How To Win Crypto's Next Bull Market | Rob Hadick

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Wolf Of All Streets

Episode: How To Win Crypto's Next Bull Market | Rob Hadick

Host: Scott Melker
Guest: Rob Hadick, Dragonfly
Date: August 9, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Scott Melker and co-host (unidentified by name) sit down with Rob Hadick from Dragonfly to discuss the state of the crypto market post-2025, institutional adoption, the retail exodus, prediction markets (notably Polymarket), and what the next crypto bull run could look like. Rob offers deep insight into the market’s evolution, the dynamics between retail and institutional players, and how value might accrue in the next phase of crypto’s maturation. The conversation is candid, nuanced, and provides actionable takeaways for both industry insiders and retail listeners.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Institutional Influx and Narrative Shifts

[02:46 - 05:13]

• The Audi Summit had heavy institutional attendance, with banks, asset managers, and traditional investors focused on stablecoins, tokenization, and AI’s interplay with crypto.
• Rob observes institutional focus on “financial technology” and how Dragonfly’s thesis orbits financial infrastructure, DeFi, payment rails, and stablecoins.
• Portfolio companies like Polymarket (“best month ever in June”) and Rain (stablecoin-backed credit cards) are thriving independently of Bitcoin’s price.

“Polymarket just had their best month ever in June. They don’t care what the price of Bitcoin is.”
– Rob Hadick [03:51]

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2. October 10 (“10-10”): The Worst Day in Crypto

[05:13 - 08:44]

• 10-10 is described as “the worst day in crypto history,” even eclipsing FTX and Luna on metrics like liquidation volume and retail impact.
• Over 1.1 million accounts were affected; the episode sparked a bear market and drove out the most resilient retail participants.
• The aftermath saw a dislocation of collateral, a stablecoin depegging, and cascading liquidations due to failures in exchange risk management.

“What people forget too, is that 2025 was not just 10-10, but was definitely the single worst year for crypto… The amount of capital lost by retail leverage traders dwarfs what happened with Luna and FTX.”
– Rob Hadick [06:53]

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3. Retail Retreat, Institutional Rise

[06:53 - 09:35]

• As retail volumes plummeted, institutional tokenization and stablecoin use skyrocketed.
• There is now a clear rift: low retail trading activity, but growing real-world-value infrastructure and institutional rails.

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4. Leverage, Volatility, and Perpetual Swaps

[08:44 - 09:35]

• Post-10-10, questions abound about appropriate levels of leverage, especially for retail.
• Regulatory bodies like the CFTC are aiming to curb excessive leverage (e.g., banning “100x”).
• Hunger for volatility remains: platforms like Robinhood see 70% of options volume in zero-day contracts.

“The CFTC is trying to get ahead of that [appropriate leverage] right now.”
– Rob Hadick [09:29]

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5. The Polymarket Bet & Prediction Market Growth

[09:35 - 13:25]

• Dragonfly co-led an extension round into Polymarket after observing its penetration “beyond crypto culture,” especially during high-profile events (e.g., the Sam Altman firing and Taiwanese election).
• Polymarket referenced as a “source of truth” and overtaken the mainstream discussion.
• Monthly volume grew from $50 million to $4.5 billion in three years.

“Polymarket was being referenced as a source of truth for everybody, like a zero point... The growth has been tremendous.”
– Rob Hadick [10:52, 12:54]

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6. Tokenization and Retail Access to Future Value

[13:52 - 17:30]

• As institutions build tokenized infrastructure, can retail participate and profit?
• Historic token launches gave early retail access, but were volatile and often short-lived.
• Movement towards asset tokenization (Open Bell/Superstate, Securitized, etc.) could enable earlier-stage, fractionalized, and alternative asset access for retail.
• The next landscape may offer broader but more selective opportunities; “not every company launches a token and all go up at once.”

“If stablecoins and tokenization is in the water supply, everyone has to drink water. And so every company will be a water dispenser at some point in time.”
– Rob Hadick [13:25]

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7. Token vs. Equity: Value Accrual and Regulation

[17:05 - 18:40]

• Debate continues over how value accrues—should it be in tokens, equity, or both?
• Current hybrid models stem from a lack of clarity (“Clarity Act”). In a perfect, fully-tokenized world, tokens would be the sole value vehicle, but we’re not there yet.

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8. The Next Bull Market: Selectivity, Sophistication, and Volatility

[18:40 - 22:53]

• Retail wants excitement and big swings, but volatility has shifted to equities (i.e., AI stocks like Micron) as mechanisms to capture it have spread beyond crypto.
• As AI-driven equity volatility wanes, traders likely return to crypto.
• Future retail waves will be more sophisticated, focusing on tokens with real revenue, solid tokenomics, and product-market fit.
• “Alt season” may look different—no more blanket rallies, but rather selective, fundamentals-driven runs.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be in a world again where all things go up together. I do think there’s going to be a lot more selective alt season.”
– Rob Hadick [26:31]

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9. Institutional Flows and Altcoin Prospects

[23:23 - 26:36]

• Big finance (Franklin Templeton, Coin Fund) is preparing to buy liquid tokens—expect more institutional flows as infrastructure matures.
• The influx of institutional capital could change how and where value surfaces in the crypto ecosystem.
• Growing comfort with on-chain assets and increased retail access via fintech should strengthen the overall ecosystem, even if interest is more selective.

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10. Closing Reflections: Builders’ Optimism

[27:04 - 27:46]

• Despite the bear market mood, Rob is long-term optimistic: “When you’re on the ground and you’re talking to the people who are building… it’s hard to be bearish over the long run.”
• Bear markets foster true builders, undistracted by hype and frenzied price action.

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Notable Quotes

• “Tokenization… the perfect world is one where everything is tokenized and we can get tokens to be the only source of value accrual.” — Rob Hadick [00:39]
• “When the retail investors don’t make any money… they’re not going to come back, they’re not going to participate, they’re not going to continue to trade.” — Rob Hadick [06:53]
• “If more capital comes on chain, through stablecoins, neo banks, or institutional interests, that is going to be good for the ecosystem and for prices, but I’m not sure we’re ever back to a world where all things go up together.” — Rob Hadick [25:51]
• “It’s hard to be bearish, to be honest, over the long run.” — Rob Hadick [27:06]

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Key Timestamps

• [02:46] – Audi Summit institutional focus, Dragonfly’s thesis
• [05:13] – The events and aftermath of 10-10
• [09:35] – Why Dragonfly went deep on Polymarket
• [13:52] – How retail can access/profit from institutional tokenization
• [17:05] – Token vs. equity debate
• [18:40] – What the next bull market may look like
• [23:23] – Institutional flows into altcoins
• [27:04] – Builders’ mood and long-term optimism

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Institutional adoption is here, driving infrastructural and financial evolution in crypto—even if that doesn’t always benefit retail directly.
• The retail exodus post-10-10 remains a central concern, but true “on-chain” products and tokenization could eventually democratize access to more asset classes.
• The next bull market will likely be more selective—favoring real products with revenue and product-market fit, not blanket speculative rallies.
• Builders and institutional players have not lost optimism—innovation continues, even if the retail crowd is less engaged for now.

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For listeners looking to navigate the next crypto cycle:
Focus on fundamentals, understand where value accrues (tokens vs. equity vs. hybrid), watch for institutional-led innovation, and don’t underestimate the staying power of authentic builders in the space.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

Crypto prices may be struggling, but behind the scenes institutional adoption is accelerating. Today I'm talking with Rob Haddock from Dragonfly about prediction markets.

[Rob Haddock]

It looked to me like it had started to permeate more of the non tech forward or the non crypto culture. Tokenization the perfect world is one where everything is tokenized and we can get tokens to be the only source of value accrual stablecoins if stablecoins and tokenization is like in the water supply, everyone has to drink water and so every company will be a water dispenser at some point in time.

[Podcast Host]

And why companies like Polymarket are growing regardless of what Bitcoin does.

[Rob Haddock]

Polymarker was being referenced as a source of truth. Polymarket just had their best month ever in June. They don't care what the price of Bitcoin is.

[Podcast Host]

We also break down what really happened on October 10, why retail disappeared, and what the next crypto bull market could look like. Are institutions building the future of crypto while retail sits on the sidelines?

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

We're going to find out.

[Podcast Host]

Lets go.

[Lowe's Pro Desk Announcer]

Let's do.

[Podcast Host]

Today's video is sponsored by 21 shares, not financial advice. Investing carries risk. Products might not be available depending on where you are. Talk to a financial advisor. Crypto solved a lot of things. Easy access through your existing brokerage account wasn't one of them. 21Shares offers exchange traded products designed to provide that access. 21Shares products can be accessed through many brokerage accounts similar to other exchange traded products. They launched the first crypto ETP in basket form back in 2018, before crypto ETFs were even on the table in the US and they've operated through every market cycle since. Today they run around 60 ETPs globally and the research is used by asset managers, private banks and hedge funds. Want to learn more about developments in crypto and digital assets? Subscribe to the 21Shares newsletter for market insights, product updates and research. FollowTyoneShares and at 21SharesUS on X for crypto education and market commentary.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

They've had Haseeb on the show like 50 times. Great.

[Rob Haddock]

Well, I'm glad I could be.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Why, why haven't we done this before? It's my fault. I'm so, you know.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, it's your producer's fault.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, that's right. We need, we need, we need someone to blame and I'm glad that we're finally doing it. So obviously we're out here at the Audi Summit. What are the sort of prevailing narratives that you're hearing or that you're interested in on the ground here?

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, I mean, this summit is pretty institutional, as you can tell. So it's been pretty interesting to see. There's about 330 people here, but basically every bank, every asset manager, a lot of the different investment companies with the traditional investment companies are here. They're very focused on the things that you would think those people are focused on. So stablecoins, tokenization, the future of AI, what does AI look like and how does it interact with crypto? How do we, you know, how are the markets going to do? What is clarity act and how is that going to affect the markets? And so that's been the prevailing narratives. And so I think your listeners won't be surprised because that's a lot of what the narrative has been in the market recently and we've seen the market get more mature, get more institutional, but it's exciting to see this much interest from all of the big name financial companies in the world.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Agreed. So that doesn't necessarily align with how you actually allocate capital.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, it's from a venture capitalist perspective. It does make it interesting right now to figure out how you're going to allocate capital for Dragonfly. We've been obviously a little bit different in the way that we've thought about the space than some others. And so we've always viewed this space as financial technology. And so we've always invested in the infrastructure and then we've invested in decentralized finance, centralized financial companies, prediction markets, payments companies, stablecoins. That's been the prevailing narrative within our, all of our funds, basically. And a lot of those things are doing incredibly well. So we have a couple of portfolio companies. I heard you just talk to Chris. Giancarlo is obviously very close to Polymarket. We're one of the largest shareholders there, been in them for several years. And Polymarket just had their best month ever in June. They don't care what the price of Bitcoin is. We have another portfolio Company called Rain, which does stablecoin backed credit cards. And they of every month that I've been in that company for the last year and a half has been their best month ever. And it doesn't care what the price of bitcoin is. So it's been very interesting to see where we have a lot of these like very crypto native investments, especially on the defi side of our portfolio, on the infrastructure side, who have struggled since 1010, at least on the price action side, maybe not from the adoption side. And then the with the adoption picking up these other companies who are just, you know, doing incredibly well despite the prevailing sort of, I think, kind of lingering concern that a lot of the investors and a lot of the market has had.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

You brought up 10 10. It doesn't get brought up as much as it should, still probably. So what's your view on what actually happened there? I haven't had the conversation in quite a while and maybe now the dust is settled. There's actually a conversation to be had.

[Rob Haddock]

Listen, I think 10 10. Listen. It's pretty clear that there were mistakes made at certain exchanges.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Mistakes were made, yeah, mistakes were made

[Rob Haddock]

in infrastructure and risk management at certain exchan created this dislocation of collateral. And that dislocation of collateral meant there was a de pegging that shouldn't have happened. And that wouldn't have happened if people were appropriately building the infrastructure for the way that everyone had warned and expected that they should be doing. And that created this cascading liquidation effect that ended up being the worst day in crypto history because of that. And there's a couple of narratives there. One of them is about, you know, making sure that we continue to act like a mature enough industry that has risk management and counterparty risk at the top of our mind. Another one is how we think through, you know, the types of leverage that we allow for products. And obviously there's retail hunger for a lot of leverage. But is that the most appropriate way to, you know, get access or give access to a lot of different, you know, retail traders depending on what their level of sophistication is. And so I think there's a lot of conversations to be had, but it's very clear that there's a huge overhang because that was, you know, the worst day in crypto history.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

It was over a million individual accounts. I think for whatever 1.1 million people those were, you know, there's not that many people here. Well, it's 100%, especially when you enter the bear market. Those would have been the people who probably would have still been participating.

[Rob Haddock]

That's right. And I think what people forget too, is that 2025 was not just 1010, but was probably not probably. It was definitely the single worst year for crypto ever in terms of the. What it did to retail participants. Because, you know, we've had the genius act. We had, obviously, you know, bitcoin ran up to 120,000. But if you looked at what happened with the Trump meme token, if you looked at what happened with the tariff tantrum and kind of a lot of the liquidations we saw over that period of time, then you saw 10 10, the amount of accounts, the amount of capital loss by retail leverage traders. It dwarfs the rest of what happened, you know, Luna and ftx, et cetera. And when the retail investors don't make any money, when they continue to lose money for things that they might feel are unfair, whether, you know, whether you believe that or not, they're not going to come back, they're not going to participate, they're not going to continue to trade. And so now we get this market where volumes are low, the active traders are low, the active accounts are low. But at the same time, you have this other thing that's happening, which is that tokenization and stable coins and institutional interest continues to skyrocket. And that's why we've got this sort of dislocation between, I think, price action and what's happening on the ground.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

It made such an interesting point because I think people would, on the surface, say 2022 was the worst. Right. Because you have BlockFi, Genesis, BlockFi, Celsius, Voyager, FTX. All of them. Right, Luna, of course. But I looked back and I think the volume on the day that FTX collapsed was like 1.2 billion in liquidations. And 10 was 19.

[Rob Haddock]

Yes, that's right. The space has got so much.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

So I get, you know, it doesn't matter what percentage, it's how many actual people lost their money that would still be here today. Interestingly enough, talk about having a responsible conversation about leverage and perpetual swaps, and now we're just bringing them to everything.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Instead of let's do perps on the weather.

[Rob Haddock]

Well, I will say, though I'm not

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

saying that's bad, by the way. Yeah.

[Rob Haddock]

But what I will say there is, like, if you talk to Chair C Leg over at the cftc, like they are trying to be very thoughtful about the appropriate amount of leverage and the way that they roll these things out,

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

it's not 100x leverage.

[Rob Haddock]

Correct. Right. And I think to your point, they serve a real use case for traders, but you want to be thoughtful around, you know, how you present them to traders. Right. You know, we're in this interesting spot today where if you look at Robinhood, volume, 70% of options are the biggest part of their volume and prediction markets are growing, but of their options volume, 70% of that is zero day options. Right. So that tells you like, you know, the type of trading activity that's happening on Robin and there's a real hunger for these things. How you roll it out in an appropriate manner and what type of sophistication you require. That's the story and that's the question that people are asking. And the CFTC is trying to get ahead of that right now.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

So you didn't become one of the largest investors in Poly Market by doing it last week and you obviously saw it very early.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah. Right.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

So I would love to kind of dig into your thesis and thinking at the time when you made that bet because now it's probably one of those things. It's like, oh, obviously.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah. So I, I wish I could say it was obvious, but we've been in polymarket for, you know, not that long. Right. So it's been about three years or so or a little less. We, we co led sort of an extension round with Founders fund in late 23. And it's funny because if you remember 23, there was that weekend where Sam Altman got fired and he got fired on a Friday and then there was all this speculation about, okay, would he come back and would he be the CEO again? And the Poly Market for whether or not he would be rehired ended up being one of their largest. I think it was actually the largest weekend they ever had in terms of trading volume. And I was seeing that a lot of my friends were texting me and they were saying, hey, have you seen the Polymarket about Sam Altman? And they were thinking, because this was on top of everybody's mind at the time and the polymarker was being referenced as a source of truth for everybody, like a zero. Yeah, exactly right.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

This became the term for a prediction market was the Polymarket, the Polymarket.

[Rob Haddock]

And we've known Shane for a long time. We thought about doing an earlier round, but we didn't. But when that weekend happened and it became such a big part of the conversation, I really felt that there was, now was the right time. It was starting to permeate the, not just the crypto crowd, but and prediction markets were already something that a lot of, I think, you know, tech forward people were thinking about. But we started to see the volume show up as well. And then at the same time, the. The Taiwanese election actually had a. It was the highest volume they've ever had for a foreign election. And so we're like, okay, so now it's not just US elections. And we started to see Joe Wiesenthal from Bloomberg. And at the time, a lot of the political candidates were starting to tweet out poly markets. And we had seen a little bit of that in 21, but it looked to me like it had started to permeate more of the non tech forward or the non crypto culture. And I reached back out to Shane and I said, hey, let's go for a walk or let's have a meeting. And he was like, yeah, let's go for a walk. It was a Friday night, I still remember it. And walked for like two and a half hours through Washington Square park in New York City. And he just.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

That's why I got engaged.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah. Yeah, he's. He's a New York guy. Oh, you got engaged? Yeah, I know he's got a girlfriend, but.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Sorry.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah. And. Beautiful place to engage, but yeah. And he. The story he told about wanting to create markets for everything was the same story I had said and told people, you know, years earlier. He had never wavered, despite the fact that, you know, I kind of had this big run in 21 and 2020 and then had the CFTC settlement in 22 and that they had kind of a big dip in volume. And you could just kind of see that he still felt very strongly about it. I started to feel a lot more strongly about it. And so we decided to do the deal at the time. And I think they were doing, you know, 50 million of monthly volume at the time. Last week they did four and a half billion. And so it's. The growth has been tremendous. I don't think Shane would tell you that he would expect. He expected that growth, but I don't think we even. We expected that much growth that quickly.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

But it's interesting, Dragonfly, obviously widely viewed, I would imagine, as a crypto vc. Right. I know that that's diversified and whatever, but even at the time that you made that investment, you were probably looking at it as a crypto company to some degree. Or were you not?

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, I mean, we absolutely were. And, you know, the entire business at the time was just built on, you know, polygon.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

And they still don't forget that's where the poly comes from.

[Rob Haddock]

That's right. Yeah.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

The day I was like, wow, altcoins might really be dead is that you can't get Poly market polygon to move, even though polymarket has it in the name and it's. But yeah, anyway, so you were viewing it as a crypto company at the time, right?

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, yeah, absolute. Now, we've always invested in the idea that a lot of finance, or all of finance maybe will happen on chain. And so in some sense, if stablecoins and tokenization is in the water supply, everyone has to drink water. And so every company will be a water dispenser at some point in time. So if that's the case, then the aperture gets a lot pretty big. So, yes, it's a stable or a crypto company, but it's a financial company. And that is where finance is going in our mind.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Okay. So talking about everything ending up on blockchain rails, I think. So you have a unique insight once again, as a vc, and I think that maybe aligns better with retail than what Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs is doing. Right. So I think a big fear for people is how will they allocate capital as retail investors and actually profit from this new adoption of the technology? And I think that's actually a very big question mark. Right. So, like, you know, the example that keeps coming up when I talk to, you know, Carlos from Securitized, for example, says, yeah, what the DTCC is doing is really, really interesting by tokenizing, but it's like it's just changing their plumbing.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, that's right.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

It doesn't matter outside of the dtc. So, you know, how will will retail, I guess, be able to actually profit from what's being built by all of these institutions utilizing the Rails?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Rob Haddock]

So yes is the answer, but I think it's like, not as obvious or as obvious it has been in the past, which is. So, you know, all of these people, all of these companies, these protocols, they launched tokens, people were able to, you know, participate in the growth of those tokens. What was really happening was people were launching, you know, some form of a. Of exposure to their protocol very early stage, much earlier than typically would happen in the equity world. And know that also meant that these things were very volatile and people like to trade volatility. Now, obviously we're in the situation where, you know, clarity act is being debated. I think they just launched the new text or just released to the public like 35, 40 minutes ago. And, you know, we'll see if that becomes law or not. Obviously, if that becomes law, I think there's a world in which, you know, yeah, different conversation, everything is tokenized. But if everything is tokenized, one of the, there are many benefits of tokenization. One of them is that there are different ways of which people can go public and can provide, you know, maybe fractionalized access to different types of investment opportunities earlier stage. And so we're already seeing that somewhat with Open Bell, which is the, the product that is coming out of not securitized but superstate. And they're trying to find, provide a way for people to tokenize their equity earlier than they might go public otherwise. You're also seeing a lot of, you know, different startups try to find ways to tokenize and provide retail access to you know, different types of alternative asset classes that didn't exist before. And we're also seeing net new novel financial products be built on top of blockchain rails that are also providing or building things that have product market fit and revenue and so hyperliquid and lighter Venice, there's many, many others that are starting to say okay, well we're building kind of net new financial primitives and we're launching tokens around those. And because of that we're able to do this earlier than we'd be able to potentially IPO because IPOs these days and whether or not you trade well as a public company has as much to do as well, like can you get index inclusion, can you get an equity research analyst to cover you? And that's not going to happen of you know, companies of the size that I'm talking about for the most part. And so there will be a world where the investable universe is much bigger, but it probably won't look like a. Every technology company launches a token and these tokens can hopefully all go up at once.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

So you mentioned Venice. It was weeks ago now, but it kind of re sparked the token versus equity debate. And I would love to know where you sort of stand on token versus equity debate. How value should accrue to one or the other? Should people have both? Should all tokens be converted to equity in some way, shape or form at this point? Or should equity be converted to tokens? How is this going to look?

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, listen, I think this is a complicated conversation and it depends on context of any individual company or protocol. I think very clearly everybody is working within like the parameters that a non clarity act world allows them to operate into. I think where there's a lot of very interesting token, token, economic work that people are doing, Venice being one of them and some of the Dexs as well. And in terms of finding ways to provide just value accrual back to the token and back to the holders of that token and also, you know, operate within the governance structure that they need to as, you know, companies that are, you know, building different types of, of just, you know, businesses that require the ability to, you know, enter into contracts with, you know, large service providers and like large some of the financial companies that we're talking about, etc. And so it is, it's complicated. I think we, the perfect world is one where all everything is tokenized and we can get, you know, tokens to be the, the only source of value accrual. It's not yet the world that we live in, but I think a lot of us are working to, to try to get us there.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

As you look forward, what do you think the next bull market? I'm not asking for tie, I'm not asking for timing or price. Yeah, but you know, as you're kind of handicapping the future, what do you think it looks like versus the previous cycles that we've seen before? First of all, I was one of the like four year cycle, dead skies. I'm kind of eating, eating it right now. Maybe we'll see.

[Rob Haddock]

I guess I was also that way or I am also so that way. And I don't really think it's.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Well, I keep saying unless it goes like wildly up in October and just keeps going up, then I'll say I was wrong.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, exactly.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

But okay, if we get the upside too at the end of it, then sure. But I mean, what do you think the next market looks like? We've obviously, we've had the ICO cycle and then sort of the pre sale, I guess, VC cycle. We've had the Defi summers and the metaverse Winters and NFTs. Right. So, you know, what does it look like?

[Rob Haddock]

You know, it's hard to know and you know, I wish I was able to see the future.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

I'm not asking you to see the future, but I know that you have a premise because you're actually allocating capital based on what you think will happen in the future.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, I mean I have an expectation that there's two things that are happening. So there's the retail side and the institutional side as we've kind of talked about. On the retail side, you know, people want volatility, they want potential for like large movements. You know, we have, you know, companies like Micron and on the equity side, who are 100 volume, even though trillion dollar companies. Right. Like that type of volatility within the equity market means that we, the traders, the prosumers who are often in crypto have found interesting things to do in the equity markets which were previously less volatile. I have an expectation that volatility moves from one asset class to the other. Right. And so the volatility in the equity market will probably dampen at some point, especially as we start to get a little bit more clarity on how the AI market is going to. And there's just so much uncertainty in the AI market that's driving a lot of this volatility. As that dampens, we're, we're going to see, you know, those traders move back to crypto and other high volume assets as well. Prediction markets have obviously been a big part of this story as well because people have been very excited about, you know, this new primitive and how they can engage in different types of exposure to different types of trades. And so we'll continue to see that ebb and flow. I think, you know, Bitcoin is sort of its own thing. Ethereum is sort of its own thing. And you know, I expect that, you know, whatever the time horizon is, that Bitcoin is much higher in the future than it is today. And then I think that when volatility comes back on the retail side, there is going to be the focus on like or people are going to be more sophisticated around. Does this token have good token economics? Is it a thing that is going to accrue value? Is there revenue within this protocol? Does it have product market fit? That sophistication is much higher than it was in 2021 when there was like all this FOMO.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Right. And betting on an idea that maybe, maybe may not be built and was already worth billions of dollars.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, in some cases the fact that we're getting what we wanted was bad for, you know, and for, for token prices. As a vc, we were also doing a lot on the more institutional infrastructure side and things like that. But I have an expectation that that institutional infrastructure also means that more retail applications will be built that will be net new and novel and so you'll have more things that people can trade that they can interact with. I do think there will be continued ability to do like novel earlier stage projects on blockchains and that will include tokens that, you know, aren't necessarily just stablecoins and neo picking like a lot of people say. And so if that happens this year, if that happens next year, I think a lot of that depends on what happens in the public markets and what happens with AI. Be honest.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah. You made an interesting point about volatility. Well, I think one of the just quiet reasons that crypto has been so uninteresting is that we actually took what you could do in crypto and allowed you to do it on every other asset. Yeah, it used to be that, you know, if you went to a crypto exchange you had to find some crypto asset or some altcoin that was going to have volatility or you know, that you get catch the pump. Now you can just go on hyper liquid and the same people who would have been trading crypto are trading silver instead. Right. Or pre IPO, SpaceX or.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, I think it's recently, you know, the hip three markets that on, on hyper liquid which are, you know, the real world asset markets, it was as much as 40% of daily trading volume.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Rob Haddock]

It's crazy. And because people, people are looking for volatility and they're looking for places to find an edge. And you know, in these markets right now where there hasn't been as much volume, especially in altcoins, there's just been less interest. But these things ebb and flow. Like there's, you know, it's absolutes are, are for what is the, the, you know, absolutes are for. I forget the exact same. But you know, I, I think we'll see that ebb come back and when that date is. I, I don't know.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I guess the big question a lot of people's minds is what happens to the things they're holding. Like these altcoins just haven't moved in five years. You know, is there somebody. It's interesting. I mean I think we have the Franklin Templeton branding back here. But you know, they bought Coin fund and, or however that was structured and it's a liquid fund and they're going to try, I would assume try to raise billions of dollars to buy a bunch of liquid tokens. Right. So there's somebody out there who's, I've got to imagine they're not the only ones who are interested in buying tokens that are on the market right now.

[Rob Haddock]

Absolutely. Well and you know, I've even talked to, you know, some of the big, you know, kind of like multi stage hedge funds who do both public and private, maybe crossover funds who you would be surprised some of the names that own some of the tokens that we were just talking about the lighters and hyper liquids of the world. And you would have expected that maybe they own Bitcoin or Ethereum and Solana, things like that. But also owning a lot of the applications. So we're seeing people buy these things. But I do believe that there's still, it's still very hard for those types of investors to stomach some of the volatility. But they're also as they get used to the volatility on the equity side. I expect over time with more agent trading, more automated trading, that the risk management will get better and so people will get a little bit more comfortable with it. But this asset class is one where I used to work at a big hedge fund called Golden Tree. And we were one of the first ones in the 2020 and 2021 phase to come into crypto. But when things start making money for people, everyone takes notice. And you know, there's, the infrastructure is now there for a lot of these big liquid managers to come back into the space when they see opportunity.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean you kind of made this joke before. You care for what you wish for. We got what we wish for and maybe we didn't want it. I mean institutional adoption was all we ever talked about and now, you know, institutions are going to adopt it in their own way and maybe not ours.

[Rob Haddock]

Yeah, that's right. Well, remember Larry Fink was, it was 2023, he was saying everything's going to be tokenized and, and if you remember like all of the altcoins went up with, you know, bitcoin and everything else when he did that. And, and then a lot of things are now being tokenized and we're finding out that, you know, the value occurs in different places.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Well, I mean if we do believe that there will be value in altcoins then we should actually be on the fact that our bags are underwater. Cheer the fact that we'll find a reasonable way to value them and invest in them and understand why they may move up or down beyond just speculation gambling or like a tweet from a Kol or something. Right.

[Rob Haddock]

100%. And I'm of the opinion that if more and more capital comes on chain, whether that's through stablecoins, through these Neo banks, through a lot of the more institutional interests, if there is just inability to be on chain or not have the same friction that you had had before, you know, things like the, the lighter integration into Robinhood wallet and things like the hyper liquid builder codes and we start to see these things get pushed out to more and more everyday users, that is going to be good for the whole ecosystem and it's going to be good for, you know, prices within that. Now I do believe we're in a world where I don't, I'm not sure we'll ever be in a world again where all things go up together. I do think there's going to be a lot more selective all season.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Rob Haddock]

But also like that's the way markets should work. Right, like that. And there's efficient markets and so interesting.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

I think somebody, I'm trying to remember who it was. I did one of these interviews and pointed out that we have the most dispersion historically we've ever had in the stock market actually. So like it actually if you're a good stock picker right now, like yeah, markets may broadly be up but there are huge winners and huge losers. And it's not everything goes up at the same time as much as the headlines seem to indicate. And maybe if that comes to crypto that becomes a very compelling reason for people to take notice again.

[Rob Haddock]

100%.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Anything else on your mind before I let you go?

[Rob Haddock]

I. What is. I always like to say when. Because like it does feel like there's just so much despair almost in the markets and when you're on the ground and you're talking to the people who are building here like it's hard to be bearish, to be honest over the long run. Right. Whatever happens in the short run, you know, if you're long term builder in this space, you're a long term investor in this space. It's very clear to me that we're in for a good, you know, X number of years. Whether or not that means for the rest of the year, who knows?

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean I think we've gone from despair to apathy now maybe you know, like retail but I think that there's actually more excitement to build in the bear market by anyone who is. Because they're not distracted by prices and media narratives.

[Rob Haddock]

Absolutely.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

All right, man, appreciate it. Thanks. We finally got to do this. Thank you.

[Podcast Host]

Today's video is sponsored by Securitize. You've heard the word tokenization. Putting assets like funds, bonds, treasuries and stocks on chain. Securitize is the regulated infrastructure the biggest names in finance build on. They're the tokenization partner for BlackRock's on chain, treasury fund Bidal working with New York Stock Exchange, Vaneck, Hamilton Lane and Apollo SEC regulated entities. Nearly nine years running, most money still moves through slow decades old systems. Securitize puts the real asset on chain itself. Not a synthetic or wrapped token standing in for it and regulated in the United States. It's the institutional grade bridge between traditional finance and crypto. They didn't just build it, they just proved it, listing their own stock on the New York Stock Exchange and simultaneously tokenizing it on chain on Solana and Avalanche. The first and only public company built entirely for this. Their mission? Tokenize the world. Learn more@securitizeio this is a paid partnership, not investment advice.

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