Dan Tapiero on why he thinks crypto has bottomed

Transcript

So by 2035, we think Bitcoin can get to 20 trillion in value. So that's a 10x from here. >> Bitcoin went from around $125,000 down to below $60,000 and is right now back up near $80,000 all within the same 12-month period. That kind of volatility you only find in roller coasters and in crypto. And right now it is much more fun in crypto. Hello and welcome to Milk Road Crypto, the podcast that's here to explain why meme coins like Bike Tyson and Laptop are absolutely essential to the future of finance. And today we are joined by the macromaster of digital assets himself, Dan Tapiro. Dan is the founder and CEO of 50T Funds where he has been one of the few Wall Street macroinkers publicly bullish on crypto since 2019. He manages roughly 2 billion

in assets and he is out now raising 50T Funds fund five right now. and Dan is going to give us an updated look at his thoughts on crypto and all the things that are going on in the markets right now. If that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. And as a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful partners at Saber. The stable coin payments platform built for Asia. So keep an ear out for more information on them later in the episode. But for now, welcome back to one of my favorite guests, Dan Tapiro. How are you, sir? >> Hey, John. Good to see you. I don't know that I'm going to talk about memecoins at all or uh Mike Tyson. So, let's just

get that straight. I don't know if your listeners are expecting that. We're not going to get into that today. >> I think that's probably what's best. But Dan, what I do want to get into is something I've seen you tweeting about uh recently, which is that you've said that the bull market has now begun. Expect digital asset ecosystem explosion up. Uh you're one of my favorite follows on Twitter. People have been debating this right now. Has the crypto bull market started again? Is the bare market still going? Where do you land on this conversation? What are your thoughts on this? >> Well, yeah, I I just jumped in here a little bit because I can't answer too many questions all at once. I I it's like one at a time. I So, I think there are certain spots within what I call

broadly the digital asset ecosystem. So, that is and I I have been calling it that the DAE since 2019 basically. And that is sort a view that all things of value money will eventually move on chain. And you know the total number there is something close to you know 800 900 trillion dollars of assets and value that exists out there between you know real estate and stocks and bonds and everything. That's roughly the number. And so I'd always thought from the very beginning that on the one hand Bitcoin is the core asset of the space, the pristine collateral, the original code, that's all Bitcoin. Everything else sort

of derives from Bitcoin. So, and I think ETH and Salana have come along now and also are, you know, the core three assets, you know, in the space and and pretty much everything else uh of the altcoin world, we'll just say, is just more of a venture project. So, we've been in the midst of a bull phase for the DAE broadly uh probably since the bottom in 22. So, what do I mean? Uh stable coins, RWAs, prediction markets, all of these sort of onchain uses of money, capital, value have been up and to the right. So even

as Bitcoin and ETH and the cryptocurrencies themselves have been in uh a pretty I think a pretty harsh bare phase. I mean since the peak in July 25 the market basically just went straight down. I mean it was I think it was quite quick. I mean 50 60%. Some of the alts as you know are down 80 90%. And some of them are still going down from their 21 peaks. So you can imagine uh up until about you know a month and a half ago you had certain altcoins that were down 99 and a half% uh from their 21 peaks and of course NFTTS which I also non-f fungeible tokens which I also include as

part of the broad DAE you know they peaked in 21 I still big picture think that there's a huge use for um you know digital tokens that represent you know, I don't it's not just art, but you know, all uh items, you know, all specific items that can be registered on on a blockchain, right? Like I I think that some of the hype around the PFPs, those are the pictures, right? The NFTts got a little out of control, you know, board ape, etc. Um but I do think there's a use case there and um digitizing property rights which is essentially what that is uh is

important. It's just that area of the DAE has sort of stayed within its its bare phase. And so I think that you know you ask me is the bull market in Bitcoin you know is it back? So yeah, I think Bitcoin bottomed, ETH also bottomed. I think everything bottomed and we had a nice catalyst in um there was an SEC announcement, you know, whether clarity gets passed or not, you know, I think that the SEC and the CFTC are going to be, you know, passing, you know, uh, you know, putting out white papers that confirm that certain activities within our world are legitimate or okay. Um, I

think, you know, now it seems like we may not get one overall or overarching Clarity Act that passes, but we might get, you know, little, you know, little bills that they can agree on. So, that was one catalyst. But then, of course, Secretary Bessant came out and said he was going to buy treasuries. I think it's a form a little bit of quantitative easing, but he's buying these off the run longdated bonds. Um, I I think it's just, you know, it's cheaper for the Treasury to buy these 30-year uh bonds that are trading at big discounts that are also very illquid. So, he's he's he he's consolidating the liquid liquidity in the bond market. And again, I think

he's probably adding net a little bit, too. And that also kicked off and interestingly happened almost the same time that the BOJ, Bank of Japan and Bessant came in and intervened in dollar yen at 163. So that of course pretty much put the bottom in for gold. The dollar has a very high negative uh correlation with gold. So I would watch the dollar very carefully. Yesterday, Bessant came out. I'm going to come around to answering all your question, but um came around and said, "Look, if anybody wants to come up against me in the dollar yen, good luck." Okay, Scott is probably, you know, certainly the

most knowledgeable treasury secretary of any country in the world on the dollar yen cross, I would argue. I mean, maybe not as much uh background as maybe some of the Japanese financial ministers, but actually, if I were, and I am a betting man, um I I I I think Scott's ability to manage the dollar yen uh rate to where it needs to be uh is even uh I would say superior in a way to even the Japanese officials. And they're working together now. So, I I was a little surprised. I mean, it's interesting. People in the

crypto world, you know, blockchain, however you want, they have no they don't follow the dollar. They don't even know what dollar yen is. Okay. For macro, oldtime macro guys like me, and you know, I know Scott from years ago. Um, you know, we're in a sort of similar world. He's a bit older than me, of course, and we both work for Stan Duck and Miller, so we're a little more, you know, obviously very attuned. It's hard for me, even though I don't trade any of that stuff, it's very hard for me to not look at the dollar again every single time I look at my Bloomberg. It's just something, you know, Scott's been trading the dollar yen for 35 years. So, the intervention in the dollar is a big deal. It doesn't happen very often. I

mean, uh, I remember 1998 very, uh, clearly, as I'm sure he does, because Bob Rubin took dollar yen down from whatever it was, 150 to 100, like in a nancond or 110 or whatever it was. Again, that's a long time ago, but all of us um, made our performance back then, watching this dollar yen very carefully. So, the fact that the Treasury comes out and says they're going to buy Treasury bonds, which doesn't happen much, the um Treasury Secretary puts the top in dollar yen. It also puts the top in the dollar against other currencies. That's very important because the dollar yen doesn't trade in a vacuum. The dollar also trades against

the euro. Uh it trades against the pound, the Canadian, etc., etc. And so when a very strong push is made in the dollar yen, it often does filter through uh against the dollar and other currencies, but it very specifically follows through in terms of the dollar against gold. And so gold bottomed almost at the exact same time, right? and the Bitcoin, of course, they're like, "What's going on in that fiat world with all those boomer guys playing around in these currency and treasury markets?" Oh, you could have bought Bitcoin, I think it's 60 or 65,000 days after the intervention and after

gold moved. But the crypto guys like, "Oh, no. We're still mired in a bare phase. You know, the world is coming to an end." If you were on Crypto X or Crypto Twitter or whatever, however it's called now. the negative sentiment was unbelievable. And if you go back to my ex, you know, I like to I took a break for a few months. Um because when I post, I like to post something every day. I'm very much an all or nothing kind of guy. So like I I'm either going to post every day, make my best attempt at posting something interesting, or I'm not going to. And you know, the summer was a little bit of a lull and the volatility in Bitcoin of course collapsed. By the way, thank you for letting me drone on here because I'm almost done. And you know, you could

have bought the Bitcoin and the ETH and everything. It was a gift if you had been clued in a little bit to the way the old macro world works because the liquidity i.e. the dollars, the value that sits in the old world, the non-digital world of course is, you know, a thousandx greater than what exists in our little world of, you know, crypto blockchain. So that was the sign and you could have bought a ton of Bitcoin and I think that's that was the low and I pretty much came out and said it and I kept posting charts like h this looks like a low you know um it wasn't definitive. I wasn't jumping up and down about it, but the market was very sold

out. And then you had these positive catalysts and so I'm not actively trading the way I used to, but it was it was clear. And of course, you know, you mentioned my fund five in our fund five. Uh it was a clear sign also for us to ramp up our buying of private companies. I mean, I don't you don't use the the daily or weekly trading on the Bitcoin or gold as a signal for us, but like I can't I can't take to buy, you know, to make a 10-year investment into a company, but I sort of can't take my macro hat off there. So, the the answer to your question is is I think the low is in for the space. Doesn't mean we can't correct a little bit. You know, the semiconductors,

uh, Intel, etc., they're down a lot. I was looking last night down over like 50% from a few months ago high. I think Micron was down a ton. My guess is that bottom happened a few days ago and now those stocks are going to start going on a run. So I I I think people who are worried about the stock market, about the Fed hike, about inflation, about, you know, copper and oil going up too much, they're worried that the stock market's going to go down and then that is going to hit our space. I just say to them, our space has been going down, like straight down for like a year and it's lost half its value. So, that's enough. And the Treasury, you know, secretary came in and put a low in. Uh,

I think we're probably near the peak in interest rates as well. Um, the market can test him a little bit, but I think it's a joke. I mean, honestly, in my whole life, you could not have hoped ever for a better Treasury Secretary in combination with a better Fed governor. I mean, that is like a dynamic duo. So, whenever you read something that's sort of attacking what they're doing or this and that, people just have no concept. These are practitioners both and war also worked for dr um after I was there at Dukane and you know people just civilians just don't understand when you're managing a macro portfolio

daytoday and you're working with Stan Duck and Miller you know who along with Soros of course are the two greatest you know macro investors traders of all time like how in the world does some like Wall Street Journal you know, journalist like fading those guys or some silly Bloomberg article. I mean, it's it's it truly is comedy. We have never had a better combination uh managing monetary and fiscal policy in this country. So, the market's down a ton, down 50%. We've had a little pop up and maybe we have a little dip if the market corrects into October kind of thing, but you know, look at how the

market spiked up to 80,000 wonderfully and now is having a hard time coming in. It's like not selling off at all. I mean, it it really is trading well. So the question about the low yes I think that's in the caveat to it for our space is that there are many things you know like hype and like Zcash that have been on a tear and have not been in bare faces like they had dips but I mean hype has been a straight shot from 20 all the way up to 80. So you know and if you look at you know other metrics like you know stable coin trading volume or issuance or uh as I said the growth in you know dex uh trading or per rwa per

it's all been com vertical and up and up and uh to the right so I just think that you have to separate out uh your question right when you ask like is the bottom in or not. >> Hi everyone, this is John. Listen, our Milk Road Pro analysts nailed this AI bull market. They had dozens of calls pay off in a big way for our community. If you want to see how our entire team of analysts are positioning for the crypto bull market that's going to come after this bare market finally ends, you can join us now at Milkroad Pro. It's just a dollar. Link is in the description. You'll get access to all of our analyst trades, their watch list, and see how they're navigating this in their portfolios and get access to ask us questions in Discord anytime, day or night. It's just a dollar. Link's in the

description. Milk Road Pro. Join now. I'll see you there. >> Right. Yeah. Well, I appreciate the depth, the nuance there and sort of the macro picture around all of this. There's a lot of wisdom in that. So, thank you for that answer. I want to ask about 50T funds and particularly about Fund 5. 50T is known for making investments in infrastructure plays, growth, equity in the digital asset space. Is that where you're focused on for fund five as well or or where are you seeing the opportunity right now for this fund? Yeah, I mean as you know we we were very fortunate last year and we had realizations in circle and in Darabit. Derabit was purchased by Coinbase uh Figure E Toro. These are companies that we bought, you know,

literally five years ago that had IPOs and we made multiples uh return and we returned almost $400 million to our uh uh LPS and existing capital. So in terms of DPI which is the percentage of committed capital that was returned our funds one and two have returned 40% of original capital. Those are launched in 21 2021. Our fund three is lagging a little bit because it has an exposure to metaverse blockchain gaming and NFTTS.

We've only returned 20% of the capital there. And our fund four which closed in 24 uh is up over 250% gross very in a very short period of time and has returned 30% of its capital already with 8 and a half years still remaining on that fund. And the 24 fund fund 4 just shows you how powerful it can be to purchase equity during the bare phases. Of course, it's much harder to raise capital during the bare phases because, you know, I remember in 23 people were saying to me, "Oh, Sam Bankmanf Freed is going to jail." Uh, they were watching his trial. And I'm like, "We have nothing to do with Sam Bankman Freed. In

fact, we passed on FTX three times. You know, we've passed on over 400 deals uh in the last, you know, five to six years." So, but people get panicked and so you know our our third fund in 2022 also was raised at the absolute peak of the market because people were nearly euphoric and we were able to you know hold off and invested some capital during the bare phase. about one-third of the capital was invested in the bare phase but you know that that fund is lagging as a result but we've invested in names um that you know that we think over the next 2 three years will have IPOs Kraken is our largest investment Ledger is another very large one for us

anamoka uh another company we really like led in quick node these are all you know more developed more mature businesses is uh at least you know 5 years you know companies making minimum sort of 50 to 100 million in revenue and that's sort of been my niche from day one. I you know when I had the idea for the funds in 2019 I just never thought that we I could do venture you know and I certainly didn't want to compete with you know Mark Andre and you know poly chain and paradigm all of these guys uh in Silicon Valley I'm not from that background I mean you know and I and I'm

not going to win against those guys you know they are very adept and it's also a very different style of investment right they're they're investing companies that are not proven, their returns can be greater, but it's the style of investment that I'm not really so keen on. It's, you know, make uh 10 investments, nine go to zero, and then hopefully one is is Google or one is Coreweave or one is, you know, Open AI. Like, I think that's wonderful, but that's just not what we do. we, you know, our focus is to make, you know, four, five, 6x return over a 10-year uh holding period uh in our investments.

So, we take less risk and we also have more modest return expectations than the venture funds which are trying to make, you know, a 100x return. And so what's surprising to me is, you know, I'm six years into this just about and we still are the only growth equity fund in the world exclusively focused on crypto, blockchain, digital assets, web 3, all those those four things. We don't do anything else. You know, we have some Bitcoin mining exposure. We have a pretty significant position in Bitfury for us. And Bitfury owned at one point.

80% of cipher mining which of course is one of the lead um you know power providers to the data center uh buildouts. So um you know through uh cipher which we still own a chunk of through bitury uh we do have exposure uh directly to the um to the AI theme. I also think many of our existing companies have pivoted in one way to AI. it's not generating a lot of revenue yet. But also many of our companies since they are some of the smartest tech guys and they have so many developers and you know I they're not exactly software companies but Bitcoin and ETH

and you know the applications that are built on top of blockchains you know kind of are tangential to software companies and so those guys are the ones that are using AI I to sort of a mind-boggling degree and one of our companies just as an example 18 months ago had 10% of its code written by uh agents and today it's 100%. So just think about the savings and all that flowing to the bottom line. So in the first four funds we've got you know about 1 point I think it's 1.4 four maybe a little more billion uh in 22 companies and then fund five we've

raised close to 200 million already and uh we've already made some investments we haven't talked about them they haven't exactly finalized I invested 40 million uh into a well-known uh company you'll know the name it's you know a company doing hundreds of millions in revenue um we got in at a reasonable valuation that deal probably closes at the end of the month and We have two other deals that we've invested in. So, we've already invested in three and I think we'll have two more by the end of the year. And they are traditional I would traditional they are sort of picks and shovels infrastructure uh companies.

We don't own cryptocurrency. Um, you know, I would love to own hype, but we think that, you know, just historically we have it. And I think that until there is absolute 100% clarity in terms of where revenue will acrue, does it acrue to the token? Does it acrue to an equity? If a company doesn't have equity and only a token, do they wake up one day and decide to issue equity? You don't know. I think hype is a little bit of a different story, but it's just not clear and I really just don't want to take that risk. And you have a hype DAT.

You have all sorts of DATs that you can invest in. We don't invest in any DATs. I just don't I don't really believe in that. I I I think Micro Strategy is great. I think Michael Sailor's phenomenal. Uh Tom Lee's dad's probably pretty good. They own 5% of ETH. But we only invest in operating businesses. And buying Bitcoin or ETH and putting it into an equity wrapper, I think, is is okay. If you can build a business around that, that's that's okay. But I just don't really think it's that interesting. I mean, what you have a you know, a Bitcoin that's going to have a 100% correlation basically with Bitcoin.

So, you don't need me to do that, right? We're finding companies that are building core infrastructure that we think will be around in, you know, five years that will eventually go public. And we're investing, you know, companies, you know, roughly four or$500 million to a billion, five or two billion in value because we we like to invest at around 5 to 10 times revenue at the most. Um, you know, if we can, five times revs. All of our best investments were things we invested at between two and five times revenue. I mean, we bought Kraken, you know, at two and a half times revenue, you know, at $3 billion valuation. And I think now

it's north of 20. So, it's very important uh where you get in. And for fund five, uh now I think it's it's a wonderful time. uh we don't really have that much competition in um pricing deals and in investing uh in in growth stage companies. We just there just aren't that many people and the prices are still, you know, reasonable. >> Great answer, Dan. I I I want to ask you covered a lot of questions that I had there. Dan, you you brought up a a great subject in here which I I really was curious to get more thoughts from you on which is this notion of token versus equity. And we've seen a lot of projects in the crypto space trying to align

their value more with their token and try to treat their token more like their equity. Could you talk to me about what you're seeing in terms of the evolution there and you know how you're evaluating when you might actually start being interested in tokens as opposed to equity or or both or just Yeah. What are you seeing in that space happening? >> Yeah, honestly I think it it's pretty complicated and it's case by case at the moment. So, you know, we don't have clarity. You know, thank goodness for genius. That was great for stables, but, you know, I think it's just it could go either way. Um, you have to really know the founder, believe in their commitment to one or the other. You also have equity businesses that say, "Look, well,

we're just never going to launch a token." And then, okay, that's fine. Uh, I mean, I think honestly we would be agnostic to the token versus equity if we could just develop some confidence around, you know, they're going to do what they're going to say. And the problem with our space has been has been really that it's it's a good and a bad thing. I mean, it's been mired with all sorts of frauds and there are all kinds of, you know, dicey people involved. I mean, you know, I think Toma Bravo came out after 21. I think he unfortunately was in FTX and they just vacated the space. I think

other traditional growth equity tech investors won't touch crypto because, you know, it's it's been littered with problems and fraud and hacks and, you know, all of this stuff. and the people are much younger and this is all new and often they don't really you know know how to manage a business on top of that. So what I'm saying is is that I think that's wonderful for people like me because it creates a moat around our business. So guys like I mentioned to Bravo, but also Silver Lake, Tiger, CO2, the Canadian pension fund system, these very large investors, they've all moved

out and they're not back. So that leaves more opportunity for us. But on the other hand, like we want to have a higher degree of credibility, right? We want to have upstanding guys, you know, in the space who do what they say they're going to do. And we deal with it every week. Some founder tells us something. It's not true. Literally not true, right? Or he changes his mind. I mean, I had one founder, you know, one founder, we were close to a deal. Bitcoin has nothing to do with Bitcoin. This guy's business. Bitcoin rallied from 60 to 80. He changed his mind because the previous week he had a

very strong week in his revenue. Now, I'm thinking we're going to make a 10-year investment in this guy, and he's changing the valuation that we kind of broadly agreed on because of one week performance a, you know, a week ago. Like, that's crazy, right? Like, in the real world outside of crypto. Yeah. Now, who is he going to raise money from? I don't know. But he's not getting anything from us. So, so it's a, you know, it's a little topsyturvy.

And, you know, just to go back to your question, I think that's part of the reason why, you know, we're still not investing in tokens because also tokens do different things in different projects. You know, Canton, which is a token, is the token of digital asset, which is a company that's more of an enterprise blockchain, right? And that may be a wonderful investment. I don't know. They look like they're really gaining traction, but do you invest in the token? I don't know.

It doesn't move. Uh, should it move? I don't know. I don't really understand the acrual mechanism there which is very different from hype which is very different from you know take a look at poly market right like you know you own you should you should own the equity there and so there are different businesses doing different things within the DAE it's not coordinated it's who knows and I'm not saying that's bad it just is but like I can't take existential risk and wake up one day and like, "Oh, the equity you thought you had. Oh, you invested 50 million in the equity." Well, >> now it's only worth a fraction of that because we're going to focus on our

token. >> I'll let other people take the risk and they will reap the reward. You know, good for them if they figure it out. But to me, that's more venture risk that I don't want to take. >> You know, one of the weird things about crypto is that the longer you're in it, the more accounts you seem to end up with. You buy in one place, trade somewhere else, earn yield somewhere else, and if you actually need capital, you end up having to sell something that you probably wanted to keep. That's why we at Milkroad are partnering with Nexo. These guys keep the whole thing under one account. You can buy, trade crypto, earn interest on what you already hold, and even borrow against your capital without having to sell it all in one spot, all in one account, all on Nexo.

So, if you need liquidity, but you don't want to give up your position, or you're already holding crypto and you want to be able to do more with it, I think Nexo is worth your time. We love working with them. I think you will, too. Telemilk Road sent you. >> Gotcha. Okay. I appreciate that perspective and you know just like you said that's evolving and and we'll see how that plays out. Um you mentioned Hyperlid you mentioned digital asset treasury companies and Stanley Ducken Miller came up too. I want to ask your thoughts on this. Uh Dukane Capital's most recent 13F filing showed that Stanley's taken a position in PER which is one of the largest hyperlquid uh digital asset treasury companies. And I was curious your thoughts on this as like a signal for the market. Does this mean that you think Wall Street is

starting to come I think it was like a $23 million position. Um, which I don't know million. Yeah, >> $23 million if that was the position is it's so small. It's I I it must be one of his junior PMs that he has working there. Uh, portfolio matter, one of his, you know, $23 million for Dukane. I mean, it's I'm sure it's less than 1%. I mean, it's probably less than one of 1%. So, I mean, the market could could take it as a signal if it feels like it.

I don't know. Um, but very small position. That being said, I mean, it's it's some position. Maybe it's a starter. Maybe, you know, he wants to learn a little bit more about it. I don't really know what the team is that he has there. I know Wars was very involved uh until he left, but you know, it's a family office. It's not when I worked for him, I worked for it was a fund and we were over $10 billion. So now it's his personal money and I don't know what that is, but it I mean it certainly could be 10 billion. I I just don't know. I just don't know. He's he's had he's had some positions in our space. I think he was an early investor

in Anchorage. I think he's been an investor in figure uh which we have been too. So uh but I I think you know he's a portfolio manager with investments he he has hundreds of investments in his portfolio. So I don't I don't know if the position were 250 million then I would say that's a real position for him. I mean I'm just guessing because I really don't know. Yeah, >> I know it's speculation, but I I just kind of want to hear your reaction.

>> I mean, I worked for him, you know, over so long ago, I don't even remember, over 15 years ago. >> Yeah. >> Well, I appreciate your thoughts on that. Uh Dan, I want to spend the rest of the conversation on the intersection of AI and crypto because I've heard you talking about this a lot. You've called uh blockchain the money of AI and my understanding is that at least some of the the capital from Fund 5 is supposed to be looking at this intersection of blockchain and AI. Could you talk to me about what opportunities you're seeing there and your thoughts on that intersection right now?

>> Yeah, I mean this for us is a little ventury like we we look to to for companies that are actually making money which can be hard right there. I mean actually producing 50 million in revenue, 100 million in revenue. So at the moment there are no companies that are benefiting from Agentic Finance to that degree and a lot of it of course you know was kicked off by X42. A lot of the money movement that agents are transacting are stables and there have been millions of transactions millions already and there they've been

I don't know what the number is I mean hundreds of thousands I think there are millions of agents having done millions of transactions but the total revenue that's been acred is small you know in the tens of millions and again maybe that's changed you you know in the last things are changing so dramatically uh in the last you know month or so but I think it's very clear that there are going to be hundreds of trillions of dollars transacted by autonomous agents in the coming five years and you know we don't exactly know who is

going to be involved in that world we don't know where the revenue is going to acrue, who's going to be actually making money from all those agents because again a little more traditional guy I'm looking to invest in operating businesses that are leveraged to the growth in this broad DAE digital asset ecosystem and there is one new component to this out on the far right that is aentic finance. So the way I think about it is we need to invest in companies that are already making sort of a certain amount of revenue that we know will pivot to that world. So the we just made a $40 million

investment in our fund five which fits that description and I can't say the name yet because the deal hasn't closed. It'll close in a few weeks. But, you know, they are, let's just say, in part, building, let's the wallet infrastructure for these agents. Now, they already have that wallet infrastructure for crypto and blockchain, right? They already have it, but they're also pivoting it now towards being able to service agents. And so that's sort of how I play it as opposed to investing in something that's at a

super early venture stage that's an idea that doesn't have an existing business, right? It's a little bit of a safer way for us to play that. You know, um transaction landing I think is also going to be very important. um you know who gets to place their transaction in which blockchains, right? The ordering of blockchains. And I think if you if you start to get a little bit more in the weeds into sort of the blockchain blockchain architecture infrastructure, I think there's some good moes around those businesses because they're complex and I

don't think that some of the trady people who are coming in now, you know, like Fidelity and Templeton and Erade, Morgan Stanley, everybody is now offering, you know, crypto services whether it's custody or execution or transaction or whatever. But for us, you know, it's it it's tough there in that specific area of Agentic. It's just so early. We want to have exposure, but we don't want that venture, you know, that, you know, three guys in a garage coming up with like could be the greatest idea ever, but it's just too too early. And when I mean by the you mentioned the money, I mean I think look it makes sense to me that agents agents are are

just code and you know blockchain and crypto have been around for you know over 15 years and it's taken forever for human adoption and I think people are now more on this theme. I was on this about a year ago two years ago. Now I think it's it's better understood that that maybe you know the infrastructure of blockchain and crypto are just more native to the agentic universe because it's just code interacting with code. Humans don't have to worry about you know worry about like losing their seed phrase. the multiple wallets, you know, crossbridgeing, you know, there's

just all sorts of stuff when you're moving uh money on chain hacks. I just, you know, even the most experienced DeFi guys will have a moment of panic, you know, right before they do a transaction, like, did it did it go through? Did it not? You know, there's a few seconds there where you could be a little concerned. I'm just saying that I don't see autonomous agents going through tradfi rails, you know, AC wires. I think that's all dead. And so there are no big dollars there yet, but I think it's coming.

>> Okay. And I I appreciate that perspective. >> Is that too vague? I mean, I >> vague answers. I think it it shows your strategy though because a lot of people are kind of in this same spot of wondering how to pick the next venture thing and your strategy of trying to pick who you think is well positioned to to pivot to that space. That makes a lot of sense. Um Dan, I I want to end with one final question here. here. I know we're coming up on time, but you you rebranded the funds from uh 10T to 50T and I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit about the reason for that 5x in the forecast of the digital asset ecosystem and just where the updated thesis is on that.

>> Yeah, I mean it's really sort of simple. I mean in 2019 the total value in the space was 300 billion. So, Bitcoin, ETH, all of the cryptocurrencies, and all of the equity of the businesses, we tallied up to about 300 billion. So, I thought, okay, we're launching a 10-year life fund. Where's that going to be in 10 years? And I thought, well, it's going to 30x. And I've told this story a million times, actually. I said, 'It's got a 30x, but no one I know is going to believe me that I actually call the 30x when it happens. So, I've got to put my view

into the name of my fund. And so, 300 billion going up 30x is 10 trillion. So, the first three funds were called 10 trillion 10T. Uh the fourth fund I pivoted to a name a different name slightly one roundt partners that fund was more focused on secondary and special situations within the space still and by the fifth fund so we're talking like 2025 I looked out and the value of the DE was like four to five trillion already so it had gone from 30 from 300 billion to 5 trillion so it felt really stale for me to say, "Okay, well, we're going to call

it 10 trillion cuz in 10 years, like we're already halfway there. We could be at 10T in two years from now." So, we sat back and we said, "Okay, what really is our view?" And what is the value of the digital asset ecosystem 10 years forward from our fifth fund launch date, which is now? So by 2035 we think Bitcoin can get to 20 trillion in value. So that's a 10x from here.

That's over 10 years. ETH we think can get to ETH and maybe you want to throw in Salana there two to 10 trillion. So that's 30. And then I think the equity of the businesses in the space will be worth you know 20 trillion. and we very meticulously went through every single company where we think it can be worth and so I wasn't necessarily going to at the outset call it 50T but when we look at our true forecasts that's what we think and also you know the the team has completely changed our methods have changed I mean what I was doing in 2019 2020 21 I mean it doesn't look anything

like what we do today. I mean it just that was a you know an idea that I had in my head that you know our first fund was very small. It was only 100 million and um you know today we've got 20 people. We have real professionals. It's hard finding talent in the space. It's a little harder. It was harder back then. It was nearly impossible uh in 2019 to find people of quality and substance in the space. They were all like very I would call them sort of spivy token promoters and you know people weren't really doing real research right like they weren't really doing analytics so it was hard to hire people today it's

changed you know the quality of our team has never been better we have people who are you know enough experience in the old world and have experience in the new world and that's sort of where we come in we kind of bridge those two worlds. We're definitely not like a typical crypto native group or crypto, you know, venture group, you know, trolling around in DeFi and, you know, playing around to leverage up different stuff. I mean, I'm not saying that stuff is bad. It's just we're just I mean, sometimes it's bad, but it's just not what we do. So, anyway, there are a lot of reasons for

the upgrade. uh as far as I I was concerned. >> Dan, you have told that story before, but I love hearing you tell it because it is so bullish and shows how fast things have grown. Dan, thank you so much for being on the Milk Road Show. You're one of my favorite guests. I always love having you on here. I always learn a lot. Uh where can we send people to find more of you and your work online? >> Well, I mean, there's there's the X and then, you know, DTAP, that's my entity, one of my holding companies, DTAP Capital. So that's that's one on LinkedIn under my name, but then also we have a 50T LinkedIn site that's a little more active than on on X or 50T on X because it I found that over the years the X crowd doesn't really have as much

interest in the companies now. They should start to you know you've got Figure and Circle and Coinbase you've got more coming. Securitize also now has just popped up and become a public company. So I I think that you know the LinkedIn people are very interested in our equity investments etc. So that is a place the 50T site on LinkedIn where we publish actually you know we share a lot of work with people. I mean, sometimes I'm concerned we overshare, but I I feel like, you know, as we always do, we have a role to help educate people and there are still a lot of investors out there with zero exposure to the space. And I

look out, you know, 5 10 years and I just don't think you can have zero exposure. I think your portfolio suffers if it doesn't have at least some. So, that's where you can find me. >> Thank you so much, Dan. Thank you for also, you know, letting me be a little long-winded on some of these answers, too. >> I I love your long-winded answers. They're the best. Uh Dan Tapiro, 50T Funds, thank you for being on the Milk Road Show. >> Thank you. >> Thank you all for joining us. I hope you all learned something today. So, until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milkro Show.

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