so joe before cryptex you know you came from a traditional world of trading and asset management and i always find these founder stories fascinating because there's usually a moment where someone sees a problem they and everyone kind of seems to be ignoring or they kind of seem to be ignoring it What was the moment for you in this crypto space? What made you believe this market needed something more than people simply buying and trading individual coins?

So, you know, a great way to start it off.

And I think, you know, for me, I'm 42 now.

I was in the asset management space from the time I was 19 to the time I was about 2016.

So after 2016, I kind of just took a little break and took about six months to just figure out, you know, what I wanted to do next.

and started accumulating bitcoin you know that was my first um position that i took it's hanging up on the wall to always remind me that you know sometimes it's uh crazy to be early but always the best way to be so yeah got into bitcoin kind of dove into it I read the paper.

It was like, this is going to be life changing.

So heading on that theme, you've been talking recently on the Schwab Network about Bitcoin ETFs, institutional money, and where the market might be heading, right? So we've been hearing this Wall Street story for years, though, in crypto, right? So what's genuinely different today? And what are the big financial institutions beginning to understand about crypto that they really didn't a few years ago?

Where do you think Bitcoin's headed?

I think Bitcoin winds up a little bit higher than 100K over the next six to 12 months.

And the reason for that is just because looking at where we are from an institutional standpoint, institutional adoption is just getting started.

We had regulation CTX and regulation CAM outside of the CFTC.

Over the past couple of weeks, we also have the SEC ruling on their digital assets rule today.

Comments are due.

So from an infrastructure and institutional perspective, we're seeing things we've never seen before.

At this point, are you watching some of the outside things, geopolitical concerns, the 10-year bond yields, what the Fed may do, and midterm elections? What of those stands out to you as an important point

I always think of Bitcoin and Ethereum as sort of the leaders and the go-tos, but there's so much more, isn't there?

Absolutely.

And I think if you look at previous cycles, institutions asked, am I allowed to own this? You know, can we even hold this on our balance sheet? And I think what you're seeing this cycle, given the rules that are coming out of CFTC and SEC, while they're not laws yet, what you're seeing is how big should our position be? You know, the wrappers exist.

We have a federal stable coin law called the Genius Act that exists.

And regulators are now writing rules instead of persecuting open source code.

So I think the only question that is left for institutions is permanence, when these things actually get put into law.

But as of right now, the wrappers are there, institutions are coming in, and we're seeing very different movement than we have seen in previous cycles.

Do you think Bitcoin goes higher? Do you think, you know, how else are we using this? Because now we're starting to hear about 24-7 settlement for trading, right?

And Joe, with the SEC and the CFTC now having to step in to continue rulemaking without Congress, how much uncertainty can the regulators actually remove on their own to bring in broader participation without the legislation or the law underneath?

Well, a lot.

And I think that's kind of echoing what Taylor was saying as well, is that you're already seeing so many institutions building tokenized technologies, building blockchain-based infrastructure.

And we don't think that that's going to be a trend that stops anytime soon.

So once the SEC and the CFTC do enact rules and laws, those laws are on the books, and now those laws have to be adhered to.

And I kind of feel like when you look at the price of Bitcoin at the current time, that's why you didn't see, which typically is such an incredibly volatile asset, you didn't see the price movement yet that you might have anticipated.

It's because all of the players are aware that you're going to see CFTC and SEC step in.

In terms of stablecoin and the opportunity there, how much of the opportunity is actually dependent on clarity versus the implementation of the Genius Act?

They seem to be decoupled against each other, and we're not seeing typically historical movements in a lot of the cryptocurrencies in terms of them being tied anymore.

Yes, yes, that's exactly right.

There has been a decoupling across the larger assets in the space.

Specifically, Hyperliquid has been an incredible performer to date.

So Hyperliquid is its own chain.

It processes transactions and allows people to trade.

You look at the size of Hyperliquid, where it's 11 employees compared to the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq or Coinbase or other traditional digital asset and equity companies, and it's literally doing the work of thousands with a team of 11.

As you look at that weakness, how much of that do you tie TO INSTITUTIONAL FLOWS VERSUS SOME POTENTIAL FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES?