🚨LIVE: Tom Lee Buys More ETH?! Bull Market Rages On. Bessent's $1T Deal. Lighter, Franklin & Paragon

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[music] [music] [music] 17. Second floor. We'll see you around the timeline.

Feels good to be back. >> I think The Rollup is one of the most premier [music] media brands in crypto and Andy and Robbie are great experts at everything they talk about and it's my favorite podcast. adding it to my library as we see potentially multi-chain deployments. We are at Dev Connect day [music] one here. I'm guessing from base [music] [music] >> [music]

[music] >> Heat. [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> JP Morgan, Black Rockck, DTCC, Fidelity, the entire thing was just institutions.

It's just it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. >> I'm bullish. >> HE SAID IT. HE FINALLY SAID IT. >> I'M SO BULLISH. And he's bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music]

Heat. [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] >> Corola [music] is headed to the top. If

we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're going >> roll up is my favorite. >> People from all walks of life, all over the world, all over this industry come together for the roll up. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music]

>> Zoom out. The institutions aren't coming. They're simply here. It's the golden age of crypto, guys. Get right. Let's go. [music] >> Welcome to the next. see you on the show. >> Absolutely flying. Bitcoin is pushing eight. I mean, guys, guys, guys, welcome. Happy Monday, August 24th. Absolutely flying. Uh, we're not even euphoric. This is the beginning. This is the beginning. It is early. Uh, this rally will fail like all the others.

Everyone's in disbelief. Everyone is sidelined except for you. If you've been watching the show, you know that we've been bullish hype. We've been bullish lighter. We've been bullish Bitcoin. We've been bullish Ethereum and we're bullish pump funer drrome and fake world assets. Guys, this is the rollup. Uh we have a thesis and we've been sticking to that thesis and we've been keeping you updated on that thesis and the thesis is playing out exactly as expected. Doesn't mean we're going to get every move right. Doesn't mean that we're not going to make some mistakes along the way. But guys, if you stick around and you listen and you're you show up every day and you remain consistent, you will outperform.

You will absolutely outperform. And that's exactly what we've done here on the rollup. Fantastic show for you guys today, August 24th. Big shout out to Plume. We're down in South Florida at Rollup Headquarters South. Plume is the sponsor for Rollup Headquarters North in the Empire State Building, the absolute center of finance, both north, south, east, west. Um, I mean, there's just no no other way to to slice it and dice it. Guys, we appreciate you rocking with us here. Uh, Tom Lee, Michael Sailor, I mean, someone's outperforming. And uh if you've been here watching the rollup then you've been outperforming. So absolute banger show for you guys today.

I mean incredible lineup of guests also. Um I can just shout out a couple of people that we have coming down the pipeline. So today obviously today you guys have seen the speaker graphics, you've seen the movie posters, you've seen the lineup. We've got Trevor of Lighter. He's going to be joining us in just a moment. Uh then we're going to get Seth from Franklin Templeton Digital Assets and then we have Taha uh from Paragon. So great show for you guys today. We're going to take you through all the news that uh happened over the weekend. Okay. But then uh I mean just to give a quick shout out to to to the guys that we have coming on later this week. Uh we've got Alexander of Aer Drrome and we've got a

big Coinbase announcement in just a minute that we're going to go over. Alex is going to cover that with us this week. We've also got Zach from Gayscale. We know they are launching their Zcash ETF. Uh so that's a massive, massive announcement. You know that we've been tracking Zcash uh since I mean just for months we've been tracking Zcash. You guys know that it's part of the monetary premium and the privacy thesis as the AI surveillance state continues to develop. Uh so we've got Alex, we've got Zack, and then we've got Hanan front of the show from Codeex. uh doesn't stop there.

We've got Robert Leshner and Ethan Bman. Uh these guys are absolute OGs, both of them in their own right. And then we've got Scott from Coin List. We've got Mike from EtherFi. We've got Mike Belshi from Bitco. This guy was shaking hands in the White House with President Trump last week. Okay. And now he's coming on the rollup. And then we've got Jang from Circuitize and Austin Beric uh from Relayer Capital. So absolute starstudded lineup for you guys. and freedom guy, you know it, you love it. If you're here and you're watching day in and day out and you're consistent on the rollup, you will outperform. Guys, big shout out to Plume as always. Also, big shout out to Dinari. Uh tokenized equities are coming. Okay, and this is our tokenized

equities partner. They're doing incredible things. They've been able to crack tokenized equities in the breadth dimension. So, they have a very broad swath of tokenized equities that they are deploying and developing on chain. We are keeping track of all of those atdari.com to get exposure to the equities market onchain. Watcher 8582, what's up? What's up? Welcome to the show. Dinari is our tokenized equities partner and we've got some tokenized equity news to get into in a little bit. But first, we've got our weather. It is sunny. What do you expect? It's bull market and it's sunny.

I mean, I wouldn't quite call it DeFi summer 2.0, 0. But I mean, what do you want to call this? You call this the revenue meta summer, the revenue summer, the the what do you want to call the the the tokenization fall? I mean, it is the rise of tokenization. It is the rise of tokenized equities. And it is the absolute domination of revenue in this disruptive innovative digital assets market. Uh, as always, uh, weather is brought to you by the rollup here, sunny South Florida. Uh, watcher, very strange to be called out. I was browsing some other side as my name drops. That's what we do here on the rollup. We speak

directly to our audience, directly to every one of you. We want to provide you with the answers that you're looking for and the information that is going to help you outperform in this market. So, stick with us. keep coming back and we will continue to outperform together. Guys, big shout out to our stable coin partner Fracks. These guys are absolutely crushing open stable borderless. They're on the front end ahead of the curve when it comes to genius regulation. We know this has been a big catalyst for the stable coin market. We also know that Besset is going to absolutely print T- bills.

These are shortdated bonds. He's selling the long end. He's uh excuse me, he's buying the long end. selling the short end and we anticipate stable coin issuance companies are going to be a massive massive buyer of shortdated treasury bills. So keep an eye on this. Stable coins are a systemic component of our national security and Bitcoin's pushing $80,000. Ethereum's pushing 2500. So Lana is about to crack the $100 mark. Near's above two and chain link is running. Chain link big announcement here with Coinbase. We're going to get into it. I actually don't even want to spend too much more time on markets because uh what is there to talk about?

I mean equities are a little lower. Uh the digital assets to the S&P ratio flipped is now bullish. Digital assets are set to outperform. Chatting with a buddy of mine who uh basically said that uh the Treasury buyback is going to create confusion and unpredictability in the bond market. Uh we know that this is uh an attempt to run the economy hot. Besset doubled down. He went and he made the announcement doubling the amount of buybacks that they're doing on the long end. Then he went on CNBC. He said, "We're not going to stop there. We're going to do more at least 4 billion every single uh auction." And then today there was news that he might drain the

SGAA or the TGA, which I think is the Treasury General account. And that's 950 billion that he can use to continue to buy treasuries off the open market, inject liquidity into the supply, and just money printer go. Not new credit, but it is credit that had previously been frozen, not really moving, and now it's going into the open market. And remember how money is created. It gets into the market. It gets into the banks. They loan it out. They do the money multiplier and they issue credit. And that is part of the money printer complex. And the TGA getting drained by Bessin in the Treasury is a catalyst to the money printer. So remember this is

just the beginning. They are quite literally preheating the money printer. It's not turned on yet. This is like preheating your oven before you're about to cook. They are preheating the money printer. We are still so early markets powered by Zama as always. Uh digital assets pushing 80k on Bitcoin ETH. I mean just crushing and uh obviously all eyes on the bond market as uh we're trying we're trying Besson is trying to save the long end and potentially just absorb and cancel a ton of debt in the midterm, medium-term, tenure. I saw a bunch of rumors flying around uh all in an attempt to issue more debt in the short end. Um so let's keep moving along. We are going to keep moving and tell you guys about Near, our AI

partner. These guys um are at the convergence and the confluence of several momentous trades and narratives happening across digital assets across AI. We know the AI buildout is continuing. The entire attempt in order to rectify the $40 trillion national debt here in the United States is to accelerate the capital buildout from AI and grow our way out of the debt. We attempted austerity. If you guys remember tariffs, liberation day, Doge, uh you know, all of this was the facade of austerity, right? We're going to stop spending money. We're going to stop contributing to the debt. When in reality, the plan all along was to run the economy hot. grow our way out of the

debt and basically run inflation high but run the economy even hotter. I mean, if you have 7% GDP growth, who cares if you have 5% inflation because net net, you're actually uh you're actually um deleveraging and uh uh devaluing uh the currency, which is, you know, the opposite of inflation. It's actually healthy for a market if you can get there. But uh technology we know is deflationary. Guys, let me tell you about our first piece of news today. We're covering the announcement from Bitwise and Coinbase. Today, Coinbase launched tokenized stocks on base. This is massive. This is going to have far-reaching imp implications across several of our partners. Uh Chainlink is

sponsoring and powering this partnership between Coinbase and Bitwise. Chainlink is a part of this. Shout out to the entire Chainlink marines out there. As Andy is saying in the chat, higher he's speaking directly to Zcash, Chainlink, Coinbase, Bitwise. Aerodrome is well positioned for this. Extremely well positioned for this because Aerodrome is the liquidity engine on base. Bass is where these tokenized equities will be deployed. And Aerodrome will help provide liquidity and ultimately grease the wheels for the tokenized equities buildout that's happening between Coinbase and Bitwise. also Bitwise friend of the show. You guys must have saw Matt and Ryan come on the show a

couple of weeks ago, give their thesis on the market as well as the tokenized equities buildout that is happening right before our eyes. Tomorrow, Bitwise will show you what we're building on top of them. So, this is fundamentally a Coinbase tokenized equities announcement on base. Bitwise is coming in and building on top of this tokenized equities offering from Coinbase. And we've got a video here that we're going to show you guys. Little announcement video. Let's go ahead and play it. Available 24/7 360. [music] [music] Wow. I mean, swap, lend, borrow, build

base.orgs. This is huge. I mean, we know the equities market is hundred trillion dollars. Uh, obviously, it would have been nice to get a lot of this built out before the huge runup in equities, but if they can nail the macro liquidity landscape and we can get accommodative monetary policy, we're going to end up steepening the bond curve and pouring money into all of the asset classes. If you remember our daily equity segment from last week, you know that this bull steepening is going to be a hot economy, a hot business cycle, and it's going to be bullish for scarce assets as well as equities. We do believe digital assets will outperform in this bull steepening paradigm, but nevertheless, digital assets and equities are both set to

rise. Let's keep going. I know we've got a chain link tweet that we're going to pair uh nicely with this and so we want to make sure that we get that in here as well as we round out this tokenized equities offering. As you guys know, there's tons of price data. Let's go ahead and talk about how pricing data is served to this Coinbase announcement for tokenized equities. So, Chainlink here, Coinbase selected Chainlink as their oracle. Really no surprise given that Chainlink has really taken the seat as the industry standard.

Coinbase knows this. Chainlink has been around a long time. Coinbase selects Chain Link as the official oracle infra powering its new tokenized stocks on base. Chainlink is now enabling millions of base users to lend, borrow, and trade. The largest publicly traded US stocks on chain. And remember, this is 247 365 swap, lend, and borrow. Do more with your stocks. And so this is ultimately the best raw material for DeFi that we've seen for a long time. Chainlink obviously powers a ton of DeFi, meaning a right lending markets, decentralized exchanges. Chainlink is plugged into all of this. This announcement from Coinbase is now bringing on equities. Hundred trillion

dollars of assets that are now composable with the rest of DeFi. Chainlink is helping to bring composability to this asset class. Uh little quote here from from another friend of the show. Best raw material for DeFi. Stocks bring yield. They pay dividends. These are fundamentally securities. It's something that we've avoided on chain for a long long time because of the Gary Gendler villainous era that we had before the lovely SEC and CFTC that we have today. But what we're seeing now is that stocks bring yield. They pay dividends. And lending shares to other investors is one of the oldest and largest yield businesses in finance. Okay. with trillions of dollars of stock on loan at any given time.

Stocks can also be better collateral for securing loans powered by a on base. The significantly widens the product set that lending protocols can serve. And so given that chain link is sort of this connective tissue between the existing native players in DeFi like the a of the world and now working with Coinbase to bring on tokenized equities. We anticipate that chain link given that it's at the confluence of several momentous narratives is poised for success. And remember our idea here is outperformance, right? We are now having thoughts around outperformance, forming theCCCs around outperformance. And so

DeFi as it's positioned to subsume so much capital as a result of the tokenized equities buildout is significantly positioned to outperform. We think that these guys, DeFi, EVM, ETH, mainet, DeFi has significantly underperformed up until this point. We believe uh this trend is going to flip. We're now at an inflection point. Chain link and a position to do extremely well as this trend flips. Also, we want to put Aerodrome into that mix because they are part of the liquidity engine on base. Uh these guys are friends of the show and uh I am extremely excited to see the amount of capital come onchain as a result of this tokenized equities buildout.

uh T420 uh in the chat. Link is just for people who like holding it because of its fame. Look, it's famous for a reason. Okay. Uh there is some element of longevity and sustainability that can be said for chain link that cannot be said for so many other projects in the space. You have to do something right in order to stick around for so long. These guys have been uh here from the beginning building out the DeFi ecosystem. Now that it's being recognized, now that the industry is being legitimized and you have Sergey up there with the president of the United States helping to legitimize the industry, there are companies that are are in position to be the primary benefactors of the legitimization of the industry. This comes from better regulation, the SEC

and the CFTC as well as the Clarity Act if and when it goes through. And we believe that certain DeFi protocols, chain link included, are some of the primary benefactors of this legitimization of the industry. And so this is what we're continuing to see. Link token is not just a meme. We are absolutely tracking this. They're bu building uh and they're building and they're building. Um just reading a little bit more of the chat here. Greg, oh Greg, I think you've been vindicated as well as Edward. Uh Nest Force unite. Bro doesn't even breathe. Yeah, link token is not just a meme. Fake world assets going stupid. Chain link to 100.

Inflection point. Link is the best. Guys, keep the comments coming. Hit me with some questions. We're going to bring our guests up in a few minutes and uh we're going to get this party started. Let's keep going. We've got another friend of the show, Lorenzo from Arc Invest, who says it's becoming abundantly clear that being the fast second mover might be the best place to be in crypto. I mean, this is lighter coded. Mr. Lighter OG Edward, uh you guys have been tracking Lighter from the beginning. Uh you guys have been in since I mean sub $2 Lighter. Uh now I saw Lighter was pushing $3.50 and so now we have Lorenzo uh who works at Kathy Woods Arc Invest talking about how the fast second mover is the place to be. Uh this could point to KHI in

prediction markets. It could point to lighter in in the per market. uh could point to Circle in the stable coin market or Athena or Sky. Second place is kind of up for grabs in the stable coin market, but there's plenty out there. Fracks also has a grab at it. Uh plenty in the stable coin market and uh you know, we know how this could play out. Uh it's becoming abundantly clear that this is the case. We have enough data at this point to say that first being first matters much less than in other industries where technical modes tend to be much deeper and harder to replicate.

Uh Bass has been around for almost three years. However, Robin Hood chain has been around for hardly two months. Yet, Robin Hood was able to take a lot of the learnings from Bass, execute them on them extremely quickly and enter at a time when the infrastructure and crypto primitives are far more mature and efficient. There's one more thing that I would add here. We've gotten a little bit less we've gotten a little bit further away from this in recent times, but given that crypto and digital assets has fundamentally had an opensource ethos, a lot of the technology that would have been a moat in some other industry is actually not defensible at all because we have this philosophical point of view that all this technological moat should be open source and available for everyone to learn and build together. And so that is going to

uh dwindle down some of these technical notes even faster than they would have otherwise. Uh Lorenzo goes on to say that it also get got to Robin Hood got to bypass a lot of the distractions and dead ends along the way. Social grass creator economy and so look there is this very very timely point of an industry and a market buildout in which it makes sense to enter the market. And so that changes depending on the size and scale of your company. But we see we've seen the decentralized exchange landscape. You know, UniS swap obviously took an early lead. Aerrome came out and now Aerodrome took the lead on base, right? They were able to learn use upgraded tokconomics mechanisms, flywheels, right? Liquidity providing uh

mechanisms that allowed them to be more efficient before developing some of the tech debt and philosophical debt of decentralization, some of these other things that is holding back some facets of the industry. This is true across stable coins, decentralized exchanges, lending markets, per prediction markets. All of this is now showing that this is the case. Let's see the chart. Believe this is block works data. Blockworks everywhere. L2 transaction fee revenue. You can literally see when Robin Hood launched. I mean, they superseded what was happening on base. And now I I mean, they're consistently leading all across August. And so, obviously, this was a timely time. this was a time to enter the market. Not everyone could have

replicated the success from Robin Hood. But if you're an incumbent, meaning an incumbent in the fintech financial institutional space and you're now watching this institutional or excuse me, this innovative space, then well, you have the opportunity to enter the market at very particular times. And so if I'm lighter, right, I saw the success of Hyperlid and now I'm flooring it. And I can learn from hyperlquid right on both the tokconomic side, the buyback side, look at the reinforcement of the flywheels as these things go hand in hand. Um, if I'm the stablecoin side, I can take a lot a lot of learnings from Tether, from Circle, these sorts of things. and we can start to piece together how a disruptor could come into

a rather early market, leverage some of the learnings from these technology companies building in public, either leverage the tech right off the bat as a result of it being open- source or gauge community sentiment and adapt a lot of the feedback that a company gets from being a first mover, implement it and play leapfrog. This is what I think we're seeing both digital assets and I you see it in AI too. These models leapfrog, right? Once something gets gets put out there, it gets released, it gets stress tested, it gets reverse engineered, it gets distilled. We do that in every industry. We do that in crypto as well. And then you see Robin Hood be able to leaprog. Well, look, what was Robin Hood's secret sauce? It

was equities. Okay? It was a result of Robin Hood being a broker dealer. they had had significant traction in market share in the equities market, you know, relative to the likes of all brokerages out there and so tokenized equities was their differentiator, right? And then they had meme coins. They were able to kind of, you know, play that game as well to wolves, but they're ultimately going for this RWA. Now today, you have Bass working Coinbase and launching tokenized equities offering. And now base is set to sort of understand and watch what what happened with Robin Hood, right? How excited people were about some of those offerings, right?

And now they can take those learnings, go back to the drawing board, work on the product today, release the product, and I anticipate actually Bass could leapfrog Robin Hood as a result of this tokenized equities offering coming out from Bass today. uh with the likes of Chain Link, Aer Drrome, Bitwise, all of these guys now building on top, I anticipate a second wave of adoption coming from Bass. These guys are not dead yet. And ultimately, this is healthy competition in the L2 space from uh you know, the incumbents, the first movers, right? The disruptors and innovators, the second movers, and then ultimately these guys going back and forth and battling for the number one spot. Aton asks, "Are we rich yet?"

Aton, just stay patient. Give me some sound effects. It's all going to be okay. We're all going to make it. Let's keep going. We've got our first guest ready. Um, let's do one more because I see a a tweet from our friends at Near. Okay. And these guys are crushing and so why don't we just cover this near powers first major quantum resistant crypto pilot. Uh, I do think this is going to be huge. Obviously, you know what's happening in Zcash and we know how important that is uh you know to the you know private money ethos and landscape overall and now we have near also pushing on the quantum resistance framework. I mean if you're looking for

some of the top most technical teams in the entire space you probably don't need to go any further than Near and Zcash. Okay. If you're looking broadly, if you're looking AI, quantum, just well-rounded technical teams, could obviously throw chain link some of the early early builders in the digital asset space and infrastructure, but if you're looking for how these things are going to integrate across sectors, right, how digital assets is going to play a role in quantum and play a role in AI, right? No need to look further than Near and Zcash. Uh near here, bank and regulators are testing postquantum wallets. uh the responsible fintech institute and safe heron initiative uh uses a variety of standards uh with MPC

bringing in bison bank different banks uh and there's a full white paper and open sourcing of the technology to be announced um you know there's a variety of opinions on this but uh here at the rollup we believe in uh the importance of quantum research uh there's definitely a research funding or excuse me uh casino funding the research lab sort of uh dynamic that's in play here. U but ultimately quantum could have significant repercussions across digital assets AI economy globally medical like so many things that quantum is going to touch and uh we want to be ahead of the curve on here. Bitcoin is sleeping at the wheel could get caught uh behind the eightball, but uh there's some really really talented teams that

are working hard on this technology and on this research. Okay guys, um so that's going to be it for news today. We might come back a little bit later if we uh if uh we have the time. Cover more headlines. But let's go ahead and bring up our first guest for today. Uh because this one's going to be good. This one is going to be good. Uh so we are going to bring up I'm going to bring up Trevor. And uh this is going to be fun because lighter is on an absolute tear. And so Trevor is going to uh talk to us about uh the entire landscape there at Lighter and he's doing investor relations at

Lighter. So we're gonna get a full download. We're going to bring him uh bring him in into the back and we're going to bring him up on stage and uh I'm excited because you guys obviously are familiar with Lighter. Uh these are look I mean this is exactly what Lorenzo was talking about in his tweet is the innovative disruptor in a sector. Lighter is a zero knowledge setup. Uh they've got you know obviously the per exchange. Uh they do so with ZK which a little bit of more of a differentiated uh technical offering. Uh they're running $39 billion a day in 30-day per volume on basically half a billion dollars of TVL. It's also the exclusive perpetuals partner inside Robin Hood

wallet. Uh splitting revenue 50/50 since Robin Hood chain mainet launch on July 1st. Just last week, Lighter's liquidity provider Vault started holding spot ETH inventory to support basis trading. And the team is targeting Q3 for accepting a much wider range of collateral from tokenized stocks to gold. Trevor is ready in the back. We're going to go ahead and bring him up. There he is. I think it's first time on the show. Trevor, welcome to the show. >> What's going on? It's a pleasure to meet you. >> Absolutely. It's a pleasure here as well. We've had Vlad on several times. Uh we've talked to Camila, so friends with the team and uh it's your first time on the show. You guys are absolutely crushing. Probably fun times over there with the recent uh movements here. Uh we've been having some fun as well. We're calling this the pre-bull

phase. Uh not getting too euphoric because it still feels incredibly early, but you guys have been on an absolute tear with Robin Hood chain with the buildout. Vlad was at the CFTC uh advisory meeting. So, as investor relations at Lighter, I think you've got plenty of ammunition to talk to investors about uh all the good things that you guys have going on there. I'd love just a little bit more of a you know, kind of a store is how you found Lighter and what you what you find yourself uh doing there on a daily basis today. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yes, Price has been great, but there's still so much to do. It feels like we're always behind.

um there's always more to do um which is a great spot to be the whole team feels that so love to be around this team but yeah my background is actually original traditional finance I worked at a multif family office uh building fund of funds helped build fund of funds for our clients helped run a liquid model portfolio as well did that for three to four years left and went and joined a liquid hedge fund actually and did that for a little bit and then joined Deli to do research and consulting um spent some spent some time on the venture side with Yan as well and for the better part of two years I focused on per and that's kind of when I found lighter here. So, I've known uh someone on the lighter team, various people for the last year, year and a half now. Um and they're an

incredibly stellar team and got the opportunity to join the team about 6 months ago. Um and so joined about two months ago after some back and forth, but it's it's been a lot of fun being here, largely lead investor relations. Um it's it's an incredible team. I've been very impressed uh to see them kind of grow into a a tech team, a crypto team over the last 12 to 18 months and the momentum they've been building. Uh I mean price is reflecting it now but this is a bunch of little things compounding over the last you know 24 months really. >> Wow. Yeah. This is I mean it's been incredible to watch because there's been so many developments that we've seen both on the technical front, the partnership front and then obviously now the market sort of realizing what you

guys have been up to as well as not to mention the regulatory front. And so you know we've had several conversations with Vlad. we get really technical and we kind of you know get into the weeds on some of the ZK stuff but given your role at lighter let's keep this one relatively high level talk about some of the partnerships and talk about >> essentially what lighter is as you explain it to investors maybe at the institutional level because I have a feeling now with the market rerating this there's a lot of people that are discovering lighter for the first time and they're coming to lighter and they're coming to pers and they're realizing that you guys have a serious business you know 39 9 billion in 30-day volume, half a billion dollars in TVL.

How do you explain Lighter to someone who is just entering the perpetuals landscape, getting familiar with it? How how do you explain Lighter to these people? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're we're a crypto tech company that offers a new new way to express a bet to institutions and retail, and that is the perpetual future. So, I like to say you can think of us very similar to an exchange. Um, and and that's kind of how I go about explaining the business. We're an exchange. We offer this new primitive that's very complimentary to spot to per or to options to binaries. It's a very complimentary instrument and it's another way for institutions to hedge.

You can hedge balance sheet. You can hedge existing positions and it's also a good way to express uh linear leverage uh exposure to to underlying assets. And we can generally speaking do this on just about anything with a with a time series. >> Beautiful. >> And you know as as an exchange business too like generally speaking we're we're like exchanges are also generally speaking like a relatively high margin business. And so that's always like a good story. It's like, okay, we're this high margin business. We're growing really fast. And I'm biased here. I've been focused on perks for two years. But I also think perks as like a tech sector is one of the fastest growing verticals in tech outside of AI and in AI include robotics. But we're going at a rapid pace. We see continue to see adoption.

We continue to see interest from institutions and that ranges from brokers to exchanges to single multif family offices from the investment side. It's across the spectrum. We're seeing lots of interest. And it's a it's an amazing time to be building and it's been it's been a lot of fun over the last 12 months even though uh it's it's been a it's been a bear. >> Yeah. Right. Uh that that's what they've been saying. But it feels like we're on the precipice of something uh some something much much greater. And so you know you're talking about perpetuals as one of the greatest technological innovations, you know, not just in fintech but just broadly. Maybe you could just explain that a little bit more. Why is perpetuals so significantly different, unique, and better than other financial instruments that we've seen before?

>> Yeah, it's incredibly simple. Like the closest thing, you know, could probably think of a CFD, um, which you would typically see in traditional finance, which is a way to get get leverage, call it cheap leverage. Um, but not everyone can can trade these instruments. They're they're pretty restricted. So whether it's accredited investor, high net worth individual, it's hard to get cheap leverage. Going to interactive brokers and getting margin isn't the easiest thing in the world. This is super simple. Um, I I I love I loved it. I was speaking to one of my good friends who's now at Deli before. He was in traditional finance and I remember the first time he traded a per. He called me. He goes, "Dude, that was a magical experience because we both come from traditional finance and being able to get leverage to short or long an asset

is like somewhat difficult and not everyone can do that." He goes, "It was incredibly simple. I deposited my my money into the exchange and I just hit short and like my leverage and he wasn't a deesent. He was at like 2x. He wasn't he wasn't sliding it to 50." And he's like, "It was incredibly easy for me to use. It was a magical moment." Um, and so I think a lot of people have this aha moment. I have a lot of friends who are are at various financial institutions, Black Rockck and whatnot, and they're like, "Yeah, we we trade PERS. We love PERS." Like individually, not not as as a company, but they do individually. And like it's just it's an instrument that was like it was a magical moment to be able to open up this platform, deposit $100 and be able to start, you know,

leverage trading an instrument. And it was incredibly simple. Um, and I think this this magical moment, a lot of different people have had this across finance in general. >> Yeah. And and that I think is a a really important point because this for a while was just a cryptonative sort of instrument just used to trade digital assets, but that is no longer the case. And I think that's why we're seeing adoption >> broadly at at the highest levels of finance. Now, you know, Vlad in the CFTC uh advisory innovation committee uh you know, kind of recommending to the CFTC how some of these things should be regulated. you guys have this massive partnership with Robin Hood. Um maybe

you can talk about the partnership with Robin Hood first. Why do you think uh you know Robin Hood chose you guys as one of the you know pretty premier partners of this space rather than building it out themselves or going to someone else? Why did Robin Hood choose Lighter? Yeah, I think and this is something I I wrote about when I was at Deli for quite some time as I was underwriting the the lighter team is they have this very much a white glove approach to partnerships where they they have we have we have for deployed engineers. I know a lot of the frontier labs have kind of coined that. We also have frontier or for deployed uh engineers that we will send to offices or just use remotely to help teams build out their per offering to their users.

And so we take a very hands-on approach to working with our partners. And this this goes for Telegram and others as well, not just not just Robin Hood, where we we take a very much a white glove approach. We help you integrate. We don't just throw an SDK over the fence and say good luck. We're very much hands-on and we're wanting to work with these teams. And I think if you look at the history of partnerships and traditional finance and and business in general, like you need to be a good dance partner. You need to have friendly economics. You need to be able to help each other out. And that's something we we we think we do really well. And so when we were working with Robin Hood, you know, they wanted their own instance and so we were very happy to build that and we're happy to build those for the

right partners. Um, generally speaking, we think most of our partners will be better off just plugging into our partner attribution which you can access our SDK, access our liquidity, build the front end, and we think most users get and most businesses get get great use out of that. But for for one-offs, we're happy to build uh an instance for them as well. And we're just a really good dance partner with a lot of the teams we work with. And could you explain the economics behind this partnership a little bit more? You know, maybe there's NDAs and things that you guys have, but you know, we we're all obviously at least on this show and a lot of our audience in our chat here, we have calls for lit to $8. So, uh you know, the the the audience here is pretty pretty familiar with uh with with the offering

and the buybacks are, you know, obviously an important piece of this story. And so maybe you can help us understand the revenue profile of the Robin Hood partnership and how that translates into buybacks for the lighter token. >> So starting just with the Robin Hood instance, we have a 50-50 rev share with them. And this is this is public. They announced it a month or so ago now. Um we have 50-50 rev share and that's both on the perpetual futures that traded through the lighter instance on Robin Hood and the and their stock tokens. Their stock tokens. We also have a 50-50 rev share over there. And if you're following this on chain, you know, 100% of revenues kind of come to us and then you'll see 50% go back out to them and then we take that 50% to towards buybacks. And so for those that don't

know, we do we do buybacks with 100% of trading revenue on the main instance as well. And so this is the same 100% of the the 100% of the revenue that we get from this instance goes towards buybacks and we continue to do that. And that those are the economics and with our other partners like Telegram uh Morirana and others pair protocol now that was announced today. Um, generally speaking, um, you know, we charge 0.5 bips or zero bips, uh, for our partners. Um, and so we take that, they can charge whatever they want on top, which we view as, uh, very, uh, generous and we view that very competitive and we think that'll be competitive than traditional markets.

And what do I mean by that is if if you have an exchange that has a a hurdle rate. So if you're a builder, you have to you have to pay the exchange 4.5 bits of everything you make, that means you have to charge a minimum 4.5 and you're not making anything there. So if you want to keep 50% of your revenue, you have to charge nine bips. Okay. So then you you're giving 50% of your revenue away to to someone else versus if you worked with us, you could charge nine bips and keep, you know, 90 95% of that. And so you can almost 2x your revenues by by working with us. And so we we view that as very competitive. We think that would be competitive as as per come to the US. We think that would be very competitive offering to traditional

financial institutions as well. And so there's there's kind of like a holistic view of like the way in which we work with different partners. >> Yeah. So this is a massive buildout, right? the the tokenized equities market in general is hundred trillion dollars plus and you've now gone with Robin Hood and partnered up right and providing liquidity not just to cryptonative assets but now tokenized equities and and you kind of talked about the the revenue profile and the buybacks now as we see regulation improve in the US specifically I'd imagine that's going to open up the floodgates even further and so how different do you expect the perpetuals landscape to be post regulation post per you know legal and

allowed in the US um given that you're already working with you know Robin Hood financial institution they and already have tokenized equities tokenized stocks offering through their stock tokens you're already servicing this industry in that regard how important do you think regulation in the US is to to open up the aperture even further >> so when Vlad and team built lighter they built it in mind with pers being uh allowed and regulated uh in the US and we think that's true. I think the last week or two has been I think this kind of validated that thesis somewhat and we think per overall is going to be 100 times more competitive over the next 5 to 10 years than it has been the last 24

months. I think most of us who have been in crypto for the last 3 to 5 years, we've seen pers evolve over the years and especially over the last 12 to 24 months get really competitive. Everyone's still farming various per decks. Um, lighter was one of those and there's still many more to come and a lot of people view that as competitive. We think it gets much much more competitive when you open up the US. Um, and we think that I think it's going to be a highly competitive vertical because the TAM is so large. I mean, you mentioned it the equity market is so big. Tokenized equity market is is massive. And the same for PERS. I mean, you think about crypto relative to equities. Uh, I don't know what it is today, but it's, you know, somewhere between 30 and 50 times larger, which is

a huge TAM. And then that doesn't even include if you go into FX markets, which we think is also like a pretty high growth vertical for us over time. And so like the TAM is is absolutely massive and we think it gets incredibly competitive, but we really love how we're positioned. We're we're open source. We're decentralized. We we started in the US. We're still here in the US. We plan on staying in the US. And so we really like the the relationships we built in DC and with with others around the US and globally. Like we don't want to just focus on the US like we want to work in different parts of Latin. We want to work in Asia and things like this. We we announced our partnership with BitCub and they're in Thailand. So, we want to continue to be everywhere else, but like we're

highly focused on the US just because the the US is still the capital markets of the world and that really hasn't been unlocked yet for per. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I mean this just feels like a massive win. It it feels like a massive win for users who ultimately want access to these products. Obviously, you know, we've been kind of handicapped by the regulatory agencies that were in place, you know, before the the SEC and CFTC regime that is in there now. Gary Gendler, you know, prohibited anything that even resembled a security of, you know, navigating onchain. And now we're bringing things that we know to be true. We know these things are securities. their equities, but we're bringing the best fintech technology and applying it to the asset classes at the

largest scale of finance. And so it feels like uh ultimately the the win here is making everything more efficient overall. We've got a a a comment from our chat here, a question for you. Uh Edward in our chat has been a big lighter fan for a long long time. Uh he says, "Can you ask Trevor what the specific USA Robin Hood lighter strategy is?" uh in terms of lighter powering anything on the core app per tokenized stocks options or is it all on Robin Hood wallet? >> Yeah, I think that'll be TBD based on regulation. We we are we are flexible.

We have a great relationship with Robin Hood. You know, obviously it'd be ideal to be in in their their main application here in the US, but we just want to continue to main that maintain that relationship and as as regulation unfolds and licensings come then then we can talk about that in the future. >> Yeah. Got probably a little bit of a political answer for you, but there you go. >> You got to stay you got to you got to you know be uh a uh you know a political um you got to have kind of have the demeanor of you know being able to uh balance these things. So >> no it it makes sense. I mean you you also mentioned forex and I'm just curious you know >> do you have any metrics behind uh first let's just start with the Robin Hood

announcement. Do you have metrics behind, you know, where you guys were pre- Robin Hood with, you know, the the crypto native asset class? What kind of revenue were you guys doing? What kind of volume were you guys doing? And then post Robin Hood once you guys integrated stock tokens, how large of a jump did you see in volume, revenue, etc. Yeah, we on the specifically on we'll start with the main instance the main lighter instance we have seen you know our RWA percent of OI and volume OI specifically go from really close to zero about 8 months ago to close to 30% today and we've we've loved to see that growth coming from the asset allocation world I love to see asset class revenue diversification so I was like this is great we're less cyclical to to crypto cycles this is incredible and I want to

continue to see that grow I mean if crypto markets really are coming back uh as we've seen over the last week. I would expect, you know, maybe RWAS as a percent of OI and volume to maybe trend down just because we're seeing uh retail and speculation come back to crypto, but we want to continue to see that grow. We think that's a huge growth opportunity. We want that with both our pers, with our options, with spot as well. And so, we want to continue to grow that. And on the Robin Hood instance specifically, roughly 30 actually 50% I believe it's 55% of OI is now RWAS. And so, we love to see that growth. you know, we're very aligned with with Robin Hood and wanting to bring Trady on chain. Um, and we're we're we're excited to be helping them in that. And so roughly 55% of our OI is

actually coming um from from RWA and we're incredibly excited for that growth and the user growth over the last two three weeks uh has has been massive for us and we we love to see that and we're we're excited for where they're going to go in the future and and how we can help them. >> Beautiful. And and this was kind of the buildup to uh to my question around the Forex market. I mean, there's been a couple of projects that have attempted this. We haven't really seen this built out significantly at scale because there isn't really a uh regional stable coin, you know, market out there right now. Stable coins are dominated significantly by USD denominated stable coins, you know, to the tune of 99, you know, 5%.

And so given that's sort of the dynamic in the stable coin world, why do you think forex is such a large potential addressable market that lighter can help to facilitate on on stream. Um but but we're excited for that growth. We're working with various partners who are incredibly excited. I mean, I think if you if you think about potentially hedging balance sheets and things like that as well, hedging currency r like I think if you if you spend a lot of time with desk and people trading currencies on Wall Street, uh it is incredibly painful to be able to try to hedge your book after 3:30 on a Thursday. Like that is hard.

Liquidity isn't great. That is a very fragmented market that is relatively inefficient and very inefficient after hours and weekends. And this is something like blockchain was built to help solve. So, it's a very fragmented market and we're excited to help make that more efficient. I don't think this is something people talk about and get super excited about over the next 6 to 12 months, but when we look out 2 to 3 years, we do think this is definitely going to be a really big market. Um, but I don't think I don't think it'll get really exciting over the next 12 months, but it's something long term that I'm very excited about. >> Okay. Okay. Another another very political answer, but >> yeah. Sorry about that. I apologize. I hate I hate hate when people answer questions like that. Now, I'm that guy.

>> No, no, no, no. you do you got to do what you got to do like you said there's plenty plenty that you guys are cooking we know you guys ship fast which has been just very very cool to watch as a user of the platform as well as you know a friend of the team um and I'm just curious you know what what is like the culture like I I'd imagine especially now inside with these market conditions and the the pace at which you guys ship it's very exciting to be working at lighter um also given you know the new potential addressable market you guys might be hiring you know like what is it like [snorts] just speaking to the culture at lighter these days?

>> Yeah, absolutely. I think I think lighter is a special place. So before this I was I was at Deli and I I still believe that was one of the best places I will ever work. The team there is incredible anal Kevin Yan Ashwa etc. incredible team so much ingenuity. Can't speak highly enough for them but it's really fun to be at kind of at the bleeding edge of tech here and here in the US as well. So incredibly excited for that. It's incredibly competitive. uh most of the team is, you know, former athletes of some kind or or Olympiads, math specialists, and so like everyone's incredibly competitive. Um and so it's it's very competitive internally, but we we very much so encourage one another um uh in what we're doing. We we champion each other, but like there's definitely like a high standard here. Like we want

to work with the we the people we hire, we want to be some of the smartest people in their vertical and we want to bring them on to the team and continue to grow the team. Um but it's incredibly competitive. We're competitive not with each other, but with the market. We want to be the best and we're not satisfied where we are today. We want to continue to grow another 10x and a 10x and a 10x and a 10x. We want to continue to grow and hit escape velocity. And so I think the team has never been more locked in than they are today. Um and this was this was true 6 months ago when the token was down whatever was 60 to 70% in six to seven weeks. The team was incredibly locked in then. Um and we are now as well.

>> Well, it's happening uh it's happening right before our eyes on on multiple fronts. I mean pers in general at the confluence of so many factors here regulatory uh we we've coined the revenue meta you guys are absolutely printing um and uh like you said forex native assets in addition to RWA's stock tokens you know these things are are coming online and fast uh and lighter is one of those protocols which is just at the receiving end of the tokenization of new asset classes so hundred trillion dollar you know stock tokens uh trillion dollar forex market. I mean, as these things get tokenized, you guys are right there to, you know, just just sit there and just catch all that

volume. >> Yeah, it was funny you mentioned the revenue meta, and it's so funny. It took crypto a decade to get to a revenue meta. And I understand there was a ton of experimentation, but it took an incredibly long to get to to revenue meta. I remember being back in Tradfi and pitching assets, and they're like, "What are the cash flows? How much money what are their earnings?" And so it's like it's funny, we're finally like at this revenue meta and my bet is within the next 12 to 24 months we go ahead and get to like net margin and free cash flow and people start to look at these what's your earnings and things like this and I think over the next 12 to 24 months the the industry will mature 10 times what it did in the last 10 years in 12 to 24 months as we begin to

start looking at the earnings of these businesses as well. >> So excited for that to come. I think that the the industry will mature quite a lot when that happens. >> That that's where we are. uh and you know it it's multi-level here whereas you know the the first level that we've talked about on as part of this revenue metathesis is you know the protocol must generate revenue. Second is that revenue must be passed back to the token and then third is that you know there they can't have more expenses or inflation or unlocks going out more than you know that second level of what they have coming in. So, you know, this is sort of the the outperformance thesis that we're going on uh for this cycle and lighter is at the heart of this thesis. So, >> we appreciate your support.

>> Absolutely, man. Thank you for coming on and uh would love to catch up in a few more months and uh you know, we're going to turn some of the political answers into more tangible things that we can talk about. So, no uh uh uh no harm there and uh really appreciate you coming on, man. Keep up uh keep all the great work. >> Thank you. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. >> Absolutely. See you next time. >> See you. Thanks Trevor. >> Very cool. I mean these guys are absolutely crushing um absolutely crushing lighter and uh you know these guys are at the heart of the perpetuals buildout uh which is one of the few uh sectors that we see uh that is just taking the world by storm uh as it pertains to fintech broadly. So we know tokenization, we know pers, prediction

markets, vaults, uh these are the things at the heart and stable coins. These are the things at the heart of the buildout. I'm seeing some rumblings about a Treasury Secretary Bessant press conference and we've got about 30 minutes or so until our next guest. So, I'd like to potentially do some screen share here. Hit me up in the chat, guys. Hit me up in the chat because uh we've got a few minutes here.

We're going to be we're going to cool it uh for a little while. We want to want to maybe see this this latest Scott Bessant interview here. I think it was just an hour or so ago. Maybe it's on Twitter somewhere. Uh I believe he was saying that we're going to be sanctioning some uh some financial institutions which the market seemed to not be particularly bullish. Let's see what we've got here.

Let's see what we've got here. All right. So an hour ago. Let's see. An hour ago, he's talking about Iran here. This press conference. The Economic Club of New York. The Economic Club of New York. I think we're going to try to bring this up on the stream because this is what everyone's talking about today. Um, so just give us a moment. Hit me up in the chat. What are you guys feeling? What do you think? Market. A little bit of pullback. I tend to think pullbacks are for buying these days.

Yeah. Here we go. Fox Business Besson announces major operation targeting Iran's economy. Let's go ahead and uh we're going to play this. Just give us our give our producer a moment or two to pull this up. I think this is where we're going to uh we're going to see some things here. Get a little bit of an update from uh Scott Bessant. This guy seems to be the driving force in in the market. Now, obviously, you guys saw the Treasury announcement. This is the Secretary Treasury uh talking about the buybacks program that he's doing on the long end of the curve. Uh and we are going to uh see the press conference that uh that he is talking about today.

And so, why don't we uh why don't we bring this up here because I think this is the full interview. We'll just skip around a little bit. Producers getting it ready in the back. Let's bring up put close captions on there if we can. Yeah, a little Miss Gone. I see you there in the chat. I like Bessant, too. Uh I think the market's a little bit skittish about what he was saying in this conference here. So, we're going to we're going to cover it. Um so, we're going to bring it up in just a moment, get it going here for audio for you guys.

Freedom guy says he would comment, but he's paralyzed with euphoria. That is also how I have uh felt over the last couple of days. All right, so here we go. Let's get rid of the chat there on the right, Mr. Producer. We don't need that. We can go. Yeah, let's go like that. And let's get some audio going. And uh we're going to listen to a little bit of this uh before our next guest is up in about 30 minutes. And uh we'll yeah, let's get some audio and then we'll skip ahead to when uh Bessant comes on stage.

Yeah, there you go. So we'll skip ahead there about Yep, there he is walking on. Let's get some audio. Good afternoon. Today, at President Trump's direction, nope. The United States Treasury has begun Operation Economic Outcast, an unprecedented campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers. In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies to target and drive the enemy from its positions,

including those in third countries. Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe. Around the globe. Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tran stands alone. Iran's fanatics devote themselves to death to America and seek nuclear weapons to do just that. They have murdered and maimed more of our citizens and service members than any other terrorist regime on Earth. and they have been at war against America,

their neighbors in the Gulf, and much of the world for 47 years. >> President Trump has taken action that his predecessors, >> Operation Economic Outcast, >> and under his leadership, America is no longer managing the Iranian threat. We are ending it. Our great armed forces have laid the groundwork for achieving the president's objective of preventing Iran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons. They have shown America's resolve to finally end this threat. And the strength of America's economy under President Trump allows us to wage this sustained financial operation alongside

the might of our military. Iran now faces a very clear choice with only two paths before them. Complete global isolation and a substanced economy or a path back to normaly with an opportunity to rejoin the global economy. Today we are launching operation economic outcast to foreclose every other option available to the Iranian regime. Treasury has mapped every node, every facilitator, and every network that Iran has used to smuggle oil and evade sanctions.

Beginning today, the actions of Treasury and other agencies will tighten the noose and block every potential source of revenue that funds the IRGC and the evil Iranian regime. We are enforcing a zero leakage approach. There will be no minimal breathing space for to rebuild his capacity to inflict terror against America and the world. The final refuge of this regime is the mistaken conclusion of nations that still finance the Iranian threat in the hopes of evading it. It is no longer acceptable to operate in the grave spaces of this conflict. Countries cannot claim they are blind to enabling

this activity. Iran's enablers purchase, transport its petroleum. They facilitate the flow of its finances through exchange houses and free trade zones. They welcome Iran's flights and maintain registries on its behalf. They turn a blind eye to seaborn fuel transfers and overland transits. They condone illicit use of their banks, all the while concealing the extent of their complicity. The president is making phone calls to world leaders with specific requests to cease their interactions with the regime. We are already seeing results. Over the weekend, comments from Iranian

leadership clearly acknowledge the effect of this campaign and nations that facilitate any intern interactions with the regime should quickly heed our message. Those who stand with the United States will reap the rewards of our partnership. Those who tether themselves to the good >> Iranian regime should expectation, Russia, China, who else is enabling them. >> Teams from Treasury, state, and the US military are now meeting with their global counterparts to tell them that the United States expects action. Every country has a defined timeline to shut down activities. we have identified if

they do not take action we will do so unilaterally through treasury authorities. For example, every branch of bank mele must be shuttered and dark. And let me be clear any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the US dollar system. The clock just started ticking. The new sectoral sanctions determinations issued today target five of Iran's most vital lifelines that it exploits in other countries. Digital assets technology gold aviation and shipping. These measures broaden

secondary sh sanctions risk for anyone foolish enough to continue conducting business with this regime and will accelerate the speed with which with we pursue them. As I speak, Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control is also sanctioning over 60 entities, individuals, and vessels around the world that enable the Iranian regime to procure illicit nuclear and missile technology, conduct cyber operations, and generate oil revenue.

This is a sustained campaign to collapse every last option for Iran. Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States. An economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power. For decades, this regime has drawn strength from a calculus. Iran is starting to respond. >> Iranian retaliation as certain. Iran major general says America must change its behavior and take practical steps to implement the terms of the memorandum of understanding.

>> To the ordinary soldiers supporting this regime as more and more of your paychecks stop or supposedly just delayed, ask whether your commanders are leading your country to triumph or to ruin. And recall that the Berlin Wall fell when ordinary soldiers decided not to shoot at their own people. And to those who enable Tron, do not discount the cost of testing Washington's resolve. No nation should expect to enjoy the rewards of our system while helping those who seek to destroy it. It is now a time for world leaders to make a decision between prosperity and isolation, peace and terror, America and

Iran. The campaign we begin today will gather force with every day that follows and it will not end until this regime stands alone. With that, I welcome your questions. >> Obviously, the question is what is the economic impact of this? >> We already know his uh >> um attempts. most powerful tools you have at your disposal is the ability to impose secondary sanctions on on banks and financial institutions that facilitate transactions for Iran. Um, Chinese banks uh have often been talk

talked about being targeted, but we don't see any any of those institutions targeted here. Is that something that is coming in this campaign or is is the uh very delicate trade truce with China something that that could prohibit you from you know going that far and taking that very big step? uh we want to make clear to here today that no one is above the reach of US sanctions that if they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money into repression they will be targeted. We find that the best way to

engage with countries is through quiet diplomacy and we are level setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are. They know who they are. So when the hammer of US Treasury actions falls upon them, they will have no one to blame but themselves. So Richard from CBS Thank you, sir. Um, thank you. Uh, you said the president is calling world leaders with specific asks and um and that there is a defined timeline. Who is he calling and what are the asks? uh we're not going to name names that we've already seen some results and that I I

am confident the president as you all know is quite persuasive and we are following his calls up with calls from visits and calls from the state department and from the US treasury expecting them ex >> are telling the guys leaders >> you know there's a a lot of different angles here to take politically but if we're just looking economically what this could And I would expect that very quickly if they do not respond >> kind of weighing you will see these two things that we have action >> right in front of us >> the sanctions >> are going to stop some liquidity you know they're already using tariffs right this is going to slow e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e

e e e e e e e e e e e economic factos down but then on the other hand we know that Besson is trying to do everything that he can to lower yields do so both on the long run as well as in the short run. And this is going to speed the economy up. >> And I think that's a much stronger force than the economic sanctions that he's describing here today. the Iran conflict fades and oil prices recede that will help bring down long-term bond yields. In the meantime, you have mentioned your toolkit and I'm curious if you are looking at reducing

auction sizes for longerterm dated Treasury debt going forward and what other actions you may consider from that toolkit. Now, >> this is a great question. >> Let me work backwards. Uh we we issued the the quarterly refunding announcement two and a half weeks ago. uh we are going to continue the with our regular program of auctions. So you will be hearing from us again the at the beginning of next quarter. Uh in in terms of as I said every country, every entity should know that they should be prepared to face US sanctions and the no one is is above this. uh we are going to hold everyone accountable and this is

exfixi economic exfixiation of this regime and Jennifer as I said no one should test our resolve. So >> Josh from New York Post >> it sounds like the beginning of next quarter they might lower their auction sizes. said you weren't going to name names, but there's been some reports that the United Arab Emirates is among some of the first nations to take seriously these words from the United States to cut off all uh business interactions with Iran. Is UAA leading the way in this respect?

>> Uh I I I would think that the actions that they took last week were not coincident but likely causal. And I would expect that we would see a broad array of countries taking similar actions the as we continue our engagement. Uh the the UAE have been very good partners and have taken the brunt of the Iranian attacks in the Gulf. And what have what have these countries gotten over the years from appeasing Iran? they were subject to violent attacks. While we were bombing Iran, they were bombing them. So it

shows that with with this regime, appeasement does not work. And on the other side, with this regime, trying to buy appeasement will no longer work in the eyes of >> obviously this is all about and I want to emphasize, >> you know, they're trying out across the world. Iran >> as we speak >> to banning the lower inflation in the US >> when you leave this meeting today and you free flowing oil through the street for moose >> and I would expect >> oil prices come down inflation >> a major announcement of a financial institution being sanctioned by the end of this week so

the Samira from sky >> well he just said that they're going to sanction a major U uh not US but major finan cial institution by the end of this week. So there's going to be more news on this. >> And this is obviously a negative force on the market, >> but at the same time, you have plenty of positive force on the market as well. >> So this is probably going to cause a death. >> But does the United States um and President Trump still want Canada to become he did say that they're getting all the benefit without um being one? Uh I think he would like Canada to come to the table and negotiate in good faith.

They were offered quite a good deal last week. Uh they chose to reject it. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Carne Carney rose to power on an anti-American anti-Trump platform. I believe he was more than 20 points behind. And you know, he seems to have gone back to his old playbook. And I think one has to act ask oneself is he trying to benefit himself, the Liberal Party or the Canadian people because they were offered a very good job. So, yep. You >> Thank you to Secretary Besson. Uh, if I could shift to bond yields quickly. We saw them tick down today after some turbulence and going up last week. Can

you tell us if there's any possibility that there'll be more bond buybacks anytime soon? Uh again, we haven't bought a single bond yet. The the the next um the the the next time uh we have an operation is September 9th. So we we will see on September 9th. >> All right. Uh >> one one more. Um >> let's see. >> All right. Up until now, it's all been signaling. You described this as an econom wasn't a threat of an invasion and the US didn't give a timeline to Germany. So why not impose the sanctions today?

>> Well, we we are giving everyone the opportunity the to remedy bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period, but they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious. Secondary sanctions are a very powerful tool. And we here at Treasury, uh this is Gene Wang, the acting under secretary for terrorism finance. And in the terrorism finance department and in OFFAC, the reason we are able to use secondary sanctions is because we do not take their use lightly. So we believe that a warning shot and a level set of expectations is

appropriate and if people do not want to meet our expectations then we expect and they should expect that they should will leave the dollar system. Okay. Thank you all. Is this an endarily? Is this an acknowledgement that the war can't be militarily? >> Well, there you have it, Leo. Let's go uh let's go solo. Next guest is getting ready in the back.

Um wow. Okay. Okay. So, there you have it. I mean, the uh the pieces on the board are starting to um are starting to fall into place. You know, you can you can really see uh how this is shaping up. How on one hand I let's start in general. In general, the US is doing everything it can to bring inflation under control. Uh and if they can do that and control the narrative, meaning inflation comes down, national debt isn't spiraling out of control,

then it's greater justification that their argument around the national debt and the economic situation of the US that they can grow their way out of this is more likely if they can keep inflation low because ultimately they need GDP to outpace inflation. in order to make a dent in that national debt. And so if you can run GDP at 6 7 8 9% and inflation is inflation can be a little bit higher if you're running you know GDP that high because you know the difference is still positive. So you can run inflation at you know four 5% if GDP is 678.

um even better if you can get inflation down, but ultimately you need GDP higher than inflation. That's that's where we're at. And so to help this, what we can do is we can uh bring yields down both in the long run and in the short run. But these are the two the this is the push and the pull of the market right now. They're going to do everything they can to bring inflation down. That is deflationary pressures. Okay? Deflationary pressures also are going to bring the market down. And so you can't pump liquidity into the market at the same time as lowering inflation. You can do both at the same time and you can hope that the liquidity injections are going to lead to a greater GDP than uh inflation increase. That's what they're

hoping for. But it's a very very prickly situation because uh you know liquidity injections are also going to increase inflation. So that's kind of what we're faced with, right? They have these operations, but they need to do two different things in order to justify their goals. And so they're walking the tight rope and they're choosing to run the economy hot on one side, right? So that they can bring yields down and they can increase GDP and productivity and continue the AI buildout because it is, you know, a massive capital driver and that is boosting everyone's assets, boosting the economy. And if they can continue these buybacks, continue these

liquidity injections, bring down the yields, steepen the curve, they'll keep the bull market going, that's all kind of working in our favor as digital asset owners. On the other hand, right, these sanctions are deflationary, right? Uh they restrict the movement of capital and they slow the economy down. And so on one hand you have, you know, the sanctions on Iran slowing the economy down to try to limit inflation and deflate the economy. But then on the other hand, you need to try to inflate this debt away. Inflate uh credit in order to uh you know inject more liquidity and boost productivity and grow your way out of the national debt.

And so this is kind of the situation that we're forced with. On one side you have a push, on the other side you have a pull. You know these are two competing forces. Look, I'm here to say that the stronger force is going to win, right? You have two competing forces. One is going to bulldoze the other, and it's up to you guys to decide which one is stronger, right? On one hand, you have uh fiscal policy and political, you know, sanctions. On the other hand, you have pure raw economic energy. I think I know which side I'm betting on. And if you, you know, missed the runup, uh, if you're looking at these dips, this is kind of what we're faced with now. And I I'll just tell you what I'm going to be doing, and that's buying

dips. Because, like I said, the trend has changed. We're no longer in apathetic volatile market conditions. Obviously, if we can surpass some critical levels in the Bitcoin market, that is going to do wonders for the entire altcoin complex as a whole. And I'll tell you, I mean, Bitcoin's holding up. I mean, it's still upwards of 78. Even on the last hour, we haven't really seen the market react too negatively. And so, this is kind of what we're keeping an eye on. Uh, and it's up to you to decide whether or not, you know, these dips are for buying or you think we've got one more move lower. But this is, uh, this is where we're at.

This is where we're at. Um, okay. We are going to bring our guest up in just a moment. Before we do, we're going to update the headline here. Um, because uh Franklin Templeton uh the CIO um of Franklin Templeton Digital Assets is coming in and uh we're going to bring him up in just a moment. Uh Seth is the CIO at Franklin Templeton Digital Assets. Uh we know Franklin Templeton well because uh these guys have been absolutely crushing uh in the RWA space, tokenized funds, these sorts

of things. Uh one of the leaders, one of the pioneers. Um and so we've, you know, talked about a lot of these funds. Uh we've had Sandy on the show. Uh she's great. Uh anytime we have her on. Uh Franklin Templeton also acquired 250 digital. So, we're going to be talking about that a little bit. This uh launch gives Franklin's $ 1.7 trillion distribution network, a dedicated active management crypto arm at a moment when Guinness has called out for a real disconnect between price and fundamentals. And so, we're going to be getting into this disconnect. It feels like the market is rerating the fundamentals a little bit. It's a very funny tweet that went out last week. uh our friends at CMS, they said, "You can

literally feel the technology getting better as we speak." Uh which is very very funny that the market is now uh rerating itself based on uh the technology that's always been here, but never nevertheless. Uh let's go ahead and bring up Seth. I think I I see him there. He's ready in the back. Believe it's his first time on the show. There he is. It is. Seth, welcome, >> Robbie. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. It's a pleasure. Thanks for coming on. How how are you doing? Uh we're calling this the pre-bull phase uh of the market. How how is it treating you? >> Do doing a lot better today than two weeks ago. [laughter] >> Yeah, right there with you, man. I'm right there with you. I mean, this thing has reversed course fast over the last few days. I mean, obviously you can attribute this to a variety of different

things. Probably most significantly is this, you know, liquidity buyback program from the Treasury. We actually just watched Bessant give this press conference on sanctions in Iran. I mean before we dig into everything that you've got going on at Franklin Templeton digital assets which you know is a lot I'd love just your read where are we fouryear cycle is true or false fake news or real news what are you watching what kind of catalysts are you expecting here over the coming you know weeks to months >> you know it's interesting if if you had asked me that midyear last year I would have said fouryear cycle behind us not something to to pay attention to and I was totally wrong on that it's interesting If you look at what Bitcoin whales do, you actually saw whales

selling into what would have been the the end of the four-year cycle, so October of last year, and you started to see whale buying over the last few months. So, from like June, July, so I I'd say look, timing wise, the four-year cycle definitely has come into the mix here. Um, and from a whale engagement perspective, also seeing the four-year cycle uh in the mix. Now, does that mean we have to wait until October, which would be when the four-year cycle would tell us that that we're ready to to lift off? No. I mean, look, like the you you've had um whale buying, as I noted, for a few months now, and and now you've gotten a a real catalyst. And there

there are a bunch of things that that we should talk about here, but what one of the ones that I really focus on is um Bitcoin versus gold. And and that was just down only from like August of last year until uh the start of the Iran war. Just down only. And and it's odd because normally you don't see Bitcoin and gold decoupled to that extent. And what what you see if you zoom out is Bitcoin versus gold on this really nice up and to the right over the long run. Well, the um the the start of the war kind of kicked off a bottoming process in that ratio

>> and and we can talk about some of the reasons why because we got some really interesting color on the ground about what was happening there. we kind of we we bounced a few times on on a nice like upward regression floor, >> but now we're actually seeing with this move tied to liquidity with this move tied to to Besscent and the Treasury buybacks, seen a really nice um breakout moment in Bitcoin versus gold over the 200 day moving average for the first time in a year, which is pretty remarkable. >> Yeah. And I I think you're pointing to some of the relative strength metrics that we like to watch on the show as well because these are ultimately where we're going to learn about

outperformance. And for so long it's been about capital preservation, but now going forward, you know, we've got uh what looks to be market conditions where we can start to think about outperformance as we get into um you know, potentially a more you know, accommodative monetary policy regime. And so as you're looking at, you know, Bitcoin to gold, we're looking at crypto to equities, these things seem to have reversed course. And one of the things we covered last week was that as a result of uh Bessant making this, you know, liquidity announcement as a result of the Treasury, you know, he's he's buying up the long end, trying to, you know, help out the yields and then and then selling on the short end creating this bull steepening, which in theory

they're going to try to run the economy hot here. Why or do you think do you think that this is caused to believe that that this will create a regime in which scarce assets Bitcoin and gold will outperform equities and if so of those scarce assets Bitcoin and gold which one do you think will outperform and why? Maybe we can get into some of the specifics that you had you had mentioned there. Yeah, I mean when you when you look at what Treasury is effectively doing, and by the way, today he came out and said we haven't started yet. And I think that's why you're seeing a little um weakness in the market. Um and I think they said they're starting in early September. So again, a little bit of a an air pocket between here and there, but what they're

doing is fundamentally driving real yields lower. It's fundamentally providing liquidity into the market. you're seeing gold respond to that. So, so gold is up nicely from its roughly $4,000 trough. Um, and and as I noted, Bitcoin versus gold up very nicely as well. So, Bitcoin outperforming gold in in this move higher. When when I think about what the longer term trend there is, look, Bitcoin has a a component of it that is tied to to real yields, the same thing that drives gold, but then Bitcoin has a component that's tied to network effects. It has a

component that's tied to being this new tech asset. And and there's a really um interesting additional fact which is when gold's price goes up, more supply of gold comes to the market. So gold's price goes up, gold miners start producing more and and you get that supply response. In Bitcoin, it's actually the opposite. So people think of it as Bitcoin as fixed supply, but in reality we we haven't mined all of the Bitcoin that's going to be mined. But if you're a minor, your operating expenses are denominated in dollars or your local currency. So as Bitcoin goes up in price, you have to sell less Bitcoin in

order to cover your operating expenses. So there's actually this really cool dynamic where Bitcoin has less supply programmatically come on the market when its price moves higher in contrast to gold which has more supply. So I'd make the bet that when you zoom out you're going to continue to see Bitcoin versus gold going up and to the right. So, I' I'd bet through this cycle, through this liquidity provisioning, easing cycle, you're going to see Bitcoin outperform gold, but I think they both likely do well.

>> Yeah, I I tend to agree with you and I think they tend to both outperform equities if we do get this bull steepening of the yield curve. Um and and so on the show we've been developing this thesis as we've sort of trans trans uh transitioned you know from a bear into this pre-bull phase that we're calling it and then eventually into you know some some of the market conditions that we can remember so fondly uh and we're thinking about our performance and we've uh we we've uh kind of talked about this as a barbell approach. We've arrived at this barbell approach and on one hand we've got this small group of uh digital assets that have a monetary premium and this is almost only two or

three. You can make a case for a third one. We feel like Bitcoin, Zcash have true monetary premium and you could make an argument for Ethereum belonging in that group as well. And we feel like as a result of the scarce asset thesis and the scarce asset outperformance that we just talked about, we believe this this basket is poised to do incredibly well um because of uh some of the supply dynamics as as you talked about Zcash AI surveillance is coming you know a little bit more increasingly so and accelerating. So we we have a thesis around these things. On the other side of the barbell, as an individual investor, we've arrived at this revenue meta, this group of companies and tokens that sort of have this this threepronged thesis that we think make them a viable

investment. uh and and ultimately I'm getting I want to get your thoughts on this as well but the three prongs are sort of levels in which first and foremost in order to to have this viable thesis protocol or company needs to have revenue uh needs to have product market fit needs to be generating some revenue. Second uh second level here is that revenue needs to be flowing into an asset that is available to the public whether that be a token or security that's available or public cannot be going into some ventureinvested you know private labs corporation. Third is that, you know, if you can get the first two, get product market fit and revenue and you can get that revenue flowing into the token, you can't have more outflows, more emissions or unlocks or or

incentive programs flowing out than the revenue that you have flowing into the token. And so my question here that I'm getting to is, you know, this is kind of the thesis that we've arrived at, you know, for myself as an individual investor, one that we're describing as a potential to outperform baseline digital assets, you know, as we enter these market conditions. Your CIO of, you know, Franklin Templeton digital assets, how do how does this thesis reconcile with the strategies that you're deploying given that this could work for an individual investor? Does it also work at the institutional level? What makes sense? and is cross-co compatible with what you're seeing on the ground uh with Franklin Templeton.

>> So that is that is very much in line with the way that we're thinking about uh valuing tokens. So it it's really a fundamental approach and my background I I did public equities investing for 18 years and what you just described is really similar to public equities investing. But there's one thing that I would add to that which is you need transparency into the P&L. So there's a a big debate and and the P&L meaning that the profit and loss rate uh statement which really what you need to understand is revenue and expenses and um the the way I describe it is um you know the there there's a sense that the

optimal setup is that all of your revenue or a very large percentage of your revenue goes to buybacks. That's obviously what Hyperlid is doing and that's what what the market is using is kind of the proxy for the right way to do it. I'd push back on that a little bit. Every business has a different margin structure and that doesn't mean that um one business is inherently better than another. um obviously in a vacuum. You love very high margin businesses, but you can come up with the the right valuation metrics for a a lower margin business. Businesses have different capex requirements. So, you've had this buildout of financial

statements in the traditional investing world. And I think it's really important that we start to move there in in crypto because when I talk to teams, a a lot of times they're like, "Hey, listen. We have great product market fit. Our revenue is growing at a nice clip, but we have a lot of very interesting growth investments we'd like to to make. So, why do we need to um why why do we need to put all of our revenue into a buyback of of tokens? >> Um, and I I fully understand that point of view. If you look at Amazon, if you look at Tesla, Netflix, they all had big periods of investment or expensing. uh

spending before they got to profitability, but they also had transparency around that. They they had quarterly calls where they were saying exactly what they were going to spend on those initiatives. They were laying out how those initiatives were high ROI, high return on investment, and frankly why they were higher ROI than buying back their equity at that time. So I I think the last element to everything you laid out like product market fit and revenue growth super important flowing to the assets super important and not having emissions overwhelm the buyback super important but transparency around what we're

actually getting whether we're getting 100% payout ratio. In some cases, we might be getting a 200 or 300% payout ratio, meaning we're getting subsidized by a venture raise and we don't even know that if we don't have transparency around that. So, that transparency element super important. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think the transparency can also speak to the durability of the revenue, the buybacks, the value acrruel to the asset. Um, and I was having this uh this debate with my co-host who isn't available today, but we were, you know, he was kind of making the case for buybacks. And ultimately the conclusion that I draw was well, you know, if you aren't doing buybacks

on your token, that's okay because there are growth investments as you laid out, but you probably shouldn't have a token. You probably launched your token too early. What do you do do you think this is the case or do you think you know it's okay to have a token out there circulating as a mechanism you know to to get exposure to a company but you know it's okay not to have that revenue and and instead put it into growth and that token can still exist what do do you have >> I'm fine with that I I'm fine with that um I I I mean look we when I was investing at Jennison Associates we were growth investors very growthoriented So the growthiest of growth there there

weren't that many large institutional investors that were in Tesla back in 11 and 12. >> So you you had to be able to imagine what things would look like in 5 years and then discount back from there. >> And I think like a lot of crypto investing over the last decade has been imagining what the future would look like. And I get it. A lot of people are saying great well now's the time to deliver because we have an administration that lets us deliver value to the token >> but I think they're going to be situations where investing is the right path to take and um I would rather have that token investable today even if they're not driving value back

to the token. It's kind of like the the question of, you know, everyone talks about wanting to have startups more accessible to the broader public, right? You you can only get SpaceX when it does an IPO at almost two trillion, right? Wouldn't it have been great for nonacredited investors to be able to get exposure to to SpaceX earlier? Well, what we have in crypto is the ability to get exposure at a really early stage. But now we're saying, well, but you have to be dividending back or using all of your um revenue for for a buyback or a large percentage. So the the that to me there it's quite analogous to to the

debate that we're seeing in the equities world. And I'm all for early access, broad access, >> but you need to know what you're buying. You need to know what your what what the the P&L looks like, what the growth prospects look like, and what the the payout is likely to be over time. Because what you're basically doing is you model out where you think revenue is going to go over a five-year period, >> right? You you say, "All right, I think margins are going to be at this level." And then you you come up with a multiple that that you want to put on those earnings. that gives you a price target 5 years out or four years out and then you discount that back to today and that gives you your fair value today. So you

need some level of transparency to understand when what you're seeing in the top line translates into a buyback or a dividend or a staking yield or something like that. >> That that makes complete sense. You know, thinking about projections and discounting it back to present value. I and I have an inkling that what I'm about to say is the wrong way to think about this, but I'd love your critique as to why this is wrong. You know, given, you know, we've got this analysis. Let's say we're doing, you know, we're doing an analysis of this token over the next five years. We understand there's a couple of, you know, very lucrative growth investments that are available to it today. We expect those to start to uh we're expect

to start reaping those rewards maybe two three years from now. uh and that's when you know we might see more value acrruel as a result of those growth investments paying off. Now why is it wrong to think I'll just buy that two to that token two or three years from now when you know those we start reaping those rewards. Why is that the wrong way to think about it? >> I it's it's interesting. Markets tend to be pretty efficient at pricing in what's visible today. So if the market can see that there's this opportunity 2 or 3 years out and if it thinks that it's highly likely, think about it this way.

The more likely the market thinks that outcome is in 2 years, the lower the discount rate it's going to assign to that outcome and you're going to start seeing that priced in in the near term. So it it's kind of um the the way to think about it is um let's say the market thinks that outcome is really unlikely in in two years. It might be pricing it at a 100% required return. Meaning for each of those two years the market wants to see 100% return in order to justify the risk of that outcome. So think of it as trading at 25 cents when you think it's going to be a dollar in

two years. But as the likelihood as you get data points that say hey you know they just got uh CFTC approval to come on shore and they just announced this big business development uh relationship. What happens is that required return comes down. That discount rate comes down and and it might go down. It might go down too far, right? It might go down to 20%. But at a 20% required return, you've more than doubled the stock to today, right? The the fair value today has more than doubled because you're only requiring a 20% compound return to get to that that dollar price target. So the market will

adjust in real time based on the information that it has >> even if you're still two years out from from getting that cash flow. >> And you talked about transparency and I think that is, you know, extremely significant part of what you're talking about here because more transparency is going to give us more of those data points. It's going to let us have more insight into the future of how certain or uncertain it is that this out outcome is likely or not. And so what are some of the tools through which you've seen projects be more transparent? We've had, you know, we've been running this show for, you know, several years now.

Several people that work in the industry, they come on, they watch, you know, they learn from other founders, uh, that are employing some of these tools. And so are there tools out there available to founders in which they can use and leverage to provide the market with greater transparency? What are some of the tools that you found the most helpful for this case? >> For sure. I I mean I I'd say transparency starts with having your business onchain. So there are a lot of businesses where the the actual revenue acrruel is not onchain and that makes it harder to analyze the business. Now there are a lot of reasons why businesses will do that for a period of time. It's like launching a startup in

stealth, right? So we're okay with that. But that's a really nice first step as you're moving down the the path of transparency, putting your um your actual top line online or on chain. When you when you start to get into expenses, often times the expense stack and and you want to look at both direct expenses as well as incentivization, those often times require some reconciliation with offline accounts.

So, um that's what the foundation or uh in cases where there's an equity entity, that's what they have to sell tokens to to pay out. And it's good to know what that expense base is. And by the way, it's good to be able to comp that against other similar businesses to see whether you think they're running the business efficiently. So um another great reason to um to have broader transparency. Um, you know, I'd say beyond that, having uh regular investor relations calls open to the community, those are great. We've seen a lot of teams start

doing those on a regular basis. Now, sometimes I get the feedback, well, we started doing that and and it didn't help our token price. Well, that's that's okay. Maybe there's something that you're not sharing yet. Maybe there are aspects of your business that people are waiting to to turn around before they engage. So just the fact that you're doing the call and the token isn't working is not a reason to either stop doing the the calls or decide to to not do a call in the first place. I think the more the more visibility, the more transparency, the more questions from the retail and institutional investor community you can answer, the

better. And then I'd say documentation. So very clear documentation, very clear and consistent statements around your long-term mission, values, approach to economic sharing. And in general, we take a view that we'd very much like to see um equity and token consolidated. So yeah, >> we're we're token investors. Equities have a lot more rights, formalized rights than tokens. Um there's certain circumstances again where it's advantageous to keep them them separate and communicate that. we're we're

comfortable in some cases when when there's communication around that, but in general when you have equity and token, it's really hard to know how the team is incentivized between those instruments. um where future businesses are going to you you might feel really comfortable with a a setup that you have today and then the team ends up launching a bunch of new businesses that they're focused on that don't acrue value to the token and you could become a lot less comfortable with that dynamic um over time and the market will derate the token. So transparency can come in a lot of ways. What what I'd say is um

we're we're very much there there's a term material non-public information. Um it's very important in the equities world and it's also very important in the crypto and token world. So what we ask with for teams is when they are disclosing information, they do it on broad-based calls, they publish it in blogs um or they they do it um when when they're doing broader community updates so that no one is getting preferential information um and we take that very seriously. We we get on every call saying we we want to make sure that we don't receive MMPI.

So as we talk about transparency, the other side of that is we want to make sure that that transparency is always broadly disseminated. >> Yeah. >> If it's material. >> Absolutely. >> Right. Absolutely. And this is standard practice in the equities world like you said and I think the digital assets world is coming around to this. Uh we're seeing more transparency frameworks, more of those investor relations calls as you mentioned and so this this is uh you know it's kind of this growing up moment. this maturity of the industry and and it's it's encouraging and reassuring to see uh several of the the companies in the space taking this very seriously. We think this is part of what is legitimizing the industry and this is

something we talked about at length last week as we saw you know industry leaders up with President Trump with the CFTC innovation advisory committee. There are certain companies that are in a position to be primary benefactors of the legitimization of the industry perpetuals coming into the US. You know, there are certain narratives or sectors that we think are really poised for success as some of these things continue to develop. Um, another, you know, another one of them being the tokenization buildout, which we're seeing right before our eyes. Um, you know, this is another part of the thesis tokenization super cycle. We're seeing equities and tokenized funds. These are

hundreds of trillions of dollars that are entering the onchain economy and ultimately we anticipate will flow into D5 protocols, greater TVLs, you know, greater AUM, ultimately more activity, more fees, more earnings, more potential value acrruel for all of those D5 protocols as asset classes become tokenized. And so, you know, I'm curious if there's sectors that you think will outperform. We've talked at length about stable coins as it seems like you know the treasury is going to rely on buyers of these short-term treasuries. Uh stable coins, vaults, perpetuals is a big one and generally the legitimization of the industry. Uh we think perpetuals

is you know a benefactor of this. What are some of the sectors the categories that you think are poised for outperformance as we transition into this accommodative monetary policy? Yeah. So, I'll um I I'll say two things. One is I think market infrastructure and payments are are t two key areas that that are going to to benefit. Um I I think those are those are layups. And beyond that, I think we're going to see more and more applications where to analyze what's going on with that business for that token, you're going to have to know more about the end market, whether it's healthcare or consumer,

than you will about the the deep uh elements of their crypto infrastructure. So I think it's going to be value ad to be very familiar with the history of the development of the crypto infrastructure, the choices they've made. But I think we're going to get to a world where you're looking at a a healthcare business, a consumer business, an AI business that happens to be on crypto rails. But that leads into the second component which is you know there's this term that the VCs used to like to use a lot which is skumorphic and non-skeumorphic right so skuorphic is well we're going to have things that just look like equities today right but

they'll be 24/7 they'll trade on crypto rails we're just swapping out legacy infrastructure for crypto non skuorphic is usually the stuff that's unexpected so it's um but when you put equities ities on crypto rails 24/7. You just get an explosion of new stuff going on, new ways of using equities, of incorporating them into business models, and disagregating them. And I think the non-skeumorphic uses of equities and other real world assets are going to be mindblowing. I think they're going to be much bigger than the the just like, oh, we're taking Nvidia stock and putting it onto 24/7

rails. And a lot of those things, like we have tons of ideas around what that will look like, but a lot of those things are going to be unexpected and they're going to come from really innovative teams. >> Yeah. Incredible. that that is something that we are excited about over here on the show as well because the the ingenuity and the creativity of this industry it's unparalleled and we've seen it before. We've seen how one mathematical innovation call it you know XY equals K in the in the decentralized exchange space can lead to the explosion of tokens on chain where the AMM ultimately enables the liquidity provisioning of a permissionless set of assets. um and allows things that had

previously very high barriers of entry to now all of a sudden there is no barrier and and there's so much competition and and and there's so much experimentation in a market segment. So we're very very excited for this. I totally agree on tokenized equities. I think this is going to be huge. Um there's been announcements today. Coinbase, you know, is uh is tokenizing equities and uh I think swap earn build is all part of this. Uh, and we're already seeing people come in and start to build on top of uh, this new entrance in into the tokenized equities market.

Um, Seth, I think we're just about at time, but this I mean I could have could have kept this going for quite a while. Um, I'd love just to give you the last word on what Franklin Templeton Digital Assets is up to, anything that you'd like to share um, and where people can can find you to learn more. >> Thanks, Robbie. You know, we're we're really excited about what the the future holds. I think it's really important to recognize that Franklin made a big investment in building the digital asset business in the downturn and and we we think the next few years are going to show that that was the the right investment. And again, this is Jenny Johnson, Sandy Call, the whole team that that we have here showed high conviction

through the downturn and and I think we're ready to to start seeing that pay off. And um obviously a lot of the announcements that we've had over the last few weeks and months point in the direction of of starting to really build that momentum. We think 26 is going to go down as the year where traditional finance and and crypto crypto saw that convergence come together. So really excited to be on here, Robbie. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. Thank you so much. We believe in the convergence as well and uh we appreciate you uh stewarding the traditional finance side of that world and ultimately seeing these worlds collide. So thank you so much. Would love to have you on again soon, Seth.

>> For sure. Thank you. >> Very cool. All right. We'll see you soon. Um, thank you so much. Uh, that's been Seth of uh, of Franklin Templeton Digital Assets. Great segment. Great segment. Um, love to get broad and have some of these broad swath conversations that we can understand how some of these sectors and categories interconnect with one another, build broad investment thesis, uh, and ultimately understand the space from a high level. So, very, very cool. We're going to bring up our next guest uh from Paragon and we're going to keep this show moving along. Uh hope you guys are having fun out there. Uh I see everyone cranking in the chat. Little Miss Gun, great convo. Good to have you here. Uh is it was a guy from FT that

got me into crypto. Yeah, Franklin Templeton's been uh been in the game a long time, doing incredibly uh incredibly well and uh like I like I said there at the end, just uh pioneering the traditional side of the this world. Uh and ultimately these two worlds are colliding. The decentralized finance is the traditional finance. Ultimately, this is just fintech and fintech upgrades the financial system and this is what we're seeing in real time. Uh and so big shout out to the Franklin Templeton guys for doing exactly that. Um because uh yeah this is and it does feel like this is the year where it's not necessarily reflected in asset prices but ultimately it is happening the convergence here between

tradfi and defi. Everything is coming on chain. This is the tokenization super cycle and uh we're integrating these two worlds and upgrading the financial system. Uh and we're doing it all with you guys here. And so keep uh keep all the comments and the questions in the chat coming. Uh we're going to bring up our next guest, Taha, the founder of Paragon. Uh and I'll tell you guys a little bit about Paragon while uh while we get Taha up on the stage. Uh Taha founded Paragon. Uh Paragon's a hip 3 uh market deployer on Hyperlid turns crypto narratives, macro benchmarks, and even preIPO equities into tradable perpetual futures. And so this is sort of a developing story as there's more

competition in the HIP 3 deployer space. Obviously you guys are familiar with Hyperlquid success. Uh tons of volume, volatility is returning, so revenues through the roof. A little bit of a pullback on Besson's press conference today, but uh you guys know what to do with dips these days. Uh roughly uh Paragon's Unit preo had price a robot maker near a $ 38 billion valuation. uh roughly uh four times it n billion dollar Shanghai IPO price and when unitry actually opened this week the stock surged uh even past that mark and so uh we think that this is a massive massive opportunity this is why we see so much uh appreciation and adoption of

the per space in general and uh deployers are a very very crucial part of this ecosystem so let's go ahead bring up Taha of Paragon we're going to talk a little bit about unitry the preipo market and uh everything that Paragon's doing in the hyperlquid ecosystem. There he is. Taha, welcome to the show. Welcome. >> Hey, thanks for having me back. >> Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Um maybe you could just catch us up on everything that has taken place since your last appearance on the show. Um you know, we were talking a little bit more about the Hip 3 ecosystem. There's been calls for Hyperlid to acquire something like a Gemini uh for regulated HIP 3 deployment. Let's get into the HIP 3 market deployment space. I mean this is

like very very hot topic stuff. Uh and so let's start uh with your experience as a hip 3 market deployer but I also want to get into what has transpired since your last time on the show. >> Yeah for us um you know we started with cryptonnative indices uh but multi-asset was always the vision. So, you know, recently we've made a push into some single name equities like you mentioned preipo with unitry. Um, and I think what's actually really topical is, you know, uh, we we've registered Ansom, which is a crypto perp as well as the 10-year, the 30-year, and the 2-year, uh, you uh, treasury benchmarks. So, that that's really what we're building Paragon for. We want it to be for whatever is front of mind for traders,

um, and and very much asset agnostic. Um and yeah, I think like what's changed since the last time we spoke, I mean, obviously, uh there's been some some movement on the regulatory clarity front. Uh but for us, we've really just changed the speed with which we're we're looking to respond to, you know, the market and and what traders want. Um and you know, the feedback has been uh lately um you know, the AI and the resulting bottleneck trade has been extremely interesting. international equities, preIPOS, and and now, you know, bringing the the rates trade and the long bond onto hyperlquid.

>> Yeah. And obviously, I mean, the bond market is more volatile now than it's been in in recent times. And so, maybe you can just talk to us about the reasoning and the rationale behind bringing the 30-year on. How big do you think the hyperlquid bond market can get or the onchain bond perpetuals market? Obviously, this is one of the largest asset classes in existence, but what is the opportunity as we bring that onchain? >> Yeah, I think it's consistent with, you know, this messaging and this vision for the house of all finance. Um, we don't think that pers, you know, are are only suitable for what look like blowoff only equities. Uh, and we see this as an awesome opportunity to onboard a totally

new cohort of traders and and as you mentioned, it's one of the biggest markets in the world. uh to hyperlquid. Um I think there's some opportunities to to use these rails to simplify the trading experience. Um maybe bring someone to rates who has never used it before. So for instance, like our products, um you're you're really just betting long or short on the yield going up or down and it removes the idea of like duration, right? Which which really trips up a lot of folks uh unless you're you're pretty fluent in bond math. Um, so yeah, we we see it as an awesome opportunity just like the the IPOs, the pre-IPO pers to to kind of introduce people to hyperlquid. Um, and you the idea of non-custodial exchanges being as performant as their their centralized

alternatives. >> Maybe I mean just because the bond market has been in the news, you know, so so much over recent days, maybe you can just explain, you know, the concept of duration and how a bond perpetual removes that factor from the equation. >> Yeah. So the idea is um you know with a movement from 1% or 2% or 5% to 7% uh you're going to see the same effect on your notional amount on a per because a per's payoff is linear whereas a a bond has some convexity to it. Right? So as you're moving out the curve you always hear people talking about you know moving out the curve in in the bond world. Um the math isn't exactly like onetoone right? Uh but we we we really

simplify that with the introduction of a yield per where you're just speculating long or short. Uh and you don't have to deal with the idea of of teners, right? Um and and different uh QIPS and and different bonds of with different maturity dates. >> Got it. Very cool. Um and so why do you think maybe maybe you could just talk a little bit more about being a HIP 3 deployer? We know that it takes significant capital to issue these tickers um and and launch these markets, deploy these markets. Um why do you think you guys were the first? Right.

This is obviously a massive asset class. I I'd imagine that there's first mover advantage to deploying these assets. Um why why do you think no one had done this previously and why were you guys the first to do it? >> Yeah. Um I think like Hip 3 is just generally new as a whole, right? uh and um we're talking about something that's that's less than a year old. Uh and I think what what HIPP 3 has really done is open up the the uh aperture of really what can be made into a perp. Um so we've seen the first step with with equities and then preipos. So I think it's really just people uh opening to the opening their eyes a bit and realizing like hey uh we don't have to stick with the status quo when it comes

to funding mechanics and uh how we think about some of the different parameters of a perp uh which have previously only been used for pricing crypto assets. So the idea is like there are these there's a pretty interesting primitive here um and you can kind of tweak it in various ways uh to map some of the fundamentals that exist right for the underlying asset in >> tradfi. Okay, very cool. And so, you know, obviously you guys started with uh, you know, crypto indices. Uh, you went into some of the preipo world given, you know, the unitry equity and, uh, you know, also with the bond market listings now as well. Is there a sector that you anticipate is going to be particularly

profitable for deployers, you know, whether it be the bond market or preipos or crypto? Where do you think that there's still a gap that you guys can can start to take and capitalize? Yeah, we're we're pretty hopeful that, you know, these rates per can can uh validate this thesis of, you know, bringing on net new traders to hyperlid and ideally new asset class. Um, as far as, you know, what we've planned, we we tend to keep that pretty pretty close to the chest, but I think really what we're trying to solve for is this idea of as soon as something becomes front of mind, we want there to be a per there ready for you to express a view on it. Um, so you know, just like with Besson's statements and actions over the last, you know, I guess it hasn't even been a

full week yet. Um the idea is uh traders have this kind of muscle memory flow where they're going onto hyperlquid whenever you know a catalyst emerge or uh some sort of news breaking event happens and we just want to be positioned so that the asset already exists uh by the time that that you know uh the trader actually goes and and onto to hyperloop front end and looks for it. So for us um I don't think there is any specific asset uh I think if we like made ourselves beholden to an asset class or a trend we would miss you know kind of the next one. So, we're we're constantly asking ourselves um you know, where is the puck heading? Um and and what do traders want to trade next?

>> M makes complete sense. And you're kind of chipping away at the house of all finance, laying it brick by brick so that you ultimately have this house ready to live in whenever there's someone that wants to come in and, you know, stay in the house of finance. The the bricks are already laid and the house is already built. Um and you know there's been this this this landscape has been created such that it has a thriving ecosystem. There's a very you know healthy competition amongst deployers such as yourself and ultimately Hyperlid has up until this point decoupled itself from the responsibility of actually deploying these markets.

There was some speculation about whether you know Gemini or some other you know company would make sense for Hyperlid to go and acquire and kind of bring and maybe you could actually help to articulate this argument steel man it for us and tell us what you think you know Hyperlid going out and acquiring and deploying bringing it into this verticalized stack is that kind of the the the core thesis of the argument and and why do you think this makes sense or maybe doesn't make sense >> I understand why people are asking the question, right? Um, I think it comes down to like what is the the highest, you know, the best use of of the next dollar. Um, and I can understand why uh you can make the case for M&A. Um, I think what gives people trust, right, is

the idea that you have this kind of 99% net income machine that is programmatically buying back its token, right? And and that that's very scheduled and you kind of know where those flows are coming from. Um, I also think it's pretty consistent with the vision of, you know, becoming this AWS or this liquidity layer. Um, and and really being the rails with which other people can build products and businesses on top of. Um, I think you can probably do a bit of both and perhaps an acquisition can kind of be ingested and made into a public good for everybody building on Hyperlid and using Hyperlid.

So, that that seems like an avenue that um, you know, I'd be really interested in in the community exploring. Um, but I don't think it's necessary, right? Or or uh yeah, I don't think it's like a hill that that you have to die on. I think we're seeing plenty of progress um so far with, you know, builders and and third parties like like ourselves coming in and and um building products that folks are, you know, very actively using on on Hyperlid. >> Yeah. and and you guys, you know, as we talked about bond market, unitry, you guys have have found success as a hip 3 deployer. Um, I think we know that, you know, trade XYZ still, I think, has maybe 90% market share here. Do you

think it's possible to close that gap and what are you doing to close that gap and and you know, gain more market share in the HIP 3 deployer ecosystem? >> Yeah. Yeah, I've spoken about this before, but I I really don't think that our strategy needs to be defined, you know, in comparison to theirs. I think if you look at the EDF issuer landscape uh as a proxy for maybe how HIPP 3 deployers will play out it is concentrated within a few folks uh but there there is not it is not a monopoly right it looks a bit I guess more like an illegopoly so for us it's just continuing to focus on being a good deployer and I think that we're we're starting to to get some appreciation for you know our selection and our taste um I think increasingly that's what's going

to differentiate deployers um you know you're starting to uh Coinbase and and uh put folks who are like much more plugged in with the market in charge of asset listings like Kobe for instance. >> Um so I think like all else equal, right? Uh your your taste and your selection and um basically arming your traders and investors with the toolkits for expressing the views that they want to when it matters most. Um, that's that's what we're focusing on and it's a bit of an art, a bit of a science, but we we hope that that's coming through in the catalog that we're presenting.

>> Yeah, that that makes complete sense. And I and I want to kind of pass an idea over to you because I was I was chatting with a friend and uh we were chatting about, you know, this market dynamic of HIP 3 deployers. Um because ultimately, you know, it it could make sense, especially with all sort of the contentiousness of how aligned or not aligned some of these deployers are with the Hyperlquid token and ecosystem. Uh the idea came up that, you know, maybe spot equities, spot tokenization is and spot markets on Hyperlquid is a an integral part of the house of all finance that is currently missing. And if there were a spot equities market uh or or just spot market in general on

Hyperlquid that was more robust, it could provide a variety of different facets for someone to gain significant market share in the deployment ecosystem. You know, be it you know uh increased opportunities for hedging, increased liquidity options for market makers, uh increased venues for conducting a basis trade across multiple assets. Have you considered incorporating more spot markets into the deployment strategy? And how do you think that could round out whether it's paragonss or or any hit three deployers uh offering?

>> Yeah, I think um spot is extremely complimentary, right? Uh like you mentioned, you know, doing things like basis and carry trades. Um I think that makes a ton of sense. Uh yeah, I think the idea of creating complimentary products within the decks uh is super interesting. So, for example, being able to cross margin your 2-year per with your 10-year per and and you know, doing the spread trade between those two, which is a very popular trade in in Tradfi. Um, that would only exist, right? Having those two products on the same HIP 3 decks uh and and having cross margining enabled. So, we do see that as as a differentiator. Um, and but I I think primarily, right, the listen

strategy serves as like the the primary onboarding. um like mechanism and and we saw that really well with unitry uh you know folks were coming in to trade the unit IPO for the first time and then um you know exploring some of the other markets available on on paragon hip 3 decks. >> Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. And do you think that this is a potential flaw in hyperlquid in general the lack of a spot markets? Do you think you know this in in theory could kind of damage the potential value proposition of Hyperlid as the house of all finance?

>> Uh I think it's really early right if we look at the spot volumes on Salana or any other venue. Um by no means do I think that they're you know uh kind of hustling to play catchup here. So um I think like having a very established existing purpose product or I guess any sort of flagship product always helps you know uh having a wedge to kind of move into the things that are to complimentary and and ancillary to what you're building. Um so yeah I I I think we're just getting started and you know now we're seeing um some some some green lights at least from Washington that uh you know this is the way of the future.

out. >> Yeah. And that's been incredible to see. I mean, how significant is that, you know, given that we've already got, you know, HIP 3 and there's equities on, you know, the hyperlquid, you know, uh, uh, exchange. We've already got kind of the asset class. How important is the regulatory clearance to serve the US market? >> Important, right? just given the size of uh you know American markets uh relative to the rest of the world. Um so for our business I I feel like it's it's the probably the first or second you know thing that comes up uh as far as like uh the risk underwriting goes. Um so yeah

clarity on that side uh would be yeah invaluable. >> Yeah. And then is there anything else? Obviously regulatory clarity is is huge and important to you know just continuing to lead this charge but is there anything else you know hit four hit five like what else are you looking forward to to sort of put together another catalyst and you know kind of generate another wave of adoption here of the hyperlquid ecosystem. Anything you're excited about looking forward to? Yeah, we think HIPP 4 is a super interesting primitive. Um, you know, beyond just the idea of building, you know, a competitor to some of the other prediction market venues on on there, we think that it's like a really

interesting sort of uh yeah, base layer for business building. Um, you know, and some things that maybe are a bit less obvious than than uh kind of what we're seeing from from Ky and Poly Market. >> Yeah. Very cool. And um I mean that's uh that's just one of the things that I think is going to just continue like you know we're we're going to see more markets. We're going to see more asset classes. Tokenization super cycle is happening kind of right right before our eyes. Um yeah I'm I'm curious how how you anticipate this this market unfolding. Um, is there, you know, I I realize keeping keeping things close to the chest, but we had people come on

talk about Forex, uh, you know, talk about some of these different asset classes. Is there an asset class that you think is underexplored and and underserved right now? I realize that, you know, maybe part of the strategy you can't share, but anything that you can share with us that kind of helps us understand the direction for Paragon and Hyperlid as a whole. >> Yeah. Um, maybe I can share this. I I think like when we think about you know interesting markets uh that we can build a lot of the time uh the per form factor falls flat um just in terms of like build being able to build something that's actually liquid and hedgeible uh despite like you know maybe being able to actually define an oracle and and actually and build it and relay that to to hyperlquid. Um, so

I think what HIPP 4 does is really open up the horizon in terms of what is possible for a market and I think what's really cool is you have this burgeoning RWA uh per ecosystem with which you can make complimentary products for. Uh, so perhaps I'll just leave it at that. Um but I think like yeah there's some some hyperlquid nativity that exists um which I I think allows for some products that would uh yeah get get a ton of volume on this exchange that maybe wouldn't otherwise on other venues.

>> And is that a result of having these things in the same venue with composability and cross margining across prediction markets and hit three markets? >> Exactly. Yeah. And I feel like if you're if you're looking at the two primitives right in isolation, it's something like you'd never really be able to see. But exactly that, having them all under one umbrella starts to make the connections between them maybe a bit more obvious. >> Love it. Yeah, that that makes sense and I'm excited looking forward to those products. Um before we let you go, I I just I'm curious. I'm sure this information is out there somewhere, but could you just kind of unpack the economics of being a HIP 3 deployer?

Like I think you know the most public figure is the amount of capital that's required to ultimately deploy a market and you know get this this listing out there. But what what else goes into it? You know what other costs do you have to put in to ultimately manufacture a a market on Hyperlquid and what are the economics in return? What is the revenue profile of deploying one of these markets on Hyperlid? >> Yeah. Yeah. So obviously there's the stake, right? And the idea behind the stake is a skin in the game. Um but we also think that it it serves a purpose of you know making sure that only uh teams that have the ability to run this infrastructure meet you know kind of surpass that first barrier. Um outside of that right it's the 500 I guess now

closer to 600 uh hype per ticker that you'd burn um for for every registration. And I guess that that actually cost 25% more this week than it did last week. Um, so that's that's a five, you know, I guess now a mid to low five figure number. Yeah. >> Um, and then most markets uh are in growth mode right now, >> which means they earn, you know, about one to two basis points, uh, depending on on, you know, the user's fee tier. And that is split 50/50 between the deployer and the protocol. Um, so yeah, all of this volume at the end of the day goes back to buying uh buying back hype.

Um, as far as like the the economics go, I think there's a bit of noise in the data right now, just given growth mode and this idea of um, you know, trying to to stimulate activity on the network. It'll be interesting to to see where things settle, especially with um, you know, compression and fees and DRFI like we we saw that happen. Um, and and folks kind of thought about different models than transactionbased models to monetize their products. Um but yeah, that that's kind of where things stand right now.

>> Very cool. And so I I take it that you know the model that we've all kind of been thinking about um which wasn't really kicking uh during these apathetic market conditions because you know volatility was low creates low volume means low trading activity means low amount of fees. But that's now changed, right? In the last week, we've gotten big announcements, more volatility, more trading volume, more fees, more earnings for both you and the hyperlquid ecosystem and goes to to buying back hype. How much of an increase I mean h have you guys seen, you know, in just the last week alone compared to maybe a, you know, an average of the last few weeks?

>> Yeah. Uh, I guess for us like the last there's there's a bit of a confounding variable in that we've made this big ticker push over the last few weeks and listed assets such as Unitry and Reddit before the S&P inclusion and all of these things. Um, so we've been just, you know, candidly like we've we've been seeing some growth and and and breaking some numbers when it comes to volume and and users. Um, and we're super grateful for that. Uh, so yeah, I guess it's hard to tell like where the the pickup happens here. Um, I think we're really excited, you know, uh, with this pick up on on rates discussions as well as crypto kind of having a comeback for the products, uh, both the crypto native indices we have as well as, um, some of the some of the other rates products we

have coming down the pipeline to, you know, be positioned right for when that narrative is is really front and center. >> Yeah. Well, congratulations on that growth. Uh, and thank you for spending some time with us today. uh you guys I mean are contributing to the hyperlquid ecosystem. We're big believers and uh it's very cool to see the growth from Paragon and ultimately a more competitive HIP 3 deployer market. So uh thanks so much for spending the time and uh congrats on the growth. >> Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. >> Absolutely. We'll see you again soon. >> Cheers.

>> All right, guys. Beautiful. Well, that's uh that's where we're at. I mean, hip three deployers, cooking, volatility up, volume up, revenue up, Bessant, Bessant up, market down a little bit off his press conference, but we're going to keep things rocking and rolling. I think that was our last guest for today, but we are going to provide you with our daily equity segment powered by Dinari, and we're going to share that with you guys in a moment. Little checking in the market. Bitcoin looks just fine. I mean, down half a percent in the last hour.

Still up on the day. ETH pretty much holding up as well. Hyperlid down a little bit in the 70s on Hyperlid. Zcash holding above 800 near just under $2. So, that's what we're watching. That's what we're watching, guys. Okay. So, all in all, seem to be holding up. Obviously, big sanctions. We're going to be hearing more about that probably later this week. We're going to hear more about sanctions. It's going to be a little bit more of a negative force on the market. Uh but September 9th, we heard is when they're going to actually execute this buyback. That's when they're going to have this Treasury operation. So, more of a positive force in the market. So, it's going to be a

little bit of a push and pull here over the next few weeks. But, I mean, I'll just come out and say I think dips are for buying. That's what I will be doing on my portfolio. And I anticipate uh that the forces, the positive forces in the market are stronger than the negative ones. Bess needs to use that 1 trillion and buy some Bitcoin for the Trump accounts. He absolutely does. I think we're going to be seeing some of that Treasury general account drained and put into the market very soon. Guys, we're going to play our daily equity segment as our last segment for the day. Don't go anywhere. We're going to close out strong right now.

Daily Equity powered by Dinari. These guys tokenized the entire S&P 500 and they are on the forefront of the tokenized equity buildout. Hundred trillion dollar asset class coming on chain, flooding DeFi protocols and rerating the token economy. Today on daily equity we have railroads where one 63% of the entire US stock market another AI to railroad comparison not 63% of transport stocks but 63% of everything listed that was railroads of the entire US stock market the history history of concentration.

So we're going to well give you guys a little history lesson. Tulips were first in year 1637. A single bulb traded for the price of an Amsterdam canal house. That was the tulip bubble that people like to reference so much here in this industry when we're talking about bubbles. South Sea Company 1720 shares went from about 128 to over 1,000 by the summer, just six months later, then back to 150 by the end of the year. Massive bubble. US railroads 1840 63% of US market cap. Took a little bit longer for that one to unwind, but ultimately that pumped and popped as well.

Utilities, telecom, industrials 1929 36%. Nifty50 in the 1972, 40% of the market. Japan 1989, 44% of global equity. Do bubble 2000 41% AI big 10 today about 40% of the market. Let's see what the take on this uh is. We obviously know that there's several bubbles that have existed throughout time. Uh AI is nearing that level of concentration. Every one of them was built on something real. Railroads did compress a continent. The internet did rewire commerce. Being right about the technology was never the thing that protected you. The tulip story is also

less clean than the legend. Modern research found the economic damage was modest and the ruin was mostly literary. So, a lot of narrative talk about the ruin from the tulip bubble. The bubble was never in the idea. It was in how many people decided to own the same idea at the same time. This is arguing that the concentration is the problem. And so, obviously, you've seen this be, you know, throughout time. Uh, you see railroads, nifty50, TMT, utilities Japan, and now AI approaching similar levels of concentration in the market.

So what happens when the market gets so concentrated that everyone is in the same thing? Well, how do you know if if everyone's in, how does it continue to grow? Who is the ne next buyer? Right? And ultimately, this is why we've seen and heard calls for the US government to bail out AI if this bubble pops. Uh also, are they going to bail out the stock market if it pops? uh we are seeing more involvement from the government actually owning equity in these AI companies that is getting like more calls for more of that as well and so ultimately if you want to keep the music playing and the train rolling well you need

some net new some new entrance someone that has yet to participate and enter the market that is still on the outside on looking in that we can use to potentially uh tell a story for growth and we may not see that unless those who own the equity control the money printer themselves and I think that is what this is trending towards. Uh we know how much Bessant is attempting to bring yields down. uh they're doing this and at the same time they're talking about growing their way out of the debt which means that in they can bring the yields down, they still need to pour a ton of money into what they believe is going to fuel the productivity in order to grow their

way out of the debt. Um so they need these things to keep going. They cannot allow these things to stop and crash because it would ruin their plans politically and that would end their reign of power. And so we're seeing the government take equity in more of these companies, the AI big 10. Uh, and if they do, and at the same time they create accommodative monetary policy, then it could be the case that the stakeholders of these companies can literally print the money and put it into their own holdings, thus printing the money to pump their own bags and keeping these things growing and inflating the debt away. This is a

potentially very precarious situation scenario. Uh there's multiple variables that all sort of have to fit together correctly for this to work. If they can get inflation down and they can get productivity up without printing too much money. That is a very very tricky tight rope to walk, but that's what they're attempting to do. We're going to see if it works out for them. This has been the latest segment of Daily Equity. Big shout out to Dinari for tokenizing these equities and serving them on chain to all of us and all of you. And guys, that wraps up today's show. Uh so, thank you everyone for watching. Hope you guys

enjoyed. I mean, absolute banger guests that we had today. We had Trevor from Lighter, we had Seth from Franklin Templeton, and we finished it off with Taha, a uh you know, founder of Paragon, the HIP 3 deployer. You guys can see the green tinge. on the left side of my screen or the right side of my screen. And so the force is strong, right? There's a red force over here, right? We have liquidity supply from the treasuries over here buying the long end of the curve. Liquidity injections preheating the money printer.

That's green. You can see that that's a strong force over here. There's actually red. You can't even see it because it's not very strong. Green is stronger than red. And this has been the rollup August 24th. Thank you so much for watching. We're going to have an incredible show for you guys tomorrow as well. Uh, and I give just a little bit of a shout out to everyone that we've got on this week. I mean tomorrow Aerodrome Gayscale and Codeex, join the show. You guys are not going to want to miss that. Thank you so much. Give me some W's in the chat. Freedom guy, you rock. Big shout out, Freedom Guy. Big shout out, Little Miss Gun. Couldn't do it without y'all.

Andy's in the chat. He's going to come back very soon. He's hanging out with the moose. Edward, big lighter fan. Hope you enjoyed Trevor today. Freedom guy, little miss gun. Edward, I think we had a couple new faces in the chat as well. We appreciate everyone rocking with us and uh keeping it lit in the chat. And so guys, stick around. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Another great show. Don't go anywhere. We'll be back. We'll see you guys tomorrow. >> [music] [music]