Wall Street's move to Ethereum and why ETH lags

Transcript

Often times I think that the price follows the usage with a bit of a lag and I think that Ethereum is now where everyone's coming to shop. JP Morgan just put their deposit token on Ethereum, but ETH is still fighting to hold on to the $2,500 price level. Can ETH break out here? Can all of crypto break out here? And what do investors need to know about all of this? Hello and welcome to Milkroad Crypto, the show that knows that our guest just got a new job, so this might be our last chance to get price predictions out of him. And it might already be too late for that. But we're going to try anyway. I'm your host, John Gillan. Today is Wednesday, October 21st, and David Dwong is back with us. David was the global head of research at Coinbase Institutional for a long time. He was just named the head of

US at Ethereum institutional. He's one of the best macro minds in crypto, a longtime friend of Milk Road. So, if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe, share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. And as a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our partners at Alumni Ventures, giving accredited investors access to private market investment opportunities alongside leading VC firms. So keep an eye out for more information on them later in the episode. But for now, welcome back to Milro Crypto. David, how are you, sir? >> Hey, thanks John. It's good to be back. Uh I'm doing pretty well, thanks. >> Well, there is some big news this week.

I I wanted to start with your new role. You are the head of US at Ethereum Institutional. uh for people who haven't heard of it, what is Ethereum institutional and tell us about how you got into this new role? >> Yeah, so I've literally been in the job for less than three days as we're recording this uh institution. Yeah. >> So, this is the first official interview I've given uh in that role. But yeah, so Ethereum institutional for many people who may not know, it was actually launched in July of this year. So, it is a fairly young organization. Uh it's led by David Walsh, Mario Smith, Matthew Dawson. Uh and it's backed by some of the big names on Ethereum that you probably have heard of. Bit mine, Sharplink, Joe Luben's an investor in this. Uh plus dozens of other

contributors. Uh but it is a nonprofit. The mission is to be the credible neutral front door for financial institutions, banks, asset managers, anyone who's basically evaluating Ethereum to tokenize something like funds, stable coins, and basically transform the onchain financial plumbing that they have here. So my role uh I'm basically moving away from the research side of things less on the like trying to figure out what the price predictions are going to be on some of the stuff and more you know I'm going to be securing the institutional adoption of Ethereum i.e. I'm going to meet institutions where they are across a wide range of use cases.

>> Okay. Well this is very exciting. I did one of the first interviews with the the three founders uh that you mentioned of Ethereum Institutional. So if anybody missed that episode definitely go back and watch it. There's a lot of great alpha there. Um, I'm really excited about this because this basically means I'm now talking to one of the most important Ethereum uh salesmen or advocates in in the United States. So, that's really cool. Um, but talk to me about the strategy here for Ethereum institutional because it seems like we are seeing institutions moving towards Ethereum, but they're going slowly. What do you make of that process and what's your assessment of the situation there?

What needs to happen to sort of unlock more of that institutional progress towards Ethereum? Yeah, I think the first challenge was that for a very long time a lot of institutions knew that they could go to maybe the theorem foundation but theorem foundation isn't really designed or equipped to actually speak to institutional clients. That's not what they do. uh and I think that you know they had narrowed the stewarding of the core protocol towards all right what are we going to do and you know there's the spin-offs into ETH labs and other things as well to kind of focus on the technical side of these things but really institutions needed a dedicated counterpart that speaks their language and this isn't the most exciting stuff I'll be honest because I worked in

banking for such a long time so many of these things are like compliance custody how do you settle things what are the timelines for this stuff um which is isn't really the these are the things that the Foundation was really uh kind of like trying to handle. So I think that now they've decided listen we're going to have Ethereum institutional to deal with this in a neutral way. There's you know no single company or layer 2 or any vendor to actually push uh the protocol team. that they will build the engine, but we are the one handling the banks, handling the keys, talking them through the owner's manual. And I think that this is really what it comes down to. Like so many of the these, you know, banks and asset managers are coming to

us and they're all asking fairly similar questions. They're like, "Hey, we are worried about privacy. Oh, we're worried about our compliance controls. What do we do about it?" And I think many of them actually, for better or worse, probably are not as familiar with Ethereum. You'd be surprised by that because you know if you're a crypton native you're like well it's it's Ethereum how are you not familiar with Ethereum but some of them are coming from a place where they're like listen we're just kind of getting into this idea of like public networks maybe we were kind of obsessed with the idea of just private networks for the longest time realize that's untenable. So now it's really kind of coming to them and getting these questions out of the way of like well what does what does settlement finality look like? Is that a

problem for us and we need to unwind a trade? uh what do we need to worry about from the regulatory perspective and we're just kind of walking through all that. This pullback on Bitcoin is scaring a lot of people and I am not one of them. So if you want to see what I'm not selling and why, what's on my watch list and when I'm going to be deploying more capital into these markets, you can join Milk Road Pro today. It's just a dollar. The link is in the description. I answer questions day and night in Discord. I'll see you there. Gotcha. Okay, this is really helpful. I think as a case study it would be helpful to talk about JP Morgan because they just brought their tokenized deposit coin JPMCoin onto Ethereum's mainet Ethereum L1. It had already been live on base and it's been live on Kexus which is JP

Morgan's internal um permissioned chain for a long time but talk to me about this. How significant is this move from JP Morgan here? And is this the kind of you know deal and adoption you're going to be targeting in your new role? Yeah, I think it's a pretty big deal. And you know, you're right. Uh the JP Morgan deposit token was launched on base I think in November of last year. Uh and I remember when you know I wasn't part of that deal when I was still with Coinbase, but definitely it was something that we were were pushing for for a while on base. And if you're looking at the numbers themselves, they are already handling something like $7 billion a day on its private network. So in terms of size itself represents a pretty you know large chunk uh of what

they they could be doing um and I think that the transition away from just doing base and doing this on Ethereum mainet you know what it really kind of shows it's a very big signal because this is America's or one of America's largest banks and they are choosing the main public chain not just a private network uh to actually launch this deposit token and this is a good example for all the other banks out there who are potentially going to compete in the space. These are the deals that you tend to chase. These are big balance sheet institutions that are moving real money, real flows on chain. So I would say that when you have like one of the biggest banks in the US putting its own dollars on public Ethereum, this shows you that

you know that debate that people would have about is this safe for institutions, that debate's over. like this is you know sure you know like uh a permission way to do this and I think the volumes are still I think on the smaller side but it's certainly growing but you know that you know JP Morgan is in the space we can easily expand this to other places as well. >> I want to talk about some of those other places too. Uh there's also been recent news that Deutsche Bank is moving towards um crypto custody solutions for for their their uh institutional clients. Um Charles Schwab announced that they are bringing Bitcoin and Ethereum trading to their 40 million users. Um it's already live now. Charles Schwab has already launched this. Um

what are the institutions that you're targeting for adoption? Is it banks? Is it brokerages? Is it hedge funds? Is it all of them? Um and what does that look like as as more and more of these titans of finance start to come to and converge on Ethereum? >> I wish I could say all of them. Uh and the reality is if you're coming to Ethereum institutional like we will happily chat with you about this but we are a small team. We're growing very quickly. Uh probably we're going to be dealing with the banks and the asset managers in the first uh wave of this as we're trying to prioritize and grow these kinds of things. I think one of the biggest points of friction for me still is that you know like I think there have been a lot of launches. So on the supply side of things, we are

hearing every day about some new tokenized security or money market fund kind of coming out. I also really want to grow the demand side of this equation. I want these banks, I want these ass managers to be promoting it. So you see that people like the retail or institutional clients are actually actively using this stuff because this is how the pipes become useful. This is how Ethereum becomes useful. I mean, I think I've thought for the longest time uh that the financial plumbings of the traditional world are, you know, it's it's a little creaky. It needs to be updated. We're finally at a point where these institutions have bought into that idea and they said, "Yeah, you're right.

Like, we need to change. We need to update this kind of stuff." I want them to actually not just say it, but actually do it. I want them to get people to the door and use all these tokenized assets and realize that if you employ them as collateral inside of loans or inside derivative transactions, it really makes things a lot more efficient and honestly, it's going to save a ton of money in the long term. >> I'm getting bullish the longer we talk about this. Okay, I want to ask about um something else that's changed in the landscape here, which is the SEC giving the green light around this innovation exemption and it looks like they're just trying to encourage um the exploration of tokenized products, tokenized equities, other things. How does that change the potential design space for products and services that can be built

on Ethereum and how do you go about communicating about that with institutional clients that you're talking to? Yeah, I I really love this point uh because I think this was this happened or the announcement the order like happened in midepptember and it runs to 2031 but very few people I think understand the details because the trading apps must sit on a public permissionless blockchain and it will have permission access for traders but basically we're talking about Ethereum's home turf like this kind of the caps keep it small at first I believe that you know 75 large company stocks only at like a very small number. I'm I'm hopefully not making this up, but 0.25% of daily volume. I think uh there's 250 others at 2.5%.

So, you know, you have large firms like Robin Hood, like their crypto head has already said that volume is going to hit its limits because of that. But I think retail trading that you're going to see on layer twos due to, you know, their speed, due to their cost. Um I think a lot of that big settlement collateral is still going to happen on the main chain. So, it's going to be happening not just on Ethereum mainet, but it's going to happen on the ecosystem incorporating those L2s. In my mind, I think ETH still wins either way. Uh, because those layer twos of course will eventually settle back onto Ethereum and they're going to use ETH to do it. Uh, but, you know, whether the stock trades on a side street or on the main highway, i.e. the L1, I think it's still basically driving

through the Ethereum road map. I think that's what's key for me. >> Okay. I want to talk about a little bit of the Ethereum road map here too as well because now that you've joined Ethereum institutional. Um you're now part of this little constellation of entities that are sort of shephering the growth of the Ethereum ecosystem. There's the Ethereum Foundation which you've referenced. There's ETH Labs. There's the digital asset treasury companies. Talk to me a little bit about what the collaboration with those other players is going to be like as the Ethereum ecosystem continues to grow and and how you see that playing out. >> Yeah, it's a great question. Uh so each of those organizations you've kind of mentioned will have its own part to play in all of this. uh I've already kind of told you about Ethereum institutional uh how we are basically the front door for

these financial institutions but also you'll have like ETH labs who's going to be dealing really with the technology side of things and I think this of course is key in a place where you know we're still thinking about hey what are the risks coming from quantum computing for example or for some of the issues that a lot of the institutions come back with which is privacy like you know how does zero knowledge proofs kind of work with gas fees for example, or is it better to have fully homorphic encryption? I think those are the questions that are going to be answered over the next few years. Um, and so of course that technology still remains like ever present, ever significant. Uh, we've got two upgrades kind of coming in, which is of course where the

Ethereum foundation is kind of involved. So, I would say that all these things like they're not they, you know, they seem like separate parts, but they all work together. David, I'm I wasn't planning on making this all an Ethereum episode, but I'm glad it worked out that way because this has been a lot of fun. I do want to ask though about ETH, the asset, because in all of this, I it's all very exciting. I' I've been really impressed and like encouraged by the the energy and investment and innovation that's happening in Ethereum this year. Um the Ethereum price has been struggling around $2,500 for many, many years now at this point. um talk to me about how you situate ETH the asset in these conversations and just how all of this drives value to ETH as an asset.

>> Yeah, you know, ETH is a funny one, right? Because I think when Ethereum ETH uh was the token itself was first traded, it was treated as future tech and most of that most tech is kind of valued on long duration terms. uh that is like you basically price in the growth and that's kind of what you're capturing not necessarily revenue and I think that as a result like it disappointed some people when we saw that ETH started facing competition from Salana because memecoin activity really kind of migrated there or other L1s that started to compete and I think as a result you see that activity is actually growing faster than some of the fees or some of the value that you've seen ETH

capture actually involve So take L2s, you know, you've had cheaper L2s, some that are less than a penny for like per second, you know, like a lot of that means less value captured on the main chain per transaction. And often times when we're talking about the market, they want this clear line from usage to ETH demand. Uh now I think that that has been mitigated to some extent because ETH is of course still the collateral and the gas for the Ethereum economy. you know, you have these treasury companies like Bitmine, uh, who are, you know, still stacking up a lot of the ETH and they're, you know, staking that, locking up like a lot of that supply, but, you know, often times I think that the price follows the usage

with a bit of a lag. And I think that Ethereum is now where everyone's coming to shop. I think that now like a lot more institutions realize hey you know what if we're going to have a credibly neutral kind of place where we are transacting this stuff maybe Ethereum is the place to kind of go with this uh I think eventually you will see that kind of make its way into the fundamentals but that's kind of how things trade I mean that's how markets are in the first place I would say especially in crypto short-term transactions probably don't involve the fundamentals as much that's this is why a lot of people rely on systematic trading strategies to kind of run their short-term books. But if we're talking about the longerterm plays,

that's where usage comes in. That's where fundamentals really makes its place. That makes a lot of sense and that longer view uh I think is is important to take on all of this. Um I I want to ask you about the Ethereum BTC ratio because this summer Ethereum showed a lot of strength in performance uh relative to BTC in the last few weeks. It's kind of softened a bit on that. Some people are just calling it a retest. But do you think that there's a chance that Ethereum begins to lead the crypto markets here and starts begins to take that baton and gain ground on Bitcoin or or do you think that Bitcoin remains the leader in the industry overall uh as Ethereum continues to grow?

>> It's an interesting question because yeah, you're right. Like I didn't haven't thought about it too much, but yeah, it's true. It ETH outperformed almost every major asset in Q3. Uh but you know, Bitcoin's here in the market still high. I think it's it's still around like 60%. So you you know right now it's it's a hard kind of gauge because you know we just saw some outflows, but this was after like a three over $3 billion Q3 inflow into the ETH ETFs. So you know, you would expect that after such a large inflow and after such, you know, decent gains, decent performance, there's going to be some profit taking. By the way, I think that's happened for Bitcoin as well.

But, you know, I would say it's it's really hard to, you know, for the crypto markets large to perform without Bitcoin. I I still think that Bitcoin tends to be the precondition needed for, you know, almost any other kind of token to actually do well. But right now, we're in this period where people are fear like rate hikes. People a little bit worried about inflation. Um, I consider this a period of consolidation. I don't think that people are, you know, trying to abandon crypto again. You know, it's it's just that like almost every asset, particularly in the AI stocks kind of world. Um, and again, a lot of this has happened after one of

the best quarters of the year. I think that this is kind of why crypto is kind of running into some headwinds, but if anything, it shows that it's very resilient. The fact that it's kind of hitting some of these kind of macro issues. And I think I did say it on this show like once before like I don't think that these things have to do with like Bitcoin is responding to uh to ddollarization or people's fiscal fears. I would say that on its own terms I expected crypto to actually rally and that the store would come expost and that's what's happening right now. I think the story that the the performance now is kind of catching up to the narrative.

>> Okay. Okay. This is really helpful. I do want to pivot and talk a little bit about Bitcoin and macro, which is originally what I had planned to talk about before you got this awesome new job in Ethereum. Um, but let's talk about Bitcoin because a lot of people have been surprised by the relative strength that Bitcoin and crypto overall have exhibited right now, especially through this big recent pullback we've seen in, you know, AI stocks and and equities generally. Um, at the time of trading of recording, um, Bitcoin I think is almost at $85,000, which is, you know, again, showing some strength and resilience. What do you make of that? Do you think that this is you know all well just yeah what do you make of Bitcoin strength here relative to the rest of the markets?

>> Yeah I think that there was some profit taking uh which is why we saw that initial dip and you know some of that has been bought back uh leverage was kind of getting a haircut but again people are starting to kind of enter back into here. Some of this is related to the liquidity in the broader kind of risk space. Uh which is really what has been happening on the equity side of things. I mean you can kind of look at the macro factors and say like wow maybe this is a response to people pricing in greater hikes coming from the Fed. I think you know now we're pricing in additional three hikes coming from the Federal Reserve. But honestly, I feel like if anything, it's more again consolidation uh more so than people

actually wanting to cut risk outright. Or maybe they are to some like what I mean by that is people aren't basically taking out risk like wholesale. If you were like 90% in risk, maybe you're down to 80%. Some of that is political, i.e. what's going on with the US midterms coming up. Some of that is the fact that, you know, because the midterms are there, Iran is purposely trying to keep prices in oil expensive. I I think that these are some of the challenges you're seeing in the like volume and liquidity space large for pretty much most assets.

Um, but yeah, you know, like I'm pretty confident about like the fact that Bitcoin can hold on here because if it can remain resilient in the face of all that, it really does show me that it's actually operating with on its own terms, it's not necessarily being heavily impacted or negatively being impacted by what's going on with equities and other things. So, I'm still pretty confident. You know, I think that like I had a forecast that we could see Bitcoin by 100,000 by year end. I'm still going to hold on to that view. I mean I I think the probability seems lower now because of what has happened.

Uh but the fact that you're at we're back at 85 considering everything considering you know inflation at 3.7% you know like my view was that growth is still very healthy in the US and the last number we got definitely proved that. I think that it still shows me that this is going to be the more important part of what drives the story. In crypto, you can get into a project long before it lists on Coinbase. In tech, the early window mostly belongs to VCs, and companies now stay private for a decade or more. Alumni Ventures, a partner of the Milk Road Show, gives accredited investors a way in. Time and CB Insights both rank them as a top 20 US venture firm. You can sign up for free to see the weekly deal flow or write one check into their foundation fund for about 25 private deals. Venture

is high risk and long-term though, so read the details first. Go to av.vc/milkroad. Okay, let's talk a little bit more about this. So, we had this huge short squeeze in August. Since then, Bitcoin has been ranging and it's been a wide range of like, you know, the mid70s all the way up to the mid 80s. 87K, I think, has presented resistance a few times, but it's held on to that range despite all these macro headwinds. And so, like you're saying, it's it's shown strength here. What do you think needs to happen to push us through 87K and really break out to the upside? or is is there specific catalysts that you're watching for or do you think we just need to wait until some of these macro headwinds clear and and the market will continue?

What's your outlook on that? >> Yeah, I think the macro headwinds, particularly the US elections, really need to clear before we see another push higher. Um, and I'm not saying that we don't have some macro things that we should be paying attention to. Uh, you know, like I've been a disinflationary advocate for quite some time. Uh, and to some extent the oil shock that we've been getting from the Iran conflict, I did get it wrong because I thought I didn't see the second wave kind of coming and pushing inflation even higher. And the second order effects have been a little bit hotter than expected. But what is important to me is that if I'm looking at inflation expectations, priced in to break even inflation like uh bonds, you still see that for the most part those are

relatively well-contained. So, I did get the Fed wrong because initially I thought that we wouldn't see a hike in 2026 or at most if I saw a hike it would be an inflation hike. I still think that's the case. Uh but of course the market has been pricing against that. They've been pricing this idea that hey maybe like we could get even more hikes coming out of this. Again, compared to what I saw in 2022, 2023, it's not as big a obstacle for the market. Uh but certainly it's one that we need to watch to see if could this become a bigger headwind for us. So I would say that if we can get through November whatever whatever it is November 4th then I think

that we could see a much better kind of year end for Bitcoin. And again a lot of this has to do with the fact that the market structure for Bitcoin was so beaten down after the events of 1010. It's taken a while for that to be rebuilt. We finally gotten to that point. Uh, and now I think the longerterm narrative is starting to catch up. So now people are also thinking, hey, we see what's going on in France. We see what's going on in other places. Uh, we're more worried about sovereign debt. What about the risk of fiscal dominance? I think these are questions that are still longer term. I don't necessarily think that they're going to be priced in the next one, 2, 3 months, for example. These, for me, are concerns that we deal with in years. So

like I wouldn't be worried about a sovereign default uh from a developed country for another like three to five years. Um which is still very short considering the fact that we thought once upon time we never thought that was possible. Like I I came from the emerging markets world and emerging markets debt like this I I don't want to say common is common place but it happens. But now we're starting to think could this happen with you know somewhere in Europe somewhere in the US. So, I think that continues to add more value to the idea of holding crypto at large, uh, Bitcoin in particular.

>> Okay. So, after the midterms, you're anticipating some strength and and a rally to happen sometime before the end of the year. But between now and then, we have the midterm elections. Before that, we have another Federal Reserve FOMC meeting. Um, and you know, I was in the same boat as you. I wasn't expecting a hike. We got one. Obviously, I was hoping the war would cool down. It it definitely didn't. Um, how do you think Bitcoin navigates the next couple of weeks while there's these major macro uncertain events still hanging over us like the FOMC and the midterms? Do you think we're going to just like stay pancake and flat? Do you think we'll see like increased volatility up or down?

Like what are you expecting the market reaction to be to to these major events that are coming up here? >> Yeah, it's very clear that the Fed has a bias not to hike. I think that they would rather remain on pause and see how things settle down, but they don't want to spook the markets. And I think that's actually why we got that first hike. I think we got that first hike in part because we saw the long end of the yield curve, the US Treasury curve I should say, starting to kind of pick up. And granted, you know, on a structural basis, it's still below nominal growth. And we've been below nominal growth since 2012. So it's not something new, but that represents the upper kind of like threshold for where those bond yields could actually go. And people are

kind of staring it down and saying like listen you know we're not happy with what Besson's been doing in terms of intervening in this in the long end of the curve like what happens when the Treasury wants to you know use Fetty Franny Freddy or Fanny bonds to kind of inter interact with that as well and some people saw that more as a political move rather than one that was necessary. Uh so I do think that the bond the bond vigilantes are at play now uh in the US Treasury market. You know it's it's it comes in off and on but I would say that uh from the Fed's perspective they needed to react to that. They needed to kind of like reestablish the credibility

on this side. Having done so I don't necessarily see that they need to make this a series of hikes. We're not in that kind of place. I mean like there's only so much they can contain as far as oil prices. That's really, you know, that's really not their mandate. Like their mandate is to deal with core inflation or at least their their stated view is often that they what they care about is the core side of things. And they really have little they can control with monetary policy on oil prices. But as I said, there are second order effects that have been kind of playing into this. Diesel prices play into manufacturing, for example, that goes into goods prices. Um but you know like if you look at what's also happening

like the US economy is doing fairly well productivity is growing jobs are actually still fairly strong the numbers are are fairly decent and I think that this is where kind of come to play of like well if this is kind of what we're getting and they can contain inflation expectations which as I said are for the most part contained then I think that they can kind of slow roll this. I'm not saying that there won't be any hikes like but you know like it's going to be like one maybe wait see how it goes maybe they'll do another one if inflation starts to come down in the numbers and you start to see the US and Iran come to some sort of agreement post midterm elections maybe that's also going to feed to it but why jump the gun

why do that be you know why react before that so I think that this they're kind of waiting to see all the places uh come into play first and of course such negotiations aren't things that you can negotiate in a few days. It'll probably be a few weeks and they want to give it time. >> Gotcha. Okay. So, they're trying to b their time and not frontr run the markets or spook the markets and just kind of like keep their eye on the ball but not but not get ahead of people. Um David, I want to ask you some questions about the the early bull market that we are in or first of all, do you think we are in an early bull market and what does that mean going forward? Do you think we're going to continue to see these sort of like fouryear cycles

continue to play out in Bitcoin? Do you think that's changed? And uh what would you tell investors who are kind of a little bit nervous about crypto and like wondering if this is a fake out still and we might see new lows or do you think we have started a new crypto bull market? >> Yeah, I hate these labels. I got I got to tell you, I do think that it's very helpful the fact that a lot of people haven't bought into the idea that, you know, things are rallying and that it's sustainable. Uh, and you know, like I I think crypto players in particular are so quick to kind of throw in the towel suddenly when they're like, "Oh no, like we're not seeing 4x anymore. Like I'm kind of done." It's like, "Oh, guys, like markets don't just go one way. This is kind of the nature of markets." Um,

but like I said, the fact that there's a lot more debate around this, the fact that, you know, on the fear greed index, we're not like, you know, straight on one side or the other. I think if anything that's very helpful to markets at the moment. Uh so that actually feeds into my more bullish expectations about what we're getting here. But I can't deny that AI is kind of facing some some trouble right now. Uh we still have some IPOs on the way and and some people concerned about what that means for liquidity and whether that's going to be like going to take it away from other assets. I don't by the way I don't think that's going to be the case and I think crypto will weather that completely fine. Um but you know like these are still going to be challenges because the

broader risk setup I think has has made it more difficult. Like even though some of the stocks uh are still doing fairly well in the AI side of it, many are not anymore. Uh the PE ratios for those are kind of dropping. So I would say that we still kind of like need to reckon with this. And in the midst of all that too, you know, like the midterms are still fairly important. Uh, you know, like what's going to happen because this is still has large implications for what's going to happen for the the Clarity Act and crypto and other things. Um, I I think that for the most part this is going to remain. I probably have more of a visibility of around six months because that's my timeline. Uh, I I think that we'll probably do well uh in

in those six months. But yeah, you know, like it's going to be year end and you we'll see what happens with the rest of the risk market. >> Gotcha. Okay. Very circumspect take as always. Uh David, I want to ask your thoughts on something that got a lot of attention on Twitter recently, which was um Satrini's piece called Breaking the Wall about and it's talking about the wall between tradi and and Wall Street and crypto coming down and falling apart. And in this like 80page um research report he wrote, he names a pretty large basket of about 15 different altcoins that he thinks is going to or they think are going to benefit a lot from from this wall coming down. In your new role, you're kind of supervising the demolition of this wall.

I just wanted to get your reaction to this idea and how you see this playing out uh and and who benefits the most from from this wall between Wall Street and crypto finally beginning to come down. Yeah, I think that now that you see that happening and this has been going on inside of crypto for the better part of a year to two years like fundamentals are now featuring a lot more importantly in how these tokens are are you know featured. Um and this is why there's been only a select name uh select altcoin names I should say that have kind of benefited some of them you know maybe some of them like less so but you know like hype of course has done well because it's had the

purpose market behind it and it's grown very strongly and that's why it's been so resilient even over the last few months when I would say the broader crypto space hasn't done quite as well uh over the past year or so. So, I would say that we're kind of catching up to that right now. And with Trafi's involvement, I think that they're going to actually play a bigger part in completing that transition. So, it's no longer going to be the wild west. Uh, some people are going to begrudge that. I don't think they should. And, you know, like this is why you've seen things like unis swap opening the fee switch, uh, which I think they did last December, for example. like a lot of a lot of protocols are now saying like we need to kind of factor that in. How do

we provide value to the token holders? And I think that's a good thing. >> I think it's a good thing too. David Dwong, head of US at Ethereum Institutional, thank you so much for being on Milk Crypto. We've been interviewing you really consistently for a long time and now you're going to be one of my even more favorite guests because you're such a big deal in the ETH ecosystem now. Um, but where can we send people to find more of you and your work about uh Ethereum institutional uh online? >> Yep. Uh, so you can probably find me on X and my handle is right below. It's Dave Dwong D- A V D O N G all one word. Uh, I'm also available on LinkedIn and yeah, if you are building in the Ethereum space and you're an institution, please ping me. I'd love to

talk to you. >> Well, thank you so much for being here. I'm really looking forward to catching up and and seeing how all this plays out from here. But I'm really excited about the new role and thanks for being on Milkro Crypto. >> My pleasure. Thanks. >> And thank you all for joining us. I hope you all learned something today. So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of Milkro Crypto. Thanks for being here, everyone. Bye. Thanks for listening to Milk Road. If you enjoyed the show, make sure you like and subscribe. And if you're struggling to find winners in the market, that's exactly what Milkro Pro is built for. Our analysts have called some of the biggest winners early and Pro lets you see what they're buying next, every trade they make, and the

research behind every position. Check out Milk Road Pro at the link below. Everything you hear on Milk Road is forformational purposes only. These are our personal opinions, not financial advice, and we may own some of the investments we talk about. Always do your own research and make the decisions that are right for you. See you next time.