Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: What's the Latest in Crypto?

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

On this episode of Animal Spirits: Talk Your Book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are joined by Krista Lynch from Grayscale to discuss: crypto legislation, stablecoins, ETFs, in-kind creations and more. Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://idontshop.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits Talk Your book is brought to you by Grayscale. Go to greyscale.com to learn more about their whole suite of crypto products and research. That's grayscale.com to learn more. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not. be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Bridholz wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. And today's talk your book. We brought back Krista Lynch. She's the senior vice president, ETF capital markets at Grayscale. Pretty good time to talk about crypto. I actually like talking to crypto people more when things are in a lull than when they're really super exciting. Is there any more we're so back, it's so over thing in the world than crypto?

Because I'm not saying that we're so back, but Ethan's up a decent amount to the last month, you know, despite obviously still well, well, well off its size. In the face of geopolitical threats, right? Crypto is hanging in there pretty good. How about this? I have to ask Chad how to describe this. What is... See, you're already outsourcing your thinking to AI.

This is how it happens. I'm doing it live on the show. Here we go. Hyperliquid is a decentralized crypto derivatives exchange. So what does that even mean? Why am I talking about it? There is a proxy, a derivative, if you will, for the S&P 500. So over the weekend, I was checking the prices on this blockchain-based technology.

Ah, it's like the futures of the futures. There you go. Is that it? That's just sick. I mean, you can't let it go for like... 48 hours? Yeah. Come on.

We asked for a bunch of stuff that, you know, we don't know very well. Like, what is the crypto legislation going to mean? What's going on with stable coins? All these little things that, like, are building. Here's the biggest takeaway. We spoke about what's the next catalyst? Because the obvious catalysts are now off the list, right? Institutional adoption, ETF flows.

There's not going to be another ETF, a new ETF. I mean, there will be more ETFs, but not. not in the sense of, you know what I mean. You know what I mean. What if the next catalyst is just price higher? I mean, that's all it takes. This is such, like I said at the outset, this is such a narrative-based asset class that kind of who cares what's the next catalyst?

The next catalyst is higher prices. So I said that I'm surprised Bitcoin didn't really take the throne as the digital gold. But I mean, if you were going from current levels, Bitcoin being depressed, Bitcoin being depressed, gold going crazy. for the past five years or whatever, wouldn't you think the next five years would be more Bitcoin over gold? Wouldn't that make sense? I don't know.

Perhaps. Could happen. All right. Anyway. How's that for conviction? Yeah. We got into a bunch of different stuff on crypto with Krista Lynch from Grayscale. So here's our talk with her.

Krista, welcome back. Thank you so much. A lot happening in the markets these days. unbelievably, the indexes are mostly flat, but doesn't feel flat. And I'm imagining it doesn't feel flat in crypto because, well, it's not flat. It does seem to be stabilizing. We are recorded on Thursday, March 12. So who knows what Friday brings.

But how would you describe the state of crypto markets in early 2026? Yeah, what a wild ride. It has been not only in crypto, but in other markets. I think right now we're actually surprisingly seeing, I would say, a bit of stability, despite the fact that markets are broadly having, you know, a moment of heightened volatility. why I say that. So I remember about two weeks ago when the news in the Middle East first broke out, it was a Saturday. I was looking at the price of Bitcoin and refreshing it, thinking that Bitcoin was going to be kind of like the lightning rod to express the fact that all this chaos is going on

and traditional equity markets aren't open. Bitcoin actually only moved 2% both Saturday and Sunday before those equity markets were reopened. Now, I compare that to an experience I had, I think it was April of a year before when there was similar news about missiles and all sorts of chaos happening on a Saturday. I was out with some crypto traders that didn't have access to their phones. And as soon as they got them back, they were all kind of in a state of panic. They were having auto liquidations go off. The price of Bitcoin was down 10%. It was a very, very different experience. And that was just one year ago. Paper hands, am I right? Yeah, exactly. This speaks a little bit to the maturity of the asset class, how much it has evolved in a very short period of time,

but remains a way for investors and traders to express risk even when traditional markets are closed. So I was out to dinner on Sunday night and I was sitting next to Dan Ives and crude oil futures opened up 27%. And Dan is my witness. I said, Bitcoin is flat. I feel okay. So So like S&P futures were down 2%, and a complete earnesty here. I'm like, I'm not saying this ironically. If Bitcoin was down 8%, I would have been much more worried. Yeah. Right?

Because like that, so if nothing else, it is at least for me and not only for me, a meaningful measure of risk appetite or lack thereof. Yep. Yep. I think people are viewing Bitcoin as a more steady asset than they did in the past. there's less of this kind of immediate whippy reaction to news that results in huge up or down spikes in price. And you see also kind of a different or broader investor base that spans institutions now as well as retail. So, Chris, you mentioned the fact that, you know, a year ago, people were just getting blown out of trades, right, because they had too much leverage on.

To me, that's one of the interesting things about crypto is that it's like this self-reinforcing mechanism. Like, if you take too much risk, the market kind of pulls it back for you. But how is that in the maturing market? Like how much is there ebb and flow of the leverage being used? Because I don't know, it seems to me like it's sort of when markets are going well, then leverage really ramps up. And then when they turn around, then it just pull back out. Is it, does it ebb and flow that much?

Because it seems like for the stock market, it's a concurrent indicator, right? If stocks are high, then margin debt is high. But I'm just curious how it works in crypto land. Yeah, we do still, of course, see ways that one can leverage their position. and I think the Dats were really front and center for this for a while earlier in the year. They are a vehicle that is pretty easily able to add leverage to a crypto exposure, and they did have some struggles earlier in the year. Being an ETF practitioner, that's why I love the spot Bitcoin,

Ethereum expression because it is pure. It's not leverage. It's a way for traders to really get that pure access. But for those who are seeking to have features like leverage, there are, of course, avenues that you can do that with. still. So this has been, in my estimation, a pretty tough year for crypto because we had a new administration that was all about it, leveraged the community for votes and support. And part of the narrative was that Bitcoin was digital gold. And I don't think that was that controversial.

I think, like, you know, that was and is a thing. And then gold just. took all the shine from Bitcoin and it is up, whatever, what, 80% you over you. I mean, it went on an incredible run. This should have been Bitcoin's time to shine. What happened? Time to shine. No pun intended. Yes. You know what? My brain broke for a second. I was looking for that phrase and I just got lost in the dust. So thank you. Yeah. So one thing I've been tracking is I do see a shift to some extent between the Bitcoin and crypto as a price action, a way to capture price action and a build of infrastructure. And why I say that is because a lot of the busiest crypto and crypto adjacent topics right now actually have to do with building infrastructure for

operating finance, whether that's traditional finance or whether that's digital finance. If you look at projects like tokenization, you see the DTCCC, leaning in. You see NASDAQ and NISI starting to participate in the conversation. Credit card companies. Yes, exactly. So these are all crypto adjacent applications. And I think that we are seeing a lot more buzz around things like that than we are for the price of Bitcoin. Now, of course, I think it provides more tailwinds when the price is going up for all of the above. But there's been no lack of discussion about some of these crypto-adjacent features and progress, despite the fact that Bitcoin's price has really stagnated in the past month or so.

One of the things I think that people were excited about was we're finally going to get some crypto legislation that just lays out what it means for the industry going forward. Maybe you could give us just an update there on where things stand. Yeah, so we're watching closely for the Clarity Act to provide clarity, no pun intended, for the ability to progress a lot of these initiatives, similar to where we're. we found ourselves two years ago before Bitcoin ETFs were approved, there is, I would say, lack of transparency or ambiguity about what the way forward will be for some of these initiatives. And that really leads potential builders and developers uncertain and on the sidelines,

afraid to invest many dollars into building projects that may eventually not be permissible or just may not really take hold given the regulatory environment. So I think that once we get more progress on that. It's going to be kind of the next wave of momentum that we see. But I think we'd be remiss if we didn't note all the progress that we saw on the regulatory front last summer. We had the generic listing standards come out for ETFs. Grayscale actually has eight ETFs now for single token exposures. We had last time we talked, I think we had maybe two. So quite a bit of progress in that arena. We have multi-token products that are now on the market. We have staking inside of the ETPs, we have in-kind. So we really have made a ton of progress, and that was mostly via a wave

of regulation that came out last summer. So while there's a lot to look forward to, we also have to look at all the progress that we have made. You mentioned staking. When did that get passed? When did that happen? We started staking in our Ethereum and Salana products on October 6th. So it was right around the time of the government shut down. I remember that being kind of a quagmire that we had to navigate. But it has been in practice for almost six months now. And we have seen really good results with that. We're really excited to be able to deliver yield now in that ETF wrapper to investors that are looking to leverage their Ethereum and Solana positions. So all is equal. And I'm assuming it's not. If you could own the spot or the state,

why would you not do the state? Is there are there drawbacks? I can tradeoffs that I'm ignorant to? I think generally one would choose to stake it, but there is some hair on how you can actually go about implementing that. Like myself, as an example, if I were to try to stake my spot Ethereum position, I would have to choose a validator. I would have to get all of these kind of third-party service providers engaging with me in my position. It would be costly to me. It would, as a retail investor, it would cost me a lot of money. By the time all these frictions are sorted out is probably not worth my while for two, to 3% return on Ethereum, but you can do it through our ETH product, 15Bips management fee.

And to me, that's very compelling. So personally, I hold Spot Ethereum. I also hold our Spot ETH product. I am not staking my Spot Ethereum, but ETH does it for me. No, I'm sorry. I wasn't clear on the question. Like, why would somebody, if you're considering buying the product, why would you choose the not-staked version if you could pick up yield?

I see. Is it a liquidity thing? Yeah, so one thing that we had to sort out, now, I will be clear on our Ethereum products, they are all staking. But why one might not necessarily want to go down that avenue, it is mostly due to liquidity. So this was a big project that we worked on. We actually went to the crypto task force in D.C. and talked to them about the model under which we would determine how much of the fund to stake. And that is very much predicated on the liquidity profile of the underlying token. So at the time that we implemented this, I think the,

unstaking queue, i.e. the amount of time it would take to unstake the asset was about 40 days. Now, if you need to be able to facilitate a redemption for the product, which typically settles in two days, that's obviously, you know, you get a lot of days of discrepancy in there. And so we were able to develop a model that the SEC reviewed, and that was how we came up with what we call our liquidity sleeve, which is a portion of the fund that is not staked. Now, in the coming months, I think you're going to continue to see more. progress on additional avenues that allow issuers to stake a higher percentage of the fund using some additional features that will give more confidence having a higher percentage

staked. Let's talk stablecoins because I feel like this is the one area where a lot, I know a lot of crypto people think, like this is how we could get our foothold into the finance industry, right? Through stable coins. So why don't you walk through how that is? Because to me, it's interesting. It seems like one of the most boring parts about crypto, but it also could totally

reshape like the rails of finance, which is, I think, what people are looking for. So what exactly is happening there? I love that you said boring because I think maybe a year ago, most people's reaction to staple coins is like snooze fest. Like, why do I care about this? And now it is catching on like wildfire. And the reason for that in my view is because it is basically the bridge between traditional finance and digital assets. And we're continuously seeing that become more and more of a convergent set of worlds, if you will. So if you're going to have a tokenized asset, i.e. have a traditional equity in a tokenized or digital wrapper, you need to be able to get dollars into the system in order to purchase that asset.

A stable coin is basically how you transfer your USD or any other fiat currency into this digital world and vice versa. So to name a couple projects, again, where we see this convergence, we've got the DTCC, NISD, NASDAB working on ways to bring traditional equities to the digital world, and stable coins are going to be a centerpiece of that. Another reason why they're so popular is because they do provide liquidity characteristics inherent to digital assets. So 24-7 trading ability to settle on a T-0 basis, these are all characteristics and attributes that I think are going to be necessary in this kind of new finance world that we're building towards. What's the sentiment like in crypto these days? Because it is interesting, like there was a

ton of people were really juiced up after the ETS came out and after the administration came in, they're going to be pro-crypto. And now we've run, you know, a little bit of a, you know, it's not a crypto winter by any means, but it's a bare market, you know? So like, how do you think people are feeling these days? Yeah, I was actually answering the same question to one of my trading counterparts about an hour ago. And we were both talking about how it's given us the room to breathe, to go back to the world where we were able to explore and diligence and innovate. And so while, of course, it's not as exciting as when there's crazy price swings on a daily basis and the exuberance that comes with really high increases in price, you know, that's always very

fun to be in that world. But I have been able to spend a lot more time with the pullback in prices to research topics like tokenization, to research things like stable coins. And that is to me very reminiscent of the pre-ETF world where, of course, now we're operating eight products in market over eight products, eight tokens in market. So we do have that kind of recurring things that we have to pay attention to the daily rolling of the ball up the hill. But there is more time and less franticness to being able to study what is to come and build cool things and innovate. I don't know if this is bad. I mean, it's going to sound bad coming into my mouth, but maybe there's some benefits that I'm not thinking about. So in 2019, I guess 20, 21, whatever it was,

everybody wanted to work in crypto. It was like the exciting thing. It was this new technology. It was, you know, disruptive and all that sort of stuff. And AI has clearly taken the baton and ran with it. And so all of the smartest dorks are going to work on AI projects. Is that bad? I don't know why it would be bad.

Maybe it's bad. I don't know. What's your take on what's happening in the industry? I don't think it's bad. I think that there are these percolating topics that have a lot of adjacencies. So I view the recent buzz topics. It includes prediction markets. It includes AI.

It includes tokenization, crypto. I think that there's a lot of continuity between these things. Like, for example, I actually attend an options conference, and I'm a very traditional finance person by background, but I find myself working in crypto. I work for a crypto ETF issuer. I go to an options conference where all the talk is about how these options can power the backend for prediction market ETFs. So I'm seeing a lot of convergence in these flavors of the week. I think some of them are definitely going to stick for the long term. And like I said,

this has been a good opportunity for us to really be able to dig in and understand what's going on under the hood because there is less to have to monitor on a daily basis in terms of crazy price swings. So I think, you know, of course there will be some transfer of where talent wants to go based on what is most popular at the time that they're looking. But I think that there is a lot of overlap in all of these topics. tokenization. What do you think is a reasonable time frame for us to be like, all right, there's just not a thing.

Like it's a thing that we keep hearing about, but it's not actually happening. Because I feel like that's where it is now. It's like definitely buzzing. And people are talking about it. And I understand that things don't happen overnight. But give us what you think is a reasonable timeframe for this. happening? Is it like by 2028, is this going to be a thing? Like a thing thing? Yeah, it's a great question. I think tokenization has ed and flowed as a topic right now. It's definitely flowing hard.

I think that part of that though is because we have seen these, I would call them almost like utility providers, like the exchanges like the DTCC leaning into it. And so I think that the progress is the train is leaving the station, if you will. Now, it's always going to move slower. than we would like, but I have sensed the momentum really picking up. I think that it's possible that we could have a lot more clarity via the Clarity Act on some of the necessary prerequisites for this in the coming months' quarter sometime this year, and now we'll really catapult things forward. So what is the main selling point for the tokenization? Like, what do you think that's going

to bring investors? Is it going to be lower costs? Is it going to be quicker speed of transactions? Is it all of the above? What do investors get out of that? I think right now the biggest selling point that I hear, and again, it's very nascent. So this is like 1.0 of what will probably become like 10.0. But some of the selling points that I hear of right now are really the 24-7 liquidity, the ability to settle instantaneously. It's all of these features that one who has had their first trading experience with a digital asset has come to expect. And they actually are demanding that of traditional finance. So I think that those are the initial selling point. I think in the future you might start to see exchanges or other venues such as a coinbase or a Robin Hood. Places that you initially thought of as more as hosting one or the other will start to be something that you can buy both equities, crypto, any sort of asset in. And I think that having the tokenization element is what is going to help to bridge that gap. Which tokens do you think are going to benefit? Let's just assume that tokenization does become a thing.

Does this have to be, or would you think that it would be bullish for some of the blockchain-based coins that this runs on? I think it definitely will benefit the blockchains that win in the application of who is tokenizing what. It is unclear really how that will all play out. But there are some blockchains. I won't necessarily name them. I don't want to play any favorites here. But there are some that have been thrown around by some of these service providers. And I think that is why they've been popular in the news recently is because some do think that they could blow up in a good way if they are kind of the chosen way to approach tokenization and other projects like that.

So how about this? Altcoins is the fact that altcoins are in a winter, maybe dead forever. Who knows? Not all them. But is that maybe good for the space in the long term cleaning up a lot of the things that people like me traditionally laugh at and say this is like complete nonsense? I think it could. Like I said, I think crypto is maturing, and I think that along with that comes less traction for the flavor of the day type token. But it is fun. We have to go, you know, a nod to the roots. That was a way that crypto got a lot of a lot of eyeballs on it at one point in time. But yeah, I do think that there is not necessarily as much excitement, enthusiasm for meme coins right now as there is for Bitcoin, Ethereum, what we've come to call the blue I will say that as more and more tokens become ETP eligible, we are seeing kind of a top 10, top 12 or so that are accessible to the markets in this really familiar wrapper.

And in order to organize that for investors, we do now have a product that is the top five by market cap. It actually excludes memes and stable coins. And I think that that is attractive because for those who want to get into crypto are overwhelmed by the number of assets that are now available in ETP format, but do want to screen out what you described as what you might mock. This is the product for them. That's ticker GDLC. I think it's a good way to organize the market. It captures about 90% of the crypto ecosystem, and it's a very streamlined way to avoid those types of tokens. So Michael talked about stuff dying, and I think over time, that's been my thesis on Bitcoin

in crypto in general is that every time it has goes to one of these periods, people write it off and say it's dead, and then every time it seems to come back. And the narrative shifts a lot, too, about what it's going to do and what it's going to lead to. And I actually think that's a positive, that there's still enough people who believe in it, that even when it feels like, man, the news couldn't possibly get any worse, it still comes back. Do you think that people have moved on from that a little bit? It's like, listen, this is a much more mature industry now. Even though, you know, crypto compared to other things hasn't been around very long, it is more mature. And I think having the financialization of the ETFs is part of the reason for that. Totally. I think the ETFs were the

catalyst that kicked off all of this progress, whether that's the actual advent of the ETF, all the way to the regulatory clarity that we are now kind of reaching the final end stages of. Now, the Bitcoin ETFs are over $90 billion in assets. I don't think that you can really argue with them, you know, not being here to stay for context that's about a third of the size of the gold ETF market. It's double the size of silver. So they really are able to stand toe to toe with these traditional assets in ETF form. And we're seeing continued adoption of the ETFs, not only from those who were previously on the sidelines, but we're actually seeing some more crypto-native holders of tokens start to embrace them as well. So even though the price of Bitcoin itself might be

down. There are still real-life use cases for why one might be porting their assets into these products. You don't really hear too much about Web3 anymore these days or NFTs or a lot of the consumer-facing type of stuff. Do you think that, do you think that ship sailed? And just because that didn't happen, I would say, like, I'm not a crypto as no use case person. Like just, this is not just when I saw it was flat on a night where futures were nuking and took comfort in it, that's a huge accomplishment. Like that's not nothing. This thing didn't exist 20 years ago, right?

And now, like, I'm genuinely looking at it to determine how scared or I should be. But there was talk about more than just that about there being consumer-facing products. I forgot who was like the blockchain-based internet, like pod. company that, what the heck was I called? It doesn't matter. But things like that, is that ever going to be a thing? I was actually talking to someone about bored apes earlier. And we were like, oh, remember when those were a thing? You know, it is crazy, some of the hype that you see around various elements of any developing area of the economy. I think punks are still worth like six figures. I think the floor is still that high. Yeah. So do you have one? No.

You seem to know a lot about them. Above my pay grade. I would say, though, I think that where this is moving is more utility and infrastructure build than any of the kind of shiny objects of like an NFT as an example. So I see where value could go as building rails on which we operate apps and real value add things for our lives, but that won't necessarily be as showy as some of these previous applications were such as NFTs. It's going to be more the boring stuff like stable coins where we thought it was a snooze, but it's actually going to change our lives.

Bitcoin is a very weird asset. There was the digital code narrative that we discussed. And then more recently, it was trading like in lockstep with software stocks, which I think makes, I think I think makes sense. One of the things that I worry about with Bitcoin is the ETF was such a clear and obvious potential catalyst. And it's really hard to foresee, obviously. It's really hard to foresee what the next catalyst is. But and also, I'm very aware of the fact that Bitcoin can go up $13,000 in a day just because, and then the price is driving and then we're creating all sorts of like whatever narratives. I understand that I could change on a dime. But right now it is hard to see what the next catalyst is. Yeah. And that is something that traders are saying too. I don't think

that that's necessarily a sentiment that you have alone. But I do think that a lot of this regulatory clarity could be the next momentous driver. Like I said, people sit on the sidelines when they don't have clarity around what the rules of the road are. And while it won't necessarily be obvious one-to-one Bitcoin adoption as a result of it, I think you could, one, see a spike in the price of Bitcoin because it's adjacent and its progress. And two, I think that you'll start to see real development and real infrastructure build as a result, which will inherently leverage Bitcoin leverage Ethereum and some of these protocols. How about on the ETF sides? You said you have all these different single token ETFs now. What else do, and that's been opened up, you know, in recent

is because of legislation. What else is coming on the ETF front for, you know, there's a staking, there's a single, there's the more, you know, you have the more diversified ones. Like, what else is coming in the ETFs? Yeah, we actually launched a product that. this morning in European hours. So I had the joy of getting up at 3.45 a.m. to see it off into the market. We launched an Avalanche product, which we're excited is our eighth single token asset

to be in market. But what is to come on the ETF front? So the generic listing standards have been a way for issuers to have clarity like I keep harping on about what assets can be ETF eligible. They are really a living, breathing set of rules. And so you will continue to see more tokens come

into eligibility, you'll continue to see more assets issued in ETF form by issuers like Grayscale and our peers. But there's, you know, less impact each time we do that in the sense that we're not reinventing the wheel. There's really a firm playbook for this now. Now, another area in ETF land that is picking up steam is in kind. So in the same set of rules or same time frame as the generic listing standards coming to market, we also had in kind clarity. the SEC determined that these products could facilitate creations and redemptions in kind, whereas they had previously mandated that that had to be in cash. And at first, the market was like a little bit mixed on their reaction to this.

We'd been operating these in cash for quite some time. They already had penny widespread. So by most measures, that's as efficient as you can possibly get. But in the recent months and quarters, we've seen some crypto-native holders of token start to express interest and moving their token into the ETF. And the reason for that is because they're then able to get some capital efficiency, like margin and collateral. And so we've been very pleasantly surprised to see this application for In-Kind,

as well as other, I would say, more routine practitioners who have really started to lean into it. In-Kind is generally considered to be the most efficient way to create or redeem any ETF. And so this does represent more progress in that way as well. That's interesting. So there are a lot of people who are seeing the benefits of having the more traditional finance backbone to their holding, as opposed to having it in cold storage or whatever it is on their own. They can kind of outsource that security. And like you said, that's interesting. And that's like that's institutions or individuals or both? It's both. It speaks to this continuity, too, between traditional finance and more crypto-native participants. So we see crypto-natives going into the ETF. And then we see crypto-natives going into the ETF. And then we see, see more traditional players getting into digital assets via things like tokenization and stable coins. So like I said, I think the theme here is all continuity. And I think that's where we're really going to continue to go in this year. Okay. What else has you excited these days?

Let's see. What else has me excited? I think I'm personally really interested in tokenization. I have been studying it. I would say I am trying to dabble in it. I am not sure what will necessarily be the highest and best use of it, as we discussed earlier. But I'm very curious to see where this goes. So that has me excited. Hang on. Do you think we need a platform like Robin Hood to get individual investors interested in that kind of thing? What would be the way that that's expressed in the market? I think it's going to come down to some of this regulatory clarity. Right now, a lot of would-be U.S. participants are on the sidelines. They're trying to figure out what they can and cannot build and what investors will be able to buy, even like what is accessible to a U.S.

investor remains somewhat ambiguous. So I think that, or not necessarily ambiguous, but restricted. And so I think that that is going to be what is necessary. Back on your question, I think as an ETF practitioner, I'm very excited about this in-kind stuff. Generally, in-kind is only accessible in all ETS to more institutional counterparts with very, very high amounts of the underlying asset. I think that we're going to see in the coming months the ability to break that barrier down and help smaller holders get the ability to access the ETF primary market, which is pretty unique. I've worked in ETFs for about 12 years, and I have only in the past six months or so, really with any sort of reality, embrace the fact that an individual might be able to access

the primary market. So to put my ETF hat on, that's what I'm excited about there. Interesting. Okay, for people who want to learn more about Grayscale, where do we send them? Grayscale.com, please reach out. All right, thanks, Krista. Thank you. All right, thank you to Krista. Remember,grayscale.com, to learn more about all of their different products. Email us, Animal Spirits at CompoundNews.com.