Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Announcer

Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

This is going to happen on November 20th. I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast. I bring you the headlines and I’ll tell you what’s really moving these markets. We just finished our capital raise.

Very busy over here, instead of growing getting the foundation rebuilt, signing new contracts for our consulting marketing division and now that all that’s in the past which is really good news I want to focus, like I told you, bringing on more and more interviews Somebody used to do a while ago and bring it on every now and then, but now it can really focus on this. A lot of people have reached out to us. A lot of big names have reached out to us. Thanks to you, this platform continues to grow. Again, I joke around. I still don’t know how many people and why so many people listen to us, which is awesome and cool, but 50 million downloads, 100 and whatever 20, 30 countries this goes to. So you know, when you have those kinds of numbers, there’s a lot of people that want to come to this platform. They know our brand, they know it for real, they know how to. You know bullshit people Very respectable in the industry. So it leads to a lot of people trying to get on this podcast and tell their story, and my job is to vet a lot of these people before they come on, make sure they’re really, really good, but expect lots and lots of interviews, starting with right now. So I have a great one with David Goone. If you’re not familiar with David Goone, he’s the CEO of tZERO. That’s the security trading platform Curzio Research trades on. Yes, if you’re new to this podcast, we tokenized our company four years ago. I thought that trend would be much bigger by now, but, as you can see, crypto is on fire, especially with Trump coming in, and very, very exciting times, especially for tZERO, who recently got their special purpose broker deal license One of the only companies in America to do that which means they could trade just like a Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, except within crypto Taking custody, electronic trading. It’s a very, very big deal and this company is ready to take off, so you could own our company, trade just like a stock on this platform. There hasn’t been a lot of liquidity. Now liquidity is going to come finally. I thought they’ll come a lot sooner, but really exciting times, especially at a time when we’re growing.

Now, David, if you’re not familiar, he’s a pioneer 20s experience. You’re going to hear all about it in a second. But, David man, he’s been on the road like crazy ever since this news and this news just happened about a month and a half ago so doing lots of interviews going all over the place, lots of big interviews just with uh, speaking to a lot of investment firms and things like that, and we were able to get him on a day that he was extremely busy. Told him hey, if you’re too busy, don’t worry about it. We know him, I know him, he’s on again. I trade on his platform and he’s like no, I want to do this for you. It’s’s great and you know so, at the beginning a little tired, I think. He did a couple of interviews before. But, man, once we get going, it’s really amazing when you see how innovative he is. I mean, coming from ICE Chief Strategy Officer, again, I’m going to go all over this stuff.

And once this thing gets going and picks up, he’s going to talk about this industry, including tokenization, which he believes is going to be a trillion dollar opportunity. Again, tokenization is fractional ownership. He’s going to talk more about the special purpose broker deal license, what it means for his company and the entire industry. Should we welcome more competition? It’s going to be even better, probably. Let’s see what he has to say. He’s also going to talk about because he’s very in technology for 20, 30 years what the next biggest trend he sees. So again, it’s a little slow because we got him just off of other interviews, but then it gets going. It’s really, really exciting.

And here’s that interview with David Goone right now. David Goone, thank you so much for joining us on Wall Street Unplugged. Great Thanks for having me. Okay, so take me through this scenario because I believe, if I get this right, in 2000 you go to this new company, ice, and you have maybe a dozen employees and then all of a sudden, you create those new products. I mean, you know electronic trading, you’re doing data analytics, you’re building up this traffic and then you do this amazing job and turn this into this 15 000 employee plus uh place whatever 70 billion plus market cap or whatever you guys are with ice, uh, now. And then now it’s 2022 and you’re probably thinking, okay, wine, golf, ready to retire, and then was it a tap on a shoulder or something. Take a look at this company. Take me through that process in, and I know probably happened before 2022 for getting to zero. But how did that process start?

0:04:53 – David Goone

1. So we had a really good I had a really good run at uh, ice, uh and I believe of kind of the poor group of original guys it it was just me and the CEO, Jeff Sprecher, left the company. I think everyone else had pretty much retired and many of the people who worked for me had retired and I was ready to retire. So I was planning on that and a couple of things happened in my personal life was going on where I was dealing with some elderly parents and was going to kind of be stuck in, you know, in the Chicago area where I’m from, and so it wasn’t like I was going to be able to retire and just go travel and do all the fun things.

I have an inquisitive mind and then I got contacted by some people about would you be interested in being the CEO of this company? They had some interesting things to talk about. By the way, this was no different than how I got to ICE. At first I said I’m not really that interested. I started thinking about it, mulling on it, and then I had a couple ideas, I had a couple conversations and I thought they had enough of a regulatory structure that I might be able to try some fun things and keep my mind active.

Maybe it would be fun to do that and see if we can move forward with that. So at that point in time I talked to Jeff Stracker, who was the CEO of ICE, and I said, hey, I kind of knew I was thinking of retiring or was going to retire around this spring, to retire around this spring, I think it was 22 and uh, we talked about, uh, I told them what I was thinking up here and they need some capital and they could be an investor. And uh, so Jeff thought, yeah, that’s an interesting idea. If that’s what you want to do, I’ll certainly back you with some capital and see what you want to do. So, um, that’s kind of what happened. That’s how I got here. I had some interesting ideas. They needed some capital. I was gracious enough to become a significant minority owner and then off to the races.

0:07:20 – Frank Curzio

I went so off to the races, and then it’s February 2022, February 2022, and then, all of a sudden, I mean maybe you could do it all over again.

Maybe you could eat the timing right. The market crashes, market falls and then starts rebounding, I guess towards the end of the year 2022, and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere uh was it january, I think 23 we see this attack on crypto, uh, where they really went after these companies and you know I’ve been in this industry for a while. As you know, we trade on your platform and it. You know they closed the two major banks right, and for me, I was my words illegally. They didn’t do anything fraudulent. But I saw the letters and everything you know to all the banks saying, okay, don’t do anything, or you know, we’re gonna make sure you don’t do anything with crypto anymore.

They even went after Coinbase, which went through the whole SEC process and made it really difficult for this industry, and this you know as well as I do that there’s names that definitely need to be policed. But it was a pretty big surprise, a little bit of setback. And were you surprised I guess let’s start there Were you surprised to see that’s getting caught? Caught me by surprise, caught a lot of people by surprise, but were you surprised when that happened? It felt like it was a little bit of setback for the industry and I thought this would take off a little bit uh.

0:08:31 – David Goone

I wasn’t. I was a little surprised. Not, I certainly wasn’t shocked and I wasn’t. I wasn’t that surprised, I think.

Look, the SEC, uh, up until now has really been dealing as, as I think everyone would agree, with not necessary crystal clear rules on on things in terms of, particularly, the crypto’s, fast digital area, but they have been more, uh, aggressive in terms of enforcements of what you know, their, of enforcements of what you know, their, you know, of actions, of what they feel is clearly, you know, in their view, securities or not, and that’s how they’ve been doing it more by enforcement than you know, really crystal clear. This is exactly what you need to do and how you need to do it. What they’re saying is that this is it, at least seems to me. This is blatant, it. What they’re saying is that this is it, at least seems to me, this is blatant or this is a you’re outside the bounds of what we think is securities law and we’re going to come find you or, you know, put you in the penalty box. That seemed to be their structure and that’s what they were doing. So you know, the issue is, some of this is the cat’s already out of the bag and I think they don’t know. I’m not saying they don’t know, but it’s difficult to figure out. You know we’re not starting from scratch this crypto industry’s. You know the cat is out of the bag a little bit. These things are trading pretty actively and you can’t put. You know Pandora’s box has been opened and how do you put it back? And I think that seems to have been the struggle. So they take this enforcement path, which seems to be what they’ve done. So what you’re probably missing is, on top of that, we had the FTX issue, which was more, not necessarily a crypto issue. It was just more of a difficult issue. It was just more of a difficult issue. I mean, you didn’t have to call it crypto.

What he was found guilty of was not really anything necessarily crypto related. That just happened to be the game board he was on. It was the fact that he was absconding with. He was using segregated money for other purposes. It didn’t have to be crypto, but it certainly at first and later on tarnished, I think, the industry. I think that was probably the bigger tarnish to the industry that happened. He basically wasn’t telling the truth. As far as I could tell, he said he wasn’t using customer funds to. You know, he was commingling funds at the very highest level and not necessarily being honest about it, so that’s been going on for probably thousands of years. It just happened to be the crypto arena he was playing in, but I think it had a chilling effect on the industry, certainly at first, because when something like that happens, people look at the arena, not just the players, and I think that’s kind of what happened. So yeah, that’s just my view of it, so I wasn’t necessarily surprised.

I think there were certain things that needed to be cleaned up and certain people, you know, push the envelope. And sure, there’s bad actors in every area and maybe, you know, as any industry grows up, you know, the bad actors will kind of hopefully disappear and things become more and more legitimate with, you know, institutional, like high quality participants, as time goes on. So, which I think’s happened yeah, it definitely makes sense.

0:12:22 – Frank Curzio

So, all right, we got the negativity either way, let’s talk about the positive stuff. So, in the past two months, uh, really good news, uh, politics aside, you have an administration that that one that’s very pro crypto, I think. I think I want to say, you know, quote me on this number, I think it’s 46 senators, house representatives, who are pro crypto ran. I think they wanted like 100 rate, uh, as of now, and then you get this out of nowhere, which I thought was very, very cool the special purpose broker deal license. Explain what that is. I mean, obviously we know what it is, but explain it in terms of why it’s such a difference maker for your platform.

0:12:59 – David Goone

So a special purpose broker deal on a license which was, I think tZERO, I don’t think I know had applied for prior to me even coming here. So the SEC was not in general, we’re not necessarily quickly approving what was supposed to be a pilot program starting three years ago a five-year pilot approving what was supposed to be a pilot program started three years ago.

A five-year pilot, tZERO had applied right away and you know, the process just was probably unduly long. They kept asking us questions and questions and it was, you know, perseverance, I think. It was, you know perseverance, I think, and kudos to our general counsel, Alan Konefsky, for constantly, you know, pushing, but we finally got it. So the issue was, it didn’t come out of nowhere. It came out of three years of lots and lots of work and lots of effort, not only from our general counsel, our technology people.

What it allows us to do at the simplest level is to be a special purpose broker deal. It allows us to custody digital assets that are securities and can be the custodian, as opposed to going to a three or four party model where you have to go to someone like an Anchorage or something, to house your digital asset. So it allows us to be more one-stop shopping. You can do your primary, your secondary and custody your digital assets all with us, and that’s probably the biggest benefit of the special purpose broker dealer. We’re only one of two the other one with Panethium, and I think that was a different decision for a different reason, is my guess. So we’ll talk about that. But that’s really kind of where we’re at and it was nice that we finally got it. I mean, it was a lot of hard work and time just of constant meetings and making sure they were comfortable with us having infrastructure and the ability to no, it was incredible.

0:15:20 – Frank Curzio

it really was. I mean, I’ve been with you guys for a very long time and I knew that process was in there and the surprise was like, wow, I can’t believe they just approved it, which is awesome.

0:15:31 – David Goone

So hopefully it’ll prove we’re hoping it approves the advantage. So we’re talking to a lot of other people Because think about the crypto ecosystem there are certain assets in crypto and in digital assets where people, at least you know, under the laws it is today.

One wouldn’t argue that a strong argument. One would say that there are aspects that are probably, um, those are securities, an interest earning instrument that you know, you know, basically security. So it allows creation of other instruments that can help the ecosystem, uh, in the crypto, uh world, the crypto ecosystem that now, uh, you know those aspects, can be, you know, traded as a security but housed in a custodian basis, in a way that is more economically viable, I think, for people so now you have this license and maybe say about a month or two ago that you received their approval?

0:16:51 – Frank Curzio

have you seen more people calling about a month or two ago that you received their approval? Have you seen more people calling you about this? Or have you seen people looking to tokenize? Because I know that we’ve been on the platform for a while and it’s been kind of like the same issuers over there and we’re starting to get.

0:17:03 – David Goone

We’re having a lot of interesting conversations with many parties about this now, um, so let’s just kind of level set. So we need to. You know, we get the permission. Now we have to launch the special purpose broker dealer. There’s some work involved in that and that’ll get launched before year end. And then, you know, just like anyone else, we got to be our own guinea pig.

So the first asset you’ll probably see us do is our own T rlp, completely digitized, and you know us custoding it. We already have a second one, which I won’t mention, uh, ready to go. A second asset, um, uh, but I haven’t talked to that. That party does, so I don’t want to bring it, I mean in terms of letting it out publicly, but we have a second asset ready to go, and now we’re looking at some more interesting assets and lots of conversations, particularly some bigger players that are looking at things I talked about, that there are parts of the crypto ecosystem that could benefit by some security type token, digital asset that then, um, you know, we can be the custodian of in a much easier way so tokenization, all right, because you say security token, tokenization, you know, fractional ownership of an asset.

0:18:26 – Frank Curzio

There’s a lot of liquid assets out there, right? We look at the bond market, we look at real estate. We’re seeing you a company like Masterworks do this very well. Aspen Token do this very well. Right, with rooms and stuff like that through their token. I guess my question is where do you see this industry headed?

When I first did this, I looked at it and I’ve covered trends all my life. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I looked at it. I was so excited because I feel like it’s a way for retail investors to really to get into some of these things very early, which you don’t see anymore, because companies IPO at insane valuations right, and a lot of that growth has taken place. It’s area you get in the ground floor. You could do with smaller businesses if they’re able to raise money, if it’s a restaurant, any asset right.

But then I see another platform make this more institutionalized and I feel like and I’m hoping it doesn’t do this and maybe it’ll do it right away, because I understand it’s a much bigger issue but I feel like Wall Street’s pushing this and finding another way, just like they kind of did with SPACs and dumped this on retail investors and made a fortune off of it, while everybody else got killed. I feel like they’re like okay, we have all these people in this liquid assets, a lot of these are credit investors. How do we get them out somehow in an easier way, where it’s in between, where you don’t have to, you know, not ipoing yet maybe we could tokenize these assets and I just feel like you know, you see, Morgan Stanley invested it. You’re seeing jp morgan invested and I feel like, is it that way, or am I too naive to think that this could really be for the retail investor and a really great outlet?

0:19:55 – David Goone

Well, that’s a good question, so let me think about the answer. So I think a good way to think about it, Frank, is I think it’s a little bit of both. I think the house is big enough. It’s a meal where everyone can eat. Yeah Right, there’s going to be enough food for all. I think there’s a credibility. You know, the good news about the big institutions is it gives us, it gives a lot more comfort or credibility, even for the retail right.

So you know it’s the rising title raise all votes and I think that’s not a bad thing, I think it’s a good thing and I think you know you’ve got to define what’s retail. So what you’re seeing, particularly outside of the US, where you don’t have this strict regulatory environment, and look frictose now I don’t know where, I don’t have it in front of me now, but it’s top 90,000 yesterday, yesterday I think we’re having this conversation on the 14th of November, I think yesterday at top 90 000. I mean, there’s a lot of people with a lot of capital in the crypto world that I think are looking for outlets to further invest, right, not just in in the crypto, and I think that’s kind of the, what I’ll call the. There’s a retail opportunity for that and others participate in, let’s call it, non-traditional assets. Everyone can buy stock but you know, can I take my crypto and invest it in whatever? In a sports team, and I invest in a piece of art and I invested in, you know, all these other things that people have access to? You know, private equity is an open.

There’s lots of, you know, issues that I think can help both institutional and more retail people in private equity. Think about fractionalizing that. Those are illiquid, but really why? Potentially those that could free up and actually probably better for institutional and retail. So I think you’re going to see both. I think there’s going to be definitely there’s too much money going into on the institutional side and the digital asset that that’s going to happen and it could take some time but it will happen. And then on the retail side, I think you’re starting to see it and I think people will get more and more comfortable and probably with the regime change and let’s see what happens with the SEC, I think things will loosen up a little more and I think it’ll become a little more accepted. But people want to. You know it’s where people want to invest. If you look at younger people, they want to invest in what they know and invest. If you look at younger people, they want to invest in what they know and stocks look great, great and you know I think the stock market will always be there.

But you know, as I’ve said, I think, in another someone’s interview in another podcast, if you would have told me 20 years ago that people would be investing in gym shoes or sneakers and collecting them and not wearing them and putting them in boxes and storing them in their closets and buying and selling them. I think that might have been, you know, a bridge too far for me to get to, and I like to think of myself as a bit of a futurist. I mean, I was, you know, prior to ICE. I was developing products with CME and we used to have people coming in on probably more than a weekly basis with, you know, some of the crazier ideas and some really good ideas, but mostly ideas were out there. Sneakers wouldn’t have been one we would have probably, you know, brought a team in to have a meeting about. But there it is right, people invest in those things and they are, you know, it’s been a good investment for for some people there’s companies that are doing quite well by buying and selling sneakers. So I think the retail people will still be out there.

But there will be some institutional stuff. You know can we have and you’re starting to see it, you know, a tokenized, you know interest earning, you know money market account. I don’t know that I’d want to go with, would you know, with, uh, some small company out of, uh, you know an island somewhere in the Caribbean, so or maybe don’t even know where they’re at right. So I, I think there’s that. So I I hope I answered your question. I think there’s a lot of interesting thing and I think there’s a lot of interesting thing and I think there’s a lot of room for innovation. And they’ll probably be like anything There’ll be innovation, there’ll be people who succeed, there’ll be roll-ups, people will acquire them and 20 years from now it’ll probably be a much more institutionalized-like market. But listen, people trade. Morgan Stanley owns E-Trade, right? I mean, people trade retail and they also have a huge, I’m sure, book of institutional clients.

0:25:00 – Frank Curzio

Yes, and I think you sold yourself short. I mean, I know your history, I’m a big fan of yours and if you look up your name, you’re going to see ICE and what you did for that company. But I think what I’ve read and studied about you is the innovation part and how that excites you. And let’s talk about that level, because the innovation that you’re seeing this is something totally different right From when we’re used to and I think it’s most people still don’t know about it, where you see it, even in horse racing, collectibles and a lot of things. And again, some companies are doing this, which is incredible. Where do you see us in the stage of, say, when you were at ICE and I think it may have been you started 2000 and small and probably, if I would imagine, 2005, 6, 7, you starting rock and roll and markets coming back back then I mean, and where are you at this stage in terms of excitement, in terms of innovation?

0:25:48 – David Goone

I mean, because, especially with everything happening in the past, yeah, I think we’re right at the beginning. I mean, I’ll let me give you some analogies out to cme, and I developed a lot of product there too, you know. So, you know, we’re at the beginning. I would say, if it’s a baseball game, we’re just, you know, we’re still in the warm-ups. I don’t think we’re in the first inning yet of where we’re at, or maybe we’re just about to start the first inning. That’s kind of where we’re in the first inning yet of where we’re at, or maybe we’re just about to start the first inning. That’s kind of where we’re at.

But you know, it’s an interesting thing, things do and can move logarithmically. So you look at, you know, back when I was at the cme I think I was before I worked for the exchange I was, you know, on the trading floor back in, let’s say, 1987, 88. And everyone thought electronic trading and everyone was going to get put out of business and the floors are going to close and by and large, that’s happened in the derivatives world. It probably didn’t happen, for it started happening much later than 1987. It started happening much later than 1987. It probably started really happening, you know to, between 2000 2010 is probably when we started to see a major shift and then the next decade 10 to 2010 to 220. You know it really moves, so it takes longer, but when it happens it moves quick, right. Once it kicks in it moves quick and right Once it kicks in, it moves quick. And I think that’s kind of what’s going to happen here is, you’re going to have some early things going on, you’ll start to see some successes and then all of a sudden, it’ll hockey stick, as they say, on the chart and you’re going to see a lot of things go.

I think what you need to get is more critical mass and distribute. You know working on your distribution and getting it going. So I don’t know what’ll cause it. You know I’ve had a lot of successful products and sometimes you’re surprised, you know. But when you get, when there’s gonna be and there will be one or two successful products in this arena, then all of a sudden you’re going to get critical mass for everything else, because it’s not that the ideas are bad, it’s just getting the critical mass for adoption. You know, it’s like. I think that’s where we’re at. So, to answer the question, I think we’re probably in the beginning of the first inning and a long way to go, and I think it’s going to evolve well, probably in some ways. We don’t know, but in some ways you know we, you know I think it will. I mean, let’s just say I know I’m heading north. I don’t know the path of how I’ll get there exactly, and there’s probably 30 or 40 paths to get there.

0:28:33 – Frank Curzio

Is there a formula that you look at? And I’ve covered trends all my life. I’ve been doing this for a long time and one thing that was always a certainty when you see disruption is you know for three things. It made things easier, right. It was good for both parties, it made things cheaper, right, and a lot of times faster. And that’s when I give Uber a great example, like why would you take a taxi? It’s cheaper, it’s safer, it’s better. You got drivers. Good for the company, it’s good for you, it just benefits everyone. Where it makes, it’s just. Why take a taxi?

So when I look at tokenization, I see the same thing. I mean this is something where, if you have commercial real estate, you could sell off a piece. The owner gets a check, which is great. The value of this asset is probably going to no longer trade as a private asset maybe three times earnings. It’s not going to trade probably I don’t think for a while until we get a lot more liquidity at an S&P multiple, but the value of that asset is probably going to move up, since it’s called semi-public traded. So it’s really good for the.

It’s good for individual investors because they’re able to maybe buy a piece of real estate, a piece of a great painting, a rare art and stuff like that. I just see, and not only that, just the method of doing this, where the IPO market and how you go public on these exchanges now, where you need all these qualifications, you need the lawyers, the quarterly reports, it seems like it checks off all the boxes. I mean, is that how you see that in terms of innovation, with some of the things you look at? Or again no, you get, you know 100%.

0:29:51 – David Goone

I’m looking at all those things. I think you have to. It has to be a win win, right? I think you know, just like any.

You know, I always used to say this with people and this was very common both at ICE and I see, still see it now, even at tZERO, but I see it certainly at ICE and at the CME before that. People would come in and they would have a great idea. But the great idea was usually that it was really good for either a buyer or seller. They used to have a guy who worked for me, a really clever guy, and he used to always say you know you need both. Like you know, I can understand why everyone wants to sell, but who’s going to be on the other side? Why would someone want to buy it? Or vice versa, I can understand why everyone wants to buy it, but who would ever sell that? Right? You know, hey, I have this great asset, I’m earning 50% on. You know I should monetize it, I should sell it. It’s like, well, you’re earning that much, why would you ever sell it, right? Yeah, so of course, I think the line out the door to buy something like that would be around the block or hundreds of miles long.

So I do look at that, I try to look at where’s the buyer and seller, which basically is saying that it’s a win-win in some regards for both parties. There’s opportunity for both parties, opportunity for both parties. And then, you know, is it solving some problems that are opening some opportunities that weren’t previously available? And solving a problem? So I can, you know, you can think of, you know, let’s just take sports teams, right, I mean there’s, you know that’s the hot. You know, you read, you know it’s been a great investment you can talk about. You know, I don’t know what. Over time it’s been a great investment.

But you know, unless you’re a very wealthy person, you don’t have access to that. So can we democratize that? Can you fractionalize that in such a way that it’s a win-win for everybody? And I can come up with lots of reasons why that would be. It could be like that in private capital markets. You know, I have, I’ve been fortunate enough to have access to a lot of private equity, private capital deals, which have been really great returns. You know. Certainly, you know, should that, you know, can that be made available to the average person? You know, can that be made available to the average person. I think absolutely there’s no reason and it could be a big benefit to the people who are holding it, because those are illiquid, you know. The downside is, though, you know there, once you get in, you got to wait to get out, and those can take a lot longer.

I’ve had private equity investments. I thought were three to five years and I’m you know, you’re 15 and still holding. So, you know, is it a good investment? Most of them are great, but it doesn’t mean I’m out, you know. So there are interesting things, I think, in those arenas, certainly sports, arts, entertainment, private capital all those things are probably, you know, real estate. All those things are interesting and should, once people get used to them and there’s some good wins, I think people will continue to pour money, but it’s an acceptance issue. It takes a little time. If you look at the crypto world, that took off. Right, bitcoin took off. You know we’re not for Bitcoin taking off. I don’t know all the other cryptos, if you would have had a lot of others, but for one reason or another, all of a sudden, you started having it beyond what it was envisioned for. It wasn’t envisioned for-.

0:33:26 – Frank Curzio

Yes, that’s usually the way it works, right.

0:33:28 – David Goone

Right, it was envisioned to be a currency replacement, not a currency, something that was a tradable instrument on a regular second-to-second basis. It was just going to be an alternative to the currency.

0:33:47 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, which is the way it works, right. It’s Netflix sending DVDs in the mail right, yeah, which is the way it works, right, it’s Netflix sending DVDs in the mail right, yeah, exactly.

0:33:53 – David Goone

No, no, yeah, exactly. I mean I don’t think the iPhone they ever anticipated social media would be, the you know would be the driver of social media throughout the world. Right, at least the catalyst.

0:34:06 – Frank Curzio

No, absolutely, absolutely. So I want to almost going to be the last question because I think this might be a little bit long, because this is a very easy. This is going to be the easiest question for you. Okay, I’m being sarcastic how at this position? Okay, basically, one of the only companies to get your special purpose broker deal license. Another company has it, but they’re also trading like different cryptos, and I understand. If they want to generate revenue, so getting rid of. If they want to generate revenue, so getting rid of. I feel like you’re on an island by yourself. Now for the fun part. How do you, what are you doing to build the moat? Is it better for competition to get into the space, because that’s going to be more people and it’s the industry so small that that’s what you want? It’s probably, you know, just more people, more traffic. Or what are you doing right now to really position yourself where, hey, we are the premier and, like you know, in the short term maybe the first year, especially since you have this license?

0:34:55 – David Goone

well, I guess you can’t be afraid of competition, right? I mean, you know that’s going to happen in everything, right? Not monopolies, and you know, you know there’s some problems with monopolies in and of themselves. You get fat and lazy, so it up myself. You get that and lazy, so you want to always be worried about somebody, uh, catching up. But I think you know rising tide, tide raise all boats right now.

I think the I, I think we can stay ahead by, you know, having a best in breed program, you know, you know, look at good systems, you know, obviously, good people working on it. You know, and having, you know, high ethical standards within the industry makes sure you’re doing everything right. I think that’s how you do it. And you’ve got to build trust with people because there are, let’s face it, this industry, the digital assets, that crypto industry has some you know, not everyone’s playing, um, you know it’s, it’s, it’s not as um, blue blood for lack of a better word as as it should be. So I think, if you’re holding yourself to the highest ethical standards, you have good technology um, that’s what will set you apart and you’re innovative, or innovative enough and partnering with good partners on the deals you do.

I think what would be. You know you also when we talked about it before. You want to do assets that are. Are you want to do things that? To do assets that are. Are you want to do things that are good for the investor? I don’t want to list an asset that people are going to lose money on if I thought an asset came to us and someone say, hey, can you do this?

and I know that it’s we talked about specs not all specs are bad, but a lot were because there wasn’t good alignment with the investor and the issuer. So you want to make sure that you know the investor has a chance for a good return and that it’s not, you know, something that they’re just going to lose their money on and, you know, throw it away. So I think if you do a good job and have good assets, I think that’ll be the differentiator. Will someone come along I can’t say and look, you know, let’s see what happens. You’ve got a new change in government.

I’m sure there’s going to be a probably substantive change in how the SEC approaches these things up. What I will be surprised on, if it’s status quo in terms of this SEC. You know, three to six months from now, in regards to digital assets, crypto and everything, I think it would be a different environment. Let’s see how that goes and then we’re going to have to adapt to that as well. But I think we’re positioned well and we try to do everything ethically and above board and you know, know, follow the rules, and that’s how we’ll differentiate ourselves no, that’s great stuff.

0:37:56 – Frank Curzio

And I guess the last question, which is a little bit uh of a side question and not related so much uh, because I’m not gonna let you use tokenization as someone that’s been around innovation and loves it right and just studies it and is fascinated by it and loves even like the startup version of it is there a technology out there? And again, ai, I guess would be the easiest example, because you know big data, incentive things, everything but is there like a technology out there that has you really excited, that nobody’s looking at that? You’re like, wow, this is actually, that’s an interesting one. Well, what?

0:38:24 – David Goone

so look, it’s hard. Not, you know we’re talking. Probably you know really also the I don’t even know if we’re in the first inning or warm-ups. Ai is clearly going to have a huge impact and I don’t think we’ve. Even if we have this discussion in 10 years, which I still think will be early in the AI revolution, I don’t know that we’ll be able to predict which way it goes.

Just like I was talking a little bit with the iPhone, I don’t think anyone really realized how much that changed the world. I mean, you know my kids were little. You know I had cameras and video cameras and you know, you know a telephone that we didn’t even have. You know we had portable phones or looked like dinosaur bones. You couldn’t even carry it with you. You had. You know, you know everything’s in in in one thing. I have my schedule, my work, my email, which no one was using. Then you know you’re available 24 seven. You can do video calls. I mean, no one envisioned that when you first these things first came out. I think it is going to be like that.

But I do think there are interesting areas within the AI arena that I think everyone’s looking at Well, I shouldn’t say everyone Interesting areas that I think are going to really substantively change both the world and the workforce in a way. We’re not quite prepared for, so and I think in most cases that will be for the better. There may be some areas where it’s going to be for the worse. Outside of that technology, I’m trying to see if there’s anything else I’ve seen recently. I think everyone’s going to become much more productive. Hopefully that means we’re going to start going in some new arenas and new technologies we haven’t thought of before. I think AI will allow that, but have I seen anything that’s blowing me away outside of AI? It’s pretty hard to say that. I mean, that’s such a mind-boggling change in so many ways.

You know I was talking to people. I mean, how does a student in college? You know, like, how does a professor in college deal with that? Or in high school, grammar, grammar school I mean it writes papers, it can do your math homework, you know, and we’re just starting it. You know artistic endeavors and it’s just, like I said, just starting.

But I think we’ll start being able to do huge calculations and do some really interesting things out there from a technology base that will change the world. But we’re still going to have capital, we’re going to have to invest, which is kind of the world I live in, and it’s going to have to be fun and interesting and I think it’ll become more and more frictionless. So what I think will be interesting is you’re going to see lots of people being able to do things. Huge companies, did you know, in their basement, you know, not on the just similar to the music industry. Remember, you used to have these, you used to have these huge studios and, you know, do recording. Now you can do it on your, you know, your ipad. Yeah, you know, people can do stuff there. So I think that’s going to happen with a lot of things.

0:42:11 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and I can tell I can tell how excited you get you just because I’m yeah, you just close your eyes, you’re like, well, I have no idea, just on a medical front, on, like you say, you just talk about the labor front. You’re talking about you, about calculations of things and math and space, and it is unbelievable when you just think about it a little. While it’s pretty cool, you just go down a couple of rapid steps.

0:42:29 – David Goone

I mean, just look, what happened to the medical I think is going to be radically changed. I mean, I’m not in that field, obviously, but I mean just the ability to come up with and customize treatments and calculations that they’re going to be able to do to test so many variety of you know, whether it’s, you know, vaccines or treatments or drugs. I mean all that is just going to constantly accelerate to levels we probably can’t even imagine.

0:43:02 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, it’s definitely definitely incredible. Well well and a lot of fun.

0:43:06 – David Goone

I mean I love it, right. I mean, yeah, definitely, you can’t be afraid of it, you got to embrace it. I think people you know it’s going to happen, so you gotta, you gotta embrace it. I don’t want to be that old person who doesn’t know how to use the ATM it doesn’t even you know, people don’t even use anymore or or a pay telephone, right it’s just.

0:43:26 – Frank Curzio

it’s funny when my kids see that. What is that thing? Rotary phone? Yeah.

0:43:32 – David Goone

Actually I think Jeff Sprecher from the CEO of Intercontinental ExchangeSent Me a funny video. Years ago. They did kids in college, just like four or five years ago, a rotary phone. They didn’t know what to do with it, like how would you call a? You know it’s not intuitive Like how do you call a number on that?

0:43:48 – Frank Curzio

That’s so great, so great. Well, well as David, I want to thank you so much for coming on and how busy you are.

0:43:54 – David Goone

Thanks, for having me. Thanks for the discussion. Always like to talk about fun stuff.

0:43:58 – Frank Curzio

That’s great. I want to also end with this and saying listen, you know we’re very, very glad we chose your platform. You know there’s a couple of different places out there we’re very happy with and very happy that you received a license and everything. And, yeah, it’s really cool being on your platform. I know my subscribers and my investors really love it. So I look forward to the future with you and I’m really excited with it.

Thanks for all the support. Thank you as well and, yeah, hopefully you come back on soon. Yeah, anytime. Thanks, take care, buddy. Thanks, hey guys.

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Okay, guys, great stuff from David. I really appreciate him coming on. It’s a long day for him. Long month and a half for him. Got to get the word out. Lots of questions what’s going on with this platform? You guys have been sitting there Security tokens Supposed to be huge. Now you get your special purpose broker deal license and now you see the new administration focusing 100% on crypto.

Holy cow, there’s a reason why Bitcoin’s taking off, reason why a lot of these stocks are taking off Because crypto is an industry. It’s not like the stock market where you just got the Trump bump. I get it, but stocks are already high almost across the board. Outside of that, small caps you can argue with, but most stocks are trading near their all-time highs most of the indices and then we saw this bump up with crypto. Take out Bitcoin, take out Ethereum. This is a market that has been annihilated.

Outside of that, I mean, you’re talking good technologies, the next hundred. I’m not talking about meme shit and all that. You want to play that Good for you. I’m not going to get mad at you and say you’re an idiot, because sometimes I’m the idiot because I see people make 10,000 to 100,000% on some of those things. That’s okay. But the top Also security token market really take off in exciting times where, yes, this has gone higher, but this has gone higher. With so many of these names outside of the top three or four, including Bitcoin, ethereum in there and Binance they still have 60%, 70% of their highs. This is where the opportunity is here.

Hopefully you enjoyed that interview. Really, really, like David and you’re going to see us work hand in hand, I’m going to help them build that platform Again. It’s in our best interest as well and these guys are doing a fantastic job. We’re getting calls in. We’re getting calls even from gold companies. They’re going to tokenize assets now because they see the liquidity coming Now. Because they see the liquidity coming Now it’s here. Now, this is something I think is really going to be really, really huge. I’m hoping, and we’re right in the middle of it. We’re right in the middle of that With our business, with our consulting business, with our publishing business, traffic increasing on all social media platforms.

We launched an offering to raise money, which we just closed, and we raised a lot of money in a short amount of period, because everybody that we spoke to, I told them our story and where we’re going. And you know, listen, it wasn’t always good. You get the bumps and bruises you get from starting a company to managing a company. Where we are right now, things are really, really cool. And then you know tZERO getting this license right when we’re doing this is fantastic. And then trump winning everything’s really lining up and, uh, it’s really exciting times here got a great team, everything’s awesome and really, really cool. So, again, more interviews coming, even in the crypto space, across all spaces. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. If you guys think there’s any great guests out there, let me know. We’re gonna start doing lots and lots of interviews uh, at least two or three a month, and we’ll have a lot of fun with that, because a lot of people are asking to come on a platform and now now have a lot of time to do it.

So last thing here, guys, we just opened up Curzio One to new members. Curzio One is our elite membership. Right, you can only get invited to a special invitation through me and I pretty much talk to everyone before they come into this membership. And there’s about a hundred people that say, hey, you know, I’m interested, and we put them on a list. So when we open up, we email them. If you want to be on that list, email me, Frankcurzioresearchcom. But we just opened it up why? Because I like to open up when we have a really good opportunity and this opportunity, which is part of this service, and you get all of our membership services for free. Now, you know and everyone was coming forever, I’ll talk about that in a minute but you get all of our services and usually the people on this list and how they get in this is is because they have a lot of our products already. So we allow them to deduct that amount from the large membership fee, because this is an elite membership and you also get access to private placement deals. So I like opening this up. We don’t open up often, but we have a great private placement deal.

It comes from an awesome source, someone who has done very, very well for us. He started a biotech fund a very early stage seed biotech fund in 2021, and it’s now ranked in the top 5% globally for IRR. And he also came out with another offering that we just got data from that I showed my one members where it’s phase one B data and they just released it and showing that not only it’s a psoriasis drug, but not only has it treated it and they show pictures of this, it’s curing it and the results couldn’t have been any better than any stock on the market. And there’s one comparison that saw results that had half the efficacy I’m not even kidding you and made it to phase two and got bought out for $4 billion plus $2 billion in royalties, and we’re in this thing at $50 million valuation, so these results could be published everywhere pretty soon.

If you’re a Curzio One member, you got the chance to invest in that name. This is where this new company comes from. It’s another biotech company that’s disrupting a $420 billion segment within healthcare, and healthcare is a shit show. And when you see this and what they’re doing. It’s amazing. This isn’t like this early startup that we’re going to. Just you know this is a second round of funding.

I think they’re up to $45 million of funding and they gave us a small allocation. The only way you can get it is through CurzioOne, basically, or if you know the lead investor on this, which is you know. I think that they’re done right, so they’re waiting for our allocation, so I have a able to get you into this deal as long as we don’t see a ton of people, but it’s a high price tag. We usually don’t get a ton of people to come into this membership. If you’re interested, let me know, because this is where I invest my money. This is where I made my wealth. Most of it in my lifetime is investing in these deals, and I’ve gotten my ass kicked for 20 years, long time ago, and it takes you a while to understand how these deals work. Who’s full of shit, and build a list of contacts that you could trust that consistently make you money in these deals, because you only need one, you only need one, and if you get that one, it could be life changing and you want to be really smart about this. And now the contacts that we have across every single industry, especially crypto, is going to get hot. Biotech is getting funded tremendously. That’s where this one comes from.

This name comes from Again, this is a name that’s generating over $25 million in sales right now. They did a capital raise a year ago for a Series A raise and they said this is what we’re going to do. And you hear that shit all the time. In the early capital raises they exceeded it by miles. So now they’re taking this model, which is just in one major city in America, and going to scale it to every major city and really exciting stuff. The model works. It provides a cheaper alternative compared to hospitals. It’s cheaper, easy, better for patients. So it checks all three. This is something that’s going to disrupt the entire industry and the industry’s $420 billion market, and comes from a really good source. So if you come into Curzio One, this is something that you get. This is just one of many names.

I’m at the New Orleans conference right now. I’m going to be talking to a lot of different companies and they need money as well, and I love gold. I really do love gold. Right now, people are like, well, pull back and try. I love gold right now. I think gold is going to go off. As you see, Goldman Sachs just put a price target on gold at $3,000 2025. I think it’s going to happen very early in 2025. I think that happens in the first three, four months of the year. Central banks are going to continue to buy. This is going to push a lot of junior gold miners much higher and the deals that they’re offering with warrants and stuff like that.

This is how you get into these deals through Curzio One. It’s not easy. I had to work my way up there to the Rick Rules and Eric Sprott’s and the Marin Katusa’s and the Jeff Phillips, because I used to go to the bullshit deals with so many people that go to these conferences. See, this is elite. We get calls first, just like everybody else, and these are the deals I put my own money into. So if you’re interested in that membership, you get a chance to talk to me. You can email me, Frank@curzioresearch.com. I would just say that it’s first come, first serve basis with this new deal that we’re getting into and it comes again from a fantastic source. So if you’re interested, reach out to me, Frank@curzioresearch.com, and I can put you on a list. I could talk to you and see if this is something that interests you and if it does very good. My words on this, guys.

Okay, for everyone that’s a subscriber to our memberships, this would be the last time we offer a lifetime membership in this product or any product Curzio Research produces. Now and in the future there’s going to be no more lifetime memberships. If you’re a lifetime member to any of our products, congratulations. I’m not going to take it away from you. It will never happen again. Okay, so even for this membership, it’s going to be an annual membership and you got to keep re-upping in order for you to access our research. We feel like we’ve been a premium brand for a long time and had discount prices for a long time, but now, with the research that we have, the quality, the performance, as you guys could see in a lot of our newsletters, Dan’s doing a fantastic job as well. The lifetime memberships are gone. New business, new pairs of research Again, everything we focus on we’re doing great right now.

That’s going to be the publishing division In this last chance. If you come into Curzio One, it’s going to be the last chance you can get a lifetime membership. After that you will not get it anymore, not only for Curzio One, for any of our products. I think I said that a couple weeks ago. I’m sticking do it. We know why our competitors do it. You know it’s nice to get a lot of money up front, but we have great research, consistent, great research. We don’t need to sell someone up front that they’re locked in because we’re going to provide them garbage for the next three, four, five years. That’s not what we do here. So if you’re interested guys that you see that you think will make for a great interview email me, because we’re going to really focus that, especially on the Wednesdays podcasts. I get a lot of great people on, great people that are smarter than me that we can learn from, that have ideas, really cool stuff, and that’s going to be the agenda going forward.

Questions, comments. I’m here for you Once again, Frank@curzioresearch.com, and I’ll see you guys soon. Take care.

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