Jordi Alexander on Market Outlook, Token Buybacks, and Neo Finance

Transcript

If you're going to do systematic, I think like the one thing is just don't have something that will just keep buying top lasting because when the market's good, your revenue is good and you're just like pushing prices way too high, which is not good for anyone cuz when things revert, you just have people that are down way too much and you've also not absorbed enough tokens. >> What's your take on the token equity uh situation happening right now? How do you see this unification happening in 2026? Do you think that is sustainable or do you see this as again just you know the yield's never enough you're going to have to go get more risk uh and the yield that you promised to your stakeholders is going to fall through.

>> Welcome back to the rollup. I'm Robbie. >> I'm Andy. Rob and I met at the University of Florida in 2017 where we first found out about digital assets. >> We learned a lot along the way and we're bringing you face to face with the leaders of our industry. >> Sit back, relax, and enjoy today's episode. >> Jordan, what's up? Oh, it is 3:00 a.m. So, I wish it was 11 p.m. >> Are uh are 3:00 a.m. nights are they conducive to the health? Is this like a polyphasic sleep schedule that we're on or what what's what's up there? >> I'm I'm traveling to Switzerland like this weekend. So, I'm kind of okay to try to adjust pre-adjust for jet lag >> to the Europe hours.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Jordan, happy new year, man. How was your uh how was your Q4? I mean, you know, like I I was happy that things were pretty quiet. I didn't get many telegram messages over the holidays. So, it was the first time that I actually disconnected and it was just very nice and chill. Um, I went to Saudi Arabia, which is not a normal destination for uh holidays, but I think it will be in in the next few years. Like, they're they're building some pretty nice resorts. And >> what uh what brought you out there?

I just chat GBT, you know, where is where is warm and nice and what are the best places and it seems it gave me a couple good options uh in Saudi Arabia apparently like you know they're spending a lot of money trying to >> make like a Dubai B2 like a second Dubai and >> I think they'll get there in a few years. >> Yeah, man. I know you're going out to uh St. Moritz for CFC. Should be a fun week with the uh lizard people there in Davos uh who who control the world with their strings and their and the way that they pull things and and that's clearly Trump is not playing by the rules. So, we'll see what how Davos goes. It'll be an interesting interesting one this year.

There's a lot of economic activity changing globally. Um we'll get into that. We'll get into some of your token buybacks 2026 outlook, but let's just recap 2025, man. How was it for Seleni? How was your performance? What did you learn? Um, and like what are some of your biggest takeaways from the market in 2025? >> Uh, overall, you know, I'm happy that we we did better than 2024, which um, you know, was not easy. I mean, most most firms and, you know, mo most things did not do better than 24. So, um, it kind of speaks that we've really, you know, gotten a ton of talent in and we were

able to navigate even even like these choppy situations. Um, you know, obviously like some categories did better than others. I would say like venture wasn't like having the best year in history. Um, you know, we made like a pretty big bet on WorldCoin that didn't go amazingly well with all alts. you know, basically they didn't under overperform just like, you know, also do well. >> Um, our systematic trading side, it was a mixed bag, I would say. Like we lost a little bit of competitiveness to like the jump kind of, you know, HFD side, which we're trying to really like aggressively prioritize now. So, um, you know, number one priority is like just

get get like latency and and and networking and execution really tight. Um but we did really well with some of these um you know venues like lighter you know I think we were maybe like the the largest volume on on that exchange and did pretty well in the airdrop. So it was a nice kind of end to the year there and you know we survived 1010 which a lot of people were like oh winter mute's out of business and then I'm like oh they're like oh there's >> the rumor mill was hot the mill was hot for sure. Yeah, I mean we, you know, we we we did lose like, you know, a few weeks of P&L. Um, but, you know, these things, these things are as long as you survive

and you don't give back too much, it's fine. >> Yeah. >> Um, and, uh, you know, some things did really well for us. Um, we're doing more and more um, stuff on the liquid side, you know, long short obviously like the shorts have have, you know, really gone down. So, you know, when we track things like unlocks and kind of, you know, things that look overvalued, like obviously all of that stuff just kind of went to zero. So, um yeah, overall overall was good. Good. Yeah, I think uh 1010 scared the boots off a lot of the per farmers. Um it's kind of like made that trade more difficult than it was before that. Um

and if you look at the numbers, it's kind of gone down. We'll talk about per. All right, let's talk about token buybacks. Um, this was like a big thread, a big kind of part of what you were uh kind of pining on recently. I want to talk about that. I want talk about health maxing, just like kind of like general 2026 plan. So, you put out this post in in the midst of kind of this token equity dilemma. Maybe we start here and go into the buybacks as a result of this. So, uh the natural order of thinking in 2026 is going to be like unifying these structures. So, it's actually quite funny. Robbie and I have kind of came up with this pro- centralization idea as of recent. Maybe it's not their exact way to put it, but you think about how we had all this kind of fugazi

decentralization for for the sake of regulatory arbitrage and then obviously with this new administration and regime change in the states specifically, uh, a lot of that kind of is unnecessary now you could say. And so coming to this one of the realities is well there's a lot of realities that are hitting the market as a result of this but I think one of them is that the way that these foundation and labs corps have been structured uh you know have been kind of mis aligned for incentives for investors uh for uh stakeholders for participants retail etc. So we've got this kind of token equity dilemma and on top of that you've got these app layer projects being purchased uh by larger companies and then selling out kind of leaving token holders with you know not claim on

that sale etc. And so you've got this dynamic here that is is happening and then on top of that you've got this token buyback structure. So Jordy what's your take on the token equity uh situation happening right now? How do you see this unification happening in 2026? Um, we've gathered opinions from tons of different folks and there's all these different kind of ideas. There's yet to be a really consensus way I would say. What's your take here? >> Yeah, look like the the main problem for the industry is that every chart is just down only and at some point, you know, what's happened is like retailer has stopped bidding because, you know, they're just not getting enough wins.

And um there's a few structural reasons for that that have kind of caused like every single chart to always just go down. Um not least of which, you know, is not related to buybacks. It's more related to like unlocks. And the other thing I've been posting about is, you know, you kind of force investors with these like one-year cliffs. And I think, you know, the centralized exchanges love that because, you know, they they get to launch things where the only tokens or the marketing tokens that the exchanges are getting. So, they they're the only ones that have tokens. So, they're they're very happy. You know, the exchanges do the do best. Um, and then you get these like artificially high

prices. I was looking at back at some of these Binance launchpads from like a year or two ago and it's just every single like project regardless of quality was launching they're at like you know two to three billion. I mean I don't want to like name specific names but you can just go back and look at them and clearly like these are trading at like 99% down now. Um so a lot of it was like this like structural reason like there's not enough tokens. The founders are drinking way too much [ __ ] Kool-Aid. I be talking about this like it's 5% of founders that I've talked to that like will say that their token is like overvalued. Like to give him credit

like someone like you know Mike from Etherfy like you know they launched at like 8 billion and he like I you know we're an investor I talked to him like that week and he's like yeah like this is like dumb like what what the [ __ ] like what are people doing? Like come on. Like you know I love my project but like we're not it's not a billion right now. Um most of them they just drink the Kool-Aid. It's like oh yeah 20 billion. Yeah. Um and then you know this this concept of like having revenue is good. Um you know it's a maturity of the space and you have revenue to do buybacks. Not many projects have revenue do buybacks but you do have some projects that you know have managed to get there and then and there's a few problems. one is the

what you mentioned of like are token holders getting it versus like is it this equity structure and I think um you have to be very clear on it and and like unfortunately like even in the last 48 hours I've had two conversations with projects where I thought that like it was going to be like an equity thing and then you know they're planning to just prioritize equity holders um and it's like yeah you know all these people that bought the token like what's what's going to Yeah.

>> Um, so that's this ongoing thing where I I always prefer if there's just like a you know the token should be the equity and then you know you get some regulatory concerns or tax concerns or stuff like this come comes back to you. Um I think you know like the US is obviously like right now in a bit more of a tolerant place where you can do you know better things. Um I think an interesting one so soon there's going to be a launch of um something called Fu Fuse Energy which is a company that has raised at 5 billion on the equity side and has separately raised like on the token side at like 333 million. I think Multicoin led that round is a Salana

token and that's quite an interesting one because it's going to launch as an SPL while you know there's like this whole other part of the business that's just making like web two money and it's just like a cash cow. I mean they have like 440 million AR like huge but then they're launching a token that's not going to be getting that revenue but then they're going to try to give it utility. So like you can try to like thread that needle and you have different investors on both sides it's even more it's worse than having like a safe and a saf investor like different investors >> different investors. Yeah.

>> I think like you know if you do really well everywhere everyone's happy that's fine like know that's a good case scenario. You just like token doing well everybody's everything's doing well. Um but you know the these things are expert kind of like difficulty nightmare difficulty you know things to navigate. Um and then my last point like uh on on the buyback specifically like the projects that we've seen in crypto the few really like successful ones that have uh buybacks like you know you know Jupiter um Hyperliquid right now.

>> Yeah. Athena like I guess they don't have buybacks directly but the dad has done a ton of buybacks like through the money that they they they raised through token sales there >> pump yeah for sure I mean I don't know why it's not pumping more but >> well this is kind of your point isn't it right is like is there a more systematic way to approach buybacks than just programmatically buying daily right >> right I mean um I think that targeting you know price ranges through some you know ratio either PE ratios or some other kind of like you know ways to find that like what is cheap you know the simplest way to do it is just like look

at the EMA like if you're under the average price of the last like 60 days versus over the last price of the last 60 days and you know like things are trending down you want to buy more things are going up you don't you don't necessarily need to chase it and just kind of keep pushing it um you can get more tokens out of the market this way. Um, so I think like, you know, for the few successful projects that can do it, there's ways to do it. I took a bit offense when like, you know, people say that like they don't work. Like, oh, look down. It doesn't work. I mean, >> they [ __ ] work, right? They work.

Clearly, >> we know this from like hundreds of years of like, you know, stocks existing like they work. It's just like, you know, other parameters that >> Well, I mean, in the Jupiter case that that the post that you were referring to, I saw some comments on there and it was like there was about a billion dollars of unlocks over the same period that that did like a $70 million of buybacks, right? And it's just you're just kind of like, well, you know, so the math is not mathing here, right? And so from your perspective, right, there's like a more, you know, you're talking about doing this in a very calculated price to earnings ratio-based way where you can try to achieve a consistent buyback methodology that is not just purely programmatic based on the revenue

of that day or of that week. Um, maybe you can like walk us through that from your perspective, right? because you have kind of more of a fund manager style perspective and less of like a I'm a founder managing my token, you know, perspective, I think, which I think that probably founders want to start to think more in the way that you are rather than in just kind of like doing what the market is screaming them screaming at them to do. >> Well, I'm I'm happy with like, you know, both approaches whether it's systematic or not systematic. I mean, you look at like traditional equities, they just like buy back whenever like the, you know, the board decides that that's it's a cheap price and they just buy back their shares and it's like a very

standard thing. Obviously, you know, when you're dealing with traditional equities, you know, if they're public companies, you have disclosures, you have windows, blackout windows, these kind of, you know, like there's all these kind of structural considerations so that things don't get too insidery and too front. um you know if we've decided that these are things are commodities then it it's it's sort of like you know what what makes sense but uh I mean we're looking at some projects like I would say like lighter and meteora that do have substantial revenues that are taking this approach of um you know they're not just like doing systematic buybacks but they're like yeah like there's prices we're going to buy back our our cheap

tokens and um that should give some confidence to the market that you know the revenue is is going to be utilized um for token holders in some way. I I think that's the key thing. It's just like at some point you know you have to either give dividends or give buybacks. I think dividends are totally fine obviously like they're very normal things to do and we do have some projects where you stake and you get you know revenue. I think uh you know the curve kind of crew does things like that. Um you know even like their new token yield basis kind of has this kind of structure. You know you stake it if you lock it up for longer you get you just get more dividends. Um I think uh you

know sometimes those things go into ponomics. Obviously, you have the full ponzomics which is Olympus down and you have like the semi stuff like aerod drrome where it's like oh you're getting you're locking up and you're getting some other tokens and they're paying your token like it's like this this kind of hybrid structure. Um, yeah. I mean, if you're going to do systematic, I think like the one thing is just don't have something that will just keep buying top lasting because when the market's good, your revenue is good and you're just like pushing prices way too high, which is not good for anyone because when things revert, you just have people that are down way too much and you've also not absorbed enough tokens. Um, so you know,

did did it look like Jupiter was worth $20 billion at the height of like, you know, the volumes that were happening during the Trump token release? You know, maybe. But like um I I would say like what we've seen in crypto time and time again is that the you shouldn't put like a a growth stock P ratio of like 30 plus on on these things because the the space changes so quickly that like you know there's a new perex every like year and so like you know DYDX shouldn't be valued at like 50 XP if they have to defend from like you know the new generation of whatever it is.

Is there right because Santiago and Hib from Dragonfly, they had this whole debacle where you know Hib was arguing more like this is this should be valued almost more like a city or a state and they have this network model and then you know Santiago was taking more of this price to or sales price to earnings ratio. Where do you fall? And this is less about the velocity of price and you know directionally getting it pushed higher or lower but more in terms of the static valuations that maybe something should be valued at and you know the efficient market would you know take it there swiftly. But where do you fall on this as sort of the value heruristic?

What is your what is your mental model when it comes to this this dynamic? Should we kind of fall on one side of the aisle or the other? Yeah, I I have like a pretty clear mental model that I've arrived to after like you know whatever 10 years dealing with these kind of tokens. Now my my mental model is this like you you have revenue as like one source and like future revenue kind of like a traditional equity you know DCF type of model. You have that and then you have this other thing which I'll call like um it's like this premium for being a good game to gamble on. Like you know you go to the casino and it like if they have a fun game and people will

just go like throw money at it. They just want to bet like you know we saw this with pre-markets where like you know these things got just got popular because people were just able to you know speculate on something new that was exciting for them. And um you know some some of these like things were very successful. It's just like a a novel thing that people wanted to just bet with each other on. And we've seen this like now like even poly market has these like oh you know what will this thing launch at over 4B over 6B like all this kind of stuff. I think, you know, there is a value to just being like the the thing that people will bet on. Like you'll absorb speculative premium for whatever reason, you know, people uh

will make bets that they know like are zero or like negative sum for somebody. They're just like, "Oh, I'm going to win." So, doesn't matter if like, you know, overall we're going to lose 10% because I'm going to be the winner. then they're going to they're going to be the one paying the rake because I'm I'm going to be winning. Um and so like tokens that have a lot of mind share and that have a lot of like you know uh distribution for places to bet on you know they have a lot of exchanges betting on it. There's a lot of liquidity. There's a lot of like people talking about it. They'll they'll during that period just have this extra premium and that's what it is. talking about cities and states and whatever like it's literally like you know are a lot of people wanting to speculate on

what is this thing is going to go up or down and for how long is that going to be the case I mean usually like TGE tokens start really high because there's just like a lot of people betting on you know what the next week is going to look like and then there's a new one and then as soon as there's a new one the old one goes down because there's just like less people giving it that premium and that's why you see the that premium disappear. Yeah. I mean coming to that for 2026 then Jordy um is there particularly sectors that you're going to be bullish on more so than others from a token performance perspective and sectors that you're particularly bearish on from you know either personal or Selen's perspective like applying this framework right of speculative premium you know L1

L1 premium or not uh chain app premium revenue generating tokens is it like where are you kind of looking at for bullish sectors and maybe not so bullish sectors for 2026. >> So obviously there's some uh amount of like excitement about taking traditional companies and like cryptoying them and you know giving them stable coin rails and like potentially giving them a token especially if that token is actually like you know collecting the value of of what's happening in some good way. Um, I'm I'm, you know, very open to that idea. I think the

quality of the assets that we have in the space is kind of [ __ ] Like, you know, you look at like the number one, like the number 10 token. You know, it's supposed to be good. Like, it's like the 10th best token in all of crypto. It's the 10th best digital asset, >> the 15th one. Like, you look at some of the stuff and like some of it's just like this. We have >> having better options than this like this or like Doge or you know, whatever. you just have like a bunch of stuff, right? Um I think that you know equities are winning out because like they're more quality assets and eventually people have realize that you know you kind of you want something that has longer term sustainability. Um, we will hopefully get

some good businesses issuing tokens that represent those businesses and have higher quality assets. And ideally that, you know, there's one in discussion that's making me like >> incredibly bullish, but I can't talk about it's like very early. It's not it's not even I don't know if it's happening. But if you get like a brand that is like like globally recognizable and even has like new mobility and it has revenue >> and you and you bring that uh that that's like the sweet spot. So really trying to focus on a few opportunities that that can hit all those sweet spots that um you know like

you like imagine like a global brand that that will actually like do this like you know you can acquire this company for a lot of money but then like you know you you kind of bring those rails. >> Havachi is fast and private per trading secured by ZK with Celestia underneath. Go to habachi.xyz to start trading today. Trade on anything. Economics, weather, sports, crypto, and more. All on couchy.com 24/7 for the world's biggest prediction market. Yeet is built for big moments. The most fun you'll ever have with your crypto. Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game. I want to take a guess on like what what this could be.

>> It kind of gives me like Pudgy Penguins vibes to be honest. Um >> yeah, >> like not not obviously quite a bit that Pudgy Penguin is quite a bit smaller. Um um >> um it actually I you're right because it is like globally recognized but I I kind of get the vibe of like a like a GameStop like a brickandmortar something that has some memeability. Nike >> only fans. >> Okay, I think we got Jordy back. Let's get him up. >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. I mean, I think uh I mean, I was talking about this with the VANC uh portfolio manager in New York last year as well, like like these onchain IPOs. Um yeah, Jordy, you we'll get you right back up here. I think you're good now. We're just refreshing you. Yeah, it does seem like there's going to be this pull away from cryptonative stuff, if you will, businesses to like these like like what would you want to own, right? would you want to own a um an altcoin or would you want to own the tokenized share of a business, right? That's actually >> and so I think this is like kind of like the trend that's um happening. I think we're also seeing like the stockification of a lot of

these companies. >> And so if you look at, you know, Jordy said the number 10, but if you look at the number 11, >> it's uh >> Yeah. What is it? >> Figure Helock, >> which is that >> coin market cap. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's number 11 in the market in market cap. And so >> so weird. >> Obviously, this is it's this RWA thing. They're tokenizing these home equity loans. And again, this would be if crypto didn't exist, they would find a way to do this business and it would probably go public or, you know, it would, you know, be private and then it would go public.

>> Yep. >> And then you could find, you know, this business on a public stock exchange and you could trade it. >> Yep. >> But crypto is eating the back end of a lot of these money stacks within a lot of these companies. And so they're tokenizing the they're tokenizing these companies from the inside out. And I think what we're seeing is like the first thing that we're seeing is we're seeing these these products from these companies get tokenized in the sense that like first we're going to see companies before they tokenize their stock or their equity, they're going to token they're going to launch a stable coin and like before figure goes public or launches its own governance token or network token, it's

going to launch this figure heliloc token which if you look basically just a stable coin just tokenized loans. That I think is the first step. And so you'll end up where more and more of the companies in you know the NASDAQ or Dow Jones or S&P more and more of those companies will have tokenized parts of their business call could be a stable coin and then eventually we'll get to a point where those companies themselves will tokenize their equity. But I think first and foremost we're going to have more parts of those business get tokenized.

>> Yeah. And it'll just look like like the top 10 or 15 tokens could just be stable coins or like yield coins. And then eventually I think we'll we'll expand the the surface area of the tokenization. We'll expand it from the inside out going from just a product a stable coin product that they launched to tokenizing more and more of the business. Yeah. >> The equity the stable coin and more parts from there. >> Jordan. So, kind of hopping onto a different tangent off of the onchain businesses that you're excited about, which I I think again it's like Hyperlid caused an entire restructuring of how the space is thinking about profitable businesses on chain. Obviously, the new administration came in now. Now, we're

having token buyback, token equity conversations that's happening. I think what you're saying is going to re restructure the way that a lot of investors think about which tokens to allocate to in the space because if you've got these massive brands as you're saying with business models with revenue and they have a token well that puts them in the top five like very clearly or top seven right and so you know that game is going to change when we were in New York um you uh respectfully told me that my infra thesis was just not going to live up to anything and I was kind kind of like still a a a believer in our venture bags. Come six months later, I'm absolutely cooked. So, you were right on that one. Props to you for that one. Um

cooked me there straight. Looked me in the eye. I was like, "You're wrong, buddy. Get your [ __ ] together." So, thanks for that. Uh but we we were also talking about Micro Strategy. We were also talking about the This was like pre-dat kind of DAT mania, but Micro Strategy was on and you had kind of formulated a a take around where you see kind of this space going. And then obviously we had the entire DAT craze. Um where are we at from your perspective with this part of the market? Um is this is Tom Lee gonna get you know absolutely BTFOed liquidated? Is he going to make it? Like where are we at with DATs? You know take us from like micro strategy all the way to like long tail story protocol DAT.

Like where are we at in the spectrum from your perspective? Yeah, I mean the DATs were another one that I was very skeptical about and I just knew like these things would trade under MNAV because you just have a worse version of owning the token because you have an illquid like way you can't actually sell the token and in some cases you know the founders blocking you in some cases you just have too much of a a token like Bitcoin ETH maybe you can sell you know you can sell like a billion dollars if you have but like nothing else. So um thankfully avoided most of these dats you know we did we did a few for commercial reasons but um didn't do many and um the the part of the cycle I mean look I I did like have a concern that

like one we would get this massive like run up to 200k and this crazy mania and that that's would be the cause of it because we would just way overheat and then we would collapse. We didn't heat up that much. I mean, we did go to like, you know, 130 and ETH went to 5K, whatever, whatever. But, um, we it didn't get like too ridiculous. And so, even though the the bubble burst, it wasn't like a ridiculous bubble. So, we've kind of like gone through it. It's the same thing where I was saying I was warning like around the the DOS event in in London that um I had that debate with Hib about uh synthetic dollars and I was warning that like you

know this this thing people are going to keep like yeah you have Athena but then you have like you know people just adding risk to get more yield because it's not getting enough yield and this is going to like blow up and people are pres presenting these things are stable coins. like presenting them as dollars or pegging them to dollars. I mean, sure enough, like two weeks later, you just get like this collapse of stream finance and you know, that hund00 million loss just permeated like through the entire like, you know, vault ecosystem of of every single exposure of like elixir had some of this thing which had that some of that thing and it's just like this like everyone was was like, you know, indirectly being touched on it. Um, but thankfully like you know what I warned

happened but it happened at like a size before things got like way too big. You know it got it happened at a 100red million of a loss instead of like a 10 billion loss like you know like Luna did. So um you know bottom line like we've gone through where are we on the cycle? like we've we've had a few of these bad things that I predicted happen have happened like the DATs kind of splintered and like this but it's not catastrophic and I don't think that you're going to see Micro Strategy or you know Tumbly blow up in essence like these things like still have they still have a bid um they still have cash they still have participation the tokens that they're buying are actually like worth something uh in both cases like ETH and

BTC so um you you know, are they going to be able to buy as much as they used to, you know, a few months ago? Like, no. Uh, and that that bids like reduced, but it could come back and and I think like, you know, for those two big ones that you mentioned, um, the game's not over and, you know, the assets that they're buying are good assets and so that that game will continue. But when it comes to the altcoin dads, uh, yeah, I mean, it's it's it's just the graveyard out there.

>> Yeah, it is. Um, and so do you think that these DATs putting their like so Tom Lee has staked, you know, billions into ETH now and then Sharplink has also just recently put a bunch of their ETH into like IE Layer and Lineia and um, EtherFi and whatnot. Is this something that is at all interesting or is just kind of like the because like you know like the trend is okay they can't just be holding companies these DATs need to turn into more productive companies. I guess deploying their assets onchain is one way to do it but is this is it enough? Is it interesting? Is it compelling or is it just is it just me?

I mean look if if there's there are some that are trying to be like proper operating companies and get like actual real revenues and like you know build business like do stuff that that's fine and like you know um like there's like the Aether one trying to do some stuff with compute like there's there's a few trying to be an operating company and then that's fine the ones that are just like oh we're going to stake this or put it into IE layer like those yields are obviously viously going to get compressed and you can't do it on size and you know it's not tremendously profitable or interesting to just like do that and then you can make it more interesting if you take more risk but then you're just

like a hedge fun um and maybe you make a mistake and and you like lose money because you're taking too much risk so um look they have to try stuff I mean so many people even like the big names of the industry even like the Sanmanis and the hives who like were initially like very anti-dat. They end up doing they end up doing that themselves. So you got the AVAC one, you got the like Solano one, you know, like there these guys are on the boards. I mean, everyone's kind of like committed to trying to make the best of the situation, but it was definitely a fever dream. I think now it's pretty clear.

And then on on one of your points in there about, you know, the yields aren't enough. You take more risk and then you try to get more yield and you're kind of selling these as stable coins. Like I I there's kind of this new cohort. One of one of them that comes to mind here is like USD AI where it's selling itself as a stable coin but it's going out and it's you know trying to do things in a different industry and then bring those yields back to crypto bring them back to the stable coin holders. Are you paying attention at all to this this new cohort we're calling it like Neo DeFi or Neo finance and we're you know these guys are going into like energy or we were talking to a protocol

yesterday uh they're doing reinsurance right so they're you know going out they're selling insurance to insurance providers and they're getting their capital base from crypto and then the products that they sell obviously get revenue they get yield they're just passing the yield back to the stable coin holders. How how much do you see that overlap? Do you think that is sustainable or do you see this as again just you know the yield's never enough? You're going to have to go get more risk uh and the yield that you promise to your stakeholders is going to fall through.

>> Uh I think it's sustainable. I mean obviously you need to know what risks you're taking and there's no free rate above the risk-free rate with no risks. So there are some risks. Um but you know there's a place for people to take some risk and you know whether it's private credit whether it's reinsurance whether it's like you know financing compute which will then hopefully have a return like these things are super interesting I think um you know going back to like the quality of like the assets that we have like th those those can eventually end up you know once they're cleaned up and you know like they go through the extreme cases and they kind of survive like there there can be some some decent yielding assets Um, totally fine. I mean, uh, you know,

like there's stuff like Wildcat, which gives private credit for any company that wants to just show up and say like, "Hey, you know, we have our reputation. We're Seleni, we're Wintermute, we're, you know, uh, Bodie Ventures and this is Kain speaking and whatever." And here's my yield. And and you know, um obviously they they did have one um one company, I can't remember which one, but they they they did have like a first default, but that's kind of normal. I mean, that's part of the game. Like you you're going to have some defaults, that's why you're getting paid above their risk-free rate.

Um so like the these these instruments are interesting for sure. And um you know the RWA side has been trying to do it for for for a long time. You know we've heard about like real estate yields and different stuff. Um but there's there's some interesting things I'm I'm hearing like people trying to do like data center real estate um you know uh tokenization. Obviously, Canton, which you know, we've invested in on the digital asset side, is trying to do a lot of just bringing a lot of people on chain and tokenize assets and and do it natively in a way that is like, you know, representing the real assets, not just a receipt. So,

it's definitely a space that um I think a lot of people are are very interested in and including us. >> Not your keys, not your coins. From the team that pioneered cold storage, Treasure has just released its new wallet. Guys, if you are still using hot wallets in 2025, 2026, you are missing the entire point. Secure your coins. Get a treasure at treasure.io. Holiday is unified crypto payments. Give your users more wherever they are. Go to holiday.xyz to never write a smart contract again.

>> Looking for yield that stands out? Infinifi gives you just that. deposit stable coins and earn far more than the current savings rate. Infinifi is a battle tested, reliable DeFi platform that is ready to go. Head to infinifi.xyz. Yeah, I mean, we're calling it NEO finance. That's kind of our that's that's our focus for this year is like this this category of combination of tokenization, stables, neo banks, kind of the the institutional crowd. I'm going to New York again. We have a sick office space in the Empire State Building. We're locking it down. We're doing all these different things. It's very very focused on this. It's kind of like it's aligned with what you're saying about big brands coming on chain and launching tokens, but it's in a different way. It's more just like very

institutional. Um, and it does seem like that's like the ongoing meta. Um there's a there's a lot of apathy right now amongst like crypton native participants but there's also uh simultaneously like a lot of bullishness and excitement from these like higher level institutional participants like the Cantons and the teams that they're working with. Um so that kind of brings me to your portfolio positioning 2026 big game theory guy. What is the game theoretical approach to the market right now from the investor perspective? Right. So, Trump, Venezuela, QE, Jerome Powell, um, uh, midterms, uh, four-year cycle, where, what is the game theoretical approach to

the crypto market right now? How, like what is your current mental model for, uh, allocating in the space? How is Seleni positioned? How are you thinking about like like the risk on versus risk off period here? Your buddy Tiki just closed his, uh, ETH shorts for a loss. He thinks they're going to go lower. He had a fun short spree there. Um, other people are are getting bowled up on going to all-time highs off of a 5% pump to Bitcoin. Feels very PVP right now. What's the game theoretical approach to the market? What's your mental model right now given the large set of variables in front of us?

>> Um, I'm expecting this year to be as choppy as last year. So, there will be, you know, some big movements up and then like we'll have some crashes. Uh so that's not going to change. It's going to still be tricky. So my mental model is like you find these spots that are worth accumulating during and I think you know this recent in the 80s it just looked very nice. I think we already came you know quite a bit off the top. We're super lagging traditional markets including things like silver and like you know palladium whatever all platinum all this kind of random stuff people people are like shooting out to the moon. Um and it it's just like a

situation where you can easily see like a bit of a catchup uh trade. That said, you know, like I said, alts are kind of broken for the most part. you just like have unlocks coming, you know, for for most of them. Um, the major L1 tokens, I think, never really managed to explain why the token should be worth anything apart from just the fact that it has that speculative premium of like people want to bet on it that I mentioned. Um, so like even like the, you know, the large L1's I think are not necessarily like super clear long-term holds. So, we don't actually hold much ETH or soul, you know, we hold a little

bit, you know, we participate in in like the the trading, but we hold a lot more BTC um as a macro asset that I think is very relevant for today's world. We're definitely tracking the the quantum thing. And when I say the quantum thing, I don't really mean like the actual quantum as much as like people's perception of what could be a quantum thing. like are people, you know, I watch I watch like uh these like clips on like CNBC or MSNBC, whatever. Like I I want to see like what the normies are talking about and they mentioned it like they mentioned you got the guy random dude coming talking and then they mentioned quantum for Bitcoin and they're like you're a little bit scared

like they're just kind of like looking at it. Um >> that's so good, man. And I think it's I think it's a good thing that they're kind of climbing that wall of worry because you know once things calm down and nothing happens we we'll be able to kind of have people come back in. So um you think about you know positioning when when you see that and I think positioning might be might be low and people might need to position more. Um and um you know the main risk like you said is that we just get like a collapse in like uh equities other assets and then um that would obviously like hurt hurt uh hurt crypto prices.

So, you know, midterms, um, I am expecting Trump is going to aggressively try to juice things either by doing some kind of, uh, you know, airdrop check 2K, uh, to people or, um, some, you know, getting Steven Moran in in place of POW or some he's going to try to do something. So, um I do expect we'll get a liquidity surge around, you know, the mid year and and that's going to be like another buying opportunity. So, TLDDR like you know long right now mainly Bitcoin some select alts that have just like sold off way too much especially the ones with revenue. So, um you know we we do have some

of the ones that I mentioned like all all the ones that have revenue. We have like a basket of of of all of those things now that they're kind of at reasonable prices. >> Yeah. I remember you were telling me like, you know, Hyperlquid at 40 or 50 here, like is it that interesting? Or you you were kind of like me. I was like, ah, dude, it's going to go to the moon and then it went to 60 and then now we're back at 20 and it's like, okay, now it's kind of interesting again. And lighter. And then you got like the like sky, Maple, even a after some of the drama, Jupiter, these types. That's kind of like where our focus is. What's that? >> Meteora as well. Meteor Meteora is very cheap on a like a revenue basis. So, >> um yeah, we just have a basket of these

things. I like I like layer zero as kind of like another one that is like a dark horse, you know. I think I think like they're really starting to get some stuff uh together and they've undoubtedly won the war when it comes to like, you know, some of these categories, you know, like the OFTs and and like some of these things. So, um >> what about privacy, Jordan? Are you excited about Zcash as much as Arthur Hayes and Mertz or not so much? No, I'm not. I mean, I'm excited about Canton, which has privacy and I think the things that that might enable. >> Um, less less kind of like, you know, forms of money like Zcash that are trying to like meme themselves, >> you know. I was also like cur like I felt the same way about Bitcoin in 2012

when I first heard about it. I'm like, are they really going to meme something like into money? Like, I don't know. And then they did. So, like I could be wrong again. I know it's getting late over there, but just curious because we've heard it come up and I think they will come on the show, but why are you bullish on Canton? What what's your Canton thesis? >> Uh, you know, I I it's the same with lighter. Like I like um the combination of like um a founder that is able to go to these like trady institutions, these big guys and like sell them to co collaborate and bring them on and you know um I think Uval has that

ability to just, you know, go to a citadel, go to these guys, get get the banks on, get these guys on. Okay, like we're doing some interesting stuff. you got privacy, we have the credibility, we have, you know, the other names and then just kind of you just kind of get a a a bit of a group going and then before you know it, like other people want to come in because of because the other people are in and and that that's a good that's a good way to uh do things in the world, you know, that's it's very different than the hyperlquid thing. I like, you know, what Jeff is doing this like neutrality thing of like we're just like going to put the infrastructure and it's just code and anybody can deploy and that's also cool but like I think you want to be barbell. You either just do

like pure infra like neutral or you go like okay we're really good at like showing up and doing partnerships with all these guys and building you know building this stuff. So, um, they've been building this thing for a long time and, um, you know, I think at this point there's like so many investors that are in, they've thought about the privacy aspect, they thought about like issuing actual native securities and like the legal side a lot. Obviously, like when it comes to, you know, things that we're used to on the crypto side like, you know, MetaMask or EVM or some of these things are different. So like there that that's probably like the main thing that they need to um overcome and and kind of think about how to make like the the you

know the UX let's say like um kind of more friendly. >> What do you think about chain link? They they they've done all the things that Canton is has done. Sergey is you know one of the best founders in the space. token just can't seem to get a bid sustainably over time even though they are probably the most important kind of like DeFi try connector right now. Like do do you see these types of fundamental companies like ascending into the higher ranks of of um you know like top 20, top 10? And I mean chain link's already obviously up there uh like over the 5 to 10 year period or like do do these companies have to work on like like does chain link need to work on its token more than what it's currently done

basically is what I'm getting at or is just the fundamental work that they're doing and business that they have enough to kind of allow them to basically outlast everyone because I think it's really a game of outlasting more than ever now. How do you view like a company like chain link or those that are kind of similar in in in the space where the token value is still, you know, in that kind of utilityesque realm? They've kind of got some buybacks going with the link reserve, but not nothing like programmatic or like massive uh like massive uh programmatically like something like or hyperlquid.

>> I mean, look, like I'm not a I'm not a chain link expert. Um, one of the reasons is like it it just never was interesting for me for like looking at it from either a long or a short because from the long side it was just always so expensive. Like I could never like really justify why this thing's trading at like you know many billions and then from a short side it's like you know there's much less real like there's like more vacuous [ __ ] to short than like something that at least is is like is okay. So I didn't look at it from a short side or a long side. I just haven't like dug into into it too much.

But I will say that like you know some of the categories that they try to compete on like the bridging and some of these things you know they're not necessarily like winning in all of them. And and so um I guess like you know there's oracles but now there's like you know people are not really like using them for for most of these like financial oracles. Now they're using like pith or they're using you know something else. And um so I'm not exactly sure like I had yeah I'm not the expert on chain link I'll say. >> All right guys uh quick rapid fire and then we'll close out here. Jordy uh Bitcoin above or below 150k and end of the year.

>> Uh you know given where we are like I I would say like close to but probably like a bit below. >> Yeah. Soul above or below alltime highs around 280. >> Oh it's definitely below. I mean like >> not going to get close. >> Best uh best quarter of the year. Q1, Q2 but >> for crypto in general. Yeah. >> Yeah. So best best performing quarter >> I think um I think Q2. >> Q2. >> Um biggest sleeper like narrative or sector that people aren't talking about right now that that will be hot. LA, you know, it was privacy in Q4. It was it was Hype Liquid and Pers back in 2024, end of that year. It was the AI agent

meta. What is it this year? >> Um I I like I said, I think like getting some like real businesses as a tokenized asset, whether it's, you know, they're fully tokenizing the whole business or if it's just like equity per becoming really hot. Um I just think that people are going to want to bet on things that have like a real business. Yep. Yep. Jordy, thanks for your time, man. Get some rest. Uh I look forward to to hearing about what comes out of CFC. Uh and seeing you in the city as well soon, man.

>> Oh, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. Before we finish, can we just have a quick couple minutes? What is the health maxing journey? Can you give us like the like the 90 second TLDDR? Like what have you been up to? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, obviously, like I've been, you know, anyone that's dealt with me over the last years is just like, "Dude, like how are you [ __ ] online 24/7, like you don't sleep, you're always like," and I've just been pushing like very hard for years. And at some point, I think it just, you know, uh I hit I hit 40, you know, the anxiety of like trying to run this big business and all everybody, it just it just started to creep up in in health ways that I didn't, you know, realize until it like really hit me. So, I just started

prioritizing and, you know, I think like uh the approach is you just need to like layer habits and why habits because like habits become automatic so you don't have to like think about them they don't take your brain space so you just have like a healthy habit you can move on to the next one then you just like stack them and and and so like I started with uh something that was very easy for me which is diet just because I've always kind of you know been diet conscious uh and then you know exercise obviously like you know is something that we lazy people like or busy people like me like sometimes you lose you lose the slot that you supposed to have prioritize that and then um I would say like the latest one I've been successful on is

sleep uh I'm quite happy it's like the first time in years that I'm having like you know seven hours a night so I feel good um and then um you know there's a bunch of other stuff like you know just um stress you know if something is just like very stressful I don't even tolerate it. I I sort of just cut it out. And then the last thing, of course, is um you know, things like supplements and uh I've gone very deep in that rabbit hole. I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to you know this stuff because I like to take um information from like a lot of experts.

Like what I've always done well in my life is like, you know, there's a lot of economic projections from different people, different experts, and I just I just take it all and I just distill it into like here here's like here's the most likely correct vector out of all of this like noise. And so, you know, I've been doing that for a long time with, you know, people you should take take you should you should take the the goat weed thing. It's going to, you know, increase your sexual endurance or the other. you just hear a bunch of random [ __ ] right? So, I I I've I've I've been doing a lot of um trying to like clean up clear up the noise and u sometimes you have to take stuff that um you know like peptides are you know

they're not FDA approved yet. You got you got to like figure out what it makes sense and and I think I'm pretty good at that. So, um, I've gone down that path. And at some point, I think I I'll try to give people, you know, like the not the TLDDR, but like the long form, uh, like write up of of what I found. >> Awesome. Yeah, I'm I I took some ashwagandha to sleep recently, and it's been super great for sleeping, for endurance, um, all of that. Yeah, man. Good. Good. I'm I'm glad. I think, uh, you'll perform better in the markets, in life in general, feel better, be happier, right? And uh as you said the the big four zero for us I mean we're 15 years behind you or so 14 years behind you. And so uh for us it's more just

like don't have 20 beers have like 10 and then get seven hours you know it's like you know don't do the whole concoction like do like a a very small bit of fun and sleep and then work out and get some sun right and but as you as you progress it becomes more and more you know you have to be more specific with it. Yeah, the only the only good I mean obviously like your body's less forgiving but the good thing is like you you start becoming uh I would say like more disciplined and you have more more like you know data points more knowledge so in some ways becomes easier as well in some ways harder some ways actually becomes easier as as you age. Yeah, Joy Alexander, thanks for your time.