Unchained - Bits + Bips: Stablecoins Just Went Legit, but That’s Only the First Step - Ep. 873

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Last week, the U.S. passed its first major piece of crypto legislation. Stablecoins now have a legal home, and that could open the floodgates for adoption, disruption, and regulation. But is this just the beginning? In this episode of Bits + Bips, Ram Ahluwalia, Noelle Acheson, Steve Ehrlich, and guest Cosmo Jiang of Pantera dive into what the stablecoin law actually means, who it helps, who it threatens, and why Wall Street and crypto startups alike are positioning fast. They also cover Ethereum’s rally, what’s fueling it, and whether the boom in digital asset treasury companies is sustainable. Plus, they unpack Trump’s latest threats against the Fed and what it means for markets, inflation, and interest rates. Sponsors: Bitwise Mantle Hosts: Ram Ahluwalia, CFA, CEO and Founder of Lumida Noelle Acheson, Author of the “Crypto Is Macro Now” Newsletter  Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained Guest: Cosmo Jiang, General Partner and Portfolio Manager for Liquid Strategies at Pantera Capital Links Stablecoins Unchained:  GENIUS Act Passes: Who Are the Winners, Losers, and What Comes Next? House Passes Landmark Crypto Legislation: GENIUS Act and Digital Asset Bills Trump to Unblock Crypto Access in America’s $9 Trillion 401(k) Market: Report The Block: GENIUS Act is helping Ethereum ‘have its moment,’ Bernstein says WSJ: Why Banks Are on High Alert About Stablecoins Digital Asset Treasuries WSJ: Blank-Check Company Strikes Cryptocurrency Deal Unchained: SBET to Raise Additional $5B to Grow ETH Position Bloomberg: Trump Media Buys $2 Billion in Bitcoin for Crypto Treasury Plan CoinDesk: DeFi Development Nears $200M Solana Treasury DeFi Dev Corp Press release: DeFi Dev Corp. Announces Global Expansion Through Strategic Treasury Franchising Model TLGY Acquisition Corp Press release: TLGY Acquisition Corp. Announces Business Combination and Approximately $360 Million PIPE Financing to Form StablecoinX, an Ethena Stablecoin-Focused Treasury Company The Block: Nasdaq-listed Sonnet BioTherapeutics agrees to $888 million merger to become Hyperliquid Strategies, launch HYPE treasury Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 🚀 3:01 Why Noelle believes the stablecoin law is just the beginning 😒 5:25 How Ram explains his disappointment with the market’s reaction 💳 11:31 Whether Visa and Mastercard survive the stablecoin disruption 🏆 17:00 Who stands to gain the most from the new stablecoin law 🏦 20:08 How tokenization could hurt investment banking 📉 22:26 Whether regional banks are on the brink 📈 27:42 What’s fueling ETH’s latest rally 🧠 31:08 Why Cosmo credits the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership for the momentum 💥 36:14 Where markets are heading as retail FOMO ramps up 💼 37:56 How Cosmo is evaluating the surge in digital asset treasury companies 🥱 43:52 Why Ram is spotting signs of market fatigue 📊 45:15 Whether upcoming crypto IPOs can match early successes 💸 47:21 Why VC activity is still lagging despite bullish narratives 🧨 51:03 How Trump’s threat to fire Powell is shaking macro sentiment 🧃 58:08 Everyone’s unexpected or contrarian take this week Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Within crypto native capital, like, people are pretty allocated. But within Tradfai, they still aren't. I think where that leaves me is, as each day goes by, I think more and more likely, and we are seeing signs of this, the waves of Main Street capital are going to come in. And so I'm like more and more confident about keeping our exposure out there. But who knows? This story has always taken longer to play out than, you know, the optimist in this industry might expect. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Bits and Bips, exploring how macro and crypto collide one basis point at a time.

Today, we're going to talk about easter price bump. We're going to digest the Genius Act and talk about a lot of other things, fed independence, a new crop of crypto treasury companies coming to the forefront, much to discuss. First, some quick intros. I'm your host, Steve Ehrlich, high scribe of the Unchained Kingdom. I'm here with Noel Acheson. The high seer and keeper of the crypto is Macro Now Newsletter. Hi, everyone. Ram Alawalia, the Meister wealth leader of Lumida, and our special guest is Cosmo Zhang, the unshaken hand of Pantera's Liquid Vault. So welcome everybody.

So we're here to discuss all the latest stories in the worlds of crypto and macro, but just a quick disclaimer, as always, nothing that we say is meant as financial or investment advice. please see UnchainCripta.com backslash bits and bips for more information. And before we dive in, let's just take a brief pause so we can hear from the sponsors who make this show possible. Mantle is pioneering blockchain for banking of revolutionary new category at the intersection of Tramphi and Web 3. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Crypto moves fast. It's why Bitwise launched the weekly CIO memo, a jargon-free summary of what

It'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. Kind of a validatory show, I think, guys. I mean, you've been waiting years and years and years for clear regulation. God forbid a law, a bill passing Congress dedicating or passing Congress and signed into law by the president, sort of bestowing some good graces upon crypto. And we're here today

with the Genius Act, the stable queen bills. There's now clear rules for stable coins. I know a lot has been spoken about it last week during the run-up of whether or not we get across the finish line and then just everything that happened since it was signed. But I think it makes sense to begin with just a few key thoughts. So, Noel, why don't we begin with you? Like, what are just some lasting impressions you have of the ceremony of the bill or just how crypto's responded in I guess the 72 hours since. Well, as we highlighted last week and as we can confirm now, because until it was signed, it was never really a short thing, right?

It just is a very big deal. We have confirmed crypto-focused legislation in the United States, home to the largest financial market in the world. That is a very big deal. But I'm going to push back about this being a slightly valedictory feel. It's just the beginning. It was the low-hanging fruit. It was always going to be the first one.

Stable coins are relatively simple compared to the rest of the crypto ecosystem. But it's just the beginning. It was a struggle, and it's a hint at the colossal struggles that are still ahead. But this is just getting started up. And I'm not even just referring to the Clarity Act, which is going to be mammoth and is going to have a lot of difficulty getting through, but will, I think, eventually get through. It's not just about that. It's a lot of little things as well.

And again, I'm not just talking. about the SEC pronouncements. I mean, over the past few days, President Trump has talked again about the de minimis exemptions, super important for crypto adoption. That would basically mean there's going to be a threshold under which you can use your crypto without having a tax event, without having to calculate capital gains and declaring them. This means we will be able to buy a coffee with our ETH or our Bitcoin. I mean, not want to, but the ability to do so is important for the evolution of the industry. And it looks like crypto is going to be admitted into the pension funds into 401Ks.

That unlocks a massive market. So, again, the Genius Act was the beginning rather than the culmination of the package. And there's a lot of good news on the horizon. I'm really interested in the 401K aspect of this. I know, I think back when I was at Forbes a few years ago, we published an interview I think with the head of the AARP, and he was very negative on having crypto in retirement accounts, just because of the volatility. And as people get older, you want to reduce that because you don't want to lose your money.

But for people starting out that are in the 20s and 30s that have a long way to go, I can't imagine a better asset or asset class that put into 401Ks. And if that gets federal support, that could really be a game changer because, I mean, there's so much money on the sidelines that could go in. Ram, let's go to you next. What are some of your thoughts? Yeah, look, there was a celebratory relief moment. It felt like last week with the signing, the bill initially wasn't passed,

and then Trump intervened and convened 12 Congress leaders to the White House and then got over the line. So it took some leadership. Also, Trump was tweeting, you know, Bitcoin this weekend, too. There's really quite something. I think when Bitcoin doesn't perform the way it's supposed to, someone taps on his chief of staff shoulder or something, they say, hey, can you go tweet this?

And so that happened again. It's not the Trump put. It's the Trump tweet. That's said, you know, from a market's perspective, I was disappointed with how markets reacted. In last week, we talked about how it's very important to see how prices respond to these news items. So you had the passage of the bill, and you also had Trump out there with the tweet.

And, you know, Bitcoin prices are, I want to say lower than where they were last time this week. So, you know, these kinds of things happen when you have these seminal moments. If you recall the summer of last year when Trump gave his speech at the Bitcoin conference, that created a local top in the asset. And at the same time, you're seeing a lot of excitement. and assets like light coin, just come back from the dead. That started rallying. You saw an incredible rally and other risk assets out there, like open from public equities.

And all these are a sign of just vigorous animal spirits at work. And then I look at today, you know, open that stock, open doors down massive, double digit percent. So I think we might have had a peak sentiment moment. And there may need to be some time for the market to just cool off. and relax with it before the fourth quarter. Yeah, and Cosma, I think that's a great lead-in to you because you run Pantera's Liquid Funds. What are you seeing in the market?

Any thoughts on genius? But maybe you could piggyback on what Rom said as far as the market reaction. Yeah, totally. I mean, Rom, I definitely hear you on the watch, watch how prices react to news because that's super important to know where the incremental thing is. But I guess I would temper that and say,

I'm still pretty bullish here. Um, you know, the market reaction, the stable coin bill is sort of something that we all assume was going to get through. I think. Okay. Noelle, correct. It's not, doesn't happen until it actually happens until you sign on the dotted line. But it felt like a foregone conclusion and with everyone making such a big deal out of crypto week in DC, it just felt like, you know, it was set up for disappointment. Um, and Bitcoin already, I mean, to be clear, it already rallied to app like all time highs and a lot, like well up a lot, quite a lot months of day. So. I do think there's a lot of anticipation, a lot of good news already there. And so these bills weren't going to be a positive catalyst, especially because legislation is like, it's not like pass a bill next day, simple points ago from $250 billion to a trillion, right? It's like, I'll take time. And I guess I would say, you know, all things equal. I'm a little bit disappointed that it wasn't a price catalyst. I think the bigger catalyst to come is probably market clarity, right, market structure of legislation.

Because that actually is fundamental. but the stable-cone stuff is very good. I used to cover public equities for most of my career, right? And so I still follow the big banks. And I think one interesting takeaway from the Genius Act was just like how all the big banks responded, sort of it responded to that under earnings calls, which are happening at the same time. And basically, every single big bank mentioned stablecoins. And importantly, like JP Morgan, City, Bank of America all mentioned launching their own

stablecoin or tokenized deposit. it. And so it's pretty clear to me that, you know, these things take time, but we're, but like maybe less time than we expect, especially because, you know, we all know, JP, City, Bank of America. Like, they've had had 100 person teams working on digital assets for the last three years. This is not like, all of a sudden surprise we're going to create a staple point. They've all quietly had spent tens of millions of dollars doing this already. They're going to continue to doing it. Now they just have been more open about it. So big moment, good. But. Yeah, tempered reaction, I think, kind of reasonable. Yeah, it's one of those things. I was thinking myself, like, is this a buy the rumor, sell the news story, or buy, by, and buy, and like, the Genius Act in a way, it's sort of, it's sort of caught in the middle because it is a bill, it's a crypto bill, it's a big deal, but it's not the big one. I mean, it's really blessing.

I mean, I kind of find uncomfortable or weird to call it $260 billion market small, but it is in the grand scheme of $4 trillion market at this point. So we're trying to figure out what's going to happen next. I know some of the more stable coin adjacent tokens like XRP, even though I still have some real questions as to like XRP's value vis-a-vis like RLUSD because the profit from that won't actually filter back into XRP, but that's a whole other story. SLM is going up.

I'd be curious to see how MakerDA is doing. And I know ENA has also been surging. So some of those tokens have done particularly well. I mean, we all know what happened with Circle. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens. And last week, we spent a lot of time talking about how the big banks are going to respond and stable coins versus tokenized deposits and how quickly they can get onto the market. But I think before we just move on, it's probably worth just everyone taking a quick breath

and just acknowledging how important it is that there actually is a bill that is, now law that that blesses crypto. I mean, we've waited for that for over a decade. And it's a huge deal. So everybody that was involved from the lobbyists to the companies to whoever really deserves a lot of credit for making that happen. I 100% agree. That's a great point. I mean, you can't really understate the impact what this means. I think there are two big impacts. On the one hand, crypto and fintech are just merging to the same thing. By the way, a lot of fintech of firms are completely off sides. They never really understood crypto or they got to the team's focused on crypto, but crypto is custody lending payments and now you're having asset management

built on top of that. But the second thing is, I think you're going to start to see the decline of Visa and MasterCard and Legacy payment rails. I think in 10 years time, Visa and MasterCard will simply not be that relevant and it'll be because of the Genius Act. I'm not convinced it'll be that easy to supplant them because they're scrambling to offer all the insulary services around stable coins. And there's huge difference between credit card payments and stable coins. And credit card payments just processed payments. And stable coins don't actually process anything.

They are the transaction themselves. What the credit card companies can do, have a lot of experience doing is handling the clients, the chargebacks, the merchants, etc. And that is something that stable coin issuers don't have a lot of experience doing. Coinbase is trying to solve for that as well. Circle is trying to solve for that. But arguably Visa MasterCard have a very big head start. And that's even before looking at what could happen.

Should Ali Pay get into the stable coin business, for instance? I'm here referring to market cap. I'm talking about net income. So what I see here is competition, eating away interchange. Like the big payment rails, you have ACH, you have wires. Credit cards run on ACH and wires as a form of payment. Of course, the Visa Maca Card Network. But if you are an e-commerce merchant like Amazon, and then you can accept stable coin as a form of payment, you're going to drive spend to adopt that form of payment because it's going to save MasterCard.

It's going to save Amazon 3%. So this is going to be the next wave of innovation that you see. Stablecoin and stable coin infrastructure investment is probably the hottest theme now. But it's going to take a few years to actually spend that up. You know, Palmer Lucky is getting after some kind of bank. It's not clear what he's trying to do. I imagine it's something around this. They've got a $3 billion post money valuation.

They've done nothing yet. So I think, yeah, to your point, OL, Visa MasterC will still have some relevancy. But I don't think that the market cap and the earnings will be anything like it is in 10 years. Yeah, I get the way I see this playing out is like, I clearly the stable coin tam, you know, if we talk about it in terms of total number, staple coins in circulation is going to explode from 260 today to trillion, maybe this year, and tens of trillions over time. But I do wonder where the problem polls are going to be, right?

Like, show me the money, right? Ron, we cover equities and, like, ultimately, we care about net income. And I do with questions about whether this is a, like, whether this is truly, like, creating new businesses that create new profit pools or if it's just a cost savings mechanism that will be transferred to all the existing financial providers. And the story is to be written. Clearly, circles trading like it'll be the most profitable thing ever and enable all these global payments.

But on the other end, I could very well see, you know, this ends up being J.P. Morgan gets to cut out 20% of its cost base. And like everyone's really happy. It just shows up in JP Morgan stock price, right? Not somewhere else. And so, yeah, I think those are the two ends of the. spectrum and we'll see it. And that's especially relevant in a scenario with declining yields and declining interest rates, which will happen eventually because Circle's revenue comes from where,

from yields? That's actually what I was about to say, Noel. This all sounds great unless Trump gets his wish and cuts interest rates by three, I guess, 300 basis points. And then on a sudden profitability drops 75%. But I guess at that point you can make it up with scale. Well, it's why Circle rallied so hard on, like, FOMC a couple weeks ago and when the rates started repracing Circle rallied hard, because it is a levered rates play if you're a pot out there. Yeah. And then when rates do start to come down, we all pivot into the DeFi plays because the yield there will be much more attractive.

I think it's all the above, Cosmo. I mean, you're going to see J.P. Morgan and Citibank try to get after this. But look, the big tech companies don't like JPMorgan. They don't like Citibank. They wish they could have banking licenses and compete. They want to offer payment services to their clients. They want to enable money movement just like their peers in China do, like WeChat and AliPay. So I do think you're going to have like the new gold rush is stable coin infrastructure.

Now remember like DM and Libra. This is Meta's initiative, which Janet Yellen killed, not Jerome Powell, but Jerome Powell signed off in it. Janet Yellen killed it. It was great reporting for the FT on that. It would have changed the course of history, by the way, if that happened. you're going to see that come back. And you're going to see a number of stable coins that specialize in niche use cases.

Some will be cross-border. Some will be peer-to-peer. Some will be online e-com merchants. Some will be generated by Walmart. Some will be used to settle between prime brokerage desks and treasury repo markets. But that's what the next three years will look like. And it's going to be a big win for the consumer. Before we move on,

maybe just to kind of make this conversation a little more tangible for our listeners. I'd love each one of you to maybe share one winner or one loser from the bill that isn't entirely obvious, like Circle as a winner, for instance. Yeah, this is something I was spending a lot of time chewing on, but ironically enough, the banks are going to be big winners here. Look, first off, Custodia Bank run by Caitlin Long, could be a big winner here. That's one. Cross River Bank, my alma mom.

I was the head of digital assets at Cross River. they power Stripe, they power Coinbase, those Fiat ramps to three other infrastructure banks, I think, can do really well here. You know, the banks can move money. So you're going to have some intersection between the Trotify money movement and the on-chain activity. There's got to be some bridge between those two areas. and whichever entity or set of entities does that is going to charge a toll gate fee, and they're going to create fee income. We're talking like hundreds of billions of dollars

in some of these categories, and it's only growing in terms of like the payment. Some of these categories for payments, we're talking like trillions. There's a ton of money movement there. So I think actually certain select infrastructure banks are going to be very well positioned. Yeah, certain select ones,

whereas many of the mainstreams we won't be able to innovate. enough to be able to keep up. I'll go with tokenized money market funds because stable coins can't earn interest and nobody really wants the money sitting there. And that sort of makes sense. I mean, stable coins are meant to move there, a money substitute and not supposed to just sit there. But we are going to see more and more functionalities where while it's sitting there, it's a tokenized money market fund earning yield. And then when you need it, it can automatically be swept into a different accountants sent to wherever where it then gets swept back into a tokenized money market

fund. That kind of thing can be done automatically, can be done with a simple click. And that's the frontier treasury management, at least in the short term. Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest winner is probably defy. Right. The reality is all these stable coins are going to live on chain. And that's a lot of capital that can then be deployed into various defy protocols. And I think, you know, once the, once the genies out of the bottle, it's hard. Like, everyone will want to, use all the great innovation that exist on chain, like the ability to take out a mortgage on chain rather than going to JP Morgan

to take out your mortgage will just become so obvious. And so I do think, I guess I'm not saying a specific DFI protocol, but so many in general with DFI activity and many of the D5 protocols will meaningfully benefit from this. I think on the user side it's like super

it's it could be a lot. I mean, it's like it's really the regional banks, right? I mean, the regional banks are already secular shorts to begin with. This only like accelerates that, unfortunately. As much as they will kick and scream and add in provisions, like lack of yield on stable points to like try to save themselves. It's a, it's a dirty, dirty road ahead. What about the middlemen?

We talk about Visa MasterCard as losers. There's there a type of middleman that played an important role decades ago when you needed to connect merchants and customers. But there's another type of middlemen, which are the investment banks, the investment banks that create securities. then make markets for these assets in a capital market. I think those guys are at risk as you start to broaden out the scope of things that are tokenized. Yeah, I think that might be right. Right. The natural evolution of capitalism is like lower crisis for all and creating consumer surplus.

And I don't know. I'll like, you know, remember my former partners and, and all the, all the people that I was friends with who are still in banking. And man, they work really hard, but it's probably, I don't know, this, this is probably a lot of margin compression that they could bear. And so it does seem like, that's right, Ron. Like the flattening of capital markets is what crypto enables or on-chain rails enables and we're seeing the first step. Yeah, that's the good way to frame.

I'm not saying they're going to go away. In fact, I own some of these doesn't base my portfolio, to be clear. It's not a three-year story. Yeah. Like you said, the flattening. It's the browing now. It's the long tail of improved capital assets. Like I think back to when Google IPO, they did a direct listing.

It was not a traditional IPO process. managed by an investment bank. Why don't we see more of these direct listings enabled by tokenization where certain companies, namely brands that have their own community following, go direct to raise money via internet capital markets? I think this is the emerging story that we'll start to see in tokenization. And you're already seen it with names like Robin Hood and Palantir that they've, especially in the case of Robin Hood, they've turned their shareholders into customers.

They've evangelized their shoulder base to become customers. So I think growth in internet capital markets will start to eat away at what investment banks are focused on. And that's great. It means more capital formation. Yeah. I mean, we just saw with Pump, right? The last, just a little over a week ago, Pump did their I see offering fully on chain, or not fully on chain, but basically fully on chain.

And it went smoothly. they paid no one any fees. Like it's great for all parties involved. I want to focus on the regional banks that you mentioned, Cosmo, because we're starting to see some battle-ins drawn between the big banks and maybe not necessarily the big banks, but the regional banks are banding together to try to come up with, like, one standardized stable coin,

doing it with FISA, and I think Caitlin Long's Avanti is doing one as well, trying to get off the ground. But I have an interesting take, I think, on the regional banks, because to me, I do see them as an early loser, ingenious because they're just, I don't think they're going to really be able to compete with the big banks with regards to the stable coins. I don't think that's a very outlandish statement to make. But I mean, I remember, and back when I was a consultant in this industry, like 2015, 2016, 2017, I would speak at

like regional banking conferences and try to talk to them about integrating blockchain into their operations for things like cybersecurity or digital identity or trying to get them to build something on top of R3 or HyperLedger. And there's conversations that really went nowhere for a few reasons. I mean, one, they have limited budgets or they have higher priorities, like trying to create like multi-user accounts and other stuff that's more relevant to their clients. But I wonder if even if they're not going to win stable coins, if they're forced to open the door to stable coins because that's just where the industry is going,

it could open things up for them to integrate blockchain, tokenized assets through much more of their operations. And in that way, like longer term, they could offer cheaper services to clients, more diverse services to clients. They could offer a more complete menu of options to their clients to what the big banks can. But then they also know their clients so they can customize that service and maintain that local touch. So again, I kind of agree with you, Cosmo. And I think Rob and well, you probably would agree with us too, that stable coins are not going to be a winner for the regional banks. But at least right away, but I think a longer term, it could open up a lot of exciting opportunities because in 2016, 2017, you could get fired by recommending something on blockchain and then it doesn't work. I mean, look what happened to ASX.

But now that everyone's making stable coins, it's kind of table stakes to do something. Regional banks don't even understand this stuff. They don't know how to build it. They're going to wait for these infrastructure providers like FIS and Jack Hunter, these bank core providers, firms that help build of Zell, for example, offer a stable coin will benefit everyone,

which actually doesn't help the regional banks because it helps the big banks more. The other winner here would be a company like Paxos. So Gary Gensor, former Sitcher, almost killed Paxos. Paxos, I believe I read reporting, they're creating a stable coin that will be used by Robin Hood

and Cracken and others. This is really interesting, right? You've got USDC issued by circle, which Coinbase helped create via their distribution. Now you've got these other leading platforms. Robin Hood is a serious player and Cracken teaming up to find another standard powered by Paxos. It goes back to the thesis of those infrastructure players, I think will do well. And when you have a gold rush, bet on the folks selling the picks and shovels rather than the ones digging for the gold.

Are you talking about Paxos with the BUSD issue with finance? Yes. Yes. No, this is USDG. Well, that USCG is the token is the stable coin correct that they're issuing. But yes, they did have that issue around BUSD. Yeah, but divine the stable point. Yeah.

If you got to have all of these stable coins floating around and we expect different types of entities to use and the winners are also going to be the wallet designers. Because interconnectivity comes through there, at least from the user experience point of view. Yeah. Maybe curve's going to be one of the big winners too, since they're basically the decks for stable coins. Mantle leads the establishment of blockchain for banking as the next frontier. UR is the access layer that transforms Mantle Network into a purpose-built vertical platform, the blockchain for banking that enables financial services on chain.

UR unifies and vertically aligns Mantle's focus on payments, trading, and assets. MI4, MEP protocol, functions of VTC, supported by developing, developer grants, ecosystem incentives, and the industry-leading distribution platform through the UR app, reward station, and by-bit launch pole. All economic activity within UR will be captured by Mantle Network to further drive value to token holders and establish its significance in blockchain for banking. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Hi everyone. Matt Hogan here, the chief investment officer of Bitwise asset management.

Each week, I write a five-minute memo exploring the biggest topic in crypto. And this week, I look at the stunning rise of E. Whose price is up 65% in the past month and 160% in April. What's driving that big price move? And can it continue for the rest of the year? To find out my thoughts, head to bitwiseinvestments.com slash CIO memo. That's bitwiseinvestments.com slash CIO memo. Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing.

Okay, so we have about 30 minutes left. we have gone long enough without talking about ETH's massive runoff. So I think now is the time. Cosmo, I'd love to get your thoughts on this just to kind of kick things off. When we had the show last week, I guess it was around like 3,3,300, Romer, Noel.

And I think the idea was maybe it could go up a little bit more. I'm not sure anyone anticipated it going up almost another 25% in a matter of five days. But it has. So what are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, Eith, just living at the ETH,

Bitcoin ratio, it's nearly doubled from the bottom, right? And in like less than a couple months. So that's pretty wild when you think about it. So in one word wild is how I would say it's it reflects a few things, right? One is where we, what the starting point was, which is everyone was extremely bearish on Ethereum, or at least, you know, the fast money or the incremental buyer of tokens was, was bearish on Ethereum. And the markets themselves are pretty listlets. I think two months ago when ETH was at its bottom

on an or it was we were in a market where everyone was selling anything looking for reasons to sell anything and so you know whether it's east's fault or not it would also happen to be in the crossairs and so that that's like the technical reason that it's now getting better because we've seen it's a complete reversal of of attention and activity or attention and excitement around what what you can do i think there's a few things driving that the most important really which is these digital asset treasury companies, right? The amount of effectively price insensitive buying from these entities is pretty incredible. And part of the pitch that they're pitching to Main Street, you know, the people who are

buying the stocks is that this is your best way to get, look at it, look at how circles done, look at look at the stable coin activity that's being created because of the stable coin built. ETH is going to be the rails on which all this lives. And I think that's, you know, we can talk about. about how we actually tie the numbers to make it all make sense, but certainly from a narrative perspective and directionally, that's right.

And that's why we're seeing a re-appreciation of what Ethereum brings and just this incredible, incredible price and sensitive buying from the digital asset treasury companies. Yeah, that kind of raises a good question, Cosmo. I mean, as far as I can tell, nothing has really fundamentally changed about the narrative for ETH from where it was a month ago. But it's obviously blooming.

A lot of money is coming into the space. It's coming from ETH Wales that already own it or people who invest in ETH. So it's a big narrative shift. It's a lot of momentum. I mean, they're trying to kickstart something. But I'm hearing the same things. It has the most TVL. All the meaningful defy is going to be on Ether.

It's the most secure blockchain. But it still has the same issues like L2 cannibalization. It's still trying to scale, but it's not, I mean, it is not there yet. How do those things mesh for people who are listening and they're evaluating for different options to get exposure to ETH because there are leveraged ETFs and people must say maybe I do that

as opposed to putting money to a crypto treasury company where the premium could shift and flow? Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think I'd contest the point about like the final metals haven't changed for Ethereum for a couple reasons, right? It's not that, I think the big overarching problems, a lot of the big overarching problems,

questions on the economic sustainability of ETH still exists. But a couple big things have changed over the last few months. And usually, like, even if something fundamentally change, it often doesn't get reflected in the price until there's some sort of like forcing mechanism or catalyst, which is these digital asset treasury companies. And so I guess the two things I call out on the fundamental side is one, one of the biggest criticisms of Eith, which I think is, you know, largely justified, is just the cultural ossification that befell the Ethereum Foundation. And everything around it and the management of it. Just like the slowness of change, the fact that they came out with a grand five-year plan

a couple of a year ago that included two years of like socialization. It's like all that stuff was just incredibly disappointing as someone who thinks eat at an inquisism has so much potential. But this year we saw be with Tomash coming into coming into his new position as director of the Eid Foundation. Like there has been real meaningful change. She has him and the rest of the Eith Foundation that just done an amazing job, really totally rewriting the culture of the Eith Foundation and engaging with venture firms

and other and DFI protocols and institutions in a way that the EFoundation basically had not done for its entire history. Right. So that is a massive, massive cultural change. Like I like to say one of the adages that I was taught as a young analyst is companies or at this case protocols are collections of people. And so like the most important thing is what are the people doing and the people have have changed and it feels very different. So fundamentally that is a big change. Like now we have to see that play out and actions and all that. But organizationally it's a huge cultural change.

And the second thing is is like stable points. I mean, going back to the beginning of this conversation, Noel's point about how like nothing is written in stone until it's until the president actually signs on the dotted line for legislation. We actually did get that. Right. We actually did get circle company in public markets. We actually did get a stable coin legislation coming to place. And so now there are even more the probability of success for crypto as an asset class for ETH as a as a token has gone out materially because of those events. I have two things to add to that. One is, yeah, until it's done, it's not done. But we also tend to forget that most of the investors out there, most of the market still doesn't follow crypto. It was a done deal to all of us who look at the money. market, but that's still a relatively small segment. And then when that the signing is hitting the headlines, then new investors, new types of participants start to pay attention. So in crypto,

I've often said nothing is ever priced in simply because the market that is aware of crypto is still relatively small. And then the second is on the treasuries, I confess, I don't really pay much attention to the Bitcoin treasuries. And I certainly haven't been paying much attention to the east treasuries until this morning. I started going back over. some of the headlines and just over the past week, some really splashy big numbers were crossing our screens. And so that's when I thought, yeah, okay, this is a narrative that I don't think the market is fully aware of yet, even people like myself who do follow it very closely. And it certainly hasn't been followed by the mainstream. So the treasuries, yes, they've been around

for a while, but not at this pace, not at this volume. Ron, why don't you go ahead? Yeah, this policy and personality. Like one is, you know, this was telegraphed due to Treasury Besson's commentary, which I highlight in this post here. And, you know, he was saying on June 19, stable coins could reinforce dollar supremacy. He's a pro-stable coin policy. And, you know, I pointed this on June 17th that the number one token to benefit from that would be Ethereum because Ethereum has the most stable coin volume. So there is, you know, a telegraph from policy. But the second part is personality. What's helped Bitcoin is the personality of Michael Saylor. What's helped Robin Hood is the personality of Vlad Tenev. What hasn't helped Ethereum is Vitolic not being front and center.

You need testosterone and you have to be aggressive. You have to be on offense. This is an animal spirit's momentum market. You have to punch through. Look at how Kyle Samani and Tolly and Joe McCann have positioned Solana and they've leaned into like meme warfare. That was absent. The big irony of crypto is that a decentralized system requires a leadership more than ever. A foundation can't do that. Now, what I noticed this morning is Andrew Keyes, former executive from Consensus, he launched and he's calling it the Ethereum Machine, his own Ethereum Treasury. He was on offense. He was fighting. He was aggressive. The host asked him, do you own Bitcoin?

He said, no, I'd rather own an iPhone instead of a landline. That's what you need. That's an amazing line. He's a good public speaker as well. So this is just getting warmed up. Okay. So what are our predictions? I mean, and this might be more for you, Cosmo and Rom, but where does the market end here for

for Eath? I know that 4,000 could lead to another. other short squeeze for the run up. What are your how are you in a very not official financial advice point of view? Like how are you guys playing the market where it is right now? Because people are, it's very frothy. There's a lot of FOMO. And sometimes there's an adage.

Be scared of those are greedy. And lots of people are greedy right now. How do you play it? How do you time it? What are the signals that you're looking for? Yeah. I mean, I think the hardest thing about using that adage is that it's pretty clear that, like, be free for when others are greedy, but like, who are the others, right? And the crypto world has been sort of isolated to itself for a very long time.

And so we've only worried about whether the crypto world is greedy. And then I've always like, the big prize is like getting to the point where people in Main Street are truly fully allocated as asset class. And it's very clear we're very, very early in that longer term. penetration story. And so, however, I think I could have said that over the last few years, every single, every single time things surge, I would have pointed to that bullcase and, you know, you got to hold that. So I don't know, that's like the careful dance we got to do here is within crypto native capital,

like people are pretty allocated. But within Trad V, and they still aren't. I think where that leaves me is, as each day goes by, I think more and more likely, and we are seeing signs of this, the waves of main street capital are going to come in. And so I'm like more and more confident about keeping our exposure out there. But who knows? This story has always taken longer to play out than, you know, the optimist in this industry might expect. And maybe just a quick follow-up, Cosmo, because I know you lead Pantara's like crypto treasuries, I guess, business line.

I can only imagine how many deals you get come across your death. Maybe you can share that with us. No, yeah, it's wild. I like to say, I mean, I remember when we, like, we're fortunate. And sort of in being quite early this space because I come from a traditional equity back or public equities background and then, but have been, you know, managing our token portfolio for some time. And so this marriage of this crossover of tokens and public equities fits exactly, fits like my mindset very well. I understand exactly how SEC filings work and how all the registrations and how public companies work and all the litigritty gritty. And then I also, you know, have, we have strong views on which tokens we want to learn term. And so when the first one came out, the first one in the U.S. really came out, which was DFDV, the Solano Treasury Company. I was like, wow, this is really cool. I think this could really work.

Let's like take this crazy non-consensus bet on this working. And it's probably going to be the only one, but like, it's a great one-off to put you in our investment. And then we were a suit approach by Tether and Cantor and something saying, hey, we actually have this micro strategy copycat for Bitcoin that we've been baking for a while. We'd love for you to get involved. And I was like, okay, maybe it's two and done. Like, we'll do this one and it'll be a really big investment. We'll fire a big bullet.

And then that's it. Like, this is we are two and that's it. And now we're sitting here. I've taken 100 pitches over the last four months. And so it's been quite the acceleration after, you know, our first two deals got incredible reception of the public markets. Everyone sort of saw that and tried to do something similar. And I'd say I'm still very positive on the idea that there will be more people that come

to market and do succeed. There's obviously going to be a lot of creative destruction as well as there is in any set of new startups. Not all these guys are going to make it, but some of them will make it and do really well. And so we're continuing to invest pretty meaningfully in this space, probably more so than any other crypto-native fund because I do think it's it's so rare in your career as an investor to get to see that like the genesis of a whole new category of companies. Right. And so we're pretty excited to leg in here and see how long it goes. Maybe just one quick follow up to that, because I know a lot of people listening probably has the same question that I do. I mean, I'm sure there are some very easy disqualifying items in a pitch that will make you cast it aside.

But how do you really determine what is the best deal? What is, and maybe not just for Pantera, but like the best long term, but, but, the companies are the best chance at long-term success because outsiders who are not intimately knowledgeable about how all this works might say every single company seems pretty homogenous. Like how do we which is the right one? What are the risks that are known and unknown? Like how do you discern all that when you're working through pitches? Yeah. Well, I think first you have to like fully believe that this strategy is sustainable.

And, you know, we've done the work and done the idea. running to believe that to be true. That at salt is like a whole, you know, legitimate discussion that people should have. What do you believe these can sustain? Which we do. But then the next point is that like, to your point, this is,

there are a lot of them and only, and it is relatively homogenous, or it seems relatively homogenous from the outside. And it's because it's true. Like the, this is relatively commoditized, right? Your only moat really is capital and capital's not a real moat. And so I do think, think this is a relatively, like, I think there's, there's good execution, a big bad

execution, but it is a relatively commoditized industry where there's probably going to be, and in any relatively commoditized industry, you see that eventually there's two or three players that really dominate the space, right? It's never a monopoly, but it's also not a long tail of many people. Um, and right now we're in that Genesis where there are a lot of people trying to become those next dominant guys. And so that's why we're, that's where we're investing in them in a variety of players with different tax. Um, I think the key things that we're looking for is like you really have to, if it's success, we have to get to scale, like, whatever things that we're looking for, people who can scale.

I think one is we have to believe in the underlying token, of course. Like, I have to want to actually be long and believe that that token is going to go up over time. And so there's, you know, some selection of tokens that fit that criteria. It has to be a large enough scale token, right? You can't be to coin market cap number 500, let alone number, not be number 50. You probably have to be top 10, 15 tokens. otherwise you just don't have enough critical mass to get the end enough scale.

And then especially you also have to have like main street awareness and appeal. I think a lot of crypto tokens, like they, they optimize for servicing the crypto economy and optimizing servicing crypto retail, but like as opposed to normies or mainstream retail. And so it has to be something that truly everyone in the broader market can understand very clearly. And, you know, again, that narrows the token universe a little bit. And then it comes down to execution, right? You really have to have both the marketing skill set and be able to drive awareness for your token, be able to drive awareness for your company, and come across with a really differentiated evangelizing mission.

And then two, you also have to have the Trad VIII credentials of knowing how the SEC process works, knowing how the capital process works, knowing all each of those, having each of those tools, how to effectively use each of those financial and leadering tools. So I think it's a combination of both and some teams do it better. than others. Ron, what are your thoughts on all this? We're a treasury company. We're cross-asset class thematic investors. So we look at a lot of asset classes and try to see if there's some synthesis, we can find some conclusion. And what I see are some signs of fatigue. For example, look at market leaders like Robin Hood or Circle or Coinbase over the last week. I see some fatigue

there. If you look at things in terms of seasonality, next month is the worst month for for Bitcoin. Seasonality matters more than most other asset classes because you don't have free cash flow. You have more momentum and sentiment and traders look at these things. So I think there's more fatigue here. I think Ethereum will continue to have relative strength. I completely agree with Cosmo that there's a strong D5 follow-on story here. That might be a Q4 story. You're already you've seen tokens like Ave start to approach at 2021 highs, you're going to have traders start to instinctually want to de-risk around that. And as I mentioned before, I just didn't like the news reaction. I don't think we need to 3D trust the news. Prices should go up on news. Digital assets

are like Ram Jets. They're fueled by airflow. They go up or they go down. And when they go up, They keep going up and they need to keep going up because momentum creates its own demand. What I see is softening in momentum. We've also seen that digital assets can spend quite a lot of time chopping sideways. We've been through those somewhat painful markets. Speaking of fatigue, I've been wondering about the IPO fatigue. I mean, we've had some spectacular successes on crypto companies IPOing this year. But we're starting to sense a kind of fatigue in the stock market anyways.

And now we have a whole host of those. big crypto companies filing IPO prospectuses. Does that mean that the second half will not be met with the same success the first half was? Ram, you are in this weeds every day. What do you think? I agree. I agree.

I think it's hard for people to focus. There are a lot of treasury companies launching. I don't think we've seen the last of them. The first time you see a launch, it's a novelty and it creates excitement. It creates interest and focus. but now that focus is being fractured. And so hard for people to rally behind that asset for that asset to emerge as a leader.

Yeah, but I'm thinking more of the crypto companies listing on the public, going public, like BitGo we saw today, like Grace Scale, like bullish, like I'm sure I'm missing some others. There's a rush, I mean, Circle did really well because there hadn't really been a big crypto for a while and everyone wanted to get that in their equity portfolios. I agree.

Are we going to get tired of this soon? No, that I don't think we'll get tired of, no. Because if you look at those comps versus public market, depends on name by name, but some of these names are just mispriced versus their public comps. You know, Coinbase has priced at 60 times earnings. So if you look at the valuation for some of these names in the private markets, they are priced at 35% of a public market comp.

So, you know, I think in Q4, we'll see more of the market. those. But you know, you had a lot of these deals in 2021 that were struck at absurd valuations and they have to grow into valuations and, you know, we'll see how they digest all of that. But I think the appetite for IPOs is still there, but we might have to wait for Q4 or Q1. That also brings us on to the VC funding space. You mentioned the huge valuations 21. Then VC funding dried up. Nobody really wanted to do a down round. I mean, Cosmo, are you seeing VC activity pickup? I've been keeping a track of the. announcements that we've seen and they seem kind of small. Yeah, I'd say a lot of the activity right now is actually in the public markets and sort of some of these pre-IPO rounds, if you will. I think to Rob's point, it's not lost on many capital allegations in the space right now that Coinbase and Circle are trading where they are. And there's this big pipeline of companies that should have done public over the last few

years, but basically wasn't allowed to. And so, and that are, you know, we can argue about whether Coinbase is fair at 60 times earnings or not, but like certainly cheaper than that. And so there's a, there's a lot of people trafficking that particular segment of the market right now. And then, you know, the early, the super early stage is always very active. There seems to be maybe a little bit of a lull in that, you know, in between. But the early stage, super, super early stage, super active. And then this like growth stage, free IPO stage is also quite active. I think we're going to find out the answer to your question about relatively soon because all these companies that have filed confidential S-1s, I mean, think the next three to six months, they're going to go public and we'll see what the market thinks.

I am interested to see how they do because, I mean, as exorbitantly priced as Coin Mason Circle may have been, they're also sort of clear market winners, segment winners, at least in terms of the U.S., especially in the Circle's case. And I guess Coinbase is too, if you compare to Binance. But I mean, Gemini, bullish, I think they only made $80 million last year. Gray scale, it's profitable, but we discussed last week how we have some real questions about how they're going to diversify and grow their business. I know BigGo is a large custodian and they're kind of behind the scenes. So they might not have the same brand recognition as some of these other retail facing companies. But none of those really scream as like must have if you're starting like a mountain rush from her of crypto companies or a starting five of crypto companies. And I'm curious to see what BitGo financials are.

I mean, I guess all of them. But the other ones, I don't expect to be as impressive as CoinBases in particular. And Circle was really, I guess, more of a growth story than financials anyway. So it is interesting to see what will happen. And now they have all these Bitcoin Treasury companies to compete with two and people want leveraged exposure. So we're going to get our answer soon. I guess that's my long-wind way of getting to that point.

Well, and just for somebody to go public, It doesn't have to be the best thing since slice bread, right? There are plenty of companies in the public markets that are like, fine. Like that are not special, but they're fine. But they exist because they are profit producing like real enterprises. And so if I'm like a Fidelity PM or, you know, if I used to be in whatever C, I used to be it. Like, I do probably want to build a portfolio of crypto exchanges. I don't want to only own Coinbase.

I may not own them all at the same weight, but there's room. There's room for it for another one. I guess so, but I feel like Coinbase and Circle have just created this impossible standard for people to live. I mean, Gem and I'm sure it'll be fine, but I mean, that's, I mean, it's mostly by the Lincoln by anyway. And I mean, I see Bitco, like, I mean, I see Bitco because there isn't really a publicly traded. Yeah, I mean, I could see them being successful depending on what their financials are. But the other ones, sure, I mean, it could be fine, but we're not talking on this podcast. Like, fine in this day and age right now won't cut it.

Like, people want to see, like, massive 600% appreciations post-IPO. So we'll see. We're getting close to time. But, Noel, I know there's a few things that we want to talk about, our macro expert. A lot of talk last week about whether or not Trump was going to fire, pal, at least the governor call it's at the last minute. And you've got a stay of execution for at least a few more days. Like, what are your thoughts on that? And just looking ahead, I know earnings are coming up.

We had a CPI reading the day after we recorded last week. Just quickly, what are some of the things that you're seeing and writing about in your newsletter? I love that question. Thank you. On the macro data, as I suggested last week on this podcast, it doesn't really matter. The CPI didn't really have anything surprising, sort of no excuse whatsoever, no reason to cut rates on the horizon. Economic growth, we've seen other data to come out since then.

Again, looking okay. We've got housing this week. It's probably the main set of data. Otherwise, it's relatively quiet. There are signs that tariffs are having an impact. Inflation is relatively tame, but you lift the lid, and there are signs that some of the categories that are being hit by tariffs are those that happen to be increasing most.

You look at import price indices, and they are definitely climbing. Meanwhile, you've got consumer expectations are correcting back to more reasonable levels. We've often talked here about how meaningless really they are, but it is something that the Fed does follow. And speaking of the Fed, the fuss around the possibility of Trump firing Powell is just as bad as if Trump actually tried to fight power in terms of reducing global trust

that the political independence of the Federal Reserve will be maintained. And what's the consequence of the loss of independence of the Federal Reserve? It's inflation, because investors around the world will assume that anyone in the White House will want to spend more because that is how you win votes and monetary inflation will become

a much more permanent feature of the landscape. And that obviously does mean either a disastrous impact on economies or higher interest rates, which is not exactly going to be what those in the White House want. So in other words, very bad news. Even just talking about it, as Trump is doing, is doing enough damage, in my opinion, to pretty much ensure that there are no interest rate cuts on the horizon this year, not just because of the potential. inflation impact of the threat. But because Powell's not going to want to be seen to be going into the pressure, he has his legacy to worry about.

It's interesting to bring that up because I do know, I think, looking at features data that traders are pricing still in one to the two cuts, I guess, in expectations that the economy, I guess, stays somewhat in stasis. So, like, how do you respond if someone asked you that question? And then just a second follow-up, Powell doesn't decide rate decisions on his own. I mean, it's a whole voting member. I mean, you all know the names that are being bandied about as potential replacements, but will that person, I know Trump will get to replace a couple of other Fed governors over the next couple of years,

but will that person have the moral authority to just do what Trump wants, or will the other voting members and the governing board and stuff stand up for, I guess, what they think is the right thing to do? I believe no and yes. No, that person, we're thinking of Chris Waller, obviously. He will not have the authority to just do. what he wants. And he is way over on the dovish side of the spectrum, like way over, compared to his peers on the FOMC committee. Most are leaning hawkish. The median is relatively hawkish,

and it will take quite a lot to shift that. There is one governor who's stepping, or Fed President, I believe, who's stepping down in January. But other than that, Trump can only replace two on the FOMC committee, two tops. And that's not enough to shift the median. So I don't think that's going to make any difference whatsoever. And the others, again, even if they, even if they were to change their minds about the need for a rate cut, there is such a thing as maintaining the Fed independence for the sake of their own reputations. And so going against any pressure to do so, whatever their actual opinions may be. And again, we have yet to see what the numbers do. If, as is expected, as is increasingly expected, inflation does start to tick up because of tariff pressures during the

course of the year, it will then just add even more on certain. Now, one thing that's not very well understood is that it's not necessarily inflation price, sorry, tariff price pressure that would be enough for the Fed to hike rates because tariffs in theory are a one-off. You can look through them. It's more the fiscal situation. That is the unspoken concern. We're focused on the impact from tariffs. It's the fiscal situation that is a much bigger danger because monetary policy has a much bigger effect on the kind of inflation the Federal Reserve wants to combat. than a one-off tariff hike.

Yeah, interesting. One more quick follow-up, and then we'll start to wrap up. This week, there's a really big summit between China and Europe. I think Ursula von der Leyen is going to Beijing. It's either Tuesday or Wednesday. I forget the day. But Thursday, but what are your expectations there? It's a very tenuous time for both economies.

I mean, they're both trying to negotiate with the U.S. Beijing is looking to potentially dump products on Europe if they can't. sell them to the U.S. right now. So what are you anticipating? How should investors think about what's going to happen in the next couple of days? It's a really, really big deal. And I would say easily the biggest macro event this week is the EU China summit. And there's some fascinating backstory there. This has been on the table now for a very long time. The EU's, it's the EU's turn to host. They invited President Xi Jinping to come to Europe and let's talk this through because we have so much trade that we can be doing together, especially given the antagonism.

from the other side of the ocean. And she thinks team said, no, you come here. And the European team had no choice but to say, okay, we'll come to you. This is a big power struggle already. There was going to be a two-day summit. The Chinese team decided, nah, one day's fine.

The European team have no choice but to say, okay, that's fine also. So already they're starting off on the back foot. Already there's a lot of tension, largely because some very stupid things that the EU officials have been saying, very antagonistic things towards, China. And it raises the question of who does the EU think it is going to trade with, if not the

US or China? There's really no substitute. So the EU is in a very difficult place. We have the ECB meeting on Thursday also to decide what to do with interest rates here. They'll probably do nothing because they got their summer break coming up. But still, it highlights just a sort of fragile situation. The European economy is in at a time it is supposed to be raising common debt to fund the defense spending that the United States has finally goaded it into accepting it needs to do. If the EU doesn't grow, then where really is the global commerce, where really are the global commerce hubs going to migrate to? That's interesting.

All right. So let's wrap up. But as you guys all know, I like to wrap up by just asking each one of you to share one thought that was left on the cutting room floor or some contrarian opinion that. you're itching to get out and start a fight on Twitter. So, Ram, how about I come to you first? I think NewBank is an interesting idea. Trump put tariffs on Brazil due to the treatment of one of his buddies, former prime minister there.

Now they're talking about amnesty, and that should cause some relief for the Brazilian stock market, which has traded off on those tariff news. So I think that's behind us now and the prospect of better tariff treatment, which doesn't really hurt Brazil anyway. It hurts American importers. There's a good play in Brazil there, specifically in Brazil. I think there are a number of interesting ideas. I think NewBanks is one of them.

Cosmo. I think there's not a new piece of news, but I do think maybe the one thing that isn't talked about enough is, and it's happened a while ago, is Coinbase getting added to the S&P 500. I think part of the reason we're seeing all this excitement about Circle, all this excitement about the digital asset treasuries, it really stems back to the fact that Coinbase was added to the benchmark for every single manager in the world in April. And now if you will manage any professional money in any professional capacity,

all of a sudden you went from not needing to care about digital assets to now being forced to benchmark against digital assets. And, you know, you have to choose what to be underweight, overrate, or whatever it is. And so I think that is making that is making. such a huge impact on people's perception of how much they need to be, and they're choosing to be over-allocated right now. Okay. All right, Noel.

I'm going to stick with stable coins, but not in the U.S. in Hong Kong. Hong Kong's stable coin law goes into effect August 1st, and we are already seeing a scrambling of firms from the mainland trying to get the stable coin licenses. And there's talk of issuance of Juan backed stable coins in Hong Kong. And you read between the lines and you think, who's really, who's really, who's really, who's doing the experimenting here and why? Hong Kong is traditionally seen as the sandbox, the financial innovation sandbox for the Chinese government. Stable coin law is, I think, significant, especially at a time that China is trying to increase its bilateral trade with non-dollar companies,

doing more and more outside the dollar system, and is also at the same time trying to develop its own digital yuan to be able to handle some of the cross-border payments. Would not be surprised to see Chinese government also encourage many of the state banks to start working with stable coins, either private or public. There's not really that much difference in China in order to be able to facilitate bilateral cross-border trade and smooth. The wheels of commerce were things to continue to go and to be complicated with the United States and Europe. I guess for me, just quickly, it's kind of a fun tidbit, but I'm sure we all laughed when we saw the news last week. I think Vanguard is sort of accidentally the world's largest holder of strategy because of its various index funds. And Vanguard for anyone listening who doesn't know, although I would imagine most people listening are well aware of the fact that Vanguard is vehemently against crypto.

I think that's just a perfect example of just how resilient this industry is that just in the face of opposition from governments, from regulators, and even from the private sector, that continues to denigrate it and cast it aside. Market forces are market forces, and they end up winning out. So I just think that's another kind of feather in the cap of this industry, that despite Vanguard's best efforts, they are very long crypto, whether or not they like it. And with that, I'd just like to thank everybody for watching and listening. Thanks to our guests and Cosmo, our special guest today. We'll be back next week with another episode of Bitsen,

tips.