Mm.
The earliest days of crypto involved believers with the highest conviction in digital money.
These early Bitcoin investors heard about a new tech and perhaps read Satoshi's white paper, and they held strong even as the mainstream media trapped by largely ignored, a token they did not understand.
Part of crypto's rise to the mainstream has been thanks to VC investments.
In 2025, activity in crypto has become more selective.
Strategy.
And also focused on foundational blockchain technologies and real world applications rather than speculative assets.
Well joining me this morning to weigh in is Elliot Hahn, CIO at C1 Fund.
Well, Elliot, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for thanks for having me.
Good to see you again.
Well, when we're talking about digital asset companies, we've seen quite an evolution here.
So tell me where we are right now.
Yeah, so I think we, what we're seeing right now is that a lot of these companies.
Mature to the point where we've seen real businesses with real revenue that's actually recurring as well as having real global customers around the world.
I don't think we saw that maybe anywhere from maybe 5 years ago.
I think we're in the beginning stages.
We're not at full maturity yet, but I think we have a lot of great momentum going on right now in this space.
Yeah, and we're counting down the month until the end of 2025 and when we think about the first launch of the Spot Bitcoin, that was the beginning of 2024.
Talking about investment structures, give us an idea of what we're looking at right now.
Yeah, so I mean, you obviously have the ETFs, they are out there that that give public investors access, but most of them focus overwhelmingly on Bitcoin and old coins.
You don't have many that focus on the public companies that are.
In the digital asset space and that's where we here at C1 are trying to do is provide that access for these public investors in these private late stage digital asset companies that, you know, hopefully will come to market soon or maybe have a strategic exit but it gives investors an opportunity to take part in potentially venture style upside.
Yeah, Elliott, you mentioned some keywords there and that is access and opportunities.
So for people who want to get a better understanding of the business models of some of these digital asset companies before they go public, how do they go about actually doing that?
Yeah, so a lot of it, you know, is going to have to be their own diligence, but I think the issue.
And the hurdle that a lot of people face is that from a retail as well as an institutional perspective, there's, it's one of several things and sometimes it's all of it, it's it's the lack of network, it's the lack of bandwidth to actually do the work, the diligence and quite frankly, a lot of it comes down to knowledge, lack of knowledge.
This isn't a space that is as easily understood as something.
The other sectors that are out there on the public markets, it's, you know, some aspects of quite esoteric.
There's a lot of nuances involved, so I think that's where funds like us and other funds that are dedicated for the digital asset base could do that heavy lifting so that way we can provide that access as a proxy for these public company public investors.
Yeah, and Elliott, we're here at the New York Stock Exchange and what we're looking at say equities, we are looking at sectors and because of the public information that is available, it's easy to identify what's happening with these companies in terms of market capital leadership.
But when it comes to some of these digital asset companies, how do you take The leaders and what do you define as leadership?
Yeah, so that's actually a great question because I think what we're seeing is that it seems like a very crowded field and I think a lot of that has been driven by the I guess resurgence in the digital asset space plus I think we can't deny that the fact that there's a lot of regulatory tailwinds as well, so it's made the field pretty crowded with every which way a digital asset company shown up for us, we're looking at, we look at as an initial threshold I guess scale.
The second is governance and I think the third is really quite important is just revenue durability and I think what that helps us do is narrow that funnel of companies very quickly and what you end up finding is that you find companies as I mentioned before, that that are real businesses with real revenue that's recurring and as well as having real clients that are not just domestic but also international.
Yeah, and speaking of which, you speak with many stakeholders, so you have a lot of insight into what types of digital asset businesses are actually attracting institutional interest.
So tell us what's going on.
Yeah, so I think a lot of the focus is on late stage companies.
One, it's really the picks and shovels of the ecosystem.
We're not talking tokens here, we're talking the infrastructure, say.
Custody platforms, trading venues, compliance and analytics companies and and also payments.
Those are the real companies that are attracting a lot of investor attention right now because you're actually still seeing real world application for it.
And finally, Elliot, while I have you here, tell us who is driving demand for exposure in the space right now.
Yeah, I would say it's two primary constituents.
One is retail and one is institutional, but they they they're basically their demand is being driven for different reasons.
I think for retail, they're looking for that venture style upside with a lot of the accreditation hurdles that most of the, well, quite frankly.
The vast majority of main street retail have to face and I think for institutions it goes back to what I was saying they they want exposure, but I think a lot of them lack the network, and the knowledge in order to diligence these deals properly.
So to the to the extent that they can use someone like a C1 to do that on their behalf as a proxy, I think that that's been very attractive to them.
OK, Elliott, well, great having you on the show today.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you.
