Dan Tapiero, 10T Holdings & 1Roundtable Partners

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Dan Tapiero

Founder

10T Holdings & 1Roundtable Partners

play_circle_outline Introduction of Dan Tapiero, founder and CEO of 10T Holdings.

play_circle_outline Discussion of the crypto market's growth from 300 billion to trillions.

play_circle_outline Optimism regarding the IPO market for crypto companies.

play_circle_outline Perspective on the future growth and acceptance of digital asset companies.

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Dan Tapiero, 10T Holdings & 1Roundtable Partners

Dan Tapiero

Founder 10T Holdings & 1Roundtable Partners

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What is Dan Tapiero's background in the cryptocurrency market and his ventures related to it? add

What was the value of the cryptocurrency market in the middle of 2019? add

What is the current sentiment regarding the IPO market for crypto blockchain companies? add

What is the current state of institutional investment and corporate involvement in Bitcoin and Web3 technologies? add

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Dan Tapiero, 10T Holdings & 1Roundtable Partners

>> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE and NYSE Wired's production of Crypto Trailblazers. My name is Dave Vellante. We're here at the New York Stock Exchange at our studio. Dan Tapiero is back on theCube. He is the founder and CEO of 10T Holdings and One Round Table Partners Principle. Thanks for coming on. Good to see you again.

>> Yes, happy to be here.

>> So I say good to see you again. I feel like I saw you because I watched your interview with John Furrier over on the balcony, and I love your story. You got into crypto and the market value was like 300 billion. It's multiple trillions today, so great. Congratulations on that. And the other thing I love is 10T Ventures, of course, is 10 trillion. You saw at the time we're going to 10 trillion and you launched 50T.

>> Yes. Well, we're about to. Yes.

>> It's germinating.

>> We've had to change our view about the future. So in the middle of 2019, the value in the space was 300 billion. So that's Bitcoin, all the old coins and all the equity was about 300 billion.

>> Wait, what year?

>> This is 2019. That was when I had the idea for the funds.

>> 2019.

>> Is that low?

>> Yes. Well, yeah. It was even lower in 2012 when I first learned about and got involved. So 300 billion. Then I thought, okay, over the next 10 years, where can the value go? If I'm going to be investing in the companies in the space, where can it go? And I thought, okay, it can go to 10 trillion, which is 30 times. And I said, well, there's nobody in my world who's going to believe that I called a 30 times appreciation in the value of anything. So I said, okay, I've got to put my view into the name of the space. So the fund's name 10T stands for 10 trillion, but that is my view in 2019 as to where the value would go within 10 years. So here we are five years later. Okay, five years later. It's already 5 trillion. So it's 5T.

>> Okay. I said multiple trillions.

>> Now it's 5T today, it's a 15X. Our next fund, which will be our fifth fund growth equity fund, sort of ridiculous to call it 10T, given that we're at 5T. and that's actually not our view. We think in the next 10 years that we could head up to, we think 50T, which would be a 10X from where we are today. That's the value in the space.

>> And how do we get to... Where are we? 5T now. That's a combination of-

>> So that's three and a half trillion between Bitcoin and the alt coins. And then about a trillion and a half in the equity in the space, if you start to add up what Tether and Binance and all the private companies are worth, plus Coinbase, and now Circle, of course, you add it all up, it's somewhere between a trillion and a trillion and a half.

>> So what's your investment thesis? You play in all of those?

>> So we tend to play we're the only growth equity fund in the world that's exclusively focused on crypto, blockchain, Web3 digital assets. And so far we've invested in 23 companies. These are more developed companies. It's not venture, it's growth stage companies making generally at least 40 to 50 million in revenue that we think are going to be core to the ecosystem over the following 10 years.

>> You were in Circle, home run. Congratulations. I mean, wow.

>> Thank you.

>> I mean, it must have exceeded your expectation.

>> It did.

>> You kind of felt like it was going to do... It was such an appetite for it, but holy cow.

>> Yeah, no, it did. We invested it around a 3 billion valuation. I thought it was worth over 10.

>> It's 50 now almost.

>> Yeah, I did not expect 50. I think, yeah, we have investors in our third fund that it was a decent chunk of their portfolio that we built in the third fund, and they'll be getting back a substantial portion of their capital that they committed.

>> Love to see it. I mean, the IPO market feels like it's a coiled spring right now, ready to go in the second half. I mean, there's so much demand.

>> Agreed. Especially for crypto blockchain companies. I mean, if you think about it, and this was always part of our thesis, was that Coinbase, it wasn't going to be that Coinbase, which is a phenomenal company, was going to be the only large crypto blockchain business that was public. It was just impossible. And so my focus has always been with these funds is to invest in the companies that we thought within five to 10 years could be listed businesses.

>> And Brian Armstrong, he did some good pioneering work taking on some of the Gary Gensler friction, of course. But wow, think about 2019 to where we are today in 2025, going through some really difficult periods from a regulatory standpoint. It's almost like this big wet blanket has been lifted off of us. Dan, what's your sentiment as to where we are today? Are we in the right spot, right balance or more work need to be done from a regulatory standpoint?

>> Yeah. Look, I think it's night and day compared to even nine months ago. And it's not just the regulatory backdrop, it's that in the middle of 23, we had Larry Fink change his mind about Bitcoin, which is very important because that led to the explosion in the ETFs. In January of 24, all of those Bitcoin ETFs were launched in terms of creating more awareness and general adoption. That was important. But then of course, with the election of Trump, and this administration is very pro-crypto and pretty incredible in a way to think that people in that administration, they own cryptocurrency. They own Bitcoin. Compared to the previous administration, I was at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, and they were actually their people representing the administration at the conference. And of course, Trump spoke at the one last year. But my point is that it's not just regulatory framework. It's about a general understanding that Bitcoin is real, that digital assets are important, that things like stable coins, as we see with, you said the circle IPO, and now the legislation that's being passed are important in the financial future of the US and the world. So we did not have that. We were nowhere two years ago. I had multiple companies being sued by the SEC, completely unfounded. The previous administration, I have no idea why they were so hell-bent against doing damage to our space. I think it's just lack of education.

>> I feel like it was almost virtue signaling, protecting the little guy.

>> But that's hysterical because the little guy-

>> Gave the benefit of-

>> But it's the little guy who has been the most impassioned, the biggest supporters of the space. The institutions have been late. The little guy, I think there was a study last year that said there are 50 million Americans that own cryptocurrency. That's the little guy. That's not CalPERS, that's not these large institutions. So how the other party somehow didn't understand that 50 million voters were supportive. Okay, why you would spend so much energy, wasted energy attacking such a huge voter. I mean, I'm just thinking rationally as a politician, forget about my view about the space in the-

>> Do you want to get elected?

>> I mean, what were they thinking? It's like the worst leadership decision that I can recall, right?

>> Incredible. I don't know, Trump, he kind of flip-flopped on it, but smartly. And I actually think some of that is a function of listening to people.

>> Of course, of course.

>> I was talking to Chuck Robbins a couple of weeks ago at Cisco, and he's the CEO. And I had said to him, Lou Gerstner once, he was the CEO of IBM famous said, "You don't go to Washington to get stuff. You go to Washington to make sure they don't screw stuff up," which I thought was pretty funny. He laughed and he said, "Well, I'll tell you this, the last administration, I couldn't get any time with them. They wouldn't listen to me. Now it's like an open door. They don't always agree. It doesn't always happen way I want it to happen, but they listen." So I do feel like they are kind of listening, at least as it relates to crypto and the innovation that's going on there. I mean, you go back to the original premise here. It's not just about the currency and the hype around it. It's about the underlying technologies, which is you as an investor, I think, understand that well. So where are we at from your perspective with the technology, whether it's DeFi, the performance associated with the blockchain, all this innovation that has been invested in for well over a decade now?

>> Well, oddly enough, I still think it's early. Which is strange to think that, but I think it's early because there is still quite a lot of resistance. There still is. It's fading away. The success I said of the ETF has been helpful. But if you are out there speaking still with institutions, maybe the circle IPO sort of raised some eyebrows. But again, that's only one. That's one. So now we have two companies and these corporate treasury companies that are getting involved with Bitcoin. That to me is a little different than what I'm talking about. We invest in the core... The companies that are building the space, the infrastructure, the whole concept of Web3, putting blockchain to productive uses, the businesses. So if I step back and I think, well, there are only two? How could that possibly be? I think there are going to be 40 or 50 public large crypto blockchain businesses. And so I'm an investor. I look at it through that vantage point. We are investing in companies that we think 3, 5, 7 years from now can be public. So we only have two, and I have 23 in my portfolio. At least 10 of them I think eventually will be public in the next two years.

>> So you look at it from an investor standpoint, you're looking at the, what call it distributed computing architecture, Web3, the innovations. I mean, again, my original premise was always the major protocols of the internet were co-opted by just a few companies. The innovation was stagnant. It maybe came out of universities, but that's 30 years ago. And now you have this whole industry that people like you are investing in. They're not all going to hit, but some of them are going to solve some real problems. You mentioned the... Well, you alluded to, I think you were alluding to the Genius Act, which looks like it's going to provide at least some framework around stable coins, what they are, what the rules of the road are. So these little steps along the way are all very positive steps.

>> Yeah. Now this is huge. I mean, look, I would say, look, the administration came in and they said almost day one, we are going to make America the crypto blockchain capital of the world. I mean, shocking. I read it like 10 times over. Is that really... I mean, they really said that and they kept saying it. So I think the interesting thing now is that the rest of the world is being left behind in a really dramatic way. And I think even a year or two ago, there were places where companies, businesses were a little more focused. Singapore, the Middle East, even Europe to some degree, people were looking outside the US. You saw Andreessen, Gemini, they were opening offices around the world. I think everyone is now very focused on the us, come back to the US and with this legislation, and I think with the support, the rest of the world literally is being left behind now and US is really vaulting ahead. And that goes for, I think almost all of Asia. I think China... Excuse me.

>> Yeah, go ahead, please.

>> China, which I think four or five years ago people thought was at the forefront because there were quite a few, much of the Bitcoin mining was happening on the mainland, and then in 21 for some reason didn't make any sense to me at all. They banned all Bitcoin and they banned all Bitcoin mining and it all left, and it doesn't seem to have come back. So I don't-

>> The timing was definitely, so you've got the US is obviously the reserve currency of the world. You've got now stable coins that are being backed by treasuries. So that I would presume is a big factor here in terms of just luring people to this part of the world, providing some stability for the market and confidence.

>> Well, what I would say is the demand for digital dollars, which is just what stable coins are backed by US, around the world, is much greater than for any other asset. So of all the stable coins out there, they're all 98% are dollar denominated. So this is very important for people in foreign countries where the governments are unstable. So we as Americans maybe don't think about this so much, but think about it, if you're, I don't know, an average guy living in Africa or Asia, you don't have access to a bank account. You can have a digital wallet, and you may not always want to have exposure to Bitcoin or Ethereum. You may want to just have a stable digital asset that is money, that is value, that can be transferred, that can be sent, where your savings can be stored. And so for the rest of the world, that's where the demand is. The demand is for these digital dollars.

>> When your currency is-

>> Yeah, well, who knows. Argentina or whatever it is, wherever it is. And so all of a sudden the entire world can plug into the stability of a digital-backed dollar. It's incredible. I mean, how could that not be an important innovation for the world? I don't get it. I mean, right.

>> Where are you on stablecoin being backed by actual... Forget real estate for a second.

>> You mean like real-world assets?

>> Real-world assets, not withstanding real-estates, more complicated. What's your point of view?

>> Yeah, I think that's happening. I mean, it's happening in a small way. One of our company's figure is at the forefront of that, Mike Cagney. It's been slower to develop than I would've thought, because to me, it's a very obvious use case. There are lots of illiquid assets out there that would benefit from being on-chain. They become fungible. They become tradable. There's price discovery. So I think we're just waiting for the next companies of the future to figure out how to put those assets on check. It's happening now. It's just small. It's just small so far.

>> It could be a big wave though, is the digital and physical worlds come together.

>> It's massive. I think it's massive, but I would've thought stable coins would've taken off years ago. These things take longer, unfortunately.

>> Well, when you have a supportive public policy, that obviously helps.

>> Absolutely.

>> I know you got to run. What's exciting you in the coming 12 to 18 months? What are you focused on?

>> Well, look, I think that, and I alluded to this a little before. The focus by the administration is to make the US, the crypto-capital, crypto-blockchain, capital of the world. And I think there are a lot of ways you can do it. The regulatory framework is great, et cetera. In my view, the way you do it is you encourage the world's companies, not just American companies, to list and be public on the NYC, on NASDAQ. That is how you get the world's capital to invest in the developed companies that have gone through the process. It's very important for companies in our space to go through the legitimization process of listing, right? We've had problems in the space with their bad actors. There have been a few with companies that have raised capital that didn't deserve to raise capital. We don't need to get into that. But going through this legitimization process and having outside investors, global investors be able to invest in the real businesses that are building the space, that's how you become the capital of the world. And I don't just mean American ones. You're having now, I think next on your next interview is Ledger, which is a French company, which we are I think the largest investor in. And so-

>> I didn't know that.

>> Oh yeah, I'm on the board.

>> The physical wallets.

>> And we own, I think 10 to 14% of the company.

>> Oh, interesting.

>> And Pascal is a phenomenal CEO. So I'm just saying it just happens to be that he's coming on next. But we've invested in companies like that. And I think having those types of companies listed here, that's how and capital deployed to those companies that know what they're doing that can invest in even the technologically more complicated companies in the space. That's how we become the capital of the world. And I think we're well on our ways, especially after that Circle IPO. People have become very excited.

>> Well, thanks for your support and helping make that happen and your sharp investments, and congratulations on all your success. Appreciate your much time coming on theCUBE.

>> Happy to be here.

>> All right. Thank you for watching the NYSE Wired plus theCUBE's coverage here of our Crypto Trailblazers. I'm Dave Vellante for John Furrier. Right back after the short break.