Bullish for Builders Is 2026 the Year the Foundations Hold

Gentlemen, yes, thank you so much. I have been anticipating this conversation for some time and I imagine everyone in the audience is equally excited. I can see the camera phones going up already. So, no pressure. Uh, Reeve, I am going to start with you if that's okay.

Um let's start by addressing the volatility that we are seeing in the market at the moment. Uh what for you is it signaling you know what does it signal what kind of you know stability what kind of transparency what kind of infrastructure that we need to reassure those who are buying in?

Well it's a great question and you know I don't want to say today's volatility or the volatility that we're experiencing right now because it's crypto. So volatility is the beauty of our market. It's also the pain. And we can look back over the 10 years and and see the ups and the downs in the market and know that crypto has always weathered the storm. But what does that really mean?

It means that the infrastructure below it, the companies that are being built are really changing the way the world does business. We've got Mike right here who's invested in some of the best companies in the ecosystem and Joe who's built some of the best companies in the ecosystem. And so what it really means is that innovation and that foresight and that ability to create technology that's going to change the way the world's financial plumbing actually operates. That's the longevity. So the volatility is just on the surface.

But when that technology continues to perform in the way that it has, that's what gives the world trust to know that it might be down now, but eventually it'll be up and to the right. Mike, with your decades of investment experience, your your pedigree, um, you know, given the mix that we're seeing at the moment of inflation pressures, of shifting rate expectations and geopolitical shocks, you know, what signals matter to you most when it comes to choosing where to put your money?

Um, it's a big question. Uh listen, I mean from a macro perspective, markets go on long long and big cycles and the cycle is often uh determined by the central bank of the United States, right? The Fed, there's a big Fed meeting today uh 2 o'clock New York time. Uh Fed will probably cut rates and that'll send a signal to the whole world. And so we've got this big cycle.

The reason crypto exists really is that Satoshi and then the followers of Satoshi sensed that things were getting carried away in this credit cycle perpetuated by the US and the West. And you had this 2008 financial crisis that was solved by jamming lots of liquidity into the system. And then you had a 2012 European crisis which was solved by monetizing more assets. And each step of the way, central banks and and ministries of finance, treasury departments have monetized assets, have financed their way out of this gigantic, you know, debt problem. And the debt problem gets bigger.

And so we are close a year, two years, two months, six. You never know when these things end uh to the crack to to when it breaks and it's going to break because in the west we have inequality like we've never seen, right? I remember I gave a speech at the Milkin Conference in 2009 and I said when inequality gets this bad it ends in revolution. Well, that was 2009 and now it's 2025 going on 26. 16 years later, an inequality has gotten worse every year.

And so, how does inequality break? It usually breaks with revolution. It can be a violent revolution or it can be a peaceful revolution. Uh we just in New York City elected a mayor who some people call a socialist or a communist who who broadly is just pointing out that affordability in New York City and most of America has gotten really difficult for most people. And so that's the big cycle we're all in.

Crypto came and said, "Wait a minute." Bitcoin specifically started in saying, "Hey, if they're going to monetize their way out of this, I want a place where I can store my hard-earned work, you know, the fruits of my labor in a community that I trust." And so, we created an alternative money, really, you can call it digital gold. It was originally alternative money. And lots of other crypto ecosystems have have showed up for that purpose.

And so in some ways it's the breakdown of this credit bubble in the west that gave crypto its its right to exist. And so that's the big picture. I mean I I don't want to talk too long. It's the big picture of how I see everything. Uh and it's why crypto has got to here.

Now next time I'm around I'll give you the next chapter.

Brilliant. We will well we'll head into that but but I have to get Joseph involved in this conversation. Can I can I go even bigger picture?

So So you ask you ask a simple question. Why is there uh um the perception that there's greater volatility in the world? Um so we can uh answer that uh with some uh some deep structural reasons. Uh we c we can go back to uh 80 years ago. We can go back for millennia.

Um if we think about uh um the current super cycle uh which I would argue is a debt and monetary super cycle or a generational super cycle in a Strauss and how generations theory context. Um it's essentially about the fact that America came out of World War II uh with the strongest military and industrial base and and set the rules monetary rules uh for uh the globe. Um and um and uh there was if if we go back millennia, we've been operating under a certain kind of trust, a a top- down command and control trust where authorities imbue intermediaries um with authority and trust and and those intermediate intermediaries maintain ledgers of who owns what and and who has what rights. Uh and so that system of the world has been great for building civilization. Um but increasingly it's very complicated and even terrible for the people living in that civilization.

And so um uh we've seen um the current super cycle run 80 years and technology is so powerful uh and disparity in wealth has grown because of the technology. And so there's a real loss of trust in the system uh by the people in the system. Um and essentially we need a new form of trust, a more powerful form of trust. And uh in 2008 2009, uh Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, uh invented something very profound, uh which is decentralized trust. Uh Satoshi uh also showed us how to operationalize decentralized trust on a uh peer-to-peer network of independent actors uh that can process transactions.

And so um in the Ethereum ecosystem with the Ethereum technology, we took that insight and we um enabled the application of decentralized trust uh to basically everything um that you can imagine um writing software for. And so the idea is that we have a new trust foundation for the planet. um for the last 10 years of of non-stop uptime in the Ethereum ecosystem uh we've scaled it uh and we built decentralized finance at a second layer and now we can um move into different sectors of the economy. We can uh disintermediate uh certain intermediaries that have rent seeeking behavior. Um intermediation is actually really good in a lot of ways uh if you add information, add value, reduce frictions and so we now have this this new trust foundation on which we can rearchitect the world on sounder principles.

Just a a quick follow-up question on that. What would you say are the strongest signals that the sort of underlying infrastructure for the sector is is becoming more reliable is becoming something that more people can place their trust on. Yeah. Um so uh we have spent uh 10 plus years um uh building this new kind of infrastructure for the planet. This new kind of decentralized cloud on which to uh to run all of our applications.

Um it is now scalable enough. It's scalable horizontally. Uh meaning we can add lots of networks. We can add um better technology, better hardware um vertically. Uh so just like the internet which can scale infinitely um now the Ethereum ecosystem and related ecosystems can scale infinitely um to grow with the world um it's now affordable it's very cheap uh block space is cheap transactions are cheap it's getting very very usable and as we add artificial intelligence user interfaces uh to our wallets and to our applications it's going to get very delightful to use and AI is going to uh enable us all to level up in tremendous ways and AI is going to heavily run um paying each other paying agents with tokens and and run on decentralized infrastructure.

Um and most importantly um uh it's hard to build uh an infrastructure a civilization scale infrastructure on a totally different organizing principle um uh in a world based on essentially the opposite organizing principle which is top down command and control. And so um for years we've we've built enabling infrastructure um and now we instead of uh governments like the US trying to kill us or slow us down, we now have the wind uh at our back. Uh and so whether it's legislation or the stable coin phenomenon, uh whether it's uh freeing organizations to use tokens, issue tokens, use DeFi or or bring in the best and the brightest builders into our ecosystem. Um we are surging.

Let me hop on that for one second because I think 2026 is a really important year. Uh you know, crypto has been a story. It's been a story of what's coming and why we're such an important industry. And Joe's done an amazing job of giving the history of that story of why it existed. But practically, very few people, certainly in the West, in the United States, have an app on their phone where they use crypto.

They don't have decentralized ticketing yet or decentralized finance yet in a practical way. Part of that is because it took a while for blockchains to get fast enough, scalable enough, and trusted enough to be used. And we're at that point. And a big part of it was because US legislation, which I know this sounds like a an American centric view of the world, but you know, US GDP is the dominant GDP at 65% of a global market cap. Uh, and when US legislation doesn't work for an industry, it is very difficult for that industry to thrive.

And with the new administration, there is a bipartisan view now that we need to pass crypto legislation. And so we've got the Genus Act passed. I would hope in the next six weeks the market structure bill passes, which is going to allow companies to feel more comfortable participating. And so you're going to see every trade institution join this digital revolution, right? This this blockchain revolution.

in five years time we won't talk about crypto and trade fi it'll just be markets and so we're in this transition uh it will create volatility because some of the stories that we told that were just stories now those stories have to deliver

right I tell people when I talk to crypto audience all the time I was like dudes it's time for us to build something we all can be proud of uh where the average citizen uses it I my strongly held belief that the first generation of crypto that what's coming next will be more important to the rest of the world than it will be to the western economies. Right? The payment system in America is pretty good. If I want to buy a stock, I can buy a stock. And so it'll be distribution.

Simple things like distribution of tokenized equities to people in Paraguay, in Cambodia, in Africa, in the Middle East, you know, places where it's more difficult to get access. You can see the stable coin phenomena exactly as what happened. But this will be the golden era of actual you know crypto adoption of digital asset per uh permeating you know around around the globe or it should certainly should be.

Yeah Reev I want to pull you in there as our as our expert on stable coin. It is con considered the sort of bridge between traditional finance and digital assets. Perhaps you could talk me through the real world world cases that are gaining the most traction for for stable coin.

Yeah. Well, still today the majority of transactions are within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Okay. Because for trading, but that's that's expanding. And as Mike mentioned, it's the rest of the world that feels the pain of poor financial services or highly volatile currencies.

So they're leaning into a digital dollar and leaning into improved banking services that stable coins can offer. And so those are going to be the next use cases is more and more of these other countries leaning in deeper. And just yesterday I was at an event and two gentlemen from Ukraine came up to me and they're like, "Oh, I heard you're the co-founder of Tether. It's so nice to meet you." And they're like, "You guys, you don't understand the impact it has had, especially during the Ukrainian war.

We get to send money to our friends. It's not just some soldiers over there. These guys are their friends on the front line. And that actually just gave me goosebumps just to to see that the industry that we're all in is truly having an impact, especially stable coins. And as we advance the next step now that the regulatory landscape has shifted and as they've shared, the traditional institutions are lining up to dive in.

Well, why is that? First of all, stable coin will be the bridge. So, so stable coin businesses and infrastructure really is going to be the narrative for the next few years because it's not going to be stable coins. It's just cash. It's just fiat.

It's just money that runs on a different infrastructure. And soon it won't be a stable coin that you see in your wallet. It will be USD or whatever your local currency is. And on the back end, it will run on an improved infrastructure, some sort of blockchain technology that that's been integrated in that bank. And so it will just be finance that's greatly improved.

And that's why all the money from traditional finance is sitting on the sideline. People ask how much money will flow into stable coins. [snorts] All of it. Because stable coins aren't stable coins. They are just money moved in a more efficient way.

And that's why it will all flow in because it's a great improvement that includes the rest of the world. The people that were left outside of banking infrastructure in the past. So that's the future that I see. Gentlemen, do you agree that all money will flow?

I I would argue that uh stable coins will be a foundational element of a of the new monetary system. Um so, uh there are a lot of banks out there uh that are very concerned that they're going to lose uh the bulk of their deposits because uh there is this new instrument uh that uh uh can be used as cash. uh in some cases uh even consumers are going to be able to get uh something that looks like yield uh for even holding the stable coin. Um if there are other ways to get yield too, you can package up uh yielding instruments into a money market fund and you can actually put your money uh into a tokenized money market fund uh and then flip some of that into a stable coin in order to to pay for your night out or or something like that. Um we have uh at our company consensus we published the MetaMask wallet.

Um we have our own stable coin and most companies are going to have their own stable coin. Uh it's going to be a revolution in e-commerce essentially because uh whether it's a stable coin or a white labeled debit card um or or even a tokenized equity companies are going to have direct access uh to the holders of of those particular instruments which is um different in in some cases. Now um in our wallet um whether it's the stable coin or or whether it's a debit card um our users are able to instead of taking their salary uh taking their monthly paycheck and sending it to their bank so they can use their debit card um and the bank earns interest on their backs uh for for that entire month. Um, we're building a payroll system that enables people to uh simply deposit their salary tokenized um in stable coins or or in other tokens um and earn money in decentralized finance um right from the start of the month uh and up until the moment that you do go out and you you use your debit card to to purchase some things um in real time that money will be pulled from decentralized finance will stop yielding Um uh but then and it's not all of it. It's just whatever uh whatever you're paying for in real time.

Um you convert to stable coins um and on the debit card and and you're paying instantly essentially uh for um for whatever you need. It runs on the global Mastercard network and uh and essentially we've managed to to close the loop so that uh that people can uh essentially live their lives um with this new monetary system. And

I mean Mike, you mentioned that the shifts that are going to come in 2026, the changes, but there is still a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines. What do you think it will take for institutional investors um to start moving their money into the into the sector and where do you think those capital flows might come from? So it's interesting to think about like what what is an institutional investor even right like if you think of the so GA is a10 billion dollar company that deals with institutions right so we we set ourselves up to be this we called ourselves the bridge between crypto people and institutions and what we've seen the idea of what an institution is slowly evolve right uh we originally had some venture capital firms that were ahead of the curve they were the institution ions that got in and then they were the big trading shops like DRW and Jump Capital that were arbitrage that were providing liquidity like those are big institutions and they got in. Uh now we have Larry Frink at Black Rockck who started this ETF revolution or actually maybe didn't start it but certainly accelerated the ETF revolution and that has brought tons of institutions in. So hedge funds are participating, sovereign wealth funds are participating.

The more important shift which is starting to happen now is that every single financial institution on the planet is preparing themselves for a world of tokenized assets. Um when I say every single one I mean every single one from the biggest to the smallest banks. And so mark my words six months after this market structure bill passes you will see the Goldman Sachs and the city banks. We're already seeing Bank of America talking about it, JP Morgan talking about it, providing services for digital assets, for Bitcoin, but also for all digital assets. And there's an old adage on Wall Street, right?

Wall Street is a selling machine. It's not a buying machine. It's a selling machine. It's this giant apparatus to sell financial products to its customers. And so hold that thought and think about this giant group of financial institutions that are going to start being part of the selling machine.

And so there is a wave coming where not just consensus and Galaxy and Coinbase and the crypto guys are touting the merits of this new revolutionary shift. But every old financial institution is going to be part of that team. And so again, I don't know if it's mid 26 or 2027, but we're at the starting point really. Like I told my team when we went public, it feels like we just finished a marathon. We actually just hit the starting line.

And as an industry, this is the starting line. And so would it surprise me if it takes to 20 2027 for it to get going? No. Things sometimes take longer. But it's impossible not to feel the energy at all these places picking up.

Yeah. So we we have hit the starting line and the race is going to go very very fast. Um we uh are seeing banks panicking because of stable coins. Um legislation in the US that's in place and legislation that is coming into place is going to change the nature and the SEC itself uh will be changing the nature of the securities industry. Uh so we're seeing uh organizations like Swift reach out to us to to help them build the Swift ledger.

They did that because they're panicking. Uh they did that because stable coins are are going to change the nature of banking. They're the big banks are going to be fine. They're they're really good at adjusting to things. But uh uh local regional banks uh they were panicking.

Uh and so uh we have we have some solutions for them. We believe that they aren't going to need to custody everybody's assets in order to uh to handhold their customers and to earn money uh from that. Uh we believe the nature of identity is shifting in the world. Uh and so um a institution like a bank can be a a data fiduciary, an identity fiduciary. Um we're seeing organizations like uh DTCC uh Eurocar clear stream um and uh stock exchanges around the world um uh getting very serious about tokenizing equity.

I I know somebody who tokenized his own equity um sitting right next to me. Um uh so uh whether it's uh payment versus payment or delivery of instruments, financial instruments versus payment, um I think in the next two years uh we're going to see uh the financial industry totally reformat itself.

It's a very rosy picture for those of you in the sector. I've got to ask hurdles, hiccups, what could stall things? I mean it it doesn't feel like that long. I know we're talking about the foundational elements of this, but it doesn't feel like that long since the crypto winter.

Well, listen. I mean, all this bullishness and overall crypto prices are down pretty big on the year. So, how does that make sense?

Yeah.

Right. We are in this transition, right? There was a lot of excitement coming in with the Trump administration that pushed crypto prices out. And there's a real transition, I said this before, of the story of what could happen and it actually happening. And so lots of ecosystems were a version of Bitcoin.

They were community-based places where people said, I trust in this ecosystem because I don't trust other places. And those the ecosystems that actually start providing value, the blockchains that are built on and used will continue to have narrative and story to bring people into those those spaces. And the other ones are fading away. And so we've probably seen 75% of crypto assets this year lower in price, not higher in price. And so when I say it's going to be a confusing 18 months, the the underlying momentum of an industry is going to be disconnected to a degree from price of what people always perceive to be the assets of that industry, right?

Stable coins, if they do their job, they don't move off of one, you know? So you don't buy a stable coin to make money. You buy a stable coin for utility to use it to pay for things. Those stable coins often run on blockchains or they go through wallets. And so there are lots of businesses that will profit and make money from the proliferation of crypto, but it might not be the token you were used to holding.

Okay?

And so investing in this space is trickier now than it was even in the beginning because in the beginning it was all correlated to each other. was this broad story of crypto and and it's it was a powerful story because it was ringing true. Crypto was the first global market mania. It was the first global asset. You remember US stocks were US stocks or Japanese bonds.

They were localized markets, right? Crypto is a truly international market. Joe told me early that MetaMask has people from 200 countries. I I only thought there were 196 countries, so he found four. uh right like every in every part of the world people are participating in this industry and it's funny because we're all here in Abu Dhabi and we float around in the world to be here so we're globalist by definition

[snorts]

uh most people aren't and so most people are local and this is really a global industry

Joseph I'm going to come to you in a minute but I I'm I aware we've got four minutes left so I just want to get uh Reeves's response to this idea that you know maybe the industry is underest underestimating the, you know, the the challenge, shall we say, of scaling responsibility. And then I then I'll come to Joseph. We need to be good about our timings, otherwise they'll get very angry with me at the back.

It is our job to underestimate the challenge of scalability because if we didn't, we wouldn't do it. So all of us in the crypto industry have to be bullish. We have to believe. We are entrepreneurs. We are builders at heart.

The whole goal, we've been in this for 10 years plus. when when the whole world was against us and just fought every step of the way through every rise and every fall of crypto. And so the volatility has always been there. It's always going to continue. But the technology itself has proven itself over and over and finally the large institutions are recognizing that and that money is going to pour in here and make this last decade of laying the foundation all worthwhile.

[snorts]

Okay. that I I have to say I mean it's wonderful to hear the sort of the positivity and you're backing it up with such solid arguments. Um Joseph you know for years you have basically framed blockchain as the foundation for new digital economies. You know which pieces of that vision for you feel closest to reality as we head towards 2030? Um well I'm a systems thinker uh and uh and I think the paradigm shift is underway and it's accelerating.

Uh so um if you look at uh at uh where we are we are as I I discussed earlier we're at the end of a super cycle an 80year super cycle. The next super cycle will be composed of AI and crypto and decentralized protocols. Um, our ecosystem gets a bad rap because we're this little baby technology ecosystem in a in a big bad economy uh that thought it it uh it ruled the world and and it does. It did and it still does. But uh but things are shifting.

Uh one of the knocks on our ecosystem is that we're too volatile. Uh so we're too volatile because we're a baby ecosystem. um when the the big dog economy sneezes uh the the tail uh the little tail that represents us, it whiplashes uh all around. And so we've seen that recently. We've seen that so many times in our history.

But we're at this moment where the paradigm shift is on to greater decentralization and all the capital is moving in our direction. uh traditional finance is onboarding itself to DeFi in the form of digital asset treasury companies in the form of stable coins in the form of tokenized equities and so many other forms and so uh as I said before uh it's on uh the pace of transformation is going to be pretty shocking to a lot of people.

Amazing stuff. It's been an absolute privilege to share the stage with all three of you. Thank you very much indeed. I'm sure everyone in the audience will want to join us in a round of applause for what has been a truly fascinating conversation.