Byron Gilliam: What Crypto Can Learn from Wall Street (And Vice Versa)

In this episode of The Blunt Dollar, I sit down with Byron Gilliam, market strategist at BlockWorks and the writer behind one of the most engaging daily newsletters in finance. Byron spent 25 years trading global equities across financial hubs like Frankfurt, London, Paris, and New York before making the jump into crypto.

We talk about what led him to shift from trading to writing, how explaining crypto to traditional finance professionals changed his perspective, and why financial markets keep making the same mistakes.

We also cover:
 🚀 How speculation in crypto compares to past market bubbles
 📉 The biggest risks in decentralized finance that no one talks about
 📊 Why institutions are still hesitant to fully embrace crypto
 🔮 Whether DeFi and TradFi can coexist or if they are fundamentally at odds

Byron’s mix of humor, market wisdom, and sharp analysis makes this one of the most insightful conversations on crypto and traditional finance you’ll hear.

Oh, and if you haven't already... subscribe to The Blunt Dollar for more raw and honest finance conversations.

New episodes drop every other week! Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.

And last, but not least, don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignacio-ramirez-moreno-cfa/

Enjoy the episode!

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Listeners should consult a qualified financial professional before making any financial decisions.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crypto is at its best .
It's a new financial systemthat's being built from scratch.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
So do you envision a future where decentralized
finance and traditional financecoexist symbiotically, or will
one system eventually dominateover the other?
Welcome everyone.
We have Byron Gilliam, themarket strategist at BlockWorks.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me on.
I feel that we're still at apoint where decentralized

(00:25):
finance and traditional financeare two separate worlds.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Larry Fink says that everything is going to be
tokenized.
I think that would be reallyfun if you could trade equities
on public blockchains.
That would be neat If you justput all of equities on
blockchains.
Really, it's just kind of likebetter and cheaper bookkeeping.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Markets are driven by human behavior.
There's fear, there's greed,there's FOMO, there's panic.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
I just think that financial markets are so much a
function of behavioralpsychology.
People in crypto are humans.
People in TradFi are humans.
They fall into all of the samebehavioral finance traps,
whether they're trading cryptoor equities.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
This is the blonde dollar with ignacio ramirez.
Welcome everyone to a newepisode of Blunt Dollar.
We have the great pleasuretoday of hosting Byron Gilliam,
the market strategist atBlockWorks.
For those of you that don'tknow him, byron is the writer of

(01:35):
the BlockWorks daily newsletter, where he makes super
insightful and witty analysis ofcrypto markets and traditional
finance, of crypto markets andtraditional finance.
Before joining Broadworks,byron spent 25 years trading
global equities across majorfinancial hubs such as Frankfurt
, london, paris and New York,and we absolutely wanted to have

(01:55):
him on the show because hisextensive experience in
traditional finance provides hima unique perspective on the
intersections between theestablished financial systems on
one side, and the emergingdecentralized technologies and
the world of crypto.
As you can imagine, in today'sdiscussion we'll delve into
Byron's journey going fromtraditional finance to crypto,

(02:20):
but we'll also gain insightsinto the intersection between
these two worlds.
Byron, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate that super niceintro and I especially
appreciate you reading thenewsletter.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
We'll talk about that in a few minutes, but to start
with, can you tell us a bitabout yourself and what is it
that you do at Blockworksprecisely?

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, so I write a daily newsletter about crypto
for Blockworks, which is acrypto media firm.
They asked me to write itbecause at the time, about three
years ago, when I started, theywere looking for someone who
could explain crypto totraditional finance people and

(03:07):
they thought I could do thatbecause I was a traditional
finance person.
I didn't know very much aboutcrypto at the time.
I knew like Bitcoin and ETH andthat was about it.
So I've been trying to do thatwhen, which is, you know, I've
been figuring it out as I go.
So the newsletter is kind of meexplaining crypto to myself,
which I think has been helpfulfor people, and then I find

(03:29):
myself also explainingtraditional finance to crypto
people.
So I kind of I kind of tried tosit in the middle of the two
and try to explain each side tothe other.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I'm always puzzled when you say that you didn't
really know much about crypto acouple of years ago because your
newsletter is so freaking good.
I'll be honest, there's threenewsletters that I read
religiously every morning.
One is John Authors onBloomberg, another one is Robert
Armstrong on Hedge, on DFT, andyou're the third one.

(04:02):
I'm not a crypto expert, butthe way you you you bring market
stories from traditionalfinance to explain things
happening in the crypto world isjust amazing.
I mean, it's absolutely crazyhow good you're at that.
And and yeah, I'm alwayswondering like.
I guess my first question foryou is like writing this daily

(04:23):
newsletter.
It's not an easy task,especially given the amount of
depth you go into, and, ofcourse, some of the topics you
select resonate, others fallflat.
Sometimes the things that youthought would be a throwaway
line ends up being the mosttalked about part of the
newsletter.
So I guess my question for youis how do you select the topics

(04:45):
for your newsletter and whatfeedback has influenced you the
most in your content directionsince you started?

Speaker 1 (04:54):
How I select the topics.
I don't have any real process.
I think, basically, what I dois just write about what's
interesting to me and then hopethat it's interesting to other
people.
I kind of think that's the onlyway to do it, because if I'm
not interested in what I'mwriting about, then it's not
going to be interesting to read.
And I enjoy financial historyand business history and I'm old

(05:20):
enough so that I remember a lotof it, and so that's kind of
what I wind up talking about,and it seems to resonate with
people.
I think it's a good way tounderstand crypto also.
Like, crypto is a you know, atits best, it's a new financial
system that's being built fromyou know, from scratch.
So I think it makes sense totry to understand it in the, in

(05:43):
the context of financial history.
Um, and then for the secondpart of the question about what
feedback I've had, uh, I don'tknow.
I think probably, uh, thefeedback that's that I've taken
most to heart is that peopleseem to like it when, uh, like,
I talk about personal stories,like my old trading stories from
the 1990s or something likethat.

(06:05):
Um, and also just generallywhen I kind of uh, you know,
express an opinion not like notlike hot takes and stuff like
that, but just kind of likepersonalized opinions, like when
I'm just kind of being myself.
People seem to like it, which Ireally appreciate because that
makes it more fun to write.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, I mean for sure I can say as a reader that I
love when you bring stuff fromthe early 90s.
I mean you've been a trader, ortrading at least equities, for
around 25 years, which is ofcourse, no joke.
You've seen markets change,you've seen rules change,
regulations change and the wholeindustry transform.

(06:46):
So maybe another question I hadfor you was like, looking back
at your trading days, was therea defining moment that really
stuck with you and the way youapproach financial markets?

Speaker 1 (06:59):
I don't think so.
I mean, I traded through thedot-com crash and through the
great financial crisis, so thosewere, you know, formative
experiences for me.
I'm not sure I actually learnedanything useful from them.
Um, you know jim grant, thefinancial journalist.

(07:20):
He's got a line about uh,scientific knowledge being
cumulative and uh, financeknowledge being cyclical, the
idea being that, uh like, nobodyever learns anything in in
finance, you have to relearneverything.
Like the, the dot-com bubblewas the same as like the
railroad bubble, like therailroad bubble in the 1880s.

(07:41):
You know if that, if you knowif there was some science
discovered in the 1880s, youwouldn't have to rediscover it
in the 1990s, right, but infinance, you've got to go
through the same thing every 30years, or something like that.
You know collectively and Ithink that's true for me
personally also like I have torelearn, not to buy bubbles in
every single bubble.
So maybe I don't, maybe that'sa lesson, maybe the lesson is

(08:03):
that there are no lessons bubble.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
So maybe I don't know , maybe that's a lesson, Maybe
the lesson is that there are nolessons.
Yeah, I think that's put on.
The one sentence that resonateswith me around the same topic
is that markets have shortmemory.
So I feel like we do learn thelesson, but then we forget about
it, which is the same as notlearning, I guess.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
There's a great line from Stanley Druckenmiller also
about in like 1999, he had beenshort tech the entire time the
dot coms, and then, like at theend of 1999, he flipped long and
just got completely blown upand afterwards, talking about it
afterwards, he said somebodyasked him like what did you

(08:42):
learn from that?
And he said I didn't learnanything because I already knew
I wasn't supposed to do that,but I did it anyway why did he
do it then, gosh um, that's,that's the cyclical, uh the
cyclical nature of financialknowledge.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
I think yeah, and and that's, I guess, the beauty and
the curse of financial markets,right, like I feel, whenever
there's like a new breed ofinvestors and analysts and so on
, they have to experience thesethings by themselves.
Because it's kind of annoyingsometimes when you hear people
that have been in the industryfor like 30, 40 years saying, oh

(09:15):
yeah, but you didn't livethrough the 90s or the 2000s and
this and that, and you kind ofthink to yourself, well, you
know, like there's other thingshappening now, and then you
actually get to experience someof those volatile periods and
then you understand, oh okay,that's what they were talking
about.
I mean, yeah, I guess there aresome lessons to be taken from

(09:36):
that, and some of the thingsthat happened back then are
happening now.
So for sure there is value,because history has this
tendency of repeating itself insome way.
What is the sentence?
History doesn't repeat itself,but it tends to rhyme.
So I think that's very, veryspot on, that you have this way

(10:06):
of making experienced,traditional finance
professionals sometimes feellike you know, interested in the
crypto world, that they maybedon't understand fully.
But also, you know, by readingyour newsletter sometimes they
feel or we feel a bit likebeginners, because there's the
jargon, there's the tech,there's all this constant
innovation in the centralizedfinance and it's a little bit

(10:27):
easy to get lost.
But, as we were saying, I thinkyou're really good at bridging
that gap with your writing inmaking the decentralized finance

(10:48):
concept understandable to thosecoming from a traditional
finance background.
What is the hardest thing tomake them understand?

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, I guess I don't really think about it that way.
I really just think abouttrying to understand it myself
and trying to express things ina way that it makes it clear in
my own head and then I hopepeople come along, um for the
ride.
Uh, it is difficult because, uh, my audience is like runs the
entire spectrum, from cryptonative to you know, crypto

(11:16):
newbie, um, so it's hard to knowlike how to uh, um, uh, you
know how how much of the jargonto explain and stuff.
I lean in the direction of notexplaining the jargon because it
just kind of makes for boringreading and I know I lose some

(11:36):
people with that.
So I have to strike a betterbalance, I think.
But the newsletter is like athousand words long every day.
So if I, you know, if I, if Iexplained it right down to the
uh nuts and bolts, it would get,uh, you know, and start reading
like a, like you you know, aninstruction manual to, to set up

(11:57):
your VCR or something like that.
Um, so, yeah, I don't knowthat's, that's a, but I
generally just try to make itclear to myself and hope that
people will appreciate theeffort at least.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
That's pretty cool, and you're basically your ideal
customer persona and you justwrite what you want to read
about and it turns out that alot of people are also
interested in the same thing, soit's a win-win.
That's pretty cool.
I want to ask you anotherquestion about this transition
that you made, because obviously, going from trading equities to

(12:35):
writing about crypto is quite ashift.
Most people wouldn't wake upone day and think, hey, you know
what, I'm going to become acrypto newsletter guy.
And I think, hey, you know what, I'm going to become a crypto
newsletter guy.
So my question is whatmotivated you to shift from
traditional finance, after morethan two decades working in
there, to becoming a cryptonewsletter writer at BlockWorks?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, I didn't really plan it out, it was just kind
of something that happened.
I was, you know, I kind of agedout of trading.
Um, it's kind of a youngperson's game and also, trading
is not as fun as it used to be.
Uh, like, trading in the 1990swas super fun, uh, and then in
the early 2000s, the algorithmsstarted to take over.

(13:20):
Uh, you know, before, like, say, 2005, I would say, when you
were trading, uh, you just hadto be like a little bit better
than the next guy, and by 2010,you had to be better than a
machine, which is impossible,really.
Um, so, uh, the job wasn't, youknow, got decreasingly fun for,

(13:41):
for one thing and two, just forpersonal reasons, I had moved
to North Carolina and was kindof poking around looking for
something new to do and I just I, this is.
This is like the boringestcrypto origin story of all time,
but I just clicked on aLinkedIn job ad for Blackworks
and replied to it.

(14:03):
Sometimes I think I need to tolike, make up a new origin story
.
I think my, my linkedin storyis actually so banal that it's
interesting, um, and I think ittells you something about crypto
.
Is that like crypto being stillvery new.
Like you don't really have toknow anything about it to
contribute.
Like you can just jump in evennow, like that was three and a
half years ago.

(14:23):
Three and a half three yearsago you really didn't need to
know anything about it tocontribute.
Like you can just jump in evennow, like that was three and a
half years ago.
Three and a half three yearsago you really didn't need to
know anything, but even now Ithink you can.
You can jump in and contributewithout really having any prior
knowledge, which is verydifferent than traditional
finance.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
That's interesting.
Yeah, kind of being a new assetclass levels up the whole thing
.
Everyone is a beginner prettymuch.
Kind of being a new asset classlevels up the whole thing.
Everyone is a beginner prettymuch.
These assets haven't beenaround in previous financial
crises and so on, so everyone islearning along the way.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Well, I think that's what makes it fun and
interesting, I think.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I'm also, as you know, a big LinkedIn fan, so
thumbs up for LinkedIn forfinding your job.
You can find a new job viaLinkedIn, so cool stuff.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
I think that was also the first job I ever got that
wasn't from somebody that I knew, which was different for me
also Nice.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
So I want to talk about again.
Now we're going to bounce tothe part of the conversation
where we're going to becomparing a lot of traditional
finance to decentralized finance, because I think really that's
where you have a uniqueperspective and great stories to
share.
So, starting with marketpsychology, you know as well as

(15:40):
anyone that markets are drivenby human behavior.
There's fear, there's greed,there's FOMO, there's panic, and
what I've noticed is thatdecentralized finance and
traditional finance and theinvestors in there don't always
behave the same way.
So, obviously, DeFi,decentralized finance, move at

(16:01):
super high speeds.
A lot of times they're fueledby speculation and memes, whilst
traditional finance has allthese guardrails, circuit
breakers and, of course,institutional players that
usually bring stability in bothworlds.

(16:28):
How does investor psychologydiffer between traditional
financial markets and theemerging decentralized finance
space?

Speaker 1 (16:31):
That's a good question, I mean, I guess two
things spring to mind.
One is maybe the very firstnewsletter, I don't know.
In the first week or something,I wrote a newsletter about uh
option smiles, which I know iskind of technical, um, but
basically in um, in equities, uh, puts are always more expensive

(16:58):
than calls.
Like out of the money, puts arealways more expensive than
calls and that's because peopleare uh, people use options to
hedge their downside.
Uh, like, everyone is naturallylong with equities and their
you know retirement accounts ortheir hedge fund or whatever.
So the purpose of options is touh, is to hedge your downside

(17:19):
in case something goes terriblywrong.
Um, and in crypto, one of thefirst things I noticed was that
it's the opposite Call optionsare more expensive than put
options, which was like almostdisorienting to me.
It just looks so weird and Ijust figured out that that's
because, like, nobody's hedgingtheir downside.

(17:41):
In crypto, everyone is hedgingtheir upside, if that makes
sense.
Or, you know, they're usingoptions.
Well, they're not using optionsto hedge, they're just using
options for leverage, becausesomeone, you know crypto people
are so excited about crypto thatit's not enough just to be long
, they have to be levered long.
So I think that's like a realdifference in psychology.

(18:02):
Other than that, though, Iwould say there's more
similarities and dissimilarities, probably.
Um, I just think that financialmarkets are so much a function
of behavioral psychology, um,and you know it's.
You know, people in crypto arehumans, people in trad fire
humans, uh, so they have all thesame, you know, they fall into

(18:23):
all of the same behavioralfinance traps, uh, whether
they're trading crypto or orequities what is the most common
, uh human behavior bias thatyou've witnessed in in crypto,
oh uh that I've witnessed incrypto I don't know, maybe the I
don't know, I would have tothink about that one like the
classic one would be the unitbias, where, uh, like you know,

(18:48):
people on tiktok or whateverwill get excited about buying a
crypto because it costs you knowone one hundredth of a cent, or
one one millionth of a cent, orsomething like that.
Um, instead of you know acrypto that costs ten dollars or
something, or they think thateth is cheaper than Bitcoin,
because Bitcoin trades at$100,000 and ETH trades at
$2,000.
So, I don't know, that's onethat springs to mind.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
The one that comes to me is obviously herd behavior
and FOMO.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Oh, yes, yeah, FOMO.
Fomo is universal, but it'sprobably more pronounced in
crypto than it is in equities,even now.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I love what you were talking, or what you were
explaining about the smile,because I'm a fixed income guy,
I'm a fixed income advisor andyou know I tend to look at my
asset class as a good complementto more volatile asset classes
that historically, you know,have been used by investors to
add, let's say, more alpha toportfolios such as equities,

(19:52):
whilst now, with the arrival ofcrypto, yeah, like equities is
almost like the conservativepart of the portfolio of a lot
of investors and they look forthat alpha via this emerging
asset class.
So, yeah, I guess the world ischanging.
So right now, I feel that we'restill at a point where

(20:12):
decentralized finance andtraditional finance are two
separate worlds.
One is open, decentralized andexperimental.
The other is very structured,very heavily regulated and
deeply entrenched in the globaleconomy.
But there's a growingconversation about whether these
two worlds, these two systems,can actually work together or
not.
So do you envision a futurewhere decentralized finance and

(20:36):
traditional finance coexist,symbiotically, or will one
system eventually dominate overthe other?
Hey there, quick favor to ask Ifyou enjoy the blunt dollar, the
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The easiest way to support theshow is by tapping that
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(20:57):
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Thanks so much for being hereand let's keep these great
finance conversations going.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
I don't know.
I go back and forth on that one.
Larry Fink says that everythingis going to be tokenized, and I
think that would be really fun.
If you could trade equities onpublic blockchains, that would
be neat, and there's things thatyou can do with tokenized
securities that you can't dowith equities.

(21:34):
Like you know, you can use themfor collateral borrow against
them.
You can, uh, you can stake themand get extra dividends and
things like that um, but I don'tknow, like, if you know if, if
shares are tokenized, uh,they're still going to be fully
regulated and you're still goingto have to be kyc to trade them
.
Um, so if you just put all ofequities on blockchains, really

(21:59):
it's just kind of like betterand cheaper bookkeeping, so
that's like not super excitingto me.
It could like cost.
It could cut costs a lot, um,and there are, like there are
people going in that direction.
Um, just yesterday, I spoke tothe guys from Prometheum, who
are very controversial in crypto, but they're building a fully

(22:22):
regulated exchange for cryptosecurities, so things that are
registered as securities.
So it's possible we go in thatdirection.
I kind of think, though, thatthey're just going to develop in
two different directions, andin DeFi, the things that are
interesting are things that havebeen created natively, you know

(22:45):
, not bringing real world assetson chain, but just new assets
that have been created withinthe crypto sphere and that just
trade on their own.
But then you know, on the otherhand, that probably is not
going to be unregulated forevereither.
So I don't know, yeah, maybe itwill just end up in a big kind

(23:08):
of mushy middle somewhere.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, I have a hard time thinking that any of the
two will dominate over the other, quite frankly.
But what I find interesting isthat, yeah, over the time, there
seems to be more and moreinstitutional adoption.
Right, Like some time ago noone wanted to talk about crypto

(23:32):
from the big financialinstitutions, and now it seems
that more and more people areopening up to the idea of having
something to do with it.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, I'm really curious to see how that will go.
It doesn't seem like theinstitutions have gotten very
far past Bitcoin as of yet, andmostly they just own ETFs of
Bitcoin.
When crypto develops somenative assets that are unique
and attractive enough that itforces traditional investors to

(24:05):
participate because they justfeel like they can't miss out,
that would be the realinstitutional adoption.
I think, like Larry Fink'svision of bringing existing
securities on chain, that's notsuper interesting to me, but if
crypto natively develops someassets that are genuinely good

(24:28):
investments and that forcesinstitutions to come on chain,
that's what would be interesting.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, I'm looking forward for that and obviously
I'm also really curious to seehow the topic of liquidity pans
out in this whole thing.
I'm a fixed income person andliquidity is, of course,
incredibly important for bonds,given that it's an
over-the-counter market, as youknow.
So, yeah, I would argue that intraditional finance, liquidity

(25:00):
is everything.
It keeps markets moving andsupports investors' confidence
to be able to get in and out ofany position.
But in the centralized finance,I have the feeling that
liquidity works a little bitdifferently.
It's more fragmented, it'ssometimes reliant on certain
incentives and, more importantly, it seems to sometimes

(25:21):
disappear overnight if thoseincentives dry up.
You wrote about this, I think,in one of your dailies called
Cash is Still King.
So question about liquidity howdoes the role of liquidity in
decentralized finance compare toits function in traditional
financial markets?

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, I guess there are two different kinds of
liquidity maybe, or twodifferent issues in liquidity in
crypto.
There's the centralizedexchanges, which look and feel
like a traditional equitiesexchange, except that the
liquidity there is veryfractured.

(25:59):
So, um, you know the you knowbitcoin can trade at one price
on coinbase and at a completelydifferent price on binance, um,
which you know doesn't happen inexact in equities, at least in
us equities.
You've got the reg nms where,no matter where you place your
order, you're going to executeon the whatever exchange has the

(26:21):
best price.
And crypto is not like that.
Crypto, the liquidity isfragmented amongst all of these
centralized exchanges, which isjust weird for a traditional
person.
That you know you have to thinkabout what exchange you should
be trading on.
That's just just very different.
About what exchange you shouldbe trading on.
That's just very different.
I think that's part of thereason why the traded volume

(26:46):
numbers are really inflated incrypto.
Bitcoin trades $40 billion orsomething a day, which makes it
sound incredibly liquid, butsome large portion of that is
just people arbitraging betweencoinbase and finance and stuff
like that, so it's not realliquidity, um, so that's the one
issue is the centralizedexchanges, where the liquidity

(27:07):
is much more fractured than itwould be in traditional finance.
And then there's thedecentralized exchanges which
are, you know, growing in marketshare and those are mostly
based on automated market makerswhere the liquidity is passive.
You know it's passive marketmaking and I think that really
changes the way things trade.

(27:29):
I think that makes things moremean reverting Things can, you
know, go up more than you wouldexpect them to, uh, because the
mass of you know the marketmakers are just just passively
providing liquidity, uh, andthen when people notice that it
just it reverts back to the meanvery quickly, um, feels like

(27:50):
things just trade differently ondecentralized exchanges for
that reason yeah, I think forsure, like this is something
that, uh, traditional financepeople are looking at very, very
closely, and if, if we want umdecentralized finance to be more
widely adopted, um liquidityhas to be there in a stable and

(28:11):
reliable way, otherwise, the oneone one thing that, uh crypto
is good at is creating liquidityin the long tail of tiny assets
, and that's because of theautomated market makers.
There's a market for thingsimmediately as soon as they
start trading, even if it's gotlike a $300,000 market cap or

(28:31):
something like that.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Which is not the case with equities, obviously.
So maybe that's one advantageof crypto liquidity over
traditional finance.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, that's interesting and talking about,
yeah, like those tiny, tinyassets on the tails.
Obviously, there's been a lotof tokens that have been issued
over time and I wanted to askyou something about that.
So if you compare tokens tostocks, it seems that they both
represent an investment intosomething, but their
fundamentals are very different.

(29:03):
Stocks gives you ownership in acompany with usually revenue
and, hopefully, profits, whiletokens they can represent a lot
of different things, like usagerights, governance or even just
pure speculation.
And how should investorsapproach valuation in some of

(29:27):
these assets in the centralizedfinance compare to traditional
finance?
Are the models that we use inthe traditional finance world
applicable or do we needcompletely different frameworks?

Speaker 1 (29:40):
I think they're very applicable, um, and I feel I've
always thought that I've alwaysthought they were applicable,
because I don't reallyunderstand how else you can
think about valuing an assetother than as some net present
value of its future cash flowsor future dividends.
Even, um, like, to my mind,even stocks that don't ever pay

(30:03):
a dividend still, theirintrinsic value is still the net
present value of their futuredividends.
Um, and I think you shouldthink about crypto tokens that
way as well, at least the cryptotokens that, uh, look more like
businesses that, um, you know,charge fees and collect revenues
or at least will do sometime inthe future or theoretically

(30:25):
should do.
Um, and I think there's therethe.
I think people are coming aroundto that point of view in crypto
, maybe just because there'smore people coming over from
traditional finance.
I'm not sure, but people aretalking about valuation metrics
a lot more than they used to,and those valuation metrics are

(30:45):
just the same as in traditionalfinance, because there's no
other way to do it, really, withthe exception of meme coins,
where there obviously is novaluation.
There are no fundamentals tospeak of at all.
In meme coins, that's clearlyjust a game, but for non-meme

(31:05):
coins, the tokens of protocolsthat purport to do something.
I don't think there's any wayto value them other than using
the same valuation metrics thatpeople use in traditional
finance.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Maybe new ones will emerge over time, but you got to
start from somewhere, I guess.
And talking about value andvaluations, I wanted to ask you
about investment philosophy.
So value investing intraditional finance is huge and
very well understood.
You find an underpriced assetwith strong fundamentals and you
hold it for the long run.
And in crypto that, of course,is a little bit trickier because

(31:44):
a lot of speculation is present, as you were alluding to, and,
most importantly, a lot ofprojects don't even have like
proper revenue streams.
So how do traditionalinvestment strategies, such as
value investing, translate intothe decentralized finance space?

Speaker 1 (32:06):
I think they translate like you know, one
thing that I think is that mostvalue investing in traditional
finance is actually trading.
Um, so usually, when, whenvalue investors are talking, you
know, are giving their thesisfor a stock like they, you know,

(32:26):
like whatever refining companybecause it trades on eight times
earnings or something like that, like, usually, what they want
to do is they want to buy it oneight times earnings, convince
everyone that it's too cheap andthen sell it on 12 times
earnings, like that's.
That's not really investing,that's trading, right, it's just
.
It's just a, you know, tradingfrom a valuation perspective,

(32:47):
which is totally fine, um, butit's maybe, uh, a little bit
less benjamin graham, uh, warrenbuffett, pure theory, uh, than
people make it out to be.
Um, and you know, in crypto,that's harder to do because
there just are not that manycryptos that are currently
earning, you know, revenue, butthere's an increasing number of

(33:10):
them and, uh, I think you can uhinvest in crypto.
Uh, you know, from theperspective of what is this
going, what is this protocolgoing to earn over its lifetime
and how is?
How are those revenues gonnacome back to token holders?
Um, it's just harder because,one, there's not that many that
make revenue now, uh.

(33:32):
And two, everything is justreally, really expensive.
I mean not literally everything, uh, but most things.
If you look at them from atraditional finance point of
view, they're just inexplicably,inexplicably expensive, uh.
Which makes you know, makes youthink well, I just, if I'm
going to trade this, I've justgot to trade it on momentum or
sentiment or something, uh,because the value is so far in

(33:53):
the future, uh, and so difficultto to determine, determine that
it almost seems not worthtrying.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
I think what is tricky with this whole thing is
that speculation and bubbles arehard to measure or pinpoint
right, because you never reallyare 100% sure you're in a bubble
until the bubble bursts, Iguess.
And of course, traditionalfinance has had its fair share

(34:24):
of hype cycles.
We had meme stocks, we hadSPACs, we had the dot-coms and
so on, but the central financehas taken this to a whole
different level.
We've even seen projectslaunching tokens before they
even had a product, but at thesame time, some of these tokens
that have been launchedeventually become valuable

(34:46):
because there's something behindit.
So I guess my question for youis at the end of the day, what
is it about decentralizedfinance that makes it more prone
to speculative bubbles?
Is it the, the, the fact thatis a new asset class and there's
less regulation?
Is it, uh, just the fact thatit's still very new and there
hasn't been, uh, widespreadadoption yet?

(35:09):
What?
What is it?
Um?

Speaker 1 (35:12):
yeah, I think, uh, I think previous crypto bubbles
were, uh, uh, largely aboutnovelty.
Um, like the original Bitcoinbubble, um, was, you know, it
was just this new thing and andyou can, uh, you know, when
something is new, you can justimagine these blue sky scenarios

(35:33):
.
Um, I think that was the samewith the NFT bubble bubble and
the defi bubble, uh, where, likeyou said, it's just, it's just
a function of of the novelty.
It's new, nobody knows whatit's worth, so you can, you know
, you can kind of dream thatit's worth infinity.
Uh, I think that's changed justrecently, though, like just in

(35:54):
the last few months even.
I think I feel like this um,crypto cycle and I shouldn't
call them bubbles really, like,like bitcoin is not a bubble.
I don't think, because bubblesdon't like continually reinflate
, right, bubbles generally, oncethey pop, then they're done and
then the next thing has got tobe a bubble and something
different, uh, but if you have,you know, if you continually
have bubbles in the same thing,then then it's probably not, you

(36:16):
know, an investing bubble.
Um, but crypto has a lot of,like, mini bubbles, uh, and uh,
this most recent one, uh, I feellike something has changed and
it's probably because it is soeasy to create cryptos.
Now there are something over 30million cryptocurrencies now.

(36:39):
Oh wow, yeah, I mean, you know99% of them are just ephemeral.
They get created and they gostraight to zero and basically
nobody ever trades them.
But they're just so easy tocreate.
And there's, you know, brianArmstrong at Coinbase the other
day said that you know they'relooking at a million cryptos a
week, a million new cryptos aweek, which is impossible for

(37:00):
them to parse and decide whatshould be on the exchange.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Almost as many as new podcasts.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
No, not that many.
Yeah, so I think what's changedis that it's become so easy to
create cryptocurrencies, is thatthe bubbles come and go very,
very quickly, like we mostrecently had the ai agent bubble
, which only lasted for like Iwant to say, it lasted for like
three months, which is, you know, not a very good bubble.

(37:28):
Um, and I think the problem wasthat, like, uh, the supply side
can respond so quickly todemand.
There was suddenly demand forai agents and the demand just
got out.
There was just a tsunami of newai agent tokens for people to
buy and it just it just squashedthe bubble before it could
really get going.

(37:49):
Um, so I think that's maybe thatmight be a uh, a feature going
forward in crypto and somethingthat makes it different from
traditional finance, likeequities.
If you really want a bubblelike there's got to be something
, some exciting topic like ai,and then vcs have to invest in a
bunch of money in a bunch ofcompanies, and then they have to
go through a few series offundraising and then they have

(38:09):
to ipo and people still have tobe excited about the thing to
buy the ipo.
So, like it takes you know, ittakes a long time for an
equities bubble to really getgoing.
And even now, how many AIstocks are there to invest in?
There's not very many, right.
But in crypto, the supply side,the supply of tokens, can just

(38:32):
respond instantly to whateverthe hot topic is, and I think
that maybe might make cryptoactually less prone to large
bubbles, at least Like it'sprone to lots of little mini
bubbles, but it might make itless prone to very large bubbles
.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
So, talking about AI and hot topics at the moment,
obviously AI is everywhere, bothin traditional finance and
decentralized finance.
You were saying, moment,obviously AI is everywhere, both
in traditional finance anddecentralized finance.
You were saying that, yeah,every project is lapping
AI-powered on their decks and,of course, a lot of times, the

(39:08):
AI part is kind of questionable.
But everyone you know loves agood buzzword and jump in
whatever narrative is dominatingmarkets at the moment.
But at the same time I mean I'ma big fan of AI.
I think it can legitimatelychange the way the world
operates.
For sure it's going to happenin traditional finance and I can

(39:31):
only imagine it's going to bethe same in decentralized
finance.
So, in the decentralizedfinance world, how do you think
we can differentiate betweengenuine innovation when it comes
to AI from just speculativehype?
What are really the use caseswhere you've thought, ah, this

(39:51):
makes sense, Definitely this isgoing in the good direction now
that we're putting AI into it,compared to other use cases when
you're like, okay, this doesn'tmake any sense?

Speaker 1 (40:05):
I think crypto has matured to the point where you
can start weeding things outaccording to the revenue that
they generate.
That wasn't you know, thatwasn't the case until recently,
probably, um, uh, but there areenough projects in crypto where

(40:26):
people are paying to use them,uh, and you know that that is.
That is maybe the ultimateindication that they're you know
, the thing is useful.
If people, if something isgenuinely useful, then then
people are going to want to useit.
Um, and there are enoughprojects in crypto now where
people are genuinely willing topay money to use them, uh, that

(40:50):
I think you can use that as a,as a as a filter that filters
out almost everything like Likethere's.
You know, you can generallyassume that, whatever the latest
topic in crypto, you cangenerally assume that it's hype,
but there are a few things thatare attracting genuine users

(41:12):
and charging fees, and peopleare willing to pay them.
So I think that's probably theway to separate the substance
from the hype.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
That's it.
So, yeah, we're talking abouthype, we're talking about
bubbles, corrections, so I guessan underlying topic in all of
this is risk, and I wanted toask you about that too.
So, obviously, risk iseverywhere in finance.
Whenever you start your studiesin university, they tell you
about this famous equation thatthe higher the risk, the higher

(41:42):
the potential return.
Of course, and that getsingrained within your brain, but
it seems that the risk we'retaking in traditional finance
and in decentralized finance arefundamentally very different.
So in traditional finance, alot of it comes from central
bank policies, from geopolitics,regulatory shifts,

(42:05):
institutional failures such aswhat we saw in 2008.
While in decentralized finance,it's a completely different
game.
We're talking about smartcontract vulnerabilities,
protocol exploits and the famousliquidity crisis of things that
can blow up overnight, as wewere just alluding to.

(42:25):
So they both have risks, thetwo systems, but they manifest
in very different ways.
And my question for you is howdo the risks in decentralized
finance compare to the ones intraditional finance?
What are the parallels thatyou've witnessed between the two

(42:46):
, despite their very differentnature?
Hey there, quick ad break.
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(43:08):
I'd love to hear from you.
And now back to the show.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
I guess the not sure about the parallels.
I guess the.
The difference to me, basically, is that, you know, in
decentralized finance, I thinkthe risks are mostly about
self-custody, you know, holdingyour assets in, you know, in
your own digital wallet.
Like, self-custody still givesme the heebie-jeebies.

(43:38):
I hate it, um, and it likestops me from putting any real
substantial amount of money intocrypto, because I'm just, you
know, worried about phishingattacks or losing the piece of
paper with my private keys on itor signing a transaction that I
shouldn't sign.
Um, you know, when you're, whenyou're doing something in

(43:59):
decentralized finance, there'sall these pop-ups.
You're always signingtransactions and you like should
look at them very carefully andmake sure, but I just, you know
, I just I don't have patiencefor it, so I just like basically
click every pop-up, uh, whichis terrible, opsec, um, but I
think that's yeah, that that'sthe.
The major, the major security uhconcern is is is the risks of

(44:23):
self-custody?
Um, there, you know there aresystematic risks also, like
there, I guess there could be amajor bug in the solana code or
something like that.
They, I think they call it uh,is it zero day bugs or something
like that.
Um, like there could be, uh,there could be a bug in the
bitcoin code base or something,or the eth code base that nobody

(44:44):
has discovered yet.
I don't really think aboutthose because it that seems like
it seems pretty unlikely.
Um, there's also 51 attacks incrypto, which has never happened
on a large blockchain at allthings, so I don't really think
about that.
Quantum maybe I guess we canworry about quantum computers.

(45:05):
I guess maybe the I don't knowmaybe the parallel to
traditional finance.
I guess I don't really thinkabout the systematic risks in
traditional finance either.
I guess I guess probably youknow the things to worry about
would be the things that younever think about, like maybe a
major cyber attack or a solarflare that wipes out the
electricity grid, the blackswans.

(45:29):
Black swans or North Koreahacking the DTCC or something
like that, like that, um, butyeah, I don't know.
I feel like they're all.
They're all, uh, black swanenough that you, like you, can't
even think about what they're.
You know, if you can imaginewhat they are, then that's
probably not something you needto worry about and um.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
I wanted to ask you about something you very briefly
touched in that answer, whichwas was transactions and I guess
also the transparency and theanonymity of all of these.
So one of DeFi's biggestselling points is transparency.
Every transaction is on chain,it's visible to everyone, but at

(46:16):
the same time, defi embracesanonymity and you have all these
pseudonymous developers,private wallets, permissionless
access, and on the other hand,you have, in traditional finance
, completely the opposite, likeeverything is about KYCs,
anti-money laundering, compliant, monitored by regulators, and

(46:36):
so on.
So my question is Is DeFireally more transparent or is it
just a different kind ofopacity with?

Speaker 1 (46:46):
the mainstream without privacy, like even just
for basic payments.
Companies are not going toaccept payments on a transparent

(47:10):
blockchain where all theircompetitors can see exactly what
their revenue is, or somethinglike that.
Big institutional investors, Ithink, are not going to want all
of their transactions to be ontransparent blockchains where
people can see what they'regoing to, what they're doing.
So for defy to go trulymainstream, it would need some

(47:32):
level of um, privacy, but that'sdifferent than anonymity, right
?
Like I, I, uh, I don't thinkthat DeFi can be truly anonymous
, or at least I don't think itwill be.
The anonymity wouldn't beaccepted by regulators and stuff

(47:53):
.
So you can, you could have ablockchain where everything is
based on ZK proofs.
Nobody can see what anyone elseis doing, but everyone can
confirm with a ZK proof that youknow you are, who you say you
are and you know you're, maybeeven that you're, that you're
not a North Korean hacker orwhatever.

(48:14):
But I can't imagine thatregulators are ever going to
accept a ZK proof for KYC,because you'd have to be some
kind of like PhD mathematicianto understand whether it even
makes sense.
So I think there's going to bean issue, probably over the next
couple of years where there aregenuinely there are blockchains

(48:36):
that genuinely preserveanonymity.
I just don't think those willever be accepted by regulators
and law enforcement.
So my guess would be thatthere's going to be some kind of
fork in the road where there'sjust like there's a dark web and
the Internet there's.
I'm guessing that there's goingto be like a dark crypto

(48:57):
ecosystem and a public cryptoecosystem.
That's, that's, yeah, that's.
That's's not happened yet, butI feel like in the next couple
of years that that will probablybe a theme so, talking about
regulators, there's this conceptthat I find interesting, which
is regulatory arbitrage.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
So defy has this reputation of in some instances
because it's so new uh, beingable to sidestep regulation,
which some call innovation, andothers say it's an arbitrage
opportunity, and I guess it'spart of the reason why it makes
DeFi so exciting, but also itmakes a lot of people very, very

(49:35):
nervous, especially when youcompare it to traditional
finance, which is, as we said,healthy, regulated, strict
compliance rules, all biginstitutions are kept in check
and so on, and I guess somepeople argue that DeFi's
regulatory gray area gives it abit of a competitive edge, while

(49:57):
others think it's like aticking bomb.
What's your take?
Do you see DeFi's ability tooperate outside these
traditional regulations as asustainable advantage over
traditional finance, or is it avulnerability that could lead to
huge setbacks in in the future?

Speaker 1 (50:16):
uh, probably both.
Um, I think the the good thingabout regulatory arbitrage and
regulatory gray areas is that itallows people in crypto to just
try things, um, you know, tonot ask permission, to just set
up an exchange and see whathappens.
Like there's a new one calledhyper liquid, which is which you

(50:37):
know it's got like about.
It runs on about four nodes inin singapore, which is
effectively like a centralizedexchange, except on crypto rails
, and that would never fly withUS regulators.
But they're trying it and it'spopular and maybe it'll get
decentralized in the future downthe road or something like that

(50:59):
.
So, yeah, I think the advantageof that gray area is that people
in crypto can just try stuff,throw things on the wall and see
what sticks, um, but there'snot a lot in the industry that's
genuinely permissionless, um,because that's just very hard.
Like developers can be arrested, uh, front ends can be shut

(51:21):
down and almost everybody incrypto like 99.8% of crypto is,
you know people using front ends, except for the, you know the
bots and stuff.
Um, it's just very hard todevelop something with full
anonymity, uh, and it's veryhard for people to access DeFi
code without some intermediary,making it a lot, um, simpler for

(51:44):
people.
So yeah, so I think the benefitof the regulatory gray area is
that you can just try stuff.
But if the industry wants to be, you know, genuinely cypherpunk
and genuinely permissionlessand not have to, you know, ask
for permission from anygovernments, then it would have
to, uh, you know, ask forpermission from any governments,
uh, then it would have to go inin a different direction, like

(52:07):
that dark web um direction thatI that I just mentioned.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
the last question yeah, which is definitely not
what uh, at least most of thepeople are uh looking forward to
.
I think everyone you know to acertain extent agrees that, uh,
if you want to have more ainstitution adoption or wider
adoption altogether, at somepoint you you gotta compromise

(52:30):
on something and, um, yeah, Imean, I, I did, there's just no
way around it.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Uh, you have, yeah, I think ultimately there might be
a uh, yeah, there might be amore means mainstream, uh,
mainstream decentralized financethat has got official approval,
and then there might be a smallhardcore group of people that

(52:56):
are truly cypherpunk and trulyoperate without anyone's
permission.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
So one last question regarding DeFi versus StratFi.
It's a bit more philosophical,it has to do with education.
So I have the feeling thatdecentralized finance markets
itself as a solution forfinancial inclusion.
We've all heard these slogansof banking the unbanked,

(53:26):
creating access to capital,removing intermediaries, and in
theory all of that is great, butin reality I feel that DeFi is.
I mean, look, listening at you,we realize it is highly
technical.
It definitely requires acertain level of financial and
technological literacy and,quite frankly, it can be super

(53:50):
intimidating for the averageperson that is not willing to
put like a thousand hours intothis Whilst.
On the other hand, traditionalfinance, for all its bureaucracy
, they do have infrastructure inplace to serve people at scale
and most of it is relativelystraightforward.
So question for you is isdecentralized finance actually

(54:11):
making finance more inclusive oris it creating new barriers at
a different sort of privateelite group, so to speak?
Private elite group, so tospeak.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
That's a good question.
I think my answer againprobably is both.
For this one, I think itprobably depends on the
geography.
Mostly, I think crypto has donean incredible job of promoting
financial inclusion in countriesthat are suffering from
hyperinflation, uh, or where, uh, you know, the government is

(54:49):
very autocratic or something, um, but you know, if you live in
argentina or lebanon orsomething and you have the
option to opt out of your localcurrency by buying bitcoin or
mostly people buy stable coinsbecause, ironically, people just
want dollars, but that to me islike a very, you know,

(55:11):
important service and that youknow that is a way in that
crypto has really promotedfinancial inclusion In the US
and developed economies.
It maybe feels like it's theopposite, uh, in the us and
developed economies.
It maybe feels like it's theopposite, um, and you know, a
lot of the times it feels likeyou have to be part of a cabal
to make money.
As a crypto investor, most ofthe money is made by being

(55:35):
really, really early, and theonly way to be really early is
to be in the right telegram chatgroups, uh, and be in I don't
know the right discord serversor something.
I'm not in any of those, uh, soI'm never super early, um, and
that that feels like financialexclusion.

(55:55):
Uh, there's also like there'sno reliable price discovery in
crypto.
Uh, you know, if you're anequities investor, you can just
go buy a bunch of stocks and bepretty sure that they're, you
know, within 10 or 20 percent ofwhat they probably should be,
and then you can make money byjust waiting.

(56:15):
You know like time is theultimate arbitrage in equities
investing.
Uh, but you, you can't do thatin crypto because there's, you
know, the price discovery is soscattershot that you, you know,
if you just buy a bunch ofthings, they could be, you know,
a thousand percent overvalued.
I guess that's impossible.
They could be a hundred percentovervalued, um, uh, so, yeah,

(56:38):
so I think that's my answer.
I think there's there's, uh, alot of financial inclusion for
people who you know can, can nowopt out of their local banking
systems and their localcurrencies, but for investors,
it often feels like financialexclusion, as you said.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
I love that sentence that time is the ultimate
arbitrage opportunity intraditional finance.
It reminded me of that sentenceof uh that says, uh, timing the
market beats timing the market.
Um, yeah, that's a good one.
So, wow, that was amazing likewe we covered so many, so many

(57:15):
different parts of ofdecentralized finance.
I learned a lot.
Thanks for that.
Now I I have a couple lastquestions, but we're going to go
back to you as a person andyour writing style.
I want to ask you about thethings you learned through
writing, because I'm a creatormyself obviously at my own scale

(57:37):
, I would say so a lot lesssophisticated type of stuff.
I post just market insightsrelated to financial markets on
LinkedIn and I realized that Ilearned a lot by writing,
because you have to understandwhat you're reading, integrate
it and then actually try toexplain it so that people

(57:58):
understand it.
And my question for you is howhas writing BlogWorks newsletter
helped you refine your viewsabout traditional finance,
decentralized finance andmarkets in general?

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I was an equities trader for 25years and I've been writing
about crypto for three and a bityears.
And I've been writing aboutcrypto for three and a bit years
and I've learned 10 times moreabout finance in the three years
I've been writing about cryptothan I learned in the 25 years
of trading equities.
Part of that is because, youknow, in traditional finance,

(58:35):
like, every job is very siloed,it's kind of plug and play.
You just worry about, you know,your little tiny slice of the
thing.
You're not.
You know, if you're anequitiesities trader, you're not
like wondering about the howietest, like, is this thing I'm
trading a security?
Like, if you're trading it,it's obviously a security.
Uh, but in crypto you have to,you know, force you to think
about that.
Um, uh, which is fun.
And then, uh, as far as learningthrough writing, like that's

(58:59):
that's been, like, you know, agreat experience for me.
Um, I've think I've figured outthat if I haven't written
something, if I haven't writtenabout some topic, then I
probably shouldn't have anopinion on it.
I do, anyway, I express lots ofopinions still, but now I'm
kind of aware that thoseopinions are not very well
founded, because if you writeabout something, it forces you

(59:24):
to challenge your assumptionsand it forces you to recognize
that you're making assumptionsthat you don't even know that
you're making.
And you know, when I sit downevery day and I start writing
about a topic, I don't reallyknow what I think about the
topic until I've written it out.
I kind of find out what I thinkas I go along, and that's been
a really fun and interestingprocess.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
Like you're pushing yourself to the limit every day.
It must be a little excitingbut exhausting at the same time.
Mostly, it's fun.
Yeah, I think so too.
Writing is really fun.
And who are the authors orthinkers inside or outside
finance that had the biggestimpact on your style?

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
I don't know.
I kind of you know people.
You probably can't tell fromthis Zoom call, but I'm very
tall.
So people always ask me if Iwas good at basketball, and
usually I say I was good atbeing tall.
And if you ask me, like, ifsomebody asks, are you good at,
are you a good writer, I wouldsay I'm good at sounding like

(01:00:27):
myself.
I think that's my.
My skill as a writer is thatI'm good at sounding like myself
.
Um, so I like to think that I,I just sound like myself, but,
uh, you know, matt Levine is anobvious influence.
Um, I hope I don't sound likeMatt Levine.
I obvious influence.
Um, I hope I don't sound likematt levine.
I don't try to, but I, you know, I think matt levine very much
sounds like himself, um, and hisconversational style is, is

(01:00:50):
something that I enjoy reading.
So, uh, I guess I try to towrite that way as well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
He's one of the columnists in bloomberg yes,
yeah, and he's like I.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Sometimes I don't even think he's a real human
being, because he writes like 6000 words a day.
I have no idea how he does it.
It's amazing, he's a machine.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
I'll try to get him on the on the pod at some point
and we'll ask him the questionfrom you.
Yeah, byron, byron.
Byron is wondering this Can you, can you please shed some light
?
Are you a real person?

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Yeah, he just I like enjoy his conversational style
of writing, Um, so I guess thatwould be the, the finance person
that I, that I think of and Ienjoy reading.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
So I probably have lots of, lots of uh writing
influences that that I'm notaware of.
So I have a final question foryou that I'd like to ask to all
the guests in the Again a littlebit more philosophical.
But what's a financial lessonthat you wish you had learned
earlier in these 28, almost 30years in?

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
finance.
We're just talking about liketime in the market beats timing.
The market, um, people, I thinkpeople just naturally take more
risks when they're young, uh,you know, financial risks or
risks of any kind, uh, and thatmakes sense on the one hand
because you know, if you loseall of your money when you're 25

(01:02:18):
, then you've got another 40years to make it all back.
But and that's kind of how Ilooked at it early in my career,
like you know I'm, you know Ilost a lot of money in the
dot-com bubble because I wasjust being silly and got caught
up in it and but now, and likeyou know, maybe it didn't matter
because I was employed and Icould keep making money, it

(01:02:39):
didn't matter.
But now, when I think back andI look at just the, the value of
, you know, being staying in themarket over decades, uh, I
think people should probablythink about it the other way
around, like they should be,they should be investing very
conservatively when they'reyoung.
The, the power of compounding,uh is is really amazing, uh.

(01:03:01):
So, yeah, I think maybe if Icould, if I could impart a
lesson to my younger self, itwould be that thing about time
in the market beats time in themarket.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Yeah, no matter what you do, start, I mean that's, I
think, already like a good thing.
Start investing, because a lotof people are intimidated and
they don't know what to do andthey get paralyzed and
overwhelmed and at the end ofthe day, yeah, the sooner you
start the better.
There will be good years, therewill be bad years, but there's

(01:03:30):
compounding, the eighth wonderin the world, as Einstein once
famously said.
Apparently, some people thinkhe actually never said that, but
I like to quote that.
And yeah, and let thecompounding do its magic.
Byron, it's been amazing.
What a amazing conversation.
That was great.
Thank you for sharing all thoseinsights.

(01:03:50):
For those of you that are notsubscribed to Byron's bloggers
newsletter, please do so.
I promise you won't regret.
It's incredibly insightful andeven if you're not into crypto,
you will read all thoseparallels between traditional
finance and decentralizedfinance that Byron is so good at
, and I can guarantee you aregoing to love it, byron.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Thank you so much.
It's awesome.
It's also free.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
It's also free.
There you go.
That's the ultimate argument.
Byron, thank you so much forcoming to the Blunt Dollar and
best of luck for the future.
Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
This was fun.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
The Blunt Dollar is written, produced, hosted and
edited by me, ignacio Ramirez.
Everything you hear concept,script, sound design and
production comes straight frommy desk and, occasionally, my
kitchen table.
Thank you so much for listeningand join me in the next episode
of the Blunt Dollar for moreraw, honest finance
conversations.