2024 Crypto Outlook Soirée

Transcript

very much I think it's time to to kick it off so my name is Jerome Bay I'm the vice president of the crypto Val Association it's really great to have all of you here uh for the last inperson event of the of the crypto valet uh so we'll spend the the the start of the evening together with a a presentation a panel and then after uh a cocktail um so first of all I start by uh the thank you so of course thank you to uh Google who uh host the event tonight and uh we always to have the the the cocktail after so um Google especially Google Cloud might be a a prefer partner for web three company uh so think about them

in your uh Cloud uh project um then I will thank of course our our speaker and panelist um for bringing the content um tonight you see the three uh the three panelists and speakers we'll introduce them later and uh yeah of course all the crypto Val Association team who made this even possible um we had um uh Nikki was not here quite far away but she did a great job about communication pushing us to to do it it's not easy to do a an event at the end of the year where we all have packed agenda uh keep in mind it's just a nonprofit Association we are all volunteer we all have real job so uh I

hope you will uh appreciate this uh this evening together tonight so the agenda is uh yeah I will say a few words about cryp Association for the people who don't know who we are um and then we'll go with um exclusive sneak preview from Dominic about the Bitcoin swis 2024 uh crypto Outlook which is not yet published so you might be one of the first one uh to have uh the first few information and we will do uh then after uh a panel discussion with Kevin uh rad and and and Dominic so that's uh that's the plan for tonight um roughly one hour

of uh talks presentation panels uh depending on on the question you you might want to ask us at the end and and then after one one hour uh of a until the k kick is out uh I don't know exactly when but uh uh we could uh okay so I start about few words about Crypt Association uh for the people who are not member um so all the speakers here are are member corporate member Bitcoin Swiss um Kao and and and kirck um we have 250 roughly corporate members so what do we do uh as I say nonprofit Association uh we are an industry

Association just Gathering the whole crypto community and Switzerland and abroad uh helping to connect you networking like we do uh tonight collaborate in working groups uh Advocate that's the lobbying part we are one of the point of contact for regulator mostly in Switzerland we meet uh with a local regulator almost twice per year uh and of course innovate in our space which innovate all the time um we have 10 working groups and that's the most important St you have to remember because that's where the work is done uh we we not only do networking and drinks we really work uh within this uh 10

different working groups which are like vertical um we have tried to represent all aspect of our ecosystem and uh maybe you can pick one of them already that could be interesting for you so when you a member you can join this working group you can suggest some ideas project uh you can can collaborate and uh you can learn you can network uh everything is within this working groups and the chapters are more horizontal are local base so Western Switzerland chapter for the French speaking area of Switzerland where I'm based maybe you can recognize to my French accent uh and uh yeah we are proud to have a um we are proud to coming from zuk of course zuk

is still the he it's where everything started uh one third of Our member are roughly in zuk the other the second third are everywhere in in Switzerland and the thir the last thir are everywhere abroad outside of Switzerland so that's why we started to launch International chapter like Middle East and Latin America um to attract entrepreneurs from abroad to help our our members to go abroad and to also attract uh investors in in Switzerland um and in these groups what do we do so first of we pres we produce contents contents might be papers guide uh we just published a resource Journal uh by

the way um you can everything is accessible on on the website so this valuable contents are made by Our member for our member and whole Community we also on top of that organize events so online events mostly like two three per month uh and also iners event like um like like like tonight and last but not least our Flagship event the cryptal conference in zuk since 2017 we have not missed a year even the 2020 uh covid years we we did it a bit a bit postponed but but we did it this year you can save

the day June 2 3D uh for the event we organized during two days in in zoo uh roughly 1,500 attendees so that's quite a big one maybe one of the the biggest in Switzerland and one of the top in uh in Europe once again still organized by nonprofit Association we do that at with and as or School luum in the RO compus so the ecosystem the members so anybody can be a member you can join as an individual member like the 850 members just go online you pick your membership um if you want to involve your company then you can be a corporate member so

and it depends on the size we have startup members uh and corporate members and if you look at the top 50 these are only the biggest uh company in terms of size and also the the the the support they gave us uh in terms of um of fees because we are only financed by membership we are fully independent we do not get any public money we are fully independent we just are um uh members uh members uh members base so there are some corporate in crypto there are some non-- crypto Tech Swiss non-swiss so it gives you a rough idea of the people you

can meet when you become a member so here are membership fees everything single on cryptal swis it start from 100 S FRS only for individual to 5K for corporate and of course Jin us social media more than 20,000 followers in LinkedIn and Twitter that's a good first point to to catch up with our with our system um so that's that's it for the for the presentation of crypto Val and then tonight we are here for an Outlook of 2024 but also let's have a let's have a look back at this crazy year we have only 12 12 points January remember bankruptcy of Genesis February launch of

Bitcoin coin ordinal March remember the 3s silvergate signature Silicon Valley Bank collapse it seems like it was few years ago no it was just this year uh April MAA uh the European um regulation for Market in crypto asset regulation I like this one may bhon did you know that bhon invested half a billion US dollar to launch uh crypto mining in the imaya half a billion by the Bon this is a this is amazing uh June not as great operation choke point 2.0 you might have heard about that that um that phrase uh by yeah really Crackdown by us regulator

on uh on crypto this is not not good even if we are not in the US okay we got some cor members from the US they relocated in Switzerland but this is not good for whole industry let's hope that uh it gets better um in the other side of the of the pwn then July once again regulation the St lost uh a case again Ripple remember the long long case for xrp August PayPal launch is stab coin um that's that's a good one for um crypto adoption in mainstream Another One Visa in September expense stab coin settlement um getting close to uh the current date

October uh the SEC approved the listing of ethereum future uh ETFs November binance story remember it was not long time ago uh the 4.3 billion fine CZ stepping down pleading guilty what um and yeah December uh we are like 12th of December can we say we just start at the start of a bull run I believe so um so since December 1st we got like plus 10% was plus 18% a few days ago uh your to date one 140% on bitcoin um and maybe in a few days we will see the approval of the

Bitcoin Futures uh Bitcoin um not Futures bit spot ETF so yeah that was only for 2023 an amazing year uh on that's crypto years like you multiply by seven uh and um that's uh now let's look at what we could have uh next next year let's look at the Outlook and uh I will call Dominic um Dominic is a crypto researcher at Bitcoin swis and as I said we will have the chance to have sneak preview to the uh your your report maybe you can introduce your report once I'm launching your slides I need to do a come here come here uh I need to do a some some

tech setup I do everything tonight MC and Tech but I will do it uh yeah please take a m or introduce the Stu and I I launched the I launched the presentation yeah so welcome everybody is it working you on the on the on the button so also welcome everybody from my side um it's great to speak today uh in front of a full house and um yeah I want to thank the the CBA the CBA and Google for for hosting this event um yeah and as Sholes said already um I will give an sneak preview of our Outlook annual Outlook

publication that will launch uh next week so the full release is only next week um um but I guess yeah the majority of the audience uh wants to get a bullish Outlook and I think I'm able able to provide that um but no Financial advice today I have to say this um so we start with the final assembly line so as many in our industry I have no background in finance nor do I have a background in computer science but my background is in um Material Science and aerospace engineering and while I worked at the Outlook at this year's Outlook um report um I felt there are a lot of parallels

to final assemly line from aircrafts so the final assembly line is a place where major components of aircraft such as uh the wings or the fuse lar and engines come together after they were in manufacturing for many months and it come together from different places of Earth and then result in this great engineering piece which is an aircraft so how does that refer to to crypto you might ask um I see similar parallels with different demand and Supply Supply components that we're in development for the for more than a decade now and I or we see that these components are currently assembling and might materialize in the upcoming months and

years so today we will uh touch base on different supply and demand domains and we start with different demand pillars that we observe so the first one is the most obvious one it's a US spot ETF the odds are really high like above 90% according to Bloomberg analysts that we see approval in January but why is that important the US spot ETF will bring legitimacy regulatory regulatory Clarity and most importantly it will bring efficient access for the most Capital heavy Market which is the US um for instance the US Stock Market is 22 times higher than the

Canadian one in case you you ask yeah we have a spot ETF already in Canada but it had not a big impact but this one certainly will have in our opinion on the other hand it will also provide access to a major uh like a major share of the wealth management sector that couldn't access Bitcoin at scale without an ETF reer that's important and they and there's a huge share of wealth management that that could also can't gain exposure in Bitcoin or digital assets with a Futures based product um then we have a look at different metrics that we feel you can

measure institutional demand um for example the CME flip binance in open interest then we have uh the huge coin bit we saw this year Co coinbase stock outperformed Bitcoin even for me it's an indicator of institutional demand then we have the narrowing down of uh discount to net asset value in gbtc right and finally we have a all-time high in Bitcoin under management in etps all of these are signs that the in institutions are approaching our industry and then finally what you see on this chart here um it's transactional flows in cryptocurrency um I saw that in a chain analysis report and I found it um pretty

substantial because the the the flows are already dominated by institutions and especially the US is highly driven by institutional flows with 77% and we think the this uh whole setup kind of will eventually lead to um long-term buy side flows and since these are very Capital heavy entities uh you might uh uh understand that it only takes a very low relative uh allocation of these entities to move the needle right um next up where do we think do these buy side flows like um enter and we um created several model portfolios

here you see um one for for Bitcoin only basically what happens if you have uh small allocations of Bitcoin in a diversity in a divers Diversified portfolio that consists of equities bonds um cash and gold and what we found is you're not only like enhancing the performance of your of your portfolio significantly but you also do it on a risk adjusted basis so it's kind of actually a no-brainer to have Bitcoin in your portfolio right um and what we also found is um the largest marginal impact like on a relative basis happens at a 1% and 2.5% allocation of Bitcoin which is

pretty cool because it kind of shows you just need to allocate a little bit and your portfolio gets a massive boost already um so overall we feel um that with the ETF like assuming we get an ETF um Bitcoin will earn distinct role in a distinct role in portfolio construction basically and it already proved that it's a great source of diversification in the last decade basically um and it also proved that it's kind of a unicorn asset when it comes to correlation be because it can um it has Pro sometimes it behaves like exponential gold sometimes it it behaves like a growth

stock it can be basically anything but usually it outperforms anything else and then these this outperformance you see on the following table it kind of shows um the last the last 11 years from 2013 to 20 uh 23 and we see in eight out of these 11 years Bitcoin heavily outperformed any other asset class there were only three years where we had like a rather significant draw down right so we have a annualized return of more than 10% on bitcoin and actually the the followup the NASDAQ which is considered yeah okay like a

super performer only yielded uh like less than 20% and gold at 1.3 so the annual top performer is Bitcoin it dominated like basically on eight out of these 11 years and what I want to mention here is the blue dot on the right in 23 um even the the stocks digital asset Blue Chip index that we launched last week in collaboration with stocks and it's actually a better better proxy for the digital asset space even that uh index outperformed um every other asset class even on a risk adjusted basis so these were kind of

institutionally triggered demand p pill but now I want to put some emphasis on what uh why we expect demand organically like organic Demand by adoption as well not only by institutions and what I want to point or show here is we have different domains such as gaming a lot of games we in in in development now for two to three years that were funded like three years ago and that that now are very close to launch gaming is a huge sector as many of you probably agree like there are games like Roblox or fortnite that that have like 200 million monthly active users it's huge and I'm

of the I have a high confidence that we see one game in 24 that will have a breakthrough moment and that will be a triple A game and what that does is kind of it pulls in onchain citizens without them even knowing maybe so other domains that I want to focus on is betting and gambling they are very nice platforms like R bit or winner that yield um sustainable and real yield you can become the house it's fully decentralized at least winner I know then there there there's progress on social Platforms in offchain assets or real world assets and then crypto also acts as a risk mitigator we will also

see adoption through cryptocurrency as a risk mitigator as an alternative to CBD as a solution to deep fakes but also as a kind of privacy preserving technology like just this week we saw um what was it that the government is buying on via Android and and apple smartphones right and then finally we will also see and already see adoption uh through cryptocurrencies or digital assets as a hedge like in Argentina or in Venezuela where the residents are kind of suffer from monetary debasement and high inflation and there we already see like big spikes in adoption from tokenized dollars but also from Bitcoin and E for

example and I want to point out here that most of these domains could not get into this position without having an enabler and these enablers just happened like within the last couple of months we made huge progress on the scaling side with rollups with paralyzed execution with data availability layers with c approves but we also make made progress on the ux side with account abstraction for example and lastly on the Privacy side we now have fully fully homomorphic encryption which is a which is a a game changer basically because it actually allows full onchain privacy um and then this aspect to me

it's the most overseen one it's a huge demand pillar and it it's the great wealth transfer so what do I mean mean by that baby boomers sorry for all of the Baby Boomers here baby boomers hold more than 50% of the US wealth right and they will retire through 2045 now interestingly by 2030 Millennials will already hold five times more wealth than they do today but that why why is that important so the important aspect here is the op adoption rate of Millennials already today is five Times Higher on average than than of baby boomers so one doesn't have to be a genius to see how

much value like what are these Millennials buying for example Galaxy just last week put out a report where they estimate that we see 20 to 28 million on buy side flows daily over the next 20 years like that's just mind bending demand so now if we have a quick look at the supply side obviously the Hing is happening next year historically uh the haling post haling uh returned uh nice gains and the early trends of this fouryear cycle already Echo P pattern so we expect it it will like pretty much um behave like like previous

Cycles uh and I'm Number crunching at a valuation of 44k per Bitcoin we have more than 7 billion uh Less in potential Sal side suppli salside Supply it just vanishes with the Hing event and now if we put that into context with some inflow estimates of the spot ETF various sources estimate that we see 10 to 15 billion inflows through the US bot ETF in the first year so kind of we um outperformed this already twice yeah I don't know what else to say um

then on the long-term holders uh and short-term holder Supply we see that short-term holders are exhausted it's the it's the lowest line here the grayish line so uh shortterm holder Supply we perceived that as kind of a proxy for for the actual available Supply in the markets and it's like ranging at multi-year lows while the long-term holder Supply that did not move in more than in more than a year is at all-time highs 70% % of the Bitcoin Supply did not move and that kind of indicates to us um that these are strong signs of like a community of Believers of people that just don't sell and that just pull Supply from the market and

make the the asset class kind of pretty much yeah it's kind of a supply squeeze and then on the other hand we also see that there's no science yet of this long-term holder Supply Trend inverting so it's it's kind of it looks currently like like it's up only basically then on the exchange exchange Reserve side we also see alltime lows there are only two million Bitcoin left on all exchanges in some and this is kind of uh it suggests kind of that that all of that Supply is migrating to venues that are that are less that are less liquid and are that are maybe also less spec speculative

right um so overall yeah we are dealing with a setup where there's just not not a lot of Supply left I want to note here that some of that Supply is also migrating into ATF vehicles or trfi Vehicles obviously but that also means it's kind of Il liquid uh one more thing the free flow Supply is also since a couple months uh the first time that it's declining so the issuance does not outperform the the free flow Supply anymore um if we go back to our final assembly line again we have these different demand pillars and the different Supply pillars and the picture I wanted to paint today is basically all of these demand components including

institutional demand is straight up running into a heavy heavy Supply constraint and if you're familiar with the law of supply and demand it you don't have to be a genius to know that uh assuming all of what I said is right that the price equilibriums should be way higher um I want to talk about a little bit about the ugley um we still expect macroeconomic uh turmoil in the first half of 24 the yield curve is still still has to unvert and usually a recession follows then the ETF it's not in the books yet the ODS are very high but they might also get

rejected and there's some chance that we also face more regulatory pressure like the bill of Elizabeth roren just just recently so that's kind of the ugly so take everything that I said with a grain of salt but overall the odds are very good for digital assets and then finally I want to put some emphasis on this whole anal analysis was kind of centered around um around the Dynamics on how supply and demand might influence the the performance of Bitcoin and digital assets but um ETFs it's for me it's important to say that ETFs are kind of only a vehicle like what provides substance and the juice is that emergent

monetary technology that allows us to transfer value in a permissionless immutable and decentralized fashion right and to me price is only a lagging indicator of these fundamentals um finally um what else can you expect in the Outlook we have a great interview with Harold router on bitcoin screen turn we have a super nice crypto and macro piece um that kind of uh deals with how macro influences the crypto space and then we have an interview with Matthew seagel who is head of digital asset research at vck on sound valuation models because that's also a topic that is still unclear unclear how do we find fair value for

cash flow assets or for store of value Asset assets and then finally we have the future ties article where we um have 13 digital asset predictions and with that I want to thank my colleagues Marcus D Dennis Overman and Marcus benuto and thank you for your attention thank you thank you X you can stay here uh that was uh very amazing thank you for presenting to us this uh in preview so I think people can register uh to make sure that they receive the full version it just went live the the forms went live one hour ago on bitcoin with uh websites you can

just uh let your email and you will uh get um the the next week when when is next week uh 19th of December is the release all right thank you very much so now I'm calling um my panelist um so we will have Kevin Kevin the P from KCK founder and CEO welcome welcome Kevin and r r uh from Koo um please um please have a seat uh all right that's perfect then maybe I will try to um switch off so that the streaming will have not the the banners but we'll have

the um the camera stop present thing how is that Silvana if you are in the room uh if you can help me to maybe have the the camera in Bak so that the stream can have the camera I don't know exactly uh what to do uh but if not we will let the banner okay so uh thank you very much uh gentlemen um so we will start this is it good like that um I think you know it's recording but it's recording uh um yeah squeeze let's give one more minute so that people online can get

the the the the picture in big if not then we will we will continue like this TR disconnected from the call okay no problem thank you s unforunately our T yeah silana by the way is from Google and once again thank you for hosting us silana tonight um okay so I want to start with uh a loop back okay I want to start before talking about 2024 I want to start with L back I I made a quick uh review on what was my highlight per month so I would be interested to know um yeah what would be the p p p ship for you maybe you can start with you take

one two three uh of 2023 uh this year well I guess the biggest change for me was um can you hear me yeah yeah I guess the biggest change for me was actually entering the crypto markets coming from uh traditional Finance after 15 years um I think very noteworthy was obviously the 3s as you said that was um I think almost less of a um crypto story than almost like a inflation and real money story um but also very important kind of how res resilient the crypto Market has proved itself year this was truly impressive and also kind of formed my decision to kind of move away from

Investment Banking com into crypto but I have another additional question for you so what was the main difference when when compare Investment Banking C carrier to the with the crypto Fanatics like us so well I mean there's definitely more optimism in the crypto then Investment Banking it's a growing Market rightfully we so so um I think kind of after you know started in Investment Banking um two months ahead of Leman yeah so I've basically seen 15 years of just kind of the investment banking collapsing and crypto is just a whole different animal it's growing it's enthusiasm rightfully so and has a bright future have amazing maybe you can

say a few word about Koo I know Koo I know you are you Rockstar CEO arm uh well Koo is one of the most uh performing crypto startup in France in Paris yeah I mean we provide data for the crypto economy right can we can provide you data on decentralized exchanges and centralized exchanges we have um indices we have um wallet solutions for source of wealth so we are data company and we are here to service the growing cryptos space okay amazing so Kevin founder CEO of Rock maybe you have to push so that it's

green yeah so I like green green candles are better yeah Green Green only green tell us a bit more about uh your company and I know you were recently moved to Switzerland to the crypto valy yeah very very recently indeed um so good evening everyone I'm Kevin so I'm the co-founder in C of K Rock we're a market maker in digital assets so I founded a company back in 2017 so rad was saying just be he joined Finance should before lemon uh when you saw that rather significant draw down of Bitcoin was minus 73% I founded the company just before that so it was a great time to start so 2017 so we've been around for six years and basically we provide liquidity so we work as market makers on exchanges

working with issuers working with the exchanger themselves and we also provide liquidity of venues for institutional looking to trade with our OTC desk both on spot and options around digital assets so yeah we've been around for six years today we're a team of 180 people dispatching 28 countries um and indeed one of those new countries was Switzerland so I moved in Switzerland in February we open an entity here in the course of the year and so we mainly active on the OTC side yeah so I mean that's I guess that's somewhat not true because I'm in Geneva right as you can hear from my accent as well I speak French so I'm in Geneva our our entity is B in zoo okay guess why and um and yeah we' mainly here to develop our OTC business from Switzerland we've seen a you know a

business environment that is extremely positive a regulatory framework that is very forward looking which is you know Europe is catching up with maika but still I think it's quite an exception here in Switzerland and and it's been a very very positive year for development so your key highlights from the past year so 2023 I mean I think for me what is interesting is the change in Dynamic when you I mean you highlighted it right where where we started where we were in December 20 December 22 the start of years in 23 was getting even worse for me really the the Turning Point honestly was um the the the partial Ripple victory in July um I think that that really changed the dynamic completely because even the month before so you see the SEC you know suing binance uh but then the SEC suing coinbase as well and

I just you know this operation chold whether it was coordinated or not it does look a bit like it but it wasn't confirmed but then a month later you see the the win actually from Ripple I think that that tremendously changed the dynamic on the on the market kind of also really ended the negative momentum and then started to go to a lot more kind of you know going from from wins to wins over the last the last six months so for me that was really the turning point of 23 yeah resilience I think that's the that's the word um Dominic you talked a lot about next year uh a few words about what what happened this year for for you at Bitcoin you not only doing Bitcoin at Bitcoin h no yeah of course not yeah that sometimes is a little bit confusing

of course we have a a pretty big um Tok Universe um what excited me a lot was for example the the launch of the of of the plue chip of the stocks digital asset Blue Chip index that happened last uh last week because um we put a lot of effort into crafting um kind of this index um we also have a pretty sophisticated underlying metrics on how to decide what is Blue Chip and not so that was kind of one of the of the nice moments for me that the investing advice team um shipped that one um other than that of course it was a pleasure for me to see how Bitcoin and the digital asset

space overall performed this year um while um yeah we still faced a lot of challenges also in the regulatory space um but yeah as the colleague said uh like the crypto space um Prov that it's like incredibly resilient and it's like it makes um yeah hope for for the up I guess so maybe question I think you could be the bitcoiner tonight so uh tell us if you can answer this one what about ordinal like this this year it seems we started with with ordinal so is it major breakthrough is it just uh something small you have thought on that so I just want to uh clarify I'm not the a Bitcoin

Maxi like I like a lot of digital assets um but yeah good question so with Bitcoin what we what we observed I think it's a great development because um the uh Bitcoin currently at least in my opinion does not really have a sustainable security model at some point all Bitcoins will be mined and miners probably will rely on fees so what Eric wall and the T Roots T rot Wizards did there is um to me it's a it's a positive thing a positive development because it kind of triggers development like the community might uh change directions and we already see that with for example STS

is a pretty cool project we see more Layer Two developments happening on bitcoin right now because they're actually forced to think about yeah how do do we deal with uh with more block space Demand right and um by having for example now a CK rollup maybe in the future you get both you get functionality but up on bitcoin yeah like it's kind of in in development at least they try obviously you need like if you re want to do it really really proper proper sound you need to change op codes not sure if that is happening but um yeah at least there's some develop development happening and I feel

like um functionality is good because fee follows functionality and it's it will be overall uh good for Bitcoin if we have sustained block space demand and and higher fees and miners get paid even when there when there's no block subsidy anymore right okay uh maybe we we Deep dive a bit on on technology um what kind of innovation could we could we see in in 2024 like in 2022 we had the merge like the big proof of stake eum then last this year the ordinal um ZK Z knowledge maybe do do you have an idea

about what what's coming next uh on on the Innovation side so I guess I'm I'm going to have a somewhat control in take for a blockchain event I really don't care um on this specific topic what is the next technological breakthrough because the way I look at it I think it's a big fallacy in this industry is that we care about the tech too much I think what matter is really the users that you know end user actually get and you shouldn't as a user you shouldn't care that it's based on blockchain you shouldn't care that you know the thing what you should care about the benefit of decentralization but you shouldn't you don't need to know that it's decentralized you don't need to know it's a blockchain I think there's just too much um Tech wrappers around what we do uh in in in digital assets so it's a

bit of a of a pro provocative answer but what matters to me the most actually the the actual users that we will get you know from this technology and what how how is it going to go mainstream so is it going to go through gaming as um as Dominic mentioned I do think it's it's an interesting take is it going to be through real world assets potentially is it going to is that massive view going to come from you know much higher trut like some of the effort being done on Solana for example maybe but I think that what matters the most to me is really what is going to be that mainstream use like currently it's one it is still a comment that resonated with me quite a bit from from last year a bit earlier last year when things started to crash somebody told me like

you know the entire crypto economy can collapse it would impact a very small minority of the world a very very small and I think that this is what matters the most to change to me is okay when does this become an technology that act actually has use for the greater number and I do think that of course this come through you know additional technological breakthrough better user experience better you know more speeds more security more of everything but I think it's very important as a as an industry in general to focus on this actual use and the the use cases rather than purely the takech itself good answer you wan to yeah I mean I mean I tend to agree most you said I think the the biggest change would be if actually one

of the like I say the settlement systems for example for equities or for fixed income would change in the blockchain right we already have JP more running uh his own token for um repo business and if actually we would U is it really blockchain CLS permission is it really my my sending it's a coin which they use basically for for the reaper business but like just actually doing some real Economy based on based on the blockchain right that would be one and obviously the second game changer if we actually get that ETF approved in January as you said it could be bring some institutional demand it could actually enter maybe some 401 case if people are

adventurous on that and actually kind of one of the big driver for us equities is the 401ks basically that's the Pension funds for for the workers in the US right and these are driving a lot of institutional demand for equities and that would actually way out perform even your like 10 billion estimation right kind if we just get like like 1% allocation or something right these These are huge amounts right yeah that would actually be a true game Chang yeah yeah double click on that uh Bitcoin uh ETFs but uh I've heard some people say of course it's great news but it won't be like a game changer on day one uh what's your point on the impact on the on the market on the price so my and that's this is kind of just assuming I would assume that

these guys have already kind of gotten some of the block uh Bitcoin in right and are ready to go day one right so there's not going to be an Institutional demand or like a demand day one however as soon as you know some of these 401ks take them and you know some people actually kind of proactively buy the new market at product by black rock or by the other providers that's going to create some some substantial demand ongoing demand as well so we can have um the ETF as a big um driver of price uh which then kind of creates and then also but just price setion General like if we continue to perform 16% per week or something that could also be you know that's going to lead to to just read going after after

after the Bitcoin right I want to stay on that on that ETF spot because I think that's the big topic these days um it seems if they get approval by the state they will get approval at the same time yes uh which one would win the biggest the Blackhawk or what do you think well black H has has the advantage that kind of they have already their distribution channels right they have a huge marketing machine they will be able to kind of push it through the end user right um however as um the if the market is actually going to grow there's going to be room for everyone right there's not just one S&P 500 ETF there are hundreds of it right price you think price could

be a difference like price no not really I think we gonna distribution would I think we GNA N I think we're going to soon start in yeah yeah that's that's always gonna be the first thing right which is still GNA be good because there's more more money G come into the the market price yeah okay bro broaden a bit and uh let let's stay with you R and then after Dominque about the market sentiment right now are we in bu run yes yes yes yes okay you canot be aun this um to be honest I don't know if we already if we already got started like for me the biggest surprise at the end of this year like what's happening now I would have

expected to arrive more in somewhere Q2 of 20124 so honestly I'm not I'm not yet 100% convinced whether this is really the start or something that is going to you know continue for the next few quarter than years or whether it's kind of you know small dip before we have more sideway movement for another six months and then we and we start again so of course this is a you know if this is just a dip it's a it's a big one right so it could be that you know I managed to be surprised by the market yet again you know after seven years in need full time but I'm not 100% convinced yet I do think that you know we if you look at all the previous Cycles there was always a very strong narrative like each cycle you had a like a few big narratives in the

market that was driving the demand driving the excitement I do think that we are we we are seeing the startup now with with the ETS with reable assets and so on and so forth but I think that those two narratives when you think about it are a lot more institution driven than they are retail and therefore I think that the the actual impact is going to be longer lasting with a bigger Market overall but I don't think it's going to be as fast and explosive as the previous cycle that we've seen so um of course I I remain very ex I mean you will have got it it's a rather optimistic panel on on how the market looks right but so I I am as well quite quite excited for for what 2024 and even 2025 will bring but how we think and would I say now with full

confidence we're back let's go this is just up only for the next two years I don't know because I do think that honestly I did not expect to be as early you know as it did happen and so I would still have a bit of of caution even though if you look at 12 month from now are we going to be you know bigger as an industry than we are today like that's a reling yes but you know are we Off to the Races right now I think that there's still a bit of a of CS there yeah of course caution but we put some sparkles on the banner because yes we went through a quite difficult bare Market we see here a full room today so we are it makes a bit of um yeah it's good to be finally to see some green candles uh not

only the market The Innovation the builders are still there so as your a market maker maybe you have a view broader view on on some other Trend new coins that you're working with so maybe you want to share something with us about we talk a lot about Bitcoin but not only Bitcoin here no I mean I think that the definitely we're seeing a lot of things right um there's a lot of new coins that still you know get issued it is part of our business to work with them on on their liquidity I think that the I don't know if there's one specific project that that that I would point on point Sol maybe I I've WR Solana foundations Representatives maybe in room yeah uh it was crazy what happened

with Sol the last few weeks so yeah I mean definitely Solana definitely performed very well I think that what is interesting so again the focus for me on on looking at Co in general is like what is the use what is the purpose of of this Tech what what good does it actually bring I think that when you look at Solana Solana has very clear characteristics that no other chains have I think that the the the type of usage the type of speed of throughput that you can have on Solana is something that is almost unmatched and so I do think that you know there are some use case some Mass really mass and scaled use case that can be brought through Stana that's for me is is you know one of the the driver of the of the success what is interesting also that you know

salana was having a very hard time after you know the FTX blow up and when you look at the last year he shown a lot of resilience which of course is of course always a good a good sign for for such project so I think that why salana currently you know is is doing well I think it's just simply because they actually have a a clear value proposition they actually you bring something that that you know allow very differentiated use cases and that's that is part of their their current success I would say yes so I take the opportunity to thank Solana and all the other Foundation which are member of the crypto found Association so we have a cardano solena web3 and definity um just talking about the Casper I think as also

a member of this my answer was not sponsored by salana but no no that's why I I also give the name of the author and they are all members of the crypto Val Association so I hope that if you're not yet member you will join us soon um then we could let's talk about regulation could be a bit boring but uh why not regulation this year we have seen this choke point two Z in the US quite OD now um what's next um what's next you want to St well I mean I would I mean it was a choke point but it's kind of just natural cleanup I guess before you can of get to to a healthier state right it was much harder in the US than anywhere else on the planet like if you compare

to Europe Switzerland well Asia I mean some of the reg I mean if you look at Regulators in general right it's usually the angle SE and Regulators who are the toughest in general in the space right but what do they want to do like they want to just I think legitimize it right they just want to export their project to Offshore they just want to pump deser uh what is that well well one one Theory could be like they want a clean house right and can everybody who actually is allowed to stay there so that if you are a consumer that you actually can you know trust in the providers that that that are there the second is if you have someone who already has a dominant position like um let's say binance for example right that

you want to try to kind of bring them into the fold after cleaning house so regulation I think is going be key for for Mass adoption are we still competitive in Switzerland Dominic with our regulation do do you think we are still attractive on a global landscape um yes certainly I I mean it's still one of the few countries with with the most Progressive like regulatory landscape and I think Switzerland does a great job in iterating consistently on like which is like a very Dynamic environment right but maybe for to the to the US case I would like to add um I agree like the at least

I think that this binance event was kind of a drisking event and it kind of like cleaned the space um now we kind of only have coinbase we have the CME and I feel like it was a move to make it more ready for the institutional um entry or like access yeah and also what I am Keen to see is that we get more clarity on what tokens are securities especially on on Eve it's still very unclear while thec kind of behaves at as they kind of acknowledge that it's a commodity with allowing for example the Futures products but I would like to see more more clarity on that side to be

honest why Switzerland why did you left Belgium or yeah so no I didn't leave know headquarter of of kok is still in Belgium I think that's basically what matters when you looks when when you when you discuss you know regulatory framework I think the the main thing is Clarity and that is something that currently is still an advantage in Switzerland I think that's if MAA actually is implemented by the end of 2024 that is it's still going to be a strong point of Switz but not a differentiating factor anymore but currently it is a differentiating factor I mean being based in Belgium some of activities we don't know uh what the framework is going to be like we don't know how activities are going to be treated where and that is something that

is extremely clear here and so why do we open an enti here of course there's a lot of you know potential clients for our OTC desks but also from the regulatory side of things there is there is Clarity and you know I think it's very good for the for a market that you have very that you have tough rules right you need to have high standards especially when it comes to financial markets I think more importantly we need to know that the rules are there that they are known to everyone and that they're not going to change every every six months and so that is also part of why the US approach is so detrimental right when you start uh regulating by just you know enforcement you never know what's what's going to happen next here you have a very clear framework in in Switzerland um and that is for me one of

the it was clearly the main reason plus of course the the commercial the commercial opportunity that led us to open an entity here and so two European companies okay Co headquarter in Paris and you still in Belgium so mik is it is it is it good uh I think it's good so what do you think about M no I mean it's it's um as you said right it's gonna bring the EU forward in terms of Regulation quite a bit it's gonna enable of parties which were on the sidelines to kind of participate in the crypto environment um it's gonna to ask it's GNA also like when we design our products they're also kind of based on you know upcoming regulation you know

when you need stable price date uh all the all the that you can you know go to your auditor and confirm it's it's okay not just from from an exchange or something right so Micah d8 right some some of these regulations are going to be crucial and are going to hopefully bring bring new entrance into the market as well by new entrance I mean you know your asset managers your your wealth managers and then their the retail clients well okay excent I see it's seven so maybe you can open the question from the audience uh who is not shy to stop uh I'm Lucas and I want to ask a

question because I lost some coins on Mount Cox 10 years ago so the supply sides they're supposed to come back we get some of the coins right next year and that's going to be a lot of coins because MX had 80% of the trading volume more or less back then so what do you think you didn't have that in your calculation you don't expect that or is it negligable good point thank you no it's of course I expected but I think it will be a a rather shortterm event we saw what also what happened for example um with the with the um sell pressure of FTX it didn't have too much of an impact right and I feel if if we are in a bull

market that kind of sale pressure gets gets compensated fairly quickly and also we not sure how many of these Mount Cox clients will sell right maybe they also understand that digital assets are the best asset class that we have so then they might they B like 10 years ago they bought 10 years ago mon when was that when was that January 2014 okay so the quite lot interesting upsell to sell now 10 years that's true but we also saw the the long-term holders or like the when you look at the free flow Supply Supply that is not not

moving uh in more than five years it's also kind of up only so I guess a good amount of of clients might also be uh pretty much in in our camp let's say hello I'm Adrian from 21 shares um I would like to ask what's your opinion on bitcoin ordinals BR c20s and all the Innovation that is happening on top of Bitcoin I think you arrive a bit oh I'm sorry you talked about it I'm sorry yeah it was same yeah yeah we answered it so maybe during the let's discuss afterward absolutely or maybe

later uh hi I'm rvan from toon.com I would like to ask what's your opinion on Brewing Civil War in Bitcoin this is regarding Max Kaiser let's say tweet that mentioned that ordinance are a bug and you will be fixed shortly I don't know someone can answer here or you take it you want to answer we can have answer from the from the audience super Interactive I yes I can try I think it's good to um that these guys or like the kind of how do they the the Bitcoin fundamentalists kind of trigger that uh debate and it I think it's it's

healthy to have the discussion and even if it might end in another hard for which I don't expect but it's good to um to discuss uh the actual substance because like I mentioned previously Bitcoin as of now does not have a sustainable security model right with the current status so we should think about it and and these guys should also like um fuel this debate in my opinion it's a healthy debate okay we have one more question hello guys uh I'm founder of curio we focus on reable assets and what I've seen the last few years is this rhetoric

of reable assets together with institution you know coming and so forth and in the last few months clearly after talking 2049 we assets was kind of a a topic there and also what I see right now is many foundations seeking to diversify their you know treasury with starting with t-s like maker D and so forth now I was hoping to see a bit of that rhetoric here today but I didn't see it I just wanted to ask um you know um uh your uh I want to ask you now that you were a bit bullish about salana uh maybe something about real asses what did you stake there um can you hear me like I

bring you the uh so yeah I mean I definitely think again the reason why I'm personally interested in digital assets right I think in all in all it's a better way to exchange value that's it I think it's a better way to exchange value I think that's you know what we've seen as digital asset we've seen over the last five six years are of concept are you know the first innovators going representing value fully digitally and why is it better to digitally represent Valu because it's it becomes easier to transact on it becomes easier to exchange 24/7 everywhere in the world very fast fraction of the cost you know all of this and so knowing that this is the very reason I'm overall bullish

about digital assets I think that representing more value fully digitally is for me the main reason to be active in the space I mean this is what for me matters the most I do expect that if you look at today the overlap between traditional financial instruments and crypto the overlap is very very small and you know tokenized T bills it's interesting because you know t- bills are the further way you could get from you know the kind of cyer punk ideals from six years ago and yet I believe this is tremendously positive for the space because it just make the whole thing boring but it's fine it's not supposed to be 100% disruptive all the time it just shows the potential that representing T bills fully digitally makes them all other things

being equal a better asset and so I do think that if you look fast forward I don't know if it should be five or 10 years because again everything that is regulated and that touch of institution is going to be very slow but if you look at five 10 years ahead I do think that maybe what 50 90% of the overall volume of digital assets would be you know regulated financial instruments as we know them today and so I do think that that narrative that is has been around for the first time I went to consensus were in 2017 and there they all talked about you know tokenized Securities already six years later we're still talking about it but I do think that the timing is a lot better now for all the reasons that Dominic presented also on the on the regulatory side so for me

that is the most exciting part about this this whole thing is being able to represent value fully digitally simply because it becomes more efficient you know cheaper faster and if you can do that with with gegs and you can do that you know with Bitcoin and you can do that with t bills and you can do that with carbon credits and you can do that with equity and you can do that bonds and so on and so on and so forth I do think it's a it's one of the main reason to be excited about the technology overall all right we have uh lots of question hi I'm Fabio I'm a partner with alpinum law um my question is we talked about Mass adoption and I'd like to know what do you think can can bring this

trust because trust goes with mass adoption vice versa I think uh what can bring this needed trust to allow or to um enable this Mass adoption to come r or retail I would I would say retail I mean the key word here is trust right and digital asset if they are designed properly are trustless so if actually you don't need to trust them but I feel uh adoption like especially from from retail will happen because the ux gets better some

Gamers for example they might not even know that they use blockchain uh that that that the game runs on blockchain Rails for example and will only then get familiar with the tech um I feel to to get that kind of trust component it needs more education and it's a very complex space so it's a a long road to get there I feel but actually uh to me it's obvious that the technology is trustless and currently we are trusting centralized entities which is at least to me kind of much worse I mean also can of the answer also the the real word as the question think in in a world there's a lot of

stakeholders like so kind of if you want to change how things are done you can't just expect it to go overnight you know there's a lot of consultations and we are for example part of the um uh consultation about how digital bonds are transacted on on on on the blockchain right and it's law firms um custodian Etc who are also part of this and everyone has their opinion everybody has their also you know their Stak grounds kind of which they want to protect right so I would assume that obious in gaming or something kind of where things are controlled by you know Sony and you know some Publishers right it's going to go faster or in music or anything but traditional Finance with law firms

governments Etc right you can't just sell your apartment without paying tax and proper even though it's possible on the CH no the notary will still need to make a note or at least can I have some part in in that the transaction right so it's going to take a while but clearly we are going to that direction I remember can know when Bond trades were down on paper dockets right and then kind of It Came electronically and then clearing systems Etc so we heading the direction but you know Rome wasn't built in a day thank you thank you I'm Carmen I'm member of the sustainability working group in CVA that's my my best so I think it's the

first event of the Year where I don't hear AI mentioned at all so so of course my question is about that but probably yeah the question is what is your outlook for AI in general for 2024 if we're going to the theme but more specifically of course where do you see the role of blockchain and we have seen a lot of block not a lot some blockchain based AI projects that are ramping up do you see uh yeah that as a as a solid Trend and overall your your thoughts about the intersection of blockchain and AI thank you so I'm definitely not an an AI expert right um the one thing that I'm excited about at the inter intersection

I guess of AI and blockchain is around authenticity I think that one of the thing that potentially is the most threatening when you look at the evolution of AI is you know everything becomes fake potentially it's very easy to fake you know images sounds videos and so on and so forth and I do think that there is's a very an interesting role for for um digital asset to play in terms of authentication of of truth but then of course the question is what is truth and how do you you know vouch for it but so it's it's somewhat a very partial answer but that is the the overlap that's that I see is potentially the most interesting and there are lots of project that are you know if you look at a guy like Sam Alman he's right in the in the middle right because he's

somewhat yeah exactly somewhat influenc in AI but then also involved in World coin where they try to have a a way to authenticate that a human is a human I'm not going to launch a world coin debate right because there are you know very clear questions around it as well but I do think that there it's an interesting topic looking at how can we use the ability of digital asset to authenticate something combined with the Potential Threat of you know everything being made up uh in in a world where AI is so prevalent I think it's it's an interesting overlap but that's that's about it on my end uh maybe it's good opportunity to remind that uh you might know more than us SC about that topic because in the sustainability working group you just issued a paper on um how could we mix Ai

and crypto and it's available on crypto val. SSS uh what do you think then yeah let's ask question the other we run great um no I think so our report was was kind of split in three in three uh pillars and and I I I truly believe in those so we were looking at um ethics so how can blockchain support a be a bit more ethical and there's a lot of discussion what is ethics what you know Frameworks you use but it goes to mostly what you said the other one is open um open source or Democratic AI which I think you know blockchain is is quite well s suited there we think as as a group and the third one is green AI

right so there's a huge of course energy footprint carbon footprint now they talk about water footprint for Korea Ai and uh whether whether blockchain um can support in in in that so not too much more than that but we definitely see uh three areas who for sustainability through blockchain yeah I don't know if the other more in the report bra thank you very much okay maybe last two question hello I'm and I'm wondering green hello I'm Yan ritell and I'm wondering what do you think will be the three

biggest narratives of this bull run and in which order I should okay let's see you start you start yeah so one of the one of the narratives I'm EXC very excited about is reaking I think it will alter the space completely because it will eventually allow also non applications to um get permissionless Innovation and inherit security from ethereum I think it will be one of the the biggest topics in in

2024 um because it allows like all kinds of middleware be it oracles data availability layers and so forth to tap into the security trustless security layer of and then maybe the next one is kind of it's unclear to me how the the integrated chain narrative being Solana which also uh I also think it was kind of over dumped back then and now it it it performed performed super nice because it has crushingly good Tech under the hood their parallelized uh VM is is very impressive and what I wanted to say is it's unclear to me how it play how the integrated narrative plays out

against the modular narrative I feel I'm more on the modular side currently um but that is something that that is worth monitoring I think and I and I also believe it will play a huge role going forward um and then the last one probably like sent us around the institutional adoption basically and everything that happens after the ETF is approved I just come back on staking so one example of the lobbying action of the crypto we just um one two one month or two months ago issue an open letter for the finma together with the Swiss BL Federation about the decision to uh impose uh banking license for staking

and Switzerland which is obviously not good uh let's hope that we try and succeed to make them change their mind because um yeah just Bitcoin s You're Number Four ster on the planet so yeah we still need you uh maybe you will get the banking license who knows but for now you don't have it um and uh yeah that's allos official position so if you join us you can help us um do some lobbying in b not easy but uh we have really good uh they listent to us maybe that's interesting closing question let's all rep yeah well for me

without a doubt this regulation that being you know ETF we just kind of um the regulator bringing crypto into the Limelight making it a um a real world asset that kind of people can invest and Trust in it right uh second support supportive macro environment that being you know like inflation topic is probably over right um because see it today on the on the on the print in the UK in the US and um obviously the price section so that's all the the micro topic and last but not least um further Innovation and and further adoption of uh the blockchain

Solana Etc right don't last one um sure so three things I guess the first one would be real world assets for me really what I'm most excited about I think it's it's not the 12 month Horizon to be honest it's we're talking about something that will take more time but it's interesting to see that the proof concept are you know bigger and bigger and getting closer you know to one another so if I look at maybe the next two three years that's what I'm would be hopefully the biggest narrative quite surprisingly the second would be gaming I think that there's um again a lot of overlap between between the two a lot of use case that actually make sense uh for digital assets to be used in in gaming and an adaption adaption speed that I think will be know much faster than than

for institutions so I'm quite excited about gaming and the third one is options um it's quite interesting when you look at purely like the financial side of digital assets today I think that options about 10% of spot on digital assets It's usually the opposite in in most traditional markets so I think that the development of option Market what they allow for institutional investors the higher efficiency of the capital but also the the the tailor made risk that exposure you can have for me makes me quite excited about option as a as a level for growth in the next next 12 month all right thank you so we could make it kind of endless uh I like this interaction I think it will be uh good to continue during the networking so now we'll close uh so what's next for crypto

Association next year so in Davos uh this will be our next event uh we will be there um and uh if you are a crypto startup there are only a few more days three days uh to apply um so you you can talk to benedek uh who the chair of the startup working groups and uh also ekarina there uh board member and a regulatory working group chair uh so if you compliant sorry 10 working groups um so that will be next in January and then in February in Geneva with Olga co-chair of the western

Switzerland chapter say hi Olga so that people can come to you um we the web3 banking event in Geneva so if you want to explore the opportunity of crossing web3 and banking uh in Geneva private Banks and so on you all know so it will be quite interesting um and then fast forward to juli uh June second and third cryptool conference Flagship event biggest so you should all be there with your friend um and yeah maybe one uh we have tilma here uh uh co-chair of the education working group just published the the paper the resarch Journal of the

crypto Val Association so you can come and and check it and discuss um with with tilmar I see another CV officer Maxim board member uh so now you are you know to talk who to talk to I think like five six six people in this room so I think night's over once again I want to thank Google for hosting us is this amazing uh location so close to the station for us coming from Geneva perfect uh and coming back to Geneva in a few minutes um and thanks again also Google for the for the Aero uh networking that will continue now so thank you very much for being here uh

and let's continue thanks thanks good one I'm looking forward to downloading the the report every year it's a nice report was nice preview this year not only oh that's why you