The Wolf Of All Streets - Wall Street Doubles Down On Crypto! Mastercard, NYSE & Western Union Push Ahead

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Wall Street is doubling down on crypto as major financial institutions accelerate their blockchain strategies. Mastercard is enabling 3.5 billion cardholders to make Bitcoin and crypto transactions, Western Union has launched its USDpt stablecoin on Solana, and the NYSE-backed ICE is partnering with Polymarket to adopt 24/7 tokenized collateral. Meanwhile, new ETF filings and growing institutional investment signal that traditional finance is moving deeper into digital assets. As adoption expands, the line between crypto and Wall Street continues to blur.

Wall Street and financial institutions are doubling, if not tripling down on crypto. Yes, market prices might be depressed, but the news cycle is as crazy and bullish as ever. Also, we obviously have to talk a bit about the macro and the Fed. It is the Friday 5 with NLW. Let's go. Good morning, people, and welcome to the Friday 5, or a few minutes earlier than usual. Feels good. We're here earlier, fresh for a Halloween Friday 5.

It's scary how early at the beginning. Scary. You see how that is? I see what you did there. I see what you did there. And what is scary? apparently to people is that the future Fed rate cuts are far from certain after a divided meeting. Quite a few articles right now about confusion at the Fed and what they may or may not do.

We know that QT is set to end very soon, but many saying that if they end QT, they also have to end rate cuts for now. Even Michael Burry of the big short, sometimes we see bubbles. Sometimes there's something to do about it. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play. Cool story, Michael Burry is worse than like a college, a high school quarterback who wants to bring up the big game from his high school days every party that is at forever. Anyways, regardless of those mountains. Hey, Uncle Rico. Let's go.

Yeah, I think that the, the Fed meeting was surprisingly hawkish, even though it wasn't really hawkish in a traditional sense, just relative to expectations. I think markets had priced in basically, you know, more or less entirely priced in another rate cut in in December at this point. And then literally as he was talking, it went from like 100% to 66%. The January cut went from, you know, sort of the middle of the range to 25%. And it's just clear, you know, that Powell isn't really, there's lots of mixed signals as there always has been. We're also careening into the period where Powell's, you know, effectively a lame duck at this point. You know, we're starting to see it emerge in terms of the, you know, the wide variety

of opinions where for most of his tenure, Powell's done a very good job of keeping everyone more or less in line without a lot of dissent. There's clearly a lot of different divergent perspectives here. It was an interesting meeting, honestly, like from a sheer talking about things that are interesting perspective, there's a lot more juice in this, in this one than we often get. Yeah, you can only talk about the Fed so much. There's so much uncertainty. And to be frank, we won't know until next month. But it is interesting that you get into this cutting cycle and people are so confident that it's just going to continue.

And then five minutes later, nobody knows what the hell is going on. Well, what's interesting is that for the first time in a lot of ways, broader macro factors are now even subsuming the Fed, right? Like as soon as the press conference started, it was all questions about Powell's perception of the AI bubble, Powell's perception of layoffs and what that's going to mean. You know, it was like it was a much more sort of outside in type of Fed. then usually it's really just like group therapy for those, you know, Fed governors and what they're going to do next time.

Yeah. And pivoting to the other part of the title here, Wall Street doubling down on crypto, well, it's largely institutions, but Polymarket plans U.S. return within weeks with sports focus. That's one story. But this is the one that goes Wall Street and really blew my mind. Polymarket will help ICE, it's international, excuse me, will help ICE adopt 24-7 tokenized collateral. This is New York Stock Exchange. I is obviously the largest owner of exchanges in the world. Wow. Because this is not a polymarket thing. This is a using smart contracts and the

technology to tokenize everything thing. Yeah. It feels to me like tokenization is going to be one of the most gradually than suddenly things we ever experience. I mean, we're all living in a gradually then suddenly sort of moment across crypto writ large. that's been going on in some ways since, you know, Black Rock, you know, shot the starting gun for a spot ETF. But I think that this has the potential to be a whole different level. You know, you've got Larry Fink just out here continuing to beat the drum anytime anyone will listen about anything he's talking about tokenization and the complete tokenization of everything. You now have the intercontinental exchange, making big multibillion dollar acquisitions,

at least in part to sort of build out that infrastructure. I think this is going to happen head spinningly fast. yeah it is going to happen head spinningly fast and we're going to see the adoption of the technology across the board just last week we're talking about governor waller of the fed talking about doing this to the fed right so it's once you see the central banks talking about it i don't think there's much question as the direction things are heading i think it is worth going back to this other story quickly polymarket plans u.s return within weeks uh with sport focus they're gonna i mean we're going to have predictive markets for literally everything and i really think this

is going to crush very complicated traditional sports betting. And it's all going to be, a lot of it will be on crypto rails or at least using crypto for the bets. But much easier to understand a 75% chance my team wins than a plus 120 minus 120 over under spread. It's so binary and moves in real time. It's really just, I think, taking over. Yeah.

I mean, it is just a 10x experience on that sort of thing, for sure. If you talk sort of like Silicon Valley product people, you know, the new thing's got to be 10x better than the old thing. I think there's an argument that it is in this case. So I think you're right. I think we're going to see a lot of it. The sports betting conversation and just the casinoification of everything is like an interesting sort of sub-topic that's getting louder and louder. I anticipate being part of this next election cycle as well. You know, it's interesting. I was thinking about, I saw someone, I can't remember who it was, but they had a great tweet that was just sort of like a single, a single bulleted list of why, like why we are where we are and what what the the this cycle was like and um and one of the things that it uh it was talking about was the fact that retail never really showed back up this cycle and um and i think that in a weird way well one i think that that's absolutely true but two i think that because we didn't have some weird side show story you know like i'm not saying nfts are weird but something that seems weird to outsiders like nfts or whatever you know the closest we had is sort of a very brief meme stock thing. It's almost like Wall Street didn't even have

like as they're watching what's going on, they didn't have a chance to get refrieked out by some new crazy thing that we were doing because just no one showed up to do the crazy thing. It's just literally been all institutions all the time this entire cycle. To the extent that we've done anything crazy, it's sort of like nudging into their world with our crazy treasury strategies. But, you know, it's been such a such a weird cycle by not having, you know, some retail group that's trying to, you know, make an insanely fast buck with something different. Just to wrap the predictive markets one, I don't know if you saw the Coinbase earnings call. I don't have the audio here. But at the end of the call, Brian Armstrong

literally said, hey, I'm actually watching the predictive markets and there were a lot of bets on things that I might say. So let me just rattle them off. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana, whatever they were. And he just said all the words that people were betting on at the end of the call. I mean, what a sign of the times. Yeah. It was pretty hilarious. Yeah, what to Chad. Moving on, we've got adoption by a number of payment institutions. Exclusive MasterCard poised to acquire crypto startup zero hash for nearly two billion sources say. We can dig into that one. From what I saw, they're not worth $2 billion, but it shows just how desperate these dinosaurs are to keep up with what's happening.

And MasterCard to enable 3.5 billion cardholders for Bitcoin and crypto transactions via blockchain network. Yeah, I mean, these- master cards in there. These stories just get blurry, you know, because they're, they're all, they're all telling the same story. Mass conversion to crypto infrastructure as a key part of, you know, the traditional financial rails. And how do we do it quickly? And I think that to the extent that the zero hash story is interesting, it's that to your point, there's, there's clearly a premium right now on speed and a, you know, a tax for a feeling like you have to catch up. And I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of, a lot of that sort of, that sort of M&A activity in the next,

you know, couple of months or next, next 12 months as companies sort of, you know, they decide that they can't fight the tide any longer. Yeah, you just need to buy someone. You're not going to be able to fast enough. Yep. It's just really crazy to see once again how fast all of this is happening. And of course, the, maybe the story of the week, Western Union announces USDPT stable coin on Solana and Digital Asset Network. I thought it was called Wu-W-U-U-S-D, like the Wu-T-N-I-D-N-I-D, and I got really excited. Now I'm confused. I don't know if it's USDPT or if it's Wu-USD, but either way, a company made famous by the Pony Express and literally delivering money and mail by horse and buggy, which would arguably be the last likely holdout on something like this. This is kind of like the vanguard of payments

when it comes to crypto is going to go ahead and disrupt themselves here. Yeah, you know, you don't survive that long by sticking to the same guns that you stuck to during the Pony Express days, you know, again, there's, I guess there's not that much to say in the sense that this is just the inevitable, like sort of a session, ascension of crypto into this area. I guess what is different and what's notable is that we are very much and have fully trippedo or kind of ticked past the point of, hey, look, big financial firm is making announcement about a thing that they're going to do to big financial firms is doing a thing.

They're doing it right now or they're buying someone to do it, you know, tomorrow. And that is, I think, a pretty distinct change that you can kind of feel out there. And you can also feel that they know that they're completely screwed if they don't do it. Yep. Yep. 100%. I really wonder how this is going to work for Western Union. I understand disrupting the technology with something faster and better, but how are they going to get away with 10, 11, 12% predatory fees if they're using a stable coin that effectively has none? I guess they just charge them on the front end and call today and assume that people

don't know. Yeah, who knows? I mean, I think that we are at the very beginning of figuring out, like markets haven't done their work yet to sort of rationalize all of these service prices as these become sort of, you know, mainstream. There's going to be dislocations for. a little while that will allow people to still get away with things because, you know, whatever, random person X is still using Western Union. And so they just use that version of the thing. Over time, you would expect there to be sort of price compression and those sort of things to be competed away. But we'll see. Another huge story this week, obviously, is the Solana ETFs and the H-Barr ETFs and all the

other ETFs. Wall Street Salana bet advances Fidelity Upstate's ETF filing. So we know that anybody who had a filing is going to start filing for staking, et cetera. upcoming alt-coin ETFs could draw 14 billion, according to JPMorgan, ETF to $8 billion on XRP and sole ETFs near $6 billion. I think considering the power of the community, XRP will probably do exceptionally well, as they're saying here. Interestingly, we had outflows on Bitcoin and ETH spot ETFs, but inflows on Solana ETFs.

And Salana has more filings than any other crypto since 2024 with a total of 23 ETF filings institutions want Salana. So this was the best launch of 2025 of an ETF. It doesn't compare, obviously, to the Bitcoin ETFs or even the ETHETF in 2024. But out of 850 total ETFs, non-crypto-related everything, this Salana ETF, B-Soul was the best this year. Yeah, I mean, that I think is the really remarkable thing about this, is that. that we're so anesthetized at this point because of these huge numbers that these other

ETFs put up. And especially because for frankly, a lot of us, I don't think we're paying attention to the ETF markets with particular detail before Bitcoin and Ethereum showed up on the scene that we're like, oh, I guess it's okay. You know, it's just $66 million in its first day or whatever. Not bad. And it was like you said, the best performing ATF of the year on its first day. So look, you know, the demand for crypto is very clear. We are just now beginning the phase where we're going to see just how far down the long tail it goes. I think that we are going to see to your point where the long duration community building efforts have paid off. And I think that you're likely to see a sort of distribution, not just based on, you know,

total size of the token right now, but also based on strength of community. So I would expect XRP to outperform, among others. Yeah, and so we're clearly going to get ETFs for pretty much everything. Oh, yeah, they're going to, we will try absolutely everything. Whether they are successful or not, you better believe we're getting an ETF for everything, you know, times 10. I think a lot of it is going to obviously be heavily market dependent as to when they

launch and how well they do, but we're going to have them. They're going to definitely be there. And speaking of companies and they're all, coins. If Zilla sells Ethereum to buyback shares is crisis coming. We have Ethereum. There you. Sells 40 million of ETH to fund stock buybacks. Of course, we also apparently have Seqon Bitcoin treasury selling 110 million in Bitcoin. I thought the whole point of this was to, you know, sell shares to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum not to sell Ethereum and Bitcoin to buy shares. Yeah, I, you know, I don't know yet whether this is short-term wobbles or the end of the trend, you know, that's that's the thing to watch. But it's certainly not a good sign if this is a thesis that you're real stoked on. I mean, what do you think the future of these is? I think that it was always way overblown and that there's going to be a power law distribution and that a few of them are going to do enormously well and that others aren't.

And I think that the ones that are at the top are going to feast on the carcasses of the ones that fail. But, you know, what else? I think that part of why people are excited about these is, you know, these are extremely liquid assets that sort of cap your downside to some extent. And you can make an argument that the ability to move in and out of them, even if it's sort of off mission, is part of what makes it an appealing play, you know? Like, you don't, you just go, go tap into the existing markets to, to, you know, sell and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I don't know, I've never been, uh, a sort of a huge sector bull on these things. Um, but I think that as, I think that as a modest part of the overall ecosystem that accommodate a certain amount of demand, there's going to be, there's room for some that do really well in a very consistent way. Uh, it's just, you know, but, but, but, At the end of the day, I don't fault anyone for trying because we just don't know how much appetite the market has until we see. You've got to push it to those limits and actually find out. And it could change, honestly, wildly if price ends up at $150,000 in a few months or something.

A lot of these that we're talking about now will end up have done exceptionally well and it'll be a big nothing burger. But I do think we do get the consolidation. And this is just echoes everything we've ever seen in this space, which is a lot of people try a lot of things. Most of them fail. rises from the ashes, and that's where we get our future kind of narrative or champions. One of the things that makes crypto different than other startup areas, because this is the pattern for everything, right? Like every new technology theme has a hundred times the number of companies try a thing that are ultimately successful at that thing. And sometimes things that they try aren't successful at all. But because that all happens in private markets, it's sort of

like out of the limelight. Because of the nature of crypto tokens as this sort of monetary type thing that has capital and participation right away, it's like if every startup in Silicon Valley went public from a perception and from a participation perspective the day that they were founded. And so everything seems sort of more dramatic in crypto land because the failures are public, the successes are public. But it's really ultimately not that different than any area where lots of experimentation tries lots of things. Some of them work. Some of them don't. Usually it's unexpected things that work. And eventually there's consolidation into a few big sort of winners that changed the landscape around them. That was all the stories that we have. I just want to ask

you briefly, market thoughts. Here we are sitting at 110,000, the very end of, I guess we can say, a disappointing October. Yeah, I think it's fair to say in historical perspective, it's a disappointing October. My sense is that in the long term, we won't be all that disappointed. I think that we're going to look back at this time as one where it's just, again, if you weren't paying attention just to crypto and you were looking broadly, there is so much confusion. Even, you know, markets are always marked by confusion, but boys, there are a lot of confusion right now. The debates around whether AI is a bubble and to what extent it's a bubble and whether it's, you know, a bubble in this way or a bubble in that way is totally ubiquitous

across the industry. And that's really shaping how people are participating in all sorts of other things. That's starting to shape the way people are thinking about monetary policy. But then meanwhile, alongside this, you have trade policy going on. You have sort of like weird signals with a China deal and then it's kind of anemic. There are just so many factors right now, which means people don't have a handle on anything. And I think ultimately, again, while yes, based on October standards and the fund that we normally get, it's a little disappointing. I think that we will be fairly pleased with the durability of Bitcoin and Crypto when all is said and done. Totally agree. Well, that's how we got for you today. We started early. We get to end early.

Everybody give the breakdown a follow, of course, and check out everything else that NLW is doing. We'll be back next week, obviously. Happy Friday, 5. Happy Halloween. And happy Bitcoin White Paper Day. Oh, that's right. 17 years ago. Yep. Congratulations, Satoshi. 17.

You're listening, and I know you are. Thanks, Deb. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you soon.