ETF Edge - Could return of risk refocus crypto investors? 6/15/26

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

A real deal with Iran would remove a huge obstacle from investors’ wall of worry. Would that then allow them to reassess risk and return to allocating funds towards cryptocurrencies? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The ETF Edge podcast is sponsored by InvescoQQQ. Let's rethink possibility. Investco Distributors, Inc. Welcome to ETF Edge, the podcast. If you're looking to learn the latest insights on all things, exchange-traded funds, you're in the right place. Every week, we're bringing you compelling interviews, thoughtful market analysis, and breaking down what it all means for investors.

I'm your host, Dominic Chu. Now, a pending resolution in Iran and a pending return to risk on investing, could help cryptocurrencies crack another prolonged winter. Could it change things? Here is my conversation with David Laval, president of indices and data at CoinDesk, along with Todd Rosenbluth, Director of Research over at Vetify.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for the conversation here. I maybe want to start from a bigger picture standpoint with you, David, on this conversation. Because when it comes to crypto, there have been a number of down drafts that we've seen over the course of the past seven, eight years. This one has been a little bit more pronounced than some of the others in the past. It has led to some questions about whether or not there is a true future for cryptocurrency investing. Take us through what you've seen over the course of the last few months

and what you're seeing even in today's market action as Iran somehow gets incrementally better with regard to a ceasefire extension. Yeah, well, I think you raise a really credible point that some of the price action and the volatility that we've seen in the market has given investors some trepidation. And I think what has largely been reported is that there have been massive outflows from, you know, the cohort of Bitcoin ETPs. I think it's been reported, you know, three plus billion dollars of outflows, which has, you know, led some to, you know, ask whether or not there is a future for digital assets and or a future for digital asset ETPs. In the context of having $3 billion of outflows and $100 billion plus kind of cohort of ETPs, I'm just saying that, you know, these ETPs are doing what every other, you know, ETP has done in every other asset class, which is not only been, you know, a solution for buy and hold investors,

but also a solution for institutional holders. And so when you see these inflows and outflows, it's really just another credibility point that the, you know, ETFs or exchange trader products are doing what they're intended to do, which is to give a really high quality representation of the underlying asset. Now, as it pertains to the future of digital assets, there has been a lot that has transpired and there has been down drafts over the past eight years, as you mentioned. This is my second crypto winter. And unlike previous crypto winters, this crypto winter is more about, hey, when do I get back in

as opposed to whether or not there's a future? we look at this as, you know, a point of credibility where the stronger assets are going to show, you know, a bunch of resilience and it offers an opportunity for some consolidation in the marketplace and then an opportunity to kind of reinvest. You know, Todd, it's interesting because the stronger assets that David is speaking to right now are usually referring to two cryptocurrencies in particular. And that's Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest ones out there. And even Bitcoin dwarfs second place Ethereum in this. whole process. I guess my question to you is, David mentions all the ETPs, these exchange traded products that are kind of mirroring what's happening with the cryptocurrency market and the vehicles that are giving investors more avenues to access the returns for some of these instruments. Have you seen anything from your side of things with regard to those flows that David referred

to that may concern you? We have had crypto down drafts in the past, but we haven't had the level of maturity in the ETP market that we are seeing today. So can you make any kind of a link for what we're seeing today in terms of proportional flows to the market versus what we've seen in other younger down drafts when exchange traded products were not as mature? So a few things. What we've seen is that crypto ETFs still remain part of many people's portfolios, iBit, which is the iShare's ETF, actually just cross into the net outflows, despite Bitcoin itself having been down for much of the year. So people were still holding on and, in fact, buying Ibit through the initial down draft. That's encouraging to me that people

were holding on. It's also interesting to me that we have a wave of different other products. So the NEO's Bitcoin high-income ETF, BTCI, which has exposure to Bitcoin. but uses options to generate additional income. That's actually been the most popular of the Bitcoin-related ETFs. Roughly $500 million went into that ETF this year as of last week. So that's encouraging to me

that people are getting exposure in different forms, whether it's traditional spot Bitcoin or an options-based product. I think also lastly, is that VETify recently did a survey with some of our financial advisor community, and we saw a lot of people on the side, sidelines. When we asked the question, do you have exposure and are you interested in? A lot of people were on the sidelines. This was only a few weeks ago. So I do think that a pullback has created a

buying opportunity for some people. Others, it might reinforce that they don't want to be near it when something sells off too strongly. But I do think we're going to see continued evolution of the demand. Todd, could I follow up there with this question? There are financial advisors that you speak to, and there are financial advisors kind of in the larger universe, some of them are allocating to things like iBIT or GBTC or ETH or other ETS that kind of track some of the bigger parts of the crypto market. Those allocators are, again, allocators. It's kind of like every week, every month, every quarter,

something kind of goes in automatically because it's part of an asset allocation model. Do we feel as though this kind of crypto winter, as many you're calling it, has changed the allocation thought or sentiment around financial advisors with customers and clients that are into crypto right now. So I think what we've seen is that for people who have a diversified portfolio, there's stocks, there's bonds, and then there's alternatives. And Bitcoin ETFs have fallen into that. Now, gold is another alternative that people have considered. Gold hasn't performed as well the way that people might have expected. that's a place for people to be able to turn to.

There's some other alternatives that offer additional diversification. I do think that people who allocated to Bitcoin using ETFs are likely to add to it now that if they see a turn and if there is a risk-on environment returning, that we could see people increase their exposure. So it might have been 5% of the portfolio. It fell to 2% or 3% based on the sell-off. That's an opportunity to increase exposure

to bring that back to 5% if and when the time is right. David, an interesting point here as well. Can I? Yes, please, by all means, jump in here. Yeah, I was going to chime in. I think some of the thinking here is actually, you're totally right with these allocators adding to their models. But these Bitcoin ETPs haven't really actually been added to a lot of the house models,

and they haven't even really been onboarded to some of the advisor platform. So it's super early, which is actually kind of hard to imagine. given that we're over, you know, two years into, you know, Bitcoin ETPs being in market. When you take a look at some of the, you know, buy, products that are really targeting buy and hold investors, I mean, Morgan Stanley just several weeks ago launched their first Bitcoin ETP. That has flowed over 250 million in assets. And it's, you know, 11th to 12th to market. It's incredible to think that's going on.

And some of the other lower fee products, BTC over at Grey Scale, and also ETH, their low cost alternatives for Bitcoin. and Ethereum have also been net positive flowing. So I think we're still in the early innings of those allocators that you reference on the advisory side, really incorporating them into their models and ensuring that they're being part of, you know, where advisors are able to make allocations. Bitcoin specifically is really different things to different people. It definitely can fall into an alts bucket. But additionally, it also can be a real asset and pull away from a gold allocation as,

you know, Todd was referencing. But also for some, it's, you know, a little. bit of a, you know, a type of a disruptive technology and up into the right kind of, you know, price action. And so you may pull some of your allocation away from small cap tech or, or global tech, you know, to really try and have some of that, some of that return profile. You know, David, up into the right happens, right? But up into the right doesn't happen all the time. And there is no guarantee that it's always up into the right. And certainly not at a 45 degree angle or or better in some of these circumstances.

What we have, though, seen over the course of the last several months is more attention being paid to Bitcoin and Ethereum because they are the flagship cryptocurrencies. But as things have now kind of taken a bit of a turn specifically today, it is not a trend, it is a day so far, right? But we are seeing a huge bounce today,

not just in Bitcoin and Ethereum, but other smaller alt-alt coins and alt tokens, if you want to call them that, in the ecosystem. Those are not as allocatable to, I guess if you want to use that kind of a word, because they don't have many exchange traded products tied to them that investors can go to. But there seems to be a lot more attention, at least from a return standpoint, speaking of the up and to the right, some of these smaller non-bitcoin, non-etherium coins and tokens are getting a lot more attention in terms of performance. How much does that translate into investors wanting to look at those instruments? as opposed to, say, a Bitcoin or Ethereum? What I would say to answer that question is, obviously, the largest assets are going to

lead the charge. And typically, we've seen coming out of previous winters that that will pull along some of the alt coins. I think the difference this time around is there's a bit of a regulatory change that we have seen, whereby allowing for more exchange traded products to come to life holding these other tokens. And, you know, look, look at hype, for example. the more kind of recent kind of, you know, strong token that has come to life in the form of exchange traded products,

has been something that's been pretty exciting to watch and some real allocation that's going towards it. But again, if Bitcoin hasn't been added to house models and hasn't really been put in the hands to be deployed by advisors, then you're certainly not going to see the assets or the tokens that are further down the cap spectrum. But you mention Bitcoin, you mention Ethereum. It's hard to have that conversation without also mentioning Solana. Salana is an incredibly strong token that has great utility in the market and that there's a lot of, you know, investment into incorporating into the Solana ecosystem as well. But I think as time goes on, you're going to see the tokens that are going to be attracting more developer activity

and attracting more utility to the marketplace. And we think that this is just, you know, a pause in a further wave towards tokenization, tokenization of real world assets. And here, you know, our parent company bullish is, you know, keenly focused on insurance. during that we're positioned for tokenization. And the analogy that I like to use, which I think some of your viewers will probably appreciate, is when I got my first smartphone,

which is a great example of a disruptive technology that has been incorporated into my life, I didn't get the smartphone and say, this thing is garbage because I can't get a taxi in front of my home whenever I want it. I was very excited that I didn't have to carry an MP3 player and my cell phone at the same time. We do not yet know what the application of crypto

is going to be that is going to be that kind of Uber version of the smartphone. We believe that tokenization is going to be a wave in the future and tokenization of real world assets is going to be something that changes the way that all investors engage with the market. Now, Todd, this is a good point because if you think about it, there are reasons why investors, yes, they are maybe more cautious and maybe even pessimistic about things, but there's also, I guess, a cadre and ecosystem of folks who are in this because they are trying to imagine the possibilities. But one of the ways, that many investors and traders stay tethered to whatever the kind of near-term possibilities of any

particular blockchain or cryptocurrency is, is by having indices that tie them together. And you both deal in indices. And Todd, I will go to you for this one first. If you take a look at some of these bigger coins and tokens, they do dominate some of the handful of indices that are out there that investors are kind of watching with regard to how these devolve. How can indices be more evolutionary to catch up to what's happening with crypto and blockchains, to make them more, I guess, actively managed at some point because people don't want to just be in iBIT or ETHA, and they want to feel like they can get into some kind of a fund that gives them broad-based exposure, whether it's cap-weighted or equal-weighted to many of these other tokens and coins as well?

So I would start with there is an ETIFOs, maybe more than one, but one that comes to mind from coin shares. It's their alt coins, ETF. The ticker is dime, DIME, and it offers exposure to everything outside of the top two of those cryptocurrencies. And the active management part is that as new ones emerge and become exciting, the ETF offers exposure to it. So there is an ETF to be able to get exposure.

I do think we're going to continue to see innovation happen within the crypto space. We at Vetify, as you mentioned, are an index provider. It is something on our roadmap and an area of focus for us. But it's also exciting to be able to see what's happening from others. And there are firms that are offering exposure to a range of different indices, a range of different cryptocurrencies to give people benchmarks so that they can have as a reference point. Now, Todd, I'm going to follow up there as well because TMXVETify, your parent company at Vetify,

has now engaged in a pretty decent-sized transaction as well with regard to that index space. Can you take us through the news here and why TMXVETIFIs on the acquisition trail for these index providers? You're right. So we've made a series of acquisitions as part of our general growth, and on Friday, TMXVETI acquired the RAFI indices from research affiliates. What it did is take our $90 billion or so index-based business and triple it inside. So roughly $260 billion of assets is now tied to, or will be once the deal closes, tied to a TMX VETIFI-related index. A few of products that come to mind.

Schwab has a fundamental U.S. large company, ETF, FNDX. Invesco has a U.S. Rafi, 1,000 ETF, PRF. Those are going to be soon part of the VETIF family, along with some existing Smart Beta the ETF. So the Victory shares, free cash flow, V-flow is one of those. And we're known for thematic investing. So the Illyan MLP is a ticker there. So we're really excited about bringing these together. Rafi is a pioneer within the smart beta and fundamental investing space. And I think it's going to impact a lot of investors. All right. For this one, David, because you are the head of indices and data over at CoinDesk, how important will this index

evolution be to what's happening with cryptocurrencies and what do you see happening in the coming months and quarters, more kind of near to medium term, to maybe draw some more investors towards that market because of more robustness and evolution for the index type products within cryptocurrencies? Yeah, I think Todd, you know, his opening comments there were, you know, totally in line with the way that I'm thinking about it. We have, you know, the Coin desk 5 and the Coin desk 20. CoinDest 5 is, you know, top five tokens by market cap, no meme and no stable coins. And the, you know, the Coin desk 20 is, you know, similarly top 20 coins with a little bit of a different waiting strategy.

There are ETFs based on both of those GDLC and then on the CoinDX5 by Grayscale and KRIP, CRIP, over with pro shares. So we just haven't seen as much adoption as we would have probably hoped we would like to see based solely upon the earlier comments that I made. made about these really not being available to, you know, the broadest range of investors and advisors, I think as we look forward, what's going to happen in the evolution that we're going to see is maybe a little less about ensuring there's the appropriate number of tokens, but a blending of both tokens, equities, and maybe even in the future, you know, companies have come to market directly through, you know, token issuance. I think the, you know, merging or the convergence of TradFi with crypto is happening at the exchanges. It's happening, you know,

at asset managers, it's happening at indexers, it's happening with research and media. So I think we're going to see this trend continue with indexers as well. And we're super excited to be able to be competing for that business and kind of deliver on the value that we're seeing investor demand come from. The last point I would say is, you know, Todd and I have been around the ETF industry for a long while now. And we often talk about the evolution of product and product exposure evolving, but indexing also alongside of the ETP market also evolved.

And we went from seeing straight market cap weights to equal weight to fundamental and then also technical strategies. So I think we're going to start to see other index weighting methodologies be applied to crypto or to the merge of crypto and tradify, whether it be momentum strategies, growth strategies, quality strategies, or maybe even some fundamentals that are really only specific to crypto around developer activity, you know, or or other total value locked or things like that. I'm excited to continue to innovate

and really respond to the demand that our clients ask for. It's interesting. The next frontier for not just those crypto-related products, but maybe even multi-asset type products as well on the indices side. David LaValle, thank you so much. Todd Rosenbluth, thank you so much for the conversation.

We've asked David to stick around for the ETF Edge podcast. You can catch that and all of our other content over at etFedge.cc.com. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next week. Now it's time to round out the conversation with some thoughtful analysis and perspective to help you better understand ETFs with our Markets 102 portion of the podcast. David LaVal, president of indices and data at CoinDesk continues with us now. David, thank you for taking the time with us on this ETF Edge podcast. Can we chat a little bit about where we left off on?

You had mentioned this idea that we could be seeing a little bit more innovation with regard to how people approach cryptocurrency investing. There could be index innovation. There could be product innovation. But after what we've seen in terms of the drawdown, more than 50% for some of the largest cryptocurrencies out there from the recent highs, and investor sentiment somewhat shaken because of this so-called crypto winter,

what have you seen over the last five or six months in terms of trends, in terms of flows, in terms of data, and what have you seen very near term with the risk on appetite today, given the war headlines, for what it could tell us about the future for crypto in the coming quarters? Okay. I'm thrilled you ask me these questions. There's really two pieces that I want to bring up to this conversation. And it is a little bit of a 102 conversation as opposed to a 101. The first is it was absolutely incredible to think about how fast that this cohort of Bitcoin ETPs got to $100 billion in assets.

But let's remind ourselves that that was when Bitcoin was at $125,000 per coin. Now, since we've seen a retrenchment of basically 50% on Bitcoin price, we have yet again eclipsed $100 billion in assets for that cohort. What is that telling you? It's telling you that the shares outstanding have been massively increasing. So as the prices come in, the user base has grown, and therefore that has resulted in AUM really growing. Now, if we see, you know, another run on Bitcoin, I think you're going to see the result of that be pretty significant in terms of the asset growth. We get back to $100,000.

We're not going to be at $100 billion in assets again. We're going to be closer to $150 billion in assets, which is going to be pretty impressive to see. So my first point is we're seeing a broader utilization and a broader range of investors come into the Bitcoin. ETP cohort, and that can be representative of kind of interest in the broader asset class. More importantly is what you said about kind of Congress's action or some of the focus on what's happening in Iran, and hopefully we are on the doorstep of a codified solution and resolution to what's happening in the Middle East. I think that will have a net positive impact on the ability for Congress to focus their attention on getting the Clarity Act pushed

over the finish line. Now, Clarity Act is the second. piece of legislation that is kind of crypto related. The first was the Genius Act, which late last year we saw get passed, which was giving a little bit more, you know, codification around stable coins and what could be held for stable coin collateral. This Clarity Act is really more focused on offering clarity, no pun intended, to some of the infrastructure that exists in and around, you know, the crypto marketplace. So exchanges, custodians, you know, treatment of, you know, stable coin yields. And I think with some resolution in the Middle East, it's going to allow Congress just pay a little bit more attention. And so I have a slight uptick in my confidence in

the Clarity Act being passed. If the Clarity Act gets passed, I think we'll see another wave of innovation and another wave of, you know, positive momentum in the broader crypto marketplace. What do you think that innovation looks like? What's the next step or two or three? for as much, and no pun intended here, for as much clarity as you have, given what we know right now around not just the clarity act, but around the conflict, the war in Iran, in the Middle East, around the regulation and the regulatory environment that we have

alongside just general interest, inventors sentiment, and what's happening with cryptocurrencies, is there going to be kind of a more, I guess, odds-on or predictable next step or two or three that you are anticipating or what are you the most concerned about in order for those things to be cleared for a runway to happen for the upside? Listen, I think this last downturn has flushed out some of the, you know, euphoria around some of the alt coins.

I think the, you know, the excitement about, you know, fraud coins or, you know, paintings of apes and things like that. Look, that's exciting. And there's some utility to some of these meme coins and whatnot. But I think by and large, that's something of the past and will serve and service a very small set of the user base. We're looking for institutional adoption. And that institutional adoption, as I think about what's coming in the future, cannot be discussed without focusing almost all of our attention on tokenization and tokenization of real world assets. And I'm not talking about tokenizing the Mona Lisa or tokenizing the Empire State Building.

I'm talking about tokenizing the $280 billion, excuse me, $280 trillion, you know, global equities, market. We're talking about the opportunity to, you know, take the next wave of evolution of, you know, the capital markets. And, you know, look, I started my career down on the floor of the American Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange not that long ago. And the first thing that I had to learn were my hand signals and fractions. And then we quickly went to an automated marketplace. And, you know, those that used hand signals and fractions said, ah, you know, you don't need to automate this market. And now there are many that probably say, look, these markets work pretty well. We're T plus one settlement. We were trading, you know, billions of dollars a second. We just had an

incredible IPO, the largest IPO and the history of the markets that went off, you know, without a glitch, thankfully. But now this is just the next wave that we're going from, you know, paper trades to automated trades to a tokenized market. This is going to be beneficial for investors in ways that they can't really yet imagine. And if you start to tokenize the market and you really add efficiency to the way the market's going to operate, that's going to decrease collateral. That's going to make the banks more efficient. It's going to make the clearing brokers more efficient.

It's going to make the investors have a better experience. And it's going to allow the U.S. capital markets to have a much greater connectivity point between the sponsors, those issuers, those public companies, and their end investors. That's going to be a benefit to, you know, John and Jane Q public. So, okay, let's put a point on this then. if you have that kind of a, I guess, a visibility on the trajectory and maybe not yet speed, but trajectory of what's going to happen here with what happens on traditional finance, TradFi, as it moves into kind of decentralized finance, defy and everything else,

there are ways that investors and traders are taking views on that trajectory with or without the speed function, right, about how long it's going to take for us to get to some of those evolutionary points. how exactly are investors and traders expressing that view for what the future could hold in the most profound way today? In other words, what exactly are people doing today to position themselves for what could be those possibilities a year, five, seven, ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty years from now? Yeah. Yeah.

It's another way to say it is when I was on the floor of the Amex and Jeff Bezos was you know, selling books online. Don't do what I did, which was to say, there's a borders across the street and two Barnes & Nobles. Why do I, you know, need to buy books online? That's really the question. And I would say, take a look at something like hype. You know, this is a decentralized platform that's allowing for incredibly efficient trading of exposures like oil, you know, Brent and crude and the S&P 500. I think people are familiarizing themselves with the ability for how to engage in a decentralized market with an institutional quality of access. And that's really the point that I want to make here.

There's lots of retail-focused exposures and the ability for individual participants to engage with crypto. The change now is that you're having institutional solutions. Bullish, my parent company, for example, is a platform built for institutions. You've talked to Tom Farley, you know, our CEO about this in the past. And CNBC has been excellent to, you know, be able to be able to. platform to offer the opportunity for us to talk about how we're building an institutional quality platform. The question is why is the inflection point now for institutions? It's because

for disruptive technology to happen, you need two things. You need an actual piece of technology, and then you need regulatory clarity. So we've had the disruptive technology in the form of technology, but we haven't had that regulatory clarity that has allowed for mass institutions to really deploy capital, both human and actual dollars and cents, into the technology that we think is going to be the wave of the future. Having a company like Morgan Stanley come online and bring a Bitcoin ETP to market is just a little tip of the iceberg of what's happening at that institution on a global scale. And so, you know, that's the opportunity for them to trade Bitcoin on their e-trade platform or, you know, for their investment management team to launch more products. And for

for, you know, their advisory platform to leverage the 17,000 advisors that they have to deploy into digital assets. This is a different scale of institutional adoption. And I think what captures some of the airwaves is that, you know, Jamie Diamond will say, you know, Bitcoin's a joke. That really isn't representative of what's happening with institutions around the globe. All right. And one final question for you. You are the president of CoinDesk's index and data business, what exactly does that mean in terms of what you think the next big thing for you is? What exactly would you, I mean, I understand that there's stuff that's always in the works, but if you are the head of indexes, indices, and data at a place like Coin desk, what then kind

of project-wise are you thinking about for the coming months that's going to take up the bulk of your time? Yeah, so I think one thing to mention is prediction markets. I think prediction markets are growing rapidly and with incredible. pace, but they've been happening very quickly and without a ton of institutional, you know, kind of framework or or or or platform. And so how can we as a high quality FCA regulated benchmark administrator that delivers high quality data to the marketplace that underpins, you know, financial products that are offered by asset managers, you know, and also, you know,

banks and brokers, how can we act as a credible solution for prediction markets that That's something I'm paying a lot of attention to. We can be the Oracle for, you know, settlement prices for these prediction markets. I think it's something that's needed in market. That would be one thing. The second thing is, you know, I always talk about the convergence of tradfying crypto. So I don't think there's going to be crypto indexers and tradify indexers in the future. I think there's going to be indexers.

And so how do I position myself to ensure that I'm going to be one of the indexers that's going to win in the future? And I think that's ensuring that I can offer, you know, a myriad of asset classes with a high degree of competence. and making sure that I'm putting it together and delivering it to clients with institutional grade quality and regulatory stamp for approval as well. All right, we're going to have to continue this conversation because this is like a doctoral dissertation

at this point now. So David LaValle, David LaValle at Coin Desk, thank you very much for joining us here. That was David LaVal, the president of indices and data over at CoinDesk. We appreciate the conversation, and that does it for the ETF Edge podcast. Thanks for listening.

Join us again next week or just head over to ETFedge.cbc. Over the last few decades, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. Through it all, Invesco QQQETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the future today with Invesco QQ. Let's rethink possibility. There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETF risks are similar to those of stocks.

Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. The NASDAQ 100 index includes the 100 largest non-financial companies. companies listed on the NASDAQ. An investment cannot be made directly to an index. Before investing, consider the funds, investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit investco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Investorutors, Inc.