# Crypto V2: Equity Perps, ICOs, and Tokenomics

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-01-30

## Transcript

And equity perp is a new asset.
Just doing spot won't be enough because I can trade spot anywhere.
But the ability to get like unique exposure via that kind of perpetual futures leverage is it's a new product, and um it's something that Shrif can't offer right now, right?
So, like taking advantage of that regulatory arbitrage in crypto, I think is like is is critical.
And I think you can have a really big company, and I think like a winning ecosystem will be crowned, whoever executes on that vision.
2025 saw hundreds of billions of dollars chasing the latest crypto IPOs, but could 2026 be the year that ICOs make a comeback?
What's the difference?
Why does it matter?
And why is this so important for investors to understand?
Hello and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that knows that whether it's an initial public offering or an initial coin offering, the rules are the same.
Buy low, sell high.
I'm your host, John Gill, and today is Thursday, January 29th.
And today we are joined by Ryan Connor.
Ryan is the head of research at Blockworks Research, where he focuses on cryptocurrency analysis, contributes to thought leadership on trends and innovations in the crypto space, and frequently speaks at industry events, sharing insights on blockchain developments and a lot of other things.
Ryan is going to give us a ton of insider alpha on crypto today.
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And without further ado, on this red candle day, welcome to the Milk Road show.
Ryan, how are you, sir?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me on.
Well, I'm glad to have you here.
Uh, today has been a kind of a brutal day in the markets.
There's a lot of craziness going on, not just in crypto, but across the board.
Um, but I I did want to just start with that and get your thoughts on this here today.
Bitcoin, I think, has now lost um the 83k level, or it's around 83k.
Ethereum has lost twenty eight hundred dollars.
So we're we're seeing a big dip in the markets today.
Um, your head of research for one of the best crypto data and analytics firms in the world.
Uh, are we in a bear market?
Are we going to see crypto recover?
What's your read on where we are and what's going on with this price action here?
Yeah, so you know, I think look, it's a it it's an extraordinary it's an extraordinarily volatile space.
So level setting and stepping back is really, really helpful um to not get shaken out of these trades.
You know, I think you've seen the research where you know folks show that if you miss like the two or five, you know, biggest gain days in a year, you might miss all the returns, right?
So staying invested is incredibly important and that necessitates zooming out.
Um, I don't think that you could have an opinion on crypto without having an opinion on traditional macro.
I think it's almost impossible to just look at crypto markets and not look at other markets because crypto is integrated.
It's highly correlated with the NASDAQ.
People with TradFi portfolios have crypto, and increasingly people with crypto portfolios on TradFi assets.
And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that later.
But you like these these things are connected.
So what do you have to do?
You have to look at the macro.
And I think really only two things.
Look, I was on Milk Road, I don't know, six months ago.
I probably said the same thing.
I've been saying it for a long time.
Um, the only only two things matter.
Um, for risk assets generally, the risk appetite and animal spirits around AI matter, and the fact that we have deregulation for crypto in the United States matters.
Nothing else matters for crypto assets.
And on the risk side, or sorry, the risk appetite side, or like you think of the as like traditional, you know, business cycle side of things.
Um, there's nothing in macro that's pointing to a slowdown.
Uh, you know, the VIX is at a healthy level, high-ield spreads are pretty tight, could get tighter.
Um, the Fed just forecasted, you know, 5% GDP growth, a level that we haven't seen since I think 2014, and then before that, 2003, and those were only you know, one quarter apiece.
You know, the ISM has plenty of room to run to the upside after many quarters negative.
And the unemployment rate is pretty steady, and it's doing something that's never done in its history, where it's just basically going sideways and not going up.
Um, and the reason is because AI is so important and impactful.
I think over 50% of that GDP growth that the Fed's forecasting is attributable to the AI boom in the US.
And that's going to keep animal spirits really high, and that's gonna be good for risk assets.
On the crypto side, it's been like a pressure cooker on crypto.
I mean, the you know, the Gensler regime uh had its boot on the neck of crypto for a long time.
That boots off.
And um, you know, you're seeing the consequences of that with TradFi entering the marketplace, with RWA issuance at all-time highs, with spot decks volumes at all-time highs, with product experimentation and like high-quality founders building, you know, on Solana and ecosystems like base.
So, you know, taking a step back from the one day 6% like decline that we're seeing in markets today, which is you know, which is significant.
The um it's like all systems go.
I don't think that there's a better time to be invested in the in this industry.
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I really appreciate that context and framing.
Uh, and I think it's important to take that more macro view of the market, especially on days like today.
Um, what are you seeing in terms of these fundamentals and these all-time highs you said in terms of volume and adoption and um this improving fundamental landscape?
What are you seeing in terms of that translating into actual impact on the price and valuation of these digital assets and increased appetite and demand for crypto and for block space in general?
Yeah, so you have to pick your spots.
Look, crypto is coming from a pretty weird position that you haven't seen much in like the history of finance, um, as as far as I can tell, where you had a very isolated set of participants in crypto markets that behaved in very suboptimal ways that made weird things happen in markets.
We all remember, yeah, exactly.
We yeah, we we know what we're talking about, right?
Like tokens, people in crypto were rewarding tokens for doing nothing, like bringing nothing to the table.
And all you needed to have in 2021 was a story and a token and some branding, and you could walk away a multimillionaire and get a 20 billion dollar valuation on your token, right?
That's no longer the case.
So, you know, Blockworks has been pretty well ahead of this trend uh on the research side, especially.
Look, we were like, you know, telling subscribers and you know, tweeting in 24 and and increasingly in 25 that like, look, as the marginal dollar into crypto is a sophisticated market participant and not a retail market participant that just wants to punt things, um, that the that the market mechanics are going to change, that you're going to be rewarded for doing different things.
And the industry is slowly waking up to um, you know, the fact that the token structures have been in many cases predatory, the fact that the business models have been highly suboptimal.
And now it's time to build for um real installed bases on Phantom and MetaMask and in TradFi.
Um, you have to be thinking about asset managers that want to touch crypto and what's important to them.
Uh, you want to be thinking about the next retail, uh, the marginal retail user that wants like a snappy UX and and doesn't want to, you know, click the button 12 times to do their transaction or bridge from chain, you know, A to B.
So it's a it's a new game.
And you're seeing a lot of the incumbents, they weren't prepared for that new game.
So you have to watch that out.
Days like this are partly the result of that, right?
Like they're partly the result of that.
And you're gonna have that kind of pressure in the market for a long time, but you're also gonna have some bright spots.
Like we know the tokens that are the bright spots that are compounding that have like real teams that are making real revenue.
Um, so you so you have to pick your spots.
Like again, incredibly bullish on crypto, but that doesn't mean like buy an equal weighted basket.
That doesn't mean buy the whole market.
Like you have to think about who was building for V1 of crypto, call it the 2009 to 2023 era, 2024 era, and then who's building for like the V2 era, which which is um, you know, the more trad fi oriented product market fit era.
Gotcha.
So what I'm hearing you saying is that the the everybody's a genius season, you know, anybody in crypto gets 20 billion dollar valuation.
That season's behind us, and now we're in a season where we're having to look for real value, real economic value um and lasting um uh value ads in the market here.
Um, I think that's a sign of maturation.
Something it is one of these bright spots that you mentioned, uh, even on this week when most of the digital asset space is is very red, hyperliquid is up now, I believe somewhere around 50, 55% on the seven day chart, um, which is enormously strong performance.
It seems like traders are coming back to the platform following their hip three upgrade.
Um, I've seen you talking about perpetuals for equities um and I thought this might be a good place to start with this um just you know what are your thoughts on hyperliquid at this moment what do you think is driving that huge valuation and price and why are you so interested in perpetual futures contracts for equities here.
Yeah so I think taking a step back equities are the most exciting and newsworthy asset class on planet earth.
Like there are entire media networks built around those businesses and online communities built around sorry built around those securities.
They're very transparent.
They work very well and there's a ton of like we live in an incredible time um in technology the world's gonna completely change um a lot of the most exciting companies are going to go public you know the hyperscaler and semiconductor landscape in that whole supply chain is shifting dramatically and you're seeing really strong returns.
So like that like it was always an exciting asset class but like it seems like it's gonna get even more exciting with AI.
And um so like how can crypto capitalize on that?
To me, it's like very obviously one way to do it that I think could have like really profound implications for both the app layer and the ecosystem like level is um equity perps.
There's a lot of PMF there and that it's a new asset and an equity perp is a new asset.
Just doing spot won't be enough because I can trade spot anywhere.
Um, but the ability to get like unique exposure via that kind of per perpetual futures leverage is it's a new product, and um it's something that TratFi can't offer right now, right?
So, like taking advantage of that regulatory arbitrage and crypto, I think is like is is critical.
And I think you can have a really big company, and I think like a winning ecosystem will be crowned, um, whoever executes on that vision.
And you can see that you know, these teams are shipping, whether it's you know, osteum or hyperliquid or you know, the teams that are building in the Solani ecosystem, everyone everyone believes this and they want to execute on that market.
Um, you're seeing you're starting to see that takeoff on hyperliquid, like it's still very early days.
You're also starting to see a takeoff on Solana with X stocks.
Now that's a spot asset, but you know, directionally, um, you know, you're kind of seeing it come together.
Look, I don't I don't know what's gonna happen with hyperliquid.
You know, the regulatory ARB is gonna help for some time.
I think there's some problems with the story.
Now, like, look, I'll preface all this with saying hyperliquid's one of the best tokens in teams out there, without question.
I think if you have a liquid portfolio, like it's very obvious that hype's in it.
Um, there are some risks to the thesis.
It's like one that perps traders will go anywhere.
They are they're very fleeting, they they have no allegiance to a platform, they'll go anywhere.
So you have to keep shipping.
The second issue is that the regulatory arbitrage gap can close.
And the competitors that hyperliquid would have, call it CME or whoever, they have very large installed basis, you know, and you know, as does Robin Hood, right?
They can easily compete when that regulatory um gap closes.
And then um, I think the other issue is that like I think like other ecosystems like Solana are pretty well positioned as well.
Solana uniquely has equity spot assets on chain that are doing, you know.
I think according to RWAXYZ, like 130 million volume uh dollars in volume per week, and it's up and to the right.
Now, like, why is that important?
It's important because for market makers to participate, they need a way to hedge and they need a way to move money very seamlessly between the assets they are hedging.
So to have them all on Solana where you know the settlement times are sub one second is very advantageous versus hedging on a Trad5 venue, like you would have to do um if you were like market making on hyperliquid over the weekend, for example, you'd be exposed.
So, you know, it's anyone's game.
I think hyperliquid is here to stay.
I think it's a fantastic story, but a lot can change.
Uh a lot can change it.
There could be many winners, and you know, I'm excited to see it play out.
So maybe just as you're very familiar with this landscape and with these these um participants in the market, maybe just for our audience, uh try to frame this competition a little bit more clearly for us.
You know, you've mentioned hyperliquid Solana, and you mentioned some TradFi names like the the CME.
Do you see more competition emerging from TradFi if like you know we get this market structure bill passed?
Do you see like some of these legacy finance players starting to bring out purpose features for equities and bringing that into the competition space?
Basically, like frame who's winning right now and and who are the players and and what's what's at stake, basically.
Yeah, I mean it's it's it's a it's a massive market.
Look, I think that you could have you could have many, like perps has obviously seen PMF.
We've kind of seen it for a long time in crypto, but it became very, very obvious in 24 and 2025.
And if you own the user and you're very close to the user, you can, you know, hopefully, if things go the way that they're trending in the US regulatory landscape, like the CFTC will issue guidance on how to um on how to enable these markets and who can participate and who can't, and the risk management systems that you need to participate.
And um Robert could can flip a switch and launch that product and and have they have uh I think an installed base of you know, 10 or 12 million MAUs that they could that can trade crypto and they love trading options.
Right?
They'll probably want to trade perps.
Same thing with Coinbase, same thing with I don't know, SoFi.
Like they can radically transform their business by plugging into these permissionless APIs on chain and um and and give their customers something new to do, you know, fight for that market share.
So I think it's gonna be a little fragmented for some time, but who knows?
Who knows?
It's it's it's it's all about um it's all about product once you get regulatory clarity.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
So I think that this is uh a thing we're seeing in a lot of places in digital assets is that there are new and emerging products and services, um, things that are finding product market fit, and then there tends to be this huge competition and fight over market share to capture and defend that.
So we'll see how these things play out.
Um, you know, I mentioned IPOs and crypto were a big thing that happened in the markets in 2025.
Um, but there was also the MetaDAO ICO.
Um, and I was curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Um, you know, do you see this pivot happening back to ICOs?
Like this is something the SEC sort of killed off.
But you know, MetaDAO was able to do this.
Do you think that there's going to be more ICOs happening in the digital asset space or just in general?
And like, how do you see this balance between IPOs or ICOs happening as we move forward here?
Yeah, I think I think if you were, you know, if you were in the crypto markets in 24 and especially in 25, like it's no doubt that the the ICOs are sorry, no doubt in 2024 that the the ICOs are back.
It's clearly like a wedge for crypto to be able to permissionlessly amass capital on the internet.
Now, like I think they're framed in the context of IPOs, and I I don't really don't think that they're the same at all.
I think it's like apples and oranges.
Um, I think the IP the IPO is a completely different thing, right?
It's like you're mature, it's the gold standard, you're raising a lot of capital, you're you're raising patient capital.
Like you want um, you know, you want um a foundation or like a large asset manager to like buy your token or sorry, buy your equity and uh and perhaps hold you know one or two percentage points maybe five percentage points for decades right like it's very different capital base.
So like you know what's the wedge for crypto builders it's uh allowing I think like seed and pre-seed stage founders to raise a little bit of capital from a lot of people on the internet and you know why do I think it's that it's like well I think there are a lot of things that could get funded especially in the age of vibe coding that don't need a lot of capital.
You don't need as many people to to do a startup and if you don't need a lot of capital you might not be the right size for a venture style outcome like these guys raised tens of millions on the low end very very low end hundreds of millions typically could be in the billions and um they need to you know your investment needs to return the fund and I think there are a lot of things that aren't supposed to return the fund because they're not supposed to get that big.
So who, like, who's you know, well positioned to kind of fund those founders?
It's retail.
But if they're it's effectively illegal today.
So again, regulatory arbitrage, like let's spin up permissions, permissionless capital markets on chain where a founder can raise, you know, 500,000, 3 million, 5 million bucks um at a very low valuation, and um, you know, make a make a cool app, make a product that you know generates a few million revenue a year.
I think that that's I think that that's I think that that's the wedge for crypto.
And then maybe it becomes something bigger, but like the way that you have to attack it is you have to go for an underserved area of the market, which is that kind of like micro founder.
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One of the big ethos of the digital asset space is this idea of decentralization.
You know, historically, a big criticism of ICOs was that it gave a lot of power to the centralized exchanges that were hosting those ICOs, and like the way that you go about doing your ICO is is somehow, you know, it's like that matters in terms of people being able to trust that it's a fair launch and that they're not being just like, you know, use this exit liquidity.
Um, and I think some people are concerned that with these ICOs, there's going to be more power concentrated in in centralized exchanges and that retail investors are just going to be like kind of mowed down in these ICOs.
Um, so I was wondering if you had thoughts on that, or maybe just how retail investors protect themselves if they want to participate.
Yeah, yeah.
The way that you protect yourself is you either go to a direct listings platform that has a good reputation or you you you you buy the ICO on MetaDAO.
You know, I think that there are three kind of players in the like the ICO space.
It's like the bonding curves is the direct listing platforms, and then it's the um, and then it's meta DAO, just a categorically different business model.
Like the bonding curves, like they'll allow you to access these like very early stage opportunities, but there's a ton of adverse selection because nothing's baked into the token.
Like you need token holder protections baked into the actual instrument.
Um, you could go to direct listings platforms and they will screen for the higher quality founders, but the way that they do that is they kind of go up, they kind of go up like in the stage, right?
Like so they'll de-risk an opportunity by like, okay, it's a series B company and they're launching a token, right?
But then like you don't have as much upside.
The way that um retail can protect itself is by participating in an ownership coin ICO where token holders and the market can take back the funds if the token issuing entity is you know underperforming investor expectations so egregiously.
And um, you know, it also ensures that their comp, their token comp is tied to token performance and KPIs, right?
So, you know, I think the V1 predatory model is like, you know, we're selling a lot of tokens, and that's that's that's how we exit the business.
In the MetaDAO model, you really can't do that, right?
Like your burn is capped, you can only spend so much of the treasury per month.
Uh, if you undershoot expectations from token holders or you act egregiously, token holders and the market can raise a proposal and take the treasury back from you.
And um, you know, you have to venture tokens, right?
And that vesting schedule is very transparent upon launch and is encoded in smart contracts.
So that's how you protect yourself.
Um, in this, like, if you're if you want to participate in like anonymous capital raising environment like on-chain, right?
Um, other than that, like, you know, probably like ICOs on the centralized exchanges, like they're fine.
Like Coinbase is gonna is gonna vet these guys and they're gonna make sure that you don't get ripped off because they won't they want to have a good reputation and they're Coinbase and they're good actors.
It just depends on like the risk profile and the the spot in the market that you want to invest.
Gotcha.
Yeah, and I think that's helpful framing of that.
I think just this idea around tokenomics has been something that people have been paying a lot of attention to recently because there are a lot of projects in crypto that have a token, but you know, maybe the tokenomics are a little bit out of whack and there's uh let's say some perverse incentives happening.
Um this pivots me towards something I wanted to ask you about that I've seen you writing and talking about.
Pendle Finance launched a new algorithmic uh incentive model.
Um, there's a significant upgrade they're saying is going to reduce their emissions of their token by 30%.
Um, and I know you like just generally pay attention to a lot of updates of like who's building, who's shipping in crypto.
I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on this update from Pendle Finance and how this impacts our tokenomics.
No, yeah, it's obviously a step in the in the right direction, right?
The lock is less, so there's like there's like a cooldown period that's you know much less for um you know the lock token holders than before.
So like long term, I think that's good for the token.
Um, you know, the VE model has had mixed reviews, I think, at best.
And look, this is part of the maturation of crypto markets.
Like token holders are like revolting back, right?
Like they want to see value accruing to the token.
They're not falling for stories anymore.
They want to see like proper structures with protections.
And um, this is part of a larger trend of like a token holder-friendly environment.
I think it's gonna be ultimately good for the space.
And like, look, we like the pendle team a lot.
I think the business model's fantastic.
I think their positioning is fantastic.
You know, you want to get to a point in the industry where you're not thinking so much about the structure.
It should be pretty vanilla.
You should just like buy a token and like it's pretty standard what you get.
You really want to think about the business model.
So, like, you know, now that now that pendle's so simplifying the token structure, it probably de-risk the opportunity a little bit in the eyes of like larger, um, more sophisticated capital.
And um, I just think that they're so well positioned.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
And I just wanted to bring that up because I've seen you like drawing attention to that.
And it's this is one of those times where it's easy for like fundamental improvements in digital assets to get lost in the noise of price action.
Um, just a kind of a general question here.
You know, we we've seen a lot of red days in the market.
Is there anything specific that you're focused on, or maybe a few things you're focused on that you're very bullish on for Q1?
I mean, obviously hype has done well, but is there anything else that you would put on that list of things you're really bullish on here in Q1?
Yeah, we just I mean, Q1 is kind of tough.
We take a longer term time horizon.
And I think a lot of our so like we like most of the asset managers in the space are uh subscribers of ours, and they they want to take longer um time horizon bets as well.
Um, the market uh doesn't always allow you to do that given its fall, but you have to think long term as best as you can.
I let me do maybe I can just go back to the pendle thing.
Like we recently wrote a report there.
Like, you know, I don't think that there's anyone in crypto that's better positioned for both the rise of uh stable coins and perps than pendle.
And it doesn't matter who's winning either, you know, um, you know, it doesn't matter who's leading market share in the perps market, it doesn't matter who's leading uh who is issuing the the the new hottest like yield-bearing stable coin.
Uh what you're gonna want to do, because time like repeatedly, um, asset issuer asset issuers are finding super optimal to um to go this route is um you want to bootstrap TVL.
And the best place to do it is pendle, because they break your asset into two pieces, they bring in the PT and the YT.
Um, the YT lets you target points for accumulating your asset, and the PT allows folks to get a nice fixed yield on that asset that you're issuing and then lever it up in lending platforms at a high LTV.
And that's worked fantastic.
You see it with USD AI today, you saw it with USDE, um, and Athena.
And, you know, when I look at the competitive lend landscape, I think pendle has something like geez, like 25 times or 30 times more TVL than their next largest competitor.
There's like a single place to bootstrap TVL um by stripping assets, and that's on pendle, and asset issuers love it.
And then they have Boros, which is like frankly, like you're starting to see the early innings of PMF.
Activity and OI is very small today, but consistently up and to the right and say, and it solves such an obvious problem in perps markets where you know perps are a really interesting asset.
They're really easy to trade, but they have a big fundamental flaw in that when you trade a perp, you're trading two prices.
You're trading the the mark price and you're trading the funding rate.
And in every market on planet Earth with um variable rates, you have a way to hedge that rate.
And that makes those very um it limits the risk, right?
And in taking on a variable rate, um, people provide that service, and no one's doing that in crypto today except for Boros.
So, you know, I think that there's a lot of promise with pendle in 2026 because they serve two of the hottest markets in crypto, and it really doesn't matter who's winning because the only place to, you know, either hedge that rate uh or to issue that asset um and bootstrap uh TVL via points is is pendle.
Where does that value from that service accrue?
Like I definitely see the value proposition, but where does it accrue in that ecosystem and where yeah, where do you see that stacking up?
Yeah, I think that's a really good question.
Look, it accrues because they monetize trading volume on the YTs.
Uh they monetize uh OI on uh on the Boros platform.
So um, and they've shown pricing power actually.
So I think they 2x their fees uh on the YT portion of the trade in um on Pendle V2.
Um I believe they just might have lowered fees from 20 bips to 10 bips on Boros, but I think that that's probably more in line with like kind of high turnover asset.
You want to see that?
So yeah, they monetize via the yield and and via trading volume.
And it's a really attractive model.
Uh a lot of folks in the yield space, they simply they'll either monetize either the trading volume or they'll monetize like the rate spread.
So for them to monetize kind of both is is too, you know, it's it's good to have both and and not a lot of not all of the not a lot of um protocols in the yield space monetize both.
Ryan, one of our uh chief crypto researchers here at Milk Road has been very gung ho and bullish on on Pendle, on Sky, Maple, several other businesses that are are you know uh showing strength in the digital asset space.
This is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about this because I don't think many people know what's going on and how much value is there.
Uh, you said that a lot of your clients are taking a long-term time horizon view and the long-term investment view of the digital asset space.
What does that mean to you?
Is that 10 years, five years?
What what what is the long-term view mean to you?
Oh no, no, no, 12 months.
12 months.
Okay, so for yeah, so my mental model is like, you know, 12 months is long term before 12 months, sorry, sub-three months is short term, and then somewhere in between three to twelve is like medium term.
Okay, so what's what's your simplify it?
Yeah.
For your thesis on pendle, is that a three-month, 12-month where where does that thesis fall in this?
Yeah, that's that's 2026.
That's a 12-month thesis.
The reason is is because you know, perps are realizing PMF, like we were just talking about.
I think you know, you're gonna see the regulatory clarity gap close, hopefully, in 2026.
So that's good for the borough side of the trade.
And then in terms of issuing yield-bearing assets, that's a 2026 thing.
Go to RWAXYZ.
Any asset issuer in Tradfy is trying to is issue assets on uh crypto rails.
Uh a lot of them are low-vol assets with with medium to high yields.
And the way that you bootstrap that TVL is through a very targeted points program, and and the only one that really allows you to do that is pendle.
So, yeah, the reason I wanted to ask that is I wanted our audience to understand that this is not like a 10-year thing, this is actionable information for this year.
Uh, this is something we're watching at Milk Road and Blockworks is paying attention to too.
Um, Ryan, you know, you said you'd written a report on pendle.
There's a lot of great alpha in that.
What are you looking at to write a report on next?
What are you focusing on in your role as head of research at Blockworks right now?
Yeah, I think that look, I I think one of the biggest trends of 2026.
I mean, we're kind of already talking about it, but maybe let's get a little bit more specific, is just differentiated yields on chain.
There's a big problem with yields on chain today.
It's that they're all correlated to crypto stuff.
So what you want in a portfolio is to have ballast and you want to have some a mix of assets that aren't perfectly correlated because it minimizes your vol, but it increases your expected return.
And the problem with crypto, um, with crypto yields today is that if you have something that's yield bearing in your portfolio, the yield will go down when the market goes down.
And if you've, you know, been in TradFi, you know that over the last G since the 80s, only up until recently, that most of the time when risk assets went down, yields also uh sorry, you you had the fixed income portion of your portfolio giving like giving you ballast to your portfolio, right?
So look, there's there's a lot of opportunity to put um uncorrelated assets in your portfolio.
Um I'm thinking of things like reinsurance, maybe things like high grade uh triple A rated CLOs, which you're seeing institutions like BlackRock and Janice issue.
Um, these asset classes are uncorrelated to crypto.
Reinsurance, like it might be catastrophe risk, right?
So you only don't get paid on your yields when, you know, a cat five or whatever for a hurricane hits in uh in the Q4 of every year, somewhere in Miami or something.
So yeah, so those those um will give you some like stability and certainty to the yield profile in your portfolio and act as ballast in down markets, which uh which you need.
And look, like why, like what what's going to be the big use case of these assets?
Like one is gonna be again, it's gonna be that ballast, but the other thing is like it's gonna be really good for LTVs.
So posting that as collateral and getting leverage against it and having some yield offset the the cost uh cost of uh levering up.
Gotcha.
So there's there's uh a lot of alpha for people to sift through in there, but the great on-chain migration is what I'm hearing.
And that's what we've been preaching here at Milk Road.
Um, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how all of that plays out.
Ryan, uh, you guys do a lot of great work at Blockworks.
I really appreciate the research that you're putting out over there.
Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online?
Yeah, we're at Blockworks.com.
We're we're recently building out a new data product.
So, you know, for all your data needs, Blockwork and research, Blockworks.com is a space.
Thanks for being on the Milk Road show, Ryan.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
Appreciate it, John.
Thanks for having me, man.
And thank you all for joining us.
I hope you all learned something today.
So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you on the next episode of the Milk Road show.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
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