150亿美元加密资产管理机构解释 Bitcoin 为何被低估（Matt Hougan）

Absolute pleasure to have you here. How are you?

Hey, pleasure is mine. Thanks for having me. I’m really excited for this.

I’m so glad it wasn’t me messing up on the tech side.

Dude, I’m at the new setup. I just moved to New York, so I’ve got the new setup. It’s actually the first time doing an interview on the new desk and new PC. My Discord is a little bit scuffed, but Luke gets to live to see another day with his job there.

Welcome, man. I’m excited to have you on. I’m excited to talk to you, and I think right now is a particularly exciting time in crypto to do this. Start with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do with Bitwise, and then we can get into some fun stuff.

Yeah, I love it. I’m really excited for this. I’ve been looking forward to it all week.

I’m Matt Hougan, the chief investment officer at Bitwise. I look after our investment strategies across ETFs, SMAs, private funds, and active strategies. Bitwise is a global crypto asset manager. We manage about $15 billion if you include our staking group.

That includes everything from some of the largest Bitcoin, ETH, and Solana ETFs to index ETFs that combine those assets. I know you were talking about meme exposure earlier on stream. We have the only NFT index fund in the world and the only DeFi index fund.

The unique thing for the audience is that what I do all day is talk to institutional investors about crypto. Earlier this morning, I was speaking to an investment bank in the Middle East about crypto. I talked to a consultant that manages $300 billion about crypto, and I talked to advisers about crypto.

If you want a lens on what TradFi institutions are thinking about this space and where TradFi and CT cross, that’s me.

This is why we brought you here today, Matt. That is absolutely music to my ears. I do want to cover some of the meme stuff and some of the on-chain stuff, but I think right now, how I’ve spent the last couple of weeks and what we’ve talked about on this stream is the Bitcoin trade and the potential depth of the four-year cycle.

Is it a four-year cycle? Was it OG selling? What exactly is happening? When are we going to catch up to gold and silver? Commodities are going crazy.

Right now, if you froze this moment in time, it’s a pretty good day to be a crypto trader. Could you set the stage a little bit on what you think is happening right now, macro crypto- and Bitcoin-wise—and no pun intended? Is this a move to fade, or do you think we’re really starting to gas things here?

I think it’s a move to buy. If you’re talking about the next year, I think there’s a question about whether we get above $100,000. I think there’s some Bitcoin for sale around the $100,000 mark. So, in the next week, I don’t know. That’s not to say it won’t happen; I just don’t know.

What I do know is that the things driving this rally—which I think is being driven on the Bitcoin side, not the meme side, primarily by institutional capital—are going to keep happening.

A strange thing happened in Q4. I spent half my life on crypto Twitter and half my life speaking to institutions. On crypto Twitter, there was extreme depression, as you know: fear and greed at 18, people panicking that this would never get back on its feet.

I would leave that space and go to these meetings, and institutional capital had been strictly bullish. I think a lot of what you’re seeing is institutions starting the new year and making new allocations. I think that’s pushing it up.

Short-term, I’m uncertain—tomorrow, the next day—but I think we’re on our way to new all-time highs, certainly in the first half of the year, maybe early. I’d be a buyer at these levels, and certainly a buyer on any weakness. Not investment advice, just my own personal view.

You know what’s funny about the CT separation? That is 100% the vibe. I think sentiment is probably about as low as we’ve seen since I’ve been on the app, even as the market is moving up.

It was relatively similar before, too. In hindsight, you could point a lot of that back to the buy flows not really coming from crypto Twitter either. There were a lot of institutional funds. This little DAT disaster moment in CT was largely, at least from what I understand, a nonfactor in the move up as well.

Definitely. I think it was primarily a nonfactor. It was a little bit depressed, right? We turned the page, turned the calendar year, and people were no longer worried about the October 10 liquidation event. They thought that was in the clear.

They relaxed, but mostly I think it’s institutional capital. That’s just a persistent trickle. It’s not going to slow down; it’s going to accelerate. That’s going to be a story for 5 to 10 years, is my best guess.

When you think about the institutional side, one thing they’ve definitely been buying is metals—gold and silver. You’re older than I am, and you’ve been paying attention to markets for a lot longer than I have. We were just looking at the silver chart.

What’s happening right now? Can you explain the takeaway from what’s happening with gold and silver?

Let me start with gold, because I think it paints a picture for Bitcoin. Silver is the translation: it’s altcoin season in metals.

We had the king rally in Bitcoin, and now people are moving down the metals. Eventually, they’ll get to rhodium and shit, right? Silver is, I don’t know, Solana to Bitcoin’s gold.

What’s happening in gold is really simple. The gold market changed in 2022. That was when Russia invaded Ukraine and the U.S. seized Russia’s assets. Central banks around the world panicked, and you saw purchases by central banks go from 400 tons to 1,000 tons. They grew 150%.

That was the only change in the gold market: central-bank buying. But the important thing for Bitcoin people to recognize was that the price of gold went up 2% in 2022.

In 2023, central banks kept their buying at the same level—another 1,000 tons. So it was higher than 2021 but equal to 2022. The price of gold went up 10%.

In 2024, they kept it again at 1,000 tons, and the price of gold went up 27%. They kept it again in 2025, and the price went up 67%.

That’s the same thing that’s happening in Bitcoin. The ETFs launched in January, bought more than 100% of the supply, and the price went up. In 2025, they bought more than 100% of the supply, and the price went up, then eventually went down.

What gold tells you is that the sellers run out of ammo. That’s when the price goes parabolic. I do think gold has shown us what’s going to happen. It’s just that ETFs are behind central banks.

There’s been more selling than many people expected, but we’re going to get to that parabolic blow-off move if this buy-side demand continues.

I’ve never heard it framed like that. Is the gold move just the buying pressure alone, or how much of it is retail saying, “They’re actually not going to stop. We can pile in at the same time”?

I think that’s helped a little bit, but the best way to measure the flow is through ETF flows or jewelry purchases, which is how you measure retail demand in the Global South. Those have been okay, but not crazy.

I think retail has pumped silver. Retail went altcoin on gold. They missed the gold move until the very end, then rotated out into riskier assets like silver. The silver move is absolutely crazy. Now it’s a $4 trillion asset, which is nuts.

Mostly, gold was just central banks. Retail is driving this altcoin—alt-metal, I should say—boom.

Do you know how Arthur Hayes talks about this Russia moment in 2022 as well? Why did those flows not come to Bitcoin? Was it just too early? Gold is more familiar. Could you put more money into it? Bitcoin isn’t big enough for the size. How does that work?

It’s not big enough, and central bankers don’t want to lose their jobs. It’s still a little crazy.

I like that take. Why would you risk your job? You’re an employee, right? Why would you risk your job for something that is risky when you know you can be right and make money with a guarantee?

Yeah, that is exactly correct. They’ve done it before, and Bitcoin was not that big a market.

I met with a central bank this week. They were still asking pretty fundamental questions about Bitcoin. It may be hard for Crypto Twitter to know how slowly institutions move.

I’ll tell you a scary fact: our average client invests after 8 meetings with us.

And they meet with you on a quarterly basis?

Yeah.

That’s brutal for business.

But then they allocate in size. For a central bank, they might meet with us every year. That’s just the speed. They don’t want to lose their jobs, and they’re very slow, but they’re going to get there.

I think we’ll see more sovereign purchases this year. Last year, I think a few more came in.

What is your average client size?

In terms of what they invest with us?

Yeah.

It really ranges. We have clients that are financial advisers managing about $20 million and have 2% in crypto, so that’s not much.

Then we work with platforms that manage $50 billion to $100 billion and have multiple millions with us.

What happened when you met with the central bank? You just kind of dropped that casually.

Yeah, it was fun. They came into our office. Let’s see.

They went to San Francisco—that’s the headquarters.

Okay. We’re also in New York with you now and in London. They had big questions around Bitcoin and big questions around stablecoins. Those were their two areas of focus.

Around Bitcoin, the questions people asked about Bitcoin in 2019 are the questions that they’re asking. Why does it have any value? Isn’t it just a Ponzi scheme? Isn’t it the last person in?

You have to go back to breaking that classic FUD. That’s the stage they’re at, but there are good answers. I think we made progress, but it’s not like they’re going to buy tomorrow. Maybe they’ll buy in 2030.

Can you just, for the sake of conversation, give me your quickest, best “why you should allocate capital to Bitcoin” pitch?

Well, it depends what you want. I could give you a pitch on why Bitcoin has value. I could give you a pitch on why it helps your portfolio. I could give you a pitch on why it’s going to $1 million.

Why it’s going to $1 million is the one I would prefer.

All right. Let me give you my pitch on why it has value, because that speaks to $1 million.

The big criticism institutions have is that this thing doesn’t produce cash flow. It’s a pet rock. How is it worth $2 trillion? How is it worth $100,000 a coin?

What I tell them is that Bitcoin offers a service. The service is that you can store wealth without a government or a bank, in a digital format. The more people who want that service, the more valuable it is.

We’re used to services having value, right? Microsoft offers a service. The difference between Microsoft and Bitcoin is that you pay Microsoft a subscription for its service. You can’t pay Bitcoin a subscription. If you want this service—storing wealth in a digital format without a government or bank—the only way to get it is to buy Bitcoin. If you do, you get the service.

The reason the price has gone from $1 to $100,000 is because at $1, no one wanted that service. No institution, no financial adviser—no one wanted that service. Now Harvard wants that service, Stanley Druckenmiller wants that service, and the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund wants that service.

The more people who want the service, when there’s a fixed supply, the price goes up. The reason it’s going to $1 million is because 95% of all the Bitcoin that will ever exist is already owned by someone, and 95% of the money in the world has no exposure to Bitcoin. Those numbers have to even out, right? There’s just so much money that has to come into the market.

I think eventually the price goes up. I think it goes above $1 million eventually. Look, it’s better than gold on almost every metric.

I’ll tell you the one thing that really resonated with the central bank. Sorry to go on and on.

Please.

The fact that you can custody Bitcoin directly. We asked them where they kept their gold, and the answer was in London and in the US. That’s great until it’s not.

A little gold history: In 1971, the US went off the gold standard. France sent a warship to New York to pick up its gold. Then the warship went back, and they blocked all their railways and had a special train. It cost a huge amount of money and took 2 or 3 months.

With Bitcoin, they could just push a button and have it. We call that self-custody, and we think of it as the basics of Bitcoin. But to the central bank, it was like, “Whoa, that’s actually better than gold.”

So I do think eventually it gets to be bigger than gold. It’s just a matter of time.

We were watching—I’ve been spending a lot of time overlaying the gold chart from 1971 to 1980, which is the gold standard. When I was newly learning about this, Nixon basically just bitched at Arthur Burns and was like, “You’re going to lower interest rates.”

There’s maybe a similar convergence happening right now between Trump and Jay Powell, or Trump and whoever is willing to do that at the end, in May 2026.

To close the loop, your explanation was incredible. I like the idea that 95% of Bitcoin will never be sold and 95% of money doesn’t have exposure to Bitcoin. I was like, “Yeah, clip that.”

To close the loop on the Russia 2022 moment, what is it going to take for Bitcoin not to be a career risk?

We’ve seen it happen. That’s the good news. We’ve seen it happen.

If you think of central banks as the most institutional, buttoned-up traditional institutions, you can walk backwards from that to insurance companies, university endowments, 401(k) providers, private family offices, and financial advisers.

When I started at Bitwise 8 years ago, financial advisers wouldn’t touch crypto because of career risk. What I’ve seen now is Morgan Stanley, the largest wirehouse, which controls $10 trillion, launching its own Bitcoin ETF.

I can’t—I almost want to say you would get laughed out of the room at Morgan Stanley to suggest that 8 years ago, but you wouldn’t have gotten in the room to get laughed out of it. They just wouldn’t touch Bitcoin with a 10-foot pole.

And so I’ve seen this career risk happen. The other thing to say—something that’s obvious and dumb—is that young people get older, right?

The people at the wirehouses who are greenlighting Bitcoin ETFs now were 27-year-old junior associates in 2017, when Bitcoin popped on their radar. It’s just that now they’re 35 and MDs, and they have more power.

The same thing is going to happen in central banks. It’s literally just a matter of time.

I think that last thing you just said is going to get overlooked, but I think this has been one of my theses for why on-chain adoption will happen. It’s just kids growing up who are 18, 19, or 20, and who had a Phantom wallet for the first time in 2021. They’re 25 now, and they’re going to be 30 in a couple of years.

Now they have money, a salary, and a job. As you messaged me after the Bankless podcast, these things are not foreign to them. Making money on the internet, investing in a memecoin, Dogecoin—these things are not foreign. People just have to age into power. I think that was a really good take.

Um—

Crypto has the best demographics in the world, but it’s dismissed as degen crazies. These are just young people who grew up doing this natively. Of course they’re going to do it as they get older and wealthier. It’s a huge tailwind. I think it’s totally underrated.

One of the things that’s still a little opaque and unclear as to how this played out exactly is the death or the resurgence of the 4-year cycle, and then this concept of the OG whale—the mythical Bitcoin whale that’s just selling millions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars.

Can you speak a little bit about this concept of the 4-year cycle and what exactly is happening? How is this playing out?

Yeah, I think the 4-year cycle is dead. The reasons it existed previously no longer exist. I think there were 3.

One was the Bitcoin halving, which of course still exists, but is half as important every time. We’re producing 164,000 Bitcoin a year. That’s not that much Bitcoin. If we cut it in half, it’s 80,000. That’s like 1 or 2 months of ETF buying. It’s just no longer the big dog.

The second one is interest rates, which spiked in 2018 and spiked in 2022. There wasn’t a 4-year cycle in 2014; it was the first time it would happen. It really repeated in 2018 and 2022, and I think the interest-rate cycles were a huge factor.

The third was blowups. We had a huge bull run to 2021. The market got frothy, and FTX blew up. We had a huge bull run in 2017. The market got frothy, we got ICOs, and they blew up.

When I look at the market today, the halving is not as important anymore. Interest rates are going down, not up. Blowup risk is so much lower because we didn’t have the frothy buildup, and because regulation has made things like custody, trading, and ETFs boring.

So I just don’t see why it would happen. Conversely, we have this regulatory tailwind that’s a 10-year force. We have institutional capital moving in. That’s a 10-year force. I think 2026 prints an up year.

All that said, OG whales definitely contributed to selling in 2025.

How significant was that?

They’re not selling out. That’s the thing. I think they were just trimming because they made a lot of money, and $100,000 is a big round number. They didn’t want to suffer again through a 4-year cycle.

From our perspective, the people we talk to aren’t exiting the market. They were just trimming slightly. So I don’t think it goes on forever. Again, I think there’s probably somewhat more for sale at $100,000, but I don’t think it’s people leaving the market.

I think of it more as going from 100% to 90%.

Some aggressive trimming. Huh.

Yeah. For what it’s worth, a lot of it is through option overwriting. There’s this meme about it not appearing in the data—you can’t see these OG wallets moving. That’s because many of them aren’t selling. They’re just selling calls, which is the same thing. They give away the upside to capture some income.

That’s where a lot of that selling is taking place. That’s still happening. But I think we’re closer to the end than the beginning.

Thank you for some clarity on that. I guess, to talk about what’s hot right now, I feel crypto separating into 2 categories. I’ve been throwing around the word “ideology coins,” which could include Bitcoin, memes, and probably XMR—Monero, Zcash, privacy, things like this.

Then there’s the other side of the equation, which is fundamental cash flows—revenue, like traditional companies on-chain—which are kind of a disaster as a category right now. The equity-token problem—we may come to that second. What do you think about the other side, and specifically these privacy tokens? What’s happening with Monero right now? It’s the best-performing token by a mile. What happened, and what is happening with Zcash? It feels like there’s some institutional hype. The Winklevoss twins are in. How do you feel about that side of crypto right now?

Yeah, Zcash is definitely buzzy. Monero is performing extremely well. Even though I don’t hear the buzz as much about Monero, I think it’s because if you stack-rank the privacy coins, it would be on the far end, and therefore the people I speak with aren’t comfortable going that far.

Yeah. Yeah.

But that’s definitely a meta that’s in the market, and you mentioned it earlier on the stream. The thing about it is, it’s so small.

It’s not—what is it?—$25 billion? Like, what are we talking about? Dogecoin is $25 billion.

Exactly. It’s chump change. Only a little bit of money moving into that makes that a $100 billion market.

I think that’s going to exist. Another way to think about it is that as institutions and traditional finance, and people like me, stretch crypto more into the regulated realm, the space for privacy is actually bigger, right? Before TradFi, they were not that far apart. Now privacy is more attractive because there are always going to be people who want that, and they’re no longer feeling comfortable in the BTC side of the world or the stablecoin side of the world. That makes it more attractive as well.

I think it’s a sustained meta for the year.

As a closing take on that, I want to read you a tweet from goodalexander. It sort of relates to the institutional Bitcoin side, and maybe the macro-privacy side. He tweeted this on January 5:

“The next wave of buyers of crypto won’t be typical retail, in my opinion. It will be comprised of high-net-worth folks who will likely see the collapse of Western democracies due to demographics and intellectual and capital flight. They also can’t custody gold and silver like a nation-state.”

You talked about that a little bit. How do you feel about that?

Yeah, I agree with that. I’ll translate that into the way I tell my institutional investors, who would panic at the word “collapse of Western nations.” They’re 100% exposed to fiat.

People talk about diversifying your portfolio, right? Don’t just own stocks. Own stocks and bonds and crypto and commodities, whatever. Don’t just own 1 stock. Own a bunch of stocks.

If you’re wealthy, almost the biggest risk to your wealth is that you’re 100% exposed to the US dollar and the fiat system. Does that mean you need to be 100% BTC or 100% Zcash? No. But it means if you’re at zero, you’re leaving open a big flank, right?

The world is crazier than it’s ever been. There’s a politicized Fed. There are reasons to believe that doesn’t end particularly well. So whether they’re worried about a full-on collapse and buying the financial equivalent of a seafront place in New Zealand with a farm, they need some exposure to this just in case.

That’s been a story forever. People used to have Swiss bank gold accounts and stuff in the ’70s. That was a big thing. Now it’s Bitcoin, and they can self-sovereignly hold it, and no one can take it from them. It’s amazing.

This is a powerful narrative: You don’t even have to believe in it, but you’re too fucking rich not to have some coverage.

That’s right. Yeah. It’s the equivalent of someone—a foreign person—buying a villa in London. It’s the financial equivalent of that.

You need something because you’re 100% exposed to fiat, and no one wants to have all their eggs in just 1 basket, particularly when that basket looks increasingly crazy, overextended, and late-cycle. Why not have something else in this other bucket? Even if it doesn’t go up—which I think it will—it’s still good insurance.

One thing that’s particularly interesting about you guys at Bitwise, which you covered at the beginning, is that you’re not just Bitcoin. There are DeFi indexes, NFTs, and a little bit of memes. I think you guys have the Pudgy Penguins PFP, if I’m not wrong.

We love Pudgies.

There’s a video of you talking about Farcaster. You guys love a lot of the more micro side of crypto, which I think, especially with DeFi and these revenue-generating tokens, is in a bit of a weird place.

I may be wrong about this, but I think on a micro scale, tokens are equity overhang. You have Hyperliquid buying back 100%. Then you have Aave, with the Aave Labs foundation drama, buying back 0%. There’s a little bit of, “I’m not sure if I want to invest in these tokens long term.” What do you think about the state of DeFi and, maybe, internet capital markets on-chain?

I’m excited about it, but the thing you point to is how messed up the token space is, which is extraordinarily true. I see it as upside because I don’t think it can get worse, but the Aave situation speaks to some of the inherent risks.

It’s worth noting that the reason it’s that way is that the regulation under Gensler was so harsh that you had to create a useless token in order to launch it. So they launched governance tokens.

I’m an optimistic guy. My view is that we’re going to see token rights improve dramatically. Maybe UNI is a step in that direction; maybe it’s not. People can talk about that. But I think that’s the direction of travel.

The question from an investor perspective is: Does that create a new generation of protocols? I think DeFi protocols can be great investments with the right token economic structure. The question we’re going to see is: Do the existing tokens move in that direction? Are they replaced by new tokens? Or do equity holders steal all that value?

One of the reasons you said it’s confused is because it’s confused. We don’t know, and who knows how that all turns out? My guess is it’s going to turn out better, and DeFi will end up looking good, but I could see it with a whole new generation—like HYPE—coming in, which really won in part because of its clarity on tokenomics, right? That was one of the reasons it was such a winner.

I hate to say the word “pump.fun,” but I think Pump.fun’s fees are $1.6 million a day right now, and they’re committed to it. I think it traded at a weird premium because, at any moment, Elon could just wake up and stop buying it back, and token holders can’t do anything. I think that doesn’t help.

Institutional—I mean, crypto-native professional investors—like Pump.fun.

Yeah.

It’s a business. It’s a business with sustained revenue, real distribution, and real utility. I’m a fan. I think it’s a real thing. So I do think it’s pointing the way.

I agree there’s some unfortunate lack of clarity, but it’s directionally right.

What’s the institutional appetite for crypto that’s not Bitcoin?

It’s pretty good for stablecoin- and tokenization-related themes. Institutions love that. They can understand it. It’s skeuomorphic. It fits their view.

For Solana, I think it’s good. For ETH, it’s pretty good. As you get beyond that, their attention drifts off.

Yeah. A lot of steps to get you there, right? To get you to Uniswap, it’s a lot of steps.

Yeah.

We’re like, “Let me tell you how Chainlink works.” It’s like, “Oh, my God.”

You guys just announced a Chainlink ETF today, right?

We did launch a Chainlink ETF. I’m a big fan of Chainlink. I think it’s on the Mount Rushmore of crypto assets, but it’s complex. It’s a complex story, right? It’s not a simple protocol.

It’s like, it’s an oracle, and there’s this thing. Yeah, it’s like—

Yeah. But in the early days, you could only do Bitcoin. Now we can do Bitcoin, ETH, and SOL, and I think eventually you’ll be able to do a few more. But that’s where it stands right now.

Yeah, makes sense. Things are in a little bit of a weird place on the on-chain side, but I like your take, which is that it can’t get worse, so you could assume that we can only go up from here.

I want to get your take on where we are with this market-structure bill. I think some headline came out while I was live. I didn’t really pay attention, but Coinbase doesn’t want to back it. I don’t entirely know what’s going on there, but how impactful is this, and what are the implications of it passing or not passing as it stands?

It’s hugely impactful. The way to think of it is that the pro-regulatory tilt we’ve taken in the last year—so, crypto regulation in the US has gotten much better—is built on a foundation of sand, because right now that’s governed by the SEC, and the SEC can change with a new administration.

So we could have Gensler back in 4 years, right? I mean, it’s not going to happen, but we could.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you have a law in Congress, it’s a concrete foundation, and you can build bigger buildings on concrete than you can build in sand. The CLARITY Act, as it stands, is not perfect. You’re not going to get perfect from a crypto perspective, but you’re not going to get perfect through this Congress.

I think it’s close to pretty good. I think if it passes, it’s new all-time highs for ETH, for Solana, et cetera. If it doesn’t pass, I think it could be a meaningful setback. I think Bitcoin would do well. I actually think privacy would do well, but I think the rest of it would face a setback. It’s sort of like Groundhog Day, like the groundhog seeing its shadow if it doesn’t pass.

My understanding of it is it basically sets the groundwork for how, as a protocol, you could be seen as decentralized and get away from being an unregistered security with the SEC.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

That’s exactly right. It also covers how stablecoin yield flows, or doesn’t flow, to holders. It covers the right to self-custody and the right to peer-to-peer transactions, which is good. It covers how DeFi protocols work, but basically now it’s just unclear, and firms have to guess.

That suppresses investment in the space pretty substantially, and it makes for a very uncomfortable environment where it can be good or bad on any given day.

It does nothing for equity token holders, right?

Correct. I couldn’t find that anywhere. I don’t think there’s any clarity. It sort of creates the possibility for there to be equity tokens, which is an important step, but then there will be effort there.

But look, I want to go back to the DeFi point. Prior to something like the Clarity Act, there was no way to legally have token economic rights. I mean, that’s why UNI was just a governance token: They didn’t want to go to jail.

Now, in a better regulatory environment, you saw that they are more comfortable with the fee switch. You would see that kind of thing more, and you would see more positive developments. I do think the chair of the SEC wants there to be equity tokens.

You know, he was on the Token Alliance, which was a lobbying group for crypto tokens specifically, prior to joining the SEC. That was one of his board jobs. How likely do you think it is that this passes?

Polymarket has it at what, like 54%? I think it’s a little bit better than that because I haven’t heard either side cry.

What we saw in Q4, the last time this came up, is the crypto people said, “This is a nonstarter,” and the anti-crypto people said, “This is a nonstarter.” What we’ve heard this time is everyone saying, “This is not perfect,” which tells me that this is probably the one that will go through.

So maybe I’m at 65%. The market is probably at 54%.

Okay, a little delta there.

There you go.

So I guess, for some forward-looking stuff, how significant do you think Trump basically persecuting Powell because he won’t lower interest rates is, and saying the Fed listens to what the administration wants or else you are in danger and nothing’s off the table? What does this mean for Bitcoin?

Yeah, it’s good for Bitcoin. It’s always good for Bitcoin when the existing world looks crazier than Bitcoin, and this is an example of the existing world looking just crazy.

I mean, a politicized Fed is not a good thing. The economy is running pretty hot, right? So aggressively lowering interest rates, I think, raises the risk of inflation. I don’t think it’s quite a burn scenario because there are some deflationary forces at work with the AI boom and such, but I think it’s that kind of risk.

A political prosecution of the Fed is a risk. If Hassett—there are 2 key nominees, Hassett and Warsh—Hassett is by far more dovish, meaning he’s more likely to cut rates and do QE. If you want a tell, when we figure out which Kevin gets appointed as the new Fed chair, if it’s Hassett, that’s very bullish. If it’s Warsh, that’s more neutral.

I don’t think either of them is negative, but I think Hassett is maybe more bullish for inflation in the future.

You know, some of the irony of how this Fed-president relationship works, as I’m learning about it in the last couple of days, is yes, the Fed is becoming politicized with what Trump is doing, but he’s appointing—and has been openly saying—who I appoint is going to cut interest rates.

There’s deep-rooted irony in that. How significant is it? I mean, I guess they’re longer sometimes, right? Trump appointed Powell in 2017, right? So there’s some irony there, which is like, okay, yes, they’re independent, but you also hand-select them.

That’s totally true, and it’s always been political. I’ve been reading a book about the ’20s. There was certainly a lot of political interference with the Fed back then.

Jesus.

It’s always been political. This is just more, in Trump style, in-your-face and direct, as opposed to behind the scenes. But yeah, same story on repeat.

The Roaring ’20s. Are we repeating it?

I think there are a lot of similarities. Yeah, there are a lot of similarities.

Have some Bitcoin for your exit liquidity in case the crash comes. But hopefully, we’re still early in that process. Hopefully, it’s 2026 and not—

Yeah, there you go. Right. Not ’29.

Okay, I’ve got a couple more for you, just because you’re on a heater, and I’ll let you go pretty soon. First of all, what does the world look like at $1 million BTC?

What does the world look like? I think it looks better in the following ways. I think, actually, it will help constrain central banks from overly abusing their currency. I think that’s a hopeful note. If Bitcoin becomes really important, it’s like a warning signal to people running fiat currencies that they’re screwing up and need to get on track. So I’m hopeful of that.

At that level, a lot of the world’s millionaires are crypto. Actually, a meaningful, significant percentage of all the people with, let’s say, $10 million will be Bitcoin holders.

Wow.

If you think about that, what does that mean? That’s good for DeFi. That’s good for speculative activity. That’s good for everything crypto. That’s good for memes.

Imagine a world where crypto wealth is normal and dominant. Just like when the oil boom happened, oil people being wealthy influenced culture. When the tech boom happened, tech people being wealthy influenced culture and investments.

At $1 million, crypto is a big center of the world’s wealth, and I think that has a lot of downstream effects on culture, investments, strategy, et cetera.

That is very well articulated, actually. It doesn’t have to be this complicated, right? It’s like that. I’ve never thought about it like that. But yeah, CryptoPunks probably will be worth $10 million too in that world.

Totally. Yeah. Punks are a derivative of crypto wealth, for sure.

You have a million people with a million dollars of crypto. They’re going to want their own punk. All those things that are scarce but loved by this community increase in value as the wealth of this community goes up.

I do think it’s really that simple. Sometimes it’s that simple.

What do you think about the AI bubble and maybe this pending narrative that AI is a national security risk? The U.S.-China arms race to AGI, or superpower intelligence—and Trump is just, you can’t not run it hot in this environment.

Yeah, I think we’re going to run it hot, and then there’ll be a bubble burst and it’ll pull back. I think it has every single signal of that. It’s a huge, important technology. There’s a massive infrastructure scarcity that’s going to turn into a glut. There are just enormous amounts of capital.

Unless we create AI gods in the next 3 years, we’re going to enter a bubble phase and burst. But I do think we have no choice but to run it like that. I think the bubble is building. I don’t think we’re at the peak, but I do think eventually it’ll burst, just because they always do. All these booms, they always have a big pullback. They always do.

The internet transformed the world, and there was a huge bust from 2000 to 2002. I think we’ll probably see that again. I say that as a huge fan of AI. I sit on the board of an AI investing company. I’m into it, but eventually I think the bubble—

What do you think?

I feel like your take is probably correct. As long as the big man, the big orange man, is in office, you just have to be a bull. Until something structurally changes, you have to be a bull.

It makes me feel, when you see what is seemingly step-function growth with Claude Code and what is happening right now, like, yeah, maybe it can probably go higher for longer. Then Marc Andreessen’s on a podcast saying, “Yeah, AI is bigger than the internet,” and you’re like, okay, maybe this thing can go higher for longer.

You don’t hear much talk about the AI bubble on Twitter post-Claude Code, and I’m seeing a little bit about AI safety for the first time in 2 years.

That is a very good point. Yeah, I do think Claude Code broke people, and I think your point—

There’s this old saying on Wall Street, “Don’t fight the Fed,” which means if the Fed is raising rates, don’t own the market.

If they're cutting rates, buy it in spades. Tom Lee came out with a post saying, “Don't fight DC.” I think you're right: if he has his finger on the scale, that literally pushes the scale in one direction. You can protest all you want. You can think it's a bubble—which eventually I think it will be—but right now I think the bull market keeps going for a while.

I mean, Trump's watching the 15-minute chart, right? He's on the podium and he's like, “There's good news. The market should be higher. Why is the market not higher?” I mean, it's hard to fade that.

Okay, here's my final 2 for you. Number 1: can you give us the Pudgy Penguins shill? You guys love the penguins. What is the Pudgy Penguins shill, and maybe the broader crypto-cultural thesis?

They're cute. That's it. That's all you need to know.

Look, I'm not as into the Pudgy community as Hunter, the CEO, and Teddy, our president. But the thing about Pudgies that's unique is it's a really good culture. It's a culture that appeals to a lot of people.

We talk about NFTs in particular having culture, but they're distinct. The punk culture is very different from the ape culture, which is very different from the Pudgy culture, which is very different from the Milady culture. And the Pudgy culture is just actually a nice culture.

I could talk about how they're using the IP and stuff like that, but I don't think that's it. I think that it's a nice culture. Attention is investment today, and that's a place where people feel really good.

There are a few other areas. I thought Nouns was a great culture.

Nice pull there. Yeah.

Yeah. But Pudgy has that sort of positive aspect that I associate with it, and that's one of the reasons. Plus, they're cute.

I'll tell you what: when 1 out of 10 millionaires are from Bitcoin, it probably is going to age pretty well.

Okay, here's my final question for you, Matt, and I've had a lot of fun. As things accelerate—as AI accelerates, as degeneracy accelerates, as P/E ratios get crazier—there's this framing that gets thrown around, which is that if you're young, you have a finite period of time. It's like the GCR, Degen Spartan idea: you have a couple of years after college to hyper-gamble yourself into elite status, or your wage is cut for the rest of your life.

I think it could be framed more as: you have a finite period of time to make a certain amount of money, which is a hot $10 million, $15 million, whatever—plus millions of dollars. If you miss it in that window, then you are sort of stuck in the permanent underclass.

So my question for you, really for me and for a lot of people who listen to the stream and skew younger, is: what is your advice on how to play the next decade and this world that we're quickly evolving into?

Yeah. Oh, wow. That's a big question.

I know. Sorry.

Yeah. I mean, out of college, my first job was as a minor league baseball mascot, so maybe I'm not the right grind-it-early kind of guy.

Let's see. What is my advice? I think 2 pretty simple things. One is your biggest assets are not your financial assets. It's you. And 2, find something that feels inevitable but people are skeptical of.

Speaking from my own career, it's sort of had 3 phases. One was biotech, 2 was ETFs, and now it's crypto. In each case, it felt like an inevitable technology that people were skeptical of.

And that's where alpha is. All alpha is behavioral, and people who are older tend to be skeptical of new things. They're skeptical of what you're doing as the future of media, which I think it is. So find those things and lean into those things, because that's where the alpha and exponential growth is, from my perspective.

That was beautiful. Matt, it was an absolute pleasure, man. I really appreciate you coming on. We don't often get to do an interview like this, but I think this moment is particularly important right now. Hopefully, maybe we get to bring you back for a part 2.

But dude, you're fighting a good fight. And by the way, your ability to come on this stream and articulate what's happening the way that you do, and then go talk to a $20 billion client and get him to swap our bags, is pretty remarkable.

So we are grateful for what you are doing on both fronts of crypto for us. I'm here for it. One team, one dream.

Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

One dream. Matt, it's a pleasure. Have a good one.