Why digital asset treasuries could change crypto exposure

Transcript

I'm in conversation with a lot of the large asset locators every single day. These are punching doment but also solving loss fund. The conversation today I'm having versus 12 months ago is night and day. Both in the ways that how eagerly they engage but also as a number of the conversations right 12 months ago John not investing crypto is okay. Today not invest in crypto is an active decision. They have to get sign up from the board. The board typically say hey everybody else is doing this. Why are we not doing it? >> GM, good morning. Welcome to the Milkro Show, the daily crypto show that knows that it is never more over than it is right before we are so back. I'm your host, John Gillan. Today is Tuesday,

October 21st, and we are joined by Matt Zang. Matt is the founder and managing partner of Hivemind Capital Partners, a multistrategy investment platform focused on digital assets and blockchain technology. Prior to Hivemind, he served as the global head of structured products at City, where he was also a founding partner of the City Impact Fund. Matt is one of the most influential and plugged in investors in the entire world of digital assets. Today, we're going to cover a lot of things, venture capital and crypto, digital asset treasury companies, the outlook for Q4, and what all of this means for the market and this struggling bull run. So, if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe, share this episode with someone who's going to enjoy it. Uh, and as a reminder, uh, we have just pushed a big update to the Milk Road portfolio. If

you are a pro all access member at Milk Road, you've been using this portfolio for a while, but now it is much faster, much smarter. There's way more things to play with to poke around. You can still track every move we make in our portfolio, but now you can do it with interactive charts, category breakdowns, real-time performance, and benchmarks against a bunch of different things. All Access members have access to this now, so they can go check it out. And for everyone else who has FOMO, uh, don't worry, you can upgrade to All Access at any time and get in on the alpha there. Today's episode is brought to you by our sponsors, Figure Markets. Grow your cash like a bank. No lockups, just real returns and Gemini credit card. Stack Bitcoin every time you swipe. No fees, no fluff, just crypto rewards. And without further ado, welcome to the

Milkro Show, Matt Zang. How are you? >> Good. Thanks for having me, John. >> I'm really excited to talk to you today. I think there's a lot of ground to cover. Um, but I want to begin with Hivemind. You left an extremely successful career running a trading business on Wall Street to launch this fund back in 2021. Uh, and you're famous for your focus on investing in digital asset culture, uh, in web3 ecosystems, something that a lot of other VCs have missed and overlooked. Um, but tell me a little bit about Hivemind. What's the unique vision behind this project and what inspired you to launch this firm? >> Yeah, look, first of all, thank you for having me on the show, John, and love to spend the time and chat about everything about the markets. You know, as mentioned, I'm the founder, managing partner of Hivemind Capital. Um,

Hivemind is a global blockchain and crypto focused investment firm. We're headquartered in New York City. Now, we have offices also in Europe and in Hong Kong. Um, we have just over a billion clients assets. uh we manage and um you have different strategies cross venture investing um cryptocurrency uh NFTTS we also trace public equities with underlying crypto exposures so really spending across different type of strategies you know across our platform started by me being a u very early enthusiastic about Bitcoin I bought my first Bitcoin around 2014 always as a personal hobby and I decided to uh

pursue my second life uh leaving all the Wall Street careers behind in 2021. Uh so it's been four years. It's you know it's it's a lot of events I would say that happened the last four years and some good some bad and and uh but never had a day of regret. I love what I do. You know I think this industry is very very exciting and uh and there's a lot to look forward to from here. >> Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I appreciate that context. I did something similar. I was at Black Rockck for six years and left to get into crypto as well. So I appreciate that and respect it a lot. Um, so I want to ask your thoughts on this. Following the CL the collapse of FTX and Teral Luna, VC investment into digital assets kind of flatlined for a number of years. It's only recently

starting to pick back up again. What have been some of the biggest struggles to be a venture capitalist in crypto? Um, has AI stolen the spotlight? Have there been other issues that you faced? And do you think that the market there is beginning to turn in a more positive direction now? >> Yeah. So for us to figure out is the market going to turn let's figure out exactly what happened that lead to us today. I think there's two reasons one is micro and one is micro. The micro problem is in the last four five years of a cycle the asset locators has massively overlocated to the private side. When I say private side I meant private equities venture investings private credit versus the public side which is public equities and public

debt. So all the asset locators the pension endowments institution investors supposed to maintain a well balanced portfolio because of the private side there's not much of recycling of the capital right there haven't been much of a DPI from the venture space for example that all of a sudden all the asset locators are overindexing the private side that means when you raising your venture fund too you're just not going to get the asset locators to re up your funds so the fundraising of the VCs in general has been difficult because the asset locators doesn't have the liquidity to redeploy back into the private side. That's the overarching micro problem. The micro problem is after Luna FTX, people are really struggling to find that crypto project

that's worth backing that you're actually still trying to find ways to grow meaningful revenues, user base. And quite frankly, the problem is just way too much capital chasing too little few worthwhile crypto project, right? together with the other side where listing of tokens are becoming a little bit more restricted strict with all sort of like large exchanges upping their requirement. The combination of that two just means that there hasn't been many VC investors be able to have many wins and there hasn't been many wins in general in the crypto space anyway. So if macro you having asset locators are not enthusiastic redeploying into the VC

funds on the micro you have the VC fund are struggling to find worthwhile projects to back when you're having the two headwinds hitting together I think that's really the problem the crypto VCs today how do we get out of this and what's my view well if you're going to the problem if the market problem going to solve by its own what I mean by that is the rates cut cycle has already started it before end of the year we may get one cuts we may get two more cuts but nobody's denying that we're in the rates coming down cycle typically what that means is you have a lot of IPO windows opens up you have more company going public you're going to have more access from a private investment into the public market as that train starting

to move you will have the capital recycle back and you have the asset locators went back to reupping the next private equity fund commitment the next venture fund commitment so that macro problem I'm expecting going to get solved by its own. The micro problem for me it's more challenging is even the micro got solved that just means there's more people with the VC money but are they be able to use the VC money being helpful to the founders in the crypto and also spotting the next poly market the next hyperlquid by the way didn't even raise venture capital to start with that's something I think we need to talk about obviously AI has take a lot of the mind share away from the market you know AI startup attracting a lot of more

capitals but I think crypto needs to get out of the zone not thinking about just competing with AI like if we're really thinking blockchain is such a paradigm shift changing of technologies we should be confident to know there should be a lot of capital to be attracted for own space regardless what's going on in AI space not to mention AI and crypto has a lot of overlapping anyway too so I think we have to really just reexamine to say hey you know what are the founders projects and space that worth backing number two is for you to be able to back versus many other competitors in the VC space. Can you give the founders and the product more than just the capital? I think that's really what people need to start to think about more.

>> That's some really helpful thoughts and perspective on that and this is one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you is that you just have this really like on the ground experience in this industry and and uh a unique perspective as a result. Um I want to ask you about this administration um because they have been much more positive about digital assets and trying to encourage um innovation and just activity in the space. Again, the Genius Bill passed in Congress, the stable coin bill, the uh C uh SEC and the CFTC are working towards regulatory clarity as well. And we have the Clarity Act that's if the government ever gets out of this shutdown um is supposed to still be under under review and and consideration for passage into law in Congress. How significant has this change been in helping to bring

back investor interests into digital assets? >> It's hugely um significant and I think most of the people are underestimating the significance here because we still had to quote unquote Biden administration hung over, right? I think all the founders investors in the crypto space has went through such a challenging period in the last few years. And when I say challenging, I didn't really mean about um markets. I'm talking about you don't really having a supporting legislation and regulatory framework to clearly define what we're allowed to do and what we're not allowed to do. I think that's really the challenging and I think because of the hungover what people are seeing in the last nine eight eight nine months since the Trump administration many people are

still underestimating it but we have a massive shift in the policy almost 180 degree I think any single events you mentioned genius act clarity act on its own is already significant enough but I think the most significance is the sequencing of all of them happening one after another this means that I think we have a very very supportive SEC CC we have a very supportive organization that really want to bring innovations and blockchain back to the US and we're seeing all of that at different levels at a founder level at a capital level and at institutional level founder levels a lot of the project were thinking about migrating to Europe to Asia I'm seeing a lot of them coming back some of them are portfolio companies and then at the capital levels

you know there are locators was worrying about locating to crypto and we're seeing them accelerating the pace in all different perspective. You talk about ETF, ETPs, now have a lot of debts this year. There's many ways now to get a locators be able to really getting a piece of exposure into this market. That's all coming back to the US. And on top of that, we have institutional investors are very curious about the space, right? This is almost a topic people doesn't want to talk about in the boardroom. Now almost it's a problem if you don't acknowledging and discuss actively if crypto should be part of your location strategy. So I think at all this level is very very significant.

I think a lot of people are still on the sideline because they still have the hunger from the last cycle but as this cycle starting to pan out I'm anticipating even more innovations and capitals injection to the space. So I'm very very bullish about this space right now. >> Gotcha. Yeah. No I I appreciate that and you're right the the the confluence of all these things happening together has really amplified their impact on the market. Um you spoke about the attention, the focus of investment on private placements, private opportunities, but now we're starting to see, you know, because of this regulatory shift, uh an influx of IPOs and uh crypto companies going public. I I want to talk about digital asset treasury companies, but I thought I would start by just asking about your

thoughts in general about how this new wave of IPOs in the crypto space has changed the market and and what you think the impacts of of this new um yeah just like opportunity to do an IPO is going to be on the market. I I think public equity market as a gateway for people and investors to getting exposing crypto not only is the most organic is the most natural I think it's the most scalable way right because if you go to asset locators institution investors you're pitching them a crypto specific mandate some investors may be more uh enthusiastic about it than the others but no matter what it's a new program you are asking them to set up but most of the investors already have a mandate today to invest in public equities. So

if you actually give them crypto exposures, whether via ETP, ETF, DAT, or just purely investing in corporates like Circle Coinbase Bullish Geminis that's the most easy way for asset allocators locating into a strategy. They're already having a long history of operating and getting the cryp exposure. So from a symbolic standpoint and from a capital actual capital contribution standpoint, I think having more public crypto public companies going public in this cycle going IPO is a great way for a lot of investors now be able to find ways to expose themselves into cryptos and an easy learning curve once they get there. Just like people by parking their money in the BTC ETF two years ago, now

they made the money they're obviously thinking about how else they can do more from there. So, I think it's the best first milestone, first gateway for you to be able to get a lot more into the crypto space. >> Yeah, I agree. It just it radically opens up the the public access um to this asset class. So, yeah, I'm appreciative of the view there. Um I want to talk about some some get your thoughts on some things about digital asset treasury companies. um you've recently been involved with a new digital asset treasury company that's going to be called AVAC 1 and obviously for legal reasons that's still a lot going on there so we don't need to get into the details on that is specifically but um around digital asset treasury companies this has been one of the most active areas in the digital asset world

in 2025 some people are saying that it's been a bubble that's burst and the hype is over a lot of people are saying that this is really still just beginning and getting started how are you thinking about the market opportunity in the digital asset treasury I agree with both argument. I think there was a bubble and I think it should be bursted but I also think we're at a very early journey of entire movements. I think that the beauty of a free world public equity capital market like NASDAQ in the US means everybody has a good idea can try to make something happen in a regulated compliant way. So when you see micro strategy been very successful last few years in inevitably you have

other people all trying to do the same thing which also means inevitably you have the good character have the bad character you have people more capable than the others to do this not all that's created equal starting from January this year hive mind ourselves have evaluated more more than 80s and we invested more than a dozen and as you mentioned we lead one ax1 ourselves um work with the avalanche foundation which are very excited about. That's just to say there's a lot of that's out there. I think today there's more than 100 kind of companies on NASDAQ if not more that actually claiming they are turning themselves or have already turned themselves into a digital asset treasury company. So in the short term when you're having this gold rush

you obviously going to have a lot of irrational behaviors a lot of lowquality you know projects that just trying to make the transactional money not with a long-term view to think about how to bring enduring value to their shareholders. So just like all of the innovative and early days of technology shift, you're always going to have the bubble. What happened is you need to ask yourself like after all this up and downs is this structure has merits. My answer to you is I think it have a lot of merits to the degree I think in five years time you will have the Fortune 500 500 company or some shape or form at that company. That's as far as I go. I

would say that today just like 20 years ago if your company's corporate treasury only having dollars and your corporate treasur of that public company think about okay should I diversify into euro pounds and yen Chinese yen or gold so I don't just taking a single sovereign currency risk right now all of the fortune 500 companies think about okay there's this BDC going on sounds like a great inflation hedge sounds like a very uncredited assets and a good store of value see the track record see of the performance performance. Should we at least allocating some of our corporate treasuries into BDC or Ethereum or Alex or something else to diversify our treasury? Not every going to say yes today, but I think that is not going to

everybody's heads in the next five years. So, I think in the next five years, you'll see a lot of if not all of the Fortune 500 companies will run a digital asset treasury. However, I would think that digital asset treasury strategy will also evolve. what today happens in D treasury which is a very simple buy and hold structure and maybe staking it is not what I think that that going to be in five years time which more than happy to go into more details to talk about why do people invest in real estate because it spits off cash flow but I'm not here to manage rental properties that's why I'm looking at figure markets their new democratized prime product backs your money with real cash flowing assets and returns up to 9% APY it's the First real world asset

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is accepted. When you're approved and spend 3,000 in the first 90 days, you'll get a $200 Bitcoin bonus. Spend as usual, earn Bitcoin instead at milkroad.com/gemini. Yes, and that's exactly what I want to go into more details on. But first, I want to start with something you said. Um, I know that at Hivemind you guys have seen a lot of proposals for new digital asset treasury companies. As you said, some of them you've invested in, some of them you haven't. Um, but I want to get your thoughts on what differentiates these companies from each other because just like you said, like I tried to get a number of total digital asset treasury companies for this interview, but it's changing all the time. There's so many happening that it's kind of just like the numbers expanding daily, right? Um so what differentiates them from each other and

what should investors be looking at when they are trying to evaluate one company versus another like how do you think about this and in in terms first of all it's not financial advice but definitely love to talk to your audience and share some thoughts because we have a lot of thoughts as you can tell I would say the first thing is you cannot wrap a bad technology into a good structure and all of a sudden make it magical. It just never happens. So if your underlying cryptocurrency is never meant to be a top cryptocurrency, it's never meant to be something that here to stay. It doesn't really matter you put into ETP or ETF or corporate public companies or that it will eventually fail. So I think the first question for the audience who are

looking into investing into different debts is to say would you be equally excited about investing the underlying cryptocurrencies without or with the that wrapper on top of it. If the answer is no, you should stop doing it. Right? That's the first thing I would say. It's almost the first principle. So get confident and comfortable with the underlying technology and the token itself. On top of that, if you wrap a token in a public equity structure, you ask yourself the second question, which is I could go on Coinbase or Binance and today buy the token.

So if you get all of this additional hassles to actually buy the token, wrap in a public company structure, what am I getting on top of the token itself? You already know you love the token. You can go Bana, Ethereum, Avalanche or BTC. But why doing this in a Dash structure? Well, you must think that by wrapping a Dash structure, it would trade higher than where the token would be trading on the line. So the question you should ask yourself is where is the premium coming from right? If there's a MNAP premium, where's the premium coming from? And how sustainable the premium going to be? It can only come from a few different places. Number one, the leadership behind the company of the dad is going to be able to bring you the alpha. The premium come from the leadership or the

premium going to come from the structure of the company. The company must be able to do things more than just accumulating the token that you believe will bring you the long-term premium that otherwise you wouldn't be able to get there. So again if I just putting two things together I would say advice to the audience here is if you look into buying a how to differentiate the good one from the bad ones is check the underlying token is something you really want to back check the structure of the company of the leadership is something you actually are following. You actually have a lot of respect. They have the right background and track record not just in crypton native way but also know how to run a public company which require a combination of skill sets of both DIY and crypto and on top of that what is the mission and

vision of the company. Are they simply buy and hold or they do something on top of that? If you have the answer on yes all three questions that's a good starting point. >> Very helpful and very comprehensive framework. I think that's a great place to start for everybody. Um, and another thing I think I wanted to get your thoughts on. Uh, you mentioned that, you know, a great way to get exposure to these digital assets is to just buy them directly, right? Um, digital asset treasury companies are another way to do that. Another one that's become very popular and, you know, the the SEC is making more popular by forthcoming approvals is ETPs, ETFs, um, that allow investors to get exposure directly to these digital assets. in your mind uh what differentiates these two products

and why would an investor choose to invest with a digital asset treasury company versus an ETP and yeah and just walk us through some of those choices there. >> I give you a very simple analogy for this question. You could invest in S&P 500 index. Why would so many people still want money to invest in Brookshire Hathway? If you think about the underline, there's no difference. Brookshire Hway is also managing a portfolio of public stocks. They actually have a filing every quarter. You know exactly Warren is buying every quarter. But why is Brookshire Hathway will be able to trade a value that beyond the value of the underlying stock? This is the analogy.

You compare that versus ETF. The ETF will always trades at their NAV value by definition. That's the structure of ETF. Just like your S&P 500 index, it always going to track your index. you have underlining portfolios and you can probably put a tech companies and structure this as a tech index but no matter what it's a tracking index thing yet despite this being so popular the ETFs of Bitcoin and stuff like this you still are able to create a special strategies for people to invest in the likes of Berkshireway because you believe the managers behind it are good about picking the timing picking the investment underneath are driving values

beyond just the value of the stocks themselves. That's the right analogy for that. So I would say if the debt do nothing more than just accumulate tokens it's just ETF but the way for that to differentiate in the medium to long run is going to think about how does warrant has made Brookshire Hathway more valuable than simply a ETF or stock index over time. their ability to pick the timing to buy the stock to sell the stock timing of the market be able to pick the underlying structures leveraging a lot of the broker's office structures have cheap leverage insurance business of brokerage is a great way to structure liquidity of their capital structure they be able to get all the premium up

front invest in the stocks and pay out later right so a lot of things should apply to that too which is the reason why again as you mentioned we couldn't shut out of the stuff going on behind the scenes because for legal and right reasons for AX1 we have done a lot of thinking to say if we're going to sponsor and lead one ourselves it cannot just be one of the hundred we have to find our own unique paths and we have this tagway to say we want to bring AX1 being the Bshireway of the onchain financial economy for exactly that reason because we will do things more than just simply buy and staking ax tokens timing them when to buy is an art and the science and then making sure when you buy them how you staking them

to get you the consistent yield which by the way a AEX token has one of the highest staking yields among the top 15 tokens and on top of this can you actually also investing and building the business simply beyond the token values that you're going to be consistently trading above the premium of the NAV that's the right analogy between ETF and ETP on one side versus that on the other side >> gotcha so what I'm hearing you saying is that there's not much between an ETP or a DAT if they're both just going to buy and hold. But if the digital asset treasury company is going to do some sort of business operation, some sort of additional way to to generate returns, um then that can be a differentiator. Um

so I I want to ask your thoughts on on what some of those things are. You know, you mentioned staking, but um Micro Strategy or Strategy is perhaps the most famous um and I think the first digital asset treasury company, but its price, its stock price has been underperforming Bitcoin this year. This has got a lot of investors sort of concerned. What are some of these ways that digital asset treasury companies can work to make sure that they're driving real value to their stock um to make it more attractive than just directly holding the the underlying asset? And you know, you mentioned that you think this is going to evolve over time. How do you see that progressing from where we are today to where it might what it might look like in the future? And yeah, what what's the the the business I guess that these dats are

going to do on these assets to generate that additional alpha? >> Great question. I think human have a tendency to always overestimating a trend in the short run and a massive underestimating the trend in the long run. So everybody is talking about micro strategies not doing well this year but they forgotten about how well they've done over the last decade. I have a tremendous respect um to sailor from that regards because it's easy for someone to launch a debt this year. But having that conviction and do the hard work and grinding year in year out for the last few years when we've run through FTX, three arrows, Lunas, all of this, that's extremely hard and be able to continuously maintain a premium. I think it's very very not only require a vision but require a very extensive

execution ability and clearly the strategy guys have both. So I think first of all is you can't just judging you know company's performance based on what's happened the last nine months, right? That's number one. And I would say number two is um for you to really build a value beyond simply accumulating um the tokens. Uh you have to really think about what drive the value of those tokens more than just you going out to buy. How do you acquing value by the tokens fundamental way for us using Alex one as example avalanch chain is designed and catered for financial industries. They already on boarding so many different partnerships with the banks asset

managers and the financial industry big player the like of JP Morgan the city and Apollo and the like. So it's already have the right underlying fundamental technologies to do well to serve as the infrastructure layer of financial services industry beyond just purely accumulating the token and then do the simple staking and do all of the share back at a discount and doing the ATM and issuing more convertible bond at a premium which by the way every single debt manager tell you exactly the same. What we think really going to do in the medium long run to bring you sustainable premium is figure out a way to bring a lot of the financial companies onto the avalanche ecosystem. You have to force

adoption to happen. There is no never a better time than today to force that adoption. If we be able to systematically identify cash flowing undervalued small medium businesses that in the fintax space either are commercial banks, regional banks, insurance companies, reinsurance companies, payment companies that have earning between three to five times PE, real revenue business, real cash flowing business, profitable businesses. But we think their business model can be completely transformed when we bring them from offchain to onchain, from offline to online. Now from online to onchain that's where the feedback loop clicks.

We are planning to go and invest and acquire this type of cash flowing business. It's all in public. It's part of the price release and then we'll bring them to the AX1 ecosystem and bring them to the avalanche chain ecosystem. If they be able to increase the volume, the usage the TVL of the Avalon chain, not only the price over time will reflect that, which means AX1 will have a bigger treasury over time, but also it means all this company we either acquired or rolled up or invested will add the enterprise value because they're profitable beyond the NAV value of the company. That enterprise value is sustainable. That's the reason why we

were constantly trading above the book value. So I think I can tell you everything a John everybody else going to tell you. do the share bad value discount issue the convert bond at premium got a sell covery from the world street banks time will tell how acquisition ability differentiated people at least I'm the person who actually done this in the trifi world before but I think really what's going to differentiate us is doing this type of stuff building a real business in the long run to build a broker houseway that give you the consistent that premium via the manager selection not just purely accumulating all the underlying assets >> so I think that that's a very helpful way of thinking about this and I I want to kind of like bring this now to so we talked about hive of mind we talked

about the opportunities in in crypto VC and capital here we talked about ETPs digital asset treasury companies now I want to talk about how these digital asset treasury companies you know they they do these strategies to differentiate themselves in the market and I want to talk about how this feeds back into the the ecosystem or the you know the asset of the ecosystem itself um you said on a recent post on X which by the way if anybody's not following showing you on X. I highly recommend it. Matt shares a lot of great insight on there. But he said, "I believe the most or not he, you said, I believe that the most powerful feature a successful DAT can do for a blockchain protocol is to serve as the quote unquote buyback and burn engine and ultimately make the network deflationary." So, I want you to

kind of explain this a little bit to our audience and explain how this works, but then why are digital asset treasuries companies so powerful for the blockchain ecosystems and the assets themselves? Yeah, first of all, thanks for the shout out on my Twitter handle, but I'm going to make a first confession to say I don't think I tweet enough. I'm still trying to guide myself better practice there, John. You're much better and a lot of your audience is better than I do, but I'm trying to train myself to tweet better, you know, and then share some of the thoughts and I really enjoy the conversation here and I hope more people can be able to benefiting from, you know, communicating and chatting more. The space needs that. So, I'm going to trying to make a habit to to tweet and and share more with the

community. That's that definitely going to happen. hopefully over time and I think you know coming back to what I tweeted the other day regarding deflationary discussing with many many smart people in the space I think you know using as example Solana as example right as you know that they all have a fixed supply in the end the token is not unlimited there is a fixed amount of token out there um but I think that that one thing we can do that differentiate it from the incation which by the way have a very different purposes in the ecosystem right is us serving a differentiated sort of way to do this. We talked a lot about what we can do rolling up fintech companies into the ecosystem. That's definitely going to be one of our focus.

But by purely buying and holding the token itself, we are able to make the chain defect to deflationary because our goal is never to sell the tokens. Again, for us to achieve that, we have to figure out many other things, right? Because how would you fund for your normal operating expenses? uh how would you expand the businesses? But the goal and the goal for the time being and obviously subjecting to everything on approvals and all of that is we want to making sure no matter how fast and how slow we're accumulating ABX over time, we can buy one token a day. We can buy a 100 token a day, we can buy 10 million tokens a day, but our goal is we're never going to sell the tokens ever for what we have bought. It's accumulating

one way strategy. So I wanted the people in the markets to know every day they go to sleep there's less available ax in the markets to buy in open market I think that's a very powerful reminder if somebody be able to do that consistently on the daily basis right so from our standpoint if we'll be able to go out there and then crime ax every ax required we st management we're never going to be selling them right that's effectively making the token supply deflationary because every single day there just less and less token out there that are available for sale in the open market. So again, we don't know how big

this thing will be. We'll do our best to make it very very big over time. But a consistent buying and also making this a one-way accumulating strategy will defacto making the token have less. Everything come to our treasury, we put them away. People should forget about them and they should view that this is not something that will ever become available for a long time if not forever. I think that burning mechanism we served is making token less and less and hopefully on a per token basis the value a lot more. >> Gotcha. So, I I want to apologize to the audience where Matt is, there's uh seems to be some sort of emergency outside, but hopefully under all those alarms, you can still hear that alpha about how these digital asset treasury companies are going to act as a way to bring in

and then lock in a lot of economic energy and capital into these ecosystems and into the underlying assets. Um, so yeah, really really helpful insight on that and I'm I'm excited to see how these digital asset treasury companies start to act as that sort of feedback loop, that economic flywheel, um, to really power a lot more of these blockchain ecosystems. Um, so you you spoke a little bit about I want to we're coming up on time here, so I want to get your thoughts on Q4 and the market outlook, but you spoke a little bit about how digital asset treasury companies are going to, you know, be a niche for a while, but we're moving towards a place where basically every Fortune 500 company, you said, is going to have some version of a digital asset treasury company. What does that trajectory look like to you from where

we are now to that end point? And yeah, just walk us through how you see this niche in the market evolving over time. Yeah, apart apologize for the background noise. It's benefit is sitting in the center of New York City and this is just like what you eat for lunch. Um hope you guys >> I have the same problem. I'm on the lower east side. It happens to me all the time too. >> Yeah. But look, I I'm extremely bullish about the market both in the short run and in the medium run which is very controversial and contradictory many other people's view. I think two weeks ago we obviously have this great crush. Uh people are still trying to find ways about what happened. uh every time something like this happen people can't really figure them out. there's always a lot of conspiracy theories uh what

happened right but I think over time people have to realizing there's so not so many conspiracy theories there's not so many romantic stories out there like things just happen there's so many contributing factors to the market dynamics in the end we have to get better about risk managing investing trading ourselves and stop blaming the market because there's everything happens for a reason that there's not so many conspiracies out there I I I think that the result of the crash and all of This means like a lot of the leverage are completely flush out from the ecosystem like if you're looking for open interest the leverage outright where the skills are option market everything point towards that right now people who are still holding the tokens

probably has hold the tokens for a very long period of time and probably hold for that long period of time so I'm a very simple math guy there's a demand supply there's no more selling there's only one way it's going to go right but I do want to remind the folks here is I think uh what happened last two weeks ago, it just means that the liquidity of the market may be in a different flux influx point that may take a little bit more time to repair the liquidity. So you're probably going to see the price jumpier than before just because you probably still needs a bit of a time to restore the confidence to the market maker, the exchange, the players to come back do the same size because you know everybody gonna have this hung over back of their mind. But in terms of the

bullishness, I think whoever need to sell already sold. I think that shutdown going to finish at some point soon. I think that you will have a couple more prints on CPIs and stuff. Nothing controversial and we will resume the track of the risk cuts. After all, crypto is a risky assets. So, I think when the risk goes from 4% to 2%, I think crypto set for a very very good run. And I also want to tell something to the audience which a lot of the investors on the other side listening probably not privileged as I am. I'm in conversation with a lot of the large asset locators every single day. These are pension dollar but also solving loss

fund. The conversation today I'm having versus 12 months ago is night and day both in the ways that how eagerly they engage but also as a number of the conversations right 12 months ago John not investing crypto is okay. Today not invest in crypto is an active decision. They have to get sign up from the board. the board typically going to say hey everybody else is doing this why are we not doing it there is no room to say oh it's okay we'll just wait and see what happens like wait and see what happens is becoming to say a no so I think that pressure is on for everyone right so I think that I leave the rest for the the audience to to judge I just think that when you're having such a big force coming in you know pushing the market to

one directions I think you just have to have the ability to take outside of ignoring all of the ways and you know don't take leverage uh risk manage uh be optimistic in the medium run and knowing that we're in a transformative stage of something which is very well worth preserving and I think blockchain is great so there's a lot for us looking forward to for quarter 4 and rest of 2026 >> lots of great wisdom in there and I appreciate the view on the market for Q4 I think that there's a lot of retail investors who like you said don't have that transparency into these conversations with institutional allocators with Sirius Capital and how much that conversation has shifted recently. Um, and at, you know, at the beginning I said you're one of the most well-informed plugged in investors in

digital assets right now. What are some of the other opportunities that you're seeing in the market um that most investors, especially retail investors are missing, are overlooking? Uh, what are you most focused on going into the end of this year? I actually think for the retail investor in particular uh you know if I'm done I'm thinking about not only what's most interesting but also what's most interesting plus that I can easily access because we're can sitting here and talking about what's interesting but in the end if that's an instrument that retail investors and people can't get hold of I mean all bets off right so from that perspective I think what I would say is definitely spend more time in the public equity market right as I mentioned earlier the race cycle going to come down IPO window opens up every single company in some

shape or form I'm hoping will transform from an online company into an onchain company you see what Stripe is doing regarding launching temple a new layer one I think a lot of fintech companies like what in the web 2 or not even fintech companies payment companies just financial services companies they all going to be able to bring you some kind of crypto exposure in a very unique and different way so I would say to our communities and audience out there is do your homework, remain curious, study the public equity market. Every single day there will be companies that adopting a crypto strategy, a blockchain initiative, I think they're going to one way or another transform themselves into a cryptos company somehow. Now, if

combining that with the underlying robust business that's already profitable, cash flowing, that's a great way for you to get crypto exposures. getting crypto doesn't really just means that you buy BTC and E and Salana and hold them doesn't means that you can just find the next category defining poly market which is very hard for a lot of retail investor because they don't have the abilities to access those deals that early on but they don't have to public equity market is trans is transparent a very very high bar for disclosure you kind of on the same playing field than many other institution investors stay curious you'll probably have a edge versus the large pension dominance fund because you already know crypto very very well. Use that in your edge. Go and figure out

what companies, what sectors are violently, aggressively giving themselves a digital asset flavor transform transformation and then figure out if there's any interesting market opportunities out there. That's would be my advice to the audience. So, it's about understanding what your what your goal is as an investor and then making sure that you are evaluating all of the opportunities that are available to you and looking at ways that you can get allocated to participate in this. Um, yeah, really really helpful perspective on that. Um, I want to sneak in one more question here on this. Um, a lot of investors, especially after this crash, have been saying that we may have topped that, you know, the the just like you said, like there's going to take it's

going to take a little bit to build up investor confidence and for liquidity to come back. What are you looking for in Q4 here as the next catalyst for not only Bitcoin, but for the broader digital asset market? Do you think it's going to be a trade deal with China? Do you think it's going to be the end of quantitative tightening? like what are you watching on the horizon in the markets in Q4 that you think is going to kick off the next leg of the the digital asset bull run? >> Yeah, first of all, for whoever says the market has topped, I'm just going to do one thing. Ask them to zoom up the chart for the last 11 15 years. Okay, every single time it says top, it has not topped. So again, uh I don't know if this time it's topped. All I can tell

you is that from a statistics standpoint, I know which side I'm on, you know. So until I see any other evidence, I would say that you have a normal volatilities. Crypto volatility is always exaggerated. Every single time it's going to be different, but I've seen that we're top for so many times, even just in the four-year period, the high money being operating. So not worry about that. I think from here quantitative easing, uh, Middle East, Russia conflict, um, inflation pressures geopolitics China tariff, all of the stuff you mentioned are the right catalyst for the market to do better from here. But I would say that there's like a very very big catalyst in the room which is don't

forget that under Trump administration with SEC CFTC with clarax coming in all of this forget about everything else like we're set up for the market do well from a structural standpoint the government the president and the regulators would love you to do more in the space I don't know what a stronger message to encouraging people to try either build something or invest something in the space right so I think none of cars are going to be geopolitic journalists or you know someone is expert in knowing the Middle Eastern you know conflict and stuff like that what's going to get solved like but I think we have to take a lot of things for granted saying these are things we can't change but I think there's things that people are often ignoring but actually pretty

meaningful is we have a very very supporting legislation which by the way going to happen for at least another two and a half years three years so I think from that perspective that's just you have to zoom out and really understand that we are setting up for a very very good market environment to do that. So I think in the short run everything you mentioned are the short-term catalyst. In the mediumterm catalyst I think all of the thing that really matters like do you have a very supporting regulator legislator and governments that's supporting this industry and I think we do. So from that perspective I think that's really the meaningful the biggest catalyst for us to continue to do very well.

>> Matt, I really appreciate you coming on the show today. I feel like I learned a lot. Our audience I think is going to love this conversation. Um so thanks for being here. Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online? >> Yeah, sure. Of course. Uh you know help you to you please follow me on on Twitter. As I said I'm trying to get better about tweeting more and sharing more thoughts. I'm also you know occasionally active on LinkedIn. So definitely follow me there. I will try to read any as many messages as I can but apologize if I won't be able to respond every single one. Go to hypind.com our website. There's a lot of good information talking about the fun, our strategies, our approach and you can meet the writer team there. Um, and yeah, and hopefully I will see a lot of

your audience in the next events. I'm going to be next events I'm going is the Sock uh conference, the first inaugural conference in London. So, I'm going to spend a few days in over there. So, hit me up if you're around uh and love to uh see many of you. >> Matt, thanks so much for being here again. I really appreciate having you on and I look forward to our next conversation. So, thanks for being here, Matt. >> Likewise. Thank you so much, John. >> Thank you. And thank you all for joining us. I hope that you all learned a lot. I know I did. Uh so until next time, stay safe, stay bullish, and uh we will see you all on the next episode of the Milkro Show. Thanks everyone.

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