 Do you want to learn how to trade stocks and cryptocurrency? Join our community of traders, go to richpicksdaily.com and find the next 10-Bagger. Hi, how's everybody doing today? I'm here with our very special guest, the CEO of the Evolve ETFs, Raj Lala. How are you doing today, Raj? Good, Raj. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. Super excited to have you on the show. Congratulations on all your success. Thank you. Appreciate it. And let's get started by you telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with the Evolve ETFs. Sure. Well, actually, I'm the founder of Evolve. I'm the CEO of the company. We started it back in 2017. So we've been at it now for about three and a half years. Prior to that, I ran Canada for Wisdomtree, which is one of the world's largest ETF providers. Prior to that, I always go in reverse chronological when I talk about things. Prior to that, I ran the retail business for a large asset manager here in Canada called FIERRA Capital. And then before that, I built a structured products company with a couple of partners, and we built that up to about a billion in assets and then sold it to FIERRA, which is why I went into run the retail business. And then going all the way back, because I'm older than you, going all the way back, I started something called Jovian Asset Management, which was part of a company called Jovian Capital. And most people in Canada still don't know who Jovian was, but we were the ones that actually incubated the Horizons ETF. So I intersected in the ETF industry a couple of times. And when I left Wisdomtree back in 2016, decided I wanted to build one because I felt that there were still a lot of products and a lot of opportunities that weren't being well covered by the other ETF issuers. And really where we started to focus in on is disruptive innovation or disruptive technology, and also in actively managed fixed income as well. And so here we are three and a half years later closing in on two billion in assets, been one of the fastest growing ETF providers in the country. And I think that's got a lot to do with the fact that we've brought out differentiated products and we've been fortunate to have some fantastic performance as well. Yeah, let's get into some of those products. So we're going to break down the different sectors that you've been involved with. To start, we know you guys are big on cybersecurity. Can you go through the growth expectations for the cybersecurity industry, how the impact of the SolarWinds hack in December has affected it, the recent Microsoft breach, Biden's cybersecurity initiatives, and the effect COVID has had on cybercrime, bad actors, and the type of cybercrimes that are currently happening. Okay, we're going to unpack that question. So let's start at the top. When anybody that's watching this that's maybe over the age of 40 something years old may remember their first encounter with cybercrime was that blue screen of death where you opened up your laptop or your computer and this blue screen popped up and it's at a fatal exception error. And you had one choice, two choices, either you throw away your computer or you get your hard drive rebuild. But there was no economic model for the cybercrime. They weren't making any money other than just being a complete useless and being disruptive in your life. If you fast forward, you started to get into things like Petia ransomware, WannaCry, where cybercriminals are hijacking your data and demanding a ransom. And if you pay that ransom, then you get your data back. And truthfully, there's quite a bit of honor among thieves because it would be a bad business model for them to not give that data back because then nobody would pay the ransom going forward. So you pay the ransom, you get your data back and nine times out of 10, that was the case. It's become very lucrative for cybercriminals. Like last year alone, cybercriminals made between $25 billion and $30 billion. So when you make that much, guess what that sparks? It sparks more cybercriminals. You have more people coming in. Attacks become more sophisticated. They become more organized. And that's the world that we're living in right now. And there's a lot of interesting aspects of the cybersecurity industry that I think are really important when you're looking at it from an investment perspective. And going macro for a moment, it starts with our connectivity. I mean, in today's world, there's 25 billion devices connected online. If you look around your room that you're in right now, you probably will see at least three or four, right? I mean, I've got my iPad. I've got my desktop. I've got my watch. I've got my phone. I've got a smart plug over there. I've got a Google speaker over here. So I'm probably up to six or seven just in this room. Actually, my printer is connected too. So we live in this increasingly connected world. That number is going to grow to 75 billion in the next few years. Put that into perspective. That's 10 devices connected per person on our planet. Now, it makes us happier, makes us more efficient to be more connected, makes us feel more plugged in. But the downside of it from a cybersecurity perspective is that it also means that there are multiple entry points for a cyber criminal to access our precious resource, which is data. Now, cybercrime also is costing the global economy today about $6 trillion. That's going to balloon up to about $10 trillion in the next few years. That's bigger than the GDP of Japan and Germany combined, okay? Putting that number into perspective. If you hear CEOs of any organization, like let's say Fortune 500 companies speaking at conferences these days virtually, but in the past at events, if they ever get asked a question, what's the one thing that keeps them up at night? Nine times at a time they'll say fear of a cyber breach, fear of a data breach, because data has become their most precious resource. And most CEOs have seen the case of what happened to a company like Equifax a few years ago, where they had 143 million records breached. And it wasn't just username and password. It was data birth. It was driver's license number. It was credit. It was high quality data. The moment that they reported that data breach, the stock dropped in that first week by 35%. The CEO got fired. The board got fired. They lost customers forever. So if you're running a Fortune 500 company, that is your ultimate nightmare to go through that. So what I find fascinating and one of my favorite things about cybersecurity is it has become a non-discretionary spend for every organization and government agency around the world. And what I mean by that is if you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and you just had a terrible financial quarter, after that terrible financial quarter, you're not going to come up and stand in front of your board or your shareholders or your customers and say because of our poor financial results, we've decided to reduce our spending on cybersecurity. Never going to happen. You are going to maybe close some offices, reduce your ad count, defer initiatives. You're going to cut costs in other areas, but you are not going to reduce your spending on cybersecurity because your data has become so important. So what I love about the cybersecurity industry is it's become like the utilities section of the technology sector today. One other really important point on cybersecurity, and I know I think I've only answered one of those six questions that you had in there. One of the really important points in cybersecurity is it is one of the very few areas of the market that has a massive shortage of human capital. There are three and a half million job vacancies in the cybersecurity industry. So if any of your viewers are trying to figure out a career path for themselves or if they have kids trying to figure out a career path, you may want to nudge them towards a career in cybersecurity because it's virtually guaranteed employment. Now, why is that important to us as an issuer of a cybersecurity ETF? Well, because of that massive shortage of human capital, most companies are outsourcing their cybersecurity work to a third-party company because they can't staff up internally enough people to fulfill their cybersecurity needs. So if you're again the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, are you going to outsource your cybersecurity work to a small mom and pop shop operation? No. You're going to outsource it to a big, reputable, regulated, publicly listed cybersecurity company. And so with 75% of all the cybersecurity work being outsourced, it's the companies in our portfolio that are the ones that are getting the beneficiary of all of that cybersecurity work and all of that cybersecurity revenue. And that's not going to change anytime soon. So you can look at it in so many different ways, and it's a fascinating industry. It's always been one of my favorite funds that we have in our stable. Now, you asked me about, I'm going to try and remember some of the questions that you asked within that, SolarWinds. SolarWinds is a really interesting development. So SolarWinds for the viewers that are not really too familiar with it, because most people hadn't even heard of SolarWinds before November of last year. SolarWinds owns the software called Orion. And Orion is used by a lot of the Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. Sometime around a year ago, we don't really know. Nobody really knows exactly. Sometime around a year ago, these Russian nation state hackers planted this spyware basically into the software update for Orion. So all these Fortune 500 companies downloaded the update. All these government agencies downloaded the update. It's sat in their, it's been sitting in their system or was sitting in their system for anywhere from six to 12 months. We still don't know what all of the data was that they had access to. We're talking about US Homeland Security, Department of Defense, companies like Microsoft. In November of last year, one of the largest cybersecurity companies called FireEye found it. They got hacked. Very embarrassing for a cybersecurity company to get hacked, right? It's like a criminal holding up a cop shop, a police station. I mean, a very embarrassing situation, but in actuality, what it's spun into was that FireEye became the hero because FireEye was the first company to detect this spyware. And they went back to SolarWinds and told them SolarWinds then had to go to the 18,000 companies that downloaded the Orion software and notify them about this. Now, the timing was also really interesting because what happened in November of last year, Joe Biden just got elected, right? So this is now all front-side. And by the way, what I will say is SolarWinds is turned out to be the biggest cyber breach of our lifetime to date. And I say to date because there's probably going to be bigger ones in our future, unfortunately. And so Joe Biden had made this a top priority, has made this top priority for anybody that watched his speech a couple of nights ago to Congress. He kept talking about cybersecurity and how important it is because we need to protect our data that exists out there. So I think this year, you're going to see a lot of companies practicing better cyber hygiene. I think this year you're going to see companies having to spend a minimum amount of their IT budgets on cybersecurity. I also think that at some point a lot of the too big to fail companies are going to have to get proper cyber insurance, proper cyber insurance because many of them have it but they probably don't have enough. And the one thing because I'm in the finance services industry, the one thing I know about insurance companies is they are very good at hedging out the risk that they have of paying out on a claim, right? They don't ever want to pay out on the claim. So what are they going to do to these companies? They're going to say to them, you have to have these minimum standards in place of cybersecurity infrastructure and training before we can give you an insurance policy. What's that going to result in? It's going to result in more spending on cybersecurity. That results in more revenue for the companies that are in our portfolio. So it's a great circular message. Did I answer at least two of those five or three? Yeah, no, I think you went through most of it and that's good. I think we got a good understanding of how important cybersecurity is and why it's a sector that you're focused on. Let's touch on another sector. So we know COVID accelerated the need for cloud computing, data and new gold and you touched on data and the importance of data. Can you explain how data is a business's most precious resource today and what the growth expectations are for the cloud industry over the next five years, especially with how everything is in the cloud these days? Yes, so actually not everything is, you know, everybody says everything's in the cloud. You know what? Only 40% of our data is in the cloud today. Wow. And there's a reason for it. If you started your company in the last five years, you went straight to cloud technology. But if you're an older organization 30 years ago, you started or 40 years ago or 20 years ago, you have these legacy systems. And these legacy systems are very difficult to migrate to cloud-based technology. And I'll give you a great example. I'm not going to name the bank, but my broker is at one of the big banks in Canada. And about six months ago, he sent me some documents to sign. And he said, hey, Raj, can you print this out, sign it, scan it and send it back to me? I was like, have you guys not heard of DocuSign? DocuSign is like, why do I need to be in a situation where I've got to print documents, sign it, scan it, send it back? Well, it's not because they didn't want to spend the licensing money for DocuSign. It's because that software as a service, which is a cloud-based service, wouldn't be able to mesh properly with those legacy systems that they have. So we're in the midst of migrating those legacy systems to better cloud-based technology. You asked a question about data. So many people have heard this, right? Data has become our most precious resource. Data is more precious than gold, more precious than oil. We're consuming and we are producing vast amounts of data on a daily basis, zettabytes, if that term of measurement means anything, zettabytes of data are taking place. So, and part of it is because we're so connected, right? That I mentioned about cybersecurity. So we're consuming and producing a lot of data and it gives some context to that over the next three years. We'll be producing more data than the previous 30 years combined. So that's a lot of data. So we need a place to store it. So cloud computing takes it from on-premises storage to online or cloud-based storage. What's great about cloud computing is that it is much more cost efficient for the companies. And I'll give you an example. In the past, if anybody that's watching worked in a big office, you probably remember like six, seven years ago, there was this room on your floor or in your building that had these file servers. That's where our data was being stored. The bigger your company, the more file servers there were, the more rows there were, or the bigger that room was. So companies had the choice of making sure that they stored it all on-premises. But they didn't know how much data storage facilities they were going to need. So if they made this big one-time infrastructure spend, not knowing if they were going to need 20% of the server's capacity or 120% of the server's capacity, well, if they only used 20% then they way overpaid for the infrastructure that they bought. If they needed 120%, well, remember when a friend would say to you like five years ago, oh, sorry, Rich, my server crashed or our server crashed? When was the last time somebody told you their server crashed? It doesn't really happen much anymore because a lot of the data has now, a lot of that data has now started to migrate over to the cloud. What's great about cloud computing from a data perspective is companies only have to pay for what they use, not for what they don't use. So it's like your light switch, right? You come into your room, you turn on your light switch, you start paying for the electricity, and then you leave the room and you turn it off. It's as flexible as that. But the big, big advantage of cloud computing, which is what we have now lived over the last year, is it also gives us the ability to access that data from wherever we are in the world. So when we all got vaulted into a work from home, stay at home environment a year and a bit ago, companies needed to make sure that their employees could access the data, companies needed to make sure that employees could access programs and things like that. That's where cloud computing came in. So cloud computing allows you to access it. And the one thing I often say to people, because we often forget about the way the world was 10 years ago, right? The one thing I say to people very, very often is if there's one silver lining about going through this pandemic, is thank God we're going through it today and not 10 years ago. Because 10 years ago, we wouldn't have been able to do this. It would have been very difficult. It would have been very difficult for you to stream your movies off of Netflix. It would have been very difficult to stream your games because they're all cloud based. So we would have been in a much darker, much more isolated world without cloud computing. So we should all be very thankful that cloud computing has enabled us to communicate with our friends through video conferencing, download our movies, play our games, upload programs that we need. Very important. It's been a long time since you've probably been to the store to get a new edition of Microsoft Office or any other software because we're downloading it from the cloud. That's SaaS. So to me, it's a really great industry. But going back to my original point, there's still only 40% of our data in the cloud. But that migration is taking place. And you can see how important cloud computing is to organizations like, for example, Amazon. A clear indication of how important it is. Most people know that Jeff Bezos announced a few months ago. I think it was a few months ago now. You lose track of time during COVID. A few months ago. And he made the announcement that he's stepping down as CEO. Who's he appointed as his replacement? Andy Jassy. What was Andy Jassy doing before? He was running Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services is their cloud computing division. So that's a clear indication of how important cloud computing is going to be to the future growth of a company like Amazon. In fact, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google control today about 55% of the cloud computing industry. And of that 55%, the majority of it is still Amazon. So it's a really important business. And it's a highly lucrative one for the big tech complexes. Wow. That's exciting. It's a lot to digest. And you're 100% correct. It's like, without the cloud, I wouldn't be able to operate my business. I wouldn't be able to, RISTV Live wouldn't exist without the internet. RISTV Live wouldn't exist. And in fact, during COVID, our community and our channel and our brand has grown because of the cloud, because of the internet, because of technology, because companies like yourselves can't do trade shows, can't do events. So more and more companies are going online to tell their story. So it's interesting to see how some companies have really scaled during the COVID-19. And let's get into another sector that I'm really excited about, one of the hottest sectors in the world. We've been watching the explosive growth in the electric vehicle space. Tesla, clearly one of the hottest companies, Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world today because of what he's been able to do. And Neo, for example, countries are committed to clean technologies, conversations around electric versus hydrogen. What do you think the growth expectations in the automobile industry are with autonomous vehicles, legislation happening, and Biden's clean energy initiatives, and how big China's EV growth has been? Right. Okay, so let's start with the electrification of the car. So to your point, let's go macro. I 100% agree that the car, the automobile is going through its biggest transformation, not just of our lifetime, but in history. Absolutely. The biggest transformation since the move 115 years ago from the horse and buggy to the combustible engine vehicle. And we're back then, neither of us were alive. But back then, most people thought the car was never going to catch on. Everyone was going to keep using the horse and buggy. 15 years later, nobody had a horse and buggy on the streets anymore. It was all automobiles. I believe that electrification of the car automotive market today is at that tipping point where there's still a lot of naysayers and there's still a lot of people that are not adopting. I mean, less than 5% of the cars on the road are our electric vehicles around the world today. But we're at that tipping point. And let's talk about that because first, I think you need to go macro. I'm a big believer in always thinking about things from a macro perspective. So we have this problem in our world called greenhouse gases. And everyone's getting very concerned about it. You see the Paris Agreement before that Kyoto as well. Carbon dioxide is contributing about 80% of our greenhouse gases today. Everyone's on this mission. And I hope we get there to neutralize to a maximum of 1.5 degrees to 2 degrees increase in temperature versus the pre-industrial age by 2050. So everyone's focused on becoming much more carbon neutral in our world. About 28% of the carbon dioxide emitted into our atmosphere is coming from transportation, primarily the combustible engine. So if you look at that, that translates into countries saying, we need to do something about this. So they join the Paris Agreement. They make all of these other commitments. And you're seeing this now translate into commitments of moving to electric. Because that's one way that we're going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So companies, countries like Norway and Netherlands, if anybody watched the Super Bowl, the best commercial I thought on Super Bowl was one with Will Ferrell where he made the trip to Norway because he was trying to figure out why everybody in Norway was driving electric vehicles. And today, Norway is 54% electric. 54% electric. 2025, they have committed 2025. Both Norway and Netherlands have committed 2025. You will not be able to buy a combustible engine vehicle in their country. Wow. Okay. I didn't know that. That means that over the next six years, six, seven years after that, you just won't have any combustible engine vehicles on the roads there. But also the big behemoth countries, India, China, making statements. We'll see if they live up to it, but making big statements that 2030, they're going to start phasing out the combustible engine vehicles on their streets. China is right now just under 5% electric on their roads. They have said by 2025 their goal is to be at 25% electric. Now, the sheer size of the Chinese population, that's going to result in millions of cars obviously being sold that are electric. And I've also got to believe that if the Chinese government wants something to happen, especially within their own borders, then I think that they can actually make that happen as well. And then it translates to the auto manufacturers. Many of you have probably seen the big statements in the last few months, GM and Volkswagen specifically, two of the biggest manufacturers. 2030, they will not be manufacturing a combustible engine vehicle anymore. Okay. So you've got this greenhouse gas issue. You've got countries making these big proclamations, and then you've got the auto manufacturers making these proclamations or making these commitments as well. So what is that going to translate into? Well, it's going to translate into greater and greater adoption of EVs. What are the two major challenges of adopting electric vehicles? It is cost and it is infrastructure. Okay. So the cost is coming down dramatically on a car. You will see in the next few years that a mid-level car, the cost of the electric version will be the same if not cheaper as the combustible engine version of that mid-level car. The moment that it gets to the same price and starts to even dip below it, you will see greater and greater adoption. It's pretty simple. And the cost of manufacturing the battery and the technology going in, it's getting cheaper, it's getting more efficient. So we will be seeing that in the next few years where that cost of a car of an EV will be cheaper. That's one. The next one is the infrastructure. So I have an electric vehicle and I got it, what, about six months ago now. And there's this thing called range anxiety. I don't know if you've ever heard this term before. Range anxiety kicks in for me when for example, my family wants me to drop them at the cottage and I got to come back and I got to work. For me to make a trip to the cottage and back, I can't get there on a single charge. So what do I have to do? I have to, especially in the winter. In the summer, I can try and do it, but in the winter, battery usage goes, the battery dies faster. So what do I have to do? I've got to go on my way home 20 minutes out of my way and then sit there for 45 minutes while my car charges. Highly inefficient and it's a real problem for adoption of electric vehicles. We need more infrastructure. So the Biden administration is highly committed to this as well. 150,000 new charging stations across the country, that's going to make it easier. But the next thing that we need is we need better batteries that can charge faster. You mentioned NIO. I love that company. I don't know if you know what NIO's business model is, but it's extremely interesting. Instead of going to a charging station, you go to a service bay in China. It's almost like Mr. Lube. I don't know if you're, are you in Canada? So you remember Mr. Lube? I think they call it like this, where you pull your card and they do the oil change. It's kind of the same thing. So you drive into a bay, they prop up your car and they swap out the batteries. And then you're out. Then you're out. So you literally can be in and out within like five minutes. Now, and then what they do is they take your battery and they just go and charge it and then they give it to the next person or not the next person probably needs a little more time. But like the fifth or sixth person that's coming in and they put that battery into the car. And so you're almost in and out as fast as you would have been at a gas station filling up your car. I love those kinds of ingenuity that are taking place in the EV market. And that's all going to result in greater and greater adoption of electric vehicles. I got to tell you, I love my EV. I got a Tesla. I'm a huge fan. You mentioned it before. I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk as well. I think he is probably going to go down as one of the geniuses of our lifetime. He's absolutely also an incredible marketing genius as well. But I mean, I love that car. I mean, it's smooth. It's quiet. It's great. I think when people and it's fast, once people get the experience of an electric vehicle and they can get over the cost issue and the infrastructure issue or we get over the cost issue and the infrastructure issue, then I think you'll just see adoption catching on really quickly. And so it's an exciting time for the car market. And you talked about technology, your spot on. If I take a look at, so the Tesla that I got is the first car that I've gotten in five years. So if I compare my Audi that I had five years ago compared to my Tesla today, and if I take a look at the technological improvements that's taken place in those five years between my two cars. And if I apply that trajectory to the next five years, you can clearly see a path to having self-driving cars or autonomous vehicles on our road. Technology is still not there. In order to get to full self-driving cars on our road, you need to be at something that's called the level five. I would say we're probably at like a level three and a half to three and three quarters right now, but we need more technological progression within cars in order to get to that point. And you know what, something really far fetched and some people will laugh, but I actually believe it. Self-driving cars will become so important that maybe in 15 to 20 years, it'll become illegal to drive a car. You will have to use a self-driving car. Wow, that's incredible. That is incredible. It's one of the things that I'm really, really excited about because I actually want the Cybertruck. I think the Cybertruck is like the coolest thing ever and I've talked to my kids about it and my kids are like, yeah, dad, get the Cybertruck. And some people think it's ugly and I'm like, that is like the coolest truck I've ever seen. It's an electric vehicle. It looks like a tank. It's bulletproof. It's super cool in every way and it's going to be affordable. So I totally agree with you and I'm a huge fan of Kathy Wood as well. And you've seen her price projections for Tesla. She's projecting a $3,000 stock and she's also projecting cars going down to like $18,000. Yes. I mean, it's incredible what's going to happen here and we are literally seeing a changing of the guard. Now, let's say we're going through the biggest transformation in history of the automobile between the electrification and the technology. You know, you keep hearing about this chip shortage everywhere. Cars didn't have chips 15 years ago. That just gives you an indication of how much the technology has improved within our automobile today. If you bought a car in the last two years, it's the most complicated, sophisticated piece of technological equipment that you own. I mean, hundreds of thousands of lines, if not over a million lines of code are going into our automobile today. They are highly, highly sophisticated. So yeah, you're absolutely right. Whenever people ask me what I think is the biggest disruptive technology is going to be over the next five years or 10 years, car is usually the first thing that comes to mind. There's a lot of other interesting ones, but the car is going through its biggest transformation. And for most people, it's also the second biggest purchase that they make as well. So it's very relevant to your life. Absolutely. Now, let's talk about another really hot section and something that I love. Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ethereum and digital currency. I'm a huge fan, huge believer. I've been in the cryptocurrency space actually talking on YouTube since 2017. I've seen the rise of cryptos. I've seen the crash of cryptos. And now we see the rise again. What do you think the financial growth expectations of this sector can be? And can you go through the hedge to inflation, Bitcoin versus gold, investor, institutional, vendor acceptance of these instruments? And also what do you think Bitcoin and Ether ETFs impact will be on the marketplace? Yeah, wow. Lots to unpack there. So when I look at Bitcoin, and by the way, I just did a yesterday or day before yesterday, I did an interview with Tyler Winklevoss, obviously one of the crypto legends that existed out there. And he's built a great business being Gemini around custody and wallet and pay and everything else and just keeps expanding. And he puts it really well also that Bitcoin kind of falls into two phases. And phase one is kind of that early days where most people thought Bitcoin was a joke. Some people adopted, but most thought it was a joke. And it was never going to catch on. And you had all those stories about people losing their USB stick or their hard drive and rummaging through garbage dumps to recover their security key or their password. Still today 20% of all Bitcoin hasn't been touched that's been purchased. So a big part of that has got to be people that lost their security key that can't access it. Then you heard those stories about that guy that spent, I don't know his name, I can't remember his name, but he spent like 10,000 Bitcoin to buy a pizza was one of the first trends. That's a legend. That's a legend. A legend. It's a true story. And God, that's like that's a $550 million pizza. It better have tasted amazing because it still must really bug that guy. I think he was like an engineer or something like that that did it. He still must really bug. It still must really bug him today. Those were like kind of the early days of Bitcoin. It's changed a lot. We actually filed for the first Bitcoin ETF back in 2017 and the regulators here in Canada just weren't ready for it. And I completely get why. I mean, there's two issues. One was there wasn't enough infrastructure around Bitcoin back then and there also wasn't enough adoption. You had a lot of do-it-yourself or investors, online investors that were buying it, but you didn't have the buy-in from the rest. You didn't have the buy-in from institutions, from corporates and so on. And so over the last three or four years, we have seen that. We have seen hedge funds buying into it. We have seen institutions buying it. We have seen companies like Tesla using it for a portion of their cash reserves. I believe they're one and a half billion that they purchase has now already worked two and a half billion that exists out there. You have MasterCard coming into the space. You have Visa coming into the space. You have Square coming into the space. You have so many companies that are embracing it and legitimizing Bitcoin as a store of value or as we call it, Gold 2.0. And so since you brought up the point about inflationary hedge, everybody, I think most people know that Bitcoin is limited to 21 million coin. Never going to have more than 21 million. I think we're now at like about 18 and a half million that's been mined so far. Because of that fixed supply, there's a lot of individuals over the last year that have become really concerned about all of the money printing and the relaxed monetary policy, the quantitative easing and concerned about an inflationary environment around the corner. And so they look at Bitcoin as an inflationary hedge against all of that monetary easing. And to me, that seems like a really interesting use case. And what's also been interesting over the last few years is that Bitcoin has kind of emerged as an asset class, right? Absolutely. Not just a currency. People are looking at it as an asset class. And if you take a look at Bitcoin over the last couple of years, the correlation, the relationship between the movement, the price of Bitcoin versus North American equities or North American fixed income, basically zero to negative correlation between those. So it becomes a diversifier for a lot of investors as well. So you're seeing a lot of use case taking place. And companies are using it for a part of their cash reserves partially because their cash isn't earning anything. We're in such a low-income environment, right? But their view is like, it's actually costing me money to hold my cash. So what's my opportunity cost? Yes, there's volatility. But it's interesting to watch the adoption. And one of my partners brought up a good point a couple of days ago about it that now that Tesla is in the S&P 500, everybody that owns the S&P 500 has an indirect exposure to Bitcoin. That's right. Absolutely. And I gotta believe that more companies are going to start looking at Bitcoin for a portion of their cash reserves. So all I'm saying is that you're seeing all of this adoption, you're seeing all of this improvement in infrastructure. I would say Tyler Winklevoss and Gemini, for example, have been very important in terms of improving the overall infrastructure around Bitcoin. And I think you're going to just continue to see it grow. I'm not going to give a price target. I know everybody always asks me, what do you think it's going to be at the end of this year? I don't know. But man, oh man, like 10 years, 200% annual return. There's a lot of people that look at it and say, well, why wouldn't I put one or two percent of my portfolio in this? Because absolutely. If it continues on that last 10-year trajectory of 200% a year or half of that or less than half of that, well, then that one or two percent of my portfolio could be worth a lot. That's right. But if we're all wrong and Bitcoin's at 10,000 by the end of this year, well, it was only one or two percent of your portfolio. Nobody likes to lose money, of course, but it's not going to sting you that much because it was such a small portion of your portfolio. And I think a lot of people are looking at it from that perspective. For some people, it's become a bit of a FOMO trade as well. But yeah, a lot of adoption, a lot of use cases for it. It's Gold 2.0. I think it's better than Gold. I mean, people are all over the internet trying to say, Gold is better. And I'm like, okay, well, let's just look at it statistically. Gold hasn't moved in a year. So if you're holding Gold, you've made no money. If you're holding Bitcoin, it's up a thousand percent to this rate. So you can't tell me that Gold is better if you're an investor because, realistically, you haven't made any money. You're probably just bitter. And I'm a diversified investor. I got my hands involved in everything. But realistically, when you look at the numbers statistically, and I love Peter Schiff and I love all these guys, but they're just bitter. They're bitter because Bitcoin is up a thousand percent in a year to the day and Gold is not up at all. So when you look at it as an investment, you can't compare the two. You really can't compare them. Very different. When you look at just what the return has been for investors. And today I had one of my members and he started with $42,000 and he hit a million dollars today in a year only buying crypto. So show me someone that's invested in Gold that can show you that they made 25 times their money. So as a just a strict investment over the last year, the returns are astronomical compared to any asset class. I think, and I think you're right, Rich. And I think the reason why it's considered to be Gold 2.0 is because it's comparing the use case to Gold. And so historically, Gold has been used as a store of value and as a hedge against inflation. And so the argument that's being made around Bitcoin is that it's a better store of value and maybe it's a better hedge against inflation and you've got some growth opportunities, some significant growth opportunities there as well. So yeah, it's a really interesting asset class today. Absolutely. And the adoption, if you do the research, it's growing faster than the internet and what has been a better for technology in our lifetimes than the internet? Nothing. So when you look at it and you compare it, there's nothing that compares to Bitcoin other than the growth of the internet. And the mass adoption is 560,000 new people a day. So it's doing the math. It's growing about close to 200 million new users a year. So when you just look at the numbers and you do the real research on it, you can't guarantee anything. But if it continues to adopt and I think the average holder of Bitcoin, it's about 55% of the holders have held it for a year. So when you consistently look at what the potential is, it's astronomical. I'm a huge fan of Cathie Wood. In my opinion, the best investor of our generation. And she believes that if every institution just holds 5%, the number will be around 500,000 is her prediction of Bitcoin will be the price of Bitcoin over the next few years. If just every institution in America was holding 5%. The stat that I saw recently is there are 40,000 publicly listed companies in the world and only 30, 32 actually hold Bitcoin. So imagine if that number gets to 500 of the 40,000. Not that still, not that many. And they start using it for a portion of their cash reserves. You can kind of triangulate what that could do to the price for sure. Mind you, it is extremely volatile. And anyone who's watching, you can't guarantee anything. And I remember in 2017, when it went from 3,000 to 21,000 in 2018, and then it dropped back to 3,000. So I've seen it be extremely volatile. And even Cathie Wood has said there's going to be tremendous volatility. But if the adoption continues and larger institutions like the Tesla's, like the PayPal's, like the Visa's, like the MasterCards continue to adopt it, the sky's the limit. Now, let's go into another topic, another huge topic, another sector that I love, especially due to the fact that everybody's at home, spending more time at home, e-gaming, video gaming is larger right now than the music and the film industry is combined, especially how COVID has changed the face of video gaming with a lot of people staying at home. What do you think the expectations are in 2021 on this sector with new technologies and mobile gaming drivers? Yeah, you're quite right. Actually, it's two and a half times the size of the entire film and music industry combined. That is incredible. So if you put it in a perspective, linear television is about a $260 billion industry, e-gaming is about $160 billion, and film and music are about, I think it's $62 billion. So it's massive. And this was an industry that was already doing well before COVID kicked in. This isn't a new phenomenon in any way, but COVID helped accelerate it, right? COVID helped accelerate cloud computing to a degree as well and accelerated many other industries also. And so it's a fascinating industry from a growth perspective. Last year, the amount of time being spent e-gaming increased by 35%. It's increased 30% so far this year. I think a lot of people are concerned about the reopen, right? Like when the world reopens, are you going to have a reduction in the amount of time gaming? I would argue not necessarily because the growth driver of the future of e-gaming is going to be on our smartphone. There's no doubt about that. If you think about like the smartphone five years ago made up about 25% of the revenue of the e-gaming industry, today it's about 50%. I think it's going to be 75%, 80% in the next few years because if you're a game publisher, it's one thing to build your game for the 200 million consoles that exist in the world. It's quite another business to build your game for the 4 billion smartphones that exist. So if you're going to focus on the growth area, you're going to focus on the smartphone. Now, with that, when the world reopens and we all start going back into an office again, we start traveling again, what's the one thing that we always have with us? It's our phone, right? And so as the game publishers are manufacturing or producing better games that provide you with a better experience and like richer graphics. And we eventually get proper 5G technology, which has taken a long time to roll out properly here in North America. Like still less than 10% of the North American population is using 5G. And I expect that in the next few years, sorry, in the next year and a half, that we'll be at about 40% usage of 5G. Because you need two things, right? You need hardware, like a new phone, which a lot of people are getting, and you need those cellular boxes built on the lamppost and the low-rise buildings. But once we have proper rollout, our internet speed is going to go up depending on where you are anywhere from 10 to 100 times faster than where we are in today's 4G world. Which means that we can download games faster and we can also play games with richer graphics as well. So we've got better quality hardware, our phones, we've got faster transmission. Those are going to be big growth drivers for the entire e-gaming industry. And then you're going to have, I mean, there's still three and a half billion people in our world that don't have smartphones. That aren't connected. We live in this little bubble in North America where we think that everyone must have a phone. Everyone must be connected. Well, the truth is there's over 3 billion people on our planet that are not. But they will get it. And when they do, what's one of the things they'll be doing? They'll be gaming on their phone. Because 75% of all the downloads on the Apple App Store and Google Play are game-related. The reason why we created this fund on e-gaming is because we had two aha moments related to this fund, related to the industry. The first was the revenue ecosystem that exists within the e-gaming industry. You think about, again, like I said before, think about the way it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, you went to the store, you bought the game, you brought it back, you plugged it into your console and away you went. That's where the revenue stream stopped for the game manufacturer. Now you download the game for free. You have something called a freemium model where you pay to unlock levels, where you pay for boosters, weapons, or in the case of Fortnite, skins. The average millennial in North America is spending $112 per month on e-gaming. Oh, I know. I got a 13-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter. They're always buying these skins. I'm like, why are you spending money on these skins? My friend has this and my friend has that. And I'm just like, oh my goodness, this is nuts. So you just have to take a look at your credit card statement. And by the way, that's a good point as well. There's almost 3 billion gamers in the world today. It's a huge population. And by the way, the definition of a gamer is probably most people, obviously a lot of people, which is anybody that spends six hours or more per week gaming. Wow. There's three billion people spending six hours a week. And so it's not just your teenage kids. No, definitely. I know lots of 40-something-year-old professionals who hop on an e-sport and compete with their friends. I know 75-year-olds like my mom and all of her friends that spend way too much time on games like Candy Crush and Word Search Games. So it transcends multiple demographics. So what I love about the e-gaming industry is that they have such a fantastic revenue model. The in-app purchases or the freemium model has been hugely successful. But then once you get engagement, people watching as well as playing, that's where you hit the big time, right? That's where you have companies like Mercedes, like Red Bull, like Coca-Cola saying, oh my god, there's millions of people watching. There's thousands of people playing. There's millions of people watching other people play on like Twitch or something like that. We need our logo embedded in the game. We need our logo at the tournaments for the prize pools. We need to sponsor it because this is our audience, the people that we need to get our logo in front of. So all of a sudden, you get advertising revenue. When you do these events, you get the media rights like TSN or ESPN are broadcasting these games. So these companies have developed these sophisticated ecosystems of all these different revenue lines besides just the in-app purchases, which to me is fascinating. I'll tell you I had a really tough time getting my head around why stadiums before the pandemic, why stadiums were getting filled with people watching other people compete in an e-sport or in a video game. Why would you go to a stadium to watch something like that? And I did an interview with a professional e-gamer and he said to me, I made that comment to him and he goes, well, with all due respect, Raj, we don't understand why your generation watches cooking shows or watches home improvement shows. And I was like, fair enough, sometimes you think of what other people are doing is strange, right? And you don't necessarily think the way you are in their eyes. So it was nice for me to kind of get put in my place as it relates to that and recognize that everyone just has different tastes. But I'll tell you like Twitch, which is Amazon's Amazon property, which is online games streaming medium, give you a stat that'll blow you away. 2012, okay? 2012, 100 million hours were watched on Twitch, watching other people compete or just getting better at your gaming experience. So far this year in 2021, we're just past a quarter in, right? So far this year in 2021, over 5 billion hours have been watched on Twitch. That tells you about the engagement in e-gaming. So lots of people watching, lots of people playing, lots of growth potential coming from our smartphone devices and the gaming experience on those smartphones. Wow. It's incredible, incredible time. And you guys got your hands involved in all the hottest sectors. I love that. We've covered a lot of topics today. We've been going for about an hour now. If there was one thing you would want investors that are looking at investing into some of your ETFs, what would it be? That's a great question. I think when you look at some of these sectors, right? Oftentimes when we're talking to advisors, because we don't often talk to investors, we're usually talking to investment advisors across the country. Oftentimes when we're talking to advisors, they'll say something like, and I won't name you companies, but they'll say something like, you know, yeah, I love the e-gaming industry. So I bought XYZ company or I love the cybersecurity industry. So I bought XYZ. That's a cybersecurity company. So they use these single stocks to express their view on a specific sector. If you're using the stock to express your view on a sector, you should use the ETF instead because the performance variance in some of these funds like e-gaming and cybersecurity. And when I say performance variance, let me explain what I mean. The difference between the top performing stock in our fund and the worst performing stock in our fund could be north of 600%. So if you're going to go and try and pick the stock, how does it know you're going to get that one near the top or unfortunately end up with that one near the bottom? So if you're looking to express a view on a sector because you really believe in e-gaming or you believe in cybersecurity or automotive innovation or cloud computing, if you're looking to express a view on a specific sector, I would highly say it's better to use an ETF than to use a single stock as that proxy. That's a great answer. And I agree with you 100%. And I started to dabble into ETFs because of that exact reason. You find that you want to invest in Bitcoin. You want some exposure into Bitcoin. Well, maybe you don't want to buy Bitcoin because it's got a lot of volatility. It's $57,000 US for one. So you buy the Bitcoin ETF or the Ether ETF. It gives you exposure and you're buying it at 10 bucks instead of buying at $57,000. But you still got exposure. You're in the game. So if Bitcoin explodes or Ethereum explodes, you get a chance to enjoy that upside without having to put too much risk, too much exposure of your portfolio into one asset class that could be extremely volatile and is trading at all time highs. Yeah, that's actually, if I could jump in there, Rich, because I think it's actually a very good point. A little bit different than on cybersecurity where you're talking about stocks. In this case, you're talking about the crypto, whether it be Bitcoin or Ether. The reason why I like the ETFs is because, first of all, when you put a dollar into our Bitcoin ETF, you are getting a dollar of Bitcoin. There's no synthetics or anything like that. When you put a dollar into our Ether ETF, you are getting a dollar of physical Ether or physical Bitcoin, depending on which one you use. The big advantage of it is that for a lot of people opening, I know you've done it, but for a lot of other people, opening up that digital wallet and going through that process can be a daunting task. Because partly because you hear stories about missing security keys and do I really want to give any information and is this a reputable provider and so on. So all we've done is we've created a vehicle for you to do the exact same thing, buy Bitcoin or buy Ether, but now you can buy it inside your brokerage account. You can put it into your TFSA, if people know that better. Obviously, everybody in Canada knows what it is. You can put it into your RSP as well. You can hold it in your brokerage account, and you can sell it, buy it every day, whatever you want. It's just a much easier way to own the crypto than to go through the process of opening that digital wallet. Yeah, I love it. I think what you guys are doing is fantastic. What is the best way for investors to get in contact with you or the Evolve ETF? If they had questions, if they're interested in investing, what's the best way? Yeah, I think we have put together a really great website. I guess I'm a little biased, but I think we've put a really great website together. It is EvolveETFs.com. You will see pretty much everything you need to find there, all the media, all the infographics, the fact sheets, of course, our prospectuses on our products, all of the current data in terms of our net asset values, prices, and everything else. It's very comprehensive and should give end holdings for the individual funds. You should be able to get all the information you need from the website EvolveETFs.com. Fantastic. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on the show today, Raja. Very, very excited. Rajlala, the CEO of Evolve ETFs. Continue doing all the great work you've been doing, and thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Rich. You continue to do the great work you're doing too. I really appreciate the opportunity and look forward to doing this again. Thank you so much for your time today. Now, remember everyone that's watching, Rich TV Live is strictly for information and education purposes. Please do your due diligence, do your research before you invest in anything that we talk about and discuss here on Rich TV Live. If you're winning, you're not watching. If you're not watching, you're not winning. We bring the winners and we bring them to you first. We've been doing it for four years since 2017, and I love watching companies like yourself and CEOs come on the show and tell your story. It just helps me learn so much more about what is really going on in technology, infrastructure, and this has been just mind-boggling really to think where you guys have come and where we've come and we're sitting here talking about all this technology and we're just really the first inning when it comes to a lot of this technology. It's so exciting and investors get the opportunity to put their money into great opportunities and see incredible upside. Thank you so much for joining us today. For those of you guys that are watching, please smash the like button, comment down below, share the video everywhere. It allows these videos to go viral and subscribe for future updates. Thank you for watching, everybody. Thank you, Raj. Have a great day and thank you for your time today. Thanks, Rich. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for watching, everybody. Have a great day.