Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
[Bracket] - Smart Money: The Institutions Are Coming
Recorded: April 10, 2025 Duration: 0:55:51Space Recording
Short Summary
The crypto landscape is witnessing a surge in institutional interest, with significant partnerships, innovative financial products, and a shift towards tokenization of traditional assets. As projects like Bracket collaborate with industry giants and new ETFs emerge, the stage is set for a transformative era in digital finance.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It might not be the right time, I might not be the right one, but there's something about us I want to say Cause there's something between us anyway
I might not be the right one
It might not be the right time
But there's something about us I've got to do
Some kind of secret i will share with you i need you more than anything
in my life i want you more than anything in my life i'll miss you more than anyone in my life
i love you more than anyone in my life. I love you more than anyone in my life. Thank you. so
gm gm everybody welcome back to another banger show with Bracket. Bracket is liquid
staked DeFi backed by Binance Labs. Today, we're here to talk about smart money and the
institutions they are coming. We've got a bunch of banger guest speakers to dive into
this conversation with and cannot wait to jump in. We've got Punk AJ with us
today, Marketing and Partnership, ex-Amazon, Razor Network, Hyper Sign Chain, MBA Finance.
We've also got Nibiru Chain with us today, the Web3 Hub ushering in the next era of money.
We've got Jonathan with us today, Strategy and Ops at Nibiru Chain. And we've got Gordon Finance with
us today, trustless peer-to-peer Bitcoin bridge. I think we've got a couple of other speakers we're
just waiting on at the moment. But before we get to them, before we get them up on stage,
I want to throw the mic over to whoever is behind the Bracket account today. Welcome to the show.
Are you excited for it? Where do you think we're going today? Hey, guys, it's Mike here. Yeah, I'm interested to see thoughts on the new kind of roadmap that Trump's laying out for the realignment of global affairs,
as well as how CryptoL plays a role in this, given the new SEC appointment, you know, etc.
I think things are going to change pretty fast.
So I want to hear what folks have to say absolutely yeah definitely cannot wait to dive in and it's been a wild
24 hours slash year i was literally gonna say week and then i was trying to think back
of the last time it wasn't wild and yeah i'm thinking more the start of this year
and so it's going to be genuinely a really fun conversation to have today for our speakers if you've not been on a
show with myself michael bracket before just a few housekeeping rules to make sure we get the most
out of the show today and then we'll dive straight into it and really simply we just go for organic
conversation on this show meaning you can come in with your own questions your own takes and
basically take the conversation wherever you would like, wherever you find most entertaining, because genuinely,
that's what's going to be most entertaining for the audience as well. How we get there though,
because I am just looking at a bunch of PFPs on stage, is I need help from you. So there's a heart
plus function at the bottom of your screen, around the right-hand corner next to the comment section,
hand raise function when you go to the far right
of that once you've clicked on it demoing that now basically if you guys want to come in at any
point or time during the conversation get that hand in the air we will get the mic straight over
to you um and on top of that we do also have jack points so if the hand raise and getting to take
the conversation wherever you like isn't incentive enough, you do get 10 jack points for every time you raise that hand in the air.
At the end of the show, we will tally all those points together and you will receive
absolutely nothing for doing so.
I just told you guys that we're worthless.
But on top of that, you will get my love and admiration for adding it to the conversation
today.
I know you guys are going to be dying to jump in anyway, so I cannot wait to do exactly
that.
Mike, how about you take the microphone back for a second and just set the stage here?
What specifically has caught your attention in the last 72 hours? Where are we right now in the market? And what does that mean for the conversation that we're about to set ourselves
upon today? Yeah. So I mean, I don't think it's any news that we were in a trade war to realign
friendlies with the United States and to isolate China and global market.
This is, you know, there's a lot of opinions on this. I don't want to be like just another one.
But the outcome for this is potentially very good down the road for risk assets,
because I think everyone has
this expectation that eventually there will be QE quantitative easing and
printing and therefore risk assets will go on I think until then it's gonna be
a little bit little bit rocky and we'll not really recover until we get a
clear picture the other thing that's interesting that's happened recently was
Paul Atkins who is the new SEC chair replacing Gary Gensler.
He's very pro-Bitcoin, very pro-regulation, doing something that's very clear, safeguarding markets.
I think it's kind of what people want.
He's definitely what people want as compared to this kind of ambiguous regulation by enforcement.
And this is good for Bitcoin slash crypto in the United States, just in general.
Everyone's just waiting to kind of see what exactly they have to follow to do business
here.
There's also like some thoughts that, you know, the USD one coin that Trump is the world
Liberty was looking at is like conflict of interest and whatever.
So I think there's going to be some rigmarole there but everyone seems to be pretty pro pro crypto and administration
and we have to wait it out to see how uh risk assets come back to play for now because it's
still kind of a waiting game yeah great great uh setting of the conversation today and really
excited to jump into this one for my own education as well as our audiences. So listeners, look, if you guys are excited for this too, if you feel
like this is a conversation you need to hear, then get the likes out, get the retweets of the space
out. Let's blow this one up because I'm sure there's a ton of people who are looking to hear
from some industry experts about what is going on in the market right now and what that means.
And that's exactly what we've got for us today. So speakers, at this point in time is where I want to get the hand over to you, get the
mic over to you, sorry, but I need to see those hands. So here's the question. I'm going
to first start this off with, honestly, just a further dive into what Mike just said. Like
what recent developments do you guys feel is showing institutions are seriously committed
to this crypto space? And what does that mean to you and the is showing institutions are seriously committed to this crypto space?
And what does that mean to you and the projects that you are building and how excited you are for this future? All hesitant. Literally, whatever the take is, I would love to hear it. So maybe
Jonathan, get the mic over to you first. Oh, from the Nibiru account, it seems. And then we'll get
the mic over to PunkAJ as well. Yeah, i think one thing that i mean institutional adoption is
coming i know we've been saying this for quite a while but i think one of the biggest things that
we're excited about is the advent of like truly tokenized private credit and longer term loans
on chain and i think that uh the announcement I think it was yesterday or the day before
about Apollo Funds investing some capital into Plume
is just another proof point of that.
I think that crypto generally is a really,
obviously great technology that allows permissionless access
and a various degree of different opportunities.
And I think that this stage or this step by one of literally the world's
largest asset managers is the great step in the right direction.
We might have lost Jack there. Jack, can you hear us?
Yeah. I, for some reason, every time I click on mute, it sends me back to mute.
So I'm actually having to hold the off mute button right now whilst I'm talking.
So I'll try and get the mic over to you guys as quickly as possible.
But look, really love that initial take.
Again, really setting the foundations for the show today.
Punkad, do you want to come in here?
What's your take on where the market is right now?
Is there any nuance that you've seen from yourself and your team and what you guys are looking at in terms of the near-term
future the same problem can you hear me oh you're coming yeah you're coming through um it's a little
it's a little broken up but i'll give you a thumbs um thumbs up if we we need to pause or anything
yeah i was having the same problem where I hold the mic down
and it just muted me automatically.
But to answer your question, I think there's a couple of ones
that we could use to look at this, right?
There's ETFs, which you're seeing them get launched left and right.
In the earlier days, I think you saw Fidelity's multi-asset crypto ETF
also launch that goes beyond Bitcoin and ETH.
And that incorporates some DeFi tokens, which is good to get in front of the public aside from just Bitcoin and ETH.
I think you're seeing more sovereign wealth funds and pension funds start thinking about allocating assets towards Bitcoin.
You're seeing a lot of macro funds actually talk about, you know, like in the current landscape, if printing does
occur and currencies get depreciated, you know, the reoccurring conversation is always like,
will Bitcoin be the inflation hedge? And, you know, you've seen sometimes where it decorrelates,
but largely Bitcoin has been correlated with stock markets. But in the long run, the idea is
people will move to digital currencies. We'll have to see if that actually happens. But in the long run, the idea is people will move
to digital currencies.
We'll have to see
if that actually happens.
But if there's a larger focus
from governments,
government funds like the sovereigns
and itself starting to buy a Bitcoin,
that's where you might see
more of that shift
and the volatility in the assets
starting to become a bit more reduced.
So things like Trump's announcement for the, what was it?
The, the, you know, the, the global, the American Bitcoin fund,
which I think he just repurposed a bunch of seized Bitcoin into the actual
fund, which, you know, the market actually sort of viewed positively,
but I think some people were expecting that you'd actually go in and buy Bitcoin.
All these things are sort of positive.
And then you are seeing a lot of people
interested in building their own L2s.
So over time, we've seen a bit of the shift away
from decentralization maxis
to you're seeing things like Base,
which is Coinbase run or Kraken's Inc.
or a lot of institutions themselves launching their own L2s.
That's positive for the space in general.
So I guess maybe the last thing I would touch upon here is you,
like sort of Gabe touched upon, he's from the Nibiru chain account,
but tokenized municipal bonds, real estate, private equity shares,
I think would be a large step for
the next evolution of RWAs. And you're seeing earlier evidence of that with banks like JP Morgan
and HSBC starting to touch upon them, which is positive.
Yeah, look, I think the X is a little buggy right now. So Jonathan, really appreciate you
sticking with us and getting through that take. So Jonathan, really appreciate you sticking with us
and getting through that take.
A really, really interesting take as well
around where you see the future of this
and how the impact is of the current sort of changes
are really, really just like moving towards
just a more interesting time for the crypto space.
And I know it's been a crazy couple of weeks,
but I do think overall i think
most of us were understanding of once the dust settled it was going to be a pro crypto like sort
of movement um and it's really interesting just to get that sense on the stage right now x is
bugging hard so i don't think we have a couple speakers up on stage i think other speakers can't
actually get up on stage right now.
And then we have myself and Jonathan having to hold the unmute button just to have a conversation
right now.
So hopefully we get that resolved.
Listeners, if you are enjoying this one, still get the likes and retweets out.
We always persist no matter how many difficulties Elon and X throw out or so.
Do not worry about that one.
And Mike, maybe get the microphone back over to you for a second here whilst we do try and get our speakers up.
What's Brackett's sense of all of this now?
What are you looking for in the market?
Are there any other indicators that you need to see to push even harder into the space?
Or are you pretty happy?
Because I do know you often talk about this idea of wanting to not just see regulation come in and support more crypto
adoption in the US, but also really support those entities, those industries that were in the US
and then basically got shook out because of the previous regime almost.
Yeah, I mean, there's a obvious bias towards, you know, the last administration against crypto, but we already kind of know that I think that the general themes now are.
Pretty much if you token, just tokenizing something is not that useful, to be honest with you right now, we all know that distribution is the key to success.
So that's more or less what we're looking at.
It's like how you can tokenize anything, but how do you distribute it to those who want it?
People who invest in private credit off chain don't give a shit about tokenization.
They just do it to balance their risk exposure and stuff.
That's the most.
But there are people who want to tokenize who are doing it because it gives them more
flexibility. And there's a lot of on-chain money. It's sitting in fewer and fewer hands,
unfortunately. But that is seeking that exposure. And I think that to me, there's definitely more
of a narrow opportunity today. But it's just about counterparties, right? Who wants to actually trade these on chain right now?
We'll see, right?
There is, it's unclear who wants to, you know, use it,
add leverage, things of that nature,
but it does seem like transferability,
adding leverage, all important.
I know on bracket side,
like we've had a lot of these conversations so far
and it does come down
to demand for the product, transferability, and liquidity.
And no matter what people say, private credit funds and these other funds are not really
designed to be instantly redeemable, liquid, as DeFi wants them to be.
You know, DeFi, people are used to, they're not exactly that sophisticated.
They're used to, oh're not exactly that sophisticated.
They're used to, oh, I can get this A token out immediately.
I can get it out anytime I want for the most part.
Whereas redemptions on most of these funds are like quarterly.
And they could probably get a little bit more liquid, monthly, potentially weekly.
But I think there's a lot
of hurdles still to making them extremely useful. And the sophistication of the counterparties in
on-chain is still pretty low. So it really requires more sophistication from people who are,
from those who want to move on-chain. Again, the narrative always leads to the demand.
And it's fine, right? There will be product. There will be some demand for these things.
There are going to be permission pools and lending markets.
There will be allow this whitelist.
There will be chains like plume who try to do this on an isolated way.
Almost, you know, don't get tokenizing everything on their own chain, doing it all there.
I have the suspicion that isolating these products in another chain and it's just like, yes, that's fine, I guess, if it's on an EVM.
But the transferability components, the implementation components, those are the most important.
So that's what we're watching.
That's the most interesting thing.
And always think about the demand side because whatever product that you have, we're in this – because I think just the last thing I'll say, we're in this weird place right now.
Everyone knows it in this room in crypto.
We're not quite there with institutional adoption and demand,
but everyone wants it.
And everyone on chain doesn't really understand those products yet.
So it's a weird place to be if you're trying to build a business here
because it's like, okay, well, if I can't get demand on chain, I can't really take on these tokenized assets because no
one wants to buy them and no one's supporting them.
And the DeFi Lama doesn't support the TVL for them because it's like, oh, there's a
NAV component or something more sophisticated than they're used to dealing with.
So there's still a lot of like systemic issues that are going to impact the adoption of these things. But I mean, those who are building now are working those things out. And hopefully the demand side starts to ramp up because right now it's still pretty small, to be honest.
It's a great context and definitely leads me to some interesting questions around, you know,
what do we need to see in terms of that implication of yes, no, there is like real appetite for this
now. Is it something that needs to happen on the regulatory side? Is it something that needs to
happen more on the investment side? Because look, I'll give some context here. Like I was speaking
to a financial advisor. I think I might have referenced this before.
It was now maybe a week or two ago.
And it's very clear that there is a growing concern
from like wealth managers, wealth funds,
investors more broadly,
that the S&P isn't really a place to park your funds right now,
even for a minimal growth strategy, you know,
a non-risk growth strategy. And to me, with stable coins, with what we're seeing with the ETFs,
et cetera, and the age of the crypto space in terms of it being, you know, at least more
solidified. I think at this point in time, you look at Bitcoin, the price action, the idea of this being a complete
scam, which was, you know, really still pretty prominent in the space, even a couple of years
ago. I think that's over now. It's reached another all time high. And there's only so many times an
asset can continuously consolidate and then reach more and more and more before even the most skeptical of people have to
say, okay, well, there's something here. Somebody's doing something. I can't just keep throwing an X
in the air and say, no, this is no good. So yeah, really, really interesting conversation we're
having right now. Jonathan, your hand came up during that take, so we'd love to hear what your
thoughts are on it. Yeah, I think that came up from Brackett's earlier question on what do we need for the institutional center. And you can
kind of just think about the rails that are already built around equities investing and what needs to
be recreated. So you have banks that have sales and trading desks that can do full-scale support
of each of these funds when they want to make trades. So they'll have trading desks, they'll have prime brokerages that could offer intraday trading
and loans, and then they'll have better accounting practices.
Part of that also comes from legislation and policy that'll give people the green light.
So you had a lot of market makers exit the space in the prior regulatory regime,
but that are re-entering the space and now hiring
teams, which obviously causes different implications for normal crypto traders,
where you're having sophisticated web two players enter the space that have
better algorithms. So trading becomes more difficult. But as a function to that,
you also get better institutions entering the space. But when you also think about crypto,
there are a lot of things that,
you know, because of its newness of its industry, that it lacks like digital identity and be able to identify who the counterparts are, who are the counterparties you're interacting with.
You have bad actors and basically scammers running rampart, right? So things like chain analysis,
or better regulatory control, or, you know,
when you have private blockchains that can better identify counterparties,
you can actually have those institutions enter the space. But, you know, we just kind of have
the tip of the iceberg right now with the green lights on. Okay, from a macro perspective,
it makes sense to have more of a crypto allocation. But then, you know, you kind
of need all these, these, these real companies that, that come along, and they're able to,
you know, provide the infrastructure support. And these companies would have to be largely equity
financed in venture deals, or like, you know, built by companies themselves. So to a degree,
you're also seeing, you know, cracking, acquiring Ninja Trade, Ninja Tr degree, you're also seeing Kraken acquiring Ninja Trade, or you're seeing
Ripple acquire Prime Brokerage Hidden Road in recent acquisitions. All these things are hinting
at the more infrastructure that's being built out. But crypto has also struggled in the past
with venture funding reaching growth stage funding, where you see a lot of initial companies get
funded at the pre or seed stage level, but then are unable to generate the stats in terms of real
revenue or continuous growth to justify later stage investment. And this is also a problem to
do with the cyclicality of the industry. If it's a four-year timeline and people are investing top
of the cycle, a lot of people just continue, a lot of these institutions continuously get burned, right? So you have,
I think KKR did Anchorage. It was like a custody player in the past at the peak of the cycle. And
then when that falls off, you know, the GP or investor that had brought that to the investment
committee now has to, you know, they justify their their decisions to the all of the investment firm and then you know who wants to
stick up for crypto if every time you go and invest it's like peak of the cycle and then you look like
an idiot for four years so um you know there's a lot of factors that are ongoing but just providing
some initial thoughts here yeah i love that context again like really genuinely does help us like sort of align
on what is going on within the market right now and why some institutions are still you know on
the fence with all of this at least with the volume that they have to play with right like
it's not that they're not here they're not playing we've heard those big names and we've heard
you know substantial figures coming into the space but in realistically when you look at how much liquidity these things do genuinely have it is just a drop in the ocean
right now so yeah i really really love that additional context and look punkaj i'd love to
get the mic over to you just to at least get a mic check for you and then i can see nabiru with
the hand raise and so would love to get your just genuine thoughts
on where we currently are in the market,
when institutions are coming,
why institutions are coming.
And then, yeah, definitely get the mic over to Nibiru next.
Yeah, thanks, Jack.
I was having some problem with the mic initially.
So a quick intro on me.
I contribute to marketing at Garden.
And Garden is the fastest Bitcoin bridge to EVM currently.
It's built on intense base infrastructure.
So there's no custody risk for users.
I really, would you say, like, the mic's point on World Liberty Foundation launching USD1, right?
That is the world's biggest economy's president's son launching a stablecoin.
World Liberty Foundation, for those who don't know, is run by one of Trump's sons.
And they're launching a stablecoin.
I'm just reading out from the announcement about this stablecoin, right?
So it says, we are offering a digital dollar stablecoin that investors and major institutions can confidently integrate into their strategies for seamless secure cross-border transactions.
So there is definitely interest or prom institutions right now.
interest or from institutions right now there are say countries like Bhutan having 13,000
dollars worth 13,000 Bitcoin worth of reserves US launching 200k Bitcoin strategic reserve
there is a lot of interest from institutions or large economies like anything that u.s does the
whole world follows right if u.s is going to regulate crypto whole world is going to regulate
crypto if u.s is going to see it as an asset class whole world is going to see it as asset class
so that's something to start with but i'll let nibiru you know continue
yeah amazing stuff punkaj. Thank you for persisting
and making sure that you get up on stage.
Just one quick thing.
The mic is a little
ruffle right now. We're getting quite a lot
of background noise, so we can hear you fine, but
if there's any way to get to a quieter location
or to maybe cup your mic, that might
help with the background noise for the next take.
Yeah, Nibiru, your hand was raised,
so we'd love to get the mic over to you next.
Yeah, so I just wanted to touch on Brackett's point
about tokenized assets.
And I think, and you're right, 100% right now,
there's not too much utility
because if you're looking to get allocations
of private credit or private equity or whatever it is,
or just private assets, the only reason that you would use crypto for these fund me, to create a sort of exchange for these. So like the
reason that private credit isn't super liquid is, you know, obviously the different loan portfolios
have their own different originators. There's a whole bunch of problems
there. But in theory, the GP stakes and the secondary market for these kinds of funds
is pretty large. And if somebody was able to create a DEX for securitized, tokenized funds,
literally built on securitized, I funds um like literally like secure like built on securitize
i think that would be a huge value add because at that time you know there's really not too many lps
that wouldn't be open to just another liquidity angle so you know it's it's a nice to have but
that would be a huge pitch because being able to get, you know, T literally plus zero liquidity for your lockups on private equity funds or, you know, private assets would be a massive sign.
Now, you know, that's built on hyperliquid.
If that's built on whatever, obviously you need to figure out and create a sort of like order book.
and create a sort of like order book.
But I think that would be something that, you know,
would create a huge push towards a liquid secondary market.
And also provide a pretty substantial amount of benefit for both the app,
i.e. the exchange or whoever the broker is.
And also for the LP itself.
So just, just an interesting thought there. But totally see your point. And yeah, right now, it's just kind of like a nice to have that. Oh, great. My KKR health care fund is tokenized. Big whoop.
It would be amazing if there was a liquid secondary.
I just think there's a mismatch of users right now that it's a temporary thing, right?
It's not something that's going to last forever, but it would probably outlast most startups' ability to get out of seed stage if they're trying to do this.
It's really going to be – I mean, in my opinion on the – I mean, I think it's fine to try to get these things more liquid, to find some limited demand and work on that.
But the kind of numbers that I think we all would expect to qualify as success probably won't come until everybody's like, OK, this is the best option.
This is the most liquid solution. This is the X, Y, and Z. And he's basically convincing these LPs who are buying these things to say, yeah, I'd
rather do it this way because it's more liquid.
These credit funds are making money on the more time your funds are in there.
So they're also kind of like, I don't know how much more liquid I can get this thing and be comfortable.
I've had plenty of conversations with funds, whether they're big or small, running these types of strategies or having credit funds.
And most of them are like it's unrealistic to expect X percent returns and it'd be liquid and this and that. And so there is, I think,
a little bit of a misalignment of expectations, but it will change. I'm a thousand percent sure
within a decade, for sure, we will have a liquid secondary for private investments and it will be
tokenized. But that, you know, it could be a little bit faster, you know, but I think that's really the time frame to get these slow moving investors who are used to their typical old boy networks with sales and trading.
Kind of like that phone call network is not going to love this because right now there is no distribution that's new in crypto that is really going to light them up with serious AUM.
I mean, they would get some AUM, but not like what they're used to getting.
They're used to getting, these guys are like huge.
So it might help the smaller funds.
I think we're seeing and probably others are seeing,
smaller funds are definitely making the move into this,
trying to get more distribution on a product or whatever, but it's novel.
But the larger moves are not going to happen until real capital, who typically LPs into
these funds, says, well, I'm going to do it the tokenized way because I get more liquidity
and it's more flexible for me.
At which point I think 100% correct, that will happen.
And the network to sell it is going to be like a plume or an Aave or something like that.
But it's going to be highly, you know, invested in and controlled by a cabal of private credit institutions who are basically colluding to make a market as opposed to like, I think, an independent brokerage who really has no distribution advantage today.
Yeah, I totally agree there there i think it's interesting
like i was purely speaking about a secondary there's no way in hell we can't hear you jack
you're on the you're on the mute button again oh no um nibiru was chiming in mike maybe you can't
hit maybe we lost jack but jonathan go ahead for sure i want to hear what you were uh what you
were talking about.
I think he was speaking at the Nibiru side.
Yeah, let me reset the stage here.
Go for it.
Can you guys hear anything? Yeah, you go for it.
So, Mike, Nibiru, maybe Mike can't hear even me.
We're getting rugged.
We're getting rugged in real time, gentlemen.
Let me look.
Look, what I'll do is I'll message Mike on TG.
Jack, I can't hear anything you're saying if you're trying.
Okay, this is fun.
I did say about X bugging, didn't I?
So I feel like we were all pre-warned.
Let me get over to Mike on TG.
Nibiru, try and provide your take in the meantime,
but it might get a little one-sided if Mike can't hear you.
So Jonathan, depending on you,
is coming next on that one.
It'll be really quick.
It was more,
my whole point was mostly on secondaries.
I don't think there's any chance
that an Apollo or a large fund
is going to willingly allow for redemptions
at whenever they want.
That's just not going to happen.
Like you're going to be locked in
for five, 10 years,
whatever that period is.
I just think that, yeah.
And also to Brackett's point about, you know, whatever that period is. I just think that, yeah. And also
to Brackett's point about, you know, it's going to be controlled by a cabal of large institutions.
Yeah, it definitely will. Because otherwise there's going to be a lot of liquidity fragmentation,
but I think there's a huge value there in just being the marketplace for these tokenized assets.
Because right now I've worked on a couple of
these transactions where you're doing a secondary and you're probably charging 2% to 3%, if not a
little bit less on the overall transaction volume. So on a $10 million trade, that's pretty lucrative
for like a middle market firm. But this would just be a way to lower those spreads and create an
actual liquid market that you know you could then find an actual price for so somebody's building
that let me know yeah absolutely love that and jonathan you were about to come in as well on
that take mike cannot hear us by the way but we are now in in the loop at least to understand that
he knows he can't hear us as opposed to feeling like the whole show is about to rug.
So Jonathan, over to you next, and then I'll keep this one cooking until either X unbugs itself or we hit time on the show.
Yeah, this is a bit of a different thought loop from Nibiru and what I had thought about from Bracket.
But I think another problem within crypto is we need to see more long-only style
funds that are holding for the long term. And then when you see more institutions entering
the space, people have mentioned a larger focus on fundamentals rather than pure tokenomics
innovations. But at least if we can figure out better stats for us to focus on if there are monthly active users in a,
you know, a uniform manner. So essentially in crypto or in Web2, you have CapIQ or Bloomberg
pull you multiples. There are attempts at doing that where Kaido tries to do like Twitter attention
and then you're valuing crypto things based off attention, because in theory that can translate
to value. But if there were, and then DeFi Llama does things on TVL,
and then Token Terminal takes a stab at looking at fees
and seeing if that translates to revenue.
But we probably need tokens themselves to perform better
for the long-onlys to actually perform better.
Part of the problem is tokens have too short of a cycle, And that's also like, because it's so easy to launch a token.
We've all seen the amount of meme coins that have, you know, got launched in the last couple of
months. And that fragments a lot of the liquidity across multiple things. So I don't know if there's
a need for, you know, just more guardrails behind launching things.
Because then if you can have better performing long onlys, you can have institutionals buying those specific blue shit assets.
Because otherwise the problem stems from money staying in early stage seed and then people launching a token and the token dying over the period of four years which
is essentially after you know the company hits a cliff and then the remaining vcs exit and then
you never reach a longer state momentum um you know so that's just one thing i think that would
be helpful but sorry i think that's a bit of a sidetrack point from what both bracket and nibru
were talking about no honestly i think if mike could hear you right now he would have really
enjoyed that and i i did say at the start of the show organic is what we're going for here and that
means like if something pops into your head and you just feel like you want to say it that's
honestly that's sometimes those valuable stuff that we get is where it's actually a little bit
of a tangent but it for some reason it strikes you and you feel like you've got to share it and i bet you the audience
would have got a ton from that as well and so look audience i do apologize for all the technical
difficulties that you're going through right now i very much appreciate that you're all still
hanging in there with us if you are enjoying this show still get the likes out still get the retweets
out we will continue to be providing that value and keep cooking on, you know, really what it means for smart money and these institutions to
come in. So look, for all of our speakers, I think we've done a really good job of both setting the
scene and setting the why not right now. Like, I think that's two things that we've done incredibly
well at the start of the show. And honestly, one of my favorite things about a bracket show is that
we do get to bring thought leaders who are actually building in the space and have that
context to provide. I think the next thing, if I'm being really selfish here, but also I feel
like the audience is definitely going to want to hear about this too, is what does it mean when
they do come? I think that's still something that we're a little shaky on um as a space and i
think obviously that's because we don't know in what form it means to say what happens when they
all come but let's just reflect on this idea that we do see mass adoption from institutions and what
that would actually mean for the crypto space the good the bad the ugly so specific question here
for all of the speakers. And Pankaj,
I'd love to get the mic over to you first here, because I know you've been incredibly patient.
So I'd love to make sure we start with you. But in terms of institutional involvement,
in the long term, once we have it, what do you feel that means for the crypto space? Are we
going to see the same levels of volatility is it a purely positive thing what
what as a crypto adopter a user would you want to know before these guys do come in in the droves
uh jack i would say like question is not about has it happened or when it will happen. According to me, it has already started.
Maybe we are in the early adopter stage of it.
You know, some of the examples are like, say, for example, BlackRock has, I guess, last
time I checked in last December was $20 billion plus in the Bitcoin ETF that they have.
the Bitcoin ETF that they have.
Or JPMorgan has launched its own, what do you say, blockchain internally that they use
to tokenize real world assets like treasury, bonds and private equity for their institutional
clients.
So it's not that it has started or when will it start.
According to me, it has already started and we're just going to see more and more of it.
Just that the market needs to stabilize a little bit more.
It has to be assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Sol
or these kind of assets that will lead this momentum
momentum and not really say meme coins in my, like meme coins are according to me, you
and not really, say, meme coins.
know, thing that is seen by institutional investors as like that makes our industry
look, would you say, not very mature, right? But if you're looking at assets like Bitcoin, that really solved some problem of value movement across globe without Swift Network, right?
Or like these big banks joining in and launching their own blockchains to move value across chains or across countries.
So it's going to be more stable assets that will lead this movement forward.
It is not a question of if it has started.
In my mind, it has already begun.
Yeah, really, really interesting take here.
And I'll rephrase to support the audience on this side.
And look, this is not a financial show, so I'm just going to put that out there for our audience right now. None of these takes are financial advice. They are just
builders within the space, giving their opinions on what they believe the impact is going to be,
but they should not be taken as financial advice. Do your own research always, and hopefully still
enjoy the show. But for Jonathan and Iberu here, specifically, how do you feel like retail investors should be preparing for that growing institutional activity in crypto?
Because, you know, Punkadj is right. It is already here.
Actually, looking at the figures in front of me, it's around $110 billion in Bitcoin ETFs and major investments across firms right now. So yeah, there's no small change,
but it is in respect to the broader side of when they do come in, in the masses. But if you were
an investor on the other side of this, a retail investor, how would you be preparing for this?
What would you be expecting? Are there any signals, any milestones, or any behaviors that
you would expect from somebody in the retail investment
side when it comes to preparing for growing institutional activity in the crypto space?
Yeah, I think if you look at some of the older finance books, when they talk about what stocks
used to be, people used to describe it as the Wild West. And I think that's what we're kind of
sort of seeing in crypto right now is a lot of things are driven off momentum style investing.
And, you know, there are many times I think I've seen people run certain trades and say the fundamentals make sense, but then the market's emotions is the market's emotions.
But if you have institutionals entering the space, you have to go back to how do decisions get made.
Right. And, you know, people will prepare a memo.
They'll have to have the right materials, have to have the right stats, and then they'll have to go to investment committee and they'll have to defend their decision on why they want to invest in it.
So I think a simple thing, a simple check that retail can sort of use is, can I explain why I'm buying this investment to a friend or family member in simple reasons that aren't just everyone else wants to buy it?
in simple reasons that aren't just everyone else wants to buy it.
Right.
I think because that's a consistent problem that we sort of, we all, you know, and I'm
victim to this too.
You know, we log on Twitter, we see some tweet and like, oh, wow, that looks amazing.
But like, if you understand how things work in crypto, it's like a lot of things are KOL
driven and KOLs get paid.
They get given tokens and then they get paid to show and then people get upset at KOLs, but that's also just the nature of their business. That's how
influencers work in Web2. That's how Gymshark rose to fame. Like, you know, it's the nature
of the game, but you know, if, if, if we take a step back and try to do a bit more work. So
when you think of just normal business and investing concepts, it's like, how does a company
do relative to its peer group?
What would allow it to differentiate in the long run?
How does the team dynamic sort of look and how has co-founder sort of disputes worked in the past?
How do I think about that vertical in the grand scheme of all the verticals that are in crypto. I think there's a lack of, you know, you've just got to start top down,
take a look at DeFi Llama and look at the top sort of categories.
There's lending, DEXs, perps, options, vaults, LSTs, LRTs.
And which one do you feel the most bullish on?
And once you have a degree of allocation towards each,
then you can then look at each specific companies and then try to articulate why you think one's going to win.
I think there's a common problem both in crypto and AI and any sort of investing where people, you know, they index the comps and they see like, OK, OpenAI is trading at this amount of valuation.
is trading at this amount of valuation, you know, that they just did around 300 bill.
You know, they just did around 300 bill.
And if I see a new foundation model and they raise at a billion, then, oh, I have a 300x
potential return opportunity. But you have to think that, you know, at earlier stages,
the chances of failure are much higher. And how a lot of companies actually do better is,
you know, sometimes their product only starts 20% better companies actually do better is, you know, sometimes their product
only starts 20% better. But then over time, you know, 20% better, you have better value accrual
from talent, you have better value accrual to your token, or your stock. And over time,
that 20% benefit becomes 40% benefit, 50% benefit. In a historical context, with globalization,
the large winners just have a slight comparative advantage,
which allows them to outperform the long run.
So oftentimes we find ourselves funding or investing in things
that are just, you know, number four or five player
because it seems like good value,
and that's where you can get deal access.
But, you know, if you look at Magic 7, FANG companies,
each of those individual peers, each of those individual companies had a full set of peers in the past that they used to compete against.
And a lot of them died over time.
So you have to think about who's actually going to survive over the long run.
And a lot of times in normal business fundamentals, it's just like, you know, if you have better control over a certain market, if you have better pricing power, you have stickiness to brand,
those things all matter significantly. And then you also have to think about,
you know, crypto Twitter and crypto is a bit of this own little vacuum where sometimes things
are well known in crypto. But if they're not well known outside of crypto, then, you know,
the brand recognitions is not the same. So we have to keep in mind, talking to a retail audience, our normal friends or parents and see what they sort of recognize,
you know, Coinbase has a strong brand name, for example, can new upstart exchanges in America be
able to overtake them regardless of background? It's quite difficult. But I forgot what the
question is, but hopefully that helps to answer something.
Yeah, no, honestly, absolutely fantastic context there and really actionable feedback as well,
like, you know, to look at this and the initial context for a reminder was really like, how should
retail investors prepare for growing institutional activity in crypto? I think that was answered
really, really well. I do hear that we have mike back in the
speaker role he can hear us now so absolutely love it so i want to do is get the mic over to
the baru chain and then i'll get the mic over to mike um i always do this the microphone over to
mike um because otherwise i'm just saying mike mike um anyway i will do that as soon as we've
heard from the baru chain and make sure that we can close out with a banger.
Yeah, so Jonathan had a lot there.
And so I think obviously I agree with a lot of that.
I think the main things that I would just say, especially for retail investors who are trying to align themselves with institutions,
is have a much longer term mindset and viewpoint.
a much longer term mindset and viewpoint. Otherwise, you might potentially get burned.
Because look, these like Jonathan said, these institutions are coming in with four or five,
10 year investment horizons. And, you know, sure, you could probably snipe a couple of meme coins
and, you know, get pretty into that and do do well but in order to really be aligned with
them you need that very long-term in-depth um mindset there um and then the other two things
i would point out or i guess just one other thing really um i think that as these larger prop firms
like i know um i think jane street and citadel said they were going to start market making.
I think you're going to see a decent bit more price volatility.
I think spreads are going to decrease. So, you know, liquidity is going to be a lot better.
But it's in these firms best interest to increase price volatility because they can obviously profit from that.
profit from that. And so I think as these more professional traders come in who,
you know, are going to outperform every single person on this call, unless there's some crazy
trader in here, I think you'll probably get burned by that. Because candidly, when there's
a Jane Street quant who's been doing this for 15 years with, you know, all the might and leverage
that Jane Street brings, you know, no offense, but your $10,000 is probably not going to do much
when they can quite literally move a market. And so I think that's one thing. It's less price
speculation and more longer term horizons. So those are my two takeaways though.
and more longer term horizons.
So those are my two takeaways though.
Incredible stuff, guys.
Cannot thank all of our speakers enough
for just so much actionable takeaways
for our audience today.
And audience, if you have enjoyed that,
another thing you can do to show support
outside of the likes and retweets
is follow these guys.
Tons and tons of context there,
a lot of actionable takeaways
and a lot of really valuable takeaways as well. So if you have enjoyed it if you're looking to action on any of those points
do give them a follow it'll make their day make my day and overall yeah it would just add great
great context to your timeline mike we are basically at time for the show so i want to get
the microphone back over to you before we do close out get your final takeaway from what part of the
show that you did get to hear in the end. And also if you've got any updates, milestones, or anything
you'd like to share on behalf of Bracket, this would be a fantastic time to do so.
Yeah. Thanks guys. Yeah. Sorry. My, my mic just like, I don't know what happened. I couldn't
hear anybody for a while, but yeah, I think this is a great convo. I think it, it, it,
it makes me think a lot about the distribution model that will work for some of these alternative assets that are going on chain.
And then what advantage truly do people that have been on chain a while have?
And I think that advantage will shrink in the next few years.
That window is shrinking because the talent pool is getting deeper.
I think Nibiri talked about how Jane
Street guys are going to get, yeah, they're going to get into this. DRW is going to hire people,
like it will happen. Crypto will just become another asset class to them. And the tooling
used to trade 24 seven will just be an improvement over the status quo eventually.
On the bracket side, we just put out ETH in our vault so basically you could come in with ETH
it'll automatically get you into bracket ETH at a conversion rate so that makes
just easier for folks to get into our initial vault which is producing as of
today we're averaging probably around 10 but it's over 10 today it's like as of
last update was ETH plus 19 real yield. So in this
market, we're doing a really good job. Next products will probably end up being USDC or
potentially a Bitcoin product, depending on partners. But yeah, we're working hard to try
to increase the amount of assets in here and actually seed them with like legitimate LP money.
But yeah, really excited to work with y'all and thank you for joining.
Yeah, incredible stuff and a massive shout out to Mike, the bracket team for putting this banger show together, to Nibiru, to Jonathan and Pankaj for all of the amazing context shared today and
all that value that they brought. But big, big shout out to our listeners as well. you guys are why we get to do this so really appreciate everyone who tuned in gave us the likes
and retweets for support you guys the real mbps let's play this one out now Thank you.
Host
Bracket
from
Bracket Labs
