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- [00:01]
James Seyfert
I mean, Morgan Stanley now is recommending a 2 to 4% allocation to Bitcoin, specifically, depending on, like, your risk level and metrics. Right. So that's officially something that they've stated. They are the biggest wirehouse. So they have 17,000 advisors, $7 trillion in assets among them. So, like, the numbers that we're talking about are insane. Even at a 2% allocation. The first. The first thing you asked is like, why did they do this?
- [00:22]
Brian
Hey, I say when we sell,
- [00:26]
Jackson
we are back. It's the last trade. Our special guest of honor is James Seyfert from Bloomberg Intelligence. James, welcome back to the show. It's good to see you. Thanks for your time.
- [00:38]
James Seyfert
Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be back.
- [00:41]
Jackson
Thanks, man. And Brian, good to see you, as always.
- [00:43]
Brian
Always good to see you, Jackson. And you. You too, James. Thanks for joining us again.
- [00:48]
James Seyfert
Yeah, happy to do it.
- [00:50]
Jackson
So, look, James, I'm surprised we're even recording this because from what I've heard, the bitcoin, the digital asset, the crypto market is cooked. It's over. There's nothing to even talk about today is what I've been hearing on the street. So I would love for you to start on the sentiment discussion, because I think there's almost two stories that are being told right now. Everywhere I look online, in my circles, people are really beaten down. They're devastated. You wouldn't think that the price is around 80,000. You wouldn't think that the adoption that we've seen in traditional finances happening, but yet people, I think, are really discouraged. It may have something to do with the everything but bitcoin rally. Yet if you start to look into what's going on on Wall street, traditional finance, I think it does paint a bit of a different picture. So I'm curious what you're hearing specifically in your circles. Could you speak to kind of the divergence in sentiment that we're seeing online on X, for example, versus what's taking place in the large institutions?
- [01:49]
James Seyfert
Yeah, I mean, first I should sit. Say that, like, I sit squarely, like, in the middle of these two things in some regards. Right. Like, I. I've been paying attention to this space since early 2017. So, like, I'm. I'm fully aware of what's going on in the trenches and. Well, that's not true. Not fully aware of what's going on in the trenches. But I can see everything that I pay attention to, what's being said on Reddit and on different discord stuff and on Twitter, and the sentiment is Down. I think most of it's down because a lot of those people, particularly on the crypto side, not necessarily bitcoin, leaned into like NFTs and a lot of these meme coins and other stuff that's really not good. So anyone who is leaning to that, it's, it's not, it's not sitting pretty right now. And the other side of it is like the true cypherpunk idealists that were big into bitcoin a decade ago and even, you know, eight, five years ago, the things that are happening aren't like in line with that. Like, it's very institutionalized. So like I sit in tradfi, like that's where my job is. Yes, I'm interested in this stuff. I'm pro defi, I'm pro decentralization, you name it. But I also live in the real world and I am a very much a tradfi analyst first and foremost. And like from my point of view, everyone in tradfi is finally taking this seriously. They're taking tokenization seriously. The stablecoins, like even, even our chief rate strategist who I sit next to was like really not on board with anything crypto related. Didn't really believe in bitcoin at all. But like stable over the last couple years has really come around to see what stablecoins and that technology of tokenization can do. I mean, I was at Consensys last week or the week before. I mean, JP Morgan had a huge booth there. Morgan Stanley was on stage multiple times talking about their ETF launch. Like you have the two of the biggest Wall street banks talking about this stuff. Every asset manager in the world is looking into tokenization. People are like taking bitcoin more seriously. I think what's happened is like the left tail of bitcoin outcomes I think has kind of gotten chopped off and a lot of these other things. I mean there's millions of coins and protocols and things that are going to go to zero functionally, maybe not actually zero. So I think people who really believed in web3 and gam chain and stuff like that, maybe that happens down the line. But so that world is just like not doing well. But like from an institutional perspective, from a tradfi perspective, asset management, like, they're all aboard. Like there's so much building happening and at least, if not building, at least testing and testing the waters. Right?
- [04:06]
Jackson
Yeah, I appreciate that context. I think it's important and it's definitely the divergence that I've seen online too where I think A lot of the industry that has died off has essentially provided, let's say, no or very little utility. I think there, to your point, there's Web three, there's gaming, there's daos, there's all these different things that have been launched in the past five to ten years in crypto and really haven't amounted to anything. But what you're saying is there's a lot of these crypto rails that are going to provide a tremendous value to the existing financial system, whether it's tokenized asset classes. That is a huge unlock. It's stablecoins. We talk quite a bit about stablecoins and the relationship there in terms of the US treasury market. And then the final piece would be bitcoin. And I want to get into it a little bit later in the episode. You're covering some things that are happening in the altcoin space, the ETFs, and I just want to better understand what people are paying attention to there. But is it a fair assessment to say that it sounds like a lot of the crypto use cases are essentially improving the traditional financial system and have moved away from any sort of utility, you know, direct utility, in this kind of battle that the cypherpunks had against those systems to begin with?
- [05:13]
James Seyfert
Yeah. So I think most of that is accurate, but it's not done yet. Right. Like, I think a lot of this stuff, blockchain infrastructure, it's like it's going to be stuff on the back end. Like, like people using polymarket, a lot of people going there initially, probably had people till today, probably have no idea that's built on an L2. Right. Like people have no idea that blockchain is on the back end there. I think over the next decade. Plus a lot of the things that are going to use blockchain Rails, whether using like protocols that we're used to seeing Solana, Ethereum, what have you, or some of this other stuff, like it's just going to be abstracted away from you and it's going to make like the financial ecosystem better. Is it going to use everything that we're using right now? Almost certainly not, but there's going to be pieces of it. So, like, the way I view it is like it's this two, like galaxies colliding, Tradfi and Defi, and there are going to be people that try things from both worlds, both universes, and try to figure out what's the best. And there's going to be some amalgamation of what we're used to. You know, 10 plus 15 years from now, like 24, seven trading. I mean, all of these things that are. There's a lot of stuff that still needs to be sorted out. But yeah, that said, bitcoin's not dead. The protocol hasn't changed. Like decentralization, the cypherpunk ideals, like, all that's still built into the protocol. Same with the way that Ethereum is operating and these other protocols. What's going to happen is the market is going to decide, right. How much are you going to focus on speed and scaling and all those things to give up some decentralization and the market will decide how much they're willing to give up on that. And yeah, my view is just like, let the market decide where the value is and it's not like any of these things are going to die from it.
- [06:49]
Brian
Yeah, that's all fair. I think the way I sort of perceive what we're talking about here in terms of the sentiment is there's almost two camps, right? I sort of compartmentalize. Like, bitcoin Twitter sentiment is different than like broader crypto Twitter sentiment. And if you think bitcoin sentiment's bad, like, the crypto sentiment's even worse. And I think I agree with what you said, James. Like, part of it to me is a lot of the things that worked for that broader crypto space, namely stablecoins, and what we're seeing with tokenization, it didn't necessarily result in value accrual to all these different tokens. And so that's where I think the poor sentiment lies for a lot of folks in that camp who are invested in all these things is like, okay, you got everything you ever wanted. Like, TRADFI is coming in, they're adopting all this stuff, they're going to tokenize equity markets. But that doesn't necessarily mean your token that you bought a couple years ago is going up in price. And so I kind of view it like that these things are being adopted, particularly stablecoins. And it's like the rails that are being adopted and the value accrual story for a lot of the tokens that existed isn't necessarily participating in that. And then when I look at the bitcoin side, I think it's a little bit different in the sense that in my mind, the trajectory was always going to be like, if bitcoin's going to be global money, like institutions are going to adopt it like that. So that. That isn't the. I think the, the real issue. I think part of the issue over the Past two years is a lot of this treasury company stuff sucked a lot of the air out of the room. And a lot of people that invested in those things are, you know, down way more than whatever bitcoin's down right now. And so I think that that is specific to the sort of the bitcoin sentiment side of things. But overall, I think you're right. Like, this is. It's a very interesting time in sort of digital assets generally, because, like I said, like, all the things that people dreamed up five years, five, ten years ago about happening, like, kind of are happening. You're getting regulatory Clarity. You're getting J.P. morgan, Morgan Stanley coming in, launching products, tokenizing things. All those things are happening. It's just not showing up in sort of native token prices. And I still sort of like, segment, like bitcoin is separate than all of that stuff because bitcoin's kind of doing its own thing. It has geopolitical implications. Like, you know, it's being used for straightforward news patches. Like, that's a totally different story to me. But, yeah, I think that's how I parse the sentiment stuff.
- [09:14]
James Seyfert
Yeah, I think part of it is one. I will go back to something you're saying if you can tell me exactly where the value is going to accrue here. I would love to know. Because a lot of these things still have issues with the equity in the company itself versus the tokenomics. And that stuff is being sorted out right now, but it's still very confusing. I think a lot of it is people just got ahead of their skis. If you valued this the same way you would value a stock or any other security or instrument, like, these things are trading at insane multiples to, like, what they're actually doing, because they're projecting massive growth. And I think part of it is like, just this growth is going to take time. Like, the trajectory still looks really good, but maybe we got over our skis a little bit is the way that I would kind of frame it right now. But the trend still looks very good, particularly from a tradfi adoption point of view. But a lot of this tokenization effort and all these things like Ondo and Securitize, they're doing a lot of really cool stuff with tradfi. And it's measured in the billions. But I mean, billions in, like, the world of tradfi, particularly globally, is like a drop in the bucket. Like, it. We're still like, obscenely early. We haven't decided winners. So if you can pick out a couple of winners here or just bid on the space. There's probably value to be had. But I agree with you, like, it's just, it's, it's frustrating for people because they're not seeing number go up in the way they would. And like, one of the things I say to other people is like, I see a headline every week where like, if this had happened three years ago, they would have been a God candle for bitcoin. And it's just like nobody cares, like it doesn't matter whatsoever. And then on the DAT comment, I agree with you. I think the DAT meta, all that stuff kind of took the wind out of the sails of any sort of altcoin bull market. I mean, obviously some of the stuff going on there is, it doesn't look great, obviously. And I think there's, there was just too many of them. I think, I think you could argue that there is some value potentially in, you know, DATs operating and stuff like that. It's just there was just way too many of them getting into the space.
- [11:04]
Brian
Yeah, I agree with that. And one other thing you highlighted which I think is worth reiterating is like, and I agree with is like the market will decide if people care about decentralization. And you know, I think at least what I see, like, let's just take stable coins as an example. It seems like people aren't going to care about decentralization one because like, even if you purport to be decentralized, like tether has historically, it's like, okay, well Iran's tether is going to get seized. So like, is it decentralized? Not really. And then you also have like the tempos of the world, the stripes, bridges, who are just like basically building their own privatized or permissioned blockchains to issue stablecoins. And so in my mind the value is going to accrue to these issuers who are creating all these more permission networks. And yeah, that really flies in the face of the sort of decentralized narrative that has existed sort of since the dawn of altcoins.
- [12:00]
James Seyfert
Yeah, I actually fully agree with that. And part of it is like they're US dollars. Like the US government issues those things. Like, and like there's got to be some form of centralization on the back end there at the end of the day. And the same thing is going to be true for these tokenized assets, however they're going to come about. But like their bitcoin and some other things are truly, you know, decentralized assets where there is no central intermediary that can do this. But like, just because there is some ability of like governments to, you know, hold sway over things doesn't mean there is no value in like some level of diversification or sorry, diversification of decentralization. So like it all comes back to like the market will decide where the value accrues. Private blockchains. I'm kind of like, I mean a lot of them will say they're not actually private but I'm somewhat like skeptical because like people were very, I mean I'm not the only person to say this but like intranets in the 90s, like everyone, these, these, these Internets that are going to operate within companies and things like that and didn't work out because all the value accrued to things that were like way more open. Do they have to be 100% open and decentralized for that value to accrue? I don't think so, but there's probably like some level on that spectrum where the market is going to decide, okay, we're good with like this level of decentralization. And I know this is like an anathema to some bitcoin maxis because it's like either you're decentralized or you're not. But like from my point of view there really is some sort of spectrum of how these things operate and not everyone can be like for a Solana validator for example, like there's a lot more cost and hardware operating that than running a bitcoin node. But you are way more performant. There's way more things you can. And again I just keep going back to the market will decide if there's value in that process.
- [13:38]
Jackson
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- [15:09]
James Seyfert
Right.
- [15:10]
Jackson
And then the second piece we can get into a little bit later on would just be understanding frameworks and allocations that you're seeing in the traditional finance space that are moving away from that typical 6040 structure. Favor of assets like gold in favor of assets like Bitcoin. Yeah.
- [15:27]
James Seyfert
So, I mean, I got to figure out where I want to go with this. I could talk about like those things for like an hour probably. So I'll try to keep it, I'll try to keep it concise. I mean, Morgan Stanley now is recommending a 2 to 4% allocation to Bitcoin specifically, depending on like your risk level and metrics. Right. So like, that's officially something that they've stated. They didn't even allow their. So one, they're one, they are the biggest wirehouse. Right. So they have tens, I think 17,000 advisors, six plus trillion doll trillion dollars in assets among them. Oh, no. So, yeah, that sounds right. And like, so like the numbers that we're talking about are insane. Even at a 2% allocation, obviously not all of them are there. The first, the first thing you asked is like, why did they do this one? Obviously they came around to it. They allowed the ETFs in the fourth quarter of 2025. So you can hold other ETFs if you're a Morgan Stanley advisor or broker, whatever you want to call them, they're managing money. Before that you couldn't hold them. Like, like no matter what you wanted to do, they weren't approved to hold. And now they're like, okay, you can hold them and they're somewhat recommended if you wanted to buy it before that, you had to jump through a whole host of hoops. You need to meet all these requirements now. It's like way easier. And I think part of it was like they just decided that they can, you know, they can launch these things and be competitive. Like one of the things we like to say is like BYOA is better than ptog, which is bring your own assets is better than paying the other guys. And so like they obviously thought that they could do this on their own. And I think there's multiple reasons for it, right? Like, the first reason is one, they probably have, they have a lot of clients and I'm sure a healthy chunk of those clients hold exposure to crypto, especially bitcoin, on other platforms where they're not charging their management fee. They might even be incorporating it into like their financial planning for those clients. So like just bringing this in house under the umbrella, even if so for today, one, they came in at a 14 basis point fee, which is the lowest fee in the market. I doubt they're making any money on this. If they are, it's not much at all. So like this is more about like meeting their clients where they are for one thing, right? And then all of a sudden if they, if some, you have a client that has a million dollars in bitcoin on, you know, Coinbase, Gemini, ftx, something else, right? Like you bring it on, you bring it in house, you can charge a management fee on that. And the fee is going to be, depending on how much money you have, I don't know, 0.5% to 1.25% likely, maybe a little bit more for somebody at Morgan Stanley. So all of a sudden you're making money on that fee, you can incorporate it better, it looks better for younger clientele that they can bring in house. Like, look, not only do we kind of believe in this space, but like if you're a crypto guy or a bitcoin guy, like we launch products like we're not just saying you can invest in them. We launched our own products to get involved in this space. So I think it's good, like branding from their perspective. And then what, what is the tradfi institutions doing? So Shameless Plug, Eric Baltunas, my boss and I have a book that's coming out where I'm actually working on it today a little bit in the fall. And we Talked with about 50 different people, a lot of people from these ETF issuers to just tradfi firms that are pro and anti bitcoin and everyone that was pro, like for the most part, you talk to them and they say 1 to 5%, some of them say up to 10% allocation to Bitcoin or crypto, more Broadly, everyone usually falls in that single digit percentage area. Like that's just the consensus. Like blackrock officially is there. They kind of equate it to like holding a Mag 7 stock. You don't want like one thing, shake, moving your entire portfolio, then you end up with the tail wagging the dog. And once you get over like single digit percentages, you can have bitcoin, like actually moving the entire portfolio. And if people aren't accustomed to that risk, it's not, it's not a great look. Right. But when you talk to these people who are writing these recommendations, are involved in all this and you ask them how much bitcoin they have or how much crypto exposure they have, almost unanimously, like they're all at 30% or higher. So like, yeah, single digit percentages. And then it's like, But I hold 30 or 50% of my portfolio in crypto. Which is funny that I just wanted to point that out. So I think there was another question you asked in there that I kind of lost track of. But like, that's kind of the sentiment that we're seeing across the tradfi landscape. Cool.
- [19:25]
Jackson
Yeah, we can get to the second part in just a second. I wanted to react to what you said. So the heldaway opportunity is incredibly. I think it's 90% of the entire digital asset space. Crypto space is purported to be held away from advisors. And so that's obviously a problem. James, to your point, you're spending time with clients and you're providing guidance, working that into their financial plan, but you don't reap any monetary reward of doing so. And so that's a problem. And then you also have problems from a counterparty perspective.
- [19:53]
James Seyfert
Right.
- [19:53]
Jackson
I'm sure there are a lot of advisors out there who had clients that landed on BlockFi or Celsius or FTX. And naturally you don't want to be in a position, not necessarily where you're recommending clients use those platforms, but you don't want to be in a position where you have to talk through a client's financial plan. And they have suffered a considerable loss on one of these platforms. So the ETFs are also typically a safer alternative than some of those kind of offshore exchanges, at least. And then another thing as well, that again is often overlooked that you mentioned is Morgan Stanley is the largest of all the wirehouses, so they have close to 20,000 advisors, I believe it's 16,000 to be exact, and over $7 trillion of assets. And I kind of forgot you mentioned 2 to 4% allocation across the board. So this is, you know, this isn't funny money. This isn't something that we're on the fringes of anymore. It really does feel like this is stepping into the institutional, into the institutional space finally. Right. Because you mentioned, Fred, if it was before we hit record or is right at the start of the conversation, you've been in the space following it since 2017. We've been hearing that the institutions are getting involved in digital assets for about 10 years. And you know, a lot of the time that wasn't true. I feel like it actually is finally true now. And so I just wanted to highlight the magnitude of some of what you just spoke to. A lot of the, A lot of the times it does come back to incentives. I think Brian gets sick of me saying that. But look, if you're, if you're Morgan Stanley and you see all these other firms, their sponsors to their own bitcoin ETF products and they're generating a lot of revenue relative to their other ETF products and the AUM has been scaling at rates that were unprecedented, it's hard to sit on your hands and not do anything.
- [21:28]
James Seyfert
Right.
- [21:28]
Jackson
It's almost a foolish thing to not build product for when your clients are asking for it.
- [21:32]
James Seyfert
Yeah. So I want to hit on something you just said there. So there's two things I want to point out. One is like, they kind of have to do something now because of how successful the Bitcoin ETFs, how successful this space has been, people are asking them questions. Like a few years ago we were saying like, if you're an advisor, even if you don't like this space, as long as you, you need to be able to have a conversation about it and articulate your opinion why you don't like it or why you don't want in a portfolio. Now. It' almost like you kind, it's almost like you're making an active, short decision to not hold bitcoin or crypto if you're an advisor in the space. Right. But the other flip side is like you talked about, like, institutions are coming in here. They kind of have to do something. There are still plenty of people at these institutions that do not like bitcoin, do not like anything related to crypto. Some of them don't even like blockchain. So, like, yes, there are people within all these companies, including within my company, that are proponents of what's happening and proponents of this stuff going forward. And they're the ones who like, are taking the risk and putting their name and reputation behind the launch of these products or the investment in these products. But there are plenty of people on these boards and other things that are willing to, you know, drop the hammer on anyone if this thing goes bad. Like, they don't like it, but they're like, they're like, okay, I guess we have to do it. Clients are asking for it. But the minute anything goes wrong, there will be plenty of people that will be saying, I told you so within these companies. And yeah, that was the one. And then the other thing I wanted to point out that I didn't really clearly say because I mentioned that MSBT was the lowest at 14 bips, if you're an advisor. And I mentioned, you know, bring your own assets versus pay the other guy. Like there's a fiduciary duty to try and get like the best product. There's arguments. It doesn't really matter if there's a couple basis points, differences. But like if you're a client and you Launch, you know, MSBT, the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF and you charge 25 bits like Ibip or even a little higher, but there's other products like Grayscale's BTC, that's 15 basis points or Vanex product that has a 0% fee because of a fee waiver. Right now it gets really gray around. Like, should you be buying your own company's product for your client? Is that good fiduciary decision? But when you have the lowest cost product on the market, it's just super easy to be like, we're going to buy our own product, we trust it. And not only that it's the lowest on the pro on the market. So it's just a very smart decision from my point of view from Morgan Stanley, they're coming in. This is likely a loss leader or at least like not making them any money. And I suspect they're likely going to do the same with Ethan Soul.
- [23:44]
Brian
Yeah, that's a, it's a really good point, James. And the other thing I would mention is like they're also, I think being this quote unquote aggressive because they are playing catch up to some extent. Like blackrock's IBIT has amassed tens of billions of dollars. They have to do something to actually compete. The one thing I wanted to see if you had any thoughts on was so you mentioned, and I agree, these institutions are not a monolith in terms of everyone believing in these things. And when that sort of comes to, let's talk about like the active solicitation so the 2 to 4% as these 16,000 advisors are going out, I guess, first question, like, in your mind, like, how many of those 16,000 actually believe in this stuff and will be actively soliciting their clients to have bitcoin exposure? And I guess that is the question, how long does that take for people to actually be? Because I think for a while, when the Bitcoin ETFs came out, even at most institutions, it was like the client needed to ask for it. It wasn't being actively sold. So, like, where are we in that transition of people actually selling these products, like, earnestly and genuinely to these massive client bases?
- [24:53]
James Seyfert
It's still very early. I would say that the minority is likely recommending this. I mean, that might never change. Like, they might, like, yes, this is our recommended allocation. But like I said, just like there are plenty of people on the boards and running these companies, there's plenty of advisors that don't believe in this space, don't like it. And a lot of advisors, like, if we're talking strictly bitcoin, there's plenty of advisors out there, I know who don't like bitcoin as an asset in a portfolio because it doesn't produce cash flows. And like, you can make the very same argument for bitcoin absent, like, whatever other criticisms you have for it. So, like, it's up to the advisors. So I would say it's almost certainly a minority of those 16,000 advisors that are going to be recommending this to their clients. But it's growing. But for the most part, I think we're now, like, I remember when I was first talking with you guys or like going on these podcasts, even right after these things launch, people thought these would launch and everyone put in their portfolios. But, like, we have to go through all these hoops to get it approved. And there's all these different levels. And like, the first level is just like, can you buy it for your client? If you jump through some hoops and the client meets risk, like ability to take risk or willingness to take risk and all these different things. And then they have to usually have like some level of assets before you can even buy them. That's where we were. Now we're trending towards like, okay, if your client asks for it or you think you should buy it for them, you can recommend it in like, small portions. And we're just getting started there. And the 13F data that we can see from the end of the of Q1, there's not a lot of Uptick. But part of that is like through the end of February it was a bloodbath for the Bitcoin ETFs for the most part. So you only had one month of relative inflows. So yeah, I mean the short answer is we're still pretty early as far on the advisor route.
- [26:26]
Jackson
So then tying back in the second part of the question earlier was James about Mike Wilson's. Oh yeah, recommended. Yeah. So this 60, 20, 20 and I wanted to get your thoughts, take it however you'd like. But it was interesting to me that. Well, first of all, again if we're talking back to just having to be dynamic as a firm and launch product when it makes sense and then also be able to make changes to the portfolio when circumstances changes within asset classes and then also at the macro level. So I thought it was interesting to see that that was a pretty sure call back in Q4 to start recommending gold, which I think we all know traditional finance hates gold or at least has. Like I just remember gold was never discussed. Yeah, yeah, it was never discussed like it was never discussed more than maybe like a percent allocation, maybe 3 or 4% here depending on what was going on. But to hear a firm say 20% could be a recommended allocation for gold and then also in parallel with that starting to turn on access for bitcoin. I think it's just interesting timing to say the least. I'm curious what your thoughts or what your read is on the precious metals being integrated into portfolios and all that aspect.
- [27:35]
James Seyfert
Yeah, I mean people have been preaching that gold and commodities should be a part of your portfolio since, for, I mean since early 2000 really I think is when it really started the ETFs launch. People have been pushing for it. It's still like kind of not really used. I mean look, the gold ETFs crossed 300 billion in assets last year. So it's not like they're not being used at all. It's just not to nowhere near the level of an equity exposure. I didn't see the exact like argument for 60, 20, 20 with, with 20% gold. But I have heard plenty of people talking about 60, 20, 20 and that other 20 is being alternatives, including some private assets, including crypto and other alternative assets and different strategies to diversify. One of the things that like this kind of fits into is something we've been, my team has been talking about for 10 plus years at this point is we go, we, it's, it's just core satellite. We look at like 85%. People tend to choose like cheap beta type exposures, right? Whether that's within a portfolio or specific accounts. So like people's 401k is their retirement accounts. They tend to be in like index funds or reasonably priced active managers. And then whether it's equity or fixed income or what have you. And then 15% is like the alternative bucket is the way we talk it, we call it the hot sauce bucket. And bitcoin fits in there. Theoretically you can make the argument that gold fits in there, but maybe not. It's more of a portfolio diversifier. But crypto, all these other things we're talking about fit there and people can play and keep themselves interested in what's going on. So it basically allows them to leave that other 80, 85% of their portfolio alone because they're paying attention to these things that are moving and they're trading a little bit more actively. They're more interested in these alternative spicy things. But like the real way to like compound wealth over time, at least historically over the last 50 years is just like put your money in broad exposures to equity for the most part and like let it sit there and compound. And, and like the worst thing you can do is constantly trade that money because like you're just, you're interrupting that compounding. And like having this 15, 10, 20% allocation to these other hot sauce areas, which again I think bitcoin and crypto fits into, allows you to like be diligent and not touch that the 80 plus percent of your cheap beta exposure. But it also means that like you're right sizing your exposure. So if you have like I said, 2 to 4 or 8% exposure to Bitcoin and it goes down 50% like we saw almost, people aren't dumping like yeah, we saw outflows, we saw billions of dollars come out of the spot Bitcoin ETFs. But if you told me an asset fell almost 50% and it only lost 12% of its, its flows, like that's pretty damn good. And so what's happening, we see the same thing with Solani ETFs and XRP ETFs. Like for the most part when people are putting these things in their portfolio because it's right sized in their portfolio and it's not the tail wagging the dog. They're not completely dumping it at the first time sign of like trouble. Which like if we go back to before the ETF's launch, I can't tell you how many people I was arguing with that the ETF holders were going to be weak hands and sell it the first sign of trouble. And like the exact inverse has happened. The big dumping of bitcoin was like the OG holders and, and some of these other things that were happening. It was not the ETF holders. I mean, again, they did sell billions of dollars, but in the grand scheme of things, they were dropping the bucket
- [30:39]
Jackson
in the selling the boomer diamond hands.
- [30:42]
James Seyfert
Right.
- [30:42]
Jackson
I mean, Eric's always talking about that as well. It's interesting too, because that. So the data point you mentioned about the percentage of flows relative to the drawdown and how you typically don't see something like that. You typically see people running for the door. If something is collapsing, like we saw back on February 5th or 6th, I think it was Paul Tudor Jones famously said as well that that's what got him to study bitcoin after the 2017 peak and then the 80% drawdown in 2018, he looked at the, I guess the UTXO said and. And discerned that about 80% of the holders just didn't do anything with their bitcoin. They literally just got punched in the face. They wrote the drawdown 80% and held it and accumulated more. And so I think bitcoin is incredibly unique from that perspective as well. But that's honestly how like, that is just good financial practice, right? You would. You would want to do the same thing in an equity down market. And so I think it is. It's not necessarily surprising to me to see that the boomer diamond hands have held strong through the drawdown, just because if you are kind of like a boglehead or you just like ETF products, right? Then you already have that behavior down. You're already doing that with your equity portfolio. So why would you have a different behavior for your bitcoin portfolio? And perhaps you would have a different bitcoin behavior if you were in a position where the tail was wagging the dog. It's interesting you make that point about the interviews for the books, right? And so people you're interviewing have outsized exposure to Bitcoin. 30, 50, 100%, I'm sure, in some cases. But then they're making a recommendation of, you know, 2 or 5%, because I could easily see the opposite happening. If people were over their skis and had an allocation that was a little bit too, you know, bit off more than they could chew, then it may have been a different story when the drawdown happened. And we may have seen more significant outflows of the complex Yeah, I mean,
- [32:30]
James Seyfert
part of it has to do with like your education on the topic, right? If you're an advisor and you're like, look at this bitcoin thing. We want to give you like a 2% allocation. We think it makes sense for all these reasons. Currency debasement, it's, it's like high growth tech in some regards. It's uncorrelated for the most part. Right. And then all of a sudden it goes down 50% and you don't really understand what it is. At a 2% allocation it's like, okay, that's not a big deal. But at a bigger allocation, they're going to, they're going to want you to dump it. They're going to want you to get the hell out of there because they don't understand what they have. They don't understand why they're invested in it. So part of it is like just education and knowing what you hold. But the opposite is true too, like what these advisors are going to do. Which is why I think like the volatility, I mean no matter how you look at it, the volatility over time from bitcoin has been going down. Obviously there's spurts where it goes up and down, but for the most part the trend line is down. And I think some of that has to do with like, what's going to happen with these advisors and institutions that are going to hold this. They're going to have it as a set allocation, part of their portfolio. They're not just going to hold it and let it run forever. Most likely when it runs up, they're going to sell some to get back to their target allocation goal. And when it goes down, they're probably going to buy some. So I'm, that's part of the reason why I'm thinking that I thought we'd have seen more inflows by now. Like when I talked to advisors where like, I don't even know six months ago, they were like, yeah, we're thinking about adding bitcoin to a portfolio, but like not at 125k like this, that seems a little absurd. So I kind of thought like this, this retracement will actually allow some of these advisors that were like, I'm not going to add it to a portfolio right now a chance to get in. But we're just not seeing that right now. The buying hasn't really happened, at least the 13 Fs, which are as of the end of March. But I mean, we're still early for
- [34:06]
Jackson
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- [35:21]
James Seyfert
I think it's great. Obviously like it just, just the more exposure is better for the space. It's the, the fees for trading it is, are actually rather high though. Like if you look at trading an etf, it's free and the spread is near zero. And if you look at any of these crypto trading platforms, the fees are not free. It's not free to trade these things. There's, they're usually like in some cases a full percentage point to trade. It's Schwab and E Trade I think are 50 bips and 75 bips. So there's costs there but there's like there's cons and pros and cons there. Right. Like with an ETF you're not. least right now you can't take your bitcoin out and do whatever you want with it. You can't put it on a hardware wallet, what have you. If you're doing it in these other ways you probably can. And if you're holding long term with an ETF, yeah the fees are low. Like MSBT is at 14 bips, ibid's at 25 bips. That's your something getting hit every single year. So if you're going to buy it really long term, at some point, like holding it over a long enough time period, trading it directly and holding it and not having an annual fee for holding it, that is going to end up playing out better longer term than, you know, putting in an etf. But again, I just go back to like one. It's giving people options to do what they want. And the ETF is just the easy button really. Like they're used to buying stocks, they're used to buying ETFs and for the most part that's what advisors are going to continue to do in my opinion. They don't want to have to deal with like worrying about, you know, client keys and all these different things. They would much rather outsource it to a name like, like Blackrock or Bitwise or Fidelity or you name it, Morgan Stanley. You know, all these guys out here, Invesco, like all of them are doing and they'd much rather outsource that risk to somebody else and pay a minor fee for that convenience.
- [36:58]
Jackson
Yeah, I mean the keys are, are incredibly complex. We have advisors that reach out to us and they have clients with held away assets and you know, they're typically in many cases managing their own keys. And I think maybe when they first got into that several years ago it was a little bit more manageable because the, the allocation was a lot smaller. And now they're like I have, you know, a handful or I have dozens of clients that are in these self custody setups and I have very limited purview into how they're managing it. I don't think it really fits into the financial plan in terms of my ability to help them plan. Their spouse is in the dark and so like that's a whole thing that I don't really know how shake, how that will shake out in this industry because at the end of the day you have that really strong commitment from the existing holders that want to hold their own keys. But I think there is that challenge as it grows over time. And then at the same time you have the advisors, they're kind of in an interesting situation where they're not really able to do the best work that they can for their clients because these assets are held away. So that will be an ongoing challenge.
- [37:59]
James Seyfert
Yeah, I would say like, I think there's obviously going to be a subset of people that like, they just don't want to hold the etf. They'd rather set up an account with somebody that can manage it for them or like they're Telling their advisor, I don't care if you want to buy the etf, I want to have access and like a pseudo SMA account. Like with you guys, like, what is your guys's opinion? Your opinion matters more than mine on like, you know, Fidelity and Schwab and E Trade and all these things. Allowing direct trading of crypto and holding of crypto.
- [38:27]
Brian
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's a natural extension of like starting with a wrapper and then moving towards something that looks more like spot the. I guess the issue is like, are you still outsourcing it or are you building custody in house? And that's, I think, the big question now. I think Morgan Stanley has signaled that they are going to build custody in house. Fidelity obviously is ahead of a lot of these folks in terms of they built out custody years ago and that's why they're kind of the only ETF that didn't outsource it to Coinbase. But I think the longer term story is you don't want to be in a spot 10 years from now where a lot of your clients have quote, unquote, Bitcoin exposure, but you don't have any purview of how that Bitcoin is actually custody. And so I think these ETFs will exist and proliferate because they are the easy button to your point. But I think ultimately these firms are waking up to. You want to be closer to the asset, to the underlying, and have greater assurances around how it's actually secured. Because that's not even to talk about the natural concentration risk of a lot of the ETFs all using Coinbase. That's something that I think a lot of these firms who are very sophisticated are going to wake up to that reality of like, is this the best product necessarily, if everyone's just outsourcing it to Coinbase, like, maybe we need to get closer to the underlying. Maybe we need to build this out, build out our own expertise in terms of private key management and custody in house. And so I think that's sort of the longer term trend and you're starting to see some signals of that. Yeah. Jackson, I don't know if you have any, any other thoughts, but yeah, I
- [40:03]
Jackson
mean, I would echo a lot of your sentiment. I have a lot of thoughts on it, but I don't think people are here to listen to me talk about it. So I, I want to make sure we get to. I want to make sure we get to the 13F stuff as well, James, because I know, it sounds like maybe there wasn't too much to talk about there, but I want to at least cover it just because, you know, it was a couple days ago, five days ago, filing date. I don't know if there's anything particularly notable on your side. I know Brian was all excited. He was the most excited I've ever seen in last year when Harvard allocated to the bitcoin etf. I'm kidding, but I know they trimmed their position. They sold their Ethereum allocation, which was interesting.
- [40:40]
Brian
I'm glad they did that. But yeah, they didn't need to trim the bitcoin. They should have doubled down. What are they doing?
- [40:46]
Jackson
Yeah, I don't know anything interesting. James, I don't know what caught your attention with the, the filings this time around.
- [40:51]
James Seyfert
I mean part of the problem is like the data we have is from 3:31, right? So we just got it hectic Friday, Monday, depending on when this goes out. So we don't get it until May 15th. And usually it takes a little bit of time for like at Bloomberg even to like upload all this stuff before we can really download it and analyze it. So I'm researching it right now and honestly like there's nothing super interesting. Like there was one new major holder of the bitcoin ets, Mangrove Partners, a hedge fund. They bought a significant portion here. Like, sorry, they bought Ethereum. But like there's like nothing huge that happened as far as like the Bitcoin ETFs go. And part of that has to do with the fact that from 1231, 2025 through the end of February was an absolute bloodbath for the, for the Bitcoin ETFs, right? So we only have like one month where there was actually inflows. So for the most part we just saw net outflows. A lot of people like to write right to the idea that like Jane street and Virtu and Goldman and all these places like cut their allocations and like unlike Harvard, that's actually probably a portfolio decision. Those guys, they're, they're making markets so like they're, as the market goes down, they don't, maybe they don't need as much. Like there's not much signal to be had in there. Maybe there is if you can like figure out exactly what's happening. But for the most part they're just going to have exposure that's going to go up and down over time and there's not usually a lot of signal in like what the hedge funds are doing. Hedge funds sold a lot. The basis has gone even worse like from last time I talked to you guys, like the basis wasn't doing great. That was, that's a decent portion probably like 20ish percent of the assets in the ETFs on Bitcoin specifically. And basis like has gone down even further. So for basis on, just for anyone listening who doesn't know, it's like you sell the future forward and you buy spot. And a lot of these hedge funds are using these ETFs to buy the spot. And the difference like between if that futures is a little bit more, that's going to be a higher yield and it's almost risk free because you're selling something and the basis is. Exactly. There's no basis risk because you're holding the spot asset and it's gone down. So all these hedge funds that were kind of levered up and when the basis was 10% or more, it looked really good. Even when the basis went to like 8, 9% it was still pretty decent, especially if you lever on that. But now it's gone down to 5% or lower. So like there's no interest from there. So yeah. And advisors technically sold, which makes sense because we saw meaningful outflows as far as the first quarter is concerned. But there's no way for me to see how much of that is net gross selling versus gross buying. After the end of February when we saw the flows completely change, obviously now we're at outflows again. But most of March was decent inflows for the Bitcoin ETFs.
- [43:29]
Brian
Yeah, I would agree it's hard to parse much signal from these filings. The one thing that I would highlight that I, I think is worth continuing to monitor is Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund continuing to accumulate a position. And even that is not like pure signal because I would venture to guess that like the majority of their bitcoin exposure is not through the etf and they are using ETF exposure for something like a basis trade potentially. And so that's the one that I continue to monitor because they've been just continuing to increase that position. I think it's up to 600 million now. They've just increased that over the past like three or four quarters, which I think is pretty positive. But yeah, I would agree with you on the whole. It's hard to parse a lot of the just the hedge funds trading it versus real long term accumulation, which is what you'd want to be seeing if you're looking for signal in these things, but.
- [44:26]
James Seyfert
Exactly. I mean the way I've said this in a million different places, but the way a category an ETF grows, very rarely is it straight up and to the right. It's usually two, three steps forward, one, two steps back. And we were in that step back period through the end of February at least. We have seen some outflows in the last week or so. But for the most part that's a healthy growing thing. The only thing that's going up and to the right right now is an ETF called DRAM, which is investing in the memory for GPUs and stuff. And that thing is the, actually it's the first ETF to beat IBIT for the first fastest to $10 billion. So we didn't think IBIT would ever be touched or the Bitcoin ETFs in general. I guess they weren't because in aggre it didn't beat it. But like this ETF was faster in 10 billions than IBIT, which is actually kind of insane. So that's one area we're, we're seeing it. But at some point there's going to be a pullback almost certainly. But yeah, like this is, it's healthy for a, like a, a group of ETFs or a sector of ETFs to go up and have steps back. Like it's the, the longer it goes up, probably the steeper the, the decline will be at some point. And we like if you look at what happened with Bitcoin and ETFs in general, like we never really had that like blow off top and we also haven't had the blow off collapse 70, 80% down, which, knock on wood, I mean it's not over yet, but that's the way I'm looking at it.
- [45:43]
Jackson
We'd love to hear just what else you're paying attention to, James, because as you know we're a bitcoin only shop, but I know you've been covering just different filings over the past week or two with Altcoin ETFs. And so I'd be curious just to hear, there's two parts of the question. First you mentioned just kind of like it's a step up in terms of these products, right. And people getting comfortable with, with even bitcoin as an asset class. Is there anything on the bitcoin side that you're looking for paying attention to? Do you think it's just more spot products? Do you think like the premium, you know, premium income etf products. Are there certain bitcoin ETF products that you would expect to come to market in the future? And then could you speak to just kind of what you're seeing, if it's more interesting on the altcoin side, what do you make of the filings there? What do you make from appetite, from advisors, from the traditional finance apparatus? What did you hear at consensus, all that kind of stuff. Like it's not really what we pay attention to, but I at least like to have an idea of what the pulse is for traditional finance approaching these other asset classes as part of the ETF complex, as part of the traditional portfolios.
- [46:46]
James Seyfert
Yeah, I mean there's all these products that are launched around bitcoin. Not just spot crypto, not just spot bitcoin. So there's 13 spot Bitcoin ETFs now after Morgan Stanley. I mean one thing I will say is True Social, which is Trump's company, actually withdrew their application for a bitcoin ETF yesterday, which was kind of big news. Some people are saying they think it might be due to clarity. I will take the other side of that heavily. I think this is just like, do we really need a 14 spot Bitcoin ETF? And like true Social probably did the math and like they're not going to be profitable if they want to be competitive on price, almost certainly like even at 25 bips. I don't think it's that profitable unless you have like serious assets in there. Right. So it's really competitive. Fees have been driven down as low as possible and like there's very little differentiation you're going to do there. So I don't think it has anything to do with like people saying ethics concerns and Trump backing out on bitcoin. Like they issued a statement on why they did it. They're going to lean more on 40Act. We don't need to get in the difference between a 33 Act ETP and a 40 Act ETP. But like for the most part, I think they're still going to launch crypto based products. It's just going to be like maybe they'll hold some spot crypto ETFs themselves but also hold exposure to, you know, crypto equities and be an active manager in the space. I think they're going to launch stuff like that still. So that's the first thing I would say. And then what was the other part of your question?
- [48:01]
Jackson
Just with all the altcoin filings, anything notable there? How are advisors thinking about it, et cetera?
- [48:06]
James Seyfert
Yeah, so they're doing really well. I mean for the most part. I talked about the Bitcoin ETFs holding up really well. Ethereum ETFs themselves, they saw outflows but again it wasn't massive, it was more like 20%. The flows didn't quite return in the same way it did for Bitcoin over the last couple months. Solana and XRP in particular held up really well. They're doing well. We just had hyper liquid ETFs launch, one from 21 shares and one from Bitwise. They're both doing extreme extremely well. Like if you, it's. It's hard to tell early like unless you're taking in tons of money. But one way you can look at is like how much demand is there? Is like looking at the volume and like one thing you want to see. Sometimes these things launch with a big splash and then like they kind of teeter off and they don't get a lot of interest. Like if you look at the 21 shares, Hyper Liquid ETF it's increased its volume in trading every single day. So like that's showing a lot of strength and demand for these types of products. I thought there would be a lot more interest in the index based products basket products, actively managed products that go across like multiple different chains and tokens. That is still. It's a big category but it's not growing as fast as I would expected. So but overall things look pretty good. And then there's Also prediction market ETFs that have been filed if we want to get in there. That's kind of interesting and pseudo related but for the most part like things sound bad and seem bad online but like these products are launching and they're not like blockbuster hits in the same way that you know, Bitcoin ETFs were. Ethereum ETFs even were, but they're all still doing pretty well. Oh and BNB is probably going to be next so there's a BNB filings that have been seeing a bunch of stuff. There's a bunch of others like we're very early. There's going to be a new ETF launch probably every month I would say for the near future.
- [49:43]
Jackson
Interesting. Yeah. I wanted to just get a sense of what the interest was. Appetite tight wise. I was also partially asking for Brian's bags as well. But yeah, let's talk about prediction markets. James, I know we'll wrap up here pretty shortly but I know you were covering the prediction market ETFs would love to hear just your thoughts on that. I mean, that's of course, one of the fastest growing areas of finance. There's a lot of hype around it. How are those products doing? What do you, are you able to talk off the record in terms of just like, what do you make of prediction markets? Yeah, yeah, all that.
- [50:15]
James Seyfert
Yeah. So they haven't launched yet. We thought they were going to launch like May 11th. It seemed like they initially round. So there's three issuers. There's Roundhill, who launched that DRAM product I was talking about. You have bitwise, they're launching a sub brand that's going to be called Prediction Shares, and then Granite Shares, another ETF issuer. And each of them filed for six ETFs. So it's 18 ETFs that were filed. There's been a bunch of others filed since, but those are the main ones that would likely come first if these are approved. And there are bets on the Senate, the House and the 2028 presidency, either Democrat or Republican is going to win them at the end of those elections. Right. So I think there's going to be a lot of demand for these things. If and when they launch. Things seem like they were going really well and these things were going to launch. There was tons of like, just like you remember when we were watching the Bitcoin ETFs or any of these things, there's a lot of amendments that go back and forth and there's changes and usually it's the SEC saying change this, update that, do this and then like maybe we'll be okay. And after a bunch of back and forth, they launch. That kind of all stopped like a couple of weeks ago. They tried to file for effectiveness and the SEC kind of said no from what we can tell. So I think part of what happened is like, I'm sure you saw the news. There was like a service member that like bet big on prediction markets on the Maduro Raid. I think that was just like a black eye for prediction markets as far as the SEC is concerned. The SEC seems very concerned around, like if they allow one of these, like what else is going to be around? Like, is there going to be like a jets Super Bowl 2027 thing? And they probably don't want that. There's a lot of concerns about sports and like my view is like one, they there's no reason for a sports prediction market ETS. But you. This is ETFs and everyone's going to push the envelope of whatever they can and you kind of end up in a situation if you allow one, how do you stop another? These are regulated by the cftc, so they've kind of put the stop on this for now, which is interesting because as you know Atkinson, like all these things are, the people running the SEC now are way more favorable for these types of things. But even they are not allowing them through right now. I think ultimately they will. The products were initially potentially going to have like a term, so an end date right afterwards and they either go to 0 or $1. That doesn't look to be the case. They're going to probably only launch products for now that are going to be able to roll. So like after 2026 election you would just roll it to making bets on Democrat or Republican for the 2028 mid election. So I mean I just rambled a bunch. So I think there's going to be a huge market for these things that the SEC allows it, but they need. I think the SEC is trying to figure out a way to like put a line somewhere where this is and isn't allowed. And it might need Congress to basically say that you can't have sports betting on prediction markets, which obviously the current CFTC chair completely disagrees with because sports markets are the biggest part of prediction markets right now.
- [52:54]
Jackson
Yeah, I'm just curious like it's, it's so interesting to, to hear of prediction market ETFs because you mentioned that you think there's going to be a big uptake. We'd love to hear who's going to be, you know, who's on the other side of that. Do you think it's mostly going to be self directed investors that want to essentially gamble in their ira or is it like, do you, how. I don't even know how you'd begin to think about a portfolio having a sleeve allocation to prediction markets like that just, it doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm a boomer, but you know, it's just like how do you get advisors who are like, oh, I can't understand, I can't understand Bitcoin as part of the portfolio. But I can get behind having, you know, 1 or 2% allocation to prediction markets, you know what I mean?
- [53:33]
James Seyfert
Well, I think a lot of it will be retail. Obviously it's just easier rather than setting up an account, you know, with Kalshi or doing something with polymarket. So one that's like the same reason people were like bearish Bitcoin ETFs. Like anyone who wants exposure already has Exposure and then I hit $100 billion right. Like so that's kind of one, that's my first caveat. I would say like people there, there is reason. It's the easy button. You already everybody has a brokerage for the most part. That's why I think there will be success. The other thing is like it's it first order thinking. Like a lot of times when you're trying to look at some of these things like elections, like look at Trump the first time everyone's like the markets are going to go collapse and like they kind of did initially and then like all of a sudden they went the opposite direction. So like if you predicted that Trump was going to win and then you were like had to take a second order effect of what companies were going to get hurt, you couldn't benefit, you couldn't bet on that. And there's certain ways that you can benefit from like these taking these things out. Like is Apple revenue from iPhones going to go up or down this quarter? You could get that right. And like want to be bullish. Apple stocks and all of a sudden it go the complete opposite direction because like they their forward looking outlook is not good and you get hit. So like it kind of strips away the second, third, fourth order thinking of investing and there are reasons why you would want to hedge these sorts of things. Where I have like, so that's my bullish like why I think prediction markets actually make sense potentially in a portfolio, in an etf. But again I go back to like, I really don't think there's any reason for somebody to be able to bet on like an NFL team winning the super bowl in a brokerage account. Like that really does feel like betting markets and you need sports betting approval, different state commissions and all these things. So there's a lot of caveats that need to be sorted out. But there's just also benefits and they fit a niche, a need that people might have.
- [55:16]
Jackson
Yeah, to your point, I mean ETFs pushing the envelope, innovating, right. Creating new products. So it'll be interesting to watch. Well look, want to be respectful of your time. James, thank you for coming on the show. Any parting thoughts or did we get to cover?
- [55:31]
Brian
What do we get in the book? When are we getting the book?
- [55:33]
James Seyfert
James, the book is supposed to be out sometime November. So I'll come back on around then and we'll talk about you and Eric
- [55:40]
Jackson
on at the same time.
- [55:41]
James Seyfert
That'll be for sure. Yeah, for sure.
- [55:42]
Jackson
I mean the real reason that we're podcast.
- [55:46]
James Seyfert
I mean, the real reason we're writing it is, like, there's a. Like I talked about, there's a lot of people as institutions that like, have really negative views and don't understand at all, like, what it is in the back end. So it's like, more for. It's for anyone who wants to learn about this space, but it's really for people to, like, understand what it is. If you want to. If you don't want this in your portfolio, you should read this book and understand exactly where it comes from, what it does and how it operates. And, like, then you'll be educated. And after you're educated and you still don't want in your portfolio, great. If you want to add it, then good. But, like, at least you're making an educated decision because we talk to so many people who are still like, it's all a joke, funny. Money in space. Like, where does it get value? Like that quote from Jamie Dimon a year or two ago. Like, satoshi is going to come on here and all your coins are going to be gone. Like that. That's not pot. Like, just stuff like that. Like, understanding exactly how this works. There's a lot of people that just. Just fully, completely don't understand it. So it was more just an education, honestly, like we both wanted to. It forced us to go down a lot of different rabbit holes and become, you know, better experts on it. So that's the whole gist. And then my parting words would be like, the institutions are here. It's becoming institutionalized. If you're like a DEFI native and you've. I've heard people complaining about the vibes at Consensus, particularly because it wasn't like, completely like, freewheeling and NFTs and all these different things. I'm like, from my point of view, that's a good thing. But again, I'm a TRADFI guy. I'm a suit, as people would call it. So I can understand why people in crypto and defi in general do not like this institutionalization part of it. But I think net net, it's a good thing as long as it doesn't stop the ability of people to do the other side of things.
- [57:16]
Jackson
The suits are taking over. Watch out. James, it was a pleasure having you on the show. Appreciate your time. Looking forward to the book. I get the sense that it'll be one of the definitive resources for bridging the gap from traditional finance into the digital asset space. So thank you for your work there and thank you again. For your time today on the show.
- [57:34]
Brian
Thanks, Chance.
- [57:35]
James Seyfert
Yeah, thanks Jackson. Thanks Brian.
- [57:37]
Brian
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