Unchained - Bits + Bips: The Case for Why DATs Are Superior to Crypto ETFs - Ep. 897

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

DATs aren’t done. They may just be getting started.  In this episode, CoinFund’s Chris Perkins and Upexi’s Brian Rudick join Ram Ahluwalia and Steven Ehrlich to dissect why some DATs could outcompete ETFs for certain investors, the bullish accretion math behind premiums, and what makes a winning vehicle. We also dig into whether this is altcoin season or a head fake, why Galaxy’s tokenized-share move matters, and the one market unlock Perkins says could change everything. Use this episode to pressure-test your assumptions: are DATs “just banks,” or the best product-market-fit crypto has found for TradFi capital? Thank you to our sponsor ⁠Xapo Bank⁠! Xapo offers Bitcoin-backed loans of up to $1 million, so eligible members can access liquidity without selling their BTC.  Hosts: Ram Ahluwalia, CFA, CEO and Founder of Lumida Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained Guests: Christopher Perkins, Managing Partner and President of CoinFund Brian Rudick, Chief Strategy Officer at Upexi Links: DATs: How Crypto Treasury Companies Are Turning to DeFi and TradFi to Juice Yields How Michael Saylor Plans to Ensure Strategy Keeps Its Bitcoin Forever These 4 Crypto Treasury Companies Are Primed for a Price Crash Crypto Treasury Companies Are All the Rage. Could They Cause an Industry Collapse? Tokenization: Federal Reserve to hold conference discussing crypto stablecoins, tokenization, and AI GLXY tokenized stock Ondo Finance launched over 100 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs on Ethereum CZ-owned Trust Wallet launches tokenized stocks and ETFs Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro ⏱  3:00 Are markets set for another September swoon? 📈 6:03 Why the bull case for DATs isn’t over 🏦 12:41 Why Brian says “DATs are banks” 💡 18:20 Are DATs better products than ETFs for investors? 🧮 21:00 How the math behind premiums shows DATs create value 🪙 28:01 Whether this is the time for altcoins to shine 🌍 35:10 Where macro is heading and what investors should watch 🚨 37:48 Why Galaxy’s tokenized-share move on Solana is such a big deal 🔑 49:25 What the key market unlock is for altcoins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For me, it's just this very asymmetric risk reward, which is why I like, I've placed all my bets in datland, essentially. We've had dat exhaustion. There's too many dats. It's a bubble in dats. If you're able to take on meme-like properties in the process of driving these fundamentals, even bigger things could happen. Hi, everyone. Welcome to bits and bits, exploring how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. I'm your host, Steve Ehrlich, High Scribe, of the Unshribe. Kingdom and I'm here with Ram Alawalia, Mastra of Wealth, leader of Lumida. Let's go. And we have two special guests.

First one is actually a repeat guest, Chris Perkins, the Golden Hand of Coin Fund. So welcome, Chris. Hey, thanks, Steve. Good to see you. I always like it when people blush with the Game of Thrones nickname. So, Brian, wait until you see what we have for you. And then we're also here with Brian Rudik, guardian of the Salon of Crown at Upexie. Very nice.

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, no, no problem. You can thank ChatGPT for those wonderful nicknames. One early bitcoiner sold 30,000 BTC too soon, missing out on over a billion dollars. Don't want to make the same mistake? With Zapo Bank, eligible members can get instant cash without selling their Bitcoin. Check out Zappobank.com slash Unchained for more. Brian, why don't you just take a second to introduce yourself and your firm since it's your first time on the show?

Yes. Thank you very much. I'm Brian Rudik. I'm the chief strategy officer of UPEXE. We are one of the largest Solana Treasury companies, and we were actually a first mover in the space. So we did the first large-scale equity pipe to create an old coin treasury company. We also did the first in-kind convertible note to raise additional funds. We have about 400 million in Solana. Prior to this, I led the research effort for GSR, one of the largest digital asset trading firms for four and a half years. Prior to that, I spent a decade on Wall Street,

willisly managing a book of bank stocks, always in a long, short construct for firms like Citadel, Ballyasne, Millennium. You mentioned that because DATs are just banks, and that's what got me really interested in this and allowed me to really internalize where all the value creation for shareholders comes from for Dats. That's what just banks. Wow, that's quite the provocative statement there. Yeah, we could certainly get into it.

Yeah. And before we do, Chris, I know you've been on the show before, but just the case there's some listeners, new listeners, one of them, you just briefly introduce yourself and your firm as well. Yeah, I'm Chris Perkins, president of coin fund, one of the managing partners here. We're early stage investors with seed, venture, and liquid strategies. We've been around for 10 years.

My background was also in traditional finance. I actually started as a U.S. Marine, was in Iraq, came back, and had a career both at Lehman. So, blown up in Iraq, blown up at Lehman, and then I went to Citigroup prior to joining. Coin Fund four years ago. All right. Great. So it's been a couple of weeks since we hosted the show due to summer holidays and some other things. So, Ron, why don't you start? Just give us a quick recap of

the month and sort of your take on what's happening so far. Historically, I think most people listening to here know that September does not tend to treat Bitcoin and crypto very well. Is there a reason for hope this time around? Right. Well, that's where we left off, I believe, on the last show at where I was on, it was like discussing just the negative seasonality around Bitcoin and shared that I thought Bitcoin would struggle to get above 125K due to that and some other factors. You know, you had a lot of enthusiasm around the passage of the Genius Act, Stable Coin Bill. And, you know, after that, it's hard for Marks to see forward through that. You're also seeing just a softness in what I call animal spirits.

So high momentum names that retail traders love have just been weaker, which generally also happens this time of year. So I think that's a part of this. This happened the last year and the year before that, too. The Clarity Act is something to stay focused on. Maybe we'll touch on that soon. I doubt it gets passed in the first attempt, just like the current stable coin bill as well. There are some concerns around Bitcoin and the four-year cycle. which for those that follow the cycle says that Bitcoin tops in November or so.

And some people are saying the cycle's over. I don't think that's the case where we are now. So when people are excited, I was pessimistic. People are getting pessimistic and getting a little more cheery. So we're kind of a nomads land. We'll come back to that in a moment though. But I believe those are the highlights. I think one thing else I'd share is that several of these dats are just not perform well.

We've had dat exhaustion. There's too many dats. It's a bubble in Dats. We've been talking about this bubble in Dats for a while. When Wall Street sells too much product, be cautious. My view is that you have one leading dat per asset class, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana. Maybe there's a Pepsi.

You're going to have a Coke. You're going to have a Pepsi, and then no one cares about number three. Some of these are trading below MNAV. Michael Saylor, obviously, leads micro-strategy or strategy they called it now, change the rules governing when they buy Bitcoin. I think that helps spoil the market in a certain way, right? The whole thesis around Bitcoin is like immutability and you just change the rules. And then he changed them back.

You change them back. Like that doesn't help. That doesn't help. None of that helps. Can't change things. But he had to change things. So, you know, these concepts are being tested. Okay.

So, yeah, let's talk about that. since we have, I think, I guess maybe our first debt representative on the show. I mean, Brian, Upexie was very early into the Salana Treasury game. Talk about what the last couple of weeks have been like for you. I'd say not much has really changed. So for us, we're really focused on what we can control. For any dat, that's really two things. One is you want to be as visible as possible.

So you want to maximize people actually knowing about you. And so if they think about, hey, I want to invest in Solana, maybe that is the best way to do it. They think about UPEXC. And so we announced this morning that we're at three different traditional finance conferences later this month. I'll be disappointed if our pace doesn't pick up over the rest of the year. And so we're really hyper-focused on increasing our visibility. We have a bunch of other initiatives afoot there. And then the second component is issuing equity, which would you issue equity above book?

It is by definition accretive for shareholders. MSTR selling it two times. They've come in a little bit, but it's tantamount to selling a dollar for two, or buying Bitcoin half off. And this is how they created literally 26 billion worth of free Bitcoin for shareholders over the last six quarters. So we're very focused on figuring out what we can do there. We have an equity line that we're hopeful will go effective very soon. And then we're always out in the market.

And this is not MNPI. It's the business model of ADAP to raise capital in this accretive fashion. So we're looking at all options in order to do so. Okay. And Chris, let's put you. Go ahead. I think ROM's too negative. If you step back, this is the summer of DATS.

2021 was DFI Summer. This is where DATS came on the scene and established themselves as a core innovation. And a lot of that unlock was frankly regulatory. Saylor approved it. And now we've got this regulatory unlock. Now, I'll agree with ROM. there's a ton of froth. However, I believe, probably like Brian here,

that dads are going to emerge as a fundamental part of market structure within crypto ecosystems, public facing. Then you've got the foundation labs. Maybe they consolidate. But this has been a major innovation. And the reason why not all of them have been successful is because it's really, really hard to pull it off. And we've been very, very active in the space.

To make a dat work, you need about five elements. Market timing has to be right. The market has to be ready for you. The market was closed for a long time. Really important. Timing is hugely important. You need good fundamentals on your token. And I think as we depart Bitcoin, we get into yielding assets. And that gets really exciting when you stake and you restake and you can generate fundamental value that way to generate a natural MNAV. Foundation alignment really, really helps. You need to have really good advisors, bankers who know what they're doing, top-notch. You need a strong management team. You need good asset managers who know how to manage those underlying assets and drive those that yield. And then perhaps most of all, you need a KOL.

You need someone who can tell the story and who can translate. These dads are beautiful convergence tech innovations. They bring it all together. I think they're here to stay. Yes, there's going to be a shakeout. but the winners are going to be really, really special thing to watch. And we're very excited. And by the way, I don't think we're at the beginning of this.

I don't think we're at the end of this. I think we're at the very beginning. I think there's some amazing projects that are still coming out. And, yeah, we remain really excited. Brian, one of the interesting trends that came out when that's first came to prominence, I guess, post-sailer, was the fact that the first companies to follow were focused on Solana. not, not ETH. And it was, it was you guys, it was sole strategies, and it was Defy Development Corp, I believe. I always get that last name. I was confused that last name. But now, I mean,

Heath recently hit an all-time high. ETH Treasury companies are raising billions. And Solana is, all of a sudden, in certain ways, maybe the little brother to Ethereum again. What is it like for you right now? Because I'm sure when you're at fundraising, investors are asking about the differences between Solana and Ethereum, they both can generate passive yield. What are some of the hard questions that you're getting in some of these meetings, and what are your responses to them? Yeah, that is a great question. I would say that candidly, the knowledge and tradfai is quite low.

So the most common question I get is, like, what's the difference between Bitcoin and Solana? Not even, like, what's the difference between Ethereum and Solana? I thought we were past that. Yeah. I mean, there are some folks that have some sort of a background in crypto or digital assets, and we'll start to ask hard questions, but nobody's asking me about, like, when is Solana going to implement multiple concurrent leaders? Like that type of thing.

I still think that there are some folks that don't truly buy into the value creation from a dat. Like, for me, it's really about having access to these value-of-cool mechanisms that, by the way, all compound. So the big one is issuing equity above book value, which you can do either via like an ATM or an equity line or even if you go to any sort of like convertible note issuance. Most like options pricing models will have like a really high delta there and we'll suggest like there's a 90% plus of these things to convert into equity because the duration of these notes are so long and the volatility of the underlying is so high.

So that is another way for Dats to actually sell equity at any. an even higher MNAB than where they're currently priced. And so, like, that to me is the big one. This is where, like, micro strategy has created so much value for shareholders. It's more than tripled the return of Bitcoin, and it has barely any leverage. But the second thing is when you get into pre-mine tokens or you get into tokens that are built on a proof of state consensus mechanism, you can do things like staking where, like, UPXC is staking to earn an 8% plus yield, turning our treasury into this productive asset.

and we're also buying locked tokens at this 15% discount. If you put that discount into any sort of yield equivalent, we're roughly doubling the staking yield on anything that we buy in locked for. And we have this buy-in-hot-all strategy. We don't intend to sell any soul, so there's no reason for us not to do that. And so these additional value accrual mechanisms are things you can't get by buying a token natively or in other instruments like an ETF.

And so I think a lot of this is investor education and just walking them through how powerful this, model can actually be when you're underpinned by the right token. Can you elaborate on the statement you had at the outset around banks or debt? It's like banks for FDIC insured, they can re-hypothecate, they have a lender of less resort. What were you getting at there? Yeah. This is a massive simplification, but banks earn spread income.

They raise funds from depositors. They lend to borrowers and they make the difference between the YOLON loans and their cost of deposits. And then also a massive simplification, but investors, will basically present value all of that feature spread income and add it to book value. Banks generally trade above book value. They don't really issue equity because it's hard to come by loan growth. But there are historically some banks like M&T that have just issued equity again and again because they traded at this premium multiple and they use it for this roll up strategy and they just

basically move. It's more of a BDC, I would say. It's a BDC, like a private credit fund that's publicly traded. business that make loans, they earn spread, they've got some back leverage, they're trying to capture that spread. Yeah. We're kind of the same way. So we raise funds from the capital markets.

We invest into Solana. We are in the difference between the return on sole and our cost of capital. When the market thinks that the return on sole will outpace our cost to capital, that spread will be positive, not just this year, but in future years. They will present value that, add it to the nav, and that will work out to be something that's above one that we can then monetize for shareholders. Got it. It's hard to underscore the importance of this education, right?

Now we have these stats running around all the traditional long-only investors and explaining what Solana means, how it's a yielding asset. That education is just so good for the asset class. And I mean, I think that's probably the biggest benefit to the ecosystem of what we're seeing here. Is it education or marketing promotion? It's both. When we first started, there were a lot of questions as to whether this was just a money grab and whether that's where this existential threat to the token ecosystems are underpin by because

you could be a four-seller at exactly the wrong time. Then I think folks have seen like Ethereum success and Tom Lee is on CNBC every other day. And in my opinion, like this is what lifted ETH from 2,700 to 4,700 is the main reason. Yeah. So I think like now there's this big focus by a lot of other token ecosystems to really embrace and push stats forward just as another key visibility mechanism to get them out there, especially to traditional investors. There's so many debts. You know, like I wonder if you were to pull someone on Twitter and say, can you name eight tickers for debts? I don't think anyone could.

I know Chris could. I know Brian could. And it's like, I think about the dad who has like eight kids. I struggle with three kids, my kids' names. I call one by the other name. People know MSTR, for sure. It took years to build that brand and it. It literally comes out of these things.

Like, how many elements can the human mind recall? And you're competing for those slots in the context of other tickers. It is the attention game. It's not just the product game, which is Ryan and Chris, where you were focused on and the value creation machine and the financing machine and the staking yield packaging machine, et cetera. Like, there are not enough slots in the human mind for all these players to succeed and thrive.

What do we make, though, I mean, the attention game, I mean, Tom Lee and Bitmind, their MNAV is, I think, 1.1 now, and it's been dropping. What do you guys make of that? So I haven't been super close on other ecosystems. systems, but my impression is that Bitcoin has kind of become saturated. I think you're seeing some like Empere and Sequins that are trading at like 0.7.8 of NAV. I don't think that Ethereum is saturated, but I think it is a bit of a race. And so I think you're seeing some of the players in there sell equity all the way down to one times, whereas you had someone like

micro strategy that when they were the only game in town, they would only really sell the other ATM when they were at 1.6, 1.7 or higher. So I think all that selling out there, and I see why they're doing it, they want to be the biggest, because whoever's the biggest gets the most trading volumes, and then you can issue the most equity via the ATM, because that's what you're kind of limited by.

So that, in my opinion, is what is happening out there in the other token ecosystems. I do think that Solana has the highest staking yield. You can buy lock tokens at this discount for built-in gains for share. holders. And so I do think like there's some argument for a Salon Adat to trade at this higher MNAV versus some others. And so far that is proving to be true. But again, like I need us out there in the public news. There are other Salon Adap's coming. So we'll we'll see if that does anything to the MNAVs either way. Yeah, I think you're at 1.7 right now. I was just checking your website. Chris, in your view, what's the better move? Like, is it better to own spot commodity or own the DAI? If I look at Ethereum, like Ethereum's got a bit, forced bid from these debts. So it's an accumulation bid. And if you're a dat, you're issuing shares

that's called dilution. That's cell pressure. Isn't the simple idea just buy what people are forced to buy or keep it simple? Okay. So it's still super early as we get into a lot of the dads. And I'll give you an example. Last week, we put together a letter to the SEC and FASB because LSTs were considered liquid staking tokens are considered intangible assets. And so like we still need to have a lot of things to come together. A lot of these stats are only getting the machine running right now. I saw that one of our portfolio companies, EtherFi benefited from, you know, ETHILA put some, some ETH to work there. So it's, it's very early. But when you step back, let's, let's look at like ETH as an example, because there's a little more complexity around the ETF. You can invest in the ETF. You can invest in

spot. For a lot of investors, they can't touch spots. That's off the table. That brings them to the ETF. But the ETF, they can't generate yield because of the, there's a lot of constraints around daily liquidity with ETS. You know, you have a 13-day unbonding window. You can't just stake. Eventually, they'll figure it out and you'll have a total return product. But it's an inferior product.

No offense to the ETF issuers, but it is because you don't get that yield. And that's core to the investment, if you're a long-term investor. You're any-term investor, right? You want that yield. Okay. So that brings you to the DAD. The DAT has that wrapper like the ETF that you can buy on your brokerage account very easily and very accessible. It gives you greater access to the yield of the underlying product.

So in a sense, it's a better product because you can't touch spot because you're a traditional player. You're not allowed to. It's not part of your investment authorizations. It's a little bit better than the ETF. So that brings you to the DAT for here and now. At the same time, maybe someday a total return, pure total return product will emerge. And so maybe you have a little lack of transparency.

I think the dads are trying to say, wait a second, we're going to differentiate through transparency. This is what we're doing with the assets. And that's the game, is to give investors, not just access to the asset, but to everything you can do with that asset, leveraging defy and everything else. That's the investment case.

And a wrapper that they understand, a wrapper that they're allowed to deploy. Oh, by the way, you open up the entirety of U.S. equity capital markets. You can eventually, it'll be, I mean, it's no different than any other equity. You take it to your prime brokerage account. You can get leverage and you can use all the other things that you use equities for, collateral, et cetera, going forward. That's the case for this instrument. You're right, Rahm, there's like plenty of froth. I talked about the elements. They all have to come together. It's super hard. It sounds like Brian's got to figure out. But that's the case? The one thing that I would just plus one on is I really do think that people haven't

thoroughly internalized just how powerful this accretion is and like compounding nav over time. And so here is the math and this is what helped me and these multiples have come down, but this is the numbers that are fresh in my head. So say I want to start a dad to buy Salana and let's say all the comps are trading it five times. So I raise $100 from Steve. I give Steve 100 shares, he now owns 100 shares worth a dollar each, that my dad is holding $100. I now remix that USD into Solana, and because now I hold $100 worth a soul, I achieve this peer-like multiple, and now it is a 500, and peers are all trading it a five times MNAV. Now my company has a $500 market cap, and Steve owns 100% 100 chairs worth $5 each.

Here's where the aggression comes in. I now want to go raise another $100, but because I'm trading at $5 a share, I actually only need to issue 20 shares. So I go out to the market, I sell 20 shares at $5 each, I get another $100 U.S. dollars, I remix that into Solana. It takes on another $500 market cap, and now it's a $1,000 company. Steve has actually been diluted, so he owns 100 out of 120 shares, or roughly 85%, but now he 85% of a $1,000 company, and he just saw his investment move from $500 to $850

via one accretive issuance. So my one point is just this accretion math is so powerful, and you can trade at this premium that you could just use it to continually compound nav. And as long as your multiple holds, your share price should move up commensurately. The second thing is, is I personally feel, once we get past this wave of supply, that MSTR should be the floor in terms of MNAV. They're trading at like 1.6 right now. I say that because there should be some sort of embedded growth premium for a smaller company.

Like if we issue $100 million of equity at two times, it's going to be very nicely appreciative for us. Whereas if MSTR issues 100 million of equity at any multiple, it's not going to move the needle because they're so big. So there should be this embedded growth premium for us. Similarly, when you are underpinned by a much smaller token, all else equal, there's more potential upside. So Seoul is literally 4% the market cap of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is unlikely to 5x from here, you know, over any reasonable time period. It's the fifth largest asset in the world,

whereas Solana has a lot more potential upside, all else equal. So there should be more embedded growth premium there and then access to these additional value accrual mechanisms that you don't get with MSTR via things like staking and buying locked tokens at a discount. So for all those reasons, I kind of think when things shake out, at least I'm very hopeful that other Dats will end up trading at a premium to wherever my growth strategy is based on market conditions. But that's at least how I think about multiples. If you're able to take on meme-like properties in the process of driving these fundamentals, even bigger things could happen. Oh, yes. And like, let's be honest, this is a phenomenon we witnessed in crypto.

We witnessed in equities as well. And that's the other thing to be mindful of. Well, the whole goal is for these things to become a meme. Not all of them can. This is like a Highlander game. That could only be one. That's the nature of memes. You've got Palantir, you know, Tesla was a meme, but you can't have them all mean.

That's my view. That's my. Now, here's a, I'll ask a question for you. I think I have an answer as well, but I want to get your perspective. So as an investor, would you prefer a high market cap to NAV or a low? Now, I think you're going to say, Brian, I want a high M cap to NAV. because I can go accumulate the underlying spot. That's number one.

Now, the irony of obviously is that you get more value with a lower M-CAP to NAV. So there's this reflexive property at work. And I think the game only works so long as the data has momentum. And when momentum breaks, you better get out of the way. And the funny thing is, if you trade below MCAP to NAV, below one,

you're an acquisition target. if your M cap, the NAV is very high, and you do an acquisition, I believe that that asset price would drop. So I think this is more complicated. There is a very complicated kind of game theory that plays out. I have so many thoughts. So high versus low MNAV, it all depends on where I think my MNAV is going in the future. If there's one dat that trades at two times, one that trades at five times, if I think there's going to be convergence, I'd rather buy the cheaper one. And if I think they'll stay where they are, I'd rather have the one trading at five times

because their issuance is going to be more accretive. And then for me, it kind of all boils down to risk reward. Like if we trade it one six, one seven, I look at like one times as the floor. And then you're like this, I don't want to say levered because it's not really leverage where all this comes from, but we're going to trade with some sort of beta to Solana. And so, you know, the risk reward is that Solana moves up very considerable. in times like that, our MNAV will likely move up as well. So Seoul Strategies was trading at 15 times.

MNAV back in December, it was a different market. There were many fewer options, but that can show you like where these MNAVs can go to. And then when you do trade at these higher MNAVs, you can do more and more accretive issuances for the benefit of shareholders. You add in all those things and they kind of compound versus like what is the downside?

Maybe we drop down to one times. Maybe Seoul falls 50%. And so for me, it's just this very asymmetric risk reward, which is why I like, I've placed all my bets in that land, essentially. All right, this is a really good conversation, but we do need to take a quick break to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible. Selling your Bitcoin just to get cash? One early Bitcoiner did and missed out on over a billion dollars. With Zappo Bank, you can access up to $1 million instantly without selling a single set. Eligible Zappo bank members can borrow up to 40% of their Bitcoin's value.

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It's securely held until your loan is repaid. Check them out at sapobank.com slash unchained. So I want to turn to some of the tokenization news that we've seen in the past, but I just want to go around the, I guess, the panel really quickly. Where does the alt-coin movement go from here? One chart that has been circulating on Twitter, I'm sure you guys have all seen it. Bitcoin's market dominance is around 58%. and change or so I know during like at the peak of the COVID driven boom,

et cetera, it drops down to like the low 40s, even below 40. Not necessarily saying that history is going to repeat itself, but it does suggest that this rotation out of Bitcoin into alts has some more room to grow. Brian, for someone like you, I mean, that could be open season for perhaps OPECC investors.

But Chris and Rahm, too. I mean, this is sort of the time when guys like you, also make your money. So maybe Chris, let's go to you first. I mean, what do you think, like, where do you see us in this current like alt coin cycle and like what are your goals in the next couple of months? Very bullish alts right here. A lot of it is predicated on the regulatory risking that we're seeing. Even in the absence of clarity, you're seeing like yesterday, the CFTC and SEC announced, you know, coming together to work to allow spot tokens to list. And so that crystallization of alts as largely commodities is going to be a mass is going to be a nice unlock.

And I'll give you some alpha what I'm looking for. And I think one of the biggest things to watch for as alt-unlock are listed futures in the U.S. Because as these tokens start having listed futures, you know immediately that they're a commodity. Because as you go through the process, the SEC didn't hold it up. it unlocks basis trading, right, where people go long spot, sell the future. And you do that, spot goes up. It unlocks ETS because what do ETS rely on for surveillance? They rely on the futures market.

So the one thing to watch for are all futures coming into play, listed futures in the U.S. Because, again, it's like the missing link for a lot of institutional buyers of that. Now, we have some initial sole futures for people like Brian, but as we go down the curve, I think this is going to be something that I'm looking for. I think it's going to happen now with the regulatory certainty that we're starting to see, I mean, have great conversations with regulators all the time. That's going to be huge. And so, look, we still, that aside, I think that we're seeing, you know, incremental focus on fundamentals.

There's good projects. There's bad projects and there's ugly projects. We'll continue to look at fundamentals. And, but I do think that we're starting, you know, this education process is so important with the Dats. You know, people are going around saying, this is Eath. Okay, this is what Solana is. And as we go down, investors are like, wait a second. These are different.

They're nuanced. I like the utility of this token because it's at the intersection of AI and crypto. That makes sense to me. So I'm very bullish. And I think we have a long way to run. Yeah, for me, I would say that thinking about it in the exact same way, way over the medium term, near term. I agree with ROM does seem like risks are mounting, like national debt concerns, sticky

inflation, tariff uncertainty, elevated valuations, but we've been dealing with these for a while. And so I kind of think like near term, altcoin prices will go the way of macro and policy risks. Long term, I am supremely bullish. My view has always been that the biggest thing holding crypto back is a lack of clear rules and regulations. I think that we are probably going to get that with the Clarity Act sometime next year. I think that that generally like incumbent big tech and big finance firms haven't really wanted to come into crypto and dismediate themselves, particularly if it adds legal and regulatory risks. But now once we get regulatory clarity, they're going to have to come in in a big way. It's all these big incumbent firms that's a bit

antithetical to crypto. They literally have billions of customers. They've got built in trust. They've got billions of dollars worth of capital to throw at it, and they have the top developers. And so this would be something like Google Chrome adding in a crypto wallet or something like Amazon adding in accepting like stable coin payments. And we actually have like the opportunity to potentially onboard the masses. And so I think like we could potentially be on like one of the biggest all coin booms that we've seen over like the medium to longer term. It's a great point.

So you have the Dats that are buying. You have trillions of dollars of stable coins coming in that are buying. And then you have 401Ks coming in that are structural buyers for the first time. That's pretty powerful. Appreciate the macro noise that that's always going to, you know. I'm on the other side of the macro. I'm actually on the bullish side of the macro, by the way, just to be clear. Like I think rates are coming down.

I think that's bullish. I think fiscal deficits are bullish. Income tax cuts for some $150K are coming. That's bullish. There's some indigestion in their term around terror. tariffs, but markets are looking through all of that. Retailers, which import from China, they're up substantially. So I'm actually not bullish on the macro stuff.

There's like a couple of weeks to sort out in September. So like timing matters. I agree also like on a and Chris, you made this point actually the last time you're here about, hey, after the stable coin boom, you get the defy boom. I think that thesis is right on the mark. I like that thesis. I like that thesis in Spot. Ethereum has momentum, though.

These are digital assets. These are momentum. It's all about momentum. Momentum is the measure of the attention. And one of the last thing I'll say there is the person with the biggest megaphone for onboarding new flows, that's Chris's point is flows, flows, flows, okay? The person, the biggest megaphone is Tom Lee, not the guitarist. That's right.

The heavy metal guy. It is Tom Lee, who might be going to drive. Joe Rogan show. And what is he talking about? Ethereum, right? Attention follows a power law distribution. Like, keep it simple. What has momentum? What has attention? What benefits from regulatory clarity? What's been highly shorted and is not transitioning from non-consensus into momentum. It's Ethereum. If you look at the Ethereum chart, you wouldn't guess that people feel despondent. And there's that there's that kind of melez out there, right? You wouldn't guess that. You look at that, you're like, oh, no, 30 people are happy. They're sitting pretty.

But I like Chris's point, though, on all especially around that defy thesis. You look at like AVE. Look at Avey. It's a leading defy protocol on Ethereum. It's doing fantastic. Yeah. But after defy, they're going to go to the agents, right? Because you can manually try to optimize your yields.

Like this is the whole stable coin thesis, right? One of the greatest gifts to crypto is that the regulators and the bank suppressed interest. Because now you've got to find it back. You're going to go to defy and you're going to realize, okay, I can do it. I'm okay with it. But my agent over here, and we invested in a company called Giza, ARMA agents, they're awesome. Let's let them do it.

They can do it better because they're awesome at optimization. So that narrative is coming together nicely. Rom, I wanted to ask you a question about the macroi outlook. I think I know the answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway because you tend to say things are nothing, burgers. But just given the tumult at the Fed, like what's going to happen with Jerome Powell, obviously now Trump is trying to fire Lisa Cook. And I guess we're going to have to wait for the Supreme Court.

to decide what's happening there. IAPPA. No one cares. Nothing burger. Sorry. No one cares. But I wanted to get you on the record, but I kind of knew. What matters?

The most questions ask my wife. I know the answer is going to be already, but I still have to do it. In the long term, what drives asset prices, earnings growth, the level and change of interest rates, the level of change in inflation, which drives policy. In the short term, what drives asset prices is positioning. an incremental news flow. So that news around that termination is short-term incremental news flow. It's negative.

It gets priced in and then you move on. That's it. Every buyer of an asset bought that asset fully informed about the background news information. That's what causes the pricing in. The fundamental backdrop is strong. We just dropped up a quarter with exceptional earnings growth and we have more stimulus coming And rate cuts the economy doesn't need, which is bullish. I disagree with the policy, but I'm bullish.

That's okay, too. I intend to, I have exposure to these small caps and rate sensitive names and things like home builders now and consumer discretionary stocks because the backdrop is bullish and the consumer is strong. It is a strong consumer. Yes, it's a bifurricated economy. Yes, there's pressure on the low end of the consumer always was, always. what matters is the top one-third, they drive two-thirds of spending, on average, consumer spending. You can see the utilization, different areas, travel and leisure airlines.

Banks are lending again. Bank lending activities increasing. Bank deregulation is still coming. That's stimulative. We're talking like more credit creation. You're seeing private credit firms compete for deals. I talked to a fisticated bank that essentially is like a private credit fund wrapped within FDIC insured charter.

And they're starting to say no to deals because there's so much availability of credit. Now, at some point, that's bad, but it's not now. We're not seeing DQs flare up. Things are actually quite reasonable. And credit begets more credit. The cycle just keeps going. There's no external pressure to stop that from happening. Why don't we turn to tokenization?

Because there was some big news this morning that we were talking about on Telegram. Galaxy, I think it's tokenized some of, or sorry, they did not tokenize some of, of the shares. They just directly issued shares onto the Salon of Blockchain in partnership with Superstate. I know that, Chris, I got you particularly excited because there was no sort of like middle layer. It was just a native issuance. And I think the hope is that that will be the future. So why don't you kind of share some of your thoughts? Yeah, disclosure. We're investors in Superstate, good friends with Rob Leshner and the team. And gosh, this is a guy who decided to start a regulated asset manager and transfer agent in the depths of the Gensler era of destruction. Fast forward to today,

this is a big deal because today what we've had is we've had like this idea of tokenization of RWA. And as a banker, I hate RWA so much. I can't begin to tell you because it's stiff for risk weighted assets and it gives me PTSD. And so I'm sure we're going to screw up the acronym here. But the way it used to work in the past, and this is how stable coins largely work as well, is you take an asset, you put it in a box, you issue a token to represent that asset, and then you set it off into the ecosystem. But this is different because it's canonical. And you don't have this stock that's locked up in a box and Bank of New York custody account, and then you issue a token on that represented asset. No, this is canonical. This is a canonical digital asset that we've actually

taken a share, and that's the only representation of that share. This is a big deal when you put it on blockchains and they use super state as the transfer agent. It's regulated. And when you speak to people like the FCC chair Atkins, he's like, hey, we need to make IPO great again. We need to make capital markets great again. We need to make them more accessible. What is more accessible than a public blockchain? And this was issued on Solana. Incredible jobs. Salana has always tried a position itself to be the decentralized NASDAQ. What a great step forward for that team and that ecosystem. And so now you have these assets. Now, they're not perfect. This is a great first. step, and I would say this is an improvement of what we've seen in the past. I'm also very excited

about the tokenization of private equity, but this wasn't like some SPV where you're getting some piece of the SPV and blah, blah, blah, blah. This is a true stock, a tokenized equity. Now, you can't trade it yet on AMMs. There's this thing called regulation NMS. There's an NBBO. This means in simple terms, national best bid offers that equities need to get routed to the best price on an exchange. And if you have an AMM and you have the traditional system, they kind of don't talk. And so I think the SEC is going to work through some of those challenges on what we call reg NMS. But you can transfer these stocks peer to peer for people that have been gone through the right onboarding process. And this is the beginning of unlocking this global internet to

buy assets like equities. I'm hugely excited. Last thing I'll say, because I could go on forever. I get too excited. The IPO market cap last year was like 30 billion. The meme coin market that's how much money was raised. The meme coin market cap was like 140 billion. It's an apples to oranges relationship. But we're soon going to be able to unlock the superpower of blockchains slash transfer agents. And that's capital formation. Right. Not in my head. Well, I mean, catafel formation. I mean, that gets me turned on. So yes, I like we need more capital formation. the registration and listing costs for public markets is way too high. The on-chain activities that are done by firms like securitized through reg ATS and all this stuff

is just trying to mix stratify with permissionless networks. It doesn't work. So the direction of travel is good. I think Galaxy's move is mostly symbolic. You get 24-7 trading. That's the main unlock. But the symbolism means you can get more to come. the funny thing about this actually, I took my family to the beach this weekend, and as one generally does on a holiday, you dream up different things.

I actually posted this on Twitter. I said, should Lumida? So actually, like Robert Lesser, I started Lumida as a digital asset wealth manager in the bottom of the bear market. And the first thing we did is with SEC chart, Arthur Levitt, is criticized Gary Gensler in October 2022. And then we said, digital assets need a regulatory framework. And fast word, here we are. So, but I wrote, you know, should we tokenize on chain, the equity on chain on August 31st? And then I see this news from Galaxy.

Oh, shit. Something's in the water. Second thing, it means that no ideas are original. Chris, you know this is a VC guy. Someone has one idea. Somehow the magic of consciousness or whatever it is, I've no idea. 100 people all around the world have the same idea at the same time. It comes on to execution.

So I've no doubt we're going to see a lot more of this happen. I think it's mostly symbolic. Like what I'd really love to see is a way to get a permissionless market going that provides an unlocking of participants. The things are sort out there. You've got to have sanction screening. You've got to make sure North Korea cannot engage involved, right? Like these defy pools that are engaging this market, and there's really fascinating things

happen, like credit coop. I don't know if Chris, you've taken a look at that, what they're doing to finance rain card, which is a credit card that lets a crypto native spend. And they tap into the digital asset wallet on chain, right? You can finance that on chain. You can make a deposit and get a 14% yield on chains. Amazing. That's a bank on chain.

You can deposit on chain, get a 14% coupon, fully collateralized with T plus two duration risk. You get liquidity in two days you want. That's incredible. That's a misprice, short duration, high yield asset. But it's all permissioned. And it's, but it's a step in the right direction, though. Same thing with the galaxy. So, you know, if you look at SECR, Paul Atkins, about three weeks ago, you gave a speech.

And this follows Besson's speech about a month ago. And it was timed a week before Fed Governor Bowman's speech. And both were pro-innovation. And Paul Atkin specifically called out tokenization, the rise of the super app. And Bowman, so talked about tokenization as well. So the regulators are starting to, they've already announced and signaling the market, hey, we're going to get out of the way if it's lawful and compliant. So we're moving in that world now.

You're going to see 200 fintechs. They're already applied for OCC charters like Anchorage. Dozens will be approved in the next few months. So I think Galaxy is very symbolic, but there's more to come behind it. And we need more permissionless frameworks to unlock than that. I just want to build on that, Ron, because I think you made an important point. Chris, Chris, you did too. Salana obviously is a permissionless blockchain, but Superstate is very permissioned. And, I mean, Ram, you were getting at that as well. I mean, I followed tokenization

for a long time. I'm sure all of you have. And I can't tell you how many pilot projects. And I know this is not a pilot project, but of like tokenizing some sort of credit instrument or whatever. And there could be a huge nine, ten figure top line number, but there's no secondary market. There's no secondary liquidity because these things are silent. And I'm curious. I'm not sure what the process is in order to break down that barrier. Like maybe we need a lot of companies to agree to issue on Superstate or Avey's version of it or something else at the same time. Or securitize. There's tradable. Or securitize or any of them. But how do you do that? Because that's the key to unlocking this. Anyone can. Go ahead.

I have the answer. So what did we just do with stable coins? Right? Stable, how is this different than stable coins? Yes, with stable coins, you locked them up. But the issuer has a duty to K.YC and AML. And then the person, someone receives them.

And then based on the activities of that individual, you know, if you send your securities to North Korea, you're going to get in trouble because it's based on behaviors and activities. Right. That's the stable coin model. And yes, they have freeze and seas, but does it really work because of latency? I don't know. But I think when you step back and what we're seeing right now, it goes back to what Brian's doing.

This is a massive convergence trend, right? We're taking equities and we're canonically making them tokens. We're taking tokens and we're turning them into equities on the debts, right? So my question for Brian is, when are we going to tokenize and issue your debt canonically on chain? And by the way, they all have different economic. We have announced it. So, yeah, two thoughts. One is like I couldn't agree more with you guys on everything you're saying on tokenization.

Like, in my opinion, finance is built on antiquated rails. Stable coins are literally just like RWAs or tokenized dollars. It works on ACH, which was created 50 years ago. And even FinTech is just this front end wrapper that if I sent you 10 bucks with Venbo, it would use ACH on the back end. So blockchain and tokenization reimagines the rails themselves. And then the second big thing is like finance is rife with intermediaries. That's why like defy is such this big thing. And so like this can help us remove all these rent extracting intermediaries that we really don't need given where technology has progressed to.

And then second thing is we have announced our intention to tokenize UPEC equity via super state. In case it's helpful, it was really two main reasons why we chose to do it with them. One is just exactly what you said. So direct issuance of stock on chain for global access, not a wrapper, which can fragment liquidity between wrappers. It's not like restricted to just XU.S. And then also holders are getting the exact same legal and economic rights as traditional equity.

So that was like one big reason. And the second one is we are hyper focused on compliance and legal and regulatory risk and like Super State is doing everything exactly correctly. They're dotting every eye, crossing every T. SEC registered transfer agent. They're working on regulatory clarity with the SEC via things like Project Open. When you tokenize equity via Superstate, it has strict compliance with securities laws. So they have like these allow lists in terms of who can actually access your tokenized equity and who have actually KYC'd. And so we got very comfortable working with them to eventually put

EPEC equity on chain. I'll tell you what I'm really interested in is, I mean, Chris, I understand what your take, your point about regulation and so and so forth. But I'm waiting for one company to just put everything on chain, especially like one major company that would essentially force anyone who wants to own that share to engage in the on-chain economy. Like imagine if Tesla decided to just completely go on chain. At that point, I mean, how many of us own Tesla shares even indirectly through ETFs? Like, we would be forced to participate.

I'm not quite sure what that would take. but I almost wonder like it's or like a hot up-and-coming company. I mean, Palantir is obviously not up-and-coming anymore, but something like that that would essentially force the hand as opposed to a nice to have. So Brian, we're waiting for, I'm waiting for a big announcement from you guys that you're delisting from what is the NASDAQ and just going completely. But I wonder if that's what it's going to take. All right.

So, Rambino and Chris may remember from the last time you're on the show. I always like to wrap up. by giving each guest a chance to share something that was left on the cutting room floor, or if you have some sort of interesting contrarian opinion that you're dying to get off your chest and start a Twitter fight about, I'm all for that too. Chris, why don't you go first?

I think we're in the period, the golden age of convergence. That's Galaxy Equity. Now's the time institutions are coming in. And I think my contrarian, intake is that the one thing that's preventing further progress beyond this, as I said earlier, is a lack of futures, a lack of listed U.S. futures because they solve so many things. That's what I'm focused on in the coming weeks to watch.

Actually, if I could push you on that, because, I mean, there are futures for obviously Bitcoin E Salina, I think XRP too. Barely, yeah. Yeah. What are there two or three assets in particular that you have your eye on? Everything beyond those four? Seriously, this unlocks everything. It'll unlock ETFs.

It's going to unlock basis trading. It cements them as commodities. This is what's needed next. This is one of the most important. We have a massive gap in the United States because, honestly, this was an SEC issue. They prevented exchanges from listing. It looks like the window is starting to open, and that's what needs, that's the missing link, and that's what needs to be solved for.

Okay. Yeah, Ram, would you like to go next? Well, I was just looking at the report for American Eagle. That was the Sydney Sweeney. That thing is of 24% report after the close. So that's just evidence of these non-consensus ideas like retailers that were beating down to tariffs working. I expect that to continue to work. I think the mortgage refi concept, we talked about that a few weeks ago, like better mortgage, still own both of those names.

I think that's going to keep working too. on digital assets i think you just a timing thing you just got to wait a few weeks it really depends almost of the day now um you know i would position for a rally through november it's just you got to time it time it well there's some uh you know there's just some chop to get through mr rudic yes i will stick to dat land because that's what i think about all day pretty much and yeah maybe i'll talk about how many dats can potentially work I think that I'm somewhere in between Chris and ROM. So my view is that only three to five different assets can really work over the long term for a

dat and that there's only going to be three or so companies within each dat that can really compound nav and create value for shareholders over the long run. Thought behind this is 95% of all coins are down 95% over five years. And the biggest determinant of any that success is going to be the underlying performance of the token that is underpinned by. And so I do think that a lot of these trades can work out. Someone can come in at one time, see it moved to two to three times. When the registration statement goes effective, you sell, and it works out to be this really great annualized return almost regardless.

But I think, like, if you're looking for these long-term winners, it's probably going to be far and few between of these companies that could potentially come close to replicating micro strategy's success. And just for me, I have two quick fun things, I guess. One, Ron, I know you are the king of the Nothing Burger. I tend to, I think, be a little more risk-in-vers. I'm my new moniker now. You're the Nutting Burger. Mr. Nothing-Burger. Start making a Halloween costume.

I tend to be a little more risk-averse, especially when comes to stuff at the Fed, given everything happening with Lisa Cook, et cetera. But it got me, I was watching an episode of the office last night. Pretty sure. The woman, Nellie, It was one of the later seasons. Came in and took Andy Bernard's job as office manager and tried to usurp as authority by giving out everyone raises, despite having tenuous authority to do so. And Dwight was going in to get his raise.

And Jim looked at him and said, Dwight, you know it's not real. And Dwight looked right at the camera and said, money hasn't been real since we went off the gold standard in 1971. And I thought that was pretty funny. And it reminded me why Bitcoin and crypto is so valuable. and then two, for all NFL fans out there, welcome back to the season. For what I hope are millions of listeners in the Philadelphia area, go birds. And with that, thank you, everybody, for watching and listening. Thanks to Rahm, as always, Brian and Chris for joining,

and we'll be back next time with another episode of Bits and Bibs.