🎬 DAS a wrap

Takeaways from Blockworks' busy conference

Here’s what you’ll find in today’s edition:

  • Felix shares his top takeaways from Blockworks’ DAS conference.

  • Trump’s pick to run the SEC faced questions from senators this morning.

  • A tech-focused portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price talks stablecoins, crypto equities.  

My takeaways from the Digital Asset Summit

DAS was incredible. 

It was a jam-packed session of inspiring and motivating discussions about how the institutional adoption of digital assets is unfolding. I was honored to be at the center of it all, hosting a number of panels. 

Here are my top takeaways from the conference:

Stablecoins are taking over

I had the good fortune of meeting Austin Campbell a couple of times during the week and we discussed, at length, the innovations around stablecoins. I came out of the conference incredibly bullish on them. 

The climax of this discussion emerged during a panel I hosted with Campbell and Joseph Wang. We nerded out on the cross-currents between macro and digital assets. 

Austin’s explanation of how he thinks about stablecoins:

“So if we think about marginal buyers of US debt, a lot of foreign governments have been reducing their holdings of treasuries. And the great irony…is that the countervailing weight is that the people in those countries are increasing their holdings of US Treasurys through stablecoins. Generally people overcomplicate the discussion around stablecoins, and also call a lot of things stablecoins that shouldn't be called stablecoins. But a properly constructed stablecoin is just a box that basically holds stuff that looks like T-bills and treasuries. Very simple. And it's just represented on a blockchain. Now the important part of that is there's two criteria. One is that you've got the internet, and the other one is that you have something of value to exchange for it.”

If that quote got your wheels turning, check out the rest of the panel here:

Institutions are just getting started

One of the biggest themes for me was just how bullish institutions are on the digital asset industry. This bullishness comes at a time when the entire retail industry has been imploding via the nuclear detonation that are memecoins.

The dispersion between the two worlds is quite incredible. One of my favorite institutional bullposters is Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan. Matt’s just so good at eloquently explaining why digital asset adoption by TradFi is just beginning. 

We sat down to discuss this dispersion, to which he said:

“That's the biggest dichotomy in crypto right now. The crypto native degen world is in existential depression, while all of the institutional players are coming into the market thinking that this has never been better and we are on the cusp of a multi-year bull market — the scale of which you haven't even imagined. And I think that's absolutely true. Look, I think memecoins will always exist. I also think they were great stress tests of this infrastructure that we've built, and they showed it can handle real throughput. But, you know, from an institutional perspective, when I look at what's happening on stablecoins, tokenization and institutional investment, those are all up and to the right. The crypto native world will come back to that in the future.”

To listen to the rest of our interview, check it out here:

Chatting with a fixed income legend

Interviewing someone like Mohamed El-Erian in front of tens of thousands of listeners was a career highlight for me, full stop.

The way El-Erian can clearly and simply explain complex macro topics shines a light on how much more I can improve within this realm.

The context for our conversation was fascinating. It feels like every major trend of the last 30 years is being reversed. For the first time in decades, investors are more excited about European equities over US ones. That is a wild change. 

Mohamed unpacked just how unique this situation is right now:

“We are living in a really fluid world. I mean, the word ‘uncertainty’ is used a lot, but ultimately, there are three things that people care about. Fundamentals, technicals and valuation. And all three, Felix, are being upended right now. And that is a world that we haven't seen for quite a long time. These are things that are being created internally endogenous to the system. That means that the operating paradigm on fundamentals is in play. What does the trade regime look like? What does the public sector look like? How would other countries react? Lots of uncertainties, let alone the positive ones, the innovations…[like] how quickly will it take for AI life sciences, and quantum robotics. Then you have the technicals. Before, it was ‘the US is better,’ now we've had the largest drawdown in the US relative to Europe. And then even when you go to the third one, valuations, it's no longer clear what valuations should be in a world like this. So this is a really, really tricky time, and it doesn't surprise me that gold is at a record high.”

El-Erian’s excerpt really hits home about how significantly the world is changing right now. 

When you have fundamentals, technicals and valuations all going through regime shifts at once, you need to pay attention. 

Find the rest of our conversation here:

This was by far the most exciting and inspiring digital asset conference I’ve ever attended. I’ve seen a lot of chatter from people saying this was the best conference they’ve been to and that the vibe was completely different from the crypto native corners of the internet. 

I’m here to tell you that’s a fact.

— Felix Jauvin

Permissionless IV is about the people writing smart contracts, pushing protocols forward, and building what’s next.

🚀 Speaker applications are open. Got something real? Take the mic.

🛠 Hackathon locked & loaded. $100K+ in bounties. Your ticket? Covered.

The number of senators who voted in favor of the Congressional Review Act to essentially overturn the IRS’s so-called DeFi broker rule. 28 voted against, and two didn’t vote.

Though the Senate passed a similar resolution earlier this month, the House advanced a new version of the legislation. It now heads to the president’s desk.

The Senate Banking Committee on Thursday gathered to question four of President Trump’s nominees. Lawmakers posed the majority of their questions to two Cabinet hopefuls: Paul Atkins (up for chair of the SEC) and Jonathan Gould (nominated for Comptroller of the Currency). 

Poor Marcus Molinaro (up for Federal Transit Administrator) at one point said he thought committee members had forgotten he was even there.

It took only minutes for senators to bring up crypto. Chair Tim Scott talked about the de-banking of "politically unfavorable” industries in his opening statement. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in prepared remarks, accused Atkins of “helping billionaire CEOs like Sam Bankman-Fried.” 

Sen. John Neely Kennedy brought up SBF again later. He asked Aktins if the SEC has plans to pursue actions against his parents, who at the time of FTX’s collapse were professors at Stanford Law School. Atkins evaded the question, saying he looks forward to getting to the SEC “to find out what has happened” with regards to the agency’s investigation.  

In response, Kennedy uttered maybe the best line of the day: “I expect you to find out. I’m gonna pounce on you like a ninja.” 

The other hot topic of the day for Atkins was the 2008 financial crisis. Atkins, an SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008, has insisted there were “many causes” to the economic downturn, particularly overleveraging at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. 

Democrats tried to nail down whether or not he felt the SEC had done enough to prevent the crisis. Atkins didn’t bite.

— Casey Wagner

A tech fund portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price is keeping an eye on crypto, noting that the benefit of stablecoins is bringing more attention to the space.

Dominic Rizzo, who leads the financial giant’s global technology equity strategy, called stablecoins “the most obvious use case for crypto” at the Exchange ETF conference Tuesday. They clearly have “big, big potential,” he added.

The comments prove timely given the stablecoin headlines we’ve seen over the past week. We heard about World Liberty Financial’s USD1 and that Fidelity is reportedly exploring its own stablecoin launch.

Just this morning, New York Stock Exchange parent company Intercontinental Exchange said it’s looking into using Circle stablecoin USDC (and its tokenized money market fund, USYC) to develop products for customers. 

It’s important to be thoughtful about where it makes sense to use DeFi vs. TradFi, Rizzo told me.

“Pound to USD conversion — where you have bank accounts on either side of the pond — is actually a really cheap transaction and probably not the best use case for stablecoins,” he said. “Stablecoins into different countries that might not have that same level of FX liquidity may make a lot more sense.” 

Also invaluable is using them to move between fiat currencies and crypto assets, he added. 

Stablecoins are just one of many use cases for crypto, Rizzo believes. He considers bitcoin a “productivity-enhancing technology” — and while it is susceptible to bubbles, Rizzo said he owns some.

Crypto exposure in the T. Rowe tech ETF that Rizzo manages (just equities) are limited to Coinbase and Robinhood for now. He struggles with the premium to NAV that MSTR trades at and what he considers to be a lack of differentiation among bitcoin miners.

Rizzo didn’t want to name private companies he would be interested in allocating to if and when a crypto IPO boom occurs.

But based on his belief in stablecoins, Circle seems like a clear choice.

— Ben Strack

  • Canada’s federal election next month “presents a critical moment for Canada to consider its position on digital assets,” according to Coinbase. The crypto exchange in a blog post detailed actions the country should consider, including launching a government crypto task force and establishing a bitcoin reserve.

  • The DeFi Education Fund has published a letter from various industry advocates calling on Congress to correct what it calls “the DOJ’s dangerous misinterpretation of money transmission laws.”

  • US spot bitcoin ETFs on Wednesday saw net inflows ($90 million) for a ninth straight trading day. Meanwhile US spot ether ETFs have failed to garner net inflows over the past 16 trading days.  

  • Happy Opening Day, to those who celebrate.