The Next Big Bet For Asset Managers and Allocators Investment Opportunities for 2026 and Beyond

Hi everyone, I'm Elad, one of the founders and CEO of Market Across. Uh, one of the biggest and most prominent PR agencies in the space, been around since 2014. Also, uh, one of the founders of Chainwire, which is the biggest press release distribution platform in crypto. uh and maybe we take uh a few minutes to introduce yourself and just tell a little bit about your background and what brings you here.

You can start.

Hi everyone, Mariam from MV Capital. We are a defy defy asset management company. We manage about two billions USD across different strategy and most of the strategy are um onchain. So here to talk about DeFi.

Hi everyone. I'm Luis Torres. I'm one of these bankers that from the other panel that they just mentioned that we are around. I'm a business sellside equity analyst and also wealth manager about two billion of assets under management in multif family office and basically traditional finance still. So, I guess I'll join that.

Uh, but I'm I actually have two hats. So, the the boring banking hats, I guess, in this conference where I represent 10 of the wealthiest families in Denmark. Within that context, uh, we saw a few years ago that we wanted to have exposure to this blockchain universe. Uh, so we established um our first product ever because we are independent. So, we don't like products.

uh but we didn't we didn't know how to express that multi-family office boring way of getting exposure to a new new technology. So we uh we established a fund internally. So we have two funds and that's my my cool hat when it's facing backwards. Uh we run a fund business on the side and and maybe going into venture as well. So we have exposure to some of the panelists beforehand and Ioka brands ledger some of the larger uh players within the space as well.

Thank you for that. Um I'll start with the first question. There's we're talking about institutional adoption and and we we can actually see it like if if you walk around this conference you see more people suit and tie less Dens and like the the usual crypto nonsense and memecoins and it's becoming very uh like the big boys are coming in and what do you think are the biggest drivers like micro environment in 2026 like we've seen the plays from the US like the Genius Act or things that are kind of solidifying or creating frameworks for institutional asset managers to feel more confident in deploying capital. What do you think are the main drivers around that to see more institutional capital flowing into the markets?

Yes. Yes. Um first of all the the genuous act change a lot of things and the onchain is um defy is very limited but stable coin on China. So for now it's mostly dominated by us and uh uh as soon as we will have more liquidity through new stable conditions. So we have seen uh new new stable conditions.

Now we have a also in in in France you have s general who has started defy two months ago at the movie capital who are the exclusive partner uh it's still small only 100 millions so nothing's to compare with giant like circle and tear and um mostly we talk with many banks many issuers they have stable cons but they don't want still to use into defy and they say okay we have stable that is not transferable. So uh to grow defy uh we need more uh more liquidity and also more um what what we what we what we name uh asset management onchain solution what it's what we do at MV capital

I think um to if I have to underline some elements I would say that first of all is the track record especially on Bitcoin I think that it begins to keep an eye on on institutional investor. I mean there's some things that still in my opinion does not fit the traditional finance mindset because to me is a problem of of mindset rather to talk about metrics or to talk about volatilities and things like that. That's to me is point number one and point number two and and probably third is is the regulation part and and that we have now a push on the US administration that is quite central but I would underline also as well the macro environment. I mean we've been through a period of very volatile very volatile sorry um monetary policy with changes not only with the monetary regime but on the rules that apply the Fed to to manage money and I think any investor that traditionally family office that need to protect capital they begin to see how the fixed income is not an option. We've seen now how the gold has become a crowded trade.

I just want to mention that I mean anyone was invested in gold 12 months ago only the central banks and now it's beginning to to to being adopted by by institutionally widely I could say. So I think this this for me are are the two elements that begin to make this traction on the institutional segment for for Bitcoin and hopefully probably also in the rest of crypto with time as well.

I think we tend to over complicate stuff in this industry in the institutions are here and time is the only thing that that's keeping them from coming into the space. We have regulation in Europe. we now have regulation in the US. So the institutions have no uh issue coming into the space. Uh so time will will get them all here in my opinion.

You spoke a little bit about volatility and that is something that usually scales institutional investors. Right. So I I I'm in crypto since 2012. It used to be like Bitcoin could go down 70% that time and that's what we would call a Tuesday, you know, like it's you see that it's stabilizing a little bit and that even now you've seen like the flash crash that happened a week ago. You literally held altcoins dropping 80% and then bounced back.

Bitcoin didn't take a big hit and some would say that it's because the institutionals are in it because of the ETFs because of they don't have the like they have more of the diamond hands. What do you think uh like where do you think that smart money will keep flowing next? Would it be more focused on like early stage startups, investments, VCs? That was a big thing. Let's say it's usually a bigger thing when the markets are green.

When the markets are uh falling, people are looking for less opportunities. Or will it be more of like hedge funds or buying liquid tokens? What do you think will be the next trend in that regard when institutionals are in?

I think we have to define what smart money is because institutional money can also be dumb money. um pension funds will not be the first ones to adopt uh a strategy into that. They'll not be the first ones to uh buy the ETFs. They'll come in the second or third wave. So if smart money is not institutions or not pension funds, what what is really smart money?

I think um smart smart money can be family offices. It can be ultra high netw worth individuals. It can be wealth managers across the world that are truly independent and don't have a compliance department that they need to uh check XYZ before they can uh push a trade. And smart money are already chasing the volatility. They're already seeing the arbitrage opportunities within the space and they're just looking uh for these mis mismatches in and around the space.

What I'm curious about if over 2026 I think crypto is becoming such a mature market that um we can actually see other markets being as interesting for smart money as the crypto market. Uh some of the delta neutral strategies that I speak with on a regular basis within the crypto space they haven't been able to to give 30 40 50% returns this year. Why? It's because all the smart money is already in the space. They've been able to do 10 15% which is a lot for delta neutral strategies but it's mimicking what they are able to do in other markets.

So in my opin opinion smart money is already here uh and have arked out a lot of these inefficiencies that we see in the crypto space and then we have a black Friday like uh Friday. Uh so that's why I'm probably completely wrong.

Absolutely. I'm very I I I'm very agree with with Adrian H picture of of what institutional money uh does and I would just add one thing that related with uh what Elliot underlined which is very important which is volatility which is at the end of the day the 90% of the conversation and and the thing that you can address or you can have exposure to blockchain or what we call crypto in two ways because there's like different type of assets. you can play the liquid uh bitcoin asset play in which you try to uh is a trade that wants to be similar or better than gold is a protection of capital in the long term at least the in the concept but at the same time and paradoxically you're having a lot of the volatility that you typically find in a tech small cap and this is like a challenge that you need to deal and the other side and it's very interesting with Adrian we talked earlier is this type of approach in which you try to approach Bitcoin and all these ecosystem as a BC as a BC segment BC I don't know how to say it super asset in which you emphasize that you are investing in tech which is also and with this BC vehicles you try to modulate volatility and can be another let's say Trojan horse to enter in in in what today are traditional portfolios or nonsmart money to say it politely.

Yes, I would say that most smart money are looking for stable con strategy. They don't want to take risk in in bitcoin. When we talk about corporates of of course there is some uh some uh some name famous name who invest in bitcoin but now most of the company just want to manage their their their treasury in euro USD and they are looking to compare with what they do with traditional finance. So now they know that they can have the uh the native yield they have with like money market securities like treasury bills but in top of that we can um put in some money market like moro and to have some uh additional yields and for them it's like um interesting because they don't take any risk on the volatility of Bitcoin, Ethereum or whatever assets. And the the yield on stable coins are the highest you can find in the universe of 27 finance on DeFi.

It's about 15 to 20%. So right now you see a lot of so we know the micro strategy Michael Sailor model right where they keep buying Bitcoin as a treasury and it started off as being just like a side thing and today that's everything around strategy like there's no it it almost looks like there's nothing else there. Do you think that that trend is something that we're going to see? Because you do hear about publicly traded firms quietly acquiring Bitcoin and sometimes not quietly acquiring Bitcoin and then announcing it and then it looks good on the stock because you know they follow the strategy model. Do you think that's a a valuable trend?

Like something that we're gonna see more and more and more like more publicly traded companies put Bitcoin on their balance sheets? I mean, we've seen it with Tesla before. We see it with the US government. We see it with, you know, publicly traded stocks now. But is it a trend or do you think this is the beginning of connecting Wall Street to bitcoin in the sense of like the treasury model?

Yeah, I think it's a question of 10 trillions dollars because uh if we know the answer, we will know that the bitcoin will go to to millions price. uh we have seen Luxembourg government is the first of European states buying some bitcoin from the government uh uh not treasury but the government uh like foundation. So uh the speculation of bitcoiners is like uh bitcoin will be the the main assets and the to preserve uh value beyond the inflation. So if uh if we are confident on on this way, we can uh we can think that more and more corporate will buy Bitcoin and because now the the only obstacles was regulation and also also the the fear of investors. So now we we can see that we every everyone can accept that we allocate like five 10% to bitcoins is not look at crazy as before.

It's a good question. I would say that here again I see like two paths because on the one hand if I try to imagine that I'm the CPO of a public listed company here in Spain and I mean if you read the textbook what you need to do with your treasuries is to keep them safe. I mean it's there for first of all you need to do the there's a game changer for your shareholders. There's a change in the governance on them treasuries. Second of all, you can it can be um good long-term decision, but if you are not if if it is only for treasury management of of this company, it's going to add uh volatility to the balance sheet.

So, it's a game changer with your shareholders. If the other path is that part of your business model is going to be to buy, acquire, optimize this process of acquisition and maximize the bitcoin per share. Uh which is I think is another another business model. I think in in this trend to me is clearly that has momentum right now. Um has its difficulties to invest.

I don't know if you we can talk it in in another question but yeah I think is interesting and the first one I think may be uh how to say more slow down I don't know companies here in Spain that has a lot of cash in the text for instance well-known uh fashion brand I do not foresee in the coming months or years that part of this cash that they have they transform it in treasury because it would imply a change in the in what you own as a shareholder. So I I think that to be main obstacle for this mass adoption of corporations so far

I I actually hate it but I I I tend to agree with you Luis. Um uh but for a slightly different reason. Um so what is the treasury function of any company? It is to to keep the business afloat and we we have to remember that we are speaking about businesses and and they have their daily operations and how do they fund their daily operations? Right now it's through euros in Europe or US dollars in in in the US.

So they are not going to buy a treasury uh thing a bitcoin if it if the prices for the vendors are denominated in US dollars because it adds too much risk to the balance sheet in my opinion. So what needs to change is that the way we uh interact, our barter system or our shopping system in in the world needs to be denominated in some form of cryptocurrency in order for everyone to adopt Bitcoin on their treasury. Uh so as long as we still um finalize or settle payments in dollars, I don't think we'll see a large inflow of of companies around the world that are super well capitalized. uh adding the risk of volatility uh to the to the balance sheets um it's a completely different thing in my opinion.

So that leads me to the next question. Uh we look at Bitcoin as a as a volatile asset but it's you can't even compare it to like all the altcoins, right? So now we're actually seeing a trend of a few things. one foundations of different altcoins that decide to actually open or publicly list these uh altcoins in the form of so I I don't know if you've seen the Trump media announcement with Crypto.com.

So Trump media is a publicly traded company. Now they acquired a lot of CRO tokens and then of course there's a utility they're going to use CRO in truce social which is a Trump mediaowned product. So now they have a treasury for CRO. It's not even Bitcoin. Is CRO good or bad?

I don't know. Is it volatile? 100%. And a lot more volatile than Bitcoin. So now that's one thing.

You have like foundations that are doing it. And then you're also seeing that's like decentralized asset treasuries that say, "Yeah, we hold Bitcoin, but that's only 50% of what we hold. We're also holding 10% of BNB and 10% of Solana and then 10% of Avalanche and whatnot. What do you think about that? Like where is that going?

Because that could be the best thing that happened to the crypto industry or the worst thing that happened to the crypto industry because a lot of people that are not really exposed to people, don't know how to even open a wallet can now be exposed to what you call shitcoins. So when that drops, what would be the effect on the market? So just to play off what what you said about volatility, I think that's a lot more volatile is that a and it is a trend. So where do you think that is going and what would you think how how would you think would that that would evolve? I I think these new DATs are just another way of getting exposure to some underlying stuff.

Uh to me, these are masked head fun hedge funds. It's a way for um either bad actors or good actors with a good idea to do a lever play on an existing thing, which is to me just another way of saying you're adding a little bit of leverage or you're adding a strategy in and around something to be making it more uh um more valuable. So to me, I I think this is a little bit of a o overhyped. I I don't think that's just the new big shiny thing within this industry. Um, yes, M Michael Sailor has done a tremendous job of being a proponent of doing these strategies, but I just don't see uh them competing in any way with the flows that we've seen from the ETFs.

The ETFs are by far out competing these stats with flow. So uh to me it's an insignificant uh market risk uh to the space as of now. Yeah, I would say I would add to what Adrian said that um let's took a strategy to me which is easier to to understand and and the example that you give us I think it goes goes beyond that but basically when you add um the treasury company what you are adding is layers of complexity to the underlying asset and the thesis the overall thesis becames much more complex in the case of a strategy. Now you need to have the high conviction of the asset under underlying the the security which is the bitcoin of course but then you need to validate the management team again the governance which is very delicate issue that can add a lot of volatility because links directly very is very sensitive with the trust that you can build with your shareholders. You need to validate the capital allocation model.

You talk about different tokens. So it's very difficult. You are not buying the token. You basically are buying the trust in the management team of the company and how they are going to to perform and use these sources and they are going to to invest properly. So at the end of the day you are playing another game.

To me it's interesting strategy for some of my clients is a way to gain exposure to Bitcoin. is not the best way for some clients because of compliance legal and many staff is the proper way to do it because you have uh proper custody is easy if you just uh open or operate with public equities but you need to understand that you are going to have much more volatility than the underlying asset for the reasons that I mentioned that you need to validate so many there are some other complexities that I mean it can go very well when when the cycle uh reverses but you need to understand that there are more sources of uncertainty and potential risks.

Yes, if you look for the three years volatility of Bitcoin, it's not so much higher than stock market. the risk is uh in the last few years except if you isolate some few events it's almost uh very similar and there is a high correlation with uh S&P 500 and for the Bitcoin treasury and it can be also the Ethereum treasury of BNB treasury now all this uh company want to to find solution to offer yield because it's beautiful to have assets in the company. But if you have assets like uh like euro USD, you can invest in um in traditional vehicles like like tables to generate returns. But for for Bitcoin on it, it's it's more difficult to do. So now the the the next big big uh big uh big meta will be to how to generate yield on how to grasp the the company assets.

So in the last cycle or actually in every cycle in crypto you always have the trends right. So it used like in the current cycle it's RWA it was or it still is and deep in and then the building on Bitcoin was really really hot like a year ago everyone was suddenly building on Bitcoin and talking about ordinals and all kinds of stuff like that. And then if you look even like before that there was DeFi summer that that was like insanely well for DeFi protocols. And then you have NFTs and memecoins and you know stuff that hold no value. Do you think like from that perspective how do you see asset allocators, institutionals, VCs or what we call smart money.

How to navigate that landscape chasing the trends, ignoring the trends, trying to get in on the trends. what what kind of risk assessments or erh what are your two cents on being or being against those trends? I mean um every everyone can create its own strategy and try to to follow the next narrative and jump to one uh one one protocol to another to one chain to another and uh but the time to do the duty agents to talk to the team to evaluate all the risk it it takes a lot of time and there is no one company even the biggest one who have a dedicated department to do that. So they have to to uh to give to delegate this uh this power to some asset manager and uh but they want to have a control on the policy what will happen with the assets what the manager can do with the assets because uh uh in defy there is so many opportunities and so is um the they want to to navigate into these fields but um they have to to delay ate the the framework on the what they can tolerate in term of risk and the the the principal use case is basic one of lending on borrowing. Uh institutional will not come to to do some um some basis trading of of some uh of some tokens because the size is too small.

If you want to to allocate 50 millions of euros into a strategy, you can do that. It's like too much uh uh there's not enough uh market dip market liquidity. So the the main strategy always said same the same. It's always to to uh to put for example Bitcoin or Ethereum what you have as collateral as supply and you borrow stable coins and you you uh your goal as asset manager is to um to generate more more returns than the borrowing sides and it's it's like this you you you generate

well to me I I I don't know have a specific uh view on on on the strategies that we can foresee in the in the coming months and years. But what I can tell as a overall uh insight what of what I'm I'm I'm feeling or perception of talking with clients and and people that are investing in the ecosystem. What I see is that people is beginning to to focus more not only in the narrative. You mentioned the mecoins and all these kind of things. I think these are like in um a video game there are phases that we already we are passed through that and we are in another stage right now.

I think that actually that we've been talking about institution all this afternoon. I think they they can enhance how the overall ecosystems manage risk and I think and I foresee that we become we are going to see how risk is be is is going to be much more met uh better managed uh overall in in the coming in the coming cycle. uh probably just Marian just mentioned important to to recognize that it doesn't mean if a token or any investment has a public quote does not mean that has the proper depth and liquidity to take it out that's very important h any project that has subsidies and helps and all this is not income so I I I I'm perceiving that some practices that are very deep rooted in the traditional finance are moving moving to the to the crypto space. That's on the one side and on the other side and because of it's inevitable that if we are beginning to a more let's say easy money cycle again uh history tells you that I mean when when when the when the money is easy to and the liquidity pours uh the risk management tends to to be a little bit lower. So we we probably will see a little bit of of these two in the in the coming year.

I don't have an opinion on the hype cycle in digital assets. So please

how do you so so you mentioned like risk and liquidity, right? That these are two things that are kind of like you're in crypto. Uh it's by definition like a risktaking position, right? But then institutionals are not very fond of taking tremendous risks. What do you think are like how do you balance that?

like getting on uh the VC route with like private rounds and then buying tokens before they launch and or buying like top uh like very small market cap tokens that you know you can thousandx or have this dream or more of like a stable type of conservative buying only very liquid tokens in the open market. How do you balance between the two? uh because crypto is about that but now it seems like it's changing a little bit. Crypto is a risk asset and I think it's completely false that institutions are not willing to take risk. Every single institution in this world is within the finance industry is there to take risk.

But it's a bal balancing act. It it's not about uh if you want to take 100% risk or not. It's about balancing that that risk to your mandate and and and and the last five 10 years uh crypto has been in a way to express the higher end of that uh risk spectrum. Um someone from bit uh wise told me uh this morning that their target for Bitcoin is $1.3 million or something like that.

That's a tremendous tremendous number but it's 10 years from now. That's a cargo. This is their numbers. Don't hang me up on it. It's it's a cargo of 28%.

I I bet you within the normal finance world or within the normal VC world, some other players within other industries are going to make 28% car as well. So, we've come to this inflection point where you can certainly use crypto as a risk asset, but you just have to balance it out with something else in your portfolio. And I think that's why a lot of asset managers are looking toward adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets is because it's a high beta product to compared to a NASDAQ for example. And then our question within this industry if we just focus on digital asset is can we beat this benchmark of 28% carer? Maybe yes, maybe not.

But you have to think about the added risk that you're also taking to going into pre token launches. Are you going to add by by uh adding um uh exposure to that? And and I think we're in a weird dynamic in this market cycle where uh Bitcoin might be the best risk adjust adjusted uh place to be for the next 10 years or we see uh market participants uh actually uh adopt some of these new DeFi things that are coming out. And if that's the case that the total globe actually adopt blockchain rails then we'll see a lot of returns in the VC market um on a risk adjusted basis. But but we just have to remember that these bigot institutions they're balancing risk.

So whenever they want to be risk on they go they go further down the risk curve and and right now uh everyone and their mom are uh exposed long to risk because of this debasement narrative that's going around the finance industry. So everyone are long risk that no one is is short risk at this moment and we just have to be aware of that and that can continue for 5 10 years. I'm not saying it will stop. Uh we just have to be this this balancing act, these these weights on each side of the the coin. We just have to be uh be sure where we are in the cycle of risk takingaking.

Um sorry that's a long ramble but

yeah yes um the reality when we we when you talk to some uh corporate on CFO uh the difficulties to uh to teach because I never heard about some protocols how works oracles how works liquidation how works liquidator pools how works uh the competition to to enter into the last Okay. So when they have to understand it and to be challenged by their their own chairholders, it become a nightmare. So we try to educate them but at the end um uh it's mostly uh in the end of each company's CFO to to take the decision but as uh they don't have the education to uh to understand and the the learning the learning curve it's quite hard even with a simple protocol like uh like a oral or or moro So after when you talk about investment in some tokens that it's only for for hedge funds. So they will only delegate uh they will just delegate a mandate to hedge funds but they will not never do themselves the strategy. So um to um to manage so I can I can I jump in real quick?

Something that's very close to my heart. We were talking about risk and opportunity. This is the uh 2026 opportunities investments to me that's can also be outside of the the space right can I just quickly spend 30 seconds giving some stats last year in 2024 exchina the total solar capacity in the world was 290ome gaw this year China is on track to build 200 almost 300 gawatt in solar capacity in one here. That's the total amount that every other country in the world had. This is the biggest macro story that's no that no one is are talking about.

The the capacity to have energy into your grid grid is the biggest opportunity in my opinion uh we have uh in the next couple of years. Why? In in this space, we're talking about something that's infinite scalable. It's software. In the AI space, we're talking about something that's infinite scalable.

what what what really hinges on these two things is compute GPUs and then energy the uh the GPUs they need energy to function and AI needs GPUs to to function as well but but no one are talking about this big massive solar capacity that China is building and I bet you that all of these guys that are talking about uranium as well they're talking about nuclear power we just have to remember that even these small nuclear reactors that are coming out they will take years before they're commissioned and and building a a solar uh park with a battery is cheaper. So I I I this is the biggest trend uh in my opinion is is we got to watch these dynamics and and the demand for AI the demand for and and the demand for AI is closely linked to blockchain in the future. why AI agents if we're going into an a aentic future we need some some controls underneath and and what better technology than blockchain to do settlement or to keep track of all these agents uh working together so the next big way for blockchain might be AI agents so if that's true then we have to watch for the total demand of AI and the total demand of AI is crazy. So where are the investment opportunities? It's within the rails of this demand and the the demand scarce or the supply scarcity right now is not in software.

It's in the physical world. So for the first time in probably 15 20 years we can find find scarce thing in the physical world that are that are really invest investment opportunities that can provide you 5 10x and that was not the case 10 years ago because then it was all soft software. So that's to me the biggest opportunity is the scarce world that we're already living in because AI will solve the software component. It's infinitely scalable and yes, there'll be massive winners within blockchain and AI, but within the physical tangible world, we have to remember that's that's scarce. And to me, that's where some of the biggest opportunities for the next 5 years lies.

That's a very interesting take and I think uh it kind of sums up uh the we we're out of time but generally speaking I think

may I add just one thing because is the the the thing I I could say many things but actually the thing that I want to do with your question about risk is that the main risk is not to have exposure in your portfolio to this type of trends mega trends and assets and and probably it's not that common to quote Mr. Buffett in these events, but Warren Buffett always says that errors of omission are the more painful ones. And I think not to have a little bit of Bitcoin, a little bit of what Adrian said in your portfolio is a big risk. So I would sum it up with like eventually it's all about balancing and diversity and also looking up to alternative markets and not only following the main road but also look for other paths in order to get uh that balance that we're looking for. Thank you very much everyone.

Thank you for tuning in and

thank you very much.