Welcome to the Forward Guidance newsletter, brought to you by Felix Jauvin and Ben Strack. Here’s what you’ll find in today’s edition:

• The host of the Forward Guidance podcast (surprise, it’s Felix!) recaps his favorite interviews of 2024 and the commentary we can learn from.

• Last year’s big narratives and the outstanding developments likely to come in 2025.

My favorite interviews of 2024

Before we get into the groove and craziness of 2025, I want to reflect on my favorite interviews and biggest takeaways of 2024.

Warren Mosler

Warren Mosler is the father and pioneer of the modern monetary theory (MMT) movement, and has very unique views compared to traditional macroeconomic thinking. I had him on the show as I wanted to understand his views of the current economic environment. 

One big learning was how high interest rates were actually making inflation worse, rather than deterring it. When debt levels become as elevated as they are, interest payments made to Treasury holders act as income. 

Therefore, to Warren, for inflation to come down the Fed needs to actually cut rates.

Jeff Park

Jeff Park is the head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise and an absolute powerhouse on all things options and derivatives. We sat down right as options on the US spot bitcoin ETFs started trading and had a fascinating 201-level discussion.

One of the biggest takeaways: Because crypto options marketplaces like Deribit operate 24/7 and ETF options hew to standard market hours, prices on each marketplace should actually be different. When there is more time for the option to trade (Theta), the probability of it expiring in the money is higher — which comes with a higher price for the option.

Stephen Miran

Dr. Stephen Miran is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and worked at the US Treasury during the last Trump Administration. He’s a leading academic on the potential economic impact of Trump’s incoming trade policies, namely around tariffs. 

I had Stephen on the show for an exclusive launch interview for his latest paper, in which he unpacked the mechanical impacts of what tariffs could do to the US economy. He highlighted them as a necessary tool to help the US alleviate symptoms of what he calls the Triffin’s Dilemma — the associated residual effects of what happens when a country’s money is the global reserve currency.

George Robertson

George Robertson is a veteran macro trader and a true maven.  He has a unique view on what drives the economy and markets. The core of his revolutionary view: The Fed has no actual impact on the economy in terms of its mechanical policy implementations; it's almost entirely psychological. 

These episodes were my favorite because each guest held unorthodox views that they developed independently to become leading thinkers within their domains. 

As we head into another year of wicked episodes on Forward Guidance, I encourage you to revisit some of these truly excellent podcasts!

— Felix Jauvin

Reviewing the big crypto headlines in 2024, we journalists are always on the lookout for follow-ups. Many should come in this new year.

You know about demand for the US spot bitcoin and ether ETFs that hit the market last year.  But whether we’ll see similar US funds holding other crypto assets (i.e. solana, XRP) is a big question for 2025.

And who will be the biggest new adopters of the existing BTC and ETH offerings? We know plenty of pension funds, wealth managers and other institutions still sit on the sidelines.

Remember, too, how Morgan Stanley advisers started being able to pitch bitcoin ETFs to certain clients? We’ll continue to watch out for such developments from other wirehouses.

Oh yeah, and will Vanguard change its closed-off stance on crypto? Signs point to it taking longer than 2025 before that happens. One more: will Schwab launch a spot crypto ETF?

Moving on, Donald Trump’s crypto promises are well documented. But what exactly his nomination of Paul Atkins as SEC chair will mean, and whether a US bitcoin reserve is established, remains to be seen. 

Could the SEC rescind SAB121? And if so, how quickly? Getting rid of that guidance appears a potential easy, quick win for a new agency administration, Ava Labs deputy general counsel Wee Ming Choon told me last month.

We’re also on the lookout for progress around FIT21 and US stablecoin legislation. 

“It feels like folks in Congress understand these two items are a big priority, and there’s been so much done and debated over the past 18 months that hopefully there’s enough to go on,” Choon said.

While the US fell behind other regions implementing crypto regulatory frameworks, action on these items would turn that upside-down, he added.

“We’ve had lots of jurisdictions around the world who have put in place consultation papers, got all the feedback, [established] laws and amended laws,” Choon said. “I think they’ll look at what the US is doing and probably have to tweak their regimes.”

Rep. French Hill today named Allison Behuniak as policy director of the House Financial Services Committee. She was most recently staff director of the digital assets subcommittee — a promising sign.  

There is also the chance for more crypto firms going public this year. We’re looking at you, Circle, Kraken and Figure Technologies.

And aside from BlackRock so far dominating the spot crypto ETF space, the company launched a tokenized money market fund in March. Franklin Templeton launched a similar offering in 2021. Combined, the funds have roughly $1.2 billion in assets.

We’ll see if some projections of the RWA tokenization segment growing 10x (to about $50 billion) this year were too bullish — or not enough. We’ve heard it will depend on institutions seeing enough value in the emerging use cases.

The bottom line: 2025 will tell us a lot about the crypto space’s trajectory — on these topics and well beyond. 

— Ben Strack