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You're a 25-y year trading veteran. I mean, you're a 25-y year market veteran. Is that fair to say? Yep, that's about right. So, what would you say the headline for crypto in 2026 is? I love that question. Uh, something like the Great Reset. Today, I sit down with 25-year market veteran and CIO of Bitwise, Matt Hogan. I think that's probably the easiest trade right now in crypto about what comes next with Bitcoin. If it passes, I think it's a shotgun start to a new bull market and the crypto coins with the most potential into 2027 in this future of
tokenization, which is clearly happening in the next 1 2 years, what benefits more, ETH or Solana? Click subscribe if you're invested in crypto so you never miss conversations like this. And let's start. I think we're going through I think we're in the process of bottoming right now and I think the bull market that comes out of this bottom is different than the bull markets that we've had in the past. So I do think crypto is resetting into a much more real world oriented uh vision a much more revenue driven um a much more tangible vision. So, I think there is a big reset or a big change um coming and we're just going to start to feel that at the second half of the year. And when you say Bitcoin is in the
process of bottoming, what are the signals you're looking at that tell you that? Yeah. So, there are two things that really always happen in a bottom. The first is that you see signs of leverage being squeezed out of the system. Uh you see signs of apathy emerging and we saw that at the end of Q2, right? Q2, you had massive outflows out of the ETF complex. You had massive selling. But at the end of Q2, you started to see the leverage really get squeezed out. You saw Micro Strategy trade below its MNAV. You saw stretch trade down to 75. You saw open interest collapse. You saw funding rates uh trend towards zero. All the signs that
speculative excess in the system were hitting the bottom. And then the big tell to me is always when markets stop reacting to bad news. So as an example, so far this half we've had the odds of the clarity act take a one-way path downward based on poly market and crypto has been flat to up. Uh we saw micro strategy sell bitcoin and crypto rallied. uh even at that moment when stretch broke crypto traded flat when markets stop reacting to bad news that's usually a sign that the bottom is in and um you know those are the indicators there are other things I'm looking at the 200we moving average uh looking at long-term holders in the Bitcoin community looking at ETF flows normalizing out there are
thousand different signals um but those are the two that really matter to me and the most important the most telling ing signal is when markets stop reacting to bad news. And we have seen that in the crypto industry even recently AI blows up. Crypto's like whatever. That's a really good sign when you get that kind of apathy. That means there's no more excess excitement and you're ready to move to the next level. What do you think is the most important macro factor for crypto and Bitcoin? like the Fed, if the Fed hikes later this year, if the bond market breaks, uh, or if AI earnings come back and the liquidity keeps going into AI, what's most important for crypto?
Any extreme. So, crypto is going to do fine if all of that maintains on a normalized pace. If the Fed raises rates a little or drops rates a little, 25 basis points either side, I don't think it matters, right? It's not percentage point moves. it doesn't reset risk expectations in a massive way. I think that's fine. If oil stays between $50 and $100 a barrel, I don't think it matters. It's not big enough to change the cryptospecific factors that are shaping this bull market. If AI does pretty well, but neither goes back to where it's sucking all the oxygen out of the room, nor does the bubble collapse and Frontier Labs go bankrupt and there's chaos. If it's just normal, crypto does great. So, if I had to pick
one of those, the one I'm most concerned about is the AI1 on either side of that binary outcome. Either a true bubble bursting, which I don't anticipate, or a rebirth of excitement, which seems more likely to me. Um, those would take a little bit of the steam out of uh what I expect to be a good second half of the year in Bitcoin and in crypto. But broadly speaking, we just want everything to be sort of okay because the cryptospecific trends I think are very positive and as long as macro doesn't get out of the way, I think we're going to do great. So in the reset of 2026, like you mentioned, you gave signals for um basically seller exhaustion. What makes helps mark bottom? What brings the buyers back in?
So what's the other side of that? So, so it depends on whether you're talking about Bitcoin or the rest of the crypto ecosystem. This is all Bitcoin, right? What isn't that the mover? Well, I actually So, I think there are two different things. So, on Bitcoin specifically, I think what brings it back is these large wealth management platforms that have been orienting around towards crypto. the Wells Fargo, the UBS's, the Meil Lynches, the other major wealth management platforms, they've been turning towards crypto. That's going to really accelerate in the second half of the year. I expect you're going to see inflows. A lot of those flows will go into Bitcoin, and I think
that will sort of drag that market upwards. Uh the other market that's going to do very well is anything that lies at the intersection of real world assets and onchain assets. So that is hyperlquid. uh that is a that is unis swap it's morpho it's lighter it's aer it's all of those things you're already seeing them perform extremely well actually over the last 3 months our defi index is up about 25% you don't usually see that when the majors are flat it usually lags the majors I think that's going to be the other bull market and what's going to drive it is just this spectacular focus of interest in onchain ain real world assets which I think are exploding upwards as we speak.
I want to talk about some of the smaller coins like unis swap and hype and everything small being relative but um in this uh in this future of tokenization which is clearly happening in the next one two years what benefits more ETH or Solana? Oh, great question. Obviously both, but if you had to pick more, you're gonna pin me, you're gonna pin me down. Um, uh, look, what I'm seeing right now is really explosive growth in tokenized stocks and, uh, tokenized stocks are concentrated on the Salana ecosystem currently. And so, I would give the edge to Salana there. The other reason I would give the edge to Salana and I'll make the bull case for ETH because I'm also bullish on ETH um is it's just so
much smaller, right? We sort of talk about those two assets being the same size, but in fact ETH is like five times bigger. So uh it takes incrementally less activity on Salana to sort of close that marginal gap. But I am bullish on both. I will say in ETH's favor, it continues to be the chosen platform for institutionals, institutional assets moving on to crypto. And the ETH community has really surprised me to the upside with the way it's reinvigorated itself with all these new sort of sub foundations emerging. Uh it's been a beautiful example of an ecosystem healing from a challenging environment and I think there's a lot of momentum uh because of that in that community.
That's one of the reasons ETH has been doing very well. And again, it surprised me on the upside its ability to self-organize uh around the challenges it was facing and uh really put some effective steps in place to address them. I've been very impressed. Why do you think Robin Hood chose ETH and ETHL2 for Robin Hood chain? It seems like Solana and Robin Hood kind of similar DGEN users, but they chose ETH. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's a good question. I mean, with an L2, you get to own a great deal of your own economics. And um I think that is a that's a good argument in favor of ETH, ETH broadly. So, it has that almost subnet style uh chain value that
attracts a lot of people. It's also the case that you don't you still don't get fired for building on ETH just like you didn't get fired for buying IBM. So it is a it has a default momentum which is a really valuable characteristics and one of the reasons among many that it keeps winning. Look, I'm an ETH bull. I actually like them both. Um but I think that ownership, those economics and that default nature contributed probably to its decision. Matt, you've been in markets for over 25 years. You've seen near it all. What's your gut tell you about will clarity pass? M h I It's really tough. Um it's really tough. My I don't want to answer. You're trying to pin me down.
It's so It changes every day. So I get the it's like a coin flip. It changes every day. Look, Poly Market has the odds at something like 30%. I haven't looked today, but that's where it was a couple days ago. I think the probability is higher than that, but probably still less than 50. So I think it's in the high 40s. I really think it's like a coin flip. The pro case is it won't die. And things that don't die, even though they have a million excuses to die, um often tend to make it through. So, it's it's shown remarkable resilience. But man, is there uh Democrat on Trump hatred and it just feels like ethics is this explosive thing that is going to be hard to shepherd across the line. So, I' I'd take the other side of the poly market
trade, but I'm not sure I would take a 50/50 trade on clarity. What changes in your outlook at least in the next two years if it passes or if it fails? I would assume if it passes, you're more just pro Bitcoin and the large caps. I mean, if it fails, you're pro the stability, the large caps. I actually uh I actually think that the impact is much shorter term. So if it fails, uh I think crypto in general struggles for a month or two as it digests that news. And I think smaller cap assets probably struggle more. Um if it passes, I think it's a shotgun start to a new bull market. That's my broad thesis.
I don't know how much it matters over the next two years because I think crypto is going to get enough escape velocity over the next two years that even a dramatic change in administration won't be able to put it back inside. You just have too many people building in this ecosystem. I think it will be an Uber versus taxis sorts of situation within 2 years. So I think the impact is more shorter. But for sure, if it fails, I think there's a reasonable probability that crypto goes through a period of volatility and that hits particularly non- Bitcoin assets. Um, but as you go smaller, the impact is larger. I think that's a logical analysis of what will happen.
Yeah. And to that point, it seems this train is rolling either way because Morgan Stanley is already developing products around ETH and Soul. That's exactly what I mean. uh all the major providers are coming on board. This is not like a one shot and then we're done. And if you think about the progress we've made over the last year and then you roll that forward two more years, it's going to be really hard to put this back in. You have Morgan Stanley launching multiple ETFs. Um you have 140 companies, you know, coming together to form a stablecoin. you have Robin Hood integrating with Uniswap and Morpho on its own, you know, layer 2.
It's just going to be it's going to be too embedded into how finance works in 2 years for us to peel it back dramatically. It will still matter what happens in the election in 2 years, but it's not we're not going back to Gensler. We're not going back to Elizabeth Warren. Uh, you know, crypto has achieved escape velocity regardless of whether the Clarity Act actually passes or not. this question for fun. What all Bitcoiners talk about or crypto people top of next cycle, where do you see Bitcoin? Yeah, I think 250 to 400 is a reasonable range. Um, look, I continue to think it's on a path to a million. I think the next bull market probably has the largest market cap impact of any bull market, but a smaller percentage.
That gets you to something like 250 is a double, but it's also a couple trillion dollars. uh it just takes more to move this asset than it does in the past. Uh but I do think there's a lot of capital from the financial advisor community, from the family office community, from the large wealth management platform community that's going to come into the market over the next two years. Um and I think that'll contribute to a nice healthy bull market for Bitcoin. And when you say 200, 250 to 400, is that because psychologically, oh, money will start to unlock at those levels or due to institutions, they're going to sell at a double for safety of their clients?
It's mostly psychologically behavior. I think I, you know, above 100,000, I think the next psychological hurdle is 250. Um, just because it's a quarter and so that's a natural cell wall. Will we get through it? Maybe. That's why I offered some upside, but you know, $100,000, I know we went over it, but it was clearly a behavioral sell wall. There were clearly a lot of long-term investors willing to take money off the table at 100 grand. I suspect that'll happen again as we go through it again in the future, but the next stopping point is something like 250. And um, you know, that would be a reasonable place to get to. That's a 4x from here. Um, that would be pretty good.
I love I think we'll get there. Uh I think there will be another cycle. I don't think the top is in at all. Most of the money coming into Bitcoin still isn't coming in. And the fundamental case for it is as strong as ever, right? The budget is running away from us. So, um I feel pretty good 100%. Nothing has changed in terms of the fundamental use case and we're seeing adoption. So, eventually that breaks to the upside. Question for you, Matt, though. This is topical question from a news thing, a news event that just happened in the last two days. Cold card got hacked the wallet. Where is the safest place to store your crypto?
Oh man. Um, it's a question everyone is asking right now that, you know, I it's hard for me to not talk my book. ETFs do a phenomenal job uh of working with qualified custodians which have some level of insurance in place and a strong track record over a decade plus of successfully custodying uh their Bitcoin. So I think that is a good solution on the self-custody side. Um there are good solutions out there but um but I don't want to recommend one feels like a Twitter accident waiting to happen. But essentially, and I think you can have both. You know, ETFs obviously they will handle the custody for you and the other option would be hardware wallet is essentially what you're saying.
I think that's it. My view generally is that you want to be at the barbells and not in the messy middle. That's been the history of crypto from the beginning is uh hardware wallet, real self-custody, true institutional custody regulated with protections in place. Those have been great. It's everything else that has been a mess. And as soon as you get away from those two extremes and I think people, most people are best served by doing both. Um there's strong arguments for both. Uh it's everything in the middle that I wouldn't touch. I think we need to go to the edges. And speaking before of talking your book, I personally like that because if you invest money in it or in your time in it, that's truly what you care about
most. So speaking of that, Bitwise I think manages over $15 billion in assets in crypto. What are you buying and what would you never touch? Me personally or Bitwise the company? I think both if there's a difference. I was talking about Bitwise, but obviously whatever you're most comfortable with for sure. I mean Bitwise runs a huge variety of products, ETFs, active strategies, etc. um the bulk of our assets are in very plain vanilla products that just help people gain exposure to the market. So something like an index-based ETF or a Bitcoin ETF or ETH ETF or a Salana ETF we do um we do we are selective in that. So if
you look at our index for instance the top 10 uh there are a number of assets that aren't in it like uh Tron is not in it. um uh Dogecoin is not in it. BNB is not in it. Leo is not in it. It's not an indictment of those assets. They just don't fit the institutional remitt. Um so that's what we're doing there. We're doing more onchain. We're doing more vaults. That definitely gets you into a riskier uh subsegment of the market, but there's some uh areas there. In my personal uh side, most of my crypto is basically broadly diversified in indexless strategies and never changes on a short-term basis. I think the meta that's live in the market is revenued driven chains uh that capture their value. So things like uh
hyperlquid is a great example but some of the smaller apps that are improving their tokconomics are also attractive to me uh from the unis swaps to the a etc. Yeah uh especially with the institutional narrative uh protocols that earn makes sense to me. You mentioned also before defi and you have a defi index so obviously you see uh buying demand from your clients for defi. I look I think that's I think that's probably the easiest trade right now in crypto. Um many of those assets are extraordinarily small right unis swap is a global brand that is on a circulating supply basis a 2.7 billion asset. It's improving its tokconomics.
There's a reason why it had poor tokconomics because under Gensler you couldn't capture any value. They've shown the ability to throw a fee switch and aggregate uh a portion or irrigate a portion of the uh fee activity to the chain itself. Um, I think that's that's like a pretty it's aligned with a lot of things that are going right now. Uh, real world assets, integrations with large financial partners, uh, improving regulatory status, improving tokconomics, a revenue-driven meta. There is demand for those sorts of assets. You can't do many of those in an ETF yet. So, these are private funds, um, which are harder to buy, but we're hearing that from clients. They're very interested in the revenue real world um themes coming together.
Does Bitwise have an AI index? We don't have an AI index. Uh it's something that we talk about. Um why not? It's mega huge mega trend. Yeah. Well, we're a cryptos focused asset manager, but I'm talking about the decentralized AI, the near the VVS. Yes, absolutely. So, um, uh, I bet that we will. The short answer is it's very hard to do those in an ETF yet, and it's very hard to distribute something that's not an ETF. So, if you don't do it in an ETF, you have to do it in a private fund, which has these huge paperwork hurdles. It's really challenging. the ETF is the magic distribution rapper and those are just
getting to the point where they might be applicable for ETFs. Um, but if you think about the themes that could drive the next bull market, that's clearly one of them. Uh, we're huge fans of the Near team. We're fans of many of the other protocols in the space. So, I wouldn't be surprised to see us working on that in the next 6 months. None of my competitors are listening to this, I assume. So, of course not. This is just us. Just us. Um, a few final questions for you, Matt. U more big picture, doesn't even have to necessarily do with crypto, but as a market veteran, what's the best financial advice you ever received?
Uh, the best financial advice I ever received, I mean, it has to be that leverage and debt is what kills you, right? If you avoid leverage and debt and invest for the long term, so many things work out in your favor. So that's uh that's foundational and certainly if you're young and have an experience of leverage or debt ending poorly, that's actually a very valuable experience to have when you're young because there's a place for those, but they have to be used very strategically. Most of my investments I just buy and then I haven't gotten to the point in my life where I sell them. So, um, that's generally the thesis is, you know, if they're good investments, they go up over time. The way you get yourself in trouble is leverage,
debt, and timing. I love that. And then you mentioned some of this earlier in the conversation, but um, the greatest trade happening now, most don't see it yet. You said I think you said DeFi products is like the easy next thing that's a no-brainer for institutions. Could you go more on that? Yeah. Well, it's just that um a few things have to collide to make something a great trait. You need to have a theme that gets exciting in the market because that's how you get multiple expansion, right? If no one cares about AI, you don't get the kind of multiples that we see in the AI space. You need a theme that gets exciting in the market. DeFi fits that because the ex there's a huge amount of excitement around
tokenization, stable coins, and the integration of crypto and real world assets. It's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. It's in CNBC every day. So that is a clear thematic push. And then you need reasonable valuations. And when you look at the DeFi space, it's absolutely true that on a earnings or like re real revenue basis, they trade at relatively high multiples because they're still improving their tokconomics. Although something like hyperlquid is trading depending on how you count whether it's circulating or fully diluted on something like 15 to 50x um that's a big range but even at the top of that range that's not much above highly valued fintech companies and it
is going after a much bigger market. So, I think you have a situation where you have like a thematic catalyst and you have valuations that look very reasonable to me. Um, that's a really exciting combination. Again, I would go back to these brand global brand names uh that are valued at a few billion dollars. That's like try to find that in the equity market. Find me a global brand name that's a $3 billion company. They don't exist. Uh, you have that in the DeFi space. I think the collision of reasonable valuations improving tokconomics and this mega trend of tokenization has to lift those not has to probably lifts those higher and uh I like them a lot right here.
Matt, final question. If Bitcoin if slash when Bitcoin does get to that 200 $250,000 level in a few years, where does that put ETH? Where does that put Salana? Oh, ETH and Salana are the hardest assets right now to put a valuation target on. And uh I'm generally bullish, but I'm I'm going to resist putting a valuation target. I think they're still honestly in the process of figuring out what drives their value. And I think we're going to learn a lot about that over the next year or so. So, I'll I'll cop out and just say higher. I think it is higher, but I think we I think they some work needs to be done by those
communities on how you think about their value and uh we're monitoring that. That's that's totally fair. I respect it. Slight follow-up. If Bitcoin does get to 200 or 250, do you think ETH breaks all-time highs? Like, would that be fair? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I'll give you that. I'll give you that much. Yeah. I think that is true. There is a beta to the broader market. And uh look, there's a lot of excitement around stable coins and tokenization and most of that is taking place on ETH and Salana. Uh it's hard not to own them and be excited about that theme. So I think that's the direction. Um yeah, if ETH is at I mean Bitcoin's at 250, ETH's at a new all-time high and it could be substantially higher. I just think the
community is still grinding through some of these valuation questions and I actually expect them to make a lot of progress over the next year, but we have to go through that process first. Matt Hogan, chief investment officer, Bitwise, thank you for joining me. Links for all your stuff down below. Final thoughts. Uh this is a magical time to be investing in crypto. uh sort of the hero stories that people tell are the people who came in the depths of 2022 or the depths of 2018 2019. This is like that except we can see the bull market on the horizon pretty clearly. We
have this catalyst of stable coins and tokenization. We have this catalyst of large wealth management platforms finally allocating to crypto. It honestly feels like sort of the best moment I've seen to invest in crypto uh across eight plus years of being a bit wise. So, it's an exciting time.
