I'm very excited to have our panelists here today. The reason I choose and ask to
moderate this panel is because it's a topic that has really interested me ever since
it launched. I really do believe in the future of digital assets, cryptocurrency.
Anybody here that's kind of like anti -crypto, it's just here to listen in and under
their perspective, anybody here? Just come on, don't be afraid if you're like, not
believing in the future. All right, excellent. But once again,
I mentioned that I've been with the company for eight years because when I came
into the company, it was something that we never did panel discussions on. It was
something that was relatively new. It was before the bull market In this asset
class, and it's just been interesting to watch a change and transform So really
happy to have you here with us today We're gonna go down the line just with quick
introductions your name Who you represent and why why you're on this panel here
today? We'll start with Lawrence Well, thank you. I appreciate the invite. I am an
entrepreneur actually in crypto and fintech I've been an investor for about 15 years
or so personally, and also run an angel investment organization called Princeton
Alumni Angels. And since we formed it in 2017, we've grown to over 300 active
investors and about 1500 people in our broader community. Part of the reason I was
invited today is that I've worked in digital assets and crypto since 2015, which
makes me a very, very old head in that particular asset asset class and so I've
built several companies in the space as well as made a number of investments over
the years and advise a number of firms on growth strategy, product and growth
strategy as well. So I have a bit of a full circle view of the industry both as
an entrepreneur and an investor in it. Fantastic. Thank you Lawrence.
Good afternoon everyone. My name is Jorge Cortez. I just came from Miami, Florida.
I've been developing the technology ecosystem there since 2006. By 2013,
I was creating spaces, co -working spaces across Miami -Dade County. I was advisor for
the Blockchain Center in downtown Miami and I'm currently co -founder of Pete Basel,
the ecosystem builder in Miami, focus on Blockchain Web 3 for the creative
industries, art, music, film, design, fashion, and I'll be telling you more details
about it later. - Fantastic, thank you, Aurek. - Good afternoon, everyone. Can I have
a show of who actually owns a little bit of crypto, even if it's like $100 worth?
That's not bad, that's not bad, good. I'm an investor, I was always into investing.
I started my career in technology, but always on the side, I was focused on
investing. Started with stock market, real estate, and then in 2017, I read an
article, "Mark Cuban Turns Bullish on Bitcoin." Reached out to my network, asking,
"Who here has heard of Bitcoin?" Only one person replied, and that was enough. I
sat with him, learned about it, realized there's a lot of potential to make outsized
year, gave my time, invested some money, and then by 2021, 2022 was lucky enough to
financially retire, so I left my job and now I'm become a full -time investor thanks
to Bitcoin and crypto. What I'm doing now for the last few years is AI doing angel
investing, which is not just in crypto, but outside of crypto as well. I do a lot
of advisory roles. I'm advising a few crypto companies, non -crypto companies. I am
starting a movie production house in India which is we have a movie going on floor
in November. I am planning to launch my own crypto hedge fund sometime end of next
year not raising any capital right now for that and starting to get into a multi
-family office in a couple of years and a full disclaimer because this is a crypto
panel even though I'm going to talk about crypto and bitcoin I don't believe it's
be all and end all I don't believe that bitcoin is the ultimate truth I love it.
It's great. I just want people who are not invested in crypto just have an open
mind I understand it's when you hear Bitcoin you hear word scam But just have an
open mind for the next 30 minutes if you can you'll probably get learn something
from here and it's not the The our objective here is not that tomorrow morning
You're gonna go buy Bitcoin because we were talking about it. It's just this panel
is probably gonna help plant a seed in your head. I'm hoping in three, six, nine
months when your RIA investor come along and talk to you, you'll be like, "Oh yeah,
I heard about it. There were guys who were talking about it. I'm ready for it." So
thank you. Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, I definitely want to touch on the geopolitical
aspect of cryptocurrency in a bit. I think it's an important aspect, right?
Like you said, it's not the be all end all, but I think that geopolitical aspect
is is what's gonna really determine that. But let's first talk about investment
allocations. What type of, and we'll start with Lawrence, what type of investor
allocations are you focused on? And if you can expand a little bit, you said you
were a crypto digital asset entrepreneur, a little bit on those businesses,
'cause I'm assuming that kind of influences your allocation strategy. And with so
many projects out there. So many, um, from everything, from blockchain projects,
cybersecurity, cryptocurrencies, altcoins, um, NFTs, right,
all these events, right, arts, um, what, what are you looking at right now?
>> And that's a great question, it's a great place to start. Um, I also always try
to bring back, uh, talk about digital assets to what people understand. So thinking
about it as a traditional asset classes. You know, how many people here are invested
in large -cap public stocks? Most hands are gonna go up. How many people here are
invested in penny stocks? If you're of a certain vintage, you think of it as pinks
and bullies, pink sheets and bulletin boards, right? Lot fewer hands. How many people
are invested in art? And think about it as an investment as opposed to simply for
pleasure. Probably A few hands, I see one or two hands out there. Digital assets
are very similar. There is a range of ways in which you can get exposure to the
asset class, thinking about enabling technology. So blockchain, some of the, that we
call them L1s, the level ones, things that enable other projects to be built on top
of them. There are NFT projects, non -fungible token projects, which again, the
equivalent would be something, or the analogy in a traditional world to be something
like investing in art. There are very long tail, at this point,
tens of thousands of instruments. The long tail ones don't have a whole lot of
market cap, they don't have a lot of trade, and very similar to, say, pinks and
bullies or penny stocks, if you will. So you really wanna just understand the asset
class overall, it doesn't take a deep understanding of all of it, but enough to
say, ah, I understand where this particular instrument plays and what type of
instrument it is and how -- and excuse me, the risk profile of this particular
instrument relative to other asset -- other digital assets and relative to other
asset classes. So, you know, coming back full circle to where I invest, I spent a
lot of time where I do work. I have built -- most recent company that I built in
Digital Assets was a company that and Treasury Management Services for CFOs that were
transacting with digital assets. And so I spent a lot of time investing in enabling
technology. So what are the firms that are building tech grounded in Web 3, grounded
in typically blockchain or other type of tokenomics, that allow either traditional
businesses or other Web 3 businesses to expand their business, to grow their
business, to more easily transact. I spent a lot of time there,
and I think it's the thing that's gonna enable the next 10 billion company or
billion companies to come online as Web3 companies. I do also buy some tokens for
some projects that may make more sense to me where I understand the mission, I
understand the economics of it, I understand the community they're going after, and
on occasion, on a passion, I'll invest in some NFTs. Pregie Penguins is one that I
got into a little bit earlier. Again, passion project, like art, I think of it as
something that is where I could very quickly go to zero and something I buy because
I think it's fun and cute. A lot less so for the investment, although they've
actually done quite well. Fantastic. Thank you, Lawrence. Yeah, Jorge, please. So
great question. Legal regulatory
um, I was able to participate in being part of the Miami -Dade County Cryptocurrency
Task Force where we help commissioners and majors of Miami -Dade County understand the
technology and being able to utilize the best benefits not only for the community
but also for the employees of the county. Um, I was able to advise for presidencies
in Latin America and when it comes to legal regulatory frameworks, I think the most
important part of this is also the attraction and retention of talent.
So I think in Asia there's plenty of opportunity for legal regulatory frameworks that
are working very well and very efficient. But it seems like the biggest opportunity
is no -brainer Latin America, especially for investors in the U .S. if we want to
attract and retain the best talent in the world and continue to continue to do
that. So investing in Latin America, it has been always a great investment for when
it comes to industry 4 .0 or blockchain technology. So I'm bullish about that. And I
think we're no longer in times of prohibition at all. I think that the governments
are more open to this. Um, I actually can, uh, release some alpha here.
I hope, I don't know if I'm being recorded or not, but I, it feels like, I think
that, um, there's a very major protocol, uh, in charge in, uh,
recently to publish the new CBDC for Brazil. So that's going to be, that's going to
be, that's going to be coming up in, in the news very soon. Um, so it's very
interesting. - Awesome, thank you. What about Raul? - Yep, so I mean, both my co
-panelists already covered a majority of it. I just have a little bit to add to it.
Yes, when you start looking into it, let's say you want to get into it, you'll
hear a lot of words. There's crypto, there's Bitcoin, then there's layer one, which
is Ethereum, there are a lot of other layer ones, layer twos,
DeFi all of that stuff for people who for majority of the people who are here who
have zero investment I would say just think about Bitcoin. That's it. I usually when
I go to a lot of conferences My only shield is for people who are not invested
focus point to five percent of your portfolio in Bitcoin and that's pretty much it
That's all I usually advise so Bitcoin is a good start and then let's say a few
years down the line You're comfortable with it. You become well versed with it. You
you like, okay, I want to increase my investment, you can always go about and
either buy more Bitcoin or go into layer one, layer two, NFT, whatever you feel
like, but if it's getting off zero, it's a famous saying in crypto, get off zero
is is the more important task. So what it means is if you have zero exposure,
get off zero is just take 0 .25 % of your allocation by Bitcoin. Let's see where it
goes. It goes to zero, fine, it's just 0 .25. If it's go somewhere, who knows? And
I'll give you just a quick example of it. So when I got, let's look at number,
because we are investing to make money. When I got into crypto, Bitcoin, 2017,
Bitcoin was at roughly $2 ,000. It is seven years later, it is right now $60 ,000.
It's at a 30X. Most projections now that BlackRock, Fidelity, and all the top
bankers have Bitcoin ETFs, they're 11 ETS right now, their projections are that
Bitcoin is probably going to a million dollar 20, 30, 35. So if you let's say
that's a rough 20X, if you put 0 .25 % of your portfolio, that takes you to 5%.
Let's say your rest of your portfolio doubles by then, you still have 2, 2 .5 % of
Bitcoin in your portfolio. That's a good allocation to have. That's Bitcoin is
considered right now a digital goal. That's what you would typically allocate your
portfolio as into gold. You're getting another exposure to a digital goal for a 0
.25 % on today's portfolio value. So that's my advice. So let me just add one thing
that I think supports the point that I was just saying, just to get in the game.
And since its inception, Bitcoin has had one year where it ended the year at a
lower price than it started the year. Just one. And we've seen,
you know, who already mentioned how much it's increased over that time. So it's been
a, you know, smart investment over the last 10 plus years. - Yeah, and it's an
interesting topic. I mean, we have some speakers that are consistent speakers up on
our stage that are super anti. And I love getting into the debate about it. I'm
biased because obviously I wanted to win, right? And that's kind of the catch 22
about investing in cryptocurrency. Anybody that's invested in cryptocurrency obviously
wants to speak good about it because the more people invest in the higher their
allocations go, right? So that's, there's that contradiction, but at the same time,
I don't think you just have to look at the history of Bitcoin. You can look at
the history of how money changes. Can you guys kind of speak to that a little bit
and, and you know, you have fund managers here that are managing over a billion
dollar in assets that won't go near it. That will tell you it's crazy. >>If you
can just add to that. So yes, I understand there's, as I said, initially as well,
there's a lot of anti -crypto, anti -Bitcoin, scam, all of that stuff. Hence,
I'm very specifically saying a middle way or a mid -path could be 0 .25%.
There's nothing to lose in 0 .25. Because we are in so we believe in it, I believe
in it, I give you a theory of how it can do a 20X, that will take care of it.
I'll give you another-- - Well, Raul, I wanna say something. Let's play devil's
advocate, right? You know, but why, I mean, right? It's like, yeah, of course,
you don't stay away from altcoins, stay away from anything that's not top three, but
people still argue against Bitcoin. Why? What's the logical look at,
like, don't even touch Bitcoin, devil's advocate perspective. If I could make an
analogy, it kind of reminds me of people that said the internet was just a fad.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, there are always those holdouts to new technology and new
ways of doing business and new ways of thinking about the way in which we move
information and the way in which we sort of make money. And so that kind of, that
cycle is not new. It's probably maybe a little bit more pronounced, but we had I
don't know five years in the mid 90s where they were plenty of very Well -respected
researchers and pundits and capitalists that were just like this internet thing is
never going to mount to anything It's a fad. It's something these kids are dealing
with and it's going to be gone And they thought they were vindicated in 2000 and
you know here. We are Where I don't think any of us can live without you know the
mobile internet in our wallets while it's much less at home. - And it's fine, like
if people are against it, that's totally okay, there are people who have publicly
had stance against it. Best example is Larry Fink, he still comes out and say,
yes, 2018, '19, I didn't get the story. 2021, 2022, I read the white paper, I got
the story, and now 2024, BlackRock has EDF, one of the most successful EDF launches
they had. It happens because just remember I just asked everybody to raise their
hands if they are invested in Bitcoin. Imagine this panel was happening in 2014 and
I'm like how many of my question would have been how many of you have heard of
Bitcoin? I wouldn't have raised and for sure probably there would have been one or
two hands raised for simple question of how many of you have heard of it. Look at
where we are from a political standpoint. If 2016, both the political candidates, if
you would have asked what's your opinion on Bitcoin and their answer would have been
what's Bitcoin? 2022, two candidates on both sides of the aisle, what's your opinion
on Bitcoin? Yeah, we have heard of it, I don't know, no opinion. 2024,
both the candidates, actually we had three, one dropped off, two candidates from both
sides of the aisle. One candidate went to a Bitcoin conference has been talking
about US should add Bitcoin to strategic reserve. The other candidate just came out
three days ago saying, I'm going to make sure that there are pro -policies for AI
and blockchain. That's how far the journey has been from a 2016 to 2024, where you
have presidential candidates talking about it. You have BlackRock. And they were anti
-crypto or against crypto. So that's fine if people are saying we are anti -crypto
and here we are not trying to convince you take your time, take your years, that's
okay. We're here just to plan that seed that there's this thing going around which
is available for investment. You can take a small portfolio, unlock it to it and
see where it goes. >> I think diversification is the important part and I think
that's, that was kind of the interesting thing when I would see family offices be
against it and then a year later They would talk on stage about how they allocated
two to five percent of their portfolio and I was like, hey, last year we talked
about it and you kind of laughed at it. And it's like, well, my friend just made
a 10x return, so I'm gonna put 2 % at least, right? 'Cause 10x on 2 % is pretty
good. But I wanna know, is there any questions in the audience right now? Questions
in the audience, I have a hand in the back. Fantastic, Charlie's coming over right
now with a microphone And please make sure it's a question. If you start pitching
something, I'm gonna interrupt you, all right? - I don't know a pitch. No pitch to
that.
How do you handle the thoughts around pump and dumps by whales in markets that just
around the world? That's something that I've read some about. Didn't really have a
lot of clarity on it. How have y 'all approached some of that volatility
I have high rates of activity outside of regulated markets effectively. I'd like to
take on that. So the percentage of money laundering, or perhaps what you're referring
to,
these pump and dumps, are very small for the utility and the amount of the volume
that it's moved into the major cryptocurrencies as a utility and transaction -wise.
So I think that hundreds or thousands of those are going to disappear over the next
three to five years. The legal regulatory frameworks are very clear on many things
from Mica in the European Union to here in the United States. I'm actually very
comfortable with the US speaking about blockchain and Web 3 at last,
Because he's a very disruptive technology and as leaders, I think that the US has
time to review what's been happening in Japan, in Asia, in legal regulatory
frameworks like Mika in the European Union. All the consumers and they affected
consumers in Japan from FTX where reimburs and where being able to be protected by
the government as well as here in the U .S. are actually recently. So I'm very
comfortable with sometimes the government, I'm not trying to say moving slow, but
being very careful on where we promote the talent, the engineering, the innovation
and we're not limiting the entrepreneurs. So yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a really
great overview of just of the importance importance of having a supportive regulatory
regime and also some of the statistics to just contextualize. But I think it's just
specific to what can you do about it. I come back and I feel like I've got a
long time kind of sales and trading guy in the traditional finance world, so I tend
to think about pinks and bullies again. You've got to educate yourself. And if you
wouldn't invest in penny stocks and on the cash equity side here in the US, you
probably shouldn't be investing in new or long -tail small projects in the digital
asset side. The analogy is very similar. There's a lot of incentives for folks to
not necessarily be fully transparent. I would encourage people,
particularly those who aren't necessarily as familiar with the space, to start at the
top. Ro said it, just buy a little bit of Bitcoin. That's it, just by a little
bit of Bitcoin, right? It's more than 50 % of the total market cap of digital
assets. You know, it's still highly volatile, but it tracks more like gold these
days. And start working your way down the sort of market cap stack to things that
tend to start to become more volatile and a little bit less transparent. But you do
gotta do your research, understand what the project is about, understand what the
economics are, understand the community, and in our ways to gauge signal on how
competent or how realistic this project is. You can look at the community,
how many developers are contributing, you know, how big the community is, other areas
like that. So, but you got to do your homework and I would say if that is a big
fear, just work up the chain, like start at the top and work down as opposed to
starting at the tail end and working up to larger market cap instruments. Do we
have another question in the audience? Anybody else?
Going once, going twice. Oh, we got one right here on the right, please. Charlie's
coming over, say your name, please, and if you can tell us where you're from as
well, that'd be great. - Yeah, sure. My name is Paul Graham, currently live in
Austin, but moving to Nashville, so come on out. Question would be, what's in your
crystal ball for election? Not saying sides, right, but curious of what either you
found in previous years, right, especially if you've been in the game in a long
time, are you thinking it's gonna be more fold? Some of us might be more risk
tolerant, so 2 .5 is good to get in, but could be looking to maybe put in a
little more if your crystal ball's saying it's going something, if your crystal
ball's broken, I'm sorry, but thanks for being on the panel.
- Ro? - Yep, I can take up that question because That's an active conversation in
the crypto community where I'm mostly hanging out with this. What's going to happen
on election? A, it depends on what you're holding. So if, again, for this audience,
let's stick to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin doesn't have a CEO. It doesn't have a marketing team. I'm talking about
Bitcoin. I'm asking you to buy Bitcoin. I don't get a single dollar because I'm not
part of a marketing team. Somebody wrote a white paper in 2008, threw it out on
the internet. 15 years later, we're sitting in a panel in a single family office
talking about Bitcoin. Look at the journey it has taken. It won't matter what
happens on the election. Yes, there could be some price volatility. The adoption
curve, the network effects is on the move up. People like me are talking, going to
different events, evangelizing it. The adoption curve is happening. We have ethos
being approved. Nation states, one country already made it as a legal tender, one
country's, this country's president, one of the presidential candidate talking about
strategic reserve, every point is adding up where it's on the move up and because
it has a limited supply, the only way to offset that is prices to go up because
there are people like me and a lot of people who believe in it and are gonna hodl
it. So if you can ignore that November 4th and few days or few weeks of
volatility, and if you look at the long -term trend, not just in terms of price,
but in terms of the network effect, it's just zooming up. And I think that's what
is making Fidelity, BlackRock, these kind of companies to project that 2035,
the price is probably going to a million. More than that, if you like Michael
Saylor, he's going even further out saying, I don't know, $20 million, $30 million a
coin in 2040, 2045. But let's not go that far. Let's just stick to where the trend
is. And I think it is agnostic of what happens on November 4th. That's my reading
on it. >> Yeah, I think the main realization too is that crypto is a global
currency, right? So what happens in one election doesn't affect. In essence,
even though it is the U .S. election, we're still just waiting for another, you
know, only 1 % of the world population touches crypto right now, right? So election
or not, there's still too much space for growth.
I wanted to reinforce what you said about network effect, which is a very technical
and very interesting concept that we cannot miss, has nothing to do with networking
or scalability and companies, the network effort is a real uh thing that happens in
the world of technology and we cannot ignore it uh when it comes to having a uh
uh um um looking at the future uh of this technology so I just wanted to make a
point on that where uh the reason that I'm here as co -founder of Bitbazzle is also
to um pick your brain about movements around the world,
like the creative tech movement, creative industries, our music,
fashion, film, design, bullish, into utilizing these technologies,
not only blockchain but also artificial intelligence. We're also co -founders of the
University of Florida's blockchain lab, which was created with with a $5 million
grant, where these young undergrad and graduate students are being hired by a large
amount of companies in the enterprises like EA Sports and Disney, where they're
already experimenting and already launching their own products onto these platforms.
And when we see the future of blockchain is really the future of the new
infrastructure of technology for us when you have mesh architecture which uh increases
the level of security including many things government wise um or contracting with
the government for traceability and transparency. The use cases are endless um but
the network effect of some industries we're about to see we're just about to see
that uh huge exponential growth on those network effects like on the creative tech
industries and major enterprises. Excellent. Well look, I have one more question. I'm
gonna just direct it to Lawrence for him to wrap up but we only really talked
about crypto and there's so much more when it comes to digital assets that we can
talk about. But the other thing too are the other industries that are affected by
crypto, right? You can Coinbase, for example, which is the largest crypto exchanges,
you can invest in public markets in their stock, for example. So what are other
examples of that, that you can be, without having to invest directly in crypto that
are affected by crypto, like investing in exchanges, like investing in servers? Yeah.
I think you kind of hit it on the head. There's a bunch of related industries.
You've mentioned some of them. There are a number or public companies that are
crypto -affiliated, coin -based, being the sort of marquee one. Even a company like
PayPal is investing a ton in their PayPal USD and like using that as a growth
engine to cut out costs and also to reduce friction for merchants to effectuate
payments. So, you know, I would, there's, as you mentioned, there's not quite as big
as AI, which is a bunch of data and mining related activity that requires a lot
There's a lot of power in generation, so I'd argue power in generation is also
another area that is, see some tailwinds with digital asset activities. And even some
of our large financial institutions, JPMorgan and Onyx projects and some tokenized
real world asset projects. >> Tokenization. >> Or tokenization generally, or really
creating cost efficiencies that are driving growth in other areas far outside of what
people would traditionally think think of as crypto. So a lot of areas, again, I'd
just say do the research and just get off the sidelines, get in the game. Awesome.
A big round of applause for our panelists on panel number nine. Thank you so much.