# Macro Favorability, AI Digestion, and Crypto Infrastructure Shifts

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-07-16

## Transcript

And the overall macro picture is actually a lot more favorable than people are giving credit for.
Bitcoin has been showing some strength this week, but it appears to be stalling out.
Is the bottom in or is this the beginning of another leg down?
Hello and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the podcast that knows that meme coins took over the Robinhood chain faster than transaction speeds on Solana.
And that's pretty fast.
I'm your host, John Gill, and today is Thursday, July 16th.
And today we are joined by David Duong.
David is the former head of institutional research for Coinbase, one of the best analysts in all of crypto and a longtime friend of the show here at Milk Road.
David is going to catch us up on his latest thoughts on the crypto markets and give us a ton of alpha on everything that's going on in crypto today.
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Make sure you like and subscribe.
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Now, without further ado, welcome back to the Milk Road show.
David.
It's been a while, man.
How have you been?
Hey, thanks, John.
I'm doing pretty well and glad to be back.
Yeah, well, I'm glad to have you back.
I think you took some much needed time away, but our audience always loves you.
So I'm really glad to have you back on the show.
David, I wanted to start with a conversation about inflation because we got the June CPI data and it showed that the rate of inflation is cooling much faster than most people were expecting.
And it seems like a lot of markets caught a tailwind for this.
I want to get your reaction to this and how you think this sets up Bitcoin going deeper into the summer here.
Yeah, so.
First of all, this captures the June data.
So I think people are already looking ahead to like the current escalation intentions with Iran again and with the impact on oil and whether that's going to feed back into inflation.
Now, I don't really buy that.
I didn't buy it when we were seeing that swing back to the forehandle on inflation.
And I don't buy it now that we're like, all right, like, let's just chase this.
And let's say like inflation is coming back down.
I look at the secular trends for this stuff.
I kind of look through a lot of the cyclical noise, which is what I think the energy prices represent.
And when I think about secular, like what really impacts inflation, what really impacts prices in the US?
That's mostly like where you live, for example, shelter costs like are like features, one of the most important factors you need to look at if you're really trying to understand like where is this trending.
And granted, like you have to keep in mind that there are the psychological effects of like things cost too damn much, which is why there's affordability concerns, which is why this is going to feature very heavily in the elections.
And that's separate from what the data tells us.
I'm here to study the data, and I'm here to tell you what the Fed is looking at.
And the Fed will look at it and say, like, first of all, we don't even care about headline inflation.
We care about core.
Not only that, we don't really care about the core CPI.
We care about the course PCE.
If you're looking at that data, Like there really doesn't seem like the Fed has a lot to go on in order to justify another hike.
Now, let's play devil's advocate.
Let's say like, OK, let's say oil prices, gas, too sticky and eventually forces their hand.
Well, then we look abroad and look at the analogs of what other central banks have done.
What has the ECB done, for example?
What does the Bank of England do?
What does the Bank of Canada do?
And in the case of like the ECB, at least like they have one hike and then they paused.
And why did they do that?
They did that because they were very clear.
This is an insurance hike.
So at worst, like we should not be pricing in like three hikes in the US.
Like if you price one, I accept that as reasonable.
I don't even think they're going to get that.
And if it was, that would be an insurance hike.
And what I care about is like if I look at that.
Is that bad for markets?
Like if they just do one hike and then say they stop for the next five meetings, that's fine.
The market will look through that and just be like, all right, cool.
Everything's fine.
Like what I care about is the overall macro picture and the overall macro picture is actually a lot more favorable than people are giving credit for.
Yeah, I think that I agree with a lot of this.
But one of the things that you mentioned that has added some uncertainty to this picture is the re-ignition or escalation of the Iran conflict, which it seems like it almost every day.
It's on, it's off, it's on, it's off.
But it's kind of maintained this kind of uncertain overhang over the markets.
And I agree the macro picture is strong.
But how do you think crypto investors should think about this?
like reintroduction of uncertainty from the Iran war?
And do you think that there is a chance that this could, you know, kind of ruin this strong macro backdrop that we have here?
Not really, in large part, because this is a lot of noise.
If anything, I would say it's kind of like become classic, quote unquote, like noise at this point that I think the market has already largely digested, you know, like.
You had the shock factor when Hormuz first kind of happened.
Now it's behind us.
I feel like experts have been on the wrong side of the oil spike.
Prices are shooting up, they're shooting down.
But over the long term, I feel like these things have been evening out.
And you think about the secular effect of this stuff.
Again, secular is what's important to me.
Where's demand for oil really going?
It's not going to keep increasing.
Think about that.
Like if already I'm like, oh, my God, what's happening in Iran?
I need a switch.
I need to like go to like wind power, solar power, whatever, like any other alternative.
I don't care what it is.
Maybe it's nuclear.
It's other things.
There is a very good chance that demand is not coming back because once you rotate out of that.
Once you reduce, and I'm not saying that like our dependency on oil will go to zero.
It's definitely not.
There are just things that we have in the world that will require us to have oil in some shape or form.
It's just that whatever we can move away from in order to become more resilient, because we don't want to be dependent on a lot of these geopolitical factors, like we will do so.
And that demand is very unlikely to come back.
So I don't think that this is going to be like, oh, like this direction of like, it's volatile now.
And I think it's great trade, but like over the longterm, like oil prices are not going to stay at like 120 or 140.
Like even now it's having a hard time breaking back above that $100 a barrel kind of, kind of price.
So short-term shop, completely fine.
Is this structurally going to be a permanent status?
No, absolutely not.
If anything, I think oil prices.
need to come down.
So that is something where when I'm looking about inflation, it's going to be a disinflationary effect over the long term.
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Okay, so you're not expecting a rate hike.
You're not really concerned about the impacts of Iran.
The market seems to be pricing in that they agree with you on these things.
I want to ask you about your thoughts and the outlook for the Fed here.
The new chairman, Kevin Warsh, is a Bitcoiner, very publicly so.
And he's brought in, he's launched these new five task force to sort of reevaluate how the Fed gets their data, how they put that into a function to determine monetary policy.
And he's brought in.
industry leaders like Mark Andreessen, who are favorable to crypto.
Do you think we're going to see a Federal Reserve that kind of becomes more dovish, more up to the minute with data and more like structurally favorable to crypto and Bitcoin?
Or like, what do you expect to see sort of as the Fed goes through this reevaluation of everything that they do here?
I think that he's already said he wants to be or rather, at least he wants to pay more attention to the data.
And I think people put.
a little bit too much stock in his initial comments at the first meeting because they're like, look, the guy came out hawkish.
What was he going to do?
What was he going to be like?
Come out right off the gate and be like, oh, I see that inflation is like trending at like 4%, 3.5%.
But guys, it's totally fine.
We should be cutting rates.
Like he obviously would lose all of his credibility if he did that.
So he had no choice.
He came out and he, yeah, he's like put that in like a message of, I am against higher inflation and we will do what we need to in order to get it under control, which is the message that you need to calm people down.
So I feel like even though this is happening, he didn't want to contribute to the dot plot.
He's bringing these people in because he wants to get a better read on what the actual economy.
And like I said, like, you know, my initial point was prices don't really at least the CPI index doesn't reflect what we're feeling.
Right.
Like.
costs are high.
Like we go out and I'm like, my lunch is twice the cost of what it used to cost.
Like, that's what we care about.
That's the pulse.
And so like, you got to keep in mind that like a lot of the data that we get in terms of like GDP, jobs numbers, like even inflation, like all these things represent what we can measure.
But just because that's what we can measure, it doesn't necessarily mean what it is.
And I think he's trying to get at the latter.
What I do think is important too, is that like, we kind of also need to look away from just Warsh himself.
Obviously, he's the Fed chair, so his voice is probably the most important on that board, maybe a little bit less so, given the fact that people have seen the politicalization of the Fed chair role.
But I do think that we need to see who else is important on the board.
There's Waller, for example, and I thought that was really important.
I don't know if people heard it, like he said earlier, and this is kind of a change in tune a little bit.
He said that now like the, you know, he used to be on the side of, you know, like the cuts.
And I think a lot of people saw that as him petitioning for the role of chair, which he didn't get.
But he previously said that if you saw these second round effects emerge, you know, then, you know, like then you need to kind of react.
But if they don't, then you can kind of wait for inflation to come back down.
Now he's kind of changing that tune.
And I think maybe that is something that I kind of want to pay attention to.
So that makes me a little bit nervous because we're looking at the two year.
We're looking at what's happening with rates.
You know, obviously the policy rule such as it is, isn't really that significant.
But his suggestion that maybe the Fed funds rate might be a little bit too low could be consistent with the rule.
that becomes the predominant way he's viewing this.
So that's something where I'll give the other side of like, all right, maybe that makes me nervous again.
But again, just one hike and done, fine.
If he's saying that this needs to be a series of hikes, that would be my concern.
Yeah, I've been watching Waller's comments as well.
He is, I think, the leader of the Hawks on the committee, and there's not none of them.
So there's still something to watch there, and we'll see if we end up getting a hike or not.
I think Warsh is going to try to use these new task force to justify not doing a hike and, like you said, waiting until he can finally get to a place to cut.
But we'll see how that plays out.
David, I wanted to ask you about something else that's sort of part of the larger macro backdrop.
I promise we will talk about crypto, but I want to get your thoughts on some of these things first.
The AI trade has been...
dominating a lot of the capital attention and sentiment in the markets recently, or for this whole year and longer.
But recently, we've seen sort of a slowdown and pullback in a lot of these trades and a lot of these stocks, semiconductors, many other things.
And I'm curious your read on this.
Do you think this is just, you know, a mid cycle like digestion and cooling?
Do you think the capital is beginning to seriously rotate out of some of these AI stocks?
And how do you think that this like slowdown we've seen in this AI trade impacts crypto?
Do you think some of that capital is going to come to be?
Bitcoin or what's your outlook on that as part of the larger macro backdrop?
Yeah, I think this is more narrative digestion than a rotation or a cool off.
You know, like if you look at the multiples on a lot of these names, like they're actually compressing while the earnings are rising.
And that to me seems like this is still a good bet.
Like we're not at euphoria levels, which I get it.
people are kind of looking at the analogs from the 1990s and saying like, this is the internet like all over again.
And that actually blew up.
And obviously there was an opportunity that came in after that when like, you know, like secure socket layers came in and people could put credit cards online.
You could buy stuff from Amazon.
All that stuff came in a little bit later, but the like 1996, 1999 to like 2001 period, I think people are treating it as such.
excuse me, I still think that we're a lot closer to 1996 than we are to like 1999.
Like we're not even done yet.
Like, first of all, I don't even think that's the right approach.
Like, yes, like it's the only, not the only one, but it's like one of the main ones we have.
But this is like the industrial revolution.
You know, this is something where like, yes, the internet was great because it put all the data we had out there and it destroyed the media companies because now you had, data sources, you had social media, and you had all these other things that kind of ate away at what our traditional sources of information were, and that changed things.
And we could just buy the click of a button.
This is not that.
This is something entirely different in terms of how AI is going to transform our productivity.
And like, think about it, like.
I'm capable of kind of taking each puzzle piece at a time and kind of saying like, oh, this is how AI is going to transform this.
This is how AI is going to transform that.
But holistically, it's so hard to conceptualize because this is such a big thing.
And we haven't gotten to that point yet.
So I don't think that we're done with the AI story.
I think it's still a hockey stick higher.
But to your point, like, yeah, people are just nervous and they're kind of getting out of it now.
And like we have these kind of like macro.
like kind of stumbling blocks and is there an escalation of tensions in Iran again?
Are we done with the ceasefire?
Is this like, I'm not saying they're not important.
They are, but I think to kind of get away from the true narrative that's actually driving markets right now.
Like, I think this is a great opportunity.
Like in my mind, I'm like, I'm looking at it and I'm saying this is actually a good time if you haven't already bought.
some things in the AI space to like to at least be kind of getting in.
But probably, you know, we'll need to like still look at the earnings that we're getting right now.
Like, you know, I think Meta is reporting like at the end of the month, for example.
And, you know, if you see that these high debt hyperscalers have been getting punished, then yeah, you know, like you got to move with that.
You can't just kind of like be like, oh, I'm just going to dump everything in there.
But if, you know.
Zuckerberg comes out and says like, Oh, no further acceleration on this.
Make caps can catch a bid.
So I feel like that's kind of where we're at at this time.
But again, I don't look for those kind of like cyclical news driven headlines.
I think as a sucker scheme, the way I travel and excuse me, the way I trade.
And again, like this is not advice at all.
I don't give investment advice.
But if I look at this, the picture right now, I think.
risk capital is still looking for the next asymmetric setup and maybe crypto will benefit a little bit of that because so many people have lost interest in crypto more recently um but i think that that could trade alongside ai stocks bonds whatever uh it doesn't necessarily have to benefit from just a pure rotation david i've been asking a lot of guests this question but i'm curious your thoughts on this ai is obviously a huge theme in the markets right now.
And a lot of people have been speculating about what the intersection of crypto and AI looks like as those two technologies start to come together.
And I'm curious if you have any thoughts or perspectives on that in terms of what that actually begins to look like.
Is it just, you know, AI tools assisting traders?
Is it agents starting to take over trading for people?
And just like what's what's got your attention at that intersection right now and how you see that developing?
Yeah, I think agents tends to be how people see the intersection because they're like, well, AI agents.
naturally need something that they can actually access in terms of their wallets and to be autonomous if they want to trade on behalf of the user.
And I think that could happen, but I think we're still too early on that front.
I think there's going to be a point where all the stuff really does matter and people would be like, earnestly, I don't think people are comfortable using AI agents to trade on their behalf, not with any real money.
And I think that will take maybe one or two generations.
I think there will be people who will be much more AI native, like the kids these days, whoever's in like elementary school or high school, like those guys.
I mean, like they're going to be the ones who are truly going to be growing up with AI and crypto to some extent, you know, and blockchain.
Like all of us are early and we're.
we're kind of Taurus because we're like adapting to it.
And we're like, this is my workflow.
How do I adapt that workflow using AI?
And I spent a lot of time doing that because I have a computer science background and I've been using it to kind of code up models.
And it's great because things that used to take me like weeks to code up, now it's taking me like a day.
You know, like I built a trading model and, you know, it's a simple like momentum model.
I'm just going through like whatever, like.
a thousand stocks and I'm saying like, okay, tell me which ones are actually catching it right now.
Like tell me which sectors are like, you know, are benefiting like blah, blah, blah.
I'm looking at all that.
I have it built up in Python.
And I was like, dude, it took me like an afternoon to like just to come up with that.
And I built like 10 models, uh, eight of which have been profitable.
Like that is crazy to me when I think about it, but.
Think about what I'm doing.
I'm building the model with AI to trade, like using like what the results that it's giving me.
I'm not giving any agent full autonomy to do that because I'll be honest, I'm still not comfortable with that idea.
And maybe that's me.
Maybe it's psychological.
Maybe I'm just old.
I don't know.
Whatever.
Someone like younger at some point will be like, dad, it's cool.
Like.
Why don't you sit down on the couch over there?
I'm going to do it.
I'm just going to let the AI chill and just run this while I go out to the club and play or whatever.
I don't even know what they're going to be doing.
But I earnestly think that's what's going to happen some point in the future with AI agents.
But that's then.
It's not going to be now.
That's kind of how I see it at the moment.
I really appreciate the transparency on that because I think everybody is figuring out their own version of what leveraging AI looks like.
So it's interesting to hear your journey on that.
But yeah, I saw somewhere on Twitter, somebody said that there's only around like 13,000 AI agents trading on Ethereum right now, which I don't really know how they estimated that.
But that's the very beginning early stages of this.
But yeah, you're right.
I'm really curious to see how this develops because I think there's a lot of different ways it could go.
David, I wanted to get your reaction to another major.
thing that happened in crypto just last week was the launch of the Robinhood chain and the rise of meme coins on there and the introduction of, I think they have like 25, 30 million users now that have access to digital assets.
So there's just been a ton of volume, a ton of attention, a lot of people bridging their Ethereum and other assets into the Robinhood chain.
What's your reaction to this as a signal for where crypto is going and how significant a milestone is the launch of the Robinhood chain in your mind?
Yeah, I think it's pretty important.
I thought it was a really impressive launch.
So I said before this call started, I haven't been paying that much attention to markets and driving this stuff.
This is one of those headlines that caught my attention because at least in the crypto space, like that main end launch and immediately it went to like top five decks by volume.
So, you know.
In a large way, I'm not that surprised given the fact that Robinhood has a distribution.
And like you said, I think it's like 28 million customers or whatever they have.
So I feel like this was the product market fit that most L2s actually dream about.
You know, like you are able to like grab this many users.
And I think like the amount of stables they have on there is still like limited, but it's like, you know, 300 million.
It's not a number that you would sneeze at.
So I feel like.
There's real tokenized activity happening on this.
I do think that this could be one of the bigger success stories of this year.
So I don't know about the meme coin frenzy.
I was never a huge believer in that.
But at the very least, this could become an on-ramp for a lot of their retail clients to come on to tokenized assets, to perhaps access DeFi primitives, which I feel like has been pretty...
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One of the things I wanted to get your thoughts on and something that I've been thinking about a lot is just how many different things in crypto this chain touches and who are the winners and losers of it, right?
Because it's technically on Arbitrum, on Ethereum.
Are they the winners or losers?
Is it Morpho?
Is it Leiter?
Is it one of the other many other projects, protocols that they've sort of partnered with on this?
How do you think about the winners and losers in this landscape as we've seen this huge new player, Robinhood chain, come into crypto here?
I think perps as a product.
is likely to emerge as a winner.
And I'm not saying anything, you know, hugely surprising, right?
Like Hyperliquid has done well this cycle, like where many, many alts have not been able to survive.
Like hype has been one of them.
Like the two things that everyone wants to like trade is hype or purr.
And like, I'm like, all right, fine.
I get it.
And then we break that down into like, well, yeah, but is the valuation really worth it right now?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of good stuff.
But like, I think that It shows you that, you know, there's a path where when perps are done well, like and perps are, you know, coming after equities at the moment.
And I think that that's only going to grow.
I feel like that is going to be like one of the clear winners in this cycle.
But, you know, like this is competition.
You know, in my old shop, Coinbase, like I think base had a lot of stumbling blocks.
not just with the network itself, but like with base wallet.
And, you know, like, I think there came to be this realization of like, well, what most people want a wallet for.
They want a wallet to trade.
People want to use this stuff to actually trade things.
And I feel like Robinhood had the benefit of being able to look at that and say like, okay, this is how we're going to do it guys.
And we're going to do it well.
So in a lot of ways, they can kind of avoid some of the things that were learned by some of the predecessors in the space.
Yeah, I think that they did exactly that.
They learned a lot from what had gone before, and it's just been a really impressive launch.
I'm really curious to see what the second order effects of this end up being, like how other competitors respond to this, not just Coinbase, but Binance and many others, because there's definitely a new player in town.
All right, David, our audience is going to lose it with me if I don't ask you at least some questions about Bitcoin.
So I want to ask about this here.
Let's just start with the question everyone's wondering right now.
Has Bitcoin bottomed?
We have seen it find support.
at 60k went through that bounced over at the time of recording we're now around 64k do you think we have bottomed here or do you think we're going to see another break lower from bitcoin i think that we are if we haven't reached the bottom yet we're very very close to it and obviously we're back above that i think it was like 58 that we like kind of bounced off of in order to kind of get here and you know i did think that the bottom was going to be somewhere in the 50s and if we look at like overlapping technical factors and I'm not talking about stuff like RSI or MACD or whatever.
Like I think that stuff is crap, but you know, that said, that is how some people kind of look at.
So it's not one thing.
It is kind of like looking at, all right, what a pivot points kind of tell us about the floor.
Like how much volume is at certain levels, for example.
What are the Fibonacci sequences kind of tell us again?
I don't really.
totally believe in Fibonacci kind of like levels because now I feel like it's like a finger in the air, kind of like, you know, like what's the name?
What's the good?
I think people call it astrology for men.
And it's kind of that, but psychologically it still matters.
And all of those factors kind of overlap around that 56 to 58 kind of like level.
So we kind of like touched that already.
What I can't kind of account for is.
People are fairly bored.
The sentiment isn't great.
Positioning has been washed out, which is actually an okay thing.
When positioning gets washed out, that means that you can start rebuilding here.
And the dollar, I feel like we've already kind of hit peak dollar during the auspices of the Iran war.
So I feel like we're getting towards that classic.
bad news, good price divergence.
And I think we're building a base here.
So I think the confirmation will come with sustained ETF flows turning positive.
Again, I think the macro environment is actually very favorable for risk right now.
So if that confirms this soft landing, this inflation path I think we're on, then I think that we could be in a very good spot for Bitcoin.
Yeah, one of the things I think I agree with all of that.
One of the things that's been frustrating with me with trying to answer this question is that it feels like the volatility has gotten so low that Bitcoin itself can't make up its own mind, right?
Like if we broke above 71 or 74K, be like, okay, well, the bulls are back, right?
Or if we went down to 40s, be like, okay, that's got to be it, right?
But it just keeps hanging around 60K.
It's like, I can't tell if this is over or not.
So I want to ask you a question about this.
Something I've been thinking about is that the Clarity Act in the next couple of weeks seems like it's going to get a yes or no finally from Congress after two years do you think that the clarity act either passing or finally getting killed and failing might serve as a catalyst one way or the other on Bitcoin here or do you think Bitcoin's going to shrug that off no matter which way that goes I feel the clarity act is really important for institutional clients less so for retail And if it's less so for retail, I feel like the day to day price action isn't really going to reflect anything hugely negative if it doesn't pass.
And I veer towards that way because we're down to Republican senators.
And I don't mean to be glib about that.
It's, you know, like the passing of Lindsey Graham, for example, and the fact that Mitch McConnell is sidelined at the moment.
Like, I don't think that.
it's necessarily make or break if we don't see this happen before the August recess, i.e.
like this could come back in 2027.
And granted, you'll have to restart the process all over again because then there will be need to be new debates.
And they'll say like, oh, should we use what we, the language you previously had?
And then someone's going to say like, no, we can't.
Or if there's going to be more Democrats in the Senate, maybe they'll say like, well, hold on, we want to throw in more conflict of interest clauses or who knows what, you know, like more regulated, like kind of, kind of things.
So I feel like there's a lot, you know, like, and I, when I look at the clarity, I think it's important from like having regulated on ramps, clearing a path to ETFs, which the SEC already kind of did, but also really supporting the tokenization pipeline.
So that would be, for me, would be relevant in terms of having like a real.
bull market restart for the next leg.
But I think failing that, it will be some short-term disappointment.
And again, it's just because we have such a narrow window at this point.
I think the odds for me of getting clarity done are quite low at this point.
There's a record of me being on another podcast at the start of the year, and I was like, oh, it's at least 40 or 50%.
And everyone's like, no, it's zero.
And then we went back and forth and back and forth.
And I never kind of changed.
I was like, eh.
still like even odds, like it's probably around like 50% for me.
And some points like it was like 40 to 50, then it was 50 to 60.
And then but like, now I'm kind of like, man, it would take a lot for them to kind of agree all this stuff right now.
At the end of the day, just markets hate ambiguity more than they hate any single outcome.
So really, it just got to be like, dude, just tell us what it is.
If it's not happening this year, fine, so we can move on.
But I don't think it's going to kill us at all.
Do you think that the SEC and the CFTC, with their efforts around things like Project Crypto, have given the industry enough clarity that we can just keep going without the Clarity Act?
Or do you think that there are super important, vital things that can't really start to happen until we get some kind of legislation on the books?
I mean, the biggest thing the Clarity Act does is just gives a green light to a lot of those institutions out there that are expecting it.
I'll be honest, I thought that this wasn't on the back of the president's mind anymore because I felt like maybe he looks at it.
He's like, listen, I delivered the Genius Act to you guys.
You know, like I put a favorable SEC chair, CFTC chair.
Like they've done a lot.
They're trying to give you clarity.
So when, you know, Senator Graham passed and President Trump, I think, sent a tweet and he was just like, you guys like for him, like you guys got to get like the Clarity Act done.
I was like.
okay, like that was not what I was expecting you to like to say.
I kind of thought you forgot all about us and that he had moved on to like the SAFE Act or other things that he's really concerned about for the midterms.
But it does show that there is still like from the administration itself, like people paying attention.
to like what's happening.
So I think it's hugely important what the SEC has done, what the CFTC has done.
They've enabled a lot more instruments.
They've kind of reduced some of that, like, you know, regulatory enforcement by regulation by enforcement kind of activity that, you know, they have been known for in the previous administration.
And that's been great.
But yeah, you know, I think for your institutions who want to be able to like.
recommend this to like, you know, tell their RAs, hey, just like, you know, tell people like green light fully, just kind of do it.
They want this to happen.
They want the Clarity Act, but obviously not in a way that would hurt them, i.e.
the banks, which is what held things up for so long.
So I think a lot of people want it.
A lot of buy side clients want it.
But like I said, it's not the be all end all.
And I think that there will be a point where they're like, okay, if this doesn't get done.
Like ultimately, there's still a lot of pro crypto senators out there, both Democrats and Republicans who are going to get it done in 2027.
When you say they want it done, is it more important?
From your perspective, is it more important to institutions so that they can deploy capital and make investments into the digital asset industry?
Or is it more important so they can kind of launch their own products and services and like start to compete in this industry?
Which one do you think they're more excited about?
And which one does clarity, like give them more clarity on how to do?
Or is it both of those things?
It's more about deploying capital.
I would say for the ones who want to launch their own products, the Genius Act was more relevant because space facts here a lot of them wanted to like launch their own stable coins and whatever way that was done whether that was to like tokenize deposits which is still kind of a you know like up for debate kind of thing of like well what does that look like and how would like jp morgan coin actually do that and like will people be will people come on board for that um tokenize tokenization i think would be more important from the Clarity Act perspective, so that tokenization pipeline, I think would be important to like, you know, for Clarity Act to pass and maybe allow more of that access.
But it's already happening.
I think if people are able to kind of say like, well, based on the rules that we already have governing, you know, risk markets as a whole, we have a line to actually do that.
But I think that in order to really make the stuff viable, You know, like you need to have like jurisdictional kind of unification between like the U.S.
and Europe and Asia, because right now it's fragmented because a lot of this stuff either exists on whitelists or it's incumbent upon the actual brokerage or whoever's distributing this stuff to actually say, like, hold on, you're allowed to hold this tokenized stock, but you're not.
So even if you somehow got your hands on it.
Sorry, you can't sell it.
You know, like it's it's that kind of stuff that really hasn't been worked out quite yet that I think the Clarity Act would resolve.
But, you know, like that's something that you could probably get an executive agency to kind of at least give some guidance on for their interim period before like the federal regulation actually happens.
But keep in mind, it has to happen.
I think at some point, like in some point in time, the SEC and the FCTC, they know, and they've actually already said this once before, at least once before.
We can do all we can to kind of provide some of this clarity.
But at the end of the day, it still needs to be Congress that comes up with the final rules.
David Duong, one of the best institutional analysts in all of crypto.
I'm really glad to have you back.
It's good to have you on the show again.
I'm looking forward to the next conversation already.
Where can we send our audience to find more of you and your work online?
I'm still solo right now.
I'm just on my own.
I'm not doing anything.
I'm not selling anything either, but I am on X.
So you can find me on Twitter at David Duong.
you know, full name.
And, you know, like sometimes when I feel like it, I'll put out a market take or regulatory update.
But, you know, I've been enjoying my time off so far.
Well, I hope you continue to enjoy your time off and I hope we'll have you back on the show again soon.
Thanks so much for being on the Milk Road Show.
No, it's my pleasure.
It's always happy to dig deeper with this community.
Well, our community loves you and we love our community.
Thank you all for joining us today.
I hope you all learned something.
So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milk Road Show.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
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