DeFi Technologies - Earnings Call - Q2 2025
August 15, 2025
Transcript
Speaker 4
To the DeFi Technologies 2025 Q2 Financials Review and Shareholder Call. I'm Curtis Schlaufman, VP of Marketing and Communications. On the call, we have CEO Olivier Roussy Newton, President Andrew Forson, CFO Paul Bozoki, and Co-Founder Johan Wattenstrom. I'm going to read a forward-looking statement to get started, and then we'll get the webinar rolling. Certain information set forth in this presentation contains forward-looking information, including future-oriented financial information and financial outlook. Under applicable securities laws, collectively referred to as forward-looking statements, except for statements of historical fact, the information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements and includes, but is not limited to, projected financial performance of the company, completion of, and the use of proceeds from the sale of shares being offered here under the expected development of the company's business projects or joint ventures.
These statements are not guarantees of future performance, or undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual performance of financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or result expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Done with that, I'll give you a little overview of how this is going to go. We'll start with some statements from the execs team here, starting with Olivier, and we'll move on with Paul with an overview of the financials, and then Johan will give a brief overview on our 2025 financial guidance. We'll then open it up and take some retail questions from the Q&A, and then invite our analysts on live to ask additional questions and wrap it up from there.
With that, I'll hand it off to our CEO, Olivier Roussy Newton.
Speaker 5
Thanks, Curtis, and thanks to everyone who has joined on this Friday in the summer. Q2 2025, and Curtis, I'll let you flip onto the slide. Q2 2025 showed us what our platform, specifically all of our business units combined, can deliver in a softer market. We reported adjusted revenues of US $32.1 million, adjusted EBITDA of US $21.6 million, and adjusted net income of $72.4 million. The takeaways of all of this are pretty simple. Our model scales, prints cash, and performs across market conditions. As a company, speaking with Johan, my Co-Founder, and the team yesterday in detail before we filed our financials, I still believe we're extremely early in our growth story, but the flywheel of all of our subsidiaries acquired or incubated in each business line is reinforcing the others.
For Valour, our largest business unit, which is specifically operating in the asset management space, demand continued to build with net inflows every month year to date, totaling US $77.4 million for the first half. AUM ended Q2 at US $772.8 million and reached US $947 million by July 31, 2025. In Q2, Valour generated US $6.9 million in staking and lending income and US $2.1 million in management fees. We also launched 14 new ETPs, keeping us on track with our target of 100 listed products by year end, which would make us the largest issuer of digital asset structured products on regulated stock exchanges. Outside Europe, Andrew has done a tremendous job and effort in terms of pushing our global expansion.
Outside of Europe, we're continuously expanding in Europe, but we are in the final phases of regulatory approval in Kenya and both Turkey and are targeting other markets in Asia, Latin America, and we'll let Andrew elaborate on that further into the presentation. Stillman Digital, which was acquired, I believe, October of last fiscal year, has been a great acquisition. Q2 revenue was US $1.9 million. Stillman also completed its integration in Talos, deepened capabilities in FX, and a large focus of Stillman has been market making and providing liquidity for stablecoins as that market segment becomes one of the largest digital dollar-based stablecoins and the availability for that. We see that as a significant potential growth area. They also added some great senior trading talent.
In our DeFi Alpha business, we executed a high conviction, low risk trade in May with $17.3 million in returns and maintain a zero loss track record since inception, which was, I believe, we've been operating for about a year and three months now that we incubated DeFi Alpha. Neuronomics, which was recently four or five months ago, acquired the majority stake of Neuronomics. We've been a shareholder of Neuronomics for around three to four years. We see them as one of the leading and pioneering companies in artificial intelligence and specifically applying AI to the digital asset sector, which they've done for four to five years now, and traditional equities for almost ten. They completed the development and testing of Smart Crypto, which we'll have more news about shortly, and we'll open subscriptions for institutional and qualified investors in early September.
Neuronomics also secured a validator node on the Canton Network, which is a fast-growing blockchain positioning us to participate directly in institutional-grade tokenized assets. Reflexivity, which is our research unit that complements all of our customers at Valour with leading-edge information on all the, you know, primarily alternative crypto coins that they're kind of buying and trading. That is kind of a main focus, but they've expanded distribution into platforms such as Beluga, BlockWire, and CoinMarketCap, which is, I believe, the largest trafficked digital asset website globally. We are building new events and newsletter sponsorships alongside a brand upgrade into institutional clients. That kind of compromises all of our companies within the DeFi Technologies umbrella. Moving to our balance sheet, we remain well capitalized with $26.4 million in cash and $26 million in digital assets, with a combined $52.4 million as of June 30.
We are in the process of renewing our NCIB, which is the Canadian terminology for share buyback program that we will utilize to buy back what we see as an undervalued share for our financial performance as a company. What the rest of 2025 looks like, we've raised that look based on the current performance and market conditions. We raised 2025 annualized operating revenue guidance to $208.2 million and $18.6 million. Valour, more listings in new markets. We expect additional ETPs listings in the coming months with a robust pipeline through 2025 and into 2026. As I mentioned before, on track for 100 products by year end. We're also expanding into Africa, Asia, Middle East, other regions within Europe, United Kingdom, and as I mentioned, final phases of regulatory approval. Execution will continue, and all of these new geographies come on stream.
It is a bit of a longer process, but regulatory approvals in all of these jurisdictions, market making, FX partnerships make it all happen. I'll let Andrew, as I mentioned, elaborate further on that. I think that sums up most of this. We've also kind of, I think we'll have more information coming shortly on our newest business line, DeFi Advisory, that uses our kind of expertise in trading technology, market making, OTC for public companies that are managing digital assets. You'll see more news surrounding that. To conclude, we're encouraged to see a structural upgrade in our shareholder base. Since early July, we've welcomed and reported 89 additional institutional investors and funds, bringing us to 95 institutional owners representing over 33 million shares. Despite recent share price action, the register is deepening with longer horizon capital.
I firmly believe it's an indicator of a quiet rotation of our shareholder base away from retail, driven towards institutions that are welcoming digital asset companies. To kind of conclude, you know, put simply, I think we're delivering now and building sustainable value for the long term. We're, you know, keen on being one of the leanest revenue-producing companies in the digital asset space listed on the NASDAQ. I'll pass it over to you, Paul. Okay.
Speaker 4
Going to a financial.
Speaker 5
Starting with the presentation currency, beginning with the second quarter of 2025, DeFi Technologies changed its presentation currency to the US dollar to better meet the needs of our US investor base following our successful NASDAQ listing in May. In terms of AUM, DeFi Technologies closed June 30 with an AUM of $773 million. Q2 average AUM decreased to $748 million from $780 million in Q1 due to negative cryptocurrency price movements on our altcoins. However, cash inflow into our exchange-traded products remains strong with positive Q2 inflows of $27 million, bringing total inflows for the six months ended June 30 to $77.4 million. In terms of revenue, our Q2 IFRS revenue of $13.4 million brought our cumulative IFRS revenues for the six months ended June 30 to $57.1 million. The company's revenue guidance for the six months ended June was $62.5 million.
Thus, the actual revenue shortfall was $5.5 million, or 8.7%, due to DeFi Alpha trading revenues deferred into the second half of 2025. The minor miss was due to DeFi Alpha revenues being lower than planned in the first half. The company reminds investors that these trades are opportunistic and may not be realized on a straight-line basis, but we reiterate that we do have a strong pipeline. Our IFRS reported revenues also include the effect of a movement and a discount of lack of marketability provision, DLOM. The acquisition of $18.7 million locked SUI tokens as part of our Q2 DeFi Alpha trade and crypto price increases on our existing locked Solana and AVAX coins. The DLOM increased by $18.7 million in the quarter and brought the total DLOM provision to $74 million.
I remind everybody that the $74 million DLOM provision will unwind over the locked period of the coins, which goes until 2028. It will come back into income and increase our equity. Talking about AUM monetization, our Q2 effective realized staking income was 3.6% on the average $748 million AUM. We staked 72.5% of our AUM during Q2. Staking revenue decline is due to the notable drop in on-chain activity, particularly on the Solana network. Lower average prices of key assets, Ethereum and Solana, which were both down about 20% quarter over quarter. Lower protocol reward rates in Q2 versus Q1. Protocol inflation and reward reductions across Solana, 4.4% down from 4.6% in Q1, and similar reductions for Toncoin, Polygon, and NEAR. Inflation and reductions lead to lower baseline reward rates, resulting in lower staking yields.
We also redeemed 71.6% of our unlocked coins within one of our equity investments in digital assets, which resulted in some of the coins becoming unstaked at the end of Q2. Our effective staking income earned for the full six-month period ended June 30, 2023 was 4.3%. Our effective management fee yield earned during Q2 was 1.1%, down slightly from the 1.3% earned in Q1 due to positive price performance of Bitcoin and Ethereum, where we earned management fees of nil. People remember we earned a headline rate of 1.9% on most coins, but Bitcoin and Ethereum zero. The effective rate was 1.1% in Q2. This brings our total effective AUM monetization, being staking income and management fees in Q2, to 4.7%, down from 6.2% in Q1 due to the factors noted above on lower staking yields. Average AUM monetization for the six months ended June 30, 2023 was 5.5%.
Unadjusted EBITDA came in at 21.6%, reflecting a strong focus on profitability. Adjusted EBITDA includes adjustments to add back the non-cash DLOM and non-cash share-based comp. In terms of the balance sheet, the company focuses on maintaining balance sheet strength. We ended Q2 with $26.4 million in cash to provide ample liquidity to meet our obligations. In terms of new investments, the company's venture portfolio consists of eight private investments, with the largest investment being our 5% stake in Amina Bank. Amina Bank continues to perform exceptionally well, growing its revenues and AUM while maintaining strong fundamentals. Readers can find additional detail on its performance in our press release and our MVNA. Lastly, to just reiterate what Olivier said, during Q2, we did repurchase 675,900 shares and returned $1.9 million to investors, and we are in the process of renewing our NCIB to continue doing so.
I'll pass it over to Johan.
Speaker 3
Right, I give some color on the DP monetization for Q2. I would say that absolutely nothing has changed on the downside in terms of the opposite. We have strengthened our ability to monetize the AUM to date, as of today. The dip during Q2 was due to the composition of our assets and the markets. As Bitcoin dominance was up at 65% during Q2, it's down since that level, and now we've seen the altcoins being stronger and stronger. Obviously, Bitcoin, Ethereum, especially Bitcoin, remains the lowest yields for us, both in terms of management fees and in terms of staking and lending yields.
The reason we have upped our full year forecast is that as the market is today, the strong performance the last few weeks, and not the least for altcoins, has put us in a much stronger position to higher the monetization rate to all-time highs, hopefully within this quarter, because of the composition of our AUM. It's simply a function of what AUM we have in each of our 50 underlying assets and what assets are driven in and taking what percentage of the portfolio as a function of market prices. Those conditions were at worst, I would say, possible scenario in Q2. If you look at a few years back, Bitcoin dominance has been between 40% and 60%. It was at 65% during Q2 and has come down below 60% now, and altcoins are performing more and more stronger.
This obviously leads to our basket of assets having a much better composition for us and allowing us to have a much higher average yield and monetization on our portfolio. On the full year forecast, there's always two components. We have the core business, we have the alpha trades, and on the alpha trade sides, that account for, like communicated at last quarter, for around half of the forecast. We have an even higher conviction of that coming to fruition, not the least as our higher AUM in the assets where we can do these trades, which composes of our pipeline, has grown in terms of AUM and our capacity to do these trades. That's on the DeFi Alpha side. Nothing has changed in our full year forecast for what we will be able to execute.
In terms of the monetization rates, it's already up significantly from Q2, and we continue to see that trend following through as our assets composition has changed and product mix has changed to the better. I think that concludes the returns we've seen and why we are very optimistic right now. Nothing has changed on the downside. Rather, we believe that this mechanism obviously will be to our advantage now when the market, what we believe, is a continuous strong market for the year. That concludes my color on the forecast for the year.
Speaker 4
Thank you, Johan. I'd also like to remind folks that over the past six quarters, we've raised guidance, and initially we do aim to offer what we view or Johan views as conservative guidance. I believe at the end of 2023, we offered guidance of around $60 million in revenue. We ended up at the end of the year at $144 million in revenue. That's, you know, if we're not taking into account all the messiness of the DLOM. We've continually raised guidance, and we've exceeded those numbers, and we expect to do that again. With that, let's open it up to some questions from our shareholders. If you want to type in the chat, you can, and I can pick out a few. Then we'll invite analysts to come on and participate as panelists. We'll have an open forum for questions for them.
I'm not seeing any questions in the chat. Let's just, I guess I'll just invite Mike on and Ed. If you're an analyst, please raise your hand, and I'll invite you to become a panelist. You guys just have... There we go. Cool. Let's open it up with Mike. I think you're on mute. We can start with... Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 2
Yeah, great. Okay, thanks.
Speaker 4
Mike, we can start with you. Go ahead and ask any questions you have.
Speaker 2
Thanks, guys. Hey, my first question is your guidance now of $218 million. Can you help us bridge that? You know, what number are you using for the first six months of the year? You know, what are the big drivers to get you to $218 million for the full year? I'll start with that.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think the simple answer there is that when we did the guidance last time, our market, the portfolio composition was different, which actually projected a lower monetization rate for the rest of the year. Because of the market action we've seen in a lot of the big AUM assets for us, it gives us in a much better position at the moment for generating more yields from our base business. Also, the pipeline for our alpha trades, they are kind of the alpha trades we have are measured for us in coins, and the value has gone up in those prospective trades we have in our pipeline.
Given that we can execute the same amount of trades, which we have a high conviction of for the year that we have forecasted early on, those trades will be higher dollar value, you know, if even be the same amount of coins. That's basically it.
Speaker 2
Okay, so just paraphrasing that a little bit, but what's the six-month U.S. dollar revenue number? I just want to understand the starting point. What I think you're saying, Johan, is most of this is going to be alpha trades. Like, you know, I think in U.S. dollars, we're at like $6 million, or maybe for six months, we're at like $12 or $13 million in staking and $4.5 million in management fees. Maybe that annualizes to about $30 million U.S. The rest is really coming from trading activity.
Speaker 3
Yeah, if you look at the dip we had in Q2 for fees, for management fees and for staking rewards, I don't have it on the top of my head, but I would think that if I recall correctly, the average daily AUM was at a significantly lower level than our AUM is at now. There also has been some development that there are assets now that we can monetize from now that we couldn't monetize historically at all, like for Ripple, for instance, where we will get 7%. We didn't get anything historically and so forth. I would say that at these levels, the staking and management fees rewards would be just 30% higher, just given the market level and the market composition at present. We will see a much higher monetization rate if this market continues. Obviously, that's the assumption here.
For the alpha trades, it's the same number of coins for the same trades in the pipeline that we guided on before, but it's a higher dollar value because of the higher values of those tokens, the higher value where we are exploring those trades. It's correct that a big part of this would be obviously the alpha trades, similar to last year. As we have discussed, I guess in a lot of calls historically and also in these calls, unfortunately, it's not super easy to pin down when those will occur on a quarterly basis, but on a yearly basis, obviously, we have a high conviction that they will occur. Obviously, I realize that from your side, it's much easier to model and forecast staking yields, management fees, and so on.
We also try to look on how we can communicate that better so the AUM composition is more clear, because I think that will give a lot of insight in the dynamics of the monetization yield. You can see, for instance, that if we earn X amount on Solana in staking yields, in MEV fees, and in management fees, and also in market making in those assets, because that's also another revenue generator, then it will be much easier for you to follow just from the levels of the price levels of those assets, what our composition of the AUM is, and derive what earnings rate we are at.
Speaker 4
Yeah, I think it's important to emphasize that we're not only with Valour specifically, we're not only making staking fees and management fees, but also trading fees and market making fees as well. Johan and team have monetized effectively that issue and structure from in every facet to where we're squeezing margin from every area we can.
Speaker 3
Another line item that I think will make it easier for analysts to forecast once we can publish it, and hopefully that would be quite soon, is the money we generate at the liquidity provision and market making. Right now, that's part of the realized and unrealized profit and losses from all trading activities and all positions.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it would be great if you could break that out.
Speaker 3
Yeah, because that's definitely something that's easy to model because our margins, net margins, are very stable over time, but they correlate strongly with the turnover on our products on the stock markets, which also is very highly correlated to the turnover in the crypto market. I think then you would get also a lot of super important input for your models as well to increase accuracy.
Speaker 2
Cool. Hey, just one more question. You know, we've been waiting for you guys to expand into Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. What are still some of the roadblocks to getting into those regions?
Speaker 4
Andrew?
Speaker 5
Yeah, if I may, it's less, it's not actually a matter of roadblocks. It's a matter of dotting the I's, crossing the T's. As a case in point, this morning I was on a call at 5:00 A.M. Eastern Time with the Capital Markets Authority of a particular jurisdiction. So many jurisdictions, for political reasons, for instance, they would like to know where are the underlying assets of the ETPs custodied. They want to do something like find out is there a way to get it, for instance, custodied in their country. In that regard, since Valour is vertically integrated, we manage the custody, so we explain this process to them. We have to understand that the digital asset space, while it's quite advanced in terms of regulatory environments within our countries, Western Europe, Canada, and the U.S., in the others, there's somewhat of an education process.
In all of these markets, we're more than advanced. In many of these markets, we're actually in the process of doing, I'll almost call them book generation or pre-sales. I think it's something that I've said to Curtis recently. Going forward, we want to be very conservative about how we announce and when we announce, and that when we do make announcements, it's almost like over-delivery. We want to make sure that all the conditions are right before we talk about what's going to happen. The appetite is actually quite strong for our products, not only the digital asset products, but other products that our infrastructure will permit. The expansion, it does continue in various regions of the world. Obviously, East Africa is the big one.
With regards to the Kenya Digital Exchange, the technology there has actually been assembled and developed, and we're actually just in some final legal stuff. It's sort of unfun to have to have this particular discussion during a Q2 call because August is a huge holiday month in many parts of the world. That means governments in particular are not as present in these months, but we are moving right along. Definitely in East Africa, as mentioned, I think there'll be some pleasant strides there. Latin America, we've had some great progress there. Asia, we've had great progress as well.
Speaker 2
Okay, thank you.
Speaker 5
You're very welcome. Thank you.
Speaker 4
You want to move on to Michael Kim at Zacks.
Speaker 0
Hey, guys.
Speaker 4
Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. In terms of product development, just curious to get your perspective from maybe more of a broader strategic approach. Seems like you've got opportunities to launch existing strategies into newer geographies on the one hand, as well as come into market with newer, more innovative strategies. Just curious to kind of get your perspective on the broader approach, if you will.
Speaker 3
I can give a first comment on something that has been kind of becoming quite clear the last few months here, that the decision we made to be the leading asset manager in this space in regards to the number of assets, number of products, has shown to have a lot of synergies with other new initiatives we have on products. Because we have such a complete universe of investable securities in the digital asset space, we have been approached and had a lot of really deep discussions with major global banks about building products on top of our product portfolio. That includes usage funds, which are in high demand from institutions in Europe, Latin America, and other places of the world.
Also, on the structured product side, there are large banks that use their own distribution, construct the structured products based on our assets, because it's not allowed in most jurisdictions to do these types of products directly on crypto assets, whilst we can offer a full investment universe to build these products out of. That also corresponds very well with our initiatives to launch our own usage fund in Europe and also do so with our own structured products for three to five-year-term structures in some key markets. We were obviously pleasantly surprised to see a lot of demand from large institutions with their own distribution networks to start building exclusively on our products, which obviously will feed into our AUM.
I think that that's a great receipt for us that we made the right decision in terms of how we build our portfolio and develop the products on top of this. It will not only be our product developments, but also the product developments of major banks and new jurisdictions on top of what we already have. That's one interesting point, I think.
Speaker 5
I'd love to add on to this because this is where I really think the strategic future and vision of Valour and the founders of Valour and DeFi Technologies comes into play. We are being reached out to by not only global banks, some multilateral development banks, and actual exchanges that have a sovereign basis. What they like about us is that we have the ability to create instruments that hybridize digital assets with traditional assets on the same infrastructure. Whenever people think about Valour, they're thinking about the limitations of digital assets. Notwithstanding the fact that we have the broadest portfolio of digital asset ETPs in the world, people are reaching out because we also currently today have a very, very broad distribution of instruments listed on a number of premier exchanges. I think that that's a significant area for expansion.
The fact that more and more in the real-world asset space, you're seeing linkages between digital assets and traditional assets, this is a position that we are already there. We are already leading effectively in the real-world asset space. It doesn't actually require too much modification of what we already do in order to expand with significant products there. I can say without a doubt, I'll call it our R&D initiative has us working with sovereign-level exchanges on creating innovative products over the last few months. I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 4
Got it. Super helpful. Appreciate the color there. Maybe just one other question. In terms of the new DeFi Advisory business, can you frame sort of the pipeline or the opportunity more broadly, just given all the public companies that are seemingly transitioning to digital asset treasury strategies? It just seems like there's a lot of pent-up demand there.
Speaker 2
I think I can give a quick take at that. I think I was a recent import from a foundation from Hedera. What you'll find is DeFi Technologies is uniquely placed to solve a lot of foundation problems. Every single token that you hear of out there has a backing foundation that normally has liquidity-related issues. They not only have liquidity-related issues, they're also very interested in figuring out how to get their tokens into the hands of most people, more people, particularly institutions, because a lot of institutions can't touch them. They're actually also really interested in figuring out what are the best revenue-generating projects to invest in. The one thing that DeFi Technologies has been exceedingly good at doing is actually finding projects in the digital asset space that generate revenue, either in the stablecoin space or in the liquidity provision space.
A lot of these foundations actually want in on these types of projects. Whenever you combine our ability to bring liquidity to foundations that are somewhat hamstrung in terms of what they can do with their tokens, and when you combine the fact that we have a very, very broad exposure, a foundation can only look at their own token. I mean, could you imagine if Polygon or some other foundation started dealing in another chain's token? That would be politically suboptimal. In our case, since we have connections in all, it gives us the ability to provide broader solutions and link them with the capital markets. In that way, the DeFi Advisory isn't even a service line we had to make. It is something that was more of a demand pull. I think this is an okay thing to say.
There have been three foundations that are begging us to provide them with particular solutions that I never reached out to. These solutions are quite easy for us to deliver on, either in terms of provision of liquidity, defining new ETPs, assisting with establishing almost like a corporate venture capital portfolio, and having novel yield-generating strategy companies. A lot of them have determined that having a pure buy and hold with no revenue model strategy company is actually suboptimal. They're trying to figure out how they can get productive assets together with their native assets to deploy strategy companies that would have more value. We're well positioned for that.
Speaker 4
I think just touching on a brief synopsis of advisory in general, we did announce our first deal a few weeks ago with NBE. This is, you know, I call it a digital asset treasury in a box. I think somebody termed that, Matt Segal from VanEck. I saw him use that. We want to work with partners or public companies that we can see as really partners or leverage in a commercial way as well, and implement digital asset treasury strategies that we think are sustainable and long-term, usually using only tokens that we have high conviction in. As I mentioned, one deal in the pipeline. We have a couple of others that we'll announce over the coming weeks and months and looking to add into that or our way to take advantage of the sort of FOMO catalyst in the industry right now.
We're taking a percentage of the AUM in either a flat rate in cash or equity from that perspective.
Speaker 2
I'd love to add one more thing. I'm trying to hide my excitement about this, but you know, it's really incredible because it's not mutually exclusive. What I mean by that is a lot of these foundations are looking for multiple options. The fact that we exist, we can provide a structure, but it doesn't mean it locks out other participants in providing a structure. Where we have a real advantage is it's soup to nuts. Right from origination, right from the token, we're able to go directly to the capital markets. That's something that the Web3 space, back when I was doing VC in the Web3 space, we used to talk about like Web3 math because their valuations were really, really wonky, and they would have a hard time bringing capital into their projects. This is where DeFi Technologies excels.
To me, it's super exciting, and it's definitely useful for the foundations.
Speaker 4
Great. Appreciate it. Thanks for taking my questions. Yep. Ed Engle.
Speaker 1
Hi guys, thanks for taking my questions here, and yeah, appreciate all the additional color on the guidance. I just wanted to hone in on, I guess, DeFi Alpha. You talked about how this year some of these deals are taking a little bit longer than you expected, at least the first half of the year. What kind of gives you conviction that this can all happen in the second half of the year? Do you see any risks that some of these deals can maybe slip into next year? Thanks.
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's obviously extremely hard to say if any of these deals will slip into next year. Obviously, we're working super hard to make sure they happen within this year and sooner rather than later. I would say each and every of the deals we are working on in our pipeline, there's different triggers for all of them. There might be some who do not want to execute before the price is at a certain level. I think we have not really forecasted to be able to do all the trades in our pipeline, but rather, I think 65% of them, because there's always something that falls off. I wouldn't say it's an overly optimistic forecast. I wouldn't say it has necessarily taken longer time with any of these than the trades we already executed. It's always negotiations and back and forth.
It depends also a bit, the appetite depends a bit on the market's conditions. In Q2, when the market came down for a lot of these tokens, there were a few of these that wanted to delay a little bit. I think that was to be expected, but I wouldn't say that any of these deals have been worked on for much longer than expected or the deals we actually have executed. These are deals where we have a very strong relation to the other, the counterparty. There's a strong will from both parties to do it. There might be some technicalities. There might be some incentive for some people to wait because of bad market conditions during Q2. As I think I mentioned also, I think some of these might be much higher value because of the higher price levels we see now.
We don't, I don't assume we will do all of them, even though we hope to do 100%. If we do 65% of them, we will be able to reach targets. On an individual basis on each of these trades, I would say we have around 15 of these trades that we could do and hope to do this year. We don't think we'll do all of them, but that's not in the forecast either.
Speaker 1
Okay, really good color. Thank you. I wanted to touch on you guys issued a press release about an investigation into share discrepancies. I think some other details on like Canadian listings and maybe some indiscriminate short selling. Can you just give a little bit more color for those of us that are less aware of Canadian market structure and I guess some of your early findings there? I guess what do you think might be going on?
Speaker 4
I can touch on just that investigation in general. This was at the request of many different shareholders to look into our trading activity. Of course, we obliged because we want to make sure our shareholders are supported. The initial few reports did raise some flags in terms of the amount of unpaired shares that were present over the course of three specific trading days. We have reached out to the specific brokers in question for additional clarity on why that might have occurred or may have occurred. We will continue to pursue that. If we get any actual evidence that there is any foul play involved, then we will take action. We are still waiting on conclusive evidence before taking any further action. Right now, we're still looking into it.
Speaker 1
I mean, you guys have made progress, obviously listing on NASDAQ and changing your reporting to U.S. dollars. I definitely appreciate that there's definitely tons of progress going on there. It feels like a lot of this accounting confusion and even some of this market structure is a bit more related to Canadian markets. It's unfortunate because fundamentally there's kind of been no change, but it feels like some of these more technical issues have kind of been weighing on things. Any opportunity to either focus more on the U.S., whether that's moving past the Canadian listing or even domiciled in the U.S.? I'm just kind of curious if there's an opportunity just to be completely U.S. in terms of the listing and some of these accounting rules. Thanks.
Speaker 4
I can touch that. We are a foreign private issuer. It's an annual test July 1 every year, and it's a combination of your assets, your directors, and your shareholders. There are tests on how many U.S. people are in there. If you fail, then January 1 the following year, you become a U.S. domestic. We just passed our July test, so we're still IFRS and Canadian. If we fail, we'd have to adopt U.S. GAAP and become a U.S. reporting issuer under the SEC. If the feedback from the market is we should adopt U.S. GAAP, the Board of Directors can consider that, Ed, as a separate matter to just do that. In terms of re-domiciling the Canco to the United States to become a Delaware company, we would have a tax issue, right?
Because Valour is now where the market cap of the company is essentially driven off of Valour. Our cost base of Valour is about $70 million, so our market cap's now huge. It would be a Canadian exit tax. It is unlikely that in the near term we would re-domicile to the United States. The U.S. GAAP, we either fail FPI or we voluntarily adopt.
Speaker 1
I guess even if you remain a foreign issuer and maybe avoid some of the tax issues, what's kind of the board's, I guess I can't speak for the board, but what's kind of the overall view towards just the Canadian listing in general, especially just given that you have graduated to a main or to a NASDAQ listing?
Speaker 4
Maybe I'd turn that to Ali. We could drop Sebo and go NASDAQ, but maybe Ali, if you want to.
Speaker 5
Yeah, I mean, I think it's actively being explored, and we've definitely looked at that route and scenario. I think as Paul touched on, being kind of all-American doesn't suit our bottom line in terms of Canadian exit tax to re-domicile towards the U.S. I think, obviously, the political situation in the U.S. is not something I or, I think, the board would want to be attached to in the long term. We're developing this company for the long term. The capital markets are great in the U.S., so we'll definitely explore that. I think we'd remain a foreign listed issuer, and that could see us dropping our Cboe Canada listing in the not-too-distant future.
Speaker 1
Okay, yeah, thanks again for the color, guys. Again, the AUM continues to patiently run. The quotes are great. Operationally, things look fantastic for them.
Speaker 4
Thanks, Ed. Kevin, we get to you, and then we'll move on to Alan after that. Kevin, you're on mute if you wanted to ask a couple questions. All right, Alan, we'll let you go first while Kevin...
Speaker 5
Hello. You mentioned that there's less activity on altcoins during the quarter and an increase in the value of Bitcoin and Ethereum, where you don't get management fees caused a lower yield on your AUM. You expect this to improve in the future. Is there a way to think about kind of a range that's reasonable?
Speaker 3
I think, let me just rephrase it. I would say that in the main assets where we stake, the staking yields have not been falling at all. We have gotten more transactions. There's a small component called transaction fees that we collect on top of the staking yields and MEV trading. Those are marginal and vary with the activity on chain. The only reason which makes it easier to model, if we can produce more numbers for you going forward, is just that the AUM levels sank quite a bit compared to the ones in Bitcoin, for instance, and Ethereum because of how the market was reacting in Q2. Obviously, with the Bitcoin dominance up at 65%. It's mainly a function not of falling rewards. It's a function of the product mix, the composition of our total AUM assets as applied to the different underlying assets.
SUI, Solana, Avalanche, quite a few of these took a big hit during that quarter, and so did our AUM in those assets. That has recovered strongly at this point. Our asset allocation is very much different, as is our average monetization yield. That also obviously reflects our management fees. On Bitcoin, most of our AUM in Bitcoin is in our Bitcoin Zero product, where we have zero management fee. It's mainly a function of the market prices in our portfolio. That leads to what percentage of our daily average AUM they represent and what contribution to our monetization rate that represents. I think if we can give more clarity in the future on what the AUM is per asset, I think that would make it easier to forecast on your side and see also why the drop occurred in Q2.
I think it might even be a good thing long term, because we obviously believe that there's a huge number of the digital assets, which has a lot of unique value added to contribute within terms of utility and different applications. We obviously are big fans of Bitcoin, but we're no Bitcoin maximalist, and we're trying to be the first mover in a lot of these other very interesting technologies. If one believes that Bitcoin will not be the only asset, but actually there will be a strong market for the others as well, then I think what we saw in weakness in Q2 in that regard will be, we will see the other side of that coin, which is the upside, when Bitcoin dominance falls. I think still we're at 58 to 60, where we're up at 65.
Historically, we've been in a range between 40 and 60 or so. I think there's a lot of upside in monetization rate when the other technologies will become stronger, and we'll be able to monetize that to a larger extent.
Speaker 5
Thank you. If I could add on to what Johan is saying, I think he's absolutely right. If anytime you hear of an announcement of a stablecoin, you have to understand that the stablecoin is not likely built on Bitcoin. Bitcoin as a blockchain or a token is not really used in a functional way. It is the altcoins that have very high transaction volumes, great smart contract programming languages. That's where the action is when it comes to RWA, real-world assets, stablecoins, yield-generating tokens. For the investor to gain exposure to that, right now, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that your most likely path to gaining exposure to these nascent technologies that are booming is through Valour, because we have the broadest portfolio of these instruments. In particular, it's these newer layer one chains that have incredibly high transaction rates.
There is a distinction between financial transaction in terms of securities and the transaction volumes of the underlying chain. These are the chains that are capturing the imagination of developers, financial engineers in the Web3 space. This is where we really do have a competitive advantage. Very exciting.
Speaker 3
Yeah, we obviously were bullish on Bitcoin as well, but I think what drove the Bitcoin focus, obviously in not least Q2, was the hype around the treasury companies, MicroStrategy and so forth, and maybe 100 copies of MicroStrategy around the world. They have obviously been very good at marketing and selling that narrative. We are not big fans of that business model of the treasury companies. I don't think it's sustainable. It might hit back on the market at some point, I would guess. There are more efficient ways of gaining exposure to all these assets. I think less of a hype in these Bitcoin treasury companies, but also even if we don't, we're not big fans of treasury companies, obviously we now see that type of entity spreading across other assets as well, which might help in short term at least to drive the visibility of those.
It's a good PR marketing thing, maybe, if nothing else. I think we will see less of a sole focus on Bitcoin because of that hype. I think that's what we see in the market right now, and it will turn out to be a strength for our breadth of portfolio rather than a problem like we see so early in Q2.
Speaker 4
Let's really have a couple minutes left. Let me give Kevin a chance again. Kevin, are you there? You're still muted. Kevin, if you wanted to answer or ask questions.
Speaker 2
Thanks, Curtis. Sorry about that.
Speaker 4
No worries.
Speaker 2
Yeah, a little bit of a technical issue on my end, and I apologize. You gentlemen had spoken to management fees falling from the first quarter to the second quarter. I think the numbers you cited were $1.3 million to $1.1 million. How do you see them improving in the second half, and how much of a quotient is that in driving your raised guidance?
Speaker 3
Yeah, I would say that as you might have deducted, that fall was on the average of the portfolio, and it's driven by the same factors as with the staking rewards and so forth. Because we have the Bitcoin Zero, which is our largest AUM product in Bitcoin, has zero management fees. It's a big part of the overall portfolio, the average, so I'd say that simple. There's no pressure on the management fees on our products at all. We actually have launched a few products with higher management fees the last six months because we think they have been maybe less liquid, maybe a bit more volatile, and harder to hedge. We've taken some precautions and heightened the management fees. We also have a lot of assets where we have, I would say, monopoly at this point. We have seen no pressure on the management fees as such.
Similar to the staking rewards and MEV fees and transaction fees on our validators, the management fees are basically a product of the AUM and the composition within our product mix. We have products with 2.5% management fee. We have products with 1.9%, which is the most common. We have Bitcoin and Ethereum ones. We have two big products with zero management fees. The less part of the overall portfolio they are, the higher the management fee average will be. It's purely a function of the composition, similar to the other revenue streams.
Speaker 2
Yep. Johan, have you penciled it out at all? I guess how much of it is a function in the calculus of your guidance?
Speaker 3
I would say it's a small portion because the staking fees are a much bigger part of our income. For instance, if we take in Solana, what we'd stake in our own validator, which is More & More, we can make 7%. I think it peaked at 7.35%. I think we have 7 point something now in base staking rewards. We have another % in MEV fees. On top of that, we have maybe a % of transaction fees from within that network in the blocks. We have 1.9% in management fees. It's basically 11% and management fee is 1.9% of that. I would say that the management fees as such is a smaller proportion of the driver here.
Speaker 2
I have a question for all you gentlemen. I think I've run it by Andrew and Curtis once before. I guess it would be interesting to see how you might address it now. In order to hit your 100 product target for the year, you'll need to add roughly 25 new products. I'm wondering, based on your history, if you've been able to look at what a new product commands in terms of new AUM, and if there's any way to apply any kind of an average to that.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think this chart shows the, if you look at the 2024, that's the inflow 2024. If you look at it, 45% of the inflow was November, December. That was driven by 20 new products launched. What we've seen also, I think the total AUM, we got up to 15%. Those 20 new products were 15% or more, I believe, after two months from launch. These are all smaller coins because we already had, I think, 25 products out there covering all the top ones. This is something we've seen consistently, that obviously there are trends in, sometimes it's more AI type tokens, sometimes it's more level one blockchains and so on that are in fashion. What.
Speaker 4
There's a big demand from these, and I think a main reason is that we are a first mover. Those are unique in the world. There's no other way for a lot of these investors to gain exposure to these. If you see on this chart, the white field in the last, that's predominant, that's more pronounced in the last month in this chart, that's all the small new tokens we launch. Even though these are much lower market cap, much less known, I would say it shows that our client base, which is loyal and is sticky money, they already have the portfolio. They don't re-weight. They actually make new investments into these new assets. A lot of them are very well read up on the technologies and are requesting smaller coins for us to list that they followed a long time.
If they pass our test for eligibility, and we have a conviction that this is a, they are a strong team, a strong history, strong technology, and fills a market, a market demand, then we will do an ETP on them. The marginal cost for us to do so is very, very small. As you see, since we started launching smaller tokens, quite a big portion of our AUM now are in these small tokens. Even though the green, blue, the larger fields here are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, which are much more well known. We didn't expect this large part of our AUM actually to be composed of these, but I think, as mentioned, it's part of us providing something unique, and our first movers.
What we've seen in other coins we launched is that if we are the first mover, even when competition catches on, we will remain in the lead and remain the dominant actor in that asset.
Speaker 5
Oh, one other.
Speaker 4
A lot of value is derived from just being the first mover, basically.
Speaker 5
Right, right. Okay. One more, if I may, Curtis, please. I'm just curious, of the 25 new products you're rolling out, how would you characterize them? Are they primarily going to be bringing existing products to new geographies, or, as you were just talking about, Johan?
Speaker 3
Those will all be unique new products, right? That's not our hundred products by year end, it's not accounting for potentially kind of, you know, 200 products that we would be listing in Africa. It could potentially be, you know, when regulatory approvals are in place, there could be 300 products by year end, theoretically, right? We're characterizing these as independently unique coins that we monitor. We have feedback from our client base. You know, we kind of hear things in the community and due to our regulatory purview in specific European market jurisdictions that we operate in, we have, I would say, kind of a monopoly globally on smaller coins being rolled out and then passed forward to other jurisdictions globally. No one else can really do in a very quick and efficient timeframe.
That could obviously change, but for the moment, that's where we're, I think, going to see a large portion of growth. I think what we've, you know, what Johan Wattenstrom touched on earlier was, similar to equity markets, you have blue chip bull markets that rotate into small caps, Bitcoin and Ethereum being the blue chips of crypto. Then you see rotations into smaller coins, what the crypto crowd has been calling alt season for seven or eight years. That's where I think we're going to see new adoption, new technologies. We're going to be the first to market in a bunch of different geographies with these new verticals of coins, and that's where we've seen growth and revenue historically be the largest driver for Valour and DeFi Technologies as a company.
Speaker 5
Perfect. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate you letting me tag on the end too, Curtis. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.
Speaker 4
Mike, we had to get you in. We missed you the last couple of times, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 5
Oh, no problem. You guys have a great weekend. Thanks very much.
Speaker 3
Thanks, Kevin.
Speaker 5
All right. I think we answered a lot of the questions from shareholders in the conversation. If you do have any follow-up questions, as always, Andrew and myself are always widely available. You can email [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected]. Bother me first because Andrew is on the road trying to expand our offerings. Thank you all so much for joining today. I know the share price isn't a reflection of how we're executing currently. Look at all the institutions that are coming in. We have high conviction that we're going to outperform this year. There's a lot on the radar for us coming forward. Thank you for your time and for your loyalty as well. Thanks, folks, and look forward to catching up with you in two or three.