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.

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s February 1st. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where we break down headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. Exciting news, pretty close to official, but our CEO token, Curzio Equity Owners token, will start trading on the tZERO platform early next week. Holy cow, what a journey. Ups and downs, crazy since 2017, 18. Tried to launch one of the first ever security tokens. And the goal was always to get it traded on a US-based platform. So, a lot of you know our token was trading on the MERJ exchange, and that’s an international exchange, M-E-R-J, and that’s located in the Seychelles. Great team over there. Great guys.

Frank Curzio: And we were trading on that platform, I think close to a year, maybe 10 months or so. And until the last two or three months from moving to that exchange, US investors, so any of you that wanted to buy our token had to do so by wiring money to the Seychelles, which wiring money’s not the easiest thing. I mean, some people do, if you’re an accredited investor, you do it to get in a lot of private deals or whatever, mortgages and stuff like that. But to wire money to a place that you never really heard of is pretty crazy, and I get it.

Frank Curzio: And credit to them, the last three months, they opened up a way to do it where you don’t have to wire money where you can come in through crypto, through stable coins. But there was almost no volume on the exchange. And that was almost the entire time we were trading there, and maybe that changes later on or whatever. But again, our goal was to get our token trading on a US-based platform because we’re a US-based company and it make sense, and this is the goal here, right? To get everyone to be able to purchase this thing if they want. And I said, MERJ is an awesome company, an awesome exchange with a team I really respect. And it’s in exchange.

Frank Curzio: So, even though it’s in the Seychelles, this isn’t some BS company. I mean the same rules applied to them as if you go on IPO, on NYSC, fully licensed. But the compliance, the data, the stuff we had to go through to get listed there was insane, which is great, right? I mean, it’s a good thing since this is crypto, we’re skeptical, and you can’t blame investors, they want as much transparency as possible. So, it’s a good thing for people who are doing the right thing and have good structures like ourselves. But yeah, there’s a foreign exchange.

Frank Curzio: Now, if you’re looking at the US-based rules, over the past 12 months, they ease tremendously where you’re seeing a lot of new security token platforms being launched. And tZERO being the early adopter here, first to the party, is now starting to list security tokens like crazy. Started with Exodus a few months ago, which tens of thousands of accounts came over to them. More and more accounts are being opened on tZERO, that’s how you trade these tokens. And tons and tons of security tokens are in the pipeline. Now, I was on the podcast last week and the week before when Daniel took over and did a fantastic job for me, I went to a conference in The Bahamas.

Frank Curzio: And I was asked to speak about security tokens, and about our token, and how we launched our STL to basically some of the largest financial publishers. And we were the smallest there. These are companies that’s doing over 100 million in sales. We’re doing a lot less than that, right? We’re growing. We want to get there pretty soon, hopefully, a few years, we’ll see, if everything goes as planned. But it was amazing that we took center stage at that conference. And the presentation, and it wasn’t even a presentation, I just got up started talking about it for 30, 40 minutes. After I was done, the amount of questions that everyone was asking.

Frank Curzio: And this is 25, 30 people, again, these are the largest publishers in our space, different divisions, all over and people who I know, just a nice industry conference where we’re all talking about trends and things like that and how to get better and stuff. Again, we’re competitors, but it’s really cool to get together with all those guys. And again, a lot of people who I respect in that room. And this is my first time invited to this conference, which has been going on for a while. And the questions and the interest. I mean, I was up there for at least another 20, 30 minutes. Tons of questions. “Holy cow, how did you do this? This is awesome. How could we do this?”

Frank Curzio: And five different companies came up to me right after the presentation and said, “Look, we want to learn and more about this. How can we use the strategy to help raise money for ourselves, grow our businesses?” And for me, I take this very seriously, so I don’t want someone who’s looking to exit their company do this. No, this isn’t an exit strategy. This is someone who believes in their company, wants to raise money and build their brand. You do that from acquiring companies, you’re using your stock, and you can be like a public traded entity and use your stock just like a public company would do.

Frank Curzio: If it goes higher, you could raise money. The marketing campaigns are to build a company even further, hire great talent, have options surrounded around that great talent, where they’ll participate as you grow. And also you can use your stocks currency to acquire companies that are pretty much five to 10 times larger than us, which we wouldn’t be able to do. So, it put us in a great place in terms of being able to compete with the big guys, which is very difficult to do when you’re a small business. And the interest that I saw there was unbelievable.

Frank Curzio: Because I’ve had these presentations before where I’ve got up and spoke and people are interested, but not this kind of interested. And it makes me think that we need to tell the story better of what security tokens are and why this is going to be one of the biggest industries in the world. You’re going to see massive demand. We saw that and we’re seeing it now, but just the demand was there, just the regulation wasn’t there. Now that everything kind of have a structure in place, still we want the SEC to come out and make it even more clear, but you’re seeing a ton of these platforms being launched now and more and more companies taking this route.

Frank Curzio: But we need to tell this story, because everybody I tell this story to is fascinated, absolutely fascinated. Because every company in the world’s looking to raise money. Every company is, right? You want to grow your business. That’s every company. It’s like marketing, the ultimate secular growth trend ever. People are always going to pay to market their companies. They want to raise money. It’s very difficult to raise money unless you have an amazing company that’s traded in a shitload of sales and that goes directly to the Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanleys, stuff like that.

Frank Curzio: Whereas if you have a growth company, where you’re doing 3 million to 10, 15 million in sales, it’s not easy. You might be able to get investors, but those early investors, they’re not really interested in the long term of your company. They’re interested in, “How am I going to get my money back immediately and make 5x, 10x, my money immediately. How can I do that?” So, they’re going to come in, take a board seat, and they’ll write you a check for five to 10 million. That’s all cool until they’re basically running the show, running your company, the culture changes immediately. Because they’re not used to the culture, right?

Frank Curzio: They’re just looking to get in. How could I make this as most exciting as possible by the time we launch and make a shitload of money for ourselves and then we’re out and we’ll go to the next company. That’s what it is. That’s what it is for a lot of these companies. And look, when I started this thing in 2018, here’s what I saw. I saw a way to raise capital by selling off a piece of our company, Curzio Research, which a lot of companies, especially private, don’t like doing. But it’s going to inflate your valuation tremendously because you’re a publicly traded company so you sell a portion of it.

Frank Curzio: And this will get investors direct equity stake in my company. I’m not talking about, oh, if you buy our token, and you see our security tokens, it’s backed by an asset and if we generate profits… Most small companies aren’t going to generate profits for a long time. That’s fine. A lot of that money needs to be poured back into the business. I mean, you’ve seen AT&T get nailed today because they cut their dividend. I mean, they’re going to save five, six billion dollars to have 3% yield instead of a 7-8% yield which was already on the table. And it’s not getting announced today.

Frank Curzio: But now you’ve got to throw all that money into growing streaming, growing your company, buy more 5G properties spectrum. These are companies that are going to be generating $25 to $30 billion dollars in free cashflow. So yeah, people are pissed off right now about the dividend, I get it. But holy cow, that’s what you want to do, right? They’re a growth company now. They’re into streaming now, Discovery is. And they’re the second best platform behind Netflix, much better than Disney+, and their content is great.

Frank Curzio: Getting back to the token, and this is going to give investors direct equity stake in my company. Again, not percentage of profits. As we grow, you grow. And our original investors where we did a Reg D filing, so it’s only available for accredited investors, will be able to trade their shares and their tokens after 12 months on an exchange or alternative trading platform. Think about that for a minute. It’s pretty significant. Given the average liquidity period for a private investors is seven years, meaning it takes an average of seven years before early investors could cash out, which would be through an IPO or if the company was acquired, stuff I mentioned to you in the past.

Frank Curzio: Let me get more into detail about this and why this is important and why security tokens is going to be one of the greatest markets in history. And it’s still super early. Seven years is a very long time, a very long time, which is why you saw the explosion in SPACs in their popularity. Through a bull market and a superbull market, would the mark go up on average of 22, 23% over the last three years, which is what? 3x more than historically? Got the government flooding the market with money, liquidity everywhere, easy to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, pretty easy.

Frank Curzio: You can raise 10 million for almost any project you want right now. Not right now, as rates going higher or different environment, but you’re looking at 2020, 2021, go back 2019. So now, we have these SPACs in the explosion. SPACs were popular at a time, they weren’t popular anymore. Why did they become popular again? Here’s why. Because the main investors, the big investors, large hedge fund managers, billionaire celebrities, Ackman, Chanath, Branson, Alex Rodriguez, Jay-Z, all found a quick and legal way to get rich quick, right? To get rich as fast as possible. This is how you do it.

Frank Curzio: It’s basically a scheme. It’s legal, but they found a way to bypass the system, and that’s why you’re seeing so many SPACs being launched. Now, there was 59 SPACs launched in 2019. That amount surged to 248 in 2020, see the popularity. And last year, 2021, and it slowed down tremendously towards the end of the year, there’s a reason. SEC came out, and so you have to disclose a lot more stuff, but over 600 were launched last year. That’s from 59 SPACs in 2019 to over 600 in 2021. And that 600 account for 60% of the total new listings, including IPOs, launched last year, which they raised around 160 billion dollars.

Frank Curzio: And this broke records in terms of number of deals not raised which dates back to the 1990s. Holy shit, 1990s. When you see shit broken, it’s like, “Hey, we did this in 2007, date 10, 11, whatever.” 1990s. That’s how hot the market’s got for new listings. And why did SPACs say probably is a provider way for institutional investors and insiders to cash out early. Where they create this blank check company, which is listed on an exchange, it’s a holding company be listed there for whatever they say, 12 months, 18 months, I think they have up to two years.

Frank Curzio: Some of them say six months, usually a year to find a company that they’re going to merge with, they’re going to purchase and they wait until they find the perfect name. And once a SPAC begins trading, they’re allowed to dump their shares pretty quickly, sometimes in a few months, sometimes even shorter durations based on if their stock price went higher which was the case of DraftKings, one of the early ones. We’re inside a lockup, so I think we’re shortened from 180 days to maybe two months, as based on where the stock price went and the stock price took off.

Frank Curzio: It went over $65 a share. That shortened the lockup period where insiders will allow the dump, I think it was September and then in October 2020. Look at the chart, no coincidence. The stock crashed, cut in half almost immediately. That was early on, I believe that was 2019… So, it’s 2020, and then 2021, it still was hot, the SPAC market and that stock went up again. But now, it’s trading in the low twenties, a $65 share. Now, the best part of this, which people don’t explain, and I’m going to show you why this is such a boom to the security token market, is these insiders get super cheap stock, sometimes in a pennies, 50 cents, dollar, even three to four dollars.

Frank Curzio: They’re also issued a shitload of warrants that they were not required to disclose in their filings. Think about that. These warrants as the stock goes up and the stock is probably going up. So, if they’re selling it or they’re making these pipe deals, and they’re saying, “Hey, you can come in at four or five, and we’ll give you a bunch of warrants that are exercisable at seven or eight.” These things are at 13, 14 coming out. They’re almost able to immediately convert the warrants and sell them. So, they made an absolute quick fortune, which is great for these guys.

Frank Curzio: Now, in order for this system to work, you need a bunch of suckers. And that’s you, that’s you. Retail investors. And I’m not putting anyone down, but I’m saying that’s what Wall Street does. It preys on the weak who don’t understand. Now, what don’t you understand? You don’t understand that these guys are going to get you super excited. They’re going to take over a company that’s either involved in space, crypto, AIs, EVs, data analytics, crazy ESG technology, carbon credits, all the nice buzzwords, do a big roadshow, get you excited. And they know that the retail investor, they’re going to invest with emotions.

Frank Curzio: They’re not going to look at the valuation of this company. They’re not going to look at the valuation that this company was 300 million dollars four months ago but now they took it over as a SPAC raised money and now valuations $3 billion. Nobody’s going to pay attention to that. What happened in those past few months that increased the valuation 3x, 4x, 5X? Nothing. It’s a road show. These guys are great. That’s what they want to do. Because their lockup here is short, and they got really cheap stock. They tell that great story, and it needs to be great. Again, the fundamentals in these companies are insanely rich, like buying a Snickers bar for $500 but nobody cares. “We’re going to space, we’re going to space.” Carbon credits, AI, wave of the future, robots, whatever.

Frank Curzio: So, they launch these things at a price point of $10, that’s where it starts. And now, it’s the company they’re buying, which helps the stock run up 30 to 100%. That was the model. That 30 to 100% run up is you, retail investors. That’s the liquidity event. You want to create a massive liquidity event. Liquidity event is tons of shareholders coming in because you need the liquidity event in order for these insiders to dump the shares right in your face. To have liquidity to all insiders, right? Billionaire celebrities. That’s what SPACs create to dump the stock right in your face.

Frank Curzio: And quick note here, I said the liquidity period is months. However, the clock starts when you create the SPAC. So, if you have a six month hold period and it takes you seven months to purchase that company, by the time it gets traded, you could sell on day one. Pretty crazy. So, you’re a SPAC, you sing exchange six months before announcing a deal, your lockup period already expired. You can sell the stock almost immediately convert the warrants and sell it. This is the formula and this formula is absolutely fantastic for institutions.

Frank Curzio: Get rich quick, get out and then go on to the next back. That’s these guys done. While retail investors, you get left holding the bag. BlackSky, Momentus, SPY, DraftKings, Virgin Galactic, Beachbody droll down more than 60% from their highs. In fact, the average SPAC is now trading 60% below the price from when they first started trading to the public. People got wrecked on these things. And it makes sense because they inflated these valuations then dumped the shares right in your face. But this is the reason behind SPACs and why they made a monster comeback.

Frank Curzio: They’re like, “Holy cow, we’re going to be allowed to do this and just… Let’s murder these retail investors, they don’t know better. They’re not going to really look valuation or anything. They’re just got to get excited about the story.” But the biggest investors are able to shorten their liquidity periods to where they will launch a SPAC, acquire a growth company and sell out a big chunk of their positions 5x to sometimes 20x, even 50x gains in less than a year because they’re sitting on cheap stocks, sometimes under a dollar. Somebody owns that stock, but now the gigs up.

Frank Curzio: The SEC came out and said, “We want more disclosures on these.” Notice how SPACs are not coming out as much anymore. Plus you’re taking liquidity away which is a big deal for crazy situations. Where Viridian could generate 1 million in sales and have 100 billion dollar valuation based on future growth. I could see 20, 30, 50 billion, and I think they have the best technology is space, but 100 billion’s a little bit of stretch and that’s not cut in half. That’s why SPACs are not popular anymore. But last year, another new trend surfaced, which was even a bigger slap in a face to retail investors. Getting to the point here why security tokens are going to be a monster industry.

Frank Curzio: So, the trend that surfaced is direct listings. So, in a direct listing, the company sell shares directly to the public without the help of intermediaries like investment banks. So, no traditional underwriters involved and investors love this because they hate Wall Street and this works for companies that have massive platforms and massive people that use their products. If you have millions and millions of people, you don’t really need, right? That’s what the investment banks bring to the table. To bring all these investors, big investors. But if you have a massive file that loves your company, has been using it for 10 years, you can raise money on your own.

Frank Curzio: And we raise money on our own without institutions. Not direct listing. I mean, if you look at direct listing here, now it’s selling these shares to investors on day one. I mean, you have Coinbase took advantage of this, so do Robinhood. But companies with big client bases again, could do this since they have that massive platform invested, I’ll buy it. So, Coinbase was a pure direct listing, Robinhood was an IPO, but created something called IPO access where they took a percentage of that float, and if you had account at Robinhood, you could buy these shares on day one and you don’t have to be accredited, which is cool.

Frank Curzio: It’s cool for Robinhood to sell non-accredited investors because these are investors who aren’t used to this system, and they’re like, “Holy shit, IPO. I get to buy Robinhood a little bit before everybody else. That’s great. I don’t have to be accredited, right? I’m an insider now.” And there’s no minimum of shares you need to buy. So, you could buy 10 shares, 50 shares, 1,000 shares, 10,000, whatever you want. Sounds great, at first, but wait a minute. Because you do a direct listing instead of an IPO, this allows insiders to have no lockup period. They could sell on day one. And what’s day one, day one is the day that the most excitement takes place and likely the highest point your share price is going to be.

Frank Curzio: Because in the valuations that these things have come out were not… Normally, you see Microsoft, Google, the trillion dollar companies go higher and higher, Nvidia, get it. But the valuations that these companies are coming out at is anticipating massive growth for the next 25 years. That’s how all these valuations are. But these insiders get to sell on day one. So, if you look at Coinbase, Coinbase opened up 250, went to 350 in a few days, it’s now in the 200, lots of insiders cashed out. Robinhood surged to over $80 a share within a few weeks, the excitement wore off. Now, the stock is 12, 13. It can surge to over $80 a share, day one. That’s the day where everybody wants… That’s the liquidity period, all the volume, makes it easy to dump your shares.

Frank Curzio: Now, where I’m going with this. If you could find a way to invest super early in a company and shorten that liquidity period for investors to where they could sell their shares pretty quickly and not locked up for seven years, it creates an enormous market, massive hundreds of billions of dollars. We’ve seen it with direct listings, we’ve seen it with SPACs. However, these vehicles special listings, they were created, excuse my language, to fuck you. That’s what they created for. Make institutions billionaires even more effing rich by taking full advantage of you. And nobody’s looking out for you. Crazy when you know a full story.

Frank Curzio: I bet you didn’t know. I hear so many young investors, “Buy in this SPAC. This SPAC is awesome. This is great.” Yeah, but you don’t even know the fundamentals. The insiders are dumping in your face. And we saw Chamath and Richard Branson go in front of the New York Stock Exchange and tell them, “Space travel’s great.” And the stock was what? At Virgin Galactic was at 10, 12, 15 then it went high 20, 30, 40 kept going higher and higher. These guys like. “This is great.” Well, now they all sold out, made hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves. And now the stock is, what? I think it’s below 10 again.

Frank Curzio: I mean channels are promoting the out of it at 17, 20, 30, you would think you would buy more here. No, he’s not. You shouldn’t buy more. It’s you guy’s money. That’s the point. Now, into security tokens. Security tokens are not just great for the issuer, like us Curzio Research who saved boatloads on fees to raise money to help grow our business. No investment bankers are involved. Legal costs, accounting costs are 10% if you were paying traditional IPOs. I would say around, probably about $300,000, which sounds like a lot but a lot of that takes place after the capital raise.

Frank Curzio: So, you put up the money, you raise capital and some of that is going to be allocated to legal and stuff like that, right? Because you’re growing the company, especially as that lockup period ends and you’re actually going to be publicly traded, where retail investors could buy your security token on…. I have a new security tokens exchange and platforms are popping up in the US, I’ll get to that in a minute, but that’s great. Again, it seems like a lot in cost for a small business, but a lot of income after the capital raise. Because that’s where you… IR department, everything. Right? You have to get everything locked in, talking to the alternative trading platforms where you going to be traded, more lawyer stuff, but much cheaper than going traditional IPO. But it’s also great for who? For you, the retail investor.

Frank Curzio: I mean get equity stake in my company. You’re investing in the ground floor and it’s risky. We’re a small cap, maybe I don’t make it work. Maybe we have a setback. Maybe people stop buying financial newsletters. We’re not able to innovate anymore. Maybe. That’s fine. But at least you’re in at a price where if this thing does work and we turn this into a billion dollar company, you’re probably going to do very well, because it’s going to be reflected in our token, which is a direct equity stake for you. So, early investors can sell their tokens after 12 months.

Frank Curzio: And after that 12 months, any retail investor can purchase our token, which you could do by signing up to tZERO. You have to go to tZERO just like if it’s trading on Gemini only or Coinbase. Some these utility tokens just trade on regular exchanges. But guys that’s how you disrupt markets, not providing something that’s just great for your business, for you. There’s a reason why everybody hates Wall Street, because all they do is fuck people over and over again. Give the analogy. Listen, they’ll take everything from you.

Frank Curzio: You’ll be sitting there naked in the street with a sock and they’ll take that sock off. They’ll leave you dead in the street. That’s Wall Street. There’s no messing around there. The reason why all these billionaires rush to get those SPACs out. “Holy shit. These people are actually buying this garbage. Come on. We can make a fortune off this and sell immediately.” And it worked and it was legal. But if you want disrupt markets, it can’t be just good for you. It’s got to be good for everyone involved. Something that benefits every party involved. It’s why Uber was great, Amazon.

Frank Curzio: Look where that company went, just from selling books to where they are now, providing an amazing experience. Look at Netflix. Providing experience or product that benefits all parties involved at a much cheaper cost to everyone. And that’s why I’m predicting within five years you will see hundreds of thousands of assets tokenized. It’s why you’re seeing lots of new security token platforms come to market right now. It’s why Gemini, which you’re very familiar with, just announced the approval from FINRA to launch their Gemini Galactic markets platform to trade security tokens. It’s why Coinbase in 2018 took over three separate brokerage firms for their licenses, which is going to allow them to trade security tokens.

Frank Curzio: May seem a little weird. Why is Gemini and Coinbase, two massive utility crypto trading platforms, massive volume…. Why are they preparing to launch security token platforms? Because they have to. They know that almost every name trading on that platform right now, these utility companies, 99% of those utility tokens are securities. The SEC knows this. Everybody knows it, fits the perfect definition. And they’re eventually going to regulate these names as securities, which is going to result in thousands of these coming off US-based platforms and going to Binance or other international crypto platforms.

Frank Curzio: So, how are these guys going to make their money? Security tokens. Makes sense. Checks off all the boxes. Though our token is CEO, we’re changing the symbol to C-R-U-Z when it trades, C-U-R-Z, sorry. We need a four letter symbol instead of three. I like CEO a little bit better, but… Actually, I didn’t really want CURZ, C-U-R-Z, but it’s an easy transition where people will be able to find it, especially those investors and stuff so that’s what is right now and is going to be. And it’s going to begin trading next week.

Frank Curzio: So, discussing the exact date once I know I’ll let you know. And the way to trade our token is through tZERO, which has been a really, really awesome partner for us guys, just amazing partner. And they’ve done their due diligence to make sure we have no hiccups launching, worked together for over the past nine months to make this happen back and forth and legal teams talking and everybody, just communication’s been great. Love the process. This wasn’t like, “Let’s rush it out. Let’s rush it out.” No. Let’s make sure. This is something that could be very, very big. Let’s make sure that we’re able to launch this thing and there’s no setbacks. There’s no anything.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know where it’s going to come out. I don’t know what it’s going to do. I’m just saying that, we want to make sure that it’s a fair market for anyone to trade and want to launch it where there’s no bugs or anything. And they’ve been fantastic partners, really exciting times with launching this thing finally. But that’s the difference. This is why I’m so excited about security tokens. And I had my doubts. I had my doubts, 2018, back and forth, back and forth going, “Holy shit.” And then COVID hit. I’m like, “How isn’t this market taking off?”

Frank Curzio: It makes sense. It eliminates a middleman, which is the investment banks who make tons of fees. They do lots of great things investment banks, but they’re making fees by saying, “Hey, you got a really good company. We’re going to introduce you to these people and do a road show for you and make whatever.” That could be as high as 6%, even more depending on if it’s a small cap. I mean, large caps maybe 3% of the float. And they get shares that are dirt cheap. You’ll see them in Golden Funds and Morgan Stanley Funds and things like that. You’re able to eliminate all that BS.

Frank Curzio: And for investors, you get to buy in to equity stake into a company at the very, very, super early stages, which you really can’t do anymore in this market, which is known from SPACs, direct listings. And look how much investors that got fucked through Robinhood, Coinbase, and so many of these SPACs. So many of them that a lot of these investors who created them aren’t even in them anymore. They’re not even in them. But you are. I thought we were sending people that space. How many space ships do you think are going to go?

Frank Curzio: How many people could fit on a spaceship to go to fly around space? How many? Maybe you buy bigger rocket ships or build them and maybe you get 50 people or whatever. How many times are you going to go to make the revenue to support a $25 billion dollar company? Are you kidding me? What is that happening? But it’s insane. People don’t care. They don’t want to look at things. They’re just like, “Whatever.” But here’s what I see with security tokens. I can’t tell you… I’ve been around so many trends over the past 20 years, seeing them develop, studying them. And sometimes I’m investing in things too early.

Frank Curzio: That’s my biggest flaw, is seeing something and go, “Holy shit, this is going to be great.” I invest in a lot of these things early, and sometimes it takes a little while to develop. Then, all of a sudden, doing a podcast with two or three people in the financial industry, 14 years ago doing a podcast, now the whole entire world as a podcast. Launching one of the first ever security tokens, now you see tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people start going on platform forms and alternative trading systems so they could trade security tokens.

Frank Curzio: You’ve seen a ton of these things in the pipeline. It just makes sense. It checks off every single box. It’s just a story that we need to tell better. More exciting NFTs, which continue to soar in terms of excitement. See some of the prices come down on the garbage, but when it comes to investors, and you’re tracking crypto trends, NFTs have never been more popular than they are right now. Extremely popular, launching like crazy, a big part of the metaverse. And it’s more than just selling your art, it’s ownership. People want ownership, equity, security tokens, non-fungible tokens. This is what they want.

Frank Curzio: It’s a great time for individual investors but this checks off every single box. Excited about the industry. Excited over the past nine months, 12 months, the amount of news that is coming out. Go on Google and search security tokens, and you’ll see it for yourself. These are the biggest crypto exchanges. They understand. If you look on their boards, they all have SEC people on there. There’s a reason why they’re all purchasing assets that are going to allow them to trade security tokens. These guys are already inside. They know. They see it coming down the pipeline. Eddie S. Seven said, “These are securities.”

Frank Curzio: And pretty soon they’re going to put into law. And when they do, that’s when these platforms going to go to security tokens. We’re going to have a massive head start on so many businesses. So, really exciting times. I want to thank all of you that helped me get to this place. If you want to be buy it, buy it, there are risks. However, at least if we’re not getting it done, and you’re seeing our financials, you get to sell the thing, which you should have the right to, which early investors should have the right to if they want to. And that’s fine. But it’s better than waiting seven years in a private company, that kind of sucks, right?

Frank Curzio: Where year three and four, you’re changing a business model because you’re not getting any customers. It’s not working anymore. You got everyone who knows you’re on your platform, but you’re having trouble growing outside, introducing your company to people who never heard you before. That’s the hardest part with really scaling, growing a business. And sometimes, it happens through word of mouth or whatever, and sometimes it doesn’t, and then you’re stuck. I mean, imagine having say 100 grand to invest, and you want to put it in 10 companies, and you put it five or six private companies. 60,000 that’s locked up for seven years, could be 10 years, could be three or four, you don’t know.

Frank Curzio: Security tokens at least after one year. And if these things go higher, you could sell out right? Sell half of your position if they double. Now, you could take that and put into other outlets, other things you want to invest in. That’s the point of this. Checks every single box. But really see it get off the ground over the past nine months… Again, my biggest mistake is being early to all these trends at the Consumer Electronics Show and having unbelievable contacts over the last 10, 15 years that help me tremendously to see these trends develop.

Frank Curzio: They all have the same thing in common. If you look at the biggest trends, they’re good for every single party involved and they make business better, faster, cheaper. And that’s what security tokens does compared to every other outlet. But there’s an outlet that’s for retail investors. Just like crypto retail investors. Wall Street late to the party. This is what you want. This is what DeFi is about, Decentralized Finance. This is why everyone’s hopping into crypto because they know, “Holy shit, those massive fees that we charge. Credit card companies, processing, investment banks. Holy shit, they’re onto us.”

Frank Curzio: Just like Robinhood disrupted the entire online banking industry. Now, you don’t have to pay for trading and those fees all because of Robinhood. Make something better, faster, cheaper. That’s how you scale. That’s how these trends get massive. And we’re in the very early stage of security tokens, glad we’ll launch it next week. When I’ve had the final date, I will let everyone know. You can go to our site, curzioresearch.com. Any questions or comments send them to me, frank@curzioresearch.com. Any your new investors have any questions, send me an email.

Frank Curzio: Any current, which we’ve been talking to, tell them how to transfer their shares from MERJ through Computershare, which our transfer agents are now getting on tZERO, where you’re going to be able to trade them on day one. That’s like a four day process altogether. So, if you are a current investor and haven’t signed up a tZERO, do that right away. It’s quick to sign up with tZERO, but link it in and we’re going to help you with that whole step for where your shares Computershare. To get the approval of tZERO, it could take two to three days for all that. Not to open up an account, it takes less than 24 hours to open up account, usually very quickly.

Frank Curzio: But for those of you who have owned the security token already and you had it on the MERJ exchange or whatever, now it’s at Computershare. Reach out to us if you have any questions or comments on how to do that. We’ve been sending emails explaining exactly how to do that. I wanted to make it as easy as possible if you want to trade. And again, there are risks. We’re a company. We’re a small cap. It’s really fun times. And just excited to finally get this thing launched. So guys, that’s it from me. Really appreciate all the support. I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Take care.

Announcer: 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.