Zoom Out: Crypto's Long Term Opportunity | DAS London 2025 | Day 1 | Main
Summary
Market Structure: The podcast discusses the evolution of the crypto market structure, highlighting the shift from firms handling all aspects of trading to a more specialized approach with exchanges, custodians, and credit providers working together.
Institutional Adoption: There is a growing interest from institutional investors in crypto, driven by the development of market infrastructure and the introduction of new products like perpetual contracts (PERPS).
Regulatory Alignment: Regulatory clarity is identified as a crucial factor for further institutional adoption, with the expectation that once regulations are in place, there will be a significant increase in spot and physical Bitcoin trading.
Perpetual Contracts: PERPS are gaining popularity among institutional investors as a way to engage with the crypto market without owning the underlying asset, despite the risks associated with auto deleveraging and liquidations.
Credit Complex: The rebuilding of the crypto credit complex is underway, with prime brokers entering the space, which is expected to facilitate significant market growth once banks begin participating.
Global Regulatory Landscape: The podcast highlights the varying pace of regulatory development across different regions, with the UK potentially at risk of falling behind the US in establishing a competitive edge in the crypto market.
Future Outlook: The speakers express optimism about the future of crypto markets, anticipating that 2026 will be a pivotal year for financial institutions actively trading in the space.
Transcript
Hey Jenna, great to be here today with you. Hey. Yeah, thanks for having me. Very exciting. Um, so we've got a lot to cover here, but before we get into it, could you just give a quick 30 second intro on yourself and Group? Hi everyone. I'm Jenna Wright, managing director of digital assets. Elmax Group. Um, we are a cross asset marketplace that essentially brings buyers and sellers together across a host of trading platforms um, in many jurisdictions. um allowing you to trade a number of different assets. So, FX and digital assets specifically. So, Elmax Digital has some of the most solid trading infrastructure in all of crypto. And I thought it would be fun. I want to give everyone just a flavor kind of a what's going on in the state of institutional crypto at the moment. But maybe we can use what happened this last weekend as a jumping off point. So, to give the audience a little bit more color, uh we had $19 billion of liquidations. what I think kicked everything off at FTX was about 1.5 billion if that gives you a sense that was a full order of magnitude larger. Um, and you can all remember maybe some of the dust that had to settle after FTX. I certainly remember. So, I'm just curious, you know, there's a lot of different directions that we could take this, but maybe from the market structure perspective, how do you think things held up? What are your takeaways from this past weekend? Yeah, I mean I I I'm less on the operational side now, but I know the team were sort of very busy helping move assets around all weekend to facilitate our clients, but we traded over $2 billion this weekend, which is a lot for a weekend. In traditional markets, you wouldn't trade anything, right? Because we're we're not in a 247 market. Um, but what's key is, you know, 15 times that took FTX out and, you know, we were all crying for days and weeks and months and trying to recover. We're now in a position where that that's okay. It can happen. And actually, we're trading on the back of the volatility. Um, market structure, the market structure is there. What happened in the FTX era is every single firm was doing every part of the cycle. Um, and in terms of speed to market and it h, you know, being able to trade, we just all sort of accepted that was okay, but actually when you stand back and look at it, you shouldn't really be executing and custodying and taking credit from a single firm. That that wouldn't be allowed in traditional markets. Um, so now we've all stepped back and said, "Okay, this can't work." We've had this period of consolidation and convergence where we've removed some of the firms that were trying to do all of these activities and we've started to see the professionals come in and the exchanges and the custodians and the credit piece are coming together and and the ecosystem is you know the life cycle now is that firms are working together much better so that we can really start to extrapolate some value and start to trade in the correct manner as we would expect in the traditional world. And one thing, can I get a show of hands by the way? How many people know what perps are if I were to Okay. Wow. All right. A+. All right. You've graduated from B to A. Uh, so I think PERPS featured pretty heavily into this. And there are some new upstart exchanges like Hyperlid that had, you know, something like $9 billion of open interest wiped. And per is something that folks on the more institutional, more traditional side of things have been actually getting pretty interested about. And I think uh Elmax has a new product there as well. And I'm just curious now that there was kind of this phrase that a lot of people learned for the first time over this weekend, ADL, auto deleveraging. Uh and some people were pretty shocked that the position that they thought they had open on these exchanges got wiped uh for them by their exchange. And so I'm curious, you know, how how do you think this was kind of a crucible moment for PERPS? Do you think this is going to change people's perceptions? What do you what do you think about how the per market infrastructure held up versus something like say spot? Yeah. So, so it's a strange one for us. So, we we've never offered per until around three or four weeks ago. Yeah. So, part of sort of how do we your timing is excellent. How do we offer a full suite of product in the digital asset world to our institutional clients? You know, we offer spot trading and we offer CFDs for our retail broker client base, but actually what we were missing were per. So, for those of you who don't know, a per is essentially a futures contract with no expiry that allows you to um speculate on the price of Bitcoin or Ethereum uh without actually having to own the asset. and the the leveraged element allows you to take on much larger positions than you would if you're, you know, paying 154,000 for a bitcoin today. Um, so we think it has legs. We think it's what people want to trade. We think actually the the offset of trading the spot and the per is important. So for us having everything under one roof is is key. Um but we we will we will end up with liquidations. That's that's the nature of the beast unfortunately. But I I think it continues. Um but I do think there will be a switch. I think top 10 exchanges last year traded just under 60 trillion in per alone. I think when you you're talking we're in we're in a crypto market where a 4 trillion market cap. You think about what FX trades in a day can trade double that easily. We're in a very small market today, but we need sort of capital markets to open up. And you mentioned earlier, we're going to talk a lot about regulation over the next few days. That single catalyst for institutional adoption is regulatory alignment. And I think once that happens, you'll probably see that switch of a lot more spot and physical Bitcoin being traded. And that might just level out things a little bit so that we're not so focused heavily on purpose. Yeah. Do you have a sense of why I'm very curious to get a sense from the institutional lens why everyone is so interested in per all of a sudden? Because this is actually per uh quick history lesson I guess. Pers actually didn't uh they weren't invented by crypto even though they were popularized by I believe Bitmax uh back about 10 years ago. Uh it was a concept invented by Robert Schiller I believe back in the early 90s and it just never really took off for whatever reason. Um, and so it's kind of been the instrument of choice for many of the, you know, the dgens on chain who love to speculate, but it seems like in the last year or so, there's been a massive amount of institutional interest for this instrument. And I'm just curious about what I I think they haven't really been allowed to trade spot fundamentally. The market infrastructure has not been there. Um, the regulatory there's no certainty and clarity there on the regulatory front, which is a problem. you're not seeing banks um or sort of real money being given the green light to date. Um and so it's it's like okay, how do we how do we stay involved? How do we participate without having to physically touch that coin? Um so it's it's really been the option for trading. Um so yeah, I I do think that changes over time. Um, but it's the quick win. If you're not engaged or if you're not thinking about how you transact, you're probably missing the point and you're you're too late. Um, so this has allowed firms to get to understand the asset class. Um, and I think that puts them in goodstead when they do get regulatory uh, green lights to perhaps sort of spread that risk a little bit and transition more towards spot trading. Okay. So, final question for you on this this last weekend and then we can move on to other subjects. But, you know, sometimes I I would love to get your perspective on how do you think this will be viewed by both potentially regulators um and also the institutional world because there's a very positive spin on this which is hey, we just handled 10x the liquidations of FTX and we're all still sitting here and actually markets look like they're recovering pretty nicely. The flip side of that coin would be how you know what happened. Uh, and it's very it's a little bit discouraging that markets that are even as large as crypto are today can still sell off like that. So, how do you think that the world is going to end up viewing this this sort of event? Well, I I heard last week someone say the hype is out and the infrastructurees in which is a little bit crypto bro for us. Um, you know, we see ourselves as institutional uh an institutional offering. Um, but I just think we will see we we will see the fusion of sort of tradi and digital assets coming together. I think we've seen that a lot. I mean, I told you earlier I've just come back from maternity leave and it's that, you know, this isn't my first rodeo. I'm on child three now and every time I come back I'm like, okay, we're still talking about institutional adoption. and we started Elmax in 2018 and probably sat on a panel in 2018 and said, "Oh, yeah, the banks are coming probably next year." But the reality is that that didn't happen. I've I would genuinely say I've come back this time and I'm like, "Wow, it's happening." Um, we're seeing there there are small couple of things that are still pending, but we're finally on track. I think that um really what was sort of holding us back were probably credit and regulatory um frameworks and actually we're dealing with both very nicely. We're seeing prime brokers come through. Um Hidden Road are a great example of a traditional PB that have entered the space and are doing particularly well. And I think as soon as the banks are able to sort of engage in spot then naturally they will fulfill that role of being a PB like they are in other asset classes. Um we're seeing traditional custodians like you hear that bony are a custodian in the digital asset space. They're not going to be the only ones. We'll see a lot more of that. And then suddenly you're starting to get trust and certainty. Um and people are gaining a ton of confidence at that point. And then you know the for us global momentum is absolutely happening in the states on the regulatory front. You know it's sad that the UK is sort of falling behind a little bit there but we'll take the lead from the US. We will look for frameworks in all jurisdictions and based on where our clients are based we'll go and sort of adhere to those frameworks and we'll get seek the relevant regulations. So we kind of split ourselves at the moment. We're in Jibralta. We're in Singapore. You know, we'll be in the US with a regulatory stance as and when it appears it's all about sort of satisfying the needs. And I I think that's kind of what's pushed institutions. There's been an a definitely a sense of competitiveness and if tier ones and if financial financial institution don't sort of get ahead of things they are going to fall behind. So I I have a number of follow-up questions there but you know for could you talk a little bit about the UK regulatory scene. So, we've seen there are a couple of very high-profile bills that are passing in the the Genius, which is the stablecoin bill that just passed. Um, although it's going to be a number of months or maybe about a year from uh November until when that actually takes effect. Uh, and clarity, which is the market structure bill, which is what are these tokens? Are they securities? How do we trade these things? That is working its way through the Senate at the current moment. I I I think we'll get some clarity next year from the UK. I just don't know if that's too late. You know, are we losing our competitive edge? How do we become a hub if we're so far behind? Like the US will be way far ahead by the time the UK comes out with some rules. Um and we don't really mind what the stance is on how they regulate it. Do they adopt existing regulations? Um but we just need something. It's almost like different regions across the globe are being really innovative. Um and some countries, some jurisdictions are coming out with specific uh digital asset type regulations. Um Singapore for example are being more service specific. So they'll they'll regulate you based on your activity. It it doesn't really matter. We just need some framework and then we adhere to it. And my con my concern with the UK and maybe Nigel will give you a better take on that later. um is are we are we going to miss the boat here because things are rapidly moving at this point. So I'm really curious about that. We so last um when we did this conference last year um again in my open I remember uh going back and saying that it felt like the US was at risk of missing the boat at one point because we were so uh the you know the SEC at that time was so openly hostile to the industry that it was pushing people out. Great for Das London. We uh doubled attendance uh year-over-year. Not so good if you were building in the United States. It feels like now that has entirely reverse coursed and there's this big sucking sound in New York uh where a lot of talent and capital is moving. H how at risk do you think the UK is here at falling behind or losing out to that market? Yeah. know I I I really unfort it's it's really sad like we our global headquarters I mean we have a ton of our sales guys over from all around the world because you know we're headquartered here DS is a three-day event in digital assets market but the reality is they've had a long time it's been really slow and I think the window is closing and that's really unfortunate that we have to and I mean by the way when we launched so much digital in 2018 we had to set up and get regular ated in Jibralta. That was the framework. Jibralta or Mortar. I mean, it's it's disappointing really. And we went to the FCA and we said, you know, we're regulated as a broker and an MTF today for FX. Okay, this is what we're going to do. What what do you think and how do you support us? And the message was very much, let us know how you get on. And here we are seven years later and we're still lacking a framework and we're still waiting on guidance. and it it would be really good to get some news quickly and we go okay applications in. We wouldn't have it any other way. We'd love to be regulated here. Um but you end up having to sort of step away and I imagine many jurisdictions are are in the same boat. But it feels like you know people being well global uh regulatory organizations are being really proactive about it. Um and we could miss the boat which would just be a shame. Right. Well, we have some policy makers who are coming who are maybe change your mind and uh get everyone jazzed up about some of the work. I'm here for that by the way that the case. Yes. Um come speak to us. Okay. We've only got a couple more minutes here and I wanted to get to something uh that you mentioned which is the credit complex in crypto. So that is the credit complex got built up in back in 2020 and 2021 and it was mostly the form of this kind of retail you know these shops like the block fies and the Celsiuses of the world these kind of lending desks the genesis of the world etc. Uh and it feels like we haven't really rebuilt that it's gotten rebuilt in DeFi and now with the advent of ETFs in the United States it feels like the prime brokers are starting to move in a little bit more and facilitate trading that sort of thing. But you mentioned that whole complex getting rebuilt and I'm just curious, you know, what is happening on the credit front for this market. Yeah, look, it's still there's a there's a long way to go. Um, and the hidden roads of the world have new backing now with much larger balance sheets and and that's what's pending fundamentally. So when the banks do come, we it's explosive. Mhm. they will they will naturally PB this asset class and it's game changer. We we're talking about 10 20 30xing really quickly. Um so we're keen to see it but what we don't want to happen the mistake of the past was that you know as a as a venue we shouldn't be providing credit. We shouldn't be jeopardizing our balance sheet. We shouldn't be custodying. We shouldn't be clearing. We shouldn't be doing everything. It it's okay for firms to have variances and you know we are a custodian in our own right and we have set up a separate entity to perform that because actually over 15 years we've built up quite a nice client base who have leared to trust and work with us and and actually it's on the back of client demand that they said actually we would like you we hold assets we'd like to store them with you and we treat that very separately um and you know our custodian forms part of what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to work with far custodians to build a nice network to say to our clients who execute with us because that is our core business matching buyers and sellers. You choose you choose the custodian. Um you choose your prime broker if you have one. If you want, we'll interact with your prime broker. We're very familiar with that in FX terms. And actually in FX terms, we don't typically outside of our FX broker, we don't typically um hold cash because it's a a prime brokerage network and a bank or a bank's client interact with each other and they have their own credit um agreements with each other. So we want to say to the client, you choose your custodian, you choose your PB, we'll just make it all work. will allow you to execute with us and we'll give up your trade to your prime broker or your custodian. And it's it's moving towards that market infrastructure that we're used to in Tradfi. And guys, we are creatures of habit, right? We like to do what we're used to. We don't want to, you know, as a as a service provider, we need to make we need to remove the barriers of entry for you. We need to make it as easy as possible. We need to give you a regulated venue to interact with. We need to give you um options. We need to remove barriers. We don't want operational headaches for you. We need to give you fix APIs that you're used to using um to trade other asset classes. We just need to make it very easy for you and and give you options. I think yeah, we've got a closing minute here. I want you to We haven't spoken about anything we said. I was going to I know that's the mark of a good conversation this weekend activities. Uh I want you to leave the audience here that we know we're kicking this conference off. Give people like a quick 30 secondond view one thing you're excited about something that's happening in the this combination of institutional and crypto like you know send us off with a bang here. I'm very excited about Elmax perpetuals guys. So if anyone wants to trade them come see us today. Um no look regul regulatory um alignment is key and that will allow the market to explode. Um we we will wait patiently but I think next year we'll see may maybe even this year we'll see there's a little bit press about banks trading. Not sure. Um but 2026 is the year of financial institutions trading. um let us know if we can help you. But we're we're gonna see a big change. I genuinely I'm not going to sit here next year and say institutions are coming. They'll be here. We'll be having a different conversation. I can't wait. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Jenna. Thank you very much.
Zoom Out: Crypto's Long Term Opportunity | DAS London 2025 | Day 1 | Main
Summary
Transcript
Hey Jenna, great to be here today with you. Hey. Yeah, thanks for having me. Very exciting. Um, so we've got a lot to cover here, but before we get into it, could you just give a quick 30 second intro on yourself and Group? Hi everyone. I'm Jenna Wright, managing director of digital assets. Elmax Group. Um, we are a cross asset marketplace that essentially brings buyers and sellers together across a host of trading platforms um, in many jurisdictions. um allowing you to trade a number of different assets. So, FX and digital assets specifically. So, Elmax Digital has some of the most solid trading infrastructure in all of crypto. And I thought it would be fun. I want to give everyone just a flavor kind of a what's going on in the state of institutional crypto at the moment. But maybe we can use what happened this last weekend as a jumping off point. So, to give the audience a little bit more color, uh we had $19 billion of liquidations. what I think kicked everything off at FTX was about 1.5 billion if that gives you a sense that was a full order of magnitude larger. Um, and you can all remember maybe some of the dust that had to settle after FTX. I certainly remember. So, I'm just curious, you know, there's a lot of different directions that we could take this, but maybe from the market structure perspective, how do you think things held up? What are your takeaways from this past weekend? Yeah, I mean I I I'm less on the operational side now, but I know the team were sort of very busy helping move assets around all weekend to facilitate our clients, but we traded over $2 billion this weekend, which is a lot for a weekend. In traditional markets, you wouldn't trade anything, right? Because we're we're not in a 247 market. Um, but what's key is, you know, 15 times that took FTX out and, you know, we were all crying for days and weeks and months and trying to recover. We're now in a position where that that's okay. It can happen. And actually, we're trading on the back of the volatility. Um, market structure, the market structure is there. What happened in the FTX era is every single firm was doing every part of the cycle. Um, and in terms of speed to market and it h, you know, being able to trade, we just all sort of accepted that was okay, but actually when you stand back and look at it, you shouldn't really be executing and custodying and taking credit from a single firm. That that wouldn't be allowed in traditional markets. Um, so now we've all stepped back and said, "Okay, this can't work." We've had this period of consolidation and convergence where we've removed some of the firms that were trying to do all of these activities and we've started to see the professionals come in and the exchanges and the custodians and the credit piece are coming together and and the ecosystem is you know the life cycle now is that firms are working together much better so that we can really start to extrapolate some value and start to trade in the correct manner as we would expect in the traditional world. And one thing, can I get a show of hands by the way? How many people know what perps are if I were to Okay. Wow. All right. A+. All right. You've graduated from B to A. Uh, so I think PERPS featured pretty heavily into this. And there are some new upstart exchanges like Hyperlid that had, you know, something like $9 billion of open interest wiped. And per is something that folks on the more institutional, more traditional side of things have been actually getting pretty interested about. And I think uh Elmax has a new product there as well. And I'm just curious now that there was kind of this phrase that a lot of people learned for the first time over this weekend, ADL, auto deleveraging. Uh and some people were pretty shocked that the position that they thought they had open on these exchanges got wiped uh for them by their exchange. And so I'm curious, you know, how how do you think this was kind of a crucible moment for PERPS? Do you think this is going to change people's perceptions? What do you what do you think about how the per market infrastructure held up versus something like say spot? Yeah. So, so it's a strange one for us. So, we we've never offered per until around three or four weeks ago. Yeah. So, part of sort of how do we your timing is excellent. How do we offer a full suite of product in the digital asset world to our institutional clients? You know, we offer spot trading and we offer CFDs for our retail broker client base, but actually what we were missing were per. So, for those of you who don't know, a per is essentially a futures contract with no expiry that allows you to um speculate on the price of Bitcoin or Ethereum uh without actually having to own the asset. and the the leveraged element allows you to take on much larger positions than you would if you're, you know, paying 154,000 for a bitcoin today. Um, so we think it has legs. We think it's what people want to trade. We think actually the the offset of trading the spot and the per is important. So for us having everything under one roof is is key. Um but we we will we will end up with liquidations. That's that's the nature of the beast unfortunately. But I I think it continues. Um but I do think there will be a switch. I think top 10 exchanges last year traded just under 60 trillion in per alone. I think when you you're talking we're in we're in a crypto market where a 4 trillion market cap. You think about what FX trades in a day can trade double that easily. We're in a very small market today, but we need sort of capital markets to open up. And you mentioned earlier, we're going to talk a lot about regulation over the next few days. That single catalyst for institutional adoption is regulatory alignment. And I think once that happens, you'll probably see that switch of a lot more spot and physical Bitcoin being traded. And that might just level out things a little bit so that we're not so focused heavily on purpose. Yeah. Do you have a sense of why I'm very curious to get a sense from the institutional lens why everyone is so interested in per all of a sudden? Because this is actually per uh quick history lesson I guess. Pers actually didn't uh they weren't invented by crypto even though they were popularized by I believe Bitmax uh back about 10 years ago. Uh it was a concept invented by Robert Schiller I believe back in the early 90s and it just never really took off for whatever reason. Um, and so it's kind of been the instrument of choice for many of the, you know, the dgens on chain who love to speculate, but it seems like in the last year or so, there's been a massive amount of institutional interest for this instrument. And I'm just curious about what I I think they haven't really been allowed to trade spot fundamentally. The market infrastructure has not been there. Um, the regulatory there's no certainty and clarity there on the regulatory front, which is a problem. you're not seeing banks um or sort of real money being given the green light to date. Um and so it's it's like okay, how do we how do we stay involved? How do we participate without having to physically touch that coin? Um so it's it's really been the option for trading. Um so yeah, I I do think that changes over time. Um, but it's the quick win. If you're not engaged or if you're not thinking about how you transact, you're probably missing the point and you're you're too late. Um, so this has allowed firms to get to understand the asset class. Um, and I think that puts them in goodstead when they do get regulatory uh, green lights to perhaps sort of spread that risk a little bit and transition more towards spot trading. Okay. So, final question for you on this this last weekend and then we can move on to other subjects. But, you know, sometimes I I would love to get your perspective on how do you think this will be viewed by both potentially regulators um and also the institutional world because there's a very positive spin on this which is hey, we just handled 10x the liquidations of FTX and we're all still sitting here and actually markets look like they're recovering pretty nicely. The flip side of that coin would be how you know what happened. Uh, and it's very it's a little bit discouraging that markets that are even as large as crypto are today can still sell off like that. So, how do you think that the world is going to end up viewing this this sort of event? Well, I I heard last week someone say the hype is out and the infrastructurees in which is a little bit crypto bro for us. Um, you know, we see ourselves as institutional uh an institutional offering. Um, but I just think we will see we we will see the fusion of sort of tradi and digital assets coming together. I think we've seen that a lot. I mean, I told you earlier I've just come back from maternity leave and it's that, you know, this isn't my first rodeo. I'm on child three now and every time I come back I'm like, okay, we're still talking about institutional adoption. and we started Elmax in 2018 and probably sat on a panel in 2018 and said, "Oh, yeah, the banks are coming probably next year." But the reality is that that didn't happen. I've I would genuinely say I've come back this time and I'm like, "Wow, it's happening." Um, we're seeing there there are small couple of things that are still pending, but we're finally on track. I think that um really what was sort of holding us back were probably credit and regulatory um frameworks and actually we're dealing with both very nicely. We're seeing prime brokers come through. Um Hidden Road are a great example of a traditional PB that have entered the space and are doing particularly well. And I think as soon as the banks are able to sort of engage in spot then naturally they will fulfill that role of being a PB like they are in other asset classes. Um we're seeing traditional custodians like you hear that bony are a custodian in the digital asset space. They're not going to be the only ones. We'll see a lot more of that. And then suddenly you're starting to get trust and certainty. Um and people are gaining a ton of confidence at that point. And then you know the for us global momentum is absolutely happening in the states on the regulatory front. You know it's sad that the UK is sort of falling behind a little bit there but we'll take the lead from the US. We will look for frameworks in all jurisdictions and based on where our clients are based we'll go and sort of adhere to those frameworks and we'll get seek the relevant regulations. So we kind of split ourselves at the moment. We're in Jibralta. We're in Singapore. You know, we'll be in the US with a regulatory stance as and when it appears it's all about sort of satisfying the needs. And I I think that's kind of what's pushed institutions. There's been an a definitely a sense of competitiveness and if tier ones and if financial financial institution don't sort of get ahead of things they are going to fall behind. So I I have a number of follow-up questions there but you know for could you talk a little bit about the UK regulatory scene. So, we've seen there are a couple of very high-profile bills that are passing in the the Genius, which is the stablecoin bill that just passed. Um, although it's going to be a number of months or maybe about a year from uh November until when that actually takes effect. Uh, and clarity, which is the market structure bill, which is what are these tokens? Are they securities? How do we trade these things? That is working its way through the Senate at the current moment. I I I think we'll get some clarity next year from the UK. I just don't know if that's too late. You know, are we losing our competitive edge? How do we become a hub if we're so far behind? Like the US will be way far ahead by the time the UK comes out with some rules. Um and we don't really mind what the stance is on how they regulate it. Do they adopt existing regulations? Um but we just need something. It's almost like different regions across the globe are being really innovative. Um and some countries, some jurisdictions are coming out with specific uh digital asset type regulations. Um Singapore for example are being more service specific. So they'll they'll regulate you based on your activity. It it doesn't really matter. We just need some framework and then we adhere to it. And my con my concern with the UK and maybe Nigel will give you a better take on that later. um is are we are we going to miss the boat here because things are rapidly moving at this point. So I'm really curious about that. We so last um when we did this conference last year um again in my open I remember uh going back and saying that it felt like the US was at risk of missing the boat at one point because we were so uh the you know the SEC at that time was so openly hostile to the industry that it was pushing people out. Great for Das London. We uh doubled attendance uh year-over-year. Not so good if you were building in the United States. It feels like now that has entirely reverse coursed and there's this big sucking sound in New York uh where a lot of talent and capital is moving. H how at risk do you think the UK is here at falling behind or losing out to that market? Yeah. know I I I really unfort it's it's really sad like we our global headquarters I mean we have a ton of our sales guys over from all around the world because you know we're headquartered here DS is a three-day event in digital assets market but the reality is they've had a long time it's been really slow and I think the window is closing and that's really unfortunate that we have to and I mean by the way when we launched so much digital in 2018 we had to set up and get regular ated in Jibralta. That was the framework. Jibralta or Mortar. I mean, it's it's disappointing really. And we went to the FCA and we said, you know, we're regulated as a broker and an MTF today for FX. Okay, this is what we're going to do. What what do you think and how do you support us? And the message was very much, let us know how you get on. And here we are seven years later and we're still lacking a framework and we're still waiting on guidance. and it it would be really good to get some news quickly and we go okay applications in. We wouldn't have it any other way. We'd love to be regulated here. Um but you end up having to sort of step away and I imagine many jurisdictions are are in the same boat. But it feels like you know people being well global uh regulatory organizations are being really proactive about it. Um and we could miss the boat which would just be a shame. Right. Well, we have some policy makers who are coming who are maybe change your mind and uh get everyone jazzed up about some of the work. I'm here for that by the way that the case. Yes. Um come speak to us. Okay. We've only got a couple more minutes here and I wanted to get to something uh that you mentioned which is the credit complex in crypto. So that is the credit complex got built up in back in 2020 and 2021 and it was mostly the form of this kind of retail you know these shops like the block fies and the Celsiuses of the world these kind of lending desks the genesis of the world etc. Uh and it feels like we haven't really rebuilt that it's gotten rebuilt in DeFi and now with the advent of ETFs in the United States it feels like the prime brokers are starting to move in a little bit more and facilitate trading that sort of thing. But you mentioned that whole complex getting rebuilt and I'm just curious, you know, what is happening on the credit front for this market. Yeah, look, it's still there's a there's a long way to go. Um, and the hidden roads of the world have new backing now with much larger balance sheets and and that's what's pending fundamentally. So when the banks do come, we it's explosive. Mhm. they will they will naturally PB this asset class and it's game changer. We we're talking about 10 20 30xing really quickly. Um so we're keen to see it but what we don't want to happen the mistake of the past was that you know as a as a venue we shouldn't be providing credit. We shouldn't be jeopardizing our balance sheet. We shouldn't be custodying. We shouldn't be clearing. We shouldn't be doing everything. It it's okay for firms to have variances and you know we are a custodian in our own right and we have set up a separate entity to perform that because actually over 15 years we've built up quite a nice client base who have leared to trust and work with us and and actually it's on the back of client demand that they said actually we would like you we hold assets we'd like to store them with you and we treat that very separately um and you know our custodian forms part of what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to work with far custodians to build a nice network to say to our clients who execute with us because that is our core business matching buyers and sellers. You choose you choose the custodian. Um you choose your prime broker if you have one. If you want, we'll interact with your prime broker. We're very familiar with that in FX terms. And actually in FX terms, we don't typically outside of our FX broker, we don't typically um hold cash because it's a a prime brokerage network and a bank or a bank's client interact with each other and they have their own credit um agreements with each other. So we want to say to the client, you choose your custodian, you choose your PB, we'll just make it all work. will allow you to execute with us and we'll give up your trade to your prime broker or your custodian. And it's it's moving towards that market infrastructure that we're used to in Tradfi. And guys, we are creatures of habit, right? We like to do what we're used to. We don't want to, you know, as a as a service provider, we need to make we need to remove the barriers of entry for you. We need to make it as easy as possible. We need to give you a regulated venue to interact with. We need to give you um options. We need to remove barriers. We don't want operational headaches for you. We need to give you fix APIs that you're used to using um to trade other asset classes. We just need to make it very easy for you and and give you options. I think yeah, we've got a closing minute here. I want you to We haven't spoken about anything we said. I was going to I know that's the mark of a good conversation this weekend activities. Uh I want you to leave the audience here that we know we're kicking this conference off. Give people like a quick 30 secondond view one thing you're excited about something that's happening in the this combination of institutional and crypto like you know send us off with a bang here. I'm very excited about Elmax perpetuals guys. So if anyone wants to trade them come see us today. Um no look regul regulatory um alignment is key and that will allow the market to explode. Um we we will wait patiently but I think next year we'll see may maybe even this year we'll see there's a little bit press about banks trading. Not sure. Um but 2026 is the year of financial institutions trading. um let us know if we can help you. But we're we're gonna see a big change. I genuinely I'm not going to sit here next year and say institutions are coming. They'll be here. We'll be having a different conversation. I can't wait. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Jenna. Thank you very much.