Tony Saliba, CEO of Liquid Mercury, on Being a Option Trading Pioneer | Ep. 179

In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Tony Saliba, CEO of Liquid Mercury, talks about pioneering option trading, how to develop trading discipline, and managing risk.

About Tony Saliba

Tony Saliba is the CEO of Liquid Mercury. He is an internationally renowned business leader, multi-faceted serial entrepreneur, option trading pioneer, master trader and board member of the Chicago Stock Exchange, author, shareholder, operator, and investor in nearly 100 companies. Tony has been the founding member of key companies in the trading and tech industries such as Efficient Capital Management, International Trading Institute, Liquid Point, Fortify Technologies, and more. He currently maintains a global team of staffers in offices around the US, UK, India, and China helping companies achieve high rates of growth, and identifying initiatives to unlock exponential value.

Tony Saliba gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.

Highlights Of The Interview

  • Providing crypto trading powered by OTC liquidity to retail traders.
  • Tony being an option trading pioneer; the true OG of the options trading space 2.
  • Trading discipline – it’s a journey and make sure to journal.
  • Options trading over standard equities trading; manage your risk and upsize returns.
  • FTX situation – how will this affect us moving forward?

 

 

 

Full Transcript Of The Interview

Matt Zahab 
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We’re buzzin as always, it’s your host Matt Zahab.  And I’m very pumped to have a literal legend on the show today. We have Tony Saliba, the CEO of Liquid Mercury. Tony is an internationally renowned business leader, a multifaceted serial entrepreneur, the legit pioneer of Options Trading, a master trader and board member of the Chicago Stock Exchange. He’s also an author, shareholder, operator and investor in nearly 100 companies. Tony has been the founding member of key companies in the trading and tech industries such as efficient Capital Management, the International Trading Institution, Liquid Point, fortify technologies and more. He currently maintains a global team of staffers and offices around the US, UK and yet in China, helping companies achieve high rates of growth and identifies initiatives to unlock exponential value. Without further ado, I’m very pleased to welcome Tony Saliba to the Cryptonews Podcast, Tony, welcome to show my friend. 

Tony Saliba  
Matt, great to be here. 

Matt Zahab 
Tony pumped to have you on now, the thing that stuck out the most to me as a bit of a degenerate is you being the OG the original gangster of Options Trading, I think this is a good place to start. And I’ll sort of give some pretext I’m feel like I’m pretty standard when it comes to someone’s trading journey. Got in at a young age started just doing regular, you know, didn’t have a shorting account, because I didn’t have the capital in my classic brokerage, saw the returns that you could have in effect that was sort of my first little foray and party into the leverage world. All went well. And then like most, you know, beginner FX traders, one bad trade, and you get hooked. And then I started screwing around with Options on traditional equities and still do a little bit today. Not a whole lot now mostly just crypto. But it’s cool to think that now we have you on the show. And you are literally the OG of Options. I’d love if you could tell the story about sort of how you discovered them, and how you’ve made such a name for yourself in the Options Trading space. 

Tony Saliba 
Thanks, Matt. Uhmm, I know that some of your viewers and listeners probably have either read or seen or heard some of my stories in the past. But I started out right out of college as a account rep. In the malaise seven days of Jimmy Carter were a big day, like the biggest day in 1977, when I started of volume. And in equities, was 11 million. We do that in the first heartbeat of the opening today. And I said, you know who makes all the money in this business. And they said the guys on the floor and I grew up here in Chicago and I caddied for being brokers and, and bond traders. And the Options market had just launched a few years earlier. And I was reading about Options. And I was like the in house kid right out of school, that people were asking me questions about Options. And I knew I could answer sort of like how they cleared and some of the regulations but I didn’t know a lot about strategies. So I said goodbye to being a broker, came back to Chicago, and found a guy to hire me as a clerk. And I very quickly figured out different strategies. And I met a guy a candidate for that was down on the floor and he was just there to get out of the house. He had sold his women’s haberdashery business, and you could smoke on the floor at the time. And he just was like a lot of the other guys punting knew nothing about Options, only that there was a lot of leverage. And I said, Julian, I, you know, he goes, you know what you’re doing down there go Yeah, I can show you I can make you some money, I put a spread on. And within a couple of days, it made money. And I ran over to him and I said it’s time to take it off. And it goes, wow, you know, like risk 1500 bucks and made like 2500 bucks in three or four days. And he said, can you do that regularly? And I just said yes. 

Matt Zahab
Yeah, I can. 

Tony Saliba 
Yeah, he backed me and then it was struggles in the beginning, no question about it. But after a few months of riding the ship and not overtraining, which is the biggest problem, you know, I mean, you get full yourself or you get a little bit lacks in your discipline, and your trading size goes up or your inventory size exceeds what you where you want it to be, push a little bit, and it gets, you know, goes against you. And it’s tough. My issue was I was long premium and, you know, took the air out of vows right before Memorial Day, weekend that year. And so I learned a valuable lesson. But over the next year and a half or so I made enough to buy him out, started my own trading companies. Literally, every clerk I had, I tried to turn Hiroshi into a trader, and mostly got into technology quickly because I needed it. Necessity was the mother of invention. So I took my ideas, which, you know, we’re just doing some cleaning out of storage. And I found some of my trading cards from you know, back in the day when you know, we use these on our trades, I’ve got some with my positions on him. And I automated that I had a guy write a program, I taught him Options. And my first program was to help me trade bigger and faster and less risk, more and more margin calculations. And then eventually, I had literally the first front end that showed Options calculations on it internally. And I go, hey, I can probably sell this so started barnstorming around the country, training people how to trade professionals and selling them our software. 

Matt Zahab 
What a journey. So when you were using the terms punting and caddying you were you’re referring to literally like being on the trading floor guys are hacking darts, you know, smoking left, right, and centers yelling at each other literally punching holes going, like in the old trading movies and shit. 

Tony Saliba 
Yeah. So when I met when I mentioned caddying, I kept it as a kid. And all the guys at the club where I caddied were most of them were down at the Board of Trade. Okay. 

Matt Zahab
You mean golf caddy? 

Tony Saliba
Golf caddy. 

Matt Zahab
Yeah, gotcha.

Tony Saliba
Yeah. Oh, the other terms are definitely trading terms, you know, that these guys had other businesses were successful sold them. And a membership was like 10 grand at the time, okay, to be a full time member, you know, now than they went up to a quarter of a million, half a million now they’re, you know, no more no longer memberships. But when the exchanges went public, they were worth like, $2 million for a membership. And as a poor kid, who didn’t, you know, didn’t have any money. I needed a backer. And Julian good, who, you know, passed at 94 years old, about 10 years ago, was my benefactor to begin with, I made him a lot of money, but bought myself out of that contract. Early on, and, and I’ve carried that with me in terms of backing people, you know, I’ve backed dozens and dozens of young men and women. Definitely not the most of the people that I know. I mean, I know bigger shots. But there were a few of us down there that just said, you know, clerk for me, I’ll teach you what I know, work on your discipline and then if you’re any good, I’ll fund you. Back then, you know, 50 to 100 grand you can get started. It’s different game today. It’s definitely big Titans you know, measuring their speed of execution in nanoseconds. But there were no computers on the floor to do everything in my head or scribble it, you know, on these trading cards, and just figure it out. But I also did a lot of homework at night. Kind of my nickname to myself as Mr. What if, because, constantly, you know, what could go wrong? What my best case scenario things like that. 

Matt Zahab 
Tony, you keep bringing up the word discipline. And I’m not a trader. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t definitely don’t day trade. There were periods in my life where I did now I more just HODL and I guess present day more so than anything else, unfortunately. But discipline. You hear that word all the time. More specifically, in the trading arena. How does one get and gain discipline? Well, and again, there’s classic ways of going about this, the easiest way is the hard way, which is learning right? But the best part about reading books and listening to people like us speak is we can learn from your mistakes instead of us, you know, going to the shitshow of learning it ourselves. So if a trader were like Tony, you got you know, 30 seconds, you got a minute, two minutes, give me an elevator pitch on discipline mode. What would that sound like?

Tony Saliba
Well I’ve been asked this question, dozens if not hundreds of times, man. And as you were just asking me that question for the very first time, it struck me that discipline. And I’ve answered this question so many times, but discipline is really a journey, in that. Even the best of us can be super disciplined at times and then undiscipline, the next moment or the next day or whatever, but there are some things you can do to learn about discipline, and achieved discipline. I was a wrestler in high school, okay, in wrestling, unlike any other sport, maybe even boxing where you know, your one on one. Difference between boxing and wrestling, there isn’t as much brute force in wrestling, and you have to strategize, but you also have to be disciplined. You have to be disciplined in your weight, and your fitness in your moves and everything. And I ran cross country where you also have to be disciplined. This journey to perfection and discipline is kind of, you know, you could get off topic or you can get distracted. About 30 years ago, 32 years ago, I reached out to Mark Douglas, who passed away a while ago, but he’s written a number of books about the psychology of trading. And Van Tharp is another one. He’s, I think he’s recently passed away also. And I was trying to teach my people and clients about trading. And I felt that this dimension was super important. One of the things you can do, it happens today in some of these online discord groups or Reddit groups, some of them are way too unruly, undisciplined in themselves, but it’s to find a sounding board, or a small group of individuals, two or three, maybe Topps sounding boards, and, you know, not get crazy and not get, you know, egocentric, but a way to bounce your ideas off of someone else and do these what ifs, so discipline is painting your lines, your lanes, and staying in that lane. And it has to do with strategy, and money management, and market timing. I’m a big fan of scaling in and scaling out of positions, you know, I’m known very well for being one of the original users of the butterfly, and Options, okay, and all of its spawn, pterodactyls, and iron butterflies. 

Matt Zahab
Can you explain that quickly? 

Tony Saliba
Yeah, so a butterfly is two verticals. To call verticals along in his short, a traditional or classical butterfly, your short ones strike twice, and your long, the lower strike and the higher strike, okay. And your optimum P&L is if it lands on the strike that your short now the way to look at is your short straddle. And your long strangle, okay, so if any of your viewers want to go to liquidmercury.com and just go to the contact us mention your name, Matt. I’ll personally answer their questions on butterflies. But, you know, my gig today is all about technology and has been for about 20 years, although I still mentor some people and trade but I kind of stylized butterflies and wrote some books about him. Like 40 years ago, I started trading butterflies and a lot of guys have expanded on that or focused on it. But the beauty of the butterfly is you can leg in and out of it because there’s four legs, the two wings and the body. Right. 

Matt Zahab
Yup! So again, one last question on discipline and we’ll get into some of the crypto stuff and we will get into Liquid Mercury. The discipline one of the things that I’ve found that has helped myself and again, I’m not a trader just to sort of see what was right and what was wrong and I’m a bit of a sports bettor as well. And I’ll always be like, oh you know I wanted to hammer the Pats by seven or whatever the case may be and then you see you do it whenever you see you do it and don’t bet you always win and then when you bet it you always lose. I started keeping a journal the absolute best way at the source of truth I do it by hand I don’t even do it on my computer. Short Form notes on this was good. This was bad. Do you have any journaling techniques? 

Tony Saliba
Oh my god. I’m so excited that you said that because I use a remarkable okay and if you ever use it, but this is a you know, feels like you’re writing on paper with graphite. It’s a really create electronic note keeping tool. And the reason why I bring that up is because not only is the journaling important for the reasons you mentioned, to go back and review, but journaling is super important because a lot of us learn that way by taking your ideas and writing them down in that function cannot be replicated. And, you know, look, I’ve got, you know, four devices on my desk, you know, three phones and a laptop and everything. So I’m all about technology. But the journaling is therapeutic. It’s changes your ideas into something on paper for you to review. But a lot of us also learn visually by writing out your ideas. So, you know, it’s not like I’ve written anything about journaling, but I’m all about that. And review those and use different colors and mark them up when you find found something that you’ve expanded on or expounded on, where maybe you found an error in your original ideas, so that I had goosebumps when you said that because, you know, people say, well, you’re old school, okay, fine. Some things. So many programs today are like, guys were doing this point and figure in books, you know, tape reading and writing these things down, saying, you know, I had a guy who never used a computer called the market bottom in March of o’nine and like, point and figure tape reading and saying that, you know, so do not ever throw that stuff out. And maybe there’ll be a revival in maybe a semi-automated thing, like, you know, like this so. 

Matt Zahab
Interesting. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Walk me through your journey from traditional equity. And again, you’ve treated literally everything you have traded ever. I did a lot of research on you. Is there anything you haven’t traded? 

Tony Saliba
Well, when you say FX, I was not an active FX Trader. But I have traded everything else grains, fixed income, futures and Options, equities, OTC stuff. But when I pass my kids will put on my gravestone necessity was the mother of invention that literally when I there’s something about my brain, when I see something, I’m like, we can make that better, we can fix that we can, you know, optimize that. So it started in my, you know, early days of trading, probably when I was 28, or 29. I was like, I gotta get a PC. And people were like, no, what are you talking about? It’s PC means personal computer, you can’t use it in business. And I said, fine, I’ll never bring it in the office. And so I had my first, you know, chance of writing a program to take all this stuff on the cards. And an automated was a DOS based program 1984 and automated so that I could trade more safer. And, you know, my clerks would run upstairs and run it and say, here’s your new position, whatever. And then over time, my next big program, which made a lot of money on was a margin optimization program, because back then, interest rates were in the high teens, and you needed to worry about, you know, how much you were borrowing, right. I was, like, 2122 points. 

Matt Zahab
Someone like me, I’m born in 95 turning 27. I can’t imagine what a world. You know, my parents when they bought their house, they would say the same thing. I think the interest rate was close to that back when they bought the house a couple of years before I was born, and they’re like, oh, yeah, interest rate was like, 18%. What the fuck? But no, like, Are you kidding me? Two years ago, in Europe, they were paying you to borrow money. It was like dash, you know, point two, five or whatever, crazy. 

Tony Saliba
Exact. Right? Right. Well, we just bought a car, a new car a few weeks ago. And when we were filling out paperwork, finishing up, we’re paying cash, but the guy said, “You want to finance that?” And I said, “Well, what are your rates?” And I don’t know, it’s like 8% percent or something. He goes, rates are at an all time high, you know, and he was probably like, 30 31. And I said, Well, maybe they’re going there, but they’re not at all time, you know, maybe for your life. So, you know, high interest rates do great things in the Options market, because that’s the dimension that we’ve been missing for the last 15 14 years. Yeah. But, you know, discipline, journaling, doing what ifs, finding software to help you do all that stuff faster. Optimizing a you know, a thesis, if you come up with a thesis, optimize what’s the best approach, risk reward basis. Quite frankly, I don’t know how anybody still trades straight equity today because you can always optimize your risk reward profile with Options. But, you know, maybe people don’t want to take the time to learn about Options and they think they’re too risky. But literally, that’s a much better replacement than buying the underlying or selling the underlying. So, you know. 

Matt Zahab
People don’t like change, though. And I also think a lot of, you know, I look at boomers and a lot of boomers don’t manage their own money and they don’t do a lot of trading either. It’s, you know, financial advisors and a lot of financial advisors, it’s so much easier for them to just pitch them on it on an index fund. 

Tony Saliba
Spot on. 

Matt Zahab
You know what I mean, It’s way easier. Tony we’re going to take quick break gotta give a huge shout out to respond to the show that’s PrimeXBT you guys know i’ve been loving PrimeXBT been using for a hot minute as they offer a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. Doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a vet, you can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style. PrimeXBT is also running an exclusive promo for listeners of the Cryptonews Podcast. Promo code is CRYPTONEWS50, that is CRYPTONEWS50. All one word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Again, that’s CRYPTONEWS50, to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Now back to showtime. Tony, we spoke about sort of the traditional equity stuff and how you were one of the original gangsters of Options Trading. Let’s move over to crypto. Walk me through your journey into crypto. When did you get in? And why? I know why I did the research. And it’s a great reason. And it’s something that only really, you know, a couple dozen, maybe a couple 100 people on the planet have and you are giving a massive solution to the average Joe and Josephine, which I love. But tell me why you moved into crypto and why you founded Liquid Mercury? 

Tony Saliba
Well, I think you nailed that, Matt. So my, my trading career is centered on the floor in 78 I traded on the floor, personally full-time till like 91. But then I had a floor operation till about 2002. My brother ran it. And it was all about trading in that vein, but then had this growing technology business on the side. And the thrust of the technology was workflow automation. So in Options, I mean, there’s so many moving parts, right. And whether you’re just a single, you know, individual speculator or a agent, a broker that handles business for a lot of people. Back in the 90s, there wasn’t any technology that really brought the full Somnus full value of Options to the user in an easy way. So once again, assessing Mothers of Invention, I created a liquid point which took all the different workflows and Options. And I was first person to put at that time, there were five exchanges, and put them all on one screen. In fact, two of the exchange officials, one was the president of an exchange and other one was the head of business development of another exchange said the same thing to me at different times. Why would I want my quotes on the same screen next to my competitors? My quotes are better. And I said, you’re answering my question. If yours are better, you’re gonna get all the business. And that was when there was only five exchanges. Now there’s 16 trending is 17th. And in those Liquid Point days, I realized, you know, Options are hard to trade and they’re hard to manage as an agent when so I got I started following Bitcoin, like right away in 2009. And the reason I did is because I was part of a company that had a great research team and the guy who ran it was a really nice guy, really good guy. And he sent out an email every morning, and I read it every morning whatever his topic was, and one morning topic was Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin might have been trading for 50 cents or something. And I learned everything I needed to know. And within a year, I put it aside about seven years later, I revisited so I missed the whole move definitely from like under 100 bucks to about 2500 bucks. And then when it broke 2000 Bitcoin that is broke 2000 and started to become something on everybody’s lips. I dug in and realized all the similarities between the market for digital assets today back in late 2017. And what it was like 20 years earlier for Options when we started building out our stuff. And we built out a solution, front to back matching engine for a company that had a banking license, custody and clearing solution. And we delivered all the technology for them, we’re off to the races, this was late 2018. But then they did not manage their budget and they ran out of runway and they close the business down. Mercury back then it was Mercury Digital Assets, we pivoted started building out the solution for the people that we knew in traditional finance. And today, we have professional tools, or a B2B. We have professional tools for agents, market makers, traders, that are businesses. But just last week, we announced our partnership with Gemini, the exchange, and we’re rolling out a B2B to see for content providers and other firms with audiences. A full stack, Matt, from onboarding, to custody using our technology to liquidity, some of the biggest names in the market providing no fee, raw OTC quotes in 2000 pairs cleared by Gemini on boarded and then custody by a top 10 Exchange, following all the regulatory rules. So none of this stuff that’s happening with FTX. 

Matt Zahab
So, you’re giving retail for the first time ever access to institutional tools. 

Tony Saliba
Institutional tools, liquidity depth the market, clearing, you know no commissions, and we have a loyalty program where if you’re part of the loyalty program, we actually rebate based on your AUM that you trade, you’ll get E3 beta to you monthly. And we’re we have integrated into our platform, a curated set of third party trading tools curated by me, portfolio, modern portfolio theory, tools, strategy, optimization, all included for those who own our tokens, which is really, you know, a very mere pittance compared to some of the things that are out there. So that we’ll be rolling that out next week with our first group. And, you know, you’ll see more and more of us. We’re all white labeled technology. 

Matt Zahab
How do you guys this is, this is my apologies, I don’t know if you can answer this question. But this I just, I’m so freaking curious about this, how do you offer so much OTC liquidity? Like how are you giving OTC prices to retail traders. 

Tony Saliba
So our core business is all institutional and we have a handful, three, four or five, large multinational market making firms liquidity providers that trust us as a source. And we run enough business through them, that they’re willing to take the small orders and actually probably price improve. If you look side by side with some of the traditional exchanges that are out here, much better pricing in depth. And, you know, we don’t handle any of the, we execute the trades, but Gemini does the clearing, they have the Fiat on board, you know, on and off ramps, and they priced it to us so low that it I mean, there’s literally no friction for the end user. You know, our, our pricing, so then we have a license agreement with liquidity providers, and we just treated as a technological solution, so we’re off to the races. 

Matt Zahab
Such a treat. 

Tony Saliba
Yeah, sure. It’s, you know, this is unique because it’s top to bottom, you don’t have a lot of different entities involved for custody. And the thing about these exchanges, most of these hacks and problems are with the exchanges that are doing everything. They’re doing their execution, they’re doing your because custody and everything, we split it up, where, you know, all of our messaging is encrypted. We have, you know, immediate fills, super fast turnarounds where anybody was trading anything on some of the exchanges will wait. I don’t know, 30 seconds or more to get a fill. It’s kind of herky jerky. So. 

Matt Zahab
Tony, based off the research I’ve done, it seems like you just like what you said, you’re doing what you’re best at, and you’re sort of outsourcing and partnering with other companies who you guys couldn’t do, you know, bringing in hundreds of a good as job as them. Whereas you have companies like FTX, who, you know, overstep their boundaries wanted to be a one stop shop for everything. And now it is, you know, shitshow, city population FTX. And all of us, I guess that’s a good segue into that. What’s your two cents on this whole situation? 

Tony Saliba
Well so it’s funny, because I was reading a story last week and talking about some of my colleagues about, you know, how deep is, you know, SBS pool, you know, funds, and he’s going out being the backstop everywhere, in this article was raising the question, like presciently that came up a week later, how much of the value is based on their token, and so they were pumping up their own token and using that as collateral. So I think this is a long term, there’s gonna be a number of these purchase, right. And I think this is a long term, positive, I welcome regulation, I welcome rule set that we can all play by. And this is probably going to get the notice of the regulators to a great degree. Now, what I’m, you know, like reading what Novogratz says, and some others that really, it’s a liquidity crunch, and that they still are liquid, just the movement of the funds are such that they need some help, and they’re not necessarily going to fully circle the drain? I don’t know. But I’m glad we’re not over there at this point. And, you know, I don’t recommend people having their entire trading account in one place. Like, when ours we have no minimums, you can open an account with 100 bucks or something, you know. So when you spread it around a little bit, you do have a little diversification in that regard. The people on the inside that I know say that this is kind of a buying opportunity, or at least yesterday, the day before we’re buying opportunities, and some of the big names you know, we have some obligations we pay with ETHs so we bought, bought ETHs in the last couple of days, just you know, prices were down, so it’s good. 

Matt Zahab
Fire sale. 

Tony Saliba
Yeah, fire sale. I think long term, this asset class is only going to grow and be more ubiquitous. Albeit, some people overreach like SPF, but for the most part, I think, you know, I don’t know the guy, but I think his heart is in the right place. But he’s so young. That was some time. 

Matt Zahab
Really, like imagine being what is he 29 He’s worth 50 billion. I think at his peak, he was worth like, a year like, I don’t know the numbers, but you’re so powerful. You’re sitting with Congress, you’re sitting in the supermodels on stage like that’s gotta get your head, you know. 

Tony Saliba
It’s oh heavy man. So heavy. 

Matt Zahab
It’s crazy. The ones Tony one thing I’m super curious about. I don’t know if you’ve seen the conspiracy theories with CZ from Binance, where a lot of people are saying that his team orchestrated this and a lot of the proof is in the pudding. Right? There was a tweet, I want to say two weeks ago that was an I quote, defy is the future of crypto, which is synonymous with a major exchange is about to get fucked. And then the whole him, you know, having 2 billion worth of FTT and selling it off. It’s like, do you think you orchestrated this? 

Tony Saliba
Well. So the difference between traditional finance, you know, listed markets, highly regulated markets and the crypto is if they can, you better expect that they will. 

Matt Zahab
Good point. So Wild Wild West. 

Tony Saliba
Yeah, totally. And if you go out there with your token, and you’re, you know, selling, it is rallying and it’s worth, you know, billions and billions, that’s one thing. But if you start borrowing against it, and leveraging against it, and underpinning your business, 

Matt Zahab
And someone knows about it, and then the big dog knows 

Tony Saliba
It’s like, well, I have this, you know, Achilles’ elbow or tendon it’s exposed and he just goes, how much can I push on this? I don’t it’s only conspiracy theory if it’s not true, so, you know, if it comes to light that that was orchestrated or maybe even loosely thought about it, you know, like Terra Luna busting Terra Luna, they expose themselves should have been should be positioned limits for these guys. I mean, you could call us a whole bunch of wallets in doing attack, if you would wish. But if there were limits, no one shop could get at you. Or if you had enough of the assets backing it, whether it be Fiat or Bitcoin or something else coin of the realm that is going to help stabilize where you are, then go for it. Otherwise, wow, you know, you’re really, you know, you’re really putting yourself at risk. And it looks like these guys are paying the price 

Matt Zahab
Hundred percent. I’m about to do something I’ve never done on the pod before. I’m going to ask for some financial advice. And folks, even though I’m asking Tony, this is not financial advice. Tony, I’m sitting on some Tether right now some good old USDT, which we all love, personally, again, I’ve had Paulo on the podcast twice, he is an absolute great guy, very switched on incredibly intelligent, just a beauty through and through, I believe him, I’m on Team Tether. There’s a lot of FUD about it, me personally, I’ve been thinking, do I keep the Tether? Do I buy some Bitcoin and Eth? Do I buy other things, I’m not 100% Sure, but that I’m like, if I get out of stablecoins, and Tether Deppeged, Bitcoin and Eth are going to 10 bucks, so it doesn’t really matter. And on the flip side, if I keep it in tether, that money is gonna get you know, lose 90% of its value. So I almost feel like it’s a tomato tomahto. So my question to you is, as someone who’s sitting on some Tether, if your feet were in my shoes, what would you do with it? 

Tony Saliba
Well, so your thesis is accurate? I don’t think it’ll unpeg. But the results that you mentioned, probably will happen, but it isn’t guaranteed. I would diversify because there could be a situation where if it if the peg is broken, and it does get hammered, and Eth and Bitcoin 

Matt Zahab
Everything’s, everything’s done. 

Tony Saliba
You think it’s all toast, 

Matt Zahab
I think everything’s toast, I have peers in the space who have thousands times more than I do. And most of them are sitting on Tether right now, a lot of them are sitting on Tether, and even circle. But still regardless, it’s just if a major stablecoin deppegs. I can’t see how the market doesn’t drop another 80% I feel like that’ll be doomsday people think this STX thing was bad. That’ll be a bloodbath. 

Tony Saliba
Well, I mean, some of the guys that I know, that have been in for a long time wrote it from, you know, triple, you know, for figures up to 60,000 and back, said they’re never going to sell things as a buying opportunity. And there might be, you know, a little bit more ShakeOut. But I still would diversify. I mean, the I think your premise is probably well taken. It’s just that still all eggs in one basket, you know, are you investing in anything else besides? 

Matt Zahab
Yeah, I have traditional equities as well. But, you know, back to the Tether thing. Do you think it has a chance with to depeg? Well, of course, has a chance. But do you think there’s a legitimate chance of it depeg? 

Tony Saliba
Well no, I, you know, I think that would be so there’s stories going around that this was LBR the ruling yesterday or day before that deem them to be a security that the CEO was saying this is bad for all digital assets. They’re appealing, but basically, they didn’t have a good claim. And they mentioned you know, that some of the other stablecoins might be at risk, but the reality is, if you’re paying your taxes, the big thing is protecting the consumer, that’s the FCC is after three things, protecting the consumer, eliminating dark money, you know, money laundering in collecting their taxes. So, if all those things are happening right now they’re regulating based on enforcement, they’re looking for companies, and just going after them and finding that’s not a way to run, you know, this is a huge industry. And they need to get a set of, you know, guidelines. And I think Tether is pretty safe. But still splitting it up and putting it in some of the other bigger names probably makes it a little even a little safer for you. 

Matt Zahab
Wouldn’t hurt love that. Tony, this has been a treat, we’re getting a little tight for time. Let’s jump in the hot take factory here. Give me something that Tony believes in that most other people do not take. I know you had a couple good hot ones in the oven locked and loaded. What are some Tony hot takes? 

Tony Saliba
Well, so I believe Options are the greatest invention in financial history. I think, right now, it’s hard to trade. Crypto Options, if you’re an American, let’s say you have an overseas account, they’re the fastest growing product, if somebody had a sword put a gun to my head and said you have to get a tattoo because I don’t have any ink. I would tattoo staying spread is staying alive. So it’s saved me so many times. And if there were puts on, Tether, I’d say collar it up a little bit, have a range that you can let it breathe and but otherwise, you know, protect yourself. 

Matt Zahab
So you just you’ve just been to hedge? 

Tony Saliba
Yeah, just have a little bit of a hedge on to your wonderous audience. Learn about Options. And that’s what I totally believe in. I think what we’re doing in crypto and Liquid Mercury is in preparation for the proliferation of digital options on digital assets. And, that’s coming. 

Matt Zahab
So, you’re just you’re getting your ducks in a row building out the infrastructure, building the team so when the Options Trading parade comes to crypto, you’re at the forefront you’re ready to buz, 

Tony Saliba
Right. The clients we have right now are trading some Options, but on Deribit and a lot, mostly spot. But our system is all ready to go on that. And so we’re just positioning ourselves. You know, we didn’t expect this bear market. But some people are saying first quarter some people are saying third quarter doesn’t matter. You know, it’s going to happen. You know, you’re richer than I am. You’re more wealthy than most of my staff. Why? If somebody came to me and said, how much your wealth would you give to be Matt’s Age? I would probably say. 

Matt Zahab
All yeah. No very true. 

Tony Saliba
So it’s happening. Definitely in your lifetime very soon. So the your audience should bone up on Options, make that part of their trading toolkit, their repertoire. That’s one of my most firmest beliefs because you can tailor your risk reward to your capital base and your appetite of risk. 

Matt Zahab
Tony, appreciate you coming on man. I got I got a call out sorry if I’m, if I’m being obnoxious here. It looks like you are also team Ulring. 

Tony Saliba
I am.

Matt Zahab
And it also looks like you have is that day date on your wrist? 

Tony Saliba
This is an oyster. Yeah, it is. 

Matt Zahab
Well, that’s this. 

Tony Saliba
So I didn’t grow up with money. I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. And I always said as soon as I make my first million I want a gold Rolex. Okay. And I was 24 Okay, and these guys were like 25 grand 

Matt Zahab
When you were 24? 

Tony Saliba
Yeah. 

Matt Zahab
Jesus. 

Tony Saliba
It’s between 20 and 25 grand. So I got one and then my house was robbed about 30 years later and instead of getting a gold yellow gold I got a white gold to replace 

Matt Zahab
Mad clean well done. Tony appreciate you bro really means a lot to have you come on. I watched your ship before. You know we even knew that you would be coming on the pod. So love how life comes first full circle. 

Tony Saliba
Pleasure. I’m a fan and like I said if your audience wants any of their questions answered, liquidmercury.com, contact us mention your name or the podcast. I will personally answer their question. Whether it be Options, Crypto, women, whatever they have in mind. 

Matt Zahab
I love it. What about you in Liquid Mercury on Twitter? 

Tony Saliba
So well we have Liquid Mercury has a Twitter account, LinkedIn, I think we have Facebook page. I got a team that handles my social but since we went through a brand rebranding a few weeks ago we combined Liquid Point and Mercury digital assets to come up with Liquid Mercury. So going to our website is probably the easiest to remember liquidmercury one word .com down at the bottom it has our tokenomics on there and everything else but if they go to contact us mentioned your name I will personally reach out to them. 

Matt Zahab
Tony, you’re the man, appreciate you bro. Can’t wait till you come on for round two. 

Tony Saliba
Thanks, man. My pleasure. I love too. 

Matt Zahab 
Folks what an episode with the GOAT and one of the original gangsters of Options Trading, Tony Saliba, crazy stories dropping knowledge bombs left right and center we absolutely love to see it. As always I will include everything in the show notes if you enjoyed this episode and I truly hope you did. Please do subscribe. It really does mean the world to my team and speaking of the team, love you guys appreciate you and listeners, love you so much. Keep on doing your thing. Keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now. We’ll talk soon.