# Reserve One CEO: Bitcoin Cycles Dead, RWAs Lead Next Crypto Wave

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-03-26

## Transcript

I don't think the uh the dust has fully settled from 1010.
I think I think that shook up a lot of markets, a lot of traders, a lot of a lot of retail.
There was a lot of leverage in that shakeout.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Due Set here, and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that knows Bitcoin hasn't changed, even if the market has.
Today's March 26, 2026.
We are recording on March 25th.
We're at a crucial moment in the history of finance.
It may not feel like it with crypto kind of in the gutter and so much turmoil globally.
But looking back years down the line, we may see 2026 as the inflection point when things really changed.
Our guest today has an extensive tech background and is full steam ahead building in crypto for the next leg up.
Jamie Leverton, CEO at Reserve One, a diversified digital asset treasury company in the process of going public.
This is they're in transition.
They're getting ready for this next big thing that's about to happen in the market.
She's on the show with us to talk about what this moment means in the history of finance.
Today's episode is brought to you by Shareland Trade Real Estate, like stocks, and Nexo, Earn Interest, borrow and trade crypto.
Jamie, what's up?
Welcome to Milk Road.
Thanks so much for having me.
It's great to be here.
Okay, so let's let's just get right into it.
Okay, you've been doing this for a while.
You have a tech background, you choose to be in crypto.
But tell me, are are we actually do you agree that this is a bear market and that we're not gonna see anything change for at least another six months?
Or do you have a do you have a different take there on what's going on?
Look, I uh I stated publicly in the in Q4, that I thought the four-year cycle was dead.
So I'm I'm I am sticking to my guns on that, although um it doesn't, it doesn't feel like I'm right right now.
Look, it's really, really difficult to time the market.
I think anyone that tries to time and trade around Bitcoin in particular, uh is taking a lot of risk.
You just you don't want to miss those big legs, and you you really can't predict when they're gonna come.
Uh so I I've always been a long-term holder, and I I don't pay attention to really daily price action as much as I can, although of course it's hard, it's hard not to.
What what drove you to believe that the four-year cycle was dead?
What was that, what was that based on?
It's really difficult to see the signal as clearly as before.
The kind of the four-year cycle was based on the supply demand involved in uh in Bitcoin miners and and the supply coming online, and then obviously it getting cut in half every uh every four years.
But there's just so much, there's so much more activity, so much more trading that I just don't think that supply shock has that much of an impact anymore, given just how little sub how little new supply is coming into the market every four years at this point.
We're already at 20 million Bitcoin in circulation.
The rest is gonna uh dribble out over the next you know 120 ish years.
So I just I don't think that that uh that supply-demand relationship is as important as it historically was.
Uh that said, uh, people get ingrained in patterns of behavior and and potentially the four-year cycle is just an now an ingrained pattern of of how people think about the market, how they trade around the market.
Uh, but I don't think it's here, it's here to stay.
Um, and I think there are a lot of catalysts that we could see in 2026.
Obviously, we're all um anxiously awaiting news on clarity, and I think there's still a lot of optimism that we could see clarity get through before before recess here, which would be, I think, a catalyst for the industry.
It's something that we absolutely need and uh we're hoping to have seen passed before now.
We had such great momentum in 2025 with genius, you know, coming out with bipartisan support and really really uh accelerating uh with pace, and and then clarity's just unfortunately been uh been slower to evolve.
Everything you're listening to today is also covered in our daily crypto newsletter, and on Sundays, we even recap the best parts of the entire week's worth podcast.
So check it out at the link below.
So Jared, I'm just gonna stop you there.
We've talked about clarity a lot on the show, and we can come back to it in a little bit, but I I'm still curious to know like uh you're somebody who clearly understands that your bull case on this stuff is really the tech side, right?
You're saying it's gonna take a long time to mine it, and as a result, it's like this silly four-year cycle that we're supposed to have, uh, that everybody foresaw just like this this kind of fake math, it's like we just made it up as as crypto was kind of uh still a small asset, that that should have been over, but now it's pointing to that it's not.
Like, how do you how do you reconcile that?
Like how what would what would make you believe that the four-year cycle is intact?
Well, if if if we continue to trade where we're trading in this, you know, kind of we've been in this in the 60 low 70 range now for you know four months, maybe longer.
Uh if that continues for another six, 12 months before we see it start to move back up then that's that would indicate the four year cycle is is still intact i i think we're gonna test uh test new highs by the end of 26 that's that's my perspective and and if and if that is the case then I think we can we can safely say that the four year cycle is dead but we'll see it's it's uh it's now what late March and uh and we haven't we haven't seen that those catalysts yet it doesn't feel like it's coming anytime soon does it is it is this something where somebody like you guys um where you know you you have a much different mission than just price action let's say obviously that's the long-term goal is is are are stretches like this like the last six months um when you work at like a a dat like like where you guys are is this like a distraction like how does this kind of change uh like uh the kind of work that you guys do you get oh no like we're does anybody think internally like oh no we were wrong about this or or is it just oh we're just gonna you know we're we're getting it we get to get in at better prices in a way.
Yeah, I mean that's that's the silver lining.
It is a it is a better entry point uh where we're sitting now versus where we were in in um in the fall, where a lot of people deployed into the the all-time high range and in September, October.
So yeah, from that perspective, it's a it's a nice, nice entry point.
But it doesn't really change what we're doing from a from a day-to-day perspective.
Um we we will be diversified, we will be active, so looking to put our assets to work to generate returns on the assets while we hold them on the on balance sheet.
I've I've been in the space, I I was took over as the CEO of HUD 8 in uh in 2020, which was kind of the start of of the the bull market in that cycle.
And um, and I was the first CEO of a Bitcoin mining company to say, look, I'm not gonna sell my Bitcoin.
Uh we're we we took a hodl position, which um was really because we had and and I continue to have a long-term belief in the value of of Bitcoin versus uh versus fiat and and the the purchasing power of Bitcoin over time uh being consistently up and to the right and and the purchasing power of of fiat over time consistently uh being down to the left, if you will.
Is this uh let's let's talk about something more recent where you know, the last month, the only headline that there is everything that's going on in the Middle East, and we've covered that extensively on the show.
We've talked about oil and the macro and everything else.
Is this, are you surprised at crypto's almost like lack of movement during this time?
Not that it we're in a short time frame, right?
To be fair, but it's something where it's like we haven't really moved in any direction uh despite the rest of the market being so shaky and commodities doing things that they have never done before, yet the highest risk asset seems the most stable.
Yeah, look, I we all would have hoped to see Bitcoin trade more in line with with gold and commodities.
Um really it's it's doing what we don't love to see, which is it it's trading in line with with uh riskier kind of tech stocks.
It's a pattern that we've seen consistently over the last number of years.
Eventually, I do believe that pattern will will break and it will start to trade more like a commodity.
It's just it's unfortunately it's not there yet.
It's not doing what I would have predicted it would do.
And I mean, that's that's kind of the thing about Bitcoin.
It really never does exactly what you think it's gonna do, which is why it's it's generally a very good idea to just take your position and hold um because it's so difficult to predict.
Do you feel like a lot of people have gotten shaken out in the last six months?
Look, I think I don't think the uh the dust has fully settled from 1010.
I think I think that shook up a lot of markets, a lot of traders, a lot of uh a lot of retail.
There was a lot of leverage in that in that shakeout.
So yeah, no, I think that I think the dust is is very much still settling.
And uh this happens.
This is this is something that we've seen time and time again and in the space.
I think it it happened to uh coincide with the turning of the cycle.
Um it just kind of hit that that October surprise window almost perfectly, um, which is purely a coincidence, but here we are.
It's funny.
That's that's the magic of the four-year cycle narrative, is that it seems it seems like a well-timed coincidence so far.
Uh I wanna I want to switch to something else and just kind of back to the value of Bitcoin.
Um I was clearly somebody who's like such a strong advocate there.
How do you value something like Bitcoin versus gold?
You can hold gold, sure.
But how easy is it to trade gold bars?
Like it, it's it's really it's really not.
Um ultimately most of most of what we transact in is digital.
Bitcoin just happens to be truly digitally native.
It's the it's the only asset that is that is truly decentralized uh and and is completely finite.
So yes, it's a superior um commodity to gold.
Were you surprised?
I mean, another thing that happened too that coincided with our massive pullback in crypto was the massive rise in gold, right?
And now it's seen its own, its own um incredible one-day, one or two-day uh price change, let's say.
Um surprise of many.
So it finally, it finally coming back to some level of reality.
Um, but was that how do you perceive something like that where it's like we saw this decoupling right around 1010 where it's like, man, Bitcoin just kept ripping and and or uh gold kept ripping and Bitcoin kept dying?
Yeah, in fact, gold had more volatility over over that period than Bitcoin, which I don't think we had ever seen before.
And it look, it all it all goes back to to macro.
I mean, you you touched on on what's been happening in the middle Middle East, and we could talk about oil over the over the last number of weeks.
Um so I think about them differently.
I have it, I do have exposure to to gold in part in my PA, not anywhere near the exposure that I have to Bitcoin though.
Wow.
Oh wow.
Secret reveal.
Don't tell, don't tell the people at Reserve One about that.
They don't want to know.
They don't they they can't find out.
You got gold bars in the buried it somewhere.
Um what's I mean, so so here's a question for you.
Somebody with the tech background, um, and and I'm assuming you have it uh you had a tech background prior to a crypto tech background.
What what made you kind of make the leap?
Well, yeah, I've been in I've been in traditional tech since uh since 2000.
I started my career at IBM and I've been in and around the data center space for much of much of my career.
And really that's kind of where I started with the transition into digital assets when I took over HUD 8 in 2020, um, which is a publicly traded uh Bitcoin mining company.
And a Bitcoin mine ultimately is still a data center.
Uh there are a lot of principles about how you operate a Bitcoin mine that are very different from how you operate a traditional data center.
Um, but that that infrastructure was really my entry point into the space.
And I've never looked back.
It's I love being, I love being in this world.
I went down the Bitcoin blockchain rabbit hole in 2017, 2018, when I was running a traditional data center company and actually trying to figure out how to bring some of these workloads into the traditional data center environment, which is very difficult to do.
But it's it's it's the world that I've been in really for almost a decade now.
Um and the just the the pace of innovation, the pace of change, the creativity, the the people that work in this space, the passion in this space, there really truly is nothing like it.
And it's a it's a privilege uh to have a career here.
Is there anything that hasn't moved as quickly as you would have hoped when you started your journey in crypto?
Uh no, I I wouldn't say so.
I mean, look, we've been talking about the it when the institutions would come.
Uh and I think broadly they came they came faster than I expected them to.
I mean, traditional banks are are notoriously kind of very, very slow, and yet we've seen just really significant adoption over the last couple of years, massive, massive success on the ETF launches.
Um, I think the regulatory environment has moved incredibly quickly, certainly um in the last couple of years, in particular in the United States, um, but elsewhere globally.
So I I would say in general, it's moved faster than I would have expected coming from a traditional tech and more traditional finance background.
I think one of the things that's been really exciting about the last couple of years are companies that are really making an impact solving real world problems on chain.
What we're seeing with some of the tokenization efforts, uh securitize, uh just had a big announcement earlier this week with with the NISE.
I think I think the work that that uh that Figure has done bringing home equity lines of credit on chain and solving a really unique world real world problem is is really fascinating.
I think that's what we're gonna see over the next number of years are these really uh exciting use cases.
There was a lot of talk years ago about you know, crypto was look trying to solve a problem that didn't exist.
And and now I think what's really exciting is we're seeing uh the technology solve problems that really do exist and uh and it's making an impact impact uh for the better.
How much how much how important is is something like clarity passing to the space?
Look, I think it's really important.
It's really important that we that we get something kind of codified around how we can see more capital come to the space, more innovation come to the space, more products.
That uh that really doesn't happen without that last leg of regulatory clarity that frankly we need from clarity.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Do you think it passes this year?
I do.
I'm I'm an eternal optimist, so uh I I think I think we're gonna get it through before before summer recess.
The way we build wealth is changing.
Stocks, savings accounts, real estate, that playbook is getting rewritten in real time.
Nexo is the platform built for what's next.
It's an all-in-one digital wealth platform where you can earn interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a wide range of assets, all in one place with 24-7 support and institutional great security.
Oh, and by the way, Nexo is back in the US with new US clients getting 30 days of wealth club premier access.
That means elevated interest rates, lower borrowing costs, and crypto cashback on trades.
Benefits usually reserved for loyalty program members.
Get started at MilkRoad.com slash Nexo.
Real estate is one of the world's largest asset classes.
$300 trillion plus.
But buying it, that's a nightmare.
Brokers, paperwork, massive down payments, and your money's locked up for years.
What if you could trade real estate the same way you trade stocks?
That's Shareland, a platform where you can trade US housing markets instantly, starting from just a dollar.
We're not talking boring national indexes here.
Shareland lets you trade at the neighborhood level.
Think you know which zip codes are about to pop?
Now you can actually put money on it.
And then there's Tycoon, Shareland's AI agent that monitors housing markets, builds investment strategies, and can even execute trades on your behalf.
It's not a chat bot.
It's a real estate analyst that never sleeps.
Explore the Shareland Exchange at Milkro.com slash Shareland.
How how much do you think things will change?
Or I guess like how how much volatility should we expect in crypto?
And I guess I guess across the market too, but mainly in crypto leading up to the midterms.
Because I think I think once this kind of phase, geopolitical phase, hopefully is over in some way, that's the next big thing that's coming up, right?
Is that it's like, listen, you've had a very crypto positive administration and it's been good, but you know, the midterms uh could wildly swing it back.
Not that there would be an immediate change on policy, but and that's another reason for Claire to get to get through that.
It's like, hey, it might not ever get through if it doesn't happen before that.
How how how much how important will those midterms be?
And how much how much uh action in the market should we expect before that?
Look, as I say, we really need it done before summer summer recess.
So we need it done by the end of May.
Um that's that's my perspective.
In a in a more long-term positive way, we have we have great leadership uh through throughout the government right now.
We've got the cftc and the SEC working in collaboration, super knowledgeable on our industry, really pragmatic in and how they're working together and how they're thinking about it.
Uh, and that's really true as we look across the landscape at the the key regulators.
We've got we've got really, really good people in positions of power that are looking at this in the right way so I think I think even if we don't get clarity through we've got a lot of great people in the right positions to to uh to guide us regardless of what happens at the midterms I want to I want to kind of swing back thank you for the answer um I want to swing back to what you're saying about RWAs and you mentioned figure and and we've had the CO figure as well on on our show to discuss that and and we've done a few episodes on on different RWAs another theme that we touch on though is stable coins um which is it obviously they work together but it's stable coins is a is a whole other bag of tricks uh basically just advancing digital digital payments if you had to kind of like pick horse in terms of like what can push forward quicker and have a larger impact in tradfy which would it be out of those two I'm much more excited about about tokenization and and what where we can go with real world assets.
Stablecoin I see more as the plumbing which is just less exciting for me I I like the solution side of things and I think I think for me, it's just I'm I'm more excited about where we're going with tokenization and the problems that we can solve.
If I if I may ask you, and I I hope I'm allowed to ask this while you guys are kind of in a in a transition period here.
Um, we've we've talked about Bitcoin, Jamie.
As somebody with an extensive history here, you've seen uh you've seen crypto go from uh a handful of tokens to thousands, hundreds of thousands of tokens, a lot of them meaningless.
What's what how do you see Bitcoin versus kind of the rest of the field?
How do you visualize that when you're when not and uh it doesn't have to be in the reserve one context, but just in your expert opinion, like like how do those all fit together in in the future of the industry?
Well, yeah, look, not all tokens are created equally, that's for sure.
Bitcoin very much stands apart and I think alone when you think about a long-term store of value.
We touched on some of the properties of Bitcoin earlier, but ultimately proof of work is is a critical differentiator to Bitcoin versus um most of the other tokens out there.
Meme coins had had a really fun run in in 2024.
They don't have a lot of utility, but they're they're fun to build communities around.
And I mean, I never thought I would I would uh be trading meme coins, yet I did.
Um and I know I know I I wasn't doing it because I thought they were going to they weren't taking uh attention away from from Bitcoin.
They're not they weren't solving the same the same reason that I have uh I have Bitcoin as part of my investment.
I wouldn't consider meme coins investment um opportunities, but they are they are fun ways to to participate in community, depending on what on what they are.
And so I think I think ultimately for the next generation, I've got two teenage daughters, and they're fully digitally native.
They grew up playing Roblox and spending road bucks, and they very much understand digitally native currency and and the value of of how they um how they navigate in that world which is only gonna accelerate obviously with um with everything happening in AI and and agentics so I think I think there's there's lots of room for lots of different digitally native assets I just I think Bitcoin is the only one um that has the long term store of value properties which is entirely unique from the utility or the promise of all of the other assets out there.
Did you tell your daughters that you were trading meme coins?
They know yes did they advise you?
Did they advise you and be like yes this is this is a TikTok meme mom get this uh no they they didn't have any any suggestions for me although I'm sure I'm sure that's not too far off.
Is that something that they want to do now or is it or is like mim or meme coins now like a is like a boomer thing for them like nah your mom's doing it's not cool like we'll do something else.
I don't think meme coins are cool right now.
They've they certainly it was they kind of had their moment in 2024.
I don't think I don't think that's true any longer.
Will they come back?
I don't know.
But I just I think that's that's what's so fun about this space.
Remember crypto dick butts?
That was that was in the what cycle was that 2021?
That was like towards the end of the NFT cycle.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
And look, there's there's there's lots of things that uh that you can get from this industry.
Entertainment is certainly is certainly a part of it.
I can't believe that I'm talking to somebody that I didn't realize was such a DGEN.
Listen, I started this is this is this is why I'm gonna be like, I started.
You're way more DGEN than most of our guests.
This is even the the references you're making.
I feel that's just surface, too.
I feel like so you know so much more about this stuff than you're letting on, too.
I feel like I don't you know what you live in this world, you you get to know so many different founders and and fascinating people.
And look, I I've I like to be a supporter of the ecosystem.
Wow, who knows?
Maybe there'll be a dat for crypto dick butts uh in the future for coin or something.
Yeah, that's what you never know.
You never know.
Oh wow, that would be uh I think you know what I'm sure somebody came up with that at some point.
Yeah, I feel like in the NFT days we had there's definitely some some version of data that have all uh not worked out, let's say, because NFTs were not uh as long-term, let's say, as as some of the assets that that you guys and the other dads are into.
Um I want to ask you is think about NFTs.
Like in that the NFT craze where they didn't have real utility.
Um obviously, that was that was a a bit of a hype cycle, but the long-term promise of N NFTs with with real utility and their ability to solve real world problems, I think is fascinating.
And we're gonna we're gonna see that come back around.
It's just that that cycle lacked the utility factor.
But I think the next cycle when we talk about tokenization, NFTs are gonna are gonna have a role to play for sure.
Do you think NFTs are a dirty word though?
Not to not to recycle minerators from a couple years ago, but I feel like you talk you say NFT and anybody walking down the street and they're like we'll call them something else.
We'll re-grand it.
Oh, we tried that.
I think I think some of the sports stuff tried that and it's still uh been hard to take off.
But I like this.
I like I like what else Jamie, is there what other kind of weird DGEN stuff are you into these days?
Is there anything else like you you spend your nights kind of seeking on the internet, like secretly trading oil futures on hyperliquid?
Like what else, what else, what else are you into these days?
Look, they're hyperliquid is fascinating.
Obviously, they got a bit of a raw deal on 1010, but I think, yeah, I'm very excited to to keep watching that space.
I think I think Canton's another interesting uh area to watch.
Obviously, it's got some big institutional support.
Um, I think I think that's something to pay attention to.
There's a lot of really interesting stuff out there.
Hmm, yeah, I like that.
I like it, like, I like, I like where your mind's at.
I feel like we could do a whole other show about the stuff that that Jamie likes behind the scenes, maybe as an an-on guest as well.
Um Jamie, I guess kind of I I wanna wrap this up soon, but I think um one of the one of the questions I was really keen to ask you um is where do you see, where do you see all of this in like 10 years?
Because I think one of the things that we struggle to do on the show is is zoom out properly, right?
And I think I like having people like you on who, you know, you're building long term, you're, you know, the stuff you're doing doesn't matter what's happening price wise day to day, week to week.
Um, and also I like hearing that you're you're somebody who's been in the streets, right?
Like you you you've been down there trading shit coins and you're you know what's you know what's going on.
You're not just you're not just heads down building your data, like you you keep up with the trends.
So like where are we at in 10 years?
Where does this where does this space evolve to?
Yeah, I mean, look, ultimately what we're doing here is we're upgrading the entire financial system.
And and that's gonna take that's gonna take time, and it's it it really requires an overhaul.
It's not something, there's so much um legacy, technical debt processes, kind of people, culture.
There's there's so much that needs to change to get to the promise of of a new, better, more inclusive, faster, um, decentralized financial system.
I don't think we're gonna be there in 10 years.
I think we're still gonna be on this journey.
Uh, but I think more real world problems are going to have been solved within the next 10 years.
And frankly, like thinking back to me getting into this space in in 2017, it's almost been 10 years, and I can't believe the rate, the rate of change and what we've seen built over that period of time, which I think is only gonna accelerate.
I think AI helps with that acceleration.
Uh, but ultimately we're talking about really, really large, complex institutions that can't can't change overnight.
And I think it's gonna be kind of one problem at a time over the next couple of decades until we ultimately are in a place that looks like something very, very different from where we started.
How much uh are you worried about quantum at all?
So I've been in in tech now for 26 years, and I think almost the entire 26 years, quantum has been 10 years away.
Um I think I think it's probably still 10 years away.
So it quantum isn't something that keeps me up at night.
I love obviously the promise of of what can be done with quantum is super exciting.
Um, but I it it's not uh it's not uh it's not on my list of things I worry about right now.
Okay, it doesn't keep you up at night.
Is AI something that you guys you guys think about as as being a place to invest on the crypto side or to uh pay attention to?
Like how do you kind of visualize that at this point in time?
Obviously, that's the other, that's the other big story of the economy as well.
We are having so much fun playing with uh different AI tools and processes right now.
Uh yes, absolutely.
It's an it's an area that we're paying very close attention to.
Obviously, um in the Bitcoin mining world, which is where I came from, um at HUD 8, we we started pivoting into traditional data centers and and AI workloads back in 22 or 23, and now you've seen broadly the the Bitcoin mining uh community as a whole of the publicly traded now making that pivot um into traditional data centers and and AI workloads.
I'm uh lucky to sit on the board of Riot um who's who's active in in that transition.
So AI is kind of everywhere in our world in one way or another but the the promise of the technology as far as just advancing what we do day in and day out and you know how much smarter and faster it's making us all is is absolutely wild.
Right on is it something that you're like on the crypto side have you looked at any of the uh like token standards that have been created are you looking at any like BitTensor or anything like that anything that that you think can can kind of come together or looking at agentic commerce any of that stuff.
Yeah but not I haven't I haven't gone deep we've started to to peel back BitTenser there's a lot of there's a lot of people in the space that are super excited about the about what they're doing over there.
But I haven't done a ton of work yet I'm more I've I've spent more time just playing with it.
Right on yeah well that's that's something I would expect from you you're clearly clearly tuned into that kind of stuff that's going on.
All right Jamie well getting my hands dirty and then I figure out how I want to play it.
Yeah yeah i like that yeah I like that a lot.
Right on okay well Jamie I mean it this has been a great chat uh great to great to meet uh uh a fellow secret degen uh and keen keen to keep an eye on reserve one best of luck with with everything that's going on.
Um and we'll uh we'll keep an eye on uh on the stuff you guys are doing amazing thanks so much for having me want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event subscribe to our channel join the milk road daily and pro newsletters and start investing like the top one percent this show is for educational purposes only nothing we say is financial advice investing is risky never invest more than you can afford to lose