Crypto is crashing: why the bull case is still alive with Bitwise

Transcript

If you ask people what do you think about the next 3 years, I bet the same people who turn bearish on your show LG will say they're very bullish. What's up everybody? It's LG Ducet here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that explains why the market is down again and why somehow that might still be kind of bullish. Today is November 20th, 2025. We recorded this yesterday, November 19th, after close late in the day. Listen, Bitcoin has hit a low point this week that it has not hit since April this year, which seems really dramatic, but not if you zoom all the way out, which is what we do every time we have our guests on. Matt Hogan and Ryan Rasmuson from Bitwise joining us today. Their Salana ETF has been on absolute fire. They just opened an XRP ETF. And why I love talking to these

guys is because they think in years and decades and not like five minute charts like I do. The last two times we talked with them, the markets were already pretty shaky. Now the markets are down another 10%. So I'm here to grill them. I want to know why. What's broken in the system? And most importantly, what is the opportunity from here when things are choppy and sentiment is way lower than it could be than we really ever thought it could be. Before we start, we've got a quick one. We're running a short listener survey to help us make the show even better. It takes less than five minutes and two people are going to win uh our investing master class in crypto or a one-on-one call with our research team. All you have to do is

take the survey. It's milkro.com/servey. The link is in the show notes. I would really appreciate it because uh you know I've been doing this for a little bit now and I want to know what you guys think. Is this useful? Is the podcast useful? Are our newsletters useful? What do you like about the show and Milk Road? Go hit that survey as soon as you can uh and get entered to win one of those nice prizes. You can even have a one-on-one call with me as your prize. That's pretty nice, right? You get to chat with me. You get to hear my voice as much as you like. All right, enough about that. Today's episode is brought to you by Block Trust IRA. Let AI outsmart the market and grow your crypto while you sleep. Bridge power your business with instant stable coin payments. No friction, no banks, just

global finance made simple and figure markets. Earn solid returns on your cash because sitting idle is not a strategy. Enough from me. The house is burning down, gentlemen. What what's the first thing you grab when when the house is on fire in this in this Bitcoin market or this crypto market? >> Ryan, what are you grabbing, man? [laughter] >> I grab when the house is burning, I I grab Bitcoin. I think that's that's my kind of go-to that I return to whenever the house is burning. But, uh, but you know, I I've been grabbing some Salana as well. Uh, that feels like it's gotten particularly beaten up, uh, in the midst of everything. And so, uh, that's my answer. But what about you, Matt?

>> No, that's a good answer. House is on fire. Yeah. buy more Bitcoin. I do I do take comfort in this house on fire market that it seems like all the negative forces are short-term forces and nothing has changed about the long-term for forces and so yeah long-term feel optimistic but it's it's painful out there. >> It [clears throat] is painful. Has there been are you guys shocked by the current price action? Is this is this something that comes as a surprise even to you guys that are that are, you know, experienced investors and and and people that invest for decades?

>> I'm not shocked. I don't know what Ryan thinks. I'm not shocked. What I think I've realized is that I misweighed two forces, right? So, if you think about what's going on in the market right now, Harvard is buying and retail is selling, right? Abu Dhabi is buying and cryptonatives are selling. And I think when we entered the year, the assumption was that the massive purchases from institution and corporations would be more than enough to soak up any additional supply from retail selling. And I think the element to which I'm surprised with is that there's more retail selling than I anticipated. I think the thing that I didn't factor in was people, I think, pre freaking out about the four-year cycle and wanting to

dodge the 30, 40, 50% pullback in the market that they saw coming in 2026. I didn't think about that psychological effect. I think that's what we're living through. I think we have to finish living through it and then we bottom. But I do think we're sort of shortcircuiting the four-year cycle now. Probably closer to the bottom than the start. And I think it's still upward over the long period of time. >> Matt, you wrote this tweet which Ryan told me is the most pessimistic bearish thing you have ever written, which is, and you wrote this yesterday, so it'll be two days ago by the time you guys are listening to this. The other theory is Bitcoin is a leading indicator and the whole market is nuked. Please, [laughter]

what? Oh my. Are you okay, man? Do you need a hug or something? You was that were did you need some coffee when you wrote that? What happened? >> I I always need some coffee. But no, the the thing I was thinking about there is I remember back when Bitcoin first turned down at like 120 and it started going down. I remember more recently when it started to flirt with going below 100K. And Ryan and I had some conversations that Bitcoin is sometimes the canary in the coal mine. Not always, but sometimes the most risksensitive asset and it's the first thing people sold. And the thing that was happening outside of crypto was people were starting to worry about the circular nature of AI revenues. They were starting to worry about Jaime Diamond's

cockroaches in the private credit market. They were starting to worry about the Fed turning hawkish even as economic conditions worsened. And so the thought that occurred to me when we first started going down was this may not be cryptospecific. Crypto may be showing us which way the market's headed. And sure enough, the market did follow that. Like it started to emphasize these negative narratives. You're hearing words like AI bubble more. You're hearing words like consumer credit crunch and delinquencies in auto loans and those sorts of things. And so it occurred to me that, you know, we we we're so insular in crypto that the thesis I said at the start of the show that what's causing us to go down is

cryptonative people worrying about the historical four-year cycle repeated is so mirror gazing that maybe I should step back and actually what's happening is the market is going broadly risk off because of concerns about AI revenue. That's not my base case, but I think it is something worth considering. And uh that's why I threw that that tweet out there. [laughter] >> Ryan, do you did you agree with that sentiment? Did you like that tweet or or or was that was that even more bearish than than Matt was was uh was it was expressing himself in internal meetings?

>> Yeah, [snorts] I think I think Matt was sleep tweeting if I had to guess uh on that. No, I look I I I understand that. I mean Matt mentioned like we had conversations about this where we we thought this you know was certainly possible and I know even you know as recently as a week ago we're saying look it's not impossible for Bitcoin to go down to 85 or low 80s before the recovery begins. So uh I'm not surprised especially given where sentiment is more broadly around all assets and private credit has not mentioned equities. I mean if you turn on CNBC uh up until uh today right it's it's kind of like everything is falling. What are we going to do? The economy is crashing. are we headed towards uh towards more market crashing? And so I'm not surprised by the fact that mark that Bitcoin has led

the market lower. I do think that a lot of the fears that are leading all assets lower are significantly overblown. And I think we're closer to those fears being settled and uncertainty leaving. Now that we have the shutdown behind us and we're starting to get the data that people were so worried about was going to shake out in one way or another and didn't know how to react. I think that will have, you know, knowledge of whether the Fed's going to cut interest rates or not in December very soon, but I don't think they're going to do that. And then I think broadly speaking, like these AI fears, uh, Nvidia beat earnings today. It's up 5% after hours. I think we're closer to the end of the AI panic than we than we were a week ago or six weeks ago when Bitcoin started falling.

So yeah, I think overall uh I have a more uh you know bullish outlook on where we're at shortterm and uh and long term than that that tweet, but I think Matt and I share the sentiment around where the market's headed uh you know in the long term. >> I did position it as the other theory. I I I'm I'm inherently not not bearish. I am bullish. I actually agree with Ryan, but I think acknowledging that there's this other possibility uh that that was the goal of the tweet. >> Absolutely. Guys, I don't remember there being a time in my time in crypto where there's such a confluence and opposition of opinions, right? And and a and a factor pointing even earlier this year, right? The last big bottom was largely tariff driven at least on the surface,

right? It had a clear tariff liberation day and then we're coming out of that and we're back to bull run. But this time every you know all the major analysts you guys included the fund managers everybody a lot of people one by one over the last couple weeks have been either you know m saying hey maybe I was wrong with my my time my timeline for that or in other cases even people we've had on the show coming on and saying you know what when I came on here 6 weeks ago I was wrong and now I'm bearish I can't remember there being such a confluence of opinions of such a a change of opinions and even AI is is facing the exact same thing where half that people are saying we're in a bubble. People are selling and the others are saying like, "Listen, we

don't even have enough data centers. We're going into the biggest bull market ever for AI." There's such a such a like a there's such a barely a middle ground there where you have such a a broadening of opinions, guys. How do you how do you balance that? Because I'm sure that your clients, everybody who's using Bitwise, they're hearing all that, too. So, how do you where do you how do you guys thread the needle when that's happening? I mean, the the beautiful thing about crypto is that your bullish or bearishness right now depends on your timeline. If you're focused on the next three weeks, it's hard to find someone in crypto that's uber bullish, that's like jamming the buy button. People are tentatively and painfully making small incremental buys if they're gutsy, but

no one is like, "This thing's going to rip tomorrow." If you ask people, "What do you think about the next 3 years?" I bet the same people who turned bearish on your show, LG, will say they're very bullish because over the next three years, you have trillions of dollars of institutional capital moving in. You have the Genius Act going into effect in a year. You have huge growth in stable coins, huge growth in tokenization. It's really hard to be bearish over the long term. So I think the way we thread the needle is we talk to you know mostly institutional investors and financial adviserss who do move on like a 3 to 5year time frame and they're looking at this asset and saying yeah looks pretty good. We can buy it at 90 instead of at 125. That's great. Um so I really think

it comes down to time frame and uh and that's the big discrepancy in crypto right now. >> Ryan, I pointed out um I pointed out that last time was tariffs. What to you is the specific thing that's driving down I mean the market. Sure. Right. Like like Matt's saying it was maybe the the Bitcoin was the canary in the coal mine, but what what is actually driving the market down this time? Especially cuz last time we had you guys on with Jesse Eckle, we had a list of amazing things coming and those things are still there. So what what's actually doing this this time?

>> Yeah. I just think it's uncertainty and opakeness. Like people are scared of what they can't see or don't know. And right now with the government shutdown and with all of these uh fears and you know kind of uh you know fear-mongering around like what's happening with AI and as everything all cooked is just leading people to think wow if that is right if if we don't really know where things are but there's a 50% chance or more that it is correct that we're headed lower that the economy is headed towards a recession etc then I'm going to take my chips off the table. I think what what is interesting is that you know a lot of people like to look back at the prior bull markets 2023 2024 or even 2020 2021 and it's like they have that Vince

McMahon meme of just like you know the crying you'd be like those like those were the days you know and can't even talk about it because it was so great >> even talk about it >> yeah I can't even I can't even go there but the reality is is that any given year that I just mentioned where Bitcoin was up double triple digit percentage there were periods where it had massive draw downs. So, I'm actually not that surprised the market's shaking out the way it is. And I tend to believe that you have less differing of opinions in bare markets because everyone agrees that it's all over and we're all cooked. But in bull markets is where you have everyone shouting, "No, this is the end.

Oh, no, it's still going to go." Like, you have all of these kind of opinions uh going against each other. So, I'm not that surprised this is where we're at in the bull market. I never expected us to go, you know, from 100 to 200 in a straight line. you know, we hit all-time highs, we draw down. We hit all-time highs, we draw down. That's a pattern that we've seen time and time again. And so, not surprised we're seeing that in 20 2025. >> Yeah. I want to pull up Oh, go ahead, Matt. >> Oh, I was just going to add another characteristic of these bare markets is you have to take the hot buzzword and completely kill it, right? So, like during the ICO bare market, we had to take ICOs and grind them into the ground. And then we had to take DeFi and

take it out back and completely kill it. And then we had to do the same with meme coins and NFTTS, right? And >> NFTs. >> We didn't get to the bottom until those words were dead. >> The words for this cycle that were in the process of killing are DATs, DeFi looping, and the basis trade. And I think those were the three things that like bubbled up and everyone was talking about, right, and became common stance. and they're just in the process of being uh destroyed in the same way that NFTTS and and memecoins and ICOs were in the past. And probably when we get to the the bottom of that when everyone's like DeFi looping, are you crazy? That's for uh Dgens. That's the point where that's probably exhausted and we're ready to go back up to the races.

>> Oh man, great point. And also hilarious. What about what about pers? What about leverage trading? Is that is that one of the words that's going to die in this in this time around? >> Uh good question. I mean uh I don't [laughter] the idea of like either risk-free leverage trading uh through like uh asynchronous basis trading um should die. The the idea that that was a risk-free income was just not true. Uh leverage won't die. Leverage never dies. But the idea that you could use like per to do a a a complicated basis trade and generate a 30 like that's just that has to die and uh it's that one's in the

process. That one's pretty far down the chain uh in terms of its death. >> Bitcoin changed the investment game. Now AI changed the strategy. Crypto's wild ride demands perfect timing. Selling before drops, buying as it climbs while most investors panic sell or hope. A select few leverage a crucial edge, AI. Block Trust [music] IRA's trading platform spots market patterns with precision no human can match. Since 2020, their Animus AI platform has outperformed Bitcoin by 250%. Visit milkroad.com/blockrust IRA today to get up to 2500 in bonus crypto and transform your investment strategy. Stable coins are the biggest use case in crypto right now. But let's

be real, using them on chain is still way too complex. That's exactly the problem Bridge is solving. Recently acquired by Stripe. Yep, that's Stripe, Bridge helps businesses send, store, accept, and launch stable coins instantly. Explore the future of global financial infrastructure at milkroad.com/bridge. Mhm. [clears throat] Well, Matt, I think that's a good transition to to to go into something that you seem quite bullish on, right? And every week you publish your memo and last week's was about capital formation. And one of the only interesting things that's happening during this big downturn chop is we're seeing Coinbase, one of the biggest players in the market, launching their own ICO platform, right? And they have

something big coming next month, some kind of system update with December 17th's a big date. So they're clearly making moves. U Matt, you you're all in your article, you're alluding that that's perhaps part of a larger trend. So please tell us about that and what that might look like going into the new year. >> Yeah, one one way to think about the story of crypto and all these things that become really big deals is that there is an initial version that bubbles up and then people are like nah, right? There were initial vo versions of stable coins. There was there was D and such and then people were like no and there were abuses like Luna and now we're in the stable coin bull run. When ICOs were happening, you know, back in 2017 2018, there was a lot about them that was

great, right? They allowed retail participation in new engaging ideas. They were an efficient platform for raising money. The problem was they were mostly scams and you couldn't build a token that had real economic value. Those were big problems to be sure and that's why that died a grizzly death and it should have. But there is nothing that made the fundamental act of raising capital not interesting. And if you listen to SEC chair Paul Atkins, he's now saying you can do ICOs in a well-contained format with proper oversight and that will be a new way to catalyze capital formation in the US. He said that in a speech in July and

Coinbase is launching it now in November, right? Doing doing Monad as the first example of an asset. I think it's very possible that next year we see a rebirth of ICOs of really interesting projects with well-designed tokens that give economic rights to their users. They're not just governance tokens and that everyone can invest in. And that's a new major way of capital formation. I think it's a pretty big deal. I also do think to tie to the other point you raised look I think everyone's looking at crypto and uh says we have three major use cases we have bitcoin as digital gold we have stable coins and we have tokenization I think what's happened is that we've

built good infrastructure for 15 16 17 years and we had a hostile regulatory environment that prevented real use cases from entering into the mainstream and now we've listed lifted that regulatory lift and I think Bitcoin, stable coins, and tokenization is just the tip of the spear. I [snorts] think we're going to see maybe six major use cases bubble up next year. I think you're going to see ICOs bubble up. I think you'll see digital identity. I think you'll see privacy. I think you'll see a DeFi renaissance. I think you'll see a DIN renaissance. I think thinking that crypto is Bitcoin, stable coin, and tokenization is like thinking that the internet is email, search, and Amazon.

What about social? What about Uber? What about mobile? What about Zoom? What about podcasting? There were a million more use cases. We have not reached the end of history in crypto. We have three use cases. We're going to have 30. And I think next year is the year that those are going to start to bubble up into the mainstream. >> There's a lot. Okay, that's I mean that's that's a really interesting point and I like that's I guess it's kind of a rosy outlook for the new year that there's there's at least some innovation in the hopper. My main question about that is what what I feel like there are so many ICO platforms now, right? And Coinbase is is going to be the biggest naturally, but there are so many that's to me that's been a trend through this whole year as you have all these new ICO

platforms. Um, and and obviously Monad is a is a pretty big project with a lot of funding. How many big projects could line up to launch on Coinbase? Like how how many projects are there left to ICO that have not ICO? That's my I guess it's a question. It's sort of a challenge but >> an infinite number. An infinite number. And here's the reason. Here's the reason, LG. If you were a creative entrepreneur and you wanted to do something cool in the world, you looked at crypto and you were like, if I do something cool, I'm going to jail. And that wasn't a good outcome. Like, you had to be slightly crazy to want to build in this space. You had to be willing to take on regulators. You had to be Brian Armstrong. You had to be Hayden Adams. And even if you were

Hayden Adams, you had to be very careful. You couldn't have a fee switch. You had to have sort of a governance token. So the suppression of entrepreneurial energy to build on this new technology cannot be overstated. I mean that literally that entrepreneurs had the choice of building in crypto and going to jail or building in AI. And faced with that choice, they're all going to build in AI. It's now the case that you can build on this $4 trillion economic base with this incredible technology that moves money at the speed of light and allows it to be programmed.

To think that there aren't another thousand projects strikes me as crazy. I would make the analogy back to the internet like people thought the internet was email and search and just because Ryan and I can't imagine what this next trillion dollar idea is doesn't mean it's not out there. And I think there is this enormous release of entrepreneurial excitement. So could there be 10? I think there could be a hundred of interesting ICOs in the next couple of years. And I think the time frame if you think the regulatory pressure lifted in November of last year and we're one year in it could take a year to create a project, take a year to scale, then you

ICO. I think next year and the year after that's going to be really fun. Mhm. Is there is there if that was happening on Coinbase, right? Again, because you're you're basically telling me that Coinbase doing this is going to give projects that are launching on Coinbase a lot of legitimacy. But trust both sides, right? That it's like if I'm launching on Coinbase, there's no way I'm going to go to jail for my project unless I find new reasons do something new to go to jail. But otherwise, this isn't like launching on one of the more DG platforms that's unknown and might be a little bit sketchy and when nobody knows who you are. this will this you know this should provide some trust for investors and for retail and also for the participants for the entrepreneurs.

Um such such such a huge >> can I just add one thing because it gets me so >> um the thing crypton natives may not understand is that a lot of traditional finance operates under what's called self-regulatory organizations or SRO's. As an example, when Ryan and I write content, it has to go to a group called FINRA to make sure that we're not lying about it. FINRA is not a government agency. It's a self-regulatory agency that institutional investors created in financial firms so that the in the world would trust us because we created our own regulation that said we're only going to put out information that's trustworthy. And as a result, billions of millions of Americans and Canadians and everyone else trust the content

that's put out. Uh this is like an example of that. This is Coinbase doing effectively a self-regulatory organization saying ICOs had a lot of scams. Rather than wait on Washington to make a format that works, we're going to apply cryptonnative knowledge to provide an SRO type experience. And it I can't tell you how much this accelerated traditional finance and it's going to do the same here in crypto because you'll be able to trust it. That's why Coinbase specifically is so important in this example. Hm. Okay, that makes sense. I didn't know that. I didn't know that you guys had So, every single memo you write, they gota they got to look at it.

>> They got to look at it. Yeah. I would say crypto ETP and not ETF. It's because an organization that effectively we created told us to uh to do that. So, um SRO's are a really big deal. Uh it's how most of like Wall Street functions is actually selfation as opposed to government regulation. And this is like the first instance of that maturation process showing up in crypto. It's it's it's pretty cool. >> Okay, that's a nice like look behind the curtain of how this this kind of financial world kind of works. Um I want to flip over Ryan for a second. Hearing kind of Matt give us this great spiel.

Ryan, what's what's what are the investment opportunities that kind of come to mind when he says all this? Like is this a reason to um are we buying is this are we buying Coinbase stock? Are we buying ETH? Are we buying the base token? if that ever happens. And I guess that's a very Coinbase specific take, but even kind of his outlook for the next year. How do you approach this potential new wave of entrepreneurship and projects in the in the space? >> Yeah, it's it's a great question. I think the answer is you want to have exposure to all of it because it's basically impossible to know which is going to outperform which and what's going to go up 100% and what's going to fall 99%. So I think indexing the space, buying a basket of assets at different

layers of the technology stack is probably the best way to play it. I mean that would that would involve owning Bitcoin Ethereum Salana XRP other L1s. It would involve owning chain link and other oracles. It would involve owning DeFi apps or stable coin issuers, publicly traded companies, Bitcoin miners. I mean, you really want to own all of it because at different times, different sectors are going to do well. Just like when you think about the internet, you want to own communications, you want to own AI, you want to own SAS companies because all of them do well at different times. Many of them have different operating models.

But as the world moves into this continually digital, you know, civilization that we live in, all of these technologies are going to grow to a certain extent. So I think investors can sit back now and say, I'm not going to go to jail for building in the space as an entrepreneur, but I'm not going to go to jail for investing in the space either. I think that's so incredibly important and so many investors that we speak to every single day talk about the fact that the regulatory environment is so friendly to crypto now in the US and I think that's going to be a multi-year tailwind that's going to you know rise all boats here and you want to own the market rather than pick winners or losers and that applies to individual assets and it also applies to equities and it applies to themes as well not

just individual companies or or assets. All right, be spec. Come on, be specific, man. Tell me Tell me what I Tell me what I should look at. I'm looking I think on a down day like today, I'm like, give me something to look at. Give me give me a ticker. Give me a space I should care about at this moment in time while everything else is down so bad. >> The beautiful thing about uh that question is it loops back to what Matt just said, which like FINRA won't let me give you a specific >> but >> don't make me open Poly Market again. Don't make me go back to Poly Market.

Matt's been given financial advice every week. >> That's and it's been right. >> No, it's it's a good question. Look, I I think that the major trends of the next three to five years are going to be use cases built on top of L1's and the uh so what I what I mean by that is like stable coins tokenization prediction markets are going to be massive. So what I want to own is the piping for those. So Ethereum, Salana are two of the major ecosystems where stable coins and tokenizations are being built and where they live and where they move and transfer. So I look at those as good infrastructure plays if you want exposure to the underlying technology.

Chain link's another one that's necessary for these types of use cases and applications to exist and to operate and they have a huge monopoly over that space. Like if you want prediction markets to grow and to do well and you think that they will, they need to be able to get the information they need to resolve markets, they need to know who wins the next presidential election or who wins the Super Bowl. And oracles like chain link are the ones that provide that information. So I'm surveying the space and saying what's the applications that I can invest in the unis of the world. What's the data layer of that technology stack? And then what's the underlying infrastructure where everything trades and settles. And then beyond that, crypto equities I find to be extremely interesting, particularly those like Coinbase, which

are building kind of the everything company of finance. Like they're the Amazon of the crypto and financial world. And so, um, you know, I think the fact they're still trading below their IPO price from 2021 is is pretty remarkable if you think about where valuations have gone for this industry, how big this industry has grown, too. And so I think Coinbase is really uh you know really looking appealing to me right now. >> Okay, that that makes a lot of sense. I I I agree with the you know building like looking at uh the infrastructure layers, right? And I think unis swap and chain link are great examples. Again, I have a counter I feel like I feel like I'm I'm here to grill you guys today. My counter to that is one of the biggest stories I've seen is since 2021, alts have barely moved if you zoom out,

right? That's a joke I see on Twitter every day that it's like if you bought a bunch of coins four years ago and you went to sleep and you woke up today, nothing would have changed. And you could say the same about Ethereum as well, unfortunately. Right. So, how I I guess again, you guys can't give us uh investment advice, but I I I think that that's I guess I I don't know what point I'm trying to make. I'm just saying that sometimes perhaps those infrastructure layers um might not see the price action that investors would want in the time frame that they want. >> Yeah, I think that's fair. I I think I think there there are two possible explanations. One is that they were in fact in a bubble, right? If you think about something like Amazon stock after the internet bubble, it took a long time

to get back. The business was growing throughout. it ended up being much much higher but took a while to get back to that 2000 era high. So that's that's one possibility. The second one is the one you mentioned which is we don't know where value occurs. We know a huge amount of value is being created in this new financial ecosystem. Does it go to Ethereum? Does it go to chain link? Does it go to unis swap? Or does it go to Coinbase? Is like a really good question. The the thing I loved about what Ryan said is like who cares? Just buy them all. If you pick one then you could be wrong.

>> But um but so just just sort of know your thesis. Are you betting that a lot of value will be created then buy them all. Are you betting that the value will be created and it will acrue to the L1 and Salana will be the winner versus ETH? That's actually that's a that's a a trifecta or something uh on sports the way Ryan does. So he can he can correct my terminology. But you have to get all three of those things right if you're making that specific bet. >> Yeah. We call that we call that a parlay uh in the in the DGEN world. But no, I think that's right. Like my view on alts and and DeFi and all of these assets that they've been fighting a war for the past 5 years and the war is finally over. And just because the war ended in

January or February doesn't mean that immediately the dust settles and immediately we start to see the the sunshine again, right? Like if there's a war happening somewhere, even when that war ends, well during that war, no no tourists are going to go, right? But even when that war ends, it takes time for tourism to ramp back up to rebuild. And I think that's a good analogy for what's been happening with alts and with investors. They've been fighting a war against regulators. No investors have wanted to go there because it doesn't feel safe. They could get hurt and so it's better to just avoid it. And now that that war is over, they're waiting and slowly revisiting the space and the alts and the DeFi apps and the other use cases of the world are rebuilding and starting to re-enter the world. So I think it just takes time for things to

open back up and I think that we'll hit that mark over the next few years, which is why our time horizon is longer than I think a lot of the investors out there that that get so focused on short-term price movements. Why do people invest in real estate? Because it spits off cash flow. But I'm not here to manage rental properties. That's why I'm looking at Figure Markets, [music] their new democratized prime product backs your money with real cash flowing assets and returns up to 9% APY. It's the first real world asset borrow lend pool built for everyone, not just institutions.

Ready to lend like a bank and get more than the 5% A is offering you? Download the Figure Markets app today and get 9% on your idol funds. go to milroad.com/figuremarkets. >> That's a beautiful answer. Thank you for saying that. I think that's that's that's exactly what I was looking for. Um, and I think you guys are right. And and and speaking of L1's, I do want to kind of circle back and talk about uh just take another quick look at the market before before we we move on, but or before we wrap out. But um one thing that I find I find is a bit of an an anomaly and even I tweeted I don't tweet very much but even I tweeted about this the other day is that uh the Bitwise Salana ETF is on fire this week man somehow like this is this is one of the

most countermarket trends I've seen uh in this whole like last couple weeks yesterday alone $23 million of inflows to your ETF which is absolutely berserk. So first of all um congrats to you guys. It's the highest in almost two weeks. uh and definitely higher I think than any other crypto ETF that's out there by far. I think most of them have outflows especially for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Gentlemen, how do you explain this? >> Ryan, you want to take that one? Yeah, I look I think investors are buying the dip is clear what we're seeing here. But I also think this speaks to, you know, why the market is structured completely different today than it was a year ago or two years ago or four years ago and why I believe the four-year cycle is dead is because you have institutional

participants that are willing to come into the market even when we have these down periods. And so what we're seeing with things like Salana, for instance, and the ETFs is that hedge funds that use the ETFs to gain spot exposure to Salana and then go and short sell the futures to capture what we call the basis trade. They are interested in the ETFs even in down markets and they're establishing positions that they believe will over the long term be profitable or that are parts of multi-sided trades. And we just didn't have that when we didn't have institutional players in the space. And we didn't have that when we didn't have ETFs. I think that's what's driving a lot of these inflows. I think separately investors like to buy the dip. Institutional investors like to rebalance their portfolio or dollar cost

average into assets. I think that's what we're seeing here as well. But I think it's remarkable that the salon ETPs have inflows day after day after day while the market is bleeding 10% day after day after day. I think that's really impressive. >> Yeah, I I'd agree. I'd just add salon is cheap. It's $75 billion. It's smaller than Sherwin Williams, the paint company. Um, and it's building a new layer for all finance to operate on. That's I don't know like you, everyone can choose their their racehorse. But I do think it's it's remarkable that investors can get in at prices like this. It's not a guarantee it's going to go up. Just just my perspective. It's it's a relatively small asset at this point.

>> Listen, Matt, people need paint more than they need memecoins, man. [laughter] >> That is a fair criticism. And and these walls are painted with Sherwin Williams paint. >> There you go. Yeah. I see more paint than I in this picture than I see uh need for Salana. >> Except for Gen Z and millennials who don't own a house and don't need to paint anything. They want me coins. They want to invest in the next financial layer of internet markets. >> This is the big debate in our world. Salana versus Yeah. Digital nomads don't need uh they don't need paint when they're they're going from hostile to hostile for for five years straight. So, but they need Mean Points. They need Mean Points to sustain that lifestyle. I love that. That's a that's that's a

great take. Um okay, guys, let's let's um let's wrap this. You know, you guys always paint we always paint a great picture. This is a really honest show today, especially with you guys. Um you know, we really kind of talk about what's happening. I think it's our duty despite painting a great picture looking at the three years that you guys pointed out. I still think it's our duty to talk about the risks at this point, right? Because even while we've been talking, sure, while we've been talking, Bitcoin went down. It came back up to 91. Wow. You know, thrilling. But um obviously this danger zone is not done. So So what are some of the biggest risks um let's say in the next 2 to 3 months that maybe people are still ignoring if any? what

it like are like what could cause us to go down more and what is something that investors um are not really thinking about at this point. >> Sure. Yeah. I got three Brian and then you could follow on. We could see the hopes for a market structure bill in the US Congress get completely derailed. And if that pushes further into 2026, people will lose faith in that that will happen and they'll start to worry about this stronger regulatory footing that's unleashing this entrepreneurial energy that you and I talked about. Uh you could see end of the year tax lost harvesting. people selling because they want to report losses can in fact lead to prices being lower right before we get to the end of the tax year. And then

there is a bubbling up concern in the crypto community about quantum risk that I definitely have been sensing from crypto Twitter and a few other spokespeople. To the extent that that becomes an existential worry, I think that could contribute to the bearish sentiment. If we were in a bull market, I think everyone would just shrug their shoulders and be like, "Yeah, whatever." But in a bare market, they dwell on bad news. And there is this sort of increased focus on quantum risk that I'm hearing from a few sources. >> What is quantum risk? >> Well, quantum risk is the idea that they'll actually build a steadystate giant uh quantum computer that can break the underlying cryptography uh that underpins all of crypto. Um there you

go. Yeah, Vitalik is talking about it. uh Nick Carter is talking about it who's been preent on a large number of calls uh from Castle Island and a few other people are talking about it and when you know that when you when you start to hear this a couple really smart people say something it's worth paying attention and I don't think people are necessarily paying attention to this. So you ask me like what are people not worried about? Look, I don't think quantum is an existential threat and I think it's still a long way off, but smart people are saying it's time to pay attention and in a bare market that can contribute to negative sentiment.

>> Ryan, over to you. Give me some of your um biggest risks over the next couple months. >> Yeah, I mean I I agree with Matt there. I think right now in my mind, the biggest risks are what's going on with the macro and what's going on with equities. You know, there are periods of time where equities lead crypto assets, but it's not all the time. and where the general outlook for assets like tech stocks or like AI stocks or the Mac 7 does bleed into where all markets are moving. And I think that right now what we're seeing is that stocks are leading the way. And so I think the biggest risk out there in my mind right now over the next few months is will this AI bubble actually burst? Will we get really poor uh you know news from the Fed when it

comes to rate cuts? And if those two things both happen and we don't see rate cuts and the AI bubble, uh it really is so overvalued and burst, I think that that's going to be bad for all risk markets. I think it's going to be bad for crypto markets. So that's the the risk that I'm looking out for. The good news is that I think that that risk is severely overblown and I don't think that's going to happen. Okay, great. Sobering takes, guys, uh and and good honest takes and and really appreciate it. We we were doing this one thing at the end of every show. people that have heard you guys the last couple shows that I've hosted. So maybe this is an LG thing. Uh but this is the point in the episode where we completely divert from crypto and we open up Poly Market to

look at the best bet that could have been made in the last month from Matt, which was to choose the highest grossing film of 2025 at 37%. I think 37 or 39. and he had told us that Wicked for Good was the one to pick and we would be up over 50% if we had chosen that this uh if we had chosen it when he did. There's still another 40 cents on the table, I'm sure, is what Matt is about to tell us. Ryan, are you surprised that Matt has this kind of intuition for Phil? I like to fancy myself the the cinnaphile on at Bitwise and on the research team, but I think this one uh not to discredit Matt at all was somewhat of a a no-brainer. I uh you know, I think that Wicked, you

know, has this thing in the bag. >> It's it's they're selling they're selling dollars for 60 cents LG. Uh if you were 50% Wicked for good, 50% crypto, you're up over the last month. So, you know, there you go. That was that was your secret message a month ago was dump everything and just unload on Wicked for good for an easy 50% thus far. Uh and the other thing we had discussed was presidential election winner for 2028. I don't know if these odds have changed that much. I don't see the Oh, The Rock is still at 2%. I think Josh Shapiro has gone up. I think his odds have doubled, Matt, since we uh since we last chatted. Maybe >> Josh is still looking for a bid, but that's that's a 10x that's a 10x opportunity

>> uh by the before the you want to ring the register at the second Democratic debate. So wait for the first debate. It'll be at 20 cents or more. Ring the register then. That's not just a call. That's a call with a time frame. And if I'm right on this, I uh I will be I will be a little proud of this one. [laughter] Well, I'll tell you if the bitco bit Bitcoin keeps going down, uh most of our shows are going to be just about uh non-crypto things like these. Oh, and right before we wrap out, guys, breaking news. The Bitwise XRP ETF is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow with the ticker XRP.

What? XRP? Wow, guys. Uh what does this what does this mean for Bitwise and for the for the crypto world? >> Yeah, look, we're really excited about it. Obviously, we're excited to have the ticker of XRP. Bitwise is knocking down the chain of the most important Mount Rushmore crypto assets. XRP is obviously been around for a long time, has a very vibrant community. We are entering a world where investors, traditional investors, will have access to all the opportunities in crypto. We've seen what that's done. I know we're up and we're down, but we've seen what that's generally done for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

We're seeing it cushion I think some of Salana as you get more of these assets uh you're going to see that same effect. I think it's just strictly good. I'm really excited to get in the market. >> Wow. >> How long how long has something like this been brewing? >> So long [laughter] since the last market since the last bull market. the the the you know obviously Bitwise started working on ETFs uh I think seven years ago and um you know took five years for the first one took maybe two years for the next one. Now we're starting to click them off and I think you'll see many more from us. Um but yeah really excited you know XRP is a great ticker uh it's got a great community and yeah 34 basis points. Look, Bitwise is here to launch

and help investors gain opportunity exposure to all the most interesting opportunities. It'll be great to see how this one does. >> Amazing. Well, gentlemen, thank you for your time. Congrats on the new ETF. That is uh that's really exciting. Um and always a pleasure to have you guys on the show. I'm sure I feel like we're going to have you back uh at least one of you, if not both of you, before the end of the year to really talk about 2026, which I'm really excited about. We're going to be running a whole series of 2026 predictions and you guys are going to be a huge part of it. So, uh keen to chat with you again, and uh as usual, thank you for your thoughts, uh and your non-financial advice on Milk Road.

Thanks for having us. >> If y'all are making swaps or trades right now, highly recommend you check out Milk Road Swap. This is a DEX that we built in partnership with Cow Protocol. Why did we build it? Not to make money. Just honestly, so we could have a place to do our swaps for the lowest fees that we could find. This is the fees on Ethereum, Arbitum, and Bass are only.15% fees. Uh this is a huge difference from uh other centralized exchanges that charge half a percent or even up to 1.2% fees on their swaps. Also, you can swap on Salana all at swap.mmillgro.com.

Check it out today. You won't be upset. And you can join me in my favorite place to make swaps on chain. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe [music] to our channel and join the Milkro Daily and Pro Newsletters and start investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky.