Aug. 9, 2026

#121 Frank Hepworth | Regulation, DeFi Portfolios, and Why Institutions Buy the Top

#121 Frank Hepworth | Regulation, DeFi Portfolios, and Why Institutions Buy the Top
The Crypto Podcast
#121 Frank Hepworth | Regulation, DeFi Portfolios, and Why Institutions Buy the Top

Welcome to The Crypto Podcast. You can find all our episodes on thecryptopodcast.org. My guest today spent years inside the room where crypto's rules actually get written. As a regulatory crypto attorney, he's advised leading exchanges on exactly what they could and couldn't legally offer, and he helped launch the first crypto ETFs on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Now he's on the other side of the table as CEO of Yield School and founder of New Market Trading, helping everyday investors get access to the primary markets that most retail traders never know exist. Please welcome Frank Hepworth.

In this episode, Roy and Frank cover the regulatory landscape shaping crypto today, including the Genius Act, the pending Clarity Act, and why Frank believes Europe's MiCA legislation forced crypto into traditional finance and backfired. Frank explains how New Market Trading uses smart contract technology so clients retain full self-custody while still getting professional portfolio management, why institutional ETF buyers have been buying the top and selling the bottom like retail investors, and how he evaluates which crypto assets are worth investing in using a commodity-versus-business framework. The conversation closes with a detailed, refreshingly honest breakdown of why real estate tokenization is far less advanced than people assume, and why native on-chain companies, not tokenized off-chain assets, are where Frank believes the space is actually heading.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

0:02 - Welcome to The Crypto Podcast, intro to Frank Hepworth
0:48 - Frank's path into crypto and law simultaneously, starting in 2017
3:03 - Getting hired by a top law firm during the 2020-2021 bull run
4:53 - The Genius Act, the Clarity Act, and why Frank thinks MiCA backfired
11:47 - How Yield School teaches DeFi investing vs. how New Market Trading manages it
13:44 - How the smart contract investment account makes theft technologically impossible
17:45 - Helping US clients set up checkbook IRAs for tax-exempt crypto investing
24:56 - Why big institutions have been buying the top and selling the bottom
27:42 - How Frank decides which crypto assets are worth investing in: commodity vs. business framework
31:00 - Where NFTs are headed, and why early blue-chip collections may hold value
32:12 - Why real estate tokenization is far less advanced than most people assume
37:17 - Cypherpunks who operate entirely outside the fiat system
41:20 - Frank's honest take on his role in launching the first Toronto Stock Exchange crypto ETF
41:38 - Where to find Frank Hepworth and connect with his team

About Frank Hepworth

Frank Hepworth is a former crypto regulatory attorney who advised leading exchanges on legal compliance and contributed to the listing documentation for the first crypto ETFs on the Toronto Stock Exchange. He is now CEO of Yield School, which teaches investors how to navigate decentralized finance directly, and founder of New Market Trading, which uses ERC-4337 smart contract technology to give clients professional portfolio management while retaining full self-custody of their crypto. Frank currently serves primarily US-based clients.

Connect with Frank Hepworth
🌐 newmarkettrading.com
𝕏 X (Twitter): @Frank_HEP
▶️ YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn: search Frank Hepworth

Roy
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Welcome to The Crypto Podcast. You can find all our episodes on the cryptopodcast.org. My guest today spent years inside the room where crypto's rules actually get written. As a regulatory crypto attorney, he's advised leading exchanges on exactly what they could and couldn't legally offer, and he helped launch the first crypto ETFs on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

(0:28 - 0:48)
Now he's on the other side of the table as CEO of Yield School and founder of New Market Trading, helping everyday investors get access to the primary markets that most retail traders never know exist. Please welcome Frank Hepworth. Thanks for having me, Roy.

(0:48 - 2:05)
Yeah, no problem at all, I suppose. I mean, working for regulation is something that I'm definitely interested in, but I just want to kind of get to know you a little bit first. I suppose, I mean, you studied law, but how did you get into crypto and kind of make a transition? Was it always legal? Did you go down a certain legal route first? I got into crypto when a friend sent it to me in Hong Kong in 2017.

And so, you know what? Yeah, my camera disconnected, Roy, but we'll just disconnect it and we won't worry. Well, let's see if we can change it. So you've studied as an attorney, but I'm just curious, like what field you went down first, and then when you kind of learned about crypto and how you made the transition? Yeah.

So when I got into crypto, it was 2017, and I also started law school in 2017, or I was in law school in 2017. And so I was obsessed with crypto immediately. And by the nature of law school, I was also obsessed with the law.

(2:06 - 2:41)
And so I was learning them concurrently, which was a really interesting experience for me because crypto is all about money and technology that is separate from the nation state, you would say. And law is all about the nation state and how a country implements its culture and its policies onto the citizenry. And so I was basically learning two different ends of the spectrum.

(2:42 - 3:03)
When I got into crypto, I should say it wasn't from the hardcore trading investing standpoint. I was doing some of that, but I was interested more so into what the hell is this thing? Like, why does it exist? It's quite different. And so I was studying them concurrently.

(3:03 - 4:53)
As it so happened, I got hired by a pretty high profile law firm during the 2020-2021 bull run in part because they saw how much I was into crypto. And that is pretty novel for an attorney because attorneys are typically quite risk averse and crypto is certainly risk on. And so I got hired by this law firm, which is a great law firm.

And I worked there for several years. And it was at the law firm that I really got quite deeply into how crypto intersects with the regulatory environment and the financial schema that most of the Western world operates on. And that was my journey into crypto and the law.

I kind of did it concurrently and in a bit of a synergistic way. So with the regulations, what regulations have been passed that most people wouldn't be aware of? Not too many. Not too many.

There's a lot of fuss that goes around crypto regulation. So people have maybe heard of the Genius Act. It governs how companies can be allowed to issue stable coins in America.

And most other countries follow America. There's also the Clarity Act that is coming up. And that is actually quite a notable bill.

I thought Genius was overblown. I didn't think it was too big of a deal. But the Clarity Act actually does have some consequence to it.

(4:54 - 5:10)
And that has not been passed yet. But you can see where the direction is going based on the proposed version of the bill and the revised versions of that proposed bill. And so you can just from that, get some insight as to where the regulation is heading.

(5:10 - 5:36)
We've also had MECA come out years ago. Europe, the EU was one of the first governments to put crypto regulation out. I am not a big fan of MECA.

A lot of people hailed it at the time saying Europe is so progressive, it's leaving the US behind. They were able to get this legislation out so quickly. And there's now clear defined rules.

(5:36 - 11:46)
But if you actually read MECA, it's not good legislation. It basically forces crypto into traditional finance, which is not a good thing. Because when you force crypto into traditional finance, it just becomes traditional finance.

It just becomes banking. You can't do anything without a passport. No assets have composability.

You can't issue crypto to the public until you've done like a big IPO. So I was not a big fan of this legislation. And now years on, because MECA has been out for several years now, years on, people are saying, we can't work with MECA.

Tether left the EU because they can't work with MECA. Binance left the EU because they can't work with MECA. So it was stupid from the start, to be honest.

And I don't like that legislation. But nevertheless, so MECA came out and the financial task forces of the world, the people who do AML, KYC, anti-terrorism measures, they've implemented this thing called the travel rule. And all crypto handling entities need to implement the travel rule, which is like this very like onerous piece of regulation that basically means anybody who has crypto and sends on crypto, you need to have their ID and you need to make sure that they're not a terrorist.

And you need to make sure that they're basically that you need to have their ID and you need to make sure they're not a terrorist, which sounds great in principle because you don't want terrorists having crypto. But it also means that you need to enforce human identity onto the asset and onto crypto wallets, which really takes away the composability, a lot of the interoperable benefits of crypto assets to begin with. That makes it a very interesting and unique and like sovereign would be the right word, asset class.

And, you know, regulators don't care about that stuff. They just want your identity. They just want surveillance for good reasons in their mind.

And fair enough. But nevertheless, it is just surveillance. And that's another like sort of significant chunk of simple regulation that is very consequential in its implementation.

And it's being implemented fairly successfully on the big institutions like a Coinbase, a Binance, a Crypto.com. But it is not at all being implemented in decentralized finance where that sort of, where basically governments really struggle to implement their regulation. So that's a bit of an overview of this stuff that comes to mind. Because I mean, like you mentioned the sovereignty, the reality is, it's trying to kind of keep out a big brother.

If you're on the boat kind of, you know, trafficking and money laundering and everything, it's usually the governments that are doing that around the world. You know, it's not the individuals that are there. They tend to try to destroy what it was originally set up for.

And just curious because, you know, they've brought in, I don't know when they brought this in, but it's like 10,000 limits, I think it's $10,000, 10,000 euros when you're traveling along. Are they trying to, because reality is, you know, you can go from one airport to the other and you could have 10 million in your exchange. But if they're going tracking all this, are they going to stop you for that as well? I don't know what country policies are when you travel from like airport to airport.

I do think most of them have this $10,000 limit. I think that's still there. I do not think that they're going to be able to implement it.

Like I traveled with my and no one's saying, show me the amount on that ledger. I hope that day never comes. I hope that day never comes yet.

So, so far they do not have any ability to enforce that. With the different coins then and, you know, tokenization and utilities, what kind of things are you kind of finding is best for humanity as opposed to some things? Because they're tracked and everything is, you know, the way that there's so much scamming going on, which I believe can be traced, can be tracked, but they're not. Because I've heard of even billions going to a certain wallet.

I'm not sure you're aware of that, but that has been scammed as going to a certain wallet and they can't catch them. But like with the other, like tokenization and with crypto, are you concentrating on certain ones or what, what, what exactly are you working on? Are you asking like what, what type of crypto assets do we work with? Yeah. Or like a new market trading? Well, yeah, you've got the two different ones.

So yeah, you can talk about them. Yeah. So in both companies, both companies focus on the same thing.

We just take a different angle. Both companies, we're just helping people become like good crypto investors. With YieldSkool, we'll teach you how to do it.

And then that's a nice mug. And then new market trading, new market trading, we will, we'll build the portfolio for you and manage it for you. YieldSkool is a bit easier to understand.

So YieldSkool is like, I've hired like a really high quality guys, typically guys who are hedge fund managers, guys who have worked for very large institutions like Coinbase or Chainalysis, guys who are crypto native. And we'll just teach you how to use specifically decentralized finance to answer your question. And we'll provide you the research, the analysis, the community so that you can see what the pros are doing, and then you can learn from them directly and you can build your portfolio by essentially copying the same strategy or the same portfolio build.

(11:47 - 13:44)
In new market trading, we just work for people who are too busy to even put in the time. So we do it in a bit of a unique way. The client connects their hardware wallet, like a ledger to our platform, and it generates a smart contract.

The smart contract is relying on ERC-4337, it's account abstraction. And all that means is it's basically a programmable investment account on the blockchain. And it's basically an investment account on the blockchain that comes with rules.

And so they open up this programmable investment account, they deposit their crypto into it. And some of the rules of this investment account are, one, only they can withdraw it. So we can't withdraw it.

So the risks of us like stealing their crypto is zero, it's technologically impossible. And two, we are allowed to trade that crypto amongst like white listed DeFi protocols. So like Uniswap, Aave, Crystal, these other places.

So that gets the person the benefits of self-custody, like the banks can get it, government can get it, only they can get it, with the benefit of like full scope DeFi portfolio management. So they get every asset, every liquidity pool, every DeFi protocol, because their investment account is natively on chain, not in like some custodian. And so that's what new market trading does.

To answer your question, for both of them. And just while you're on that, sorry, because if you're not able to take the money, how do you get paid your share? We've got a fee that gets charged every quarter. And that one of the rules is allowed.

Like one of the rules is that the client will pre-approve the fees that get taken out every quarter. And that's all that's allowed to be taken. And the client needs to sign that with their hardware wallet when they create the account.

But it's not like an unlimited spend. They're not approving Frank and his team can take a bajillion dollars. It's that specific amount only every quarter.

(13:44 - 14:20)
And so they do allow for that. But if we were to ever try something different than that, their smart contract investment account would just go, no, like you're not allowed. And are you working on the increase that you've earned, or is it a percentage of the value that's being done? We have both depending on the size of the client.

And so we have both. For most clients, it's just a simple flat fee. Clients really like it because, yeah, for reasons I could get into.

(14:21 - 14:31)
But I still haven't answered your question yet. I'm sorry about that. I'm after interrupting, so that's why.

So I haven't done it again. I'm glad you, yeah, this is a nice conversation. I'm glad you're curious.

(14:34 - 15:15)
We, yeah, what we do is just basically focus on decentralized finance. So every asset that was in that is within that. So we know that most assets are going on chain and no one's really done this yet.

But to me, it's very obvious that if all assets are being tokenized, if all assets are going on chain, then you probably want the investment account on chain as well. But no one's really doing that. The reason why JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, all these wealth managers take forever to integrate crypto to their clients is because they all exist off chain and they're trying to bring in on-chain assets to their clients.

(15:15 - 15:41)
And to do that, they need to integrate so many different middlemen. They need Coinbase for their crypto. They need Anchorage for their custodian.

They need some person to translate the data of Anchorage into the JP Morgan client account. There's like so much, so many middlemen that need to happen to reconcile what is happening on the blockchain to what is happening in a JP Morgan computer. Like so much is needed to reconcile those two.

(15:41 - 17:44)
And we just say like, to hell with it, just put your investment account on the blockchain as well. And then you get immediately, you get everything, you get every asset, every DeFi product, you get the data in real time. We don't need any middlemen because your investment account is on the blockchain, you self-custody it with your ledger, and we're just going directly to your investment account on the blockchain.

And so it's just a much better experience for the customer. They get better returns because they don't get just like four crypto assets. They get like 10,000 with liquidity pools, with yield from Aave, with native staking.

For example, I think Fidelity, someone, Fidelity, one of these big guys, they've just announced an ETF where the big highlight is that like 95% of ETH staking rewards go to the people pooled in the fund. And like, that's like their big claim. It's just like, just use us.

Like you can just stake ETH natively through us and you'll get 100%. And you don't need to do some complicated ETF. You can just, like, we'll just do it for you in like two seconds.

And that's just a competitive advantage that we have just by simply putting your investment account on-chain where all the assets are on-chain as compared to all of these tradfied guys who are still trying to reconcile on-chain assets with their off-chain systems. So yeah, we'll come for their lunch, to be honest, but I'm getting a bit off topic here. It's because I know that differs from every single country.

Like, you know, Dubai does nothing, but every country, I think Germany does none either. They all vary. Do you get involved with that with the clients? Because I mean, if they've got a large amount, it's nearly worthwhile if they are cashing in to move into a certain area for the 180 days or whatever it is.

(17:45 - 18:10)
Yeah. Sorry. Are you asking, do we help them take their crypto into their- Yeah.

Is that part of your service as well? Like the tax optimization? To be honest, we only serve the US right now because that's just kind of our bread and butter. The US is a good market. We know how to deal with Americans and we've had very few clients from any other country, just a few from Canada as well because I'm Canadian myself.

(18:13 - 18:24)
But yeah, to be honest with you, so for our American clients, we do. So we partner them with corporation specialists, tax providers. We want everybody setting up checkbook IRAs.

(18:24 - 18:36)
It's a way for them to invest in crypto in a tax exempt manner. We tell everybody to do that. People don't know about it really, but it's what they should be doing.

(18:37 - 19:01)
Basically, are you familiar with that? The IRA is like their personal pension fund, is it? The IRA is just a tax exempt. Basically, it's just a shell that you can put your investments within to not pay tax or to defer tax. And there's this thing called a checkbook IRA.

(19:03 - 19:55)
Where basically the checkbook IRA is a tax exempt investing vehicle that you create. And it's called a checkbook because you can sort of like write the check. You can basically decide what to invest in and you can invest in anything.

For example, you can set up an LLC. That LLC owns DeFi wallet, your MetaMask. That LLC goes within the IRA.

And so now you've got basically a DeFi wallet where you're investing in anything in crypto and it's within an IRA, so it's tax exempt. And the fee to maintain that checkbook IRA is like $40 a month. It's like not expensive in order to save like a couple hundred thousand dollars on taxes or more if you're a big investor in crypto.

(19:56 - 24:56)
So we help our clients do stuff like that. So we're not the tax person ourselves, but we partner with blockchain tax specialists who are very used to dealing with our clients. But because we don't service other clients in other countries, we don't set it up in other countries, but we will as we tackle those markets.

And just curious, because I've asked a lot of guests on this, the inheritance one, because sometimes nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow when they live to 200, but we could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Have systems in place or how they can actually make sure their loved ones get their assets? Yeah, we give them guidance and beneficiary. We cannot sort of like, if the family just approaches us and they say, hey, we heard our dad had his crypto with you guys.

Can you like give it to us? We can't actually because of the nature of the programmable investment account they set up. But what we do do is just give them instructions so that their next of kin can very easily get their crypto from their investment account with us, which is very easy to do. It just takes like 30 minutes of planning.

Yeah, 30 minutes of planning. And the next of kin are going to be able to withdraw their crypto from their safe. Safe is the name of the investment account that they set up with us.

So we help them with that. Okay. And the type of investors you're looking at, do they have to have a certain network that they have to invest in? Is there from a certain amount? Not really.

I would say, well, I shouldn't say not really. I would want, like when you work with us in yield school or new market trading, both I'm putting like, not AI, but actual humans who are like fairly expensive. I'm matching them up with you to give you either portfolio management or to coach you one on one either way, yield school or new market trading.

And these guys are expensive. And so we do charge fees. And so I'm really wanting that person to have at least 40 to $50,000 in crypto or money ready to go in crypto or else otherwise we're going to be like too expensive.

And I'd rather that person just spend their time on YouTube, learning it themselves. What kind of returns would a person expect to get? Is it varying from the trader that they're working with or do you kind of do it across the board? How does it work out? We follow very similar strategies internally. And then if the person wants modification for them, so for example, the guy's like, I'm set in life elsewhere.

I've got my business. I've got my everything. Crypto is just fun money for me.

Let's go hard on this. Then for that guy, we will help him just go harder. There'll be more aggressive plays, more moonshots.

But that's driven by the client, not by us. Yeah, typical returns. So it depends when you start with us, right? At the end of the day, crypto is a very cyclical market.

And if you start with us at the top of the bull market, like October 2025, it is going to be difficult to get you a good return within six months. If you join us October 2025 and the entire market drops by 60%, it's going to be difficult for us to get you a plus 200% return. So what we say is we'll actually manage you for the cycle.

So if people were to the top of the bull, we're going to be keeping them in a very conservative position. We're not going to be putting them all into aggressive risk on positions. And so if people were to start working with us now, for example, when we're at the bottom of this bear market or very close to, when people started working with us in 2023 and 2022, we saw clients go from $100,000 to over a million dollars in about two and a half years because of the nature of the crypto market.

When you get in at these lows to the highs, you get a fantastic return. And so I'm hoping as many people can as possible join with us ASAP because then we're going to be able to help them get the best returns possible. But when prices are low, people don't care as much to their own detriment.

(24:58 - 25:50)
And because I mean, with BlackRock, I remember Michael Fink is that the CEO coming out and going against Bitcoins, you know, it's not good. And then they are like heavily invested now. So usually people are selling and buying and getting the market.

But the fact that you've got all these big financial institutions holding a lot, will that affect the way the markets go in the future? People say that. People have been saying that since the ETFs came out in early 2024. We haven't seen it.

I think a lot of the institutions are pretty dumb to begin with. So for example, the heaviest ETF purchasing was happening in October 2025. That's when the institutions were buying more of the Bitcoin ETF than ever, right before.

(25:51 - 26:06)
My theory is that institutions are really just retail investors. They are not particularly sophisticated at all, because if they were, they'd be working for like Citadel Securities, these true quant hedge funds. They would be really trying to find the alpha in the market.

(26:07 - 27:41)
These big money managers, they're just guys who invest like a retail investor. And because they're retail investors, they're investing like a retail investor would invest the first time they invested in crypto. So what we've seen, this isn't projection, this is just what happened.

These big institutions are buying more of the Bitcoin ETF in September, October 2025, right before the market crashed than they have ever purchased. They were making the absolute rookie mistake of buying at the top. And we've been seeing selling, the most selling in April and May of 2026.

And so we've seen them selling at the bottom. So they literally, with their client's money, buying the top and selling the bottom, like amateur hour, truly. And so I think that they're keeping the cyclical nature of this market perfectly intact.

And I know people say that it's going to be different, like my team thinks it could be different. And I think it could be too. But only a somewhat small chance of it.

I think the more likely outcome is that the cyclical market is going to continue right on time. And I think that we're nearing the bottom of this market. And certainly by the end of the year, we're going to be tracking back up again for another, what is typically a three-year uptrend when it comes to crypto markets before another eventual bear market in like 2030.

(27:42 - 30:38)
I don't know even how many thousand cryptos are out there now, but how do you determine when something new is coming, whether there's got legs on it? Because I mean, there's nothing for sure, but there's ways of kind of checking. So how do you kind of decipher, okay, this one looks a lot better than the 50 others? Yeah. Crypto has come a long way.

So there's going to be two camps. So camp one is the meme coin traders, which we are not. So the meme coin traders, they basically trade and analyze social sentiment.

And I've got some friends who are like very wealthy, very sophisticated meme coin traders. And they look at this cultural sentiment to determine, is the culture of the gambling retail investor, are they going to be, it's literally like, are they going to be more attracted to the frog with sunglasses? Or are they going to be more attracted to the son of President Trump meme coin? Which one of those meme coins is going to be more appealing to the casino? And then they make a bet on that. And they're able to do that analysis surprisingly accurately, and they're able to get really good returns.

But that's extremely, like, in my opinion, like difficult and intense and fast paced trading. And that's what we don't do. So what we focus on instead are crypto assets that are basically either one of two categories, because crypto doesn't escape basic economics.

Category one is that it needs to look like a commodity. So it's scarce and it's consumable. So Bitcoin, it's like gold.

It's scarce, 21 million Bitcoin. It's consumable in the sense that it's a store of value like gold. So to consume Bitcoin, you simply hold it.

But there's only one Bitcoin. So another scarce commodity, something like Ethereum. So there's a scarce amount of Ethereum.

It's also deflationary. So it's actually a reducing amount of Ethereum at certain points. And it's consumed by expending it as gas in order to power the Ethereum network.

Same with Solana. So these are basically commodity like assets. And so you can do a very objective analysis on that.

The other category is we want things to basically look like an online business. So assets like Hyperliquid, Aave, Uniswap, they're providing a service to the market. The service accrues profit and that profit goes to the crypto asset itself.

So you can do basically almost a cash flow analysis like you would be able to in a traditional business. But this business exists on the blockchain. And so both of those are very like standard ways to invest, investing in commodities or investing in businesses.

(30:38 - 32:11)
And so you ask, how do we know which crypto assets to invest in compared to the others? Same way you would invest in a business. You just need to do an analysis. Do we think that the service is going to find increasing product market fit? Does the value actually go back to the crypto asset itself? Because often it doesn't.

There's like a disconnect between the success of the service and the value accrued by the crypto asset. And then we will take a bet on that crypto asset at a size that makes sense for where we are in the market and the macro condition. And where do you see NFTs going? Because that was really big hype.

And again, it leveled off and it's kind of, I don't know, where it is at the moment. I don't know. I won't lie.

I don't put too much mindshare towards NFTs. I think they'll make a comeback. And I think that in like, I think, I think the very early stage NFTs will make a comeback.

So the Bored Apes, the Crypto Punks, these ones will be collector's items, I think for history. They've certainly crashed in price, but I think they'll come back. But this, this very frothy market where everybody is spinning up an NFT collection and selling it for a hundred thousand, a million dollars, I don't think that's going to come back.

(32:12 - 32:58)
I don't think that's going to come back. And with tokenization then, because with real estate, I mean, I see some people trying to get projects going for that because investors want to get in that. And if it's all smart contracts for say a real estate investment and they own shares, are you seeing like, is that take, I would have thought that would be way further ahead than it is, you know, it seems to be very little doing.

Are you seeing much of that? Like tokenization of real estate? Yeah. As in like, you know, it's like timeshare, I suppose, and other, but, you know, because the guy with 10 bucks can buy, you know, a fraction of a percent. And then if it goes up and when they're selling it on and everything, but I don't see much people doing, I see a lot trying it both.

(32:58 - 35:31)
Yeah. These people are, these attempts are very naive. The reason being is because at the end of the day, where is true ownership of real estate affected? And it is in the registry of the governance body of wherever that real estate is.

So like I own a property in Canada, say in Calgary, Alberta, true ownership of that physical house, it's not on the blockchain. It is in the property registry of Alberta. And in order for the crypto asset to be true ownership of that property, you need to convince the courts of Alberta, Canada, that they should ignore the Alberta property registry that has been governing for the last 200 years.

And they should instead refer to the Ethereum blockchain. And no government wants to relinquish control of real estate in their physical governing area to a blockchain. They'll go, sure, if you want to, if you want to put your house in an LLC and then create a crypto asset that is like a share of the company, okay, sure, you can do that.

Then if there's ever a dispute over like, someone likes, for example, compromises my crypto wallet that showed that held the share of my real estate. And someone just steals the share, my crypto asset share of my house. And now I'm like, hey, they stole that from me.

They don't really own my house. I own my house. The way you decide that is you need to go back to the court in Alberta and be like, decide this for me.

And then the court of Alberta will be like, okay, crypto investors. Okay, we need to now kill the original crypto asset and give a new one to Frank. And once you get into the nuts and bolts of it, all these companies realize and all these investors realize, usually after they've invested a couple of million dollars into a project like this, damn, this is all like just a lot of complexity for at the end of the day, just needing a court in a country where that real estate is located to decide who owns the real estate.

(35:32 - 36:32)
And so the whole, I'm not very bullish on tokenization anyway. Basically, if an asset exists off-chain, whether it's a share of Apple, a share of Tesla, a house in a neighborhood, a treasury bond, whatever, bringing it on a blockchain does not bring that much of a benefit because all of the regulatory baggage that exists with that thing off-chain always comes with it on-chain. For example, you're seeing lots of companies being tokenized and brought onto a blockchain, but you still need to KYC.

It's still only available to accredited investors. It doesn't get to go in Uniswap. And it's like, well, what the hell? What's even the point of that? And so for me, I want to see companies natively on-chain so that their equity is natively issued on-chain.

There's no thing that is being tokenized. It doesn't go back to some registry in Wyoming or Delaware. The company natively exists on-chain.

(36:32 - 36:57)
And true ownership of that company is the crypto asset on-chain, and there is no share in Delaware. That does not happen very often, but that's where I believe the space is going. But that's a long run on answer to your question.

No, but it's excellent. I love it. I love it because I think nobody's actually saying that and you've hit the nail on the head exactly how it is.

(36:57 - 37:16)
Yeah. That is how it is. Yeah.

So the other thing is that I'm very curious with your background and experience. They've got the print and press, the Fed, and they can buy what they want. And hence why they can control some of the crypto.

(37:17 - 41:19)
Can you ever see it where something is not, some crypto is not connected to the Fiat? Can I see it where some crypto is not connected to the Fiat? What do you mean by that? What I mean is that we're not controlled by the government and that if I want to do work with you, I'm just transferring money and we're all doing it, but we have a system that it can't be bought with Fiat money. Yeah. There are definitely some cypherpunks that just do not use Fiat.

Yeah. So I know peripherally of a couple of people that I do not think have bank accounts. They operate solely on chain.

So they work for people, they get paid in crypto. We pay our staff in crypto. Yeah.

If it wasn't for the fact I had girlfriend and all this like other humans in my life, I could probably operate just on chain myself. Our customers pay us in crypto typically. Yeah.

But there are a few people out there that operate just completely on chain. They don't have a bank account. And that trend is going to increase.

It is easier for people who are nomadic and travel. But as soon as you want a house in most countries, you're going to have to get plugged back into the banking system. There is some exceptions to that.

Like I spend a lot of time in Dubai and in Dubai, there are plenty of people who will be selling you your house, your car, and they'll accept crypto. And in those scenarios, if you can buy a house with crypto, you can buy a car with crypto. There isn't too much reason to need to plug into the banking system.

So yeah. They don't stable coins when they're doing that rather than kind of risking fluctuation. For whatever reason, they should be using stable coins, but for whatever reason, they often market for Bitcoin.

And when they receive the Bitcoin, they'll receive it to a provider that will automatically swap that Bitcoin into stable coins. And so actually they get paid in assets like Ethereum and Bitcoin more often than you'd think. But the person ultimately ends up with, they don't want Bitcoin because of the volatility, exactly like you say.

They end up with stable coins in their address, in their account. You mentioned at the start that you helped launch the first crypto EFTs on the Toronto Stock Exchange. So how was that experience? To be honest with you, Roy, we'll cut this one because I wasn't that involved in that transaction and I don't want to pretend like I was.

Like my team always wants me to mention that because it's such like an authority thing. And so I mentioned it, but yeah, you're the first person to ask me about it and I wasn't that involved in it. And so like, what would I say there? What I say about it? It's just basically, I wrote all the listing documents.

I helped evaluate the redemption schema between the Spark crypto and the ETF because the two need to balance out. You can't have more ETFs than you do Bitcoin, but I was an accessory on that transaction. And so I don't want to pretend like I can speak on that authoritatively like I can about crypto investing or tokenization or some other areas which I'm more experienced in.

Yeah, but it's still involvement in it anyway, so that's good. Yeah, certainly. I'm still definitely proud of it.

(41:20 - 41:38)
No, no, excellent. Just kind of finally, I mean, you've got the company, so what's the best way people get involved and how they can connect with you? So depends on the person. So I like to be active on X, so formerly known as Twitter.

(41:38 - 42:04)
So my handle will be Frank underscore HEP, H-E-P. I'm sure that'll be somewhere. People can also follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn, or they can just go to NewMarketTrading.com and they'll see the contact us tab.

And if they just click that and submit their message, then we can contact. That way either we're online all over the place or just follow me on YouTube as well. Subscribe.

(42:05 - 43:03)
Perfect. Was there anything that I didn't ask you that you would like to have told me? Do I want to say anything else? No, I think that I covered the things I wanted to talk about. I guess the last thing is, yeah, thanks for the curiosity.

I could tell that you were genuinely I'm listening to what I was saying and that this was a great conversation. So thank you for that. I enjoyed it.

And I love what you said about the people doing the real estate, because I think most people haven't done that. I think that's one that a lot of people should heed. So thank you very much.

Totally enjoyed it. Yeah. Cool.

Thank you, Roy. So all the links will be in the show notes and you find everything about me, scan the QR code, go to roycollin.com. If you're looking for virtual assistance, go to va.org. Be sure to give us a thumbs up, five star rating, maybe share with three friends. Until next week, take care.

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