The altcoins best positioned to win this bull market

Transcript

were interested in making bold bets on both. Betting on winners, especially when they're priced to lose, and and betting on losers, especially when they're priced to win. >> The bulls are back after Bitcoin finally broke out of some key resistance levels. But what does that mean now? Where do we go from here? And what do we need to know as crypto investors to navigate these markets? Hello and welcome to Milk Road Crypto, the show that knows that it is better to find what's going to pump next than to chase what has already pumped. I'm your host, John Gill, and today we are joined by Greg Viviverito. He is the general partner at TAG Capital. TAG runs one of the best long short fundamentals driven crypto portfolios in the entire business. This guy has a ton of alpha to share with us today and we're going to get into his

strategy for these markets and there's just going to be a lot of insight in this one. I'm excited for this. If that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. As a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful partners at Nexo, the digital asset platform that lets you trade, earn, and borrow all in one place. So, keep an ear out for more information on them later in today's episode. But for now, welcome to Milk Road Crypto. Greg, how are you, sir? >> Doing great. The bull's back. >> The bull's back. Uh, I thought that would be a good place to start the conversation, Greg. A lot of people are looking at this breakout on Bitcoin and declaring that the bulls are back, that there's the start of a new bull market

that's happening. Um, but some people are still bearish and saying that this is a fake out and a bull trap. Where do you land on this conversation? Which side do you tilt towards here? Yeah. So, we have this this conversation basically every day between uh my co-founder, my partner, and I. Um, and normally I'm the bear and he's the bull. And I think the one thing that crypto has taught us is that it's never as good as it seems and it's never as bad as it seems. Um, so we're positioned for upside from here, but we certainly don't expect it to be without volatility and, uh, and we certainly don't expect it to, um, to necessarily include every token.

So, uh, I'm sure we'll get into that. >> Yeah, I think we will, too. Well, tell us a little bit more about TAG Fund and sort of your role here. Where do you guys see yourself in the industry? And just for those who aren't familiar, tell us a little bit more about the company. Yeah. So, uh, we started the fund, uh, four and a half years ago, and at the time it felt like we had a somewhat contrarian view, which was that fundamentals matter. At this point, that's become a little bit more consensus. It's taken us about four years to get there. And when we started, we were structured. We've always been um a liquid fund, liquid tokens um, exclusively. and we started as long only and over the course of time have shifted towards a long short strategy. So I

would I would describe us as long biased but constantly trying to understand what the market is telling us and uh adjust the portfolio to reflect that. >> So I've heard you say a lot about this in some of the things I've read from you on your Substack and other things. Um, but you guys have talked about this pivot from being long only to long short as being a really key to your success here and you've said that we are in a dispersion regime in crypto. Yes. Which Yeah. So, I'd love to hear you just elaborate more on that and sort of like how you're navigating that in the markets.

>> Yeah. I mean, I think we we've sort of witnessed the market grow up over the past couple of years, right? um you know in the early days at least for us 2021 2022 the correlation of stuff was effectively one when um you know when Bitcoin pumped everything pumped um and that's not the case now right like even in this this latest rally you've seen some of the best alts lead and that doesn't mean that you know there's sort of like no no activity amongst some of the stuff that shouldn't be pumping but but you've seen this really the shift towards um towards sort of fundamentals ruling the day um and and I I think there was a period of time in like 2023, 2024 where the bloom just really fell off the rose on tokens being designed in

a way that didn't make sense and also projects that were, you know, sort of lacked fundamental value and and and and whereas those those tokens, you know, were were highly correlated to Bitcoin in the past, that was no longer the case. And so so as a fund, you know, we sort of saw this opportunity to restructure and take advantage of the fact that, you know, that that coins can go down, right? And and and and at times go down quite a lot. And and so, you know, we think about both sides of the book as really fundamental bets, right?

You can sort of think of, you know, each project and each token um on sort of two dimensions. one being traction and project success and the other being token design and and we are, you know, we're we're interested in in in making both bets on both. Betting on betting on winners, especially when they're priced to lose and and betting on losers, especially when they're priced to win. >> So, I think this conversation would have been really interesting to have in the start at the start of the bare market as opposed to now at the end of it. But for the last, you know, like year or more, I think you've been saying that it's just much easier to find shorts in crypto than longs. Um, but at the same time,

it's also dangerous because like you said, like some things can pump for no re no reason and then you're in trouble. Like talk to me about what you're looking for when you're trying to find a good project to short and and what goes into that process of analysis. >> Yeah. And just to be clear, I mean, we got into crypto to to be long crypto, right? And we're always going to be more long than short. We think the right construction is both tactical and fundamental. So you're looking for projects that are either no longer being actively worked on or have structural and flow driven issues that are going to make it really really hard for it to go up. And so, you know, the classic

example here is like um you know, sort of the the the like VC coins, right? Like I think in in many ways and the reason that this dynamic persists is that there are or there were or there was a constant bid in private markets for many of these tokens. And so they created this dynamic where you just had a lot of supply locked in profit and the marginal buyer effectively went away. And so when we when we look at the universe, you can sort of like I said break it down into good project, bad project, good token, bad token. the the projects that are doing well, have found

product market fit, are generating revenue, and are also finding ways to acrue that value to token holders. That's where you want to be investing. And then, you know, in some cases, you've got projects that had really interesting designs and are the forebears of some of the things that are working right now. You know, we've been investing in the per space for years. some of the earlier tokens there had really good models, GMX, DYDX, but the business didn't succeed um or hasn't succeeded. And on the other end, you have projects that are having success, but the tokens don't make a lot of sense. And so we we sort of write off both of those categories as as the messy

middle and focus on the investable universe which is good project, good token and the potential shorts which is uh bad project, bad token. Just want to pause for a quick second to remind you all that the crypto bull market is back. I have been deploying capital into altcoins that I think are going to do very well this bull market. Some of them are already up over 2x from where I entered. So, if you want to see what's in my portfolio, what's on my watch list, and have access to me in Discord to ask questions 24 hours a day, join Milk Road Pro now. The link is in the description. It's just a dollar. I'll see you there. Now that we've seen the markets start to turn more bullish, are you going to table the shorting aspect of the strategy for now? Or do you think

you're going to continue to look for shorts even during a a bullish uptrend? No, I I mean I wouldn't and we would have answered this question probably differently a few years ago, but I don't ever imagine us not having a short book. Rather, we'll flex it based on the market environment. So whereas we were um closer to 30% short to start the month, we're going to end the month closer to 20% short. But, you know, when we look up and down up and down the screener, there's still a lot of tokens that don't make sense and there's still a lot of valuations that don't make sense. And even in an uptrend for a fund like us, you know, that's based in the US that has to pay taxes on our capital gains. A a shortbook is is

is actually quite helpful in any market environment. You know, I like to think what we're doing is running an all-weather portfolio and and so certainly we expect to lose money on on the short sleeve during an uptrend, but we can also use those gains to offset our um rotations that we want to make off of the winners. And we can also um you know in in times like this uh you're paid to be short whereas you know 6 months ago uh we were we were paying to be short.

And so we just think it really sort of complements you know a a core long strategy well um to be able to to you know harvest losses tax losses and and harvest funding you know when we're in times like this. >> Gotcha. Okay. Well, let's talk about some of these tokens that fit into this short thesis of yours. You famously have been shorting the Trump coin, the Trump memecoin, um, which is now down below $2, I believe, and had an all-time high of somewhere north of $20. Um, and you know, I would love to hear you elaborate more on how you go about um, finding a short and sticking with it and what what you might still be looking at it as a short right now.

Yeah, I mean this is this is sort of the classic example of of a of a of a coin that really never deserved its valuation once it pumped. And I would say I'm a bit a skeptic on meme coins in general, but a lot of them are not great shorts because a lot of them have or most of them have fair launches and fully unlocked supplies and so, you know, very susceptible to a quick runup in in times of euphoria. Trump, on the other hand, was basically in the hands of insiders from day one. And when you looked at it in in, you know, month two, month three,

there were no buyers left and the sellers had infinite tokens. And so, you know, that's that's sort of where where we began our short journey was was with Trump trading like 10 15 um and just looking at it as the air came out of that that you know first meme cycle on Salana and asking ourselves who's going to buy this thing, right? Like all the buyers have already bought. You know, we're not we're not we're not here to say that memes are never coming back. Obviously, we've seen that they have, but this one in particular had way more sellers than buyers. And so, we're just constantly asking ourselves that question like, who's the marginal buyer here? Who's the marginal seller? Um, and and at least for that one, we couldn't

we couldn't figure out who the marginal buyer was, and the marginal seller was quite obvious. >> Well, I'm going to leave that with no additional comment, but it sounds like you found a winner in the shorting category there on that one. I I would like to hear like, you know, we've come through a long bearish period here. There's been a lot of down only in crypto the last couple of months excluded. Um, how much of your funds outperformance do you think you attribute to the short positions in the portfolio during that bare market? And like how much actual performance was contributed by this strategy >> during the first half of this year effectively all of it, right? like it.

It sort of got us through the bare market and allowed us to harvest cash that we deployed into things we liked on the long side into correspond positions so that we would be in a good position to outperform times like now. And and so it was it was essentially all of our P&L for the first half of this year. And it allowed us to reduce the volatility of the fund. And of course, we're giving up a little bit of upside on on the shortbook at times like this, but overall just feel really comfortable sitting in some of these names that um again it's just hard to imagine. You know, one of our kind of overarching

thesis is that crypto is going from speculative to fundamentals, right? It's like why should this asset class be different than every other asset class on Earth, right? like people want to buy businesses that are good, that make money, that return money to to to shareholders or token holders. Like this isn't this isn't um like controversial stuff. And um you know, in the last couple of weeks, months, it's gotten a little bit easier to find longs, but it's still really easy to find shorts, right? There are a lot of projects that simply aren't generating anywhere near the revenue that you would expect from, you know, from a from a company with with that

level of valuation. And so it's not necessarily to say, you know, these projects are bad. In many cases they may not be but it is to say sort of in a unique position where you know as as liquid investors you can look at what's working you can look at what's not working and and you can get exposure to both. But at the same time it's a lot easier to make money on the long side than it is on the short side. Right. Um it's it's there's a reason there aren't many many short selling funds um really in any market. um it's it's a really hard way to to gain, right? Like the your upside is capped, right? It can only go down 100%. And and so we um you

know, we very much view it as a component of a more comprehensive strategy and one that works uniquely well in crypto because there are so many tokens that frankly deserve to go to zero. >> I appreciate the the thoughts on that. shorting is very dangerous and you know 100% loss is is the cap but it's still always a risk. So um >> yeah and the other thing I'll mention here is that um we we take a basket approach right and so yeah I called out Trump because that's one of the favorites and we size it accordingly.

But whereas we have a core five to 10 core longs, we're looking at, you know, a couple dozen shorts, right? And and and and structuring it as a basket helps insulate against some of that single name volatility. And if it's sized correctly, you have the opportunity to increase your position, right? You never want to get into a position where your short doubles and you have to close it because it's too much of your book, right? We always want to be in the position where we can we can add on on a rip and and and really sort of take the other side of those of those short squeezes.

>> Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. And there's a lot that goes into managing a short book. It's not uh the easiest thing in the world. I do want to pivot this back towards the long conversation because that's where I think a lot of attention is right now and where a lot of audience is going to be interested. Um, I want to hear your thoughts on this value acrruel thesis and the fundamentals that are driving valuations here. Where I'm sure you debate this all the time internally too, like all of us do, but where do you see that landing right now? And, you know, I I want to also tie this to crypto equities because I think two of your most recent um long positions have been in the equity space and it just fit that into that value acroal conversation for me and what you're seeing there.

Yeah, one of the most interesting things we noticed earlier this year was that the earnings multiple on DeFi in aggregate had come way way down. So I think a couple of years ago the sort of like aggregate multiple was 100 and then it was 50 and then it was 20 and you would like go to these conferences and and you could sort of hear people say like well you know it's it's like kind of in the strike zone here hard to imagine it going down much much more and it and it did and it continued to and and this year I think the the the aggregate multiple in DeFi earnings was like 10 and and so we sort of looked at that and thought this was a really good opportunity to by what felt like the

bottom in terms of the earnings multiple on these businesses. You know, constantly reminded of how reflexive crypto is and and and this is why the bare markets hurt so much is because when you're dependent on generating onchain revenue and onchain activity goes away, your revenue goes away and so that the business all of a sudden starts to look really really bad. But what we noticed this bare market was that there were actually many protocols that were still generating some revenue. The earnings multiple that the market was giving them felt unfair. And so we as we've watched these these multiples compress you know we just got comfy with the with you know the reality of yes

they could compress more but these feel unfairly low. And when we we zoomed out and we thought about what was happening, it was clear that yeah, you're you're you're constantly I think as a as a crypto investor sort of trying to track where we are. Um you know, it's like you've got the the price action on on on sort of one line and then you've got the fundamentals which are sort of going above and below the line and and it just felt like the you know the fundamentals had had gotten had gotten too cheap. So, you know, most of the stuff that we're in outside of the majors is is onchain finance. I mean, that's the thing in crypto that's that's really working and

and that's where most of our longs are. You know, one of the weird things about crypto is that the longer you're in it, the more accounts you seem to end up with. You buy in one place, trade somewhere else, earn yield somewhere else, and if you actually need capital, you end up having to sell something that you probably wanted to keep. That's why we at Milkroad are partnering with Nexo. These guys keep the whole thing under one account. You can buy, trade crypto, earn interest on what you already hold, and even borrow against your capital without having to sell it. All in one spot, all in one account, all on Nexo. So, if you need liquidity, but you don't want to give up your position, or you're already holding crypto and you want to be able to do more with it, I think Nexo is worth your time. We love working with

them, I think you will, too. Tell them Milk Road sent you. Well, let's talk about some onchain finance, then. Uh there was an announcement today which will be I think 2 days ago when this episode is released but um this morning Galaxy added $100 million of SUSDS to its corporate treasury. Um they've approved uh SUSDS as an eligible collateral asset across their institutional um trading business. This seems like some institutional adoption of onchain finance and I'm curious your thoughts on this because I think you guys have been kind of like pretty bullish on Sky for a while and it seems like the institutions are starting to adopt this. What's your view on this? uh and the setup here for for onchain finance.

>> Yeah, we've been holding Sky since it was Maker and you know, I just think it's a it's it's sort of a misunderstood protocol somewhat of their own doing. I think the rebrand was messy. I think the governance is complicated. Um and as a result, people have had a hard time wrapping their mind around what this is. But at the end of the day, it's been around as long as anything. It is extremely cheap on on in terms of just earnings and and and the multiple.

And you know, we I would say the the kind of one of the sort of highest conviction viewpoints we have is that there will be more stable coins on chain in the future. and it's behind USDC and USDT. It's the best stable coin on chain. And so for us, you know, we just look at that and and just feel really comfy in it as a as a long-term position and have honestly been really really also encouraged by um you know, some of the hires they've made with the Sky Foundation um and and and you know, bringing people aboard that are going to go out and do deals like the ones you mentioned with Galaxy. Yeah, I think part of this growing up and this

adolescent phase for crypto is figuring out where the value is. And I think a lot of the value is in the sort of messy gray area in between onchain and offchain, right? like it feels to us like we've exhausted, you know, the growth of the sort of self-custodied onchain user. Um, and the next leg of growth is going to come from institutional capital. Institutional capital wants to do deals with other serious people, right? And so you need teams that are going to go out and they're going to they're going to tell

the story and uh you know they're going to they're going to they're going to make it safe. They're going to make it turnkey and and I think that's what you're starting to see from from Sky. Um you know another another position we've held for a long time is Syrup, right? like those guys are going out and um and and they're and they're developing business to bring it on chain and then providing the infrastructure that actually allows that to happen better, faster cheaper. >> Well, full disclosure, I have positions in both of these two. So, I I I get where you're coming from on this. Um, but I think there's some tension here in the market and I want to kind of ask this question um, and get your thoughts on this cuz Standard Chartered came out and said that Sky was acting as DeFi's federal bank and they said that they're

doing $6 billion of lending. They had a price target that they set which is 5x from where Sky is right now. However, at the same time, you know, Sky just posted one of its best quarters ever, but they're redirecting a lot of that revenue towards a reserve as opposed to token buybacks. And so the token price has been, you know, not flat, but not super responsive to this growth. How do you resolve this tension in your mind? And when do you think we're going to start to see sort of the success of this DeFi federal bank start to be reflected in the token price sky? >> Yeah, it's a fair question. I don't spend that much time thinking about when, right? If we have conviction in the team and we have conviction in the value, we're pretty comfortable

waiting for that to happen. Um I don't I certainly don't think we have any edge on sort of figuring out um you know when price action is going to happen. As far as you know DeFi tokens go it's been I would say steady but not explosive. And you know on some level I think that makes it a valuable part of a portfolio. You know sort of think of it as like uh you it's like the 6040 stocks bond. It's like your it's like the bond section of a crypto portfolio in the sense that you know it's it's uh it's pretty sturdy.

But we're comfortable with a long-term view on it and comfortable with with really seeing the team make the decision on how they want to allocate capital, right? Like we're not dogmatic about buybacks versus reserves. Like um you know, I think either can work. It sort of just depends. And the other thing that I think is really underappreciated about Sky is that the staking rewards are terrific. Um, and so for a long time you were earning, you know, 20% paid out in USDS on the value of your Sky position on the value of Stake Sky

holdings. And so, you know, if you're staking and you're collecting rewards and the coin's not dumping, you know, pretty easy to be patient. >> Well, patience is a virtue, I think, in this environment. Uh, Greg, I want to ask you about something else. There have been a lot of there's been a lot of attention on this war about perpetuals platforms. Hyperlid and lighter have gotten a lot of attention in this. Both of them have buyback programs. Um I'm curious your view on this because this this week we've had uh Lewis from Proper which is a prop trading fund uh a company rather uh on Hyperlquid. We've also had Trevor King who's the head of growth at Lighter. And I know I've just been like hearing a lot of conversation and attention on PERPS as an asset class

and as an emerging sector of digital assets. What's your view on this and you know where are you allocating your capital around this thesis? Yeah, I mean we love PERPS. I mentioned at the outset that we've been investing in per since the basically the beginning of DeFi summer and you know our view is is that they are a superior instrument for leverage for most use cases um certainly for retail. We also don't view it as winner takes all. And so you know we hold both hype and lit. We think they're both awesome. We think both teams are awesome. We think the value ac for for both to really do well. I mean

our um you've held hut for a longer time than we've held lit. Lit is a or lighter is a good example of sort of the one of the pitfalls, right? When they first came out, it was really hard to untangle how much of the usage was actually, you know, like what the discount rate should be on that usage given the the incentives around around the airdrop and around farming. Um, and so that's one where we took a wait and see approach and and we we sort of waited for it to find a bottom both not just in terms of price um but really in terms of usage and wanted to see what the unincentivized usage would look like and and when that leveled off and price sort of joined it um you know we got comfortable taking a

big position there and we really really like the approach that they're taking in the US market right like the other inflection point I think for them was was the was the deal with Robin Hood and and and powering that product and and we just think there's plenty of other fintech platforms that would benefit from offering per to their users and just bullish that they would rather use infrastructure like lighter than um than try and figure out how to build it from scratch themselves.

>> I like that perspective a lot. I think it's a little bit like the Ethereum Salana conversation. You don't have to be bearish on one and bullish on the other. They can both grow together and I think they should. Um, all right, Greg, I want to end with some thoughts on what you're most bullish on for the rest of this year because we've talked about a few things you're very bullish on and you said you you've got patience and conviction in these plays, but there's a lot of things that are pumping on the market. There's like Zcash and Venice and Near and just like Uniswap all over the place. There's stuff ripping. Um, and I'm curious if there's something we haven't talked about that you think you're particularly bullish on um, for the rest of the year or just like how you think the market unfolds from here

going into the end of 2026. >> Yeah, I think the thing that we're watching most closely is the the tokens and the projects that are going from bad token to good token. So, you know, maybe in the past didn't have anything around value acral or uh, you know, had really messy unlock schedules and are proactively trying to change that because they've seen the market reward the projects that actually do a good job with this. Um, so a couple of names, Athena, Ephi, Grass, right? These are projects that are are going from at least in our minds sort of quasi

uninvestable based on um you know who is holding the token or uncertainty opacity around their revenues and now making a real effort on the investor relations front to uh tell people like us what they're doing, how they're doing it, how much money they're making and giving us the confidence to underwrite those businesses. So, I would say that's where we're most excited um is is just looking, you know, I said this to you before, but like for a while it was really hard to find longs, right? You could sort of like count on one hand the number of protocols in crypto that were um actually generating revenue and acrewing value to token holders. Um you know, the list is still short. Depending

on how hard you want to squint, it's you know, 10 names or 20 names. I think what we're most excited about is uh is is the is the projects that are taking that seriously and and sort of putting themselves into the quadrant of of good project good token. Yeah, it's just a function of sort of keeping an eye on all the wonderful resources out there with regard to onchain data and and seeing where the growth is happening. >> Greg Viviverito, TAG Capital, general partner, thank you so much for being on Milro Crypto. I think there's a lot of alpha and wisdom in this and just it's really helpful to hear how you're navigating these markets. Uh where can we send people to find more of you and your work online?

>> Yeah, so our uh our quarterly letters are published on our Substack tagf fun.substack.com. Um we'll be posting our our next letter there in the coming weeks. So check that out. And then I'm on Twitter and and happy to chop it up with anyone. >> Well, Greg, I hope we can have you back on the show to catch up again soon. Thanks so much for being on Milk Road Crypto. >> Thanks, John. >> Thank you all for joining us. I hope you all learned something today. So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of Milk Road Crypto.

Thanks for being here, everyone. Bye. Thanks for listening to Milk Road. If you enjoyed the show, make sure you like and subscribe. And if you're struggling to find winners in the market, that's exactly what Milkroad Pro is built for. Our analysts have called some of the biggest winners early, and Pro lets you see what they're buying next, every trade they make, and the research behind every position. Check out Milkroad Pro at the link below. Everything you hear on Milkroad is forformational purposes only. These are our personal opinions, not financial advice, and we may own some of the investments we talk about. Always do your own research and make the decisions that are right for you. See you next time.