Former Bridgewater analyst: The case for digital assets is really strong

Foreign. Hi, my name is Joe. Welcome to a cointelegraph interview from Davos. Alex, how are you doing today?

Hi Joe, I'm doing great today.

Alex is the co. Is the founder of Codex, he's former Bridgewater Associates. Is that, is that right?

That's right, yes.

Fantastic. So we've just come out of the crypto house behind us where you're on a panel discussing institutional investments and the world of DeFi cryptocurrencies, etc. But before we get on to that, you first heard about Bitcoin in 2010, is that right? What's the story?

That's right. In 2010 I had actually come up with an idea for an energy backed currency and I had this sort of idea, you know, distributed currency based on renewable energy credits and governments and things. It was suitably complicated. This guy was working with me, was like, you know, I'm actually going to go work on this other thing instead called Bitcoin and sent it to me and I'm like, this seems cool, but like it's never going to work thankfully, like I should probably get a little anyway, just as a, you know, as a hedge.

So you did buy in 2010?

Sadly then Bridgewater told me Bridgewater couldn't handle the compliance.

And so you finally fell down the rabbit hole or started to invest in it a bit later.

Right. So I, I got into a really, it was Ethereum in 2015. A friend of mine was the launch manager for Ethereum and I'd been really intrigued by Bitcoin, but sort of the idea of a programmable currency, the idea of sort of a world computer and like an interoperable global financialism that blew me away. And so I basically quite quit Bridgewater and went full time into crypto, was sort of launched an exchange in the last kind of ICO boom. And then found myself here in Davos with Codex in 2022.

And so the panel we've just come from now, it seemed that the discussion within institutions now is all about NFTs, Ethereum, DApps, you know, different ecosystem things within the cryptocurrency sphere. Whereas maybe two, three years ago the conversations around institutions within always Bitcoin first. Has that sort of Bitcoin first message dissolved or is it still there? What's your take on that?

I think there's a lot of Bitcoin first and then even, even institutions that have got as far as Etherium, it's quite a big deal. And we heard the story about one institution took a year to be able to get Permission to buy one eth. So I think we're just seeing a really big spread. There's a lot of obviously new funds that sprung up that have had, you know, their 100x in asset value because they started at the right point, that are now major players and a bunch of institutions moving into the space. But it's, it's still very, very early days for the whole industry, really.

So you're not at all affected by the bear market, by the global macroeconomic backdrop that we're experiencing at the moment?

Oh, I mean, everybody's affected by the macro and macroeconomic situation. And I mean, look, the. The secular case for digital assets is really, really strong. And, you know, bitcoin's been declared dead long enough that even the people who used to declare it dead don't so much, I think, as a sort of. As a secular trend bet. Digital assets still makes a lot of sense. And, you know, obviously the industry is still reeling from the lunar crash, and obviously, you know, we're in a pretty uncertain macro situation.

It's very exciting there. Right. And with the WEF just next door, do you think they're listening? They've got their eye on these kind of conversations, these kind of developments, such.

As at Codex, I think really stuff started to break through with the Canadian freezing of funds on the trucker protest and ordinary people realizing that their money in the bank was no longer safe. If the government doesn't like their politics, that, plus everything that happened with Russia, plus the crypto communities being able to deliver $70 million in aid to Ukraine, sort of on the spot through crypto, these have started to break through. So that sort of, this is no longer just looked at as, you know, is bitcoin a risk to stability and looked at from this very kind of, you know, prudential, defensive standpoint. And actually, I think people starting to see the possibility of crypto and blockchain to solve some of these problems. I want to say something I mentioned inside, but is worth digging into more. Ethereum is programmable money, and then Codex is a more advanced version of Ethereum as programmable money. So it's my personal belief that the only way we're going to solve climate change is, is if the money system itself has the rules programmed into it that solve the prisoner's dilemma issue or the sort of, you know, the game theoretical issues that cause us to be where we are today. So that's something I've been working on for a decade. That's what got me into the alternative currency space. You know, pre Bitcoin. And I think we're at a place where sort of both the problem space of climate, of, you know, all of the breakdowns that come with famine and various things happening this year and having a new technology of money coming together, I think it's going to be a rough next decade, but I think the world's in a much better place with this technology than it would be without it.

Wonderful note to finish on. Very optimistic. Thank you so much, Alex. This is Joe Hall. It's been a Cointelegraph interview. Thank you very much.