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Speaker A: My view is that ultimately we will get an Ethereum ETF. The core logic on which the bitcoin ETF approval rests, which is that futures and spot track each other very well and are tightly correlated. So I think we'll eventually get it. I would guess I'm over 50% by the end of this year.

Speaker B: Welcome to bankless, where we explore the frontier of Internet money and Internet finance. And today we're exploring the frontier of ETF's, specifically the bitcoin ETF and the Ethereum ETF. We have Matt Hogan and Ryan Rasmussen from Bitwise to help us out with that. A few things we talk about today. Number one, the bitcoin ETF wasn't a success. How successful was it in the grand scheme of things, and why? Matt and Ryan still think there's a lot of juice to squeeze out of the bitcoin ETF. Number two, flipping in gold. Why not only is the bitcoin ETF flipping gold in line of sight, uh, maybe we go far beyond that, potentially three x or more beyond that. Number three, the Ethereum ETF. Is it coming this year? What are their honest predictions? This is by far the best analysis I've heard yet. And number four, what's next for the institutions after the Ethereum ETF? After the bitcoin ETF, where do we go from there?

Speaker C: There's so much to unpack in this episode, especially with the conversation around the Ethereum ETF, which has been going around in the crypto Twitter verse. A lot of the conversations and just around Ethereum these days is about the ETF. Lately in the ETF conversation, there has been discussion about the decreasing likelihood of the Ethereum ETF approval at the end of May, where the first deadline is up after going through the gamut, that is the bitcoin ETF conversation, of which there is plenty to talk about. And we do unpack all of that conversation. We get into the Ethereum ETF conversation, and the crypto industry really has just always a perpetual short term focus because of how fast things move in the crypto industry. And so thinking in like multiple quarters is generally not what we do. But Matt and Ryan and generally people speaking all understand that the Ethereum ETF is going to get approved. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And so we ask some of the questions about that approval. Of course, we start asking by when, but then we asking about further things, like what about staking inside of the ETH ETF? How much demand is there? Will there be for the Eth ETF, and how are they positioning the Eth ETF to their broader clients? Matt is coming to us from digital asset summit over in London, where he. He's talking to all of tradfi and about what their interests are. Uh, and, uh, he's got a lot of alpha to share here on the podcast today. So we're going to get right into all that information. But first, I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible, especially bankless nation.

Speaker B: We have two esteemed guests from Bitwise today. Matt Hogan is the chief investment officer at Bitwise, and Ryan Rasmussen is a senior analyst at Bitwise. Matt, Ryan, it's great to have you on bankless.

Speaker A: Great to be here.

Speaker B: Okay, so, bitwise for. For context, we've had Matt on before, is an asset management firm. And, uh, you guys have your own bitcoin etfemen. It's called bit b I t b. So four letters there. It's got 2 billion in assets under management. So congrats on that. And bit wise, it's probably one of our favorite bitcoin ETF's, if we're allowed to have favorite. I don't know, because we've known Matt and bitwise for a while. They're crypto natives. They understand the space. They understand this industry. And so we want to ask you guys a few questions about ETF world, about institutional adoption and everything that's going on there. That sound good?

Speaker A: I love it. Yeah. Appreciate the support.

Speaker B: All right, so, first question here is, uh, how are the bitcoin ETF's going? Just give us the lay of the land. We are, what, like just over 60 days in? Uh, you know, a few more than that. How's it going so far?

Speaker A: I'll start and, uh, and Rasmussen can jump in. This launch has exceeded everyone's expectations. Right. For context, I spent 15 years in the ETF industry before I moved into crypto, uh, full time, six and a half years ago. These are the largest ETF launches ever, by a significant factor. To put it in context, before, these ETF's the fastest growing ETF for one year. Inflows. In other words, how much people invested in the first year were the Nasdaq 100 Qs. Qqq. And those pulled in $5 billion in a year. And if you take these new bitcoin ETF's, even after you subtract the outflows from GBTC, they've pulled in $12 billion in two months. So, by far and away, the fastest growing ETF's of all time. I was very optimistic. I spent three years with the team at Bitwise or five years trying to get one of these launched and I didn't expect anything like this. We're at 2 billion. The ecosystems pulled in twelve. It's just been outrageously great and I think it will accelerate in the future. So after maybe a few weeks, a few months, maybe a month or so now where it may be a little bit quieter, I think there's a second acceleration coming that may even dwarf this first one. So it's good time in ETF land.

Speaker C: Well, if you think these first two months of the bitcoin ETF's have been quiet, I can't wait to see what a future acceleration looks like because it doesn't look like it's been quiet. From my perspective, it seems like it's been quite loud. I want to ask just about how the success of these bitcoin ETF's has characterized the industry from the outside perspective. So there were two potential worlds going into the approval of the bitcoin ETF. There was the flop and then there was the massive success. And we are in the universe in which we got the massive success. How has that changed the pr, the optics, the position of the crypto industry to the perspective of the outsiders?

Speaker D: I'll go ahead and take this one. I think that this has been a massive boon for the industry. I think we hear a lot of stories from, whether it's grandparents or aunts or uncles or parents or siblings, who now with these bitcoin ETF's, look at that as a stamp of approval from not only the government but just the mainstream America. You have these biggest investors going on CNBC, Larry Fink and others that are really well known talking about bitcoin as an asset class rather than a speculative vehicle or something that like vaporware that's going to, you know, go away in a few years. And I think that just shows what these ETF's have done in a very short amount of time. And in two months we've gone from a crypto is a scam to, oh, this is a legitimate asset class that could overtake other commodities at some point, like gold. And so that just kind of shows where we're at. And I know the conversations that I'm having on the road with our sales team, at conferences with advisors are way different today than they were one year ago or two years ago. And without the ETF's, we wouldn't be in the situation that we're in. So it's been a huge boost for the asset class.

Speaker B: Matt, you call this an overwhelming success? Was Wall street surprised by this?

Speaker A: I think Wall street was surprised. I think people thought it would be a success. We knew there was demand, but the scale of the success and the broad based nature of it I think has exceeded expectations. I think it gets to something that Ryan mentioned, which is what really changed from traditional finances. View is they now accept that bitcoin is going to be here forever. Once we have these ETF's, once Blackrock and Invesco, and these giant names are in there, once RAS investment advisors institutions are piling in, theyve accepted that bitcoin wont go away. We knew it was going to be a success, but the scale is just off the charts.

Speaker B: You mentioned, Matt, this second acceleration, we've seen the first acceleration that got us to 12 billion, and the second acceleration, can you describe what that actually is? Why would we be getting a second acceleration? If you're looking at this from the outside, you might say, well, the first wave, everyone who wanted to buy, they probably already bought. And certainly now the bitcoin ETF is hyped enough, we're squarely in a bull cycle. Why would there be any second acceleration?

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. I can start it and Ryan can finish. The thing about ETF's approval is it unlocks only a portion of the market. So the day an ETF is approved by the SEC, retail investors can buy it, and independent financial advisors, people who manage money on behalf of other people, can buy it, but there's a whole class of investors who still can't buy it. So the largest wealth management platforms in the US are firms like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Wells Fargo. These have tens of thousands of advisors and trillions of dollars of assets, and they cant buy it on those platforms until they complete their own due diligence. So its not good enough that the SEC approved it. Each of those platforms has a due diligence process and they have to approve the ETF as well. And that process hasnt happened yet. That will probably start to happen in the next few weeks or the next few months. I would say that maybe 30% of the wealth market in the US can now access these ETF's, but theres a whole additional 70% thats going to come online, not all at once, not like the ETF launch. This will be a series of individual approvals at each of these firms and each of these tiers of wealth until we get to the final opening. Ill make an analogy that maybe makes sense to people. The closest analogy to the bitcoin ETF launch was the gold ETF launch. The gold ETF launch was a very big deal. And suddenly people could buy gold, but inflows built over seven years right before they reached a local maximum. And actually the largest year was year 16. So what weve seen now is retail investors and independent advisors buy these ETF's hedge funds, venture capital funds. Great, huge success. But theres this whole other level that were about to get to in the next month or two months or three months, that that's really where the trillions of dollars is.

Speaker B: That what we're seeing when we see, like, Morgan Stanley has kind of opened the gates, that bitcoin, Wells Fargo has opened the gates to the bitcoin ETF, all of these gates. I didn't even know these things existed. But is that basically the process of this second acceleration here?

Speaker A: That's exactly right, yeah. It's like a nuclear key, right? You need the SEC to turn it, and then you need Morgan Stanley to turn it. And we're just going through that process of the second key turning.

Speaker D: I would give one additional data point here. So I spent eight years before I joined bitwise working at a company called Cetera Financial Group. This is a large network of independent financial advisors. They have 10,000 advisors or more. They manage 300 billion in assets. And they just recently approved bitcoin. ETF's on their platform for those 10,000 plus advisors to start allocating on behalf of their clients. And that took two months. And like I said, I've been in that organization before, and organizations, organizations like that. And the wheels just move very slowly. There's so many executives and teams involved in reviewing what is bitcoin. Are we okay with our advisors allocating to it? How do we feel about them getting exposure on behalf of clients? Then, once they make that decision, they have to evaluate the different vehicles. They have to decide how they're going to educate their, the advisors on what bitcoin is and what it means to put bitcoin in a portfolio. A lot of time those advisors have to educate their clients before they actually make that investment. There's all these different hurdles that you have to clear before you actually make the allocation. It isn't just the platform approval. There's a whole education process that happens after that. I think on the retail side, we move a lot quicker because we're self directing our own investments. When you have someone managing money on behalf of another, there's a lot more hoops you have to jump through to make sure you're complying with all of the regulatory requirements and whatnot. I think that's partly what takes so long.

Speaker C: Yeah, this is certainly probably things that are moving on timeframes that crypto natives, the crypto industry doesn't really consider, uh, because we are so short term focused in this industry. But really the, the bitcoin ETF's in general, ETF's uh, broadly are just like a fine wine kind of thing. Like you got to let them age before they really, uh, they really uh, mature. Uh, Matt, I just want to try and get some more numbers on this thing. You, you said 30 and 70%, uh, in terms of like 30% of capital is available. And just want to make sure that I'm understanding that, that uh, correctly when in terms of the acceleration that you were referencing, the 30 70% is like total available, like pools of capital, as in like the 30% is the available and interested capital. And that acceleration that you're talking about is like there's roughly 70% more capital available to be, to buy the bitcoin ETF as the BTC ETF ages. Can you just shed a little bit more light on that?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that's, that's a, that's a back of the envelope calculation, but that's a route. Right. If you look at the us wealth management industry, people have different measures of how big it is. But let's call it, you know, 40 to 50, $50 trillion somewhere in that zone. Yeah. I think about 30% of that can access these ETF's today, which is great. That's trillions of dollars that can access these ETF's and it's turned into billions of dollars of flows. And those flows are just getting started. But there is this whole other group that hasn't even crossed the chasm into being able to access that. It's certainly the larger contingent. So the majority of wealth, whether it's 60 or 70% of the wealth thats still waiting and theyre doing their due diligence, theyre actually moving faster on these bitcoin ETF's than they do on most ETF's. Usually this would be a six month or year long process and its going to be a quarter long process or a four month long process. So its great. But as you said, thats glacial from a crypto perspective. But they will get there. The progress is happening. Theyre going to approve them and we'll start to feel those flows build over months and quarters and years.

Speaker B: I will say one of my favorite parts of this whole story, the whole crypto story, and what's happening with Wall street, sort of discovering crypto is something we say at the beginning of every single bankless podcast. This is an opportunity to front run the opportunity. Bankless listeners will know we are fans of the crypto natives, the believers, the underdogs, retail over institutions wherever possible. And retail has had a solid decade to front run bitcoin price appreciation. And even now, there's still time for retail in their 401 ks, for instance, their iras, to get ahead of that 70% that still has no access to capital. And I'll juxtapose this with basically almost all 99% of the opportunities that you sort of see for investment opportunities, where institutions have an edge. If a company is going to IPO, first of all, all the VC's get in first, and you have to be an accredited investor, and all of that rigmarole. And then the banks that are issuing the stock, they get their cut ahead of time, too. They get preference. And by the time the thing is IPO'd, it's like all of the juice has been squeezed out of it on the institutional side. And what's retail left with, which is Facebook stock that's already done its 10,000 x appreciation. And you just get a measly, like, you know, five to ten x after that. Uh, and just like, thank you very much. Crypto is the exact opposite of that. And that is one of the things I've been most excited about, uh, for every single, every single moment of joining retail, the small guy gets first dibs on this, the believer, the person who's using it. Uh, and then institutions are left to kind of like, uh, come, come, uh, buy our bag. I'm sure you wouldn't phrase it like that, Matt.

Speaker A: No, but I think that's exactly right. I mean, this is an empowering technology, and institutional capital has so many sort of behavioral biases against it, inherently anti tech, inherently disruptive, difficulty getting their heads around digital things. This was one of the few places where retail had advantages and has taken advantage of it. And kudos to them. Kudos to everyone who was early and has been in this for years through bull and bear markets. Kudos to everyone. As you mentioned, still getting in now, because it's not the end. It may be the end of the beginning, but we're not quite there yet. There still is a little bit of time, even on bitcoin, much less on ETH, which I'm sure we'll get to. But, yeah, I love that about crypto as well. It's really a beautiful thing. It warms my heart.

Speaker C: We got a two part question for you, Matt. I was looking for some timelines on that 70%. That 70% will be accessed by the end of this year, end of 2024, or is it even longer than that? And then zooming into the fullness of time. Once this acceleration phase is over and we strike some equilibrium with flows, I don't want bankless listeners to perceive the fun is over. In the old world of the stock market, there is constant flows into people's just 401 ks, into QQQ, into spy. And so these indices, and even just the general stock market is up only because there's persistent flows into them. And this is where bitcoin is going. This is where the bitcoin ETF is going. Any sort of crypto asset with an ETF gets access to this flows, and that's the new equilibrium. The two part question is like this acceleration period, what's the timeline on that? And then once that closes, what does the final equilibrium of flows into the bitcoin ETF look like?

Speaker A: Yeah, great questions. I think it's a, let's say it's a year long process evenly distributed with unlocks along the way. At each phase of that, it may be till the end of 2025. It may be an 18 month process, and a little bit gets unlocked every time. Its not like the shotgun start of the ETF launch, which was the SEC said go. These are probably 50 individual decisions that each unlock a little bit of this additional pie, some more important than others, but it will take some time. I think the point you made about one difference of these tradfi markets, there are probably actually two. One, you mentioned continual investment, which is absolutely true. What were seeing at bitwise is people putting these ETF's into models. And what that means is they have a theoretical allocation to stocks, bonds, real estate, and now a little bit of crypto that they put all of their investors into. And as they save money for retirement, as they save money in taxable accounts, a little bit goes in on a continual basis. The flip side of that is a lot of these people rebalance, which is if crypto goes up a very lot, they may sell a little bit to bring it back down to that target weight. I think the effect of this will be upward push on crypto prices, long term sustainable upward push, because it's a continual flow of capital, as you mentioned. That's why stocks are up only over long periods of time and a diminution in volatility. I don't mean that crypto is going to be boring. I just mean it will be less volatile than it was in the past because you'll have people who invest a little bit every month. You'll have people who systematically buy low and sell high because they're rebalancing. And so you should see volatility compress a little bit over time, which it already has been, but it's hugely positive for crypto. Persistent inflows that will match or overwhelm supply. Think is what you should expect. And I just think you should expect that to build over multiple years. I dont think 2024 will be the peak year for bitcoin ETF flows. I think thatll be many years out. I think its going to build over time.

Speaker B: I think theres this idea. Matt, you said earlier that, well, crypto bitcoins not going away anytime soon. Theres this realization. I think theres also this realization that crypto is now, has to be part of a portfolio. I think I saw this was Fidelity Canada, by the way, not fidelity us yet, but you could imagine it coming. Now they have their default growth funds, right, the typical 60 40, 60% stocks, 40% bonds. If you're doing something high growth, for instance, well, now it's like 60 43, or it's like it's not 60 40, obviously, it's 103%. We've got like 3% allocated to crypto by default. So we're starting to move to this world where not only is crypto not going anywhere, it's part of a default portfolio construction. And that is, I think, the world that you were describing here.

Speaker A: That's absolutely right, and it's a complete game changer, but it aligns with sort of the most conservative stayed pinstripe suit, dyed in the wool investing methodology, like sort of the Jack Bogle vanguard methodology to evoke a firm that is now very much disliked by crypto, but their view is that your starting point is you should own everything. You should own every stock. You should own every bond. You should be just invested in the global economy because it grows every year. Just own everything. And from that perspective, you have to own crypto. If you dont own crypto, youre actually short crypto versus your global benchmark of asset allocation. And so what that 3% in a model portfolio tells you is thats the baseline. If youre below that, then youre making an active bet that crypto is not going to matter in the future. Most people dont want to do that. They just want to own the market. And its a complete game changer. I save for my kids college education every month, x dollars, and theres no crypto in that exposure yet because the products dont exist. But I suspect that will change in the next couple of years, and that means everyone who's a parent will be saving x dollars every month for their children. And a little bit will go into crypto. I think that's the world that we're moving into.

Speaker B: Crypto will help us pay for the rising cost of education. I mean, but you're talking about the truth here. Just a quick side quest though, Matt, since you invoked the name of Vanguard and the bogleheads. Okay, so CEO Vanguard has says no bitcoin. We're not doing that. Double down multiple times it seems like. Why?

Speaker A: Can you explain that anchoring bias, you know, desire to seem conservative. Vanguard also said, no, eTF's right. Jack Bogle was famous for hating ETF's. They thought he tempted shareholders to trade too much and destroy themselves, and they stayed out of the ETF game for a long time. Now it's their largest area of the market. Vanguard will come over as well. Look at Blackrock. Larry Fink called bitcoin an index of money laundering. Wait, really?

Speaker B: When was this?

Speaker A: 2017. An index of money laundering. And then to his enormous credit, I mean, really his enormous credit, we compete with them. But to his enormous credit, he studied it, talked to smart people, changed his mind, and developed a team to integrate bitcoin into Blackrock. So I think Vanguard will eventually be here, just like they eventually became a large ETF issuer. And everyone gets the bitcoin price they deserve. And apparently the CEO of Vanguard deserves a higher price.

Speaker B: I will never get tired of that.

Speaker C: Line, by the way, bitwise. Ryan, I want to ask you about, through your travels and conversations with just these buyers of the bitcoin ETF's, who are they? I'm sure there's the regular cast of characters that I could also guess, but are there also any surprises in there? What kind of data do we actually have to talk about? Who are these actual buyers of the bitcoin ETF?

Speaker D: Yeah, that's a good question. So we go on the road. We have a sales team, about 25 people that go around every day. They're meeting with financial advisors or ras at their offices or at steak dinners or at lunches and so on. The research team, we travel with them sometimes. Recently I was in Denver ahead of ETH Denver with our sales rep out there and we went into a large ra, they managed 350 million in assets and we catered some sushi lunch. We sat down with them and then we did a bitcoin 101 presentation. What is bitcoin? How does it work? What is mining? How does bitcoin fit in a portfolio? And you can just walk them from the very beginning through where we're at today, why bitcoin ETF's exist, why those are a big deal. And then what you see in the room is a wide variety of people, some that are crypto interested. There's generally one or two people in a room of ten or twelve. That's a die hard crypto fanatic. They own it in their portfolio. They start asking about nfts and go down a rabbit hole. And then you see some other people on the other side of the spectrum that are likely too afraid to ask questions, because in a room of their colleagues that are supposed to be, you know, well versed financial professionals, maybe they haven't taken the time to study bitcoin and crypto, and they don't want to seem like they don't know what they're talking about. And so it's really a wide variety. But those one or two people that are crypto fanatics in the firm is what allows us to get our foot in the door. And then from there, it's just an educational journey. And, and I would say that those are individuals that, that are into crypto. They're probably advocating for three to 5% of portfolios to be invested in bitcoin or invested in a crypto index. And then you have the skeptics who think 1% is outrageous. And that's where we show them the models and the portfolio simulations that say, look, if you have 3% or 5% or even 10%, that can add a lot of risk adjusted returns to your portfolio while barely increasing volatility. And I think once you show them that kind of data, you really start to see their eyes opening. Especially the people that were more averse to adding bitcoin to a portfolio. Going into the conversation, you start to see their eyes opening and they see the sharpe ratios, the risk adjusted returns, and they start to realize, oh, this is a real asset that can really boost the diversified portfolio versus add unwanted risk and unwanted volatility. And that's when they start to come around to adding it into their client portfolios.

Speaker C: Just out of curiosity, is there any just like comparative conversation being made about gold ETF's? And just like, how has the pr around gold as a commodity changed. Now that bitcoin is like this sparkly new digital gold that's also gotten ETF. What are people saying about gold these days?

Speaker D: I get the same critique when we try to make the comparison of bitcoin to gold. I think you often have similar to how you have like a, you have a bitcoin bug in the room. You have a gold bug in the room. And they try to argue all kinds of things like it's been around for a thousand years, it's 10% of it's used in electricity. Electricity, uh, or in electronics. And so uh, you have to kind of fight that narrative. But we ran a really interesting simulation the beginning of this year. We said instead of adding 5% of bitcoin to your portfolio, to a traditional 60 40 portfolio, what if you added 5% of gold? And the impact that gold has on a portfolio is actually negligible. It doesn't do anything for your portfolio. It doesn't add any, any risk adjusted returns. It doesn't increase volatility, but yet it doesn't boost returns. And so we start to show that kind of data. It says, look, I understand that you like gold. We understand that you may be allocating to golden, but if you just take a small portion of that, maybe 50% of your 3% gold allocation, or 50% of your 1% gold allocation, and you shift that over into bitcoin, the impact it has on the potential for returns without really impacting the downside is really hard to ignore. And they almost have a fiduciary responsibility to listen to that argument and to look into it, because they really have to do what's best for their clients. So that's certainly what we're seeing. Definitely seeing outflows from gold into bitcoin as they think about what part of their portfolio and their alts sleeve theyre carving off as theyre investing in bitcoin as well.

Speaker A: Preston. Yeah, id just add two things on top of that. Were seeing some advisors have an inflation bucket or a us government debasement bucket. Thats 50% gold and 50% bitcoin, which I think is great. Thats fine. Thats an easier sell to their clients. Were worried about a government printing trillions of dollars of debt every few months. Lets hedge it. Who knows how its going to work best? I think thats fine. The other narrative change, which I find really interesting is for the last five years, mostly you could talk to advisors about bitcoin taking a percentage of the gold market, 10% of the gold market, 20% of the gold market, 50% of the gold market. Increasingly, I find you can convince them that it may be multiples of the gold market. Bitcoin is everything that gold is, plus the ability to teleport it around the world. And that has more applications. So is it two x the gold market? Is it three x the gold market? And I think that's an interesting change. You couldn't really get that across to people before the bitcoin ETF. Now I think you can, you can start to talk about multiples instead of percentages. And I think that's pretty exciting.

Speaker C: I think inside of the crypto industry, we're all pretty good at thinking in parabolas, much more than the tradfi community. And so when we see the gold market, captain, uh, gold being the number one asset by market cap and bitcoin as like number nine, number ten, as crypto natives, we were like, oh, we could dethrone gold and which is probably like unheard of to, to like, tradfi, just like in the, in the, uh, in their first, like, gut reaction. Uh, but like right now, I think the, the next milestone on this is like the bitcoin ETF aum. Flipping the gold etf's aum. I actually don't know where we stand on this current race, but like also in crypto world, we are used to using this world called word called the flippening. Uh, so like when, which I'm guessing is just inevitable when the bitcoin ETF does flip the gold ETF, is this like a big deal or is this more of a milestone for funsies that us crypto natives talk about? Like, how will that change the conversation in the traditional finance world?

Speaker A: Oh, I love that. I think the flipping will happen next year, and I do think it's a big deal because ETF's are how investors today express their preferences for what to allocate to. And what that will signal is that more of them want to allocate to bitcoin. That nostalgia is not an investment strategy and gold is in the past. So I think that will be an important moment, and I suspect it could happen as early as next year.

Speaker B: How close are we, Matt, and how does that end?

Speaker A: Well, we have about what, $50 billion plus in the bitcoin ETF's, inclusive of GBTC. I think gold is north of 100 if you add them all up together, or right around 100.

Speaker C: So we only need a two x.

Speaker A: And that's price inflows. There you go. Exactly.

Speaker D: We'll do that this year.

Speaker C: We'll do that before Q two.

Speaker A: Let's flip q three.

Speaker C: Excuse me.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to happen. I think it's inevitable. As Ryan mentioned, bitcoin is just so much more valuable in a portfolio context than gold has been historically. Not to mention it has better underlying fundamental growth patterns. But, yeah, we might flip it this year. I love it.

Speaker C: Beautiful. Beautiful.

Speaker B: I know bitcoin is not the only crypto asset that you guys at Bitwise find interesting or valuable. In fact, I think, Matt, we've had you on the podcast before. We were talking about how to talk to our ias and institutions about DeFi decentralized finance and some of the tokens surrounding it, and these new cash flowing assets that are not stocks, but something different, protocol, network assets, something like this. Let's talk about the next set of assets that we think we can create an ETF wrapper around, like a trad ERC 20, as we call it sometimes on bankless. So the next one in line feels like it needs to be. It should be the Ethereum ETF. And I'm coming from the perspective that nothing else is close to that at this point in time. We don't yet have futures for any other ETF. So the next in line, apart from bitcoin, would be the Ethereum ETF. And I want to get your take on when that's going to happen. Could it happen this year? There's been a lot of conversation about this recently. So some of the Bloomberg analysts who we've had on the podcast before recently came back, and they said by May, low probability, something like 30% saw Jake Trevinsky and others kind of, like, weigh in on this as well. They think that it will be politically very difficult, probably untenable, for chair Gensler to do this with the current kind of administrative setup and some of the political pressures he feels. Let's remember, Gensler is kind of like the third vote of five. Uh, he. He was the one that, that got majority for the bitcoin ETF across the finish line. I know. I. I'm pretty sure you guys have a filing in. Is that correct? And so you. You don't yet?

Speaker A: We do not yet. Oh, we do not yet.

Speaker B: Okay. Is that something you want to announce, Matt, on the. Upon the podcast today?

Speaker C: How much work is that yet work doing?

Speaker A: Yeah, that yet work is doing a lot of. A lot of work. I mean, we've talked about it in the past. We. We intend to have an Ethereum, uh, ETF filing when we think it can be approved and were really excited about Ethereum. We love the asset as weve discussed, Ryan. I think for many in tradfi, its easier to get their hands around ETH and the cash flow generating nature of ETH and the real world use applications that are being built on the ethereum network. I think thats easier for many people to understand. So we absolutely intend to be in this space. The good thing about not having a filing is I can talk about it. If I had a filing, I couldn't actually.

Speaker C: We have some freedom before you file. Once you file, you'll have a little bit more mouse, but now it's more open.

Speaker A: That's exactly right. Yeah.

Speaker C: Once you file, I've got some questions.

Speaker D: Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker B: Let's go.

Speaker C: Okay, so the recent meta has been a decreasing in the probability of the approval of the ETH ETF in May. I think there was something previously like 60% to 70% sometime late last year, early this year now that has decreased. You can see this in the poly market. The ETF bros, Eric and James, have also decreased their probability down to 35%. Maybe without any sort of question in specific, just comment on that. Comment on the likelihood of the ETH approval happening in this year, for example.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure, I can start. Ryan, you can jump in afterwards to set up. The reason people talk about May is because ETF filings for crypto ETF's move on a 240 day review cycle. And so by the 240th day, the SEC has to say yes or no. And the first of those days ends up in May.

Speaker C: So May would not end up in a delay. It would end up in either an approval or denial, correct?

Speaker A: That's correct. Yeah. They can't kick the can down the road after May, and it's a great part of the process because they have to say yes or no. The reason you're seeing the odds decrease is because Eric and others are reading the tea leaves. What are the tea leaves? Usually when you get to this point in the process, if you're going to get an approval, you're having direct engagement with the SEC, where they're asking you a bunch of questions, and then you're updating your prospectus to reflect those changes. So they'll ask you like 40 or 50 or 60 questions. And if you look back at the bitcoin ETF approvals, what you started to see was amendment two to our prospectus, amendment three to our prospectus, Amendment four, amendment five. Between those amendments, there's this back and forth with the SEC, and I think the reason they're down rating the likelihood. And I think the reason they're approximately accurate in those expectations is because we're not seeing any of that. Right. There's no amendments, there's no discussion, there's no obvious updating of all the prospectuses at once to answer the same question questions. There's just none of the indicia.

Speaker C: There's general indifference from the SEC.

Speaker A: Yeah, or they're listening. They're in listening mode. There are meetings with the SEC and you see them listening, and they did that with bitcoin for years. But there's no two way flow, and that's really what you want to see. That doesn't mean it's impossible. We're not yet in the window where it's impossible. If this were still true in late April, we'd be in the window where it's impossible. They just can't move that fast at this point. It's still theoretically possible. That's why it's 35 and not zero. But it's trending down because we haven't yet seen this in the public filings. My view is that ultimately we will get an Ethereum ETF. The core logic on which the bitcoin ETF approval rests, which is that futures and spot track each other very well and are tightly correlated, applies into Ethereum. And to give kudos to a competitor, Fidelity recently updated their filing with some really good data demonstrating this. I think it's probably the best shot on goal that the ETH world has had for a bitcoin. ETF was the new fidelity update. So I think we'll eventually get it. I would guess I'm over 50% by the end of this year. I think it's probable this year and ill add one more nuance and then ill stop talking because ive been going on for a while. Ill let Ryan speak, poor guy over there. I think Ethereum ETF's will pull in more assets if they launch in December than if they launch in May. I think tradfi is still in the process, as we discussed, of digesting this bitcoin ETF and theyre not yet ready for the next asset. I actually think the ETF's will be more successful at the end of the year than if they launch in Mayenne. And I think it's more likely we'll get a launch at the end of the year than we get a launch in May.

Speaker C: Preston Tradfi is just currently reeling, overwhelmed from what's going on with the bitcoin. ETF hasn't completely processed it. Still digesting it. And so it would be more bullish if we just sat on our hands as an industry and waited for them to catch up with the times and then we can improve the ETH ETF. That's your most bullish version of the future?

Speaker A: Thats my most bullish version of the future because Ryan can only do so many meetings and he still has to get through his bitcoin meetings before he can do his ethereum meetings. Its a joke, but its true. So I do think if these launch at the end of the year and Weve had Denkun and Weve started to see the applications bubble up and were getting those real world applications and user counts are growing, I think its a perfect scenario for ethnic. Of course, the sooner we get it in some way the better. But I do think there's a bullish case to be made for end of the year bitwise.

Speaker C: Ryan, tell us about your perspective on just the conversations around ETH and the ETH ETF as the resident boots on the ground here.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think that's right. You don't want to overwhelm these advisors with choices. You have to think about. Even though we're talking about and researching and on Twitter talking about ethereum every single day, in talking about crypto every single day, these investors spend a very small percentage of their time actually thinking about crypto, actually thinking about investing in it. They're over there trying to grow assets. It's really a business development business when you're in the world of managing assets and you're just trying to find clients who want to entrust you with their assets, and then you go and invest them. And if you're only investing in 1% of your portfolio, or 5% of your portfolio into crypto, you're spending less than that thinking about those assets as a whole because you're spending most of your time thinking about marketing and growing your business. And so I think you have to let them get their arms around bitcoin. When we go back to Denver, when I was in the room with that large radical, almost every single question was about bitcoin. And they weren't deep down the rabbit hole around bitcoin. We were still getting questions that says, how do we know that bitcoin isn't a Ponzi scheme? How do you know they can't increase the supply to more than 21 million? Right. And these are questions that we've maybe all grappled with. Our first Satoshi is just going to.

Speaker C: Come and dump it all.

Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. And so then you try to tell them, okay, look, that's the whole case around bitcoin, is its limited supply increasing demand. It's a. It's a commodity similar to gold. Then you try to explain Ethereum, which is this decentralized version of the Internet where all these crazy crypto applications are going to be built on top of it. They don't really know how to think about that. And when they're trying to allow the bitcoin brain drain to come in, it's really difficult to also have this new Internet come in, defi crypto applications. And so I think that conversation coming later would help. Like Matt said, allow them to get some exposure to bitcoin first, let that settle. Let them talk to their clients about it, have some of their quarterly meetings or biannual meetings that they have with their clients to go over their portfolios, get them used to bitcoin, and then the next best thing comes up, which is Ethereum. And they can then have that opportunity to say, look, we carved off some of your inflation hedge, and we put it into bitcoin. What if now we carve off some of your technology sleeve, maybe some of your Nasdaq sleeve, and put that into Ethereum, which is a tech version of the crypto ecosystem.

Speaker B: And our job here, Ryan and Matt, just so it's clear, is when that time comes, to make sure that there are some bankless listeners implanted in the audience. You talked about those bitcoin fanatics. We want some Ethereum fanatics in the audience who are allocated to ether to speak up for it and to explain it to their colleagues. That's what we're here to do. Matt, I want to ask you about your percentages. Understand, like, you're not predicting May right now. You don't think that's going to happen. So you think maybe the 35% percent is along the lines of accurate, unless we see some real activity in April, but you still give it over 50% probability for the year, maybe towards the end of the year. And I want to ask you about the pro side, the likelihood that it happens versus the against side. On the pro side, a few facts, I guess I would say, or things of interest, I'm wondering how you weight these. One is that Blackrock wants it. And so one thing that we used to say in 2023 is what Blackrock wants, Blackrock gets. And that's probably a kind of a binary way of understanding it, but it's no small thing to have a blackrock filing. And their filings have proven very successful over time they usually don't lose. And so this would be in the camp that, hey, Blackrock is behind this. They definitely want this. So how can the SEC say no at this point? Another fact that I'll enter into the matter is there have been ongoing court cases. So it seemed like the grayscale win for where I believe the court called the SEC's action arbitrary and capricious, which is just a brilliant line. We could apply that many in many SEC decisions. Don't comment on that. Of course. You guys are in the filing process. That was me saying that. So court cases could come up against the SEC. If they do decide to reject an ethereum ETF in May, what reason do they have to reject that when we have a trust out here and ether e trust from grayscale as well? Some of these things factor in. I think at least they weigh highly in my mind. Do they actually make a difference? Is this more force to the pro that we'll get in Ethereum ETF by the end of the year?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the lawsuit makes a lot of difference. And I love the words arbitrary and capricious. I should like get a couple dogs and name them. I think it's wonderful. So I think the lawsuit is real because it did establish that if you have a futures based ETF, which we do in ETH, and if the futures are highly correlated with spot, that it's very difficult not to allow a spot ETF. It's not impossible. There are differences around ETH, but its very, very difficult.

Speaker B: We have those things.

Speaker A: Yes, we have those things. Absolutely. And the data is very convincing. And the ETH futures market is very liquid, and the correlations are arguably even tighter than they are in bitcoin. Its a very compelling case, and I ultimately do think that will be the winning argument. And thats why I dont think we need a regime change to get an ethereum ETF, because I think thats established. Its also the case that there is then a nice dividing line where they dont need to go any further because there are no futures on other assets, theres futures on bitcoin and ETH. And so its not like theyre opening the floodgates to meme coin ETF's. Thats not the case. Theyre doing the two blue cap assets and theyre letting people gain exposure to them. I think that will matter. I think the other thing that matters is that the ETF's have worked so well. Theyve worked perfectly. Theyve lowered the cost for investors by 90%. Theyve raised security theyve improved trading and liquidity, and the SEC is supposed to consider that in its reviews as well. Those are the big things. I dont put too much into the blackrock piece. Thats a correlation causation thing. You could also argue that they only file when things look promising. I don't think they have any sort of magic inside sauce, but I think the lawsuit thing and the investor protection thing mean we will get them. I just think the SEC can take its time.

Speaker B: Okay, now I'm going to ask you to take the other side of that argument. So if we don't get the Ethereum ETF by the end of the year, why won't we get it? I think some have pointed out political pressure being a reason. I'm sure no one in the SEC would ever acknowledge this. They are purely merit based, aren't they? And, but you know, some have pointed to kind of like the political anti crypto army maybe playing a role here, indicating that there was some political cost for regular, various regulators approving this, this nasty crypto asset, this nasty bitcoin thing. And I'm wondering if that factors in or if not that, then what other factors would like create conditions where we don't have an Ethereum ETF by the end of 2024?

Speaker A: I think the anti crypto army is a lot less scary now than it was a year ago. There's been a lot of desertions from that army. It's now five people waving ratty flags into the wind. So I wouldn't worry too much about the political pressure, at least not as much as I would in the past. I do think from the SEC's perspective, allowing an ETH ETF sort of recrosses that line of ETH is definitively not a security. And theyve been uncomfortable with that post Hinman right. The Hinman said it was not a security. Gensler has been unclear on that. And thered be some sort of re endorsement of its status as a non security by the SEC that I think they may be uncomfortable. Again, I dont think thats going to happen. But if it did happen, I think that would be the behind the scenes reason. That wouldnt be the explicit reason. The explicit reason would be something to do with data quality or data history or liquidity or something like that. But I think behind the scenes, what they would be wanting not to do is establish that precedent if they didn't allow it within the next twelve months.

Speaker B: To be clear, the industry is ready for this now, at least from the industry side. If they approved in may we would be good to go.

Speaker A: Absolutely. These ETF's would work perfectly again. They would lower costs again. They would improve security for many investors and improve access. It would be a win for american investors and a win for american technology and a win for America if they approved it. And I think eventually they will. I just don't know if they'll be quite ready yet.

Speaker C: We talked about the bitcoin ETF kind of aging like wine. And there's this extra nuance in the ETH ETF that it actually has its own endogenous reason why it would improve over time. And that's because I think in the fullness of time we will see staking be a part of the ethereum etfeminal. And so in addition to all the regular tradfi just needs to absorb it, comprehend it, figure out how to filter it out to all of its distribution arms, which are the brokerages, the advisors, et cetera. There's also the evolution of the ETH ETF itself, I would assume would start at the vanilla ETH asset and then evolve into a staked ETH asset in the fullness of time. Matt, do you agree that this is the long term conclusion of the ETH ETF, just to really start this conversation?

Speaker A: 100%. That's exactly right. And you're right it will probably start without staking. And you're right that it will add it over time. That's what investors want.

Speaker C: And is that a trivial evolution or is this going to take another number of years in order to get the SEC and regulators and just people on board with this?

Speaker A: So I don't know is the answer, but I'd be surprised if it was years. Year. A year seems like a more reasonable number. They're certain to. Not certain they're likely to go with the simplest version first. Because that's what you do when you're getting something new out the door. Think of it as an MVP of an ETF. It's a minimum viable product. I don't think it's that far of a leap to staking. And you can see it used in other markets around the world. But I do think it's a year. It's 18 months. It's something on that timeline. If I were forced to guess, I.

Speaker D: Would just add to that. I think an analogy you can make here with the vanilla and then getting more complex from there is other ETF's that initially launch, whether its bitcoin ETF's or simple ETF's that you then have short or inverse ETF's launched that are focused on those products, you then have leveraged ETF's launched that are focused on those products. And so you tend to always have this simple approach first, and then you get more complex out there. And so, while staking is a little bit more complicated than just creating a leveraged or inversed ETF, I wouldn't be so shocked that we see the ability to have a staked Ethereum ETF in the future. It's kicking a dividend down to the investors, ultimately, which, again, is good for the investors. And as long as you disclose the risks in the fund prospectus and all of that documents, really, it's up to the investor to make that decision. And the SEC shouldn't be playing gatekeeper when it comes to that. And so I think we'll eventually get there, but definitely, we'll have that vanilla eth ETF before we have anything.

Speaker C: Man. Ryan, I think you just opened up a whole entire rabbit hole of ETF permutations, ETF derivatives. What kind of spark our imaginations here? What kind of other types of crypto ETF's merely even just off the bitcoin or the ETH assets, what types would you expect to see emerge on the floor sooner rather than later?

Speaker D: I think if you look at the futures ETF's, we had bitcoin futures ETF's, we had ethereum futures ETF's. Then you have maybe 50 50 eth futures and bitcoin futures ETF's that just split it down the middle so that with the purchase of one share of an ETF, you have 50% exposure to bitcoin, you have 50% exposure to ethereum. You could have that as a market weighted ETF. Or, you know, you could have some sort of moving average built into that fund where it trades in and out of one and into the other based on moving averages. Uh, we also will have options for these for the bitcoin ETF soon, which unlock an entirely new, uh, category of demand and traders and, you know, call it Wall street bets or just institutions that love that, love buying and selling options. I think that'll bring new demand into the market. And so covered call strategies ETF's will emerge, and all kinds of fun things like that. It'll be interesting to see what happens to inverse bitcoin ETF's when those hit the market.

Speaker C: Beautiful. I want to get back into some more questions about just the nature of the ETh ETF. This is starting to get into some fog of war stuff. We just don't really have too many answers or clarity here. But Matt, any insight on how this staking mechanism would actually work inside of a staked ETh ETF? What's the most likely outcome here? ETh is just basically going to be staked by Coinbase. Is this going to be like a lido staked Eth denominated ETF? Do you have any sort of insight as to how the yield actually gets into an ETF?

Speaker A: Really complex question. Made more complex by the fact that the structure of these ETF's is something called a grantor trust, which you can sort of think of as a box that doesn't want to do anything. All grantor trusts want to do is just sort of sit there. And so making a grantor trust do something like stake ETH is complex. I think it's liable to be at the custodial level. That's the most likely outcome is sort of through the custodial level. The analogy, for what it's worth, there is an analogy in traditional equity ETF's. So what many traditional equity ETF's do that hold, like Tesla stock or Apple stock, et cetera, is they actually lend that stock out to short sellers and earn a yield on it. And that's typically done through the issuer or through the custodian. And I think the similar model will apply here, but we don't know for sure yet.

Speaker C: And then the last question, and I think is the most important question about this whole ETF thing when it comes to ETH, is of course the price impact on it. ETH is of course one third of the market cap of bitcoin. It also has less ETH on secondary markets, simply because there's plenty of ETH in Defi, plenty of eTH on layer two s, plenty of eTH in Eigen layer. Do you have any sort of notion as to how the relative price impact would be on an ether ETF in comparison to what we've seen in the bitcoin ETF. Do you have any sort of commentary on this map?

Speaker A: That's a great question. Look, I think ETF's will gather billions of dollars of long term capital that buys it and holds it, and ETH market cap is not that large. So over time I think the impact could be really significant. I still don't think, right now I'm not sure that the ETF tail is what's wagging the ethereum dog. I really still think it's the use cases and the technological progress which has been massive and overwhelming and maybe im just so bullish on the growth of those things that I think that thats more important than the ETF. I think of the ETF as a nice, important catalyst that will impact price.

Speaker C: Future catalysts, not current catalyst future catalysts.

Speaker A: That will impact price. But ETH has other really important catalysts almost in a way that bitcoin doesnt. Right. Bitcoin has the having, but the ETF was really important for bitcoin because its fundamentally a store of value, its use case. Ethereum has so many use cases. And the technological story is so good right now and the app development is so exciting right now, that I think thats probably the primary driver. But look, itll be billions of dollars. Itll impact price. Im really bullish on ETH.

Speaker B: Okay, so bitcoin is 50 billion right now and were expecting maybe by the end of the year it could flip gold. What do we think if we got an Ethereum ETF, do you think it would be comparable to that? Do you think it would be smaller? Some have described this as it's more like the opener, whereas people go to the concert for bitcoin and this is just a side act and it's not going to accrue nearly the interest that the bitcoin ETF would. And they point to, I think, the ethereum futures, which have been fairly paltry to this point. What do you think of that argument, Matt, and what are your expectations for a future Ethereum ETF?

Speaker A: Theyll be way more successful than the Ethereum futures ETF's were, which were very disappointing. Those launched at a nadir in the market in a period of disinterest, and they were rushed to market. So I dont know that thats a good analogy. I dont think theyll be out of the gate as big as bitcoin, but I think theyll attract billions of dollars in their first year. That's my guess. I also think they'll have a slower ramp in terms of their terminal flows, will be more upward sloping because there's more education around Ethereum than there is around bitcoin. But I think it'll be billions of dollars. Look, I think they'll be very successful, and you'll have Blackrock and you'll have bitwise and you'll have others talking about Ethereum and real world use cases. I think it'll be broadly additive for the space, but I don't think it'll be $50 billion in year one. It'll be billions. It'll be a success.

Speaker B: Ryan, you're on the front lines of institutional education here. And you've certainly been doing your share of education around bitcoin. I'm not sure what narrative is sticking the most, but if I had to guess, it'd be like store value, hedge against the dollar. We've talked about some of those things here. Digital gold, that seems to be a lasting meme that you can transport. How do you think the Ethereum narrative will land among that crowd? Like, what words will you use? What analogies, what narratives do you think are the stickiest for that tribe?

Speaker D: I think you got to look at it like a technology investment that tends to resonate the most with the advisors that we're talking about. When we explain what Ethereum is, we don't get so into the weeds of it's a blockchain. That's a decentralized database that allows anyone to build, you know, any kind of decentralized application with smart contracts. You kind of, you kind of zoom out. You say, look, this is a new technology platform that's going to fundamentally change the way that we interact with each other, that companies interact with their customers, and that we interact with data and value online in a way that bitcoin just today can't touch. And when you talk about it like that, and then you get into things like emerging AI and other kind of technology narratives that are emerging. Blockchains don't seem that crazy, and Ethereum doesn't seem that crazy. And the more it becomes a household name, the more that people are talking about that as they talk about bitcoin when they go on CNBC or Fox Business News, the more that word Ethereum comes into the mainstream and the minds of investors. And really you just need to educate them on the potential use cases on top of Ethereum. If you have this decentralized Internet, look what you could do with stable coins, look what you can do with things like Farcaster or prediction markets. And that starts to really get the wheels turning in their head of, oh, man, if I could have invested in the Internet in the nineties or in the early two thousands, what would that have looked like for my portfolio, for my clients portfolios? And maybe it's not so crazy to carve off a bigger part of your technology sleeve to invest in Ethereum than what you're doing with your alt sleeve to invest in bitcoin. And that's where I think we'll really start to see the demand for Ethereum ETF's when they launch is, okay, now, this thing's real. We have an ETF around it that is issued by some of the largest asset managers in the world. And if I invest in that ETF, I have exposure to this new technology platform where there's thousands of developers and millions of users and thousands of applications being launched and being used every single day. And all I have to do is buy this one asset, invest in this one asset. I don't have to pick the individual winners. It's kind of a, it's an index on that future growth of the crypto ecosystem beyond just a store of value. And I think when you talk about it like that, you start to see them really, you know, start to turn, turn the page on what's possible with this technology. You don't have to understand everything it does and everything that will happen on it to know that it will have a fundamental impact on the way that we interact with technology in the future. And that's really the best selling point that I've seen resonate when I'm talking to advisors in walking them through it.

Speaker B: Okay, so you're basically saying this is a piece of the Internet, maybe the decentralized Internet. That's part of the narrative. When it comes to valuation, though, do they think about this as a tech play, similar to maybe an Amazon high growth tech stock? Or how do you talk about valuation? I'm wondering if specifically the meme that we've been working on, that some others have been kind of working on for narrative understandings, like the Internet bond. Right? This thing does have a yield. It is sort of a share of the Internet. Do you think that that has a chance, or is that too far? Is that a bridge too far, Ryan?

Speaker D: No, I think that has a chance. We kind of talk about it in two ways. We say, look, in some ways, when there's more and more activity on this network, you start to have this burn mechanism, which acts a lot like a share buyback, right? And traditional investors can understand share buybacks. The largest companies in the world spend a billions of dollars buying their shares off the market to reduce the flow and to reduce the supply. And you have the same thing happening when ETH is being burned, when, when usage goes up. So we talk about there's value accrual from the fact that you have this burn mechanism, which is very similar to a share buyback. And then we talk about the yield from staking, which is very similar to a dividend. And when you put it into analogies, they can understand that are very similar to investment in dividend stocks or in stocks that do share buybacks. They can really start to see how value will start to accrue to the underlying asset. An Internet bond is a great way to think about it. I think simpler terms for financial advisors who really think about things from a cash flow value accrual dividend perspective also works.

Speaker C: Does the one two punch of a asset that has a native stock buyback component to it, that is also yielding dividends at the same time? Because both of these things are great in silo. But the cool thing about ETH is that you get both, you get a deflationary asset that's also producing yield. Does that one two punch land, or how do people react to that?

Speaker D: I think that one two punch lands. It's kind of like the setup for the haymaker, which is then when you show them the revenue that Ethereum's generating, it's billions of dollars in revenue every single year. And so I think those three things together, it's like, sure, great, there's a buyback, and sure, there's a dividend, but where's all that actually coming from? And what's going to make that happen? You say, well, look, here's thousands of applications, here's millions of users, here's billions in revenue being generated on this platform. Then they have that aha moment and they really start to understand this isn't going away, it's only going to get bigger. And I should have some exposure to this on behalf of my clients.

Speaker B: What we're really asking you for, Ryan, is that you would take David and myself on the road with you so we can help fight the good fight and convince some folks. Matt, what would you add to this discussion around kind of narratives and positioning of ether, the asset for the institutional tribe?