[SPEAKER_00]: Today we're joined with Joe Butler room.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the CEO of Field Digital and Field is a building a public operating company focused on digital asset infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's giving investors away to gain exposure to companies helping power the next phase of crypto adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about why the sector matters, why public market markets make a play a bigger role and how field is looking to build and scale this opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really excited to have Joe on today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joe, thanks
[SPEAKER_01]: Brian, awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Looking forward to talking about all the cool inspiring things coming up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it certainly is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's always a, it's always an interesting time in digital assets in the crypto world that is for sure and excited to kind of dive into it and exactly what's going on with field.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Joe, to start can you tell us a little bit about your background and what led you into the digital assets and infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so my first four way into digital assets was just being a kid on the internet, you know, running around and hearing about this Bitcoin thing that people were transacting with, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is called like 2011 and I thought it was fascinating, but didn't really get grasp of the concept fully in 2012, I worked for the Rumpall campaign.
[SPEAKER_01]: So big libertarian right, Austrian economics monetary policy, and so was able to really learn about like what was happening Which was like all the money printing that was happening in society and coming of age and a financial crisis Stalkyrie was gonna be a bit big thing and then so Alongside that I took a tampon and I wrestled in high school and college and I competed in a professional mixed martial arts career for a while and so Did that but had a lot of free time my hands and I
[SPEAKER_01]: was just getting into a ton of interests that, you know, I was gravitating towards an ultimately in 2014 and when the Mt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gawkes bubble happened in the price of Bitcoin was much much higher than the first time I saw it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like curious like what is going on here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And from there, I took another dive in and with the experience in the life experience of the rompalk campaign, I realized like, oh, this is the sum that's really going to matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so went down the rabbit hole was discovering just kind of like, what is this used for?
[SPEAKER_01]: How can you play with this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what's going on?
[SPEAKER_01]: And my fighting career, I turned that off in 2015 and so I decided to enter.
[SPEAKER_01]: At that time, Coney Blue camps are really popular.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just was like, OK, I want to learn how to play around with the tech.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just joined one and just learned.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then around that time, Ethereum was launching.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I went to like a Bitcoin investor conference back in Vegas, like in 20.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I think, yeah, it was like 1516 and that's some kid and he was like probably 19.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, this Ethereum thing's really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: You should check it out and I did in the DevCon Zero video that all come out and and I just just like, oh, this is like really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so from there, just, you know, imagining about programmable money, I got more and more down into that rabbit hole and
[SPEAKER_01]: So as I was sort of discovering what was next or how to get involved in the space, during those days it was whole blockchain not Bitcoin, that's kind of what the banks were doing like private, like DLT ledgers and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so from there I went and you know, just started exploring on the community grass to the level of what was going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that's where all the magic was happening, was on the open source side.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I really got my first start in the space and earn is helping through the first Ethereum developer meetups in San Francisco.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then from there, just I was hacking around on the EVN and playing around with the technology.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when the ICOs happened with me, my friends were well positioned.
[SPEAKER_01]: to go and essentially capitalize on that moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything my private placement, the exchanges got smart, so I started putting syndicate funds together.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the biggest deal I did at that time was a project called, for a stable coin project called Haven.
[SPEAKER_01]: And 2018 fell out, and I was just sort of supporting the projects that I had my portfolio.
[SPEAKER_01]: and the founder of that project can't work with who's also on our board.
[SPEAKER_01]: I helped to reposition the protocols, synthetics, and develop early yield farming.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so from there, within the trenches, playing around with the early protocols, D5 Summer was really good to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And from there, Formula One's my family office in 2022.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've been investing just as an angel during that entire time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mostly seed stage, and infrastructure, just defy tokens, the whole of the whole game.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought to myself after FTX went down, I basically had an idea of like, okay, I've been investing from the balance sheet the entire time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's the moment now to like set up a side car fund, like brawn the network, bring on some LPs, getting to the mix of what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then as I went through that venture, I talked to one of the largest fund funds in the space.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, since they were one of the largest fund funds, they also had some of the largest market research, and they told me they said, hey, like, what do you think DPI is for crypto venture?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is 2223, um, cash on cash for transfer LPs, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had some friends that just didn't own that, big markups, all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was maybe like 8 to 12% something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: They said it was 3%.
[SPEAKER_01]: And mind you again, 2223, it's probably negative since then, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's just such a different time, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I was just thinking like, you know, when I got involved in like 2015-16, like, no one even under, like, everyone thought I was like, just talking about scams, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, they couldn't imagine capital formation could happen on chain in this way, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as like I just thought about it and this fund was this fund of funds was enthusiastic about investing in us for for us it didn't make sense to me in my co-founder it was just kind of like is this even the business model that makes sense anymore I don't know if there's going to be a lot of venture stories that do really well There's going to be you know lots of singular successes in the space all the time right but as like an index it's probably changed and like what's next right
[SPEAKER_01]: And so from there, me and my co-partner, a co-co-founder and friend Raule, we were thinking like, what is the next thing?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then at that point, Trump is coming back into office.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, like, crypto is making a huge play into the regulatory scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it first occurred to me that public market activities in crypto is going to start converging when Ripple filed for the RIP on 2020.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, that got shut down, but I was like, this is probably going to happen at some point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then as all of that came together,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a big fan of Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was at the Omaha meeting this year, and I just thought to myself, like, all the cool things I do in the family office, the on-chain yield farming, the super crazy tokenomics, and all the really big breakthrough stuff that crypto's going to enable, you know, in this basically really cool digital financial world, you know, people need access to the stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: No one's really gonna mess around with their ledger and figure out how to, like, you know, be the first transaction into some of these pools, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I thought this could possibly the moment and that's how that was the genesis and there's obviously more of a story of how it came together But that was the crux of the heart like we have to go down this path
[SPEAKER_00]: it's amazing it's one of my favorite things about the podcast is like learning about people's backgrounds and how they got into crypto and everyone's stories just a little bit different and just from your point of view uh from from the point of view that here from you it pays to be curious uh it's it's amazing how like you know just one day like you're learning about this Bitcoin thing you're like it seems interesting and then now it's
[SPEAKER_00]: blown up into this entire career in business bottle and just everything's evolving more than we could ever a dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess my first question for you is, tell me a little bit about field digital.
[SPEAKER_00]: What problem are you trying to solve in the market?
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me a little bit about what you do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so field digital is a crypto native thin tech in the llama and we're using emanator scale So what's happening at this point is public markets have an appetite for crypto the dad's all this kind of stuff I know right now on this day June 25, you know things are you know a little wonky out there in the markets You know Marco sailors, you know looking as wounds maybe a little bit of figuring things out But tough day for sale right tough day for sale.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no
[SPEAKER_01]: it is, it is, it is, and cats out of the bag, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But this thing is happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, the Trump, you know, Trump leaves office in 28 and maybe it flips blue, like, okay, maybe we might have some regulatory, like, tightness happening, but this is not going backwards anymore, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, as we were thinking about all of this and piggybacking off the last point of my story, me and my co-founder were thinking like, okay, like, it's time to put everything into a public company and figure out some sort of structure that could work this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in my family office, I've invested into like hospitality and like all I got my prime suspect going out having a nice dinner, you know, nice drink or whatever and I invest in a few lounges and restaurants and you are confirmed that we met our third co-founder Mullen Shaw he's a big time fund manager he's
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, run, uh, books, uh, and was PM at, like, say the Dell and Millennium, um, those big shops.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we got to know him over the years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he just, you know, didn't know anyone that was like a real crypto person that could, like, offer him something interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as he got comfortable with us, he was like, hey, like, if you guys ever want to pass along the hat for an opportunity, like, let me know, I'll go and, like, reach out to my network for you guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so.
[SPEAKER_01]: As we were thinking to this idea, it was an investor we really respected.
[SPEAKER_01]: We reached out and we explained the idea and he was like, this is awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: This makes total sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, I know everyone on Wall Street likes to have a mini roadshow.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was literally the week that all the debt stuff started going crazy last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we were, you know, and all the investment banks offices and, you know, pure Wolf of Wall Street stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, who are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your name?
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me my money into the...
[SPEAKER_01]: And the aha moment came for me for one of the big investment banks that did most of the transactions last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were sitting in their offices and I was explaining to them what like the levered looping was.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like what liquid-staking was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even what's staking was itself, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were like, wow, you could do this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, you guys have already raised like billions of dollars and it was mostly just for singular treasury, that's mostly Bitcoin, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was for me kind of like, whoa, like these guys, like you really have no share but no idea of what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to like bridge the gap.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it needs to come from twofold, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I love my people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love our crypto, crazys on Twitter and all this kind of stuff, but it's a different skill set.
[SPEAKER_01]: Being in the trenches locked up in your room, grinding away, versus being in board rooms and really pitching and closing like some of these big deals and honestly, transient.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a lot of my job right now is not necessarily, you know, like a lot, like there's a lot of things, but really it's marketing and it's also just education, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like telling people what's going on, how this works, not making it so scary that like money is just going to disappear all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, we have to invest in the right things and do all those proper analyses, but as the CEO and what we're doing in this whole process is basically putting together a public company that is going to acquire fixed and shovels to infrastructure businesses that are cashier positive in this space.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you think about it, most of the stuff that has happened right now is kind of crazy while it's open volatility, which in some ways is great, some ways it's not, but in general, there's something that's obviously powering all the
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have, like, obviously, the biggest winners in the space, which is probably Coinbase and Binance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And particularly the trading and brokerage engines, I've been consolidated like the regulatory, the custody, the purbs, the longs, all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in general, the things such as block explorers on Shamedetta analytics, wallets, RPCs, networking infrastructure, base-level protocol, builders, all these infrastructure shops that
[SPEAKER_01]: they have done well, but they're not as big enough to go and be someone that can go public.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a bit of a lock right now for crypto public companies just given many number of years and random cap table things.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a bit of an innovator still dealing with M&A, where they want to chase down like bigger opportunities, such as maybe prediction markets, or big regulatory changes and regime changes and all the sorts of stuff and be like thanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then there's all these like really core pieces of the space that need to be gathered and consolidate and gaubled up, which when you do that creates like truly a conglomerate that can start building towards this next financial future that exists, and that's what field digital is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really speaking to things that I'm really interested in as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always interested in that infrastructure later that we want to talk about because there's a feels like a lot of opportunity there and it makes me laugh whenever you kind of say that like a lot of your job is education and you you're basically probably speak two languages.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you have like, probably like the, yeah, I was just looking at the Twitter feel digital and wanted to treat this GM world, you know, to a normal guy and suit that doesn't deal with crypto a lot different like GM, but like any crypto like DJ and or somebody's on the
[SPEAKER_00]: Twitter absolutely knows what that is and that's a way you communicate and it's really interesting how you can kind of bridge the gap and I look at it it's like a really high level skill that you're able to communicate with these two different worlds and really just bring them together make the understanding of what we live and breathe every single day and why it's so important and I guess I want to talk a little bit more about
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of investors still focus on tokens.
[SPEAKER_00]: They talk, you were just talking about this, they focus on tokens, they focus about ETFs, they focus on exchanges, they focus on miners.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you really think the infrastructure layer could be really one of the biggest opportunities?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a number of different reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, from our products perspective, it has a fundamental translation that public market investors and institutional investors can understand, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, tokenomics, I think are really groundbreaking and interesting, but you know, try to describe a buyback and burn through like a multi-sig and like how that works.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you've lost them, like, you know, immediately, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can say, like, hey, I have this many users that look up the price and data feeds
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we are expanding into the new chains that the Genius Act and the Clarity Act will enable, you know, once we get figured out with the stablecoin chains that come out and makes this, you know, compliance is going to have to be a big thing, right, and privacy, right, and all these protocols that are like specializing in those things are going to be really important.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, networking in up times or he'll be super point people love to trade their tokens.
[SPEAKER_01]: They love to trade their their their their volatility But then you know if you can't do your transactions then we see it every time there's a bull market people just like you know Ray John Twitter right these things are going to get better and more improved and then it's also like very sustainable And there's AR right and so you have KPIs you have metrics that investors really understand that gives the base
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not neglecting the on-chain world, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's going to be a token aspect of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have an equity business and an on-chain business, and it's going to be really important to have those two because everything's converging on-chain, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That being said, though, you can't just throw tokens on there and just expect people to start coming on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, building and they will come, not necessarily, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Build it, build the bridge, like, tell them to cross the bridge and they will come.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's why infrastructure is going to be so key and critical in all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, really well said, I don't know, it just makes me smile and kind of laugh when you say, like, buy back in burn and we look at like what hyper liquids doing out there and just all the mechanics, he's 99% of the revenue to buy back the token and you know, we're seeing it being picked up and featured on all these major mainstream websites and I'm like, oh, we've come far, but again, it's, it's new to a lot of people where a someone like yourself has been in it in it from day one, it almost, you know, a 2011, you said you first
[SPEAKER_00]: You really, you grew up in this age and you really have a good foundation understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in traditional markets, infrastructure businesses come incredibly valuable because they sit underneath that entire system.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see the same thing happening with digital assets?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, entirely.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, we're speaking to some of the largest institutions at the moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Banks, investment banks, long-only mutuals, all these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have actively been neglecting the space the last 15 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not just talking like overlooked.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've actively been persecuting the space.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now there's an open wide open mandate.
[SPEAKER_01]: The world is transitioning, fate people are figuring out how to use this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now they're scrambling and they can't build it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to buy it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so who better to buy and build from them the guys that essentially got us to here in the first place, which is like our people that have come up and now, you know, the space of becoming, you know, more, more investible, it's also becoming more institutional right it's been generally entrepreneurial there's a big demographic change that's happening to keep telling people where all the people my age when we started this journey 10 or 15 years ago on our 20s and 30s were aging out or having kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, there needs to be a succession plan and some sort of broader platform to roll up into and you know, all roads lead to lead to Wall Street.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, um, yeah, I really do think that institutions are really starting to work up and really have to, you know, get on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to work with them, but they're starting to open up the Commando and let us in too.
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think regular authority, clarity, starting to change the way a lot of these companies are think about public markets?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 1,000 percent, especially from, you know, even the institutions we're talking to, like, you know, none of these guys want to write a check and then get fired, right, there's a lot of money in the institutional world, but, you know, and they can, like, you know, have bad years or down years or reasons why that things don't work out, but then if you invest in the next FTx are totally done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, the regulatory priority around this stuff is really going to empower, you know, the operating crypto companies to basically be like, okay, we now have like a clear path of how we're going to do this right now we're putting pieces together as field digital helping, you know, our target companies.
[SPEAKER_01]: get public and join us in a platform.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a sizing issue like the skill sets between crypto and Wall Street are very different, like learning about how pipes work and public markets and ATMs and sort of all these different ways of tapping into the world of finance.
[SPEAKER_01]: You really have to be really buttoned up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to have your audits together.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to have the right people and connections together.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be in touch with your regulators and your auditors.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, alone, there's a thing I like, which is a lonely can go quick, but together we can go far, and I think like for us at Field Digital, as we like go and we really like build our community of like, you know, ecosystem companies that really can cross out to each other, work together, have like, you know, composable synergies, we're able to really go and tap on this opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, part of the digital asset infrastructure stack are really the most interesting to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a great question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: There's, there's, there's a lot that still needs to happen with sort of like banking the unbanked, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so even though, so I mean, one of the positive things about seeing, I guess, you know, token volatility and, you know, days like this, uh, where Bitcoin is down, like stable coins are consistently going up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of guys are just like, you know, maybe crypto savvy, most have to be and just keep their money on chain and they know how to do this stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But the average user, which is the majority of the world's money, still has no idea how to get a wallet.
[SPEAKER_01]: They still have no idea how to do their last mile, you know, feet out off ramps are on ramps, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And from there, like you really can empower these users to like leapfrog like their infrastructure and their governments to essentially participate in the global system of finance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then additionally, there's just all these pieces along the way that are very exciting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of it is, you know, a foot centered around like kind of activity in networking.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like right now, like even though, you know, block chains are figuring out how to scale and be faster and all these sorts of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: They still require RPCs, you know, and they still require batch-roading transactions, they still need compliance, they still need all of those stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, maybe it's a little bit boring, but I'm like a bit of a nerd in that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really like interesting to me to see how these pieces can come together.
[SPEAKER_01]: doing it in a compliant way, but also doing it in a structurally sound way in which the end user is in all the constituents and stakeholders, like basically can benefit copacetically and together as opposed to what you generally see in these flows where there's one parasitic entity that like is sort of extracting from everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think someone who can get that whole pipeline together of dollar in my pocket to, you know, an investible product on chain and that all those steps along the way and do that at scale for everybody, there's just there's just
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, great, great answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: In four, traditional investors who, obviously, there's traditional investors out there, they're still cautious about crypto.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the strongest pace for digital asset infrastructure in particular?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mentioned this to people when, after FTX happened and I was going in, you know, just socializing an idea for a fund and people were, you know, not so sure about D5 particularly, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, I just, I tell them and I would say this as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So people who are skeptical, you know, do you believe in programmable money?
[SPEAKER_01]: right, do you believe that money can be programmed and live on the internet and do things that humans just can't do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that's probably most likely a reality, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of steps to get there and honestly there's a lot of volatility on the what along the way, but whoever nails it, it nails it big, obviously it's going to be world changing and the velocity of money is directly tied to just the economy, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The faster you can move money, the faster you can
[SPEAKER_01]: humanity can make and create, and the more good that can happen for the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think from a capitalistic theory perspective, it makes a ton of sense from a technology perspective, it makes a ton of sense, and for a greater sort of connectivity of the world and good in that way, it makes a ton of sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to figure it out out along the way, but that reality will exist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Question is who's going to do it right, and who's going to invest in it?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you have to be smart about it, but that reality is when it happens,
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's it's certainly an interesting time and you've you got into crypto so early on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've seen your fair share of cycles, you know, you've seen your fair share of up and down days here and looking at the overall crypto market today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a good vibe where we are in the current cycle?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was texting my friend just like an hour ago because like oils crashing and then rates are going up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like nothing makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, what are we even talking about?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for me, I do feel that crypto is highly levered and reflexive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, we, we tend to get the brunt of, you know, the good and the bad things that happen in macro and right now things are a little bit shaky in that perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: Additionally, we have obviously a large unwind of leverage micro strategy, you know, otherwise I mean 10, 10 was a while ago, but there's still bodies that are floating around probably right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, people aren't aware of, yeah, and then, and then, so, and people are just generally psychologically burnt, and that generally just tends to happen, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That being said, I am a huge believer in the four-year cycle, like the happening, all of this kind of stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is going to still impact supply and demand.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're going to see how it worsens up playing with things, but, you know, in general, I think if you have an ability to get into the markets at this point, this is obviously a fantastic time, depending on your holding periods.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say crypto right now is struggling from a trader's perspective, but from an investability perspective, I actually think we're in probably a good place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then additionally, this is how we think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that people want to invest in all the other pieces, just besides the price of Bitcoin, the price of all these other things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so equities are going insane right now, you know, well, we'll keep an eye on SpaceX and how everything's going that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm pretty positive on the year for IPOs, which I think is good timing for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in general, you know, the public markets are risk on, and there's massive constituency of people in the world that are risk on, that have a ton of liquidity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why we need to bridge this gap between crypto and them from like, you know, the investability perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: As we get, you know, one marketing making, we get more long only funds, we get more indexes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is all just a natural way that capitalism works in the financial markets work, which crypto has been successful as a standalone on its own, with just kind of an on its own island.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we really have to start bridging our way into there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I am very bullish, but, you know, it's always on the margins, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's a great way to put it and very I very similar thoughts there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, well, I should say I've always been a believer in the four-year cycle until this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was one of those people that were like, you had the four-year cycle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's done.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we have all these ETF inflows and then like, sure it's clockwork.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just kind of broke that way, which is now it, now it looks like we're in a four year cycle, but I love the way you put it, that from a trading perspective, and I do my fair show of trading tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is tough right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are certainly opportunities out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got this intersection of AI and crypto.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's certainly interesting and up and brewing companies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you really get into the weeds, you could do well, but I mean, it is a particular skill set there from trading.
[SPEAKER_00]: longer the days from, you know, where you could just have some scalping or you can get into some product projects and you just feel like the smartest guy in the world, trading is very, it's, it's more difficult than it's been in the past, but from an investor perspective, I've told some of my friends because they know I've been in crypto for years and I try to educate them as much as I can.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've, without giving them a financial advice, I've been very clear of,
[SPEAKER_00]: boys, like if this crypto thing's going to work out, which you know, I believe it's going to work out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a long-term believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like a generation of wealth of opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could bleed out a little bit longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you have some sort of realistic time frame, we're all young, you have realistic time frame, you got a few spare bucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: this is probably the time to do our cost average in and we're seeing in real time right now how volatile it's not just a crypto market i mean you know as a you know oil oil gold i mean things are volatile right now space it's crazy i mean in retrospect it kind of that space X IPO we all knew it was
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of out was going to break out and there could be a little bit of a ball off top of market top there with that SpaceX IPO.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think anybody thought it was just going to run from a buck 35 to 500.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there were some obvious signs there, but there's some very interesting moves that are very interesting opportunities there from crypto specific.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do feel like if somebody really wants to get involved in just invest dollar cost average in, it feels like it's good over time as ever because this is map we've seen, you've seen it.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, we've seen this story before.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, exactly, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, pretty sure the choir of my friend and just in general, you know, it's a talk for which was paradise, you know, we just survive, you know, all these little like ups and downs and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, an inch right now is a mile down the road.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's really true, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we're just entering a world in which, you know, inflation's probably going to stay weird and, you know, things are going to get continuously, you know, more difficult and, you know, certain sort of business lines and just, I disrupting everything and so like you kind of have to be in the markets to get ahead, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, we'll see what happens with everything, but, you know, crypto right now is, I think, a really interesting opportunity for Savvy, you know, a contrarian investor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to say you are one of the like the analogies and these like little one liners like you're like a clippers dream I've wrote down like four lines.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna honestly steal from you the cockroaches paradise is amazing It's uh, I just had to call that out because it's it's amazing stuff
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, what do you think about, you know, no doubt about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think about them?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think the market is still underestimating about institutional adoption of all the digital assets?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ooh.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a good one.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great one.
[SPEAKER_01]: One that surprised me.
[SPEAKER_01]: These guys are pretty smart.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, they're actually pretty, like, like, you go, like, In your book, if you have that amount of, No, true, true, that truthfully, like the guys who are at the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, some of the biggest banks and the biggest funds that we're speaking with.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am, I am, I'm delightfully impressed as to sort of how sophisticated they're thinking about the cycles, about the, the sort of market structure issues that crypto has, the technological advances that could be had and how they are willing to get involved.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, at the end of the day, we still have to check the boxes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to go through your background checks.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to go through your regulatory findings.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to go through your audits.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to do all these things, which honestly most crypto people are just like, oh, let's do a token instead.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which has been our problem, you know, but these guys really, really understand the space and they're willing to go really big.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just has to be the right product in the right structure.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's been my take.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've been delighted to educate them, they understand it, and they are enthusiastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think as much as you just see the bad guys and finance, sitting in the big board rooms, standing on top of everyone, at the end of the day, they're just people and they're trying to get involved.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that to me has been really encouraging.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a that's a great way to put it not I absolutely love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So three buzz well, not word so much three buzz terms I should say that really floated around our stable coins tokenization in real world asset infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next phase of crypto.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you view those three I mean they're just they've been talked about so much I'll repeat them again it's stable coins tokenization in real world assets what's the future looking like for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so stable coins without a doubt are going to be huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, best meant today was on seeing the sea I believe it was and he was talking about how, you know, they were, yeah, you saw that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like, yeah, we took out Venezuela, they're going to use dollars around, we left attention, so we're going to use dollars too.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's no.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we all know how this dollar, this dollar scheme works, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, that proliferating is going to be huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: That being said, there are a lot of players there, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of income been sorreddy, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we'll see if it's going to be weather and circle still or if they get nationalized or something of the likes sort of happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is going to be competition and, you know, we'll see what happens there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's going to be more novel, interesting, global stablecoin products.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's probably like my hot take is that you're going to see more local international currency stablecoin, so I know there's a bunch of companies working on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But those are more useful for transacting on the ground over there than they are for every instance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's generally what people are converting to when they're moving dollars around.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you can imagine a world in which people are doing that, and then additionally, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: we can see like AMM pulls come back and the curves start doing these like stable swaps again like that's I'm kind of seeing things go in that direction and that's kind of my hot take and then when it comes to RWA's I love it I think so the way I kind of look at them
[SPEAKER_01]: particularly the ones that I find interesting are sort of analogous to, you know, junk bonds in the Michael milk and air, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, high yield is now what they're called because they've been accepted, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I'm seeing like tons like crazy things come down my, my desk where, you know, it's like, oh, there's like an inefficiency in like, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: This sort of, you know, reap over night market in like, you know, car loans or like other things like that, right, which basically like the incumbents and traditional finance have too high of a hurdle to extract of monopolistic tactics of all large banks in which they're charging like enormous outrageous fees, right, and one of the things that's really interesting with with crypto is that when token prices go down stable coins go up and people are searching for yield.
[SPEAKER_01]: right so they're searching for light vaults you know they're searching for you know they're 15-25 percent amounts right because why would you invest anything less if you go into treasuries or you can buy like real estate or an Airbnb or something like that right and the reason you want the liquidity the reason you want to invest in something that potentially could be risky is because of the high returns and there's actually a ton of uh
[SPEAKER_01]: of markets out there that need this sort of servicing liquidity which now you can bring on chain and that is a huge swath of users that are looking for a home, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I am very bullish on WAs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the issue in terms of monetization perspective is that people are genuinely just issuing RWAs and so it's sort of like a one-time fee that is being created when it like you know is issued by a protocol and a project on on a certain chain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then from there what do you do with it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Then okay, are we going to transact it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we going to trade it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are people going to speculate, you know, the base price or people going to wrap it up in another derivative and maybe do like a structure product or something like that, that's the next leg.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think of our WAs that's going to make it into like a viable sort of revenue generating ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's my second take there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then third was, sorry, I was the third to the point that you brought up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stablecoins tokenization will roll to assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: They kind of, you kind of go hand over fist there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Last point on tokenization is that we really need exhaustion of seals.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know what I mean like it's we just can't like keep like you know pumping and dumping tokens and having all these like you know crazy like you know like exotic you know inflation strategies and stuff like that like even like base layer L1 security is like at the right deep like you know what's gonna happen when you know that happening happens too much you know there's all these things in the future that we need to have yield that comes from outside the system
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to be important to have that there, because not only does it give a larger breath of products for users to pick from and a more robust ecosystem, but it's going to keep people interested and keep these going and volume and transactions, which ultimately is why people stick around.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if people are just parking their money and leaving, not a lot happens from the day to day.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you need this vibrant ecosystem of constant
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of my final questions here, if an institutional investor or a high net worth investor are looking at digital asset infrastructure right now, what's the one thing you want them to really understand?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the biggest thing for them to understand is that there is a significant amount.
[SPEAKER_01]: What immediately comes the surface in my mind is that crypto is very volatile, not only in token prices, but it's fleeting in its use cases.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the infrastructure today may not be the infrastructure of tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: right and so like a lot of the companies that we talk to that has have survived these number of cycles you know rightfully we're very focused on one product line and they were cash will positive there now the space is broken out and they're looking around and they're like okay we've made it that this far but like this is not the only like we're a single product for not a giant company right
[SPEAKER_01]: What are we going to do next in order to survive?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's that one product line might not be relevant in five years, you know, and so I think, you know, and this is what we really focused on at field digital, we have a flexible mandate and we're permanent capital.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're basically allowing for us to acquire the builders of the space.
[SPEAKER_01]: fire the assets and infrastructure that are going to empower everything and then as the themes change and then as the cycles, you know, just naturally happen, we're able to constantly adjust and rebuild and raise money and consistently go into the direction of the future, which is by definition never stagnant.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I would say.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be very, be very thoughtful about, you know, the singular themes because, you know, they always change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amazing Joe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great interview.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously you're a wealth of knowledge of this space and I urge anybody that wants to learn more that they should certainly reach out to you or reach out and learn more about field and how do they go about doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're making a lot of public announcements soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a ton of great things happening in the background.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, keep up with our website.
[SPEAKER_01]: Field.digital alongside our Twitter as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll be we'll be out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm sure there'll be there'll be hearing from us soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they can just follow up with us directly where we're constantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Spreading the good word and educating people like I was telling you early on in the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: amazing and for everybody in the audience i'm gonna put this links down below so you can learn more i highly encourage that because you're ready here you can tell how educate how much education you have in the space he's been here forever and he's got some great tips thanks again joe that's it appreciate it bro