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CRYPTO 101
Ep. 692 Are We Coming out of a Bear Market!? & 2026 Outlook with Bitwise's Matt Hougan
00:56:07
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Crypto 101 podcast, presented by Gemini, your bridge to the future of money.
- [00:15]
B
All right, ladies and gentlemen, gather round, gather round. I hope you are having a fantastic morning, noon or night, wherever you are in the world, you're certainly in the right place, and I hope you are well, and I hope you're getting more sleep than me.
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A
That's.
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B
That's what I'm hoping for for all of our listeners. Not only do we have the volatility keeping me up, I've got a crazy 1 1/2 year old who decides, you know, when he wants to sleep, it's on his own time. So we. We're not feeling super fresh this morning. Brendan, how are you feeling? I hope you're feeling fresh. Young gun, no kids, none of that.
- [00:52]
C
I'm just riddled with arrows. One hand still working, crawling to safety in this crypto market. But you're getting the one, two punch. I would say the only thing that could compete with the crypto market falling the way it is, is a screaming toddler who, who doesn't want to sleep. So, man, you're getting the 1, 2 jab. And I'm surprised you're making it in here with us, but I'm still stoked, man. You know, as we're going to talk about today, we got a very familiar guest, someone who's been on a lot and just constantly has good. Just insights into what's happening into the market, what has happened, what will happen in potentially in the future. And yeah, overall, just a lot to talk about.
- [01:30]
B
Yeah, no, the. The universe throws, you know, bigger challenges at you the more you grow. Right. And, and, you know, we've got the CIO of Bitwise, Matt Hogan joining us. And talk about a person and a company that have just grown and grown and grown. And with that, I mean, the good times are good and the tough times are. Are tough.
- [01:51]
C
Right.
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B
And there's challenges. But, man, Matt, we are so know pleased to have you on the show amidst all of the investor calls that you have and financial advisor calls, but thanks for taking the hour out of your time to come visit us. How, how are you holding up?
- [02:05]
D
I am doing all right. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me back. My heart goes out to you for the one and a half year old. I have three kids, they're older now, they sleep very well, but wow, they're.
- [02:16]
B
Sleeping too much, probably. I remember those two.
- [02:18]
D
One of them, one of them slept through his alarm today and was late for school. So you will get to the other Side eventually. But yeah, hey, doing well. Crazy crypto market. A very interesting crypto market for me because you have these short term negatives and the long term positives and that creates an interesting psychological twist and interesting things to talk to people about. But excited to jam with you guys on what's going on.
- [02:43]
B
Yeah, I just want to start at the top of the call. I mean, for folks who are just hearing Matt speak for the first time, please just go search through our catalog. We have him on, I mean, as a regular guest. And so there's been plenty of episodes where you could dive a little bit deeper into Bitwise's offerings and products and strategies. And please do your own research as you go through that. But we just want to talk to you kind of about the market right now and kind of looking forward and so on and so forth. And of course, nothing that you hear on the show, listeners, is ever to be construed as investment advice. These are just our thoughts and they're actually just our own personal opinions. They're not any representations of a firm firm. But Matt, I read one of your tweets recently and I thought it was kind of a little, a little interesting because it was a take that I haven't heard yet, that we've already been in a bear market for about six months and we might be towards the, the tail end of the bear market. Tell me how you know you've kind of came to that conclusion or that idea.
- [03:39]
D
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's really true. Look, if you look at the fundamentals that are underlying the long term growth of crypto, they're extraordinarily positive. You have institutions that are buying in scale. Bitcoin is now the number one liquid asset held by Harvard's endowment. Right. That's an incredible crazy. You have sovereign wealth funds that are buying. You have enormous regulatory and legislative process progress. You have big companies building in the crypto space. The long term outlook is so extraordinarily good that I'm really bullish. At the same time, you have these short term negatives. You have significant selling by people who were early into crypto who are afraid of the four year cycle. Right. So you have people selling to get ahead of that. You have some short term liquidations. The point of that tweet was in a neutral market environment, absent these short term negative shocks, the price should be much higher. I think bitcoin should be north of 200,000. Maybe it should be 250. It's being adopted by sovereign wealth funds. You know, El Salvador is buying more. It's incredible. The fact that we're down slightly for the year is actually a severe bear market versus where the fundamentals would have us. So I think we've had these bear market forces sort of fighting against the really strong fundamentals. And I just think we should be much further than we are today. And for that reason, I think it's been a bear market for six months. I think we're near the end of it. I think the sellers are close to exhaustion. That doesn't mean there's not more downside. I think there could even be a little bit more downside, but I think we're much closer to the end than the beginning.
- [05:22]
C
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because you're right, we're seeing a lot of adoption and institutions are still interested. But we are asked this question, in fact, I've been asked this question a lot over the last week or two from our community is if we're seeing all this, who are the people that are selling? You mentioned it's people that are maybe trying to front run the four year cycle. Until recently, like the ETF flows were fairly normal and good. You had some red, some green. Now we just had our second largest day of outflows from the Bitcoin ETFs in history. But from your perspective, who are the people that are selling here?
- [05:59]
D
Yeah, it's a great question. The answer is long term and intermediate term holders of bitcoin, people who are up 100% plus when I say that the question I get from crypto natives is you can't see that in the data. If you look at the long term wallets, the wallets that haven't moved, they haven't sold that much. The answer is that's not where the selling is happening, where the selling is happening. And we see this at Bitwise because like every other asset manager, we do this for large clients is those existing holders who have 100, 200, $500 million of Bitcoin are writing covered calls. Those are option strategies that sell the upside of their position. That's the functional equivalent of selling the asset. It doesn't appear in the wallet movement because they still hold that bitcoin, but they've sold away the upside. And I think that's where a lot of the selling is coming from. So I really do think it's people who bought Bitcoin at $1,000 and are sitting on 100x gain and want to sell some of it. And the way they're doing it is through covered calls. And you know, we, we have regularly people coming to us with hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin asking to do this. And if they're doing it with bitwise, they're doing it with others. I think it's a really big thing.
- [07:16]
A
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- [08:31]
B
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- [09:24]
D
All right?
- [09:24]
A
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- [11:35]
B
And tell like mechanically or like operationally how does that kind of happen? So say, you know, say I was one of those lucky few who had $100 million worth of Bitcoin and I wanted to come to you, but I have my recovery phrase, I've got my private cold wallet. Are you guys, you know, naked the other side of that? Or like what Happens, you know, because you don't ever have possession of the underlying.
- [11:57]
D
Yeah, yeah. Typically, first of all, you look more like a billion dollar bitcoin person than 100 price. Typically those assets will be held at institutional custodian and they'll be posted there. And then you know, as a, as an asset manager you can write calls against that position. So bitwise is not, is not naked on either side. We're just facilitating the covered call writing strategy. So they're, the assets still sit at the custodian where they are. Typically it's at an institutional custodian, it's not like a ledger device or a private device. It'll be in the traditional ecosystem. But institutional custodians have been in the market for, you know, 10 years. So those coins may not have moved from those institutional wallets. And then you're just writing covered calls against them. And, and you never, you typically roll them before, before you run into, into any issues, before you get like you.
- [12:51]
B
Know, margin called out of that position or something like that.
- [12:54]
D
That is. Right. So it's just a way. And, and they do it know people do it because they generate income from the upside and that's what they're looking to do to de. Risk themselves into what they expect to be like a four year cycle bear market.
- [13:08]
B
And then also there's no capital gains because you're not selling to an extent.
- [13:13]
C
Right.
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B
There's no capital gains income.
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D
This is exactly why it happens. If you sold the bitcoin, you would realize a gain and you'd have to write a big check to the IRS if you keep holding the bitcoin but you roll on a option strategy on top of it. There is no capital event to that, so it's much more tax efficient. That's why a lot of the selling is taking place in this format versus explicit selling by the underlying holder.
- [13:39]
B
And it's interesting because, you know, it feels like something similar to like what MicroStrategy is doing with a lot of their preferreds and just, you know, selling volatility. And we see bitcoin's volatility just kind of getting crushed over the years. Is that good for the asset class? Like how do you kind of parse through all that?
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D
Yeah, is it good for an asset class is really an interesting question. I'm a free market guy, so I think people should be allowed to do what they want to do. And I also think if you think of bitcoin effectively as money, the more financialized it is and the more ways to access it and the more liquidity surrounding it, the better it is long term. In the short term, it can create unusual dynamics. It can actually lead to differing liquidity, differing volatility cycles. It can create downside pressure in certain situations because maybe the futures market is more liquid than the spot market, and so you have uneven liquidity hedges. So there are all these complications in the short term. But is it good long term? It's absolutely good long term. If you think bitcoin is important money for the world, you need the full financial ecosystem around it. You need maximal liquidity. But in the short term, right now, is it contributing to the downside? Yeah, yeah, it's.
- [15:02]
B
It's so interesting. Like, you know, I've been, you know, at the crypto market for a long time, and when I first got started, you know, I wrote the book Crypto Revolution, and it was all about, you know, sticking it to the man and, you know, having this money outside of the institutions and just like this really novel approach to markets and with the revolutionary spirit. And I feel like somewhere along the way, as you know, we've met our heroes, we've got institutionalized. Some of that revolutionary spirit has fallen. How do you kind of think about. I mean, it's no longer just the retail guys that are in.
- [15:34]
E
It's.
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B
It's the big banks. It's, you know, Larry Fink saying, hey, bitcoin's the future. And I'm like, oh, my God, now I'm on the same side as Larry Fink. Like, I never thought I would say that. Like, but here we are.
- [15:43]
D
Let me give you the ray of sunshine. There's an element which that is true, which is you don't want those. Those traditional investors to own a majority of the Bitcoin because they would exert economic control. But let me give you the ray of sunshine. The reason it's a net good. As you guys know, I come from an ETF background, so I have a lot of ETF history. I was the CEO of ETF.com. the closest analogy was the launch of Gold ETFs in 2004, when Goldbug said the same thing. This is paper gold. Why are you parking your gold with blackrock? You should be buying gold bars and putting them under your bed. That is what gold is about. The same story we're telling about bitcoin. But a funny thing happened after the Gold ETFs launch, which is they gathered like $100 billion in assets over time. They were hugely successful. And the number of people who own physical gold increased dramatically. And that's I think the thing that people miss. I'll give you another more crypto native analogy. The majority of investors who today own bitcoin in a self sovereign way with their own keys, maybe on a ledger or similar device, probably bought it first on a centralized exchange. Right. Like it's just too hard to go from zero to self sovereignly holding Bitcoin. You need a way in. An ETF is a way in and then you're going to get a trickle of people who come into Bitcoin through an etf, learn what it's really about and eventually hold it directly. So that's, that's my positive message on this. But you're not entirely wrong. Like we don't want it majority owned by Larry Fink or the US Government. That is bad. But I do think as an on ramp and that example of like people buying on a centralized exchange I think should give people comfort that this leads to an increase in sort of the core OG Bitcoin revolution that you wrote about. Yeah.
- [17:33]
B
Speaking of the, the government I saw today, Warren Davidson, I believe on one of the talk networks talking about how they want to start collecting, you know, IRS taxes paid in Bitcoin as part of their bitcoin accumulation strategy. And we'll see if that gets passed. I'm sure it might, you know, be a far out of the money sort of bill that we'll, we'll see what happens. But I thought that was kind of interesting. I don't know if you saw that. And also if you pay in bitcoin, they're trying to make it so that you wouldn't have to have any capital gains in that.
- [18:05]
D
Let's, let's bring it on. I mean it's worth noting that everything that's happening in bitcoin today was out of the money ten years ago.
- [18:12]
B
Totally.
- [18:13]
D
So just because that seems like, oh, we'll never get there, there's a lot that's happening now that we said would have said the same thing even five years ago. So a lot can change. And I love that kind of proposal. Yeah, let's do it, man. I think it would be great. And I don't think it's impossible that we will get there.
- [18:30]
C
Yeah, I mean, like Bryce said, I mean, speaking about the government, how does the government shutdown come to bear on this in terms of liquidity?
- [18:39]
D
Yeah. I think what you saw in the government shutdown was that it withdrew liquidity from the broad money supply. Right. It also took money out of the hands of people People literally didn't get their paychecks. Yeah. And so that's, I mean that's bad for all sorts of reasons that are more important than bitcoin. But it also meant that it took money out of the ecosystem. I do think there was this sort of pent up expectation when the government reopened that the liquidity floodgates would like, and we'd, we'd be surfing this incredible wave. It's, it's much more incremental than that. And I think some of the pullback is disappointment that that liquidity wave didn't like appear overnight. Just not the way it works. But it's better that the government is open now that that liquidity should start to reverse over time.
- [19:28]
C
Yeah. And does that throw a wrench? I guess rather did it throw a wrench in the plans of the SEC approving all those other altcoin ETFs because I mean, what was there? I think there was over 100 of them from my understanding. And it was this big moment that was hyped up and everyone was waiting for it. There was talks that this was going to be the moment for altcoin season and all, you know, 100 plus of these things would get approved. And then it felt like we got cut short. Just like a brutal cliffhanger where it was like this is supposed to happen, but the government shut down and it felt like most of those didn't get approved. Right.
- [20:00]
D
Yeah. There's nothing more crypto than getting rugged by a government shutdown. 99 yard line. That was exactly right. So there were a few. Like we launched our Solana ETF B Soul, and, and there was an XRP ETF that launched during the shutdown. The reason those were able to launch, Brendan, is that they'd already had a lot of feedback from the staff. So they were like really at the 99 yard line. And so with the garment shutdown, there was a mechanism to get them to market and that was fine. You couldn't have done the other hundred altcoins, Right. Because you hadn't had the feedback from the SEC yet. They were just earlier in the queue and it did slam the door on that. That door is now reopened. So I think you're going to get your, your hundred ETF launches in the next year. You know, even, even today as we're recording, we just launched our XRP etf. There, there are more to come and a lot of those are going to be successful.
- [21:00]
C
Yeah. And you mentioned B Soul. You're being humble here with us. I actually have Some stats from B Soul for the listeners. I mean, it was the first disclosure.
- [21:07]
B
I'm an owner.
- [21:09]
D
Right. Awesome.
- [21:10]
B
Yep. Personal brokerage account.
- [21:12]
D
Love it. Thank you. Absolutely.
- [21:15]
C
I mean, when we look at this though, I mean, it's, it really is a big milestone and accomplishment. It's been wildly successful. I mean, it was one of the, the most successful ETFs of the year. It was the first US ETP to have 100% direct exposure to Spot Solana. You guys are trying to maximize Solana's average taking rate of 7%. You guys are targeting 100% of assets staked. You're doing it through Helios Labs. And I believe there's even 0% fees for a limited time as well, Right?
- [21:48]
D
That's right. Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, the, the, the, the. I appreciate you saying all that. The bitwise approach to designing these ETFs is to make them as easy for people to buy as possible. What is easy? It's the lowest cost. It's 100% of assets staked. It's working with Helios, which has an incredible reputation in this space. You know, it's from bitwise, which is, is known as a, a, an ETF expert and a crypto expert. And we just try to line up all those things together and launch it into the market. It's not going to mean we're going to win every time, but, but I think it's been helpful and we did have a huge response. It's really remarkable that it's pulled in like half a billion dollars in flows in a crushing bear market. It makes me very excited for that people are able to get in at these prices, but I think that would be billion dollar plus if the market was surging.
- [22:39]
C
And for perspective, how does that compare to the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs over the same time frame?
- [22:46]
D
Yeah. So it's much faster growth than ethereum. The Ethereum ETFs sort of stumbled out of the gate and then only caught on about a year later when the Ethereum community turned around and got positive. Bitcoin ETFs did bigger on absolute numbers. But the thing about solana is it's 1 25th the size of Bitcoin. Right. It's 1 25th the size of Bitcoin. So if you put that into Bitcoin numbers, that would have been like doing $12 billion of inflows in the first month. No ETF has ever done that. Right. So scaled for size, it was an enormous success. And that I think speaks to the level of excitement about Solana. I think Solana is the sweet spot for where altcoin investors are excited. It's. It's a play on stable coins. It's a play on tokenization. It's a community with a ship first attitude. It's going after big markets, and it's at a relatively low valuation. I said this to someone the other day. Solana's valuation is about the same as Sherwin Williams, the paint company. And, you know, I mean, either the foundational network for finance in the future or paint now. The walls of my room are Sherwin Williams paint. So, like, that's a real business. But I'm just saying it's relatively cheap, it's relatively small.
- [24:05]
B
Talk about a hellacious experience. Where I was in Sherwin Williams with my wife when we got our new house, talking about, are we going to do eggshell white or simply dove white or, or. Or pampered cloud white?
- [24:20]
D
I mean, it was.
- [24:20]
C
It just.
- [24:20]
B
And I'm looking, I'm like, baby, you got to be. You got to be shitting me. You can't actually tell the difference of these. And she's like, no, no, no, I can't, I can't. It's when the, when the light hits it, I'm like, okay, Sherwin, you got us. You got us 100 of white.
- [24:33]
D
Yeah. It is incredible that that is its own unique hell.
- [24:37]
B
But. But while we're on the topic of Solana and the staking etf, I think I saw this morning, or maybe it was in the foundation, sent some letters to the US Government, people in the government or whatever, talking about some tax treatment that they're hoping to. To lobby for. Did, did you have. Do you have any color on what they might be looking for? Yeah, I think in terms of the staking.
- [25:01]
D
Well, I haven't seen those letters. It's a great question, but there is a big question around staking ETFs that has to do specifically with the. The role of those ETFs in retirement portfolios, which is that the IRS is not clear if staking income qualifies as what's called ubti. The consequence if it qualifies as UBTI is you have to file an extra form in your retirement accounts if you hold these ETFs. And it makes it difficult to hold them in things like IRAs and 401ks. Not impossible, but difficult. It just adds a complication. And I know that this is like. Sounds really nuanced, but when you think about Firms like Morgan Stanley or firms like Wells Fargo that have trillions of dollars of assets, they hate headaches and a lack of clarity on the tax of staking and the possibility of like additional forms that are headaches to file is just a headache that they don't want. So it's actually really important to get this clarity, hopefully in a positive direction if we want to unlock the full opportunity for these. And of course it should be fine. Right? Like dividends are not an issue. Bond interest are not an issue. This is just a new area that the tax law hasn't caught up to and it needs to catch up so we can unlock the full opportunity.
- [26:25]
B
Yeah, that's so interesting.
- [26:26]
D
Yeah.
- [26:26]
B
I saw fidelity launched a ETF. I know BlackRock is launching a staked ETH ETF and so I, you know, I just ran a quick search on ubti Unrelated business Taxable income is income earned by tax exempt organizations that isn't related to their primary exempt purpose. But it feels like staking is primary to, you know, Solana and it is primary to the network functionality of Ethereum and so on. Without it, the network doesn't work. And so hopefully, yeah, hopefully the tax lawyers who might be listening or fighting that good for fight get their way. And I'm sure they will. Right. I'm sure that the, the very, the very. What's it called, Friendly treasury right now where, you know, he's tweeting out it's the golden age of crypto. Like I'm sure he's going to be sympathetic to some of these letters and stuff. So.
- [27:20]
D
Yeah, I love that. I, I think it's a great example. BlackRock is launching that staked ETF or they filed for it and they have an unstaked version. The reason is this tax uncertainty. So that tells you that like people are really thinking about.
- [27:34]
B
Would be interesting if, if like the, you know, eth A right is, is like kind of just a stopgap like where if they get this new one approved, hopefully they just transfer everybody's assets into that new one because that would.
- [27:46]
D
Clearly be the superior one everyone wants to stake. Yeah, that, that's, that's the answer. I mean, that's why we designed B soul with, with 100% staked. Everyone wants to stake because of course you want to participate in. That's part of the crypto opportunity set.
- [28:00]
B
So yeah, imagine, imagine buying like whatever, a high dividend stock. I actually don't know what which high dividend stock is out there, but let's just call it Ford or Whatever. It's like you could buy Ford with the dividend or without the dividend and it's the same price. It's like, well, that's ridiculous. Of course I want the dividend. But there's another rule that, that's a foot here that has to do kind of not with the tax stuff, but with the banking and the custody. And I've seen you tweet about it and dozens of others about the Basel rules. So first off, who the hell is Basel? How do you get his name all over this stuff? What are all these rules and stuff? And how does it come to bear on Bitcoin?
- [28:38]
D
This is the incredible thing about crypto becoming a mainstream asset is that all of this boring stuff matters. I mean, we just talked about UBTI and irs.
- [28:48]
B
My dad would be proud.
- [28:49]
D
Exactly, exactly. And now we're talking about Basel, which is sort of like a international group that sets the standards for how large scale banks do a number of things, including what capital charge they take against certain assets. By that I mean, if you want to hold an asset on your balance sheet, can you margin it out effectively to people, or do you need to reserve against those losses the way the original Basel rules were written, which was 2022 when they were written. So put yourself back in. The mindset of the heart of the FTX catastrophe is that if a bank wanted to hold a crypto asset, it had to hold more than that amount of cash. In other words, if you deposited a crypto asset with the bank, that's a liability to put more than that amount of cash on the balance sheet, which just makes no sense because all you've done is deposit the crypto asset. All you want is the crypto asset back. Why are they also having to reserve this money? It would make it impossible for banks to really interact with this ecosystem. The wonderful thing is both the US and the UK revolted against this at the last minute. These were supposed to go into effect I think next year. And the US and the UK were like, this is ridiculous. But it's really remarkable because we could have just sleepwalked into this situation where banks can't interact with, with crypto because of an obscure accounting rule. And it just shows you like the various, the scale of the attack vector by which bad regulatory ideas can cripple the industry. So I was very pleased. It's sort of amazing to imagine that our financial ecosystem is captive to a group of regulators in Europe thinking about this from an FTX era perspective. But that is the reality on the ground so we should be thankful for all the people fighting these boring regulatory fights.
- [30:47]
C
Absolutely, man. I mean, there is a lot going on, and that's one of the great things about this, is that we continue to get to bring in guests like yourself and do our own versions of rundowns and keep track of the news and all this. You know, looking forward like this, it feels like this has been one of those big events that people have been looking for, is like, you know, we're going to get institutional adoption, and we're going to get regulatory changes, and we're going to get this and that and everything. Kind of raises the question, though, like, what do you think the next major catalyst could be that would push the crypto market moving forward?
- [31:21]
D
Yeah, I think there are two, and they're enormous. One is well talked about, and the other is not talked about nearly enough. The most obvious catalyst would be progress on market structure regulation in the US which used to be called the Clarity Act. There are some concerns about whether that will get through Congress. I think it will. I think when the market rerates, the probability of that happening, that might well be the bottom right. That might well be the catalyst that kicks us into high gear. But the other bigger picture story is if you talk to people about crypto right now and you're like, what are the killer apps of crypto? They'll say digital gold, they'll say stable coins, and they might say tokenization. And I think the common conception of crypto's future is that those are the three horses that we're riding. What I actually think is true is that there are another 12 killer use cases that are going to emerge in 2026. And just to provide some context to you, two years ago, if we had this conversation and I was like, what is the killer app of crypto? You would have said bitcoin. No one would have said stablecoins and tokenization. Those only emerged because we got an improving regulatory environment. And now we have three killer apps. But I think that's because the other 10 or 12 killer apps are still coming. What could those be? Look, I think Defi is a killer app. I think decentralized Identity is a killer app. I think privacy is a killer app. I think Deepin has a future. I think ICOs are a major growth area. I think there's probably something else down the stream. If you think back to the early days of the Internet, people are like, it's just email and search, but they didn't think about Amazon or Salesforce or Netflix or AGI. Or Nvidia. And I think the second catalyst is you're going to start to see these other use cases, maybe prediction markets, maybe that's the fourth one. So all of a sudden crypto is going to be Bitcoin, stablecoins, tokenization and prediction markets. And then it's going to be all that plus privacy and then all that plus defi and all that plus digital identity. And I think that's the way we're really going to scale into an industry in 2026. And I don't think many people are thinking about that.
- [33:32]
B
Yeah, man.
- [33:33]
C
It's a great point that in the early days of the Internet, in the early days of any, I would say any technology, anything that's been invented, you never can fully forecast and expect where it can go because it doesn't exist yet. Right. You could never think about the Internet in the early days and see all these different areas. You could never think about computers in the early days. And now think about the way that Nvidia's operating. And we have these like, just data centers that are the size of like, cities and towns and like all these things, and you would just never, ever, ever be able to comprehend that. And so, like, as we use, we, we have used this example on the show before where people are wondering about the job market and they're saying, oh, well, all these jobs are being replaced, but as they're being replaced, new ones are being created. And they're going to say, well, what are the new ones that are being created? And you're going to say, well, you don't know yet because they don't exist. Like when the Internet was booming, you'd never expect that half of these AI and data center and video like jobs, you would never even be able to explain that they exist because it was never a concept before it was invented. And I think the same goes for the crypto market here, where we're not fully pricing in the areas that do not exist or that we haven't comprehended yet. But that doesn't mean that the value isn't there.
- [34:47]
D
It's, it's so. Right. If you knew what those would be, you'd be Mark Zuckerberg.
- [34:51]
C
Yeah.
- [34:52]
D
I mean, you'd be a billionaire, like by definition. And they're crazy things. Like we use our phones to summon strangers to pick us up in cars all the time. We call that Uber. It's $100 billion company. That was a wild idea. You're going to get into a car with a stranger. We called that hitchhiking now, you know, now just because we pay for it, it's suddenly safe. And I think the same thing is true in crypto. I mean I called out like seven things that I think could be next, but they're probably another seven that I'm not thinking of. Right. And I really think prediction markets is the one that people can start to sniff as the fourth leg of this stool. But it's like it's a 20 leg stool, it's not a four leg stool. And I think 2026 will be about the market recognizing that there are yet more of these stablecoin size opportunities in crypto that are going to bubble up and impact the real world.
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F
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B
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- [37:21]
B
And I kind of think about that like being on like the supply side, right? Like all of these narratives that feed the demand of investors. And I saw a tweet that really made me feel think about this. It was, it was one by you and it was talking about the amount of investors who are, you know, young folks that now have brokerage accounts relative to 2015, I think there was about 6% of 25 year old and unders. And now that share of 25 and your 25 year old and under is 37% of those folks now have a brokerage account. So you have that. And those are the guys and gals who are really, you know, privy to all the crypto stuff. Really excited about, hey, why am I going to want to buy this old, you know, car company stock that's, you know, has a volatility of, of barely anything when, you know, you could have, you know, higher volatility for future sort of growth and all that kind of stuff. And plus there's also another kind of demand side effect to support all this, which is like this great wealth transfer from the boomers to the millennials and Gen Z and all that kind of stuff. Although my dad famously read a book called Die with Zero. And so I'm not sure if I'm going to be getting any of that great wealth transfer. But there is, you know, I've seen estimates anywhere between 20 trillion and 90 trillion that will be inherited over the course of the next 25 years. And so it does seem like there's that long term setup that really does benefit crypto. We just got to hang in there.
- [38:47]
D
Yeah, I love that point so much. It's so funny to me because in every other industry they talk about young demographics as great. Like TV networks love young demographics, consumer products love young demographics. And then people are like, young people like crypto. They're crazy. Well, why is it different in this industry? No, the people who bought Bitcoin when they were 25 in 2013 are now 37 and they're MDs at Goldman. Like they have a lot more money. The demographics are on our side and they're marching upwards. So I think it's a real long term positive catalyst that people like look at as a negative. It's just, it's sort of baffling to me.
- [39:24]
B
Yeah, I'm really excited about like, you know, what Coinbase is doing as well. They seem like they're really expanding. I think Kraken raised a bunch of money. They might be going public against or they might be going public soon. But there was this leak from Coinbase that show. I don't know if it was an internal leak or they got hacked or maybe they accidentally tweeted something out about how on December 17th they, they might be releasing some stocks tradable on, on Coinbase, which would be pretty cool. I mean, I would, I would certainly be excited to have Some of that. What do you kind of think about? Like, just this, you know. You know, I sometimes think about Altcoins. Right. And it's like, man, the investment case for Altcoins sometimes seems drab when you could just invest in the casino. You could invest in, you know, you know, Coinbase or Kraken or all these different issuers that are doing, you know, other stuff. But like, what do you kind of make of just this? I don't know if they call it the Everything app or the super app or whatever. I mean, that's going to be your one stop shop.
- [40:23]
D
Yeah. I think Robinhood and Coinbase, Robinhood, coming from two different sides of the spectrum, are the most exciting traditional financial services companies and may end up being the largest in the world over time. I do think something that people get wrong is they're like, tradfi is coming for crypto. Right. Charles Schwab is rolling out Bitcoin holding. Fidelity is doing the same. I think the reverse dynamic is actually more exciting. Like, what financial services company go back to demographics, has the best demographics in America? It's probably Coinbase. And they're going to expand into Tradfi at the same time that Tradfi is coming down into crypto. So I'm really excited about it. I think both Robinhood and Coinbase are generational holds, to be honest. I think they're both executing well. They have great demographics. They are the Everything app. Like, they're the first and closest to that vision. And I think the market's going to recognize that, you know, for the next five years. Yeah.
- [41:22]
B
And I know Brennan, it wants to get to a lightning round of your 2025 predictions. But I just wanted to have one comment that I am hopeful that eventually, because, you know, we, we host in person events and all that kind of stuff and people come up to me and they're like, hey, Bryce, like, when can I like, sell covered calls easily against my crypto? And it's like, well, if you're not, you know, you got 100 billion or whatever, 100 million. Like, nobody really wants to like, do all that, like, you know, maintenance and stuff for you. It's very difficult. But I hope that eventually, like Coinbase or Robinhood will be able to give people really, really, really easy access to do that and, you know, maybe even bitwise have a, have a nice, easy retail platform for folks like us.
- [42:01]
D
Yeah, I think that's the direction of crypto. Crypto wants to make the strategies that are available to ultra rich available to everyone. And yeah, so keep asking for it, people will provide it. If you're, if you're listening, Coinbase, there's a product idea.
- [42:15]
B
Boom.
- [42:17]
C
Yeah. Well, when we look at this, I mean I think we did a lightning round with you. I believe it was this summer, Matt, when we went over this, I think it was like right around the halfway point and we were coming back and saying, hey, like let's look at these, these top 10 predictions for the year and some of them had already come true and now we're kind of coming back at the end. A wrench has been thrown into to a lot of this and we're excited to see what you have for 2026. I know it's not ready yet.
- [42:45]
B
Right.
- [42:45]
C
I know we usually get that a little bit later.
- [42:47]
D
We're finalizing it. But we have some ideas. We can hint at a few for sure.
- [42:52]
C
Perfect. Well, let's come back to these. We'll make it quick because again there's 10 of these and definitely a lot to talk about. But prediction was, or one was that Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana would see new all time highs this year. And we did, we, we. Well, bitcoin did. Ethereum like tapped the highs and I believe Solana did hit new all time highs. It was just at the start of the year, right?
- [43:19]
D
That's right. Yeah, we, we got, we got two out of two out of three on the all time high part and I'll give us credit for that. They basically all hit all time high.
- [43:27]
C
They basically did.
- [43:28]
B
I agree that part of the inflation adjusted.
- [43:30]
A
Right.
- [43:31]
D
I'll take it in. I'll take it in. So yeah, we, we got that part of that prediction, right? Yeah, yeah.
- [43:37]
C
Well, number two here it was that the Bitcoin ETFs will attract more flows this year than they did last year in 2024. Where are we at?
- [43:45]
D
There's the wrench. It doesn't look great. It doesn't look great. I think we're at like 25 billion in net flows. We were tracking really well until this sharp pullb. I was confident we were going to get there at the end of the year. Barring a significant reversal. I think will be, will be under. We're still good. I still think we could get close. I think we get to like 30 billion but I don't know that we're going to break next year. So I was, I was, I was on track and then got derailed by this bear market.
- [44:14]
B
There's still, there's still a lot of game left happens at the Last couple minutes.
- [44:19]
D
I'm not giving. Not giving up entirely, but, you know, look, it's. It's an incredible year for flows. I think a lot of people expected them to go from 30 billion to 5, and that's not what happened.
- [44:31]
A
We're.
- [44:32]
D
We're very close. Maybe I'll throw out a 2026. I think we'll set a new record in 2026. There we go. We'll push that prediction out one year.
- [44:42]
C
Fair enough. Well, that wrench that we were talking about affects this one as well. Coinbase surpassing Schwab as the most valuable brokerage in the world. It had a really good run. And when I believe part of that was saying that coinbase could hit $700. Had a really good run, I think we saw it go up to around 450. But obviously the little lull that we've gotten here in the last couple of months affecting that one.
- [45:07]
D
Yeah, yeah, that's another one. Similar to crypto in general. I think the company is executing extraordinarily well. Right. I think they're executing on diversifying their business. They're executing on new business lines. You just hinted at stocks. They may move into prediction markets. I think they're going after a trillion dollar tam. But yeah, the negative downturn, particularly in the crypto equity market, which really has suffered even more than crypto in this pullback, has taken some starch out of it. And Schwab did better than I expected. Credit to them. They are also executing well. I think eventually we'll see this flippening, but we didn't see it this year. So I got this one wrong.
- [45:47]
C
Yeah, well, that's okay. I'd be. Honestly more. I'd probably be more scared and nervous if you got all these right. Even with the kind of crazy year that we had. What kind of connections does Matt have over there? But number four was a good one. It was 2025 is going to be the year of the crypto IPO with at least five. Was it crypto? I believe crypto unicorns going public.
- [46:11]
D
Yeah.
- [46:12]
C
Yeah.
- [46:13]
D
Crush this one. Yeah. I mean, there were. There were so there. If you. If you count dats, there's just an extraordinary number. Even if you exclude dats, you had a large number of large firms come to market, so, yeah, I'd give us an A on this grade. I think it's going to continue. You mentioned Kraken earlier, lining up doing a raise at $20 billion. There is still. Grayscale is out there. They filed for an ipo. There's still a lot of large crypto companies that are going to enter the public market. So we may well just double down on that prediction again in 2026. I think it's still true.
- [46:48]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Well, number five was tokens launched by AI agents will spearhead a meme coin mania.
- [46:55]
D
That was last year.
- [46:57]
C
Let's skip that one. We'll come back to that.
- [47:01]
D
That was just strictly wrong. Both of those trends petered out, which I think is an interesting thing to focus on. You know, it really speaks to the level of damage done to the retail community and it speaks to this uncertain nature of the AI sort of bucking bronco that we're all on in terms of what we're interested in, what we're excited about it. Agentic AI and token launches was a big thing. This was a speculative prediction. Didn't turn out to be true. But like you said, you can't get them all right, or else they'd be boring.
- [47:36]
C
Absolutely, man. Yeah, it was, it was interesting. I think retail has been hurt because it feels like we've had, I would say, two major black swan events this year. Right. And I think retail has been hurt by that from that large liquidation event. Because as we've discussed, if you were in almost any form of leveraged long on almost any altcoin, you were basically liquidated. I mean, most altcoins fell by at least 50%, which means that if you were in 2x leverage, you were wiped out. And most people, as we know are a lot of traders are degenerate. They were probably in more than 2x leverage. And so, I mean, that wiped a lot of people out. You had the, the tariff crash at the start of the year that hurt people. Before that there was the deep sea GI and all these other ones. And retail investors have been hurt from it. And so I would agree with you, I think that that has probably contributed to some of the fall off and the meme coin mania. But prediction number six here is the number of countries holding bitcoin will double. How are we looking over there?
- [48:35]
D
Yeah, I think we got close. I think we got like more than halfway there. We'll see where we end up. I think we'll be just shy of getting that prediction right. But we've seen folks like Luxembourg come in. We saw Central bank buy bitcoin the other day on an experimental basis. We've seen Abu Dhabi double down. So we're making progress. I think we'll get that like 80% right, which is pretty good considering it's talking about sovereign Adoption of this asset. Yeah.
- [49:08]
C
Well, let's move on to number seven, which was Coinbase will enter into the S&P 500 and MicroStrategy will be a Nasdaq 100.
- [49:18]
D
Yeah, we got that one exactly right. The reason I'm proud of that one is because we didn't say MicroStrategy would get into the S&P 500, and it sure enough didn't and people freaked out about that. The reason we knew this one, we have someone on our index committee who used to be part of the S&P 500 index committee. So we had a little not inside track, but he talked about the qualities that they look for in these companies, and we just didn't think MicroStrategy had the consistent profitability that they would be looking for. But sure enough, Coinbase did. And that's really important. Now, basically every American has exposure to crypto. Every American investor owns S&P 500 exposure, roughly, and they all own exposure to crypto via Coinbase. I think that's a fun fact.
- [50:08]
B
I think that's also just to harp on that one again is like that ads, I think when I, when they got added, I think I saw something about like 15 or 14 billion dollars of passive flows that go to Coinbase. I mean, think about all their products and services and offerings that are now just going to get that much better just because. Just because they exist. Like they don't have to do anything special anymore other than just keep running a good shop.
- [50:34]
D
Yeah, so. And every week, I mean, I save in my 401k every two weeks. I don't even think about it. It's just buying an index fund and some of that is ending up in Coinbase. So yeah, if you have a 401k plan, your dollar cost averaging into crypto, at least to a little degree.
- [50:50]
B
Now, speaking of which, prediction number eight.
- [50:55]
C
Speaking of which, prediction eight, the US Department of Labor will relax its guidance against crypto in 401k plans, enabling billions of dollars in potential flows.
- [51:07]
D
Yeah, we nailed this one pretty good. Sure enough, this exactly happened. Also proud of this one because no one was talking about it at the time. And the reason it's important is that's the biggest way that people save money in the U.S. right. If part of the thesis is traditional investors will start allocating to crypto and you want them to do so, the reality is most people allocate to things in their retirement accounts. They're not trading taxable accounts. That's not where the bulk of their wealth is the bulk of their wealth is in retirement accounts, specifically in 401ks. And opening that up to crypto is a big deal. Now it's going to take time because that market moves at a glacial pace. It's going to take time before you start to see the billions of dollars flow in. But we did get this DOL guidance change. They're finalizing the rule set now. It is a long term enormous catalyst for crypto. Right. Enormous catalyst. Imagine if every person with a 401k was rolling 5% into Bitcoin every two weeks. I think that is where we are going. And this was a huge step forward.
- [52:18]
C
Absolutely. Continuing on prediction, nine stablecoins will double to 400 billion in the US and that the US is going to pass its long awaited stablecoin legislation.
- [52:30]
D
We got the stablecoin legislation bill and assets are up significantly. I don't know that they won't get to the $400 billion level yet, but maybe give them a few extra months. So I'll give us a pretty good grade on this one. I think we got it exactly right on legislation and then directionally right on the asset flows.
- [52:50]
C
I would agree. And it's trending in that right direction. I think the, the overall thesis behind this is that you're going to see a lot of stablecoin build out and it's going to grow and you're going to see this all happen. And that's pretty much exactly what happened even if the numbers didn't get exactly there.
- [53:04]
B
So I think it got pretty close. I think it got to about 320 billion.
- [53:09]
C
Yeah.
- [53:10]
D
So pretty close. That is. Right. And more to come. Right. The genius act actually goes into effect 12 months, but we're going to see this number go up. We'll be talking about trillions. If you have me back on in a year or two.
- [53:22]
B
We sure will.
- [53:23]
C
Absolutely. Well, we have 10 and then we have a bonus prediction. But 10 was the value of tokenized real world assets will pass 50 billion as Wall street embraces them.
- [53:35]
D
Yeah. Again, directionally. Right. It's dramatically up. I think it's in the 30, 30 plus billion dollar range. I don't think it's going to get all the way to 50, but it is, it is one of the fastest growing segments of the crypto market. So we picked a number that was a little bit outside. I think across these predictions you can see that we expect it a little bit more upside this year than we saw. But directionally, boy, tokenization has gone from nothing to something that's on the tip of everyone's tongue, it's been a remarkable explosion of interest. So directionally. Right, but. But a little too optimistic. That's like the, that's the TLDR of my predictions for 2025.
- [54:17]
C
I think most people were also kind of right there with you expecting like a little bit more. Probably not as many like wrenches thrown in. But yeah, this last one.
- [54:26]
B
Life.
- [54:27]
C
Yeah, that's life. You're right, Price. That is the story of life. But the last one is a bonus prediction outside of this and it's not for just 2025, but by or in. So I'm sorry, in 2029, Bitcoin will overtake the 18 trillion dollar gold market cap. Long story short, Matt, why aren't we there already? Why haven't we passed this early?
- [54:50]
B
I think gold's now 30 trillion because it had such a big bang out year.
- [54:53]
D
I didn't think about gold doubling, but that makes that prediction easier. The idea there is this was the cycle of it entering institutions and then the next cycle would be it scaling. And whereas the first phase of scaling of bitcoin is matching gold, from my perspective, a lot of people think that as the terminal target. I just think of it as the next target. Bitcoin is fundamentally more useful than gold in so many ways. And so I think its long term upside is above that. So I'm still sticking by that as being a very well now that gold has gone to $30 trillion. I don't know, that's a long way. But if we can stick at that number of 18 or whatever, I think that is something that we could still see in the next four years.
- [55:42]
B
I love it. Well, look, Matt, while we still have a couple minutes of your time, I know you're still working on your 2026 predictions with the team and those I'm sure will be available on your CIO memo and we'll link to how folks can subscribe to that because I get it in my inbox, I think every week. And so it's, it's a great newsletter, but can you give us Crypto 101 listeners a little sneak peek into one or two predictions that you feel strongly about for 2026?
- [56:10]
D
Yeah, sure. My most important prediction is that the price of bitcoin will go up in 2026. All right, I like it. That sounds like a very modest thing to say, but the reason that's important is because of course that would break the historical four year cycle and suggest that we're in a new era of crypto the reason I think it's true is the scale of institutional capital, particularly from large wirehouses and true institutions, is just overwhelming in nature. And I think we are going to exhaust the people who are willing to sell. I also think that if we break the four year cycle, if we bury that in the dirt and never talk about it again, I think we're in a new kind of regime, a new kind of mainstream era and I think people will be more comfortable allocating to bitcoin. So the one prediction I'll throw out is bitcoin will have an up year in 2026. And I think that's actually really important. The second one, and I'll probably just. This is the other one I'll offer you. I do think we'll have more real world use cases that have escape velocity. I don't know how we're going to structure this from a written perspective to measure it. But I think the thing I said about people thinking crypto is bitcoin, stablecoins and tokenization, I think we will add more to that in 2026. I think prediction markets are a gimme. I think privacy is likely. I think defi or something else will also have that kind of real world escape velocity. Maybe I'll throw out one more because I'm getting excited. I also think the value capture of tokens will improve significantly in 2026. So to give you an example, Uniswap turned on the fee switch, allowing fee to accrue to token holders of the uni token. I think you'll see that kind of activity on multiple different assets. I think a mistake people are making in crypto right now is looking at crypto assets that don't have value capture and tossing them in the trash. That's like looking at Facebook before it had ads and saying there's no value. The hard thing is building community and utility. The easy thing is value capture, particularly now that we're in a new regulatory environment. So the value capture of tokens will never be worse than it is today. It's going to get significantly better in 2026. I think uni is the tip of the spear. Things like XRP talking about staking is another example of that. And I think you're going to see a dozen of those value capture Transitions happen in 2026, which will cause people to re rate the assets.
- [58:54]
B
I love that.
- [58:54]
E
Yeah.
- [58:54]
B
On that point, one man's trash is another man's treasure. And you know, you could, you could turn coal into diamonds and it happens all the time. Right under our feet. And so yeah, I'm super bullish as well. You know, got a lot of exposure to a lot of those assets that are, you know, hopefully do, you know, have once the clarity act or whatever it becomes, you know, memorialized as kind of allows for all that and gives people clear rules of the road. And just like one other thing like on the point of the four year cycle being dead, I think you're totally right with that. And it's something that we've posited quite a bit on the show and in the old days, right, like when bitcoin having had such a dramatic impact and bitcoin new flows. But right now bitcoin is already 95% diluted and there's something like 20 or 25 million dollars of bitcoin mined every day in an asset that trades $100 billion every day. So like the, the having impact really just is de minimis now relative to like you said, these ETF inflows, these wirehouses who, you know, in a blink of an eye they might even lose 20 million. They're like, yeah, where did it go? Like, you know, they're, they're talking on the orders of hundreds of billions and trillions. And so I think you're totally right. We are in a new era. And typically if this was sort of the year after the halving in every past cycle, the year after the having 2017, right. 2021. Now 2025 is the year where bitcoin's up massively and we're negative on the year. So the four year cycle is yeah, empirically done and hopefully 2026 which is historically, you know, that second year after the having is like the worst year. Right. If the cycle's broken, maybe we're just going to get a refresh, maybe we're going to get a full re hit the restart, unplug bitcoin, bitcoin, plug it back in and we're gonna have some good times ahead. So Matt, we, we greatly appreciate you joining us and you know, brain dumping all of your thoughts. We hope that you enjoyed, we hope everybody at home enjoyed and you know, any last words to, to help people keep their heads on straight during this volatility.
- [61:02]
D
Yeah, I think just think about the time cycle that you're investing in crypto. If you're investing for the next few weeks, who knows what happens happens. Even I'm nervous about the next few weeks. But if you think about where crypto will be in 2029 or 2035, I'm extraordinarily optimistic and so that's how I orient my investments and that's how I keep my sanity during these short term pullbacks that we see in the market.
- [61:28]
B
Love it, love it, love it. Thank you so much everybody. Thank you for joining. Click the show notes so you can could find out how to keep tabs on everything Matt is writing and what bitwise is circulating. And with that we will see you sometime next year. Take care. Have a great holiday with your family and those those three wacky kids of yours.
- [61:49]
D
Good. Good luck getting some sleep my friend. Thanks everybody. Thanks Brendan.
- [62:04]
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