Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Topics covered in this episode:
- Norway tax returns are public and crypto tax non-compliance is pervasive National Bureau of Economic Research and Financial Times 8/26
- HM (Her Majesty) Revenue & Customs warns crypto investors in ‘nudge’ campaign.
- Fed announces the time for rate cuts has arrived in attempt at soft landing
- SEC loses phrase "crypto asset security"
- Tokenized bank deposits, $200T
- SEC sues again...
- Abra, unregistered offers and sales
- OpenSea NFT marketplace
- Paypal stablecoin PYUSD surpasses $1B
Creators & Guests
Host
What is Weekly Crypto Check-In?
Hosts Robert Swarthout and Andres Sandate cover the last week's worth of crypto news, providing insights and opinions on this quickly evolving space from a fund managers perspective.
Welcome to another episode of the weekly crypto check-in recorded on August 28, 2024. I'm my host, Robert Swartout, and I'm joined by my cohost, Andres Sendate. How's it going, Andres?
Andres Sandate:Hey, Robert. Things are good. This is, my second time on the air today, so I don't know. I'm I'm not sure I'm cut out for full on media 247. But, yeah, I guess you just get you get used to going live and, being able to talk.
Andres Sandate:Somebody asked me at lunch yesterday, have you ever presented to anyone?
Robert Swarthout:Well, you're just practicing your DJ voice is all you need.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. My DJ voice. Exactly. So, yeah, so it's good to see you. It's good to be back.
Andres Sandate:And Yeah. Yeah. Talk, crypto headlines. There's, some interesting ones today, some some connections I have to a few.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. We're gonna start out, outside the US today. We'll start over Norway. So Norway, tax returns are public and crypto non crypto tax noncompliance apparently is pretty pervasive. I can't say I'm terribly surprised.
Robert Swarthout:You for years you've heard about, oh, they don't know how to understand, they don't know how to track it, I don't feel like I need to pay my taxes, which is never a good excuse. And it's at least in the US, I have no idea what it means not to pay taxes elsewhere, but at least here in the US. And, yeah. It's it's pretty crazy. You know, it's I guess our first two bullet points kind of go together in that sense, but you get Norway and then even have, her majesty in the UK, revenue in the customs.
Robert Swarthout:I guess they kinda group that together. Yeah. And there's they're trying to nudge people. Hey. I I would say that there's gonna be a lot of grumpy people, years to come from years to come from now that all of a sudden get a a notice of audit or because these tax agencies are gonna catch up.
Robert Swarthout:All the stuff on the blockchain is public, and they're gonna figure out how to get you for your taxes that you've owed them. And guess what? There'll be penalties. So probably should pay your taxes as as you go.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I I don't know if this is the most exciting two headlines that we've ever come up with, in in, you know, the the Teton, weekly crypto check-in. It does seem like crypto and taxes may not often go together and be synonymous. There's I think there's a the the broader conversation is the, you know, the amount of people going into crypto, the amount of folks that probably own digital assets globally seems to be, obviously, a big degree, go going up into the right. The question is, what's an what's a effective way if you're trading the asset class?
Andres Sandate:You know, the ETFs, it's a little bit more cut and dry, speaking of the the big ETFs here in the US. Right. But I think the the broader conversation is, yeah, there was a paper that came out, out of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and they looked at Norway. And they state that there could be as much as 88, you know, literally close to 90%, of Norwegian crypto holders failed to declare, to tax authorities. And then, yeah, in the UK, there's this campaign, sort of PR campaign going out to to get people to start sort of self reporting.
Andres Sandate:It it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, because I was just on a LinkedIn show, as a as a listener the other day where they talked about the, you know, the the merits of custody merits of custody. You know, do you go through these ETFs, or do you do self custody in the whole not your keys, not your crypto?
Robert Swarthout:Right. The
Andres Sandate:moment you do that, it brings up the question of, you know, how how do you report the taxes, all this type of stuff. So it's just there's a lot of stuff to to sort of work through in in in the basics of owning these assets. But I thought these two headlines were were, if nothing else, things, that I think are gonna rear their head as you said. All this stuff is ultimately tracked and
Robert Swarthout:Right.
Andres Sandate:Can be can be identified.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. You know, it's, admittedly, taxes, at least in the US for crypto, aren't terrible if you're doing everything on one exchange. Like Coinbase will make it easy. They'll they'll give you the right form to file. Things get hairy very quickly when you start using multiple exchanges because they can't deal with cost basis and all that other stuff correctly.
Robert Swarthout:Much like even if you were transferring, say, stock between 2 different brokerages, that that gets handled for you. So you have that, and then if you do DeFi, good luck. It gets even hairier. So
Andres Sandate:Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Software out there now is poor at best, in my opinion, and it's admittedly, it's a tough challenge to solve, and build that kind of software, but it it that is also not a reason not to pay your taxes. I'm all for paying your legally required amount of taxes and nothing more. And, but also not skirting taxes is pretty high on the list.
Andres Sandate:Well, you know, for years, investors, and and speaking of alternative assets and and private markets assets, you know, things like, LPs, For a long time, you heard the, you know, the the comment, these are just too hard. Right? It's hard to report and track these interests and private fund interest in particular. When it comes to taxes, you have to go to k ones. They're always late.
Andres Sandate:And so, you know, when you talk about crypto, some somewhat of that sort of same narrative, although I think people are still buying it. It's just a question of when do the regulators, shockingly, you know, kinda get get their house in order. And, I think it's gonna come down to when the amount of dollars become bigger and bigger and bigger and the government, you know, will recognize, okay. There's there's a revenue there. So they're gonna start finding out, that they're gonna need a more effective, way and better technology because I do think multiple people will have multiple exchange accounts just like they do with their brokerage accounts.
Andres Sandate:You know? Not everybody, but multiple people you know, a lot a lot of people out there have multiple accounts. So Yeah. Anyway, more to come, starting in Europe. No surprise and likely to be something that we see more of here.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. You know, it's not necessarily in our notes, but something I read was, you know, the I think the average inflow for BlackRock's ETF for Bitcoin right now is, like, 220,000,000 or something kind of a day, on days that it has inflows. And that does that well, that quickly adds up to regulators caring, and figuring out that that will start to get politicians in order, in line and all that stuff. So anyways, we'll get back on track here. So the Fed, it was big news this last Friday.
Robert Swarthout:People are it's highly anticipated of sorts, but, you know, why don't you give us the rundown on this one?
Andres Sandate:Well, they were out they were out in the Tetons. I mean, they were hanging out in in your rarefied air. Right? Yeah. The Kansas City the Kansas City Fed has, includes the the the region of Jackson, Wyoming.
Andres Sandate:So they host every summer late summer right before Labor Day. They're kinda big summit and, of course, Fed chair Jerome Powell, known as Jay Powell. His his remarks are always highly anticipated. Any any of the the chairs, whether it was Greenspan, Bernanke, now Powell. And so I think it was Friday, during the press conference, he came out and announced that, okay, that the time has come for, potentially rate cuts.
Andres Sandate:They've seen enough, and there's gonna be an attempt to to, to to get a soft landing. I I had on, the co CEO and group CIO of a a really large asset manager actually out of Atlanta today, and I asked him sort of this macro question about rates because a lot of what they do is impacted by rates being a a fixed income type credit manager. And, it it's interesting. I mean, there's a lot of people that are highly informed about this and have deep takes, but, the the question is, you know, are we gonna see over the next, 3, 4, 6 quarters, you know? No.
Andres Sandate:I mean, anybody thinks that we're in a 2008 scenario where we're gonna go back to 0.
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:But it's also difficult. This CEO is saying to say, okay. You had all these businesses and all these assets that were sort of built, and their models were all based on a zero rate environment. Then you go to 8. Right.
Andres Sandate:There's gonna now need to be time, you know, to to adjust the business model, to adjust to the new rate environment. So it it's just, again, you talk about interest rates and financial markets, and everybody's gonna have an opinion. It's kinda like, we'll have to wait and see. But I do think that we'll see, it looks like, you know, some rate cuts probably by the end of this year, whether it's 1, 2, who knows?
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. I you know, purely from a
Andres Sandate:Data dependent.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. Sure. That that's their favorite phrase. I would say strictly from a crypto lens, we have never had a bull run where there wasn't, loose monetary policy. So I'm happy to see them changing their tune, so we can try to stay on schedule here.
Robert Swarthout:So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. Yep. Well, my my thought is we we at least get one cut before the end of the year, but, we'll just have to see, you know, depending on what what the data says as they as they say the, what the reg you know, what the Fed says. But, anyway, big big news on Friday of last week, and, we'll continue to report on it.
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm. So our favorite villain at the SEC, loses in court again. The the case wasn't lost, but in the Kraken case where they're filing or suing them for unregistered security sales, just like they like to do with everyone else, they have that case is a little bit further along, but they, lost on the there there's no such thing as a crypto asset security. This is Gary's favorite phrase that he must have made up, to seem smart, or something else. I'm not quite sure.
Robert Swarthout:Anyways, there's no legal definition of crypto asset security. That was his way and the SEC's way of looping crypto into the security model, and governance is, is my take on it. And to see him, the court finally say, no. No. No.
Robert Swarthout:You you can't use that phrase. It's it's misleading, and if anything, it's false. So kind of, I guess, good news there. Not not much news, but just, you know, a an interesting point. So, yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. There's there's
Andres Sandate:a few things on on the SEC front that we're gonna talk about here in the second half of, of of today's check-in. So, yeah, that that's the first one.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. May maybe we'll just jump to the rest of the SEC so we can just get them out of the way. We would literally like that to happen in general in life. But so the SEC, has announced that they are well, that that they are suing ABRA. ABRA is a, exchange largely, well, as of today, I don't think it services any US customers as far as I know.
Robert Swarthout:They did for a while. I have personally used it in the past, admittedly, for something that they probably got in trouble for here. So the unregistered offers and sales. So I have, once upon a time, put crypto there and did some staking. They called it, basically, just getting interest on it, in in their model.
Robert Swarthout:But yeah. They're I I know you have a little bit of a connection to Abra, so this one Yeah. Caught your attention.
Andres Sandate:It did. I I, host a couple of podcasts, the ATL Alts podcast, and a newer one called Asset Backed. And one of the one of the guests that I had on, ATL Walts was a a new executive that joined Abra. Now the the name of Abra, a r b a, the the actual real name of the company is is I think it's Plutus Lending, LLC, p l u t u s, Lending. Yep.
Andres Sandate:And this might be breaking news or at least breaking news because I hadn't checked the headlines since you put it up, but they settled with the SEC. Woah. Yesterday. So they they were in so they were in, a case, and the there the the document is out, was actually filed on on August 26th. So it's only, like, 2 days ago.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. So it's very recent. But, yeah, there was a complaint filed by the SEC. I had an executive on that talked about how Abra was trying to and that you can listen to the podcast. But talking effectively how Abra was trying to, go out and build, like, a higher touch set of crypto solutions, offerings, and capabilities to cater to, like, that ultra high net worth family office, like, private wealth, independent RIA customer.
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:Because, historically, they had, you know, kinda had more of a retail model. And, and so that was kind of interesting. You can go out and listen to that, just self promotion. But this case, yes, that that, that I think, you know, you're talking about, there was apparently, an a product called Abra Earn, which the agency said had amassed as much as half a $1,000,000,000 at one point. And they reached a settlement, with the Securities and Exchange Commission over these accusations of them selling unregistered securities.
Andres Sandate:I'm looking here through a headline to see if I can find what the settlement entailed. I'm sure it's all in the 14 page white paper. But, but yeah. I mean, I think they've agreed to return as much as 82,000,000 to customers in up to 25 states as part of, well, as part of another settlement. And it'll just be interesting to see as you dig in and sort of pull apart the news here.
Andres Sandate:Of course, the company is saying nobody was harmed. No consumers, you know, were were harmed. And, this is their second this is Everest's second settlement. They paid a $150,000, fine to the SEC and the CFTC in 2020. So they had some experience dealing with, you know, dealing with the agency.
Andres Sandate:But yeah. You know, more of this regulation by enforcement, corner of, you know, approach. Yeah. It it's interesting to see, you know, amidst what we're in the midst of a you know, gonna be a very contested presidential election, like, who ends up running the agency, and and the direction and and that's a broader question, but the direction that they take as it relates to crypto.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. It's, so so a couple points. Hopefully, with with this settlement that they've done, it doesn't follow the same path that it did for Kraken. We kinda mentioned them earlier in this episode. But Kraken, about a year ago, did a settlement under similar circumstances.
Robert Swarthout:You know, it was announced and it was settled all the same day. And, within, I think, 9 months, the SEC had sued them for something else. They kind of went went back for a second, a chunk of blood there, a chunk of flesh. So, anyways, that aside, you know so you mentioned the political thing and it made me think. So there's this whole group that is literally titled, crypto for Kamala or Kamala for crypto.
Robert Swarthout:I forget, I always get it backwards probably. And then you would think that if there's any sort of, like, connection between the White House and then the way that Gensler is running the SEC, there might have been some communication, like, let's let's tone it down a little bit towards the crypto community. Potentially, these are some swing voters. Right? Yep.
Robert Swarthout:And then and then you have these two things within a week.
Andres Sandate:Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Well, actually, we haven't got to the second one. So the second one is OpenSea is an NFT marketplace, back when the summer of 2021, when everyone was buying NFTs and thought they were all everyone was gonna be rich from this. You were likely buying them on OpenSea. They got a Wells notice. So they haven't technically been sued, but they're down the path.
Robert Swarthout:And the SEC is claiming that these NFTs are unregistered securities, surprisingly enough. And, here we go. The the but there's a playbook to fight the SEC here, so maybe that's a good for OpenSea.
Andres Sandate:I was gonna say, I wonder if you look back at who's representing the, you know, the the companies in these cases, I wonder if it's a revolving door of lawyers, you know, that really are highly highly connected, very specialized. They understand the playbook, like, it's interesting to see.
Robert Swarthout:There's been enough of these lawsuits. They could just do find and replace on their on their documents and just resubmit them. Okay.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. Exactly. The yeah. So so I remember the Bored Apes NFTs would, you know, became all the rage, like, 2 or 3 years ago. And, you know, there's this whole discussion amongst those of us that are maybe newer to the crypto space and digital asset space.
Andres Sandate:Like, oh, it's like a JPEG. Like, why would you ever buy that? Of course. And then, yeah, yeah, you had you had trading cards of, like, NBA players, you know, but done digitally. We called them NFTs.
Andres Sandate:And Yeah. I just remember that whole that whole conversation, like, 2 or 3 years ago. What's happened to prices? I'm curious of Wait. These NFTs down 80%, 90%?
Robert Swarthout:In in most cases, I would yes. Yeah. Maybe more. I mean, 99% would not surprise me. This is you know, it's all about liquidity, and no one's willing to buy if prices go to the floor.
Robert Swarthout:So and, you know, I I don't think the prices got crazy like that back then, largely because people were trapped in their houses, and the government was giving them money, and it felt like some form of gambling that felt Yeah. Social.
Andres Sandate:Right. And there is that still that element of of, you know, high high risk, high reward in this space. Right? Like, there are definitely market participants who they they are in it to trade. They're they're they're expecting these massive swings, and maybe they're not investing slash, you know I don't know that it would be called investing in all corners of the actual markets.
Robert Swarthout:Right.
Andres Sandate:You know, they're they're putting money on the line, knowing that the stuff could go up a 1000%, you know, and swing the other way a month later and be down. So it's it's just interesting because that is definitely a, an aspect of this market. And, I I wanted to give a post trip on Abra. The the executive I had on Mariskim was part of a division that they launched in April of 24 called Abra Private.
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:Abra Private was launched alongside Abra Prime, which was, you know, ABRA's effort in growing. They they quote, the idea was offer digital asset services in the US, including both yield and staking as a registered investment adviser or RIA to private and institutional clients. So, you know, high net worth investors, family offices, institutions. So that's the that's the effort, that we talked about. We did not talk about the lawsuit on the podcast, but it is interesting to see, you know, them back in the news, and I'm sure they're glad to have this behind them.
Robert Swarthout:For sure. Because I imagine it's been hanging over their head for a while. It's not like it happened yesterday and got settled to them the same day. So Yeah. Lots of sleepless nights there.
Robert Swarthout:So we'll jump back up a bullet point to kinda pick up on that one. So tokenized bank deposits, around the world, they total around $200,000,000,000,000. It's a lot of money. Yeah. And I think the point here is they're being tokenized.
Robert Swarthout:You're seeing, different things slowly get tested on the blockchain. We've talked about tokenized, our titles in California on the blockchain, and you're seeing it different places pop up. Obviously, all bank deposits are not gonna be tokenized in the same day, but it will come. And I guess I bring this up more as a point to say, as they get tokenized, these different because it's not gonna all end up in one network. That's just the chances of that are basically 0.
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm. So you're gonna have networks that need to talk to each other, and there's, some companies working to solve that. With Quant is one that's based in the UK that is working with those kind of institutions and, you know, federal banks type situations that will, help them interoperate between them. So more of a stuff is happening. It's happening slowly behind the scenes, and then all of a sudden, one day we're gonna wake up and be like, oh my gosh.
Robert Swarthout:Look at some a bunch of you know, there's maybe news headline that $20,000,000,000,000 was tokenized, and then quickly we'll, over time, get to 200. No doubt.
Andres Sandate:Well, on this point of tokenization, I think I mentioned to you before we went on live that I was on a LinkedIn live earlier this week with couple of executives from OnRamp, which, was acquired by a company. I think it's called Securitize. Is that right? Do I have my facts right? And they they help individuals and and now advisors.
Andres Sandate:I believe one of the individuals on the call was formerly a executive with Schwab, the big, you know, discount brokerage firm, but also custodian that supports advisers, with technology, custody, service, etcetera. Point being, they were talking about, you know, at OnRamp, how you can now partner with them if you're an adviser and help your clients, get into digital assets, get into tokenized, assets, I would think, over time. But it's it's it's more of a model. Is it right to to try to own the the assets more directly versus through a central, centralized, like, custodian, like a Coinbase? Is that is that right?
Robert Swarthout:Yes. But I think that, you know, admittedly, we spent, 15 or 20 minutes talking about this when I recorded with, Philip and Dalton Yeah. On their podcast convince me. They're like, what's the point of tokenizing a lot of this stuff? You know, you see tokenized treasuries already happening.
Robert Swarthout:But, like, when you could tokenize stuff that you personally own, like, what's the point besides being able to prove that you own it? And I think that what it does is not that everyone needs to get levered up, but, like, it allows you to get leverage easier on things because it's it it a marketplace is kind of already existing or the the rails are there for it to happen. And that's just one of many examples I probably could provide, but I think the ability to prove and use as collateral, in a much easier, swifter fashion. Yeah.
Andres Sandate:And where I think about those types of firms, like I mentioned, with Securitize and and OnRamp, like, if if you if you wanna tokenize, let's say, a portfolio of assets, whatever they may be, and there's a way to do that, would you then want a way for you to monetize those? I mean, I'm curious, like, how these markets become, more liquid. Right? So let let's just say Robert or Andres owned a bunch of horses. K.
Andres Sandate:And and I and I'm gonna and I'm gonna tokenize those in a way. Like, the racehorses or whatever. It how do I get that offering out to people without having to go through the whole process? You know, speaking of the SEC, like, the traditional way, it'd be like, oh, we're gonna set up a private fund, and we're gonna go then solicit and get people to buy into our LLC. The LLC owns, you know, horses.
Andres Sandate:You own a share of horses. Like, walk me through what you could see evolving in that space. It could be real estate. It could be horses. It could be artwork.
Andres Sandate:Like
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. I mean, what you know, choose something you personally own that's got, you know, 5 figures about you. So, you know, something like that.
Andres Sandate:Like my house. A title on my house or a car.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. At the end of the day, you know, I'm gonna set aside and say regulations have been figured out and they're Yeah.
Andres Sandate:Okay? Yeah. We have to suspend reality.
Robert Swarthout:But we're
Andres Sandate:in the election season. I mean, this is the time to do that.
Robert Swarthout:So this is this is where we make our Christmas list. Right? What we were hoping for.
Andres Sandate:Right? What would you like? What would you like? So in
Robert Swarthout:a world where that that exists, I think that, a, the way it could easily happen today, and it's still a bit of a marketing issue, is through DeFi. You could go in and you could say, I'm gonna, with a smart contract, I'll be able to prove that this horse, every time it goes to track and runs around runs around, it wins money.
Andres Sandate:Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:That I'm willing to sell off a third of all sorts of winnings. And people could fractionally come in. I can choose how many shares or tokens I want to sell that. And the smart contract would monitor the results and automatically feed the money in. Obviously, there's a lot of moving parts there that would need to be wired up together, but, you know, that's an example.
Robert Swarthout:Okay.
Andres Sandate:Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:I think, you know, a house is obvious, you know, if you're renting it. The car is a little bit trickier, like, maybe you're an Uber driver and you wanna you know, not that Uber drivers make tons of money, but I want to be able to sell again a third of my, you know, revenue stream.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I mean,
Robert Swarthout:I want that cash now. So a bit of, like, lender financing of sorts or, you know Yeah.
Andres Sandate:I mean, there's there's there's, like, earned wage access models out there today that exist that are you know they're growing and they're big, like, in the Fintech context where you can you can you know, if you're if you're a company, you can go in, set up a partnership. Let's say they have a lot of hourly workers or they wanna, you know, pay their workers or they do pay their workers on a weekly basis, you can go in and set up a model where you can, you know, advance them 20% of their paycheck that they're gonna get on Friday. You can advance it to them, like, on Monday Right. You know, for for a fee. So there's I I and there's fractionalizing and, like, buying wages or salaries of people that, you know, think are gonna be high potential earners in the future.
Andres Sandate:And it's just yeah. It it's interesting. I I think this whole tokenization narrative, we've talked a lot about it. We need more regulation. The everyday person's still trying to get wrap their hands around, you know, should I buy Ibit?
Andres Sandate:Should I buy, you know, from some of these other ETF issuers? Like, there's just a lot lot to cover, which brings me to one point that I'll make before we before we wrap up. But let's go to PayPal and Stablecoins.
Robert Swarthout:This one's gonna be quick. This this more of saying so PayPal has got their Stablecoin. It largely has only been within the PayPal system. They've done a little bit where you can, take your, pay pay p y USD, Stablecoin and it can go into Solana. 80% of the the dollars that have gone over into Solana are in the ending up in their DeFi.
Robert Swarthout:Beyond that, I don't know too many details about what's being used in the Solana, universe for that, but I think the headline here is it reached the $1,000,000,000 milestone. And, you know, I think that we should start a stable coin. It it seems to be the thing in vogue these days. And No doubt. Guys with their arms.
Robert Swarthout:Sure they love it. So yeah.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. So you and I talked about this yesterday, and I I think I mentioned this a week ago that I was you know, I'm I'm an adviser with a independent RIA out of Nashville. I'm building up the Atlanta market. So that adviser is Gramercy Park, Wealth Advisors. One of the things that you know, we're we're looking at all sorts of different, alternative assets.
Andres Sandate:If if we put crypto in that, clearly, you know, we're we're trying to get smart on it, trying to get educated on it. So I'm spending time, like I said, listening in on these LinkedIn lives and different shows. I I don't know why it took me so long, but I I called BlackRock. I went on. I created a plat I created an account as an adviser, which Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:We didn't have. And I'm like, I'm gonna start looking at the materials and educational resources and other things that they're putting out. And we had talked about this, I probably 6 months ago or a year ago in another I think on an I don't know if it was another podcast, but the amount of assets that are held away
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:By independent advisers.
Robert Swarthout:Yes.
Andres Sandate:And so there's a there's a link that says recapture or build your practice.
Robert Swarthout:Right.
Andres Sandate:Anybody that has a wealth management platform is always thinking about ways to grow the practice. Right? How do you add more clients, more assets? There are according to BlackRock, there are 960,000,000,000 dollars of held away crypto assets by high net worth and ultra high net worth assets. And 50% of retail investors would would consider changing banks or brokers if they do not have an appropriate digital asset offering.
Andres Sandate:So that that caught my attention when I went to the build my practice. Secondly, millennials. I think I'm Gen z because I was born in late seventies. The people that were, like, 80, 81 is, like, the cutoff or
Robert Swarthout:80 2 ish. I'm, like, right on the line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Andres Sandate:They're like y and then you have and I think y and millennials are almost the same thing. Yeah. And then you have z. Okay, which is, like, everybody that grew up with social media, they're probably under 30. Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:Millennial millionaires, 83% of millennial millionaires again, this is Courtney BlackRock's, research. I don't know who the original research is by, but 83% of those millennial millionaires hold crypto, which may not be a surprise to you because you've been in there a long time.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah.
Andres Sandate:You know, they're younger. They tend to be male. They tend to be urban, you know, or live near, you know, major metropolitan areas. Yep. And we happen to be in Atlanta.
Andres Sandate:So I'm just thinking to myself, the wheels are turning. The wheels are turning. I don't know about stable coins, but digital assets.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah.
Andres Sandate:In general, millennial investors are more likely to hold crypto than stocks or mutual funds.
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:Isn't that interesting? And then lastly, crypto has grown to a 1,000,000,000,000 asset class in a decade. And, you know, we've talked a lot about how quickly, you know, these ETFs have grown. So, obviously, BlackRock's promoting the ETF as a way to own it. Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:But, you know, some of the headlines, like, what is Coinbase? You know, I think we in the inside of the industry I'm not calling myself an expert, but, you know, what is Coinbase? You know, you'd probably laugh me out of the room if I if I asked you that. But the whole point being platform, education, tools, research
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:Education. I think everybody agrees we're quite early. More re more more regulation's gonna help. But, I just wanted to give, like, a real life kind of what are we doing with this stuff, and and how's it how's it apply to me sort of perspective in our check-in this week? Awesome.
Andres Sandate:Because I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about, like, what does that adviser opportunity, and what's that client wanna hear about? And it's it's a lot to do.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. I think that advisers that aren't open to the idea of having crypto held by their, clients are asking to be, out of business in the long term, but time will be the judge of that. So
Andres Sandate:Time will be the judge of that. And the 8th and final of their FAQs, do you know what it is? Do I have to pay taxes on my Bitcoin?
Robert Swarthout:Well, if you have to remember, the whole Bitcoin movement started initially very much rooted in libertarian mindset, which is so not not a surprise, but, you hear less about that each day and, at least the libertarian piece of it. So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. For sure.
Robert Swarthout:Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us on this week episode of weekly crypto check-in. If you wanna stay updated on future episodes, you can find us in a podcast player by searching Teton Crypto Capital or the weekly crypto check-in. Take care.