SEC x CFTC Event, Neo Finance Category Updates, Avalanche & Bitget join the show

Transcript

H the hot Black 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. You said it. You finally said it. I'm so bullish. It is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. I'm about the I'm above the

hot above the [ __ ] How the [ __ ] The rollup is headed to the top. If

we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're on fourth floor today. We're going to be on floor one and then we're headed straight to the moon boys. >> All righty. Happy Thursday. >> Happy Thursday indeed. >> Happy Thursday to all my uranium holders. Cheers to you guys. If you're holding crypto, I'm sorry. >> We successfully shook Andy out of the coins. It's time. >> I mean, I've been shook I've been shook out since like November mentally. >> Oh, a few days ago, didn't we have you on the stream saying you were back?

You're a Bitcoin bull. We had convinced you. >> Yeah. Every time Vance and Michael come on, I I get bowled up and then I lose money. >> It's kind of sad. >> All right. Well, um, how's the >> How about that gold candle? How about that gold candle from uh 5,500 to 5k? Apparently, there's going to be a lot of shortages in these markets for uh for um actual paper paper receipts versus the the physical markets. We'll see, dude. So, the SEC and the C are having an event today as well that um um our friend um is moderating.

our friend. >> Yeah. What's her name again? Eleanor. >> Ah, yes. >> She's moderating it. >> Shout out Eleanor. She's great. Um, you know, she told us a story of how she got into crypto through uh, you know, she was at a traditional uh, mainstream legacy media company. Uh, she wanted to cover the space. They didn't let her. She got an invitation, I think it was from David Saxs, >> to come. Uh, >> really? >> I I think so. I might be misre misremembering but it was around the time of the inauguration I believe uh this was I think this was a I don't remember the exact timing but uh I believe she got an invitation to come to the white house when there was some crypto things

happening and the legacy media company would not let her go and cover as a journalist and uh >> and she said [ __ ] them >> and she went anyway >> badass bullish >> yeah she went anyway and then uh you know got very involved in the in the crypto space, was no longer part of the legacy media company and ended up making uh you know a name for herself uh you know covering the space. So shout out Eleanor. Yeah, I mean I think the goal of the meeting was to kind of uh get clarity on the market structure bill um and try to get the CFTC and SEC together to like unite forces.

Um basically to try to figure out how they can best create this, you know, crypto capital of the world that that that they're uh trying to create. I I don't really know, man. Um, but it I I I don't really see anything getting done there for still a long time. Brian Armstrong was on uh CNN, I think, or CNBC saying that it there's literally banks behind the scenes lobbying against crypto, like full on against crypto >> with like a lot of money. >> So, yeah, it's defin there's definitely a big fight going on. Let's just put it that way. But it's interesting to see how the White House, the regulators, and the crypto community are all aligned in fighting against the banks. Like Trump

literally sued JP Morgan for $4 billion because he got debanked >> during his whole political crash phase. >> So Trump is not a fan of the banks. The people he appointed are not a fan of the banks. Like David Saxs is a cryptozar. He's not a banking zar. And so, >> like he said, I mean, if none of this clarity stuff goes through, >> yeah, >> they can pay rewards and and interest on stable coins because it's in the Genius Act. It it's framed it's framed as rewards and it's kind of funky and so they would kind of have to back door into it. But, >> you know, that that is the way that they

could pay interest. They don't need the Clarity. the crypto companies and stable coin providers don't need the Clarity Act to do it. I think something that's more interesting that came out in this regard that came out this morning was uh there was a piece put out about Tether. >> Yeah. >> And how Tether didn't want this to go through. They actually separated themselves from Coinbase and they were not a in favor of paying interest on stable coins because that would eat into all of their net interest margin. That's their entire business model. And if they had to if it became standard practice for them to share that income with retail stable coin holders, they would sign they would have significantly smaller profit margins.

>> That's so funny, man. >> It turns out that wasn't true. Paulo and Tyler actually didn't say that. They there was some piece put out by a law firm that ended up kind of fabricating this and then there was a later piece just a few hours afterwards that came out in the block uh saying how they look they don't actually have a they don't really have a dog in this fight um >> because they don't pay interest on their stable coins. So I I think it's you know it's interesting to to watch this all unfold. You know uh there was a vote by the Senate Agriculture Committee. I think the reason it's the agriculture committee is because these are commodities.

>> Um, >> and I think that went well, but again, we know that there's significant push back by the banks and then also by Coinbase and you know, I'm sure there's other uh, you know, crypto companies that are are on the side of Coinbase as well, but it did go to a vote and I think the vote went through. So, we'll have to we'll have to wait and see as far as what the next steps are. >> Yeah, man. Definitely. Well, we've got our first guest coming up today. Um, Olivia, she runs tokenization at Al Ava Labs. Um, she was recently on CNBC amongst other uh news platforms talking about tokenization and and more. Excited to to have her on and discuss what she's doing in from the tokenization side at

Avalanche and more of obviously the Avalanche ETF also just went live today or this week VAVX. So, why don't why don't we get Olivia up and uh talk tokenization. What do you say? Rob up. Let's do it. Here she is. Olivia, welcome to >> So nice to meet you. Thrilled to be here. >> Absolutely. We're big fans of tokenization and Avalanche has uh I I think been flying under the radar for a little while, but it's it's no surprise that you guys are up there with, you know, the the biggest names in tokenization. Um it it's incredible.

Could you just give us a sense of like what you've been up to because it it seems as if you've been you've been quite busy here over the last weeks and months. >> Yeah, sure thing. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. Really excited to talk about what we're up to on the Aval side. Um, first off, just for those who might not know, Avalabs is a software development company supporting the growth and adoption of the Avalanche ecosystem. Avalanche is a network of layer 1 blockchains that are purpose-built for any industry or use case. Be it FIFA's L1 related to tokenized collectibles or be it Avalanche L1's that we've run in tandem with big names like JP Morgan etc. So that's what Avalabs is. Um in my role I'm focused on all things

tokenization within financial services. So what that looks like is on the one hand partnering with leading financial institutions to bring institutional grade assets on chain. So think top tier issues like issuers like the Franklin Templetons, the Black Rockcks, the Apollos, the KKRS, the Vanex, SEA, Wellington managements of the world and bringing their tokenized assets to Avalanche. And then where I'm really laser focused and where our team is really laser focused is on connecting those assets to distribution channels where capital already flows. Be it fintex with an appetite for stable coin yield products or tokenized US equities infrastructure or allocators such as family offices liquid funds etc. Um and

prior to joining Avalabs I was actually on the trad side. I was investing in Smith banks at Torric Group, but I was very involved in the digital assets working group there. >> Very cool. And you know, one of one of the reasons that prompted this conversation was uh you guys have record activity. Saw daily active addresses hit an all-time high of 1.71 million on Avalanche. Total assets exceeding three half billion dollars uh in stable coins and real world assets. Galaxy Digital launched a $75 million tokenized loan obligation on Avalanche. And then Grove is planning a 250 million RWA deployment on the on the network. Give us a sense of what it takes to progress these from just an idea in these, you know, in in

we and we like to call these, you know, these are like institutions that are kind of cryptocurious and they're starting to, you know, wet their beak and get in the game. Give us a sense of like how these deals are made, right? Like I take it you probably have some you know institutional networks and relationships and you kind of have on you know you know some people at you know the galaxy digitals and the and the groves of the world. H how do these deals ultimately come together from the ideating phase to you know money being deployed on chain? I mean, I would say first of all, you know, not all institutions or or fintexs as we call them are are created equal. And so, um, you have some of the more progressive players like the, you know, forward-thinking asset managers such as the Apollos of the world that have been

very active in bringing assets onchain in getting more involved with DeFi. And so, that experience looks very different than some of the more what I call like traditional financial institutions that um are just dipping their toes uh in the space, you know, as of this year. So obviously it depends on where they are in their educational journey. But what a lot of what our work is focused on is serving as trusted advisors or consultants really that work with these institutions understands what their actual pain points are and then where blockchain technology can you know in fact solve some issues or maybe not solve issues. Um and so a lot of our work you know starts with understanding

what the pain points are working with our network of tech enablement partners to effectuate whatever the identified you know mutually identified solution may be um but I'd say a lot of it is education um going into these institutions having educational sessions you know Q&A sessions for 45 minutes to an hour fielding their their inquiry you know inquiries about what we're doing what institutions we've worked with some of the work we've done with city on onchain FX pricing and execution in the past some of the work we've done with MAS's project guardian um and so on and so much of its education but then once we identify the problem that can actually be solved by blockchain technology and then the tech enablement partners that can help you know resolve

whatever the issue is at hand be it our tokenization platform partners like centrifuge or securitize with whom we've done a lot of work on everything from tokenizing KKR's healthcare growth fund to um more recently bringing Janice Henderson's JA JTRSY products into the Avalanche ecosystem through centrifuge. Some of it's working with Oracle providers. Some of it's working with dev shops that can help um you know these teams uh crystallize whatever vision they have in mind. So that's where the bulk of the work is is really, you know, putting the puzzle pieces together on the tech enablement side for these institutions who may be again dipping their toes in the space or may have some experience in the space but aren't necessarily sure on how to execute certain visions.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely an education gap happening and and I've seen quite a few of your posts on LinkedIn. And I think that you're doing a great job there as well on just trying to basically educate on stable coins, credit, um all the all different types of onchain products. I saw that you were at Davos or you were talking about Davos recently. I'm curious kind of what what insights you took from there as well. Um what surprised you the most about how institutions are thinking about stable coins, credit creation, these types of things? Um I don't know if you were there or not. So, I was not there on the ground, but our um Avalanche Policy Coalition team was there. But I tuned in to all of the panels uh was glued to glued to my screen as many of us were

last last week. Um but you know, on that that's a great question. I went in expecting more familiar territory. You know, much of these discussions in the past have focused on payments efficiency, compliance frameworks, you know, regulatory guard rails. Instead, I was most surprised to hear central bankers, bank CEOs, you know, executives openly wrestling with a far more, in my view, consequential shift, which is the growing realization that credit creation may no longer be anchored exclusively to bank balance sheets. And so to understand why that that matters, and I wrote about this, and I talked about this on, you know, NYSC last week, is to consider how traditional banking works.

So it it bundles two functions together. You're holding your money, you're lending it out. When you deposit funds, the bank keeps a fraction in reserve and lends the rest. And that's what we call fractional reserve banking. And it's how credit gets created. Stable coins work differently and they're fully reserved by design. A dollar in means a dollar held typically in short-term treasuries. There's no lending. There's no multiplication. And so, you know, as trillions in transactional volume value, you know, migrate onto stable coin rails, the credit obviously doesn't vanish. It it relocates. some of it's in capital markets, private credit funds, programmable lending protocols that again sit outside the perimeter of the traditional banking system. And so that shift came into sharp focus during the

panels um in on tokenization, stable coins. And there was, you know, one particular panel and Q&A session when the a chief economist from one of Brazil's largest banks asked the question on everyone's mind, what happens to leverage and what happens to monetary policy transmission when stable coins dominate transactional money? And so Coinbase's Brian Armstrong's answer, you know, was pretty blunt. He was talking about under the Genius Act, stable coin reserves must be held in short-term treasuries, 100% reserve, no fractional component. And so if customers want yield beyond that, they choose to lend their money out explicitly. And as he put it, it it flips the banking model on its on its

head. And it was interesting to see the the governor of the Bank of France push back uh not so much on the mechanics, but his concern was more historical. And he was talking about how monetary systems dominated by private money have collapsed before. And he pointed to the US in the 19th century before the Federal Reserve existed when banks panics were routine and confidence was was more fragile. And so for him the question wasn't so much about whether stable coins function technically. It was more so about whether a monetary system can in fact remain stable without public mon you know money as as its anchor. And so that disagreement it was what gave like and I think a lot of you probably saw this but the interest

debate a lot of intensity. It's like more than a technical question on you know should stable coins pay yield you know it's underneath of it it's really a debate over who controls you know credit creation going forward >> and it's an incentive to bring everyone further into this stable coin direction which we're seeing the tension like it would be bringing them out of the banking the traditional banking system and more into you know the stable coin fully reserved fully back system. The question in my mind is like isn't that super deflationary for the currency because right credit creation adds money to the money supply you know we we end up increasing the money supply and

demand causes inflation. If we take leverage out of the system and all of a sudden you know the money multiplier isn't above one it's actually less than one until we bring all that money supply back to you know fully fully what's in reserves. like h is that not deflate help us you know how should we be thinking about this is that not very inflationary for the dollar >> and interestingly in another session Jeremy Aair was um arguing that as the marginal cost of storing and moving value on on blockchain networks drops towards zero you know future economies might generate similar output but with a far smaller monetary base and then similarly I think the IMF's Dan Katz

agreed noting that you know this kind of velocity increase is more supply driven rather than than demand driven which could mean a smaller monetary base without inflationary pressure. But I think all that's to say um you know the the moment that really stayed with me came from standard charters um Bill Winters and his his he put it you know his bank doesn't really care which instrument wins. It could be stable coins, it could be tokenized deposits, could be tokenized money market funds. what he said was that he wanted the customers to get the best thing for them. And so they just want to be the entry point and the exit point. And so that's in my view, you know, from the institutional side the real posture now.

It's not defending really the old architecture, but positioning to intermediate whatever whatever replaces it. >> Yeah. Well, then let's talk about some of those those replacements. Then I think the the big thing on on folks mind from this past week or two has been uh the the launch of the BitGo IPO and actually how was able to uh have it be traded on chain from the moment that it was launched. Not sure if it was on Avalanche. I think it was on Ethereum B&B Salana maybe Avalanche. Um maybe it is now. And um we saw that this is kind of like this first of its kind tokenized equity being traded live with the IPO, right? meaning anyone with a Phantom wallet, a MetaMask, a Rabby, etc. could

trade this tokenized asset on chain. Um, but you there's kind of some issues with the way that tokenization is is being done on chain right now, specifically around tokenized securities. You've made some pretty strong points around weakening of investor rights when it comes to tokenized securities. What does good tokenization of securities look like at the infrastructure level? A and you know, how how do you think about this this investor rights dilemma as it pertains to tokenizing different types of assets? Because we're also kind of in this context of crypto right now where everyone's trying to figure out what they own, what what what you know, this token, what what is it, what do I have claims to, what are my rights? But specifically with with securities, it's

a bit more black and white over there. However, in the tokenization process, you you seem to think that there's some weakening of rights. How does that occur? >> Yeah. Um, and I would say this is super timely as just yesterday that the SEC issued guidance, you know, clarifying um, many of these issues. But I would say, you know, first off, many of the tokenized securities products today um, on the market can give you weaker legal rights than traditional stock ownership in my opinion. And so how you build it matters far more than the underlying blockchain technology. and SEC Commissioner um Pur, you know, over the summer had written a really great um I guess it was memorandum saying that blockchain, you know, doesn't have

magical abilities to transform assets. Like the tokenized securities are still securities. And as I mentioned, the SEC just issued guidance this week clarifying exactly this point. The format doesn't change the law, but the structure you choose determines what rights investors actually get. And in in my opinion, if you tokenize, you know, incorrectly, you're rebuilding Wall Street's problems with higher costs. And if you architect correctly, you unlock all the promises we've heard of, instant settlement, lower capital requirements, programmable assets, and so on. And so it comes down to a spectrum, like are you getting a synthetic claim, a backed claim, or an actual share? And so just to to step back and um Chuck at the

stable coin blueprint has written a lot of great literature on this and I refer everyone here to it. But you know when you think about stock ownership and how it works today when you buy Apple stock through Robin Hood you don't actually own Apple shares. You own a claim on the shares that sit in a chain of intermediaries. And so how it works is Apple's official shareholder lists one owner. It's seeding company. It's owned by the DTCC. The DTCC tracks clearing brokers like Morgan Stanley who track re retail brokers like Robin Hood who track you. And so each layer handles complexity for the layer below. And you get the economic benefits, dividends, voting rights, price gains, etc. But you're not listed as a shareholder on Apple's books. And so you hold a legal claim against your broker for shares.

And interestingly, the system was actually created in 1973 because Wall Street was drowning in paper certificates. They literally had to close stock exchanges on Wednesdays to catch up on paperwork. And the solution was centralizing shares at the DTCC and settling through e electronic ledger updates. And that was genuinely innovative for its time. Um because the DTCC could use netting to compress trillions in trades into billions in actual movements. And so that architecture for 1973's problems obviously now creates new limitations. You can't hold your shares yourself.

Trading only happens during business hours. you can't use your shares as collateral in DeFi protocols. And so would solve that paperwork crisis 50 years ago now constrains what's possible with modern technology. And now flipping to present day with the tokenization models that are being proposed. You know, the SEC just released guidance this week that really maps cleanly to the spectrum of synthetic exposures versus custodial security entitlements versus issuer sponsored tokens. And each gives investors really different legal standing. The first model is synthetic claims through offshore SPV structures.

So you own the shares in the SPV, but importantly not the underlying securities. So you're a creditor but not a beneficial owner. And so if the SPV fails, you wait in line with the other creditors. Corporate actions require manual processing. You know, the voting rights company communications disappear entirely. you know, execution happens through RFQ systems or AMM pools with what could potentially be wider spreads than NBBO pricing, which is the best price available across all exchanges and that traditional brokers are required to give to you. And so for institutions, a pension fund can't treat an SPV rapper the same as actual shares for regulatory, you know, capital and compliance. And the SEC's new guidance makes this pretty explicit that you know

third party tokenized securities may not confer any rights as a holder of the underlying security and and holders could face bankruptcy risk that direct you know shareholders don't. And then I' I'd point to the second model which is that of back oh sorry I was just going to say like the second model of backed claims through custodian tokenization with proper transfer agent and broker dealer infrastructure. That's like what dinari has built that eliminates the SPV layer entirely. And what's really interesting there is that a regulated broker dealer buys and holds real Apple shares and segregated custody accounts.

And like an SEC registered transfer agent issues the blockchain tokens backed onetoone by those shares. So you own a token representing a direct legal claim on actual Apple shares, not a claim on the SPV, but really on the underlying security itself. and you maintain the full shareholder rights, right? And so that's has a practical advantage of speed and scale because institutions can get compliant access to tokenized equities in a matter of of weeks rather than perhaps, you know, waiting years for issuers to to restructure cap tables. And then the third model I'd point out is where the actual share is, you know, through direct issuer tokenization. And this is really a breakthrough model where the

company itself issues shares, you know, directly on the blockchain. Securitize has talked about doing this where your token isn't a claim on something else. It's the actual share. It's recorded directly on the company's cap table. And so, you know, when you transfer your token, the registered shareholder of of record changes on the company's books and like the seed and company DTCC structure that I mentioned earlier disappears completely. And so all this to say um I think this is where tokenization reaches its full potential where one token equals one registered share. It's transferable peer-to-peer.

You can self- custody your shares with no middlemen re hypothecating behind the scenes. Your corporate actions execute automatically through codes. Settlement is instant and intermedias are are actually removed rather than than just you know digit digitized. And so that's more of like securitizes approach. But across all these themes like what good tokenization involves, it's direct legal claims on underlying securities, it's preserved, you know, shareholder rights, it's quality execution through regulated infrastructure, and it's also, you know, eventually the ability to self-custody and use shares as as programmable collateral. And so, you know, custodian models deliver the first three at institutional scales. You know, today

direct issuer tokenization achieves all four by eliminating intermediaries entirely. But, you know, I'd say if you need tokenized Tesla and Apple with full shareholder rights, you know, next month, custodian infrastructure ships at today versus if you're building a platform where equity becomes composable collateral, you know, that's direct issuer tokenization enabling that future and and perhaps on a different time frame. Got it. And so it it sounds like at a high level this is an evolution where ultimately you know we we start with the most abstracted and then we further tokenize deeper and deeper into the stack until we're providing everyone these native shares on these companies cap tables. But there's sort of this design space because different teams

move at different paces that you know a a a company may want to tokenize now, but they're not ready to take that full leap of faith all the way to you know whether it's a it's a technological limitation or it's a regulatory one. They're not ready to go all the way to that endgame that you mentioned. Sounds like BitGo has kind of gone all the way, you know, and and pushed the bleeding edge as much as possible. But there's you mentioned securityize in there. there's other players that are sort of finding a a more creative design space in the pros and cons between some of these spaces to try to optimize the frontier of speed and safety and robustness of the product.

>> Yeah, I mean I think that summarizes it well. I would just say put really simply and I wrote about this not all tokenized securities are are created equal. You have your SPV rappers that make you a creditor to an offshore entity. custodian models with transfer agent and broker dealer infrastructure like dinari preserve direct claims and full shareholder rights today and then you know direct issuer tokenization represents I think the ultimate architecture with shares issue natively on chain that's what securitiz is striving for and where you land on that spectrum determines whether you're an owner or just another creditor >> yeah so basically the the the shift that's happening in trust right I think you've said it's from like from balance sheets to infrastructure basically as As an investor, you need to understand what

specifically you are buying based on the infrastructure of the of that tokenization provider, whether it's superstate ono securitiz etc. etc. etc., um, with different with different types of of tokenized asset structures. You're basically buying different assets. This is why it's really confusing, Olivia. This is why people don't really understand what's happened with with tokenization. Um, I guess from just a pure investor outlook framework to summarize what you've said there from the investor's perspective of wanting to own tokenized assets on chain, could you do your best to provide a simple framework for understanding like the the the um just like like the key uh shift in trust from balance sheets to

infrastructure, what that really means and what we need to know if we own tokenized assets onchain, what to look for. >> For sure. And I I'd say what this means in practice again token you know tokenization shifting trust from balance sheets to infrastructure is that trust becomes verifiable rather than assumed. So instead of you know again from an investor perspective underwriting a chain of counterparties investors can verify settlement custody and compliance directly on the infrastructure. And so you know when trust moves to infrastructure the protocol enforces rules. So you have settlement finality, asset segregation, compliance gates, all becoming properties of the rail itself

that's cryptographically enforced rather than you know the covenants that you're hoping someone someone honors. And so I'd say this is already happening. Um like investors are already moving on this. Uh one example is the digital liquidity gateway uh built by FIS which obviously trii you know a trifi incumbent and intain which is on avalanche and it connects about 2,000 regional and community banks to institutional investors and so the banks originate you know solid small business and CR paper but historically institutional buyers couldn't touch it because the due diligence was too manual now loan level data flows straight from FIS core systems onto onto a chain and so investors can verify the underlying

assets directly. That's like a key example of when trust lives, you know, onchain in the rail, investors can transact with smaller originators they previously couldn't underwrite efficiently. And so it opens up asset classes that were just simply too expensive to access while also fundamentally changing how, you know, investors think about counterparty risk. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I think uh people are now getting excited about what's happening on Hyperlquid with HIPP3, trading a lot of those assets there. They there there just becomes a stacking of different risks that you need to understand for as you get deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of of using tokenized assets onchain and then actually putting them into DeFi

protocols or trading them on purp etc etc etc. Um, let's talk about some of the recent news from Avalanche, right? So, Robbie mentioned the work with Grove coming up as well as uh Galaxy Digital as well as the the ETF VAVX. Um, talk to us about some of the uh in in institutional adoption milestones that uh you're most excited about that you've been involved in, what this means. just kind of give us a bit of of the lay of the land of Avalanch's state of affairs and then kind of what you're looking at ahead in into Q2 here >> off um as you mentioned ETFs like you know BAVX launched this week we're very excited about that and I'd say that ETFs

like VAVX are essentially on-ramps that don't require institutions to overhaul their you know operational stack on day one and so you know most institutional allocators can't just add you native Avac to their books, they'd need qualified custodians, compliance signoffs, perhaps prime brokerage agreements to be struck. And that's months of internal work. And an ETF eliminates all of that. It trades through existing broker dealers, settles through DTC, and is, you know, fits into the standard RAA custody arrangements. And it it shows up on client statements like any other equity holding. So very excited that, you know, Vanax Avalanche ETF can now offer that to investors.

launched as a US- listed product providing spot exposure to AVAC. It's also really interesting because the fund tracks you know price using a benchmark index but can also generate additional yield by staking a portion of holdings. So really the strategic function is here is distribution and you're creating a a point of entry for capital that's already allocated to digital assets but you know constrained by operational or perhaps regulatory limitations on on direct holdings. So very excited about the VIVVX launch. I'd point to um a couple of other teams that we've seen on your NEO finance roadmap which I really appreciate uh including Open Trade.

They've been doing a great job um you know where whereas most tokenization projects are you know getting execution quality wrong because they're solving the wrong problem. I'm really excited about open trade and how, you know, they are letting FinTech offer yield products backed by Franklin Templeton's money market funds or Wisdom Tree private credit, Black Rockck's high yield corporate bond ETF, and have created a structure where they've been able to secure 25 plus fintech partnerships in just a year and a half or so across Latam, Africa, Europe, and and Asia. And while most RWA platforms are really grinding to get their hundth retail user, Open Trade has done a great job of

being very distribution focused and and taking a B2B TTOC approach of plugging into distribution channels with millions of existing customers. Um, and they've done a really great job of getting the B2B TTOC economics down, demonstrating yield transparency to, you know, really accelerate sales velocity and and then also really, you know, starting with securing the right legal infrastructure to um, you know, make it really easy for fintexs and investors to to get uh, comfortable with their RWA back to yield.

>> That's awesome. Yeah, I think that's like the next frontier, right? is actually taking these assets and moving them onchain and then getting either either you know doing looping getting additional yield from them um putting them into other other DeFi protocols. I I'm curious kind of where where you think this all ends here or where this is all uh converging to. Right. So you mentioned the neo finance map. We we kind of are looking at this as the intersection of legacy finance and DeFi, right? We're seeing this it's not fintech, it's not DeFi, certainly not traditional or or legacy finance. It's it's almost like this this uh this wrapper around DeFi with a really nice front end, you know, easy easy to use forgot password buttons. You know, it's

it's you know, non-custodial in some neo banks. It's custodial in some more fintech apps. a lot of these things are kind of converging towards the super apps a and you're also clearly seeing that a lot of the blockchains are really really focused on their institutional approach now um right and so I'm just curious like where you think this converges to right because we're also seeing NYSC move towards 247 markets so a lot of like the traditional markets are also moving towards the like the crypto infrastructure it just really continues to feel like these two worlds are like rather than crypto and blockchain usurping all of finance it's we're like mutually colliding and then we'll kind of see where it goes from there. How do you see this continuing to to play out? What's your kind of

multi-year neo finance thesis with regards to this convergence of these two industries? >> Absolutely. Uh well, first of all, I'd say that much of the focus and tokenization has been on the supply side. Um and what we really need to get right as an industry is um the demand or distribution side of that equation. like really bringing assets on chain that have true product market fit and you know demonstrable distribution channels be it through fintex family offices other allocators and so when I think you know in 2026 and beyond especially in the context of of rwas and what's underexplored when people talk about rwas coming on

chain you know the conversation usually starts with inventory it's about treasuries private credit real estate and you could argue you know certain tokenized assets are poised to catch a tailwind this year depending on your macro view as a Fed balance sheet expansion and rate cuts, you know, could unleash like a fresh wave of liquidity. Maybe it's Latam sovereign debt or liquidity sensitive plays like uranium funds that are tokenized that'll that'll really, you know, gain traction. But I'd say that that supply side focus and framing really misses where the real change is happening. Um, and I'd say the most underexplored RWA category is is not so much an asset class, but more so in in the structure. And what I mean by that is it's vaults, the infrastructure that lets you, you know, express

investment strategy directly in code with custody that never leaves the the investor's hands. And it's really about providing, you know, investors and specifically institutions with greater utility. And so, you know, traditional asset management at this point's duct taped together, like strategies are buried inside leg legal vehicles. Assets are shuttled between custodians, administrators are scrambling to reconcile after the fact. And, you know, liquidity is rationed out on a schedule. And even the best designed products end up sluggish, overpriced, and and opaque.

And if we can find a way for tokenization and RWAS to address those pain points and really uh incentivize institutions to go on chain simply because it's better, faster, cheaper, then that's then we've you know achieved our northstar vision. And I'd say one example of that um where you know tokenization is is providing more utility and would incentivize institutions to come on chain is is with vaults you know which are rules-based you know portfolio um runs directly in software. investors can unlock, you know, and retain full control of their assets while, you know, allocation, utilization, and and risk limits, you know, all execute in a single settlement environment. That's the sweet spot

between an ETF and an SMA. And the scale and accessibility of of the one, the precision and the guardrails of the other, uh, where, you know, you're never handing custody to a manager, that's quite compelling for institutions and investors. And we've seen Bitwise made a move into vault creation this week. And I think that's a signal worth watching. And their $15 billion asset manager. >> I see that. >> Yeah. They didn't just roll out another tokenized fund. They started writing portfolio construction directly into code. And it's just it's been more specifically a stable coin lending strategy on Morpho. I think it's targeting about 6% yield. And Bitwise is setting the parameters. The smart contracts enforcing them. And critically, you know, the manager never lays a finger on client assets. And so >> the business case again is really

concrete. There's utility vaults got the cost stack. There's no custody fees. There's no fund admin. There are no armies reconciling spreadsheets. And so new strategies can spin up without forming new legal entities. You know that shrinks launch timelines from quarters to weeks. And you know the accountability really flips from you can trust us to transparent real-time parameters that that anyone can verify. And I'm really excited for this model to gain traction. I think that'll bring a lot more institutional participation. Bitwise predicted that their vault AUM may double in 2026. And if they're right, one of the more value RWAS on chain may turn out to be, you know, institutional judgment that's spelled out clearly on chain and and enforced by code.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And Yep. And non-custodial and gets the, you know, gets the best of DeFi in a rate cutting environment still gets good yield. People who are people who are new to you know crypto or DeFi will see that on from Bitwise and they will be very curious if their if their you know average Robin Hood gold account is giving them you know 4% three and a half right >> their money market on Schwab is that 3.7 3.6 six all of a sudden Bitwise is a 6% product they'll probably be a little bit you know concerned as to like what the risks are um and you know lo and behold there there is quite a bit of smart contract risk defy risk etc but yeah that that is a vaults we Olivia we'll

have to do a whole episode on vaults I I think there's a lot for us to learn >> also I feel like I need to say not financial advice do your own research like give all the disclosures should have started with that >> well naturally yeah but the This was all tremendous information. I feel like, you know, we got our daily dose of uh financial education here, whereas a lot of times we're talking about, you know, the more digital asset crypto side of the world, >> but uh a place where these two, you know, the these two are going to converge. Uh Andy and I both, I think, are planning on going to Vault Summit.

It's in Can so it's around ECC, but it should have a nice mix and it's presented by Morpho. So, I'm I'm looking forward to that event. But, you know, there's a number of events this year that are that should be quite good as as more of these worlds start to intermingle together. Um, it should it should provide a nice balance. >> Yeah, for sure. >> All right, Olivia. Well, we'll see you soon. Thanks so much for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure. Like Rob said, learned quite a bit here. You're a great speaker. >> Thank you. Really appreciate you guys having me on. >> We'll see you again soon. >> Thanks, Olivia.

>> Bye. >> Bye, Olivia. Peace. Alrighty, guys. Up next, we've got our next guest. We've got Gracie Chen, the CEO of Bit, who is gonna be asked what she thinks about Hyperlquid for a a long time. >> Uh, Olivia was great, man. >> She had bullish on uranium. I'm >> That was hilarious. Um, I wonder if she uh she heard us talking about that beforehand or if that was that was organic, but um, man, I I I think like there's a lot going on in this traditional financial space and we're so entrenched in the

>> Yeah, we have no idea what's I mean what what happened so much to learn, man. >> We went Exactly. Right. So we, you know, we were obviously on some of the >> much more hands-on in DeFi and now and and then right if we're just going back into the rollup lore like we had to sit down for 90minute conversations with CTOs to understand the blockchain architecture >> our next three months are going to look like deep conversations >> finance architecture yeah >> tokenization lingo too you know it's like and uh uh >> SMAs and ETFs. You gota you got to have your threeletter acronyms in order in order to in order to speak the language.

>> Um >> yeah. >> And so we've got coming up next. >> Uh CEO of BitCat. >> Uh I don't know if if Gracie even knows this, but BitCat was our our live stream sponsor at DevConnect down in Arts. And it was phenomenal. I mean, we were in the war room. We uh you know we wereo supposed to be at the main event and then we had to switch locations. There ended up being no Wi-Fi at the main event, >> pivoted, ended up getting a a great space to to record the show. Shout out to our our friends over at Lambda Class um locals there.

>> I still can't believe I jumped out of a plane yesterday. >> Anyway, let's uh and yeah, let's bring >> We'll talk about that after the show ends. Uh Gracie, how are you? Welcome to the show. >> Thank you for having me. Yes, I it's great. Uh I just I also just landed uh in the US from yesterday. So now jet lagging. Um but uh having a great time. >> Well, welcome. I'm in Hawaii. I jumped out of a plane yesterday and now and I survived and uh looks like the markets followed me today. Kind of saw that one coming. Gracie, we're going to get into it. This is going to be spicy. Feel free to uh you know say no comment if you don't want to comment. But everyone is

blaming CZ and Binance right now. Uh Binance just unloaded a massive clip on the market of spot Bitcoin. Uh you can literally see it in the flows. Every time Bitcoin dumps, Binance is unloading clips of Bitcoin. Uh people are really pissed about uh CZ that they think that Binance is corrupting a lot of the market and that this market can't continue in a healthy way with them as number one exchange. What's your take on the current market structure here with Binance leading the way in terms of their uh selling of Bitcoin? Where are you kind of looking at the broader crypto market structure as it lands today post1010? I think a lot of people are upset. Gracie, we brought you on to get your market takes. Thanks so much.

>> Sure. Uh well 1010 I would say yes it started with a Binance technical um slip um like a glitch. Uh and then it followed with you know USD pegging on Binance a few of other wrapped coins in BTC and Ethereum also due to the kind of death spiral effect went down a lot. Um and then largest liquidation daily liquidation happened on October 11th or 10th depends on your time zone. I was also traveling at that time and when I saw that happened um it's just massive um lots of like a I think that time Asia wasn't awake but that that time I was in like Dubai translating and and I get to

experience the whole thing um more vividly. Um what I would say is after October 10th liquidation the market especially the alcoin market uh is very very weak in terms of liquidity in terms of trading volume or or or just interest. Well, people were talking about altcoin season, but in even in early 2025, I've already said I don't think there will be an altcoin season at all. But liquidity on sorry, the largest cr liquidity crash on October 10th just ma may made it more true and more magnified. So, um right now the market is still in my opinion kind of correcting and uh finding its balance.

um later this year. I do think Bitcoin has still very strong fundamental uh because of the the larger liquidity coming out of the market in 2025. They flow into gold and uh even US stocks like Nvidia, the these all these assets all hit their all-time high. But Bitcoin just fell from, you know, world's top five asset class to right now top eight or nine. Um I think Bitcoin should be is actually the um the best asset to reflect liquidity because of the fact that it doesn't really have like a pricing model. So the price can be

largely uh adjusted or affected by the the should be should be a good reflection of liquidity. In 2025, we didn't see it happen because that year, gold went up 60%, but Bitcoin went down 6%. Um, right now, you know, today, like you pointed out, gold, silver went down, US stocks corrected, um, Bitcoin and all the altcoins also went down. Um but I actually think it's a little bit like panic due to the uh geopolitical reason or uh maybe some exchanges are selling.

We are not actually for the past 11 uh 12 months we have been actually accumulating bitcoin rather than selling. Uh but my point is in general my my market take is this year shouldn't be too bad. uh should should be, you know, Bitcoin still has has a chance to hit 150K or so. >> Love it. Yeah, I think we had uh Hibon for our 2026 crypto predictions. He thought the same with regards to ending this year. One of the recent um things that is happening as a result of this liquidity shift that you talk about with regards to metals, US stocks and others is people wanting to trade um these assets in crypto rails. So whether it's

onchain or on centralized exchanges, people are now wanting to trade stocks, they want to trade gold, they want to trade silver, copper, they want to trade all these assets on chain and um the what the place dominating that is Hyperlid. Uh Hyperlquid's HIPP3 has allowed them to basically uh create a way that they can trade pretty much any asset on onchain on on Hyperlid. The daily volume has hit two billion as of today. The OI is clearing is almost at a billion and they're growing 100% week over week o over the last couple weeks.

Um this is like the biggest growth story right now in crypto we think uncorrelated in terms of the rest of the market. How do you think about the rise of uh stocks, gold, metals trading on chain as well as on uh uh centralized exchanges? you know, is this a priority for BitGet? Do you see Hyperlquid as a big competitor or, you know, do you see it as good for the ecosystem? How do you kind of uh think about this entire new market of crypto traders and retail wanting to speculate on other asset classes, but do it onchain or in the cryptonative friendly platforms that they're used to?

Uh you may not realize we actually offer onchain asset trading as well as well as uh uh tokenized US stocks, tokenized ETFs etc. actually um beget from September 2025. We call ourselves UEX universal exchange rather than CEX or DEX because people used to think you know CXDX they are they're very different CX are very centralized the DX are not and and then KYC like AML standard everything is different for CX and DX for us we are still holding a pretty high at least from a KYC AML point of view in terms of having all our users needs to do KYC uh that that's

more like CX But in terms of the asset offerings, we are very you can call us DEX. That's why we think you know none of these two words can define us well enough and we said UEX. UEEX is a little bit similar to what uh Brian Amstrong call it everything exchange. Now we often offer tokenized assets um on chain. any any of the assets that's issued on five top uh publishings including Salana, Ethereum, BSC, uh Monad, Morph are all tokenized are all tradable on big you can just put your contract address and then trade and then tokenized US stocks is another big market that we're developing. So um back to your question I feel uh hype

hyperlquid is I wouldn't call them a competitor uh because essentially the market that they are serving is a bit similar to what we were uh before being more compliant. Um there are users that we gave up when we said we need all the all of our users to do KYC. So they moved more some of them moved to per DAX or DAX in general. Um and and we as one of the largest centralized exchanges or universal exchanges we do need to be more compliant otherwise uh we can't go bigger. So so that's a little bit of a give up give and take kind of game in

terms of who we are serving what we are offering. But in general uh I I see lots of potential in trady in tokenized gold, silver stocks etc. And we see lots of attra attractions not attraction tractions over there since the last few months when we launched US tokenized US stocks and uh silver gold etc. So through some CFD platform. >> Yeah. So is that how you see the pers market and this and the trading market like playing out like you get like this kind of bifurcation of the more let's say not compliant borderline gray area exchanges or onchain venues that don't require KYC AML etc. And then you'll have like the

much more compliant institutionally oriented exchanges that have all of the checks and balances in place and you'll kind of see this split happening. And if you're kind of in the middle, you're kind of left in the middle without an edge. Is that how you think about the trading landscape evolving in in crypto generally? >> Uh I think so. I think that's a good summary of how we look at the market. Actually last year we we spent a lot of time strategizing and thinking about whether which way we should go you know whether we want to go for more compliant more mainstream market or continue in running an offshore exchange and uh uh and in the gray area. So we we chose the

first way and uh uh it doesn't mean that the second PLA path wouldn't be successful or uh wouldn't have a market. Actually there's a big market because we we we've been there in the in the in the sense that um that we know the market is is very big and going the first path is probably the tougher but more correct choice for us. >> Yeah. H how do you see the space trajectory with with reg with respect to the assets that are coming on chain?

It's no longer just Bitcoin and Ethereum. We've on this show we've said that there's sort of a lack of quality assets. Um but you mentioned like now we have you know tokenized commodities. We have tokenized metals and and there's a growing asset class in income products which is effectively like these tokenized money markets, tokenized private credit, all these tokenized RWA products. You know, typically what we've seen in terms of this these income style products is, you know, it starts with a stable coin that you own in your wallet, at least if it's onchain. You go take that stable coin and deposit it into some sort of yield producing vault or smart contract. Now those things are getting packaged up and and dist distributed just like regular assets

that pay some sort of yield or dividend. Do you see BitDAT as sort of a a distribution pathway for a lot of these assets right along with the speculative assets or generally how do you see you know serving the golds the bitcoins the fixed income assets the you know to tokenized RWA serving all of these products when when all of them are so different without overwhelming the end users right still providing a simple user experience >> um how how do we make sure that we I'll overwhelm users. I think that's a good good question. Um I sometimes find it confusing and I talked to my for example CPO shift shift product officer. It's a

it's a she as well. So so two girls having lots of conversation about uh what market is is feedback is is giving us feedback and how can we improve from the product wise. Um so so a few a few thoughts around that is um first of all I probably don't have like a full answer and I think we are overwhelming our users a little bit by providing universal asset coverages. >> It's it's always it's the balance right it's like users always want more and more more like they want more choices but they also want it to be simple you just can't have both simplicity and lots of user choice.

>> Yeah. Yeah. That's right. uh but the the the big picture we are seeing here is not about how many tokens we have or how many assets we we provide in terms of trading. It's about what users want. So even for tokenized US stocks uh or ETFs, we are not listing all of them. We only have about 200 tokenized US stocks. And then for the futures trading the perpetuals of those US stocks there are only 30 plus. On the other hand uh crypto and all coins I would say in 2025 we did slow down a lot on token listing for the pure cryptonative kind of token and we did listed a lot that were on us.

Uh the reason being these asset classes or these um um altcoins are not we are not seeing as much liquidity trading volume. Sometimes price just can just crash like 30% a day um and those assets are not traded by the users anymore. So we delisted them. So while adding all sort of uh asset classes on big we are also um delisting some altcoins. So the major shift that you are seeing here is less and less cryptonative especially those altcoins that's not providing or producing real value more and more mainstream asset they are listed on

NASDAQ and my SE big ETFs and indices they have much more fundamental value so as an exchange we want to look at number one what our users want number two what are the assets assets that has value that's that has volume that has people who want to trade and then how do we enable them um so so that that's the methodology behind I I don't we we definitely don't want to overwhelm our users but as far as we keep this mental you know me mentality here that we know what we're doing and why we are doing them I think that that that should be

fine >> yeah Gracie the user just want to trade uranium and they want it now. They want to trade commodities right now. They they >> don't let Don't let Andy sell you uranium. And Andy's got a big uranium position. He's been pushing on this show. >> It's one of metals. >> The TZOs guy came on Rob so long ago and told us about it. Remember that? >> And uh and >> they had a tokenized They had a tokenized uranium product that that they listed as well, right? >> Yeah. Gracie, I'm curious. Um, when you're thinking about the current market structure, um, you know, I I just want to come back to 1010 because I see I saw this tweet today that was like, oh, you know, 1010 really screwed us. And it was the chart of Bitcoin negative 15% um,

since like June or something of last year and then it was S&P, NASDAQ, gold, and there was like 22%, 22%, 40%. Like, do you think we're still picking up the scraps of 1010 uh, in the market? Like do you think that we're still like navigating market maker fallout? We're still waiting on uh some like pieces to get put back together or is this just like we all you know said this time was different that the four-year cycle was over but it's a midterm year. It's the it's the year after it's the um you know the fourth year of the cycle has passed.

Uh Bitcoin had a 8x from 15k to 125k. you know, we're just going through the usual pullback here and 1010 maybe could get blamed for it, but hasn't left necessarily like um catastrophic damage in terms of the structure. Like I'm trying to get a bit of insight from your side into the structure of what you're seeing. How healthy is the structure right now in Bitcoin? Do we have cause for concern with regards to uh the way that market makers, exchanges, etc. are holding up? I mean, we had a crazy 2025, right, with Bybit, you know, I remember you coming out and helping Bybit with their hack and then 1010 and then all these things. And so, like, are are we at a healthy point behind the scenes

right now? I I'm not sure exactly what you can share, but I'm just curious like what you're seeing. >> Um, that's a good question. And I don't have a crystal ball. I wish I could. Um but but telling whether this is already very healthy position or not that's like holding a crystal ball. Uh but but I do think fundamentally Bitcoin as we pointed out Bitcoin should um still have a rally because of the liquidity is increasing. The the the the global market you know monetary supply is increasing and Bitcoin should reflect that. um whether the well I I I also noticed that

maybe yesterday Kathy Wood thought that um the the so-called correction period should be very much finishing now. Uh I'm slightly less optimistic but I'm not pass uh pessmissive. What I mean by that is I I think um I don't want to really guess the market. Um but if you're a long-term holder, what you should do now is probably accumulate a little bit of Bitcoin. Um especially if you don't have any position. >> But um um but whether Bitcoin can reach another, you know, 70K, even 69K, I think it is possible. Um, I as a as a long-term holder, I'm more

like um I I prefer to start buy when I see the trend being very obvious. I don't mind buying slightly higher. Um, but I don't want to um be very very much like again predict predicting or or just speculating on what's happening in the market. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, >> that makes sense. >> It it does. It does. And I I think um you know cuz you don't have a crystal ball. None of us do. We're just you know we're trying to draw you know what what a unique perspective that you have as a centralized or you know a universal exchange as you called it. You know you've got quite a bit of insight into the flows right of several high volume

market makers and traders. And so I guess I I'll just double down not again not trying to ask you to predict but sim a very similar question is are you seeing anything in the flows as far as is it more retail is it more institutional is it you know greater volume is there is there anything that you can point to and how you're seeing the trading via bit right all the throughput that is coming in the volume that's coming in is it on particular assets more on maybe the major asset classes or and less on altcoins is there anything that you can point to in in the trading flows through BitArt that are signaling anything to you about the market.

Um in terms of in terms of what we see um or in the business we I would I would say institution and retail are like half half in terms of volume >> but the asset classes that they prefer is very obviously mainstream cryptocurrencies and also the mainstream US stocks are picking up um in terms of volume on big as well um traffic you know gold, silver, copper etc. even Forex, we we also started to offer Forex very recently in January this year. Um so so the the conclusion from that observation or my personal take would be uh Bitcoin

is still dominating the um the narrative and especially if you are running or planning to do a token launch on all coins, you want to make sure that your project can hold in the long time and is doing your business have have some sort of inflow rather than purely you know issue a token then and >> yeah we call this the revenue meta Gracie >> yeah that would be very bad to to the market and and that that and that won't succeed either right now exchanges are very very selective in terms of what token we are launching

>> yeah just last thing there Gracie what has been the major changes for listings and for tokens Right? Because we've got this general thesis that and I think like the entire market knows that it's it's it's changed. It's getting more it's gotten more harder due to more tokens, more dynamic um you know different types of businesses. Give us the quick and dirty here on the changes in what you're seeing industrywide on token listings and on the way that exchanges are operating with new founders uh kind of trying to prevent these slow rugs or easy money operations that have been plaguing the industry for a while. What are you guys changing and what are you seeing as the core industrywide shifts here?

>> The core industrywide shifts would be uh again pure cryptonative stories won't really work. Uh some some of the good projects that we see now are either infrastructure like RWA stable coin uh payi and then probably have some sort of elements in AI. So so this is not just how exchanges are listing. I've talked to a lot of VCs uh VC partners as well and uh um and and I think from the VC point of view what they are investing is also shifting a lot. Uh we actually collaborate uh we already funded a a a VC 400 mill aum VC force ventures and

and we we do have like weekly meetings. Uh it's the same it's the same thing. So the narrative has been very different. And then from an exchange uh listing process point of view uh not not sure how much you know about how we evaluate project but I can give you some sort of quick summary >> please >> would be would be we we do look at the their product like you if you have a if you have an app you have an agent we want to look at what what it is doing exactly we also want to look at the community and social uh so that we know how popular this project is and we even you know divide um the the the volumes from geographic point of view in order

to understand how healthy uh those volumes is and then token economy that's just another big monster there that we have some some core team who will look into them and we want to ask for auditing report for some um token auditing as well as uh uh code auditing uh we look at the background of the project as well as the background of the investors. So um so it's a quite tedious process that that that our listing team is like the BD talking to the project but but but behind them there's a very strong research team who look at each elements differently and uh and support our our our listing managers to to talk

to the project and come up with good plans. Yet I would say in 2025 most of the tokens are um especially after October 10th are kind of like like think the graph probably look like this like the the listing day is the highest price for them which is again very unhealthy uh for for a whole sector for the whole blockchain or crypto sector. People said web 3 is dead. This this term just doesn't make sense. is not re revolutionizing web two at least from the application point of view. Um, I probably agree with that and that's why we have not been listing as many alcoin tokens and I even said tweeted I said

all coins are dead extreme but I I want to make my point. >> Um, in essence >> is Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gracie Chen, thank you so much for your time. Enjoy your time in in the US. Enjoy your time uh fighting the good fight here. Thank you for your energy and your work in the industry and we'll have you on soon again. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> See you next time, Gracie. Thanks. >> All right. You're the uranium market's closed, but we're up, boys. We're up.

We're so up. I'm on. I mean, I don't know what to tell you guys. I thought I loved crypto, but then I realized I just like seeing my portfolio go up. So, how much has uranium gone up relative to gold? Like the runup in gold has been I mean, >> so the runup in gold is separate from the uh runup in uranium because gold is not a precious metal or sorry, uranium is not a precious metal. there's a massive uranium uh shortage right now because um so basically like in that book the rise of America the guy Marin Katusa talked all about um the like basically the rise of America it's the name of the book and like it

wasn't you brought it up on the stream yesterday I think or the day before with one of the uh guests where you're talking about we had this globalization then we had like this nationalization now it's like localization >> basically what what's happening right now is the re-industrializ ization of America. >> And so due to the re-industrialization of of America, there's a set of resources that need to get allocated towards. >> So uranium uranium is not a precious metal, but you'd consider it like a rare earth. >> It's kind of in the middle between a precious metal and a rare earth. It's almost like a utility resource. It's like a utility metal.

>> Is this what goes into uranium is what goes into nuclear reactors. >> Yes. And the thesis is that we we need so much power and the taboo against nuclear is is gone. There's a lot more positive developments in the nuclear space. Um and basically there's a shortage of uranium and it's been underallocated to compared to like stocks etc for a while. And I don't know man I just I I I've got a massive bag of uranium and so I'm here. The chart looks insane. The the weekly and monthly look insane. Crypto's [ __ ] Like, I'm just like, I don't really care. I mean, like, I I have my Bitcoin. I have my ETH. I'm

holding. I'll hold forever. I'm glad to have it. But I'm not going to sit here and watch crypto bleed out and just act like I am so loyal to the coins when at the end of the day, it's like, dude, there's other markets that are chatting and like, I don't know, man. It's just why am I gonna I got I re I redid my my plan. I'm ready to go, Rob. Let's [ __ ] go. Uranium 10year cup and handle. >> 10 years. >> I mean, that's kind of what what gold went through as well. >> 10year cup and handle on the spot. The spat physical trust breaking out right now. Literally the most insane. Here, I'll send you the chart in the chat real quick. You can have a look at it.

Unreal. and we can go through some of the news and stuff, but 10year cup and handle on that thing. I mean, come on. Come on. >> And it looks good. Were you here? >> Gotta go. >> Were you in >> So from 2020 to 2024 almost exactly four years ago, >> dude. When I got the book from Mr. G, my mentor was literally 2020 at the bottom. The pico bottom. >> My first god. That was the pico bottom. That was the perfect entry back in that would have been January 2020. Yeah, my first entry was like I don't know a monthly chart.

>> Yeah, my first entry was like four to six weeks ago. >> Yeah. Okay. So, it was still it would have been like 2025. >> Yeah. >> Late 2025. >> Yeah. Like this year, late >> 4x from the peak bottom to the top >> before it even >> the top of the range. >> And the thing is it's not even it's still not even like it's not even allocated. Isn't it kind of crazy how >> again like I am not a technical analysis guy that is very much more your world but you got to think like this is really clean like it did exa exactly a 4x and exactly four years and then it retraced from pretty much exactly 30 to exactly

20. >> Dude, I'm so in, man. And this is going to take six months to break out and then crypto is going to I don't know. Gracie was way more. Gracie was actually on what I think is the right train of thought. I think Kathy Wood's too bullish. I think these other people are too bullish. I think Graciey's thinking about it right with Chris and Ben, which is be accumulating this year. Don't be expecting any crazy optimistic turnaround anytime in the immediate term. Uh but be accumulating I think end of the year at 150. Like if I could hammer uranium for three to six months, take the a lot of that if I'm right, and put it back into Bitcoin around 60 to

80K. Oh my god, that would be sick. >> Like that's that's my plan. That's my current plan. I mean, >> I think it does make more s it it I mean I have two one I have a po comment and then a question. comment is I I think that it does make more sense to price like pricing Bitcoin in dollars is cooked when it's debasing. It's going to give you the wrong sense of the equation. Pricing dollar uh pricing Bitcoin and gold, Bitcoin and silver, Bitcoin and copper, Bitcoin and uranium makes a lot more sense because these are all things that have their own like you want to you want to price on a relative basis, right? And so it's not like you want to own dollars, you want to own

hard assets. So it makes sense to price hard assets against hard assets. >> So you have a fundamental thesis on uranium, right? I understand how the repatriation of indust industry in America makes sense. This is going to be very bullish because there's going to be a shortage. Ukraine and and China don't want to give up their rare earths. They would, you know, >> there's structural supply deficit forecasted out to 2045. The spot price has risen 5x in six years and absolutely no new green field uranium supply has entered the market.

>> Right. Okay. So like basically what needs to happen is there needs to be more nuclear power plants created to effectively create to mine more uranium to lower the price of the nuclear energy. I is like kind of how I understand it. There was a >> right now there's a there's no there's not that many new plans to create new uh new nuclear energy power plants >> right there there was a comment on allin the other day Chimath and David were talking about nuclear and how uh David was the typical energy guys very bullish nuclear chimath was a little bit against nuclear he picked copper as like a much much you know better bet >> um or excuse me they weren't talking

about uranium they're talking about nuclear but nuclear is a very fundamental part of the thesis here. Um, I know you want to show >> Okay, if we're moving off of uranium, we're talking >> No, no. I was going to show this uranium chart. >> Yeah. Well, there they have a We need another minute to bring it up here behind the scenes. So, I wanted to ask you, right, there's a fundamental thesis here around uranium. I think it makes complete sense. There's a there's a supply shortage. There's repatriation of industry. They need more of this in order to build out power. All of these this is all confluence, right? that leads to it. What is the fundamental thesis around why Bitcoin goes down? Is it that >> Dude, the chart is cooked.

>> Okay. Okay. I don't care. I don't care about the chart. >> The chart is cooked. >> I don't care about the chart, dude. There's all these whales sellers. There's no net buyers. Everyone's buying gold instead. All these other markets are pushing forward. There's outperformance everywhere else that you look. and and like as the outperformance continues, you just get people leaving Bitcoin and selling it. It's already up 8x from the bottom from 12K, 14K to 125K. It's the 40-year cycle. It's the midterm year. 1010 destroyed the entire market. Like I mean like sailor buys have gotten way less. Micro Strategies cooked way under MNAV. DATs failed. Like dude, this market structure is cooked.

It's cooked. It's so cooked. You're like, "Oh, it's in chop, man." And I've been like screaming from the hills the last like three months like, "This ain't chop. This is this is bare market." I mean, if you look at the last two months of price action, we've been in a range between 80k and 95k and like now 28. >> Say bye-bye to your range, buddy. Because >> 2,800 and 3,200. >> Say the goodbye to the range. Say goodbye to the range. >> I'm not I'm not gonna expose your top blasts.

>> Say goodbye. Look, I top blasted E3,300. That range is cooked, too. That thing's That thing's gonna bleed. Bitcoin and ETH are both leaving the their ranges to the downside. It looks like almost I would say like almost like certainly. I would say highly likely. They're at the they're at the support of the R. They're at the lower bound of the range right now. So, you know, it's easy to say that when something is tapping against like the floor, right? If it's tapping against the resistance, it's easy to say, "Yeah, it's going to break out because it's a much smaller move."

>> What is the reason why breakthrough? >> Why is Bitcoin going to go up? What is the fundamental reason for a bid here? >> Look at the SEC CFTC is meeting to discuss crypto regulation. We have crypto becoming America is becoming the crypto capital of the world. Trump has his finger on the Fed retire button, which is also the same as the money printer button. They're cutting rates. We know they're cutting rates. Jerome Pal's a cuck. He's not going to be in in the Fed anymore. We know there's going to be an increase in liquidity. The the America, New York Fed is going to intervene in the yen. They're going to print money. They're going to bail out all of these sovereign nations. They need to find net new buyers of treasuries. Those are stable coins.

Stable coins are going to pour money into Bitcoin. All of these crypto companies around Bitcoin are going public, getting acquired, raising more money. These are all raising. It's not the crypto infrastructure slop. It's the neo finance public goliaths that are winning. And the thesis that all of that in surrounding infrastructure, >> Bitcoin and ETH are the core assets to which people can get exposure to the private companies around those core thesis. That's >> Chad says if if crypto is now desperate for regulations in order to pump, then we failed as an industry. I agree chat.

I think Robbie's thesis is grounded in fact and in objective truth. However, it is grounded in the in the lack of understanding that these small regulatory changes, they they impact the narrative over the long term, but have very little effect in the mid short to midterm like 2026. Like, if Clarity Act goes through this year, doesn't really matter. Doesn't really affect the market in 2026 in my opinion. I mean, maybe it provides a nice bump, but like that's more of like a fiveyear thing. Rates, yeah, the rates cutting could could work, but like >> it's the increase in liquidity, man. It it's the same. only reason >> the same debasement trade that's leading to gold has extraneous factors as far as the US dollar becoming less of a reserve currency as to why that's going up.

Central banks are accumulating it. Bitcoin is a better measure of global liquidity because there's not >> I I I think um if you look at >> it doesn't matter it's going down there and then it's going to go higher. I think that's the reality. >> The most bullish >> we're going to get to the 60s to 70 range probably. Maybe definitely 70s pro 60s would be crazy but possible right that 72k range looks great. We'll probably chill there for a little while and then we'll rip. >> I guess problem benefit I it depends on how you look at it but I just that doesn't seem so far away.

>> No, it doesn't. >> Obviously if you can if you can >> but if uranium risk in that time you can if you can make more money elsewhere. >> I'm not taking that downfall. I'm not seeing a 25. I'm not seeing 25% more downside on the chin here. >> 10 from from >> 85 to 70 is like >> now we're not 85. Now we're closer to 80 than we are to 85. >> We're at 843. From 84 to 70 is 20%. Plus a wick down to 68 67 you're looking at 25%. Dude, that is a lot of money for my size. Sorry, man. I know that you're uh I I know that you're trading and >> you're hilarious, dude. They're hilarious.

>> No one wants >> You can't go higher. >> No one wants to take >> goes belly up. >> No one wants to take a 20% draw down. >> All right, let's get the uranium on the chart here. Um let let's let's have a look at what's going on here. >> Let's bring it up. I don't think we get to 60s. I think we I think we get to 70s maybe. Sprat physical uranium trust is going to go parabolic. The market is tight. SPUT is raising cash every day and the structural supply deficit is forecast all the way out 20 2025. Guys, remember on my book, The Rise of America, Marin Katusa, we talk about how there is less nuclear power plant plans being built than before. While the demand is simply going to grow, meaning that there will be a premium on the price of uranium. Price has risen 5x in

six years and is absolutely no green field uranium supply has entered the market. We've only had old mothball restarts. We scroll down a little bit. If a 5x increase in price is not enough to incentivize new supply, we can only assume prices go significantly higher, don't fade uranium in 2026. And if you scroll to the bottom here, you see that our boy Blunts has a pretty good chart. And I mean, uranium looks ready to go. I mean, look at this thing. So, uh, this is my biggest position in all markets right now. And I'm in I'm in with you blunts. I've been in for a little while.

I should have got in when I was in 2020 reading the Rise of America book. I have a fundamental thesis here. My only concern is that it's just going to track gold and gold doesn't look that great, but hopefully it can just kind of stay sideways and cruise for a bit instead of just dumping or just keep going higher. So guys, I mean, look, I'm in uranium. It's my biggest position uh in the entire market right now. I've got a substantial amount of my net worth in it. I'm looking for a nice three to six month move. I don't know when the crypto rotation's going to happen. I'm not planning on waiting on it. I think everyone else is there with me as well.

People are tired of waiting. Rob's going to wait, though. We'll let Rob wait. Um, and yeah, I mean, that's that's uranium, guys. I'm bullish. So, I'm in. We'll see what happens. What do you say we cover some news? Hey bud, >> let's do it. I'll send you this all in clip later. >> Uh, yeah. I mean, Chamath is bullish on um >> Chimath is bullish on copper. David's bullish on nuclear, but >> Cho Cham is hard, man. I don't know.

>> Chimoth is bearish on nuclear as the solution to America's power deficit, >> right? But like what Chimamoth thinks doesn't affect the market. >> So our first bit of news here is that uh >> Sham is FOMOing people into copper. Come on now. Come off. >> Get out of here, bud. >> Let's uh we're going to get this up in just a moment. Uh as we wait here, just look at this beautiful drawing. Look at that technical analysis. Jesus.

>> I don't know if you guys >> look. I mean, uranium's ready to go, man. >> It's so ready to go. >> Let's blitz through these news headlines because we've got quite a bit. >> Okay, let's go. >> Uh, it's going to it. We're going to be up here in a moment. Why don't you just continue to show us your your rare metal thesis while I look for this clip? Um, I am going to let you find that clip and cover some news and um yeah man. What a what a day in the markets

here. All right, Mesh Connect secures a pretty big um stack of cheese, $1 billion valuation after a recent $75 million funding round. Um and yeah, are you still looking for that clip? >> Yeah, give me a sec. >> Nice. All right, let's just take a quick break here. Um, and we'll be right back covering some of these uh all of the news. Take a quick standby. Quick commercial break. Thanks, guys.

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>> All right. All right. All right. Let's see the uranium clip. Let's see the uranium clip. What are we seeing here? >> I'm just going to I'm going to play it. Let me know if the audio is good. Okay. >> You're going to play it. >> Build out. I think you get some credit there, too. Yeah. >> How's this sound? It's fine. >> Not sure. Not sure. We got some work to do there. Massively. >> Massively short nuclear. You're still short nuclear. But I know my guy Howard Letic >> I talked to Howard Lutnik as well. >> He said he's all in on nuclear free. Can I tell you why I'm short nuclear? I think that we're in the very delicate part of the cycle where they've missed the window. So by the time that they deliver working SMRs at scale, the problem is that the marginal cost of electricity

will effectively be zero and it'll have gone to zero because of a combination of solar and storage as well as coal and oil. And so it's just in a very delicate place where the large form factor nuclear reactors make zero economic sense by 2032 or 2035, which is when through the Byzantine permitting and building they get it done. And then the SMRs by the time that they get it done they may not be able to meet the market either. So I think it's a very complicated moment for nuclear actually >> not scientifically economically just does not hang together mathematically. I think that's if you assume um no shift in the demand curve and I think that like if you if you look at China going to 8 terowatts of production and by 2040 or whatever it is

and we're sitting at one and we're not moving we are going to have a big catch up to do. And the question is, can we really build out two 3 terowatts of electricity generation? How are we going to build out 2 to three terowatts of electricity generation? The amount of land that you would need with solar and what's it going to take to get all of that installed and so on? And by the way, there's a lot of the stuff in China, if you look at all the big solar buildouts that they did where they're ripping it up now. This is a longer conversation, but I really do question whether we can pin everything on solar. It's going to be a mix of stuff. And so your point may be right that in the near term to meet the current kind of demand curve nuclear is going to be

economically challenged. But at some point here there's an inflection that we have to meet. >> So what's your most anticipated trend? >> So you got both sides of the argument there? >> That that uh we're going to have the marginal cost of electricity is going to be at zero because of solar and storage and coal and oil. The >> I give that about a I I I I give that like a a a three out of 10 take. Um, and okay, Shimoth, we're talking about 2032. I'm talking about a 10-year cup and handle that's going to break out for a six-month, 40 to 80% pump, gonna make like half a mill, and then [ __ ] dump it all into Bitcoin. I'm not I don't need to give a [ __ ] what happens to

2032, Mr. Billionaire. So, thanks for your insight, Mr. Billionaire. Shimoth, you've triggered me more. I'm gonna go lever long now. >> That's uh it's been a great show for the rollup today. Um, be careful on leverage, boys and girls. Don't get liquidated. And if you don't get liquidated, then we'll see you tomorrow. >> Yeah, don't get liquidated, guys. I hope you enjoyed today's show. Uh, there's tons of news to cover tomorrow. Rumor mill, more guests. Um, just stay positive, you know? If if you're if you're riding the the charts out, look at Hyperlid.

Give yourself some faith. HIP3, it's the one to look at right now. Mahalo.