Is crypto the biggest contrarian bet in markets? Matt Hougan

Transcript

We're trying to do two things. We're trying to reinvent gold and reinvent finance, Bitcoin and everything else. If you take out Bitcoin and you take out stable coins, what is the market cap of what we're trying to reinvent finance with? What's up everybody? It's LGD said here and welcome to the Milk Gro Show, the daily crypto show that desperately wants to stand out in his friend group, even if it's going to take a total opposite take to get there. Today is June 9th, 2026. Recording on June 8th. Listen, we've all been the odd person out at a time in our lives. It's totally normal to have an opinion that's different than everyone else around you.

But it's on another level to actually voice it out loud. Our guest today, one of our faves on the show, believes that opinion is actually crypto right now as the most contrarian bet in finance, and it might just be the perfect time to add more. Matt Hogan from Bitwise is back on the show. Also, as you know, the market is going completely insane, and our analysts were busy last week. They made over 20 trades. A lot of them coming on Friday right at the deadline. Some are buying the blood. Others are waiting to see how that dip plays out. You can see what they sold and what they bought for just a dollar in Milkroad Pro. You get 7 days in there and you can cancel anytime. Today's episode is brought to you by Cape, the privacy first mobile carrier. Matt, what's up, man? It's a

one-on-one showdown today. >> I love it. This is the best. I can't wait. We don't need Ryan around here. We're good. >> We don't We don't need him. How would he possibly answer what happened since we last you guys had you guys on the show, which was like 10 days ago and we're talking about hyperlquid. Oh, it's beautiful. Everything like lots of things are green. Uh and since then, I think crypto like Bitcoin went from like 76 to 59, Matt, in in a short amount of time. When these things happen, it feels extraordinary how quickly uh it can shoot down. Did you Matt, I mean, like listen, I we didn't we haven't chatted since then. Um, did you did you log off and touch grass this weekend after the downturn Friday?

>> Oh, I definitely did. I got out for a nice couple hard runs. Uh, tried to get away from the screens. Uh, yeah, it was a brutal pull down. And the other thing that happened was that sentiment fell faster than the price. Actually, like crypto reached pretty close to peak despair on Thursday or Friday, right? Sailor was selling. It was over. People were rage quitting. I had to remind people that like not only two weeks ago were we talking about hyperlquid, two months ago we were talking about how Bitcoin was responding so well to the crisis in Iran, you know, sentiment can change so wildly over here. It is important actually to step away a little bit and get some perspective.

>> Do you fancy yourself an analyst andor a content creator in this space? Well, we want you. Specifically, if you live and breathe tech equities, Milk Road could be the home for you. We're hiring for two positions right now, analyst and content creator. So, check out the careers page below. Do we hang on too much to like these narratives that are like false, not false? Like things like, oh, well, you know, Sailor sold 32 Bitcoin out of his however many thousands and and has bought since bought way more. But is that like is, you know, do we overreact to that kind of stuff and just try and attribute it too much to price action?

>> Well, we definitely try to make too many monotonic uh explanations for what happened. this happened because of X. It's always a series of things. >> I I thought a lot about the the strategy reaction and I think it's almost their fault. The the thing about strategy is it talks in infinities, right? So, Bitcoin is going to a billion or we're going to issue a trillion dollars of this new debt instrument or whatever. It's never in modulation. In reality, behind the scenes, what they're doing is quite nuanced. They have like eight tools they can push. They can issue equity. They can issue bonds, they can do converts, they can do preferred, they can do perpetual preferred, they can buy Bitcoin, they can sell Bitcoin, they could theoretically do option overlay

strategies or lend Bitcoin. They have like this array of levers. And actually, if you look at what they're doing, they're doing it very carefully. It's just they talk in infinities. So if you talk in infinities and then you sell 32 bitcoin people are like well they sold 32 they're obviously going to sell the other 831,000 which is just not the way it works right like all of us at some point have sold crypto for tax loss harvesting to cover a short-term cost whatever and all of us will buy more crypto in the future they're no different but I do think because they talk in infinities people take every step to infinity and Um I think that was part of why the market reacted so poorly to that.

>> I never thought about that. Yeah. That it's like you'll people will react to them in the same way that they discuss things. So it's like well you sold once it means you're going to sell everything and you know you bought and I guess that probably also where the the you know the parabolic of of they will buy all bitcoin you know like that's the same thing right. It's like they will seller will buy and it will be keep buying until he's the only buyer and he's the last person buying you know. >> Exactly. Right. or they'll issue preferred and they'll owe $50 billion a year in dividend payments. Like no, they issue like a little bit. It's always a proportion of the market cap, but because they train people in infinities, people just take and everything breaks in infinity, so it always feels like

it's going to break, but it's actually behind the scenes, they're they're sophisticated capital allocators. >> Matt, is this symptomatic of crypto in general outside of and Bitcoin is a huge part of crypto? Obviously, it's the majority of it, but is I feel like it's symptomatic. Like even when we had who do we have? We had Eric Jackson on the show last week or the week before and he was like, you know, Ethereum's going to 15 million. And I was like, okay, that's like that's the biggest number we've heard ever, you [laughter] know. And I was like, that is wonderful that you think that and I'm very down if that happens. Like that would be amazing for me and a lot of people I know. But I was I was like I feel like nobody but nobody says Nvidia is going to 100 trillion even though that seems way more likely

to happen even though it's extreme. That seems way more likely to happen at this point than Ethereum going to 50 million. You know what I mean? Like but we don't we don't say that about other assets. We only say it about crypto. >> No, it's definitely true. I think it comes from sort of traditional argumentation which is if you have a very hard skeptic and they're they say something is worth zero, you have to say it's worth a million dollars. so that you settle somewhere in the middle. Uh, and I think Bitcoin was raised in a world where 95% of people are like, "This thing is worth less than zero." And so we were like, "No, every Bitcoin will be a million or every ETH will be 15 million. Oh, you want to meet me in the middle at like 600,000?" Okay. Um, and but I do think it's endemic to

crypto. The reality is, uh, and and this is specific to this particular moment. we're entering a more fundamental driven, more grindy moment, more uh where it's going to be more nuanced and it's about sort of like market share and percentage points etc. So yes, that is something that has been part of crypto probably will 15 million though I got to say that's pretty bold. >> It was something like that. >> That is pretty bold. [laughter] This was and this was you know this was during like the David Hoffman like this was right after our show our last one where like ETH was like okay what's going on with ETH and people leaving the foundation we discussed all that last episode for anyone who wants to check it out but I think that was on the heels of

like and I think that's exactly it right as soon as there's indicators it's like well oh this this thing is totally doomed you need some kind of >> you know opposite be like but here's why it's going to be the greatest thing ever maybe a good way to frame it as well and you've said this as well is that this year we saw a we saw AI stocks perform like memecoins. So now the analogy for an asset like 10xing in a short amount of time is crypto, right? And I don't think that's ever existed before.

There's like wow, it went up like it's a crypto asset, right? And which whereas crypto is always, you know, so I think that that's even kind of indicative of of what crypto has become is something that just has just like an extreme volatility. absolute extreme volatility and it's going after the largest markets in the world, right? So, it's natural, you know, uh all assets will go on chain. That's a lot of assets. That's like, you know, that's $600 trillion dollars of assets. It'll be a quadrillion dollar of assets before it happens. It's a lot. So, um yeah, I do think is is part and parcel of the space. you know, one of our and speaking and the last thing I'll say about, you know, um, extreme projection is one of our most popular shows of the last couple months of this year by far is the

one the last time you and I were together, just us and the the theme was Bitcoin to a million dollars and it was your comparison to gold and how much of the market cap of gold it would have to kind of eat into and and how much it would grow and everything. And that was that was a brilliant one. So, uh, definitely you're the you're the one you're the one leading the charge on Milk Road when it comes to those types of projections. >> I appreciate that. I mean, that one is conservative, of course. [laughter] >> No, I do, for what it's worth, I do think there's a pretty easy case. Uh, if Bitcoin succeeds, it gets to that level. Um, I still think Bitcoin is almost like a punctuated equilibrium asset. It's like the asset that can go to a million or it can go to $5,000 ultimately. I

think those are the two highest probability outcomes. And everything else in the middle is like relatively low probability. >> Probably both. >> Honestly, at this point, it's probably going to be both. It'll probably be both before the end of the year. >> That's probably >> at this rate. >> I would love that. Especially the low before the high. That would be awesome. Like in terms of in terms of the buying opportunity, not because not because of our bags. Yeah. >> Matters a lot. [laughter] Actually, Matt, I wanted to ask you as well, like, you know, I I can't help but feel in this most recent draw down at the end of last week that it was not expected, but kind of welcome that it was like, you know, everyone's been trying to dissect when this bare market bottom will be, when did we start the

bare market, which is something we've discussed with you a lot with your, you know, theory of the winter started in early 2025. people, you know, you go to Ben Ben Cowan who's got, you know, got it dialed for Q3. It's going to be the four-year cycle. Everybody's got a theory. So, it feels like everyone, the main story is just looking for this bottom. So, it feels like last week was kind of welcome. That's like, okay, here we go. Now, we're going to go down to bottom and then we can then we can start the march to infinity. What what level, Matt, to you would be like, that's got to be the bottom there.

>> [snorts] >> Well, I mean, if we're creating worst case scenarios, if you go to the four-year cycle, which as much as I don't think it intellectually should occur, seems to occur. So, you have to accept reality as it is and not as you want it. A 70% 75% draw down from the all-time highs would be what it'd be in the the mid30s, something like that, >> something like that. >> So, you have to admit that that's something that is possible. I don't think it's likely. What we've seen over time with fourear cycles is is they've been uh the draw downs have been smaller. There's a lot less risk in the market than there was in the past.

There's a lot more institutional capital and slower actors. But that would be like the point where you would, you know, imagine it to be absolute max pain. I don't think we'll get there. Um I don't know if we're at the near-term bottom or if we could go a little bit lower. A little bit lower seems certainly uh possible. I'm not good at calling precise bottoms, but but you know, somewhere like that would be absolute max pain. It feels like somewhere around 50 is where many of the people who have been calling for this bare market think it ends. Um, and there have been some smart people who have been on that bid. Will we get there? I I honestly don't know. I suspect we'll be much higher in a year, but I don't know where the the bottom is.

>> I hope so. Yeah. And we've had a lot quite a few of our guests are also very technical onchain people and they've told us that ranges in that high50s low 50s is kind of where like the the average uh cost of a bitcoin is and and there's been a lot of dissection of you know how many how many bitcoins are underwater from their purchase price and what the spot demand is and how much it's been retracting and everything. It definitely seems like that range has been targeted but then again it is the market for a reason. You know those are projections for a reason. And so it is it is it is hard to call.

>> Definitely. >> I I can add my I have I have a short-term market indicator that I love. Can I add that? >> Oh boy. What [laughter] is >> right now? It's bearish for what it's worth. LG. >> Oh no. [laughter] uh you know the the the one thing there is strong academic literature in uh in crypto is that it's a momentum driven asset which sounds so dumb when you say it because of course it's a momentum driven asset but there is really strong academic research that suggests it is and specifically what it suggests is that short uh duration uh moving average crosses are really relatively powerful indicators of returns. So things like a 1020 or a 520 or a 1030, anything in that zone, you can back test it over any

time period, does a pretty good job of short-term momentum. Right now, that signal is negative. Um, but that's an index that we uh we track. I don't try to call bottoms, but when I went confirmation that the market has like found a turning point, not a V, but a turning point, those sort of short-term momentum have academic and real world out of sample uh results that they're relatively effective. >> I haven't seen enough crashing out yet. In my opinion, we're not here to get my opinion, we're here to get yours. But I just want to say in my experience, I don't think we've seen enough crash. I need more crash out. I need more David Hoffman's freaking out being like, I sold everything, man. Just buy the AI, you know, whatever. He didn't say exactly that, but I want more prominent players like completely losing it,

telling their whole communities to just dump it all. I I need some of that. That to me is like the absolute like that, you know, you're getting close to it because it um as as John, my co-host, likes to say, which I believe is actually a Ben Cowan quote that he quotes him, so I'm quoting him quoting another guy, is the bare market makes fools out of both the bulls and the bears. So to me, it's like that is a good example. is like when enough bullish people totally lose it, that's that's that's the spot. That's I'm breaking I'm breaking the piggy bank, you know. So, I'm selling the car >> and uh [snorts] and a magazine cover saying Bitcoin is dead and we're [laughter] >> and a little Jim Kramer uh action. Maybe just a couple more. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

I know. We Jim Kramer is more often now than than it's not as good as it used to be. Uh it's not quite as on point. Uh Matt, in your most recent piece as well, which was uh crypto becomes a contrarian bet, which these memos are fantastic for anybody who who hasn't signed up to them. Um they're they're Matt's I think weekly or bi-weekly uh crypto memos are really really good. um you did kind of cite what you were saying about kind of or wait your first point was about AI but your main point that what I really liked in here was that um you framed crypto and the AI trade from the viewpoint of like kind of like a normal investor where you know AI is something where it's like it keeps going up there's a lot of great things to invest in a lot everybody's into that or you

can get into crypto which is has a 50% chance of a major setback in the clarity act right so it's like even people outside of crypto they're looking at those two scenarios, the choice might be kind of obvious. >> Yeah, I think it's happening at a big degree and it's one of the reasons it's so hard to bottom. You could buy AI stocks which double every day. Uh and boring companies like Micron become trillion dollar behemoth Jensen is anointing new trillion dollar behemoths every day. I think it's Marvel now. Or Yeah. Or you could buy crypto where the polymarket odds say there's a 50% chance that the most important piece of crypto legislation will fail in Congress. And um that's just a hard choice to make, right? Like uh the

market hates uncertainty more than it hates bad news. And that is actually uncertainty. Uh my view is regard fail or s or p you know pass I think we'll be better off when we get past the clarity act because it's this sort of damocles hanging over crypto and I do think it's keeping money out of the market. It's one of the one of the major things that keeping keeping people from allocating >> and it's and and it does and from a narrative standpoint it's like I'm tired of talking about it. [laughter] I'm like, "Come on, man. Just do this."

You know, like, and like you're saying, like, just do it one way or another. Just let us know. You said it last time. Clarity about clarity is what we need because it does feel like a huge drag and it and it and it feels like >> it almost feels like no one kind of cares at this point. You're like, just please just tell us what it's going to be so that we can move on. >> Just make it go away. Yeah, I think >> make it go away. >> Make it go away. I mean, I think that's absolutely true. Yeah. You have these things that are raising doubts. I would say clarity is one of them. I would say quantum risk on Bitcoin is one of them. And you know, we've talked about the the yeah, but scenario where crypto is very much an asset where if one person says,

"Yeah, but what about," uh, it slows down the process for weeks or months or quarters. And I think uh the Clarity Act is one of those, "Yeah, what abouts?" That we get asked questions about. You have to be like, "Well, is a 50/50 chance?" And, you know, you have to go through the whole thing. Um, so I do think we'll be better off when we get to the other side of that. Your phone carrier knows more about you than your best [music] friend does. Where you go, who you call, when you sleep, and they're selling all of it. AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, they've all been caught leaking data or cashing in on it. And your VPN, your encrypted messaging app, they can't fix what's broken at the network level. That's where Cape comes in. Cape is America's privacy first mobile carrier. Same premium coverage you'd expect, built with privacy from

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because that's another kind of and it's really hard to say how much the market actually cares about this right now, Matt. But it's like can't deny that every every week now we're getting hit with like there's a hack. Uh the Zcash last week was like no one even knows if there was more tokens minted or not. It's this ambiguous maybe, but it crashed from like 600 to 250, bounced back to 450, like an extreme volatility for such a a top asset. Um and also there's the these regular discussions about quantum. So I just wonder like how much do you think that these kind of ambiguous conversations yet there's some truth to them because there are there have been a lot of hacks in the last few months especially. How much does that factor into the strength of the sector?

>> Yeah I I mean I think it definitely weighs on the sector. I think it's reflected in the prices for what it's worth. The prices are really low. What's unis swap right now? It's a 1.6 billion protocol >> 250 or something. It's like super low >> you know. I mean all of these things are extraordinarily low. I think >> I I still think token value capture is a bigger deal than AI. I think they haven't sorted out token value capture and I think they should, but AI definitely hangs over the space. There's lots of hacks. My my base case is that these short-term setbacks have never stopped the market. Do you remember when everyone was like really worried that Salana would go down, which was similar to when people really worried that Facebook broke occasionally?

>> They're like, "Oh, people will never use this thing." Um, I mean the DeFi hacks are uh the AIdriven hacks are more risky than that and Zcash is a great example of that. I do think it casts a shadow over the market, but I don't think it's the primary reason. But I I do think it h it it's it's a real thing we're going to wrestle with for uh 6 months, nine months, something like that before you build institutional confidence in that market. >> I mean, I'm glad it's happening. I think a bare market is a good time for that kind of stuff to happen, too. It's like the build strength, get everybody fortified in a sense against it, against these hacks hopefully by the time things are ready to to roll again.

>> Yeah. Maybe it maybe even bigger than that is uh better now than when there's a trillion dollars of assets on chain. >> Uh try recovering from a DeFi level hack when there's a trillion dollars of stocks, >> right? That would it would it would be over. >> Um so it is better in that sense that we're going through it. Hopefully, it's a one-time upgrade from a security perspective. And if not, we have a more intermediated regulated financial future in our future, right? If not, if you can't get to the point of trusting these things, you're going to slow things down. Uh I hope we don't get there. But yeah, I think it's I think it's a relatively good time to go through it now.

>> We are being battle tested then. The DeFi protocols are being battle tested at a time where where it's a contrarian B. So, nobody's really looking or caring anyways. Uh, and they, you know, a $200 million hack is just another crypto thing to most people, I think. Uh, so maybe maybe another reason to be long-term bullish, I guess. Maybe. I don't know. >> You do you do have to always think about what's known in the market that is already priced in. I do think this is relatively well known. >> Uh, Matt, I actually have a question on the um for you on the institutional side as well since you guys deal with so many institutions. You have all these conversations. Is there such thing as a summer lull? Right. And this is, you know, kids are off school. Typically all industries see a slowdown. Now crypto

typically especially June is in in these midterm years especially is seen as like a really really slow month. Uh kicking off the month giving truth to that. Is this is this do we are we going to kind of peel back a little bit this summer? Are we going to relax? Is it just price just going to chop for a bit? What's going to happen? >> It's a good question. Well from an institutional demand perspective August basically closes down. Uh that is just true. Like August really is very light. I've had more sales meetings today than I've had in a single day this year.

>> Oh wow. >> So um I did nine sales meetings before this call. It's 2:31. [laughter] >> Oh my god. >> So uh so there's a huge amount of interest. I do think the fact that prices are down >> while the fundamentals around stable coins and tokenization which plays to the institutional crowd are still very much in mind and strong >> is creating this uh sort of uh boomerang of interest. Will that persist through the whole summer? No. I mean in August again it will really slow down. Uh but right now there's still interest is still pretty high. People are uncertain.

They're all wondering where the bottom is. Uh they want you to tell them precisely. So that's still the market that we're in. They're not ready to jump in with two feet, but they haven't forgotten about the sector. Actually, the interest in the sector from my perspective is pretty high right now. >> Are you going to tell us which assets they're asking about? [laughter] >> Look, the the reality of of the institutional market is um uh most of them have just learned about Bitcoin and ETH. The reality it is. It is the reality. They haven't heard of Hyperlquid. Um, they haven't heard of Chain Link.

>> Some of them maybe have heard of Salana, >> but it it falls off really quickly. And I always try to make an analogy that makes sense to to crypto people. If if I were like talking to you about drug manufacturers and I got past Astroenica and Eli Liy, I could say names that could be true or could not be true and you wouldn't. [laughter] Um, and I think that's too. So that's that's the level that they're interested in. It's mostly Bitcoin and ETH or rather Bitcoin and then stable coins and tokenization with the question of how you play those being the question.

>> Man, that is a really good framing that it's like we see this as a big industry and everything is a big deal to us. But once you step outside of it, people don't know the names of any of these blockchains or protocols or whatever they are. They just know the top one. That is >> that's 100% right. Well, I was thinking of this the other day. If you think about this ecosystem, we're trying to do two things. We're trying to reinvent gold and reinvent finance. Bitcoin and everything else. >> If you take out Bitcoin and you take out stable coins, what is the market cap of what we're trying to reinvent finance with? It is less than a trillion dollars, right? Like it is a small

entity. So everything that we talk about outside of digital gold is like uh handfuls of hundreds of billions of dollars. ETH the largest asset $200 billion and then it falls off a cliff from there. Does it get to half a trillion dollars? I'm not even sure. So it is a relatively small industry. It is a relatively small industry going after an enormous addressable market. That's why it's interesting and why it's a contrarian investment. And we sometimes we miss that because we lump Bitcoin in. But Bitcoin is really a distinct thing from everything else going on in crypto and that everything else is really remarkably small at this point.

>> Crypto is the only place where we ever talk about things that are sub like $5 million market cap. >> Totally. [laughter] >> You know what I mean? That's the only place you'd ever be like that thing's only $120,000 market cap. Like that's not no other industry there's no other industry where there's a market cap that low. That doesn't exist. >> That that that's exactly what I mean. Okay. Yeah, >> unis swap again is $1.6 billion. I don't know. Could you take a company public worth that? I'm not sure. Right. And unis swap is this giant thing, right? A is this giant thing we focus. But they're relatively small. That's what makes this exciting is despite all the noise and despite all the media coverage and all the conferences and all the CNBC stuff, when you remove Bitcoin from the

equation, it's a really small market trying to recreate the entire financial stack. That's um that's pretty fun. Yeah, combined it's it's it's a it's a medium-sized company for these days, you know, and that has a cool mission. Like if you lump all crypto outside of Bitcoin into one thing that's like our mission is to reinvent, you know, global finance, you're like, "Yeah, maybe." Like it's got a you know, like you said, it's got just barely a half billion half trillion dollar market cap. Like that's it's a good company, but it's that's half the market cap of Micron. >> Exactly. Right. Yeah. [laughter] trying to reinvent how finance works is >> that's why it's like a still a venture style bet. That's why there's still substantial upside and why there's still a significant amount of risk.

>> Man, I honestly didn't expect to have this conversation with you where you would frame us so small. Like this is like, you know, when you see those videos, it's like this is you on Earth and it zooms out and it's like this is the sun compared to a different star and that star compared to another star and that star compared to another star and that star compared to the biggest star in the known universe. And it's like you're so small. This is what it feels like for crypto. Like listen, we're all so small and if you think that this stuff matters, it's going to get bigger. Uh that's that's a good way to look at it. [laughter] >> That's basically it. Yeah, >> that is a funny insight though, Matt.

You're the phones ringing off the hook today with these low prices. That's definitely a good sign. >> It's It really surprised me. I mean, I woke up this morning, I was like, "Wow." Started at uh 7:00 and just went straight through to this call. Um >> Wow. >> Uh yeah. And and the people are really engaged. Um and these are calls with like teams of like 10 people. And they they want to know some of the basics. They want to know if this is the bottom. They want to ask a few piercing questions. Uh has something fundamentally broken. So they ask about >> quantum and they ask about regulation and they're [clears throat] just sort of reunderwriting the asset. But I I took it as a very bullish sign.

>> Matt, just send them this podcast. >> You don't even have to have all these calls this week. Just send them this podcast. That's I literally I'm asking you the same questions that you're being asked on your calls. It's the exact same It's the exact same line of questioning. >> I'm just gonna post you're gonna you're gonna >> Yeah, just post it. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. or or design an AI that just takes bits and pieces from this podcast and just responds with it to the to the questions. That'd be really great. >> Matt, you know, while we still have a few minutes since we're since we're missing Ryan today, um I think it's you know, we've had you on the show show so many times. It's always a really really really great episode and you've kind of given us a bit of your history in the

past. you've told talked to us that you you know be more into gold and and you know you clearly know a lot about this stuff not just crypto but but finance and and how money moves uh globally as well. What I want to understand or maybe something you can you can kind of help us out with. I think for a lot of people despite this being perhaps an expected draw down or a welcomed one in some cases, you know, you can't help but if you have bags look at them and be like, man, like we are far from break even or far from where I hope we would be at this point or both. And maybe as a seasoned u you know finance guy, as a seasoned investor, you can kind of give us a little bit of context on like you know how these how you see crypto

growing or like fitting fitting as an asset now 15 16 years in compared to a lot of other stuff that you have tracked and monitored over your career. um and and even give us a bit of your own kind of like you know investing philosophy like what's helped you survive through m multiple market booms and bust over time and kind of what keeps you rooted to crypto and all that. >> Yeah. So I guess you know if you look back at my career I tend to get involved in areas that I think are inevitable but are sometimes out of favor because I think that's where a lot of the alpha is. So my first job in finance was as a biotech analyst. That was an area when I joined it that people were hugely skeptical of, right? Actually more skeptical of that than they are of

crypto today. But it seemed like biology based uh drugs and modifications were going to be a big deal eventually. And sure enough, they were. Now this industry has gone through booms and busts and etc. But if you have a underlying technology that's uh sort of fundamentally undeniable, better, faster, cheaper, more effective, over time it wins. Uh, the other things I would point to in my career that fit that, I was early in ETFs, right? I was a CEO of ETF.com. People hated ETFs. Oh my god, there were congressional hearings about ETFs destroying the American dream and they were labeled weapons of mass destruction. They were they were they were, but they were better, faster, cheaper, and more tradable than mutual funds. And now

they're gigantic. >> Uh, other things. I've been on the board of an AIdriven investing company for a decade. And a decade ago, no one believed that that was even possible. Today, they manage something like $10 billion. They're doing pretty well. And then crypto at the same time is the same thing. The thing that keeps me anchored in crypto is the underlying technology is undeniable. I gave this example on a sales call earlier today. Uh you you want to send I mean, I know we use this example all the time, but it's really instructive. you want to send money to Indonesia, you could call JP Morgan, which has 300,000 employees and 5,000 offices, and they can get it there in 1

to five business days. Or you could use Ethereum or Salana or blockchain with no employees and no offices and get it can get there in a second. That's like an undeniable fact. And that's true for equities and true for bonds and true for commodities. And uh there's been nothing really that has changed that about this particular pullback. So, you know, look, if you've been in crypto for a while, I've been in crypto full-time for eight years. You've seen these long periods. Everyone's talking about how the current price of Bitcoin hasn't moved in 5 years. Well, that was true in 2022 as well. It was below the price of the December 2017 boom, right? We have seen this pattern before. And you have to decide if you're a trader or you're an

investor. And if you're an investor, you just have to accept this as part of the course. If you're a trader, God bless. I don't know what to tell you. Um, but if you're an investor, this is actually like an exciting moment. Um, so that's where I come from. That's been my thesis. Technologies that are inevitable will win over time. Crypto feels like a technology that's inevitable. It's winning over time. I think it's doing just fine. >> I briefly, thank you for sharing that. I briefly asked you guys about it last time you were on. You guys were not prepared for the question. I always ask you prepare questions you're not prepared for at some point or another.

It is going to be the big news this week if not already. Speaking of sectors that maybe feel inevitable, is space an inevitable sector and will this SpaceX I IPO suck everything out of the market? Is that what was that another We haven't even talked about that as a potential reason for because there was draw down across all markets on Friday as well. What do you what do you what do you think? How do you how do you view that first actually? Does it does this does space fit your definition for that? >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Now, uh 100% I agree. I think space is inevitable. I think we'll be able to do amazing things in space. It has unique characteristics that are not the same here on Earth and the technology seems solvable. Does that mean that SpaceX should be the most

valuable company in the world? I'm not sure that that is true, but would I be aligned on space long term if I could stand? Absolutely. Uh I feel the same about robotics as well. Robotics has been an idea and a proof of concept for many years and I suspect we'll eventually crack it. I don't think there's any physical limitation to that and then once we do the applications are absolutely enormous. So I'm like long-term bullish on robotics as well. But I I I do think I think both of those are in the end inevitable. Right now they're very in vogue. So maybe now is not the most exciting time to be excited about robotics and and uh space. But, uh, in terms of their inevitability, of

course, um, I think they're both massive markets. >> Oh, man. Matt Hogan, the secret science nerd, man. Little did we know. Little did we know, this guy just wants this guy's the ace in science class. >> Come on. >> 10th grade science class. >> Um, to answer the to answer the other part of your equ your your question, it's absolutely sucking capital out there. >> Yeah. These big IPOs, and it's not just this, >> it's open AI, Anthropic, etc. coming down the pipe. They're gonna they're going to suck a lot of capital um out of the room. >> We had we have uh James Seaffort on on the show pretty often from Bloomberg and he was he was sharing with me last week that there's over 20 ETFs filed for SpaceX that it's just like the that you know people they I mean people trying to

offer products for this and trying to you know get a piece of it is is just on another level never really before seen. >> It's completely wild. It is um it is actually completely wild. Can I tell you one unrelated fact that this SpaceX thing >> please? Yeah. Yeah. >> I was looking at the most valuable private companies in the world. >> Uh because SpaceX is an example of how companies are staying private longer. And I thought, what is this list? A really interesting thing to me is like among the 50 most valuable private companies in the world, about 15 or 20% are financial services companies. And that's really interesting to me because you never hear about like financial services VC, but if you look underneath the surface, it's Stripe, it's Revolute,

it's Kraken, it's Tether. It's actually a lot of these companies that are trying to reinvent this industry, which is the least disrupted industry in the world, right? JP Morgan was literally founded in the 1700s or Bank of New York. Bank of New York literally founded in the 1700s, still a giant. And it just occurred to me that this is like another signal that this is actually going to uh I think really change. We're like pretty close to a fundamental change in how finance works. >> And I think you can see it in some of the exciting things happening in crypto, but you can also see it in those large private companies that are reimagining traditional financial services.

>> Wow. Yeah. I hadn't thought about it that way. Isn't Kraken trying to IPO? Are they trying to IPO? Yeah. >> Yeah, they're trying to IPO. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're trying to get out there. Yeah. Yeah. It's true though. I never thought about Stripe is something that's so involved in our space and in everything else and and and they are private. Yeah, I haven't even thought about that. >> They are private. It tells you that like there is this wave of disruption coming. It's just we haven't really seen it. Like when was the last exciting precoinbase financial services company that it was a while, >> right? Okay, I see what you mean. Yeah. So, I think >> right so there's a lot of large private companies. You're saying 15 out of the top 50 or whatever it is largest private companies in the world are financial

services and and you're saying they are all like like uh evolutionary they're all you know cutting edge technologies more or less but they are all you know coming up and providing us a different business to a different generation let's say >> it tells me that this financial services ecosystem is ripe for disruption and it's you know it's it's like it's it's about 15 or 20% of these companies but even Stripe who made the largest acquisition of a stablecoin service provider in the world. >> It was strike, >> right? They're like, >> all of these firms are in and around this space. It's another reason that it feels uh inevitable to me.

>> Wow. and just wait until they find out that there is a half half trillion dollar public company that is a collection of will they or won't they applications all of which have a different design slightly similar but slightly different design to revolutionize finance. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> That and that and that it has an extreme volatility. So, at any given moment, you could pay attention and buy it at an extreme discount. Uh, so long as you got the stomach for it. Yeah, [laughter] that's awesome. Oh, Matt, this is good.

I like one-on-one, man. This is good. No, no, no shade to Ryan, but uh it was fun talking one-on-one. It's It's a It was a little bit more personal. U great to see you again, man. Thank you for your thoughts. Uh I have no idea where we'll be again in two weeks when we see you. Uh but without a doubt, it will not be the exact same price it is now. >> That is for sure. I'll see [music] you then. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, man. >> Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and [music] how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milk Road Daily and Pro Newsletters and [music] 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.