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Bitcoin as Digital Gold, Ethereum on the Edge
Episode Transcript
So if you are feeling whiplash watching the crypto charts right now, you're certainly not alone, not at all.
We are, I mean, we're navigating a market that is just fundamentally split into You've got this massive institutional fear that's driving all the volatility right and yet at the same time, there's this incredible structural progress, these technological breakthroughs happening just under the surface.
It's a real battle between panic and conviction.
Speaker 2It really is an essential period of transition.
And you know, the numbers they tell a pretty brutal story about the.
Speaker 1Short term they really do.
Speaker 2We've seen a market dip that in just six weeks wiped well over I mean over a trillion dollars off the total crypto capitalization, a trillion dollars, A trillion Bitcoin hit a high in early October, was it one hundred and twenty two hundred and fifty und dollars, But that momentum just completely reversed.
It fell sharply below ninety two thousand dollars and even briefly dipped under that ninety thousand dollar mark.
Speaker 1And that draw down that just erased everything from twenty twenty five, didn't it all?
Those hards one gains pretty much all of them.
Yeah, what's really remarkable to me about this correction isn't just the you know, the size of it, but the sheer speed.
Speaker 2The speed's the key.
Speaker 1Previous big market corrections they took what seventy seven days, one hundred and forty seven days to inflict this kind of pain.
This one did it in just forty two days.
Speaker 2That compressed timeframe.
It just it accelerates the fear.
You can feel it.
And we saw that fear reflected directly in how the institutions behaved.
Speaker 1Absolutely, you just have to look at the ETFs exactly when.
Speaker 2You look at the exchange traded products, the panic is crystal clear.
The spot bitcoin ETFs, which you know, we're supposed to be the source of all this new stability in capital, safe money, the safe money, right.
They saw record outflows.
We're talking three point one billion dollars flooding out in November alone.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2And the most startling data point I think comes from Black Rocks Ibit ETF it recorded a single day record outflow of five hundred and twenty three million.
Speaker 1Dollars half a billion dollars.
Speaker 2Half a billion dollars fleeing what was supposed to be a safe regulated vehicle in a single day.
Speaker 1And that right there, that sets up our core mission today.
We have to unpack this, this conflicting narrative because on one side you have this extreme price stress, the institutional caution, you know, the canceled funds, the record losses, all the panic, all the panic.
But just beneath that, there's this quiet structural advancement happening.
You've got regulatory frameworks solidifying major infrastructure, you know, exchanges, pursuing Wall Street IPOs, and the tech integration in the tech genuine technological integration from AI and trading to real world asset tokenization.
It's all accelerating.
It's it's the messy, difficult transition from you know, a fringe asset class to a maturing financial ecosystem.
Speaker 2It's the difference between looking at the day's closing price and looking at the multi year construction plan for the foundation of the building.
Speaker 1Let's start with that institutional drama then, because you have these two stories of just stating capital commitments.
One is doubling down and the other is abandoning ship completely.
We have to start with the Abu Dhabi whale.
Speaker 2Let's call it sovereign wealth conviction.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Council or ADC, they made a massive strategic bet.
They tripled their stake in Black Rocks ibit ETF during the third quarter.
Speaker 1And this was before the crash, right, that's the critical part.
Speaker 2That is the critical part.
This move was completed just before the market tanked in a way, they bought the fear before the dib even fully manifested itself.
Speaker 1Tripling a stake like that, that's not just passive investing.
That's a high conviction, you know, directional trait.
How big did their position actually get?
Speaker 2It grew from two point four million shares to nearly eight million shares, so as of September thirtieth, that position was valued at roughly five hundred and eighteen million dollars.
Wow, but the value is almost secondary to their stated rationale.
This wasn't framed as some kind of speculative trade.
ADC characterized this Bitcoin allocation as a long term diversification strategy.
Speaker 1That long term view, I mean coming from a sovereign wealth fund, that's profoundly important.
What exactly are they comparing bitcoin to?
Is it just another tech stock?
Speaker 2For them, no, not at all.
They explicitly stated they compare the asset to gold to gold to gold, they expected to play a structural role in what they see as an increasingly digital global economy.
This comparison is a huge indicator for institutional finance because gold is it's the ultimate geopolitical risk off asset.
It's a recognized hedge against fiat evaluation and political instability.
Speaker 1So for ADC to put Bitcoin in that same category, that signals a permanent shift in how sovereign capital is viewing this asset exactly.
Speaker 2It's not a temporary allocation for them, it's a new pillar of a global reserve strategy.
This is them saying they see bitcoin as part of the financial foundation for the future.
Speaker 1And this commitment it's shared across the whole organization.
Right because Mubadala, which oversees ADC, they also have a huge position.
Speaker 2Huge position.
Mubidahla Investment Co also holds a substantial eight point seven million IBIT shares.
They're valued at around five hundred and sixty seven million dollars, So all in you're talking about over eight billion dollars in sovereign capital making a structural bet on bitcoin's long term status as a digital reserve asset.
Speaker 1A billion dollars of deep long term confidence.
But then you have to contrast that with the other story, the proposed billion dollar ethereum digital asset trust, the DAT the.
Speaker 2Complete opposite story.
This is being championed by a heavyweight consortium of Asian backers.
We're talking Hubie founder Lee Lynn, Schnbo of Fenbushi Capital, Shao Feng of Hashki Group, and Kai Wenching from May two Inc.
A real who's who.
Speaker 1And this was poised to be an institutional behemoth, a corporate treasury vehicle designed specifically to rival the size of you know, a gray scale or a bitmine, but focused only on accumulating ethereum.
Speaker 2That was the plan.
Speaker 1What kind of capital did they actually manage to get together?
Speaker 2Well, that's the thing.
That consortium had already lined up a billion dollars in committed capital.
Lee's Avenuer Capital put in two undred million dollars, and other institutional investors, including the very powerful Hongshan Capital Group committed a massive five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1So this was locked committed money.
Speaker 2Yes, it was aimed at fundamentally changing the supply dynamics.
Of ethereum just buying and.
Speaker 1Holding that level of capital committed by that caliber of you know, traditional and cryptonative whales.
That sounds unstoppable.
So why did they pull the plug?
Speaker 2It was called off completely.
Sources familiar with what happened confirmed that the primary trigger for halting the plan was the market downturn, specifically the sharp selloff on October eleventh.
The committed capital was just returned.
Speaker 1Wow, So a billion dollar strategic venture just disassembled because of one bad week in the market.
Speaker 2That's it.
And this is the clearest example we have of just how sensitive some of this committed institutional capital still is to short term volatility.
The Abu Dhabi Fund they shrugged off the dip and bought more bitcoin.
The Asian Consortium saw the eight dip and immediately pulled the plug.
Speaker 1That is a devastation dating psychological blow to the institutional ethereum narrative, isn't it.
It suggests that the deep pocketed ETH buyers are still fundamentally more speculative, more risk averse than their bitcoin counterpart.
Speaker 2It definitely highlights a difference in the perceived risk tolerance, for sure, and we see that risk tolerance being tested even further with Sharplink Gaming.
Speaker 1Ah.
Yes, they were famously the first publicly listed company to adopt eth as their primary reserve asset.
But now they are facing a well, a financial reckoning is the only way to put it.
Speaker 2A reckoning, is right.
When we talk about that, we're talking about a half billion dollars in unrealized losses.
That number is just staggering.
Speaker 1It demands a closer look.
Speaker 2Indeed, Sharplink currently sits on substantial unrealized losses.
Depending on the source, it's estimated between four hundred and seventy nine million dollars that's according to SCR Data to over five hundred million dollars according to crypto quant Data.
Speaker 1Okay, so just for our listeners, break that down.
What's the difference between sr and crypto quant data?
Speaker 2Right, So SR data refers to securities exchange reporting that captures the book value the company reports triblgulators.
Cryptoquont, on the other hand, provides on chain analytics.
So it's measuring the actual real time difference between the current price and their average purchase price based on their wallet activity.
Speaker 1So two different methods, but they both confirm the same thing, a massive loss.
Speaker 2A massive loss, and what's driving that liability is well, unfortunately poor timing.
Sharplink's average purchase price free ethereum is quite high.
It's sitting around three thousand, six hundred and nine dollars out with ETH now falling sharply toward that critical three thousand dollars level.
The stress on their balance sheet is immense.
This is important because you know, institutional holders often have debt covenants or requirements to maintain certain balance sheet ratios.
Unrealized losses of this magnitude trigger some very serious risk.
Speaker 1Management concerns at Sharplink.
They had previously treated dips as buying opportunities.
So what specific action did they take that has analysts thinking there's a major reversal in their strategy.
Speaker 2They made a very deliberate, high value move on chain.
They transferred five four hundred and forty two ETH, which is worth approximately seventeen point zero two million dollars to Galaxy Digital.
Speaker 1And Galaxy Digital is a specialized over the counter or OTC exchange exactly.
Speaker 2And OTC desks are typically used for large volume private transactions, the kind you do when you want to avoid slippage on the open exchanges.
Speaker 1So if they're moving millions of dollars in crypto to an OTC desk, is the consensus that this signals in outright liquidation or I don't know, could it be collateral for a loan, maybe to raise quick cash without selling the underlying asset.
Speaker 2That's a great question, and it really speaks to the nuance of reading on chain data.
Well, you know, collateralization is possible.
The consensus among analysts is leaning toward a risk reduction sale.
Speaker 1So they're cutting their losses.
Speaker 2It looks that way given the sheer scale of their total unrealized loss and the fact that they're moving the e to a third party known for facilitating these large private sales, it strongly suggests a major portfolio balancing aimed at reducing risk exposure.
So, yeah, cutting losses or raising FIAT capital to shore up their operations.
Speaker 1So regardless of the immediate intent this move, it just underscores the pressure they're under.
Even the second largest institutional ETH holder and sharp Link still holds what eight hundred and fifty nine, eight hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2Three ETH an incredible amount.
Speaker 1They are demonstrating significant weakness.
They are the definition of an entity being forced to react to market volatility, not act with conviction.
Speaker 2So we have a clear picture of this institutional fear and you know the contrasting conviction of sovereign wealth.
Now, let's pivot away from that short term market action and look at the actual physical and financial infrastructure being built underneath all this volatility.
We're talking about the exchanges that are aiming for Wall Street, and.
Speaker 1We have to be talking about krack In, which has just taken a massive step toward becoming a publicly traded company.
Speaker 2Absolutely, crack In confidentially filed a draft S one registration form with the SEC for a planned initial public offering.
The fact that they filed confidentially that signals they're moving very aggressively behind the scenes and have secured the backing they need to pursue this.
Speaker 1And the valuation they secured just before this IPO filing was I mean, it was truly enormous.
Speaker 2It was an eight hundred million dollar funding round that valued the company at an astronomical twenty billion dollars.
But the crucial detail here is who backed this round, right, major traditional finance players.
We're talking Ken Griffin's Citadel Securities in Jane Street These are not cryptonative venture funds.
These are the deep pocketed giants of Wall Street.
Speaker 1That backing Citadel in Jane Street.
That signals immense confidence from TRADFI that Kracking can actually navigate the regulatory gauntlet and compete head to head with a company like Coinbase.
So what's the immediate goal of this IPO?
Speaker 2The filing aims to position Kraken alongside the other listed crypto firms and most importantly, to fuel their global expansion.
They're looking to extend their dominance internationally, using the IPO capital to build new product lines and secure additional licensing in key jurisdictions outside of the highly regulated US market.
Speaker 1But the path to public market glory is, let's just say, it's fraught with peril.
And you can see that with what's happening with the Bullish paradox.
Bullich completed its IPO at thirty seven dollars a share back in August, and despite hitting major financial milestones, the stock prices really struggling.
Speaker 2It is a profound paradox.
It really highlights the disconnect between traditional financial valuation methods and how the public markets are currently perceiving crypto firms.
Bullish reported record adjusted revenue of seventy six point five million dollars and a net income of eighteen point five million dollars in Q three twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1That's a huge turnaround, a.
Speaker 2Staggering turnaround from the sixty seven point three million dollar net loss they posted the previous year.
So they are profitable, they're growing rapidly, and they're demonstrating successful cost controls, all the things Wall Street supposedly loves.
Speaker 1Yet despite all this fundamental financial success, their stock is sinking.
Speaker 2Correct bullishar has dropped over five percent recently and are now trading below their thirty seven dollars IPO price.
They hit thirty five dollars eighty seven cents.
The market, it seems, is just not rewarding proven, profitable growth in the crypto exchange sector right now.
Speaker 1Why not?
Is it just the broader market fear or uncertainty about future regulation.
Speaker 2It's likely a mix of both.
The sentiment is just so negative that good news is being ignored.
Speaker 1So if profitability isn't enough to drive their share price, where is Bullish looking for their future growth?
Speaker 2Well?
Their CEO highlighted two major strategic areas.
First, their options product has proven very successful.
It's already surpassed a billion dollars in trading volume.
Second, and this is critical for the future of the entire sector.
They are hyper focused on real world asset tokenization RWA.
Speaker 1RWA tokenization so taking tangible assets like real estate, credit, or commodities and putting their ownership stakes onto a blockchain.
Why is that the strategic focus.
Speaker 2Because it bridges traditional finance and blockchain with tangible, predictable revenue streams.
And to solidify this commitment to RWA, Bullish submitted an SEC application to be registered as a transfer agent for US securities.
Speaker 1Now that is a massive regulatory step for the listener.
Why is registering as a transfer agent such a significant regulatory hurdle for a crypto exchange.
It sounds like boring back office stuff.
Speaker 2It sounds boring, but it's a huge deal.
A transfer agent is responsible for tracking who owns a company's stocks, bonds, or other securities.
If the SEC approves Bullish to act as a transfer agent for US securities, it means they're essentially authorized to handle the back end processing of traditional financial assets, but on the blockchain, so it's.
Speaker 1A direct regulatory stamp of approval.
Speaker 2Exactly.
It allows them removed far beyond just crypto trading and into the multi trillion dollar world of digitized equities and debt.
It makes them a foundational layer for RWA tokenization in the US.
Speaker 1This ambition, you know, contrasting with the short term price fhere it ties into this bigger market psychology debate.
Are we finally moving past the purely speculative phase of crypto?
Speaker 2The data suggests a definitive shift is underway.
Market makers like Influx in Singapore.
They observe that the market is rapidly moving away from being liquidity driven, you know, relying on massive retail inflex excess leverage and generic momentum, to being fundamentals driven.
Speaker 1The old alt seasons.
Speaker 2Those traditional alt seasons fueled by pure speculation are fading.
Speaker 1Yeah, So if speculation is fading, what does fundamentals driven actually look like on a chart when the price is crashing.
Speaker 2It looks like divergence.
You see tokens that are tied to clear utility, things like staking yields, predictable revenue streams, approve dtfs or RWA.
They're holding up much better than the purely speculative assets.
The weaker majors and the carely narrative driven coins.
They're the ones absorbing the majority of the selling stress.
Speaker 1So the market is becoming more discerning.
Speaker 2Exactly, it's a fine of long term structural health.
The market is prioritizing durability and utility over just reflect of beta exposure.
Speaker 1That shift towards structural durability is perhaps what Jim Kramer was seeing when he suggested it almost feels like a cabal is trying to keep Bitcoin above ninety thousand dollars.
Speaker 2That comment perfectly encapsulated the market tension when Bitcoin was briefly dipping under that psychological ninety thousand dollars mark.
But the community counter argument is crucial here, which is there's no manipulation.
The support is entirely structural buying driven by clear math.
We are seeing persistent mandatory ETF inflows combined with massive accumulation by corporations like Strategy, and this volume of buying consistently exceeds the new daily issuance of bitcoin from minors.
Speaker 1And Michael Sailor has been the most vocal champion of this structural argument.
He's been arguing that Wall Street's entry is actually making bitcoin more stable, not.
Speaker 2Less, he is incredibly committed to this view.
Sailor maintains that Wall Street's adoption through ETF's and corporate treasuries provides this predictable, deep source of demand that acts as a continuous floor under the price.
I mean, strategy currently holds an astonishing six hundred and forty nine thousand, eight hundred and seventy BTC.
Speaker 1Which is worth about what fifty nine point five to nine billion dollars roughly.
Speaker 2Yeah, and he has repeatedly called their leverage position robust.
In his view, the market floor is an arbitrary it's being raised by massive, transparent, committed institutional capital.
Speaker 1But if the four is being raised structurally, why did the price still dip so dramatically.
Why didn't that structural demand just overwhelm the short term panic and prevent the dip below ninety thousand dollars in the first place.
Speaker 2And that's the critical question that challenges the perfect stability narrative.
While that long term accumulation is mathematically raising the baseline, short term volatility is driven by force selling.
You've got liquidations of leverage retail positions, You've get ETF redemptions from panicked holders, and major corporate risk rebalancing like we just discussed with sharplink.
Speaker 1So the force sellers create a tidal wave.
Speaker 2They create a massive immediate liquidity event that even the persistent etf inflows can't instantly absorb.
Sailor's long term stability argument is sound, but it doesn't insulate the asset from acute short term panic induced by leverage and unexpected news.
Speaker 1Speaking of structure, we have to address the major stress point within the bitcoin network itself, the economics of the miners.
The reliance on the block subsidy is hitting a critical level compared to the transaction fees.
Speaker 2This is a foundational concern for the bitcoin network's long term security model, which is designed to eventually rely entirely on fees to pay for security.
Currently, bitcoin miners get their revenue primarily from the block subsidy, which is three point one two five btc.
Speaker 1Per block That translates to about forty five million dollars in daily revenue.
Speaker 2Right However, the transaction fees paid by users, the payments for actually using the network, currently contribute only about three hundred thousand dollars per day to minor revenue.
Speaker 1That is less than one percent of their total income coming from fees.
That ratio seems I mean, fundamentally unsustainable for the future of the network.
Speaker 2It represents a twelve month low for fee contribution, and it dramatically highlights the network's heavy reliance on the inflation based reward system right now, and while the subsidy won't fully end until around the year twenty one point forty, this persistently low fee contribution raises a very serious question about long term minor economics.
Speaker 1Okay, so why does low fee revenue matter if the price of bitcoin is high, I mean, isn't the subsidy still worth a lot of money?
Speaker 2It matters because miners secure the network.
They spend massive amounts of energy to validate transactions and prevent double spending attacks.
If the block subsidy eventually disappears, the network needs fees to compensate miners for that security work.
Speaker 1And if the fees aren't there.
Speaker 2If fees remain negligible, if the network is mostly used for simple transfers rather than complex, high fee transactions, and the bitcoin price doesn't appreciate enough to make those small fees worthwhile miners won't be incentivized to spend the energy.
Speaker 1Required, which could lead to a decrease in network hash rate, and.
Speaker 2That could potentially expose the network to a fifty one percent attack risk, which is when a single entity gains control of most of the network's processing power and can rewrite the ledger.
Speaker 1So we have institutional investors structurally raising the price floor, but at the same time, the underlying economic engine of the network, the fee generation, is showing long term weakness.
The infrastructure is somehow robust and fragile at the exact same time.
Speaker 2Moving from the Bitcoin fundamentals, let's look at the all coin space, where the volatility is often amplified, especially around major institutional product launches, and we have to start with the first xrpetf launch, which was a clear by the rumor sell the news event.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was positioned as this major breakthrough, but the launch by Canary was met with a well, a resounding thud in terms of price action.
Speaker 2Canary launch their xrp ETF with a respectable two hundred and fifty million dollars in initial inflows, which you know, would typically be seen as really bullish momentum, but not this time, not this time.
Immediately following the launch, the XRP price dropped a sharp nine percent.
This just reinforces that earlier point.
In a market under stress, even significant fund inflows do not guarantee price appreciation if the broader liquidity and sentiment remain fragile.
Speaker 1But this institutional access, it's not a one off thing.
There's a strong pipeline of major asset managers gearing up to launch their own XRP funds right absolutely.
Speaker 2Franklin Templeton Financial Giant has their XRPETF scheduled for launch on November twentieth.
Analysts are projecting anywhere from one hundred and fifty million dollars to two hundred and fifty million dollars in first DAI trading.
So there's clearly persistent demand for regulated exposure.
And we also have active filings from Fidelity, Invesco, and bitwise.
Speaker 1So institutional access is expanding rapidly regardless of the initial price disappointment.
Speaker 2Correct And meanwhile, Ripple itself is making moves on chain.
We saw a shift of four hundred and fifty million dollars in XRP to an unknown wallet, While the reason for that move is murky.
The most high profile XRP story involves the one and only Dave Portnoy.
Speaker 1Of course, Portnoy's conviction is once again highly entertaining and highly visible.
During this market dip, he reported making a calculated two point one five million dollar dive back into crypto.
Speaker 2He did.
He divided that capital seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars into bitcoin, four hundred thousand dollars into the ethereum, and he committed a full one million dollars to XRP.
Speaker 1And he called XRP his tenx bet, his ten XPT.
Speaker 2That's a significant vote of confidence in xrp's long term utility, even as the ETF launch disappointed.
His comment about hunting when there's blood in the streets really confirms his Hodl conviction and his willingness to bet big on assets he believes are fundamentally undervalued, regardless of short term volatility.
Speaker 1It's a pure high stake speculation play that contrasts so starkly with ADC's structural risk off allocation.
Speaker 2A completely different mindset, and now completely outside the institral ETF race, we have the story of z cash, which is delivering returns that justify the broader market fear.
Speaker 1A one thousand percent rallies since October is almost unbelievable.
Z cash or ZC.
It's soared from what seventy dollars to now trading above seven hundred dollars per coin.
What on earth fueled this explosive price action in this market?
Speaker 2The primary driver is a dramatic resurgence in the privacy narrative.
This rally has been accelerated by some celebrity endorsements, and I think a growing global realization that centralized digital systems inherently lack anonymity.
Z cash, with its superior zero knowledge proof technology for shielded transactions, became the main beneficiary of this renewed interest in digital financial sovereignty.
Speaker 1How has that surge affected its market ranking?
Speaker 2Zc's market capitalization has reached ten point one billion dollars.
That places it within a sixty five percent price increase of overtaking Cardana or Ada for a coveted spot in the top ten rankings.
Wow.
And what's perhaps even more telling about its current momentum is its trading volume.
In terms of daily trading volume, ZEC is already ahead of Ada.
It's registering one point seventy one billion dollars.
The narrative is strong and the liquidity is flowing rapidly to support it.
Speaker 1That's a powerful reminder that utility tied to a deeply felt user need in this case, privacy, can generate spectacular momentum even when the rest of the market is in pain.
Speaker 2Now contrast that strong utility driven narrative with Shiba Enu or Asia.
Here the price action appears to be driven purely by inertia and hope.
Speaker 1Right, we've seen massive outflows recently, Over one hundred and twenty billion to one hundred and thirty billion azib were moved to exchanges in just a forty eight hour period, reflecting sustained selling pressure.
Speaker 2That kind of outflow should crush the price, yet it's sort of holding weekly above a critical threshold.
Speaker 1Why the resilience, Well, technically, the asset is not yet in a catastrophic oversold zone.
Its relative strength index the RSI is staying above the critical thirty mark, which usually signals that rock bottom is imminent.
This suggests that while there is a lot of selling, there is still some baseline momentum and a dedicated retail base that is absorbing the volume.
Speaker 2But the real scrutiny falls on the project's long term promise its deflationary mechanisms.
Are they actually working?
Speaker 1It doesn't look like it.
They are demonstrably failing to create scarcity at any meaningful scale.
The project has long p voted burning tokens to reduce the supply, but the burn activity is nearly non.
Speaker 2Existent and the amounts are tiny.
Speaker 1The few transactions that do occur are minuscule compared to the overwhelming supply of over five hundred and eighty nine trillion tokens still in circulation.
The failure of this intentional sca fity mechanism means the tokens price movement is driven entirely by speculation and community inertia rather than any intentional utility or supply shock.
So we've covered the market volatility, the institutional positioning, and the all coin drama.
Now let's accelerate into the technological revolution that is defining the next era of crypto, the intersection of AI, next generation security, and real world utility.
Speaker 2This section really proved that innovation is accelerating completely independent of price, and the biggest news here is the direct integration of artificial intelligence into mainstream trading.
The crypto exchange by true is implementing this into its copy trading service.
Speaker 1This is a huge leap, allowing users to automate their investment decisions based on the analytical power of these maps massive AI models.
Which models are they actually integrating?
Speaker 2They've integrated six of the leading large language and intelligence models GPT five, Gemini two point five pro, Claude, Sonnet four point five, Grock four Deep, CGV three point one, and Quin three max.
Users can select any of these models and entrust a portion of their portfolio to automatic machine management.
Speaker 1That list covers the absolute cutting edge of AI development.
What sort of performance track record are these models bringing from traditional finance.
Speaker 2Well, experiments conducted in traditional stock trading environments have shown some remarkable effectiveness.
Models like GPT five and Gemini two point five pro have recorded impressive success rates of seventy four percent and seventy one percent, respectively.
They often outperform human fund managers under specific market conditions.
Speaker 1But the crucial question is how they will fare in the highly volatile, peculiar, and often narrative driven environment of cryptocurrency markets, which often don't follow traditional technical analysis patterns exactly.
Speaker 2This is the first major real world test of AI in mainstream crypto investing by true was allowing users to define the portion of their investment they wish the AI to manage, but the profits and losses are entirely retained by the user.
Speaker 1So it's an interesting blend of decentralized investment control with hyper centralized analytical power.
Speaker 2It is this signals the future where these large language models might be the primary drivers of short and medium term trading liquidity.
Speaker 1Moving from AI trading to a fundamental problem of crypto securing your private keys, we're seeing a true disruption here with the gnot biometric hardware wallet.
Speaker 2The g knot aims to completely sideline the seed phrase, you know, the infamous twelve or twenty four words that are simultaneously the key and the single point of failure for cryptosecurity.
It's challenging the established hardware wallet makers like Ledger and Treasure by eliminating the need for seed phrases or even pin codes entirely.
Speaker 1How does gnot achieve that level of security without a traditional key.
Speaker 2It uses advanced finger vase standing technology, and this is far more secure than a standard fingerprint reader.
Finger vein scanning works by reading the unique vascular architecture inside the user's finger.
Speaker 1And it requires live blood flow.
Speaker 2Crucially, yes, the technology requires live blood flow to unlock, which effectively prevents sophisticated threats from high resolution static scans, molds, or morbidly, the use of severed fingers.
The core security mechanism relies on zero knowledge proofs processed locally on the device, ensuring your biometric data never leaves the wallet.
Speaker 1That's a massive leap in physical security and convenience.
I mean, it solves the single biggest fear for a lot of people, right losing that piece of paper with twenty four words on it.
Speaker 2It does, and it supports all the major chains Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, BnB, and XRP.
Furthermore, the company is actively developing multi sig functionality, which would allow the wallet to unlock only if multiple users potentially located globally verify their unique finger vein scan simultaneously.
Speaker 1And what's the price point?
Speaker 2The Founder's edition pre sales priced at two hundred and ninety nine dollars.
They're betting that users are willing to pay a premium to eliminate the security nightmare of managing a seed phrase.
Speaker 1That solves a major headache for institutional and high worth individual holders.
Let's look at DeFi innovation now specifically Falcon Finances Staking vaults.
Speaker 2So Falcon Finance launched these staking vaults to cater to users seeking higher predictable yield without giving up ownership of their assets.
Users can deposit their holdings starting with a native FF token and earn yield up to twelve percent APR, and.
Speaker 1This yield is paid out in their synthetic dollar.
Speaker 2Correct, it's paid out in USDF.
There's synthetic dollar, which is specifically designed for consistency and resilience.
It aims to minimize the volatility risks associated with non feautbacked stable coins.
Speaker 1Twelve percent APR is attractive, but what structural features are built into the vaults to ensure that consistency and resilience you mentioned?
How do they stop a bank run?
Speaker 2Well, the design emphasizes orderly asset flow and prevents those rapid destabilizing withdrawals.
The vaults require a one hundred and eighty day minimum lock up period, ensuring liquidity remains stable for half a year ah okay, and there's a three day cool down period before withdrawal can be finalized.
This structure strengthens the underlying pooled liquidity and reinforces the broader USDF ecosystem by creating predictable capital commitments.
Speaker 1Now, this next story might be the most critical development in terms of real world utility.
Stable coins finally bridging the gap to everyday commerce in major developing economies.
Speaker 2This is a monumental achievement for utility and adoption.
Medipay, which is a Cello based stable coin wallet developed by Opera, just rolled out a pay like a local feature specifically targeting Latin America.
This innovation directly connects ust eerycannor balances to local real time payment methods.
Speaker 1So you're telling you my stable coin balance is instantly usable for buying groceries or paying rent Exactly.
Speaker 2Users can now make direct, instantaneous payments using their stable coin balance to essential local rails like Mercato, Pago and Argentina and PIX in Brazil.
This completely eliminates the need for expensive card processors, unfavorable exchange rates, or slow bank transfers.
It links global digital dollars directly to essential local commerce infrastructure, and.
Speaker 1We have to emphasize the sheer scale of the PIX integration in Brazil.
This isn't just some niche app.
Speaker 2Not at all.
Pix is not just another payment app.
It is Brazil's financial operating system.
It's used by over seventy six percent of the entire Brazilian population and it processes eighty percent more transactions than credit and debit cards combined.
Speaker 1And Mercado Pago is huge in Argentina.
Speaker 2It's huge.
It boasts seventy two million active users.
This integration immediately turns stable coins into instant, low cost utility for two massive economies, solving persistent problems like card rejection and high cross border transaction fees for anyone holding digital dollars.
Speaker 1It's incredible to see that level of adoption and utility being built while the price charts are just flashing red.
However, as AI and distributed computing expand, so what does the sophistication of criminal activity, we have to address the growing thread of crypto mining malice.
Speaker 2This is a significant security warning that it's directly at the infrastructure enabling the AI boom.
A botnet which is being tracked as iron Earn four forty is actively exploiting a critical unfixed severity flaw in.
Speaker 1Ray clusters and Ray for our listeners, is an open source Python network.
It's designed to distribute computational workloads across multiple machines, which makes it essential for AI development and data processing.
Speaker 2Right, so, attackers are hijacking this specialized computing power that's intended for development or AI tasks to mine crypto.
Speaker 1For themselves, and they're using AI to do it.
Speaker 2Precisely, the attackers are using AI generated payloads, ironically leveraging the same technology they are undermining to submit jobs via the unauthenticated Jobs API in these RAY clusters.
The payload then deploys the xm rig cryptojacker.
Speaker 1And their method of deployment is highly refined to avoid detection.
Correct.
Speaker 2Yes, this is the clever part.
To avoid the easy detection that usually happens when a cryptojacker consumes one hundred percent of the processing power and drastically slows down the host system.
The attackers are locking xm rig to just sixty percent of the victim's processing capacity.
It's a very clever stealth tactic designed to keep the victims server operational and the theft running longer without anyone noticing.
Speaker 1How widespread is this vulnerability given how much RAY is being used in AI.
Speaker 2Now, the research indicates an alarming spread.
Over two hundred and thirty thousand vulnerable RAY servers are now exposed online.
This is a huge increase from only a few thousand exposed servers that were reported back in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1So the dark side of the AI boom absolutely.
Speaker 2Specialized computing networks are becoming massive, highly valuable targets for crypto mining, theft, exploiting flaws in decentralized architecture.
Speaker 1It truly is the Wild West merging with the future.
You have AI models trading our crypto, while AI is also writing the payloads used to steal computing power to mine crypto.
Speaker 2All this institutional commitment into technological advancement is moving in lockstep with global efforts to regulate and manage digital assets.
It's a necessary step for mass adoption.
We are seeing governance finally start to catch up to innovation.
Speaker 1Let's start at the highest levels of traditional banking regulation.
The Basle Committee on Banking Supervision, their chair Eric Sedin, is demanding an overhaul of the rules governing bank crypto capital.
Speaker 2This is huge news for traditional finance integration.
The current Basal rules are notoriously stringent.
They require banks to hold massive amounts of capital.
In some cases it's dollar for dollar backing against their crypto exposure.
The Dean is calling for a major overhaul because these stringent rules are simply not working.
Speaker 1What specifically is forcing his hand now.
Speaker 2Two major factors.
First, the dramatic increase in stable coins, which fall under some of the most stringent BASL capital requirements.
Banks want to engage with stable coins for payments and settlement, but are financially penalized by the rules for doing so.
Speaker 1And the second factor.
Speaker 2Resistance resistance from key global financial centers, specifically the US and Great Britain, which have effectively refused to enact the current stringent rules.
Speaker 1Why did the US and UK resist implementation Well, the industry criticized the original basal rules as being too punitive and too conservative relative to the actual risks presented by holding high liquidity assets like bitcoin.
Speaker 2By delaying and resisting implementation, the US and UK essentially forced the global body to acknowledge that a different approach is needed, one that recognizes the growing stability and structure in the crypto market, especially in regulated stable coins.
Speaker 1Moving to North America, we've seen rapid coordinated movement on stable coin legislation.
Canada just introduced the Canadian stable Coin Act YES as.
Speaker 2Part of its budget Implementation Act.
This is a foundational piece of legislation for them.
It establishes a robust federal regime under the Bank of Canada to supervise all issuers of FIAT referencing stable coins available to Canadians.
Speaker 1And it requires a full registration process.
Speaker 2A very detailed registration application covering governance, financial disclosures, and reserve management.
Speaker 1And this framework is very familiar to US observers.
Speaker 2It is modeled closely on the US Genius Act, which was signed into law earlier this year.
This highlights a coordinated, regulatory, confident North American approach to defining and securing stable coins.
This regulatory clarity is exactly what President Donald Trump championed as part of his pledge to make America the Crypto Capital of the world, and it shows some bipartisan progress on this specific issue.
Speaker 1Speaking of the US, the government is also making moves to severely limit the use of offshore crypto avenues, focusing heavily on tax transparency and reporting.
Speaker 2This is the IRS and the White House reviewing a proposal modeled after FBR and FACA, the frameworks used for reporting AUSTUO bank accounts and foreign financial assets.
This new proposal would require Americans to report and pay taxes on foreign crypto accounts, and.
Speaker 1The definition of a foreign account here is intentionally broad to catch as much activity as possible.
How wide reaching is it extremely broad?
Speaker 2It potentially includes offshore centralized exchanges like those operating solely out of Asia or Europe.
It could include foreign custodians, foreign brokers listing tokenized assets, and even certain foreign wallet providers that hold private keys outside of US jurisdiction.
Speaker 1And what's the stated reason for this?
Speaker 2The stated rationale is not merely tax collection.
It's to promote the growth and use of digital assets in the United States and alleviate concerns that the current lack of reporting disadvantages US regulated exchanges.
The message is clear, the US government wants crypto held and transacted through onshore regulated entities.
Speaker 1This regulatory momentum culminates in what is perhaps the most tangible sign of sovereign adoption yet, the integration of bitcoin into municipal finance led by New Hampshire.
Speaker 2New Hampshire just launched the nation's first one hundred million dollar bitcoin secured municipal bond.
This is not a speculative investment.
It is a financial product backed by the security of a digital asset.
The bond is a conduit bond led by the state's Business Finance Authority or BFA.
Speaker 1So what makes this secure for the investors and critically, how are the state's taxpayers protected from the underlying volatility of bitcoin.
Speaker 2The structure is designed for maximum risk management.
Bitcoin held in bitco custody serves as the primary collateral to safeguard the investors if the BFA were to default.
The investors are secured by that bitcoin collateral, which insulates taxpayers from the market risk.
Speaker 1And this is part of a bigger state strategy.
Speaker 2It is This bond initiative is a controlled trial, and it follows an earlier critical move that allowed the New Hampshire Treasury to allocate up to five percent of public funds to crypto that created the first state level strategic bitcoin reserve.
Speaker 1The ultimate goal then sounds like converting idle reserves into functioning tools for public finance.
Speaker 2That's the long term vision.
The fees and gains generated from this collateral program will be directed into the Bitcoin Economic Development Fund, which supports local entrepreneurship.
Experts working on the structure noted that it opens the door for pension funds and retirement programs to gain limited, managed exposure to crypto through a highly regulated bond structure.
This is how bitcoin begins its integration into the multi trillion dollar US bond market.
Speaker 1Finally, we saw a key shift in direction at the FDIC this week that could ease access to banking for crypto firms.
Speaker 2Yes, Travis Hill, President Trump's pick for FDIC chair, was advanced by the Senate Banking Committee.
Hill has focused on overturning the agency's direction on digital assets, specifically moving to end the practice of using reputational risk as a means to block crypto firms from financial services.
Speaker 1Which has been a huge problem for the industry.
Speaker 2A massive problem for years, major banks have denied services to legitimate crypto firms citing this undefined reputational risk, effectively choking off their access to traditional banking.
Hill's advancement suggests the agency's poised to move toward a more objective res disk based regulatory assessment rather than just subjective fear.
Speaker 1So if we synthesize all of this information, from the sovereign wealth funds buying the dip, to the exchanges filing from massive IPOs, and the regulators finally trying to catch up.
We see a market that is just fundamentally defined by tension.
Speaker 2That tension is undeniable.
We see enormous institutional fear.
You've got the billion dollar Ethereum trust canceled sharp Link, facing a half billion in unrealized losses, record ETF outflows.
These are all signs of acute market pain and caution.
Speaker 1But on the other side, we have incredible institutional confidence.
You have eighty nine is tripling its Bitcoin stake, treating it as a structural peer to gold.
You have crack In marching toward a twenty billion dollar IPO backed by giants like Citadel and New Hampshire, and New Hampshire launching the first Bitcoin secured municipal bond, legitimizing BTC as collateral in public finance.
Speaker 2The market might feel chaotic and volatile in the short term, but the machinery underneath is rapidly maturing.
The persistent effort to bridge crypto innovation.
You know aim models trading automatically on bitru stable coins paying via pix in Brazil.
G not revolutionizing hardware security with traditional regulatory guardrails like the overhauling of Basil bank rules and the new Canadian stable coin law, suggests we are solidifying the foundations for the next era regardless of the price TEPS.
Speaker 1What stands out here is that despite the short term price trauma, the technical and governance infrastructure is just moving forward as if the chaos doesn't matter.
But we do have to acknowledge the one area where this market is deeply intertwined with broader economic forces, the global AI boom.
Speaker 2We've seen AI feed crypto trading, We've seen AI create new security threats, and the AI narrative in general is driving risk appetite among the major tech investors, who also backfirms like Kracken.
The sources noted warnings from figures like Google CEO Sandor Pichai and JP Morgan warning of irrationality and a potential bubble in AI valuations globally.
Speaker 1So here is the final provocative thought for you to consider.
If the high valuations and speculative frenzy driving the current excitement in the AI sector, the very sector that provides capital and narrative confidence to the mature and crypto world were to correct sharply.
How might that global systemic correction affect the newfound structural stability that institutions like ADIC and Michael Saylor believe they are building into the Bitcoin ecosystem.
What stands out to you about that potential spillover risk