Bilal Little:
Welcome to another edition of ETF Central. My name is Bilal Little and I'm your host. My next guest is Dave LaValle. He's the president of CoinDesk Data and Indices. This conversation for me is very unique, because I've been a crypto enthusiast for years, but it's arguably the most interesting and I would say timely conversation plaguing and/or challenging investors today. Everyone is trying to figure out, "What do we do?" And who's better to ask than Dave LaValle who spent 20 years on the street? Dave, welcome to the show.
David LaValle:
How's it going?
Bilal Little:
It's good. Good. Glad you were able to make it down.
David LaValle:
Yeah, you've got a great setup here. I'm happy to be here.
Bilal Little:
You like coming down, right?
David LaValle:
I mean, any excuse to come back to the NYSE is a good one.
Bilal Little:
It's a special place. Every time I come down, it's not sort of missed on me about the uniqueness of capital markets here. It's like everything takes place here, so it's always exciting.
David LaValle:
Yeah. You know this was my first job down here on the floors?
Bilal Little:
I did know that. I did know that. I did know that.
David LaValle:
It's a little different now.
Bilal Little:
I though I brought you on as a guest.
David LaValle:
I mean, it's a little different now, but equally unique.
Bilal Little:
Absolutely. When was the last time you were here?
David LaValle:
I think last time we had a GDLC bell ringing. So GDLC is an ETF, a multi-token ETF based on the CoinDesk 5. So I was here just several weeks ago. Momentous moment for ETFs, momentous time for the CoinDesk business and also for the Grayscale business as well. So that was always fun. Bell ringings never get old, I tell people.
Bilal Little:
Never.
David LaValle:
They never get old.
Bilal Little:
Never.
David LaValle:
Yeah, it's really great.
Bilal Little:
What's your favorite?
David LaValle:
Oh, man, my favorite bell ring of all time?
Bilal Little:
What's the most memorable one right now? Right now?
David LaValle:
Oh, the first one that comes to mind was after 9/11. This place is the most patriotic place I've ever been in my life and that was pretty powerful. Yeah, we came down here the Tuesday after. Yeah, yeah.
Bilal Little:
Well, Dave, look, man, I'm glad you're here. This is important to me. I think you have a very unique lens as far as covering TradFi, now I'm transitioning over to the digital side. I like for the guests to tell their own story.
David LaValle:
Sure.
Bilal Little:
If you could, just in a very succinct way, sort of talk about how you sort of started in the business and transitioned over to digital assets.
David LaValle:
Oh, man. Yeah. So look, the first time I had ever heard about Bitcoin was at a different exchange when the Winklevoss-
Bilal Little:
You better not say it.
David LaValle:
Listen, where the Winklevoss twins came in, Catherine Moriarty called me and said, "I've got an interesting client who really wants to do something innovative in ETFs." And I was like, "I'm all ears, let's do it." And she said, "The Winklevoss twins want to come in here and they want to talk to you about launching a Bitcoin ETF." And I said, "The Winklevoss twins, like the social network?" And she said, "Yeah." And I wasn't familiar enough and I had no idea what Bitcoin was.
Long story short, fast-forward, and we had a meeting and we talked about the process of writing the initial rule filing for a Bitcoin ETF, leveraging everything that had kind of happened with GLD, 33AC, Delaware Grantor Trust, the whole thing. And so, that was the first foray into digital assets. And I had kind of been actively watching the process from '13, '14, '15, '17 denial. And I was doing some other things at the time and I had gotten a phone call from the CEO of Grayscale and he said, "Look, we are really going to advance the ball on getting the Bitcoin ETF over the finish line. I want you to work with us on it."
And in a fast-forward way, I give my wife some of the credit, because she essentially said, "You kind of have to take that job." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "Well, everyone is talking about the metaverse and Bitcoin and you have some expertise in this. So in two years it doesn't work, what's the downside? In two years it doesn't work and you're unemployed." She's like, "I don't really see it." And so, it's nice to have some confidence at home as well. She always has a longer vision on everything anyway. She's more intelligent than me by a long shot.
Bilal Little:
So let me ask this question, so you've recently taken on a new role as president of over at CoinDesk. What does that entail and how is that transition for you?
David LaValle:
I'm super excited about the opportunity to lead an indexing data business for crypto. Obviously, incredible run at Grayscale, getting the Bitcoin ETF over the finish line and a ton of fun with a high class team and high octane team. But this opportunity, I feel like is the next wave of innovation. And I'm uniquely suited and also kind of intellectually curious about advancing the ball with multi-token indices and where the market is going to go and the ability for CoinDesk and the position that CoinDesk is in to really service the market, both crypto asset managers or non-crypto asset managers that are going to come along and realize that they need to have a solution to offer their clients. When I say clients, it's self-directed clients, the advised market, and that's a broad spectrum that you know more about than I actually do, but it's coming, and then also institutions.
And I think we all agree that index-based solutions or beta exposure to market is something that works for investors of all shapes and sizes. And crypto really is the only one of a handful of markets that doesn't really have a benchmark. And we have high conviction that we're in a position to not only create the benchmark, but also to build out the use cases for it.
Now, that's super exciting for me and kind of like, okay, ETFs are based on indices and ETFs or other products that are going to become distributed by asset managers are super exciting. But also, on the other side, it's that financial products. So futures, options, listed derivatives, structured notes. The banks are advancing the ball as well in digital assets, and so we're going to be in a position to offer the opportunity to really have the chance to build an ecosystem that is not dissimilar to what you see with the S&P 500. I mean, we're just at the early phases of it.
Bilal Little:
Could you talk about that? Just given your seat as the president, you're wearing multiple hats. How are you navigating this changing landscape and providing sort of clarity to your team about obviously advancing the ball forward?
David LaValle:
So innovation takes a couple of things. Innovation takes technology, but also takes regulatory clarity. And so, at this moment in time, when we obviously have a piece of technology in crypto broadly, that is changing the way we think about things and changing the way that we do things, but we also have some more regulatory clarity as the new administration has taken over. That regulatory clarity exists coming out of The White House, the regulatory clarity exists coming out the SEC, and that's fostering an opportunity for us to invest feverishly and also having a strong receipt from our clients and our prospects.
And so, I break this down into two pieces. As an indexer, what do you need? As an indexer, you really need high quality data, which we have and we own, and we need a high quality index engine, which we have and we own. And it's FCA regulated and it's the same type of index infrastructure that you would see from a large scale traditional finance indexer. But then we also have the opportunity to enhance the distribution of our indices and advance the distribution of our clients' products in the form of really high quality distribution channels, coindesk.com, our consensus events businesses.
So this is incredibly exciting to be able to walk into an asset manager and say, "Hey, we're going to build you a high quality index and then we're going to help you distribute it as well," which you and I have talked about many times in the past about how important distribution is when you're bringing products to market. It's the key differentiator.
Bilal Little:
It's everything. It's everything.
David LaValle:
So what do I tell my team? I tell my team that we love all of our children, so all the indices that we bring to market are fantastic, but every indexer is religious about a couple of indices, NASDAQ with the queues, S&P 500 for S&P, et cetera, et cetera. We think the CoinDesk 20 and the CoinDesk 5 are going to be our two flagship indices that we're somewhat religious about, and it's the opportunity for us to advance the ball with multi-token exposures. It's early. It's incredibly early, but we think the opportunity is really quite exciting.
Bilal Little:
You bring up an interesting point that it's early, right? And I want to hit this for a moment, because your client profile has changed.
David LaValle:
Oh, 100%.
Bilal Little:
So when you say to your team like, "Hey, we-"
David LaValle:
Expanded.
Bilal Little:
It has expanded. For sure, for sure. But you almost have these sorts of two camps. You have institutional clients that are early adopters, some. Not the incumbent, some.
David LaValle:
Yes.
Bilal Little:
And then you have this very exciting retail audience on the other end. How do you navigate that conversation from a service perspective as far as what-
David LaValle:
We talk all the time. No, it's usually when you're talking about a new asset class coming into an ETF wrapper, you're talking about the kind of democratization of an asset class, which is normally an institutional grade exposure that is now being availed to all.
Bilal Little:
For sure.
David LaValle:
So we think of S&P 500 exposure as the most basic exposure, but in 1993 when it became an ETF, it was an institutional grade, very difficult calculation to do. This is pre-internet and and pre having availability to data.
The uniqueness about crypto is you have this really, as you explained, a kind of barbell approach where you have the most sophisticated institutions and then the most enthusiastic retail investors. So the compression that we're seeing is really happening as a result of that inflection point of the Bitcoin ETF kind of getting over the finish line. And so, now it has kind of opened up the eyes to the advisors in a way that they hadn't had their eyes open before.
Now, the way that we've talked about it is this inflection point of the ETF coming online really inverted the risk that existed in the advised market. So you and I were talking about it before, pre-ETF, you really didn't have a lot to offer your client as an advisor. And we're really only talking about Bitcoin at this point in time, so you're talking about in the 2017 to 2023 rate-
Bilal Little:
Which seems like a lifetime ago, right?
David LaValle:
Yeah, it is a lifetime ago. Look at me, I'm 23. No, I'm kidding, obviously. But the point was is that clients were asking questions and advisors had nothing to offer them. The best thing that they could do would be to point their client to something that was off their platform. And they really had asymmetric downside risk if they made a recommendation to crypto and their client lost that exposure, lost those assets.
After the ETF, the advisor's asymmetric risk inverted in the sense that clients were now saying, "Hey, we know what an ETF is. We want Bitcoin in my portfolio." And the advisor now was on their heels potentially because they didn't have a strategy associated with it, because they never had anything in the past that they could deal with and offer their clients with credibility. And so, now the advised market is really trying to grapple with exactly how they're going to have a strategy associated with digital assets and a client's portfolio.
And so, real numbers, you've got a $30 trillion market that really hasn't come online at all. A 1% allocation, which I'm just pulling it out of thin air, is $300 billion, and that's 3X what is currently in Bitcoin ETFs, and that's just Bitcoin alone. And I think you and I would agree that this is going to advance into encompassing more tokens and more exposures. So then the advisor says, "Okay, what has worked in the past? What's worked in the past is diversification? Great. What can I use as a benchmark?" And there really isn't a ton of options, which is where CoinDesk comes in, because we've been indexing digital assets in 2014 and we have the opportunity to say, "Hey, we have the crypto, we have the CoinDesk 5, which is a market cap weighted exposure to the top five tokens that are not stable and not memes. Great. And we also have the CoinDesk 20, which is adjusted market cap weight with some caps, so it can give you some performance a little bit further down the crypto tail." So this is exciting stuff and we're here.
Bilal Little:
Before we jump into that, the composition, this is an important question for me, when you think about the advisor audience today, they're being driven to purchase crypto because of the client's demand, it's not the advisor. The advisor still arguably is less familiar with the utility of what's actually taking place.
David LaValle:
Listen, it's a tough seat for the advisor to sit in, because their client is more intelligent than they are in many cases. That's a problem for them.
Bilal Little:
Talk about that for a minute.
David LaValle:
Well, I mean, it's hard. They haven't had the tools and the resources at their home office to be able to have credible conversations, because there hasn't been an offering on their platform to put in front of their client. And so, they've been on their heels. Now, some of the advisors that we have spoken to that were themselves enthusiasts have fostered a conversation or helped their clients address that. And then there's a cohort of advisors who said, "Listen, I can't bring this to my client, but I'm interested in it for my own personal account."
But putting yourself in a position where you're really in the business of not only advising for the wealth, but also from a planning perspective, advisors aren't in the business of sending assets off platform. They lose transparency into what their client's kind of risk exposure is. They're certainly not in the business of sending assets off platform, because they're not able to actually charge for them.
Bilal Little:
Bill them.
David LaValle:
And bill them. And then from a succession planning perspective, God forbid you have a situation where you need to talk about managing an estate and you don't have a full credible picture of your client's portfolio. These are real problems for them.
Bilal Little:
For sure.
David LaValle:
So I think some of the conversation that we need to have with advisors right now is a bit more basic than where the crypto market is generally, but that's the space that we want to be in. I feel like we are in the 2005 to 2007 timeframe of ETF adoption in crypto right now, which is to say that in 2005 to 2007, advisors were saying, "Hmm, maybe these things are not financial weapons of mass destruction. Maybe these ETFs are actually as transparent, as tax efficient, as useful to be building blocks in my client's portfolio. Maybe they are a disruptive piece of technology that we can incorporate into our franchise with real benefit to our end client." And so, they have stopped turning a blind eye to it.
And I think similarly, in crypto right now, we've gone through a couple of cycles. There's some more regulatory clarity. The ETF brings some comfort and some credibility. Some very large scale institutional names are coming into the fold here that helps clients feel more comfortable. And so, the advised market is now saying, "I think we're in a better place now to dig in a little bit, learn a little bit more, have a credible conversation about it, and position ourselves so we can have good conversations with our clients and figure out exactly what the right allocation is."
Bilal Little:
And it's funny, so I'm glad you're able to thread that needle because I think it's important to transition into the index business that you guys are building and how that can be utilized in a client portfolio.
David LaValle:
Yeah. I mean, listen, the concept of indexing and diversification is not a new concept to anybody. I think in the future, people are going to have a better handle on how broad crypto is going to be and how it's going to impact their lives in many different ways as a disruptive technology. I believe it's going to be akin to the smartphone. It's going to be akin to the internet.
And when we first adopted the internet, I was thrilled about having email and being able to communicate to anybody all over the world, but I wasn't like, "God, this thing stinks. I can't do my banking on it or I can't get a book delivered to my house immediately the next day," or whatever it is. But then we grew to grow with that disruptive technology in a way that it impacted our lives in ways we couldn't imagine.
Bilal Little:
Absolutely.
David LaValle:
The smartphone, I didn't shun the smartphone because I couldn't get a car in front of my house whenever I wanted it. I was like, "This is great." I think similarly with crypto, we don't yet and can't yet imagine the things that we are going to utilize crypto for that's going to change the way we live our lives. And I think we're also in a unique cross-section of AI as well. And I think there's a unique opportunity for AI and crypto to come together where we can utilize some value of the crypto technology to ensure that AI is advancing thoughtfully.
Bilal Little:
So unpack the new index that you guys are releasing and how this is going to be this critical component, right? Because you're talking about, I want to say this, this is important, people always, when it comes to crypto, they think they have to know every aspect of how it works.
David LaValle:
Yeah, it's so funny.
Bilal Little:
It's like the iOS phone operating system. I have no clue how this phone works, but I'm glad it works.
David LaValle:
It works really well.
Bilal Little:
It works really well. Talk a little bit about what's in the index and sort of how you guys have derived what the makeup would be.
David LaValle:
So like any other index methodology, it's totally transparent. And people think beta exposure or index-based exposure is very static, and it's actually not static at all. And so, we have reweighting methodologies, rebalancing methodologies just like every other index, and we're fully transparent on them so that the concept of having crypto exposure in an index... Look, these things are moving pretty quickly. So you can have a token in six months that didn't exist today that is gaining some pretty meaningful steam and some relevance.
The beauty of having index-based exposure with a transparent methodology is that, pick what you want. Do you want the top five tokens that's going to be market cap weighted, which is going to allow for a very heavy weighting of Bitcoin and Ethereum currently in and around 90% of the market with three other tokens to round out your portfolio? Or are you interested in something that is going to go a little bit further down the market cap spectrum who is going to catch a few more of the smaller tokens and is going to have capped weighting exposure for Bitcoin and Ethereum, which allows for a bit more participation from those next 18 tokens? So the CoinDesk 5 and the CoinDesk 20 are both index-based exposures with transparent methodologies, but are serving a very different user profile.
Bilal Little:
Yeah, for sure.
David LaValle:
And the CoinDesk 20 is going to have a volatility characteristic that's roughly on average about 20 handles higher than the CoinDesk 5. That may be unappealing to certain people, it may be very appealing to others.
Bilal Little:
Absolutely.
David LaValle:
And we're going to continue to build out the entirety of the ecosystem around these indices so that every user is going to have a better experience. So those that might be trading firms or hedge funds or more active participants in the market are going to enjoy a higher form or a higher quality of liquidity in gaining exposure, whether it's through an ETF or whether it's through a future or whether it's through an option or whether it's through a listed derivative. And the benefit to the retail investor that's just buying and holding is that the liquidity profile is going to get better, the spreads are going to be tighter, your cost to execute is going to be lower. All these things are net positive for all of the users.
Bilal Little:
Yeah. Did you know there were over 1,100 ETFs launched in 2025? How do you make sense? How do you find the tools and resources to compare, contrast strategies? That's why there's etfcentral.com. It's a website where there's tools, resources, and a way to track and monitor your portfolio. Please visit etfcentral.com. So you bring up an interesting point as far as exposure. How are you guys communicating the value proposition of exposure in a portfolio?
David LaValle:
Yeah. I mean, so where does crypto fit in a client's portfolio is a classic question. I think if we were just to talk about Bitcoin, which is an easier place to start, because if I was to talk about where index-based exposure, we're really early in the infancy stage, so I don't think it would be as valuable to the listeners, but let's just start with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is different things to different people, and that's kind of the beauty of it. Sometimes we talk about it as a, obviously a digital store of value is probably the easiest and the first place where clients point to. And so, it's like a digital gold version. And so, sometimes people will pull away a little bit of their gold and insert some Bitcoin, or they may just say that it just fits in my kind of alts allocation, or they may think of it more broadly as a disruptive technology. And more so historically, less so recently have viewed Bitcoin as an up and to the right, much more risky asset, has kind of a small cap tech feel to it. I think that is somewhat dwindling now.
If we were to shift to CoinDesk 20 or CoinDesk 5 exposure, again, two very different exposures with very different kind of volatility characteristics and performance characteristics. Obviously the CoinDesk 5 is dominated by Bitcoin and Ethereum. The CoinDesk 20, less so. But last year when we had this off with Bitcoin a little bit and on with Ethereum, you see the outperformance of the CoinDesk 20 because Ethereum has a higher weight. So it just depends on what you're looking for and what that exposure is. But I think more generally, my opinion is we're talking about a disruptive technology that has the potential to be up and to the right and have that risk return profile that feels more like small cap tech than anything else and making the allocation accordingly.
And listen, I'm not here to say that everybody should have an allocation in crypto in their portfolio. I'm not an advisor and I don't know where you are in your life, what your planning goals are, what your return goals are and what's the expectancy that you're looking for in your portfolio. What I am here to say is that you should be asking the questions to your advisor, "What is your strategy around Bitcoin? What is your strategy around crypto? What is your strategy around AI?" These are really important questions that should have some thoughtful answers. And there's plenty of information out there to do your own education as well.
Bilal Little:
This is an important point.
David LaValle:
Sure.
Bilal Little:
Do you think the self-directed investor should be asking that same question?
David LaValle:
Well, yeah, but the self-directed investor has also evolved over the past five years, certainly, and definitely 10 years as well. Availability of information and access to research has drastically improved over the past decade. And so, many of the tools, not all, but many of the tools that are available to you and I being professionals in the world of finance are now offered to the retail investor. The gamification of trading and the desire for risk somewhat concerned me, but you're able to make informed decisions. My opinion would be to make those decisions as informed as you possibly can.
Bilal Little:
I'm glad you said that, because when someone asks me, "Hey, Bilal, what should I be doing with crypto?" I'm like, "Listen, I can't answer this question for you."
David LaValle:
I know.
Bilal Little:
But I do always say, I said, "Let me put some options on the table for you. You have a 1% call option to participate in the market, or you have a 100% guarantee to not have any exposure."
David LaValle:
Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember when it was I heard Ric Edelman say, "You determine what amount of money..." And by the way, this is a little bit dated, because I think some of the questions around whether Bitcoin was going to be around forever or not have dissipated. It's here to stay. I think largely everyone agrees with that. So this was a little bit earlier, but he said, "Put the amount of money in the market that you can afford to lose, but the truth is you can't afford to miss out on what you might make."
Bilal Little:
100.
David LaValle:
And look, rebalance down if you need to rebalance down, but make sure that you're participating. And there's no better way to learn about something than to participate in the market and then pay attention to what your money is doing for you.
Bilal Little:
Yeah, for sure. What are you most excited about right now, just given the fact that we have gotten some regulatory clarity, right? We have an administration that is extremely accommodative, you have an SEC chair that's excited about what has taken place. And at the same time, this is a bit of an arms race when it comes to the infrastructure of the future digitally. What are you most excited about?
David LaValle:
I mean, look, I still am a strong believer in the ETF and the ETF market, and I think that the ETF is an incredibly powerful vehicle to deliver an exposure credibly to an investor. And so, you and I may disagree about a particular asset or a particular token. If you put in an ETF and then you and I can say, "Well, if I'm bullish on it, I can go long that. And if I'm not bullish on it or I think it's going to go down, I can actually short it." And that is bringing an opportunity for clients to invest in a product that with a high degree of certainty is going to track the value of the underlying asset. That's a really important thing.
And so, I think with some of the regulatory clarity that we've seen coming out of the SEC, it's going to give an opportunity for more products to come to market that clients can rely on, and that's going to be good for the market. That's going to be bringing crypto to life in clients' portfolios in a way that they are familiar with the wrapper that it's in, and that will allow more people to invest with competence.
Bilal Little:
I'm glad you said that, because I've been having this conversation with many of the wealth management firms about, this is a fantastic, meaning the ETF wrapper is a fantastic opportunity to go out and educate the public, not only just about the ETF wrapper, because it is different than the mutual fund wrapper, but also this sort of convergence of crypto exposure, because they're going to do it anyway. To your point about assets held away, they're going to do it anyway. So why not educate on the utility of the ETF wrapper and getting your exposure through crypto in that particular wrapper? And right now, most of the wealth management firms, and you know this to be true, it's all reactive. So what do you think you guys can do from a firm perspective about partnering with some of these firms to help these advisors really embrace the technology?
David LaValle:
I mean, we are full steam ahead on seeking opportunities to educate credibly, and that is self-directed investors and that's certainly institutions, but the market that is kind of ripe to be educated is the advised market. And we think there's an incredible opportunity to do that.
I mean, next wave of tokenization, I think if you asked me a year ago what I thought about tokenization, I would say it's a solution looking for a problem, but I don't know, maybe it was six, seven months ago. I don't know what it was, but it hit me like the two by four across the forehead, I was like, "Wait a minute, this makes all sorts of sense." And we have to figure out how it's going to actually work, but there are elements of tokenization that feel eerily similar to how I felt about ETFs in the late 90s when I was like, "Wait a minute, this just totally makes sense."
And I was standing on the floor of the American Stock Exchange, trading micro cap, Canadian listed oil and gas companies, and all of the noise was coming from the ETF pit and all of the tickers that were going across the tape predominantly were SPY, MDY, DIA, and QQQ. And I was like, "Wait a minute, what are these things? And I have to learn more about them." I'm having that type of feeling about tokenization right now, which I think is going to take some time to figure out. But if we get some regulatory clarity on it, I think this could accelerate really quickly.
Bilal Little:
My next question was going to be, I want you to put your capital markets hat on and talk specifically about tokenization, because you're talking about expediting information with trust effectively through smart contracts.
David LaValle:
Yeah. But I just think, I mean, what is the one thing that frustrates ETF issuers and public companies the most? They don't know who owns their-
Bilal Little:
Attribution, number one.
David LaValle:
They do not know who owns their ETF. They do not know who owns their stock. Now, ETFs are somewhat to blame for that. And I'm sympathetic in that some of the largest owners of stocks in street name are Vanguard, State Street, BlackRock, and others. But the opportunity to have a better handle on who owns your stock or who owns your fund would be a material benefit to those issuers.
Bilal Little:
Do you think that's the greatest agent coming to the market?
David LaValle:
Oh, man, it's up there.
Bilal Little:
Yeah.
David LaValle:
Yeah. It's up there.
Bilal Little:
What do you think is the largest structural impediment still, if any?
David LaValle:
Regulation. I mean, you just need to have clearer regulation on how this is going to be able to come to market. All the pieces to the puzzle exist, it's just making sure that you're not going to run afoul of an illegal securities offering. And I think it's to be determined on that.
Look, I think Chair Atkins has said a couple of things and his posture has been, "Look, the principles and tenants of the SEC remain the same. It's investor protection, it's capital formation, it's fair and orderly markets. And fraud is bad, and so no fraud. And we have laws in this country that you need to abide by. So if you're going to stick to the tenants of what the core principles of the SEC are, you're not going to behave fraudulently and you're going to live within the bounds of the law, then we're going to let free markets reign." It doesn't mean that there's enough clarity that firms are going to be able to lean more heavily into figuring out how to tackle tokenization. But look, we will see.
Bilal Little:
Yeah, absolutely.
David LaValle:
There's some tremendous opportunity there.
Bilal Little:
I want you to sort of nail this for me.
David LaValle:
Sure.
Bilal Little:
How should the audience think of CoinDesk? I mean, most people know you obviously as a media partner.
David LaValle:
Yeah, yeah.
Bilal Little:
How should they think about you guys?
David LaValle:
Listen, we have a really comprehensive offering and I say it's unparalleled on the indexing and data side. And I say that hand over heart with a lot of credibility, because the needs to have as an indexing partner or a data partner, we have a highly credible, highly regulated business. The ability to also pair that with a high quality distribution engine in the form of our events and our media business makes our offering really unparalleled in a way that is super exciting. And we're owned by a parent company in the form of Bullish that is a public company with a very strong balance sheet. And so, organically we're going to grow and we're going to access fund managers and asset managers and partner with firms like ICE to bring high quality derivative products to market. But we're also going to inorganically seek ways that we can kind of grow our business and enhance the opportunity for us to deliver value to our clients.
And I know that's a little bit maybe business school speak, but we have a really strong organic growth strategy and our foot is on the accelerator there and we're going to see cool opportunities to supplement what we have to offer the market as we see other assets around that look interesting.
Bilal Little:
Dave, before I let you go, this is important to me.
David LaValle:
Sure.
Bilal Little:
There's a lot of people who are trying to figure out what to do next in their career. The thing that has always served me well is just to stay curious.
David LaValle:
Yeah.
Bilal Little:
Always stay well-read, but stay curious. What do you think people should be thinking about that might be trying to figure out what's next in their career in financial services?
David LaValle:
I mean, all the time I have this conversation. Forget about what you have done and what you can do, focus on what you want to do. And it's not an easy question to answer, but that's the question to continually ask yourself. And for me, I have a really high pain tolerance for doing difficult things and I have a really low pain tolerance for bureaucracy. And so, that has offered some magnetism for me to go towards things that stimulate me intellectually maybe differently than somebody else. And I think when you're having a conversation about what's next in your career, focusing on what you want to do is the single most important thing that you can ask yourself in increasing the likelihood that the change that you make is actually going to be something that's fulfilling.
And the last thing I will say is that you spend your own time, don't let somebody else spend your time. And time is the fleeting asset that we all have, and so make sure you're making thoughtful decisions in the way that you're going to actually spend that time. And we all spend a lot of time working pretty hard in our careers, so focus your attention on exactly what you want to do. And in spending that time, I think is a good endeavor.
Bilal Little:
Dave, thank you for joining ETF Central.
David LaValle:
It has been great. Thank you so much.