All Episodes

December 5, 2025 27 mins
Matt Hougan, CIO at Bitwise Asset Management, joined me to discuss the launch of their XRP, Solana, and Dogecoin Spot ETFs.
Topics: 
- XRP, Solana Staking, and Dogecoin ETFs 
- Is the crypto bull market over? 
- Outlook for crypto in 2026 
- DATS vs ETFs 
Brought to you by
🏠 Propy (PRO) is a blockchain-based real estate marketplace and decentralized title registry that leverages smart contracts to facilitate property transactions globally https://propy.com/home/ & https://propy.com/home/ownyourtomorrow/ 

💡Get the (Re)Thinking Crypto Book on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2525DYX 
🖥️ Learn Crypto with Expert Commentary - http://MyCryptoCourse.com 
Sponsors:
🌟Uphold - Signup with Uphold. https://uphold.sjv.io/gbED4X Terms Apply. Cryptoassets are highly volatile. Your capital is at risk. 
🔐 Safely Store your Crypto with Trezor Hardware Wallets - https://affil.trezor.io/SHlz 
✅ VeChain is a versatile enterprise-grade L1 smart contract platform https://www.vechain.org/ 
🏦 Learn about iTrustCapital’s powerful Premium Custody Account (PCA) and tax-advantaged Crypto IRA platforms https://www.itrustcapital.com/go/thinkingcrypto 
🖥️ Sign up with Santiment to get quality crypto metrics - https://santiment.net/?fpr=thinkingcrypto Get 25% discount with code THINKINGCRYPTO
📰 Sign up for the Free Thinking Crypto Weekly Newsletter https://thinkingcrypto.substack.com/ 
✅ Become a Channel Member - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjpkwsuHgYx9fBE0ojsJ_-w/join
🔥 Buy Merch & support the Podcast https://my-store-574b5b.creator-spring.com/ 
🧙‍♂️Merlin - http://tinyurl.com/MerlinTCYouTube “I am a Merlin partner and get compensated for purchases made through links in this content"this content" 

Follow on social media:
➡️ X(Twitter) - https://twitter.com/ThinkingCrypto1 
➡️ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thinkingcrypto/
➡️ LinkedIn - http://linkedin.com/company/thinking-crypto 
➡️ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thinkingcrypto/
➡️ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thinkingcrypto5 
➡️ Threads - https://www.threads.net/@thinkingcrypto 
➡️ Website - https://www.ThinkingCrypto.com/

🔊 Listen to content on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinking-crypto-news-interviews/id1458945676 
🔊 Listen to content on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/221AV5A65v7uYEsuMviVKl

💼Business Inquiries💼
hellothinkingcrypto@gmail.com 

⏰ Time Stamps ⏰
00:00 Intro 
02:05 Launching new ETFs
03:34 XRP ETF ticker
04:21 Solana staking BSOL etf
05:03 SEC genetic listing standards
06:11 Index ETFs
11:22 TradFi and Crypto
13:09 TradFi vs Retail sentiment
14:56 Macro impact on Crypto
18:40 DATS vs ETFs
21:10 DAT consolidation
22:22 Crypto M&A outlook
================================================= 
#XRP #Solana #Dogecoin #Crypto #CryptoNews #Cryptocurrency #Bitcoin #BTC #BitcoinNews #ETF #News #Ripple #XRPNews #RippleXRP #Ethereum #EthereumNews #ETH #money #investing #trading #Altcoin #Altcoins #NFTs #Metaverse #Podcast #ThinkingCrypto ================================================= 
The Thinking Crypto Podcast is your home for the best Crypto News and Interviews - crypto, cryptocurrency, crypto news, bitcoin, bitcoin news, xrp, xrp news, ripple, ripple news, ripple xrp, ethereum, ethereum news, cardano, ada, solana, altcoins, defi, news, interviews, podcast, metaverse, nft, altcoin daily, cryptosrus, coin bureau, altcoin news, bitcoin today, markets, investing ================================================= 
Disclaimer - The Thinking Crypto podcast and Tony Edward are not financial or investment experts. You should do your own research on each cryptocurrency and make your own conclusions and decisions for investment. Invest at your own risk, only invest what you are willing to lose. This channel and its videos are just for educational purposes and NOT investment or financial advice. Note that links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting my channel so I can continue to provide you with free content each week!

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thinking-crypto-news-interviews--3464539/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Almost everyone bought their first crypto asset on a centralized
exchange and it's only after they became acquainted with it
that they then moved to self custom to operating in
the DeFi space. The market has been suppressed so long
from a regulatory perspective that anything that has had that
lid come off, whether it's icos, IPOs M and a,
et cetera, You're going to get more than normal activity

(00:23):
in the next year.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
As crypto mature is and it's become more affected by
the macro it's probably going to break some of these
four year cycles and things we've known, you know, legacy mindsets, right,
and it's going to act a bit different.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
This episode is brought to you by Propy, which is
leading to charge in putting real estate on chain. Propy
is a game changer. You can buy and sell real
estate with cryptocurrencies using the Property platform, which is powered
by a blockchain of course, and they have a native
token call pro And I've been in investor in the
Propy token since twenty eighteen. So Propy is a licensed

(01:04):
Web three pioneer operating since twenty seventeen. They have facilitated
over four billion dollars in transactions. They're putting titles and
deeds on chain. They use Coinbase for their crypto escro service,
so this is a great platform. And once again they
are ahead of the curve when it comes to putting
real estate on chain. And they just launch a great
campaign where you can earn some of the Propy tokens

(01:26):
and it's simply by doing tasks such as sharing their
vision video, signing up and inviting a friend, and much
more so. If you'd like to learn more about Propy,
visit the link in the description. Hey, folks, welcome into
the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward, and
joining me is Matt Hogan, who is the chief investment
officer at Bitwise Asset Management.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Matt, great to see you, Tony. It's so great to
be here. Good to see you, yeah, Matt.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Exciting times for bit Wise over the past well, actually
we're recording on Wednesday, November twenty six, the dose Cooin
ETF is live. But over the past couple of weeks
we've seen the SRP and the b Soul Solana Sneaking ETF,
so exciting times. Tell us a bit about these products
and the launches that we've seen so far.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, we're really thrilled to be in the moment that
we're in. We're finally working with regulators. We're able to
launch ETPs on the best crypto assets in the world.
We're sort of moving, you know, down the list from
largest to smallest. It's not a direct step, because there's
some that can move faster than others. But of course,
you know, we all started with Bitcoin and ether and

(02:28):
those came out in twenty twenty four and now, yeah,
we've been really excited to launch the first physical Salona
staking ETP stakes one hundred percent of its assets, which
is pretty exciting. And then follow that up with our
XRP ETF love the pill in the background, good work
with the great ticker XRP. Really excited about that. And

(02:49):
then of course dosecoin, you know, a community led initiative
with enormous staying power, a fair public launch. Really excited
to get that out into the market as well. There
are additional ones coming, but you know, we're starting to
work through the biggies and the most exciting thing to
me has been the response has been absolutely amazing. I
think the Salona ETF has had inflows every day since

(03:12):
it launched, which was before Halloween. That's an incredible stretch
for an ETF. The XRP ETF has had strong inflows
as well, and the Dough ETF is off to a
good trading first day. We won't know if they're inflows
until the end of today, so three more hours to go,
we'll see, But so far the response has been really strong. Man.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Everybody wants to know, how did you get the XRP
ticker symbol? That's primary real estate right there.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
All credit goes to Hunter Horseley. You know a few
our CEO a bit wise a few years ago. You
have to reserve these tickers, So you have to petition
the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAC that you want
to reserve these tickers that you're planning to launch an
ETF related to that ticker, and then you have to
prove that you're planning to do that. You have to

(03:58):
show momentum in that direct action. And we look back
in our archive it was a few years ago Hunter
told Teddy that we wanted to reserve this because we
knew we were marching in the direction of XRP, so
really excited to have that ticker, you know, The ticker
is not everything, but it's an important thing, and obviously
that is the iconic ticker, so it was great to
have that for launch.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Oh absolutely, let's talk about the B soul because I'm
fascinated by the staking component. I think that's huge. A
lot of people are looking to have the yield, the
passive rewards earned as they hold the asset. So will
the rewards be continually reinvested or paid out in different ways?

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, that's exactly right. They'll be continually reinvested over time.
So over time you would expect this ETF to outperform
the direct price of Solana, right because the Solona price
doesn't include those rewards. It's targeting. You know, there's something
like a seven percent yield available in Solana at this moment,
so over time, that's the kind of internalized reward you

(04:59):
would back to build into the CTF.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
You know, as far as the generic listing standards from
the SEC has that made it easy for you to
launch these products.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
It's definitely made it a lot easier and will in
particular make it easier going forward. So it made it
It created a set of assets for people who aren't
aware before the SEC put in place these generic listing
standards or gls. You had to petition each asset and
get special permission to do that. They had to create

(05:29):
what's called a rule exemption that would allow you to launch.
So you had to prove so many things about each
particular asset. It was a long drawn out process. A
lot of lawyers made a lot of money. The beauty
of generic listing standards is as long as you fit
a certain criteria, which is basically, is there a derivatives
contact trading on a regulated futures exchange or does it

(05:50):
meet a few other qualifications, then you can proceed to
launch in an ETF format. It's opened the doorway to
get through the first Like you know, a dozen or
so LARGESTYPTO assets. Not everyone, there's some that don't meet
the criteria, but many do, and you're gonna see bitwise
and others roll those out over time because now we can.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
And then I imagine over time you're also going to
have more index or basket ETF. So let's say all
staking proof of steak blockchains that earned these eels like Ethereum,
Solon and others, and then maybe other categories like mean
coins or whatever it.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
May be that's exactly right. I actually think that's going
to be slowly, not tomorrow, but over time will become
the biggest category of these ETFs. You know, right now,
when you launch a Solana staking ETF, the first people
who buy it are people who know what Solana is.
They may have an opinion about Solana versus Ethereum versus
other blockchains. They may have been following the community for

(06:46):
a while. They're certainly familiar with tokenization and stable coins
and the drivers of Solana. Maybe they even know it's
technical roadmap. But over the next five years, you have
to think that the average person coming into crypto doesn't
have that knowledge. In the same way I don't have
that knowledge about you know, well, which AI company or
which quantum company, or which biotech company is particularly well oriented.

(07:11):
But I may want exposure to AI or quantum or biotech.
The same will be true in crypto. Maybe you want exposure,
as you said, to staked assets that provide a staking yield.
Maybe you want exposure to assets that are linked to
the growth of the stable coin market, and so groups
of those index products I think are going to be
a really big theme in twenty twenty six it's an

(07:33):
area we're focusing a lot on it. Bit wise.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, the staking component aspect is very appealing to me
to have that basket because I think personally, being an
early adopter at Crypto Steak, Carnano, Algoran, Solana, etherorem, they're
all running earning the rewards. But to your point, as
a newber crypto, you know, newbe curious person if I
can just get access to that and have that yield
and it's outperforming the price and it's all those major

(07:57):
staking assets, that's really appealing.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, it's really appealing. And the beauty of an ETF
structure is you can do that at institutional level, right,
so you know that you have an ETF provider, whether
it's bit Wiser, someone else then hopefully is evaluating all
the available approaches to staking, ensuring that they're best of
class monitoring on an ongoing basis. The goal of ETFs is,

(08:20):
you want to summarize, what they're trying to do is
to provide an easy button for traditional investors to allocate
into crypto, and that to me includes staking, right because
as you said, you've been doing it for years, you
of course want the staking yield. You know, that's an
important component of returns. ETFs are designed to make that
very easy for everyone who even people who are not

(08:43):
crypto experts, to gain access to that pattern of returns. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
I feel like that's just going to be a huge
game changer and just allow more people to get into
the acid class and on board. And you know, maybe
the ETFs are their first base. They get comfortable, they
watch it for six months, is growing, and then they
want to go more into web three and they can
become more of a djen if they want.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's right, exactly right. We all start somewhere. I tell
people that all the time. If they think back to
the first time they bought crypto, chances are they bought bitcoin, right,
maybe they bought eth. But a lot of people don't
stop there. And I think that's what you're going to
see here, right, this is bringing people into the crypto ecosystem.
There is one criticism that I'm sure you've heard of ETFs, Tony,

(09:27):
which is are they like anti crypto. It's supposed to
be this decentralizing force and ETFs are a centralized entity
like a traditional finance entity. But I think that overlooks
what you were pointing to, which is for many it
will just be their entry into the market, and then
they'll go on to do more native things. The analogy
I always remind people of is almost everyone bought their

(09:50):
first crypto asset on a centralized exchange. Almost everyone did that,
and it's only after they did that and became acquainted
with it that they then moved to so custody that
they then move to operating in the DeFi space, you
need that easy entry point. ETFs are just another easy
entry point. Not everyone will stop there, A lot of
people will go there to more cryptonative approaches to the

(10:12):
market as well.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
You know you're absolutely right, mat because I literally talk
to family members and friends who are now you know,
they're like, hey, I'm hearing a lot about bitcoin and crypto.
Tell me how I should get involved or how I
should buy. And one of the things I've been telling
them is, you know, if you don't understand what coinbase
is or these other exchanges, just go to your broker
or whatever you're using to invest in stocks, and you'll

(10:35):
see the ETFs now, and that could be a great
way for you to participate, because you know, sometimes I
tell people, hey, there are these things called exchanges. You
can go sign up and KYC and all that, and
they're like, huh, like what but you say ETFs, they
know about ETFs.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
It's it's so true. I mean think about you know,
for cryptonative people. Think about that in any other area
of your life. Right if someone told you, oh, you
had to create a new account some before, you could
do something verse just like go into coinbase and you
can do it, or go into your crypto while and
do it. Of course it's easier. Humans are lazy. If
there's friction, they won't do it. So all ETFs are

(11:13):
doing is making it easy for a group of non
crypto native investors to gain exposure to this exciting asset class. Oh. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Now, just recently I saw a Hunter Horsey posted on
x and he tagged you that you guys spoke to
I believe it's two thousand plus advisors. You got a
call and want a large US bank and they want
to know more about bitcoin and crypto. What can you
tell ASERA as far as demand that you're seeing.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, it's absolutely really significant. I mean it's worth remembering
that even though Bitcoin ETF's launched in January of twenty
twenty four, it's still the case that most wealth managers
have not allocated. Most of them are still studying of it.
Some of them haven't been able to allocate until the
last few months. We think twenty twenty six is going

(11:59):
to be the year you see large national account platforms,
the major broker dealers out there that manage trillions of
dollars of assets start to put crypto into standard portfolios
alongside stocks and bonds. So I think we're just we've
just sort of touched the surface of the demand that
we're going to see in this market. I mean, that

(12:20):
was an incredible call. That's an organization that manages well
north of a trillion dollars of assets, and their advisors
were listening to the case for bitcoin, ethereum and other
crypto assets. They were asking questions. They've followed up with
us since I think that kind of activity is going
to lead to substantial inflows in twenty twenty six. And

(12:41):
I will say those people don't see the crypto market
as in a bear market. I know in crypto native
Land there's a lot of the fear and greed. Sentiment
is down below fifteen. People are very sad. People outside
of it see crypto in a sustained bull market that's
had a natural pull back. They think of this as

(13:01):
an opportunity, not a risk. They like the lower prices,
and so we're going to continue to do that education
to bring more of those people into the fold.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, Matt, there's this interesting dichotomy to your point, trad
fi is moving at a rapid pace, adopting crypto, building
different products, launching stable coins, custody, tokenization, yet cryptonati. If
you go on crypto Twitter, it feels brutal out there, Matt.
It's like everybody's in depression.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
So true. Yeah, I mean it's hard to operate as
a trad five focused sort of crypto educator and then
someone who's engaged in Twitter, because it really is like
living in two different worlds. Yeah, and I think that's right.
If you think about time frame, if you look backwards
over any long time frame, crypto has done exceptionally well.

(13:51):
Over a short time frame, we're down thirty three percent
or whatever from the all time highs. If you look forward,
even amongst cryptonatives and you ask them, where do you
think this is going in ten years? Of course they
all think it's up into the right where do you
think it's going in five years up into the right
even a year or two. They're optimistic, but they're very
worried about the next three months. So I think that

(14:13):
difference between how trad fi is viewing it and how
crypto Twitter is viewing it is that crypto Twitter is
looking through a next six weeks phenomenon or eyeglass, and
trad file is looking through a next six to twenty
four month time view, and you just get very different outcomes.
Even I am not certain where crypto goes by the

(14:33):
end of the year, but I'm very optimistic about where
we go in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven.
And I think that's the difference that you're feeling there.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, And I've been trying to tell my listeners and viewers,
you know, focus on the macro.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Just step back.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
It's I know it's tough right now, Maybe go out
and touch grass and come back right right. You're taking
your position, but you've got to have the macro view,
I think. And it seems though I don't know if
you agree with me, but you know, as crypto mature
is and it's come more affected by the macro, it's
probably going to break some of these four year cycles
and things we've known, you know, legacy mindsets, right, and

(15:09):
it's going to act a bit different.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah. Absolutely, It's the forces that created the four year
cycle are weaker now than they were in the past. Right.
The having supply impact is obviously statistically smaller than it
was in previous supply impacts. Interest rates, which went way
up in twenty eighteen, way up in twenty twenty two,
are neutral to down this year. And at the same

(15:33):
time you have these massive long term forces. You have
institutional investors moving into the market. That's a ten year trend.
You have a one point eighty on regulation from headwind
to tailwind, that's a ten year trend. And those are
the forces that, to my mind, are going to drive
the market forward. I think I think the four year
cycle will not repeat. We think twenty twenty six will

(15:56):
be an up year for bitcoin. A lot of people
have been asked me, like, what's your boldest prediction for
twenty twenty six. It's actually that that it'll be an
up year, and I think that's really important for the
direction of where crypto is going.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, Matt, because when you take into consideration the November
December twenty twenty one timeline. When we started rolling into
a bear market, the FED came out and said, Okay,
we're doing quantitative tightening. Rates are going up. We're at
the custom at December one, you're ending that, and we're
on the path to lower rates. Right, there's another cut
expected in December, if not maybe early next year. You

(16:31):
got crypto market structure bill on the horizon. I'm in
agreement with you. I feel twenty twenty six is going
to be up here.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, I think you're right. I love those examples. That's
the really important one to me, because I think one
of the biggest drivers of the eighteen and twenty two
pullbacks was that macro environment. It was skyrocketing interest rates,
it was quantitative tightening, and we're not just neutral. Now
the reverse is true. As you mentioned, we're ending QT.
Liquidity is refilling the market starting effectively after Thanksgiving, and

(17:01):
interest rates I think are going down substantially next year
as we get a new FED share, as we get
you know, people wanting to encourage the economy in an
election year. I just think the template is there for
lower rates, and I do think the market just can't
see past it's sort of its nose on these things.
I think we're close to a pretty good turning point.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, it feels like the four year cycle has almost
become a self fulfilling prophecy. Everybody has the in the
mental timeline set like, oh yeah, it's one thy sixty
something days, that means it must go down. But it's like,
you know, and they star, they all start selling, and
it's like this self fulfilling prophecy thing happening.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
I do think that a lot of the pullback has
been people selling ahead of the four year cycle, trying
to get in front of that. You know. One of
the reasons I look toward the year end for a
real turning point is you have that coming to an end.
You can't front run the four year cycle if you're
selling in the fourth year, So I think that will
wrap up. I also think people are worried about the

(18:02):
lingering effects of the October tenth liquidation market. Are there
any other sort of wounded parties that are going to
rise to the surface as majorly impaired. I think we
have to assume that that process will also wrap up
by er en that won't linger into twenty twenty six.
So I think as we turn the calendar year, we're
going to have a pretty clean slate with lowering rates,

(18:24):
positive regulatory direction, strong institutional adoption, strong growth of stable
coins and tokenization, growth of prediction markets and other areas.
I think that's a pretty exciting mix. Starting to see
some green shoots in the market that make me pretty happy.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Oh absolutely. I did want to get your thoughts on
digital acid treasuries and et apps. You have these two
running in parallel. Digital acid treasury companies are feeling more
pressure because they're leveraged up and they're doing a lot
of different things. I'm a big believer in companies holding
bitcoin and these assets on their balance sheet. You know,
whether they should raise obscene amounts of debt to do that,

(19:01):
I'm not sure. I'm not on that boat, but if
they take some of their cash reserves. So I'm curious
what your thoughts are on the state of digital ascid
treasuries and how they may compete with ETFs.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah. Sure, I mean, first of all, it's worth noting
there are two versions. So there are traditional companies that
buy bitcoin is part of their balance sheet strategy, and
that trend is just up into the right those are
the teslas of the world and the stripes of the
world and the pigmas of the world. That has nothing
to do with sort of traditional digital asset treasury companies
like micro Strategy and the people who copied micro Strategy

(19:34):
or the same equivalent in other assets like Solana or
ether or many other assets. When you focus on those,
I think what we're going to see is pretty obvious. Look,
ETFs are sort of the risk free rate in crypto.
You can gain exposure to bitcoin at a cost of
twenty basis points. You can gain exposure to state Solana

(19:56):
at very low cost with one hundred percent of your
assets staked. If you're comparing that with a digital asset
treasury company that is just doing the same thing as
the ETF, the digital ascid treasury company will trade it
a discount. Why would you lock up your capital and
not be guaranteed to be able to get it out
at nav when it's easy to do it. So that
means the digital ascid treasury companies that want to succeed

(20:20):
have to do something harder and more complex. It doesn't
mean that there's no role for them, right, It just
means that if their strategy was just to like be
a bad version of an ETF that's not going to
pass muster. I think a thing that happened was before ETFs,
you could do that and succeed. It's just ETFs have

(20:40):
raised the bar first they came to exist. Now they're
adding staking. You now have to do something hard, smart, clever,
and sustained over time. I think the companies that do
that will absolutely be well rewarded and will outperform their
underlying asset, and I think companies that fail will dramatically
underperform the asset. You're going to see this dispersion of

(21:01):
returns between well run companies and poorly run companies, and
that's the way it should be, right, That's the way
capitalism works. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Do you think there might be some consolidation where some
of the ones that are well run they acquire the
ones that are failing.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
One hundred percent because the well run ones want to
increase their crypto asset per share. If they can acquire
a poorly run one that's trading at a discount to
its crypto asset per share, well then they can increase
their crypto asset per share. So I do think there's
a natural m and a activity in this space. I
think many of being people entered this space in the

(21:35):
hopes of short term riches. That's not going to happen, right.
You're going to need well run, tightly run companies with
liquidity and leverage that can do many things, including m
and A activity to increase their crypto per share. But again,
I think there'll be some winners. So if all dats
traded down to a discount to NAB, I would be

(21:57):
looking for the best dats as a real opportunity. You
just have to evaluate them the way you would evaluate
any other company. They need to keep cost reasonable, they
need to execute well, they need to manage risk. It's
just like any other company. And I think people need
to realize that that's what these are. They're companies. They're
not quasi ETFs. They're companies that need to execute well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Well said, speaking of m and A one of the
things I had in mind. I don't know if you
agree here, but once the Market Structure Bill is passed
into law and is clarity, you know across the United
States what you can and can do. What are the guardrails?
Could we see MNA's skyrocket. Maybe some of the trad
FI folks the banks say, you know what, I don't
want to build out all these crypto infrastructure items. I'm

(22:40):
going to go buy these cryptonated firms. You think we
might see things like that. Yeah, I think you'll definitely
see that.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
I think that's going to be a natural response because
you sort of have the regulators starting a race, like
shooting a gun off to start a track race, and
some companies will choose to build and some companies will
choose to buy. I think you'll start to see that
next year. The Genius goes into effect in January of
twenty twenty seven. Right, so next year is the building

(23:05):
year for companies that are looking to enter that space.
Some may choose to do it via acquisition. The same
is true for tokenization. Right now is the time to
build before the regulatory gun really goes off and you
can operate at scale. So I think that will be true.
Maybe the thing people aren't looking at two things in
M and A. I'll call out for you, Tony. I

(23:26):
think crypto wawats are going to be attractive M and
A targets because that's a way to connect with crypto customers,
which is one of the hardest things to find so
I think that's a particularly valuable area I would keep
an eye on. And then I think the reverse is
also true, which is large scale crypto companies may acquire
firms in the traditional space as those two places merge.

(23:49):
I'm not sure it's one direction. I think it may
be bilateral, and maybe people aren't considering that bilateral approach,
but I think you'll see that in the next year
or two as well.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
That's such a great point, the opposite happening, and we're
seeing a bit of that one that comes to mind's
Ripple and Hidden Road and things like that.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Exactly right, Yeah, I think Ripple has been at the
forefront of this. Right. If you imagine that the two
worlds are coming together, it doesn't have to be the
case that it's only coming from this direction. Right. We
think in crypto that crypto is going to disrupt TRADFI. Well,
if that's true, we should be buying them, right, and
we should be co opting their customers and giving them

(24:26):
a better experience with new tools and lower costs in
all of those things. Those customers aren't necessarily easily going
to migrate directly to crypto U aided, but you're starting
to see it. You mentioned XRP sort of on the
bubble of this is some of the acquisition activity we've
seen out of firms like robin Hood, which is a
quasi crypto company sort of straddling that border. I think

(24:47):
you could see more and more of this overtime, Matt.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
I think I have to pinch myself thinking, you know
what you mentioned, crypto acquiring trad fi companies. We couldn't
even dream of that here.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
That's absolutely true. Yeah, look how far we've come. But
we now have many very large companies in this space. Right.
Coinbase is a giant company. Kraken just raised at a
twenty billion dollar valuation. These are big dogs, right. They
are out in the market, competing even with other traditional

(25:19):
finance companies. Right. I mean the old joke is that
Tether makes money more money than Goldman Sachs, which is
funny but also true and means that these are big,
world changing enterprises. So it can go book direction. We
saw this in the Internet era, right. We saw the
largest Internet companies actually eventually acquire some trad fi companies.
Some of those deals ended well, some of those ended questionably.

(25:42):
The AOL Time Warner deal comes to mind, but we
are out of that scale. We are an emergent industry
and playing at the big boys too.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
You mentioned Krack, and I know there's a lot of
IPOs and folks looking to go public, securities and others.
So that's also like a signal that going back to
the theme of twenty twenty six, expecting to be an
up year as opposed to what heard right now is
thinking is the opposite, it's going to happen.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Look, I think we're
gonna see multiple IPOs right again, the IPOs have been suppressed.
Another thing to think about in twenty twenty six is
the crypto market was suppressed, generally by regulation, and there
were these things that were held down over time, and
we're starting to see those emerge. Examples are like the
growth of stable coins, the growth of tokenization. Prediction markets

(26:31):
were held down, IPOs were held down, icos were held down,
and we're starting to see all of these things bounce
back really fast, and I think people probably underestimate how
big those bounces will be. We just had Coinbase just
did the monad ico, right, that was the first major
ico in recent memory. They will probably be twenty of

(26:54):
those next year, right, that rays hundreds of millions of
dollars and are really important. I do think you have
to think the market has been suppressed so long from
a regulatory perspective that anything that has had that lid
come off, whether it's icos IPOs M and A, etc.
You're going to get more than normal activity in the
next year under this better regulatory climate.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Oh yeah, I'm excited. Matt as always great insights. Thank
you so much. At some point we're going to have
to figure out to do one in person in New
York at my studio.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
We've gotten so close. I know it's hard to Maybe
we'll make that a resolution for twenty twenty six will
make it happen.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Absolutely well. Enjoy your Turkey Day and excited to see
the results for doche coins or your dochecoin ETF today.
But thank you so much for joining me.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, thanks for having me excited to be here.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.

Crime Junkie

Crime Junkie

Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.

The Brothers Ortiz

The Brothers Ortiz

The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.