Now you have these other big uh ipos that they said they were gonna push back i believe it was anthropic just said they were gonna try to delay but overall there are all these categories that uh didn't really exist and weren't necessarily investable when crypto was uh just getting mainstream attention in 20 20 2017 excuse me so with that what role does blockchain play in the investment story of tomorrow

So I think the investment thesis is still very much intact, right? In that if you trade equities, right, and you have a fundamental understanding of how the infrastructure and plumbing works, I think most people in the outside world would be surprised at what a messy process that is.

There are settlement problems.

People fail to deliver.

Oftentimes, brokers, in human error, they send stocks to the wrong broker-dealer.

There's breaks.

There's all sorts of things that happen that human beings and old processes make mistakes with.

And given your like a unique position in the ecosystem, along the way to scaling Avalanche, are there any, I guess, hurdles to adoption or scaling that you aren't so dismissive of where others might be? Things like maybe quantum policy changes? Yeah, I

the worlds that you guys originally came from, which was traditional finance.

Yeah, I mean, for me, so getting involved in Bitcoin was kind of an offshoot of the ETF business at Susquehanna.

Around the 2013, 2014 timeframe, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were trying to list a Bitcoin ETF.

They came down.

They talked to me and my desk about trying to advocate with the SEC, which we did unsuccessfully.

But the firm was long Bitcoin themselves as early as 2014.

And so all the kind of crypto related stuff at that point was just Bitcoin was just kind of embedded in our desk.

And within two days, I had to do

You know, we saw those emails and this is a big conversation about, you know, is it going to be a headwind? Is it going to be a tailwind here? As far as the banking industry, do you view AI as more of a threat to traditional banks or is it potentially a productivity tailwind that could actually boost margins in the long run?

Yeah.

I don't think AI has much to do with current bank stock valuations.

I don't know it's going to have much to do about it in the future.

When you look at what's driving bank valuations, they're down a little bit today, but what kind of pushed them up a little bit was a steepening yield curve, easing economic issues and improved regulatory outlook, and the potential for resurgence in M&A.

All those things are the things that really are the drivers of value in the banking space.

When you look at banks in particular and how they make money, they already are running very efficiently.

But longer term, when investors are thinking about the financial services sector and how AI-driven disruption may or may not impact that particular sector, what metrics or milestones do you think are going to separate the winners from the losers here?

Just talk to us about first and foremost, the state of the banking industry right now and the financials, given there's been a lot of optimism around the regulatory side of the equation, M&A, et cetera, and just how they're faring right now.

Yeah, well, really, it's a tale of two industries.

On one hand, the overall bank industry is doing well, but there's a divide between the largest companies and the 4,000 plus other companies that make up the rest of the industry.

So if you look at BKX, which represents the largest 25 companies, it's posted a pretty good return over the past year.

well outpacing standard standard poor's 500 but smaller indexes like krx nasdaq bank index are below 10 so there's lots of good value in smaller companies but right or wrong there's a concern about lower growth potential and the inability to harness efficiencies the good news is across the board Margins are up, security depreciation is down, capital levels are very strong, and incredibly, we haven't had a credit cycle for a very, very long time.

So assuming the economy remains strong, credit holds up, banks will continue to do well, but the gap between large and small will remain in place unless the smaller banks can be a little more assertive about their performance.

Many of these smaller companies truly create great value proposition, so there is a value opportunity there.

Does it work without the Clarity Act?

What are some of the initiatives you'll be doing as far as supporting the ecosystem?

Right.

So, you know, we're going to take a lot of keys from the regulators, right? So there's been a wave of these digital asset treasuries.

And so we, you know, as we're going through our own S4 and our goal is in the first quarter of 2026 to successfully merge with Mountain Lake Acquisition Corp, we'll be a listed company.

We are going to, there's a lot of things that we can do and that I believe we're going to be able to do, but we have to also just kind of go through this process and make sure that everything that we're doing is aligned with the, you know, the SEC and other regulators.

So I think that's an important point that, you know, that we are going to continually evaluate that.

So just putting that aside.

So I'm curious, you know, how would you, what would be your elevator pitch to say, hey, that is better than just buying an ETF?

Can you just comment on the business model of treasury companies and whether or not what I said makes any sense?

No, yeah, I, I...

So I think taking kind of a step back, right? Like corporate treasuries have existed in the United States for decades, right? So Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, uh, Microsoft have massive corporate treasuries that they use.

Uh, those companies generate profits.

Those profits go to a corporate treasury.

They manage that treasury aligned with the, you know, the, the, the intentions of the, of the for public company, right? And, and, and secondly, the, the concept of going to the capital markets to fund an enterprise, right? So you start a public company, you issue debt, you issue equities, you take those proceeds, and you invest them in an enterprise.

And if that enterprise does well, shareholders and bondholders do well, is kind of like the, the, the basic tenants of, of capital markets in the United States.

Well, tell us about AVAX and, um, its, uh, properties and, uh, why investors should be paying attention to AVAX right now.