September 23, 2025 • 18 mins
Galaxy Digital CEO and Founder Michael Novogratz discusses recent crypto price movement and whether the price of crypto can impact stocks. He also says crypto legislation is a “big deal” and will “unleash a tremendous amount of new participation” Novogratz, who spoke with Bloomberg's Scarlet Fu and Tim Stenovec, says stocks are having a "euphoric moment" right now. He says this could be the last leg of a very long bull market. Novogratz says cryptocurrencies have had a great few months and this is just a temporary pullback.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Galaxy Digital and its founder Mike Novograts have been a
major force in the push by crypto into mainstream finance.
Digital asset treasuries dats are the latest example, with an
astounding eighty five and counting announced this year. They've raised
billions from investors everywhere from the US to the Gulf
to Asia. Galaxy among the top investors over the past
(00:28):
six months. It's helped lead fundraising round for Forward Industries
one point six billion dollars Solana Treasury. It's the largest
for that token. Forward share surged on the news, up
now more than five hundred percent so far this year.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Let's bring in.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Galaxy Digital founder and CEO, Mike Novagrats, who's going to
be hanging out with us for quite a bit of
time during the show. Mike, Always appreciate your time. Always
good to see you. We're going to talk about Solana
in just a minute. First, though, I just want to
get your commentary on what's happened in the last forty
eight hours with the selloff and the volatility that we
have seen. How do you explain it?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Yeah, listen, there are a few things that happened.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
One.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Crypto had a pretty awesome few months, right. I mean,
Ethereum went up almost three x, Solana went up a ton,
and so market's at one point get a little bit long,
and it takes just a little bit for people to
get nervous and some of the leverage to come out.
We saw what it looked like some big Chinese mining selling.
(01:25):
You also had you know Arthur Hayes, who's one of
the real thought leaders around crypto. He put out a
pretty bearish commentary around hyper Liquid. Hyper Liquid is the
only token in the top ten that didn't exist a
few years ago. Right. It's a decentralized version of binance,
if you want to think about it. And it's a
(01:46):
pretty spectacular story with the amount of growth it had.
And Arthur said, hey, wait a minute, I think it's
gone too far. The founders are going to sell, and
so hyper liquid really got hit the hardest, and that
I think kind of hit some of the overall element
in the market. And so I think this is just
a pullback. You know, Crypto has been kind of soft.
Bitcoin's been kind of soft because a lot of the
(02:08):
action moved away from bitcoin. But if you had told
someone four months ago that you're going to be nervous
with bitcoin at one twelve, they would have a big
grin on their face, right, And so you have to
keep things in context. We're still up significantly on the
year of both bitcoin Ethan and solon them.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
Speaking of keeping things in context, a lot of people
have been saying that crypto price movement can foretel stock
prices as well. More broadly, you know, it's like a
leading asset class.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
Do you subscribe to that? Do you believe that?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Ah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Listen, I think sometimes it feels leading and sometimes it
feels lagging. We are in a euphoric moment in stocks,
and there is a lot of excitement all around this
AI theme.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
AI is powerful. It is going to change the way
we do things.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I was literally just in a meeting with my management
team talking about aiad galaxy, and every single C suite
in the world is having that same conversation, and so
that creates bubble like excitement. And we've got valuations in
the in the NASDAC and the S and P as
high as we see them, and so it's a really
(03:22):
hard market because it's got husu momentum and excitement around
a real story. But it's got valuations that get you
really nervous. And the interconnectivity of the video, open ai oracle,
the vendor financing, you know, web that gets you nervous,
(03:46):
like valuation creating more valuation. And so I think you've
got a market that's that's nervous. That doesn't mean it's
not going to go a lot higher. Right The last
the last leg of great markets always surprises people and
how powerful it can be.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
And I'm not saying this is the last leg, but
it very well could be.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
So if you're looking at that in terms of the
equity market right now, how does that translate over to
the way you're thinking about crypto and where we could
be in the cycle when it comes to crypto right now,
and not every token is created equally. I know you
love Ether and Solana, and you know you're traditionally going
back to bitcoin, but what does it mean for crypto?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Well, listen, crypto traditionally has traded with four year cycles,
and that would be ending in December, right halfway between
the having is usually where our peaks have been. And
you know the end of twenty seventeen, if you had
sold everything in December, you look pretty smart. And the
end of twenty twenty one, if you'd sold everything in December,
you look pretty smart. And now here we are October
(04:48):
of twenty twenty five, at all time highs at almost
every token, and you're wondering should you sell everything in December?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Listen? What could be different? And I think probably is different.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
We have gotten one piece of legislation out of the
US called the Genius Act stable coin legislation. In an
all likelihood, sometime in mid October mid.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
November, we're going to get.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
The second piece of legislation, which will help define what
a security and what a commodity is and a lot
of other rules around crypto in America.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
That's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
With those two bookends of legislation, it's going to unleash
a tremendous amount of new participation, new participation in crypto.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
I mean, think about it.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
You can't use stable coins on your iPhone yet, there's
almost zero chance in the next few years you will
be able to use stable coins on your iPhone or
on your Samsung Galaxy phone or in almost any social
media app. You couldn't before because they weren't necessarily legal.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Now they are. Yeah, and once the.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
US government puts its improper tour on this industry, which
it has, we have the most crypto friendly sec one
could imagine. Yeah, you know, you're going to have this
new wave of participation and so we might not be
in the traditional cycle.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Well, this week, Brera Holding says it will be renamed
Soulmate to become a Solana based digital asset treasury following
a three hundred million dollar fundraise. It's newly named CEO,
Marco Sentori, joins us now along with Galaxy Digital's Mike Novograts.
Marco's formerly worked at Pantera and Kraken. Good to have
you on the program. Another digital asset treasury company. I
(06:42):
was shocked to see an Olga Krieff's article today actually
about Mike Novograts and other Princeton folks, that there have
been eighty five digital asset treasury companies just this year.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Why another one listen to. First of all, thank you
for having me.
Speaker 7 (06:55):
Second of all, you've got to stop looking at treasury
companies as trades.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
These things are notes.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
There are going to be as many treasury companies as
there are coin accumulation strategies over the next twenty years.
This is not a fad, it's not a trend, it's
not going away. This is a replacement for the traditional
foundation model. So historically, what digital asset innovators have had
to do is sequester all of their new coins. They're
(07:20):
newly created coins in these not for profit corporations or
nonprofits in the Caymans, in Switzerland, and basically these companies
have watched their treasury go down into the right over time.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
That is clearly an inefficient model.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
We think treasury companies are going to take the place
of these foundations over time. They have access to the
capital markets, they can be more dynamic, they can generate revenue,
and they can still steward the ecosystems that they're supposed
to steward. So you can't look at this thing like
a trade. You have to look at it as an evolution.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Having said that, and your company is rebranding itself as Soul,
which really shows that you're betting on that particular coin.
Can you explain why you've said walste will be building
on Solana and not ethereum, what's the basis for that view?
Speaker 7 (08:11):
Well, I'm a big Solona believer. Everybody at Soul made
it's a big Salona believer. Bitcoin is special. Bitcoin was
and remains and I think for a very long time
will be special. It's a new monetary system, a new
kind of money. Then Ethereum came on the scene, and
Ethereum said, you know what, there's actually more we can
do with these blockchains. We can do more than just
(08:31):
move value around. We can create smart contracts, they can
be composable, they can be decentralized, they can be hardened
against attack and interference. But then it didn't scale, it
didn't go anywhere. Ethereum still can only handle a small
number of transactions per second at the base layer, and
instead it chips off the large numbers of transactions, all
(08:52):
the high throughput, highly performance transactions to these second layer
servers where it's really just somebody else's computer, and sacrifices
so many of the values that made decentralized technology valuable.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Solana doesn't do that. Solana doesn't have to do that.
Speaker 7 (09:08):
It can scale to hundreds of thousands of transactions per
second at the base layer, at that foundational layer that
made all of those promises about financial services and what
financial services could do with blockchains. So when I discovered Solana.
I wasn't as early as the party as some I'll
tell you that, but it was a light bulb moment
that went off.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
This is clearly the future.
Speaker 7 (09:30):
This is what sophisticated high throughput transactions are going to
run on in the future.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Mike. I want to bring you into the conversation because
Tim mentioned they're about eighty five companies that are involved
in dahs, and you've said that you don't think all
these dhs will be successful. But if you get critical mass,
enhance yield on the underlying token, and build the ecosystem,
I think they're net positives for crypto. These are public
companies that will be around for a long time.
Speaker 6 (09:53):
Mike. What will determine success and longevity?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Listen, I think you're going to need scale, right because
scale begets scale, and so you know, you think of
something like micro strategy, which came out first, and now
strategy it's got scale, and you know it will it will.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Probably What do these companies do?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
They bring energy into the ecosystem in lots of ways.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
And what I.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Was a little wrong on early on, and then it
dawned on me, was the access to capital through the
equity infrastructure is so much greater than it was through
the crypto infrastructure. Right, crypto' is a twelve year old business,
and equities have been.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Around for a long long time.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That the wonderful thing about these data center company, of
these treasury companies is they've brought in so much more
capital at a quick pace.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
And that capital is what will build this industry.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
And so I think in each of these buckets, like
I love the fact that that Marco is doing another
Salona company because it's also based in a different part
of the world. It's going to attack a different set
of new investors. You know, we're you know, foreign Industries
is a very US focused investor base and company, but
(11:21):
it's a global technology and so in some ways, the
more of the merrier, I think, in order to survive,
you're you're going to have to prove to the investors
that you bring value. Right, Like listen, if we all
trade to nav it's hard to it's hard to raise
a lot more capital. And so you've got to do
something that allows you to think, hey, on our one
(11:41):
point six billion dollars of Solana, just through staking and
other things, if we can get that yield from seven
to ten percent you're making one hundred and sixty million
dollars a year in dividends, and you can use that
one hundred and sixty million dollars a year to do
other cool stuff with You can use that leverage to
maybe get a good deal on getting free free equity
in a program that's building on top of the blockchain.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
And so you're gonna have to be creative.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
We partnered and forward with Jump Capital and multi coin.
Jump is probably the premier builder of architecture, of financial
market architecture on blockchains and certainly on the Salona blockchain.
And so to me that's just thrilling. Right, there are
four companies in the world I think that can coind
(12:27):
of Pete with Jump right, like frequency trading, and so
they see the Salona blockchain as what will be the.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Foundation for capital markets in America.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And when you have the new head of the SEC,
Paul Ack and saying I want everything to move on, Shane,
that's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
I mean, it's a stunning Dear.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
We're going to talk more about the regulatory environment in
just a moment. In the meantime, I do want to
thank soulmate CEO Marco Santori for joining us on set.
Mike nograts is sticking with us now.
Speaker 8 (12:58):
I'm committed to this company because they did everything they
could to try and cancel us. They did everything they could,
I'm talking about traditional finance to put us out of business.
I was the guy that was getting hundreds of letters
from the big banks, Capital One, JP, Morgan, you know,
I mean all of them, Bank of America. I saw
Moyhand was just on trying to take away accounts for
for golf courses, for hotels, for residential buildings, for doing
(13:18):
absolutely nothing wrong. And it drove me into crypto because
I realized that there was nothing that couldn't be done
in crypto better, faster, cheaper, more transparently, and it's amazing industry.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
That was Eric Trump speaking to us last week. We're
back with Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Mike Novogratz.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
Mike, the White.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
House, as we know, has ushered in this new era
for crypto in terms of regulation and of course in
terms of this friendly stance toward growing the industry. Are
you comfortable with the First family being this act of
so active in this industry. Some make the argument that
there's an inherent conflict of interest. There.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Listen what I've said before, and I'll say again, as
long as the Trump family and their associates by the rules,
I'm completely fine by it.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
And you know, the one thing.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
About this new SEC is they're all about disclosure and
you know people, and it's a little bit of a
buyer beware SEC.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
And I would guess if you read.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Through most of the the different protocols the Trump guys
that have participated in it's everything they do is pretty
well disclosed, and so I don't think there should be
any mystery around, you know, what they're doing.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Listen, if they break the rule, if I break the rule,
we should get in trouble. But I don't think you
can you can prevent.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
The children of people in power from participating in business.
I do think it's an issue in politics right The
Democrats are going to make a big deal about what
they perceive as grift, that the president shouldn't be doing this,
and that that has a potential to slow down the
market structure bill. The far left will push. I think
(14:58):
the optimistic news is is there's enough Democrats.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Right, you know, and you can think about guys.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Like Mark Warner, Ruman, Diego's our own New York Senator
Kristian Jildebrand that see the value in crypto, that see
the political value in being seen as pro technology, pro innovation,
that market structure will get passed, and we'll probably get
(15:27):
passed with a lot more than ten Democratic votes.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So it sounds funny we spoke I just want to
jump in because there'red a ton of time. But we
spoke to Dan moorehead last week, and he made the
point of saying that it really seems like this is
important to voters. I push back a little bit on that,
because we saw in the last election a year ago
that even the pro crypto candidates weren't being messaged in
(15:51):
a way that even mentioned cryptocurrency in a lot of cases.
Do you think that Democrats now are getting the message
if you think that they have to be on board
with this type of asset, I do.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I think Democrats a lot of them think, oh shit,
crypto swayed the election Trump's way. Why were we so
dumb not to like you think that the election. I
think crypto had a big deal. If it had the
big deal in the election in the Ohio.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Senate, but was that crypto or was that just the
messaging around Bernie Moreno, I think.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
It was crypto. It was the money that crypto brought.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Crypto was the crypto pack was the single largest donor
to the Trump campaign.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
But they didn't message around crypto. They message around the border.
They message around other issues that seemed to resonate more
with voters.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
They listen. There were eighty million crypto owners in America.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
A lot of them are single issue voters who care
a lot about this issury that more people own crypto.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Than owned dogs.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
You know, can you imagine being the party that said,
I don't like dogs, I don't care about like like.
It was so dumb for Democrats to be anti crypto.
It turned people off. It was It wasn't the only thing,
but it was a pile on effect of all those
issues that swayed young men. I mean, young men voted
for Trump much more than they did in any press election.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
And young men are the crypto people.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah, yeah, go ahead, No.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
No, no, I think that's a good point, and it's
something that's a distinguishing factor.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
We only have about a minute left. I'm just wondering.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
As we wrap up our conversation here. It's been a
banner year for crypto overall? What is next on your
to do list?
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Mike, listen.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
I think any cryptocurrency company has to be looking on
Shane to figure out how do we move more of
our business on Shane. How do we bring on Shane
access to our traditional customers. Right when the head of
the SEC says we think markets should move on Shane,
we should listen. And so we spend a lot of
time here figuring out that exact question. We are building,
(17:51):
we're investing. You look at our stocks, it's gone from
the lower left to the upper right in a pretty
good line. So we feel good about you know, we're
having a great core order in a great year, and
so it's a whole different, different feeling here than it
was twelve months ago.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Hey, Mike, we only have ten seconds. You're known for
that Luna tattoo that you got a few years ago.
Did you get the Solana the sole tattoo?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yet?
Speaker 1 (18:15):
All my tattoos are are going to be kept hidden
for a long time.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, we'll keep talking about him as long as you
keep coming on. We appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
Mike Murrats, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, really appreciate
your joining us for the entirety of bloomber Crypto,
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Galaxy Digital and its founder Mike Novograts have been a
major force in the push by crypto into mainstream finance.
Digital asset treasuries dats are the latest example, with an
astounding eighty five and counting announced this year. They've raised
billions from investors everywhere from the US to the Gulf
to Asia. Galaxy among the top investors over the past
(00:28):
six months. It's helped lead fundraising round for Forward Industries
one point six billion dollars Solana Treasury. It's the largest
for that token. Forward share surged on the news, up
now more than five hundred percent so far this year.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Let's bring in.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Galaxy Digital founder and CEO, Mike Novagrats, who's going to
be hanging out with us for quite a bit of
time during the show. Mike, Always appreciate your time. Always
good to see you. We're going to talk about Solana
in just a minute. First, though, I just want to
get your commentary on what's happened in the last forty
eight hours with the selloff and the volatility that we
have seen. How do you explain it?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Yeah, listen, there are a few things that happened.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
One.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Crypto had a pretty awesome few months, right. I mean,
Ethereum went up almost three x, Solana went up a ton,
and so market's at one point get a little bit long,
and it takes just a little bit for people to
get nervous and some of the leverage to come out.
We saw what it looked like some big Chinese mining selling.
(01:25):
You also had you know Arthur Hayes, who's one of
the real thought leaders around crypto. He put out a
pretty bearish commentary around hyper Liquid. Hyper Liquid is the
only token in the top ten that didn't exist a
few years ago. Right. It's a decentralized version of binance,
if you want to think about it. And it's a
(01:46):
pretty spectacular story with the amount of growth it had.
And Arthur said, hey, wait a minute, I think it's
gone too far. The founders are going to sell, and
so hyper liquid really got hit the hardest, and that
I think kind of hit some of the overall element
in the market. And so I think this is just
a pullback. You know, Crypto has been kind of soft.
Bitcoin's been kind of soft because a lot of the
(02:08):
action moved away from bitcoin. But if you had told
someone four months ago that you're going to be nervous
with bitcoin at one twelve, they would have a big
grin on their face, right, And so you have to
keep things in context. We're still up significantly on the
year of both bitcoin Ethan and solon them.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
Speaking of keeping things in context, a lot of people
have been saying that crypto price movement can foretel stock
prices as well. More broadly, you know, it's like a
leading asset class.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
Do you subscribe to that? Do you believe that?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Ah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Listen, I think sometimes it feels leading and sometimes it
feels lagging. We are in a euphoric moment in stocks,
and there is a lot of excitement all around this
AI theme.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
AI is powerful. It is going to change the way
we do things.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I was literally just in a meeting with my management
team talking about aiad galaxy, and every single C suite
in the world is having that same conversation, and so
that creates bubble like excitement. And we've got valuations in
the in the NASDAC and the S and P as
high as we see them, and so it's a really
(03:22):
hard market because it's got husu momentum and excitement around
a real story. But it's got valuations that get you
really nervous. And the interconnectivity of the video, open ai oracle,
the vendor financing, you know, web that gets you nervous,
(03:46):
like valuation creating more valuation. And so I think you've
got a market that's that's nervous. That doesn't mean it's
not going to go a lot higher. Right The last
the last leg of great markets always surprises people and
how powerful it can be.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
And I'm not saying this is the last leg, but
it very well could be.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
So if you're looking at that in terms of the
equity market right now, how does that translate over to
the way you're thinking about crypto and where we could
be in the cycle when it comes to crypto right now,
and not every token is created equally. I know you
love Ether and Solana, and you know you're traditionally going
back to bitcoin, but what does it mean for crypto?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Well, listen, crypto traditionally has traded with four year cycles,
and that would be ending in December, right halfway between
the having is usually where our peaks have been. And
you know the end of twenty seventeen, if you had
sold everything in December, you look pretty smart. And the
end of twenty twenty one, if you'd sold everything in December,
you look pretty smart. And now here we are October
(04:48):
of twenty twenty five, at all time highs at almost
every token, and you're wondering should you sell everything in December?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Listen? What could be different? And I think probably is different.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
We have gotten one piece of legislation out of the
US called the Genius Act stable coin legislation. In an
all likelihood, sometime in mid October mid.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
November, we're going to get.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
The second piece of legislation, which will help define what
a security and what a commodity is and a lot
of other rules around crypto in America.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
That's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
With those two bookends of legislation, it's going to unleash
a tremendous amount of new participation, new participation in crypto.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
I mean, think about it.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
You can't use stable coins on your iPhone yet, there's
almost zero chance in the next few years you will
be able to use stable coins on your iPhone or
on your Samsung Galaxy phone or in almost any social
media app. You couldn't before because they weren't necessarily legal.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Now they are. Yeah, and once the.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
US government puts its improper tour on this industry, which
it has, we have the most crypto friendly sec one
could imagine. Yeah, you know, you're going to have this
new wave of participation and so we might not be
in the traditional cycle.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Well, this week, Brera Holding says it will be renamed
Soulmate to become a Solana based digital asset treasury following
a three hundred million dollar fundraise. It's newly named CEO,
Marco Sentori, joins us now along with Galaxy Digital's Mike Novograts.
Marco's formerly worked at Pantera and Kraken. Good to have
you on the program. Another digital asset treasury company. I
(06:42):
was shocked to see an Olga Krieff's article today actually
about Mike Novograts and other Princeton folks, that there have
been eighty five digital asset treasury companies just this year.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Why another one listen to. First of all, thank you
for having me.
Speaker 7 (06:55):
Second of all, you've got to stop looking at treasury
companies as trades.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
These things are notes.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
There are going to be as many treasury companies as
there are coin accumulation strategies over the next twenty years.
This is not a fad, it's not a trend, it's
not going away. This is a replacement for the traditional
foundation model. So historically, what digital asset innovators have had
to do is sequester all of their new coins. They're
(07:20):
newly created coins in these not for profit corporations or
nonprofits in the Caymans, in Switzerland, and basically these companies
have watched their treasury go down into the right over time.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
That is clearly an inefficient model.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
We think treasury companies are going to take the place
of these foundations over time. They have access to the
capital markets, they can be more dynamic, they can generate revenue,
and they can still steward the ecosystems that they're supposed
to steward. So you can't look at this thing like
a trade. You have to look at it as an evolution.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Having said that, and your company is rebranding itself as Soul,
which really shows that you're betting on that particular coin.
Can you explain why you've said walste will be building
on Solana and not ethereum, what's the basis for that view?
Speaker 7 (08:11):
Well, I'm a big Solona believer. Everybody at Soul made
it's a big Salona believer. Bitcoin is special. Bitcoin was
and remains and I think for a very long time
will be special. It's a new monetary system, a new
kind of money. Then Ethereum came on the scene, and
Ethereum said, you know what, there's actually more we can
do with these blockchains. We can do more than just
(08:31):
move value around. We can create smart contracts, they can
be composable, they can be decentralized, they can be hardened
against attack and interference. But then it didn't scale, it
didn't go anywhere. Ethereum still can only handle a small
number of transactions per second at the base layer, and
instead it chips off the large numbers of transactions, all
(08:52):
the high throughput, highly performance transactions to these second layer
servers where it's really just somebody else's computer, and sacrifices
so many of the values that made decentralized technology valuable.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Solana doesn't do that. Solana doesn't have to do that.
Speaker 7 (09:08):
It can scale to hundreds of thousands of transactions per
second at the base layer, at that foundational layer that
made all of those promises about financial services and what
financial services could do with blockchains. So when I discovered Solana.
I wasn't as early as the party as some I'll
tell you that, but it was a light bulb moment
that went off.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
This is clearly the future.
Speaker 7 (09:30):
This is what sophisticated high throughput transactions are going to
run on in the future.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Mike. I want to bring you into the conversation because
Tim mentioned they're about eighty five companies that are involved
in dahs, and you've said that you don't think all
these dhs will be successful. But if you get critical mass,
enhance yield on the underlying token, and build the ecosystem,
I think they're net positives for crypto. These are public
companies that will be around for a long time.
Speaker 6 (09:53):
Mike. What will determine success and longevity?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Listen, I think you're going to need scale, right because
scale begets scale, and so you know, you think of
something like micro strategy, which came out first, and now
strategy it's got scale, and you know it will it will.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Probably What do these companies do?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
They bring energy into the ecosystem in lots of ways.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
And what I.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Was a little wrong on early on, and then it
dawned on me, was the access to capital through the
equity infrastructure is so much greater than it was through
the crypto infrastructure. Right, crypto' is a twelve year old business,
and equities have been.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Around for a long long time.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That the wonderful thing about these data center company, of
these treasury companies is they've brought in so much more
capital at a quick pace.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
And that capital is what will build this industry.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
And so I think in each of these buckets, like
I love the fact that that Marco is doing another
Salona company because it's also based in a different part
of the world. It's going to attack a different set
of new investors. You know, we're you know, foreign Industries
is a very US focused investor base and company, but
(11:21):
it's a global technology and so in some ways, the
more of the merrier, I think, in order to survive,
you're you're going to have to prove to the investors
that you bring value. Right, Like listen, if we all
trade to nav it's hard to it's hard to raise
a lot more capital. And so you've got to do
something that allows you to think, hey, on our one
(11:41):
point six billion dollars of Solana, just through staking and
other things, if we can get that yield from seven
to ten percent you're making one hundred and sixty million
dollars a year in dividends, and you can use that
one hundred and sixty million dollars a year to do
other cool stuff with You can use that leverage to
maybe get a good deal on getting free free equity
in a program that's building on top of the blockchain.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
And so you're gonna have to be creative.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
We partnered and forward with Jump Capital and multi coin.
Jump is probably the premier builder of architecture, of financial
market architecture on blockchains and certainly on the Salona blockchain.
And so to me that's just thrilling. Right, there are
four companies in the world I think that can coind
(12:27):
of Pete with Jump right, like frequency trading, and so
they see the Salona blockchain as what will be the.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Foundation for capital markets in America.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And when you have the new head of the SEC,
Paul Ack and saying I want everything to move on, Shane,
that's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
I mean, it's a stunning Dear.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
We're going to talk more about the regulatory environment in
just a moment. In the meantime, I do want to
thank soulmate CEO Marco Santori for joining us on set.
Mike nograts is sticking with us now.
Speaker 8 (12:58):
I'm committed to this company because they did everything they
could to try and cancel us. They did everything they could,
I'm talking about traditional finance to put us out of business.
I was the guy that was getting hundreds of letters
from the big banks, Capital One, JP, Morgan, you know,
I mean all of them, Bank of America. I saw
Moyhand was just on trying to take away accounts for
for golf courses, for hotels, for residential buildings, for doing
(13:18):
absolutely nothing wrong. And it drove me into crypto because
I realized that there was nothing that couldn't be done
in crypto better, faster, cheaper, more transparently, and it's amazing industry.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
That was Eric Trump speaking to us last week. We're
back with Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Mike Novogratz.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
Mike, the White.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
House, as we know, has ushered in this new era
for crypto in terms of regulation and of course in
terms of this friendly stance toward growing the industry. Are
you comfortable with the First family being this act of
so active in this industry. Some make the argument that
there's an inherent conflict of interest. There.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Listen what I've said before, and I'll say again, as
long as the Trump family and their associates by the rules,
I'm completely fine by it.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
And you know, the one thing.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
About this new SEC is they're all about disclosure and
you know people, and it's a little bit of a
buyer beware SEC.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
And I would guess if you read.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Through most of the the different protocols the Trump guys
that have participated in it's everything they do is pretty
well disclosed, and so I don't think there should be
any mystery around, you know, what they're doing.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Listen, if they break the rule, if I break the rule,
we should get in trouble. But I don't think you
can you can prevent.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
The children of people in power from participating in business.
I do think it's an issue in politics right The
Democrats are going to make a big deal about what
they perceive as grift, that the president shouldn't be doing this,
and that that has a potential to slow down the
market structure bill. The far left will push. I think
(14:58):
the optimistic news is is there's enough Democrats.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Right, you know, and you can think about guys.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Like Mark Warner, Ruman, Diego's our own New York Senator
Kristian Jildebrand that see the value in crypto, that see
the political value in being seen as pro technology, pro innovation,
that market structure will get passed, and we'll probably get
(15:27):
passed with a lot more than ten Democratic votes.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So it sounds funny we spoke I just want to
jump in because there'red a ton of time. But we
spoke to Dan moorehead last week, and he made the
point of saying that it really seems like this is
important to voters. I push back a little bit on that,
because we saw in the last election a year ago
that even the pro crypto candidates weren't being messaged in
(15:51):
a way that even mentioned cryptocurrency in a lot of cases.
Do you think that Democrats now are getting the message
if you think that they have to be on board
with this type of asset, I do.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I think Democrats a lot of them think, oh shit,
crypto swayed the election Trump's way. Why were we so
dumb not to like you think that the election. I
think crypto had a big deal. If it had the
big deal in the election in the Ohio.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Senate, but was that crypto or was that just the
messaging around Bernie Moreno, I think.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
It was crypto. It was the money that crypto brought.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Crypto was the crypto pack was the single largest donor
to the Trump campaign.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
But they didn't message around crypto. They message around the border.
They message around other issues that seemed to resonate more
with voters.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
They listen. There were eighty million crypto owners in America.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
A lot of them are single issue voters who care
a lot about this issury that more people own crypto.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Than owned dogs.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
You know, can you imagine being the party that said,
I don't like dogs, I don't care about like like.
It was so dumb for Democrats to be anti crypto.
It turned people off. It was It wasn't the only thing,
but it was a pile on effect of all those
issues that swayed young men. I mean, young men voted
for Trump much more than they did in any press election.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
And young men are the crypto people.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah, yeah, go ahead, No.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
No, no, I think that's a good point, and it's
something that's a distinguishing factor.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
We only have about a minute left. I'm just wondering.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
As we wrap up our conversation here. It's been a
banner year for crypto overall? What is next on your
to do list?
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Mike, listen.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
I think any cryptocurrency company has to be looking on
Shane to figure out how do we move more of
our business on Shane. How do we bring on Shane
access to our traditional customers. Right when the head of
the SEC says we think markets should move on Shane,
we should listen. And so we spend a lot of
time here figuring out that exact question. We are building,
(17:51):
we're investing. You look at our stocks, it's gone from
the lower left to the upper right in a pretty
good line. So we feel good about you know, we're
having a great core order in a great year, and
so it's a whole different, different feeling here than it
was twelve months ago.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Hey, Mike, we only have ten seconds. You're known for
that Luna tattoo that you got a few years ago.
Did you get the Solana the sole tattoo?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yet?
Speaker 1 (18:15):
All my tattoos are are going to be kept hidden
for a long time.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, we'll keep talking about him as long as you
keep coming on. We appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
Mike Murrats, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, really appreciate
your joining us for the entirety of bloomber Crypto,
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