#CryptoCornerSeason2 Jeff Walton, Chief Risk Officer, Strive to @CNBCTV18News - See Bitcoin as long-term capital on our balancesheet - It important that US gets CLARITY Act done - Tokenisation of assets is the future Manisha Gupta Strive Binance #Bitcoi

CNBC TV 18 presents Crypto Corner powered by Binance. Welcome back at the guest for our trip to Corner this time around is Jeff Walton. He's Chief Risk Officer at Strife. Jeff, I thank you so much for joining in. And Strife has rapidly grown in growth in Bitcoin treasury, recently breaking through significant milestones with over 24,000 Bitcoin. How would you model the risk of a volatile underlying asset on a corporate balance sheet? Yeah. I mean big Bitcoin is incredibly volatile and and we do see Bitcoin as capital in long term capital on our balance sheet. And really we lean into the volatility and we are, we are underwriting the volatility out of the instrument and we've created a new perpetual preferred equity security being SATA and we try to provide low volatility exposure, Bitcoin exposure to the market via another wrap security. So we we are underwriting the long term. Trajectory of Fiat debasement and the debt crisis that we're in within the United States and the US dollar right now. So that is something we believe to be systemic. the US debt to GDP is growing at 3.2% compounded annually for the the last 26 years in a row and that that's how we view the market right now. Of how you looking to capture the massive interest from India and institutional investors, high net worth individuals that are looking to global macro exposure currently? Yeah. And we're, we're wide open in terms of global capital investment. This isn't just limited to the United States. To the extent that Indian, Indian institutions have the ability to buy U.S. Securities that we are, we are completely wide open to how they, how they come into the marketplace here. I think again, what's interesting is the fact that we've created 2 instruments that are appealing, 1 of perpetual yield instrument, something that right now as of today, it's paying 13%. Annual interest, so $13 per share. And we are taking the risk of how to pay that $13 per share. We've got $1.9 billion of Bitcoin on our balance sheet. We've got $200 million of cash and $50 million of marketable securities. And we pay that dividend every single day. We are the first security and capital markets history to pay a daily dividend and that's coming through every single day. And then on the other side of that, the the high volatility instrument, if you wanted something that outperformed Bitcoin, something that was more volatile than Bitcoin itself, whether that be for trading long term, holding, hedging different directions, you would be interested in the common equity. And as of recently, it's been trading around A2 beta to Bitcoin. So meaning for every one point of increase in the price of Bitcoin, the our instrument moves 2 points and conversely on the downside as well and and. So really this is a global marketplace. Bitcoin is global capital. We believe these instruments, if they're not accessible in different countries at the moment, we think that tokenization does allow exposure to these instruments to to widen and broaden and I think that will continue. I wanna talk about tokenization as well and the real world asset tokenization space really seems to be growing, whether it's about real estate, financial markets, private equity structure, credit, etcetera. How are you approaching the space? Yeah, token tokenization of assets is the is the future understanding the. Alright, Understanding and watching how these instruments trade and and trade hands in between different investor classes is, is the way that this market is going. And this is something that is already happening with our digital credit, our senior perpetual preferred equity right now say to it is being tokenized on different platforms. And what we are seeing is that in the D5 space, in the tokenization space, we're seeing these companies that are trenching and structuring these, these assets even further. So the digital credit instrument being our senior instrument, we've seen different structures of these as well. So where you've got another senior instrument and another equity instrument that's providing even less volatility, something that's even more like a stable coin that's providing maybe 7 or 8% yield and then an equity buffer that's providing A leveraged yield or a leveraged position on that, that senior instrument. This market is rapidly evolving. I, I think I see something different every single week and there's a lot of energy. Being shoved into the space and, and ultimately this is the future of finances, digital finance where risk can be calculated very quickly. Algorithmic algorithms and computers are leading the trading environment and we think that's something very unique with our instrument SATA. Given it is the only instrument or the first instrument in capital markets, US capital markets history that pays a daily dividend that really changes the risk economics for tokenization, trading algorithms and dynamic environment with computers. So really we created this instrument not only for humans and people, but also for computers and the tokenized world like the future that we're going into. And we think that's going, that's a really big idea that is underestimated at the moment. All right, Jeff, all eyes on 15th of September and that is when the US Senate closure clarity vote is happening. Are you keeping an eye on that too? Yeah, we're watching it very closely, watching it like a hawk where we've got our our ear to the ground on what what's happening in DC. Luckily for us it, it doesn't have as much of an impact. It would be a really big impact. I mean it's necessary that we get clarity done. It's necessary that the US has framework for digital assets and crypto and and something that has some regulatory clarity. Previously in the past US administrations have looked very negatively on the crypto space because there hasn't been any regulation at all. So having some sort of framework is, is very helpful for the industry. I think it would be a boon for all of crypto. But luckily for us what what we are doing. Fits within the framework of traditional capital markets. You know, we have structured 2 security, We have two securities publicly traded on the NASDAQ that's already allowed. We've got ATM's on both of those securities. And we're effectively what we're doing already exists within US capital markets. So the, the whether clarity goes through or not doesn't really impact the design of our business model, but a having clarity go through should be a boon for the entire industry. My final question is on stable coins and they seem to be doing quite well, at least for the first half of 2026. What's your sense on this segment going forward? Yeah. Stable coins have been growing incredibly rapidly. They've been growing over the last really three or three or four years. And I think these will continue to evolve. I think there's going to be several different stable coins. I mean, clarity will have a really big impact on this marketplace of the stable corn marketplace, particularly around whether or not the stable coins themselves are allowed to pay yield. And I think that a lot hinges on that on on that decision and how these get integrated in the market. In the meantime, this is where tokenization still has a a large. I guess tokenization of real world assets and tokenization of other assets has a bit of a head start because they can, you know, structure entrance and do different type things that effectively give stable coin type exposure and provide yield. So I think we're going to continue to see a lot of buzz around stable coins and and really digital credit the the security that we've created, the security that strategies created and how those get integrated within the capital markets, whether they get integrated into stable coins. I think is on the horizon and how they integrate with the market. CNBC TV 18 presents Crypto Corner powered by Binance.