Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital

Mike Novogratz, founder, chairman, and CEO of Galaxy Digital, joined Frank Chaparro on The Scoop, The Block's flagship podcast, for a wide-ranging conversation recorded in May 2020, just after bitcoin's third halving and amid the broader market dislocation triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A former Goldman Sachs partner and macro hedge fund manager at Fortress Investment Group, Novogratz built Galaxy Digital in 2018 as what he has repeatedly described as a merchant bank for the digital asset industry, combining institutional trading, advisory, and asset management businesses under one roof.

On the episode he traced Galaxy's evolution from its early days advising on initial coin offerings into a more diversified institutional platform, noting the firm's headcount growth from roughly eight employees to more than eighty and plans to open a San Francisco office to compete more directly with crypto-native investors such as Paradigm and Polychain Capital for deal flow. Novogratz discussed his long-held conviction that bitcoin functions as a form of digital gold, arguing it had effectively become a finished, hard-to-improve-upon product that would likely lead the broader crypto market for at least another year while smart-contract platforms remained several years away from real scalability. He was candid about the difficulties Galaxy faced navigating a prolonged bear market, including compressed trading margins, leadership turnover, and the challenge of raising institutional capital when sentiment toward digital assets remained tepid, reflecting that staying private longer before pursuing a public listing might, in hindsight, have been the wiser path.

Looking ahead, he pointed to emerging opportunities in tokenization as a growth avenue for Galaxy's advisory arm, citing tokenized real estate, music royalties, and fractional ownership of fine art as areas where blockchain rails could unlock new markets for institutional and retail investors alike. The conversation offered listeners a candid, insider view of how one of crypto's most prominent bulls was managing a firm built for a boom through a period of macro uncertainty and industry consolidation.