Bitcoin's setup just got more bullish with David Duong

Transcript

And the overall macro picture is actually a lot more favorable than people are giving it credit for. Bitcoin has been showing some strength this week, but it appears to be stalling out. Is the bottom in or is this the beginning of another leg down? Hello and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the podcast that knowns that meme coins took over the Robin Hood chain faster than transaction speeds on Salana. And that's pretty fast. I'm your host, John Gill, and today is Thursday, July 16th, and today we are joined by David Dwong. David is the former head of institutional research for Coinbase, one of the best analysts in all of crypto and a longtime friend of the show here at Milk Road. David is going to catch us up on his latest thoughts on the crypto markets and give us a ton of alpha on everything that's going on in crypto

today. So, if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. Today's episode is brought to you by BitGet Stocks 2.0 with real liquidity, real dividends, and securitize the regulated rails for tokenization. Now, without further ado, welcome back to the Milk Road Show. David, it's been a while, man. How have you been? >> Hey, thanks, John. I'm doing pretty well and uh glad to be back. >> Yeah, well, I'm glad to have you back. I think uh you took some much needed time away, but our audience always loves you, so I'm really glad to have you back on the show. Uh David, I wanted to start with a conversation about inflation because we got the June CPI data and it showed that the rate of inflation is cooling much faster than most people

were expecting and it seems like a lot a lot of markets caught a tailwind for this. I want to get your reaction to this and how you think this sets up Bitcoin going deeper into the summer here. >> Yeah. So, first of all, this captures the June data. So, I think people are already looking ahead to like the current escalation in tensions with Iran again and with the impact on oil and whether that's going to feed back into uh inflation. Now, I don't really buy that. I didn't buy it when we were seeing that swing back to the forehandle on inflation and I don't buy it now that we're like all right like like let's just chase this and let's say like inflation is coming back down like I look at the secular trends for the stuff. I've kind of looked through a lot

of the cyclical noise which is what I think the energy prices represent and when I think about secular like what really impacts inflation what really impacts prices in the US that's mostly like where you live for example shelter costs like are like feature as one of the most important factors you need to look at if you're really trying to understand like where is this trending and granted like you have to keep in mind that there are these psychological effects of like things cost too damn much uh which is why there's affordability concerns, which is why this is going to feature very heavily in the elections. And that's separate from what the data tells us. I'm here to study the data and I'm here to tell you what the Fed is looking at. And the Fed

will look at it and say like, first of all, we don't even care about headline inflation. We care about core. Um, not only that, we don't really care about the core CPI. We care about the core PCE. uh if you're looking at that data, like there really doesn't seem like the the Fed has a lot to to go on in order to justify another hike. Now, let's play devil's advocate. Let's say like, okay, let's say oil prices, gas too sticky, uh and eventually forces their hand. Well, then we look abroad and look at the analoges of what other central banks have done. What has the ECB done, for example? What has the Bank of England do? What does the Bank of Canada do? And in the case of like the ECB at least

like they had one hike and then they paused. And why did they do that? They did that because they were very clear this is an insurance hike. So at worst like we should not be pricing in like three hikes in the US. Like if you price one I accept that as reasonable. I don't even think they're going to get that. Um and if it was that would be an insurance hike. And what I care about is like if I look at that, is that bad for markets? Like if they just do one hike and then say they stop for the next five meetings, it's fine. The market will look through that and just be like, "All right, cool. Everything's fine." Like what I care about is the overall macro picture. And the overall macro picture

is actually a lot more favorable than people are giving you credit for. Yeah, I think I agree with a lot of this, but one of the things that you mentioned that has added some uncertainty to this picture is the reignition or escalation of the Iran conflict, which it seems like it almost every day. It's it's on, it's off, it's on, it's off, but it's kind of maintained this kind of uncertain overhang over the markets. And I agree the macro picture is strong, but how do you think crypto investors should think about this like reintroduction of uncertainty from the Iran war? And do you think that there is a chance that this could, you know, kind of ruin this this strong macro backdrop that we have here?

>> Not really. In large part because this is a lot of noise. If anything, I would say it's kind of like become classic quote unquote like noise at this point that I think the market has already largely digested. You know, like you had the shock factor when Hormuz uh first kind of happened. Now it's behind us. I feel like experts have been on the wrong side of the oil spike. You know, prices are shooting up, they're shooting down. But like over the long term, I feel like these things have been evening out. And if you think about the secular effect of this stuff, again, secular is the what's what's important to me. Like where is demand for oil really going? It's not going to keep increasing.

Think about that. Like if already I'm like, "Oh my god, what's happening in Iran?" Like blah blah blah. I need a switch. I need to like go to like wind power, solar power, whatever. Like any other alternative, I don't care what it is. Maybe it's nuclear, it's other things. There is a very good chance that demand is not coming back because once you rotate out of that once you reduce and I'm not saying that like our dependency on oil will go to zero. It's definitely not. There are just things that we have in the world that will require us to have oil in some shape or or form. It's just that whatever we can move away from in order to become more resilient because we don't want to be dependent on a lot of these geopolitical factors like we will do so and that demand is very unlikely to come back. So

I don't think that this is going to be like oh like a this direction of like it's volatile now and I think it's great to trade but like over the long term like oil prices are not going to stay at like 120 or 140. Like even now it's having a hard time breaking back above that $100 a barrel kind of kind of price. So short-term chop completely fine. Is this structurally going to be a permanent s? No. Like Absolutely not. If anything, I think oil prices need to come down. So, that is something where when I'm looking about inflation, it's going to be a disinflationary effect over the long term.

>> Guys, listen. We are at a very crucial point in time right now. AI stocks have ripped. They're going to keep ripping. Our analysts on the AI side are up like literally 100% or more on quite a few calls. And crypto is about to boom again, or at least it feels that way. If you want all the insight on what we're buying, what our analysts are doing, what's on their watch list, all of that is in Milkroad Pro. So, join at the link below. >> Okay. So, you're not expecting a rate rate hike. You're not really concerned about the impacts of Iran. The market seems to be pricing in that they agree with you on these things. I want to ask you about your thoughts on the outlook for the Fed here. the new chairman Kevin Worsh is a Bitcoiner um very publicly so and he's brought in he's launched these

new five task force to sort of re-evaluate how the Fed gets their data how they you know put that into a function to to determine monetary policy and he's brought in industry leaders like Mark Andre who are you know favorable to crypto do you think we're going to see a Federal Reserve that kind of becomes more dovish more up totheminute with data and more like structurally favorable to crypto and Bitcoin or like what do you expect to see sort of as the Fed and you know goes through this re-evaluation of everything that they do here. I think that he's already said he wants to be uh or rather at least he wants to pay more attention to the data and I think people put a little bit too much stock in his initial comments at the first meeting because they're like look

the guy came out hawkish. What was he going to do? What like was he going to be like come out right off the gate and be like I see that inflation's like trending at like 4% 3 and a half% but guys it's totally fine. we should be cutting rates. Like he obviously would lose all his credibility if he did that. So he had no choice. He came out and he yeah he he's like put out like a message of I am against higher inflation and we will do what we need to in order to get it under control which is the message that you need to calm people down. So I feel like even though this is happening he didn't want to contribute to the dot plot. He's bringing these people in because he wants to get a better read on what the actual economy and like I said

like you know my initial point was prices don't really at least CPI index doesn't reflect what we're feeling right like costs are high like we go out and I'm like my lunch is twice the cost of what it used to cost like that's what we care about that's the pulse and so like you got to keep in mind that like a lot of the data that we get in terms of like GDP jobs numbers like even inflation like all these these things represent what we can measure, but just because that's what we can measure doesn't necessarily mean what it is. And I think he's trying to get at the ladder. Um, what I do think is important too is that like we kind of also need to look away from just Wars himself. Obviously, he's the, you know, Fed chair. So, he's his voice is probably the most important on

that board, maybe a little bit less so given the fact that people have seen the politicalization uh of the Fed chair role. Um, but I do think that we need to see who else is important on the board. There's Waller for example, and I thought that was really important. I don't know if people like heard it like he said earlier. Um, and this is kind of a change in tune a little bit. He said that now like the this, you know, he used to be on the side of, you know, like the cuts and I think a lot of people saw that as him petitioning for the role of chair, which he didn't get. Um but he previously said that if you saw these second round effects emerge um you know then you know like then you need to kind of react but if they don't

then you can kind of wait for inflation to come back down. Now he's kind of changing that tune and I think maybe that is something that I I kind of want to pay attention to. Uh so that makes me a little bit nervous because we're looking at the two-year we're looking at what's happening uh with with rates. um you know obviously the policy rule such as it is isn't really that significant. Uh but his suggestion that maybe the Fed funds rate might be a little bit too low could be consistent with the rule if that becomes the predominant way he's viewing this. So that's something where like I'll give the other side of like all right maybe that makes me nervous again. But again just one hike and done fine. if he's saying that this needs to

be a series of hikes, that would be my concern. >> Yeah, I've been watching Waller's comments as well. He is, I think, the leader of the Hawks on the committee. Um, and there's not none of them. So, there there is still something to watch there. And we we'll see if we end up getting a hike or not. I think Wars is going to try to use these new task force to justify not doing a hike and like you said, waiting until he can finally get to a place to cut. But, we'll see how that plays out. David, I want to ask you about something else that's sort of part of the larger macro backdrop. I promise we will talk about crypto, but I want to get your thoughts on some of these things first. Um, the AI trade has been dominating a lot of the capital

attention and sentiment in the markets recently. Um, or for this whole year and longer, but recently we've seen sort of a slowdown and pullback in a lot of these trades and a lot of these stocks, semiconductors, many other things. Um, and I'm curious your read on this. Do you think this is just, you know, a midcycle like digestion and cooling? Do you think the capital is beginning to seriously rotate out of some of these AI stocks? Uh, and how do you think that this like slowdown we've seen in this AI trade impacts crypto? Do you think some of that capital is going to come to Bitcoin or or what's your outlook on that as part of the the larger macro backdrop?

>> Yeah, I think this is more narrative digestion uh than a rotation or a cool off, you know, like if you look at the multiples on a lot of these names, like they're actually compressing while the earnings are rising. And that to me seems like this is still a good bet. Like we're not at euphoria levels, which I get it. People are kind of looking at the analogs from the 1990s and saying like this is the internet like all over again. And that actually blew up. And obviously there was an opportunity that came in after that when like you know like secure socket layers came in and people could put credit cards online.

You could buy stuff from Amazon. All that stuff came in a little bit later. But the like 1996, 1999 to like 2001 period, I think people are treating it as such. I excuse me. I still think that we're a lot closer to 1996 than we are to like 1999. Like we're not even done yet. Like first of all, I don't even think that's the right approach. I like yes, like it's the only not the only one, but it's like one of the main ones we have. But this is like the industrial revolution, you know? This is something where like yes, the internet was great because it put all the data we had out there and it destroyed the media companies because now you had data sources, you had social media and you

had all these other things that kind of ate away at what our traditional sources of information were and that changed things and we could just buy at a click of a button. This is not that. This is something entirely different in terms of how AI is going to transform our productivity. And like think about it like I'm capable of kind of think taking each puzzle piece at a time and kind of saying like oh this is how AI is going to transform this. This is how AI is going to transform that. But holistically it's so hard to conceptualize because this is such a big thing and we haven't gotten to that point yet. So I don't think that we're done with the AI story. I think it's still a hockey stick higher. Um, but to

your point, like yeah, people are just nervous and they're kind of getting out of it now and like we have these kind of like macro like uh kind of stumbling blocks and is there an escalation of tensions in Iran again? Are we done with the ceasefire? Is this it? Like I'm not saying they're not important. They are. But I think to kind of get away from the true narrative that's actually driving markets right now, like I think this is a great opportunity. Like in my mind, I'm like I'm looking at it and I'm saying this is actually a good time if you haven't already bought some things in the AI space to like to to at least be kind of getting in. But probably you know we'll need to like still look at the earnings that we're getting right

now like you know I think Meta is reporting like at the end of the month for example and you know if you see that these high debt hyperscalers have been getting punished then yeah you know like you got to you know move with that. you can't just kind of like be like, "Oh, I'm just going to dump everything in there." Um, but if you know, Zuckerberg comes out and says like, "Oh, no further acceleration on this." Mega caps can catch a bid. So, I feel like that's kind of where we're at at this time. But again, I don't look for those kind of like cyclical news driven headlines. Uh, I think that's a suckers game. The way I travel and excuse me, the way I trade, um, and again, like this is not advice at all. I don't give investment advice.

Um, but if I, you know, look at this the picture right now, I think risk capital is still looking for the next asymmetric setup and maybe crypto will benefit a little bit of that because so many people have lost interest in crypto more recently. Um, but I think that that could trade alongside AI, stocks, bonds, whatever. U, it doesn't necessarily have to benefit from just a pure rotation. >> David, I've been asking a lot of guests this question, but I'm curious your thoughts on this. AI is obviously a a huge theme in the markets right now and a lot of people have been speculating about what the intersection of crypto and AI looks like as those two technologies start to come together. And I'm curious if you have any thoughts or perspectives on that in terms of what

that actually begins to look like. Is it just, you know, AI tools assisting traders? Is it agents starting to take over trading for people? Um, and just like what's what's got your attention at that intersection right now and how you see that developing? Yeah, I think AI agents tends to be how people see the intersection because they're like, well, AI agents naturally need something that they can actually uh access in terms of their wallets and uh to be autonomous if they want to trade on behalf of the user. And I think that could happen, but I think we're still too early on that front. I think there's going to be a point where all this stuff really does matter and people would be feel like earnestly I don't think people

are comfortable using AI agents to trade on the be their behalf not with any real money and I think that will take maybe one or two generations. I think there will be people who will be much more AI native like the the kids these days whoever's in like elementary school or high school like those guys I mean like they're going to be the ones who are truly going to be growing up with AI and crypto to some extent you know and blockchain like all of us are early and we're we're kind of tourist because we're like adapting to it and we're like this is my workflow how do I adapt that workflow using AI? Um, and I spent a lot of time doing that because I have a, you

know, computer science background and I've been using it to kind of code up models. And it's great because things that used to take me like weeks to code up, now it's taking me like a day, you know, like I built a uh trading model and you know, it's a simple like momentum model. I'm just going through like whatever like a thousand stocks and I'm saying like, okay, tell me which ones are actually cashing in right now. like tell me which sectors are like you know are benefiting like blah blah blah. I'm looking at all that I have it built up in Python and I was like dude it took me like an afternoon to like just to come up with that and I built like 10 models uh eight of which have been profitable like that is crazy to me when I think about it but think about what

I'm doing I'm building the model with AI to trade like using like what the results it's given me. I'm not giving any agent full autonomy to do that because I'll be honest, I'm still not comfortable with that idea. And maybe that's me. Maybe it's psychological. Maybe I'm just old. I don't know. Whatever. Someone like younger at some point will be like, "Dad, it's cool. Like, why don't you sit down on the couch over there? I'm going to do it. I'm just gonna let the AI like chill and and just like run this while I go out to the club and play or whatever." I don't even know what they're gonna be doing. But like I earnestly think that's what's going to happen some point in the future with AI agents, but that's then it's not going to be now. That's that's kind of how I

see it at the moment. >> I really appreciate the transparency on that because I think everybody is figuring out their own version of what leveraging AI looks like. So, it's interesting to hear your your journey on that. But yeah, I saw somewhere on Twitter somebody said that there's only around like 13,000 AI agents trading on Ethereum right now, which I don't really know how they estimated that, but that like that's the very beginning early stages of this. Um, but yeah, you're right. I I I'm really curious to see how this develops because I think there's a lot of different ways it could go. Um, David, I want to get your reaction to another major thing that happened in crypto just last week was the the the launch of the Robin Hood chain. Um, and the rise of meme coins on there and the introduction of I think they have like

25 30 million users now that have access to digital assets. Um, so there's just been a ton of volume, a ton of attention, a lot of people bridging their Ethereum and other assets into the Robin Hood chain. What's your reaction to this as a signal for where crypto is going and and how significant a milestone is the launch of the Robin Hood chain in your mind? >> Yeah, I think it's pretty important. Um, I thought it was a really impressive launch. So, I said before this call started, I haven't been paying that much attention to markets and driving this stuff. This is one of those headlines that caught my attention because uh at least in the crypto space like that mainet launched and immediately it went to like top five decks by volume. Uh so in in you know in a large way I'm not

that surprised given the fact that Robin Hood has a distribution and like you said I think it's like 28 million customers or whatever they have. So I feel like this was the product market fit that most L2s actually dream about. You know like you like are able to like grab this many users and I think like the amount of stables they have on there is still like limited but it's like you know 300 million. It's not and it's not a number that you would sneeze at. Um, so I feel like there's real tokenized stock activity happening on this. Uh, I do think that this could be one of the bigger success stories of this year. Um, so I don't know about the memecoin frenzy. I was never a huge believer in that. Uh but at the very least this could become an on-ramp for a lot of

their retail clients to come on to tokenized assets to perhaps access DeFi primitives which I feel like has been pretty weak this year. Like we saw like DeFi TVL like drop by more than half in 2026. Uh, but as a way to onboard people, as a way to actually get more people into crypto, see what the whole blockchain thing is about, I feel like it's a good way to do it, you know, to bring people through a a brokerage that perhaps they already trust. Real world assets like funds, treasuries, and private credit are still running on rails built decades ago. Gated, paperwork heavy, slow to settle.

Everyone's talking about tokenizing them, but far fewer can actually do it and do it without cutting regulatory corners. Securitize can. It's the SEC regulated infrastructure bringing real world assets onchain. 9 years in native tokenization not wrapped, backed by Black Rockck, Morgan Stanley, and Kathy Woods Arc Invest and chosen by the New York Stock Exchange, Van, BNY, and Apollo to do it at scale. It's the regulated bridge between traditional finance and crypto. Tokenize the world at milkroad.com/securitize. >> Everyone's tokenizing stocks these days, but almost nobody's doing it right. Thin liquidity prices that drift from the real thing, dividends that just vanish.

Bit stocks 2.0 is different. Real NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange depth through licensed brokers. Prices mapped one to one. Dividends paid to your account in real time. Plus, you get the lowest fees in the market at just 0.04%. And you can trade them like any other crypto. as margin in earn in grid trading tokenized stocks finally done right. Head to milkroad.com/bitgget to get started. >> One of the things I wanted to get your thoughts on and something that I've been thinking about a lot is uh just how many different things in crypto this chain touches and who are the winners and losers of it right because it's it's technically on arbitrum on Ethereum. Are they the winners or losers? Is it Morpho? Is it lighter? Is it one of the

other many other um projects protocols that they've sort of partnered with on this? How do you think about the winners and losers in this landscape as we've seen this huge new player Robin Hood chain come into crypto here? >> I think per as a product is likely to emerge as a winner. Um, and then I'm not saying anything, you know, hugely surprising, right? Like Hyperliquid has done well this cycle. Like where many many alts have not been able to survive, like hype has been one of them. Like the two things that everyone wants to like trade is hype or purr and like I'm like, "All right, fine. I get it." Um, and then we break that down into like, "Well, yeah, but is the valuation really worth it right now?" Blah, blah, blah.

All that kind of good stuff. But like I think that it shows you that you know there's a path where when pers are done well like and per are you know coming after equities at the moment and I think that that's only going to grow. I feel like that is going to be like one of the clear winners in this cycle. Um but you know like this is competition you know in my old shop Coinbase like I think Bass had a lot of stumbling blocks um not just with the network itself but like with Bass wallet uh and you know like I think there came to be this realization of like what what most people want a wallet for? They want a wallet to trade. um people want to use the stuff to like actually trade things

and I feel like Robin Hood had the benefit of being able to look at that and say like okay this is how we're going to do it guys and we're going to do it well. Um so in a lot of ways they can kind of avoid some of the things that were learned uh by some of the predecessors in the space. >> Yeah, I think that they did exactly that. They learned a lot from what had gone before and they uh it's just been a really impressive launch. I'm really curious to see what the second order effects of this end up being, like how other competitors respond to this, not just Coinbase, but Binance and many others. Um, because there's definitely a new player in town. Uh, all right, David, our audience is going to lose it with me if I don't ask you at least some

questions about Bitcoin. So, I want to ask about this here. Um, let's just start with the the the question everyone's wondering right now. Has Bitcoin bottomed? We have seen it find support at 60K, went through that, bounced over. At the time of recording, we're now around 64K. Do you think we have bottomed here or do you think we're going to see another break lower from Bitcoin? >> I think that we are if we haven't reached the bottom yet, we're very very close to it. And obviously we're back above that. I think it was like 58 that we like kind of bounced off of in order to kind of get here. And you know, I did think that the bottom was going to be somewhere in the 50s. And if we look at like overlapping technical factors, and I'm not talking about stuff like RSI or

MACD or whatever, like I I think that stuff is crap. But, you know, that said, that is how some people kind of look at. So, it's not one thing. It is kind of like looking at all right, what are pivot points kind of tell us about the floor? Like how much volume is at certain levels, for example? Um, what do the Fibonacci sequences kind of tell us? Again, I don't really totally believe in Fibonacci kind of like levels because, you know, I I feel like it's like a finger in the air kind of like, you know, like what's the name? What's I think people call it astrology for men.

Um, and it's it's kind of that, but psychologically it still matters. And all of those factors kind of overlap around that 56 to 58 kind of like level. So, we kind of like touched that already. What I can't kind of uh account for is people are fairly bored. The sentiment isn't great. Um positioning has been washed out, which is a it's actually an okay thing. When positioning gets washed out, that means that like you can start rebuilding here. Um and the dollar I feel like we've already kind of hit peak like dollar uh during like the like you know opaces of the like Iran war. So, I feel like we're getting towards that like classic bad news, good price divergence, and I think

we're building a base here. So, I think the confirmation will come with sustained ETF flows turning positive. Um, again, I think the macro environment is actually very favorable for risk right now. Uh, so if that confirms this soft landing inflation path I think we're on, then I think that we could be in a very good spot for Bitcoin. Yeah, one of the things I think I agree with all of that. One of the things that's been frustrating with me with trying to answer this question is that it feels like the volatility has gotten so low that Bitcoin itself can't make up its own mind, right? Like if we broke above 71 or 74K, be like, "Okay, well, the bulls are back, right?" But or if we went down to 40s, it' be like, "Okay, that's that's got to be it, right?" Um, but it's it just keeps hanging around

60K and it's like, "I can't tell if this is over or not." Um, so I want to ask you a question about this. Something I've been thinking about is that the Clarity Act in the next couple of weeks seems like it's going to get a firm yes or no finally from Congress after two years. Do you think that the Clarity Act either passing or finally getting killed and failing might serve as a catalyst one way or the other on Bitcoin here or do you think Bitcoin's going to shrug that off no matter which way that goes? I >> feel like the Clarity Act is really important for institutional clients, less so for retail. And if it's less so for retail, I feel like the day-to-day price action isn't really going to reflect anything hugely negative if it doesn't pass. And I veer towards that way because we're down two Republican

senators. Um, and I don't mean to be glib about that. It's, you know, like the passing of uh Lindsey Graham, for example, and the fact that Mitch McConnell is sidelined at the moment. Like I don't think that it's necessarily make or break if we don't see this happen before the August recess. I.e. like this could come back in 2027. And granted, you'll have to restart the process all over again because then there going to be need to be new debates and they'll say like, "Oh, should we use what we the language you previously had?" And then someone's going to say like, "No, we can't." Uh or if there's going to be more Democrats in the the Senate, maybe they'll say like, "Well, hold on. we want to throw in more

conflict of interest clauses or who knows what, you know, like more regulated like kind of kind of things. So, I feel like uh there's a lot, you know, like and I I when I look at the clarity, I think it's important from like having regulated on-ramps, uh clearing a path to ETFs, which the SEC already kind of did, but also really supporting the tokenization pipeline. Um, so that would be for me what would be relevant in terms of having like a real bull market restart for the next leg. But I think failing that it would be some short-term disappointment. Um, and again, it's just because we have such a narrow window at this point. Like my I think the odds for me of getting clarity done are quite low at this

point. Like you know, like you can I I there's record of me being on another podcast at the start of the year and I was like, "Oh, it's at least like 40 or 50%." And everyone's like, "No, it's zero." And then like we went back and forth and back and forth. Um, and I never kind of changed. I was like, "Eh, still like even odds." Like it's probably around like 50% for me. Um, and at some points like it was like 40 to 50, then it was 50 to 60, and then but like now I'm kind of like, man, it would take a lot for them to kind of agree all this stuff. Right now, at the end of the day, just markets hate ambiguity more than they hate any single outcome. So really, it just got to be like, "Dude, just tell us what it is. If it's not

happening this year, fine, so we can move on." But I don't think it's going to kill us at all. >> Do you think that the SEC and the CFTC with their efforts around things like Project Crypto have given the industry enough clarity that we can just keep going without the Clarity Act? Or do you think that there are like super important vital things that can't really start to happen until we get some kind of legislation on the books? I mean, the biggest thing the Clarity Act does is just gives a green light to a lot of those institutions out there that were expecting it. Um, and I'll be honest, I thought that this wasn't on the back of the president's mind anymore because I felt like maybe he looked at it, he's like, "Listen, I delivered the

Genius Act to you guys. Uh, you know, like I put a favorable SEC chair, CFTC chair. Like, they've done a lot. They're trying to give you the clarity." Um, so when you know, uh, Senator Graham passed and President Trump I think sent a tweet and he was just like, "You guys like for him like you guys got to get like the Clarity Act done." I was like, "Okay." Like that was not what I was expecting you to like to say. Uh, I I kind of thought you forgot all about us. Um, and that he had moved on to like the safe act or other things that he's really concerned about for the midterms. Um, but it does show that there is still like from the uh the administration itself like like people paying attention to like what's happening. So I think

it's hugely important what the SEC has done, what the CFTC has done. Um they've enabled a lot more instruments. They've kind of reduced some of that like and you know regulatory enforcement by regulation by enforcement uh kind of activity that you know they had been known for in the previous administration and that's been great. Um but yeah, you know, I think for your institutions who want to be able to like recommend this to like uh you know, tell their RAAS, hey, just like, you know, tell people like green light fully, just kind of do it. They they want this to happen. They they want the Clarity Act. Uh but obviously not in a way that would hurt them, i.e. the banks, uh which is what held things up for so long. So I think a lot of people want it. A lot of buy side

clients want it. Um but like I said, it's not the beall end all. And I think that there will be a a point where they're like, "Okay, if this doesn't get done, like ultimately there's still a lot of pro crypto senators out there, both Democrats and Republicans, who are going to get it done in 2027." When you say they want it done, is it more important from your perspective, is it more important to institutions so that they can deploy capital and make investments into the digital asset industry or is it more important so they can kind of launch their own products and services and like start to compete in this industry? Which one do you think they're is they're more excited about and which one does clarity like give them more clarity on how to do or is it both of those things?

>> It's more about deploying capital. Uh I would say for the ones who want to launch their own products, the genius act was more relevant because space facts here a lot of them wanted to like launch their own stable coins and whatever way that was done whether that was to like tokenize deposits which is still kind of a you know like up for debate kind of thing of like well what does that look like and how how would like JP Morgan coin actually do that and like will people be will people come on board for that um tokeniz tokenization I think would be more important from the clarity perspective. So that tokenization pipeline I think would be important to like you know for clarity to pass and maybe allow uh more of that

access but it's already happening. I think people are able to kind of say like well based on the rules that we already have governing um you know risk risk markets as a whole we have a line to actually do that. Uh, but I think that in order to really make the stuff viable, you know, like you need to have like jurisdictional kind of unification between like the US and Europe and Asia because right now it's fragmented because a lot of the stuff either exists on whitelists uh or it's incumbent upon the actual brokerage or whoever is distributing this stuff to actually say like hold on, you're allowed to hold this tokenized uh stock but you're not.

Um, so even if you somehow got your hands on it, sorry, you can't sell it. You know, like it's it's that kind of stuff that really hasn't been worked out quite yet that I think the Clarity Act would resolve. Um, but you know, like that's something that you could probably get an executive agency to kind of at least give some guidance on for their for the interim period before like uh the federal regulation actually happens. But keep in mind it has to happen. I think at some point sh like at some point in time the SEC and the FCFTC if they you know and they've actually already said this once before at least once before um we can do all we can to kind of provide some of this clarity but

at the end of the day it still needs to be Congress that comes up with the final rules. >> David Dwong, one of the best institutional analysts in all of crypto. I'm really glad to have you back. It's good to have you on the show again. I'm looking forward to the next conversation already. Where can we send our audience to find more of you and your work online? >> Uh I'm still solo right now. I'm just on my own. I'm not doing anything. I'm not selling anything either. Uh but I am on X. Uh so you can find me on Twitter at David Dwong just you know full name. Um and you know sometimes when I feel like it I'll put out a market take uh or regulatory update. Um but you know I've been enjoying my time off so far. Well, I hope you continue to enjoy your time

off and I hope we'll have you back on the show again soon. Thanks so much for being on the Milkro show. >> No, it's my pleasure. It's always happy to dig deeper with this community. >> Well, our community loves you and we love our community. Thank you all for joining us today. I hope you all learned something. So, until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milkro Show. Thanks for being here, everyone. Bye. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milk Road daily and pro newsletters and start investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.