Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!

Rafael Casas: [00:00:05] Welcome to crypto with Accounting CWA podcast powered by Wave, where we talk with technologists and crypto enthusiasts as we discuss current events in economy, politics, technology and digital assets with thought leaders from around the world. Hosted by Pat Whyte, he was the CEO and co-founder of Big Wave, the only back Office Digital Asset Solution for Enterprise, Digital Asset, Accounting, Finance and Tax. And Rafael Casas, VP of Business Development here at Big Wave. This is an exciting day because this is the inaugural podcast with a very special guest. Our amazing guest is one of the most influential individuals in the digital assets world. Ron Quaranta currently serves as chairman and CEO of Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, the world's leading nonprofit trade association, promoting the comprehensive adoption of blockchain technology and crypto assets across global markets. Ron is the editor and contributing author of the book Blockchain in Financial Markets and Beyond. Ron was also named to the top 100 most influential people in the accounting industry by accounting today in 2018. And so we're really, really excited to have these amazing folks on today. And thank you for joining and tuning in. Great to have you here.

Ron Quaranta: [00:01:15] Raphael. Thanks for having me, Pat. Thanks for having me. It's a privilege. It's really a privilege to be on the inaugural episode, particularly because I'm not an accountant, but I spend an unbelievable amount of time with accountants. But it's great to be here. I'm looking forward to the chat. Pat. It's it's too long. Been too long, brother.

Patrick White: [00:01:31] It's been too long, you know, and I'll say I'm also not an accountant, but I definitely play one on TV and I've spent now an enormous amount of my life learning ASC rules and things like that. So it's we're kind of in that same boat there. But perhaps it takes a non accountant to to really examine the.

Ron Quaranta: [00:01:47] Industry to.

Patrick White: [00:01:49] Bring an outside fresh perspective on it. Well, Ron, no, I'm excited as well, buddy. I mean this is, you know, you and I have gotten to do a few podcasts and it's fun because we've done webinars and podcasts and things like that. And I always it's I'm always on the other side of the of the table here, which is I'm being interviewed. You're always asking me the questions. And today we get to turn it around and I get to ask you all the hard questions. Me and Ralph, I'll get to ask you all the hard questions. So.

Ron Quaranta: [00:02:11] So I'm in trouble.

Patrick White: [00:02:11] Yeah. Boy, boy. Howdy. I hope you prepared for this for the party here, but this should be. This should be really fun. I mean, we will. And, Ron, the thing I like about you, of course, is that. Is that you cover all the things that we just talked about. So it's not like we're just going to talk about accounting. We are like, you do cover digital assets through the economic impact, through regulatory congressional actions. You know what's happening in the House Intelligence Committee. We can we get we can cover it all here.

Ron Quaranta: [00:02:35] So this will be yeah, you know, it's interesting, Pat, because you and I have been to so many meetings, I'm very privileged to sit across a pretty wide range of different industry verticals. And, you know, I come out of financial markets, as you guys know. But just to be able to expand my mindset, talking to accountants and lawyers and technologists, it's been a really fun ride.

Patrick White: [00:02:54] I like accountants. It's one of those really funny things like I think because I'm I'm an engineer by training and I really like accountants. I find there's a lot of similarities between accountants and engineers. I think there's there's there's obviously sort of attention to detail and that kind of thing, which is, you know, as an engineer you have to have a high level of attention to detail. But then there's also accountants, good accountants, and I'm not sure I'd say this for every single account I've ever met, but like really good accountants also are very they're very aware of materiality. And so it's the same with like really good engineers. Like there's there's a saying that I use all the time with the engineers in our staff, which is don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. And I think that's like the best. Accountants also have a very similar mentality, which is like it's attention to detail to exactly the point. The best accountants, the best engineers have incredible attention to to detail, to exactly the point they need to and know further. And that's like it's one of the skills that you kind of develop both as a good accountant, as a good engineer is is like is calibrating that point where you stop worrying where like you've reached a material threshold and you're like, okay, like we could get this perfect, but you know what? Let's move on with our lives because life's too short to tie out to the night. In the Bitcoin world, life is too short to tie it to the 18th decimal point.

Ron Quaranta: [00:04:06] You know? And Pat, that's really interesting. And I agree with that point. You know, you and I get to talk to a lot of accountants, a lot of lawyers and beyond. I am not an accountant, but I'm interested in accounting. I married my accountant, so that's a whole other conversation. But but it is interesting because when you talk about the accounting industry, a lot of people in the past have been, well, very stodgy. They don't really innovate. The accounting groups that I've seen in accounting participating are some of the most innovative minds that I've met in this ecosystem. Oh yeah. And I think that ties into what you're talking about.

Patrick White: [00:04:35] Is there a part of it that like so is there a part of it? I wonder that that, that accountants aren't always looked to, to innovate like you're not asking your accountant often to do a lot of innovative stuff. And even the other day we were working on our, you know, we just did a webinar all about the Facebook updates. Sure. And I and it's funny because I asked when we were doing our prep work for the webinar, I asked the guests, I said, Hey, so when was like, can you guys give me an analogy? The last time there was a major Facebook change like this that we could use to anchor as like, Hey, we can't talk about what the crypto FASB changes are going to look like because that's forward looking and all this kind of stuff that goes into that. But here is what happened when Facebook changed the rules on option, on option recognition and or whatever it was. And like, it's funny because they both kind of scratch their heads in a way that was like, Oh, this doesn't really happen all that often. There's not really that many times that that like there's so much innovation in a space that's out kicking that's outstripping outpacing the, the, the standard setters. And yet crypto is that space. And so I wonder if there is this aspect that's just like, you know, a lot of accountants don't get asked to do really innovative stuff every now and again.

Ron Quaranta: [00:05:50] Yeah. You know I think that's part of it. I think the other aspect of this that's really impactful to the accounting industry when you look at the things that have happened in the accounting industry, you know, leaving crypto off the table, going back a few years, it wasn't, you know, Ron and Pat made some money on this innovation. Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Accountant, help me. It was, you know, it was the larger accounting firms. It was it was larger institutions that had things around revenue recognition, etc.. The innovation that you and I have seen around crypto assets was almost the groundswell of and I hesitate to use the word the retail customers. Yeah. So when you don't when you get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of retail customers saying, what do I do? That was really kind of a grassroots evolution for the accounting profession. So I take your point. I agree. And I think a lot of this was, holy cow, like a lot of people who are doing this, the accounting profession needs to evolve. And I think in many regards they've successfully done that. I'll compare that to like, you know, Pat, compare that to the insurance industry, and I'm not making fun of any insurance companies. I never.

Patrick White: [00:06:47] Never would never say anything bad about insurance.

Ron Quaranta: [00:06:49] Never say anything bad about.

Patrick White: [00:06:50] It. Never.

Ron Quaranta: [00:06:51] Right. But, you know, I mean, I'm still getting carbon copies of paper from insurance companies. And so, you know, to that point, I think the accounting profession really is working hard to evolve. And that's important.

Patrick White: [00:07:01] I tried to the my insurance company offered me a discount to switch to billing paper, to switch off of paper billing. And I've done it like every every month I try and fail like there's a website, you click on it and it like I've failed to be able to just switch off of paper billing, even though they offer me money to do it. It's the most bizarre thing in the entire world.

Ron Quaranta: [00:07:21] Well, their websites are designed from like a 1998 browser. I'm sorry, I go through AOL. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Patrick White: [00:07:27] And I know, like, even for a bit wave here. I know we kind of dove in and we're getting a little bit off topic, but even for a bit of like our first our first major partners were not it wasn't Deloitte like it wasn't it wasn't those guys, as were first major partners. Like our first major partners were little sole proprietors, like people that just sort of hung up a shingle and said, Hey, this crypto stuff's kind of fun. Like, I want to I want to do accounting for crypto companies and like, Oh no, there's no tools for it. Like, Hey, oh, bit wave, hey, here's a tool for this stuff. So it's this really interesting aspect. The like it did the innovation all really did happen from the, from the bottom up in these situations.

Ron Quaranta: [00:08:04] Which is spectacular. And think about what that means for big wave. Right. And in fairness to other vendors, but, you know, big Wave now has this almost trusted provider perspective for a lot of those grassroots kind of folks, because previously they had nowhere to go and they weren't going to be able they're not going to H&R BLOCK. They're not going to go to. Wc Right. But to beat to see that there are vendor providers out there doing the hard work is, you know, you guys are part of that evolution.

Patrick White: [00:08:28] And that's a super good point because it was it wasn't like a throw it over the fence like it was it was going a battle with these folks like three years ago when we were you know, when we were trying to figure out what to do about Defi, it was it was literally us in our sole proprietors in the trenches. You know, it's like, what, 1917? I mean, it was like literally in the trenches getting, getting air bombed by by the IRS constantly with no idea what to do and just figuring all of this stuff out together and trying to like read ether, scan together and things like that. So it is.

Ron Quaranta: [00:09:02] Yeah, it's the one.

Rafael Casas: [00:09:04] Point positive thing that I can say that I've seen in the past several years, you know, 3 to 5 years from the accounting community is that they really focused on innovation as a group. You know, there there's a lot of organizations and community, you know, outside of just innovation, beyond technology. So that's been really, really inspiring and inspiring to see. And I think actually that kind of segues into something, Ron, that I wanted to ask you, you know, kind of what your journey was getting into this crypto space and inspired you to kind of get so deep in here because, you know, you're really an inspiring individual in this space. And so I like to understand your journey to get there.

Ron Quaranta: [00:09:37] Raphael Thanks for that. And by the way, that was that was Raphael getting us back on course because you were.

Patrick White: [00:09:42] Expert, expert, expert host right there.

Ron Quaranta: [00:09:44] Exactly. So Raphael, I appreciate the question. So, so I this is my almost 11th year in the crypto space. I'm also I come out of financial markets and financial tech as as Raphael you know this is my 33rd plus year in financial tech. I'll share with you that the past ten years is where the gray hair came in as I probably so.

Patrick White: [00:10:02] Is your 30/30 year and. In fintech.

Ron Quaranta: [00:10:06] I started 33. I started working in 1989.

Patrick White: [00:10:09] What was the what was your first? I mean, to not to derail also, but what was your first what was the first fintech thing you worked on? What was what was fintech in 1989?

Ron Quaranta: [00:10:17] Oh my God. Well.

Patrick White: [00:10:20] Like up until like five years ago, they were still shipping shipping tapes around to do ach.

Ron Quaranta: [00:10:24] So I'm like, I need a drink to answer that in its entirety. But I'll tell you that one of the first big projects I worked on for a company a long time ago was literally the migration from base terminals to to Windows.

Patrick White: [00:10:36] Oh, that's awesome. Oh, that's.

Ron Quaranta: [00:10:37] Fun. Which two years of of COBOL programmers banging their head against the wall and telling me and I'm not kidding, Pat, that no one will give a crap about windows and green screen terminals will be here forever. That was literally how it all started for me.

Patrick White: [00:10:53] In their defense, there are still green screen terminals at like most airports have at least a couple of green screen terminals still sitting around. So like in their defense, they were not wrong, if perhaps a bit misguided.

Rafael Casas: [00:11:06] Yeah, the government is still using cobalt. Right.

Ron Quaranta: [00:11:09] And the government still use it. You could probably count on two hands the number of cobalt programmers that are that are left out there and get the code, which is the majority of a lot of government and banking code. Yeah. So we can go down that rabbit hole. I got involved in the crypto space. Raphael, back to your question, it was really interesting. So I spent several years at a company that you probably know Thomson Reuters I was their head of Exchange trading for the Americas for a bit and a salesman on my team had left and about a year later, so this is about 2013, maybe early 2014. He calls me up and I know this sounds like a joke. I promise you this literally happened. And he calls me up on his cell phone and he says, Ron, I think I'm in trouble. And like, if you come out of the financial services world and someone calls you on their cell phone, which for all I know is a burner phone and tells me they're in trouble, that's really not a conversation I want to have. So like, I practically hung up. He's like, No, no, you don't understand. We've got a we've got a client that wants me to invest in something called crypto, and I think it's called Bitcoin, but a buddy of mine thinks it's illegal. What do I do? That is their story. And at first I'm like, I don't I don't know you. Who is this, you know, wrong number.

Patrick White: [00:12:15] So if you're the police, you have to you have to identify yourself.

Ron Quaranta: [00:12:19] Yeah, exactly right. Exactly. So, you know, I spent a bunch of time researching it. And obviously by 2013, 2014, 2015, I had colleagues, colleagues in financial markets that were aware and really looking at the decentralized aspect of it, because we all grew up in the financial services world knowing friction. Yeah, right. Like literally the entirety of my early jobs in Wall Street was I'm the person who's supposed to spot friction and then write a report about it or remove the friction. So when you see that level of innovation, that's kind of what started me down the rabbit hole personally.

Patrick White: [00:12:51] So interesting. That's that's so interesting. And so it's so like it actually does it's funny to to, to bring this to somewhat current events. So if you've watched the Bernie the Bernie Madoff like, I actually didn't know a lot about Madoff's early days as a market maker and as a as a trading house before, you know, before all the everything went down. But it's funny because that was a lot of the early proposition for his for his company was basically it was friction. It was could you go from T to it was T two week settlement to T three day settlement using using this newfangled green screen computer thing on on that, which I hadn't really realized that. And that's super interesting that then you're then one of your original takes in this was then okay well can we go from tt3 to you know, everything is like frictionless across the board.

Ron Quaranta: [00:13:38] Yeah. You know, a lot of the trading we were involved in was also international trading. So it's also very jurisdictional. You know, I'll give you an example. Back in early nineties, if you were trading international securities and say India for example, we had t three here to five at one point, then T three and it was t 30 to 30. Wow. Yeah. What's really it would.

Patrick White: [00:13:58] Because they were like mailing mailing paper search back and forth.

Ron Quaranta: [00:14:00] Things like that, They're mailing paper shirts back and forth. The registration for these are on paper books depending on where the company was domiciled. So imagine both the friction there from a technological lack of technology perspective and the risk. Yeah. What happens if that gets lost?

Patrick White: [00:14:15] Or at t 30 you almost have to have insurance. Like, like I wouldn't say title insurance, but whatever the whatever the equivalent of title insurance is for brokerage is, you almost have to have insurance at that point because like, like half of those deals will will or like maybe like a quarter of those deals will go belly up in 30 days.

Ron Quaranta: [00:14:30] Yeah. I mean, a lot of the brokerage firms in the exchanges at that domicile, there were other countries like that as well, had some level of quote unquote insurance. But that's as good as their ability to enforce and monitor that insurance. You know?

Patrick White: [00:14:42] Wow, That's super. So that's that's funny because it's it makes me so happy that you said that, because that's not it's it's not normally the answer a lot of people give for why they got into crypto. It's it's the reason that I love crypto is the reason like we a bit wave love crypto right is this idea of of basically I always describe it as like you know there's this 3% tax and whether that. Tax like whether that tax is a literal tax or it's 3% because a Indian exchange is holding your money for 30 days, like there's this 3% tax that the financial services industry tends to put on the world. And crypto is one way for us to basically get rid of that tax in a pretty safe way. That's super interesting. I didn't realize that was the background. I'm so happy we're doing this.

Ron Quaranta: [00:15:24] Yeah, I know it's a lot of fun. And you know, the last thing I'll add to that real quickly, Pat, is that I was one of the folks who got involved in crypto from Wall Street that wasn't looking to be a you know, I didn't look at it and say, Holy crap, Joe Coin, I'm going to become a billionaire on joke or whatever it may be. I literally looked at it from the technology solution first. And the problem now is I have family members wondering why I don't have a million Bitcoin lockup. I was going to.

Patrick White: [00:15:48] Say that was like me too, because like, like, like you and I are the only billion not not billionaires in here that have been around since late 2010. So so maybe we did it wrong.

Ron Quaranta: [00:15:57] I yeah, let's not hope not. I tend to be more optimistic than pessimistic. So I try not to look backwards and be like, Holy crap, Ron, you should have got out of Terra Luna earlier or you know, but, but I get the point. But that's what, you know, being too much in that prohibits at least me from looking at the next opportunity. Yeah. Yeah.

Rafael Casas: [00:16:18] You know my great lessons learned because I think you know this we're helping the next generation of folks get in from a business perspective. I know Pat and Ron, you're super passionate about that of like, you know, ultimately I had this discussion of with partners of were in the really in the business of helping the ecosystem succeed. You know, and I think something that really that's really fascinating that you're working on that Pat's going to be involved in, that we'd like to kind of share a little bit more about is the SBA Digital Asset Industry Principles Initiative. And I'd love to learn more about that. I know. I think that's going to be, you know, a really, really important piece of framework for many different verticals in this industry as a whole. So I'd love to dive into that a little bit.

Patrick White: [00:16:59] And if you don't mind, Ron, before you say, like, how did you start the SBA or how did you get like the what's the inception there? And then tell us about like the most recent.

Ron Quaranta: [00:17:07] Yeah, so a SBA had launched. So the conversation going back to 2014 brought us to a former salesperson who called me. You remember all of that. And I remember having lunch with a bunch of colleagues that were Wall Street colleagues, a couple of bankers, probably an unhealthy number of attorneys, one or two attorneys at the lunch. And there the conversation really pivoted to what's the trade association that can help the evolution of this? Well, what's the safe space to kind of have these conversations? Because up until that point, patent, you remember it was go to this conference, go to this incubator in downtown New York or in Seattle.

Patrick White: [00:17:41] And the conference, I mean, like Ron, I always joke because the first conference that I went to was World Crypto Con in Vegas.

Ron Quaranta: [00:17:47] Yes.

Patrick White: [00:17:48] And it was like, I won't besmirch anyone's good name, but like there was there was a floor of the convention center. It was just lambos like they weren't for sale. They just brought in 15 lambos to put on the floor of this convention center. It was like I was like, What are we doing here? Like, why are there 15 lambos here? They're like, Oh, they're awesome. Like, well, OC, I guess that's fine. Everyone was wearing a cowboy hat. Cowboy hats were super in back.

Ron Quaranta: [00:18:14] And it was just a different world. Do you remember the American flag denim jacket sets, which are all.

Patrick White: [00:18:19] Over the place.

Ron Quaranta: [00:18:19] Because there some of the advocates of freedom and look, I get that perspective, but when you're like in that group, I was talking about lawyers, bankers, Wall Street. If I walked into an event center with them and there's ten Lamborghinis sitting there with a bunch of guys in cowboy hats, they're probably turning around and walking.

Patrick White: [00:18:34] Like, this is not not exactly my.

Ron Quaranta: [00:18:36] Scene, not exactly my scene. And there's probably a regulator who wants to get a picture of me at the scene and I don't want to, you know, So when you look at it in that context, a lot of our foundational mission was to pull in stakeholders in the ecosystem and given our name, Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, it's who you thought, right? It was. It was bankers and traders and investment houses, lawyers, certainly. But, you know, going back to when you all became members and we're privileged to have Bill Wave as a member of the SBA, it's a it's so much bigger an ecosystem. It is accountants and technologists and cybersecurity people and folks focused on ESG. So so, Rafael, getting back to your question, that was the genesis of SBA. What's the safe space to do that? The immediate answer really became a not for profit trade association, right? We don't buy or sell crypto. We don't invest in crypto startups. We I'm not even allowed to take member dues in crypto yet, although I'm going to have to talk to the board about that at some point. But being that not for profit trade association gave us the opportunity for the the conversations that needed to happen. You know, everyone uses the phrase the grownups in the room and I, I kind of don't like that phrase, but at least the responsible people from different industry verticals who know what needs to happen to evolve. And once we did that, we launched more publicly in early 2016 and here we are.

Patrick White: [00:19:50] It's a funny phrase because, well, there's a lot of those phrases that have they haven't the phrase it hasn't really aged well. And that's I guess because it has it kind of reeks a little bit of ageism. But at the same time, it also is like the exact right thing because there are some. It is. There needs to be people in the room who are taking this up seriously, who are not in it for rock and emojis. They're in it because it's going to fundamentally change how we kind of operate, how money moves around the world, how we do business. So like, yeah, there's a few phrases like that. Haven't quite aged well, but no.

Ron Quaranta: [00:20:21] But I mean it really. The problem with those phrases, Pat, I'd love your perspective on this. And Rafael, you as well. Those phrases pop up and they're really meant to address how do we bridge the world we're trying to get to with the world that currently exists? Right, Right. And, you know, we could talk about all day long. But when you look at some of the examples of how poorly some things run, just from the cursory reading that I've given some of it and experienced people who understood things like corporate reporting or the stuff you and I talk about, Pat might have avoided that. Yeah. So a lot of this and I agree with you and some of them don't age well, but it doesn't negate the whole how do we get the new world thinking together with the old world? Let's not blow things up. This this one was.

Patrick White: [00:20:59] Like and this one, the FTC's one. Not to go too far off topic here was not like it didn't need a deep expert in this stuff like anyone who knew these things even remotely well you know, could have brought some controls onto this and been completely fine. That's right. But yeah, well, I hope they will spend a little bit time talking about the other side of this, because it is a fun one in our in our world. All right. Well, we were talking about the newest initiative, though. That was that's where we were.

Ron Quaranta: [00:21:25] Yeah, right. So in the wake of where we begin EFT and Celsius and Voyager and before that, three arrows pad, a lot of the conversation in SBA and across the different parts of the membership, you know, in other associations and other groups have kind of referenced this, this lack of an almost ethical perspective on how to do business in this space. And I might be overstating or overusing the word ethical, but the SBA's Crypto Industry Principles project is really designed to help create the structure of a framework of ethical principles, of a moral perspective on if you're going to be a responsible player in this ecosystem, you should be willing to do the following. And a lot of this isn't going to be prescriptive per se. It's not going to be you must be audited on next date by this company with this technology. And you know, the principles will launch and we're targeting launching those in early February. Pat, you and Wave team, we want you at that table. And in fairness, we'll be opening it up to other industry participants as well, large banks, large broker dealers members or not, it's meant to be in other trade associations. It's meant to be an industry conversation that points to how do we want to play in this world and how do we want to play in this world in a way that enables us to understand the best benefits of the technology, maybe opens up the best benefits of here's the best, here's the way to use CRYPTOASSETS to evolve global markets and help things like the unbanked and underbanked, for example, or payments. And in a way that also gives us the protections the world expects, right? You need to protect investors. You need to protect people who are getting, you know, receiving remittances in overseas, for example. And I think our belief is that that framework will be the start of that that global conversation.

Patrick White: [00:23:04] All even at I mean, one of the one of the things that I tend to think about this is and it's it's like it's what annoys me so much about FTC's in some ways is that, you know, we're in this world where you see crypto players as bad.

Ron Quaranta: [00:23:19] Actors. Yeah.

Patrick White: [00:23:20] And and so then everyone just thinks crypto is, is full of bad actors. But at the end of the day, like I tend to think when I think about institutional adoption of digital assets, I think that they have a that that institutions actually have a lot to learn from digital asset companies like some of the stuff that digital asset companies are doing around proof of reserves, like we call it polar inside a big way, the proof of liabilities and reserves. But this idea of of being fully transparent of your assets and your liabilities is we we kind of take it for granted because we've been doing it for a while and it just makes sense. And there's a blockchain, all this kind of stuff, because you imagine if, if, if you could do that for Bank of America and actually like really see I not and obviously the the banking regulators can do this, but if you as an individual could go to their website and see exactly what their assets are, you could double check that by going to an independent third party bank explorer, call it a bank explorer. You can see exactly what their assets are. You could see exactly what their liabilities are. I mean, this idea that there's there is really innovative things that we in the industry are doing around transparency and around visibility into this that I actually think the traditional financial institutions have a lot to learn from. Like if you are my my argument probably is like, let's say five, ten years from now, if you're a bank and you are not doing some sort of proof of reserves, I'd actually be like a proof of liabilities and reserves. I'd actually be really surprised. Like I think that you're going to see certain things like this get back ported to traditional financial financial institutions. And and they're like, But in order for that to happen, everyone has to get to the table and they have to start learning from. Us about what's cool and we have to learn from them about what a control is, I guess.

Ron Quaranta: [00:25:08] Yeah. What an internal control is. Yeah. And no, Pat, I agree with you. And I certainly I agree with the philosophy of the perspective that you and I have. I think part of the challenge is there's this trade off between particularly for the incumbents, between transparency and sufficiency. And what I mean by that is you and I come from well, we certainly grew up in a world where transparency isn't replete around the world in every institution. And let's, you know, not to bash banks too much.

Patrick White: [00:25:32] Or certainly our best friends.

Ron Quaranta: [00:25:34] Our best friends, you know, and we've got banking members, so I'll shut up soon. But, you know, there is an inherent interest for a lot of the incumbents not to have that level of transparency. Right. Right. And there are a variety of reasons. I'm not necessarily trying to paint a picture of this kind of nefarious activity, but the vast majority of of the populace wouldn't understand fractional reserve banking. Right. So transparency into the banking system in the United States would aid them little. I think. I think this is a very long term sweeping part of history conversation, right? Yeah. Because 100 years from now, how our descendants engage in banking and interact with the world and exchange value is going to be very different than me wondering whether or not the government solvent and there's going to be a raise of the debt ceiling. Yeah, but but it's those two competing perspectives, and that's part of the challenge. That's what makes regulators say crypto's bad. It's got to go away. But it's what makes the adherence of innovation understand that this is part of evolution.

Patrick White: [00:26:30] Well, now the other side of that, though, is all is all. Not that I'm going to argue with you because you're 100% right. But let me let me offer a little bit of a devil's advocate, which is that when we when we're sitting in a 1%, I mean, right now is kind of a funny time with higher interest rates, But essentially the world is kind of going to centralize around very, very low interest rates with periods of periods of inflation that then that then the majority of our lives are spent in low interest rate situations. Yeah, in a in a 1% or less. I mean, my bank gives me 0% interest, I mean maybe 0.01 or something. Why are we doing fractional reserve banking in a place where I don't actually get any benefit off of it? And so at the point at which you're doing a where it's the profits of the bank that are coming purely off the fractional reserve, but nothing back to the stakeholders. If you think about this in terms of like a competitive environment, then you'll the the faster we get away from making money on the spread to making money on on value add services for the clients, the better will be. So even even in fractional reserve like, there is a real world where I actually tend to think that that it's not that it's a dying industry, but it is a it's going to face competition, you know, over the long term.

Ron Quaranta: [00:27:44] Look, and you see that happening today and it's you know, this is all publicly available information. Any major bank is paying 0.1 or 0.12, whatever it may be, you know, but a Robin Hood, which is which targets a very different demographic and a younger generational shift, is offering 4% APY on cash deposits. So never before in history have, to your point, participants in the in the global economy had the opportunity to be as mobile as they can be now. And I think blockchain and crypto are going to accelerate that.

Patrick White: [00:28:13] Oh yeah, 100%. Oh yeah. And I mean that's that's the dream of crypto is full, full trans portability of all of your assets from stocks, everything else because I mean it's like it's a pain in the ass to move from TD Ameritrade to ETrade like they don't make it too bad like but you are filling out 20 pages of of paperwork to do it signing stuff. I had to fax something in the last time I did a movement like that and to be able to do that with one click is is obviously a much different world.

Ron Quaranta: [00:28:39] And look at the other look at the other verticals that that impact right Think real estate You know we joke about real estate. I live in a small town in central New Jersey. The registry of my title of the deed to my house, rather, sits in a giant book in a basement in a building from 1832. And, you know, it's all quaint until you realize, holy crap, this is a real pain in the neck. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rafael Casas: [00:29:01] There was there was two points that you both had made. You know, Web two learning from Web three, Web three learning from Web two. And that was something that I think broader that you and I have discussed in the past of basic fundamentals that, you know, Web three companies need to confirm controls to basic back office to the right departments, just things that you should follow to make sure you're successful. And that was something that you and I discussed we shared about with martial arts, for instance, with, you know, I in jujitsu for a long time. And the guys that were the most successful were really just really good at basics, You know, they weren't doing anything fancy, anything crazy. They were just excelled at the basics. And, you know, I had shared I had done a talk with digital CPA 2019 with regards to how jujitsu made me a better consultant. And I know you practice martial arts and I want to you know, it's probably been valuable to you in many ways and from business and dealing with people and wanting to kind of get your insight on that.

Ron Quaranta: [00:29:59] It has. And Rafael, I've got to say, I had forgotten for a moment. In our conversation a few weeks ago. And when I saw the bullet points and I saw you had martial arts, like, wow, how good is waves research? This is I mean.

Patrick White: [00:30:10] It's it's our APO. Our APO research. We keep on everybody.

Ron Quaranta: [00:30:13] We have really unbelievable.

Patrick White: [00:30:15] Well well, Ron once kicked a kid really hard in third grade. So if we ever need something, we got we got some stuff on.

Ron Quaranta: [00:30:21] Don't worry. Yeah, that'll be my on.

Rafael Casas: [00:30:23] We'll cut that part out.

Ron Quaranta: [00:30:24] Yeah. Please. Let's edit that out. So Rafael, I appreciate that. It's so for many, many years I taught Japanese martial art that, you know, Rafael Aikido. I stopped practicing just before COVID because I. Because I injured my knee and then COVID kicked in, and then people really weren't getting together to do martial arts. I mean, I think the thing about martial arts and it's so impacted my life, it's impacted how I look at people I participate with in the ecosystem, in the industry. It's impacted how I look at teaching people who are younger than me about moving through different capabilities and how they move up in quote unquote, the ranks. And there's a couple of different ways to look at it. I learned the most from martial arts and how it changed my perspective, not by being a student, by being a teacher. And one of the things I would argue, Rafael, you probably seen as Pat, I don't know if you ever practice, but I learned more by teaching things I had a solid foundation of than I ever did by being a student trying to build that foundation. And it sounds like a weird thing to say because once you teach, you need to understand the foundations.

Ron Quaranta: [00:31:28] Without fail, you need to understand what's that framework and that foundation. What does it mean? Why does it do what it does? And Rafael, by way of example, in the early days of Bitcoin, one of the things I had the privilege of doing for some companies back in 2014, 2015, I teach executive level over summaries of what the heck is Bitcoin, what the heck is crypto? The other thing that martial arts had done for me and Rafael, I'd be interested in you and Pat's perspective. It really reinforced not just the discipline of doing the work, no matter what work that is in the field of your life. But I had an interesting conversation. I think I read this somewhere, you know, when you when you look at students of different capabilities or arts, you'll see the frustration. Why can't I get this? Why do why are you able to do this, Raphael or Ron or Pat? And, you know, it's taken me so long. And one of the answers that really impacted my life was a teacher had told me long ago, he said, because I failed more times than you've ever even tried.

Patrick White: [00:32:21] Yeah.

Ron Quaranta: [00:32:22] And in that context, like, holy cow, just don't keep trying, don't give up. And I see that in entrepreneurs and I see that in colleagues in crypto and blockchain and other industries as well. So it really informs my perspectives on how to interact with the world.

Patrick White: [00:32:36] Oh yeah, I did two weeks of Ninjutsu and one of the warm ups on Ninjutsu is you, you like you roll and then stand up and turn around in a fighting pose. Yeah. And my knee kept popping out when I would do that. I don't know why. I don't know if I have like weak knees or something, but every time I'd flip around, my knee would pop out and I'd have to like. So I didn't last very long and I was not not the most fun thing in the world. That was a fun sport, though. The one the class at USC where I went, they the first thing they teach you is how to like dislocate someone else's arm. It just was kind of a different I think it's a different martial art than maybe some of the more disciplined ones.

Ron Quaranta: [00:33:12] Well, you know, it's interesting because Aikido is a defensive martial art. There are no technically no attacks in Aikido, which really points to Raphael. You had and I have this conversation around redirection like you can direct a conversation, you can direct the impact in the perspectives that people are throwing at you in a way that becomes more productive.

Patrick White: [00:33:29] Yeah, but I have to say I agree on the high level, which is that the only way you get good at anything is by is by failing out of continuously. And it's one of those it's going back to the accountants and engineers of this is that it's the you you bash your head against problems for a very very long time in both of these disciplines and that's that's how you get good because you bash your head against a problem long enough. You eventually get to the point where you are able to you're able to solve it, and then you're able to kind of solve it the next time a lot faster. And you also know is the patterns around like what got you to solve it.

Rafael Casas: [00:33:59] So yeah, it was a good.

Ron Quaranta: [00:34:01] Point that I'm still not getting on the mat with Raphael, though. Know that happened.

Rafael Casas: [00:34:05] That's two big things that I shared when I did that. You know, the takeaways that I had brought over into consulting and just business acumen was one was our instructor would always talk about it's not going with the flow, it's flowing with the go and you have to be adaptive. Yeah, whether you're count engineer, anything in business, you have to constantly be adaptive and you know, flow with that and not try to go against the grain and just pivot. And then, you know, another area is just under being under pressure constantly. You have to be able to deal with that really well because you're under pressure constantly. So just having different mindsets is all super important.

Ron Quaranta: [00:34:41] Yeah. Rafael thing things inflexible we all know eventually break. So be flexible. Yeah. In every aspect. Yeah.

Patrick White: [00:34:48] That leads us very nicely to some of the things we want to talk about, which is speaking of flexibility, the current regulatory and standards environment here, because that's that really has been the big news over the last probably like three three. Once. Here is is what's going to happen with the regulatory environment. And I'll even mention one thing that so we're we're recording this. Jan 27, 2023. Just yesterday, Elizabeth Warren came out with another. You know, they put a lot of pressure on the industry in general. Elizabeth Warren just yesterday came out with a statement directed at, of all places. I mean, it's been really interesting seeing this because there's a lot of esoteric stuff in the world. And I'm not sure that the PCAOB, PCAOB gets mentioned in congressional hearings all that often. I mean, but for her, she came out yesterday with a very directed statement or a couple days ago, a very directed statement at the PCAOB about accounting audit standards for these these firms.

Ron Quaranta: [00:35:46] Yeah.

Patrick White: [00:35:47] How do how do you feel, Ron, how do you generally feel about the regulatory environment right now, the various pressures?

Ron Quaranta: [00:35:53] Yeah, I you know, let me just claim this a little bit, Pat. Obviously, all of these are nonfinancial, not financial investment tax on and on, not advice. It's just my personal opinion and not the CPAs. But that being said, look, I think there are a lot of different forces here. You know, I think all of us agree investors need to be protected to the extent possible. There really is a world where disclosure is make sense. People should get disclosures on where they're risking their money. I think this is also and I know this is going to be more provocative than a lot of people here. But Pat, you've never shied away from provocative commentary.

Patrick White: [00:36:27] Is that this is I stand by my 2020 200 k Bitcoin prediction. I stand.

Ron Quaranta: [00:36:33] By it. You know what? I agree with you and you know a lot of this. There is clearly a land grab from a regulatory and legislative perspective. And I know that sounds like, you know, I'm not wishing for some entirely decentralized liberal libertarian world where everyone is an individual. I mean, there are parts of the world the world needs help, right? Individuals in the world do need help. So when I see and if you if you look deeper into Elizabeth Warren's letter and I forgot the other senator who cosigned it with her.

Patrick White: [00:37:02] Wagner. Wagner from Oregon. Uh, yeah.

Ron Quaranta: [00:37:06] Widen.

Patrick White: [00:37:07] Why didn't why didn't.

Ron Quaranta: [00:37:08] You know, when you when you kind of parse through the letter, when you look at the public company Accounting Oversight Board, PCAOB, Warren very particularly goes down into the depths and says according to the regulations that empower PCAOB, you're not doing your job and you're not doing your job because you're not policing the public companies as well as potentially private companies involved. And to me, without congressional authorization to do some of that stuff, that those rights to regulate don't exist. Yeah, not necessarily saying they don't have a right or the SEC doesn't have a right, But to me, a lot of this feels like let's throw an entire blanket of regulatory stuff at this industry in a way to control it.

Patrick White: [00:37:50] Now, No, I'll second that because I do think that well, there's two I'll say my inflammatory part first and my less inflammatory second. But like a government organizations are incredibly incentivized to keep gray area like the second you put up And that's that's that's probably a good thing and a bad thing like it's a bad thing. And like the second you really clearly define lines, suddenly one group or another can't take some sort of action that they would otherwise. And so all of these guys are are incentivized. If you think about your 510 A in a government regulatory area and you think about the the risk map of the world that you control, like the gray area is where is where you and other other regulatory bodies over overlap. The second that there's clarity there, you suddenly can't do enforcement actions in that particular area. Right. And so that's that a makes you as a public figure less enticing or like you as a public figure, which most of the heads of these agencies are to some extent, if you something cannot take action, a particular area, your power is diminished. You you have less chance for for publicity and things like that. So there is there is this aspect that the gray area is very helpful to them. But then also, like there's legitimate gray area here, like there is very legitimate gray area between the CFP, like the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the PCAOB, the SEC, the the FTC, like all these guys have a legitimate gray area here.

Ron Quaranta: [00:39:14] So, yeah. And, you know, one example that we see on a regular basis is the Securities and Exchange Commission. You know, I had a lawyer friend who was very deep in the regulatory space and has been for many years when I raised this question with him is, you know, and I talked about why doesn't the SEC put forward clear guidance, clear directions on what is or isn't the security why why cherry pick eight or nine securities sorry tokens that are being listed on Coinbase for insider trading or whatever it may be and not some of that stuff is so bizarre, right?

Patrick White: [00:39:43] It really was like it really was so bizarre from the outside perspective.

Ron Quaranta: [00:39:46] Yeah, right. And his answer to that was and you and I agree on this point was they want that greater gray area because it allows them to continue to do the enforcement that they do. Yeah. They're you know regulators aren't incentivized to to help innovation right they're. Incentivized to tamp it down in the name of the protections they claim to want to do. And you could flip that argument around a little bit. And Pat, you and I get pretty passionate about this, and I think we both see this eye to eye since the SEC has started regulating in the way it has without providing some of the guidance, people have literally asked for trillions of dollars of investor money if apples flown out. Yeah.

Patrick White: [00:40:19] And and it feels it honestly, it feels because there is a there is a precept in in common law of, you know, the laws have to be a set like it is generally a bad idea to have retrospective laws. And unfortunately enforcement through a regular regulation through enforcement is a form of retrospective law if there's if there's a lack of clarity. So that's something that, you know, you don't have to be a hardcore libertarian Bitcoin maxi to to think that it's not good to enforce or regulation like we should be or to regulate through enforcement, you should be enforcing clear regulation. Yeah. And that always gets me with like the PCAOB is that I do think that they you know, we talked we talked about this because we just had this this webinar in fast being we did we talked about a lot, which is like, you know, there's a world where this is very fast. Like there is a world, you know, options have been around for 150 years or longer. I mean, when was the East India Trading company like? They had options like four years ago. Yeah, these things have been around for 400 years. And it took until like 1997 or whatever it was to actually have like clear, clear pricing guidance on options. So to be able to go from all the numbers, there were all of the dates that were wrong. So I apologize before any where we're recommending. But to then have the other side of this be that we went from a completely new financial instrument in 2009 to clear regulation, hopefully coming out in 2023. Well, we've we've gotten faster than than 500 years. So let's move in, moving.

Ron Quaranta: [00:41:53] Up, you know, and the pace of innovation continues to accelerate. Right? It's not a linear curve for the pace of innovation. So, you know, one of the challenges in the wake of that is regulators and legislators around the world. It doesn't matter how efficient they are, They they can't keep up. The thing. The thing that I really dislike is this kind of blanket perspective on the part of a lot of legislators that, well, all of this innovation, all of this technology is simply meant for, you know, terrorists and money launderers and tax evaders. I mean, I have I have accounting friends to this day, Pat, who are like, well, you know, bitcoin's really for tax evasion, right? Come on, Ron, Stop. Stop kidding. Go. Well, why don't we.

Patrick White: [00:42:30] All lying to ourselves like we're just we're just all here evading taxes.

Ron Quaranta: [00:42:33] Right? And I find that so to be such a myopic perspective on innovation that it's always very frustrating.

Patrick White: [00:42:38] Well, I will say we we keep a list internally. So there's this is kind of a funny thing, but like, there are companies that that we try to sell to and we go through and maybe we lose a deal or whatever it is. And that's that's fine. Like that happens. There are companies that like we try to sell to and we never get a call back. We never get any engagement. They don't care. And and I'll say one of those, because they were not a customer of ours, was FTC's. We're like, we you know, we tried selling to them. We called them. We we called on them. We had interactions with like higher ups there, and they just never really cared about this. And so there is that aspect. You're like, you know, most of the people that are our customers do care about this. They are making a good faith effort to do this correctly. But there are, of course, are people that are not.

Ron Quaranta: [00:43:27] Yeah.

Patrick White: [00:43:28] So we we keep a little list internally of the companies that like it's not just that that we lost a deal is that like they just like won't even talk to us which always strikes me is very weird because we have a tool designed for like exchanges and things like this at this point to help them track their internal liabilities versus assets and all of that. So if they're not talking to us like they're it's hard to build this stuff yourself. I mean, it's it really is. So, yeah, it's an interesting one.

Ron Quaranta: [00:43:52] You guys have been at it for how many years now building this stuff.

Patrick White: [00:43:54] So we the first fingers were on keyboard late 2017, early 2018, somewhere in that range. So mean we've been doing this for five five going on six years. I mean it doesn't feel that long. And honestly my my co founder and I, we bootstrapped it for the first three years because we didn't, you know, in 20, 2018, it wasn't all obvious. It's still in 2018 was not all obvious. This was a real thing, right. Like it's still all of this might have gone away. So I was was my co founder and I she did sales and marketing and I did the engineering and I just, you know, and then I had a day job doing other stuff. Also, I was a chief architect for a company called five nine and consulting chief architect. And, you know, we just sort of plodded along waiting for it. And then we where things really took off for us was during the pandemic. I mean, the pandemic was sort of that huge uptick in crypto companies and innovation, all that stuff. And that's when that's when we started hiring people and and all of that.

Ron Quaranta: [00:44:48] Yeah, it's not easy to build from scratch, but when you see those those sales targets that you know, if they don't understand, you can educate, right, Pat If they don't want it because they don't want that service and you're talking about an exchange that needs that kind of reporting. Makes you want to step back and say, I probably don't want those people as a customer.

Patrick White: [00:45:03] It's really it really was interesting that like that, because we've seen that with a couple of of exchanges like that or a couple of these different companies that have had problems where they were not. We have to my knowledge, we haven't had any big wave client that went through one of those one of those types of situations. Yeah, we have a couple now that have gone through it and then came to us either through their auditors or through their liquidators or whoever it was.

Ron Quaranta: [00:45:27] Yeah.

Patrick White: [00:45:28] But we don't have anyone who went through that. And there's, that's notable because, you know, you either care about this stuff or you don't. And you either have controls and you're thinking about that way or you're not, which is. Yeah, but and that's why I'm so excited about this, the new SBA initiative, because I think there is a lot of stuff here to be defining. I think there are stuff here to be defining best practices for the crypto industry. And I think there's things here to be defining best practices for us for the financial services industry, because they are it's going to be one of the same. Like today we think about as different five, ten years from now. Every single bank, every single bank, every single investment, TD Ameritrade, you name it, they will all have crypto and they all have digital assets. And you will get to this point, which so getting back to the earlier point I make, like you will get to this point where someone like TD Ameritrade, this is totally speculative. I have no inside information or anything like this, but someone like TD ameritrade could have digital assets and they could go through a process of publishing a polar like a polar report. So having their their, their prove their liabilities and provable reserves as all published and then suddenly it does actually become kind of weird like, well, hey, we have all this transparency into you over here. We have no idea what you're doing over on this. Like, are you naked short selling? Are you like, what are you doing over on this side of the world? And suddenly you start to get more pressure to even open up transparency there? I mean, I I'm a big believer in transparency, if nothing else. Like I'm a big believer in transparency.

Ron Quaranta: [00:46:51] I agree with you. And I think, you know, to me, the example everyone's got this world, you know, digital assets and crypto will totally overthrow Tradfri, Right. You know, that's not that's not realistic. And we live in that world. Credit cards didn't overthrow the use of currency. I mean, arguably, I don't remember the last time I had a dollar bill in my hand. But that being said, it was, you know.

Patrick White: [00:47:13] I had to borrow 20 bucks from my mom to tip somebody because I literally, like my mom still keeps cash. And I don't it was just it was like, right.

Ron Quaranta: [00:47:20] But, you know, and the comparison is for a good half of a century, people still have cash and then credit cards. Yeah, I think there will be a parallel kind of evolution with with traditional finance and what we're looking at in the crypto world.

Patrick White: [00:47:32] I think that there's companies will die because of this. I don't I don't like what's the right way to say like traditional trade for companies that do not adapt will have significant problems. But I don't think that that's a blanket statement that every company will not be able to adapt like I don't. I think that most of them are pretty savvy. Like, you know, financial services companies are the capitalist capitalists. These are people that are they might be conservative in some ways, but boy, do they know how money and how money works. And so when they see a world where they're threatened by it like we have seen, we've been seeing more uptake and more more interest from the traditional finance companies because they are legitimately scared of it. And in the same way to bring us back to more to to modern events, in the same way that like Google just declared a code red internally, which is where they like they they realign all of their resources and shut down projects and do everything to work on to work on the GPT stuff. Because I don't know about you like the first time I used chat GPT and I asked it a question and it just showed me and just told me the answer. Like I'm like, Oh, Google is totally screwed. And so like that's the same with these guys. Is the first time that you send $1,000,000 across borders with no forex slippage fees and, and for $0.07 on polygon boy you know the the different companies that rely on that arbitrage they got to be pretty scared and so that's that's the stuff where either they'll they'll adapt or they won't.

Ron Quaranta: [00:49:04] Yeah and look there's a very different thing between the CEO of JPMorgan calling crypto or Bitcoin Bitcoin.

Patrick White: [00:49:12] He's always real cagey. He always says Bitcoin like he hates Bitcoin, he likes he likes crypto.

Ron Quaranta: [00:49:17] Yeah but we all know and they've been very public about the fact that there are probably 100 people working on different implementations of blockchain in financial services because it's a strategic choice. They have to they don't want to be the last buggy whip company because horse and carriages are going away. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Rafael Casas: [00:49:33] No, this has been an amazing conversation. One thing I did want to I want to close on and get your you know, just your perspectives on either of you or both of you is kind of what what is inspiring you right now or what is currently inspiring you in this space in the future of this space.

Ron Quaranta: [00:49:49] So I sort of there are a couple of things. You know, everyone's been complaining about bankruptcies and I get it and it's pretty traumatic. Builders are still building. I really love some of the building work that. Happening around identity. I really love some of the work that's beginning to really bear fruit, at least from a proof of concept or conceptualization perspective on tokenization. You know, people can joke all they want about nfts and they can joke all. There is a clear picture on the horizon of a world where tokenization makes the world better from the perspective of value transfer. I'd love to be able to sell my house in a day and not have to wait 60 days for a closing. And I know that's kind of an oft used example, but that example in every implementation of it and every iteration of it from friction perspective, happens billions of times a day, every day all over the world. So I think there's a lot of great stuff there. I think, you know, everyone says Web3. I think people are still working on what the heck do we mean by Web3? And there'll be a point in the future where we realize, Oh, that's what we meant by Web3. And that is empowered in many ways by by different types of crypto assets or or blockchain technology. And I'll add one last thing to that and I pad, I'd love your perspective on this. I won't do price predictions, as you know, but everyone everyone looks at the vast majority of crypto assets and says, Crap, going to hell should go to zero, whatever. But there will be a core that will have a use case that I will, I think will make lots of fortunes, but also make the world a better place.

Patrick White: [00:51:19] Yeah. Yeah. That's a great that's a great answer. I like I like tokenization a lot. That's my my theory. So I still do price predictions, but I don't know, I guess my, my other price prediction is bitcoin to 100,000 at some point. I just don't I just can't put a real pin in it. The prediction that I like to do is I like to, to to do. I call it the summer of prediction, which is if you think about like so wrong, you and I met 2019, something like that. Yeah. 2020 was a summer of defi. Yeah. Defi was just it was, it was the thing that was what we were all doing. It was the new hotness. It was amazing. 2021 was a summer of Nfts that was pandemic year. 2021 was magic. Eat an open see all these guys? It was absolute craziness around Nfts. I like to say 2022 was the summer of winter, which is like all we could talk about over the whole summer was just the crypto winter, and that's literally the only thing we could talk about. That's right. I'd be interested to hear your prediction, but. But maybe we are the same. Is that my prediction is the 23 will be the summer of tokenization. Like I have kind of a deep belief that by the end of this year we're going to see the ability to buy anything from, let's say, Coca Cola stock to houses to Porsche's all we'll be able to buy all of those on chain with kind of a high level of of certainty and assurance and things like that. So my, my prediction is, is around tokenization. That's not actually I wouldn't say that that's exactly what my what keeps me so inspired by this industry.

Patrick White: [00:52:49] I mean, what keeps me inspired always comes back to the friction. Like I, I love defi I think Defi is the single like the so for I don't know if people know the history or not but like Vitalik Buterin wrote the first AMP whitepaper, which was how to how basically how to do automatic market making when you don't have when you can't do discreet time based like the way normal market making works is you at a nanosecond level you're putting and taking making make and take orders at a really high level. You can't do that on the blockchain's too expensive, is too slow moving. So you have to have these mechanisms where where you have like a formula that dictates a pool that you can kind of use. So he wrote that for his. But I actually fundamentally believe that he should probably get a Nobel Prize in economics for it because it's so it is so fundamental to how the world is going to change. So what gets me inspired is actually this is this is not meant to be flip for any of the people who lost money on FTX because it was a horrific tragedy. I wish it had not happened, but at the end of the day, like, I don't like centralized exchanges in that way. Like I like Defi. I think Defi is a lot of the future of a lot of these things. And I think that, you know, you either have companies like Coinbase, which are great, which are like regulated, very transparent in the US, open to regulation or you have or you have defi that's what gets me. So I'm excited to see a new wave of defi innovation, which I think we've got coming down the pike here.

Ron Quaranta: [00:54:16] Pat I, I agree with that in large measure. I do want to ask you one thing, though, because you brought it up, you know, and a lot of people have looked at FTX and the other failures. I'm going to say something I want to tell you. Tell me, tell me if you agree. Ftc's had nothing to do with crypto.

Patrick White: [00:54:29] Fdx was not it was no, FTC's was not a crypto company. So even even the history of it. Right. Ftc's started because and this this like drives me insane. Yes, it started because SBF was doing arbitrage and he was doing crypto arbitrage and he was annoyed at the lack of derivative instruments that he could get on crypto in the other exchanges. So he decided to make an exchange to create newer, crazier derivative instruments. The second you are doing derivatives on. Crypto. You're it's a derivative shop. It's not a crypto, it's not crypto. It's not these other things. It's a derivative shop. It drives me nuts. Absolutely.

Ron Quaranta: [00:55:07] And the the alleged fraud, again, let's you know, in the sake of fairness, because that's going to trial, what could have happened with anything. Yeah. And the market portrayed it. Sorry, the mainstream media portrayed it as crypto's bad look. And my argument has been it has nothing to do with crypto.

Patrick White: [00:55:24] Yeah, 100%. I mean, it was Enron, it was WorldCom. It was it was Lehman Brothers. It was all the same thing. It was it's sort of the world that it is. What annoys me most is that it was a it was a Wall Street. It was it was a Wall Street failure repackaged as a crypto failure, which which just annoys me to absolutely no end. But what are you what are you going to do?

Ron Quaranta: [00:55:48] It is what it is, my friend. People who dissents will constantly come back and say it's all bad.

Rafael Casas: [00:55:54] Yep, yep. Brian, you've been in a.

Ron Quaranta: [00:55:56] We blow up your agenda. No, no.

Patrick White: [00:55:59] Agenda.

Rafael Casas: [00:56:00] This has been amazing. This has been really, really great. Both insights from both of you. And you know, Ron, I want to get your information on how can anyone reach you if they want to learn more about WSB, to learn about the initiatives that you're working on?

Ron Quaranta: [00:56:11] Yeah, absolutely. So w w w w wbko dot.com info at wbko. We're on LinkedIn. We have our company page there. We're on Twitter at Wall Street. Betsy, drop us a note, check in. We're happy to share information. We're grateful for betway of being members, but we're also grateful that you guys are all going to participate in this kind of principles. I think a principled based approach will accelerate a lot of the things, Pat, you and I've been talking about, and I think that's important. And as many voices that we can have at the table helping that we look forward to it.

Patrick White: [00:56:44] Yep, 100%. I couldn't agree more.

Rafael Casas: [00:56:46] How can I how can everyone reach you, Pat as well?

Patrick White: [00:56:49] Yeah, we're at Betway Avio. I come in and learn all about us and I'm at Pat White on, on Twitter. I don't really tweet all that much. Yeah, but we are a bit way, way, wave audio, come in and learn all about us, and then I'll do a plug here really quickly. You know, as part of this, we have a conference coming up at the end of at the end of April. So April 24, 25th, in Austin, Texas, coinciding with consensus called Enterprise Digital Asset Summit. So if you are doing anything with digital assets and you are a business, then you are welcome. So we will have everyone there from accountants, tax people, product people, technologists, anyone touching digital assets. This is a conference for you. We have a bit of a slant obviously because of our of our bit wave. We have a bit of a slant towards accounting. So like last year someone gave an awesome presentation all about doing an ASC 606 analysis. Like literally was a 20 minute ASC 606 analysis on staking rewards and whether it was a derivative or whether you should be doing deferred revenue recognition of it, how, how slashing has worked. So if that's the kind of thing that would interest you, if you are the kind of person that would enjoy a half hour. Asc 606 presentation on a really esoteric part of crypto. This is your your conference so you can go to Edas Edas Edas live to learn more about that as well.

Ron Quaranta: [00:58:11] Pat I may have to go just for the swag. My wife stole my wave t shirt, she says the best t shirt she has.

Patrick White: [00:58:16] So our t shirts are awesome. I love.

Ron Quaranta: [00:58:18] Our T-shirts. We have.

Patrick White: [00:58:19] The plus. We got new. We got new hoodies too. So nice. Ron, you better. You better be there, buddy. Let us know if you need the ticket.

Ron Quaranta: [00:58:27] I'll be there, my friend. I'm looking forward. We're overdue for a drink. All right.

Rafael Casas: [00:58:31] Thank you, everyone so much for tuning in to our podcast today. And you can look for us on several different areas that will be linked up into the podcast. So thanks everyone. Have a great day and talk to you soon.

Ron Quaranta: [00:58:43] Thank you. Thank you.