YouSaid · the spoken record

James Seyffart

lines on the record: 72
first: 2026-02-25
most recent: 2026-02-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Don't know. I don't think it's going to move as fast. The other part of me is like some of it is BlackRock and think they want to see like they're ahead of the curve on a lot of this stuff. And, you know, they really push the charge on ESG and some of that stuff and you really don't hear them talking about it anymore. So part of me more is like they're talking about this tokenization side of things. And eventually it's going to fall out of favor and they will just kind of stop talking about it. But I actually don't think that's going to happen. That's like the risk in my head. I really do think the benefit is like 24-7 leveraging atomic settlement, all those things are the benefits that would happen. And I think like the first way we're going to see this real tokenization stuff take hold is in tokenized treasuries and dollars, which you're already seeing and using them for trading in platforms. You've had plenty of people on your podcast to talk about the benefits from doing those types of things.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, one is 24-7 trading, taking ownership directly of your own stuff. But I think at the end of the day, there's Way they're going to work now, at least the tokenization I'm hearing about in ETF side, is like it's there's going to be a custodian, the total actually ETF shares, and there's going to be a tokenized version of it. There's like this kind of halfway to doing this, and there's a full-fledged way to doing it. But like the full-fledged way, you need the underlying stocks to be tokenized themselves. And you can do it via vaults or automated smart contracts where they're already out there just owning the underlying tokenized assets. We are so far from that happening. I mean, you can see notes from Atkins and Selig over at the CFTC. like they want to invite a lot of this stuff to start happening and testing it out on these different platforms dtcc is bullish on doing these sorts of things but again this is like we're so early that like”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a lot of regulations specifically for these financial firms. Like they're not just going to do this immediately, but Schwab is going to turn on crypto trading directly soon. All these things are happening. A lot of these advisor networks, which we can talk about too, who actually holds these ETFs, they're still coming online. Like I talked to you two and a half years ago about eventually these advisor networks and what brokerage platforms are going to allow people to invest in these ETFs. Still hearing news about these platforms allowing them to come online now. Like there's still plenty of platforms out there where you can't just click buy on some of these ETFs. So we're a long way out still.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have plenty of people that are still kind of leaning on like private blockchains, which I hesitate to even call blockchains because the whole point of it is that they're public and decentralized and what have you. So yeah, I'm still optimistic that some of this stuff is going to work out. I just think it's one of those things where like humans in general tend to overestimate what's going to happen in the next 12 to 18 months and then underestimate what's going to happen over the next five to ten years. And I think that's what's happening here. I think it's just going to take time. They're going to build these.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree 100% with what you said. The contrast is very hard to wrap your head around. But there are plenty of other things happening on the service under the surface, right? So there's still plenty of institutions that are leaning in pretty heavily. You look at Robinhood. You look at Fidelity. You look at BlackRock. They're actually building on these chains and they're doing tokenized assets. There's a lot of like the fake tokenization type stuff that's happening from these institutions. A lot of it is institutions. Like they've had small teams that were like paying attention to what's happening here, testing things out. And they're building out those teams like Frank Chaparro has been tweeting constantly about all these new TradFi firms that are hiring for people to do things like vaults and all this different stuff, all those companies I just mentioned. So we're just still early as part of it. And it's hard to know exactly where this is going to coalesce, right? You have like networks that are.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's so crazy. It's interesting to contrast that with where the interest, because to your point a bit earlier about the state of the industry is that retail has just been absolutely smoked. A lot of these more long tail crypto tokens have just been performing terribly for a while. But at the same time, you hear all this excitement from the institutional side about getting into crypto. I'd love to hear a bit more about your thoughts on how that dichotomy is representing itself because there's all this talk from the institutions about coming in, but then when you actually look down at what they're actually doing, it's things that that basis trade, which is Delta Neutral, or it's like these banks issuing their own stable coins and trying to, you know, harvest those fees and deals, like it's things and actions that don't directly accrue value to these tokens that are being launched. And I'm just curious how you think about that contrast.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Specific on what they're going to launch, but some of these other issuers are like, we're going to launch a Belania coin ETF. Like we're going to do whatever we can kind of thing.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like right place, right time. That has been sitting there for 12 months gathering no interest whatsoever. And all of a sudden, a couple hundred, 200 million dollars flow into that thing. And all of a sudden you're profitable and you make all the money that you've wasted letting that sit there. So there's kind of like this trade-off system you have to make when you're launching these products Some people are being a lot more diligent. You look at BlackRock, they have only launched Bitcoin and they've only launched Ethereum. They're going to have two ETH and two Bitcoin ETFs. One is a premium income, so writing cover call on Bitcoin. The other one is an E staking and the original one, ETHA, is already, they're not going to do staking in it. So they're keeping very.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over the last few years, that has definitely been the case. So we went through this thing called ETF rule, which basically made it easier to launch ETFs. We went through a similar process with the crypto ETFs. I'm not sure if you or your listeners were paying too much attention, but like the SEC used to have to go through and approve these things, write up these huge long papers around why they were approving this asset for an ETF wrapper. And the SEC came in with this rule under Hester Perse and Atkins and basically streamlined that process. That process was also streamlined for ETFs. And they did it for active ETFs. So like that process made it one cheaper and easier and smoother to get these things to market. And so it made more sense to do that kind of spray and prey type approach. And then now we have these things, like I mentioned, like the two X leverage single stocks and we have all these crypto assets where it might be worthwhile to launch something on an asset that's 25 on the top list of crypto market caps. And if it hits some stride or does something really well and hits a lot of momentum and you're the only issuer that has the ETF that you can get exposure to in the TradFi market.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You get down the list of like the largest crypto assets and you get like the number 20. Can that really survive with like four different ETFs relating to it? And it's like there's no interest. Maybe if it shoots up that market cap list, but like for the most part, the issuers, we call a spaghetti cannon, right? They're just throwing these things at the wall, seeing what sticks. They're doing it with single stock levered ETFs right now. They're going further down into the market cap spectrum, launching mid-cap, 2x levered mid-cap stocks that like I've never heard of in many cases or whatever. So yeah, they're just launching things and they're going to continue to do that in crypto too.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As far as launches, you were like, there's so many filings. I can't even keep up. I think there's a hundred in. I'm looking at 160, 170 filings right now. Some of them have already launched, like you mentioned, XRP, Solana. We have a bunch that have launched, and they're doing pretty well. I mean, the flows are not bad for Solana and XRP. I think XRP actually has inflows in aggregate. There's a bunch of ETS that have launched. We have a whole bunch of other things Sui just launched. So these issuers, they're still going to launch these products because they spent time, effort, and energy building up the back end systems to launch these things. They already filed with the SEC. They went through the legal paperwork. They were always going to launch them. Something I wrote in December in my year ahead outlook was like, we're going to see well over 100 of these products come to market. They're going to be leveraged versions, covered call writing so you can get income on the underlying, these all derivatives versions. You name it. They're all going to come to market. I think a lot of them are going to liquidate. So my take in December before things started getting really bad was like we're going to see a lot of these things launch and then within 12 to 18 months we're going to see a huge wave of liquidation just because one if you”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, the first thing I would say is if you look at the atmosphere and the way people are talking about this market, it's very different from what I'm talking to issuers and institutions in this space, right? They are still very bullish stablecoins. They are still very bullish tokenization. They're still very bullish. Like all these assets. And like, it's weird. It's this weird dichotomy. It's been like this for over a year now. I mean, you've had other people on here. It's like you listen to people who have been in crypto for a long time and you think like everything's over and it's awful. And then you talk to these TradFi institutions who are looking to get in and they're like, no, there's a lot of opportunity here. It's like very bullish. It's like this weird dichony where price is collapsing and like all the people that everyone was saying we need the institutions to come in are finally starting to really invest and put things to work in the space. It's just, I guess you don't know which protocols are actually going to benefit from all this or how much of they're actually going to benefit from it.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a nice trade when you can get it. Yeah, yeah, interesting What else has been going on? You just rang off a bunch of other crypto ETFs that have been launched in there, and I'm curious, it seems like the appetite to at least launch these ETFs is still existent. Interesting, the contrast that with the supply dynamic of the amount coming on. But yeah, how are you thinking about just the state of play of the broader crypto ETF landscape”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I'm looking at Bitcoin for the most recent ones today, we're looking at for the two month of 5.6% for the one month 4.3. I mean, XRP is near zero. For a while, even after the ETFs launched, that was double-digit Solana. Right now it's actually kind of steep. It's around 10%. Ethereum is near zero on the first month contract. So like, it's just, there's no interest, essentially. So I think once momentum goes, that's part of it. But I think a lot of it really did, at least initially is like it wasn't an efficient market yet. So the hedge funds were able to provide. Risk free basis. And it was a nice trade. It is a nice trade when you can get it.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's so many theories out there. My theory now on what causes it one is that I think a huge portion of it was just demand for demand for capital in general, right? I mean, and so a lot of it comes from these offshore systems, these crypto-specific native exchanges or protocols, what have you. And it's like this arbitrage between taking TradFi capital and putting it over there. And so like hedge funds are doing it via the futures contracts. And then there's other people doing it via perps and non-regulated SEC CFDC regulated products. So there's like this whole like steep curve of like how much you're paying over here and how much you're ending up with by putting TradFi capital into that same type of trade. So I think part of it is just that like taking capital and there's a lot of demand there. Part of it is momentum, right? Like when momentum when price is running these basis levels get really high right now, I mean, they're nearly non-existent.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's fair on the point of the basis straight. That one's always been so perplexing to me because at certain times, it's been a very juicy trade for people. And it's just, it shocks me how durable it's been. I'm curious, how do you think about what drives that basis trade? Is it just demand for leverage from retail and there's someone on the other side of that? Or how do you understand the marginal driver of it?”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Related to that, from my point of view. So, yeah, it's hard to know exactly what's happening. The one thing I will say is, like I mentioned, it was 30 bill that came in between April and October. And yes, from October now to end of Feb, we've seen almost $9 billion come out. And I mean, it's, if you told me an asset falls as much as this asset has and you only see that small percentage of a drop, you know, 12, 15% of the flows go out, that's pretty damn good, I guess I would say is the flip side.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Using the ETFs to do that, that sell off in early 2025, 100% basis trade related. That was a huge portion of it because the basis was so steep at the end of 2024 that everyone and their mother was piled into that. So we saw four or five billion pile out. And a lot of that we saw in the open interest on the futures contracts come out. So we knew like there, I don't know, there's no way to know exactly how much of the flows is correlated to that, but a huge chunk of it came from that. And then we didn't really see open interest pick up that much after April. So all the money that came in, the 30 bill, most of the seems at least from the data that I can see was people actually buying and getting along the asset. Recently, we have seen some outflows and some open interest drop, and the basis is just completely nothingness. So for a while, you had a lot of people in because you were getting near 20% yield, almost risk-free, and that's like really advertising. But when you're starting to get single digits, it's like these hedge funds kind of lose interest. So there's been some of these outflows have definitely been.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, if you really go back We go back a year ago, people really excited. Then we went through the April sell off. And people then were saying it's over, right? And then the ETFs went on an absolute blistering run, taking in almost 30 billion between like the April bottom and October. And we've kind of, now we've gone in the opposite direction, right? So since whatever caused that sell in April 10th, I know you've had, I mean, in August to October 10th, I can't speak, it hit the ETFs too, obviously. And there's a lot of theories around what caused it. Did somebody blow up? Is there correlation to software stocks, some package trader? Who knows exactly what happened? But if you look at the ETF flows, Bitcoin ETFs have now seen record outfits. So they're just about almost 9 billion since that October 10th blow up. Some of it, I think, is basis trade related. So there were times where the basis on Bitcoin ETFs or the basis trade, which is where you're selling futures and buying spot. And most hedge funds.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the guys on my team, it's going to be his first crypto conference, maybe even first real full professional conference too.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanks for having me, Felix. Happy to be back. It's been a while since the heyday of these launches and stuff. It's not as interesting to cover this area anymore when crypto is concerned.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You listen to people who have been in crypto for a long time and they think everything's over and it's awful. And then you talk to these tradition institutions who are looking to get in and they're like, no, there's a lot of opportunity here. It's like very bullish. It's like this weird dichonomy where price is collapsing and like all the people that everyone was saying we need the institutions to come in are finally starting to really invest and put things to work in the space. Something I wrote in December in my year ahead outlook was like we're going to see well over 100 of these products come to market. They're going to be leveraged versions, you know, covered call writing so you can get income on the underlying, these all derivatives versions you name it. They're all going to come to market. I think a lot of them are going to liquidate.”
2026-02-25 · Forward Guidance · What ETF Flows Are Telling Us About Investor Appetite | James Seyffart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT