YouSaid · the spoken record

David Lawan

lines on the record: 81
first: 2026-03-05
most recent: 2026-03-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Same on X, Matt underscore Hogan. It's got the U in it H-O-U-G-A-N. No, I don't know why it's there. You can also find me on bitwise investments. I write a weekly memo called The CIO memo. You can look it up and subscribe.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. I love it. Yeah, I tend to say this is probably the lowest price, the highest price has been with the most number of people upset, you know, like this is it's such a weird dynamic going on now if you just zoom out a little bit, but I think Michael, that's a great point on structured finance. I think that's perfect for probably the topic that we'll discuss about next week because unfortunately we're out of time now. So, I mean, this has been great. Obviously, we could continue talking for another hour. Thank you all for joining me. If anybody wants to reach out to you, where can they find y'all? Let's start with David.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To figure out how to structure these things. And the lawyers, the dirty little secret is they take the legal agreements off the shelf that they use 50 times before, 100 times, 500 times, change the names, change some of the numbers, and there we go. But it slows the process down. And we can automate all that with on-chain. So I'm really excited about it. And Bitcoin will serve as collateral in those structured financial products.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quite bullish right now on. Whether it's 65 or 85 or 100, like the fact of the matter is that We are going to see what I focus on in my day to day is sort of moving my clients, moving our partners away from overly focusing on price action and focusing instead on the underlying technology. And what the underlying technology can do and how they can fit the underlying technology into their existing businesses right now to completely obviate some of the most costly and bureaucratic parts of their businesses. Lately we've been talking a lot with structured finance. Structured finance is ripe for disruption. It is almost perfectly, almost like laughably obvious that structured finance should trade on blockchains. It's this corner opaque corner of the market. It's hard to structure. And the majority of it is paying lawyers.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hard to complain about Bitcoin at above 60,000, right? Obviously, a lot of people are underwater. They probably bought much higher than that. But I remember the days when you could only dream it was going to be $60,000. I mean, we all do, right? So it is holding its value in that sense. And that's a very good point, Matt. I haven't looked at that data, but that's actually that would explain a lot, right? If you've got central governments that are buying gold, then that explains the entire or explains largely the divergence between the two.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is down, but you have to ask why gold up? And there's a really specific reason that just today doesn't apply to Bitcoin. So I think it'll be fine. I think it's an incredible opportunity. The fundamentals are way ahead of where the price is right now. So I think it'll be fun.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The data, it's all central bank buying, right? Central bank buying upticked after Russia invaded Ukraine. It's maintained there and accelerated in recent years. There is no retail-based buying actually outside, at least in the US, gold ETF flows are very weak. There's some speculative future, but it's mostly central bank buying. So actually what you're seeing is central banks are buying gold, so the price went up. Are central banks buying Bitcoin? No. Right. And so Bitcoin is doing Bitcoin things, which is following the four-year cycle. But the fundamental like 20-year thesis is still incredibly intact. The world is more digital, Bitcoin allows self-custody through settlement. It has statistical advantages over gold. It'll just be fine. You just have to isolate the reason there's this narrative violation is gold is up and Bitcoin is doing following its normal four-year pattern.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great commentary. I'll add two thoughts because I can't resist Mark. I know you want to keep us going, but this is like my favorite thing. I feel like everyone wants Bitcoin to go up whenever gold goes up except for go up 10x more, which is, of course, insane because if that happened, you would only own Bitcoin and then gold would never go up. So the logic actually breaks in that argument. I think that the way I would answer your question is if gold weren't at $5,000 If gold were like flattish, would we be raising any questions about Bitcoin as a store of value? Definitely not. All the long-term trends look awesome, right? It's at $65,000. It's following the four-year cycle, sovereign wealth funds are buying it. Endowments are buying it. All the fundamental characteristics are true. So then you isolate the question of why is gold up so much? And the reason gold ups is so much is very obvious if you look at the...”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I would say is I'm actually making me kind of excited because that's where the upside is. If Bitcoin behaved exactly as it should, its more mature phase, the upside wouldn't be there. I remember like five years ago when I was a bitwise, a lot of folks were like, oh, I don't want to get into this because I have regulatory bitters. I said, fine. And at the time, Bitcoin was traded at 56K. I said, fine, if you want to wait for the regulatory concerns to be cleared out, you're probably going to buy Bitcoin at $50,000 to $60,000 each, which at that time sounded absolutely outrageous. And that's where we are. And I think if you want to wait for Bitcoin to behave exactly as this asset that we all imagine it to be at its full maturity, fine, but you're probably going to pay four or five hundred K, maybe more per BTC. So the reason why it's not zigging as.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just to finish, I feel like I'm talking for too long. I think Bitcoin's investment thesis as digital gold is still in place, but just sometimes we have to be a little patient because Bitcoin is an emerging digital goat. It's definitely not there.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Uncertainty and a lot of moving parts, right? Sometimes we're concerned about the, I don't know, Fed independence, sometimes we're concerned about the geopolitical issue, sometimes we're concerned about fiscal policy, sometimes we're concerned about inflation and growth. There's just too many moving parts where there's a lot of uncertainty and they're kind of taking their turns in grabbing the market attention. So I also think that the macro environment turn out to be relatively unfavorable for Bitcoin over the past six months. If that was not the case, maybe we would be seeing very different trading dynamics. So, I mean, what I want to say is I think market psychology plays a role and a lot of people believe in the four-year cycle. And that's the thing. But I think that over time, I'm not a huge believer in the four-year cycle.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've done some analysis in the past of the halving as a percentage of how much Bitcoin trades per day, not necessarily the amount of Bitcoin standing, but how much Bitcoin trades. And that comparison is even more dramatic at how fast the halving is becoming irrelevant from a flow standpoint. Of course, there's psychological aspects and market psychology has a role. So maybe there is some of that. But I think it's kind of a little bit of a coincidence. And I think all these kind of macro trends, I think a lot of, to Matt's earlier point, there's definitely, I think some market structure topics. There's definitely some folks selling. But there's also some big macro shifts, right? Over the past six to 12 months. Macro has been uncertain for a long time. Maybe it has not changed much, but I feel like there's a lot of.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I'll take a little bit the other side here, but not entirely, but a little bit. I usually joke that due to inflation, the four-year cycle became a three and a half year cycle because it's actually not matching exactly the calendar years that we have mapped. But no, my real belief is that I'm not a believer in the four year cycle sustaining. I do think that even the last four-year cycle, I think we kind of lucked out because you had a major Economic stimulus that happen at that year. I think that was a factor in driving the Bitcoin price. Orders of magnitude more important than a halving.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is it in fact a store of value? Because gold going up, Bitcoin going sideways or down, we always have to explain that. While, I mean, I would love to hear what Matt and David think on this, but from my perspective, it is a little concerning to me that Bitcoin right now is at least not trading in a way that would reflect a store of value and a safe harbor for global instability.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the four year cycle is alive and well, but every cycle it gets less steep. It is more shallow. And the bear, this time around, I think will be no different. Frankly, in scratching my head about what the main catalyst is for... Like, for example, we're talking about the basis getting flushed out. Like, okay, well, directional is still out a little bit as well, right? And on top of that, I see macro conditions, not, they don't seem that much different than they were six months ago to me, right? And I'm scratching my head about the following. How do I explain? I mean, this is what I have to talk about with institutional counterparties every day for last month. Is the Bitcoin thesis on As a store of value is the Bitcoin.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, you run a top, and just for my curiosity, I want to open the subsidy floor. Believe the four year cycle is dead. Do you all still believe in the FOYA cycle, or do you all still believe in the FOIA cycle because you believe other people believe in the FOIA cycle?”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's right. I think the primary thing that will shrink demand for the covered call overlay strategies is getting past the historic down year of the four-year cycle. I think a lot of those people will look to reallocate as we move into the end of the year and they start looking for, you mentioned the word reflexive. I hate that it's this simple, but the reflexive nature of people speculating that we'll be in another bull cycle. I think you'll see those compress. And I agree that the lending market is interesting, but the yields are really, really low. I think it's fair to say.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Call selling overlaids and much more active strategy. It's something that you have to monitor and kind of harvest that yield over time. But historically, it has been more attractive than just simply lending BTC. But I think we'll get there. I think the market will definitely evolve.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Adding complexity and further sophistication of Bitcoin credit markets, perhaps overall on-chain credit markets. This doesn't have to be a Bitcoin specific discussion. So I think there's something that we'll probably see more and more. But the reason people do these covered call strategies is because the rates that they would get by lending their Bitcoin are relatively low. So if you go to a prime broker, if you go to a lending desk and you say, hey, I have all this amount of Bitcoin that I want to lend and get a yield. The number you're going to get is that the rate you're going to get is not super high. And you can get probably three to four, maybe five times depending on how aggressive you are of that rate doing call overlay strategies. They're not the same thing, right? They have very different risk profiles.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think this all makes sense, Mark. We do probably need though a little bit off market maturity here. I feel like BTC credit markets, they're still kind of still one way. So like very one-way markets in that. If everybody has Bitcoin, everybody wants to lend their Bitcoin. Not a lot of people wants to have their liability in Bitcoin. So I think we need a little bit more market maturity here. But I think the direction is right. I think one of the things I'm very excited about is this.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's pretty ironic that we're making this transparent system more opaque as it gets more integrated into the system. So I guess would a countermeasure to that be these same? Investors looking for a source of yield. If we had, for instance, Know if they were to experiment more with regulated products, maybe vaults, maybe BTC lending, maybe these alternative options to generate yield, maybe not at a delta neutral way or risk neutral way, but with this kind of counteract. The basis trade”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over the last year, for what it's worth, this is why you saw people who were skeptical of the Bitcoin IPO theory, and they pointed on chain and said, not that much Bitcoin has been sold, but probably 2x what was sold was sold away in option overlay strategies. And the market just didn't see that because the underlying Bitcoin doesn't have to move. It actually stays at the custodian and then the options are written against it. And so that's like an underreported corner of the market that's very real.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say, Mark, most of that you're not seeing in public reported data because it's actually taking place in individual SMAs, individual one-to-one client relationship. So there's already a lot of that activity in the market. I think it's been one of the primary reasons it's been so hard to rally is there's much more Bitcoin than you can see on chain has sold away its upside over the last year. If that continues into public products and there are public products, folks like NEOS and others that are accumulating real flows, it has that same effect, right? Again, that's not net demand. That's selling away the upside. So I think you will see it. I think you're already seeing it. You just don't see it in public funds. Because SMAs aren't reported, right? They're private one-on-one relationships. But that's a big business that's really growing.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These investors, the yield is being compressed on the basis of trade, but they don't just want to hold Bitcoin. That's why they do these kind of trades. And the volume, the volume that ETFs make up as a percentage of Bitcoin volume as a whole continues to grow over time. And this demand for yield, we're seeing other ETFs with yield, staked ETFs like Solana, maybe ETH coming in the future. But then even with Bitcoin, we're seeing ETFs in the form of... Bitcoin yield through that same going short, futures, long spots, the Contango trade, if that ETF starts to become more popular, will that further change this market dynamic and possibly also put this kind of soft cap?”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree with that, David. I would also add there's probably caps on the upside, the reverse of that is probably also true. I think it'd be behaviorally hard to blow through 80 and then again at 100. I think those are still levels with my gut feel is significant supply willing to sell, at least in this market environment.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Longer term, fundamentally driven investors actually starts to become kind of a little bit off the charts. You can also see that in overall trading volumes. So I feel like a lot of these basis trading, a lot of these attention investors that Matt mentioned, I think these guys are broadly out of the market. It does feel like positioning is light. Of course, we can always have a few pockets of leverage. Accumulated leverage, especially in the perps market. But overall, it does seem like positioning is light. And it also seems that Do a price call or anything like that. We can obviously go one way or another, but it does feel like the setup now is rather interesting.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is like a third of what Bitcoin would normally trade before the October 10 crash. On the other hand, when we had some of those major sell-offs, like for example the early February, the February 5th crash, Bitcoin spot volumes were exceptionally high. We're talking about while Bitcoin usually has been trading $6 to $8 billion a day. During those days, Bitcoin was trading $18 to $20 billion a day. So what this kind of gives me is a sense that there is some strong support around certain price levels. And I think certain folks are seeing certain price levels as very interesting entry points, probably the 60K level is a big one. Whenever Bitcoin gets to that 60K level, even the amount of trade activity that we see at our desk from these institutional”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think one indicator that helps contextualize that is just looking at overall liquidity trends And I think this year we saw some pretty remarkable things. So, like, take, for example, Bitcoin spot volumes. Bitcoin is obviously a very liquid asset, but its spot volumes have actually been very low. And all this trend, all these things that matter saying, they're very meaningful and they impact the price. But we're talking about these down moves coming on very low liquidity. Just yesterday, Bitcoin trade at $6 to $7 billion. That should be a weekend for Bitcoin, not a regular weekday.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out of like a hundred billion dollars come out of the market because the long term allocators are still buying and holding. When I go visit them, I was on the road last week in Miami. I met with 40 advisors. They were all allocating and they will continue to allocate. So I really think if you keep in mind these three groups, hedge funds, attention, and long-term allocators, they move at different paces. And that's probably the reason I'm optimistic long-term is that last one is still aggressively buying. They're actually buying the dip. They're allocating more. You can see that if you really analyze the flows and think about which category is using which ETF, you can tease out some incremental wins on people who are focused on that long-term allocator space. But I think that's actually what's happening in the market.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. There's sort of three groups of Bitcoin ETF traders. Their hedge funds running the basis trade, they're attention investors, and then they're long-term allocators, financial advisors, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, et cetera, that are buying Bitcoin for the next 10 years. And the reason we've had outflows is those first two have been pulling money out of the market. As mentioned, basis collapsed, so the hedge funds who hedged their basis by buying the ETF because it's regulated and they feel comfortable with it have been redeeming as they unwind that trade. The attention investor has migrated entirely to precious metals or to AI, and they're no longer interested in crypto. The third component, which is the long-term allocator, the institutions, the family offices, the financial advisors, they're still buying and holding. That's why we've seen billion.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we've had historic weeks of PTC outflow. I think it's five net negative in a row right now and probably maybe nine out of the past 11 have been net negative. And then as you mentioned, the basis trade is those yields are compressing. It almost seems like it's a reflexive cycle. Do you have any thoughts on that? Do you see anything stopping it?”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what I mean. Yeah, there's no conspiracy, there's no magic. It's people are selling. Basis is compressed because retail traders aren't taking on leverage upside position. And that translates into sale of physical because the way basis is hedged out or sales of ETFs. The outflows we've seen from ETFs since October 10th. We've seen $10 billion of outflows in Bitcoin ETFs. The vast majority of that is from hedge funds that were running the basis trade and are no longer running the basis trade. But it's not because the hedge funds don't want exposure. It's because the other side of the trade, which was retail speculation that created the basis doesn't want exposure. That's what's been squeezed out of the market. And I think it's just important for people to realize that they're all boil down to demand for Bitcoin. That's like the ultimate driver.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100 of the story, and I worry I hear like talk of paper Bitcoin and these sorts of things. No, it's like people are selling. They may be selling through options. They may be selling through futures. It's all the same. It all boils down to people selling away their Bitcoin. And that's why the price is down. So that was the simple point I wanted to make. I think that's maybe not. People trying to make it complex. It's actually pretty simple.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was just jump on the question of has unlocking a broader derivatives market been the reason that Bitcoin is down? I definitely agree with David that it's changed the market structure and changed how things trade. But the reason Bitcoin is down is because people are selling Bitcoin. They may be selling physical Bitcoin or they may be writing covered calls against Bitcoin positions that they hold. Those are functionally the same thing when you write a covered call against a Bitcoin position that you hold, you are selling away the upside of Bitcoin. It is mechanically the same thing as selling Bitcoin itself. So I do think that the enormous growth of the options market has changed sort of the way Bitcoin trades for sure. But the reason prices are down 50% is because people who held Bitcoin at the start of 2025 have been selling it and writing calls against their position. And that's the.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You look into what's going on on, for example, options markets. Are certain leaves that are growing very significantly in crypto. So, yeah, no, I think there's still room for the market structure to change quite a bit from here. It's definitely going to be a few exciting years ahead.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's interesting. I feel like crypto is becoming a little bit more tradi, but in a few aspects, stradfi is also becoming a little bit more like crypto. And we are seeing these worlds kind of getting mixed and interconnected in a more smooth fashion. But I think, yeah, no, I think the market structure will change. I think we're going through a period where it's changing. It's probably going to change more. I think actually another kind of still probably a much longer trend, but the idea when you start to see crypto integrated, for example, into 4.1ks and things like that, you're going to bring another very different demographic that's going to be very large. There is the rise of derivatives that has been really growing in the Bitcoin space and the crypto more broadly, even though prices are kind of flat.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it's cool to see some of the shackles kind of getting cleared up a little bit. The other probably big one that I think is not It might be a little bit understated, is that I think the CME will start trading cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin futures 24-7, starting in a few months.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lots unpack there. Thanks, guys. I mean, first of all, I'm surprised that. KYC AML was ranked higher than regulation. I thought maybe a bit the other way around and then makes me wonder if y'all are fans of Sam Altman's World Network decentralized identity solution. But then I think, David, you brought up a point about this new. Market structure that Bitcoin is trading in because of the different types of investors, do you see this changing anymore? I mean, Nasdaq and ICE have recently removed the up to $25,000 options contract limit on the ETF products. And some people are relating that to the recent downturns in prices. Are you saying there's a correlation between them? How long do you see this supposedly like new soft cap going on for?”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Overall, I mean, we have all these frictions. There's definitely a lot of problems to solve. And I think Matt and Mike covered a lot of them. But we are pretty much on our way to at least have a roadmap for most of them. That was not true two or three years ago, right? If you talk about the regulatory environment in crypto two or three years ago, that was a major risk. That was a big question mark. We didn't know it's going to happen. So I feel like we have pretty clear roadmaps that will obviously take some time to be navigated. But I think that, and that makes me think it's a very interesting phase.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Upside volatility. Now, every once in a while, you have weird things like CME market open gaps on Mondays or a hedge fund hedge fund blowing up somewhere because they were doing an exotic bat that involved Bitcoin. So now Bitcoin is trading in a different way than the one we were used to. And of course, things will be different for DeFi and tokenization. But whenever you bring such a large participant, you can always have these short-term frictions that they can happen over time. And I think that's totally fine. I think that's part of the game and the market works those out. The other thing I like to say is that TRAD5 people, they work very hard, but they don't know what's coming at them when their assets all start to trade 24-7. They're all going to be as stressed as we are. And that's going to be fun.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's also great. I think the thing I would add, and I agree with everything Matt and Mike said, but perhaps the thing I would add, and then I'll bring it back maybe the discussion a little bit to Bitcoin, because Bitcoin has been integrated into more traditional Rails for a while. And I guess the interesting thing is that this transition period doesn't come without friction. I think one that has been very interesting and kind of now maybe patently obvious is that when you start to bring this new cohort of investors that now hold a sizable amount of Bitcoin, Bitcoin starts to trade a little differently. So like a lot of these folks want to get a yield on their Bitcoin holdings. So all they're going to do, they're going to sell covert call strategies. And this has been done to an extent that I think it's fair to say that it has capped some of Bitcoin's.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“T plus one is a problem, and it is. But it is a problem that it has a lot of benefits to, namely being able, you know, T plus one is the cost you pay for extending credit, right? Extending leverage throughout the existing financial system. And if there is no T plus one settlement and the current financial system completely migrates over to decentralized rails, we do have to figure out how to provide leverage, how to provide credit to purchasers so that that transition is seamless and they don't have to buy everything on collateral at the point of sale.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ministers and the corporate lawyers are legal engineers. And I said, that is the coolest thing I've ever heard. I don't know what that means. That is the coolest thing I've ever heard. Turns out no engineering at all. It was just pure pushing of paper. So when you see all these complex legal structures, a fund administrator, the fund wrapper, all these, these are just contracts. They don't actually exist in the world. And they're nothing happens unless a trustee or a fund administrature or a lawyer actually reads the documents and enforces the rules. That is archaic. We now have smart contracts that can execute these things programmatically. And so, you know, there's a lot of benefits, but not to sound too bullish. KYC is a big problem. The other problem, and I'll hand this off to David, is we always talk about...”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have all the programs. We have all of the core technology ready to go. They just need assets and volume and liquidity to trade, right? So Vault products are already superior to funds. A vault is effectively just a programmable fund. It's like, I remember when I was a kid and my mom brought home a, she brought a brand new washing machine and it was intelligent. It was an intelligent machine, right? It would talk to us. That's what a fun. I mean, it's a silly analogy, but funds are dumb pieces of paper, right? I used to do fund work as a lawyer. And when I was, before I was a lawyer, I was a paralegal. And the reason I became a corporate lawyer instead of a litigator is because the head of corporate law at Cravat-Swayne and Moore, where I was a paralegal, said to me, and I'll never forget this, he said, Litigators”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody can receive it because it's restricted to only accredited investors and there's not a lot of accredited investors. So there's some issues there. I think that needs to get solved. But that's a regulatory issue about lowering the velvet rope, so to speak. On the AMLKYC, though, we should have decentralized identities. If we can get decentralized identities, that will be a tremendous... Benefit. And frankly, we need decentralized identities because I just don't think we are going to onboard billions of people through a sort of regulatory apparatus that requires AMLKYC formally. It should be done almost informally through a decentralized identity. Once that happens, we finally get what we need. And what do I mean by that? And what gets me so excited is this. We actually have all the infra.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would echo that, Matt. I think the number one issue actually is the last one you touched on AMLKYC. And it's Ugly Cousin, which is the accredited investor standard, right? So as long as RWAs, which are securities, right? As long as they can only be traded behind a walled garden, you sort of undercut, not fully, but you sort of undercut the power of permissionless systems decentralized networks, right? You sort of undercut the composability of smart contracts and decentralized finance. And when you do that, you make it a little awkward, a little weird. There's some issues when buying a cred or buying a RWA. What can you do with it? Well, nothing because you can't trade it anywhere.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where do we start? For the most part, the UX is terrible. Gotten better, but it's still pretty darn bad. There's no easy way for non native consumers to know which protocols to trust and which protocols not to trust. Regulation is uncertain, so large institutions that AMLKYC don't have an easy way to access the space and it's full permissionless nature. We've probably only scratched the surface on the primitives. We haven't solved things like under collateralized lending. That remains like an uncrashed And that's the bulk of lending in the world. So that's a real issue. But if I had to like tick off. What we're going to Next, it's regulation. It's It's some Of AMLKYC or solving the permission versus permissionless problem that will unlock trillions of dollars of scale. The other stuff will come along, but those are the three that”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. I mean, not only did I get a better rate and it was cheaper, it probably happened a lot faster than the bank would even reply to my email. So I think it was a win all around. But I, I, Do you want to ask We are highlighting a lot of the advantages of this technology. But like, as Matt said, it's not perfect in everything. What do we think are some of the current structural disadvantages? And do we see them changing?”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Last second innovator's dilemma. I guess the other thing I would say, Mark, is you probably not only paid less fees, you probably got a better rate. And this is true still today. If you try to access capital in DeFi, it's cheaper than doing it in most traditional finance venues. To the point that I think just today we saw a mortgage lender better trying to announcing access to DeFi at scale, I think 500 million and then scaling up to a billion in order to get better rates for their clients. So we're starting to see some folks identifying some of these advantages that Matt has announced or has alluded to and being willing to go over all the hoops to integrate DeFi. into the more traditional system. I think this is all very exciting.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“CN DeFi is getting better at the things it's worse at. And I think people make the mistake of, yeah, but it has these problems. Of course, it's a new disruptive technology. It's like the oldest story of all time.”
2026-03-05 · Forward Guidance · Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT