[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the crypto marriage podcast and we have a great guest here for you today.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Anthony, Jordi Anas, who is the founder and general partner of Innovating Capital.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a 220 million investment firm focused on AI, digital assets, enterprise technology, and cybersecurity.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also the co-founder of Lumera Protocol, giving him a really unique perspective of both the investor and builder in the web three world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anthony, thanks for joining us today.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, definitely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I butcher the last name or did I come close how how to how to come out?
[SPEAKER_02]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, okay, I think it just been nice, but I like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, like I said, just a moment ago, really excited to have you on because you're the very unique perspective in the world of web three and it's kind of what our audience loves to hear about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But to kick things off, how'd you first get started in crypto, web three, whatever we want to call it, and what made you believe the technology had long-term potential?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for sure, so I guess for some quick context and background, I run the Innovative Capital where a technology focus investment firm are really focused on foundational infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Things you mentioned right, digital assets, what three,
[SPEAKER_02]: AI, cybersecurity, deep infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is like quantum.
[SPEAKER_02]: We invest across both venture and control transactions.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're very much so involved in the portfolio companies that we operate in.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and prior to this, I've spent both of my career and it's just really just at the intersection of capital markets and emerging technologies.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, you asked about obviously getting involved in the digital asset and web three world.
[SPEAKER_02]: interesting enough when we started the firm, it's actually called crypto's capital with a program to focus on obviously, you know, with three digital assets.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've gotten into the space actually from the lens of a developer doing some open source, you know, early contributing and consulting for one of the first years he 20s, you know, out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, that gave me a lot of
[SPEAKER_02]: direct exposure to really this sort of construct of tokenized based ecosystems, theater peer transactions, and really what this could actually do or amount to on a globalized scale, especially as the world itself is moving so far more decentralized cadence and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I fell in love with what three in that became a huge focus of the firm, which we're frankly part of the reason for starting.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was at the time very few firms were focused on investments in this particular sector.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I may have missed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: What year did you get going at Innovating Capital?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's we launched in 2017.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's really
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you've seen, you've seen your fair share of bare and boom markets in the crypto world, huh?
[SPEAKER_01]: You've kind of seen it all, I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I see old woman boss, you know, secure-tized token offerings, these RWA today, you name it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's one of my favorite things when we get people in the podcast to just kind of know when they got involved in crypto and what they've seen and you've obviously seen your fair shares of ups and downs and certainly weathered to the storm that we get here in the crypto world, but we definitely love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're also both an investor and a builder.
[SPEAKER_01]: How is building crypto changed the way you evaluate companies that innovating capital?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, one of the ways that we look at, obviously, and investing overall is developing somewhat of a kind of a thesis in the particular sector of cervical that we're looking at.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether it's, hey, this new cryptographic scheme is going to, you know, really disrupt, you know, how
[SPEAKER_02]: fast or throughput or finality for particular block change and it was building those types of technologies.
[SPEAKER_02]: How does that same technology apply to web2, cybersecurity, data orchestration, things like that, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we really kind of start from,
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, developing a thesis from the ground up and going out into the world and looking for managers and operators who are building under the presentation of that thesis itself and backing and supporting them, you know, typically in more meaningful ways than, you know, more passive or less active venture.
[SPEAKER_02]: What that sometimes leads to is us kind of not necessarily discovering anyone working on, you know, something that we have high conviction in.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so in some instances, we've, you know, led quasi incubation type opportunities, such as Lumera.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Lumera is a company that we've seeded and incubated, you know, really since day one, you know, brought on the management team to really come and execute and build out the company as as you alluded to, I serve as a co-founder.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it certainly gives you a very nuanced perspective of things as well, you know, from both that sort of, you know, symbiotic relationship of both building and investing, right, both understanding, I guess, from a diligence perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know what's really think about things that are less tangible from an execution or psychological or environmental perspective and it obviously certainly helps as well in terms of you know winning the partnering with founders when there's somewhat of an alignment with regards to you know hey we're not necessarily just type or focused on are you going to hit your AR metric and the next 12 months right but more so what is the actual
[SPEAKER_02]: prudent decision to make with respect to your product roadmap.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe sometimes it means, you know, delaying revenue in order to refine or tailor your overall go to market strategy or business model plan or whatever it might be.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think, you know, having that perspective, naturally elevates a certain level of alignment with a lot of the founders and companies we deal with as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see a filter here for web three companies that you've worked with or invested with.
[SPEAKER_00]: How's that thesis changed since I mean I'm sure it's changed right 2017 till now there's just been tied away after tied away of change.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you said you started with the infrastructure part of the sector.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that still the case?
[SPEAKER_00]: How's that evolved from 2017 till now?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it's largely always been focused predominantly on that level of infrastructure overall, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, where that infrastructure applies to has certainly changed, you know, back then, it was far more focused.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a very, very,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, kind of fresh landscape of this construct of, you know, new L1s, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Back then, the thesis was somewhat largely ideological, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we believe that blockchain or decentralization would
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, removing intermediaries, decentralized trust, you know, give users ownership of data and digital assets, right, create a more open internet, you know, a theory on more salon, all right, our early examples of, you know, potential investments that, you know, provided programable money or programmable applications.
[SPEAKER_02]: or distribution uses, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And it kind of made you feel that everything else could be somewhat decentralized, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we replace centralized systems things like that?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that was really a very early pillar for us, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It was understanding where these different how one layers and there was a big debate at the time, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where value would ultimately
[SPEAKER_02]: tokens versus protocols, applications versus L1s.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we ultimately, you know, we're very, very focused that there would be a world with very interoperable L1s that sort of different use cases and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, over time, that's evolved, you know, just given the obviously innovation and how things have developed on.
[SPEAKER_02]: massive ecosystems like Ethereum or so on.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and then that thesis evolved from to really kind of pinpoint more on the infrastructure level orientation, the centralized storage, identity, middleware, developer tool, like things like that, which is one of the reasons why we incubated the mirror.
[SPEAKER_02]: The focus shifted away from foundational infrastructure, or you just
[SPEAKER_02]: really focused away from that kind of pure L1 generalized infrastructure to more foundational infrastructure that was more purpose built in use case oriented.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: If Ethereum is now going to scale this kind of global compute environment with a myriad of different L2s scaling tools and applications building on top from a vertical standpoint.
[SPEAKER_02]: What can actually support that overall development when Ethereum is potentially chasing speed over storage or potential throughput and finality over security rate, and it might require working with dedicated L1s or more application-oriented L1s overall.
[SPEAKER_02]: More recently, you know, markets obviously somewhat matured and things have happened over the last few years.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's become obviously a lot of it's been the regulatory shift and the regulatory environment.
[SPEAKER_02]: Market somewhat matured.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have a lot of institutional adoption.
[SPEAKER_02]: And our thesis with respect to this long term vision has not changed by any means, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: We still fundamentally believe that, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone relatively in, you know, the early innings, especially if you look at a lot of the, you know, more first-world nations, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: What I love about crypto is that you kind of see that that same ideological thought that I had, you know, years ago has really taken hold and you can pinpoint it and see it in real world use cases and emerging markets and things like that, which is what it was meant to serve.
[SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, not to digress, you know, today everything's all about capital markets,
[SPEAKER_02]: and the realization for, I think, a lot of people has been, you know, blockchain stone necessarily create value just because they're decentralized.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of a, you know, fundamentally use case of it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But they create value because they're potentially operationally superior across a number of different points of fractions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Instance settlement.
[SPEAKER_02]: programmable collateral, global liquidity, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: The use case for ability for potentially jump or tower, a breven tower, to provide liquidity or service and counterparty against retail investors, thousands of, you know, a mom and pop coffee shop, right, things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's kind of
[SPEAKER_02]: provide this level of sort of global liquidity and markets that didn't necessarily fully exist for.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're seeing that with RWA's on-chain settlement, private credit, tokenized treasuries, things like that, and it's definitely exciting to see how things evolve.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what's the Anthony's favorite areas of crypto or areas of interest right now?
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a bunch of buzzwords out there, you know, the AI sector, we got perks, we got privacy, we got just the good old Bitcoin Ethereum, RWA's tokenization, curious.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you kind of lean into or what makes you stop and read an article with a header?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's really interesting to me is this construct of, you know, and I know it's somewhat, you know, buzzy, but intelligence, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think what people are, you know, potentially saying or not saying is,
[SPEAKER_02]: This sort of, you know, Web3 plus AI narrative that is buzzing on the surface.
[SPEAKER_02]: because of just general societal trends and whatnot, but fundamentally makes pure sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you can have a blockchain that kind of becomes the trust layer, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You have AI, which is the intelligence layer, and blockchain that really serves to power, autonomous agents in action.
[SPEAKER_02]: An autonomous agent doesn't just need reasoning, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It needs things like, and I tend to see that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It needs things like memory, it needs things like profit, and it's a wallet, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It needs the ability to own assets and the ability to transact.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what's exciting is,
[SPEAKER_02]: looking at potential, you know, use cases and applications, or infrastructure or into chains that are supporting a lot of this, whether it's the centralized storage, whether that's verification or that's proven it's whether that's, you know, these centralized inference, which is less, you know, interesting to me per se.
[SPEAKER_02]: But these types of things as the building blocks for a lot of these AI native applications, which is why I think it also ties directly into
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, stable coins.
[SPEAKER_02]: It just, you know, makes a ton of sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a world in the future where, you know, there's a hundred autonomous agents acting for every one person and they have the ability to transact directly, they have access to a wallet that's segregated with.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, a limit of stable coin and they can transact in real time, you know, money can move instantly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Assets can settle immediately.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, these agents can actually transact and that ownership is totally very viable.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, markets are just operating at 247 continuously.
[SPEAKER_02]: Blockchain is completely not obsolete, but off-skated.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's talking about
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's kind of the general ideological framework that is very exciting to me, happy to dive into it more.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's great because we we tend to think the same and sometimes we think we're incorrect but thanks for conferring our crazy ideals also.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see that robotics is not a part of a sector that you're a part of now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we're in early innings of blockchain AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not are we even approaching the early innings robotics is the reason that you guys haven't invested in that sector yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have made certain robotics investments, you know, robotics is a loaded term, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: People will peer robotics, so they think, you know, obviously potentially autonomous drones or what, from like Boston Dynamics are doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But,
[SPEAKER_02]: construct that's tied to it is really the problem of a lot of the computer vision, right, and, you know, people have this kind of potentially misguided, you know, framework that.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of this AI and agentic work can be applied to computer vision problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you look at things like what obviously Patrick Park has been doing for years, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: He's one of the most advocates in terms of obviously talking about the difference between what they're doing on a lot of their element and raising models and how
[SPEAKER_02]: deviates to an extent from some of the kind of deep neural and that type of problems that he's also worked on for decades that are more computer vision-oriented.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess, you know, to think about it, you know, directly write a, you know, AI might be able to reason and generate some sort of image or photo or video that looks extremely, you know, real and apparent and as almost like a replica.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that doesn't mean that you can, you know, attach that same model
[SPEAKER_02]: a pair of, you know, glasses and have it walk through an unstructured environment and be able to reason the same way.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're both very, very different types of problems that, you know, don't just have a high degree of correlation.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when it comes to robotics, you know, things that we are interested in are certain types of, you know, computer vision based,
[SPEAKER_02]: companies that are focused on really, how do we solve a particular unstructured data set?
[SPEAKER_02]: There might be a hardware application that's tied to it within really a more confined environment where you have a tighter feedback loop, a new can retrain and remodel effectively in real time on a confined basis.
[SPEAKER_02]: And obviously, that can extend to more generalized unstructured data sets over time.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, to an extent, you know, we are obviously in early inings, you know, there is, you know, some degree of obviously escape velocity that's happening now with a lot of those problems, definitely an area we're focused on, but I can, you know, sides that to the investment side, it's a fully different kind of underwriting model as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the hardware aspect and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's certainly an interesting time that we live in, and I mean, you know, better than anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're just talking about these like AI agents and what they can do for some curious, do you ever utilize like an AI it's like in personal use and I guess from a professional, but do you ever utilize an AI agent
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm having a hard time thinking of an example where I don't use, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anything where everything is, you know, it's much time I waste this may.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, I can't think of an example where I'm not obviously working with an agent, you know, more actively in real time.
[SPEAKER_02]: everything, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Working actually with or the founders of the mayor on kind of a something that we've been building.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's been dedicating a lot of his own time, too, and not basically kind of think about it like public equity screening overall, but you have this kind of
[SPEAKER_02]: of Ferry in the public market, it's potentially much easier for an agent to spawn and manage a weird amount of different agents that are doing a bunch of different things and tasks, but getting that to kind of work almost back to their kind of computer vision problem in the private markets.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll give you an example.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every SEC filing for every public company has, you know, formulations that get to net income, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or revenue or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it follows all the ASC standards and things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That stuff doesn't exist in the private markets.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're got compliant.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's a lot of nuances.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's lots of assumptions.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have one company that might have five or six different EBITDA figures, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: For different contexts.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for different assumptions being applied.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have my private credit and I have my credit agreement that has meant to find people up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have my gap for an answer.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have my report of even up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have my quality of earnings.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have my pro-form adjusted, which is what the market's going to pay me for, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's one example of, you know, one input that has extremely different kind of context, which is behind it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, developing agents that are almost
[SPEAKER_02]: start to discern the sort of, you know, source of truth around, you know, we have this blank basket of inputs, where should they be applied and how and, you know, taking you to a higher level of reasoning about, you know, what the true evaluation or assessment of something should be, you know, not to, not to digress, but there's a lot of interesting news cases and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_02]: in that regard.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the point being is, you know, definitely use agents for, you know, anything and everything where, you know, where I can, a lot of personal tasks, a lot of, you know, operational components, managerial items, reporting, monitoring, you know, your name at
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just made our life so much easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's really amazing because we get a full of information shove down our throats, non-stop, you know, and it just continuously increases.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's nice to have something kind of just help us filter it out a little bit and get a little bit more organized and structure it.
[SPEAKER_01]: and a more manageable way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, Joe and I are big, big fans of where we're going and in both like centralized AI, but also in decentralized AI.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I personally think we're really in the early innings and there's a lot of opportunity, but it is funny to see how far we've come.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I remember years ago, like introducing, I like chat GPT to people, which is just like a
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were just like, what is this thing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Get yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada y
[SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's just like, yeah, breaking the surface, but I mean, it's it's I even think about like just little things like I can't remember the last time I went to a new site or read a blog, right, you know, every aspect of news or information, even
[SPEAKER_02]: Twitter, you know, I don't think I've, you know, redirected from kind of a non-agent days for, you know, any kind of source of information, you know, and like over a year, it's insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my first instance of utilizing a financial agent, which just happened this last week with Robin Hood, they had an MCP to chat GBT, and I had my first successful, what is it, a stock purchase, a limit order and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just took, it's looking back on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's taken what, since 2007, I got in the same time as you Anthony, 2017, and I got in the crypto.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here we are, only nine years later, to see some sort of feature and some sort of benefits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even a benefit actually, just an execution, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're pretty far off of actual, you know, seeing the, I would say the long-term benefits of it, but it's good to see that there's finally traction like inside a financial platform like Robin Hood, you have to see that bleed over to other things shit like we all hope for you know, we all hope to that it would solve a lot of these friction points and, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: One that stands out to me for 2026 is surprisingly just RWAs and Pokemon cards.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they seem to be winning in the world of tokenization is a really good use case.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know Brian and I were just talking about that before you got on of how physically backed assets with tokens do make sense in some, in a lot of places, I guess collectibles to start.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anywhere else that you're seeing maybe like high usage of it, or maybe you could just speak on RWAs itself?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think RWAs, right, there's obviously the kind of non-fungible collectible type, you know, but there's frankly the bigger use case, I think over time is
[SPEAKER_02]: liquidity, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: People here are WAs, they think real estate are Pokemon cards, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's like a from my perspective, kind of a narrow super, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You saw it with NFTs, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You had this sort of a kind of contrast that, you know, just because something was tokenized, liquidity would draw to it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's just not necessarily the case.
[SPEAKER_02]: You look what assets are you liquid in general, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a reason why.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just because you tokenize something, doesn't mean you're going to draw a multitude of liquidity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I might be easier to trade Pokemon cards or transact or things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But
[SPEAKER_02]: There's trillions of dollars sitting on balance sheets that are fundamentally good assets that you can apprise a true tangible value to that might be.
[SPEAKER_02]: liquid assets from the standpoint of observable inputs, you know, there are fundamentally level one or level two, but they're just operationally eloquent based on how they're structured, an insurance receivable, inventory financing, trader receivable's LP interests, private credit, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, private credit markings are, you know, more or less, you know, very, very solid.
[SPEAKER_02]: Public markets, you know, already have tons of liquidity until they potentially, you know, don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is kind of, I guess, thinking a little bit bigger here, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Public markets, we view as a proxy of liquidity, but then we start to think about things like see plus one settlement, securities, lending, overnight repos, collateral management, marginal optimization, all that stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Applying tokenization to this sort of world doesn't necessarily create more buyers, it just creates better liquidity mechanics, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the real unlock here isn't like this kind of construct of fractional ownership, the unlock, that's obviously a feature of it, that's a great feature to have.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that will drive some incremental,
[SPEAKER_02]: But the unlock is this kind of construct of, you know, programmable liquidity that, you know, I mentioned a couple times, you can move collateral, it's simply, you know, you can settle a security, instantaneously or continuously assets are more composable, you know, financing is potentially automated, you know, we were seeing over the ton of these vaults right now, most of these vault use cases or these are to be use cases are more CLOs they're more kind of lending oriented, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you obviously have this opportunity and some of the more private facets of the market in the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, finance is a lot of times really about how fast capital can move.
[SPEAKER_02]: The faster you can move collateral, the faster you can settle, the faster you know, you can recycle or use capital, the lower the cost of capital becomes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Think about where high cost of capital assets are.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's generally tied to these kind of e-locquery, and things like, you know, why is there a higher spread in private credit versus public credit if you're looking at quasi-identical triple-a-rated assets, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Simply because of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So tokenization compresses a lot of that risk overall, you know, I think that these are just general things that
[SPEAKER_02]: Frankly, seem very just surface level, but it's truly where the underlying kind of vision comes from, you know, you move to a world where economically valuable becomes, you know, more digitally made of.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not just things like these sorts of collectibles or slow-moving assets like real estate.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's things that we think about every day, cash flows,
[SPEAKER_02]: equities, right, debt, anything that can kind of generate economic value, you can kind of program it to this sort of financial primitive, and you know increase obviously turnover or utility of it itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're talking a while about the buzzwords here, RWA's, we're talking about AI, everything that you know, you know, which is buzzing in the space and something I have to bring up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it feels like what I'm about to bring up is ping ponging as much as this I ran U-US conflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, one day we're in one day we're out and it's the Clarity Act.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seemed like earlier in the year it was a slam dunk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we're really up against the gun to get in this clarity act done.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I just I just saw recently it seemed like a bright arm shunger saying it's ready to go to the Senate floor.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious, is the clarity act going to happen this year?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your personal vibe?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not going to hold you to it, but I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: The main thing, I guess, to kind of, I guess, think us that back and think about for a second is most people look at the Clarity Act, kind of like, you know, the Genius Act and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, as it providing more regulation and, you know, frankly, to be it's more about,
[SPEAKER_02]: the level of permission, for years, institutions, national states, funds, whatever, you know, are asking, you know, can we do this and how can we do this?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, now it's basically how fast can we do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, the Clarity Act is removing a lot of legal uncertainty, you know, which, you know, matters as much as the specific rules, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: boundary between the SEC and the CFTC and have kind of this, you know, more predictable framework.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I don't think the winners in the space, the market's excited from it from a crypto perspective and obviously, crypto will be a winner, but the winners are frankly,
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of, you know, everyone in the, you know, really financial rails world, whether you're a custody provider or a compliance provider or an identity provider, a lot of these kind of picks and shovel businesses, you know, obviously, you know, markets are just generally going to be able to function a lot better when entrepreneurs, you know, know the rules overall.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, to me, I mean, it's almost impossible to predict when, and if it's, you know, when it's going to happen, I do frankly believe that it will happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a question of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a question of when.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a lot of bipartisan support for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I think obviously the market is generally waiting because it's going to kind of unlock or unleash
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot of accessibility, you know, two a lot of those, you know, not just the coin basis of the world, which is what the market's kind of focused on, but everybody else as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's going to be a lot of benefits, you know, from the passing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'd like to see it pass in 2026.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been watching those odds on Paul and Market quite closely, and you know, we've been ping pongging around quite a bit, but it'll be great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, it's got unlock a lot of opportunity, a lot of capital that's probably on the sidelines, and
[SPEAKER_01]: give a little bit of pushing the right direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it does feel like it's kind of lining up for the whole four-year cycle, we're getting out of the summer, we get a clarity act, we've been grinding in a bear market for some time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be nice to you know kind of lead way into a nice little bull run to the next couple of years with a clarity axe signature.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean listen, there's been a lot of a lot of foundations and a lot of crypto players because like if you look at like
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there again, there's tons of bipartisan support and everyone's generally aligned on this kind of market structure legislation, but, you know, so there's not a lot of politics left it's, you know, you have like these ethic provisions, you have certain
[SPEAKER_02]: The ejecta foundation just had a summit down at TCA.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a lot of politicians there where it was really much of structure as a platform for education and things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, definitely, you know, we'll see if, you know, we get this down before the next recess, I think what it's like, what's calcium, whatever it says.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say, we're 37% change on Paul and Mark, which feels low.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a little embarrassed a couple weeks ago, then I've been here and that we got a little bit farther with the ethics provisions and
[SPEAKER_01]: we're here in some bullish news out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have a side anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I do like about the Clarity Act is it's kind of turned like the world of like the five arm shrugs in the Jamie Diamonds.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like this like soap opera in the financial world with, you know, Jamie Diamonds, like kind of snapping at that reporter a couple months ago when it's like, if Coinbase wants to be a bank, they should be a bank and I'm like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, it's, uh, everyone's, uh, everyone's very testy about what's happening right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's been interesting to watch and say the least.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we'll think about it this way, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's why it's made it's kind of like, is it all guess it's a 10 years later this year is an extra, to me, it's, it doesn't really matter, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: What matters is the fact that
[SPEAKER_02]: 10 years ago, or even five years ago, the conversation and the debate is, our digital assets can exist, like, just completely banned, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And now it's, okay, how do we actually properly, you know, regulate that, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's obviously a sign of, you know, where we are in kind of the maturity cycle overall, and in some of the the staying power.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know if the market prescribes enough, you know, value or
[SPEAKER_02]: the clarity act as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's not bullish because of any one provision.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, you know, if you take a step back and just look at what it's going to unlock, which is why I think that premium should be in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just generally bullish from this standpoint of eliminating
[SPEAKER_02]: broader uncertainty.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we're far along enough away where there's a high level of certainty that it will pass in general, which is why optimistic on industry overall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a great perspective and that's why I wanted to kick the question over to you because you're obviously extremely sharp in the area you've been around since 2017 and you remember the days when honestly there was like a time there early on when we were all kind of scratching our heads like United States is going to ban Bitcoin again or the guy do this and all those headlines are now off the window.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be very hard to convince anybody that Bitcoin or just digital assets overall aren't a real asset class.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're not growing and they're not going.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you take a step back and you look back, like Joe said, nine years ago, there was kind of a real thought process.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not a non-zero chance that digital assets may fizzle out or something could happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now that all seems to be gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, we got like the black rocks and the fiddilities and the Morgan Stanley's and just major people involved in digital assets.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you put it very nicely there where it's like a not a matter of if it's a matter of when.
[SPEAKER_01]: It probably doesn't matter all that much, but again, we'd like to see it done sooner rather than later.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Anthony, it's it's it's awesome to have you on the podcast me because you're a wealth of information.
[SPEAKER_01]: You obviously have a great pulse on what's happening in the market.
[SPEAKER_01]: We would love to have you back on the podcast, especially as things continue to grow.
[SPEAKER_01]: But before we let you go, I would love for you to just to give you an opportunity to shout out innovating capital, Lumera, how do people find you?
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to give you an opportunity
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely, a website innovating.capital.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my Twitter is P Anthony, LG, so you've been obviously, you know, if I'm into this well, follow, you know, Lumera, I think it's Lumera, you know, out of the mirror protocol.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, definitely appreciate, appreciate you having me on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk soon.