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- [00:00]
A
Over the course of 2025, I think we hit 200. I don't know where we end 2025 at. I think we usually see these cycles tail off in October, November, but I do think we see a higher high than most people are expecting.
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We all want to believe in something. In Chinese, belief also means trust. We want to trust our systems and each other so we can build a future beyond what we know.
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A
Trust.
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B
Join us at Consensus Hong Kong, where belief becomes real. Hello and welcome to Markets Daily, hosted by me, Jen Senassi. On this show, we navigate the currents shaping the crypto markets, providing insights against the broader financial landscape. So whether you're actively investing or simply fascinated by the volatility that is the crypto markets, this show is your compass to understanding what's happened, where we are, and where we're going. On today's show, we are welcoming Core Dao initial contributor Rich Rides. Rich, hello.
- [00:59]
A
Hello. Great to talk to you again, Jen, of course.
- [01:02]
B
Great to have you back. I mean, what a morning to have you back. More than $300 billion has been wiped out of the crypto market since January 6th. Talk to me about what you're making of this information. I know there was a short period in December when we all thought that we'd be flying high here in January. Talk to me about what you're watching this morning.
- [01:25]
A
So I too, shared that view back in, back in December, coming off the election, that we were going to get a Santa Claus rally. And I think there was a bunch of tests in rejections and unfortunately we didn't get there. And I think the way to think about it in hindsight is we pulled forward a lot of expectations in November, in December, and now we've come a little bit back more to reality as we've got a lot of uncertainty around the inauguration. The Fed recently was hawkish. There's a lot of not strictly up only as it appeared just a couple months ago. But I think that's a very interesting time to get involved in some of these digital assets like bitcoin, where I think over the next year or so there's a lot of structural drivers to make bitcoin and bitcoin adjacent assets really appealing.
- [02:07]
B
Talk to me a little bit about some of those structural drivers. What do you think is going to continue to make Bitcoin appealing to larger and larger audiences?
- [02:16]
A
So I think the strategic Bitcoin reserve has been hot on the news topics over a little bit, and there's been some speculation that maybe that does happen in the first hundred days of the Trump president. And see, I think I'm not going to factor that one into my own math but, but I do think there is a potentially, you know, fairly decent likelihood that it does happen. But for in my mind it's probably a coin flip, maybe 59 or 51, 49 type thing. On top of that I think we'll continue to see more and more ETF inflows. That was the other really interesting part of the end of, of last year. We started to see outflows for the first time in size and it was showing you that hey that the market is cooling off a little bit. But I think over the next year we're going to see that bitcoin is going to continue to evolve as a part of the financial system. It's not going away and we'll see even larger inflows than we did we did this year.
- [02:59]
B
I saw some headlines recently that said we could pull back as far as 75k. Talk to me, I ask everyone on this show, not everyone answers. So it's okay if you don't want to give a prediction but talk to me about how you see the price of bitcoin fluctuating over the next year. Where do you see the price of bitcoin headed?
- [03:17]
A
So I think personally 75 is a fantastic buying opportunity. I mean I've been in bitcoin since 2013 and when you see these big bull market pullbacks that they're usually great times to get involved, not financial advice. Over the, over the course of 2025 I think we hit 200. I don't know where we end 2025 at. I think we usually see these cycles tail off in October or November but I do think we see a higher high than most people are expecting. I don't think people like we do get a strategic bitcoin reserve, something similar. I don't think people have, have accurately priced in what sort of demand that will be. And that's another net new structural demand driver versus just the ETFs.
- [03:53]
B
Talking about some of these catalysts, the approval of the ETFs a more crypto friendly administration coming into the United States. A lot of new folks are looking at bitcoin, are looking at cryptocurrency assets and you've been in the space for a really long time for people who are just starting to get involved or just starting to learn about what bitcoin is, what it means to hold bitcoin, what advice would you give them?
- [04:16]
A
So I think there's been an amazing amount of new materials that have come out. My, my former answer used to be, you know, start the bitcoin white paper. And I that's still a great spot for people to go. But if you look at some of the materials put up by BlackRock, Fidelity, etc now that are more at a kind of classic investor audience, those materials are phenomenal and I think they still get across the key pieces that the Bitcoin white paper used to get across which was this non sovereign store value, perfect scarcity. And especially as we're in such uncertain economic times, the appeal of Bitcoin is that much more interesting for so many people, not just in the US but globally. And now with the ETFs, there's access for folks that cannot self custody or don't want to use an exchange and they can access it through whatever retirement account, etc. That they have. And I think now that it's so accessible and so legitimized, there's just, you know, there's so many people that haven't gotten involved yet and now is, you know, as good a time as ever.
- [05:08]
B
There was another headline this morning. There's some unconfirmed reports that DB News is suggesting that the US government has been given the green light to liquidate as much as six and a half billion dollars worth of Bitcoin. This is an interesting time, right? We have the Biden government leaving, we have the Trump administration coming in. Trump has said he wouldn't sell any of the US's Bitcoin. The Biden administration might talk to me about how you make sense of that and what people should take away from the these government reserves and speak speculating on whether they're sold or not.
- [05:44]
A
So I think we can look at our friends over in Germany and watch what happened late last year as they liquidated their large Bitcoin holdings. And that's a pretty expensive mistake at this point. And I hope that the US doesn't follow in a similar vein, which is the Biden administration was so notably anti crypto, amazing work by Nick Carter, Coinbase, et cetera that have done all that investigation into the operation 2.2.0. But this would kind of be the crescendo, right? Like this would kind of be the final, you know, like ending salvo to the crypto, you know, regime in the us and that's really unfortunate if that is where we head. I think the market's already largely priced it in and I think people also under, under underappreciate the flows that we're seeing and I think, you know, you've seen the sailor bid, you've seen these other, other folks that maybe other nation states are accumulating. I think six and a half billion. Again, short term, bearish, but long term, great buying opportunity.
- [06:36]
B
Let's steer away from bitcoin for just a second and talk about some of the alts and maybe even meme coins out there. The audience gets mad at me because I often say alts and meme coins and they think that I'm saying that they are one and the same, which I am not. But what are you looking at outside of bitcoin as we head deeper into 2025?
- [06:56]
A
So I think meme coins have been really interesting and I think they will do well in 2025. We've seen it's lightspeed gambling effectively and that's appealing to so many different folks out there. Your dopamine sense is go wild and it's hard to pick. You know, what's the meme of the day if you're not super in the trenches on crypto, Twitter, etc. Not having to be where I spend a lot of my time, but people have done phenomenally well in those trades. What I've been spending more time on is kind of these bitcoin beta assets. And of course that's some of the role at core. But I think what we haven't really priced in as an industry is you've had so much bitcoin adoption. Now people are aware of bitcoin. Well, now people are going to want to go put their bitcoin to work. And especially if we get strategic bitcoin reserve, et cetera, that's going to accelerate. I think a lot of these, you know, leopard bitcoin beta plays. I think the Ethereum ecosystem is also largely undervalued. I think there's been a lot of Ethereum hate over, you know, the last few months, but there are some really amazing technicals behind it. And I do think that over the year we do see Ethereum do pretty well. And then if you haven't had a Solana position over the last 12 to 18 months or whatever, it's been a tough time to put up good numbers.
- [07:58]
B
It's interesting you say that. I've had some people come on the show and say, you know, Ethereum could be the BlackBerry of this industry, could get flipped soon by some of the, some of its competitors. Talk to me a little bit more about why you remain bullish on Ethereum.
- [08:17]
A
So I think it's the second largest crypto asset there's such an amazing developer community and one of the reasons that it's doing poorly at the moment relative to some of these other assets is because it's just a lacking of techno leadership and a roadmap that's really clear order to how they go compete with these, you know, generation two or generation three chains like a Salana or a Swee. And, and with that they're, they're kind of getting left behind and they've been, you know, kind of like the most hated coin this rally. I think in, in bull markets, you know, hopefully all things, you know, go up and I think there will be some sort of, you know, 2025 announcement where Ethereum does get back on track. And I think that makes it a really interesting risk reward relative to some of these other things have been trading really, really well or been, you know, maybe too hot over the last 12 months.
- [08:58]
B
Just before we started talking about Ethereum, you mentioned some of the Bitcoin beta plays and how to put your bitcoin to work. Talk me through maybe your top two or three ways to put your Bitcoin to work.
- [09:10]
A
So, and I think this will be a story either maybe in 2025 after the Ethereum ETFs get staking, or potentially 2026 we'll see how quickly some of the crypto policy stuff moves in the US but I think as soon as the Ethereum ETFs have staking, you will see Bitcoin staking ETFs as well going to make sense where you have this very large passive capital asset base that can now go earn passive yield and that's kind of the next step of Wall Streetification if you will. You go from spot assets, then you start to go to derivatives and now you have the ability to go earn passive yield through staking. So you're not lending those assets. We all saw what happened with MicroStrategy when they announced, not MicroStrategy, sorry, Marathon when they announced recently they were lending their Bitcoin. So I think a lot of those things will be untenable. So that passive yield opportunity in non staking product like or there's no principal risk I think will be very appealing and I think it will also allow the ETF issuers to compete on fees in a different way. And you'll see some zero fee products even though these have been wildly profitable for the blackrocks of the world. So I think that's one aspect and bitcoin staking is probably $100 billion plus opportunity today. I Think the other very appealing spot of these, how do you put your bitcoin to workplace is going to be some of these, let's call them like bitcoin backed stablecoins where you can actually earn passive yield on your bitcoin or leverage. Right. And but it's leveraged to in a very safe way. But it's kind of the entry point to okay, how do you start to get stable coins against your bitcoin? Maybe avoid some, some taxes and go use some of these, some of these bitcoin that you've been holding for a long time and now kind of use it as your daily driver. And I think that's going to be a big story particularly in the emerging markets for the next several years where bitcoin is this perfect collateral asset. And you'll see these neo banks that look very similar to a Revolut or a Robinhood, et cetera. They're super friendly but under the hood you're borrowing into your bitcoin, you're using stables to, to make payments rich.
- [10:54]
B
Just before we wrap up, I asked some people on the show and you are one of our lucky guests. Give me your if you were to think ahead and think about your perspective of the markets markets, what's your hottest take? What, what do you think is going to happen, let's say over the next quarter that you think enough people are not talking about?
- [11:17]
A
Wow, that's a tricky one for me to think of. I think people underestimate how large this cycle will be. And I think we are in a super cycle where we have actually changed kind of the market structure of how these crypto four year cycles have gone on. And I think people underestimate what this transition period is going to look like. And kind of the analogy that I've given a few folks was I remember 1999, I was young at that time, but I remember my 75 year old neighbor that was day trading stocks. And we haven't seen anything like that in terms of the crypto crypto space maybe since 2017. The 2021 cycle, as interesting as it was, it was much more muted in terms of kind of that Main street adoption, less Shiba Inu and some of those other meme coins. And I think whether it's this cycle, eventually next cycle we will see something that rivals the dot com translated forward to today. And I think that will be a much bigger kind of phenomenon to go watch. And I think some of these crypto assets will perform generationally.
- [12:21]
B
It's interesting that you say 2021 was muted because from within the industry it feels like it was. And it feels like that hype, that excitement was there. But you're absolutely right. Looking in from outside, it really was muted. There wasn't really that staying power with the mainstream audience. That's a very good point there.
- [12:41]
A
Yeah. 2021 was a lot of fun, don't get me wrong. But, but it was, it was very muted. And it was also during a period of meme, meme stocks, everything else. It was like just kind of a function of all these assets, you know, inflating pretty rapidly and, and I think if that was just directed to crypto, wow. Would have been, you know, quite a different cycle. But I think now we're, we're pretty pretty firmly in the focal point this and AI really rich.
- [13:04]
B
Thanks so much for joining the show. It's always a pleasure chatting with you.
- [13:09]
A
Thanks for having me chat soon and.
- [13:11]
B
Thank you to our audience who watch and listen to markets daily every day. If you prefer to listen to this show, please subscribe to the Coindesk podcast network that is available on all podcast platforms. If you like watching us, we are on YouTube. Subscribe, give us a thumbs up. Thanks again for watching and we will see. See you tomorrow.