Where to invest when most projects fail scrutiny, with Ryan Connor

Transcript

and equity per is a new asset. Just doing spot won't be enough because I can trade spot anywhere. But the ability to get like unique exposure via that kind of perpetual futures leverage is it's a new product and um it's something that stratifi can't offer right now, right? So like taking advantage of that regulatory arbitrage in crypto I think is like is is critical and I think you can have a really big company and I think like a winning ecosystem will be crowned whoever executes on that vision. 2025 saw hundreds of billions of dollars chasing the latest crypto IPOs. But could 2026 be the year that ICOs make a comeback? What's the difference? Why does it matter? And why is this so important for investors to understand?

Hello and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that knows that whether it's an initial public offering or an initial coin offering, the rules are the same. Buy low, sell high. I'm your host, John Gill, and today is Thursday, January 29th, and today we are joined by Ryan Connor. Ryan is the head of research at Blockworks Research, where he focuses on cryptocurrency analysis, contributes to thought leadership on trends and innovations in the crypto space, and frequently speaks at industry events, sharing insights on blockchain developments, and a lot of other things. Brian is going to give us a ton of insider alpha on crypto today. So, if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. Today's episode is brought to you by Bridge. Send stable coin payments instantly simple global friction-f

free, and chain link links web 3 to Wall Street. And without further ado on this Red Candle Day, welcome to the Milk Road Show. Ryan, how are you, sir? >> I'm good. Thanks for having me on. >> Well, I'm glad to have you here. Uh, today has been a kind of a brutal day in the markets. There's a lot of craziness going on, not just in crypto, but across the board. Um, but I I did want to just start with that and get your thoughts on this here today. Bitcoin, I think, has now lost um the 83K level or is around 83K. Ethereum has lost $2,800. So, we're seeing a big dip in the markets today. Um, you're head of research for one of the best crypto data and analytics firms in the world. Uh, are we in a bare market? Are we going to see crypto

recover? What's your read on where we are and what's going on with this price action here? >> Yeah. So, you know, I think look, it's a it's an extraordinary it's an extraordinarily volatile space. So level setting and stepping back is really really helpful um to not get shaken out of these trades. You know, I think you've seen the research where, you know, folks show that if you miss like the two or five, you know, biggest gain days in a year, you might miss all the returns, right? So, staying invested is incredibly important and that necessitates zooming out. Um, I don't think that you could have an opinion on crypto without having an opinion on traditional macro. I think it's almost

impossible to just look at crypto markets and not look at other markets because crypto is integrated. It's highly correlated with the NASDAQ. People with Trafi portfolios have crypto and increasingly people with crypto portfolios on Trafy assets and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that later, but you like these these things are connected. So what do you have to do? You have to look at the macro. And I think really only two thing look I was on Milk Road I don't know six months ago. I probably said the same thing. I've been saying it for a long time. Um the only only two things matter um for risk assets generally the risk appetite and animal spirits around AI matter and the fact that we have deregulation for

crypto in the United States matters. Nothing else matters for crypto assets. And on the risk side or sorry the risk appetite side or like you think of the as like traditional you know business cycle side of things. Um there's nothing in macro that's pointing to a slowdown. Uh you know the VIX is at a healthy level. High yield spreads are pretty tight. Could get tighter. Um the Fed just forecasted you know 5% GDP growth, a level that we haven't seen since I think 2014 and then before that 2003 and those were only you know one quarter a piece. You know, the ISM has plenty of room to run to the upside after many quarters negative and the unemployment

rate is pretty steady and it's doing something that's never done in its history where it's just basically going sideways and not going up. Um, and the reason is because AI is so important and impactful. I think over 50% of that GDP growth that the Fed's forecasting is attributable to the the AI boom in the US and that's going to keep animal spirits really high and that's going to be good for risk assets. On the crypto side, it's been like a pressure cooker on crypto. I mean the, you know, the Gensler regime uh had its boot on the neck of crypto for a long time. that boots off and um you know you're seeing the consequences

of that with tradey entering the marketplace with RWA issuance at all-time highs with spot deck volumes at all-time highs with product experimentation and like highquality founders building you know on Salana and ecosystems like bass so you know taking a step back from the one day 6% like decline that we're seeing in markets today which is you know which is significant ificant the um it's like all systems go. I don't think that there's a better time to be invested in the in this industry.

>> Everything you're listening to today is also covered in our daily crypto newsletter. And on Sundays, we even recap the best parts of the entire week's worth podcast. So check it out at the link below. >> I really appreciate that context and framing. Uh and I think it's important to take that more macro view of the market, especially on days like today. Um what are you seeing in terms of these fundamentals and these all-time highs? you said in terms of volume and adoption and um this improving fundamental landscape, what are you seeing in terms of that translating into actual impact on the price and valuation of these digital assets and an increased appetite and demand for crypto and for block space in general?

>> Yeah, so you have to pick your spots. Look, crypto is coming from a a pretty weird position um that you haven't seen much in like the history of finance um as as far as I can tell where you had a very isolated set of participants in crypto markets that behaved in very suboptimal ways that made weird things happen in markets. We all remember Yeah, exactly. We Yeah, we we know what we're talking about, right? like tokens. People in crypto were rewarding tokens for doing nothing, like bringing nothing to the table. And all you needed to have in 2021 was a story and a token and some branding and you could walk away a

multi-millionaire and get a 20 billion valuation on your token, right? That's no longer the case. So, you know, Blockworks has been pretty well ahead of this trend uh on the research side especially. Look, we were like, you know, telling subscribers and, you know, tweeting and 24 and and increasingly in 25 that like look as the marginal dollar into crypto is a sophisticated market participant and not a retail market participant that just wants to punt things. um that the that the market mechanics are going to change, that you're going to be rewarded for doing different things and the industry is slowly waking up to um you know, the fact that the token structures

have been in many cases predatory, the fact that the business models have been highly sub-optimal, and now it's time to build for um real installed bases um on Phantom and MetaMask and in Tradfi. Um, you have to be thinking about asset managers that want to touch crypto and what's important to them. Uh, you want to be thinking about the next retail, uh, the marginal retail user that wants like a snappy UX and and doesn't want to, you know, click the button 12 times to do their transaction um, or bridge from chain, you know, A to B. So, it's a it's a new game and you're seeing a lot of the incumbents, they weren't prepared for that new game. So, you have to wash

that out. days like this are partly the result of that, right? Like they're partly the result of that and you're going to have that kind of pressure in the market for a long time, but you're also going to have some bright spots. Like we know the tokens that are the bright spots that are compounding, that have like real teams that are making real revenue. Um so, so you have to pick your spots like again incredibly bullish on crypto, but that doesn't mean like buy an equal weighted basket. That doesn't mean buy the whole market. Like you have to think about who was building for V1 of crypto, call it the 2009 to 2023 era, 2024 era, and then who's building for like the V2 era, which which is um you know the more Trafi

oriented product market fit era. >> Gotcha. So what I'm hearing you saying is that the the everybody's a genius season, you know, anybody in crypto gets $20 billion valuation. that season's behind us and now we're in a season where we're having to look for real value, real economic value um and lasting um uh value ads in the market here. Um I think that's a sign of maturation something. It is one of these bright spots that you mentioned uh even on this week when most of the digital asset space is is very red. Hyperlid is up now I believe somewhere around 50 55% on the 7-day chart. Um which is enormously strong performance. It seems like traders are coming back to the platform following their HIP 3 upgrade.

Um, I've seen you talking about perpetuals for equities. Um, and I thought this might be a good place to start with this. Um, just, you know, what are your thoughts on hyperlquid at this moment? What do you think is driving that huge valuation in price and why are you so interested in perpetual futures contracts for equities here? >> Yeah, so I think taking a step back, equities are the most exciting and newsworthy asset class on planet Earth. like there are entire media networks built around those businesses and online communities built around sorry built around those securities. They're very transparent. They work very well. Um and there's a ton of like we live in an incredible time um in technology. The world's going to completely change. Um a

lot of the most exciting companies are going to go public. You know, the hyperscaler and semiconductor landscape and that whole supply chain is shifting dramatically and you're seeing really strong returns. So like that like it was always an exciting asset class but like it seems like it's going to get even more exciting with AI and um so like how can crypto capitalize on that? To me it's like very obviously one way to do it that I think could have like really profound implications for both the app layer and the ecosystem like level is um equity per there's a lot of PMF there in that it's a new asset and equity per is a new asset. just doing spot won't be enough because I can trade spot anywhere. Um, but the ability to get

like unique exposure via that kind of perpetual futures leverage is it's a new product and um it's something that TRFI can't offer right now, right? to like taking advantage of that regulatory arbitrage in crypto I think is like is is critical and I think you can have a really big company and I think like a winning ecosystem will be crowned um whoever executes on that vision and you can see that you know these teams are shipping whether it's you know AIM or Hyperlid or you know the teams that are building in the Salana ecosystem everyone everyone believes this and they they want to execute on that market um you're seeing you're starting to see that takeoff on Hyperlid like it's still very early days you're also starting to see a take off on Solana with X stocks.

Now, that's a spot asset, but you know, directionally, um, you know, you're kind of seeing it come together. Look, I don't I don't know what's going to happen with Hyperlid. You know, the regulatory ARB is going to help for some time. I think there's some problems with the story now. Like, look, I'll preface all this with saying, Hyperlid's one of the best tokens and teams out there without question. I think if you have a liquid portfolio, like it's very obvious that hype's in it. Um there are some risks to the thesis. It's like one that perp traders will go anywhere. They are they're very fleeting. They they have no allegiance to a platform. They'll go anywhere. So you have to keep shipping. The second issue is that the regulatory arbitrage gap can close and the competitors that

hyperl call it CME or whoever they have very large installed bases you know and you know as does Robin Hood right they can easily compete when that regulatory um gap closes. And [clears throat] then um I think the other issue is that like I think like other ecosystems like Salana are pretty well positioned as well. Salana uniquely has equity spot assets on chain that are doing you know I think according to RWXYZ like 130 million volume dollars in volume per week and it's up and to the right now like why is that important? It's important because for market makers to participate they need a way to hedge and they need a way to move money very seamlessly between the assets they are hedging. So to have them all on Salana

where you know the settlement times are sub 1 second is very advantageous versus hedging on a trady venue like you would have to do um if you were like market making on Hyperlid over the weekend for example you'd be exposed. So you know it's anyone's game. I think Hyperlid is here to stay. I think it's a fantastic story, but a lot can change. A a lot can change and there could be many winners and you know I'm excited to see it play out. >> So maybe just as you're very familiar with this landscape and with these these um participants in the market maybe just for our audience try to frame this competition a little bit more clearly for us. You know you've mentioned Hyperlid Salana and you mentioned some Trady names like the the the CME. Do you

see more competition emerging from Tradfi if like you know we get this market structure bill passed? Do you see like some of these legacy finance players starting to bring out purpose futures for equities and bringing that into the competition space? Basically like frame who's winning right now and and who are the players and what's what's at stake basically. >> Yeah. I mean it's it's it's a it's a massive market. Look, I think that you could have you could have many like Peros has obviously seen PMF. We've kind of seen it for a long time in crypto, but it became very very obvious in 24 and 2025. And if you own the user and you're very close to the user, you can, you know, hopefully if things go the way that they're trending in the US regulatory landscape, like the CFTC will

issue guidance on how to um and how to enable these markets and who can participate and who can't and the risk management systems that you need to participate and um Robin could can flip a switch and launch that product and and they had they have uh I an installed base of, you know, 10 or 12 million MAUs that they could that can trade crypto and they love trading options, right? They'll probably want to trade per same thing with Coinbase. Same thing with, I don't know, SoFi, like they can radically transform their business by plugging into these permissionless APIs on chain and um and and give their customers something new to do, you know,

fight for that market share. So I think it's going to be a little fragmented for some time, but who knows? >> Who knows? It's it's it's it's all about um it's all about product once you get regulatory clarity. >> Gotcha. Yeah. So I think that this is a thing we're seeing in a lot of places in digital assets is that there are new and emerging products and services um things that are finding product market fit and then there tends to be this huge competition and fight over market share to capture and defend that. So we'll see how these things play out. Um, you know, I mentioned IPOs in crypto were a big thing that happened in the markets in 2025. Um, but there was also the Metadow ICO. Um, and I was curious to hear your thoughts on this. Um, you know, do you see this pivot happening back to ICOs?

Like this is something the SEC sort of killed off, but you know, Metadow was able to do this. Do you think that there's going to be more ICOs happening in the digital asset space or just in general? And like how do you see this balance between IPOs or ICOs happening as we move forward here? Yeah, I think I think if you were, you know, if you were in the crypto markets and 24 and especially in 25, like it's no doubt that the the ICOs are sorry, no doubt in 2024 that the the ICOs are back. It's clearly like a wedge for crypto to be able to permissionlessly amass capital on the internet. Now, like I think they're framed in the context of IPOs and I I don't really don't think that they're the same at all. I think it's like apples and oranges. Um, I think the

IP the IPO is a completely different thing, right? It's like you're mature. It's the gold standard. You're raising a lot of capital. You're you're raising patient capital. Like you want um you know, you want um a foundation or like a large asset manager to like buy your token or sorry, buy your equity and uh and perhaps hold, you know, one or two percentage points, maybe five percentage points for decades, right? like it's very different capital base. So like you know what's the wedge for crypto builders? It's uh allowing I think like seed and preede stage founders to raise a little bit of capital from a lot of

people on the internet. And you know why do I think it's that? It's like well I think there are a lot of things that could get funded especially in the age of vibe coding that don't need a lot of capital. You don't need as many people to to do a startup. And if you don't need a lot of capital, you might not be the right size for a venture style outcome. Like these guys raise tens of millions on the low end, very very low end, hundreds of millions typically, could be in the billions. And um they need to, you know, your investment needs to return the fund. And I think there are a lot of things that aren't supposed to return the fund because they're not supposed to get that big. So who like who's you know well positioned to kind

of fund those founders it's retail but they're it's effectively illegal today. So again regulatory arbitrage like let's spin up permission permissionless capital markets on chain where a founder can raise you know 500,000 3 million 5 million bucks um at a very low valuation and um you know make a make a cool app make a product that you know generates a few million in revenue a year. I think that that's I think that that's I think that that's the wedge for crypto and then maybe it becomes something bigger.

But like the way that you have to attack it is you have to go for an underserved area of the market which is that kind of like micro founder. Stable coins are reshaping the financial order but most companies don't have the opportunity to participate in the rewards they generate. Plus launching a stable coin means wrestling with complex regulations, building bespoke infrastructure and burning endless developer hours. Enter Bridge and its new product, Open Issuance. Bridge lets companies send, store, accept, and even launch their own stable coins instantly. Seamless fiat to stable coin flows, control over reserves and rewards, [music] and full interoperability across every bridge issued token. No more patching payment rails, no more monthslong [music] launches. Visit milkroad.com/bridge to see how it works.

ETFs provide investors with a structured, disciplined, and diversified approach to crypto, which is cool, but the world is moving on chain. We need a crypto native equivalent. That's exactly what Reserve's decentralized token folios bring to the table. Reserve ETFs are rule-based baskets of crypto assets packaged into a single token like Coin Market CMC20, crypto's version of the S&P 500. Go to milkroad.com/reserve to find out what's on offer. One of the big ethoses of the digital asset space is this idea of decentralization. You know, historically a big criticism of ICOs was that it gave a lot of power to the centralized exchanges that were hosting those ICOs. And like the way that you go about doing your ICO is is somehow, you know, like that matters in

terms of people being able to trust that it's a fair launch and that they're not being just like, you know, used as exit liquidity. Um, and I think some people are concerned that with these ICOs there's going to be more power concentrated in in centralized exchanges and that retail investors are just going to be like kind of mowed down in these ICOs. Um, so I was wondering if you had thoughts on that or maybe just how retail investors protect themselves if they want to participate. >> Yeah. Yeah. The way that you pro that the way that you protect yourself is you either go to a direct listings platform that has a good reputation or you you you you buy the ICO on Metadow. You know, I think that there are three kind of players in the like the ICO space.

It's like the bonding curves is the direct listing platforms and then it's the um and then it's metad just a categorically different business model. Like the bonding curves like they'll allow you to access these like very early stage opportunities but there's a ton of adverse selection because nothing's baked into the token. Like you need token holder protections baked into the actual instrument. Um, you could go to direct listings platforms and they will screen for the higher quality founders, but the way that they do that is they kind of go up they kind of go up like in the stage, right? Like so they'll derisk an opportunity by like, okay, it's a series B company and they're launching a token, right? But then like you don't have as much upside. The way that um

retail can protect itself is by participating in an ownership coin ICO where token holders and the market can take back the funds if the token issuing entity is you know underperforming investor expectations so egregiously and um you know it also ensures that their comp their token comp is tied to token performance and KPIs right so you know I think the V1 predatory model is like, you know, we're selling a lot of tokens and that's that's that's how we exit the business.

In the Metad model, you really can't do that, right? Like your your burn is capped. You can only spend so much of the treasury per month. Uh if you undersshoot expectations from token holders or you act egregiously, token holders and the market can raise a proposal and take the treasury back from you. And um you know, you have to vest your tokens, right? in that vesting schedule is very transparent upon launch and is encoded in smart contracts. So that's how you protect yourself um in this like if you if you want to participate in like anonymous capital raising environment like onchain, right?

Um other than that like you know probably like ICOs on the centralized exchanges like they're fine like Coinbase is going to is going to vet these guys and they're going to make sure that you don't get ripped off because they won't they want to have a good reputation in their Coinbase and they're good actors. It it just depends on like the risk profile and the the the spot in the market that you want to invest. >> Gotcha. Yeah. And I think that's helpful framing of that. I think just this idea around tokconomics has been something that people have been paying a lot of attention to recently because there are a lot of projects in crypto that have a token but you know maybe the tokconomics are a little bit out of whack and there's uh let's say some perverse incentives happening. Um this pivots me

towards something I wanted to ask you about that I've seen you writing and talking about. Pendle Finance launched a new algorithmic uh incentive model. Um there's a significant upgrade they're saying is going to reduce their emissions of their their token by 30%. Um and I know you like just generally pay attention to a lot of updates of like who's building who's shipping in crypto. I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on this update from Pendle Finance and how this impacts our tokconomics. >> No. Yeah, it's obviously a step in the in the right direction, right? The lock is less so there's like there's like a cool down period that's you know much less for um you know the lock token holders than before. So like longterm I think that's good for the token. Um, you know, the VE model has had mixed reviews, I think, at best. And look,

this is part of the maturation of crypto markets. Like token holders are like revoling back, right? Like they want to see value acrewing to the token. They're not falling for stories anymore. They want to see like proper structures with protections. And um, this is part of a larger trend of like a token holder friendly environment. I think it's going to be ultimately good for the space and like look we like the Pendle team a lot. I think the business model is fantastic. I think their positioning is fantastic. You know, you want to get to a point in the industry where you're not thinking so much about the structure. It should be pretty vanilla. You should just like buy a token and like it's pretty standard what you get. You really want

to think about the business model. So like you know now that now that Pendle's so simplifying the token structure they probably derisk the opportunity a little bit in the eyes of like larger um more sophisticated capital and um I just think that they're so well positioned. >> Gotcha. Yeah. And I just wanted to bring that up because I've seen you like drawing attention to that and it's this is one of those times where it's easy for like fundamental improvements in digital assets to get lost in the noise of of price action. Um, just a kind of a general question here. You know, we we've seen a lot of red days in the market. Is there anything specific that you're focused on or maybe a few things you're focused on that you're very bullish on for Q1? I mean, obviously hype has done well, but is there

anything else that you would put on that list of things you're really bullish on here in Q1? >> Yeah, we just I mean, Q1 is kind of tough. we take a longer term time horizon and I think a lot of our so like we like most of the asset managers in the space are uh subscribers of ours and they they want to take longer um time horizon bets as well. Um the market doesn't always allow you to do that given its fall but you have to think long term as best as you can. Let me maybe I can just go back to the Pendle thing like we recently wrote a report there like >> you know I don't think that there's anyone in crypto that's better positioned for both the rise of uh stable coins and per than Pendle and it doesn't matter who's winning either you

know um you know it doesn't matter who's leading market share in the per market it doesn't matter who's leading uh who is issuing the the the new hottest like yield bearing stable coin Uh what you're going to want to do because time like repeatedly um asset issuer asset issuers are finding super optimal to um to go this route is um you want to bootstrap TVL and the best place to do it is Pendle because they break your asset into two pieces. They bring in the PT and the YT. Um, the YT lets you target points for accumulating your asset and the PT allows folks to get a nice fixed yield on that asset that you're issuing and then lever it up in

lending platforms at a high LTV. And that's worked fantastic. You see it with USDA today. You saw it with USDE um, and Athena. And you know when I look at the competitive l land landscape I think Pendle has something like jeez like 25 times or 30 times more TVL than their next largest competitor. There's like a single place to bootstrap TVL um by stripping assets and that's on Pendle and asset issuers love it. And then they have Boros which is like frankly like you're starting to see the early innings of PMF activity and OI is very small today but consistently up and to the

right and see and it solves such an obvious problem in per markets where you know PERS are a really interesting asset. They're really easy to trade but they have a big fundamental flaw in that when you trade a per you're trading two prices. You're trading the the the mark price and you're trading the funding rate. And in every market on planet Earth with um variable rates, you have a way to hedge that rate and that makes those variable that that makes those variable rates more um it it limits the risk, right? And and taking on a variable rate. Um people provide that service and no one's doing that in crypto today except for Boros.

So, um, you know, I think that there's a lot of promise with Pendle in 2026 because they serve two of the hottest markets in crypto and it really doesn't matter who's winning because the only place to, you know, either hedge that rate uh or to issue that asset um and bootstrap uh TVL via points is is Pendle. >> Where does that value from that service acrew? Like I definitely see the value proposition, but where does it acrue in that ecosystem and where yeah, where do you see that stacking up? Yeah, I think that's a really good question. Look, it occurs because they monetize trading volume on the YTS. Uh they monetize uh OI on on the Boros platform. So, um and they've shown

pricing power actually. So, I think they 2x their fees uh on the YT portion of the trade in um on on Pendle V2. Um, I believe they just might have lowered fees from 20 bips to 10 bips on Boros, but I think that that's probably more in line with like kind of high turnover asset. You want to see that? So, yeah, they monetize via the yield and and via trading volume. And it's a really attractive model. Uh, a lot of folks in the yield space, they simply they'll either monetize either the trading volume or they'll monetize like the the rate spread. So for them to monetize kind of both is is is too, you know, it's good to have both and and not a lot

of not a lot of the not not a lot of um protocols in the yield space monetize both. >> Ryan, one of our uh chief crypto researchers here at Milk Road has been very gung-ho and bullish on on Pendle, on Sky, Maple, several other businesses that are are, you know, showing strength in the digital asset space. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about this because I don't think many people know what's going on and how much value is there. Uh you said that a lot of your clients are taking a long-term time horizon view and a long-term investment view of the digital asset space. What does that mean to you?

Is that 10 years, 5 years? What what does the long-term view mean to you? >> Oh, no, no, no. 12 months. 12 [laughter] months. >> So, so for so for Yeah. So, my mental model is like, you know, 12 months is long-term before 12 months. Sorry. Sub three months is shortterm and then somewhere in between 3 to 12 is like medium-term. >> Okay. So, what's what's your >> simplify it? Yeah. >> For your thesis on Pendle, is that a three-month 12-month? Where where where does that thesis fall in that? >> That's 2026. That's a 12-month thesis. The reason is is because, you know, per realizing PMF like we were just talking about, I think, you know, you're going to see the regulatory clarity gap closed hopefully in 2026. So, that's good for the borrow side of the trade. And then

in terms of issuing yieldbearing assets, that's a 2026 thing. Go to RWAXYZ. Any asset issuer in Tradfi is trying to issue assets on uh crypto rails. Uh a lot of them are lowvall assets with with medium to high yields. And the way that you bootstrap that TVL is through a very targeted points program. And and the only one that really allows you to do that is Pendle. So yeah, the reason I wanted to ask that is I wanted our audience to understand that this is not like a a 10-year thing. This is actionable information for this year. Uh this is something we're watching at Milk Road and Blockworks is paying attention to too. Um Ryan, you know, you said you'd written a report on Pendle.

There's a lot of great alpha in that. What are you looking at to write a report on next? What are you focusing on in your role as head of research at Blockworks right now? Yeah, I think that look I I think one of the biggest trends of 2026, I mean, we're kind of already talking about it, but maybe let's get a little bit more specific is just differentiated yields on chain. There's a big problem with yields onchain today. It's that they're all correlated to crypto stuff. So what you want in a portfolio is to have balanced and you want to have some a mix of assets that aren't perfectly correlated because it minimizes your V, but it increases your expected return. And the problem with crypto um with crypto yields today is

that if you have something that's yield bearing in your portfolio, the yield will go down when the market goes down. And if you've, you know, been in Tradfi, you know that over the last, geez, since the 80s, only up until recently, that most of the time when risk assets went down, yields also, uh, sorry, you you had the fixed income portion of your portfolio giving like giving you balance to your portfolio, right? So, look, there's there's a lot of opportunity to put um uncorrelated assets in your portfolio. Um, I'm thinking of things like reinsurance, maybe things like high-grade AAA rated CLLOs's, which you're seeing institutions like Black

Rockck and Janice issue. Um, these asset classes are uncorrelated to crypto reinsurance. Like it might be catastrophe risk, right? So, you only don't get paid on your yield when you know a cat five or whatever four hurricane hits in uh in the Q4 of every year somewhere in Miami or something. So, yeah. So those those um will give you some like stability and certainty to the yield profile in your portfolio and act as balanced and down markets which uh which you need and look like why like what what's going to be the big use case of these assets like one is going to be again it's going to be that balance but the other thing is like it's going to be really good for LTVs so posting that as collateral and getting leverage against

it and having some yield offset the the cost of cost of uh levering up. >> Gotcha. So there there's a lot of alpha for people to sift through in there, but the great onchain migration is what I'm hearing and that's what we've been preaching here at Milk Road. Um yeah, it'll be interesting to see how all that plays out. Ryan, uh you guys do a lot of great work at Blockworks. I really appreciate the research that you're putting out over there. Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online? >> Yeah, we're at blockworks.com. We're we're recently building out a new data product. So, you know, for all your data needs, Blockwork and research, blockworks.com is a space. Thanks for being on the Milk Road Show, Ryan. I really enjoyed the conversation.

>> Appreciate it, John. Thanks for having me man. >> And thank you all for joining us. I hope you all learned something today. So, until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you on the next episode of the Milkro Show. Thanks for being here, everyone. Bye. If y'all are making swaps or trades right now, highly recommend you check out Milkroad Swap. This is a DEX that we built in partnership with Cow Protocol. Why do we build it? Not to make money, just honestly. So we could have a place to do our swaps for the lowest fees that we could find. This is the fees on Ethereum, Arbitum, and Bass are only.15% fees. Uh this is a huge difference from uh other centralized exchanges that charge half a percent or even up to 1.2% fees on their swaps. Also, you can swap

on Salana all at swap.mmillgro.com. Check it out today. You won't be upset. And you can join me in my favorite [music] place to make swaps on chain. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milk Road daily and pro newsletters and start investing like the top [music] 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.