YouSaid · the spoken record

Andy Edstrom

lines on the record: 68
first: 2021-02-03
most recent: 2021-02-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, here's an idea precedent, which is because grayscale, I think, came to market in like 20. Maybe, or 14? It was a while ago. I wonder if there's a change in regime in terms of regulator. In other words, if we had the election in 2016, like for example, I don't mean to single out bitwise, but I'm not sure that they were in the market with a product yet. So if you sort of had, I don't know if grayscale sort of got grandfathered in under the Obama administration, I don't know. I'm just spitballing here. Maybe got harder to get through the gates after you had the change in administration.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wish I knew all of the discussions between the regulators and the various parties that have fund products now. In fairness bitwise has made a move, they now have effectively a similar trust structured product that is trading. Although theirs is an index product and obviously it's heavily skewed to Bitcoin, but of course it had some holdings in XRP, which they liquidated quickly after the lawsuit came to light from the SEC, which was a good move, and retrospect because price fell further. But they also have a Bitcoin fund, but it's not yet trading on the secondary. And so if you ask me, like, how come grayscale was able to bring this product to market? And I was like, I don't know, Bitwise couldn't follow soon with a similar structure on just Bitcoin. I wish I knew the answer about that.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's say people in regulation. I don't know if I'm going to name names, but it's been kind of a mixed bag. In some respects, we've been really lucky. Obviously, we were blessed with Brian Brooks. So I would say that Gensler is on the net, probably positive for this industry and for Bitcoin.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Gensler comes from the dark side of finance just like me. He's an ex-Goldman partner. I was never a partner at Goldman, by the way. I was a lowly plebe as some on the show like to say. And yeah, so he knows the financial world inside and out. Obviously, he was chairman of the CFTC, I think it was under Obama. And he has taught courses at MIT on blockchain and crypto, quote unquote blockchain crypto. I assume that he understands Bitcoin better than most. And so at least he kind of sort of probably knows what he's doing. I think that he was actually maybe on record about concerns about Ripple being a security or XRP being a security years ago. And so at least he should know what he's talking about, which is arguably an improvement from some folks, some regular.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To get back to grayscale, but before we do that, what are your thoughts on Gary Ginsler coming in as the new SEC chairman? Tell people a little bit about who he is and what his background is and then your thoughts on.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Subscription documents and qualifications, and you're sending wires and stuff, you can't just buy it in the brokerage account. And they are not sort of SEC qualified as far as I know. As far as I know, basically no asset manager has a literally SEC qualified product, SEC approved product out there. And so that's kind of the downside, as well as obviously the premium to net asset value. I didn't even go through the whole laundry list. I mean, there's three IQ. has a fund. I mean, obviously the Skybridge guys have come to market with a fund bitwise has been out there actually for a while, you know, having done all that good research on where's the real transaction volume in the Bitcoin markets, how much of it is fake. But those are some of the downsides of Grayscale, as well as the fees, which are pretty high.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Partnerships. So we all know there's grayscale. And that's a trust and it trades at a premium. And it's not sort of a normal way financial filer. And so none of these things are perfect. As you know, I'm working with Swan, which is a private client product. None of these things are perfect. But I think as an advisor, you say to yourself, well, I want the sort of clearly SEC qualified silver bullet solution. And we just don't have that yet. And I don't think we'll have that. I mean, to me, that happens at 100K Bitcoin, right? So you probably miss a triple from here if you wait for that. Why wouldn't Grayscale fit into a category that would be considered quote unquote qualified? There are trust structure. By the way, if you buy it on the secondary, then it does show up on your 1099 form, which is kind of like your normal brokerage form. Although they have a different form if you subscribe at net asset value, and that means you're doing”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I never even really thought of that challenge for a lot of them from a compliance standpoint. But now that you say, I mean, it makes some sense. So tell us how you think about that from a compliance standpoint. I guess the holy grail, well, okay, as we know, the Holy Grail in terms of an investable product for wealth managers or financial advisors obviously is an ETF. And that doesn't exist yet. So next best is an SEC qualified custody product, which also does not exist. So short of that, there are various fund structures out there. They all had their own pros and cons and various amounts of hair on them. There's several sort of direct buy options. I mean, there's DIM has one. The NIDIG guys have one, you know, Eagleburg has one. There's several out there. And those come with their own hair as well. Then, of course, there have been hedge fund structures around for a long time.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out there, although there are several products that have come to market and that are growing, basically there's a whole world of options that are now available that weren't there a few years ago. So there's more, but I would say that's the main thing that people come to me with, that advisors come to me with, they say, look, I can't get it past my compliance department, or I don't have the perfect product, so I'm not willing to take the risk. And so they just push them to an exchange like Kraken and say, hey, do it yourself. Yeah, they prefer not to admit that to me, I guess, but I think that's got to be practically what happened is what happens is they probably end up at Coinbase is my best guess in many cases.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a great question, Preston. I think the major problem that a lot of wealth managers face or that they articulate or that they're worried about is I don't have a product that I think is safe enough compliant enough. Basically, I'm worried about getting sued by my client if I lose money in Bitcoin. My personal view on that, and I think I'm the exception, is that given what I know about Bitcoin, what the valuation potential is, i.e. the upside potential, as well as potentially the value of the hedge against inflation, given how important it is to a client's portfolio, it's hard for me to see how I wouldn't buy it for them, even with an imperfect product. In other words, it's a business, there's a classic concept in, you know, in law, it's usually invoked in law, which is like there's legal questions and there's business questions, right? And to me, this is like kind of a business question. It's like, yeah, maybe there isn't a perfect product.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Filter through to credit. And when the credit market goes, all hell breaks loose. This can't happen. So, Andy, let's transition into your financial manager. You have lots of experience doing this. And I'm kind of curious, when somebody comes to you and they say, hey, I'm interested in buying Bitcoin, you obviously have a response to them, but I'm kind of curious how some other peers or people that or stories that you've heard from other financial managers, what you're hearing them tell their clients as they say, hey, I want a 1% position or a five percent position in Bitcoin. What are they most people hearing back from financial planners and managers?”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the stakes are too high because of the amount of leverage in the system. And I'm talking about leverage also in the equity markets, also on corporate balance sheets, just on households. I mean, it's everywhere, as you know, debt is just at record levels as a percentage of GDP. If they let it unwind, then you'd get a cascading liquidations, right? This was the moment that the Fed had in March was when the Treasury market fell out of bed. And I don't remember if it was just the long end of the curve or was also the middle of the curve. But basically Treasury started selling off. And that's not supposed to happen, right? Treasuries are supposed to rally when there's risk off. And so if treasuries are falling when there's risk off, you know that the system is well and truly threatened. I think that the Fed and other central banks have realized that basically a major downturn in equities or risk markets will”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My concern is you have all these people in money management and the talking heads on CNBC, and I suspect everyone's looking for that event where the market sells off for two or three years and drops and has another 2008, 2009, or a 2000 kind of crash that would conclude this 12-year, 11-year bull market, whatever you want to call it, since 2008, 2009 time period. I think everyone's looking for that. But I just don't necessarily buy the idea that it's going to happen. And I think a lot of it comes down to the interest rates. We haven't had interest rates. They're down at zero. They can't let them drop 5% like they did on all these other previous quote-unquote traditional boom bust cycles. So it sounds like you agree that maybe the cycle is shortening itself so that it happens every year, every two years. And then it's the reflation is just.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Normalized. So I do think that we are stuck in this cycle now. They have to keep stimulating. It's going to be, yeah, it's going to be financial market driven pullbacks and recessions that we see in the future. But I think that the Fed thinks that it can just keep doing this in perpetuity until finally they get a rise in inflation. So when I say that they're going to deliver inflation, I kind of believe them. We'll see what happens”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love the phrase. It wasn't my original, but recessions are illegal. And even you could say bear markets are illegal. I am a big believer in the tail wagging the dog here, in the wealth effect being so important in the U.S. stock market, which is now, I don't know, it went from 100% of GDP to 150% of GDP to, I don't know, it's probably like 175 now, if I had to guess. And granted, this is the, you know, you're looking at the triple Q. So this is just the tech sector. But as we know, tech, broadly speaking, is now like whatever a quarter of the index. They can't let things normalize. It's not allowed. If things did normalize, then anyone with wealth, which is basically a large percentage of the population, which has a propensity to spend, although granted, rich people that own stocks spend less on the margin than folks that don't, we'll have a big problem if prices actually”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And entities like Bitcoin. And so, yeah, it's a really tough call. I definitely think that valuations are pretty stretched. I think that investors are doing their DCI calculations like you like to talk about based on near zero or very long-term interest rates. And so you get to sort of goofy valuations if you're assuming that the 30-year Treasury is going to yield very, very low single digits in perpetuity. And that's where I think we are right now. Makes me nervous.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the context of a major market correction or a bear market because growth valuations get extended, you get to 20 and then 30 and 40 and 50 times earnings. And then people's rosy assumptions about the growth rates as some of these companies eventually run into reality. Meanwhile, those left for dead cheap value companies finally get bought. However, we are living through, as you know, a major shift between the industrial age and the information age. And so one has to be cognizant of that potentially being different this time. And so there's this constant struggle in my mind between, oh, how long in the tooth is this growth rally and when will we get a reversion to value versus, oh, wait, most of the economic growth is into software and automation and internet enabled businesses, network enabled businesses.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's been a strange time in financial markets, to say the least. I've been in markets for about two decades now. And it's interesting to observe some of the trends, sort of, you know, what's different this time, what isn't. I'm of two minds and I'm conflicted. So on the one hand, I feel like the growth trade is pretty extended. In other words, the entire decade, right, of 2010 to 2020 has been growth just beating the pants off of value. As you know well, because I remember you've talked about earlier in your learnings and your sort of evolution as an investor, you started as a value investor, you know, Warren Buffett, all that good stuff. Historically, a decade of outperformance tends to be about as long as it goes for growth versus value. And usually you get a reversion or value will surge back. Sometimes it's”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT