Unchained - Bits + Bips: Bitcoin Brushes Off Another War & Will Powell Relent on Rates? - Ep. 857

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

As tensions flare between Iran and Israel, investors are watching oil, gold, and, of course, crypto. In this episode of Bits + Bips, the panel digs into the market response to war risk, the chances the Fed will actually cut rates, and how Circle’s IPO is being treated more like a meme stock than a fintech play. Plus: Why Scaramucci says we’re all living in a surveillance state  Whether stablecoins are being kneecapped by U.S. regulation  When altcoin ETFs are coming And what BlackRock’s Larry Fink secretly told Scaramucci about Bitcoin in 2021 👀 Sponsor: Bitwise James Seyffart, Research Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence Alex Kruger, Founder of Asgard Noelle Acheson, Author of the “Crypto Is Macro Now” Newsletter  Anthony Scaramucci, Founder of SkyBridge US-Iran-Israel war Unchained: Bitcoin Dips Below $100K as U.S.–Iran Tensions Trigger $627M in Liquidations Polymarket: Will Iran close the Strait of Hormuz before July? WSJ: What Israel’s Soaring Markets Are Saying About the Iran War Macro WSJ: Fed’s Bowman Says She Could Support a July Interest-Rate Cut CNBC: Fed Governor Waller says central bank could cut rates as early as July FT: Jay Powell to push back on calls for Federal Reserve rate cuts as soon as July Stablecoins WSJ: Stablecoin World Opens Up to Main Street Banks The Block: Circle's post-IPO stock surge pushes market cap near Coinbase and USDC ETFs James upped the odds on a bunch of altcoin spot ETFs Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 🌍 2:51 Are there lessons in how the markets shrugged off the Iran-Israel conflict? 🔥 9:37 What flashpoints in the Middle East could ignite next 🛢️ 14:40 Will oil supplies remain safe? 💸 22:13 Are cracks finally forming in the Fed’s resistance to rate cuts? 📉 28:08 Why Anthony believes that Fed Chair Powell is playing politics with rates 🇺🇸 33:55 Whether TACO Trump or tough Trump will show up on tariff day 🎯 36:26 What Anthony says that people get wrong about Trump’s economic strategy 🏦 43:52 Why Circle’s IPO feels more meme than fintech and what Larry Fink once secretly told Anthony about bitcoin 👀 🚫 50:27 One thing that Anthony HATES about the GENIUS Act 📊 56:17 Why James is upping his odds on a wave of altcoin ETFs, but doesn’t expect many to be successful products Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, everyone. Just a quick note about today's show. It was recorded live at 4.30 p.m. Eastern on Monday, approximately 90 minutes before President Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. That's why it is not addressed in this recording. As of Tuesday evening, the cessation of hostilities appears to be holding that it remains a fluid situation. And now on to the show. The president is tweeting at the Fed president, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you know, I think it's asin. I don't think he's a sudden. you should be tweeting at him. You're shoving him, and he's trying to help you and trying to help the flow of capital in the United States by having some level of political independence.

And Trump's shoving him is not helping this situation. Probably, if anything, I think the rates could go down. And I think Trump has actually slowed that process with his nonsensical assonine behavior. Yeah, I mean, he was calling him a moron saying he doesn't understand things. I mean, it might be like, if that was me, it might push me the other direction. Not you. How about if it's Jerome Powell? Jerome Powell's giving them the bird right now. You know that and I know that.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to bits and bips. Exploring how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. Today we're going to talk about U.S. and Iran and Israel. Just first, I want to say, obviously, our hearts go out to anyone directly impacted in these situations. And when we're talking about this today, we're going to focus mostly on, you know, the financial and geopolitical impacts and not to dissuade or anything like that. That's just what we can do. here. And obviously, none of us are particular geopolitical experts, but we can try to talk about how we think it's impacting markets.

We're going to get into a bit about the Fed, macro topics. We're going to talk a little bit about stable coins. And then we'll get into the ETFs coming to the U.S. markets when I think it's going to happen and what I think will get approved. But first, some quick intros. I'm your host, James Saferred, tried by Archmaister, Lord of Bloomberg's End. Also joined by Alex Kruger, Kroger, of House Asgard, Protector of the Realm. and Noel Atchison, Hi, Seer and Keeper of the Crypto is Macro now newsletter. Hi, everyone. Today we're also joined by Anthony Scaramucci, the Baron of Skybridge House. He doesn't really need any introduction himself, but for those that don't know who he is,

we'll let him intro himself in a minute. We're here to discuss the latest stories in the world of crypto and macro. Just remember that nothing we say here is investment advice. Please check UnchingCrypto.com slash Bips and Bips for more disclosures. Before we begin, let's take a minute to hear from our sponsors that make the show possible. Crypto moves fast. It's why Bitwise launched the weekly CIO memo, a jargon-free summary of what's moving crypto markets, written by one of the best in the business, CIO Matt Hogan. Get up to speed in five minutes or less. Check it out at bitwiseinvestments.com slash CIO memo. Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing.

All right. So let's get into this. If you've been the, living under Iraq, you can't talk about what's going on in markets without talking about what's going on with U.S., Iran and Israel. Iran and Israel obviously have been attacking each other for a few, a couple weeks now. The U.S. just bombed nuclear sites in Iran. Earlier today, Iran fired a barrage of missile attacks at U.S. bases in the Middle East. Obviously, the number one impact here is oil, which we can talk about all here, everyone's point of view. but Alex, let's turn to you to get your views and thoughts and how you're looking at trading this market.

I mean, I saw your tweet this morning. It's come out that Iran basically, or Iran, basically warned Qatar and essentially the U.S. that they were going to send missiles at nearly empty bases beforehand. And I'll let you read your tweet or comment on your tweet real quick if you want before we get in. Hey, guys. Yeah, to be honest, actually, I've been on an extended vacation all month. And I came back to the screens for this, for Iran and Israel. It's been very tradable and very volatile.

The way I saw it and the way I still see it, and I think it's like people still have time to react. This is a very, very, very exact, almost exact replica of what happened with also Israel and Iran in 2024 in April. So the length of the extent of the conflict back then was, I think it was like nine days. And this time was, what is it? 12 days, more or less. And if you look at the chart, it's been very, very similar. Just the difference is who started it and who has had the last ward.

But if you recall back then, it also ended with, in this case, was Israel having the last ward and having basically a safe, face-saving last attack, that it was highly telegraphed and it was meant to produce minimal damage. And that's exactly what we had today at the end with Iran sending, attacking a US base in Qatar, which was telegraphed, even announced directly to the US, announced to Qatar, the missiles were also intercepted,

there was no damage. So it seems like a perfect replay and thankfully there is no death. And also thankfully, this allows markets in general and in crypto in particular to basically catch back up. That's the way I'm thinking about it, what you guys think. Yeah. Anthony, what do you think? And briefly before you comment, why don't you just for those that don't know who you are

and are living under a rock, why don't you say who you are? You know, I spent obviously 36 years on Wall Street, 20 years as the founder and managing partner Skybridge. Of course, I had an ill-fated stint in the first Trump administration and it's fired from the comms directorship after 11 days. But I have a pretty good idea of what's going on, having read intelligence briefings before, and I'm not read into anything right now, though, full disclosure. But I would just say that I don't think a lot of damage was done. I think the response from the Iranians indicates that there was not a lot of damage done. I think the sites that we did bomb, they too were tipped off and they moved a lot of the stuff out of those sites.

Any Russian nuclear technician was moved out of those sites before those sites were bombed. So there's a flex going on right now. Some of it is to help EV Net and Yahoo domestically. And some of it is to give the president of the president of. an opportunity to assert himself as well. But I can tell you that the markets are usually right. And if you look at the performance and just keying off what Alex is saying, if you look at what's going on, there was uncertainty before the attack, the attack happened, the counterattack has happened. Markets have rallied into those two things. I don't think we're going to get much more than that.

This notion that there are terror cells in the U.S. that are going to demolish us and so forth. You guys probably know this, which is why you own Bitcoin. You live in a surrealant state. I can't speak for Madrid, but my guess is it's similar in Madrid. And they can turn on your phone. They can turn on your TV. They can turn on your baby's camera. And they can listen to everything you're doing.

And they have a recordation of everything. And if you think Signal isn't compromised by the U.S. government, then you really don't understand how the shit works. So you can go to apps like Signal, go to apps like WhatsApp. app, it doesn't really matter. They have access to all of that information. And they also have access to your telegram. And if you don't believe me, ask the French government who detained the founder of Telegram for several weeks last summer. So now, having said everything I just said, that is good news in some ways if you're a law-abiding citizen because they are tracking these

terror cells. One last point, I don't mean to dominate the conversation, but one last point, you will find in the United States a lot of these terror cells self-liquidate. You say, okay, what does that mean? They show up in a jihad. They want to kill Americans. You give them a T-shirt. You give them an iPhone. You give them a girlfriend.

You give them a social media website. You give them access to fast food like Chick-fil-A. And you self-liquidate. They no longer want to kill the people that they were assigned to kill. So a lot of that happens as well. So I don't see that as a huge risk. Yeah. I'd agree that the panic was overdone for sure.

I've been writing for a while, though, about one thing that worries me a lot about markets, and that's the complacency that nothing ever happens, and the complacency that this is all fine, and the massive shifts that we've been talking about on this show, and I know that, Anthony, you've been following, the massive shifts that are happening in the geopolitical back rooms, they are material for markets, and markets don't care. Normally, what does it take for markets, start to care?

Something kinetic. So that explains the reaction. this weekend that explains the uncertainty on Sunday with Bitcoin all over the place. Bitcoin being the only global macro asset trading when all of this went down. And the confusion and relief, I think, today that, yeah, this is probably not going to go far from here. But again, that doesn't change the fact that things are moving. There's the NATO summit starting tomorrow.

And for the past few years, the IP4, the Japan, South Korea, Australian New Zealand, they have attended. They're not attending this time, none of them, not one. And this kind of big picture shifts is partly why we do what we do. And markets have to be short term, obviously. And I thank God every single day, I'm not a trader. But the complacency is something that I've been worried about. And Anthony, I do want to get here, your take, please, on what do you think comes next for the conflict in the Middle East, including Israel, Gaza, as well as Iran? All right. Well, I mean, this is a little bit out there. It's not in the news, but I think that the Trump administration is trying to help Netanyahu. And one of the ways they help Netanyahu is by striking those facilities, which hopefully gives him more credibility at home as he's dealing with his own political entanglements. Because the Trump administration wants the situation, we'll call it a situation as a euphonism in Gaza to end. I think most Western leaders, you know, even if they support Israel, recognize the state and survivability of Israel,

would like to put an end to what's going on in Gaza. And again, I am a supporter of Israel, travel to Israel. I grew up on Long Island. I've been to more bar mitzvahs than I've been to christenings. Okay, so I'm with the Jews. But you've got to be very careful about your brand management in terms of the state of Israel because there's an overreach going on in Gaza. And I think weirdly the attack on Iran will give Netanyahu a political opportunity to trim his sail in Gaza successfully.

Because remember, he's got to please the hard right, stay in power. And I think they're more or less getting what they wanted. And so weirdly, I think that this is going to help forge a road to peace that would have been harder to achieve Noel had these strikes not taking place. Yeah, I agree, especially if Hamas's funding is completely cut off. I mean, it was Qatar and Iran, the part of the agreement from what I hear, and you probably know more, what Trump got when he visited Qatar was an agreement to not do that anymore and kick out the leaders from the nice hotels they've been living in. And if Iran is not able to fund as much, then that does make peace in the region more likely. Okay, for viewers and listeners, I think it is important to know that the Qataris were given a great.

light by Netanyahu himself to fund Hamas because there were water shortages. There was hospital and medical equipment shortages in the area. And they went to Netanyahu and said, do you want us to fund this stuff? Now, unfortunately, a lot of those donations, if you want to call them that, got diverted into terrorist activity. So there's a plot line, there's a headline. and then there's a subtext of what's really going on in the region. So, you know, there's been some mistakes. The biggest mistake, and this is not me berlaming the victim, but this is just me explaining how rough the neighborhood is,

is that the Israelis were not ready on that Sunday morning. But they are typically ready. I've been to sterote, and if you look at the map, it's at the lower bottom edge of what I would call the southern western western blue. border of Israel, right adjacent to the Gaza Strip. Now, that city gets hit with Kasem Rocket Fire almost every day. Most of the glass in the city is bulletproof.

Lots of the facilities are hardened, and certain areas were not ready. That musical festival was unsecure. And, of course, they haven't had time to go over that, but it is really like a 9-11. we got caught off guard incident for Israel. And I don't think the Hamas, I don't think the terrorists or their proxy sponsor, Iran, expected that level of damage on that day.

They thought that they were going to kill three or 400 people, perhaps, caused an international incident, stall the Abraham Accords. I don't think they expected to catch the Israelis that far off guard and to have them go that deep into the country to do that much damage.

So remember, when you start a war, you cause a terrorist attack, a lot of things happen that you're not planning for that lead to other things that unfortunately can worsen outcome. So I will say this about the Trump administration that try to be objective. They have said repeatedly over the weekend. Okay, James is laughing because he doesn't think I'm objective because he knows I hate Trump, but I'm going to be objective about the facts, okay?

I just think Trump is a moron. and I'm happy to talk about them as well. But objectively, they drop the bombs and they're sending a message of de-escalation, and I do like that. Yeah, I would say the markets, obviously, Anthony, you pointed to the markets there. I mean, I look at oil and it really started rocketing a little higher in June, went crazy on June 13th. And it was more in preparation for how bad things could get.

And I think after today, after those missile attacks where we know it was choreographed, the kind of last ditch thing you said. So oil went from $60 to start June or 62-ish. It went all the way up over, you know, 77, 78 at its peak. And now it's trading back around $67. And it's like the markets are like predicting the worst case outcome. And now they're basically saying, okay, you know, I mean, the one thing we would, what we should ask about is like, do you guys think they're going to close the trade of her moves? I mean, I feel like polymarket odds were at 27% earlier today. I don't know exactly what they are right now. But like, do you? Do you think that's a realistic situation that's going to happen here at any point?

Or do you think that's kind of off the table now? Short answer is no. They're setting 1.7 billion barrels a day in China. The Iranian economy needs that money. And they can't close the straight. I think they've had a political statement of their parliament, giving them permission to close it. But again, that's posturing to help them internally in the internal politics. They're not going to close the straight.

Yeah, they got to look strong to their people, even if that's just sending 14 missiles. They alert that point. And that's why they struck that bass and guitar. Yeah. Alex O'Neill, do you disagree? Yeah, no, I don't disagree, but it's, I think, is the past now. We're talking about the past. I mean, it was interesting what Anthony was saying before, because it's about looking into the future beyond the immediate reaction in markets.

But when we're talking about crude and the Strait of Hormuzes, it's a past. That's the way I see it. But it did matter. I mean, like, I'm not a Middle Eastern expert at all, but I talk to trading houses who are. And the view from people who trade crude in size was basically there was a real, very real possibility of this trade of Hormuz being shut down this time for the first time ever. So the debut was last Friday, like exactly 10 days ago, was like, you know, crude oil just just packed up to 72. and there is, if nothing happens, it's going to fall back down five to six dollars. And if they do close it, we go in straight back up, straight up to 100.

So it made sense as a trade that in a way that reflects what happened in the markets overall. If that gets closed, inflation goes to like roofs. And the entire geopolitical landscape changes. And we're basically looking at a whole new world, at least for three weeks or X number of weeks. right. The thing is also it doesn't need to close to have an impact on the oil market. For sure, the price is going to come back down, sure, get a scare, but insurance is going to get more expensive simply because of the additional risk going through there.

And we have seen, even without confirmation of a closed, tankers turn around and choose to take a longer route. So it's not insignificant, but I do totally agree. It's not going to be the catastrophe that a closure would be that would be declaring war on many of their neighbors, which just doesn't make sense. But the straight of Hormuz is not entirely theirs. But at the same time, you could argue if you have, like, if you're in a position of absolute weakness, that you have no leverage whatsoever.

So it's a hyperbole, right? But if that's the case, you can turn around and look at the Strait of Hormuz and, hey, I shut it down and I change balance of things. At least I force people into the negotiating table. Again, I think that's looking backwards. Hopefully I'm right. But I think it's backwards looking. Yeah, I think that a lot of people get wrong as they view like markets as like a binary outcome when really it's like discrete.

Like there's there's a probabilistic situation here. And that's what everyone's pricing in. And it's funny, you see a lot of people actually pointing to polymarket odds and various things and working that into their assumptions for predicting the future. Because when everyone's doing financial market predictions or trying to understand the price of something, they're trying to see what's the probable outcome of X or Y happening and multiplying that by what they think the future value would be. And that's how they're getting to the present value. And I feel like Normies kind of missed that in many cases when I'm having these conversations. Last thing on this topic, is real.

Before you change quickly there. Go ahead. That polymarket contract had like the open interest was like half a million. It was like really tiny. It's something we often forget when we're looking at polymarket. And markets can move very quickly. I mean, one of the big things that's being used right now, I keep seeing it all over the places, like the odds of, I can't,

I don't remember his name, but Cuomo versus the other guy, the, about socialist. And like, you can watch that and there's like massive spikes. And you can just see that somebody buying long, you know, Zohan versus whoever. And it goes to, you know, but yeah, so the actual odds right now are down at 11% on the market. Mandani.

Mundani, curious, Anthony. What do you think of Mandani and New York? York and on that front. Well, listen, you know, I get the grievances. I just want to make sure people understand that. I get the grievances. There's a lot of people in the city that feel like the city is overpriced. And there's families that have been here forever.

Their wages, Alex, are not rising to the pace of the inflation and the exogenous inflation in the city. And so this is a responsibility of good government to fix those problems. but do it with market forces. And I've said this from the beginning, if you create equal opportunity in a city like this, I'm not for equal outcomes, but if you create a platform of equal opportunity in a city like this, you'll calm people down, they'll once again feel aspirational.

But many people in this city feel economically desperation. They did not feel that way under Mayor Bloomberg. And so unfortunately, these types of policies that the Blasio and Mandami and these other people, AOC, represent, they are well intended, but they have an ill effect on the people that they're trying to help. They're worse than the problem. So he gets in. Businesses will leave the city. Taxes will go up. Services will go down. There'll be a free-for-all in that city and the conditions of that city, which has made that city great and a wonderful place of where I've made my income and I've enjoyed a great life in that city even though I live out on Long Island

will be worsened by him because I'm just going to say like what other people say on wall show oh Mondami sucks and we got to vote for Andrew Cuomo I'll say that but I'll say the underlying context you have to fix the problems of the people that want to support him okay Zawain's getting support from a group of people that feel aggrieved and they feel left out of the system you ignore those people at your peril? Because there will be a political leader that's a little older than him and a little bit more. I predict he'll lose, by the way. But it's not to say that an older, smarter, wiser version of him couldn't win if we don't fix these ills, Alex. And that's the thing I'm the most worried about. Let's move on a bit here to talk about macro topics. Let's get into the Fed.

We had a Fed meeting last week. We got some dot-plot releases. Essentially, right now, the Fed, is calling for 50 bits on average. It's actually pretty widely dispersed this year, definitely next year, in the dot plot that we saw. But right now, the markets are basically pricing for two cuts by December. And then the market is also pricing for another two cuts by the middle of next year. The Fed doesn't think so. They're saying one cut by next year. I will say that Bloomberg's Fed rate strategist, Ira Jersey, who I sit next year,

I was talking in today and asking for his view, they're also in the camp of two cuts or 50 bits of cuts this year, though they think it might be just one 50 bits cut later this year. And he thinks they're going to have to cut more into 2026, but right now the markets don't justify any sort of cutting based on economic factors. So I'll go to you first, Noel, like what are your thoughts on where the Fed is sitting? Do you think the Fed's rate cutting patterns even matters that much for markets? Where do you sit here on the situation? The Fed's dot plot is generally, wrong. I mean, generally they get it wrong what they're going to do. What I think is much more interesting than the FOMC outcome, the press conference as well as the SEP, which frankly was sort of a nothing

burger. What's much more interesting is the pivot we're seeing in some of the Fed officials' tone over the past few days. It started last week with Waller saying that he thinks cuts now. And of course, our reaction is, oh, he wants the job. He's auditioning for Powell's job. But then we had two more. Bowman come out, and this afternoon, Gullsby has also said, is they're talking now about cuts. Now, I'm not sure how much this is a pivot in the Fed's officials tone, or it is a shift in reporting because Gullsby said, yes, I think cuts would be appropriate. And then in the small print, if there is no repercussions from the terrace. And that's an if that is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

But it was interesting. It felt coordinated rather than suddenly a lot of people auditioning for. Powell's job. Anthony, how about you? What do you think we're headed on in a rate environment? Do you think they should cut? Where do you think they should go? Or do you think, what do you think the impact is? Do you think it's more about the fiscal situation rather than the monetary situation? Well, I think, I think Noel is right. They all think of this up for long because they, you know, well, the Wall Street guys were saying four cuts last year and the Fed said they were only going to cut once. The markets reacted to that. And then guess what happened? They ended up

cutting all four times. They did it late in the year. And so, yeah, I'm not making a up, that's exactly what happened. So I think Noel is on the right track. I don't think you're going to get 50 basis points worth of cuts this year. I think it's going to be closer to 100 because I would encourage everybody here to look at truflation.com. And trueflation is an aggregator that's taking cash register data from retail. It's taking service data. It's taking a whole host of different things, including energy and food and all the different things that you would expect and it's real-time data that's going into trueflation. And those inflation numbers are lower than the way the Fed is calibrating the number. And so I would tell you the reason why Noel's right

is that the Fed is using antiquated mechanisms to measure the inflation in the economy. And so real-time mechanisms, I think, are more accurate. And I think there's rule. for 100 basis points of cuts. But, you know, when you're tweeting at the president, this is why the president is tweeting at the Fed president, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you know, I think it's Asinai. I don't think you should be tweeting at him.

You're shoving him, and he's trying to help you and trying to help the flow of capital in the United States by having some level of political independence. And Trump shoving him is not helping this situation. It's probably, if anything, I think the rates could go down. And I think he, I think Trump has actually slowed that process with his nonsensical, assonine behavior. Yeah, I mean, he's calling him a moron saying he doesn't understand things.

I mean, it might be like, if that was me, it might push me the other direction. Not you. How about if it's your own pal. Jerome Powell's giving him the bird right now. You know that and I know that. Yeah. I mean, the other thing here that I like to think about is like his, his tenure is almost up. And he's probably worried about legacy.

and like the long-term risks of potentially cutting and then causing a whole bunch of inflation to come back is something that he might be worrying about more than he should, I think. I mean, I'm obviously not a macro guy, but that's something that I think about. Like, if he's really worried about his legacy and he keeps on inflation despite no signs of inflation whatsoever, obviously they're going to keep pointing to, you know, terrorists potentially causing inflation. That's what he said multiple times. Yeah, I think that could be part of playing a role here too. But the one area of the, I think for the most part, the financial conditions, you look at this, it doesn't look like we need to cut it.

I mean, you know, labor is getting a little bit soft. Inflation is not showing anything, but nothing really looks really bad. The only thing that looks bad in my mind is the housing market is completely out of whack. But last time they cut, mortgage rates weren't even affected by the rate cut. So, like, I don't even know if cutting right now is actually going to help anything in the housing market as far as rates go or mortgage rates. But that's what I'm thinking about, I guess. Like the one area where I'm like they could really use lower rates to like equalize out the housing market is there's such a huge divergence in what people bought in 2020 before the Fed cut rates. And before they started raising rates, you look at rents versus buying and mortgage payments on those people.

It's literally insane. You're looking at somebody worried about 25% of their net paycheck going to housing versus other people who have bought a house recently in the 60% range. But again, I don't even know if cutting rates is actually going to help there. So let me ask you a question, James. What should the real rate of return be in the United States? So if the wrong bond is 4.8 percent, what should the implied real rate net of inflation be? Go. I have no idea. I don't want to pretend to be like. Okay. Yeah. Alex, do you have a view? What do you have a view on that? What should be or what it is? Well, I mean, let me rephrase it. You're saying because right now the real rate is...

You're the Fed share and you're looking at inflation and you now have to set rates in the country and you're recognizing the bond market is also involved with this and there's going to be a real rate above the inflation rate. What should that be if you're the Fed share? Well, I don't think the Fed manages rates that way. they're not looking at the real rate of return. They're going after trying to maintain their dual mandate, which is independent from rates of return. Like usually stocks, so we have a, like, say stocks have a 10% give or take on average,

including dividends, bonds, I would say like 1% or 2% above ideally, the inflation, but I don't see why this matters for the Fed, to be honest. Alex is addressing the question I'm trying to get to. So Alex is saying one to two percent above inflation. That seems to be the historical number that works the best for the economy. So if you go to trueflation, trueflation is a 2.14% right now. Okay, so that would put the long bond. Let's split the difference and say it's one and a half. half. We never put the long bond of 390 right now, down from 480. Okay, so let's take what Alex said, because I think that that is an appropriate number. And I'm just saying you have room.

I'm just trying to provide evidence to you guys that if you're sitting in the Fed meeting and you're one of the board of governors, you're one of the presidents of the other Fed, and you're looking at the numbers, there's 50 to 100 basis points worth of cutting that would. potentially help the housing market, would potentially help the capital markets. And, you know, I think he should do that. He's not doing it. Some of the reasons not doing it is because of Trump. True. But there's also the risk of tariff triggered inflation. Right now, we haven't seen that, but July 9th is just around the corner. And we have no idea what the tariff rates are going to be. And we still don't know. It's a really good point, which is why he more or less said exactly what

you're saying last week in his press commerce, how can I move? Because if imbecil goes from July 9th and extends it to November 9th, then, you know, maybe then I can cut. But if he's not going to do that, you know, what is what is interesting is that he has gone from being data dependent to forward looking, which is something many of us have been arguing he should have been doing all along. The Fed shouldn't be relying on the rearview mirror as much as it has been. And again, central bankers are by nature cautious people. If you're not, you probably don't apply for a job in the central bank to start with. But going back to your question as to what the rates should be, I have heard Powell talk on many occasions and I've read other Fed officials writings on this about the neutral

rate. They seem to, in my opinion, anyway, focus more on the difference between the actual rate and the neutral rate. And they are concerned the neutral rate has been climbing, which is another reason for caution. No one ever knows what the neutral rate is. It sort of is the equilibrium rate and what equilibrium even means these days. I don't think anybody has any idea. But there are many variables in here and the demographics and the savings and everything do all contribute to the change in the neutral rate. And so they're going to wait until I think they absolutely have to do something. I'm more of the camp that, I mean, I would love to see them cut, but I think a caution is going to be the main tone going forward. However, the change from three Fed officials over the

past few days is making me rethink that. You know, I want to add, like, I agree exactly what you're saying right now, and it's, I mean, for me the point is that they don't really know, because they don't really know exactly what, what Trump will do on, as Anthony was saying, on what is the ninth, I think it's in ninth or the eighth, say the ninth. The other thing is that inflation, the pass-through is not, not yet completed. Inflation could truly spike very fast. in the next two months and we don't really know that

because we don't know exactly what's being passed through. And it happens with tariffs that at the beginning, the importers are absorbing most of the price effect and with the passing of time, and there's a lot of data on this, if the passing of time, the pass through to the consumers increases dramatically. I don't have the data in front of me,

but could pull it up. So I, to be honest, yeah, it's true inflation and inflation right now is being quite muted. But it makes sense to wait. And I don't think we're going to see a cut in July 3. Three people, not enough. The last FOMC was around the corner. And Powell was quite adamant that he wanted to see more data.

Okay. Can I ask a question to everybody if you guys don't mind? I know James is running the program, but is Trump going to chicken out again on July 8th or night? I think I think yes Okay so I'm a yes And now we get two yeses on this program It's like Hollywood squares

Okay I'm also a yes He's not gonna he's gonna check it out Alex, go ahead, what's he gonna do? He's not gonna chicken out He's gonna extend without checking out No tacos He'll find a way to extend it without causing chaos Well he just did something people didn't expect them to do

Yes Right? He dropped a few bombs in Iran. And I think it's going to give him some space to extend the portorian on a tariff. I think he's going to give him some space to cut some deals. And I think he's learning and his team is learning. You know, Mike Froman, who was USTR, went to law school with me, USTR for Obama. He said one trade deal with one country takes 18 months. You're not going to do 90 trade deals in 90 days. It's just not going to happen. There's 15 days left. I mean, keeping track, there's 15 days left of that 90-day window, which we were going to get 90. And we've had half a one from the UK. Yeah, the market's telling you that he's, I mean, Alex can call it whatever he wants. God bless you, Alex. Yeah, you tell me what the name of it is.

He's not going to chicken out but chicken out. So maybe that's the name of it. The market's telling you that he's going to do that. Yeah, I mean, the question is, what was the ultimate goal of this? Was his real goal to onshore all this stuff and make. it so is so prohibitively expensive or was it to generate income and try to at least bring up some you know manufacturing here in the u.s i feel like you when you were hearing about these tariffs you're hearing like 20 different reasons of why they were doing this and what the goal was and then they're

like pausing them moving them along and like i guess you need to know what his real goal is here his end goal and maybe it was just he set the the goalpost so far out that if he comes back in he just says 10 percent on everyone and all of a sudden everyone's like okay i guess that's not so bad but really, like, if he had just come out and said 10%, I mean, this is something he does all the time in his deals. He's literally written about it and said, we're doing 10% tariff across the board for everyone. People would have been up in arms. But now it's kind of like, okay, I guess 10% might not be so bad. So you have to figure out what his real goal is.

And I think it determines by like who in his faction you're talking to, what their ultimate goal was. Actually, I have a question for Anthony about that. I mean, you obviously know the people in question here. Does he have a goal? Or is he just letting people fight it out in the Oval? So, I think he has to go. I mean, listen, I remember, I got fired after 11 days, Noel, but I work with him for a year.

I was on the campaign playing for him with a year. Remember, I was on the, it sounded like I met Trump on July 21st and then got fired 11 days later. I worked for the guy and provided media, worked on the executive transition team, sat with him, called his cell phone regularly, talked to him, he has a point of view that is no longer economically sound policy. His point of view is that we've had a three or four decade trade agreement in balance with the rest of the world, a result of which America has been ripped off. I can prove to everybody, we don't have enough time for this, and that category is not true.

Moreover, the instruments that he wants to use will hurt the. U.S. economy. I'll just give one vivid example. The tariffs are going to hurt Boeing. 60% of the parts that Boeing needs to put together that airplane are coming from overseas. I think all the flat screens that are on these airplanes. We're not making those. And we're never going back to making those. If you guys think we're going to do that, you're smoking crack on the show. Okay. So what he could do is you could have gone to the Europeans and he could have said, listen, we need to create a North Atlantic free trade agreement. I fixed China, I thought I fixed Canada and Mexico with USMCA. And now I want to bring you guys into it. The total population is about

800 million. When I'm done doing that, which is going to take six to eight months, I'm then going to turn my attention to China because I've got 800 million people in the free world that I'm representing and China is disavowing their trade agreements. They promise certain measures of grain. They promise certain measures of different agricultural products. The minute Trump left the office, they stopped living up to that agreement during the Biden administration. Trump is right about that.

You have to give him his due for what he's right about. But by shooting our allies and shooting our adversaries, did I piss off Kruger or why? Probably, right? Alex, I go off with the commentary? or no, no, I turned my BPN off, so it was losing signal. All right, I was getting sensitive. But all he had to do is go in that direction, and he would be a hero.

He'd be a hero to Wall Street. He'd be a hero to the working class. But when you're shooting everybody in a 360-degree angle, and you're creating adversaries out of our allies at the time that you're trying. to, you know, get our adversaries, our economic adversaries into economic compliance with agreements. You know, and so, yeah, no, but you know what? The roll ass kissers in that white house now.

No one's going to pick up the phone and say, hey, you're acting bad shit crazy. Calm yourself down. You know, I knew Elon was in trouble three or four weeks before he hit the eject seat because he said that Peter Navarro was as dumb as a bad rocks. And then he said, you know, I just, the secondary truth is, I just want to apologize to the bag of rocks for the comparison. I didn't mean to insult the bag of rocks. But look at me. Trump and Navarro are like this on trade.

If you're calling Navarro, think about it, guys, you guys are the mathematical derivatives. If you're calling Navarro an imbecile and Trump has the exact same ideas as Navarro, that makes him also an imbecile. Okay. And then, you know, that was it. Then Elon exploded and said, okay. I got to get the hell out of here. He lasted 12 scaramuchis. 11.8, but we're generous when we grade by these scaramucci, so we rounded up to 12.

Okay. Yeah. That was the, him exploding out of there was the most predictable thing in the world. Everyone knew it was going to happen. It was just a question of how long it was going to take before they butted heads over something. And, yeah, I mean, I wish. And how theatrical it would end up being. Yeah, which was electric.

I mean, we talked about it on the show already when it happened, but that blow up was fun to watch, man. Sad, sad to watch, but also fun to watch. Yeah. I thought J.D. Vance got involved. I felt like Elon was ready to go full jihad. JD Vance got in there and said, Elon, calm down.

You know, in a way, I think Elon may have sacrificed himself for the benefit of everybody. because he was the way I see that he was part of the trigger that helped Trump's pivot away from the initial path that they were taking the intransigent

high tariff's path that they set up on the 8th, right? Like the Navarro what's his name? Nathlick, I call him Nathlet. Butler? Lachnick.

Not Lack. Nathleth. Yeah. It's nothing Navarro path versus the Besson path. So, yeah. I'm just giving me a couple of nicknames We call them on Wall Street.

But go ahead. Which, but lick. Yeah, you know, butt lick. Yeah, it makes sense. Howard Butler. I mean, he lost his mind. I mean, when you watch him on TV, you're like wincing. I mean, if you look at like when some of those people we mentioned are on TV

talking about what the administration is doing, I mean, I forget who, Renaissance Capital did this. And you look at when Besson is on TV. It's like Besson talks, markets go up. Half these other people were talking about go on. Markets just tank because they don't like the way they're talking about anything to do with economics and finance. Anthony, were you drinking there? Like, kind of say what? No, I'm, I wish it was.

Oh, yeah. Lemonade, but it's just lemonade. My wife brought it down. Yeah, no, it looked like a drink from Latin America with the little. Condensed milk. With the pipe that you had. So I was curious. It's from there.

This is a glass straw. See, I'm not allowed to. There's no classic paper straws in the house. Yeah. She's a good woman. All right. Before we move on to stable coins and ETS, we've got to do it quick because we got a hard stop around 530.

Well, let's hear from our sponsors who make this show possible. Hi, I'm Matt Hogan, CIO of Crypto Asset Manager Bitwise. Look, crypto can be confusing. There's so much noise and the space changes so quickly. That's why, every week, I write a five-minute memo on the biggest. stories impacting crypto in plain English. Why is Bitcoin up or down? What are people missing? Where should investors look next? Get the lowdown every week. Sign up to get the weekly CIO memo delivered straight to your inbox. Go to bitwiseinvestments.com slash CIO memo. That's bitwiseinvestments.com

slash CIO memo. Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing. Let's talk about stable coins. Obviously, stable coin bill is one of the hottest topics as far as crypto is concerned. We're also looking at a potential market structure bill. But let's stick with stable coins because it doesn't look like the market structure bill is actually going to get done. We also had this Circle IPO, which we have talked about on here. But the valuation on Circle stock is absolutely insane as far as I'm concerned. But what my view doesn't really matter, I guess.

I'm curious, Anthony, what is your view on Stable Coins, the Stable Coins? the stable coin bill, and I guess the Circle IPO as well. Just feel free to rant on what your thoughts are on this topic. Well, first of all, at full disclosure, I'm an investor in Circle. I bought into it over a course of several private rounds. And so, you know, I'm a fan of their business. I think first of all, congratulations. It's pretty right now.

I think the market capitalization is telling you that Circle's trading like a meme stock at this point, and there's meme stock activity in Circle. If you wanted to build an institutional case for Circle, you'd say that a lot of these institutions are still gun shy of Bitcoin, the way BlackRock was gun shy of Bitcoin four years ago, where they made their $400 million investment in Circle. And then Larry Fink told me in the lobby at the Four Seasons Hotel in Abu Dhabi that he hated Bitcoin. And that was November of 2021.

Fast forward to January of 2024, he's launching the most successful ETF, most successful Bitcoin ETF. It's got 70 plus billion dollars in it today. So people can change their mind, but I think most of the people that started this buying spree were institutions that were like, I got to get along something in crypto. And this seems like it's an okay thing to get long because it's a regulated stable coin. But just two more sentences quickly. stable coins are here to stay. I'm not super in love with the legislation. If you actually really read the legislation, it's a top line win. But the lobbyist for the American Banking Association wrote a lot of that legislation. And it's going to curb and make it a little bit difficult

to get the true blockchain trustless third-party transfers going that we would all like. So, but it's way better than we would have been had Joe Biden or Kamala Harris been present. Yeah, I think that's a very fair point. I'll just throw some numbers out here. I mean, Circle right now is trading at $263 a share, just shy of $60 billion in market cap. Compare that to Coinbase. It's trading at like $78 billion in market cap. So they're not that far away from parity.

I mean, it is $18 billion, but it's kind of, it's crazy that the run that Circle has been on. I think, to Anthony's point, it's more so from my point of view is like, one, a lot of people wanted to get exposure to stable coins after seeing what's going on. They're hearing all about Tether. I think people just want to get long this thing. And now it's just a momentum, meme stockiness right now. But we'll see where this shakes out long term. I personally wouldn't be one putting my money into short this thing because when stuff is moving

like this, you can get blown up. Noelle, what are your thoughts? I'm curious as to why they're so eager to go long, anything that would have exposure to stable coin growth. The Genius Act is going to be material. There are a lot of corporates using stable coins, but there's also just a ton of competition coming out. One thing about making it legal to issue stable coins is this going to be a lot more stable coin issuers. We're already seeing many people come out of the woodwork promising all sorts of old projects are being reawaken, new projects are being ignited, and the banks are starting to sniff around this and they already have the distributions. In other words, a circle's

monopoly can only get weakened from here, certainly not going to get stronger. So the exposure to the business of stable coins is exposure to a business whose margins are going to be getting compressed. You know, on Circle, I mean, I've been seeing people talk about putting puts on Circle, long inputs on Circle, like almost every single day I get into the chats for the last 10 days. like every single chat room talking about buy inputs. And it's too soon, I think. I mean, maybe like today had a big move, but it's too soon because to think about Circle,

I think is very similar to the infamous Solana low float high FDB. So Circle has ultra tight free flow. It's about 15% of the A shares. And it's very little is going to hit the market. I mean, there's really nothing hitting the market until it's a 180-day gate. So there is no liquidity for quite a while. So, I mean, I think it's highly overvalued right now on fundamentals,

but fundamentals don't matter when you have such small float, you know? Yeah, I mean, the numbers right now is 19 to 20%, 18 to 19% of the float is shorted right now as of the most recent data that I have on the terminal. One thing to pull on that Anthony said when he was talking about the wording of the Genius Act is actually, there are many losses that the crypto community is taking there. And one that surprised me was something that prohibits any non-financial company from issuing stable coins. This means meta is going to have a hard time doing so. Walmart and Amazon were reportedly looking into issuing stable coins. They're going to have a hard time doing so because the wording was changed at the last minute to prevent a tech company from becoming.

like a financial company, essentially becoming a bank, because it's hard for a bank to become a tech company. They thought this was slightly unfair. And then to show you where I'm going with this, today, or was it yesterday, time blurs, I think it was today, we read that X, formerly Twitter, is looking, is going to be launching trading and payment services within the app sometime in the remainder of this year. They haven't specified if they'll be using a blockchain-based payments or a token of any sort, but it would kind of make sense. And if so, is, are they going to be using another or existing stable coin or are they going to be trying to issue their own by setting up a financial subsidiary?

It's funny. I guess, Anthony, before I make my comments, I'm curious, if you could talk a little bit more about you said you didn't love everything in here. And now I'll just point out of one thing she didn't like. I honestly kind of like this. It kind of makes sense to me to prohibit the people that can launch these things, at least domestically. I don't know if you want an Amazon and a Walmart, like, you know, completely controlling everything in the ecosystem. It will just help them become more centralized and

dominant in their market space and they already are. But I guess, Anthony, what are what are some of the things in this bill that like really jump out of you that you're just not a fan of? I'm going to, is one of them the fact that they can't pay interest? Well, isn't that the big one? Yeah, that's the, you know, so that's so, so if they could pay interest, you're putting them in direct competition with the banks and you're giving the client a 100% match non-fractional banking. Right? So just think about the, if I came to you as your financial advisor, I said, James, you

could earn this amount of interest and every dollar's back 100%. But here's the spread. They're lending here. They're giving you a healed year. They're getting yield there. And they're capturing a spread. in your net, but each dollar is 100% backed, or we can go into the fractional banking system, which has a crack up every 15 years and needs the feds to bail them out.

Which one would you choose? So right there, you've limited the competition. Right there, you've limited the ability for people to make the incremental choice to move into the stable coins. Some cynical people say, oh, that's great for stable coins because they can capture. all the yield, not great for stable coins, because they want to grow that business and they eventually want to eliminate the fees associated with the banking. So that's really the number one thing for me. There's other incidental things. I apologize if we only have three minutes left,

but I just say to somebody, go to chat, GBT and say, what parts of the stable coin legislation do you believe was written by the American Banking Association? And it'll spit out a whole summary of how the American Banking Association got themselves in there to hurt the bill. Yeah, I think I agree actually 100% with everything you said. But I also think that the one that will ultimately change at some point down the line and also that people are going to find out ways to pay interest. Like, right, you can deposit USDC at Coinbase right now and earn 3. Whatever percent as though it's a banking account. Like they're going to find out ways. Austin Campbell get this great analogy

in a podcast I was listening to and he basically said it's like money like you squeeze on one end the balloon's going to fill up somewhere else and they're going to figure out a way to like use that money to bring on more users and pay them back. So I don't know necessarily it's going to be completely a killer but it definitely there are parts of this bill that have the banking lobby written all over it.

And even David Sachs was on the all-in podcast this weekend and they asked him why like that was in the bill and he like there was no like stepping around the issue He blatantly said, this is the banking lobby that came in and put this in there, which I thought was pretty blunt and just like completely true. I applaud David for saying the truth. And so if you open the light in the kitchen and the cockroaches are running around, if it's better to identify the cockroaches, you have a greater likelihood of removing them from the kitchen than pretending they're not there. Guys, I have to hop, but I want to thank you guys and greatly appreciate. being on and Alex, you're up to tell me which rank that is in Latin America.

I'll have that. Yeah. Thanks for joining us, Anthony. Great to have you. Great to see. Fantastic. James, thank you for the invite. Can I add something to the interest-bearing stable coins thing?

Totally agree with you. They can do so by paying marketing rewards and it'd be very difficult to ban marketing rewards because that would also affect banks giving you toasters and things like that. So they probably can, but there's also another way. And we've already seen a sample of what this could look like with the Biddle token, for instance. You just convert into a tokenized money market fund at the click of a button. I think the stable coins were created to move. They weren't created to sit in an account.

And so if you've got the stable coins moving because they're not earning interest, and then when they don't need to move, they can be earning interest by converting automatically into a tokenized money market fund. And that sort of solves the problem in an elegant way in that it does make sure that stable coins move. Now, this is obviously very U.S. centric because if you're in Kinshasa or something like that, you kind of just want stable coins because they're dollars and it would be nice to earn interest, but whatever.

But there are, the point is there are ways around it and I don't see it as being the big, it's a stupid rule, but I don't see it as being the big negative because technology will find a way around it. Yeah, I agree 100%.

They'll figure it away around this. The big negative is limiting who can, I agree with you, James, and that it would kind of be messy if Mehta is issuing a stable coin, given what they know about us. But it would be kind of also convenient maybe for Walmart to have a stable coin that their customers trust and that can give them rewards as well, because we forget that stable coins are programmable tokens. And while they are a dollar and a dollar, you can debate what they actually are. But this is a segue into a new world of programmable rewards tied into your purchases, much more directly. We haven't really started to explore that yet.

Yeah, I just worried that we go back to like a pseudo wildcard banking situation. But I mean, we might be heading there anyway. So who knows. All right, I'm going to share my screen real quick. So this is our image for the ETFs, the assets that we think are going to get ETFs this year for the most part. This last week on Friday, we officially up our odds to 95% and 90% for many different things. Basically, light coin Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, Pocod, HBarr, and Avalanche are all at 90% or higher. The predominant reason for that is we think the, it sounds like the SEC is going to try to come up with some sort of framework, which is what I've been saying all along. They're going to try to figure out a way that basically you know what things you need to hit, whether that's the market

cap needs to be a certain size. The liquidity needs to be at a certain level. I think if it has the CFTC regulated futures, it's automatically probably going to get a spot at some point, maybe after, you know, six months or a year of futures trading or some level of open interest or some level of regular trading volume in those futures. So I think all those things could be used to be like, okay, these sorts of tokens are going to be allowed to be an ETF, assuming that we agreed that they're, you know, a commodity. And the last thing I would be worried about potentially is like the low float high FDV situation, you know, where where things that's been a huge issue with crypto in general.

So that kind of might hurt Suey a little bit. So that's why our odds are a little lower. They also don't have a futures contract. So we're not sure what this framework looks like. But I would be shocked if just the fact of having a CFTC regulated futures product, in this case, most of them, some of them have CME like Salon and XRP. Obviously, Bitcoin Ethereum also have a CME futures contract. But the rest of these all have futures contracts that I have in that column on CFTC regulated futures on CoinB.

So if you have a futures contract, you can launch a derivatives ETF. You basically have to be able to launch a spot ETF after the precedent that the Grayscale lawsuit and Grayscale case determine basically if you have a derivatives futures product, you can't then say a spot product can't list because it doesn't meet other criteria. So that's why we think all of these things are going to launch. We can get into what we think the framework's going to look like. I don't know if you guys have any questions or thoughts. I'll come in with a question, James, about the ETS. So do you think Coinbase would be?

be enough. I remember back in the in the scary Gensler days, it had to be a regulated derivatives platform. And that was CME. Is Coinbase derivatives regulated enough yet? Yes. It's their CFTC regulated futures contracts. So all of them, they're all on there. So they have their own derivatives business that CFTC regulated and registered. So it should be enough. And also the other thing, oh, I didn't even mention another one that I'm thinking about. Basically, the spot product is traded of some level of size or demand and volume on a U.S. regulated institution that where like you can go,

I'm thinking like Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, crypto.com, OK, X, you know, you name it. Like if it's trading there with some sort of volume, I think that would also be enough to get an ETF potentially. So like if you have some token that's only traded on finance or some South Korean exchange, I don't think you're going to get US ETF. listed. Maybe they won't even put that into the framework, but that would be my guess.

So I think within the next couple months, we're going to get a framework around all of this stuff that the SEC is going to try to, like, I don't know if it'll be public decision making, where they're going to go back and forth and we can see the comments from the SEC and from the issuers trying to launch these things, but I think there's going to be some sort of back and forth. They'll figure it out, and these things are all going to launch this year. So we're going to see a wave of them. The question is just how much demand is there going to be? Yeah, I'm going to ask you, what kind of demand do you expect? Because we're not really seeing BlackRock, for instance, say, hey, we've got a ton of client, institutional clients asking

about Sue ETF. So what kind of demand do you think will get? It depends. I mean, from what I'm seeing, Salana and XRP could get some demand. I mean, ironic, funny enough, I actually, we have derivative Solana and XRP ETFs. And the XRP ETFs have more volume and more trading and more assets than the Solana ones right now, which not going to lie, surprised me a little bit. So there might be some demand there. But at the end of the day, I think it's kind of the same thing as what happened when I was talking about the Ethereum ETF launches. Like we were very bearish on the demand and we weren't bearish enough. I mean, they've had a tremendous success since Trump's election. It's still vastly underestimated our expectations versus the Bitcoin ETFs. So I think that it's going to be even worse for a lot of these. The one exception to that I think is the basket and index products. I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be looking at the space and like they're not going to necessarily go out and buy, you know,

an avalanche ETF, but they might buy an index product that has a little bit of exposure to avalanche. So I think the demand on that side of things, the index side of things, particularly for the advisor world might go there. But these other things are going to be more trading vehicles. I mean, they could get hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, but I don't think they're going to be anywhere near the, you know, $130 billion behemoth that is Bitcoin UTS right now. Interesting. And do you see the equities because Circle went really well?

There will be many other crypto-related. equities, I imagine, coming to market. Do you see them detracting at all for potential ETF demand? Yeah, potentially. I think for sure. You said it. Just look at what circles doing. I mean, we've heard Gemini is filed to go IPO.

We've heard about Cracken potentially IPO. I mean, I feel like I hear a different name in the crypto sphere trying to IPO at some point in the next year or so. So that definitely attracts eyeballs. But I think if you're a long-term investor, you're going to want, one, you might, you might invest in, you know, one of those crypto equities or a thematic equity ETF that invest in any sort of asset that fits with the crypto and blockchain, you know, ecosystem. But you might also want spot exposure.

I mean, we had thematic crypto equity ETS for years before we had even Bitcoin futures ETFs. And when you get a spot product, that's where a lot of money goes because people just want the real thing. So sure, it'll take away some demand. but there are some people who are interested in equities that aren't necessarily interested in spot and vice versa. It's a big change from when Coinbase went public. Most of your listeners probably remember that.

It listed on, I think, the absolute top of the market and things went down from there. That's a very different environment to the circle listing. Yeah, completely different. I mean, are we even at the Coinbase IPO yet what it went at? I think it's close, but not quite. quite there yet from what I checked the other day wasn't. Yeah. So crazy. Any final thoughts? Noelle before I finish up? No, I just wish everyone, you know, be careful out there. It's going to be an interesting week. Things are changing fast and keep an eye on the geopolitics because my take is

they matter a lot more than the market is giving them credit for. Yeah, I find that when I talk to people, there's like this, you know, everyone likes to attack the permabairs that are always talking about things that are worrying and they're like just buy and hold and go long and all these things. But there are people alternatively that are like the exact opposite where they're permibals, which is arguably a better thing to be, but also they just discount any sort of risk as though it shouldn't be something that people should take into account when you're looking at risk assets. Like if they did shut down the straight of removes, like it would have been a huge deal.

It's just you have to decide what are the odds of that happening. And again, it's a probabilistic outcome, which I feel like. So I feel like that when I look at Twitter, I see a lot of people that are just like perpetually bullish on risk assets and just keep buying and everything's a dip buying opportunity, which I guess is true in a long enough time frame. But like they also kind of disparage people who are talking about the risk, which kind of bothers me as well. Especially investing is about risk. I mean, that's really what it is. It's managing risk. And you take your profile and then you make your allocations accordingly. And geopolitics

is not all negative. Yes, it's changing, but not necessary. Okay, there may be some things will be worse when the dust settles, but maybe some things will be better. So it's okay to focus on the geopolitical shifts and position accordingly without being a perma bear. It's better to be optimistic for mental health, if nothing else. Yeah, agreed. A hundred percent agreed. All right. Thanks for joining us for this episode of bits and bips. We'll be back in one week to discuss more about how the worlds of crypto and macro are colliding. Until then, everyone.