I'm curious your take as somebody who's been in both worlds.
You know, the everybody wanted the institutionalization. Be careful what you wish for maybe.
So I mean, is it is it more has it turned out to be a good thing? This sort of financialization of the of the system.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the maturation of the Bitcoin and Ethereum assets. I think Bitcoin, ETH and Solana are the core assets of the space. And Solana's sort of transitioning, but definitely the first two.
And I think everything else, maybe you could argue Ripple, but that's a little bit of a different one is a venture project. These are venture tokens. It's a venture project. These aren't established assets. I think what's happened in the last 18 months, with the advent of the ETF and now these companies that are holding Bitcoin and ETH and the DATs has been really, um the acknowledgement that these that these are instruments that are assets that need to be part of your asset allocation
in your fund or in your, you know, portfolio. And so that's a very important, uh uh a shift. And there's hundreds of trillions of dollars that if it decides it wants to have 1% to Bitcoin, they'll go to, you know, either they'll they'll go to Kraken and open a an account and get or they'll just do the ETF, whatever suits them. But I think the acknowledgement, you know, for years and years, we were fighting the fact that, oh, Bitcoin is a fraud.
Bitcoin is a fake, Bitcoin. I think all of that discussion is over. I think there's a stamp of approval that it is an institutional asset worthy of an allocation. But along with that comes some very, very smart players who are very aggressive on both sides of the market. So you have to understand
Well, they don't seem very aggressive on their buying side of the market right now.
The hedge funds, on the hedge, the the $4 trillion of money that is in the hedge fund world, aggressive shorting is very normal. And so I've seen it in some of the stocks that we've owned. We have companies that IPOd where our stock has been locked up. And I'm pretty sure the hedge funds have come in and they short the stock into the lockup, into the end of the lockup, right?
There're all sorts of you know, very intelligent and legal, very intelligent games that professional investors play when they're involved. And there's no comparison between a Ken Griffin or a Millennium or a S Steve Cohen type of investor with the people who are the long-time holders in this space.
And so, if they feel that there's a weakness, right? If they have the ability to short and press that weakness, they will do it. I lived for 25 years in that world and there are many, many very successful hedge funds who make their living off of uh taking advantage of these moments in the markets where there's weakness where the fundamentals maybe are in transition, where, you know, so it's, um, it's like welcome, you're now on the main stage.
However, as a result, you're going to be treated like a big boy
and things are going to happen that maybe, you know, you're you're not expecting. They won't make sense the way maybe they used to.
Yes. And that seems to be what's happening right now. Dan, we got to leave it there. Thank you so much.