So, have you recovered from the
confusion 11 days ago when we were
shocked and of course certainly the gold
industry was shocked uh of that
unexpected Trump administration ruling
that certain gold bars would be
tariffed?
It was a crazy day for sure. But uh it's
actually why we built our business. Um
so on one hand our uh a lot of our
clients were kind of scrambling because
this is now the third time in five years
that the EFP you know basically this
price between LBMA in London and the
COMX price blew out and that caused a
lot of risk for people. Um but you know
we built uh you know we built Abbeck uh
to to launch a kilobo kilobar contract
in Singapore very specifically because
that's where the physical market lives.
Um and so that's uh it was actually
probably good news for us but you know
certainly our clients were were
scrambling.
There was a lot of scrambling certainly
and you talk a little bit about you know
trying to bridge the gap between how
gold is quoted and priced depending on
what geography you're in. What is the
appetite for something that kind of
unifies across the the different
geographies?
Well, we're already seeing very good
open interest and trading on our
exchange. It only launched about 6 weeks
ago for for our gold contract and we're
really having a lot of Singapore uh and
and really all Southeast Asia Asia
rallying around our contract because
it's it is the product that they're
they're they're demanding, right? Um
because again, a lot of the like if
you're buying gold uh over LBMA, that's
really balance sheet gold. It's almost
like foreign exchange markets. You're
buying bilaterally with a bank. You're
buying balance sheet gold. uh Comx of
course is physical but it is kind of an
older warehouse warrant system of older
you know 100 ounce bars mostly but but
you know the main physical demand in the
world is Asia for kilo bars so and
that's what our market is is is kilo
bars
I I am curious as to kind of where you
think this market can go we talk about
gold right now something like 33,000 an
ounce 3,300 an ounce excuse me uh in the
uh uh in the spot market you've seen
forecasts including today UBS upping
their price target to 3600 we're already
at record levels more or less and some
of that certainly had to do with this
administration and some of the policies
coming in. If we start to get in
leveling off of what's been happening in
Washington, does that actually hurt the
price of gold?
Well, again, I think physical demand has
been very strong in Asia. Um, uh, you
know, there's a number of factors for
that, but I think a lot of that even pre
predates, you know, some of the, um,
call it the volatility, you know, policy
volatility. Um, so I think, you know,
you know, really we've been on a couple
years now. Um and it's really broken
what used to be the old, you know, when
I was at Goldman, we always uh we always
analyze real interest rates as really
the only factor. Um but now there's just
a whole another geopolitical bid u from
central banks um that that I think the
market's still even two years on trying
to get comfortable with what are the
metrics to to analyze that. I
I am curious though about where exactly
the demand is going. There's been a lot
of speculation whether it's coming from
governments, whether it's coming from
traditional investors, whether it's
coming from organized crime. uh there's
been a lot of discussion about where
those demand flows. Do you have any sort
of clarity into where it's coming from?
Well, I think that's one of the other
one of the other issues is it's not
going through the typical u or not all
of the flows are going through the
typical way again buying from bullion
banks in in London, right? So, uh even
when the first some of first movement
started happening a couple years ago, a
lot of it was going through Dubai, a lot
of it was going through through
Singapore and not your traditional gold
centers. Uh and again it's it's much
more demand for physical uh rather than
just having balance sheet gold you know
with with a with a bank counterparty for
instance.
How has demand for gold in its different
forms whether it's physical gold or
balance sheet gold changed with the rise
in demand for crypto?
Uh I I don't see it totally correlated.
I mean, of course, um, uh, you know,
after, uh, a after the some of the
political, you know, policy changes
around, uh, US dollars, you know, after
Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, of
course, that's that changed a lot of
dynamics that probably affected both
crypto and gold. Um, but I I really see
them as very different markets. In fact,
you know, we still see crypto as very,
you know, correlated to, you know, tech
stocks and so forth where gold really
is, uh, you know, a physical safe haven
that that people look for. There's
there's been a lot of talk about the
more tokenization of assets. I mean, we
talk about crypto and obviously the
digital universe, but it's more than
just sort of holding uh you know,
whatever the digital currency is.
There's this idea that the underlying
technology can offer a way to sort of
make all markets more efficient. How are
you sort of diving into that if at all
beyond just the commodities trade?
No, it's it's actually probably this we
there's two pillars of our company. It's
why I started the business. you know,
one is to get commodity markets closer
to physical, but second to move
collateral markets in real time. So, my
former colleague uh at Goldman Sachs,
Allison Nathan, just put out a great
report on stable coins like literally
today. Um, and there's a lot of talk
about stable coins for retail, retail
payments, retail holdings and emerging
markets. Uh, but a far orders of
magnitude larger use case is collateral,
moving US dollars in Asia or or gold as
collateral in Asia. Um, and that's what
you need for margins on say a futures
trade. Um the futures industry
association actually just put out a
great report about trying to move
collateral to real time. Um and we
really think we are going to be the
first regulated clearing house in the
world uh that will be able to to do that
uh with two upcoming pilots we're doing
this year. moving uh tokenized money
market funds in real time and moving
gold in real time uh for collateral in
Asia.