Let's get to the big story breakdown.
In New York Morning trade, we are looking at Bitcoin holding the 91,000 level earlier this week.
The crypto major dropped below 90,000 everying its year to date gains, but the crypto major is trading about 30% below its all-time high from early October.
Now, a big part of this year's rally was fueled by leverage, traders borrowing heavily to amplify their.
But and also making headline news, the head of the Bosnel committee says global rules on how much capital banks must hold against crypto losses need a major rewrite.
Now the crypto ecosystem has seen its share of major ups and downs, despite the volatility and doubt, developers have been building decentralized permissionless networks and also creating an entirely new industry estimated to be Worth nearly $4 trillion.
Joining me this morning is Chris Perkins, president and managing partner at Coin Fund.
Chris, welcome back.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Good morning, Remy.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Well, the countdown is on to your end, and a lot has happened when it comes to the digital asset landscape.
So give us a sense of where we are right now when we're talking about institutional versus retail.
Since its inception, Bitcoin and crypto has largely been retail led, and I think right now we're seeing what I like to call the flippinging where retail recently pulled back a little bit.
We had some issues in what we call 1010.
There was there was some issues with finance and other derivatives issues, so retail got burned a little bit.
And because of that pullback, retail will ebb, retail will flow, but behind the scenes we're seeing incredible building from the institutions.
They continue to march forward and what's driving that, it's a lot of the regulatory derisking that we continue to see and and I guess the realization that this technology is something that we could they could really use.
And Chris, you have the privilege of speaking to entrepreneurs out there, so what are you hearing and what conversations are you having with stakeholders?
It's a very exciting time.
So this regulatory de-risking is allowing innovators to come back into space.
We think there are about 30 million developers in the world right now, and a lot of them have been very scared to enter crypto because in certain cases under the Genzler administration they may have gone to jail.
So that's opening up right now and it's a very exciting time.
I'll tell you something else that's really interesting, and we're seeing the markets be buoyed a little bit right now by Nvidia earnings.
Um, people don't realize how intertwined these major technologies are.
You have AI and you have crypto, and you shouldn't look at them separately.
They're very much intertwined.
And so with the strength we're seeing with Nvidia, the excitement around AI, you can't ignore crypto.
I'll give you an example.
People don't realize this.
Sam Altman, he's a Founder of WorldCoin.
WorldCoin provides proof of humanity.
It's a way that we can tell the difference between bots and humans.
That's just one example of how these technologies are intertwined going forward.
It's a very exciting time.
Yeah, and in today's session we are looking at US stock futures higher on the heels of Nvidia earnings and artificial intelligence. is something that we've been paying close attention to.
You gave us an example right there at the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence.
So what are other use cases that you're paying attention to?
Yeah, so we're going to be soon in a world that's dominated by AI agents.
AI agents are amazing technologies and they're very good at optimization, but it's really hard for them to open up a bank account.
But guess what?
They can definitely navigate this new decentralized finance system by transacting in things such as crypto or stablecoins.
So pretty soon you're going to see the agentic economy start supplementing everything that we do from our investment decisions to everything else.
And again, proof of humanity really comes in handy when you want to know am I dealing with a person or am I dealing with a bot.
And when it comes to agentic AI, there are a lot of concerns, especially when we're talking about a highly regulated regulated industry such as finance or financial services.
So give us your take on what we're seeing in the nation's capital in terms of progress for legislation and what we can expect in the new year.
Yeah, so there's there's a lot of things going on in DC right now.
Yesterday, Mike Selig went through his first hearing of the Ag committee.
We expect there to be potentially a vote from ag today, then it will go to the full Senate.
I will tell you there are very few people in the world who understand the complexities of AI and crypto like Mike Selig.
He's pro-innovation.
He's going to work very closely with Chairman Atkins, and we're going to see a lot of things coming, even in the absence of legislation.
But on the legislation front we're seeing that marching forward as well.
I recently spoke to Patrick Witt down at the White House.
He's working really hard to get legislation done, and that's just another avenue to see mass adoption, mass mainstream adoption as this entire technology gets crystallized.
From an AI perspective, I do think there's we do need to have a federal level set of guidelines because otherwise you're dealing with states, it's really hard to realize the full potential.
So it's no surprise that David Sachs is responsible for both AI and crypto again, going back to that intertwined theme.
And finally looking overseas, 2025 has been the year of stablecoins across the digital asset landscape.
So what do you make of the Basel Committee's comments, and do you think they're doing a complete 180?
So I'm an ex-banker, and if you haven't worked on Wall Street, it's really hard to understand just how important Basel rules are.
They drive everything at a bank.
They determine what business is good and what business is bad because it drives what we call your ROE.
And so to date they haven't just been punitive.
Basel rules have effectively been a shadow ban on crypto.
They charge you a 1,250% counterparty risk weighting, which is a huge number, even if you don't know what I'm talking about.
It means it's really punitive.
Just yesterday, the chairman of the Basel of the banking supervision Committee said, wait a second, maybe we need to rethink this, and it's no surprise when the US people like Governor Bowman say this is ridiculous, you know, this needs to get better, so.
Any type of change will allow the banks to get back, will allow them to participate in the crypto economy.
That is a major unlock for the space.
And so people don't realize how big a deal this is.
It's a big deal.
Well, Chris, always great talking to you.
Thank you so much for joining me here at the New York Stock Exchange, and thank you so much for sharing all of your insights as well as your perspective.
Thanks Ray, to see you.
Thank you.
