I think we will go higher into year end again. Um, and we will print fresh all-time highs into the year. My I guess my stronger conviction now is my medium-term view, which is that by the end of 2028, so by the time Trump leaves office, we'll get to we'll get to 500,000 Bitcoin. Don't forget to sign up for a free portfolio review with one of our endorsed investment partners at wealthon.com/free. With markets hitting all-time highs, now is a great time to stress test your strategy and be prepared for what comes next. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Wealthy on Pod. My name is Chris Perkins. I'm president of CoinFund and today I'm really excited because I have one of the boldest research analyst folks that make the biggest calls, a guy named Jeff Kendrick. Jeff is global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered. And what I love about this is that he makes incredibly bold calls. Uh but he does so inside a bank. And so welcome, Jeff. Thanks, Chris. It's a pleasure. It's awesome. Um look, you recently came out. you said you don't think Bitcoin is going to drop below 100K ever again. Um, as we get into it, I would love to know like how you got into the space in the very first place. Would love to hear a little bit about your background and then want to get into some of your predictions and calls. Yeah, of course. So, I um I run digital asset research at Standard Chartered have done for about five years now. Before that, I spent the best part of two decades as a macro strategist. So I'm an econ economist by training uh not a technology person. I um had spent a long long time as a macro strat mostly looking at FX and rates markets most directly with standard charted in emerging markets before coming over to digital assets. So I actually came at this space originally somewhat skeptical. Um so which is interesting compared to where I've come now obviously given my views are quite bullish. Um but I started out I guess with little knowledge five or six years ago. Um obviously I knew some things about Bitcoin and Ethereum and etc. a little bit about blockchain, but I I spent most of my time around co deep diving, learning the new asset class and then once I got through the rabbit hole or the looking glass or whatever analogy you like, um came out the other side and said actually I can see how this is a completely new technological solution, how it's going to disrupt trap fi etc. and and since then I've gone all in um really and effectively bet my career on this in the last few years. I really appreciate that. Um, so look, yesterday we had the Fed come out. It feels like the market is not responding incredibly well to it. You got, you know, in the background Trump doing his thing in China. Can you paint a macro picture for us and and how do you see, you know, things like the Fed, um, things like USChina relations impacting the price of Bitcoin? Yeah, so it's been a bit complicated this year. So, Bitcoin should be a hedge against issues in the traditional financial system, be they in banks or in what the what Trump says about Fed independence, for example, right? So, whenever Trump talks about the Fed, you would think that would be Bitcoin positive because this is like a risk in tradies that back up TRDFI, that should be Bitcoin positive. So we've seen a bit of that this year, but things like tariff wars, trade wars, so we had a chunk of it earlier in the year and then obviously more recently with the 10th of October flash crash in in digital asset prices. Um that's not a positive and it's mostly not a positive because at the end of the day, Bitcoin and other digital assets are a technological solution. So if the NASDAQ will go down sharply, so let's say bad stuff happens um on US China trade or Middle Eastern tensions for example, then normally Bitcoin and other digital assets go down too. So in those bad days which are not driven by tradi type issues like banks going bust um like in March 2023, but bad risk days the reality is in a lot of those days correlations do go to one uh if risk assets fall. So today um obviously NASDAQ's off it it's still trading pretty well to be fair. Risk set still trade pretty well considering last night uh Pal said that a December rate cut is not a given whereas the market had gone in pricing 90% likelihood. So if we now need to go to 50/50 obviously there's no data because US uh government is closed. So it's still fe quite feasible that you won't get a cut in December and that's that's obviously a macro shock for for markets today. So you have that as a negative. You have US China trade positive outcome today. Yeah. Um was I guess mostly expected and so now you're sort of struggling. Um so I can probably see Bitcoin heading a little lower. Um obviously we're trading not so well today down you know overnight we're down sort of 108 now. Maybe we'll dip back to 105. Um the the one thing that has held has been the 50WE moving average which is around 102 103. So I suspect that still holds but you know we might go down towards that on this riskoff move if it continues for the next few sessions perhaps through the weekend. Understood. I I think it's really interesting you point out this fact that a lot of people continue to struggle with this dichotomy with Bitcoin where it kind of acts like a like a a frontier risk asset uh in one way but in the other way it it's perceived as others as digital gold limited supply you know is that a maturity thing and like what would it take for it to you know kind of move past that that technology risk asset and into a true digital gold type um commodity when it visav like macro events it has been improving in the last couple of years. So I think since the ETFs launched in the US what are we best part of two years ago you're you are starting to gradually change the mix. Um so crypto quite uniquely by an asset class is something like 80% retail 20% institutional today and all other asset classes the other way around. So over time you'll probably see digital assets move in the same direction as as others. So that 80/20 will flip and then you tend to see less sharp down days and we have seen more of that like it has been u moving that direction. So yes I suspect maturity is one answer. Um, the other for me though is I'm not that bothered. Like if if Bitcoin is a hedge against Tradfi issues or Trump talking about Fed independence type issues, but it also trades as like a MAG Seven stock in some ways that's okay. You can kind of have your cake and eat it too. Um I did a note earlier in the year where I looked at if you took out one of the mag seven stocks and put Bitcoin in for each of the preceding seven years in every year you would have had higher returns and lower vault. So like in a sharp ratio sense it's a no-brainer to do that. So you can like it it it's the best of tech plus it plus it has this hedge against tradfi issue. So actually for for me today I think that's fine and over time you're right probably matures into the digital gold narrative more more formally. Yeah. And you've been very critical of the four-year cycle. A lot of people I was at a conference this week and I was talking to a guy. He's like I just don't know if the time is now to enter the space. The four-year cycle the four-year cycle. uh you you've mentioned some of these institutional vector buying vectors now whether it's the ETFs, pension funds, 401ks or even the digit digital asset treasury companies. Um is the four-year cycle dead? I think it is dead. Um we just need proof that it's dead. So it was very unfortunate that we had the current all-time high was October 6. Um, and then that which is the Monday and that week on the Friday, Trump's tweet laid on saw Bitcoin fall like and so we we paired quite a way back from the all-time high. Um, and coincidentally in previous cycles, the amount of months post having was about 18 months when you had the cycle high and the having was in April 2024. So 18 months would be October. So um in my mind it's coincidental that that current all-time high was a very similar number of days or months um post the haring as we have this time. So we'll now need proof if you like. I think the proof will come uh it will come before year end and it will come on the back of ETF inflows which we're now roughly $60 billion of net inflows since the start of 2024. That's the best ETF launch of any asset class in the history of ETFs, right? The the the previous best ever was QQQ, which everyone knows for NASDAQ, had 8 billion in its first year. And we've had eight we've had 6 billion in just under two years. So, it's a massive inflow. And the types of buyers that are buying the ETFs like the pension funds that you mentioned, the like teachers funds, the um police, you know, the firefighters, all those super long-term pension fund style, they take a long time to get involved in a new asset class mostly. And so the the asset managers that issue the ETFs like Black Rockck go around every quarter and talk to all these funds and say, you know what, you should get involved. But it typically takes 8 10 12 14 quarters for them to get involved and we're only seven quarters in. So I think like in the same way it happened with the gold ETF in the US which started November 2004. Took about 8 years for that market to um reach maturity. We're only a couple of years into at least four or five years cuz this is probably a bit quicker. So I'd say we're not even halfway yet. If you're looking for a simple, secure way to invest and own physical gold and silver, visit our sister company, Hardass Assets Alliance, at hardassetsalliance.com. That's hardassallalliance.com. I totally agree. It take takes a long time for the institutions to get um their act together just from a governance perspective, an infrastructure perspective. I think things like the DATs or the ETFs make it a lot easier for them because it's a known regulation. They have the operations all set up, but they still have to set up, you know, in certain cases and change their investment mandates. Um, but Jeeoff, you had called 200k for Bitcoin earlier this year. Uh, as we approached year end, are you standing by that? Do you think it needs to be adjusted? How do you see the rest of the year plays out for for Bitcoin? To be fair, when we got to 126, three and a half weeks ago, something like that, 200k was was was looking within reach for me. Um by the end of this year I felt like we get a couple more Fed cuts. Yeah. Um this this Trumpdriven US China spat which obviously has gone away now but it's impacted sentiment I think has um made reaching 200k pretty tricky now. But I think we will go higher into year end again. Um and we will print fresh alltime highs into the year. My I guess my stronger conviction now is my medium-term view, which is that by the end of 2028, so by the time Trump leaves office, yeah, we'll get to we'll get to 500,000 Bitcoin. And that for me is it's really just a flow story. It's the ETF inflows. Um and then if you compare Bitcoin and gold in a two portfolio, two asset portfolio mix at the start of this year. So this is where my 200k number came from. At the start of this year, your if you look historically at returns and correlations and volatility, you should have been roughly 80% gold, 20% Bitcoin in portfolios globally, but the reality of the market caps about 9010. Um, so um I thought well actually that should mean instead of 100K you get to 200k and that's just on historical volatility and since then all of Bitcoin has collapsed this year. So actually like in a portfolio sense global investors are even more underweight Bitcoin than they were at the start of the year when you will adjust. So over time I think you like portfolios do normalize to where they should go. It just takes some time and the theory here is that before the ETFs started last year investor access was limited globally especially and in the US quite dramatically and over time that improves. So therefore over time portfolios should go towards where that optimal mix says they should be and by 2028 even if V stays where it is now you can make a case particularly what given what gold has done this year um that you can get to 500k. So that's my very strong conviction end of this year has perhaps got a bit messy now because of all this China uh US trade stuff. Wow 500k by 2028 um sounds like that's a place where people should be. Um you've made some other bold calls around 2028. You've talked about $2 trillion in stable coins uh and $2 trillion uh in tokenized products, you know, mixture of money market funds, equities, etc. Let's start with stable coins and and I think you know very recently you published a piece on DeFi. What does this influx of stable coins mean for the US economy and mean for crypto? So, stable coins, for those that aren't familiar, are just a digital version of money which is pegged to the US dollar. So, um obviously people in the US may not think about this, but if you tried to send money from a bank account in the States to I'm going to make up a countryistan, it's probably going to take two weeks to get there like in your normal payments rails and that's not JP Morgan's fault where your bank account is, but it's you know the payments rails are set up in the 80s and 90s. So it's very very outdated. And stable coins now have solved that. So instead of it taking 2 weeks and maybe never arriving, you can do payments 24/7 near instantaneous near a zero cost to any country in the world for the first time. So basically you have an internet version of money in the same way we've had an internet version of in of information for for two or three decades now, right? So so that's a huge positive. Now to get to large numbers of total stable coins, I looked at where the users are and the uses users and users. And it turns out today of the $300 billion of stable coins roughly in total market cap about 2/3 of that is emerging market savings use. So this is money that in previous uh cycles would have left mainland China and other to buy property in London for example. Right? So money is trying to get out of politically or economically challenged locations and put itself into the safest most liquid trustworthy form and 2025 that's stable coins. it's not, you know, Mayfair property in London, right? So that's where the money has been coming from. So my theory is that over time that continues. So far it's mostly the super wealthy. Yeah. So it's very large wallets. Um so this is savings out of EM for oligarch types, right? So over time they probably tell their friends, they tell their golf buddies. And so you get the super wealthy and the next level wealthy will do do this same thing over time because it's super safe, right? like all stable coins are backed by tea bills, which I'll come to in a sec. Um, then over time in other countries, you'll have a large amount of less wealthy individuals. So, think about Brazilian taxi drivers for example, that want to get money out of local currency and local country because of inflation or political risk or other, right? And so, you stack the two together and over time they add up to more than a trillion dollars for me in emerging market savings stock. Um the good thing for Scott Besson in Treasury is this is all new T bill demand because you have to have 100% T bill backing and this is all coming from other locations. Yeah. So more than a trillion dollars which is a big new treasury buyer. So that's I guess impact number one is that this US administration has found a new massive buyer of treasury debt and it's all in it's all in super front end. Um that has a couple of implications because it's super front end when it becomes large enough which for me is probably in 12 months from now. The Treasury can issue more frontend T bills and less debt out the curve. And so that will then change demand supply dynamics out the curve to have yields lower in the back end which will impact mortgage rates in the US probably just in time for the midterms in November 2026. Um and that would ch start changing the shape of the US yield curve to be flatter probably then becomes dollar positive as well because you see large inflows to buy assets from emerging markets and other and so you start to get dollar buying as well. So over time it changes US interest rates, it changes dollar direction as much as it perhaps weakens emerging markets where flows are coming from. So there's an emerging market negative and it also extends dollar hedgeimmony which is one of the things Scott Bessant gets as well right. So over time for me this extends dollar hedgeimmony probably by another generation because you're taking what was traditional payments rails in FX and banks mostly in dollars but like 2/3 dollars to now this market's going to be more than 90% medium-term in dollars currently it's 98%. And so I think that's a very large medium-term story um on the back of it. It will also then start to impact those who use the stable coins in developed markets like the US. Right? So the amount of conversations I've had with Midwest treasurers in the last couple of months like in the leadup to Genius Act in July and post that. So these are manufacturing types, they're commodity types, they're distribution network style. So corporates that are sort of Fortune 500 style do do stuff globally have operations in lots of countries globally they're now asking me they're saying Jeffe what are stable coins we've heard of them how can we use them this is going to increase capital efficiency for us so if I go back to my Beckistan example before where it takes two weeks to get money from your New York Chase account tobekiststan if you have as a corporate operations in lots of those countries Today you need to have cash stockpiles in each country because you don't know how long it takes for money to arrive, right? But tomorrow because stable coins are like the amount of time it takes is certain and it's near instantaneous, you can reduce stockpiles so you can become more capital efficient. So if you put your equity sectoral hat on, those types of companies will outperform because they can do get same revenue with a smaller capital base. Right? So that's a massive positive for those types of companies. Others like banks quite frankly are probably the losers because a lot of this stuff in payments rails and FX markets and other um have traditionally been done by banks that have had moes right so banking it's probably a negative large sector manufacturing distribution style corporates that are mostly in Atlanta, Chicago, Texas um probably do quite well. Yeah, that's an amazing response. I I think I saw Tether yesterday announced they're sitting on 135 billion dollars of treasuries. And I think you're right. The US government loves when we have new buyers of treasuries. They're actually the 17th largest holder of US debt. You know, they just outpaced South Korea and they're about to pass Brazil. And that's just one stable coin company. Um I've seen a lot of pe I would like to drill into a little bit of this this issue around interest. So stable coins don't pay interest. And one thing that we're seeing in the developing world is that yeah, the dollar, even a dollar that doesn't generate interest will logically outperform in many cases an inflationary local currency. But there's also ways to get that that that interest back. And you know, I've I think we share the opinion that the these folks in the developing world are going to use DeFi. They can it's like right there on on their mobile phone. They can go borrow lend. They can generate interest. Um how do you think about this as a catalyst for DeFi and I would think this is going to be very net beneficial for many of the borrow lend protocols etc. Um how do you think about that whole interest conundrum 100%. So the where we are today. So you're right for stable coins you can get yield in a couple of ways. Either in the US if you hold USDC you could park it in Coinbase they'll pay you some yield. In emerging markets for savings use case it's probably mostly in DeFi, right? So you take your stable coin you park it in a earn four or 5% yield. Um it's pretty easy to do. People do it once and they see it's it's super easy. So this creates users of DeFi. So there's um stable coins to me are doing a number of things now um to accelerate DeFi. Your point here is a good one is is it it's creating users which is fabulous because this is an asset class that it's sort of like you don't learn how to ride a bike while looking at the bike, right? So once you use it, you'll see it's easy to do. Um the second is that stable coins now in developed markets have created a lot more knowledge or visibility um of DeFi right because stable coins summer circle listing uh etc right so most people in DM now have heard of stable coins which is good the third is liquidity so a lot of or most defi protocols need a lot of liquidity particularly around times when traditional markets are closed like weekends um and now there's stable coin liquidity on chain. That's great because then you can do things on weekends like close out your tokenized Apple stock on a Saturday night if you're sitting at home watching a game on TV and you want to do that as well. Um, and the next one is stable coins this year have started to explode lending and borrowing on protocols like Ave and its competitor Compound. So today roughly one half to2 billion every day of stable coin borrowing takes place new borrowing um and that's a massive acceleration this year. So if you take a step back you've got liquidity you've got borrowing and lending so basic banking functions you've got knowledge and you got users all because of stable coins and this now for me sets up the next huge influx in DeFi. So if I take the the corporate user in stable coins as my base example here um today if I make up a corporate like today they've got a million dollars offchain. Yeah they probably parked 90% of that in an offchain money market fund to get some yield 10% in cash so they can use it when they need it. Now that they would like to use stable coins because they've got operations in you know and other countries like that. They want to get onchain for stable coins. they'll take their off-chain money market fund, park it onchain. Um, and so over time, I think you get a lot of migration into products like tokenized money market funds as a result of that. And if you think about the scale of that market offchain, currently that money market fund space in the US is $7.5 trillion. Yeah, in my mind, you could get about 10% of payments in FX go spy FX go onchain in the next few years. So that probably requires 10% of that money market fund to be on chain 2 which is 750 billion which a massive number massive number today tokenized real world assets on chain of 35 billion and I think in 3 years you have 750 in tokenized money market funds like then you think of other asset classes right so assuming we get some clarity either from clarity act or from SEC guidelines at some stage in 2026 US investors will be able to do the tokenized equity thing that started in Europe with Robin Hood and and with Ono in other places as well, right? And then you'll also be able to take those assets and put them in DeFi in Ave or trade them on unis swap. Um so you'll unlock that too. And then the US listed equity market is $62 trillion today. Maybe it's gone down because of the Fed last night, but you know that's roughly the number. um you need only a small percentage of that to again get in my mind about another $750 billion on chain like it seems quite easy because you can unlock the DeFi part then you're already at one half trillion then you get some funds go on chain so you know like someone like a black rockck says we've got this offchain fund we're going to put it on chain then others follow suit you get illlquid commodities and other and so you stack up in my mind a couple of trillion dollars again by the end of 2028 in tokenized real assets on chain 2. And this has all been fed into DeFi and others. So it unlocks those those DeFi protocols for the first time really to mainstream which up until this point have mostly been about crypto trading with itself, lending with itself, etc. Now you're getting this real world like Uber replacing taxi style things going to happen and DeFi protocols ave and others like those are going to have massive out performance on the back of it. Jeeoff, you make some really bold predictions. I think you're being conservative here on the uh on on the tokenized equities and I'll tell you why. Um we have you know we're in the investment management space and we have to act as fiduciaries for our clients. Um, if you look at a regular fiat equity, maybe that's the wrong a normal equity, a traditional equity versus a tokenized equity, once there's sufficient liquidity in the tokenized equity, I'm actually compelled to to use that as a product. And the reason why is like I can't risk manage it. If there's an event on the weekend, positive or or negative, I'm going to need those stable coins to fund that equity. So, you know, there's going to be a certain point where, you know, the $62 trillion fully has to tokenize because like again, I 24-hour markets are better markets if you're risk managing them than not. So, what how do you react to that? I I 100% agree and I'm very I'm very pleased to be called being conservative, Chris, when um doesn't happen too often. No, no. When when I've said that a market that's 35 billion is going to be two trillion in three years from now. So, um, no, I mean, all jokes aside, I think you're right. I think, um, once it becomes large enough, yeah, it becomes truly self-fulfilling. So, um, in in my mind today, we've we've just started the self-fulfilling cycle. So, we're sort of we've done this and you're right, eventually we're going to do this. Like, so we're sort of we're just becoming self- sustaining and then you're right, it it it gradually takes over everything. So, so speaking of bold calls, um I think you called 25K for Ethereum by the end of 28. Um you're talking about all this movement of stable coins, um real world assets on chain. Is Ethereum going to be the beneficiary? I mean, we're also seeing a number of um essentially stable coin chains coming out, whether it's Tempo, um which is Stripe layer one, uh we have Plasma, which looks to be like one of the Tether layer ones, Arc with Circle. which chains are going to benefit um and and how is that going to impact them? Yeah, I think I I think in the first in the first round if you like which is all investors care about. So the next couple of years um when we go from 35 billion in tokenized real assets to to a big number. Yeah. Um it's going to almost all happen on Ethereum. So the the model I'm thinking about there is if if listeners have a look at what happened with Black Rockck's Biddle, it was 100% Ethereum and then over time they've gone bits and pieces on other chains, right? So but the vast majority is still is still on ETH. Um and the reason for that really is just because a lot of this is coming from Tradfi. So I mean I work in a bank that's conservative banks are run by compliance and risk functions since 2008. um if someone in the bank wanted to put forward a proposal to build something on chain, if they said let's do it on Ethereum, which has been around 10 years, has never gone down, like no one's losing their job over that, right? So, um the fact that other chains are faster and cheaper for Tradfy is completely irrelevant. Um like um I use another analogy which is and hopefully some of your listeners are old enough to to get this like the payments rails in Tradfi today are kind of like Betamax, right? And even though Ethereum is sort of like Blu-ray DVDs, it's not streaming Netflix style videos, right? You've gone from Betamax to DVDs in in a heartbeat. This is this is it's a huge upgrade, right? So um and all of the senior people in banks know what DVDs are right so in this in this analogy um and so tradfi is going to go almost 100% for Ethereum um for the next couple of years now later on maybe you'll get you know some of the faster chain Salana in particular could get some of the fastmoving stuff I think that makes sense tokenized equities perhaps but for the next couple of years I think it's ETH um and I suspect my target of 25k E 2028 will be too low. Wow. Too low. You're starting to sound like Tom Lee. Well, exactly. He's um I mean actually he's obviously helping it helping it get there this year, right? The um the amount of buying that Tom has done is uh phenomenal um in terms of percentage of E bought right and they'll be getting close to 5% target by Christmas which is uh quite remarkable. Yeah, I know you're not not an equity analyst, but um you know, Tom leads has one of the leading DATs, digital ass treasury companies that you know, we're seeing as as um structural buyers of crypto. I mean, have they been a game changer? How how do the DATs play all into this? And I know you've published some pieces on it. I think it's a massive game changer. So, there's there's a few pieces for me. So, the first is just the pace of buying. So I mean everyone all your listeners will have heard of Micro Strategy Micro Sailor. Um the fastest pace that uh Micro Strategy got to and I know Bitcoin is a much bigger asset but in terms of percentage of um the pace that Bitcoin is going at under Tom Lee over these six months is 2 to 3x the fastest ever months that um Micro Strategy did. Right? So, you're going from 0 to 5% roughly over a 6-month window, which is unbelievable um to think about comparing to what Micro Strategy has done for Bitcoin. You know, it's a 3%ish now um again in the in the larger assets. So, the buying pace is one in and of itself that's enough to become somewhat self- sustaining. And for me, it makes more sense actually in Ethereum than it does in Bitcoin. So the original rationale for um Michael Sailor was restricted access for investors right before the ETFs it's difficult unless you know what you're doing to get access to Bitcoin. So the proxy made a lot of sense and actually today the proxy still makes sense in a lot of countries like I'm in the UK I can buy Micro Strategy a lot more easily that I can get access to the underlying. So it makes some sense from that perspective. But in Ethereum's case, you get the staking yield in the in the digital asset treasury company, which you do not in the ETF. I'll go back a step um just to explain that. So in proof of stake, you have what's called a staking yield. So instead of mining by computers and you're getting um the miners getting paid, those that own Ethereum put that into the system and get paid roughly 3%. Which um your your C's attracts Chris very nicely, right? So about 3%ish. Now, if you hold the ETF, so Black Rockck's ETHA, the most liquid Ethereum ETF in the US, you get zero staking yield. And that's because the SEC is afraid of unstaking liquidity risk type issues. So, you can't have staking and can get half of it. US might go to half of it as well, but the DATs can capture 100% of that. So the amount of um Ethereum that Tom Lee owns now with Bit Mine, he's earning staking yield all the time, right? So over time that becomes um a significant reason to own the DATs. And Tom Lee argues that that should add about6 to the MNAV um which we could debate um but I think it's not a bad estimate. So the MNAV for those that aren't familiar is the value of the company market cap divide value of assets held. Um bit mine I haven't checked today but it's like 1.3 1.4 something like that. Micro strate is about 1.2 today. Micro strate got up to about three last year when Trump won the election kind of got a bit overheated. It should be in my mind they should be like 121314 maybe bit mine should be 1617 if you listen to Tom's point plus 6. Um, but definitely above one, I guess, is the point. And so long as you're sustainably above one, you can keep buying the underlying and turning $1 into a $150, if you like. Yeah, just a disclaimer, uh, Jeff mentioned Caesar uh, composite Ether staking rate. It's a rate that I I co-invented. Um, essentially the risk-free rate of Ethereum. And one of the things I like about Ethereum as well, Jeff, is that it's a nice real yield, right? So, it's not a very inflationary yield, which should also play into that MNAV uh game, which makes things really really uh exciting. Um, so there's so much momentum, the markets are like near-term choppy. Um, what are you on the lookout as far as risks go? Like what would you know, what keeps you awake at night that would derail like these these incredible projections? So, the main risk really, which I guess we're seeing a bit of, is macro risk today. So, that's like that. Let's say that's the between now and Christmas that's macro risk. So this is um you know Trump's 1010 tweet about China tariffs 100%. Um is the Fed going to not cut in December? So that sort of stuff. That's you know typical things people look at when they're looking at their you know NASDAQ type exposure. So that's that's the in-your-face risk today. The the crypton native risk is actually these days relatively low. Um so it would be handy if we got some regulation or SEC guidelines. Now there's always political risk around those. Um the fact the US government is closed obviously has pushed back Clarity Act um which is you know given we're trying to get all this done ahead of the midterms in 12 months from now. If you push that back too far that's problematic. So that's one let's say marginally native risk which is related to regulation. Um the SEC guidelines might overcome that though. So that's you might be okay even with that. You could have some bad headline risks. Thankfully in crypto we haven't really had for a number of years now. Um always possible. Um that we sort of you know if you get sharp moves like you saw on 1010. Um I actually thought that might unveil some negative things like we saw in 2022 when you had sharp moves. Actually cryp crypto has held up pretty well since then. like you know a lot of the a lot of the um altcoins had sharp moves lower um a lot of the protocols though like Ave I spoke with Stanny after that at a um and they did exceptionally well that weekend like so actually the let's say the crypto rails are really holding up this time which is pretty encouraging but there is always the risk that you know if you have dramatic altcoin down days you could un unveil something that is now kind of like a Walking Dead fund, I guess, is possible. So, you could get that. Um, and then, yeah, I mean, that's probably the main thing that's keeping me awake at night. The other stuff I think is mostly in train now. You're kind of getting into the self-fulfilling motion and we still have enough runway ahead of any political issues like that could come after midterms, I guess, in the US next year. Yeah, I'm I'm a little bit less concerned about the clarity or I think they call it in the Senate the RFIA act. Um, I think it's going to be exceptionally difficult to pass. But the one thing that I'm encouraged, you mentioned the SEC. Uh, we now have an appointee for the CFTC who's a guy named Mike Celig who many of us know incredibly pro crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, everything else. Um, and one of his criticisms as he's going into confirmation is that he's too close to the SEC, which is crazy because he should be close to the SEC. We want these guys to coordinate. So, it feels to me like we're going to enter into this golden age of coordination. Um, and I'll give you an example. One area that I think is holding back our markets are a lack of comprehensive futures. So, if you're an institution, you it's very difficult for you to go long a DAT ETF or anything else because you can't hedge it and you can't take that type of volatility um for for many institutions. And so I'll give you an example that I'm looking out for and that's to see you know comprehensive futures for the alts because then people will be able to trade basis you know as they le in and I think that will be helpful for some of the in extreme volatility like that. That's one of the the macro things I'm looking for and I think that can come about just through coordination. Gary Gendler wanted to make everything a security u chairman Atkins has said wait a second most of these things are not. So I'm hoping that that solves some of our issues. What do you think about that? I think you're right as well. Um, you never want to sit here and say everything looks good, but it kind of does, right? So, um, I mean, how many meetings I've gone into and I was just like, yeah, everything's fine. But obviously, it's, you know, you have to have some stuff on the other side sometimes. It kind of does like regulation, political backdrop, the the the the flywheel is like it's like it's going like the it's it's only macro risk and some of that silliness, but presumably once we get closer to PAL leaving the Fed, even the macro risk goes away cuz I mean by definition there's going to be some politicization of the process. Um the next guy's going to be more doubbish than pal. like it's fairly obvious it's going to be the outcome. Um and so the logic behind things like Bitcoin and then that will lift all boats. Yeah. Becomes even stronger. So it's Yeah, it's really one of those ones you really want to be buying dips through this window of time, I think. Um and once you get into 2026, things become clearer on that macro risk point and then you kind of off to the races, I think. Yeah. Yeah, to your point, I was invited down to the uh Fed payments innovation conference last week and I sat next to Governor Waller over lunch and like I'm not going to kid you, he's as bullish as you are. Yeah, he's particularly around stable coins and you know he told me you know I saw stable coins four years ago no one would listen to me you know I'm here to disrupt you know I'm here to innovate u so it seems like this entire government is focused on innovating and just growing the GDP so I think you're right you know once we have a successor to Powell I can't see a situation where they're not incredibly pro crypto and also um you know you're right the macro a lot of the macro challenges come off the table. I think that's right as well. Um we just need to navigate probably through the next couple of months. Yeah. Get through the December Fed either way and then um yeah, 2026 looks pretty exciting, I think. I love it. Wow. I've really appreciated your your your thoughts, Jeff. What else are you focusing on that I haven't asked you? Um let's see. What else have we got? So, I suppose we should talk a bit about the DeFi winners and where that's going to go a little bit more. a little bit more detail. So, this was a note I literally put out today on the $2 trillion um real world asset market cap idea. Um I think DeFi is going to be uh super disruptive. Um so it creates winners and losers, quite a few losers in in Tradfire, I suspect. Um you'll get those get ahead of it, which hopefully our bank standard chart is trying to get ahead. So you'll have some winners and losers in that space. Um you'll then have um if you fast forward to AI agents as well which will be 2026 I can well imagine a um a broader disruption being unveiled here which is when there's enough liquidity on chain plus we have AI agents individuals like ours or or corporates can become extremely capital efficient so you know every time I get paid today if I want to do investments mostly I need to be proactive but my AI agent can do that for me next year and I can start getting intraday yield on tokenized money market funds with black rockck right so that sort of stuff is just going to be unleashed um and so I think for the first time it creates interest in the DeFi protocols now mostly interest in Bitcoin and the layer ones in in um uh digital asset investment for the past number of years right but I think this for for the first time lets value trickle down to the protocols. Um, so I particularly like Ave uh on the back of that trickle down effect. Like if you have if you're going to 50x the amount of real world assets on chain to make up a number well actually my prediction is almost 50x um then you know that's all going to go into onchain lending protocols like are right so and so it becomes a multiple of and so I think that's where people now need to go in 2026. So rather than thinking about um in the previous cycle we had an altcoin cycle this time it's an altcoin pick the winners cycle I'd say right so Bitcoin still do well ETH does fine given it gets most of this DeFi story but then you go down the market cap table to you know numbers 10 to 20 and you start looking in there and you find a you find unis swap if they can pass they can pass through um profits etc. So I think investors need to kind of differentiate a little bit more this time rather than all boats rising and it's probably the largest protocols that do well. Yeah. Uh fundamentals matter. I mean those are some great protocols you're talking about. You touched on AI agents uh which I think are going to be a massive theme and what people don't realize is that the foundation the infas being set. Recently we saw a protocol um release called something called X42 that allows micro payments between agents which I think is going to be another um really really interesting piece. Um we've also talked in the past about things like Sam Alman's World Coin that's going to help people navigate that. How do you see this agentic economy playing out in the crypto space? The interesting thing um I mean my my cynical crypto hat is always to say that once AI does something that's useful they're going to need a bank account and that's crypto so which I think is where stable coins come in right so but obviously there are crossovers and you mentioned worldcoin um I think what they're doing there around proof of human is is super interesting um where we're going to circle to at some stage needing um zero knowledge proof of individuals or zero knowledge proof of corporates and this is kind of the first part of that or the first half of that if you like the proof of human or humanity um and so I suspect you'll have a couple of winners in that space and that will again unlock the next piece here which is once you have proof of individual um in zero knowledge space then individuals and corporates become whitelisted and you then step across any KYC AML problems that have otherwise hurt the industry so far right so Um, and then once that accelerates, again, DeFi is is is is is the big winner. So, I think we're very close to that. I love it, Jeff. Um, really appreciate your thoughts today. Any final thoughts before we end the pod? I think that's it for me today, Chris, and thanks for having me. Um, and I guess I'd just say to investors out there, like averaging in is always a good strategy when you get volatile markets like we have today, right? So, if we're going to be at 500k Bitcoin end of 2028, 3 years from now, um, keep buying those dips and and keep listening in. Buy the dip, everyone. Amen. Thank you, Jeff. Really, really appreciated your comments today. Um, I love what you're doing and keep up the good work, sir. Fabulous. Thanks, Chris. Don't forget to sign up for a free portfolio review with one of our endorsed investment partners at wealthon.comfree. With markets hitting all-time highs, now is a great time to stress test your strategy and be prepared for what comes next. Thank you all for watching. We'll see you again next time. [Music]