Sol Strategies Inc. (HODL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. I am delighted to welcome all of our existing and prospective shareholders to our very first investor webinar of Cypherpunk Holdings. My name is Veronika Oswald. I am the Head of Investor Relations at the company. And as we have alluded to, we will be discussing today the recent management changes in the company and I will shortly be introducing you to our newly appointed CEO, Jeff, who will also present the company's vision and strategy. Before I hand you over to Jeff, I would also like to add that this webinar is being recorded and you are encouraged to submit any questions you may have at a little Q&A chat box that you have at the bottom of your screen, and we will be addressing these at the end of the presentation. Now without further ado, I would like to welcome our CEO and President, Jeff Gao.

Thanks, Veronika. If there are any sound or visual issues during the presentation, just pause and let me know we'll get that fixed.

I will let you know. Thank you.

Welcome, everyone, to Cypherpunk Holdings' inaugural monthly investor call. I would like to thank everyone in the audience for making the time to join Veronika today. For those who cannot make it, all sessions will be recorded and uploaded to our website and our socials. As the series title suggests, we will be doing one of these every month from here on. The session was scheduled with our North American audience in mind. In future, we will find a more balanced time slot that would be more hospitable to all. In particular, our shareholders in the U.K., where it is currently an hour past midnight. So apologies to those on this first occasion. And to our Australian supporters. Good day. Good morning. It's probably morning tea at the office there. The format for each one of these sessions will be around 15 but no more than 20 minutes of updates from the CEO. This will be followed by 10 to 15 minutes of audience Q&A facilitated by Veronika. This session might go a little bit longer than usual due to the one-off administrative items covered and the fact that the past 2 weeks have moved at light speed. And some of the things I have lined up, if I don't talk about them today, I'll probably never have an opportunity to cover them again. Note that I appreciate everyone's time and I promise not to be overindulgent. But certainly from the next session onward, we're going to stick to a tight schedule. Audience questions can be entered into the chat at any point in time, Veronika will curate these for us. We're going to keep these sessions tight to ensure optimal use of time for all present. I want these sessions to be functional, informative and not self-indulgent. The recordings are resources people can go back to, to replay and take notes. We're going to all work hard to keep it tight and make the call a valued resource. So how did I involved in all this? I started trading Ethereum at the retail level because there was high volatility and there were plenty of arbitrage opportunities. I accumulated a core position, which I disposed off at the end of 2020, only to sell another 400% from its all-time high. Along came a good friend and a trusted associate of mine who introduced me to Cypherpunk and its epileptic CEO, Tony G. Like most of us who are here, we came on board, valuing HODL for its crypto holdings and wrote off all its other assets and touch and go lottery tickets. Great if they materialize, but conservatively valued below 0. That good friend of mine also asked me to come along, not just for the Bitcoin, but also he wanted my views on IP Addresses, which I knew something about given my network engineering experience. We had a few calls with Tony and he thought I would be a good fit for the Investment Committee. I did not have a lot of experience when it came to DeFi the privacy and pretty much everything HODL stood for at the time. However, I am objectively focused, quantitatively minded and perhaps just enough of a bystander to bring a fresh perspective to the company. One of my first responsibilities was to find ways to generate yield. HODL was an investment holding company, perhaps too much on the holding and not enough on the investment management, which arguably includes proper taking. We had a sizable crypto and treasury, which we've held on to like a pet rock. Personally, I thought HODL to the idea of HODL-ing too literally. I don't think it's competitive advantage enough to simply be a coin proxy to replicate where retail traders could otherwise do in their own accounts. I'm proud to say this issue is being addressed, and the details will come to life in the months to come. Fast forward to October, our then CEO came to the realization that he needed to focus his attention on securing privileged deal flow for HODL and that he needed someone he could trust to handle the day-to-day affairs of running a start-up, and that's where I came in. My first order of business as CEO was to clean house. I made a lot of friends at HODL. People who shared interest in hobbies, some of these were dedicated to their work, wanted the best for Cypherpunk, cared about the company and how success or failure reflected on them. Others were more lackadaisical, played fast and loose with their work ethic, only did what they were told, concerned more about self-preservation and were here to collect the paycheck, but nice people nonetheless. The kind of person you might find lodged in a nook and cranny of some large institution grinding away the days, hating Mondays, loving Fridays, enjoy talking about their kids or their golf stroke at the water cooler. These people are all friends, and they all treated me well. The moment I became CEO, everyone in that second category was served in notices of termination. Prior to my confirmation, I performed a simple functional review of the work that we did and map those functions to the resources that needed to be made available to perform those functions. Our Investment Committee is the point of value origination. We do critical due diligence on works on deal flow. We set investment policy and mandates, and we perform active risk management that latest one being a recent implementation. Marketing is responsible for content and campaign development, which I will expand on a little later in this presentation. Operations provide a logistical support that oil of the engine that keeps comms and information flow running smoothly. In my experience, the CEO of a junior startup is as much a janitor and all-round handy person than they are CEO in that official capacity. Any work that was assigned, but for whatever reason remains incomplete by default, becomes the CEO's problem. In my view, we are far too small to warrant a dedicated Chief Operating Officer and a dedicated project manager. That just opens up room for excessive delegation, and it was very clear to me where the slack was. The CEO, the COO and the operations lead for a business that is outsized is a single full-time person, not 3 separate roles. This is what we look like as an organization from 2 weeks ago. Roughly the day before my nomination was put forward to the Board for a vote. There are actually 2 additional resources not shown on this diagram, a project manager and an SEO contractor performing web analytics and traffic analysis. Looking at this chart, there were a number of issues with the structure that broke the cadence of work and information flow. One, there is a management layer of 5 resources yet all of the sub resources to be managed appear all under the COO. Our Chief Economist and CIO are in the management layer, but they have no management responsibilities. What's worse, our CEO did not have control or visibility of the team. And on one occasion, a hiring decision was made and the CEO only found out about it in our general chat channel. Two, Marketing and Investor Relations did not have any visibility over the decisions made by the Investment Committee. As our press releases earlier in the year appeared mixed message or haphazard, that was because we simply dropped bombshells on marketing and expected them to run with it without any context. Work and information flow, these are symbiotic and they need to go hand in glove. HODL needed a reliable and competent junior analysts to support the Investment Committee and the CFO's office. We have substantial due diligence grunt work that needs to be done. We also have onerous audit requirements. Not a lot of firms out there that can competently assess crypto and blockchain assets. We essentially need to be -- we essentially need to do the critical thinking in the valuation for our auditors as much as possible. Otherwise, their billable hours will quickly run away from us, making those investments unviable from a compliance perspective. We had a resource for the junior analyst role, but it was unfit for purpose. Their contract will conclude by the end of the month, and we will need to readvertise. Our Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Growth had 2 other jobs. This resource was functionally ineffective. Work assigned was either delegated or done so poorly and required complete rework. The website being one example. That resource is no longer with us. This was the proposed agile structure post-management consolidation. The agile layout, which is functional by design and multitasking by design allow resources to be connected and work in parallel so that a smaller team can support a larger volume of product development. In HODL's instance, you have the CEO and CFO across 4 functional centers. The chief executives provide guidance and structure to the flow of work. Staff within their functional centers have agency and decision-making autonomy, thereby making HODL a representative meritocracy. This model is born not out of ideology, but out of practicality. It allows the executive function to be close enough to the action to identify resourcing needs, equip the team and then get out of their way. To facilitate the flow of information, I have made a compulsory for the CEO to publish a brief set of explanatory notes after each Investment Committee meeting to distribute to marketing and operations. This helps us operationalize the investment narrative in thematics and to develop highly focused marketing content in line with the strategic intent of the Investment Committee. The process of progressive value add is crucial. It will take time to get right, but we will improve with each iteration. This is basically how startups work, how startups are able to consistently punch above their weight. But in order to do so, the coordination across these self-organizing teams must be engaging and supportive, you're not intrusive and certainly not micromanaging. This is one area where I will be earning my [Technical Difficulty] And of course, once we settle into the role, took me around a week to figure out that there was actually more fat on the side. By November 1, we have stemmed the bleeding and cauterized the wound. All defunct resources were given notice and total workload was redistributed across the resources you see on this page. The CEO is the only full-time role. Everyone else is engaged on a fractional basis. We can run a public company and manage our product development pipeline using only what you see on this page. Something that becomes not only possible, but also practical through effective communication to direct self-organizing efforts and through the parallelization of workflow. In time, HODL will grow and we will need to hire. But now we will do so on a clean slate and offer base that is accustomed to high-functioning team-based organization. We now have a team that is competent, motivated and actively learning to become more independent and impactful. We are still growing compared to seasoned teams one might find at Tier 1 software companies, but we are learning quickly, and we won't be long before excellence becomes second nature. We also no longer see ourselves as just a holding company. Our team has adopted a highly effective product development mentality towards investments, investment themes and investing ideas. New projects and investment opportunities are our product and everything we onboard passes through the lens of a value-adding process that sees a meld into our brand and socials. We are implementing a data-driven approach to help our Investment Committee and marketing team better measure the impact of projects on our NAV and price to NAV premium. This helps us on 2 fronts. One, it provides objective assessment -- provides objective asset selection based on financial and socials metrics. Two, making progressive and iterative check our content marketing and messaging to enhance public awareness and recognition of the value we're adding to them and for them if they invest in us. With personnel review and restructuring out of the way, my next order of business was to work on our branding and messaging, which, to be frank, has been lackluster to date. As a publicly traded crypto investment company listed on the CSC and OTC markets, our 2 prime objectives, in my view, are: one, allocative efficiency in managing capital deployment; and two, narrative efficiency in telegraphing our brand and values to the market. Narrative efficiency is a function of our broad content marketing strategy. And we have adopted an omnichannel approach toward producing, measuring and refining impactful content. Although I'd like to think that we're a cut above the majority in asset management, there are plenty of public company crypto-themed investment holding companies out there vying for capital and attention. And when you ask them about their unique selling point, they'll tell you things like, "We have great deal flow. We have a deeply experienced team. Our bespoke investment strategies are designed to enhance returns." HODL's unique selling point is we invest in brand building, and we do it through a disciplined and impactful product development methodology. We invest in assets that are not only sells from a capital allocation perspective, they are also narrative-rich, and we know how to best capitalize on that richness. Personally, I like this slide. I like that our story is simple because our process of value-add is linear. Investment Committee sets the agenda and votes on proposed deals. But unlike the past, we now produce detailed notes on the deals and decisions. These get posted to the entire organization, especially marketing and operations. And in knowing what was put forward, what decision was made and why it was made, our content developers can start their ideation and brainstorm ways to best package and present that information to the market via our press releases, our socials and our media partners. The risk management component, I'm not going to go into today in the interest of time and because it's quite the body of proprietary knowledge in its own right and deserves us to inform. This is a recent addition. It was why it was brought on board. And it's still in the early stages of implementation, but work has commenced. And once finalized, our crypto holdings will be generating risk-adjusted yields while staying long the underlying and with partial hedges in place to ameliorate the aggressiveness. This is one of the smart alpha space that I will be going into in future occasions. These aspects in our connected end-to-end operations give rise to what I now consider and I'm proud to say are compelling and concrete reasons for investing in HODL. Not the fact that we're HODL-ing Bitcoin or investing in privacy per se, but we're actively doing something with these assets while they sit on our books, so that they're not just idly sitting on our books. Because nothing is really too good not to be put to work, not even Bitcoin. This slide is for demonstration purposes only. In developing -- the team is responsible for content development and publication will work closely with our legal team and our CFO office to ensure that everything we do is above board from a regulatory and compliance standpoint. But we will be pushing a lot of content. The content will be pushed out as an ensemble and it will be too voluminous for compliance to check every single piece. The idea is to not to have compliance review every piece of work that we do from a marketing perspective, but to agree on a framework that would allow the teams to perform self-censoring if needed. As a publicly traded crypto investment company, we talked about our 2 prime objectives, that of allocative efficiency and that of narrative efficiency. To that end, the website is a significant asset in our tool box. On the narrative efficiency [Technical Difficulty] our story is simple because our process of value-add is linear, and we need to communicate those points. We just need to instill rigor and purpose in our messaging, employ mix of match. We need to be specific, we need to be specialized and we need to be purposeful in our communications. So if things go the way that is planned, what I would envision is that from our present state, where we are, ideally capital allocative efficient, something like this. So in 12 months' time, we hope to become something that's more aligned from a capital and a narrative perspective, where we call and divest from non-core projects and bring to full bear the narratives that are ingrained in our professionally managed product ecosystem, and to treat it as such. These slides will be made available after the presentation for those that want to go back to these in more detail along with the recording. Again, I wanted to reinforce, at HODL, we invest in projects because they are functionally sound. And we only invest in projects which, as an extension, are narrative-rich and it has to be a narrative that will align with our core values. HODL is not a story stock, and by extension, we do not invest in pure-play story stocks either. But by the same time, again, we also do not invest in things that lack a story or narrative. Because investing in projects for HODL is much -- as it is much about brand building through strategic partnerships as it is about direct returns. So what have we put in place now, which I'm proud to say we're going to have implemented before the close of the calendar year. We're forging ahead at an incredible pace with a very lean team. Our medium term objectives, which we will finalize before calendar year-end. One, launch the new website. We have begun issuing requests for tenders in competitive bidding processes to award new contracts, something we haven't done before. Our website contract was awarded to a service provider who could rebuild the site from scratch in half the time and at 40% of the cost of the recent build, which was offered at non-arm's length and work that we had to completely redo. Furthermore, the monthly website maintenance is now done by an embedded resource for 40% less cost, which is material given that it is monthly and ongoing. Two, content marketing and insight analytics integration for search engine optimization and campaign building. This resource, again, is embedded in our marketing team so that there is a very more communication gap between the contractor and what we do internally. We will now be in the -- we have now commenced the process of building systems and infrastructure at the analytics level to ensure that there is discriminatory power to realign web analytics back to content creation in real time, telling us what works and what doesn't and allows us to pivot in real time in terms of the content that we produce and manipulating it so that it fits the narratives that we want to have it projected and have that reflected back in the web traffic that we see in our socials and our website. Three, HODL original content. Once our new website is launched in December, I will be publishing a weekly CEO's blog on our website. This is a form that allows me to delve deeper into some of the topics covered in our socials, where our posts are character-restricted. I will also be doing monthly podcasts commencing this month, with the first episode scheduled for recording this Friday. I will also be doing weekly feature articles, and the first one has already been written, I've provided a link. All of this constitutes the concerted media outreach that go into the narrative building that I've spoken about earlier. One Board member, at my nomination meeting asked, what would success look like at HODL to me? In balancing ambition with realism, my response was, one, we need to get good at identifying projects that aren't just efficient from a capital allocation perspective, but are also narrative synergistic with our overarching brand. Two, we need to refrain from guessing and instead supplement the creativity and imagination of the marketing and design team with data-driven and evidence-based insights. This area is my part -- is part of my bread and butter. I have a data science background in performing A/B testing, and I know how to work with good operators in this space. Three, we need to onboard like-minded talent and welcome to HODL nation. And as HODL nation grows, so will our content marketing ambitions. There will be a demand for content developers, but not just any content developer. We will be recruiting talent with experience in data-driven market intelligence and who know how to work with our external partners in testing hypotheses and running experiments that cross the divide between subjective and empirical. And finally, it would be good if we broke even. That would be a watershed moment for the company and to simply show that it can be done without having to resort to extraordinary measures would break down a formidable psychological barrier and trigger a rerating for our stock. I've ambitiously set a time frame of 12 months for these goals and a significant portion of my performance bonuses are tied to these as well. So thank you all for listening. I promise that length-wise, this will be a rare occurrence. Going forward, my presentations will be 15 to 20 minutes time boxed. I'll now take questions from the chat queue. So Veronika, over to you.

Thank you, Jeff. That was very informative. And I think we kept quite well with the time as well. We do have some questions. The first one is coming from [ James ], and he's asking, given that Tony has a new company that is now listed, how will this -- how will his dual roles affect both companies and the company deal flow for HODL, specifically?

So I'm assuming that by reference the new company, they're referring to Tony, CEO. That is a cannabis and medicinal themed company which will have its own esoteric deal flow. I just want to say that had Tony not stayed on as Chair at Cypherpunk, that would have been significantly influential in my decision as to whether I would come into this role or not. I think that Tony and I share an essential relationship in building the HODL brand and building the HODL business. And that is Tony is there to introduce deal flow. His role there as Chair, or one of his roles as Chair of the company is to put stuff in front of me, for me to look at. That's, again, one of the reasons why he brought me onboard, for that critical thinking aspect and then as CEO also the ability to run the day-to-day business of the company. So I'm not going to be out there beating the foot path, doing the kind of engagement and the relationship building that Tony can do exponentially better than I can or of the magnitude better than I can. And so he needs to go out there and do that. That is what he is paid to do and he need to put those things in front of me. We've already had a couple of really good catches, which I won't be able to talk about today because we still need to sign the agreement, and we'll need to announce the market. But I really look forward to talking about that in our next monthly investor call. It's about to materialize. And that's basically what Tony is there for, right, to really project himself and cast that net far and wide, and then bring in volume, deal flow, privileged deal flow. And some of it will be trash, some of it will be gold needles in the haystack, that part is my job.

Okay. Let's move on to the next question. [Operator Instructions] So let's move on to the next question from [ Brian ]. How many shares of Marc Henderson still have to sell? So Marc Henderson is our ex Director, Jeff, over to you.

Yes. So I haven't had a lot of time to check, see the filing there, what's happened over at co.ca. But my impression is he still has a substantial holding in the company. But I guess if there's any relevance to that question as well because, what I intend to do a huddle is to cause hesitation. Firstly, in anyone who is even thinking about selling our stock. And secondly, for anyone who sees a rise in the share price is thinking about proper taking, for those types of people to hesitate as well. I have, over the past couple of days, just looked at the order flow and the order book in terms of where the bid and ask price are. And I think that a lot of those who are putting orders in place at prices below $0.30 will, over the next 6 to 12 months, perhaps regret that decision. I'm going to make it my mission to make that -- to turn that from aspiration into fact.

Excellent. Let's move on to another one. We have quite a few questions that we need to get through. Will you be able to change your U.S. ticker to HODL instead of KHRIF? It would help with name association and name is catchy with Bitcoin traders. I'm happy to take this one. We have actually already started the process, so that is being handled. And absolutely, it makes sense. We'll be having similar -- the same tickers on both exchanges. Anything you would like to add, Jeff? Or can I move on?

No. Let's move on because yes, that sounds -- I think the HODL brand is underutilized. So wherever we can project that and relate that would be good.

Absolutely. Okay, a question about Chia. Any idea when Chia will IPO?

We've been asking ourselves that question since our Chia signed the first convertible note. At that time, we were told 18 months. And after 18 months was up, I wasn't even with the company yet. So that's the question on everyone's mind. What I would like to refer -- people to refer to is the YouTube channel set up by their CEO, which has a lot of good content. And what is encouraging is the amount of work that they're putting into the company, at the infrastructure level, precisely to improve user experience. User experience for those who are farming and for those who are plotting. And to potentially build out some of the infrastructure that would in future, lay the groundwork for monetization. So those are indicative factors, but they are in no way certain. So I wouldn't be too focused on the IPO date at this point in time, but rather look at the indicators around that, that are the second and third order effects that would lay the foundation for that eventual IPO date.

Excellent. Thank you. There is a comment from shareholders saying thank you, Jeff. Awesome presentation. I will just put it out there. Another question. Have you identified any new growth opportunities? And will you need to raise any capital to fund these opportunities? If yes, what method of funding or fundraising would you prefer? Would it be debt or equity?

That's a 2-part question. First part, have I identified any catalytic opportunities that would put HODL on the ground floor with these types of projects and opportunities that could essentially see a rewriting of the company? The answer to that is yes. We're about to sign an agreement. I can't say anything in addition to that. Will that require additional funding? No, we can do it within our current capacity. So that's very promising. But I don't want to talk more about that at this point. And then secondly, in relation to fundraising, we will need to do fundraising. I'm keen to get the share price up before we go ahead and do that. I have a few targets in mind. Probably won't disclose that yet, but the share price needs to be substantially higher to where it is currently before I will even contemplate that. And in order to facilitate that, to put HODL in a position where we could choose the time and place as to when we do these fundraises, I will be doing a lot of work in the background to ensure that we get our OpEx covered so that we can make do with what we currently have and so that we're not pressured to do a capital raise. I'm confident that will happen so long as I have the support of the Investment Committee and the other members of the company.

And just to clarify, the debt versus equity, there is going to be a traditional fundraiser with an equity, I assume?

Yes. But then we're not going to close any opportunities. We're not going to say no to anything before we give it due consideration. So that will be a composition between myself and the CFO, but the modus operandi, historically, at least it's going to be an equity raise. But we'll see. We'll see what comes.

Another question. It's time being invested into possibly into Cardano or other crypto projects? Are we considering, again, it's quite future forward-looking, but are we considering or looking at other projects from the crypto space?

We are actively considering staking as a growth opportunity for the business. Again, not just from a risk managed yield perspective, and there are lots of diversification methodologies that we can look into to ensure that it fits HODL's risk profile as well. But in terms of -- not just Cardano, but also Solana, Polkadot, Polygon, we're actively looking to those opportunities. And there's some promising work being done in the background by Tony G on that front. But that's probably as much as I can say on that at this point.

Private investments as more -- as a comment, private investment doesn't get market recognition. That's the end of the question. I think that's more of a comment.

I can probably speak -- so yes, the thing with private investments is, again, I want to go back to what our 2 objectives are. Allocative efficiency and narrative efficiency. It needs to make sense for us to say, when we onboard this investment, there needs to be a time horizon. Let's say, we envision it to be 5 years or 10 years or what have you. And there needs to be a terminal event that allows us to exit. That is good practice in -- best practice professional money management. I can't say to what extent that's been done prior, I do know that our core investment thesis is privacy. That's also something I'm willing to challenge. That's not something I'm qualified to challenge. I trust that our Investment Committee has the company's best interest in mind. And if I'm told collectively by the Investment Committee at the consensus level that this is the direction that we need to go, then this is the direction that we need to go. But I will overlay operational rigor on top of that to ensure that going forward, we're not going to sink money into any investments that are going to be timing definite. And certainly, we're not going to sink money into any projects where I cannot work with the founders at the ground level. All the projects that we're onboarding I speak directly to the founders that run the projects and I work actively with them to ensure that the project enjoys every bit of success that it deserves. That's all I can promise going forward. Anything at this point that we have on our books where the terminal condition is indefinite, my plan is to value those as perpetual bonds. But going forward, there's going to be a change in terms of how we onboard those types of investments, absolutely.

Right. What type of operating revenue do you expect? I believe currently is the revenue from IP Addresses and some types of dividends paid in Bitcoin from the loans. Do you expect any more revenue channels?

I expect significant revenue channels, if my proposals for treasury deployment is realized to its fullest extent. And the plan is already in place. I can see from end to end, what that thing looks like. I just need buying from the Investment Committee. And we're addressing this on a weekly basis because we have committee meetings on a weekly basis, where I put proposals forward. And if they get voted in, I implement them. So I would consider, firstly, the revenue that we get from Wasabi Wallet in Bitcoin for the revenue that we get from the leasing of our IP Addresses, which have also significantly capital appreciated as well as the revenue that we get from our Bitcoin loans, which we've switched over to a different provider and increased our yield threefold from our previous provider. That revenue will be, as substantial as it may be at this point in time, will be insignificant compared to the kind of revenue what we look at -- that we'll be looking at when that treasury portfolio deployment is realized to its fullest extent. But also appropriately risk managed so that we're not incorrectly exposing our loan positions.

Has any Bitcoin being sold? And what is the current Bitcoin holding?

The current Bitcoin holdings, again, there are numbers that we're looking at in real time, which I cannot disclose because we haven't disclosed the market. I would just encourage everyone to look at what was last released in our public releases. As to whether Bitcoins were sold, there is a risk management framework in place where we either purchase insurance indirectly through derivatives markets or we use a risk management model through a structured product. And that may involve buying and selling activities within certain bands. So yes, at any one point in time, there will be marginal purchases and sales at the margins. But overall, our objective is to ensure that over time, our Bitcoin position only builds, not shrink.

I'm going to jump into the Q&A session. What led you to sell Ethereum in December 2020?

December 2020, not only did we sell Ethereum, I believe we also sold Bitcoin. Why were those decisions made? I really haven't -- I really can't speak to that because that was 5 months before my time. I can only say off the record and off hand, that if I had to take a guess, it's because it was profit taking.

What do you see potential upcoming -- oh sorry, how do you see potential upcoming regulation in crypto market potentially -- directly targeting privacy impacting your privacy-related investments?

I think they will be catalytic because, in my view, the regulators have to approach this very cautiously. And there's a number of things that have the -- a number of considerations that have to balance. One is they have to look after DeFi, their bread and butter. And to ensure that what happens in DeFi isn't an existential threat to them. And the industry that is DeFi also a cognizant of that as well. And so even if they're not talking directly with each other, there is that implicit dialogue and signaling that is happening between those 2 centers of gravity, if you will. So I think anything that happens from now on because you have that rhythmic dance and signaling going on between those 2 centers of gravity, I think we're in a pretty healthy steady state where progress made at the regulatory level and in progress made at the industry level with respect to DeFi and privacy is working somewhat in tandem to ensure that we do get to an end point and end state that is more stable, and that is more transparent and acceptable to both parties. So I see anything happening on the regulatory front, as long as you're able to screen out the noise, right? There's a signal-to-noise ratio. You just got to step back and look at it from a 2-, 3-, maybe 5-year time horizon and see that overall, the trajectory is more promising than it is concerning. So I regard these changes as a tailwind rather than a headwind so long as I'm not too focused on the week-to-week news headlines.

Another question. Jeff, are you committed long time to HODL?

I've signed a 12-month contract. I've made it my -- so what I -- what annoys me the most is people and things that disrespect work and don't have discipline in work. So there are certain things in HODL which as an adviser to the company, it's really none of my business. But now that I'm in the position of CEO, it is my business. So the only thing I can say to shareholders is, if I leave, I want to leave the company in a better position. And when I do leave, it's because HODL has grown to the point where I no longer have the expertise or the attitude to run a company of that size anymore. At which point I will step down graciously. But I've signed a 12-month contract, and I envision that unless something extraordinary happens, it will probably be much longer than that. So let's see where the company gets to in 12 months' time, but yes. And the logical point, there will be a handover and I intend to stay on up to and including that point.

Just to note from a previous question that we have already answered. [ Daryl ] just wanted to say thank you for answering the question, and I wanted to say thank you for the presentation. I will move back into my other line of questions. Are there any investments or proportions relative to IP Addresses significantly dependent on IPv4, or is IPv6 included in the scope of projects?

Right now, IPv6, there's so much going on in that space at the infrastructure level and at the innovation level that there really hasn't being too much work done at the monetization level. Most of the monetization is done at the IPv4 level. So China, for example, has adopted a framework where they will only use IPv6 going forward. But this is not necessarily news at a wholesale level because similar announcements have been made in other jurisdictions in the past, although to a slightly different extent. All I can say is that based on current projections and expectations, both -- using both quantitative and qualitative considerations, IPv4 has at least another 5 to 10 years of positive growth trajectory before it's going to hit that sunset moment and the stuff is going to decline, which means that from an amortization perspective, from a depreciation perspective, we are in a pretty good position right now to continue holding on to that portfolio. What I'm more concerned with is that, in time, when we start to have these other opportunities, right, these higher value-add opportunities and to remain in IPv4 becomes too much of an opportunity cost despite the fact that it's still growing, but decelerating, right, growing at a slower pace compared to those other opportunities. At that point, we might make a decision to divest right, locking those capital gains and then allocate that capital to more promising ventures and endeavors. I see that to be more likely then have to sell those assets because it's going on the decline. I think we'll be able to make that decision well before we hit that 5- to 10-year mark.

Will Animoca go public soon?

Will what go public soon?

Animoca or one of our later investments this year, Animoca?

Well, Animoca is already public, right? It's listed, just not on a reputable exchange by certain measures.

It's -- yes.

Yes. That said, I have been -- it's interesting, because some of the deals that we looked at Animoca as a co-investor in. So there is back channel communication going on. I do -- all I can say without giving away too much is, the conversations are very promising. And they've certainly got more work than they can deal with, and they're in a position where they can be very selective. So all of that puts them in a very good position to -- if they wanted to move to a more reputable exchange to be able to do that. And I think there probably is work being done on that front. How soon? You guys will have to decide. But yes, the back channel conversations are pretty good.

What specifically do you view as a non-core asset in the portfolio?

A non-core asset is an asset where we cannot definitively define the terminal conditions for exit. Whether we decide to exit at that point is another matter. But can we -- when we onboard an investment, we need to have a definitive time horizon as to how long we're going to hold on to that thing. And if we cannot define that endpoint or if we define the endpoint and the time has passed, and we need to reevaluate and we cannot ascertain, what the new endpoint is, that is no longer a core asset or at least that's influential as to whether it is a core asset or not. And secondly, that narrative efficiency. If we have an asset that might perform financially well, but otherwise, we cannot align or systematically build that into our signature brand, then we have to give serious consideration as to whether we can sustain that over the long term. And I say IPv4 could be one of those assets, right? Where right now, it's somehow is -- has its existence on the fringes in the periphery of the privacy narrative. But going forward, when that continues to be the case with the advent and the rise of IPv6, that is yet to be determined. So again, capital allocative considerations, narrative efficiency considerations, both together, is used as significant determinants as to whether something is core or non-core.

Another question, establishing HODL's value is hard but important to drive the share price, how are you planning to do both?

Well, when you say establishing HODL's value is difficult, I guess, the difficulty in that establishment really has to do with those long-term private equity players, which quite frankly, our auditors also struggle with. So going forward, we need to make a clear eyed -- we need to make a series of clear eyed decisions as to how we wish to treat those assets based on the input from a variety of different stakeholders. And yes, essentially, how do we qualify value? How do we ascertain value for those assets? We need to communicate those things clearly to our auditors and by extension, clearly to the market as well. I can't promise that, that will be done as effectively for our legacy assets. That is -- those were onboarded before my time. But certainly, going forward, there has to be -- Veronika, currently my video has frozen. Is that the case?

I was going to -- I didn't want to interrupt. Yes, would you mind maybe just restarting that? We can hear you okay, but the video seems to be little it frozen.

Right. Let me stop video and then... I see. Let me try that.

You can actually stop the sharing as well.

Okay. All right. So look, apologies. You guys will have to just deal with the animated face of mine. But if audio is still recording then that's good.

It's. Yes, we can hear you okay, yes.

Yes. So just with valuation going forward, I just need to ensure that all investments go on from here on have very clear monetization milestones or otherwise valuation milestones with respect to, for example, subsequent capital raises. And that I will also work closely with the founders, the project leads using those opportunities to ensure that what was promised, what was envisioned has the best chance of being realized. And then that will be reflected in our order report and certainly be reflected in our communication with the market.

We've got 2 questions as we might have to jump through these as we try and fit it in now. Another question here is, been Bitcoin bottom of $29,000. HODL's price has increased by $0.01 for every $2,800 increase in Bitcoin like top work. My point being that, it's moving like a Bitcoin holding company and not getting recognition for its equity investments. Will the marketing campaign focus on these investments in its trading, and is Bitcoin and Ethereum value now without those equity, please. Any comments on the main focus of the marketing campaign would be appreciated. And a comment to say, thank you for a great presentation.

Right. Great. Thanks for that. So again, two separate things. One, is I guess, is relating to our smart alpha strategy for treasury deployment, and that is to say, marketing, notwithstanding, if all of a sudden, we're starting to break even or at least significantly cover our OpEx, that is signal in its own right. But further to that, we will be actively communicating to the market what it is that we're doing with our treasury, why we're doing it and what precautions are we putting into place to ensure that we remain long in those assets, while we deploy those assets for risk-adjusted yield generation. And then that really just isn't -- that -- I mean, our crypto holding is just one part of the story, right? Because we have private equity as well, which we will actively build into our narrative stream, that product development methodology, which is core to HODL going forward. And then also, operationalized assets, which include the deployment of our IPv4 and also Bitcoin mining, right, where we actually own those assets but we use a concierge service to find ways to deploy them for us to take advantage of low-cost renewable energy sources that can help us maximize our yield. All of that need to be integrated into the product development value chain, which is spearheaded by our marketing and operations.

Were HODL or any capital gains taxes on the Ethereum sold earlier this year?

Yes, we will, but those will also be offset by losses accumulated in earlier period. I cannot attest to the quantum, but that's a conversation I'll need to have with our CFO, which is eminent.

You mentioned the price point of $0.30 a share. Based on the plan, that sounds awfully low. What is your true goal for a share price? Are there any concerns that will keep it low?

I may have misspoke. I believe this was addressing a question earlier about capital raising. And the comment I made was that I'm not even going to contemplate capital raising until our share price is significantly higher than where it is currently, certainly higher than $0.30. I believe that was what I said. And I'm not beholding to $0.30. That was just an off-the-cuff mark as an example, but $0.30 is not a humor there. It just needs to be significantly higher. How significant, I have a few targets in mind, but I haven't really telegraphed it to the audience at this point in time.

And just a follow-up question, actually to add to a previous question. Many investors like this gentleman holds many Bitcoin-related investments, and HODL has done one of the worst returns in this space. Miners like Bitfarms, Riot and Hut 8 have done a lot of marketing and post regularly on platforms like LinkedIn. Marketing socially appears to be one of the best investments you can make in this space. Will HODL be heavily investing into the marketing campaign?

So the answer to that is yes. And let me see if I can get access to a visual, because that's actually a really good question, and it's something that I've already communicated to our team and our Board. But I might just spend a couple of seconds digging it up and let's see if I can bring this one up.

But I think it's sorry to say, absolutely. So there is going to be a significant increase in communications overall. We have started making sure that we are visible and present on all of the social media channels, and we will be increasing the activity overall.

Yes. So change the zoom on this one. Hopefully, I can share this. Yes, that should work. Let me try and ratio my screen. Okay. Veronika, can you see this chart?

Yes, I can. Thank you.

Okay. Great. So I trust that everyone else can see it as well. So startup fund is the red, right? In terms of normalized price and NAV ranking. So I won't go into how this ranking is established, but it's an amalgamation of metrics based on traditional financial metrics that you would typically find on Bloomberg terminal, for example. So it's about 15 or 20 valuation metrics all put together into a synthetic measure, normalized measure priced in their ranking. And based on that, HODL is in the -- roughly in the bottom 25 percentile of what you would call discount bids, right, or bargain value. Which is not good, if you're consistently in that basket. And so from a traditional financial metric perspective, we are cheap. And then the question that then came to mind was, well, are we actually cheap? Or are we actually properly valued, but we're just not doing a very good job, which is why we're down there. So if you look at the company from a social metric perspective, in terms of how we're engaging the market, this is the -- this is where search engine optimization comes in. This is where web analytics and a data-driven approach towards content development comes in, something that I've already spoken to earlier. And you guys can go back and replay the recording to get that. But if you look at HODL from that perspective, it's a much more so green picture. And actually, I don't have that chart here, apologies, because I haven't actually -- I've got the data, but I haven't actually constructed it yet. But if you look at it from that perspective, we are actually properly valued. So this just tells you. Asset selection, notwithstanding, the fact that we're not able to tell the story or just we're not even telling the story at all to date, explains a lot about where we currently are and why we deserve to be in this position that we're currently at and why we absolutely need to change and why I absolutely need to drive that change. So thank you for that question. I was meaning to bring this up, but I've actually forgot to include it in the deck, just another one of those things.

Another question, do you know what the annualized ROI will be on the $300,000 invested into the Bitcoin mining company recently?

I'm in the process of building that model. I was building that model, and that exercise had to be put on pause because of the CEO nomination. But I will get back into that at some point in time. And it's not just about looking at the ROI, but it's also building a certain sensitivity analysis that the CFO has also requested of me as well, which also goes into the urgent nature of having to onboard a junior analyst, so I can be freed up to do other things as well. But yes, that will be produced in due course. And I'll be responsible for building out that model, not just for our shareholders but also for our audit requirements.

The follow-on question actually is from the same sector. Can you talk about the revenue split with your partner on the Bitcoin mining venture?

I know those numbers. I just don't know whether I'm allowed to talk about them. So just we're on the side of caution, I probably won't talk about it at this point. But it's good revenue coming to us simply because we get to outsource a lot of the operational requirements, which otherwise, we would need to have resources internally to manage and it's just more efficient to have those guys that have mining to do it for us, and just have us own the assets and then do all the groundwork for us. That said, there are certain aspects of the contract, which can be optimized in terms of how their fees, how their performance fees in their revenue split is calculated. But I have to say, in order to have those terms improved for HODL in my mind, we probably need to do a little bit more for them and work with them on that front. So because it's only a seed investment at this point in time, we don't have a lot of pricing power. But going forward, if we were to expand that relationship, that would certainly change.

Another question. When do you foresee profit at HODL, Bitcoin and Ethereum are at record prices?

Well, it depends on what you mean by profit. Is it profit-by-profit decking and selling down some of our treasury, or is it profit in terms of treasury deployment for risk-managed yield generation? As to the former, like I said, over time -- Ethereum is there as part of that basket. But we are overweight. Bitcoin, in terms of that representation and deliberately so. That goes back to our core investment basis. But over time, we expect our treasury portfolio to grow, not shrink despite the fact that we do intermediate buying and selling. So whatever profit that yields from those activities at the margins as a result of risk management, when you take profit, is what it is, right. Which is not -- I wouldn't consider that to be recurring or reliable. It's just incidental and opportunistic. But more so, the reliability of profit generation has to come from the smart alpha play, right, which is the risk-managed yield generation. That when implemented to its fullest according to my plans or my anticipation, would significantly cover our OpEx, if not fully.

Another question, where can I buy some official HODL merchandise?

I have the same question, Veronika. I was expecting a mug. I was expecting a shirt that I can wear on my jobs. I think we just need to have a chat to Jessie about getting that delivered. But we're hoping to sell that at cost as well, not to make money off it, but just to get the messaging out. So that's another one of those just -- no-brainer things that we can do right now. And so we're certainly going to get on to that because everyone needs to be -- know about HODL nation, everyone is welcome as a citizen to HODL nation, and we'll do our part to make sure that is brought to realization.

Absolutely, we are definitely on that. Okay, 2 -- actually 2 questions that are related to the same topic, so I will bundle them together. Tony G has occasionally weighed-in on CEO dossier. Will you do the same in the company channel there? And was that the real Tony G?

I don't know if it was the real Tony G. We certainly don't have people posting on others' behalf, like we just -- we don't spend money on that kind of resources. So I would assume that unless his account got hacked. It probably is the real Tony G. Will I jump on to CEO dossier? Maybe I will, maybe won't. I never thought about it simply because I'm doing investor calls on a monthly basis. I plan to do podcasts on a monthly basis. I'm going to be writing one blog every week, and I'm going to be writing one feature article every week. I think at that point, people probably has enough -- has heard enough of me to make whether I jump on to CEO dossier, that's a moot point. But we'll certainly look into that, but I just haven't thought about it.

Yes. No, I think we're going to be making this monthly regular calls and there's an easy access to speak with the team. So we will certainly be out there if anyone would like any information. And the last question, how does Cypherpunk Holdings get access to and learn about new crypto opportunities?

You mean how -- if I can just get a clarification, how do our shareholders get access to that as part of a broader education complaint? Or how does Cypherpunk itself, at the Investment Committee able to get access?

Cypherpunk itself.

Okay. Right. So it's really about ensuring that -- well, first of all, there is the landscape research that we do, which is at the macroeconomic level, can we identify trends, right? So for example, there are lines of effort to look into NFTs and not just any NFTs, right. Certain aspects from a functional perspective of NFT, which includes its narrative momentum. There's also a line of effort that look into crypto gaming, and that's certainly something I intend to talk about in future calls and also addressing my write-ups as well. Those are being done at the macro level to identify trends. And then also, when we -- on the back of those trends when we start to engage founders in their projects, right? We will then work specifically and closely with them to better understand how it is that they intend to build value models around concrete economic activities. That's something I really have to stress on. What is a concrete economic activity? Is it sustainable? That's a -- that's something that we need to do from an internal research perspective, but also we need to do from a collaborative perspective, whenever we onboard new investments and new projects, and that is going to be a core focus of mine with any private equity deals that we do going forward. So that research aspect that we do is something that we do at the foundational level, at the macro level, but also something we do as an iterative collaborative process with the founders of projects that we onboard.

Excellent. Well, Jeff, thank you very much for that. I think we've done this in a great time as well. We have now answered all of the questions. Hold on, one more. Looking forward to the next month webinar. Okay, that's not really a question, but thank you very much for that. Yes, fantastic. I think we have covered all of the questions. I hope this was informative for people I'm sorry that was...

Veronika, I just want to add one thing, which is to thank everyone for all the great questions that's come through, and I want us to all keep it up. It's an effort on my part, on Veronika's part, and also an asset on the part of HODL nation and you guys as shareholders. Because we really want to make these investor calls a resource, a valuable resource for someone to go back to, to look at the -- to relisten to the recording then to correlate that against the slide decks that we will be publishing in concert as well. So I hope to make this a valuable resource that people can go back to. So thank you all for that.

Thank you very much for that, Jeff. And we have actually had several comments to say thank you very much for the presentation. And the shareholders really do appreciate the engagement. So we will make sure that we do keep up with these, and we will be scheduling another webinar in a month's time. But again, as I mentioned, if anyone does have any questions, in the meantime, please do reach out to us. We're always very happy to speak to shareholders. Excellent. And I think that is all from us for now. Thank you very much for joining us again, and we are looking forward to speaking to you very soon. Thank you.

Thanks, Veronika.