The Compound and Friends - Ethereum ETFs Are Here

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

On episode 151 of The Compound and Friends, Michael Batnick and Downtown Josh Brown are joined by Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise Asset Management, to discuss: the launch of Ethereum ETFs, Bitcoin vs USD, crypto regulation, tokenized money market funds, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Public. Make your savings work harder and earn an industry-leading 5.1% APY with a high-yield cash account on Public. Visit https://public.com/ to learn more! Sign up for The Compound Newsletter and never miss out! https://www.thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Instagram: https://instagram.com/thecompoundnews Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecompoundnews LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-compound-media/ Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.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 Josh Brown 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. 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. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ A High-Yield Cash Account is a secondary brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Funds from this account are automatically deposited into partner banks where they earn a variable interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance. Neither Public Investing nor any of its affiliates is a bank. Learn more at public.com/disclosures/high-yield-account Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So Matt, are you driving to Nashville? Check, check, check. Maybe. What is this? The Bitcoin thing? Yeah, I'm going to the Bitcoin thing. How they got Trump to speak at this? There's a lot of money on the line too. There's a lot of money. A lot of donations.

Do you consider yourself more in one camp versus the other in terms of Bitcoin versus youth? Ooh, no, I'm an index guy. That's right. How could he be in both? Very political answer. Do you like one kid or the other kids? You know? Yes, actually. But you could do it like an index of only Bitcoin.

Just different Bitcoins. Different Bitcoins. Hey, do you remember when Kevin O'Leary said that from now on he will only buy sustainably mined Bitcoin? Oh my god. No. Is that one of the funniest things you've ever heard? Is that impossible? Yes, G coins. I don't even know what that means.

What does that mean? I don't know. He like, it's probably years. He like tweeted out like, I will only buy sustainably mined Bitcoin from now on. That's right. Is that before or after he invested in FTX? Stop that.

All right. Hey, I want to, so according to Nile, who is the CMO of Future Proof, we have just surpassed 2023's entire registration size. And historically 50% of registrations come in in the last month and a half or so before the event. So that's where we are. That's where we are.

This one's going to go nuts This one's going to go nuts. It's going to go nuts. I think we're going to go above 4,000. Everyone wants to be there. Oh my God. It's going to be amazing. Wait, what were we last year? About this, about 2,400.

2,400. Something like that. So 4,000 is going to feel like the Super Bowl. I mean... You're going to be hiding the whole time. Yeah, I'm never leaving my room. Come on, the sun's going to be out. It's going to feel like the Super Bowl. I mean, you're going to be hiding the whole time. Yeah. I'm never leaving my room. Come on. The sun's going to be out.

It's going to be on the beach. You know what? I very strategically, I do blocks of time and, uh, and then I retreat. Yeah, I do too. You have to, you have to. Otherwise I'm a man of the people. Yeah. Michael, I spread my wings.

Michael soaks it in. All right. So this is exciting. If we, if we get anywhere near 4,000 people, it's going to feel like a double the size of last year. Yeah, it is, it is. And if you remember last year, it felt much bigger than year one, right?

This thing continues to grow. Yes, so there were 150 sponsors last year, and this year I think it's 300. Is that possible? That sounds right. That's more booths and exhibition areas. It's a bigger, the meetings are going to be way bigger. It's the most important event in wealth management.

It really is. It has become that. And yeah, you mentioned the meetings. We're going to do 30,000 one-on-one meetings. Oh my God. Right? That's eight meetings a person. It's a meat market.

He said this is the biggest event in wealth management. I said, well, no, not bigger than impact. And he thinks it's bigger than impact already. I think it's going to be right there. We might nip him at the line. But think about that. I mean, think about the scale of what people used to talk about Impact being.

And we're in year three. And then it's going to keep growing from there. This is super exciting. The most important thing to me is that the In-N-Out truck comes back. It's going to be back. It's going to be back. It's going to be slinging.

Don't worry. You'll be there. It's a to be back. It's going to be back. It's going to be slinging. Don't worry. You'll be there. It's a Virgil production. That's right. So last year, last year on Tuesday night, at Tuesday Eve, I remember running over to the, the area was closed off and Method Man and Red Man's

like, um, supporter, supporting act came out on stage to do the mic check for them. I guess they were still at the hotel. Yep. So these guys are, I mean and these guys are emcees. These guys are wrapping their faces off. The In-N-Out truck is sitting right next to the stage. So I like break through the security thing,

like a breakthrough, I show the guy my badge. And he's like, it's not open yet. I go, no, I know, I know, I need to just, I need to get some burgers for the rappers. He's like, oh, that's nice of you. I'm like, yeah, that's nice of you. I'm like, yeah, that's nice of me. I take down an in and out burger in three bites. And then I did in fact bring the crew some cheeseburgers.

That was a highlight for sure. Yeah, you didn't lie. You just stretched the truth a little bit. I love slinging out. Think about all those things you just said about a wealth management event. I know it's a lot. That's what makes Future Proof so cool. It's hilarious. Well, I'm saying that. Think about all those things you just said about a wealth management event. I know, it's hilarious. That's what makes future proof so cool.

It's hilarious. Well, I'm super excited and you know, Matt, Matt's like so cool about all this. Like he's not like- Stressed. Stressed, he's not beating his chest. He's just like, yep, this is business, this is what I do. Also, last year, Matt was so calm at the actual event.

Just goes to show, he doesn't actually do anything. That, I think, is what it does show you. Yeah, that is correct. He's a figurehead. Shout to Matt Middleton, shout to Niall, and the whole Future Proof crew. So Mike, this is the first time Matt's been on any of our shows.

No, we had him not. Oh no, we had him remote. We never had him here. Okay, all right. Could the timing be any better? No quite frankly. We had the ETH launch Yesterday no two days ago. Oh Yeah, that is right. All right, so let's not let's not step on that. We're definitely gonna hit that Relatively early and relatively hard and relatively hard

I Should mention we're not gonna do a ton of econ stuff, but there was a GDP report today. This is the first print, I think they revised it two more times, of Q2 GDP, 2.8%, quarter over quarter, not bad. Not bad. Let me, this is Bank of America, Merrill Lynch. This was even stronger than our above consensus forecast of 2.3% and our final tracking estimate

of 2.4. The upside surprise on growth was supported by strong consumption growth of 2.3%. So that's the US shopper bailing us out. Once again, growth has cooled relative to last year but at a gradual pace. The risk of a sharp slowdown is low. And then there's some other stuff about the Fed can afford to wait, blah, blah, blah. But I think that this has been really supportive of the market recovery that we're seeing today.

We need a good news. It sounds like a soft landing. That's actually what it sounds like. I was skeptical, but it seems like that's actually what's happening on the ground. We did it. If anything was going to help the small cap rally continue, it would have been this. That's what they need to hear the most is that there's no reason to be afraid of rates

and US growth is solid. Yeah. That's what they got. They're going to get rates coming down eventually. Yeah. While the economy still hums along. If you ignore everything that's going on in politics things look pretty good One of the things that I think is important is people got into this mindset where strong economic growth

Meant. Oh, no higher for longer. It's not that because this is not inflationary growth Inflation is still cooling what this is. think, productivity. It's that difference in between. So we don't have to do this good news is bad stuff anymore. And the market didn't do it today. We threaded the needle. That's right. Good news is good news. What a day. We threaded the needle. So Matt spends the summer in Maine. Do you know that?

No. You've never been? He just told me. Have you been up there? Uh-uh. Never. Oh my God. I love it there. You got to come.

I've been trying to convince my wife to go for the summer. And I don't know, she's not excited by by the I don't think she likes the word mean I'm not really sure what's going on. She's just she's a weird aversion to it go up for you Don't need to go for the summer. I want to go for a weekend just for a weekend food is amazing My friends are right now. He did the Kenny bunk board Few other places you got to come weather's perfect. I'm gonna bunk port you have to see it from a distance He's like right like you look down on it from over, at least when I was there, there were secret service trucks in front of it. Maybe normally you can get closer. But it has that big anchor on the rock that's

like a monument to George H.W. Bush. Okay. We did Freeport. That's a really cool place. That's like the city. And we were at the Cliff House. So we were, we did all of like that Ogonkwit area, all those little towns. Yeah. Yeah. Did you do Portland or Freeport? Portland's the big city. Freeport is L.L.Bean.

Oh, I did Portland, not Freeport. Okay. There you go. Both great. Portland, one of the greatest cities of all time. How'd you end up summering in Maine? We used to live there. So I went to school there.

Distantly related to the Bush family. That's definitely not true. Went to school there, lived there after college. I had my first two kids there in Bar Harbor. Only moved out to San Francisco about 15 years ago. We just kept our house. But I worked at L.L. Bean. I did the whole Maine thing.

Yeah. What's the tech scene like up there? In Portland? You and one other guy? Yeah, Bean, I did the whole Maine thing. Yeah, what's the tech scene like up there? In Portland. You and one other guy? Yeah, exactly. I am crypto in Maine. Now, it's, you know, Portland's actually got a lot going on, but Maine's pretty quiet. We did a bike tour of Portland

and we rode up some of those hills into the residential neighborhoods. Yeah. And then we rode around, what's that lake that we rode around or pond? Oh, the Back Bay, the Back Bay Lich, yeah. So they took, we saw the whole city. It was a cool way to see it.

I think it's one of the best eating towns in America. Well, I was going to say that was my, but you know that I was going there next. Yeah. We ate three meals in that town, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, one better than the next. It's off the charts. I think it has more restaurants per capita

than any city in America, and it's got a real food scene, and it's livable, affordable. I think it has more restaurants per capita than any city in America and it's got a real a real food scene and it's it's Livable affordable. I think it's a great place John you've been out there main No Duncan you either. All right, never looks like we have some we have some work to the call. We know you've never been Yeah, there we go You have been All right, you know you you better travel than I thought, my bad. You gotta come, it's the way life should be.

What's your address? How we doing? Ready to rock? Guys, he's an important man here. So, as you're about to learn. Come on now. 151. 151. Welcome to the Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown,

Michael Batnik and their cast mates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. At public.com, you can earn 5.1% APY with a high yield cash account. That's not just a good rate. It's literally an industry leading rate. Plus, no fees, zero, so you can maximize your interest.

What's the point of earning a high yield if you have to spend a bunch of it on fees? At public.com, it's just 5.1% APY, straight up, no strings attached, and no balance requirements. Use as little or as much of a deposit as you'd like. This is a paid endorsement for public investing, 5.1% APY as of June 17th, 2024, and is subject to change.

Full disclosures in the podcast description. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the greatest financial podcast of all time. Is that too much? No. Just the right amount? Not quite enough. Show is on fire this summer. One blockbuster guest after another and wait till you hear who we have today.

Ladies and gentlemen, his name is Matt Hogan. He is the CIO of Bitwise Asset Management, the largest crypto index fund provider in the United States. Bitwise works with thousands of advisors, family offices, institutional investors managing a broad suite of index and active solutions across ETFs, separately managed accounts, private funds and hedge fund strategies. Prior to, first of all, give that a round of applause. Come on.

Thank you. Thank you. For me, there that a round of applause. Come on. Thank you, thank you. For me, there's a lot of words I just said. Prior to Bitwise, Matt was the CEO at Inside ETFs, a managing director of global finance at Informa, the CEO of ETF.com, and he co-authored the CFA Institute's monograph on ETFs. Matt Hogan, welcome to the compound and friends. Oh man, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Josh. Matt, I always forget you ran inside of the ETFs.

Like that was the biggest conference forever. It was the biggest conference forever. Yep. Ran that for a number of years. You started? I was part of the team that started it. Yeah, absolutely. And, and incubated exchange that conference for a while. And now have been doing the futureproof thing.

I love real high quality events. What's the big change from when you started doing conferences to these days? What would you say is the most, the thing that's most different? Well, conferences were death when we started doing conferences. I remember sitting at conferences and just feeling my life flow through my hands. Like I'll never get these days back. They were miserable. And you look now at future

proof. We're outside, we're on the beach, people are wearing casual clothes. There's real business being done. I think conferences have gotten a lot better. Yeah, I do too. And I think one of the things about going, I've been to a million conferences, I've spoken at a million conferences, just that cycle that you do while you're there as an attendee. It's like, oh, should I have another kind bar? Kind of just had one in between the last session. But what else am I doing? Go back to the exhibit hall.

Yeah, I need a phone charger. Maybe I'll go back to the room and call my wife, my husband. It's just like this cycle. And you almost can't wait for the day to end so you can make it to happy hour. But what if happy hour were the whole day, minus the alcohol, but what if you were just like vibing out all day and absorbing content and meeting people?

Yeah. I agree with you. I think that's... Do you feel like other conferences have gotten better as a result of Future Proof? Is there an influence that you detect when you look at some of the other events? Yeah, I mean, you definitely see people

trying to embrace this festival model, trying to move things outside or be a little bit more low key. But I haven't found one that approximates that. And I really haven't found one that's figured out how to do the meetings program like we do at Future Proof. The other thing about conferences that always struck me is we spent so much time thinking about who should be on stage.

But then you looked in the audience. There were like 2000 amazing people and it felt like this huge untapped resource. I love that we found a way to get those people together at Future Proof. So I never would have come up with this. In hindsight, it's so obvious. People go to these things. They want to get something done. Most people are not naturally good at flirting.

So, and this is not like to insult anyone, but historically somebody standing in front of a booth, it's like, hey I have a stuffed animal, you know like, no seriously, right? Like, oh I have a yeti, come talk to me, you want a yeti? You want to maybe have a conversation for a yeti? Nobody's good at that. And if you're walking through the exhibit hall,

you almost don't want to approach the table because the guy's on his phone or the girl is like, you know, looking around the room and it's like, I'm gonna go talk to this person. I don't really want to talk that badly. By giving people an appointment to talk to each other, it's so genius. I just never would have come up with it. But that's really helpful when you talk about getting business done. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. 30,000 meetings. Yeah. Michael will be taking part in the meetings. So if you go on the app and you want to sit with my, you blocked out six hours for the first day. Do I have that right?

All right. All right. No? Okay. Book him up. All right. Can we talk about Ethereum? Yeah, let's do it. What is Ethereum? Ethereum is the second largest crypto asset. Okay. And unlike Bitcoin, it's a programmable blockchain. And so people are building cool stuff on it. Everything you hear about that's really exciting in crypto outside of Bitcoin is digital gold. If you hear about tokenization, that's all built on gold. If you hear about tokenization, that's all built on Ethereum. If you hear about DeFi, that's all built on Ethereum.

Stablecoins are built on Ethereum. It's like the operating system. If you think of Nvidia is what AI chatbots are built on, DeFi, stablecoins, tokenization, that's all built on Ethereum. So it's this incredible technology platform. I'm a big metaphor guy. Bitcoin is gold, Ethereum is stocks. Have you heard that before? Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard. Do you hate that?

I don't think it's bad. It's useful. I kind of like Ethereum is the app store or Ethereum is the operating system to be a little bit more precise, but I think that's the direction. There was a Lego analogy. Did you make that or did somebody else? No, there's been a Lego analogy. I mean, that's the idea that you can build

on top of this, right? So you can take the base layer of Ethereum and you can build an exchange on top of that. And then somebody else can build a lending platform on top of your exchange, just stacking it up and down, which you can't do in traditional finance. So if I say to you, all right, I'm a real estate investor,

and one of the things I'm frustrated about is, I buy a piece of a building, or I buy the whole building, but I kind of have to hold it until the building sells. And all the other owners of the building have to agree to sell, and I could be locked up in this thing for 15 years, 30 years, who knows? Somebody comes along and says,

I know how to solve your problem. We're going to take these ownership stakes in the building and we're going to tokenize them. So now you're going to have shares of the building effectively, right? It's coins, but it's shares. Okay, what if you want to get rid of 10% of your holdings and rather than go through this whole legal process and meet with investors and blah, blah, blah, you just take that tokenized

stake that you have, decide how much of it you want to put out there on an open exchange, and somebody can come along and match with what you think it's worth. That kind of securitization, that kind of tokenization, in my view, is the most exciting thing that crypto could potentially unlock. Okay. So you would build something like that on Ethereum? Yes. Yeah.

All those transactions would settle to a blockchain. Ethereum is the number one blockchain that they would settle to. So it's like the statement of record for who owns that token. So what are we solving by doing it that way? We're pulling out like a title and legal and banking and we're just saying here's a transaction. It took place. It was tokenized. It was secure.

Everyone in this layer agrees that it happened. I mean that seems pretty exciting. And it can happen 24-7-365, and it can settle in a second. And you could take your tokenized share and you can get an instantaneous loan against it, collateralized by that tokenized share, and then use that money to do something else. It makes finance so instant and so easy.

Okay, so you can't do this with Bitcoin. You can't do that with Bitcoin. Okay, so this is the key thing then. So if you're a capitalist, and what you love about the stock market is that it enables you to build companies and form ventures and things, this should be the really appealing part of crypto to you.

Yeah, that is right, yeah. And if you're a commodity person, Bitcoin makes more sense. That's just the way I try to understand it. I think that's exactly right. I mean, I would go further. If you're a tech investor and you own the Qs and you don't own Ethereum, you're

actually missing a big part of the most exciting corner of technology. If you think about venture capitalists, they invest in AI, they invest in semis, they invest in biotech, They invest in crypto and blockchain. That's part of the technology sphere. So yes, Ethereum is in the tech side. Bitcoin is in the money or commodity side.

That's the right way to think about it. You mentioned tokenization. CoinDesk was reporting that Coinbase is creating a tokenized money market fund. Why does that need to exist? Well, there are a couple reasons it needs to exist. And we already know there's big demand because BlackRock built one and they gathered four or five hundred billion dollars of assets in a few months, which is an amazing fund launch.

Wait, what is this? BlackRock built a tokenized money market fund. Where? On the Ethereum next... Tell them what it's called. Biddle. Of course it is. Yeah, like HODL.

Like HODL. Yeah, B-U-I-D-L. Of course it is. Like HODL. Like HODL. Yeah, B-U-I-D-L. But it pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars. There's a few reasons why something like that is really useful. For one, there's a whole $2 trillion economy that operates in crypto that doesn't

operate in traditional rails. They're not going to take money out of their crypto ecosystem and move it to a traditional money market fund that settles you know. And nobody wants and nobody wants pay taxes. Well, there's that. Come on.

Come on. Easy now. Easy. The other piece is it trades 24 7 365. Right. So they're talking about making it usable collateral against things like futures on the CME. So this is not that people would put their cash into a tokenized money market fund.

It's for people that are in the crypto ecosystem already. That is right. Yeah. First and foremost. So what I think is going the direction of travel, I think, is you're going to build these products. They're first going to draw from the crypto economy, which again is a $2.5 trillion economy. So they could get pretty big.

And then eventually, once they're proven and established and liquid other people will start making that decision that they want a money market fund that trades every day of the year rather than a few days a year. What is the most successful product currently on the currently utilizing ETH or on the in the Ethereum world. Yeah, it's probably Uniswap, which is like the Coinbase, a decentralized version of Coinbase. But for people who don't know this, Uniswap's amazing. If you think about Coinbase, giant company, right? Billions of dollars market cap, thousands of employees, offices all over.

Uniswap is a software program, does the same thing. You can trade Ethereum for Solana on Uniswap. They do roughly the same amount of volume. One has thousands of employees, one has zero. That's pretty... One with zero though requires the user to be a little bit savvy about a wallet because what Coinbase is doing is safeguarding your assets. If you're utilizing Uniswap, it's every man for himself. That's right. Yeah, that is right.

But the analogy I would make is back to the internet. Like if you think about AOL made it safe and easy to go on the internet. And then we move to a more open system where people were comfortable operating in that space. I think you're going to see the same migration, particularly if we get regulatory changes. What's important about Uniswap is it's proven that it works. Right? You can trade these assets.

They trade and settle billions of dollars of assets. They've been doing it for years. We just need a few unlocks for it to grow even bigger. Is Uniswap a layer that sits on top of Ethereum as the base layer? Yeah, it's an application. It's an application. It's not a layer. It's an application using Ethereum.

If tokenized money market funds really takes off, what would that do to stablecoins? Because that's a huge economy for lack of a better word. Yeah, I think it would disrupt part of the stablecoin market. But that will depend a lot on regulation. The difference between a tokenized money market fund and a stablecoin is one accrues interest and the other doesn't, sort of like cash and a traditional... The money market accrues interest. The stablecoin is just accrues interest and the other doesn't sort of like cash and a traditional money market accrues interest Yes, stablecoin is just supposed to be a dollar

That's just supposed to be a dollar and the interest is taken by the stablecoin issuer on the other side I think they'd be in competition. I would love to see the market move to Tokenized money market funds, but there there's their regulatory issues before we get there one more thing before we talk about the launch And all that sort of stuff there was a report today by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau highlighting the junk fees charged by school lunch payment platforms and one of the one of the pitches for programmable money is Instant settlement at like a fraction fraction you can move billions dollars for a very small percentage

fraction fraction. You can move billions of dollars for a very small percentage. So I'm going to read a quote from the paper. These processors typically charge fees to add money to a student school lunch account which collectively can cost families upwards of a hundred million dollars each year. Among the companies that studied the CFPB observed that the payment processors charge transaction fees of two dollars and thirty-seven cents or four point four percent of the total transaction on average each time money is added into a payment account. These are for kids lunches. Now, is this the type of thing that blockchains can potentially go after?

Yeah, absolutely. That should be zero. It should be stable coins and it should be instantaneous. And school lunches are a great example, but that's almost every payment you make. There's this Visa charge on top of it where you're paying a few extra dollars for that transaction. It strikes me as absurd. I mean, it's an absurd thing. Finance today is absurd. You just mentioned that. I get charged $4 to take money out of an ATM. If I send you a check, deposits in a few days. You don't need any of that to be true.

Blockchain has already proven it can solve those problems in a very real way. And that's why you're seeing- So what's missing? Why aren't, there are 350 million people in America. Why are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% utilizing any of the stuff you're talking about on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's something like

70 or 80 million Americans own crypto. Okay, but transacting in crypto, what's that number? Zero. Zero Americans? Basically zero outside of crypto. Okay, but transacting in crypto, what's that number? Zero. Zero Americans? Basically zero outside of crypto. So what's missing? You need regulatory clarity on that space. That's it, honestly? They don't seem to give a shit about regulatory clarity.

Oh. I watch these people on Twitter. They're not so worried about it. I don't know. What's it going to take for Stripe or JP Morgan or Visa to accept stable coins as a point of sale transaction. Oh, so they're being held at bay to not do that. They're being threatened to do that.

Threatened not to do that. I would believe that. Yeah. The banking regulators are telling them, I dare you. And how about the lobbyists? This is their whole business. Exactly. I mean, there's been a real government overhang of the crypto industry.

Wait, so we'll talk more about the political aspect, but could we be in a place where the Republicans become the party that is antithetical to the aims of Visa, Capital One, and MasterCard? Well, I would... If they go full in on crypto, which they seem like they're on the verge of doing. Could they now be pitted against traditional payment processors? They should be. They need to be disrupted. Think about every other area of the economy. How unlike like if I would have told you that 10 years ago, you would have been like, no way. It would have been crazy. But at the flip side, there's some of those companies that are moving towards this space. PayPal launched its own stablecoin. It's trying to disrupt that space.

Visa is actually experimenting with a lot. I think there'll be a have and have nots from that former class. But if you look at finance and you look at any other industry, the largest company in finance, JP Morgan, found in the 1700s. Name me another industry where that's true. It's just a market that's ripe for disruption.

I heard you guys talking about XLF on a few podcasts ago. What has the finance industry done to get better? Why should it be a bigger segment of the economy? What do you like about finance today that you didn't 10 years ago? It's like hard to say. So I think they're ripe for that kind of disruption. I read a paper from you guys maybe three years ago that was like, oh yeah, this makes sense. Talking about the rails of these financial companies that were built in the 50s and 70s. And when you transfer money from JP Morgan's ledger to Citi's ledger or Bank of America, whatever, like there's a reason why it takes long for these things to process. And why is that? Because these things are old. They're ancient.

So is it going to be the type of thing where the banks lead the charge here and they use blockchains and maybe there won't be a like killer consumer app. It depends on how it depends on how the regulations work. I mean, that gets into a detailed discussion. If you look at like the stablecoin regulations that were proposed, there are two approaches, one of which basically cordons off the space so only banks can operate in it and the other of which is more open.

So it will really depend on how those regulations break down. But I think it's, you know, I think 10 years from now, we're not going to be moving money the same way we move money today. When you ask what is the finance industry done that merits it growing, probably nothing. But what it does do today is it sits in the middle of transactions. And if party A does not fully trust party B, or vice versa versa to deliver goods and services for payment, well, in the middle is Visa, and Visa is extracting an interchange fee. And in exchange for that interchange fee, they are serving as that layer of trust.

So they say party A is good for the money. And to prove it, we're going to advance that money and we'll get it from party A later. Okay, if you're the seller, you say, great, I don't need to worry about if Matt has the money. I know Visa has the money. You probably have a rebuttal. Yeah. Well, no, I'm sure you do. But this is where, but when you talk to regular people, they don't give a shit about an interchange fee because it affects the merchant

Ah, let me push back there on something. Do you honestly care how much the merchants paying? Well, let me let me let me give you an example, please Have you been to a gas station where they advertise a cash price and a credit? Well, that's that's a whole other thing It's gonna work That's exactly the same thing because you could advertise a stable coin price and a Visa price, and those two would be different. Your Starbucks latte would be $5 or it would be $5.50. That should be, honestly, that should not be legal. Oh, well, it-

Which part? But they have to- Two prices for different payment forms? But the merchants are pushing the Visa fee on you now. But they didn't have to five years ago. The merchants are pushing the Visa fee on to you. The reason they're able to offer cash cheaper is because they don't have to pay that Visa fee.

Imagine if that was at every point of sale transaction. If you had a choice, I'll pay $5 for this latte using my stable coins connected to my wallet or 550 using my visa card. That's not hard to imagine. It's not hard to imagine. Respectfully, this whole thing started in the pandemic and I'm going to tell you the actual reason why.

And now everyone's trying to get away with it. Every pizzeria on Long Island, every diner, every bagel store, they're accustomed to having a certain amount of their customers pay cash. And then for six months, nobody would touch anyone else's cash. And all transactions went over the phone or via text message or via online ordering or if you were desperate, you pulled up to the parking lot and you handed someone a credit card through the window. If you're, let's say a pizzeria, because I'm from Long Island, so these are the terms.

If you're a pizzeria and normally 30% of the money that you have coming in comes in as cash, I'm not saying you don't pay taxes, I'm saying there's some oopsie there. Is that fair? Okay. If 100% of your revenue for the month is now credit card, you just lost some of your margin that you're accustomed to.

Again, oops, my bad. And then it stuck. And now they're printing menus with two different prices. But I'm telling you that the origin of this has nothing to do with interchange fees. Now it does. But what first made it start was that nobody was getting the amount of cash they normally got for whatever they sell. It was the oopsie. It's the oopsie. I mean, look, this is the reality that, right? Let's just, let's keep

it real. No disrespect to anyone. You know, everyone's got their thing, but like now it's stock that's got, that's got to reverse at some point. We can't have two different menus. Yeah, I think we'll see. Why, you think legislation is going to make that so? I don't know. I think, yeah, somebody's going to say, what is going on here?

It's too much now. Now it's everything. That's a lot. It was restaurants at first, and that made sense to me. I understood it. And you felt bad for restaurants during the pandemic. I don't think people feel as bad. What if they start telling you a car costs X dollars

if you're making your first payment with a credit card versus if you're giving them a bank check? I'd just rather it was lower. I'd rather all those costs were lower. We agree. I feel like this has to come from the bank. So this idea that people are going to start using stable coins or Uniswap or whatever,

it's just come on. Well, I feel a little bit about that, but think back 12 months in crypto, the idea that Larry Fink would be on CNBC saying Bitcoin is a store of value and a risk safe asset, the idea they'd be building new funds on Ethereum that gather 500 million or that the Republican nominee for president would be speaking at Bitcoin conference like a lot of crazy stuff can happen in a short amount of time. It's so true and that that saying the darkest hours just before the dawn could not have been more apt in 2022.

It literally looked like game over between FTX and various other things that it just looked like the end. We're not even two years removed. Was that October 2022 or something like that? November is like 100, yeah. It's not even two years. It's one of the most incredible reversals of public and government sentiment

around anything I have ever seen. We started the show with Ethereum because very timely we have Matt here. We got the Ethereum ETF approvals, I lose track of time, was that Monday of this week? Finally we have Matt here. I lose track of time. Was that Monday of this week? Talk about the launch and we'll get into what you guys launched. But just generally speaking, was this about what you expected in terms of price action and the amount of AUM that came in.

How do you think it went week one with a few ETH, not a few, ETH ETFs? Yeah, I would say it was a little bit better than expected. I mean, day one we had over a billion dollars in trading volume. Bitwise, we had a couple hundred million dollars of net inflows. Congratulations, by the way, not easy to do.

Thank you, thank you. You guys are behind, Grayscale already had their products, so that's maybe not fair, but you're third behind iShares and Fidelity. Yeah. It's f**king huge. Outstanding.

I appreciate it. Yeah, we're, the community, it seems, wants to have a crypto native issuer that appeals to some people. And that's you. And that's us. Because the rest are traditional asset managers. Many traditional asset managers are in there.

Yeah, but it's been nice to, you know, they're great people to battle with in the field, but we feel pretty good about what we did. I think there was a risk on Ethereum, at least some people thought, that it would come out of the gates and sputter because we saw with the Ethereum Futures ETF launch, they launched and nobody cared. Yeah. So I think people were worried that that could repeat and that didn't repeat. This is going to go down as the second most successful ETF launch of all time.

Behind Bitcoin? Behind Bitcoin. Yeah, it's going to be big. These are going to be multi-billion dollar ETFs, you know, within a month or two. Who bought the ETFs in week one? Like, what is the profile of the money that's come and look like? Yeah, there are two that we know. So one is sort of crypto friendly retail investors. That have been waiting for this. That have been waiting for this.

Maybe they have money in a retirement account, or maybe they just like ETFs better than buying it on an app. And two were advisors who already had positions in BTC. So there are a lot of advisors who are still doing due diligence and haven't made a move yet, but we definitely saw and heard from some of our clients, hey, we have this in BITB, we're going to add ETHW as well. And I think those were the two drivers.

What do you make of the price action? Because it's pretty abominable. It's down 6% today, it was down a couple of percent yesterday. When moon, Matt? When moon? Do you think, I saw some speculation about large a large a wallets movie and maybe dumping or what what how do we how do we explain this? Yeah I mean there are two things. Defend yourself. Yeah as speaking for the industry. Defend the whole industry. I should have worn a suit or a t-shirt. Two things I would say you know first

when the Bitcoin ETF launched, Bitcoin's price went from 50 to 40 in the first few weeks. And everyone said, these ETFs are a bust, you know, this was overblown. That might have been me. Everyone. I need one of those buttons. There it is. I did it.

And then, you know, it turned out, no, that was wrong. They're the most successful ETF launch of all time. They pulled in $17 billion. The price went to a new all-time high. And the money stayed. And the money stayed through thick and thin. And continued to come in. We had inflows in Q2.

We've had inflows in July. So there's part of that, which is like a sell the news event. And then the other thing is, you have to, there's ETH-E, which is the Grayscale Trust. Grayscale is a great company, but ETH-E, which is the Grayscale Trust. Grayscale is a great company, but ETH-E has a two and a half percent expense ratio. And so a lot of money is flowing out. So over these first two days, the new eight ETFs have had very significant inflows. I think they're getting close to, not yet, but close to a billion dollars. But there have been net outflows from the category because some of that money came out. So we saw that with Bitcoin where a lot of new money came in, but also there was movement

finally out of Grayscale now that it was a free trading ETF, which went to the other ETF providers. Maybe some of it came out to do something else, but for the most part. So does this look exactly like that? It looks exactly like that. Some of it comes out to pay taxes, right, on accumulated gains and then some of it moves into the other space. But the important difference is one is a one-time event. The grayscale money will exit and find equilibrium. The other inflows into these

ETFs, I think, is going to be an ongoing story for multiple years. So, you know, when moon, I think you look- Next week, you promise? No, but I do think by the end of the year- Will you personally guarantee- So Matt, GBTC, the story was, there was a lot of money that was playing for the compression between the discount and NAV when the ETF launched.

You got that and there's really no reason to stick around. That trade worked. Yeah. It worked beautifully, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the most obvious trade on earth. It was purely a legislation play, or not like a government says yes,

and you make that spread. It was so obvious I didn't do it. You didn't do it, did you? No, I didn't do it. I don't do stuff like that. But was ETH a similar thing? Same thing, yeah. Traded a discount and people were arping that,

and then the discount's gone away, right? I would imagine a lot of the discount went away after the Bitcoin approval. It shrunk substantially and for the last like few weeks there's been very little discount in ETH pre ETF but I still think it takes time for people to to exit out of the trade. Here's something interesting I'm curious about. To this day, I believe you cannot buy the Bitcoin or the ETH ETF with Bitcoin or ETH. There's no in kind.

There's no in kind. That is right. That's really ironic. Isn't it ironic? Well, I mean, cash works well as a way to acquire it. It's a little ironic. I'm just saying, so what is it about the prospect of people being able to move coins into and

out of ETFs? Yeah, that's one of the whole things about ETFs is the in-kind. So, in-kind is important for other asset classes. Why won't they let this happen? Because the SEC has certain concerns, which we can dig into. I mean, they're basically that they don't know what would happen about allowing broker dealers to touch Bitcoin. So broker dealers are not currently allowed

to touch Bitcoin, which you would need to do the in-kind transaction. But it works well with cash, and it's just as tax efficient, which is something that few people understand. In the case of these ETFs, it's a tax efficient mechanism. Okay, but so if you're a big shareholder in one of these grayscale things,

and you want money out, you have to take it in cash. You have to take it in cash. That's the point that I was driving at. What do you think are the big fundamental drivers of ETH? I think we've all settled on this idea that Bitcoin sort of kind of becomes correlated with tech. Sometimes it's correlated with gold. Sometimes it rallies on great inflation data and sometimes it route because they think

interest rate cuts are coming. And then sometimes it rallies when we're afraid of inflation because it's a hedge. So I think we've all agreed that it's based on nothing. Does ETH have a fundamental driver that you could point to that makes sense from like in a narrative way? I can push back on Bitcoin in a minute. I mean, you could try, but I could prove you wrong. No, I could prove you wrong.

I got the receipts and the data. This guy came into my house. How many charts you got? All right, no, push back on Bitcoin, please. You want me to push back on Bitcoin? Believe it or not, I don't know everything. Okay, I think it is a perfect hedge against inflation. Oh, come on.

Here's my argument. Other than when there was actual inflation in 2022. Here's my argument, no, no, no. Hold on, let me give you the data. Oh. It bottomed. I feel like I'm wading into something here. But no, here's my, here's, you can pull up the data.

It bottomed at the start of COVID, right? It hit like 3,000, 3,500. So did everything. So did everything 3,000, 3,500. So did everything. So did everything. Panic sell hit 3,500. It then went straight up between March of the start of COVID and November of 2021, straight up to a new all-time high, 6,800.

Matt, there was no inflation. Hold on. Okay. It smelled it, Josh. Hold on. What happened in November? What happened within two days of it topping? Was the Fed released the minutes from its meeting where it first said that the inflation was not transitory and it was going to begin

Pulling in rates and they started doing that in January So Bitcoin top ticked the exact moment the Fed realized that this inflation was here to stay and it had to get its act So it did all its hedging but before before? Before, before. Get out of. No, CPI's backward looking. It hedged. I understand, but you're making a case that it did hedge, but it did all its hedging in the 12 month period prior to the inflation actually showing up. It hedged against the risk of runaway inflation,

and once that risk was contained, it pulled back. That's what the data shows. Rob, we're going to allow this? I just, I don't? I can't even start. Be that as it may, does Ethereum have fundamental drivers like volume or how much usage there is on certain networks or what would you point to for somebody that's like, okay, I get what it does, what's the investment case for,

what would make it go up? Yeah, sure. Every time you use an application, you have to pay a fee in Ethereum. So when you use Uniswap, you pay a fee in Ethereum. Ethereum did about- These are gas fees. Yeah, gas fees. Did about 2.6 billion in revenue last year. Where does the revenue go? The stakers? It buys back ETH. So the ETH that is paid- Yeah, it retires the existing- Is destroyed. The same way a company makes

profits and buys back stock, and so the float shrinks. I love this aspect of it, by the way. It's recognizable to me. It looks like a share buyback. It is a share buyback, and you can run DCF on it, et cetera, right? So ETH, as people use it more, they buy back more ETH,

and the float reduces over time. Which should boost the price if there's an equivalent amount of demand. Even if there's consistent demand and you have a shrinking float, it should boost the price. So there is a fundamental driver of ETH, which is not true of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, there is no fundamental that you can point to.

Well, yesterday was an interesting day, and I know it was just one day, but large tech got killed yesterday, and surprisingly, Bitcoin was green a lot of the day. You don't see that too often. Yeah, I think large yeah, I think, I think large cap got killed for very specific reasons. When I think about a crypto asset,

I think about three drivers. It's driven by three things, driven by macro forces, driven by crypto industry forces, and then asset specific forces. So if you look at like Bitcoin, what's going on in macro, you know, the feds moving towards cutting rates. So that's positive. What's going on in crypto, politicians know, the Fed's moving towards cutting rates, so that's positive. What's going on in crypto?

Politicians are embracing it, that's positive. And then what's going on in Bitcoin itself flows into the ETF. All those are good. The reason it didn't pull back yesterday is there was nothing about those three things that was impacted. When it's highly correlated is when this macro thing

is what's tugging stocks and Bitcoin together, and it overshadows these crypto. You think Bitcoin could ever be a risk-off asset like for real for more than a day? Well, what do you mean by a risk-off asset? Like the end. Will people buy it when a negative event happens? That's hard to imagine. But you never know. I mean, in the future, in the future, if the US adopts it as a strategic reserve asset.

Complete this sentence. We have a PCE report at the end of this week. This is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation. Yep. I'm going to give you the sentence. This morning, PCE came in cooler than expected and prices of Bitcoin blank. Went up modestly. Okay. Yeah.

You feel good, like you feel strongly that that's how it will react If there's if there's no bitcoin or crypto specific hedge though in this case You guys are trying I love you I love you but I can't get there with you I can't get there with you in this case. It's it's a complex asset. There's no single in this case It is looking forward to like all risk assets, rates coming down. And so that would indicate rates are coming down. That should be modestly positive.

Okay, back to gas fees. One of the critiques of ETH as a quote unquote, decentralized asset is that the Ethereum Foundation has the power to make rule changes to how the token works. Is it a coin? What do I call it? Cryptoasset. Token works. Cryptoasset. In a way that Bitcoin, anyone that was quote-unquote powerful in Bitcoin has long ago lost any kind of control. That's now, the ship has now sailed. I still think the Ethereum foundation is too

centrally powerful for the SEC and other maybe banking regulators to look at this and say, it's not a company. We're talking about share buybacks and they have made changes to gas fees and they've made change. So if the foundation has that ability, are they kind of like a quasi corporation and therefore is this not really decentralized? So they don't have unilateral ability to make those changes. That has to be decided upon by the network, which if they don't like proposed changes

could fork the network and that's happened in the past. So they don't have, what they have is a center of influence. The thing about decentralization is there is a spectrum. It's not like you're decentralized or you're not decentralized. You're more decentralized or you're less decentralized. Bitcoin is extremely decentralized. Ethereum is relatively decentralized. Solana, the third largest asset, is more centralized.

Other assets are even more centralized than that. Who controls Solana? Mark Andreessen? Effectively, with his tweets? Okay, I'm just kidding. All right, so this is on the spectrum and it's not quite Bitcoin. Yeah, my guess is it's on the side of not being a security. There's no informational advantage that insiders have, which is what securities law is about, that really affects the future of ETH. They have influence, but they don't have control. So I would guess it's on the

side of not a security. There are plenty of crypto assets that probably are securities. But what would be great is if we knew, like if we knew for sure that- Right. Tell us, tell us specifically and where the line is drawn. We don't have Satoshi Nakamoto, unfortunately, or maybe we do, we don't know. But we do have Vitalik. And from my perspective as a crypto outsider, he seems to be the most interesting figure amongst all the various characters and people because he shit talks his own asset all the time. And I think he dumped all his ETH or claims that he did.

He still has some ETH. But he's like very enigmatic in some way, but then he's constantly talking. So what are we to make of the creator of ETH? Does he still matter? Does what he says matter? Is that a risk to the acid class? What are your thoughts about that? Yeah, I mean, what he says matters,

but it doesn't control, right? It's like you let your kids go off and make their own lives, but you still have influence over them, and you still get to say things about what they're doing. But so he helped create Ethereum with other people, and now it's owned by the community, which is deciding what to do with it. But he's thought about it a lot,

so the community still listens to what he says. And the beauty of him talking objectively about it, about its good things and bad things, is it helps the industry move in the right direction. He can't be kidnapped and forced to divulge how this could be hacked. It's not like that. No, it's sufficiently decentralized that it's controlled not by him, not by the foundation, but by the community.

It is a decentralized vote. So the community has votes based on the number of ETH they have? How does that work? On how they decentralized vote. So the community, what, has votes based on the number of ETH they have? How does that work? On how they're maintaining nodes in the network, yeah. So if you're an active participant on the network, you have the ability to either go along with the consensus or fork out. The more people fork out, I guess, the weaker this gets or not necessarily. Anyone can fork off and create their own version of the Ethereum blockchain.

It's open source code, right? And so we've seen Ethereum Classic is a fork of ETH, right? That didn't like ETH's decision to restore the blockchain to a previous point in time. They thought code should be law. They forked off. They're doing their own thing. So anyone can do that. There was a hack.

There was a hack and the community decided we're gonna undo that. That's right. And that is not code is law. That is right. That's community is law. And then the other people who thought code was law said we don't like that. We're creating our own version of it.

Those are the real hardcore. Yeah, you know. Okay. Mazel Tov, let them go. So what does Vitalik think of your ETF? I don't know. All of the ETFs. Like, what does he think of the concept of retail investors being able to buy into these networks via retail brokerage firms?

Look, I think anyone who wants crypto to scale knows that ETFs and institutional ownership are going to be part of the puzzle. There's nothing about an ETF that interferes with the core offering of Bitcoin or the core offering of blockchain. And our ETF tries to do good for the system. We donate 10% of our profits back to Ethereum core developers. We publish our ETH addresses. So hopefully he likes it.

But if you want crypto to have a major force in the world, you can't imagine it without having professional investors owning it and they want to own it in an ETF. Can you talk about the SEC's decision to not allow you guys to stake the ETH? What's that about? Yeah, there are probably two avenues to that. So one is the SEC likes to crawl, walk, and run. And so just getting an ETF is a big step. And staking would be an additional step, additional risk, additional disclosures, etc. There's also a view that the SEC hasn't determined if staking ETH makes it a security or not.

If it transforms the asset into a security, there's a little bit of uncertainty around that. But I don't think it's that big a deal. If you look at Ethereum that's held natively by crypto and crypto natives, two thirds of it's not staked. You know, a lot of people just want to hold ETH for the price appreciation. The non crypto people staked is putting the putting the ETH somewhere where someone can utilize it to create some sort of yield, which would ultimately come back to your ETF shareholders. Yes, that is right. So you can earn like a 3% yield by staking your ETH,

and ETFs can't do that in the US. They can do that internationally, and eventually I think we'll be able to do it here in the US. So you might have a dividend. I don't know if you'd call it a dividend, a distribution. Yeah, you might have a distribution or you might just increase the NAV. You might roll it into the NAV. Um, you know, and long-term look, I think these ETFs will do it. Staking is an important part of supporting the Ethereum ecosystem, but we shouldn't overlook that this gives you exposure to the beta and you know, the

market's up 1500% in five years would a few extra percent be nice yes of course but that's much better than not having exposure at all Trump he's gonna be the keynote speaker at a big a big crypto event again this would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago I think he called it a scam so did everyone else else. So, you know, he's in good company. What's he gonna say? I am kind of curious. Yeah. Oh my God.

Beautiful bitcoins. He's gonna say some uproarious stuff. I can't wait to watch. Yeah, it's gonna be fun to watch. I mean, look, the Republicans put Bitcoin into their platform. So we know a few things that they're gonna say. You have the right to self-sovereignly hold Bitcoin.

We're not gonna launch a CBTC, you can mine Bitcoin in the US, and we're going to end or they're going to end Operation Choke Point 2.0, which was this effort to wall off the crypto industry from banking services, which is a very real thing that happened. It is a very real thing that happened. We have some stories to tell about that, but that was a very real sort of extra legal administrative state function. Do you have an opinion on why the Biden administration specifically, but Democrats in general, have come to be seen as so hostile to decentralized crypto assets. Republicans were just as hostile, but now they see the opportunity

and how many people are passionate about this. Is that all it is? And Democrats are moving that way as well. Like a crypto bill just got 71 votes in the House. Of course, not surprised. Yeah, so it's moving in that direction. I think there's parts of the Democratic Party that have become overtly hostile to

tech writ large, crypto fits within that. And then there's parts that are worried about control and crypto sort of takes away from that control. But ultimately, I think Washington is moving in a pro crypto direction. Well, let me ask you this. Does crypto compete against the US dollar ultimately? No, not at all. Does gold compete against the US dollar ultimately? No, not at all. Does gold compete against the US dollar? I don't think gold competes against the US dollar. So does Bitcoin compete against the US dollar?

I don't think so. Maybe eventually. Is it not the goal of crypto enthusiasts? So it depends on which crypto enthusiasts you would talk to. If you speak, if I just speak for myself, the role I think it will play in the US dollar, there's one area where it competes and one area where it helps.

Where it helps is it provides an alternative which will help hopefully guide the US to not do crazy stuff with the dollar, not abuse it from a quantitative easing perspective, not overinflate. If you have an alternative parallel system that people can opt to, you may be able to stay on the rails. But this is the whole pitch of Bitcoin and how is it not in opposition with the US dollar? It was all about we're abusing the dollar, we're inflating it away, we're printing like out of control, dump your dollars and buy bitcoin. It's against the US dollar if the dollar is abused.

So you're saying it's like a good behavior enforcement mechanism. That is exactly right. The place where I do think it will compete with the dollar is in international settlement eventually. I imagine we're moving toward a multipolar world. I can imagine a world where two countries want to settle transactions in a non-political currency. There's only one that's viable. What is it?

It's Bitcoin, right? There's no other apolitical currency. What are you going to use? So Bitcoin, I could imagine playing a role there. It's a little bit competitive, but mostly I think it's a good behavior enforcer. Playing devil's advocate, a democratic politician might listen

to what your answer was and say, that's exactly why we can't have this. Can't have a situation where we sanction Russia and they start selling barrels of oil denominated in Bitcoin to North Korea and to China. So I get why it will be helpful internationally, but I also get why there would be some reticence. Which would be fine if the world would agree on banning Bitcoin, but if it's just the US doing, you know, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, it's still going to-

Well, China banned it. That's the second largest economy in the world, soon to be the largest. And they've loosened up that ban. you know, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. It's still going to- Well, China banned it. That's the second largest economy in the world, soon to be the largest. And they've loosened up that ban. But yeah, I agree. It could be. It's a challenge to state currencies. There's no doubt about that.

And that's a risk. There are lots of risks in crypto. That's a risk. I would add that there's another side to that, which is if regulation gets behind Bitcoin and crypto, that's a catalyst. But it is for sure a risk. Where does ETH trade today? 3100.

How much? 3114. Okay, Eric Balchunas wrote you up and said that you predicted ETH's price will soar. Oh, by the way, can we clear this up? ETH or Ether are the coins themselves. Ethereum is the network. That's right.

Okay, Hogan predicts ETH price will soar past its current all time high to above $5,000 US before the end of 2024. What makes you so confident that that will happen? Strong ETF inflows, no net new supply. There's no ETH being issued on a net basis. And the positive regulatory trends in Washington, plus the embrace we're seeing of the Ethereum network

by people like BlackRock. I think when you add those together, it's one of the best setups I've ever seen. So your ETF is one to one. If somebody believes that and they buy the Bitwise ETH ETF, that's the result that they'll get if it works. If it works, if I'm right. Of course.

Anything can happen. Why don't we get off 24-7 trading with these ETFs? Oh, we should already, right? I mean, it's ridiculous. I don't know. I mean, this is one of the reasons not to buy the ETF. If you want it, like, because if ETH is dumping and you see it as an opportunity on Sunday at eight o'clock,

you have to wait until they open. I agree, yeah. There's an irony of running an ETF in the crypto market. It just points out how ridiculous the traditional market is. I mean, we've run ads about how ridiculous it is. You've certainly made a name for yourself in the crypto ecosystem, but your roots

are in ETFs and stock ETFs. And let's do some stock stuff. Wait, hold on, hold on. Before we get there, John, chart one, three. This is wild. So iBit, which is BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, has had more inflows in 2024 than the Nasdaq 100, than the Qs.

This is incredible. 19 billion versus 18 billion? And when you consider the year that the Qs have had, it makes it even more remarkable. Yeah, it's incredible. People want to have exposure to this asset. Look, it's the best-performing asset in the world over the last three, five, 10, 15 years.

People want exposure, and they're starting from zero. But yeah, it's remarkable. There have been 5,500 ETFs launched. This is the fastest growing ever. That's an incredible fact. Okay, we are leaving crypto land. Can you guys do one of those transitions where it's like a harp like, yes? Gabi on that? Okay.

Savita Subramanian, I think I could say friend of the show. She's never been on the show, but definitely, definitely a friend of the show. We love her. At Bank of America. Savita says, US stocks are expensive on 19 of 20 valuation metrics. The 20th is the only one that matters. That sounds bad. John, can you put this table up? So, just for the listener, trailing P.E., trailing gap P.E., forward consensus P.E.,

trailing normalized P.E., median forward P.E., Shiller P.E., price to book, enterprise value to EBITDA, on and on and on and on and on. In gold terms, in crude oil terms, no matter how you look at it, stocks are historically expensive. The only measure that they're not, what is this? Equity risk premium. Equity risk premium market-based. Guess what? Guess what?

This probably would have been the same thing every, for the last 10 years. Stocks have been expensive. That's what I was going to say. I would like to see these numbers over the last. This many measures. Probably not. Probably not. But when you compare stocks today, we've done this topic a billion times.

Stocks have been getting more expensive since the 1980s for good reason. Well, let's put those reasons up. Next chart, please. So Savita is awesome. So, she basically, after going through all 19 of those indicators, she says premium in part is justified by mix shift, lower leverage, et cetera. She's got a couple of charts here explaining

why it's acceptable that stocks are more expensive relative to history. And here on the bottom, we'll start from the bottom, earnings per share volatility is structurally lower. And the 2023 earnings per share recession, we had an earnings recession last year, the smallest since the 70s and 80s. So companies are better at being companies.

Is that the right way to say that? Definitely. Okay, so profits are not as volatile as they used to be. The top one, 50% of index is now asset light companies versus only 15% in 1980. Manufacturing is less than 20% of the index today. Well, exactly Josh. It was 66% in 1980.

To that point, companies are able to better leverage technology to preserve their margins and act very swiftly. If you were running factories back then, you just can't turn them on and off. You could do that today with data. Yeah, that's right. One more factor here.

Leverage is back to 1980s levels. So they're showing S&P 500 pulling out the financials, net debt to equity from 1986 to now. And what you could see is we had this huge leverage spike in the 2000s after they dropped interest rates to zero to recover from 9-11. Everybody went nuts with leverage. Everybody bought four houses. That's just not the case right now.

There's a little bit of leverage in the system, but it's historically low. Yeah, it looks relatively healthy. So shout to Savita, and if you guys want to actually see those charts for yourself, of course, you can check out the YouTube video. What's this next one? John, let's skip a second. Show chart 2.5, the rolling 11-day change

of IWM Russell 2000 and the Nasdaq 100. Over the last 11 days since we had the inflation softening meaningfully, you've had this insane run of outperformance from small caps over large tech. It's like almost 20% of the last 11 days. And to see something like this, you have to go back to the dot com bubble bursting. So a historic, truly historic run of the last week and a half. You know what I would say that's really notable about this? In 2000, you needed the NASDAQ, large caps on the NASDAQ,

to fall like 90% to produce this result. I was looking at the fang stocks like today. They're down, but like they're not down. NVIDIA is down. Apple's actually like up. NVIDIA was down, had a 20% drawdown. But the reason why this happened, let's throw up some of these charts from Bank of America.

Oh no, I'm sorry. This is from JP Morgan, Michael Sanblas, my bad. Why have Russell 2000 stocks underperformed, and why are they a beneficiary of rates peaking out? So they look at the free cash flow margin of the S&P 500 versus small caps. And the free cash flow margin of the S&P 500 versus small caps and the free cash flow margin has just trounced it on large caps versus small caps. You look at the return on invested capital, same story.

You look at companies with negative earnings by size and almost no large cap companies are losing money. It's like 5% of companies. You look at the most of 2000, it's 45% of the index. And so these companies are heavily reliant on external financing, debt, and when you look at fixed versus floating, almost all of the S&P 500's debt is fixed.

So they were not punished at all by rates going up. In fact, I saw a crazy stat that Google earned a billion dollars on their cash recently earned a billion dollars on their cash recently a billion dollars on their cash so of the Russell 2000 almost half of their Debt is floating and so if you get some relief from rates coming down That is going to have potentially a he be a huge tailwind for these names hence the big Divergence we've seen over the last week and a half. What percentage of your personal portfolio is in small caps? Any? Very little.

Very little. Yeah. Because they've shrunk or you just don't care about it? I just don't think, I mean, most of my money's in, you know, all market portfolios. So whatever that shrinking percentage is. So that's going to go up and down within those portfolios. Yeah, I'm a really boring investor. Fair enough.

Let's do this small caps expected to grow earnings. I like this chart because it gives you some hope that this could continue for, I think it's the next one or you want to do this one? So Bank of America is showing that earnings for the Russell 2000, I'm sorry, the S&P 600 are expected to grow by more than 25% by the second quarter of next year. That sounds really good. Yeah.

That's... How much of the small cap index is financials? Of the value, it's a third. The biggest sector in the Russell 2000 is our industrials. I think financials are top three. Biggest in market cap or in number of stocks? Market cap. Okay, got it.

Look, this is a notable story because, and I said this today on CNBC, this is one of those weeks where people have an aha moment. Like, oh, that's why people say diversify. Because it made no sense to be diversified in the first half of this year. For what? Like, why would anyone want to own anything

other than the S&P 50? It seems like a waste of time. Oh, this is why. But I like when we have those moments, because it's a great opportunity to go back to basics. And it's like, look, don't expect this to happen every two week period after CPI is announced, but this is the risk to large caps that all of a sudden they get used as a source of cash

and the money gets distributed to other stocks. Like, what other stocks? I've never heard of all these companies. Right? Because we don't really talk about them at all. But I think this was really great for the markets to have this happen. You know what else is hot these days?

Underconsumption. You know about this trend? What's underconsumption? This is not a trend. I don't even know what you're talking about, but this is not a trend. Who's underconsuming? Duncan, are you underconsuming? No. Conspicuously underconsuming.

What? Yeah, that's what's up. Fork off. That's what all the young people are doing now. Okay, listen. And influencers raison d'être is influencing their followers to buy stuff, usually on behalf of a paying sponsor. That's why it's so surprising that, quote, under consumption core, an increasingly popular

trend in which people boast their underspending has emerged as a rebuttal to influence her culture. All right. So basically on TikTok, this is taking off. People are showing non-name brand things to prove that they can't be influenced. I don't know. This is like another form of raw dogging. I think this is fire.

I kind of like, I kind of like this until you look at some of the pictures and it doesn't look so hot. I kind of like this. Until you look at some of the pictures, and it doesn't look so hot. TikTok has turned almost everything into an opportunity for consumerism. Even going for a walk is a shopping experience. But on that same platform, the hashtag under consumption has proliferated, boasting over 5,000 posts in which minimalists... I'm sorry, come on. Nicole, is this a thing?

No, there's no way this is a thing. She's nodding her head, yes? But she's wearing today a plain black dress, no jewelry. She's the under consumption queen. Nicole, is under consumption brat this summer or not? Yes. OK. Oh, wow.

That's official. There you go. I stand corrected. How about that? That's official. Anyway, you think this is a reaction to inflation? These are young people that are just getting demolished by high prices. They don't own any assets.

Oh, wow. That's an interesting take. I don't know. That's what I wanted to ask. You think that's right? Yeah. I think it's a backlash to just how much everything costs now. And they're like, you know what?

Name brand shit is not cool. This is what's cool. Look how little I buy. Oh, by the way, Nicole, honestly, I'm not even joking around. That's the example of the girl. You're literally dressed identically to her and you're very stylish, so I know you're part of this under consumption core. Can we put that on screen from the article?

Not right this second, but like, all right. All right. I just want I want to throw that by you um in economic news on Wall Street they're cutting the paid internships are you surprised by that they're cutting the paid internships on Wall Street yes why I know anecdotally I know a lot of young people or I know the parents of young people I should say I don't know the young people it's very very hard this summer to get an internship. And a lot of people just didn't. And I don't know if

this is like the canary in the coal mine for employment in general. Let me share this with you. This is New York Post. Wall Street banks and other major companies have cut back on paid summer internships as businesses slash costs, intensifying the competition for the few plum jobs available. Remember last summer where they said Citadel was flying people to all these locations to go through these competitions and giving people like $200,000 to intern?

I'm surprised it took this long. That's not happening now. Having an intern is work for the employer. It's a pain in the butt. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I thought it was a bigger trend, people complaining about entitled young workers and that sort of thing.

Goldman Sachs hired 200 fewer summer analysts this year than in 23. JP Morgan cut its summer analyst class by 600, or more than 10%. Elon Musk's Tesla slashed a major chunk of the usual 6,000 summer intern. Tesla had 6,000 summer interns. That's crazy.

What, were they building the pyramids?,000 summer interns. That's crazy. What, were they building the pyramids? What? That is crazy. That sounds like a canary, I believe it. All right, so this drastic change comes after hedge funds like Citadel paid a select crop of interns 20,000 a month to participate

in an 11 week math bootcamp. So this is going hard the other way now. Do you think it's an AI thing? Are they using AI to replace what these interns used to do? Yeah, that's a good thing. Why not? Yeah. Why wouldn't they? This could be showing that's that's gonna happen. Let me see what else is in here. Zip Recruiter said postings for white-collar internships fell 14% since last summer. Indeed said internships fell 17%. So this is like a real thing.

Yeah, I think it's an AI thing. I think they were using them for labor and now they don't need as many. Well they definitely used them as Excel monkeys. That's what I mean. Or respond to my emails while I'm in Montauk. I mean that's definitely. Totally, I agree with that.

Do you think, so we got a good GDP number, but do you think there are signs in the economy that like we've seen as good as it's going to get for the cycle and now it's about managing the way down? How do you feel, broadly speaking? I think the economy is kind of okay. I don't feel worried about it, but I don't feel excited about it. I think, you know, this period of time before an election is an uncertainty period.

It's usually not a good period for the markets. And I think the, so I think it's okay. I think it will be dependent on what happens in November and what the, what the, you know, 100 day agenda is to see if we're, you know, up, down, sideways. Now how many paid interns will Bitwise commit to hiring right now? All I have. Six thousand above and below. I guess there's six thousand that are available. So we'll look at it. will Bitwise commit to hiring right now? I guess there's 6,000 that are available, so we'll look at it.

Can you tell us about Bitwise, the company itself, the people that you work with? You guys have an incredible reputation both within crypto but also outside of crypto because so many people know you. Tell us about the company. Yeah, sure. We're seven years old. We manage about $4.5 billion. We're 65 people. All right, all right. It's a mix of people from tech and people from Wall Street. So, you know, the Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan's of the world and the Googles and Facebook, which, you know,

crypto is both a technology and an asset. So we mushed that together, you know, split between the coasts, but I think- Who do you like working with better? The tech people or the financial people? Oh, that's interesting. Like, who do you vibe with more you like working with better? The tech people or the financial people? Oh, that's interesting. Like who do you vibe with more? Who's more annoying?

Or who's easier to work with? Oh, we got, I'm going to take the easy way out. We have such a great team. Oh, of course you do. We have a great team. They're an incredible group of founders and executives and team members. I'm talking to Howie next week.

There you go. He'll tell you. We're pretty unique. We have a full sales team that's rare in crypto. You close any business? You meet with institutions? Do you do any of that kind of stuff? Every day.

Every day. I mean, Bitwise does 20,000 meetings with financial professionals a year. So I don't know if you know this, but you're sitting across from a whale right now. Michael oversees our client's crypto portfolio. Convince him, if you could. He's got separately managed accounts. It's ETH and it's Bitcoin only, right? Okay. So I think we're 60% Bitcoin, 40% ETH. I'm sure the prices have moved. That's our version of an index but we own it directly. We have a third-party software platform to help us manage it.

And we're cut, where are we custodied? Gemini. Gemini, okay. So we're a custody to Gemini. And then there's a third party sitting in the middle that helps us with the trading that we do. And then that's the story. And we really haven't made any changes to allocations

or anything like that. Pitch Michael on why that should, and it's billions of dollars, why that should be moved to 60% bitwise Bitcoin ETF, 40% bitwise ETH ETF, now that both are available and we could buy them right at our custodians. Yeah, well, Michael, it'll, you know how easy ETFs are used.

And beyond that, you're dealing with a product that has a 20 basis point fee for each of them and for which the trading of Bitcoin and ETH is done by people who have been trading in this market for seven years and work with six or seven different market makers to get the best available price. So from a cost perspective, a security perspective, a custody perspective, and a trading and execution perspective, it's pretty world class across the board. Michael, do you have an objection? It's a scam.

Oh, come on. Oh, wow. Come on. No, no, no. Listen, I get the pitch, and I love that it's been unlocked for advisors and people that have been on the side for a long time. And listen, proof is in the pudding.

You could be a crypto skeptic, hater, have no opinion on it, but people want it and the flows speak for themselves. Like I said, more money into just iBit, then the queue is remarkable. So clearly there's been a massive unlock. But pulling us out of the equation, you're going to sit with RIAs all over the country. If the conversation is, I want to own the coins themselves at Gemini or Coinbase versus, no, actually, you should own the ETFs.

Like, how does that conversation normally go? So we offer both. We offer both. So it's up to the end customer. So you have SMAs that sit at third party. Yeah, absolutely. It used Gemini as a starting end. How do you guide someone that doesn't know

what's best for them? Well, it depends on how much they care about self-sovereignly holding those coins. third party. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. It used Gemini. How do you guide someone that doesn't know what's best for them? Well, it depends on how much they care about self-sovereignly holding those coins. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Then the ETFs are just simply the cheapest way you can buy crypto in today's market with that level of protections and audit from KPMG and all of those things administration for the bank in New York at 20 basis points you would have to be Maybe you couldn't even you could be the largest crypto investor in the world. At 20 basis points, you would have to be, maybe you couldn't even, you could be the largest crypto investor in the world. I would challenge you to get institutional level custody, trading, audit, administration. At 20 bips.

At 20 bips a year. It's pretty great. It's pretty incredible. Let me answer this. So say we're not saying we're an RA, we manage six different model portfolios. And what I'm not interested in is having, okay, this model with a 2% Bitcoin sleeve and a 2% ETH sleeve, or this model with a 3% and 1%. So with that said,

are you seeing advisors integrate the ETH and the Bitcoin ETF into their model portfolios, or are they running this as a separate account for the client? Yeah, we see both. We're starting to see people put them into the models, is what I would say. I just feel like that could just balloon,

and now I have 74 different models. Yeah, well, usually, I mean, usually what we see is advisors doing it for one or two clients who are asking for it. And then they do it for 10 clients and then they put it into the model at a 2.5% rate. That's what we see. Yeah.

What's adoption look like? I mean, I know the ETH thing just came out Monday, but just generally between advisors and retail and hedge fund I assume or institutional I assume it's like retail leading Institutional just behind and then RAAs or wealth management probably in third place I mean so we know from 13 F's right and it was 75% retail, give or take, 25% other investors. Okay, not surprised by that. In that hedge funds were a significant piece,

advisors were a significant piece, family offices were a significant piece, institutional, true institutional was still very small. And brokers are zero because it hasn't been approved yet at Morgan Stanley, et cetera. But still, even I would note, even if you remove that 75% and look just at the 25%, it's still the largest ETF launch of all time. So professionals are buying it as well.

When do you think the wirehouses of the world say, okay, you can go? Yeah. Big point 100,000. Late Q3, early Q4. Oh, that's coming now. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Now they'll let you buy it, but they don't recommend it. That's

right. Yeah. So more like more. I think Morgan Stanley is like it's BYO. It's called unsolicited. Yeah, versus solicited and solicited means that they can want it to be in the portfolio and talk to clients. That's the big like the CIO could say this is now a 1% allocation sleeve. They can have a house view. I think Bitcoin will go to six figures when that becomes a sleeve at Merrill Lynch or something. You could see that, right?

I, from your lips, I think that's true. He's had that in my career. Exactly. Do you have any active, do you have any active filings for new funds in front of the SEC right now? Do we have any active filings for new funds? No. I saw a filing yesterday for part Bitcoin, part ETH. That's coming, right?

Yes. Yeah, you'll get diversified blends. Oh, so then you don't need two ETFs, just one. Then you just need one ETF. If you like the rebalance rules. That is correct, yeah. So we're looking at that space. Stay on him.

I'm telling you, you're going to knock him down eventually. Stay on him. The cost alone, I'd love to go head to head on the cost. Listen, I have been one of the more... Send him a tote bag. I've seen the way he makes decisions. Just put a sales guy on this. We can talk about the index strategy in an SMA too.

That's something we love to do. I want to ask you, if you had to bet, maybe you are making this bet, what is the third accepted ETF digital asset? Is it Solana or is it something people would be surprised about? I think it's probably Solana. What's even number four?

Well, XRP, people talk about XRP. Doge, doge, for the loss. By the way, I'm sure you get this. I do think it's going to be Solana. For the SMA, the ability to tax loss harvest is really nice. Tax loss harvesting is really great. Ownership of coins directly is really great.

It's just more unwieldy and more costly. And a lot of our SMAs are in our index products. Some people don't want to just stick on Bitcoin and eat. They want to own Solana and everything else. We've been running that index strategy for seven years. Are you at the major custodians with the SMA? Yeah. You're at Fidelity.

Yeah. That's great. Yeah. OK. Yeah. And those are successful. It's a big part of our business. It took a lot of guts to do what you did.

I can't believe you did it. I want to tell you that. You should have heard what he was saying when you did this. No. Listen, so you had this really successful career in ETFs, you became fascinated by crypto and digital assets, and you said, if I take what I know about ETFs and funds and advisors and retail investors,

and I marry that with this new exciting realm, I could build an all new company. And I'm sure other people had that idea, but you're the guy that actually did it. And I just think it's so impressive. You took a leap. Congratulations. And you did it from Maine, which is so impressive. I think it's awesome, dude. Are you having more?

I appreciate that. You must be having more fun now than ever before. It's so much fun. Every day is fun. It's so exciting, so much to learn. It's great. Matt Hogan, ladies and gentlemen. No relation to Hulk.

All right, so that was the warmup. I wanted you to just get a sense of what the show is like. I'm just kidding. We always close the show with favorites, and I know you listen. So we like to give the viewers something that they should be watching, reading, listening to, thinking about. Have you come prepared with a favorite for the audience today?

Watching, listening. I just saw Fly Me to the Moon. You're the one. Yeah, I'm the one. Wait, you saw it in a theater? I saw it in a theater. Well, I will say I saw it in the greatest theater in America. So there's a favorite for you. Say more.

There's a place in Bar Harbor called Real Pizza, which serves high quality pizza and beer. R-E-E-L. That's right. Exactly. And virtually any movie that you watch there is pretty great. So I'll give a favorite to Real Pizza, the institution. Shout out to Real Pizza.

And let's see, what's the, it's a great place. It's like an Alamo draft house kind of feel. I like stuff like that. We don't have anything like this near us. There was one in Park Slope where that, what was it called? I can't remember, whatever. We don't have like a cool place where it's not like pretzel nuggets. No, this is legit. It's good food. Local beers. It's pretty great.

Let's see what on the book side. How's the movie? Movie was pretty good. But you can watch... It's a Bond. Yeah. Wait, who's in this? Channing Tatum and Scar Joe.

Scar Joe. It's a romantic comedy? Yeah. It's alright. It's alright. It's alright. But you can watch anything at that movie theater and it's great, like what could be better? Let's see, on the book side, the last great book I read was All the Light You Cannot See by Anthony Dorr.

It was pretty great, it was a great novel. Okay. Outside of the business realm. What's the best restaurant in Maine? You got, if somebody says, somebody, I'm in Maine one night. I want to go to dinner with my family. Where do I go? Yeah, if you're in Portland, I would go to Four Street. Four Street's been there forever. It's an institution that's absolutely incredible.

There's some amazing restaurants up on islands, on like North Haven, Vinal Haven, but that's hard to get to. Like you take a ferry. I saw that stuff. Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal. But 4th Street in Portland. You can't miss it. Shout out to 4th Street. There you go. Michael, you have a favorite for us today?

I do. My favorite is I'm going to see Billy Joel tonight. Oh, wow. It's a Long Island legend. It's his last show at Madison Square Garden. Last show. You think it's really his last show though? It's his last residency show.

I'm sure he'll be back in a few years. Yeah. Have you ever seen Billy Joel live? Yeah. I only did once and I regret that I didn't see any of these show. I'm sure he'll be back in a few years. Yeah. Have you ever seen Billy Joel Live? Yeah. I only did once and I regret that I didn't see any of these MSG shows. Like I saw him like 30 years ago with Elton John.

Oh wow. Yeah, no I know. I should have, I feel like I should have taken the kids or something. This is like culturally really important for the Islanders. This is a big moment. I'm sure maybe Elton will come out tonight. Maybe Sir Paul. Somebody will.

I saw a clip of him playing an electric guitar, which I thought was pretty cool. Which he doesn't really do that, right? You saw that? I think he does. We didn't start the fire on guitar instead of on piano. So yeah. If this is last night, I would expect somebody really big to come out.

Like a Paul McCartney or somebody. Ron DeSantis. Alright. Yo. Ron DeSantis. Alright, Ron DeSantis. Shout out to Billy Joel who I consider to be the Bob Seeger of Long Island or the John Mellon Camp of Long Island. Oh, did you see?

I know that's like Bob Dylan, not Bob Seeger. Chalamet is playing Bob Dylan in a new one. Oh, I wanted to mention that. The trailer for the Bob Dylan movie. Thoughts? Did you see it? I haven't seen it. It's called A Complete Unknown. He's really good.

It's about early Dylan, how he gets discovered in the West Village. Oh, wow. And it looks amazing. And they use his music in the trailer. So you're just immediately like, I have to go. So Chalamet is everywhere these days. So hot.

He makes sense for this role though. He kind of has like the black curly hair and these little... Looks like he's wearing like a lot of makeup or maybe like prosthetics. Doesn't look like him at all. Who's the... Dakota Fanning is the girl in it, right? I feel like that's going to be a big movie. On the other end of the spectrum, did you watch The Land of Bad on Netflix yet? No.

So on your way back to Maine, this is the movie for you. Okay. It's Liam... what's the guy that plays Thor? Oh, I saw some Airplane. This is a lot of fun. Yeah, it's great. It's fun. What's the guy who plays Thor? It's the other Hemsworth.

The other Hemsworth. It's his brother. Luke. Is this the one that... I know Liam. Wait, is this the one that was married to Miley Cyrus? I don't know. It is. There's two Hemsworths in the movie. There's Luke and Liam.

Yeah, well they're both great. All right, but Russell Crowe is hysterical. He looks like he discovered Russell Stover's. I don't know how I want to phrase this. But it must be weird for him. Father to a murdered hoagie. This is a great airplane movie. Watch this on the flight home.

I'll watch it. Anyway, he's really... Russell Crowe is great in it, and the Hemsworth kid is great in it, and it's like super intense. Oh wow. And I want them to... I like the extraction.

I like all the action movies. Yeah, it's like extraction. I want them to make like one of these every month. They're coming. And I feel... Alright. Great job this week. John, Duncan, Rob, Graham, they're coming. And I feel, all right. Great job this week.

John, Duncan, Rob, Graham, Nicole, Daniel, who else? Everybody, Sean, we have some crew here. Guys, great job on all the shows this week and to the audience, thank you so much for watching, for listening, for all your faves and likes and tweets and retweets. We just appreciate everything you do so much to support us. I want you to follow Matt Hogan and you could do that on LinkedIn. It's linkedin.com slash Matthew dash Hogan. H O U G N.

So not like Hulk Hogan. Twitter, Matt underscore Hogan. And where else are you doing anything else? Those are the big places or over at the website, bitwiseinvestments.com. Bitwiseinvestments.com. Congratulations on everything you've built. We were so inspired by it and really glad to see

how much fun you're having, how much progress you guys are making. Shout out to Bitwise. All right, that's it from us this week. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you soon