Bitwise's Matt Hougan and Ryan Rasmussen on crypto fundamentals

Transcript

I am optimistic that we're going to end the year higher than where we started, which may be a hot take because in order to do that, we need to see prices climb something like 50% from where they're at today. If you look at something like Bitcoin, what's up everybody? It's LGD said here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where the prices are low but the vibes are shockingly kind of high. Today is February 26th, 2026. Are we turning things around? There's a lot going on in the crypto tabloids, including rumors of forced price suppression and AI totally destroying the economy in the span of the next two years. Our guests today, though, are as optimistic as ever, as they've got the proof in the pudding that things are heading for a very rosy future for crypto. Matt Hogan and Ryan

Rasmmanson from Bitwise are back on the show. Today's episode is brought to you by Warbucks, the easiest way to trade crypto and some turn crypto tax chaos into confidence. They are back. Matt and Ryan, welcome back to the show, guys. Always great to see you twice a month. It's a pleasure. >> Glad to be here. >> Let's do it. >> Okay, so let's let's just dive right into the headlines. There's a lot of confusing news these days in crypto, guys, and and AI and it's all merging together. We need always from you guys, we need the Hopium. That's what we want. Okay. And I saw this chart the other day and I wanted you guys to comment on it about how crypto always seems to bottom sometime around 23 months after it breaks the all the pre after it had broken the previous all-time high. And

obviously this is I feel like at this point in the bare market despite having a bit of a positive week in the last couple days, we're always looking for something something nice uh that gives us some kind of hope, some kind of new metric. But gentlemen, would love to get your thoughts on this and also kind of where the where the market's at. Ryan, you weren't here last time. Let's hear from you, man. >> Yeah, sounds good. Uh, I would just clarify. I think I'm more bullish than ever uh on where we're headed in terms of of price action for Bitcoin and for crypto. There's so much positive news, yet it's not reflected in the price. And I think that creates a tremendous opportunity for investors.

>> Like charts like this are are really interesting because I think this aligns with a lot of other developments we're seeing across fundamentals for the crypto ecosystem. And if you think about, you know, where we're at in this downturn, we have seen a stallout in stable coin supply. We've seen negative ETF flows week over week over week over week. We've obviously seen prices draw down significantly from all-time highs. Calls for Bitcoin being dead are everywhere. The attention has turned to AI and other areas of the investable market. And and then you start to look at well how long has this draw down really been happening or like where's a pattern exist from prior cycles cuz this is starting to very much feel like a prior cycle. We're seeing you know

bodies surface from the October 10 flash crash that feels a lot like moments in 2022. So I feel like this is a reminder that we've been in this cycle for a while. These cycles often repeat themselves and that we another sign that we are likely near the bottom uh of this bear and we're excited for the recoil that we'll see once we turn positive. >> Ryan, I thought cycles were dead, man. Why you talking about cycles? I thought I thought cycles were out the window and now but now we're looking back at metrics that I was like, well, it's clearly a cycle and that's how cycles work.

>> This is a fair This is a very fair statement LG. It's a grind higher, I would say. And the cycles get less uh dramatic as we grind higher. But the road from 20K to 65K to 125K was never going to be straight up. It's never going to be straight up up to 250, 500, a million. You're going to have these boom with bus, boom, bust. But I believe they'll be more muted both in terms of the upside and downside. And so that's why we talk about this grind higher that is driven by different forces today than it was four years ago. And even though it can look similar, there could be different forces behind what's happening. And I think that's why it's important to look at fundamental metrics

like liquidity across the ecosystem, demand versus supply for a lot of these assets whose price is driven by that. And then other narrative drivers like regulatory adoption and uh the growth of of investment in stable coins and tokenization. There's so many positive things happening that uh while the cycles can look similar in nature when you zoom out, think there's fundamentally different things driving them. Everything you're listening to today is also covered in our daily crypto newsletter and on Sundays we even recap the best parts of the entire week's worth podcast. So check it out at the link below. Matt, you wrote a great memo this week kind of outlining that, right? And even I I find, you know, and you and you remind me of this in your tweets and and your memos and even, you

know, Milk Road, I'm reminded of this. It's like when you're in the bare market, you have headlines like Black Rockck is buying a bunch of unis swap and it's and it and unis swap goes down 2% on the day, you know, it just doesn't even like what is happening, you know, how's that even possible? And you kind of wrote all about that in your latest piece. Tell us about it. >> Yeah, absolutely. Look, I mean, I think there are two factors at work. You know, one one I talked about anchoring bias, which is just people hear one piece of news and they get caught on it and it's really hard to stretch them away. Um there's also this is sort of almost an evolutionary response, right? When you're under threat, the only thing you can worry about is the immediate threat.

And so when you're in a bare market, the only thing you can see is risk. And all the good news that happens is sort of beyond what you can process. You mentioned the unis swap example. I'll give another one. Yesterday, uh Meta announced it was rolling out stable coins across three billion people. And we talked about it for like 12 minutes. Uh a few years ago, Meadow tried to move into stable coins. We talked about it for 12 months. There's three billion people who are gonna have crypto wallets in a year. It's like ridiculous. And the price is like, h uh I think a point I was making in the memo is look, most of the biggest alpha opportunities you'll ever encounter as an investor are behaviorally driven. It's when people

make classic behavioral mistakes and there's a gap between perception and reality. And the reason Ryan is more bullish than he's ever been is the gap is bigger than it's ever been in my view in crypto. Uh the reality is Meta is rolling out stable coins to three billion people. The reality is Black Rockck is investing in unis swap and Apollo is investing in Morpho. Uh the reality is Stripe just said all internet transactions will take place over blockchains and they're the best payment company in the world, right? The reality is Circle just reported blowout earnings. Everyone's building on tokenization and crypto is like ah life is terrible. Um that that is alpha. It doesn't mean it's alpha tomorrow, right?

Like I'm not the thing about the chart you showed is it's both genius and crazy. The the crazy part is assuming that things will play out precisely to the day and this is exactly the bottom. That's insane and wrong. The correct part is like this is a natural cycle where we get overly bearish and then the people who buy when you're overly bearish do really really well. This is just a moment where the news is really good and the vibes are really bad and that disconnect is potential profit and that's why Ryan and I are so excited.

>> It's going to be so obvious in retrospect. It's one of those things. It's one of those things. And I think Matt, you know, we've talked about this so many times in the last five, six months with you guys is that what you're describing about that discrepancy, that space between how good things are and how low the price is, is really at like an it's like an all-time high of that stretch, whatever that is, fear, agreed to, fundamentals, whatever you want to whatever metric you want to make up with for that. But I also feel like in the fall, we were waiting for the opposite to happen and it never did, right? where it's like and fundamentals were always good, but that we w we expected price to completely obliterate go so far beyond fundamentals because of how good the fundamentals were that and that never

actually happened. It kind of kind of just had like a middling kind of me and then and then now we're back where we are and Matt, we've talked about that so many times. Uh the bare market uh started a year ago like you've made really great points on that. Um so I think I think it's good to hear that this is the opportunistic time as well. Uh and we're just getting a reset before things go higher. One thing in your memo, Matt, um that you pointed out is the RWA opportunity and how we've got $20 billion of tokenized assets, but the amount of actual assets that could be tokenized is way beyond that. Tell me a bit more.

>> Yeah, this is one of those things where like people can't contemplate large numbers. So, we're excited about tokenization. There's $20 billion. Stocks are $110 trillion, right? Bonds are $140 trillion. Real estate is like $250 trillion. ETFs are $30 trillion. The the the point I made in the memo is that the tokenization market could 10,000x and still have room to grow. And while that sounds like a crazy idea, you have the CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, saying every asset will be tokenized. You have Paul Atkins, the chair of the most important regulator, saying every asset will be tokenized. You have every major Wall Street firm hiring people to tokenize

that. Like the world is screaming at you that everything is going to be tokenized. We're going to go from 20 billion to 200 trillion and crypto's like nah nah nah nah nah. They won't listen. And I think that that is just a really significant opportunity. >> Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh Ryan, I'm assuming you you're very much on board with this narrative that it's just like that's when when Larry Frink speaks, we should listen. Is that is that is he just giving a warning of what that that all that that is going to come to to fruition or is there maybe something else there? Like I don't know enough about the strategic speech patterns of these types of very important powerful people.

>> Yeah, I I absolutely do think that when Larry Frink or Paul Atkins or Jamie D when these people speak, we should listen. And the reason we should listen is because most institutional investors are absolutely listening. A lot of us in crypto get hung up on the specific narratives that we talk about or see floating around Twitter all the time. But you got to remember that most institutional investors, 98% 99% have never even been on crypto Twitter. And they don't care what's happening day-to-day in the crypto space. But what they do care about is seeing someone like Larry Frink, who's chairman of the largest asset manager in the world, literally 10 plus trillion dollars that they manage, saying that all assets are going to be tokenized. And what they do

care about is that the head of the SEC is now giving speech after speech after speech and writing opeds about prediction markets and about uh tokenization and stable coins. Those are things that actually move the needle in terms of the perception of crypto and the impact it's going to have on the economy and on the world. And that's what institutional investors are paying to is they sit back and think about long-term mega trends that they want to invest in or their client should have exposure to. >> That's why it matters and that's why we absolutely should be listening.

>> Yeah. I would add just to just to make this concrete for people, you're seeing this in other parts of the market, right? So in July of last year, the SEC chair said, "I wish there were super apps that combine stocks, bonds, prediction markets, futures, etc." And now Coinbase has turned on stock trading. Right? So regulators act, people listen. The chair of the CFTC said prediction markets are okay. And now the CME is building prediction markets and these are going to be multi-trillion dollar markets. Uh the the chair of the SEC also said everything will be tokenized and everything will be tokenized, right?

like every fact points to say something, it happens in the real world. So, I really think this is it's going to happen and I don't think people have contemplated the scale of it yet. >> Mhm. And one of the, you know, what's funny too is, and and obviously this is one of the big stories of the week, and we've talked about this on all our shows, is this Triny piece about uh AI, this predictive sci-fi piece from retrospect from 2028 saying how much things will change. And we've already covered this um on the show, so we don't have to go over it again, but that if you're in crypto and you read if you're in crypto and you read that, you get really excited because it a lot of it points to all this agentic economy and how stable coins are going to be, the

way that they transact, and it just makes so much more sense. If you're in other industries, maybe maybe it's time to pivot it back to crypto or to stable coins. Um, and guys, Circle is up 45% this week, and I don't know if it's because of the article or because of earnings, Ryan, like you were talking about. Um, but we would love we'd love to kind of hear your thoughts on on the I guess the general state of stable coins because we talk about this often on the show, but it seems like we're really at a point where people are starting to get excited um, and starting to really understand, I think, with some of these futuristic AI pieces that's that are really sci-fi. That's the part that they pick out. They're like, you know, you know which part is actually true about that is the stable coin part.

>> It's it's absolutely true. I mean, the state of the stable coin market really has never been better. I mean, I mentioned this earlier, right? The stable coin AUM has stalled out. But let's remember that it's stalled out around 300 billion. That's a massive number, but it's going to be small when we look back 10 years from now. And it's significantly larger than it was three, four, five years ago. And so I think the state of the stable market when you zoom out is is very very strong and we're very optimistic about it. I would just note that when we talk about how price and fundamentals are mismatched when we look back at January of 2025 when Donald Trump launched a memecoin and prices were euphoric that showed this kind of

how price is way ahead of fundamentals. Like we shouldn't have really cared that Trump and Melania were launching meme coins. But then you go to today and Meta is rolling out stable coins to half the world and the price is wamp wamp wamp sideways. These are the mismatches that that we're talking about and that Matt was referencing earlier and these are the investment opportunities when it comes directly to stable coins. I think, you know, the fact that regulators are behind them, the fact that the White House is behind them from a legislative and regulatory perspective with the Genius Act, the fact that all banks are behind them, payment companies, FinTech, like this is all signs that things are moving in the right direction. And stable coins were crypto's first killer use case. And people heard that and thought, well, then why haven't stable

coins become everything they say they are? And the reality is they're on that path and people are just impatient. How realistic is this timeline, Matt, for this stuff? You work with these institutions. You've known them for years. Obviously, there's a million reasons why they're going to convert to stable coins and they've started, but these are some of these places are dinosaurs man. >> Yeah, they move slowly. It always takes longer and then is bigger than you think. Those are the two things that are inherently true. Stable coins will gain traction in the areas that are not best served by the traditional finance system first. That's what we're seeing in the crypto markets, in offshore transactions, in countries with poor currencies, etc. long before we use them here in the dollar. But I I in the US uh

to replace like standard dollars. But I I I do think it's going to happen faster than the market expects. Um and the primary catalysts certainly the Genius Act going into effect uh in a handful of months uh will be a major catalyst. Uh, I think this agentic idea is a major catalyst. Um, so yeah, it always takes longer, but it always ends up bigger than you think. I think that is the fair way to think about it. >> Are there does does Circle have any competitors for what it's doing? I I feel like I don't know. And if you guys aren't at liberty to kind of discuss that, that's fine with me. But I'm just wondering Circle like it seems to me like so many roads point to Circle.

They're they're integrated into Coinbase and Coinbase gets a piece of that as well. Um, but it seems like everybody just wants to know how do I capitalize on stable coins and there's a lot of other options totally like there's there's Sky which we talk about a lot on Milk Road is a it's a vastly different type of stable coin. Uh, so I think you would get into that for different reasons but for strictly like okay aentic commerce USDC trading back and forth. People are launching agents right now. Open claw all that kind of stuff. Is there is is circle what people should look at or should they look outside of that?

>> So it's it's a dominant player. I have this thesis on on equities like Circle and Coinbase, which is they have this unique advantage that the regulatory environment was so hostile that the period where natural competitors would build up in their markets never happened. So there's no reason that Coinbase should have the market share it has. The reason it has the market share it has is wellunded competitors were hard to come by. You had Kraken, which is doing exceptionally well now and gaining share, but it has a do it has a far larger position than it should, right? It should have been like the brokerage market where there was Schwab and Fidelity and Interactive Brokers and Erade and all these other people competing for share and that didn't happen for Coinbase and it didn't happen

in stable coins for Circle. So, it has a lead that is bigger than it should and I suspect it's going to be able to sustain a big chunk of that lead even as other competitors come into the market. So, yeah, I think it has this embedded regulatory moat uh that it shouldn't have, but it does and it's pressing that advantage and it looks like it's going to stay ahead to me. >> Crypto taxes are a nightmare. You've got trades across 15 exchanges, DeFi positions you forgot about, NFT flips, staking rewards, airdrops, and somehow you're supposed to report all of this to the IRS. Good luck. Cue the solution, SUM. You may know it by its old name, Cryptotax Calculator. The Sum platform connects to over 3,500 exchanges,

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profits, and withdraw on demand in crypto or USDC. Blow the account, you only lose the test fee. Reload and go again. With Warbucks, you can profit from crypto moves in any direction, up or down. Get funded today at milkroad.com/warbbucks. Does someone like a meta stand a chance? like like I get it. They're going to bring in they want to do their own stable coin and their own wallets. Um but I don't think Meta has the greatest track record of creating their own products, right? A lot of these big mag seven companies, it's like they mainly acquire other companies and or just totally copy paste the product as and make it their own, right? So that's especially Facebook that's been kind of, you know, the the story for them and and same with Apple and those types of

places. So, and Ryan, I'd love to hear from you. Like, is this something that Meta can actually They tried years ago. They burnt a lot of money on it. They've been trying with Metaverse stuff the last couple years. They burnt a lot of money on that. Is this another place they're just going to burn money before capitulating and using using Circle? Anyways, >> I do think that they will spend a lot of money on this, but I ultimately think that the market's big enough that there will be many many winners. And we we kind of talked about this earlier like the market is so massive that just assuming that you have Circle dominating today but then another entry like Meta enters market and the market share just shifts I think is wrong. The reality is is that it grows significantly and Meta will likely carve out a decent chunk of

the payments market because of its installed user base. I I do tend to feel that we would have seen market share of something like Circle be taken over by traditional fintech companies or payment companies like PayPal when they launch a stable coin and we didn't see that happen. I think I saw something the other day that PYUSD is slowly growing, right? But it's at a far lower rate than USDC's growth year-over-year. And so I think that's the the type of thing that we're talking about is PYUSD can be successful while Circle is still successful, while Tether is still successful, while Meta Stablecoin and Stripe stable coin business is still successful. We're talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trillions of dollars in transactions every single year and that's probably smaller than

what it will actually be. So I do think they can be successful. I do think that the fact that you have X and Meta and these apps that have huge installed user bases embracing stable coins is very very massive and it just means it will be front and center for users. Uh and it kind of aligns with the narrative that everyone's been saying for a long time is that eventually people won't even realize they're using crypto. They'll be using the applications that they use every single day and in the back it will be crypto technology like stable coins and blockchains. >> Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. I think that's right. I I think Meta is more of a challenge to wallets like MetaMask and Phantom and maybe brokerage apps eventually like Robin Hood than it is to

Circle. I think they'll probably use other other stable coins at this point just cuz they had such a challenging uh environment, but but they are like the distribution engine and a natural home for wallet exposure, which I think is the way I would think of their entry into the market. >> Right. Yeah, that makes sense. And also, I mean, a reminder that Elon has said that there's going to be crypto payments on X pretty soon and that they've been working on that. So, that's that's definitely part of the the stuff that's coming is is the stuff built natively into the apps. And I like that. I think that makes a lot of sense. It's just a it's more a competitor for the wallets or or a potential buyer for some of the wallets that are out there as well, right? You know, why same thing, why why

go and rebuild the wheel, you know, why start from scratch when you have a lot of really great crypto wallets that exist already uh that could just be integrated? Um, one question about the meta thing too that I have for you guys or as these companies kind of announce a lot of companies that announce new stable coins. Would a meta stable coin if they did that would it have yield? Like would that how would that work? You know, like what would they base it on? That's I guess that's the case for them using a USDC. >> Yeah, I my g I mean who knows, but my guess is they'll use third party stable coins at this point. Um, and and if they did then no, right? Effectively, no.

they're they're probably already better off in the current regulatory environment using a third party stable coin and and sharing yield from distribution. That's almost the way regulators are driving the world is to create these partnerships. Um and so that's probably what you're going to see because regulation is important, right? Coinbase offers yield. If it had its own stable coin, it couldn't. That's weird. But regulation does weird things to the world, right? So that is what the world is telling you. it wants this ecosystem to look like. That's probably good for circle and it means that's going to see the experimentation uh that you see by these firms.

>> Matt, what's the latest on clarity? >> It's a coin flip still. Look, the prediction markets are slightly more bullish than I am. I think it's like strictly a coin flip and depending on which prediction market you use, it will tell you it's slightly better than a coin flip. But um I don't know. I think coin flip is the best estimate there. I look, it sounds like we're getting closer to a solution on yield. I think this will really come down to Democrats and Donald Trump hatred and whether that deep sixes the Clarity Act versus fear of the crypto lobbying effect in the midterms uh and what happened to to Sherid Brown happening to other people.

I think that's actually where the rubber will meet the road. I'm I guess if I had to choose, I take the over and say it passes. But I do think it's pretty close to a coin flip at this point. >> Every time we speak, the odds are different. And even since the last time we spoke, the odds were high and then they dipped back to the 40s and today they're back in the high60s. So, and that's just on poly market. So, you're right. I think obviously the the prediction markets are have slightly different opinion uh than you and and different things happening there. Ryan, what is I want to know maybe we can just zoom out a bit especially because we missed you on the last episode. What do you think the rest of this year kind of looks like for crypto? Because I feel

like we've ended up so focused on the day-to-day, the week to week, waiting for clarity, you know, all this different news, these these scary AI articles. But if we had to zoom out here, what where are we at in terms of this year-long bare market? Are we supposed to expect a nice reversal? Q3 clarity goes through this and that happens. Like I want to know from you, what what should we be zooming out and thinking about for the rest of the year? I am optimistic that we're going to end the year higher than where we started, which may be a hot take because in order to do that, we need to see prices climb something like 50% from where they're at today. If you look at something like Bitcoin, >> 40% to get back to to where we were before. I think we'll end the the year

around 100K for Bitcoin. Uh, and the reason I think that is true is I think we've churned through this state of despair and all of the sellers who just couldn't take it and didn't want to have exposure and were scared of the four-year cycle and we're scared that we're going much lower and that we're moving into the state of apathy. We're hearing things about insider trading and market manipulation and like the price of Bitcoin goes up 10% on a given day and that's a sign to me that we're starting to get through this like oh no, the sky is falling moment. And so I think that all of these negative drivers that have held the price down or brought the price down over the past 12 months or so >> are starting to lose their staying power

and that the fundamentals are going to turn around. I think we'll see a reverse of ETF flows going into the the middle to to late year. Summer periods typically are slow as as institutional investors go golfing and take trips with their families, but I think Q3 we'll see ETF flows accelerate. I think we'll see a return in liquidity into the ecosystem and that'll be reflected in the basis uh expanding on Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Salana. I think that we're going to see continued adoption by institutional investors who just now are getting approval to these ETFs, Bitcoin first and then others. And so I think there's a lot more positive uh tailwinds that are going to propel us higher. And while when we look back at 2026, I think we'll end the year up somewhere

between 5 and 10% from where we started, but you'll see a chart that shows it was a really crazy roller coaster ride. >> Mhm. Mhm. With the fear and greed down in the the single digits for a while as well. Uh Matt, I want to ask you what one of the other big thing that's been happening this week in crypto. The big uh rumor mill news is that Jane Street um has been suppressing price purposely and that they're now being sued for the terror collapse because they orchestrated it and that they might be behind 1010. Everybody's just like every reason that there was for crypto being bad has now been pointed at them doing it on purpose. And even to the point it's so granular um that there's several posts about how Bitcoin would dump every day at 10 a.m. like clockwork and suddenly once this company has been

sued, they've stopped uh they've stopped I guess probably halted operations internally as they're getting sued and that this daily dump has also stopped and lo and behold the day after all this comes out Bitcoin pumped 10%. Is any of that true? Yeah, I wish someone had told me about this 10 10 a.m. guaranteed dump six months ago so I could have profited from it every single day. It's remarkable that it's only after the fact that we find out that everyone knew that this was happening. Um, look at look the the reason crypto is down is because people who held Bitcoin at the start of 2025 sold it. That's the that's like that's it. That's the reason crypto is down. The problem is actually in the

mirror. It's not someone outside. It's us looking at each other and saying like we crypto sold Bitcoin and the price went down. Um I think the Jane Street story has to be fractured into multiple different parts if you want to dig into it. So there's the Teral Luna question, right? Teruna was doomed from the start. There's a reason Bitwise never put it in our index, right? It was doomed from the start. And the question of whether Jane Street used insider information to profit on it is something that we'll find out in court. I have no particular view. Uh the question of whether there is some weird magical arbitrage between Jane Street and how ETFs are created and a 10 a.m. dump just has no actual

logical path. If you know how ETFs function, there's like there's literally no way for Jane Street to profit in the ETF market because they're dumping. I've seen so many terrible takes that are just not backed by how ETFs work. Uh I come from I was CEO of ETF.com. So that story is untrue. The question in the middle is did Jane Street ever look at leverage markets and create a cascade of liquidations to put the price. That's a broader question in crypto, right? A lot of people have said forever that the fact that you can see the leverage liquidation levels in the market causes some people to create cascades in those

markets to I I you know I don't know but the the latest iteration that there is this weird nexus between Jane Street ETFs and a 10 a.m. dump that we only found out about after the fact. That one is just false. So I you know these these other two I don't know but that one is just false. >> Damn. I was hoping that was true. >> I was hoping honestly. No, but really I mean I think at this point, you know, and again, you guys come on and we always we always have a really positive picture and you guys are bulls and and it's really refreshing. Um I think we're at the point in the bare market where you're always looking. You're like there has to be a simple explanation for all this. Not the part you said at the start, Matt, that it's like simply the

market didn't want us. Like it's like it can't it can't it be like it can't be that it's like crypto is boring and sucks. Like that can't be it can't be that my coins are unattractive. It must be a boogeyman doing this to me personally, you know? And I think that that's that's investing. It's always going to feel that way and it's is shuttering that emotion is what you have to do. But uh I was hoping it was that simple. I was really hoping. >> It's actually such a good point. I mean that's what I find interesting about this is people are searching for that single uh boogeyman and then they forget about it. If you remember two weeks ago the boogeyman was a macro non-crypto hedge fund in Hong Kong >> had was forced to sell Bitcoin because of a complex unwinding of a SAS trade.

Right. that was just felt just as real as this James and then like oh that turned out not to be true so we went hunting for a new uh boogeyman uh in the end I really like all these things can happen on the edges and that can have influence on an intraday basis but the six-month boogeyman the reason it's down 50% is because people who had Bitcoin sold it and um sometimes a trazer uh cuts painfully >> well I'm sure there'll be another boogeyman in two weeks when we're back on. We'll have another another person come along or another another firm coming along. Uh gentlemen, we're almost at the end of the episode and um we always did when we finish episodes with you guys, it's always the same topic and it's kind of it is related to crypto.

And actually this time I feel like we've had an influence because it's actually related to Bitwise. So we always for people that haven't listened uh we always finish by discussing poly market or prediction markets in general and Matt gives us some very gives us the best financial advice in the business when we do this part. And I'm not going to discuss I'm going to tell you Josh Shapiro your 2028 pick. He's down to 2% right now. So I'm not even going to open that chart. Okay. He's he's back down. Buying opportunity though, right? Tell me. Yeah, there's >> coming in. He's coming. There's one buyer putting 500 grand into Josh Shapiro. Who is it? It's Matt. Here he comes. Um but you guys have some some interesting news on prediction markets.

>> Yeah. When my new yacht is named Shapiro, you'll know the reason why. Um yeah, we we filed we filed Yeah. So obviously we've been following the prediction markets with you um which are a close cousin to crypto and uh recently we filed for six prediction ETFs under a subbrand of Bitwise called prediction shares which I think is a fantastic brand and I feel very proud that we bought the URL like 6 months ago. they they provide exposure uh if they were to launch to the Democrats winning the presidential election or the Republicans winning the presidential election and the same thing for the 2026 elections in the House or the Senate. And the core thesis is of course you can get those

exposures through the prediction markets today in the same way that you could get Bitcoin exposure through Coinbase in 2023. But the ETFs unlocked Bitcoin for a large number of investors who didn't feel comfortable working on a separate app. And we think ETFs can do the same thing on prediction markets. My view is that prediction markets are one of the most important financial developments over the last 10 years. And I think they are going to be 10 to 100 times larger in the future than they are today. I think they're systematically important and broadly good for society. and the prediction shares ETFs are trying to fit that into an ETF wrapper to let people access those financial returns in their

traditional brokerage accounts. So, we're hopeful and excited to bring them to market and we'll see uh how that filing process goes. >> How would that work? And maybe if you're liberty to say like how would how would the because something like a Bitcoin ETF it's like well you're exposed to Bitcoin and Bitcoin goes up it's great but something like prediction markets it's like I guess maybe eventually if these these platforms have tokens you would invest in those maybe but how is that what you're waiting for or I guess what you describe are you taking like a delta would the ETF take delta neutral positions provide liquidity how would that work >> great question uh I'm limited but what I can say to what's in the filing so I'll say what's in the filing which is they aim to exposure through swaps and or owning the contracts directly. So, but

the goal the goal is to provide exposure to those election outcomes in an easy to use um wrapper. You can find it in the prospectus. It's on page two. >> Okay. Okay. We'll take a look. Appreciate that. Is there a timeline on that? I guess it takes a while for these to be approved. >> It it it takes a while. These are 40act uh registered products. So the timeline is faster than the timeline you're used to on a Bitcoin ETF, but there is no guarantee that they will launch. I should say the timeline for a traditional 40act product is is is measured in something like 70ish days.

Um these are relatively novel, so it can take a long period of time. I can't tell you if or when they will launch. >> Got it. I guess you guys you guys have a longterm view anyways. 2028 election uh still a ways off. So ideally uh uh approved before then and and a great way for people like you're saying some of your clients and everybody that that's already a big bid wise fan and investor a great way for them to get exposure without uh without getting in the weeds like us without having to get down and look and and analyze 2% versus 4% for Josh Shapiro or best picture for 2026 or any of that kind of stuff.

U great well gentlemen it's been a pleasure as usual and um thank you for all your thoughts. We'll have you guys back in a couple weeks and uh thanks everybody for listening. 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.