My favorite all-time guest joins me now to talk all things crypto markets and beyond.
The great Andy Bear, managing director of asset management at GSR.
My man, welcome back as always.
Look at this smile.
What could this be about?
Well, I assume this is Bitcoin re-flirting again with 80,000 being quite some time since you and I have done an interview.
We've talked about these price levels.
What do you make of it?
What do you attribute the recent moves in Bitcoin to?
We had a super long summer where volumes were down.
Rates were down, meaning fewer people wanted to borrow to buy crypto.
75% of crypto trading is derivatives trading.
So when those funding rates are low, you're just very, very low energy.
Prices were in a range, and then all of a sudden many of us were out at Jackson Hole for the Salt conference, warming up the scenery for this week's Jackson Hole activities, and suddenly this news from the Treasury came in and news that the president wanted to summon some crypto people.
Wednesday morning, prices.
To accelerate and because there was just not much in there to keep prices in one place, they just kind of shot right up.
We seem to like the altitude up here, held it over the weekend.
We'll see where we go from here.
Does the shape of the rally tell you anything and is it at all different from previous, maybe more comparable rallies we've seen among the crypto majors so far?
And of course we could have a pullback, a retrenchment, you know, back maybe halfway down to where we were before.
A lot of people are.
For that, but I like this rally.
I like that Ether held its own and led the rally, even though it was a macro-led PRP liquidation on that Wednesday.
Ether's performed more strongly.
Our core three model, which fuels our base O ETF, which just actually bumped over $10 million in assets, um, was stronger.
It was higher weighted and stronger through this whole rally, sitting now around 2500.
So I like the fact that Ether led the rally.
That means that it's an adoption.
Rally growth led rally.
Other blockchain names are strong.
I also like the things that we're seeing in the marketplace.
ETF inflows, PP funding rates are higher.
The options market, both the offshore crypto options market and the options market here on ETFs, stronger on calls, weaker on puts, signaling people are stopping overriding.
They're reaching to buy call options for higher prices from here.
Volumes are back.
All these signals are in place, all but one.
Defi rates still low, so people are still not quite getting in there on Ave Morpho and borrowing to lever up.
That would be the next thing that I would watch from here.
What did the crypto majors take away?
How are they influenced by the so-called Bescent bond buyback initiatives?
We kind of understand what the Treasury is going for.
They want to kind of decrease the pressure on the long side of the yield curve, but that kind of kicks the can up to the short end.
Maybe that makes the Fed's job more difficult dealing with short-term rates.
But how are the crypto majors?
Impacted as we learned of that last week, it's, it's not too far away from what you're seeing in some of the, you know, traditional financial media.
The thing is, is this going to be enough, right, with 40 trillion of debt?
Is the debasement trade back on now, of course that's going to affect Bitcoin or it should affect Bitcoin more than other crypto majors, but look, I think the market just needed a reason.
We were sad about clarity not passing or getting to a vote in in August.
We're sad about other catalysts not coming in and about the.
Lack of activity.
So we needed a catalyst to basically come out of the summer slumber.
This was it.
It's affected all assets and the breadth of the rally has been good.
So I think the US Treasury activity was a little piece of the catalyst.
We'll see where things develop from here, but I just love that we held it over the weekend.
Uh, Andy, I, I asked for an extra minute with you just to try and get a sense because now is, now is the time of the interview for my obligatory.
What's the latest with the Clarity Act question that we've been talking about for so long.
We're 7.
One days out from the midterms.
Andy Baer, what's up with the Clarity Act?
I think we have another chance in September.
Uh, the SEC put out some rules which would kind of try to achieve the same things.
We're all pretty sure we need legislation, so I think we're hopeful for clarity to really get some airtime in September.
But gosh, right before those midterms, the prediction markets are still giving it a pretty slim chance of coming to a vote or getting passed in 2026, around 25%, up a little bit from last week, but still not.
Where we'd really like to see it.
Looks like we might have to just figure this stuff out on our own.
My bet there will be enough integration in place.
There'll be enough sort of, you know, really business operating here.
You'd have to unwind businesses, not just rules to put us back to where we were.
I'm hoping the industry kind of self-regulates itself into a state of being where we get some of those, uh, we achieve some of the goals that clarity would have achieved.
It's not a substitute for legislation, but we'll do what we can.
And we will do what we can to continue to try and learn this stuff at a fraction of the knowledge base that you have.
I always learn so much when you and I talk.
Thanks for being here as always.
It's always a pleasure.
Thanks.
