The Wolf Of All Streets - $1,000,000 Bitcoin & The Death Of The 4-Year Cycle | Arthur Hayes & Allan Marshall

Episode Date: October 12, 2025

In this exclusive conversation, Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, and Allan Marshall, CEO of Upexi, break down the rise and fall of Bitcoin treasury companies, why only a few will survive, and how fiat liquidity — not halving cycles — truly drives Bitcoin’s future. They reveal how government money printing, the debasement trade, and passive inflows could push Bitcoin toward $1 million, while mismanaged treasuries implode under leverage. A must-watch for anyone who wants to understand the real macro forces shaping crypto’s next supercycle.

The four-year Bitcoin cycle might be dead, and the next crypto boom could be fueled by something far bigger. Today, I'm joined by Arthur Hayes, co-founder of Bitmex and one of the sharpest macro mines in crypto, alongside Alan Marshall, CEO of Upexie, the first Solana-based digital asset treasury. We're breaking down the rise and possible collapse of the new wave of Bitcoin and Solana treasury companies. A lot of people are selling puts to generate extra yield, especially if you're not getting 8%, I've got this stack. How do I generate some yield? Okay, let me go in the OTC markets and start selling puts. I don't know where these strike prices are,

but there's going to be a lot of people who are going to have to come up with a lot of cash at a particular level in the bear market, and that could be the end of a lot of EAQ companies who mismanage their exposure. Why Arthur believes liquidity, not havings drives every crypto cycle. There have the three, four-year cycles, and there's very good reasons for them, all center around U.S. and Chinese monetary policy. It's really about fiat liquidity between the U.S. and China. And how government money printing

could send Bitcoin to $1 million this cycle. Obviously, I've said a million dollar Bitcoin. I think it's possible. Tell me how much money you think that XYZ policies and lending prim? I'll tell you what Bitcoin's going to be, or a range. This conversation dives deep into the debasement trade, the super cycle math,

and why Arthur says most digital asset firms are just has funds with better marketing. If you want to understand where the next Bitcoin leg starts, and when it ends, this is the interview you can't afford to miss. Are you looking to earn up to 9% APY on your cash backed by real cash flow assets? Or want to secure a crypto-back loan at 8.91% interest rate? With the figure markets app, you can do both all in one mobile app.

They've released the first ever real-world asset borrow-lend pool called Democratic. It allows you to earn up to 9% by lending your money against real-world assets like home equity lines of credit, known as Helox, which only banks were able to do prior. Lend like a bank and get more than what others are offering to you on your stables. Figure is also the largest non-bank mortgage lender in the U.S. with over $17 billion unlocked on their lending platforms. Access loans starting at 8.91% interest rate, the lowest fixed interest rate in the industry at 50% LTV, all with decentralized custody, which allows you to do.

CCA segregated personal Bitcoin wallet with your Bitcoin in it on chains. Download the Figure Markets app today with my personal link, figuremarkets.com slash Scott Melker, and start earning 9% on your idle cash or take out a Bitcoin back loan at industry low rates. Digital asset treasury companies have had a bit of a roller coaster over the past couple months. They came out firing hot. Things were trading at 20x multiples to nav if they even had nav when they launched. and we've seen those multiples disappear across the board, pretty much. It's Tuesday, October 7th, as we're recording for people who know.

I checked this morning in Nakamoto was trading at like 90 cents. I think that's 20 cents under their pipe. The first pipe. The second one was five. Really? Yeah. I think it was $1.12 or $1.10 was their first one. Is this Bailey?

And they did a small raise at $5 and they're trading at $0.90. So, like, you know, where are we at on the Bitcoin? Let's start with Bitcoin. Where are we out on the Bitcoin digital asset treasury companies? Saturated, saturated, and I think, you know, I mean, for me, it's like there's still no return on Bitcoin other than the upside.

So these small companies, everybody knows they have to sell something at some point, right? They're not micro strategy. So, I mean, and now there's one of the reasons that we didn't do that, it was there was already 50 of them. We didn't want to be number 51 or number 52. So I think that's the real problem is just trying to work its way through retail, right?

like retail's trying to pick who it's going to be and you got to keep it simple for them with the with the acquisitions and the things i think i think people are just looking for a pure player they have micro strategies that it doesn't have to sell it's bitcoin and everybody's afraid they might yeah i mean arthur where do you stand on bitcoin treasury companies right now i mean in general there'll be a few in each category that are that are dominant obviously micro strategy is the OG and the creator of the the entire meta narrative uh think tom He's been talking about how micro strategy and Bitmin are what, like 90% of all trading volume of the entire dat space. So if you're in ETH or Bitcoin as your token, then like it's pretty difficult to compete because the average daily trading volume is really like the, you know, a financial advisor cannot recommend a stock that doesn't trade, especially if the other alternative trades a thousand times more.

So it's like no brainer. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. it was going to be hard for many people to replicate what micro strategy did specifically. I feel like whatever the premium to nav on micro strategy is is pretty much your ceiling at what you could anticipate another Bitcoin treasury trading at. I get that some of them are smaller and it's easier to maneuver and do things, but still, I mean, Alan, it makes a lot of sense why you didn't dive into a Bitcoin treasury company. Yeah, well, that's the way we looked at.

We looked at micro strategy is 107, now it's down to 1.5. So we thought that's the ceiling for Dats, you know, in the Bitcoin space because of the way Bitcoin works. And, you know, it's just compressed along with all the rest of them. But like Arthur said, volumes king. So they still have plenty of opportunity. The problem is anything they do has to be so massive, right? If they raise $500 million tomorrow, nobody cares. So they have to, he has to do billions and billions at a time.

They're the king of it. and volume is going to be in those leaders like Arthur said the leaders are going to matter like there's going to be a couple in each category so then why Solana and that made a question for both of you obviously Allen you started you pexy I mean you were within 24 hours of being the first I don't know who won the race technically but you obviously saw an opportunity and that was even before the Heath ones were huge right I mean you were very very early on deciding to roll the Solana a treasury company and raised at the time, it was very sizable. Yeah, there were no ETH ones at the time.

I don't think like Bitminor came after, SPEC came after. So what we saw was what I saw was that single issue that I think for small companies launching these are how are you going to have cash flow? So if they're already 50 Bitcoin companies out there, you know, accumulating all of this Bitcoin and they were trading, if one seven was your ceiling, and micro strategies there, why do it? And what we looked at, we looked at Solana, the staking revenue and the way you can compound that,

never mind the availability to buy that discount of locks sold from the FTF bankruptcy, which, you know, we've managed to get 40, you know, 60% of our portfolio unlocked. So saved average of 15% to 17% on those purchases. So every month, you get that adding under your balance sheet. And that 8% staking revenue really runs the company, leaves us profit. So we don't ever have to sell any if we don't want to. Arthur, why back us a lot of treasury company with all the options in the world?

One of the first, obviously, we participated in the pipe, so we were comfortable with the management and how they operated that particular deal. I'm sure people have seen some interesting market actions and some of the subsequent deals of other DAT companies, which you've chosen not to participate in. And yeah, and obviously, obviously the yield, right? Because obviously you want to stack, you know, creative soul per share at the end of the day. Because while you, in two years' time, what's going to be the story about DAT's, if maybe the market's going sideways or what have you, it's like, who's making money, who doesn't

have a particular binary price point in which if it goes below this level and they've got to start selling or doing some, you know, some things I would rather not do. And I think that's what, you know, made us comfortable taking, taking the plunge and getting into this realm. Obviously, we're not really equity folks for more pure token people. Right. I mean, I wouldn't, Alan, I don't know where you stand on this, but Arthur, I certainly wouldn't have defined you as like a Salana Maxi before coming into this, right?

I'm on money and Arthur Hace's poxit meant popular money. Of Arthur's bank account, maxi. But, Alan, you either, right? I mean, listen, you have a long, multi-decade career on Wall Street, right? This is a consumer goods company. So you were obviously You obviously saw an opportunity with a very specific asset

to do a very specific thing but in your mind was it because Salana is the greatest asset that exists in the crypto space could be or is it because it was the best opportunity for a treasury company? I think it was a blend of all three, right?

Like we actually thought about basket making a basket, Bitcoin, but Salana was still always going to be the lead but as we looked at it, we thought you know, keep it simple, right? So one story like Arthur said, we can stack that. And then once we started seeing that the, you know, the opportunities in the locksill, you know, if we stack that 15% discount, you know, that yield to maturity

is close to 11%. So we're really, the way I saw it is if you, as crypto always has a winner, it has a summer, it has a winner, you know, and there's, there's just the way it's going to go. We never wanted to be in a situation where we own something and had to liquidate it because that's the death of your premium at some point. So it just gave us a best opportunity is a small company to do it that way. And the difference between us and, you know, we didn't take any debt. Like we didn't do any debt at the beginning, like the first one before us. They did all debt to start. So trade it a little different. We wanted to do straight equity and make sure you secure down that balance sheet 100% and leave yourself the opportunity to

manage properly going forward. It sounds like for some reason you think there's going to be bear markets in the future, but I was told that it's a super cycle and they will never draw down again. So it seems like you're not really, but believe it. I hope so. That'd be nice. I read Arthur. I'm going to hope you're right, but I'm going to plan for the other. I read Arthur's medium, and I'm telling you that's how I feel when I'm done.

They're doing my job. So, listen, but it does beckon a very interesting question, which is how do digital asset treasury companies generally prepare for the somewhat inevitable winter, right? I'm not saying it'll be a part of the four-year cycle, but we all know that bare markets will come. And at the end of the day, is that just management? I mean, Arthur, you talked about the fact, like, you know these guys, you invested,

you identified that the management was competent and was likely to be able to steer the ship. Probably not the case with every digital asset treasury company from what I've seen anecdotally, right? So I guess how do you prepare to survive a winter with one of these and, you know, how do you make sure that you are solvent when that happens? I mean, I think you have to look at derivative exposure to the extent that people disclose it. I know a very big strategy for a lot of companies.

I mean, I don't know a lot, but I know some DATs, and I don't believe you have to disclose this in your results or your 10Ks or 8Qs or whatever they're called is a lot of people are selling puts. I'm selling naked puts. And to generate extra yield, especially if you're not getting 8%, okay, well, I've got this stack. How do I generate some yield? okay, let me go in the OTC markets and start selling puts. And so I don't know where these strike prices are, but there's going to be a lot of people who are going to have to come up with a lot of cash

at a particular level, whatever that level may be, I don't know what it is, in the bear market, and that could be the end of a lot of DAQ companies who mismanage their derivatives exposure. Or they issue some funky sort of debt equity-like structure that has a particular strike price, not getting a knockout, like people get really funky with this stuff.

It's going to be fun to trade as a trader, but I think people can get super, super, super duper funky, and that's going to lead to tears when the market turns. Sounds like a lot of them are just hedge funds with a label. Hedge funds and people who like to pay fees to the bankers, basically. Right. I just, like, we clearly have a very, like, we have a major problem in crypto with naming things appropriately. It's like the inflation reduction act. Yeah. But it's still inflation, it's still above zero, so I don't know, just less. From 9 to 8.

We are a fiscally responsible crypto asset treasury, right? But I mean, Alan, right? You've looked at all of these, I'm assuming, right? Interestingly, like, as much as you were one of the first, I know these deals still across your desk. And you probably say no to most of them. Like, what are the glaring things that you see when you think, wow, this one's not going to make it? I'm not putting a penny into this thing.

Well, I didn't put a penny into many. So after the first two or three, what we've seen, and I'm sure Arthur has seen it because he's, he's, everyone that I've seen, Arthur, seen 10. So whatever opportunity is letting on my desk, Arthur gets them first. So the way I see it is, like, they've gotten more and more diluted for the actual retail and the investor, you know, the sponsor warrants and all those things. And the great thing that they're doing is they still say all of, they don't really encourage. include them in the dilution, they include them in the dilution at the 1.1 nav when they go out and market it. But then the company tells you that it's going to trade it two nav. So if that's true, then it's not at 1.1 anymore. It's at 1.35, right? Because that's a 20% dilution on this warrant. So I think

those are the ones that are going to cause investors problems. For us, the way we would, or for me, like the way I think I'm not a crypto. So I'm not like Arthur. I don't think everything goes straight up actually. Like I'm in a, I'm from the, you know, the logistics business. So when I was building XPO logistics, you know, we had thousands of trucks out there. The crazy things on the weekend, the phone would ring or in, so back then we didn't have really cell phone. I didn't know the carrier cell phone, you know, when I was building that in 2000. My wife would come outside, and every time she'd come outside, I'd think, just don't tell me that the truck hit a school bus or something crazy. Like, so I'm always planning for the worst.

Like, I wouldn't sleep at night, so I couldn't have enough insurance. So the way we look at it on a short form of this is not too much leverage. We don't put all. our money to work at once. Yes, investors give us money to put it to work, but they put it to us, you know, to put to work in a reasonable manner. They wanted us to get into the market, but we don't raise a billion today and buy a billion tomorrow. So even if you look at our chart, the way we bought it, we, you know, we have 100. I think when we went out, the cost of Seoul was like one, or the price was like 159. We raised, what, a couple hundred million dollars after that, and our cost is still 159. And Seoul has been up since then. We've, we've, you know,

strategically put stuff to work. So I think those are the things that we can do. And I come from traditional finance from Wall Street. So, you know, I think it's a good blend. Like we're taking just a little different approach. We think crypto's the future and Solana is the future. Just a smaller approach. Not too much leverage.

When everything goes down, I'd love to have some leverage available and some cash available to take advantage of that moment in time. Let's talk about that. Because what happens when they blow up, Arthur? Is it merger and acquisition season? Do the big ones eat the small ones? Is it like a general? space collapse do you see it as they just go away and if you survive i mean there's so many

scenarios of ways this could end yeah i mean i think why did that's really exist because even much of zombie small-ass companies that do fall and so this was a great way to re-energize the stock price so i don't think these things are going to like disappear in the same way that you know there's a lot of cryptos that still trade above zero um and that in that in that respect the yeah right $200 million market gap or something. Totally. So how difficult is it to take over a board, go to the AGM, make them sell the tokens or redeem this and do that?

It's all lawyer U.S. capital market stuff. It's hard or it's easy. I don't know. But that's kind of the things that, you know, certain terms of investors were really, really good at that. navigating that legal capital markets, you know, rules and regulations game, they'll make a killing on this because there's going to be some awesome opportunities for assets that like, you know, people like me are not going to get involved. It's just too far. It takes too long, costs too much money. But there's people who, this is what they do, right? Like an Elliott, right? They go and they buy this distress and they figure it out and all of a sudden, you know, they bought it at 50 cents. It is trading at 95 or whatever it is. So I think those are the type of people who will salivate at all these. broken debts that will exist in not it doesn't even need to be like a super bear market just like the bull market is kind of over maybe we're just in a slight downward sideways with the volatility

declines retail becomes less interested and all of a sudden these things you know trade a few bucks a day and I had a massive discount to mnav yeah I had a conversation with katelyn long last week and she basically said you know wall street has somewhat dampen bitcoin's volatility and volatility is what these bitcoin treasury companies prey on you're like sailor Saylor just needs things to be going crazy. Sideways is really, really bad when they're trying to do all the financial engineering and make all these moves. So you just really need it to be extremely volatile for them all to be able to operate and make money. Yeah.

And then the more convertible bonds and all these sort of like accumulator type structures that are issued on top of these stocks, the more retail is whoever is buying these and probably high net worth private banks are just crushing. wall. And as the wall comes down, it becomes harder and harder to issue these things. And then it makes the underlying asset less interesting to trade from a retail perspective. Yeah, it turns out that inefficiencies are very quickly armed out of markets. So they're like, who's buying convertible note on Bitcoin Treasury Company 57? And what are they trying to offer to even get a single investor? That's always what concerned me is like once you get past a few of these, what kind of risk has to be taken on to compete?

Well, that's going to be the key, right? If you have to take on too much risk, and I think that's when people have, well, well, the only thing that can happen faster than that is people issue a new debt, because we've seen like 180 in 60 days. So I didn't even know you can get that many registered in 60 days. Well, actually, none of the register in any shares yet,

so it doesn't matter. I was just going to, that's my next question. We'll get there in a minute. I, you know, I think that there's, yeah, I think I agree with Arthur and you guys on this. It's going to get played out in a not so pretty way, especially on some of the assets when they've reached for tokens because everyone wants to do a new deal.

And like Arthur's mentioned, it's really hard to do an acquisition because even when, you know, how do we, just say us as a dat and we're trading at 1.5, whatever it is, how can we justify going to pay 1.5 for a debt that has 400 million in crypto, so really I'm paying 600 million for something I can buy on the open market for 400 million. My investors would go crazy. I'd be out of my mind. So they have to trade below now. And then you go talk to them and say, hey, we'd like to buy you below nav. And they're like, well, we're able to sell the crypto. So why are we going to sell below

nav? So then you get this whole, I don't know how it's going to play out. And I've done, you know, with XPO, I did probably do 12, 15 acquisitions. I don't know how they're going to get done yet. So then what happens if, let's say the acquisitions, environment is too difficult what happens to ones that wash out i mean shareholder value just goes to zero and see you later no no no no they probably end up being a beautiful shell with 300 million dollars in or 100 million dollars and another tech company just slips in and takes over so it kind of it's the i'm not kidding i just laugh no i'm laughing because it's like some dead medical company reverse merges into some digital ad treasury company which then reverse merges into some sort of tech

That's $300 million in it, which you can't find. So you can't sell it, right? So most of these companies had a million-dollar market gap, two-million-dollar market cap, and that's just so it was an easy deal. But now they're going to be zombie companies with 200 million of ton or whatever is next, that they go, whatever it is that fails, but still has a value. They come in, they liquidate the treasury, and they got, so the shareholders are going to get a percentage of whatever new company goes in there.

Unfortunately, it's going to be a lot less than they think because they're going to get diluted out it's like ridiculous, you know, warrants and banking fees. I mean, we have such creative ways of blowing up our market. So maybe the question is, is this any sort of risk to the actual crypto market? Or is it just a risk to the digital asset treasury companies? Like, Arthur, do you think that because they're all forced to puke at whatever that tipping point is, level you said, that we get a bigger drawdown that causes a larger bear market? Or do you think that basically anyone who bought the shares in these just gets washed?

I mean, I don't think usually the failures happen at the bottom of the bear market. So if there are a raft of failures, it will happen at the bottom of the bear market in the same way that FTX, Luna, 3 heroes really failed at the bottom of the market. So I think it would be a great signal as to when they can start going along crypto when, you know, some of these stats fail, whatever that means in the data context. But the best thing about, you know, at least Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, all these, you know, major tokens is that they're, you know, public blockchains that work, regardless of what the price is, right? Tech still works. And so that's the point is we don't have to worry about some central bank of crypto or some dudes and gals, you know, in a private room deciding whether or not

they're going to save this guy, fuck that guy, like, we don't have any on that. And that's the point of crypto. It's like, we don't have to worry about this stuff. Okay, who cares if the price goes on 99% as long as the blocks keep getting validated? it. So what happened? I think everybody intellectually can get behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, digital asset treasury companies, but we're already starting to see, like, number 98 on coin market cap, digital

asset treasury companies. I mean, what is that all about? I mean, mostly it's about, and I don't know how much, maybe Alan is a better idea of what you're supposed to disclose or not disclose. A lot of these are, I've got locked tokens, and I think I can get some liquidity today. or a multiple on it by putting it into a public vehicle and maybe there's some tax advantage and all that kind of stuff and that's really the motivation for a lot of these like tier two tokens for doing that's really just hey vc guy needs to get a dpi in their investment or show that they did you did something let me go put this in this public vehicle slap it on my investor report and say please pay me 20 percent isn't there also an element there where it's like you get to sell without telling everybody you sold it's like yeah the Yeah, I, you know, like, especially, I'll say in the Bitcoin ones, like, you have these whales who are, you know, diamond hand, never sell libertarian, screw the government. And all of a sudden's like, he transferred 30,000 Bitcoin into a Bitcoin treasury company.

That's selling without telling everybody. Yeah. I worry with the same thing with when I talked about some of these deals and the way they're funded. I think also, like when they're doing the in-kind deals on these IPOs, it's just like, like Arthur said, there's these founders coming in. or people coming in on, like, whatever the tokens is, I don't want to name anybody, but they're just contributing this illiquid token for $20 million or $50 million and creating the basis for the DAT. And then the bankers and everybody's using that to raise the other $200 billion.

You know, we've got a $50 million lead, but the $15 million, he's not leading. He's exiting. So I think, I think that's the problem. And on the, and on the DAT, you know, downside, I want to, for us, I want to focus on the positive because I think we have a huge, we have a huge, we have a huge. runway. I think these dads really do have a huge runway for the ones that are run properly and really understand the metric. But like on the downside, I think what I worry about is the ones that are not disclosing or mismanaging are going to cause like the retail investor

to rush out of these things and then make it harder, right? It's, but, but like, like Arthur said, as that happens, there'll be opportunity for the ones that don't, but it's just a shame that it's going to most likely somehow come to that, you know, in the short term, even before. for a crypto winner, it can come to that because of some of these things. So we'll see what happens. So you just kind of alluded before to the fact that a lot of these have filed, but very few have actually registered their shares. There's been a lot of rumors that the NASDAQ and even the SEC are not looking as kindly

on these as people expected maybe at the very beginning. Are we in a situation where we're going to hear about a whole lot of news of one's launching or attempting to and then they never actually get off the ground? No, I don't think so. So we've been through, we've been through a registration. You know, it's always painful for people. The first one's the most painful, second one, third one. They get easier because your float's bigger. You have more liquidity. You have a deeper market. These ones on the first round. The first round for us was painful. I'm sure Arthur saw it. Like you went to bed one and he had, it was 20 bucks a shirt. I woke up and it was three bucks a share. I know he probably didn't care. I mean, but it's just like, you did? He's like, no, Alan, I was perped out of that one. I was skiing, man. I was saying. No, but I think I, all as I've seen from them is that they wanted to put the breaks on it.

It's taking longer. The thing I think that's taking longer for everybody is you're taking a lot of people from crypto into traditional markets, right? Like in crypto, you don't have to file any registration statement with the SEC. So they're learning how the SEC does this stuff. and they can be very difficult. They can be not in a way intentionally, I don't believe, but just they have a structure.

It's this, this, this, and this. And what's the most frustrating is they say, hey, answer this question, and then you're done, and then you answer that question. They say, well, since you answer that question, I got three more for you. And then the frustration level, and if you don't have really good experience with it,

when you answer that question, you've got to make sure you do not give them a reason to ask you another question. Like, you got to answer the question. Yeah, but then you're probably, but then the issue is for, lot of these at least so far is that the news goes out you have this low float stock trading on complete speculation without shares registering and no idea what actual price discovery would be and you

get the christmas tree chart i mean that's why you get these mount everest mountain charts for you know from zero to to 20 bucks and back to zero before uh anybody even has shares to sell or they can buy the asset you know it seems like that's hugely problematic it is problematic it was problematic for us We were like, oh, please, this is the, I mean, I really, when it happened. And you can't say anything. You can't say anything. We had no idea that people were going to take a doubt the way we did. When we did it, we were the first or really, and I woke up and I'm like, this is the

worst thing that can happen. You want to tell everybody, like, why are you buying the stock today? Like, you can't, it doesn't do us any good. We're not selling any stock. I mean, some of the, some of the ones after I've sold off of registration statements I don't agree with. But I think, you know, if you look at the new deals that I've launched, the, the Retail investors gotten smarter.

They see it. They're talking about it. I'm sure Arthur's seen it. You've seen a couple of deals in the Salana space. They haven't traded a huge premiums. They're not trading a lot of volume. Like even ones that came after us, we're still, I think, the leader in Salana with the most volume per day.

And, you know, pretty consistent trading. So I think the investment community has figured it out. But, yeah, it's been a big problem. But there's still a huge flush to come for these other ones that haven't filed. Or have filed that hasn't happened. All right. Let's talk about then the market and where we're at, because we know that this is all kind of beholden to where the market heads. We're in this endless debate right now. The four-year cycle doesn't exist. Is it dead? Are we in the super cycle I joked about before? Are we following liquidity? I mean, Arthur, you're kind of the master of this. Like, where do you think we stand right now with the fiscal monetary situation in general and where the market is poised to go? Yeah, so my essay comes out tomorrow and my take on the four-year cycle, the TLDR is like, I don't, there has been three, four-year cycles and there's very good reasons for them, all center around U.S. and Chinese monetary policy. I know that there is a technical factor in terms of mining rewards, but I think that is not really the real driver of all this.

It just happens to happen at the same time. It's really about fee out liquidity between the U.S. and China. And if we think about like this particular cycle, if we just listen to what the politicians are telling us and they usually, as, you know, up in liars or they all are, they usually tell the truth about some things. And the consistent message, whether, you know, we're all around the world is we will do all these things for people and we're not going to tax them for them. Whether that's building bombs, it's building factories, it's building houses, whatever it is. taxes are not going up to the level needed to pay for all this stuff. So it's all about printed money. And whether it's the Fed or it's a PBOC, it's ECB or whatever central bank you want to talk

about, the politicians are saying, hey, we need cheaper money and we need more of it. And there's various ways of getting that, getting to that point, which is why I think Bitcoin and gold, for that matter, are basically telling us the future is more. fiat debasement and so I don't think the four-year cycle applies in this particular instance mainly because nobody knows what the world order is going to look like in the next two to three years but surely will be volatile and surely politicians will print money to make sure that people feel okay and vote for them or support them and the political process so I'm long it's long and strong yeah it's right on that's what's going on I mean J.P Morgan said Bitcoin gold

silver, yes, that J.P. Morgan, the one with Jamie Diamond, said Bitcoin, gold, silver, and called it the debasement trade. Then Paul Tudor Jones said the debasement trade, and he said Bitcoin, gold, NASDAQ. And then yesterday, Ken Griffin came in and said Bitcoin and gold on the debasement trade. So we've definitely got a new hot take coming across the board on Wallstrand. I don't know if they, like, call each other. They're like, the word of the day is debasement. Debasement. Let's get it. You know, like, and, but I mean, Alan do agree with that, because it seems like that's what's happening. You don't usually get gold, silver, stocks, Bitcoin, you know, interest rates somehow, all rising at the same time. You don't. And it's, it's just, this is crazy how

much money we printed is, never mind the European Union can never stop printing money, right? Because they have no money coming in, really. They have money. And China, you know, I mean, they've got cities that are empty, so what are they going to do with their money? And obviously with this administration, And the U.S. also wants to, you know, for four years, we've failed to actually be part of the crypto. You know, everybody who had crypto in U.S. was afraid to get arrested on some level or charge or something. So I think all of that money coming in, never mind the money being printed, I mean, I'm with Arthur. I don't know that this isn't at the beginning for a little while. I mean, golds have, what is 4,000?

4,000. That tapped it. And today I was driving home on a friend of mine called and said. said, oh, I just bought 2,000 tokens of silver for what, I'm like, why did you do that? He goes, silver is going to the moon. And I'm like, we're at a random call. I bought 2,000 ounces of silver. He was the guy in Tampa's got 2,000 more if you want them. I'm like, I'm good. So it's just starting. I did until you're the one who told me about it, but you're my top signal and I'm out. I didn't, I didn't have it on my bingo card that like we'd have the same signals from silver that we were

getting from dose going. Silver, I mean, I think silver, I'm long. Silver's definitely going to 100 plus. I agree. I agree. I do agree with that. He didn't call to see how I was doing it. I called to see if I wanted to buy silver. He was trying to use you as exit liquidity for his 2000 that he bought.

That was all a lie. But I mean, to your point, Arthur, I think the clearest thing is you can believe Trump when it comes to where he wants markets to go. He's extremely clear. about how he gauges the success of his presidency, and they literally went from Doge and austerity for like three days to we're going to grow our way out of this.

How can things not go up if the government is literally telling you they don't care about anything but growth, and we all know that growth is fake, really. Oh, and we got Stimmy checks now, right? We're going to get some tariff checks. Are we getting tariff checks? Yeah, one to two thousand a person. That's, we only got 1,500 in COVID, and look what that did, the game stop and crypto, right?

Well, we better wait to see if the Supreme Court, because I don't want to show military, check back to China, because somehow I'll come back to my boy, you know, not in a good way. So let's, let's see if the tariff stick, right? I mean, are we really going to get stimulus? Is that really a thing? Like, is these, I mean, I feel like that's bluster, but like, wouldn't you? I don't think so. I mean, it's a very popular policy. Yeah, it gets a lot of votes. Democrats and Republicans. Republicans love handing out stimulus checks.

They love giving out free money. It's not really free. They're politicians. Yeah. We call them air drops where I'm from. But, you know, whatever. So if we're not going to see the normal four-year cycle, it also can't be up only forever. We've talked about the fact that there will be a winter.

So Arthur, like, even if it's an extended sort of bull market here, Matt Hogan joke to me that recessions have become illegal. There still feels like that leads to a worse end whenever. it does tip. Yeah. I mean, and I think at least in the U.S. context, one signal will be sort of the ratcheting up a rhetoric from the opposing team blue Democrats in late 27 and starting in 2008, right? Irregardous that they all have the same essential party and they all do the same stuff.

It doesn't really matter. It's a popularity contest. Half the country hates one dude. So the people running against him are like, we're not going to do what he does. And then investors are going to go, oh, no, what if they're serious? maybe we should not own whatever it is that we own at that particular time, crypto being one of those assets. And I think that'll be the start of a massive sell-off at crypto, stocks, golds, everything,

globally as people's, you know, ponder whether or not American, think your politician, whoever is the opposition party, is serious about trying to run a different policy, even though we all know it won't, but that doesn't mean that the forward changes in people start taking steps off the table and that causes a collapse in prices. So that's sort of my mental model, 2027, 2028 time period when I want to be, okay, well, what am I going to buy now? I've got, I've made all these great gains in a Fiat number. How do I convert it into something real that's going to last me through this next

beta cycle, however long that lasts? I even see it in the midterms. Like, the only good thing about the midterms is that if it happens, it just stagnates where nothing can change, but I still think there could be a temporary bump there too. And then if it becomes a stalemate, it's off to the races again. And then if it, you know, if kind of the red side or the Republican side wins, you know, it probably just continues, just chugs right back along again. But I agree with Arthur. You have to really wait for, you know, a change, you know. Yeah, what do you sell into at that point? Right.

Like if gold and crypto and Bitcoin are the things that have completely mooned on the debasement trade, and you think that there's going to be a bare market, where do you put your money? Lands, you know, space rockets. I don't know if I can know. We'll figure it out. Yeah, we'll figure it out. We'll be so rich. It won't matter.

Cash is not that bad either, you know. It's not horrible. That's a little cash sitting around. It's okay. I've heard it's trash. That's the thing that's being debased last time I checked. But, yeah. temporarily it's okay.

It's okay, you know. But, yeah, yeah, I don't think, you know, it could be, it could be the opposite where by then crypto's got such a hold that crypto, you know, actually has a little run into that where people don't want to go into the dollar or something or, you know, depending on that. But it's inevitable. There'll be a down check. But isn't that the time that Bitcoiners will be screaming that it's going to become the global reserve currency and that fiat is dead and that's our moment? I believe it's not, unfortunately. everyone agrees it's usually not what's going to happen yeah whatever man that's not what i heard it's not that told me i read it every day i just it doesn't appear to be true on the tv yeah every single

day so alan not to get too deeply into politics but i mean factually if one house flips if the senate flips blue elizabeth warren is the head of the senate finance committee that that's literally a reality it's like she becomes ahead of like as a CEO of a publicly traded digital asset treasury company. Do you have any concerns that if the political environment changes, things could become more difficult for you? Or do you believe that, like, at least from where you stand and not maybe for public blockchains

or projects trying to build, since you are publicly traded, it's not a problem? Like, is there an environment where the pendulum swings all the way back and we go full Gensler and they come after you or anyone for things that were done during the Trump administration when the environment looked better. That part, I don't worry about that too much. Like, they can't go back on policy

and come after companies post that stuff. But I will say what I've always said as a career or business person, whatever, who's ever in whatever house, whoever it is, it'll take them six months to change something because they're so stupid. And it will take a good business person

like six hours to figure out a way around it. So just give me like 24 hours after they do it and I'll have a new policy for them and they can go do whatever they want to do. They're really not to get into politics. Politics is irrelevant in your life if you just focus on your life. But do you think it matters then if we get the Clarity Act or once you have it? Yeah. I think if you get the Genius Act next year and the Clarity Act done, man, I think Arthur probably agrees. I hope he does and if he doesn't just say you do anyway. No, I think it's off to the races for a little while.

I don't know what's in the acts, so I don't live in the Americas. I really know. Nobody knows, but it's provocative. Here's what it gives you. It gives JP mortgages in the other world. They're able to stuff that in everybody's retirement account. And that's, you know, five or 10 percent of $16 trillion going up by however much every month. So it's a big amount of money.

I mean, isn't that really the thing that will buoy crypto and break the cycles is passive flows? Yes. I mean, that's how everybody, I mean, that's how all money is invested at this point, right? I mean, you just buy like a Vanguard mutual fund or something in your 401k and never check it again. And if it has micro strategy in it, micro strategy goes up or Coinbase, right? I mean, that's the reality. So is it now a race to become big enough to be included in indexes? It'll just create some liquidity on the underlying tokens.

That's what's really going to happen for the top. Like, even though they're pretty, they look, they look, well, Bitcoin is completely liquid. Ethereum's got it and more liquid because Tom Lee buys all of it. And but like, it's a lot on the liquidity is there, but it could get better. But yeah, if you're in the index or big enough to be in like the Russell 1,000 and 2,000, it just creates liquidity among some of these companies. It'll be a really good thing, I think, you know, a temporary sugar high, put it that way, at least. So I've been kind of joking consistently since the Circle IPO that we've had a huge alt season,

but it's just in public equities that are crypto-adjacent instead of actually in all coins. Arthur, do you think we get an actual alt season with all this liquidity that's coming in? Is that an old season? Hyperliquic. Okay. Do you think we get a, do you think we get, okay, do you, do, they're B&B, right? I mean, I mean, BNB is absolutely crushing entire ecosystem. Do we get the, buy a token, throw a dart and wait for your 10x type of art's alt season?

I don't think so. I think every, every cycle is different, right? The first cycle was, you know, can you get, can you pay a minor off to put your money to an ICO? So the D5 cycle was, can you farm compound and AVE and, you know, whatever else the fuck you were doing. FIPH. And the next cycle was, okay, well, any high, FDV, low float token, either don't participate or dump that out of the open and buy things with revenue. So I think things with revenue, things like etherfi, Athena, Pendle, you know, hyperliquid, depending how they do with the fees, Astor, Light, or all these things, right? if you have money if you're going to buy back your token that'll do well it's not going to be you know

throw a dart at the wall and xyz token is going to do well you know i think people are already over memes it's very very difficult what new meme has broken out over a billion post-trump yeah i don't know if you think micro strategy puts in the ceiling for digital asset treasury companies how about the president of the united states thrown out a meme coin on friday night at night yeah so i mean i guess every that every cycle is different and you know what people say alt season, they wanted to be as easy as it was in the past, but probably most of those people weren't even participating in the past. They thought crypto was too sketchy. So I think it's a bit of misplaced nostalgia. That actually sounds like it's a maturing market. You actually want to

buy things that have some sort of utility or reasonable economics for the first time. I mean, you always wanted to buy something that had utility. It's just that your Ford was so long. Now the Ford is, show me right now. Where is it? You know, I don't want to. Right. You wanted theoretical utility, but you were trading on speculation, not on the actual utility, which makes sense why something like a BNB is absolutely exploding right now. Hyperliquid's really interesting. Astor, all the ones that you mentioned. But do you think they're like dinosaur tokens have their day? Like, do we get the, that, I mean, Ripple is still crushing. Yeah. They are. I mean, I was that token for 249. Hoskinson was there holding court. Cardano and adjacent projects had like, however many square meters of square. They must have paid millions to the token in 2049 organizers. So obviously, dinosaur tokens of a particular vintage that do nothing are doing quite well. Alan, I mean, you're obviously focused on Solana, but as you look at this market, you know, do you think that there's going to be a lot of value in the underlying tokens or anything we just focus on the stocks that are trading based on them?

Well, I think there's a place for both, right? Like I still own Bitcoin, I own Solana individually, and I have more than enough exposure of Salana on our, you know, in our equity, but I certainly think that, you know, with if you pick the right, you know, Treasury company, you can do better, you know, your return should be better than the underlying token, but there's more risk to it. So I think that's, that's for everybody individually to think. But, you know, I really don't go below the first four or five tokens personally on investment I don't understand them well enough to do it.

You don't need to understand them. You just need to understand who's going to push them. That's how we're to the past. I'm a fundamental. So actually you finally found your moment then in crypto, because I've never worked before, and now it actually does. I mean, Arthur, how is,

I don't know if you can get into it too deeply, but how is Mailstrom, like, deploying right now? Is it more into public markets? Is it more into tokens? Are you dealing with pre-sales and things like that? I think we lost Arthur, I think he's... We might have. Sometimes, so it, they'll edit it, but it records locally, so usually if he can still hear us, it's still recording on his. That's why we use Riverview, but yeah, we did totally lose him.

We'll continue on, and hopefully he'll jump back yet. We definitely got it up either way. So while we're waiting for him, let me make sure we covered everything here. Maybe we can talk about what justifies. the premium in digital asset treasuries because obviously some of them will and should trade it a premium some may end up trading a discount as we discussed but you know what what justifies a premium we're not talking about 10x 5x and how high i guess can a justified premium be yeah so the way i see it is what can we do that a token can't do right so we can we can stack the the

the token using the yield so the yield for us is something that the returns you know higher for us than it does for for an ETF because the ETFs and what my understanding is they can't stake the whole thing they have to leave some liquidity so we can be permanently staked they also can buy discounted of lock tokens like we can so we're still buying them and it's still available a 15% 12% discount that discount for us comes to term each month so we add another you know half a point to to return for equity. And then when we are trading above NAV, as much as people don't, you know, they all say, don't, oh, don't dilute us, don't dilute us, when you're, when you're selling stock above NAV, 1.5, 1.7 times, and buying the underlying token and then doing it over

again, it's by a definition of it. It's not dilutive. It's the actual opposite of that. So that's what an ETF can't do, and that's what you can't do if you just own Solana. So that that's where I think that, you know, someone who's a sophisticated investor can really just do the math each time you do it and know where the stock should trade and could trade. And that's why we're doing this the way we're doing. I think a lot of people just struggle to understand hemnav and how it's calculated. And it seems like every company has a different dashboard on their side. It's just very, very confusing. So even those who get deep in the weeds have trouble identifying exactly what one of these might be worth. So we we didn't put up a press release

probably a few weeks ago that really explained the difference in how how we look at it there's really only one way to look at it it's so it's the total number of tokens you own what that what that value of tokens is divided by your fully diluted shares less any debt you have plus any cash you have deployed into the token at that moment in time right so it's explain it again so if you for us we have two million tokens. If it's at 200 bucks, that's 400 million. If we have 100 million shares outstanding, which we don't. This is hypothetical. Then you have four dollars of share. So, so you're MNAV. And then if you have 40 million in cash, you have to make the assumption that you would put that to work so that you have to add that back in and subtract any debt you

have. That's fully diluted MNAV. It's not that hard. I know it seems like everyone has a different way of spinning it, but you have to work out all of your, all the economics so you can, the investor knows exactly what they're getting. And we're trying to do that. And then the other side, we do it sole per share. So we give you every opportunity on our website to, to see exactly what we have. When I listen to your talk, I have a feeling that 50% of an handy, I'll say 50% generously of people who have launched digital asset treasury companies can't do that calculation. I do with my head every day because soul moves. So I know exactly. what our share price is. Too many crypto guys. Too many crypto guys launch a digital asset treasury companies

and not enough people who actually have a background in this and understand it. If you don't do it right, it looks bad on you more than it looks good on you. So people say, oh, you're trading, someone we're trading under NAV. I'm like, no, we're not because you have to account for the 40 million shares we issued for the last, you know, or the, or the, you know, Wall Street all makes so different it makes it a little difficult too because you have those pre-funded warrants. So like, there's all these little things that make it a little harder, but as the company, we, we disclose exactly what it is, everything that's out there. So it just, everybody can make the same choice. They just, I don't know if they haven't done it yet or haven't built the dashboards, but I think

it's important, you know, and I'm sure Arthur believes, you know, transparency is pretty important to figure out where you're putting your money. Yeah, as we kind of, I know we're kind of coming to the end here. I want to go back to just the cycle and the fact that it's, seems like we're just entering this liquidity cycle, assuming this four-year narrative is dead. How high can these assets go in this? So talk to you about how the how the asset goes, tell me how high the price is going to print. That's the question. Thirty-three million per Bitcoin. But I think, I think when Trump says and Bestin says, we're going to grow our way out of us, there's, that's print to infinity. Same with the Europeans, same of the Japanese, same with Chinese.

I mean, I think it's that. It's political to say. decision. I mean, the Japanese are, I mean, Japan just let the governor off. Like, they elected a kind of Trumpy, Trumpian prime minister and their bonds are flying. I mean, it's crazy. Yields. Well, when you have politicians say, it's okay, we'll just write a check for it. The bank account never runs out. They don't even, they actually believe it. That's the problem. You talk about like people who can't report MNAB. We have politicians just think you can just write the check and the government always cashes it. And no one ever has to pay for it. So I agree with Arthur. We could, there's a, there's a, there's a perp bet or there's a perp bet in there somewhere that would tell you how high crypto is going to go, depending on how much money someone's going to print. And then if this, this act goes through and the JP Morgans and the Morgan Stanleys and the Merrill Lynch's of the world all start having their, you know, financial advisors allowed to put three, five, 10 percent of money that's created and printed and into. retirement accounts, I mean, Bitcoin and all of them go up until people stop buying them. And Trump is floated unlocking those retirement accounts for crypto assets, right?

So that's an executive order right now as well, which is another humongous. There's so many catalysts that's out of control. I think Morgan Stanley today said 2 to 4% in crypto, Morgan Stanley. You know, I remember dreaming of if Larry Fink would one day say, you know, 1% into Bitcoin for every investor. Now we're getting, you know, 2 to 4 from the non-Lary. thinks. But are we talking about, you know, $500 Salana, $10,000, $1,000, and $250 Bitcoin? Or do these guys literally let it fly and we're talking about a million dollars? I mean, obviously I've said a million dollar Bitcoin. I think it's possible,

you know. I have a hundred thousand dollar east. I mean, I don't know where you could throw any number out there. Like, it's like what is the Chinese GDP going to be. Well, I don't give the fuck what the, what the GDP is. Tell me how much money they're willing to print. And I'll tell you how much money you think that XYZ policies and the willing to print, I'll tell you what Bitcoin is going to be, or a range. So stop thinking about the price of Bitcoin and start worrying about how much money they're going to print. I think when you start thinking about it in that way, then everyone feels like, oh, shit, I don't

own enough of whatever I believe is the fastest force. Even if you don't believe in crypto, maybe you're a stocks guy. Why are you buying a bond? You should be owning NASDAQ. That's it. Go home. Don't even, don't worry about it. Yeah, NASDAG gold.

That's what Paul Tudor. I mean, that was Paul Tudor Jones. He was the one who included NASDAQ in that, right? So I agree. Like I have my my price targets are at least double to triple everywhere for all of them, wherever they are if Arthur's right and I think he's right because that's my theory on this stuff. And I agree with them like we're I still have everything in the market even though at this

every moment in time every day I wake up in every charts at the top and I'm thinking to myself I've seen this movie end. I just don't think it's going to end for a while and the Fed is you know dropping the rates here in the U.S. everyone's printing money out of control. and it's just going to keep going on. You just hope you can make a good decision or have some. No, you just hope you can get so rich before it ends that you get invited to Galtz, Goltz,

or wherever everybody's going when it goes down. You don't want to be there for the torches and pitchforks. Yeah, because, yeah, going up on the escalator, you always go down on the elevator. Arthur, you've got to have a bunker or something somewhere. I mean, you know, I spent a lot of my time. I'm in rural northern Japan, and, yeah, I'll be okay. I know.

You'll be okay? He's going to be snowboarding between the zombies or whatever, you know, during the apocalypse. All right, well, we're going to survive. I mean, you know, every time I talk to you, Alan, it gives me increased faith in the digital asset treasury space and at least that some who are responsibly managed are going to do exceptionally well, and obviously it doesn't hurt to have Arthur behind you. you. Yeah, you guys.

Thanks for seeing. Everybody going to see again, Arthur. Talk soon. Scott, thanks for everyone. Cheers. Thank you, guys. Have a good one. See you, right.

See you guys.