Bitwise on demand from countries and institutions
24 Jan 2025 · 39:16
Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, and Ryan Rasmussen, its head of research, join host Jay Hamilton on the Milk Road Show to lay out where new crypto demand comes from: countries, financial advisers and institutions. Hougan argues macro matters less than regulation and builder activity now, while the pair expect ETF flows in 2025 to exceed 2024 as the products mature and adviser worries about regulation ease. They count nine countries holding Bitcoin, mostly through seizures, and expect that number to at least double.
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GM good morning welcome to the milroad show The Daily crypto show that's as satisfying as waking up before your alarm I'm your host Jay Hamilton and today we're joined by the bitwise boys we got Matt Hogan CIO at bitwise and Ryan rmon the head of research back on the show if you guys don't know bitwise one of the largest crypto funds has one of the has a big ETF these guys know all about what is happening on the trafi and the crypto world in the intersection there Larry thinkink said 500 to 700k bitcoin on Bloomberg just yesterday we're going to talk about that talk about the Trump effect shortterm long-term impacts of the regulatory shift that is coming what to expect from ETFs in 2025 we talked yesterday with
James about that and now we're going to talk about that with the bitwise boys and then also everybody is talking about countries buying Bitcoin and corporations buying Bitcoin well what's actually happening though how many countries are buying what do we expect to happen this year and in the future years we're going to dive into all of that myself and the rest of the milk Road team are constantly being asked for our opinion on tokens should I buy xrp is it too late to buy virtuals is there still opportunity for AI xbt well we wanted to make sure you had a quick and easy way to get all this information from us so the milro team has been cooking and they just launched the token Center the token Center is your One-Stop
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president launched a meme coin on salana the change in DC is not remotely priced in why did you tweet this what were thoughts yeah the the the experience I've been having because we're living in this thing where news breaks every few minutes is that people have sort of lost the plot we get worried when an executive order is delayed by a few hours or is you know is is slightly different than we expected and I want to find as many ways I can to remind people that there has been this systemic shift in the environment I mean what I wrote is literally true which is a few weeks ago the SEC held salana as an illegal Securities offering that ostensively it
wanted to eventually shut down and now the president of the United States is launching meme coins a on salana specifically it's impossible for people to realize how much the winds have shifted governments don't turn on a dime that's not something I've experienced in my lifetime this has turned 180 degrees and started going down the track in the opposite direction at a th000 miles per hour and I just thought this was a good example to remind people that that's what's happening which means as a long-term investor the thing to do is just either sit on your hands or buy more it's not to worry about these short-term things so that's why I put that out there yeah it's it's so true and I want to jump into later in the
show the salana ETF and your expectations there since we bring up salana but um Matt before we recorded I just want to dive a little bit more deeper into your sort of 30,000 foot view right now and you had some great takes on does macro really matter what really matters right now in this in this as you said daytoday world where it's like there is so much happening and we're I think all three of us probably would agree that we're just getting started in the news cycle and in the attention cycle that's coming to crypto and Bitcoin and all of our assets over the next year what what really matters right now yeah well I think I think macro since you mentioned it doesn't
matter right like there's an element as an investor that you're always fighting the last battle and the last battle in crypto was all about interest rates and inflation you know what was Jerome pal doing was the most important thing happening in the crypto Market what the latest CPI or PPI we stood on edge waiting for that that defined our week or month or quarter now who cares the FED lowers by 25 basis points who cares the US is establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve the FED raises rates by 25 basis points who cares Larry finin says bitcoin's going to half a million dollars or Beyond you know uh I don't know the CPI comes in2 percentage per cents hot because there was a automobile
manufacturing issue who cares right salana is no longer in the regulatory dogghouse ethereum has lost a little bit of its regulatory remote the world's largest banks are building on crypto those things are aund times bigger than these 25 basis point things that we used to worry about so I think the game has just shifted what matters now is what we see out of the White House what we see out of Congress and importantly what we see out of venture capitalists and Builders I'm betting that we're entering this golden age of crypto where we're going to see a million new entrepreneurs building serious projects openly on blockchains and traditional companies building serious projects on blockchain that's what I'm tracking and I've just
sort of discarded uh Jerome pal he can do what he wants to do in the corner he can play with his toys but there's a bigger game of foot uh I think in crypto and that's what I'm focused on yeah it's it's very I mean Al the macro situation is also very difficult to understand right now too it it is never been so it doesn't seem nothing seems to make sense anymore on the macro side basically right you know so I think even trying to understand it it it it's almost reassuring to just say okay maybe I can actually just leave that to the side for a minute I think that's so right because if you think about something like inflation there are these massive inflationary forces looming on the horizon right tariffs and onshoring and
nearshoring which could dramatically impact inflation and then there are these massive deflationary potential forces like dogecoins uh I mean like Doge the the department of governmental officialy and um and potential recession and Europe in crisis and so it's pulling at both sides which means it's impossible to forecast and I really strongly think that you can keep your eye on global monetary liquidity you can keep your eye on deficits those still matter on the edges but mostly that's not where the game is being fought right now the game right now is crypto specific factors and Regulation and app development and usage and that's what I would focus on first
and foremost for you guys in the seats that you sit in have you seen any change in flows or interest from institu or or who have you seen change from since maybe either since Trump got elected or since the inauguration yeah absolutely I'm happy to take this one and pass it pass it to you Matt to to fill in the gaps here uh both Matt and I spend a ton of time on the road talking to Wall Street whether those are financial advisors family offices hedge funds we spent a lot of time going out and talking about crypto with professional investors and the change from four months ago to two months ago to today has just been a
tectonic shift in the appetite in the attitude towards crypto there's this great drisking that has occurred since Trump won the election and now that Trump's in office and you see that unfolding with things like Gary gendler resigning and Hester Pierce being appointed to lead the sec's crypto task force you see things like you know Bitcoin bow Senator Lumis being appointed as the chair of the digital asset committee earlier this morning so there's real traction and real things happening beneath the surface and I think that has led to this absolute shift in how advisor financial advisors and money managers and investors are thinking about crypto it's no longer ah
what is bitcoin I need to understand every element of what a smart contract is or what a blockchain is or how mining Works before I even think about investing it's now shifted to how should I put it in my portfolio what is the sizing 1% 2% 5% and then what tool should I use should I use a momentum based strategy should I manage it more actively should I just buy and hold an ETF and I think that is just representative of this massive drisking that's happened and that's just fueling the fire for demand for crypto and fueling the the winds behind Wall Street coming into the crypto industry yeah I completely agree you know the change I've experienced I was on a call
yesterday with a $30 billion advisory firm which we've been talking to for three years and for three years they were interested in crypto they love talking about it and they love talking about it and they love talking about it and now they're moving forward to allocating it's like your friend who always you know threatens to move to another city for years and years you're like whatever and then they make an offer on a house in Austin and you're like oh my God you're actually leaving that's what's happening now now and I'm having those meetings every day and if I'm having those meetings every day other people are as well I think we're going to see a flood of assets it's why I think there'll be record inflows to ETFs this year I think we might get to something like a hundred billion dollars next year I really think we're in the
sort of exponential growth phase of institutional demand uh for crypto yeah I'm glad you brought up flows because if if we're going to stop looking at macro then I want to look at flows like that's the number one thing that I want to see is like where are the flows is coming from what is happening and obviously the ETFs are a big part of flows for Bitcoin and eth maybe eth not so much for most of the year but it ended the year fairly strongly which is great to see let's let's chat about your expectations for the ETFs and for flows what do you think we could see and I would love to talk about Bitcoin eth but then I'd also love to talk about what do you guys think is coming I know you guys have some applications for some other ETFs that haven't been approved yet would love to
talk about flows this is one area that we spend a lot of time thinking about uh at bitwise it's very core to our business you know for for Bitcoin and really for ethereum ETFs we expect there to be tremendous flows this year there's this phenomenon that happens with ETFs or maybe it's not even a phenomenon it's just this pattern that happens with ETFs where traditionally year one is the slowest year for asset flows then year two asset flows get larger year three and so on it's kind of this the liquidity in AUM beg gets more liquidity in a so I think for Bitcoin and for ethereum these ETFs having existed last year I think we're going to see exceedingly more flows in 2025 than in 2024 not just because this pattern is
likely to repeat itself but because there is so much pent up demand still from money managers who haven't been able to access Bitcoin in ethereum or haven't yet made those allocations because their commit their their risk committees or due diligence committees or investor committees just haven't kind of turned the turned the faucet on or the uh the green light for them to do that so I think that's one Avenue of demand we also have corporations that are buying Bitcoin maybe they'll allocate through ETFs maybe it doesn't make sense for governments to allocate through ETFs but maybe they do so there's all these sides of Demands coming into ETFs that we think flows will certainly accelerate in 2025 obviously that's great for price because that's demand coming into an asset and buying spot Bitcoin spot ethereum for
spot other Assets Now I would just add on other crypto etps of course there's this compliance uh devil at our at our company on my shoulder saying I can't talk to and Matt can't talk to specific ETP uh filings but more broadly clearly there is a different view from this regime around what assets or how crypto assets are categorize whether they are these illegal Securities offerings or if they are digital Commodities or digital assets that we should allow investors to access through you know very popular traditional Vehicles like ETP so I think we'll see a significant uptick in the number of ET TPS that go live this year you've already seen an avalanche of ETP applications from a number of different
issuers across a number of different assets and strategies and I think that's just the tip of the iceberg in the first few days since this regime change has happened and that we're going to see more and more products uh be be applied for and filed for and ultimately come to Market this year and we'll see which ones have demand and which ones won't not all of them will be winners not all of them will be as successful as the the Bitcoin etps or as the ethereum etps have been in their first few months but certainly there's demand for all kinds of different products that's how it works in other Industries and I don't expect it to be any different in the crypto industry yeah yeah I think that's right just to add a few notes on top of that we had a billion dollars in flows
into the Bitcoin ETFs over the last two days not bitwise but as an industry a billion dollars in two days we had 150 million into ethereum ETFs just like the the Not Dead Yet Parrot uh those things are going to be uh very significant in the future I agree with Ryan we're likely to see a large number of etps launch we don't really know that yet specifically in terms of when and where because conversations are just opening up with the staff but you have to imagine that the windows are open one thing that I think will be interesting and maybe surprising people might imagine that if you looked at the market cap of every asset it would get a proportional amount of flows I don't think that's what's going to happen
there's some large cap crypto assets that are effectively zombie coins which no one is interested in allocating to I suspected those ETFs launch no one will buy them because there's no approximate reason and then there are assets that are really emergent that people are excited about and I think those would attract significant flows probably in excess of their market cap so I think you need to put a little bit of sort of like your Crypton native expertise when you're estimating flows I don't think it's going to be a linear relationship which I think many people soon that's great okay let's talk about demand so and I'd love to break get down into different categories maybe and I don't know which category or how you
guys want to approach this but like the categories in my mind are countries or Sovereign funds the corporations I find very interesting because I don't think many people talk about that and then I would say more like the private wealth the institutional wealth that sort of those feel like the three C are those the three categories of demand that are most significant to look at right now yes those are the three Horsemen of insatiable demand that is right yes okay you've always got the greatest one miners okay let's let's let's go through let's go through those categories let's start with countries and let me pull up uh your guys Bitcoin arm race uh visual because it's so fantastic uh so for those listening on the podcast I've got
a a visual up on screen which shows the Bitcoin Holdings by country so how many countries hold Bitcoin right now nine countries hold Bitcoin today okay and where are we at where where do you think we're going in whatever time frame you guys however you guys think about this I mean so today nine countries hold Bitcoin majority of the Bitcoin held by by the nine countries on the map here some of which are are huge sums right the US owns nearly 200,000 Bitcoin China owns nearly 200,000 Bitcoin and some of these countries old a hold a small amount right some own 6050 Bitcoin but most of this Bitcoin has been acquired through law enforcement seizures right
so you can think of events like uh Mount gaau or Silk Road where where assets have have been seized by the government through different law enforcement actions right but this doesn't account for additional purchases that we expect governments to start making as early as 2025 and then over the long term many years down the road so I think you know where this is going is that the number of countries owning Bitcoin at least doubles this year probably more than 20 by the end of the year there's this you know game theory that plays out when one major country starts doing it all the others will race to do it to catch up and you've seen you know the rumor mill churning around all these different major countries that are exploring the idea whether it's Asia Europe or North
America and I think once one makes the first step the race is on so I think this number explodes dramatically over the next few years it's important to to also think about the fact that these are huge amounts of Demand right it's not buying one Bitcoin or two Bitcoin you're talking about buying billions of dollars worth of bitcoin from a bunch of different different countries and that adds up very very quickly so that demand we expect to grow significantly uh over time and it also removes this fear of the government whether it's the us or China or another government dumping the Bitcoin that they currently own right so it removes this kind of selling fear from the market and then adds this real amount of significant Demand on the buys
side and that to me is just one of those uh as Matt said you know Horsemen of demand coming into crypto yeah I I love that if I can add one more thing Jay on top of that the other fear it removes to me or at least really limits is the risk of governments Banning Bitcoin I know when I moved full-time into crypto people would ask me these questions what about criminal use what about environmental use aren't there you know you can't buy coffee with it and uh I felt like Neo in The Matrix like it was so easy to deflect all of these challenges but then what if governments ban it and my mind would go well that would be bad and I actually couldn't see to the point how Bitcoin would come around to co-opt governments
and it felt like the the last existential risk was a coordinated government Banning across multiple countries maybe across the G20 that would have been really bad would force Bitcoin underground and somehow because Bitcoin is on this incredible journey it found a way to co-opt governments if that happens in 2025 I think you know you know I think it's straight to many hundreds of thousands or Millions become within views so I think it's really important from that perspective as well of eliminating that last existential risk it's it just feels like what's the odds that this doesn't happen what's the odds that countries don't adopt because everybody is talking about it as if it's
a done deal it's just when is really nobody knows when is it this year is it next year is it four years from now don't know but is there any chance that this doesn't happen yeah yeah of course I mean it should happen right because in the best interest because you have this element of Pascal's wager where it's a a lowcost option and if you don't participate you're really uh longterm in a bad place and so I have a very high degree of confidence that will happen but but politics is driven by people and people are weird and um it's not 100% Ryan May disag he may think it's 100% he can shut me down but um I think it's going to
happen and I think it's going to happen fast but of course there's there's a chance it doesn't materialize in the way we think you know Trump says we'll keep our Bitcoin we're not buying more uh and then our countries are like ah so that could happen I don't think it's my base case I don't know what you think Ryan yeah I agree with that it's not I don't think it's 100% right few things in life are 100% I think it's somewhere above 75% chance that this happens I do feel strongly that there's a high level of impatience across the crypto industry right now at least that's what it feels like on crypto Twitter right this this news drops this morning uh or or Senator Lumis tweets you know big news coming
soon and people immediately assume it's a strategic Bitcoin reserve and then immediately say we're going to zero when it's just news that she's the digital asset committee chair uh and then Trump's going to sign an executive order and host a a call with El Ador people immediately say this is it this is strategic Bitcoin reserve and if if I was a betting man I would bet that it's probably not it's probably something around immigration and it's unlikely that the the goto Market uh marketing strategy or PR strategy would be to announce a strategic bit Bitcoin reserve and then hold a call with El Salvador to talk about it doesn't really I think that much sense I'm not a marketing guy for what it's worth but it doesn't make that much sense to me so I think there's this just level of impatience out there
that it needs to happen this week or even this month for it to matter and I think that's just factually incorrect I think it's a very high likelihood that it does happen and again I think it's going to happen at some point this year even if it doesn't happen this year it's a long-term tailwind and a long-term funnel of insane demand into a supply constrainted asset and with that framing it's hard to to think of a world where it's it's bearish yeah yeah completely I mean it's it's very clear that the the Tailwinds without that happening this year are very strong we don't even necessarily need that to happen this year all of the prediction shows that we did which we had both you guys on for as well over uh the holidays all everybody
was very bullish Bitcoin without any sort of countries buying so this as you said Matt I think this is if this happens this year okay now it might change some of our projections and some of our predictions as to where we could go in the in the short term but it does sort of feel inev at this point and so if you just step back and say you know what I'm going to I'm going to keep buying and I'm going to hold and I'm not looking to trade keep this simple like long term this is an obvious massive demand Catalyst okay let's talk about corporations and institutions uh buying what's thoughts there and how Trump and regulation is affecting that yeah um I can do corporations because this is of
all these of these three categories this is the one where people are most skeptical and people think just micro strategy but there are a few important things I would point out one it's really not just micro strategy uh there's 70 publicly traded companies there are hundreds of private companies including bitwise that keep Bitcoin on its Bal on their balance sheet and those 70 companies is going to become in my view a couple hundred this year I don't often talk about Arcane accounting laws but I'm going to here because I think it's important until January 1st of this year there was an accounting rule for publicly traded companies that if they bought Bitcoin it was quote unquote an intangible asset subject to impairment
testing which in English means when you bought it you would mark down the price you bought it and if the price ever fell you would mark it down and then if it fell again you would mark it down and you could never mark it back up so if you bought it at 50k and it went to 25k you marked it at 25k it ripped to 100 you had to hold it at 25k so in other words these 70 Pioneers yeah believe it or not this is true these 70 Pioneers put it on their balance sheet knowing it would only ever cause them to have lower earnings and lower asset values than in the past they were still willing to do it and that changed January 1 there's a new fby accounting
rule so now it's marked in their all their genius now it's marked at the value of Bitcoin imagine that took them years to get to that so now if someone is bullish on bitcoin they can put it on their balance sheet when it goes up it adds to their earnings and adds to their asset value if you're skeptical of this trend just imagine that 70 publicly traded companies were willing to put their necks on the guillotine for an asset that can only go down in value what happens when that's no longer true what happens when the reputational risk around Bitcoin evaporates because the president is pro Bitcoin and Congress is pro Bitcoin that 70 is going to go to 700 is my guess for the same reason people buy Bitcoin companies are going to buy Bitcoin and the scale is
significant right remember there only 170,000 new Bitcoin produced every year that's the supply last year corporations bought something like 250 270 300,000 Bitcoin more than all the supply in this terrible accounting World they could be buying two three 4X the supply so I think this is a trend because people don't sort of understand this accounting Quirk that they dramatically undercount and I think it's going to be much bigger this year than people anticipate wow I I had no idea about that accounting rule that is so shocking and and and I mean what what a what a what a simple Catalyst I feel like Matt you always come out with these these
twerky rules that nobody else is paying attention to uh it makes me think about the the rule we talked about last time we had you on the show when you talked about how um oh I'm trying to remember the rule here was something about how uh crypto was managed in retirement funds maybe Ras I think it's notr in 401K plans yeah well right I'm a guy who loves to read the footnotes so um you know maybe that's my unique contribution to the space but these things really matter right this can unlock billions of dollars of demand the 401K thing can unlock hundreds of billions of dollars of demand and I've seen this happen in my past trafi life where small changes
in accounting or or obscure rules can unleash an asset and I just see it happening here and as you said not much discussion of it but I I do think it's a real game changer uh okay let's talk about the third horse institutions um and and the one thing that I just need to say that stands out to me about these three horse that I think is the difficult part to understand is I think everybody conceptually understands that yes these three players are going to buy Bitcoin and buy other cryptos as well the difficult to understand is like it's very difficult to understand how can they buy it when can they buy it what are like there's a lot of hurdles for all these it's not like you or I going to buy Bitcoin or going to buy crypto
all of these categories have to go through a lot of steps and a lot of time and maybe it's legislation if it's on the country side or maybe it's tax issues if it's on the corporate side or if it's on the institutional side it's probably all these like internal regulations and policies and the safety clients and the risk you can take and so like when we had James on yesterday he talked about how he thinks it could take up to three years for wealth advisers to be able to to recommend crypto assets to their clients uh which I was like and he was like we're only in year one so I was like who we still got time to go maybe as you talk about institutions if you could give us some context around where
we are and how how much more time or what would it take in order for these these flows to significantly start to increase I can I'm happy to take a stab at at institutions you know I think your conversation with James is accurate we're still in the very early Innings of a multi-year uh uh you know road to adoption from these institutions if anyone you know listening has worked a traditional asset manager I spent many years at a additional asset manager you just come around to to realize there are so many different teams and Department is involved in approving decisions ultimately at how the business moves forward and that is the exact way that that many of these large raas or large
asset managers or large wirehouses work when it comes to approving Bitcoin or crypto more broadly for their wealth managers and money managers to invest in so if you think about you know Bitcoin ETFs went live in January of last year they're about a year old ethereum ETFs are about six months old that's still very early in that due diligence and review and compliance process and it's not only reviewing you know should we allow them to invest in these assets and and then which product should we allow them to invest in they also then have to educate their money managers and go through internal education processes then their money managers need to educate their clients then they ultimately have to decide how should we allocate this and then build the model portfolios and then start allocating
right and the smaller companies can move a bit faster but most of the wealth in America is controlled by these giant asset management companies that just move slow it's like these giant you know cruise ships trying to to turn course and adopt this new this new asset class and it's just something that's going to take time so I think you know we speak to many advisers who are associated with larger you know wire houses or larger firms that that want to invest and their clients want them to invest but they just can't invest yet and so I think that's going to be a multi-year adoption I think we're further ahead today than we were a year ago but I think we're still you know in the in the you know I don't know first 10 percentile or first 20 percentile of what that adoption
looks like then the last thing I'll add and then mat and mat and fill in uh here where where there's holes in what I'm saying but I think something that's largely misunderstood across the wealth management space is that the next generation of money managers are all in on crypto they're not for the most part skeptical of crypto and so what we often see in these conversations with institutions with professional investment firms is there's a younger generation of money managers who aren't the decision makers but are pushing forward the adoption of crypto and as they grow in their career as they spin out and launch their own raas and their own firms as they get more and more assets through this generational
transfer of wealth as all of that happens you're going to start seeing a huge uptick in the adoption from institutional investors and I think that hasn't even really begun yet because most of those uh you know earlier in their in their career wealth managers uh aren't the decision makers yet but slowly they will become the decision makers and slowly we'll see a huge spike in adoption yeah that's such a good point uh I think that's really true you know I saw that in my previous career in ETFs and all the like analysts who were just coming up are now running these giant asset managers that are all in on ETFs and it's gone from a hundred million to you know a 10 trillion dollar industry the the other thing I would point out that I think people Overlook
all the people who bought Bitcoin ETFs last year are going to buy more uh there's this assumption that people like invested once and they're done but ask yourself think about how much Bitcoin you own today did you buy all of that on day one no of course not you dipped your toe in the water I think if literally no new investor bought a Bitcoin or ethereum ETF in 2025 and it was only the people who bought in 2024 we would still have record flows I think they're going to double down and triple down on this asset and people Overlook that they assume it's just these people who haven't come in I agree that's massive and that's a decade long Trend but once people are in they all buy other assets
they buy more of the asset and I think that alone is a Tailwind that probably the market doesn't appreciate yeah it it seems so simple it's almost too simple which is why I don't I feel like we discount it we're we like to make things more complex than they should be I I feel like I just want to tell everybody like just just keep buying Bitcoin and don't you don't even need to listen to us anymore you don't need to listen just keep buying Bitcoin don't pay attention to anything else and just go about your business and check back in in 10 years and you'll be good and I'll be out of a job in the meantime um so here's here's one question on my mind how how many of these three Horsemen um or others that impact flows
in a big way are waiting for regulation like was was Trump launching a mem coin all that they needed I know that's not true regulation but it certainly is an indication of the type of Regulation that we can expect like or is there a lot that are on the sidelines still and we need regulation first and if that's the case what do you guys expect to see in terms of Regulation this year I know you don't have a crystal ball but like do you think it do you think we're going to get it quickly here or do you think you know this is government it's a big cruise ship it's going to take time we still have to wait six to 12 months yeah it's a great question maybe I'll take a shot and Ryan can build if I think about the value of any crypto asset let's take
ethereum there's an element that's speculative and an element that's fundamental there's expectations that ethereum will be more useful in the future and there's actual day-to-day fees flowing through the ethereum network and billions of dollars of users I think the speculative element is being Unleashed before we get the regulation we don't need regulation for people to realize that salana is now open to more use cases than it was two weeks ago we don't need regulation to know that the you know Bank of America is talking at Davos about building on blockchains and they weren't two weeks ago so you can unleash that speculative element I still think we're early in that the fundamental piece where we start to see
cash flow and we start to see users and we start to see new applications that still needs regulatory clarity right because if you're building a new D5 protocol can you have a fee switch I don't know right if you're launching a new blockchain what percentage can be held by insiders versus Outsiders I don't know right if you want to trade a securitized uh asset in a tokenized format through a broker dealer those can't exist right now how will that happen I don't know so we need that regulatory progress to unleash the fundamental aspect but you're going to see people rate the speculative asset over the next few months and I think weate it substantially higher as they realize to go back to where we started that the shift has been really
significant yeah I I agree with with Matt there I would add one data point from a survey that we run every year where we go out and Survey financial advisors on their attitudes and approach to investing in crypto now we ran this survey post election heading into 2025 and one interesting data point there when it comes to regulatory uncertainty is that it's actually still very significant it's significant barrier to entry for a lot of professional investors and financial advisors right so in past surveys over past years for many years in a row regulatory uncertainty has remained a barrier to adoption for 60 to 65% of advisers they said this has been the main reason by far that we haven't adopted crypto or
Bitcoin in our portfolios model portfolios client portfolios now that number dropped to 50% this year so we did see a big drop you saw 20% 30% drop Eur year in the regulatory uncertainty being a vared entry but still 50% of financial advisers view this regulatory uncertainty as a bar as their top obstacle or top barrier to enter the market so I do think as we get more and more clarity as we see a pivot from the SEC as we see you know more of these actions that the early actions we've seen by some Regulatory Agencies start to to play out and and trickle down to many of the way these firms and these advisers think about crypto I do think that that will reduce the barriers to
entry and we'll start to see more and more come into this space I think it's really important slightly less important than prior years or less concerning than prior years but still you know the number one obstacle for financial advisors is this regulatory uncertainty that we've been living in for literally decade yeah and it I mean I I it's pretty clear that we're going to get clarity what that Clarity looks like don't know uh when it will come also don't really know I think Trump is pretty motivated to move pretty quickly but is this top as a priority list who knows right I I don't I don't think crypto's number one as priority list that's for sure we haven't got any major executive orders yet and that's okay we don't need to be number one we're there and he is also surrounded by a lot of
support who are big into crypto and Tech acceleration so there's all the ingredients are there we'll just have to be patient which I don't want to be patient come on let's let's go now why not now agree agree gentlemen the bitwise boys pleasure to have you guys on the show today thank you so much for joining us everybody listening in if you don't follow Ryan and Matt on Twitter you've got to follow these guys they're great we'll link to them in the show notes we also will link to a couple of these guys reports that they put out recently because they've got so much great stuff coming out uh and uh yeah if you want to buy some ETFs not Financial advice but check out bitwise because they've got some great ETFs as well thanks for joining us today jents thanks for having us fun have an awesome Wicked
awesome day everybody we'll see you again tomorrow as always if you liked today's episode please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us you don't miss out on the next one there's also a link in the description to our free 5 minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh and if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game we're going to also leave a link for milk Road Pro you get access to our portfolio where you can see exactly what we are buying this is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto one final note this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice investing in crypto or any asset is
risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose thanks so much for listening in my friends have a wicked awesome day