Institutional capital and DeFi's next phase

16 May 2025 · 34:18

Maple co-founder and CEO Sid Powell reports from Consensus 2025 on a visible shift in sentiment, with JPMorgan staff asking informed questions about DeFi. He names three trends: real-world asset tokenization, institutional interest, and Bitcoin yield, since new institutions buy Bitcoin first and then ask how to earn on it or borrow against it. Powell also explains how Maple got its name from the debt stack of senior, mezzanine and equity tranches. The Milk Road Show host is Jay Hamilton.

Speakers

Topics

Transcript

GM, good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that is surviving consensus despite partying all week. We're here live. It's Friday, May the 16th. We got Sid Powell in the house, CEO and co-founder of Maple. It's been a fantastic week. We got so much to share with you guys from what is happening on the ground in a very, very exciting way. Sentiment's been amazing. The vibes are high. You're really seeing this bullish sentiment come through at this conference. The builders are building. I mean, it's amazing. We're going to jump into that and so much more with Sid. Before we jump in, I got to let you guys know quickly there is no Saturday podcast this week. The Milker

Pro team was all out hustling at conferences doing different things. So, we didn't have a chance to make that podcast. So, no Saturday podcast this week. We'll be back again next week. Today's episode is brought to you by Letin Get Cash without selling your Bitcoin. And it's also brought to you by Coin Shift powering top crypto treasuries with their yield bearing stable coin CSUSDL. Sid, welcome to Milk Road Show. Thank you for having me, Jay. Yeah, happy to be here. Pleasure to have you. Okay, let's start big picture. You come to conferences like this all the time. Uh for those who aren't at the conference, they're at home trying to get a sense of what's going on in the market. You know, all they're doing is watching charts and candles. But when you come to these conferences, you tend to see what's happening behind the

scenes. What are you noticing when you come here? I think uh you know, having been here three days, some of the key trends that are sticking out to me, I mean, one very positive sentiment like particularly versus what we saw like this time last year. I think that's that's one of the most noticeable things just the vibe shift. I I am seeing a lot more institutional interest in crypto and DeFi. So yesterday, you know, ran into some people from JP Morgan. this is like this is not you know they are not the type of people I would have seen in 2023 at a conference and very interested in what's going on they are very knowledgeable about what's happening in DeFi and what's happening on chain and then I continue to hear about uh RWAS I think that's a massive trend

tokenization of assets we saw the SEC do a round table earlier in the week and then the third one I'd say is uh is Bitcoin Bitcoin DeFi Bitcoin yield this is a trend that comes up again and Again, the first things that new institutions are doing when they come into the space is buy Bitcoin, then the very next thing they think of is how do I get a yield on the Bitcoin? So, RWA's institutional interest, Bitcoin DeFi, and and Bitcoin yield. The uh a few things I want to unpack from the from those things. There's so much within that. Uh first the it's very the bitcoin economy is is a part of the one thing that I find very difficult for people to understand about crypto and about

blockchain is its scope and breadth is so large and we tend to try to bucket it all together a lot and try to say okay you can wrap your head around the whole thing and it's like no no we are mature we are mature asset class we now need to start to segment different things and the Bitcoin economy I mean I could make an entire podcast just on the Bitcoin economy now like that that alone and obviously it's been big and growing and I mean I mean one thing that always stands out to me I got to say you there's no Bitcoin booths at any of these conf right and you got to remember that one thing that really stands out to me right now in crypto as an investor is there's this um there's not a lot of the of what I would call investor relations

so there's not a lot of token projects that are going to their token holders with uh with the fundamental with like we just had earnings season you know so I go through that big deal the quarterly earnings and Coinbase obviously that was a big deal and Coinbase turns the S&P 500 and which obviously all of that stuff brings so much institutional knowledge and education because they understand that we really talked earlier this week about the IPOs that are going to come this as well. Circle Kraken. Yeah. And and and Bitcoin IPOs like we only have Micro Strategy right now. I think in the next year we could have five to 10 more micro

strategy like public companies. We we've already seen that. I mean uh we've seen Bitcoin like Bitcoin is going into corporate treasuries. Uh, one of my favorite analysts or portfolio managers from Bitwise was commenting how putting Bitcoin in corporate treasuries is a really good anti-short technique, right? Because you can have a company, you can have a a short seller puts out a negative report about your company, but if the Bitcoin's holding or if the treasury is holding Bitcoin, it becomes dangerous to short the company because Bitcoin could run up. And so that's almost like a poison pill for short sales.

But in addition to that, so that's a general trend where I think Bitcoin is going to make its way into treasuries. You're also seeing we've seen what three Salana versions of micro strategy come out and uh I I think a lot of people are are cutting on that there is a big opportunity there and uh that investors don't necessarily just want to hold the spot version of the token that they could get on Coinbase. they want to hold different financially engineered or they want to hold different versions of that. I think what the genius part of what Sailor did was he found a way to segment his capital stack and identify different investors who want different parts.

Maybe you want the convertible bond. Maybe you just want strategy equity. Maybe you want the pref equity or the preferred equity. But he found he found a way to carve that out and get the maximum efficiency out of it. and and and you nailed it with people don't real so everyone's been talking about the institutions are coming the institutions are coming and and the institutions are here a lot of them there's still a lot more to come and a lot of them are slow to come because of regulation and because of just education or because of compliance and their own mandate all these various reasons so it does take time but the thing that's so interesting is as as those institutions come you nailed

Not all of them are going to buy tokens. Yeah. Not all of them are they they just they might not be interested in that form of asset class, but a lot of them buy equities and they know how to buy equities and they understand that. And so as we see more public companies in the next year, there's this question of does liquidity flow from tokens to stocks or is this just new flows? And I really think it's just new flows. Like I think the pie is just growing right now. We we anyone in the space wants it to be new flows. I think the problem is that over the last 5 years we haven't really seen new money come in like not really since the very early co stages of last cycle and uh when you create like when you create different vehicles for people

to get exposure to crypto and whether that's a bitcoin ETF or whether that's m whether it's strategy not micro strategy or another version of strategy that's targeted at Salana when you create different forms of securities It makes it much more accessible for institutional investors who don't necessarily want to mess around with hardware wallets or they don't want to worry about key security. They just want to hold a simple product that they can buy on their brokerage account. Let's talk about institutions using DeFi. Yeah. Do you think we're going to see institutions using DeFi in a meaningful way? We're already seeing the beginnings of it. So, they're not here in size, but they are

here. And you know, one of the earlier one of the examples from earlier this year that I would point to is we had Bitwise made a deployment on chain to one of the Maple pools and this was because they thought their thesis is that asset management is going to move on chain eventually and they want to be early to that and they identify that this is an area where they can have an edge and the benefits of doing it on chain directly in DeFi are liquidity and transparency. uh the challenges are custody that you know custody how do they manage it how do they get their fund admin to be comfortable with it but there's enough edge that they came and more institutions are going to follow

suit we've also seen caner uh caner Fitzgerald said that they they had appetite to do two billion worth of loans against bitcoin and so we've seen you know they they've announced they're working with copper with anchorage um But what that signals to me is institutions are definitely coming. They will get more and more comfortable over time with doing this on chain. And as as we were talking about liquidity, transparency, finality of settlement, and composability, all these themes came through in Chair Atkins speech at the SEC on Monday. So, they're definitely aware of it. Yeah. Let's let's touch on uh Washington for a second and uh what's going on on the legislative side. How

are you feeling? Are you optimistic? I'm having this conversation a bit right now because we all were super optimistic. Like a month ago, if you asked anybody, stable coin bill, market structure bill, everyone was like it's happening by August, guaranteed slam dunk. Now I'm not sure so much. What do you think? I think I I like a lot of people was was very optimistic a couple months ago. We had stable coin bill and it seemed like it was going to be a a near certainty. Then we had the market structure bill coming and uh there was a lot of confidence. I think you know we got a reality check which is that things don't necessarily move that fast in Washington and that whenever it comes to a big

piece of legislation like this where's a lot of vested interest on both sides, horse trading occurs and uh and and it gets held up in negotiations and that's just what we've seen happen to the stable coin bill. I would like to see it go through. I think there's still enough inertia behind it to to help there. Uh but what I would say is if you take a step back from whether or not the stable coin bill gets through in the next few months, the attitude and the vibe shift in Washington has been immense. I I went to the SEC roundt on Monday and uh what I saw was exactly the kind of uh acknowledgement of the benefits of tokenizing assets and and

what blockchain and crypto can bring to the traditional financial system acknowledged by the SEC chair Atkins by Commissioner Pur and by a number of you know very established trad firms that were on these panels whether it was Apollo or NASDAQ or Franklin Templeton. So I think if you you know we should take heart from that and take some confidence from that whether or not you know legislation gets held up a few months or not. Yeah. It's uh uh I like to I like to say sometimes that we're all cryb babies in crypto all the all the investors and it's the expectation for number price to perfection all all the time endless right it's endless we are as a as an industry we are very

bipolar and we go between you know uh total euphoria or crushing despair and we've already seen that this year you know uh liberation day was you know liberation day uh was basically the bottom Mhm. And uh you know, if you bought that, you're very euphoric now. Do you think that's the bottom? Like do you think we're through the Yeah, I'm not a I'm not a macro trader. Like that's not my specialty. But if I if I aggregate everything I hear from very smart macro people around me, uh I think we've been through the bottom. I think that was the bottom. And uh and I think we're we're on an uptrend for the remainder of the year. I don't think the bull market's I don't think the bull market's over. And I think we've seen a

lot of uh a lot of Bitcoin dominance, but you know, if you look, alts gave up most of the gains that they made post election. You know, post-election, November, December, we had a terrific run up in alts. They gave back most of those gains after the the tariff news. And uh I think we're going to continue to see a run up in Bitcoin. And then I think you you're going to see alts get brought along for the ride over the rest of this year. Selling your Bitcoin should be a last resort when you need cash. That's why there's Lein, the trusted platform for Bitcoin backed loans. You can unlock cash in as little as 18 hours with no monthly interest payments and no prepayment penalties.

They've issued over 9 billion in loans and never lost a single Satoshi of client funds, even during the chaos of 2022. If you're a long-term hodler, this is the move. Get liquidity without selling at milkroad.com/letin spelled led. Meet CSUSDL, the stable coin built for institutions and Dows. Don't just hold basic stable coins. Earn yield all without compromising security. Backed by regulated real world assets and secured with institutional grade risk management by our friends at stakehouse Financial.

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. CYCSUSDL is gaining traction at milkroad.com/coinshift. Okay, let's I I love this conversation. just going let's talk about alts for a second because I absolutely hate that term and I want us to stop using it because it's like trying to describe like 10 million describes millions of assets right just saying the tech sector in general and not distinguishing between SAS and AI and crypto and consumer so so let's do this because

when we look at how this bull cycle has gone so far and I'm putting bull cycle in air quotes only Because to a lot of people, a lot of that hasn't been a bull cycle, right? Bitcoin's done very well. Salana has done very well, but a big part of that was because it was down so bad post FTX. Exactly. And memecoins have done very well. If you look at where Salana is versus its all-time high, still about, you know, it's still about as far away from that as E. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So, it's been, if you were in memecoins and you were in Bitcoin and you're in Sla, you've done great.

Maybe you had a moment in AI agents and you got out quick enough as soon as you got in. But other than that, there's a lot of crypto people, uh, ETH, a lot of the a lot of the L1s, a lot of the infrastructure, and then a lot of DeFi, a lot of those tokens have not done so well despite the fact that DeFi has all the fundamentals. And the narrative that I keep hearing that is it's like everyone's talking about it, but the investor side isn't picking it up yet. Yeah. Is fundamentals, right? We're shifting from pun fundamentals to fundamentals. Are we going to get a DeFi summer again? Like, could we have a DeFi renaissance? I hope so. Yeah. I I hope so. But in all serious in all seriousness, I do think we're going to

have a DeFi summer. So, uh let's talk let's talk about memecoins. So memecoins were meme cocoins had their moment last year and early this year and then roughly the top of memecoins was was Trump. Uh and so my view on memecoins was that they were the equal and opposite reaction to the regulatory uh the regulatory clampdown on DeFi. So if you couldn't launch a protocol that had fundamentals and revenues uh for fear of being targeted uh by you know whatever whatever like regulatory regime you were in then you could go and launch a memecoin anonymously and it had no fundamentals made no promises or representations. You did not try and

build a business and it was super quick and suddenly we had thousands of them. And so my view was that Memecoin the the the the every time Memecoin did well it was inversely proportional to DeFi and that now that you have a more pro-inovation regulatory environment and uh one in which the SEC is actually you know actively engaging with the industry uh I think the fundamentals of DeFi have improved and so meme you know memecoin should take a hit from that like now people are and and when I talk to the instit initutional crowd. They're starting to focus on projects that have revenues, that they have they have fees, they have users, and maybe they have a fee switch where they can buy back their tokens.

And that that is a sign of fundamental strength. And you're seeing that for, you know, you're seeing conversations more about the fee switch for teams like Athena, US, Uniswap, and uh and so I think DeFi is going to do well this year. I'm I'm long DeFi this year, shortimme points, and uh I think fundamentals as well. That's all I hear when I talk to funds is revenues, cash flow position, uh you know, customer growth. I I I'm really torn on this right now. And the only reason I'll say is like uh all the time on the show, we will generally talk about exactly what you're saying, right? Yeah. Focus on fundamentals. I believe that DeFi has the best riskreward trade in the rest of

this cycle. Very strong belief there. But then I sit back and yesterday Dave Portoy spoke here and he was one of the biggest talks at Consensus. And what was he talking about? Memecoins. Memecoins. All he's talking about is how he launched 22 memecoins last week around the Kentucky Derby. He launched one memecoin for every horse, which I was like, "Okay, interesting. Great." But there is that is never going to go away. That that part is never going to go away. We are always going to have the crypto casino and because because so much of the retail is not back yet into crypto and I think I think you and I both aligned. We're still in a bull

market shortterm I don't know next few months I don't know I could see us chopping through summer. Yeah. I think financial conditions are easing. I think the business cycle is still intact. I think we're through the macro noise. I think we finished the year higher. Right. Yeah. And as we finish the year higher, I think two trends. I agree T Defi owns owns a narrative. I hope it gets a big narrative. Yeah. But I just don't I just I see Dave Portoi and I see everybody here watching him on stage and I'm like Like I don't I think Memecoins is still going to get the narrative again this year. I think Yeah. I mean Memecoins Well, let's look at when the top of the market was on memecoins,

right? Most people would peg it as Trump. That was and that was memecoin ascendy right you know top five cryptocurrency by market cap at that point and then from there it was kind of down only uh now meme yeah memecoin's basel catch bid I wouldn't expect Dave Portoy to come and give a talk on the fundamentals of DeFi and cash flows that's not his stickick uh you know he's he's in he's in he's a content creator he's a content creator in in the culture area and the culture area is uh is you know closely linked with meme points Um, and if it was 2022, you would have been talking about NFTs. Yeah, for sure.

So, uh, yeah. So, anyway, I can't control what meme coins do or or don't do, but I do think DeFi is going to have going to show strength for the rest of the year. And I think the other thing is if I'm if I were a new retail investor coming into the space and I let's say I set up my Coinbase account, how do I know which meme to buy? Like there's thousands of them, millions. And uh yeah, absolutely. And uh also, how do I know which L1, L2s to buy? Like again, there's dozens and dozens of them, most which have no users, but they had they fetched very hot valuations back in the day. And there's a lot of misinformation out there about them, or not misinformation, but there's incorrect

stats about partnerships to kind of pump the price. Whereas I look at DeFi and there's maybe 20 to 30 investable projects across the space. So, I think I as a new retail curious investor would have a better job picking interesting DeFi projects that I'm unlikely to lose all my money on, whereas I'm almost certain to lose the shirt off my back if I go start playing the memecoin casino or even the the L1 L2 casino. Yeah, completely agree. One of my favorite questions. Just one just, you know, movement mantra. Yeah. Like all of these are uh you know L1 L2 blowups that were just heavily heavily uh primed and which did not have fundamentals. Yeah. Yeah. I

think there's a good question right now of um what what's the best trade for the rest of this cycle? I got to take Bitcoin out of it because it stands on its own and we all we all know that thesis. uh is it is it DeFi and the fundamental thesis and I agree the reason that's a nice one is there's I mean even I don't even think there's 30 there's like 10 to 20 right that like have solid buyback programs or probably will have buyback programs they have the real fundamentals and you're kind of picking Salana or ETH like which which ease you want to be in love that trade then there's L1 trade I don't know if I love the L1 trade as much anymore the L1 trade's tough if I was doing if you're doing the L1 trade you know Leaving aside Bitcoin, you have ETH hasn't got a

lot of love lately. It's had a had a a resurgence over the last couple of weeks, which might have just been kind of a catchup and some repricing of the fact that they've had a change of leadership there and and you know, more open acknowledgement of the issues and the fact they need to kind of be more competitive. Uh, and then you have Salana, which a lot of people view as just, you know, it's it's effectively levered beta on Bitcoin. you know, if you think Bitcoin's going up this percent, you think Salana is going up two or 3x that uh so leave those are the only trades I would make in like the L1 space. That's how I But I think I like your idea of a basket of solid DeFi picks probably splitting the Salana and the ETH ecosystems. Yeah.

Right. Yeah, I completely. And then the other trade I really like is I really like the public crypto trade. I really like Coinbase and I really like Robin Hood. Yeah. And I think that betting on beneficial regula beneficial regulatory cycle uh for for the next four years and uh and just continued institutional adoption because the institutions when they come in will have to go in through one of these two channels, right? Whether you know Robin Hood does more to set up an institutional business line. Coinbase has a very established institutional business line and is and is you know already generally the incumbent pick. Uh so and then you've got some IPOs. You got Circle E Toro caught a terrific um bid on the opening couple of days of trading. They they

were up. They had the they had the they had everything you'd want an IPO. They had the initial IPO pop, then they had another solid day of trading. Uh I haven't checked them today, but a couple days ago they were at like 5 billion, four and a half to five billion. Circle's got to be looking at that as a nice indication of where their IPO could price. And uh and then the talk is Kraken's going to also be trying to IPO soon as well. Yeah. Which is amazing. You can either, you know, you can either be an early early buyer in those or you can play, you know, Robin Hood or or Coinbase. Yeah, that basket's really nice. That's there's we'll make a we'll make a nice index. I think the tough challenge would be Bitcoin miners like if I was looking at the public side, you

know, um uh like difficulty continues to go up. It's a hugely capital intensive business. Uh it's like it's it's always been a challenging sector. And and also treasury management hasn't always been the best at some of these players. they've tended to try and turn themselves into a long vehicle for Bitcoin. Uh, however, they are issuing equity and so effectively they're, you know, they're issuing equity in dollars, keeping a lot of their balance sheet denominated in Bitcoin and if the Bitcoin cycle turns, their equity gets double crushed because of the leverage. Yeah, that's that's that's a scary scary I haven't done gone down. I don't go I don't spend a lot in mining, so I have the Bitcoin mining sector. I think it's just it's very

tough. There's specialists who do that and that's not my that's not my bag. You and I were chatting before we recorded about uh predictions for the end of the year. Give us some of your predictions for the end of the year. Well, I I'll so I'll give a basic price prediction. I think Bitcoin between 150 and 180. I think that I just kind of size that off of multiple of last, you know, last all-time high last cycle. Uh but I think I think broadly the trend is Bitcoin up for the rest of the year and uh and then where I'm most interested and most focused is uh stable coins institutional adoption and asset management on chain.

So I think stable coins where somewhere around 250 billion I think I think we more than double. So I actually see that going to maybe 750 to a trillion by the end of the year. And I think this year Yeah. I I think this year to like the next 12 months, I think stable coins are going to proliferate much much faster than anyone expects and as somebody who does you know asset management and credit and lending in the space that's the oxygen at which which we breathe right that's kind of the outer limits of how big we can grow it's a function of stable coin market cap but I see you know tether is the most profitable company kind of in history per person uh circle is IPOing PayPal has a stable coin. Ripple has a

stable coin. Uh there is talk of new banks getting in. Uh Stripe made the bridge acquisition last year and is launching is launching or has launched stable coin supported accounts. And so I think it can't be overstated how much easier it is to use stable coins than conventional banking. And I think consumers are going to gravitate there. And uh and also businesses don't have to pay the uh the Visa and Mastercard tax. So very like very confident in stable coin adoption and uh and I think that is then going to power new money coming into DeFi. So uh I think the our area of expertise is uh is crypto lending and I

would say that's you know if you add up DeFi and CFI it's probably something like 50 billion. I think before the end of the year that probably gets north of the hundred billion of kind of crypto loans outstanding on the CFI and D5 side and uh a lot of that is going to be powered by new money coming in from institutions and so I think that's the other big thing much more institutional participation caner is going to be lending uh they've said that I predict other Wall Street traditional finance firms at least one to two others will come in and be lending before the end of the year give us a maple prediction for the end of the year map okay so Maples TVL is currently about 1.6 billion.

That's up 10x from where we were this time last year. Uh my prediction on Maple TVL is we are going to be at 4 billion by 31 December this year. Wow. That's our goal. So we want to do one to one and a half billion of our Bitcoin yield product in TVL and then we want to have about one and a half billion in our uh syrup USDC. So the uh more the more DeFi native uh lending product and then the remaining call it 1 billion is going to be in our inst product. The fact that your token is called syrup is just my favorite thing in the world as a do you know where do you know where the name came from? No. So the I mean the name for maple came from uh it wasn't a

Canada thing despite us being here in Toronto. It was the debt stack. So I used to work in banking and you have um in really simple terms you have senior debt which gets paid first. it's the least risky. You have mez debt which is in the middle of the stack gets paid second and then you have equity or first loss just get all you need to know is it gets paid the loss but it takes the most risk so it gets paid the the highest reward and so I always thought we wanted uh something memorable so we always thought of the debt stack and it's kind of like a stack of pancakes and when you draw pancakes it kind of looks like money as well so we're like it's financial it's uh it's credit related and when you pour maple syrup over over a stack of pancakes it's like the cash

flows you pay the senior first top pancake then MEZ and then Junior. And so we thought it was like it's memorable. It's a single word. It's easy to tell people our website. It's not a complex fintech name. So that that was worth and when you get a token name that you get to call token syrup. Syrup. Yeah. Exactly. So that's a little bit fun. Who doesn't want to own syrup? Not financial advice, but you guys should check that out. Tell us about the uh before we wrap here that your Bitcoin yield product is very interesting. Break that down for us. So we have a partnership with Cordell. So they are a Bitcoin L1 proof of stake and their thesis has been that uh Bitcoin miners will be under pressure because of

security budget in a few years and so they're trying to give a new revenue stream to miners. Where we come in is that we are working in partnership with core and we offer a very simple bitcoin on bitcoin yield product. So you give us your bitcoin, we stake it and manage the staking in core dow the L1 and we then provide uh bitcoin denominated yield back. Currently it's been paying about 5% annualized and this comes from staking rather than lending it out and uh so I think it's been a good riskadjusted yield. It's been limited to uh accredited investors and uh but we now have over 150 million in that product. I think Bitcoin DeFi is going

to be a very big trend. But our role we what we do is we aggregate the staking so that we get the best rewards level available. We also uh source the core tokens that you need for dual staking. It's not the easiest thing if you wanted to do it on your own. And then we manage the risk. So we sell the core rewards into Bitcoin and then we use hedging to to manage the volatility of of core price. So, but what it looks like if you're a if you're a Bitcoiner or somebody holding Bitcoin, there's no slashing risk. Your yield is in Bitcoin.

It's not in a token and it's not in points. And your Bitcoin sits in qualified custody. It's in Bitcoin in copper. It's not floating around in smart contracts. So, that product has really appealed to high net worths, corporate treasuries, asset managers who are holding on bit holding on to Bitcoin. And so yeah, it's uh about 150 mil at the moment, aiming for 1 to one and a half billion by the end of this year. And one other point I'd add is we're trying to launch an LST of this. So this will be one of the first yield generating Bitcoin LSTs that you can post as collateral. You can use it in DeFi if you want to borrow uh or um you know as collateral for trading

positions. And that's going to be multi-chain. H that's huge. That's going to kick off DeFi summer right there. That's what we need. Yeah. A little little boost to go. There's always one catalyst for the DeFi summit or for for every cycle to kick off. Last cycle it was comp. Uh and yeah, I think you know Bitcoin Bitcoin and Bitcoin DeFi could play a really big role. So, it's another one of the biggest questions I get right now is what do I do with my Bitcoin? Yeah. Right. Everybody's got it. Everybody's committed to the long term and everybody wants to figure out either either they want to figure out how to monetize it and get some gains and they're thinking about tax or they that's where borrowing against Bitcoin comes in for a lot of people uh keep your gains don't take don't take uh

don't take a taxable event and uh institutions whenever I talk with Coinbase or Galaxy or any of these big institutional players their clients the new institutions coming in the pension funds the endowments the the large asset managers, the first thing they do is they buy Bitcoin and then the next thing they think about after that is can they get a yield on their Bitcoin? How do they put it to work or how do they borrow against it or get a a a yield from lending against it? That it it invariably goes those two directions.

Fantastic. Sid, this has been a wonderful conversation. Really appreciate your time. No, no, thanks for having me. Appreciate you sitting down. Remember today, none of this is financial advice. You should do your own research. Whatever you're willing to invest, you should always make sure that you understand the risk. But you should probably check out Maple and you check out Syrup. Great product. And let's go DeFi summer. Let's manifest that one into existence. Defi summer 2025. We're going to make it happen. Let's go, folks. Have a great weekend, y'all. We'll see you back again on Monday. Thanks for tuning in, y'all. Appreciate your time and listening all the way to the end. Before I let you go, got to let you know about this partnership that we have with OKX, where you could win up to $60,000 in cash prizes. That's onchain cash USDT cash, the good kind, the

stable coin kind. Uh why do we set up this partnership with OKX? Because they're one of the leading crypto exchanges. They're they're trusted. They've got great security. They've got tons of great features, tons of great tools. Really a great place to trade and do it in a safe way. Hit the link in the show notes. Check it out today. Thanks again for your time, y'all. Have a good one. 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 5-minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh.

And if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game, we're going to also leave a link for Milk Road Pro. You get access to our portfolio where you can see exactly what we are buying. This is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto. One final note, this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice. Investing in crypto or any asset is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose. Thanks so much for listening in my friends. Have a wicked awesome