David Namdar, Co-Founder of Galaxy Capital Partners interview with Matt Bird at World Economic Forum (DAVOS)

HIGHLIGHTS

•  Main topic of discussion in Davos is how to educate the public on blockchain
•  Enterprise-level blockchain adoption will come before user adoption
•  Security tokens expected to grow & become most innovative sector in blockchain technology

FULL COVERAGE

• Watch complete coverage of the World Economic Forum

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: David Namdar, Co-Founder at Galaxy Capital Partners with Matt Bird

Matt Bird (Show Host, Traders Network Show):00:00    

Welcome back to the Traders Network Show broadcasting worldwide on Equities.com. I’m your host Matt Bird. We’re here in Davos, Switzerland covering the 2019 World Economic Forum. And my next guest is David Namdar. David, welcome to the show. 

David Namdar (Co-Founder, Galaxy Capital Partners): 00:14

Thanks Matt. Glad to be here.

Matt Bird (Show Host, Traders Network Show): 00:15

So David, you’re the co-founder of galaxy digital and solid X partners. You are here in 2018 and now it’s 2019 and there’s bridges gap for us. What’s going on in street, be our eyes and ears.

David Namdar (Co-Founder, Galaxy Capital Partners): 00:30

Sure. So I’m super excited to be back in Davos. It was a completely different environment last year with all the enthusiasm and exuberance in the market, but at the same time, I’m more excited to see what’s going on here this year. Really what I’ve been seeing is the people that are committed to the space, the people, the companies, the organizations that are here today, they’re the ones that expect to be in the space for years to come. And so I think we’ve had a, a healthy thinning out of the industry that people have a much more serious and now focus on both educating the broader public, educating corporates, politicians and really trying to figure out how to deliver on a lot of the technological promise of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.

Matt Bird (Show Host, Traders Network Show):00:50    

What do you think is going to emerge out of this? You didn’t see a convergence between WEF and what’s happening in the street or we’re going to see convergence of more government level legislation being cut here. You know, we have very little visibility what’s going on in with here on the street. But what do you think is the outcome of all of this? 

David Namdar (Co-Founder, Galaxy Capital Partners):01:31      

So, I think, you know, last year we saw some bleeding of the conversations around blockchain, kind of into the main web events and everything. And now it’s starting to kind of take a more backseat role where a lot of the tech companies have started to figure out what the technology can mean to that. A lot of people who are still investing actively in the face. You know, I kind of, I described it as we’ve entered this boring private equity phase of the industry. And what I mean by that is, you know, the things that are being invested in the milestones, the updates aren’t as sexy. They aren’t as the same headlines that you’re hearing before and they’re less about kind of showing off the amount that that was raised and kind of fluff about it and more about like what this promise can actually be. 

Matt Bird (Show Host, Traders Network Show):02:10    

So, there’s a lot of speculation. We brought this up before that that the enterprise level integration is going to take precedence. It’s your, that the user adoption level has come second to organizational adoption. Then the organizations then roll out to their user base versus trying to do user acquisition and reverse engineer a marketplace that way. Would you agree with that? 

David Namdar (Co-Founder, Galaxy Capital Partners): 02:24

So, I like to be, I guess I’m kind of a contrarian by nature, right? In terms of even getting into the cryptocurrency space, leaving the hedge fund world and how I think about the space. And so, you know, one of the important things in a very relevant here in Davos is just that this is a global industry. So sort of the, the likes of which the world hadn’t seen before and how fast the opportunities capital entrepreneurs move and relocate the amount of people in the past couple of days that have told me from all over the world that are moving to Switzerland because of how entrepreneurial the government is. It’s absolutely fascinating to me. And that’s something that wasn’t, it wasn’t happening last year. Right? And so, I think Switzerland’s really setting a precedent by attracting that entrepreneurial capital when, when they’ve spent the past couple of years having regulators get up to speed on the knowledge about, you know, having open technology regulations.

Matt Bird (Show Host, Traders Network Show):02:51    

You know, I’m going to bring you back tomorrow if you’ve got the time, but we cut to a commercial break. Let’s leave us with your top three industry picks. What sectors you think are going to emerge in 2019. 

David Namdar (Co-Founder, Galaxy Capital Partners): 03:22

So, I think security tokens as a whole has been a big theme. And so you know that that’s an area that I think we’ll take a little bit more time, but we’ll see a lot of innovation. It’ll be leading a lot of the conversations. And then as I started thinking about some of the specific sectors there, I’m excited about bonds over equities and then really around the insurance market and then kind of data. I would say data exchanges or data as big as big, 

Matt Bird (Show Host, Traders Network Show): 03:43

We’re finding the, at least from where I’m sitting, I’m finding a lot of organizations are doing the data adoption because it can produce outcomes and datasets that previously didn’t exist. So that’s pretty fascinating. David Namdar everybody. You’re watching the Traders Network Show broadcasting on Equities.com. That’s it for today. We’ll be back tomorrow with a whole new set of guests. Thanks a lot.