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: What’s going out there? It’s October 28th. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. It’s a great podcast for you today, which sponsored by Masterworks, who’s bringing tokenization to the 1.7 trillion dollar art industry. As always, it’s interview day. We have a great one set up for you, and it’s with Kyle Sonlin. He’s a CEO of Security Token Market. You heard me talk about security tokens like crazy. We have our own security token. Now, this market’s really starting to take off. The Security Token Market is one of the largest content and data providers in security token industry, you can find all real time data on their site on every single security tokens, currently trading, including the price it’s trading at, volume platform. Again, they got all these data feeds hooked up to it really, really awesome site. He’s one of the smartest people in the industry. He’s been a partner for a long, long time finger on the pulse, one of the most trusted contacts. So, Kyle Sonlin, thanks so much for joining us on Wall Street Unplugged.

Kyle Sonlin: Thanks so much, Frank. So good to be back. Always a pleasure to talk to you.

Frank Curzio: So, what’s going on, man? You’re the guy I go to get all the inside, scoop the information, everything that’s going on in the security token industry. When we were talking, probably a year ago, our conversations were probably five to 10 minutes, and I think now they can go hours with everything going on the industry. Why don’t you talk a little bit, someone that you’re an early adopter, same as me, to the point while I was nervous if maybe this wasn’t going to work out. Now, we’re seeing really a boom in this industry. What’s changed? Why are more businesses coming in? I mean, is it the regulatory front? It seemed like it opened up a little bit more. Even the trading platforms where money is being raised across the board, what has opened up in the past eight months that everyone’s looking at this going, wow, this is unbelievable is an amazing opportunity for tokenization.

Kyle Sonlin: I think you’re totally correct that it’s some evolutions on multiple fronts. So first off, when we’re talking about regulation, which is a core piece of the security token industry, right? When we’re talking about a security token, we’re really dealing with financial assets. Real securities, they follow all of the same securities laws that are set forth by the SCC or by international legislators around the world.

Kyle Sonlin: When we’re talking about a security token, there is this core component of compliance that needs to be established. What we’ve seen over the last nine to 12 months, and even maybe quicker than that over the last six, is that regulators are getting much more comfortable in approving the licensure that’s required, especially on a secondary market perspective. So, when we rewind to about December of last year, we saw a really groundbreaking piece of exemption come out from the regulators here in the US that said that broker dealers had much more exemptions around crypto securities. They used some specific language that I don’t want to cite directly, but it essentially gave a lot more flexibility for brokers to be able to handle securities that were tokenized.

Kyle Sonlin: This kind of opened the flood gates into what we saw, which were multiple additional ATS licenses, which is the Alternative Trading System, essentially the platform that allows for a marketplace to exist like a tZERO or like others, but were granted maybe six or closer to 10 now as we move into the end of, of the year here that have now been approved here in the US to, to list and trade digital securities on a secondary market. That was certainly a really cool or piece was that one of the core issues, Frank, you and I talked about for a while was that there were some potential blockages in the approval process. It wasn’t necessarily that there were nos. It was just that we were kind of in this traffic jam where no one knew whether they could move forward or couldn’t.

Kyle Sonlin: Some of that has changed also even from an issue or perspective when it comes to regulation. I’m sure you’ve talked about it before on your show, but the Reg A plus exemption. The opportunity where you could raise up to 75 million from retail investors in a security, in equity in your company. We had never before seen a security token actually be approved for this process and now we have. Now, Exodus was not only the first security token, which they were selling equity in their company to be approved for a Reg A plus, but they were the first Reg A plus to raise the full 75 million, which was an increased cap that was put in by the SCC recently. So, we’ve seen a lot of regulatory development, but then, I think, also, you’ve seen changes from, from the actual industry as they’ve grown and matured.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And talk a little bit more about that Reg A because now, it opens up the door for retail investors, right? Where if you’re looking at the IPO market, if you’re looking at the SPAC market where these companies come out, they come out, multi-billion dollar valuations. I feel like in crypto security tokens, you’re getting in closer to ground floor, not on the ground floor, but closer to ground floor. Early on in these growth stages before they’re like multi-billion dollar companies where the insiders are dying to sell you through these IPO to some retail investors. Now, it’s the opportunity where any investor could get into these things. You’re talking about trading on the platforms as well makes it easier. I think you said 15 are available. Is that right?

Kyle Sonlin: Fifteen exchanges marketplaces around the world. Yep, yep.

Frank Curzio: I had no idea it was that. I know it’s, what was it? Kazakhstan, Dubai, Germany have all opened up but what about here in the US? What do you see? What has you excited in terms of platforms? I know tZERO, we’re going to go on in December. We made that announcement already. We’re really excited. We love the guys that MERJ but that’s an international platform we want, our US-based company wants to be trading the US. I like what tZERO is doing still very early. I think you’re going to see a ton on more volume to more liquidity on these exchanges. More issues are coming to the market, but this is a necessary step for us.

Frank Curzio: You’ll see Securitize as well, open up just recently, they were going to open up a, a platform just for a credit investors, and then add a way they saw the approvals and said, “Hey, let’s do this where we have a retail platform,” which they just opened up whatever a month or two ago. What are some of the others? Anything that has you excited out there? I didn’t know is that many, and I don’t know if… You know the ones in the US, there’s a couple had me excited. I was curious what had you excited though?

Kyle Sonlin: So, what really excites me in the US especially is this opportunity about crowdfunding. So, with the regulation CF, as well as Reg A plus, these are the two exemptions here in the United States where retail investors can get access into some of these early stage deals. So, over 3000 companies to date have actually taken advantage of crowdfunding to order to fundraise for their business. I think that the primary offering itself is fundamentally broken because I think most retail investors prefer to have that secondary market liquidity. It’s something that hasn’t been afforded to them on the traditional crowdfunding platforms because that’s almost a whole separate business model. With tokenization, we’ve really begun to pioneer this idea of secondary market liquidity for these underlying assets, for real world assets. What excites me is that you’ve got companies like Republic that just raised 150 million in order to, amongst other things, explore and potentially build out a secondary market for the shares that they’re creating.

Kyle Sonlin: We know that they explore tokenization because they did a security token sale of their own. They raised almost 20 million through the Republican note, which was a basket of a bunch of equities that they owned. They’re doing it for others as well, working in the crypto space, as well as in the security token space to provide tokenization services.

Kyle Sonlin: So, I think that really with the crowd funding, it opens this whole opportunity. As you mentioned, Frank, where no longer do investors and users of these businesses or of these products, they no longer have to wait until IPO to get access and to invest and exposure into the products that they use on a daily basis. For the first time ever, investors are going to be able to build secondary markets around the assets and the platforms that they use and then be able to buy, sell, and trade those things.

Kyle Sonlin: I think that’s a fascinating development and one that we’re seeing accelerating very, very quickly now that crowdfund portals are getting involved. You have brokers on the other side that are traditional, as you mentioned, Securitize and others that are working on Reg CF and Reg A plus deals. Again, now that we saw Exodus actually successfully pioneer this, as well as, as tZERO’s going to be bringing XY Labs, which did a Reg A plus to over 24,000 investors if I remember that number correctly. That’s 24,000 investors in a crowd fund from 2018 that had no opportunity for liquidity or the other investors that may want to have to have participated that weren’t able to. This kind of idea of crowdfunding and providing the secondary market, I think is going to blow up crowdfunding industry street as a whole, which is fascinating to see.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And just to bring everyone in here, right? So, we’re talking about retail investors, you experienced investors know this, but when you’re investing in these types of companies, it’s all about the liquidity period. Usually, if you invest in a private company, the average liquidity period, which is an IPO, or maybe you get acquired it seven to 10 years. So, your sitting in this company through, maybe they do great at the beginning. They raise a lot of money and maybe their thesis goes to crap. You can’t do anything right. You’re sitting there. So, it’s kind of like worthless, not worthless, but almost worthless to you.

Frank Curzio: So, the fact that you could have a Reg A and go immediately trading where there’s a secondary market, that’s why you’re seeing a lot of hedge funds… You’re seeing a lot of venture funds jump in here, Andreessen Horowitz is in here. You talk about Pantera Capital investing a lot in these names. The question, the answer the question I’m going to ask you, and I want this answer because it’s difficult for even me to see, but when do you see this industry scaling? Where it’s massive where you’re looking at a crack in you could trade all these utility tokens. Is it going to be the of utility tokens, which you know as well as I do are basically all securities outside, maybe the top five or six, right. They’re securities. Right?

Frank Curzio: So, when the securities are going to have to have reporting measures, and you could tell all those guys are going to run to the exits, is that going to open up the door? Do we need more on the compliance front? Like you said, that the Republic raising a hundred that, news of 150 million, and they are looking to build an exchange, training platform exchange and has them excited, but what needs to happen for this to scale? We’re seeing it now. It’s a lot of fun it’s opening up, but how does it get from… It was like this, then like, how do we get it like this?

Kyle Sonlin: I mean, look I don’t think you need to look any further than other scrutinized technologies, and why look past crypto? I think that what caused crypto to drive mainstream adoption was very simple. Investors really thrived. They made a ton of money. There was a lot of success in it. And whether or not you feel like their securities are not that wealth transfer is what drives adoption. You look at NFTs today. Why are anybody involved in NFTs? Because the market has skyrocketed and those use cases and those shooting stars are the ones that really drive the adoption. It drives hype, it drives buzz, people get excited. I think that in order to reach full scale, pure token space, we have the infrastructure that’s required. And now it’s, it’s on the onus of the industry as well as other issuers to come to market and offer this to their investors.

Kyle Sonlin: I think that if you see if, for example, Coinbase, a company like Coinbase. If they would’ve done a security token offering from the early stages and then taken it to a multi-billion dollar company, and net their traditional retail investors, their early users and investors, that same return venture is traditionally expecting of. I think that’s where you’re going to see a lot of people getting excited. That’s where you’re going to see people that want to invest in either early stage companies or in exotic assets they never had exposure to. In terms of international investors, having them be being able to get involved in US based assets that pay out US based dollars and dividends and things like that is another interesting opportunity. I really think that until there are a few great use cases that do end up really succeeding, that’s what’s going to drive mainstream adoption because I think at the end of the day, that’s what makes the headlines and that’s what drives the volumes.

Frank Curzio: No, it definitely makes sense. Definitely makes sense. So, let’s go over some of the things that you do for this marketplace in terms of data, in terms of content and go into Security Token Market and tell us exactly what you do. And I’ll show the website, because right here at securitytokenmarket.com or it’s STOmarket.com. You could see a lot of the ones that are trading, you’ll see Overstock IX Limited. I mean even what is it FTX and Bitrex are now trading some of these things, which I think you have on some of these exchanges. You have Exodus, you’ve seen a lot of these things start coming out and everything, but why don’t you tell everyone, what you guys do in here and because we love working with you.

Kyle Sonlin: Sure. Yeah. So security Token Market is really a twofold business that the first piece that you’re looking at here is data. We track data from exchanges and marketplaces all around the world, collecting and aggregating all that information around the trading information, as well as the qualitative data of what the underlying asset is. We take open information, and we’re currently in the process right now of building out a more robust trading platform, where you’re going to be able to do research analysis, look at charting tools, look at a lot of these advanced stock screeners and really be able to dive deeper into the quantitative information around these deals. Think of it as one of those trading platform, terminal kind of style thing. Obviously, we don’t have any of those broker dealer or exchange license, so you cannot exchange or trade any assets through our site, but you can come through and see all of the information around these deals.

Kyle Sonlin: From there, we take that information and create research reports, analysis, and media around it, which is really driving the industry adoption because we felt that there really wasn’t enough people that were preaching the gospel of security tokens. That were helping people understand what blockchain and tokenization can provide to a traditional market, how it changes anything. We found that a lot of the industry was pretty esoteric in terms of wasn’t super friendly for the average person that wanted to get involved. We focus on bringing the highest quality data from sources all around the world and then making sure that anyone can understand that and make better conclusions and decisions around that information.

Frank Curzio: Okay. Now, I’ve got to ask you this question because when I break the website and the top line here, and I know you can’t really talk too much about it, but it says breaking news we tokenizing on ourselves. 380 people have reserved this spot to invest click here. That’s on your website. Not too sure if you could talk about that yet or not, but sounds like pretty exciting news.

Kyle Sonlin: Yeah. We’re really excited. We felt like one of the best ways that we could help drive industry adoption was to help prove the concept along other innovative issuers like yourself, Frank. What we’ve decided to do is we’re currently in a testing, the waters campaign for are an equity crowd fund. That’s going to allow anyone to be able to invest alongside each other and, and participate in this industry with us, by investing in our business. There’s a link there on the website, and we’re excited because we’re really trying to pioneer this tokenization concept, right? We think that crowdfunding as an industry is exciting, but it’s missing this piece about liquidity. It’s missing this piece about blockchain, it’s missing this piece about tokenization. We’re very, very excited to be able to help drive adoption of the industry through this tokenization component and really help prove how capital markets, how specifically crowdfunding can be improved with this blockchain technology.

Kyle Sonlin: We figured that there was no better team than the one that, that we’ve assembled here, who’s been teaching the best practices through our sister consulting company. Who’s been covering this industry for years. Who’s been really, really deep in the weeds. We wanted to do our best to help lead by example by following all of the necessary requirements by crossing every T, doting every I. Really trying to show that this is possible, and it’s an opportunity that other small businesses can take advantage of. And so, we’re very proud and excited to do that and happy to represent Miami, as we’re based here in South Florida. We see this as the crypto capital of the world, and we want to help show other businesses how they can take advantage of the international opportunity as well as the future of tech and capital markets.

Frank Curzio: How is it in Miami right now? Is it, do you feel that crypto presence? Are you meeting lots more companies? Everyone says the crypto hub we’ve had, that the Bitcoin conference with, was massive. Attendance was massive. How is that there in terms of the companies that you’re meeting… Are you seeing more and more companies move to Miami? I mean it’s favorable. I know the governor favors it as well, and he’s putting regulations in place to, to build that, to make that the hub. Are you seeing it? You see more companies move there?

Kyle Sonlin: Absolutely. You’re seeing more companies move there but the biggest thing, especially in working in the tech scene is that you need developers. You need that tech talent and that was something that Miami, I think really has put a big focus on over the last 12 to 18 months is driving more tech focused businesses. Driving more developers and industry experts to the city the year into the local ecosystem, which will allow more of those businesses to turbocharge their operations. I mean it’s… It’s absolutely kicking off. I’ve seen, I think just this week, there are two or three different local Miami companies that have just completed monster rounds, which is very exciting, especially when you consider that they’re all, most of them are in this blockchain crypto space. You’re getting a lot of NFT action, you’re getting a lot of blockchain-based development action.

Kyle Sonlin: A lot of funds are getting involved here as well, especially, and including Algoran, has been very active and SoftBank has been very active. It’s been exciting to see that both the investors are here as well as the founders are trying to drive that vision. You even look at Miami Hack Week, which was an undeniable success just a few months ago, driving that tech talent, creating this opportunity for more of these local developers and more local Miami talent to have an opportunity to participate as well.

Frank Curzio: Yeah and it’s important I think for people to realize this, that from someone who has a Wall Street background… I’ve been doing this for close to three decades. Being able to raise money through our platform without going through all the BS with investment banks and things like that. You look at, when we talk about tokenization, what you hear about real estate market, it’s a liquid you could about bonds, debt instruments. You could also hear… We interviewed Scott Lynn from masterworks, right? Who’s tokenizing the 1.7 trillion dollar art industry, which is fantastic to sign up their secondary market. It’s amazing. If you are a small company right now, and you have a brilliant idea and you have a business plan, this is absolutely the way to go. So, it’s instead of going how do you raise money? How do you have that business plan?

Frank Curzio: Again, you form that business plan and you say, “Hey. Here’s a good idea.” It’s not that difficult to raise money in this space, especially considering the people that you’re going to raise money from, you could tell them that if you’re doing a right guy, you’re going to be trading immediately. So, you could sell out your position, you’re probably going to get in a discount. You’re going to sell out your position if you want to, or you could stay long term, but at least you get to track. Like for my company, Curzio Research, it’s publicly traded where, hey, if I don’t do my job, you could sell it yet. If I’m a private company, I don’t do my job you’re stuck, right? Having that option’s incredible, and if you come up with that idea, there’s people that are willing to give you money right now.

Frank Curzio: It’s not that difficult to raise money, there’s a lot of money out there as you could see, but there’s an incredible opportunity, I think for small business of retail investors, which we’re not seeing, right? I mean, Yahoo was, it was news from Yahoo, but it was Robinhood. So, Robinhood came out, and they have crypto trading platform, but they did it the Wall Street way, and they dumped their shares and stuff like that. Even with Coinbase, I wish Coinbase did it through crypto instead of the Wall Street way. But hopefully, it was even, even larger companies turn to security, token tokenization. I think we’re kind of seeing that right now, especially in the real estate front. I don’t know if you’re seeing that a lot more big deals come through, which you probably know a lot that are currently in a pipeline.

Kyle Sonlin: Yeah. We just watched Nolan Reynolds, which is a local Coral Gables, or I guess they tokenized a coral Gables property. Nolan Reynolds is a huge real estate firm based here in the US. They were able to successfully crowdfund through Crowd Street. They raised 35 million for a mixed use property in Coral Gables that they’re actually planning to tokenize in the future, which is exciting. We’re seeing a lot of opportunities there, and just to go back to your point, Frank, I mean, never before has a small business for, has really any business been able to connect with their core customers in a way that a security token can provide. There’s a couple examples maybe.

Kyle Sonlin: You look at Oculus, right, this is a company that was driving a product that their shareholders loved, or their customers loved. They raised a GoFundMe campaign or a Kickstarter campaign, excuse me, but that was just pre-sold revenue. Those presale customers that wanted to support the long term vision were not given any equity. So, when Facebook acquired Oculus, those early backers got nothing, which is something that is really flawed. Those customers would have wanted to support would’ve wanted that opportunity to get exposure into the business. Or even from the other side, and look at a company like AMC, which is a publicly traded company, certainly an incredibly large business, a movie theater chain. They wanted to give every shareholder free popcorn. That was one of their goals and yet they couldn’t, they actually could not do it because they don’t know who their shareholders are. They actually make you register on their site and go and proactively tell them you’re a shareholder and link that to them because they have no idea. Since those things are held under street name in brokerage accounts.

Kyle Sonlin: Even Robinhood was trying to give early exposure to their users, and we’re having difficulties doing that. So, there’s a lot of weird structural things in the traditional markets that security tokens help solve in terms of building a relationship with your customers as shareholders, as opposed to bifurcating your customer and the investor. I don’t think is a sustainable strategy long-term, especially for smaller companies that building that closer relationship with the customers you have is a groundbreaking and totally really innovative opportunity to build healthier capital markets, and that’s something that I’m just incredibly passionate about.

Frank Curzio: No, it definitely makes sense, and I want to go into one or two more questions here, where I go to your website, go to the about page. You have a lot of numbers on that. We take pride on numbers, 170 plus tokens tracked, 30,000 visitor a month. Again, people can see us to do YouTube, if you’re listening to our podcast, or iTunes. You can’t see so I’m going over these numbers. 10 million plus data request, 200 plus countries and territories, and 1,200 hours of content. How much of these figures change from say nine months ago? I’m curious.

Kyle Sonlin: It’s been groundbreaking. I think we’ve been growing at a 15 to 20% month-over-month clip for most of our metrics from views and from users and from page views. It’s anywhere from 10 to 20% based off the month. I think that we broke a thousand users, maybe 18 months ago, something like that. And now, we’re looking at, at nearly 30 a month. The industry has absolutely taken off but the fascinating thing for us is that it’s a global movement. We see the US is our largest individual majority of user base, but it only represents about 25 to 30% based on the month. Most of our traffic comes internationally from Europe, from Asia, from Latin America, from, from all different countries around the world. That’s something that’s incredibly exciting because this is building a global financial system.

Kyle Sonlin: We have seen that this is skyrocketing tremendously because of the interest and the opportunity now that, as you mentioned, the rails are here the opportunities are available. The companies have built out their processes, funds have been raised and deployed and infrastructure has been built. Now, we’re in a very different stage where the next 12 months is all about that onboarding of new issuers of scaling platforms, of really, we’ve proven use cases. We’ve figured out some of these difficult kinks in the process. And now, we can really begin to optimize that and scale that with each new issuer. I mean, you look at tZERO alone, which has consistently been a leader industry, and it took them two or three years to launch and get these things live, and they had two or three tokens. Just in the past two to three months, they’ve announced five or six that they’re going to be bringing onto the market as soon as possible. You’re looking at potentially OTC markets traded, publicly traded, companies that are exploring tokenization, as opposed as to staying on the traditional infrastructure.

Kyle Sonlin: There’s just so many different use cases. You’ve got real estate, you’ve got crowdfunding, as you mentioned, you’ve got OTC, you’ve got all different types of exotic assets, debt markets that are taking off. All the different industries now are really exploring this, I think, in a way that they weren’t looking at it 12 months ago. 12 months ago, it was still kind of a, “Oh, that sounds nice in the future.” Whereas now, I think that it’s right, ” All right, let’s actually consider if this would be more cost effective, this would be more efficient in how this might actually look for our business.” That’s something that is very exciting to see because we’ve been, we’ve been in the trenches for a couple years, you and me.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I know, and that’s what I was going to say, guys. If you’re interested in doing something, this, you want more information, Kyle myself, I’ve been through this whole entire process to… And it wasn’t easy, right? I mean, it wasn’t easy. It’s ups and downs. Everybody’s like updating their technology. There’s new technology, there’s different platforms and just going through that rollercoaster, we can help a lot of people. You can help a lot of people, but the more that get on, the more people go to your site, the more people that we’re hearing from, it’s better for the market. It’s better for everyone in general. I mean, it’s that small way, everybody benefits. But you’ll see when you look to raise money, guys, if you’re looking to raise money for an idea, when you go to a venture capitalist, they’re going to want to take everything.

Frank Curzio: They want a board seat. They’re going to want special warrant and options and all this crap that they’re going to get in, they’re going to dilute the hell out of you. Just doing it your way and, and give you that kind of control is really fantastic. It allows you to really focus on the business and grow the business without worrying about partners. I got to be honest with you, you know this as well. Those guys are not interested in the long-term viability of your business. They want to make money immediately short-term, get out and that’s what they do. So, you want to focus on a long-term. Yeah, more control of your business. It’s really, really cool again. So, once they get in touch with you, learn more about this, how could they do that?

Kyle Sonlin: So they can, they certainly need to go to stomarket.com and check out all of our opportunities that we have, our blog link there, where we have a whole host of team members that create great content on the industry. This is ranging from detailed reports on arbitrage and on the markets, as well as cool use, like The Tokenize, this series from Peter Gaffney. Or you have Token Boy Journals and many other also great content to learn about the industry and figure out more about what’s going on. This would be the best spot to get more information, depending on whether you like research, whether you like more qualitative stuff, talk… We have everything covered there. That’s the best spot that you’re going to go to get more information.

Kyle Sonlin: You can also follow us on Twitter. We’re incredibly active on social media’s STO market is the handle there. I can be found pretty much anywhere as well, Kyle Sonlin, you can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or reach out anywhere you’d like. You can really find us anywhere. If you search security tokens, you’re probably going to find Security, Token Markets somewhere in there, and we’re not that hard to find from there.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, well, Kyle, listen, thanks for stopping by. We’ve been doing this for a long time together, just to see this thing develop right now. It’s a lot of fun. I love checking in with you. We always talk and just go over, hey, what we’re seeing the industry, what you’re seeing, what I’m seeing a lot of it’s really, really for positive, and it’s a lot of fun right now. I just appreciate knowing you getting a meeting you in person, going down to Miami and going through this whole thing, where the ups and downs and seeing where we are now, it’s pretty cool, right? It creates like a bond. It brings you closer.

Frank Curzio: It’s not like, hey, we did this. We made money, right? No, you go through the ups and downs. You get the crap kicked out of you sometimes, but that builds character. It builds that rapport of enstrengthed relationships. And I’m glad I got to meet you guys, you and Herwig, who’s amazing. I’m always interviewing you, but… And the last thing here too, you guys kind of do a podcast. Is it a podcast or just like a video thing? What are you guys doing on YouTube?

Kyle Sonlin: Yeah, we have the Security Token Show. It started as a podcast with just my business partner, Herwig, and I. And now, it’s expanded to a many members of the team. I think the quality has only skyrocketed since bringing everyone else on. We’ve got six different hosts now, I think, and it’s all on video, the Security Token Show. You can find it on YouTube. And we put a lot of effort into bringing the biggest pieces of the content from the industry each week. It’s definitely one you can’t miss. So, I appreciate you giving me the time, Frank, it’s been… It’s been a pleasure and honor to know you and work with you over the last couple of years. I think that our relationship is one that will only continue to develop in the next couple of years. So, I look forward to that as well.

Frank Curzio: Definitely agree. Thanks so much for coming on. And yeah, I’ll touch with you soon. Take care, buddy.

Kyle Sonlin: Thanks, Frank.

Frank Curzio: Okay. Great stuff from Kyle. So, Kyle and his partner, Herwig, are really good people. They’re all in on the Security Tokens. I love the passion behind these guys. I’ve been doing this for a long time together. As you mentioned, known each other for over three years, I was fortunate to meet them in person drove down there to hang out with them. We experienced a lot of ups and downs together watching this industry develop. We mentioned at the end of the podcast, but it really is true. The frustrations… And this is going to happen, and to see where we are right now, how much traction it’s gaining, it’s exciting. It’s still long ways away from, from getting full, adopted, full adoption. But all the steps are there, and we’re seeing it grow. Just a great contact, good friends, someone that… Curzio Research, Curzio Equity Owners. Going to see a lot of business, those guys in the future.

Frank Curzio: I meant what I said when I says, if you’re a company out there, and I know a lot of you guys have your own company and stuff like that, and good ideas and expanding, and maybe a restaurant two to three stores, you have great food. Maybe you want to expand even more, looking to raise money. If you look at do that, look at the Security Token industry and email me frank@curzioresearch.com. I’ll help you. I’m not going to require anything. I’m not going to ask for money or whatever. Nothing. We have lots of companies coming to me, we’ve been through this process. I know how to structure these things to make them the most appealing, to make sure that it’s not just about you, that it’s about your investors, which is what it’s really supposed to be about. You are going to be the largest investor in your company.

Frank Curzio: So, if you’re doing good by them, you’re going to be doing good by you. A lot of people just seem like, “Hey, it’s a lot me, me, me, me,” and not about… The end result is making this experience great for the customer, so they can make a lot of money and invest in companies at the very early stages. I’ll go over everything in terms… I structure the compliance legal, I mean, Reg A is retail investors certified. You talked about Reg D is a year lock up period. That’s accredited investors. Reg S is international. So, all this, all the compliance, all the lawyers, very difficult to find lawyers that understand crypto and accountants too, that understand crypto and the capital markets. That’s one of the biggest problems. We had the people that had real experts in both, it’s almost like trying to get someone who’s a fantastic writer in the finance industry.

Frank Curzio: I mean, even when you go into school, you’re usually not go great at both English and math. Right? So, being a great writer and being good with numbers just doesn’t go together. Believe me, in this industry, you don’t see that a lot, so when you do, it’s cool. Having all that experience and having the right people to talk to, if you haven’t and need help, guys, reach out frank@curizoresearch.com. Again, I’ll help you out and believe in this industry, obviously. You see what I’ve done for my company. It’s really exciting, and not only that, the companies that are coming to us, it’s going to give you an opportunity to gain access to these new ideas. A lot of these security token offerings you can get in before they actually start trading and you can get in a discount. So, we offer the discounts to our early investors, which is around 20% on average.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it’s great. Having that kind of access, it’s almost like giving access to the private markets or secondary trade offerings, where they offer warrants and stuff like that. This is what you’re going to get. Even through Curzio… The Crypto Intelligence subscribers and through that newsletter. So, if you’re Curzio One, which you own all our products, you’ll get that to, but that’s, what’s going to open up that access. That’s why I’m excited about that product. We have a special order for the product, you guys know. You’ve probably seen emails and stuff like that. We are doing very, very well. A lot of new people are signing up, which is great average position. That portfolio is up over 600%. That’s not a joke. I show my full portfolio, winners and losers to show you that performance, and it’s cool.

Frank Curzio: It’s just, it’s a good video. Good, really good presentation. So, subscribe, definitely take a look. It’s at curzioresearch.com, and the offer is 40% off the retail price, and I’m also giving you a year for free. Usually, we’ll do like one or the other. We’ll do them both this time because I really want you guys in for two years, you could see we’re 65,000. We go 58,000. Maybe we go lower, but getting in and out of some of these things, you’ll see a couple of things in a portfolio that are going to be moving and how we add to these things. You got to be willing to accept the, the huge volatility. But overall, where you see the direction of crypto, you see direction of Bitcoin, how many more people even now FDSE came out and said, “Banks are look you ways to, to hold Bitcoin.”

Frank Curzio: It’s here. It’s going to get bigger. It’s limited supply. That’s the inflation hedge. That’s the anti-Wall Street play; it’s here. Bitcoin goes higher. You’re going to see a lot of other names go higher in this space, and especially through the three trends that I mentioned to you, which are DeFi, NFTs, security tokens, and also Metaverse. Everyone’s talking about the Metaverse like crazy, Facebook, that comes through crypto guys. That comes through crypto. That’s why you’re going to see the biggest innovation within that industry. And that’s why Facebook is teaming up with, to launch their own crypto. Again, it was the Libra thing that got thrown away and everyone went crazy about. But again, this is what they’re doing. This is their goal. This is their next growth market, which Daniel and I talked about yesterday. It’s really, really exciting. So, cool stuff.

Frank Curzio: If you want to learn more about that, even if you don’t subscribe, it’s perfectly fine, guys. just take a look at it. You’ll learn a lot about the crypto industry, why I’m so excited. But I also give away a free pick for you to watch that too. It’s a good pick, it’s a good crypto pick, very, very good name. It’s not like some bullshit name and I’m like, “Hey, okay. The name of the pick is Ethereum, right?” So, you’ll hate my guts, and especially won’t subscribe to any of our products. It’s not that it’s a really good name that you probably heard of that I’m excited about, and it’s currently in our portfolio.

Frank Curzio: So guys, last thing here, just be sure to visit Masterworks, who is our sponsor. These guys are great. I talked to Scott Lynn, can’t wait to go see his studio artwork and everything. Just tokenizing art, right? 1.7 trillion industry. When you know, again, another industry we could just go in there, buy a piece of an amazing art piece, right? Works from some of greatest artists out there where that market was only open to the rich elite. Now, it’s open to anyone, and then you could have that small little part that you own of that asset, which you’re owning an asset, right? You want to own assets in this market. People who own assets are doing fantastic and the people who loan getting crushed, and it’s sad. We’re seeing that big division, but that’s what the Fed is doing. We’re low interest rates, constant bond buying all assets are going to continue to inflate. It’s going to be a by the dip mentality, which we’ve seen for the last seven years, eight years, every single time everybody gets nervous, and what happens? The market seems always bounced back up two new highs.

Frank Curzio: Rates are historically low and going to stay there, and the Fed’s just pedal to the metal, throwing more money at this market. It’s going to continue to inflate assets. Art is one of the best performing asset classes over the last 20 years, even now performing S&P 500. So, to see what Scott’s doing with Masterworks is amazing. The fact that he provide us a special link for you to go on, where you can bypass like that request process, which you got to go there and request access, and then back and forth and stuff like that. But he said, “Hey, your guys can get right on, get right on a platform immediately to sign up.” To do that, go to www.masterworks.io/wsu to open an account. I opened an account. It’s very easy. I’m going to be trading a lot of our on that site because they have a really real lot of good stuff on there, seriously, never a secondary market you could trade.

Frank Curzio: Yes, they a sponsor. Yes, I’m talking about them now, but you know, I’m only going to have companies on here and that you who offer to sponsoring them, or they’re sponsoring us, is sites that we use, companies I respect, CEOs I respect. Again, this is a site that user really likes, definitely go check out masterworks.com.

Frank Curzio: That’s it for me. Questions, comments, I’m always here for you, frank@cruzioresearch.com. Love you guys. I’ve been busy getting that token on tZERO. It’s a lot of fun, business is doing good, selling a lot of crypto newsletters, hiring more people. It’s pretty crazy right now, and I love crazy. I love it. So, I just want to say, none of this happens without your support, right? You guys listen to the podcasts, this what started it all. That’s why I put so much effort into it and try to even provide you ideas outside of the newsletters sometimes. So, I just want to say thanks for all the support, guys. I love it. And I’ll see you guys next week. Take care.

Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media company in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.