Outlook for BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB and SOL, with David Siemer

Transcript

GM, good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crow show where the only thing louder than the bulls is the sound of FOMO creeping in. I'm your host, Jay Hamilton. It's Friday, May the 23rd. What a week. Bitcoin getting above 111,000. Everything else following, not necessarily everything else is following. We're seeing a little bit of a mix. Some things are following, some alts are doing well, some alts not so well. So, we're going to jump into this and so much more. Today, we're joined by David Seamer, co-founder and CEO of Wave Digital Assets, a crypto investment advisory firm that offers more products than I could even you would need an entire episode just to talk about all

the incredible products they offer and all the people they work with in this space. In today's episode, we're going to talk about macro, the administration, what's going on in Trump's world, and what we can expect next, if anybody could predict that. Uh we're also going to talk about the top five assets in the market. We're going to talk about Bitcoin Ethereum Binance Salana Ripple. We might even talk about a few more. But the reason we're going to talk about those top five is Wave has a index fund with the top five. So we're going to dive into each of those and the thesis around those. Before we jump in, if you guys want to hang with me every day, join our Telegram group where we talk to you on a regular basis and you can get your questions in front of our guests. Today's episode is brought to

you by Letin, get cash without selling your Bitcoin. It's also brought to you by Coin Shift, powering top crypto treasuries with their yield bearing stable coin, CSUSDL. Without further ado, David, welcome to the Milk Road Show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Great to be here. Yeah, absolutely pleasure to have you. Uh, okay. I always like to start with uh let's say you're you're meeting up with a friend who's a who's a crypto investor uh and knows the space and you're sitting at the bar. How how are you telling him you're positioning your portfolio right now? Sure. I mean, this is, as you alluded to in your beginning here, this has been the most exciting, you know, kind of recent period in crypto history. I mean, not not this week. This week was great with all-time highs. I mean, just with this administration, with what's happening

around the world, you know, obviously the tariffs and the debt bombs and, you know, it's been just an utterly kind of mayhem thing for an old finance guy like me that's it's been, you know, kind of in Wall Street for a long time. You know, crypto is always exciting, but this is this is kind of next a different level. And, you know, and there's just so much going on, it's almost hard to talk about. So, on the on the macro level, obviously, headings are heavily driven by non-crypto events right now. So, the administration's positivity towards crypto has has been incredible. It's been obviously a little different than we were used to. Uh, and and most people don't fully understand just how, you know, just just how much more power the administration is trying to put behind getting to good crypto legislation, you know, you know, ways

to, you know, enable uh this technology to, you know, kind of be innovated in the US. Uh, so I give a couple anecdotes. You know, we we actually hosted a dinner in DC about a month and a half ago. We had Senator Hagerty who has the the genius bill um sponsor of that bill. We had Hill and Steel who are the doing the Congress congressional version and called the stable one. And they both said every week they get a call from President Trump saying where is my bill? Um and that is just an incredible sea change you know from where we were. And now obviously you know I mean by best estimates probably at least 80% of Trump's net worth is crypto and his children it's probably 95%. So I mean there's a little bit of motivation there but it's doesn't change how wonderfully positive it is for this

this sector and and how much emphasis has been putting down. So you know everyone was kind of saying well you know will this markets your crypto markets bill be there by year end and like it for sure you know I mean you know there's always political divide and maybe you know one team might stop some things or slow things down or whatever but the the impetus the energy the focus from every aspect of the administration is absolutely incredible and what that does is that hones the rest of the world you know so the whole world has to compete with the US financial services industry I mean you know we you know it is dominant more or less you know so what we're seeing thing here is, you know, everyone's trying to get even more aggressive so they think they can attract dollars. You're seeing all

these, you know, exchanges in Europe and Asia, you know, that liked having, you know, Bitcoin long funds listed. Now, those aren't very interesting with ETFs. They've got to do more wild west things. Uh they've got to get more aggressive. Every every country is trying to issue even more favorable legislation, more protections, you know, starting with like everything from the UAE and Japan and everywhere else. So it's, you know, the US leading on this for the first time as opposed to what was going on, you know, kind of puts everybody else on their heels to be even more positive in the space. Um, so there's never been a moment like this in my lifetime. And I've had Bitcoin since since February 2010. 2010. Wow. You were OG 2010. Yeah.

Yeah. Dumb luck, but he gave me 50 bitcoins when 50 bitcoins was a totality like $10. Um, so then you know anyway and then I got more interested is not then that later. You bring you bring up a good point here that I think is like something that I I is very lost right now in all of the macro noise is all the the all the tailwinds the setup that is that is happening right now for crypto which we all knew about and we were all talking about once Trump got elected in late 2024. But then once markets tanked in March, April and tariffs took over every single media outlet in the world, we

kind of forgot about this stuff. And it's I I can like the sentiment's coming back, but there's still a lot of fear and uncertainty. Do you when it comes Let's just touch quickly on on on macro because I agree that like the crypto side setup is amazing. Like it's never been better. It's never been better. And but we're all that the fear is still so strong. So relieve our fears for us, David. You're quite tied in to the administration. Um or maybe don't relieve our fears for us if you don't think we should be relieved. Uh how are you feeling? How are you framing macro right now and finding the signal versus the noise? So So yeah, so again, the the macro is amazing. Crypto crypto

investors in general are so short horizon focused. It's kind of hilarious sometimes. So, like, you know, I remember what you said, you know, February, March, people were like, where's our legislation? You know, Trump's been in power for 40 days, you know, like, you know, why why don't we have these new bills? Is it real? Maybe he's not really serious about, you know, all these weird conspiracy theory level, you know, and of course, we're talking to everybody, so we know what's going on, but it's just like, guys, it's been like 45 days. Like, you literally, it's literally like, do you know how Washington works? Like, 45 days is a nancond. You know, you got to give, you know, these things take a little while.

doesn't doesn't matter who's in power. Um, you know, so so crypto is and I think the problem is everyone gets so bloodied in crypto that we're always looking for uh the next fall. You know, we're all and you kind of have to mentally in this asset class, you can't get too high. You know, it's easy to get too low. But, you know, when things are going great, like this week, this week is everything is great. And of course, when you talk to people, they're like, "Boy, I hope I don't know if this will last." You know, and I I think this one will really last. like I don't I think we're at the beginning stages of a a pretty interesting run right now. Uh there's just too many things kind of aligned. Uh and I'm I'm mostly speaking about Bitcoin. Um when I say that I I'll

bifurcate where I talk about you know for different coins. I think the opportunity right now is very different. But for for Bitcoin in general which is pretty synonymous for most of Congress with crypto. I'll say it that way at least. And the lawmakers and the states and everyone we're talking to like it's it's a Bitcoin world by and large. Like there's there's they don't even think about things less than a little bit Bitcoin. Um for the most part, which is, you know, okay, that's that's fine for now. You know, they'll get there someday. But the Yeah, but the the enthusiasm to make things happen, the state level enthusiasm. I mentioned the foreign governments trying to kind of frontr run what the US is doing, you know, so they get kind of keep their peace where amazingly Russia is seeing the states do the same thing. You know,

the all the particularly the red states um are are trying to frontr run the federal government for digital asset reserves, for cryptoback bonds, for better rules. You know, obviously there was always Wyoming and a couple other states that were way ahead of the government. Um but there weren't many. you know, now there's like 27 states with crypto digital asset reserve legislation in some part of the process. Uh, which is which is it's the rank states obviously or mostly um but that's okay. It has to start somewhere. Just the fact that there's 27 like even even that number and just recognizing that it's easy to forget that because we focus so much on the federal side that we we don't think about the state side as much and that's that's a massive

number like and this is such a big shift like think about where we were a year ago. Yeah. Okay. So, so, okay, let's let's keep going with Bitcoin for a second while we're on the topic of Bitcoin. Um, you believe we're still in in a bull market. You think walk us through where you think we are in this cycle and where where you see the cycle going from here? Yeah, I mean the the level of adoption and and again, so so corporations and everything's very political right now. Um, so you know, corporations don't want to be political on either side. So more, you know, like you know, like tons of universities, you know, we were kind of shocked as we've been talking to like like Harvard and MIT about some of their

products we're trying to do right now and they have, you know, huge amounts of Bitcoin and, you know, nothing else, just Bitcoin pretty much. So, you know, but like there, you know, lots of corporates we talked to have huge amounts of Bitcoin. When you look at like, you know, like all the different micro strategy cap raises and all the crypto mining stocks in general, if you look at their cap tables, it's kind of amazing. I mean, it's every large financial institution is holding Micro Strategy, is holding ETFs, is holding uh naked Bitcoin in a lot of cases, you know, through through banking partners and whatnot. Um, and you know, so so the and obviously they're very very behind.

You know, the amazing thing about crypto is is it's a purely still almost a purely retail asset class. And yes, we have ETFs and yes, we have some, you know, multi-billion dollar endowments and whatever holding the assets in some foreign countries. Um, but if you look at how big the asset class is, you know, maybe say maybe 10% of all crypto is held by professional managers. You know, if you look at the stock market or bond market, that number is about 75%. That's wild. That's wild. You know, so you know, we're at 10% now. I'm even throwing in like VC funds like Panta or whatever. Like you you throw in everything that's professionally managed and not that those are really asset management in typical sense. Uh but you still get like 10%. You know, it's really microscopic, you know. So, and

obviously again that's ignoring the fact that a third of bitcoins were probably lost and um and whatever else. So, I mean, you know, if you look at the numbers like if institutions are going to adopt this asset class in a somewhat meaningful way, you know, that number goes to 20%. you know, the prices, you know, have to go, you know, pretty, you know, parabolic. So, so I think Bitcoin is at the beginning of a big run, you know, I I'm not selling any of my bitcoins. I'm I'm not buying anymore at this price. I mean, I I I I'm pretty stacked actually, but um so but you know, but there's you know, so I think this you could you know, how fast will we go up? you know, I never want to make that prediction, you know, but I I I don't see many scenarios with what's

happening right now and with the at the pace the micro strategies, the index, the ETFs, the the miners are get gobbling up bitcoins, you know, it just it it seems like a pretty self-fulfilling prophecy. So, yeah. So, so right now very very bullish on Bitcoin. I I you know, I you know, in in there can always be short-term shocks. Uh, so not to say it couldn't be 70,000 again tomorrow if you know something weird happened or you know but um well and there and there's headline risk with with Trump. We have to recognize that right? He is the type of president who certainly likes to jump on Twitter and make an announcement that can create a shock. Uh that's his style.

So we have to be aware of that. And I and I agree. I don't think that that pullback to 70k I honestly don't know if we see below 80k ever again. I wouldn't be surprised that feels 80 mid 80s feels like maybe if we got a shock I could see us going back there but I I think right now momentum we're going up for at least the next month or two. What's are you Let me ask you two questions. Are you worried about tariffs? And when I say tariffs I mean I know we're in this like basically we're in a pause right now, right? You know yeah there's deals getting done. you know, you talked to the administration a lot. Um, but it's these pauses are going to end and when the pauses end, there's going to be a lot of uncertainty, a lot of noise

unless deals are done, especially with China and the US, which who knows what happens there. So, are are you worried about tariffs or you you think they're going to sort it out? It's no big deal. Well, I think I think Bitcoin is somewhat successfully decoupled from the usual risk asset. I mean, you know, as a guy who's owned crypto forever and as a finance guy, you know, my original thesis and, you know, my sort of at least paying real attention like 2013, 2014, you know, was, oh, this this this should be, you know, kind of a the opposite of the risk assets. You think of the you know, textbook or whatever. And it's it's finally a little bit true.

I'm not I'm not saying we've totally broke correlation. Then Bitcoin's down the day, NASDAQ's down today, like you know, but in long longer time horizons, it seems like that correlation is pretty much breaking and people are finally starting to look at it as, you know, kind of this hedge asset that, you know, gold is. And um and and it's 100% perception based. You know, whe whether Bitcoin is that type of asset is just people believe it. There's nothing else to it. I mean, there's no PE ratio with Bitcoin. there's there's no real I guess call it gravity around the asset you know naturally aside just you know absolutely pure supply and demand so and the institutional world is starting to look at at Bitcoin as again this kind of counteryical asset which is which is

massive you know so this narrative the narrative is very early I want to be kind of clear like this this divergence you know is is in the last few months like three months four months it's not long term if it can maintain that for a year I think that perception will really set in. And the same as gold, like why does gold go up when the world's in trouble? Because people think it should. Not because it actually, you know, not because we need more jewelry, you know, not because like up and demand for gold, you know, from a natural source is going to, you know, spike or something. Actually, the opposite. So, yeah. So, Bitcoin can achieve that perception. It'll it'll be self-fulfilling. Selling your Bitcoin should be a last resort when you need cash. That's why there's Leen, the trusted platform for Bitcoin backed

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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, cycusl is gaining traction at milkroad.com/coinshift. Yeah, and I think you're right. I mean, it's uh it's the decoupling is something that we've been talking about for for a long time, for years, but it does feel different this time, but it's so early that I always hesitate to, you know, is it actually different this time? As you

said, we need to see, but it seems like it is. And I mean, one of the major reasons why it's different this time is we have, as you said, we have institutions in meaningful ways here, and they're coming faster and faster. And we have Abu Dhabi so sovereign wealth fund buying 500 million Bitcoin to start the year. Like these are things that we did not have in the past. And you know they are not buying it as a risk-on asset. They're buying as a riskoff asset. So you have that thesis playing out by more and more buyers. Uh before we jump into I want to stick a little bit with um with macro for a second. Uh I know that you speak to Treasury Secretary Bessant. What are your thoughts on uh on Powell and how the Fed is going to handle things in the

coming months? You know, markets not not expecting them to lower rates anytime soon. Feels like July and their Jackson Hole Symposium is a big date to mark in the calendar to see what happens around that. But then we have Bessant saying, you know, he's going to do what he needs to do on the Treasury side and he has ways just as Janet Yellen had ways to inject liquidity through Treasury buyback programs. So how how do you think through all of that? Me a long answer that might escape the uh the bounds of this the show. Um so so and it's again I I I'm not I also have to buy the best person in the world to talk to about this. I am you know I'm a crypto guy at these boys. I was a you know more macro guy. You know, I I think

the administration and again with all the tariffs, everything else, you know, I think what we've seen is everyone wants the tariff thing to end. You know, I don't think any, you know, Trump included, you know, I think he has some reservations that, you know, this this tariff war was maybe the, you know, the best idea uh to do all at once. Like I, you know, maybe I think what they're trying to do now is how do you isolate individual countries and get them to a deal and and and try to keep everybody else and not try to do the whole world at once, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense because, you know, there's no reason to fight the entire world at once. Yes, we're the biggest economy, but that doesn't doesn't mean we want to take on, you know, yes, we're 30% of the

global economy. Doesn't mean we want to take on all 70% of the rest of the economy at once. Um, so I think the I think the announcements coming out of that from what we're talking to will be positive. Obviously Trump's been very transparent that he really wants a China deal. Uh, which would be the big one. Um, China wants a China deal. You know, you know, they're definitely playing kind of they need it. They need it. They need it, right? The only reason they don't need it is because they control their media in their in their country. So their their country doesn't actually really recognize how bad it is. If it wasn't if they were any other country in the world where they had open media, they would there would be riots in the street based on what's happening there right now. I don't know if I agree with

that. I mean, they're very nationalistic. They've taken this as an attack like a almost like a war. True. You know, so to speak and nationalism goes a very long way. We've seen it in this country. We've seen it in plenty of other countries that there is that rally around the flag which can last a long time. And the Chinese government has something we don't have. They don't have our debt. You know, they have money. They they actually have our debt literally like Yeah. They literally go they do have our debt. Yeah. Yeah. They they don't have our debt problem. They have our debt, you know. So, I mean, their ability to shield their businesses and to support people for a very long period of time is different than ours.

Like they can this could go on for a year and they can make it invisible to their population. Literally, they have the money. You know, they can just pay people to not work or whatever. They could, you know, like kind of we did in COVID times or whatever. Um, so I I I don't I think their hand is actually very very strong in this battle. Um, you know, American consumers don't aren't that way. When our store shelves are empty, there will be, you know, riots is not the right word, but you know, there will be dissent and unhappiness and things like that and and there won't be in China. I mean, yes, you know, they won't listen to it. You know, yeah, it'll be there, but no one will say it out loud. Here, they'll scream it.

Um, certain people at least. So I I think their hand is very strong. I I think you know again both countries really need each other. It's not like this benefits them, it doesn't benefit us. This is a lose-lose. So yes, I think rational minds will get us to a pretty good outcome pretty quickly. You know, I am supportive that there should be some tariffs on China. I I am supportive that our tech companies should be allowed to operate in China since all their tech companies do, you know, some sometimes nefarious things here, you know. So I think I think it's been unfair. I think it was absolutely important that you know we stand up to China and you know and and demand a leveler playing field.

Uh but I don't think this will go on very long. I I don't think I don't think this is going to last 90 days because there's no benefit. It doesn't benefit us. It doesn't benefit them. You know I think and I think there's a lot of ways both sides can claim victory. You know especially in the right-wing media in this country they can declare victory in almost matter where they want to. And in China, they can always declare victory, you know. So, I mean, like, victory is at hand. Whether or not anything changes at all, victory is at hand. Oh gosh. Scary scary thought. Okay. Uh let let me get your Bitcoin prediction for this cycle. Where do you where do you think Bitcoin goes this cycle? Uh I mean, I'm very bullish in short term.

I'm very bullish in long term. You know, I I think there's, you know, high likelihood we'll get to a couple hundred,000 a coin by year end, which is not that far. And I, you know, I think the normalization of Bitcoin as an asset is just going to be so fast. You know, when states are putting up digital asset reserves, when states are issuing, you know, cryptoback bonds, you know, mini bonds and things like that, whenever, you know, um, you know, the the, you know, it kind of forces the institutional asset conversation to end once and for all, you know. I mean, I'm still in a situation. I used, you know, Maril Lynch. They still make it hard for me to buy Bitcoin ETFs. Oh, yeah. You, you know, I mean, it's just like it's ridiculous. Like, like I can buy any penny stock. Very bullish though when

you think about it's very bullish, right? One of the biggest banks in the world makes it hard for you to buy an asset that you want to buy. You're not the only you want to buy it. Like all their customers Yeah. can't buy it. Yeah. Yeah. And if you look at the smaller banks out there, you know, none of them allow their very few of them, you know, natively hold Bitcoin for their clients or private wealth clients and things like that even yet. I mean, it's coming pretty rapidly. So, I I think there's just amazing, you know, tailwinds behind us. And as I said, I mean, you can't miss the idea that, you know, between, you know, the Trump memecoin, you know, world liberty, American Bitcoin, you know, this administration's personal finances are so entwined with crypto that, you know, and and and obviously, you know, Trump

isn't, you know, hesitant to speak his mind or hesitant to make a deal that, you know, you know, works out well. So, you know, so I I just can't see I can't I can't see anything but very positive legislation coming through. Very positive stances. You know, the US government holds roughly, you know, a little over 20 billion dollars of crypto right now. About 15 of it is Bitcoin. Um they're not going to sell it. I mean, you know, they will put it into some kind of digital asset reserve as soon as they can figure out what they hold. They can't, but uh they're we're trying to help them with that. Um they don't even know what they hold.

They vaguely know what they hold. I mean so so you got to remember you know it's it's um so I spent the last two year we spent the last two years at way building out a government practice uh so we do education for like the IRS for other states um for crypto for uh we have a software platform we developed called watchtower in partnership with with a company called Luca does tax reporting in crypto uh that basically has a dashboard for what they have it's you know it's sitting in a bunch of agencies right now for review it's a new product product it could solve the problem you know it it works you know and right now, you know, I'll use Texas as an example.

It's one of the states we've been talking to a lot. There's 40 different attorney generals in Texas. Like Texas is actually kind of decentralized to use crypto term. You know, all of those 40 uh attorney generals have some amount of crypto. Uh and then there's you know hund couple hundred police departments below those all of which have some crypto and none of it's on any kind of system. I mean it's on Excel, it's sitting in, you know, they have ledgers sitting in, you know, police boxes. Um this is all about seizures, right? This is all from this. Yeah, this is for Texas in particular. They got a relatively poorest border. There's a lot of seizures, you know, crime seizures at that border. You know, not a huge amount of crime is done in Bitcoin, but some

is. It's dumb to do crime in Bitcoin. You know, it's very traceable. It's public ledger, but but whatever. You know, people do it. Uh they have a lot of Monero, too. Um anyway, so um you know, so they so there so how do you know it's there? And so the upward report, but they do it in Excel. Okay. So prices change, there's airdrops, you know, sometimes they stake, you know, some some some of the townships have it on their own systems or like a treasure. Some of them have it on sitting on Coinbase. Some of them have it all in different places. Um, so how do you get a holistic view of what the and all of it rolls theoretically rolls up through the US Marshall, which is the federal government. Um, so you know, how do you get a holistic view of that like in and

it's you know, even in non-real time, you know, it's very hard to do. Uh so you multiply that's one state. Now multiply that by 50. Multiply you know by the police department you know 20,000 police departments in this country or something like that. Um you know they all have seizures. So it's really not easy to get a holistic view. So when we say they have 20 plus billion in crypto that's probably their best guess. You know when Trump made that edict I don't know how long ago it was you know 30 days. He wants everyone to report what their crypto holdings are. Hasn't happened. I don't know that was what about 100 days ago now. um definitely hasn't happened. But but you're you're you're helping them solve that. You're working with a lot offering them these literally like free crypto accounting software um and saying like

hey just use it the software didn't cost that much to host. um this will do it but you know and and we think some agencies will some agencies will I don't know you know it's I can only imagine the person on the other end saying you know you use use what right like you know some of these people aren't cryptonative they're looking at this like USB stick thinking what the what what do I even do with this like how do I use this what do you even mean so there's a lot of education here too which I know you guys are also quite involved with let's let's shift here I wanna I want to chat about at the other top four but beyond Bitcoin because I think everyone's going to agree with your Bitcoin thesis. The the 200k by the end of the year is a common prediction

that we're getting right now. You know, 150 to 250. There's your range. That's where that's where most people are in that range for within and and whether it's the end of the year or maybe it's Q1 like within this cycle, right? U what about Ethereum, Binance, Salana, or Ripple? Let me ask you this. If you had to if you had to pick one of those, which one do you think will outperform in the next year? H tough call. I mean, um, not Ethereum for sure. Okay. Um, Ethereum is amazing, but just it has kind of the death by a thousand cuts. So, talk about the one first. Death by a thousand cuts. You know, it's it's not the cheapest. It's not the fastest. It's, you know, it's very secure. It is probably the most secure. It's robust. Uptime is very very high. You know, obvious every now and

then Salana has a stumble or someone else has a stumble. uh ETH doesn't but it's just it's you kind of the jack of all trades master of none problem of Ethereum uh and then obviously some of the decisions to shift a lot of the value generation and capture to layer twos um I think also is done a lot to kind of keep ETH from really seeing much of a rally u because you don't have you can get all the benefits of Ethereum on polygon arbitum optimism or whatever else without actually you know having much ETH or having any ETH in most cases um you kind of rent their security now now and also then there's like the IGEN layers which were an investor in and you know bunch of you know and then the messaging layer like layer zeros which were also an investor in and you know

and and so you know I think my I guess my price predictions on ETH I think it's going to go up I still hold some mostly because I don't want to pay the taxes to sell it uh from way back um but it's you know I'm I'm not super bullish on Ethereum you know even going back to it its all-time high of whatever 4600 or whatever it was so I think I think it will probably continue to be a little bit of a lagard. Um, and again, it's it's amazing. It it Ethereum really changed the world almost as much as Bitcoin. So, it's it's kind of unfortunate. And obviously, the next last software update they did, I think will be very helpful. But um but I just feel like right now the ultra cheap layer ones you know the Salanas or you know Apto Suie that are much better way

way faster you know sub one second settlements you know things like that are just what you want in like DeFi it's what you want in NFTTS it's what you want in anything you know you can't have you know dollar plus transaction fees you can't have you know three or four minutes to know if your transaction cleared um on ongoing So, so, so anyway, so I think that one's probably my my pick to underperform the market, say it that way. You know, XRP, uh, we do work with them. They we're I'm very bullish on what they're doing, you know? I think really Okay, what are they doing? Tell me what they're doing. I I I have a tough time with XRP. I won't lie. Like, to me, they're Yeah. I mean, it's they're ghost chain to me. Like, they're they're so valued.

They have so incredible community. Insane community, but but not a lot of fundamentals. So are they are they going to go buy circle and then get the fundamentals because they bought circle which would be insane. I don't think Circle has fundamentals but no you don't think so captures all the value uh pretty most the value of what so if you buy circle I don't think you you capture a beautiful platform I mean USDC is a great product you know and I'm and thank you I'm glad circle exists I'm going to say it the wrong way I'm very you know it's great business is it worth you know 5 to 10 billion I don't know you know but but it's a great business it's worth billions you know I'll say it that way so what XRP is doing I think is pretty interesting I mean they're and what they

you. So XRP is very hard to understand if you live in the US. And when I my my life is early stage VC, you go up to 95. I launched a series of venture funds in Asia based out of Singapore in 2010. And that was what really got me into crypto because everything we invested in in Asia in that period, that wasn't very long ago, was payments. It's how do you pay for stuff? You got people with, you know, no smartphones, no bank accounts. The vast majority of people in Southeast Asia don't have street addresses. So they forget about credit scores. Uh forget about they don't have an identity, right? They don't even have they don't have they don't have an ID.

They don't have anything. Yeah. They don't have a driver's license. They don't have an ID. They don't have a street address. You know there's no mail. There's no you know it's again it's a very different world. Um so Ripple when they you know and I've you know the co-founder of way has been an adviser Ripple since 2013. Um so we're you know we've known we close with those guys forever. Uh and what they're trying to build out is all the tools you would ever need to move assets around the world. So obviously famously they're going after Swift. Uh Swift is something great to go after. Not that anything is wrong with Swift. All the challenges of Swift, you know, three-day settlement, whatever are are choices. Swift could settle transactions in a second. It's a perfectly useful piece of software. You know, the reason it doesn't is they want

the ability to unwind. You know, if there's a bad actor or a bad state or whatever. So the all the delays and all the annoyances people have with Swift are business decisions imposed by governments. um say it that way or regulatory decisions. Um, but there's a there's a So, I mean, you know, we never at all. So, when they bought Medico and a bunch of other custody and, you know, holding crypto assets, I thought that was really smart. They just bought with a hidden road. Um, they have this thing called, um, I keep forgetting the name of this. I don't know how I do this, but they have this basically on demand on demand liquidity uh ODL for um XRP, which basically means you can use XRP as a go between instantly between I think

they're up to like 170 currency pairs, which is basically everything that matters. So again, and they're really approaching the world very differently. You know, they they are a layer one. Um they're not used a whole lot as a layer one because they don't need to be, you know. So I you know I I do think Ripple is in a wonderful position to own the world of remittance of payments u of crypto transactions. You know the reason I I can't can't tell too much but you know the the reason they bought Hidden Road I think was really smart. You know they're they're going you know they're they're basically going to take everything that you think of as a banking function and put it on chain.

You know having the unique aspect of you know whatever you know $120 billion in in liquid assets. Again, they couldn't liquidate all it quickly, but they, you know, and a lot of cash. You know, they they have this, you know, kind of, you know, an interesting presence. You know, they're they're nowhere done with M&A. Um, they're slowly picking up all of the endpoints you need to live in an onchain payments world and and and an onchain finance world. Uh, so I think Brad is really smart. I think he's um doing a, you know, phenomenal job. All the all the legal stuff they went through was was kind of crazy. It was Um they're a company that literally went to the SEC multiple times, documented it

like, "Hey, this is what we're going to do. Are you okay with that?" They got no responses. They did it. They sued them. You know, it was kind of like, you know, I don't know what you there's nothing they possibly couldn't have done to be more proper with global regulators. U so they always run a really tight ship. I think they have a phenomenal team. I I get the disconnect on token value versus onchain activity. That's not their play. you know, their play is remittance. Their play is, you know, how to how, you know, to be an interchange, you know, global interchange of all assets. They're going to go huge into RWAs, their own stable coins, their own money market funds. They actually have the infrastructure to do it. I don't think anyone else has possibly Securitize comes close to their infrastructure, but

they don't. Securitize only has it in a few places and Ripple has it kind of globally. Okay. So, bullish Ripple. Bullish Ripple. Bullish. Yeah. more bullish Ripple than Binance and Salana. I mean, BNB is, you know, an amazing platform, ton of activity, obviously 60% owned by one man. Um, and, you know, the the the BNB story is is the power of Binance. So, I'm I'm bullish on BNB because it's hard not to be bullish on Binance. They have dominance. You know, we face it outside the US. There's nothing like Binance. And, you know, if you build on BNB, you get a listing on the dominant global exchange. you know, so everyone, you know, so they have, you

know, this huge pipeline of, you know, really good projects, DeFi projects, real world asset projects, you NFTs, if they ever come back, they're there. Um, everything that, you know, has this natural kind of a draw to BNB, you know, so the onchain metrics of BMV are great. You know, the decentralization of BNB is low. Um, you know, it's um, you know, it's another one of those chains that's very polarizing. you know, if you if you think Binance is going to continue to be a dominant exchange and and again, exchanges are kind of a natural monopoly, right? You know, like you you want to be where the most liquidity is that everything goes well when you when you have high liquidity. And as anyone that's ever tried to trade altcoins

learns, especially like longer tail altcoins, it's not price, it's not exchange fees, it's where can I sell the stupid thing and get some money, you know, and that's that is the power of Binance. Um, so now they're back in the business of listing more coins again after they delisted a bunch. Um, and everything else like I think they are going to continue to be the 800 pound gorilla in the space and I think BNB is going to be one of the most valuable chains in the space because of that. Okay. Uh, before we go to Salana, any price predictions on XRP or BNB? I know price predictions are like the most annoying question, but I just give give me a People love them. People love them.

Yeah, do your own research. Not financial advice, you know. Yeah, I gota give all those those. Yeah, not definitely not financial advice on any of these. I I mean XRP I think, you know, you can't say too much. I know I know some of the things that are coming. I I think it'll do fairly well, but I think I'll say this way. I don't know if anything will track Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin will probably be the in the very near term be the the highest performing asset like large asset. When you say near-term, can you give us like a rough time? Are you in the next six months? I think by I think from now until year end I think it's still a Bitcoin world because the driver is institutional adoption and no institutions are buying anything but Bitcoin right now right and you know they're starting to adopt a

little bit of ETH. I don't think that's going to work out great. Um I I don't think they'll lose money like I I think you know I think ETH will go up in you know some percentage rise with the rest of the market. Um so I don't think it's a bad investment on a dollar basis. I think but relative to other crypto assets, I don't know if it's my my choice of investment. Um, but I think XRP will perform pretty well. I mean, I think the the army is real. I know a lot of them. Um, they believe they're going to keep buying, you know, you know, if there's dips or whatever for being new new alltime highs for XRP then. Let's say that. I think so. Yeah. What is the old alltime high? Like 37. All time high is like three and a half. Did it get to

three and a half? Like Yeah. I think I think XRP could hit an alltime high. Yeah. Okay. Okay. which is not far from here to be honest. Like it's it's not that far. BNB I mean I'm bullish on BNB just because you know again you know you know it has something no other every coin would dream of having which is the power of the 800 pound richest company in crypto all the trading volume in crypto. You know they they can make their own weather. I like to use that expression with them like if they if they push it and they promote it and they, you know, get people to keep building on it, which they absolutely can and have in the past. Uh I think that I think it's a little self-fulfilling on that one as well. Uh and then Salana, you know, been on an

amazing run. I think it'll hit an all-time high again, too. Um I own some, not as much as I should have. I own a little honest, but just a little. You know, I think things are set up really well for Salana there. the the gravity around Salana is there's still this huge token unlock from the whole FTX thing which is pretty well documented but that goes on another couple years and you know people that bought those lock tokens they put Teras of the world or whatever you know they mostly bought them in structures uh like SPVS and things like that where they don't have a choice whether they hold it or sell so everything that unlocks from FTX which in today's dollars is whatever like eight you know remaining like four or five billion dollars of soul uh which is you

used to be a huge portion of the market cap. It's not that big a portion of market cap anymore and a lot of it's already come unlocked. Uh but you do have a little bit of an of a constant negative sell pressure there which I think is holding the price down materially. Like I think if that hadn't happened the price would be a lot higher. Again had FTX not done that weird deal in the past and pushed all the DeFi aspects of Soul I don't think Soul would be what it is would be either. So they you know it worked out uh long term. Um so so yeah so I think Salana again a little bit of negative pressure they've certainly captured the memecoin hysteria that's ending a little bit probably a good thing um they you know the defi salana defi is super robust um you know it's you know it's

one of the main one obviously one of the biggest ones now you know I think salana eventually may find itself in a little bit of an eth place where you kind of have that death by a thousand cuts you know it's not as cheap as sui it's not as fast. It's better for some things. It's not better for everything. Um so I you I think you'll continue to see that challenge where you know um you know there's always a faster gun kind of thing. Yeah. So do you think the race for the the dominant smart contract blockchain is still undecided?

Should we Yeah. you think somebody else it doesn't it's not I don't think we've seen the winners yet. I don't think we have the winners today. I mean I and I I say that I think Aptos is great. I think SUI is great. Um you know there's and and they've solved a lot of problems. You know they're and they're great and it's usual thing. I mean they're they're great at some things. They're not great at everything. Um you know and and obviously there's the trilmma and I have to go back and crypto lore but like man now we're getting Yeah. I haven't talked about the blockchain trillemma in a while. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's speed, security, and price, you know, pick two, you know, so you always have kind of that aspect of things. Um, you know, but there's also a bunch of new chains that are just emerging now. And

and obviously, say it this way, everyone always asks me what's going to be the winner. There's not going to be a winner. There's going to be winners. You know, we have 3,000 listed software companies. Most people can't even imagine that. like what what what 3,000 software packages out there could exist when especially when Microsoft has a hundred different packages themselves and and so does Adobe and so does you know some micros you know whatever you know Oracle and and you know all these you know and but there's 3,000 listed companies that someone thinks is valuable you know most of them are profitable you know so there's a lot more technology out there there's you know there there is you know people like is there room for even like you know 20 real layer ones and I'm like if we if we have three you know 2,000 profitable

software companies in the world. Yeah, we can have 2,000 probably layer, you know, layer ones, layer twos, DAPs, you know, whatever. Not all layer ones, but it's actually a really good analogy. That's a really good comparison that that really lines up well for sure. Oh, last question before we let you go, David. other than okay other than the assets that we've talked so far uh you whether it be a specific asset or a category I I I almost kind of want to lead you on this question because I I I know that you're bullish on DeFi and so are we and we believe very strongly in this the fundamental thesis is starting to happen right there's these incredible projects within crypto not a ton of them maybe 20 of them some of them have great

buyback programs too which is a great Great great pressure on your token. Uh but they they feel like they are about to have their moment. Would you would you agree with that? What's your what's your take on which sector within crypto might outperform other than Bitcoin outside of Bitcoin for the rest of this year? Yeah. Yeah. I mean I mean at the high level I I believe DeFi is the future of all finance. That's kind of why I'm here as a old old by crypto standards, you know, finance guy with no hair and and whatever. Great. You look great, man. You look great. Don't worry about it. Do what I can. Uh, you know, so so yeah, I mean, DeFi is the endgame of most aspects of crypto. There's others. There's, you know, track and

trace and provenance and security and, you know, there's there's, you know, medical record, you know, there's a lot of other thesis, but I think the do, you know, finance dominates the world, you know, I mean, um, so I, you know, so DeFi, I think, so so the chains that index high on DeFi are always the ones I'm most bullish on long term. And our business at Wave, you know, most of the assets we manage sit in D5 pools at any point in time. Um, so we we have a bit of I guess kind of specialization there and a bit bit of insight. So yeah, you you know, you look at like the hyperlquids and you know and Jupiter and you know a lot of these platforms that are that are you know now very scaled and seeing huge volume and you know and I think they're just going to continue

you know so we so we're very bullish on and again you know whatever chain has the best DeFi communities and the best features best product set uh you know we we like to joke we we actually kind of help build DeFi for some of our protocol clients. So you know there's like seven pillars you need you know you need dexes you need lending you need synthetic assets like algo stable coins and rap bitcoin you need you know derivatives futures you know I won't go on but you know but to get all of the features together and to have redundancy meaning multi platforms in each one you know it's a big race you know and and some tokens are succeeding really well at that race like you know like sooie's done phenomenal they've they've done it by you know leveraging their own assets

but uh you know I mean Captos is coming on pretty strong as I mentioned hyper native you know I I think there's a lot of interesting things coming out from some of the smaller coins that have been kind of lagards in that space but are large coins uh and have large treasuries and a lot of assets you know and it but you know takes a long time to build um but I think we'll you know you know I said there's a lot there's a lot coming I don't know if I want me to go into specific coins or not but uh may maybe just one or two like I like the ones that come up for me are based on what you're saying like everybody's talking about Hyperlid right now, right?

Hyperlid's absolutely flying in price, but also it's it's fundamentals are great. It has over 60% of perpex, right? That's it's incredible and it has maintained that for ever since it it it got past that point in its creation. So, so, so Hyperliquid's up there. Uh, lots of people talk about a in the Ethereum ecosystem if you believe in ETH, DeFi. Uh and then lots of people talking about Jupiter in the and and we could go further down within ETH D5 within Salana D5 but lots of people talking about Sal Jup in the Salana ecosystem. Uh maybe maybe if if you were to pick one of those three that you might think will outperform or maybe there's something else that you really like. I mean Hyperlid I love the price is very high

already. So, I mean all hyper bullish at this price point today bullish but probably not hyper bullish because it's it's it's a hell of a run. You know, it's already, you know, it's hard to it's hard to look at an asset that's up like 500x and be 500% and be like, boy, you should really pile in right now. Yeah, buy now. It's always a little difficult. Uh, and then we didn't even talk about like real world assets. I think you know some of the chains like Avalanche and and Chain Lake or whatever have done a phenomenal job kind of gathering a ton of mind share there and amazing partnerships and kind of leveraging their balance sheets.

I think that's a huge theme that is when we founded our company wave in kind of late 17 our our thesis was that security token one of our we had two thesis security tokens going to be a thing and you know institutions and protocols need you know proper treasury management. The second thesis worked great. First thesis was a train wreck. Wasted a bunch of time and money and you know but but it's here now. I mean obviously it's starting with pretty boring assets in the sense that you know T bills and money market funds. Um but you know the tokenization of the world's assets is going to be massive and the chains that succeed in hosting that are going to be absolutely massive. I mean, you know, I mean, when when you know, I do believe you're going to see, you know, tens of trillions of

assets living on chain in 10 years. Uh, so the ones that can win that battle and obviously Ripple's in that fight, Stellar, you know, I mentioned a couple others, uh, you know, Hideera. Um, you know, I think there's going to be I think those are going to over time and it probably won't be quite as parabolic in the next like six months because it's a very long cycle. Um, but I think those are going to be really powerful, you know, kind of what do you call it? you know, you know, you know, if you own those verticals, you're going to have a very, very valuable token. Great. David, thank you so much for joining us today. Truly appreciate your time. Awesome. Thank you. Take care.

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