The Pomp Podcast - This is A CRAZY Idea to Deal with Crypto Hacks | Chris Perkins

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Chris Perkins is the incoming Head of Crypto at Franklin Templeton, following the acquisition of his firm 250 Digital Asset Management. In this conversation, we break down the surge in crypto hacks, why AI is accelerating cyber threats, the case for American "privateering" as an offensive strategy against crypto crime, how geopolitics and macro are shaping bitcoin markets, and what institutions are actually buying in crypto right now.======================Uphold is the easiest way to buy and sell crypto unlike any other platform allowing you to trade in just one step between any supported asset. Check them out at https://www.uphold.com/pomp/ This video includes a paid sponsorship with Uphold. I’m compensated by Uphold for promoting its products and services and may receive commissions from referrals. Terms apply. Not available in all jurisdictions. Digital assets are risky and may result in the total loss of your capital.======================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates the buying and selling of your preferred crypto strategies. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch. No hidden fees. Just smarter trading.======================0:00 - Intro1:17 - The crypto hack crisis & AI-driven cyber threats4:17 - America going on offense: the privateering idea9:10 - AI capabilities & the US advantage in cyber warfare12:22 - Crypto regulation: where do things stand in DC?17:20 - Bitcoin's role in macro & geopolitics21:36 - Bitcoin vs. stocks: decoupling during the Iran conflict24:46 - Franklin Templeton's crypto strategy & what comes next28:56 - Quantum computing: should crypto be worried?30:20 - Stablecoins & how institutions are approaching them33:52 - Buying bitcoin vs. infrastructure equity vs. trading exposure35:47 - The Fed, rate cuts, & what it means for crypto prices

Going on vacation? We're here for it. With kids? Who turn the backseat into a courtroom drama over whose tablet is louder, whose charger is faster, and why watching the same cartoon for the hundredth time is a human right? Yep, we totally have vehicles to handle that. Because whether it's a road trip or a business trip, where your flight's delayed, your phone's at 2% and your dinner is whatever's open, yep, here for that too.

Enterprise. We're here for it. If you step back and you look at where we are geopolitically and across the globe, this is an era of what we call real politic, where nation states are acting in their interests, which is distinct from idealism, which we've, you know, these things go back and forth. And so real politic is really predicated by a trustless, permissionless world. And if only there was an asset that was trustless and permissionless, I think it's going to have incredible utility during this era of human evolution. That's Bitcoin. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great conversation with Chris Perkins. Chris is

currently the CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management, but they are being acquired by Franklin Templeton. And so Chris is the incoming head of crypto at Franklin Crypto. Now, in this conversation, Chris brings up a point that I have never heard anyone else talk about. It's the idea of unleashing American citizens in a privateering mechanism to go on the offense against all of the cyber warfare that's happening in crypto. It's a fascinating conversation. We also go through different geopolitical and macroeconomic impacts on crypto. And then Chris explains what Franklin Templeton has been doing in the crypto sector and what he's going to be doing in his new role. This conversation is going to make you think much more deeply about what's going on,

why there is so much cyber crime that's been happening recently, and also where the world's going from an institutional perspective. Here's my conversation with Chris Perkins. All right, Chris, there has been an enormous number of hacks this past month in crypto. And And I'm wondering how much of that is driven by AI, how much of it is people are just getting lazy in the crypto world. But this feels like a significantly bigger problem than people are talking about publicly. And so how are you evaluating this right now? Yeah.

Hey, good to see you, Pomp. I would say when you step back, it couldn't be a more exciting time to be in this crypto space, right? Institutions are marching in. Bitcoin is looking very, very constructive right now. In fact, the fundamentals of the asset class look great. But there's one thing standing in our way, as you mentioned, and that's all these hacks. You know, April was one of the worst months in history of hacking.

Twenty nine projects were hacked. About six hundred million dollars were taken. A lot of this is perpetrated by state sponsored actors, particularly Lazar's group, which is affiliated with the North Korean regime. And that's a real problem. It's a real problem for a few reasons. Number one, a lot of investors, and you know this, they're very comfortable taking market risk. That's what they get paid to do. That's what they get paid to underwrite.

But they don't get paid to take the risk of hacking or operational risk or regulatory risk or any of this stuff. And so as long as this threat looms, it's stopping the incredible asset class where we operate from achieving its full potential. And so we haven't seen, you know, the thing that kills me about this whole thing is that oftentimes on crypto Twitter or wherever you are, people will say, oh, you know what? Shame on that protocol. Shame on them. You know, it's like blaming the victim over and over again. And look, can things be done better? Absolutely.

We see, and to your question, a lot of this is due not, it's frankly due to social engineering. They get people to click on the wrong link. It's getting very scary with deepfakes and AI. Now you have mythos, like all these AI tools. And perhaps one of the reasons why people are speculating why there's so many hacks this month is because AI tools are coming online and it's making it easier to hack. I think as we look longer term, the institutions who have more access to compute and powerful models will probably be able to defend more. So it works in both directions. But the problem right now as it exists needs to be addressed.

Now, when you look at these hacks that are occurring, when I hear $600 million, that's a lot. But also, there's been billions of billions of dollars of trading volume on a daily basis. There's trillions of dollars of market cap. And so it feels like maybe some of the reason why it's not getting talked about is because it's $600 million spread across 29 different things. It's not like there was one hack of $3 billion that would dominate headlines. And it's also not of protocols that the mainstream has heard of. It's not like Bitcoin got hacked or Ethereum got hacked or Coinbase got hacked. And so I'm assuming part of that is like the strategy of the nefarious actor, right? It's like go to the smaller areas where the defense is probably not as strong. But I know you've also been involved in conversations in Washington, D.C. about like, wait a minute, rather than us play defense, what if we go on offense? And can you talk a little bit about this conversation around the United States incentivizing people to kind of fight back in this cyber warfare area? Yeah.

So, you know, Christian Carlo, he and I published a paper over a year ago, and we knew this was a real problem. And again, a lot of people complain about it and they blame different people for it, but we hadn't seen an effective response. And I grew up playing sports. I know you did. And Coach always used to say the best defense is a good offense. And so we looked at our history and people don't understand this. And I'm going to insult you a little bit as a Marine. But if you look back at the Revolutionary War, we really didn't win it because of George Washington maneuvering on the battlefield. We won it because we unleashed these guys called privateers. It's a concept through letters. It's called letters of mark and reprisal.

You essentially give them a license to go out and just ravage the economy of the other nation. And we did that. And if you look at the headlines in London at the time, they're like, you know, these Americans are killing our economy. They're attacking all our ships. You know, it's not working. And so that really was a very important reason why we won the Revolutionary War. Brits came back in 1812. Madison's like, you know what?

Privateers get after them. He launched 500. Same thing happened. Europeans thought it was a dirty game. They got out of the business in the mid-19th century. The U.S., however, loved this concept so much, it's actually in Article I of our Constitution. It's as American as apple pie. I don't know if they have apple pie in our Constitution, but you know what?

They got privateers there. Look it up. It's pretty fascinating. And so the problem is it's been dormant for 200 years. And our thesis is, okay, you have these state actors attacking a startup. who's going to win every single time the state-sponsored acts actor they've got more resources our country has very good resources as well and people like we'll just let the ic do it the intelligence community let the army do it whatever the problem is talent is difficult to

retain it's very expensive because you have to find specialized people with specialized skills and frankly it's low late it's it's got a lot of latency because if you're able to hack somebody You have to go through a lot of due diligence and due process, excuse me, to be able to follow the law. Frankly, the surface area is very small. And so they can't respond enough fast enough because, again, 29 hacks this month. And by the way, those were semi-concentrated. They're two about $300 million hacks. We've seen billion-dollar hacks with Bybit.

And so the bad guys are getting much, much more sophisticated. So the idea is, gosh, the private sector has all the skills in the world. They're financially incented. what we can do is we can extend the surface area by empowering private citizens to go and hack back now maybe politically right now in my conversations with some of the senators they're like you can't call it privateering you got to call it um essentially like a uh a reclaim policy or you know we'll figure out a way to to name a recovery program a recovery sorry yeah like a recovery process wonderful we can call it whatever you want um but the idea would be fully regulated

licensed to go out and recover um what's been stolen now the way it worked in the history in in the past in history is there would be um the privateers would post a bond maybe in crypto we call it staking but essentially they'd post a bond to make sure they stayed within the law and then there would be prize courts where they would say okay privateer you get x um hey this the house is going to get a little bit you give a little bit to the state and then you return some some of the spoils if you will now what does this mean This means not only could it be a really interesting business model, but you could also use this to fund the crypto reserve at no cost to the taxpayer. So it's a very, very interesting concept.

The reception I've had on the Hill has been very positive. But I think as we're going through markups on Clarity, it's very tedious and difficult. It would be wonderful to get a recovery program inserted. And frankly, we've got a lot of precedent for it in modern-day finance and whistleblower programs, which is you give the power to private citizens to go out and address issues that they see. So that's the gist of it. I think it's, again, against a backdrop of a very constructive environment for crypto at a time when fundamentals continue to improve. I think this could be the icing on the cake. Oh, and by the way, if we have this massive security umbrella over the United States, what's going to happen?

entrepreneurs are going to come back on shore because they're going to be protected by that security umbrella. So I think, you know, I don't see downside to having this program. And again, you don't want to talk about legal. There's nothing more legal. It's in our constitution, article one, section eight, check it out. You know, what's interesting to me about this whole idea of privateering is I've heard a bunch of people, maybe Eric Prince is the number one person who's been promoting this for natural resources, for dealing with cartels. Obviously, there's a ton of these different situations that are happening a lot in South and Central America. This is the first time I'm hearing about it, though, when it comes to digital uses or cyber

uses. And so how much of it would have to be like hacking type stuff where Americans would basically go on the offense versus its information flow? So almost like a reward. Hey, if you give us information about X, Y, Z, and it leads to us recovering something, then you would get paid for that? I think you could have honestly both types of programs. But again, the private sector has the capabilities and the tool sets to recover those assets and also to extend the security umbrella. I think it's a no brainer. I think it's fully legal. And I think it's time. Now, what becomes even more interesting is the US model companies seem to have had a couple of breakthroughs. Obviously, there's the whole mythos thing, chat GPT 5.5 is out now. And these have

very interesting cyber capabilities, whether they are actually, you know, a point where people need to be careful, and maybe we shouldn't give it out to the public versus, okay, they're just very powerful. If the US has those capabilities, and another country or a nefarious organization doesn't, actually, from a technical standpoint, we should have an advantage and it increases the odds we'd be able to go and recover some of this stuff, right? Totally. I think for sure on the recovery side, but I think long-term, I'm a long-term investor and I'm very, very bullish. I mean, as we're looking at, this is just another example where AI, crypto, and then ultimately quantum, these things are all flowing together. AI, I think, is going to be one of the long-term

solutions to security. Because as you mentioned, we're going to be running these models as effectively as the bad guys. The key is to have better models, faster models, more thoughtful models. And I would hope that, you know, onshore we're going to have more resources around compute, et cetera, to be able to stay in front of the bad guys. It'll always be a cat and mouse game. The weakness will continue to be humans like you and me. We're fallible. We can be, you know, we can be tricked and messed with. But I do think AI is going to be a long, you know, people are freaking out about oh my gosh we're gonna get hacked by those ai yeah for sure but i also think it's gonna be providing beautiful defense and maybe in the context of privateers even better

offense do you think that the reason why there was the 20 something hacks and uh you know kind of the higher pace and frequency is because of ai like is it that's actually what's driving uh the problem at the moment i think that's part of it um yes i think the bad guys are using tools for sure uh in many cases it will continue to get worse i was at this uh are you familiar with world coin uh i was at their event a couple weeks ago in san francisco and they literally were showing how you know did a demo of a deep fake couldn't tell but they had their world idea it was really cool but like yeah ai is definitely helping a lot of these um these bad guys let's talk a little bit you mentioned clarity um i have been of the belief that uh bitcoin in particular will be successful

with or without that type of regulation. But I think that a lot of the rest of the industry is waiting for some of these milestones to happen, whether it is the government's participation, institutional participation, et cetera. I know that you've been very involved in understanding what's kind of the current state of affairs. Where are we? And do you have a sense of when this thing's going to get passed? Yeah, I'm a business guy, but I spend a ton of time on regulation. And the reason why I do is you have to. You have to understand it. And if you can shape it, you try to shape it by educating policymakers. Because like one word or one sentence of regulation or law translates to billions of dollars of downstream value creation

or destruction. That's just how it works. So I agree with you. We don't need it. I think we want it. And Bitcoin is a special animal. I think it's going to be fine either way. But what's important for the rest of the cryptocurrency market really starts with something called taxonomy. What is a security? What is a commodity? The laws already kind of define it, but we need that taxonomy. Now, if we get the Clarity Act, I think it's going to be, it could unleash at a certain point in time, animal spirits, because now you've enshrined crypto in our laws. And like we've done that with stable coins. So I think it's going to be a nice tailwind if you're looking at markets. However, if we don't get it, it doesn't matter. You've got Chairman Selig, you got

chairman atkins these guys are setting precedent every single day that's thoughtful smart and it's giving people what they wanted the whole time clarity that is giving them taxonomy what's the security what's it and they're like and atkins is like no no these aren't securities if you wrap a security that's a security not to and by the way being a security now it's not a death sentence in fact it's an awesome unlock because you can use the u.s capital markets so we're getting that clarity either way what what are you what is what should you be looking for right now on the act itself this whole interest on stable coin stuff was such a distraction we had the genius act whatever it's been sorted either way um now we're getting into it's like kind of like when a

satellite or the space shuttle re-enters the atmosphere you're kind of going through this crazy dark period the next hurdle is ethics and this makes me a little bit mental too because there are people um that are saying i i can't support this bill because trump and crypto are thing. If I support crypto, I'm supporting Trump. Everything's unethical, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's the complete wrong way to look at this thing. Do we have issues with ethics and trading in our government? What do you think, Anthony? I think that there is so many problems across asset classes and across the aisle of both political parties that you could pick any topic and I will tell you 20 other variations of that

same thing in a completely nonpartisan way and across public private markets. Amen, right? Do we have ethics issues across our government? Absolutely. Should they be addressed? 100%. If you look at Trump's State of the Union address, he actually mentioned the Stop Insider Trading Act twice. And to your point, to my point, let's look at it holistically. This is not about crypto. It's about ethics. So why are we trying to adjudicate this here? I don't like it. And by the way, if you really hate Trump that much, then let's, let's just get rid of the real estate industry as well. I already likes real estate too, right? Like, like that's a problem, right? So anyway, I'm apolitical, but let's look at this asset class and let's, let's focus on the issues

in the bill. That's where we need to be. When I look at the state of Bitcoin and crypto markets today, there are really three things that I think are important. The first is, is the technology working. I think you can argue that Bitcoin is working. There are some altcoins that are technically executing exactly what they said they were going to do. Stablecoins have become very popular. Tokenization is happening. Institutions are adopting these technologies, trying to figure out how to use them, et cetera. So I think you can say, okay, there's always progress that can be made there, but that first bucket checks out. The second one is a lot of the regulatory DC and institutional world. And I think the institutions are further ahead than the politicians.

The institutions are kind of pouring capital and man hours into this. It's pretty much an announcement almost every week at this point from an institution. The politicians seem to begrudgingly like it across both sides of the aisle because they realize that the constituents like it and therefore they've got to support it. And so we'll get there, but we're there. The third thing, though, is what is the role of – again, let's use Bitcoin just because it'll make the conversation easier. But what is the role of Bitcoin inside of the macro and geopolitical environment? Right. And so whether it's the Iran war, whether it's things going on at the Fed, like it does feel like these assets that used to operate completely outside the system and frankly had no interaction whatsoever with the kind of broader financial system. Now it has a lot. And so how do you evaluate kind of the macroeconomic impact and the geopolitical impact on this industry?

If you step back and you look at where we are geopolitically and across the globe, this is an era of what we call real politic, where nation states are acting in their interests, which is distinct from idealism, which these things go back and forth. And so real politic is really predicated by a trustless, permissionless world, right? And if only there was an asset that was trustless and permissionless, I think it's going to have incredible utility during this era of human evolution. That's Bitcoin, right? And why did you see Ethereum come out and double down on what's known as crops, censorship resistance, right? It may not be the fastest, it might not be the sexiest, but if it can be like Bitcoin, resistant to censorship, that is a material, material edge. And so as you look at the world going forward, what is the world that I see? I see real politics continuing to dominate. Nation states around the world are trying to decouple from the dollar where possible, but it's really, really hard. and what they did was they dumped some treasuries,

they bought gold, gold went up and then everyone's like, what happened to Bitcoin? Well, guess what? They bought the gold because they're really old and they didn't know any better and now they're realizing gold is a very difficult asset to store value. If you go into the derivative space,

you're back into essentially the US financial institution for the most part. Physical gold is very hard to move and transport. And now, have you looked at the Bitcoin gold chart recently since Epic Fury began? Take a look. if you have it, straight and to the right. It's a beautiful, beautiful chart. Bitcoin is now playing with its 150-day moving average. It's about to break out. That is often a sign of

regime change. And so it's very, very constructive right now in the context of the geopolitical situation that we find each other. Very constructive. Today's episode is brought to you by Uphold. Are you someone who's tired of juggling multiple apps just to trade, earn, stake, or spend your crypto? Then listen up, because Uphold does all of that in one single unified platform you can access 300 plus crypto and fiat currencies with an interface that works for you whether you're a beginner or an expert uphold also features any to any swaps where you can swap crypto to fiat fiat to metals and tokens to tokens directly in the app if you prefer self custody upholds vault gives you multi-stick security key recovery direct trading access

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with confidence. Sign up today at archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch, no hidden fees, just smarter trading. Your crypto, your exchange, your profits, ArchPublic. Go to archpublic.com and tell them I sent you. How do you look at the relationship between Bitcoin and stocks? There was a point there when the Iran conflict started where there was like a decoupling, stocks, gold, everything sold off and Bitcoin kind of held it. It didn't necessarily appreciate significantly, but it kind of held in there very strong. And at one point it was green and everything else was pretty much red other than oil and those types of commodities. Now stocks are kind of ripping

back to new all-time highs and Bitcoin has gone up, but it's not back at an all-time high. And so how do you look at that relationship? Yeah. You're seeing Bitcoin starting to pick up against major tech stocks. Now the equity industry is going through something really, really interesting right now. It's tokenizing and people don't really understand how big a deal this is so i'm an old futures guy and back in the day buns traded on the life exchange and it was these open outcry guys that would raise their hand and fight and like try to get the bid and offer whatever your ex behind the scenes developed electronification turned it on and then one day all that liquidity moved from open outcry to electronic trading tokenization

is the new version of this. It's the next iteration on markets after electronification. And the reason why is it unlocks 24-7 markets. Think about it. Markets in their natural state are 24-7. Value changes if you're asleep or not. Nobody really cares.

But we never had the technology to keep up. Now tokens allow you to do that. And so I'm a fiduciary. I have the ability to buy a tokenized stock or a non-tokenized stock. I have to buy that tokenized version every single day because I can risk manage it when Donald Trump invades Venezuela on a Friday night, Epic Fury on a Saturday night. I have to be able to manage my risk. Why am I saying all this to your question? Well, the reason is there's this dislocation now where crypto is active 24-7 and people are hedging their risk when they have no other way to hedge their risk when those things happen on the weekend.

And so they've been using it to sell, which has been part of the price action challenges. But eventually, you're going to find out that the 24-7 crypto nativity that we already enjoy is going to be a distinct advantage. and watch as you see this happen. It's going to be very, very interesting. But before long, this also plays to the stablecoin thesis. If the equity market is $127 trillion in size and it tokenizes overnight, how am I going to pay for this stuff, stablecoins?

And so when you start thinking about numbers, Treasury Secretary threw out $3 trillion, probably conservative. And that's exactly what you'd expect from a government agency. So, look, I think you're going to start seeing a pivot back. Equities are ripping despite all the geopolitical stress. Crypto stayed resilient. But I do think the setup is incredibly constructive.

Sentiment has been really, really bad, slowly improving. Fundamentals are getting better and better every single day for the tokens that have them. And retail is going to come back. What are you worried about right now? There's a lot of positive things to point to. Is there anything in particular that you say, hey, you're stepping into this new role at Franklin Templeton, and I think that you've probably more so than most in the industry have to think about risk management and think about how do you mitigate a lot of the concerns that these institutions would have. So maybe talk a little bit about the role that you are stepping into and then also how you're thinking about the negatives or things that we need to mitigate. Yeah.

So Franklin Templeton announced that they're going to be acquiring our liquid strategies. We're super excited about it. Once we close, I'll be the head of Franklin Crypto. And it's a really, really interesting time. I couldn't be more excited. We've been operating this space, Anthony, for years. And we took a lot of risk for operating in this space. Regulators would come after us.

It was not an easy place to operate. But now as you talk to every single institution around the world, they have risk if they're not in this space because they see the value creation. They see the fundamentals continuing to improve. And so it's the most perfect time for a guy like me to leverage that and my team to leverage that crypto native experience to now come in and help shepherd them on this journey, help them find the solutions that they're looking for, the exposures that they're looking for in accordance with their risk tolerance. And we've learned a lot in the last few years. Now, as far as risk goes, we talked about it up front. We have to address the security issue.

Again, that's one of the reasons why, to your earlier point, why people aren't going true native DeFi themselves on chain. Maybe they want to partner with a trusted institution who can help abstract maybe some of the, I mean, everyone faces security challenges, but maybe you have more robust capabilities at a big institution. That's one of the reasons why you're even seeing some of the OG Bitcoin guys went into the ETF. Two reasons.

Maybe a little better security. Maybe they could avail themselves of the entire robustness of US capital markets, borrowing and lending and doing so in a more safe and secure manner. So security is something I think that we're always thinking about. Obviously, fundamentals, like this idea of chasing the next hot meme was a big part of the crypto industry in the past. I think going forward is how do we leverage our unique distribution to really understand and capture fundamentals? How do we bring in the power of AI to help power our theses and our strategies? There's so much disruption. I mean, it couldn't be a more exciting time to be alive.

You have this AI thing that's going to change everything. You've got crypto that's changing everything. And then we've got quantum eventually that's going to change everything as well. And Elon's going to do it all in space. So it couldn't be a more exciting time. We just are excited to partner with our clients to navigate these challenges. Talk a little bit about, Franklin Tubbs said, I know that it was just a five-year anniversary of the Benji Fund, and they've been kind of dabbling in some of these things. But what is your view in terms of, you know, what does the next couple of years look like? Is it just replicate every single traditional fund strategy and asset and do it in the digital world? Is it focus on the more crypto native things that maybe don't have a corollary example in the traditional world? How are you thinking? I think the answer is yes, to be honest with you. Jenny Johnson, Sandy Call, these people are not new to the space. Actually, I sat next to Sandy for years. I think we learned about Bitcoin together back in 2013 or something. And we were very close at the time at Citigroup. And Jenny and Sandy and the Franklin team have been in the space since 2018. So this is not new for them.

What they really want to do is just galvanize their focus, galvanize their teams to really solve clients, solve their clients' problems, whether it's tokenization, whether it's crypto native and everything in between. You're going to hear a ton of announcements coming out and hopefully – my goal is to operate on the frontier, focus on innovation and innovative solutions for our clients. One thing we haven't talked about is quantum. And I think that I've heard quantum mentioned by more institutional people than any other group. How are you thinking about quantum? Are you worried about it? What can people do to mitigate that? I'm not terribly worried about it in crypto because crypto people by our nature are very focused on cryptography and cutting edge innovation. And so as you look across the ecosystems, it's very apparent to me that we're focusing on addressing the challenges and perhaps even, you know, identifying the opportunities. I mean, think of the compute and the power that this technology will ultimately bring or these breakthroughs. This is not new stuff. Like, you know, you go to Columbia.

They've been working on this for 100 years. But it feels like something like AI, again, will accelerate breakthroughs in quantum. Crypto is going to be the rails that bring it together, whether it's for authentication or for movement of capital. So while it's very important for our industry because crypto is the name of our industry and cryptography and making sure that your quantum resistance is very important, I'm frankly more concerned about other industries. And this could actually accelerate crypto adoption of those other industries provided that cryptography is quantum resistant. So again, I think it's a forcing function that's going to bring more convergence going forward. Let's talk about stable coins. those seem to be, if there's any product that has as much product market fit as Bitcoin,

stable coins have just grown like wildfire. How do you think these large institutions interact with stable coins? Is it, okay, let's all go use Tether or USDT or USDC or is it they build their own? It seems like everyone's got kind of different strategies and then you've got like the payment processors and you've got the wire houses and there's just a lot of complexity and players. And so what's your view as to where we end up with stable coins in the traditional world? I think stable coins are going to be a huge part of the globe going forward. If you think about it, the US greatest export is the greenback. And now for the first time, people anywhere in the world with access to the internet are going to be able to

buy those dollars and hold those dollars as a store of value and this is unprecedented i think you're going to see the like the dollar dollar dominance just continue to um expand across the the world i think there's going to be wars fought over this uh to be honest with you i hate to say it but like we're going to see the dollarization of of the world i was talking to a really smart guy the other night he's like you know i see currencies and languages being correlated over time you know the number of languages being spoken i'm not saying this is a good thing by the way i'm just saying that this is how it is continues to decrease you know eventually you know they'll only be everyone's going to speak english um and and you know whatever and maybe mandarin and maybe

something else but like you're seeing them continue to shrink i kind of see the same trend like perhaps in currencies. And there's just going to be continued insatiable demand for the dollar. Now, one of the problems that continue to arise is yield. And it is a depreciation, though it's a very good relative store of value on an absolute basis, maybe not so much. So how do you drive that yield to preserve that value? So I'm going to ask you a question. What's the difference between a tokenized money market fund and a stable coin? Depends who you ask there, my friend. Now we're getting into the great debate.

But I mean, look, it's a very fair point. And I think that to the average person, other than the consumption mechanism in terms of being able to use it, it's very similar. Yeah. I mean, so the risk, which one do you think is more risky, a money market fund or a stable coin? Again, depends on who you ask. But it's basically the same, I would argue.

Right. So if you have one that pays somebody else interest and one that pays you interest, the only difference currently is one's a security and one is under genius, right? But if you go back to principles-based approaches, why should you not be able to give that yield-bearing asset more easily to somebody else? And so one thing that I'm very excited about is the tokenization of capital markets, the tokenization of equities, tokenization of securities. And right now, maybe it's time to look at a more principles basis where I think we announced in our transaction that proceeds are going to be paid in the money market fund. So lines will continue to blur. Irregardless, the dollar is going to become much more available and much more dominant across the world. And I think that's very good for the US government. Makes sense to me. When you think about the liquid strategies that you guys were running, how many of these institutional clients that Franklin has or others, are they looking to

buy the underlying Bitcoin or other asset? How many of them are looking to, hey, I want to go invest in the infrastructure and own equity, almost in a venture, public market style versus, look, I want trading exposure. I want hedging. I want alpha and those types of activities. People will say, and I've heard this come up a few times recently, oh, I like equity. I don't like tokens. Or I like tokens. I don't like equity. Maybe that was in 21. To me, that's kind of all BS. And the reason why is that it doesn't matter whether it's an equity or a token. The token does provide incremental utility you know where you can move it around the world 24 7 it's about the fundamentals underneath right and so what is the value accrual to that equity what

is the value accrual to that token whether it's a native form or otherwise but these are just effectively wrappers whether you wrap a crypto asset as as like bitcoin under a security as an etf or you wrap a security in a token it's really about the fundamentals underneath and so you know Like any other investment strategy, clients will want to understand basic things. What are the investment objectives, the benchmarks, et cetera. And so I think it's hard to talk. Every single investor has different objectives. I think in time, you're going to see a lot more customization via things like vaults.

Think about it. Even at the retail level, your advisor, send me your data. Okay, I'm going to run it through an AI model to understand exactly what you want. I'm going to spit out, like, very quickly, I'll spit out a vault that's particularly catered to anything that you need, your life events, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So customization will also be a very important form factor going forward. Makes sense to me. When you look at all of the geopolitical stuff that's happening, look at all the macroeconomic stuff, we're going to get a new Fed chair. Oh, yeah.

And that new Fed chair seems to have a proclivity for lower rates. The president would definitely like lower rates. Jerome Powell seems to be a little bit more resistant to that idea. What is your take on the Fed and their importance for crypto prices? Is it as simple as they cut rates and crypto goes higher through the rest of this year? That's definitely what the data has been showing. I think it's a lot bigger than that, though. And I think the crypto markets completely got worse wrong.

When he was named, everyone's like, oh, this guy's going to stop QE and it's going to be over. The guy has a pretty amazing portfolio. Now, I don't know how in the weeds he is. Maybe he's outsourcing that to some advisors. But the guy has a pretty robust crypto portfolio to begin with. As you hear him speak, he's very pro-crypto. And I think what you're going to see at a higher level – and you know Secretary of Treasury Besson is also pro-crypto. He loves stablecoins. He wants to start pushing stablecoins out to the world. But what my thesis is, is you're going to see a new Fed-Treasury accord where some roles that the Fed has creeped into are going to move back into Treasury, and that's fine. And the Fed can stay perfectly independent. Certain tasks and responsibilities can be moved into the Treasury, and that's OK because the Treasury is held accountable through elections, and I don't have a problem with that. And as certain roles and responsibilities migrate back to Besant, it gives him a lot more flexibility, I believe, to pursue his agenda, which has been very clear from the president himself. I want to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the planet.

And so, yes, I do think crypto as risk assets are very responsive to lower rates. We're seeing governments around the world right now saying, wait a second, I have this huge issue with oil. It's skyrocketing. I'm going to have to raise rates. I think there's a real conundrum around the world, which direction to go. But the US is different. We're energy resilient. We're independent. And I do think you're going to see a very conducive environment with Warsh in the seat and him working. Why wouldn't we want the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of the Treasury to be working hand in hand and coordinated? I think that makes a lot better sense.

And that doesn't mean no independence for the Fed. I completely agree. I think that we're going to get quite a bit of support here, which is not necessarily because people are just sympathetic to crypto. It's that the world needs this and America wants to be a leader. And so no different than we want to be a leader in AI and space and crypto and genetic DNA sequencing or self-driving cars or whatever. It's an innovative technology that is good for people to use in various ways. And so why should we not be the leader? I don't think we ever set out to be number 10 on the list. We want to be number one. That's what we're here to do.

And I'm glad you mentioned DNA and bio. These are really interesting verticals that we're going to see incredible advancements. Yeah, I completely agree. All right, where can we send people to find you? And they want to learn more about the new role and what you're going to be doing at Franklin. Where can we send them? Yeah, still on Twitter, PerkinsCR97. Pop, always good to see you, man.

Look forward to doing it again sometime. Of course. I'm super excited for you. Congratulations on the acquisition, the new role, and I'm excited to see what you guys do at Franklin-Tempton. All right. Good to see you. Carry on.