"We're a Tweet Away from a 15% Dump:" CEO on Crypto's Fragility | Markets Outlook

Summary

Podcast Summary: “We're a Tweet Away from a 15% Dump” | Markets Outlook by CoinDesk

Date: October 31, 2025
Host(s): Jen Senasi, Andy Baer
Guest: Sarah Santiago (CEO and Founder, Inversion)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the persistent fragility of the crypto market, spotlighted by sudden volatility triggered by external events—such as policy announcements or even influential social media posts. Sarah Santiago of Inversion joins the hosts to discuss the post-rate cut environment, macro and regulatory shifts, the evolution of the stablecoin sector, and how “real world” applications may finally move crypto beyond its “casino” reputation. The conversation covers the ongoing trend of institutional adoption, M&A in the crypto and fintech space, and the promising (but still nascent) end game for blockchain technology.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Market Volatility and Triggers

• Volatility is “Normal”: Santiago repeatedly stresses that crypto’s extreme volatility is par for the course. Seemingly minor events—especially high-profile tweets or announcements—can move prices dramatically.
  • “We're a tweet away from bitcoin and alts dumping 10, 15% or more.” – Sarah Santiago, [03:02]
  • “It doesn't take much. We're a tweet away or an announcement away from a lot of volatility up or down, and that's just normal. We'll continue to be normal for this asset class for the next couple of years.” – Sarah Santiago, [00:00], [03:02], [02:33]
• Fed Rate Cuts and Political Environment: The hosts and Santiago agree that rate cut discussions have become highly politicized, intersecting with economic issues like tariffs and triggering unpredictable market responses.

2. Institutional Adoption and Market Structure

• Crypto is Here to Stay: Institutional buy-in is irreversible, with major banks (e.g., JP Morgan) now offering direct crypto exposure and BlackRock’s ETF launch marking a major inflection point.
  • “We're not going to go back to a state of the world where crypto is no longer viable for businesses.” – Sarah Santiago, [05:07]
  • “BlackRock's launching the ETF told you everything, right? ... Jamie Dimon now... clients of JP Morgan can now have access and buy crypto directly.” – Sarah Santiago, [05:07]
• M&A Boom: 2025 sees a surge in M&A involving payments, stablecoins, and infrastructure, with both financial and fintech incumbents racing to establish a strategy.

3. The Stablecoin Opportunity and “Abstraction” for Users

• Future of Stablecoins: There is broad experimentation (companies launching their own chains and coins), but the eventual goal is simplicity and invisibility for end-users.
  • “The infrastructure will be invisible. The end customer will not care, can't pronounce Solana or Ethereum today, won't care where the transaction gets settled.” – Sarah Santiago, [07:37]
  • “When you board an airplane, do you really care if it's a Boeing aircraft or an Airbus aircraft?... You just care to go from point A to point B.” – Sarah Santiago, [07:37]
• Moving Beyond Financialization: While trading and “casino” behaviors have stress-tested blockchains, Santiago believes “real world” applications—particularly with stablecoins—are the future.
  • “If [betting] is the best thing we can do, we’re not worth $3.4 trillion.” – Sarah Santiago, [11:19]

4. Diversifying Use Cases and Fee Generation

• Need for Diverse Blockchain Applications: The health of blockchains like Ethereum and Solana depends on reducing fee reliance from speculative trading, instead enabling recurring business use like payments and transfers.
  • “You would want to see diversification away from [gambling] concentration more into payments for businesses, transfers of value amongst businesses. On the stablecoin side. That alone can be a massive category.” – Sarah Santiago, [13:32]
  • “We need to get that right because if in five years time we're still deriving 100% of the fees from very speculative reflexive crypto assets, then this industry is not relatable.” – Sarah Santiago, [14:08]
  • “Ethereum should not be worth 500 billion... If you don't show meaningful traction beyond that narrow use case, I think it's going to be very hard for the market to justify evaluations.” – Sarah Santiago, [14:08]

5. Inversion’s Acquisition Strategy and Real-World Impact

• Targeting Utility Businesses: Santiago reveals that Inversion is actively acquiring traditional businesses—especially utilities (like telecom companies)—that have wide distribution and customer access, aiming to layer stablecoin-powered financial services on top.
  • “Core utility services like telecom are very interesting to us because it allows us to take that business... no reason why a telco can't be a bank with a digital wallet with stablecoins.” – Sarah Santiago, [15:23]
  • “We're looking at businesses in Latin America and Asia, those are the markets where we see immense demand for stablecoins...” – Sarah Santiago, [16:11]
• Consumer-Centric Vision: The goal is to “acquire businesses to acquire the users and introduce them to a better way than they had previously.” – Jen Senasi, [16:46]

6. Market Reflection and Predictions

• Key Inflection Points: The market saw a wake-up call around October 10 (an eventful Friday and a regulatory turning point), reaffirming volatility and the need for caution.
  • “Is there almost a before and after of October 10th? Was there a sense of false security in the markets before? Where do we sit today?” – Jen Senasi, [16:46]
  • Santiago sees “last November” as a more important catalyst, when the regulatory environment turned 180° positive for crypto. [17:21]
• Looking Ahead: Despite ongoing fragility and volatility, Santiago is bullish for 2026 and beyond, citing continued M&A, rising ETF inflows, and a “secular trend” toward broad technology adoption.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Market Volatility:
  • “We're a tweet away from a 15% dump... That's just normal.” – Sarah Santiago, [03:02]
• On Institutionalization:
  • “We’re not going back… BlackRock’s ETF told you everything.” – Sarah Santiago, [05:07]
• On Stablecoin Abstraction:
  • “The end customer… can't pronounce Solana or Ethereum today, won't care where the transaction gets settled.” – Sarah Santiago, [07:37]
• On Moving Past the Casino State:
  • “It's only a casino right now, but we've battle-tested the technology with this use case. Now it's time to wake up… and utilize it in more value-enhancing ways.” – Sarah Santiago, [11:19]
• On Inversion’s Business Model:
  • “No reason why a telco can't be a bank with a digital wallet with stablecoins because you live with a customer 24/7.” – Sarah Santiago, [15:23]
• On the Future:
  • “We’re in a secular trend. Over the next 20 years, everyone’s going to use this technology. How we get there is going to be ups and downs, but the trend line is very, very strong and upright.” – Sarah Santiago, [17:21]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:00] – Opening thoughts on market fragility and volatility.
• [01:32] – Recent market events: Fed rate cut, correlation with tech sector.
• [03:02] – Discussion on how market sentiment can change rapidly (“a tweet away from a 15% dump”).
• [05:07] – The irreversible wave of institutional crypto adoption.
• [07:37] – Discussion on the end state of stablecoins and blockchain “abstraction.”
• [11:19] – Debate on casino-like speculation vs. real-world deployments.
• [13:32] – The necessity for diversified blockchain business models.
• [15:23] – Inversion’s acquisition focus and geographic targets.
• [16:46] – Reflection on October 10 event, lessons learned, and 2026 outlook.

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Conclusion

This episode provides a candid, pragmatic view of the crypto market’s current state. While the guests acknowledge ongoing “casino”-like speculation, they express optimism for broader mainstream adoption—including stablecoin-driven financial services for the masses. Institutional buy-in and regulatory clarity are creating a sturdy foundation, and as blockchain infrastructure becomes further abstracted, the goal is to onboard ordinary consumers with genuine utility, not just speculation.

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For listeners seeking context and where crypto is likely headed—and why “a tweet away from a 15% dump” may be the norm for now—this episode is a must-listen.

Transcript

[Sarah Santiago]

It doesn't take much. We're a tweet away or an announcement away from a lot of volatility, up or down, and that's just normal. We'll continue to be normal for this asset class for the next couple of years.

[Jen Senasi]

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[Sarah Santiago]

Hey, Santiago, Jen, Andy, great to be here. Thank you.

[Jen Senasi]

Great to have you here. We start the show out quite broad. I like to ask everyone this question. We're sitting here at the end of the week. Talk to us about what you've been watching lately.

[Sarah Santiago]

Obviously, the Fed rate cut is important. Bitcoin and the rest of the technology sector took a hit. And it's just a healthy reminder that as much as we see institutional excitement and hype and ETF inflows, you know, this industry continues to be a very volatile asset class and it's a levered NASDAQ play, so we should never lose sight of that.

[Jen Senasi]

Speaking of the Fed, Jerome Powell warned markets this week that another rate cut isn't guaranteed by the end of the year. You know, a lot of investors and traders watch this show. What should they be looking out for when it comes to rate cuts in the Fed in the United States?

[Sarah Santiago]

Well, you know, I'm not a trader, but I think, as I said, you know, it's a very volatile asset class. So I'm looking at earnings for the technology sector probably more important. Jensen Huang is equally as important as Jerome Powell here. And so I think a lot of people are reading into the language around maybe not as much as rate cuts. It's not a done deal. And so I think people just react to that. You know, the reality is markets have rallied a lot this year. It's been a very strong year and a strong set of years. So any small deviation of that is going to have volatility in the markets and people should just be prepared for that.

[Andy Baer]

A lot of the rate cut conversations feel a little more politicized and integrated into things like tariffs. And we certainly had news come out at weird times through unusual or unconventional methods like the October 10th late Friday afternoon thing. So how do you think about that affecting sentiment and general risk appetite when things are more political, maybe less predictable?

[Sarah Santiago]

We're a tweet away from bitcoin and alts dumping 10, 15% or more. I think traders in crypto have realized that the market structure is not as strong as perhaps you would have thought. And you saw that definitely a couple Fridays ago. And from that standpoint, I think the market was too confident there. Looking at ETF inflows, I mean, we just had a record ETF inflow early in October. You have all the DATs and microstrategies that bode really well and there's really positive announcements for the industry, institutional adoption, but it's still a very volatile, nascent asset class without as much liquidity. So because you don't have as much liquidity, it doesn't take much. We're a tweet away or an announcement away from a lot of volatility up or down, and that's just normal. We'll continue to be normal for this asset class for the next couple of years.

[Jen Senasi]

You said we're a tweet away from the market dumping. I'm assuming you mean a tweet or a truth social post.

[Andy Baer]

No, not a tweet for me that I've not been able to have that economy.

[Jen Senasi]

A truth social post, maybe, Maybe from the president, Is that what you're implying?

[Sarah Santiago]

Absolutely.

[Andy Baer]

I think you know the mood and I think we had the same president and we had the same Fed chair, let's say in late July, early August, the mood was so, I think regulatory, bullish, genius act, things like that, but also just kind of education bullish. The narratives around payments and the focus on things like tokenization helped prompt, I think, a longer term investment thesis for a broader set of investors around the digital asset class. And when you think about your business, a lot of M and A was underway already and M and A discussions that have even you know, become public since then were clearly in the works. So how do you link the immediate market sentiment to the enthusiasm for longer term deal making or longer term valuation of things? In other words, is the market's noise important to keep those conversations alive or can people really, you know, maintain a longer term horizon perspective?

[Sarah Santiago]

We're not going to go back to a state of the world where crypto is no longer viable for businesses. Wall street can now make money off of this industry. BlackRock's launching the ETF told you everything, right? You had Vanguard and JP Morgan that were resisting getting involved in the space. That changed a couple of weeks ago. I started my career JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon now clients of JP Morgan can now have access and buy crypto directly through JP Morgan. We're not going to go back to a state of the world where that's no longer the case. So how does that bode well for our business? Well, look, we are here because we believe this technology can be implemented for most businesses in the same way that the Internet and software transformed every business. It's a 20, 30 year deployment cycle. A lot of the M and A activity you've seen this year, BV&K potentially being acquired by Coinbase securitized and Cantor going public. Mastercard potentially buying zero hash obviously Stripe acquiring Bridge and Privy and Robinhood acquiring bitstamp. You know, it's mostly the M and A activity has been mostly centered on financial institutions scrambling to have a strategy on payments or stablecoins. What the market doesn't fully appreciate is the entire opportunity to bring stablecoins into traditional businesses because every business sends receives payments. That's the opportunity that we see at inversion, which is let's go buy deeply unsexy traditional businesses with challenged business profiles. They're not growing as much. Those businesses can be vastly more efficient with this technology. No one's done it yet. And the problem we have as an industry is it's not relatable. Right? You go and walk around New York, you even go talk to regulators and they'll say, okay look, stablecoins are nice, but how is this actually impacting the end consumer? We don't have a good answer for that yet, Andy. We will if we do this right.

[Andy Baer]

At a version at this very stage. And of course one couldn't ask you to be held to this. Do you see kind of convergence in layer 1 blockchain supportive stable coins and convergence and stable coins themselves as being the end state? Or is it more of a proliferation of blockchains and a proliferation of Stable coins that are more specialized probably either will be abstracted away from many people's experience ultimately. But it's the seems to be the race that everybody is most broadly focused on right now.

[Sarah Santiago]

You're right. Everyone wants to have a stablecoin and some companies like Stripe want to have their own blockchain. You know, I think we'll continue to see more experiments. It's something that continues to come up every cycle. How I envision the end state of this technology. As you said, the infrastructure will be invisible. The end customer will not care, can't pronounce Solana or Ethereum today, won't care where the transaction gets settled. They won't even care if it's USDC or usdt. They think in practical terms of am I holding a dollar in my bank account and can I earn interest on that? We at Inversion are very focused on delivering extreme value to the end user with this technology and really breaking away from this obsession in crypto. From an academic hobbyist standpoint of leading crypto with infrastructure, the reality is, Andy and Jen, when you board an airplane, do you really care if it's a Boeing aircraft or an Airbus aircraft? Maybe you care if it's not a 777 Max, but other than that, you just scare to go from point A to point B. And so this industry is really good from a financialization. Stable coins, like the rest of the world wants to have dollars in their bank account. And so I think that's where the crypto industry has been faulty in the go to market and being practical in how to deploy this technology.

[Jen Senasi]

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[Andy Baer]

A lot about behavior, right? And, and I When I, I guess some of the early stablecoin experiments, but also trading experiments and, and, and things like tokenizing equities are trying to attract the attention of this global trading population which loves perps and loves trading everything and you know, operates in the, let's say in the mean coin space on pure behavioral and expectation of flows kind of mentality. I feel like we're learning a lot about what delights people and maybe the future you're envisioning is one where a lot of that's abstracted away and people just enjoy better convenience. But what kind of things have you seen? Maybe it's a bit of a curveball question that kind of aims itself at that delight that we've seen in the exuberance of people who just, just love moving towards global trading markets.

[Sarah Santiago]

People like to bet, people like to go to Las Vegas, but We only have 40 million active users in crypto today. You know, the market size is limited, it's big. But we're a $4 trillion industry and we have 40 million active users. ChatGPT is worth a trillion if it goes public and it has 800 million users. So certainly people love financialization, people love betting on stuff and you know, markets are markets. The question is, is a 50 times perpetual product the best thing that we can do with this technology? And the answer is most definitely not. And if it is, we're not worth $3.4 trillion. And so we have to really take, and this is where we come at it from inversion which is let's go and acquire real businesses, utilize this technology to make it invisible, deliver a better service for the end user. If we do this well, our users will never know that they're interacting with this infrastructure, but they'll feel the impact. And I think that's the end state of the technology. And I think it's, it's, it's only a casino right now, but it's, we've battle tested the technology with this financialized use case and I think now it's time to wake up as an industry and utilize it in more, more value enhancing ways than just betting. 24 7, 365 Interesting take.

[Andy Baer]

I guess maybe a follow up is that a certain amount of that market structure needs to remain in place so that the blockchains on which you want to build some of these things maintain enough decentralization and basically public access from a valuation point of view, security, consensus, things like that. Like in other words, you need the bitcoin blockchain, you may end up needing the ethereum blockchain and you may end up needing the Solana blockchain and maybe a couple of others. And people need to like those assets and trade them and participate in consensus or else you kind of lose, you know, you lose one or two legs of the stool. So in a way, do you feel as if that market structure has to remain supported or can the technology find a just as resilient way to maintain itself if the casino starts to lose users?

[Sarah Santiago]

I think it's very complementary. What you'd want to see over time is that the fees that are generated in these systems like Ethereum, Solana, the inversion chain, are not 100% tied to one type of use case, which is perps and gambling on chain. You would want to see diversification away from that concentration more into payments for businesses, transfers of value amongst businesses. On the stablecoin side. That alone can be a massive category. Right. It could be trillions and trillions of dollars eclipsing what the Visa network processes.

[Andy Baer]

Right.

[Sarah Santiago]

So I see a world where the fees that are generated in these systems come from recurring non speculative use cases. We need to get that right because if in five years time we're still deriving 100% of the fees from very speculative reflexive crypto assets, then this industry is not relatable. Right. And so if you go talk to a regulator, they're going to ask you one question which is tell me why this technology is useful and you'll try to intellectualize it with what you just said of decentralization and security and they'll say yeah, but when you're a casino, people lose money on it time and time again. And so we need to really break away from that. And as an industry I think we're in a very different regulatory environment today than we were last November. I think we're going to have a really hard time if in five years time we don't onboard more users, we don't branch away from pure speculative activities. Because at that point I think a most of these networks are not worth what they're worth. Ethereum should not be worth 500 billion Solana ripple. If you don't show meaningful traction beyond that narrow use case, I think it's going to be very hard for the market to justify evaluations.

[Jen Senasi]

Can you tell us a little bit more about your acquisition strategy? What kinds of traditional firms are you out there looking to acquire?

[Sarah Santiago]

We have certain sector theseses. We look at businesses that have a lot of distribution and a good relationship with the end user. Core utility services like telecom are Very interesting to us because it allows us to take that business that is deeply underutilized in many places. There's no reason why a telco can't be a bank with a digital wallet with stablecoins because you live with a customer 24. 7. The way we see the world is which businesses can we acquire at a really interesting price to layer on this type of technology and offer that end user base a very meaningful differentiated service that is a bank account essentially. And we can do that now at a fraction of the cost with stablecoins with decentralized finance applications. A lot of the projects that I've been investing in.

[Jen Senasi]

Right.

[Sarah Santiago]

And that's really the opportunity that we see. There's a ton of businesses like stablecoins alone will transform consumer behavior. Programmable money, the idea of earning in dollars, receiving dollars, earning yield for a vast majority of the population. Where we're looking at businesses in Latin America and Asia, those are the markets where we see immense demand for stablecoins for financial services that haven't existed before. Right. So it's a massive opportunity and you can acquire businesses at really interesting multiples.

[Jen Senasi]

So it really is about acquiring the businesses to acquire the users and introduce them to a better way than they had previously. We do got to let you go, but I want to kind of bring us back full circle. We started the interview off talking about the current state of the markets and how fragile they are right now. I have two questions for you as we wrap this up. Is there almost a before and after of October 10th? Was there a sense of false security in the markets before? Where do we sit today? And my final question for you is where we heading towards the end of the year? What's your prediction?

[Sarah Santiago]

I think traders and investors appreciated. This industry is still very volatile. No matter that you have continued ETF flows, it's still fragile as an industry. We're still relatively young. Liquidity can really dry up very quickly. So people are skittish, they're a bit scarred from that, which is a good thing. Remain very bullish into next year. You have a lot of the M and A activity, a lot of the ETF inflows. Reality is big allocators don't make investment decisions like crypto. Twitter on the day to day. They're going into year end, they're going into committee and saying gosh, we should really have exposure to this. We're seeing a lot of our competitors buy companies to get exposure to these asset class. A lot of people still again don't know how to pronounce Solana or Ethereum. They're getting off of zero. I see continued interest there. And that's going to persist into next year. And so, again, we're in a secular trend. Over the next 20 years, everyone's going to use this technology. How we get there is going to be ups and downs. Right. But the trend line is very, very strong and upright. I would say the key inflection point was not so much two Fridays or three Fridays ago. It was last November when we had a total 180 in the regular term environment. And people should not forget that that is a huge, huge catalyst for the continued rise of this industry.

[Jen Senasi]

Santiago, thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you for joining Andy and Dai. It was a pleasure.

[Sarah Santiago]

Thank you, Jen. Andy, thanks for having me on.