The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Sentiment DUMPS As CLARITY Act Talks Collapse!

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Crypto is back in the Washington spotlight as momentum around U.S. regulation slows, bipartisan alliances fracture, and pressure mounts on lawmakers to clarify the rules of the road. From stalled Senate negotiations and collapsing crypto coalitions to growing concerns over software developer protections, today’s headlines highlight just how fragile regulatory progress has become. In this segment, we break down what’s really happening in D.C., why political gridlock is creating uncertainty for builders and investors, and how upcoming election dynamics are reshaping the crypto narrative in Washington. Is this just a temporary pause—or a warning sign that U.S. policy risks falling further behind global competitors?

Bitcoin sentiment continues to dump as lack of clarity around the Clarity Act continues to emerge. It seems that the bipartisan support that we were looking for is no longer there and that the bill itself may be entirely collapsing. We've talked about that endlessly. We're going to get into a bit of that, but have a much deeper conversation on the state of the market and the industry with one of my favorite guests who's been way too long since I've had. And we've got John Wu, the president of Ava Labs, here to join us now. Let's go. Good morning, everybody. John, you're already on.

Usually I do an thing and then you just appeared. Listen, it's great to be back on. You're right. It's been way too long out of a very volatile sector. The one thing that's consistent is your show is always great. And one thing is consistent, thank you, is that you guys continue to build. And somebody's got to do it. Right? Because there's a lot going on. I think we can dive in just sort of start with the market here. I mean, obviously, I know you don't talk about prices and you're not concerned with them because your heads down building and you have a long-term focus. But man, with all the good things that have been happening, I think a lot of people just look at this in disbelief and we're getting signs that people are giving up, time-based capitulation, need to see the number go up. A very, very strange market.

It is kind of strange in the way in 2020, you know, now we're in January 26. I think 26 will be a lot different, but I don't want to recant everything, but there's a good reason why 2025 wasn't as spectacular as everyone has wished and hoped for. First of all, there was a lot of buy the new, sell the rumor, just to start with that, okay?

We had obviously a huge issue on 1010. That took a lot of leverage and people out of the system. But I think people forget that there were many substitutes for the asset class, whether that be prediction markets for people who love the thrill of that or AI stocks, a lot of substitutes for people who liked it from an asset class perspective or a speculative perspective. And plus, I think what people don't appreciate enough is that although the ETFs and the that's in theory are great, but the debts especially, there was a lot of call it pay in kind, or contribute in kind, I should say.

And that is trapped capital. And the SEC having taken, you know, because of the shutdown, is so backlogged behind. So a lot of these debts haven't actually really started coming out to the market yet. There are big ones that are out there. But reality is there's a lot of trap capital. And that capital is the same capital that used to go into the on-chain world. And they also got hurt on 10-10.

So you have to absorb a lot of that. But then once it absorbed, the space is going to be good, I think, as an asset class in 26 some point. It feels like some of that has been absorbed. Even just looking at the market, it felt like certainly on Bitcoin that every day the stock market would open at 930 and you'd just start to see this like systemic selling. So somebody was obviously either blown up or was a four-sell or something. At least that feels like it's gone.

The same pattern isn't there. But I do think that every time I talk to someone with knowledge of the industry, they bring up 10-10. right now. I just think that that was a massive event and there's still kind of bodies floating to the surface. Yes, there are. And no one knows exactly which bodies or no one's willing to say the names. But when you're operating the space and you talk to people, it's hard to explain, but it's, you know, I don't have data, but it's empirical. You feel like they're still paying left over and it's getting much better. I can say that. Yeah. So obviously there is a lot of optimism

with the new administration coming in, whether you believe they were pro-crypt or not, I think it's very clear that the last administration was anti-cryptial and just getting a reset from all of the nonsense before. I mean, having been, you know, in the United States and building through that entire thing, have you seen a major shift in the way that you can operate through 2025, regardless of what price has done? I mean, is it easier to build? Do you have higher confidence that you'll be able to stick around, that everything you're doing is compliant? Because we're going to get into the Clarity Act in a second, but you're on the front lines of this thing every day. That's right. Yes. And as you know, Avalanto is always a technical.

technology built for business. You know, from day one, we obviously were very big in Defi, and those are the primitives that were created to help adoption from traditional financial companies, as well as, you know, enterprises. Like Avalent's been very focused, you know, and not just in gaming that we're very well known, but obviously the real world assets that we're very well known for. And also, by the way, a new category that we since last we spoke has been huge for us, which is loyalty and royalty for real, brands. And we can go into that later. That's why we're excited about this next phase of crypto. I mean, you were just eloquent in breaking the assets away from, call it the operating

environment. The evolution of the space has gone from literally like blockchain's gone from crypto assets to now think of it as really enterprise technology. There's adoption on all fronts on big tech as well as TriFi. JP Morgan, JP Morgan, JP Morgan, you know, New York Stock Exchange announced the other day that they are working on tokenized security settlements. Apollo has been their early guy in the asset side that we've worked with many times. So they're here. Like everyone keeps, you know, I think the previous years everyone talked about institutional adoption, institutional adoption. Well, I have news for everyone.

I laughed, yeah, because I just remember when like backed was first announced in 2019 or 2020. And we're like, there, ICE is here. the New York's Stock Exchange and just a whimper for like five years. But now it's every institution on the planet is here massively. I just laugh at, you know, how bought in I was to the same narratives five years too early. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing, though. And this may also explain some of the dislocation in the assets of the space.

They're here, but there may not be here in the full vision of what crypto people are always envisioned. They always vinging, you know, primitives. or P to P, permissionless. But we realized, called it the Genius Act, the Sablecoin Act first, okay, before you can get to clarity. That gave a lot of clarity for lack of better work for institutions and the willingness to participate. So once that was set, you've seen a wave of adoption, but a lot of them are doing it in closed networks. You know, the great thing about Avalanche is you can create your own L1 in a private or permission way, and we've been working with these institutions.

So the number of, the amount of activity because of just the Stable Coin Act, Genius Act, has increased tremendously. Now, you're not going to see that necessarily in all the asset prices because that's the world for the permissionless side. And this is the big disconnect because the adoption is coming, but maybe it hasn't come in the way. that we all dreamed of. It's become an enterprise technology in many ways. I remember from our conversations probably five years ago when Avalanche, I won't say it was in its infancy, but the original premise was exactly what you just described. I remember our conversations and L1s were new and you were saying we will be able to develop private L1 blockchains that are all interoperable with the main chain, but they'll be permission and they're purpose

built for institutions and here we are all the institutions are here is that structurally still the superior way to do this or have you guys pivoted in any way to kind of accommodate the new world of institutional adoption yeah so i think there's a couple of things going on when they want to adopt they want to definitely start in more of a closed environment and closed network they know they care about control they have to be compliant so they have to have and they care about security So they love the fact that they can start in the space building on top of a permission environment and what they love about Avalanche is the architecture allows it to open to the Meritland's permissionless world and the EVM compatible way.

So they love the optionality. And that's why Avalanche has been able to do a lot of stuff with these institutions. So clearly the environment has changed as we discussed. But Genius Act passed, I think, which was a huge watershed. moment, as you mentioned, but I think that there was an expectation that right behind that would be the Clarity Act. I certainly keep going on record saying, I think I was wrong that it was going to be so easy because I thought it was somewhat of a foregone conclusion with all the tailwinds. And now it seems that things are getting a bit more difficult. Bipartisan Senate Crypto Alliance just imploded.

It's a hell of a hell of a headline, leaving these high-stakes software developer protections in limbo, basically saying that right now CFTC not necessarily in line with their marketing. And, you know, we have the set up market markup coming from agriculture. We also have the one coming from the Senate Finance Committee and not as bipartisan as anticipated. Crypto regulation slows as Senate shifts focus, but momentum isn't gone. Kind of funny that we live in this echo chamber where we think this is the only thing that the Senate is looking at, but they, you know, they have other jobs. I was about to say, like, did we really expect it to be that smooth and one just comes right after

the other? besides the fact that I was dumb. Not smooth, but I thought that I would get it done by now. Yeah, and I have my doubts. Besides the fact that, you know, it's never smooth in these instances, stable coins a lot easier. It's like really one subject matter with wrinkles. Now you have like so many different issues with many wrinkles behind it.

And I think specifically where we are at is the Clarity Act version or the market structure built version of the house has. passed between the finance and the ag committees so both SEC and um cfts oversight the senate released the one just from the finance committee which is like close of 300 pages and then you have another one from the ad committee from the commodities that has to be added to the senate of finance committee so that's another 300 pages like we're talking about 600 pages that have to be co-mingled together figure it out and a lot of really what we've seen it the chat to be it but the issue we is a lot of things are going like this.

They're offsetting each other. So it has to be reconciled first before even goes and gets reconciled with the house version. So I think like anything else in D.C., it's going to probably be a little bit longer and more complicated. And the ideal scenario is like no one's really happy. The banks are unhappy and the people in crypto aren't happy. And reality is like now that, you know, it's a lot different from pre-election where

there's a common bond of moving forward as a whole industry. Now we're getting more specific. So different constituents in the call it crypto blockchain world have different interests. And they're not necessarily always on the same page. How much should we care at this point? So obviously you guys have got to be watching this. The institutions that you're working with, I would imagine want some version of this pass so that they know that they can operate here for the next decade, 20,

50, 100 years and that we won't have the pendulum swing and the lobby operating in Singapore and Dubai in three years, right? So does this still matter massively to you that this bill gets done? Do you think that that is still a sticking point for the companies you're working with? Well, I think every American should care because this will bring clarity so that innovators and capital moves to the U.S. and back onshore. Okay, it's already happening, but it'll be even better. Avalanche and Aval Lapp really care because we are so. servicing a lot of people that are still in hold or working with companies that are still in hold until they get this stuff really figured out. Just like StableCoin was a big unlock,

this is maybe even a bigger unlock going forward. Yeah, so it really still continues to matter. And as you read these articles, it seems like this definitely could get kicked way further down the road. Yes. I think we all know that something passes eventually because this industry is just going to continue to grow and they will have to at some point set rules of the road. I guess it just matters who's in power when that happens. Well, you know, as much as you can put in statute the better, because if you leave it to the rulemaking at the agencies, it can change with the win if new people take over at various agencies and a different political regime. So it's important that we get something done while there's

will to do it. I think there are definitely still an urgency. Even President Trump mentioned it in Davos, yes, in the world economic forum. But I think he's got a lot of other things he's got to worry about. And like you said, we live in this echo chamber where we think we're the most important people in the world. Yeah, there's a few other things on the docket right now beyond crypto clarity. So I think that it's actually a huge signal that he's still mentioning that in speeches when there are so many things happening in the world. I mean, there's obviously an urgency for from the White House to get this done. It's just hard to believe that both parties will come together.

As it seems we're sort of seeing a little ground swell of the anti-crypto army rhetoric coming back. You know, so from your perspective, then, obviously, taking price aside because we know that's been muted behind the scenes, what are you excited about that's currently being built specifically by you, industry as a whole? I mean, you know, I think a lot of people are disillusioned and they aren't seeing the and what's happening behind the curtain. Well, that's interesting to say that because, well, I'll tell you what I'm interested.

But first, I think adoption in this space is like, I think who puts it, I think it's Coinbase or put this out, basically there's 70 million U.S. people who are in the space, mostly as owners as opposed to users of the space. I think that's going to double this year just simply from stable coin usage in the background that they don't even realize. I mean, visas already processing a lot of this. through their partnerships with basically the cards. There's a lot of cards that are on ramps that allow them to provide,

processing effectively in, you know, fiat onto crypto. So a lot of it's already happening. People are not realizing they're touching it without touching it or it's abstracted away from them. So I think that's going to continue to happen more and more so. You know, there's a couple of things that I'm really excited about. One is FIFA. We talked about earlier, overlooked is all the stuff we've worked on with teams with brands.

So the FIFA is building a loyalty program on top of Avalanche, their own L1 blockchain ahead of the World Cup this year. And basically, it's got cool functionality. And what these brands have realized is that when you have direct access to your user, you have two major benefits. First is you don't have to reacquire them through marketing, the consumer, via Google search or Facebook feeds or TikTok or TV ads. So that saves you in the sales and marketing line item for these companies. And then the second thing is that direct engagement has actually increased literally engagement and usage and dollars. So in the FIFA example, you can get your effective thing of as an NFT, but it's a smart NFT that gets you access to certain things.

But first you get a card that's of your favorite team, of your favorite player, and then, you know, based on activity, you have a first right to actually buy tickets when your team gets to a certain place. And that's like a functionality based on engagement that they have direct access to. We've done this with Cleveland Cavaliers as a technology in the background, Detroit Pistons and LSU, the football team. And in the Cavaliers situation, they've actually realized they've created millions of dollars of revenue that they would not have had if they didn't run their loyalty program themselves in a very more convenient,

automated way. Plus, their goal in the long term is a stable coin concept where the same fan who goes to a game can actually pay for it at the merch for merch or at the concession stand and not have to absorb someone you know the merchant or the person indirectly won't have to absorb the 2% credit card fee so there's a lot of benefits and things that we're working on with brands it's a loyalty programs are actually on a blockchain these brands are realized it's a great CRN tool this is what I'm talking about because I haven't had any of these conversations in like four years.

This is, what everybody wants to talk about is Trump and politics and price and Bitcoin and, you know, now we're talking about smart NFTs, which is a thing we can

dumb NFTs. You know, CRMs, you know, customer relationship management tools and function as loyalty programs. Nobody's talking about this. You are.

Because I think, you know, just because we need price to be up for people to care about the actual fundamentals. Is this one of those things in a year when everything's up? you know, 3x and everybody scratch your head, but we should have been paying attention to this.

I mean, there's a real reason why you don't see it, though. It's because these are sometimes on private chains. So the explorers can't easily capture it. There's no easy way because they, again, the enterprises, the enterprise technology, the enterprises and definitely on Wall Street, the traditional finance companies, they need to have certain amount of privacy for their users. But in other cases, they need to make sure the networks with participant partners, that they approve of and all the security of it. And also, you know, basically they need to know that their users have a good experience and it's in a private chain.

They're not just going to give up their users until they know that this thing is 100% vetted and it's great. So it's adoption of the technology and most people don't see it because it's not necessarily directly investable for them right now. Correct. I mean, that's kind of the truth, right? at Pia, and I think this speaks to a lot of the, I guess, issues that we're having in the market right now, non-specific to you guys at all, is that we're seeing this emergence of utility, but I think

there's still big question marks on how retail will benefit from that. We obviously see how they'll benefit from it on a technological perspective, right, because they'll be able to participate, own that NFT, get the tickets, all those things, but we're sort of washing out the people who only wanted to see stories like that because they thought it meant they would make money somehow. That's right. I mean, the use cases are here and coming. Unfortunately, it may not correlate directly with the asset prices. Yeah, I think that that's a fair assessment, but it's also a signal, I think, that the FIFAs of the world don't care about the regulatory or legislative environment. They're just, you guys are just building with them. Yeah. I mean, the stable coin thing, frankly, was a great unlock and they're willing to do a lot more than they would have if it weren't for that, to be fair.

You mentioned before gaming, since I have you and we can actually have a Web 3 conversation for the first time here in a very long time. You know, you guys became sort of known as a gaming chain, not exclusively, but it seemed like all the gaming partners were choosing Avalanche over others. And that wasn't necessarily the case at the very beginning. Gunzilla was really exciting. I know that was effectively, has been effectively a AAA game. Is that still a major focus for you? I mean, I know that you have, I know this isn't a huge piece of news, but we do. You have that million dollar builder competition for building games.

So that seems to still be a focus. Yeah. No, it's still there, obviously. I mean, you know, we've built primitives for the space that can be now used by others. And we have a strong business development team that has made relationships. You know, one that we should talk about is actually Maple Story. Maple Story is actually publicly traded. It's owned by Nexon, which is a publicly traded company, the publisher in Japan.

Maple Story has been around for 20, 25 years. It's got basically 200 million plus users. And they're building a version of that game on a blockchain, Avalanche blockchain. And they have so many addresses and uses being ported over from the traditional game into, call it their own private blockchain L1 on Avalanche. And the benefits that they're looking for, first of all, they're great innovators. A game only lasts for 20, 25 years because they keep innovating in some way. Now, what they want ultimately here is not just a marketplace.

That was really the first product market. The in-game assets trading in a marketplace, and obviously a blockchain could be very good for that. And then all of a sudden, you can aggregate other games by one publisher so they can trade assets from one game to another in the same, call it, marketplace. But with stable coins, it makes that even easier to do. And ultimately, you know, a Maple Story wants their players or users to actually be

part of creating new experiences in the game. That's the next level, a lot of gaming. Think of Roblox. Roblox is not a blockchain business, but it's got a lot of blockchain ethos. There's a Robux. There's also in-game creation from users. So you can be someone who creates a creator,

as well as a player in their game. And then, frankly, there were, or at least there are kids who made a lot of money creating stuff inside Roblox. That's a one. And because it's composable tech in blockchain and crypto, it makes it easier. It's the next level for creators inside of a game. And that's what Maple Story ultimately wants.

And that's been a huge success. And people don't realize that as well, partially because it's a public company trade elsewhere and also because it's still in a private L1. Were we just way too early with these narratives a few years ago? I mean, this is the classic thing where, you know, human beings obviously think things are going to happen exceptionally fast and they don't handicap that timeline. when it does happen, it goes hockey stick, and they also don't realize how fast.

It will be adopted once it starts? So like now are we on the hockey stick part of the curve? From adoption, yes. I mean, I think you're seeing that also happening in AI. There's a lot of these AI companies that have, you know, in terms of stock price stagnated, but they're doing more stuff than ever. So this is, I think you nailed it.

It's natural human psychology or personalities to be like that. Yeah, I think a lot of the interest from the market perspective has been captured by public markets. Obviously, it's worth noting today that Bitcoin is basically going public. They're a first crypto IPO of 2026. We know there's some heavily hyped ones that will be coming. But last year, you know, we had Itoro and Bullish and Circle. And obviously, a lot of people who maybe would have been buying or trading all coins were trading these in digital asset treasury companies. Right.

I mean, first of all, I've known Belchie forever. It's great. You know, good for him. I think, you know, I haven't dug through the S-1, but, you know, it's, I think it's coming out of valuation. That's relatively fair. It's not over-hyped. You know, they have great momentum in terms of almost double in terms of revenue growth. They're positive EBITDA. It's still small, but it's growing. And I think the importance, of this IPO, for them at least, is you've seen certain IPOs in the space where they represent that functionality. Circle represented stable coins. You know, Coinbase represented marketplace way back then. Even though Figure was more of a helock play, it represents a tokenized real-world asset, if you will. And Bigel is the first custodian with many of the features, far more than just a

custody play now, that it's going to IPO. So it's going to capture that person who, the incremental buyer of the space who wants access to that space. So I think it should do really well and very happy for Michael Belchie. Do you think that these publicly traded crypto stocks are competitive with the all-coin market in any way? Or do you think that this is different capital finding a home? No, I think they are competitive because the incremental capital is, I mean, at some point, you know, in the adoption curve, even on the asset side, it's not the early adopters. It's starting to go to the steep part of the curve. And those are people who are crossover people.

And let's be honest, you know, a crossover person who's got a Schwab account still thinks a circle or a Bitcoin, today, or a Coinbase is a far easier construct and better UIUX than what exists on chain. So with that said, we have obviously, all of these crypto IPOs. We have the digital asset treasury companies. I would love to actually hear what you think the future of those is because it's just a hot topic of conversation with myself and every guest and I have a lot of opinions on it. And then on top of that, ETFs. So there's a lot of ways now. Okay. So where do you want to start? There's a lot of ways. It was just back to what I said

earlier. There's just too many competing ways to get access to the space. And that's like micro-malade. Yeah, that's part of the malaise in the actual tokens. So I think the net effect is great for people who want choice. And I think it also will force, you know, there was also too many tokens. Tocons came out like crazy. And basically, it's going to narrow down basically which tokens will exist and which won't be basically the equivalent of like a dollar stock that's going to delist at some point, which actually is not necessarily a bad thing. It's like we are moving from one paradigm to another. The space is maturing. And I think it's actually a good thing for. for, definitely for the users.

And for the builders, at some point, it's a great thing for them too, because they're going to have to focus. Yeah, I was trying to look up what percentage of penny stocks die as companies. And it's like one in a thousand survive. More than 99% of penny stocks die, and that's in public markets.

So I think that's a pretty good preview of what's likely to happen in the all-coin market when you have even take it, I mean, pump fun. It was like six million tokens a month. something for a while there, but even taking those out, right? We don't need thousands of different things doing the same thing. So there's got to be a massive competition at the top that obviously you and others who are trying to win. That's right. That's right. And we talked about this, I think,

a couple of years ago. It just seems like a attorney ago. But we even, you know, the intelligent people knew that this day was coming and it's now here. It's just hard to go through it. It's been brutal. And there was this expectation once again that 2025 was going to be the big year, I think, for all coins. So knowing that we have all of this adoption, you know, behind the curtain once again and that we have still, I think, massive tailwinds for the industry, what do you think gives the spark where we start to see the select, I guess, all coins and projects and platforms that have real utility and values start to separate themselves and actually become more performant? I mean, I always joke that the best advertising for an asset

is high prices. If Bitcoin's at 130, this conversation is completely different, right? But you still have to have some spark that pushes them to a level where you start to get that retail fomo and interest and the media starts talking about it and it's on social media. Well, I think you just said it starts always a Bitcoin. That's still the biggest one of all. That's the one that's absolutely clear. There's product market fit.

And I think at some point this year, and it'll be probably the back half of this year, or when we're closer to a clarity act possibility, that could be a spark. Or it could be literally these, you know, there are, you know, obviously the Bitcoin debts are out there. But as some of these other debts consolidate and there are fewer choices, I think ultimately, you know, the evolution is that Bitcoin does become, again, the store value and the reserve that people want. Obviously, gold is very hot right now.

And that's also taking some of the luster out of tech. But every year we pass by, you know, the younger generation, they're digitally focused. And we're in this great wealth transfer right now from, you know, the boomers down to millennials and Gen Z. So those people don't think of gold. They think of Bitcoin. So I think it's back half this year. And it could be more clarity.

It could be just the absorption of other avenues like that, you know, is finally worn out. but Bitcoin leads the way still, ultimately. Yeah, I agree with that. I had Chris Perkins on yesterday from Coin Fund. It's just a brilliant guy, obviously. Great guy, love him. And his opinion was sort of a have-and-have-n-nots version of the future, where if you have an institutional stamp of adoption,

aka maybe futures, an ETF, a treasury company on your token, great, it's going to be investable. Everyone else, good luck. That's fair. I would say, you know, that stamp of approval is very important. Yeah. So I know there's, I remember, I don't actually remember the specifics on Avalanche, but I know that Grayscale had filed and others. So do you assume that you'll eventually have all those things? I don't know if I can, I'm allowed to talk about specifics, but I think you will. There will be multiple and yes and yes. And I think it's probably, if I were to guess sooner than later.

How do you think the treasury company world shakes out? I mean, that was a pretty quick bubble. I think, well, you're going to see a couple of things. I think you're going to have the larger coins, and sometimes there's like way too many treasury companies per token, if you will. And I think you'll see consolidation amongst those. And then the ones that have the ability morph themselves into, it's a reverse of micro-strategy. Whereas they went and had an operating BI business intelligence business and used it to become a treasury company.

You're going to see, you're already seeing it with Tom Lee and trying to like own a stake into Mr. Beast. You're going to see if some of these can actually morph themselves into larger operating companies. So the ones that have survived after a consolidation, the ones that can provide more value than just quote unquote access to the tokens, especially if the tokens are going to be ETF and staking enable, then it becomes more imperative for the DAT to actually be able to do more things, whether it's on chain, create better yield, provide functionality that you can't get in an ETF. So you're saying you can't just buy a whole bunch of stuff and pray? No, I think if I were an investor, I would look at from a that,

perspective, I will look at, you know, which ones are under, you know, MNAF and figure out which ones will get consolidated by others. And I will look at it from that perspective. If I were just a passive, you know, investor, I would be very careful and go with the bigger ones that I think will survive over the long term. So your view is that there will be mergers and acquisitions and that the better capitalized players will likely consume the failures at a discount and add to their treasuries, and we won't need a hundred. You just don't need a hundred. And a lot of these will end up being statistics in your one and a thousand before.

Yeah, I thought that the bit mine news that you alluded to with Mr. Beast was a pretty big signal in that space as well, that you're not going to even, you know, Tom Lee said we're buying 5% of the supply of Ethereum. They're very close, which means, by the way, if you get there too fast, you've got to find something else to do. But to basically see from the largest player in the Ethereum treasury space that you're going to need to have some sort of cash flowing business or investments or other aspects, I think put everybody else on notice. Like you're not just going to be able to buy the asset and wait. Correct. I agree 100%. Yeah. When I had David Bailey on from Nakamoto, obviously they've performed pretty poorly. but even he said, yeah, you know, we might have been wrong in our initial strategy and we're going to need to find some cash flowing businesses,

which we're trying to do now for, you know, to find ways to buy more Bitcoin. I mean, at the end of the day, I think with Bitcoin treasury companies, you can't just buy Bitcoin and wait. You need to use cash flow to buy it. I think with the digital asset treasuries and all coins, it's a little more interesting because of staking revenues and other ways where you can actually naturally beat the benchmark asset by using that asset. Correct. You can't do anything with Bitcoin. Right. You're absolutely right.

I think, like I said before, like, you know, the ones who actually show that there's more value than an ETF, like, because they are able to go on-chain and do things and create better yield or different streams of revenue, those will also be okay. Anything else that I miss that you guys are building that you want to talk about that I didn't bring up? I think, you know, I'd be remiss not to mention the stuff we're still doing with traditional finance, obviously we worked a ton of stuff with Apollo, but we just announced this week with Galaxy, you know, tokenizing CLOs. That is a space where I think, you know, the,

call it the structure of product space. You know, we also have a deal with, you know, FIS, Fidelity National, which is a company that's been around for decades and 40 billion publicly traded market cap company with a company called Intane. Intane basically, basically, think, of them as administrators for these structured products and mortgage-backed securities and CNBSs and Collarize loan obligation. They've streamlined a lot of that workflow using the blockchain. And now they are partnering with the team or the company, FIS, that has access to 2,000 different regional and community banks.

And what they're going to do is now they've made the cost of basically issuing this CLOs, distributing claims, interest, whatever, tranching, all of the back-end software that you need that was really messy in the past, make it affordable so that regional banks and smaller community banks have the ability to actually access and securitize loans like the big boys can. So those are all like, you know, real use cases where people are going to benefit from that. Why should a regional bank not get the same access to cheaper cost of capital? because they don't want to, they can't, you know, basically afford to basically, you know, create these packages or securitize CLOs. And suddenly there's a whole industry now where mid-market and smaller players can access

this loan market. I just find it so wild talking to you how many things are happening that are kind of hidden behind the scenes. I keep saying the same thing, but we need more people who get out in the press and show all these things that are actually being built and happening behind closed doors that are so much more important than what the president or the government is doing or what prices are doing because prices will inevitably follow the adoption for the few things that are justified in going up that's right I'm a big believer in that

you know I was a tech investor as you know and I still remember the 8000 e-commerce companies and the 8,000 internet search companies. And, you know, Amazon was like a $5 stock and look at it today. So it's going to be an up and down road. It's not going to be smooth. And it's not just crypto. Look at the AI companies are going through some sort of growing pains in terms of asset prices right now as well.

Absolutely. John, thank you so much for your time. It was great to catch up again. Hopefully I'll bump into you, you know, walking in front of a hotel again in the near future. I think that was our last. In person was in Miami. I think it was at the one hotel.

I remember. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're absolutely. That was fun. I'm sure it will happen again. It's always great to be on your show. It's an excellent one. Thank you so much, man.

Everybody give John a follow. Obviously, check out everything that they're building at Avalat Labs and at Avalanche. Because when you listen, it's just really inspiring to know that the builders are out there and that the promise of Web 3 has not diminished just because people are frustrated by prices. John, thank you so much, man. We'll see you soon. Great to be on. Take care.

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