# Crypto Resilience Amid Geopolitical Oil Shock

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-03-19

## Transcript

we're facing this massive stress and Crypto's done relatively well.
Is it a coiled spring?
What's going to happen after, you know, this lets up and how it lets up?
It could be in many different ways.
What's up, everybody?
It's LGD said here and welcome to the Milk Road show, the daily crypto show where the world feels like it's breaking and somehow the markets are still near all time highs.
What the heck?
Today is March 19th, 2026.
And something does feel kind of weird in the market, right?
Both crypto and of course, the broader stock and everything else market.
There's an impending collapse if oil pushes higher, but risk assets aren't really reacting to that.
yet and maybe there are some historical parallels out there that could tell us how this may play out that we could use as a lesson to see and to frame what exactly is going on in geopolitics and how it affects our dear crypto tokens today we've got chris perkins president at coin fun to talk about all this and whether we should expect a massive market driven sell-off sometime soon and if we have time at the end we'll even find time to talk about hyperliquid and prediction markets, two of my favorite topics when it comes to discussing crypto.
Today's episode is brought to you by Shareland, trade real estate like stocks, Nexo, earn interest, borrow and trade crypto, and FortisX, your idle crypto's worst nightmare.
Chris, welcome to the show, man.
LG, how are you today, man?
I feel all right.
I mean, every day I wake up thinking there's going to be some catastrophic red candle, man.
I'm on the West Coast.
I wake up and the market opens like right away and I'm just shaking with my coffee.
But it hasn't really happened.
Like a little crypto bump came back, but it's not that bad, right?
How do you feel?
How do you feel about what's going on?
I wake up, I go to Telegram and I click on this channel I follow called Defender Dome and I scroll through it and see everything that like happened overnight and try to get a sense of like, How is this war progressing?
How is it going to come out?
How is it going to impact markets?
Then I check oil prices and see what's going on there.
And of course, if it's the weekend, I go to Hyperliquid.
Yeah, it's just a really, really interesting time for our markets.
And I look forward to unpacking it today.
Hold on.
So wait, what's the name of that channel?
Thunderdome?
Defenderdome.
I'm obsessed with it.
Yeah, it just clicks off everything that's happening.
uh that's how you you you are you're an ex-marine correct you're an ex-marine is this is this really is this like a military channel is this some kind of secret back channel we don't know about it's an open source intelligence channel i am not an ex-marine i am a marine once a marine oh you are a marine currently okay no no like it's once you're a marine you're always a marine so uh that's how we got to talk about it yeah okay got it okay okay is this but this is not this is not just for marines only nah no Okay, anybody can access it.
Defender Dome.
Okay, so wait, what was in Defender Dome this morning?
It showed various strikes that both the Iranians would make and also the U.S.
Looks like we now set off what we have called A-10s, which are these amazing aircraft that they keep trying to get rid of that are very good at various things.
And they're starting to light up some of the small watercraft that are laying mines and causing havoc in the state of Hormuz.
So yeah, just try to get a feel for the...
for the heartbeat of the war, like what's going on, that helps inform just my view.
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literally nothing you can get the offer right now it's good until march 24th and the link is in the description and honestly i hope to see you in there because i'm super excited about what we built feels like you're trying to get a little bit ahead of the headline there too it feels like by seeing that kind of stuff you'll you'll be able to see what gets published maybe later in the day or later in the week a thousand percent like it's instant yeah okay so let's let's let's actually dive into the market i feel like you are kind of positioning this as you know, kind of when we were chatting before and some of the notes you sent through and some of the stuff you've been tweeting on other shows too, is that you're saying that it feels kind of strange that despite all this, despite all this uncertainty, right?
Major conflict, major, obviously a lot of scares of a bigger conflict.
It's weird that the stock market is still near all time highs.
It hasn't like cratered, right?
So is that, why is that?
Why is that in your opinion, Chris?
Yeah.
And not only to the stock market, but the crypto market has shown a lot of resiliency.
I think going into this stress, it was largely oversold for a number of different reasons.
I think the market was still reeling.
Way back from 1010, retail got burned.
But when you step back, I think there's some very, very positive long-term things happening for the crypto market, like it or not.
And that's we've entered this world of real politic.
Trump's come forth and he said, listen, America first, crypto capital to the planet.
But against that backdrop, you're seeing a real deterioration of trust within the international community and a real focus on real politics, putting tariffs on allies, holding them accountable.
And so people are now operating in their self-interests.
And when you start seeing this trustless, permissionless environment happening.
Hmm, really sounds like an asset class that I know and I love.
And what happened was, I think in the beginning, you know, we really, you know, took a lot of very aggressive actions on Liberation Day.
A lot of the countries around the world are like, gosh, we need to start decoupling from this post-World War II order.
And we got to start decoupling from the dollar.
And so, you know what, maybe I'm going to sell my treasuries.
I need to diversify.
I'm going to buy gold.
I'm going for gold.
Right.
And we saw gold take off.
And then all of a sudden, all the Bitcoin maxis are like, oh, no, what happened?
What about my digital gold?
And the fact is that the governments that are buying gold, they are, you know, they're central bankers like 70, 80 years old.
They weren't ready for Bitcoin.
But those fundamentals never really changed.
Right.
And so against this backdrop now, you turn to the United States.
And God, I know Chairman Selig very well.
I know Atkins very well.
And the fundamentals for institutional adoption are improving every single day.
We saw the SEC come out with the taxonomy.
And we can talk about clarity a little bit, but the conditions for institutional adoption couldn't be greater.
got burned.
They got scared.
Gold goes up and burned by 1010.
They pulled back a little bit.
They'll be back.
But these institutions are slowly, slowly, slowly marching.
And yeah, Genius Act comes out.
And that's really interesting too, because while the world is decoupling, governments are decoupling, trustless environment, real politic, there's still insatiable demand.
for the US dollar amongst the people all over the world.
Because again, they don't trust their governments either.
And so when you're sitting in a developing country, or maybe you're not developing a developed country, you're like, hmm, I probably should be holding on to some dollars as a store of value and as a hedge for myself.
And so I expect for stable coins to be moving forward.
Now, the other like major impetus and catalyst for our markets is this whole tokenization idea.
And yesterday, NASDAQ put out a rule that was, or the SEC and NASDAQ put out something around just, we're seeing the conditions for tokenization to move very quickly forward.
But what does this all mean?
Whether it's perps markets, whether it's tokenization markets, we're in the world of 24-7 markets now.
You can't ignore that.
And if you want to operate and be successful in a 24-7 environment, You got to turn to crypto.
You don't have a choice.
And so like we were talking about when Trump invades Venezuela on a Friday night, when Operation Epic Fury happens on a Saturday night, I'm a fiduciary, right?
I have LPs.
I have to be able to risk manage them, risk manage my exposures.
I have to use 24-7 markets.
And so when you bring all this together, sentiment's really bad.
Fundamentals continue to improve.
That's a really, really good long-term investing environment.
Now, is there going to be volatility?
Absolutely.
So Israel bombs an Iranian oil field.
The Iranians get pissed and bomb a Katori gas field.
This is going to cause near-term liquidity.
But when you step back, yes, watching the price of oil.
Yes, you're watching the divergence between WTI and Brent.
Brent is the international standard for oil.
It's over 120.
dollars or whatever, but it's diverging.
When you step back and you think about this whole America first regime, why haven't the markets tanked here?
Because we're self-sufficient with our energy and it's kind of muting the blow for a period of time.
It's not going to be sustainable over the long course because eventually these issues and you're seeing fertilizer markets get impacted.
You're seeing all different like second and third order issues because the Strait of Hormuz is really important.
But generally speaking, the U.S., because of our resiliency right now, particularly with oil and energy, it's been able to mute that impact.
But gosh, I was out with some friends visiting from China this morning.
Asia is hurting.
You know, they get they get like 80 percent.
Asia gets 80 percent of oil out of the Strait of Hormuz.
And so it's really you're seeing an impact there more and more.
What does that mean?
That means they get even more angry with some of these United States actions so that decoupling, that trustlessness starts even exacerbating further.
Again, that's a very good condition for crypto in the long term.
So in all this, what is the case for crypto?
Is there a case for crypto?
Because I think you had also mentioned that perhaps a lot of places that may be in peril in some kind, so the whole region, which...
has a ton of money.
They have a lot of cash and they may need to flee.
They may need to move.
They may preemptively make those moves.
Is that something where they would stack Bitcoin and then get out of the country?
Yeah.
So the case for crypto, in a trustless world, wherever you are, Bitcoin will store value, right?
And so that is absolutely going to drive demand no matter what.
Stablecoins, if you're anywhere in the world, are dollars a better store of value than perhaps any other asset right now?
Yes, that's going to drive demand.
Stablecoin demand obviously is good for Ethereum and all the other layer ones as well.
So that's absolutely the case for crypto.
The other case for crypto that you just can't deny is the move to 24-hour markets that are inevitable and happening in real time.
Let's put some numbers around it.
The equity market globally, $127 trillion in market cap.
Crypto market, less than three at this point.
If we all think that the equity market will tokenize, and I think it's 100%, it's like markets went from manual to electronic.
The next iteration of markets is tokenization, 24-7 trading.
So, okay, if $127 trillion of equities have to tokenize, and I need to trade them on the weekends and at nights and on holidays, what am I going to buy them with?
Hello, stablecoins, right?
And so it creates this incredible flywheel where stablecoin production is going to go up, tokenization is going to go up.
And that also helps fuel all the layer one ecosystems around it.
DeFi is interesting too.
As regulators get more comfortable with tokenized assets, to the extent you can start deploying them in vaults and in other ways, like we talked about stablecoins as a store of value.
Well, kind of because it's a depreciating asset, but it stores it better than other assets.
Well, how do you generate yield?
Yeah, there's this massive debate with the banks and Coinbase, whatever.
But you can still go into DeFi and do it.
We do it all the time, right?
Many DGENs do it all the time.
So again, as stable coins come into the system, as tokens come into the system, very good for DeFi, very good for the long term, no matter what.
Here's a question for you, going back to the current day crisis.
And you've drawn a historical parallel that I want to ask you about as well.
If there wasn't – because the main story for us obviously is price action, right?
For months, since 1010, that's the only thing we want to know, Chris.
And do you feel like if this – we've seen a small March rally that's kind of cooling today.
If there wasn't this geopolitical issue right now that has potential long-lasting effects and could potentially be long-lasting itself, we don't know.
do you where would crypto be like would crypto be in the same spot from like a price action standpoint i guess i'm kind of asking you if you think the four-year cycle is real and kind of like what's driving price but do you think that risk assets like crypto would be anywhere different than where they were they uh if this if this wasn't happening the four-year cycle is real because a lot of retail wells believe that it's real um I think it's a bit in their heads.
As institutional adoption comes into effect, then that's going to be muted.
Price action wise, OK, we're facing this massive stress and crypto is done relatively well.
Is it a coiled spring?
What's going to happen after this lets up and how it lets up?
It could be in many different ways.
Everyone comes together and the Strait of Hormuz is open and the economy starts flowing again.
Yeah, I think we're going to be in very good shape.
Now, I think a lot of the Gulf states are going to have to think about they've been massive supporters of crypto.
Do they double down and go even deeper because they're like, you know what?
Trustless, permissionless.
I need more Bitcoin.
You know, I need more stable coins.
That's one scenario.
But they will have to put capital back into rebuilding a lot of their infrastructure.
That makes sense.
Yeah, that's a good answer.
Yeah, I like that.
How do you see crypto playing out through the rest of the year, Chris?
That's another question.
You mentioned Clarity Act, and I do want to come back to oil in a second, but while we're just talking about actual crypto action, is this conflict or not?
Does crypto continue on its supposed timeline?
Look, it's going to be volatile.
When you're dealing with this type of major...
rewiring of the international geopolitical landscape, you're dealing with massive stresses to supply of energy, et cetera, you're going to have volatility throughout.
But again, when you step back, let's just talk about regulatory for a second.
You have the Genius Act that was passed.
That's getting implemented right now.
And then you're going to see institutions pumping out stable coins.
Why?
Because it's in the US interest.
We want people to buy our treasuries.
How do you do that?
push out stable coins, and I'm telling you there's demand for stable coins as well.
Next thing, clarity.
Does it happen or does it not?
I was at 51%.
I've kind of come back a little bit.
I'm around 50% right now.
You can flip a coin if it happens or not.
In a way, it doesn't matter because you have Chairman Selig and you have Chairman Atkins.
They're getting together.
And they're providing the clarity that we've been desperate for.
They're even naming tokens and saying these tokens are commodities, like leave it alone.
Right.
And the point is, is that in three years from now, it's very difficult for a new regime that hates crypto to come in and say, you know what?
Those guys were completely wrong because you have three years of precedent.
The market has moved and they've adopted those standards.
If you've listed a future on those commodities.
uh what are you in trouble now because the next guy shows up or lady and they're like no your security you know you're gonna get fined no that's just not how it works What Gary Gensler did was he had a vision of really strategic ambiguity.
By not defining the asset class, it kind of stalled it.
And when he tried to define it, it would go to the courts.
But now we're going to have better definitions.
It's really hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
So that is a very positive, fundamental driver for institutional adoption as we hit this institutional era.
Now, the Clarity Act, if it gets done, and I am of the belief that this interest issue will get sorted.
It's been a real pain.
I can walk through it in incredible depth.
I think there's an easy way to solve it, really.
And in fact, you just saw the way to solve it recently where the regulators have said, we're going to lower the regulatory capital for banks.
Banks are saying, we can't lend if our deposits leave.
Well, that's true, kind of.
But the reason why they can't lend is because they have to hold putative regulatory capital against lending.
I remember because I used to work at a bank and it was very expensive for us to loan because we had to hold a lot of reserves against those loans and it hurts your return on equity.
That's why private credit was born.
And so by lowering the capital, and by the way, people will say, whoa, that's going to cause the next crisis.
I'm not talking about risk management.
I'm talking about lowering capital without ignoring risk management.
That gives them a lot more liquidity back to do those loans by lowering the requirements.
Long story short, if you're really worried about not being able to loan, there's a different way to solve it.
And I do think that this whole thing can get solved.
Of course, the banks think that they're going to get that anyway, so it's hard to kind of tie it together.
But there's people a lot smarter than me that are working through those politics.
So I think I get sorted.
The next thing are ethics.
And people think that Donald Trump and crypto are a thing, and so they hate crypto.
Well, I would argue.
If that's your rationale, then let's just get rid of real estate too, because he likes real estate.
So let's just get rid of that as an asset.
Let's punish the real estate as an asset class.
Doesn't make sense, right?
So if you look at what he said in the State of the Union, he mentioned it twice, the Stop Insider Trading Act.
And so the point that many of us have been making when we talk to policymakers is, guys, are there issues with crypto and ethics?
Yeah, maybe.
But they're also...
bigger probably issues in the equity space.
So just do it once and for all.
Why are you singling out one asset class, which is a very important asset class?
It's going to revolutionize your markets and drive responsible innovation.
So I think there's a way to solve all this stuff.
And then against that backdrop, you have midterms coming.
And so I went from like 51% to 50%.
I could go either way because a lot of the success of pushing this over the line, I think will come down to people like Fairshake.
And as elections get shaped, Does the crypto industry, you know, how does crypto factor into the policies for and platforms of those getting elected?
And if it's important, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, and by the way, like this stuff is totally, should not be partisan in any way, shape or form, then I think it gets done.
So I think there's a roadmap.
I think it's a coin flip.
If we get clarity, I don't want to say animal spirits, but you'll get some animal spirits and it'll be very good for the market because you're going to be like, hey, now we're entrenched.
Now we're enshrined.
We have rules.
And there's a famous phrase, it takes an act of Congress, right?
So if you get an act of Congress, it's going to take an act of Congress to get rid of it.
And then we should be in good shape.
So I'm watching that super close.
I think we'll have some movement in April, fingers crossed.
And again, if it doesn't happen, we'll still be fine.
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Here's an interesting question that I hadn't really thought about until you kind of gave us.
you know, a potential shape of the midterms there in terms of crypto being a partisan or nonpartisan issue.
Regardless of whether it should be or not, how will people running in the midterms, lawmakers running in the midterms, how will they position for or against crypto based?
Do you think they'll do their positioning?
as an anti-Trump thing you know what i mean because it's something where it's like yes it should be it shouldn't be a partisan thing but because and you made a good point that it's like you can't be you know Trump is for a lot of things and you can't you can't just hate them because he likes them he likes a lot of different stuff but do you think there'll be a huge positioning against crypto because it has it lately has felt like a like a Trump thing um in the last like two years I think that's a dangerous position to take.
If you go anti-technology, you go anti-AI.
I think it's very tempting for some folks to say, oh, you know, AI is going to destroy all the jobs in my district, so I hate AI.
I think that's a very near-term lazy and...
really bad policy i think could it win could it win a seat could it win an election though it doesn't it doesn't ask you like it doesn't i don't care what it actually means can they win with that at this i'm just thinking about like the public they're gonna try they're gonna try to do it with ai um and they're gonna try to do it with crypto and so it's interesting how some of the uh the special interests are shaping up i guess the question for me is are there a way like when i talk to some prominent democrats they're like you know ethics Got to get over my constituency red with ethics because, OK, so then let's focus on ethics and keep them focused on ethics across the board.
And there's a lot of congressmen and ladies that make a lot of money trading.
So hopefully we find a way to pivot off of that because, you know, if we destroy technology and innovation, that's not very good for the long term prospects of our country.
Let's let's let's shape back to something a little bit more near term.
We had the Fed non cut.
yesterday uh the news that came through and then we have wars coming in i think in may right and you had mentioned as well it gets confirmed that's right he gets confirmed in may so do you do expect a slightly different kind of approach to all this now that wars investment i'm assuming will coordinate a lot more yeah that's right so yeah worse has to go through the confirmation process uh i think powell said he's going to stick around as a as a member until this investigation on real estate plays out You really hate to see that become politicized, and I hope it doesn't.
But I think the markets got worse wrong.
And when he was appointed, I think a lot of crypto folks were very nervous.
The guy hates QE.
This is going to be terrible for our asset class.
Crypto tends to respond very favorably to liquidity.
And if he's pulling back on liquidity, that's going to be a bad thing.
I see it a little bit differently.
I see him as trying to not just shrink the Fed's balance sheet, but shrink its focus, its mandate on, on, on, you know, he sees as he sees quantitative easing and tightening as an expansion of its mandate.
And I think he would prefer to see the treasury take over certain roles and responsibilities that maybe shouldn't be left to an independent agency.
And why shouldn't they?
Because elections have consequences.
And, you know, to the extent that treasury, there's a new fed treasury accord where roles and responsibilities shift a little bit more to treasury and besant.
And by the way, they get on quite well.
You want to see coordination.
Policy should be absolutely coordinated across Treasury and Fed.
And I see Besant taking a much bigger role in various types of macroeconomic inputs.
Super focused on stablecoins, super focused on the shape of the curve.
What tools does he have at his disposal to accomplish what he's trying to accomplish, which is improve the strength of the dollar, make stablecoins ubiquitous, and other things.
So I think I'm less concerned.
I think you're going to see more power with the treasury.
And Besant, the guy is super sophisticated.
He's a hedge fund manager.
He knows macro.
And I think the guy knows what he's doing.
So I think that's how it's going to play out.
We'll see what happens if he gets confirmed.
And I think the markets are going to be just fine.
What is the shape of the curve?
Oh, I'm sorry.
So the interest rate curve.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
I apologize.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So when you look at interest rates, you have the short end, which...
Treasuries, stable coins are backed by treasury bills, which control interest rates, near-term interest rates versus like 30-year interest rates.
And so people think of the curve, which is the interest rate curve, two-year, 10-year, 30-year, et cetera.
So what role will, by issuing more stable coins, as an example, it forces the buying of treasury bills, which could have the intended effect of lowering short-term interest rates.
So that's the type of thing that I would envision best in focusing on.
Got it.
Okay, okay.
I've never heard that.
I apologize.
Maybe everyone else knows.
I honestly, you know, doing this show every week, I find out something that apparently everybody knew, but I didn't.
Oh, good.
Sorry about that.
And I'll always ask that question.
Thank you for asking.
if you guys know what it is and people listening know what it is good for you uh you know more than i do uh let's go back uh and chris i i promised to touch on this and it's it's a little bit out of order because we were talking about crypto in the fed but you had mentioned that this current oil shock um can be potentially compared to similar events in the 1970s obviously there are drastically different conditions now but what what maybe give us a little history lesson on that and what we can learn from that if anything Yeah, so I'm really old.
And I remember as a kid, like 1979, waiting with my mom.
And I think they would do it by like license plates.
So if you had an even or odd license plate, you could get gas on certain days of the week.
And I remember like lining up and like sometimes there'd be like red flags outside of the gas station where they're out of gas.
So we've been here before.
What we did since that time is this country really mobilized and became independent.
uh from an energy perspective and i think there's going to be a lot more opportunities to do that you know across alternatives like elon's pushing out solar everywhere i think nuclear is going to have a new effect you know the thing that i am concerned about is like with ai you have this insatiable demand for energy more so than ever and so you're going to see continued investment but the difference back then was we were not energy dependent independent now we are um which is helping again um cushion us a little bit from the blow, which is much different than they're experiencing in Asia, much different than they're experiencing in Europe.
So that was the experience back then.
Now it's a little bit better.
But again, in time, I think there will be repercussions as around the globe, demand starts drying up because inflation and energy prices just get out of control.
What was driving that when you were a kid?
What was the issue?
Oil embargo.
Same type of issues right out of the Middle East.
1979, same exact issues coming out of the Middle East.
Same thing.
Same story, same story, man.
Okay.
I guess my next question for you then is what...
I mean, we kind of already touched on this, but I mean, you know, you're a Marine, you're in the, you're in the defense dome thing.
What's, I mean, if you had to give a, if you had to give us a prediction of how you see this actually shaping out, and we've already talked about the crypto story, but what, in terms of the conflict, I feel like you're the right person to, you know, or at least one of the, one of the better people to ask on the show is like, what do you think actually happens?
I think that's what everybody, that's a big question.
So what holds you to it?
No, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious what the administration would like.
Venezuela was executed spectacularly.
And what did they get out of it?
They were very quick to identify a strong person.
In that case, it was a woman who could maintain order, who would work very closely with the administration on natural resources and everything else.
And I think that they tried to do is to apply that model in Iran.
Iran is much more complex.
90 million people have been dug in.
The theocracy has been preparing for this for a very long time.
And so the question is, is how long does it take or how do you get to the point where there's a general officer, there's somebody with a lot of guns and muscle behind them.
In this case, it's probably gonna be a man who steps up, takes a lot of personal risk and seeks to establish themselves as that strong man in the country.
I don't think it's going to be like the mission that I had in Iraq, which was to install democracy.
Rather, it's going to be to ensure stability, freedom of maneuver through the Strait of Hormuz.
And as long as it's stable and as long as you're friendly, the administration will be happy.
I think that's the vision, is really stability and have somebody take over.
Not very easy.
Probably going to take a very long time.
And if you're a Gulf state...
What do you do?
These guys just lashed out at you.
If the U.S.
just pulls out and declares victory, the neighborhood probably just got a lot worse.
And so I think at a very basic minimum, there has to be a way to control the Strait of Hormuz.
And I think people will try to find, continue to explore alternatives to its use.
Like if 20% of the world's oil goes through it.
And it's a very bad and it continues to be a neighborhood, a really bad neighborhood.
They'll have to find alternative pipelines and other means to avoid it.
I think that securing the Strait of Hormuz is probably the end game here.
I'll note that the 31st Mu is steaming across in the direction of the area right now.
That's the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit.
What I'm watching is do they take CARG?
CARG is responsible for 90 percent of Iran's oil exports.
And the Mew has a battalion of Marines.
They're very, very comfortable in taking islands or parts of islands.
That's what they do.
That's what we do.
So that'll be something to watch.
And if you control Karg, it is definitely, it would be impactful.
Now, of course, Iran's been preparing for this for four decades, five decades.
The U.S.
has been preparing for this for five decades.
So we'll see what happens there.
But yeah, I think securing freedom of navigation on the Strait of Hormuz is probably...
the bare minimum of what we need to achieve um see how it goes okay okay that's what is the what would drag this out gosh um protracted mining um it's just it's just really hard to keep sticking your finger in the hole of every in the dam um because like when you're dealing with asymmetric warfare and i dealt with it for for months and months in iraq um it's very difficult um you can use a lot of low cost means that we've already seen, like mines are not very expensive.
You can do, you can wreak a lot of havoc for a lot, for a very little cost these days with some of the drones that we're seeing, et cetera.
So the more that, you know, they just keep, keep, keep this going, the worse off it is for everyone.
So I think it's yeah, we'll, we'll see if, if the U S and allies are able to secure freedom of navigation, that that's going to be the big thing I'm watching.
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Jumping back to kind of putting the finance lens back on this.
Chris, for somebody like you, who obviously we're talking about your experience in conflict, but now you've had a lot of experience in finance since then as well.
How much does...
a 24-7 market like Hyperliquid change the TradFi outlook on these types of stories where you're going to see extreme action on the weekends now as the action develops in real life.
My sense is that a lot of these operations were planned over the weekend so that the markets didn't get clobbered and people weren't subject to that volatility.
That's going to go away.
And I think people are going to have to get used to it.
I think crypto natives like ourselves.
have a bit of an edge because we've been living in that environment for years and years and it's something that you just get used to there's been a lot of criticism over the years about well you know what if i'm a farmer and like something happens it on a saturday at 1am and i get liquidated that's not going to work because i need to hedge um at the same time you can see periods of robust liquidity when there's an event in the middle of the night oh and by the way let's not forget um Very few, I think in the future, very few humans are going to be trading.
Maybe they will as a hobby.
But the agents, the agentic economy is here.
Agents don't get tired.
They're constantly monitoring.
So I think liquidity is going to, it's going to smooth.
It's not going to be during the workday when humans are awake in the US.
I think the agents are going to be constantly seeking information and putting on trade.
So the world is changing.
24-7 is now table stakes.
You have to be there.
All the companies that I know about, all the exchanges are trying to get there.
Tokenization is the solution to do so.
But they have really old tech and it's really scary for some of them.
When I was running global futures at Citigroup, I mean, and the way the entire futures industry works is it collateralizes like once a day and is very slow.
And you could do a trade on Friday and you may not get that money.
and the market's moving like crazy over a long weekend, you might not get it for another three days.
And the entire world changes in three days.
And so what does that mean?
That means you have to hold more collateral to mitigate all those risks.
So the great news about 24-7 markets is that if you move them constantly, if you move collateral faster, you can actually unlock a lot of trapped capital back into the industry because you don't have to sit on it in case something bad happens over three or four days.
So that's going to be very positive.
I think the exchanges, I got a call from one yesterday, some of my old friends, and they were scared.
They're like, wow, if S&P can start listing on Hyperliquid, they have only a couple people, a handful of people, 24-7.
It's kind of not fair because I have to do all this regulation and hire all these people.
But gosh, they're actually using...
If TradeXYZ is actually using the official contract and the official index, uh-oh, that's going to be problematic.
Now, it's not seamless.
There's some regulatory things that need to get worked out.
But it sure does prove the case.
And again, like when I wake up on the weekends, I look on hyperliquid now.
And pretty soon I used to look at oil prices.
Now I would look at equity prices.
What's going on?
i think to survive going forward you got to be 24 7 and i think crypto natives have an edge because that's how we've operated so you're telling me that a lot of these guys trad fi guys are going to either like what's going to be mandated of them like people like you that used to run that group are going to be like listen guys who wants to take the weekends you know is that what's going to happen like we have weekend shifts now and you guys got to be on or they'll just die like the dinosaurs great question um yeah We used to do a follow the sun model anyway, right?
And it would be like, I don't know, 24, 6 or whatever.
So is it really hard to add an extra day?
Not really.
But again, I think you're going to see less and less manual human activity.
Like you don't need it anymore.
The bots are way better.
The algos are way better.
And so what's the role of humans going forward?
Well, I think relationships are going to matter.
I think kind of putting together, synchronizing, you know, much better data sets that the agents and the LLMs provide you, et cetera, will be helpful.
But markets are changing fast, like faster than I've ever seen.
24-7, agentic, much faster.
And even prediction markets.
Prediction markets are just getting started.
And people are using them to punt, bet.
Well, I think I'm smarter than this, so I'm going to do this, whatever.
Eventually, you're going to see an incredible diversification of financial prediction markets that feed models and allow people to hedge in new ways, in a binary way, to inform their trading, their risk management, et cetera.
It's going to get very granular.
you know, liquidity matters as you kind of go down on the curve, but you're going to see a lot more financial.
And I like, you know, going back to hyperliquid, HIP4 should be interesting.
But, you know, as you start betting on where rates are, where, you know, whatever other financial metric is, that's going to start feeding models.
We haven't seen as much liquidity in those financial prediction markets just yet.
It's been more focused on, a lot of these things start with retail, right?
And, you know, gaming, you know, like, you know, whatever, politics, great.
But eventually I think you're going to see a lot more financialization.
And then that'll start feeding bottles.
So between those inputs, between the perps that are going to be inevitable in the US, I think the world's 24-7 table stakes.
I think it's going to be totally different than what we've seen.
Do you dabble in prediction markets?
I've been known to do it from time to time.
My daughter's obsessed because she thinks she's smarter than everybody.
What does she bet on?
What does she play on prediction markets?
She's not allowed to, but she tells me everything.
But for what?
Like politics or like culture?
TikTok stuff?
Mostly culture.
Mostly culture.
And that's this generation.
Like my son, you know, go to a baseball game.
This generation, Generation Z, like they'll bet on like if a pitch at a baseball game is over 90 miles an hour.
So like that's just going to get bigger and bigger as they grow up.
That makes sense.
So you're experiencing it by proxy a little bit.
Of course.
Through them, let's say.
For sure.
Maybe giving them some tips.
Yeah, put it that way.
Cool.
Well, Chris, I mean, this has been great.
Thank you for sharing our insight.
Thank you for sharing your experience, I think, as a marina as well.
It's something we don't get a lot.
uh on the show so we don't really ever talk about war stuff because we're just amateurs on x with with opinions that we on topics that we found out about an hour ago so um i feel like you've got a bit more experience there uh i'm just used to getting shot at that's all used to getting shot at every day do you actually okay this is too personal but like when things like this happen do you wish you were there or are you like happy that you are not you know i'm just curious how that works it's a great question um it's it's hard to explain but um yeah if you grew up i spent nine years in the marine corps um naval academy graduate and we say there's an expression when the balloon goes up um there's a part of you as as someone who served that you you really wish you were there not because you're um some warmonger or anything but because you feel like you want to be next to the marine to your right and your left and to support them and to protect them and to be by them so yeah there's this like this is incredible feeling inside where you just, you wish you were there in a way because you felt like that was your duty to, to, to serve the man, the man, sorry, like we were in all combat unit to serve the man to your left and to your right.
And so that's, that's how you feel.
So a lot of emotions.
I was with, I was with the Mew.
I was on the, I was on the USS Kearsarge when we rescued Scott O'Grady, if you want to look at your history.
So I know what these guys can do.
They're incredible.
Scott O'Grady's guy got shot down in Serbia, and the Mew went in and rescued him.
Yeah, behind enemy lines.
So these guys that are going in right now, they're incredibly trained, sophisticated, and we'll see what they do.
So that should be in the next couple of weeks we find out.
Played by Owen Wilson in the film.
That's right.
Yeah, I saw that.
Great.
Well, Chris, it's been a pleasure to talk to you, man.
Best of luck with everything going forward, and I'm sure we'll see you again hopefully this year.
Cheers.
Thanks, man.
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