# Crypto ETFs, Hyperliquid, and Macro Hedges

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-09-23

## Transcript

I pretty quit.
has a chance, if done right, to be able to be the second largest cryptocurrency.
The Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates and Bitcoin responded with a billion dollar ETF inflow day and a breakout into a technical bull market.
Is this a fake out or a breakout that signals that new all time highs are on the way?
Hello and welcome to Milk Road Crypto, the show that knows that don't fight the Fed is good advice, but Bitcoin is going to Bitcoin no matter what happens.
I'm your host, John Gill, and today is Wednesday, September 23rd.
And today we are joined by Eliza Dinga.
Eli, as he's called, is the head of research at 21 shares.
He actually founded the research team there.
Last time we had him on was back in June and he was talking about how hyperliquid is going to become the second most valuable asset in crypto.
So we're going to catch up with him about that, about a lot of other things, about 21 shares, recent earnings report.
There's going to be a lot of alpha in this one.
So if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe, share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it.
As a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful sponsors at Nexo, the digital asset platform that lets you earn.
earn, trade, borrow, all in one place.
Keeping your out for more information on them later in the episode.
But for now, welcome back to the Milk Road Show.
Eliezer, how are you?
John, thanks for having me.
This is great to be here back.
I'm really glad to talk to you today.
This is our first conversation, but hopefully the first of many.
I thought a good place to start this conversation would be get your perspective on what we've seen in the macro landscape.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates.
Some people think they might raise them again.
And at the same time, Bitcoin is breaking out into a new bull market.
What's your read of this macro landscape for Bitcoin?
And why has Bitcoin suddenly gotten so massively bullish?
This is a phenomenal question.
And one of them that WeAS21 shares as one of the world's largest ETF issuer of crypto assets has actually received all the time about the correlation between the macro and, of course, Bitcoin as well.
And what we've seen is really interesting because I think for the first time in Bitcoin history, we've seen a very strong macro trade when it comes to the overall.
currency debasement concern that we've seen over the last, I would say, especially couple of months, when essentially the Treasury Department has actually indicated that they will actually buy a lot more of these U.S.
treasuries, which definitely concern over the overall value of the dollar, despite the fact that this is the world's reserve currency.
So we've seen actually investors quite concerned about that.
That's why you've seen, of course, a higher correlation between gold and Bitcoin.
which is quite unusual because usually gold and bitcoin actually perform in a very different way over the last i would say eight years or so and i spent about 11 years in the crypto space and interestingly there is a higher correlation between these two and the reason is because in this frightened and you know, I would say fragmented environment right now, the macro landscape, especially on the back of the Iran war, investors are actually looking at a location diversifier away, of course, from major currencies that would be.
impacted by the Iranian conflict, but also the fact that we need to diversify the portfolio.
So gold and Bitcoin actually have been part of the conversation and also reflected in the inflows that we've seen in these Bitcoin ETFs.
So year-to-date combined for crypto ETFs in Europe, for example, where we started at 21 shares, we've seen well over $1.5 billion in inflows year-to-date and well over $2 billion in inflows in the United States of America, which shows again that there is definitely a pent-up demand and a need for this asset class.
But usually the sizing of these investors is quite a small allocation between one to sometimes even 3% of their diversified portfolios among equities and hard assets and, of course, bonds to diversify with crypto as well.
So I do think that...
This is good news because usually people think that when there are higher rates, as we've seen historically, this punishes the performance of Bitcoin.
But right now, there is a structural difference compared to the last, I would say, three and a half years.
thanks to the spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US and of course, where we started in Europe at 21 shares since 2018, where investors are able to invest directly through their bank and brokerage account into crypto.
And I would say the last thing that really benefited the influence in these ETFs is also the fact that unfortunately for many victims impacted by the cold card hack and some of these AI enabled hacks that really resonated for some investors to also invest directly into these crypto ETFs so that they don't have to handle themselves, the private keys under the mattress as well.
So these are some of the two structural trends that we've seen on the back of the fiscal debasement and the concern over.
I would say the debt levels in the US and the fragmented world that we've seen, especially after the war between Iran started.
And then, of course, the technological concern over potentially some of these AI enabled acts as well.
Just want to pause for a quick second to remind you all that the crypto bull market is back.
I have been deploying capital into altcoins that I think are going to do very well this bull market.
Some of them are already up over 2x from where I entered.
So if you want to see what's in my portfolio, what's on my watch list, and have access to me in Discord to ask questions 24 hours a day, join Milkroad Pro now.
The link is in the description.
It's just a dollar.
I'll see you there.
I've heard you say this in the past as well, that Bitcoin is behaving less like a speculative risk asset and more like a global macro hedge asset.
And I think that that framing is really helpful and it'll probably continue to evolve.
But I think that's just important to call out.
I want to talk a little bit about the ETF landscape and ask your thoughts on the evolving altcoin space here, because now that the SEC has these sort of generic listing standards, Eric Balkunas from Bloomberg said that he expects there to be over 100.
new crypto ETFs launched in the next year because of this regulatory change that we've seen.
And I'm curious, your outlook on this landscape, do you think we're going to see this huge explosion of products and sort of what's your strategy for navigating that changing landscape?
Our strategy hasn't changed for us at 21 Shares.
It has always been.
research-driven and fundamental-driven when we're looking at this asset class.
Of course, eight, nine years ago, we were really in the early innings, in the beginning of the DeFi summer and what's possible with smart contracts platforms and whether the on-chain finance world would have product market fit.
But clearly now, it's not a question of whether we could have products.
It's actually a matter of when and then which products would make sense on the back of our investor demands.
And of course, our strategy is very simple, looking at the fundamentals of these different protocols, especially the ones that do have already data that we can analyze, looking at the revenue, the margins, the users, the developer adoption, their classification as well.
I was on the roadshow in all of Europe for the last couple of weeks, especially Southern Europe.
And what I've seen is that the questions are still the same around even the classification of crypto assets.
Many investors still think that they all...
all currencies they're actually very different from one another as you know right there is hard assets like gold such as bitcoin and then you've got you know venture capital type of platforms such as hyperliquid or ephemus solana and then of course then applications built on top similar to like a paypal or venmo or whatsapp that could be built on ethereum solana or even hyperliquid itself so investors really have to start with the classification of these different cryptocurrencies because they're not actually currencies trying to disrupt the dollar.
Some of them are just trying to be the next PayPal, the next Swift, or the next Venmo.
And these are major differences.
And that's why we really start with the fundamentals first, the classification, the underlying data sets to analyze, I would say, typically the earnings of these different protocols.
But unlike traditional companies, we don't have to wait at the end of the quarter.
to get the data sets is in real time, thanks to the transparency of blockchain technology, which is really powerful.
So our strategy hasn't changed.
We always really stay true to the fundamentals and the data, and that's why we pioneered the analytics data ourselves.
And then really check with our investors if, of course, this is an investment case that they are interested in to understand the potential size of the investment opportunity.
Do you think that this, like, let's say influx of new products coming to market is going to sort of like split the capital that's already in the space?
Or do you think it's going to be a sign that a lot more capital overall is going to come into these ETF products and into crypto?
And just like, what's your read on that outlook as these new products come to market?
Do you think that brings new capital with it?
I do think that it would depend on where the investors are in their journey in crypto.
Some of them are very early.
do want to just get and tip their toes into this asset class and they will start certainly with the majors especially bitcoin as a major allocation and then moving to potentially a solana or an ethereum but we've heard a lot of hyperliquid of course hyperliquid launch in may this year of course thanks to 21 shares launching the world's first hyperliquid etf in the us but also last year in Europe as well.
And we've heard, of course, that as a very simple and easy to use platform, investors really resonate with the hyperliquid investment opportunity.
So I do think that it would depend on investor type and their risk profiles.
There are areas where you could see investors already invested in, for example, an Ethereum or Solana could definitely allocate into like a hyperliquid or even looking into overall retail assets, if that makes sense for the fiduciary duties.
But I would say that a great tight lift all boats.
So I wouldn't expect, I would say significant flows into the deep longer-tail assets, but definitely a lot more flows into the majors.
And that's exactly how you're seeing it in the ETF flows.
The major flows, the majority really comes from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and then fast-forwards to the rest of the world, including the hyperliquid.
But again, I would not dismiss the fact that simple and easy-to-understand investment cases with real cash flows and evidence that these are great investment opportunities could help investors to allocate significantly more for the ones that are, I would say, more risk-taking type of investors.
So like the hedge funds, the honey-trough individuals, or like single family offices, for example.
So that's why you've seen a very important success for the Hyperliquid launch, or even as recently, the Zcash launch as well.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Yeah, no, I think that that focus on fundamentals definitely makes a lot of sense.
And I do think the industry is beginning to move in that direction overall.
So these are all positive developments.
We've talked about Hyperliquid a couple of times.
As you said, you guys were, I believe, the first to market with Hyperliquid ETF.
I assume that's going quite well because everything Hyperliquid related is going well.
But I'm curious to hear an update on that thesis for you here.
We're sitting a little bit over $90 on hype, around a $24 billion market cap.
How much more room to run does this have?
And where do you think we are in the, I guess, the growth and adoption of Hyperliquid as this, quote unquote, everything exchange thesis starts to play out here?
It's a phenomenal question because the last time I was on the show with you guys, we discussed about the case for Hyperliquid and I was discussing about the fact that Hyperliquid has a chance, if done right, to be able to be the second largest cryptocurrency or crypto projects or...
financial product in crypto after Bitcoin.
And I think it's possible by that time we didn't have essentially an understanding of whether and when Hapriquid could get into the US market.
But today it's very clear.
So they partnered with the parent company of Kraken called Payward to be able to offer in a regulated way by the CFTC access to perpetual futures for all financial assets, including crypto.
commodities, pre-IPOs, et cetera, which to me is really one of the hurdles that they had to get to to be able to understand the valuation premium that could justify that multiple that they have today.
It's a multiple of over 30x to the gross revenue that they are making.
For me, I'm really excited about that because Hyperliquid has been able to build a product out of necessity.
And we know that products out of necessity with essentially the product market fit really helps investors understand that blockchain technology is not just about speculation is also for example like bitcoin and macro traders we discussed but also like a platform similar to let's say like an interactive broker to access all financial assets and hyperliquid in june when we discussed was kind of like this offshore global protocol but not accessible to us persons for regulatory reasons but now actually thanks to regulated businesses in the US, they can use the hyperliquid HIP3 or API, as I like to call it, for traditional investors to be able to offer in a regulated way these perpetual futures, so futures contracts with an expiry date.
I think this is really powerful.
Of course, competition is here.
Last time we talked, we...
didn't have the CME coming into the market with 24-7, you know, perpetual futures or futures for crypto as well as, you know, commodities ever since the CME launched 24-7 for Bitcoin and Ethereum and Solana, I believe, and also for gold as well.
So I do think that there would be...
this hyperliquid effect that would force traditional players to come into the space and also offer similar products.
But there are two pathways.
Either they're going to build from the ground up and hire blockchain engineers and building a similar infrastructure as hyperliquid.
or leverage a hyperliquid API or HIP3 markets to be able to get to market very quickly for their very own customer base.
And I do think that the latter has a great chance to happen given the flywheel effect of hyperliquid revenue tied to, of course, the token buybacks and the token burns that makes a very strong case for the investors to hold potentially the asset itself.
So that's why for me, the...
The thesis hasn't changed, but some of the risk factors that we discussed, some of them seem to be mitigated thanks to this partnership with PayWorld slash Kraken, which is quite exciting.
Okay, so the thesis is still there.
Some of the risks are, let's say, diminished in your mind or a little bit in the rearview mirror now.
But it seems like the competition piece is still to be figured out.
And I'm curious your thoughts on that, because we're going to see competition from, you know, digital asset native products like Leiter and others.
But they're also going to see, you know, the CME and like TradFi potentially launching these things.
And just like a whole, you know, I think the word Cambrian explosion of Perpetual's products is going to come into the space.
How do you see that playing out?
And how do you think about this in terms of like what products 21 shares wants to bring to market for its customers?
Because I know Bitwise, for example, launched a lighter ETP.
So yeah, I'm just curious your thoughts on that landscape and how to navigate that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, for us, we always pay close attention to the fundamentals.
And of course, Hyperliquid is the market leader in the perpetual futures for decentralized exchanges.
I believe their open interest today is at an all-time high, well over $18 billion, which is really unprecedented.
And I do think that competition is here to come, the same way we've seen a Cambrian explosion of...
Bitcoin copies and forks from Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Gold.
You heard about that.
Same for Ethereum as well.
We've seen less for Solana, but you could argue that there are many layer ones trying to be better, faster, cheaper than Ethereum too, including the avalanche of the world, et cetera.
So I do think that there is a market actually for these different platforms.
But one of the things that is very different from general purpose layer ones.
unlike the hyperliquid case and infrastructure, is that liquidity begets liquidity, right?
So essentially, if you want to see large trades and large adoption in a significant market, the traders and the professional firms are going to actually pay more attention to where these...
some market liquidity and market depth for some of the largest trades, especially when there are heightened geopolitical conflicts after market close and there is nowhere in the world except on hyperliquid or any other similar platforms to trade over the weekend.
So that's why we like to call hyperliquid the Google of price discovery when it comes to all financial assets 24-7.
This is actually the Google effect.
And the Google effect shows that especially when you take the traditional analogy of Google itself.
Google was not the first source engine.
I think it was the number 21st.
And there were more before, including Mosaic and others in the early 90s.
And I do think that it would be the same as well for all of these different perpetual futures platforms and even traditional ones in crypto like Coinbase and as well as Crypto.com do have their...
very own versions of perpetual futures and even prediction markets.
So where Hyperliquid would win is not just covering and owning a specific vertical with perpetual futures for all financial assets, but it's also to diversify the exposure to digital assets, right?
So becoming this super financial application that can cover spot trading.
derivative trading with perpetual futures and also having options and event markets and that's exactly what they're doing right now when you look at the product roadmap and innovation and this is where i could see the upside but in each of these various verticals you know from spots to derivatives to prediction markets They are, of course, significant players across the board from Binance to Kalshi and Polymarket, et cetera.
So, of course, competition will be there.
But what would matter is if investors feel comfortable to use the application, right?
So if you're able in the future to recommend an application to expand the buy in crypto, people usually recommend like a con base if people want to actually pay.
a coffee worth of bitcoin right um and i think like the indicator where um con bays or any traditional players could lose market share around like the spot market could be like if they start to recommend decentralized venues which is quite unusual because people usually recommend like a con bays or even recommend etfs as well um but i do think that Competition is welcome.
And for us on the back of our product strategy, of course, we're always paying close attention to the fundamentals and most importantly, what the investors want to understand the market opportunity for us in all the markets where we're able to service it and working very closely with regulators.
You know, one of the weird things about crypto is that the longer you're in it, the more accounts you seem to end up with.
You buy in one place, trade somewhere else, earn yield somewhere else.
And if you actually need capital, you end up having to sell something that you probably wanted to keep.
That's why we at Milk Road are partnering with Nexo.
These guys keep the whole thing under one account.
You can buy, trade crypto, earn interest on what you already hold, and even borrow against your capital without having to sell it.
All in one spot, all in one account, all on Nexo.
So if you need liquidity, but you don't want to give up your position, or you're already holding crypto and you want to be able to do more with it, I think Nexo is worth your time.
We love working with them.
I think you will too.
Tell them Milk Road sent you.
I really appreciate the thoughts on this and the view on the perpetual space.
I'd like to hear your updated outlook on the Layer 1 wars, which you said liquidity begets liquidity.
Ethereum has been the number one for a long time, but I've had Raoul Powell on the channel advocating for SWE recently.
Kevin O'Leary has been making a lot of noise about Avalanche.
I'm curious if you have any latest thoughts, research around...
the wars between the layer ones, who you think is winning, if there is anyone that's winning in your view, and just your updated outlook on that space?
It's a phenomenal question.
And if you want to understand where the layer ones would win, in the equation, you have different variables.
And these variables, in my opinion, are the number of developers on the infrastructure side.
And then most importantly, the retention and the growth of the users that translates to trading volumes for stablecoins, trading volumes for different kind of asset spares, etc.
For me, these are the two most important ones to consider to understand the success rate of these stablecoins.
And of course, they are.
vibrant ecosystems with developers.
By the end of the day, if you're building an application and you're a business, let's say you're like WhatsApp on day one, of course, day one is hard to know whether you're going to have this hockey stick of adoption and getting the billions of users that they have today.
But there are patterns to show whether there is actually a constant growth and a...
I would say reiteration of usage of your application moving forward.
So for us, like one of the things that we paid attention to is that stable coins are some of the best product market fees that we've seen in crypto.
If not after Bitcoin, I believe that stable coins actually are significantly important.
We're talking about trillions of dollars traded on a yearly basis for stable coin, whether it's for payments or for speculation and collateral management.
Interestingly, for the case of Solana, for example, Solana only has about 5% of the stablecoin supply on the network.
But over 30% of the transactional velocity of stablecoins is actually happening on Solana.
One of the reasons is because, of course, transaction fees are...
for cheap and the settlement time to transfer some Solana to you takes less than 400 milliseconds.
So people want fast payments and cheap transactions.
I've never heard anyone say, take your time to send me a transaction and take as much money as you can from me.
Like never happens.
So the strategy for stablecoins to win is, especially on the customer and business side, is to really you know, save their operating costs and most importantly save their time, right?
So these are winning products.
And I've seen that Solana has won that so far for stablecoins, but that's one type of asset that gets traded.
But then we also have seen the rise of tokenized equities as well, which are one of the most exciting verticals when it comes to the real-world assets vertical.
And that's really quite interesting to see over 90%, probably less now that we've seen some of the success on Robinhood as well.
But at the time when we published the H1 report on Solana, we've seen well over 90% of the volume of tokenized equities happening on Solana as well.
But interestingly, the size of, I would say, the checks and the size of the stablecoins is much higher on Ethereum.
One, because of the Lindy effect.
You know, this is the first smart contracts platforms on existence.
And then interestingly, what we've seen is that Ethereum, there is also a higher...
prospects, growth prospects of developers, which is quite unusual.
We've seen well over like a thousand percent growth in the number of developers and also contracts deployed on the Ethereum network.
One of the reasons is because they're really trying to focus on the layer one, making it cheaper and easier to use.
They had bottlenecks in the last cycle with higher fees and congestions.
Bisona also had the same problem at the infrastructure level with know some network incidents where the network wasn't even operating for well over 20 hours so when it comes to the layer one trade in my opinion the variables for investors to pay attention to are the number of developers because the developers where innovation is happening is where definitely we could see eventually some products that could find some market demand and then secondly trying to pay attention to the applications built on top whether it's for financial instruments like for example you know stable coins or tokenized assets but also even more consumer facing products that could help blockchains to be invisible to the end consumer where you could use an application on your phone without realizing that this is on Solana or FM.
But to me, on the layer one trade, it seems like there is kind of like a toe-to-toe type of competition between FM and Solana, which is quite interesting.
But when I take a longer view on...
what customers like ourselves would want.
I would never pay for very high transaction fees.
I would not be comfortable with that.
And I would not be very happy to wait for 10, 15 minutes to get the transaction over to you while we're no longer in the early 90s, where the internet pages were loading for like 10 minutes.
And an email was taking so long as well to be delivered, right?
So I do think that Solana is taking the right approach as this monolithic layer one.
But I do think that...
what Robinhood has done and the brand equity that they have is also something to pay close attention to.
And that's why you've seen the significant price action in Arbitrum because Robinhood has used the Arbitrum infrastructure to build their own Ethereum compatible network.
So I would say these are the three main assets that we pay attention to for the layer one trade moving forward.
So Robinhood, Solana, and Ethereum.
That's a very rich and detailed answer with a lot of alpha.
So I'm going to have to digest that slower myself.
Eliza, I want to ask you.
Of course.
Of course, not financial advice.
You alluded to this briefly in your answer, but you're head of research at 21Shares.
You guys publish a lot of really.
thorough and just well-researched reports on the whole ecosystem.
And I know that you published one recently on the first half of 2026, where you talked a lot about Ethereum and Solana.
I would love to just give you a chance to call out a little bit more of the alpha from that report and anything that you think you'd like to highlight to the audience that you're seeing in the research recently.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, one of the predictions that we have from that report called the uh state of crypto this is our market outlook that we publish on a yearly basis towards usually the beginning of q1 is that we've seen a significant adoption of course uh of prediction markets and one of the things that is interesting operation markets is that for me the signal that got me into this was when randomly my own mother downloaded the application.
And then she started to follow the US elections a couple of years ago.
And she didn't realize that this was a blockchain powered application.
And I was asking my mother, wow, you're using Pony Market, that's insane.
How come?
And she found this more intuitive, but also even more accurate as what she was seeing in the polls.
So that's when I saw that, okay.
people can actually use blockchains without realizing that they are actually blockchain.
Sometimes people can even be passive users without actively trade on these platforms like prediction markets.
So that's why one of the predictions that we had for prediction markets is the significant growth that we could see this year as well.
And this is not disappointing when we're looking at the adoption of these.
Although, of course, we've seen some regulatory headwinds, especially coming out of Europe, where these prediction markets are considered as basically gambling platforms and they're not available, for example, in France or Spain.
Possibly also there are some warnings in the UK as well by the FCA.
I do think that the positioning of these prediction markets is going to be incredibly important as, I would say, information technology platforms rather than gambling platforms so that the mainstream can actually consider them as, I would say, technology innovation platforms and moving forward, some kind of like, you know, platform that they can consume information in an accurate way because the wisdom of the crowd can definitely outpace.
a handful of moles, for example.
So one of the things that I like about the traditional markets is how they were able to kind of like improve the information that the investors are getting and how even the world thinks about hedging itself in the financial markets world.
And then the other adoption or prediction that we had was around the treasury companies.
On the treasury companies, our prediction was that there would be consolidation in some of the largest ones.
And the reason is because, as you know, there has been a Cambrian explosion of treasury companies in the last year.
And some of them, of course, but shell companies with no even like real revenue and trying to make sure that.
they can attract customer demand and replicate what strategy has done.
But we always thought that there will always be a mismatch in demand because some of these treasury companies were trying to position themselves as a one-on-one exposure to.
digital assets or more specifically Bitcoin.
But we know that this is an equity levered exposure and not a exposure like an ETF where there is 100% of the Bitcoin that you hold through a third party custodian, for example.
So many investors discovered that this is not the case.
And we've seen many, many dots this year closing down.
And interestingly, I published a tracker on my X profile.
to actually look at the developments of these.
And the last time we've seen well over, I believe, like 10 dots that closed and shut down this year and returned money back to the investors.
So I think that's more on the gloomy side of information or prediction that we had for 2026.
But then the other one that is more exciting is around AI, because we truly believe that essentially AI and crypto are...
to some extent, solving each other's constraints, right?
So AI needs 24-7 money.
It needs on-demand memory.
And of course, AI agents would never open a bank account without a human or a guarantor behind it, right?
So almost like underage kids that cannot open a bank account until they get the approval from one of the parents or supervisor.
That's why we actually see these conversions happening between AI agents, as well as crypto rails, whether it's like a Solana or a Hyperliquid or Ethereum or even a Robinhood.
And I think that's one of the most exciting conversions because investors usually see these mega technologies as two different trades.
Unfortunately, in crypto, we have kind of like this marketing problem where people think that cryptocurrencies are all the same.
So when people realize that we have crypto commodities, crypto equities, or crypto like equities or crypto commodities.
Then, until they get to that point, they don't realize that crypto is a technology like the internet reinventing several sectors that we now take for granted, but took us such a long way to get there.
I still remember in 2003 when my parents were so uncomfortable to use credit cards to pay for flight tickets.
But now you would never think twice to do that unless...
It's a new website.
You don't know about the company and you click on the wrong link because of a phishing attack.
But aside from that, you will never run into such an issue today.
But when you transfer some assets from one blockchain to the other, it still feels complex, right?
And I think AI agents will...
decomplexify, simplify the user experience that we have on chain where essentially if you want to move funds around, if you want to touch more grass than actually people do today, this is one of the things that AI agents will be able to do where they will be on the background.
Of course, with the right approvals, with the right guardrails to be able to simplify the crypto experience.
And of course, living on the on-chain world, because we truly believe that on-chain finance is really moving rapidly, especially on the back of tokenization.
So AI agents will really play a significant role in pushing us to...
crossing the chasm to mainstream adoption.
Well, just I'll say this one more time that there's a ton of alpha in the reports and the research that 21 shares is putting out.
So if you're not following that, it's a great resource.
Definitely make sure you avail yourself of that.
Eliza, we're getting towards the end of time here.
So I want to kind of close with a shotgun blast of questions, really.
But Bitcoin is up over 25,000 off the lows.
A lot of altcoins are pumping, you know, 100% more in some cases.
The numbers have been.
euphoric, let's say, recently in crypto.
What's your updated outlook for the rest of 2026?
And what are you most bullish on going into the end of this year here?
Yeah, absolutely.
So for the rest of the year, we have the view that Bitcoin will still be down by 20%, but Bitcoin could reach $100,000, which is still down, as I mentioned, 20% from its peak of last year.
But this is the resistant level that the asset class we need to go through.
But I still think that being around $85,000 shows the early innings of a tailwind, which could definitely help investors to feel a lot more comfortable and understand that there is some upside in this asset class.
And I would say, despite the fact that the Clarity Act didn't pass this year so far, There are actions by the SEC and the CFTC to really work in hand to help with the advancement of tokenization, as we've seen with the broker-dealer exemption for some of these issuers to be able to offer tokenized equities in the right.
guarding environment and making sure that they can protect, of course, consumers if they are having access to tokenized equities.
So I do think that this is marching towards the right direction.
But what I'm really excited about, as always, is really how on one side, this asset class can really be considered not as a speculative asset class, but that they are actually real cash flow driven businesses.
that people can actually review and evidence directly in real time on chain.
And we're starting to actually see the recognition of that on the back of the inflows into these crypto ETFs, but also the conversations that we have with wealth advisors and family offices and private banks where they're really excited and they almost get this ha-ha moment that actually crypto is not speculative.
Crypto is not as...
I would say, you know, dangerous as they may have thought.
But actually, this is a real asset class.
We have real money in this.
We have real innovation that people definitely could see this happening and even being used on a day-to-day basis.
But I think Hyperliquid has really made the strongest case to show how tangible.
crypto could be, especially on the back of the conflict in Iran, where people really needed to hedge over the weekend.
And I do think that, you know, hyper-liquid and even like poly markets during the US elections really showed the early innings of what could happen on chain, the same way we've seen the same moment or inflection point with Google.
and Amazon in the past for the internet.
And I think this is why I truly believe that we're still in 2003 in terms of like where the internet was for crypto more specifically, and that we could see a Cambrian explosion of companies with real businesses and real revenue and real users that would define the future of this asset class beyond Bitcoin.
Elijah Dinga, Head of Research for 21Shares.
Thank you so much for being on Milk Road Crypto.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online?
Sounds great.
Thanks for having me, John.
So they can find us on 21Shares.com.
They can sign up for our newsletter, which is available on the website directly.
They can follow us on our social media platforms, whether it's LinkedIn or X.
I know your audience is more on X, so they can find us at 21 shares and also 21 shares underscore US.
And they can find me with the handle Eli Dinga on X as well.
I'm really looking forward to having you back as we start to go parabolic here.
But thank you so much for being on Milko Crypto, and I hope we talk again soon.
Thanks, John.
Thanks for having me.
And thank you all for joining us.
I hope you all learned something today.
So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish.
And we will see you all on the next episode of Milk Road Crypto.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
Everything you hear on Milk Road is for informational purposes only.
These are our personal opinions, not financial advice.
And we may own some of the investments we talk about.
Always do your own research and make the decisions that are right for you.
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