Are crypto markets ready to run? FalconX's Austin Reid

Transcript

GM. Good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that's more organized than the boys trip you swear is happening, but nobody's booked flights. I'm your host, Jay Hamilton. It's Friday, April the 25th. For the first time in months, there's some optimism in the markets. Everything is green. The question is, are we back or is this just a short-term rally? Today we are joined by Austin Reed, the global head of revenue and business at Falcon X, one of the world's largest institutional digital asset prime brokerages. In addition to getting Austin's thoughts on the current rally and the current market setup, we're also going to speak to Austin. He was recently in DC at the SEC digital asset round table. We're going to get his

takeaways and his thoughts on upcoming legislation. We're also going to get his thoughts on Bitcoin, where he sees that headed and the evolution of the crypto market as a result of institutions coming in. Austin works very closely with a lot of institutions. So, we're going to get a sense of what is happening on the institutional side. Before we jump in and hear from Austin, if you guys want to hang out with me every day and talk to me and my team directly, join our Telegram group, hit the link in the show notes. Would love to hang with you there. Also, we're doing something bold right now because we've got serious conviction in our thesis, which is that Bitcoin is going to reach new all-time highs this year.

And we're betting on that with real money. So, if you join Milkro Pro before the end of April, you will get 20% off. Not only will you get 20% off, but if you stay subscribed through October 31st, 2025, and Bitcoin has not reached new all-time highs, we will give you a refund. Today's episode is brought to you by Moon Pay. Trade crypto fee free, fast, and on your terms. It's also brought to you by Coin Shift, powering top crypto treasuries with their yield bearing stable coin, CSUSDL. Without further ado, Austin, welcome to the Milk Road Show. Thanks for having me, Jay. I'm uh looking forward to the conversation. Likewise, my man. Likewise. Okay. Uh just for for our listeners who don't know you or

don't know Falcon X, give us the TLDDR on what you spend your day just doing. Perfect. I'll give a quick overview and then we can dive into markets which I'm sure people are more interested in hearing about these days. So just real quick, Falcon X is an institutional prime brokerage and trading firm in the crypto and digital asset space. Today we're moving over a trillion dollars in volume annually options business 12 to 15% of global crypto options volume. So significant amount of trading activity purely on the institutional side of the market and we work with everyone from large ETF issuers, asset managers, banks, hedge funds, more cryptonative personas like uh venture capital firms and miners and really providing a full range of products and services for them

across training, credit, custody and a technology platform to facilitate that single one-stop shop solution. So that's where we sit within the ecosystem. Me personally, I lead our global growth efforts across go to market partnerships, marketing, uh, and capital raising. So, fortunate to touch wide variety of kind of different areas within the ecosystem and, uh, like I said, looking forward to the conversation. Fantastic. Okay, let's, as you said, what everybody wants to hear right now is markets and macro. Uh, first first question is, how do you feel about this week? Uh obviously we're seeing green in the markets, both the crypto markets and the equities markets.

First time in a while that we've seen this many days of green. How do you feel? Do you feel optimistic? Is this like, hey, we're back. Let's go. Bull run is on. Are you cautious still? What's your view? Yeah, it's so funny. This sentiment both in crypto and macro is so cyclical. It moves very quickly, right? And so it's nice. I like you said, it's nice to see some green days. I think both for people at Falcon X are generally you know believe in this crypto space and that a lot of our customers you know have long positions within the market too to take a step back and look at where we are to your point I think macro is driving the majority of market right now right and I think the interesting thing that you've seen specifically around BTC is Bitcoin perform better and better relative uh to

equity markets right now and so I think there's optimism on Bitcoin's relative performance on some of the net new capital inflows and specifically around Bitcoin ETFs, but I think it's too early to say that we are back in a bull market per se. I think macro is still what most customers are watching right now. And what's your what's your take on the macro setup? Are you uh are you of the view that we're going to get through this and we're going to avoid a recession or a shift in the business cycle, which is definitely we're we're we're teetering on an edge right now, right? like we're okay, but when if this continues for too much longer, and you're already seeing it in the soft data of a lot of businesses pulling

back, pulling back spending, preparing that there might be a downturn, obviously tariffs. Sure, maybe they're transitionary inflation in the long term, but in the short term, they create inflation because they just create such a mess of the supply chain. So, where do you think this all ends? Do you think this ends with, hey, we're going to get through this and it's like no big deal and we're going to be back to a bull market or do you think we're headed down a new path as a result of these tariffs which might stick around for the long term? Yeah, let me try and anchor my perspective in what I'm hearing from customers and institutions within the markets here too because like you know I mean you've referenced this. It's difficult to predict even what's going to happen next week right within these market uh conditions today. But if I

zoom out, I think that that's the important thing to really think through. Okay, where are we going? What's the trading data say we're going and where are people basically placing their bets here? And so I think shortterm over the next quarter, maybe two quarters, there is uncertainty, right? And I think what people are looking at is the frequency of the different announcements coming out of DC, eagerly watching uh in terms of what the administration is going to do with tariffs and their corresponding uh effects. And I don't think we ultimately know where those are going to land. The market this week obviously got more optimism uh with the signals from the administration that they would pull back, negotiate with China, etc. But if I zoom out and I look, I think we're

expecting and our customers are expecting short-term volatility here. I think it's difficult to have that or to uh to know exactly what's going to happen in the coming weeks or months. Zooming out though, I do think what I hear from a lot of players is they're looking Q4, Q1 next year and feel like we will end up okay as you said and that there's better, you know, kind of market conditions around the horizon. So the way that we see that expressed right now and just to talk about some of the trading data we're seeing, I think we're seeing good flows into BTC. I think you see a rotation from some altcoins that people may have less conviction in or that are perceived to be more risky into Bitcoin as an asset. And I think you're also seeing market participants look to express their views uh through options

markets and valuing the inherent optionality that that gives them. Right? So shortterm we're seeing a lot of activity both on uh the up and downside people looking to buy upside exposure into end of year some beginning of next year or further duration even and on the downside you see people looking to hedge to make sure uh that you know they're not caught off guard. So that's kind of what we're seeing at a high level across the customer base right now. Yeah. which really says that we are we are not in a riskon environment and that is really what everybody everybody who wants the bull market to come back and wants all you know not just Bitcoin but everything to go up consistently we need to get back to a risk on environment and we're still not there we're in an environment

where there is a lot of people hedging their risk because of the the geopolitical risk that is you know I don't need to explain that we've talked about that at length this week uh but it comment there. Yeah. One thing that I do think is interesting is there's one of uh our our lead traders has mentioned this with Bitcoin specifically, there's kind of a perspective right now. It's like heads you win, tails you win, right? In a world where we see more tariffs, more macro uncertainty and more inflation, right? When the tariffs start to hit, we haven't really seen the price impact dayto day. You're going to start to see ships come in from China, like prices go up, assuming that these continue to stay. What we're seeing is

Bitcoin start to trade more similar to gold, right? With a perspective that this is digital gold, non-s sovereign store of value, especially with all the geopolitical and economic uncertainty right now that this is an area that we're even seeing sovereign wealth funds start to allocate to, right? And so I think on that side there's this Bitcoin digital gold inflation hedge. The other side of that is I think that there's optimism that if the market goes risk on the crypto will rise too, right? And I think that that's a broader market sentiment. But I think the difference is you're looking at BTC as an asset versus the underlying space in the first scenario. Second scenario, you probably get more forgiveness and a greater opportunity uh towards a longer tale of tokens itself.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a great it's a great take uh which I completely agree with. Right now you mentioned when we talk about Bitcoin, whether you call it the Bitcoin decoupling uh and we've had this conversation a million times recently. To me, the big thing that would need to happen in order for Bitcoin to truly become digital gold and to be seen as digital gold is we need new inflows of people and investors and institutions mostly who treat it as digital gold, who look at it that way, right? I'm not talking about more retailers buying it, right? I'm talking about these big institutions. You mentioned sovereign wealth funds. What do you think is the current Do you have

any insights into the current state? I mean, we all know that like Abu Dhabi bought 5 450 500 million of Bitcoin in the first quarter. Is there other sovereign wealth funds that are buying that we maybe don't know about? Yeah, I'd say that there are and there's others that are holding the asset too, right? And I think that the question is also interestingly to your point, I agree, I think a lot of this conversation is around what net new capital is coming into the space, right? And if you take a step back and you even think about ETF performance, right? Like I was thinking uh earlier this week, Bitcoin ETFs the quarter before it announced uh was announced so whatever a year and a half ago at this point when you're talking to market participants

the bull case most market participants had in their mind in terms of like one year out what's the AUM of these total vehicles was like $20 billion maybe 30 right people thought that that would be a strong bullc case what you're seeing is over a hundred billion dollars in Bitcoin ETFs most successful ETF launch in history, right? And I think that's a reflection of a lot of net new money coming into the space. And I think what that highlights is actually the how profound it is to provide net new rappers and regulatory clarity on this asset. What you basically have with ETFs is net new market participants that could not hold the physical can hold ETFs. Even from there, I think you're seeing an interesting market dynamic

with like Micro Strategy, SoftBank, Tether, and Caner's new vehicle that they just announced too, where there's also market participants that can't hold the ETF, right, and can only hold equities. And you're seeing inflows into those instruments, too. You see then market participants that if they're not able to hold that instrument, maybe on the debt or fixed income side, they're participating in this market through a convert into those companies. And so I think the interesting thing is across different uh investment strategies across the capital stack you are seeing significant inflows uh into this space and specifically into BTC with that combination of regulatory clarity plus additional instruments that different asset managers or uh market participants

independent of their mandate can basically access. And so I think we're actually still at the early innings in terms of those inflows. We're having conversations around the US government buying BTC. Like I know you've been in the space for a while. I've been in the space for eight years at this point. Like the idea that that would happen even a year and a half ago was crazy. And so I think there's a lot of position for net new capital come in. I think the question is it will go into Bitcoin and then what happens to other assets in the space. Let's be honest, everything in crypto comes with fees. But here's a nice surprise. Moonay balance doesn't take a cut. You heard that right. No Moon Pay fees when you buy or sell crypto with your Moonay balance. Top up with dollars, pounds, or euros. Then

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Put your treasury cash to work earning native yields and protocol rewards. Built by the team behind Coin Shift, which is trusted to manage over 1 billion in business treasuries on chain, including a Gitcoin, and hundreds of leading institutions, see why CSUSDL is gaining traction at milkroad.com/coinshift. Mhm. And I'm I'm going to directly ask you that question, but not yet. Let's come back to that a little bit later in the show. Uh I I I just have to completely agree with what you're saying is and and here's here's my take on it. Uh, and we had Adam back on the show earlier this week and you know he predicted 500 to a 500,000 to a million Bitcoin in this cycle just to

give I mean he's a permable and obviously he he admits that but it is there is real belief from a lot of very very smart very educated people who are saying okay here's the setup we have pipelines as you said financial instruments we have these pipelines that are in place that are new that have only come into place recently and that picking up speed in terms of more and more pipelines are coming in every day. And these pipelines, they're like the ETF. Yeah, we saw way more flows than we expected, but the the buyers, especially the institutional side, are really slow to get in to something like Bitcoin because they have it takes them years to get depending upon you're talking about

a big pension fund or a sovereign wealth fund. takes them years to update their mandate to figure out what their how do they associate the risk of Bitcoin? How do they think about it? How does it fit within their portfolio? All these things and so we are still as you said early innings. So we have more pipelines we also have more demand coming but it's very slow and we have regulation coming which is the next topic I want to get to. So you were in DC the SEC hosted a digital asset roundt. Tell us a little bit about that experience. Let me pull up this photo of you sitting on the uh the the panel here uh so we can show you there in DC. Tell us about what were your takeaways from this. Yeah, a couple things. One, mentioned this earlier, but I think that

when I'm in DC now, one of the takeaways that I have is actually just how profound of a shift we're seeing within this market, right? The idea that even like a year and a half ago, a group of crypto execs would be welcomed into the SEC and asked for their perspective on how the market would continue to grow and expand and what we could do to collaborate with regulators to really enable this asset class on a go forward basis. Like that just wasn't in the realm of possibilities. And so I think just thematically I'm very excited about the progress that's being made in DC. I personally think that the market is undervaluing how profound of a shift we are seeing in the US market specifically both with the potential for market structure bills as he sees CFTC actively

engaging with the view of bringing more activity into this market and creating more healthy and robust markets overall. And so I'm very optimistic in terms of what's happening in DC right now. And I think the takeaways from my perspective is like look there's genuine interest in engaging with the space genuine interest in understanding what it would take to move more activity back to the US. One of the points I mentioned there that I think is easy from a western perspective to overlook is US is a global you know uh is dominating global capital markets but if you look at crypto markets today 85% of volume is still offshore right and so if President Trump you know articulates that he wants the US to be the global hub for crypto so much of the

work that needs to be done is to actually have a conversation around what can we do to actually move trading volume and more activity back to the United States and I think it's great to see regulators, politicians, and otherwise engaging and being thoughtful in terms of what it would take to make that happen. Yeah, it's it's an interesting take. Has the is this is this priced in? I don't I don't know the answer to that question. And I I get the feeling that you're right that we might not I mean a we're so we're so underwater because of macro right now which is just like so creating so much noise that nobody can pay attention to anything else or notice anything else that's happening but also yeah it sort

of does it's happening so fast way faster than any of us expected and when something like this it's almost like I don't believe it to be honest I I'd say that's probably my one take is I keep talking to, you know, yourself and many other players that are in DC that are having these conversations and they all say exactly the same thing. Like it's coming real fast. Like stable coin bill next few months, market structure bill shortly after we'll have both this year. But in my head, I I I can't wrap my head around it. And that's kind of what I feel like the market is saying, like, okay, we'll wait and see if you actually can deliver on this promise to make it happen this fast. What do you think is the likely timing of this? Yeah. So, the conversations right now around market

structure and stable coins happening sometime this summer. And I'm Do you think it's going to be this summer? Like that's crazy. I hope so. But uh I think we're seeing momentum around that. I'm optimistic that we will get that legislation. Do you think they'll be combined or will they be separate? Great question. I think that that comes down to like the core nitty-gritty policym. I've heard recently that there's a chance that they get combined, right? House passes one, Senate passes the other, and then you have a combination of those bills that gets forward. Um, and so I think from my perspective, like candidly, I don't really care how it happens. I think the question is, I think what's important is to have these rules for the road. To your point, has the market priced this in? I don't think so. Right. And I think that that

actually goes directly to the conversation we're happening or we're having earlier, right? Right. The Bitcoin ETF wasn't priced in to the market until we started we saw inflows and I think everyone underestimated how positive the momentum was around that right and how many inflows we got. And I think that the opportunity here the big question and what makes it difficult to have some of these conversations is we still don't have formal definition around what's a security commodity currency etc. Right? And that does a affect adoption and fund flows. With Bitcoin we have that it's a commodity.

It has securities instruments around it. People can allocate to that instrument. My hope is that with market structure, we get clear definitions and rules for the road across these. And I think that that should unlock significant TAM in terms of the capital that can allocate to the space similar to BTC. Now, it doesn't mean that those investment cases will be as good as Bitcoin, right? And I think that the question and you've seen ETH ETFs as an example. I think the investment thesis around Ethereum and like articulation of that to a RAA or wealth manager audience is more difficult than Bitcoin which is just digital gold. And I think as you go further down the market cap waiting probably gets even more difficult to articulate but it will be beneficial for

the space overall. And I think it will actually unlock fundamental in innovation in the US market itself if it does happen. Yeah, I think what we're gonna it's a great point about uh the difference between Bitcoin and and everything else when we go out to non-cryptonatives and trying to explain it to them. I think what we're going to see is we're going to see index products really lead the way after Bitcoin when you're talking about what's going to reach the the rest of the the world and the the other asset classes that are like, "Okay, yeah, I buy I'm in I'm in Bitcoin. I buy into this. Okay, now I want to get more exposure. I don't necessarily need to learn about every single crypto asset and what it does and try to understand smart contracts and you know for most people that's going to

be too much but I want they they'll buy a lot of indexes I think which which will be great because that will bring fantastic flows and will also probably be safer for those investors because they won't make the mistake of buying some ghost chain and getting absolutely wrecked uh which is always a risk in the space when when you think about this upcoming legislation or when you're speaking to your customers. Is there any concerns? Yeah, a couple of thoughts here. Let me let me unpack them. Um, I think that I would be surprised if everyone is going to love every aspect of any legislation or rules, right? And so I think what will be interesting to see is as these bills are furthered and we get more specifics in terms of what

exactly is going to be in them as they go through the drafting process, etc. I'm sure a lot of people are going to have different opinions, right? Um I know that there's been some conversations on Twitter and otherwise around you know different market participants potentially using this as an opportunity for regulatory capture etc. Like from my perspective what do we need? I and Falcon X we advocate for like competitive markets and competition both in the US and abroad and to the extent that I think we can reach that I think the space will be in a good place. I'm sure there will be additional regulatory burden that could be uh post or you know could be enacted on companies within the space and so a lot of the engagements that we are having in

the conversations that we want to have is around what are those registration categories? How are we delineate the roles and responsibilities of different market participants that are active within this space? How do we make sure that we're protecting investors and institutional market participants both retail and institutional from different systemic risk? And to the extent we can get that done and regulators can be thoughtful in terms of not placing an un overwhelmingly burdensome uh regulatory requirements on companies in the space. I generally think it will be a net positive. I am quite optimistic right now. Um but I think that the the proof will be when we get the final bills and are able to have a conversation around that. Okay, let's shift beyond Bitcoin to the other 10 million or so coins. I'm

I'm kidding. I don't want to talk about all 10 million. Well, let's just talk about the few that are actually fundamental and legitimate. Um, when you and we could go two directions here. Either either I would love to get your views on either specific assets or we could talk more broadly about emerging crypto narratives and where you see the the puck moving throughout this year. Cool. Yeah, happy to do both. I mean, I can share perspective in terms of just what we're seeing, right, in terms of trading activity, institutional capital flows. People typically find that helpful as they're building their own perspectives on the space. Won't spend much too much time on BTC here. We've talked a lot about it, but I think that that has core use case. You're seeing a lot of net new uh flows that are

happening in that asset. I think and you know this and I'm sure a lot of your listeners do too. If you look over the last year and if you consider end of last year kind of a mini bull cycle almost, we did see significantly different behavior uh in alts, right? And I think that one of the catalysts for that, you referenced like the 10 million assets. I mean, I think there's like over 30 million assets they're currently launching. You think it's 30 million now? I can't even keep track of the number because it's too easy to watch. It's exponential, right? 2021 I think it was like 2 to four million, right? And so you've seen Oh, I think it was like I think it was way less. I think it was like like 20,000 back in 2021 if you I I guess it depends if you

include NFTTS but I think fungeible tokens I think we were only like 10 to 20,000 weren't we back in 2021 and then it was like this cycle that it was like all of a sudden pumped up fund boom millions of tokens totally yeah so the rel the numbers may be slightly different one way or the other right I don't I don't know that anyone is perfect metrics uh on these two but I think the relative difference is what we've seen a 10 to 15x increase in the number of tokens in a two-year time period. And I think that what that's caused is a dispersion in liquidity and specifically on the retail side of the market in terms of where people are allocating capital. And what we see is that capital becoming much more fleeting, jumping project to project, you know, memecoin to memecoin or

whatever that is, then kind of building longer term duration positions on some of the altcoins within the space. And so the reason I mentioned that is I know both across the institutional side of the market like we work with a lot of venture firms, discretionary hedge funds who hold you know significant positions in nonBTC and different altcoin assets and I think that you've seen a wide dispersion in performance there. Um obviously Salana I think has got a uh a certain amount of uh strong investment narrative that's developed and specifically Salana versus ETH. Salana ecosystem overall I'd see is generally uh getting positive capital flows and I think from an investment thesis perspective people appreciate that and

then I think you're seeing a shift right now towards what people call value which are basically assets that have some sort of cash flow or burn mechanism that enables investors to have more predictability or perception of that and their returns right so seeing a lot of activity in hype seeing activity in maker different core kind of D5 blue chips also with the perspective that those over time will be able to turn on those monetization methods. And I think that that's actually quite healthy for the space, right? Like I'd candidly I think my personal perspective, people should be able to do whatever they want with their money. Someone wants to go buy a memecoin, great, go for it. But I do think from a long-term space perspective, I think focus on projects that have core strong fundamentals and

are actually doing beneficial things within the space will build a longer term uh stronger market. and specifically on the institutional side of the space. Yeah, it's it's interesting that you bring up uh Maker or Sky um because we were chatting recently. There's talk that the stable coin bill will not allow yield bearing stable coins because two of the basically the two biggest stable coins in the world, Circle and Tether, they're not yield bearing stable coins and they are committing the most lobbying dollars to Washington. It would appear that that could be the case. Do you think that that could be likely? Any idea on on if that's going to happen?

And do you think I think do you think that impacts Maker? And then maybe we can extend into a larger conversation of how how will DeFi respond to some of these bills that are coming and will it impact them negatively or positively? Yeah, great question. So I think that it is likely that yield bearing stable coins would will not be in this passive legislation and so you know uh that will impact different assets uh within the space and but at the same time look I think that if you look at the stable coin market overall I think that that's like when people talk about core use cases in crypto and some people like there's no like core use cases like I just think that's false if you look at BTC stable coins I'm happy to talk about other examples that I think are working

well but I that that market has been such a such a s done so significantly well over $230 billion in basically aumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumum on the stable coin side a lot of strategic interesting reasons why the US should be supportive here I'm happy to talk about those but then if I think through like okay defi other onchain areas of the ecosystem um I'm not sure how much market structure or either of these bills are going to directly touch on them I think it's early to have that strong of a perspective in terms of what the ultimate impacts will be. But I do think that like if you look at the fundamental use cases that have really done well, it's like the ability to export essentially financial products on chain. US dollar being one financial

product that's beneficial for people around the world to hold, right? You're seeing stable coins get compare compared to Euro dollars. I think that's an interesting comparison. I think that it's great and generally positive thing for the world, right? for people in emerging markets to be able to hold US dollars versus their significantly inflating local currency or at least have the option to do that. And on the stable coin side, if someone can do that by and also deliver yield in a risk adjusted way, right, I think there will be continued demand for those assets. And as you know, these are open permissionless networks that I think most people if they're technologically literate will have access to. And so I think that's the challenge in making in in rule making here that I think is actually a little bit different from any

very different I would say actually from any other asset class. And so I think we'll continue to see growth in like crypto and stable coin side overall. And I think it's going to be interesting to see okay like where does the line get drawn in terms of DeFi and some of these other assets. I would say that I've been pleasantly surprised so far in my interactions with both regulators and politicians that they're actually thinking through some of these. That was not, you know, that was not top of mind for them years ago. Um, but I don't know that we'll know exactly what that's going to look like till probably post market structure. And once the agencies start actually interpreting this and then thinking through, okay, how does this like look at DeFi, I think you're going to see most of the regulation in the beginning on centralized players

like Falcon X and others. That's a really great point actually and people lose lose this uh lose this in like the details is what we are getting here is legislation, right? We're not getting regulation yet. So we will get legislation and then the regulators will come in and they'll say, "Okay, here's how we're going to regulate this." And that will come over time. So all of this will play out and then we'll get the judiciary system to come in after them and the stuff will funnel through the courts and we'll get even more clarity. So it does it isn't an immediate thing.

I think on the the stable coin thing, my my view is that uh it doesn't matter if if yield bearing stable coins are aren't aren't in this, it doesn't matter. I don't think I don't think it affects the makers or the skies or the like Athena or any of them only because they're not for Americans. Like these products, they're not for Americans, right? Like these are products for people who can't get access to a a savings account or some form of yield on their dollar. Right? In in the US and in most of the developed world, you can you have great financial products where you can very easily get safe stable yields, right?

That's very available. Whereas if you're in Argentina or Venezuela or anywhere in the developing world, that's who these products are for and and there's more than enough of those people and inst and institutions in those places who will still want the yield bearing stable coin. So I don't think it'll make a big difference. I completely agree. I I think that it's easy sitting in the US to have a very US- ccentric perspective on this market, but if you look at like stable coins and like what fundamentally they have done is like I mentioned, you're basically exporting a tokenized US dollar on chain and giving people like we we serve as a back-end liquidity provider for example for a lot of what we call retail aggregators. So that's like investment applications, payment

companies, basically B2B TTOC relationships and a number of those are in emerging markets and and what you see in the trading data there is people look to hold Tether and other stable coins just as an asset, right? And so I don't see that trend going away and I think that that's actually the interesting trend when you think stable coins and tokenization is like the ability to export those assets on chain to a wider audience than would have been possible before. And I think that's super compelling and a net positive for the world itself. All right, Austin, before we wrap here, any final thoughts, any final things that you've been mulling on, contrarian takes that you have before we let you go? Yeah, I think we've covered a lot of ground today. Um

or how about how about a prediction? Any predictions for uh for this year or for this cycle? Yeah, so a couple things. Some of them reiterating what we've talked about already. personal perspective, I think the market's undervaluing how positive of a shift we're seeing in the US itself. I think what we are seeing is it's now become the most favorable or let's say poised to be the most favorable uh market in the world. I think that the subtext around that and the following effects are what we should be watching to think through and understand. Some things that I've been thinking through right as we referenced 85% of global crypto volumes outside of the US today. I think you could see some shift back to the United States and I think that a policy uh is a

potential push for that. I also think there's an interesting conversation we should have as an industry about whether there's regulatory reciprocity that could be granted across different regions and you could actually have global uh crypto flows. Um and so I would be excited if that was the case. I think there's a few regions where you've seen kind of a I'd say a higher concentration of companies in the space and more favorable uh regs whether that's UAE, Singapore, otherwise. So I would be watching that. I think that that could be interesting and I think that what you'd see there is where the US has been behind. Interestingly CME is like what 20% I think of uh open interest uh in Bitcoin futures. number may be uh slightly off um but

approximately from a trading volume perspective much less though right um and so I think that if we're looking at derivatives markets I think there's an interesting conversation around what's going to happen onshore versus offshore a lot of our focus has been we have a CFTC regulated swaps dealer uh so we deal regulated bilateral derivatives in the US we've seen huge growth in that market I think if there's an opportunity to basically um combine US and global liquidity it could be very compelling and I think that that would move the space forward and I'm optimistic in terms of you know I think the net new market participants that are coming in you know I think we sit in a very fortunate seat to understand like what and see around the corner everyone's

watching macro right now and we'll see what happens there I think everyone's guess is as good as the other person's but if I look out 12 months 18 months I think the interesting data that we see here is like by far the strongest onboard boarding pipeline in terms of profile of institutional market participants we've had in the history of the company over the last seven eight years um at this point and I think the question is what happens when all those people are in the space what's exciting to me is if you get also additional people that are building both established companies and net new startups and that if regulatory clarity in these net new capital flows can actually catalyze fundamental innovation within this space so that's what I'm watching right now just a couple off-the cuff thoughts wonderful Austin thank you

so so much for joining us today. Greatly appreciate your time. Appreciate it. Jay had fun chatting for sure. Thanks for listening in everybody. Have yourselves a wicked awesome day. We'll see you back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening to today's episode folks. Before I let you go, if you're looking for something to do this weekend, you and your lady or your fam are hanging out, cuddled up on the couch. Highly recommend the new documentary Vitalic, an Ethereum story. It's a documentary where a bunch of filmmakers, award-winning filmmakers, an incredible documentary, high high class, really really well put together. They follow Vitalic Brown for a few years and document his life. They get into his backstory, his childhood, what he was like, some incredible stories of him as like a sevenyear-old uh developing spreadsheets in this whole world. His

mind just works in incredible ways. Highly recommend whether you're invested in Ethereum, whether you love Ethereum or you hate Ethereum. I know there's a polarizing view on that. Doesn't matter. It's a great great film that will really open your eyes to Vitalic and the future of crypto as well. Check it out. Link is in the show notes. You won't be disappointed. As always, if you liked today's episode, please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't miss out on the next one. There's also a link in the description to our free 5minute 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