Let's get to the big story.
Breakdown while geopolitical headlines over the weekend marking another notable shift in the 24/7 crypto markets in New York morning trade.
We are looking at Bitcoin holding the 65,500 level.
Now while digital assets are experiencing volatility in 202016 a new trend is also emerging.
Crypto trading venues have become active hubs for traditional commodities.
Traders use utilizing crypto native perpetual swap.
To manage risk around the clock and leading to significant weekend trading activity in oil, gold, as well as silver contracts law as we kick off a new trading week as well as new trading month is Dave Laval, president of coin desk data and indices, a portfolio company of bullish group.
Dave, good morning.
Thank you so much for joining me.
It's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
2026 has seen volatility across all asset classes, particularly.
Early in the crypto market.
So where are we right now and what do you make of the season that we're in?
Well, I would say that you know 24/7 trading can never be more prevalent than when we have geopolitical issues rising.
And so watching what has happened over the weekend and allowing investors of all shapes and sizes to be able to kind of express their investment interests utilizing crypto assets 24/7 has been something that I've been paying close attention to, particularly over the weekend.
So whether that's crypto assets or prediction markets, I think we've seen the opportunity to be fairly range bound with Bitcoin, while we've seen equity futures when they're not trading going lower, commodities going a bit higher, especially when we're looking at gold and we're looking at oil.
So it's exciting to be able to utilize crypto to be engaged with the markets 24/7.
And you brought up another thing that we're watching in the markets, and that is prediction markets.
But when we zoom out and take a look at the macro outlook in addition to the themes that we're watching for digital assets in 2026, what's changed and what is on your radar right now and why?
Well, just to touch on prediction markets, we've seen massive increase in volumes of prediction markets, and I think over the weekend we saw nearly a half a billion that were kind of trading in and around all of the prediction markets associated with the conflict in the Middle East.
However, It's not very large when we kind of compare that to more institutional grade markets like we do here on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
So while that has grown significantly, I don't think it is yet being viewed by institutional market players as an opportunity to really take advantage of.
But where we are in the broader crypto markets, it's an institutionalization that's continuing to happen.
We're looking at the growth of crypto markets, obviously a massive inflection point once we had crypto ETFs start to trade down here on the floor of the New York and so we're seeing larger scale institutional players come in to try and bring institutional quality products to market.
So we're super excited about that.
I think at Coindesk we're really focused on the opportunity to have kind of a crypto benchmark, you know, the S&P 500 of crypto, and so at Coindesk we're focused on ensuring that we're kind of institutionalizing the market and a multi-tokeen index that can be the bellwether for all of crypto is something that we're focused on with our crypto 5 excuse me, with our Coin desk 5 and our Coin desk 20 indices.
Yes, and you mentioned institutional adoption, and that is the key theme that we're watching in 2026 and you mentioned the launch of Bitcoin.
ETFs.
I remember when they first launched here on an exciting day, wasn't it?
Absolutely.
And when we take a look at the regulatory landscape, the progress that has been made within the US, and the implications and the impact for retail investors out there, what are you paying attention to?
And because you mentioned ETPs, can you break down what we're actually seeing in the data?
Yes, sure.
So let's start with the data for ETPs.
So you know as I was working at Greyscale and trying to figure out how we're going to break down some of the kind of Complexities of bringing a Bitcoin ETP to market.
We were handicapping how big that market could potentially be, and we were kind of looking at a two sigma event to be 3040 $50 billion in AUM.
We very quickly got to $100 billion in AUM in Bitcoin ETP assets in 11 months.
Just for some sort of comparison.
It took gold ETPs 16 years to get to $100 billion in assets just as a metric for the viewers.
And so we have seen a massive adoption, but that adoption hasn't even really happened yet because large scale investments by institutions and by the large wealth management platforms haven't really been able to be able to happen yet.
So we're really looking at about $100 billion in assets that have come in from self-directed investors only.
When the large scale wirehouse managers, RIAs, and institutions start to get involved, we could see something 34, 5x of what's.
In the Bitcoin ETPs.
Now from a regulatory landscape perspective, we obviously had really significant developments with the passing of the Genius Act, so that's more regulatory framework around stablecoins, and I think we're looking for an infrastructure bill hopefully in the second half of this year that will give some more kind of clarity around, you know, when I say infrastructure exchanges and other segments of the market.
You mentioned the regulatory landscape that is something that we continue to monitor.
Here on Wall Street, but also I do want to get your take on jurisdiction before we move away from ATP.
What's happening there?
OK, so jurisdictions right now, I think a lot of the regulatory landscape in different jurisdictions around the world typically look to the US to see what the SEC is going to, how the SEC is going to handle regulation.
We have a lot of clarity as it pertains to kind of crypto ETPs in the market.
The SEC had approved a generic listing standard.
For ETP assets, so we're seeing a really strong proliferation of more crypto assets coming to life in the form of an ETF.
I think that ETFs have been kind of a battle tested wrapper that investors can really rely upon.
And so this is just another story of democratization of a different asset class in the ETF wrapper.
So I think we're going to see a broad proliferation of more crypto ETPs coming to market.
I think there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 active filings.
It's going to be an exciting second half of this year.
And speaking of the second half of this year, we're just kicking off the final month of Q1, although it feels as though it should be later on in the year.
But as we continue to look ahead to the rest of this year, you mentioned stablecoins.
That is something that we'll continue to monitor.
What is your outlook for the overall digital asset market right now?
Well, I think innovation needs two things.
Innovation needs a piece of technology, which we have and kind of broad proliferation of.
It also needs regulatory clarity, and so I think that regulatory clarity coming in the form of this infrastructure proposal which we really do think is going to seek some sort of approval or clarity in the second half of the year, will be something that will allow for a broader investment in some of this technology and therefore a broader proliferation of what we think is going to be brought to investors at large.
With that clarity allows for larger scale institutions and traditional finance.
To be able to invest further in their opportunity to kind of expand their franchises into crypto.
That's what's exciting for us.
Bullish and Coindesk are 100% in on crypto.
We are building institutional platforms that's going to be built for crypto players and traditional finance players, and so we're really excited about the future.
And finally, before I let you go, we have about 60 seconds here, but for people who perhaps were on a long vacation and they're looking at the price of crypto assets right now in particular.
Or Bitcoin and they're saying what happened and where are we in the cycle right now?
What would you say to them?
You know it's really hard to put a prediction on a Bitcoin price, but some of the volatility that we have seen, if you kind of pull the aperture of the camera back, volatility has gone from like 80 volt to 40 volt and then back to 50 or 60 volt.
The reality is that volatility and the volatility of the volatility is indicative of the fact that we haven't had broad scale. and we haven't had the mass adoption that we need.
As we get more institutional adoption, you're going to see that volatility come down.
It'll be a little more boring in terms of crypto, but it's going to be more reliable.
Where we are in the cycle, if you're saying buy or sell, I would say I'm stronger on the bid side than I am on the offer side, but we're going to see what happens in the future.
Yes, and Dave, we have about 30 seconds here, so I do want to ask you about tokenization.
How will all of this shake out?
Oh my gosh, tokenization is such an exciting segment of where we're going to head in crypto.
People are saying, Well, is tokenization just a solution looking for a problem?
And I quickly point to the fact that tokenization has already proven to be something that is massively effective.
Tokenization, stablecoins are the greatest indication that tokenization can work, and this is just essentially money market funds coming to life in the form of a token.
And it's a $300 billion market and again having that regulatory clarity and watching the US government really kind of tackle stablecoins and putting a framework around them is the greatest indication that tokenization is here to stay.
The stablecoin market in general is a top 10 buyer of US Treasuries as collateral for their stable coins.
It's here to stay.
Well Dave, a lot to keep our eyes on as we head into the rest of this year.
So thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sharing all of your insights.
It's been great.
Thanks.
