And now time for one of our favorite guests here on the show, the great Andy Bear, a name and face you know and love, but a man with a different title, managing director of asset management at GSR.
Thanks for being here as always.
Congrats on the new gig.
We'll talk more about it in just a sec.
Nice to see you.
Yep.
Uh, so you and I were just, we were just looking at the, the final tape into the 4 o'clock close.
Big rally for equities.
What are you seeing for the crypto majors?
Interesting action.
Yeah, we're right at the top of that.
Range where Bitcoin has held ever since that February 5th kind of uh deleveraging moment, right?
We've been from the mid 60s up to the mid 70s.
Every, uh, rally has failed.
There's been selling pressure up there.
We've kept this ambivalent market going for about 8 weeks now, so we're right at the top.
And given what I was seeing while I was watching the Masters yesterday and watching the S&P 500, uh, futures trade on, uh, hyperliquid down 200 handles.
Uh, I wouldn't have guessed, right?
So, uh, I would have gotten that wrong.
So, uh, it's a, yeah, it's a very strong day for both ether and, uh, Solana as well as Bitcoin.
That's I love that.
So you got Rory McIlroy hitting, hitting a bogey, but he still holds on at the 18th hole.
He hits 5 on the 18th hole and you got your hyperliquid screen over there.
You and I have talked about Bitcoin correlation a long time.
What are you seeing right now with regards to BTC decoupling from tech on this backdrop?
Of a lot of geopolitical concerns.
We've kind of always felt that eventually the market will start to decouple with Bitcoin functioning as a macro asset, really the quality asset within crypto, the thing that you kind of swim back to if you want to be in crypto, but you want to de-risk, whereas the layer one blockchains like Ether and Solana, right, they'll power higher when the mood turns more towards growth, and that's how we like to think about this portfolio allocation question, right?
You want to kind of swim back to Bitcoin when you're a little bit nervous about the market and you know, lean into those layer ones when you feel like the market has a bit more energy.
When you hear about this news about tokenization and stablecoins, all of those things have to settle to layer one blockchains.
Bitcoin really doesn't have a lot to do with it.
It's really about Ether and Solana.
So they've been leading rallies up, uh, but they've also been, you know, drawing down, uh, you know, as as much more, so.
Bitcoin is your safe haven and Ether and Solana are your growth assets.
Can I get your take on this Morgan Stanley ETF news?
Seen a lot of headlines.
Undoubtedly our viewers have seen a lot of headlines in the last few days.
Give us some context about what this moment really means for the broader adoption industry.
Absolutely.
Well, first of all, my former employer Coindesk won the benchmark mandate for that, so I was very happy for those guys that the, the Coin desk uh Bitcoin price will, will benchmark that product.
I think it's actually entering the market with a very different objective in mind, right?
It's not going to try to trade more options or more shares than the BlackRock product.
It's an allocation product.
It's going to sit in portfolios for a long time.
That's what excites me the most about it.
This is really a strong sign from one of the biggest wealth management and investment management platforms on the planet that they're going to allocate into these things for buy and hold.
Is not crypto as a trading asset class, but crypto as a long term allocation asset class.
Nothing could make me happier.
For anyone watching who might be a bit unfamiliar with GSR more, more broadly, what is the company all about?
Talk to us a bit about your new role and your top priorities.
I couldn't be more excited.
I've been following this company for a long time, and actually some of the people who joined GSR 56 years ago are the ones who really influenced me into getting.
Into this industry, this exciting industry, GSR started in 2013 when new coins went into ICO, wanted to come to market.
They needed market making services.
Uh, maybe some of you have heard of XRP and Ripple, right?
That was GSR's first client.
And when they came to market and their token listed, GSR was their first market maker.
And since then, GSR has built this reputation as a very, uh, high service.
High quality market maker for early stage tokens.
Since then it's added OTC businesses, a big venture portfolio, and is really well known around the space.
And now with all that attention and all that good client goodwill, they said, you know what, let's get into asset management, and I'm delighted to be leading that effort.
Andy Beer, longtime friend of ours here at the New York Stock Exchange and on the show now at GSR.
Congratulations, my man.
Very well deserved.
They're lucky to have you.
Thanks, JD.
