PKF O’Connor Davies hosted a webinar with featured speakers. The program covered a plethora of timely topics within the digital asset market space. The webinar reviews the market place, the various digital asset instruments, and how one can get exposure, among others.
Speakers:
PKF O’Connor Davies
- Marc Rinaldi, CPA, Partner-in-Charge, Financial Services
- Kevin Keane Jr., CPA, Senior Manager, Financial Services
Digital Asset Research
- Doug Schwenk, Chairman
Alpha Sigma Capital
- Enzo Villani, Founder, CEO & CIO
Archax
- Graham Rodford, CEO & Co-Founder
The following is the complete agenda:
Introduction (2:30)
Current market structure (6:40)
- Digital Asset Primer
- What is a digital asset?
- Public vs. private blockchain
- Fungible vs non-fungible tokens (NFT’s)
- Blockchains vs. Tokens
- Layer 1 vs layer 2
- Proof-of-stake vs Proof-of-work
- Universe of Institutional Interest
- How can I get exposure to this asset class?
- Spot exchanges, derivatives, OTC, ETPs, private placements
- Market Structure basics
- Liquidity, circulating supply
Available investment vehicles (48:34)
- Private Placement market:
- Trusts
- ETPs:
- Current marketplace of ETPs, including exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
- Internationally
- Canada
- United States
- Venture Capital
- Futures, options, swaps:
- Traded on CME, ICE, and some crypto exchanges
- Over-the-counter (OTC) options
- Future instruments
Institutional infrastructure (1:07:34)
- Define prime brokerage in the digital asset and cryptocurrency industry
- Pricing and valuation
- How to determine value?
- “Clean pricing”
- Valuation on products that are not heavily traded
- Importance of valuation
- Lending and borrowing and the related collateral
Major trends (1:14:52)
- Decentralized finance defi
- Centralized vs. decentralized
- Future of DeFi
- Potential ramifications on industries due to Defi
- Progression of digital asset exchanges
- Tokenized assets
- NFTs
Changing state of reputational and regulatory risks (1:23:26)
- United States
- Current regulatory status
- Special purpose broker dealers: Background & Potential changes to the market landscape
- On the horizon
Quotes from Enzo Villani:
- “I would be careful of decentralized exchanges… If you want to be in the altcoin market, I would say you should go through a sophisticated fund or you want to do it on exchanges that you trust or are in your jurisdiction.”
- “The great thing about this market is that it is changing the way exchanges actually compete.”
- [Alpha Sigma Capital] spends a lot of time doing research… we produce our research now because there was no fundamental research approach to these companies [and] we found some real hidden gems… Great exciting firms and some really exciting things.”
- “Our research index is up 434% this quarter.”
- “We are all in this for the long term. We all want to see this blockchain economy grow and be utilized.”
- “What I see is this… The digital asset technology is going to be applied to every single asset class because it’s going to be an easier transaction.”