Bitcoin’s All-Time Highs: Institutional Interest and the Future of Crypto

The digital gold rush is on.

Institutions racing into crypto as Bitcoin sees all-time highs.

Now ETF and floats are in the billions while brokerages are launching various crypto trading products, including tokenized equities, and the US Congress is working on advancing further regulatory clarity on staple coins and a digital assets framework to President Trump's death by the end of.

Well joining me this morning to weigh in is Blu Masai, who is the head of digital assets for T.

Rowe Price.

Good morning, Blue.

Great to have you back on.

Well, Bitcoin is seeing record highs.

Earlier this week we saw Bitcoin clear that 123K level.

So tell me what you're seeing when it comes to institutions and what about crypto product launches?

Yeah, I think one of the things that we've really seen with Bitcoin in recent weeks and also really over the past several months is the narrative around concerns about fiscal fiscal status in the US, US debt dynamics, a long term commitment to reducing deficit and debt spending.

And all have sort of entered the mainstream and once that sort of happened, Bitcoin is a natural hedge, and I think it's become more mainstream in that sense.

So I think that has driven a lot of what we've seen in Bitcoin price movements.

And then I think what we're seeing in sort of everything beyond that, the entire alt space is a move towards people beginning to understand what can be done with blockchain technology and how these things are going to be used.

So I do want to ask you about tokenized equities.

We've been seeing a rush into the space on both sides of the Atlantic.

So when do you expect to see major tradify uh players really start to offer crypto custody?

So I think this is a difficult one.

We're in a very interesting place where the regulation seems to be moving faster in a way that allows a lot of fintechs, a lot of crypto native companies to participate while a lot of stratified companies, particularly banks, have been sort of shut out of the space because of this sort of regulatory overhang.

And there's a build, right?

There's a build associated with being able to support crypto trading, crypto custody, and, and it's not fast.

So we may see acquisitions in the space of crypto native capabilities.

We may see subcontracting, licensing as as an approach, but if we have banks building out their own custody facilities, that's, that's probably a multi-year process.

So I do want to move on and ask you about Solana.

So Solana, the token rallied over the past week, but it's still underperforming the majors, the crypto majors that is.

So what are your thoughts on the blockchain, especially when it comes to stablecoins, tokenization, as well as deepen.

Yeah, I think Salana is one of the tokens I think is sort of most undervalued now.

We've seen a huge run up in many of the other majors, you know, double digit in most cases over the past week or so.

Solana, I think, is extremely well suited to tokenization of real world assets, and I think Uh, crypto Twitter, for lack of a better word, gets very focused on sort of the bursting of the meme coin bubble.

Uh, but I think for the technology, um, and the stress testing of the network itself that you see when you have a strong meme coin cycle translates.

Into the ability to support things like stablecoins, right?

Incredibly fast throughput, incredibly fast settlement times, the network can handle the volumes and the stress, and we saw that with a meme coin frenzy, and I think that carries over into stablecoins.

So It's not clear to me how you can be bullish on stablecoins generally and expect this to be a real driver over the next couple of years and not tie that out and be bullish on Salana in particular, right?

It needs to be cost effective to settle a $3 payment.

It needs to be cost effective to settle a $2 billion payment, but it needs to be cost efficient regardless of the scale, and Salanana offers that.

OK, Blue, well, thank you so much for joining us today.

As always, great to talk to you.

Thank you so much for your insight and your perspective. for having