The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Has ZERO Bank Liquidity - That's About To Change | Christopher Perkins

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Institutional adoption is no longer a future narrative — it’s already underway. Chris Perkins explains why he joined Franklin Templeton to lead its digital asset business, arguing that crypto has entered a phase where fundamentals, regulation, and institutional capital matter more than hype. Despite bearish retail sentiment, he believes Wall Street is quietly positioning for the next cycle through tokenization, Bitcoin, and high-quality crypto projects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hear that? It's your money calling. It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia high-interest savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit scotiabank.com slash h-I-SA to learn more. Scotia Bank. You're richer than you think. Crypto sentiment is terrible, but institutional demand may be stronger than ever. Today I'm talking with Chris Perkins about his move from coin fund to Franklin Templeton.

We'll have everything from liquid strategies to close-end strategies, private credit strategies, venture strategies, you name it. It's time to scale. Why major institutions are preparing to enter the market. Have you talked to any of these market makers? You should get them on the show. They'll say the same thing. Dude, I'm so busy right now. I can't keep up with the pace of onboarding.

All these institutions are onboarding. These guys are coming into trade. And why the next cycle will be driven by fundamentals, not hype. Narratives are amazing until they're not. I think what we're seeing now in this market is a lot of grown-ups running in the space and they're like, dude, where's the utility? Where's the fundamentals? We also discuss tokenization, the Clarity Act, AI quantum computing,

and whether beaten down all quins can finally recover. Our institutions buying while everyone else has given up, we're going to find out in this amazing conversation. How's it feel to be a suit now? You're a corporate guy again. I don't think that's fair. But these guys, it's like when I came to Franklin, And I'm like, you know, I need a couple things to operate. Because, like, we've been full D-Gen for five years.

And I'm like, I need telegram. They're like, it's going to be tough. So they need telegram. So done. They got it done. So I need a tweet. I said, you have corporate policies. I need a tweet.

They said, okay. So, like, they're more D-Gen than you think. Yeah. Through a classic. That laser, I remember that laser eyes, you know. They understand what's at stake. and they're awesome. They've been amazing. So talk about the move, obviously, for context,

coin funds, and effectively the liquid side has gone to Franklin Deppleton. Is that accurate? 100% accurate. Yeah. And so that's our foundation. And from here we're building. Look, you got clients all over the world that are saying, I have risk if I'm not in this space. My board is asking me why I'm not in this space. There's something here.

I need a trusted agent to take me through this, this area that I just don't understand. And like, it's funny. You always talk about how crypto is trustless, permissionless, but you need people that you trust to bring you in. And so, like, our job is to drive differentiated returns for our institutional clients, help them navigate, and that's what we're here to do. It's insane the amount of opportunity.

Is that strictly through liquid tokens at this point, or is it a diversified strategy? No, we'll have everything from liquid strategies to close-end strategies, private credit strategies, venture strategies, you name it. It's time to scale. So more broadly, I mean, how do you think about the existing all-coin market and the tokens that have been here for a while, which I'm sure you hold a ton of? I hold a ton of. It's been a pretty rough four or five years.

It has, but what are we seeing? It's a flight to fundamentals, right? Like, we were never the type of folks who wanted to go chase the shiny new toy, you know, narratives end. Narratives are amazing until they're not. And I think what we're seeing now in this market is a lot of grown-ups running in the space and they're like, dude, where's the utility? Where's the fundamentals? And, you know, hopefully, you know, leveraging our discipline that we take from Tradfai to begin with, you know, before crypto, we were in Tradfai. And now we're still able to take that Tradify discipline to find those fundamentals. And that's

where we want to direct our clients. It's, in a ways, everything's true. changed, in a way, nothing's changed. That makes sense. Right. So is your view that the ones with good fundamentals that are beat down and have existed for a while still can catch a bit? Or is it time to look for new shiny things that are maybe crafted in a way to take advantage of having fundamentals, hyperliquid, for example, right? I mean, that's been the big mover and people can point to exactly the burns and the tokenomics and the structure and they can understand why it would go up. I don't own any, unfortunately, but they can understand why it would. Yeah, look, I think you have to be, each project you have to look through a very nuanced,

and Kiperliquins is a great example. Like, is there value accruing to the token? We're also seeing the line between equity and tokens kind of collapse when it comes to value accrual. You know, years ago, people are, I'm just going to do with a token. I want the token. Now people are like, oh, I just want the equity. I want the equity. The point is that these instruments are converging.

You have to look through very nuanced eyes. And by the way, back in the day, if you were an equity or security, it was a graveyard. It was a death sentence. Now it's not like that. And so, you know, as we look at, it's just a matter of identifying that value of cruel. That's what we get paid to do. So it's interesting. Hyperliquid, amazing projects.

There are others out there. And yes, is it, I think it's a very interesting time, very constructive time, because sentiment is awful. Awful. Precious. Fundamentals are improving. You know, we got clarity at coming. We have institutional buyers coming in the space. Have you talked to any of these market makers?

You should get them on the show. They'll say the same thing. Dude, I'm so busy right now. I can't keep up with the pace of onboarding. All these institutions are onboarding. That doesn't translate to stagnation. These guys are coming into trade. They're coming into buy things.

And so, again, really awful settlement, improving fundamentals, very constructive. We have a thin liquidity market and they're all coming in to buy things. That mean they haven't started yet because you'd imagine you'd see that in the market. if market makers were that busy and everybody was coming in to buy. I'm not saying, I'm not doubting. I'm just wondering what they're waiting for, right? Those clients that are getting onboarded if they're here to buy, this seems like the time they'd start doing it heavily if they believe that bull market's coming.

Remember as well, we've developed this market to date with no bank liquidity. Zero. Why? Because regulators didn't allow it. Capital is way too high. And they don't have the appetite to go get regulated in every state, right? if clarity passes and we have federal preemption for the first time, you know, I talk to the banks all the time.

Like, they're not against clarity. They actually love it. They're annoyed with the interest thing, but they're like, hey, once this thing hits, this is an environment I'm used to operating in. There's one federal regulation. I'm going to go pedal to the metal. If we don't get clarity, they're still going to build. It'll be a slower build up.

But clarity happens. I think it unlocks bank liquidity. You seem optimistic. How can you not be, man? I think this is what we do. Okay. About clarity. Passing.

I'm very optimistic about the market. I'm relatively pessimistic, I guess. Although, like, I've gone for maybe 5% chance to 20% chance. Interesting. I'm in the 50s. So probably, like, 51%. Speaking to some folks in D.C. yesterday, it looks like we finally got something around ethics,

which is the big holdup because it's politics. It's political season. If we can get to a vote, I think it'll be very interesting because right now, if you're Chuck Schumer, you're looking at the elections, midterms, you want to take back a majority. It's going to be hard, but it's doable. And these races are so razor thin. If there's anything that pushes the election in any jurisdiction in one direction or another, you care. And so I think there's a lot of math going on right now, electoral calculus, if you will, that, you're a lot of.

that's going to really factor in because, look, like it or not, fair shake has been very effective in the past. I say it's not even just electoral calculus. It's knowing where the money might land just ahead of midterms to push it in one direction or another. It's the reality of the world we live in. And yeah, so if we get to a vote, things could get really interesting. Yeah, I think, you know, I don't know what day this will come out, but, you know, Polymarket obviously saw a slight swing when the White House

submitted their own ethics language. We'll see what that means. But the real swing wasn't in Will It Pass. It was, will there be a vote by August? The real swing on Polymarket went almost 80%. I think that now there's at least optimism that it gets its moment. Yeah, yeah. That's what we're waiting for?

I think that'll be an unlock either way. Okay, so what are you excited about in this market? I mean, you know, we can talk about broadly the trends and all coins and all this, but like, are there specific narratives that you think that you can get hyper-focused on? and make it killing. God, I think it's a matter of listening to the demand out there and we're seeing it. You know, we have this thing. Let's talk about Benji technology, right? You've heard of that this thing. Yeah, of course. Like, this is a story of crypto 101. This is what we should be doing. You take a very basic strategy like a money market, right? Very basic. Like, what's there to get excited about that?

And leveraging technology, you're able to integrate intraday, yields, you're able to integrate 24-7 liquidity, transferability. Like, if our technology allows this utility, I mean, that's what we're here to do, is to take technology, the crypto technology itself to give this new utility. Like, the amount of demand we're seeing for these capabilities is off the charts. Equity, so let's talk about equities for a second. You know, everyone's hot into equities right now, $127 trillion market, right? I'm a fiduciary.

I choose either a token or non-token. I'm buying that token all day long. So I have to. Trump invades Venezuela on a Friday night. I got to risk manage my position if there's enough liquidity. So that's kind of like here and now. What's the future? You know, we have a $145 trillion fixed income market.

How much of that's been tokenized? There's so much happening and the sophistication of trapped by like, crypto natives love to look down in certain cases. I saw. We've all seen it. But they bring a lot of sophistication, particularly when it comes to scale. And as you bring that together into our markets, it's a very good thing. Do you think that that will be investable by retail?

Or do you think that it'll be captured by the institutions within their own walled? I think that's the beauty of crypto. Like, you know, we're going to start shipping away at this private market. So 80% of companies in the United States that are over 100 million are private. So like retail can't get access. You know, that's the beauty of pre-IPO perps. finally retail can get their hands on these things that have been reserved for the accredited guys. I think Atkins is definitely going to go out.

Chairman Atkins is definitely going to go after those rules. He hates them. I could tell. Why is it that in this country you have to be rich to make money? It doesn't make sense to me. So I think that's going to be very much in scope. And everything I'm talking about, equity market, fixed income markets, I think you're going to see programmability. Even being able to trade in lower size.

That opens up, you know, this way to leg into these new instruments, get retail up to speed. Of course, like, then you got AI where, okay, I don't understand these disclosures. Nobody understands them. Not a lawyer, but you can start understanding disclosures more effectively. What else am I excited about? If you think about where we stand today, you have crypto, which is a defining technology. I think it's huge, right? I've been in this space for five years.

You're putting things of value into the Internet that we never had before. Pretty awesome. You got AI hitting us right now as well. And you see how open source models are starting to take off. This rhymes with crypto. That intersection is going to be incredibly valuable. The one thing no one's talking about is quantum. And talking about it in resistance, you know, I've been spending some time with some of the top researchers in the world.

They're like, dude, Q-Day, 2030. And I'm like, what? They could be as early as 2030. And, yeah, the initial focus is on quantum resistance and defense, and that obviously comes together with crypto. But what's going to happen when we pivot that compute on a computer? its head and start launching applications. To get those three technologies hitting us all at the same time, pretty amazing time to be alive.

Yeah, everybody's been so heavily focused on the risks of quantum and how it blows everything up. Yeah. What about the opportunity? Right? No one's talking about that. So started to really see some really smart people starting to think about that direction. That's one of the next things.

The only other person I've heard talking about it is Sandy Call from Franklin Templeton. Really? Is she just say it recently? Very. Yes, you're how excited that quantum was an opportunity. And the two of you are the first people who have really put that on my radar. There's just been so much, I mean, fear mongering, negativity at all cells, obviously. Think of the amount of capital. If 2030 is the date for Q-Day, how much capital has to come in the space between now and then public capital?

Like, I mean, while you're going to end up in a situation where governments will have to really control that stack, it'll be regulated, kind of like an AWS in a way where other applications were billed on. Anyway, early days for that one, but it's going to come quick. There's sort of multiple paths to tokenization right now,

And, you know, I had a conversation with Carlos that securitize, for example. You know, obviously he's into some degree talking his book. But there's the DCC tokenize everything, but it's just an update of our own technology and really stays within that system. And then there's the external tokenize everything, you know, which gives everybody broad access. It seems like there's sort of competing paths to where it lands. Maybe there's parallel. No, there's no competition. Yeah.

There's like one product's superior. One product's not. why would you pay for all the downstream fiat, custody, and other garbage that we don't have to keep anymore? Like, digital twins don't make sense. We'll stop. Canonical does. Now, people will say, but canonical is scary because what happens if the North Koreans come in and take it? And that's a legitimate concern.

Yeah. But guess what? What happens is if the North Koreans come in and take the digital twin? They've already swapped it into Bitcoin. Someone's out of, you know, out of money anyway. It's the same problem, right? So don't tell me security is a reason to favor the old. We need to come up with, you know, obviously great.

And we have transfer agents in both that can track who owns what. So I think canonical is like the obvious future, more efficient, cost effective. Is there anything in your mind when talking about previous all coins and the cycles as we did before that is dead? So we can't all believe that everything is going to go up again. Memes are not dead. because narratives will never die. Mem conceptually, but most of the meme tokens, I think, are probably dead, in my opinion.

I disagree. Look what's going on in Robin Hood right now. Okay, but those are new meme tokens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. I agree that the narrative is not dead at all, but I think, like, if you memes from four years ago, they caught a bit and went to zero, probably not coming back.

Some memes are hanging out, right? I think my point is that memes don't die because narratives don't die. Right. Are they the greatest opportunity for long-term, you know, investments, I would beg to differ on that one. But, you know, are there other things that are dead? Yeah, look at your fundamentals. Like, we know things with no fundamentals generally go to zero over the long term. Some stick around for a while. The thing you need to think about when you're looking at opportunities is

narratives are great until the narrative is over. And I think right now, you know, in the AI space, a lot of people were chasing that shiny new toy. They were chasing that narrative. You know, after a while, you've got to start the narrative stops and the fundamentals begin. And if you have those fundamentals, you agree. What about Bitcoin in general versus the rest of the market? You feel very constructive right now. You know, I would love to get your takes, Guy. You've been watching this.

Four-year cycle seems to be somewhat in effect as much as we keep saying it's over. I feel like an idiot. Right. Okay. So I did at least listen to people who said that that was true. I would always have like Ben Cowan on my show and he would tell me about the cycles. and, you know, but I was definitely in the No More four-year cycle camp, like very, very, very vocally. But I think I still consider the reasons that I thought that valid because the previous cycle didn't look like the other ones on the way up.

So I didn't think that it would look the same on the way down. But listen, if we stop here, it's a much shallower downside, just like we had shallower upside. So I'm fine with that. But if we just go up mid-October or whatever the date is. I will concede. I don't know yet. You know, like, it certainly looks like it.

Yeah, and that narrative seems to be somewhat in effect. What we'll throw that off, maybe, is from this institutional adoption that we're seeing. And look, if you're coming to the space for the first time, usually your first stop is the orange token, right? Of course. That's for a lot of folks, because

why it has the longest history. You can look at, you can run risk models with over 10 years. You can do the same for Ethereum. Others will eventually catch up when I was in Tradify. 10 years of risk mattered as you run through your models. So I think it's a constructive setup. And I, you know, you also saw during the previous cycle with gold was that you saw a lot of people want to decouple from the U.S. So what did they do?

They dump treasury and they bought gold. Who is doing this? This is the guy who run governments. They're 70, 80 years old, right? And then the Bitcoin people were like, wait a second. The narrator's breaking down. It's nothing to do with that. It's that the old guy at X and X country was mad at it.

you know, the U.S., so he dumps treasuries and buy gold, like, no, the narrative's fine, guys. And we've also seen throughout a lot of Bitcoin's history that it tends to follow the price of gold. So I feel constructive here. How about Ethereum? I've been a big fan of Ethereum for a long time. And like, I'm telling you, people like to dunk on it. Ethereum's difference. Its core differentiators, almost impossible to replicate.

And the EF came up with this thing called crops. And we got mad at the EFs, crops. censorship resistance, privacy, and being truly decentralized, like that's its edge. They have over a million validators. How do you name another layer one

that's going to wave its magic wand and have a million validators. So it's not everything to everyone, but it does have its differentiation. Now the next question is, what about my token? When's it going to go up, right? I think, frankly, based on the way it's designed,

it really comes down to activity. And, you know, we will see. We've seen some green shoots of activity, but... It's interesting that Vitolic leaned into crops so hard. Because... That's the edge. Yeah. But I think even when he did, people laughed at it.

Yeah. They were kind of like, we want to see faster, cheaper, you know, and TVL and memes and NFTs, what's going on, right? And he kind of said that that was their edge. He also said, you know, the Ethereum Foundation would sort of just be another node and back off. And I think he kind of really, you know, showed that he meant it. Yeah. What I think is cool about it is that if you are decentralized, why are people so obsessed with the EF?

Like, it's a nonprofit that has a view. Now what are we seeing? We're seeing multiple nonprofits, Prok Lobby. I'm a vet, right? In the U.S., we have 60,000 military veterans charities or nonprofits. Like, why wouldn't you have multiple nonprofits doing different things? Like, this guy wants to figure out how to drive cruel to the token. Okay, great.

That's just, you know, it's just going through growing pains. and what other layer ones excite you? They all have really interesting different narratives. Solana's making some interesting progress on the tokenized equity side. Hype we talked about. Canton just met with those guys. You know, they've really done a really good job of truly getting institutional buy-in and adoption.

So like, you know, they're all doing their thing, right? And we'll see. Or you think they can all find, I mean, there's a lot of we didn't mention, right? There's a long tail there. I'm sure I didn't mention someone and someone's mad at me, but like, they are all doing their thing. I think they'll differentiate in time. How do you differentiate as layer one? TPS, security, and there's a bunch of different ways, but in fees.

And so each will optimize for its own outcomes. It's all about the apps. and we'll see where they go. Yeah, that makes sense. How about the convergence of AI and crypto? We kind of talked about it before broadly, but how do you actually see that playing? I mean, I know agentic trading and agentic AI

seems to be the consensus as to where that's going to happen. How do you see that? We seem early there. We seem early on agenic commerce on chain. It's a nice narrative right now. It hasn't been backed by real, like, real shattering fundamentals. but I think there's something there and it's something to watch. Do we want to be in a world where AI and models and weights

are essentially controlled by two private companies? Maybe not. So there is definitely a trend towards decentralization, decentralization of part of the stack, open sourcing of the stack. So everything from infra to applications, there's something there. And I do think in time agents will transact on the internet

with things of value and they're going to be acts to grow that value. So I feel that that is a value, a cruel layer that people need to be focused on. Even ID. Like, you know, how do I prove that I'm a human? You know, so there's just projects that focus on that as well. Okay, not financial advice and not as a representative of Franklin Tapidon, crypto. Someone gives you a million bucks right now. Where do you invest in?

You're going to get me in trouble. So I can't answer. No, no, I don't answer that. Okay, two million bucks. Yeah. Well, I'm institutional. We've got to go higher than there. A hundred million bucks. So I'm investing in Franklin Templeton.

I wish I you'd get it. Because, you know, like I feel like, and I've been wrong about this a lot. So I guess the answer, you know, a year ago when everyone thought AI had touched was just to keep by AI or whatever it is. But broadly, I find trouble right now finding individual things that I really like and don't feel like are on the edge. Yeah, and crypto's beat down. So I like the...

So, Cryptos beat down. The shiny new toy isn't a shiny anymore. It feels like it's starting to lose its luster. So focus on fundamentals. Focus on value accrual. That's how you win long term. I mean, what other narratives are you watching right now? I think I told you.

Covered them. You know, crypto fundamentals, AI, that intersection remains fascinating. And then really starting to look, you know, this is maybe not liquid side, but how does that intersection between quantum and crypto and AI? Because quantum's accelerating because of AI. And so there's definitely value being starting to be formed there. So there's something on the horizon there. Will you still be doing VC?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. VC venture strategies, if you're in our space, is so fundamental. You need to be out there meeting the top projects, the top founders, learning about the big ideas that are going to shape the future of the markets. By the way, a lot of these guys, quote, go, you know, they have TGEs around Series A or so. And that feeds nicely into other strategies. And so it's a fundamental, these are not like, you know, venture strategies are not like the most scaled strategies in the world.

But they're truly fundamental to everything you're trying to achieve if you're running a crypto practice. Very, very important. Are there broadly many that you see coming to market that are exciting? It seems very quiet. On projects? Yeah, I mean, let's say, like, 2021, there was a TG, you know, TG an hour. It was like how many babies were being born in the world on a given day, right? And now I don't really hear about it very much.

Seems everybody's scared to do anything in the market. Well, I mean, look, even the IPO market, people are like, wait a second. Yeah, they stop. It stopped because, you know, there's, they haven't been able to retain a lot of value in many spaces. So I think the market oftentimes dictates when the windows are open, when the windows are closed, they open and closed for different reasons. So you're not seeing a ton of TGs coming to market now. But look, it's a long game, man.

You know that. Yeah, well, I think we're bottoming. I really have felt that way since February, since the first time Bitcoin kind of went down to 60. My thought was six to nine months of super boring. Yes, we're, you know, more than halfway into that prediction now, and it's been super boring. And I really feel like this is where the opportunity lies,

even if it goes lower. The thing is, is like, we're always, crypto is a volatile asset. And that volatility works in both directions. And we're always like one catalyst away from it, from it either inflecting up or inflecting down.

And it usually does so asymmetrically. So there's a couple of catalysts on the horizon. Like we get a surprise on clarity. Markets will respond favorably to that, I think. But there's downside, you know, shocks that could come too,

you know. We have, Always something. Yeah, for sure. All right, man. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Always great to have a conversation.

Very cool. Love this. It's going to be pouring soon, which is going to be great. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Thanks a good to see you, brother. Today's video is sponsored by Securitize. You've heard the word tokenization putting assets like funds, bonds,

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