Bitwise's Matt Hougan and Ryan Rasmussen on whether crypto is underpriced

Transcript

I think there's an underlying tremendously bullish market here that we keep messing up, right? We are reinventing money. We're reinventing intelligence. We're reinventing health. We're moving into space. These are the biggest markets I've ever seen entrepreneurs and innovators go after in my lifetime. What's up everybody? It's LG Set here and welcome to the Milkro Show, the daily crypto show that was hoping to sell in May and go away, but is totally going to get sucked back into the trenches through the entire summer. Today is May 5th, 2026. We're recording late on May 4th. Man, it feels good to see some green candles around here. And our guest today think that, well, I think they think that we're in a major uptrend. And all that good news we've been covering over the last several months is finally bearing fruit. We'll

get into why Bitcoin keeps moving up from here with two of our favorite guests, Matt Hogan and Ryan Rasmson from Bitwise. Today's episode is brought to you by Cape, the privacy first mobile carrier, and Feros, the layer 1 built for real. Matt, Ryan, another great episode on the docket today. This I I was so excited to talk to you guys. We We hung out in the darkness for months. 80K is a good number, >> right? [laughter] >> It's so beautiful. See the eight handle. It really is done with sixes and sevens. [laughter] >> I'm pretty excited about it.

>> Someone's got teenage kids saying six and seven. Uh anyway, or children of any kind or just spend too much time on the internet. Guys, I want >> all those things. all those things. Yeah. [laughter] Uh so is this so so Matt we've we've uh you know from a technical standpoint we've kind of come to this level a few times in in recent times uh in recent weeks and uh I feel like I've seen a lot of analysts professional and amateur an analyst tell us is like hey listen 80K like if we hold here and this is such obvious theory but it's like if we hold here it's good but don't get too excited. What do you think, Matt? Or was this a sustained rally here? Are we Did we finally did we actually bottom when we say we did? Or what's what what do

you how do you how do you interpret this? >> What I'd say is if we hold here, it's good. But don't get too excited, LG. That's >> You're just saying what I said. You can't just say what I said. [laughter] >> No, I think look, I think that's right. Look, I I think a couple things are true. [laughter] Um, one, I think we can have relatively high confidence that $60,000 was a really fundamental bottom. We seem to have sustainably pushed beyond that without too much hype getting into the market and we've talked about it here before. I think we're in this general channel between 60 and 80. The question is do we push above 80 into sort of the next channel or do we retreat back and try into the 70s? The answer I think lies in what happens to risk assets in general and then what's

happens with the clarity act in particular. I think if we see the Clarity Act continue the recent trend where it's been looking more and more likely >> and we see risk assets at least hold steady then I think we could move into the next sort of 80 to 100 channel. If we see risk assets get crushed because maybe things in Iran turn for the worse or we see the Clarity Act hopes fade and we go back below like 50 to 40% odds, then it feels to me like we'll we'll head back into the into the trenches.

But I do think that $60,000 was the um was the end of winter and I think we probably go higher from here. I just don't know. I think it's conditional on those two events, whether it's straight up or whether we reset and gather a little bit more base. >> Ryan, why isn't this war affecting the economy at all anymore? >> Well, I think it's certainly affecting the economy. I think in >> Okay, the economy, the the the price of everything. [snorts] >> I think investors become increasingly desensitized to these kind the the chaotic nature of a Trump presidency and a Trump economy and Trump markets.

There's all of these short-term risks that develop and then they get blown out of proportion and then the next major catastrophe happens and then that gets blown out of proportion. You just kind of continue to move forward and when you when you zoom out and look longterm there's an incredible number of mega trends globally both crypto and non-crypto AI other sectors that are pushing markets higher over the long term. I think investors start filtering out the noise the more noise there is when it comes to Trump. >> Yeah. Can I build on that because I feel this really strongly. I think there's an underlying tremendously bullish market here that we keep messing up, right? We are reinventing money. We're reinventing

intelligence. We're re reinventing health. We're reinventing defense. Uh we're moving into space. These are the biggest markets I've ever seen entrepreneurs and innovators go after in my lifetime. Right? We all got excited about the internet. That was reinventing media. Who cares, right? This is intelligence work money space and life. These are much bigger markets. Who cares? Snapchat. Like, we got excited about Snapchat. You have to be kidding me, right? So, now we're going after these much bigger markets. I think the market would just be doing even better.

It's just people keep mucking it up. And I think the reason why we more or less quoteunquote ignore uh the nonsense is because the underlying thrum otherwise would be just so bullish. So I think it is slowing us down. I just think the uptrend is big enough that it can't keep us down completely. >> Matt, I'm pretty sure Snapchat made like $2 billion in Q4 or something like that. And that's more that's more than most crypto businesses. Okay. Like you can't you can't you can't dump on them. No, I actually I think Snapchat's actually an incredible business and uh and it stuck around and and and you make a very good point. I just meant that I just meant the narrowly. I should have kept it general. I didn't mean to get >> I meant generally reinventing media was

a big deal, but it is not as big a deal as reinventing intelligence or work or money or life. Those are just bigger >> or a lot of infrastructure or going to space or any of that kind of stuff. And that's kind of what we're the precipice of. >> I love Snap. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> Well, how does Go ahead, Ryan. Go ahead. >> Not only are we on the precipice of it, but all of these all of these mega trends and incredible innovations build on each other. Like, you can't advance space exploration without the the the AI boom that we're seeing. And you can't reinvent internet money if there's not a a world that is demanding that. And we're seeing that across agentic AI and

there's going to be a need for I can't believe I'm gonna say these words but intergalactic commerce if we are exploring space like all of these things are building on top of each other and so I think when you zoom out and you say here are the things that are going wrong shortterm here are the massive things that we're tackling long term those are what out the out the long-term items outweigh the short-term headwinds and I think that's why investors maybe hit a speed bump pull back a little bit they zoom out and they say oh we're headed in the right direction. I need to be exposed to this market, whether it's crypto, AI, healthcare, energy space, and then they come back in full steam ahead because this choppiness shortterm will settle out. We're approaching midterms. In a couple more years, we'll have uh you know, a new administration,

but these long-term mega trends will still be driving markets higher at that point in time. You don't want to be sidelined for that, whether it's crypto, AI, or any other sector. >> If you're not seeing this, you're trading blind right now. There are real moves happening behind the scenes that most people don't see until it's way too late. Inside Milkro Pro, you can track exactly what our analysts are buying, selling, and what's on their watch list before it moves. You can try it out for just a dollar for 7 days. The link is in the description. So, what do you guys say to somebody who is aware of all this, right? Cuz if you follow investing, like these these themes are are are pretty clear and we discussed them in Milk Road and other on some of our other shows, too. Um, but to somebody who looks at all that, and I

ask you guys this every time. I always challenge I always I you guys are such good defenders of the the crypto bull case. This is why I'm throwing it throwing you this direct challenge. They look at all that and they're like, "Yes, intergalactic commerce. I love that." And they say, "I love that more than just buying more crypto." How do you respond to that? because it does, you know, I think even just amongst the people that I know who are not uh deep like you guys, like we all are, they look at all that stuff, they're like, "Yes, like I did buy some SanDisk stock a few like a year ago and I'm up big and like glad I didn't stay in crypto." You know, that there's a less obvious case for crypto unless they listen to our show, which when you guys come on, you

make such a great case. But what I'm saying is that how do you how I guess what I'm asking you is how does crypto kind of fit into that narrative? You know what I mean? and and what how does it become part of that narrative as you guys paint such a great picture for like this gigab bowl run that we're at the start of? >> I'll say two things about that. First, you can like more than one thing at once. Like when you sit down to have dinner, it's okay to like the appetizer and the main and the dessert and have a nice glass of wine and some sparkling water and to love it all. That's all fine. Just cuz I'm excited about AI doesn't mean I'm any less excited about crypto. And then as any investor knows, these things go in seasons, right? this

outperforms and then that outperforms and then the other thing outperforms. If you can time it if you don't think you're late to buying SanDisk, then God bless you. Just do that. Just buy the specific thing that's going to go up the most tomorrow and then tomorrow rotate to the next thing. But I'm not good enough to do that. So my approach is just to own all the awesome things and let those rising tides move at different time periods. I think the thing that we forget because intelligence is such a big market and AI is such a big market is that money really is a very large market too right the little world that we're reinventing in crypto which is money and finance is one of the largest

addressable markets in the world and uh we're going to disrupt that in the same way that AI is disrupting sort of intelligence and robots will disrupt part of work and again It's it's totally fine to be excited about all of them. I do think it's taken some of the ebulence out of the crypto market because the hot money, the hot ball of money that used to rotate into various parts of crypto is no longer rotating. What's lifting crypto is a slow drip of institutional money. That means I think we're going to have longer cycles. They're going to be slower moving, less volatile. So, I don't think it's had no impact, but they can all eventually rise over time, which is I think what will happen. Mhm. I like that Ryan.

>> Yeah, I I mean I agree with Matt. When you think about the people that are controlling the the mass amount of capital that has not yet allocated to crypto, this they're relatively slow moving. And so they're eventually going to get there just like they're eventually going to have exposure to AI and space, but crypto takes them a little bit longer because they have this preconceived bias they don't already have against other sectors. But I know from spending time on the road at conferences meeting with big allocators. I was just at a conference this past week in New Orleans called Alpha on the Delta. Incredible name for a conference.

This is with large institutional allocators endowments pensions family offices, multif family offices. These firms are very interested in crypto. And to Matt's point, they're also very interested in AI and they're also very interested in biotech. But one thing that they strongly believe in is having diversified exposure across these different sectors. And so while they are excited about those other new fields that maybe are stealing attention away from crypto, they're also focusing on their getting up to speed in crypto and doing due diligence and understanding how should I allocate, which one should I allocate to? How do I invest in stable coins or tokenization? Or should I buy bitcoin? Those are questions that

they're continuing to ask. And that's the slow drip that Matt's talking about. It's going to happen. It just takes time. You want to be on the right side of the equation when it happens. >> It's a funny way to put it. Stealing attention away from crypto. I like that. I like we're so we're so like self-centered. And I don't mean that as a knock towards you, Ryan. I I say the same thing all the time where I'm just we're just like, "Why aren't you why don't you love crypto?" you know, [laughter] and somebody wants to talk to me about investing and they tell me about whatever things, semiconductors and stuff and I'm like, >> "Yeah, yeah, but you know what's going on here though?" Like, "Let me tell you, you know, the latest news." And they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't care."

You know, but it's I defin totally feel the same way that I'm just like, "Wow, you're stealing my attention. You're stealing the spotlight is off this amazing thing that we love and we know is going to do super well." Um, and that's definitely how it feels for us, but I think it's you [snorts] step out of that and it's it's it's kind of a funny thing to think about. Uh Ryan, I do want to ask you since you've been on the road and um at events with amazing names. What else have you been seeing? What else what else have that, you know, you and the institutional team, what else have you guys been have? What kind of conversations you guys been having? I always love hearing this from you guys. One of the only people that come on the show and actually share this with us. Uh

what these large institutions are actually asking you and what they're looking for kind of going ahead into the rest of the year and next year. >> Yeah. So, so been on the road for the past four weeks straight at a number of different conferences with different audiences and there's been three trends that I've observed over this period. The first is that wealth managers love indexes. And the reason I bring that up is exactly what you were just talking about LG that the the attention that they have or the attention span they have for crypto or different asset classes is limited. They're at these conferences and while they're meeting with Bitwise for a half hour, they're also meeting with 15 other firms over a two-day period and trying to attend panels and trying to answer their Slack and email. And so what they love and

what we're seeing increasing demand for is just broad-based passive exposure to crypto. They can tell their clients like, "Hey, you're exposed to it and yes, you own Bitcoin. Yes, you own Ethereum. Yes, you own Salana or XRP if the clients ask for those things." And you can sleep well at night knowing that you have that exposure and financial advisors or wealth managers can say yes, I've done my job. So demand for indexing and passive exposure to crypto is one trend. >> Cool. >> Another trend is for income on idle crypto assets. We're seeing an increasing amount of Bitcoin whales or Ethereum whales or crypto asset, you know, XYZ whales who want to put their holdings to work and they want yield, whether that's through staking or

through generating out, you know, yield through options strategies uh or a combination of the two things. And so we're seeing increasing demand for that. You can think of family offices or multif family offices that have uh that their anchor is a multi is is a bitcoin whale and that bitcoin whale is long for the next 10 to 20 years doesn't plan to sell but wants to put that capital to work and so they come to us and say what can you guys do at bitwise to help us generate yield on this bitcoin bitcoin and they do the same thing for ethereum xp and other crypto assets so indexing is one trend yield is another trend I'll say the third trend is they're just asking for a crypto market update and the questions that they're asking show that they don't spend a lot of time

paying attention to crypto. They're like, "Oh yeah, isn't there some piece of legislation that is like getting attention from banks or something like that?" Or, "Oh yeah, when did did they launch Salana ETFs yet?" Right? Like they ask these questions and you just realize that we focus on this each and every day 24/7 365. We've talked about clarity so many times this year. We look at the poly market every single day. They don't even know the name of the act. They just saw some headline about the the banking com lobbies fighting crypto legislation and they just want to know what's happening. How do I think about it and what does it mean for the long term? And so those are the trends that we're seeing and to me those are all three headed in the right direction.

6 months ago we weren't seeing these kinds of trends. They were really focused on oh didn't crypto just like wipe out and just like go isn't it headed towards zero? Now they're actually interested in how do I think about it? How do I put my assets to work? How should I allocate? what's your thesis to the end of this year and and over the long term? >> And when they ask you about the crypto market, you just you just send them one of our podcasts together, right? That's what they like, listen to this. This is this is here's my thoughts. Here are Matt and nice thoughts. >> The episode and I say if you wait till the end, there's always going to be some Poly Market Alpha. [laughter] >> That's you want to learn about Clarity Act, just listen to the last three minutes of every single one of our

episodes together. >> And also, you want to learn about Josh Shapiro, potential potential president in 2028. That's that's where you could do that. Matt, how about you? Is there on I feel like you guys have both been traveling so much. Conference season, I feel like a similar >> Yeah, the the only thing I'd add to that is just how much the Overton window has shipped has changed over the last year. I remember, you know, for the first six years of Bitwise, we were like struggling to talk to people about a 1% allocation to Bitcoin. Remember the whole get off zero concept, 1% of your portfolio, if you lose it, you're only down 1%. That was like six years of repeating this story. And then Charles Schwab comes out with a video that says

two to 7%. Which 7% is above what Bitwise has historically said for most people, which is which is 1 to 5%. And that has just changed uh the conversation at these conferences that I go to. like some combination of that and what Morgan Stanley is doing and what Wells Fargo is doing, Goldman Sachs is doing. Like there's just it's been normalized so much that we've completely shifted from this like well maybe this crazy thing for 1% to like ah why don't we put 5% of our portfolio in it and just shrugging our shoulders.

It's it's really remarkable to me how much it's changed. >> And that's le it makes it way less of a risk asset, doesn't it? >> It completely does and it completely is. Um, >> and it's just really remark like sometimes we forget it because we've been down in the in the in sort of the doldrums of the 60 to 80 channel, but it is really dramatically changed, right? It's it's become completely normalized and we've just become almost inured to that. Uh, which which when I go out on the road, it just really strikes me how much more welcoming people are and the the the size of the allocation that they're considering has really stuck with me.

>> Oh, wow. The size. Okay, cool. Nice. That's that's that's cool. That's good to hear this. There's some more maybe some more buys in the pipeline. Or I mean there's a lot of buys in the pipeline. You know what I mean? But that's cool. That's cool. That's great. That's great that people are looking at that way. Your phone [music] carrier knows more about you than your best friend does. Where you go, who you call, when you sleep, and they're selling all of it. AT&T, [music] Verizon, T-Mobile, they've all been caught leaking data or cashing in on it. And your VPN, your encrypted messaging app, they can't fix what's broken at the network level. That's where Cape comes in. Cape is America's privacy first mobile carrier. Same premium coverage you'd expect, built with privacy from day one. Your phone's network identifier rotates every 24 hours, so you look like a different

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[music] talking parallel execution for serious throughput, compliance baked in from day one, and infrastructure that actually connects onchain and off-chain systems. They've got a $10 million incubator [music] backing builders who want to make real a reality. Join the Atlantic Ocean test net [music] and start building at milkroad.com/faros network. Uh Matt, you also pointed out a few other things um that have happened the last couple weeks that and again, you know, I kind of I threw this out there in the intro that it's like I feel like most of the episodes I do with you guys, we're covering a lot of the great news um the institutional news, the institutional adoption news. Whenever I do a show with my co-host John Gillan, we do the same thing where he's just like listing off every every week. He's like, "Listen, you're not even This morning he told me I was burying the

lead because then he then listed off like five major institutional moves that have been made in crypto in the last week alone. Um, so and and Matt, you were pretty keen on on talking about the ones from Meta and Door Dash, which are not even this isn't even like the Schwabs and the Fidelities, right? This is these are these are just consumer brands, you know, or consumer brands with huge online like databases of people moving into stable coins. >> That's exactly right. Yeah, there have been so many big things. Um, yeah, these two really caught my eye. There's this this thing about stable coins, which is they're $300 billion today and everyone's like they'll get to $3 trillion and we'll be using stable coins instead of our Visa card. But no one ever explains how we go from DGEN's

trading with stable coins to them my grandmother using it instead of her Visa card, right? We don't talk about that bridge. And we had these two pieces of news that I think gave me a view. Um, one was that Door Dash talked about paying uh its Dashers via stable coins on the Tempo blockchain, right? And the other was that Meta said it was going to start paying creators in two countries, eventually 160 countries using USDC on Polygon and Salana. And what I love about these is it points out exactly how we get to the mainstream, which is we start with the edge cases. If you think about Door Dash's business, they have these employees that come and go over short periods of time in like 40

countries around the world where they have very tangential relationships with them. They're not onboarding them with a month-long onboarding process and paperwork the way we do when we hire someone. They're like gig workers, right? How do you pay a globally distributed group of gig workers in a quick way? Well, stable coins make that push button easy. Same thing with content creators, right? Globally distributed. How do you pay them in a quick easy button way? Stable coins are a nice solution. So, of course, that's how it starts. But then you can imagine having millions of people who get used to stable coins in this venue and that's how we start to get into the mainstream.

So I just you know those are such big brands rolling these things out and uh we used to have a few of these stories. We used to have Starlink sort of paying some people in stable coins, but now we're starting to see like multiple of these stories each week. And it just sort of painted a road that I could draw to the end point where stable coins are as normal as debit cards. And uh I really I really like those two stories. >> I like that too. I think that you know I'm very curious to know how the nuts and bolts look, you know, like that's like what is that great news and like what is it how does it actually manifest, right? Is it going to be something one thing that you guys have in the United States for some reason we don't have in Canada is cash app? Um

there's a really easy way to pay other people, right? And I feel like that's, you know, even that concept has already laid the >> the bones for how these apps, these, you know, some cases trillion dollar companies are going to be able to use this stuff. And and it almost seems like a no-brainer. The way you described it, Matt, that's just like, listen, you have these gig workers in 40 different countries. That's a logistical nightmare, right? and yeah and and they're they're doing microtransactions every day, right? there's a payment from the, you know, from the food vendor and there's the tip and all that, you know, all the search charge, all that kind of stuff, right? So, um, moving that to stable coins makes a lot of sense. Is that is that So, I think the metal one they announced that they would be using

USDC and Door Dash is working with Tempo. Does Tempo have their own stable coin? I actually don't know. >> I actually have no idea. Yeah. But yeah, >> is this but uh but Matt, what I wanted to ask you or Ryan as well um we ask this all the time, right? Is that like when you see these kinds of things, >> what you know from the investor standpoint, are you is that does it make you more bullish on a Meta or on a Circle or on a Bitcoin? You know what I mean? Like and the obvious one is like, well, you should buy Circle because they're using USDC, but it's not that I don't think it's that that specific, right? like where where do you kind of look for the value to acrew over time >> from this adoption right outside of you know we as I ask you guys this every

single time >> I [snorts] would buy circle I think in some sense it is that simple uh right they're going to use this circle benefits from it we can we can sort of uh uh take the easy approach and just buy circle I think that's the next thing I would buy is like defi or bitcoin because the thing about stable coins is they put you one jump away from the rest of crypto uh once you have stable coins, your probability of using DeFi, I think probably goes up a 100 millionfold. And so I would look at even some of the isolated unloved DeFi protocols out there that are trading at really low valuations and find those attractive in a world where there are 100 million or a billion stable coin users. Um I don't

know if Brian has it. I mean the other obvious answer is like buy Salana or buy Polygon, right? those are direct beneficiaries, but I think you can you can go one step further uh into into DeFi, >> right? So, hope that a lot of those people that are going to eventually be using stable coins and putting more of their money on chain will then be like, well, what else can I do with this money now that I have it on chain and be like, well, look at this amazing DeFi infrastructure that exists here that has been developed for years. >> Yeah. Hey, did you know you could earn yield on your stable coin, >> right? Yeah, that is different from, hey, you should buy some stable coins and then earn yield on them and you're like, I'll just put it in the bank.

>> But if you're getting paid stable coins and you're like, you can instantaneously earn yield on them, then all of a sudden you're in uh Morpho or you're in a or you're like you're in a DeFi protocol, right? Uh you're in a vault. So, I think that's what I mean when I say like this is this is a huge push for the DeFi ecosystem is it just brings you so much closer to taking that step and they're all going to be marketed to and maybe even DeFi protocols will market through Meta to get to the people that it's paying. Like, it's very easy to see how that ecosystem uh blows out from there.

So, that's that's how I would approach it as an investor if I had a long-term time horizon. >> Is there is there a world as well, Matt? And Ryan, I want to hear from you because I haven't heard from you in a bit. Um, is there a world as well where like let's just say let's just skip ahead and you've got this hypothetical like Meta gives you a wallet, right? And they've got their USDC loaded up on Salon and Polygon and that's for anybody listening that's why Matt mentioned those two. Those are the two um uh uh blockchains that Meta has announced they will use for their creator stable coins uh payments. Is there a world where Meta is like okay you've got this wallet? Obviously Meta is going to eventually want you to do all this stuff in Meta with your stable coins, right? like buy things on

marketplace and like sign up for these apps and all this different any other kind of payment you need to make. Is there a world too where Meta wants to be some kind of bank, right? Where they're like, "Okay, listen like you know, you don't don't just put $100 in your stable coins so you could buy some or or I guess you're a creator. I think about Door Dash, but you just stop buying your marketplace stuff, but also like why don't you put all your money here and earn some juicy yield, right?" And that's is that is that something even possible for these companies? I mean, I think they're regulatory challenges, but that direction is definitely possible. Right.

>> Right. Okay. That's kind of that's how I'm trying to tie those dots together. >> Yeah. Apps and they're going to get them. >> Yeah. Exactly. Like they don't want you to leave their ecosystem. So the more uh integrations they can make whether it's with circle or with salana or with polygon or with defy app xyz or a vault curator right with well maybe they integrate with morpho and then you're holding these traders are holding the stable coins and then they just can choose to deposit them into a high yield USDC vault while they're not using them right and then uh the process of paying for that good on the Facebook market place is as easy as one click of a button But then it withdraws money from the vault, pays for the good, you get

the right like it all starts to be integrated. So I think that is that's the the bullish thesis around these mega integrations from these gigantic networks is you now have stable coins and by uh connection defy and layer 1 blockchains and oracles and it's like everything tied into this immensely valuable network that everyone uses whether you're a Facebook user or an Instagram user or a WhatsApp user you're using Meta somewhere and if they're going to start rolling out stable coin that are easily accessible and integrated with DeFi or with vaults or with marketplaces. That's just going to expand the use of stable coins, the use of DeFi. And that is bullish for all of

the underlying infrastructure that the industry's been building for over a decade now. And that investors, you know, want to gain exposure to that kind of growth. They want it through equities, they want it through blockchains, they want it through DeFi. And I think that and they want it through Meta to, you know, otherwise Meta wouldn't be doing it. So, I think it's it's just incredibly bullish. That's what M Matt and I and I going back to we talked about at the beginning is like there's these long-term mega trends like stable coins that and and reinventing money that investors want to have exposure to and those that can sift through the short-term macro uncertainty and noise they want to have exposure to that and they just buy and hold and wait and so and you know historically that's been a really great approach to to investing in mega trends. Ryan, I have a

question about an altcoin. If you if you will, >> I will. >> How does chain link fit into all this? So, you guys you wrote you you tweeted about this. You guys wrote a a report recently, chain link in plain English. And what's funny is this morning I was recording with John. He was like, I really want to talk about chain link. And I was like, no, no, no, no, we can talk about other stuff, but like, well, we'll we'll do an al altcoin episode soon and talk about all these other tokens. And it's funny, then you guys put out this report chain link in plain English. So even kind of based on the thesis everything we just said in that lens Ryan like what I think for a lot of people who maybe have looked at chain link in the past they understand kind of

what it does a little bit what is the thesis for it in this going forward in all these kind of like long-term bull cases we're seeing the thesis behind chain link is that it's critical middleware infrastructure for all of these things that we keep talking about to work and to function to connect Meta with stable coins and for those stable coins to then relay play a price on chain and whether it's in a wallet or in a DeFi app and for those DeFi apps to then value the tokenized assets that their vault strategies are wrapped around and and so on and so on, all of that requires some piece most likely of chain links infrastructure.

Now whether it's their interoperability protocols, whether it is their data relayers, whether it's their compliance and uh and related software that they run, they have a different product suite that or a different product within their suite that almost every intersection of what we talked about today relies on and many of them rely on multiple of those of those products in their suite. And so the bullish thesis for chain link is that all of these things happen. Every asset in the world is tokenized. Stable coins grow from 300 billion to 5 trillion. We're using stable coins and crypto-based rails for payments and for borrowing and for lending and for trading and all of that requires software and infrastructure. And

Chainlink is a critical piece of that software. And so if you think those things are all going to happen, then the chain link network should become more valuable alongside that growth. Then you should want to invest in the the networks that increase in value over time. >> Wow. That's that's that's a what's in this paper? Is that basically what the whole paper says? I feel like I just quizzed you on it. >> I feel like I just quizzed you on it and you gave the class presentation, but it was only two minutes. [snorts] [laughter] >> That that's basically >> So wait, do I need to read this now or did you just tell me the whole thing? >> I told you the whole the only other thing that I would add is that they have an incredible market share because they were the first mover and they have an

insane advantage in that regard. There's not another space in the crypto stack perhaps besides Bitcoin itself where there's a specific network and piece of infrastructure that has as much market share and as much of a moat as chain link has. And that's I think one reason why people have slept on chain link for so long has always confused me. You would think over the past decade there would have been newcomers that have eaten their market share and they just really haven't. That just speaks to how dominant chain links uh chain links positioning in the space is and I think they'll hold on to a lot of that market share as this all grows over time.

>> Here's a dgen question for you. Does chain link suffer at all from its like it's like cult followers? Like because I remember when I joined crypto there was like chain link god and there the link marines and I was just like this is I was like I I don't even want to look at this thing cuz I think it's so strange and then I I became like a freak myself but not for chain link but for other things. I just wonder is that is that has that on the other side if you're building a brand my marketing brand is like dude you have like cults people like that is that is a moat that nobody else can just make up like you have freaks who love your thing you know >> how does that how does that kind of how does the community aspect factor in Ryan

>> I think it's a huge asset to chain link to have link marines and chain god and enthusiasts and evangelists who use the technology advocate for the technology and try to bring new uh new fans into the space. I mean, it's it's hard to find any kind of uh anything out there where like the the amount of fans you have advocating for your technology or your brand or whatever ends up hurting it in the long run. So, I think I think it's a positive uh and and we love the the Link Marines and uh and and think that they're pushing the the ecosystem forward.

>> Yeah. >> Awesome. Well, and they're going to show up in the comments. I guarantee it. >> [laughter] >> They're going to hunt this episode down. One last question for you guys about this report. Well, I just got to pull it up. Whose hands are these? Whose beautiful hands are those? Who has the nicest hands between the two of you? And Hunter, too. Who know who has the nicest hands? Everybody at Bitwise. >> That's a good question. I'm gonna I'm gonna bet Ryan. I'm gonna bet Ryan. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We took these Yeah, we took this photo. Uh [laughter] >> he's lived a nice life, you know.

>> Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say >> not worn down. >> Easy life. Yeah. No carpentry, nothing like Yeah, exactly. I'm not out in the yard much. [laughter] >> Oh, that's awesome. >> Um, guys, looking ahead, I mean, we have you guys on every two weeks, which is great, but what um obviously clarity is a big one coming up and it looks like there's something going on in the background. Love to kind of wrap this up with your thoughts on that and anything else that you guys are watching uh in the the classic sell and may go away month. >> Take it away, Ryan. Yeah, clarity is huge. I think May is the window for for clarity and that's not probably a surprise to most of the listeners here, but we're we're hitting a point in the timeline where it either has to happen or it simply won't. And uh these delays

that we've continued to see, you you can see when you look at the odds of the market uh thinking this is going to pass just continue to grind lower uh really since the the beginning of this year. If you look at the in December, we were above 75%. Today we're sitting uh based on Kali around 55% but it was as low as 40% odds of this passing and I think uh this is the critical time. So so what I would note about clarity though and and maybe this is a hot take that crypto has grown into a multi- trillion dollar industry with stable coins at 300 billion and the largest financial institutions in the world and largest tech companies in the world embracing crypto technology without market structure legislation. So is it important that it passes? Yes. Is it an absolute deal breaker to this bull

market that we believe we're heading into? My opinion is that it's not a deal breaker. It's a minor setback and I think we'll grind through it over the long term because these other tailwinds we've spoken about institutional adoption, stable coins, tokenization. Uh those things are more powerful tailwinds than market structure legislation not passing is a headwind. That's that's something I'm focused on and I think the market will be focused on over the next four weeks. >> Yep. I think that's right. That's well said. I do think we'll get through it either way, but it will be a short-term setback if it doesn't uh resolve positively. The other thing that would really help, which I haven't mentioned, is the DeFi hack thing chilling out for

a little while. Be nice to have a a stretch of solidity there. See a fully unlock and rebound. I think that would be very helpful to the community. and uh and the reverse would be a significant setback. So that's that's another thing that's on my radar. >> Is that AI based? Right? Because we've seen those I've seen that chart. You guys have probably seen it too that it's like crypto hacks in the last like couple months is way beyond anything it's ever been and that there's a natural cor you know it's not direct but like anthropic is teasing mythos like or mythos or whatever we call it and then there's you know just the idea that AI is going to massively enable hackers although some of them were social engineering right like some of them were like a six months long con right right so it's not exactly AI based but what

are your thoughts Matt >> I actually don't so I don't know but I think the the panic around mythos us and AI based cyber hacking >> and the coincident timing of some of these hacks means we're taking them more aggressively than we would have otherwise. Like if we had had uh one of these hacks or even even even both of the major hacks a year ago pre mythos I think people would have been like ah man another one that's brutal. But because they're happening in tandem I think we're heightened >> um we're more concerned about it than we otherwise would. So maybe that's the third piece we need to really get this sustained rally. We need uh risk on assets to do okay. We need clarity and

we need not another series of major multiundred million dollar hacks. >> Yeah, that would be helpful. >> I think if we get those three things, we may be off to the races. >> Oh man. I mean, in some cases too, not to single anybody out, but in some cases too, it's some of the hacks were um more so the infrastructure was not as sound as it could have been. I'm just going to put it that way. From what I understand, my my PE brain reading about it being like, "Hey, you know what? They probably should have done a little bit more there security-wise." So, not each one. Not each one, but in some cases.

Um, anyways, gentlemen, thank you for another great episode. Great to see you guys. Uh, and great to see you guys here at 80K. Uh, hopefully we're somewhere around there, not higher next time I see you. Uh, but even if we're lower, I'll see you again either way. >> Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're [music] trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milk Road daily and pro newsletters and start [music] investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.