Welcome to FinTech TV.
I'm Emmy Blair.
While, Bitcoin has been reeling as 2026 ushers in a roller coaster ride for the crypto major.
The broader digital asset market raising nearly $2 trillion in value since its October peak last year.
Now from gridlock in Washington DC to jitters on Wall Street, the nation's largest banks, as well as.
Asset managers are eyeing mainstream integration.
Well, joining me today here at the New York Stock Exchange is Chris Klein, co-founder and COO of Bitcoin IRA.
Chris, great to have you here.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me, Remy.
Well, 2026 has been quite the year when it comes to crypto, but first and foremost, tell me what's going on with Bitcoin.
Oh, so overall crypto and Bitcoin in particular, you know, if you were in this space, I've been here for a decade.
Every 18 months we get our butt kicked a little bit and this is just another feeling.
And so if you're, if you're an outsider looking in, you're like, oh my God, here it goes again.
Bitcoin's dead again and a lot of legacy media is saying that.
But if you're on the inside and you've been in this space for a while, you're, you're pretty much like, OK, this is part and parcel for the path and we'll see where we are come summer and come fall, uh, as far as the overall Bitcoin space.
Well, of course, when we were looking at Bitcoin, the trajectory and the different cycles, can you tell me what has survived right now and where we're going and what actually really matters?
What really matters is having, uh, we keep cutting down our supply because we have a diminishing rate of return for the producers of the currency versus fiat currency where we kind of re-elect them.
We, it's an election cycle coming up.
We re-elect people by printing more money.
So in, in the crypto space we're kind of sitting in this world where we're we're we're evaluating what matters, what's important.
Having is obviously critical utility, community, um, and, and I think institutions, we'll talk about that are a big piece of this entire um.
I guess paradigm that's happening with cryptocurrency today.
Yeah, and you mentioned h, and depending on who you talk to, they have different theories about what caused the most recent sell-off, whether we're talking about October of last year or the beginning of this month.
But you mentioned a lot of keywords there, and with having comes the 4 year cycle.
So where do you think we're going?
So yeah, if you're a 4 year cycle believer, which I, I, I understand it happens, right?
We all Everybody in the crypto space knows every 4 years after having, and then there's another cycle and there's another cycle and there's another cycle.
What's different this time is the last bull run institutions weren't around.
It was all retail play.
And so now we're making this shift where institutions are, are, they're building up whether it's your, uh, you're a nation state or the United States building a reserve currency, whether you're an independent, uh, digital.
Asset treasury, uh, like, like micro strategy and others, none of that exists, neither did the ETF.
So we're in this like new phenomenon where some folks will say, hey, we're headed towards a super cycle event where we're, we're going through this lull, but when all that kicks in, everything's gonna make sense.
And others are saying, OK, well, the bull happened and now we're back in the bear and it's gonna be 16 months before we get to the next cycle.
Tough to make the decision right now.
We're in a sideways market.
Yes, we've pulled back 55%.
The last big pullback was 85%.
So, do we go further down, or are we at that point where we're gonna start bouncing forward?
Anybody that says otherwise in crypto that they actually know is probably not a crypto guy.
Yeah, and Chris, you've been in this space for a while now.
So when it comes to institutional adoption, I do want to get your take, because given what we saw with this recent selloff, there are a lot of opinions out there.
So where are we really when it comes to institutional adoption?
Well, like I said, institutions weren't around last time.
They came into the ETFs.
The institutions aren't selling.
So if you watch BlackRock and others, they're actually doubling down.
They're adding more.
Michael, Michael Sab from Michael Strategy is adding more.
So.
This is a moment in time where I think people are looking at like Macy's red tag sale, uh, Bitcoin's on sale, so I might as well aggregate more.
Those that are DCAing that I know are adding that they're basically, if I was doing $1000 a day, now I'm doing $2000 a day just to try to get more.
I mean, you're stacking sacks at a cheaper rate.
And you're gonna kick yourself when it gets back to 126, 150, 175 if you didn't buy at these moments in time.
But just like the great, the greats of Wall Street have said, when blood's in the streets, I'm buying, this is a moment in time where the institutions are saying, oh, we got a great deal.
So let's just keep going, uh, and retail's going to pay more for this.
Yeah, Chris, I like that analogy with the Macy's red tag sale because we don't have a crystal ball and hindsight is always 20/20.
So speaking of which, I do want to get your take on what's coming out of the nation's capital here.
All eyes are on the regulatory landscape.
What do you think is realistic when it comes to legislation?
So regulation has been such a blessing for us because that's what we lacked for the last 8 years.
Now that it's here, it was, we were on the roll, right?
We're on the train, we're ready to go, and then the government took the longest.
Vacation it's ever taken with the shutdown in, in, um, in October into November and that stalled not just, it didn't just stall the Clarity Act, it's also stalled, uh, ETFs, ETPs, approvals, SEC, CFTC, all, all the four-letter or three-letter agencies were saying, oh, we can't do anything right now because we're turned off and we're getting back ahead of that backlog.
What's going to happen out of DC right now is there's been this battle about stable coin rewards and what's happening with the Clarity Act and the banks have kind of put their heels in and said, well, that's unfair.
Competition and the crypto guys are saying, well, you're kind of a cartel because this is better for the end consumer.
I think we're going to get passage and even President Trump has said, you guys take care of this or I'm going to take care of this, and he doesn't mess around.
And so I think we'll probably see passage in the next 3 to 4 weeks.
What it will look like at the end of it will be a question mark.
But once that lie lies through, uh, Kevin O'Leary, who's here, one of the Wall Street greats, thinks there's $1 trillion waiting to come into the crypto space, and I, I, I would hope, I would hope to believe that he's right about that.
Once we get this clear, and I love the word that it's called Clarity Act because it's really gonna give that clarity, the guardrails and the protections, and now we're off to the races.
Yeah, and for viewers out there who are wondering what is the future, of course we don't have that crystal ball, but I do want to ask you, when it comes to use cases, whether we're talking about tokens or technology, what do you envision?
So beyond Bitcoin, I think uh my daughter's 4 years old, was 4 years old when I first taught her this.
She's now 12, she was here with me last time.
Um, there's 4, there were 4 main tokens back then.
This was 8 years ago.
Uh, Bitcoin is money.
Uh, Litecoin is shopping because she loves to shop, especially on, on, on 5th Avenue, right?
And all the, all the shops there.
Um, XRP is banking and Ethereum is contracts, and I think those two in particular, XRP and others around it like ExcelM, there's gonna be a revolution of digital banking, a streamlined process of those things, and then Ethereum is gonna be the backbone for.
Web 456 that we haven't even started thinking about taking back our privacy, protecting those, those things.
These are what the right, the right cryptos outside of Bitcoin will bring utility and community and, and they will revolutionize their space.
And let's not forget about the intersection that's going to happen between crypto and AI over the next probably 18 to 24 months.
It's going to be mind blowing.
Yeah, and speaking of which, for retail investors out there who are wondering what do they really need to understand with the crypto market, what would you actually say to them?
The biggest misnomer is the line for $156,000 Bitcoin is three people or is is literally wrapped around the stock exchange three or four times miles long, and the line for 70.
6 or $70,000 Bitcoin is 3 or 4 people.
This is the moment in time that the crypto and the market gods have given us to get in this space at a cheaper price, but they, they, they so commonly say, oh well, Bitcoin's dead.
I'm glad I didn't buy that, and then they're going to rush to buy it when it hits the next level.
The other big misnomer is you.
You don't have to buy one Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are the most fractionalized assets on the planet, and they're going to even be more so as tokenization continues to evolve.
So you can buy to the 10th decimal point of cryptocurrency.
You don't have to buy one whole Bitcoin for $67,000.
You can buy $6 worth of Bitcoin.
I think that's a big thing that they miss.
And then in my world, if you're going to risk.
I guess the Bitcoin space and the volatility that comes with it.
What better place than places like retirement accounts that that are so underused.
50% of Americans aren't using retirement accounts today.
That's a big deal.
And if you're not doing that, you're not, you're missing out on the tax advantages that really build generational wealth.
So that's what I would say to retail buyers today.
Yeah.
And finally, before I let you go, you mentioned a key word here, and that is tokenization.
You and I are here in New York City on Wall Street, but when it comes to the rest of the world, what does tokenization look like?
And tell us about the utility there.
Right now it's just a buzzword for a lot of folks.
Other than that the Bitcoin Investor Week last week with Anthony Pompiano, it was a big conversation.
Because there's, I, I don't want to call them languishing, but there's assets that are sitting without value.
And for example, the stock exchange is public, but if the building across the street could be tokenized and you could create a secondary market around that, I think ourselves, we have $12 billion of assets under custody, about 2 or $3 billion of that.
It is not crypto.
It's real estate, land, venture capital, private equity, private stocks.
All those things can be tokenized and then you build a secondary liquidity market, which is certainly, especially tokenized, is gonna give us 24/7, 365.
It's gonna change the landscape.
These guys might actually start having to work overtime here.
Well, it's really funny because the NYC also announced that they're getting into this space as well.
So a lot to keep our eyes on as we head into 2026.
So thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me, Rachel.
My pleasure.
