Industry Outlook 2025: Navigating the Future of Crypto

Transcript

[Music] I have some sharp questions for you this afternoon I'm joking don't be scared wow it's like giving a lecture at the University what a privilege how many mics do we have two I think two okay so two at a time good afternoon uh ladies and gentlemen it is great to be here in freezing uh Durk I personally love the Swiss crypto Community I think it's one of the most active vibrant and fun in the space so thank you very much for

having us here today by way of introduction my name is Valeria and I run Partnerships at 1 inch which is the largest Dex aggregator in the space and we provide the best rates when you swap this is my only line of content for today and uh for for the panel we are going to be discussing the meme coins on salana what lies ahead of the Trump coin and now that I've got your attention I'm happy to introduce you to um the wonderful speakers we have today and if I were in the audience I would be really curious what these

wonderful people have to say most of them are my friends for a long time and these are not the people that got into crypto yesterday because of the hype but the real ogs of the space that predict the future finance and shape it with um everything that they do and we have a really great mix today uh we have Aaliyah from a very Crypton native uh Signum Bank we have Alan the GSR and Market making guys the people who control the and the money flows uh leor from the VC um Al also the money part which looks for the outliers in the space and and funds the next

unicorn maybe that would be one of your projects in the future and Dominic a little bit more traditional player nevertheless still very technologically advanced from Bitcoin Swiss this was a high level overview uh but I would love to each of you to introduce yourself in a bit more detail your company and one word no explanations the crypto in 2025 let's go we can start with you Dominic all right I start so hey etherum Turk I'm Dominic I'm heading the research department at Bitcoin Swiss uh Bitcoin Swiss is uh one of the oldest crypto financial service providers we offer basically staking Services various

custody Solutions um peer-to-peer loans for instance brokerage and we are also currently heading into the asset management space for instance we launched um a stocks digital asset Blue Chip index um and we maintain a very product capable crypto taxonomy uh 25 One World bullish thanks over to you Alan hi uh my name is Alan I run the business development team in Europe and Middle East for GSR GSR is the oldest crypto native Market maker it's also a multi-stage investor um it only deploys its own money so we have a bit of different perspective um I would

say one word for this year is going to be regulatory Clarity that's two words that's two words you cheated Alan thank but we forgive you over to you Alia thanks um hi ethereum Zurich so glad to be back here um I work I'm aliia Dasa I work with Signum Bank um we are uh one of the four we are the world's first digital asset Bank back in 2017 when we started working together with finma and then in 2019 when we got our banking license and so today we work with probably 70% of the top 100 listed def protocols and projects out there so really we like to think we're the banker to the space um but obviously we're not just another bank as the many others out

there we are really focused on growing the adoption and engaging with the ecosystem as well um and with my other hats I work with the cryp crypto Monday zerk and with women in web 3 Switzerland and uh both of which are also partners of the conference here today so really happy to be here thank you oh sorry my word and my word for 2025 um adoption hi everyone my name is Leo groan and I'm a managing director at Spartan group um Spartan group is actually based uh with its Nexus out of Asia we have our offices in Singapore and Hong Kong and I have the the privilege of being swiss-based I've been here for the last eight years an active member of the ecosystem so

some familiar faces here in the room and it's great to be back at at eer um Spartan we invest an advis in the industry so we run several investment strategies we have a liquid hedge fund multiple Venture funds and an early stage partner to to many uh projects uh within the ecosystem we also work with projects on their token launches going to Market and and active m& dealmaker so we see everything from first checkin to projects all the way through to helping entrepreneurs exit um we're actively working with uh with Partners at all stages so um really excited to be back here and obviously some some good people here on the panel uh to go deeper my word for this year um a little bit less exciting uh or directional as as these guys I would say roller coaster wow okay so bullish adoption roller coaster

regulatory Clarity regulatory yes U well just regulatory my first question well obviously with the Trump new presidency and the recent execution order in the US to aim to have us as the crypto capital of the world what specific regulatory changes do you expect to see in 2025 and how they might impact both startups and establish crypto firms across the globe I I see Alan just kind of with with your regulatory Clarity so compliant he doesn't want to talk about it smart man yeah apparently I start again um I guess it's important to

highlight again like uh how big of a landmark event the US elections are for the crypto industry overall I also think or we from the research team also think it's not sufficiently priced in yet the the impact it will have um because basically the largest um economy is now now like full on institutionally embracing crypto while it was had like tight restrictive oversight up front um so we think this will be a huge regulatory unlock and and honestly I think it will also onshore a lot of crypto activity again into into the US and I think um this might also lead to um to stimulate other

jurisdictions to get more Progressive again when it comes to regulatory Frameworks okay bullish any any more takes on I'll I'll jump in quickly um just to to add to this I think that aspect of it is is clear I think there's a large Capital Market in the US that's now been opened up I I mean to make it specific and concrete I think the first things that we've seen is obviously the transition of the SEC and the role in enforcing a lot of the crypto activities and let's say um in activities or illegal activities that were um alleged over the many years so I think the first thing that happens and we've already seen that is a lot of the wells noes or the enforcement actions from the Department of Justice have immediately been at least put on hold withdrawn and that just has fundamentally shifted the

way in which you know many very early adopters in this space entrepreneurs Founders who took a lot of risk back in the day to actually create you know the the protocols that we now talk about as household names in this industry a lot of the things that they were engaged in is no longer seen as negative um it's really seen now as an opportunity to replicate and learn from many of the things that happened over the years so you know from the regulatory mindset I think that idea that people can now engage with Unis swap right I mean let's not forget Unis swap was dealing with so many issues Ripple has been fighting the SEC for God knows how long and I'm not promoting any of these tokens coins ecosystems but really just referencing the fact that for all of the attention that we've had for developments in this

space many of these large scale multi-billion dollar fdv ecosystems and projects we still dealing with the basic foundational right of what is this ecosystem and is a compliant with the US and the US is 60% of the global Capital markets um by dollar value and as soon as you've now removed the ambiguity and the illegal nature or alleged illegal nature of many of the um projects dealing in this space it's creates this whole winfall which is what Dominic's talked about so we're really excited about that trajectory uh and I think that that fundamentally changes uh the rules of the game not just for many of the defi native projects and protocols but also for many of the more centralized CI players like circle like bullish other companies who are planning for their IPOs and looking to tap into

regulatory capital and really scale up this entire industry so we're incredibly excited about these developments I think it fundamentally changes the entire landscape for our industry uh and it's really just the beginning to Echo Dominic sentim I mean if I can also add something um and it's probably going to be a bit the roller coaster to take up what my colleague already mentioned I think it was very good for The Vibes I mean when Trump won we were like at 70 we teleported up to 80 and I think now we have a lot of expectation in the market and there's also some probability that it's going to be disappointing and we're going to see the roller coast mentioned by my colleague I mean one thing is UN deregulation is going to be implemented it's going to take some time and I think like migration taxes and tariffs will be

like on the Forefront before actually crypto is is getting more clarity additionally it's probably going to be very good for the dino coins so the tokens that already have been out for a longer time because when we look at at all the regulatory staff and we have the right people in place but it's still going to be a lot of discussion around what does actually decentralization mean and all that kind so I think it's like the market already discounted a lot of hope so if the Strategic Reserve is not coming the regulation is taking a bit long we expect it's not going to be super duper bullish interesting because you talk about regulatory Clarity and then also about the roller coaster that we can expect in the months ahead because I

think when you consider okay now Trump's in and that means that things are better we can you know start innovating on projects and so on but is there Clarity yet are we going to still be sued and then Trump launches his meme coin and so you're like okay so you know gates are open we can do whatever we want do we need to test anything do we need a lawyer just ship just ship right it's uh it's it's scary honestly a little bit because we've spent the last eight years trying to kind of draw some sort of guardrails around the industry especially in Europe one can argue to the extent to which that is good or bad or um how helpful that is really to Innovation but at least the efforts have been there and now the gates just sort

of flooding open it's you yeah to lear's point is going to be a roller coaster of what we're going to see in terms of the Innovation because of course it's always good for Innovation when there's no regulatory hurdles but also a lot in terms of like consumer protection and investor protections which is also really important because we all know everybody in this room knows how much the space suffered back in 22 when so many retail investors got their fingers burnt and some would argue even today we haven't seen a full recovery to the extent of what the kind of participation we saw back then and um this as it sort of unfolds in the US and and I think they've given themselves a one-ear timeline to come up with something for

this SEC working group on crypto and so on um yeah so I guess my take is a little bit cautious on what what emerges from from the current market sentiment thanks Alia as you correctly mentioned the gates are completely open right now I expect anything and uh well some analyst have projected that the overall crypto Market could surge to 7.5 trillion by the end of 2025 just a a reminder that as of now it is around 3.37 trillion so nearly double or more than double by the end of the year do you find this projection realistic and what factors do you

believe would be the the the primary for growth I I mean if I can I mean I think the easy one would be like the US declares a strategic Bitcoin Reserve we're probably just going to see Bitcoin going up to 500 or even more so we're going to be very close to that I think that's low probability event and then the other one is actually a much faster than expected implementation on the regulatory side the one I specifically mean is more clarity for the big money manager like Morgan Stanley Bank of America Goldman Sachs all of them and black rock is already guiding people to have asset allocation of 2% if they would go up to 10% or 15 and then basically Diversified across of that

that would basically lead to a huge money flow coming into it otherwise I probably would say the odds without one of these two happening that we end up 2x on the market cap on the end of years rather low MH is there anything you want to add yeah yes for sure um so in December we also launched Outlook piece with a couple of predictions um and based on our risk models and and long-term exponential growth models we uh had a conservative floor Target of 10 trillion so I guess like 7.5 is rather on the con like even on the more conservative side uh and basically again there are like two two um catalysts for it uh a we are

currently matching again this Cy cyclicality of Bitcoin um of the US election cycle of um the liquidity cycle so there's this notion of there is some onset of a easing CLE when it comes to monetary policy in the US and then uh obviously um institutions as you outlined there're still like um around 60% of the of the big players still not able to allocate into into these ETF vehicles um based on um compliance restrictions or firmwide uh policies for instance and this should uh resolve in the in the upcoming months and then I guess like we will see like an acceleration in institutional flows

thank you Dominic yeah so I think there's there's two aspects of this that I think is important um for me to clarify and I like the point on on Black Rock and Larry fin talking about 2% allocation and what that means I mean of course if people start allocating 10% and all institutional managers and all large scale funds are doing that I think 7 point I mean we're talking hundreds of trillions of dollars at that point right so I think we need to remember the proportions of what a little what seemingly Little Numbers in traditional Capital markets can actually do to influence the the market cap uh in in our industry and I think the point I would reference here was it seems like a big number until it's not and 7.5 trillion I mean even just in November and December there was block works and

the block putting out articles I mean 1 trillion was added in those two months it was a 30-day period where 1 trillion was added alone I mean right and before the election market cap was at two right so I think again thinking about what are the Catalyst that really fundamentally change and drive this it doesn't need much to really fundamentally change the way in which value is brought into this industry I think the bigger topic that we have and the reason why it's hard to make these predictions is fundamentally I believe over time this industry will continue to grow and basically outperform most other asset classes in terms of growth rates uh the question is like where is it going within the industry and today we've seen Bitcoin obviously break out that's been you know counterintuitive to a lot of um the

previous Cycles uh typically it starts and then very quickly is followed by people moving into altcoins and you have the altcoin season here we've seen since basically the Bitcoin harving last year a sustained Bitcoin outbreak uh and there has not been a corresponding um matching of the conventional altcoins but really a lot of focus and and engagement in mem coins and then depending on how you account for the Trump coin is a whole another story altogether so we're seeing a lot of Firsts I think in this cycle and that really matches I think the first key points which is people are coming at this from a different perspective this idea of 7.5 it seems like a big number but realistically you know in one month we added 1 trillion so if you just continue on that

trajectory easily you get there so I I don't think it's a straight line ever uh and I think that's the whole point of the roller coaster is these things they seem like a distant Target or maybe High maybe low realistically even if we do hit those numbers will it stay there sustain there and where within the industry will it be I think all of these questions are legitimate and valid and what I expect to see over the next years is again just because Trump can launch a coin um and and she be president and do all of these things doesn't mean everyone can do that and I think we're going to find that out the hard way if anyone remembers the the last Trump Administration there's a a 3 to six month window where every time there's a new press secretary there's a new person

in a new role and and there is a roller coaster there as well in the way that he runs the government so I think there's so many variables and and all I would say is for us Bing uh backing the fundamental enablers um and aspects of the technology is follow what actually makes sense and we can spend and we will I'm sure talk about AI and and focusing on a lot of trends that are coming U but really it's finding the pockets of opportunity within the industry rather than specifically on what does 7.5 actually mean uh L small followup uh if we were to hit the 7.5 trillion Target uh what would be the reasonable bitcoin price Target in your opinion actually that really touches on what I was um trying to allude to so from from our perspective I mean we

focus on all assets in the industry so we have focus on defi infrastructure gaming we really cover all aspects of of web 3 uh investment opportunities Landscapes and that touches on uh literally everything from B2B to applications and and everything that's happening in this industry big Believers and supporters of the Bitcoin ecosystem specifically um I think that there's a natural path 500,000 I obviously would love to see that I I don't know if people can psychologically manage that um just in the way that human behavior and Traders operate uh but of course you know these are things that we would see I always hesitate to give a specific B price Target um but I do think that the large growth of this industry will be driven by that leader yes great uh Aliah my my next question to you would be

about institutional adoption but psychologically do you think we could manage like 500k per Bitcoin I could manage that raise your hand if you could manage that yay okay amazing I'm shocked that a room full of at a crypto conference agrees with this number people not in this room yeah right okay well I mean to your point it is really just a a doubling of Bitcoin that already gets us more or less to the 7.5 number right and as ethereum picks up and we see a little bit of a rally with the alts as well like 7.5 is really not that far out of reach even though psychologically it feels like a really big number and also like with Bitcoin because we've crossed this at 100K was this psychological

barrier for a really long time and now we kind of seeing maybe it's a bit early but we're kind of seeing how it's becoming like a resistance like a floor in the trading price like we go up a little bit and come back but 100K seems like the right number for Bitcoin for a little while at least and that means that um a doubling isn't completely far out of uh people's I think uh projections and I think Galaxy put out a study as well where 185 by the end of this year is what they think think for Bitcoin okay um Aliah uh Signum is very much of an Institutional player uh in the space and uh you also mentioned like institutional adoption globally and we've seen that over the years multiple talks and many action has been taken but

for 2025 how do you foresee institutional adoption evolving that's a good question for me because also said adoption is like my one word for 25 um I think institutional adoption it is always just a journey right and I think Trump being in maybe gives America a little bit more flexibility to come play as well but the banks in Europe and in Asia I think have already been experimenting for a while like there's been a lot of different studies out there on for example the duplication of this curve pool with the marina project or project guardian with UBS and DBS you know all of these but it's hundreds of millions of dollars worth of uh bonds that have been tokenized and America entering the game

of course gives us a bit more um inosa no a little bit more uh acceleration maybe but I think fundamentally trafi and institutions we do work slower like launching a simple product even in a small relatively Nimble Bank like Signum takes a little while it it it would be maybe I don't know 2 three months to develop for a D5 project but for us to get it through all the regulatory uh checks and all the security checks and all of the levels of um compliance that we are obligated to go through a simple product that really shouldn't have taken that long I worked on one and I'm a little bit sorry that I took this long is um at least two years right and what we're talking about here

particularly with the adoption of uh blockchain on one side we talk about the asset class so are people going to give their client our banks going to give their clients exposure to bitcoin but on the other hand it is um engaging with the technology on their infr stack level and that's a much slower Journey so I think of course it will happen it's happening already it's been happening for the last four five years but I don't I still don't see that changing overnight that is just it's designed to be slow and bureaucratic because that's also inherently what has made people trust it for the last 500 years yeah I think you ended very well to actually break down adoption because you can see to a certain point as a meme because

what do we actually mean by adoption I mean the most interesting I think the topic we all like is like cryptos and asset class like Bitcoin e and all the other funny coins we all want to see their price going up I think that's what's just going to happen I think for the Blue Chips coin it's just going to be a diversification argument a higher shape uh sharp ratio and then the other thing is is like the technology as a t Tech stack I mean on the bank side you can make the argument that putting a blockchain you basically can save you mid in back office in most of the banks and you're going to have a lower error rate which is very interesting but I think for most of us here we not on the tech side is very boring and I think something else which is also a bit

overseen is like stable coin which is actually so for the the the most yeah the best use case I think that's just going to increase are going to see a world where like every bank is going to have their own stable coin and then if you think about it it's going to act something like a CDs with different counterparty risk reflected in a discount or a premium of the price itself and then something else where we already see some movement and also taking Black Rock again is like bringing the traditional Securities on chain and making them much more accessible because I think we all have access to one or multiple brokerage and we just can buy whatever we like or most case whatever we like but I think that's still not possible for most people in the world so

actually bringing reor assets on the chain is also a very interesting use case MH yeah we're going to touch upon uh rwa um in a bit uh well Dominic you're very bullish for 2025 and uh yes you do a lot of research and everything we discussed so far looks very much you know um optimistic the overall Outlook but what about potential risks or challenges that stakeholders should be aware for for this year um yeah obviously there's uh there's still some looming risk maybe can I add something on the institutional part if you don't mind um yes so what is what we observe is really that that institutions

now also figured out that uh Bitcoin and its peers is really a very interesting asset class when it comes to diversification if you think about correlation uh across the last three years it's by far the least correlated asset uh um compared to the the major asset classes then you have this notion of like de diminishing volatility basically where also institutional adoption adds even more fuel because think about rebalancing effects of these ETF or portfolio allocation so as price goes up they rebalance out and vice versa then you have a lot of hedge funds now being active which like usually tend to dampen volatility even further um so this is something that is um kind of

very very interesting and the institutions understand uh currently that they might want to have an allocation in this emerging asset class um on the challenges or looming risks ahead it's like basically nothing new uh we have still geopolitical tensions can be um a to be honest um then there's still like the inflation in the US and in in many other countries is still not sufficiently under control that's why we still have like rather High um interest rates uh in the US and in other countries um and obviously um there are a couple more challenges but I we think that overall the the odds are rather low that something like really bad is is

happening when it comes to price performance especially given the notion of this um Di ing volatility may maybe some risks for institutional entering the space like is there something for them if we separate like let's say the regular retail investor and of course a bigger company um nothing that I could see to be honest I mean there's this notion of we have now two institutional Assets in the US right um and there's um there are some concerns when it comes to how much Supply is in their in their pockets this might be uh less concerning when it comes to bitcoin because it is a proof of work asset but might become uh

concerning when you think about ethereum because it's a proof of stake asset so if there's like institutions holding like suddenly like 30% this might be really become a problem and maybe since we are on on an ethereum conference in our Outlook we also outlined that um this regulatory unlock that we expect um should be disproportionately um beneficial for ethereum for two reasons a we basically project that there will be institutional rollups um because it's really we have Prime conditions to deepen blockchain Integrations for these institutions um think about um build in compliance and K kyc features into a institutional rollup we see first moves

from Deutsche Bank in their pilot for instance and the second one is we expect like really Swift approvals of um e staking ETFs and this might really um basically accelerate the ETF flows into ethereum that were largely muted to be honest but got some traction with the with the with the US elections and the reason is obviously you have a huge opportunity cost if you allocate into these ETFs when you don't get your staking rewards back right um leor since you have the microphone um I know a lot of VCS these days they turned away from some of the crypto projects and now they're looking at AI Plus blockchain world will will this present

an opportunity or is it actually a security nightmare that could evolve yeah so I mean great question and I think it's a great week to be talking about AI um generally um obviously I think the the rules of the game have fundamentally changed uh and all of that really strengthens and emboldens I think what we're doing and building with core web infrastructure uh web 3 infrastructure uh in this community and I think that those founding principles and tenants of decentralized web I mean that is the core of what's needed uh for people to actually participate in the AI driven um economy in future so that no matter what is happening you're not susceptible to as we're seeing now some

of the government politics forms of uh competition that's happening between things of national interest that have you know to be very honest nothing to do with what this core technology is and the well-being especially of people here in Europe like us I mean nothing to do with us rivalry between the US and China for AI dominance right the whole point of this technology Beyond you know the in invention and Advent of Bitcoin and why smart contracts and ethereum brought so much to the ecosystem was so that we wouldn't be dependent on all of these other things now I think it's it's fitting that we're also here in in Switzerland right where um again I know we're at an ethereum conference but there are ecosystems like definity and and also zerich based project um who have for a long time created this notion

of what is what is web 3A and what is a decentralized cloud Network and system and I think that those topics now we're finally starting to understand in the mainstream why it's so important to not have leaders in the US leaders in China who are owning and operating not only the apps of course anyone can develop an app on open source technology and start this it's really the distribution and who's controlling the back end and the infrastructure right and I think that the topic that we're seeing now with all of the AI models is historically everything's been done and developed proprietary and used for their own use the big development over the last years was the open sourcing of of the AI algorithms themselves so the logic and how they actually come about it and what's happening this week is we've seen that actually you don't need tens of

billions of dollars to train AI to actually be competitive in this space and again if this conference had been one week ago you would have been you would have laughed me out the room if I said there's going to be some guys in China who can produce and an out compete open AI with $5 million in in you know 6 months and the way that they've actually put out their Community notes and governance around the logic and what they've built and how they've done it really just shows the exponential nature of this technology now all of that of course there's a lot of macro big picture what does that mean for this industry it's really now the opportunity to say if we can do the AI open models on web to infrastructure what is possible then and what is the more secure way that I would feel comfortable

and be able to sleep at night knowing that my data and information is not being sold off and manag in different ways that I don't approve of but really managing this in decentralized way which is why most people that I'm aware of actually got into this industry so I really think that again you don't need 50 billion hundred billion thrown at AI just to say that we're doing it for you to be competitive in this space and no one bootstraps projects better than the this ecosystem which is founded on decentralization and governance around that so incredibly excited about the opportunities here in front of us once we filter through a lot of the noise and the the challenging um you know realities that people have to deal with and nursing their wounds with Invidia stock and so forth but those things are irrelevant to what's happen on the

ground here and really I mean anyone who's building in this space and not considering elements of AI into what they're doing and how they can basically bring that into a decentralized ecosystem I think is focusing on the wrong thing at the moment yeah l a small followup but how do you filter out the noise and how do you distinguish between a short-lived hype and a long-term project it's a great great question I mean I think it's been the same I mean I've been in the space fulltime since 2017 uh we had the Ico booms and would have given you the same answer then right I think it's really at the end of the day no matter what you're doing you are ultimately backing and working with people right and that's as a venture capitalist as a partner to projects and Founders ecosystem participants you are

working with and trusting people to actually make and develop things I hope that that will change over time and we have more AI code being written than people and you know that fundamental Dynamic is also interesting uh but basically it comes down to working with the right Partners at ecosystems and I really think that that's why specifically here in Switzerland we're in Prime position because there is a lot of trust built in into the institutions the talent the types of entrepreneurs and people that are building here genuine software engineers and developers that understand technology and and want to build a better future and that's why I'm incredibly bullish so I think if you follow and and you know honestly look at yourself in the mirror and say I really back what we're doing here the people um not that you get it right every time and that smart people

always do the right thing uh but more often than not you'll be doing and spending your time on on the right opportunities and that's how we filter this like would we still be comfortable holding this in 10 years when no one's even remembered what the word AI is or whatever deep seek was right it was like we backed projects because we believed in the founders vision and their credibility to go out and actually make a difference thank you uh well open question are um real world assets still a thing question uh of course there was a lot of tokenization and a lot of projects behind that uh but what role do you see this trend playing out in a broader sense for 2025 and perhaps you could name a couple of uh asset classes like real estate or bonds art whatever

which see the most of the struct distruption for this year maybe maybe I can start with this one because at uh Signum we've focused on tokenization as one of the co verticals of what we do and this has been literally since the Inception of the bank and it's really been a journey right so since 2017 18 we've been trying to figure out how to use existing regul to tokenize and um represent these assets on chain and it's amazing to see how uh this is evolved because we started just you know with like wine bottles then we started then we moved into art we tokenized a Picasso painting which was kind of the classic put into

an SPV and then tokenize shares of the SPV but it still made access to owning really rare art accessible to kind of the it's still for qualified investors of course but still maybe for somebody who doesn't want to spend $5 million on a painting somebody who wants to spend 5,000 Franks on it can still have a Picasso as a part of their portfolio and diversify their Holdings um and from there we've really moved forward so we worked also with um Mata labs and Fidelity to help them bring a part of their treasury on chain and then also integrated with you know chain link for to have um real time nav of these assets and now these are all just like small steps each each project that we do I

think is really just taking one step forward in terms of bringing this vision of having the whole world you know tokenized to to reality and so um one of the last more recent projects we did was with fanara and Float so it was working with private debt of Nordic B2B SAS entities and providing this as a simple token where you have a access to a whole portfolio of um B2B SAS or whatever as a way to just diversify a portfolio but without all the admin without all the overhead that typically comes from this sort of investment and I think just seeing this Innovation happen I think is it's slow moving right like I'm not

saying that this is like an overnight journey of any kind but working with our Regulators to kind of really have this democratized access to assets like this I think that is still where we see the biggest hurdle in real broader adoption of this um within big institutions I think it's clear that you can do this it works and it's happening more and more but I think for a lot of people including myself um there's been this like vision of how blockchain can really bring these assets to the Layman and you talked about maybe access to Biddle being a way for kind of a Layman to be able to um have access to us traditional Securities through

through the crypto market and that is I think one of the bigger risks I see for Europe for Switzerland because obviously in the US we're seeing this open flood of innovation now and everything's just going to go chain and there's a lot less regulatory um uh uh concern in some ways but in Europe we're really I mean we're being really cautious and really careful and of course you need to protect the investors that that that is I think everyone's uh concern as well but um it's something that I feel is yeah not moving as quickly as we really could be I mean I would try to tackle the question from like a demand side I think the moment we understand

that we actually like Dollar on chain like teder like usdc the next thing is especially if we like in an environment which is nonzero interest rate the next thing is going to be like yield so I would say every kind of instrument that provides you yield I mean one thing is is like some kind of treasuries I think credit that you mention is going to be the next stuff just going down and the credit risk and you also see like some very other alternative ways that you won't get exposure to yield I mean one interesting project is ethena which is essentially like collateralized or tokenized tokenized is the better word basis tra which is otherwise very hard to understand or implement but that's some very interesting combination from

trafi and onchain solution they have and when we just look at asset classes not likely to end on chain very fast I would say real estate in Switzerland specifically for the simple fact that you have something that is called grun which is basically owned by the local government and as long as that stuff is not really digitalized and you can read and write in it you always will have somewhere in the value chain a break so if you get pitch stuff like that just stay away um yeah I would say that's that's it and then the other stuff is like security and and all that that stuff but I think that's just going to happen through to the the big exchanges because they currently hold like some paper certificate somewhere in a bunker

basically putting that in blockchain is going to be very interesting I mean projects like Oar already in Switzerland are doing that and just to be a bit patriotic I think in Switzerland not for the EU but I think we have one very nice thing people like Swiss frank because it's very stable so I think there are different kind of projects like Franken coin happening in Switzerland where we basically hopefully at one point get the support of the asnb because I think everywhere around the world they like dollar but they also like Swiss frank because it provides stability uh Dominic um if you want to talk about rwls a bit more or I have a question for you let's go you always get a surprise

questions for me you know okay um yeah again we are incredibly bullish on tokenization the elephant in the room is basically stable coins mostly tokenized there's this nice chart from Nick Carter's recent report basically outlining um the relative share of the dollar in different Vehicles when you think about institutional loans institutional debt or FX reserves the dollar is usually um um flowing around like 60% of of share and in stable coins it's like 95% so this might even be Amplified now with Trump or it might also signal that there's an opportunity for another fiat currency uh when it comes to

tokenization maybe the RIS Frank which is honestly a great fiat currency in my view um then the all the other topics I think uh the the the largest growth uh in in our view should happen in uh should likely happen uh in stocks and Equity um it's very interesting while a lot of people are are unbanked like around 20% or something like that it's actually more than 80% are Unbroken Mark so if you bring stocks and Equity markets on chain it would like uh it would be like highly inclusive uh across the globe and as we outlined before like Larry think is very vocal about like accelerating like tokenization of of

bonds um and stocks so this is something where we see like a large opportunity to be honest one rebuttal Point here just to spice it up a bit I guess but this notion of like unbroken I think it's it's an important distinction to make because retail is one segment of the market institutional fundamentally different now the basic concept that everyone wants to hold and manage in a secure way and be responsible for their own private keys of course in a room at a crypto conference especially an ethereum conference makes sense soon as I start thinking about the Practical implications of that my parents my grandparents holding and being responsible for their own things let alone my kids and you know the next

Generations to come it's a fundamentally different understanding of what this actually means so like 80% people are unbroken today especially in places like Europe North America because they don't want to deal with brokerage it's not because they haven't had access to be able to go and open a Swiss quote account or an equivalent in their local markets it's all of these reasons that stops it is because people don't have the financial ambition or literacy to handle and manage things themselves and of course crypto is not just an investment instrument it's not just another stock or Capital Market product it is money digital all of these things and we take it for granted that people actually want to engage in that and secure their own private keys and and and reality is most people don't in my opinion and I think that we're going to

come up to this continuous balance where Us in the crypto industry it's a bit of an echo chamber where we talk about imagine how big if and when everyone has this I think the real lever is still with iwa on products like Biddle and and institutional Capital flowing in because that's where the actual value ad comes from tokenized instruments and it's on large scale institutional capital and and I really see that as being the growthly that everything else is an incremental development and the reason why we are so big and ambitious about this space is not for incremental development it's really exponential opportunities and we're focused on the institutional adoption of this industry thank you uh we're rang out of time but I have two quick questions so very quick answers and I also want to leave one or

two questions from the audience because I think everyone was great listening to us here today thank you for that um the the next next cycle um will layer twos AI tokens rwa all the trends we've spoken about today what will lead the next cycle Dominic in your opinion um yeah tough to say I mean um it's also hard to be non-consensus here there are a lot of uh great sectors or key Focus areas that are super interesting like be AI dpin is super interesting I'm actually uh also still uh highly excited about prediction markets to be honest and poly Market uh

does quite well in the postelection environment there's still like large volumes and open interest I thought it would uh dump even more to be honest um and then I think like what I what I recently checked is I think derivatives uh onchain derivatives might have a a good opportunity if you think about uh when it comes to spot volumes Dex to sex ratio we just had a alltime high I think we are now above 20% uh when it comes to um derivatives is just 10% and also in absolute terms derivative volumes are lower onchain than spot markets and usually what we see in trefi usually derivatives is around five times higher than spot and

there might be like a also some some some growth ahead awesome prediction Market um what did you just say deep deepen the the AI and uh the derivatives on chain right Allan 10 seconds yeah I would say deep in and especially like decentralized compute because everything all the blockchain stuff all the AI is normally just running on a few AWS server farms and we actually have no way to see and verify if it actually gets executed what we think it is so I think that's a very interesting vertical that is completely missed at the moment okay ala 5 Seconds less than Al um for me I would say uh yield bearing stable conss

I think it's been a long time that um the yield from traditional assets is not being translated onto on chain stable assets stable coin assets so I think that's something that's going to be seeing some growth and I'm also very bullish on deepen thank you yeah so agree with with Alon here it's um I mean not necessarily the physical part of it but decentralized infrastructure networks decentralized Cloud compute I mean this is really I think one of the most unspoken about things in the whole everything I mentioned around the AI um challenges an opportunity set and then the other one which I'm glad no one else said it's I'll stick by it and really emphasizing the roller coaster ride that we're on uh but AI I do believe this is transformative the opportunity set here is a completely uh blue ocean blank page and and we will see some of the most

exciting things happening uh in that side of the industry over the next three four five years thank you well I'm really sad because I had another spicy question to ask but you could do that in the back of this room and thank you very much everyone for your participation and active attention let's give a round of applause to our speakers thank you [Music]