Joining me now is Andy Berry.
He's managing director of asset management.
Andy, great to have you.
August officially underway.
Yes, after, you know, in July that kind of racked up some gains in crypto, it didn't feel so great, but Bitcoin actually scratched out a high single digit return, and Ether really led the way with up about 18, 19% for July.
So as Q3 got off to a start, it looks.
Like we're coming off the bottoms.
OK, coming off the bottoms, and what does that portend for cryptocurrency ahead?
Yes, you know, I still think we have to be a little bit cautious because although we had good price action, volumes are still low, financing rates are still low.
We really didn't get a lot of information from the Fed after last week's meeting.
I still don't know where that kind of max hawkish point is when we know we've Reach the top of, you know, interest rate mountain and we can start coasting down the other side.
That's going to affect Bitcoin at the same time we have kind of back and forth on the Clarity Act held up in the Senate right now, which is, you know, holding back people's fingers on the buy button for ether and other assets.
So there's a lot of still uncertainty out there, but it's good to know that prices were stable.
They're not matching the equities spectacular.
Performance today, but there's been resilience and you know we caught a bit during the day today too.
What's it going to take to push through the Clarity Act?
Clarity Act really has a lot of politics in it right now.
I think there's tremendous support.
I'm looking all over X today and there's all kinds of lobbyists from asset management companies and other figures, not only in our industry, but just in finance industry more broadly.
It's, you know, unclear whether they have the votes.
It's unclear whether they can get it to the floor before the Senate goes away for the summer at the end of this week.
That would only leave us a small window in September to get this passed.
Uh, betting market odds say it's down, you know, even during the day we've fallen down to about 27%.
So I would say the market would take it as a very, very pleasant but rather large surprise now if we got, um, clarity through.
In the meantime, we have rulemaking by.
SEC and the CFTC that will help to hold us over and we hope that that would survive into what administration comes next.
Do we need passage of the Clarity Act to see a recovery in cryptocurrency?
I mean, Bitcoin has sort of been hovering near these levels for months now.
Yes, we've been sure thing.
The winter has lasted about 10 months really since that deleveraging event back in October, and I think the Uncertainty is worse than the bad news.
So I think if we can just dispense, get through the clarity process, and again with interest rates get to that point of max hawkishness, I think the market will start to open up a little bit.
You'll be able to tell because you'll see leverage coming back into the crypto system.
And how do you see leverage coming back into the crypto system?
Look at rates on decentralized platforms.
Their, their numbers are right there.
And when those numbers start to go up.
You'll know that people want to borrow more, put more money to work, and that will be a great sign that energy is returning to the crypto space.
Break down for our viewers a bit more the difference in price action between Bitcoin and Ether and why it matters.
I think that narratives are completely different and this is what's so great about the asset class.
It's people think of it as crypto, but it really represents a bunch of, you know, two very fundamentally different storylines.
Bitcoin, you want to have.
Onto it's a financial asset.
It's something that's going to rise as the dollar gets weaker.
It's something that's going to respond to interest rates and leverage to scarcity.
Ether and the Ethereum network represent growth.
They represent blockchain adoption.
When you hear about tokenization, stablecoins, decentralized finance, a lot of that has to settle on Ethereum's rails.
And therefore, the more that happens right now, Ether has about the.
Ethereum Network has about over 50% share in a lot of these tokenization and stablecoin platforms.
That's what's going to keep Ether going.
So investors or traders who are looking at that macro side, keep an eye on Bitcoin when they want that adoption side.
Then you want to look at Ethereum, Solana, other layer one blockchains, and other tokens going down from there.
All right, Andy Bayer, he's managing director of asset management.
Andy, thanks as always.
Good to see you.
Good to.
