Frank Curzio 00:00

How’s it going out there? It’ls Thursday, August 20. I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. So welcome to Thursday’s Q&A. We get to ask Daniel and I questions about stocks, the economy, politics, relationships, anything you want, so definitely use it. Okay, it’s unfiltered, unbiased, and starting to get some questions in. And you could ask those questions at a simple website like askcurzio.com, put in your question, and you never know, your name might be the one we mention on this podcast. So let’s start with the first question, and this is from my buddy Alan, who’s a long-term subscriber, and actually it’s for Daniel. He says Daniel, but I think I’m going to take this one. He goes, “Hi Daniel, do you think it might be worth revisiting Northern Dynasty (NAK) since they are filing motions to overturn a negative ruling on their mining permits? A gamble I know, but is a potential upside where the possibility of a total loss?

Frank Curzio 01:02

Something to bring up in one of your upcoming podcasts. I know you can’t give individual advice, thanks.” So that’s why we created this podcast, really quick before we get to this question, is when they say you can’t give individual advice, which is kind of weird because we do, you know, again, it’s, you know, people go to our newsletter and I would say that’s a vibe, but we can’t give it individually where I can’t answer an email directly to that person. So I can’t respond to Alan and give him a whole answer and say, “You should buy this or not buy this.” But when we talk to an audience, it’s perfectly fine. That’s why you see Kramer and The Lightning Round and, you know, they get to answer questions. So in this format, it’s perfectly fine. I really appreciate it because anyone sending in direct emails, I can’t answer them directly because that’s considered personal advice. Again, just, you know, crazy stuff within the SEC and stuff, but on this podcast I can answer anything. So Daniel, I don’t know if you want to start since he asked you.

Frank Curzio 01:48

I know you don’t, I don’t know if you follow NAK. I follow it tremendously. I haven’t followed it in the past couple of years, but I’m very familiar with the company. I know the CEO personally, great guy. But I don’t know if you looked at it. If not, I could just take it here, but, you know, NAK, Northern Dynasty, Daniel, anything?

Daniel Creech 02:04

No. I— no. This is a trading at best. I would not trust and/or fight the government.

Frank Curzio 02:11

So in 2017, the end of 2016, I think it was, Maricatus invited me. David Lowe, the late David Lowe, one of the greatest geologists in the world. Who else was on that trip? Doug Casey was on that trip. I mean, we had like six or seven All-Stars and me, who was a nobody, because, you know, again, mining industry, these are biggest miners, geologists, and we went there. We took two planes and a helicopter to go see this, you know, undeveloped, it’s supposed to be large undeveloped copper and gold mines on the planet. It’s in Alaska. And we flew there and it was great because Ron Thiessen took a helicopter ride and he took everybody else and he left me out of it. And I was like, “What the hell? Why am I not in this group?” And Ron told, I guess Marin told him, “Look, you know, this is a guy you really want to impress. He’s got a great list. If he likes his stock, it’s going to be a big deal.” So he took me personally on the helicopter. And we went to this area and it was this massive area, again, you can’t get to, right?

Frank Curzio 03:05

You can’t walk there, you can’t do anything. You got to take a helicopter there. And I remember back then, and it was 79 cents, and I thought I was going to go on this trip and be like, “This is like a shitty stock or whatever. There’s no way I’m going to invest in it.” And there was apparently a whole motion, environmental concerns, everyone saying that these lakes, these rivers go through this area and if they develop it, it’s going to flow literally, I think it’s 250 miles or something to Bristol Bay, which is one of the largest areas for sock ice salmon. And it’s going to contaminate it. And when I went there, I’m like, “Where are the lakes?” So where these, you know, rivers, there was no rivers there. It was all bullshit. And that’s when, you know, again, 2017, I think 2012, 2013 is when I realized that, wow, what people say in the media, there’s a massive agenda because even with fracking, fracking causes, you know, we were told that when I went to go see all these areas, I thought there’s going to be dead animals everywhere and dead cows and all this stuff and because it causes water contamination, which it doesn’t 100%.

Frank Curzio 03:56

Fracking doesn’t. I mean, you’re drilling, you know, 5,000, 10,000 feet, water goes down 400 feet. Unless you take all the chemicals in that water and dump it in a river, yes, but it doesn’t cause it. And they all have these tailings, these ponds and everything. You learn this stuff by going there. I came back in 2012, recommended tons of fracking companies to be graded. And then when I came back from this trip, I’m like, “Wow, this is all bullshit.” I recommend this stock. We got warrants on it. Came into this deal where they raised money and it went over 304. And then a year later, it was like a celebration at one of these mining events. And I just remember turning to Marin’s assistant saying, “You know, now’s the time to sell it. The stock shouldn’t be 4. I just thought it should have re-rated to 2.” And then after that, I haven’t really, you know, went into the stock because this is a company that’s been fighting the government for 10, 12, 15 years to get this project off the ground.

Frank Curzio 04:45

And they spent $120 million plus at that time on environmental studies showing that they’re going to, the environment’s going to be great. Ron Thiessen personally took me around the whole entire area visiting all these people where they’re going to create a massive amount of jobs. Remember, we’re in the middle of no place where these people eat off the land. They all love Ron. You know, this is his life. It’s called the Pebble Project. He named it after, you know, Pebble Beach Golf Course in California, which he goes golfing all the time, which I went golfing with him. And it was incredible. All these people wanted it because, you know, diapers like $30, milk’s like $7 a gallon. It was so expensive there. He’s going to provide all these great jobs, everything, and you’re not even going to come close to impacting sock ice salmon, even if there were rivers there. But there wasn’t. There was no rivers there, which was hilarious. It was this big story being told by the media. So anyway, what turned me off is the Democrats didn’t want this project and late Robert Redford, you know, was in on this too and, you know, just Indians and stuff and certain groups.

Frank Curzio 05:42

And so I was like, “Okay.” Then you had Trump get elected the first term and I was like, “All right, there’s a good shot for this to get reversed.” But then Tucker Carlson went on his show, and again, he’s not on that show anymore for Fox News Fox News, and he came out and said, “Listen, we don’t want this project. This is terrible. See, we could agree with the Democrats.” So now I’m like, “Both sides don’t want this project, so it’s never going to get developed.” I still don’t think it’s ever going to get developed. Ron Thiessen is a great, great guy. But when you have both sides against this, I don’t know how it’s going to get developed. And when a company like this is raising money, you have to look at your side. It’s okay to raise money. It’s okay to dilute. It’s only if you’re using that money to grow the company. That’s what Apple did. That’s what Microsoft did. That’s what all the biggest companies in the world, when they were small, you want to raise money. It’s why you’re public. It’s easier to raise money, easier to obtain debt. This way you can grow your company, right?

Frank Curzio 06:29

That’s why you go public. And this company, all the money that they raised, Daniel, it all goes to lawyers. It doesn’t go to drilling because they’re not allowed to drill. And they’ve been going back and forth and army permits and all this stuff. And to me, the smart, the much smarter investment here, and this, listen, just, you can go into this stock. I just don’t believe that this will ever get developed. If it does, you’re going to see the stock pop. It’ll probably be a good time to sell because it’ll take 15 years after that to actually develop this thing. Maybe 20 years before you actually see any copper and gold on it. But because they haven’t been able to drill for the better part of 10, 15 years. Copernicus is a company that we’re working with now with Ivan Bibik. They just got their permit. They just got their permit after 10 years. They just got the stock re-rated higher now. They just raised money. You have, you know, Tech is in it, which is one of the biggest miners in the world, the emerging, I think Agnego.

Frank Curzio 07:19

You have Newmont in it, right? So 10 years we’ve been building this project. This has the permit. If you don’t have the permit, it’s crazy. And the fact that both sides, you’re not saying, “Oh, okay, well, we have a better administration in the U.S. where you can get this permit passed in Alaska.” It’s not like that. There’s a lot of people on both sides that don’t want this project developed for some reason, which, you know, faces an uphill battle. But, you know, you look at Ivan Bibik when they raise money, every single dollar is going to go to drilling that project, which could be one of the biggest copper projects in the world. So for me, when Ivan Bibik, he’s a rock star. I’ve made tons of money with him in the past. We recommended that stock before we started doing marketing consulting with him. And I just think when I look at stocks, I’m always like, “What’s the better one?” Copernicus is much, much better here. I love Ron. I hope they get these permits. I hope they develop that.

Frank Curzio 08:04

This is a great man, a really great guy that I met personally who is, you know, caring, who loves all these people around this area. His whole entire life, he’s never sold a share. He could have sold it at 4 and made a ton of money. By far, the biggest shareholder. He’s a great guy. I hope it gets developed, but, you know, friends aside, I just don’t think that project will ever get developed. So I don’t think it’s a good investment. Anyway, let’s get to the next question. This is relative to today. And this is Steve. He asks, “Walmart’s getting hit pretty hard today. Target also fell after reporting pretty strong results. Which one would you buy here?” Daniel, I want to hear your thoughts on this before I get into it. And we covered this four, five, six months ago, and I think there was two other times. I think the last time they reported their quarters and even the time before that. So over the past six months, we’ve been all over this trade. But, you know, what are your thoughts right now?

Frank Curzio 08:52

Walmart reporting a weak quarter and Target’s quarter is pretty good. And that stock’s near its 50-week high.

Daniel Creech 08:56

Yeah, I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on one quarter like this. I saw both CEOs are commenting on gas prices. If you need to hear from a Walmart or Target discount retailer, any retailer talking about consumers are impacted by high gas prices. That’s not really that important to me or valuable. I mean, that’s pretty common. Everybody feels that. I think Walmart is, listen, this is long-term. I don’t follow these for short-term. I think Walmart is hands down the better business. You can argue about the valuation, which is where I think you’re going. I think Target is ridiculous and I wouldn’t trust that management team. However, if you did, I think it’s near a 52-week high. So that’s fantastic. Again, I would look at these as long-term, not trading. These aren’t something I follow too particularly serious. I think they’re a good pulse on macro stuff. But yeah, I had to chuckle Frank just hearing about the gasoline comments.

Frank Curzio 09:45

Yeah. And I have my daughter here, my oldest daughter who’s interning for us. And, you know, right before she starts college. And I’m curious, you know, Walmart or Target, which one do you like shopping at better? Yeah, Target. And I hear that from so many people. I mean, Walmart, again, you’re getting better prices and the food and stuff like that is much cheaper. But let’s talk about the stocks here because we covered this, Daniel, and I love Target. And I remember, you know, I remember you ripping Target a little bit because, you know, the business was just really bad. It was a horrible name for such a long time. Even during COVID when they had inventory concerns, it took them years, years to get out. It took one quarter for Costco and Walmart to really solve the inventory concerns, which is a big deal. And that’s why you see Amazon, you see Tesla, you see Costco, right? When you’re looking at their manufacturing capabilities, it’s absolutely incredible that these guys are able to deliver, to control the inventories.

Frank Curzio 10:41

It’s the best of the world, that supply chain management, which is big. And Target didn’t have that. When I look at what you want to buy here, I would be buying Target right now very, very easily. Walmart’s numbers were not good. Okay? The comps were much lower than the past three quarters. They issued downside guidance for next quarter, Q3, but, you know, the overall guidance is okay. So they had a good quarter numbers. The numbers are good for this quarter, but it’s all about the guidance. And they lowered their guidance. That was the third quarter in a row where Walmart issued downside guidance, Daniel. And this stock has pushed higher, pushed higher, pushed higher. But six months ago, I was saying, “I have no idea in the world why you would buy Walmart because it was trading near a 52-week high. It was trading at an astronomical 40 times forward earnings.” This is a stock that’s probably used to trading at maybe 25 times forward earnings. It was trading at 40 times forward earnings.

Frank Curzio 11:27

That’s okay if you have that big premium, if you’re growing faster than the entire industry. But we’re talking three quarters in a row now that they lowered their guidance. And now you’re looking at a stock trading at 35 times forward earnings. It’s still a 75% premium to the S&P 500. Again, do they deserve that premium when they’re not growing as fast enough? Target, on the other hand, was dog shit. And we said that, but a lot of the dog shit was priced in. And the stock was getting annihilated, right? So, you know, let me see here with Target. Target’s trading at 160. I remember it broke below 100. And it was 90 when we’re talking about it. I’m like, “A lot of this risk is priced in. It’s been horrible.” I mean, the market cap was so tiny. I think it was like $60 billion or $50 billion. Very, very small. When you look at Walmart, so much bigger than that. But it was trading at 12 times earnings. Not a reason to buy it, solely buy it, you know, because cheap stocks get cheaper. But Target was clearly turning its business around.

Frank Curzio 12:20

And that’s all you need to go from bad to less bad when you’re that cheap and your stock goes up. And we saw that with Starbucks, which is the reason we recommended it. I didn’t like Starbucks. My daughter and I used to go to Starbucks all the time. There’s one right by the house. And all of a sudden, when we ordered, we used to order ahead of time because I had to drive her to school. And three, four times within a two-week period, we went there and it wasn’t ready. And we’re waiting, waiting, waiting. And we have to go. We had to leave. And that pissed me off because now, you know, I just wasted 15 minutes. Now I’m going to be in more traffic. I was like, “We can’t get. We’re not going there anymore.” And then now if you look at Starbucks, they clearly changed their business. So I say this a lot when it comes to companies. It’s, “Don’t hate the company. Hate the stock price.” So hate where it’s trading. So when you’re looking at a company, you could be like, “Target sucks. They’re horrible.

Frank Curzio 13:08

They’re horrible, horrible.” But when the stock comes down to a certain level and all that stuff is priced in, which we said about SpaceX, there’s another lockup today coming out with 300 million shares or whatever it is. How many shares are coming out in the company? New shares. But a lot of that was priced in. The stock came out 170 to whatever and approached like 105, whatever it was for SpaceX. I’m like, “All these risks are priced in here. It’s a good time to buy.” I got great emails saying, “Frank, thank you so much. I bought SpaceX. I’m up a lot in it.” And now your cost basis is much lower where you could write out that, you know, multi-year trend of that company saying what they’re going to do in robotics and Mars and stuff like that. So you always want to look at the stock price because people, and I made this mistake so many times where I look, Daniel, I’m like, “Wow, this company’s dog shit. I hate this.” Even Mara, right? I destroy Mara. But at a point, they have a ton of assets that can be converted to tier three assets in AI.

Frank Curzio 13:55

And I hate that company because the stock was horrible. It was supposed to be a play on Bitcoin and Bitcoin was up, whatever, 90% over the past, you know, five years. And this stock’s down 90%, right? So because they diluted the hell out of it. But they have those assets to the point where if Mara comes down to a price, it’s going to be worth the buy. And every 99% of the stocks, especially in the S&P 500, not tiny little garbage ones, are a buy at a certain price. So don’t look at a stock and be like, “I hate this company. It’s horrible.” Always look at the news. So right now, I love Target. Target’s valuation went up a little bit more, which I don’t mind. It’s trading at, you know, 16 times, 17 times forward earnings. I mean, a massive discount to Walmart. But, you know, there’s a reason why that stock’s now trading at a 52-week high because it got annihilated. It’s come back. And Joe, you know, you’re putting up that chart right there where we see these prices where Walmart is what?

Frank Curzio 14:42

Down 7% and Target’s up 63%. And this is when we started talking about it. That’s a massive difference. So instead of saying, “I hate Walmart” or “I hate Target” or “I like Target or Walmart,” always look at the industry. And I always try to do that for you. Just like NAK. I don’t like NAK because Copernicus is a million times better buy that has their permit in place. And it’s still a stock that’s underperformed copper by a mile because it took them a while, much longer to get that permit, right? That’s a much better buy than I hope and saying, “Oh, I hope NAK does this.” And you could buy NAK, Northern Dynasty, and that stock can go up tremendously from here. And then all of a sudden, they get the permit reversed and that thing will probably go up 100 to like Moderna went up yesterday. You see Moderna where it finished?

Daniel Creech 15:21

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 15:22

We looked at it up like 110%. It finished like up 150%, Moderna. Holy shit. Pull up Moderna. Is Moderna still up? Is it up today? Can’t be up today. They’re down market. It’s down 17%. So right there, it tells you the massive amount of short sells. Daniel, what did you say about the options in Moderna? Didn’t you tell me the options?

Daniel Creech 15:40

Oh, Joe said they were up hundreds of percent, hundreds of thousands.

Frank Curzio 15:43

Hundreds of thousands of percent.

Daniel Creech 15:45

Those are obviously short-term.

Frank Curzio 15:46

I mean, holy cow. I mean, now it’s down 18%. So that’s telling you a lot of shorts got unwound and now they’re coming back into the market on this news. But when you go from up 100%, it’s one thing. And this is a big company. But when you go up 100% in the same day, when you’re up 100% at like 12 noon and the next four hours you’re up another 50% and now you’re down 20%, it shows you the shorts and a lot of short covering going on in that stock. Anyway, when I’m looking at all these names and I see this space, I want to start looking at Costco. I haven’t looked at Costco in a while, but Walmart is just super expensive for a company that basically lowered their earnings three quarters in a row. Amazing company, Walmart. I’m talking about the stock price, right? And you might say, “Well, Target’s not that good and I like Walmart better.” Whatever it is. When I’m looking at the stock price, I’m looking at the valuation, I’m looking at the growth. Target’s a much better buy even at this price, 52-week high, than Walmart is.

Frank Curzio 16:33

It’s still super expensive for a company that basically lowered their guidance for three straight quarters. You don’t see companies trading at a huge premium that do that. Usually, they’re raising estimates like in AI and they’re getting more business. And the growth’s astronomical, which you’re going to see, I think, in video reports next week. You know, that’s how I feel about this company. So let’s get to the next question here. And Daniel, I think I’m going to take this one. We got a crypto question next. But this is Chris. He asks, “Frank, who’s your first pick of fantasy football this year?” This is huge, right? So I love fantasy football. I’m playing it for such a long time. Although I’m not going to play in the same league I played in last year because I had two lost seasons, second highest in points, 12 teams, only four teams make it. I made it. I lost. Some idiot had an amazing week. And if I would have won, I would have won a championship by like 50 points. I had an unbelievable team that was great.

Frank Curzio 17:27

So I called him this year. I said, “Okay, you know, how much did I make?” He goes, “Nothing.” Only four teams make the playoffs. I made the playoffs with the best record in the league. And I lost the first round. He’s like, “No, it only goes to the highest points and the winner.” I’m like, “Oh, you got to be kidding me.” Too much work for that. Anyway, most professionals for fantasy football have Gibbs, Puka, Jamar Chase as number one. I like Bijon. I had him last year. He played all 17 games. And you could say, “Okay, 1,400 yards is unbelievable. Seven touchdowns. You maybe want a little bit more.” If you’re playing a points per reception league, he has 790 receptions. I mean, if I looked at receivers, I don’t even think there’s maybe 15, 10, 15 receivers. I could be wrong. It could be a few more that have that many receptions. He’s a running back. And he’s unbelievable when he gets that ball in the field because there’s not as many people as getting in the backfield of running back. He’s unbelievable.

Frank Curzio 18:20

I’ve seen him make unbelievable catches. He would be a number one wide receiver on half the teams in the NFL and he had another four TDs. What? 800. So he had 700. What was it? I’m sorry. He had 79 receptions, 820 yards, right? So you’re looking at a massive amount of receptions, points per reception league. 820 yards on top of that means that he had, you know, a 2,000-yard year. That offense is going to be better this year? Gibbs, I don’t know. I’m not crazy. I mean, he had two guys in the backfield last year. I took away some points for him, but now that’s gone. So he’s going to get the ball a lot more. However, you got to see health-wise if he’s capable of carrying 350 or 150 carries. And Detroit’s offense, to me, took a step back the last two years. Still a great offense, but took a step back where I think, you know, Lance is going to be really, really good this year. So another thing, too, I would never, ever take a wide receiver as a top three pick ever. I don’t care who it is because there’s just so many great wide receivers.

Frank Curzio 19:18

There’s so many breakout wide receivers that you can have. We are not going to see a breakout running back. Running backs are limited. They’re very hard to get. I’d rather get the guarantee. But I could see Gibbs. I don’t know if I’d go Jonathan Taylor there as a top one, but I’d rather go running back. I know how great the wide receivers are, but still, it’s just for me, when I look at wide receivers, you could get a great wide receiver, a much, much higher and better chance to get a great wide receiver later on in the draft than a running back. You’re not going to get a great, great running back. It’s very hard to have a breakout running back. It really is. Where you’ll have probably five, six, seven receivers completely break out every single year, you have a shot at that. So points per league, I love Bijon. Just amazing year. And he played all 17 games. And when you look at, take on Barkley, right? Honey Eagles, Penn State fan. Hopefully, he wasn’t doing Coke back then. But Saquon actually said, when I asked him about running backs, he said, “Bijon by far.” He’s like, “The way he cuts, the way he is, there’s no one in the league like him.” And there’s other running backs that have said that well.

Frank Curzio 20:16

They all like tiptoe hat to Bijon. And that’s Saquon, which made people think he’s the best. He didn’t have a good year last year. The year before, he had an unbelievable year. And Saquon Barkley, Tank Pigs begins in that backfield. So he’s going to get a lot of carries. I heard he’s been killing it in preseason and doing very, very well. So, you know, he’ll probably take a couple carries. And that’s why you’re not seeing Saquon up on that list. But I think if you can get him late first round, that’s going to be probably the biggest deal of the draft. That’s my fantasy football analysis. And I got to do a lot of research because football is coming up. I can’t wait. All right, Daniel, we got another question here. And you could start on this one. And this is from Jason. He goes, “Frank, if you change your mind on crypto now, it appears the crypto bill will get signed this year. I still own lots of cryptos, including Ethereum and Bitcoin, and they finally started to move higher after a long and painful bear market.

Frank Curzio 21:02

Also, how will this impact tokenization if the bill passes?” Daniel, you could start on that. Your big crypto, Galaxy, the bill. We’ve been following this, so.

Daniel Creech 21:10

Yeah. I don’t think the bill passes this year, but I hope I’m going to be dead wrong on that. And yesterday, the White House President Trump hosted a lot of crypto executives and such. So Chainlink was there. That’s a cryptocurrency. Ripple executives, Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, the Winklevoss twins of Gemini, Hood CEO Vlad was there. And Brian Armstrong made some interesting comments. He said that there is a vote on September 15th, Frank, in the Senate to vote on the Clarity Act. Trump in his Q&A portion. I have to give him some credit. He was encouraging, you know, senators and everybody to pass this. I just, man, that’s just really close to the midterms coming up. So I’ll be impressed. I’ll be shocked, but I hope I’m shocked and I’m incorrect. Brian Armstrong did say something that stood out to me. Yesterday, he spoke at the White House, and then today, this morning, he was on CNBC earlier, and he mentioned that he doesn’t think that the Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, would have scheduled this unless he thought it would pass.

Daniel Creech 22:19

And he thinks Brian Armstrong said he thinks that this will get over 60 votes. Remember, 60 is the key that it needs to get there in order to pass. I’m obviously more bullish on it than I ever have been listening to these guys, but I remained to be having to prove it on that. That being said, you mentioned Galaxy. I don’t know where in the flying Florida Mike Novogratz is, why he’s not at the White House, or why he’s not communicating that he’s not at the White House. That kind of shocks me. That’s okay, though. It’ll get a bump with crypto. Do you want to talk about the crypto price, or do you want to go ahead and tune in on the?

Frank Curzio 22:54

No, just give me your thoughts. I mean, this is an industry, again, I became very negative about nine months ago, and this is after, you know, we got hit pretty hard in this, right? We did very, very well in crypto for a while. We’ve had some of the biggest winners ever. I’ve made a lot, a lot of money in crypto for my career. I just felt like, you know, with the back and forth with the crypto bill, also AI providing, you know, a nice balance where people can get in there and make a lot of money. I just felt like a lot of the speculation and that money has come out of this market. I like the big ones. You know, I still think they could do very, very well. A lot of them are up tremendously. I mean, over the past seven days, you got Bitcoin up 13%, Ethereum up 21%. I mean, these things are down tremendously still. But even, you know, BNB token, which is Binance, XRP is up 23% in the week. Hyperliquid is like the new, that’s the new, you know.

Daniel Creech 23:43

That got specifically mentioned by Trump yesterday. He said Hyperliquid is working on coming to the US, and the thing went up 20%.

Frank Curzio 23:49

And this is up like 200% for the year, right? But, you know, when you’re looking at a lot of the other ones, it’s hard. I mean, I always like Chainlink. I think Chainlink’s amazing. Cardano, Cardano’s good. You know, there’s a lot of good one in terms of the top 50 avalanche. But when I look at the industry as a whole, it’s very, very, very tough. I just, a lot of the speculative money has come out of this market. A lot of people got annihilated, you know, and that’s a big driver of this market. You have the institutions coming in, the Bitcoin ETFs already launched. I don’t think there’s going to be, you know, a special treasury or fund from these governments. I thought that would happen a lot quicker and look like it’s not a big, like everything I think that they compensate off of, you know, all the scams and stuff that they’re putting in this, you know, Bitcoin treasury and stuff like that. And we thought they were actually going to go out there and buy Bitcoin. So I still like Bitcoin.

Frank Curzio 24:38

Bitcoin’s in our portfolio. I’ve recommended Bitcoin since 6000. I recommend, I think, have we taken profits in Ethereum? I think so, right? We recommended that. We were up tremendously on that. We recommended under 100 a long time ago. It’s at 2,200 now. And this is something that was at 4,000. Again, just to show you how much these things have come back. It was higher than 4,000. Let me get to the Senate bill. I want to spend some time on this. So September 15th, Senate’s going to hold, this is a procedural vote on the Clarity Act. And there’s 53 Republican senators that are going to vote yes on it, right? Because, you know, the president needs this and they know that. And the president needs this because he took a ton of money from these crypto executives. And arguably, and I would argue that, that that won him the presidency because even, you know, the Democrats hated it. And then towards the last couple of months, they’re like, “Wow, wait, wait. Maybe we’re going to…” No, no, no. You tried to shut it off during the Biden years.

Frank Curzio 25:24

You tried. You told all the banks, “Don’t accept crypto. We’re going to shut you down.” They all, you know, started debanking people like myself. I got debanked. I know Trump talks about that as well. So, you know, the Dems, again, it’s all about money. And they tried to flip-flop. It was too late. And I think that had a huge influence on, you know, the amount of money that he generated. Remember, Democrats generated a shitload of more money. They just decided to go through paid media while, you know, Trump said, “Why use paid media? Let’s go on a real podcast.” Because they know that Kamala didn’t want to go on real podcasts because she couldn’t answer any questions. And that, you know, those measures were huge. And you need 60 votes, like Daniel said, and you got 53. So you need seven from Democrats to vote yes. And I think that’s going to happen because anyone voting yes on crypto is going to see substantial money going into their campaign. And we’re in a campaign year. 13 of those Democratic seats are up for re-election in November.

Frank Curzio 26:12

And they would probably be pretty smart in, or right now, or heading into that September 15th vote to say, “Hey, we’re voting for this if…” And again, when they’re talking to Armstrong and everyone else saying, “If you do this for me, I’ll do this for you,” right? That’s lobbying. I know it’s bribing. They call it lobbying, which is fine. And I think that they’ll get those votes. I think they’ll easily get those votes because, you know, Democrats should be smart with this because that’s a ton of money is flowing in from that industry, which they had no access to and maybe cost them the presidency. Again, you could argue that. But the market’s going to get the votes. We have Bitcoin trading above 70,000 now, Ethereum. You know, the option markets, I don’t know if you saw those option markets. Bitcoin ETF options right now trading 5.3 times the average daily call volume. 85% of those premiums tied to calls. There’s a huge amount that’s institutions telling you, a lot of big money going to crypto is telling you that this is going to get passed now or, you know, going to the next step.

Frank Curzio 27:04

So I do think eventually it gets passed. Definitely a positive for the largest cryptos. I don’t know if it’s a positive for a lot of the shitty ones that kind of trade and people pump and stuff like that. I kind of think that that has run its course. You have to see what these things are. The new technologies, I think crypto is fascinating. It’s just, this is software, right? Now they’re going to be using AI. These are software companies, right, that provide much better means than banks. And that’s why the biggest banks in the world are against this. They don’t want stablecoins because stablecoins are going to provide much more interest where, you know, Bank of America is going to fuck you and say, “Okay, put it on our checking account.” And, you know, Chase, put it on our checking account or in our savings account. We’re going to give you zero interest, right? That’s why JP Morgan is expected to generate $100 billion in 2027 from the net interest income, which is insane. That’s basically, you know, you having this money where you’re providing very little interest to everybody else, which is basically zero.

Frank Curzio 27:56

We’re talking trillions of dollars in checking and savings accounts from these large banks. Trillions and trillions, 6, 7 trillion dollars that they don’t pay interest on that you can get incredibly high interest if you use stablecoins. So, you know, stablecoins are very good. It is other crypto companies that do well. But as for tokenization, Daniel, I’m going to have a… I’m going to speak from the heart here, okay? And this is coming from someone who’s basically the first company who tokenized their business ever, you know, especially in our industry. But one of the first, I always say one of the first, I want to talk in absolute terms. I did it six years ago. And giving an equity stake to investors in our company, which is a small company, saying, “Hey, here’s your opportunity to participate in growth,” which you could do in the private markets. However, this token is going to trade on a platform where you could buy and sell based on, you know, the business survival growth. If we don’t grow our business as fast as you think, you could sell it.

Frank Curzio 28:44

You have the right to sell it. And it gives retail investors an opportunity to invest in small companies really, really in the early stage. And I always thought that was fantastic because tokenization is just fractional ownership. It’s selling off fractional ownership. And for some of those covered trends on my life, it made sense. I mean, if you have commercial real estate of $100 million, it’s illiquid, right? And yes, you’re making rental income. You could sell 20% of that. The person who’s selling it gets a $20 million check right away, which is great. Now he could buy more real estate and build up his portfolio. You’re selling that to investors and say, “Hey, here’s a 7, 8% interest, 9% interest, and that’s going to be paid by, you know, the rental income that you’re generating.” Wow, that’s great. And you also participate in what area that is. Maybe it’s going to be great and that real estate goes up. And that part of it, the 20% trades on the stock, just like a Microsoft. You’re buying a percentage of Microsoft, right?

Frank Curzio 29:32

Not the whole thing, but a lot of it when they do these IPOs, they sell 20% of that company and you’re able to buy it. And then the rest of it gets, you know, unlocked years, decades later. So it’s the same thing, but it allows these small businesses, even a small restaurant holder, to, you know, sell a portion of his business to his best clients. And then they get to participate in the business. And now they could trade this on a certain exchange. And I always thought that was fascinating because it’s good for the person who’s selling the real estate or the asset. It’s good for the people who are investing. They’re getting a high interest rate investing in commercial real estate. Most retail investors would never be able to do that unless they go through a REIT and all the bullshit. You know, and I was like, “Wow, this checks off every box. It’s good for everyone.” Then the institutions get involved and the big money got involved. And that’s one of the things I didn’t anticipate because we were trading on T-Zero. The laws didn’t allow T-Zero to market their platform.

Frank Curzio 30:20

So nobody even knows we exist on this platform. We can’t market our stock. Just like Microsoft can’t come on and see you and say, “Hey, our stocks are cheap right now. You should buy it.” Not allowed to do that. So now, because there’s no laws around this, and I think it’s definitely going to help, you know, when we pass the Clarity Act, you know, define what a digital asset, digital security is compared to a digital commodity, knowing who regulates this industry. Is it the SEC, the CFTC? We don’t know who regulates the industry. With that said, I don’t know. Tokenization, what my dream is, having retail investors have the best access similar to what institutions have, right? And I always love that, right? Because that’s who we’re for. We’re for those mom-and-pop investors. But I honestly believe tokenization is never going to go widespread. It won’t. It won’t go to where, you know, retail investors can raise money for small businesses from their own customers to help grow their company.

Frank Curzio 31:16

I mean, everything tokenization that’s working now is institutionalized. It’s institutions. And it’s going to be used to unleash dog shit because there’s tons of unliquid assets on the balance sheets of so many of these private equity firms, so many of these freaking institutions. And even though you’re seeing these IPOs come out and craziness, the private equity market is frozen. A lot of these assets are frozen. And they need to sell it. And they want to sell at the highest price. How do we do that? Let’s fund as dumb as people in the world to sell it to, create this environment that, “Oh, this is great. It’s the first time you can get into this. And this company has so much upside value.” This is the insiders telling you this story, just like Chamath did, right? With, what’s his stock? Galactic.

Daniel Creech 31:56

Virgin Galactic.

Frank Curzio 31:56

Virgin Galactic, right? He said, “We’re going to generate 100 million in revenue.” And all this stuff, they generated like 2 million in revenue. And that was four years ago, three years ago, right? Sold the story. We’re not going to hold it forever. What he did, he sold $300 million, him and Richard Branson. $300 million each while that stock went from, where is it today? Virgin Galactic? It’s three. And this was like, I think it was in the 30s at one point, right? If you go back, go all the way back, Joe. Go back further. Look at that. Look at what was that? What number is that? How high was that stock price right there? Up there? I mean, this, I mean, probably, I don’t know, pre-split. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s right. Anyway, this stock was tremendously. They sold at 30, 35 and went up tremendously because they sold the story. That was the goal, right? Come out at the left side of that chart, then look at the top, then they dump it. And then you have this garbage stock forever, right?

Frank Curzio 32:44

Because they don’t have money, whatever. It’s horrible. You have to get retail investors to dump this shit. And that’s where tokenization has gone. And it pisses me off because that wasn’t my dream of tokenization. And everyone’s like, “Oh, this is great. This is tokenization.” So T-Zero, we’re coming off that platform because we have no liquidity. We’re a private company anyway. I mean, anyone who wants to sell a little bit, when people call me and say, “Hey, you know, Frank, I’m going to sell. You know, we have our investors.” I’m like, “You have the right to sell. I mean, you’re going to sell at a low price. It goes much lower.” If I went in there and bought $200,000 worth of stock and whatever is 80, 90 cents, it’ll probably be $4, $5. There’s no liquidity, right? And that’s why I thought we had the liquidity, which I placed that in the hands of T-Zero or Securitize. And Securitize just came out and they just fucking buried their investors. Put in Securitize. Just write it. They should come up with this stuff. They went to SPAC, right?

Frank Curzio 33:29

And they just buried their best and most loyal clients by going public through a SPAC that may have been one of the shittiest structures that I’ve ever seen of any SPACs. And you know how I feel about SPACs. So look what this stock is. So Securitize. So this just came out on July 2nd at $12, right? As soon as it came out, and I know the CEO and everything, he said, he was saying, “Oh, this is great. This is awesome. This is awesome.” And I really dug into it. I didn’t tear it apart because I’m learning to control my emotions. Sometimes I want to tear things apart. I’m like, “Let me just let it happen. Let me just, you know, again, there’s a lot of big institutional investors in this and Morgan Stanley invested in this.” And when I saw that happen a while ago in big institutional investment, I’m like, “Shit, you know, they’re investing in this to get a lot of their private investments more liquidity through tokenization.” It’s not because they believe that this is going to be this massive market. So, you know, when I look at Securitize and what they did, again, really shitty structure.

Frank Curzio 34:16

It opened July 2nd. Stock was 12.30. It’s what, 6.40? It’s going to three, guys, by the way. It’s going a lot lower. They promised 100 million in revenue this year. No way. Even at that valuation, it came in. This is a $1.8 billion valuation when it came in. So even if they do $100 million in revenue, it’s insane. If you’re looking at that lockup, you know, again, I went through this and it’s a massive, massive document. And I had like 20 data points. I was going to annihilate this company when they came out with that SPAC. 600,000 of the shares went to a sponsor at 0.004 cents a share. Basically, had very little lockup restrictions. I think they were already met of the stock being at $12. So those shares could come out. Again, they’re basically free shares. Another 6 million were given to founders that could sell that stock if it’s at 12 for 30 days. It was at 12 just for a little while, but that’s $72 million of shares given at pretty much definitely under a dollar, probably 60 cents, 50 cents, maybe lower than it could be issued at the stock trades at $12 for 30 days.

Frank Curzio 35:17

And you could buy it here and say, “Okay, it’s going to 12.” That’s a big ceiling on the stock. But when you have a disclaimer that says this, this is their disclaimer. You got to listen to this, Daniel. Neither the board or any committee thereof obtained a fairness opinion or any similar report or appraisal in determining whether or not to pursue the business combination into a SPAC. Consequently, shareholders have no assurance from an independent source that the number of shares of the common stock to be issued to the sellers and shareholders in the business combination is fair to shareholders from a financial point of view. That’s a disclaimer that they have. I read a lot of disclaimers. And again, in our business, all you have to do is disclose it. Basically, they’re saying, “Look, this is dog shit. It could be worthless, but the fact that we put this in there and it goes to zero, you can’t sue us.” Now they say that they have partnerships. This is what’s going on in a lot of tokenization.

Frank Curzio 36:07

They’re like, “We have partnerships with BlackRock, Apollo, KKR, VanEck,” but they’re not partnerships. You know how they know? Because they say they’re not partnerships. They say, “Well, we refer, I’m quoting, ‘Well, we refer to customers such as BlackRock, Apollo, Bank of New York, Hamilton Lane, KKR, and VanEck, and others as our,'” and they quote, “partners. We do not have a partnership agreement with these entities. We may overly rely on certain products such as BUIDL.” That’s the biggest tokenization product. That’s BlackRock’s USD Institutional Liquidity Fund that trades on that platform. It represents more than 60% of Securitize’s tokenized assets under management. And Securitize is just the transfer agent for this. That’s it. And they use a tokenization platform, which means they sign. There’s nothing proprietary here. And I’m pretty sure BlackRock, I’m almost pretty sure this is a fact. And the rest of their so-called partners, they’re on one-year agreements. They can come off that platform when BlackRock could say, “You know what?

Frank Curzio 37:00

There’s a better platform. We’re gone.” They’re just the transfer agent. That’s it. And they’re using that platform. If a better platform comes up, BlackRock might be like, “Okay, we’re going to use a different platform.” That’s 60% of their assets under management. And one thing that they’re calling a partner, they’ve called a partner, and then this, they say, “No, no, no, they’re not partners.” It’s almost like, Daniel, it’s like if E-Trade said, “Hey, you know what? We want to subscribe to your newsletter, maybe give it out to some of our clients.” And they pay whatever, you know, $2,500 a year, decide if it curls you off. That’s like me saying E-Trade’s a partner of ours. They’re not a partner. It’s $2,500. They can cancel next year and say, “You know what? We don’t think it’s good for our clients.” I can’t, I shouldn’t be allowed to call them a partner. They’re a subscriber, right? So they’re a client. They’re not a partner. They’re not partnering with them. So when I see this shit in the industry, it kind of just pisses me off because it’s very personal.

Frank Curzio 37:50

I think this is something that’s remarkable, but I underestimated the power the banks have that they don’t want tokenization. They don’t want, you’re going to see tokenization, people, you know, real-world assets they call. You’re going to see that, you know, get bigger and bigger in terms of stablecoins and that works. But as far as individual investors, mom-and-pop investors or retail investors making money off tokenization, I don’t know if it’s ever going to happen. I don’t think you’re going to see tokenized securities that get Nasdaq signed a deal to provide some of this stuff on their platform. It’s not, these companies and platforms and everything at T-Zero, they get money based on how much is traded and how big these issues are. And they don’t want issues that are 20 million, 5 million, 10 million. They want 100 million, 300 million, 500 million. They want big institutions. And that’s what’s sitting on the balance sheet of a lot of these private equity funds that are probably going to go to some of these platforms.

Frank Curzio 38:39

And I don’t even know if retail investors can buy it because even the stuff on Securitize, I’m pretty sure almost everything on Securitize, you have to be an accredited investor to even invest in some of this stuff. And that wasn’t the purpose of this. So to me, I’m like, you know, wrong. I’ll say I’m wrong in the industry. I thought it’s fascinating. It’s big now. I was, you know, one of the first into the market. But just to see where this industry has gone, these guys, again, T-Zero is not making money. They’re going to make money by bigger issues if the private equity firms come in. They’ll get pieces of the deal. Same with Securitize. That’s how they’re going to make money. They can’t make money off of companies like us that don’t have a lot of trading. And most of them don’t allow retail trading because the laws don’t allow it. They cover themselves by making it only available to institutions, which accredit investors, and they have to check off a box saying, “I know the risk.” So if they lose their money, they can’t sue whatever, compared to retail investors that will all come in and say, “I didn’t understand this stuff.” I mean, you know, Securitize, I wouldn’t be surprised if they get sued by their investors.

Frank Curzio 39:33

I mean, anybody reading that agreement would have been absolutely, this is the greatest, easiest short I think I’ve ever seen, not ever seen, maybe the last 10 years is Securitize coming out. And even worse, what I hated is when the CEO is promoting this on Twitter saying, “Oh, this is a great deal and we’re going to come out with it.” Like he’s, I’m like, dude, now you’re pissing me off. It’s okay if you keep silent, but you’re promoting it for retail investors to come in and you fucking annihilate them. You know, and that’s what I hate. That’s what pisses me off. You got to do your own homework. I understand if you’re getting shit that you don’t understand, that it’s your fault. You got to play some responsibility. But when you have a CEO, when you have Chamath out there saying, “This is a value stock,” our place of value stock, this is going to do 100 million in revenue. You’re fucking lying to the public. You’re absolutely lying to the public. So you could get this price higher and all these people who don’t know better are going to buy the shit out of it and you’re going to sell right into them and you’re not getting sued for that.

Frank Curzio 40:23

What the hell is the SEC doing? What are they doing? What they’re going to do is knock on my door because I’m questioning it. You’re not allowed to question this shit. You don’t hear anyone talking about this shit anywhere. But this is what happens under the fucking hood. This is what I do for 30 years, seeing this shit, working on Wall Street. This is what happens. The deck is stacked against you. I describe it all the time. Wall Street, they’re like, “Oh, you know, how’s Wall Street?” And I use the same example. It’s like they completely stripped off your clothes. You’re in the middle of the street. They’ve raped you. You have one sock on. And they take that sock and stuff it down your throat. Okay, that’s what Wall Street does to retail investors. There’s no friends. There’s no like apologies and no like, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” No, none of that. None of that. It’s all modeled out. Okay, we’re going to make $300 million. Likely in three years from now, we’re going to get sued and that’s going to cost us $60 million. Okay, boom, do it.

Frank Curzio 41:09

And that’s how they operate their businesses, which is insane. I don’t know if you wanted to follow up because there’s a lot of good stuff in terms of, Daniel, Galaxy, a lot of other stocks. I’m sure the ClarityX got to be good.

Daniel Creech 41:20

Right now, Frank, we’re rubbing it in. I’m kidding.

Frank Curzio 41:22

No, Coinbase, you know, I like Coinbase. I don’t like Coinbase as much as Robinhood. I love Robinhood here. I think Robinhood just is an incredibly innovative firm. So much so they changed the landscape of the industry in terms of fees. And I know people say, “Well, they charge the fees based on, you know, the trades and whatever.” But every single brokerage firm, just about, became no-fee platforms because of them. And then all of a sudden they said, “We’re going to provide the highest interest rates on our money market funds.” And then everyone followed that as well because now you’re getting a lot of money that’s sitting in banks. Hey, I’m just going to have it sit in the brokerage firms, which is great for them because they could take that money and find ways to make more than the interest that they’re paying. I mean, banks, they don’t know better. I mean, people don’t know better to leave their money in banks earning zero interest. But even at three and a half, 4%, these companies know that, “Hey, I could generate just like Warren Buffett.” Warren Buffett didn’t become a billionaire because he bought Bank of America and Coca-Cola and held it with the dividends.

Frank Curzio 42:10

It’s because he leveraged the shit out of his portfolio by buying insurance companies. And insurance companies have the most biggest pools of money that never get paid out that he could take. And he knows he could generate a shitload of return on that and leverage it. And that’s how Berkshire got to where it is today. Not because, again, great, you bought Coca-Cola early and Bank of America and American Express and held it, but it’s because you’re able to leverage those positions because he knows if I get these massive pools of money, I can leverage and I’m going to make so much more on these assets and the payouts are going to be nothing to us, right? That’s how these firms look at this. Let’s get as much money into our firm. How much could we make off of that money? And right now, the biggest banks make the most because they don’t pay interest on their, on you’re looking at checking accounts and savings accounts where tokenization is changing this market. That’s why they’re lobbying so hard against this.

Frank Curzio 42:56

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered, not all banks. You got a lot of great banks that are supporting this, but the four large just don’t want this. They’re going to lose a lot of money. It results in a lot of money loss for them if the Clarity Act passes strictly because of stablecoins and the interest that they are going to provide to everyone out there. So I do think that Robinhood is probably one of the best stocks that you could own right here with the Clarity Act. I think this thing goes to 125, 150. It’s a great company. Plus, they’re in one of the biggest markets in the world and tied into these markets pretty heavily, which is the prediction markets. It’s one of the fastest growing industries right now. Robinhood all over this. And I’m sure you’re going to look at some hedge funds are getting into this now and in the predictions markets and, you know, signing deals with Calshi and everybody else, but Polymarket, but Robinhood is engulfed in this and they’re always ahead when it comes to the innovation part.

Frank Curzio 43:45

That’s why I like Robinhood. And Coinbase, I just think still a big player on trading fees with Bitcoin and there’s so many ways to buy Bitcoin these days, even through ETFs that I think it’s going to hurt them. I just don’t see the stock going much, much higher from here. Maybe it gets that bump from the Clarity Act, but I just think Robinhood is a much, much better play here than Coinbase and Galaxy is, you know, again, with their AI and data centers and stuff, that stock. Where is Galaxy trading, Daniel?

Daniel Creech 44:09

22, 23, something like that. Galaxy needs a bull market in both crypto and AI. I made the mistake. I thought they were going to be a leader. They are not. They need a good market. So we need some help from them.

Frank Curzio 44:20

And in all fairness, I know it hasn’t performed well. It’s come down off its highs and stuff like that. But you would talk about this in single digits, right?

Daniel Creech 44:26

Oh, yeah. I mean, I could have timed it better, but yeah, overall we’re okay. But yeah, it’s just, I mean.

Frank Curzio 44:29

I mean, you get pissed because you see it go from 30, but I mean, you know, listen to you, you’re in the single digits, right? And it’s 23 right now. So again, if you’re holding it long term, you should be happy. Maybe a little pissed it was 35 not long ago came down, but you know, if this Clarity Act gets passed, these guys have tons of assets in the AI space. A lot of firms have come to Galaxy because of their trading, their clearance division, and because they were first in the market and signing deals with Goldman Sachs, stuff like that. You know, Galaxy is just well positioned if this gets passed. And I think this is a stock that’s definitely going to go well above the $35 it was at about February. Price could go a lot higher.

Daniel Creech 45:04

Two quick things from me. Yesterday during the White House press conference, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins actually talked and the devil’s going to be in the details, so I have to look into this, but they did. And then other CEOs praised Mr. Atkins for doing this. The SEC is not waiting on the Clarity Act. They’re coming out with new rules, new suggestions, and different things like that. And one thing that they got, he got praised for, Paul Atkins, was that the SEC is now coming up with ways for crypto companies to raise money legally as securities. That’s something that’s very new. It’s so new that it’s not in place yet. So we have to, again, the devil will be in the details. But to your point, Frank, that would be a big step forward in my opinion for retail tokenization. And then the second thing you mentioned, if shareholders are going to sue Securitize, they’re going to have to get in line because there’s a good food fight going on between T-Zero and Securitize over lawsuits. So on June 15th of this year, T-Zero sends a cease and desist letter to Securitize talking about patent infringements and stuff.

Daniel Creech 46:04

June 22nd, Frank, getting the lawyers involved. Securitize files a lawsuit against T-Zero and then boom, they go back and forth. So we’ll see how that plays out, but you’re not wrong on the Securitize deal.

Frank Curzio 46:15

Yeah, it’s such a different industry, right? When you see the lawsuits between two of the main players in this and they can’t say that brokerage, all right, they have to say that they’re trading platforms, right? So specifically, and we know this because we’ve been on T-Zero where, you know, they changed their definition of a digital security about four times in the past four years just to satisfy the legal stuff. And they can’t push the issue. This is why it’s so important for the Clarity Act. The Clarity Act allows laws in place. It’s like the gambling industry, guys. In the gambling industry, it was so tough to invest in it when none of the states were approving it yet. Then all of a sudden when the states approve it, now you can put money into it because there’s not going to be institutions. Institutions have a fiduciary responsibility. Okay, they need to check off all the boxes. Doesn’t mean they can’t invest in something and lose money, but they invest in something where there’s no laws around it right now and those laws don’t exist or say if they say a Clarity Act is not passing.

Frank Curzio 47:08

Not only that, we’re deeming every one of these cryptos as security, meaning that every one of them are going to have to come off of crypto exchanges. It’s going to destroy Coinbase and all this. Then the institutions get sued. It’s hard to put money into something that doesn’t have laws around it. When you have the laws, now you can invest around that and say, okay, here’s the protections. Right now, there’s no one governing crypto. So if you lose your Bitcoin right now, if you buy Bitcoin and you have it wherever you have it stored, and I know they were able to crack into cold storage and stuff like that, and a lot of people was, whatever it was, you lost a Bitcoin. Again, with AI, you’re going to continue to see that. But if you lose your Bitcoin, you can’t go to anybody. You’re done. I mean, I know people who lost millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars that they had crypto in some of the firms that went under and they’re done. There’s nobody there. There’s nothing you could do.

Frank Curzio 47:56

There’s not like you can’t complain to anyone where, you know, bank accounts and trading accounts getting short up to a certain amount of money, whether it’s 250,000 or whatever, but you have that insurance there. If something happens or fraud happens, there’s no assurances there. So if you lose that, it’s gone forever, which is, you know, a big risk to Bitcoin. If, you know, you’re investing in it and you have it at some place and it gets lost on Coinbase, sometimes they’ll cover it. That’s why I loved about CZ with Binance and he had a hack and he covered every dollar of it and I love that. And, you know, but other firms are going to be like, sorry, and it’s gone forever. So, you know, you need something. You need the Clarity Act. You need some laws around this. Hopefully that passes. It’ll definitely be good for crypto, the largest cryptos. But tokenization, listen, is it real? It’s great. Yes, it’s awesome. But if you’re a retail investor, it’s going to mean nothing to you for many, many, many years because everyone pushing this, it has nothing to do with retail investors.

Frank Curzio 48:44

It all has to do with trying to get liquidity for these assets that basically have no liquidity at all so they can get out of them. And they need to get out of them. Private equity firms, the biggest firms in the world, institutions, that’s what tokenization is about right now. It’s going to be like that for several years. And I don’t think that opens up an opportunity for retail investors, which is sad. That’s the reason why I love this industry and formatted my whole company to take advantage of it. So, and now we’re coming off the T-Zero platform. So questions and comments, guys, we’re here for you. You can go to askcurzio.com and it’s free. Get a commentary, stocks, economy, anything you like, unfiltered, unbiased. Daniel and I just go to askcurzio.com, put your question in there and you never know your name maybe and your question may be the one that we answer. So guys, have a great, great weekend. Looking forward to football’s coming up, starting a couple of weeks. And we’ll see you next week.

Frank Curzio 49:33

Take care.

Announcer 49:34

Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money, and your responsibility.