CoinShares International Limited

I'd now like to hand the conference over to your host, Jerry Lee Brown. Thank you.

Thank you, operator. I would like to welcome you all to the CoinShares 2024 Q3 earnings call and webcast. Speaking from management today will be John-Marie Magnetti, Chief Executive Officer, and Richard Nash, Chief Financial Officer. All those joining today are encouraged to log into the live event where you'll be able to view the accompanying presentation during today's call. Alternatively, the results and a copy of the presentation are available to download from the investor relations section of the CoinShares website. A replay of the webcast will be available for 30 days following the live call and a transcript will be posted on the company's website as soon as it is available. Following the presentation, we will host a short Q&A via the webcast platform. Should you wish to submit a question to the management team, please provide your name and company affiliation. We will do our best to get to as many as we can within the allotted time. Lastly, our safe harbour statement. CoinShares would like to remind everyone that, except for historical information contained herein, statements made on today's call and webcast that would constitute forward-looking statements are based on currently available information. The company assumes no responsibility to update such forward-looking statements, and I would like to point you to the risk factors associated with our business, which are detailed in our prospectus. At this time, I will turn the call over to Jean-Marie.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm really pleased to welcome you all to our Q3 2024 earnings call. Can you believe this marks our 14th quarter as a public company? Time certainly flies, and in crypto, it doesn't accelerate. I can still remember the very first one Richard and I did. As always, I'd like to start by sharing my thoughts on what we have seen in the digital asset market in Q3. You know, Q3 was actually quite interesting. Even so, it might have seemed quiet on the surface. Let me tell you what I mean by that. While we didn't see any major headlines, we noticed some really encouraging trends, especially in ETP flows. Bitcoin products, in particular, have been doing exceptionally well. We saw this come to a head in mid-July. That was right after Jerome Powell made his comments about getting close to that 2% inflation target. The markets really responded to that, and we saw even more interest when the Fed announced their 50 basis points rate cut. Now, I have to mention something that caught everyone's attention. The Bank of Japan moved in August. While the market recovered pretty quickly, this is actually more important than it might seem at first glance. Why? Well, it created this interesting dynamic where investors were unwinding their Yen position and moving out of U.S. assets. This could push U.S. rates higher regardless of what Fed does. Here's what I think is really crucial right now. It all comes down to the U.S. liquidity. Think about it. The Fed is talking about cutting rates for the first time in four years. That's huge and probably way too aggressive versus the speed at which to push them up. But time will say. And in my view, that's going to be great news for both gold and Bitcoin. It is already at play in Q4. With lower nominal rates, we are looking at real rates potentially going flat or even negative, and the U.S. deflating themselves out of a debt issue. I'm seeing something else that's fascinating in the market right now. The amount of assets held on digital exchanges keep going down. Now, what does it tell us? It shows there is strong demand out there, but people just aren't willing to sell. In fact, we are seeing the whales, the large holders, actually increasing their positions. What is offered is pretty inelastic, if not compressing, more and more. If a shock on the domain side in the gold market is good for a 40% move, let's just zoom out and wonder what a domain shock in an algorithmic constrained 21 million coin supply does to the price of Bitcoin. 2025 is going to be very exciting and I'm looking forward to it. At that juncture, I normally let Richard Nash, our CFO, speak about financial. However, before we get into numbers, I just want to point out the remarkable job Richard and his team did over the year, moving us from UK GAAP to IFRS, and now allowing us to go even further in the quality of our reporting. In Q3 2024, we successfully changed our accounting policy for digital assets. We now record movement on digital assets at fair value through profit and loss, enhancing the transparency of our financial statements. This change enabled a wide range of investors to have a better understanding of CoinShare financial performance and health. All merit goes to Richard and his team, and now we do hope that Morningstar et al. will stop reporting CoinShare with a negative earnings per share. We will, of course, track all these websites and try to make sure the financial information is reflected the right way. On that note, it is important to point out that the remarkable work done by Perion Boring and her team at the Digital Chamber, her lobbying of FASB and IASB, contributed to Richard and his team's success. Finally, we have concurrently implemented Bitcoin as a treasury management instrument, demonstrating our commitment to our investment thesis. Consequently, we now rank among the selected few publicly traded companies globally that have opted to maintain Bitcoin holdings on our balance sheet. It is a modest position for now, only 78 Bitcoin, but it is a start, and we will keep the market informed about the evolution of our treasury position. We'll probably see more and more companies doing this, and the very first significant milestone will be the 10th of December with Microsoft AGM, where BlackRock will need to vote in support of adding Bitcoin to Microsoft's balance sheet if they want to remain consistent with their own CEO public stance. Okay, so now let's dive in our Q3 financial, and for that, I'm joined by Richard, our CFO. Richard, over to you.