Full transcript: Cole Kennelly on London Real
3:20 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Cole Kennelly, the entrepreneur, web three expert, and crypto finance pioneer. You are the founder and CEO of Volmex, the leading platform for analyzing and trading crypto market volatility and the team behind the first volatility indices for both Bitcoin and Etherium. You believe the volatility is the lifeblood of trading, not something to fear, but a force to harness and understand. You said that in traditional markets, volatility is an entire asset class, yet in crypto, it remains largely untapped. Vommex aims to change all that by giving individuals and institutions the tools to analyze, hedge, and trade volatility with the same sophistication as that in legacy finance.
4:04 Ultimately, you believe that as crypto matures into a global financial layer, volatility products won’t just be useful, they’ll be essential. With Vommex, you’re building the infrastructure to navigate and unlock a new frontier in digital asset markets. Cole, welcome to London Real in Dubai.
4:20 Cole Kennelly: Thanks for having me, Brian. Great to be here.
4:23 Brian Rose: Great to have you.
4:24 You know, I want to start by saying that Volmex is one of our portfolio companies here at London Real Ventures, the world’s first media powered investment firm, where our mission is to transform the world by investing in cutting edge Web 3 and AI companies while giving our partners marketing exposure across the London Real Media platforms and academies. We heighten awareness, create customers and build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network coal. Super excited to be part of this journey with you.
4:47 So let’s jump in. What is Volmex?
4:49 Cole Kennelly: Again, really great to be here. Thanks for having me. So Volmex is the first is Volmex Labs is a company which builds the first Bitcoin Etherium Solana implied volatility indices in the US equity market. The VIX index is ubiquitous financial media indicator that tracks fear in in the US equity markets. We’ve built a very similar index for the crypto market that tracks fear in the crypto markets for Bitcoin, Etherium, Solana.
5:17 We have the first tradable perpetual future product on this index in collaboration with Bifinex, which is a sister company of Tether. And we have other indices in our in our wheelhouse, including the Volmex prime rate index family, which track defy lending rates, funding rates and a mix of both. And so we are an index conglomerate that builds the leading ball indices for Bitcoin, Etherium, Solana rates indices and and soon more. Our indices have been featured in Coindesk, The Block, Moody’s, and and much more, and we’re just getting started.
5:45 Brian Rose: And if I go on to like coin market cap right now, which is probably one of the most popular sites for tracking prices and I drill in boom, your indices are there. I mean, these are like industry standard. When people want to know what’s going on, they look at your indices and it’s not simple to create an index. You know, it’s something that you really have that proprietary technology to create that and maintain it. And you guys are really the gold standard.
6:09 Cole Kennelly: Absolutely.
6:10 If you go to trading view and you search for Bitcoin implied, Etherium implied, Solana implied, we’re the top result. So that’s based on keyword searches. And so we’re really proud of that. That’s been a major partnership for us to get on trading View a couple years back and really builds, you know, the standard, as you say, for Bitcoin Vol, Etherium Vol indices. If you go to coin market cap, we have a whole section in the mobile app that features Volmax. We’re integrated in their fear and greed index. We’re one of the five components of that in the other, you know, social media and other other things they use. And then we also are featured in the Coin Market web app. And so there’s a whole section on Volmax and you can see the fear and greed as well there.
6:46 And so, yeah, we have a bunch of integrations in the pipeline. You know, we’d like to be on on Bloomberg and and things like Refinitiv and, you know, really exciting progress we’ve built, you know, progress we’ve made. And you know, we have built a really solid foundation that’s kind of at this inflection point where, you know, we’re really about to cross the chasm and then kind of, you know, further materialize this, you know, volatility index and and rates index standard that we’ve built.
7:10 Brian Rose: You mentioned Bloomberg, you’re also based in New York City and we’re also at a time where obviously Black Rocks doing massive volumes of the futures. They’re also putting things on chain with RW as and securities. And you have experience in that traditional financial markets and now you’re talking about bringing these volatility indices off of like a coin market cap and into a Bloomberg. I mean, this is a pretty exciting time and it seems like you’re the guy to do it because you’re not just a Web three guy. Yeah.
7:37 Cole Kennelly: So I’ve been following the options market my entire life. My dad actually works at AUS Equity options exchange and I spent about 30 years working at a couple different U.S. equity options exchanges. And so my entire life followed of all products options. I’ve been working in crypto startups for about 6 years. And so I was a second employee, first business hire at a staking company that’s now part of Kraken. And so, you know, I’ve experienced in the tratify markets.
7:59 I studied finance and economics and mentioned my dad works in the US equity industry as well as, you know, crypto startups. And so our team comes from a number of other companies, including IMC trading, which is one of the biggest and fastest option market making of firms in the in the US equity market. My colleague KG is a PhD. We have a number of other colleagues who’ve worked at companies like Lyra, Derive Consensus and others and so the team is is world class and we’re really proud of what we’ve built.
8:27 Brian Rose: Do you ever like look back and say, wow, this timing seems, you know, uncannily perfect, you know, because right as now the crypto markets getting big, it’s also being adopted by trad Fi and you guys are right there.
8:38 Cole Kennelly: Timing is great, the team is great, the products great. And so it’s kind of a confluence of of different factors, which really have propelled, you know, be Viv and the Volmex indices to, you know, continued new heights. And so we’re really excited about what we’ve built. And yeah, definitely, I think it, as you said, you know, the BlackRock ETF options have been very prolific in the last couple of months.
8:58 They’re actually about 55% of Derabit, the the largest offshore options exchange. And so the market’s evolving. The market structure is evolving. It’s a really, really exciting time in crypto and the derivatives landscape is is transforming.
9:12 Brian Rose: Let’s talk about volatility indexes and implied volatility.
9:16 That’s something a lot of people don’t understand, but it’s such an important marker in traditional financial markets and on Wall Street. And I was wondering, how do you try to explain to people what implied volatility is? Because like you said, it really kind of tracks the fear in the market, which is something everybody wants to know, and it’s something that is in crypto. There’s a lot of fear and a lot of greed. So how do you start having that conversations explain to people what it is and why they need to be watching it?
9:43 Cole Kennelly: So the B Viv index and the you know, we have a number of other indices around the B Viv index, the the term entire term structure, but the core B Viv index is a 30 day implied volatility index, very analogous to the VIX index in the US equity market. And so you know, B Viv basically uses order book options data to price this, you know, 30 day implied Vol index, it’s looking out 30 days and giving you an expectation of how volatile the market is going to be over the next 30 days. And so the B of index is effectively how much the market is going to move.
10:16 You can get the implied, you know, standard deviation move from this implied move over the next day or seven days or 30 days from our, our different indices. And so basically, you know, you know, when the, when the market is very fearful, the B of index tends to always spike. So it’s a very good tool for diversification and hedging the products that are linked to it. I’m also very powerful indicator, you know, that’s the tracked on Trading view and Mark Cap and the Block and others. And so really it’s this look into the future of the crypto market, the future price movements and expected volatility.
10:48 And so the VIX index that’s earned its nickname, the Fear Index in the US equity market, the Viv index has a very similar property, although crypto Vol is a little bit different. When the market is also bullish, it can also see, you know, positive spot Vol correlation, so very negatively correlated in times of fear, but also potentially positively correlated in times of greed. And so crypto markets moving around a lot or the mark is expected to move around around a lot. The B of index tends to to, you know, to increase. Interesting.
11:21 Brian Rose: And number wise, what’s the kind of range that that it’s usually in the B Viv? Is it kind of like, I mean I guess is it floored at 0? Does it go up to like 120? And how does that compare with say an equity index volatility wise?
11:36 Cole Kennelly: Yeah, So B Viv is currently about 50. It actually made a low from the last in the since July of 2024 is a recent low.
11:44 But you know, in the recent market movements where you know a couple months back, the market saw some bearish price action be the you know, spike to to 80 or so. And so I believe in the FTX crash was around the time we first started publishing this new methodology, it spiked to I think 120 or so. And so in times of fear you might see it, you know, above 80 or even 100 and then you know it has a very persistent mean reversion tendency, right. So when the market that is kind of calming down after these big moves, you can see it come back to sort of some long term, medium term, short term meet. And so it is a very great indicator for understanding expected of all in the market.
12:24 But yeah, you can think unless crypto market blows up and goes to to zero and and just disappears entirely, it can never really go to zero. It’s kind of always going to mean revert to some sort of mean. And so it’s a very unique asset. It’s different from, you know, Bitcoin itself or Ethereum or Solana. It’s has some different properties.
12:43 Brian Rose: That’s very cool. And the VIX index, when you’re looking at just equities, that’s significantly lower, right? What kind of numbers are usually on that?
12:51 Cole Kennelly: So the VIX, you know, is, is typically around, you know, it seems to be 1520, you know, in times of, you know, macro uncertainty with tariff funds or any things like that, it’s gone up to, you know, 2530, even even 50 in the in the last, you know, last month or so, which is, you know, one of the biggest moves in the VIX history. And so you can think of the crypto crypto market, as you know, juxtaposing B Viv and VIX is substantially more volatile, right?
13:16 So BV is at 506070, VIX is at 20. You can say it’s, you know, multiples more volatile. And we also have the EVIV index, which is the Etherium 30 day implied Vol index. The EVIV index is, you know, there’s a pretty large delta between the BV and EVIV index. So BEVIV 50 right now, I believe is at, you know, 7570.
13:37 And so EVIV Ethereum is substantially more volatile than Bitcoin. And then we actually have a Solana 14 day implied Vol index that is currently around, I think 100. And so we do have a bunch of other, you know, indices in the B Viv Eva SO family. We have AB Viv one day, just like there’s a bit of a VIX one day index. And so there’s a lot of stuff you can do with our indices. And we’ve been finding, you know, a lot of product market fit a lot of traders, investors across retail institutional segments of the market are very interested in, you know, using the product.
14:09 Brian Rose: And so, yeah, so with the volatility that you’re not betting of where it’s going to go up or down, you’re basically buying it because you think the volatility is going to increase.
14:18 Cole Kennelly: Yes. I mean, if you’re using the derivatives that are linked to Be Viv, you think that there’s going to be a big move in the market. Maybe you think that the market’s uncertain with tariff uncertainty, something like this even might go from 50 to 80. And so the Be Viv linked derivatives can be used to hedge, you know, the next couple weeks or next couple of days of, of price action. And so, you know, if you’re using it for speculation, that’s for, you know, hedging, That’s my, that may be how you’re using it.
14:45 You can also use it in a speculative way with various strategies. If it sees a big move up, there’s going to be some sort of meaner version. You could, you know, play the the meaner version. Maybe it goes back to the, you know, 50 after the 80 move. And so it’s a very versatile product.
14:58 It can be used as an indicator. It can be used for diversifying and hedging. It can also be used for speculation and various strategies and so very unique product with very unique tendencies that are, you know, not found in normal spot crypto assets.
15:11 Brian Rose: I think your last point is really important for people to understand because, well, I started on Wall Street in 1993 and I was trading a fixed income book, a derivatives book. It was a swap book, and all I looked at all day was government bonds yields and these Libor curve yields.
15:26 But we would watch the VIX, which was wild because the VIX was telling about the volatility of the stock market, which had nothing really to do with what we were doing. But we always kept our eye on it because it was always telling us kind of what the global market was doing and how that ultimately might affect even fixed income. And so it’s really an incredible metric. It’s a unique metric because we really didn’t have options priced on exchanges and probably until the late 70s, eighties and then implied volatility. It’s fairly new, newish concept, I would say in financial markets, but really, really powerful. And like you said, it does so many different things. I actually didn’t know it was part of the Fear and Greed index and that’s why.
16:09 Cole Kennelly: The aspects of it. Interesting. I guess the fear, fear and greed index is something that’s been, you know, kind of popularized in the crypto market. There’s kind of a legacy version and we’ve actually helped Quimark Cap develop this third version of it, which uses B Viv, which is we think very a great, you know, aspect to to to be creating something like this.
16:28 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s super cool.
16:29 So Bitcoin volatility is here, Ethereum will be higher, Solana will be higher. Do you have plans to introduce other crypto volatility indices? Or at least you probably need them in the in the biggest, deepest markets for that to make sense?
16:44 Cole Kennelly: Yeah. So we would love to have crypt, you know, Vol indices on the leading crypto assets, you know, things like AVAX, things like Ripple. One prerequisite is we need crypto options, deep and liquid market.
16:56 So things like Derabit OK exchanges like Derabit OK X are integrated in the BEVIV index, you know methodology. And so as these exchanges like Derabit, OK X support more, you know pairs and and you know options markets, we will definitely look to to integrating these type of things.
17:11 Brian Rose: OK, that’s fantastic. Really interesting. I think people need to take a deep dive on that and anybody in crypto needs to keep your eye on on these things where I’d say most people in crypto are just following the price of Bitcoin. And it’s interesting you say coal is that I watch Bitcoin and Ethereum prices all the time, but I would not have guessed that Ethereum was 30 points higher on a Volt index. You know, because there’s a human brain, you can’t really look at Vol.
17:36 It’s hard to really understand Vol. I can tell you what the price of Bitcoin is. I can tell you if it seems like it’s moving, but I can’t kind of inherently tell you that that Vol is is more or less.
17:46 Cole Kennelly: It’s intuitive, right, because ETH is a smaller asset, regardless of, you know, sort of the technology, you know, it’s a smaller asset, it takes less amount of money to move it around. And so it makes sense that the delta, the there’s actually a bit of a spread between Eva the Etherium 30 day Vol and Viv Bitcoin 30 day Vol.
18:03 Actually, when the Bitcoin ETF approvals were going on, that spread narrowed and actually Bitcoin Vol flipped Ethereum Vault. And so there’s been some market microstructure things to pay attention to regarding this spread. But yeah, it’s interesting. Typically it makes sense that EVIV actually is a bit above EVIV and SVIV. Solana implied Evol above EVIV, so yeah.
18:26 Brian Rose: What’s it like when you go out, start starting to talk to financial institutions like the Goldman Sachs of the world’s or the S&P 5 hundreds of the world and you start to explain kind of what you’re doing in crypto?
18:40 Is it in some ways, Cole, is it easier talking to them because they have a history of understanding that volatility is important in markets? Or are they also so new to the web three species that you have to kind of educate them?
18:52 Cole Kennelly: I think with the introduction of things like the IVID options and, you know, the new admin in the US that’s pretty, you know, favorable to crypto, you know, the tone is kind of changed with big financial institutions. They’re all trying to figure it out, figure out what can be their their big crypto products if they don’t already have them. And so it feels like there’s a very strong reception to just crypto in general, but also what we’re doing in Volmex. On the other hand, I mean, anyone who’s heard of the VIX index and has heard of Bitcoin should understand what we’re doing at Volmex, right?
19:24 I mean, we have other indices, but in terms of BEVIV, it makes sense to them if they have heard of this concept of implied volatility, expected volatility as well as, you know, the Bitcoin price. And then, you know, go to some of our, you know, tradable products like the Bifinex BIF perp. If you’ve heard of, you know, Binance and you know, OK, X and buy bit, you know this, this concept of a Bitcoin Vol index perp is very intuitive as well. And so we find that, you know, Tratify firms are, you know, traditional finance in the US and, and broadly are very receptive to, to what we’re doing in Volmex, but also retail and, and protail traders. And so it’s a very versatile product in terms of the the the users that it serves, traders, investors across retail, institutional, protail segments.
21:05 Brian Rose: Now this might be a naive question, but what’s to stop someone from copying your index? You know, what’s to stop someone from creating their own index? And what gives you kind of a Moat? Or also what is your proprietary technology or or algorithms and actually creating that index? It sounds like it’s much more complicated than you know, just getting the implied Vol of a 30 day option.
21:32 Cole Kennelly: So we have a number of integrations which really helped build a Moat.
21:37 So we have Trading View, Coin market Cap, bit, Fenix, the block has our data on there and we have a number of other exchanges that are in our pipeline. And so I think it really comes down to first mover advantage, integrations, mindshare. You know, we’re constantly mentioned by Coin Desk. You know, in the last month or month and a half, we’ve been featured in Coin Desk two or three times organically. We’re just in the block yesterday, all organic. We don’t work with any PR firms.
22:01 Fundstrat, which is, you know, Tom Lee’s firm that started covering Bitcoin on CNBC at 5000, recently published a letter, you know, an e-mail about about B Viv and I made a video. You know, they’ve done this twice recently. And so we’re finding that, you know, there’s a big Moat that we’ve built around the integrations and the first mover advantage. Now we have a couple of, you know, things in our back pocket, you know, you know, IP wise, but I think it really comes down to first mover advantage integrations and then liquidity begets liquidity, right. So as we have more products coming online, as we work with some of these bigger exchanges, these, you know, top five top 10 exchanges and get futures and other tradable products listed there, you know, momentum will just kind of get more and more momentum.
22:44 And you know, it’s kind of, you know, take it from there. And so we have some, you know, we it really, you know, companies don’t win because they have trademarks or patents, while we do value that they they win because the team and the product is superior, right. And so we’re focused on out executing moving faster than, you know, tratify incumbents, you know, CFI, you know, incumbents and you know kind of just, you know, being the the best and best product and that’s what we’ve done. OK.
23:09 Brian Rose: And based on that, what are your next 12 months look like? Like what are the big milestones you have to hit to go where you want to go with ball mix?
23:17 Cole Kennelly: I think the big thing for us is getting listed on a lot of the bigger exchanges in terms of having AB Viv future contract B Viv options contracts. And so, you know, usual suspects, you know, come to mind in the crypto market. And so getting listed on some of these bigger exchanges, making this really ubiquitous of all index standard that many different exchanges support.
23:37 And, and it’s, you know, widely adopted. And so being the most liquid and, you know, most widely adopted Volindex product, which we we’ve done so far, but also being very widely adopted in terms of financial media continuing to accelerate, you know, the, the coverage that we’re already getting from Coindesk, the block and others, you know, getting on, on Bloomberg, getting on, you know, CNBC and Reuters. And so really just taking this to the next level, we so the short answer is to keep doing what we’re doing, but just do more of it and accelerate, you know, the B Viv index. And also we have these rates indices which we can talk more about, which track things like defy lending rates and funding rates.
24:13 And so, you know, we’ve built this sort of VIX index standard for the crypto market in so far as B Viv and E Viv and S Viv, but also, you know, getting into more, you know, becoming like an index conglomerate for the crypto space that has the leading Vol index franchise, but also this leading rates index franchise that can allow, you know, trading desks and and exchanges to list, you know, cool race products. And so really excited about the potential of the rates indices. And so, and then also another big thing is kind of making a push into the US market, right? A lot of these products are perpetual, they’re offshore, you know, the I bet options are kind of changing the market structure.
24:52 We think that there’s a major opportunity to kind of to you enter the US market in a material way.
24:58 Brian Rose: OK. I want to get to the funding that sees for sure. But you mentioned you know I bit and some of these ETFs now you can trade options on the ETFs. Well, how would you say overall as the adoption going from traditional finance into crypto and maybe specifically through the ETFs on Bitcoin, the ETFs on Ethereum, is it going as fast as you thought it would go? Do you think it’s going to continue to pick up speed? What other options do you see, sorry, ETF’s do you see coming in the future, you know, whether it’s Ripple or Solana or the rest.
25:29 And do you think it’s it’s just going to be much, much, much bigger than it is now?
25:35 Cole Kennelly: So the Bitcoin ETF, Bitcoin ETF’s have been very successful. The I bit, the Fidelity ETF, the BlackRock ETF, the Fidelity ETF, the Grayscale ETF. Now there’s options on, on the big the a couple of them specifically I bit, so the I bid options are now about 55% of open interest on derivate. And so since November, they’ve grown prolifically and they’ve become very, you know, widely traded and very large as compared to the offshore crypto venues. And so I think that’s, that’s really interesting. These are, you know, now able to be traded on places like Robin Hood, Interactive Brokers, Fidelity, Schwab. And so the traditional finance pipes and rails are now catering to crypto derivatives.
26:20 And so, you know, I think since the and Speaking of the spot ETF growth, I mean, since the sort of tariff reversal a couple weeks back, I think there’s been 3 or 4 billion of inflows into the BlackRock ET FS. And so, and just broad broadly, but BlackRock is being the biggest 1. And so, you know, I think there is sort of a very material, you know, ETF inflows, you know, since the launch of the product, I think there’s, you know, there’s, there’s 10s of billions of dollars that have entered the products.
26:48 These I bid options and, and I bid ETF’s and others, but it’s only accelerating and it’s, it’s getting a lot bigger. So I bid options are very big. It’s really very interesting that it’s a winner take most or winner take all market. The other ETF options are are not doing nearly as well as I bid. And so actually, I think last week and we’ve been publishing regular research about the I bid options growth, how it maps to terabit and the global crypto options market. It’s very interesting.
27:17 It’s moving quite quickly. And, you know, if it keeps up this clip, you know, it could surpass, you know, you know, these offshore exchanges at some point in the coming, you know, weeks, months or months and, you know, next year or two.
27:28 Brian Rose: OK. I didn’t know that it grown so fast. You know, I guess when you put a big brand behind that and you’re educating your clients, you can grab a big market share. I guess this black.
27:37 That’s what BlackRock is doing here.
27:39 Cole Kennelly: Yeah, I mean basically Robin Hood Interactive Broker, Schwab, these option brokers have tons of users, right. Interactive Brokers is very famous and the others I mentioned ultimately disseminating these products across these venues, which have prolific and massive user bases is just grows at an exponential pace, right. And so the Ocx’s, the Binance’s, the database of the world have done amazing work. But it’s really interesting to see how the US, you know, capital markets infrastructure is now adopting crypto and making it a really big thing, you know, for for traders and investors.
28:16 And so if you’re AUS retail investor, if you’re AUS institution that you know, either has a mandate or just doesn’t have the access to, you know, offshore products, you know, these Ibid options represent a way to trade crypto, Vol crypto, you know, options in AUS regulatory regulated, you know, product that is accessible, it’s compliant, it’s transparent, you know, it’s backed by clearing houses, backed by big, you know, institutions. And so it’s a strong counterparty, it’s accessible things. Things are only going to accelerate. It’s amazing it’s happening so fast.
28:52 Brian Rose: Talk to me about these.
28:53 You know, the prime rate indices and and explain what they are maybe like as if we’re five year olds to people because they’re really important. But it’s a concept that doesn’t really exist in crypto, I would say.
29:05 Cole Kennelly: So rates and you know interest rate products are the big whopper for financial institutions, right? They trade more than equities markets, more than commodities markets. And so it was very strange that we noticed that there was no kind of Libor so for ask index in the crypto market, right. So Libor was the famous, you know, London interbank, you know, rate index.
29:26 And why would you explain Libor to a crypto person? Because they probably wouldn’t even know what that is. It’s it’s basically where you can borrow or lend money in a in a certain term right or an asset in a certain term right. Basically a benchmark for for lending and so you can price credit against Libor and say, OK, Brian is a strong counterparty, I’m going to lend to him at Libor +5 or. And now after there was a, you know, a problem with Libor, there’s a new index that SOFR, which is SOFR index, which has become sort of the the new standard.
29:56 And so you know, they’ll say I’ll lend to Brian at SOFR plus +5 or silver. +2 and so base rate and then that +5 indicates my kind of credit risk on top of that. But it gives you this base lending rate that’s very normal in finance, but kind of doesn’t exist in crypto because crypto was born of assets and kind of asset prices. Yeah. So, you know, we’ve built the VIX index standard for Bitcoin. We realized we had this massive distribution insofar as we’re on trading viewpoint market cap.
30:22 We, we talked to some users about, you know, just in casual conversations last year and you know, they were like, hey, you know, I’m pricing credit for my users and I’m basing it on SOFR. And they were like, you know, there’s a big, you know, big trading desk and they’re like, well, SOFR is actually not a crypto thing. So this is a little bit clunky. And you’re like, well, we could probably solve that with a product we build. And so we set out to build the Volmex prime rate indices, which are a family of 6 indices right now. We’re actually, you know, some alpha are going to launch the Solana, a couple of Solana indices for AVPR soon. And basically the Volmex prime rate indices track the cost of, you know, cost of capital in in the crypto market. And so the core of these is the Volmex Bitcoin Defy lending rate index, which basically tracks the cost to borrow stable coins on Defy venues versus the cost of lending. And so it’s basically the cost to borrow stables against your Bitcoin.
31:15 And and so, you know, it’s a really good benchmark index for like an OTC lending desk to say, OK, I’m going to land against the BDLR plus three to to Brian or, you know, there’s exchanges actually have come to us and said we want to list futures on this. And So what started as sort of an OTC lending benchmark idea actually has evolved into sort of a tradable product that should soon be coming to the market. And so we have the Defy lending rate index, then we have the funding rate entities which track funding rate entities, which track funding rates in C5 space across OKX and Durabit and soon more.
31:49 And so. And then we have a third index called the Volmex prime rate index, which kind of weights these two former Defy lending rate and the funding rate index at 50%. And so we have Defy Lending Rate Index, Funding Rate Index and Volmex Prime Rate Index, which you know, are all these interest rate, you know, rates benchmarks for the crypto space, which are truly unprecedented.
32:09 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s very interesting. What would those look like?
32:12 Like if I went in to look at say libel rates and look at those compared to say, you know, a BTC funding rate, you know, what kind of what kind of numbers would those look like? What would that feel like? Are they significantly lower or higher? And and, and maybe I’ll ask why or what does that imply about the market?
32:31 Cole Kennelly: Well, so I, I need to to pull up a couple, you know, metrics to, to check exactly, but the defy lending rate index is currently about 4.3%. And so that’s basically the delta between borrowing your stable coins on an Ave.
32:44 Morpho compound sort of weighted average across those venues versus deposit, you know, lending your Bitcoin. And so I do need to double check what the ETH defy lending rate is, but these are a bit higher than the stratify space.
32:58 Brian Rose: Okay. And that number in general, what does that tell me? Like if that 4.3% went to zero or it went up to 10%, kind of tells me kind of like the demand and the supplies of those assets relative to each other.
33:10 Cole Kennelly: Kind of shows you the the cost to borrow stable coins in crypto. And so in previous bull cycles, you know, you’ve noticed that, you know, when the market gets very bullish, there’s a very strong demand for leverage. And so effectively this rate can increase when the market is highly levered. And so it’s kind of the the cost to borrow the cost of capital in the ecosystem. And so it’s a very good proxy for how much demand there is for leverage. And so we’ve actually just started publishing these in production a couple of months back. And so they’ll be, you know, we can run some back tests and they’ll be also just more historical data building up. But generally these give you sort of a benchmark of where the market set in terms of, you know, how, you know, much demand there is for leverage in the system. And so as there’s more and more track record, I think this will be, you know, we can obviously, you know, backfill and back test data and stuff, but I historical calculation. But I think this will be a very powerful metric for traders, investors that want to understand the cost to borrow stable coins relative to what it was three months ago and you know, pricing, you know, locking in sort of fixed rate, you know, structures.
34:17 And I think it’s a very powerful precedent, a very powerful primitive.
34:21 Brian Rose: Yeah, so it’s fascinating. Do you think one day, Cole, it might be part of the Fear and Greed index because it tells us kind of so much about what people are thinking might come, you know?
34:32 Cole Kennelly: It’s an interesting question. We developed the Viv index and it was integrated into Fear and Greed index before these defy lining rate indexes and the Volmex prime rate family was live, but would be interesting to explore that.
34:45 Brian Rose: I think that’s a good idea. I haven’t thought about that actually. And again, a lot of us remember back in 21 when D5 was big, you know, you could, you could lend out your stable coins for 8%. And it was the party, the line at the party when you were going to ask people about crypto, like how much money do you get in your savings account? I get like at that time it was like 1% or 2%.
35:04 And I will guess what with crypto, you can get 8. And that would get people’s attention and be like, hey, what’s going on here now that kind of collapse when the crypto collapse. But maybe that gives people a kind of an interesting example of why your index is really important. And it’s something that it’s really hard to track, like I don’t know, I know a lot of traders in crypto and a lot of whales and influencers. And not once have they come to me and said, Brian, did you see the lending rates on stables is going up or down?
35:30 Like they’re just not using that, but they really could use it.
35:34 Cole Kennelly: So they’re on trading view now. You can search BDLRVBVPRBFR on on tradingview.com which has 10s of millions of users and add them to your watch list. And so you know, we’re finding a lot of people are interested in this. They should be on some more platforms soon. And as mentioned, they should be tradable at some point. And so you know the CME has a very active Sofer market, right? You can trade futures on the Sofer index, which is the tratifies equivalent of this type of product. The Nyze also has a very active Sofer market or ICE. And so we think there’s going to be an entire complex of of rates products built around the Volmex prime rate index family, the BDOR and the other indices.
36:13 And this is a very powerful idea and could be a massive franchise for Volmex.
36:18 Brian Rose: I think it will be, you know, when I got to that swap book of Bankers Trust in 93, I was trading Chicago American Tile Exchange futures on Libor. And they had evolved from a three month Libor contract to, you know, 1-3 months forward to six months, nine months. And then after 10 years. And we used to trade these individual 40 different, you know, futures contracts.
36:39 And it created this whole yield curve of borrowing and lending rates, you know, based on Libor. And it was an integral part of most of the bank’s business. Like you said, people understand fixed income is 10X bigger, I think maybe roughly than some of the other markets. So yeah, this on Bitcoin, this is what institutions want and need,
36:58 Cole Kennelly: Yeah. I totally agree. I think that’s a really interesting experience. You know, having traded, you know, Libor futures, you know, it’s interesting the crypto credit market kind of evolved a lot from the last cycle, right?
37:10 So last cycle there was 6, you know, entities like Block Fi and Genesis, which eventually, inevitably had problems when, you know, the sort of black box for lending sort of had, you know, insolvencies and whatnot. And so now D Phi, you know, makes it, you know, so that, you know, you can automate that lending process. And actually D Phi is kind of one of the first sectors to like fully flip the, you know, lending business in C Phi. But I think with the, you know, the introduction of folks like, you know, Cantor Fitzgerald, who’s expressed interest in building a Bitcoin lending business and maybe some of the other, you know, GSIBS, you know, big banks, you know, as a crypto credit market comes back in the, you know, lending is more prevalent in crypto.
37:49 I think the BVPR family will find a lot of, you know, a lot of users and, you know, folks that want to use it as a benchmark, folks that want to build structured products and structures off of it, tradable products on exchanges, you know, just track it on trading view or hopefully soon Bloomberg and others. And so, yeah, I think it’s it’s it’s really powerful idea. And you know, so we’re really excited to have to be this kind of, you know, index conglomerate that has the leading Vol index franchise in crypto, but also this leading emerging rates index franchise and really excited about where we’re headed.
38:21 Brian Rose: You know, you mentioned Cantor and now we’ve got, you know, Howard Lutnick, former Cantor, I guess in the White House. You see the Trump administration. We see two stable coin acts. We see the SEC new chairman, a lot of lawsuits being dropped. You’ve been in the states developing ball Max in a completely different administration. What’s that change been like?
38:40 How does it feel for you? Do you remain super bullish kind of like you mentioned you know earlier or how do you feel about the future?
38:48 Cole Kennelly: So I, I really believe in, in crypto long term and always have been, you know, very bullish on crypto. So I’ll caveat that, you know, I’m, I’m a true believer in, in, you know, what this tech can offer for the world and, and, you know, the products that are, you know, built with crypto, But there’s been a very visible sentiment shift, I think in the US with the new administration.
39:09 Now the Bitcoin price is slightly lower than it was, you know, in January, January 20th. But I think that, you know, the Biden administration was very hostile to its crypto and obviously the Trump administration is not perfect and it’s still just getting started, but is a lot more favorable to crypto entrepreneurs now. That’s not, you know, you know, other other industries might feel like the tariffs might, you know, have negative, you know, externalities on their business. And that might be very true.
39:37 And, you know, I feel bad about that. And we’ll see what happens and how it plays out a long term. I think it’s too early to tell or too early to, you know, feel feel bad about it. But I think it’s been positive for crypto. Crypto was in, you know, I was just talking to my colleague earlier about this.
39:52 You know, in the last administration there was basically a law fair against, you know, the crypto companies Coinbase, one of the best actors that invests the most in compliance and. You know, as regulated as public company. They had various lawsuits. Kraken, Robin Hood, Solana, you know, Gemini, all these different crypto actors, you know, crypto companies that are above board, had, you know, investigations, lawsuits, Uniswap, you know, the list goes on and on. And so the Biden administration just full stop was extremely adversarial to crypto.
41:22 And I think regardless of, you know, Trump, you know, what’s going on so far with, you know, tariffs and some uncertainties and whatnot, it’s a very visible, you know, positive development for crypto. And I’m, I’m quite excited about it. So I think the next couple of years should be quite fruitful for crypto. And, you know, I, I, I hope that there’s no more sort of adversarial administrations.
41:43 Brian Rose: Yeah, me too.
41:44 It’s been a just amazing to watch. And I think one day we’ll come tell our grandkids about what it was like to live in an administration that was just really not very helpful and antagonistic versus this administration with so many players in that White House that are that only asset, believe in the asset and are building on the asset. Not to mention, you know, World Livery Financial that the Trump family kind of runs are super active in it. Not to mention the meme coins.
42:08 I mean, you know, they’re all in on this. And I think we’re going to see tons of progress. You know, on the back of that. Talk to me about a token. Does Vomax need your own token? And if so, how does that help the company? How do you think about that?
42:23 Because it’s a really important decision for a company to make because a lot of companies can be made, you know, make or be a break based on the token and the execution.
42:32 Cole Kennelly: So we have a real tangible business. You know, we haven’t announced or you know, any official plans for a token, but we will always be very careful about balancing a potential token with the core business, right? Because while a token can supercharge your brand, it’s also in a lot of cases for crypto companies, it’s just purely A liability. And so we think that, you know, launching A token could supercharge the brand in the way that the Binance brand has been supercharged by the BNB token.
42:59 But also there’s for every BNB, there’s a graveyard of 1000 other, you know, projects and tokens that, you know, had a bad outcome. And so for now, we’re just focused on growing, you know, the integrations getting listed on some of the bigger exchanges. And I think that I am a true believer as mentioned in, you know, the last question, you know, last point in crypto. I think that, you know, crypto economics can really, and you know, the technology can, you know, it’s very powerful. It can align, you know, users, supercharged brands. And so I think that it could be a good conduit for this next, you know, continued phase of growth. But we need to be very careful about the execution and we have a lot to lose, right?
43:39 We’ve been working on this for about four years. We’ve built a tremendous brand up and so we’d rather just not launch a token than do a token badly. And so it’s something that we share more on later.
43:49 Brian Rose: Isn’t it interesting how a token can be a real liability? And you know, four years ago in the last cycle, we would probably be shocked for someone to tell you that because we would see, you know, the unit swaps and the AVEs and it was just all value add. But now you see a bad token launch bring down sometimes a great business with cash flow and so but a poor token launch can make it to where no one wants to touch it, you know?
44:12 Cole Kennelly: Yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting. I think the playbook’s still being written. I think you’ll see a lot of, you know, in the next two, 5-10 years, we’ll see real businesses that launch tokens. And there’s kind of a playbook to, you know, use the token in a compliant way to, to grow the business, but also align the users.
44:29 And there’s some sort of, you know, equity token structure. But I think companies, you know, it’s not really in my, in my sector, but I think you know, pump fun is really interesting, right? They’re making a tremendous amount of revenue. They haven’t launched A token yet. Maybe if they launched A token, it could have went badly. I’m sure maybe they’ll launch a token in the future. I don’t have any information, but I suspect they could. And so they’re being very careful. And so they, if they launched A token the wrong way, they could tip the balance or their, you know, the big business they have.
45:01 And so I think this is the right way to sort of think about it. Be very careful. Now, a lot of crypto folks always, you know, when token and how token or but I think that the smarter entrepreneurs in the space, the more long term minded folks like us at Vomax are very careful about how we think about that. And you know, it’s, it’s nothing to sort of rush.
45:22 Brian Rose: We just had a CEO pitch us on our live call and he’d come from like a Web 2 background and had a couple of successful Web 2 exits.
45:29 And they’re building a company that’s kind of in Web three infrastructure that’s keeping an eye of being acquired by maybe a centralized exchange or maybe even a Google or a big player. And he just said, we’ve decided not to do a token. And we’ve been told by some of the big people like the Googles of the world that, you know, they just don’t want to deal with that token. And what do they do? How do they deal with the legacy?
45:50 How do they, you know, get rid of it, that kind of thing. And so they were really holding on it. And I just never heard that before, you know?
45:58 Cole Kennelly: Yeah, you know, you hear this time sometimes and from smarter crypto entrepreneurs that, you know, launching A token could hurt the prospectus of potential acquisition for a company down the road. And so I think it’s, it’s a very wise decision to be thinking like that.
46:13 But it it depends on the the outcome you’re looking for, right? I mean, some businesses, some crypto products cannot operate without a token, right? If you’re building Solana or Ethereum, these things need a token. There’s no other way about it. But, you know, if the token is potentially supplementary or complimentary to the business, you know, I think entrepreneurs should be very careful about launching A token because there’s no going back. It’s on the blockchain forever.
46:39 And you know, like you said, the Googles, the Amazons of the world, the, the Goldman Sachs’s and you know, Robin Hood’s might not want to deal with that. Although I have a hunch that in the next couple years we will see real businesses, things that maybe look like a Robin Hood or Revolute launching tokens. I mean, I have no information, but I, I think that, you know, Binance is a classic example, right? The B&B token has some utility. It’s used for the B&B blockchain. But I think more than anything, it made the Binance brand very powerful.
47:11 It made the early ICO investors in 2017 a lot of money. They became sort of evangelist for the product. And then they told their friends or family about Binance. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Binance is Binance, right? I mean, Binance crushed, you know, the very successful token launch and it’s supercharged their brand and now they’re the number one exchange in the world. And so the number one exchange in the world has a token. Now there’s the other top 20 exchanges, a bunch of them have tokens, a bunch of them are not successful. So I think that the playbook’s still being written, but I think that companies will, you know, companies and, and can leverage these, these tokens to supercharge their brand, create evangelism, create excitement.
47:54 But it’s, it’s, it’s something to be very careful about.
47:58 Brian Rose: I think it’s a wise, wise point from your founder. Yeah, it’s fascinating. Do you think that Volmex could be acquired one day? And is there a history of index companies being acquired by Triadfi?
48:10 Cole Kennelly: I don’t really know much about that. Something that, you know, maybe long term after we have a lot more partnerships, you know, we’re on Bit Fenix and but you know, we’re on some of the bigger exchanges that could, you know, be something we’re interested in. No, no plans right now, but it’s of course, that’s always a a sexy outcome for any entrepreneur. I actually worked at one of the state dot US was required by Kraken and one of the largest crypto exits to date.
48:33 And so I worked there for two years. It was her first business employee, second hire. That was a cool thing to be a part of. I saw kind of what a successful startup looks like, you know, from sort of early days to, you know, close to acquisition. And so I, I think, you know, there’s been more and more crypto exits. You know, there’s been Stripe acquiring Bridge and Ripple acquiring Hidden Rd.
48:56 I think it’s, you know, M&A and crypto is really heating up. As per your question regarding interest, you know, exits regarding industry companies. So MSCI is one of the bigger index companies there, a $42 billion public company or so. SMB Global is $140 billion public company. I would need to. There’s definitely been some acquisitions. I’m sure over the years actually Kraken had acquired a company called CF Benchmarks, which does some index stuff, but quite a bit different from Volmex.
49:29 But I think there’s definitely potential for that in the future. But it’s something that you know we’d be working towards since we’re not ready for that yet.
49:37 Brian Rose: What was that like to go through the acquisition by cracking like what’s kind of what, what’s some inside insights you can tell us of what that was? Was it, was it difficult? Were the things that stood in the way.
49:47 Cole Kennelly: So I was starting Volmex up around the same time that that process is going on. But I, my buddies worked there and I was, I played a, you know, I was kind of the, the key BD employee that signed a lot of the big partnerships and brought in a lot of stake for ETH, Solana, Cosmos, you know, all these big chains that went live back then. And so, you know, a really interesting insight from from that experience was just that, you know, in new industries like crypto, staking crypto, you know, the playbook is really being written like as you’re, you’re kind of doing it now.
50:17 Things for, you know, things like indices and licensing. There’s obviously some precedent related to that and things that you can, you know, borrow from or, you know, get inspired by, you know, the, the traditional finance industry and, and what not. But I think that, you know, the state’s business was largely a new business. It was staking on chain earning yields. You know, a lot of times it’s just purely on chain.
50:41 A lot of these companies, a lot of these customers are just, you know, whales. You might not even, you might have a contract with them. You might, you know, they might just be, you know, bound by the the crypto economic rules of the system, right? They might just be staking $50 million of Solana or, you know, $100 million of ETH. And so staked was a fast company.
51:02 You know, it was a small company. I think, you know, there was maybe, you know, for a long time, like just 10 people. And so, yeah, I mean, it was acquired for somewhere in nine figures. It depends on how you look at it, but definitely well into the 9 figures. And so it’s a cool thing to be part of the, the founders did really well.
51:20 Early team did really well. And so I’ll always, you know, carry that with me. I think it was a great thing to be a part of. Shout out to, you know, Jonathan and Tim.
51:28 Brian Rose: That’s super cool to be part of.
51:30 What’s Volmex AI and what are you doing in that space?
51:34 Cole Kennelly: Yeah. So we’ve built AAI agent that that is trained on our data and understands, you know, the Volmex indices derivatives. And so you really can ask the Volmex AI any question about Volmex indices, you know, derivatives in general, it can make charts for you. And so it’s really an AI trained on the data, on the concepts of the Volmex indices that can teach, you know, users and educate the users about our products.
52:02 And so, you know, I think one of the things about AI is you use it to do non human things and right. And so we have this, you know, it’s basically an interface where you can, you know, learn about Volmex. And so it’s, it’s kind of like a an AIBD to some extent. You know, it teaches people about the products, educates them about the products. You know, it’s, it’s kind of an extension of our team in some way.
52:23 And so it’s, it’s just basically this agent, you know, LLM, I guess that that teaches people about, you know, Volmex and, and knows specifically about our data. And so we’ve trained it on the B Viv index, the E Viv index, the S of index, the VPR in this indices. And so you can ask it things like, Hey, Volmex AI, can you create a chart of the returns in December over the last two years? Or what was the average return in January over the last two years or, you know, things like this. Or what is the delta between the difference between BVIV and EVIV over, you know, the last couple of months? And so it’s specifically trained in the Volmex data and can answer questions that, you know, things like Grok and ChatGPT would, you know, be a little bit more general with, right? Grok is actually a really good tool for learning about Volmex. You can actually ask grok, hey, what is Volmex? Give me a guide to Volmex.
53:12 You know, where can I trade Volmex, you know, products, what is VIVV, what is EVIV SVIV? And it will give you very detailed, you know, information because it’s trained on, on Twitter data and X data. And so the Volmex AI kind of just takes that a step further and makes it even more accessible. And it’s kind of a, a way to interact with our product, right? The AI is kind of the UI is what some people are saying and I do agree with that. So it’s a tool and it’s something that we’ve rolled out. It’s, you know, our core product is Viva VV, SVIV and the VPR indices.
53:44 But I think the Volmex AI represents, you know, a way to use the product. And it’s something that, you know, we’re believers in in crypto. We also believe in in AI and we actually have some cool, you know, AI indices that will will launch at some point soon. So yeah, excited.
54:02 Brian Rose: I guess that was probably my next question is what’s next from an index perspective.
54:07 I’m sure everyone asks you this. I’m sure you have a huge list. And then maybe after that, I’ll ask you, what do you think the craziest index would be? Maybe something that you you think maybe one day there’ll be an index on that. But first of all, what are next steps?
54:18 I guess you don’t want to saturate the market with too many indices, right?
54:22 Cole Kennelly: So, yeah, so great question. We have over 100 indices now. We have BVEVSVIV to our flagship indices, the prime rate in family index family. But we have a bunch of realize of all indicators and other other cool products that are on, you know, trading view.
54:37 I think we have 40 or 50 indices on trading view. You know, it’s useful to track implied versus realized, the bread and butter being the implied indices. But what’s next? We have a couple new families of indices. I got to be a little bit cagey, but we have some cool, you know, some stuff in the in the AI space we’ll share as well as a couple of things that are a little bit like more, more quantity, but are very interesting, which I can get into more later.
55:07 Yeah. So we have a couple of new index families, but I think that the broader focus right now is expanding the Beviv index into more exchanges, Beviv into different exchanges, making it more ubiquitous as a tradable product, as a widely adopted financial metric. Same with the defile lending rate of Olmecs primary index family. And so, yeah, we’re really excited about where we’re headed. I think there’s big things coming with the road map in terms of the product as well as, you know, integrations in terms of crazy indices. I mean, that’s a good question.
55:40 We, we had a joke internally. It was kind of a real, you know, idea at one point that maybe it’s something we should revisit that after the Trump token had launched, the Melania token, we should make a, a Trump index. It’s a kind of a. Crazy idea,
55:54 Brian Rose: That’s what I was thinking.
55:56 Cole Kennelly: I. Mean there’s Yeah, it would be cool to have an index of US, you know, domiciled or, you know, do US focus companies. I think the index space is going to be something that continues to permeate the crypto market in the offshore market as well as the onshore market.
56:11 You know, you asked about ETFs before and what ETFs could be coming up. I think crypto indices, you know, index products make a lot of sense for an ETF wrapper. And so, you know, people don’t want to just necessarily buy Bitcoin. Actually, a lot of people do just want to buy Bitcoin. But other people want to index the crypto space largely, right, but they don’t want to manage, you know, rebalancing, doing the research.
56:34 And so maybe like a top ten index. But to be honest, there’s not that many investable crypto assets. I think if you’re looking at the top 20, the top 50, that’s even too many. And so I think it’s a crypto market becomes more developed and more robust. We’ll see robust index products in the ETF market that kind of allow for sort of broader indexing of the crypto market. So I think ETFs are very interesting as it relates to indexing, but crypto indices will just kind of continue to sort of develop across perpetuals and options and, you know, structure products.
57:08 But to the to the original question about, you know, crazy indices that can be coming, I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of ideas we have.
57:16 Brian Rose: It’s. Interesting. When I look at polymarket, you can see obviously a lot of people want to, you know, place bets on a lot of different metrics. And it seems to me that maybe that opens up the world to indices. You know, maybe it’s a Trump index or maybe it’s, you know, probability of a rate cut index, you know, that’s a daily piece or a number of illegal immigrants in America index. I don’t know.
57:41 Do you see that as a spark that maybe there are is a demand for more of these types of products?
57:47 Cole Kennelly: That’s an interesting point that you could create indices off prediction markets. So something that’s relevant to this is I actually think that prediction markets are a really good medium for, you know, your average retail investor and trader. Technically a prediction market is a binary option, a digital option. So it’s a, you know, it settles to some, to some expiry value and it’s, it’s done.
58:10 It’s not a, you know, you can’t exercise it. It’s just sort of a binary yes or no thing. But the UX of these prediction markets, the user experience of these prediction markets are, are being, you know, dressed up in is very intuitive for, you know, your average crypto, your average investor in the equity market or so they just know calci Poly market, green button, red button, you know, 50-7 cents or, you know, 37 cents, $0.67 and I think 37 might go to $1.00. And so they don’t even know that it’s, you know, an option under the hood, digital option, you know, binary option. They just know you know.
58:44 It’s a simple UX Green and red button. In the case of Kalashi, I think they’re blue and purple buttons. And price history there as well. So I think it’s it’s amazing. I think it’s a big on lock for, you know, user experience in the derivatives market. You can, you know, speculate hedge on things like interest rates, you know, economic events, you know, the president. But ultimately I do actually we’re talking about this internally and, you know, prediction markets, you know, on Vivi would be really cool.
59:14 It’s something that we’re looking working towards. We think that, yeah, I mean, just generally prediction markets will grow substantially in the coming years. Now they’re very, they’re pretty cyclical, right? Elections being one of the things that people want to bet on the most or hedge or however you look at it. But I think that they’re, they’re going to be, you know, growing. So, you know, another point on this is that Robin Hood has prediction markets now Interactive Brokers has prediction markets.
59:41 These are The Pioneers of the, you know, Interactive Brokers is one of the, the options trading, you know, brokerage pioneers. Like they’re adopting these products. CMEI think has some event contracts. I don’t think they call them prediction markets, but I’m very bullish on the user experience that prediction markets offer. It really simplifies.
1:00:52 Trading and, you know, investing in certain things, hedging certain things, it’s almost similar into the to the innovation that perpetual futures kind of brought to the industry, right? Green red button, leverage slider, really easy to understand. You know, prediction markets kind of have a similar unlock where it’s like super easy to to do something. And the previously was like, you know, much more complicated.
1:01:19 Brian Rose: Yeah, there’s a really interesting observation how AUI or UX could change market adoption. You know, it looks like it’s happening and I didn’t know the mercantile was having events as well. So that’s interesting.
1:01:33 What do you think of the next 12 months of the crypto market? You’ve been in this business for a while. What’s what’s Kohl’s call on, you know, Bitcoin, are we still in a four year cycle? You know, what do you think is going to happen?
1:01:47 Cole Kennelly: So I’m always quite bullish.
1:01:49 I think you know, something I saw back in like 2019 when I was working at stake, you know, there was days when ETH traded for at 100 dollars $200 and Bitcoin was at 3 or 4000. People get jaded, apathetic in this markets, but that doesn’t stop, you know, the fact that crypto is a really important technology. It’s a, you know, non sovereign money. It allows for global, you know, access to capital and and, you know, in the case of Ethereum and you know, smart contracts. And so I’ve seen these periods of like apathy and, you know, jadedness in the market, but they’re always followed by, you know, a big boom.
1:02:23 And so I actually don’t, I think, you know, in the past the four year cycle kind of held up. But I do believe that, you know, the Super cycle is a real thing where, you know, Bitcoin eventually I think it will go to, you know, 1,000,000 in by, you know, 203020292028 and in the next year, you know, this not financial advice, but it could go to, you know, 150 seems conservative, you know, 202 fifty, that’s totally attainable in the next, you know, year or two. And you know, if you know, sovereigns across the world keep buying Bitcoin, companies keep buying Bitcoin, you know, well, hopefully MicroStrategy stops. They own too much Bitcoin now.
1:03:04 But not kind of kidding, but maybe serious. I think it’s, it’s very interesting, you know, crypto is, is definitely here to stay. It’s been things like FTX, things like Biden administration tried to test it, tried to kill it or, you know, and crypto’s here to stay. I think Bitcoin is, you know, gonna go well into 6 figures, you know. Yeah.
1:03:31 And so basically there’s 21 million bitcoins. If Bitcoin goes to 1,000,000, it’s about the same market cap as gold fully diluted. And so Bitcoin gold parity I think is something that will eventually happen. Bitcoin is really a better version of gold. And you know, I also believe in in smart contracts, right?
1:03:51 I mean, things like Ethereum Solana are very powerful primitives where you can do things like collateralized lending, exchange swapping on on chain. And so these are going to test, you know, the centralized incumbents like the coin bases, the Binance of Krakens of the world. And I think that I, I think this salon is really interesting right now. So, you know, as a product guy, Ethereum was once sort of the, you know, the hottest thing in town. Now there’s more competitors and it doesn’t look as attractive because the competitors have in a lot of cases of better user experience, specifically Solana. Now people will say Solana’s just meme coins. I think that’s an interesting point, but I think that it’s a lot more than that.
1:04:37 There’s about $10 billion of stable coins on Solana right now. And so as a product guy, I think Solana just has a superior user experience too to Ethereum right now. I think, you know, part of the reason you haven’t seen as many Ethereum tokens going up or sort of meme coin cycle on Ethereum, whether that’s good or bad. I think it’s, you know, just the reality is because the liquidity and the capital is fragmented across many L twos, right? And so you look at, you know, things like arbitrams base, you know, optimism and, and others, there’s just all these L twos that are siphoning away activity from Etherium and basically not paying their fair share of, of, of fees to, you know, the Etherium network. They’re basically, you know, just throwing numbers around. It’s something like, you know, base will pay Etherium, you know, the, the chain will pay Etherium like 10,000 or $100,000 or something for every, you know, many millions of dollars it’s making.
1:05:36 So these L twos are extracting a lot of the value out of the, out of the Etherium ecosystem and then fragmenting things in a very material way. And so I think this is something that’s very detrimental to Ethereum. I have been following Ethereum, you know, for a long time. I’ve been following Defy. I’ve met Hayden, the founder of Uniswap in 2018 sort of serendipitously in New York and you know, unit, you know, Ethereum and Ethereum Defy is one of my, you know, first loves in crypto.
1:06:06 I love, you know what, what it’s done for the space. And I, you know, I’ve had a meet up in, in 20/20/2019 called Defy NYC. It was a, you know, fun fact, kind of the first, first, first D5 meet up in the world. And so I love ED5. I think Ave.
1:06:22 Uniswap are doing great stuff. But I think that, you know, Solana, it’s basically just a better UX clicking less buttons, less approvals and the capital is in sort of one atomic state, whereas like Ethereum is very fragmented. And so it’s looking quite good for Solana right now. I think things like Hyper Liquid are pretty cool. The perp decks, L1 is getting a lot of traction as a perps exchange, but very bullish Bitcoin, you know, bullish crypto in general. I think Salon is especially exciting and then excited how Volmex fits in here, right?
1:06:58 I mean, we, you know, build indices for the entire space across Vol indices, rates indices and soon more. And so we are well positioned to kind of capitalize on in this trend.
1:07:10 Brian Rose: What does Volmex look like in five years if everything goes to Plan 2030?
1:07:15 Cole Kennelly: So yeah, great question. Wow, it’s crazy that 2030 is 5.
1:07:19 Years ago, right? That’s insane. You know, I think that we want to be this index conglomerate that has the leading Volindex franchise offshore, the leading rates in this franchise, you know, globally and then this leading, you know, Vol index standard franchise in the US. And so we’ve built really the standard for volatility indices, volatility trading and should be, you know, widely adopted by the biggest financial media. We’d like to be on, you know, CNBC, Bloomberg, Bloomberg Terminal, you know, on the biggest exchanges globally in the US, offshore crypto exchanges. And so, you know, I think that, you know, we could look like, you know, a mini version of MSCI, right? As I mentioned, it’s a $42 billion public company, a crypto, you know, index conglomerate as MSCI is, will capture a fraction of that or or maybe more in the future. And so I think that, you know, I’m inspired by what they’ve done over there.
1:08:14 I think, you know, it’s interesting that S&P Global is actually, you know, double the size of CME approximately, right? I mean it’s 140 versus like 80. And so I think indices are a very large and lucrative business and Volmax could grow in a, you know, into a, you know, Unicorn deca corn. And but from a product point of view, we should be widely adopted by all of the financial media, you know, covering the Vol indices, covering the rates indices, all of the exchanges across every different product wrapper ET FS like we have a very big vision.
1:08:47 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s fascinating because you talk about how successful those companies are in the Triad Phi space in indices and like you said, you know, even sometimes bigger than some of the marketplaces. And that was one of the things that attracted us to you guys right away because I’ve seen that in the financial markets. I know how big these brand names are. I know how valuable this IP is. And whereas people on Web three don’t really understand that because it’s very new. And so really love what you guys are doing and your background is perfect for it.
1:09:18 And yeah, it’s just, it’s like, it’s like I remember talking to the team about you and it’s like everybody says the same thing. It’s like the perfect guy at the perfect place at the perfect time. Even your location is perfect. You know, it’s like all these things are ticking the boxes, setting you up for just this really high probability of winning. And we’ve done already is extremely impressive and just being right there as the go to things, you don’t get organic media like that unless you have a great product as well. So people are using it, which means people are talking about it and you got first mover advantage and then all the history you have and even the family history just makes us really bullish.
1:09:54 So I just want to say, man, we’re really excited to partner with you for the next few years and just want to say see Volmex take it all the way. And also something, yeah. Excited to have you here the next this next phase of growth. Couldn’t say
1:10:07 Cole Kennelly: that’s super nice. Thank you.
1:10:09 Brian Rose: Yeah, we really feel that way. And I also feel good because I’m from Travi, right, that you guys are going to be the guys that bring so much of this crypto market web 3 space into that tried Phi, you know, with your indices. And so that seems almost like it has a great purpose as well, you know, and knowing that you’re one of the people that incorporated this ecosystem into, you know, that trad Phi is, is a big thing too. So so yeah, man, we’re super pumped for people that want to learn more about Volmex, what’s the best way to do it? And for people that want to actually start trading on your indices as well, what’s the best place to go to etcetera?
1:10:49 Cole Kennelly: Yeah, so we’re very active on Twitter X now VOLMEX Finance, Volmex finance go to our website volmex dot finance. Those are probably the two best places to keep up to date and to learn more.
1:11:01 You know, you can ask the the AILLM anything, any questions you have, you can ask rock a lot of questions about Volmex. And so, yeah, we have a bunch of docs, but we have, you know, some reports that have been published and, you know, media coverage and whatnot. But we, we just, you know, talk about that all on our on our Twitter and on our website. You want to start trading Viv. So first, if you want to track Viv, I would recommend adding it to your trading view watch list.
1:11:26 And so search for a BVIV or Bitcoin implied EVIVSVIV and then the BDLR and the, you know, D5 landing rate indices and you know, interest rate indices. Just search Volmex on trading view, add whichever ones you you fancy to your to your watch list. And then if we’re also on coin market caps app, you know on their website, so you can can follow along there or go to charts dot vomex finance, right? So that’s our main, you know, charting portal that we have at Vomex. And if you want to start trading Viv, you can go to biffinex.com and make an account.
1:11:59 And we have a perpetual future contract on Biffinex and there should be a lot of other exchanges listing it soon, soonish. And so stay tuned on our Twitter for for those announcements. And yeah, that’s kind of the we also have EVV on Bifinex as well. And it’s kind of the rundown of where to follow.
1:12:17 Brian Rose: US amazing stuff. Congrats on all the success.
1:12:20 Looking forward to watching you guys continue to build in the future and thanks for the time today.
1:12:33 Cole Kennelly: Thanks, Brian. Cheers.
1:12:36 Brian Rose: I appreciate you, thank you and I just want to say thank you to Web Three TV. We will see you next time.
