Watch the full video of this Space session on Gamma Prime’s YouTube channel
Space session with Harrison Frye (Co-founder & CGO at Acquire.Fi), Alex McFarlane (Co-Founder of Keyring Network), Evan Szu (Co-Founder & CEO at Gamma Prime), Michael Kong (CEO/CIO at Sonic Labs), David Millar-Durrant (CEO at Sig.Network), Laura K. Inamedinova (Chief Global Ecosystem Officer at Gate.com), Shubham Bhandari (Head of Ecosystem at Manta Ray Labs), Joshua Cheong (Head of Product at Mantle Network), and Tobias Bauer (Co-Founder & General Partner at tbv)
This Gamma Prime Spaces cast brought together a powerhouse panel of founders, executives, and ecosystem leaders from across Web3, finance, and gaming to discuss the shifting tides in crypto markets. From Bitcoin ETFs driving institutional adoption, to Ethereum’s divergence, to tokenized RWAs and the future of stablecoins, the conversation spanned both macroeconomic forces and on-the-ground developments in blockchain.
Alongside sharp market insights, the panelists also shared personal stories—from professional paintball to record-setting escape rooms—reminding us that behind every protocol and investment is a very human journey. With perspectives from Acquire.FI, Sonic Labs, Gate.com, Mantle, Manta, SIG Network, and more, this session offered a rare glimpse into how industry leaders see Q3 alpha, geopolitics, and regulation shaping the next phase of crypto adoption.
Evan (Gamma Prime)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Gamma Prime Spaces cast.
We’ll get started in just a moment.
While we’re waiting, if you guys could just confirm that the audio is coming through fine and everything sounds good.
Harrison (Acquire.FI)
I can hear you loud and clear.
Evan
Awesome.
Laura (Gate.com)
GM GM everyone.
Evan
Hello.
Great to see many familiar faces.
We’ll get going in just a moment.
So everyone, again, welcome to the Gamma Prime Spaces cast.
I’m Evan Szu. I am one of the co-founders here at Gamma Prime.
For those of you new to Gamma Prime, we are a marketplace. You can think of us as an exchange. We bring together specifically private investments and capital allocators.
We say private investments—some of you may just know that as hedge funds. Essentially, it is unusual ways, uncorrelated ways of generating yield and return. But we’re also just fanatics about the market because this is the space that much of the team has been in, along with tech, for many decades now.
Myself, I’ve been a trader in markets for over 30 years. And so it’s a pleasure to be able to talk with our esteemed panel today about where markets are currently, what alpha is looking like in Q3, and get their perspective on it.
This is a great group. Looking forward to having this chat. Maybe we could start briefly by having the guest panelists just briefly introduce themselves. Tell us a little bit about what you’re working on, where your project is from.
And maybe—I always like to say—tell us something unusual about yourself that maybe other people don’t know about. Because we do have a lot of familiar faces, and folks are often familiar with the big picture, but maybe just something nuanced or subtle.
So yeah, anybody can feel free to jump in. I’ll turn it over to our awesome panel.
Harrison
Sure, I can jump in. So I’m Harrison Fry, co-founder of Acquirefy. We do crypto mergers and acquisitions, secondaries, and OTC.
We have lots of different deals. Pretty big one we just closed this week. So did a little celebration last night. We closed a Kraken-backed acquisition. Pretty big one. They bought Vertex Protocol.
And something unique about me—I’m also a professional athlete.
Evan
Sweet. Gosh, we’ve got a bunch of these. Korath is a professional snowboarder, he’s one of our co-founders as well. Oh really? What sport, if I may ask?
Harrison
Paintball. Professional paintball. So I’ve got crypto, and then I travel around the world and play paintball and shoot people with my paintball gun.
Evan
That’s sweet.
Tobi, thanks for joining. I’ve gone ahead and turned you on as well. I said we’d just let people go around. Go ahead.
Michael (Sonic Labs)
Hey, my name’s Michael Kong. I’m the CEO of Sonic Labs, which is an L1 project.
We used to be known as Phantom. We’ve been around for about seven and a half years now. So we’re one of the first L1s to have ever launched in 2019.
We rebranded to Sonic in 2024 and we launched a new chain in December 2024, mostly focused on DeFi, but also focusing on gaming as well with a bunch of developer features we’ve got coming down the line.
Unusual fact about myself is that my parents are native French speakers, even though we are of Chinese origin, because my parents are from a tiny African country called Mauritius that not many people have heard about.
Evan
That’s cool. I was just going to give my little bit something interesting, which is that I just went to Mauritius, spent a beautiful three weeks there. Michael, for people that don’t know, Michael essentially comes from paradise. He comes from Bali before the tourists overran it.
Michael Kong
Well, I am a Russian citizen, but I was born and grew up in Australia, hence my accent. But I didn’t know you went to Mauritius. I’ve been there many, many times and it’s an absolutely beautiful place.
It’s just a tropical island with a diverse mix of individuals, mostly of Indian origin, but also Creoles as well, so mixed race people. There’s a small Chinese population there of only about two or three percent.
Evan
For those of you who haven’t been there, I highly recommend it. It’s also a very up-and-coming place in Africa as a potential financial center. There are several people speculating it’s going to be kind of the African Singapore.
But it’s also just a very beautiful island, with friendly people and empty streets, not overrun by drunk tourists at all. Gorgeous.
All right, who’s next?
Laura
Well, I can go next. Hi, everyone. My name is Laura Cornelia Inna Medinova. I’m Chief Ecosystem Officer at Gate.io, now Gate.com. We rebranded recently. And principal at Gate Ventures.
Basically, I focus on finding interesting projects to invest in.
An interesting fact about me—if we’re thinking about achievements—well, I have done the most escape rooms in the whole Baltic region, being 236. And planning to increase that number.
Evan
How many did you get out of?
Laura
All of them. If I’m here in this space.
Evan
Oh my gosh. That’s amazing.
Laura
That’s my hobby. If anyone sees me in any conference anywhere around the world and you come to me and say, “escape rooms?” I’ll be like, heck yes.
Evan
Wow. I’ve tried a couple. I didn’t make it out of any of them.
Laura
Next time I’ll bring you together. We’ll escape it in the record time. Like, I hold records in around 30 escape rooms around the world.
Evan
Wow. Awesome. And now, by the way, I had a great chat with you at your spaces as well. So glad to see you in joining ours.
Laura
Well, happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Evan
All right. Anyone else?
Joshua (Mantle Network)
Sure. Can you hear me?
Evan
Yes, you sound good.
Joshua
Yeah, I can go next. My name is Joshua. On Twitter, it’s known as Innovator.
I’m the head of product for Mental Network, which is the fourth largest L2 in the ecosystem.
I came from a traditional finance background. Got into macro and got deep into protocol engineering.
But yeah, it’s always been the inspiration of mine in investments. One thing I think people don’t know so much about me—I’m based in Singapore, but I’m actually also Singaporean, which means I was born and bred in Singapore before it became a crypto hub.
The most random fun fact is the current prime minister of Singapore. We were all from choir in the same school. For some reason, the choir in the pre-university junior college, the same choir has quite a few politicians. One of my seniors is a member of parliament. And one of my largest seniors is now the prime minister of Singapore.
Evan
That’s awesome. That is a family Singapore story. And if anybody doesn’t know it, should look at it. It is totally like built something amazing from nothing in a very short amount of time. And it was the prime minister. And now I believe his son, is that right? Is currently the prime minister?
Joshua
It’s now a new, the son has actually passed it over to the current prime minister. Yeah, he happens to be from the same school. So that’s very interesting.
Evan
Okay. Actually, I’m a little out of date. I’m looking forward to seeing you in Singapore at Token 2049.
And as always, we’re doing one of our monster side events. So all of you guys are welcome to come out for the Gamma Prime tokenized capital summit as well.
It should be on the 30th of September. If we can find a hotel room. It’s already all booked out. It’s crazy. I looked at hotel rooms like a month ago. And a lot of the ones around MBS were already totally full. And the person was like, oh, it’s not just Token 2049, there’s F1 right after it as well. So it’s a busy time.
Right. Let’s see.
Shubham (Manta Network)
Yeah, I can go next. So hi everyone. I’m Shubham. I’m the head of ecosystem at Manta.
Before that, I started my career in Redfire again, banking and stuff. Then moved to Polygon as a research analyst, but it didn’t feel well. So I moved to BD. I worked with Polygon on the BD side on specifically gaming.
Then I moved to Manta. I was working with Manta as well, specifically on the gaming side. Then back in 2023, I moved to Manta as a head of ecosystem. So it’s around two years now.
Initially, I started more focusing on the ecosystem project side and stuff. Now it’s majorly focused on the foundation side, more on the grants, investments and stuff. So yeah, thank you so much for inviting me.
Evan
Beautiful. Anything else you’d like to share? Maybe a personal tidbit about yourself?
Shubham
So I think I’m quite boring on that side. So I don’t have anything to do and stuff. But yeah, I really like to log, get logged in and just work.
Evan
So I heard that you guys were talking about conferences. We can always come back if you think of something.
I’d like to open our discussion with several current events that are intersecting between the world of finance and politics and blockchain.
One of them is Bitcoin. It’s on a real tear. We are noticing and seeing ETF inflows surging to new highs.
Yet we’re also seeing a little bit of divergence with Ethereum. And I wanted to open up the discussion to discuss this.
What do you see this surge of, I guess, more institutional and more Web 2 adoption?
Do you think of this as a sign of sustained institutional Bitcoin accumulation? Is it really just here to stay now? Is it just great momentum?
People go after what’s hot. And do you see that divergence as well in terms of ETH versus Bitcoin, in terms of the narrative, the investor base?
What do you guys see out there for the two big boys in the crypto asset class?
Yeah, go ahead, Laura.
Laura
So no, honestly, it’s looking a lot more like institutional accumulation is just chasing—
oh, by the way, everyone, when I host spaces, same thing happens when a host cannot hear someone. So can anyone drop him a message saying, just turn the captions on? Usually that works.
But coming back to the question, so over the past week alone, spot Bitcoin ETFs have pulled in around like 7 billion. And BlackRock’s IPIT leading about half a billion and Fidelity’s FBTC adding another 66 million.
Apart from these, exchange held Bitcoin reserve also dropped significantly. That usually means that people aren’t really looking to trade. They’re looking to hold and that institutional fillings from places like pension funds and wealth managers show increase in Bitcoin ETF shares across the board.
You’re looking at real accumulation behavior, not just chasing the latest rally.
And there’s always going to be some profit taking, especially during price jumps. But the bigger picture is that Bitcoin is now becoming core assets in traditional portfolios, not just speculative trade.
We see a lot of institutions coming into the space, opening institutional accounts within exchanges and showing the interest.
And this current ETF wave is more than a sign of structural take. It feels like institutions are buying in quietly and they’re definitely not planning to leave anytime soon. And that’s exactly what I see coming from the exchange side as well.
Michael
I largely agree with what Laura said. It’s a momentum play. A lot of people want to get in because it’s hot.
Companies have seen other companies get into the cryptocurrency space, the blockchain space.
Evan
I am not sure what’s going on with my audio. It seems that everybody else can hear, but not me. So I’m going to work on that and let you guys continue the discussion.
And I don’t understand because I was hearing you just fine a moment ago.
Michael
Yeah, that’s the problem with X spaces is that there’s just so many issues and bugs with it. But anyway, just answering the question quickly. Yeah, I think it’s mainly a momentum play.
People have seen the stock price going up when they’ve announced that they’re doing something with crypto. Not even just like buying Bitcoin, but any sort of stable coin announcement.
For example, in Korea, if companies announced that they’re engaging in a stable coin play, some of their stocks have gone up 20, 30 plus percent in a single day.
So obviously, a lot of people, a lot of companies want to get in because they see that valuations are going up.
And that’s obviously a clear sign of a bull market. I don’t think it would last forever because there’s always bull and bear cycles in the spaces that we’re all very familiar with.
But the trend is definitely very clear that it’s going up. More and more institutions are coming in. More money is coming in.
It’s a wall of institutional money that’s going to make asset prices and crypto prices, in my opinion, go higher over the long term.
I think there’s a lot of staying power there because institutions are not like retail and that they’re not as fickle. They’re not going to come in and go out as quickly as retail usually does during market cycles.
I think the staying power is definitely stronger with institutions. But it’s obviously a momentum play. People chase profits. People want to make money. And it’s really as simple as that.
Laura
Our host is fixing his microphone, maybe someone else can add. I think we can manage the space without him until he manages to figure out what’s happening here.
Joshua
Yeah, I can add my two cents in. I think I largely agree with the observations. I think the observation is much clearer in Bitcoin that there’s sustained kind of institutional accumulation.
And it has been happening, not just short term, but for quite some time. And I think there was also data, I saw some research around differentiating data that was more about inflows for ETFs that are more with relation to hedging or other kind of institutional products for that nature versus actual accumulation.
Accumulation is actually these long positions in ETFs far exceed your short interest. So we do see actual allocations. And then more recently, you also see listed companies having what we call the public premium.
So you can think of the publicly listed companies that are trying to become Bitcoin treasuries, or a place into the crypto environment, like so-called, you see a public premium over on the evaluations. And it’s kind of like a clear indication to the rest of the market that there’s more demand than supply for excess in an institutional adoption way.
I think the clarity is clear for Bitcoin. I think there was also a public question whether is there an ETH divergence. I think more recently we see ETH catch up. I’ve been also trying to figure out where does this come from and what is the kind of core drivers.
What is clear to me is I think for the last two weeks, despite everything that has been going on, the T word—tariffs—which has come back, anything related to inflationary risk as a result of that, anything along the lines of risk of conflict and war, like previously in Iran, where things were a little bit scary.
All that seems to be on the back plate, mostly because of the kind of dovish sentiment of the Fed two weeks ago. And I think that really changes the narrative. It’s an interest rate narrative.
And I think that is what I fundamentally have always seen for this entire cycle as the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum or Bitcoin and everyone else, is that Bitcoin is more seen as the store of value and continues to be. While the rest of the ecosystem is, in some sense, some asset class that has to deliver returns and has to have some version of price-earnings ratio, however you count earnings or revenue.
And with that kind of model in mind, I think when there is a promise of lowering interest rates, even the idea that you would replace Jerome Powell in order to do so, even if there is no justification for unemployment and everything in the short-term horizon, that will lead to the kind of outperformance of ETH. So that’s how I see it as a working thesis going forward. I wouldn’t say I’m so confident about it, but it’s just a working thesis.
Shubham
I can go next. Harrison, do you want to go?
Harrison
No, you can go ahead.
Shubham
OK, awesome. Cool. I’ll just keep it short, so no need to worry.
Yeah, so I have a bit different opinion on all the ETFs and stuff, because when I personally started working in crypto space, that time I used to think it is more about decentralization. We tell like we ditch all these centralized communities and parties like banks or it can be institutions and stuff.
But now as we see ETF coming into BTC and stuff like maybe Ethereum, Solana and stuff, I think that can be an interesting thing because there are a few things that there can be a consistent inflow, which we have seen recently. Like today was the ETH again.
There can be a long-term positioning because of them. So say suppose if they hold for a longer time, it actually reduces the volatility, which is more better for us and more better for all the early stage investors who come from Web2 thinking that it is quite similar to stock market where there will be an upper cap and lower circuit where stock can just go that much.
But apart from that, for diversification of portfolio, even my parents and I think like all the upcoming generations will feel ETF and like a bunch of all the blue chip ETFs, which will be launching in future, will be the major part where they hold. They don’t have to worry about the volatility because they have already got the ETFs of multiple tokens and stuff.
And apart from that, they trust the centralized party as well. But still, if you really like—if I personally want to see all these ETFs and stuff coming, I want institution to go more deep into holding BTC directly rather than holding the ETFs and bringing more liquidity through the stock market and stuff. So that’s a biased opinion. But yeah, that’s what it is.
Harrison
I know just general agreements over here and, you know, just pointing out as well that like Bitcoin ETF is at 146 billion while Ethereum is at 11 billion. And just general narrative on store of value versus, you know, tech narrative on Bitcoin versus Ethereum. Just throwing that out there as well.
Tobi (tbv)
So I just wanted to quickly jump in because it took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get a speaker here. Because there’s a reason Twitter—Twitter didn’t want to, like, X. I’m so sorry.
It didn’t want to make me a speaker for good or for worse. But pleasure to be here, even though late. And Laura, very nice seeing you catching in and kind of like making sure that the host doesn’t fall apart.
And Gamma Prime, thank you so much for having me. And yeah, I really like the conversation. And excited to be here.
I didn’t say a fun fact and all these things. I’m going to save you all this because I didn’t want to interrupt the flow. But I just wanted to say hi. I finally have arrived.
Laura
But Tobi, I want a funny story.
Tobi
The one I heard from you here.
Laura
The one I had when you were in my AMA, I still mentioned some other AMA. So fun story from you is a must.
Tobi
I tried to bring myself out of this. It didn’t work because we have Laura here. But anyway, so what is a fun story?
I—when I was 20 years old, I moved to China, to Sichuan, to Chengdu. And I decided that’s a new thing. I wanted to go to Asia. I wanted to learn Chinese.
So actually, like every single morning at 5:30 AM, I took a bus one and a half hours to a different campus. And I swear to God, this bus driver was either high on drugs or a complete crazy person.
Because I’ve never had in my life that I was sitting in a bus seat and I hit my head on the top of the bus, probably like 20 times, while this guy was driving me to a different campus on a normal city street. He went over edges, he went over whatever thing.
And one day my dad actually came to visit me. And he hurt his head so bad on the top of the bus that we had to bring him to the hospital.
So that’s China in 2014, driving a bus going to Chinese classes in order to somewhat figure out how to learn Chinese, because that’s potentially going to be a big asset down the road.
Laura
But Tobi, did you die?
Tobi
I’m here.
Laura
Exactly. So you did a good job.
Tobi
My head probably took some challenges. I mean, as you can see in real life, but I’m here. And I’m still around.
Chaman (Gamma Prime)
Tobi, you take that saying that if it’s easy, it’s not worth having to a whole new level. I don’t think that any of the people in this room have gotten to where they are without facing a little bit of adversity. But yeah, that’s a lot, man. That’s dedication. Good on you.
Hey, I’m going to move into some of the other questions. I’m going to pivot here and talk about the new Trump tariffs. I’m going to open it up to the floor. And if you’re a speaker and you haven’t had a chance to introduce yourself and a fun fact, you can open up with that and try to tie it in freestyle that way.
So I got a question for the group: Will US and EU countries retaliate via crypto-focused measures? What are your thoughts?
David (SIG Network)
I came in late as well. I’m David. I’m the CEO of SIG Network. We’re a decentralized network that lets any single chain DeFi protocol immediately become multi-chain, which allows them to swap arbitrary assets natively on arbitrary chains. So if you have an Ethereum dApp, you can swap BTC and Solana.
Quickly to the weird story—I got my start in the industry in 2012. I was selling Bitcoin on the streets of New Zealand. People tried to rob you quite a lot when you do that. I was the largest Bitcoin seller in the country for a period of time. I eventually started doing it out of the flagship office of New Zealand’s biggest bank, because I figured people aren’t going to rob you inside a bank. I kept my head down, hoped no one really worked out what was going on there, and got an awful lot of volume through that bank. That was one of the first banks to be selling Bitcoin.
Since then, broadly, I think that the wheels of the European regulatory machine move very, very slowly. If there is any kind of reaction from the EU, it’s going to take not days, not months, but years. I think the kind of regulations they’re going to come up with is more of a hardening of the focus that we have on not selling things as speculative assets, but incentivizing research into core technologies.
So while previously in the US it was, “if it’s a meme coin, you’re in a good spot,” in the EU it was, “if it’s not a meme coin, you’re in a good spot.” I think we’re going to keep hardening in that direction. But I don’t think their tariffs are going to be major or quick. They’re very reactive and generally much more limited than tariffs in the US. They tend to just play it safe.
Laura
Well, I can add some stuff. So the question was…
Chaman
Okay, great. My apologies. Hey, Tobi, I sent you a DM on Telegram to see if maybe you could take it over. I’m having a hard time hearing.
Anybody else have some insights on whether tokenized RWAs could hedge against geopolitical trade risk? I’d actually like to push that question over to Joshua, and then open it up to the floor.
Joshua
Yeah, pleasure. Thanks for directing to me. I’ve always had this thesis, but I think it’s no longer alpha at this point. Everybody is very bullish about the opportunity of stablecoins in the Trump administration.
Where I think they see it, at least from the administration’s perspective, is as a way forward for distribution—indirect distribution of treasuries, mostly T-bills. Practically, it’s going to be mostly T-bills. If you think from that lens, of distribution of treasuries via stablecoins, the question is: who’s the buyer of these stablecoins?
If foreign central banks are not the buyers of treasuries, especially long duration, and we have to solve it through stablecoins, the distribution mechanism has to go to foreign individuals, companies, businesses that will want to use this and operate, regardless of whether their domestic country likes it or not.
Case in point: maybe a Chinese company will use these to enable trade, achieve returns, deliver company profits, regardless of whether their government allows it. In order to trade products, export goods, or move capital.
I think the US administration is in a trade-off: should we solve the debt issue and allow this to happen in a situation where we’re cutting rates and refinancing debt? Or should we be hard on things like money laundering and the export of stablecoins?
I think there’s going to be an opening of more regulatory comfort when it comes to stablecoins and their export, because of the US agenda. That’s my take. It doesn’t feel like alpha anymore.
Evan
Hi, everyone. I’m back in a different form in Evan Gamma. Welcome back. Someone told me, “oh, this happens all the time,” but I feel like it’s personal—like it’s because I was badmouthing Grok or something.
In the world of stablecoins—rewind 80 years ago. The US dollar was the reserve currency. The conception was: it’s about issuing debt, it’s about having an intermediary. Japan could do business with a Nordic country, even if yen and kroner weren’t liquid enough, because the dollar was the accepted intermediary.
Stablecoin—that’s exactly what it is. When I think of stablecoins going forward, it is the natural replacement for a reserve currency. It doesn’t have to be dollar-based. It could be gold-based, euro, a basket.
If the US doesn’t get on board, they’re just asking to be replaced. The fact you can go through a stablecoin as the intermediary was the original reason reserve currencies became powerful.
And it’s not the first reserve currency. Before the dollar, you had the pound. Before that, the Netherlands. Essentially, it’s the intermediary currency. Euro-dollars offshore functioned as grease for the global financial system.
The US got to print, spend, and go into massive debt—an “exorbitant privilege.” But those days may be ending between high debt and blockchain tech. The need for a traditional reserve currency may be on its way out.
David
One of the nice things after the fall of the Roman Empire: when people did international trade, they still priced things in Roman coinage, even though no one had Roman coinage anymore. I think US stablecoins will be around long after the dollar is gone.
Harrison
I actually think that the reserve stablecoin is essentially the dollar being tethered and tripled. If anything, it’s going to prolong the strength of the dollar. I agree Rome will fail, and so will the US dollar at some point. But stablecoins, particularly Circle and Tether, will prolong the US dollar, or at least the fiat version of it.
Evan
The interesting perspective I’ve heard before is that Tether and Circle will outlast the dollar. If the dollar becomes a burden, they’ll just switch to a basket, gold, or commodities. The dollar is just convenient right now, but they’re not married to it.
Harrison
Yeah, that could be a representation of the dollar rather than backed by any government.
Evan
Any other thoughts on this? Can we move on maybe to another question? So let’s switch into some Trump politics here.
Trump’s been talking about—he’s got his own meme coin. There’s the crypto blue chip ETF proposal. And then there’s all this hope and buzz that Trump is going to make the US friendly for crypto because he sees where the puck is going and he wants to make sure the US has a part in it.
And then there’s the flip side, which is that you never know what Trump’s going to do tomorrow. Even if he says this is the direction that he’s going to take things, there’s a new mood and a new week. That said, it looks like he does seem to be embracing it.
So what are your thoughts on this? There’s been a lot of hype around, hey, finally the US is going to get on board—or should we not be holding our breath?
David
I think there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And I think every time Trump is on TV talking about crypto and it’s in the public mind and in the public eye, people get some form of interest in it.
The best predictor of whether people start to use crypto is the amount of times they’ve checked it out, the amount of times they’ve considered using it. I rarely see people go from being cryptocurrency users back out. So every time he talks about it, every time he does something interesting, I think it helps our industry. Even if maybe it’s not a completely straight line—maybe there’ll be a bunch of bumps along the way.
Tobi
I very much agree with that because I don’t know how all you guys got into crypto. I’ve heard some stories, but there’s never really one person I’ve met that’s like, “Oh, from one day to another, I switched and now I’m an active degen or crypto user.”
It typically takes multiple attempts, especially with the sporadic ecosystem we have. The more this gets to mass market—and obviously Trump has a massive megaphone and a lot of people do have respect or trust for him. Some people might do the opposite, but it’s a great way of getting the word out and sending more legitimacy.
Because the more people get involved who are not OGs from the space—politicians, successful people with decent intentions—the more credibility crypto gains. A lot of setbacks came from once someone became “famous” in the space, they ended up in jail or with bad publicity. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t go that route.
A lot of people obviously trust the US president. So I think it’s a very interesting jumping board for a lot more people to take it seriously, do the research, and try it out from different angles. That’s exactly what we need—not just cooking in the same ecosystem with the same people, but using another person’s legitimate megaphone to reach out.
Evan
I think there’s a saying in marketing: it takes five exposures before you get sticky. And maybe Trump is giving everybody another couple.
Laura
I want to add—Toby mentioned, by the way, I saw this tweet recently that Trump has been convicted more times than Epstein and someone else combined. I don’t think there’s anything else you can do after this.
But coming back to Evan’s question, I want to talk about Trump-branded ETFs, which I believe could be a turning point because of its political and regulatory impact.
And by the way, everything I say is my personal opinion, not reflective of my employer. I think a lot of you heard about Trump’s new crypto blue chip ETF that was filed with the SEC just a couple of days ago. It included all the big names like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and even Cronos, which was a very interesting addition. This is way broader than what we’ve seen from institutions like BlackRock and Grayscale, who usually stick to just Bitcoin and Ethereum.
If we combine that with the current regulatory landscape in the US—because the SEC recently rolled out an accelerated approval process for crypto ETFs, Trump’s administration disbanded the DOJ Crypto Enforcement Division, and executive orders were signed to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve and freeze CBDC development—it’s a very different environment.
Another point: the World Liberty Financial Platform, linked with Trump and backed by Trump family holdings (around 60% ownership), is pushing their own stablecoin, USD1, pegged to future US crypto infrastructure investments. Reports suggest they also put around $2 billion into Binance.
We also need to remember that Trump personally profited over $300 million from token sales, mostly from the Trump meme coin. He hosted a private dinner for top Trump holders, and his administration openly embraced tokenization, NFTs, on-chain identity, and crypto-backed infrastructure bonds.
Here’s the bigger picture: Trump isn’t just making money from crypto, he’s making it part of government. Tokens, ETFs, and digital assets are now political tools he’s using in his campaign. Something like a Trump-branded ETF could be very well received.
Regulators might not have much say in it, and of course everyone in crypto—especially the old degens—will take a big part in it. To sum up, crypto isn’t waiting for permission anymore. It’s becoming part of the system. So we shouldn’t be debating whether it will be part of future finance—it already is, and it will continue to be for at least this term and probably the next, no matter who’s in charge.
Evan
Trump says so many things that the thing I focus on is not what he says, but what he does. And Laura, what you’re saying is he’s done a lot. He’s actually unleashed quite a bit and continues to. So maybe in this case, he means what he says.
Joshua
Yeah, maybe I can just jump right in. I totally agree. There’s a lot already shared about how Trump is both taking advantage of these new regulations and also driving them, enabling adoption.
Indirectly or directly, the projects he’s worked with—or through his fund—are enabling this to happen. On his administration’s side, the stars are aligned with his personal balance sheet and everything else in the world that makes sense for this industry to flourish.
It’s not a question of “will there be adoption?”—it’s already here. Individual interests and national interests are aligned, and that’s why this is working for the US.
If we draw back and look at other financial phenomena—say, securities in the early 1900s—the same thing happened. Regulators and businessmen together enabled a marketplace for securities trading. What’s happening today with crypto is similar.
So regardless of being Republican or Democrat, or whether you like or dislike Trump, this is simply history. Once adoption begins, you can’t reverse it. Blockchains are more capital-efficient for international and domestic finance. Once you go down that path, it’s very hard to go back.
So no matter how we get there, once we’re there, it’s long-term.
Evan
Yeah, the good news of the crypto is all the government needs to do is get out of the way and it will grow, just like you’re saying. It doesn’t have to pass the CHIPS Act to encourage investment. It’s like, no, just give us some regulatory clarity, step back, stop doing what Gensler was doing and just suing companies.
And it’ll just grow on its own. It’ll grow like gangbusters. So yeah, it doesn’t require that positive affirmation from the government, just maybe neutrality and clarity.
Tobi
I think that’s, just to keep it very short, but I think that’s really the key point here. I think all what Trump does in order to tell crypto is amazing and great, and then also at the same time, people use it that don’t like Trump to condemn, okay, he’s using it for corruption, he’s using it to make himself gain from a monetary perspective.
I think the key thing really what he did that benefited the industry is that he gave builders of all different sizes, being large scale companies, being small scale companies, you’re not sitting at home being scared of being arrested every minute or having to find creative ways to go in different jurisdictions, moving headquarters, hire people that are developers but are not working for the crypto companies and all these different things that we constantly see with companies, where they’re always scared, okay, can I touch this, can I touch that, can I touch X, Y, Z?
And just that peace of mind for builders is extremely important, right? Because we all have an idea, we all have a vision that we want to eventually build and all of you guys are founders, big companies, small companies, just people that get started, but just having a peace of mind that you’re not going to be in jail if you fulfill your vision is, I think, a very, very crucial thing.
And if you just keep doing that, of having that neutral stance, I think it will make massive differences of actually giving the people the space to come up with brilliant ideas in order to bring the space actually forward and not having to spend 50% of their efforts and time and costs in order to find creative ways to not being sued by someone or getting a letter from the SEC or end up being in jail.
Evan
It also applies to investors. As an investor, you will think twice if you could invest in something that could end up seeing SEC scrutiny, right? And you don’t know what that’s going to look like.
So it chills the entire ecosystem. It’s the founders. Yeah, they’re worried about going to prison. And all the people that would support the project, they’re like, I don’t know. I don’t know what the government’s going to do. I don’t know if Gensler is going to get up his tail the next time.
I remember Gensler had a famous saying. He was asked, hey, do you think crypto needs more clarity and regulation? And his response was something like, oh, there’s plenty of clarity. It’s our enforcement, which is essentially saying it’s whoever I decide to sue. That’s clarity.
And the fact that that is gone, like you said, it’s like leaving an abusive relationship. Suddenly, you realize, wow, there’s a lot I can do, and I’m not looking over my shoulder.
Harrison
Getting rid of Gary Gensler is probably the best thing that’s happened to this whole administration, in my opinion, specifically with the SEC.
Evan
Well, we’re down to the last few minutes. So I want to just open the floor up for any of the topics that we touched on today or any final thoughts. And also just to say thank you, guys, for joining this conversation.
As you can see, we have this amazing channel, all of which bring deep, unique perspectives based on their daily engagement with certain corners of this industry. Because it’s so wide and large now, nobody can really be a master of the entire space. And so we bring these folks together in spaces because different people have different expertises and areas of strength.
So, yeah, any final thoughts?
David
Just that we’re on the coalface right now of the tokenized bonds, funds, RWAs, that kind of stuff. And just internally, we’re seeing so much excitement from these big financial institutions, specifically connecting together their private blockchain-like systems that they do settlement on right now with more public ledgers.
They’re thinking about internally having a version of USDC using that sort of stuff for settlement. And then the question they start asking is, OK, how do I get yield for two hours on my USDC? Or what can I do next? And how do I get my systems to talk well to these public blockchains to launch this sort of limited RWA?
Once those systems exist, I think it’s just going to be like sliding down a hill. It’s going to be a really, really exciting time to be in the space once because I think these large institutions are going to realize there’s nothing holding them back when someone does it. So you’ve got all this sort of energy sitting at the top of the hill, and I’m really excited to see it all downhill, specifically on these sort of regulated RWAs, real estate, bonds, everything.
Evan
It just gave me tingles, literally. I was like, wow, you’re right. Once you get that kind of web-to-deep adoption, or not even web-to, really pre-web adoption, you know, people will naturally go where there’s efficiency, opportunity, and again…
David
And with the technologies now, you just say Ethereum is just another counterparty. That’s kind of how it looks in terms of the systems, and that just makes everything speed up. It’s easy to understand. It’s easy to move.
Evan
Fascinating. Any other final thoughts?
Tobi
I mean, I’m generally very excited and also more from like a venture fund perspective. We’re seeing a lot more non-crypto OG founders coming into the space.
And when we talk to these founders and kind of understanding why now, a big part of their reasoning is clarity. A lot of them had great ideas before, but never really dared or were ready to launch it and pursue it and build it. Because, I mean, props to every single founder that’s on this call.
It is a crazy journey. There’s a lot of risk, and there’s a lot of peace of mind that you leave outside of the table when you start your own business and really go full into crypto. And also, especially Sonic here, right? I mean, you guys crushed it.
And just understanding the risk that you leave on the table, the risk you sort of get in front of, and now with the regulatory clarity in multiple jurisdictions, not just the US. If you look at the UAE, if you look at parts of Asia, parts of Europe, how much more things are regulated now, it gives a lot more great talent the peace of mind, “I can pursue this great idea I have without having to face troubles.”
And I think that’s what we’re seeing in the market where the mindset shifts. People have creative ideas. They focus on revenue, they focus on adoption, they focus on how we can get users in the space.
And it’s not like the same recycling idea between, okay, we’re just going to bridge money back and forth in different capacities, different forms within that OG crypto community. Because I think that was a big challenge that we’re facing for a long time in the space.
Harrison
I totally agree on that. And from the other side, we’re actually seeing a lot more of the traditional buyers, you know, your hedge funds, your private equities coming in specifically from the US, and they’re seeing that clarity and they’re a lot more, let’s say, crypto interested, but interested in what we have so they can get a head start in the game in terms of M&A. So those conversations are a lot easier now.
Even on some of them, we’re talking to some on SPACs and reverse mergers and things like that, which means bringing a crypto company into the public markets right away on day one. I’m surprised by those conversations. Like, are you sure you want to do this? Because it could be a waste of time on both our parts. But they seem to be moving forward on some of them, so it’s exciting on our side.
Evan
Thank you, guys. Awesome discussion. I had such a good time talking about this.
You’ve probably seen me do a couple of these panels as well at our events. It’s just a pleasure. And like you were saying, Anderson, this is really just the beginning. Because if you think back to the dot-com boom—for those who were around back then—I traded through that whole thing.
We’re just in the beginning. It’s literally like getting the first few dot-com companies going public, because that’s where we’re at now. We’re just in the beginning of having this very small handful go into public markets. And then you saw what happened with the dot-com boom, where suddenly it’s every company developing a website and calling themselves a dot-com.
We haven’t seen any of that yet in crypto—not really, not in the public markets, not in traditional finance. And if it goes in any way similar to the way it did in 1999 and 2000, then the big public market explosion is still way ahead of us. Which means we’ve got a lot to look forward to.
So with that, I’m going to wrap up our Gamma Prime spaces for this time. Keep in touch with us, follow us on Twitter—or X, I guess—and that way you get informed the next time we’re going to do one of these discussions.
And to our panelists, thank you so much for coming out. I love chatting with you guys, and we will certainly see you at either Korean Blockchain Week or at Token 2049 in Singapore. Bye-bye, everyone. Thank you so much.
