Why XRP Might Have Been The ‘Most Hated’ Rally Ever: Bits + Bips

Transcript

I would say the level of inbound I'm getting around digital assets has never been higher. And it's from a new layer of parties that have previously not engaged with me personally on that topic. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Bits and Bips, exploring how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. I'm your host, James Safer, TradFi Archmeister, Lord of Bloomberg's End. Today, it's just me from the original crew. But before we begin, we have some exciting news. Our team is growing. We're thrilled to welcome two new amazing co-hosts. They've been on the show before, Noelle Atchison, author of Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, and Ram Alawalia, founder and CEO of investment firm Lumida.

We had both those guests in the past, as I said, and we all thought their expertise and insights would make Bits and Bips even better for diving into the worlds of crypto and macro. And there's more. We're moving to weekly format, which is part of the reason why we're adding some more hosts. So with so much happening in the markets, the bull market that we're in, we hope our new schedule helps stay ahead of the news and hear from us more often. Just remember that nothing we say here is investment advice. Please check UnchainCrypto.com slash Bips and Bips for more disclosures. And today we're also joined by Alex Thorne, the Bitcoin Viking of House Galaxy. Alex, before we get in, why don't you give us a little background in how you're relevant to our conversation today? Yeah. Hey, James. Hey, everyone. Super happy to be here. Been a fan of the show. How long has it been running now?

Like six months, it feels like. Maybe longer? Time goes quick. Yeah, it does. It does go quick. We're still not organized, but it's okay. Well, I mean, I know all three of you pretty well, and I'm very happy to be here with you guys. I'm head of research at Galaxy and spent 12 years at Fidelity Investments before I joined Galaxy in 2021. So thank you for having me. Happy to be here. Yeah, great. Nice sweatshirt. Shout out, PubKey. I'll be there tomorrow, ironically enough. All right, let's get into it. I mean, the first things we'll talk about are like what everyone, it's actually all the stuff on mainstream media and mainstream financials right now, Trump and his nominations and what's going on in the macro world. So basically,

what is your views on what has happened in the world of Trump and what he's going to do in the administration? Are the reasons believed that Trump's fiscal agenda won't be as aggressive as we initially thought? What do you think about yields? What's going on rates? I'll go over to you first, Noel. What are your thoughts on him choosing Besant to be his treasury secretary? Do you have any complex thoughts here? I confess I wasn't very up on my Besant lore when the choice was made, but I've done some digging since then, and the market seems to like it. But let's face it, that is what matters. Bond traders seem to be. treading gently into the vigilante territory. Not exactly, but making their feelings known, and they seem to like this, which is very good news for not just the bond market, but pretty much

all markets. Obviously, Besant has a hell of a job in front of him, especially when Trump is now threatening 100% tariffs on anyone that makes a slight little move away from the dollar. So it's going to be a challenging time, and he sounds like the right man for the job. Let's hope he lasts. I'd echo that. Look, I think Besant is maybe one of the most impressive treasury secretaries we've seen in 15 or 20 years. Like Noel, I did some homework after he was nominated. I was looking at his writing and his thought process and the intellectual caliber of this individual is off the charts. He's not like a former Goldman Sachs executive who's a manager operator. He understands how markets works. He understands the economy and he's focused on keeping the price of oil down, increasing US production. That helps markets. keeps inflation at

bay. He's also focused on a growth agenda that ties into Trump's policies around deregulation. He understands the role of tariffs, and he's actually not like a tariff hawk. He's softer on that. He's actually more conventional in that sense, which I think was good, and Marcus wanted to see that. So we may be seeing a preview of Trump's strategy around tariffs, which is using tariffs for negotiation, as opposed to kind of like core policy. I thought it was a very impressive selection and it speaks well about, I think, economic growth in the years ahead. Alex, do you have any complex thoughts on Besson? I mean, real quick, I'll just say his whole 3-3-3 deal, you know, cut the budget deficit 3% of

GDP, push GDP growth over 3%, increase the production of oil by 3 million barrels. I don't know if he's going to be able to hit any one of those, but I mean, if that's what he wants to do, it's be interesting to watch. I will say, I'm also kind of, I tend to be more biased towards people who actually operate in the market versus the academics. I don't know if that's because, you know, I'm used to being in the market, like talking to people in the markets and I just, I don't know, it's just my personal inclination. So I'm genuinely happy to see that he was named. Alex, any thoughts? Yeah, I agree with that point, James, and also what Noel and Ram said. But I, you know, I think one important thing to remember also is the market expecting not a lot of fiscal

tightening or debt reduction out of Trump's administration. That's been the anticipation for months, right? I mean, we've thought of the tariff agenda as probably inflationary and no president has reduced the deficit and thus the debt in decades. So I would say, I think it's starting to look like there's a higher chance that there is some deficit reduction or debt reduction. I don't think it's likely yet, but I think it picked Like, Besant is a very shrewd and good pick that makes it more likely that maybe there is gonna be some belt tightening. And at least it's being talked about. When's the last time we heard it actually be talked about with the possibility of something being done. I mean, it's obviously a lot of it

comes down to world events, which are not cooperating at the moment, but it is, as you say, Alex, it's finally on the table. And doesn't this feel very different to 2016? These do feel like grownup choices. These do feel like there's a path that will be followed. It feels a lot more organized and well thought out. Well, I mean, some of them do. I mean, other ones are just solely picked, I feel like, because they are very loyal to Trump and he's going to be able to get across whatever he wants. He wants people that aren't going to push back on him, though. I don't know if, bested in my mind, I feel like he probably would be one to push back on him, but I guess time will tell on that front. Let's move on to rates, macro, any sort of economic data, non-farm payrolls, PCE, inflation. Let's just talk about rates right now real quick,

and I'll just say what we're looking at. Right now, markets are essentially pricing for a cut in inflation. December, so December 18th is the next meeting. We're at like a 76% chance of them cutting. So this is what it looks like now. For a while, it was actually way lower than that. But no matter how you slice it for the last few weeks, the market has been pricing that there's likely to only be one cut between December and January. Still seems to be what the market is pricing at this point. There's been some comments out of different people here. I mean, Noelle was just talking about some of the quotes that came out from different Fed officials. But yeah, it's looking like we're probably going to get one cut between December and January at some point. And then there should

be some sort of pause in the coming days because inflation isn't really continuing to go down in the way I think a lot of people expected them to. Yeah, we saw that with the PCE, which was definitely showing some stickiness. And there's really not much sign, especially with long-term yields, keeping mortgage rates high, that that's going to change anytime soon. The last mile was always going to be the hardest to deliver, but it really is proving harder. harder to deliver. The probability jumped 10 basis points just a couple of hours ago, which is kind of amazing, on the back of Waller's comments. He was giving a speech today at a conference, and the part that James was referring to that I was reading out earlier, because I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I've never heard this in a Fed official speech before. He says, and

I can't do the accent, and I'm really sorry about that because it would be better. Here we go. He says, overall, I feel like an MMA fighter who keeps getting inflation in a chokehold, waiting for it to tap out, and yet it keeps slipping out of my grasp in the last minute. But let me assure you that submission is inevitable. Inflation isn't getting out of the octagon. I thought that was so cool. Look, if Trump was listening to that and he referenced world wrestling, he'd be the next to that chair. He's not qualified to replace Jerome. And it's like, that guy knows how to read the room, right? They're picking up the Trump vibes. It's a good way to communicate. That's the audition, right? That's the audition for the job. That's the audition. Look, this is the rate cut that no

one needed, but we'll get because that's pre-committed because of forward guidance. And Noah and I were talking backstage earlier, and then earlier in his written draftscript says, look, as you pointed out, it doesn't look like inflation's beat, but I think we're going to cut anyway. There's really no need for that. And you're seeing the Fed set the groundwork for the next inflation cycle. That's my view. Yeah, you have to be concerned. If you look at the 1970s, right? Like if you compare to the Volcker era chart, I don't know if you've seen this. I mean, you have to adjust the axes a little bit to make them line up, right? But like there is a serious risk of reinflation in general, particularly with the unknown, you know, new Trump administration policies, what they could do.

If you look at that, you know, the Volcker era of inflation and cutting, like it makes you frightened. So I'm sort of in the, I guess it would make me in the hawkish camp here of like, there's not, I don't see a huge need to cut necessarily. Like everything seems to be doing okay. You know, except for the national debt, which of course can't bear these rates for that long. Yeah, I mean, two data points to add to that. One, the Atlanta Fed in their GDP model yanked up expectations for GDP growth for Q4 to 3.2% from 2.7%. The economy is doing just fine, and there's no sign that the rates at this level are restrictive at all. And the second data point comes from a

survey that was released, I think, a few days ago from Absolute Strategy Research. They surveyed asset allocators. 60% answered that they expect inflation to be higher 12 months from now, almost 60%. So, yeah, as you say, Alex, inflation expectations are not gone, and they matter for how inflation actually unfolds. And the Fed knows this. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. You know, it looks like Kevin Warsh might be the next Fed chair. We'll see the path to that happening. But if that's the case, Kevin Warsh would eliminate forward guidance, which is what put the Fed in a box here. So, uh, yeah, it's gonna be quite an interesting year ahead. You know, the Fed just has to not screw it up and

they're making a mistake by cutting rates into the Goldilocks. You know, we're gonna have Black Friday sales data's coming out. It's strong. Consumers are spending. They just change the behavior. They wait. Americans like a good deal. They go shopping on Black Friday. I think I do like two thirds of my retail spend on Black Friday, this three day weekend, set it up for holidays. It's part of the game. It's part of the behavior. It's part of the culture. Right. Uh, and I think, uh, Tomorrow, we'll see data showing Cyber Monday was yet another record sales. I'll push back a little bit on the accommodative versus restrictive stuff, because I do think rates are still really high compared to where inflation is. I'm not saying we're seeing signs of it causing tightening in the market, but 25 bps, I can't imagine that's going to...

Theoretically, I guess it maybe could be the straw that broke the camel's back and we end up seeing a re-ignition of inflation, but I don't think that's a real concern. I think They're gonna do 25 and then there's plenty of bandwidth for them to pause and wait however long it takes to see what's going on with these other numbers. So I kind of get it and I'm with you, Ron. Like they said, they kind of hinted they were gonna do it and you can't like give all this forward guidance to the market and everyone starts pricing a bunch of stuff in and you should really refrain from like completely changing your direction in my mind for things when you absolutely have to, like when they went twice in September or that just made sense, right? To me, at least. Check out this charge on the

screen there. Yeah, this shows it's one of the different measures of measuring inflation. Sticky price, consumer price index, less food and energy. So this includes a basket where the price level changes less frequently. And you can see that, you know, we're at still 3.9%. We still have a ways to go. And the rate in decline is lessening. And that doesn't take into account the effect of tariffs. Well, tariffs as a whole, do we want to get on the topic of debating tariffs, inflationary impact or not? We have no idea what's going to happen there, but it does look like tariffs are going up, whatever. Yes, there's some level of tariffs coming to markets.

I don't know if there's a poly market on that, but it should be in the high 90s. The trick then is to only focus on services inflation. Forget about goods inflation, right? Yeah. Do you have anything to add on this? Will we move? No, I think, I think you're right, James overall too, that like, there's not, it's not that there's a writ like a high risk of reinflation right now, like things look pretty decent. And I, and I think you guys are right. Like if you're with the fed guiding, right, what would be the surprise? Probably not cutting in December would be the surprise. And they don't want to surprise markets. There's plenty of, I think, room to do this cut. It's just, um, it's a real i think it's a real fear though like especially with the unknowns of trump so i i wouldn't

expect i mean i would guess at the next meeting after that there's a pause unless some kind of crazy data comes out in general and and really like they should just be keeping it slow like i'm thinking back to the most of my adult life when rates were near zero and there's very few tools in the policy kit uh for the you know central bank when the rates are zero or near zero right you can't cut i mean We're not Europe. You can't cut to negative rates, right? Like there's, so I, I like keeping those arrows in the quiver until they're really needed. And, and really to me, it's more just about like how much can the, the fiscal situation, um, afford to pay these, this, this interest on the debt at these elevated levels. I, I don't know how long, I know the answer

is not forever. So like, I'm looking for it to come down, but, and, you know, it doesn't feel like, and, and, you know, Rahm and, and Noel have presented some of the data, like, We're not really there on inflation yet. It's certainly not as bad as it was. But, you know, the difference between three plus percent annualized and two percent annualized is significant. That's a significant difference. Right. So to actually get to a policy outcome where they, you know, as far as I can tell, two percent is still the target. Like they're still a ways off. I think that's it for macro. We can move on. Let's get into a much spicier, more fun topic here. I mean, if you listen to any podcast or anything around in the crypto space where we are playing here, everyone has talked about

Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Specifically, I would say that was coined by Nick Carter. He's the one that was really pushing this. He did a lot of the research here. But recently, Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, a billionaire investor, went on Joe Rogan and basically just blew the lid off of this. And Joe Rogan's audience is so massive, way bigger. Anyone in crypto has known this has been going on, knows people have been debanked, know people have been losing access to the different variations of capital markets, the banking system. But now all of a sudden this has blown up. You have a bunch of congressmen now commenting on this, saying they're going to investigate it. I will say he did get something wrong. He kind of made it seem like it was the CFPB that was doing this, which like in

my, from what I know, like I've never heard the CFPB being involved in debanking people. And if you look at it, they're kind of like doing the opposite. Like it was really more like FDIC, the Fed, the OCC, all these different other federal agencies. Ironically enough, many of them had like some sort of tie back to the Elizabeth Warrens of the world, literally Elizabeth Warren. So there's a whole bunch of stuff to go on there, but this actually seems to have finally caught the interest of politicians and mainstream media now. You guys have any major thoughts on what was said and what's going on? Noelle, you want to go first? I'll bring the European vantage point over here. It's somewhat, I mean, obviously it's fantastic that this is coming out. It's fantastic that it looks like there's momentum to get to one accountability, you know, whose idea was this and who should be held responsible. And two, let's make

sure this never happens again. In Europe, we have a slightly different situation, especially the UK, where it's not crypto. It's that has been the target of financial censorship. It's anyone who is at risk of touching anything remotely to do with money laundering. And I think that speaks to the bigger issue. If you are a person that could, even through your job, perhaps one day be exposed to a bribe, then you get debanked. If politicians debank because of their political views, and this is actually documented. So it's not anti-crypto, it's anti-anyone that just might rock the boat in any way, shape or form, which is as shocking. really, and it comes down to the ridiculous suppression, the oppressive anti-money laundering rules, which are imposed by faceless, unaccountable organizations. So I think the choke point 2.0, tip of the iceberg, really,

a global approach to money laundering needs to be re-examined. Yeah, I'll add to that. Look, there's another tweet by David Marcus, who is the executive at Meta, that was trying to create Libra and then DiEM and he had a tweet this weekend talking about how Jerome Powell under pressure from Treasury Secretary Yellen said she would not quote unquote back him even though the program was compliant. He shared a letter from the regulator and also Senator Sherrod Brown who was the Senate Banking Committee at the time lost the election by the way due to a big crypto push there which was successful was also pressuring banks not to participate. The message was like, we can't stop you, but you will have additional scrutiny. No

banks want scrutiny. You know, my former life before Lumina, I was the executive head of the crypto business at Cross River. So we were a part of the DM program. And then one week it just stopped. And that, this telling is what happened. Like no bank wanted to be a part of something that's going to require or having to live through consent orders or matters require attention. These are very debilitating for banks. You know, bank has a board that gets together once a month, they meet for the entire day. The bulk of the focus is on compliance. You need new product approval, you need new product approval, including from your regulators. And meanwhile, you're negotiating with your regulator on other matters, like are you compliant with the Company Reinvestment Act? There are trade-offs everywhere. And the regulars have a lot of power, right? Banks are quasi-public institutions. Vikram Pandit lost his job as CEO of Citibank in part due

to their failure have passed the CCAR stress test. So, you know, he was named an example of it. So the board kind of responded not for their other considerations around that, but, you know, it's very serious when the regulator says, hey, you can go do that, but we don't want you to do that. And that's not a rule of law. That's not clear rules of the road. The other part about, you know, the Libra story is that it would have advanced US dollar hegemony, by the way. It was actually a way to put Libra on the Facebook and on Meta in the same way that Tencent and WhatsApp have their native currency through social media app. People exchange money through red envelopes. They live their lives on these social media apps and they engage in e-commerce there. And that is the future. China's actually ahead

from a digital banking perspective, although it's centralized. And so Meta exceeded to every single regulatory request, including on elements that weren't even the ethos of crypto where Libra started, meaning they were in unhosted wallets and so forth. So it's great to see this come out and it's like Return of the Jedi. So I'm glad to see the exposure that's out there. Yeah, it was great and amazing and awesome to see David Marcus provide some real clarity on what exactly happened, at least in their mind to Libra. You know, I think this has always been tricky because with, with Libra sticking with Libra for one second, cause I thought that was super interesting and new, basically new information about the players who specifically

wanted it killed it. You know, Libra like, in some ways, like stable coins is threatening to banks in a variety of ways, but in particular, it would have had deposits, customer deposits, going to the stable coin issuer and left the liabilities at the bank, which create. credit crisis for banks it's the similar reason why i think long term there's not likely to be a future for stable coins outside of the banking system it's why stable coins even though for the most part they're you know pretty effective and bland and boring and mostly working are such a high priority for legislators and policymakers in the U.S. because the separation of the liability and the deposit is threatening to the current banking system. So I think there was a lot.

I mean, it was almost going to look like the IMF's SDR, right? Sort of a supranational currency. The initial proposals, you might recall, were a basket of a variety of currencies. I forget, probably the Euro, the USD, maybe JPY. I can't actually remember what they all were. Yeah, that was Libra before DiEM, which was going to be, I think, just dollar back. So That was tricky. I think for Operation Chokepoint, this is actually pretty hard to draw a line saying, well, I can't force a bank to take on any customer that I want, but I also can't, I want to prohibit them from refusing or debanking people for XYZ reason. Like that's actually a pretty tricky line to thread. It shouldn't be that hard as long as you, what makes it harder is when the regulators, particularly the Fed OCC and FDIC, blanket

discourage people from working with entire industries. And that's what they did. There was a January 3rd, 2023 joint letter from the Fed, FDIC and OCC. The Fed followed it up with the letter on that same month, January 27th, extending their guidance into state member banks, very, in my view, overstepping their regulatory authority on paper, explicitly warning banks not to get near crypto while actually saying that's not what they were doing. But of course they were doing it behind the scenes. regulators were telling examiners were going into these banks and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, like you shouldn't be dealing, doing business with this company. That doesn't even talk about, and by the way, not just crypto. The other thing I think Mark Andreessen got wrong is he said it was like 30 banks, 30 companies that were debanked. I think he means

his own portfolio companies. It was hundreds and it wasn't just in crypto. Also fintech companies have been facing. Yeah. Fintech companies have been facing significant scrutiny also. So We definitely need some kind of fair access rule reinstated or something to prevent, you know, it can't be like every four years or change in administration. Like everybody has to wonder if they get a bank account. Also, Caitlin Long, right, Custodia Bank, they're denied access to Fedmaster account. That story has yet to be told. You know, there's litigation there. You know, Caitlin will tell that at some point. Also, we're going to talk about the backstory with Silvergate and Signature Bank. So Silvergate was going to be the stablecoin issuer, and they received approval from the Fed to acquire DM's technology. You can't do M&A at a bank unless the regulator, specifically the Federal Reserve, approves you

to do that. So they have to prove the business plan and the bank must be in good standing. So we're going to learn what happened there. They have not told their story yet. I know they want to tell their story. Massive rug pull and most important, get rules in place that at least people are told why. they're denied. One of the most pernicious things is not being able to get a bank account without any reason. And that makes it harder for you to get a bank account. And these days, while indeed there are alternatives, you can't pay taxes if you don't have a bank account. Yeah, and I'm sure there's people out there listening to this. I mean, I know there's thousands and thousands of people who listen to this.

There's probably people out there who are like, this is being over-exaggerated. And if you're not in the space, like I can tell you, I know multiple people personally who have lost bank accounts, have had their bank access revoked. I know multiple people who have talked about this stuff and seen it in the back end firsthand that these examiners and bank regulators basically told them, you can't have more. I don't remember if there was 10% or 15%, but like a certain number of your deposits can't be related to crypto. And like that was never put in writing because they learned from Operation Choke Point 1.0, just don't put this stuff in writing. And Trump put an end to what they were doing with Operation Choke Point 1.0. Then he went out of office and here we go, 2.0 all over again. So I'm just hoping there's

some sort of, as was already said, fair access rules that are put in to prevent this stuff from happening. No matter how much you might dislike an industry, it just doesn't make sense to just be able to debank people because they're involved in that industry. And I think all of it, I don't think all of it was necessarily just the regulators. I think some of the banks were just like the other banks, the bigger types of institutions. I think they were happy to go along with this. They're happy to kill fintech and crypto in many ways. It's the smaller upstart banks, Silvergate's, Signature Bank, those people involved, they're the ones that are on the side of this because they saw a way for them to gain market share and really grow their business. But the JP Morgans of the world, they would much rather like

completely own this stuff and not allow upstarts to get in there. 100%. JP Morgan has the largest e-commerce payments network. And they stand to lose and other credit card issuers that move money through debit, ACH, especially credit card, where they have a 3% interchange fee. And Stablecoin puts all of that at risk. So of course they're not going to be supportive of this. But hopefully we get this back on track and get innovation and enable stable coins to challenge these legacy payment rails. And that helps consumers and it helps merchants, which is where the benefit is. One would think that that's where those of the Warren is focused. If you're a corner bodega, small business, earning a 2% net profit margin, you're paying 3% at interchange, that's the balance of whether you're profitable or not. I have a question

for the group. How soon do you think we'll see stablecoin regulation pass in the U.S.? Foley pass, like signed into law by President Trump? Next year. Next year. I think 2025. First half, second? Second half. Yeah, I'd take the under, or I guess the long, I would take the longer side of that bet. I would even say maybe like 35% chance it happens next year, more likely in 26%. Wow. Wow. That's so sure that that's good. A variant perception there, Alex. I mean, think about how much stuff they have to work on, right? Like they, you got a, they've got a razor thin majority in the house. Now the Republicans, but they have both houses of Congress, the white house, um, they're going to try to move,

um, much higher priority stuff. I think earlier tax stuff, immigration stuff, all that stuff takes forever. You're not going to see most of the like second tier of cabinet won't be approved and confirmed until like April or May. Like you're already talking about almost halfway through the year before I think a lot of real work starts getting done. So to me, I do think it is high priority. There are a lot of stakeholders to manage when it comes to stable coin legislation. And so it's not that easy. And I don't think it's that high a priority. I mean, I think it's a relatively high priority, certainly high priority in like financial regulatory circles.

But with things like immigration and taxes, I think they'll probably go after extending the tax cuts, tariffs, all that stuff is going to be much higher priority and it's going to take a while. So I think there's a good chance of it happening next year, but not that high priority, I don't think. We'll see. I'll challenge you a little bit. So on immigration, I think they'll be executive branch driven. I don't think you're going to get immigration reform. No one's really talking about that. They should, but I don't think that'll happen. The ideal way for the Republican Party to approach this is to set up tax extensions for next year going into the midterms. Stablecoin bill is already drafted. It's bipartisan.

It's the low-hanging fruit. Low-hanging fruit, right. I agree. It's not a top-three party for them. I don't believe it's bipartisan, first of all. There's still significant disagreement about who can issue and which regulators would regulate. The key question is, whether there's a state pathway or it's only national banks or are non-banks allowed? Is it the fed that oversees them? Is it, there's good questions about that still. So I'm not, but I mean, I, that's, it's a, it's a relatively low priority compared to like what Trump ran on, I think, but it's, it's, it's up there. It's more important, I think for the banking system and banks than, than most other issues they face at the moment. But fair enough. And Coinbase, their fortunes will turn on this bill.

Obviously, so will Circle. Coinbase makes their net interest income, makes their profits, primarily from USDC, and they're a non-bank. Yeah, also Visa and Stripe and all those that have invested in platforms. Would the answer be different if Trump did decide to appoint a crypto czar? I don't think so. You don't think they go faster? I mean, they have leadership, they have focus. That crypto czar question is a funny one. It's like Doge, right? It's like the Department of Government efficiency, right? It's not a department. It's not clear. I think the effectiveness of that role is going to solely depend on the ability of the person who is appointed to it to wrangle the parts of the government, what type of consensus they're

able to build, and whether they're seen as a credible voice for President Trump. I think, and that really, it's sort of whatever the person makes of it, like, because... They're not going to have any statutory authority over any of the government, most likely. I like the idea. I mean, to your point, it is aligning with NABank versus Bank State. You need leadership to get stuff done, to make trade-offs, to lead with an agenda, bring parties in a room, and address objections one by one. So I like the idea of it, even though, yeah, I agree, they don't have any real power. Yeah, I do too. I think it also signals the seriousness of the president on this issue, right? It would be very good news, but I can't think of any high-profile crypto person who would want that job just because of the

high likelihood of failure, given the difficulty of navigating the halls of power. Oh, it's an opportunity. Brian Brooks would be a great candidate. Yeah. I thought Ryan Selkis would be fantastic. Yeah, Selkis is the first one that came to my mind. He actually hinted at Twitter that he would do it. He would bash heads together. You're right. He'd bash heads together. He might make a lot of enemies too, though. I don't think he cares. I think the reason why actually, if we can go there on this topic, it would be ideal crypto czar. The reason why I think Ryan would be ideal is because one, he has clarity of vision on the policy. You have to start with that. You have to have a point of view initially, including on the minutiae. And there's even more minutiae than state versus federal and non-bank versus bank.

Issues having to do with Fourth Amendment. And is Crypto FinTech 3.0, which means the KYC AML regime applies, or is it distinct and not custodial and correct? invokes ideas of self-sovereignty. Those are two different branches of the tree. And the other key thing you need is a self-regulatory organization. And Ryan knows that. The issue I have with someone from Coinbase or any exchange running this is that they have a bias. So there's a reason why there's been no self-regulatory organization, which is really what the industry needs. Because there's so many detailed regulation you need in this market, in the same way that FINRA has created detailed regulation around broker check.

Congress is not going to pass a law saying brokers have to report this and that infraction. But it's an important regulation to have. And the industry put that forward. If you had Coinbase, an executive from Coinbase leaders, it would advantage Coinbase. And that's the issue with every SRO thus far is that it advantages the party that leads it. Because the big opportunity is to lead the SRO. NASD, which was the nonprofit organization, became NASDAQ. which is trading the public markets today, which just hit all-time highs. That's the economic opportunity that creates a conflict of interest from any one exchange leading on this issue. You truly need someone third party. Ryan runs Massari. He's a third party person, sees all the issues, and he threw Brad Garlinghouse

and XRP under the bus, which I like. I like that. He's like, look, it's going to enrich XRP share token hold. I was like, yeah, he's right. So you need someone that's like that, I think, in my view. And it's about executive decision making. It's not about, yes, there's some consensus, but you need clarity of view and fashion heads together and getting stuff done. I will add real quick. So my colleague, Nathan Dean and Elliot Stein, Nathan's down in DC, and they are doing a lot of work. He covers a lot of the policy agendas. He's where I get all my DC inside info because he knows everything that's going on down there. He knows a lot of guys. He used to work at CFTC. He knows all this stuff and they currently have an official 70% odds of these passing within the next one

to two years. So we're talking timelines, debating whether or not it can happen the second half and next year it happens in 2026. But it's almost certainly gonna happen within the next one to two years. That and a crypto market structure bill they have at 70% within the next one to two years. that's pretty high for them, I would say. I mean, I've seen them go higher, but as we get closer, maybe that number will go up. But yeah, they're pretty confident that there's going to be some sort of bills that get passed through Congress in the next one to two years. And while Trump has, you know, the Senate, the House, and obviously the White House. Amazing. Anything else on that topic?

Let's get into something more fun. We were talking about this before. Thanksgiving, I mean, I remember in 2017, right after Thanksgiving, things went crazy in the crypto world. You guys have any fun Thanksgiving-type interactions? I mean, I know you're in Europe, so maybe it's a little bit different for you over there. I want to hear your stories. I want to hear all of your stories. Rahm, why don't you go first? Well, my grandmother asked about Bitcoin. How old is your grandmother? Well, she's my stepmom's mom. So she's in her mid-70s. and she was asking about Bitcoin. And she told me about her friend, a physicist who sounds incredible, like incredible individual, I just want to get to know him. He's into Bitcoin. So Bitcoin came up like through two different individuals across a family Thanksgiving

of maybe like eight to 10 people. That's what they include. It's a high hit rate. It was a high hit rate and it was unprompted. It was unprompted, right? Meaning they just brought it out and they say, hey, what do you think about Bitcoin? And I got text messages from people. I'm sure, Alex, you're seeing that too. And Noel and James, I'd love to hear what you're seeing there. But I would say the level of inbound I'm getting around digital assets has never been higher. And it's from a new layer of parties that have previously not engaged with me personally on that topic. We're friends. We talked about 10 other things, not Bitcoin. And now I'm hearing about, hey, should I get into Bitcoin now? I don't know. I haven't heard like nearly as much as I thought I would. But I

definitely did get, well, you know, it's like I was at a birthday party for a family friend who turned 70. It was a big party. He's a great guy, great man. And it was filled. And it's one of my wife's best friends' dads, right? And so I know this group of people for 10, 15 years in general. So there's a bunch of people and they're coming over and like slapping me on the back, congratulating me. You guys, Bitcoin, I saw Bitcoin, congrats. I was like, you know, I didn't like, sell my Bitcoin and buy a house or anything, you know, like I'm just sort of watching the number, right? Talking about the number. But there's only like one or two people in that group that actually really know anything about this market. And, you know, shocker, it's the CFA and the RAA that I'm friends

with that were there and they get it. But I still, and I am getting inbound. And people asking questions. I mean, I did get a couple even at our family Thanksgiving, which was about 12 people of like, can you actually just explain Bitcoin again to us? Like now we care. We didn't care last year when we had Thanksgiving together, but now we care again. So like there is some of that. But I was also just struck by very few people out in the world really know anything about this market still. Like people just, I think honestly, it's going to Bitcoin will have to be trading at a million dollars a coin before it's like part of the day-to-day discussion, you know, like, I don't know. It's just, it's crazy because obviously us four on this, you know, podcast are like, you know, you didn't hear

about when BlackRock got involved or the ETFs launched or the, or Trump talked in Nashville. Like, no, almost nobody did. Apparently it's, you know, I guess it's maybe it's one or 200 or 300 million people in the world, but that's still only, you know, a couple percent of the total world that I think is into this. And I haven't, I have started to see some, You know, the high school friend was texting me. They're like, we saw you on Bloomberg or something like it is starting, but it's not at the level that it was for me, at least in like 2021, when like Jimmy Fallon is on his show holding up his board ape. And but I did also see, by the way, as an aside, like NFT volumes are starting to pick up. Maybe we are getting close. Definitely, you know, big uptick over

the last two years, though. Yeah, I'm not seeing very much in my circles, which are European, and we haven't had the same sort of regulatory hostility that you have in the US. But for me, it does not feel frothy yet. I'll be brief. Look, it's the same story. People focus and pay attention when you're at all-time highs. No one cared about Bitcoin a year and a half ago, two years ago. Now people are focusing on it. Now, what it means for Bitcoin here, I think, is a good question. And Alex had a really thoughtful write-up on Twitter. I enjoy those, peeled all the dimensions on Bitcoin here.

But XRP is in focus now, which tells you the kind of buyer that's in the market now. And what was the comment I made earlier, most hated rally because no one's in it? I will say my interactions for the most part, I think I did get people like, oh, I know you cover crypto now. This is crazy, right? I'm like, I guess. But ironically, I have a bunch of people asking me about XRP. I would say that's probably this, aside from Bitcoin and maybe, no, actually, I would say Ripple passes Solana. But people constantly ask me about XRP and it kind of makes sense. It's not a quality value. Most people I know that aren't like, they don't really know what's going on in with Bitcoin or blockchain or what all this is, most of those people are huge fans of XRP specifically. Yeah.

So, Aarik, what do you make of that? I mean, you wrote a thoughtful defense of Bitcoin and all the rest, but don't you see that as, like, these two anecdotes are sharing with you. Aren't those top of the market kind of signals? One is, you know, normies dialing up and say, hey, can I get in? And then second, you've got a low-quality junk rally, which, is a part of the cycle, as you know, and it's also the last part of the cycle. I'm not saying it's the end of the cycle, but cycles have many cycles within them. Isn't that a negative indicator? Yeah, it does feel like the hot ball of money period actually did start happening the last couple of days. The coins that were up 20% or more was like Litecoin, XRP, HBAR, Stellar, which is actually just like, it has been surprising and in some ways heartening it felt like

old times you know like I think um yeah I agree as like a top signal there's a question there I I think it's more like finally uh Bitcoin went sideways you know took a breather after like three weeks and there was some room for something else to do something um most of the DeFi coins that have rallied did so right after the election right so like there was already uplifts there's sort of catch up I think Just on XRP in particular, because the chart is truly insane to look at. If you take a zoom out and look at a daily or a weekly chart, it's literally just peaks in 17, goes all the way down.

Peaks in 21, again, a little lower than before, goes all the way down. And then it's literally just four days triples. It's a straight line up. Right now, as we talk, it's at 260 or something. 275, right? And I think this is maybe the most hated rally in crypto that I've ever seen. I don't know anyone in the institutional world or crypto funds that own this. All the OG crypto traders, Bitcoiners, they all hate Ripple and XRP. So I think this might be maybe the most painful rally for the crypto native investment class that I've seen in a long time. I don't know anyone that was long XRP-based. 60 cents thinking it was going to triple right like basically nobody that

i know um and so i you know kind of is what it is maybe that's why i mean it's up 91 over the week over week right now i'm looking at it here and um so i don't know if that's a top i mean it it it definitely has vibes you know the funny thing is that ether didn't really run right typically this would come at it would go bitcoin ethereum sort of alt season and and in 17 and 21 like these coins were um you know leaders in the alt season cyclicality um but we've had this different like Bitcoin and meme coins kind of and Solana Market for most of the year so things feel a little out of whack I think it does give you hints of that um but there are think about it I mean like from a policy I think

the policy catalysts are just impossible to ignore like there's this is not going to look like a normal cycle I don't think even if it is cyclical it's got too much on the horizon like regulatory relief for the altcoin and d5 complexes the possibility of a strategic bitcoin reserve um you know this cryptozar i mean for you know for all i know brad could be in the mix for that right like there's a whole bunch he i think part of this too he tweeted that he'll he did an interview with 60 minutes that is yet to air so like there's there's noise around xrp like in general but i i think people have been shocked and it does make you wonder when coins that nobody's really talked about for one to two years at least are rallying. I'm sure you guys heard about that,

right? Cardano's in the policy mix, what the hell's going on? I saw Charles say that they were. I don't know if I believe it. Yeah, exactly. That's setting up a policy department. Therefore, for sure, you're going to be invited to form part of the inner circle, right? Yeah. You're right. Alex, I get your point on the opportunities ahead, but But we need specific dates and events, right? We had SEC Chair Gensler, Nasr's resignation. That was a peak sentiment moment. People looking forward to that. That's an event you can look at and say relief is that even though everyone knew that was going to happen, but it happened, people got excited. That event fell off the calendar. What are markets going forward to? Like Bitcoiners are fantastic. Cryptos are great. But until we have dates and impact, I think that there could be a lull between

now and Inauguration Day where there's just no events. markets to focus on yeah and meanwhile you've got rebalancing of portfolios right yeah i mean this this feels like a bit of rebalancing right again bitcoin kind of just sideways i mean down a bit at first but then pretty much recovered right into the middle of the 90s right just sort of sitting here 94 and 98 over and over again um plenty of room for capital rotation and that's kind of what you're seeing a couple that come to mind rom like you've got the bitcoin mina conference at the end of next week in abu dhabi um i'll be surprised if there's not some kind of big announcements at that that are interesting like along the lines of sovereign wealth funds or nation states yeah yeah so um you have

that you you have the actual naming of someone like an sec chairman uh or chairperson that um i think is likely going to be positive for crypto Yeah, but you're right. I think markets are pricing that it's going to be favorable. So I think the remaining names for these roles, plus they're diminishing in importance, right? I mean, the Treasury Secretary was sort of the top for importance in financial markets, but the market regulators will be important. I think who you see at the sub eight, like the OCC and stuff, that'll be important. But Um, yeah, I think you're, you're kind of in a lull at some point, the stuff actually has to start happening. Right. I mean, like, and that could take a while, right? Like

after, even after inauguration, right? Gary Gensler wasn't confirmed by the Senate until April of 2021, actually four days after Coinbase won public, um, on, so like it could, you know, you could end up with waiting for legislation to be introduced or waiting for someone to actually take You know, their seat. I think maybe if it's Hester Peirce or... Sorry, what were you going to say, Rob? No, I was just saying there's risk of frustration and disappointment in markets. Because all the things you pointed out, right? Yeah, there is. That's it. We had a great event at CCHR Games Resigns. Now we go through the value of execution. That takes a lot of time. I don't know. What is the nature of that? When, the who's,

the where's? And... But in that time, we could also be seeing some rotation, as Alex was saying, not just into this, not skipping all the way through to the meme coins and XRP, but we saw on Friday, ETH net inflows its highest ever, even higher than the net inflows for the Bitcoin spot ETFs. That was very unusual. And this is before we're even hearing rumors that staking rewards will be allowed to be distributed globally. the ETFs or any catalyst like that. It felt like a rebalancing sort of rotation, which, as you've been saying, we could be seeing more of here into the end of the year. Fair enough. Look, if the administration comes out with a framework that makes Ethereum DeFi legal for institutions, that's bullish. I

don't think that's priced in. People aren't talking about DeFi, which is one of the central points of getting a counterparty risk here. That's exciting. Yeah, Ethereum's rallied. Ethereum has been unburdened by what has been. It's great to see Ethereum finally get its mojo. We'll see how far it continues. Yeah, it's got a lot of catching up to do though. There's some catch up. Yeah, it does feel like that mean or it's down all the way and then there's that little bar that goes up and everyone's like, yeah, celebrating. It did have a moment last week, Noelle, though, you're right, where Bitcoin was also trading lower while ETH was trading higher, right? And you can imagine that Ethereum and Solana, platforms that have DeFi and stuff, they stand to be bigger net gainers from a shift in regulatory policy, I think, over the long term

than Bitcoin, right? So there should be some rotation. Maybe this just gives a little bit of breathing room while we wait for, you know, a national strategic Bitcoin reserve or something. A question for James. What odds do you give the approval of Bitcoin? and XRP ETF within the next two years? Yeah, so this is a list of all the current filings. Ironically enough, today we had WisdomTree file for an XRP ETF. All the Ripple ones, as you can see on here, I hope if you're watching, there's four of them that have been filed in the last few weeks and months, but none of them has gone through that final step of filing in 19 before, which is like the filing you do in partnership with the exchange that starts the clock. But we have a Litecoin filing, we have an

HBAR filing, we have a bunch of XRP filings. We have some basket ETFs that are trying to convert. We have other ETFs that are going to hold Bitcoin and Ethereum that have already filed. Most recently, the Solana ETFs filed. So when will an XRP come? I don't know. I think it's likely to happen. We have to wait and see when people are actually going to file. But I would think I mean, even now, if they filed now, you probably don't see it. You won't see it until the back half of 2025. And the other thing we were talking about catalysts before. I mean, one catalyst that I think is causing this is the news around the fact that Ripple is going to launch RLUSD and they think they're going to get NYDFS approval to launch their own stablecoin. So that's one thing that is definitely

buoying Ripple, aside from the fact that things that go up tend to keep going up until some certain point in the future, especially in this market. But yeah, it's deja vu all over again with this stuff. Because for a while, we were watching all these Bitcoin filings and the Ethereum ETF filings, and no one else was trying anything else. And this chart is just the same thing over again. It's that people are getting a lot more, a lot riskier and going further out in the curve. And I think we're going to see a hell of a lot more filings like this over the coming years, particularly if we get a market structure built out of Congress. Do you think you're going to see, are you going to see like, because I'm noticing here, James, on this table, no Fidelity, no BlackRock, no Invesco, we've got mostly crypto native issuers fanek and wisdom tree basically that are out here

with these other are the big guys gonna get involved do you think in this sort of longer tail i think so that's a really good question so there's another thing in here that i don't have on here um all of these filings the ones that have the 19 before is the solana ets specifically for the most part they were filed with cboe so notably Bitwise, their Bitwise XRP ETF filing for all their other filings they've done with NYSE in the past, the other ones they have currently out there for Bitcoin and Ethereum, they've done with New York Stock Exchange. But for Solana, they didn't do with NYSE or NASDAQ. So I think CBWE is willing to push the envelope a little bit more. They filed these things back in September, I think, or somewhere around there. And the SEC basically refused to acknowledge

them and force them to withdraw the applications for Solana. So I think My view right now is one, the SEC has until within the next week or so, they can acknowledge these applications for Solana specifically, or they might just not and say, we're not basically denied them outright before even accepting them and going through the process. And I think that's what I think has a decent chance of happening solely because the SEC division of enforcement has multiple lawsuits out there, namely Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, where if they're not calling Solana a de facto security, they are saying that they're offering what security is offering and they don't like that. So I think until we get some change to the SEC, I'd be surprised if you have one division of

the SEC, Division of Trading and Markets, and the Division of Corporate Finance approving this asset or any of these assets, particularly Ripple and Solana, to go into an ETF as a commodity ETF product While the SEC's division of enforcement is out there saying, these are securities, this went through a securities offering. So I think there likely needs to be some cleanup at the SEC before we can see some of those things. But some of these other ones like Litecoin and HBAR specifically, I don't know that the SEC is going to go out there and call them securities. I mean, if you look at some of those lawsuit filings that we've seen out there, I mean, HBAR is a blast from the past. And The SEC doesn't refer to that as potentially being security in those filings. There's a whole host of other coins. So there's

some things out there that maybe they would let slip through the cracks, but I guess time will tell if an exchange is going to join some of these issuers and trying to get these things out. And then I guess we'll see what some of those bigger names do, like you were talking about, Alex. But I mean, honestly, I think this is the way it should go, right? Like the way the ETF market usually works is smaller issuers, upstarts tend to really push the envelope and go out in the curve And if they can get out first, it gives them an ability to like operate a business and make money for taking risks and putting money on the line earlier than most other people. And then usually what ends up happening is the black rights of the world end up following suit. They often get bigger,

they offer a lower price and what have you. But usually there's a business to be had here, which kind of didn't happen with Bitcoin and Ethereum because the SEC just didn't let anyone go out until they let everyone go out. So I mean, I can talk about this for four hours, but- I don't like the fact that XRP and HBAR and Litecoin are playing ETFs. And if we see those ETFs go to market, that's probably the top of the market. And the reason why, you see this in public equities all the time. When the IPO market window opens, that's the last stage of the bull market and a lot of action can happen. There's like this faction 2021 IPOs and quality IPOs go out the door first, like you saw here, Bitcoin, Ethereum, hopefully Solana. then what happens on the tail end of the IPO,

you know, that was expression when the ducks are cracking feed the ducks, people just want product and you see low quality issues go to the market, the market gets saturated and then things start to dump. And this is, this seems to be playing out in that way. So I'm actually, I don't like the fact that we see the XRP H bar stuff. I think it's something to watch out for as it's on polls. Also to be clear here is like with the earliest these, the Solana ones could launch is sometime in early to mid August, depending on even if they're acknowledged, they might not even get acknowledged next week. So we're looking like a long way out for the way this process usually works. And the other ones haven't even started that process where we get a clock that would start ticking. What needs to

happen is application. We need to see real applications with product market fit delivered to end customers, business merchants and consumers like now. Like customer people need to start doing that now because the regulatory story is going to take a while to develop, to Alex's point. But the product market story, that can still develop. What's challenging there also is you need developers to take risks, betting that they won't be prosecuted to do that. Because there are applications, actually. You know? Yeah, we get the building going. And further to Alex's point, one of the reasons we don't see the big players up there on the board for these ETS yet is that there isn't mainstream demand. They're just not seeing the demand amongst their clients. We hear the demand because the crypto

community wants it. And I spend way too much time on crypto Twitter, for instance. So we see the demand, but the mainstream doesn't. That is also another... We note to add to the caution around these products actually making a difference when they come out. That said, we must remember that the peak of the last cycle was when Coinbase listed and the peak of the previous cycle was when the CME Bitcoin options listed. That brings up a good topic. Alex, I know you had a lot of thoughts on the ETH-BTC ratio and when it would potentially turn around. We talked about the potential for ETH to get staking in an ETF. I think that's going to happen under this SEC administration. In-kind transactions is not something that retail people probably care about, but institutionally that will matter. So you can basically exchange the underlying asset for

the shares of the ETF. I think that's going to happen. But as we talked about, flows have picked up a little bit to Ethereum. Ram, you kind of hinted like junk comes to market. I mean, if you think about it, Ethereum came to market and had outflows, like from when it first launched until very recently. So, I mean, theoretically those things come to market. It doesn't actually mean that any sort of investor interest actually comes along. I have a chart that shows like the cumulative flows over time I'm going to share right now. Like for a long time, things were just down, down, down and slightly ticked up. And the minute Trump got elected, all of a sudden people started buying Ethereum ETFs. But still we're looking at 571 million in net inflows to these products. And it's nothing compared to what the Bitcoin ETFs

have done. Just not borderline, not comparable. But I guess to you, Alex, Do you think like we've seen the bottom in the ETH BTC ratio? You kind of hinted at they skipped the Ethereum rally, went right to the altcoins. But what do you think is going on right now? Yeah, I had tweeted. I've been like publicly negative on ETH BTC for two years, two plus years, and calling it for it to go lower. And then shortly after the election, I tweeted that that could, it was a little lower than it is now, but it was maybe at like point zero. 0.034 or so and I said this might be the bottom and here's the case for it being the bottom then like two days later it went to like 0.0311 and I was like well okay that wasn't the bottom it's clearly gone lower but

since then it's been higher and and I think it makes a lot of sense for it to come higher um this entire year has been driven by bitcoin on one side and meme coin activity on the other and which has primarily benefited Solana right so sort of bitcoin and solana like with eth getting squeezed both from a market standpoint but also on a narrative standpoint right the thing about defy high dollar defy is huge on ethereum it's by far the biggest tvl of any chain and but it's um defy hasn't penetrated trad fi yet so defy is really just servicing crypto wealth right and i think that could change i think that's one of the the key things that could change under a new SEC regime in the US

that there's actually an opportunity for sandboxing sort of an overlap between DeFi and TradFi that you could launch something like a Uniswap in a sandbox environment and let like the I don't know the New York Stock Exchange and a major issuer issue some you know equity on on tokens and that could be super interesting and that would sort of herald the the beginning of an actual overlap or integration of DeFi into TradFi the closest we've seen was you know uh TradFi issuers basically putting yield on chain to sort of treat the on-chain wealth as potential customers but not the reverse and in the absence of that like right NFT volumes basically fell off a cliff like you didn't see any major advancement on Ethereum of crypto and

gaming right? Like these and DeFi was, you know, useful, but for a sort of a crypto wealth, I mean, companies like Galaxy operate on DeFi, but you know, not like normal outside of the crypto world really using it. So I feel like, and again, the meme coin activity was most, which there was a lot of and has been a lot of has been on Solana. So it's been squeezed. It's, I think just from a pure like cyclicality, it's definitely due for a rally. And you started to see some of that. But again, I said this before, like, Most of the stuff that could happen that's positive for crypto in the new administration from a policy or regulatory perspective, I think benefits Ethereum and ex-Bitcoin altcoins more than Bitcoin. If you get clarity on DeFi, clarity on exchanges, clarity on

token issuance, and not just clarity, but a more permissive, progressive policy framework, then that should benefit Ethereum and other similar blockchains. And therefore, the ETH-BTC ratio theoretically should come higher. That's the thesis. I think, you know, I would say the Bitcoin Reserve. I was going to say the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve is the, yeah, national corporate institutional adoption of Bitcoin would be, I think, the primary, you know, contradictory. What will turn out when the crypto czar and what tribe does the crypto czar come from? Are they from the Bitcoin tribe or the Ethereum tribe or are they a neutral third party? live view like a Ryan Selkis. So there's still, you know, positioning will start to matter once we get the crypto czar.

Yeah. It's not all priced in. Everything is priced in. Always, yes. Sorry, I'm just referencing that famous copypasta, you know, you were priced in, Noel, like thousands of years ago, the woolly mammoths priced in. There was no second best holiday. Perfect information. Perfect. Yeah, I think, I mean, the markets have shown what you were talking about, Alex. There's a reason that there's so many other altcoins that popped way quicker and DeFi type tokens that went up way more than, you know, Bitcoin really did for the most part on a percentage basis. So it makes sense. I think the market's sniffing out exactly what you're talking about. And it's extremely logical. I guess time will tell

whether it goes that way. I only have one more topic on here to bring up. Feel free for anyone else to go after me. The one thing I wanted to point out is as of November 27th, which was the final trading day of November, that is the reconstitution date for the NASDAQ 100, aka the Q's, QQQ ETF. There's two ETFs that track that NASDAQ 100 index. Typically thought of as a tech index, there's 350-ish billion in assets in those ETF products. Palantir, which isn't all that relevant to anyone here, and MicroStrategy and two other companies are going to be added. So there's going to be a lot of buying, ironically enough, in MicroStrategy in the coming months from that. Now,

I genuinely do think that's mostly priced in because people have been talking about it, the fact that it's going to be added to the queues. It should happen unless I'm completely reading the index rules wrong. I'd be shocked. It's a top 60 holding in the NASDAQ composite. Anything that's in the top 75 automatically gets added to the NASDAQ 100. The only way it could possibly not get added, right now, it's ICB classification or sector classification under ICB standards. It's a technology company. I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I can easily make the argument that MicroStrategy is more a financial company and financials is the one industry that's automatically excluded from the NASDAQ 100. I think that's something we can look at down the line. They're definitely a software company under the classification system. Yeah. They sell B2B

analytics tools, and apparently they're pretty good. So this is very ironic because it means that tens of millions of pensions will own Bitcoin through the vehicle of micro strategy. It is so funny how Bitcoin finds a way. Like a seed in a concrete forest, it seeks sunlight, and just finds a way to move up. Is this yet not another example? It's beautiful said. It's very poetic. I like it. Right? I mean, it influences the world. It's birthing itself in a realm. The same like AI has all these engineers around it. They're going to make it conscious and sentient one day, maybe. The same way like Bitcoin just finds a way. It's going to be in everyone's pension account, 401k's account, substantially. A lot of people, anyone

that owns QQQ, which is the most liquid, widely available ETFs. Universe has a sense of humor, clearly. I want to see Genzo's reaction to that, but we should get a reporter, like as soon as it's an MSTRL, I want to see the facial expression. Who knows Bitcoin? What's he going to say? Yeah, I should add, it hasn't been officially announced yet, but it should be announced in the next week or so. And I'd be shocked if they, I mean, they would have to find a way to, they would have to find a way to like exclude it purposefully, which ironically, the S&P 500 committee, they have a little more discretion if there's a committee that actually decides it and they manage to keep Tesla out. So I think they might be able to keep MicroStrategy out if they really wanted to. But I think this

is likely to happen for MicroStrategy. So all the MFR bulls out there, congrats, I guess. I got to make a version of that with like Bitcoin finds a way and put Sailor's face on it. That's really one, right? Yeah, that'd be good. Yeah. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Bits and Bips. We'll be back in one week to discuss more about how the worlds of crypto and macro are colliding. Until then, everyone. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. There's no second best holiday. Happy Thanksgiving.