An interesting tidbit. You know, about seven or eight of the companies that I've been following — Metaplanet and the treasury strategy in Japan — have come out, apologized, and have pivoted.
So, where should we kick it off? We were just talking about the public markets. BitGo is a new entrant to the public markets this year. How are things? How are you feeling about Bitcoin, the cycle? You've seen this before. A lot of people haven't. What's the lay of the land?
Well, let's see. This is a Bitcoin-related topic tonight. So, I'll only mention IPO, I guess, a little bit. I think the last crew mentioned it. You know, obviously, we have traditional markets with direct access to Bitcoin by way of BlackRock and a dozen other ETFs. We got it through the ETFs, etc. I think right now, of course, the public markets are kind of cool on crypto. I think number one factor is it really is AI. It's just so damn sexy that it's unstoppable for now. But then secondarily, I think people are a little bit worried about Bitcoin. I think actually quantum is a topic. I kind of hate to say it. I'm not actually afraid of quantum. I don't think it's a significant threat. But when we did the roadshow for the IPO, I spoke to a lot of investors, traditional investors that don't usually talk to crypto companies. They could barely spell BTC. They're trying to figure out what we do. And it was a top three question.
What's going on with quantum computing?
Okay. I was actually really surprised because I mean, we talk about it a little bit, but it's not that big of a deal. So, I think we have actually as an industry, we should pull together ASAP and get a quantum-resistant algo in the protocol. And then, of course, there's going to be other things to figure out with Satoshi's coins, the wallets upgrading, etc. But as soon as that thing is in, it's just going to take this massive thing off the table. And you know, obviously there's debate about what's the best version to do it, what's space efficient and all that in terms of quantum. I think we should just put all that aside and just put one in and get going on it. And I think it'll be fine. So obviously you don't want to mess up the crypto. It does have to be sufficiently reviewed. I don't mean to be cavalier about it. But I think it's really important that we get that done fast.
Yeah, I agree. In the context of, in my opinion, and I'm not a cryptographer or a... What do you bring to this with your investors? They ask this question?
Yeah, and our feedback is that we're paying attention to all of the stuff and all of the development, but I think in our view the perceived left tail risk is actually greater than the realized left tail.
And so nevertheless, even if the realized probability of this event or this black swan that everybody's scared about and posting on X or the bears are running with, even if it's not even physical reality, but it's just a narrative, Bitcoin would benefit from chopping that left tail off and removing it, right? There's a long-standing notion that the US government would ban Bitcoin. And then, I think partly the night of the election, Bitcoin mooned because this perceived left tail was chopped off, right? And so I think with quantum, that's kind of how we think about it. There are people now looking at it, talking about it. I think it's good that the Bitcoin community is at least starting to talk about mobilizing. I wouldn't say they're mobilizing quite yet, but it's a good topic to discuss.
Yeah, I think we've been in this industry a long time and there's always the current FUD. And this is it. Whether it's real or not doesn't matter. If we can keep knocking them down, we'll keep winning over the long term. So, yeah. It's good. All right. Let's see. I guess the digital asset treasuries, I mean, I guess you know something about those.
Yeah, I agree with you. The public markets are very cool right now.
Now, by the way, your investor base, what percent is retail?
In numbers, 99%, but in share count, I would probably say 50-50%, 60%, but that's still really high, right?
Yeah, I mean, the previous crew was talking a little bit about needing institutional investors to kind of lead for retail. So, back to the IPO process, I think Bitcoin could demonstrate across multiple products, products like yours, products like the ETFs, maybe companies like ours, that actually the whole old school way of doing it through the institutions may not be the best way to take a public company public. So if you look at companies going public, the first six months is a lockup period. They should call it the hedge fund play period. And every company goes through it. And you can look at even Coinbase, this super strong company, hasn't rehit its IPO opening price. So I know the institutional guys like to sell their book and the pricing mechanisms that they use, but I wonder if it's really serving us today. And then on the retail side, I'll tell you, we allocated 25% to retail. I kind of wish I'd been brave enough to give 100% to retail. Somebody's got to run that experiment. The bankers will tell you it won't work. They don't really know. They'll tell you it doesn't work because that's in their vested interest, but they don't really know. But what did you get from the retail teams that we had? Fidelity, Sofi, Webull, Moomoo, we had about five different retail venues that contributed. They give you these daily stats of exactly what the retail interest in your product is. And it was four or five times oversubscribed on the total amount just by retail. Didn't need any institutional. Could have fully filled the IPO. And that's money that gets committed up front. I know the hedge funds have big accounts at the banks and stuff, and of course the long-long-long guys are credit worthy, but retail puts the money up. So anyway, they give you daily stats. It's way better than what the bankers do. And it's very interesting.
Turning the corner on this bear market, do you think the bottom is going to be driven by the retail crazy hodler maxi crowd or is it going to be the institutional big money saying, all right, time to dip my toe in here? Under the 200 week, it's time to allocate.
