TOKEN2049 POSTPONED, NEW EF Mandate Drops, 21Shares Head Of Research Calls To Talk Insto Bull Mania

Transcript

[music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] >> [music] >> Thank you, son. Lord, [music] [music] we'll see you around the timeline.

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

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

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

>> Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] [music]

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

>> Zoom out. The institutions aren't coming. They're simply [music] here. It's the golden age of crypto, guys. Get right. Let's go. [music] Welcome to the nest. See you on the show. >> Sir, welcome back to the tokenization tower. Happy Friday, guys. It's been an epic week here in New York City. The institutional mania is on. Don't believe what you read on Twitter. Markets are very green today amidst all of the global instability, political nonsense, private credit cracks. Uh we're looking good here. Bitcoin finally catching a bid. Finally kind of staying put in amidst the bad news and just general

market uncertainty. Guys, it's Friday. We're live. We're at the Nest. Shout out to Plume. Big big big Plume stands. We're live at Tokenization Tower. The Nest presented by our friends at Plume. Guys, we have a great show today. We have tons of news to cover from yesterday. We had some pretty great uh clips come out from Chainlink, Polygon, Across News. We had the Aentic Finance show. We had the World Coin guy come on with an orb. That was trippy. Um and yeah, today we got the 21 shares head of research and we've got markets. We got news. Let's get into today's topics powered by our friends at Treor. Let's get into it today. Today's topics, guys,

we've got the Nest Day four markets weather per usual. Um the the weather has been absolutely bipolar here in New York. It's been uh it's been interesting. Today I had a full ski jacket on. Two days ago was 75 and this room was 88 degrees. Um then we've got a little bit of touching into the timeline reactions, news, what's happening there. Then we'll flow into 21 shares, head of research, really just to talk about what's happening in the ETF landscape, in the digital asset investment space, asset managers, allocators, etc. Which by the way guys, DAS is coming up in New York the week of the 23rd to the 26th.

We are hosting an event here in the Empire State Building live on Wednesday night, the 25th from 7 to 10. It's on the DAS official Luma. So if you guys check that out, come through. We have a ton of signups already and we might be doing a special live stream there. And then we have a special guest. We got our first intern producer panel shot. We're going to have a ton join us later at the end of the show today. Going to have to show some love for our boy. He's going to, you know, hopefully have us a run through of the trenches, pulse of the market, what's happening outside of the uh kind of broader bigger picture news that we usually cover. So guys, that's what we're going to cover on the show

today. We're going to keep it rolling. We're going to have fun. It's Friday and um let's let's have at it, guys. All right, guys. As I said, it's been a bipolar week here in New York. I mean, tokenization tower has been hot. It's been cold. As of now, we're looking pretty warm. Uh it's a sunny day, not as cloudy as it's been. Shout out to Relay powering crosschain swaps across the digital asset ecosystem. [cheering] Bringing you guys live here powering our weather segment and just bringing the best of all assets on any chain anywhere. Probably soon to be powered by AI agents. That's the weather today.

That's what we're doing here in New York. It's slotted to be a beautiful weekend. Slightly cold. It's time to touch some grass, guys. Let's move into the markets. Markets today are green. Uh, Bitcoin's leading, tapped above 73. Uh, I believe we're just back under now. And yeah, really, really excited to have Bitcoin once again just kind of staying strong amidst stocks pulling back, the dollar is surging. I think the DXY pushed above 100. Um, so yeah, there is threats around the straight of Hormuz raising fears of a m of a major supply disruption. And I actually saw a tweet that was saying that a lot of the war

stuff is actually a cover up for what's happening in some of the private credit uh cracks in that market. We, you know, we'll see where that really kind of comes to fruition if that's really hiding something. Um energy markets are are potentially facing an 8 million barrels per day supply disruption of oil. uh prompting the IEA to release about 400 million barrels from their oil reserves. Um stocks are green today, NASDAQ's green, uh S&P is green, and yeah, I mean, again, volatility is definitely in the markets, but people don't seem to be that spooked. We had

Frank on from GSR. He was talking to us about how all all of the institutions are kind of holding off on actually buying more equities and buying more assets, but retail keeps buying. And ironically, they keep buying and they and they keep losing money, but they keep buying. Um, interesting enough, uh, something to watch on the equity side. As you guys know, I've been uh pushing a uranium and copper thesis, part of this Marin Katusa, Rise of America book that I read five years ago. In that book, he talked about uh rare earths, precious metals like gold and silver, which I actually was fortunate enough to buy. Uh I think like what now four years ago that I did not get my hands on the copper and uranium position that I

wanted back then. So I did kind of have to FOMO in a bit. Still holding those strong in in the equity side. And then also not financial advice on per the hyperlquid debt. The one and only one that is actually uh above ground on the MNAV and on the uh actual you know the price that they purchased at versus where the uh actual asset is at today. All right guys, we're going to get into the news. Before we get into the news, let me quickly let me quickly tell you about one of our best best partners here at the rollup.

Uh, we're we're going to get into all the news. Near is the blockchain designed for AI native applications and autonomous agents. Go to near.ai to learn more about what Near is doing in the AI sector. Guys, moving on into the headlines. We've got GSR. Our boy Frank was in the office. Let's give Frank some love, man. Came in here fired up yesterday. He didn't tell us about this. He must have not known that Zama has been a longtime partner and supporter of the show. They completed the first confidential OTC trade on Ethereum. You might be thinking, what does a confidential OTC trade even mean?

Considering that all OTC trades technically don't happen in a DEX or in an exchange. they happen with two parties kind of just sending assets to one to one another either through an escrow or through some sort of service. So, why don't we get into it a bit? Um, if we scroll down here, we can get some some of the details. Basically, uh, today GSR, this was yesterday, they announced the successful execution of the first confidential over-the-counter trade using Zama. Zama essentially issuers, trades and stakes assets confidentially on public blockchains in a quantum secure and compliant way. And yeah, the head of OTC trading at GSR

said that confidential settlement infrastructure addresses one of the largest pain points for institutions trading digital assets. And I think he's right. I think like this something that we talked about on the show this week. the missing part of digital asset trading and infrastructure for this institutional flow is on the privacy side. And so really cool to see this and basically this transaction is the beginning of the underscoring of the growing institutional demand for privacy preserving tools in digital asset markets uh and signals this broad kind of shift in momentum towards more adoption of confidential settlement standards. Guys, this is a no-brainer.

This is something that's going to just continue to happen and we expect this to accelerate. Um Aztec a privacy blockchain Zama privacy tools near is doing things with ZK and privacy for AI agents. Obviously we had Eric Vorhees on um at Nearcon and he talked a lot about that. So guys, I mean, look, privacy is going to accelerate as a result of the more positive regulatory clarity that we've had with regards into the post tornado cash kind of post onchain mixing era. Um, there's still some things that need to be worked out, kinks and that sort, but yeah, I mean, looking at trying to get privacy implemented more

and more into this space and into this market. So, big congrats to GSR and Zama, guys. Let's go, man. You guys are crushing it. [cheering] So, [applause] good work, guys. All right, let's move on here. Um, this is kind of the talk of the market right now. Very, very unfortunate. I actually had a Fortune reporter reach out to me, ask me for a comment on this specific topic. So, if you haven't heard, tooken 249 Dubai has been postponed. The event has been moved from April 2026 to April 21st and 22nd of 2027. I mean, if you guys have been seeing the drone videos of the absolute just pure sadness of these attacks on uh

residential buildings in Dubai, you'll you'll really get a sense of why people are fleeing this area. I actually put out a really viral tweet um several weeks back about how there's this kind of weird culty like environment in Dubai where uh there's a lot of like almost propaganda coming from the inhabitants about the whole area and the space and then now we've came to see more and more about how there's um actually rules and laws against uh public defamation if you will of Dubai of people leaving and so really unfortunate situation the escalating Middle East geopolitical tensions are impacting safety and logistics obviously and so existing

tickets will roll over to the 2027 uh Dubai event assuming that you know that everything deescalates by then. Also, you can transfer your tickets to token 2049 Singapore. We will be there in Singapore. It's one of my favorite events of the year. They should have sent you an email about it. If you're a speaker, you got an email to also switch over uh into the token 40 2049 Singapore. And yeah, I mean I think from a community perspective, you got to support this, right? Like you got to support safety first, community first. I think all of us are probably disappointed. I honestly, my heart goes out to Alex and the token team. I know that this is a massive revenue source

for their business. And look, I mean, outside of just Dubai, we talked about this with Frank on the show yesterday where there's this conference spectrum, right, of like Dev Connect, ETH Denver, all the way to like uh money 2020 in Vegas, fintech. In the middle, you've got things like Salt, um like Cyos, uh token, consensus, Miami this year, which I think is probably the most slept on conference. Miami has not had a banger conference since I think 2021, uh, Bitcoin conference. And so I think that's going to kind of be a good one.

But that spectrum there, I think there's kind of a bit of a shift from the, let's say, more developer inner echo chamberesque events. So some of these kind of like very uh DevConnect, DevCon, um very like cryptooriented things to now more kind of in the middle of the spectrum where it's like institutionally oriented. I think DAS fits in this. They've just raised their ticket prices. Uh apparently they're having a ton of demand from the institution side who are used to actually paying for tickets, right? That's another thing about conferences in crypto. Nobody wants to pay for the tickets for the main event because there's always so many side events. And so this kind of creates this

weird dynamic where you're not actually able to charge that great of prices to kind of like cryptonative folks. However, folks in the more institutional banking, fintech, legacy finance, uh, general finance area, they are more used to paying for tickets. And so there's kind of this shift happening. Our prediction as part of that regime shift episode is that we would expect this kind of like more techy uh you know kind of era of conference to shift or at least like kind of like bifurcate into more institutional finance um events and then actual kind of like hackathons dev events. So again guys I mean token

brings 15 to 25,000 crypto professionals into into one area in Dubai. It's a major. It's the biggest conference of the industry. My heart goes out to the team and to everybody in Dubai. Hope you guys are staying safe. Um, glad that we got to talk about this and again, heart goes out to the token team. Let's keep it rolling here. All right, guys. We got chain link. Uh, Ryan Lavell is describing blockchains as factories, data as oil, and chain link as the pipes delivering real world data.

Um, we talked about this yesterday, guys. Don't need to go, you know, too deep into it. I think obviously chain link is facilitating trillions of dollars in transaction volume across its network of products and they're crushing on the institutional adoption side. So, uh, I see this as a growing part of the entire chain link ecosystem and the crypto ecosystem at large. And yeah, if it's possible to uh just go ahead and play that video, I think it's going to be pretty helpful for for the audience to get a quick understand reliable compliant way. We're the pipes that carry that oil.

>> If you think of blockchains as factories and data is oil, you need to get the oil to the factory in a highly secure, reliable, compliant way. We're the pipes that carry that oil. If you think of blockchain factories and data is oil, you need to get the oil to the factory in a highly secure reliable compliant way. We're the pipes that carry that oil. >> If you think of blockchains as factories and data is oil, you need to get oil to the factory in a >> I wanted just to cover that just an interesting mental model to bring kind of like new ideas to how you guys are are thinking about these assets. Let's go ahead and move on. I think this next one is pretty interesting from uh Ethan,

I believe. Uh let's go ahead and pull it up here. And again, shout out to Shane Link. That uh Robin Hood clip did quite well yesterday. They were fired about that. Their their community always gets super fired up. Um yeah. So, up next, guys, we've got a little bit of market commentary from a former Goldman Sachs MD who traded natural gas for 12 years, who thinks systemic trading models can have fatal flaws when applied to commodities trading. I mean, I imagine how it could how could it could apply to crypto trading 24/7, way more volatile.

So, I just want to play this clip so you guys get an understanding of how kind of people are thinking about this idea of let me spin up an open claw, set a trading strategy, and make a ton of money. Not sure it's going to be that easy. We scroll down. This is a really, really good clip, and I think we should play for you guys. Basically, every quant who thinks they've solved regime detection needs to answer to this. >> Discretionary trading can be fully automated. Do you think that that's that's doable or do you think there's some nonlinearity so to speak with the human mind and thought processes?

>> Wow. Uh great question. Um, you know, one of the one of the aspects of a lot of these um either AI or algorithmic uh trading models is they they just look at the history of well they pull in a lot of data but for example you know think about the gold market like if you had this strategy running >> uh in 2015 or something like that uh there would not be a possibility of the gold market trading 4,000.

But from a discretionary perspective, uh you know, for kind of the real long buy and hold type people, uh to have that view that hey, this is a commodity that's going to uh go to an entirely different uh pricing regime. And actually, you know, what you've seen in kind of the last eight weeks or so with just, you know, prices going vertical, um, that is not found in the history of the gold market anywhere. And you, you would probably have been fading the market in week two or week three saying, "Wow, this thing is extremely overbought." Um, it it it doesn't it can't go up like this. It doesn't go up like this. But not only did it, you know, it carried on for another, you know, five weeks. And you know, we'll

see what happens this week, but I I think it's going green again. So, um yeah, the I think humans matter. Um you know, I've had a decent sized silver position on actually, which is uh you know, kind of like gold on steroids. Um and you know, silver broke through $50. It traded there when the Hunt brothers were cornering the market. It traded there again in in 2011. Um and it got up to this, you know, $50 level, this, you know, psychological level. Hey, it can't get through there. And then it went through. Uh now, it ended up retracing on Friday. Uh but, you know, that's a market that I think can trade over $100 within the next six months and potentially as much as $200. Uh if gold

continues going up the the uh not necessarily the way it is, but if it continues its its bull run. So, um, but that there's there's very few trading models that are going to, uh, say that other than kind of trend following models. Um, but those I'm guessing that's not quite quite uh what you're thinking about. You're thinking, okay, hey, the blackbox AI models taking in all the various uh data points. Um, yeah, I mean, it's hard because also like the markets change. Um, and the market structure on natural gas kind of seems like it changes every 3 to 5 years. And so if you've got pricing data from, you know, 8 years ago, that is going to generate a bad signal today,

you you'd rather not have that data because it's in an entirely different supply demand uh uh regime. And um but you know, when you take a step step back and say, okay, hey, my you know, I've been, you know, a gas trader for the better part of 20 years. And so I've seen, you know, I've seen when it's high, I've seen when it's low. I've seen it do crazy things. Um, and you know, a lot of the models just uh don't um uh sort of include all of that context.

>> Wow. So basically like what I gather from this is that if you are trying to just apply a strategy to a broad market like commodities like gold, you're just not going to like like the back testing of of all these algorithmic strategies. from my experience and and any uh seeing people do this or kind of like watching it, all I get is like very strong results in back tests and then when you put it in the real market with real money, it doesn't usually work as well.

And I mean, there's a lot more to it than just that in this clip. But yeah, these guys are on a these guys are on a different level. Um so all right, guys, let's keep it going here. We're going to move on from the uh oil and commodities market into the developer activity drop off. I think this is because of AI. I think there was a massive exodus and brain drain from crypto into AI. So we saw weekly open source crypto commits down 75% from 850K to 210K. Uh that was something that I mean is probably in line with the market as well as as well as maybe just a part of the broader shift that we're seeing in the

um focus point of developers, right? Like I literally just saw a video on Instagram yesterday of an old friend uh who used to work on a project with actually Robbie and he put out this video and he was like basically I'm I'm exiting my uh crypto company. I'm putting all my attention and focus on on coding into AI and ML. And so I think AI talent migration here is a huge part. If you scroll down, you can actually see the chart and just see the declining amount of developer activity activity in the space. Lower token prices reduces builder incentives. There was a lot of this kind of like bloat from grants that was happening as well for developers. I think that's changed um now and and

there's there's also more of like a verticalization of chains, right? So in the beginning of blockchain development from the uh chain ecosystem perspective, everyone was thinking about it like okay, I'm going to build the blockchain like the L1 or the L2. Then I'm going to go find people to build applications on my chain. Like I'm going to go and find people that are going to build the next decks and the and the lending market and all of that. The reality is the more kind of successful models have been verticalized. So the team that built the chain is going to build the the DEX or the leading product. And actually one of our port codes on our fund, you know, just unsolicited shill here, Rise. What

they've done is they've they've built Rise this Gigas L2 and then they've basically gone and built a enshrined per stacks into the actual chain itself. And so the the the same dev team that's building the chain is also trying to build the flagship app. And so I think there's also a shift in the way that development is happening in the space in terms of the let's just give out grants to build these kind of ecosystems without a focus and this kind of neutrality. There was this huge like look we're a neutral uh platform. We are arms open to anyone coming to build.

there was less like preference and less preferential treatment and less kind of like hierarchical bets on teams. Now obviously grants were given in various capacities based on the teams or the developers ability to execute and build something solid but the idea was open arms anyone can come build and you guys will get this equal kind of treatment and support. base went through this and struggled with a lot of their builders. Other chains did. And so I think part of this sure it is AI. It is this actual like shift in brain drain and shift in grants. But I think a lot of it is actually chain teams thinking about verticalization as a strategy and as a

business strategy and then actually giving preferential treatment to certain teams and taking bets on these teams from that perspective. So, if you're a cryptobull, you don't love to see this, but this is cyclical, guys. Like everything, if you look at the venture investing charts, if you look at the prices of the assets, if you look at the dev activity, they're often pretty aligned. And so I think that for me, I'm not too worried about this, but I think that the second and third order thinking here is is more about the the bigger shift in grants and verticalization as a strategy um as a result of this kind of like removal of governance and Dowo structures and more kind of top down decision-m and like speed and execution.

All right, guys. Let's move on to probably like the last thing that we'll cover today before we get Eli from 21 Shares, their head of research. The EF put a put out an EF mandate outlining the organization's guiding principles, the core values, censorship, resistance, open source code, privacy, and security. Again, I said earlier this week that I'm very excited that Ethereum is actually pushing this forward still. A lot of this regime shift evolution that we're talking about is kind of suffering from the losing of the core ethos. Like you're kind of losing the core ethos by doing some of this. Again, I don't think everybody is, but I think Ethereum is

staying firm on this side of the spectrum, saying like we are not giving up on any of this, where I think a lot of other blockchains, uh, Dows, teams are kind of moving all the way to like a a company structure with, you know, officers, shareholders, etc. And so, Ethereum just wants to continue to focus on on user self-s sovereignty and resilient coordination. That's something that their entire network is built upon. And yeah, the EF wants to operate as a nonprofit steward and they want to concentrate on high leveraged work. Very similar to what we just talked about about why dev activity is slowing. I think in a similar vein, Ethereum is also making more preferential concentrated bets on initiatives within

the road map rather than just kind of trying to have 25 to 30 workline items out at once and just kind of do whatever they feel is right. And so, look, I'm bullish. Um, I think that this is super important in the age of AI. you want to commit to subtraction for resilience gradually reducing EF's direct influence over the ecosystem. So I think if you guys keep scrolling down you can see a couple more of the key points here on the on the thread and yeah again Ethereum is framed as the world computer uh supporting long-term human freedom.

uh Vitalik obviously has this very very unique perspective on the world and on the future of the world and especially given into the kind of agentic world now as well. So, this was released today. Uh, early early reactions are still kind of coming about. Uh, and we're yet to kind of see how the community reacts, but I think all of these, my general take is that all of these initiatives from the EF have been rolling the ball in the right direction. And now we are at a point where that's just going to continue to compound in the in the right way. And so, look, I if you're an Ethereum builder, if you're an investor, you got to be excited and bullish on seeing these initiatives go through. Yet

to be seen how quick these can be implemented and really like at the scale, but time will tell. That's the Ethereum Foundation mandate. All right, guys. Moving on. I think we'll have our first guest, Eli, the head of research at 21 Shares, get ready to come up here shortly. Until then, one more thing here from Blockworks data is actually the hyperlquid trade.xyz growth. So, we talked about this on the regime shift and basically the hyperlquid based per market for non-crypto assets has been absolutely flying. uh we will continue to see this

do well as we get a rise in the um desire to trade tokenized commodities 247 and so yeah the OI increased 446% since January of 2026 the platform now holds 41% of total decentralized pered market OI as you can see in this chart It's absolutely up only to the right. And yeah, I mean guys, this is the 247 trading of RWAS, oil, equity indexes, and look, this is HIP3. This is the big thing that HIP3 enables. You and you

just got to be excited about trade XYZ is doing more volume on their own platform through Hyperlid than some of the entire per sexes themselves. I mean, come on. This is something that that you got to be excited about and you got to want to root for as part of the uh crypto e ecosystem and just general kind of space at large. So yeah guys, I think that wraps up our news segment of the day. Up next, we've got our friend Elizer. He is the head of research at 21 Shares. 21 Shares is a very unique company operating at the kind of like at

the fringe between uh traditional finance and DeFi and I'm sure Eli will have a ton of of different kind of like commentary about regulation about what's happening in the in institutional space and more and so happy to have him on and get into that. also the ETF landscape. Obviously being a big ETF issuer as well. And so we're live, guys. We're gonna have Eli come up and he's going to talk crypto markets, policy, and more.

Um, so we're going to get him up here and we're going to get this party started. Our one and only guest of of the day, Robbie, is still down in South Florida. He is getting ready for the big DC trip next week and we will be live from DC Tuesday, Wednesday next week at the DC blockchain summit. If you guys are there, come say hi. If not, we will be live from the actual main venue talking about clarity what's happening in the market structure bill, what this is looking like, getting a picture from the Dems, from the from the Republicans about what's happening at the landscape at large. And so guys, looking forward to that. I think we have our guest, Eli from 21 Shares, ready to come in. We're

gonna get him up. We're gonna get this show started. Looking forward to this one. Eli, welcome to the show, man. >> Thank you for having me, Andy. This is great to be here. >> Good to see you, man. Good morning. Happy Friday. H how was your week? >> Happy Friday. It's been hectic. Uh 247 like the crypto market. It's been good. >> Yeah, man. So I would love to learn about kind of what your week looks like. What is uh the head of research at 21 shares do? Is it is are you working with claude and doing perplexity financial modeling? Are you uh doing calls, talking to teams? What's your what's your role and how did you get here?

>> Sure. Thank you for having me first. And um we at 21 shares we run about$8 billion dollars in clients assets across the world for crypto ETFs like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, what have you. We've done that for the last eight years. Uh I've been in crypto for the last 11 years. Uh first as a VC and uh of course now as a funding team member of 21 shares and global head of research and our role is to make sure that we understand the client journey. Right. uh we're talking about some of the larger checks uh in the asset management space from private banks to family offices to even pension funds and even fast forward to insurance companies. So our focus is on really client education and

understanding of their journey where they are right now to better understand this asset class and they have a ton of questions right they're asking about the role of Bitcoin in a diversified portfolio bitcoin as a micro asset in these heightened geopolitical conflicts most importantly also how do we value Bitcoin does does Bitcoin have intrinsic value uh what would be the method for that right is Bitcoin similar to Ethereum and Solana and the others because there thousands of cryptocurrencies around the world. So our job is really to take these investors from zero to one uh starting with first principles giving them research in a cadence that they are used to whether it's weekly, monthly, quarterly so that they can really get

into this asset class starting with education. >> Yeah. Yeah man. I mean once you become this kind of like neutral education credible source for them they then want to you know use 21 shares for ETFs they want to you know leverage your social capital your network etc. And so I'm curious what that process kind of looks like, right? Like when you're working with these teams, it's probably on the digital assets team side or or something in in that realm. Like what is your kind of like research and education process actually unfold to look like on a weekly and monthly basis? Is this like seminars? Is it calls? and like what are what have what have been like the more

important and uh interesting topics that you've been able to like really get through uh to these you know clients and customers of 21 shares. It's a great question and you know Andy for the last eight years. Most of the questions have not really changed. Uh and actually the first question that the investors ask is whether cryptocurrencies are actually currencies. Uh and the answer is some of them no right. Some of them are actually hard assets like gold such as bitcoin while others are building app stores like the iPhone and Samsung so that we can have financial services built on top and over consumer applications. So the

research process really starts with these first principles and basic questions that the investors have oneonone series content right or even even like conference calls so that we can really guide them through. Um and then the second piece is about of course the new cycle and geopolitical conflict especially in this uh environment right now. They're really trying to understand the role of Bitcoin in a diversified portfolio when they compare it with gold and silver and oil and of course over assets as well. So our job is to really make sure that they grasp the news cycle. They actually get the rid of the noise so that they can really focus on

the signals. That's step two. And step three is to really look at of course the longtail assets but also making sure that the cryptocurrency space which is very much in its infancy has standardized analytics and information so that the investors can also understand cryptocurrencies like for example any publicly listed company earnings reports. We do also like the equivalent of earnings reports with blockchain analytics because the abduction technology is transparency. So we can make sense of the underlying data so that we can actually form signals for the investors and they can actually then understand Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana and others from a fundamental perspective when you're looking at revenue, cash

flows, user growth, etc. Right? So it's it's a I would say multi-layered research process but our job again is to always take the client angle and who they are in their journey and what type of client they are as well because a private bank and a hedge fund basically have a different I would say language to speak to but this is what we do really client centric and then providing education on the back of that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. you know, we are all waiting for Clarity Act to pass and the market structure bill. I'm curious, is there a lot of kind of hesitation and like, you know, restrictive thinking around the state of the regulatory

regime in digital assets today? like are we seeing kind of this hesitation this like oh we're just going to wait until there's a bit more clarity no pun intended on the market structure bill on on getting this through or is it just like full guns blazing like we want to do a PC for a product a blockchain you know stable coins etc like what is the institutional appetite as it pertains to the to the regulatory environment now >> um in my experience So far, I've never been more excited to see the institutional engagements that we've seen for the last at least couple of years since the launch of the world's

first Bitcoin ETF in the US. And the reason is because and as you can see with the data, this has been the best ETF launch ever since 1993 which shows again the pentup demand for this asset class specifically for Bitcoin and then also for the longtail assets that were able to be launched afterwards. Uh so when it comes down to you know the regulatory clarity that we're gaining right now from the Genius Act to then eventually the Clarity Act and also in other places like in Europe with Mika to be honest with you uh when you think about the phase in which we are right now in crypto we're in a phase where we finally get regulatory clarity.

uh investors were able to invest in this asset class uh using their banks and brokerage accounts the same way they were investing in invidia or the S&P 500 or any other publicly listed companies. So the regulatory clarity is pending um which is great and to me now we have all the infrastructure ready for investors to then once they have the ETFs being able to use the technology in a way that is sensible and that's why you see beyond PC's like real world assets being listed and traded on multiple venues whether it's one of the largest derivative marketplaces like hyperlquid where we've seen billions of dollars of volume for oil and silver as well as

gold but even also digital assets. And I think it shows again Andy that the world right now is beyond just thinking about crypto as a speculative asset class and an asset class that does not have regulatory harmony but now actually moving beyond that and understanding that missing out is actually a mistake rather than questioning the the existence of this asset class itself. So for me as an OG in this asset class, I'm more excited about the future than ever because definitely we have the infrastruct businesses. So that's really the beauty

of the uh phase in which we are right now. So to the investor's point of view, some of them are early in their journey. So they want to wait and see and that's normal. They want to have more information while others already deep in their toes one or two uh but really trying to uh delve more deep into using the technologies and of course investing in the asset class itself. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean speaking of investing in the asset class itself and I appreciate that actual thorough answer there on on kind of how they're thinking about the regulatory environment because from our perspective here in New York, I mean it's just guns blazing. It's it's just like let's go. And I think that, you know, Clarity and the market structure bill will kind of mark a line in the sand for this ongoing crypto

winter and just this state of limbo where we don't really know what these tokens are, what we're investing in. I think we'll get more like equity like structures on the token side. we'll get better uh clarity on what assets you know you can buy what you know what is a a security what you know what do buybacks and revenues look like from token structure perspective so there's a lot of these like things that are just kind of we've been operating in a gray area which I think is fine >> but this this line in the sand is coming and after this we're going to see a lot of more refined leaders in the market who are able to execute within this compliant way and do it far better than

those who were kind of operating in a regulatory arbitrageesque manner and it's going to be a widespread impact across the industry. See how h how that pans out. But I think a lot of the industry was built upon regulatory arbitrage. And so I'm a little bit frightened as to what's going to happen when we get actual clarity because I think there's a lot of a lot of businesses that are going to be kind of like the emperor with no clothes on. I mean, what's your thoughts on the state of onchain businesses? Obviously, hyperlquids is kind of like the like the golden goose. We'll see how long that lasts, but kind of what do you expect to change as the industry evolves postclarity from the onchain business

and the structure of these crypto token entity Dow structures. You know, yesterday we saw a cross put a proposal to move towards more of like a Ccorp rather than a Dow structure. What what do you anticipate to happen postclarity act as we grow into more onchain businesses that are operating in a in a uh compliant manner? Is it going to be you know operate like this or get left behind or is it going to be more of this gradual transition? How do you anticipate this kind of like evolution of the tokens of the token market in the space?

>> So I would say from a investor point of view it would feel like everything happened all at once. While it took a village and ages to get there, right? When you think about the first Bitcoin ETFs traded now in the US 2024, it's been 10 years since the first filing of the Winkle Boss brothers, but it feels like an overnight success of course given the scale of the Bitcoin ETFs, right? So, when it comes to the onchain businesses, um eventually we're going to just call them businesses, right? So the blockchain technology itself is going to be moved back to uh being invisible uh and away from the complexity that we have today right whether it's bridging

assets from Ethereum to Solana or any of layer ones is incredibly complex and I do believe that you know poly market for example is is the best archetype right when when you think about it my own mother is actually using poly market to follow elections to follow the state of the world uh process so I do think that the fact that she doesn't know that it's a blockchain based business, but she has the information and the the data that she needs is exactly where we're headed. Then structurally when it comes to the tokens I do believe that nothing changes a blockchain based startups to an AI based startup or a robotics based startups because at the end of the day what matters is solving a worldchanging

problem that many people actually are facing and your solution at a global scale is able to materially change people's lives. So the long story short is that these blockchain businesses would have to solve fundamentally something that people want and build something that people want. Um, and that's where you're going to see then that the blockchain based uh protocols that are able to have real revenue, cash flows and fundamental uh, you know, user growth not subsidized by airdrops or going to be the ones uh, incredibly successful. Um and it it will come down to of course token economics

uh being well designed and aligned with the community aligned with also probably as to your point you know sharing revenue as well as we've seen with the proposal of a or even unis swap but I do think that when any investors are going to look at blockchain based business the fundamentals are going to be the same as any venture capitalist looking at an AI company right So u this is what matters the most to look at the addressable market the margins and whether this business can actually make a real revenue in a world where the development of software has become so cheap uh thanks to AI and VIP coding right so I do think that even beyond

crypto itself AI and the enablement of building businesses overnight within hours thanks to you know places like cursor replet where you can build a business from scratch not even understanding for example Node GS or or React is is fundamentally a different game place uh that we experienced before. Uh but long story short investors are still going to investigate and evaluate businesses the same way. uh and that's why you know businesses like conveys, body market and kraken um are incredibly successful today and the VCs are actually fundamentally quite similar to the ones that are traditionally investing just in SAS or AI or or robotics. Yeah, but

that's the scary part is that there's been an a narrative kind of um hype investing practice ongoing and we're shifting now to pure fundamentals. I call it the the return to fundamentals. >> Yeah. >> So, >> I mean it is it is a culling of the fat, a trimming of the fat, uh a reorganization and a consolidation. And so I think from the investor perspective, diversification as a strategy may come back, but I think it's a consolidation of the portfolio into majors and then cash flowing assets that have uh real business models on chain.

And so getting to the majors, you guys just put out or the 21 shares US uh X account just put out a post. I don't know who needs to hear this today, but the macro trend is officially healing. global flows across ETPs and ETFs flipped positive for the first time last month since October 2025. Um so for for the entire year of 2025 almost from or at least from April onwards we had billions of dollars of inflows anywhere from three and a half to 12 billion dollars of inflows into these global ETFs and ETPs.

November we saw uh three and a half billion outflow. December, $200 million outflow. January, about a billion dollar outflow. And then February, we saw a $500 million inflow. What's happening here? I thought institutions had this long-term time horizons. Why is there outflows? Did they buy the top? Are they rebying more? Who's actually buying 21 shares ETPS? Who is the main drivers of the ETF uh, you know, complex at large? what's happening here. So um in the US specifically you know the the market is gated by financial advisors or RAAS

right um and then when you think about the breakdown of the investment cycle you've got of course family offices and high net of individuals investing through uh these financial advisors and then on the other side you've got no prop funds and hedge funds uh that do bet on volatility and and trade of course the basis trade So the futures the differential role between the futures and the spot market specifically uh and then on the lagger side you have uh you know pension funds and insurance companies and university endorments and you've seen the biggest news of uh you know the the last quarter which was the Harvard University endorment investing significantly in Bitcoin and then

diversifying also uh with ether as well right so I would say long story short you've got a multitude of uh investor types uh from you know like the university endorments to the insurance companies and pension funds as well as of course hedge funds and and family offices through raas and this is basically the breakdown uh but when when it comes to the outflows it's absolutely normal to see outflows right like people have different time horizons but on average when you look at the the flows of bitcoin ETFs uh bitcoin has been down by more than 40% from the peak of October 2025. But when you have the aggregated uh outflows, it's just 5% down. And 5% down compared to 44% down

shows again strength and a long-term view on this long duration asset class specifically for Bitcoin. Um and I do think that this is really the great news right now that investors are buying into strength. Yeah, I mean right now we've we're actually seeing the market kind of hold up in the midst of this kind of broader bad news. Do you think that there's um a dilution issue happening here with ETFs, ETPs, DATs, um and other kind of like derivativeesque products that you can buy on like a typical Schwab account or uh through a broker versus just going on a uh exchange or onchain and buying ETH or buying Bitcoin. Like at the end of

the day, all all this capital kind of gets funneled into these assets themselves. But there's been this kind of like ongoing conversation on our show and on different podcasts that I've listened to about how like if we didn't have all these different ETHATs and all these different uh you know crypto dats, we could maybe have more buy pressure directly on the asset and that all these kind of like derivatives of the actual asset itself kind of are taking retail's attention and kind of spreading it out and and diluting it. Is there any truth to that or how do you think about the kind of evolving ways to get exposure to the digital assets market?

>> So I think that's first of all to take a step back for your audience that's are fundamentally different from um exchange related funds or exchange related products. Um they are more of a levered bet on bitcoin through equity rather than buying directly bitcoin itself. So I would say it's more like a Bitcoinbacked levered bet rather than actually buying directly into Bitcoin through an exchange or buying for example a proxy of Bitcoin through an ETF that is 100% backed and follows the daily performance of Bitcoin like a bitcoin ETF right so first of all that's a fundamentally different and I do think that this is for a different type of investor um um and that's why for us yes

it's possible that if we didn't have that uh we would have probably more buying pressure into these ETFs. But I do think that the fact that we have a variety of investment vehicles to have a direct or indirect exposure to Bitcoin is because there's a market demand for that, right? And certainly we've seen the rise of that. Um that explains and and speaks volumes of that demand. Um so for us you know we are targeting a an investor base that wants to have direct exposure to Bitcoin fully collateralized via you know a beta strategy like we have and then there are that really provides a le bet or a bitcoin back le bet and that's totally fine and this is

what the market would want but then in the long run for the dads I do believe that we're going to see consolidation into the larger ones uh because there are of course different ways to have exposure to Bitcoin and of course some of them didn't perform so well when you look at the MNAV. >> Yeah. Yeah. So then kind of like piggybacking on that from your perspective at 21 shares where are investors showing the strongest appetite today? Is it just Bitcoin? Is it ETH? Is it um wanting to invest into certain platforms in like early stage? Is it any of these kind of IPOs? like what is the what is the demand appetite spectrum look like in the conversations with institutional capital like what does

that actually look like today? >> It's a phenomenal question Andy. Um and what we've seen so far is that on average we've seen of course more demand for Bitcoin in this height and geopolitical conflict. Uh especially over the last I would say couple of weeks and three weeks. uh certainly the the performance of Bitcoin over the last week is a testament to uh the spent up demand for an emerging store of value that could be complimentary to gold as in Bitcoin. Um but when you think about you know the scurve of the adoption of the asset class there are investors that are very early or were very early in the asset class and they are moving way beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana and

some of them already bought into for example Hyperlid through our product suites. uh while others are looking at also doubling down on bitcoin, doubling down on a and others. So I would say it's a mix in the long tail but I would say for the long tail it's been more selective as we mentioned previously. Investors are really paying attention to cash flows to user growth and the fundamental uh analysis and business models of these protocols. Well, right now when it comes to Bitcoin um and as an asset class itself, many investors are looking at these opportunity costs compared with AI, robotics and biotech because of course AI has actually performed really well and Bitcoin was almost like on the back

burner compared to gold and AI and not the main character when you look at the uh at the keys that the investors can invest in and love. But I do think that uh the uh the education the demand for education for crypto assets including Bitcoin and and the longtail assets is right now at an all-time high. The investors are asking a lot of information because they actually want to learn. um they want to understand they also had exposure in the past and sometimes even for the older investors they have younger generations as in their kids or grandk kidss they're super into this asset class and are demanding or uh asking more questions around it.

So I do think that this is great for uh companies like 21 shares and even for my role as head of research to really provide uh as necessary as possible information for the investors to guide them through 0ero to one or one to 10 or 10 to 100 for the 10 to 100 is more of the longtail assets but selective um yeah and I would say hyperlquid and a and unis swap and some of the cash flow driven businesses had performed uh pretty pretty well when it comes to to to the flow that we've seen.

>> Yeah. I'm I'm curious if there's any demand for like kind of the L1 trade still like are people looking at the kind of metaf's law network effects like this is the underpinning of the of the ecosystem or like like what's the state of the blockchain trade or L1 trade within the lens of the in institutional kind of landscape? >> Yeah, it's a it's a phenomenal question. Um I would say the L1 trade compared to 2021 um on a scale is very different right it's much lower than what we've seen in 2021 and partly because in 2021 we had no massive liquidity in the market uh

because of the co9 pandemic um and the fiscal policy but also at the same time um what we've seen is that there were a plethora of layer ones that came out of that time with massive air drops sometimes nine 10 figures airdrops to incentivize investors to to get into the ecosystem. Uh and right now when investors are looking at the layer ones uh they're really looking at the cash flows, the new users and the business models. >> Yeah. And even like the dilution as well from the air drops too, right? So they're looking at circulating supply compared to max supply. But to respond to your question, uh the L1 trade is still there because we've seen demand for products like for example Canton. Uh

we've seen also demand for products like Solana as well as even a especially because now FM has more of a layer one focused road map rather than a layer 2 road map. Um, so the L1 trade is still there, but again, investors are incredibly careful around token economics and the fundamentals. >> Yeah. Yeah. Ellie, man, thank you for spending some time with us today. Um, hope the ETF and ETP growth continues to run and uh I'm sure you've been a lot a lot busier than you've been in the past.

I'm not sure how long you've been with 21 shares, but but I imagine the last 6 to 12 months have been absolutely absolutely nuts. I mean, just one week here in New York and you you you get off Twitter a bit and you get into person, you put the suit on and you talk to people and you're like, "Wow." Okay. Certainly is not a bare market in this kind of sphere and sector. So glad you're here, man. And uh thanks for joining us. >> Thanks for having me, Andy. It's been a pleasure. >> Yeah. Cheers, man. [cheering] We'll see you next time. Signing off. All right, buddy. All right, guys. Up next, we're going to do a little insight into the pulse of the markets. We're going to have our producer panel, local in-house, little rollup TV intern joining in here.

Uh, looking forward to this. Ellie had a lot of things to say. I mean, I was most whenever I talk to these folks that are like on the edge on the institutional side, it's mostly interesting to like hear about what is happening from their perspective with the conversations. What are those conversations looking like? What are they talking about? You know, what like what are these guys buying? A lot of them have to put up like public reports and kind of like like here's what we did, here's what we're buying, here's what we're launching. Um, but a lot of it, I think, is kind of what we could probably assume like majors, Bitcoin, like they stay very strong.

Lwan's non-cash flow generating tokens not as much. And so yeah, I mean that's like that's kind of the state of the institutional side and then also obviously on the kind of like DAT ETF ETP side. So good segment guys. We're getting a little pulse of the market here from Aton. He's calling in from the producer panel uh here in the nest. So why don't we bring him up and uh get a little sense of what's going on in in the market. That's on there.

Yo, feels good to be here. How you doing? >> What's going on? First show, man. >> First show. Feeling good. Stoked to be here at the tokenization tower in the heart of Finance. So, let's get it uh started already. Pump Fun. Yesterday, we had Alfonso from Crossman and he was talking about Agentic agents and the what's going to go down with it. This morning, Pump Fun actually announced onchain agents are taking over. So you're going to be able to make your own token for your agent on Pump Fund, meaning it could be >> Okay. So agent So launch an agent and then use Pump Fund to launch a token for the agent.

>> Correct. And this isn't like you're going to be able to make the agent through Pump Fund. You're able to import it from Open Claw Claude, set up a set set up a token for it in Pump Fun. And if it's a revenue generating agent, you're going to be able to set up automated buybacks for these tokens for the purchases. >> Oh wow. So, so like if you have an active open claw, you can launch a token on it like like what we saw kind of do you remember the 2024 November like uh what is it? Zero bro crazy pumps and and that kind of >> AI6. Yeah. So, funny enough, that was the second thing I was going to bring

up. 20 hours ago, our favorite law firm, Burwick Law, had mentioned that they are seeking to sue them. I don't know how they're going to sue AI agent or whoever, but they're going to go after them because >> what? >> Yeah. Burwick Law, right? AI6Z is down 99% from its peak from two billion down all the way to 10 million down 99.6%. So, they're going to be actively pursuing that. I don't know how >> those guys are so funny. You see those videos that they do where it's like the guy with the bald head and and he's like dancing and then they're like in the office and like we're suing Pump Fun.

Here we go. Here we go. Um, dude, how how do you sue an AI agent like AI6Z? Because isn't that that that's that Shaw guy, >> right? I I don't know if it's like the agent or it's the person who makes it. Like I'm curious like with Pump Fund there's there's bound to be like hundreds thousands of these tokens with like revenue generating agents and it's going to be funny like god forbid if there's any like liability inside the products then like who's going to be liable? Is it pump fun? Is it the agent? So it's going to be interesting to see how this goal gets rolled out. Man, hump fun agents and tokens now. They are so quick to be on everything, right? Like creator coins were hot. Now it's Aentic

Finance. They have the creator launchpad, the fee split, all that, right? Like what happened to creator coins? Like, no one does those anymore. I don't know. >> I think I think we'll see a comeback with it. I think that every single time they just tend to go towards zero. So, it's not really a win-win for either the creator or the viewer because like if the token just goes to zero, then there's no really incentive for even people watching or the creator. I think it's just like a negative connotation. Just look at Gainy. He had that fat finger >> and like it's been the down ever since.

>> Dude, Gain streams, man. Those are amazing. >> Yeah, they're still amazing. He fat fingered it. token went from like 7 million all the way down to like under a million 200k. So like once it like rugs like if you have a draw down or like 90%. I've never seen where like a token like goes from 90 like such a high market cap draws down 99% and making a comeback. Just take a look from Bag Works all these different creator coins so hot. They're taking PJs to like fights boxing events and now like it's you don't even hear about them. So >> I guess we'll see. This >> didn't you say something about uh Jim Kramer before we jumped on today? He said something about 2008 or something, >> right? I was mentioning that. Funny

enough, he said he's not buying the 2007 hype, meaning that preceding the 2008 and like financial crisis, mortgages crisis, the stock market had hit like its high of highs. >> And he's warning that like, >> okay, we're going to go into 2026, 2027, and it's going to be the same thing. Lucky for us, anytime that you inverse trade whatever Kramer's saying, you tend to make money. So, I I see this as like a bullish bullish bullish bullish signal. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, thanks for the update. Um, pump fun. I I did see that on my timeline. I I think I saw the Kramer thing. How How's the markets looking? It's I think it's pretty green

today. Liquid is still looking good. >> Hype P liquid's always going to look good. Crude oil is trading like it's a memecoin and just trading like however Trump's tweeting. He's like, "All right, I think he just sent I think I just saw he deployed >> like 20,000 marines to Iran. >> So I So crude oil is reacting to that where it's like oil is just having 20%. >> It It's I think it hit 100. I don't know if it >> geez, man. >> Spiked down, but it it was moving like >> good for gas prices. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. All right, we're gonna wrap up here. It's It's a happy Friday at the Rollup TV. We have a full slate next week, we're going to be in DC. Um you'll be here ripping

the producer panel live. Um, and yeah, we have we have two days of policy conversations at the end of the week or sorry, at at the beginning of the week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, we'll be live here from the nest and then back Thursday here in New York. Uh, Thursday, Friday. Guys, just just going to close out the week here a bit and just kind of roll into closing remarks. This was the first week of the nest of the show and we really [screaming] [cheering] we really just pushed it. I mean, we had an accelerated timeline. We wanted to do things as fast as as we could, but still do them right. Um, and yeah, I mean, we really wanted to just get this out. I

mean, I'm getting texts back from people about small things to change, add more sounds, the the lighting here, this that. I mean, we're operating on guest management, um, you know, camera management, all of the sorts. And so this is the beginning of the eventual growth of this company to be really on the forefront of the live broadcast kind of Bloombergesque young generation. And so look guys, we're going to keep getting better. We fixed the window panel. We got our new uh little uh guy holding the world. Got our bonsai tree. Got got the AC in order. We're working on it, guys.

Excited to keep this thing cranking. Have a great weekend. Stay safe out there. Stay off the leverage slider and hope you guys enjoyed this week on Rollup TV live from Tokenization Tower. Once again, shout out to Plume. Shout out to Plume. Absolutely crushing it. And guys, we'll see you fresh and early Monday 12:30 p.m. Eastern live Monday to Friday. See you guys on Monday. [screaming] [cheering] >> [music] [music] [music]