Max Gokhman on Bitcoin and digital assets during geopolitical conflict

Transcript

If you don't understand something, assume that it's actually something worthwhile and learn [music] about it so you can make an informed decision. What's up everybody? It's LG Doo here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where we try to figure out whether crypto is the future of finance or just the world's most confusing casino. Today is March 10th, 2026. Listen, Bitcoin has been oddly strong in the last few days despite a major conflict in the Middle East. And our guest today is floating a fascinating theory that capital in the region may actually be flowing into Bitcoin as a kind of emergency store of value. We're joined today by Max Grockman, deputy CIO of Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, where he leads global research on digital assets and multi-asset portfolio strategy.

Today's episode is brought to you by Midnight, bringing rational privacy to blockchain, Warbucks, the easiest way to trade crypto, and Nexo, earn interest, borrow and trade crypto. Max, welcome to the show, man. Thanks so much for having me LG. >> Okay, listen. Dive right into it. Are you telling me that uh people that hold tons of cash, tons of money in the Middle East that are trying to uh get their assets out of there, trying to get out of the country, whatever they're doing, they're actually converting that to Bitcoin right now. So, I I think there's at least some element of wealth that is going into digital assets, not necessarily just to Bitcoin. I think there's going to be a lot going into stable coins as well. But if you think about it, if your region is being attacked, um, and you're concerned about not just going in yourself and your

assets, getting them out of there, but where are you going to go? The dollar may not be the obvious place to go or a place that you feel comfortable parking your assets. So then you say how do is there another major you know trady fiat currency that I would go into. For some people the answer is going to be no. So then can I get onto a DeFi system go to a brand new payment rail where I am fully outside the scope of traditional central banking traditional government influence. That's where that starts making a lot of sense. And and I think there's a broader concept here which is

really important that things that are worse for the dollar are going to be good for digital assets especially digital assets that can be used as transactional rails like Salana and Ripple but yeah there's definitely going to be folks who are going into Bitcoin uh as well and is that and you think that that is something that could be driving the current positive price action >> [clears throat] >> I I I think there's there on the margin. Yes, I think there there's an element of that. Again, I don't have specific flow data in front of me. So, I don't want to, you know, say there's this much out of um you know, the flows we're seeing into BTC for example that are coming

from the Middle East. Obviously, we don't know where those flows are coming from. by the way that is kind of exactly the feature >> which is some of that wealth may not want you to know that it's coming from the Middle East right so [clears throat] having those really healthy on-ramps and off-ramps that we've seen created in the last uh several years really helps with that I think there's a broader >> part of you know we've seen such a bottoming of digital assets post the uh 1010 liquidation last year that there's been a bit of a resurgence I wouldn't a that you know the average investor like certainly like my clients um on the institutional side or or myself

personally see that Bitcoin is a you know a new gold or necessarily like something that's going to be stable but so far as risk assets go we've seen more of a decoupling between Bitcoin and other risk assets and so that's continuing to play out now everything you're listening to today is also covered in our daily crypto newsletter and on Sundays we even recap the best parts of the entire week's worth podcasts. So check it out at the link below. [clears throat] >> That makes sense. So do you do you think that this is kind of like a a critical moment or an example where Bitcoin I guess can finally be seen as like a safe haven versus a risk asset, right?

Because that's kind of the whole idea, right? In terms of t times of financial crisis or turmoil, that was the whole reason for Bitcoin created being created. So, do you see this as like a case study for that? >> I don't think we're going to see Bitcoin as a safe haven. I I think the volatility is is is well, the volatility would have to come down to the point that Bitcoin wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore. The other thing is Bitcoin was created as as the original case study, right? But we have stable coins now. Those didn't exist when Bitcoin first came around. So, if I'm looking for a safe haven, again, I want to take my money, put it somewhere that's outside of the traditional financial system, but still have no fee, easy on offramps, and I'm not worried that tomorrow, if I put, you know, a million dollars in tomorrow,

it could be 800k or 1.2 million, right? That's what stable coins are for. They're really kind of like if if you know, you mentioned crypto being a casino, and I'm going to use a casino analogy, but not from a gambling perspective. I want to emphasize that. But there's a there's a concept that when we go into a casino, you can't pay with your normal currency. You have to go to a you know um cashier and get chips. Stable coins become those chips. So I so I bring in my you know my dollars, my dinars, my yan, my what rubles, whatever I need. I go to the cashier. Cashier doesn't discriminate.

They give me my stable coins. Now I can go and if I want to play a casino game, I can. If I want to just use that to then walk around the casino with it for a while and convert it back to another form of currency, I can do that as well. And I think that is something that's really important. So now that there's a stable form of getting onto DeFi without worrying about volatility, I think that is is much more important and and we're seeing significant growth within stable coins. Uh the markets now over 300 billion and I I think that is going to be something that we continue to see grow significantly. The US interestingly is helping on both sides of that. Both

with creating an environment that's very bad for the US dollar and also with things like the Genius Act that actually encourage institutions to adopt stable coins um and be more comfortable using them. So those two things together I think are going to foster broader adoption. >> So okay, here's let's let's stay on the fun analogy because I like you gave a great analogy. You built on the casino thing. If I like what you're saying is stable coins are the chips. In your opinion, what is currently the most popular game [laughter] in in the crypto casino? Like, is it is it everyone's playing a form of blackjack hoping that they can beat the dealer? Like, what is the what is everyone doing right now in crypto if they're doing one casino table? There's,

you know, I I I think there's a lot of slot machine playing right now, [laughter] which is which is to say, you know, and I think about kind of what happened in in, you know, in October 10 where you had folks super massively levered. Um, and by the way, like as a general rule, why would you lever an asset class that has um volatility of over 70%. You know, that just that just doesn't make sense. And we we like some of the funds that got un unw unwound in hyperlquid they had like 50x leverage that just that doesn't make sense you know if in any market whether it is trappy or defy if you try to defy

gravity you will fall flat on your face. So, if you could say that was kind of like going in and playing blackjack, but you're not counting cards. You're just kind of, you know, hitting the table every time you you get u you know, you're you're set. So, I I think now we're going back to more traditional crypto of people going up to the different slot machines, putting a few chips in, seeing if it works, moving on to another one. Um, also not a great strategy, by the way. Um I think one of the biggest issues with the space and this is something we've been trying to solve uh from a more institutional perspective is people don't have a strategy. They're not looking at crypto with a risk framework in mind. They're not looking at the

multiaceted nature of crypto differentiating between different tokens and the fact that there's a you know looking at say Bitcoin versus Ether versus Soul that is as different as looking at Nvidia or Loheed Martin or a IBM bond like but we're we're lumping it all or you know collectively the I think the market is lumping it all into just one component which is why usually when I go on on shows I try to say like hey we can talk about Bitcoin but Bitcoin is not crypto it's just the biggest part of it right now and I think that's also going to change so wait so okay I I have so many questions about that because I

think a lot of people kind of do do these days bundle them together despite having cases for each one but I'm going to save that for a little later because I do want to talk to you about individual tokens in a bit I want to stay just on kind of the bigger macro picture while we're kind of getting into it um do like like from you obviously have a lot of exposure to the institutional bid, right? From from both a client perspective and also working at a at a at a massive firm, right, uh that manages a massive amount of money in times like this, right? Where this conflict was brewing and it's coming after a time where you've had you've had two separate days of mass mass liquidation in crypto in a short period of time. how how do these institutions

kind of approach crypto? Like what what has changed in the conversations and in the language that you guys have uh day-to-day and and and week to week? Well, part of it is the realization that volatility is, you know, everywhere for there was a period where we really didn't see volatility, at least downside volatility, which is the only one anyone really cares about. Um, you know, in traditional equities, and it was kind of like, you know, put everything on put all your chips, I guess, into AI and and let it ride kind of uh like a um, you know, a roulette table where you always know where where the ball is going to land. and now you're like, "Oh, the ball is moving in a very unpredictable way and I don't know if I want to stay at

this table anymore." Right? So, so I think with that again, it actually reinforces the idea that there's a lot of unknowns in Trafi. We don't necessarily want to dismiss DeFi anymore as this no man's land because who knows what's what is going to be the next, you know, uh, truth or tweet or whatever out of the White House, >> right? And that's going to drive commodity prices, that's going to drive gold, that's going to drive equities. I mean, you know what? Again, a lot of what I do day-to-day involves trading traditional assets. I saw a, you know, 70% realized volatility in the in the South Korean equity market. Um, and so those are what we would call crypto

numbers. Well, they're in Trafi. So I I think all of that volatility everywhere actually makes crypto much more palatable because it's not like it's just existing in this totally different envelope you know >> and it's all you know yeah I think that that's a really good point is that now it now it feels like all assets are could be crypto assets especially you didn't even mention oil which yesterday like the last couple days for oil are historic in a way that you're seeing these massive like >> the single biggest gap to open ever and I believe by the time we ended it was either the second or the biggest intraday move for high to low of all

time. So you know and again why did it move? It moved because we had a you know a tweet by the president saying the war is going to be over soon without any evidence to that effect. And and and again, like the reason I bring this up is because before people would say, well, you know, you can't invest in a market like crypto because Elon's going to tweet something and it's going to move, you know, x%. Well, you had the exact same thing happen in in in oil, which has been, you know, one of the oldest assets people have traded. So, there you go.

>> The whole the whole world's a casino now. That's that's basically how it feels. Um do you Max I I want to ask you about a specific utility that we've seen kind of emerge in in crypto and we saw it on the silver market uh a few months back um when it also had kind of a peak peak and bust uh in a very short time frame and that's the kind of onchain derivative market right where you you know if you want to trade like I guess oil futures or oil oil derivatives you can do that all weekend long if you want on a place like hyperlquid and I think there's probably a few other options silver was the same thing right where um I I think a few months back during that day I mentioned like 3 or 4% of the global volume of silver trade was on

hyperlquid which is to me was a you know kind of a a pretty understated moment um for for for crypto. Do you obviously this trend is going to accelerate? How does that fit into your world man? Is this something that's welcomed that this this stuff is possible or are you guys keen to kind of hang on to your weekends? >> Sure. Well, I was going to say, but you actually hit the nail on the head because on the one hand, it's great. There's price discovery 24/7 on the on the other hand, like, man, this sucks. I'm not going to sleep at all. And, you know, I mean, I've already forgot what a weekend is long ago. But, yeah, there's, you know, we always used to have this like analogy of, you know, money never sleeps. Well, money actually always would take naps overnight and it would

check out on Friday and come back Sunday when Asia opens. That's that's no longer going to be the case. So the reason we're seeing more demand for onchain derivatives, we're seeing more demand for RWAs coming online is because there's so much happening as a trader. One of the worst things you can have is seeing something unfold and not be able to take a position on it. So when the US and Israel launch those strikes in Iran, I mean, and by the way, this was calculated, right? like to do it on Saturday when the markets are fully closed all around the world, at least all major markets. The only thing I could do was open up, you know, all my crypto dashboards because those were still trading and see like, okay, this is how that's moving. Can I project how

that's going to affect other asset classes? So, I think that is going to be something really crucial. And I think we're going to see a couple things. Number one, we're going to see more and more assets move onchain. We're going to see stocks move onchain. I think we're going to see derivatives already as you said accelerate their move on chain which will give access to both commodities currencies etc. But what I and then we're going to see RWAS which could include everything from like cultural assets like art to uh stakes in more traditional private equity companies. So the you know tokenization of privates but also we're going to see brand new asset classes come around.

That's been a theme that we've been really thinking about a lot here at Franklin because that's going to change the way your average individual actually invests and how they derive benefit from that. So, let me give you an example just to >> make it a little more concrete. Let's say I'm a big fan of this athlete. Um, and they're, you know, currently in the minor leagues and they do some kind of fun IO where they basically say, "Hey, I'm going to drop these tokens and if you buy one of these tokens, you're going to get some share of my future earnings from any, you know, direct deals, maybe not including, you know, sponsorships or whatever." Again, they can define it however they want. And I'm

also going to airdrop you special access to me, whether it's a video chat or tickets or whatever. So, okay, I buy a stake in in in that athlete, they make it big. All of a sudden, that's an income stream. And I'm getting also non-puniary or nonmonetary benefits from that, like access to this person. So, I think we're going to see a lot more of that come around as well. We're already seeing tokens um having a bigger role in gaming where as folks, you know, play video games, they're actually sometimes making an income out of it. That used to be a totally brand new concept. And this, by the way, this is not esports where, you know, people

get cash prizes from playing games. This is just actually like playing a game and getting items in that game that have a real monetary value or even getting directly tokens from that game that have a real monetary value. So those are things that are just going to accelerate further. The line between work, play, and investing is really changing with the younger generations and it's becoming much more blurred. So I think that as a concept is going to also change you know 10 years from now. how we're looking at all those things.

>> Max, you sound like a bit of a DJ, man. I gotta be honest with you. You know, I come I come from the trenches in crypto and we used to we used I used to do a show on this network called Milk Road DJ. Um, and I feel like I feel like you're you're you're in the streets, man. I feel like you know your you know a little bit about your meme coins and your NFTts and your other weird AI tokens that come out. part part of my job as as a macro investor. I've been doing that for over 20 years has been to spot trends early and and see where things go. So, you know, I mean, I I would I wouldn't call myself a DJ. I'm sure people have before. You're the first one to do it to my face, so I appreciate that. Um, you

know, >> is that is that complimentary or is that are you offended? >> I consider it a compliment. Yeah. >> Okay. Um, but you know, I I I think what's really important is we don't dismiss things. Like, look, I've been around for a while. I I saw how people dismissed uh things that are going to sound really boring now, like international small cap, you know, equities. People be like, why would I invest in small caps in, you know, crazy places like France, >> right? Um I'm a little too young to remember um you know the same thing with high yield. When like Mike Milin introduced high yield to the world, people were like I'm going to invest in bonds of companies that are not perfectly like structured that have issues. Like that's crazy. Now that's

just the most like vanilla thing you can have right? Um, so I think those are things that are really going to um change and I think as we see that adoption, those all those asset classes I I mentioned, >> they're they're common place now. Crypto is going to be the same thing. It's just it's it's almost like the more boring it becomes, the more important it becomes to to the average investor. And and the best way for that to happen is institutional adoption. as institutions start ironically kind of centralizing some of that you know crypto holdings and like look I mean we're saw micro strategy own like I think it's like what 10% of all bitcoin supply right what's

going to happen when you have you know again I'm not saying tomorrow but eventually you have more sovereign wealth funds more uh central banks get into the space large institutions get into the space it's going to centralize a lot of those tokens it's going to bring down the volatility and it's going to make much more of a palatable thing for all investors. >> Warbucks is the easiest way to start trading crypto. No deposits, no wallets, no complicated setup. Choose your path. One step, instant target or instant funding starting as low as $40. Trade, stack profits, and withdraw on demand in crypto or USDC. Blow the account, you only lose the test fee. Reload [music] and go again. With Warbucks, you can profit from crypto moves in any

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Benefits usually reserved for loyalty program members. Get started at milkroad.com/nexo. Okay, so I I have to ask you this because this is something I've been curious about. Um, especially for for places like Franklin Templeton because I actually remember the day and I think it was you guys. I'm not saying it was you specifically, probably not, but maybe when I think it was Franklin Templeton that changed their PFP on X to a Pudgy Penguin. Okay. And clearly there has been a large shift internally there over the last few years. Max, is this something that you have been part of and like how has your team that you work with kind of started to to accept a lot of the stuff that you're clearly very

comfortable and very bullish on? But I'm sure for people that have worked in Tradfi, this has been it's been hard for them to really accept uh you know the entire bulk case for crypto and and for Trafi going on chain. >> I mean it absolutely has been difficult uh for some folks. I think honestly like it helps when you have someone who's been in the Trady space come in and say actually this this is real guys like it's important. I guess it also helps when they're your boss. um cuz that [snorts] you know there's the carrot and the stick. But what I've tried to do with my team is say look let's approach this like we approach any other asset class. Let's approach it like we would approach high yield in the 80s. Let's approach it like we would approach international small caps in in the '9s

and you know and so on and so forth like private credit was not a thing and you know during the financial crisis now it's a very big thing. So we've we've learned how to incorporate new asset classes. It's just most new assasses didn't have, you know, dank memes attached to them. Um, maybe they should have. Maybe that would have gotten us faster adoption of high yield. I don't know. But, right, like >> that's [clears throat] a uh a facet where I think because there's those components to it, people would kind of dismiss it. Um and the reality is once we started really looking at this, we've been working on building valuation models for different tokens where we evaluate everything from you know commits uh on on GitHub relating to that

token usage where we analyze um network effects in terms of like daily average transactions where we look at real time onchain metrics through our nodes. So as we've started getting all that data and actually that's the one of the beautiful things about blockchain and and crypto in general is you can support a lot of your views with hard data and there is a lot of data. So before coming to Franklin um I I I was a founder of a digital asset hedge fund which probably helps explain some of the deness. Um and the the fund was built fully using artificial intelligence. The the reason why it did well is because we were just coming in with this really fast AI model that was trading against

humans who were slow, you know, and not necessarily stupid, but I would say AI was smarter and being able to scrape tons of data aggregated real time and then trade, you know, across exchanges, across venues um that humans couldn't. So here, you know, we are a quantitative and a fundamental uh shop. So we have really smart researchers who can take all the data, build signals out of them. We also have really smart top- down researchers who can, you know, think about what the model is missing. So with that combined, we're able to get a lot more depth on the space and as we've gotten depth, we've gotten confidence that this is really something where there is a there there and it's going to become bigger and bigger.

>> Yeah, that makes sense. How do how do you max like clearly you're so on top of the ball and you're doing it you it's almost like you're you're a DJ in disguise honestly like it's like you're secretly like people wouldn't expect that from kind of like your title and and honestly your demeanor uh you seem very professional uh unlike most of the DJs that we know but you're so you're clearly incredibly good at spotting trends and being early to them. How do you do that? How do you what is your what is your methodology or the rules you've learned for being able to spot these things as they happen and gain the confidence to to clearly like go hard

into them? >> Well, there's thank thank you. I like the Jen in disguise. Um that's keep the compliments coming uh LG. But [laughter] there part of it is experience and you know like I I think that's one of the interesting things some of the folks um I know like like the first person who I ever talked to about crypto was Mike Novagrats you know who was again also a macro guy with even more experience than me under the belt right and we just learn from seeing these things. I mean I remember when I saw the unraveling of subprime loans like the writing was on the wall and some of us saw it. So, ironically, right around the time of the GFC is when Bitcoin was created for those very reasons, right? And so, I was

like, okay, this is interesting. Why is this happening? I I think the number one thing is to not dismiss things outright. Like, that's my first key tip. If something new is happening and you don't understand it, the natural human impulse is to dismiss it. Go hard against that feeling. If you don't understand something, assume that it's actually something worthwhile and learn about it. So you can make an informed decision on whether it is in fact something you should understand or or not. There's never a downside to getting more knowledge. Number two, look at who is moving in the space. Are there other folks who you respect who seem to have a view? So for me again, it was, you know,

some people like Mike where I'm like, you know, you're a legitimate um investor. Like you clearly have changed your entire career to do this. Um, you know, I think we're we ourselves, like as as a company, Franklin, we have Jenny at the helm. Um, you know, we're really pushing into the space. So, ask yourself like, well, this a $1.7 trillion asset manager, they're really looking to get into this. Like, does that make sense? Right? And I think then you start going through and making your own views. That's that's the third and most important part. like is this something that as an investor I can generate a view on? Is that view going

to be differentiated? Is that view going to have some kind of reliability and consistency in how I can deploy it? As you answer that question, that's when you basically figure out if this is a trade or a longerterm investment or even a strategy that you can make. So, I'd say those are my top three things that I look at when I'm trying to figure out if there's a if the trend is even there, if it's a trend I should care about, and then can I exploit that trend. >> Are you are you are you into Galaxy? Are you long galaxy? >> Um, [snorts] can't comment on any any positions [laughter] >> obviously.

>> Damn. All I can say is I I Mike's a good guy. That's that's all that's that's the >> good guy. Yeah, I personally I I still have like we've written a lot about Galaxy at Milk Road. Um some of our analysts are are carry Galaxy in their portfolios and uh I I I I will always have this bias of him with his Luna tattoo that I just can't I'm like but he he had the Luna tattoo and that was like as wrong as you could be. Like I just cannot >> I'll tell you a story >> that that I haven't shared before ever.

So, when I had my crypto fund, I was talking to a potential um LP and >> you know, like I was explaining like why he should invest into my fund and this guy actually was like a legit DJ. Like this guy made a lot of money and he was going to go all in on DeFi. And he said after after like meeting number three or four, he said, "Max, I like what you're doing. I think this AI thing maybe will be important, but I found this new thing that my adviser told me about. My this adviser is like 20 years old. Um, and I think literally it's just like some kid who hodled his way in college and, you know, made a couple hundred grand.

>> So he's like, "My adviser told me about this new thing and it's called an algorithmic stable coin >> and you don't understand the yields. I'm guaranteed here." here and I was like look there is no such thing as a guarantee in anything in finance. I mean you could say maybe a treasury if you believe in the you know in the US government but >> Mhm. >> there's a really big problem when something that's supposed to have collateral does not actually have collateral like they're just a basic thing. We saw this in the financial crisis with like you know triple derivatives and things like that and at least those had some collateral somewhere massively levered and layered. Like there is zero backstep here. Like you are walking on you're like wy coyote

literally walking off the cliff and the moment you and everyone else looks down you're going to go full flat down. And I said like don't invest in my fund. I don't even care. Just please don't go into Luna. Like this is such a clear bad idea. And you can guess what this person did. And they did call me afterwards. I was like unfortunately now you no longer meet the minimums to invest in my fund. >> [laughter] >> because they lost. >> Oh, no. >> So, look, everyone makes bad decisions. >> Can't can't can't have all the wins without a lot of the losses. That's that's I think that that's >> I think the most important thing with that is when you make a loss, learn from it. Failure is is one of the best educators there is. You know, one of the ways in which I've learned how to avoid

mistakes is by making some mistakes before. The transparency of traditional blockchains forces a difficult choice. [music] Utility or privacy. And you shouldn't have to choose. Midnight empowers innovators [music] to break free from this limitation to a place where privacy isn't just a feature but foundational. Go to milkgrow.com/midnight to learn more. Very important part of the journey. Let's let's look to the future. Max, we're talking we're talking it's a great story, great anecdote, but that's that's pretty far in the past now. The the Luna collapse, right? part of the big part of the last bare market. Let's look to the future. If you were starting from scratch from here, and I'm speaking strictly like crypto, digital assets with everything that's happening,

everything that we know is being built towards, right, like you're saying, even where you're working, you know, $1.7 trillion asset manager is going full-on into this. How would you build out how would you what what kind of trends would you look at as to continue or to emerge? And how would you go about I guess your your investment strategy from here? >> So number one is to be diversified and you can't be diversified on a market cap weighted basis in crypto cuz then you're just going to own Bitcoin and ETH, right? And I think that's not how you should do it. So I would look at what are the value propositions of different tokens. Can I get behind them? Right? So like I mentioned, we have different

models that we've built. I would deploy those models. So I would have some tokens that are for example in the uh gaming space, some tokens that are utility tokens, DeFi tokens, utility tokens and cryptocurrencies and then you know general like tech networks like ETH. So I would look at that and then I would go into the L2s and see across the L2s what do I find most interesting and so I would create this kind of like if you we have a concept in trady called core satellite where my core like my you know US equities and my satellites might be emerging market equities international small caps um you know Japan etc. I would have the same concept

of like L1 as a core, maybe a couple different L1s as cores. These are the really the main networks that I have high confidence in. And then I create satellites of the L2s that are more risky, more opportunistic, but I think there's a higher chance of uh asmmetric reward there. What I mean by that is I've looked at the downside risk. Always with a volatile asset class you look at the downside risk first and I believe then having also evaluated the upside potential I believe the upside potential is got a longer tail than the downside one and that's that is how I would construct that portfolio. What what I would also say is on top of all that put in a very robust risk model. I don't

think that's appreciated enough. When I say risk model, I don't mean just look at the standard deviation of all the tokens and make sure it doesn't exceed X, but actually understand what's driving the volatility of each of those tokens. You you're going to want to build specific factors for those volatility metrics, which could be, you know, um things like flows, things like while it's going in or out of cold storage, activity on the L1, etc., etc., And then once I've got the risk modeled, then I can build an optimization platform for actually allocating across those tokens given their forward-looking risk and my forward-looking potential

for their return based on metrics I've put into my signals. I like that, man. That's a good that's definitely a good way to approach it. I want to I want to know would you um how do you approach something like ETH and AI because obviously there's new there's new token standards being developed and I think that that's still kind of like a gray area for a lot of people where they know that that has a lot of potential. They know that uh maybe a lot of onchain transactions in the future will be done by our AI agents and and clearly that's being developed as well. Is that something that's of interest to you and how do you kind of approach it? Yeah, I mean look, AI is the other thing that I've been uh working really hard on here and um I think we're going towards an

agentic future. Uh that's that's that I have extremely high confidence in. So you will have agents doing work for you and this is the less popular part about it, but you will be doing some work for agents like agents are going to be in the orc chart. And so with that, yes, agents are going to be transacting in uh in digital asset land and agents are going to be trading and investing. So you will be, you know, like we have a concept in in, you know, investing in general and trading in particular um that you're always trading against someone like it is a bit of a poker match, right? To bring it all the way back to that casino analogy, right? It's not like there there's a dealer, but really it's you against other investors.

And and you know like we always say like you got to be a little cocky to be a good investor because you have to assume that you're smarter than the market but really you're smarter than the person taking the other side of that uh trade and so you will be investing against um AI agents and AI agents are going to be developing their own tokens. We've actually already seen this. Um if for folks familiar with um OpenClaw though, they created their own token pretty hiking fast and they're not even the very the first AI agents to have created a token. I think even uh over a year ago, we had um a large language model that specifically built its own token to actually I think um similar to open call fund its own religion. So interesting philosophical parallels we probably

can't unpack on this episode, but you [laughter] know there there there's a lot there and I think that is where we're just going to see more and more autonomy where you're going to have agents build their own companies. I think they're going to build those companies on blockchain rails and they're going to list tokens and they're going to trade those tokens with each other and with humans. So again, it's an idea. It may sound crazy right now. Think about who it's coming from. Is that a person you can trust? Is there any downside to learning more? So, going back to those three things that I talked about earlier of how I spot trends.

That's how I would approach what I just said. >> Awesome. Okay. Well, that's a great thought. I feel like we actually have a lot more to unpack uh when we have you back, Max. I feel like we have to have you back and and kind of keep digging into these trends because you really get me excited getting the DJ side of me excited. I feel like we we could get a lot deeper. Um, but it's been a great episode. Max Cochman, thank you for coming on, man. Uh, great to chat with you. >> Thanks so much, [music] LG. Great being here. >> Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milk Road Daily and Pro Newsletters and [music] start investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is

financial advice. Investing is risky. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.