Unchained - Bits + Bips: Every Fortune 500 Company Will Be a DAT - Ep. 944

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Follow Unchained On Air on X or YouTube! https://x.com/Unchained_pod https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWiiMnsnw5Isc2PP1to9nNw Check out our sponsor Walrus! https://www.walrus.xyz/ The government�...�s about to reopen, but the economic cracks aren’t healing. From runaway debt to DATs trading below NAV, markets are feeling the strain of unsolved macro problems. In this week’s Bits + Bips, hosts Austin Campbell and Chris Perkins are joined by Matt Zhang of Hivemind Capital and Felix Jauvin, head of content at Blockworks and host of Forward Guidance, to unpack what happens when policy meets reality. They discuss why a $2,000 “tariff dividend” could ignite inflation, how America’s ballooning debt is constructive for crypto, and why DATs could still have plenty of potential, despite already showing cracks. Plus: the Bank of England’s £20K stablecoin proposal, whether $3 trillion is too low a target for the sector, and a final provocation: is XRP worth more than Ripple equity? Hosts: Austin Campbell, NYU Stern professor and founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting Christopher Perkins, Managing Partner and President of CoinFund Guests: Felix Jauvin, Head of Content at Blockworks and Host of the Forward Guidance Podcast Matt Zhang, Founder & Managing Partner at Hivemind Capital Links: CNN: Trump’s shutdown win just landed Republicans with a huge political headache Forbes: A $2,000 Tariff Dividend? Trump’s New Pitch Raises Tax Concerns BeInCrypto: Digital Asset Treasuries Are Collapsing: Lost Confidence Triggers Market Sell-Off FT: Bank of England dilutes planned rules for UK stablecoins CoinDesk: U.S. Fed's Miran Says Policy Needs to Adjust to Stablecoin Boom That Could Reach $3T Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 🏛️ 2:33 The U.S. government will reopen—but the economic damage lingers 💸 11:02 Could Trump’s proposed $2,000 “tariff dividend” spark inflation? 🧩 16:18 Why no one is fixing America’s long-term fiscal problems 🪙 18:59 How runaway debt should  be bullish for crypto 📈 20:52 Finding the “true” risk-free rate 💥 23:00 Why DATs are trading below NAV, and if staking ETFs are the better bet ✅ 31:09 The five ingredients of a successful DAT 📉 38:39 Are DATs fairly priced? 💷 42:45 Why the Bank of England wants to cap stablecoin holdings at £20K per user 🌐 50:45 Is $3 trillion too conservative a forecast for stablecoin growth? ⚖️ 57:41 What’s worth more: XRP or Ripple equity? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I think in 10 years I go on to say every single Fortune 500 company is a debt somehow. I will remind everybody in the crypto world if you think crypto people find a way to do this. There's literally a dude who stole a military boat from Argentina over like debts and hedge fund world. So like people are definitely going to be barging in here and looking to do some wild stuff. I think there's a lot of short-term good news about potential reopening of the government, but I think we just need to try and to make sure we don't keep getting ourselves back at the same problem. Table coins may have to follow very quickly because that's what you're going to need to exchange those assets. So $3 trillion may be materially low as I'm starting to think through it.
Starting point is 00:00:40 I don't know the timeline when it shifts, but I think we're going to be much bigger. All right. Hello everybody. And welcome to bits and bibs exploring how crypto and macro collide one basis point in a time. I'm super excited about our guests for our discussion today, but we're supposed to pretend to do things in order rather than live in total chaos. So we're going to do some intros. I'm Austin Campbell, High Scholar of Zero Knowledge Group, and one of the three members today of the City Triumvirate, joining me are Chris Perkins, as always, the Golden Hand of Coin Fund,
Starting point is 00:01:13 the second member of the City Triumphurit. And Chris has assured us all he's got some real hot takes today on some of these topics. And then our guests, we have Matt, the High Chancellor of Hivemind Capital, the third member of the city triumvir. And finally, obviously the smartest member of the group because he did not work for a bag is Felix Delman, Quill Master of Forward Guidance. And I'm going to tell you right now, also 100% worth of follow for his thoughts on global background. So we're going to continue to have some excellent guests going forward.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Also me. But I am super excited for today. Yet I have to tell you, just remember nothing we say here is investment advice that is General advice, don't take investment advice solely from podcasts. Check UnchainedCripto.com bits and bibs for more disclosures. Built by the team behind Sway, Walrus is the global data layer for Web3. And with the launch of Seal, developers now get permission to access controls built right into that data layer. Together, Walrus and Seal make Web3 data private, programmable, and verifiable by default. Learn more at walrus.xyZ.
Starting point is 00:02:24 All right, guys. Let's get into it. Let's start with the big news from today. Allegedly, our long national nightmare may finally be over. Is the government shutdown going to end? So the Senate has advanced 60 to 40 a bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown. It does appear that the word is there are votes in the House. This will fund key agencies like the USDA, the VA, et cetera, for full year 2025, others through January 30, 2026.
Starting point is 00:02:55 The Democrats have secured rehiring of furloughed workers and a December vote on extending the ACA tax credits. Progressives are pushing back saying the deal concedes too much without the guaranteed ACA extension. Sub-Republicans are saying perhaps they have given too much, but markets are rallying. Bitcoin is back above 106K to price levels not seen for several weeks. I'm going to start with Felix. What do you think is going to happen with the government reopen? putting from an economic perspective. And where does this leave us?
Starting point is 00:03:30 Yeah, totally. Also, I just want to say it's fun to reverse the roles here because I've had you on my show a couple times. And now you get to host and ask me questions. So this is just, I love it. I love to see it. Love to see in the host seat. Yeah, a couple cross currents for me that I've been looking at.
Starting point is 00:03:45 One is, it's really interesting comparing back in 2018. What was the breaking point of that previously was the longest shutdown? And once again there, it was really just, the FTC or sorry not the FAA and just the flight holds and everything. That was really the crux that got people to come back to the table and it looks like that's what's happening again
Starting point is 00:04:05 here and in terms of like the economic impacts, there's a couple ones the first one for me is just around the dynamic that happens when you continue to have the treasury go to the market every week and issue bonds and bills but they're not spending it as opposed to during normal
Starting point is 00:04:21 operations you know you have the bill auctions that happen every single week but on the same vein on the other side of the equation, they are still spending things. And that's really grinded to a halt over the last month. And that's been happening at a time where there's been a few hiccups in funding markets recently. You know, we're getting to a point now where we've seen the announcement of quantitative timing coming to an end and just getting closer and closer to ample slash scarce reserves. So that happening at the same time that you had this dynamic of week in, week out, a lot of bills being issued, but nothing being spent.
Starting point is 00:04:56 We've seen this huge draw in terms of liquidity from the markets. And you see, typically speaking, the TGA, the Treasury Journal account, they aim to have a target of about a week's worth of spending sitting in there. So typically that sits at about $850 billion. And we've gone above a trillion over the past month just because they're not spending anything. So that's been pretty detrimental in terms of just this consistent drain out of liquidity. out of spending. So, you know, when you had the biggest player out of the market, it makes sense that we've seen such a choppy dynamic of the past month. So really excited to see
Starting point is 00:05:29 this hopefully resolve itself because it's been a bit hairy on that regard for sure. Chris, I saw you making faces at the Treasury part. No, I mean, looking forward to seeing some of that money come back in. But I was going to ask, Matt, it looks like sofer's come down quite a bit, which looks like liquidity is coming back into the space as well. But before we get to that, I mean, I've been looking at Polly Market this week, next week we'll look at Kalshi, but it looks like prediction markets are saying an 89% chance that government shutdown is going to end between the 12th and the 15th. But it also says that the Democrats are going to take the House in the next election,
Starting point is 00:06:06 which I think is really interesting to me at all this. But look, I think this is going to be a very nice tailwind. We know that it's coming. It's been coming. And when those big checks come into folks' pocket right before the holiday season, it should vote well the crypto market. One of a few things. I'm not to talk about some other things
Starting point is 00:06:27 the president is talking about here. Matt, are you checking the sofa thing? Yeah, I am. And I guess just come back to Austin's question here. I mean, I literally just came back from London last week from the Salk Conference. I know, Chris, you were traveling today. The last 40 days, probably the least amount of time
Starting point is 00:06:45 you want to spend at the airport. I was I just started with. But I think we can all talk about the treasury bills and none of that, just like real consequences to people's like convenience every day, you know, the government employees and, you know, they're living from paycheck to paycheck and some of them are sort of like impact by this pretty big time. And also think about all of the federal services and payments and loans and into small businesses and farmers. All of this got halted. So I would say that is,
Starting point is 00:07:15 yes, you know, you keep spending the money without being able to borrow the money on one side. That's big problem. Number two, obviously, I think at a small medium business level and everyday level, there's a lot of disruptions. But I think the long term is always just, I think our government and our society is getting more divided in general. Like, I think this is, the question is that once happened to the next sort of shutdown and how far we are from this. Last time was 70 years ago, like, are we going to repeating this every two years, every one year? So, I mean, that's a much bigger social issue, I guess, than just economic impact we're facing for the last 40 days. But yes, I mean, BDC is riding this morning. Software is coming down, liquidity returning a little
Starting point is 00:07:59 bit. So I think there's a lot of short-term good news about potential reopening of the government, but I think we just need to try and to make sure we don't keep getting ourselves back to the same problem. Yeah, I think that echoes some of my takeaway from this, Matt, which is to say, I think short term we've gotten to do a solution, but we only really got to a solution by getting up against a pretty extreme pain point, which was holiday travel. And I'm sure both sides were looking across the aisle at each other and being like, we have to solve this right now. Because for the holidays, probably. Exactly. Like, nobody wants to screw up everybody's Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Starting point is 00:08:38 That's a good way to ensure everybody involved with this is incredibly unpopular going forward. And by the way, if you want to think about why the Democrats chose. now to deal, the worst narrative you could be facing is things get even worse a week from now and then the Republicans go nuclear to save Christmas, right? Like, that is not a narrative structure that you want to be competing against when you're seeing like, yeah, 2026 might look okay for us. But Matt, to your point, if we can't find a good way to get out of this paradigm, the thing I've been observing is one, each government shutdown seems to be lasting longer than the previous one. Like every new one is the longest government shutdown ever.
Starting point is 00:09:17 And at some point, you just end up with the government shutdown forever if you continue down that path indefinitely. Two, none of these shutdowns seem to actually be doing much to change underlying like fiscal and monetary policy, if that makes sense. Right. Like in each case, it's not a question of are we spending less. We're just spending more in different ways. And so I do wonder what gets us off this sort of like terminal. path to like infinite money expansion if you will though i want to come back to something felix said too i do think current liquidity conditions are even worse than some of the headline numbers
Starting point is 00:09:55 would have you thinking because like reserves that some of these banks are currently holding i think they're holding them because they still have significant embedded held the maturity losses in bond portfolios and things like that this is not money people intend to do anything with they're just playing defense. Yeah. And those, the distribution of reserves across banks is super uneven. Like J.P. Morgan's doing fine. But some of those longer tail banks, they're, yeah, even though technically when you look at
Starting point is 00:10:22 the aggregation, we're somewhat, you know, you can still call yourself like not scarce reserves right now, but some of those long tail banks, I think, are probably a bit hairy right now for sure. I think the shows on the original bank stock price last months or so. I mean, margins coming down. equity is getting worse, facility is being reduced and all of that. I think the pain has already been felt. But I think also you're right, like, the question is like, are we getting into a rhythm
Starting point is 00:10:48 that every time, you know, they couldn't solve a issue, they're keeping the public hostage, but keeping having shutdowns that become like one of the routine. That's going to be a place we're trying to avoid, right, for all reasons. All right. So speaking of policy changes that have happened, let's talk about the tariff dividend. So Donald Trump is back in the news, as always, with his $2,000 tariff dividend. Trump proposed $2,000 per adult payouts for Americans funded by tariff revenue, excluding certain high income or high earners.
Starting point is 00:11:25 The market reaction was pretty much investors view it as short-term stimulus. Stocks and crypto seem to have gone up, or at least if that's interpreting it correctly. A lot of people are saying the longer-term impact here is inflation, higher national debt. Trump is saying businesses are pouring into the U.S. only because of the tariffs. And yet as a backdrop for all of this, the Supreme Court just had hearings on the tariffs. And Chris, to your point, I think prediction markets are still seeing less than a 25% chance of approval.
Starting point is 00:11:57 What do you make of all of this? Yeah, so there's a long history of tariffs in our country. And in the early parts of our country, by the way, it's the Marine Court 250th birthday today, so I'm feeling a little bit of historical nostalgia. But it was very much interpreted and enumerated in the Constitution that this was a congressional power. And I think therein lies some of the challenge. But as you pivot into the 20th century, it became more of a shared power with more, I guess, deference to the executive, the president in this case, particularly if there's a thing of national security. So,
Starting point is 00:12:37 you know, and the Constitution gives the president a pretty significant amount of flexibility as they need to conduct, you know, foreign policy or national security. So how does this come out? I don't know. Do I think in the end the president is going to have the ability to find a way to levy tariffs on foreign countries? I think there's probably a way. Is this the way or not?
Starting point is 00:13:00 But this is also kind of, I guess, a beauty parade to the public saying, hey, guys, these tariffs are working, you know. everyone said that the sky was going to fall. And look, economists probably will say the jury's out. We haven't really seen the long-term impacts of the structural change. But hey, guys, we've made, I forget what the number is, $200 billion in these tariffs, sky hasn't fallen. I'm giving them back to the people. We're going to really grow this economy.
Starting point is 00:13:27 So, like, it's kind of a beauty parade. Will it have the effect that he's looking for? I think so. What is this administration trying to do? We've seen it all along. They're trying to stimulate it. They want to grow the GDP. They want to grow ourselves out of this debt.
Starting point is 00:13:40 They want to lead through innovation so that we get ourselves out of, you know, this debt problem that we face. I remember Matt back in the day when we were at City who faced the global financial crisis, and we were in bad shape. And there was only one way that we were able to get out of it. That was to earn our way out. And that's what we all try to put our heads down and do. So I think this government is really trying to focus on stimulus and really, you know,
Starting point is 00:14:04 they're looking at real nominal G&Mobile. Yeah, there's a couple ideas I've been entertaining that I could add to that. And one is, yeah, right now that the liberation in Supreme Court right now is specific to the IEPA pursuit of how they've been deploying these tariffs. But there's a lot of other means that they could go about employing these tariffs. So I feel like the market's trying to digest the odds of that is like, okay, well, perhaps these get struck down. And yeah, if that's annualized at $340 billion, $400 billion, whatever, the number of
Starting point is 00:14:36 is there is the implication that that needs to be refunded. So perhaps you see the situation where that gets refunded, but then they go after these new executive avenues as opposed to the IEPA approach. So it feels like the market's trying to decide how much to weigh one of those two outcomes. And then I just want to, you know, Trump's a big fan of optics of these sort of things. So it's like, all right, well, if he's going to be forced to have to refund $340 billion, you know, if most of the tariffs, it's going to be a total nightmare. I'm able to figure out who that gets refunded to.
Starting point is 00:15:08 It doesn't get refunded to the corporations, doesn't get refunded to the individuals that the tariffs have been passed on to. But, you know, I've seen some reports where, you know, 70% or so of the tariffs have been passed on the consumer. So, okay, if the Supreme Court is telling you, you need to refund that amount, it's a nice way to wrap that in a little bow and say, here's a little dividend for you. I don't know how much that's believable,
Starting point is 00:15:31 but it's an entertaining theory to at least play around it, you know. I agree with Chris earlier. I think politically this must be extremely popular if you can get it through. But I would say in foreign policies, you don't just getting more popular without the other side looks pretty bad. It's typically a zero-sum game. Very rarely is a positive sum game. So I'm saying it's like you're trying to increase the tariff and then trying to give the free money to your voters. It's a great political move, but even to make whoever you raise the tariff from looks pretty bad.
Starting point is 00:16:11 The question is like in the long run, is this going to increase more tariffs and retaliation stuff? But that's one side. But I think the question to talk about here is more about what this type of measurements going to do to inflation, right? Because inflation comes from two different places. It's like, where the money came from and where the money goes? the problem we have a double whammy here. The money come from by increased the price in general because there's a tariff in the first place.
Starting point is 00:16:40 And then you also put the stimulus back to people's end so they actually can spend more money. Always the backdrop that we're trying to fight a big inflation. It's coming from like a four, five-year cycle and just trying to start into easing the policy. So again, maybe the dividend itself is not huge enough to really put a dent about the, the inflation trajectory, but I think one thing hung in on everybody's heads, every single
Starting point is 00:17:08 conversations with any hedge fund managers, you know, executives in large financial firm is just figure out where it is over that burden of the US is going and how we can actually solve land, really. Like, you know, the country is at the verge of Bangkok on paper. So I think trying to do something which is politically look good in the short term, I mean, I don't know, that's sort of like, is it piling on to the inflation pressure we've already having problems. I mean, if you look at sort of historical precedents here, most of the time when governments are
Starting point is 00:17:43 faced with the choice of embrace fiscal discipline or keep spending and cause inflation, they go with keep spending and cause inflation, right? By the way, that is not a statement specific to the United States of America. You can look at that globally. Usually the only times you're going with austerity is when there's like external constraints that have been imposed on you, either due to like losing a war, being part of like the European Union and unable to issue more debt in the case of Greece, or literally the bond market just pukes all over you and stops taking on your debt. So to some extent, I think the U.S.
Starting point is 00:18:18 is just doing what we would expect them to do. Matt, and to double down on your point there, wasn't it the case that these tariffs were the revenue basis for the offsets and the big, beautiful bill also? So now if we're just going to take that money, it's spend it. We kind of have to concede that thing was just massively expansionary for the deficit. Yeah, I think it's like, if you look at the analysis of the CBO, like their initial analysis didn't actually have tariffs in there. And I think they officially added it. But it's like if you don't have the tariffs and you have the big beautiful bill kicking off in earnest in 2026, like we're going to go from like a 6% of GDP deficit to like almost 8%, I think, which is nuts.
Starting point is 00:18:58 But this feels like a constructive setup for crypto prices. You guys agree? Like super constructive. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like that's the hard part, right? It's like you're dealing with the short-term idiosyncratic market structure
Starting point is 00:19:10 stuff like October 10th. But you see where we're going. It's just trying to get that in one piece. I was going to say, go ahead. All of this is playing into the hands of spot Bitcoin holders, as I will jokingly say, right? Like the whole thesis of, in fact, many of these types of assets. is exactly that the world was going to look the way it's looking right now. I mean, Matt, you've been investing on this basis.
Starting point is 00:19:33 What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think this year, and maybe starting from last year, there was people to question with people answering. It's like, when you say flight of safety, like, what do you even mean? Right? Because, like, historically, maybe since Brenton Wood, like, people view dollar as the risk-free asset. All your term structures and spread was built on the U.S. treasury.
Starting point is 00:19:58 I think we've seen the significant rally of gold and Bitcoins. And, you know, Chris mentioned about set up for a good rally for crypto. At least for Bitcoin, I agree. With the else, maybe there's a different reason for that. But the question is, like, when people talk about flight to safeties, like, I think people are really talking about, like, is U.S. Treasury actually have a credit spread on so on. Like, what are actually flying to safety? I think we all hingered on, you know, the inflation.
Starting point is 00:20:28 U.S. monetary policies, their fiscal spending, which actually make an entire term structure pretty confusing at the moment. Right. So, you know, Chris, I mean, you'll be in that for long. I mean, we keep talking about risk-free rate, you know, software, Caesar, you know, and, you know, what is your take? Like, how do you think the risk-free curve should be built from here? Like, we've talked about this in the past.
Starting point is 00:20:54 It's really interesting that this is a completely unconstitutional. underdeveloped part of market structure and like rates drive the global economy. You turn on Bloomberg, they don't talk about companies. They talk about what's the rate, the rate. There's nothing more centralized in the world. And maybe it's even getting more centralized as we put stable coins in place. It's a different form of centralization. We'll try to control the front end.
Starting point is 00:21:16 But like you have these guys sitting in a room controlling rates. You know, as we see it, there are rates everywhere in crypto. Now that we have staking rates, those curves are starting to form. Features are going to start coming online here in a bit. And I do think that this is an underdeveloped part of crypto that will start getting developed as we look at what is the true risk free rate. And like the other thing is people ignore real versus nominal rates all the time. It's very frustrating. You start looking in crypto, you can start finding some very, very interesting real rates.
Starting point is 00:21:47 Those curves will start forming. And then we're going to start looking at trading basis swaps versus dollar versus east, dollar versus Solana. This is going to be the future, guys. And we're going to start looking at the decentralized version of the centralized rates. But thanks for the plug, Matt, something that we focus on. And I think it's going to be an important part of market structure going forward. All right. I'm going to take us to one of our ads because we have to
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Starting point is 00:23:17 one to one with their crypto holdings or below signaling somewhere between zero and negative market confidence and business value now the total crypto held by Dats has fallen with the market. But as we were discussing before the show, the majority of that is just crypto prices moving around. And back to the tightening liquidity environment, that's not totally surprising. It seems only that ETHZILA has been actually selling tokens to buy back shares, though I'm happy to hear if you guys know about any others. A lot of analysts are now calling DATs an exit event, driving prices down for some of these tokens. And the business model is under fire for high setup costs, essentially paying more than the underlying assets are worth for the end
Starting point is 00:23:59 investors. Bitwise CIO, Matt Hogan, said, if all the debt does is hold coins, you're better off with an ETF. So, Matt, I know you've been thinking a lot about this. I'll start with you. What do you make of what's going on with the market here? First of all, I'm going to just admit to say a lot of the people on the show probably, I hope I'm going to say something about our own Avex, that, to guess, alpha, we're not going to say those.
Starting point is 00:24:27 This is not financial otherwise, but, you know, as you know, we're deeply involved in the space in many ways. Also in our previous life, right, this is the year we truly see crypto and try to fight converges. I think that is just the output of that convergence. And the next innovation may not be that, maybe something different. But I'm saying that from a structural standpoint, I feel extremely optimistic about the space because finally, after four or five years since I left city, set up hive mine, I feel we have a detour. And this year was the year zero that we have a somehow fair and supportive legislation regulators, allow some of these innovative stuff to happen. Can you imagine that that happens any time between 2022 to 2024, right? So I'm saying that for the industry as a whole, it's massively positive news because
Starting point is 00:25:24 you're attracting more capital, you're attracting more talents, you're attracting more innovative structures, and people are figured out ways to make it work. Now, micro level, when you're having 150 companies all raising a debt somehow, you know, there will be problems, right? I think the backdrop is the crypto market in the last, you know, three, four months, probably also sort of have a lot of volatility now. It's hard to see and hard to say is that that triggered the crypto market or the other way around. I think there's definitely some kind of intertwined activities there, given how big the entire
Starting point is 00:26:01 that market has become. As you said, between BDC and E's, that's $100 billion on its own. And then you have the long tails, everything else. I agree with Matt from Bitwise. I think that if you just purely holding tokens, you're better off just holding ETF. You know, I made an analogy other day on my X account, and I shared some of this last week in the South Conference, too, I sort of like comparing that with ETF, almost like owning Berkshire Houseway stock versus owning S&P 500 index.
Starting point is 00:26:40 right? If you think about the business model, the two was not, or Dow Jones, for that matter. If you think about the two, they're all historically holding anywhere between 20 to 25 names. But one consistently trades above the book value of the other stock index. And the reason why it is because the two investors, the wrong structure halfway, has a proven track record to consistent adding alpha, timing the market, actually in certain cases owning the entirety of the stock so they actually can make a lot of value creations from the stock they own and not just passively holding it. So the question for that 2.0 is the following. When you're having every single one's top 30 tokens have a debt at least one out there, how do you differentiate yourself? Number two is if your entire business thesis
Starting point is 00:27:34 is based on you're hoping your stock and the trade above book value. And every, every single time it does so, there's someone else on the sideline going to raise a debt right at one time at NAF. It's very hard for you to be able to consistently, sustainably, trades above ABNAV premium. If you, the only thing you do is holding a token itself. And then everything else kicks in, right? Because you have a higher cost. You almost have to pay things for the SPAC sponsor if it's a SPAC or pay for the legacy business if you're using a reverse takeover. So if you go to this route, you almost have to have a business plan that you're going to do things beyond purely holding the token.
Starting point is 00:28:16 Again, not talking about the debt that we sort of the lead investor ourselves, you know, one way to do that is finding what is the operating business you're going to build on top of it. That do two things. One, by itself, it actually has a real cash flow, real profit, real business, real users that drive enterprise value. beyond just book value. So the combination of the two, make sure your stock trades above the book value. Number two, you have to somehow also make an operating business related with the token you hold.
Starting point is 00:28:51 But I think that's where things getting interesting is because we've been talking about migrating business, economies, financial ecosystems on chain for so long. Now you have opportunities to go to the public market, raising hundreds of millions of dollars, and trying to figure out a way to build real-world application and operating businesses, bring them on chain,
Starting point is 00:29:13 who actually drive the flag view of your token price, I think is great. I think in 10 years, I go on and say, every single 14-500 company is a DAG somehow. It's just that their operating business so much bigger. Their corporate treasury will hold dollar euro today, just like they're going to hold BTC and E's in five to 10 years time. So I think from that perspective, it's the right idea,
Starting point is 00:29:36 but I think you need a lot of fine-tuning to make this really work. All right. I'll pile in on top of that one first as somebody who has had some critical things to say about that, to say what Matt said was a very important point there about how to think about these structures from a business perspective. That is to say, if you think about it, you've got a box and you've got a bunch of assets in the box and then you've got expenses on top of that. So if you did nothing else, the average that should trade it a discount. right and that's not a commentary on the token that's a commentary on expenses right which is something people often don't want to think too much about and if you have a debt that's going to sustainably traded a premium to the things in the treasury of the company it's probably got an operating
Starting point is 00:30:21 business where you're thinking about the discounted like value of future cash flows and essentially adding that back in now matt to your point this is something i want to pick chris and felix's brain on. If we're thinking of something like the Berkshire Hathaway model, part of what's been really effective, if you really, like, dig into what Buffett and Munger were doing for a long time, was finding very cheap sources of funding, like reinsurance float, and then deploying it as capital allocators across a diversified sector of things. Does that argue for single asset debts, or should we really see, like, crypto sector debts than deploying generically into the economy? Like, how do you, essentially, where do you find the cheap funding, I guess, is my question, to enable that trade?
Starting point is 00:31:09 It's a good question. Look, I'm a big fan of Dats, and I thought Matt really summed up things really beautifully. Not all are going to be successful. As investors, we look for about five things when we evaluated that. The first is timing. You got to have the timing that's right. You want to have a token with good fundamentals. Fundamentals are correlated to the success of the debt. You know, you don't want to buy a crappy token, whatever. the most important thing, hear me out, the asset manager, kind of like what Matt said on, you know, Berkshire Hathaway, you have these two active managers. You have to have an investment advisor who knows what they're doing when it comes to treasury operations, on-chain operations. That manager has to know its stuff. That is the difference. That's the secret sauce that you get
Starting point is 00:31:53 with the dat. Look, you also want to have the foundation to be on the thing I said, and then you want to make sure you got a good KOL. Someone has to tell the story, particularly at this time. my bottom line is that it's still super early. The cement is drying on a lot of these things. These things work in cycles. I put out an article this weekend. We don't even have futures on a lot of the underlying tokens for this because Gensler held them up.
Starting point is 00:32:15 How are you supposed to trade basis? Most institutions can't even buy a debt because it's too volatile, right? It's too volatile. And if you're down 15% in a month, your PM, you're out the door. You can't even hedge this stuff yet or thoughtfully hedge it. So it's really early. If you get in early, maybe you, benefit. But again, there's a lot of risk out there. And the cement will continue to dry.
Starting point is 00:32:37 I do think you're going to see some really amazing companies. Last thing, I love what you said about every company is going to be a debt because they are because they're going to be paying in stable coins. Where's the gas coming from? Right. They're going to tokenize assets. They're going to buy back tokenize shares. Where's the gas coming from? And so we're in this golden age of convergence and it's just getting started. Yeah, I'll add a couple points. I think in general, that's as a form factor can be very interesting and powerful. But I think a lot of the nuance gets forgotten in the day-to-day discussions around just how different some of these structures can be. Obviously, it all started with micro strategy. And now we have so many different variations.
Starting point is 00:33:18 And yeah, I think in my belief, I mean, Chris, you made such a great point that the asset manager is incredibly, incredibly important. Like, I just don't think it's, I don't think there's enough humans out there in the world to just exist for that many, you know, top peer asset manager. So I think it really will follow a power lot distribution. And in the same vein of that power lot distribution, I do think that, you know, there's some very well articulated in structure, deaths and some that are less so,
Starting point is 00:33:44 and some that are, you know, a lot of cash contribution and some that are in kind, some that, you know, it's an opportunity for, say, you know, foundations of reces to be able to contribute lock tokens. There's a wide spectrum. And I think some of them are great. Some of them I might have criticisms for. But I think in general, you know,
Starting point is 00:34:00 we're underway in terms of, of creative destruction and I know it's the beauty of capitalism and I do think out of it some really interesting innovations will emerge but again at the same time that does also attract some ones that you know I might be a bit more critical of but in general I think the direction you write is is in a positive way it's just about how many get to that point. Austin you asked a question earlier you said brookshire has a secret weapon which is their insurance business it's not only a cash flow in positive business, right, but also extremely cheap funding. And what's the equivalent of that?
Starting point is 00:34:37 Well, I think the equivalent of that is the lack of the term structure in crypto derivatives, at least for the time being. If you think about it, you can't even getting a five-year co-option, if, right, nobody wants to short a gamma on the other side of the options. The only way for you to even get one is to buy a five-year convertible bond for Sharpling or BitMine or any of these that companies. with getting that inherent warrants that have a five-year co-option on it. Now the question is, like, if you run in Blackshould's model,
Starting point is 00:35:10 now we're going to some of the else, Solana, the Avex and others, the vaugh is crazily high to the degree that you can actually pricing, and we run some of this, by the way. And the result is shocking. It's like for you to get the implied wall, for those long else in that, you can actually price the converter bond current coupon negative. That's how valuable the add-a-money co-option of the converts warrants is.
Starting point is 00:35:38 Obviously, you're not going to ask investors a pay your interest rate. We're not in 2018 anymore. But you could easily structure a very cheap convertible bond with very cheap zero-coupon current pay by offering something very valuable because there is no such a structured derivative market term structure with liquidity in crypto. yet. I think in the short term, that's a structured death deficiency on the crypto side that empowered the arbitrage between the two. That that started it because you will be able to get a discounted token on a crypto side, but in return, you suffer liquidity.
Starting point is 00:36:16 You lock your token for a long time. Now you wrap in a public market ticker. All of a sudden, you got the equity of that. Perfect. Right. But now we're going back to arbitrar's the other way around to say, hey, you actually don't have ability to buy long-dated co-options on crypto market. Now, via that, you actually have the ability to get that inherited warrants. I think that's a very cheap way for you to act as capital market for a lot of this token that otherwise doesn't exist. So I think in the short term, that is something comparable to cheap funding as insurance
Starting point is 00:36:47 from Bershe's Hotsway. In the long term, your cheap funding and secret weapon comes from that your abilities for all the company you invest or rolled up to empower them on the on-chain components. I think if any legacy remittance companies, payment companies, regional banks, you'll be able to invest and rolled up right away offer them the on-ramp infrastructure. I think that's unlocking the 10, 15% of enterprise value. I think that's something to the matter. You can bring values.
Starting point is 00:37:17 And that's why 1 plus 1 is 1 in 2. But again, I think it's all come up to execution. And that's why getting a shareholder vote is very, very important. We did want for our own debt, but you need to really getting a shareholder vote to making sure the shareholders behind you to do more than just accumulating the tokens. And many dads we saw earlier this year are trying to avoid it because they're faster or they're very, for different reasons, worry about the shareholders may not approve it. Well, the question you should ask yourself is you worry about shareholders not approving
Starting point is 00:37:45 the deal, should you do the deal in the first place? But actually trying to do a little slower, get a shareholder vote, telling them the plan, making sure the roll-up is part of the plan, actually sets you up to do things that different. That is almost sort of a classic private equity strategy that you're embedding it there. If we can take these businesses that have broken operational processes
Starting point is 00:38:05 and just one-by-one fix them. We saw the Internet state, right? Like people are saying you're offline business. Now I'm going to roll you up to make you an online business. But now I'm saying there's a lot of off-chain business, but actually making them on-chain, we're giving their efficiency 10-15 percent better across the board.
Starting point is 00:38:22 I think that's where cheap funding is as equivalent to structure hardware. All right. And I also have to give a shout out here before we move on from this topic with one last question. Blockworks does have an excellent data tracker. So if anybody is looking for this entire space, like Felix is the guy to look at for that. So Felix, provocative question for you, do you think the market is valuing these things effectively? Because you said some are better than others. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, the long tale of that.
Starting point is 00:38:52 should probably trade at a discount. And I think the ones like BMNR in MicroStrategy that have a proven track record, or at least proven operators, should trade into premium. I think, like, to me, the most interesting question is what sort of potential games can be played there in the future? You know, like do event-driven funds come in here and start that,
Starting point is 00:39:10 you know, if you see these companies trading at a discount, or I've even heard rumors of the potential for, say, you know, a Salonadat to go and acquired a position in an ETHDAT trading at a discount, buy it up and then unwind the ETH position to buy Solana. That's a creative to Solana. So I think there's some very interesting games that will be played out in the next
Starting point is 00:39:29 while and I think it's just about how does that is not long tail of ones that should probably be trading a discount and get cleared out. That's what's the most interesting question to me right now. I don't know if any of you guys have theories on how that plays out. I think it plays out exactly as you say. I can't, I mean, there's going to be M&A. There's going to be consolidation and roll-ups.
Starting point is 00:39:48 And like, that's what I was thinking about. I was talking about this basis trade. You buy the data, a discount, you sell the future, try to generate yields. Two things could happen. The MNAV drops further and you lose money or it gets bought and it goes north quickly and you make more money. So I think there's a lot of structuring you can do that, again, we're super early. I think that's your question, right?
Starting point is 00:40:12 A lot of people talk about this MNA. There's two different type of MNA. There's the amicable MNA, which is the token buying the MNAs wasting themselves, right? Like the number, the largest Solana to like that by the number 15 Solana, that at 0.7 MAP. That's conditions among the same ecosystem. I think it's constructive.
Starting point is 00:40:35 You're probably seen less hotel by communities and all of that. I think that can happen and probably will happen. Now it's getting extremely interesting and spicy. While you have the second type, what you just said, it's like you have token A, go and acquire a token B. forcing them to liquid the tokens and buy the other token. I think there's a lot of unintended consequences at all different levels. And I don't know how that's going to play out.
Starting point is 00:41:03 I think somebody's going to try because if there's a way, what we know is crypto people will go there and try it. But people better get ready for all of the backfires that are going to do, right? Like, you know, like, is your shareholder asked you to basically supporting you to do this and just trying to liquidate another committee? I mean, this is going to be a very complicated MNA. Well, I would also raise, do you need to liquidate the other communities, or do you end up with the thing of having, like, mutual alliances?
Starting point is 00:41:33 Because, like, I'm the Salana dad. I'm one of the big ones. I'm trading, like, close to par. I take this tiny ETH that I put the dad out of its misery. But do you necessarily have to sell the ETH? Or do you just own it now because it's accretive? When it hits your balance sheet, it's worth more, right? There's going to be a lot of that.
Starting point is 00:41:49 By the way, I will remind everybody in the crypto, world if you think crypto people find a way to do this there's literally a dude who stole a military boat from argentina over like debts and hedge fund world so like people are definitely going to be barging in here and looking to do some wild stuff i was going to say i wonder who the crypto world is pretty poor today so probably nobody has money to do that for the time being but in the six months time who knows sorry i don't say who i wonder who the car like on if the crypto world is about to be i i rick prince um somebody is going to like show up and somebody's office and take all the ledgers hostage.
Starting point is 00:42:24 That's really trading below and they're a shareholder. Dude, I was out at dinner with the Elliott guys when they did that. And there was this firm-wide announcement where they weren't allowed to travel to Argentina. It was awesome. Some people won't be allowed to go to breakpoint, I guess. Well, we're going to talk about the UK next, the country I may no longer be allowed to travel to. The Bank of England has done a stable coin consultation, launching basically for public comments on the regulatory framework and final rules due second half of 2026.
Starting point is 00:42:57 Currently, there are some technical details. It requires issuers to back 40% of the liabilities with deposits at the B.O.E 60% short-term UK debt. There are systemic issuers that could hold up to 95% debt as they scale. And most importantly, they have proposed holding caps of 20K in stable coins per person, 10 million per business. is maybe with a handful of exemptions for those. And this does make the UK's clearest move yet towards formal stable coin oversight and payments. But Chris, I have a question for you, given your background. Are these caps not like a complete unilateral surrender by the UK on the pound being relevant in crypto and maybe in future markets? Come on, man. You look at them and they're trying.
Starting point is 00:43:47 Like it seems like they're really trying. But come on. Like, look at our country. Scott Besson's there pounding the table saying, give me $3 trillion. Give me $3 trillion. I'm going to control the front end of the curve. Let's go. I want to, you know, the dollar is going to be the global reserve currency forever.
Starting point is 00:44:02 And we're doing it through stable coins. The one thing that I want to see, I've been dying to see tokenized FX markets, which is trade better. They eliminate her state risk. I'm like, come on, guys. Like, let's get it going. I think the UK is in a real tough spot. A real tough spot. I met with Rachel Reeves.
Starting point is 00:44:16 She came over a few months ago. And like she seemed willing and engaged. She's the transfer of the exchecker for those who don't know. She seemed like willing and engaged and she wanted to have constructive conversations with Secretary Besson. But gosh, she just can't get over themselves. And I want them to. Matt, we've been to how many times have been to Canary Wharf like a million times? Global finance, one of the greatest hubs in the world is in the UK.
Starting point is 00:44:41 It's such a shame. It truly is. Like time zone works. FX markets are awesome. Like it is the. place to be. And look, the problem, if you're in the UK, how many, how many unicorn tech companies come out of there? Not so many. Right. And, you know, when you speak to government officials, they, you know, they're like, hey, we're okay at startups, but we just haven't been able to
Starting point is 00:45:03 to have those, those unicorns develop. So now you have this like intersection of finance and technology. They have a lot of risk. And I just wish they would take the training wheels off and get after it. because the U.S. isn't slowing down anytime soon. The Japanese are starting to engage. But then we can talk about the Europeans another time. I don't know. It feels like in those jurisdictions, they just have a preference for CBDCs for some reason.
Starting point is 00:45:28 And I don't know if the UK is there as well, but these caps got to stop. By the way, does anybody know why it's 20,000 pounds? Is that an arbitrary number or they just pick a number and just, I'm just curious. I don't know. They probably fell it was a very generous cat, by the way, Chris. I'm sure they did.
Starting point is 00:45:49 I'm sure they did. But, you know, this risk aversion is not helping them. And that's really what it comes down to is risk aversion. And, like, in our country, we used to be like that last administration, maybe not as bad, maybe worse in certain cases. But we need to build and break things. And that's our culture. And, like, we're going to have issues in the States, right?
Starting point is 00:46:10 Things are going to blow up, but that's okay. That's what you do when you take risk. it's about the innovation that comes out of it. And so, like, they just don't seem to be part of that. I don't know. Felix. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, Chris, also what you guys think on this. But to me, it just feels like this panic or concern in terms of control of monetary policy
Starting point is 00:46:28 in each of these countries, right? And so, you know, my guess is perhaps somebody said, okay, well, what's the degree that we can allow our citizens to own U.S. denominated stable coins, but still be able to have some sort of control on monetary policy? And then maybe somebody came up with some things. fancy economic economic model that just said, all right, well, if everybody's capped at 20K, we can still have control of our currency and our interest rates. And I don't know, it feels like this trend is going to accelerate, especially in increasingly
Starting point is 00:46:55 inflationary regimes. Like obviously, UK isn't as bad compared to Argentina, but I don't know. I'm curious what these central bankers are thinking about in terms of just control of their monetary policy. By the way, I mean, this tells you how bad the previous U.S. regulations around this ourselves about because we almost under the illusion that UK and the rest of the world are actually moving pretty fast. The last three years, it's just because we were so bad at home front. I mean, I'm serious, right? Like, when you're going to an innovative space and the worry you
Starting point is 00:47:29 have is not about your company going bankrupt, which is a startup problem. But I can learn limited liabilities for many different reasons. You're not going to be able to track the talents to do that. But I think I talked with Bob Diamond last week and you thought about the exactly same point. I think these moments made you realizing it's not UK are moving any slower than they will always have with. It's the 180 degree in the U.S. had got U.S. back to where it always have been on their policy, postpone the Internet, the mobile Internet, the AIs, and basically back on track. And I think it's just the rest of the world has always been taking that type approach and it'll conservative a little slower. It is US policy has been so bad and made
Starting point is 00:48:15 the other few. They're very, very pro and constructive. And I think this has always been the case unfortunately. And I think the other problem in Europe is, as Chris said, the country, the time zone, like all of the global hub like makes is a perfect center for tokenized the money almost, right, payments and all the type of stuff. But I think entire Europe facing a talent crisis too. I'm not talking about they don't producing talents. I'm saying they don't retain talents. If you go to the bad school and after you graduate, you want to go to an AI product and crypto project, like, it's very hard for them to be able to retain the talents too. So I think that's also a problem.
Starting point is 00:48:54 You need a policy to be supportive. You also need educational infrastructures and other things to keep up the pace. If the talent is to keep leaving to other part of the world, I mean, that's another problem, too. I will pile on there to say all three of the quants who worked on. my products at J.P. Morgan originally and City originally were trained in France. And so that tells you something, right? But like, listen, if anybody from the UK is listening, I want to make a point that you're not going to like, okay? As somebody who's run a stable coin, people only need two things to buy a U.S. dollar stable coin, the internet and something to exchange for it. And I think
Starting point is 00:49:31 the position that this puts a lot of people trying to do things like impose caps in is you're going to have all these measures that you think are protective, that you think will do something. And then the reality is, if you're not willing to completely take the internet away, like North Korea, it doesn't matter. People are just going to do it anyways. Like, we have entered the era of all of these capital controls just being eroded by internet connectivity moving to the realm of money. And so you've got two options, which is get with the program or get run over. And I think my disappointment, Chris's disappointment probably come from the same source, which is the UK, right? Like you said, Chris, is a global financial center. Hell, it's an insurance center too. Lloyd's of London was literally in the
Starting point is 00:50:13 UK. And now here they are trying to like plant their flag on no, we want everything to be done as though we're calling each other on the phone when we're moving money around and just in denial of this new reality. And it's not going to work. The comment, Chris, you made on risk aversion, I think the biggest risk you can take is not embracing this stuff. That's the strategy that borders took when internet commerce showed up and lo and behold amazon just absolutely trucked them i think this is going to accelerate the dollarization then even of the uk right well yeah okay let's talk about dollarization because myrins but out talking about stable coins and rates basically saying stable coin growth will help push down global interest rates predicts the stable
Starting point is 00:51:00 coin market could hit three trillion in five years and that rising demand for these might even lower the neutral rate for dollars and basically calls stable coins the multi-trillion dollar elephant for central bankers. So, Chris, I want to start with you on this one. Is that a reasonable projection for stable coins? Yeah, you know, $3 trillion seems right, but I've been thinking about actually a different metric. That's tokenization of equities in fixed income. And bear with me for a second. I'm a fiduciary, right? So I have to buy the best product. If there's sufficient liquidity in global equity markets, which I think they're like $127 trillion, fixed income market, something around $150 trillion, right?
Starting point is 00:51:43 Let's look at equities. If I'm a fiduciary and I need to buy an equity and assuming the liquidity is equal, I have to buy the token. I have to buy it because if there's a risk event on a weekend or holiday, I need to be able to manage my risk. What am I going to use to pay for that? I'm going to need a stable coin. So is $3 trillion enough as that, and again, I don't think you're going to see this slow, steady conversion to tokens on the real world assets.
Starting point is 00:52:06 It'll be slow and steady until there's liquidity. Then pop, it'll be exponential. And I think the stable coins may have to follow very quickly because that's what you're going to need to exchange those assets. So $3 trillion may be materially low as I'm starting to think through it. I don't know the timeline when it shifts, but I think we're going to be much bigger. Felix, what do you think? I think dollar dominance is going to continue.
Starting point is 00:52:30 But yeah, it was a really interesting speech from Stephen Rand, who'd yeah kind of point of pride is that I was able to interview him before guidance last year before he ascended up there which is super cool to see where he's ended up but yeah it's interesting I mean what I've been thinking a lot about is just this transition of the U.S. from DM to EMI emification in some ways like every turn right now is to just lower the amount of duration that the U.S. Treasury is trying to issue whether it's what Besson is doing at the Treasury which is avoiding increasing coupons at all cost you know you have have the Fed now that's likely going to start buying bills in the next six months or so and
Starting point is 00:53:08 increasing their reserves. So you have that going on. And then you have the stable coin thing, which is collateralized by T bills. Every single corner of the financial system right now feels like it's being leaned towards as low, as little amount of duration as possible. And when you look at EMs, you know, I saw something at one point in like 2010s, Brazil was over 100% of the daily the issuance was like entirely T-pills or something. So it just feels like we're heading towards this world where just to avoid any sort of upset on the long end, we're just going to avoid any sort of duration into the world. You know, we have too much inflation for that.
Starting point is 00:53:47 And we just get into this world of, you know, you can call a financial repression. But it's just we're going to stuff bills into every corner that we can. And it feels like this is one of the key avenues for it. So I see that accelerating. I agree with Chris in the sense that. I think the stable coin demand in the medium to long run maybe actually is bigger than $3 trillion. I don't know about what Steven said about the rising demand of US treasuries because
Starting point is 00:54:15 like you put treasuring on chain, right? Like you, I mean, is that driving incremental demand for it? I don't know, right? But I'm saying is I don't know whether because you're putting treasuries on chain, all of a sudden you're going to lower the neutral rate. But I think one thing for sure is you're going to lower the neutral spread. And here's what I think has happened is if you think about tokenizing assets, actually Treasury is the starting point because it's the most homogeneous large scalable asset class.
Starting point is 00:54:46 You're trying this almost as a testing thing. I think tokenizing assets where you are unleashed most liquidity is on homogeneous large, illiquid assets today, private credit, real estate, mortgages, which are trillions in size, but actually was never have the liquidity benefits like U.S. Treasury. I think tokenizing U.S. Treasury, you make Treasury 10% better. I think private credit, real estate mortgages on chain, you make them 10 times better. Now, think about when you're putting private landings on chain, that drives the liquidity of that secondary market, what's happened in the primary market.
Starting point is 00:55:24 I think mortgage lending, consumer lending, SME lending, credit card, all of the lending risk going to drive down because now I have a better infrastructure in a secondary market to tokenize this and make them more liquid in the secondary market to trade. So despite I'm not so sure about whether you actually having more stable coin to drive the lower of the neutral rate, I think you actually will actually drive the neutral spread. I think the entire credit spread is going to come lower because actually those today, illiquid or semi-liquid asset class actually going to be the biggest beneficiary for tokenization. I mean, even potentially short-term credit.
Starting point is 00:56:03 Like, I think one of the trivia items that people outside of Tradfai probably didn't notice is that, okay, so when I was there, it was still LIBOR. But back in the day, your 30-year LIBOR was trading inside of your 30-year treasuries, e.g., like, private credit was somehow cheaper than lending to the treasury. And by the way, I think the same thing could potentially happen with stable coins, because they're going to have a preference for overnight reverse repo for liquidity reasons, which could actually drive that below bills, right? Like back to the point of financial repression there that we were making.
Starting point is 00:56:35 And so, Matt, I agree with you. There are some fascinating things going on. But to go to Chris's point and why my estimate is as things start to move, like I don't know specifically five years on the $3 trillion, but I'll definitely take the over, is if we think private credit is a good thing to move on chain, the market that I'm keeping my eye on is things like interest rate derivatives, because moving to 24-7 unification,
Starting point is 00:56:58 and clearing and margining of interest rate derivatives. One, solves all sorts of jurisdictional problems, right? This issue of like, I'm long in Europe, I'm short in Japan. I can't net those damn things, but I'm flat, right, goes away when you can unify your venue. And two, it allows you to have a truly unified like interest rate market. And exactly to Chris's point, all those derivatives need collateral. People are constantly going to be posting stuff underneath them to trade something. You need money to train for it, right?
Starting point is 00:57:27 Like it's the Simpsons. of like home or money can be exchanged for goods and services. So we need to get all of that on chain. So like I'm incredibly bullish on the eventual market size here. I just have questions on timing. Very good. All right. So one last thing that I think all of us may or may not be bullish on that we promise to
Starting point is 00:57:47 include in this episode is that Laura recently became something of a celebrity because of our previous takes on XRP. Chris, you may have started this. So I wanted to pile in here and continue with a little bit of our analysis on XRP and hone in, actually, of what I think is a very important question that we've seen starting to be asked in the space, which is Ripple has had a token for a long time. But recently they've begun acquiring some very real businesses like Hidden Road. So here's the question for the group that I wanted to throw out there, long term, more valuable. The XRP token or equity and Ripple. That sounds like a question for Matt or Felix.
Starting point is 00:58:31 Chris, you go first. No, no, no. You're the guest, man. I mean, I think, yeah, high level, I'd always take the equity over the governance. I mean, obviously, Ripple's not quite a governance token. But in general, you know, you want the claim on cash flows, whatever those lead to. What do you think that? I kind of agree.
Starting point is 00:58:55 I think for Ripple in particular, but for many crypto projects, these two are intertwined, right? Like today, you can buy ripple secondary equity. But if you count 90% of that is the ripple you hold. I mean, obviously, they're not diversifying from buying actual real businesses. One thing I think people are underestimating is I think history is past dependent. We have all our favorite tokens. And in the last cycle, they may not be able to do much because there's a lot of regulatory constraints around what is a utility token and what is a security token and so on and so forth. I'm saying when you're sitting on hundreds, at least tens of billions, if there's hundreds of billions of treasuries, you actually will have a lot of purchasing power to buy real business that turned you to something which you aspire to be in the first place.
Starting point is 00:59:41 So I'm saying is my view on ripple has drastically changed, not because who is the leader, but also what they are allowed to do in this market. Right? The acquisition of hidden road, the launch of their own stable coin, the launch of the own prime, I think all of these things are paving away for them to do something more. So for that reason, I think the equity is a good play because they always have the abilities to be able to use that as a very equivalent, like a very powerful tool to actually make an acquisition. They can do all stock deal, for example, right? But I think that a lot of the value, at least in the near term, we're going to driven from the XRP, So I think these two are intertwined. So if I hold equity, I think my primary goal is making sure what acquisition I do, what space I enter to is also protecting the token price too. Because that's going to be a large impact about, and I won't be surprised.
Starting point is 01:00:39 You guys may know some of details. A lot of this acquisition probably paid in XRP. So you can't be a valuable equity company without having a very valuable token for the, I live for the time being. Yeah, I agree. It's intertwined. I think I read today that 75% of on-chain revenue is accrued to stable coin issuers. And RLUSD is a stable coin, and they want to generate revenue from that stable coin. Who's going to buy that stable coin?
Starting point is 01:01:06 Well, you got the XRP Army, you know, who is very into all things XRP. They seem to me as one of the natural buyers. Of course, they're going to want to extend into the institutional side, and they've assembled all of the tools to do so, right? We talked about the binomial, hidden road, et cetera. And so they've got this nice infrastructure. So I agree with Matt. I think it's intertwined.
Starting point is 01:01:26 Gun to my head. I'll reserve my choice. All right. So I'll say the way I think about it is if you're trying to ultimately determine whether Ripple is like a villain or a hero in the crypto story will depend on how they see themselves internally. If the token is a way to just acquire money from retail by businesses and then accrue value to the equity, I think the whole.
Starting point is 01:01:49 whole thing ends badly and they look like villains. On the other hand, if they understand they're doing a round-trip trade of get cheap funding from the token, use the tokens to go acquire a bunch of businesses, build a portfolio of businesses, and then start buying back the token to return the value or doing something of that sort. You have a very different construct there, actually, to go back to a previous comment we raised, they might have crowdsourced Berkshire Hathaway, which would be a fascinating model. And I think the thing you should be watching for, if you're an XRP, holders, which of those behaviors emerges over time? By the way, I know we're up against the time, but I think also is a great point.
Starting point is 01:02:24 I think in this cycle and the next 12 to 18 months, if you're a token-based project, I think one thing people have really fixed is tokenomics. I think we had a compromise in the last cycle because of regulatory concerns and constraints. You have equity and you have a token. People pretending that both of this model going to work. The question is like, where's the value occurring to and there's any value of leakage? For that reason, the venture space has been a. disaster, right? Because I invested tokens, but I mean, I invest the equity. It's like,
Starting point is 01:02:54 whereas what? A founder doesn't even know. And sometimes I don't even think about this. I think people have to figure out a standardized tokenomics to just like making sure people know what they're investing into. Otherwise, we're going to keep going to circles. Yeah. But your hands are also tied behind your back because if you turn a fee switch on, you go to jail, right? But I think just as we were filming, the, it looks like uniswap's now proposing a fee switch. So like, you're right, man. It's going to be the cycle to get tokenomics right. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the ultimate question. And it's a really good point that, you know,
Starting point is 01:03:23 we've been fighting with one arm behind our back for the past four years. Like, that's a lot of the symptoms and issues that we have right now are largely caused by that. And now we can experiment. And, yeah, it's no coincidence that you have what Uniswap is doing. And I'm a big fan of what Medidow has been exploring with in terms of, you know, token equity rights and that sort of thing. I think the direction is good. It's just we need to get through some of the cleanup in the interim there.
Starting point is 01:03:49 All right. Well, on that note, we are overtime, but this was 100% worth doing. So first, I want to say thank you to Felix and Matt for joining us. This was awesome. And then second of all, thank you to everybody for joining us for this episode of Bits and Bips. We'll be back in one week and discuss more about how the worlds of crypto and macro are collided. Until then.

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