Welcome to "The Informed Investor," where we break down the latest financial headlines, bringing in research and insights to help you separate the news from the noise. (gentle music) Welcome to "The Informed Investor," a show brought to you by Dimensional Fund Advisors, a global asset manager. Today's topic is the fascinating discussion around cryptocurrencies. I'm Mark Gochnour. I'll be joined today by Jake DeKinder and Kevin Green. It's good to have you on the show today, Kevin. It's great to be here, Mark. Kevin's a PhD, integral part for our Investment Solutions Group. So really, really glad to have you here today. Now, Kevin, we always start with headlines, so let me read a couple headlines here and we'll get into it. All right, cryptocurrencies. First one, "Bitcoin Soared in 2024. How Much, If Any, Should You Own?" And then another one here, "Have Cryptocurrencies Arrived as an Asset Class? It's complicated." And then, Jake, I have to go to our all time favorite. Now this- This one's so good. This goes back in time. It's so good though. All right, We're going back to 2018 here. This is John Oliver on HBO's "Last Week Tonight" in March of 2018. Cryptocurrency. All right. "Everything you don't understand about money combined with everything you don't understand about computers." what could possibly go wrong? I mean, it doesn't get much better than that. But all kidding aside, I mean, I think that is a, I think that's a theme that pops up on these informed investors a lot, which is there are a lot of investment products that are out there. There's a lot of things that you have to understand about it as an investor. And I think you want to have a reasonably high degree of skepticism. We say this all the time when you go into this, especially when you start talking about, "Hey, is this gonna impact the way that I'm gonna retire?" Or, "What I can do for my kids and all of those things?" So all kidding aside, you do want to have that high degree of skepticism with a lot of things that are out there. Whether it's cryptocurrencies, stocks, bonds, really anything. Anything. You're thinking about investing. That's right. Just be very clear about what it is- Not scared. you're trying to accomplish. Not scared- Yeah. But maybe inquisitive. Yep. Yeah. That's a good word for it. Yeah. There. Yeah. And I go back to the headlines around the one about, you know, should it fit my portfolio. And if so, how much and how do I think about that? So let's get into that here. But let's start out, let's just kind of higher level. Yep. We hear this term, cryptocurrencies, just maybe lay the groundwork a little bit. What exactly does that mean? How do I think about this term, cryptocurrencies? Yeah, I think it, we won't be able to solve all of the problems of thinking about what it combines with what you don't know about investing and what you don't know about computers. But I think it's helpful to think about what it is, right? And it's a digital form of currency. There's no coins, hard coins issued, no paper currency. It's not backed by a sovereign government. So it's issued by some independent party. And it's supported by this blockchain technology. And I think about what this does. And it's basically a secure ledger. And I know you have an accounting background. Now you got him excited. This is gonna be good for you. But if you think about, you know, I think about balancing a checkbook before you had online banking, you have these debits and credits, and it provides a secure way to link all of the transactions as a part of the currency. That gives you confidence in a way to transact and transparency into whenever you're buying and selling goods using this cryptocurrency. Now the blockchain technology, it's important, I think for many, to separate that apart from cryptology and using cryptocurrencies. Because the technology, the secure ledger can be used in any number of ways beyond just digital currencies. You can think about companies using it to add value in their supply chains, right? Producing efficiency. There's examples of Walmart using blockchain to help track the supply of produce. When you have a foodborne illness breaking out, right immediately almost they can track where a particular produce, we had lettuce or something else. Who supplied that? They can remove it from the shelves in a very efficient manner. Whereas historically, maybe that took weeks or lost out on a lot of goods that otherwise weren't tainted. So the technology is something that is prevalent in a part of your portfolio. Companies are investing in that. It needs to be distinct from the cryptocurrency, I think, for folks to kinda get a handle on, on what this is and what its role is. 'Cause sometimes the two get mixed without separating them. Well, I was gonna say- Yeah? How long has it been around, is what, you know? Because I think in the last 5 to 10 years, people have heard a lot about both cryptocurrencies. And I think for those that have read a little bit about it. They've read something about blockchain, but it's not necessarily just been around for the last 5 or 10 years that. That's been around for a while, correct? Blockchain has been around for a while. It's not a new technology, per se, but there has been new innovations into how to implement it in day-to-day business. So I think that there's been an evolution in how to incorporate the technology in a way that's beneficial. But the technology of itself, right? It's been around for a long time. It's not something that's brand new. Okay. Should we set the landscape a little bit? Yeah, I think so. So good definition there of kind of the currencies as a whole, some of the background there, but, you know, how big is it? Let's just talk a little bit about the landscape and we'll talk about how it fits in to one's portfolio. And it's hard to know exactly the number of crypto currencies out there. You can do a quick search out there and something like 20 million may pop up. But if you do another search on that are actively traded on exchange, it's somewhere between 10 to 20,000, I think, is sort of an accepted number there that's traded on an exchange globally. There's maybe about 1,300 plus exchanges out there where you can transact cryptocurrencies. That kinda how you think about the opportunities set there. Yeah, it's pretty vast and complex in terms of the number of currencies out there. But when you start to look a little bit about which ones have actually gained traction and are being traded on a regular basis, it's a pretty narrow group. So it's pretty top-heavy in terms of the coins that are actually capturing the majority of transactions and trading in the marketplace. You look at something like Bitcoin, which has a very long history relative to others. And is it the first, I'll say, cryptocurrency out there? Exactly. And that currently is around over 50% of the total market capitalization across all of these thousands of currencies that are out there. And then it starts to fall off pretty quickly thereafter. But you get something about the top five cryptocurrencies, those represent over 80% of the entire cryptocurrency landscape. So it's a very top-heavy industry. Despite the fact that there's a lot of them out there, most of the activities limited to a few of the coins. All right, Jake, we've gotten quite a few questions over the years, particularly around Bitcoin. It's one of the originals, if not the original, and, you know, the longest traded. So let me just give a couple numbers here and bring up the discussion of where we sort of gotten these questions about cryptocurrencies over time. So I'm gonna start with Bitcoin. And it really started trading, I'll say, around 2010, and it was in the pennies. And then it kind of got into the dollars and hundreds of dollars. A couple major milestones as I think about the price movement of Bitcoin. 2017, in the year 2017, in December, it got up to almost $19,000. So it had a big run there in 2017. In 2021, it got up to about almost $68,000 per coin. And then hit a record in 2025 of over 124,000. And then now, it's somewhere around 108,000, depending on the day here. But Jake, we are getting the question big time when it was in that 67,000 range in 2021, like, "Hey, this thing has skyrocketed, doesn't belong in my portfolio." And then, guess what? A year later, it was down 77%. And we've seen a lot of those drops through time, right? I mean, even if you go back, you said, I think you said 2010 there where we started really looking at the data there. It's funny if you look at some of the charts that we've looked at over time in terms of like, it almost looks like it's flat, flat, flat, flat, flat. And then back to 2017, you get this big spike. But if you actually go in and zoom, even back in like 2013, it's pretty remarkable volatility through time. And you compare that to something like, you know, a basic U.S. stock index in terms of the amount of drawdowns, the big drops, all of those, those investment experiences look very different between something like the price of Bitcoin and something like a broadly diversified index in the U.S. Well, let me give some numbers around that, and then I'll get your thoughts on this Kevin. So if you go back in time now here, we're going back to August of 2010, when you really started to see some of the trading happening there on the Bitcoin. So if you go back to that time period, August of 2010, a loss of 50% or more for Bitcoin happened six times since that time period for the Russell 3000, which is kind of a market proxy here in the U.S. We've never had a loss of over 50% from peak to trough. And if you look at a 70% drop from peak to trough, it's happened five times on Bitcoin. Again, not happened on the U.S. market. So I what do you make of those numbers there, how do you think about that volatility? Yeah, that volatility is a bit frightening, and it brings up a more relevant question, I think, of kind of how does this fit into your portfolio allocation. When you see the storied rise of the performance of Bitcoin, starting from trading at pennies to where it is, that can be attractive of thinking all the money that you could have made. But then you start to look at the volatility and think about what are the implications for that being a part of my asset allocation. And it also brings up the question of thinking about what exactly is represented by these digital currencies. Are they some form of a medium exchange? Are they supposed to be a replacement for cash? Well, Jake, if I sell you something today and you give me U.S. dollars for that amount, and then tomorrow, if I see something that- Does anybody actually still carry, I actually do carry some cash, but a lot of people don't carry cash around anymore. I do keep a little bit of cash on me- Definitely not coins. For various reasons. Definitely not coins, man. All the pennies like going away, right? Right. (everyone laughing) But the point being is if we have that transaction, then tomorrow the U.S. dollar depreciates by 70%, well, that's a little bit risky. That's not really what I'm looking at in of confidence of having a currency that provides a viable way- Yeah. To transact and gives me confidence. Certainly, no. That may, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And I think that the volatility piece is interesting too, especially, you know, you're talking about all of these additional cryptocurrencies that are out there, and now you're starting to see as say more diversified solutions that are coming to market. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's in an ETF form. You can buy Bitcoin in ETF form, you can buy a lot of cryptocurrencies in an ETF form. But also do know that if you look, you know, at what happens when you get the big drops in Bitcoin that you cited, a lot of times, you get the big drops in a lot of the other cryptocurrencies as well. And I'm not saying it's a correlation of one across the board, but you do tend to see them move as a group. So something to take into consideration as well, even as people start arguing for, well, there's a more diversified way to do it. We talk a lot about that volatility, the huge price swings up and down. But going back to then, if I think about it as an investment, so maybe not necessarily as cash. Right. Maybe the price moves are too big to think about it as a cash replacement, but as an investment, how do you think about an expected return of a cryptocurrency? Yeah, it's challenging. You compare it to the alternatives like a stock, and that's a ultimately represents a residual claim on all of the future earnings that that company is going to generate. Or you think about a fixed income investment and you're lending money to an issuer, and in return, you're getting interest payments. Those are tactical ways to think about formulating, "Oh, I can get a positive rate of return for making this asset allocation decision investing in a stock or bond." When you think of something like a cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, it's really driven more by speculation of thinking, "I'm paying X price today. And if I'm going to get a positive rate return, that must mean that I'm expecting someone else to pay more for this and to the future without any direct link to a stream of income that you're generating from that to provide support for that fundamental evaluation." It's important too, you know, we're talking there about sort of the overall allocation, and we work with a lot of financial professionals. And when they are trying to put together financial plans for their clients, right, you sort of form expectations out in the future. You gotta have expected returns for different asset classes. And I ask 'em all the time. I'm like, "If you had to put an expected return into your financial planning software for cryptocurrencies, like what would you put in there?" And a lot of 'em struggle to come up with a reasonable number. And I think it gets back to there's just a massive dispersion of returns and a high degree of volatility. Then you combine that with, well, what would be the expected return really of any currency? And I think it's challenging to come up with a reasonable estimate, whereas, you know, you look at stocks, we've got 100 years of data, you can come up with a reasonable. I mean, and they're noisy, right? But a reasonable estimate for what you expect to make on your stock and bond portfolio. Well, you always give the example too of I have a U.S. dollar. A year from now it's worth one U.S. dollar. Right. If I have one Bitcoin a year from now, it's worth one Bitcoin. But what is that value? That's, I mean, you don't know. You just don't know. Right. And that's back to Kevin's point too. I mean, look, anything can happen with the U.S. dollar, right? We know the value of the dollar fluctuates relative to other currencies. But I think there's gonna be probably a little bit, and when we've seen this, more volatility when you're talking about one form of currency versus something like the U.S. dollar or any other major currency that's out there. Well, the other thing too, coming back to, you know, thinking about it as an investment, thinking about the allocation, you know, one of the things we talk about, which is, well, how much exposure do you already have to it, right? Either through companies that are doing blockchain, using that either in the blockchain business or using blockchain. Or, quite frankly, there's a lot of companies that just invest in cryptocurrencies as well. So it's hard to understand truly already how much exposure you might have to it. Yeah, you have some. Yeah. Just don't know exactly what that is. Right. Right. Yeah, but it's a good point you made about if you're looking at cryptocurrency as growth and creating wealth, and we should just clarify that I think a lot of the conversation we're having now is probably around that. Yeah. That point. So it's hard to put an expected return on that long term 'cause you just don't have the data and really know what that's gonna be worked down the road. But one other thing too, when we think about companies, we make this point a lot on publicly traded securities. Like, it's tough out there. There's so much competition. Yeah. And there's so much competition, I think, in the cryptocurrencies. And it's gonna be interesting to see potentially if the sovereigns get into this. You know, what if the U.S. comes out and says we have a digital currency too? Yeah. Or cryptocurrency. Like, what does that mean for the marketplace? We're still in the early stages of kind of the development of this, we'll call it industry, and as a lot of uncertainty of kind of what role regulations might have, would sovereign nations issue a digital currency of their own, and and what does that do in terms of the composition of this market. If you have a digital currency issued by the US government, for example, what does that do for the attractiveness of investing in Bitcoin, right? It's quite uncertain as to what ultimately could pan out. And there's that uncertainty should be foremost in many's minds as to thinking about what role or what kind of allocation they may want to this space. All right, so we talked a little bit about the competition potentially that's out there with different cryptocurrencies. Another thing I think investors should be just aware of is, I'll say the safety- Yeah. Of some of these cryptocurrencies. You're reading some different articles about potentially fraud and people hacking, hacking, I guess, the exchanges or the accounts. So just another thing to be careful of as an investor. Well, I think you're right about that. There is this, I think, sense out there that cryptocurrencies are gaining legitimacy. You're reading about them more. You know, you go back a couple of years ago and you've got celebrities that are out there, you know, promoting different currencies, promoting different exchanges. I mean, shoot, they're naming stadiums, right? It doesn't mean that just because it's becoming, I'll say, more well known or more legitimate, there aren't serious risks that are still associated with that. And that goes back to the opening comment of you want to have a high degree of skepticism when you go into some of this stuff. Yeah. I like to think about it as kind of monitoring costs of it's pretty cheap for me to monitor what's going on with my current allocation. How much effort do I really wanna spend monitoring any type of allocation into some other asset class. It's just not something that I wanna spend a great degree of my time on and something I don't have to. Well, we talked about that in a previous episode where we talked about public markets versus private markets. And again, that's a big consideration for you as an investor. What's it gonna take from a due diligence standpoint so that you feel good about putting a substantial amount of your wealth into something like that. Yeah. Hey, you mentioned cost, and I think that's one thing you always want to consider for any investment, is it, well, is what's the cost side of things? And we've certainly seen transaction costs. There is a cost to buy and sell a stock or bond. There's a cost to buy and sell a cryptocurrency. And I think that's come down over time. But what are some other costs to think about as you think about a cryptocurrency? Well, I mean one of the ones that you love to talk about is, you know, tax cost, right? I mean a lot of people that are moving in and out of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, whatever, and maybe even the ETFs that have been launched as well. There could be some potential short-term trading in there. When you're doing short-term trading, right, that's not the most tax-efficient strategy. So that's one to think about. The other one we love to talk about all the time is opportunity costs. And I know you love to bring that one up, right? Unless you have unlimited money, you gotta pull it from somewhere. And what was the expected return of where your money was at and what's the expected return now of going into something, a substantial portion is something like cryptos. But then go back to the opportunity cost. So if I'm saying, okay, I'm gonna go invest in a cryptocurrency, that money's coming from somewhere. So if it's coming from cash, okay, I kind of know what I'm earning on cash. If it's coming from my stock allocation, well, historically, we'll say, "Maybe an expected return of a 10%, what am I going to get on that particular cryptocurrency?" So that's kinda what you're meaning by the opportunity cost. Completely. You always have to think about, again, unless you have unlimited money, right? You sort of have to say, if I'm taking it from one pocket and putting the other or one type of investment and putting it in the other, what's the trade-off that I'm weighing in doing that. Now, through this whole discussion, I do wanna be relatively balanced in that, you know, you brought up 2010, right? And the reality is, is that this industry is evolving. Cryptocurrencies are evolving. The adoption of blockchain technologies. The way that investors- Very quickly. Can access either an investment in something like that. We cited the fact that you've got, you know, packaged in different ETFs that are out there, a lot of exchanges, much easier transaction costs to do, the investments are coming down. So I do wanna be balanced in that. It's just all of the things that you cited around, well, you know, why am I holding it? What do I expect to make on it? What are the risks? What are the costs? It doesn't mean that those go away, even as this industry continues to evolve. Well, it's a good point about the evolution very quickly. Yeah. I mean, there's tokens now. Oh yeah. Are starting to be coming out. Can you start trading 24 hours a day on these different tokens on exchanges and things like that? Well, the tokenization, basically, a digital asset you're trading there for, you know, what would be a share in a stock. I mean, again, that's another one where you want to be watching how this is evolving. And back to Kevin's point, that's another application right there of blockchain technology, not necessarily inside of a company, but in the investment industry and how that's evolving. Yeah, it is a nice evolution. I think, Mark, also can point to the evolution of his art collection and the digital tokens that he has in terms of providing efficiency gains there. But no. Many applications, kidding aside. You talk about NFTs. Yes, exactly. Many applications, you're exactly right. That is a clear case of where the technology is being used as a way to provide potentially some form of benefit for investors apart from the usage in a cryptocurrency format. Now, just to be very clear on those NFTs, I never bought a picture of a monkey or anything. Yeah. My model for investing is if I don't understand it, I kinda stay away from it. And I didn't... And I still don't really understand all the intricacies of investing in cryptocurrencies, NFTs, or things. Jake, you were at a major industry event. I was out at Future Proof Yeah, Future Proof. Yeah. In the last day or two, and there's a lot of conversations going around with cryptocurrencies and things. And you do hear about it. How do you think about it in terms of a growth strategy? How do you think about it in terms of cash? But another one we hear often about is how do you think about cryptocurrencies as an inflation hedge? Sometimes you read about that- Yeah. In headlines. So maybe start with that, and then I'll get your thoughts on that, Kev, about inflation. Well, the one thing to understand about a hedge is you basically want something that sort of moves in lockstep. And if you look at the volatility of something like inflation, U.S. CPI over time, I mean, listen, you get spikes up. Don't get me wrong. And we've seen a little bit of a spike up, you know, in the last couple of years here. But if you think about inflation over time, it sort of moves like that, right? And if you think about what cryptocurrencies or we'll just take Bitcoin's done over time, it looks like this over time, right? You cannot hedge that with something like that. That to me is a different argument. That's an outpace argument, right? Which is, okay, I have something that I think is going to do better than inflation over time, which is fine. 'Cause a lot of people wanna figure out how they maintain purchasing power and outpace inflation over time. But when I do hear, "Oh, it's an inflation hedge," I'm like, "I think you're a little bit off on that." That's not the way you hedge unexpected inflation. Yeah, Jake, that's a good point. I think a lot of that comes stems from this idea that this is an alternative form of currency, so maybe it can protect against- Yeah. Inflation pressure on a U.S. dollar or something else. But the main point is that when you truly wanna think about a hedge, you do want it to move in lockstep. Yeah. To reduce or remove the uncertainty of what inflationary pressure might do to the asset you have exposure to with U.S. dollars. And when it doesn't move in lockstep, rather than reducing uncertainty, especially when you see something as volatile as Bitcoin, you're actually increasing uncertainty in your portfolio. And that's pretty much the exact opposite of what the goal of a hedge is to do. And so you see that it doesn't really line up in the numbers, and it further speaks to this idea of, if you're looking at it as a hedge or even maybe as a diversification tool, again, when you think about diversification, the objective there is to reduce uncertainty, reduce volatility. And when you're adding something that's as volatile as Bitcoin, that's not going to narrow the range of outcomes. It's only gonna expand them and increase the volatility of your asset class. So whether it's as an inflation protection tool or as a diversification tool, a lot of those thoughts are really misplaced with what you see from a data standpoint of how this asset class performs and how it fit into and what it might do for your existing asset allocation. You think about the availability of the cryptocurrencies out there, we talked about, you know, I mean, there's 10 to 20,000 that are traded on exchanges. And as this technology evolves, the opportunities that evolves, I'm sure some of these are just gonna be potentially big winners. The hard part is to say, "I don't know which ones." Handful of that 10 to 20,000 are gonna be the ultimate winners on this thing. And it's hard to diversify all 10 to 20,000 cryptocurrencies at this point. Yeah, it's getting, I mean, again, it's getting easier to do. There's definitely expanding number of products that are out there, but it's a really good reminder, Mark, that you made there. I mean, I'll go back to something as basically as like, you know, the global equity markets. I mean, you go back in 35 or so years ago, I don't think a lot of people thought Japan is a country was gonna be flat For all 30 plus years- Yeah. in terms of their equity returns, right? And if you took a concentrated bet on Japan, you probably would've lost out on relative to a diversified portfolio. And that's a real basic example of diversifying across countries. But the concept is the same, that if you don't know which ones are gonna be the winners, you have to be careful going all in on one. All right, so if I'm an investor and I'm thinking, okay, I'm thinking about cryptocurrencies, just be very clear on what you're trying to accomplish, whether it's growth or, you know, inflation or cash, we talked about that, have a good understanding potentially what that expected return may be. No other risks, the cost associated with that. If you know those things and say, "Hey, I wanna put some of my money in there," there's nothing wrong with that. You're clear on what you're trying to accomplish. Or it might just be, "I don't know. I just wanna participate. I want a flyer, really speculate a little bit." that's okay too. Or, just be clear about that. Yeah, it's a great point there. I mean, whether it's the, "Well, I'm gonna put a little bit of money in there and quite frankly it's not gonna change a single thing about my standard of living, how I'm gonna retire," all the things that we talk about on this show, great. Just don't be surprised if it goes to zero. Or I do hear people, to your second point there, which is I want to invest a little bit in this because I want to better understand it. And from an education standpoint, I'm okay with that. I mean, I'm not telling you whether to do it or not do it, right? But again, it's are you putting are large portion that's actually gonna dramatically potentially change your outcome, or are you doing it because, eh, it's a bet I find it interesting. Or quite frankly, maybe it scratches an itch. We say that all the time, right? If it scratches an itch, and you're like, "Yeah, I just hit it. Fine, whatever." Yeah. Jake, I think, especially when you think about having a segment maybe of your allocation where you can make those types of decisions, you're fascinated by the topic, you can make an allocation to Bitcoin, you can make an investment decision for some other form of investment that falls outside of the broader structure of your portfolio. Especially if that keeps you in your seat for the long term, that can be a really healthy form of activity, right? I want a little bit of this because otherwise, maybe I don't follow through with the long-term plan. And as long as it's not moving you away from that future trajectory, then it can be completely reasonable to think of having an asset allocation cognizant of all the trade-offs and considerations that we've discussed and still have a willingness to put some money to work in the space. You told us, you like to go to the craps table, right? I do, yeah. You know, I do enjoy... That's a good point. You know, I don't sit down at the craps table expecting that it's gonna help me with retirement, but I am willing to allocate a little bit of my personal income to have a little bit of entertainment. Hey, if I did though, let's say I did want to allocate not so much on speculation, but I do want it to be part of my portfolio. Like, how do I think about how much should I put in, let's say, a cryptocurrency. So, we talked about the landscape. I guess, collectively, cryptocurrencies are what about $4 trillion, somewhere in that range. It changes, you know, depending on what the prices are doing. But relative to, let's say, the overall global stock market, what is that? Like 2%? Something like that? Yeah, it's pretty small. You think about the overall stock market having somewhere around 175 to $200 trillion worth of both the global equity and fixed income assets across the world. And you compare that to something like 3.5 to 4 trillion in cryptocurrencies, and it's pretty small. And so you think about what type of allocation that you would want that allows you to be comfortable with your portfolio performing somewhat reasonably close to what you see from the overall asset. And it's small. Otherwise, you start to get a lot of tracking error, a lot of movements in your portfolio that makes you look a lot different. That can be challenging for someone to stay in their seat if they're having that type of disruption in their performance day to day versus what they're seeing elsewhere. Well, and by tracking error, let's say your coin's up 100% and your rest of your portfolio is up 10, or it's down 70% and your portfolio's up 10. That's what you mean About tracking. Yeah. Exactly. How different it can look versus your- Portfolio. Portfolio. Everyone likes tracking their where it's on the positive side, but when you go through periods where we saw over the last, you know, 15 years where you have five draw down events in excess of 70%, like that's exactly what most just can't withstand in their portfolio and something that they should be top of mind when thinking about what's the reasonable size of allocation you might want to the space. And the reason was it's pretty small. All right, so Jake, be very clear about what you're getting into. Know what you're trying to accomplish. The industry, the cryptocurrency is evolving fast. Evolving very fast. And we'll come back and give some updates on this as it continues to evolve. Well, and and one of the things too is, is I do think that, I don't think that blockchain, right, it's companies are incorporating it, we're seeing it more and more in everyday life. That's just the reality. But right, cryptocurrencies have been around for a while now. We're not here making the argument that it's going away anytime soon. My point here is I do think it's something that as an investor and as maybe a financial professional, it's an area that you want to stay up on because I think the discussion is going to continue. It just means be careful rushing in as an investor, I think. And as this evolves, we'll come back and discuss those evolutions and always have that conversation of how and if it fits in my portfolios. Just things to be aware of with that. So, thanks for joining us today, and have a fantastic rest of the day. We'll see you on the next episode. (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (transition chiming) (no audio)