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Eligibility and available amounts may vary and are subject to change at any time. For full terms and conditions, visit Current.com or call 888-851-1172 for more information. A warm welcome to the Risk Reversal Podcast. Somebody that you've been asking for for quite some time. Last was with us, believe it or not, in December of 2023. The great Mike Novogratz, the founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital. Michael, how are you? Good. All right. Thanks for having me.
Before we started, we were talking about quickly the market. And since early April, pretty significant bounce in the S&P. We traded down about 4,800. Here we are approaching 5,700. You can do the math. The all-time high was just north of 6,100. So let's talk about sort of the backdrop. What has surprised you? What has made sense to you? Because for me, some things have made sense. Other things, not so much. Listen, the sell-off made sense. We went into the year, the market was expensive anyway.
we had this Trump euphoria. You know, listen, his stated goal of cutting regulation and goosing the economy is good for markets. He put a treasury secretary that all of us believed in, Scott Besson, macro guy, smart guy, who talked about bending the curve of debt to GDP, of not balancing the budget, but pushing it more towards sanity. And so all was well. And then out of
well, what felt like left field came tariffs. And there is not a macro thinker I know that think the way tariffs were approached, the general plan was a good thing for the economy, for our standard of living and for the markets. I think King Griffin said, we just damaged the American brand. So the instinct
instinctive reaction was to sell stocks, to sell the dollar and to put a steeper on the yield curve. And to be fair, the dollar short was maybe the easiest, right? We had had this 20 year accumulation of US assets. We had US exceptionalism, these stories. We were the only stock market really that made a whole lot of money in the last 10 years. And so the unwind of that has started. The stock thing was interesting. 4,800 was the old high.
if you draw it across. And I thought that could hold. But then I kept thinking, down 20% when we have just completely shifted the framework for not just economic policy, but for security policy in the world that we've had for the last 80 years, doesn't seem like enough. And I thought we would bounce because you hit the key support level and you bounce some. The
The degree of the bounce has surprised me and lots of my friends. I think what this is, is retail. Retail has learned since before the financial crisis or after the financial crisis that if things get really bad, they get bailed out. And so they're supposed to buy the dip. And because we still have very low unemployment, people are still making money every month.
retail hasn't gone away. They've come in waves and you can see it in stocks like Palantir and MicroStrategy, two of the favorite retail names. They literally trade like rock stars. Um, and I think until we see, and this is a new thought until we really see unemployment pick up, if we do, and I hope it doesn't, cause I like when people are employed, um, you're not going to see the, the, the stock market really, you know, roll over. Um,
And that's a surprise. I think it surprised a lot of macro investors. It doesn't mean we're going to keep going up every day, right? We want to straight days, straight days, but we have the de-risk, right? And between risk management procedures at the big funds, you know, all these, these giant multi-stretch between what banks are allowed to have on the balance sheet of the trading accounts and,
the people that needed to de-risk, de-risk really fast. And that 4,800 might have been the short-term low. And we might've put in the short-term high on gold. But I think when the fundamentals start kicking back in and you are going to see the economy slow down in the next six weeks, almost by definition, the tariffs show up, prices have to pop at least one off. And
I think you're going to see the economy start slowing. Then I think you can see a re-acceleration of the short dollar trade and maybe the stocks
A lot of people obviously know you as Mike Novogratz in the crypto world, one of the leading voices without question, as they should. A lot of other people know you as in a prior life. And that's a life that I knew. And I talk about it all the time. The most successful people at our former shop, Goldman Sachs, there weren't people that were worried about how much money they could lose.
Those are the people that sort of intuitively understand in terms of trading how much money they can make. And you're just wired a little bit differently. And it worked in that environment for a long time. So you're extraordinarily comfortable with risk and understanding it. You mentioned the dollar. Let's talk about that because the move in the dollar to the downside, I don't want to say it's historic, but it's definitely noteworthy. And I've talked to a lot of people, as you have,
that are trying to figure out just a way to continue to put on this short US dollar trade against just about everything else that is out there. What's about that and what does it mean? So if you think about what happened in Taiwan in the last two nights, right, you've had a monster move in the currency and Taiwan dollar is usually a very stable currency because the central bank buys dollars all the time. Matter of fact, I stopped trading it from the short side because I got frustrated and now I'm looking like a fool.
I think what you're seeing is central banks say we have enough treasuries and quite frankly, we want less. And so Japan's talking about selling some of their treasuries as part of this trade dispute, trade war, and negotiation with tariffs. And so I think probably the cleanest trade in the next few weeks is dollar/yen lower, dollar/Asia lower. The trend has started dollar/China lower, which is a surprise because everyone thought China would do the opposite.
But as they're bringing money back and they're going to shift their economy to more consumption, right? They realize status quo wasn't going to work anymore. So they're going to have to have more domestic consumption than exporting, not overnight. They want a stronger currency, not a weaker currency because the shit they buy then becomes cheaper. And so we've started this big re-rating of the dollar lower. Now, in lots of ways, that makes the standard of living of an American less, right?
And every treasury secretary is stuck with this. Scott Besson says, I want the dollar lower, but I want a strong dollar. You know, that'd be fair. I'm not picking on Scott because Bob Rubin said the same thing. Like it's a really hard position to be in.
You want the dollar strong over a long period of time, but cyclically there's times you want it to weaken. And we're in one of those times. And so I don't know how far it goes. The trend just started, but I want to be short dollars. I've got Aussie. If you look at the Aussie chart, taking out 64 is a big deal. Like 68 should be inevitable and maybe much higher. And so things linked to Asia seem to be the easier trades right now.
I think Euro could end the year at 130. He's at 113.50. And so, but I like Asia right now. You know, it's interesting you mentioned the Aussie dollar. 69 is the level to me. I think that's if you go back and look
in the fall of last year, sort of where it topped out at. But you mentioned the dollar weaker against, and let's just play dollar/yen for a second. And I'll go back in history. I know you know this, but for folks listening or watching, dollar/yen in the summer of 2024 was about 160 or so, seemingly unstoppable to the upside in terms of the dollar until a CPI number came out on a Thursday.
And then you had a huge downdraft in the dollar. Of course, about 15 minutes went from 161 down to about 157. Spent the next month and a half, two months going lower. August 5th was a huge day in the stock market on the back of dollar yen. We traded down all the way to about 140 in September. We bounced and we bounced to about 158 or so. But over the last couple of months, here's the dollar weakening again. And we traded right back down to the levels we saw in the fall of last year.
How important is a weaker dollar against the yen in terms of this whole risk on risk off? Because very quietly, dollar yen has been, you know, the dollar has been weakening against the yen. Thoughts on that and the importance of it? The thing is, this breakdown between risk on risk off and currencies is.
has happened a little bit, which is a surprise, right? It used to be risk off euro yet lower. And I think the end has its own story now, right? Japan economy is stronger. Inflation has picked up. They were starting to raise rates a little bit after years of never thinking they'd be able to raise rates. And so I think that horse has left the barn a little bit. And so given that the U.S. is now
on the other side of this, right? Everyone expecting the Fed to cut at least three times this year, not more. In Japan, not. You know, Dahlia naturally should have looked for the 130, throw everything in there. And, you know, I think we get to 130.
you know, pretty quick, actually. We get to 130 and I'm hard pressed to, and this is just me, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but, you know, to this, what you say earlier about, you know, surprised that the market is sort of hanging in. You get a dollar in at 130 and I think things start to break in the equity market. We'll see. By the way, I don't disagree with you. You know, I do think there's an inevitability to this
weakening of the dollar strength and of the yen that I don't think enough people are paying attention to. One thing, Mike, people did pay attention to a couple of weeks ago was the bond market. And I don't want to say it was imploding, but there were some really bad things happening overnight in the U.S. bond market, which I think really took the administration off
I don't think it surprised them necessarily, but it definitely caught them a bit off guard. I think it scared them. So let's talk about the bond market. I'm one of the few people that still think 10-year yields are going higher for the wrong reasons. Thoughts on that? Listen, the president has a very unique negotiating style. When he says world leaders are coming to kiss my ass and I want to eventually take Greenland and Canada should be the 51st state.
And China has been ripping me off and stealing. Like that can be the art of the deal. But if you're on the other side of it, you're like, F you. Like, I'm sick of this. Why am I going to hold your bonds? And I think what, as Ken Griffin said, we're doing damage to our long-term brand. The treasury market is our brand. And so we got to be very careful that we don't damage that brand. And what the market was telling us, right? The steeper yield curve was, well,
Remember that robot warning wheel, Roger? - Mm-hmm. Lost in space. - So when I first started in the markets, I started at a money market desk and I went to the non-dollar desk, right? And started trading some emerging market stuff or selling it. And I spent a lot of time trying to understand the difference between what was a developed market and an emerging market. Now they call them developing markets.
What was so interesting is if you were a developed market, US, Europe, Japan, there was no correlation between the shape of your yield curve and your fiscal policy. So you can run big budget deficits and still have a yield curve that was really flat. But if you're deemed an emerging market, Argentina, Venezuela, the moment you started behaving poorly as a fiscal steward, i.e. printing too much money, spending too much money, you got punished by the bond market, right?
And I was always trying to understand where that zone is when you become an emerging market. It was like the movie with Chuck Yeager and the right stuff when he was trying to break the sound every day. He's like, there's a demon out there. I'm going to try to find it. Right. There's this weird space called the Minsky moment in economics when confidence breaks. During some of those bad days two weeks ago or three weeks ago, when the stock market was falling, you had inflation.
the dollar falling, the stock market falling, and the yield curve, it rates going lower. That had never happened in my 30-year career in Wall Street, right? And that's how emerging markets behave. And so I remember saying, I'm not calling us an emerging market, but that's how emerging markets behave. And if we don't fix things quickly...
You don't know where that Minsky moment is. You don't know where that zone is where people start punishing you like you're at a Virgin market. Well, you said that on April 16th, I think on CNBC and I took, listen, I took notice of it. A lot of people did as well, by the way, you know, you're,
one of the voices out there that have been talking about this and earnest. And I think people are starting to pick up on it, but I'll say this as well. You know, confidence is, it's a really, it's a, it's a very hard thing to build up. It's a really easy thing to lose. And then it's a really tough thing to get back. So,
Where are we on that cycle? Because, you know, talking about the U.S. trading like an emerging market, I mean, Janet Yellen, she didn't say it, but she brought up the same thing, same things that you said on one of the weekend shows a couple of weeks ago. Stock market lower, dollar lower, yields higher. That typically doesn't happen. We've sort of calmed the waters for now, but I just think that was a tremor, in my opinion. Yeah. So what's so interesting is what happened.
Any president inherits, and Trump inherited it, is a bad federal government balance sheet and budget, but a private economy that still dominates the world. From the Googles to the opening eyes, we have a really strong business ethos in this country and a really strong business sector. And so-
I think part of the stability we're seeing now is look at the earnings that those tech giants just posted, right? It's the world hasn't broken completely, right? We still have a private sector that's doing okay. I think it's going to slow and I think they're going to get, it's going to get hit, but our country is lucky because we have built up this immense capital markets engine. And, you know, despite some of that mistake,
and mistakes that continue to be made. Now, listen, how long it lasts, I don't know, right? I do know it feels much worse talking to my foreign friends than it ever did if they're in countries that feel slight, right? And if you think about the story people tell about Donald Trump, it's grievance, right? It's a grievance presidency. The MAGA is a grievance movement. Humiliating people is one of the most powerful ways
You know, feeling humiliated is one of the most powerful emotions. You don't get over it easily. And a lot of these countries, I think, are going to have a hard time. And we'll see. Listen, I could be wrong and they could all just come back to, you know, being tourists here and saying, oh, that was just Donald. You know, the Pope picture. That was just Donald. And that, you know, if you're in the New York business community, when people used to, that line is used all the time, you know, but.
That might not be right. Catholics might not come back and want to vote for Donald Trump because of the Pope, you know, or support his policies. Canadians might not want to come visit the United States nearly as much as they used to, or Europeans. And so there's a lot of secondary impacts that we just don't know yet. So let me ask you this question that I have a view on. It doesn't matter what my view is.
I think this is an administration that looks, everything is binary. You either win or you lose. And when they hear trade deficit, a deficit to them is a loss. So my question to you is, are trade deficits by definition a bad thing? Because I would submit they could be, but they don't always have to be. But I think that's the lens with which they're looking at things. Listen, so I made my first career telling the story of globalization.
It started in the 80s with Reagan and Thatcher, literally leading what I call a freedom movement. It was the ascendancy of personal choice. It was the individual over the collective. That was Reagan and Thatcher. And at the same time, we were laying down fiber optics to connect the world. Bill Gates and Bill Joy and Gary Winnegan, Global Crossing. So you had this technology revolution at the same time you had a political revolution. And
We went from a world of 450 million people that traded with each other to connecting the whole world. We brought in labor from Asia with Tiananmen Square as they accelerated from following the Berlin Wall. All of those engineers from Eastern Europe became part of our world. My mid-90s and the 2000s, globalization was wildly accepted. If you remember, there were three countries other than North Korea,
Cuba and Iran, right? We had the end of history. We had the beating of Jackson Hole where they said the business cycle had died. Everyone was independent, you know? And so there was this, like this, and it created 20 of the best years in the history of the planet. If you look at 89 to 09, more people lived at out of poverty than any 20 years in the history of the planet. That's a percent. Less war,
Trade as a percent of GDP went higher. Overall GDP of the planet grew three quarters of a percent on an annual basis. And so it was this wonderful time to be alive. And then we realized, oh shit, in '15 with Brexit and then Trump, we left the American and Western working and middle classes behind. And I think how you fix that is difficult, right? If you're the president of the whole planet,
Hey, seeing Vietnamese have a higher standard of living than they used to makes you feel good. Right now, Vietnam has one of the highest quotients in the world, where if you ask people, are your kids going to have a better life than you do, they say yes. So huge optimism. If you're president of the world, that should make you feel good. But if you're the governor of Ohio and Ohio got it, they're answering that question at a 30%, you don't feel so good.
And so what Trump is doing now, and there was first talk of it, how do we slowly manage that process? And he kind of said, bullshit, I'm not going to slowly manage it. I want to change it all right now. I don't think what he's doing is doable. I don't think it's advisable. But he's broadly saying, screw the globalists. I don't like it. And so trade deficits aren't a bad thing at all.
If I can, I'm a businessman and I can get things made more efficiently in your country than mine, why not? But when you're looking at that middle class population, which he's speaking to, I can get why he's doing it.
Kenny, will we bring manufacturing jobs? Some, but not nearly enough to employ that group. Listen, and I am extraordinarily sympathetic to everything that you just said without question. And, you know, you gutted basically entire industries across a swath of this country on the back of what was basically created in the early 1970s. You know, this introduction to the Chinese market and all the things that accompanied it. But I'll say this, and I've said this before. I'm curious as to your thoughts.
It's hard for me with the following math to say the United States is getting ripped off. We're basically 5% of the global population, if not a little bit less, and we're about 30% of global GDP. So maybe we're getting taken advantage of in some way, but that math suggests we're doing something right. What's on that? The average American worker is at the top 1% of the world.
That's all you need to know. If you're an average American working, you make about 60 grand, a little less. And if you make 60 grand, you're in the top 1% of global income workers. And so we're not losing. We're winning square. Now, at one point, we had this big bloated budget that was keeping everything feeling better than it should. We went on a sugar high. I've been talking sugar high for six years.
The irony is Trump started and then Biden accelerated it, right? Trump raised government spending in his first three years before COVID more than almost any president. And then COVID gave him the excuse and then Biden went crazy. So we had eight years of fiscal profligacy, like really bad. And you can't do that forever. You know, we're trying to do something different.
which is unprecedented with the backdrop of against what you just said with these. You know, as much as we'd like to think here in the United States, we have all the cards and I get that. We don't have as many cards as I think people want to think, but we'll shelve that for now.
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The other thing that's been top of mind for me is the way that gold has moved over the last few years, but more recently, and the amount of gold that central banks have been buying. And this will lead into Bitcoin, but I know that you follow the gold market as well. Thoughts on not where the price is going, but what it means. Yeah, so Liz, I...
I have a small podcast with two friends called Business Untitled, where we interviewed entrepreneurs and try to gear the conversation to help educate less surf communities. It's been a ton of fun. We were going to call it an ounce of gold. That was my idea, but we lost. But at the end of the podcast, we give our guests an ounce of gold. And they're surprised and they're thrilled. And it started at $1,700 an ounce. And I would always say, dude, this is going to $3,000. Don't you dare sell this gold.
And yeah, we've gone through 3000. China is buying a lot of gold. Central banks are buying a lot of gold, right? They see the demise of the dollar and they want to have something else. And so it will not surprise me. And this will be my one, you know, I'm not going to call a prediction. I'm just going to a little Nostradamus that there's a bricks stable coin that comes out in the next 12 months that is backed by gold, not fully, but partially.
Because I know they're doing a BRICS currency and they're going to want to have their stable coin. And what better message that this has got gold in it? And so I don't think the gold phenomenon is going away unless miraculously our budget deficit goes from 7% to 4%. I'm worried it's going to go from 7% to 8%. Yeah, I think that's more likely. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, if Scott Besson and Congress can get our spending and revenue more in line, the gold price should come back down. I just don't see it happening. And listen, I pray it does. As an American, I want him to win.
Of course you do. But there's a reason why. But, you know, to your earlier point, there's a reason why central banks, specifically the Chinese, but all around the world have been buying gold. And a lot of these, by the way, are looking to repatriate their gold, which is even more concerning, I think. What you don't want to do, and what worries me so much, is go to a world of us first down. Us plus them always does better, in my mind. And there's a bias in Trump to make everything zero-sum.
I win, you lose, right? And I just don't think that's the way we should approach our relations with the rest of the world. And can America live as an isolated? Of course we can. We've got more natural resources than any country. We're landlocked. We've got intelligence. Will our standard of living go down, not up? Yes. I just don't think you want to be the president that presides over a standard of living decrease as opposed to increase.
And, you know, that's what isolation will get us. Let's talk about crypto because around Christmas time, it was Christmas time for Bitcoin enthusiasts made an all time high. You'd know exactly where it was, but it was around one hundred and ten thousand give or take.
And like a lot of things, in the risk-off environment, Bitcoin was not impervious to that. And you saw what we traded down to in early April. But here we are around 94,000. I think all things being equal, it's probably done what it's supposed to do. So thoughts on the environment and how we talked to all of these different things, how Bitcoin sort of slots itself into what we're facing right now. Yeah, listen, we had a phenomenal set of events with
Four years of being in the desert in an administration that said, I'm going to give you guys everything you need. And I think earnestly, Trump's a man who stays by his word, has been trying to deliver everything he said he would. There's people both on the House and Senate, their own interests to get it done. Republicans feel like they need to get something done now because they've got the mandate. And Democrats need to get something done because they can't be the obstructionist party on crypto again. It cost them the election.
I was at the vice president's ball in the inauguration and there's only 350 people there. There are about 20 crypto CEOs. And I'm like, I don't even see that many banking CEOs. You know, like crypto really had a big... And so Trump has stood by that. That led to too much enthusiasm. And then I think on the negative side of what Trump has done is, as his family's gotten more engaged with both Trump coin, Melania coin, and some of the stuff they've done around World Liberty, it's...
It's caused that, oh, God, is this thing legit? Fear to come back. And so it's made it harder for Democrats to get behind it. And it's also made the skeptics a little more skeptical. But we had a market blow off top. That was probably a short-term trading top, or it was a short-term trading top. You had a correction with risk off. I am thrilled how well it's bounced back.
When we were at 76, if you had told me in two months, we'll be back at 96, I'd have kissed you. We're gaining momentum again. I can feel the momentum in terms of people wanting to get engaged. What we've seen at Galaxy, which is really interesting because we mostly deal with institutions, is so many of the big trade-fi institutions that provide infrastructure at trading are very eager to get engaged.
as partners, and everybody is looking for this next chapter. And what does the next chapter take, need? It needs this legislation, first stable coins to get passed and then market structure. I think there's a good chance stable coin legislation gets passed in the next few weeks. Not as good as it was last week. There's some fighting going on, but that would be important. And then a market structure bill. And then I think you're going to start seeing
Things like tokenization show up. And what crypto needs to give the American public is use cases that they show up on their iPhone.
So right now it's been Bitcoin as a story, as a store of value, and all the rest of the coins as kind of gambling tokens. They have stories and they're going to build stuff. But the common American, you're not buying your movie tickets. You're not using it as your payment system. You're not doing much with crypto other than owning it. That will change in the next 18 months to five years. And that really becomes the next leg of kind of the crypto industry.
you know, movement. Let me ask you this. Obviously, Michael Saylor and his adopt, his balance sheet adoption in terms of what they've done, I think they're north of half a million Bitcoin on their balance sheet. I think the average price is probably approaching 70,000. It's still south of that, but ish.
How important would be, in your opinion, if the next company were to do similar? And I don't know what that next company is, but if you start to see it across a swath of industries where people start to basically integrate that type of model, is that out there? I mean, have you talked to people around those types of things? Michael does something that defines gravity. And he's done it because he found a niche, right?
give people a way to buy Bitcoin with some leverage. He realized that there is a giant group of people that love to speculate. And if he has a volatile asset, more will speculate on it. And so he's encouraged volatility of stock with the two times and the three-time levered ETFs. It's one of the most highly traded stocks in the option. And that allows him to
raise more capital. I don't know if anyone else has that juju that Michael does. We're seeing someone right now trying it, right, with Cantor and SoftBank and Tether with their version, which is trading at a huge premium, but it's not tradable yet. In the long run, an asset that trades at over two times NAV
is really difficult to keep. Just by definition, you do the math towards infinity, it has to collapse at any date. Michael has pulled it off in a way that I would not have thought he could have. And it doesn't seem like he's losing momentum. And so people are buying into it. And listen, if you're an early investor or even an investor six months ago, all the new issuance he's done accretes to you.
and so it's it it it is working until it doesn't work and he he's got a special you know charm and dna and and passion and let me tell you i spent a lot of time he believes everything he says 100 this is not you know anyone who is doing anything but what he believes and it's working no it's it's it's not a grift i mean he absolutely believes that the market's allowing him to do these things and you know
The only concern, if there is a concern that I have, it's what you just spoke about, the math at a certain point. And we got precariously close to it a couple of weeks ago, but this is just my opinion and I'm not putting words in your mouth. The cost of his point doesn't matter so much other than maybe psychologically. He does not have that much debt on this. He's got a couple of converts. A lot of those other converts are so deep in the money and they'll convert it out. And then he started moving to preferrists.
Right. Which is a brilliant, brilliant move on his part, because now he doesn't have to sell anything to pay the dollars back. Right. And and so it could have a more negative impact if it falls apart on his stock price than on Bitcoin. Fair enough. Yeah, because he's been he's the buyer of Bitcoin.
right now. It's interesting, and I think you're spot on, by the way, but the psychological impact of his average price trading at the same price that Bitcoin potentially would be trading at, that's all a kettle of fish, I think. But your point about it's not as levered as people might think it is, it's fascinating. It really is fascinating to me. We'll see how it continues. We'll write books on Michael. Listen,
He's been smart that there's a tailwind of Bitcoin anyway. I think Michael would probably have to get nervous if our budget deficit went from 7% to 1%. Agreed. Just like all us Bitcoiners would. He'd be more nervous because, you know, so in essence, he's been able to take this leverage and sleep better because he so deeply believes that once populism hits, it doesn't go back.
Right. Look who's the leading people talk about as the candidate on the left, you know, and the left is kind of crazy because they think Trump is screwing up so badly. And in the polls are going, so they're going to feel more comfortable with AOC. Like you're right about that. And as you go from populist left to populist right to populist left, like that's just Bitcoin North, North and North. If we got my guy,
My guys, right? Center centrists, you know, if it's a Josh Shapiro or a Richie Torres or a, you know, a Ruben Gallegos or a, you know, throw a Westmore in there. That's just me talking, but I can think of 10 of them. Right.
You're going to have a different story than if you get an AOC or a Bernie. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, fiscal irresponsibility lends itself to all these things. And if there ever was a case where we got our ducks in order, you know, maybe that's the potential softening of Bitcoin. On May 16th, you got some really exciting news, maybe a long time in coming, but something I know you've been working towards. So let's talk about that. Yeah, four and a half years with the SEC. Yeah.
nine back and forth with comments, and we're finally going to redomicile a list on the NASDAQ, push the button, and have a big smile on my face. Well, that's really exciting. What is the importance of that? You said you spent basically the last five years working towards this
You know, what's the importance in your view? I mean, I can basically wax poetic, but you know, why do you think it's important? When you really think about it, there's only one deep capital markets in the world and it's the U S and it's being a New York stock exchange or a NASDAQ listed company. You have access to capital. Uh, we listed in Canada cause they had a venture exchange. We were really small company and thought after a couple of years we'd move to the
to the US and then the Biden administration, the war on crypto, Gary Gensler just really stopped everything for years. Competitors who made it through, if they were the mining companies or Coinbase, had an amazing advantage over the companies that did it, right? They had access to this deep, deep capital market that we didn't. And so for most of the time,
our company's been in existence our stock has traded way below book value let alone with any uh
any assessment of what our company was worth. And so we couldn't use that for mergers. We couldn't use that to acquire anybody. We don't want to raise capital when you trade below book. And so we funded this company mostly through trading profits and investing profits. And luckily, we zigged when we were supposed to zig both in 2018 and in 2022.
Or we'd have been in much more shape. Let me ask you this, because, you know, sometimes as painful, not painful, but as difficult as the last four and a half years going through the process, I can only imagine in some ways, maybe this sort of, I don't know,
duration puts you in a position to be listening at the best possible time if you really think about the environment. Well, listen, there's a couple of things going. The company has gotten stronger, right? You learn to operate on with less resource. You learn to be efficient. You learn to be tough. And so we've become a better company, I think.
We also have a data center business now, which we didn't have before. And so if you think about crypto, no matter how good of a crypto business you run, the revenue stream is correlated with the asset class, with Bitcoin, with Ethereum, with all the assets. And so your staking business, your asset management business, they go up and down. The revenue goes up and down with the price. And now we're going to have a data center business, which doesn't.
which really is a real estate business in the long run. And so we're going to enter into the market with a much different profile than we would have before. Well, you talk about a different profile, you know, it's a different valuation. The market's going to reward you for that in ways that, you know, three or four years ago, it might not have. So, I mean, that speaks to what I guess I was saying, you know, this, in a lot of ways, you know, your ability to be nimble, learn the business,
operate not in difficult environment, but you know, be lean and mean. I mean, it sets you up for this. So I congratulate you. I know it's exciting for you. I know it's exciting for the employees. Now, real quick, before we get into some other things, speak to the different ways you can list and why you chose to do this direct listing on the 16th. Well, so we're a unique company because we're already public, right? We were a public company in Canada since 2018. Uh, we filed quarterly earnings, uh,
or audited just like any public company would be. And so this just moves our listing to the NASDAQ. We could have picked the New York Stock Exchange on the NASDAQ. We're a tech forward company. And so the NASDAQ seems to be a better feeling. But I would tell you, ringing the bell on the New York Exchange is probably more fun than pushing the button at the NASDAQ. There's no... Listen, obviously, the building, I was just down there recently. I mean, it's still...
one of the most incredible buildings in New York Stock Exchange. By the way, not that anybody particularly cares, but I think the same architect of Grand Central Station was the same person that built the New York Stock Exchange. And if you haven't been, it's a wonderful place to see. And you're right, ringing the bell there is special. So congratulations on that. You mentioned, by the way, that they'll write books about Michael Saylor. And I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. People are going to write books about Michael Novogratz because
Your career has been extraordinary. And you know what? There are many chapters left. Congratulations on everything. I look forward to May 16th. Your hard work, the team's hard work. You've all basically been working towards this for the last few years. As you said, you deserve it. And Michael, again, thanks for your time. It's very much appreciated. Thank you, Guy. Thank you.