← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Bitcoin BOUNCES to $64k on Largest Inflation Decline Since Covid Crash
01:03:42
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- [00:02]
A
Good morning. Bitcoin is up, inflation is down and we're here to talk about it. Ryan Rasmussen from Bitwise is going to be with us. Tillman Holloway, CEO of Arch Public also going to be with us. Bitcoin challenging 64K up a 2 1/2% to start the morning.
- [00:23]
B
Let's go, let's do. Foreign.
- [00:41]
A
Good morning everybody. Some numbers out this morning on Wall street. Inflation down. Bitcoin up popped immediately with that number. So we've got some action to start the day. Action all the time on Wall Street. Whether it's real or it's fake, it's still action. And so let's talk about it here today. Tillman with Arch Public, Ryan with Bitwise. Let's get started, let's quickly talk about inflation and Bitcoin's reaction to it. And frankly the type of muted action that we've seen in bitcoin over the past, let's call it three to six months. Why, how, what, what moves Bitcoin to the downside or to the upside? Let's talk about a little bit, Tillman. Inflation in bitcoin. What do you think?
- [01:34]
C
Well, ultimately it's the rising tide that floats all ships or sinks all ships. And I, I think that there's, if you understand the type of economy that we are, a debt based economy, you understand that inflation is a natural part. We, we want inflation. You cannot pay off debt with more expensive dollars. You have to make those dollars less expensive, which is our inflation rate. And I think that you also have to look at an inflation against the economic opportunity or the growth potential that you have at a specific period in time and how hungry the investment dollars are needed for that growth. Like was it good to inflate the dollar into the federal highway system? Yes. That drove economic growth unlike anything we've seen at the time. Same thing with AI and what we see with digital payment systems and transformation of our financial system and network that requires trillions of investment dollars. It's a, it's a matter of national security, we all know it. And so we're going to spend the money is the bottom line. And they can't get that money any other place than printing it. And we're going to grow into that inflation. So that, that's my take on inflation. And, and bitcoin catches some of that rain just like everything else does.
- [02:59]
A
Ryan, real quickly it seems like the narrative around inflation and the way that they want to take a look at it. Right. Warsh is the new Fed guy. Him and Bessant are working hand in hand. They've actually not been all that coy about it. They've been fairly loud about the fact that they're working together, that they're taking a new look at the data and for all intents and purposes, wash being installed to cut rates. What does something like this do? A not so heated inflation number. What does that look like for the next three to six months in terms of rates? It seems like it's building towards a narrative where there's a potential cut versus an actual hike.
- [03:48]
B
Yeah, I mean, what's tough right now is you just have such wonky data because you have such uncertainty around what's happening with oil prices and the knock on effects to the supply chain that that has. And so you get a read like this, which is lower than estimates, but last month inflation came in hot. And I think month to month there's just a lot of uncertainty around where we're actually headed. Which makes it difficult for Warsh and the other members of the Fed to really have an idea of what the, the new normal is. Right. Are we at war with Iran? Are we not at war with Iran? It's a straight open. Is it closed? What does that do to prices? What does that do the supply chain and other precious metals or other inputs, you know, out there in the world that make things more expensive, less expensive, etc. And so the problem here is that we just don't know. And I think that there was a mandate clearly from President Trump when, when he nominated wars that he wanted rates to be cut. And I'm sure a lot of that was ahead of the US Midterms so that the Republicans could, could come in and, you know, tout that they've brought down the cost of living and inflation is low, but clearly that's not happening over the long term. We're still, you know, running a bit hot. It's good to have this lower print. But I would guess that where we're at right now in terms of escalation again in the Middle east, we're going to see inflation come in hot next month if things stayed this course. So it's just too uncertain to know what this means for rates, in my opinion.
- [05:23]
A
Yeah. So, you know, we can talk about rates for an entire show, but everybody would log off and not be interested. So let's talk about listen bitwise and vaults. Vaults is a buzzword not only in crypto, but it's turning into a buzzword on Wall Street. I've seen a couple of research pieces where, you know, the the, the rise of vaults is becoming more of a story on Wall Street. I think Goldman did a piece the other day that was, you know, again, fairly glowing and understanding that the movement is something to, to keep an eye on. You know, you guys a bit wise are doing, you know, extraordinary work with Baltz. But I think the audience probably knows that vaults exist, but they don't understand necessarily what they are. If you can take some time to deconstruct what vaults are, how they work and why they matter. Yeah. I'll just give you the floor because it's an important subject.
- [06:27]
B
Yeah, well, vaults are really just the next evolution of asset management. If you look back and you kind of need a bit of a history lesson here, which I will keep short to understand why vaults matter and why vaults are going to happen. Right. Like it's predetermined really. The first fund that was ever created back in asset management was like in the 1700s and there was this guy in Holland who said, look, investors want to pool their capital and get access to, to bonds. And so we created a fund structure to do that. But it was super inefficient for a bunch of different reasons. Liquidity was low, was hard to expand beyond a certain number of estrogens, et cetera. Okay, great. So that was like 250 years ago. The next evolution came in 1920s with mutual funds, which was another step in innovation. And why that matters, because now you had more liquidity around these funds. You actually had daily NAVs being struck, etc. Then you had 1970s with index funds. That was another innovation. Now you get broad exposure to a bunch of different assets in one fund structure. It was more accessible, it was less expensive than buying individual assets for the investor. Then you had ETFs. About 20 years later that became extremely popular. ETFs have grown from zero to more than 20 trillion. And in 30 years, because they're extremely liquid, they're accessible by anyone. Particularly today with an Internet, with an Internet connection and a brokerage account. And they have intraday liquidity. You can wrap any kind of asset inside of an etf. You can wrap index funds, you can wrap commodities, you can wrap digital assets like Bitcoin, etc. Those have grown into a 20 trillion plus industry because of that. And then you have vaults, which is the next evolution of asset management. And why I walk through that journey is because every step of the way, the reason you've seen adoption of things like mutual fund, then index funds, then ETFs and why we will see Vaults is because every step in the, in the evolution of asset management has made accessing investments less expensive, more liquid, more accessible and more efficient. It's just the way of technology. And that's why vaults, which are just funds being brought on blockchains to give you 24, 7, 3, 65 real time settlement. It reduces counterparty risk and increases accessibility. You could put any kind of asset inside a vault once you tokenize it. That's the reason that we're going to see this huge migration of assets on chain and into vaults. Our view, we actually said this is the beginning of the year in our 2026 predictions piece was that vaults are the new ETFs. And so that that kind of history or context. The reason that, that we said that NASA's saying vaults are tiny, less than 10 billion going into the beginning of the year. And we believe it's going to grow into the trillions over the next few years as all different types of assets move on chain.
- [09:46]
A
Yeah.
- [09:46]
C
Is the, is the distinction that it's essentially a real world asset, a tokenized mutual fund, Is that what we're talking about? Essentially that's managed on chain?
- [09:58]
B
Yeah. So it's basically it's a fund that can wrap any kind of strategy that's managed by a third party on chain. That could be an index strategy, that could be an active strategy. It could bring all kinds of different assets together. Real world assets is certainly an area that we're seeing a lot of interest in. A bit wise, you could think about these, these real world assets take credit for instance, right? Private credit for instance, which is, you know, not only had issues this year, but there, there are things around it like liquidity and accessibility that are, that are difficult to manage in traditional infrastructure. But when you take that and you tokenize it and you make it 24, 7, 365 tradable, you can then wrap it in a strategy. You can have a vault curator, which is just another, you know, crypto native term that we, we've made up for a fundamental manager that can manage the strategy. And so you can allocate to it the fund manager, the curator goes out, finds the investment opportunities according to the mandate, executes those investment opportunities, but then it brings a bunch of other things to the portfolio. Like now I have access to this vault or I have this position in this vault rather in my portfolio. Maybe I can go deposit that in a D5 protocol and easily take, easily borrow against it. Right. Or incorporate it into my broader portfolio portfolio picture and use the entire portfolio as collateral against something. Or maybe someone who didn't have access to private credit before now does and can outsource that to an expert by just allocating this vault and letting the curator do the work. And I think it's really interesting that you'll start to see illiquid real world assets that typical investors wouldn't know about or know how to touch being accessed by investors all over the world of all different types, right? Accredited and unaccredited, etc, because they can access them in their crypto wallet via vaults. Eventually it'll be in your brokerage account, in my opinion, via, via vaults.
- [11:50]
A
So in three years when you guys do like a, a Super bowl ad for vaults and you know, you gotta have the curator word. I love that. By the way, that's please hire for the commercial Jeff Goldblum as the curator character. All right, that just seems like the perfect type of guy, got the nuances, you know what I mean? By the way, I, I was around, you know, this is how quickly the innovation in finance happened in bursts like you just described, 1700, then 1929 and then 1970, right? So there's these, these large time frames where not a lot happens and then boom, something happens, right? So we saw effectively the Financial Illuminati is going to Europe to do tokenization as well as doing it here. Like hey, BlackRock and everybody tokenization. We're going to put a group together, we want to make sure it happens in Europe too. So everything is happening very, very fast around tokenization. But I've been around to where 30 years ago you couldn't hold larger than a 5% position inside of a mutual fund. Like you were not allowed to have bigger than 5% of any given asset inside of a mutual fund. And now we're in a world where like, you know, every day there's like 100 ETFs that are launched that like are single asset leveraged long, short, like extraordinary differences versus where we were, which says something about markets, says something about volatility, says something about scale. And it seems like vaults are the, the next thing with this because it takes all of what I just talked about, that innovation and then turns it up a dial and says it's always on, it's never off. 365, 24, 24 7. Right.
- [13:46]
B
Yeah, exactly. I mean that's where we're headed because technology enables it and it will expand markets, it will expand opportunities for players in the space. That's why Bitwise is so excited about the vault space, because it takes what we're doing, which is traditional asset management off blockchains and brings it on to blockchain rails. And you know, we're one of the only curators that is doing this in a regulated way, which is really important to that financial Illuminati that you mentioned.
- [14:14]
A
Right.
- [14:14]
B
These institutions that saw what happened perhaps as they dig into the vault space back in October of last year, they've seen that, okay, maybe there are some issues with how vault curation was happening before, and this is why we need regulation legislation for these big players and these big dollars to enter the space. But Bitwise is taking a regulated approach to it. I would just note that, you know, we do have a team focused on this at Bitwise, our vaults and defi team. Jeff Goldblum isn't on it, but maybe he can be our mascot if he sees this. But, but there was an interesting quote from that team yesterday that that Hunter horse our CEO tweeted out, which is that bitcoin prices might be down, but it feels like a raging bull market in the vault space. And I think that captures where things are headed in, in bear markets, you typically see the foundation being laid for what will grow and, and see the most kind of euphoria and where capital flow in the following bull market. And I think that's what's happening right now with vaults. You saw it with stable coins in prior bear markets. You saw it, you know, with ETFs in, in prior bear markets. If you think about like the end of 22, early 2023, that's when BlackRock came in and filed for their ETF. That's when Grayscale was suing the SEC around the Bitcoin etf. And then what happened? They launched in January. They became the most, the most popular ETFs in terms of year one inflows. And Bitcoin price hit new all time highs thereafter. I think you see the same thing happening here with vaults. The infrastructures being laid. Then we will see regulation and legislation supporting it. You're already seeing now with the SEC and the CFTC talking about, you know, the, the, the next evolution of finance is on chain. Then you'll see capital flow institutions with tokenization and then those strategies being wrapped in vaults. I think that will drive prices higher. But this is kind of the kind of groundwork in bear markets that gets laid and the foundation that gets set that helps drive that next cycle of capital inflows and price appreciation.
- [16:16]
C
Amazing. I, I would just add that I think that you guys are one of the only firms that are blurring the lines between trad defi in a way that I think to a user feels very natural and it gives you exposure into something that you're very curious about but in a way in which you can digest it and you know, a very elegant package. I think that what you've done with the hyper liquid thing deserves note. You know, over the last couple of months it's been exceptionally successful and again it goes back to blurring those lines of like people want exposure and they, and they really want hedging tools as well, profit taking tools and these vehicles allow for that.
- [17:02]
A
So.
- [17:03]
C
So, well that it's a natural law that you're going to attract users. If people hold hyper liquid, the actual asset, the token and they hold it physically and they don't have access to now b hype well, why wouldn't you want a tool that's so complementary to the asset that you hold as it pertains to management of that ass. So it's just a natural, you know, evolution of giving the customer what they want and being able to spot that on such a consistent basis is what continues to kind of, you know, be in you guys favor. You guys have been ahead of the curve pretty much on all this. The vaults to me sound like a level playing field. Correct me if I'm wrong, but sounds like I'm going to be able to get access to you know, private companies that are bundled up, that have high potential and you know, that the common person now the technology groundwork, you know, the, the, the, the actual infrastructure build is going to allow participants of all kinds from everywhere to get exposure to things that they've wanted exposure to. But there is no current vehicle to gain that exposure. So I mean what, what a fantastic time to be alive. And if we can see that at scale, you talk about an expansion of economic growth. I mean we got to print a lot of money just to fill all those buckets. So there's liquidity flowing between all the buckets. That's tremendous.
- [18:32]
B
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Like you're going to see all kinds of new asset types or illiquid asset types or hard to access assets like private companies be wrapped into vault strategies and then anyone will be able to access them. And I do think that will result in a huge stable coin boom because there will need to be liquidity and digital dollars to help facilitate capital coming in and out of these vaults and to help build out these vault strategies and then you'll see a big boom in tokenization because in order for these assets to move into vaults, many of them will need to be tokenized and brought on chain. And so I do think that were, you know, at the early stages of a massive boom in these three intersecting areas of the crypto market. It is a level playing field, which is what, you know, I love so much about kind of being in the crypto space is it really comes back to first principles. And I think what you've seen time and time again, you know, everyone thought ETFs were crazy, right? Like there was like a, there was a hearing. Matt Hogan, our cio, you know, who comes from ETF background, loves to talk about this. Like in the early 2000s, there was a hearing in D.C. where they said ETFs were weapons of mass destruction for financial market. People were so scared of these things. They were, they said they were going to ruin capital markets in the economy as we knew it. And then now everyone owns ETFs in their portfolio. Like you can't find an investor? Typically probably crypto investors, many don't. But traditional investors who don't own ETFs, financial advisors use them. You use them in your 401ks. You know, ETFs like the Q's or SPY are the largest ETFs in the world. People own gold ETC V ETF. So like first people are scared of it, they don't understand it. Then it gets adopted and grows into this massive thing. And I think that's where vaults are headed. And we're at the early, early stages of that, which is so exciting to me that, to, to be a part of this. And, and you know, I, I, I, yeah, I'm really excited to ultimately be able to bring a lot of unique opportunities and open access to those to, to many investors who typically wouldn't have access to them with, without, you know, crypto technology.
- [20:44]
A
Well, it's also an on ramp for, you know, typical traditional investors. And what I mean by an on ramp is, is that, you know, two years from now, when tokenization is a more mainstream thing on Wall street, when we're, we're closer or at, you know, let's call it 247 trading in a, in a tokenized way, your average investor with $7 million in an account at Morgan Stanley is still going to be like, I don't really know what this is. This is a little bit strange, but people seem to be making money on it. And you know, my buddy at the golf club said he's in a thing. And so what is this and what bitwise is just for people that don't know, it's an absolute one shot to that conversation that says instead of doing weird stuff in defi on some exchange that you've never heard about before, you can invest effectively in a fund slash, a vault, you know, in your, in your brokerage account. And now you are in, you know, you're part of that movement and you can have access to it without being, you know, without thinking you're going to make a mistake. Right. It's, it's a product effectively made for traditional investors to end up, you know, having access to what may be the next real meaningful innovation in product on Wall Street. Right?
- [22:19]
B
Yeah, that's exactly right. And to give you a sense of like, we're so early in vaults and Wall street really doesn't know about them yet or is just starting to, to learn about them. As you mentioned, last month I was at a crypto conference of just probably like 300 financial advisors there. And they were, these are like crypto forward financial advisors. They're like opting into these sessions on crypto. So they are at least believers in the space or crypto. Curious. And the entire session that I was on was about vaults. It was like a 25 minute conversation on vaults. And we ended the session talking about, great, if you're in the room right now, if you're a financial advisor in the room right now, how do you invest in vaults? How do you get exposure for your clients to vaults? And the answer was you can't, you can't do that even if you want to, because the, the wealth platform that you're a part of or the RA you're a part of doesn't have the ability to like custody vault assets in client accounts. It would require having a wallet, et cetera. Right. And so like, they actually can't access these opportunities yet. So really we're at the forefront of what's happening here. Eventually these integrations will exist and I do think they'll be able to access them in their advisory accounts or brokerage accounts. And that will just lead to a ton of capital coming into the vault space. But what we're seeing right now is the foundation of vaults being built and capital coming into vaults and vaults growing at a fast rate without any of the Wall street money touching it. You really have to be a crypto native or, or, you know, pretty sophisticated investor who's been investing crypto for a while to get access to vaults today. And majority of wealth in America sits on these large wealth platforms. With financial advisors and wealth managers, and they simply can't access it now. It'll probably be a couple years before they can access it. But that what makes us early to. To the space. I think the same thing again is true with Bitcoin ETFs. Like, everyone assumes that when Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024, it was like this light switch that turned on and every financial advisor and every wealth manager and every investor in the world could automatically access them. And that's simply not true. It took two years for the largest wire, you know, the major wirehouses and largest wealth management platforms to allow their advisors to even start talking to clients about these things. And then they could start allocating, you know, Vanguard just started allowing their clients to access Bitcoin ETFs despite these things being around for two years. I think that's the kind of lag you see with Wall street adoption to crypto innovation. In the passing. That's what we're going to see with vaults. That just means that we're early and we had a lot of ground to cover before we get there.
- [25:02]
C
I was just curious in terms of when you say that to me, people are always driven. This sounds like kind of a new ICO craze, if you will, in the fact that, you know, whoever is listing the ICO gets the users, the users all flood to that ico. Do you see any specific assets or things that people are so excited about? The use case of a vault kind of encompassing, that would drive a lot of adoption like that. And, you know, get the exchanges to start looking at this and driving that conversation forward a little faster than it's going now, or accelerate that.
- [25:45]
B
I think it really sits with integration into the custodians. Right. So. So there's this bridge that happens, I guess, to these strategies through asset managers like Bitwise. But we don't custody assets on behalf of clients. And wealth managers and wealth management platforms aren't going to custody digital assets on behalf of clients. And so you need the institutional digital asset custodians like Anchorage or Coinbase or Fireblocks to both adopt vaults, which some of them are doing this at a very fast pace, which is incredible. But you also need the other side of that integration into these traditional wealth platforms or trading platforms. I think that's what probably takes the most time. Now that we've had these custodians around for strategies like the ETFs for, for several years now, it should be accelerating. But the infrastructure in the pipes connecting this all is what's being built out right now. And then from a strategy perspective, I think what now, right now what we're seeing is just a ton of vanilla usdc, usdt, stablecoin lending and borrowing, or maybe some arbitrage or some looping happening. Right. Which is interesting to investors who see, oh, I can get 8% stablecoin yield when I'm getting, you know, 3% in, in my high yield savings account or in a money market fund. Right. That is interesting. But I think what people are really wanting to see is more complex strategies in vaults with real world assets and combining different types of real world assets for like a real estate vault that includes a bunch of different types of real world asset. I mean, we just saw the CEO of Airbnb tweet a thread about tokenization, I think this morning or last night. Right. Like that's the kind of thing you can start thinking about being wrapped in a ball. It's like, oh, what if I owned a bunch of different Airbnbs inside of a vault mixed with some other real estate assets and I could use that as part of my broader portfolio to gain exposure to real estate. And then it was easy to borrow against because all I have to do is take that claim on, on that vault position and drop it into a, and borrow against it alongside stable coins I have In A, or eth, I have an A or, etc. Right. And so I think that's the kind of air way that we're headed. But right now it's like stablecoin lending and, and arbitrage and looping, which can get you decent yield. But I think we're going for more complex strategies in the long run.
- [28:21]
A
Yeah. Isn't right now most of the conversation around vaults having to do with yield? That, that, that's, that's kind of where it's at right now. Is that, that sound about right?
- [28:30]
B
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, the reality is that yields are so low across defi right now in most places that they're actually not attractive to traditional investors or to Wall street, like the, the risk or perceived risk. And, and there is risk there of like lending in defi is much higher than what you're being compensated for for at like 2 or 3 or maybe 4%. Right. You need to get higher than that for it to be compelling to traditional investors or to Wall Street. And so that's why a lot of focus is on yield and because there's not a lot of euphoria in, on chain activity.
- [29:08]
A
Right.
- [29:08]
B
Now you don't see double digit stablecoin yields like you typically do in bull markets. And so there's, I think that's good in the sense that it's driving creativity around strategies that are properly managing risk to provide enhanced yield. But that enhanced Yield isn't like 28% which is like the type ultimately I think blow up, you know, post bull markets it's like 8% or 9% and that's great for a lot of investors.
- [29:39]
C
Well, if you have any difference in yield or delta that can be harvested through arbitrage, that's the kind of the pill that gets them into the game because you know, the carry risk is what they want to avoid. The arbitrage opportunity is, is very palatable. It sounds like that's why most people are focusing on that, those types of opportunities at this point. But you know, it's going to be interesting to me when you start seeing, you know, defi yield starting to, you know, ramp back up again and to your point then you couple that with another yield producing asset like real estate and you get this kind of hybrid supercharged engine that no one's ever built before. And it's so customizable it's going to give everybody something to, to shout about and give everybody exactly what they want in terms of consumers.
- [30:31]
A
Well over the past, you know, 15 years almost investors have been conditioned that that yield 3, 4, 6, 7% isn't worth it when you can put that money into stocks and you know, for all intents and purposes you're going to get a 12 to 20 plus percent return on an annualized basis. And so you know what, that's the reason why bonds have underperformed for a long time at this point. It's also the reason why microstrategy is out there with preferreds at 12% versus 6%. Right. I guarantee you they wish that they could do six. But the nature of where we're at with quote unquote yield to make it interesting for people, they have to push the limits, right? So yeah, it's a. Listen, vaults are something that are, are coming. You guys are on the cutting edge of innovation here with this stuff. And it is the work that you guys do on the ground, as you just mentioned, with individual financial advisors, individual companies in the space. I'm a longtime wealth management guy, so wirehouses, I know what those are. I think the term regional still exists. You know, that's the stifles of the world. Even though they aren't regional anymore, they've got offices everywhere Doing the groundwork with those types of places. When the innovation finally comes and there's tokenization in 24,7 and they're quote unquote forced to adopt it. But you're right, even when the Bitcoin ETFs, you know, became available, you had, you know, 14 to 18 month lag where they might have existed on platform. But you weren't allowed as an advisor to advise clients to buy some. It had to be marked as unsolicited, which an unsolicited type of investment means a lot of paperwork. Compliance is taking a real close look at. And if it screws up, it's your problem as an advisor, not the, you know, you, they don't want you to do that is kind of the point. And so, yeah, there's some time here, but at the same time, again, innovation and being way ahead of the curve, that's kind of been Bitwise's deal. And it's, it's pretty, it's pretty extraordinary work, you know. Kudos to you guys.
- [33:04]
B
Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I really, I really appreciate that. I mean, even last week I was on the road with one of our regional wholesalers, right? And we spent the week going to financial advisor offices and going to breakfast meeting and lunches and dinners with like financial advisors and their junior analysts talking about crypto. And we were there to answer any questions that they have and tell them about the different ways they can get exposure to the space and what I found super interesting. Okay. Because we've been doing this every week for nearly 10 years. If it was. I've been here for over five years and I was on the road with our wholesale team back in 2022 when it was very bleak and we were meeting with financial advisors. And I did that again during this bull market as recent or bear market as recently as last week. And here's what struck me as different. In 2022, it was really hard to get meetings. We would have all these meetings set up going into the week, and then as you go through the week, you'd be like, oh, hey, sorry, something came up, or hey, can't make it this time. Let me know next time you're in town, right? And you would like slowly see meetings kind of being canceled or you're supposed to be with four people and only one person comes, right? And even then when they do come, they're extremely skeptical and they're basically saying like, this thing's going to zero. You should probably jump ship now and like save your career.
- [34:27]
A
Like, yeah. And they only want to eat a bagel too. They're just kind of there to grab a bagel and eat a hard time. Yeah, yeah.
- [34:33]
C
They met you to give you life advice not to.
- [34:35]
B
Yeah.
- [34:36]
C
Your pitch?
- [34:37]
B
Yes. People I like. Back in 2022, there were several meetings where like they recommended books to me on like the principles of finance. Because they're like, you don't understand that this never going well.
- [34:48]
A
I'm imagining because I know what wholesalers are and what they do because then I used to live in that world. So I imagine Ryan and Matt Haugen like, you know, in the movie Tommy Boy, like taking the car. They're going through the break.
- [35:00]
B
Bad meetings. Oh my God. That's exactly, exactly what in like, you know, random cities all across the country. And, and so every once in a while you would have like a good conversation with someone who like was a believer and. But for the most part it was, it was an uphill battle or it was just difficult to get meetings. Those meetings were tough. What happened this past week and what's really happened this year, despite prices being down 50% from all time highs, is that the engagement is just as high today as it was in the bull market in 2024 and 2025. Like we had no meetings canceled last week. We had everyone show up that said they were going to show up. They weren't giving us, you know, career and life advice about the mistakes we've made moving into to digital assets. They were asking serious questions about things like hyper liquid and vaults and what's happening with regulation and tokenization and stable coins. And you know, the most the questions that we got is, do you think this is the bottom? Like I haven't sold, but I want to add more to my positions and my clients, they're not really asking about it, but I know when momentum, you know, returns to crypto, which it absolutely will, I want to tell them that I made allocations and bought the dip. Like those were the kind of conversations that we were having. They were around portfolio construction, hey, we're sitting at 2%. Should we up it to 5% and if so, what should we allocate to? Which crypto assets beyond Bitcoin should I own for this next, you know, bull market? Those were the kind of conversations we were having. And it just struck me that it was so different than the last bear market and there wasn't people telling us that it's all over. They were actually telling us like, we know this thing's coming back. We just want to know when the right time to buy is. And so that's, I think, where we're at in this current cycle of institutional adoption, which is so different than it was four years ago. And I think has a really big implication on where things are headed once momentum and adoption does turn up.
- [37:02]
A
Well, those advisors, they see the headlines just like we do. When Larry Fink at blackrock won't shut up about tokenization, like you, you kind of have to listen. And then on top of that, you've got the brass at Morgan Stanley also won't shut up about tokenization and talking about it being the next wave of innovation in wealth management. At some point, you listen to the chorus and you also know when those types of entities are talking about it, then behind the scenes, the groundwork's already been laid and it's just a matter of time before the actual architecture behind the innovation catches up. And now you're at that moment. So the smartest advisors get that and be like, well, if, if we can find a way to allocate per the conversations you just talked about before it gets here, then our, our clients win. Right? Our clients were ahead of the curve and we look like heroes. Right?
- [37:59]
B
Exactly that. That's exactly what is happening. Like, it was one thing to have, like, Matt and I pull up into the parking lot in, in our car on a road trip and like, go in and tell them, like, stable coins are going to change the way that, that finance operates, and, like, assets are going to be tokenized on blockchains. And they would, like, look at us like, okay, that sounds crazy. And like, you guys, you guys are in some dream world. And now we go to those same offices and it's like, look, you don't have to take it from us. You can, you can see Larry Fink talking about it. You can see Jamie Dimon, who, like, famously hates people Bitcoin, talking about tokenization being a major focus for them at JP Morgan. You can see Paul Atkins, you know, the SEC chairman, talking about tokenization, or Scott Bess in Secretary treasury talking about tokenization and bringing markets on chains. The same is true for stable coins. And it's actually so helpful to be able to point to that. You can say, look, don't take it from us. But if these people are out here publicly saying this, as you mentioned, Andrew, they certainly have found ways to monetize it and are planning to head in that direction. And so you can either sit on the sideline and say you still don't believe it, or you can at least start to get Educated and engage in the space and then figure out how you want to gain exposure, if you do want to gain exposure. But the biggest mistake you can be is staying on zero and being short. Digital assets and crypto technology and tokenization and stablecoins and bitcoins heading into the future, which is increasingly digital and driven by technology.
- [39:31]
A
Yeah, I. Sorry, but I can't keep getting memes of you guys in the Tommy boy car and turning the radio on. And don't you remember? I can't. There's just too much of it. It's all right here. It's too much.
- [39:51]
C
Well, I would say that the entire industry is being de risk. There's lower and lower risk every day that you're in our space because there's more and more liquidity. The market's larger. As markets grow, they become less risky to participate in. Meanwhile, there's more and more opportunity because the technology, bitcoin and the bitcoin standard proved to us what digital assets could do. But it's not the one size fits all shoe that you can do everything with. And so the next iteration of blockchain and what it can do across trading and banking is what we're in the throes of to me right now. And that's the on ramps and the off ramps that are so important to get adoption. And when that turns on, I think somebody at your company that was on our show, I think it was probably Matt said something like, you know, in the future we won't be calling assets digital assets. And it's just assets. They're all digital because that's the better way to transact. And so, you know, I think that's where we're headed. We're just, you know, right in the midst of that transaction or, you know, the transition.
- [41:06]
B
Exactly, yeah. I think that, I think that's 100% correct. The new York Stock Exchange is tokenizing stocks. NASDAQ is tokenizing stocks. Right. It's happening. And it may feel digital already to traditional investors, like go into their TD Ameritrade or other brokerage account and like they. Or Robinhood account and they buy and sell stocks like, ah, this feels digital and it is digital for us. But the back end is highly analog and highly inefficient and extremely expensive and slow. And that that slowness introduces settlement risk and things like that that the typical investor doesn't see. But it's very, very real. And the reason why I completely agree with you, Tillman, that in the future it's just going to be assets is because you're going to see everything converge to the lowest risk, most efficient medium. And that is just blockchain based Rails. And so I think that's absolutely where we're headed. Clearly traditional players in Wall street see that's where we're headed from an infrastructure and a business perspective. I think investors are going to be the last ones to catch up. And as I've said kind of before on here, this is the time where the foundation's being laid for the next bull market. And vaults and tokenization and stable coins are three megatrends that are going to grow into several trillions in assets individually. And I just have to believe that that's going to drive growth in the underlying blockchains and infrastructure and applications that house all that activity and facilitate it all.
- [42:40]
C
I've got to pick your brain about one thing regarding the vault situation. I, I get to talk to a lot of great tech teams across the country at all these major exchanges at Kraken and Coinbase and we have integrations at Arch Public with all of them. And yesterday struck me as another example of like what's on the top, top of their mind, which is this whole AI involvement, you know, on the side of vaults. Do you see the curator or the manager of those vaults, do you see that as being more approached from an automated perspective or an AI perspective? Or is the secret sauce still going to be, you know, the, the guy behind the, the fund, if you will? How do you, you see that evolving right now?
- [43:28]
B
Yeah, that's a really good question. I think, I think the answer is that it will be both because it makes sense that in a world that's increasingly driven by AI and increasingly digital, people will want automated AI driven solutions. Like I think that just will happen. And there will be a lot of investors, probably younger generation, who are comfortable with allocating to a strategy that's managed partially or fully by AI systems or AI agents. I do believe though that people want to talk to other people when they're thinking about their, their finance and trusting them with their finance. Like they want to see a face like I can't really imagine like an AI avatar going on CNBC and talking about some like risk managed vault strategy that they are curating and investors tuning into that who sit in a high rise in Chicago somewhere and be like, yes, I need to allocate 10 million of my clients assets to that strategy. Like there's so much like risk and just like, I don't know, weird like futuristic strangeness to that. Like maybe it will happen. Like maybe I'll be sitting here in 15 years and like there will be an AI avatar on CNBC and I'll eat my words. But like I just think in my experience, wealth managers, financial advisors, clients, they want a human in a lot of their financial interaction. Now we'll see this technology abstract away and, and disrupt a lot of the, the administrative layers behind the scenes. But I think people want to trust other people when they, when they talk about allocating 10 or 50 or $100 million.
- [45:06]
A
It's, it's certainly already an adjunct to the, the way decisions get made. Right. Like no question about it there, there are, you know, on the advisor side, you know, it's not simply 1997. Let me go with my gut. And this is, this is what we're running with this quarter. You know, big adjustments there and I'm certain that you know, at that level, you know, the, you know, sort of forward thinking advisors are using AI because their clients are like their client, you know, a lot, a large portion of their clients, any type of, you know, recommendation that they're getting, they're going put that into chat. Gbt. What does it say? Right, so it's an, it's an adjunct and probably will be for a while. But to your point about you know, some weird robotic thing doing interviews like
- [46:00]
C
that that were an avatar, you're saying that won't fly. But yeah, reminds me, there's, it's like the Seinfeld. There's an added life, you know, lesson in everything. Yeah, yeah, there's a Texas saying for that. My dad used to say, and he used to say, no, I need a neck to choke. And so, you know, you got to have a neck to choke in the equation. And if you don't know who that is, you know it's going to leave you wanting.
- [46:25]
B
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Like one way to think about that is that if you are a financial advisor and you are considering allocating to a vault on behalf of all of your clients or a certain client, like you're sitting there thinking about okay, what is higher risk for me? And like where does, if all goes wrong, where does the buck stop if I choose an AI strategy to allocate them to. The burden is really, you know, probably more on me to make sure that something doesn't go wrong. You know, like who am I going to sue if my client sues me? Right. And if I get defrauded by like this AI agent, is that going to be like I checked a box somewhere in my due diligence process that actually accepted that risk. Whereas if it's a person or a team behind it, right, you can say like, okay, well I'm entrusting them just like my clients are entrusting me. And if they don't meet their regulatory requirements and investment mandate, et cetera, like I can go after them if my clients come after me. Right. The dots connect there in a way. They don't.
- [47:31]
C
Well, the defensible actions like you, you know, the people are actually have defenses as to why they did things versus the black box.
- [47:39]
A
You know, Ryan, this probably makes a lot of sense and that, you know, I'm not smart enough to have thought of this several weeks ago. It's just hit me right now like in the same way that, you know, 30 years ago most advisors were just an advisor and they had a $200 million book and they were two doing great. Then it turned into teams were the thing like team did that, that's the whole thing across wirehousers. So teams. Maybe the next thing is, yeah, the teams exist, but part of that team is how they've integrated AI. Like here's the team, we've got this, this, this, this and this person that are experts on the team that cover all this stuff. And then here's the AI adjunct that also, you know, was doing an evaluation of everything that we've constructed for you. Like that. That seems if five years from now, if, if advisor teams are talking about that to somehow differentiate when they're competing for the next 70 million dollar client, that, that seems to make sense, right? Don't you think?
- [48:42]
B
Yeah, I think that makes sense. Like If I had 70 million and I was like debating which financial advisor to use and one said we don't touch AI for anything that we do. And another said, yeah, we use AI where it makes sense, it enhances our research, we leverage it to do due diligence, but we have a human behind the scenes fact checking everything. Like I would go with the one who says we use AI to be more efficient and more effective. And I would avoid the one who says like ah, AI is crazy. I'm not touching that because I want someone who's going to embrace new, disruptive, innovative technology, both from a usage perspective, but also be open to investing in these new things that are going to disrupt and change the way that the world works. I actually think there's an analog there to digital assets. That's really interesting is that we spend a lot of time talking, like I said, to these financial advisors and what we're hearing more and more is that even if they're not big believers, if their clients are asking about it, they need to have a solution for them, otherwise they risk losing those clients. And advisors, as you mentioned, they're these big teams of people that are trying to grow their assets under management. So they want to have a menu of options at least that they can show new clients and prospects when they come in the door and say, hey, look, you like crypto, or your son likes crypto, or your daughter likes.
- [49:57]
A
Great.
- [49:57]
B
Yeah, we have ETFs for that, we have vault strategies for that. You don't like it, great, we won't allocate to those, but it needs to be part of the menu that they're showing, otherwise they risk losing or stunting the growth of their business. And that's, that's really important as well. So it just becomes a differentiator at first, but then it also becomes table stakes, you know, as digital continue to grow and be integrated into all these different wirehouses and wealth management platforms.
- [50:21]
A
Well, you see it, you, you see it start to happen amongst platforms that advisors use, like a Bloomberg terminal. Like a big push with Bloomberg is the AI version of Bloomberg, you know, over the last, let's call it 12 to 18 months. Right. There are other competing platforms that are quote, unquote, cheaper, like Y charts and you know, starting to do that type of stuff. So, yeah, really interesting stuff. Thank, thanks for being here, Ryan. We, we really appreciate it.
- [50:49]
B
Yes, that's great.
- [50:51]
A
Yeah, it was, it was really good. And I, and I didn't even make fun of the NFT thing. Back behind you.
- [50:56]
B
I was waiting do that.
- [50:57]
A
I didn't have time to do that. We all have these stories though, don't we?
- [51:01]
B
We got stuck on, on Tommy Boy, but maybe that's right.
- [51:04]
A
Well, I mean, that's always a good place to get stuck.
- [51:06]
C
That is a great place to get stuck.
- [51:10]
A
Thanks, Ryan. We, we appreciate your time. We, we really do.
- [51:13]
B
Thanks, guys. Great chatting with you.
- [51:15]
C
See you, Ryan.
- [51:17]
A
Well, speaking of traditional markets, we are here to talk about equities and ETFs being launched today at Arch Public. And when I say launched, our concierge clients all get stuff early, so they've been able to have conversations and, you know, be onboarded over the last few weeks. But our free tier version of equities and ETFs just went live today. So we're moving beyond crypto and beyond other products into the large ocean that is equities and ETFs and giving people the opportunity to use our tools to affect performance across a bunch of different strategies and a bunch of different symbols. I was hoping that you know, part of the subject headline for this could be a new strategy for strategy. And what I mean by that is, you know, one of the, one of the equities that our teams focused on over the past few weeks and created a case study for was microstrategy itself. And you know, when Tillman comes back, looks like we lost him there for a second, you know, I'll have him talk about the fact that, you know, our, our tools. Took a look at strategy which has gone through a really rough patch, right, Year to date, down 20 plus percent over the past year, also down over the past three years, also a little bit down. And then you take it a look at using our tools and the volatility that microstrategy and strategy gives you. Just extraordinary results. I think the three years, 180%, the two years, you know, a big number, 70 something. And then year to date, just year to date and, and everybody knows this strategy has gotten its teeth kicked in year to date, a variance of nearly 50% from a performance standpoint up about 20 to 21% versus down being 26 plus percent. So gentlemen, if you want to jump in here and talk about the fact that we have, we've opened up free version of our tools for equities and ETFs. It's a big day at Arc public.
- [53:32]
C
Yeah, absolutely. And I was going to say it's a perfect segue to what we were talking about earlier with you know, 365, 24 7. Markets produce volatility. That's just the nature of the, the game. And the more markets we integrate, the more assets we tokenize, if you will, the more opportunity lies out there in the management of that volatility. And so automated tools become a necessary part of that equation. Why? Well, because you're not up 24 7. You can't stay awake, you can't monitor all markets, you can't spot the volatility and then react to that, that volatility in an efficient manner. And so what we're doing at Arch Public is we're creating tools that not only allow you to acquire whatever asset that you want to acquire at the most optimal cost curve, take advantage of time, take advantage of not putting all your eggs in one basket, but dollar cost averaging on highly volatile downturns or buying the dips if you will. But the volatility you can also expect on the upside Too. Now, you can't expect to know when it's going to happen on the upside, but that's where putting automated strategies in place that can react to it when it takes place, even though you're not paying attention. That's where it becomes paramount. And that's where you start seeing real results. You start seeing, you know, actions being taken on your behalf that you set up that are completely driven by you, that generate the results that you want generated but don't require you to sit there in front of your computer or monitor or manage or do calculations. It's reacting for you in that moment in a way that you cannot react for yourself. And if you're doing that across a broad array of assets that are highly volatile, the results are phenomenal. So now you see at Arch Public, offering our technology across equities, you see this beautiful combination of opportunity across, across multiple asset classes. And what you get is you get some that move more correlated to one another, less correlated to one another. There's a lot of beauty in combining those asset classes into something that produces a better outcome from a risk perspective and adjusted returns perspective than they would by themselves. And that's what we're seeing our customers get excited about. That's what we're so excited about about. And that's exactly what Bitwise is doing, is getting you broader exposure to things and giving you a way to access them and to manage them that fits with your life and fits with the way in which you want to do that. So yeah, we're doing, we're, we're doing that across now equities, ETFs, you know, the commodity equities as well, and having a lot of excitement generated around it.
- [56:22]
A
Yeah, there are, you know, you, you, you have the opportunity to take a look at volatility not just in crypto, but, but across broader markets. And, and volatility is something that has turned into a unique opportunity also. You know, there, there's been an evolution in finance about how to, you know, first, you know, dip your toes into an asset and then, then what does it look like on a go forward basis? So 25 years ago it was buy and hold, right? So you bought a chunk, you held it and you, you never sold it, right? Then it turned into dollar cost averaging. So this is the right way to do it. So instead of buying that chunk at a certain price, you're beholden to that price. Now you're going to dollar cost average. Well, a lot of ways this is the next evolution of that. So you can go to our recipe labs on our website and take a look at the differences between automated agentic type of executions versus versus dca. Like, not only do our strategies crush, buy and hold, but they crush DCA across our case studies. Why? Because decisions are being made in an algorithmic way that are completely devoid of emotion, first and foremost. And then secondarily, it's not just a moment in time, a static moment in time. There's math involved associated with movements in that volatile asset that are going to benefit the cost curve over time. So this is, this is where we're headed again. I've said this many, many times over the last few months. If you're not getting involved with us and getting comfortable with this technology, and by the way, allowing our teams to help you get comfortable with this technology, it's coming, it's going to be here in two years where you're going to have to be very comfortable with it because we're going to be at 247 trading. So you're going to have to have
- [58:16]
C
something that's doing, managing the volatility of the markets.
- [58:19]
A
Yeah.
- [58:20]
C
And I will say this. Just ask yourself this simple question. You know, when you look at the Bitcoin treasury companies, for example, and you look at human nature, most people react to big green candles and most people buy on big green candles. And you know why I can say that so confidently? Because that's why they're big green candles. That's the nature of a big green candle is a lot of people flooding in and buying all at once. And so you know, if you ask yourself a simple question of, like when you acquire even one asset, when you're looking at dollar cost averaging against one asset, when is the appropriate time to add a little bit to your position in an increase incremental way? Well, if you look at what Michael Saylor's history has taught us, he likes to do it at the giant top of giant green candles. And let me tell you something about the top of giant green candles. There's not that many sellers typically. That's why they're a big green candle. There's a lot more buyers and sellers. You don't want to be buying, you know, tickets to your favorite sporting event or any asset when it's the most popular on the buying side. You want to be buying the asset when there's blood in the streets, as the old adage says, or when there's pain, when people are puking up their proverbial positions like that. That's the nature of the beast. So if you have tools that literally are managing your entry points, not when you are available after work to buy it, or when you think about it, or when you react to the big green candle. But you just have a system that just grinds on good rules that you set that that's where you start seeing real results. And it's not a quick fix, but you know, put a little bit of distance between you and the starting point and you start to see that volatility become an asset for you instead of being something that you have to fear or, you know, dread.
- [60:24]
A
And we get, we get asked from time to time like, what's the minimum for working with Arch Public? There is no minimum. Go use our tools for free. We make them free so you can, you know, decide for yourself if, if you know, the, the tools themselves work the way that we say they work. You know, the free version has an annualized cap of $10,000 in transactions and that flips over every year. So if you're working with less than 10,000 in transactions, it's free forever. At the same time, you know, you don't have to have a minimum. $10,000 isn't the minimum that you have to have. You know, start with us put 2, 300, $400 in your account and you know, 50, $50 clips at a time and begin using the tools and get comfortable with them. We want you to do that. We want people to have access to these tools and this technology because it matters and it makes a difference.
- [61:18]
C
We want to be the first ones to show it to you. Yeah, in the way that we've built it because we think it's a big eye opening experience. We, we have, we've seen that in our 27, 000 customers. We serve people whether they are part of our concierge or paid division or whether they're a free customer. The same way you can reach somebody on the telephone, you can schedule a time to meet with them and walk through the tools and help get advice in terms of this, how to navigate the settings and get them set up for yourself, all of those things. We, we want to show you a new way of customer service and technology. Bringing you something that really is easy and, and you know, you're excited about integrating and even more excited about maintaining after the integration. And we see that on a consistent basis. So give us a shot. Download it for free, use it for free, contact our folks and see how, how helpful they are. And we're very confident you're going to see value.
- [62:18]
A
Well, that is all for today. I'm fairly certain that most of you want me to replace this show as the host. So go tell Scott Melker in the comments on Twitter about this. Go tell them right now. But in all seriousness, great show today. Great to have Ryan and Tillman on and thanks for being here. We'll see you.
- [62:55]
B
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A
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B
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