Automated transcript · Written by software from the replay's audio. It can mishear names and figures; the replay is the record.
0:08 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fernhill's live Investment Summit today, hosted by 6. I'm pleased to introduce their President and Director, Mark Lasky, their Chairman, Chris Kern. And today, the main focus of the event, we have Ryan Kuchen, founder and CEO of MainBlock, Fernhill's digital asset trading division. So today we're going to be going through some questions mainly for Ryan. He's going to be talking about MainBlock. But as a note, We're going to have an open Q&A session as well. So if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them using the Q&A tab found on the right hand side of your screen. And as always, with the 6th event, today is being recorded and it's going to be available on demand in the coming days. But with that, Brian, I'd love to get started. So the first question is, what's so special about MainBlock and how does it differentiate itself in the marketplace compared to other digital asset trading platforms?
0:56 Yeah, thank you, Cam. And hello, everybody. Thank you for joining to check out this webinar about MainBlock. And ultimately, what makes MainBlock special is the array of trading algorithms that we offer as standard within our platform. When we first started there was a smart router on the marketplace but they were not what we call now a smart smart router. And what I mean by that is they could break up trades on a single exchange. And we realized that there was a massive market opportunity for us to create the smart smart router, meaning we can break up trades into tranches and execute globally and simultaneously at the best price on any exchange around the world that you're connected to. Okay, that's really impressive. So what do you see as the future for digital asset trading then?
1:48 So when we first started, we were fully focused on the smarter router functionality of main block and what our technology could do. But when I look at the future, I see that a number of firms who are right now coming into the marketplace are not purely crypto focused They're looking to add crypto as a subset of their overall portfolios So what I see for the future is that companies like ourselves would be offering multi-asset classes on 1 integrated platform available to banks, hedge funds, and all of their portfolio managers. All right, so that's a nice general look at the future, but maybe a bit more specifically, 3 years down the line, where do you see MainBlock?
2:36 I see us as the global market leader in our space. So with what we have today all of the development work that we've used to roll out for CryptoWire and the development work that we still have in our pipeline to improve our offering to make it more robust, I see us as the global market leader. And that means supporting not only crypto, but also potentially traditional assets. And also we just put our options chain into development. It's a really exciting time for us as we look at what we're doing now and compare it to where we're about to be. Okay, great. A bit more specific, you know, what's the advantage to coding a modular API? What use cases does this allow the other companies, you know, that wouldn't have the ability to progress?
3:27 So let's take banks, for example. Banks historically move very slowly when it comes to adopting new technology. And this means that for us, being modular is a key component of our offering. We're able to plug in directly to an existing infrastructure without requiring a Fortune 500 or a Fortune 100 company to change all of their internal already existing infrastructure. So the trading platforms that their traders use today can simply receive all of the data coming from MainBlock and with the flip of a switch you can turn on crypto trading in your existing infrastructure. Cool, okay. Now I know that we have Mark and Chris on the line here and this question might go over to them But Brittany wants to know what sort of experiences the MainBlock executive team have, what's their background? Maybe Ryan, that's just you there.
4:25 Yeah, so I'm happy to take this unless Mark or Chris jumps in, but Our entire executive team comes from a wide array of financial services background. So when we look at Mark DeVoe, Mark spent a number of years on a trading desk with Morgan Stanley. He also spent a number of years with the Toronto Stock Exchange building all the pipes for high frequency trading. So when we were looking at exactly what would make our offering special within the marketplace, we were able to take Mark's experience and pile on. Meaning he knew exactly how trades needed to be routed, how the pipes needed to be built for our customers, our clients to get the best execution possible. And if you remember crypto, you know, from 2017 or so, when it really started to take off in the traditional market space, the entire global crypto community was discombobulated, disorganized.
5:22 You had hundreds of exchanges around the world, all offering crypto at different prices. I remember I would look at Coinbase before I would go to sleep and then I would wake up in the morning and there would be a massive difference in the price because in Asia they were trading higher overnight and then in the mornings they'd be trading lower in New York. And so when we looked at all of these different price fluctuations we realized that there was a massive opportunity for us to capitalize on by giving traders the ability to execute globally right there in their office. Right, absolutely. Go ahead, Ryan. Yeah, sorry. And you asked about the executive team. So I can also touch on Patrick. So Patrick Egan was the CRO for NASDAQ for a number of years.
6:16 And so his experience comes in very handy when we look at who our target demographic is for the user base That we're looking to bring aboard his relationships are meaningful to say the least Great absolutely next question, you know, what's Fernhill's relationship with main block right now? And maybe Chris or Ryan, feel free. Yeah, I can certainly take that one and thanks for hosting here Cam and 6. I appreciate everyone being here today. Simply, Mainblock is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fernhill. So it's an operating company under the Fernhill public entity. All right, fair enough. There's another question coming in from Greg. Can you expand on Fern being acquired possibly within 2 to 3 years as stated during the last presentation?
7:08 So that's just a potential, you know, scenario that we are certainly open to. It's not like we're necessarily planning for it. We're just being open-minded about the potential possibilities of an exit event or liquidity event where we might be potentially acquired within the next couple of years. That's part of a bigger plan to either up-list to a senior exchange at some point in the near future here. Or of course, if someone finds our tech interesting and what we're doing in our client base to be meaningful, then we very well might become an acquisition target in the near future or some doubt somewhere down the road. Can't really say, but it's just, we're just open to the possibilities and we're gonna do anything that's opportunistic for the company and its shareholders.
7:56 No, absolutely. Listen, before we wrap up for the day, And I know that this is a bit of a short form event. I'd love to hear any more thoughts, any final words on MainBlock from each of you. Maybe just go around briefly. Well, I'll kick that off. We acquired MainBlock about a year ago now. It's actually about 11 months. And there was really probably 3 big reasons why we did it. And 1 was because just where we were in terms of where the crypto industry is and where digital assets are. And it was really just kind of on a great upswing at that point in time. Yes, since then the market has kind of shed a little bit of weight and has come down a bit but we believe that's just part of an initial cycle
8:42 of a big new market building And if you parallel this to the Internet back in 2000, you can see a very, very similar type pattern. The second reason was really the team. They have an awesome team, really great guys, awesome to work with, super bright, brilliant technology builders. And just they have a real sense of what the market is and what the market wants and where the market's going. And then the pedigree from where they came from, I think, is top notch. And then thirdly was just sheer technology. They had some real great, amazing tech that we haven't been readily available, that was not readily available in the marketplace. And we saw things in there that were very exciting to us and obviously very exciting to our clients and people in the pipeline.
9:36 And so we think that there's a really bright future here for main block and everything that it represents in the marketplace of digital asset trading. Mark, just repeat that first part, You were muted. Go ahead. I'll just jump in and say that, you know, so the last couple of presentations, Chris and I focused on the overall picture of Fernhill, and we really wanted the interested party shareholders to hear a little more about MainBlock and where we're going. It's definitely a big part of our company and we're very excited about it. Chris mentioned the tech, the team, all those things we talked about last presentation and today. And it's just you know something where even that we did mention in a recent press release that we're looking to rebrand our whole company and probably along the main block as being, you know, the block, the blockchain and building blocks. There's a whole lot of things we're doing. So we really love MainBlock, love the team, the tech.
10:35 And it's coming by leaps and bounds from when we first acquired it. And we just can't wait for everybody to see a little more about what's happening. But it's coming, and we can't wait to show you more as we progress. I couldn't agree more with Chris and Mark. We're a great team of great people. Ultimately, what I'm most excited about is to be able to work hand in hand with Chris and Mark every day. They are both supremely experienced with where we are as a company and taking companies further and further down the road. And I don't know how many people out there have ever worked with a team of extremely excited developers, but that energy is infectious. When your entire team is pumped about what you're offering and what you're building for the future, the energy here is just off the charts, and we couldn't be more excited for our future.
11:32 All right, well, Ryan, with that, I think it's apt to wrap up on your note there. Today was fast-paced, but I'm really glad that you were all able to join us today. Today's presentation is going to be available on demand in the coming days, as I mentioned before. But Ryan, Mark, Chris, I want to thank you again for joining me today. I want to thank everyone in the audience, especially those who asked questions. I hope you have a good rest of your day and we'll talk again soon, hopefully. Cheers, guys. Thanks. Thanks everybody. Bye everybody. Take care. ♪
