Unchained - How Microsoft Won the OpenAI Fight as Markets Rally on Iran

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

One side wins the OpenAI-Microsoft divorce, Ram calls a 19% earnings growth year 'bananas,' and Chris wants the US to hack back against DeFi exploiters. Here is the full rundown. --- Heads up! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts. ---- Chris Perkins and Ram Ahluwalia cover a lot of ground this week: Iran appears to be seeking a deal to end the Strait of Hormuz blockade as US economic pressure mounts, and the US government just worked with Tether to seize over $300 million in Iranian-linked stablecoins.  Bottoms-up S&P earnings estimates are running at 19% year-over-year growth, tech earnings are about to hit, and both hosts think the setup for markets is unusually constructive.  They also break down the new Microsoft-OpenAI agreement, the arrest of a special operations soldier for betting on the Maduro raid on Polymarket, and what the Kelp DAO hack means for DeFi's path to institutional adoption. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Bits and Bips, where we explore how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. We're here to discuss the latest stories in the worlds of crypto and macro. With that, we're going to take our first break. Bitcoin changed how money works. Satrea changes how Bitcoin scales. With a trust minimized BTC and a native stable coin, CTUSD, Citraea enables Bitcoin capital markets with lending, privacy, Bitcoin yield, and more. Get started at sitrea.

is giving Unchained listeners 15% cash back on food and ride apps. And that's on top of the 3% you get on everything else. Your bank is charging you to use your own money. I switched. Go to ether.fI slash unchained to claim your discount. I'm your host Chris Perkins, the golden hand of 250 digital asset management. And today the good professor, Austin, is out teaching and doing what he does. So I'm going to sub in as the host.

And I'm here with my co-host, Ram Alawalia, master of wealth, leader. of Lumina. How are you, sir? Doing well. How are you? I'm doing well. Lots going on. Lots going on. You're telling me before on the pre-call, you're super bullish. But what's on your mind? I think there's a lot to be bullish about, a lot to be optimistic about. You know, we have some news around the Strait of Hermuz where the IRGC is proposing a path at the escalation. We've got earnings estimates that are going up. You got a lot of names that look like, they have bottomed. So we can take it where you want.

But that's what's on my mind. All right. And yeah, let's start off with Iran. We'll just go through that quickly because I think that that's really been in the driver's seat, right? We haven't reached, I don't know, it feels like we're reaching that stasis finally, where the markets are just like, yeah, it's in the backgrounds like Ukraine. It's not like impacting our day to day.

Certainly something could come out of the woodwork and change things. But it feels like we're kind of in the, we're, we're, we're, leaning forward. I don't want to say to the end because I've been in that position before where you wake up and you're in Iraq a decade later. But it does feel like we're starting to reach stasis. Anyway, lots going on there. We're seeing that the blockade is having its intended effect, is putting a lot of pressure on the regime. But what are you observing? Well, here's some news that came out of the Wall Street Journal about 20 minutes ago. It's titled Iran wants deal to lift Hormuz Blockade, that postponed.

owns nuclear talks. So they've presented an offer. And that offer includes stopping attacks on ships in the strait in exchange for a full end to the war, which is what Trump was looking for. And it includes a lifting of U.S. blackade on Iranian ports and a postponement of nuclear negotiations. So we'll say, hey, we'll kick the can on that. It doesn't look at the proposal includes a lifting of sanctions other than allowing Iran. to move the stray. So like their economy needs cash flow. The blockade's been successful. You know, we talked about this a few weeks ago where Sencom made a move and they ran the I am the captain meme against Kaiser Sosek. I am the captain mean one, but overall looks good. You know,

the barricades is that there is still a significant buildup that is taking place. As you know, a lot of airless moving heavy equipment into the area. Overall, though, I'm I would still be constructive. You know, we've got a meeting between Trump and G.G. And, G.G.P.ing.ing. I think he wants to have some clarity going into that and have some quality around the current situation. And you've got the American bicentennial coming up on July 4th also. So Trump needs wins on the board. He needs to bring chaos down. And it looks awfully similar to a replay, but we saw last year, almost to the week.

Yeah, so we've got the midterms coming as well, which is going to be very, you know, Trump needs something. But as we're looking at the timing, right, he is facing incremental pressure, but at the same time on the domestic front, but at the same time, we're also, the Iranians under pressure because if they're actually sending old oil rigs in to fill up because if they overflow with oil wells, it's going to hurt them for a very, long time. So it feels like this is coming to a head. You nailed it. You nailed it. Right. So Iran needs to use these old oil tankers, otherwise are forced to shut in the wells. And when you shut in a well, you're taking it one that was once productive and you've got to put it on the back burner. And just the nature of Iran's oil and how they use water at natural pressure to bring up the oil, they are not in a good position to do that. It will cause significant damage.

damage if they're forced to shut on wells. It'll be hard for them to recover from that. So overall, I would say the response of CENTCOM and Besson 2 here for the last few weeks has been brilliant. We talk also about how, look, if you're in the IRGC, they've got families too. They've enjoyed a few weeks of respite from bombs and attacks. They want that to continue and they want to focus on a local political struggle. And they've got to vie for that kind of position.

That seems to be what they're focused on here. So overall, this is good. Yeah, I agree. This is receding into the rearview mirror like Ukraine did as well. And the economy can handle higher oil prices. So, you know, that world is less energy dependent, at least certainly the United States is as a higher than the past. I don't know. Did you see the news about Tether?

So Tether-Nus government, Bess has talked about the pivot to Operation Economic Fury. And the U.S. government actually worked with Tether to seize over $300 million of stable coins. And like, we've been talking about this all along. Like, hey, if you want to get paid in stable coins, good luck to you because these are centralized assets. And that's exactly what's going to happen. You're going to get seized. So I think the added incremental economic pressure, it feels like we're actually stabilizing. It feels like as this lifts, provided there's not too much damage done to oil and it impacts,

inflation, et cetera, it feels like it's a good setup for markets. Do you agree? Yes. No, I mean, I think the setup for markets is very attractive. You know, you're getting me excited, Chris, now. We're going to start on markets. Look, here are the headlines. Number one, the SMP, bottoms up analyst estimates for year of earnings growth is 19%. This is bananas. These numbers are absurd. Last year, year of year earnings, growth was clocking around 12%. That was strong too. We're seeing an acceleration in earnings growth. So every element of the GDP equation is moving in the right direction. The government is spending like a drunken sailor, unfortunately. So bringing to the present spending, that's bullish.

Obviously, defense tech is a big part of that, industrials data center. Second, cap-back spending is going up on AI. The AI stories flipped from AI apocalypse to we need more compute yesterday, clause doing the rate limiting. Everyone needs data center and CAPEX spend from the hyperscalers there. And you're about to see more CAPEX spend from the Pentagon. They're the new customer on the block. They're just getting started. And then the consumer is healthy. We saw that from bank reported earnings from the large banks, the credit card issuers to the regional banks.

Banks are lending. When banks lend, the borrowers use those. funds to make investments. Jobless claims are low. Inflation remains higher for longer, but Borch is a new incoming guy. He's not going to want to raise rates. So owning real assets and owning market assets seems like a very compelling opportunity. Plus a lot of people have cash.

They got scared out of the market. They're trying to get back in the market. They're buying dips. I expect they will be buying dips. And this week we have tech earnings season. Yeah, 45% of the report. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that next. Yeah, what do you expect to see out of that?

What are you looking for? What are you not looking for? Yeah, they, so it's, yeah, what I would look for is ROI on CAPEX spend. And it's going to be there. It was their last quarter. It was the quarter before that. Like the overhang was really around sustainability of CAPX. But Microsoft, Google, Meton, Amazon report, this Wednesday after the close,

Apple Thursday after the close. I think the technology sector is still reasonably valued and they've got strong earnings growth. So the reaction matters more than anything else. I think it's going to be constructive. I think

it's going to be positive. Each company has your own unique story. Microsoft has a lot of KAPEX spending on the cloud. They're going through a divorce process with Open AI, it looks like they've contracted that out. We can come back to that later.

We want to see these other companies report to, but overall, though, like the world shifted from AI apocalypse to the world needs more AI compute yesterday. That's generally bullish for these cloud providers. Yeah. Let's talk about

this. Yeah. No, I think it feels like a constructive setup across the board. I want to unpack a little bit what's going on with OpenAI. This news just recently broke. So Microsoft is going to remain Open AI's primary cloud partner. And Open AI is going to ship first on Azure. Microsoft is going to continue to have a license to OpenAI IP for models and products through 2032. But Microsoft's license is no longer going to be non-exclusive. Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to

Open AI. And the revenue share payments from Open AI and Microsoft will continue to 2030, independent of Open AI's a technical progress. So this seems like, you know, what's your take on all this? Is this friendly, like, hey, we're both, like, we agree to disagree. We're, you know, how do you think about it? I'm just a coupling of whatever they call it. Yeah. Yeah, this is, let's do winners and losers on this. Like, overall, Microsoft's a winner here. You know, as you, as You know, when a startup cuts a deal with the big corporate, the corporates bring their M&A and CorpDev team and they ink a paper-tight contract that protects them many ways of Sunday.

And Microsoft was the purse funding OpenAI for such a long time and they had wins because the Microsoft Cloud would benefit from all of the Open AIs developed. Now here's a couple things. So one is Microsoft doesn't have to spend money and do a register back to Open AIs. So their expenses linked to Open AIA are going to drop. Number two, they're going to enjoy revenue from Open AIA through 2030. So they have the upside on that. And third, they have rights to the Open AI IP through then as well.

The R&D for these LLMs is significant. You're going to spend tens and tens of billions of dollars to do model training runs. Microsoft gets a free call option on all of that. So, you know, the context was we talked about, I think maybe a month ago, Open AI could a deal with Amazon, and Amazon invested in Open AI, OpenAIA needed the capital to keep up with Claude. Open AI is saying, hey, we are growth constrained because we don't have to compute. Amazon as a result got OpenNet to do a deal.

Those are a report in the Wall Street Journal that Open AI violated their agreement with Microsoft. We all wanted to see how this would play out. It looks like Sam cut a deal that was illegal under contract law and was going to play figured out later. Well, the later just happened and they reworked terms of Microsoft. But if you're in breach in a contract, if you're the breaching party, you don't have the negotiating leverage because the party that claims breach can allege damages. So Microsoft, it seems to me, ironed out a great deal and get more revenue, less expense, and a call option in the IP. So

I think it's a big win from Microsoft. It's one of my top three positions right now, too. I think Interesting. It's mispriced. Got it. And then you see OpenAI. Do you see the rumors about the phone? They're launching a phone, right? They're putting together a,

they're teaming up with two semiconductor companies. We'll see. You know, they brought in Johnny Ivy from Apple to go to Zeris. Now, remember like when META launched the Rayban glasses? They sold a lot, but it wasn't really material. That has got distribution on its apps, but it's hard to sell a physical product. Yeah, that's what we're looking at.

So we've heard this rumor for a long time. And then today, I think earlier this morning, it was tweeted out that, yes, they're working on a phone. You saw Qualcomm respond quite favorably. But like I was looking at, you know, world price. And it really didn't respond. And, you know, to your point, it's very, you know, we've seen. other projects in the crypto space like Solana, Anatoly, he's a Qualcomm guy. He's been trying to push out his phone very, very hard to find product market fit.

If they do, though, it could be a pretty nice unlock across the crypto space as well, particularly as you're trying to figure out proof of humanity. If it's an agentic friendly phone, like, I don't know what the next iteration of interface what the internet's going to be, right? like is it really natural for humans to be like this all day long i kind of don't i don't think that's our natural state and so i do think eventually we're going to evolve beyond that i don't know if this phone is a phone or if it's a new type of ui that we haven't thought of you know rather than just you know right but at some point someone's going to go head to head with apple and say there's this

new human to computer interface and i don't think it's going to take the shape. I think it's going to look like something else. And Johnny Ives, he understands UI. So I would be interested to see. And then of course, if it's an AI first phone, an agentic friendly phone, this whole

idea of proof of humanity comes in. I was in there was at their liftoff conference this week or so ago. Really interesting stuff going on. And as we said, you know, we've been big supporters of that project over the years. So I think it's worth noting, but I'll also say like product market

fit disrupting the incumbents. Let's talk about Apple a little bit. They've faced incredible criticism for not being AI first, but this is a company that tends not to be first, right? But when they come to market with the iPhone, they crush everybody else. As you're watching Apple earnings as well, like, what are they going to be doing in this space? Because it looks like Sam is coming after them on the phone side or some iteration of it.

Yeah, I wouldn't be worried if you're Apple or Google about disruption from open AI the lock-in and the ecosystem around these platforms is significant. The switching costs to get out of the Apple ecosystem is so high. Open AI doesn't really even have like an app store now. They're trying, but it's not a real credible offering. You know, those platforms can be a GenTic AI friendly. They will be, right? They can do anything they want to go do.

If there's a customer need, they'll fill and fit the need. So I'd be skeptical. It's just a lack of focus. is not focused. The best form factor, the most intuitive one, is how we're communicating, so it's audio. When I'm driving, I talk to AI regularly. When I'm going for a walk, I'll talk to AI, and that just requires a mobile phone with a GPS, some local compute, and headphones. So that might be the form factor up until we get the R2D2 projection of Ben Kenobi. Maybe the holograms come five years from now. I don't know if we have that technology yet.

But I think the form factor really simple. Audio, mobile, together. So we'll see. Like you said, it's hard. Solana trying to develop a phone. It's extremely hard to get customers to switch. Yeah. Maybe it doesn't have to be a phone.

It has to be something different or definitely something innovative. We've seen Sam do that before. I think one of these episodes, you're going to say something positive about Sam Alman. Like, we should start a prediction market on. What happens? You should call. like the 911 and they should check that I'm not being held against my will here because it's really I find that it'll be it'll be a deep fake right but you know what we have to get you uh worlds you know

I was at this world lip off event they have like this new technology right where um you can use your proof of humanity ID they can do some social uh graphing and you can prove that you're a real person and not a deep fake so it'll probably be the deep fake rom that that shows it will absolutely be the deep fake Graham, it'll be April 1st. You know, I mean, it's kind of an incredible individual, right? He's being sued by his first shareholder, Elon Musk. Elon was going crazy today. Did you see that?

No, but it looks like that the legal battle that he's pursuing here is going to be more uphill. But go ahead. What happened there? No, he was just going off on how, you know, he's saying a lot of disparaging things about your buddy, Sam Lottman, on Twitter. Yeah. On his own platform. I got to dig in more, but it looks like that the legal suit, the complaint that Elon filed is going to be more.

I mean, you know, Anthropic, which now in the secondary market has a bid around a trillion dollars amongst retail investors, right? Yep. So it's ahead of Open AI now. It's got more growth. Open AI is saying, we are growth constrained. They're saying, oh, we need more money to grow. Can you give us some money? Can you raise some money?

Claude Anthropic had less resource. resources, less compute, they started later, and they're ahead of the pack. And the CEO of Anthropic, Dario, came out from Open AI. And Open AI has spawned so many of them are seeing traction yet. The CTO went somewhere, started thinking machines and there been other spin-outs like you, yeah. But Sam has dropped the ball 10 ways to Sunday. He's birthed his own competition.

Got it. As you're looking at tech earnings going into this week, you said you're super long Microsoft. How do you think about the others? Anyone that you're- I think the others will in general, you know, do probably fine. I mean, oh, it's like, you know, meta we just got to see are they spending kind of cap-ex like a drunken sale or not? The core business does really well, though.

They can fund it because they keep growing earnings, you know. We like that too. I think Google will do really well in their cloud business. They showed a 30% cloud growth. they're benefiting more from their chip set as an alternative to NVIDIA, but they don't have enough capacity on that because NVIDIA locked down all the capacity from TSM and the semiconductor ecosystem, right? But Google has all sorts of ways to win here too. Amazon rallied ahead of earnings on news, including around Claude and OpenAI. so, you know, that's more on the expensive side.

So it's Apple. So I'd be interested in some of the other names like Meta Microsoft. But overall, though, like, hey, this is a, you know, the Macs seven names were sold off. Many of them haven't fully recovered. So I think, you know, there's still opportunity in that bucket, especially if they have a cloud business. Yeah. All right. So let's pivot to the crypto space.

I think we both, I'm generally constructive. Sometimes you're constructive. Sometimes you're not so constructive. This week you sound like you're constructive. What are you looking at? I'm constructive. Yeah. I mean, last week we were constructive.

We talked about hype. I was so constructive, actually, when I said, let's talk about what to buy. We said hype. I think it's a, I think that there's a rally. I think it's a good opportunity set. Like I might want to wait a day or two,

things that'll kind of softer tactically right here. But, you know, So if you look at 20 to 30 to 50 charts in digital assets, the very, you see these long bases, you see these quiet rallies in certain areas and you're seeing Bitcoin do well. We still want to see the STRC issuance, of course, but yeah, you know, it's doing well. Other assets, Ethereum doing well, hype. I mean, so it looks and sentiment has been so bound out, washed out, reset, that it might not take much to get this going. So is it a trade or is it a new trend?

We'll have to see, right? We haven't finished the whole four year cycle. Right. It could be a rally now through say July along with QQQQ and software. Of course, crypto has been highly correlated to software. Software in general is holding up too, right? We had a kind of one and done drop with Service Now, but overall software has been recovering. So if that happens, maybe you get an April to July rally, some softness, and then a recovery towards the end of the year.

So broad outline, you know, subject to revision. Yeah, I think from my perspective. I think there are opportunities out there. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. When you look at the crypto space, you got to start with big, cool. it's the most dominant asset.

It's maybe not the most exciting, sexy asset. It is what it is, and it's not what it's not. But the one chart to look at right now, I think, is Bitcoin gold. And if you look at it in the past month, beautiful chart. And as those fundamentals continue to improve, you know, we talked about the macroeconomic stress of Iran. We talked about its utility. I see Bitcoin and Eath differentiating themselves through this Trussle's permission

with capability, right? That's their edge. That's their differentiation. Everyone else is trying to catch up to it. So Bitcoin gold looks very constructive. We're seeing Bitcoin Dom continuing to drive out. And you can expect that to lead. But like we've been waiting for years for that pivot into alts. And maybe you're not going to see that in the future as institutions take hold. It's going to be a pivot into fundamentals, not a pivot into alts. I think that's an important paradigm for investors to have. As you step down into Ethereum, some really, really interesting things going on. And that brings us to the Kelpdow story that we talked about last week. What you're seeing is you're seeing market-driven solutions to big problems. And I will argue

that KelpDow, Layer Zero hack is a really, really big problem. It demonstrated the interconnectedness of Defi. And frankly, something we've been talking about for a very long time, the security issues across crypto and defy. These things have to get addressed. Every time there's a hack that we get a little bit harder and that we learn from it, yes, but it's this cat and mouse game. Some people think that, you know, hacks are going to be a thing of the past because once we get our hands on mythos and other AI technologies, we're going to really, really harden them. I don't know. I think it's always going to be cat and mouse, cat and mouse. You can see big hacks. And it's,

Gary, like, how can you bring the $127 trillion equities market on chain if you have these massive security issues? And like I said, a transfer agent isn't going to protect you because once you get out of Dodge, you flip it into Bitcoin, you're gone. And someone's going to be left with a bag. And we're dealing with a bag right now. There's a big bag of in Ave. And what's been, in a way, beautiful to see is Defi United coming together. And so we're seeing competitors, saw Avalanche, Solana, and others participating in the recovery efforts.

Why? Because they're being smart. They're being thoughtful. They're being strategic. And they're realizing that now is not the time to burn everything to the ground. Now is the time for the market to find market-driven solutions, which is very, very core to why many of us are in. crypto in the first place. And what you're seeing, we're seeing like, you know, these, we don't know all the details

yet, and I'm very excited and I'm going to tease that I think we're going to do something really special with the details here in the future. Don't know them personally, but I know that they're coming together. But you're going to see a market-driven solution here, and it's going to repair for the time being what's been the damage that's been done. I think there will be some pain in certain places. But, you know, if you're long-term, you think that we're going to navigate through that. And that leads us to like the bigger question.

Why are we letting, you know, state actors ravage, you know, this ecosystem, this is young ecosystem. I've been very annoyed with some of the people who are like, hey, this is a, you know, it's an environment that you have to be prepared for. And, you know, it's not permissive. It's brutal. And like, you know, yeah, you know, shame on you if you get hacked. I don't know, man.

I think that these, these sophistication of these hacks, gets more intense every single time. It's very, very difficult right now as a human. We're all flawed in many cases to not be socially engineered. But my point is that we need a policy response. And I'll continue to say it until I'm blue in the face. What would that look like? What would the argument of the policy response to be?

Well, what I've said for years, I guess more than a year now, is we need to increase our security service area. our surface area of security. We need to empower the private sector to go out on the offense against those that are hacking us. We need to hack them back. And we need to make it very painful. Yeah. Yeah.

So we need to go on offense. I talk to Democrats about it. They're like, I like offense. Rishi Torres is like, hell yeah. I've talked to senators about it. They like it.

We just got to bring enough attention to folks to understand. It's security that's hurting our next evolution. That's hurting the institutional adoption. Institutions want to come in right now. They're begging to come in, but they want control. I don't know if they're going to avail themselves. We talked about us in the past. Decentralization is fine in certain levels.

I think, and that's okay. You can have a centralized front end, a decentralized back end, but they do want control. But if they're entering a system where they're taking, like, they're happy to take market risk, many investors, take market risk all day long. But I'm going into an environment where my assets may get stolen. I'm not so sure. We got to figure it out. It's like the Wild West back in the day. Like, you know, we need law enforcement.

You know, Jesse James got has to get thrown into jail. We can't have this anymore. That's what's required next. So anyway, Bitcoin constructive. Yeah. The thing I love about Ethereum is that, you know, time and time again, the community has come together, whether it's moved from proof of work to proof of stake. Or in this case, or even in the Dow, they came together.

Like, they're coming together once again. to work through this as an industry, which I think is a very, very positive long term. Near term, it's a little bit painful. And then as you go down the stack, again, it's about fundamentals. You know, fundamentals, fundamentals. No one has time anymore for the fluff. I think you're seeing as every day goes on, less fuss, more fundamentals, you know,

and that's what happens when professional investors continue to enter the space. Yeah, I guess a few quick reactions. Like, one is, you know, in this past cycle, digital assets, failed hit all-time highs, unlike many other asset classes. A lot of expectations were missed. There's still basic issues around security and these hacks with these established protocols. So, you know, my view is that one should trade and not huddle and look for trends. So, you know, these assets still compete with other attention assets that are out there, too,

including AI names, which can do well, you know, and semis can do well over the next year or so, notwithstanding the next few weeks after an incredible run. So it's important to just keep all of that in perspective. And the quantum risks on Bitcoin are legitimate too. So there's, yeah, I'm constructive, you know, but I'm not, hey, go max long, maxi this, maxi, that. But, like, you know, it's an asset. It's got a role. It's got an opportunity around it.

Good idea. You're talking like a meme coin trader. I don't know about that. I mean, I would look for value. I'd look for real opportunities. Look for differentiation. Look for a story. You know, I don't think the meme coin thing isn't move at all, actually.

I know. I know. You're trading based on the meme, right? And I think that's a big part of it, the attention, right? So, like, that's my point. And like, there is part of, you know, the attention that you need. And you can like empirically evaluate that attention. We have plenty of tools to do that. And you know what? That has informed a lot of price action in crypto

to date. Why? Because it's a retail driven market. Now retail has been distracted, as you say, they're going after the next shiny toy. The difference with crypto, and I think there's been this gap, right, where retail's got after new shiny toys, gold, whatever, but these institutions are slowly coming in. The pace of their entry, I think is also a function of some of these things who try to get their head around like security and other things. You know, I think there's a good angle here for, and again, you said you're not a hodler,

but like, I don't know, my take in this space, fundamentals and long-term focus, because it's going to be volatile, right? It's going to be volatile in this emerging asset class. So find good fundamentals, go long-term, and then make sure you're secure as hell. And I think that's why you're seeing in this phase, you're seeing some of the big institutions coming in and saying, hey, listen, Bitcoin, awesome long-term

asset. Don't worry, you're going to outsource the security to me, put it in an ETF, I'm going to make it operationally easy for you. That's why you're seeing, you know, these big institutions come in right now, whether it's, you know, name your initial institution of choice. So Trump over the weekend said, we have to do more for crypto, to do things for crypto. He just said that yesterday. I want to see what they have. in store and the right-tail surprise outcome, which is where things are more, that's where I would try to focus. What's the right-tail story that we haven't seen yet would be, does Trump negotiate

a deal with IRGC where there's some settlement involved? I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility. I think it's more probable than people think. I don't think it's a 50% plus probability, but is it a 40% chance? Is it a 40 to 50? Is it a 40 to 45% odds? I would say it probably is. So you have two choices, right?

What are the two things they've been looking to? I guess you have three choices. You have Bitcoin. You got stable coins. Or you get you on, right? Those are the three ways that you can transact going forward. Bitcoin trustless, permissionless. Obviously, you don't want to see, you know, the Iranians buying this asset as an illicit

you know, whatever, but that's, but it has that utility, trustless, permissionless. It's kind of like gold, right? If you mine gold in your backyard, who's to stop you? You got stable coins, which, again, best instrument for national security. You couldn't invent something better on a whiteboard. We just saw, you know, they seized the tether assets. And then the yuan, which brings in additional challenges if you're, you know, any country around. Do you really trust it?

and how stable of a store value is it. So I don't know, what do you think? How does this play out? Well, if you're Trump, there's a cynical way to take it, and there's another way to take it. If you say that if they're self-dealing, then it touches Wolfie token in some way, right? Not if you're Justin's son. Not if you're Justin's son. Right.

So that's another angle. Right. So let's go through it. Or it touches Tron Network because USDT, would be likely the mechanism, not circle, because you're not KYC, the Iranian regime. So I don't think that it's circle. Or it's Bitcoin.

I think those are the expressions, right? I don't not like placing a debt on this kind. I just think it's an interesting thing to consider, though. It's an interesting thing to consider. So when you ask what he could be doing more for crypto, I think there's a couple of the trip still up the sleeve. We got to get clarity passed. And I'm actually increasingly worried about that right now.

I don't know if you saw it, but Senator Attila said, wait a second, ethics. He had, you know, he had issues around yield on stable coin, got through that. I haven't had a chance. Congress had a concern around ethics? What? That's the headline. That's breaking news right there. Exactly.

So it's been so frustrating to me. I talked to policymakers. I marched down to D.C. And they're like, particularly when he talked to Democrats, they're like, Chris, you what, my constituents, they will not fly for this because unless ethics are addressed, that's it. And I'm like, come on, man. Like, we have

ethical problems with trading throughout Congress on both sides. You know this. They're like, we know, but politics, you know, Trump, crypto, crypto, Trump. Oh, the judges really want this too. I mean, they are going to executives at Coinbase and saying, hey, you guys supported this and look at Trump coin,

look at what happened, look at money lost. So, I think they are serious about that requirement. What that looks like, I'm not sure. Yeah, it's going to come to a pass. And they're going to go after his personal holdings and he's going to say, I got real estate too.

You want to get that? And like it's and, but like we've talked about this in the past. In the state of the union address, he actually talked about the stop insider trading act twice. And that's the right way to do it. It would be to punt this into a greater, you know, cross asset class ethics policy.

That's the way to do it. And again, I would never be up here arguing that ethics aren't important. They're probably the most important. Why? Because our capital markets are based on clear, transparent rules of engagement that are not full of graft or insider trading or anything like that. Trust and integrity. Right. Yeah.

Exactly. Trust integrity, transparency, et cetera. So if you undermine that, you've got a problem. But we continue to have issues. Speaking of which, did you see that prediction market? So they arrested a special operations individual for betting on the success of the Maduro rate. Did you see that? Yeah, he made, what, $400,000?

Yeah, yeah. What do you think about that? Well, he's one of the many. Yeah, happens all the time. Yeah, he's one of the main. Right. Yeah, what do you think about that? Well, I'm glad they did it.

I'm glad they, you know, like, found the guy. Because we had seen reporting a month ago about how there were resignations from the SEC enforcement division due to failure to follow through and prosecute people that allegedly were engaged in insider trades. And we've seen a number of unusually timed large futures trades, like within 30 minutes of Trump giving a press conference. So there's more of it. Like if you're the politically connected person in the White House, they don't come after

you. doing the special operations raid, you know how the political clout, then it looks like they come after you. So it's not, it doesn't seem like even-handed justice to me. It's complicated. Look, people follow the examples of their leaders. That's it. You got to lead by example.

If you're not leading by example, then people don't know how to interpret the rules of the road or they make up reasons why they can engage in that behavior. So hopefully this creates a bit more clarity for people on what's permissible and not permissible. There's a lot of these hedge funds that are starting that are just betting on prediction markets, which I think is nuts, by the way, because I think the bid ass spread and all this stuff. Did you hear about the guy with the hairdyer who took the hairdyer outside? Right? Yep.

Well, here's my take. I've been in futures markets for a really long time. Post-odd-Frank, they became regulated. and fraud manipulation and abuse is illegal, full stop. And sometimes when new technology comes out, people like, or new innovations come out, they like think that the rules don't apply. Derivatives do. They're fully regulated.

That's illegal. I disagree with you that the guy, the special operator who bet on a military operation should be treated the same as others because as a military guy, like people could die because they tipped off the enemy and they were on hypervigilance and they shot down whatever. So the consequences of that are incredibly profound if you're betting on military operations. If you're listing markets on when land invasion is going to occur, yeah, free market's wonderful. But when it leads to people's deaths, it's a problem. And like I've had plenty of friends that have died in combat.

Don't need it. Don't like it. So I do think the consequences are different. So to the extent that one of these markets is on sure, if you're saying more severe, you're saying more severe. For sure. Yeah, yeah. If you put people's lives at risk.

The law, first of them. The law has to be enforced everywhere, right? But the consequences are much more profound, you know, like you can kill people if you tip off operations. So I think like that will be regulated away. For the unregulated businesses, you know, how do you, have accountability, I don't know, that's an interesting model because there's still a lot of centralization out there. And I think you probably could find ways to hold those folks accountable.

And again, I love decentralization, but not when my friends get killed. So I don't know, that's something to think about. Cool. Why don't we take an ad break here and we'll come back and there's plenty more to chew on, Mr. Rom. Bitcoin changed how money works. Satrea changes how Bitcoin scales. Satrea uses Bitcoin as both the settlement and and data availability layer. As Bitcoin's application layer, Citrae enables the first trust-minimized BTC on a fully programmable platform

and a native stable coin for Bitcoin, CTUSD. Citraea offers Bitcoin capital markets with lending, privacy, payments, Bitcoin yield, trading, and predictions. Citrae expands Bitcoin's utility without sacrificing its security. Citraia Mainnet is live. Get started at citrea.xyz slash unchained. Etherfi is giving unchained listeners 15% cash back on ride shares, groceries, and restaurants right now,

which honestly is kind of wild for a card like this. On top of that, I'm getting 3% cash back on every single transaction using my actual crypto. No conversion fees, no nonsense. My bank never once did that. And it goes beyond just spending. You can borrow against your holdings at 4%. percent or less, which is super useful if you don't want to sell your assets. You can also earn on all major assets, up to 8% APY, just by holding. And moving money is just easy. No hidden transfer fees, no friction. It just works globally. If you want to check it out, go to ether.fi slash unchanged to claim your offer. That's ether.fi slash unchained. If you gave me $50 right now, the first thing I'm buying is a pair of espadrilles. Coinbase 1 member month starts with 20% off, your

first year of Coinbase 1, plus a $50 Bitcoin bonus when you spend $100 with a new Coinbase 1 card in your first 30 days. It's one month of more, more rewards and prizes all month long. Coinbase 1 is the ultimate membership to make the most of your money, and I know because I'm a happy Coinbase 1 member. It gives you zero trading fees on thousands of crypto assets, 3.5% APY on USDC, boosted staking and lending rewards, and up to 4% Bitcoin back with the Coinbase 1 card. If you trade crypto regularly, the basic annual membership can pay for itself. Enjoy bigger rewards, exclusive drops, and experiences that money can't buy. All with Coinbase 1. Sign up now to get a 20% discount on the annual plan, and so you're

locked in for the weekly rewards drops starting on May 4th. Visit Coinbase.com slash unchained to get 20% off the first year of your annual plan today. Offer is valid until May 31st. Terms apply. Coinbase 1 card is offered through Coinbase Inc and cardless ink. Cards issued by First Electronic Bank. Bitcoin back rates are based on cardholders' assets on Coinbase. All right, Rob, we're back.

We started talking about prediction markets. And I think we've agreed. I wish we could find someone who disagrees with us so we can have a nice debate. But look, for the regulated ones, you can't manipulate them. the unregulated ones, there's probably needs to be some kind of accountability. But like, I'm also seeing new ETS that are coming out that include prediction markets. How are you using prediction markets to inform your investment thesis? Like, I think in time, personally, you're going to be able to use them for all different

types of things, particularly as you evaluate a company, you evaluate aspects of a company. Are you starting to include that into your discipline as you're looking at underwriting? You know, we've had, yes, so we've had prediction markets like the Fed Fund Futures contract for interest rates, like that's worth taking a look at. But now you have prediction markets on events such as the outcome of congressional elections. So that's something that we're looking at, right? If you know whether the House and Senate go one or another, then that can tell you whether, let's say, healthcare stocks linked to Medicare Advantage or solar stocks are worth owning.

those would benefit if Congress were to flip. So we're incorporating that in our AI and our app. I think you've got to focus on the right markets, though. Like there's a lot of noise out there. Like find the things that actually matter. So, you know, policy decisions, rate decisions. Yeah, I think there's some opportunities now and then that come up. You know, I saw that the prediction markets were predicting that Kamala Harris

has a high likelihood of being the DNC. nominee. Really? I'll take the other side of that all day long. That seems totally off-sides to me. Someone that didn't go through a competitive process

and lost an election. I don't think they're going to back that horse again. Yeah, I think we're barely touching the surface of what these prediction markets are going to give us.

Most of them, you know, are quasi-permission. at this point, I think with HIP 3, sorry, HIP 4, you're going to see all different types of new markets coming out. Ultimately, you're going to be able to dissect, you know, organizations that you've never been able to dissect before. Like, are you betting on a certain part of growth within a company in a certain region in a certain part of the company? How does that form the valuation ultimately? How do you hedge if your commodities investor on whether? And like you said all this data is going to feed into into the AA models to really help you project and risk

manage so I think it's still early do you have a view polymarket versus Kalshi I mean clearly these guys love each other I'm not close enough to it but I am a I'm expressing through public markets for example like I think on the one hand I don't think sports betting and prediction markets are good for most investors because they will lose money like the bit as spreads are thick They're training against Citadel who's got better edge and better information. I think just the rise of daying in general is just not a good thing. People should be focused on investing. And like you said, taking signals from what those friction markets tell us,

which can be incredibly informative. Yeah. But like I'm expressing like through genie in public markets, you know, for example. But I don't know who's truly to say who's going to be the winner between these companies. And they're expensive. They're pricey, you know, versus. other names out there in the public markets. They are their values.

Maybe the winner. I know them both. I consider both friends. I don't know if that's possible. But I've got great contacts at both organizations. I love what they're building. I think it's going to be a Pepsi versus Coke kind of regime. I think the natural state of markets is probably a duopoly.

Now, it's going to be interesting to see how other folks with massive distribution try to leg into this. And they are. But I do think right now I've got liquidity concentrating on those two exchanges. And like as a guy who's been in derivatives for a while, like nobody knows how to move and shift liquidity. Like once you have it, like it can be sticky. But like if I had a magic wand to say how to get liquidity, I wouldn't be here. But these guys have liquidity. I do think you're going to see a lot of pressure on the sports markets to your to your point. There is some, there's a lot of political headwinds, I think. Well, the CFTC has been very bullish and in Chairman Seleague, God bless them, has been saying federal preemption. That makes

total sense where you have one set of rules, not 50 set of rules, but there are plenty of politicians in various states that are saying on both sides of the aisle saying, wait a second, this is very good for my state. I don't want to make it federal and available. It's killing, you know, my, industry or my casino or whatever. So I do think sports is going to probably face some turbulence in the future. Obviously, Kalshi's got better liquidity there, so they've got more of a fight in front of them, perhaps. But honestly, I think we're so early and you're going to see these things become so massive that it doesn't really matter. The challenge is going to be, like, how do you create enough liquidity in these really nuanced markets to make the signal

valid. And like, and particularly the other thing is they're very, those signals can be easily manipulated. To your point with the guy with the hair dryer in France, like, you know, these things will and now people should be held accountable for that, but for these, these light markets, it's hard to do, but if you have. Yeah. To the extent they fragment, yeah, that signal could be super valuable.

But if there's not a lot of liquidity, it's not going to be tough. So I think the challenge for these guys is to say, where do we find liquidity? Is it financial markets? Okay. Let's list all the rates and get after it. Or is it, you know, we know there's liquidity in gaming. You know there's liquidity in elections. What's next?

And how do you make sure? You know, because they make money through liquidity. I agree. I don't think they need that many contracts. Like I'm curious to see that. What contracts are you looking at? Policy, big events like Strader-Harmuz, interest rates. Is the market going to go?

go up or down 100 points. Like those things matter. But you don't need a thousand subcontracts. I expect we'll get the thousand subcontracts anyway. But I don't think we need that. The unlock is in a few categories, create liquidity around those categories. So that's the value for the exchanges, because that's where they're going to make all their money, their ticket fees.

By the way, they're going to be having their own stable coins. It's going to make, so it's like, it's actually a traditional exchange model where you make ticket fees, you make that interest income. It's called stablecoins now. And then you're selling your data. But for the user, as you start thinking about, you know, if you truly want to hedge unique markets, maybe some of those thinner bespoke markets get really interesting for you. If you can trust them, if there's enough liquidity. Yeah. It is super interesting. I mean, I agree. I'm just like, I'm on one of these sites right now. And it is just fascinating. It's like, okay, how high will oil get by December 31st, 2026?

You know, that's informal. Will Americans receive tariff stimulus checks? I mean, it is, it adds color to what's happening with asset prices that you can't really get anywhere else. Sometimes you have to guess, like, what is on the mind of Mr. Market? You can see, you can see what the market is, is discounting. So, you know, I think they're phenomenal. I just don't know that we need a thousand.

I get your point in it. I've got to make money on these other contracts. All right. So as we end this session, sir, you've seen pretty constructive on Mr. Market. You're looking forward to earnings coming up this week. Anything else in your minds as you're navigating the markets this week? I would just say this. I think people might be feeling like they missed the bottom.

They missed the rally. The S&Ps at all-time highs. There are so many incredible businesses on sale. There are many opportunities out there. They're not in the areas that you might have historically owned, or maybe they have been. There's still a lot of names that are down 20 to 30 percent because of this AI apocalypse meme, but the businesses have strong fundamentals, earnings, and revenue growth. I don't mean even software names.

Like maybe you think software is dead. I think it's a mixed story, right? The opportunity is there. But there are many names out there that have a lot of value. Like Berkshire is an example of that. It's not going to be a fast mover per se, but that's an example. But there are many other names. It's not even like it's hard to find these opportunities.

Like you know broad-ridge financial, I'm sure. Yeah. It's an institutional capital market service provider providing technology with 40% ROI and technology, recurring revenue. Okay, that's down double-digit percentage because it's in an industry group. that was associated with the AI disruption. That's it. So there are opportunities there, folks. You got to go do your homework, go find them. There are a plenty. There are a plenty opportunities out there. It's funny, the Broadridge team, they provide financial infrastructure, like very robust enterprise

financial infrastructure throughout all of Wall Street and beyond. They've been very pro-block chain as well. They've been really integrating, you know, across Canton and other other chains, pretty, pretty aggressively. Yeah. I don't know. I'm looking at it. That's an example. Go ahead.

Yeah. Yeah. But again, companies that embrace technologies, like a lot of these SaaS companies are going to embrace AI. They're going to embrace blockchain. Maybe they'll even get their head around quantum at some point. These are opportunities. So which industry is Anthropic could have disrupt this week?

I know, right? Well, you know, it'll be interesting to see when they drop a new product. Yeah. And the markets in that category don't tank. That might have already happened, by the way. We are at all-time highs now. And even software is making higher lows now. You know, the cost of renting a GPU is close to all-time highs.

They can't get enough GPU. Yeah. So the video is going to be, again, the report next month. So I think it's, you got to be constructive. You know, I saw this article in the New York Times this weekend. It said 40% of Americans believe the apocalypse is. coming up. I was like, how do I buy here? It's like, let me let me say the other side of that. I think the world might keep spinning here.

I think the world might actually go on. That's how despondent people feel. Like the University of Michigan Consumer Settlement survey. Yeah. It's bad. It's falling in the lows. It's bad. It is awful. But that tends to be an amazing set of I agree. We had a three to four week extraordinarily powerful rally, something of which you see in 0.6% of market history. And yet, like the bull bear sentiment surveys haven't changed. They haven't moved.

I'm weighing the clock into those and just say, oh, it ticked up. Nope. Not at all. No change. People have post-market depression syndrome and they have fear. And I think people are off sides and markets aren't going to give them a chance to reenter. You know, the fact that the market only dropped 9% of the S&P, despite the blocking of the

Strait of Hormuz, probably one of the most significant geopolitical events one could imagine because it actually does cause real economic damage and you could get a regional conflict and all this, right? That's telling. That's powerful. Yeah. Yeah. So underlying the resilient global economy. And there's a lot of investors. The other thing is that like this decoupling that we're seeing this global decoupling. And we can argue if that's really the case. Like I've said stable coins are going to actually prevent that. But you are seeing decoupling. And what does decoupling require? You got to be resilient, man. And you're going to have to invest materially in your own stack, whether you're Europe or anything else. And so there's a lot that has to have to. to be done. I think that's going to be very, that'll result in a lot of stimulus across

economies as people focus on securing their own economies. Maybe long term, that's not so great. Then we'll come back together again and be. So spending is going up all around the world. Now Europe's going to spend more. The U.S. is going to spend more. We were at wartime deficits. Now we're really ramping it up. Like, long term, not healthy, but it's bullish. It's bullish. Bullish or creeper? Bullish for earnings. Bullish for a lot of things. That's right.

Bullish for a lot of things. The issue now is trading off what horse do you want to own. See, a lot of horses are going to go up. It's like which horse do you want to get on? That's right. Cool, man. Well, let's see you got anything else.

Let's leave it there. Let's leave it there. Perfect. All right. Good to see you, brother. All right, everyone. We'll see you back next week on Bits and Bits. And maybe we'll have the good professor back.

for joining. Good. Thank you for watching and hope you enjoyed this episode of Bits and Bips. Just remember, nothing we say here is investment advice, and please check UnchangedCrypto.com slash bits and bips for more disclosures.