Alex Thorn says every "blockchain, not Bitcoin" era has been a great time to buy BTC, and today's tokenization boom looks like the same pendulum swing.
so you also talked about how, um, you know, we're in this moment where the focus is on stable coins and tokenization and you cited that as another reason why this is a compelling time to buy Bitcoin.
Uh, go ahead and explain why that is.
Yeah, it's counterintuitive, I suppose, right? Because I it's very clear and I know you you've been covering the space for so long, so you've definitely seen this happen a few times like I have.
But I remember like, you know, before 2017, in like 15 14, 15, 16, there was I was at Fidelity, there was a very common refrain from the traditional capital markets, which was like,
oh Bitcoin, no, no, no, no. That's for criminals, the Silk Road and whatnot and other stuff and but blockchain, wow, we love blockchain. We can't wait. We got a blockchain pilot coming out. You know, we're using R3's Corda or IBM's Hyper ledger, right? And um, that also sort of reared its head again in like 2018 and 19.
And it's definitely happening now, right? And by the way, like that's fine. Um, now, none of those prior eras of blockchain not Bitcoin or blockchain not crypto really amounted to much, right? I used to call these enterprise blockchains, the permissioned blockchains.
Um and you know, none of them did anything really. I mean, JPM built all this stuff supposedly in house but it never did much, right? It used to be called what Quorum and then Connecis, Onyx and now Connex, I mean
to their credit, they've they've got a lot of experience building with blockchain tech. So if the moment is happening now, they're probably in a great position. But it's not like anyone's lives were meaningfully changed in 16 or 19 by the adoption of permission blockchains and permissioned assets on blockchains in the traditional capital markets.
That story probably is different today. Like I'm we're pretty bullish on the institutional adoption of crypto assets and products and services and the chain for internal efficiencies in the traditional capital markets right now. There is a lot of that happening. They really do appear to be making progress every day. You know, it's probably probably a year or two away from you being able to buy Bitcoin in every single brokerage account, not just fidelity.com, right?
So like that is happening. But what tends to occur in these bare markets is that everybody gets sour on the native crypto assets and you get, you know, the suits all come out and they want to build on blockchains, right? And whether that's permissioned or not blockchains.
I would say now, one of the positives is that it's it's not entirely permission blockchains like it was in 16. There's plenty of adoption and building on the permissionless chains, which I think is good because to me a permissionless, a permission chain is basically a database. Um, and there are better databases than blockchains for data structures.
But each of those times, when the sentiment shifted so far, think of it like a pendulum, it it was a great time to actually be long the other side, right? And to get into the Bitcoin trade or the Ether trade. Um, and like I was just at Korea Blockchain Week, which was a great event by the way, loved it my first time visiting Korea, absolute Soul's an magical city.
Um, and I didn't get to go to Token in Singapore after that this year, but I heard the same thing from our team that was there. It was like hundreds of panels on tokenization and real world assets. I actually spoke on basically the only panel at KBW about Bitcoin.
But like, you know, it that tells me that again, it's sort of is a um addendum or it buttresses the positioning point like people are writing off Bitcoin and Ether, right? Currently, they're so focused on tokenized assets, right?
That's great. Those I think will finally happen. Um, but each time the pendulum swung this far, it was a great time to buy Bitcoin.
Yeah. And just like, you know, that spidey sense, like I've watched this happen before, you know, like everyone's, no one owns Bitcoin. Everyone's written it off. Everyone's talking about like tokenized money market funds. That stuff's cool. It's going to happen. It's going to make all of our brokerage accounts cheaper and faster. I think it's it's going to be an important revolution.
But let's not forget, right? Satoshi wrote that the root problem with traditional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work and the central bank uh has repeatedly, you know, breached that trust. He did not write the root problem with traditional currency is that we can't settle our stocks quickly enough, right?
So one of them is a very interesting and efficiency and transparency technology revolution and the other one's a deep revolution, a true revolution. and let's not they're going to happen together. Um, I don't think it's controversial for me to say, let's just not forget about the the other one, right, which is the biggest one. Um, and people have kind of forgotten. Um, they'll unforget.
Like, I'm very confident. It'll swing back again, but um, it's just another data point in the idea that people are that actually being bullish and long is the contrarian trade.
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