Latest / Kitco MINING / Tokenization comes to Mining Finance | Jesse Knutson

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Tokenization comes to Mining Finance | Jesse Knutson · Kitco MINING

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Kitco Mining with me, Paul Harris here from our studio in Montreal.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Today is Tuesday, the 8th of September, and today we are looking at the future of mine financing as we're talking about tokenization.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Tokenization is becoming a larger part of the gold and the finance narrative, and this is a trend that is set to continue with BitFinex Securities, who just facilitated a$50 million capital raise for Al Kema Metacor, a Luxembourg-based platform commercialising ultra-high purity nickel wire for use in semiconductors, aerospace, defence, and other advanced manufacturing applications.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Joining me today to tell me all about it is Jesse Konutzen, Head of Operations at Bitfinex Securities.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse, welcome to Kitco.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hi Paul, thank you for having me.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've got so many questions for you, Jesse, because this is a subject I'm not very familiar with.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got some very basic questions and hopefully some more pressing questions for you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Tokenization offers a new route into a sort of broader investor base, one outside the traditional financing channels that most junior specialized producers rely on.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: The$50 million for Al Qaima is the largest raise to date on the Bitfinex Securities platform and the first tokenized commodity offering under El Salvador's digital asset framework.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse, let's start with the basics and start at the beginning.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: What is a tokenization financing and how does that differ compared to a traditional equity financing say?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think really tokenization isn't that much different than the kind of pathways that your audience would be familiar with in traditional finance.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically we're just looking to take the technology behind Bitcoin, behind the digital asset industry that's really matured over the last, you know, I guess Bitcoin since the Genesis block, it's been around for almost 18 years now.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And just to take that technology and apply it to capital markets.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what that yields is a cheaper, faster, uh, more transparent system.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's basically about upgrading the technology behind uh capital markets.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so cheaper and faster will be two words that will be uh um very welcome for any CEO to hear because uh traditional equity financing, the the brokerage or the bank that organizes that typically takes a five or six, seven percent cut of that as a fee, plus other things.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, how does a tokenization financing, you know, how is it cheaper and particularly how how is it faster?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: How is it more rapid?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because with Finance, there's so there's so much regulatory things that need to go through in terms of you know being qualified investors, uh, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I think the faster part really comes into it once it's been tokenized and once it's on the platform.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Then you get all the benefits of of Bitcoin and and other you know digital assets that people might be familiar with, like tether or or tether gold, the tokenized gold offering.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, things like 24-7 um trading, things like uh real-time settlement, the ability to take assets off of the platform, to move them to other platforms for arbitrage, or to even even self-custody them or trade that peer-to-peer.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the way we do that is to create these whitelisted ecosystems.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's kind of a bit of a balancing act between meeting your regulate, your regulatory obligations, um your compliance obligations, and then also giving people that low-friction um Bitcoin or tether like user experience that they've kind of become accustomed to within the digital asset world.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so as a result of participating in a financing such as this, um, a couple of questions.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of institutions or organizations participated?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what did they actually get for putting money into this?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this, you know, we've we've done a we've been around since 2021.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: We were first licensed in 2021.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've done a number of different issuances beyond this one.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: This one specifically is tokenized limited liability partnership interests.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've done tokenized bonds, we've done tokenized T-bills, um, we've done tokenized alternative assets, things like uh hash rate contracts and litigation finance.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: We just listed our first tokenized public equity.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: We've done five Bitcoin treasury company products.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then we've got our first tokenized funds set to come to market in the next couple of weeks.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we've got a really kind of broad range of offerings, and it really depends what the investor gets is is really in um you know, issuance and offering specific.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if this were an equity raise, for example, in a normal equity raise, somebody sends a check, they get a share certificate back or a digital share certificate these days back and say they've got a whole bunch of shares and they can trade those as when it becomes free trading, they can trade those via their brokerage account.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is is that pretty much exactly the same understanding?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the same kind of concept.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you don't really get a share certificate anymore, as I'm sure you know.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that's pretty uncommon actually.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: So most of it is already kind of digitized and um electronicized.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're just taking the next step and making people have a little bit more control over their assets and being able to use them um a little bit more broadly, being able to pull them off the platform, send them out other platforms, trade them um peer-to-peer, uh, all of the benefits of Bitcoin and digital assets that we see in other kind of uh applications of the technology.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And how does it interact with a typical standard trading platform like the TSX?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've done a participated in financing that's actually an equity raise, um can you trade what you've your your tokenized um receipt, if you like?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, can you trade that on the TSX as you would a normal share?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of efforts right now to do tokenized public equity.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people are working on that, but I don't think there's too many examples of the opposite of you know, some of these assets that have been tokenized off these platforms being recognized on some of the more mainstream traditional platforms.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're seeing some of that start in the US, but it's it's really early days.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I kind of um liken this concept.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I I previously worked in investment banking, I was uh worked in ECM at Macquarie.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh one of the, you know, here in Taiwan in Asia, one of the big focuses, you know, for years in Asia was to do things like depository receipts, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you'd go to big technology companies like TSMC or um, you know, and then list them in uh in Europe, and in the UK or in the US with uh things like ADRs.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think the I think the idea of tokenization is is is a very similar concept.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're taking these assets, um, you're putting a wrapper on them, and you're making them available to people um globally.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think if anything, you're able to do this a lot more deeper than you could previously with uh with with depository receipts.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um you just did a 50 million raise with Alcima Metacor.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why was that company the right candidate uh for you to do the largest raise to date uh using this uh method?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I did because we had investor interest.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that that's it.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: We've done a number of other um um issuances, as I mentioned, and it's just really dependent on what investors are interested in.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um you mentioned, you asked earlier about uh you know who the investors are on our prop platform.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have a lot of um, you know, what I would call crypto high net worth people, um, people that have been in Bitcoin for a long time, people that are active in digital assets, a lot of family offices.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then on the on the uh institutional side, I think the core is still probably that more nimble front foot institutional money that is able to move between traditional finance uh and digital assets.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's probably the core of it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've gotten a real tailwind.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think probably it probably really started in 2021 when we saw these two worlds that were previously quite separated, the digital asset and the Bitcoin world, um, start to merge.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we saw kind of more overlap with that Venn diagram.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that trend probably started in 2021 and has been playing out ever since and really um kind of caught fire with the launch of the Bitcoin ETFs.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, now we're seeing just a lot more news about um, you know, titans of traditional finance um getting more involved and interested in tokenized um finance.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the in the finance space, there's obviously a lot of people that are very used to the traditional model.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Increasingly, there's uh uh a growing set of people that are more used to the, let's say, the crypto kind of or Bitcoin kind of model.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you see new sources of capital being able to sort of come into the mining space because of that?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: People that have perhaps in the past invested in crypto, uh, they're very comfortable with tokenization and these kind of concepts, and they're perhaps looking for other other markets to deploy their knowledge and their capital.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: They see these kind of offers come up and think, hey, this is something I understand, this is something I can perhaps get into and back.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think 100%.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's the other side of this trend, right?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: The merger of these two industries, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Traditional finance and digital finance, and really the driver behind this whole concept of real-world assets.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, nothing is more real world than assets like gold and physical commodities, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what we're seeing is is really the merger of um these two segments within like a very broader kind of global capital markets ecosystem.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Has there been any sort of regulatory pushback to the development and rollout of this approach?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because our, you know, um crypto and Bitcoin, they've uh been lobbying for years to be able to be included in, let's say, normal investment portfolios, they've uh been gaining ground there, they've been having a lot of success, they've got certain regulatory approval to that.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in terms of mine financing, uh has there been sort of regulatory hurdles, have there been regulatory hurdles to overcome?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think certainly.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you would have looked back a couple of years ago and you would have asked me what are the you know the main parts of this ecosystem that need to kind of come together for it to hit its potential, I would have said, you know, um, you know, high-quality issuances, I would have said the investors, I would have said, you know, the technology that underlies it all, and then I would have said, you know, commercially viable um regulatory oversight.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think that last part was the slowest part to develop, but we now have you know a lot of interest in in all different kinds of jurisdictions and and countries.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the the the incumbent capital markets, I think, are increasingly looking at this.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing a lot of you know work being done in in the UK, for example, a lot of work being done in um in the US, in emerging financial centers, you know, like uh the UAE and the Middle East, and then in a lot of frontier markets as well.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we're we're we're registered and and uh licensed in in AIFC in Kazakhstan, a financial center, um, similar to DIFC in Dubai, and and also in El Salvador.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a real interest from some of these smaller economies that are maybe a little bit more nimble, maybe understand the technology a little bit better, and maybe have a little bit less downside to embrace the technology and see if they can close the gap with some of the incumbent financial centers.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's that's something we're very keen to see as well.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you about El Salvador in just a moment, but before we go there, um I want to sort of touch back again on the sort of qualified investor aspect because uh investing in mining, mining is an ultra-high risk uh sector, particularly if you're investing in the exploration end.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: The traditional financing model tries to protect individual investors from that, or because of that, um, by insisting that people are qualified investors, there's a whole bunch of paperwork that individuals have to go through uh to be able to invest in a private placement, for example.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how does tokenization look to sort of deal with that particular aspect of the mind financing situation?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, again, and this is where I'd say there's different approaches to tokenization and there's some kind of a perimeter compliance concept where people are putting up gateways kind of at the entry and exit point.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say that that's probably not quite sufficient.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think what we need to do is have it baked in on the protocol level and to have whitelists created.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and that's what we do.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we have a process for each one of our issuances that is a little bit different, just to make sure that only investors for who this asset is appropriate can get access to.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And appropriate could be defined by, you know, are you accredited, are you qualified according to the definitions of a specific jurisdiction?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or are there regional or jurisdictional limits?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, are you on an OFAC list?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is this um, you know, SEC registered?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Can US investors have access to it?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: So all of these things need to be controlled.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the way we do it is by establishing uh whitelists.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Once you're on the whitelist and you've ticked all the boxes, then you can trade the asset very freely, just like you would Bitcoin or Tether.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: We could trade it between each other if we wanted peer-to-peer.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's always a record of it on the blockchain.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not, you try and send it to someone who's not an appropriate investor who hasn't been qualified or is, you know, in a prohibited jurisdiction, and the transaction will fail.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's really the important thing about this and how you're able to give users that low friction kind of Bitcoin user experience that they're used to, and then also, you know, be sustainable and meet all the regulatory and compliance requirements that we're obligated to meet.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's talk a little bit more about El Salvador now.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele has positioned the company as a Bitcoin hub, and indeed uh it considers Bitcoin legal tender, although it's not obligatory.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why use El Salvador's digital asset framework for this rather than specifically over Luxembourg's own own regime?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Luxembourg has a very developed financial services um regulatory base.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why use El Salvador over something much more traditional, much more established, such as Luxembourg?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think part of the answer is that, you know, we're Bitcoiners and we're, you know, we were excited to see what happened in El Salvador.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, as the president was supporting Bitcoin, I think we also wanted to support the president and the jurisdiction.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that they were just uh a very open and front uh forward-thinking administration.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they they had a vision that I think aligned with our vision.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that made it very easy to work with them.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think at the end of the day, we want to be, you know, we want to be in jurisdictions that that want us to be there and that are comfortable with the technology and that that have an understanding of the technology.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what are some of the advantages of that uh digital framework in El Salvador compared to in a traditional finance jurisdiction?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it because it is relatively new and then because of that it's been basically written specifically for that purpose?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, right?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at securities law, and you know, I'm Canadian as well in Canada or in the US or a lot of other um developed markets, it's um you know, it's kind of grown organically over the last 100 years.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when it was first started to grow, it probably didn't envision things like Bitcoin and you know, and smart contracts and um and uh you know tokenization.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: So El Salvador's was a regime was regime was an opportunity to kind of start fresh and then to create a regime and a jurisdiction that was really kind of fit for the the age and for the technology of our time.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I and I think that that created uh you know a really streamlined um approval and review process.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've you've just done a$50 million financing.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: What's next?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see the growth and how fast do you think this will grow as a as a financing mechanism?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it'll continue to growth.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a little bit, you know, I can put my finger in the air and kind of try and gauge where I think it's gonna go.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not entirely sure.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I do think it's gonna grow though, right?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: So this year, the size of the of the industry of tokenized assets, there's different metrics.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'm not exactly sure what the number is, but it's certainly measured in in tens of billions.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think next year we're gonna cross 100 billion and and from there on out, it's gonna be measured in hundreds of billions for you know 27, 2027, 2028.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we're definitely gonna grow.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, right now I think fixed income is the dominant kind of vertical um amongst various assets.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think as you know, I'm I'm keen to see um more trading on the platform.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see more um public equity, I want to see more private equity.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to see all kinds of assets come to the platform and and be traded and bring the benefit of tokenization to, you know, a wide range of investors all over the planet and people trying to raise money all over the planet as well.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, maybe this is a question I should have asked you earlier, Jesse.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: But uh how is talk me through the sort of deal origination?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Does an issuer come to the platform and say, hey, I need to I want to raise$50 million, who can help me?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or alternatively, does the finance, the money, say we've got$50 million to invest in the mining space, where can we deposit?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, where can we deploy that?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so depending on which jurisdiction with path and which path is chosen, the the approval process is a little bit different.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in all in El Salvador, there's kind of three constituents within the approval ecosystem.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's the DASP, which is us, there's SANAD, which is the National Digital Asset Commission.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then they have a unique role called the certifier, which kind of like an auditor.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And their job is to look at the financials, look at the technology, and make sure that everything is um, you know, kind of um uh up up to up to grade.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and uh once it's approved, then we can go out and do the issuance.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, it's important for us to make sure that we have the commercial issuance.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll also, you know, talk to investors.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the issuer will often come with investors as well, um, and then to uh just bring it to the market and um and and open up trading and a capital raise on the platform.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of future growth, are there particular types of financing that you you really see accelerating here?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And by that, obviously, I mean sort of debt, equity, bonds, other Yeah, I think, like I said, I think fixed income products have been dominant to date.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're starting with our first equity.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: We've just listed our first uh tokenized public equity, the five Bitcoin treasury companies.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: We also expect to do some private equity this year as well, and then and then funds.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you know, it really is kind of blue sky for us.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um everything is very new, so there's a there's gonna be a lot of firsts, I think, over the next couple of quarters.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of Bitfinex uh specifically, um are you looking to continue sort of doing this on your own as a as a as an organization?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Are you partnering with other banks to source steel flow and perhaps pools of capital?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we're working with a lot of different players within the within the industry.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we've worked with uh you know a tokenization platform called Stalker out of Luxembourg.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've worked with uh Nextbridge from El Salvador, we've worked with um uh control all.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of um different players that we've worked with within the ecosystem from you know various jurisdictions.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're we're keen to work with with anybody.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we're very open and we're just about um we see a huge opportunity here, and um we're willing to work with anyone to kind of push this forward.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, are there any other deals you've got in the pipeline in in terms of the mineral space?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh at the at the moment, I think we've always got quite a bit of interest on the on the on the gold and commodity side.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of stuff that's kind of um we're working on in the pipeline, but probably nothing I can talk about at the moment.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you will be the first to know.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, let me sort of end with a really, really forward-looking statement uh from you, Jesse.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: How do you see this particular sort of tool or financing tool?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: How do you see this evolving over the next two to three years?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it'll just be, I think what we're gonna see over the next couple of years is just a merger of these two different segments within capital markets of traditional finance and digital assets.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen that, you know, like I said, really since 2021 when the first big institutional players started to come into the market.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: We saw that with the Bitcoin ETFs.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: We see that with the interest in stable coins and tokenization from a lot of the big banks.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, you know, pretty high convention, conviction.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think that uh this is definitely the direction that markets are gonna migrate to just because of the you know, the many technological advantages of tokenization, things like 24-7 um trading, uh real-time settlement, the ability to, you know, move assets between platforms.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think all of this is stuff that investors, um, you know, and and uh portfolio managers and issuers, I think it's what everybody wants.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think fairly high conviction that this is the direction that markets are going to evolve.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we'll see just more and more kind of capital and more and more integration with uh, you know, the existing system.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, from all I've been reading, um I completely agree with you there.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things in the future will be that sort of 24-7 trading, which uh begs a question: how will industries determine a price fix if you're trading 24-7?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because currently you share price, you have an opening price, you have a closing price.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on the stock, you have uh pre-market trading as well.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously in the metals themselves, you have perhaps the London PM fix for the gold price.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're able to trade everything 24-7, where'd you put the flag in the sand to say, you know, this is today's price?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think we've got like references for that right now.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've got a lot of big assets to trade 24-7, 365, you know, the the main one being Bitcoin, right?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, that's part of the reason why we see so much Bitcoin volatility on the weekends is because people will, you know, trade what they can, not necessarily what they want.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, Bitcoin operates in this way, uh, tether gold operates in this way.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of assets um that operate in this way.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's just a matter of time before all global assets go to you know 24-7, 365 trading and having a really free and kind of open marketplace.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think one thing that's for sure, Jesse, tokenization promises uh a fascinating future for everybody.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you joining me today to share your insights.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse Knutson, thank you very much for joining KitCo today.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all we have time for today.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you like what you see, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Paul Harris, and this is Kitco Mining.