The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Nears $80K As Hunter Biden’s Token PUMPS Then DUMPS | Matt Hougan

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Bitcoin is holding near $79K ahead of key inflation data and next week’s Fed decision, while Zcash ETF demand is exploding and HYPE hits new highs as Hyperliquid open interest nears pre-crash levels.... We also cover Bessent’s aggressive stance on the yen, Robinhood Chain’s record fees driven by Pons, and growing concerns inside frontier AI labs after an Anthropic researcher quits over safety risks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:22 free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Bitcoin is once again approaching 80,000. but that's not the biggest story of the day. Sadly, the biggest story of the day is that Hunter Biden launched a token called laptop that pumped to a $110 billion valuation and now is
Starting point is 00:00:44 trading at about $2 billion. And all of that happened in the last hour. What are we doing here? Unfortunately, I don't have to tell you because I can put that on Matt Hogan. Who can explain to you exactly what's going on with laptop token. We're going to get into that and a lot more today.
Starting point is 00:01:00 Let's go. Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday. and welcome to the show. Just the fact that we have to do it. Don't want to do it, but we're going to do it. Matt, today's big day for the industry. Why did I choose today to come on the show, Scott?
Starting point is 00:01:35 All right, man. We should have done one of the evergreen recorded conversations. You know, here you go. Look at it. Hunter Biden's laptop is now live. It's him clearly on drugs, smoking a cigarette with a rotating coin. and I'm going to show you a work of art. I don't know if we should call this. Honestly, the pump was so fast.
Starting point is 00:01:52 There's a five-minute chart. We can't even call it the Christmas tree or the Birch Khalifa because it's just a building that's then failing on one side. It's more like the, maybe it'll be a half pipe if it goes well. Right now it's like an evil-coneval ramp. I mean, this thing went up to $110 billion. It's currently trading. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:02:13 I'm trying to look. It's bad. 1.6, right? So, you know, the tokens right now, $4.50. So just some quick back to the map. This was a $400 token at some point in the last hour. Oh, my God. I don't even know. I don't even know what to say, although that chart is beautiful enough to become its own token. Someone should tokenize it. Laptop chart. Take your laptop chart. That's right. We could retire on that, Scott. That would be it. I don't even know what to say, man.
Starting point is 00:02:48 We sort of deserve everything that comes to us when I see these sorts of things. It's really, it's brutal to see. It makes you think you're living in a simulation. I don't know why people show up for these things, but that is incredible that it went to $100 billion. That's really remarkable. So I don't have the exact quote, but I think I remember that Trump went to about $75 billion.
Starting point is 00:03:13 There you go. Laptop over Trump. Wasn't that part of the... He beat Trump. That's got to hurt. But Trump's, to be fair, took a little while to get there and stayed for a while in the general vicinity and got back to here in like, you know, months. We did the full Trump token cycle in an hour. That maybe, maybe that's progress.
Starting point is 00:03:34 Maybe we're improving as an industry. It makes sense because Hunter Biden is on meth. So everything happens faster. Everything goes through much to the past. feed. Why does this have to happen? So listen, it's going to be like, I think this is going to be forgettable, right? It's whatever.
Starting point is 00:03:56 I have a feeling that it's not that big a deal when you're outside of our echo chamber and that most people will just laugh this off like they have the past. But it's certainly not a positive. It's not a positive. You feel bad for the people who bought, I guess, up at the top. I agree that this will not have the lingering challenge of Trump and Melania coin. We can't forget about Melania coin. They came with the one too.
Starting point is 00:04:23 Yeah, I think I think this is a blip, but it is a it is an odd blip. It's been odd to see the sort of crazy side of crypto emerge so quickly early in the recovery in the market. That has been notable. with this we have with the boner hymns thing uh you know there's a lot going on scott the boner hymns yeah me me mc which i guess isn't as funny but yeah it's all kind of funny uh i mean it does there is a persistence to this it will continue i actually think what long is doing with the pair of tokens probably has interesting downstream things uh laptop maybe doesn't have
Starting point is 00:05:09 interesting downstream things. But it is amazing how fast that has bubbled up. I guess it's, you know, part of the social trading thing. That energy is still very extant in the market. Yeah, it seems like that actually has been sort of outside of Bitcoin, the spark, right? I mean, you get FOMO app, people obviously going crazy over there. I think Robin Hood chain has been a massive spark. They're doing, you know, huge numbers on fees and, you know, definitely the most successful, I would say, layer two on Ethereum right now, even kind of helping spark the Ethereum narrative. And here you go. I mean, Pons propels Robin Holtzain fees to record six million in daily fees as Dex volume doubles. So I haven't dug so deeply, but to my knowledge,
Starting point is 00:05:48 Pons is effectively the pump fund of Robin Hood chain, right? So this is launch a meme and watch it fly and for five seconds. Interestingly, Hunter Biden did this on base, not on Robin Hood chain. Probably could have gotten to $112 million if he had done it on Robin Hood. chain. But you're right. I mean, this is, I think we see these times, but it's even becoming more clear that we have this barbell. It's like you got Bitcoin and maybe a couple very serious things and then complete an utter casino and degeneracy on the other side and not much of a bid for anything in the middle. That's definitely right. That's definitely right. And the degeneracy piece has real legs. Like I don't think that that is going anywhere. I mean, when we have laptop today, Hunter Biden
Starting point is 00:06:32 created a $100 billion entity with a few posts and a picture of himself doing meth. It is an amazing moment. I agree it's it's this barbell. I think the institutional barbell is doing pretty well. But yeah, there is this D-Gen side. It's kind of interesting to see. Again, I do think some interesting things will bubble out of pieces of it, but also some Hunter Biden laptops. All right.
Starting point is 00:07:00 Let's talk about more serious things. Yeah, we had to talk about it. It had to be depressed, I think. So yeah, Bitcoin can recoverers towards 79,000 as Zcash records a 500 million ETF haul. So, you know, nothing's more exciting than ETF flows on a day-to-day basis. But I've seen, I think we've seen a positive trend over the past couple weeks since Bitcoin caught a bid. You know, we've had a couple outflow days. We've had some of our individually biggest inflow days. And it's going, clearly beyond just Bitcoin. So maybe unpack how you're viewing the flows at the moment. Yeah, I think there are three things driving the flows at the moment. So the first is we continue
Starting point is 00:07:41 to see a lot of in-kind transactions from people who are holding Bitcoin and other assets in cold storage wallets because there've been so many hacks. There have been so many issues. That is happening. Oh, that is definitely happening. No, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's in my slack on a regular basis that this is a happening and an accelerating rate. Now, part of that was already in the water for all the hacks. People were just getting more comfortable with this. The minimums to do it had fallen from like $100 million to a million dollars. So this was already happening, but it's really accelerating.
Starting point is 00:08:15 That is one piece of the flows. And importantly, that's not buy pressure, Scott, right? That is just BTC to BTC. It appears as flows, but it's not net buying. So I think that's a piece of it. The other piece that's not that interesting to investors is hedge funds coming back into the market because the basis has expanded. Basis was sub-treasury level for a long time. That's the premium people pay on futures.
Starting point is 00:08:41 And now it's not. Now it's 6, 7, 8%. You can make real money in the basis trade. So we see inflows from the hedge fund community. But there is this long only bid coming into the market as well from financial advisors, from retail, I think that that part of the market is real. I would just say when you look at the flows, you might want to cut it in something like half to get to the long-term demand.
Starting point is 00:09:06 The other half is sort of this technical demand from in-kind and hedge fund money. Right. But I assume if they're playing that basis trade, there's a short on the other side, right? A hundred percent. There is long demand in the futures market from retail. So that is another expression of long demand. but you can't double count. You can't count the rise in futures open interest and the ETF flows.
Starting point is 00:09:30 That's double counting the demand. But the ETF flows are reflective of sort of the animal spirits in the futures market. And so that's a piece as well. But there is real money. That money into Zcash is notable, scaled for the size of Zcash. That's a lot of flows, right? If that was Bitcoin, that would be $5 billion of flows on a market. cap-adjusted basis. So kudos to grayscale for getting that product out, huge amount of interest
Starting point is 00:09:59 in Zcash right now. And we think those flows will probably continue. Okay. So we obviously always look at the Bitcoin flows, but I'm not looking at today or even the past day. But I know that last week there were days where once again relative to market cap, Ethereum was outperforming the Bitcoin spot ATFs, right? You'd have like a 500 million day or something on Bitcoin, but it would be a 200 million day on Ethereum, which is big, relative. And you guys have had like wild success with the hyperliquid ETF. Zcash doing 500, right? So this isn't just, I guess I'm just honing on the fact that this is not one of those
Starting point is 00:10:35 Bitcoin-only rallies where there's skepticism around the rest of the market. People are participating and money is flowing in to crypto generally. Yeah, that's right. Look, I think there are like four narratives that are working in crypto, maybe five. This isn't just a crypto bid, which is what we previously saw in the past. I think Bitcoin is being driven by the debasement bid. I think there's a stable coin and tokenization bid that is lifting things like Ethereum and Solana and Chainlink and other assets in that space. I think there's an improving tokenomics bid where people are excited about assets with cash flow.
Starting point is 00:11:14 I think that's why you're seeing hyperliquid. I think if there was a uniswap ETF, it would be doing. well. And then I think there is the Zcash privacy bid. The other bid is probably this retail DGEN. The reason I raise all those is like that's a really robust bull market. When it's just risk on, risk off, we're one tweet away from Scott Bessent to going into a bear market. But that's not what it is right now. It's debasement. It's tokenization. It's improving tokenomics. It's privacy. It's its memetic culture, all of those are firing at once. That's one of the reasons I think this is probably a bit more sustainable from a bull market
Starting point is 00:11:54 sentiment feel than maybe previous sort of rallies. I think really the market is turned because you have all these narratives working at once. Yeah. I mean, hyperliquid is still just crazy to me. Successively. I mean, I saw that their open interest is back to basically almost 10, 10 levels. Like hyperliquid open interest climbs of $14.3 billion is hype hits all time high. So the platform is doing well and the token is doing well as a result, which is like
Starting point is 00:12:22 seeing a unicorn on Mars in crypto, right? You could actually align these things and it makes sense. There are a lot more. There are a lot of unicorns on Mars right now. It might be a lot. You know, I think that's really the case. I also think it's still early, right? The number of people who know about hyperliquid is still relatively small.
Starting point is 00:12:41 its penetration into the regulated market is still relatively small. I was having an argument with my research team the other day about some of these protocols. They were like modeling how large they could be versus the CME. And they were talking about taking a handful of percentage points. Why can't hyperliquid take 10, 20, 30 percent? If you get the kind of regulatory breakthrough, it's still really early in the hyperliquid story. So I'm not surprised it's doing well. I think that could accelerate.
Starting point is 00:13:10 And these other assets that are driving revenue, whether it's uni or pump or Pons to go back to that, Pons has bought back 28% of its float. It's crazy. Like put that into equity terms. Imagine there was a hot tech equity that bought back 28% of its shares. It's like a wild thing to consider. But that's happening in crypto now. So I think, yeah, I think unicorns on Mars are going to continue. $10 billion and we're just getting started.
Starting point is 00:13:39 let's win. That's total volume on pawns. I mean, this thing is brand new. That's a lot of money on meme coins. Yeah. Well, it's a lot of money for any startup, to be clear, right? But yes, it's a lot of money on meme coins. I mean, look, I think, I don't think that's going away. Do you think social training is retreating? Do you think sort of DGEN consumptive investing, if you want to call it that, is retreating? I don't think so at all. I think those trends are probably accelerating. So, look, I don't have a view on ponds, but broadly that space, I think, is a legit theme. And again, it speaks to the breadth of what I think is an early and large bowl market. We have institutional strength. We have fundamentals. We have D-Gen all working at the same
Starting point is 00:14:26 time. It's pretty interesting. So have you tried Robin Hood Wallet or FOMO or any of these things just for curiosity? I have not. It's hard from a compliance. perspective. Yeah, I never like do it, but I kept seeing it. And then I was just in a moment of weakness. I was like, I want to, you know, I have Robin Hood as an app. So I'm going to open a Robin Hood wallet. And I just want to see versus trying this five years ago, how easy it is. It's really easy. You know, like where you open a Robin Hood wallet says, you know, do you want to add something? It kind of opens this thing, Robin Hood Connect. And you don't really think about bridging and all this stuff. And then, you know, I opened Uniswap on Robin Hood wallet. And it, and it,
Starting point is 00:15:06 doesn't have like all the, am I doing this wrong feelings that you used to have in the past? I looked up a contract. There was something, a friend was like, just buy this to try it. If you want to try something, it's called stonks or something. Right. But I did it, you know, and he was like, and just watch. And it, you know, it took a little heat I had on Robin Hood and it moved it over to Robin Hood wallet. It bridged it to Robin Hood chain. I didn't have to do any of this. Even on Uniswap, it was like, we're going to switch chains. And you're like, okay. And I bought this thing. I checked the wallet this morning.
Starting point is 00:15:36 bought a little bit, but, and I have some tokenized SPY, you know, like a hundred bucks worth a tokenized SPY sitting in my account because apparently because I bought stunks, I'm getting airdrop tokenized actual SPY. It's, there's something there. I think there's something very real there. I mean, that's what I was saying. The underlying protocol there long is, I think, caught something very real. And then the other piece you're talking about, the ease of use is just dramatically better. it also didn't cost you $50 or $100 to do those. I think there were alerts that were like everything happening here is free for now. Yes, exactly.
Starting point is 00:16:14 But if you go back to the last sort of DGEN boom during the NFT craze, it cost you $50 or $100. That's one of the reasons that slammed to a halt. And we fix that now in blockchain, right? So that's, I think it's a big, I think it's a big unlock. That's a huge unlock. I mean, people were trying to mint NFTs that were worth $10 and it was costing $100 to do it. Yeah, we were saying a crypto reinvent finance and stable coins were replaced dollars, you know, and we were running into $200 transaction fees.
Starting point is 00:16:45 It was completely insane. It was like when we tried to do video and dial up internet era. And I don't think we reflect how many things have changed. That's changed. Toconomics have changed. Regulations has changed. ETS have changed. The crazy thing is we're still at the price.
Starting point is 00:17:02 for most crypto assets that we were back then, right? They haven't, they should be 5, 10x ahead of where they were in 2021. We haven't gotten there yet, but I think we might. Yeah, and, you know, you saw there's kind of reminiscent of those old days. I did see news that like Robin Huchin was down for a little while and that he's actually had spiked, you know, they're not charging you for them, but, you know, they're still working through it. The good news is that we're not paying for it or really like noticing it in the same way.
Starting point is 00:17:32 Yeah. FOMO, I don't, you know, FOMO, I can't get a grasp of yet. I didn't do any of this on FOMO. I mean, I opened it and I looked at it and it was like copy these people's things. But I mean, like 200 people have made more than $10,000 on FOMO. That's an old story. I mean, the thing about FOMO is we've seen that before. If you go back like 25 years, there was marketocracy, which was the same thing for stock trading.
Starting point is 00:17:57 I feel like this is a story that emerges every five to 10 years. And of course, statistically, some percentage of those wallets will be at the top of the leaderboard. It's now easier to follow them, so maybe it's more persistent. But I do think the returns, yeah, as you said, it's like 4% have beaten the market or something. I think it's going to be a challenging place for returns. But I suspect that social trading will continue to grow. I'm still sort of bullish on the trend. I'm not sure the outcomes will be great, but I'm bullish on the trend for sure.
Starting point is 00:18:27 I didn't think you and I would spend 15 to 18 minutes talking about meme coins. in platforms, but here we are. That's the state of crypto. Take you a look now. Bitcoin 79,400. This is pretty impressive to me. Okay? And you and I have talked about this endlessly, but the fact that we caught a bid and
Starting point is 00:18:48 in the face of all this bad news, we weren't dropping and now we're still kind of rising. We've leveled up 20K as a floor effectively, or 15 to 20K, and we still have all the same bad news and we're not dropping. Yeah. Yeah. No, we're literally like you, I, you know, I try to avoid the news, but like Iran is bombing American bases and the United States is retaliating. I mean, we have to talk about, uh, uh, besent, you know, I still Bessent Bessent, I still do it wrong. Uh, but, you know, he dares traders to bet against yen. I am the house now.
Starting point is 00:19:23 You know, like yields, yields still aren't buying it. I mean, these are some crazy things. I mean, this is his quote, I'm the house now. So when we intervene with the Japanese yen, I have pretty good insight into what the Japanese, what the Bank of Japan is going to do, what Japanese policymakers makers are going to do. And you can bet against me if you want. I am the house now. This is like, you know, I am your captain. It's absolutely that. It's unbelievable to see it. The thing is this is the second time he's gone with that approach, right?
Starting point is 00:19:49 Remember, he said, I have asymmetric information. The crazy thing about that quote to me is the market will challenge him on that. There's no question, right? As Stan Drucken Miller said in his response, the thing is when you sort of say this, the market is going to test you. The market's going to test him on that. I have no doubt in my mind. So I find it strangely provocative.
Starting point is 00:20:13 The question is, is it deliberate or is he have sort of delusions of grandeur on this and thinks that he really does know better? But I saw that tweet and I thought we're going into the 80s because the market's going to push that and we'll see. I mean, I'm trying. I'm like just opening random charts. I mean, the 10 years at 4.8 and rising still this week. So I'm going to intervene and bring these things down. It's not happening. Dare I even open the Brent chart right now. No, I think we're north of 100. 102.
Starting point is 00:20:48 There you go. Yeah. You're there. I mean, like these are not like, you know, Bitcoin does great generally sort of scenarios, right? So, I mean, there's Brent, right? I mean, that thing is pumping. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. But I think the market is recognizing, in this case, particularly with the yield side,
Starting point is 00:21:11 that Besson's going to have to do something large. He's going to have to do a relatively large intervention to try to tamp that down, or the market's just going to continue to ramp it and push it up. You know, we continue to see all the pressures that would drive that up. We see massive issuance from the AI client. complex. They're now flooding Europe, raising money in Europe because they stuffed the U.S. market full of debt. We see oil pressing up. All these things should push those rates at the long end, solidly higher. But Besson is saying he's the house now. I don't know. It does make
Starting point is 00:21:47 me bullish for Bitcoin in the relatively short term. As you said, it's amazing that we went from 60 to 80 and stuck. I don't know that I've seen that kind of move in Bitcoin ever. But we did it. And now I'm like marginally more bullish than bearish because of these quotes coming out of D.C. Yeah. Like you said, I fully expected, well, I shouldn't say expected because everybody expected it, which means it never happens. But I would have thought, you know, we go back and test.
Starting point is 00:22:19 And maybe we still do, but 69, 70, 71, 72, right? And we kind of had a little dip to 76 and change. But that's a rounding error. Like that's a, you know, that's a Tuesday for Bitcoin, like a volatility. And here we are just kind of pushing 80 with, you know, very hard, very hard to explain why. And I mean, if you do take a look at the chart, I mean, for the technically inclined, it makes a hell of a lot sense that we're sitting here because this is the, you know, the 50MA here on the weekly has always been a kind of bull bear break for the entire market.
Starting point is 00:22:53 And right here where we got to at 82.8, that's a higher high. can't say anything technically anymore. Yeah. We're right at the place, but I mean, it just every time there's a dip, it's getting bought. And I feel like that's the institutional bid. I think the institutional bid is persistent. I also think it's going to accelerate, right? They come back to work after Labor Day.
Starting point is 00:23:15 They're starting to look at their portfolios. They're starting to eye what will be on their Q3 report, which prints at the end of September. Do you want to own Bitcoin that's plus 25% or do you not want to own Bitcoin? and many people will want to print that on the quarterly portfolio readout. So I think the institutional bid will be there. Look, it's also the case that anyone who bought that as a trade, you know, they expected volatility to move one direction or the others. They bought it 60.
Starting point is 00:23:44 They've cashed those chips by now, right? Anyone who wrote it up to 80 and they've stuck it out, they're in thinking it's going to 100. So I think we're one tweet from pushing above that, 50 a day and moving substantially higher. Is it a Hunter Biden tweet or is it it? But now, now, I'm getting all bullish, Scott.
Starting point is 00:24:10 And you just, not on Robin Hood chain, but if he had done it on Robin Hood chain, we could have like tied it to like the S&P or something. And he used Hunter Biden token to push the S&P up. I mean, there's so many angles. The fact that, If Hunter Biden and laptop is sort of part of what reinvigorates base, that's amazing in and of itself.
Starting point is 00:24:33 Like, what a day. Okay. So I didn't have these pulled up because they've kind of been discussed over the past few days, but I still think these are the big story. So obviously we had the cold card hack. Then we've had all the data breaches. You know, Treasurer increased from like 16,000 to 80,000 customers. Bits of gold was 200,000.
Starting point is 00:24:51 Then, of course, this crazy white hat story with liquid. And now you're talking about effectively like a non, you know, this isn't a hack of the keys. This is a hack of the software and systems. But this is block stream and at them back, right? So now the big boys are having trouble as well with the new AI models. And then on top of all of that, this story that we did not discuss, and you kind of brought it up at the beginning before we started talking, a two-key breach can hand control of 91 billion in UST to hackers report fine. So I have not done my own research on the custody, you know, strategies of tether.
Starting point is 00:25:29 But a two to three multi-sig apparently, so, you know, in this world of AI and wrench attacks, you know, getting control of two keys might not be that hard, probably pretty hard. But, you know, these things are doable. And you can all of a sudden, like, you know, mint, redeem and do everything you want with USDT on Tron, which is half of the market cap of tether. Did I get that right? I think you got that right based on that reporting. I mean, it's completely crazy.
Starting point is 00:25:56 It is completely crazy. Look, I think two things are true. The AI sort of enabled hacking capabilities have leveled up substantially, and the first place that they're attacking is crypto. And so these stories that we've seen for the last six months, we're going to see for the next six months until cyber defense capabilities level up to match what's going on there. So I just think that's true.
Starting point is 00:26:21 I don't think we've seen the last of these stories. I don't think we've seen the last of these hacks. That's, again, one of the reasons we're seeing inflows into ETFs, but it's more a broad story about crypto. So this will persist. And then the thing that Tron brings up to me is, you know, look, a lot of this industry was built in startup land with relatively small teams, working relatively quickly, and maybe isn't scaled for a $3 trillion,
Starting point is 00:26:48 going to 10 trillion to our industry, right? We think back on things like the Mount Goxhacks. That was clearly an example of people getting over their skis, like moving into a space that they weren't ready to see scale into the billions or scaling into the trillions. It looks like not entirely ready for that, right? If that story is true and there's like two people between hackers and that much money, it's a frightening aspect.
Starting point is 00:27:17 So I think this is a real persistent story, a real persistent risk. We haven't seen it deter people from this space, but we also haven't seen maybe the worst of the potentials here. So I think it's a real thing. Yeah, so we've had, here's the thing. So I've been kind of mentally framing the narrative for the last few months as you might as well get the hell out of anything old that's not active because there's, you know, call it. 10 to 100 million in market cap in hundreds of tokens that don't have anybody like guarding the walls. I'm assuming, right? Like the Raven coin thing and the Harmony coin thing.
Starting point is 00:27:58 Like these are easy exploits because there's not even a security budget. I can't even say that there's anybody watching, right? So that's like free money to steal. I don't know if you saw yesterday. This one I almost like spit what I was reading at. Harmony, the remix economy for AI video. So Harmony One token, which was an ETH killer, is now, shutting down the token entirely because they said they can't protect against AI. They don't have a chance.
Starting point is 00:28:21 They were already hacked twice. And now they're going to mint, take a snapshot, you get your tokens in the R.C. 20. The Harmony chain's dead, but they're going to remix AI videos. Okay. And then you have Kronos executes controversial blockchain rollback to recover crypto worth 111 million. So they were effectively like they had, and again, these are all novel hacks now. There was this tonic thing and someone was able to use it as collateral, which is kind of like liquid. They, you know, they minted fake to. tokens use it to get the real ones. But these are not, like, we're not at the point now where someone even needs to steal your keys. Like, they're just exploiting the stupidity of these smart contracts in the way that they were designed. And these guys roll back a chain. Like, who wants to be in any of these things right now if you don't have, like, if you can see, you know, Blockstream having problems, why do you want to be on Kronos and Harmony and Ravencoin? I completely agree. I completely agree. And again, you know, those were, I mean, we talk about aspects of this industry being non-serious. I'm not saying each of those projects were non-serious,
Starting point is 00:29:19 but they were built at a time when the industry was much smaller and they were operating with very small teams. And that's just not fit for today's market. I think you're right. On those small things, you have to be extraordinarily concerned. And I don't think people should be concentrated in that space. Again, I don't think the error people make here is assuming that the last story was the last. There's no way that the last story was the last. There are a hundred more of these stories that are going to come over the next year. Like, inevitably, I think. I think there's almost nothing you can do to stop it.
Starting point is 00:29:57 And so if you aren't taking steps to protect yourself now, you're going to wake up and wish that you had, right? I think that is just a truth of the market right now. Yeah. And, you know, we have this kind of narrative. And I saw it in the block stream situation. But it's like, you know, white hats have the same. tools at the black hats. So, you know, like, the security, but the motivation, there's no motivation to protect or budget to protect 99% of this stuff while the black hats have every motivation
Starting point is 00:30:27 in the world to attack it. So it's not like an equal, it's not like two guys are lining up with a fair fight, right? I mean, this is like, you know, would you rather fight a thousand lions or 200 elephants? You know, none. It's totally right. All the same cliches, you know, the Defenders have to be right 100% of the time. The attackers have to be right once. The cost of trying 1,000 different approaches is effectively zero. You don't have to actually cut. I mean, it's just inevitable that this is going to happen for the non-institutional part of crypto.
Starting point is 00:31:03 Again, not the protocols. Protocols have been, like the high-end protocols have been pretty great. But that doesn't mean that these layers built on top are built with concrete foundations. Some of them are built on sand, and I think that's what we're seeing. Meanwhile, all the exciting news about AI Anthropic researcher believes more than 10% chance AI could kill all humans. So this is one guy who left. But apparently it was at Open AI an Anthropic and said, I'm quitting my very high-paying jobs because we're in a race to our own death. Then this is a different guy.
Starting point is 00:31:36 I left deep mind after seven years and since rejected offers to join the other two due to severe concerns about the concentration of power these labs represent. What's currently happening in this field is deeply unhealthy for society. Okay. Listen, I don't want to go down the doom, Pat. But like, there's people that are close to this non-crypto-related who think AGI is coming to, like, kill us all. So, you know. I mean, to be fair, he only said 10%, Scott. You know, that's still 90-10.
Starting point is 00:32:00 We're okay. I saw that last night, went through a whole processing thing and decided there was nothing to do. But it is, I mean, it is a crazy world. It's a crazy world that we're living in where it, where it's not just. just one guy at OpenAI or Anthropic. You see follow-on tweet after follow-on tweet after follow-on tweet. And then you have a laptop this morning. So that's our world. You're doing great if you had shorted it when we started the show. Now it's 790 million market cap. So you'd have you'd have it cut in half. I literally think when we first looked at it before
Starting point is 00:32:36 the show. Wasn't it? It was like $2 billion or something? We should have for a billion, I think. We should have. We should have. All of this aside, I know we've got like 10 more minutes. So like what, let's talk about all the positive things that are happening. Yeah. Because there's a lot.
Starting point is 00:32:52 And you guys are on the, I always ask you. You're on the ground every day. You're having these conversations. I'm assuming most of this is not on the radar of the people that you're talking to. So what are people excited about? Are they thinking that we're getting a renewed bull market here? Is that the interest that you're seeing come in? I know last time we talked.
Starting point is 00:33:08 you said, you think the people that bought when we went from, you know, 60 to 80 is the people who are trying to hold for the cycle, three, four years view. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I look, I think what we're hearing from the market is that crypto is investable again, that we're past this sort of four-year cycle pullback, and we're now looking ahead to the next four-year cycle. I'm not saying there will be another four-year cycle, but the way the investors look at it is crypto has followed this pattern in the past. and now we're on the other side of it. They're also worried about debasement. They recognize that 6040 is 100% fiat, and they want to have something outside of fiat. They're very excited about stable coins and tokenization. I give a bunch of different talks.
Starting point is 00:33:56 The talk from being asked to give more than anything else is about stable coins and tokenization. And look, I think it's going to be fairly common for people to have one, three, five percent crypto. It's the same story we've been telling, but it's really happening at an accelerating rate. I actually think Q4 is going to be an enormous quarter for ETF inflows because I think a lot of people are on the sidelines for nine months. And now they've just got the green light that they can come into the market. And you have major wealth platforms saying, you know, we should have a one to five percent exposure.
Starting point is 00:34:31 I've sort of never been more bullish for institutional crypto adoption than I have right now. There's still a few interesting stories that haven't really bubbled all the way through. I think hyperliquid hasn't bubbled all the way through. The rebirth of defy is an emergent story that hasn't bubbled all the way through. But broadly, Bitcoin, stablecoins, tokenization, we're going to see billion dollars, billions of dollars of flows into ETFs behind those themes. Yeah, I agree. Do you think that this is really starting? starting now, or do you think that now we kind of, you know, midterms and Clarity Act and all these
Starting point is 00:35:11 things still coming that maybe we could chop for a while? Maybe we found a new range and it's going to take some time. I think we plow through the Clarity Act failing, assuming it fails with maybe a one or two-day wobble. I think there'll be like a few weeks around the midterms where people are a little bit nervous before they realize that it doesn't matter that Paul Atkins is just going to plow through congressional dysfunction, you know, like it's nothing. So I don't think there's anything that really fundamentally slows this down. I think price is the biggest catalyst. And again, people were waiting to enter. Look, crypto's been normalized. Even a year ago, it was sort of strange to talk to people about crypto. Now I don't think that that's true at all.
Starting point is 00:36:00 So, yeah, it could wobble a little bit. But, you know, again, even if there's a DSA sweep in the November election, there's not much that they can do to slow down progress on stablecoins and tokenization and Bitcoin. They can do investigations on ethics. I think we'll see a lot of that. But I think the stablecoin tokenization Bitcoin genie is out of the bottle. And it just rushes forward from there. I haven't been this bullish on crypto in quite some time.
Starting point is 00:36:30 Yeah, I mean, so obviously tether is killing it. seemingly doing quite well, but then you add this consortium, you know, of the major banks that's announced that they're going to, by end of 2026, early 2027, launched stable coin. You have the regional and community banks launching bank chain to do their own. And then you have Stripe et al, Coinbase and all of the FinTechs launching a stable coin. So they're in a consortium. I doubt these consortiums will work. But like, this is clearly the next battleground between everybody to get their peace.
Starting point is 00:37:01 and they're all in fear of the other entities. That's absolutely right. And there's going to be trillions. We're not even at a trillion of stable coins. There's going to be trillions of stable coins. It's also getting easier to access and use. You see Visa reporting on the enormous volume of stable coin link cards. Look, these are, it's so hard to say these words.
Starting point is 00:37:22 But the stable coin thing is a super cycle. It's going to be a 10-year story. tokenization is a 10-year story as well. and there's just nothing that's going to slow that down. You mentioned that you accidentally own some tokenized SBY, right? I mean, I think you saw how easy it was to access that. We think there's huge growth in the tokenized stock space. I didn't know I was going to get it, to be honest.
Starting point is 00:37:47 So I bought that just to try it, right? And someone said it's attached to whatever, but I think you have to be on FOMO to do it, but it's just sitting in Robin Hood wallet and all of a sudden some tokenized S&P appeared. That's pretty cool. It's not pretty cool because I bought a meme coin. And by the way, I'm sure the meme coin's down like 80% for me to get like 70 bucks worth of S&P or whatever.
Starting point is 00:38:09 So that's not a point. It was an experiment. But the fact that we're playing with novel ways that can affect the actual stock market and that are pushing tokenization of those assets is crazy. I mean, Rand Nooner, I think I saw you had a tweet. It was great. He was like, you know, why don't we see one of these tied to STRC yet? I think because Robin Hood doesn't have STRC on it yet. But want to push STRC back up to par?
Starting point is 00:38:29 start airdropping it to people. It's totally right. No, that's exactly right. And I don't think we've, look, there will be a million experiments there. There are things you can't do, which I wish you could do, but like incentivize people to buy an ETF by associating a token with that. There are various regulatory reasons you can't do that. That could happen with ETFs versus individual securities.
Starting point is 00:38:49 I would, an issue or can't do it. You know, bit wise, BITB, yeah. I mean, an issuer can't do it. There's sort of restrictions there, but I bet people are not doing this on Robbins. Well, that is true. As CEOs pointed out, yeah. But I bet there are going to be a million experiments like that with things, you know, things associated like the experience that you just had.
Starting point is 00:39:09 I often think, what is the Chris Dixon? You know, the thing that starts out looking like a toy is the next big thing or whatever he says. I suspect that's true with this paired distribution model. I think there'll be interesting things on like customer points, dividends, staking stocks. I think there's going to be like a million more interesting things you can do in this vein that I'm excited to see. Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:39:37 I know you got to go. I pushed you right to the limit. So thank you very much, Matt. I deeply appreciate you showing up. I'm going to let you go. I keep going for a couple more minutes. Good to see you, Scott. Always a pleasure.
Starting point is 00:39:47 We got this one done like twice in two weeks, I think, or something. So that's good. We should keep in the time. I want to get you on a macro Monday to argue with McGlone sometimes. Oh, let's do that. That would be fun. He was like, please let me fight with McLone. So, you know, we're going to just line him up. We'll do it.
Starting point is 00:40:06 Thank you. All right. Matt Hogan, ladies and gentlemen, the team from Bitwise. I'm like, you know, like I don't often get mesmerized by things. I find this mesmerizing. Let's full screen it. Look at that. Oh, it's back to 870.
Starting point is 00:40:28 So listen, I will say that this thing, I guess, is probably a dream for traders. You know, I don't know what the liquidity is, but if you're bouncing between a $700,900 market cap in a minute, $400,000 is what? It's nothing. Yeah, over here, liquidity is $400,000. It's not that compelling. So, like, what was, John, I wish they could hear you. When you said the most somebody had. made. So somebody made $850,000, I guess, who was buying very early and did manage to sell near the top.
Starting point is 00:41:04 I feel like those are amateur numbers versus what we saw with Trump. So I feel like this is a much less realistic picture of market cap than we saw with Trump because of the insane amount of liquidity that was happening at the top of Trump. So they bought $250,000 worth and sold a million-ish. Okay. Yeah. That checked out. Oh, my God. Why? Why do we have to Hunter Biden laptop in crypto? I really don't know. And I'm going to be honest, that USDT story that he and I discussed, that kind of shook me a little bit. Because, you know, I don't think there's a more trusted entity that you believe cannot possibly have a security issue than Tether.
Starting point is 00:41:50 And I'm not saying that they do. I'm just saying that if they do, like, you know, hide your wife, hide your kids, or whatever that meme is that we always get. So listen, before I go, we do have an amazing partnership with Nexo. You saw I had them on the podcast not that long ago. So you could check them out here. You're all-in-one digital assets platform. Now, I know that a lot of us have been in the situation where we've been forced, unfortunately, at times to sell assets that we didn't want to.
Starting point is 00:42:29 And, well, you don't actually have to do that if you use platforms like NXO. You've got Bitcoin. You've held for years. You need liquidity. You can just borrow against it, right? And you can get a credit line against your stack without the credit check because you already have the collateral as your qualification. So you keep your exposure.
Starting point is 00:42:45 You get your cash. But the big news is that they're back fully in the United States and fully regulated through backed. We had Mike Alfred, who's an advisor to back on recently. and of all places they just managed to go live in California. So the link is in the description. If you want to check them out more, I obviously highly recommend it.
Starting point is 00:43:07 Obviously, can you earn a yield there as well. So it's not just about taking a loan. You can do all the things. And impressively, you know, NXO really didn't wobble when we had the CFI collapses of the past and all of the issues. So highly encouraged that you check them out. We've got some big, big shows. next days. I can't remember. So I know I'm recording tomorrow with Caitlin Long for the Sunday
Starting point is 00:43:29 podcast. We got Dan Tapiero will be on on Friday. I'm recording with Mark Moss today for Saturday. And there's somewhat amazing tomorrow. It's so good. I can't even remember. Look. Let's look at my phone. Check the calendar. Tomorrow. I have to make lunch for my kids. Matt Cole, live, CEO of Strive. How can I? I forget that one. So basically, I would just like to remind you that I may not be able to tell you when or when not to buy Hunter Biden's laptop, which by the way is at $699.58 million market cap right now. But what I can do is bring you the absolute most brilliant minds in this space and ask some questions so that hopefully you can learn from them. And we have massively, massively
Starting point is 00:44:19 increased the quality of guests. They're all guests we always had, but we're trying to have the best our favorites on more regularly. So once again, tomorrow, Strive, Matt Cole, Friday, Dan Tapiero, 10T, Saturday, Mark Moss, Sunday, Caitlin Long, Monday on Macromonday, Jordi Visser. I will put that line up against any All-Star team on Planet Earth for content. So I'm going to make those lunches. Check it out. Guys, that's all we got for you today. Check me out, please, on The Daily Wolf. That show is crushing. It's a lot of fun. That'll be on at noon on Yahoo Finance and then here on YouTube.
Starting point is 00:45:22 Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.

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