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Bringing RWAs On-Chain: Milken Inst, Galaxy, Solana Fnd, Alphaledger
Recorded: March 21, 2025 Duration: 1:13:51Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion highlights the growing interest of institutions in blockchain technology, emphasizing the importance of regulatory clarity and partnerships in driving adoption. Key players like Alpha Ledger and Galaxy Digital are leading the charge in tokenization and real-world asset integration, showcasing a promising future for the crypto industry.
Full Transcription
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Eman Motamidi.
Mae'r cyfle wedi'i ddod yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle wedi'i ddod yn ystod y cyfle. I'm going to turn it over to
Why don't we get started?
Hey, everyone. I'm Eman
Motamidi. I run the Solana
incubator program within Solana
Labs. This is where we bring in
six amazing teams into our New York offices with the goal of working to accelerate their progress to make them the next blue chip company on Solana.
One of those companies is here with us, Alpha Ledger,
Manish is representing them.
And we decided to bring together a panel
on real world assets on chain.
A lot of folks hear about, hey, institutions are coming,
real world assets are coming, but what does this all mean
and how does it impact you as, you know, whether you are an institution, whether
you are an average Solana user or anything else.
I'll go ahead and introduce the group we have today.
We're very privileged to be joined by all of these folks.
Mike Piovar, he was the former commissioner and acting chair of the SEC.
He's the EVP of the
Milken Institute now. Nick Dukoff, head of institutional growth at Solana Foundation.
Thomas Cohen, head of tokenization at Galaxy Digital. And Manish Dutta, who's the CEO of
Alpha Ledger. So thank you all for joining us here today. And Nick, I'd start I'd love
to start with you actually, you know, given your role within
Solana Foundation. As I mentioned, we all obviously hear this refrain often of, hey,
the institutions are coming or the institutions are here. I'm curious from your perspective,
why might these institutions be interested in Web3 to begin with, and then why Solana more specifically. Thanks, Iman for having me today and hi everybody.
I think institutions have wanted to be on the blockchain
for quite some time and we saw some starting to build
in the first cycle of security tokens in 2017
like Franklin Templeton.
And here in the United States,
it's been a challenging environment for them to do so until recently.
This administration, of course, January 20th, made it very clear that America is open for business.
And I think that really accelerated a lot of activity that was already, you know, starting to build internally at many of these financial institutions
because they want new products, they want new
customers, they want to save money, they want to make money. And I think blockchain is great for
all of those things. And of course, Solana, the fastest cheapest blockchain in the world, the most
used blockchain in the world, nearly 100 million daily transactions, 6 million daily exit wallets,
$10 billion of daily on-chain trading volume. I think it's a match made in heaven, which is why institutions are not only coming, but
coming to slaughter.
In terms of them coming here, what actually are they trying to do on-chain?
That's a great question.
There's a few things, and it depends on the type of institution. Banks are interested in stable coins and tokenized
deposits and trade finance. Asset managers are interested in tokenizing various funds,
public and private funds. Exchanges are interested in tokenizing some of their
are interested in tokenizing some of their infrastructure
to support faster or more transparent transactions.
So I think it really depends on
what the type of institution is,
but there's so many different use cases.
And I think many large institutions, if not most,
are exploring how blockchain can improve their business.
Awesome, thanks, Nick. Thomas,
we'd love to hear from you as well on the Galaxy Digital side
on how you guys are thinking about
tokenization and why this space is relevant for you.
For folks who are unfamiliar,
maybe if you could give a brief background on Galaxy Digital,
that'd be helpful as well.
Thomas, you're muted right now, just heads up.
Yeah, we might not have Thomas on,
maybe some Mike issues so we can come back there.
Mike, one of the things that Nick mentioned
was the the pointer
on the administration, you know, Trump making a statement, hey, America is basically open for
business. I know for a long time, folks pointed to the regulatory challenges within the US as a
reason why, you know, institutions, real world assets, etc. really couldn't take hold here.
I'm curious, given your experience on the regulatory side, do you feel like, et cetera, really couldn't take hold here. I'm curious, given your experience on
the regulatory side, do you feel like the time is right from a regulatory standpoint
for there to be more adoption of Web3 within the US, or are there still pieces that need to happen?
No, absolutely. I mean, to your point, we went through four years of an administration and a chairman at the Securities and Exchange
Commission that was actively hostile towards anything crypto, anything blockchain related.
We're going to look back at that as the dark ages. With the new administration coming in,
you have an administration that's the most crypto
in US history and at the Securities and Exchange Commission in particular,
you have the two majority commissioners there, Mark Iwata and Hester Purce.
You have folks that have been waiting and waiting and waiting for them to take over and be able to direct the staff
to do the things they should have been doing over the past four years,
which is have a more friendly regulatory environment
for folks to come in and start having the conversation
about how we can set up a regulatory framework
in the United States that on the one hand,
protects investors and also protects markets,
but on the other hand protects investors and also protects markets, but on the other hand
fosters that innovation and so, you know just as an example of that up until
About now a month ago the last time the Commission actually issued clear guidance on whether
certain crypto assets digital assets were in fact securities or not, was when I was
there in 2017 and we issued something called the Dow Report, which is the distributed autonomous
organization report.
And this was related to a Dow that was on the Ether network and the commission at the
time, we put out clear guidance that said, in fact, there were in fact securities that were involved that would fall under securities regulation and
what we did was we announced to the world also the the the steps that we
were going to go through to determine whether something was a security and we
use something called the Howey test which actually goes back to a Supreme
Court case in the 1940s involving Orange Groves. No need
to get the details here. But the point being that that we view that as a lens that actually
still actually works quite well in the crypto space. And then for seven years or after that
during at least for the last four years, there was no clear guidance. That changed last month.
And the commission came out with clear guidance on meme coins where they said that meme coins in fact were not securities and just yesterday
did the same thing with guidance for Bitcoin mining and proof of work mining and said those
activities in fact do not involve securities transactions. And the one thing that people
may miss is that in determining that, they actually again laid out transparency,
transparently, the lens through which they're looking at whether something is a security, and in fact, use the Howey Test
again. And so in the absence of legislation that would change that, the Commission is moving along with that. In addition to doing clear guidance,
they've started a crypto task force
and maybe we can get into the details
of some of the activities that the task force is doing
later on in the call.
Awesome, thanks a lot for that, Mike.
And so you mentioned that sort of changing
regulatory landscape and the fact that folks
are working to put a regulatory framework in place.
Is your sense of the institutional space,
are folks just waiting and holding their breath
to see how the regulatory framework shakes out?
Or do you feel like there's enough signal there right now
that people feel more comfortable dipping their toes
in the water while a lot of this regulatory framework
gets put in place?
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
Because for the last four years, you know, the SEC
disingenuously said, hey, come in and talk to us. And folks who actually did that put themselves on
the radar screen of the SEC found themselves on the wrong end of an enforcement action.
The tone is very different. The approach is very different. The key players are very different. When they say come in and talk to us, we want to hear your best ideas. We want to learn about what's actually happening in this space so we can come up with clear regulatory guidance that does foster innovation.
They're actually very earnest in that and actually mean it. It is a complete changeover. And I get the fact that folks that have been told for the last four years from you know their law firms or their compliance people or their lobbyists
whoever like do not go in and see the SEC the opposite is the case today and I
get that maybe actually folks may take them a while if you're not in already
engaging with the SEC you can be sure that your colleagues and competitors are already in there.
The SEC has set up a website for the crypto task force and it's crypto, but it's very clear that
it's beyond just crypto. It's all digital assets and what they call the protocol. So think blockchain
and that sort of thing. They have a place for public input. They are actively taking meetings.
In fact, they have a round table this afternoon.
They're actively engaging with the public.
And so if you have something to add to the conversation,
now is exactly the time to get in there.
Perfect, thanks a lot for that, Mike.
And yeah, I'd love to come back a little bit
in how we can best involve ourselves in that conversation.
But Thomas, do we have you back now?
Are you able to unmute?
Yep, should be good.
Apologies about the-
It should be good now.
No worries at all.
Yeah, we hear you perfectly.
I'll just say for the panel up here, obviously, I'm driving things question-wise, but if
folks want to jump in, want to divert the conversation, want to ask follow-up questions,
feel free at any point.
But yeah, Thomas, what I had asked earlier was, from your standpoint within Galaxy, why
are you guys interested in the tokenization space?
What are you guys doing within that space?
And for folks who are unfamiliar, if you could just give a quick background on Galaxy.
Yeah, happy to.
Thanks again for the opportunity.
Thomas Cowan and I run tokenization here at Galaxy.
Been here for about two years in this space for about six. At a high level, Galaxy is a crypto-focused investment bank.
We're about 500 people based here in New York.
And so we touch almost every aspect of this space.
And we work not only in the crypto space, but we're also a trusted partner with many
of the leading TradFi institutions as well.
And so when we think about tokenization,
I see it of course as very much inevitable
in terms of seeing a lot of traditional finance
and the way we move and store value as going on chain.
And so given that viewpoint,
the question that we have is, okay,
how do we go about doing that?
And what is the adoption curve that we're gonna see here
in this space at a high level?
And we've all been here in this space at a high level.
And, you know, we've all been around in this space long enough to know that there have
been definitely fits and starts here.
And the bigger, I think that the two trends really that make this, you know, this cycle
a little bit different and Michael kind of already hit on it is first, we are finally
at the point where we're getting regulatory clarity.
And second, through blockchains such as Solana and others, we're beginning to see the technology
reach a point of maturity where it's much more trustworthy and much more performative
to a point where we're getting TradFi interest in a way that we just haven't seen in previous
cycles.
And the last thing I'll end on and then of course can jump in any direction, is that even six months ago,
it was very much us reaching out to TradFi players saying,
hey, we think it makes sense
to start thinking about tokenization.
And now that's completely flipped.
Now we see many more inbounds
just because the nature of the conversation,
because of the regulatory clarity
and the technology has just changed.
So we definitely see this as inevitable
and kind of the pace of changes
is rapidly, rapidly accelerating.
Love to hear that.
And yeah, to go one step deeper
in terms of Galaxy Digital and your role,
when an institution comes to you and says,
hey, we're interested in getting involved on chain,
what is the role you guys are playing in that lifecycle?
Totally. As I mentioned,
we sit at the intersection of
Tradvine Crypto in many ways.
The question we really have is,
what benefits to the specific client are they looking for?
We have a full tokenization stack.
We also have the full investment bank side of things to help with structuring and placement and all of that.
Then we also have our asset manager as well. We have the sales and trading and lending
side. It's one of those things where we have the traditional financial understanding and
knowledge, but then we also apply this new technology in ways to kind of merge the two in a unique way.
So the first question when we have someone come in is, okay, you know, what are you looking to use
the technology for? And then we are able to leverage different aspects of the firm to not
only do the tech tokenization for them, but, you know, I look at that as kind of step one and really
open up into what is the structure and what is the placement?
What is the different opportunities that we can ensure that we can best serve clients in the space
and leverage our network to be able to move the space forward.
Awesome. Thanks a lot, Thomas.
Manish, we'd love to now hone in a little bit further on real world assets in particular. Maybe we can start. Do you want to just give a brief background on Alphalegger?
Sure. Hi, everyone. Hopefully you can hear me very well. So at Alphalegger, we are focused
on unlocking real world yield. You know, we started in 2019. We were the first ones in
the US to record municipal debt on blockchain. We have done well over 800 million of that.
We built a captive broker dealer that's in the district with the SEC, FINRA, and the
MSRB.
We built a transfer agent.
And so this sort of goes back to Mike's point.
I think it's important that as we sort of work with the regulators and have been in
the regulatory industry for for 25 years.
The one thing that we have to understand by and large,
the U S has created a very safe environment for the investors,
try investing in other countries. Now, with that said,
the last four years have been very difficult, right? I mean, you know,
it was easier to launch a rocket versus dealing with the regulators in trying to
record securities on blockchain because folks seem Reliquite understand how things work. So education really becomes an important part of that conversation
where we have gone out of our way to educate about 75 FINRAs fixed income examiners on
what blockchain is. And I think part of the journey that we have to take, one, as a regulated institution,
and two, as a business trying to bring securities on chain
is that you have to impart the knowledge,
you have to lead with the right message.
You can't approach the regulators with a flippant attitude.
That's just not going to work. It has not worked.
And why we have been successful in terms of recording municipal debt, which effectively
is a really important sector of the economy. Thanks, Manish. And maybe just dumbing it down
in a way, folks hear this notion of bringing assets on chain, maybe originating assets on chain.
What does that even mean?
Can you just for the layman,
explain that a little bit further?
Yeah. Look, I mean, I think when an asset comes onto a blockchain,
the critical components,
one starts at origination,
the second one really is the ownership,
and the third one really, which is the settlement.
When we started our journey in 2019,
we were very clear as to how we wanna operate.
We started with recording of the asset on blockchain,
which is proving transparency,
proving that books and records exist for the broker dealers,
which really does mean that for the end investor,
that if there is an ownership today,
when you go to Schwab or Fidelity or Robinhood,
your assets are not your assets.
They're recorded in street's name.
That means if you don't have control on it,
they have a control on it.
So how do you ensure that books and records are clear?
And I think blockchain is the perfect ecosystem for that.
And so that's what we have been focused on.
The next step really as we
think about. Is moving down the
chain which is moving giving
the ownership to the investor
but in order to do that. You
have to lay the foundation
which is what we have laid. And
why we really sort of join
Solana because of the speed.
That it brings for settlement
in the atomic settlement
capability- for the for the
assets. Perfect thanks a lot Manish.
Nick coming back to you you know
we've spoken a lot of the virtues
of Solon and the blockchain.
Why institutions are excited.
What are some of the challenges
you're seeing though in terms of
bringing institutions or real
world assets on chain?
Sure so I think setting
regulatory aside because we've
already covered that, assume there's a world where there are
clear rules of the road and folks know what they are, you
know, allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. Let's
just make that assumption. I think there's a few things.
First, you need executive sponsorship. Ideally, somebody all the way up to the top of the organization, the CEO saying, this is an imperative for us. We need to be building on the blockchain, not only to innovate, but to be ahead of the market and where the future is going.
of the market and where the future is going.
So I think that's absolutely first.
Without that, you know, kind of C-suite sponsorship,
you're going to stay in kind of like R&D purgatory.
The second thing I would say is that you need to have expertise.
And this is one of the most challenging aspects about where we are as an industry
is, you know, there are hundreds of people in the world with deep tokenization expertise with financial institutions, you know, not thousands of people. And we need to educate more folks, we need to bring more folks along. And I think that's another limiting factor. I think three would be, you have to have a business owner who has a very clear use case
for how they're going to either make the firm money or save the firm a lot of money.
And so without that very clear business case, even if you have the executive sponsorship
and the technical and business capability to do it,
without the clear business use case,
they're gonna do the thing,
it's not gonna lead to a lot of value creation
and they're gonna go back and move on
to focus on something else.
So I think those are three things
after regulatory clarity is executive sponsorship,
technical business capability, and then clear use case.
And how about the demand side?
We've spent a lot of time talking about the supply side
and bringing assets on chain.
Nick, what are you seeing from the demand side?
Is there generally appetite for these types of assets?
So I was at a kind of a closed door lunch session
at the BlockWorks Digital Asset Summit this week and it had folks from all the big financial institutions that we know and love and use.
And there was a big announcement this week that BlackRock Biddle Fund hit a billion dollars
in AUM.
For a trillion dollar asset manager, a billion dollars is not a lot of money. And so I think on the demand
side, it's still quite early. We're marketing these products to existing crypto users. You
have to let them know one, they exist, two, you got to make it easier for them to buy,
three, you got to make it attractive. And ideally, we abstract the blockchain away.
And we don't think about these products as being marketed to crypto users, but we market these products to buyers of financial products.
And I think once we abstract the blockchain away and start taking these great products like the ones that Manish is building at AlphaLedger and market them not to crypto investors, but to just financial product investors, that opens
up a much wider aperture.
And that's how we go from Biddle being at a billion AUM to Biddle being at a hundred
billion AUM.
Manish, go ahead.
I saw you unmuted.
Yeah, no, I think Nick's right, right?
I mean, the institutions are sort of looking at this as a new frontier.
And for them to sort of really enter, they want to see a clear pathway. Clearly, BlackRock
has taken a lead. The fact that the BlackRock fund is now at a billion dollars and we ourselves
have originated about $800 million, speaks towards the demand part of the equation.
Now what's really paramount, at least from where I said, is the point at which
the asset gets originated. If we start to combine the origination part and we start to combine the
value proposition that a platform like Solana brings, which is atomic settlement, you can start
to reduce the friction. The minute you reduce the friction and you can start to provide a clear
ownership pathway to the investors
On-chain and why I don't use the word crypto natives is because I don't think that that's a relative word
Investors are either going to to own an asset or they're not going to own an asset
But if you start to remove the friction which effectively can can be cleaned up at the point of origination through settlement
You are going to see adoption.
And that's where you will see a lot of value proposition being created for the traditional
institutions, which is the back office cost that it takes to bring in asset, manage the
asset, and then service the asset.
Yeah.
And I thought I'd just jump in as well as a quick example.
We definitely see that instant settlement as a way to cut costs.
I also think that just because you can really leverage the benefit of smart contracts here
for a lot of the structured debt side of things, an example is you can completely code in the
coupons, the margins, the waterfalls, and all of that in a way where you do solve a
lot of backend
costs. But then the other benefit is the transparency side means that it becomes a much better collateral vehicle to then be moved around. And so that when we're talking to
traditional financial institutions increasingly, that's where the conversation and the value is
landing because they're seeing, oh, yeah, we have these complex financial structures today, but the settlement and management of these debt products is so complex that
it really can be automated by this technology.
So that's really where we're seeing the conversations push, and we expect that to continue over
the next six months to a year as that learning curve- increases. So just to
play- devil's advocate I
imagine what some people are
thinking in the audience when
they hear- you know we're just
targeting- folks who want to
invest in financial products
it's not necessarily it
doesn't need to be a crypto
native user- for many of these
products especially products
on the treasury side at least
for folks within the
U. S. on theoretically folks
have have avenues to access
those assets. Off chain- and so
when we talk about maybe
ministers this links to your
point of you know why
origination on chain matters.
But I just wanted to double
down on this notion of when we
talk about just a regular
investor whether- either
crypto native or not they can purchase these assets on chain. Why might they be excited
about these assets coming on chain when they have a lot of options off chain in terms of
what to go and invest in?
I'll take a stab at this one. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to drop in a few minutes.
If you're outside of the US, there's very clear
reasons why you would want to be able to access dollarized assets, because in your local market,
you may not be able to, or if you are, it might be prohibitively expensive to do so.
So I think that use case is clear. For the American investor, I think the use case is use cases democratization of private or alternative assets.
So for example, Hamilton Lane.
Hamilton Lane announced this week a new product with Republic that will have a $500 minimum
for a private credit alternative asset offering.
That's transformative. Today, if you wanted to access something like
that product, you typically have to be high net worth, have a wealth manager, and then
be paying that wealth manager a fee, 50 to 100 basis points or higher to manage your wealth, and then
make an investment typically $100,000 at the absolute minimum to get access to a product
like Hamilton Lane.
And now with a credit card, you can buy private credit products from leading asset managers
like Hamilton Lane on
Republic crypto for $500 and I think that is transformative. Yeah, I
think from a US standpoint what's very clear to us is that as I've
spoken to people there are folks that are holding holding onto USDC, PiUSD, and other
stable coins that certainly are not keen to get off that system.
I think the future is going to be blockchain where folks are holding crypto assets.
They want to move in and out of it at an atomic settlement pace.
And the next step really is to bring in on products that create a return that's
more than the basic treasury yield, which is effectively four and a half percent. I
mean, I think one of the challenges that we see today from a regulation standpoint, and
I would love to get Mike's take on it, is the pathway to a blockchain today is effectively
private funds. We see a future where tokenized securities can come on, but this is where
the new administration, the crypto task force is out there. I think they have to step up
and lay out clear guidances.
Yeah, to that point, you know, the crypto task force, as I mentioned, they're very much
want to engage with the public. If you go on the SEC's website,
there's a link to a list of,
they've asked 48 very specific questions
that they want market participants to weigh in on
for them to think through all kinds of different things.
And there's a section on specifically to Manisha's point
on tokenized securities.
And they ask seven very specific questions
about how they should be thinking
about the regulation of this.
So the one thing they put in there is they say,
look, creating a digital representation of security
on a blockchain does not change the substance of the security.
And it would actually maybe have some additional benefits.
But then there's also things that they need to think of.
As if all of a sudden people have tokenized securities rather than the securities themselves,
they ask a bunch of questions, do we need to go back and actually amend some of our
securities regulations to take into account the fact that they've written in there certain
types of securities.
Well, do they need to go back and amend it to include, you know, tokenized securities so that people can get regulatory
clarity and get, you know, and get comfortable with actually, you know, doing these things.
So this is the work they should have been doing four years ago, but they're just getting to it now.
And so, you know, they
asked very specific questions about, you know, atomic settlement came up, you know, when I was
at the commission seven years ago, we moved from t plus three settlement to t plus two. At the time,
that was the no brainer. But we saw the potential for blockchain technology to evolve over time. So
we wrote into the rule that we said,
within five years, the staff has to come back
to the commission and talk about changes in technology
that would facilitate an even shorter settlement cycle.
In the last administration, they went to T plus one,
and now folks are actually talking about T zero
or T midnight or something like that.
And it's just the technology is evolving so quickly.
Even over the past seven years that we're seeing things that we couldn't see before. And you know Manish mentioned stable coins.
We're seeing legislation. That's the first sort of piece of legislation that's going through Congress is stable coin specific
legislation that would provide a banking regulator over stable coins.
And then we're going to once that comes through, we're going to see even more
widespread adoption of that, whether it's internal settlement or whether it's
settlement at clearinghouses, and we're going to see a huge amount of efficiency
in terms of the ability to move money around and not have money trapped
for various collateral requirements throughout the financial system.
Yeah, I would just add one more point to what Mike just highlighted, which is I think one
of the biggest challenges that we have on blockchain is identity challenge, right?
So today, how do we prove who you are?
And then how do we ensure that KYC AML process, which is archaic at best, archaic, right?
I mean, so that, and you combine that with some of the reg D, which effectively allows
you to market the asset publicly.
But if you go towards 3C5, which is a private fund for accredited investors, limits you
to 100 people.
It makes absolutely no sense as to how some of these regulations sort of intersect.
So critical unlock for blockchain,
this goes back to your original question, Eman.
Is there a demand?
There is demand.
There is a challenge in getting people onboarded
for regulated assets on chain.
People are patient, but they are going to move
and move very quickly once that's unlocked.
The other part really is tokenization of securities
and then tokenization of funds,
which can then be used as collateral.
That would be the second step towards that.
But critical component here is we have to get
the identity component sorted so that we can truly unlock
the value proposition of atomic settlement
on a public blockchain.
Thomas, I'm curious how you guys at Galaxy Digital think about this piece around identity
onboarding of new users, the KYC challenges.
Is that something you guys face when you guys work with some of these institutions?
Yeah, the KYC question is one of, if not the biggest hurdle in terms of real adoption,
just because we're still very much at the intersection of TradFine Crypto.
And so it means that our onboarding and KYC process is still quite manual.
And so that really is one of the biggest barriers.
That being said, I think, to Manisha's point, if you solve that, you really unlock a lot
of utility.
And I think we're talking about tokenized
securities, tokenized debt, whatever it is, the long-term goal here is that things just go back
to being called debt and people don't even realize that it's tokenized. It's just debt that suddenly
is way cheaper, much easier to move around. And that's kind of the long-term goal. I really see
a lot of this as kind of what encryption did for the Internet
is what tokenization can do for
value right is that that's the
connections it just enables so
many more so much more utility
but at the end of the day a lot
of this should just fall away to
the to the background and KYC is
a good example of that. And so
this notion of it falling away
to the background and you know
all of you pointing to this as
as a major challenge what how
do we how do we get this problem fixed you know and maybe it's not AlphaLegger Galaxy
who's who's fixing that problem but but are there sort of solutions in place or strategies that are
that people are contemplating for for how to get get around this barrier.
Yeah I think you see in the ammunition then jump in afterwards, but I think we're seeing
many, you know, this problem has been identified for years, right?
And so there are multiple startups and multiple bigger players in the space that are definitely
attacking it.
And, you know, it'll be the one that gets the network effects going where you can suddenly
use that KYC or that that identity verification built into the smart contract.
That'll be kind of the unlock where people can say,
oh yes, this was verified by X organization.
We trust and we accept their KYC credentials.
And then you can really begin to move things around
much more efficiently.
We haven't gotten there yet,
but I see it definitely as a matter of when and not if.
Yeah, I think that's right, Thomas.
Today, look, I mean, it's the tail wagging the dog
where the compliance leads the organizations in terms of what paperwork is really needed.
The minute you go towards an identity solution, I think we have had some fruitful conversations
being part of the incubator with the Solana Foundation folks working on token extensions
and KYC AML solutions. I think that's the first critical step, but I think where the
rubber meets the road really is when you get towards an accreditation level, whether they're
qualified investors, what products they can buy. I think those things are still complicated and
extremely tedious. There is a lack of trust between regulated institutions that is a result of regulations
for the last 50 years and the penalty that comes with it.
So I think we have to really work, one, as a group of people, institutions that acknowledge
that the work done by regulated institutions will be recognized.
Two, we have
to work with the regulators to make them understand that technology that's available today can create
that immutable record, can create that track of information so that the regulators themselves
are comfortable that nobody's laundering money, which is an important concern. I think we should be mindful that there are bad actors.
And how do we build a system that is more inclusive
requires institutions to work together?
Mike, I'm curious to get your take on.
And this might be a naive or obvious question.
But I think that the very clear utility
when we talk about assets on
chain- there's many of them but
that the first point that Nick
brought up earlier around.
Folks you are in the U. S.
being able to access U. S.
based assets that they wouldn't
otherwise be able to invest in.
You know that that clearly is
such a- a benefit and in
enhancing access to folks across the world- but
but obviously I'm not in from
a regulatory perspective you
know it's not that simple and
they're probably barriers and
legislation in place. That
that might prevent that are
hindered that- you know pure
access story- I'm curious if
you have a sense of of of that
side of things that you know
what are what are some of the
barriers in that process today
and whether there's a shining light in the future
that we can look ahead to where that access gets increased?
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
So, so far we've been focused mostly on sort of
what the SEC is doing on the regulatory level.
And a couple of things to keep in mind.
One is that we have a highly fragmented regulatory framework. So
Manish mentioned FINRA. So folks that are registered broker dealers have to deal with the self-regulatory organization. For
folks that are dealing with commodities that are not securities, they have to deal with the CFTC. If you're dealing with a
bank, you got to deal with one of the three banking regulators.
And so each one of those, we've been talking mostly about what the SEC is doing.
But if you look at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the acting chairman there, Caroline
Pham, she's put out some guidance.
She's holding public roundtables.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Office of the Control of the Currency put out a clarification that
certain crypto activities are allowed in banks.
They're going to be, of course, looking at it from a prudential standpoint to make sure
things are safe.
But that's sort of in response to over the last four years, what we learned about is
what people refer to as Operation Choke Point 2.0.
So anybody involved with crypto got debanked.
That became very famous when Mark Andreessen did a couple of his podcasts talking about this. And folks said that that that in fact was the case. And so you've had this sort of chill at the regulatory level that's being, you know, that's being warmed up and unfrozen. And that's great, too. But there also needs to be clarification at the legislative level.
So this idea that the SEC has been using its old tools,
like the Howey test, to determine whether or not
something is a security or not,
Congress has to look at and say,
well, maybe is this new technology that we have
with crypto and digital assets more broadly?
Is there something else that's needed?
Do they need to change the legal framework under which the SEC and CFTC problem will
get regulation?
So you're going to see that start.
It's actually started in earnest.
The you know, we're seeing the the publicly we're seeing the stable coin legislation sort
of work through first and went through the Senate Banking Committee. The Senate's got a vote on it and the House has a companion
bill to look at that. But sort of what I call the everything else bill or what last Congress
was fit 21 or people call the digital asset market structure bill. They've already started
work on that. It includes very important things like KYC AML, how do you fit it within the framework? Are
there ways in which you can sort of modernize that given some of the, you
know, the technologies that are available? Yes, there's risks involved with things
that with new technologies, particularly, you know, with bad actors and that sort
of stuff, but there's also new opportunities here with potential new
forms of transparency in that.
So those are the conversations that are also happening. And the agencies, the SEC, CFTC,
the banking agencies are actually working actively with Congress to help facilitate
that legislation because they're the ones that are going to have to promulgate the regulation
on the back end.
Really helpful. Thanks a lot for that, Mike. Thomas, I'm curious
to get your take. Given you sit
between the institutional side
and the Web3 native side, one of
the amazing things about the
Solana community is that folks
are always willing to mobilize and work together to help push the cause of both Web3 forward, Solana forward.
And if folks are sitting here today and they say, hey, we're passionate about bringing institutions, bringing real world assets on chain, what are ways that kind of we as an ecosystem can all work together to push this forward? Yeah, I think as you mentioned, Galaxy is lucky to be positioned where we have strong
relationships with a lot of the key protocols.
Solana, of course, is one of them and we are one of the biggest validators on the network
and are quite involved.
And really it comes down to the different ways that we connect with the ecosystem,
both informally through a lot of the events that we've had. This DAS week is a good example,
but also through our ventures team as well, and then through our sales team. And also, at least
on my side, we definitely, as we tokenize different assets and seek to serve our clients in different ways,
Solana is definitely one of those top of the conversation in terms of chains that we work
with to be able to add different assets on. So at least on my end, if anyone looks to work with a
Galaxy in many different ways, especially on the tokenization side,
please do reach out. We'd love to kind of connect. But at a really high level, it really just comes
down to this market is still relatively small. And so it means that A, we all know each other, and B,
we can really all work together to generate the demand and generate the narrative and then story
that gets more capital into this space.
And that's, I think, really what we're gonna see
in the second half of this year,
is we're gonna see an inflow of capital
from players that previously have been,
you know, kind of on the sidelines.
And now they're seeing, now that we have regulatory clarity
and we're seeing players like BlackRock enter,
the train has kind of left the station
and it's kind of us to
it's up to us in the space who have been in the space for a long time to help a lot of
these institutions up the educational curve and demonstrate that.
And so it's very much, you know, anyway, we can we can work work together and support
a lot of a lot of the ecosystems and players on on Solana and others.
We would jump at the opportunity.
Thanks a lot, Thomas. And and Mike actually similar question to you and I know you spoke to this a little bit but if folks are sitting at home and thinking to themselves hey I would love to do my part to help the regulatory side of things and push this forward. I know you mentioned that the crypto task force is that kind of the best way to get involved or are there other things that folks should be thinking about as well?
Yeah, that's probably the first place to start is go to the SEC's website and you can weigh in a couple different ways. One is you can write in and put, I mean click on a link there and you can
just give your opinion on anything. You can answer any of the 48 questions that they've put out there
that's on the website or you can request an in-person meeting. I would suggest that.
And because I mentioned the regulatory framework is quite fragmented
and not everybody is an expert in Washington DC,
I would also recommend maybe go around and meet with the other regulators, the CFTC,
at a minimum and then meet with you
know go to Congress and meet with your member of Congress or people on the
relevant committees so and in the Senate would be the Senate Banking
Committee in the House it would be the House Financial Services Committee both
of them have digital asset slash fintech subcommittees and you can see who the
members are there.
And one of the key insights I'll give folks here
is if you want to engage members of Congress,
you don't always have to actually meet with a member.
Sometimes the key staffer is actually
more important to meet with, right?
So as much as we all think that crypto and Solana
and blockchain and all that sort of stuff
is the most important thing in our lives, these are folks that are busy doing a lot of other things.
And so every member of Congress has a key staffer that is focused on these particular issues. And so those are the people that you would want to meet with.
And to follow up on a couple points that that munition I think Nick made was, you know, the importance of educating, right? Don't assume that everyone has the same level of knowledge as you,
particularly when you start using, you know, technical words and all that sort of stuff, right? I come in and out of this world all the time.
I think I have an above average understanding, but every time I talk to menish or other folks that are in this world all the time. I'm always writing down some new word that I've never heard before. Some technical thing and
trying to get up to speed on a lot of these things. And then, you know, there was Manish had also said,
you know, when you go in and you talk to these people, you know, don't be flippant. Be earnest
about what you want to do. And I'll just give a couple examples. When I was at the SEC, I met with
folks early on,
and these are people that wanted to sort of operate
outside the regulatory framework.
And they said, you know, we don't have to worry
about the SEC anymore.
We use smart contracts.
And I'm like, well, what do you mean?
And they said, well, you know, we don't have any,
there's no intermediaries here.
We can do everything in a smart contract.
And I said, well, give me an example.
And they said, well, we can do what a traditional broker does by facilitating transactions by in a smart contract. And I said, well, give me an example. And they said, well, we can, you know, do what a traditional broker does by facilitating transactions by
using a smart contract. And I said, okay, are you taking transaction based compensation?
They said yes. And I said, well, that's literally the legal definition of a broker, which means
you have to come in and register with the SEC. They say, no, no, no, no, we're a smart
contract. We can operate outside. The key point here is that the SEC and the other regulators regulate by activities. You can call it what you want, but when you
look at the underlying activities, that's the most important thing that you want to
do there. So when you come and meet with folks in DC, the regulators, and you can do it virtually,
a lot of them, you don't have to actually come to DC. You can reach out and do these meetings virtually.
Be prepared to educate, be prepared to not dumb it down,
but just make it, you have somebody
who doesn't spend their entire life
thinking about these things.
And listen to them and their concerns
and don't be flipping about it.
Really amazing advice.
Thanks a lot, Mike.
Really helpful across the board there-
Manish what would love to spend
a little bit of time at the end
here on Alfa ledger really
quickly and- maybe before we I
know we have a few. I have a
few questions I want to go into
but maybe before I even jump
into those. I'm curious- you
know you guys are targeting a
very specific section of of the market-. I'm curious, you know, you guys are targeting a very specific section of the
market. And I'm curious if you could just talk a little bit more about that and why the average,
you know, users on Solana or average folks who are within Web3 should be interested and excited in
the work that you guys are doing. Yeah, thanks, Iman. Look, I think one thing that's true is regardless of who you are as
an investor, you're looking for a quality return on your investments. So today,
if you think about a public blockchain, you have really two choices, and they're both sort of on
the extreme end. So one is your basic treasury yield. Now, on the far right, you have
the crypto protocols that allow you to earn some massive returns, but there's massive volatility.
And so given that we come from, I come from a traditional background, right? I mean, I was at
a firm called Pimco for 20 years, learned about the fixed income market. And that's our DNA. Our focus really is how do we bring quality assets
onto blockchain?
So our work in the muni space has led us to sort of,
you know, make relationships with the banks
in the state of Washington,
and the banks in the great state of Texas.
And now we are working to bring some alt mortgages.
These are non-agency mortgages.
We are looking to bring on some exciting new equity-like
products with phenomenal returns.
So I think why people should be interested in the work
that we're doing.
One, we come with a regulated insight.
We have built our broker dealer.
We have built a transfer agent.
And what we're looking to do is solve for the access, the ability
for an investor to be able to buy some quality returns, not just basic treasury, which is
important, but not something what an average investor is looking to invest in.
Thanks a lot, Manish. And actually, Mike, I'd love to turn back over to you really quickly.
So Mike is an advisor to Alpha Ledger.
And I'm just curious to get your take on, you know, what what excited you about the work Alpha Ledger is doing.
Well, it was exactly what what Minish said. Right.
So they came, you know, he and Tammy, their background at PIMCO, you know, they helped,
you know, build the pipes from a very large asset manager.
We're very early adopters in this blockchain
and saw a solution for increasing efficiencies
and decreasing costs in the back office,
dealings with a lot of stuff through this technology.
And to his other point was they built it
from the perception that, look, we want to be regulated.
We know how to be regulated.
We don't need any changes in any regulations,
maybe other than just some conforming things
to allow for some stuff.
And they just wanted to go in and talk to the regulators
and say, look, this is what we're doing.
This is a new technology that can potentially
decrease costs, increase efficiencies,
and that flows through to benefits for investors.
And so that's why it was really exciting to see the work that they're doing.
And originally it was Munibonds.
And his point is that this same technology has a number of different applications that
are out there.
And to see Manish and Tammy and the team actually, you know, educate, you know, some of these folks on what's going on.
You know, it's been great, you know, he mentioned, you know, the transfer agent, which was, one exception,
the rules have not been updated since the 1980s.
And the one exception was Y2K compliance in 1999, right?
So that's how antiquated some of these rules are.
And so the ability to use blockchain technology
and to learn from folks like Manish and Tammy,
the folks at the agency
are actually listening to them and say, oh, we can actually make the transfer agent function
much more robust, much more efficient and much cheaper.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Thanks a lot for that, Mike.
And Manish, I believe you have an announcement to share with the group as well on AlphaLedger.
Do you want to go ahead with that?
All right. So I'm going to be careful with the announcement as well on Alpha Ledger. Do you want to go ahead with that? All right.
So I'm going to be careful with the announcement because there's a lot of work happening behind
the scenes.
First, as of last week, we registered in Alpha Ledger Investment Management.
And what that really means for the general public is we are now taking the next natural
step, which is the ownership of the asset, as I talked about earlier.
So we've done a lot of work putting books and records together.
We are now moving, taking the next step which is forming an outfledged investment management,
which we have done. And I would leave it with this teaser that is something coming to the market with
a 12 handle. I know a lot of the fans are big fans of number 12, So are we. And we will likely make the minimum investment
size to be $12. So keep that. And if anybody can guess what it's going to be, dinner and
drinks on me.
Great teaser. We haven't really had a good hook or a teaser on one of these Twitter spaces.
So it's good to have something
for folks to look forward to. I know now we have a ton of folks within the Solana ecosystem in the
audience. Thomas, I'm curious to get your take on from sort of a technological and infrastructure
perspective. Are there pieces that you still feel are missing from the tech landscape that maybe folks in
here could be interested in building or helping out with?
I know we talked about the KYC piece, but are there other pieces you've noticed on that
front?
I mean, I think it's impressive how quickly the space moves, right?
Think about just the upgrades that we've seen
and the companies and problems that have been solved
in the past year.
And so, well, identity was of course the go-to one
that I would have jumped onto.
I think really the technology is now to a point
where it's less the limiting step
and it's truly the education and the regulatory side,
which we're increasingly seeing an improvement on.
So I think really it comes down to leveraging the tools that we have that have demonstrated
through this cycle, have really demonstrated a lot of utility.
And one thing I would add as well is thinking through when you're actually doing the tokenization,
tokenization at origination.
So I just want to give a shout out to AlphaLedger that they really have that approach of starting all the way at origination. So I just want to give a shout out to AlphaLedger
that they really have that approach
of starting all the way at origination.
And what that does is it enables you
to leverage a lot of these tools
that a lot of ecosystem has
to kind of build the Lego pieces
that then you can combine to create portfolios
in crypto land that TradFi can't even really imagine
at this point.
So I think I mean he's
his team are are have this
approach that is that is quite
unique and I hope I hope others
others kind of following that
lead because that's really how
we're going to upgrade the
system is is starting at at
origination. Yeah and I know I
sort of hinted at this question
earlier and I know we have a
bunch of new folks in the
audience who just jumped in
here but maybe for their benefit this notion of originating assets what does that actually mean in practice
and how does that differ from someone who's not originating assets and then maybe the second part
of that question you know Thomas when you encourage the group to focus on origination
How do they actually do that?
how do they actually do that what's the best way for them to try to do that?
What's the best way for them to try to do that?
Yeah, I mean, I would say to partner with
the nation and think through and use that as a blueprint.
But at a high level,
essentially what it means is right now,
most of tokenization is done by taking
existing assets that have already been issued and throwing them in
an SPV and then issuing tokenized securities or like against that SPV,
which works quite well.
It's a little bit clunkier and it's where the market is today.
But in the long run, we see the original assets
that are filling that SPV as being tokenized on chain.
And what that really does is it just means
that you have that level of transparency and confidence and efficiency that today we're kind of working towards but aren't quite there
yet. But I want to give Manisha a chance to jump in and give that overview.
Yeah, thanks Thomas. Look, I mean, I think part of our journey when we started in 2019
really was to understand the ecosystem. And I think if you understand the ecosystem at
the point when an asset is originated, right, when you understand the ecosystem at the point when
an asset is originated, right, when you conceive the asset, that's the best place to sort of
tokenize. And in order to do that, you have to work with the issuer. It doesn't have to
be a government issuer. It can be a corporate issuer. You have to work with the bank. And
I know we have done a lot of work in the state of Washington with banks and Kitsa Bank has
been instrumental in our journey. And as we sort of move forward,
the key really is when you tokenize an asset, the next national question you can start to
solve for really is the cash component, which is how does the money move from one side to
the other side?
Today, the tokenization simply is, as Thomas highlighted, which is taking an existing piece
of paper and putting a
wrapper on it and allowing that to be held by an investor. It is an upgrade,
but it doesn't solve the underlying value proposition that the blockchain
really provides, which is go down to the issuer level. It is the hardest work
that you would ever do, which is understand the requirements, understand
the pain point when somebody's asking for a
mortgage, understand the point that the bank is going through in terms of KYC AML, understand the
movement of money. Those are all really relevant things. Those all can't be solved for in one day.
It takes time. It is moving in that direction, but critical component really is working with the
issuer and the bank at the point of origination.
So you can start to put a token infrastructure that allows for the atomic settlement on the
blockchain, which then leads towards the cash movement via stable coin mechanism and not
through the clunky ACH, which takes three days to settle.
Thanks, Manish. three days to settle. Thanks mission and I should just say I
know I Thomas and Mike were at
time here we're probably gonna
run a little bit over given we
just had a bunch of new folks-
entering but if you guys need a
hot for whatever reason-
definitely feel free and thank
you again for joining- but
minutes I kind of want to just
double down on on the point
around the importance of
origination- so much of crypto is just double down on the point around the importance of origination.
So much of crypto is predicated on the notion of Lego blocks, meaning that a smart contract,
when you open source it, that allows for anyone else to go and use that contract to build
on top of it to To create something that new. And it sounds like or I imagine that one of the benefits
of. Tokenizing at origination
is that. On suddenly those
assets can become much more Lego
blocks as well than if they're
purely just sitting in the SPV.
Meaning folks can go and create
you know their own funds out of
different assets mix and match
them in different ways. Is that
kind of how you you think about
it as well?
Yeah, look, absolutely.
Look, I mean, I think to us, origination is paramount, right?
So if you zoom out and look at a macro picture,
combine that with stable coin at the point of origination,
which is where the biggest friction lies, right?
So today, when you go borrow money,
you're filling out thousands of pages with signatures.
Now, yes, the stock you signed in for the most part, but not really.
The money still moves at the pace of paper.
Somebody has to wire the money.
You have to do it before noon.
Otherwise, you have to wait a couple of days.
That friction starts to add up when you're doing this at a pace and a velocity.
and velocity. So you're just using mortgage as an example, right? When we think of bringing
So you're just using mortgage as an example.
mortgages onto Solana, especially the alt mortgages, we are going down the level which
is, is the asset ready to be to be originated? The answer is yes, you tokenize it at that
point. If that answer is yes, and you're able to tokenize the mortgage at origination, the
next national question that the Wall Street folks really ask is,
why we securitize them,
which is effectively another way of putting it into an SPV.
Why do we have to securitize an asset
that's already tokenized?
So the value to unlock and unbundle these assets
really starts at tokenizing of the asset at origination.
You let the end investor create their own basket.
And then from there, if it is tokenized at origination, you can start to see the cash
flow moving from the pair to the lender in an atomic settlement fashion.
So I know I keep using the word origination and I keep using the word tokenization, I
keep using the word atomic settlement, but those really are critical Lego blocks that will allow for
the new financial ecosystem to be built on chain.
Thanks, Manish. Just a quick reintroduction to Mike for folks.
I know a bunch of folks just joined.
Mike is the former commissioner and acting chairman of the SEC.
Mike, given we had a bunch of new people come in and sorry to
make you- repeat yourself a
little bit. But do you mind
just giving kind of like a
zoomed out or a high level
regulatory. Take on on sort of
what you're seeing on the
regulatory side of things for
folks who just recently joined.
Yeah I mean the big pictures
are seeing a huge fall with the
regulators right so over the
last four years we had an
administration. That had
regulators- in charge of
openly hostile to anything
related to digital assets
crypto in particular and- and
by extension unfortunately
block chain technology- and-
with the new administration
coming in we have new
leadership at all of the
regulatory agencies we have
new leadership- on all of the relevant agencies we have new leadership. On all
of the relevant- congressional committees and a window has opened. You
know we've got a thought whatever whatever analogy you want to use- it is
a one eighty C. change and so- there is going to be movement- to allow for more
use of- blockchain technology by extension use of blockchain technology by
extension use of digital assets
like stable coins securities
commodities all those different
things that we're going to see
a huge change over the next few
years now regulators don't
always move with lightning
speed- but they are at but
they're gonna be deliberate but
what that means is
that for folks that have not gone in and see the regulators because you're scared that you're
going to end up on the wrong end of an enforcement action. Now is the time. Now is the time to go in
because the conversations are happening. The SEC and CFTC have active task forces working on this.
The SEC has put out a list of 48
very specific questions that they want folks to weigh in on because they're
going to move. They're going to change regulations and so if you have a
particular insight, a particular business model that is not contemplated in
some of the changes that are there, now is the. To reach out to them- you can just click
on the link on the website and
send an email to them you can
go and meet them in person- you
can have virtual meetings they
are very open to engaging with
the public now is the time to
go in. And I just want one
follow up there really quickly-
you know. Two years ago even a
year ago a lot of the founders
we work with- kind of had a fear
of operating in the U. S. from
from a regulatory perspective
they didn't know you know what
actions the SEC would take- a
lot of them went off shores
overseas- within the salon a
foundation and so on more
broadly there's there's
obviously a- much bigger push
now to kind of activate
that the U. S. markets- we have
our big accelerate conference
coming up in in May which is
kind of man on the moon type
programming to try to convince.
Regulators institutions-
etcetera that you know crypto is
open for business here and folks
should should should get
involved- but I imagine and I'm
not sure if you're able to
opine on this or not Mike but I imagine we have a ton of founders in the audience who
maybe are thinking about hey what is the right jurisdiction for me to be in and to start
my business in. Should they be feeling sort of more secure from the perspective of that
business being in the U.S.? Yes. let me say that the fear that they've had
over the last four years was completely justified.
You know, I've been in Washington, D.C. for a few decades,
and with the exception of the last four years,
my advice was always come in, talk to your regulator,
don't have an ask, just get them to know who you are
so that they're not surprised by anything
and so that you can offer to be a resource.
The last four years, I said, do not come in and talk to them
because you're gonna find yourself on the wrong end
of an enforcement action, right?
Now is the time, as you point out,
folks at Solana and Foundation and other places
have gone overseas, and that was unfortunate
because the US has lost a lot of time in this, but if there is a silver lining, it
is the fact that folks like you and other founders have actually
been operating in other jurisdictions that do have some
sort of regulatory frameworks. And if you have lessons that you
have learned that a particular regulator is doing something well,
or another one is doing something not well,
that's good information for the US regulators to say,
look, hey, don't go down this path.
This XYZ country did this,
and they lost everything overnight.
Or this regulator did this one simple change,
and they became the, in their region,
they became the jurisdiction that people wanted to go to.
So you can all be, you can use that experience
for operating outside the US
to actually help the US regulators get it right
and get it right more quickly than they otherwise would.
Perfect, thanks a lot, Mike.
And then Manish, just maybe last words on your end,
a two-parter. One, if you want to just quickly
reintroduce Alphaleture for people who join.
Then second, for folks in the audience who are excited about
Alphaleture who want to get involved in some way,
what are the best ways for them to
follow along and support you guys?
Yeah. Thanks, Eben.
We are focused really on unlocking real world yields, having tokenized 800 million
off of municipal debt and recording that on blockchain.
We're taking the next step, which is we're bringing on some exciting products.
So if you want to follow along, obviously, you guys, everybody has my Twitter handle.
I still call it Twitter.
Follow us on LinkedIn.
But I think the critical component over here is that
as we think of Solana, right, given the work that
Toli and Raj and Foundation and Eman, you're doing
to bring awareness, it's a great platform to be on.
It's an ecosystem with amazing engineering talent
and the work that we are really doing with Foundation
on some of the KYC component and then bringing on some financial products.
It's going to be exciting. I think I think blockchain is the future. Tokenization of the assets is the way forward and we are going to lead that moment forward.
Perfect. Yeah. And I think that that summarizes well a number of the different themes we hit, which are, you know, institutions are here, these assets are coming on chain.
But at the same time, we can all do our part in supporting that story, whether it's winning over hearts and minds with conversations with folks at institutions given at the end of the day, these institutions are made up of individuals who we have to sort of convince and educate, whether it's working with the crypto task force, writing in and doing our part with the SEC,
whether it's building the technological infrastructure that a lot of these folks
and institutions need as a founder, as part of a broader project. There's so many ways to help get
involved in this narrative and shape the narrative and bring really Web3 into its next chapter, which is broader institutional adoption.
So really exciting stuff. I know we're a bit over. So Manish and Mike, thank you so much
for being so generous with your time. Once again, I'm I'm I'm Imam Motamidi. I lead
the Solana Incubator within Solana Labs. We're here in New York with our amazing cohort of I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm weekly. So feel free to jump in for the next one. And once again, big thank you to Mike and Manish for taking the time. Thanks, Mike. Thomas, appreciate it. Thanks, guys. .
