Markets are under pressure following a brutal Tuesday sell off in traditional tech stocks that has spilled over into digital assets and in New York morning trade.
We are looking at the coin hovering right below the 62,000 level also spot the coins have led over $2 billion this month.
Well joining us to break down the macroeconomic outlook and what is really driving the recent pullback is the board chairman.
And CEO of Open Assets Gabor, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
Well, we are at the halfway mark of 2026, and that means we can reflect on what's happened so far this year.
So when we take a look at the macro outlook as well as what's happened this year, we know that going forward there are both fundamentals as well as technicals as well as the regulatory outlook here in the US.
So what are you paying attention to?
Yeah, it's it's been a year of building.
We have transitioned from speculation and people looking at Bitcoin and crypto prices to building fundamental market infrastructure.
So this year we have made some good momentum on getting new transregion rules in place, which means that the world can actually trade on blockchains today.
The Clarity Act is also moving forward and hopefully gets approved, and there's been some improvements on fundamental building pieces for tokenization.
And tokenized markets.
Some of the largest financial businesses like Ice and the New York Stock Exchange announced their ATS and efforts in the space.
Large banks are building and excited that this year is not about just price speculation but actually building fundamental infrastructure and particularly the and the CFTC are creating real rules for the market that changes the $120 trillion equity market, the $140 trillion fixed income market, and the 1 quadrillion.
System and tokenization is driving all of that and you and I are here on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange and it really speaks to the change that's happening across crypto in particular digital assets.
So given some of the announcements that are coming through as well as some of the regulatory changes that are on the horizon here, what do you think is important for investors to know?
Yes, so I think a few things.
So just last year, the genius Act has changed how cash.
Moving cash has gotten faster and as we go towards T0 settlements, uh, securities are getting faster.
So one of the rules was when I mentioned is the transfer agent rule changes.
So now we can settle outside the traditional centrally cleared ecosystem.
That's a big fundamental change.
The second thing that is under consideration is Rule 611 and the potential recession of Reagan MS, which opens up trading for the tokenized ecosystem.
So it means that what used to take 10 intermediaries to settle to create and settle a trade will compress to somewhere between 2 and 3, and that can potentially create 10x efficiency in the market.
So again, I'm I'm really excited to see the crypto movement going beyond speculation to fundamental infrastructure building and.
The regulatory piece is catching up and actually the US is leading.
I'd love to see the SEC and industry participants do the work, particularly around and enabling more tokenized markets.
And a lot of the points that you highlighted, that is something that you pay attention to on a regular basis.
But when we're talking about the American retail investors, whether we're talking about tokenization or even stablecoins, these might be concepts that are fairly new or foreign.
Just given what the regulatory environment has been here in the US, so moving forward, not just into the second half of 2026, but also beyond, what will the impact be for retail investors here in the US?
I think the markets are rebalancing and American retail investors will have access to real things, not just dog and cat coins on crypto exchanges, but more tokenized real estate, tokenized private markets and instruments.
And again we're working very closely with regulators to create a separate asset class and share class for tokenized assets as well as separate classification to access traditionally uninvestable companies.
So the best startups in the world never make it to retail investors, but retail investors are trading dog and cat coins.
That's not good.
So the American retail investor cannot participate in wealth creation, and that impacts over 90% of the people even in the US.
Globally beyond moving in the US, 92% of people don't have any brokerage accounts, so effectively American innovation and the dollar, stocks and bonds don't make it to the and private investments in Particle don't make it to the hands of retail investors in the US.
And not at all basically abroad, so tokenization changes this, and we think that the 120 trillion equity market and the $140 trillion fixed income market could potentially 10x within a decade with just demolishing old rules and gates of capital.
We're working on that and actually US regulators are leading for the first time in opening up these markets more broadly and tokenization is the way to get there.
Yes, and finally, before I let you go, I think 2026 has also been the year where we're hearing about potential regulations regarding artificial intelligence as well as prediction markets and given some of the volatility we have seen from the conflict in the Middle East, it has really given us an idea of what the retail demand looks like, whether we're talking about asset classes that are regulated or some that we're actually waiting for in terms of. guidance.
So what do you think the future of trading will actually look like?
Yes, so I think I'm really happy to be at the exchange and sort of like bare days and down days because it's the days of building and you know when I look at screens and I hear Bitcoin crashing to $60,000 in 2026, that was unimaginable when I was looking at the screen at $600 a decade ago for Bitcoin.
So we're already, I think at a very Good level, but certainly the markets are correcting and what I'm seeing is there's a lot of money is being shifted away from AI infrastructure and the capital markets are freeing up and they are investing into capital markets infrastructure.
So AI money is shifting the speculative money from Bitcoin and crypto assets are also shifting away towards more infrastructure investment like tokenization because that has long term value and some of the crypto assets.
Bitcoin don't.
So that's what I'm seeing.
Yes, and very quickly we have about 60 seconds here.
So what will the leaders as well as laggards look like when we're talking about the infrastructure side?
Yes, I'm biased on it, but open assets is one of the leaders.
The leaders will have full tool sets to compress the value chain and remove 7 out of 10 intermediaries from the process.
So leaders will be.
Infrastructure providers.
This is the decade of American infrastructure, and Open Assets is one of the companies that's driving digital infrastructures behind the largest exchanges in the world like ICE, behind the largest stablecoins in the world like Tether, and so the winners will be creating more access to the world and more access to.
The round quarter quadrillion dollar global capital markets and so not builders, not speculators, digital infrastructure, not coins.
That's what 2026 will look like.
Well Gavor, I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for joining us here at the New York Stock Exchange and thank you so much for sharing your perspective.
Thank you.
Thank you.
