Brian J. Esposito, CEO of Diamond Lake Minerals, Inc., was recently interviewed by Benzinga.
Diamond Lake Minerals, Inc. specializes in the development and support of digital assets and SEC-registered security tokens. The company’s goal is to responsibly innovate and develop valuable traditional businesses and successfully combine them with the future of money, digital assets.
Mr. Esposito spoke about what he expects 2024 to bring for his company and the market at large.
Diamond Lake Minerals, Inc. specializes in the development and support of digital assets and SEC-registered security tokens. The company’s goal is to responsibly innovate and develop valuable traditional businesses and successfully combine them with the future of money, digital assets.
Mr. Esposito spoke about what he expects 2024 to bring for his company and the market at large.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Welcome in Michael Murray with Benzinga joined here this morning by Brian J. Esposito, the
00:07 CEO of Diamond Lake Minerals.
00:08 Brian, great to be with you as always.
00:10 How are you?
00:11 Hey, Michael.
00:12 Good.
00:13 How are you doing today?
00:14 Doing great, Brian.
00:15 Thank you for taking the time to sit down with us as always.
00:16 Always good to chat with you and the team.
00:18 For anybody that's not aware in our audience, give us a quick overview of Diamond Lake Minerals.
00:21 What does the company do?
00:22 Absolutely, sir.
00:23 So DLMI or Diamond Lake Minerals is a GE structure type of conglomerate, parent umbrella company.
00:29 We have multiple subsidiaries underneath it.
00:32 The idea is industry agnostic.
00:34 So the entire vision and philosophy behind what we're building is boosting balance sheets,
00:39 creating earnings on companies that we're targeting and acquiring and building and starting.
00:44 And then within each of those business units where it gets really interesting, especially
00:47 in this market, has been our history, experience and strategy and attaching security token
00:51 offerings to those businesses.
00:53 So we're combining traditional finance with people that are familiar with buying stocks
00:57 and bonds by utilizing our security as access to getting into the digital asset space and
01:01 then also allowing people all over the world to buy into our business units through a security
01:05 token offering.
01:06 Wonderful.
01:07 And Brian, how does your experience with Esposito Intellectual Enterprises inform your vision
01:12 for Diamond Lake and where you're at now?
01:15 It's the culmination of my entire career.
01:16 So building EIE or Esposito Intellectual Enterprises over the last 23 plus years has been the learning
01:23 ground for where I'm operating now.
01:26 Within that holdings, honored to have accumulated over 110 companies.
01:30 There's over 200 joint ventures from around the world and proudly operating over 25 different
01:33 industries.
01:34 So I've always been building this mini GE structure within my own private holdings.
01:38 And the whole idea is these companies are sharing resources with one another, building
01:43 value, open up markets to help each other grow, boosting balance sheets.
01:48 Again, just survival.
01:49 But each company working with one another to build that value, not the idea of some
01:54 funds or VCs that have one unicorn and then a bunch of failures and they consider themselves
01:59 a success.
02:00 And what I want is all these companies to grow and thrive and help one another.
02:03 So if you look at what I built over the last, again, 23 plus years, you can start to see
02:08 how that could transition over into what we're building at DLMI.
02:12 So it's the experience, it's the access and relationships.
02:16 And you can also start to paint a picture as to what industries DLMI will be initially
02:20 focused in by my work and my private holdings, in addition to some of the iconic advisors
02:24 that have joined DLMI and the industries that they are in and that they are seasoned in.
02:28 Understood.
02:29 Now, Brian, how would a green light from the SEC for a BTC ETF, which we've now seen this
02:34 week at the time of this recording, affect Diamond Lake and your exposure to regulated
02:38 digital assets?
02:40 I think it does a lot of things.
02:42 I'm excited that they got that pushed across the finish line for multiple reasons.
02:46 From our standpoint is the work and efforts that we've been working with through our partnership
02:51 with INX, for example, and working with the within the regulations of the SEC of how security
02:56 tokens can be applied into traditional securities like the formula and the model that we've
03:01 created.
03:02 So from my lens, it's great that people that are sitting on the sidelines and maybe never
03:07 had bought Bitcoin or they don't have a digital wallet or they intimidated by all those friction
03:11 points, which is a lot of the story that we're telling to be able now to buy into the market
03:16 with something that they're familiar with and have access to ownership into that digital
03:19 asset or that or that new class of security for us.
03:24 And my mindset, this is great for banking.
03:27 This allows me to say, OK, we are moving forward in the right the right path and the right
03:33 strategy now that you've commingled the idea of Bitcoin being an approved mechanism in
03:39 a regulated environment such as a stock exchange or a Nasdaq or wherever these future ones
03:44 may be, that banking has to go along with that, right?
03:48 So for me, it's great because there's so many wonderful companies out there that have
03:52 real digital asset securities.
03:54 They got real businesses behind them.
03:55 They got real value behind them.
03:58 But there's a there's a banking issue and banks have been turning off people's accounts
04:02 or they shut down people's accounts because there's this non understanding of what they
04:06 actually have, because there's confusion in the markets, is confusion with NFTs and
04:10 crypto and token.
04:11 So key to speaking with people like you, Michael, and Benzing and all the other wonderful partners
04:15 that we that we speak about this with is educating people to understand what is a regulated security
04:21 token look like?
04:22 Does it apply to the same rules and regulations and laws as traditional stocks and bonds?
04:26 So for me, it's great that that got approved.
04:29 It's great to see this movement happening.
04:31 And now hopefully through products like DLMI and the company that we're building, the Bitcoin
04:36 ETF that got released, that you'll start to see the money that's been on the sidelines
04:40 that haven't never invested into any type of digital asset start to go into that market.
04:46 Got it.
04:48 Now, Brian, let's talk about tokenization for a minute.
04:50 What exactly is tokenization and how is it distinct from crypto?
04:55 The tokenization model replicates traditional securities or traditional assets that have
05:00 capital going into them, except it relies on a blockchain environment.
05:05 So these are things that could be stored in a store, transferred or sold in a blockchain
05:11 exchange.
05:12 So for the idea that now you have the ability for real world assets such as real estate,
05:18 precious metals like gold and silver, all these industries that have been operating
05:22 in the private space, now you have the ability to bring in capital from all over the world
05:27 into those projects, into those asset classes that they never had opportunities to do that
05:32 before.
05:33 So from someone like me, even though I'm getting older, as we all are every minute,
05:37 but for me going through early on in my career building companies in the 90s, I experienced
05:43 the dot-com bubble, I heavily experienced the OA crisis.
05:47 And now I do believe that the world's teetering on some really interesting times as to this
05:54 could be massive bubbles across all different industries.
05:57 And a lot of industries such as commercial real estate have a lot of paper that needs
06:01 to come off banks' balance sheets and it needs to find liquidity.
06:06 And what we've seen in the past is those traditional markets dry up really fast in
06:11 economic uncertainties or any type of political unrest or any type of turmoil in the world.
06:17 And then that's when you start to see things like governments coming in to bail out some
06:20 of these blessed institutions that may be too big to fail.
06:24 So again, coming from those situations and living through those situations and surviving
06:29 through those situations as an entrepreneur and a professional, having the ability for
06:33 millions and millions of people to put capital into assets that are backed by real world
06:38 assets or into securities or security tokens or companies like DLMI, that you don't rely
06:44 on your traditional financial network, I think that helps volatility tremendously.
06:50 And if you look at the scale of things, if we can promote great businesses that are within
06:55 our holdings or future holdings that have real value and real roadmaps and real earnings
07:00 and have the ability for millions of people around the world to throw a few bucks in it
07:05 through exchanges like INX or a security token offering, to me that's where it gets really
07:09 exciting for diversifying ways to capitalize or to bring capital into projects and to fuel
07:15 projects and companies, again, unreliant of what we're traditionally used to.
07:20 Outstanding.
07:21 Brian, a final question for you here as we wrap up, what is your personal prediction
07:25 for tokenization in 2024?
07:27 I believe it is the, I believe it's moving, everything's moving really fast now, which
07:31 is exciting, but I also want things to move fast in a really correct manner.
07:36 We've saw a massive movement in NFTs when he had a global shutdown with no real guardrails
07:42 and then that led to a really deep decline in value of those assets and what their perceived
07:48 value is.
07:49 So I want to see this great continued momentum.
07:51 I want to see great companies and banks and institutions support this because when you're
07:56 building new industries, it does need massive amounts of capital, but it also needs massive
08:01 amounts of credibility.
08:02 So having iconic names like BlackRock, having regulated exchanges or regulatory agencies
08:08 like the SEC, having tier one exchanges like NASDAQ, NYSE, being able to bring these new
08:16 financial mechanisms into their traditional networks is great for the movement and it's
08:22 great.
08:23 I firmly believe it's great to help protect people and their tax earnings as much as possible.
08:27 I always say whatever you're looking to put your earnings into or some capital into, whether
08:32 it's a stock, a bond, a building, a security token, a company like DLMI, you always have
08:37 to do your due diligence.
08:38 You always have to look at any of the perceived risks going into it.
08:42 But for tokenization, I think it's going to be the most important formula and the most
08:47 important mechanism to help offset a global crisis where traditional capital dries up,
08:54 banks maybe start to fail, the real estate market collapses.
08:58 But if you can open up funnels for masses of the world to throw in some money into these
09:04 assets, I think you offset a global crisis and that's what I'm really looking forward
09:09 to.
09:10 I'm looking forward to finally for people to have the opportunity to invest into these
09:15 things that they never had the opportunity to before.
09:17 People that never got opportunities to buy into IPOs or never had opportunities to buy
09:21 into the series rounds of great companies that were growing.
09:25 Now with the digital wallet and going through exchanges like INX, people have the ability
09:30 to really create wealth that they never had the opportunity to do before and they have
09:34 the opportunity to build value for their household and for their family and to feel like they
09:38 actually can make a difference in their net earnings.
09:43 Amazing.
09:44 Brian Esposito, CEO of Diamond Lake Minerals, always a pleasure to talk with you and your
09:48 team.
09:49 Very excited to see what's upcoming here in the new year.
09:51 As we record this in January, we're looking ahead to a big 2024.
09:53 Brian, thank you once again for joining us.
09:56 Thank you, Michael.
09:57 Stay well, pal.