Bitcoin’s Next 10 YEARS: The Smart Money Thesis

**Scott Melker** (0:00)
We're gonna go down the line and introduce ourselves, and then we'll get into the panel. I'm Scott Melker, I'm the moderator of this conversation. I host a podcast called The Wolf Of All Streets and a show on Yahoo Finance called The Daily Wolf.

**Scott Loughan** (0:11)
Hey, I'm Scott Loughan, I'm the president of Pantera Capital Management. We're a $3.5 billion alternative platform focused on blockchain and crypto.

**Simon Koster** (0:19)
Simon Koster, I'm the chief strategy officer at DCG. We've been investing, building, and incubating in space for over 10 years.
I lead our investment verticals and sit on our subsidiary boards, recently most focused on our kind of chunky transactions that we're working through.

**Emin Gunsirer** (0:35)
My name is Emin Gunsirer. I am the CEO and founder of Avalabs. This is the company behind Avalanche Blockchain, which happens to be the world's most technologically advanced blockchain system.

**Scott Melker** (0:47)
All right, so getting started first, congratulations on having the best name.
Second, we're going to go ahead and start with institutional adoption. I know this is shocking, but obviously we've been in a down market. It's been a rough time, but in the meantime, as retail is seemingly exiting, we have a new announcement every single day from some major institution that we would have pinched ourselves to have involved in this space before. So I guess we'll start with, why broadly do you think institutions are interested in this space right now, but more specifically, what are they actually interested in building right now? And you guys have an open conversation here.

**Scott Loughan** (1:21)
Yeah, listen, I'm happy to start. I think it's interesting, because this conversation comes up quite a bit.
You know, certainly over the course of the day, we're talking about sort of the state of the market. I think the markets are measuring different things than institutions are today, right? Markets tend to price things over short horizons, right? Six to 12 months, where do they see growth? Where do they see opportunities? Where are the macro factors, etc.?
Institutions are thinking in 10-year increments, right? And you just, you know, for those of you who didn't leave the room, if you were here for that last panel, right? You heard it from a number of the institutions about how their organizations are changing. And so, you know, regardless of where prices are, right? That certainly impacts sentiment, particularly from retail. Institutions have sort of fundamentally shifted their interest and their involvement in the space, and I think that's the big theme right now.

**Simon Koster** (2:18)
Yeah, I think that's all exactly right. And I think we're seeing the institutional adoption on both, on two sides, right? The first one is obviously institutions investing in the space, which has started over the past couple of years. But what we've also seen through the acquisitions that are going on is kind of what we all wanted to have happen two, three, four, five years ago when we were talking about building all these companies when we're thinking about from our venture lens. We all really wanted, we all kind of thought institutions are going to be wanting these companies in however many years, and that's exactly what's coming to pass now. And it's interesting that we talk about it, and it's kind of like a foregone conclusion in this room today, how many people have talked about institutional adoption. It's been kind of every single person.
And nobody's standing on their chair going like, this is fantastic. I can't believe this has happened, right? And actually people are feeling that it's almost like their thing has been co-opted to some degree, which I don't feel that way, but it's interesting to kind of get that sentiment. And then the other one, when we talk about the transactions, some people are super excited. This is exactly what they wanted to have happen, and some people aren't. And it's just when we see the institutions coming in on both of those sides, again, as investors and acquirers, that's been, I think, I think the interesting part is exactly what we want to have happen, but not everyone's super excited about it.

**Emin Gunsirer** (3:37)
So I've been in this space for a very long time. I was a professor at Cornell in computer science for 19 years. I published a paper on proof of work in 2003 That was a couple of years before Bitcoin itself, and it wasn't called blockchain then. So I've seen the space evolve, and I started talking to institutions, and when we were first doing it, we had to explain to them what the private address, what the private key was, what the public address is, and so on. And we're past those stages. Institutions have understood the value proposition of crypto, and we no longer have to combat the basics of technological understanding, but now it's a matter of slow progress. Now, when it comes to retail, it's a very different story.