The golden age of crypto: Bitwise's 2025 predictions

Transcript

GM good morning welcome to the milroad show The Daily crypto show that brings Clarity like wiping fog off your bathroom mirror I'm your host Jay Hamilton and today we are joined by Ryan masus head of research at bitwise one of the leading crypto funds they went from 1 billion asset Center management at the beginning of the year to over 10 billion asset Center management today they're basically the filter between crypto and Wall Street now this episode is a followup from yesterday's episode where we had Matt Hogan the CIO of bitwise on the show and bitwise put out their 2025 predictions their full 2025 predictions after we had Matt recorded with Matt and so we add it we asked Ryan to come on to give you guys even more predictions from

them because these are so so great we're GNA talk about coinbase we're going talk about crypto IPOs talk about stable coins we talking about how many countries will own Bitcoin by the end of 2025 and you guys got to stick around to the end because my absolute favorite prediction is that it's not actually about 2025 it's further down the road and it is when bitwise thinks Bitcoin will hit a million dollars that's right you heard that right Bitcoin at a million dollars it's not in this cycle though guys so hold your horses but stick around to find out when that is before we jump in we need to take a moment to hear from our sponsors who make this show possible meanwhile is the world's first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy they do everything in BTC you pay in BTC they pay claims to

your family in BTC you take out policy loans entirely in BTC when you need liquidity protect your family from life's uncertainty and a broken Financial system build intergenerational Bitcoin wealth while the cost of living skyrockets in dollar terms plus get all the tax and legal benefits of life insurance now in Bitcoin visit milroad docomo to join the wait list and get early access to the world's first Bitcoin life insurance Ryan welcome to the milk Road Show Jay great to be here excited to talk to you today yeah man you too really excited okay uh we we went through some predictions with Matt yesterday so we're not going to go double up and do the predictions he did yesterday that was six predictions today

I think we have seven predictions plus maybe our bonus at the end but let's start with that you guys have a big prediction for coinbase which we're we're very bullish on I realize this isn't uh buying tokens but we've talked a lot about the investing in coinbase as a great opportunity what do you guys predict for coinbase in 2025 yeah I'm super excited about all these predictions but coin base the coinbase prediction is probably one of the ones I'm most excited about we predict in 2025 that coinbase not only were there stock double uh in top $700 per share but that they will surpass Charles Schwab as the most valuable Brokerage in the world wow well can you put that into context for for us those those of us listening who are more crypto native

than trafi or Wall Street native uh what is what does that mean for what would that signal to trafi and to the market if if coinbase became the biggest bro value Brokerage in the world yeah it's a really it's a really good question and it's really important to think about coinbase in that in that context Charles Schwab is this Behemoth in the financial World for for brokerage Services right so many people have their retail accounts so many professional investors trade and clear through Schwab and so it really is this Behemoth in the Financial lcial finance world and I think what it would do if coinbase surpass Charles Schwab in value would really make wall Street take notice of coinbase as a legitimate business that they should be

paying attention to and should no longer be ignoring for for years now Wall Street has drastically misunderstood coinbase's business model it's actually more than a brokerage in our opinion so maybe this comparison is a little bit funky in that way but if you think about the value of financial services company and this exactly why we think that coinbase won't just stop at flipping Charles Schwab that it'll grow even larger than that you know these businesses generate tons of money through trading fees that's predominantly how Charles Schwab makes its money is kind of through transaction Revenue but as we know coinbase is so much bigger than that they make tons of money through staking and custody Services their stable coin business is booming generates multiple hundreds of

millions of Revenue in year every year and we expect that to grow significantly and base you know the layer two scaling solution that coinbase launched last year is now in a strong leadership position amongst the layer two scaling solutions for ethereum that's gener generating tens of millions of revenue for coinbase today will likely be hundreds of millions next year so I think this flipping moment that we're talking about where coinbase flips Schwab is kind of an Awakening moment for Wall Street to start paying attention to and start respecting coinbase as a business in the financial services and Technology space yeah completely my my coin's prediction for 2025 is a thousand so I'm slightly more bullish than you but we'll have to we'll look back a year from now and we'll see we'll see who got closer it'll be

somewhere I think 700 to 1,000 is I mean look that's more than double where it is right now I think coinbase could be one of the best performing stocks of the next year I just feel like it is lined up and is still very undervalued in my mind and it's also you make a great point about Circle their stable coin business which they have a an investment in circle that kind of leads us into our your next prediction here what's your next prediction yeah so our next prediction here uh is around crypto unicorn so we believe that 2025 will be the year of the crypto IPO we think at least five crypto unicorns will go public in the US of course a unicorn is a private company valued at more than a billion dollars and as as you mentioned circle is probably our Prime candidate

that's also probably the easiest layup for us when we came to this prediction right they've spoken about going public they there's reports their positioning to go public uh but there's other ones on this list of five that we came up with and it's worth noting that five's the floor in my mind I think it probably will be closer to to 10 crypto unicorns going public in 2025 wow and I guess is it I I would love to know which ones you think but is this is this a result of you think the regulation is finally ready for these companies to IPO yes that's that's a large reason the other large reason is that the macro setup is very favorable to crypto companies or more more broadly kind of companies going public next year you know coinbase really slid into this

uh into this you know publicly traded Behemoth right before the gates shut towards crypto companies in last cycle they went public in 2021 and then we saw the regulatory Hammer coming down on crypto we saw the appetite from traditional investors and capital markets for crypto also kind of really slowed down after coinbase went public as you know 2021 led into the 2022 bare market and so uh you know I think the regulatory environment for sure is going to be a big reason why we see these companies going public next year with that the macro environment with more investors looking for allocations into you know high growth areas with interest rates cuts on the horizon with more stimulus coming in you know publicly traded companies or privately held

companies that are looking to go public you know have a pretty strong setup going into next year can you share uh which which five you think are GNA IPO next year or any any you can share us happy happy to share these it's worth noting that when we do these predictions we We Gather the minds across bitwise and everyone kind of throws things at the board and we we have a lot of debate on which predictions we think uh will will likely come true and were're most excited about and this this number of companies going public the number as I mentioned before around five was probably the lower end of what many of us expect but the five that we selected here are the ones that we think are most likely to go public and kind of span the entire crypto industry we didn't want to

focus on one particular sector so the five companies just to run through the list real quick are Circle right which is the issuer of usdc one of the largest stable coins figure which is you know largely known for leveraging blockchain techn ology to provide lending services like mortgage lending personal loans they also getting into the tokenization space so think that they're likely to go public they've kind of been exploring an IPO since 2023 so again you know there's signs that that will happen next year Kraken of course very very well-known us-based crypto exchange they also have custody staking Services uh you know they they have a similar business model to coinbase though not quite so prolific across the entire crypto industry but wouldn't be surprised if if cracking

goes public they previously had explored it in 2021 but as I mentioned you know coinbase kind of front ran the opportunity or was the first one to be able to get to get in there and uh and Kraken decided to delay their their IPO because of market conditions back then so we think in 2025 Kraken will will likely go public the remaining two are more service providers in a way so Anchorage digital which provides infrastructure services for digital assets you can think uh custody and other types of Asset Management Solutions they're also a federally charted bank and so I think you know that that's one of the unique elements that Anchorage has in its business model uh but you know they they're a prime target to to go public uh you know we're we're partners of Anchorage in a number

of ways and we really enjoy working with them think they're a top tier provider and then chainalysis uh which is you know a bit different than these other companies okay this is the most interesting one you mentioned so far to me okay tell yeah chainless chain analysis uh you know is a is a super interesting business model they really started as a blockchain analytics company and they still do tons of analytics but they've moved into this kind of compliance and intelligence Services realm they work a lot with governments U with corporations around that sector so I kind of think of chain analysis as more of a SAS play while the other ones that we spoke about are more of an infrastructure play and of course we all know that SAS companies uh you know love they grow fast they

love to go public and they tend to do to do very well in the first few years being public so chain analysis is one I'm super excited about and I think it'll be great to have a compliance and intelligence firm publicly traded in the US I think that will help uh you know put a button on those concerns that crypto is just this crazy unregulated world here's a company that's publicly traded that's regulated by the SEC that lives within the bounds of of us regulations whose clients and customers are publicly traded crypto companies privately held crypto companies the the governments all around the world and I think that will really help uh provide a Tailwind to the entire uh industry in the way that wall street views crypto as this large largely you know unregulated Black Box I think all these companies going public will help that but chain

analysis will be a really interesting one to see yeah I think our our audience being investors the thing they're always wondering they're looking for the alpha they're looking for the opportunity to invest and the interesting thing about this prediction is to me but I'll let you give your thoughts as well this is less about hey if these IPOs happen that you should necessarily invest in them investing in IPOs when they first go is kind of a you know coin flip right like you're not no no one here can get in nobody listening to the show is going to be able to get into this IPO pre IO as part of right right like you're buy we're all retail investors we're buying post IPO and I me I could say myself I was so hyped on coinbase I bought coinbase the day it ipoed and it went

down immediately so I paid for that one yeah you so so just break it down for for me this is less about hey go invest in these IPOs right away watch them as an investor maybe there is some opportunities but this is more of an indication of uh the greater impact on Wall Street and the attention and more IPOs means w stre can't avoid crypto and they have to learn about it exactly exactly yeah I I like you uh bought the coinbase IPO kind of on day one and I'm still you know uh averaging down but still trying to recoup some of some of those uh big buys back then but no I think that's exactly right like Wall Street largely ignores the crypto

industry of course this year with the Bitcoin ETFs that's happening less and less but still in the broad scheme of things most Asset Management firms most Wall Street Banks a lot of the firms that we speak to they spend a tiny fraction of their time if any of their time thinking about crypto but what happens when you have this publicly traded the sector of public traded companies that's growing at the rate we expect crypto companies to grow over the next year or two is that these firms these these asset managers these research terms they have to start hiring analysts to specifically cover the crypto industry and that creates this flywheel effect of then putting out sell-side buys side research that's more mainstream media more investors start to pay attention to it and take it serious and so I think that's really really important the other factor of crypto

companies going public that's really important more to the crypto industry specifically rather than I guess the Wall Street side of things is that it allows Capital to cycle back into early stage Venture back startups you know a lot of these companies here on this list Circle figure Kraken Anchorage and chainalysis the venture capital firms that invested in the various rounds that funded these companies over the past four five six plus years are are going to be able to recoup some of those Investments obviously at huge multiples and then what do they do they take that capital and they go reinvest it in early stage crypto companies that are searching capital and those then grow and the industry as a whole grows larger that's a really great Point yeah really more Capital beets more Capital

more liquidity but gets more liquidity right like real fly okay let's go to your next prediction with which uh I think two months ago nobody had this on their prediction list and now in the last month this has become a Hot Topic go ahead yes this is one that I'm super excited about and I want to say I I spearheaded this one at the bitwise team so I want to take credit uh for getting this one in into the final report but what we think is that tokens launched by AI agents will spearhead a memec coin Mania even bigger than 2024's mcoin Mania I'm really excited about this one to me the intersection of AI and crypto is one of the most fascinating areas of the crypto industry right now I think

you're exactly right that two months ago this was not on a lot of people's radar and certainly wasn't a prediction that anyone would be willing to make uh but today it's the Forefront of the meta around what's happening in the crypto space like you have everything from AI agents launching tokens to these AI projects where you're trying to convince an AI to to send you stable coins or like to launch a token when it's been coded not to it's just this like really interesting intersection to me of two disruptive technologies that find a way to create more value and you know I guess be be Innovative in ways that no one could think of on their own so I'm super excited about this one uh and and

where this could head in 2025 and I think we're already starting to see this excitement and attention to the sector of the industry accelerate so far in the past few weeks curious if when you made this prediction if you looked at any any numbers the numbers that I'm seeing right now cookie. fun is a great uh site to look at not all the AI agents but I think they list about 300 on there and they they they think that the AI agent total market caps about 10 billion right now some other people I've talked to think it's a little bit higher than that because not every AI agent is indexed yet and so it might be more like 1520 then you look at meme coins mem coins I think is like3 30 140 billion total

market cap did you look at any numbers how did you think about what this could be in the next year yeah that's a really interesting way to frame this up uh you know I think that memec coins are people searching for some kind of really interesting cultural narrative and like I'm guilty of spending tons of time on pump. fun and chasing the latest meme and cultural related narrative and I just think that this will will really grasp people not only within the crypto industry but it's impossible to for mainstream media not to start covering these things as they grow so I think those numbers are really fascinating it wouldn't surprise me uh to see AI generated meme coins or AI kind of specific meme coins surpass the value of the traditional meme coins I think we

think that will happen in 2025 and we're already seeing Capital rotate away from from some other meme coins into this this area I think that's why mem coins on base have gotten particularly ramped up over the past past month or two instead of it all just happening on salana but yeah virtuals clanker like all these projects are just so exciting and one element of it that that fascinates me so much and why I'm so excited about this for what it means for the long-term trajectory of crypto is that this wasn't possible two three or four years ago Not only was AI not in a place where it needed to be for this to happen but the blockchain ecosystem really wasn't there from a tech stack perspective but if you zoom out and think about where we're at today where

we weren't in the last cycle is that we now have layer 2os that have very lowcost high throughput transactions and viability you have Mobile Wallet infrastructure that makes it super easy to go from interacting with these tokens on social media to then going and trading them in and out of your wallet using stable coins using l2s you have this element of decentralized social social with foraster that wasn't there a couple of years ago where people are exploring these meme coins I just think that you start to to layer these different technology Stacks that are underpin a lot of this this crypto Innovation and to me that's the most exciting you have super Anon or Anon cast which you know also embeds this ZK technology into this meta and I just

think the technology stack is a signal of where this this industry is headed from an innovation perspective and how we have kind of these I would call them um social Legos that are starting to be put together and it's not just money Legos now the other thing that I can just say from a from my seat in media is it's every every day every week There's a new narrative or a new meta that is catching some attention in the space but it's very rare that one sticks and filters for us at milk road we don't we don't produce content around most of these like flash in the pan narratives right we we actually work really hard at

identifying the ones that we think are going to matter long term and AI agents is the First new narrative that's come along in a while probably the first one in like I would say maybe even the first one in 2024 because mem coins was really the one that was catching all of the attention in 2024 it's the first one that not only we're producing content around it we have multiple guests reaching out who want to come on the show to talk about it we have sponsors we have sponsors that like AI agents that want to sponsor us want to sponsor no grow like you know and that's just the that's just the start we're just so it's really wild to see to sit in my seat and see that and when that's starts to happen my Spidey Sense starts to go

off and say okay there's something way bigger here than most people and it's just so it's still so so early uh that's incred isn't that wild yeah I want to go to your next prediction before you give your next prediction Matt gave your guys bitcoin price prediction in yesterday's show but can you just repeat the Bitcoin price prediction because it kind of goes along with this prediction yeah yeah of course so we believe Bitcoin will trade above 200k in 2025 okay and what what's the next prediction here I love this prediction by the way yeah so to your point right there's a number of reasons we think that Bitcoin will trade above 200,000 in 2025 but one of the key catalysts or Tailwinds that we see driving the price higher is that we believe the number of

countries holding Bitcoin will double in 2025 from nine which is the number of countries holding Bitcoin today to 18 or probably higher let's dive into this a little bit because I am so hype on I I I don't know what ter term you guys are using internally I've really caught on to uh Matt hang from Paradigm and his title of calling it The Sovereign cycle I don't know if like Sovereign means enough to Mo I don't know if we should call it like the government holding cycle or the country cycle or like what you call this but it feels like this I mean even just today as we record this we're recording this about 10 days before this episode actually comes out but as we record this today Thailand has said that they are

thinking about making Bitcoin legal end or putting it on the national Reserve Argentina same thing we know that Brazil has a bill that is currently being discussed in legislation so and and let's be clear most of the countries the nine countries that currently hold Bitcoin it's most of them got it from seizing it from criminal activity not because they went out and they bought it so do you think that we're g to see countries buying Bitcoin as part of their National Reserve do you more so think that this like how do you break down what you think happens when more countries start to hold Bitcoin yeah Jay that's a really important distinction to make here because one might look at the

visual that we put together and I actually love the visual in this report I spent a lot of time with our marketing team trying to trying to get them to to visualize this in a world map view but I think that uh it's a very important point that you make right historically the nine countries holding Bitcoin which span from the US to China to Ukraine El Salvador Finland the UK these countries have acquired this Bitcoin for the most part with the exception of El Salvador and Ukraine through asset seizures right through law enforcement actions where they've seized the Bitcoin and they just haven't sold it all of course there was more countries like Germany for example that had also seized Bitcoin But ultimately uh sold sold those assets off so right now you know nine countries hold Bitcoin again majority of that was through asset seizures but we think that

what's going to happen in 2025 is that we're actually going to see the number of countries you know holding Bitcoin double through purchasing Bitcoin not through asset seizures so we believe countries are going to go out and start buying Bitcoin you named a number of those and it feels like every single day we're continuing to see more and more countries or more headlines hit where countries are considering at a at a minimum considering but in some cases proposing creating a national or strategic reserve of of Bitcoin you know so it's it's really really interesting to me that it's that it's happening we're kind of calling it the Bitcoin arms race uh you know or the space race of Bitcoin and the reason that we're calling it that is because there's this game theory that we believe will play

out similar to the Space Race where no country wants to be last right they don't even necessarily want to be second or third and I think it's exactly why you're seeing countries like Poland like Russia like Thailand talk about a strategic Bitcoin Reserve ideally ahead of Donald Trump taking office because if he indeed does declare a strategic Bitcoin Reserve uh in January or short shortly thereafter the US will be the first right and I think that will kick off this Bitcoin arms race uh in a way that will not only fuel the market higher but will uh make headlines all around the world about how big of a deal this really is yeah I like Bitcoin arms race better than Sovereign cycle thanks for

giving me a better tagline for this because uh it's just it is so it's the meme once America does it everyone has to do it and it's so true and as you said I mean you know there's I think that one thing that people have a difficult time understanding is like the difference between countries holding Bitcoin versus buying Bitcoin and already I I guess here's my question what do you think America and what do you think Trump does in 2025 because there's a lot of people who really expect this National Reserve thing to happen and I'm not so convinced that that act like goes through legislation

and becomes and the central bank is now like essentially buying Bitcoin like that's a there's a lot of steps in there versus Trump saying we're not going to sell the Bitcoin that we have and going on record and saying that there there's a there's a big difference there what do you think yes I agree with you there's a difference there there's kind of tears to how this could play out uh that are really really important so I think you know worst case scenario for this narrative is that not only the worst case scenario for this narrative is that the US sells the Bitcoin after Trump takes office right that kind of completely debunks this entire narrative and this entire theory that we're going to build a strategic Bitcoin Reserve now I don't think that's going to happen but

that would be you know tier zero or even making make taking steps backwards on this front I think the next tier up is just declaring a strategic Bitcoin reserve and taking the assets that we currently hold today and just moving those into that strategic Reserve category but not buying additional Bitcoin for what it's worth I think even if we declare a strategic Bitcoin Reserve I think that kicks off this arms race at an accelerated pace of other countries going and building their own Reserve many of whom don't own Bitcoin yet so we'll have to go out and acquire it but I think that's kind of the tier one that's probably baked into the market today as you mentioned we've been expecting this since Trump announced it back at the Bitcoin conference in in May or or June or whatever that was so I

think that one's largely baked in but of of course the the highest tier in my opinion here of what could happen and what would ultimately Drive the markets higher above that 200,000 mark would be if the US was going out and acquiring more Bitcoin in 2025 maybe that's that's possible I'm not sure if it is I mean these you know governments move very very slow of course the biggest uh you know organization in the world is the the US government uh and for anyone who's worked in a large organization you know that they move very very slow uh for for one an I guess is that we work with Satoshi action fund sometimes to go speak with uh governments or or state governments around considering allocating to bitcoin and in some instances they have to pass a bill that

just then forces them to study the impact of Bitcoin as a reserve asset in their Treasury and that that takes like lobbying to just pass the bill to even study it right and and then then comes the next stage of you know then having a bill to actually allocate to it and what does that mean so I do think get organizations move slowly I think the game theory of this Bitcoin arms race could accelerate that significantly we all know uh you know Donald Trump has a strong personality and definitely doesn't like being second at anything so I think if Russia or another major country announces they're building a Bitcoin Reserve we could see the pace of this discussion good point that's actually a good point like his ego could play a big factor here yeah right I

hadn't considered that to because to me he would have to expend a lot of political Capital to take the to basically take the further step here as you said where America is going to actively start buying Bitcoin whether it's a Cynthia lum's proposal of 200,000 Bitcoin a year or whatever form it takes it just to me it feels like I just don't know that that's the thing he's going to really take his political Capital to do but if if another major country does it first then yeah you're right he it's the arms race the game theory is so it's it's so prevalent here and the space race is a great example gunpowder is

another great example like you can't afford to not if if enough countries are doing this you have no choice you have to you have to jump in as well okay I want to go to your next prediction which I find hilarious because part of this prediction came true today as we record this so go ahead you're almost ahead of the game here with this prediction yeah this one is really interesting uh so this this prediction here is coinbase will enter the S&P 500 and micro strategy will enter the NASDAQ 100 adding crypto exposure to nearly every us Investor's portfolio you know happy that this is already coming true we're not even in 2025 here uh and we can tick some of the boxes here for our 2025 predictions uh as you mentioned right

micro strategy will now be entering the NASDAQ 100 at this at this year end reconstitution in December uh and and and that's really important for a number of factors but I love I love this prediction yeah so um for give us because this is a prediction that um is actually very conservative in my mind I mean part of this already happened so I think this is like this is just this isn't going to be one that we need to check in on like our coinbase stock prediction that'll be more interesting this one feels pretty likely it's going to check but talk to us about what's the impact of this yeah yeah I think that's exactly right the impact of this is is perhaps more important than getting the prediction right and kind of ticking

ticking that box so this matters for a number of reasons so the S&P 500 right is a is an equities index that nearly every us investor has exposure to either in their 401k or their brokerage account it's a it's a basket of the 500 most valuable assets or or companies in the in the US and it gets reconstituted or the the constituents change every December so that Recons coming up this December the NASDAQ 100 is the same but it's 100 companies and has a few other U criteria besides the S&P 500 now both of these get reconed on annual basis both of these are major parts of nearly every Investor's portfolio it's not just retail investors who allocate to these

the funds tracking these indexes in their 401ks or Roth IRAs or even in their brokerage accounts but so many professional investors wealth managers raas financial advisors you know cios of Pension funds and endowments so many of these investors that control trillions of dollars in capital allocate to these different funds or indexes in their portfolios and that's extremely meaningful for two reasons one it's a massive amount of money and when you have an asset added to one of these indexes that means that you have to go out and buy the stock of those companies to put that into context there's 10 trillion trillion with a t of capital in index directly against the S&P 500 so

that's 10 trillion of dollars that invest in funds that track the in the assets inside the S&P 500 Index that's just assets index directly doesn't even count the Six Trillion of assets that's benchmarked against the S&P 500 meaning that they track their performance relative to the S&P 500 and they generally don't want to miss you know assets that are in the S&P 500 because they could then underperform so 10 trillion of assets directly indexed against the S&P 500 if you put coinbase for example uh if you look at where coinbase would fall within the 500 constituents of the S&P 500 of that 10 trillion 15 billion of capital would have to be used to buy coin stock right to go make a purchase of coinbase stock now that's a massive amount of capital

because coinbase today is like a $75 billion company right so you're talking 15 billion of buying pressure on a 75 billion asset and that's just the initial allocation into the stock right it's it's it's really mind blowing that's really mind-blowing I I love I I pulled up your your visual that you guys had from your report so if you guys are listening on YouTube you can see that I love that you broke it down this way to show how much money would actually flow into coin as a result of this so wait wait a second let me just understand if coinbase enters the S&P 500 in 2025 I don't know if you have a month when you think it's gonna happen but if it does happen in 2025 it doesn't get

reconstituted until the end of the year is that heing that correct yeah so a good question so uh so I think you will enter in 2024 at in the in the December 202 you think it'll happen now okay yeah oh okay okay very end of the month and then every quarter the index is rebalanced which just means you kind of Shuffle the weights of existing constituents but only on an annual basis really are new assets entering and assets exiting the S&P 500 in the NASDAQ it's not something I think that most people actually are are aware of because you hear rebalancing quarterly and you think oh they're moving in and out but there's this distinction uh that I know way too much about having working now working in the crypto indexing business between reconstituting which means adding an exiting assets and then

rebalancing which just means kind of reshuffling the weights to what they what they were targeted at okay so it it has to it has to hit it in 2024 like in the next two weeks of the year in order for it to be included at all in 2025 yeah there's like the special circumstances where like they the index committee could use this uh you know extreme circumstances to to enter it but it I don't see it happening for coinbase that's more for like companies that go public mid year and they don't want to wait till the end of the year for it to enter the index so so what happens here right is you index all of the companies that would qualify based on all these different eligibility requirements and then you take the top 500 by market cap some of these eligibility requirements

are liquidity and profitability and things like that we believe and expect coinbase will pass all these different screens and then we'll be in the top 500 assets when you kind of look at the the universe of of assets there and then then it will enter in December and then we believe it'll be there uh at least until the next reconstitution in in 2025 but if our estimates for how large coinbase continues to grow are accurate right we expect it to be in there for a long time yeah once it's in there it's definitely not leaving yeah that's a a real nice prediction not one that uh I've seen others talk about enough and one that just is going to create so much so much buying pressure and I here's really comes down to for me is I don't know how many Americans currently own

crypto I like the last estimate of like Global ownership was I think around like 500 to 600 million people own crypto but let's assume that the average American does not own crypto currently but the average American very very likely owns the S&P 500 and so now they start to own crypto and even just that mental shift of them being like Oh yeah I do own some of this now is it's it's it's you know it's like getting a little bit of a taste of something it's like the gateway drug you know yeah exactly and it and it uh Dr risks or or kind of removes that negative bias they have towards investing crypto when they eventually find out actually they already are investing in crypto and guess what your portfolio didn't blow up like everyone said it would if you touched crypto so I

think that's really important the other really key element of this is that uh more Capital flows into these funds every single week if you think about people investing money in their 401K fund or I know many people that just buy you know a share or two or three of the S&P 500 every month out of their paycheck that's capital that continues to flow into these products and is very very sticky right it's not short-term capital that flows into these uh These funds so that's just continued buying pressure uh into the future and you know what I would call you know more permanent Capital than than your traditional uh retail investor kind of just just buying and selling your hedge funds trading in and out of assets so I think that's really important I would just touch on one other thing around this prediction as it relates to micro

strategy uh is that micro strategy We Believe will enter or now we know I guess we enter the NASDAQ 100 going into 2025 the reason why we decided to focus on coinbase for this graphic is because the NASDAQ 100 is much smaller when it comes to funds tracking that index than the S&P 500 so you will have this similar impact of a portion of the capital tracking that NASDAQ 100 flowing into micro strategy creating by pressure of course that should have a positive uh positive you know Catalyst to the stock it just won't be nearly as large as the 10 10 trillion or more assets that track the S&P 500 15 billion of which will be used to buy coinbase stock yeah bullish coinbase stock that's for sure okay uh I'm gonna skip your next two predictions

because we're we're getting late on time here uh but if you want to know what bitwise thinks about stable coins and real world assets we'll put a link to their full report and also if you want to know details the these guys wrote an incredible report breaking down all these predictions today uh but I want to go to your bonus prediction because this one is just uh I all of our listeners are going to be psyched about this one so tell us your bonus prediction yeah this one uh this one we love I'm happy that you like it we believe that in 2029 Bitcoin will overtake the $18 trillion gold market and that Bitcoin will trade above $1 million let's go let's go okay why why 20129 yeah that's a really good question

seems kind of like a random point in time you know for the most most part when the crypto industry does these kind of predictions we look forward one year we have a tendency to do that with predictions and when Matt and I were discussing what we're going to do for our 2025 predictions we thought what if we gazed further down field and thought about where the Market's heading on a longer term basis and one of the things we kept talking about was when will Bitcoin hit $1 million when will it overtake gold right at 8 trillion value which is the most valuable asset in the world gold uh and then at that point would it become 1 million per Bitcoin now we think this is going to happen in 2029 for a number of reasons historically crypto has moved in these fouryear Cycles where you have three

really strong years followed by year of pullback and there's been different catalysts for each cycle the first cycle which really started in 2011 was kind of the Bitcoin cycle right is when you could first access Bitcoin on any kind of exchange even though it was very difficult you had three really strong years followed by a year of a 58% drop then in 2015 you you kind of had ethereum and the Ico cycle 2016 2017 massive years of gains uh and then again a 75% pullback in 2018 and thank you yeah for pulling up this this graphic because this captures kind of our view on how the markets moved historically uh then you have the next cycle which we call the early application cycle three strong years followed by a year of pullback so historically the crypto Market more broadly has followed this three up years one year of reset uh you

know since 2011 and we do think this trend will continue this also syncs up with some kind of like Capital uh cycle and economic cycle uh flows interest rate Cycles things like that but more broadly speaking right we expect Bitcoin to to continue to move up over this next year there likely will be a pullback in the market whether that's a leverage uh driven blown out that kind of pulls us down a bit and people exit the market whatever it may be whether it's a change in the macro cycle that no one people aren't anticipating like a recession or some global conflict that happens but we think there'll be some kind of reset that happens between now and 2029 for about nine months to a year and then after that we expect the Bitcoin Market just to grow significantly larger if you think about like I said the size of the

gold market the largest uh asset in the world it's an8 trillion Market uh but you could only expect Bitcoin to hit a million and to surpass that or hit that if you think that's the only adjustable market for Bitcoin and I know us at bitwise believe that Bitcoin is is chasing an addressable Market far larger than just gold it's not just the gold market it's remittances in Sovereign wealth funds and uh you know currencies it's all these different markets that Bitcoin is penetrating so we expect that to happen kind of in this next cycle to to I guess book end the four-year cycle thing right we think that the third year of this three-year cycle which is generally the strongest will happen again in 2029 so we expect Bitcoin to hit a million then I would just say you know we spoke earlier about a strategic

Bitcoin Reserve now if the US does announce that it's actually buying 1 million Bitcoin for a strategic Reserve we believe we can get to 1 million per Bitcoin a lot faster than 20 a lot faster yeah yeah that's the I I think that's a that is the the like black Swan event uh or white swan event I should say that is not in baked into anybody's predictions I don't think everybody that I've talked to about 2025 predictions is basically saying hey I'm not counting on that happening right but if that does happen whether it's 202 20 2025 2026 like that changes the game completely it's it's just wild like what when is the rest of the world going to wake up

to to what's going on here we're sitting here talking talking about a an an asset that could increase an average of 150 200% per year for the next five years and like that makes you don't talk about that in other asset classes like that is bananas to most asset classes and and and you're not you're not some you know bitwise is a very respected firm in the trafi space very well known like it's these are not predictions that are coming from you know out of the way they were maybe you know 10 years ago back when Bitcoin was early and we didn't have the the people in the space that are doing the research that you guys are

doing and putting the effort into building this report I mean I just think yeah I can't wait till Christmas dinner this year to sit down with my family and for every single person at the table to look at me and be like is it too late did I miss it and to I'm just going to show them this this shot and say yeah here here you go just start allocating at least a few percent everybody please please please at least a few percent I know I love that Black Rock by the way the largest asset manager in the world just came out and said everyone should have one to 2% Bitcoin in their portfolio uh interactive brokers another very respectable you know traditional Finance brand came out and said everyone should have crypto in their portfolio so you're right it's not just this crazy corner of the crypto world that's now

coming around to everybody having some kind of allocation to bitcoin or crypto more broadly in their portfolio and so we're really excited about you know what that will do to Drive the assets higher and by the way you know this this 10x that we're talking about over a 5year period has happened before from 2019 to 2025 the market did a 10x from 2015 to 2020 the market did Far More Than A 10x so this actually isn't that crazy of a prediction when you zoom out and see what's happened in the past and you know I know that we believe that investors are still early to bitcoin until it hits 500 to a million per coin and so we're you know kind of screaming from the rooftops that it's not too late and kind of all great assets look expensive uh at the time but cheap in hindsight and we

think Bitcoin is no different that's a great Point that's a great Point Ryan been an absolute pleasure to sit down with you today really appreciate your thoughts and shout out to the entire bitwise team the 100 so people you guys have there that are just absolutely crushing it and coming up with this report everybody listening in I want to know what do you think 1 million Bitcoin by 2029 you think that's bullish bearish you think we're going to get to a million earlier or later let us know what you in the comments you think Bitcoin will hit a million thanks so much for listening everybody have a wicked awesome day thank you as always if you liked today's episode please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't

miss out on the next one there's also a link in the description to our free 5 minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh and if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game we're going to also leave a link for milk Road Pro you get access to our portfolio where you can see exactly what we are buying this is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto one final note this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice investing in crypto or any asset is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose thanks so much for listening in my friends have a wicked awesome day