Stephen: This is your host, Stephen Sargeant. You're in for a good episode, I'm telling you fans. This is a great one. We have Anthony Fernandez, who's the head of BizDev and Sales at ICONOMI. They have a wealth management platform. We talk about his early days as a strength and conditioning coach. Getting into derivatives, working at one of the biggest mining operations early on in Australia.

And then we get back into what they're working on in the ICONOMI, the wealth management, what are institutional companies doing to get into crypto. We tap a little bit into what is happening with the regulations. What his thoughts are on DeFi, Bitcoin, even President Trump's, you know, recent purchase of, you know, pizza using Bitcoin.

This is a really fun conversation, end to end. He provides short and concise answers. And he's just a really educated person on the macroeconomics of Bitcoin and what it's going to do for so many use cases around the world. Stay tuned and reach out to either one of us on LinkedIn, because he's a LinkedIn guy too.

Hope you enjoyed the episode.

Stephen: This is your host Stephen Sargeant. Exciting episode today of Around The Coin Podcast. We have Anthony Fernandez, the head of biz dev or business development and sales at ICONOMI. Great play on words that you have in the organization. Anthony, tell me a little bit about yourself and I'm going to jump into your background and your journey of how you got into crypto and Web3.

Anthony: Yeah, hey, hey, Stephen. Thank you very much for having me on the podcast, by the way. So, yeah, well done for pronouncing ICONOMI correctly. So a lot of people generally get that, get that wrong. So hats off to you. A bit about myself. So I guess I I've been in the financial markets now for almost a decade cryptocurrency markets specifically for around six years, leading up like sales team that spans from cryptocurrency mining in my previous previous role at the moment with ICONOMI.

I'm leading the, the BD and institutional sales out ICONOMI. Helping drive that kind of institutional growth in the market. And yeah, I've been there for about a year and a half. We're essentially a digital asset wealth management platform. So we provide a marketplace for investors to access a range of portfolios and where portfolio managers can go to actually display their portfolios to gain access to investors and AUM.

Stephen: And you were saying before we record that you were in and around 2017. Do you know what like wealth managers, when you were in traditional wealth managers, where people talking about crypto, was there a platform that you could be like, Hey, I want to, I want to test out, you know, some client funds there, I want to try it out myself to get used to it.

What was the existing communication methods and ability at that point when it comes to platforms?

Anthony: Well, if you think in 2017, Very few people knew about crypto unless they were working directly in crypto, or if you was, you know, probably in deep tech you know, buying Bitcoin or various different exchanges, you know, from a wealth management perspective, there was little to no services or platforms to use to service your clients on those particular platforms.

Back in 2017, no one knew what Bitcoin was, Ethereum, all these different assets, you know, in the cryptocurrency market. So, I don't think wealth managers were even considering it as an asset class to invest into at the time. So, We've come a long way now in 2024. There are a number of different, I guess, wealth management platforms still, you know, probably on the, on the few side, there's not many out there.

We are one of few that do provide this kind of full digital asset wealth management platform. So it is an exciting market to be into, and we see a lot more growth coming from professional investors and wealth managers over the next few years as they want to adopt a Bitcoin strategy to hedge against various risks in the market.

Stephen: Is a lot of what you do education? Cause I think one of the biggest, biggest knocks about wealth management is like, you can't say no to digital assets and no to Bitcoin if you're not educated on it. Cause you're not doing yourself a service to your clients and your customers. What are your thoughts? Are more people trying to get educated?

Like my financial advisor, I remember in 2019, just before the pandemic, I'm like, I want to put all of my, my retirement savings plans into like Bitcoin focus. He's like, no, you know, it's a, it's a shell scam. It's this and that. And it's like, obviously I don't have that same health manager, but it's like one of those things where they weren't educated on it, but yet they're giving me financial advice, which I, I think that, you know, there are certain like due diligence things that you have to go through. What are your thoughts on that?

Anthony: Yeah, I think there's there's probably two reasons there. So, you know, firstly, I think everything that we do tends to be educational focused. And it's because when people say no to Bitcoin, it generally means they don't understand the tech, they don't understand the tokenomics. They don't understand the principles behind Bitcoin.

I'm referring to Bitcoin, but obviously there's loads of other assets out there you can invest into. But yeah, generally when people say no, it's because of a lack of education. So we tend to lead with education first. Now coming to the financial advisors side, you know, I guess they potentially see Bitcoin and digital assets as a threat to the traditional financial system, which it potentially is as well.

So. There may also be a bit of a reluctance to adopt this type of technology amongst a lot of financial advisors because there is a small threat there to the traditional financial market. So a bit of education and probably a bit of fear of adopting this new technology as well.

Stephen: Is there the same incentive plans? Because I know if you know, you refer a certain mutual fund, you get a commission back legally, you get a commission back for certain financial or wealth managers. Is there not that structure right now for cryptos? Like, hey, if you're offering this crypto index fund, you'll get a %age back.

Is there not the same structure? And is that a reason maybe that they're a little less likely to forego commissions? To maybe go into something a little bit more riskier because they don't fully understand the concept.

Anthony: Yeah, definitely. You know, if you're advising a client to go just into Bitcoin there's probably not that infrastructure to then generate return from that in terms of commissions. There has been, you know, historically a lack of digital asset funds that have been available. A lot of them are based offshore as well because of the regulatory conditions.

But here in Europe, where we're also based, our ICONOMI is also registered in Netherlands. Now under the new MECA legislation, People or advisors can apply for a crypto portfolio management license and financial advisor license now as well, coming into effect in January. So the regulations are changing, meaning now there will be more portfolio managers and advisors advising digital assets in the cryptocurrency space going into 2025.

But historically, there has been a lack of regulation around receiving commissions from these types of assets, which have historically been unregulated assets. So no one's wanted to touch them before.

Stephen: That's super interesting. And that license, is that something like, is there a specific association? Anytime there's a license, there's an association with a, with a course or an educational plan to catch that cash grab when regulators change the rules in some way, is there a specific association people are going to, to get educated or is it kind of like just self education and they just have to fill out a couple of multiple choice, or is it just simply a registration process?

Anthony: No, yeah. So under the new MECA legislations, there's different tiers that you can apply for. So the MECA is the new cryptocurrency regulations across Europe. There's different tiers that you can apply for. So one of the top tiers would be, for example, a custodian or an exchange. Then down the tier that could be like a broker, for example, then down the next tier, it might be, say, a portfolio manager who isn't directly holding client assets, but they're advising clients where to go to buy and sell different assets and how to build a portfolio.

Now, those advisors would potentially still need financial qualifications to be a financial advisor, so not everybody can go and just get a crypto portfolio management license. There still would be checks and balances in place to make sure you're qualified to do so.

Stephen: I love that. Take me back to your early start in your career. Your schooling, everything early in your career was all about strength and conditioning, working with different firms. I believe even I saw some kind of sporting team. What made you make this transition? You know, I think it's always tough when you spend so much and invested so much money and you're probably, you know, you're a fit guy.

So everyone's like, why would you do this? You're already doing so well. What can you kind of take us through that process where you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. You know, I can still do it on the side. Maybe like walk us through that transition. Cause I think people have listened to this episode.

And others, they're so intrigued with how people get into crypto. And then more importantly, there's so many people on the sidelines that want to get into crypto, but they can't make that jump. It feels so scary. So it's great to hear your story, how you overcame any fears to get the industry?

Anthony: Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a really interesting place to start. So I guess growing up through my teens, early twenties, all I ever knew was sports, fitness in the gym. That was kind of the career path that I chose from a very early age. So yeah, I, I studied strength and conditioning at university, had a master's degree in strength and conditioning, did a two year internship at a Premier League football team at the time as well.

Conditioning a lot of the Academy and the Academy athletes. Now..

Stephen: I want to interrupt you. Was that a kind of a dream job at that point? When you're talking about, you know, was that kind of like the goal? Like, oh, if I can just get this job at the time.

Anthony: It was, yeah, yeah, definitely. That was the dream job going into uni. If you go and do a Strength and Conditioning Master's degree, it's becoming an S& C coach. For me, I love football myself, so it would be a Premier League football team. So that was the dream job. I was, you know, just an intern there. I did that for two years.

But the role then would be to hopefully develop into a full time coach, work your way up into a first team, potentially move to a bigger team down the line as well. So. That was really the career path that I was aiming for, but yes, I was on my way to kind of land that dream job. But I guess coming out of university, traditional broke uni kind of type student, I had to find my first role to earn some income.

And, you know, I was given an opportunity at a wealth platform in Newcastle, actually one of the largest wealth platforms in the UK outside of London. They managed roughly six billion pounds and they were looking for someone on the BD team, someone who was hungry that they could teach, that was hungry to learn.

And, you know, as soon as I walked into the office, I was suited and booted. I had a tie on, had my suit on. It was just a completely new world to what I was used to. And I absolutely loved it. You know, previously I've been wearing tracksuits to training ground throughout my whole early years of my teens.

And now to be wearing a suit every day, coming into this new environment, learning about stocks, investing, how to prepare for your future. It was just a whole new foreign world to me that I had never had access to before. And I absolutely loved it. And I thought, you know, this is what I kind of want to do and where I want to pursue a career now going forward.

You know, if I think back to my early, early teens. Friends and family. I would say not many people discussed investing. They didn't know what stocks were, derivatives, futures, ETFs. So investing was very kind of, not talked about in the circle that I was previously in. So when I did get into that kind of circle, I just wanted to learn and absorb as much as I could to try and better my future as well.

That was kinda my first step into financial services, and I haven't looked back, haven't looked back since now coming to the cryptocurrency market. So I I, I was approached in Australia by a startup company to potentially purchase this cryptocurrency mining machine that would generate me a passive income.

Now, I had heard about Bitcoin, I'd heard about Ethereum. So I, I kind of knew the very, very basics about what it was, but I didn't know what mining was, so I actually became.

Stephen: to me about that approach? Like, is it a guy in the coffee shop? Like, when I think of someone approaching me, like, Hey, you want to buy this mining machine? Was it the guy like at the hardware store driving around in the van saying, Hey, we have the, you know, we, we, we overfilled on our truck on mining machines.

You want to buy this one for cheap? Like walk me through who's approaching you

Anthony: Yeah, no,

Stephen: a mining machine.

Anthony: It was actually a colleague. It was actually a colleague. So I had a colleague who was building these mining machines in his garage at the time, and it was a bootstrapped startup company, and they were building these mining machines in their garage, and he invited me over. He said, Hey, come and have a look at this.

Here's a wallet. Show me his phone. Here's a wallet. This machine is making X amount of Ethereum per day. It goes into your wallet. It's making you passive income. You can then transfer it to this particular exchange to sell it for fiat currency or you can trade it for a different asset. And I thought to myself, okay, this is, this is getting interesting.

I'd, I'd made some reasonable investments at the time. I had some spare capital. So I became one of their first clients and bought one of these hardware machines. And I guess over a six month period, I'd built up a reasonable amount of Ethereum and I was making this passive income and I was, and I was kind of wanting to, to learn a lot more about the market.

So I ended up actually joining that startup company. And that was my first kind of entry into the market. I left my kind of corporate role Moved into the mining industry in the startup area and helped them then scale their new business and they ended up going. extremely well, you know, it started selling to friends and family.

You know, we was in the right place at the right time because not many people in Australia knew about crypto. And then even fewer people knew about mining crypto. But one thing that is good about Australia is a lot of people have access to solar energy and renewable energy. So when you can bring their costs down and take their return on investment up in a very short period of time, it makes it a very kind of attractive.

Side income or passive income opportunity for them. So we ended up doing a terrific job there. We had facilities in China, the US, Europe Australia, South America, and very, very proud of the time there at, at Mining Store, yeah.

Stephen: I love that. I checked out their website. It looks like they're still doing fairly well. What was the environment like? Like you said, many people in Australia, they understood energy, cost savings, but was there a crypto kind of community there? What was the ecosystem like? Obviously you're going down the rabbit hole because you're wondering what you can do with your Ethereum and, you know, where you can kind of move it around.

But what was the, what was the atmosphere like there when you were in Australia?

Anthony: I would say it's actually very open to digital assets. A lot more people are open to hearing about these new investment opportunities. And in Australia as well, from my understanding and my experience, you know, I was there for five and a half years. People have a lot more spare capital. They actually do relatively well in Australia.

There they are potentially happier to take a bit of a risk on an investment and then scale it down the line if it's going well. So yeah, you know, there's there was already a fairly good community, but we was obviously part of building that community ourselves. That was part of our role. which was to provide education in the cryptocurrency market.

We ran an education platform at the time as well, teaching people how to stake their interest that generated from the miners, how to bridge cross chain, how to build a diversified portfolio. So we built up an audience of people that were mining different cryptocurrencies, predominantly Bitcoin and Ethereum.

And then we also had a service educating these investors on how to actually stake their mined income and how to generate extra return on investment on top of that as well.

Stephen: That's super interesting. That's amazing. Take us to ICONOMI. You guys are doing amazing things, but if you go to the website, it looks like, okay, it's another buy and maybe sell, trade a crypto exchange. But like after clicking on a few buttons, I'm like, oh, This is something I've never seen before. So maybe like, tell me what makes ICONOMI so much different than your regular crypto exchange like a Coinbase or a Kraken or you know, even a Binance.

Anthony: Yeah, so I, you know, we were founded in 2016, so we're actually a fairly long standing platform in the cryptocurrency world. Now, historically we've been a retail platform, and basically, you know, if you ask most retail investors, I would actually say very few have made a consistent return on investment.

You know, most people will jump into different tokens. Very inconsistent returns. They may jump in at the top of a bull market along the hype, sell down at the bottom when the news is telling them it's going to zero, and then that kind of cycle keeps repeating itself. Now, what ICONOMI is attempting to do is to provide investors access to a range of professionally managed portfolios where you have control of your assets in terms of they're in your account, but you can actually allocate a portfolio to your portfolio or a strategy to your portfolio.

Where there's some oversight to your portfolio, meaning you don't need to have the greatest skill set or knowledge to time the market. You don't need to know the latest trends. You don't need to know the most tokens that are being hyped up that have the most potential in the next bull market phase because your portfolio manager is essentially taking care of that for you.

So we're, we're essentially trying to make or help. More beginner investors who don't have the confidence to invest themselves to, to be able to to make a return in the market through these portfolios.

Stephen: And what's interesting is if I come in there and I don't know what I'm doing, I can actually copy the strategies that people are already executing within a portfolio. It looks like there's even like a news feed for certain portfolios where you can hear the conversations going on and contribute to them.

That's a very unique business model than what we've normally seen, right? Where exchanges are focused on transaction fees. Keeping you on the platform and making as many transactions as possible. Where did you come up with this idea of like copying strategies? And how has that been? Because obviously that when people aren't in control and they're relying on other people, I'm sure there's some risks, you know, to your organization as well surprisingly enough, you have a really great score on TrustPilot considering you're in crypto and you're in something that has to do with investment strategies.

Maybe talk a little bit about that, like the nuance of, you know, working with people that are very beginner. And, you know, obviously, losing money is a possibility, but trying to make sure that they're, you know, people aren't losing their shirt coming to your platform.

Anthony: Yeah, definitely. I guess the reason ICONOMI was founded was because the founders at the time had this problem where people were coming to them and saying, I would love to invest, but I don't know what I'm doing. And the founders were actually performing very well. They were essentially like mini strategists themselves, and they had friends and family saying, we want to get in, but there's too much to learn.

And we don't have the right skillset to do so. So they actually, that's why they built ICONOMI. So their friends and family could follow their portfolio. So that's where the platform kind of evolved from. Now, in terms of protection for for clients. Yeah, we, we of course, we can never guarantee any returns of the portfolios, you know, we have a range of different portfolios from index portfolios to discretionary managed to quant portfolios.

We're very transparent with the performance. All of the fees are very transparent. So you, you, you touched on different exchanges where their priority is to increase trading volume. That's not our priority. Our priority is the return of the portfolios because every portfolio will have a performance fee and a management fee.

And ICONOMI takes a share of the performance fee and the management fee. So when the market and the portfolios do well, The client of course does well because they generate a return on their investment and our ICONOMI does well because we will then take a larger portion of the performance fee which is worth more during the bull market phase.

So all of our interests are aligned with our clients which is also crucial when using a platform to make sure there's no conflict of interest. We try to protect our clients in a number of ways. We have strict due diligence on the tokens that we list. So we list roughly 150 different tokens that can be used in the different portfolios.

And each token has to go through a strict due diligence check. So we have to check where is the token listed? Is it listed on at least three major exchanges? Is there a minimum 24 hour volume? Is there a minimum market cap? What is the due diligence on the token on the underlying kind of team behind the project as well?

So There's a fairly strict listing process we go through. If there isn't a token on the platform that a portfolio manager wants, they can request it, it goes to our listing team, they'll do the due diligence and then list the token if it passes the checks.

Stephen: And how difficult is that? Because I saw that, you know, listing process, and it looks like you are doing some due diligence, making sure it's not low volume trading tokens that someone could pump and dump fairly easy. But, you know, with the rise of things like meme coins and, you know, what we would call hype tokens, how do you manage like, hey, I want the investors to be able to take advantage of the increase of this value, but I have to be careful because some of these I On paper, even in crypto, they look like pump and dump schemes.

Whether there are or not, you don't know until kind of afterwards, how, how would you kind of balance making sure that your investors get access to what they want, but like, you know, even the legitimate projects look like pump and dump schemes at some point. And that's why pump and dump schemes work so flawlessly sometimes, because they look like legitimate product projects.

Anthony: Yeah, I'll be honest, it's very difficult. It's very difficult because, you know, there's certain tokens there's one token recently that got rejected, but it's being requested every day from our investors on the platform. So it can become very difficult. We just have to explain to them that, yes, it could be a good short term investment or it could be a good long term investment, but it just simply hasn't ticked the boxes that it needs to tick for us to list it.

You know, we, we have these checks and balances in place to make sure that. If they do get delisted on a certain exchange, we can still sell them on another exchange. You know, so it's for our investors best interest that we follow this process. But also, you know, every token that does get listed doesn't mean it's a good investment as well.

It just simply means it's passed the due diligence checks. So there's definitely tokens that have performed well that we haven't been able to list. But a lot of these kind of meme tokens that came about in the last kind of bull market phase, the most recent one on the Solana kind of ecosystem, not many of them made it onto our platform, but the hype tends to kind of fade very quickly as well.

So you tend to see. Market cap and volume decrease fairly quickly, which is a sign that it shouldn't be listed. So generally, before we list..

Stephen: So by the time you get enough complaints, by the time you respond to all the complaints, they see that the price has already plummeted, they kind of withdraw those complaints and say, thank you very much, we'll move on, I guess.

Anthony: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, we do our best. Obviously we want everyone to do well on the platform, but from us, it's more of a consumer protection duty to make sure they're not getting involved in some of these kind of pump and dump schemes. If they want to get involved in those, they need to go to a different exchange for that particular asset.

Stephen: And I love the idea of like, it has to be listed on three exchanges, because I think a lot of, you know, issuers of tokens and, you know, companies, they get the pressure too from their clients as well, like, hey, why don't you have this? And they're always going to be at least one exchange that will offer whatever token.

So I think it's great. At least three exchanges, especially main exchanges. And probably for you, you want to make sure when it's time for them to off board the token, there's an active market that they can do. So otherwise they're just holding onto that token, which isn't great either. If you know, when you're running a business of investment, it's buy and sell.

You don't want them to be able to buy. And then there's no way to sell the token when that time comes either. I'm assuming.

Anthony: exactly right. That's happened previously in our history. So yeah, you know, we've been exposed to a token that's been listed only on one exchange, and then it's been delisted and the token's worthless, you know, where are you supposed to sell it? So we actually trade across 15 different venues. So we actually have integrations into 15 different trading venues.

We have an algorithm which knows where to go to get the best price for our clients. So we use like an iceberg orders where we break orders down into micro lots and we filter them out across multiple venues to get our clients the best price for their portfolio.

Stephen: And we're seeing exchanges do a better job on the low volume tokens as well because they see there's not a lot of activity and the activity that there is is where people take advantage, especially, you know, once they're on the platform trading between two accounts that they may have. One thing I saw is that you're not only offering this service, you guys have a cold storage solution.

And a full digital asset management platform, which is what I'm assuming a lot of people come to you for. Because they're like, cool, we want to get into this token. But like, we don't have a case management system, we don't have a portal. And I'm assuming that must be high in demand. Is like, this, you know, one dashboard that they can come on and execute all of their trades.

And have a full view of the ecosystem. Versus using several different, I'm assuming platforms and have to kind of piecemeal it together on their own.

Anthony: Yeah, exactly. So when I came into ICONOMI a year and a half ago, you know, my, my role was to really go and prove the concept, prove there is a B2B model out there to build. And I think after speaking with wealth managers and advisors, Their, their kind of key issues or concerns were more around security of assets.

When you talk to retail investors, their concern is return on investment. When you talk to professional investors who are managing millions of pounds in assets, their concern is security. So the number one thing we did was develop a cold storage solution to Bitcoin and Ethereum, where there's no third party exchange risk whatsoever.

the other solution we developed was ICONOMI Wealth, which is a new solution that came out over the past kind of six months. And this is a platform where wealth managers can onboard their clients. There's a client management dashboard, there is a portfolio management dashboard, they get to trade across 15 different venues, they get a cold storage solution.

They get a compliance framework where our compliance team helps with KYC, AML processes, transaction monitoring. So it's a full kind of turnkey solution for a wealth manager. Rather than having to go to a custodian, going to Binance and managing sub accounts on Binance, for example, and managing everything in different areas.

You know, their clients can log in and view their investments, they get reporting, so on and so forth. So, yeah, this full solution was developed based on feedback from the market, from the wealth managers and advisors, yeah.

Stephen: And I think the reporting part is crucial for them. The KYC, I'm assuming compliance. And the, as much as it's nice that you have your own platform that clients can plug into, I think the reporting and the compliance part is what keeps a lot of institutional clients on the sidelines. Right. When it comes to cryptos, like, Hey, I don't have the same reporting as a money market fund or, you know, an SMP index.

And I think that's huge. One thing I want to know is like, where are your customers based? Is it just the UK? Do you have customers all over the world? Because Chainalysis just released a report that, you know, East Asia is going crazy and accelerating when it comes to institutional adoption, probably similar to the products and services you're offering.

So I'm curious of how your customer base is segregated.

Anthony: Yeah we was initially founded in Europe, so we have a very, very strong European kind of core investor base. Obviously, because of our FCA registration in the UK, we have a strong team in the UK as well now. But I actually recently onboarded a wealth manager from Dubai. So we have clients in Dubai in the Middle East, in Asia as well, Australia.

We have a nice kind of following from Australia as well. So yeah, I would actually say we have a global team. South Africa, we have a portfolio manager from South Africa as well. So yeah, we do have a global presence, but I'd say our core kind of following tends to be Europe and the UK, with a bit of kind of the Middle East now coming into the company as well.

Stephen: You brought up the EU regulation earlier, Micah, which is, you know, focusing on what I think is some of the most comprehensive regulations to the digital asset industry. Probably going to be copy and pasted, hopefully somewhat, by the UK and other, you know, jurisdictions around the world. How does, like, what do you have to do?

What are your requirements? Cause you're offering investments, your digital assets. I feel like the mic is all over what you're doing. Talk to me about that.

Anthony: Yeah, with the FCA, so, A lot of it comes down to AML and KYC, so you need to know where the money's coming from. So source of wealth checks we have to do crypto, it's called the crypto travel rule. We spoke about this briefly as well. So we have to know where every single cryptocurrency transaction comes from.

So an investor would have to self declare in their account that this has come from. A KuCoin account or a Binance account that is their own personal account. So we don't, we're not a platform where we support payments because we can't verify where those payments have come from. So any transactions have to come from the same person to their own personal account.

And that's how we kind of monitor different transactions happening on the platform. And we also have the UK financial promotions regime as well with the FCA, so making sure every promotion is compliant with the FCA, a balanced view, a risk warning, not guaranteeing any returns, which is obviously common sense in the financial markets anyway you know, we have to put a risk warning on everything there has to be a link through.

Before anyone in the UK can access and invest in the cryptocurrency market with our platform, there is a maybe a six or seven questionnaire that they have to complete and make sure they understand the risks of it investing in the cryptocurrency market as well. So, you know, it's more around, you know, AML, KYC, and then also making sure every client understands the risks when they're getting into the market and being balanced with the viewpoint as well.

Stephen: What are your thoughts about that? Like, you know, the FCA, which is interesting because it's a regulator that's also focused on marketing, right? As you said, certain marketing materials, you have your banner across the top. I think Papa John's and other companies got in trouble, you know, promoting crypto pretty early on, and that's kind of why they took over.

What are your thoughts? Does this make you less competitive when it comes to innovation? If they can go to an Asian based wealth management platform and maybe do none of those, and I'm not, I'm using that as an example, they do none of those checks and they can onboard instantly or do customers prefer like, Hey, I'd rather go through this process.

I'd rather check all the balances before I invest my token. I feel more secure here because they're, they're heavily regulated and they're more compliant.

Anthony: So I actually went through a similar journey in the FX market. So previous to getting involved with Mining Store, I worked in the FX industry and we went through a very similar transition where we had to start putting risk warnings everywhere and disclaimers. And questionnaires to make sure they were suitable for investors.

It can be frustrating for investors, but actually the feedback has been pretty positive. Because they actually sometimes come to us and say, this is actually great you do these checks. You know, it adds some legitimacy to the investment. You know, so yes, people, you know, people that shouldn't be investing can go to offshore exchanges and get access to the market without understanding the risks and blow up their account.

That can obviously happen. We're here to kind of prevent that from happening. It can be frustrating, but I think it provides that legitimacy as well. So, you know, we want people here sustained long term investments. Rather than going to, you know, these kind of pump and dump schemes, chucking all their money into an asset they don't understand.

That's not really what we want to achieve as well. So

Stephen: And you know, your Trustpilot score of over four out of five, which is amazing, right? You're, it doesn't matter what kind of platform you are, anytime that you're investing money and there's not a guarantee, you're gonna get bad reviews. So the fact that you have such a high score is probably working and it works in your favor, that you're probably getting rid of the people that would be complaining the most.

Because, you know, they're not suited for some of these investments and because you didn't make it easy for them to get involved in these investments in the first place, and they're probably, you know, raises your results too, right? You have more people that are a little bit more diligent to actually focusing on where their investments are going.

That probably leads to a higher success rate and probably less complaints overall.

Anthony: I agree. Yeah, you touched on one point earlier as well, which is the community aspect of it. So the portfolio managers, it's in their best interest to post on the newsfeed as often as possible to update their investors on what's happening in the market. So, you know, most days there might be an update from a portfolio manager.

And what that does is it keeps the investor up to date with Any changes to the portfolio, any risk events that have impacted the market, if the market's gone down, why it's gone down, if they've underperformed, why they've underperformed. So as long as the investor is up to date with why the portfolio manager is making those decisions, they tend to be more happy even when the performance hasn't been, you know, as good as it should have been.

Stephen: And is there any trends that you see on the platform when you go through like the bear market we just happened in 2022? After such a thriving bull market in 2021, like what are people's reactions? Are they more engaged? Are they less engaged with the platform when they know it's down there? Like, Hey, I don't have to check it.

Cause I know we ain't going anywhere. Are they now used to it? You know, you said the platform's been open for almost eight years. Are people now that have been in a long time, like, Hey, this is just a Knox with investment what are your thoughts about that? And then maybe we, even the broader, you know, Bitcoin cycle of usually every four years we go through this cycle.

How do you effectively run a business through something that's so cyclical and volatile in such short periods of time?

Anthony: Yeah, a couple of things to address there. So on the global scale, I would say that The retail market really hasn't participated this bull market as they have done in previous ones. It's been mainly institutional liquidity into the Bitcoin ETFs. So, you know, the Bitcoin ETFs have consumed roughly 20 billion since the start of the year, broken every single ETF record there has been.

So it's been a huge success so far. We haven't seen that kind of trickle down effect yet in the cycle. So Barcelona, BNB, which hit record highs in maybe June this year. Outside of that, there's been very kind of little movement or upside on those kind of top 50 altcoins in the market. There might be a couple more in there that have done fairly well.

So, you know, we're still waiting for this altcoin season to kind of really kind of kick off and I think that will be when the retail market really starts to kind of get back into the market and start depositing and investing back into the cryptocurrency market. On our platform, you know, I think, yes, investors that have been there for a couple of years, they're used to these cycles.

So they're used to holding, they have a long term investment plan, they're looking for four years, five years return of investment. But what we've done, I guess, over the past year is, We've specifically pivoted to cater towards the sophisticated and institutional market as well. We have our retail offering, which is taking care of itself.

We're always looking to improve that, but we've made a conscious effort to also now adopt an institutional kind of offering, or build an institutional offering, to make sure we can cater towards that area of the market. which is seeing a lot of growth. Now, amongst business owners, you know, there's been a 587 % increase in business owners over the past four years that are adopting a Bitcoin strategy.

That's huge growth. So more corporations, more companies are now looking to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet and adopt a Bitcoin strategy. So we think this theme is going to continue growing. So that's why we're also focusing more on the B2B side, the wealth management side, and the institutional side.

Short term, there's definitely a lot more growth to happen in that particular market, in that area, until the altcoin season comes, and then retail should start kicking back up again maybe in 2025 when altcoin season starts.

Stephen: what are your conversations when you're going out there and pitching like, Hey, portfolio managers, this is a good idea. What are those conversations? Are there, is there big, you know, pushback? Is there like, Hey, I need to meet this, this, and this requirement. Like, what is the main conversation piece that's kind of holding people back?

For me, when I was like trying to get people to come in from a blockchain investigations, compliance lens. They're like, Oh, you know, when there's more regulation, I'll come in basically saying like, Hey, I got a comfy, cushy job at a bank. I'm not going over the crypto where people are losing their jobs every other year.

So what's been the biggest challenge or the biggest surprises for you speaking to some of these institutional companies that you're trying to onboard on the platform?

Anthony: Yeah, I would, I would actually say security of assets, so what security measures are in place, and that's why we developed this kind of cold storage solution to partner with the wealth management solution as well. So, I was surprised that, I guess I wasn't surprised that everyone, everyone wants to have a secure solution.

But how many wanted a full cold storage solution and trading via liquidity providers to, you know, they weren't necessarily as as concerned about the execution price to make a trade. They were more concerned about the security of assets and guaranteeing the assets stay in cold storage. You know, whereas I would have thought institutions would have wanted, you know, To get the best price possible whereas that's not their major concern from my experience from speaking to those types of investors, it's mainly security, which has been the number one driver of investors coming onto the platform or not coming onto the platform.

Stephen: That's interesting. I thought it would have been more like the compliance regulatory stuff, the, in the checkbox AML stuff. That's super interesting that, yeah, secure. I guess at the day, if you can secure your funds, you can deal with anything else, but if you can't secure your client's funds, that's when you really get it.

It won't matter what compliance checks you had in, if you don't have the funds protected for your clients, right?

Anthony: No, I guess regulations is crucial as well, but they're, they're kind of now evolving and people now understand in Europe especially what needs to be done. The UK is probably actually a little bit behind Europe 'cause of the mea sort of things, you know, wealth managers and advisors in the UK still can't advise clients to go into an unregulated asset, which Bitcoin still is.

So in Europe is potentially slightly different now because of Amica regulations. So Europe for us is a key. audience or key area we're targeting over the next year.

Stephen: That's amazing. I saw on your LinkedIn what you were talking about, you just mentioned it here, the increase of institutional adoption in crypto, but you also mentioned that like 80, 90% of it is really just two companies, MicroStrategy and Tether, which is the largest stablecoin issuer. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Are we excited that there's more institutions getting into crypto? Are we still a little scared that that's not very, that's not much decentralization. Two companies, you know, doesn't, would you prefer to see lots of companies making up that 80 % versus just two companies?

Anthony: That's just public companies, by the way. So I guess it's hard to know private holdings of private companies. So yeah, definitely they are very concentrated, but we are seeing this kind of now growth amongst other companies in even in different industries. So I guess they're now kind of what we call crypto native companies, but there's even companies in healthcare, in tech, in automobiles, in food and beverage, public companies that are now purchasing Bitcoin.

So we are seeing that growth, but I also think what's going to happen is Once people, once more and more companies understand that there's another alternative to just holding cash in their treasury and cash equivalents, like money market funds, they can hold Bitcoin. It provides a hedge against fiat currency devaluation that there is an opportunity there to hold some Bitcoin.

I read a really interesting report last week from a company called River and it was a corporate Bitcoin adoption report and it had a A chart showing what holding cash would look like over a five or seven year period. It resulted in a 17% depreciation in that cash value. If you held cash and some money market funds, it resulted in roughly in minus eight point %, eight minus 8% depreciation.

If you had cash and 3 % worth of Bitcoin, you had a 7 % gain over that 4 5 year period. So even just holding 3 % of your balance sheet in Bitcoin is enough to offset the depreciation of fiat currency. Of course, depending on the inflation rate and the central bank monetary policy as well.

So I think once education becomes more apparent to those types of businesses and corporations, It's only a matter of time now before we see more and more companies adopt a Bitcoin strategy.

Stephen: If you think about like 3 % and 3 % of what they are putting their, you know, their, their, their portfolio into, it's not a huge amount, right? I thought you were going to say like, Hey, if you had all Bitcoin, you know, in your reserves, you would have made a certain %age. So you're not saying, Hey, like completely, you know, abandon, go completely Anthony Pompadour and get.

All your Bitcoin and turn all your reserves into that. You're just saying, Hey, like even what you experiment with 3 % is usually what companies and organizations will experiment with that the return on that investment longterm will kind of offset what you're losing on a regular basis by just holding it.

One of the interesting things is that, you know, the looming recession that we keep on hearing every conversation you talked about inflation, I think everyone knows that it's buying growth, especially you as a strength and conditioning person. You probably know that the cost of chicken breasts has severely gone up over the last, you know, 18 months.

What are your thoughts? Does Bitcoin help this situation? Does crypto help this situation? Or, you know, is crypto so now correlated as a legitimate asset class that it also goes down with traditional financial products as well.

Anthony: it's important to understand that, you know, when you talk about Bitcoin, it's, I would say it's different to cryptocurrencies, you know, it's a beast of its own. Now, Bitcoin, yes, it does provide a hedge against inflation. If you take a look at Bitcoin and, for example, plot it against the global liquidity or the M2 money supply, which is the amount of money printed by central banks, There is a direct correlation between the Bitcoin bull markets, when the central banks are printing money, and the Bitcoin bear markets, when the central banks are reducing the money supply and You know, increasing interest rates and removing money from circulation.

And that actually, you know, shows exactly why Bitcoin was created and what it does. During periods when central banks are printing money, they're essentially debasing that fiat currency, they're devaluing it. Now what Bitcoin does, because it has a limited supply of 21 million it hedges against that devaluation.

So when they print money and provide liquidity, Bitcoin tends to increase in value. And when they reduce the money supply to strengthen the local fiat currency and increase interest rates, Bitcoin tends to move into a bear market phase. There is a direct correlation between the bull markets and the bear markets.

Now, There was a very interesting chart that I saw the other day, which had a 10 week projection or forward guidance or forecast of the M2 money supply. And the forecast is expecting a vast increase in the money supply and global liquidity going into Q4 this year. And when you plot that same chart, Over the past year, with Bitcoin and the forecast of the M2 money supply, it follows each other very, very closely.

So the forecast is suggesting we're going to see an increase in liquidity Q4 this year, which suggests Bitcoin should have a very good run going into the later stages of this year as well.

Stephen: What are your thoughts on the U. S. dollar? You know, it had such a stronghold for decades, but we're seeing more and more companies Move to, you know, you know, in the same alignment as BRICS and we're seeing, you know, a lot of what I would say is like companies that have been pretty much cut off from the U S financial ecosystem due to sanctions moving further and further away from the U S dollar into things like even the digital yuan what are your thoughts about that of, you know, more and more the U S dollar domination seems to be losing steam.

Or at least like people are thinking like, Hey, there's alternatives to this. We don't have to deal in the U S dollar as much as we did before.

Anthony: I think the global de dollarization theme is still happening. It's just not as mainstream in the media as it has been over the past few years is kind of happening silently. You know, even Japan had to sell huge, huge amounts of their US dollar holdings to protect their own fiat currency. You mentioned Tether are one of the major holders of T Bills, so they're actually potentially propping up the US dollar at the moment.

Long term wise, if we're going to see a continuation of interest rates declining over the next couple of years, that supports a decrease in the value of the U. S. dollar. And if you look across the BRICS nations, they have between them been de dollarizing. They've been reducing their holdings to U.S.

dollars. Of course, Russia has had the sanctions that prevents them from doing so. If you look at China, they have significantly reduced their holdings of US dollars and they've vastly increased their holdings in gold reserves over the past 5 to 10 years. Now I think this is a strategic play by the BRICS nations.

Of course, there are now 5 other nations that are potentially going to join them as well, you know, Argentina, I believe, Saudi Arabia as well, and a few others. So as that alliance kind of strengthens, global trade in U. S. dollars is going to gradually decrease. But this global de dollarization isn't going to happen overnight.

It's going to be a gradual play that takes place over the next decade, I believe.

Stephen: And you mentioned Tether. We both mentioned Tether today. And it's funny because I was just watching an episode with Paolo, the, the CEO of Tether now used to be the CTO on CNBC Arabia, I believe it was with Henry Arsalanian talking about exactly what you said. It's like, Hey, we're helping the U S dollar and strengthen it.

Do you find it ironic that a stablecoin company that's often, I feel, been, you know, I don't want to say wrongly, but has been scrutinized heavily by the U. S. authorities, is helping to prop up the U. S. dollar? Do you find that ironic, or do you have any comments or opinions about that?

Anthony: Yeah, I mean, the only probably thing that I would put into that is, for the size of the team, the earnings they are making is incredible. Incredible. It's insane. Like their revenue and their profit over the past year has been crazy to the level of a company like BlackRock, I believe. I think I read a report recently where they made more revenue than some of these major institutions.

And their team is actually very, very small considering the size of the other organizations. So, you know, a lot of this kind of pressure from governments and officials is potentially from a lot of these traditional financial companies. I'm not kind of for or against them. I think stable coins are providing a service.

In terms of transferring assets around the world with a stable value. I don't believe like we, we need them for cryptocurrency adoption and for growth. It's definitely a useful tool, especially for trading and settling trade in a stable coin as well. But yeah, it's going to be interesting. There's new regulations coming into the, into the European Union.

Where any stable coin that isn't registered in the EU will have to potentially be delisted. So that is potentially Tether there as well. So there could be a bit of a shake up coming in the EU to Tether's kind of market cap over the coming months, depending on how that goes as well. But

Stephen: And, you know, as someone that worked at Bitfinex, their sister company, or consulted for Bitfinex, their sister company, they've run extremely lean. But they also have very dedicated people working there that enjoy what they're doing. It doesn't feel like work, I think, to a lot of people. And they also have a very, they're very visionary, you know, I think a lot of crypto exchanges to have that kind of same visionary, but very, Tether's very visionary.

Same with Bitfinex. You mentioned stable coins and, you know, they account for almost two thirds of the transactions in cryptocurrency, but you're saying that they're not as important. Why is that? And do you see something like CBDC being as important? Because we're seeing now, and a lot of people have said mostly from the stable coin issuers, that the government should do a great job of regulating stable coins, but they should be creating their own.

I think one of the, the funniest metaphors is like we want governments to regulate how planes are built, but we do not want governments building their own planes for a number of reasons that they would've been stated. What are your thoughts on this? Stablecoin usage, is it necessary? And do we, and then the second question, part of that is like, are CBDCs necessary, or are we letting, should we let these private sector companies do what they do best, since that's what they're focusing on 24/7?

7?

Anthony: I mean, you know, if you think of a stablecoin, two thirds of transactions are in stablecoin because most currencies are traded against the stablecoin. So, you know, if you're going long on Bitcoin, USDT, you're trading that stablecoin, or short, you know. But ultimately, there could potentially be a Bitcoin and US dollar pair.

A Bitcoin and a Euro pair against the fiat currency as well. So, you know, I don't know if stablecoins are needed for widespread adoption. They are widely used, of course, because everyone trades USDT pairs and USDC pairs and so on and so forth. Now, coming to CBDCs, I actually think news and the media around CBDCs has actually gone a bit quiet recently.

You know, you've got Trump and an RFK that came out saying they would ban a central bank digital currency. I think, you know, if you take a look at governments around the world and what they've done, a CBDC would give them the powers to overreach across, across the country. And we know they have, you know, in recent times overreached on certain areas.

So I think giving them that control is definitely a concern and pretty worrying for me. I wouldn't support CBDCs. So. You know, I think here in the UK, I went to a seminar a few months back and they were estimating by the end of 2030 that there would be a CBDC here in the UK, but we actually haven't heard much about it in the UK.

So whether it's flying under the radar, and it's going to be a big surprise in a few years time. Who knows, but I think, you know, we've got to be pretty careful with CBDCs. It's definitely a tool that can be used for overreach by governments.

Stephen: And you're going to the European blockchain I believe it's convention, EBC in Barcelona, Spain coming up. And I think there's a lot of conversations. I know there's some people from I believe it's DEA, which is kind of like the digital Euro association. That's probably going to have a lot of these conversations.

So that should be an interesting one. Talk to me about the Bitcoin spot ETF. We're seeing actually a significant interest in things like Solana, so much so that Solana, or at least companies have applied for a Solana spot ETF. What are your thoughts? Are you seeing increased demand by customers? Around Solana, just because of the obviously increase in price and activity with meme tokens on their platform.

Have you seen the same increase internally on your platform?

Anthony: Since the Solana ETF application, I would say, actually, no. There was more demand last year throughout 2023. And actually, if you look at the digital asset inflows into these kind of types of products, institutional products. Solana received the second highest inflows in 2023 behind Bitcoin. So it actually received over 100 million in inflows in 2023.

But this year it's been pretty reserved. I believe it's probably tens of millions, maybe 10 or 20 million it's received this year so far. And obviously Solana had like a 1000 % gain throughout 2023, so it had a huge run, Solana did. But this year it's been a bit quieter in terms of the interest.

You know, the, the SEC, I believe they rejected or pushed back the most recent Solana application filing, which means it now has to be revisited. So You know, there are some concerns or there are some potential kind of like risks that it may not get approved. But in fact, I think that because there is now an Ethereum ETF that it's only a matter of time before more ETFs are approved like Solana over the coming months and maybe years.

Stephen: It's more whenn than if I think at this stage, right? It's hard for the regulators to fight it off when they've already approved too. Solana just has to follow the playbook of Bitcoin and E and Ethereum. About that, like we've seen, speaking of Solana, the meme tokens have completely taken over this year.

Why do you think meme tokens? But not altcoins, like, why do you think Meepco, or even, you know, that kind of, people put them in the same bucket. Why do you think they're outpacing things like, you know, crypto when it comes to prices in general? What is it in your thoughts that you see?

Anthony: I would actually say, you know, back when I first started getting into crypto, people were a lot more tribal about their investments. You know, they were, okay, I'm an XRP maxi, you know, I'm a Bitcoin maxi. You know, you had, you had your core kind of audience for each particular project. Now what I actually find is people are a lot more kind of fluid with their investments.

They, they're not so tied to one particular investment. They're happy to try out a meme coin and try and ride that train. They know exactly what it is. They know it's a meme coin. They know it's a joke. They know there could potentially be some large money to be made there and they're happy to risk money to do so.

So I actually think people are a bit more strategic now about where they want to deploy capital. And I think that's why you're seeing a lot more of a frenzy around these meme coins, people jumping in, jumping out, riding that train and not being so tribal about only investing into one particular project.

That's kind of what the change I think has happened over the past few years from my experience from speaking to a number of investors.

Stephen: I agree there. A lot, when I got into the industry, very tribal. But then there wasn't a lot of people, so being tribal was like, kind of like You, you had to be tribal because it felt like not a lot of people knew about cryptocurrency. So you want to put your stake in the ground that you belong to this group of people.

I think as it evolved, people want to make money though. So they're like, cool. Making money's cool. Making money's cooler. I want to talk to you about DeFi because, you know, you're heavy with institutions. You do have recreational users as well. Whether, like, are you exploring anything in DeFi? I know that kind of goes outside of your traditional business model, but more and more institutions are looking at DeFi and seeing how they can play in that arena.

What are your thoughts around DeFi?

Anthony: we are. Yeah, we're actually currently building into our wealth portal some like staking protocols and DeFi protocols to generate yield generating products that has been requested heavily by a number of our clients. And you'd actually be surprised, you know, a lot of the kind of institutional clients that are already involved in crypto, they are still using various DeFi protocols at the moment already.

So I think you'd be surprised. There is actually a fair amount of institutional adoption in various DeFi protocols because they. They like the yield generation. upon, you know, Ethereum or even Bitcoin, for example, as well on various different protocols. So yeah, it is definitely a market we're trying to attract.

Now we're developing a small solution that could cater towards that market as well.

Stephen: Awesome. I love the teaser. What else is on the roadmap for ICONOMI going into end of 2024 and beyond in 2025? I'm Adam.

Anthony: Yeah, so, staking is, is one of them. Building out our custodial solution as well for more assets, that's definitely two. So at the moment we have Bitcoin and Ethereum vaults. We're looking to develop that solution further to hold increase, potentially increasing the number of exchanges and venues we trade from.

And I think 2025, potentially something with market neutral strategies. So on our platform, we are long only because in the UK, You know, derivatives and futures products in the crypto market are banned for the UK retail market, but on the sophisticated side and the institutional investor side, we're now looking to develop different products that can cater towards market neutral strategies, so there's some protection during a downside market.

Stephen: Is there a demand for ESG? Like I see a lot of things around NFTs, carbon credits, as you, I think you brought up sustainability earlier. Is there like maybe some indexes or you know, portfolio that's, you know, very ESG conscious? Are people looking for that? Or is that, you know, more like what we see is like people kind of virtue signaling online, but they really don't care when it comes time to make money.

Anthony: Yeah, I can't say I've seen any kind of ESG portfolios on the platform yet. There's, there's all kinds of, you know, we get the themes. There's some AI portfolios. We have a Shariah compliant portfolio. We have like top 20 portfolios, maybe meme coin portfolios because there are some meme coins on the platform that have the correct due diligence checks.

But yeah, I can't say I've seen any ESG compliant portfolios on the platform just yet. But ultimately, it's down to an investor to come on the platform and build that portfolio. So maybe that's a gap in our market. That's something I should actually fill.

Stephen: Maybe. It seems like Tello Foundation is a, they do some really great work in the ESG space. Last but not least, we saw, you know, ex president Trump. Buy, I think it was a slice of pizza with Bitcoin. We've seen people say it's the biggest historical moment in Bitcoin history. What do you think? Is this, is this, should we be pegging historic moments to someone that's obviously catering to our industry?

But like I also saw him on stage saying how hot Nikki Jam was. She's so hot. Not realizing that Nikki Jam is a male performing artist. What are your thoughts? Should we be, Buy into the attention seeking or should we be backing off and saying, Hey, like, what are you actually gonna do for the industry?

Anthony: Yeah, I mean, listen, that's, that's a great gimmick of an image, him buying a pizza with, with Bitcoin, but I think more importantly, what's come out recently is him saying the U. S. Treasury Department will adopt a Bitcoin strategic reserves. That's, that's a game changer. If, if that takes place. That will kind of set the scene for other central banks around the world to adopt a Bitcoin strategy which will be huge for Bitcoin and digital assets.

So, yeah, you know, buying the pizza with Bitcoin, all fun and games, that's great, may make a good NFT in the future at some point. But ultimately, I think, you know, that the previous comments about the Treasury Department adopting a Bitcoin reserve would be the bigger game changer there for him coming into office.

Stephen: That's awesome. I like the, I like the photo because, like, you just see Pomp in the background, kind of, like, monotone look on his face, like, he's just, like, sitting there. It's kind of like, what are you doing there? It's kind of interesting. Anthony where can people find you? Where's the best place to get connected?

I love what you're working on too. And like, you know, usually we don't have business development folks on this podcast, but I saw your background. I saw the list of questions that you kind of wanted to touch on. And none of it was about ICONOMI, to be quite honest. You wanted to talk about the ecosystem as a whole, macroeconomics.

I don't even think you put anything about, you know, what ICONOMI is. And I found that super interesting because usually biz dev people want to talk about their product. But it almost seems like your products and your services speak for themselves. So where can people find and get in contact with you if they want to test out one of these strategies themselves?

Anthony: Now, yeah, firstly, I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, Stephen, so thank you for having me on the show. We run a newsletter on LinkedIn, so predominantly a lot of the content we put out around education, market conditions, macroeconomics, is all on LinkedIn. So, yeah, you can either follow me on LinkedIn, Anthony Fernandez, or go to ICONOMI.

We run a newsletter on ICONOMI, a monthly newsletter, you can subscribe to that. And that's generally where we post a lot of our content around the portfolios and educational stuff around cryptocurrency. And economics as well. So yeah, please subscribe to that newsletter. And

Stephen: Two favorite words in one sentence, content and LinkedIn. That's what we're all about. And especially those that follow me closely. Anthony, it's been a blast. Thank you so much. I think people will be looking out, especially with the EU regulations, kind of opening up things for, you know, organizations like yours to thrive in.

It's going to be very interesting in the next couple of months.

Anthony: Thank you so much, Stephen. You're looking forward to hopefully catching up at some point in the next year as well.

Stephen: Awesome.