The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin BREAKOUT Could Be Just the Start - AI May Reallocate $50 TRILLION | Bill Barhydt

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Bill Barhydt argues that Bitcoin’s breakout is being driven by a broader shift toward easier financial conditions, weaker dollar pressure, and renewed liquidity. He also explains why crypto is evolving into a 24/7 financial layer for perps, prediction markets, tokenized assets, and AI-driven investing, with Bitcoin increasingly positioned as pristine collateral for that system. The conversation closes on how AI could reshape portfolio management and accelerate the convergence of crypto, banking, and global capital markets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if Bitcoin's biggest future use case isn't as an investment, but as the collateral layer for an entirely new financial system? Today I'm talking with Bill Barheight from Abra about Bitcoin's latest move. You might get to like 85 and then you've got to unwind the leverage again. And then maybe low 70s and then maybe a methodical march to 100 or 110. Why I thinks liquidity is turning. Money's being put into the system. Short-term rates are moving up. Long-term rates are moving down, which is usually what you want to see for risk on assets.

And how ABRA is building yield-bearing assets that can become pristine collateral across crypto. We've released USDAF, which is our yield-bearing stable coin token. We're now testing BTCAF, which is the Bitcoin version of that. That gives us, for the first time in crypto's history, a cross-chain, collateralized system where I can use all of that collateral for anything. We also get into perpetual markets, tokenization, AI-managed portfolios, and why Bitcoin may ultimately sit underneath an AI-driven financial system. If Bill's right, the next phase of crypto looks very different from the last one.

Let's go. We've been sitting in the 60,000s here for seemingly ever. It's been purgatory, I think, and we finally get this massive move to the upside, and sentiment seems to be shifting. And, you know, here we are. It's coming out of August, and things are looking a little bit better. better. So what's your take on this? Yeah, look, so, so I think that it helps to understand the, this is President Trump driven. And and I don't, by President Trump driven, I don't mean,

um, the president said Bitcoin yesterday, so the price went up. I don't think that's what's happening. I think that the president has a belief that the United States needs to reestablish supremacy. Now, I don't think that's going to work, but there are tactics along the way that I think are good for risk on assets, in particular Bitcoin, and that's what we're seeing right now. And I'm happy to get into why I think that is, but the president's basically playing a big game of risk. And another move in that game yesterday came with, not yesterday, but over the last few days, with Besson basically saying, look, I'm going to flatten the yield curve. And I'm going to do it by basically raising short-term rates effectively by buying more bonds out of the long-term market

using short-term debt at the expense of the dollar. And my favorite proxy for liquidity, it's very simple proxy, is the DXY, and the DXY is down 2%, I believe, in the last couple of weeks. and that's a pretty good proxy for something's moving. And I think the markets now believe that this administration is not going to stand by and allow rates to go to Valhalla. Whether or not they can accomplish that with $40 trillion in debt is another story, but the market believes in the short term that rates moving sharply higher out on the yield curve has been somewhat muted. I don't necessarily know if that's true, but I think that's the stated goal. And it's part of this bigger geopolitical game of risk that I believe Trump is playing, which all relates to

Venezuela, Iran, interest rates, weaker dollar, oil. It's to stave off the rise of the Chinese empire, which I don't know that he can do. But he's certainly going to give it the old college try, as they say, whereas my grandfather would have said. So that's where I think we're at, and Bitcoin wins either way as a result. Yeah, so I agree with you. I think that a very specific catalyst, which happened on Wednesday, yesterday was the announcement from the Treasury. And then I think we just poured gas all over the fire with the incredible amount of open interest and leverage that was in the market, which sent it flying. And then Trump comes over the top on TV and says, you know, Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Clarity Act, innovation, you know, and like all the big catch for

and hyperliquid of all things. Right. That was the surprise of the day. The fact that he, that the president would mention a perp-dex, which he probably has no idea really what it is, obviously. But selling said, hey, this is a big deal for the United States and we're missing the boat. Yeah. And we should get into that.

But, but, um, was there a prediction market on Donald Trump saying, weren't hyperliquids. Right. In other words, he had a microphone in here. I'm Barron saying, Dad, I just put 100 on hyperliquid at 1004. Can you say it by 1003, please? No, I don't think that's true.

But, you know, who knows these days? Somebody knows something. Because if you go back and look at futures trades over this administration and their timing, it is insane. I mean, it's not as impressive as Pelosi. but but it's it's in that direction for sure and i only give pelosi the win because she's done it on such a sustained basis over such a long period she is the undisputed heavyweight champion of all time insider trading bullshit and and and probably will be for forever because the rules

will probably change before anybody can catch up yeah i agree with all that so uh maybe we can dig into more of those topics on the on the macro side. I think yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. So I mean, you kind of hinted to not being able to stop China. Isn't there an underlying theme in all of this actually Japan intervening in the ye, intervening in the yen, all these things that we've been doing that really comes down to our debt, right? I mean, like we're trying to prevent Japan from selling off our debt and to compete with. Yeah. Yeah. Look, so, so that's right. And, I think that there's a few things happening at once. And again, it's this big geopolitical game of risk and the United States has assembled its army. China is assembling its proverbial army.

And what's ever going to happen, I think is going to happen anyway. But the United States, from a geopolitical perspective and also from a domestic kind of base perspective, can't be seen as doing nothing. Right. Vance desperately wants to be president now. And he needs certain things to happen. Trump knows in his heart of hearts. It's all about the economy. Populism is all about the economy, regardless of what people may think about, you know, Black Lives Matter, which I do think is an important topic or, you know, what's happening in Iran, which is obviously an important topic. Ultimately, the popular vote comes down to the economy. The Electoral College is a little bit more nuanced because of the way it works, but that's basically the way it works. And so these rates, and you, and as,

As a real estate developer at heart, Trump believes two things. One, we need a weaker dollar. And two, we need lower long-term rates. Now, he grew up into what macro guys call the channel of truth, which is long-term rates under Volker were insanely high. And that channel basically troughed during COVID, what, 40 years later. So they couldn't- I remember my parents buying like a home and the mortgage was like 13 or 14. exactly exactly and and you did it and you accepted the fact that was the the value that you paid

for protecting the dollar at the time now we all have been hard those of us who you know kind of understood anything if like my my grandfather would say like what is regan doing kind of thing right you know by raising all this debt in order to kill the soviet union turned out regan was right but the amount of debt we were raising was inconsequential because it's gone vertical now right so So anyway, I think that the long-term game is clear. There is no way out of the kind of late-stage debt cycle that we're in. We've talked about this probably 15 times now together. But I do think the micro situation or macro in the moment is also all about now getting rates down while the president believes that inflation is under control, which shockingly it mostly is relative to where we

were, right? I mean, look, you know, inflation was up 20% over Biden's four years, and it's down significantly, right? Now, the people don't feel that because prices are 25% higher than what they were four years ago, right? So, so there's two things you have to understand about inflation. The first is what is the price of product X? What is the price of this iced tea versus the price of this iced tea five years ago? And it's probably 30% higher, if not more. Okay. Now, what is the rate of change of the price of this iced tea right now? That's that those are two different things. And the rate of change of this price, the price of this iced tea right now has come down significantly over the past two years,

right? But the damage for many consumers is already done. It was just done before Trump two, right? And, and, and so he knows that there's nothing he can do about the past, But what he can do is basically take the fact that they have inflation largely under control and combine that with, you know, the idea that they can get long-term rates down by taking action, even if it means raising the debt. The president does not care about debt. This is a person who has embraced debt and filed for bankruptcy many, many times. Obviously, debt has spent his friend for his entire, you know, personal career. I'm not opining on good or bad. I'm just saying that's the way he thinks. And so if you want to think, right, if you want to think like the president, you want, you want low rates, you don't care about debt, right? And what you care about is probably a weaker dollar in order to basically take the levered bets you're making using the debt and making them go up faster. Right. And that's how this president thinks, in my opinion. And his minions around him who support that, Beston in particular, who's a genius, by the way, he's a macro genius, is basically bringing out all the tools out of the shed to make that happen. Which means that there's no chance Kevin Warsh is raising rates. I don't see it happening. Yeah, I don't understand how markets were at 50% on that until just a matter of weeks ago. I haven't looked at-

Misread on inflation. Complete misread on inflation. Inflation is coming back. Really quickly, but even if you believe that inflation is a problem, Kevin Warsh wasn't put in that job to raise rates. Of course not. Even if it was economically the right decision to make, you can't bet that he would do it. It's the one thing that Trump and Warren have publicly agreed on.

The debt ceiling. Yeah. Right. Well, and rates. So I guess two things, right. Eliminate the debt ceiling and keep rates low. And again, this president doesn't care about debt. He doesn't.

He thinks debt is his friend. So if you think debt is your friend and you're willing to basically finance getting long-term rates down by bringing long-term rates up and flattening that yield curve, you know, the dollar is going to weaken. It's inevitable. The biggest challenge the U.S. had in doing that was the dollar weakening is relative to every other currency, right? Well, every other currency needs to go to shit right now because we have the strongest economy in the world. So getting our dollar down while other currencies are going to crap is not an easy trick. And getting the trade balance back in line at the same time, which they've done, by the way, to their credit.

Some of it due to tariffs and other things, but I can't believe the rate at which they've brought the trade deficit down. It's remarkable. What a time to be alive. So, I mean, just kind of wrapping the Bitcoin price story before we've done more interesting things. I mean, do you think that this was the signal that, you know, we're coming out of a bare market? Where do you stand on the four-year cycle?

I was totally against it before it kind of feels very four-year-cycling at this point. Yeah, I mean, there's no denying that it does. I think that this, I do continue to believe that the four-year cycle exists. If it does exist, it's really a function of other things in happenstance, which we've talked about before as well, meaning the long-term treasury yields, which we're coming down. That's playing out in a different way now because now you've reset the long-term curve, meaning they need to basically now the curve the long term rates bumped up and they have a new the new base from which to get them down and that may have reset that long term rate cycle but I think it's only going to work for one more cycle and and it has to do and my reason for believing

that is it's it's it's AI it's robotics it's declining labor force participation rates so so in other words, I think the way that macro has traditionally worked is going to work for another maybe six or seven years. And then after that, I don't know what's going to happen. But what we have right now is, I don't see how it's sustainable after that. We can get into why. But the bottom line in regards to Bitcoin, in the very short term, it makes sense to me that Bitcoin would retest 85. It makes total sense. I mean, you know, there's nothing in the current conditions that says it shouldn't do that, right? Money's being put into the system. Short-term rates are moving up. Long-term rates are moving down, which is usually what you want to see for risk on assets.

And Bitcoin was already lagging liquidity by many, many months. All of that points to a very, and it was way oversold. All of that points to a very healthy bounce to 85, usually as a reason, and usually historically, I should say, not usually historically, in the last, the previous three cycles, that has meant an extreme winding of leverage, which means that you're just not going to go right to 125K. You might get to like 85 and then you got to unwind the leverage again. I down in the low 70s. Right. And then exactly, maybe low 70s and then maybe a methodical march to 100 or 10 or 110 another psychological barrier. So in other words, we could actually be doing that 85K over leverage unwind right at the bottom of what the four-year cycle would predict,

which is really amazing if you go out a few weeks. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happens. And I don't know. And I've also been looking at the Altz chart to see, you know, where it is and historically when that would start its March up. I think that's when Alts would start to take off, meaning the second run after that initial over-leverage unwinds is when I expect to see, you know, a real march. So in other words, if Bitcoin gets to 85, pulls back to low 70s and then starts a March to 100, I expect ALTS to start to move faster than Bitcoin at that point. I don't expect alts to be moving. I expect ALTS to move in lock sync on a beta basis with Bitcoin for now, but I expect them at the end of the year to be moving faster than Bitcoin if what I'm saying

really unfolds. And that assumes no... I mean, it's not performed on this move, right? I mean, it makes sense that Hyperliquid did, right? Because they, his president said the name. Yeah, I mean, that's crazy. And they're 100% news about a raise. But there was some beta, you know, like, movement here. If he did a 20% day, amazing, absolutely amazing. And that is 100% on Trump, right? I mean, the idea that the markets could price in that hyperliq would be, would be available to the largest trading market in the world when it's already the fastest growing, well, now second,

I guess, after FOMO, but the fastest growing crypto app, which is shut out of the U.S., minus people who use VPNs, I guess, is remarkable. And again, you know, whether the president understood what he was saying or not, doesn't matter. The markets are now pricing in some potential that hyperliquid will figure it out. And by the way, what Trump alluded to was just commodities, right? So because there is no path forward in the United States right now for security swaps for retail. And so whether he knew it or not, he was just talking about the CFTC, not the SEC, right? Because there is no legal path in the United States right now for launching a retail perp futures system. Centralized or decentralized doesn't matter.

Right. So until the SEC fixes that, it doesn't matter what the president says. Well, Bitcoin perps, but you mean for securities specifically? For securities, right. So, but the majority of trading on hyperliquid, I would imagine is, I don't know. Actually, I shouldn't say that. I assume a big chunk of it is securities. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's from what I've seen and I don't have the data in front of me, but it follows the hot ball of money.

Right. I think it was obviously crypto and then it became golden silver and then it became oil. That's right. Yeah, oil during the wrong. That's right. It's pre-IPO, right? So like pre-IPO perps, which I think have remained huge there depending on what's launching. But I think the bigger story there, and maybe it leads into another topic, is the sort of

convergence of speculation on everything on crypto platforms, right? Because, you know, that hyperliquid really didn't fly the coop until you could trade other things on hyperliquid until they became popular. And when crypto traders, most of which probably who lost all their money on 1010, so whoever was left, found out they could trade other things in a familiar manner on a platform they were already using with not only could they trade other things but the AI because the AI stocks had become the meme stocks of of of of this call it cycle whatever and you can now basically make levered bets on the price action for those proverbial mean stocks you know invidia you know my micron whatever on a a perp decks

all of a sudden it became you know a positive a positive feedback loop loops, flywheel, whatever you want to call it, that the markets have never seen before. And it looked a lot like, again, the NFTs or meme coins or whatever of the last cycle. But what's interesting is they're companies with actual cash flows. And those cash flows are growing at an unprecedented rate. That's different. Right. And because they're American companies, people aren't, you know, regulators aren't really

complaining as loud and also what's a different administration. But really interesting that we've got this kind of everything FinTech model emerging within crypto right now. How do you, you know, listen, as a fiduciary, as a regulated entity, right, how do you build for this everything all at once future? Right? Because even you, I've got to imagine, have got to start thinking in the same way that every platform is about offering everything to everyone all the time. Yeah, so I have never been more excited about our product plans at Abra than I am right now, and I've been at this for over 10 years. And we've had some amazing launches. Look, I mean, our retail app was growing like a weed when the Warren Cabal came calling.

And so I think what we're doing is going to grow way faster than that ever did. So I'll put it this way, right? So we've released USDAF, which is our yield-bearer, stable coin token. We're now testing BTCAF, which is the Bitcoin version of that. In other words, you deposit Bitcoin into the token. You get that plus more Bitcoin out. Right. So, and you'll see other AF tokens, Abrify tokens, all of which, you know, whether it's sold AF, ETH AF, eventually maybe equities AF, so you're earning yield on QQQ, whatever. All of that becomes pristine collateral. We've built, now it's going to be multi-teachyf,

chain, but the initial launch has all been on Solana. That gives us, for the first time in Crypto's history, a cross-chain collateralized system where I can use all of that collateral for anything. And so historically, collateral has meant lending. Now back to your question, until the last year where it started to mean, you know, leveraging myself in perpetual futures or prediction markets. So I think where you're seeing this going is, is that the Abrify token system is teeing itself up to be the pristine collateral for these markets. Now, these markets are not going to move fast enough for me to adopt Abrafi tokens as collateral. So we're going to take matters into our own hands and basically build and launch things. And I say build as if we're going to do it. We've already done it. I just haven't

announced it yet. We're going to be launching things that use the AF tokens as collateral, where you can basically pool that collateral because they're all built on Solana. And we're going to do it in two ways. We're going to do it in one way that is decentralized, right, so that it's, and a lot of this may be outside the U.S. at first, but all of the systems that use AF tokens as collateral will allow you to do everything that you're seeing today, but with cross-margining for the first time. And then the second is for our ACM or ABRIC Capital Management clients who run through the RIA, where those clients will basically get curated services from a fiduciary that basically allow them to do things that are regulated, that do have KYC, et cetera,

et cetera. And then hopefully make that available to the entire world of RIAs out there. So basically taking our many years of expertise in yield and lending and bringing it to this, new world order in a way that I think no one else can. The inevitable next question, BTCAF, where does the yield come from? Yeah. So we've been doing this for years, right? It basically comes from everything including it. And it's the difference with BTCAF and other yield products on Bitcoin is it's not a one trick pony. Right. Most companies that offer yield on Bitcoin, they say, oh, this is a basis trade product or this is an options based product or this is a over collateralized lending product. our AI-based, what our Abrafi AI-based system does is it takes like nine yield sources

that are delta-neutral. And for the non-traders, delta-neutral means that you're not taking directional risk on anything and basically extrapolate to yield from those positions. And it can be anything from a basis trade to options, to liquidity pools, to, you know, hedge dollar yield positions. So we do the same, very similar techniques for USDAF. versus BTCAF. The yield on BTCF will always be a little bit lower than the dollar because of the hedging costs related to Bitcoin versus the dollar position. And like I said, we've become exceedingly good at it to the point now where our AI systems

are making most of the day-to-day decisions, which are then overseen by our CIO, who then basically directs the AI and then that reports to our risk committee every Monday where we look at new strategies and what the systems are doing. I mean, we're getting ETFs now that employ singular strategies effectively to earn. Very risky, in my opinion. But I'm saying, but they're becoming commercialized. Yeah. I mean, Goldman just bought Nios.

Is that what it's called? Right. And that had the BTCI or whatever it is. BlackRock has their own, which are, you know, they haven't performed well. The reason I like the Averify, the reason I like Averified. better is not and the reason I use it is because like, okay, yesterday, Eve had a, you know, a multisigma movement that shouldn't be happening. Right. I mean, it was, yesterday was a generational event for, for Ethereum. I don't know if people realize that.

Yeah. Right. And, and so if you look at the chart, it's like the macro setup for Ethereum couldn't be better. Now, from a yield perspective, if you're using a basis trade on Ethereum and you had a natural short on Ethereum and you weren't paying attention to what you were doing, you could have lost a lot of money on that basis trade yesterday, right? Because your hedge could have broken. And so we have systems in place that don't allow for that. That also, because we don't have any concentration risk and any one yield source, also mitigates that risk on top of the real-time systems that we run. So I could publish a paper, and we do actually publish for our clients, how we generate the yield.

But I could give you a step-by-step guide on how to do it, and you still wouldn't do it. It's just too much work. And so that's our advantage, is that we've done the work, we have the diversification, we have the expertise, we've done it through two and a half cycles now. We were the first company to announce that we were even using defy for yield. When I used to go on Clubhouse and have these conversations, where's the yield coming from? Remember Clubhouse? And, you know, when I had nothing else to do at night during COVID, I would go on

clubhouse and pontificate about where the yield is coming from. And I'm still here, right? That's probably the biggest difference between us and the other companies. And so, you know, I think people who look for these one-trick ponies where they say, oh, I'm offering 9% on Bitcoin, be very skeptical because it usually means that you're taking directional risk and principal liquidation risk. Right. You'll blow up on a huge move. That's exactly right. Yeah. I wonder how those products are doing in this volatility, actually. Don't know. To the upside, it's probably generally okay for them.

But, you know, you get it. Well, it depends how you define upside. Because, again, if you need to short something to get to. Right. Yeah. Well, they're definitely, I mean, they're structured to underperform when there's a big upside move, right? So they definitely are not capturing the benefit of it.

But, yeah, it depends on the product. But a lot of these, like, hedge fund oriented products will underperform in big moves, for sure. Yeah. So you're building all of this. Do you see this as the inevitable next wave of adoption? I mean, this is sort of the financialization of the industry in a familiar way to Wall Street, right? That is so well said. It is exactly the financialization. So when crypto becomes banking, and, you know, look, maybe we've talked about this before as well, when you swipe your credit card, there are 10 things that happen. And the majority of those 10 times, 10 things are completely unknown to any consumer who uses their credit card.

That's what's happening in the crypto world right now. Polymarket uses crypto rails. Obviously, hyperliquid for stock trading uses crypto rails. FOMO is 100% on crypto rails. And they're all hiding the complexity of those crypto rails to the average consumer and growing like weeds as a result. If you had to basically deal with all this. transaction signing stuff front and center, they would not be growing as fast as they are, in my opinion. They would be growing, but more limited.

Yeah, that makes sense. So then, 15 ahead of this, you know, obviously to let's do 40 chess. What comes next once, let's say all these products launch, they become wildly successful and accepted. And you have yield and pristine collateral everywhere. What are the next parts that maybe we're missing that's still existing? exist, you know, for banks and Wall Street. Yeah. So, so right now, the market doesn't seem to like everything apps as it relates to crypto. It likes apps that do lending. It likes apps that do perps. It likes apps that do money transfer. It doesn't like everything apps. And so I'm torn as to

my opinion as to whether that changes, meaning will the market start to like everything apps? I don't know. It seems logical to me, but consumers aren't always logical, right? And by the way, This is a cultural difference. So Americans tend to like standalone things. Chinese like to like fully integrated everything things. And so, but you know, I tend to think that people will end up with banking apps that are completely crypto based, right? And I am spending a lot of time on this topic, right?

And that's related to your last question, which is, where are we going with the Abrafai tokens, right? If they've all become pristine collateral in a banking. world, what does that app future look like? And so I actually think, first of all, the market is so massive on what's happening with perpetual futures trading, price exposure. It basically takes the old-style CFD market that most Americans don't know, which is just, you know, multi-trillion dollar market and blows it up even bigger and makes it available and makes it unregulated for the most part. Right. And so hyperliquid alone is never going to address the tantaliener.

I just can't. No one can. Right. So you're going to see 20. But by the way, you know, there are 50 exchanges still making good money, even with spot volumes coming down 80%. Right. So, so their profits may be way down, but there's still dozens of exchanges, right? Now, a lot of those exchanges are making way more money in perps because like you said, they can trade other things besides spot, spot crypto than they could before. But my point is, is I think you're going to see dozens, maybe 25 companies, maybe 25 to 35 companies that are making really good money using myriad techniques that I'm describing, whether it's perps, prediction markets, you know, neobanking, combining them, and not only serving customers directly, but maybe taking advantage of other distribution channels

like banks, wealth managers, et cetera, et cetera. So that's basically the distribution of the technology getting integrated into the existing world of consumers who don't know who to trust. Okay. So that could be like a two to three year process where these features start to get more and more absorbed and you start to see more announcements. You know, Chase is doing this. Bank of America is doing that. Deutsche Bank is doing this.

Shparcas is doing that, right? So we'll see a lot of those announcements, in my opinion, over the next 24 months. In terms of stuff that we haven't even thought about yet, I think a lot of that is going to be AI driven, right? Whether it's AI taking over portfolios, AI taking over active trading, I talk about this to RIAs, and a lot of them are scared shit when I tell them what should happen, right? Okay, so I'm going to say something that the RAs don't like, okay, which is the incentives are perverse because the average RIA is incentivized not to talk to their clients. Of course. Because the more they talk to their clients, the bigger,

the chance that they're going to move their money out, okay, which is insane. But that's, that's the reality, right? So, but what should be happening is, is that the RIA's 6040 portfolio, and by the way, most of them still are on a 6040 portfolio, which, you know, you should be going, that's horrifying, right? Meaning, meaning the 40% has been a drag on the 60 for six years. And nothing has changed. What should be happening is, is it should become a, probably a 70, 15, 15 portfolio, where you have 70% exposure to, you know, what you have now, and index funds are fine, because most RAs can't outpick an index fund, 15% exposure to debt, and 15% let it ride money. And the let it ride money should probably be AI driven where it's being allocated to perps,

to, you know, to alt, sports leagues, whatever, that you can get access to, venture, private equity. Now, an RAA can't do a lot of that today. They literally can't. Legally, they wouldn't, the head of risk and compliance would, their heads would spin, right? So even though that's what they should be doing, there's no legal path forward for them to do that. That is going to change. And we're talking about between U.S., Europe, parts of Asia, you're talking about $50 trillion, probably that is going to be reallocated between, you know, people dying and inheritance

and just people basically giving up on the old portfolios with AI-driven systems that are coming. So that's the biggest new thing that I think is coming. Do you think those AI systems will be managed by RIAs or do you think that we'll completely fly the coop from, you know, professionally managed portfolios to people self-managing and handling themselves? You know, you sign on to some platform says, you know, what's your risk tolerance? You click go. Well, my answer is yes.

I think the answer is yes because there's two things, right? One, some people, especially the youngans, are going to realize they didn't need the RAs in the first place because they're not moving fast enough to do what I'm saying. And they've been doing it themselves via Robin Hood with their allowance from their parents for the last, you know, 10 years. That's what my kids do. They all basically started on Robin Hood. my oldest is on a different platform now, but that's how he started because to him it was just like using Snapchat. And that's what they grew up with as kids because they knew I couldn't read their messages because they would disappear after they sent them. And so, you know, if that's what they're

used to, they're certainly not used to having to call someone to say, how is my Apple investment doing? Right? That's not going to happen. And so I do think that that generation is highly likely to say, hey, can I just do it through my Abra app or my Robin Hood app or my Coinbase app or my cracking app or whatever, right? And then there's going to be people who are just completely technology illiterate even in the next generation who would prefer to trust someone. And even if that person they trust says here, log in to my r a dot my rai.com and do this, this and this, they're still going to want to know who to trust. And that's a, you know, that's going to remain a multi-trillion dollar business for the Fidelity's

you know, in the Schwabbs, the LPLs of the world who service the majority of the U.S. R.A. space, and that's fine. So I think it's going to become a bifurcated world, and people are going to be shocked at how fast it happens. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be tokenized everything, and U.S. capital market is going to be exported to every corner of the planet. Yeah, that's the other issue. RIAs. Yeah. They work 35 hours a week. So if you're working 35 hours a week and markets are open, you know, 24-7, I had to do the math, 168 hours a week. You know, what does that imply for who you're trusting with the money? Well, I have three slack windows open here. I'm talking to Max in parallel. If I say to something stupid, she tells me, and she doesn't

sleep, right? You know, and this is the AI orchestration system that I've built that we've talked about over the last year, and it's basically become my Jarvis, right? And so Jarvis doesn't sleep, Jarvis doesn't complain. Only Jarvis only complains if I say something stupid. Right. Other than that, no holidays, always there, always making reasonable decisions, always digging in. And that's the future.

That's what kids already know. If you're in high school, you spent your high school years with AI. Right. Yeah, my kids didn't grow up, didn't know a world without mobile devices. The current generation of kids don't know a world without AI. It's a really wild thought. So where does Bitcoin fit into all of this? Obviously, I think we could see where the tokenization trend is going.

Does Bitcoin become the like boring old guy, boomer, boomer rocks like gold is to current generations or does it have a role at all this? I mean, beyond just. I think those two points are part and parcel to the same thing, meaning one, I hope the first point happens. I hope it becomes steady, predictable collateral. And I hope it becomes that collateral for the AI generation. The biggest problem with Bitcoin is that it still operates as a matrix that you need a hard line into,

you know, wrap Bitcoin, Coinbase Bitcoin, you know, now BTCAF on Solana for you earning yield on it, using it as collateral, right? But we're solving that problem now, meaning using Bitcoin as collateral is finally becoming a reasonably solved problem. That opens Bitcoin up to the entire AI world, right? I think this premise that AI will use stable coins is probably, probably true for a hot minute because humans will make the decisions. When Bitcoin becomes truly cross-chain fungible because this problem has been solved, then I think smart AIs would rather use an asset that isn't losing 6% of its value via money printing. And as the volatility, and by the way, with this pullback, if what I said happens, happens,

we haven't yet another cycle where the volatility of Bitcoin has shrunk significantly, right? And so at some point, you know, 10 years out, I hope we get to the point where we're measuring things in sats and not in dollars. Yeah, because the price is so high that, yeah. And also because of the volatility is, certainly that AI is, right? And even if it's a world where AI just holds the money in Bitcoin and then transactions and stable coins, that's still a massive win. Hey, look, if I'm an AI and I can basically hold my Bitcoin, which I think is still going up because we're still printing dollars and I can borrow in dollars. Right. I'll do that all day, which is my stated goal for how I want to live my life. I measure my life in Bitcoin. And I simply make investment decisions relative to that. And I would prefer to borrow in dollars versus holding the Bitcoin wherever I can. That continues to be my kind of stated position. I just like to do it with low LTVs because for me, it's a very long-term game. And I have no intention of dying. Ever. You could. You're all stuck with me. I'm very, very sorry.

You could be building anywhere, right? And so we're still, interestingly, in 2026, really having a conversation about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana. Right? There's a million chains. Now they're very compelling use cases for crypto that have been valued on utility this time, which I think is good.

But like, you know, why aren't we talking about building this on avalanche suey, you name it, down the line, or will it inevitably go to all of these chains? Well, do you consolidate or are we going to see, you know, 100 chains doing the same thing and it's just cross-chain? So I think we're moving into a kind of a trifurcated world and putting Bitcoin aside, right? So Bitcoin stays pristine collateral. I think we're moving into a trifurcated world where Ethereum is really the chain of institutional adoption. And that will continue to be the case.

It's, it's, you know, when I talk to the ices of the world, they trust Ethereum. They're starting to trust Solana, but that's more on the retail side. I think Solana is winning the mindshare of how to basically build retail DAPs because it's very low cost, high performance, you don't have to deal with roll-ups. You know, you're still getting some, you know, layer two adoption, you know, but by and large, I think Solana is doing a great job of winning on kind of the NeoBank, NextGen retail oriented. They have to be. haven't made huge inroads on the institutional side. That may change. I don't know. And then, and then the third kind of piece of this trifurcated story is, you know, the top 10 chains,

which and or forks, which result in new chains like hype or whatever, that all basically have niche apps that they're optimized for, right? And, and so I think, you know, Suey is going to be optimized for massive throughput cash applications, right? Because they've, they've, They've taken stable coin fees to zero, high TPS. I'm, you know, I spend, I'm on the chairman of Algaran, so I can tell you there's, I'm super excited about the announcements coming from Algaran. A lot of org changes, a lot of product changes. They're going deep in kind of this post-quantum world, what it means, and also for bridging

and using their post-quantum tech to do secure bridging across chains. So there's a lot of announcements there, but that's, there's some niche applications that I think are extremely compelling that the public, Joe Public, won't understand, public doesn't understand how NVIDIA does what they do. They just know they sell a lot of fucking chips. Right. So if, if, and a lot of DAPs are adopting this algorithm model because they need cross-chain bridging, the public wouldn't necessarily understand it, but the price is going to go to VAL. Right. So, so I'm pretty excited that there's going to be like maybe 15 projects that get adoption in some way as niche projects, with kind of this, this trifurcated world that, that we're moving towards. I wonder if there's going to be space for completely new chains that we haven't even thought about.

There always is, right? 100%. 100%. Yeah. I mean, look, we haven't thought about, we haven't really gotten to the point where we have true AI integration. So let's say you basically wanted, and I think the, I forgot to say his name, Mistakas, the AI guru, who is trying to build a decentralized system, right? We haven't really gotten to the point where we have true AI decentralization because AI is too expensive in a centralized model and decentralizing it makes it even more expensive.

And then it would beg the question, what problem are you solving? But I do believe that banking needs to be decentralized in the new world order. If that's true and AI adoption is equally true, what is the true merger of? of decentralized systems and AI look like. Well, we don't know for sure yet, but it probably is not Ethereum or Suey or Solano or Algarand. It's probably something completely new that some kid at MIT is maybe just starting to think about.

Yeah, something truly purpose built. Yep. Yeah. So this is just happening so much, I think it will continue to happen so much faster than people are accepting. Yeah, and I always, I love developers. I love looking at what seed investors who understand tech are looking at. If you look at what's happening at Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, the number of kids that are basically looking at these different, you know, touchpoints and new technologies and thinking about defy, thinking about the integration with AI, it's way beyond where we are right now, way beyond.

Yeah. To be young, you know. No, but I actually, I think we grew up in a, you know, a glorious time before all of this. But I was born too early for sure. Yeah, I mean, maybe a little too early. I mean, it really is incredible what our kids are going to be able to pull off. Whether the other than I have no idea. Yeah. I mean, there's good and bad, right? My kids probably won't drive, right?

Thank God, right. Yeah, and where does, like, are you taking a look at robotics yet? I mean, just as it's kind of intellectually curious. I think that, you know, space and robotics are probably the next hotball of money in my mind. Yeah, I think so. I think so. The whole exponential technology space is going ballistic now. And it's always basically been the promise.

Basically, exponential technology for the last generation meant Moore's Law. And everything was driven by, you know, know, post-industrial age, it was basically driven by microprocessors and how many of them you could fit on a silicon wafer and, you know, the density and power consumption and things like that. We're past that now, and we're basically moving up the exponential curve into an everything curve. And as we move into kind of the next gen of exponential tech, I mean, it's just, it's going to start to feed on itself and create a positive feedback loop to the point where, you know, if you were to come from the year 1500 to today in, in 25 years, we will basically appear like spacemen gods.

In 25 years, a significant portion of the population will be merging with machines. And I don't mean like, like in the Borg sense, but I mean in, you know, nanoparticles and other things that basically give us, you know, if you're being born today, the chances that you're truly lonely as an adult are very low, right? And at least the same way we experience it, because you're going to have like nanotechnology that replaces neuralink that literally gives you to us, it sounds dystopian, but a sense of everybody in the room when you want it. Right. And so we're going to redefine, you know, what it means, the senses and the feelings and what the hormones do and the oxytocin release and what it's going to mean different things, which is the first major change to, you know,

We are involved in the evolutionary leaps of biology as a result because we're literally playing with nature at that point. And it's inevitable. It has to happen. What value do we provide if we don't merge with something that's going from 130 IQ today to 170 IQ in two years? Yeah, I just want to be there long enough to experience it. You know, like you say, born too early. Like, yeah, I think about my parents. As you see technology evolving and longevity and all these things, it's to have.

how long you can possibly live. Yeah. You're going to look this handsome in 50 years. Before it happens. Yeah. So you're literally going to look this handsome in 50 years. And when we're doing this show, you know, when I'm 110, you're going to be, remember that time in August in, in 2026 when you were joking about how, you know, nanoparticles.

And in the meantime, you and I are actually not talking. We're actually communicating via those nanoparticles. I mean, I'll be 99, so I'll be pretty young. Nice. I mean, anything else on your mind? I mean, anything else that you're looking at excited about? Yeah, I think, you know, look, I'm super excited about exponential tech right now. I spend so much time working on next gen apps.

Like, my vacation is like, when do I get to spend time, like working on the things that I truly am excited about? It's not going to the beach. I used to be like that, right? Now it's like, yeah, I'll go to the beach. it's because I can basically shut everybody else out to do what I actually want to be doing. And, you know, in that regard, I've never been more excited about, you know, Abra's future, my personal future, family, friends. It's truly, it's truly remarkable time.

And I think, think about this, right, AI is never going to be dumber than it is now. meaning it's always it's going to be smarter in six months it's going to be even smarter six months later even smarter six months later probably you know to the point like I said where it's 170 IQ and everything in two years um and then the following two years it starts to get PhD level which is when you get the real ASI right because then it's solving real world problems and I think crypto gets dragged along as the orchestration layer uh for how to make this work at global scale And we haven't totally figured out what that means yet. But I do believe that there's kids figuring that out right now.

One final question circling back to the Bitcoin volatility point. If Bitcoin volatility is dampening each cycle, should we be less hyperbolic about the upside targets? Or do you think they're still realistic? You know, when we talk about a million dollar Bitcoin in 2030, whatever, you know, Taylor, 15 million, 30 million, whatever the numbers are. Well, the adoption stops, eventually stops coming because of just price movements versus the dollar and comes because it's what you should be measuring your personal life in, meaning we measure our

personal financial lives and dollars today because it is the global reserve currency. And it may have its role in ephemeral transactions in the next world order. But Bitcoin is going to be that beta. and you'll use Bitcoin as the collateral for everything else in your life. And that will become the pristine collateral instead of treasury bonds. And that makes sense in a deflationary exponential world order. In an inflationary world order, it makes sense that something that facilitates the 2% inflation is the pristine collateral, which is what the dollar has been.

And so adoption of Bitcoin continues unabated as the volatility shrinks because it is what you want as collateral in the exponential deflationary world order that's coming, meaning the rise of China just mitigates the U.S. In the new world order, it's a multipolar world, in my opinion. Love it. Totally agree. All right, Bill, taking up enough of your time. I appreciate you joining, as always.

Oh, you know, it'll be funny when this comes out on Sunday if Bitcoin's at 80 or 60. Yeah. So good. I was born 20 years too early either way. Yeah, you and I. I still think I was probably still born 20 years too early. All right, man. Thank you very much.

Everybody, I give Bill a follow. And I'm sure we'll have you back very, very soon, man. Thank you so much. Look forward to it. Great to see you.