VIC JOKOVIC | CEO of Cboe Australia

Do you think that the Australian stock market IS the ASX? Few people know that there is another exchange accounting for 20-25% of daily trades. Cboe Australia is an alternative exchange and a competitor to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) within the Australian investment market. Cboe was previously known as Chi-X.

Vic Jokovic is the Chief Executive Officer of Cboe Australia he's worked as a broker his entire career, for large brokerage firms such as Deustche Bank. He started on the on the trading floor of the Sydney Stock Exchange, a physical exchange with lots of noise, high energy and ‘Chalkies’ writing prices up onto chalk boards. It was the days of single computer monitors on lazy-susans and ashtrays built into the trading desks. Exchanges have rapidly progressed to become the digitised and automated on-line platforms that we see today.

ETF Securities, 3IQ and Cosmos Asset Management have launched cryptocurrency ETFs on Cboe Australia. These ETFs are the first to offer Australian investors with direct, regulated exposure to the world's largest digital tokens by market capitalisation, Bitcoin and Ethereum. We spoke about how they work and the regulatory negotiations that were required to get them to market.

Here are links to the Crypto ETFs mentioned in the podcast.

BT3Q - 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin Feeder ETF | Cboe Australia

CBTC - Cosmos Purpose Bitcoin Access ETF | Cboe Australia

EBTC - ETFS 21Shares Bitcoin ETF | Cboe Australia

EETH - ETFS 21Shares Ethereum ETF | Cboe Australia

Cboe is the holder of an Australian Markets Licence to operate a financial market in Australia. Any information is provided for informational purposes only – it is not intended to be financial product advice. Under no circumstances is it to be used as a basis for, or considered as an offer to, engage in any activity or purchase or sell any security, or as a solicitation or recommendation of the purchase, sale, or offer to purchase or sell any security. To the extent permitted by law Cboe makes no representations or warranties and excludes all liability in relation to the information provided.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Phil (24s):

G'day and welcome back to Shares for Beginners. I'm Phil Muscatello. When we think of trading on the share market, we immediately think of the ASX, but that's not the only game in town. There's another exchange called CBOE, which is a competitor to the ASX. So I'm pleased to welcome back to the mic, for the second time, the CEO of CBOE, Vic Jokovic. G'day Vic.

Vic (42s):

G'day Phil, how are you?

Phil (44s):

Good. Good, good to see you back here again.

Vic (45s):

Pleasure.

Phil (45s):

And so much has happened since then.

Vic (47s):

There has been a lot, I mean, you know, we can talk about the world and all the geopolitical things that are going on in the world, but for us a lot has happened because one of the biggest exchanges in the world acquired our old business, Chi-X.

Phil (1m 0s):

Yep, used to be called Chi-X, didn't it?

Vic (1m 3s):

Exactly. We were Chi-X and now we're CBOE, Chicago Board Options Exchange. So a lot of change there with a large entrance into the Australian market.

Phil (1m 13s):

So tell us about CBOE, what is it? Like I said in the introduction, most people think it's the ASX is where their shares and other products are being traded through.

Vic (1m 21s):

Well, that's right. I mean, a point on that, given you've mentioned it, is that if you're buying shares in the Australian market at the moment, you will be buying them likely on the two exchanges. So, you know, anywhere between sort of 10 and 30% or all, in fact in some cases of what you buy when you go and buy Australian shares, may have been transacted on CBOE and not on the ASX. It's really determined by the broker. So the broker takes your order and generally routes to both exchanges, CBOE and the ASX, and whichever one has the best price at the time, that's where it'll execute.

Phil (1m 58s):

And is that kind of automated at the moment?

Vic (2m 0s):

It's absolutely automated. These are called smart order routers. So technology has taken over there. The old days of, you know, you give your broker the order and he takes it down to a stock exchange floor, and I know that well 'cause I was down there, and it was all paper-based like the world was before and downward come a runner, aptly named a runner. He would run down to the operator on the floor and execute. All of that's done electronically in nanoseconds. In fact, orders will come from offshore, from trading houses and brokers in micro or nanoseconds, be executed and be reported back in the US in that sort of timeframe.

Vic (2m 41s):

But you asked about CBOE. So CBOE is the largest exchange in Europe, not a lot of people realize that, it's the third or fourth largest exchange in North America, it's the largest options exchange in the world. It was the first options in the world back in '73. And in fact, interestingly Australia had the second options exchange in the world. The ASX set up options, I think in '76, '77. So we were fairly forward thinking, but CBOE is a very large global exchange.

Phil (3m 14s):

So let's just delve back into history just for a little while there. It's Chicago Board Options Exchange.

Vic (3m 19s):

Yes.

Phil (3m 19s):

And it goes back a long way, doesn't it? And we were talking about the old open outcry pits. Actually, before we talk about the history, I remember the last time we spoke, I was really impressed the way you described trading in the eighties on the ASX, or actually it was Sydney's exchange

Vic (3m 35s):

Sydney Exchange, they were all regional exchanges. There was the Melbourne Exchange, Sydney exchange et cetera

Phil (3m 40s):

And how there was one monitor on a Lazy Susan between three brokers and they had ashtrays in the Lazy Susan.

Vic (3m 47s):

Generally ashtrays on every one full of cigarette butts. You know, the world's moved on.

Phil (3m 52s):

So you used to work in Chicago at Chicago Board Options Exchange.

Vic (3m 56s):

Well, I worked, one of my first jobs out of university back in the mid eighties, was working with a company called Prudential-Bache. They're a Chicago based broker. And that took me to Chicago. And CBOE itself has always run an educational part of their exchange called The Options Institute. And even going back to '88, '89 when I was there, I did that options course just to give me, you know, I was young and straight out of university. So I wanted to understand what options were. So I did that course at the time and it was very early on in terms of the development of the derivatives market of options.

Vic (4m 36s):

That was my first introduction to CBOE. And interestingly, somehow 35, 40 years later, I find myself working for, or with, that same group. Yeah.

Phil (4m 48s):

CBOE Australia also has a lot of other products as well. It's not just about options, there's ETFs now, I believe, warrants.

Vic (4m 57s):

Correct.

Phil (4m 58s):

Let's talk a little bit about the products that are on offer.

Vic (5m 1s):

Well, look, the key products. I mean, when you talk about competition in Australia, the ASX is a very large organization with, you know, 900 people, with many, many limbs in terms of what they do. We compete with them on some of those limbs. We'll increasingly compete with them now under CBOE in more of those limbs. But where we primarily compete is if you think about shares and buying shares, buying and selling shares, about 20% of all trading every day is executed on our exchange and therefore the other 80% on the ASX. Then you've mentioned warrants. Interestingly, last month we were 50% of that warrant market for the month, but generally we're about 35 to 40%.

Vic (5m 45s):

And the ASX is that obviously the other 60%. So that's another area in which we, you know, obviously we compete heavily and then ETFs this new, very fast growing phenomenon in Australia. I mean, it was predated, it was certainly, we saw large trading in ETFs, particularly in North America, but they never really took off in Australia up until about five or six years ago.

Phil (6m 10s):

I know, it's been explosive,

Vic (6m 11s):

It's been explosive. And what it is, I mean, ETFs are the ability to invest in one unit, if you like that tracks an index or passive ETFs are exactly that. So if you think that the technology sector is going to push up and that's where you want to be invested, then clearly you would buy a ETF that represents a technology index and you would get the returns of the whole index of names. So we have, we've certainly pushed into that ETF sector in competing with the ASX. And we've had some fantastic large brands, global brands, local brands launch their ETFs on the CBOE exchange.

Vic (6m 54s):

And we're talking about Schroders, Magellan, Janus Henderson, AllianceBernstein. These are big fund managers globally, and they have launched those products on CBOE. The latest and most of those are active ETFs. And that'll probably illicit a question from you, Phil, on active versus passive, a passive ETF tracks and index like I described earlier, and an active ETF is simply actively managed by a fund manager, say takes a greater role in stock selection. And certainly that's where we have seen these, the increasing number of ETFs that are coming to the market, both on CBOE on the ASX have been in that active space.

Phil (7m 39s):

I've noticed that, that there is now fund managers are starting to move out of the fund space and issuing their products as ETFs. I've seen even some that are both ETFs and managed funds.

Vic (7m 51s):

Yeah, that's right. Look, I mean, historically these funds have been available off market, you know, you would fill out an application form. All the KYC would be done. You know, obviously you'd invest in those units and then the redemption process would be done by the fund manager. So you'd put the application in again, through your advisor to then redeem or sell those units. If you like, the benefits of an on-market product is obviously the ease you've already got your account. Let's say it's with CommSec or Morgan's or whoever it might be. You know, they've done all the KYC. So you simply go online or call your broker and it's executed right away, none of that paper trail.

Vic (8m 36s):

So again, electronification, if you like of that particular product. Yeah. It's just easier. And then on top of that, you can watch that unit price move on market. Like you watch your ANZ or your Telstra move around and then you can sell it. And it's an easy process T plus two through your broker, again, no paperwork. So for many fund managers, I'd describe it as almost the holy grail of, in terms of the next step of getting access to all those brokers and broker accounts and reducing all the paperwork. So it's just an easier form.

Phil (9m 13s):

Let's have a talk about the crypto ETFs. This is an interesting side of the market at the moment, isn't it? Because it's seen as been a crypto is kind of a lawless Wild West of currencies.

Vic (9m 25s):

Correct.

Phil (9m 25s):

But you're issuing, or your what's the correct word, facilitating the issuing of ETFs in the crypto space.

Vic (9m 34s):

Yeah, the quoting of ETFs. So let's, I mean, crypto believe in it, or don't believe in it. There's obviously a massive push across the world in terms of the use of blockchain and investing in cryptocurrencies. Let's take Australia first up. I don't know the exact numbers across North America, but I understand it's somewhere between five and 7% of Americans have invested in crypto. And that number is somewhere around in, in numbers. I think the ATO released a number not so long ago of over a million Australians now hold crypto. So again, believe in it or not.

Vic (10m 15s):

There's a very, very large number of people investing in crypto. Now you mentioned the law plus, you know, west or whatever,

Phil (10m 24s):

Or maybe that's a perception. Well, there's a perception.

Vic (10m 27s):

Most, most new products start trading in that way. You know, it's considered lawless and you know, there's no regulation because they're so new. And really, we've only seen regulations trying to catch up with crypto. And it's important that it does because you know, for anyone listening, if you want to be investing in crypto, then you want to do it through a safe means. You want to do it in a regulated market because there's too many stories about products and we've seen it. We saw it, you know, a month ago with some of these stable coins, et cetera. And what can happen there, you know, down 98% in a week is not normal in markets,

Phil (11m 8s):

Not when it's got stable in the title.

Vic (11m 12s):

No, not when it's got stable. Exactly. So what we've seen is crypto ETF starting to emerge around the globe. And what does that mean? That means, again, an exchange traded fund that trades crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, or a selection of other coins. And really it's just a different access point for those cryptocurrencies. So there've only been three or four countries around the globe that have got there, where their regulator has worked out. You know, what they need to do. The exchanges have worked out the rules, et cetera. And those countries are Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, and now, more or less, fourth is Australia.

Vic (11m 54s):

And really CBOE, we were heavily involved in working with the regulator treasury, the reserve bank, everyone gets involved and they should get involved because you're talking about people's money. And where we got to was we launched the first crypto ETF in Australia about a month ago, that was a company called ETFS. Followed by others from ETFS and another company, Cosmos. And then tomorrow we have another one from a company called 3iQ. So there are many of these crypto starting to come to market in different forms. You can buy them that just represent Bitcoin. You can buy them that represent Ethereum or a combination of a basket.

Vic (12m 37s):

So it's good because you know, it will give investors the opportunity to buy these products on a regulated exchange, regulated by, you know, government and ASIC

Phil (12m 49s):

Are these ETFs actively managed.

Vic (12m 51s):

They are.

Phil (12m 51s):

They'd have to be, I guess, wouldn't they?

Vic (12m 55s):

Well, look, they are actively managed. But when you've got an ETF that represents nothing other than Bitcoin, ETFS and Cosmos and now 3iQ will have Bitcoin related ETFs that represent nothing other than the Bitcoin price and Ethereum prices in the case of those managers and then baskets as well. There's not a lot of management that goes on. It really should just replicate the price of the underlying crypto.

Phil (13m 21s):

And how has the market been affected with the recent downturn in all of the cryptocurrency prices?

Vic (13m 29s):

Look, it's interesting. What I should say is these three cryptos, Cosmos, ETFS and 3iQ, are all leaning on existing managers. So they're using existing managers. Canada's two largest crypto managers are Purpose and 3iQ. So these funds that are listing in Australia, really just feeding into those funds that are on the Canadian market or using their management expertise. And then there's a Swiss group as well that are working with ETFS. So they're using their expertise. The downturn is interesting. I won't name the manager, but we've got a crypto fund manager that is in town at the moment.

Vic (14m 12s):

And I said to him, well, the timing could have been better on getting your crypto onto market. I mean, it's taken a while because there's a lot of hoops to jump through as you'd expect with regulators, et cetera. And he said, well, quite the contrary, Vic, in fact, it's a fantastic time for us to be launching because the crypto prices halved and we still strongly believe that it will see new highs and it will see those new highs in the next six or 12 months. So, you know, some would argue the point, the other way that fund manager would argue that that gives us a better opportunity. But yeah, the markets have been wild, not just in crypto, but right across the board. And, you know, I was asked this question a few days back at a conference at a Securities Institute conference around geopolitical risks and markets at the moment.

Vic (14m 59s):

And you know, you look at the geopolitical risks in the world from Ukraine, Russia to, to, you know, obviously concerns around cyber attacks, this decoupling around technology in the US block and China block, really trying to be much more, or certainly in the case of the US block. And we're probably more in that block trying to be self-sufficient in terms of not needing that supply chain out of China,

Phil (15m 27s):

That's a huge change that's going on. That a lot of people aren't aware of

Vic (15m 33s):

Absolutely massive changes in the world. And then on top of that, we get this situation now where post COVID we've got inflation, no doubt increasing quickly. And perhaps some of the forecasts on inflation have already been exceeded. So I think it might've caught some economists off guard and all of that creates an environment where we may not realize it. But if you look at the performance of some of the global indices, since the start of the year, it's crept up on us, you know, the S and P 500, arguably the global benchmark is down 20%. And then the darlings of the last five-year, the FANG stocks, you know, Facebook and Amazon, Google, Netflix, those four in particular are down 35 to 40% since the start of the year.

Vic (16m 20s):

But interestingly, our market, I think is only down four or 5%. So one might argue that we've got some catch-up or otherwise, you know, we're not as heavily exposed to those more volatile names. And that's the reason we've held up

Phil (16m 35s):

With crypto and the legitimization of crypto. What is the shape of the regulation that's required to achieve that?

Vic (16m 46s):

Oh, look, I mean, in terms of getting there, it was certainly a long process with government, you know, treasury, reserve bank, all those groups that formed COFR the Council of Financial Regulators needed to be involved and the assets needed to be comfortable that the exchange had set rules around the management of these products. They needed to be comfortable that the clearing house, and we have one clearing house in Australia. That's the ASX is clearing and settlement house CHESS

Phil (17m 16s):

Soon to be blockchain, apparently

Vic (17m 18s):

Soon to be blockchain. That's a conversation, a, the conversation perhaps for another day, but we can touch on that as well, if you like fell, but yeah, you needed to have all the pieces in place. Were the custodians ready? Was the clearing house ready with margining where the broker's ready was the exchange ready CBOE. And look, our competitor, the ASX have already set their rules and they will have product market soon as well. So there will be other fund managers coming onto the ASX to compete with those fund managers that have crypto products on, on CBOE, but the eco system needs to be worked out.

Vic (17m 58s):

And boy, oh boy, we found that out the hard way we thought we could have launched these products a year ago, but because it was so new and the lack of understanding across the market, including amongst all those, those parts of the ecosystem meant that it was one step at a time, the last step being the clearing house. And we finally got that clearing approval about a month ago. And that's when these products started to come to market

Phil (18m 27s):

Just before we go on, what are the ticker codes for these ETFs?

Vic (18m 30s):

Okay. So we've got the CBTC, which is the Cosmos Asset ticker that's the Bitcoin fund, ETFS that's EBTC that's the Bitcoin, the Ethereum fund is EETH. I'll have to check on what the ticker is for 3iQ that will be on market today. So just check our website, the CBOE website, and all of them are listed there.

Phil (18m 57s):

How does CBOE and ASX work alongside each other, apart from in the background of the exchanges and in trading, are there other ways that you relate to each other?

Vic (19m 7s):

Well, we have to, you can be competitors, but equally we need to work with each other. Look, there are other exchanges in Australia, but really the two dominant exchanges in the equity markets,

Phil (19m 18s):

There's other exchanges?

Vic (19m 19s):

There are other exchanges. There are there's the National Stock Exchange that has been trying over time to compete with the ASX on listings, corporate listings. So they have a number of smaller, small cap and micro cap names that trade on their exchange. You know, that's been difficult for them to compete in that area with the ASX, but they've certainly pushing along. And then there's Sydney Stock Exchange and other group that has corporate listings as well. But I think both of those exchanges are just trying to get there in terms of, you know, relevance versus the ASX. So that battle will continue for some time, but in the main game, in terms of trading every day, it's CBOE and ASX, more or less in that ratio that I told you about 20% with CBOE, 80% with the ASX, interestingly in the ETF market, it's probably 60% ASX, 40% CBOE.

Vic (20m 11s):

So we've taken a large share of the trading in the ETF market.

Phil (20m 18s):

So an ETF has to list on an exchange, right?

Vic (20m 20s):

Exchange traded fund, yep. It has to be exchange traded.

Phil (20m 23s):

It can be either CBOE or ASX.

Vic (20m 26s):

And everything that trades on the stock market has to go through an exchange. If it doesn't trade on market through the day, if it's a large, what we call block trades, you know, institutional block trade where it's, you know, five or 10 or $50 million. And it goes from one large institutional fund manager to another, it may not trade through the market because of the size of the trade and certain trades, depending on size, don't have to be printed on market as in, through the trading day, but they still have to be reported on market. You know, there still needs to be a mechanism for showing that the trades happen.

Phil (21m 5s):

Transparency

Vic (21m 5s):

Exactly transparency. Yeah.

Phil (21m 6s):

Competition is presumably to benefit investors or benefit users. What do you see as the, being the benefits to Aussie investors with CBOE, or Chi-X previously, coming into the market?

Vic (21m 17s):

Yeah. Look, I mean, you don't see it as an investor if I didn't know the exchange market or financial markets, all that well, and I was just interested in buying and selling shares. You may not even know that there are two exchanges, but certainly the benefits are the same. You know, I always draw the analogy of, well, if we didn't have Uber competing with the taxi industry, or if we didn't have Coles competing with Woolworths or IGA or Aldi coming in to compete with them, you know, ultimately I'm sure we'd all be paying higher prices for our retail goods or whatever. So the benefit is perhaps not saying, but the benefit is that in every aspect, in which we have competed CBOE with the ASX over the last 10 or 11 years in our former guise as Chi-X, we've seen the ASX respond by reducing their costs to brokers.

Vic (22m 9s):

And when an exchange reduces the cost of execution to the broking community, then generally those brokers can move prices down. And there's no way that CommSec and Westpac online and NAB online and all, you know, CMC and all of those groups that, you know, everyone listening, probably familiar with and perhaps using that they would have been able to offer the commission rates that they're currently seeing without that exchange competition. Because if the exchange is charging you $10 a trade to execute a trade, let's say it's highly unlikely that you're going to be pricing it at $5 to your consumer.

Vic (22m 51s):

So the last 10 years, I think the competition with between CBOE and ASX has facilitated the much lower rates of commission in the market place. And that extends out to other things, exchanges, sell market data, every bit of data that you see if you're looking at a screen is sold by the exchange. Now that that used to be very, very expensive. CBOE came in and cut those prices by 70, 80%, the ASX has responded to some degree. And then that gets fed down to the cost of things like access to a Bloomberg screen or some other data provider

Phil (23m 28s):

Let's go back to clearing houses and the CHESS system. We all know that when we buy or sell any instrument on the exchange that we get a blue piece of paper providing confirmation of that.

Vic (23m 40s):

Yep.

Phil (23m 41s):

And as we alluded to before, this is going to become electronic using blockchain technology.

Vic (23m 45s):

Yeah.

Phil (23m 45s):

Yeah. Tell us about that.

Vic (23m 47s):

Oh, look, I mean, there are naysayers, but certainly what the ASX is doing regardless of the time it's taken again, it's very new. It's certainly not being done before on the scale that the ASX are looking to do it, and it will provide a new source of truth, easier access, arguably better security for underlying shareholders, better access to market data. There are many benefits to using the blockchain or distributed ledger technology in terms of the clearing house. And the ASX are right to argue that their old clearing system is now 30 years old, and we need to move away from that technology.

Vic (24m 31s):

I think the concerns in the market, if anyone has read the press around the replacement of the existing CHESS system with the new DLT based system is just the amount of time it's taking to get it done. And the fact that these timelines have been pushed out, but they will get there. And I don't think for the consumer, for the investor a lot will change. It'll just be much more efficient for the exchanges and for brokers and for all those vendors involved.

Phil (25m 3s):

So your parent company, CBOE run, what's known as the VIX, the volatility index, is that right?

Vic (25m 11s):

It's the, you know, when you talk about global benchmarks, things that people look at and Australia, we look at the ASX 200, that's generally the benchmark. If you're watching TV that you refer to in the global sense, we look at the MSCI, MSCI global index or the S and P

Phil (25m 27s):

Which is an index of every, most

Vic (25m 30s):

Of the globe, including Australia's, whatever it is for those that don't know. I mean, it's less than 2% of the global index, the MSCI. And then we look at the US I mentioned it earlier, the S and P 500 when it comes to volatility, the key index that everyone looks at in terms of how volatile markets are at the moment is the VIX index, the VIX volatility index. And that is a CBOE that's part of our exchange. It's operated for a long time. I would say somewhere around 20, 25 years, we've had access to the VIX. And certainly what I look at, if I'm looking at volatility, if you're a, a trader, if you're a fund manager, if you're an options trader, you will look at volatility.

Vic (26m 17s):

And what we're seeing at the moment is interesting. The VIX has these long periods of inactivity. It's like Australia before bushfires, you know, everything is quiet,

Phil (26m 26s):

Smooth seas

Vic (26m 27s):

Smooth seas, you know, nothing happening. The VIX is trading at sort of 15 to 20 ish, and you'll get something happening somewhere globally, an event, and the volatility index, the VIX will spike. And what we're seeing at the moment with this incredible convergence of many things at once, governments having printed a lot of money to get us through COVID this unexpected Russia Ukraine event, if inflation really starting to ratchet up more concerns around these cyber issues globally, and then the whole US China debate and Taiwan as a potential flashpoint.

Vic (27m 12s):

So you pull all those together at the one time, and we're seeing the VIX index trade at elevated levels, plus 30, as opposed to 15 to 20, and as high as 50 60 on various weeks, depending on what's going on. And our strategist at CBOEs sees an extended period of very high volatility. And the last times we witnessed this, if we look back two or three times over history, '87, if you're old enough like me, that, you know, we go back to the '87 crash, an elevated VIX index in the sort of sixties, seventies, eighties.

Vic (27m 52s):

And then, you know, you had the dot com boom and bust around the early 2000s. 2007 to 2008, 9, the GFC again, elevated VIX levels. And now for about the last six to 12 months, we've seen an elevated VIX, and there's no reason to believe it's going to come down anytime soon. So what does that mean for people listening? It means heightened movement in markets. So expect to see bigger shifts in prices on a daily

Phil (28m 22s):

Up and down

Vic (28m 24s):

Up and down on a daily basis. Don't be surprised if you see moves of three or 4% quite often,

Phil (28m 31s):

It's the volatility index derived from the price movement is that it's exactly where it comes down. Nothing else

Vic (28m 38s):

Nothing else.

Phil (28m 40s):

That's interesting to know that. So you're speaking with analysts at CBOE as well, apart from this increased volatility. Is there anything else that they're taking into account...

Vic (28m 49s):

Oh look, you know, I mean, there's clearly a refocus on fixed income products. We're going to see perhaps thankfully for anyone that's retired, for example, and dependent on fixed income returns. You know, if they haven't invested in a lot of retirees, invest in bank deposits and they've seen no returns, I think you're going to start to see those returns ratchet up. Obviously rates are going up. There's no moving away from that. So we see more fixed income products coming into onto exchange. And certainly in focus, we certainly see an increase in these crypto products. They're not going away.

Vic (29m 29s):

You know, I mentioned those now for regions or countries that have regulated ETFs on market Australia, being one, the US many countries across Europe and elsewhere, and now pushing for these listed regulated ETF. So that's a focus for CBOE in, in the US certainly and in Canada. And I think in terms of other products, I mean, high volatility is great for futures and options, markets, derivatives markets.

Phil (30m 1s):

So you don't see crypto going anywhere, then it's here to stay.

Vic (30m 6s):

Well, you know what, unless there's a massive meltdown and I just can't see it at the moment. It now feels like the use of blockchain is in, you know, much more accepted, you know, mainstream, large Australian companies are all doing work on how they can use blockchain technology. So you think about your NABs and CommSecs, to some of your larger manufacturing groups. They're all looking at crypto. Healthcare groups, I know they have teams working on how they might be able to use blockchain technology. It doesn't feel like it's going away. That doesn't mean that, you know, I'm necessarily endorsing

Phil (30m 45s):

Putting the house onto Ethereum

Vic (30m 47s):

The product, but I think it was important that we brought some of those products into a regulated world. And then we'll see where they go from there.

Phil (30m 58s):

Yeah, because blockchain being the, the technology underlying crypto is not just for cryptocurrencies. It's for many, many uses as well. I mean, I was speaking to a friend recently who sells rare books and rare books are going to go on blockchain because it's all about the provenance. And being able to prove where that book came from and its history that it's exactly what is being sold.

Vic (31m 19s):

Absolutely. So that is the point, you know, let's move away from the underlying cryptocurrencies to the technology itself. And the, the technology is a step change. It's a significant move forward in terms of, you know, everything we're seeing the supply chain issues around the globe, which obviously, you know, again, blockchain can play a part there as well.

Phil (31m 42s):

So Vic, how can people find out more information about CBOE?

Vic (31m 47s):

Thanks, Phil. Yes. The best place to go, I'd say would be the website. So cboe.com.au CBOE.com.au is the best place.

Phil (31m 54s):

Yeah. So it's not an acronym. It's pronounced CBOE as well.

Vic (31m 59s):

Absolutely. It is. It is.

Phil (32m 1s):

Vic Jokovic, thank you very much for joining me today.

Vic (32m 4s):

Thank you, Phil. Pleasure.

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