저자: TomLee · 외국인
요약 보기
토큰화와 온체인 금융이 전통 금융을 대체할 것이며 크립토 강세장이 진행 중이라는 주장. 전체 금융자산 약 200조달러, 매년 약 7조달러 증가 등을 근거로 제시. AI 버블은 아직 이르고 2033년경 정점 가능성 언급. 이더리움은 5년간 2700달러 박스권이라 저평가되어 이번 사이클에 25,000~50,000달러 가능하다고 주장. 연말 기준 ETH 7,500달러(비트코인 10만달러 전제) 예측.
다듬은 글
Thank you, Tom. Thank you for joining us at another event this year. It's great to great to be together. I think both of us over the last week or so have been a bit around Asia. I've been truly struck by the energy that I've seen in the market coming from before that the the US Europe. Would love your take on how you're seeing the market evolve here in Asia, how it compares to other geographies.
Well, first I' I'd echo there's good energy. I mean the last 12 months have been a grind because you know it's been a crypto winter but KBW last week and this week you can see the real change. You know we are in a full-blown bull market again and I think that it's good to be in Asia because we know uh things like tokenization and banks moving forward with blockchain and crypto.
It it's a lot of it is taking place in Asia. So it's the right place to be. Excellent. Yeah, I agree. I was with a lot of the more traditional legacy institutions that are all really becoming very interested in the space. And on that point, I mean, obviously you spent decades on Wall Street. You've become also a leading voice in in digital assets.
What do you see today that a lot of the traditional financial institutions don't yet see about onchain markets? Well, I think the incumbent institutions never see disruption. Uh I spent my entire career really focused on disruptors. So in the early 90s I I covered wireless which was a disruptive technology against local telefan and long distance.
The telecom operators the money managers of the traditional world didn't understand why there would be disruption. I think that's the story today. I think banks today tend to think their customers the wealthy ones are older. They want to hold on to their customers. But as you know, the future is driven by younger people and and they see a very different world.
And as you think of the onchain assets today in terms of size, we're still looking at what three to four trillion. I mean, depends a bit on the cycle. We're looking at traditional capital pools. Look at just public equities on its own or 150 trillion. You had fixed income, you're maybe at 250ish trillion.
um what do you think is needed to be able to drive true change so that we stop talking about sort of the onchain capital and bring really to that capital more traditional capital pools foremost the market is huge I mean it's $200 trillion m minimum but it's also growing by about 7 trillion a year okay that's I mean just think about that for a minute every year there's another $7 trillion of liquid assets that's looking for a place to invest.
So for instance, you know, when you hear about people talk about hyperscalers and AI and they're going to spend a trillion a year where the money comes from, there's already $7 trillion of new money waiting to fund anything. [clears throat] But I think most wealth and most of this liquid assets, they're controlled by wealthy people that want to protect their capital and they want to have, you know, outperformance of what they earn.
So I think part of this sea change really is convincing people that moving this tok onto the blockchain is going to outperform traditional ways of allocating wealth capital and I think for instance a lot of wealthy people invest in private equity and private credit now that's illquid uh and the returns have actually underperformed so I think the idea that tens of trillions of dollars has been allocated in funds that take four years, five years, 10 years to pay out and when you get your money back, you probably did about the same as a money market fund.
That's a a very big addressable market. Um but I think a another big sort of obstacle or what needs to change is that you know crypto as an industry needs to look more mature because I think anybody who's even going to do tokenized trading or tokenized equities I think that they need to feel that they're working with partners that their money is secure.
It's not going to be hacked and disappear. um things like managing your private keys um and worrying about fininsen and sanctions because your uh tokens got intermixed with sanctioned countries. So I think there's a lot of little things but I think once those sort of frameworks are established I think things are going to move very quickly.
Yeah, fully agree. I think there's a lot of still conversations around the compliance element of it and how do we adhere to some of the standards that traditional finance has been used to. On the the beginning of your response and you mentioned that those seven trillions that continue to grow every year, obviously there's a lot of noise out there in terms of are we in a bubble or not in a bubble?
You were sharing very interesting stats in the in the back room earlier comparing it to sort of the 90s. was wondering if you want to share a bit with the audience how you compared the capital that was deployed back then in relative magnitude to today and how do you think that this fits in the cycle.
Yeah, I I do want to offer some perspective because I've been following markets for 34 years now. Actually, 36 years, I'm not sure. A long time, more than a generation. And uh most of my time has been dealing with institutional investors. So, fund managers, professional money managers. What you have to keep in mind is that the average age of a fund manager is probably 35.
So that means that fund manager probably entered the business in 2016. Okay? So they only saw the world since 2016. And by the way, in 2016, the fund manager there started his job in 2006. What that means is if someone has 10 years of experience, their look back doesn't cover other bubbles. For instance, the average money manager today wasn't managing money during the GFC 2008.
And the average money manager today wasn't managing money money during the.com bubble. So whereas actually I was covering markets that entire period of time. If you think there's an AI bubble today, okay, foremost, it's a widely held view. I have never seen a bubble when everyone thinks it's a bubble.
Okay, think about that for a minute. If you all think it's a bubble, then you're likely to not be pushing things to become a bubble because you all think it's a bubble. And I think that's why uh when I look at AI, I think we just have to take some measurements. Jack GBT was launched in 2023. So we're 3 years into the innovation coming from artificial or super intelligence.
The public internet was launched basically in 1994. Okay. And that's also when mobile networks were being built. The total buildout of internet and mobile and handsets in 2026 was about 35 trillion. The AI infrastructure spend is about 30 trillion. So it cost about the same. Here's the thing. Cisco didn't peak until 2000.
Okay? And between 1993 and 2000, Cisco went down 50% twice. So both you had nearly a wipeout twice. And I think we're basically today in 1997. I I think we're far from a bubble. That being said, another thing to keep in mind, wireless was an S-curve, grew exponentially for 25 years. The stocks peaked 10 years into the cycle.
So I I think the AI cycle even if it's 25 years the bubble is probably around 2033 the bubble peak. Yeah. I found that those data points very interesting to 25 trillion versus 30 trillion. I think we often think of this being completely out of the norm that's ever been historically. So thanks for for sharing that relative view.
Maybe pivoting a bit more to I'd say the onchain world. uh you've obviously put quite a bit of BitMine's balance sheet behind Ethereum and the Ethereum infrastructure. So I was curious if you could share a bit your broader thesis and just generally how do you approach and how do you think about monitoring that thesis over time?
Bit mine is now 15 months since launch, 15 months into a 10-year business forecast and we made a big bet on Ethereum because we at the time we thought Ethereum it would be the settlement rail of the future. So we we believed a super cycle was coming for tokenization and crypto and that Ethereum was the the most neutral infrastructure because of the size of the development community.
the actual fact that it's had a 100% uptime and in the 15 months I I think it's been tracking. I mean to us Ethereum continues to be the most neutral infrastructure. I think there's a lot of winds that they're posting and the token price is 2700. It's been in the same price for 5 years and as you guys know the longer the base the bigger the breakout.
So, I mean, part of our thesis is we think Ethereum is massively undervalued and I mean, in this bull cycle, I think it could easily be 25,000 or 50,000 per token. You you answered a question that my pump's team wanted to make sure I ask, but maybe it's where do you think ETH will be at the end of the year?
You know, I I think Ethereum should exceed its all-time high. So, I think it's above 5,000. I think Bitcoin is going to be over 100,000. And if that's the case, then I think Ethereum is around 7,500. And are there indicators you look at in the market? Like what do you typically look at to inform usage of the infrastructure and have a bit of those those forward views?
I mean, I think there's already a lot of I think that I think crypto is a thematic story and what I mean by that is that in 2016 2017 that bull market was really an ICO story. Uh, but it was principally retail investors, but it was huge. I mean, it didn't take a lot of people to to cause Bitcoin to hit 18,000.
And then in the 2019 to 2021 bull market, that was a lot about NFTTS, which was, you know, a novel innovation, but that was again pretty much a retail boom. And and you saw massive moves in crypto prices. But this bull cycle is coming at a time when institutions are building a lot of products and I think we're seeing some real innovations.
I mean like Ando announcing private markets today that's bigger players, bigger dollars. I I think this is going to be a much much bigger cycle than than what we've seen in the past. I mean I think people kind of aren't bullish enough actually. I think you're going to see some monster moves in crypto prices.
And speaking of institutional, what are some of the products and areas where you think some of their capital can be deployed on chain? Obviously, PERPS, which David touched on, is is one that's of interest. It's really one of the only ways where you can get 247 exposure with deep liquidity. Uh in a context where there's a lot of macro events that happen over weekends or outside market hours, we launch portfolios.
We think it's an area that can be interesting. What are some of the areas where you feel real world assets from an institutional side can be deployed on chain and drive a bit of that that cycle? Well, I I think investors always like liquidity. Uh they like to move things more cheaply and and they like information edge.
I think there's a huge advantage in tokenization. Uh maybe more importantly, I think that there's going to be a role where tokenization involves deconstructing an asset. For instance, at KBW last week, a company announced that they allow you to trade Whimo, the stock, within Google. That's a huge innovation that's that's bu that's that's taking place in the blockchain.
And and I think it's a kind of a mass market thing. I think people would want to basically be able to buy, you know, Elon Musk, they want to buy Starlink out of SpaceX, they want to buy full self-driving out of Tesla. And I think that these are things that can really grow the market. And how soon do you see some of these maybe call it more issuers starting to engage?
A lot of the demand right now is a lot of the asset managers I think are are interested. It's a way to access new capital. It's a way to also issue new types of products. What are some of the other components of the value chain that you expect engaging next? Well, I think what we have to be mindful of is tokenization is really disruption.
Uh because you're look, you you could almost tokenize everything that a bank does, right? So, you're not just tokenizing assets, you're tokenizing the entire functional services of a bank. And therefore, I can see why asset managers are embracing tokenization because their fee model isn't disrupted.
You know, it's just a a fee on assets managed. But if a company makes its money because of a, you know, a capital charge, a trust for time, an insurance element, and you don't need to worry about any of these in a tokenized world, I think it it represents a huge amount of risk. I think that's why you if you're going to look at tokenization I I think the asset management world is embracing it and I think Wall Street broadly is going to be very slow.
I think it's interesting to see the dynamic with the buy sides pushing clearly and we see the largest names several of of which are also here in the room and and speaking along this week and starting to push I think the sell side to adapt and to think through what are part of their rails or their ecosystem that can that can move forward.
But that dynamic between buy side and sell side I think it's quite fascinating to see play out in the in the market. Fast forward 10 years say we've some been successful in this room. We've reached some tens of trillions of capital on chain. How do you think the financial system has changed? Uh what will be net new?
What will be story of the past? I mean I I think just keep in mind the financial system is half of the economy. So like everything that happens in the real world, you have to have a one unit equivalent of that as a financial transaction. But in a world of where we're going to have agents and robots, I I think the financial system is actually even bigger.
So one thing that we may see in the future is the financial services industry becomes the largest sector in the economy because agents and robots are part of that digital world. Uh but I think the success for the crypto industry is kind of democratizing access because you know in the US today for instance 46% of Americans don't even have a bank account.
The the the debit card prepaid card is their bank account. I mean that's a very expensive way for people to store money. Yeah. I think that's another number I'll take away. probably 46% of Americans out of bank account. And as you think coming back to Ethereum and in a bit of the the thesis of the next cycle, what are some of the risks over the next year that you'd keep an eye out for if you were speaking to to CIO in terms of where we are in the cycle and and how to track?
Well, I think a Tradfi CIO today has an existential question. How many of you guys heard of the company National Cash Register, NCR? They were the giants in the mainframe world. So in 1980, they controlled like computing, but they didn't make the pivot to personal computers. Okay. How many of you guys heard of MCI?
They were a juggernaut in telecoms because they offered long distance and calling cards and they never made the pivot to mobile and they disappeared. I think a lot of large financial institutions today uh if they don't stand up a crypto rail or a crypto strategy are going to be the NCRs and the MCIs of this era.
And are you still hearing that in your conversations on Wall Street? Do you still get challenged by CIOS today or how has that changed the last 18 months? I I think most people, investors and companies believe crypto is still a niche uh because they can point to the current world where 99% of everything happens on traditional financial rails and I think that uh that recency bias is actually going to constrain a lot of people.
Yeah, I echo. I think there's as in everything there's some leading the edge and others that we still cumulatively together have to to convince. But thanks for for joining us, Tom. Great to great to see you again. I'll take away I think the 46% the 25 and the 30 trillion and those are very interesting numbers to put in perspective.
So ask you all to thank Tom for joining us today and we hope to have you at other of our events. Yeah. Thank you.
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