Why You No Longer Have to Choose Between TradFi and Crypto

**Ram Ahluwalia** (0:00)
The number one question to understand the direction of markets is this. Is the data center cancellation rate going to increase or not? That's it, that's the whole question.
The demand for chips, the demand for infrastructure, the demand for energy is there.

**Austin Campbell** (0:19)
Hello everyone, welcome to Bits and Bips, where we explore how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. We're here to discuss the latest world of crypto and macro.
But before we begin, a quick commercial break.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:33)
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**Austin Campbell** (1:51)
All right, everybody, welcome back. As always, I'm your host, Austin Campbell, High Scholar of Zero Knowledge Group. I'm here with my co-hosts today, Ram Ahluwalia, Maester of Wealth, Leader of Lumida, and Chris Perkins, the Golden Hand of Franklin Crypto. We are not going to be joined by Joseph Shalom, however, thanks to some scheduling and market difficulties, but another time. However, before we get into our usual topics, I want to take a moment here and say, Chris, congratulations. So as of midnight, Chris is officially the head of Franklin Crypto after Franklin Templeton completed its acquisition of 250 Digital.
This is going to be fitting for our first topic, but before we go there, Chris, one of the themes we've been talking about for a long time on this show is the collision of decentralized markets, traditional markets, and all of these technologies coming together. You are now sitting at the intersection of those two things. So do you want to give us a little bit of what Franklin Crypto is going to be doing, what you're thinking about, what you're focused on?

**Chris Perkins** (3:00)
We've all been in this space for a really long time. And by the way, thank you, Austin, for the wishes. Thank you to the Franklin Templeton team for the professionalism and helping us on board. I mean, these guys are amazing. I've been in the space since 2018 And I'm walking into this like foundation that's been set. And my partner Seth, Tony and I, we're here to build. So it's going to be awesome. But I feel like you make this great point about the cycle. And having been in crypto for years, I think we've all been in it for well over five years.
Back in the past, you kind of had to choose, right? You either go into crypto or you stay in TradFi. And we know that the TradFi guys were building for the last few years, and they've been building like crazy. I mean, this is like the quote institutional cycle. But you couldn't have both. You either had, and like, you know, I went full DGN, went into the full native space, really, really loved it, learned a ton.
And I was obviously prior to that I was, I was on Wall Street for many years. But now is the time when you can actually do both. And watching that collision come together full time and to the credit of Franklin Templeton, when I'm like, hey, guys, this is how to be successful, these are the tools we need, this is how we operate. These are best practices. They've been like, yeah, let's go for it. You know, we'll make exceptions, we'll figure it out. And so this is the first time, I think, in years where I haven't had to choose one side or the other, it's like, yes, let's do both. And like, that's pervasive across every institution I'm speaking to. I was out with a buddy of mine who runs a big TradFi institution, one of the largest in the world. And he's like, you know, man, I just engaged this partnership with a crypto native, big crypto native name, and like, we're able to give them FX solutions that they never had. Because like, they didn't realize the sophistication and might of the tools that TradFi bring together. We can save them, you know, a ton of money on FX by doing it, you know, in a more sophisticated way than they were doing. So like, you're seeing this collision happen in real time. Sophistication is coming out on both sides of the equation. You're seeing efficiencies, cost savings.