The Pomp Podcast - #1536 Hunter Horsley & Matt Hougan | Did The Bitcoin ETF End The 4-Year Cycle?

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Hunter Horsley is the Founder & CEO of Bitwise Asset Management. Matt Hougan is the CIO of Bitwise Asset Management. This conversation was recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation we talk about bitcoin, what has changed since ETFs have been approved, why is buying the ETFs, Bitwise, private wealth, sovereign wealth funds, and is the 4-year bitcoin cycle over?=======================BitcoinIRA: Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Take 3 minutes to open your account & get connected to a team of IRA specialists that will guide you through every step of the process. Go to https://bitcoinira.com/pomp/ to earn up to $500 in rewards.=======================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should

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make the most of their Bitcoin while keeping it safe. Your Bitcoin stays safe in your vault, untouched, never lent out, and secured a global network of military-grade bunkers with cutting-edge security technology. Head to zapobank.com forward slash pomp to learn more. That's X-A-P-O-B-A-N-K dot com forward slash pomp. Go check out Zappobank today at zappobank.com slash pomp. All right, you guys have 10 billion, maybe more in assets under management.

You started seven, eight years ago. You did not have that. I think you started with zero, right? Um, probably the most excruciating process that I've watched where you guys have gone door to door to door for year after year after year. And you heard no, no, no, no. And then it seems like in the last 18 months, yes, a lot more. Yes. Okay. Explain what led to this change? Is it simply just like ETF gets approved, okay, we have to do this, or is there other things that have gone into it? Can I take a stab at it? Yeah, go for it.

Also, I just want to say it's great to be with all of you. I think in our industry, there's a strong community and Pomp is at the center of it. And so getting to be around so many people and obviously so many great speakers is a pleasure. And to see Scott, a very early Bitwise investor in the audience. It's a pleasure. So what happened? The analogy that comes to mind for me recently, and I'm already being long-winded with this answer, but if you think back to the early days of Facebook, if you can rewind your memory a little bit, before Facebook IPO'd, it was a thing that maybe you used or one of your friends used, and you heard about Facebook, and you heard about this crazy CEO who was some college dropout,

and it was a social phenomenon, but it wasn't an investment decision for you. You couldn't invest in Facebook stock. You didn't have to decide if $35 was a high price or a low price. And I think for a lot of investors and a lot of our clients, that's what Bitcoin felt like for a very long time. It's the social phenomenon. You had friends or family who were doing something with it, had some opinions about it, good, bad, whatever. And then the Bitcoin ETFs were like the IPO. Like when Facebook went public and was trading at $35 a share, and you could decide if that was the investment opportunity of a lifetime or a wildly overvalued, unprofitable startup. But suddenly it was something for you to consider about Facebook that you hadn't considered

before. And I think that the Bitcoin ETFs were that moment for a lot of investors who couldn't use the Coinbase app or invest any other way, the first time that they could really consider Bitcoin as part of the opportunity for them. So I think that that really fundamentally changed the set of audiences that could participate. Yeah. And I just add one more thing to that. I agree with that. First, I'd say you didn't say enough no's, Anthony. It's actually 10 on average. Our average client allocates after about 10 meetings. So it's a lot of no's before we get to a yes. That's a real statement. Sounds like a joke. The other thing that changed is we chopped off the left tail. I think the percentage of the real reason people didn't invest before the

ETF, before the election was this thing in the back of their mind that said this thing might go to zero. And investors are comfortable with investments that go up and down. They're actually comfortable with losing money, but they're not comfortable with looking foolish and buying something that goes to zero. And I think we just completely eliminated that left tail. There's the Bitcoin obituary site, which cites the number of times the media says Bitcoin is going to die. I think it's like 1200 or something. It basically hasn't had one in the last 18 months. So I think that was also a big change. You are the biggest ETF expert I know. You used to run ETF.com. The ETFs, I mean, wow, what a grand slam product that's been for Wall Street, for you guys,

many asset management firms. Who's buying the ETF? Because I think everyone said, ETFs are coming, institutions are going to buy it. But then I get on X and I see hardcore Bitcoiners who are like, ah, I sold my Bitcoin and I just put all that money into the ETF. So is it institutions? Is it retail? Is it a mix? Yeah, it's everybody. Everybody is buying the ETF. The ETF is an incredible deal. Our ETF charges 20 basis points. You have to be managing billions of dollars in Bitcoin to get that kind of deal with audit and custody and all those bits and pieces. So it's retailers buying ETFs. It's hedge funds are buying ETFs for the basis trade.

It's RAAs buying ETFs. It's family offices buying ETFs. It really has become the primary tool for everyone. The only thing I would say about that is we're going to see more people buying ETFs next year. I think flows this year will outpace flows last year by a significant faction. So if you thought last year was good, just wait. Go ahead. Yeah, I've had some conversations with people here, and I think a fascinating part of the moment right now is that a lot of people who are very knowledgeable about Bitcoin and they're on Twitter and they're reading the news feel like it's sort of a lukewarm mood right now.

But I would say that amongst our wealth management clients and investment professional clients, it's the best moment there has ever been, February of 2025. You guys want to see them smile? This morning, I bought more BITB. I need a priceless down. I knew I'd see you guys. I felt like I should do this. Thank you. Thank you. He's not good, right? We both worked at Facebook. Facebook went from challenger. Nobody cared. There was like 9 million social networks before it. I think they won. Pretty clear to say they're now the incumbent. Now there's a bunch of challengers trying to kill Facebook. There's a ton of incumbent asset management firms.

They saw the ETF. They're like, we're the big dogs in the room. We got distribution. I don't care who's coming from the crypto world. Move out of the way. You guys have held your own. Like, I think most people are surprised at how well Bitwise has done, given BlackRock, Fidelity and others are just pounding the table and saying, let us use all of our might to go after this market. And I noticed that you guys now position yourselves as a crypto specialist. I know you guys are smart, so it can't be by accident. Explain a little bit as to the market positioning, what you're hearing from clients as to why that's resonating. And then how are you holding your own against these massive, you know, multi trillion dollar firms when you put

them together? Uh, uh, well, I will say that, uh, I think BlackRock is very satisfied with the result. Um, so, uh, uh, we're, you know, we're, we're grateful to be one of the largest. And as you said, a lot of great firms. I think that for many of our clients, so it depends a little bit. I think for individuals, they oftentimes will invest with us because they see that we publish the public wallet addresses of the Bitcoin held by the ETF. And they see that we want to bring the fundamental characteristics and value of Bitcoin into the traditional system and not to forget about what made Bitcoin important in the first place and just hand the dollars over to Wall Street. We donated last week to open source Bitcoin developers. This week, we sponsored

a community space in San Francisco for Bitcoin developers. And so I think there's a lot of people in the community who say, we're excited for Bitcoin to enter the mainstream, but we don't want to lose its soul. And we trust that Bitwise will try to retain those things. And so we like the ETF for that reason. Amongst investment professionals, I think that there are a lot of investment professionals who are used to in credit. Some of them will invest in BlackRock's credit fund, and some of them will invest with Ares. And in private equity, some of them will invest in BlackRock's private equity fund, and some of them will invest with TBG, Carlisle, KKR. And I think that for a lot of our clients, the idea that we have 100 professionals

who are only focused on this space and don't have other things competing for our time, and that they can pick up the phone and call us at any point and we're there to help them, I think that that that resonates. Another thing that is emerging is that many of our clients are interested in doing additional things. So we've been getting more questions recently about can you help us earn yield on our Bitcoin? So for one very large institutional client, we just set up a separately managed account where we run a derivative strategy on top of their Bitcoin position from from the custodian where they currently hold their Bitcoin. And so I think the second thing that some of our clients like about working with us is the feeling that we will support what

they want to do in the space more broadly, that we're a partner to them on accessing the opportunities versus sort of only having one thing. So I think those are the reasons that the clients will sometimes choose us. And we're really grateful that they do. Matt, the institutions, they don't look like, talk like, walk like the retail investors, which also means that in good times and in bad times, there's different reactions, different sentiment from retail and institutions. What do you see as the differences there? And maybe also, when do they agree? Yeah. I mean, Hunter spoke at it earlier. Retail is in this very sad place right now. Institutions are completely oblivious to

that. It is only the best time ever in crypto if you're an institutional investor. They're not talking about Bybit or meme coins. They're talking about the ETF launching. They're talking about the election change. They're talking about the SEC removing lawsuit after lawsuit against the crypto industry. So I think there is this two very different timeframes in crypto. Institutions are moving on a multi-year timeframe. And the multi-year story for Bitcoin is just the best it's ever been. I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we saw retail and institutional agree a little bit at the start of the Bitcoin ETF launch. But not right now. Retail is sad. Institutions are bullish. And in this case, institutions are right.

So retail, don't sell your coins to Wall Street. If you think about the... I'm going to call it the private wealth channel. I have seen a lot of different private wealth folks come out and say, ah, the grinding of the gears to get the approvals and go ahead and talk to the clients. That takes time. What is that timeline look like now? We're a year after the ETF launch. So it feels like, you know, are we starting to see those private wealth, especially the larger ones say, okay, we're going to go and we're going to put 1% in everyone's portfolio. And then percentage wise, what do you expect to get there? Is it a 1%? I think BlackRock came out today, say one and a half percent, a 5%. Like how do you just look at private wealth in general and their relationship

here and their kind of process internally? Yeah. I think you have to think of it as a spectrum, right? From RIAs, which are independent people up to the largest wire houses, the Morgan Stanley's, etc. The RAs have started coming in already. That's going to be 2.5% to 5%. I think you're going to see those numbers creep up from where BlackRock introduced them today. I think we're going to end up at 2.5% to 5%. As you move up the spectrum to national banks and regional wirehouses, those have mostly flipped. I forget, Hunter, how many platform approvals we have, but it's a very large number. What we're waiting is for the 4 big wirehouses to fall. And it's anyone's guess when that will happen. Just to give an anecdote that

points in the direction, we do tours through the middle of the country to talk to them every year. A few years ago, you'd go and do a meeting. It'd be two junior guys. I was out there last month. It was 12 of the most senior people. And there were actually two meetings at the same time. It's a game changer. I introduced that to say that that that will happen soon too. So I know crypto is uncomfortable with how slow it is, but it's happening. Look at the 13F filings, which count the amount of Bitcoin assets. It went from 17% to 28% of Bitcoin AUM from Q3 to Q4. That's going to be 40% or 50% by the end of this year. So this train is moving and it's gathering speed. Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth

fund comes out, throws a shot across the bow and says, yeah, we bought a Bitcoin ETF. To me, what was interesting is that they bought the ETF, they didn't buy the Bitcoin. And somebody brought a good point up earlier this week. They said, well, maybe they did also buy spot Bitcoin, but we know for sure they bought the ETF. For these really, really large pools of capital, is it a, I'll buy the ETF, get the price exposure, and then maybe one day I'll think about self-custody stuff? Or given the conversations that you guys have, I don't know if you've talked to the sovereign wealth or other large pools like that, what is the conversation? How are they thinking about this? Yeah, I mean, I had a conversation with the sovereign that was

interested in the ETF because they wanted to get ahead of the US buying it. And it was just a faster, easier button. I do think they'll end up buying both. If you look at the gold market, for instance, that's what you see. People own gold ETFs and they own gold bars. The same thing is going to be true here in crypto. So I think it's probably more likely that more sovereigns are going direct. But you'll definitely see more than one take the ETP route. It's just incredibly convenient, incredibly low cost, and allows you to execute very quickly without having to set up the custody side of the business. Hunter, you're the CEO. You get probably final thumbs up, thumbs down on acquisitions, M&A stuff. You guys have been quite acquisitive.

Talk about the general philosophy there and maybe some of the acquisitions that you have done, what the thought process was. Sure. In the fall, we acquired the ETF issuer of the largest Bitcoin ETF in Europe, which is now a Bitwise ETF. And the thinking there was it allows us to serve investors in Europe.

And that has been an extraordinary thing. It also, for certain organizations that operate in both the US and Europe, it allows us to be an even better partner to them. If you're a bank in both places, then we can be one relationship you can rely on in those two places um and uh then we also uh we also bought uh one of the largest providers of staking for ethereum that was sort of uh is a firm called attestant that

fantastic team and is known for being the authors of dirk and vouch which are the most popular open source libraries for ethereum staking um and the thinking there is that you know back to what i what i mentioned before i think for a lot of investors they say there's opportunity in this space. It's complicated. I'm busy. I want to put some percent of my money into it. And I need a partner so that I can be on the right side of how this all plays out and a partner who can help me accomplish what I want to do. And Bitwise's aspiration, we've been around for seven plus years, protecting clients' assets, picking up the phone when they have questions and introducing new solutions. And so as they want to do additional things, I mentioned to you that

that we have large institutional clients now asking us to run derivative strategies and separately managed accounts. Maybe at some point they want to stake their Bitcoin through Babylon or Cordow, who spoke yesterday, and we should be able to facilitate that for them too. So that's some of the thinking, which is how can we best serve what our clients want to do in the opportunity set of this space? And that was the thinking behind those two acquisitions last year. Matt, how do you think about the geographic difference of investor interest? Are certain areas outside the United States more interested? Other areas less interested?

What are you guys seeing there? I mean, we think the U.S. is an enormous growth market because you're really penetrating that wealth market. And the wealth channel, when you get into Europe, is very different. It's more sort of bifurcated there with significant retail interest and then a lot of hedge fund interest. But interest is growing around the world. They're just each one is its own different market.

I do think, continue to think, U.S. wealth is where the next $100, $200, $300 billion of inflows come. But there's significant growth in Europe as well. Four-year cycle? Is it over? Yeah. It's over. Okay, hold on. Explain. Well, I mean, so my view of the four-year cycle is you have a catalyst that brings new pools of capital in. So 2011, it was the launch of Coinbase.

Retail investors could buy Bitcoin. New capital. Then leverage builds up and eventually it pops. 2015, the introduction of Ethereum. 2019, DeFi. 2023, it was Grayscale winning its lawsuit in March against the SEC. We're going to get ETFs bringing in capital. The reason I think it's probably not going to play out over four years is A, I think that's a longer inflow of capital than retail hot ball of money, which was the past three. And then secondly, we have yet another of those catalysts in November, which is the election completely changing the game in terms of institutional adoption. So even if the ETF-driven

cycle would have built up, leveraged, and popped and receded, we have this second tidal wave that's just so much bigger than that first one. It's going to overwhelm it. So will there be pullbacks? We're seeing one now as leverage comes out of the system, of course. But the election was such a sea change, that it's like, it doesn't matter. Yes, there may be this natural thing, but it's just going to get bulldozed over. That doesn't mean we've repealed pullbacks. But I think this cycle is going to be much longer than people think. I definitely don't think this pullback is the end. I think 2025 will be a great year. I think 2026 will be a great year. I think 2027 it'll be a great year. And we'll see about 2028. You guys have on the ground sales team,

Hunter. You're doing a lot of hard work around education. You're doing a lot of in-person meetings. I think at one point you told me a number. I don't want to misquote you of how many meetings you guys were doing a week. What is that number? Hundreds. I can't remember this. We do a lot of meetings. Yeah. Okay. That is a very different strategy than most quote-unquote technology companies. Talk about why that has been such a competitive advantage, especially when you're going up against these big guys. You have real relationships with these people. You guys have been sending real humans to talk to other real humans and really educate them and answer their questions. I don't think people quite appreciate just how much effort has

gone into this. I think all of you have experienced this firsthand. You have somebody in your life who seemingly would be an obvious person to own Bitcoin, but hasn't, and maybe you've spoken with them about it and, uh, you've had the experience that, and so we just professionally go around and offer to have that conversation with people. And I think for so many people, um, actually pressing the button and investing in this space is the easy part. The hard part is all of the thoughts and confusion and concerns around it. And I think just having a professional that you know will show up for you

and that you can rely on and that you can answer a question two weeks from now when you get posed with something you don't know the answer to is so valuable. So I think for a lot of our clients, the relationship with Bitwise is as valuable as the management fee on the ETF. And we love it also, by the way,

we love working with investors. investors are brilliant people you're a brilliant person so many people in this room are brilliant you know investors are thinking they're thinking they're trying to navigate the future they're trying to position for the future and i would just say i think it's a really fun part of what we do we love talking to investors about how they're positioning for the future um and then supporting them as we have for the last seven years uh for for the next you know seven years so um yeah yeah and i just said i can't tell you how valuable it is to have shown up in person in late 2022 to talk to these investors. I mean, those are the relationships that you now see

in the flows and the way that we're competing is, you know, we were showing up before then, we showed up during then, we showed up in 2023. And I think that, you know, multi-year commitment to always be there, always willing to talk truth about what's happening in crypto has been incredibly valuable. If you want to test this, email james at bitwiseinvestments.com and he will respond to you uh so i'm just giving you that as a simple we we really do care about showing up for for clients and investors is james here james is not here that's why you disappointed that i mentioned his yeah i said that's why you gave his email okay um last thing is fees uh you mentioned uh when the etfs launched i think bitwise had the lowest fee uh what does that look like are fees

compressing how do you guys look at that just kind of evolving over time it's more competition Yeah. So Bitwise launched with a 20 basis point management fee, which, to be honest, we think is incredible value for investors. That's institutional custody. That's an audit from KPMG. That's BNY doing the books and records. That's us supervising all of that, running portfolio management and trading at an institutional level. The largest product is at 25 basis points. So it's a bit cheaper than that. But I think in general, investors feel like there's a lot of value in that. I mean, the QQQ is 20 basis points, and they hold public stocks. So the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, BITB, is the same price as an equity ETF. So I think investors have found it to be a really, really reasonable fee. You guys are hella guys, man.

It's like you guys do that for only 20 basis points. Seriously, though, right? I mean, it is pretty incredible when you describe it that way. All right. Thank you guys very much. Hunter Horsley and Matt Hogan, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.