The State of Crypto: Adoption, Use Cases, and the Future of Blockchain

Welcome back.

I'm Vince Molinari, and I'm joined by a dear friend John D'Agostino, who is the head of strategy at Coinbase Institutional and a regular contributor here on FinTech TV.

John, always great to have you with us.

Thank you so much.

Well, so been action packed, so much going on.

Give me a little bit of the State of the Union from your lens, crypto markets, everything that's going on.

The timing's great.

So Coinbase just released its state of crypto quarterly report.

And I think if the story last quarter when I was on was price movement, Bitcoin hitting all-time highs, retail expansion, these incredibly popular successful ETFs.

The story now is use cases.

And so a couple of fascinating statistics 161 million people around the world hold and use stablecoins.

That's incredible.

Well, that's more people than live in the 10 largest cities on the planet, right?

So these are massively popular instruments.

We saw an IPO last week on this storied floor for Circle, the stablecoin issuer that Coinbase is a strategic partner with, and it was 25 to 30 times oversubscribed.

The stock doubled or tripled in the first couple of hours.

So we know now that these that blockchain is being used by Institutions by people, it's being used to solve problems.

Roughly a third of small and medium businesses reported using blockchain to hit their two major pain points slow processing times and excessive transaction fees.

So if you know anyone who's tried to start and run a small business, that's what kills small businesses.

Why take take loans if you just get paid on time?

About 60% of Fortune 500 companies. are currently using blockchain, and 4 out of 5 plan on using blockchain in the near future.

So the story now is small businesses, large businesses, and asset managers hitting that tipping point and really engaging in the crypto and blockchain space.

Well, first of all, thank you.

I feel like I had my master's class this morning compliments to you, John.

Thank you.

So so much information that we haven't heard and I really appreciate.

The coinba facts and data sets coming out of the study.

When you talk about 160 million people, when you talk about this adoption versus price action that we were talking about last quarter, that's a major tipping point.

It appears.

I don't think we're quite to mass adoption yet, but certainly the pathway when you're talking about small businesses to large, you know, if you have a little bit of a crystal ball, you know, we've got 2 minutes left here.

Give me your thoughts on what it looks like.

Adoption going forward and you referenced this incredible IPO by Circle right here at the New York Stock Exchange last week.

Congratulations to you and Coinbase being partners and equity holders.

What do you see as a signal from that for a broader activity?

So snap my fingers, we're a year ahead in time.

You and I are a little more gray, but I think what you see are two major things.

One is if there's less than 10.

Investable public crypto vehicles, I think you see 2345 times that in a year from now.

Bullish obviously announced recently the founder of which was the former president of this place, right?

So who better to guide an IPO into success and that list is going to keep growing.

We have these public access vehicles that are creating efficient mechanisms for people who want to invest in crypto but maybe don't understand how to do it directly.

So I think fast forward a year from now, demonstrably higher. of public companies and that's hugely important because if you want to build trust, you need the transparency and you need the oversight that this market provides.

Second thing I think we'll see is a lot more fund managers investing in crypto.

4 out of 5 fund managers who've heard about crypto.

Now these are not crypto managers.

These are traditional asset managers.

4 out of 5 who have done the work to learn about it say they're going to invest in it.

Even more importantly, 60%. of those that say they're going to invest say they're going to invest more than 5%.

5% is a magic number in the fun world, as we talked about before.

Once you put over 5% of your assets in, you have to tell your investors what you're doing.

You have to basically change your operating documents.

So that that is marriage.

Under 5% is dating, over 5% is marriage.

Well, look, you know, as we close out, I think we've had so many conversations of trad fi meeting, defi, right, but it's actually.

Really happening when you think about crypto native companies going public on the New York Stock Exchange.

If you're remotely right, 234 times more, it all speaks to more investable product and access, and fund managers, I like that, you know, dating to marry that's a big moment of going over 5%.

Yeah, exactly right.

Thank you so much.

Hey John, always wonderful having you.

Thank you.

Hopefully our next conversation is not a quarter away, but come back any time you want me back, Vince, I'm here.

Thank you, my friend, take care.