Because of the USDC DPEG?

No, because everything went down and there was a seller that needed liquidity and he had some circle stock and that was the price that I bid him.

But the point broadly is that now we have RWAs, we have prediction markets, we've got all of these perps now, hype is fantastic success.

And the view about the broadening value of the digital asset world- Again, the internet was the digitization of ideas and information, and blockchain and Bitcoin is the digitization of money and value.

So that is making huge progress now, but didn't even exist two years ago.

And I just gave a talk now at the Digital Assets Summit here in Asia about the next stage.

So for me, we're in the first inning of the digitization of liquid assets.

But

be that big.

Yeah.

Well, no.

Yes, that's right.

In 2020, Jeremy was doing a raise at the end of 2020, early 21.

And we talked to them at that point.

Remember, he was just recovering from the Poloniex gaffe, but started to move towards stable coins.

think

So how have you seen the invest- the investment environment change based on, or since you first announced, or when you were first raising those earlier funds? It seems like there's a lot more interest now in this space.

Yeah.

We're, we're at around 200 right now.

Of that 500, as you know, private equity raises don't happen overnight.

Uh, we do have institutional investors, and they take...

You know, they can take, uh, months and months to make decisions, and investment committees.

We do have Texas Teachers as an investor in the funds, and we have the Michigan Pension Fund, MERS, and other type of, you know, I would say also 30 or so billionaire family offices.

So what exactly do you mean by that? And, and, and how important is, is the Japanese market still to the US, given that we've seen sort of a change in the Japanese market where, where they're even seeing inflation, uh, now?

... where do you land on this conversation? What are your thoughts on this?

Well, yeah.

I, I just jumped in here a little bit 'cause I can't answer too many questions all at once.

I, I...

It's like one at a time.

I-- So I think there are certain spots within what I call broadly the digital asset ecosystem.

So that is, and I, I have been calling it that, the DAE, since 2019, basically, and that is sort of a view that all things of value, money, will eventually move on-chain.

Is that what you're focused on for Fund V as well, or, or what, where are you seeing the opportunity right now for this fund?

[laughs]

... from a, a Treasury Secretary who probably understands dollar/yen better than any Treasury Secretary in the history of the country.

Obviously, has traded it for over 30 years.

And, uh, anybody, any of the civilian population that wants to fade Scott Bessent, uh, as the Treasury Secretary, as he said, "I, I am the house.

I know things you don't know," uh, it's true.

He's playing on the other side.

And I think you'll see the bottom in gold, uh, coincided closely with the bottom in...

... investor coming?

Why?

Well, I would tweet more.

The reality is, is that I really like tweeting.

I used to try to tweet three times a week, two, three times a week.

Um, and it would always be about, you know, macro or trading or crypto or Bitcoin or whatever it is.

And I started really only on Twitter in 2019 after I did this interview with Raoul Pal that had hundreds of thousands of views.

It was the first time that I spoke about why I was bullish o- on Bitcoin, and they basically said to me, you know, "You have to have a, a Twitter account because there are all these people who wanna reach out to you." And I was like, "What is this? Why?" You know, "How does this world work?" I had no idea.

Mm.

That's a lot.

I know.

And, and what's really interesting is that our, the growth, um, some of these larger growth deals, the valuations have not come in as much as you'd think despite the drop in Bitcoin, despite the drop in ETH, despite the drop in the tokens and in VC, because there are several strategic investors like Binance, like PayPal, who are paying high valuations.

And so, you know, we tend to not wanna pay more than five to 10 times the revenue, and our investors, I need to be able to pencil out a five to 8X return over a 10-year life.

And some of these founders and some of the strategics just are not...

They don't care.

And so, you know, you'd think there'd be a huge number of deals.

Yeah

Do you see any correlation between those valuations coming in, settling down, and then potentially finding a bottom in this market?

I sort of do.

But you know what? It's funny.

MySpace lags.

Bitcoin and ETH and Solana are the leaders.

Those are the core assets of the space.

To be honest, I think, look, hype also, I think, has proven itself in the last few months to actually have quite strong metal.

But you're saying, hold on, the market actually hasn't gone down that much.

You weren't launching the product, but you and all your friends were thinking about what is this going to mean for the industry? Have you seen a change in the conversations with people who you would consider peers after the launch?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it started in May of 23, or I think it was June when Larry changed his mind about Bitcoin.

I think that was sort of the beginning of this bull phase.

He really kicked it off.

And then the launch in January 24 of all of the ETFs, frankly, was definitely a legitimizer.

I think the big change now is that Bitcoin, and I think to some degree ETH as well, maybe not quite Solana, maybe Solana too, but are really considered established assets that now must be considered within an asset allocation model.

Now everyone thinks that they should be the next Fed chairman with their opinions.