YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Novogratz

lines on the record: 67
first: 2019-08-12
most recent: 2019-08-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Faster people can learn to do that, the happier they are. Not easy, but that's the life lesson you wish you learned earlier because it just liberates you.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pain and stress and self beatdown I gave myself after some of these mistakes was unnecessary in lots of ways. Like suffering is just in your head in some ways, right? It's a self-centric, selfish. It's all about you. If you can get outside of yourself and say, well, Jesus, I'm not helping anybody. You know, when I left Fortress, I was miserable for luckily only a few weeks, but I was, I sold my stock at the wrong price. I just kept ruminating and beating myself up. And this Indian friend of mine was like, dude, you're not helping your kids, your wife, you're anybody or yourself. This is all about you, all about you, all about you all the time. And if you can get outside yourself, you realize he's right. And quite frankly, I made the mistakes. Can't blame on anyone else. Like own your own mistakes, let them go and move on.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to be okay that when you screw up, it feels like the end of the world. I've screwed up plenty of times in my life. Often die a psychological death. That's okay. You're going to be just fine. The son will come up tomorrow. And so the amount of”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If there was like a family motto, it would be just show up. Like my parents show up, our whole family shows up. That's for funerals and weddings. And when you're sick and when my brother just had another baby or when someone's in stress. And so that's it. It's just show up.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, from trading, there's only one Bible, and it's called reminiscence of a stock operator. Any speculator, that is their Bible. I used to have 50 copies. I'd give it away to any young kid that came into my office. And then I got a Paul Jones did an annotated version with his notes in the side. A book called Narcissus and Golden by Herman Hess, which I loved when I read. And a buddy just gave me an original copy, so I'm going to read it again. I used to read a ton. And then Wall Street and reading the phone all day and the internet, I became more of a TV head and a movie guy. And so I'm trying, this year, my goal was to read 12 fiction books, and I'm at two. So I got a long way to go. Maybe this summer I catch up”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my biggest trading pet peeve is when you don't trust yourself. Like it just drives you crazy. I don't mind losing money when I'm wrong. I used to have assigned great traders make money when they're right and lose money when they're wrong. And people are like, well, of course, that's true. And I was like, you don't know how hard that is. Stan Dracamella, when he's bullish, he's long. When he's bearish, he's short. You can say that about one in a hundred people. That's the hardest part of this job. And that's my biggest pet peeve when I screw that part up. And people are like, oh, you must have a great day. I was like, oh no, I didn't. Let me put a knife through my gut.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mean people. Meanness, it's funny because I'm a wrestler and wrestlers are supposed to be tough. It just drives me crazy. It's why I dislike Donald Trump so much. He's just a mean son of a bitch. There's no reason to be mean. You got the whole world going for you. I mean, he spits bile. I would love to take him in a cage match or a son. I'll take a son. Both of them at the same time.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Parties. I have literally been throwing parties since I've been 16 years old and I love it. I love getting my friends and people together. I love live music. I have music at my house probably more than anybody in New York City. Literally, I have a monthly gospel brunch. I'm the vice chairman of the jazz foundation of America. I don't even play jazz. I just like it. And so that's my passion.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But man oh man, it's if you think of one to a hundred, I visit a German prisons, they're like ninety two out of a hundred, Norwegian prisons, 99 out of 100. We're at like fourteen out of 100. I mean, it's that bad. And so we got a long way to go.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It just shows we just throw away people you don't care. So then they're going to get out at 10 or 11. The bail window is right next to where you get your valuables, you know, the old valuable window you always see in the prison movies. Oh, that shuts at six. So the poor guy down has to walk home. They give him a subway card. Long way to the subway. And then come all the way back tomorrow from wherever he is living to this shithole of a place to get his valuables, which was priority that valuable because most of these guys have no money. And so that whole system is just so infuriating. And so by having proven that when you bail people out, they still come back to jail. Now we're being able to change the laws. And so New York just passed a really good bail reform. And we were part of the lobbying of that. New York's way ahead of most states on some of this stuff. But the goal would be our organization is out of business in 10 years, that the country gets rational laws.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The simple act of paying someone's bail is revolutionary. I did it up in the Bronx once. And you go to the Bronx and you walk down this walkway. And the jail in Rikers Island in the Bronx is actually a slave ship that sits in the middle of the harbor by Willet's Point. You've got to be kidding. This is an old steamship that they floated from New Orleans 35 years ago, and it's populated with black and brown guys and shackles. I was like, really not a great look here in New York City. You can't comprehend it's five miles from where we're sitting right here that there is literally a slave ship. And you go to bail someone out and you're excited like, all right, well, you know, I got my own legal. I wanted to bro hug and hear his story. I'm like, oh, he doesn't get out till 10 o'clock. I'm there at noon. I'm like, why can't you get him now? Processing. I was like, what the hell does processing me? They don't tell you. They're sending faxes, literally faxes, back and forth to Rikers. And I'm like, this is so archaic.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if I pay your bail, 50% of the time, the DA drops the charges. We have a whole justice system that's based on blackmailing people into saying they're guilty. Now, a lot of people are guilty. I'm not saying they're not. But if you're wealthy, you don't spend the night in jail. It's just so unjust. 40% of prison death and 40% of prison rape happens in the first week you're in jail. Jail is one year under. Prison is one year over. And so you literally are brand new in this freaking jail. You might have done something really shitty or you might have done something like get in a fight because you were drunk or steal something from the 7-Eleven or get an argument with your wife and that got loud and someone calls the neighbors because she threw the vase at you. My wife has thrown a vase at me once or twice. And, you know, in my neighborhood, you don't go to the deal for that. In bad neighborhoods, you do go to jail for that. And so.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so listen, the Bale Project, I helped get started. We've raised $70 million plus money. Before then there were the largest bail funds might have been one or two that were a million dollars in most $200,000. And so we brought scale to this idea. The bail story is really simple. Tonight, $500,000 people will go to bed in a jail cell, dirty, stinky, dangerous jail cell solely because they can't afford bail. 90% of Rikers Island are people there pre-trial. And so We pay bail. If I don't pay bail, you're in jail. You're seven times more likely to plead guilty.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“on their own right to take on probation and parole in a group called reform. And so we probably are making grants or donations and working with 25 different organizations in the space and really just trying to push the ball, be another guy on the right side of history, shoving the ball downhill.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The justice system that we have in our country. The deeper you dig, the more disgusted and dumbfounded you are. I mean, we have literally one of the worst prison systems in the world. We're the richest country in the world with the shittiest criminal justice system. And that's changing. The optimism now is that for like 30 years, this group of really dedicated social justice warriors have been pushing this ball up this hill and it kept rolling back on them. And it's just now cresting the hill. And so the Sisophian task is in the balls rolling down and lots of people are getting involved. And so we help stand up a thing called the Bale Project. That's now a big, vibrant organization run by Robin Steinberg. I teamed up with Michael Rubin out of Philly and Jay-Z and Meek Mill and Bob Kraft and Rob Smith and Clarissa and Dan Loeb, all these rock stars.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a private equity group downstairs called Durational to young guys that are stunningly ambitious and talented. You see my Bojangles box. They bought Bojangles fried chicken. And so I love talking about the barbell between chicken and”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the planet, right? I mean, he's providing huge leverage for Asian gamblers in a lot of ways. And having lived in Asia for seven years, they like to gamble. They could gamble on the price of these glasses or on a Bitcoin. And so that liquidity engine is literally based on gambling. It's not based on these, oh, we're making these long-term strategic investments in Dogecoin. It's what's hot, where's liquidity we're gambling? And so those businesses are very, really profitable. Most other businesses just haven't been making money yet.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“AMLKYC done well enough. I think yes, but the infrastructure is not there yet to do that. And so one of the things we're investing in is companies that are part of that space, like security. And you're going to need to build a whole lot of infrastructure for this to be part of the way business gets done. And the third is just your own execution risk. And so building a business is hard. You got to pick the right people. You got to put them in the right seats. You got to mentor young people so they become talented. We have 85 people now. We're growing. It's hard to build a business. The markets aren't really there yet because there's not enough. The only place people are making real money is in the retail exchanges. And most of them offshore where they're taking all kinds of regulatory. They have more regulatory movement, you know, not as tight on the KYC stuff. And so Binance and Bitfinex. And I mean, BitMex, I mean, BitMex, Arthur Hayes is the best business in the world.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are, I think, three big risks. One is that we're here building away and in two years time David Solomon tells his army of warriors, hey, we need to be in this business faster than we thought. And, you know, Goldman and JP and everybody else is trading and lending. And they just have so many resources that they can move quick. And so we need to build fast enough to be a player before the competition comes. They're going to come. There is absolutely no way that in five years time at least, you're not calling up your broker and saying, you know, dollar yen and cable and Bitcoin and Libra and gold. And they're going to all get trained on the same desk. And so we need to get in first. There is a regulatory risk continues. The big risk in Manuchin talked about it is money laundering and terrorism financing. And so can you really get the...”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is really fascinating to me. The venture piece of it I sit, I hear all these new young businesses and how we're going to change the world. And so intellectually, this is a fascinating place to be. It's neat to have a place in it, to have a role as one of the spokespeople or commentators on the space. And so you get a sense of purpose that way. It would have been a lot easier just to be a speculator. I go to family office. Well, you have a family office, people come and they shine your shoes. They tell you how good looking you are. And I told our whole group, I was like, guys, now we're the shoe shiners. We're in the client service business. And so get on your damn knees and start polishing shoes. So it's a mindset shift. And so it comes with a little bit of work and stress, but I do think the reward is being part of what will be, I think, a really big industry in 10 years.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you bring together these sort of two aspects of what you've done? So on the one hand, you get into Bitcoin and think of it as a speculative vehicle. On the other hand, you've taken a big chunk of your time and some capital and put it into a business that's locked into this ecosystem.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and blockchain will be part of all infrastructure. That realization is dawning on people. And so institutions are going to make it in. Is it the next six months? I hope so, because you're trying to build a business out and you're like, oh, you're waiting for Godot. And your hope he shows up on the subway train. But I'm not wrong on destination. I could be wrong on timing them when they all come.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The New York Stock Exchanges Group. And so you're going to check that box. What Facebook did, or this Lieber product did, is say, wait a minute, MasterCard Visa. So now you're sitting at the state of Wisconsin and you've got cover. You're like, well, MasterCard and Visa, not all these people are doing it. Let's put a chip on the table. And so I think this Facebook project really accelerated institutional money coming in. It's not rushing in yet. And we're not getting to 20,000 without it. This run up from 4,000 to 13,000 and back now to 9,500 wherever we are was people front running that enthusiasm of this is actually happening. The president of the United States was just talking about it. Steve Manuchin, the Secretary of Treasury was just talking about it. Like this is now going to be part of our financial and consumer infrastructure for the rest of our lives. It's not going to start tomorrow, but in 10 years time.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Start with the break news first the Yale Endowment, which is always the leader, are already in, right? They made a fairly sizable investment with Paradigm, a firm out in California. Harvard and Stanford are in. University of Pennsylvania, Columbia are either in or getting in. And so the big university endowments are already having their first bets on the board. That forces every other pension fund and endowment to look. We've had meetings with 700 different institutional investors. And I'm not telling you they're all on the two-yard line, but they're all moving towards the goal line. And they're nervous. They're worried. They had a few things, custody, custody, custody. Well, now we've got good custody. You've got BitGo, good custody. You've got New York Dig. You've got Fidelity. You've got this guy's anchor out in San Fran. And so you got real custody places. Backed is coming on soon.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you mentioned that when you have that bubble, you're able to bring resources into the ecosystem. The big dollars ultimately come from institutions. Yes. Where are we on in institutions thinking about the crypto world?”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Paying $250. So you're literally paying 12 and a half freaking percent to get your money out of a bank. Bizarre, but it happens to entire A laborer in Abu Dhabi because they all come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indiana, and poorer countries. So for remittances, for transfers of money, for buying things, it'll make the world far more efficient. It's going to take a lot of fat out. Why are people fighting it? Banks are fighting it because it's going right after their business. And listen, will Facebook be the guy? You know, Telegram is something to watch. The guy who runs Telegram is sharper than Attack. He's got a great engineering team. They're 280 million users. They're passionate users. I think it'll be one of the coolest things to watch this year how they spin that out. The next few years, we're going to start seeing the revolution. And I think payments is one area. The other area, and we're focusing on this, is the video gaming space, the digital world, VR, games, you know, with 5G coming. This stuff is going to happen so fast. And that's where the quick adopters are. And so...”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Listen, payments is going to be a really interesting battle here. And Libra, I think Libra's a really cool project. Will it get off the ground? It's got its work to do, but I think it's a really cool project because it starts this, it's a Trojan horse way to have a market for money. So they start by having a stable-ish coin backed by dollars and euros and renminbi and yen and whatever other currencies they put in in five, six years later if that has enough acceptance and trust, they can just like the silver certificate became the dollar. You know, we're not backed by silver anymore. It wouldn't have to be backed. It'll just be its own currency. It's a democratic and a democratizing thing. It goes right at banks. The spreads banks choose even in credit cards and fees and go to the ATM and you pay $250 to take a dollar out. And if you're poor, you're taking $20 out because that's what you're taking out.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will it ever get there? I don't know. But that's the hope. And so will consumers care that they've given up their privacy? I don't know. I mean, it's a big debate in the medical records field and medicine. Look at 23 of me. You gave your DNA to this lovely woman who now knows everything about you and you paid her to own your DNA. Like that's insanity. And I did the same thing. I licked that little stick. I was like, ooh, let's see where I'm from, right? She knows everything about me. That should be behind a firewall. That data is valuable data for researchers to use, is valuable data for me, but it should be private. And the question is, can you kind of rebuild some of these systems? Like pricing data dies after a while. So that's the DNA data is out there. You're like, okay, that sucks. But I think we'll see if this all does work or not. And where are the other?”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting. So, Bitcoin's got this great brand and it's going to replace gold over time, or at least supplement gold in a big way. It's going to have to be two things. It's going to have to be so easy to use, right? So the user experience, user interface is going to have to be far, far better than it is today. And people are going to have to demand, and this might come from governments as well, a level of privacy. The thing that excites me most about being part of trying to help birth this blockchain revolution is we are losing privacy at a stunning pace. You look at China right now, where 95% of financial transactions go through a government clearinghouse, which they now just add a little bit of machine-based learning to, and they know everything about you. Like that's a 1984 scary as hell proposition to me. All of that stuff should be behind the firewall of a blockchain.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Off by saying you were gifted salesman, and salesman gets attached to brands. And so you think about Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud or whatever it is. Decentralized protocol develop a brand that it could possibly replace something that has big brand name behind it.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Computer. It's data times something equals something. And you start playing subconsciously with that math. You say, okay, what's the first thing this Web 3.0 can replace? The cloud. The whole market clap of the cloud is less than a trillion dollars. So it's one tenth of gold, one-eighth. Amazon's cloud, Google's cloud, Alibaba's cloud. Take their cloud earnings, put a market cap. This is a rough, rough math, but it's not a trillion. And so that group of protocols first step are going for a smaller pie than Bitcoin was going for.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now Ethereum and Algorand and Eos and Definity and all of these other protocols are vying to be Web 3.0, this decentralized global supercomputer where we process data in a private or cryptographic way to retain our privacy and bring efficiency. And this wonderful world, all of that stuff is a couple years, three years, four years away from really being vibrant, from being a product that you can really use. There's test cases you can do stuff on it now, but there's nothing really happening in a big way on it. And so markets get ahead of themselves. But now markets are a little more rational. The moment you start thinking, this isn't going to be the digital gold, but it's going to be used. You start coming into some discounted cash flow model. Okay, there's got to be some valuation. If it processes data, if it's a super”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bulk of it went to Bitcoin. And in a lot of ways, it's because Bitcoin went from originally being this Decentralized money to really a decentralized hard asset, decentralized gold. You can still call gold a money, but it's really not a transactional money. It's a hard asset. And in that box, Bitcoin's kind of done. The project is finished. It's good enough to be decentralized gold. It doesn't have to change. And so gold's got an $8 trillion market cap. Bitcoin's got about $150, $160 billion, depending on what price it's at. A long way to go.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone was seeing it all as fungible and a little bit of a regulatory tap on the brakes because regulators were way off. They were just caught way off guard. They were caught off guard because regulators talked to institutions and no institutions were playing. They don't talk to mom and dad. This was mom and dad's revolution. Then we had this collapse, literally a 95, 96% collapse. Out of the rubbish, we started kind of rebuilding. Well, in that sucking in of money, you were also sucking in capital and talent and building infrastructure and a lot of the good projects were being worked on. And so bubbles have a positive side to them. It sucks in resource. And so this rally back this year, which happened a lot faster than people might have thought, is a lot more rational in that”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So great bubbles happen around great stories, right? This was such a powerful story that it created this global phenomena. First global bubble we've really had, right? where Taiwan and Korea and Japan and India and Russia and everyone was buying into this decentralized story, this new. And so in 17, it all went up. And what happened was there was this crazy supply response. Everyone was launching the new Bitcoin. Ethereum was the better Bitcoin than Litecoin was the Bitcoin for Porpor.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you go back two years 2017 and Bitcoin's having this huge run, there's a couple of long-term theses with decentralization, store of value. As you look two years later, prices moved up and down and back up again, but a lot's probably happened underneath that people who are outside the space don't know about. So as you look at the crypto world today”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exchanges, and you name it, we'll invest in it. So we're direct investors off our balance sheet and then we're advisors, traders, and asset managers.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we have four businesses, I said. We have a trading business that we're trying to be a liquidity provider at both OTC and electronically to market participants from funds to institutions to high net worth individuals and to exchanges. We're building a derivatives business. The river market is really mascent and a prime brokerage business. And so one of the big trading engines, we have an investment banking business, an advisory business that is going to in time provide merger and acquisition advice, strategic advice, and raise capital for people. And so we're out trying to raise capital around a few projects right now. And then we have an asset management business that will try to run other people's money. Right now we have one big fund that we run mostly focused around digital gaming space with a blockchain focus. We have a balance sheet that we do a lot of private investing all across the space. So in security.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this isn't VC. This is kind of VC where the liquidity comes way too early. I mean, you look at what just happened with Algorand, right? They first printed a $20 billion ecosystem. And I was like, I've seen $20 billion companies and ecosystems, and they look a lot more vibrant than this one. Let me sell it as much as I can. And so how do you get it short on? And so I do think having the Wall Street and the speculating experience is a really good tool for operating in the crypto space. And we're trying to use this firm to help clients, to give advice, to participate in all sides of the story.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Originally, I saw the role as this bridge between the institutional world and this kind of crazy crypto world. And I thought that was kind of the role I play mostly as a spokesperson. And when we thought about starting Galaxy, first I was going to do a hedge fund. I was like, I don't really want to run another hedge fund. And I thought the market was way overdone. I was selling everything. And I was like, it's really hard to run a hedge fund in a speculative market when everything's going down. And so decided to do a company with permanent capital and probably, and I look back, even though I was bearish and even hedging on our book, of course, you never realized how bad a bear market gets. It went down 95 odd percent. But the idea was let's be this company in the middle of the space and not just be the bridge, but also provide guidance to this new crypto world who don't really understand finance. Even still, I think some of the great VC funds, they don't understand how to sell.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exciting. And I wasn't public again. Joe asked me to be on some panel, and yet again I mentioned, I think I have 15, 20% of my net worth in this stuff at this point. And I didn't realize the press was there again because I'm a knucklehead and I went to like literally every newspaper it seemed in the freaking world mentioned that and it's right when the stuff took off again and so again a little bit lucky in that if I didn't know Joe, I wouldn't have bought Ethereum at one. I wouldn't have made as much money. And by already being wealthy, it gave you the staying power of not selling it right away. And so when I look back on my life, the Ethereum trade probably is the greatest trade I ever had because I sold it so at 100 and some at 350 and bought it back and some at $1,000. And it was a great experience, but it also sucked me into this community. And as I got more involved, it's fun to be part of the revolution. And I saw this role.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bitcoin thing that there was a revolution, this decentralized revolution, and these people really cared. And they talked like revolutionaries. We're going to change the world. We're going to decentralize. We're going to take these silos of data and smash them into smithereens. It was an infectious energy. I actually try to buy a chunk of consensus and I would have if it was actually a little more, I was like, all right, and Joe got excited about it. And then I was like, well, write down what the company looks like. And then it looked like spaghetti. And he was like, it's going to take me a while. And I think by now he's figured out what the company looks like. But Joe's a believer. It's a completely decentralized company. And so instead of that, I bought a bunch of Ethereum. Actually bought Ethereum from Vitalik. No one else was selling. So I called him up and he remembered me from the dinner. So he sold me some of his Ethereum at 96 cents, one of my great buys of life. And then I started trading it. And as, you know, it went from one to eight and then to 20 and back down. And now I've got more time because I'm not at Fortress.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That a theory would exist, I left Fortress, my hedge fund didn't do so well my last year. When you leave Wall Street, you almost always leave Grumpy. There's a little broken glass, you're angry, you get screwed up. You know, very few people leave on top. And I certainly didn't. I left with a lot of money, but I certainly didn't leave on top. I was a little bit embarrassed and frustrated. And I looked at my portfolio and I thought, well, I got all this Bitcoin. It had gone up. It had gone back down. It was doing nothing. And I have all these investments. I have investment in Zapo and Bitstamp and funds. I said, what am I going to do with all this stuff? And so I called Joe, who had moved back to New York. I said, Joe, let me come talk to you about all this stuff I have. And I went over to his office in Brooklyn, and I literally thought it was going to be him and, you know, one guy or dog. And there was this vibrant office. And it was literally the beginning of this company consensus. And it took me about 30 minutes to realize something really special was going on, that this was much more than just kind of the...”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chinese buying people worried about this hyperinflation fear. Very cool technology, right? Instead of in God, we trust and cryptology we trust. And sponsorship from this community I talked about before. It was pretty simple. So when I got on TV and started talking about Bitcoin, I got a message, email or Bloomberg message, I forgot from another classmate of mine and actually a roommate in college, Joe Lubin. And he was like, dude, I didn't know you were a Bitcoin guy. And he was down in Bermuda or Barbados coding away on this new project called Ethereum. And he was like, we got a new thing that's going to kick Bitcoin's ass. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know what he was talking about. So Joe was a computer science major at school and stupidly smart and a great squash player. And so that was in the back of my head. I had this idea of...”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At that point, 100 to 1,000 really quick. And the only reason I actually became a Bitcoin public spokesman, I was at a conference, UBS wealth management conference. It was boring as hell panel. And someone asked me about Frontier Currencies thinking about these emerging emerging markets, you know, the real emerging market currencies like Tanzania. And I was like, horseshit with those things. If you want to frontier,”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be a bigger business than we think. And let's build a business around this. Talk to our other partners. And then we're like, you know, Fortress is such a hard money, distress debt. Like Bitcoin, we decided we didn't want to do it at Fortress. I actually kind of did, but the collective didn't. I said, well, who do we know? And Dan Moorehead, who now runs a company called Pantera, had been a classmate of mine and a friend. And he was on the sidelines. He had left a job running an exchange business for Ed Simenschel and Deutsche Bank and had run a hedge fund and shut the hedge fund down. And his hedge fund was also called Penterras. We called Dan up. And I said, Dan, look into this thing. And Dan was a much better student at Princeton than I was. He called back after two weeks. He was like, oh my God, it's going to change the whole world. And we're like, well, how much are you going to buy? And he bought a lot, a big percentage of his net worse. And so the three of us all bought a decent bit, a lot because Dan was so constructive. And it went from...”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bitcoin was trading around 950. And I was like, dude, cool technology. There's a community of people, cipherpunks, libertarians, off the grid, people that are going to be attracted to it. The Chinese started buying. And remember, we were post right coming off of the European financial crisis. QE was going, you know, rates were going to zero. People like Paul Singer thought we were going to have hyperinflation. They were taking ads out in the Wall Street Journal that Ben Bernanke should be in jail. I mean, there was a lot of craziness around what QE would do. And so here's this hard money construct, technologically cool. And I was like, dude, this is going to be a bubble. And so we literally started buying and bought a decent bit right away, 90, 100. And then Pete and I were like, this is going to be.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I was at Fortress, I was running a macro fund, and ironically, Pete Brigger, who would be the last guy on the planet I would have thought of to be the Bitcoin guy. But he had moved to San Francisco, and one of his friends in his YPO group, a guy named Wences Cosseras, who in a lot of ways is like patient zero for a lot of us Bitcoiners, Wences had been preaching Bitcoin to Pete. Pete called me up. He didn't want to say, dude, you know anything about this stuff? Look into it. And so I did like a two-minute, you know, 15 minute, 20-minute scan on Google and started looking at it and started asking my guys on the desk and a couple of them hadn't heard about it and surmised really quickly that this is a perfect speculative instrument.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I traded macro, so it was interesting when I was at Hong Kong, they said, well, we want you to run the fixed income markets in Asia, and I looked around, I was like, well, you don't have enough liquidity in the fixed income markets in Asia. And so to trade, I mean, you need to trade currencies and equities, and not just in Asia, but you also need to trade the S&P in treasuries because you're going to be hedging out these macro risks. And so it was intuitive to me. Lloyd Blankfein, who was my me boss at the time, completely agreed, and Corazine, that you need to have all the weapons. And so I got my start as a macro guy literally from day one of seeing how all the different markets fit together. And so when I started a hedge fund, I was more emerging market focus when I was in Asia. It was just a natural progression to say I'll trade anything. And quite frankly, crypto is just another market. Well, you're a crypto trader. You're not. You're just a speculator. You're speculating on a different widget.”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“30 years of doing this still make the simple mistake of not completely trusting myself. It's a really hard business to trust yourself”
2019-08-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Novogratz – Galaxy Digital (First Meeting, EP.06) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source