YouSaid · the spoken record

Bob Diamond

lines on the record: 47
first: 2025-09-10
most recent: 2025-09-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And I have both become pretty active on Twitter because in the crypto world, you have to be active on Twitter so you can find us both there talking about a lot of these things. Our website Atlasmerchandapital.com, we have a news and other things we put out, whether it's us talking or different releases of ours. So you can find there. But, you know, we're a private equity firm by definition. We're not super public. And you got to chase us down to find the coolest stuff we're talking about.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it would be, it's highly optimistic to think we're going to solve at least the US debt problem because, you know, people are going to have money sitting in stablecoin.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got to say, I think thinking that stablecoins are going to solve the U.S. debt problem seems highly optimistic to me, right? Like anyone who has $1 in USDC today, likely before they had that USDC, they had a dollar deposit in a bank or they had a money market account in a brokerage firm. And those deposits and money markets were going somewhere and the money market was probably directly buying U.S. debt. So, you know, maybe you can make an argument that if more of the world moves to the dollar because they're putting their money into USDC or USDT instead of in their local currency, that'll help on the margin. But it's not exactly a new idea to say the US dollar might be the reserve currency for the world. If anything, people are worried about it going the other direction. So, you know, I'm going to go back to my normal schedule.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The weaker dollar, which is down 20 over the last couple of months, make it even more expensive? Absolutely. So I think separate from all the things we're talking about today. And stablecoins, you're right, will help with financing the debt and lower the interest rate. But we can't just deal with at the margin the rate and kind of the liquidity in those issues. We also have to deal with the fact that we've had every administration since Bill Clinton has increased the outstanding debt of the United States. The wealthiest, most innovative country in the world and doubling the outstanding debt in the last two administrations. It needs to be dealt with. I didn't give you a solution, but I think there are solutions there, but it starts with a desire. To recognize that this is the dark cloud.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the macro question you touch on is the debt levels in the US primarily, and that is the dark cloud sitting out there. Those of you that have students of kind of the talking heads on TV, I've been a part of it on CNBC in Bloomberg and I've been saying since COVID. Let's just temper all this fiscal and monetary stimulus with the debt levels. You know, until recently, everyone's been ignoring them, but since the first Trump administration to today, Trump, Biden, Trump again. So bipartisan, we've more than doubled the outstanding debt of this country. And you can't tell me this was a terrible economic environment. It was pretty good, I would have said. So we have a real challenge. Will innovations in finance be a positive? Absolutely.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That point about not just. Trying to solve problems for problems that don't actually quite exist, I think, is really important. And I think that's a nice pivot into just ranting out this conversation in terms of contrasting going with the 20,000 foot view in terms of the macro situation that we're in this modern day and age, which I would characterize as one of the great questions of our time right now, which is who's going to buy all the debt and especially U.S. Treasury debt. That's one of the great questions of this day and age right now. And we've seen some compelling hints that perhaps stablecoins will be one of these key unlocks. And I'm curious how you both think about where does, you know, using that as a pivot point in terms of stablecoins, but you can take that in any direction you'd like as well. How do you see some of these innovations we've talked about start to sit within some of these big macro questions of this day and age?”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“World, you can raise a lot of money and trade a lot of volume on the equities markets right now. It's not like anyone ever looks at the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq and say, you know, there's not enough liquidity here for me. We have a problem. We got to figure something else out. So again, if we go out long enough, we may have all this stuff. But I personally am not predicting that, you know, you're going to be trading city group shares in tokenized form, you know, issued directly by citigroup anytime soon. Because again, I think that would be solving a problem they don't currently have, whether people do derivatives off that in different ways and figuring out ways to trade derivatives of equities on chain, like that's awfully interesting and that could happen. But I'm not sure, you know, I think hyperliquid's going to be, I don't know about a unicorn, but it's going to be unique for a while, I think.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, look, if you go out long enough, all technologies converge eventually. But I don't think we're going to wake up anytime soon and see lots of regular companies issuing securities or whatever in tokenized form rather than in normal securities form. I think Hyperliquid is an exception. It's quite different. Again, three years old, less than three years old, no external capital, like that's not how over a billion dollars of free cash flow, that is not the normal profile of almost any company out there. And, you know, look, we have to be careful also when we talk about new technologies that we're not solving problems that don't exist, right? Generally speaking, the currently functioning equities markets that we have all over the world.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Skepticism around crypto and what's going on and what is this? And Gary Gensler saying no to everything and this could be dangerous for people. And now you have Jamie Diamond saying blockchain is fantastic technology. We use it. So, I hugely supportive political and regulatory environment, a serious acceleration both in retail and to me importantly institutional, and a convergence that blockchain is real and it's innovative and it's going to be the future. That changes the macro environment so much, Felix. That's so exciting.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me just say before David gives you some very, very good data points on just that question that we are operating in a macro environment where we have an incredibly supportive political and regulatory environment. We did not have that prior to the last six or nine months. We have an acceleration, real acceleration in retail adoption. But to me, what's more important is more a traditional finance person is we have a real acceleration in institutional adoption. And I think it's like top of the first inning in institutional adoption. It's maybe second or third inning in retail adoption, but it's really, really early. And when you think about that, and the like you're hearing people today, lastly, I'd say you're hearing people today talk about blockchain in a way that's very, very different than kind of the...”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's reasons for it, right? One reason is what we've been talking about, which is that it's not easily accessible in the United States. Now, that's a pretty big reason. Another reason is that it's a token. As I talked about before, there's still plenty of people that aren't accustomed to invest in that way. So there's some good reasons why that's the case. But for guys like us, we are generally value style investors. We're not a venture capital firm. We don't generally invest at things at a hundred times revenue and infinity times earnings. That's not really our style. It's not what I've been doing for years. As I said before, we're pretty skeptical investors all the time. And this one, you know, we had to scratch the surface a bunch of times to really dig in and convince ourselves that this is real, but it's real. You know, high growth, compelling valuation, solving scarcity. Like that's a lot of things. You don't necessarily need all three of those things.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, look, I think part of the reason guys like Paradigm wanted us to be in this transaction with them is that relative to other tokens, as you said, Felix, there is you can do what I'd call some traditional financial analysis here and look at metrics like EVIDA, EVIDA, price to free cash flow and EV to earnings and things that people look at. And that's the second leg that we haven't talked much about. yet, but it's probably implied. You know, the numbers on hyperliquid, you know, the crypto area these days is certainly known for high growth, but it's not really known for compelling and reasonable valuations. But when you look at where the token is trading today, it's a pretty compelling valuation. It's not sky high. It's not even where near by Coinbase. Is multiple.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Describe a blockchain almost ever before this point now, which I think is really important for you know one of the most valid criticisms I've seen over the years for digital assets in crypto is that okay well there's no there's no claim on cash flows there's no cash flows associated with this so how do I run a DCF and okay well now we're at this situation where we have a we have a project that is forging this path here where there actually is a very significant fee generation free cash flow growth as you said and there's a significant buyback associated with it so I'd just love for you to just yeah paint some color around just how unique that is and where you think that represents how the industry is going to head from here on out”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Providing access to the fastest growing token that is yield generating, that is part of the ecosystem with an incredible revenue generation, stealing market share from everyone. This is a very, very, very exciting investment. We'll see. You know, I mean, I think the proof is in the pudding, but we're very excited about seeing this grow. And, you know, I think that's why we had the investors that we had with D1, with Paradigm, with 683 capital. So many people who have so many different opportunities in this space and so much knowledge in this space. And $888 million of value day one is a serious, serious commitment to the strategy. It's not a million dollars or $5 million or $10 million. It's almost $900 billion from day one.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Find opening a Coinbase account and buying some Bitcoin directly to be weird and not what they're used to doing. So to invest in our company, invest in hyperliquid strategies, you won't have to open a Coinbase account. You can go on your own brokerage account and buy the tech.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other thing I would say, Felix, I mean, you're clearly well in the crypto world. And I think most people probably listen to this podcast consider themselves to be pretty crypto aware or crypto native, et cetera. But there are still plenty of people, serious investors with serious money. I was literally having a conversation with someone over the weekend, he said, you know, I probably should buy some Bitcoin and I never have. What do you think? I said, of course you should. You know, we just debated how much. And he said, yeah, I'm just going to buy, you know, the BlackRock ETF or one of those things. And I said, that's perfectly fine, but open a Coinbase account and buy some Bitcoin directly. You're a big boy and you should get the full experience. You know, anyone, you know, you have a brokerage account. It's easier to buy ETFs. But, you know, take the extra five minutes. So the point I'm making is there's still a very large percentage of the world out there that”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a very efficient way to get exposure. This is also the only way for many people to get the exposure, but I think both of those things are important. And then the third thing I'd say is that both David and I recognize that, wow, what an opportunity here for the investors because of the explosive growth of hyperliquid and hype. And again, think about that. The only token in the top ten tokens that has not been around for a decade is hype. How did it get in the top ten? Because of the explosive growth, the success, the cash generation, the buyback program, all of these things mean this price has realized. Significant this isn't just buying a bar of gold and putting in a public listing. It's very, very different with huge opportunity. And that's what got David and I so excited.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they do, but I can frankly argue either side of that one. This is the real need to. We are solving a scarcity problem for a very large percentage of the investing world by making this easily accessible through our digital asset treasury company that will be publicly listed on the NASDAQ for people that can't easily do it.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Casually mentioned, Felix, that anyone can just go buy the token. You casually mention that sitting in Vancouver right now for all the rest of us sitting in the United States, it isn't so easy. As people may or may not know, the hyperliquid exchange, which is really the main place where hype is traded, the hyperliquid exchange is not available in the United States. If you go to it in the United States, you'll see a big ugly red bar on top that says you're in a location that's not able to access the token or access the exchange. So for a lot of people, for a pretty big percentage of the investing world and the crypto investing world, it's not so easy to buy the token in the United States. We can debate, I actually enjoy the debate about whether DAS should exist and whether they create value that couldn't be created on their own.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what they said was they would use the vast majority of their free cash flow to buy back that token. I believe today the buyback free cash flow buyback rate is something like 99% might be exactly 99%. What's also great about it is it's happening every single day. It's happening automatically in the protocol. So a regular company, they generate earnings, they have a board meeting. The board sits around and decides Do we want to use those that are those earnings to buy back stock or do we want to pay a dividend or maybe we want to build a new headquarters building or maybe we want to buy our CEO a new plane or maybe we want to pay people more? There's a lot of things they can do without money here. It's pre-locked in 99% of free cash flow right now is going to buy back the token. So we think that's all really interesting and really creative and very new.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, look, I would say that a couple things. One, for anyone who has followed Hyperliquid, and it's not a lot of people, it's sort of amazing to me still how few people, even people who consider themselves to be very knowledgeable in the crypto world, how few people really understand what's gone on here in the last three years, right? In less than three years, a company with 10 employees and zero external capital, no VC money, no private equity money, zero external capital, 10 employees sitting in Singapore have built what I think is the most exciting and probably fastest growing crypto exchange in the world that right now is free cash flowing, call it between a billion and a billion and a half a year on an annualized basis like that right there is a pretty amazing, amazing feat. Secondly, we think the structure they came up with for their token is really interesting. They did an airdrop nine or ten months ago.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do worry that guys are sitting in a JPMorgan boardroom right now saying, of course, everybody shouldn't have their own blockchain. Everybody shouldn't have their own stablecoin, but we should because we're JT Morgan, which is not unreasonable, actually, because they are JT Morgan. But then Welsh Fargo says the same thing. And then B of A says the same thing. And, you know, next thing you know, we know how that could end up. But I do think the market will.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just to add on that, I think what's clear to us is there won't be one winner. There will be few, not many. And I think the competitive nature of this is, you know, will be a success factor. If you evolve from blockchain to stablecoin, one of the values of USDC and Circle is that it is available to everyone. If JPMorgan has their own stablecoin just for their customers, it can't be used as broadly. So maybe there are some use cases within one bank for a stablecoin or a blockchain for a specific use. But as you get into the larger market, I think the winners won't be one. They will be few though. They won't be many.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With one that they think has done right and not doing business with another that's not done right. But that, you know, that might be a shred of wishful thinking here, I think.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the other hand, I have to say it's worrisome that we may end up in a world where every one of these crypto companies has their own L1 blockchain, which to me isn't all that different to the world we just came from, where JP Morgan has their own credit card rails and P of A has their own credit card rails. And it's a different technology, but sort of the same outcome. So I think we are at a crossroads with this. I think it's been really interesting to see what happens. I think Hyperliquid is a good example of someone creating their own L1 that adds to the sort of crypto ecosystem and makes it kind of better for everybody. I'm sure as more people do it, that won't always be true. And hopefully I'm being hopeful here, you know, the market will help decide these things. And I don't think it's going to be a government coming in and saying that one's okay and that one's not. doing business.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say, I got to tell you, speaking of myself, I think I'm of two minds here. On the one hand, two of the companies we invested in or we have exposure to Circle and obviously hyperliquid started out with its own L1 blockchain and circle announced in the last earnings announcement that they're going to build one of their own. And on one hand, I completely understand why they have their own Circle made the point that when people have problems with a transaction, whatever, it's very hard for them to go in and audit it or whatever on someone else's blockchain.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today is not adopting and adapting will be left behind ten years from today. So this technology will be adopted by the financial institutions that have resisted it for so long for obvious reasons, right? It was cutting into their most profitable business. But it's just so logical when you walk through an example of why blockchain is going to be the winning technology. It democratizes and gives so much more self-sufficiency to the actors in the market and takes that power away from the middle person, which has been the large global banks. Bob, I'd love to double click on a couple points there that you made. And I think there's this important distinction between public permissionless blockchains such as hyperliquid or Ethereum that you hear about. And then also these internal sort of private blockchains.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But with blockchain, we need neither of those banks to attest to that transaction. Blockchain is the trusted source. And so when our client in Singapore wants to send that billion dollars, it's immediate internet. Frictionless, fast, and very, very efficient. Those two to three points times two are a very, very, very small spread because this is all done instantaneously over the blockchain. One of the things that's misunderstood is that the banks are resisting this. Well, that's true. You know, for a decade, the banks have been pushing back because it's encroaching on their fees. I will tell you today, the largest banks like JPMorgan and B of A are spending billions investing in blockchain technology. Jamie Diamond has been very open that they use blockchain in many areas throughout JPMorgan. And I would say that any bank”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Felix, let me ask or touch on your first question there, which is around blockchain and kind of expanding more in our thinking there. It is very simplest sense. If we think of a significant Cross border complex international transaction for banking today. You know, maybe it is one of our investors in Singapore sending a capital call to Atlas Merchant Capital in New York for a billion dollars. That's a huge amount of money, a billion dollars. And when that happens, our client in Singapore goes to their bank there and says, we're going to send a billion dollars and that bank does KYC on Atlas Merchant Capital. They call our bank in New York. They arrange all that. And if the genesis of this was on a Monday, maybe Wednesday or Thursday sometime that transaction will happen. Three or four days later after all this work by two banks and guess what? Both of us are paying two to three points for the transaction a ridiculous amount of money.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To trade in a lot of markets. And obviously, I think it was invented in the early 90s. It wasn't used much as far as I know in any serious way until the crypto world. Binance is obviously a big perpetrator and hyperliquid really started itself with perps.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Minute to explain the perp will trade at either a slightly higher or slightly lower price generally to the spot price of an underlying asset. And what happens is when the per price is higher than the spot, the forward rate will be positive. What that means is the person going long has to actually pay a rate, and then the person on the other side of that trade going short actually gets paid that rate. So what happens is that forward rate, the funding rate, excuse me, you know, is sort of the referee to keep the perk price close to the spot price. And then when the per price goes below the spot price, the funding rate goes negative. Therefore, you have to pay to be short and you get paid to be long. And I think it's just a very efficient way it's a derivative, but it's a very efficient derivative to use.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, as far as I understand it, Perps was sort of invented in the kind of late 80s, early 90s. I think, again, I've done some research on this by Bob Schiller from Yale. I went to Yale. I took his class, actually, in 1995. But I think he invented it, or it's been invented really initially to be able to do what I talked about a minute ago, which was create a market for things where there isn't necessarily an easily observable spot market. I think it's become popular in the last number of years for sort of the opposite, where there is a spot market and it's obviously in crypto, whether it's Bitcoin or ETH or whatever token is being traded. It's a very efficient way to trade with leverage on the underlying. And the whole concept of the funding rate is actually quite ingenious. And for people that don't understand it, maybe I'll take a”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You increase it by 25% across the board for every one of those firms. You know, what do you think that does across the country or even across the world when it comes to new job creation? If every single venture deal that's getting done has a 25% pop in where the investor thinks they're getting out in the future, you know, that allows them to invest at lower costs to put in more capital. And that took a real effect on the economy. Anyway, so those are like two small examples of how hyperliquid specifically is using the sort of blockchain technology to make real changes in the near term in what we all consider to be traditional finance.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you can have pre IPO companies or companies that are not yet IPO'd but trading in a per market allows for that price discovery, right? It's going to be a lot harder for the next circle if it's trading in the pre-IPO market on like ventuals, which is one of the guys trying to do this with HIP3. If it's trading at $100 a share, it's going to be a lot harder for the investment banks to price it at $31 a share. And I think that's, you know, it sounds like, oh, who cares? You know, some venture capital guys or some pre-IPO investors make it a little more money. What does that really matter? But if you take every venture capital firm, every one of their assumptions around exit.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out the exchange, you're literally using their rails and you're built in right on it. And that makes so much sense to me. The most interesting one I've seen so far, at least being talked about in the HIP3 world, is for pre-IPO equities being traded. So for years, I've been one of these guys that have complained that I hate the IPO process, that investment banks, you know, they're always pricing things for their buy side clients and not for the company. And you see these big pops in the stock the day it starts trading. And on one hand, that feels good to everybody. Everyone loves when the stock goes up. But on the other hand, that's the seller. That's the IPOing company shareholders leaving money on the table in circle, which we just did, the stock IPO to $31 a share. And it popped, you know, we also had pop really quickly. The idea.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, they'd have to go to Singapore and go be nice to Jeff and all that. They literally took some code that Jeff had set up. They put into their system. And next thing you know, they're in the purpose business. So just think how efficient that is versus what else is out there. And again, one small example of what you say about the rails doing more. I think another example is what is known in the hyperliquid world as HIP3. So HIP3 is the ability for others to create their own perp exchanges using the hyperliquid backbone. So in other words, you're not using their capital, but you're using their technology, again, in a permissionless way. You just loop into it. And instead of your startup or whatever that wants to get into the perps business for some asset class taking tens of millions or more dollars to build.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“maybe months of going back and forth on legal terms and business terms. And maybe it all gets up and running and maybe it's a success and maybe it's not. And there's just a huge inefficiency in all that. Hyperliquid built their system out for that kind of partnering, but in a permissionless way. So when I say permissionless, you don't have to call up Jeff Yan. You don't have to go to Singapore and have a meeting with him. You don't have to take him to lunch and convince him why you're great and others aren't. You got to take the way they've set up their code. You got to put it into your system. And next thing you know, you're doing business with Hyperliquid. So the best recent example of that is Phantom. Everyone knows the Phantom Wallet. It's, I think, the top one or two wallets out there. They decided they wanted to start allowing their customers in the wallet to trade perks.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, look, I think specifically around hyperliquid, some of the things, you know, they've built a system in a short period of time, right? They've been around for less than three years. And they built a system that not only works well for them, right? We've seen their volumes go crazy. We've seen their feet, revenue go crazy in a very positive way. But they built the system where others can build on to their system in a permissionless way. And that's just really interesting and really exciting and really different from how traditional financial services works. So what do I mean by that? You know, if somebody wanted a partner with JP Morgan, if I'll use an example, if E-Trade, before they were bought by Morgan Stanley, wanted a partner by JP Morgan, the CEOs have to get a meeting, they have to talk through it all, and there's weeks.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it really dominates prop trading today. So we're very, very excited. I'm probably going on way too long from the original question, but that was the background. And I think if we had a vision for Atlas Merchant Capital, it would be, you know, we're referred to by many of the people we're doing business with right now as the suits. We don't want to be the suits. We want to be in the middle, in the intersection. And I think we're getting there quickly. We really. Really are enjoying. When you invest, as you know, you're really putting your money where your mouth is, so you have to really study, really analyze. And the two of us WhatsApp each other at midnight some nights, and we're both reading new things about the advantages of hyperliquid.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The world of large financial services today. Since that time, Dave and I have probably seen 200 opportunities in what we would call broadly crypto. And the first one that we've acted on was hype and hyper liquid. And it says a lot about the opportunity that we see there. You look at the opportunity and the exchange and the token. If you look at the opportunity where the top 10 tokens. The only one that's been around less than a decade is Hype and exchange like HyperLiquid, which is unbelievable, showing unbelievable growth. In both”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was to include more people in financial services. He did exactly the opposite. But what happened during that time, Felix, was both David and I learned a lot about blockchain. And again, it goes back to our origin is understanding financing, technology, processing. And blockchain is an incredible technology. And both of us believe that 10 years from today, we'll see that as the underpinning of the infrastructure even the convergence of new and existing financial services. And we also learned a lot about stablecoins, the digitization of currencies, the democratization of finance, the removal of that middle person and that middle bank to make things 24-7 instantaneous and much, much less expensive than they are.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of financial services technology, and kind of front office, back office. In Atlas Merchant Capital, we were early, early investors in Circle. Our original intent was 2021 to despack circle. I think David and I feel good about our vision that we could see what was going to happen with stablecoins. That process where we ended up not getting the SPAC approved by really the what we've all seen is the attitude of Gary Gensler in the SEC against crypto negative on crypto. No, no, no, no, no, no matter how good the idea was for the democratization of finance. And I think Gary Gensler will go down in history as having been so backward that his intention”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Felix, in my case, it's been an interesting journey. I joined Morgan Stanley in the early 1980s, who was still a private firm. Like David at Solomon Brothers, I started at Morgan Stanley in the IT department. So I've always had a tech background, but it was much more around tech how to process trades in the very, very early days of firms like Morgan Stanley growing from an advisory business into one of sales and trading. So very similar to the position that crypto has been in over the last decade. My first job in the front office in trading was in repo. And again, in repo, the short end of the curve, you really got real exposure to how trades settled, how they processed, how they were financed. And so I've always had a very strong background in the under”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or 1% of your net worth in Bitcoin is probably not a terrible idea. At the time, I was kind of laughed at a little bit on the show. And in retrospect, you know, we all should have put a lot more than 1% of our net worth. And so I would say Bob can speak from self, of course. Maybe Bob, you can talk about Circle for a minute. But we've both been, I think, healthily crypto skeptical over the years, but it doesn't mean we were anti-crypto. As a matter of fact, again, I owned some Bitcoin and we've done now two crypto deals over the years. And, you know, every investment we make and everything we've done over the years and everything I've done from the beginning, I've been skeptical over. So like being skeptical does not mean being anti, in my opinion.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's no question we both have been and continue to be TRAD five people. We've both grown up in the financial services world, our business Atlas, merchant capital is a private equity firm almost exclusively focused on investing in financial services businesses. We both started in sort of the investment banking world in different ways. It's impossible not to have gotten exposure to crypto over the years. I think in 2015, I bought my first Bitcoin. I did it in a Coinbase account that I still have. I should have bought more, like a lot of us. A couple years later, Bob and I were on CNBC after we announced a deal that had nothing to do with crypto or as an insurance deal. And of course by 2017, that's all they wanted to talk about on CNBC. And they asked us what we thought about it. And I actually said, you know, I'm pretty skeptical, but, you know, having a half a percent.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are solving a scarcity problem by making this easily accessible through our digital asset treasury company that will be publicly listed on the NASDAQ.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In less than three years, a company with ten employees and zero external capital have built what I think is the most exciting and probably fastest growing crypto exchange in the world.”
2025-09-10 · Forward Guidance · Former Barclays CEO’s Big Bet on Hyperliquid’s Explosive Growth | Bob Diamond & David Schamis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT