The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin DUMPS To $62K As Iran War Escalates – Matt Hougan Live

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Bitcoin fell below $62K after renewed U.S.-Iran tensions triggered a broader risk-off move across markets. We break down the macro forces driving Bitcoin, why Japanese companies are adding BTC to their treasuries as the yen weakens, and what it means for the market. We also discuss Robinhood chain hot start, Strike's no-liquidation Bitcoin-backed loans, Morgan Stanley's AI outlook, and why Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan believes this correction is a healthy deleveraging process, forming the bottom for higher prices in the fall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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thousand dollars on news that we have ceased ceasing fire in iran apparently the war is back on even though anybody who's been watching realizes that it probably never left but under the hood there's a lot more to talk about than just what may or may not be happening iran on any given day and i have my favorite person here to discuss all of it with we got matt hogan from bitwise let's go good morning everybody happy wednesday and welcome to rivendell here in uh the neighborhood of Mordor, I don't know. Everyone's wilds look back and I'm like, we're in the Lord of the Rings. Matt, I know it's

not 6 a.m. where you are, but it's we don't even keep time here. That's right. You don't need time. That's quite a background. You're looking good. I didn't know it was going to be there. When you live, when you're an elf, you live forever and the time doesn't really matter. Right now. So, you know,

yeah. Okay, so like, I mean, I have to admit something. You know, you do titles on YouTube because you know, you need like the engagement and there's a formula for the outcome but like one day we're like Bitcoin pumps to 64. The next day we're like Bitcoin dumps to 62 and it's all just the same price. Right. But then it's still, you know, the Bitcoin under pressure as Trump says Iran sees fires over. I didn't even know we had one really. I think we're supposed to wait 24 hours to react to anything that that Trump says. So I think really this is a tomorrow story. That's the incredible thing about this market. We've gone nowhere

since June. I actually take that as a pretty big positive, right? Sentiment got really terrible at the end of June. It's picked up a little bit now, but we're basically trading where we were on like June 9th. I think when there is bad feelings and bad headlines, but the price is flattish, that's probably good long term, but it's a little bit of a boring market right now. Yeah, it is a boring market. That doesn't mean that the news is boring, though. You know, I think that the key, and I'm trying to find your, I know you wrote a note and I had it pulled up, but about STRC and Sailor. So I think this is just a continuation of what you just said because that was definitely the, quote,

unquote, bad news in the market for a while. And so I'd love your take as we do with every guest who comes on on, you know, what he did basically on Monday and how the market reacting. Because what we had for those who haven't been watching, obviously, he had a significant sale for the first time, 200 plus million dollars worth of Bitcoin. And the market kind of went up. Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, there were two important things that I would put out. The first is that when the full stretch freakout happened, right? When it traded to 74 and when Microstrategie stock was getting crushed, Bitcoin didn't care. It traded flat. And that was one of the first times I had ever seen where Bitcoin didn't care what was happening to stretch and micro strategy. And then as you said, when he sold Bitcoin to raise cash to sort of push off any concern about strategy into the future, Bitcoin rallied.

I think that tells you something pretty specific, which is that strategy was the big dog. It was the tail wagging the dog of the past few years of crypto. It was the biggest buyer. It was also arguably the biggest risk if it ever had to liquidate things. And now it's just become less important. The more it's in the rearview mirror and not front of stage. I think the happier the market is. But it was really interesting to see it rally when he sold.

And I think that tells you everything about what people expect from strategy in the future. Yeah. So I'm torn between a number of narratives with him. Obviously, the biggest fear, I guess, was that he would be a forced seller. So him selling says, I'm not going to be a forseller because I'm willing to sell. So maybe it removes the fear from the market. I'm wondering how the market is handicapping him not being a buyer. because the other narrative is that he was the only person buying Bitcoin this entire way down,

or at least in size, and who's going to step in? You wrote about that here in this memo, but I think that's another interesting conversation. Yeah, maybe let me tease the first part of what you said, and then I'll talk about who's the next buyer. I think what the market was worried about was that he was going to be an irrational actor, that he was going to be a toddler that stands in the corner and slams his fist and maybe issue streak at a discount or pushes it to infinity. And it was only if he was an irrational actor that strategy would get into the point

where it might be forced to sell a lot of Bitcoin. I think what we learned is that he's a rational actor, which those of us who know, sailor know very well, right? Big, strong voice publicly, but behind the scenes, obviously a very smart operator. And the market realized that and it recovered. So I think it discounted the likelihood of strategy doing something stupid

almost to zero, and that's why it rallied. In terms of the net buyer, it's absolutely true that I don't think it will continue to accumulate Bitcoin at the rate it has in the past. We may have even hit peak strategy Bitcoin. I doubt that, but it's, of course, possible, but it's no longer the person driving this forward. The question is who it becomes. I think the answer there is obvious. It's institutional investors. But maybe more important is for people to reflect on the the fact that we've seen this sort of baton transfer before, right? Before strategy, it was GBTC. Before GBTC, it was U.S. retail investors. Before U.S. retail investors, it was Asian retail investors. Before that, it was cypherpunks. There have been like a series of leading buyers.

We're now at the end boss of that series, which is institutional capital. And I actually think they're going to take it and run with it. So I feel pretty good about where we are. But yeah, for sure, micro strategy is not going to be the big buyer for the next five years of Bitcoin. Yeah, it's interesting the notion that they could have peaked, right? Because if every, you know, if they don't, it would be actually very confusing if he bought Bitcoin next week, right? So that, I think if he's trying not to look irrational right now, he can't really buy. And I think actually people thought that he looked irrational for a few weeks there where he was raising cash, but also just buying a tiny bit. Like nobody wanted him to see him buy,

50 million dollars worth of Bitcoin and raise 150 million, that made it feel like he was like more religious about it than rational. And I think when he stopped doing that, so maybe that, I mean, the best thing for the market, I hate to say, is that he just doesn't buy Bitcoin for quite a while. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think you made a good point. It was like selling 32 Bitcoin, that felt weird, right? Paying off the 2030 convertible, that felt weird. So I do think people upgraded the probability of him acting in a rational or like messianic bitcoiner direction. But yeah, I think we may be at something close to peak Bitcoin. I think it's good if he doesn't buy for a while.

Look, if prices rip, if we get back up to 100K, you might see Mike's strategy trade to a premium. You might see stretch trade back up towards 100. And then maybe he'll buy more. But it's not going to be at the quantum that he's been buying for the past few years, nor do we want that. We don't want strategy owning 2 million Bitcoin. That would be bad for Bitcoin as well. So I think it's sort of all working out for the best. So do you think that the bull case for STRC is simply Bitcoin back up in the 90s or hundreds?

Do you not see it trading at par otherwise? Yes. I don't see it trading at par otherwise. I don't see it trading at 50 either. But I don't see it trading at par. If you think Bitcoin is going back to 100, you know, Stretch probably trades there. It probably trades at something like Bitcoin's price divided by whatever, a thousand or something. It'll be fine. They seem committed to it. The biggest risk was stretch is that they would turn their back on it and not pay the dividend. And to that. But they're not going to do that, at least not in the foreseeable future. So I think it'll trade 80s to mid-90s. And then if we ramp, yeah, if he's back in the green, if he has profits on his

book, if the size of it looks small relative to his Bitcoin stack, you could get a trading back, you know, close to 100 in that scenario. We should have started a treasury company. You just sit around and do nothing for like months at a time and collect a paycheck. I mean, that actually do nothing. They want them to do nothing. Yeah, we're here out working. But yeah, that is true.

We should have started one. I mean, yeah, I don't have the story for it, but I've showed it 100 times. Obviously, ETF flows, right? It's kind of, if I don't ask Matt Hogan about ETF flows, then I've not done my due diligence or duty for a show. We had a bad run, right? I mean, they reversed, I guess. I didn't see Tuesday, but I know Thursday was 200 in or so. Monday was 230-ish, you know, just quoting off memory.

After a kind of a sustained 10-day streak, I think, down, but then really months of selling. I mean, it really looked at it. Yeah, and it felt different for what it's worth. So we've in the past before Q2, we've seen periods where you had outflows. We've seen three, four, five, six days of outflows, including some chunky numbers. But it never felt like investors capitulating. I do think in Q2 it felt a little bit like investors capitulating. It was hundreds of millions of dollars out day after day after day after day.

And, you know, I do think some weekends got shaken out of that. It does feel like we've turned the corner. You're seeing a more a mix of inflows and outflows without the price going up. I think that's a positive sign. It suggests that if prices steady, you could start to see inflows accumulate. But for sure, I think Q2 was the first time I had seen sort of capitulative selling from ETF hands. Now, not all of it came out. There was still $50 billion of net flows at the low point.

But you had some billions of dollars come out. It really did feel like a different moment in the market. When people are asking you why, what's the answer? Because that, I mean, that has to be a question that you guys are fielding now, right? Because it was always, you can always explain price. You could always explain narratives. We could always talk about AI rotation and all these things. But now you have a big number that's being repeated in the media

that probably is not helping in your first meeting sometimes. Yeah. I mean, the short answer is it's a natural part of the four-year cycle. I really think that's what's going on. I was not a four-year. Man, I really got to take my L where I can. Like, I kind of laughed. I mean, I guess the October height was pretty curiously close,

but everything else didn't look like the four-year cycle to me. But here we are. I mean, I guess we'll see what happens. Here we are. I mean, let's hope the four-year cycle holds at this point. Yeah, because we'll get up in October. We'd hate to have been right, but for the wrong reason. I was skeptical too.

The mistake I made was I talked to institutional investors, and by and large, that audience is still buying. Bitwise had a pretty great quarter in Q1 for inflows. We had a good quarter in Q2. I won't call it great for inflows across the franchise. And that's our audience. But the thing I missed is that retail investors still control the bulk of Bitcoin. And they were net sellers into the four-year cycle.

Now, I do think, talking back about strategy and stretch, one signal you're getting to the end of that cycle is when excess leverage and financial engineering gets squeezed out of the system, right? You can think about GBT trading from a premium to a discount in the 2021-2020 cycle. You can think about blockfi and Celsius breaking, as an example, financial engineering, sort of breaking down. And you saw a little bit of that in late June with strategy trading below an MNAP of 1 with stretch trading to 75. That was sort of like a distressed signal that all the excess greed was transformed into fear. That's the kind of thing that points to a bottom, although it's worth noting it doesn't always happen immediately, right? GBTC traded to a discount. I think in relatively early 2021, it took a while to get to the end of that train.

I think we're closer than that this time. But I do think it's a signal we're at a late stage of the bear market. And if we can get new demand from these institutions, I think we'll see the bull market emerge before the end of the year. What I'm saying, you're still seeing demand for hyperliquid ETFs. Nothing sells like prices going up. Yeah, hyperliquid is doing exceptionally well. I'll actually say an overlooked story is that, DeFi generally is doing exceptionally well. There aren't other defy ETFs you can point at. But if you

just look at performance across, you know, we have a defy index that we track. It's up, I think, 30 or 40 percent over the last three months, even though broad crypto is down. That's an unusual divergence in a bare market. You don't usually get small caps rallying while the large caps decline in a bare market. That happens at the peak of a bull market. But that's what we're seeing in the defy ecosystem. I think hyperliquid is the most public example because it's the largest and it has the ETF so you can track those flows. But I think people are excited about morpho. I think people are excited about AVE. They're excited about uniswap. They're growing on the Robin Hood chain. I think there is a whole sort of defy renaissance taking place. And hyperliquid is sort of the beacon that's showing you

that. But there's also below the surface, I think, interest in those assets as well. Yes, so many questions. Ave obviously had that, you know, toxic collateral issue from Kelp Dow, and obviously there was the drift hack. And it seemed a few months ago, we were, and once again, you know, in hindsight, these are the narratives. But, you know, Defi was dead, right? Because, you know, the smart contracts worked as they should.

But if you're taking collateral that can break down in another platform entirely and it blows you up and you need a bailout, what is Defi? But it seems like that, once again, was kind of a bottom thing. That was like the worst case scenario played out and there was not much lower to go. I find it really interesting that these things are performing well because it doesn't seem like they would have. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that.

Well, the defy community did a good job of bailing out ABE, but I think what people are realizing is they've made two fundamental miscalculations about the space, maybe three. The first is the market it's going after. If you think defy is servicing the crypto market, that's a $2 trillion market. But it turns out that defy is going to service crypto equities and bonds. That's a $300 trillion market. So you went from $2 trillion to $300 trillion in TAM. That's 150X error.

So I think that alone is causing people to rewrite that, right? You're now lending tokenized stocks on Morpho. That's not something we were talking about a year ago. It was a fantasy. So I think people are re-rating them because they're re-rating the size of the TAM. And then at the same time, they're re-rating the size of the TAM. And then at the same time, they're re-rating the sort of value capture because whether it's uniswap during the fee switch or ABE, I forget, we'll win or whatever their program is, or hyperliquid with a much better token economic function, people are seeing that these chains have a way of actually taking value. And when you combine, like, re-rating the market up 150x and then re-rating value capture from zero to something, that's.

that's, I think, why you're getting sort of a phase shift in these assets, which got down to really small valuations, right? Ave, you know, I think it was sub two billion or something. Like, it was really small. And I think people are realizing that they need to adjust to this crypto takes the entire capital market phase, in which case, DFI is probably a lot bigger than it looks today. Yeah, I think as I'm hearing you talk through it, it seems that the DFI that was crypto native may have actually died and then rising from the ashes is a completely new defy and that's what people are pricing so defy like i go take a loan against some random collateral to go live my life that was defy and that kind of died but standard chartered had those wildly huge predictions for uniswap you know

and uh it was hype in you no it was a thousand dollar ave or something i don't remember what it was but it was based on exactly what you're saying. I thought it was a bit of an absurd way to extrapolate price. But if defy TAM, you know, or TBL grows to trillions because of tokenized stocks, then the price goes up by the same multiple. I don't necessarily agree that that happens with the tokens once again, but are saying the same thing. You can't look at Defi as me going to take a loan.

Now it's what am I going to do with my entire stock portfolio? That's exactly right. Yeah, that is exactly right. And I love Jeff Kendrick at Standard Chartered. Those were very aggressive price targets. I'm not sure I get all the way there. But I do think that's it. Yes, the old DFI vision is dead.

The new DFI vision, which is just finance, but on chain, is just a much bigger market. And we are seeing these protocols be roped into these discussions, right? It is uniswap on Robin Hood chain. It is BlackRock doing things with more, like, are seeing that tradfi, defy combination sort of emerging in this market. And I don't know, it's pretty exciting. I think it's a part of why you should be optimistic about the next cycle. This is a piece of it.

It's not just crypto anymore. It's finance. And defy is the canary in that coal mine, and it's looking pretty good. And I think there's been a big fear that whatever comes next would be so institutional, that would be uninvestable by retail, and that's not the case if you look at it through this lens. I've been fair to that. It's like, yay, stable coins are up.

Cool. You know, like open U.S.D. Wonderful. I'm glad that they're using our plumbing, but how does that help me? This helps me. If I, you know, if you choose to invest and are broadly allocated.

Absolutely. That's exactly right. And I'll guarantee you that no traditional investor knows what Morpho or ABE or Uniswop is, right? So you let's all care. As a crypto native. retail investor, you have this advantage of understanding what's going on. They're reading news stories about Robin Hood Chain, and they're like, what? You know, they don't know what they're talking

about. So I think it's a, I think it is a unique moment, and you're right, this can benefit, you know, the investors that we care about. I mean, Robin Hood Chain, here is. You brought it up as it was my next topic anyways. Robin Hood Chain hits 100 million in TVL just one week after launch. So, I mean, 100 million is drop in the bucket, but it's a quick ascent to that point. But maybe broadly, how important is it that we have Robin Hood chain? Exactly. Robin Hood chain is a layer two doing tokenized stocks integrated to defy globally. I mean, it's the biggest story in finance this month, right?

J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York, NASDAQ, what is anyone talking about? they're talking about Robin Hood chain. Last month, same set of giant characters, B&B Paribas, Santander, Global, whatever, what are people talking about? They're talking about hyperliquid. If you sort of step back, you can see the primacy of these defy and crypto narratives taking over finance. I tweeted earlier today about this Scott Besant speech from June 23rd,

which laid out a whole vision for America's economic policy, one of which was America will set the rules. The first and only example he gave was defy, tokenization, stable coins, etc. Those are the rules he wants to set for defining the future. I just think it's like it's a pretty big story. And I think many people are not listening to it because we're in this bare market. And crypto has been telling this story for so long. But it's finally coming true.

I think it's pretty remarkable. So how is Robin Hood chain different than the other long ale of? layer twos and layer ones and chains that we have. I mean, you know, Coinbase launch base, I guess that would be the closest comparison, right, at L2 with no token launched by a company that wants to be the everything app. Yep. It's the same story. The difference, I mean, the only thing that matters is they come with what 30 million customers or whatever and a giant brand with a reputation of leading retail investors to the next big thing. So it's not, there's no, I mean, I could be wrong.

There's no world that I can fission where Robin Hood chain is the dominant franchise of finance. But is there a world where it moves us further along to this sort of defy future and they're serving their 30, 40, 50, 100 million customers, absolutely. And then for what it's worth, for Robin Hood itself, which I think is a pretty incredible company, it dramatically expands their market. All of a sudden, they're a global. not just a U.S. enterprise. That's a pretty big deal as well. And it's a high margin opportunity. So I don't think it's meaningfully different than base. But base was pretty exciting. And Robin Hood's a bigger company than Coinbase. So that's pretty exciting as well. Yeah. I wonder if we're going to see, you know, meme coins launched on Robin Hood chain.

Like, do we get the same kind of crypto degeneracy on this chain? Or is it really more focused by whatever they choose to build and whatever partnerships they do? I mean, probably that, but it's important to note that the cost to do things on chain is lower than the cost to do things off chain. So I bet you'll see a lot of experimentation and you'll see degeneracy and you'll see awesome things. I mean, that's the future we're building where there are a lot of things happening at any point in time, many of which are good, some of which are suspect, some of which are unique. I suspect we'll see all of that. It's just a piece of what this future puzzle will be. But it is nice.

There is this worry. Will these corporate chains sort of eat the opportunity? Will they remove the Ethereums and Solanas from the world? And that remains up in the air. But one thing this is showing is, you know, these defy applications have a place to live in this corporate chain future, which I think is pretty interesting as well. Yeah. We have tempo from Stripe, right? We've got ARC from Circle.

I guess those are more stable coin focus. We're going to have a lot of these. There's going to be a lot of people trying to win this space. But yeah, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. That's what we see in traditional financial services as well, right? There's not one brokerage. There's Shab and there's TD and there's, you know, there's Morgan and there's Merrill and there's

Wells. You'll get some version of that here is the most likely outcome. At least that's what it looks like right now. And it's definitely going to be what we see over the next couple of years. Everyone in the brokerage space is looking at Robin Hood chain and having a board meeting about what they should be doing. You have to. If you're a Robin Hood competitor, you have to. And some of them will decide nothing.

And then some of them will decide they have to do something as well. So it's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out. Yeah. Going back to who's going to be the next buyer, I don't know if you saw this story, but Bitcoin XRP draw Japanese firms as weekend drives treasury diversification. So they've basically seen a doubling at SBIVC trade of, you know, corporate and large accounts who are buying Bitcoin and apparently XRP because very transparently because the yen is so weak and that's where they're going to preserve value and store value, which I just saw this headline came out of nowhere.

It's like, hey, that's what that's what we've been saying about Bitcoin. It's a beautiful thing. I still think that story is very intact. You know, that story gets papered over during bear markets. People aren't willing to advance it. But, you know, the probability that most fiat currencies lose value over time seems to be 100%. And the probability that these assets, which are increasingly accepted from a regulatory perspective, increasingly have better liquidity, are increasingly accessible, gain some portion of the flows is probably very high. And it doesn't have to be that much of the flows to drive interest.

It's interesting that it's XRP, but the world is a, you know, a wide space. So I think that's a good example of, you know, this hasn't slowed down. We continue to do consultations with central banks and sovereign wealth funds who are interested in diversifying their treasuries. So this, you know, underneath the surface, this is all continuing to happen. Yeah, I mean, it says, I'm reading it says that we again pushes them to diversify corporate. treasuries as a crypto exchange registered accounts past two million. But interestingly, here it says that the crypto arm of financial group, blah, blah, blah, they've grown as the weekend drives firms to spread reserves beyond cash with added demand from companies that hand out

Bitcoin or XRP through shareholder perk programs. So, wow. That's an interesting nuance because I did not know that there were companies that hand out Bitcoin and XRP through shareholder perk programs. I did not either, but. But it makes sense to me, right? These are tribal communities you can tap into through doing something like that. I think that's really interesting. It's also worth noting, I say this all the time, and I can't seem to get it across. But if you think about like this bear market versus a bear market four years ago, the people

making those sorts of decisions at those firms are four years further into their career. They're probably higher up those firms. That demographic like aging into positions of power makes these. sorts of decisions easier for these companies. And I think it's actually sort of an underreported thing that's happening in crypto. Yeah. There's one more story that I want you to ask you specifically about is because this one's hitting. Jack Muller's strike launches a volatility proof Bitcoin loans built to protect against liquidation. So actually I was just kind of thinking about this. I remember Coinbase not so long ago announced their mortgages that couldn't be liquidated

that were backed by Bitcoin. But this seems entirely different. And I know you said that you I watched what Jack had to say about this in his empty closet. So maybe you can unpack it for me because, you know. The empty closet is a headline or this is a big innovation, you know? It is. Look, I think it's great marketing. I mean, what they're doing is they'll only do loans at about a 45% value. So if you have $100 a Bitcoin, you can borrow $45 against it.

They'll only do it for a six-month term. So you have to pay it back within six months. the way they protect against liquidations is they charge an upfront fee of about 3%, which would be about 6% annualized. And then they're using that, I would guess, in the options or futures market to hedge the risk below that liquidation threat sold. So you can give up the first 55% pullback on Bitcoin and just sell calls or puts at that 45% level, which is pretty cheap on a six-month basis.

So therefore, if the world ends, they're protected and you're protected. So it's a clever bit of financial engineering. It's not free, right? You end up with a relatively high interest rate and you have to pay back the money at the end of the period. So people shouldn't notice that thing. But it's not liquidation risk as long as you make your payments. That is exactly right.

If you don't make your payment, you get it. I mean, the good thing about this, which compares to previous crypto cycles is I believe there's a financial rationale that allows them to do it. I would say, you know, eight years ago, someone would just offer this and then borne the risk and not disclosed it. So, you know, we'll call that progress. Yeah. I mean, a six-month loan on Bitcoin is not particularly long.

I'm not hitting on the product at all, but you would think that most people who want to take a Bitcoin-based loan, if they're Bitcoiners, are looking at a much longer time frame than six months. I mean, there's like a massive balloon mortgage. Totally exactly right. Yeah, and it doesn't, you're still borrowing probably a stable asset against a volatile asset. The rule of thermodynamics is investing is you can't get rid of volatility and risk. And this definitely doesn't. But it's a nice piece of marketing. I bet people will use it. I hope people find it helpful. I do think it's real in that it's not a scam, which is nice. And, Yeah, good innovation. Not a huge breakthrough, but interesting to see. So, yeah, decent headlines, something a few people will use. There's a lot of products in the Bitcoin lending market.

And I think they're great and I'm glad people use them. I don't think any of them have hit the exit velocity for something that mainstream would use yet. No, what mainstream. Product for Bitcoiners. Mainstream wants what they can't get, which is like, you know, a 5% down 100,000. 100% loan, no liquidation. You can't get. Yeah.

I mean, I guess I should ask you broadly. I mean, we kind of talked about the four-year cycle in general, and that kind of, I think, gives a hint as to where you think we are as far as the market and the fact that obviously bad news hasn't pushed it down. I keep seeing this one go around that the Coinbase premium is at 50 days negative, which usually kind of means there's weakness, obviously, underlying the market that American institutions or American buyers, I guess, are not participating in the same way that they are in Asia or other places. I mean, is it really just as simple as the, you know, maybe the real question.

So is this like kind of a little, you know, bull trap in the middle of a bear market or, you know, what does it mean? I think it's just a choppy summer. I have the Green Day song, wake me up when September ends in my head. Look, look, you still have uncertainty in the market, right? You still have the Clarity Act uncertainty, which is a big sort of Damocles hanging over crypto. You still have financial advisors and institutions who I think are the next primary buyer, basically take most of the summer off. So they're unlikely to show up with, you know, $20 billion of Bitcoin, particularly ahead of the Clarity Act.

and you have Iran, you have figuring out who Kevin Warsh is and how he views the market, you just have a lot of uncertainty. So my base case, and I could very well be wrong, is it's a choppy summer. I think as we get into the historically good months of crypto, which start in October and accelerate through November, there's a lot of reason to imagine we might be on the other side of that chain, that we might have the Clarity Act on certain things. behind us, that we might have figured out Kevin Warsh, that we might have squeezed the last bit of leverage out of the system, that this defy renaissance might be actually in full bloom, that the

stable coin rules, which are being finalized right now, will start to go into effect. There's a lot of things lining up for the fourth quarter in particular, maybe the late part of the third quarter. I would love to say we go straight up from here. Maybe we do. We've shown a lot of resilience, but I personally think the market's going to want to churn through that uncertainty for a little while. And then I think it'll be a great end of the year. I do think the next cycle, you can see what it is. It's institutional adoption of crypto. It's everyone building their own chain.

It's defy conquering all assets. It's all assets moving into the crypto and blockchain ecosystem and everything that means for the growth of this ecosystem. I think it's a really good narrative for that next cycle. But I think we have to get probably through a little bit of uncertainty over the summer before we get there. Again, I hope I'm wrong, but that's my base case. You said Clarity Act, so now I have to ask. Happening? Well, my base case has been it's not happening because the Democrats hate Trump.

And I think the end boss of the Clarity Act's future is the ethics consideration. But I will say this Bessent speech that I read, which really cemented to me how important the administration sees crypto regulation and legislation for their economic agenda made me slightly more optimistic. But if you forced me to make a bet, Scott, I would suspect it doesn't get done because Washington doesn't get things done. And there's a lot of partisan acrimony. But it very well could break the other way.

it does break the other way, I do think that's a shotgun start to the next cycle. Yeah, I don't think it's happening either, but I do agree that if it did, now, now it's, now it's happening is not much priced in. That's right. It's a good, it's a good place to be. That's what we want, you know, only outside. Yeah, I love it. All right, man, well, I've taken enough of your time.

I deeply appreciate it, as always. Is there anything I missed? Just I don't, I think we covered it, but. I think that was good. Yeah, always good. Good to see you in Rivendell. Thank you. Thank you. I will have the Elvin Council vote you in.

Appreciate it. If possible. It might even get you one of those rings. Oh, man. Bring it on. I'm ready. Maybe not the one that rules them all, but we'll see. All right, man.

Thank you guys. Give Matt a follow on X and everywhere else, of course, and check out his memos are great, as we showed referenced something I go to all the time. So appreciate everything you do, man. Thanks so much for having me. Bye, yeah.