While we are fresh off one of the biggest crypto conferences of the year in Miami and the vibe has officially matured.
The flash orange suits and Lambes are scarce.
Instead we saw execs from Tra by as well as policymakers roaming the massive convention center while the real test comes this week in Washington on May 14th.
The Senate Banking Committee will finally hold its markup on a landmark digital asset bill after months of delays.
Well joining me live here at the New York Stock Exchange is Frank Chaparro, Head of Content and Special Projects at GSR.
Well, Frank, great to have you here and welcome back to New York.
So good to see you.
I hope you had a nice flight.
Yes, I did.
So we're off of consensus 2026, which took place last week in Miami, and there's quite a shift in mood when we're talking about what we've seen in consensus in previous years.
So what did you make of that shift?
I mean, I think.
The juxtaposition was very clear in Miami right with the number of Trad 5 folks represented and the lack of sort of retail fervor that you usually see at that Miami conference.
The last time they had it there, I think was in 2021, and that's when NFTs were a big meta, the metaverse was a big meta, and you had much more of a retail contingency at the event, you know, large house parties and that sort of thing.
This was a bit more sleepy, a bit more focused on the development of RWAs and stablecoin, and less about those retail narratives, which makes sense because the crypto market from a retail perspective has been stuck in the doldrums, and that's really evident I think in crypto exchange volumes.
Last month April was the lowest level in over 2 years, so about $750 billion of turnover compared to multiple trillions last year.
But I think we're starting to see a shift there, which is interesting.
Over the past week there's been two categories within crypto that have been doing really well privacy and AI, unsurprisingly, so I think maybe we've bottomed out from the perspective. retail interest from the institutional side though, I mean it's clear that the demand is incredibly strong, we saw this morning NE listed Circle announced that they're raising over $220 million for their Ark project.
So the institutional demand is there.
The retail interest is a trickle, but it looks like it's starting to move in the right direction.
Yes, and Frank, while I have you here, I do want to get your take on market sentiment here because when we look at the price action of the majors, including Bitcoin and E, we are currently looking at Bitcoin right above that 80,000 level.
But there are a lot of expectations in the nation's.
This week.
So what do you expect to see as we head into the rest of Q2 for 2026?
It's a good question.
I mean right now the question is on clarity and whether that's going to get marked up and become the law of the land.
We're looking at maybe 40, 50% chance of that happening, so hopefully it does.
I think once we have the right guardrails and rules of the road in place.
Institutions will be able to get even more involved than they already are in crypto, but they already are quite involved.
If you look at Apollo being engaged with Morpho, Blackrock snapping up some Uniswap tokens, these are developments that if you had told me this when I started covering the space in 2017, that this would be the lay of the land, I would have.
I would have called you crazy probably, right?
And this is the reality that we're in and I don't see it slowing down.
In addition, we've had 6 weeks of net inflows into crypto ETFs, which is a big change from the Q1 sentiment, the Q1 flows that we've seen.
So the momentum is.
The puzzle pieces are there and I think the most important part right now is the fact that Trackf is not slowing down.
Once you move the carrier into this direction, you can't really shift gears very easily, and we see that in the hiring Morgan Stanley, Citadel, BlackRock in aggregate they've got.
Over 100 roles open on LinkedIn for digital asset strategists, Defi strategists, and traders, and I don't think that's going to, they're not going to sort of walk back on that.
Yes, and Frank, as you mentioned, you continue to monitor the hiring from traditional financial institutions as you mentioned.
So what are those roles actually telling you?
LinkedIn doom scrolling.
That's what I do.
I'm just doomed scrolling LinkedIn.
And the jobs, I mean, honestly, they point to where we're going.
This is a hot tip for your audience.
If you look at a LinkedIn job ad, give it like 3 or 4 weeks, you're going to see some sort of development happen or some sort of news announcement happen at that particular company, right?
So you've seen trading firms post job postings for Prediction market trading specialist at Fidelity, they had a job posting for a DeFi specialist that would look at building out vaults, which are a red hot topic in the crypto space and kind of an asset management 4.0.
So they really point to the strategy.
And the endeavors of these tra fund institutions.
And finally, before I let you go, Frank, of course GSR has announced the launch of funds, but in addition to that, last week at consensus we heard plenty of announcements whether we're talking about partnerships or. positions.
So what were the key takeaways when it comes to some of these partnerships?
Yes, it's interesting.
I mean, I think right now what we're trying to do is build the pipes and plumbing of what an institutional grade crypto capital markets look like.
For over a decade we've been licking our wounds on the blowups of our credit markets, the lack of interconnectivity between our trading platforms and exchanges, and so in 2026 with The movement of TrackFinder crypto firms like GSR need to position ourselves to support that amount of flow and that amount of engagement with robust platforms for trading, market making, and asset management, and that's what we're doing.
We partnered with Standard Charter.
And we had SEV join our cap table, first time ever we've had an external shareholder join our cap table at GSR, and it shows how the banking, traditional banking rails and the crypto rails are now becoming interlinked so that we can.
Move in the right direction of bridging these two worlds and that's what I think we're going to see more of in 2026.
And in a nutshell for the retail investor that is watching right now at the airport gates across the country or even hotel rooms, what would you say to them that all of this will impact their daily trading activities that's that's probably.
Most important question, right?
I mean there's nothing about sort of more robust market structure that's going to add net new buyers to crypto.
But once sentiment shifts and the animal spirits awakened, we're seeing a little bit of that with the AI tokens, a bit tenser Venice, they're catching a bit of a bid on the boom we're seeing in.
But once we have those waves and once retail sentiment shifts and you have more buying, a more robust capital market just means more resilient trading, right, so you don't have these massive blowups or if you do, they're more controlled, they're more contained, which is beneficial for for the retail user.
Well, Frank, it was great having you on the show.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Hopefully you'll be back soon.
Hopefully, thank you.
