Luke: [00:00:00] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features a guest we spoke with about a year ago at the same place, at Rare Evo in Las Vegas.

we checked back in with Juan Leon, who’s a senior investment strategist at Bitwise Asset Management. He helps lead research, product and strategy development, fund and index management, and supports sales and client relationships.

Prior to Bitwise, he was a portfolio manager at the US Global Investors, managing equity, fixed income funds, and designed quantitative investment strategies. In this episode, we discussed how AI agents

could eventually manage treasury operations, collateral, and yield strategies on the institution’s behalf, why sustainable on-chain yield looks fundamentally different from the products that blew up in the past cycles, what safeguards need to exist before institutions trust AI to make real-time financial decisions.

It was fun to check back in with Le- Juan, now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist.

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Luke: Juan, welcome back to The Brave Technologist. How are you doing today? I’m doing great. Thank you for having me again. How are you doing? I’m doing well. I’m doing well. It’s been a year. Um, you know, last time we were here, we were talking [00:01:00] about the $500 trillion, you know, real world tokenization opportunity, and whether Wall Street and DeFi were starting to converge.

~~Um, ~~it’s been a year. Like, what’s, uh, what’s changed the most since our last conversation?

Juan: Yeah. There’s a lot of things that have changed. I think mainly, um, last year was a question more of, uh, whether this convergence was going to happen fully, and th- it maybe, that it was still more distant. It, it might be, uh, within the decade, but not clear how fast it would happen.

Yeah. And I think in this year we’ve seen it pick up speed more so than we expected.

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Juan: ~~Um, ~~so- Putting a couple of, uh, numbers to that, uh, in this past year, uh, realized real world assets on chain have tripled, uh, to, uh, a little over 30 billion. Wow. Um, that still leaves a ton of room on that 500 trillion, 600 trillion opportunity.

I think the direction of travel is now very clear. The other thing we’ve seen is the plumbing starting to get built. So the DTCC, the, ~~uh, ~~Depository Trust, uh, Clearing Corporation- Mm-hmm … which, uh, settles, uh, all of the US [00:02:00] stock market, has now, is now working on tokenized settlement. Wow. Um, NASDAQ, uh, has received approval from the SEC to tokenize certain equities, uh, as tokens, uh, to, yeah, tokenize equities, ~~um, ~~and settle them as tokens.

Um, so we’re starting to see that, ~~uh, ~~underlying infrastructure getting built, and it’s happening quicker than I think, uh, we expected. That’s huge.

Luke: I mean, those are foundational items that are super key. I mean, like, has there been one prediction you’ve changed your mind about, uh, i- since our last interview?

Juan: Um, I think it’s the, the, the speed, the uptake speed from both the regulatory side, ~~um, ~~and, uh, the end tokenization, how fast it’s moving. So on the regulatory side, we had, ~~uh, ~~the SEC announce Project Crypto last year.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Juan: Uh, then at the beginning of this year, they, uh, broadened out that initiative on a, with a joint initiative, uh, with the CFTC.

Mm-hmm. Then in March, they moved to provide classification guidance for 16 tokens as digital commodities. Um, and in their, uh, rulemaking agenda for 2026, they also have laid, laid out, uh, safe harbor for, uh, decentralized, ~~uh, ~~protocols. They’ve laid out, uh, agenda items for, uh, [00:03:00] broker-dealer and custody and, uh, a- and e- exchanges.

~~Um, ~~and so I think they have a broad agenda that they’re moving on pretty quickly, and, uh, they’re acting as a bridge, uh, until we get the CLARITY Act passed in terms of rulemaking. Uh, I think they’re moving swiftly, and, uh, I think that’s really positive for the space, especially as we see some of the hangex- hang-ups with the CLARITY Act.

That’s,

Luke: it’s a, it’s a major course change, right? Absolutely. I mean, like, which is like, I don’t- Yeah … I think it, the people aren’t aware, like, like, just how significant this is, right?

Juan: No, that’s a really good point. It’s a, it’s not only a 180, but you, before, before this, uh, this past year, you rarely saw the SEC and the CFTC collaborate together, much less work on a joint initiative.

They were always sort of at loggerheads of ~~who ha- ~~who wins the battle over custody over a market. They’ve actually come together, are working in unison in order to provide- ~~Uh, ~~very clean cut transparency and delineating rules for the crypto market in terms of s- what’s a security, what’s a, what, what’s a, a commodity, how can you move from a security to a commodity status in terms of the [00:04:00] decentralization.

So it is a really big deal.

Luke: Yeah, I mean, I, I think, like, you know, we mentioned~~ a, a,~~ a few different i- important things that have happened. ~~Like h- ~~what’s the biggest signal you’ve seen over the last 12 months that tells you that institutions are taking on chain finance really seriously?

Juan: I think it’s the infrastructure commitment.

Yeah. What I mentioned with, DTCC- Yeah … uh, and, NASDAQ, they’re actually building. You know, they… You can see things getting worked on. Um, there’s also, uh, just the on chain adoption, uh, of, uh, uh, by institutions. So Apollo is now tokenizing private credit w- on chain, uh, via vaults. ~~Uh, ~~at Bitwise, we’ve launched our own first vaults.

We’ve also launched our first, uh, tokenized fund on chain. So we’re seeing institutions actually building, launching products, uh, on chain. And so I think this, uh, this shift from where maybe before institutions were piloting to now actually launching things, um, and seeing traction on that is a, is a big step forward.

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Luke: [00:05:00] Can you unpack, uh… You know, a lot of our… We might have a lot of crypto users or listeners, but we probably have a lot that aren’t. Like, uh, w- when you mention vaults, like w- what does that mean, like, to a layperson?

Juan: Absolutely, yeah. A, so a vault, in essence, is a smart contract, uh, that has,~~ uh, ~~transparency and accountability like a regular fund.

Mm-hmm. Um, so in a vault, you, the, the investor deposits, let’s say, USDC, um, and then that USDC gets invested by the vault strategy in, it can be a lending strategy, it can be a staking strategy, uh, it can be a multi- multi strategy. And you get, once you deposit your USDC, you get issued, uh, shares of the vault.

Mm. Uh, much like fund [00:06:00] shares. And then value accrues to those shares depending on the performance of the vault strategy. Okay. Um, so to us, it, it really is, uh- We see it as the next evolution in fund wrappers. Yeah. ~~Um, ~~very much like we moved from mutual funds to ETFs. Yeah. We see vaults as the next evolution of that because they bring programmability, because they bring transparency.

Uh, they become a~~ a really, uh, a b- a, a, ~~a much better vehicle than what we even have with ETFs. Mm-hmm. Um, and we’re seeing more and more institutions, uh, see that opportunity and start building vault strategies. We’re starting the SC- we’re seeing the SEC, ~~uh, ~~start making pronouncements on how these can be regulated.

So we see it at the, as the next evolution of fund wrappers.

Luke: Yeah. It sound interesting. It’s, it does sound like a big convergence point where DeFi, like, you know, in a lot of that ~~programmatic, you know, or program- ~~program- programmability, i- it meets, uh, you know, like an ETF management. Asset management. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly, exactly. And I think, um, uh, didn’t… I, I think even, uh, Commissioner Pierce gave some guidance around, like, uh, uh, securities and, and, and some of these types of vault models la- last week or so.

Juan: That’s right. Yeah. [00:07:00] She provided some, uh, initial guidance, uh, basically laying out that, uh, vault strategies, uh, will have to be, uh, will have to fall under securities laws.

Luke: Yeah.

Juan: Which I think is great. It, it, it, uh, signals both that the SEC is taking this new emerging area seriously, um, and by, uh, by starting to, uh, talk about how regulation will be provided, it shows that, uh, there’s, you know, this, that space is starting to mature. Um, so I think it’s very positive.

Speaker: Yeah. And I think, too, like years past, AI was kind of big last year.

I think it’s even bigger this year. Um, I know that you’re speaking at Rare Bo, uh, about AI and on chain finance. Um, how do you see AI changing the way institutions interact with blockchain infrastructure?

Juan: Yeah, that’s a big step function change that is underway. Um, look, blockchains are the best, uh, financial platform for AI agents.

Yeah. Um, you know, traditional finance, uh, works off of PDFs.

Luke: Right.

Juan: ~~Machines w- ~~AI works off machine readable structured data. Yeah. And that’s what you get with blockchains. Yeah. You know, everything on [00:08:00] chain, every flow, every trade, every settlement, it’s all public, transparent, and readable for machines.

And so AI agents are able to run on blockchains in a way that they aren’t on traditional financial rails. Um, and so I think that’s where we see the innovation of as AI agents grow, they are going to run on top of blockchains. And then, ~~uh, blockchains are gonna become… ~~AI is gonna become the interface, uh, for where we move, uh, starting from, ~~um, ~~the AI agents, you know, running a trade that is programmed by a human.

Um, and then, uh, it makes a recommendation, the human executes it. Yeah. Then I think it’s gonna move to more sophisticated cases where within the smart contract, the AI agent is able to execute more sophisticated parameters. Then they’re gonna be able to, uh, the AI agent is gonna be able to control that collateral on chain because it’s composable, and use, you know, vault shares as collateral for a looping strategy.

Mm-hmm. Uh, or to take out a loan for an individual. Um, so as all of the [00:09:00] plumbing, ~~uh, ~~becomes, ~~uh, ~~more secure, more developed, AI agents will be able to run more sophisticated programs, uh, for asset management on chain.

Luke: Makes a lot of sense. I mean, smart contracts, it’s kind of like a funny name, but it d- it really does kinda work well with this whole idea of agents and, and AI, even though, you know, it wasn’t even necessarily on the radar as much back when these things came out.

So I think it totally makes a lot of sense. I mean, um, could AI agents eventually manage things like treasury operations too, and collateral movements or, or yield strategies on behalf of institutions?

Juan: Yeah, I think they will. Um, we’re, we’re I think a little bit, uh, still, we, we still need more to go to get there.

I think there still needs to be, um- Things like, uh, determining how regulation, uh, kicks in when an AI agent makes a, makes a mistake. Yeah. Like who is liable, who w- who take– has accountability for that. ~~Um, ~~probably insurance mechanisms that help, ~~uh, ~~provide protections- Yeah … for an AI agent. I think there’s still a ways to go on that.

And then also the infrastructure that, uh, [00:10:00] allows those AI agents to run is still, is, is getting built but, you know, for example, NEAR is a big player in the crypto space that is building for the future of decentralized AI agents. I think they’re doing great work building that infrastructure, and I think the m- the more robust that becomes, the, the more, uh, the more, the more sophisticated functions we’ll get to build.

And, you know, each– Even today at Bitwise, we’re starting to get questions from, ~~uh, ~~corporate treasurers on- Mm-hmm … how do we adopt ta– uh, stable coins into our payment rails? How do we, ~~uh, ~~adopt, uh, tokenized assets into our treasury, ~~uh, ~~operations?

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Juan: And so they’re starting to think about, um… I think what we’re seeing is ~~we’re, you know, ~~the ETFs came out in twenty twenty-four.

That was, like, the first wave of institutional adoption. That was like, how do we access the space? ~~Um, ~~now, uh, investors are asking- Not the, uh, we have access. Now how do we move beyond access, beyond Bitcoin to other assets, and how do we put them to productive use? And I think this is where, uh, all of [00:11:00] these strategies, uh, these vault strategies come in, where you’re, you can earn yield, you can stake.

Um, and where increasingly AI agents are being built on top of to manage those, uh, those functions, uh, including treasury, treasury operations, collateral management. Uh, I think all of that will come to the fore with agents as well. Yeah. It’s

Speaker: hard to believe it was 2024, right? Like, I mean, I mean, you guys were ahead early and ahead of the curve on the ETF stuff and, and, you know, it, it’s cool to see that you guys are kind of still on that frontier with thinking about how AI fits into this picture.

‘Cause it’s just like we need folks that are ~~kind of, you know, ~~on the institutional side to be making everybody else hip to what’s going on basically, you know? Like, so it’s, it’s really awesome. I mean, um, you know, w- w- speaking of, you know, these new areas with, with AI a- and things like treasury management, et cetera, like, what safeguards, need to exist before institutions are more comfortable letting AI make financial decisions in real time?

Mm. How would you feel about the current state of safety in this area?

Juan: Yeah. I think, uh, we still need, ~~uh, ~~better regulation- Yeah … on how, how, uh, how to regulate AI agents. Yeah. Uh, I think once we have that in place, then people will feel more [00:12:00] comfortable about programming these agents. Um, I think we also need, uh, we need to institute policies and mandates for verifiability- Mm-hmm

and accountability. Uh, which I think the blockchain is a great venue for that. Okay. So, you know, I think for, uh, for audit trails, for regulators, and for fiduciary duty, I think, uh, as, as agents start managing more of investment mandates, um, I think we’ll need, uh- We’ll, we’ll need audit trails that, ~~uh, ~~are able to log everything the, everything the agent did.

Yeah. ~~Uh, ~~how it carried out its operations, and the rationale behind it, and I think you can record this all on public, uh, on, on blockchains. Yeah. So I think they’re very symbiotic in that regard. Um, and then I think you’re gonna need very firm guardrails for the, uh, AI agents to comply. So, um, I think within that, the smart contracts also lend themselves for that.

You’ll be able to institute very precise parameters of what it can execute, what it can’t, so that you don’t have… You know, there’s people building AI agents outside, uh, blockchains in the decentralized world as well. Uh, and, and we’ve s- we’ve heard and we’ve seen a lot of the issues [00:13:00] that they run into, right?

They, they give, un- they, they set up the agent, they give it a mission and a budget, and then, like, the agent runs amok. It, like, spends more money than it needs to. It goes off in directions it didn’t, weren’t, were, weren’t expected. Yeah. Whereas with a smart contract, you can program exactly what it can and cannot do.

Yeah. So it’s actually ~~a guard, ~~a guardrail mechanism to contain, uh, and make, uh, the use of AI, AI agents safer- Yeah … and more effective than what you can do in traditional finance currently. Well,

Speaker: and it seems like, there’s been a lot of great groundwork laid ~~i- ~~down i- in this area, ~~like ~~things like, programmability, like with DAOs and, and network upgrades and things like that, where we’ve actually seen how with smart contracts and with, like, kind of, you know, consensus in the DAO side, but also the right approaches to rolling these things out, ~~um, ~~we’ve seen, you know, billions of dollars of value kind of be able to upgrade through these flows.

~~And, ~~and AI, like, will just help automate and, and, and make that stuff, you know. I, I think you have a really good point, too, around, ~~you know, ~~knowing what the agent does. Like, we’re starting to kind of see things like traces and, and, and markets kind of forming around those things as well. Like, it does seem like there’s kind of a fair bit of [00:14:00] unknowns around, like, how the agents are operating a- a- and, and how that could be, you know, what the risks are, right?

Yeah. Like, around some of that stuff.

Juan: Yeah, definitely. You need, we need verifiability for risk management- Yeah … if AI agents are truly gonna become a robust tool for asset management. Otherwise, no compliance, uh, department is gonna sign off on this.

Luke: Right. Right. Sure. True. So I mean,~~ um,~~ we talked about vaults a little bit.

Like, what kind of separates, uh, sustainable on shade yield, uh, from the kinds of yield products that blew up on previous cryptos? Like-

Juan: Yeah, that’s such a good question, and an important question to ask and for, uh, investors to understand and evaluate as vaults become more prominent so that, uh, we don’t face those situations again.

~~Um, ~~I think, um- Vaults, I think what differentiates sustainable yield is, uh, who is paying for that yield? Is, you know, is that yield being paid for by over-collateralized loans where people are paying for that? Is it, uh, from staking rewards by securing a network? Is it being earned [00:15:00] from a basis trade carry, ~~uh, carry, ~~carry yield trade?

Um, those are sustainable sources of yield. What we saw in the prior, uh, cycles, you know, the FTXs, the Celsius- Yeah, Three Arrows …

Speaker: Three

Juan: Arrows. Yeah. Yeah. That, that was not transparent yield, it was opaque yield. Yeah. There was rehypothecation. Yeah. Uh, there was, uh, undisclosed leverage. Yeah. Uh, those things, um…

So it was an issue of not on-chain yield being the problem, and smart contracts and DeFi, it was opacity of yield and centralized operations that hid what was going on under, under the hood. Um, today, I think the advantage, ~~uh, and, ~~and the safeguard with Vaults is that they are, they, they are transparent- Yeah

strategies. You can see what’s going on. The parameters are defined in the strategy. So parameters are set. Um, so I think you don’t face– You can avoid those issues because they’re much more transparent, uh, than those centralized situations that we saw in past cycles.

Luke: Well, and even on the non-crypto side, I mean, I think when you think back to things like the financial crisis in [00:16:00] 2008, like, there was a lot of opacity in, in how those products like synthetic, you know, CBDs and, and, and all these like, uh, the, these products that people didn’t really know about the acronyms until after the thing blew up.

But then you were seeing that like, yeah, a lot of things, whether it might have been, uh, uh, ratings that were not necessarily as, uh, grade A as they should have been, or other things like that, it does seem like the transparency you’re gonna get with, you know, the Vaults and other types of strategies is gonna be great for the consumer too, a- and the investor, right?

Like- Absolutely.

Juan: Yeah. No, that’s a great point. Y- in 2008, you had mortgage-backed securities which were repackaged into structures where the risk was elevated and people didn’t understand or know that. Uh, you had those mortgage-backed securities then being lent out and over, and collateralized, uh, and held by counterparties where the books, there wasn’t transparency, so you didn’t know who was holding what risk exposure.

And then when everything blew up, then you found out like, oh crap, ~~like this is, this, ~~this is where things were hiding. Um, but with DeFi being, you know, open, l- blockchains being [00:17:00] open, transparent, ~~uh, ~~ledgers, and then with Vaults shares being composable in the DeFi ecosystem, you can have not only transparency, but you can see where that exposure is being held, what counterparty holds what shares.

And so I think that’s what can help us, um- Hopefully if we do this right, avoid the, the issues we faced in the past because we can manage the risk better. When there’s more transparency, ~~when there, ~~when there’s more audit- and accountability, you can manage risk better.

Luke: Yeah. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna get kind of blue sky here and, and, and, and this can be your own personal opinion, but I think, like, there’s times where people…

We’re at a time right now when, when people are kind of questioning or maybe there’s erosion of trust in certain, uh,~~ uh, uh, uh,~~ sacred cows or, uh, you know, institutions and things like that. A- and when these things fall apart, people tend to discover things like, “I didn’t realize these institutions were betting against my ability to pay back a loan,” or something like that.

Mm-hmm. It seemed like with crypto, you know, part of the promise You had this kind of ~~this, ~~this, [00:18:00] this virtuous cycle loop, right? Like, and with some of these things going on chain and some of these new types of offerings coming out there, do you personally, like, see potential for instead of betting against, the taker of the loan, like, uh, the borrower, like, uh, potential for markets for, ~~like, ~~rewarding good behavior using these things?

Or I, I’m just kinda curious, like, ‘cause you’ve got an interesting vantage point and position i- in the space. ~~And, ~~and you don’t have to be speaking on behalf of Bitwise, but, like, i- is there an opportunity to flip that script, like, on the institutional thing? I, I feel like people, a lot of people that might be listening to this might feel like these institutions are working against them a lot of the time, even though they’re putting their hard-earned money into these things, right?

~~Mm-hmm. Like, I’m just kinda curious your take on it. ~~

Juan: Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I think there’s the opportunity for incentives to align better. Yeah. ~~Um, from, from a couple different angles. Uh, for one, um, crypto assets and, and blockchain, uh, and blockchain technology, um, they’re more cost efficient and, uh, than, ~~than legacy systems.

Yeah. So you, so you reduce costs. So you can compress fees, reduce costs, which is better for the end investor. Yeah. So as compared to the management fee on mutual funds, the management fee on ETFs was even lower, and the man- and the fee that you pay for participating in a vault, which is [00:19:00] also~~ a, a,~~ a type of management fee, is even lower.

Mm-hmm. So costs are coming down to be able to participate in professional investment management for individuals. Mm-hmm. I think that’s a good thing that only improves with crypto, uh, and, and blockchains. Um, another thing is going back to the transparency of blockchains, where you can know where, where there is counterparty risk, where there are risk exposures.

Then you can have that transparency to make better decisions. Yeah. Um, you can lend better, more effectively, uh, or r- or pull back lending if you see that there’s, ~~that, ~~that there’s too much risk in a, in a, in a pool, you know. Mm-hmm. In, in a given vault or in a liquidity pool. You can, uh, assess risk better.

~~Um, ~~so I think those are, uh, important elements. Um- And, uh, I think that, that can really help manage risk better. There’s also, you know, with the advent of programmability of smart contracts, and especially as AI agents become smarter, um, you can, you can manage those risk expo- exposures faster. Yeah. And so as markets move, you can adjust your parameters, and your portfolio can weather, you know, dislocations [00:20:00] easier, hopefully.

Yeah. Um, uh, I think there’s definitely, on-chain world will allow for that to happen more seamlessly than what we have in traditional finance today. Yeah. So I think there’s all of those elements that, ~~uh, ~~do create that opportunity, uh, and I hope we can, uh, capitalize on it.

Luke: That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean, it seems like, you know, even with identification of, like, s- major systemic risks, like, there’s just, having that transparency, like, if we only had that back in 2007- That’s right

right? Like, I think it would’ve saved a lot of pain, like, and, and i- it’s great. I mean, like, I wasn’t- Absolutely … aware of half of the stuff that you’re mentioning today on the institutional side, so it’s really cool to hear that the progress is being made there. Um, you know, what trend do you kinda think the market is still underestimating right now?

Juan: I think one, I think a, a trend or a perception that is, that, that is being underestimated is that people talk a lot about tokenization from the cost savings and efficiency perspective- Yeah … but I don’t think they realize the opportunity ~~in the, ~~on the distribution side. Mm. Especially on the non-traditional investment distribution side, [00:21:00] meaning there’s a whole world that can participate in tokenized finance and on-chain finance that can’t participate in traditional finance.

These are DAOs. Mm-hmm. These are treasury protocols. Mm-hmm. Um, these are increasingly AI agents. Mm-hmm. Especially as AI agents grow, that, uh, that pool of capital that will transact through blockchains and through DeFi, uh, that is an avenue for tokeniz- tokenization to grow, um, and, and, uh, and for that opportunity set to become a new avenue for fun- for capital and fund distribution.

That I think is not, is,~~ is, uh,~~ being a bit underestimated. Oh, interesting. ~~Um, ~~I think another, another trend, um, maybe that is being underestimated is, uh, how much the potential for, uh, stable coins to turn, to become the dollar’s s- biggest export product to the world. Right. Um, as token, as stablecoins grow, especially as the Genius Act comes into effect this coming year.

Yeah. It got passed into law last year, but it’s coming into effect this coming year, and I think that’s really gonna [00:22:00] catalyze the growth of stablecoins. And with the growth of stablecoins, you have to collateralize them with treasuries. Yeah. Um, and so I think that’s really going to, um, help the, the, the, the standing of the dollar, ~~uh, ~~as a reserve asset.

Speaker: Yeah. And projection and, and, and the fact that, like, it, it, it can also, like… Seeing interesting things happening around, like, um, you know, there’s a lot of other, uh, fiat currencies, like, that, that are, are, you know… With the adoption of these, like, cards, I mean, people are transacting and, and these FX trades are basically happening in the background.

Like, huge potential unlocks for getting more liquidity into the market that could be potentially used, ~~uh, ~~backed by the, the, the USD-denominated stablecoins with, with getting other types of stables into the market.

Juan: Yeah. We’ve seen the share of, ~~uh, ~~the dollar as foreign exchange reserves fall over the last 20, 30 years.

I think stablecoins have the opportunity to flip that, uh, and help regain some of that share-

Luke: Yeah … of the dollar. Super interesting. Um, you know, at, at Brave, we care a lot about kind of building user-first systems. As institutions move on chains, how do we make sure transparency doesn’t come at the expense of [00:23:00] privacy?

Juan: That’s such a key question. ~~Um, ~~and I think what’s important is determining what needs to be transparent and what needs to be private. Hmm. Um, and not confuse the two. And so I think what needs to be transparent are the systems. So ~~the, ~~the code, the smart contracts, um, the audit trail at the aggregate level for transactions.

~~Uh, ~~but what still needs to remain private is, um, y- is identities ~~and, uh, ~~and individual positions. Mm-hmm. You know, you can’t have, uh, an asset manager’s positions freely avail- ~~uh, uh, ~~transparent, ‘cause then that invites front running. Right. So you need to have some, ~~uh, ~~you need to have some confidentiality.

Their payrolls. Yeah. You can’t have that fully transparent on chain. You need to have confidentiality there. Um, so I think that’s where you need to make the distinction, and I think what’s great too is that there’s now technology that can allow for that to happen. ZK, zero knowledge proof technology, can, uh, allow to prove the, the, that the reserves are there without disclosing [00:24:00] exactly who makes up or what entities make up the reserves.

Yeah. Uh, disclosing that publicly, ~~their, ~~their actual information. So I think, uh, zero knowledge proof, ~~uh, ~~to my understanding, is really coming to maturity. And as that becomes embedded in blockchains, it will allow us to provide that layer of confidentiality while still maintaining the transparency at the aggregate level- Mm-hmm

um, for auditability that blockchains need.

Luke: What’s one prediction you have for the year ahead?

Juan: I’m gonna go ahead and say even though we’re still in the, the doldrums of this bear market and investors are wondering whether the, the bottom is in, can’t s- you know, don’t know if the bottom is exactly in or we have a bit more to go.

But I think this time next year we’ll be back at or, uh, at, back at, uh, all-time highs or higher than that. I think we’ll be out of the bear market and into the next leg of the bull market next year. Awesome.

Luke: Nice. Great, great prediction. I, uh, one, one last question, and, and, and you can answer this or not, but I was kind of curious your, your take.

‘Cause, like, I, I’ve been in this space personally for a, [00:25:00] a decade, right? Like, and, and, uh, um, when you see things happening like, um- Tokenized equities under the same house as things like meme coins. ~~Like, the, how-how… ~~What’s your take on meme coins, meme coin trading? Like, ~~i- ~~is it a regression? Is it a necessity?

Is it something we’re just gonna need to live with? Like, uh, is it a positive or a negative, like, kind of from where you’re coming from?

Juan: I think, uh, meme coin trading is not an investment strategy. They’re not investments.

Luke: Right.

Juan: They’re speculations. Yeah. You know, we’re in Vegas.

Speaker: Yeah.

Juan: Uh, we have casinos.

People love to gamble. Yeah. Uh, I don’t think people come to the casino as an investment strategy. You’re right. They come to have fun- Yeah … and to blow off some steam. And, you know, if you’re a responsible gambler, you have a, a small, uh, set amount that you are willing to lose. ~~Um, ~~and I think, ~~uh, ~~people should think of meme coins the same way.

~~You know, I, uh, ~~I don’t participate in meme coins, but a lot of people have apparently a lo- a lot of fun trading them. ~~Um, and, ~~and they’re, they’re, uh, they’re almost a reflection of culture. Yeah. Um, and, uh, and so I think they’ll con- meme coins will continue to exist, and we just have to treat them as such.

Yeah. You know, [00:26:00] speculations and for fun, ~~not for in- ~~not for serious investment.

Luke: Okay, cool. No, that’s super, super helpful, super interesting. Is there anything, uh, that, that’s going on at Bitwise that we didn’t cover that you want people to know about, and where can people find you online?

Juan: Yeah, thank you for that.

Um, yeah, Bitwise, we, we, as you mentioned,~~ and, uh, we’re, ~~we’re always trying to push the envelope of, what the opportunities available to investors looking at crypto. Um, and it’s an evolving landscape, and ~~we’re, ~~we’re always looking to stay on top of that. So a couple things to mention. Mentioned, uh, we launched our first, ~~uh, ~~tokenized fund.

So we’re actively working in that area. We’re expanding our vaults business. Uh, we’ve also recently launched, uh, the first suite, uh, the first institutional suite of, uh, model portfolios for digital assets. ~~Uh, ~~so that’s a simplified way for investors to carve out a crypto sleeve in their portfolio- Mm … and access it via, basically offload the management to us, uh, for, for us to do, uh, to curate a, a sleeve of their portfolio.

Mm-hmm. That is growing quickly, and, uh, and we see a lot of opportunity there. So those are, those are areas that, uh, we’re excited about. Um, and, uh, as if for myself,~~ um, ~~I’m [00:27:00] on, uh, LinkedIn, uh, on X as well, uh, under @singularity7x is, uh, is my handle. So please follow me there. Um, and, uh, I, you know, I look forward to speaking with you again.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Likewise, man. Juan, I really appreciate you making the time. Uh, we’ll be back in a year to check on this again in about- Let’s do it … but thanks again for making the time. It was really, really enjoyed the conversation and the catch-up.

Juan: Likewise. Always a pleasure with you.

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