Matt Hougan & Ryan Rasmussen: Digital Assets To Hit $10 T Market Cap Before 2030 (How We Know)

Transcript

They're in the game of winning business and winning clients from other financial adviserss, but in part because they need to beat the market. >> That's what I would expect for this next cycle. A slower, more fundamental, more institutional bull market that grinds higher. That would be my base case. Just like the streets of Manhattan, I'm going to keep this quick. Over 70% of our viewers are not subscribers. Yes, you. Every week, we interview some of the best entrepreneurs and investors in the financial industry. The easiest way to support our channel is to hit the like and smash the subscribe button. Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy today's show.

>> Matt, Ryan, welcome back, guys. >> Oh, it's awesome to be here. Thanks for having us. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh it's fun. I was just saying, you know, you guys are able to uh you know, come on the show, kind of talk shop, whereas a lot of these other guys that come on, they want to talk their book. So, I mean, just generically, you know, as you guys are moderating things, keeping an eye on things, I mean, where are we? I I actually just to kind of set the tone here, I uh posted a meme the other day. It was pretty much a Buzz Lightyear meme. Everyone saying the same thing of, hey, we've got one more wash out over the summer and then one last leg down and then it's up only. Everyone's going to buy the bottom in October, one year

after 1010, right? Is that the playbook? Is that what we're on pace or do you guys kind of see some uh maybe variation in the path that we're following here for digital assets? >> Yeah, I see I'll take a first stab and Ryan can follow up. I see something a little bit different. The thing that I've noticed more than anything else in the market over the last, let's call it two months is that we've completely stopped reacting to bad news. Right? Michael Sailor is selling Bitcoin. Uh Bitcoin doesn't care. Stretch trades to 75. Bitcoin doesn't care. We have a massive cold storage hack. Bitcoin doesn't care. The Clarity Act goes down.

Bitcoin doesn't care. When you have a market that entirely stops reacting to bad news, that's often the sign that you're actually at that bottom. So the part of that analysis that I would question the sort of consensus wisdom is whether we in fact get this massive draw down. Now maybe we do. Maybe you get a chance to buy Bitcoin in the 50s, but I'm not sure that you will. There's a lot of signs to me that maybe we're in this rounding process. Maybe we slowly grind higher over time. And we're seeing interest from institutional investors.

We're seeing interest from long-term investors. I don't know. The sort of signals I'm seeing in the market look actually pretty strong. >> And uh Ryan, what do you think is uh is bottom end or do we have one of these 10 to 15% draw downs ahead of us? >> Look, it's hard to know, but what I do know is that in these in past cycles when we've recovered from a bare market and finally left crypto winner, some of the best days in that cycle are those early days. And so sitting on the sidelines trying to time the bottom perfectly has hurt people in the past, right? And they've missed some of Bitcoin or some of other crypto assets best days. So I think it's really difficult to time. I do agree with what Matt said where we continue to get bad news particularly in July. We got a lot

of bad news followed up with the cold storage hack and with the clarity act here in August and Bitcoin's up over that time period, right? And so I think that is important uh to to look at and to level set with and maybe you're you know better off just staying in the market at this point rather than trying to time it. >> Yeah. Or maybe building positions a dollar cost average as time goes on could be the right strategy here. I mean that's kind of what we're seeing. It's as time goes on the question then becomes how much time is going to go on with us in these apathetic market conditions. Have you guys done any any research or or any sort of analysis as far as you know people like to say we're in the four-year cycle now it feels confirmed and we're going to get this

you know one year from top to bottom. Do you feel like these cycles are expanding or contracting relative to time at all? Do you feel like as the market cap grows as Bitcoin becomes more ubiquitous do you think we're going to get these longer market cycles? maybe the four-year cycle turns into six or do you think we're going to get maybe this contractionary, you know, response where we do get some more fluctuations on a quicker time frame? Any any any thoughts as far as how we might see the time variable here play out uh on on Bitcoin in particular?

>> Ryan, why don't you take the first step? >> Yeah, well, I do think, you know, first of all, we are seeing these cycles compressed in terms of returns, right? both to the upside and draw down to the downside in the bull and bear markets. And you can't really ignore that when you start to think about what does the four-year cycle look like, right? In the last run up to alltime highs in October of last year and you know year four or year three of this four-year cycle, we didn't get a,000x from the prior low, right? It was less high of a multiple. And the draw down that we've seen now is about 55% from all-time highs. It's not the 70 or 80% we're used to in past cycles. So, it's compressing there. I do think that look, these cycles aren't perfect in terms of their timing. If you

look at 2025, actually that was a down year over the calendar year for Bitcoin. And so the four-year cycle historically, it was three up years, one down year. Now we had two up years, a slightly down year, and then a down year this year. I think it's not easy to to map exactly over the long run. I do think that the market's fundamentally changing. You have different buyers coming into the crypto market today than you had four years ago or four years before that, right? And you have institutional investors that we face off with at Bitwise. You have corporations, you have sovereign wealth funds and family offices. Those are just different types of investors. They take different types of exposure over different durations than the early retail investors in crypto. And it's a much more liquid

asset. So, it looks different. Uh clearly we have some pattern holding here and we and we've had it hold, but it's always going to look a little bit different in my opinion. >> Yeah. Uh Matt, any any thoughts on how long we think this these apathetic conditions are going to last? >> Yeah, it they always last a little bit longer than you think. You wake up and there's a massive bull market. I think we could easily in the right series of circumstance end up, you know, back at 100K within a handful of months. But I think it's going to take a reasonable amount of time to sort of get the ebulent bull market that we remember from crypto cycles past. I think what Ryan said is very true. We have a new actor in the market which are these large wealth management platforms, institutional investors, and they move

slower than traditional retail crypto investors. In some ways, that's positive. Right? Over the past few months, we've seen a number of major wealth management platforms uh approve Bitwise's Salana staking ETF, BOL, despite the market being down 50%. They're not doing that for FOMO. They're doing that because they're making a decadel long decision that this is an important asset for the world. So, they move at these different time frames. So, yeah, could we could we still be sort of in a sad like not ebulent market in a few months? I think that's entirely possible. But I do think there is there's sort of strength in that slowness. That's what I would expect for this next cycle. A slower, more fundamental, more institutional bull

market that grinds higher. That would be my base case. Uh but it depends on how conditions break out. And and so the just de diminishing uh volatility as we continue because the the new net buyers, the new units of liquidity are a little bit more sticky, a little bit more solid than maybe the fleeting retail and mercenary capital that we've seen in previous cycles. >> Yeah, I'd say a lot more uh long-term oriented, maybe a lot more solid. These are people who set investment policies and invest for 3, 5, 10 years, right?

They uh they don't react on a 3, five, 10 day basis. They react on a much slower basis. They're institutions that take a long time to turn. We've said this before, but for a long time, our average client at Bitwise allocated to crypto after eight meetings with us. You know, sometimes you're lucky if you get a meeting every quarter with a professional investor. That means it's a two-year educational process. So, it it does just move slower. And I'd add that anytime you inject a new type of investor into a market, that alone lowers the volatility because they just move and zig and zag at different times.

So I think the thing we're seeing in this bare market with the market down 50% not 80%. I think that's indicative of the direction we're going. I suspect we continue to have sort of shallower draw downs, lower volatility, and more grindy upside. There's still a lot of upside. I think Bitcoin is still going north of a million dollars over the next, you know, decade or so, but I think it's going to be a different kind of move than we've had in the past. >> And are these investors primarily taking exposure through ETFs? And what are some of the ETF flows that you've seen as of recently?

>> Yeah, I think ETFs are the primary vehicle. That's how they get exposure to stocks. It's how they get exposure to bonds and it's how they getting exposure to crypto. So you are seeing flows into that. Since July 1st, you know, we actually saw strong outflows into these ETFs through the end of June. Since July 1st, we've had relatively strong inflows primarily into the crypto majors, primarily into Bitcoin and Ethereum, a little bit into assets like Salana and Hyperliquid. Uh that's to be expected, right? Remember, these people were learning about Bitcoin and Ethereum for a 2-year period. they're now making their allocation and I think from their perspective majors are likely to lead. I

in fact think there's going to be sort of a bifurcated uh bull market where institutional capital is driving assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum higher and cryptonative capital is more focused on revenue generating apps from hyperquated to unis swap to a to morpho. That's the that's what I expect to see over the next sort of six to 12 months. >> Oo okay. I think we we will get a little bit deeper into that because I like the bifurcation into cryptonative capital. Those uh capital investors are looking at a fundamentally different asset class and maybe some of the majors that are getting primarily institutional capital interest. Um before we move off of, you know, some of the the ETF investors that both of you have spoken to on a regular

basis, I'm curious, are there any catalysts? I know Clarity was sort of, you know, taking front front and center for quite a while. Is there any catalysts that you or some of the institutional investors that you're talking to, do they have any catalysts on the horizon that they're watching and they're sort of, you know, staying on the sidelines until these things happen or is it just the the regular process of market education that is a slow grind that is ultimately bringing them into the markets? Yeah, I'm happy to to to answer this one from what at least what I'm seeing when we talk to these wealth management platforms or individual advisors. Uh, you know, I I do think that we're fighting for attention as an industry

right now with AI and with these equities rallies. They've obviously performed really strong this year while crypto's been down. And most of these financial advisors or institutional investors are looking at crypto as a small portion of their overall portfolio allocation 1% 3% 5% and so they spend that much time on it and they're just not focused on crypto so far this year. I think that's starting to turn as you see the market bottom out and as you start to see some positive news developments. I actually think that the Clarity Act stalling out and now that we're in this kind of quiet period for clarity with a vote scheduled, I think that's a positive catalyst going into July and August, it was, oh, there's

this looming deadline and if it doesn't pass before the the recess, then we're doomed. And now we know there's a vote on the horizon. I think that tells the market that these things can change over time and they're not a uh, you know, they're not such a binary event. I also think the macro environment is getting a little bit more settled. We're getting used to elevated oil prices. It's still unclear what's happening with interest rates, but we're getting used to a war Fed. Of course, we'll have the the Jackson Hole uh speech coming from him later this month. That'll give us a little bit of an indicator perhaps of where we're coming, but he's not really telegraphing, you know, what they plan to do. But but overall I think getting out of the summer period and this

uncertainty period leaving some of this bad news of July and August behind us is a catalyst in and of itself as investors start to look ahead towards the end of the year and towards 2027. I think crypto fits really nicely into those end of year discussions. >> Yeah. And I I would just add I think some of the biggest catalysts are in places that crypto Twitter is not looking. Right. If you talk about Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, UBS, and Maril Lynch, the four sort of largest wealth management platforms, uh they control about $20 trillion in assets, the kind of catalysts that I think will be a big part of the next cycle for the majors at least are Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other assets being added to the model portfolios on those platforms. You've

already seen it on a small scale at places like Wells. I think you're going to see it at many other of those providers over the next 6 months. Again, $20 trillion of assets there. If you're starting to get model allocations of 1 or 2%, that's a huge amount of inflows. So, I think a lot of crypto thinks about the Fed, they think about the Clarity Act, they think about Red Crypto. All of those are really important, but many of the biggest catalysts are actually internal to these wealth management platforms that are going to be the marginal buyer of the large cap assets, I think, over the next few years. And I would watch for those sort of small news stories that actually trigger tens of billions of dollars of flows uh on a persistent basis for years in the future

>> and and I think you guys have you know tremendous tabs on those sorts of investors and so let's talk about this bifurcation in call it investor asset class fit right you you mentioned how the cryptonative investors looking at a more maybe defy fundamental revenue driven approach whereas as we've got, you know, some of the more monetary premium assets that are appealing to some of those investors uh that that come from an institutional background. I I guess before we get into some of the nuts and bolts, maybe you could just explain a little bit more why you think this is the case. Why have we seen this bifurcation? And then we'll talk a little bit about each of those investor types and asset classes.

>> I think there are a number of reasons. You know, first you start with liquidity, right? I just mentioned 20 trillion of wealth. They can't look at an asset like unis swap which is what $2.5 billion dollars and make a significant allocation to that. There is just a size mismatch. It's not fit for purpose for institutional capital. Really only a handful of the largest assets can absorb the kind of liquidity that I think is going to come out of this market. So that is one element of it. A second one is just educational process. I mentioned it takes two years generally to bring this audience up to speed. The Bitcoin ETFs were approved in January of 2024. So they're sort of reaching that educational apogee at this point. And I think that's another big

piece of it. And then on the flip side, uh the institutional investors don't have the sort of emotional damage that crypto natives do. Right? We've been in Bitcoin and seen the market pull back 50%. We're looking at the values in our wallets that are down substantially from that October high and it's painful for us. And so there's a healing process there. If you have a 0% allocation, you look at that pullback completely differently. To you, that's a gift. To you, that's an opportunity. To you, it's a better entry point. So, because they're starting from a different point, they're viewing this asset in very different ways. The flip side is also true on the cryptonative capital. We're just very closely aware with what's

going on with Hyperlid doing nearly a billion dollars of revenue. were very closely aware to what's going on at a and unis swap and morpho and others about returning revenue directly to token holders. That area of education hasn't trickled up fully into the institutional market. It'll get there, but I think re sort of OG crypto has a chance to be ahead of that narrative just because they're more focused on these smaller cap assets that aren't big enough for this institutional crowd. >> Yeah. Yeah. makes a ton of sense and I appreciate the the insight into the investor psychology of how they're thinking about each of these asset classes respectively. Um Ryan, I I think a question for you here is, you know, I

I'm curious about the correlations, right? Because and I'll just sort of take a step back. We've been thinking through this thesis on this show where, you know, with the midterm elections and the Clarity Act, we've been hearing a lot about the national debt and how, you know, it comes from both sides. one's spending on the military-industrial complex, the other one's spending on, you know, uh, pro programs, entitlement programs. And so ultimately, you know, both sides are blaming each other for spending the money. Regardless, the money's getting spent. And, you know, Bitcoin tends to react to that. Whereas, you know, because the the cryptonative, the digital asset native asset class has been a little bit more fundamentally focused and driven on these revenues. It feels like that bifurcation has now correlated the altcoin complex with the

equities market and how we typically value those sorts of things. Whereas Bitcoin feels like it's a bit more uncorrelated getting a little bit more into the inflation hedge conversation sort of pendulum has swung back over into into valuing Bitcoin that way. curious what you think about, you know, this analysis and if you're seeing any other uh pertinent correlations in how these asset classes are represented. >> Yeah, it's a really good question. I think you're smart to talk about correlations because these investors that we're speaking with think about these things as they're trying to build a comprehensive diversified portfolio. I also think that you're absolutely right.

Go Bitcoin is trading differently than other crypto assets. Now they they do have some correlation together because a lot of investors do treat crypto as one thing but they should trade differently and the reason they should trade differently is that they have different fundamental drivers. In the same way gold has different fundamental drivers demand versus supply the need for a hedge against currencies being debased etc versus software companies which are driven by earnings growth revenue technical developments uh innovation etc. Right. And I think that you're going to see this increasing divergence between the return of Bitcoin over the next decade versus the returns of crypto

assets like Ethereum, Salana, Hyperliquid, DeFi assets like Uniswap. That doesn't mean one goes up and the other goes down. I just think that they're going to trade differently as investors start to think about them differently. I think that Bitcoin will trade more like gold. And in fact, we've seen Bitcoin's correlation to gold increase relatively recently, uh, which which a lot of investors a year ago were saying, "These things aren't correlated at all. I thought they were supposed to be digital gold." Well, recently they've had, and we're seeing of the crypto assets that are innovative technologies and softwares trade more like technology and software. I actually think that's good. shows that crypto as an industry and as a technology is infiltrating traditional markets and traditional

industries in the way it's in intended to. And I and I think it makes sense. The other thing I would say about correlations, which is particularly interesting, is that if you were to tell investors there's this asset class or these assets that have low correlations to other assets in your portfolio, volatility is declining and it has potential for high returns because it's very early on in this assets life cycle. They would they would be screaming the sm you buy this thing, Jim Kramer be banging the smash button on his show. uh but then you say it's Bitcoin or you say it's unis swap and they freak out and they say I can't touch that thing right and there's alpha there because eventually they will come around to the fact that this is a powerful tool to

build a diversified portfolio built for the future and digital assets are just one of many asset classes they'll consider investing in >> I think uh producers listening behind the scenes he just ordered a smash button it's going to be here in the studio in a little while um and I think you're absolutely right I mean crypto has this connotation in the in the world and society. It's just people just it left a bad taste in people's mouths as a result of FTX or you know through one thing or the other. Um which is why we call it digital assets here on this show. Uh because people and I you know I I think it was Matt maybe you were on the show and we we I think the last time we were talking about this how the exports of the industry are completely fine in terms of optics and perception.

You know people don't have a problem with stable coins. people don't have a problem with uh blockchains or digital assets or you know any of these things perpetuals you know but they have a problem when you get the umbrella term of crypto and I think that is some of the market education that you know you guys are fighting the good fight and going out there and helping to educate the market to arrive at a more sophisticated and mature knowledge base in the in these investors so that they're able to parse out you know this isn't just all crypto there are some nuances here perpetuals and meme coins are different from stable coins and blockchains. Let's kind of treat these things, give them their due.

>> Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And we have come a long way, right? You now see plenty of headlines that put together the largest institutions in the world and worlds like tokenization and digital assets and blockchain. And you couldn't have written those four years ago. We sort of almost take that for granted now. But every once in a while, I'll see a headline that's like, "Wow, in 2018 this was complete fantasy." And yet here it is and it's just a daily occurrence and we barely even comment on it. So I I think that is definitely true. We have some baggage but when you reterm it people are able to evaluate it on the merits and uh I think that's part of the growth.

>> Yeah. And and you know ultimately we're we're aligned. We're both out here you know educating uh everyone else so that they can kind of level up their own understanding. We've got some questions uh from the audience in the live chat that I want to get to in just a moment. But first, I I I want to just chat about kind of the the the 8020 portfolio feels like it's it's done. And I'm just curious how maybe the investors that you're talking to are reacting to this. Do they see this similarly? You know, people are calling for the death of the 8020 portfolio. You know, typically stocks and bonds weighted and and you know, now we've evolved to a point where we've got these radical portfolio constructions. Maybe just a a quick word on, you know, what the the status, the

state of the 8020 portfolio is now in the eyes of institutional investors and where do you think we are now? What if you're just conjuring up the the you know best portfolio construction for you know an institution out there? I I realize it's a rather general question, but you know what what are you suggesting to some of these investors? Yeah, look, I I look at this from like a big picture historical perspective, which is if you back up 20 years ago, the largest institutions in the world were not investing in an 8020 or 60/40 portfolio. They held stocks and bonds and private equity and private credit and alternatives and commodities and they put them together to gain the kind of returns that brought them headlines in the Wall Street Journal. That's what

we saw at Yale. That's what we saw out of Harvard. That's what we saw out of hedge funds, etc. That was true, but retail was sort of left with the S&P 500 and the aggregate bond index and we were told that's good enough. The beautiful thing that's happened over the last decade is we've sort of broken down those walls. Right now retail can get in access to private credit and private equity. It can get access to commodities. It was early to crypto which has been the best performing asset class arguably in the world over the last 15 years. And now you can build a more diversified, sophisticated portfolio that includes all of the world's different assets. Right? The starting point for any investor should

be to capture the global opportunity set. Crypto is part of that, as is real estate, as is stocks, as is bonds. And we're seeing that at these major wealth platforms. They're no longer content with 6040. Part of that is because the nature of bonds has changed, but a lot of it is that the nature of opportunity has changed through things like ETFs that make things like crypto accessible in an easy wrapper. >> Ryan, anything to to add here on portfolio construction? How people and in institutional investors might be thinking about this? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's changed a lot over the long term as Zach mentioned, but also over the past six years in this kind of postcoid era where you've had a lot more retail participation in the stock market

while you've had crypto grow as an emerging asset class. You've had access to these other asset classes at the same time where we've had a world that pays a lot more attention to the amount of money printing that's happening to the rate of money printing is accelerating. And I just think all of these things start to play a bigger factor in portfolio construction. What I'm seeing more and more when I talk to financial adviserss is that they are moving further away from these traditional structures. Partly to differentiate themselves from other financial adviserss because ultimately at the end of the day they're in the game of winning business and winning clients from other financial adviserss, but in part because they need to beat the market, right? And crypto for instance is now part of the S&P 500 via Coinbase, right? via strategy and now crypto's in

that benchmark. And so if they're not investing in crypto, they're essentially short crypto as part of the returns of their portfolio. And so it's just changing the way investors are thinking about portfolio construction as a whole. Bonds have not been performing well. That's an area they're thinking about. Private credit. They now they had access. Now they're concerned about it. It's just changing the way investors are thinking about portfolio construction. And you see legendary investors like Ray Dallio suggesting 15% allocation to Bitcoin or gold or Rick Edelman who's one of the most successful financial adviserss in America suggesting 20 to 40% crypto in a in a client's portfolio.

You even have some of these these large traditional firms uh like Charles Schwab saying you should have up to 6% crypto in a portfolio. That's so different than it was 5 years ago. It's remarkable. And so I think that's where we're headed is just a very different portfolio construction regime than we had a decade or two decades ago. And crypto is a core part of that. >> It it certainly is. And uh now it's suggested by some of these you know large financial advisors uh and big trading firms which you're right is absolutely different from where we were before. Um you also mentioned money printing which I think is the gateway for a lot of people to come into this asset class and start to understand it and give it its due. Um, and so Ryan,

you know, just curious if if you have a word on macro because you're right, Wars hasn't really given us any sort of insight into what he's thinking. What do you think? And, you know, we saw a lot of money printing go into the AI capex buildout. Do you think it has to shift and maybe money in order for it to flow into this asset class into the digital assets has to shift away from AI and we need to see kind of an unwind or a rotation out of that? Maybe you can just give us what you're seeing on the macro landscape and what you think this Bessant Worsh you know combo is going to do for digital assets moving forward.

>> Yeah. Well, well, I think rotation is the right word, right? We saw a rotation out of crypto, out of gold, into equities, particularly into AI driven equities. I think eventually you see capital rotate out of that trade as investors take gains and look at other opportunistic areas to deploy capital. What I do know from our conversations with these investors is that they're not asking should I invest in crypto. They're saying when should I invest in crypto? And that's very different than four years ago. And so I do think we see capital rotate back into crypto. My macro outlook is that we're going to continue to see these massive deficits.

We're going to continue to see money printing. We already had the US government come out and say that they're going to need to spend 600 billion of borrowed capital in Q4, which is bigger than the global financial crisis package that bailed out the banks. That's the long-term trend. That's not slowing down. It's actually and kind of scarily accelerating. I also think that Worsh wants to keep rates low. You already saw the expectations for rate hikes come back down. I think, as I mentioned before, we're getting more used to elevated oil prices. I just think that the macro is getting less uncertain and that's making investors more confident in their ability to allocate across

different asset classes. I think crypto is one of the ones that benefits from a capital rotation heading into Q4 and into 2027. Yeah, it it makes a ton of sense and we've already seen, you know, this regime intervene in the Japanese currency which kind of creates some money printing as well. So, I think you're right. It feels like the macro and, you know, as you mentioned, had the opportunity to raise rates, chose not to. And so, it feels as if this this macro regime is starting uh to evolve into uh you know, potentially more dovish position. Um, all right guys, few minutes left. I've got kind of a rapid fire segment here. I guess we've got some questions in the chat for you guys.

Um, first one is from Matt. Matt, which are your investors that you're talking to buying more of, Bitcoin or ETH? >> Uh, right now it's still Bitcoin. There is rising interest in ETH. It's been performing well. People are excited about stable coins and tokenization, but the starting point remains Bitcoin and uh we're seeing more flows there. >> Got it. Ryan, you uh you seeing the same thing out there? Yeah, I think the thing to remember is that if you were on one of these investment committees and you were thinking about how should the 10,000 financial advisors who use your motto portfolios start getting exposure to crypto, you would start with Bitcoin and then maybe you would add some ETH, but it would probably be like a market

cap weighted exposure or maybe you would add some salon instead of right. But you're starting with Bitcoin. I think that's exactly true. >> Yeah. Um, which one are you guys more bullish on? Hood or hype? >> No, you gotta go first, Ryan. >> I'm more bullish on Hype. It's a smaller market cap asset, and I think it's earlier, you know, in its in its uh life cycle, and I think it's going to be one of the major benefactors of the next crypto bull cycle. I'm bullish on Hood, but more bullish on Hype. >> Yeah, I'll take both as well. I think I think hype has more upside potential, but I think Hood is a generational buy and hold asset. If you had to tell me I had to buy something and come back in 10

years and be confident that it's substantially higher, I think I would put my money on on Hood. I think it's just a phenomenal company executing phenomenally well. >> Okay. All right. So, we got a divergence here amongst our bitwise uh peers. Okay. I'm keep the chat is loving this, by the way. I'm keeping up with what what they're saying here. The next one is over under. All right. So, I'm going to throw out some just go over under and then maybe we'll we'll talk about some of the the the rationale as to why after the fact, but we'll we've got four or five assets here. Uh and price targets. Bitcoin 180K by 2030.

>> Oh, over over. Yeah. >> Okay. All right. These are all by 2030. ETH 8K. Ryan >> over. Oh man, I over as well, but definitely some nuance worth unpacking there. >> Oh, okay. We'll we'll we'll note that. Um Zcash, actually we got two different ones, both by 2030. Uh one prediction Zcash 30,000. Other one is Zcash 25,000. By 2030, >> under and under.

>> Oo, I think over and under. >> Over 3,000. under 25,000. Ryan, why so bearish on Zcash? >> Yeah, >> I I'm not bearish on Zcash. I just think that you can't have these you pretty optimistic price targets for every crypto asset. I just think that things move slower than we we think, right? Like Bitcoin is only trading at 65,000 today. And I I think it's going to take a long time for Bitcoin to to get to a million, right? 2030 at a million. I think that, you know, could happen, but it's probably going to be a few hundred thousand. The reason I say that is I think it takes longer than people expect. And so, do I think that Zcash is going to be a a good buy over the long

term? Yes, I do think there'll be demand for privacy coins. I do think that Zcash is uh is a special asset. I just don't know by 2030. >> Got it. Okay. Yeah, 2030 is uh three and a half years away. So, uh we got we got some time. All right. You guys are going to have some fun with the next one. hype. $500 over under >> by 2030. Uh >> 10xy by 2030 on hype. >> 10x 10x. I'm thinking through on that one. That's a $600 billion valuation on hype.

Um Oh man, I I'm think I'm probably under but I'm uncomfortable saying that. I'm not sure. >> Okay. Well, it sounds like it's a close one. Ryan, what do you think? >> It's a close one. >> I think under, but it could run above it in between that period. >> Interesting nuance. >> Some big volatility coming. >> Just curious and we'll get to the ETH nuances as well, but just curious hype. Why do you think that, you know, we might get some sounds like, you know, serious blowoff top there? uh with some volatility.

>> I I mean my opinion on Hype is that look what it's done in the face of a bare market, right? Hype is one of the only crypto assets. Now, to be fair, Zcash is in the same boat that's done remarkably well given the environment that we've been in. I think once the environment turns in crypto's favor, you're going to see many of these larger market cap non- Bitcoin assets run. And I think Hyperlid is probably primed to benefit the most given the size of the asset and the growing awareness and popularity of hype. But uh but but as we've seen with many of these newer crypto assets in these cycles where you have these magnificent runups, you do

tend to get a decentsized pullback, a lot of volatility. And so I think it's going to be, you know, probably like the the key asset that displays those properties that we've seen displayed in things like Salana previously or Ethereum in the cycle before that. >> Yeah. >> Y >> and just to add a nuance to my comment because I had I'm realizing a mistake of course because of the buyback the total market capitalization could be substantially lower even at those prices. So I think that's the like that's the challenging mechanism to consider. Um but it is the case historically that we've seen rotations between leading platforms. So that's probably the risk to the long-term 2030 thesis.

>> And similar you know point to that uh is competition from you know within the sector. The next one here is lighter. Uh we've got one for 30 and the other one for 50 which would be insane. But uh what do you guys think about lighter? >> There's a lot of people at Bitwise that are bullish on lighter. I will say that it's something that we we've talked a lot about across the research and DeFi teams. I think perpetuals is going to grow, you know, remarkably over over the coming years. So, I think lighter could it could go above. Look, it it'd be it'd be tough, right? All these assets can't have these massive runups is my is my general opinion. So, okay.

>> Um could lighter be a winner in this bull market? Yes. Uh 30 is is probably the more of a ceiling than a than a floor in my mind by by a large margin. Matt, any thoughts on Lighter? >> I think it's just hard with a platform that new, uh, to be honest. Um, there's so much churn in this space, it's it's hard to predict. So, I'll let Ryan take the take the vote on that one. >> Got it. All right. Well, that was our overunder segment here for today. Uh, Matt, um, you mentioned, you know, ETH at 8K by 2030, and I realize all these predictions are far out. We're not going to hold you too too uh close to the fire on this, but what are some of the nuances that you described that could affect, you know, the upward mobility of ETH over the next couple years?

>> Yeah. Well, I think there's a a pretty fascinating thing going on in the market between ETH and Salana with one positioning on a monetary side, one positioning more on a revenue-driven side. And I think it's indetermined at this point which valuation approach um will will win out over the market over the next handful of years or whe whether you'll get both, whether you can have both. Uh and those are really fundamental decisions that lead to downstream decisions on how the protocol is run and go to market. Uh so I think it's it's just a a fascinating comparison from my mind uh how those two projects are running and uh my favorite approach is just to own them both.

>> Do you think uh this memecoin launchpad you know phenomenon that we're seeing play out on Salana is at all sustainable in terms of revenue and we do get some sort of sustained rally in the launch pads like pump fun. >> Ryan, you want to tackle that? Yeah, I mean, look, if you if you believe that investors are going to continue to to speculate, then I think you can believe that we're going to continue to see fees generated by memecoins being launched, right? So, I actually I don't think it's going away. My my hope and my general thesis on Soul is not centered around the the meme coins, right? I think that is a shortterm uh uh tailwind that will be surpassed by things like tokenization

of equities which is a significantly larger market than memecoins and has a much you know bigger TAM than memecoins and so uh do I think that it's sustainable to be the only driver? Absolutely not. Do I think it will play a role in the short term and will still be some sort of a factor long term? Yeah, I do because I think you whether it's with options in traditional markets or other types of derivatives or perpetuals in crypto or memecoins, right? What we've seen is that retail investors love to speculate and I think we're going to continue to see that uh you know for for years to come.

>> Yeah, I completely agree. If I can just add two things, I think it's still pregame on something like Salana, right? We're at $300 billion of assets. There's $670 trillion of assets globally. That's like 2,000x. Um, we're a week away from red crypto being introduced, give or take, which will clarify how tokens can raise capital without triggering SEC compliance. When you take something like that in a mature regulatory state and you combine it with the kind of launch platform we see on something like Salana uh, and entrepreneurial ideas, I think there's an explosion of possibilities in that space. So, I I do think pregame is sort of the way to think about it and it's doing exceptionally well.

>> Matt, could you just tell us a a little bit more about red crypto? Maybe not everyone has been keeping their eyes on this, especially amidst the Clarity Act. What can we expect from red crypto? >> Yeah, it's sort of it's sort of the the the bypass road on the Clarity Act, right? So, the Clarity Act would be legislation, but of course the SEC can do regulation. uh they've said, you know, they've come out with rules already in terms of taxonomy between the CFTC and the SEC that's also in the Clarity Act, but they're acting on it on a regulatory perspective. What we expect in the next week is sort of the first draft of the red crypto rules. Those are intended to specifically allow new projects to raise capital without being uh registered or triggering SEC

registration and then evolve over time into a decentralized platform. That's sort of a dream we've had in crypto in a real way since 2018 and the ICO boom. But now with some regulatory teeth and some regulatory certainty, I think people are dramatically underestimating how much entrepreneurial energy that that can create. We've seen all these amazing crypto projects emerge despite massive regulatory threat. In a week, we might get the rules that allow those to emerge with regulatory clarity. I think there's going to be like a million flowers that bloom. I should say it's just the proposal of the rules, then there's a comment period, etc. So, Washington moves slower than crypto is

used to, but next week is a really big deal, particularly if you're worried about the Clarity Act. The SEC does have a lot of levers it can pull for the next two and a half years, uh, at least, and it looks like they're going to pull them. >> Okay, big week next week. We're going to keep our eyes on that. Um, one of the last things I have, R is is Ryan, you mentioned, you know, uh, not one of the things you said just now was, uh, not everything can go on these crazy runs. And I'm just curious to to dig into that a bit because in cycles past, we've seen everything move in unison. you know, we've got Zerp era, you know, interest, low interest rate environment, liquidity injections, everything, you know, is uh

is generated higher off of those tailwinds. And now it sounds like because the market is a little bit more mature, we're going to see a little bit more nuance in how these things move. Why do you think that is? And what categories do you think are set to outperform in the coming bull market? >> Yeah, it's it's a good question. like the the market's larger today than it was in past cycles, right? And just naturally, the the laws of numbers here would say that when you have capital coming into larger market cap, more liquid assets, it's going to have less of an impact. That's why you've seen Bitcoin for instance, start by going up 1300% a year and then 700%, then 400, then 300, then 200, right? So, I think

that same thing happens across other crypto assets. You also just have more crypto assets now than you had before. And we talked about memecoins. You now have tens of thousands of crypto assets being launched like every day or every week. And so at some point that saturation plays a little bit of a role. When I step back and think about what's going to do well in my opinion over the next cycle from a thematic perspective, I think it's Bitcoin, which will continue to cement its place in the world as a digital alternative to gold that's better in many ways, but at minimum a kind of partner to gold in portfolios. I think layer 1 blockchains that are already seeing a lot of

institutional adoption and a lot of traction like Salana and Ethereum and Hyperliquid and some of these others are going to do well in this next cycle particularly because investors have now heard of them for many many years and are going to be able to start seeing how much traction that these these networks are are seeing. DeFi is another area. It struggled in a crypto environment that saw regulators suing DeFi companies, right? UniS swap was being sued and debanked in the last bull market. Now it's free of those chains and those things holding it back. I think that we see DeFi really become what we all thought it would become in 2021. I think

that happens this next cycle. So, I'm bullish on on DeFi. I'm pretty bullish on layer ones where stable coin and tokenization activity happens. To be honest, I'm very bullish on crypto equities because I think that Wall Street just does not pay enough attention to some of these crypto companies like Coinbase, like Figure, like some of these other crypto companies that are setting themselves up for success in this next bull market and doing a remarkable job at executing and positioning. And so those are the areas I think are going to do particularly well over this next run.

>> Yeah, you mentioned crypto equities. Also, um there's this cohort of, you know, mining companies that are pivoting their hash power over to AI uh data center compute. Uh but it is catching notice. I think it could uh also indicate that, you know, we're we're in this phase shift of the market. Guys, I think that's it. We covered a lot of ground today. Really appreciate you guys coming on. This was fantastic. The chat loves you guys. We have people asking Ryan to check his DMs. That was Flip has that message. So guys, really appreciate you coming on and just as we continue to play out these market cycles, would love to have you back on in a few weeks and just, you know, continue to catch up and uh give us the good word. Really appreciate it, guys.

>> Awesome. Thanks for having us. >> Yeah, appreciate it. >> See you guys again soon. Thanks so much. >> Bye.