$1.3 Million Bitcoin Will Be “Relatively Easy,” Says Bitwise’s Matt Hougan | Markets Outlook

0:00Our long-term prediction is we get to 1.3 million by 2035. I think we have a good chance to get back up to 100K this year. I think the conditions are extremely bush. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Crypto markets move fast. You need research that keeps up. That's the stack. GraySkills blog with sharp analysis from the team that's tracked digital assets since 2013. Head to GraySkills.com slash the stack. Introducing RealFi, a smarter stablecoin that's backed by real-world assets. Launching August 2026, join the TestNet now at realfi.co. Matt Hogan, welcome to this special edition of Market's Outlook from the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Thanks for being here. Now this is my first market's outlook since being on vacation. And you and I were just talking about the flip of the market. You said folks were in despair and we hit you for you overnight. Talk to me a little bit. I mean, I was on vacation.

1:00I'm sure some of our audience hasn't been following as closely as you and I. But what triggered that flip? It was really amazing. I mean, we went from zero to 100 miles an hour overnight. The answer, specific answer to your question was what Bessent did in the Treasury market. More than anything else, him stepping in to say he would buy back the long end of the Treasury curve, really spark the rally. But that's sort of a fake answer. I think what was really going on was crypto investors had been waiting for weeks, maybe for months for an excuse to buy. There's been all this good news. There's been the growth of tokenized stocks. There's been interesting real world assets. There's been hyperlick with. There's what's happening on Robinhood. People were waiting for an excuse to come into the market. One Bessent gave them their excuse. They jumped in with two feet. I think that explains the sort of despair to exuberance switch that we saw so quickly. All right, we're in September now. Some might call it a wreck, temper historically, not a very good month for Bitcoin. We did have that flip of the market that we just spoke about. Talk to me about how you expect Bitcoin to perform this month and throughout the rest of the year.

2:03Yeah, look, I think we're going to have a little bit of digestion of the big mark up. You don't go up 30% and then not sort of pace yourself a little bit. But there is a lot going on on the macro side. Just today, we're seeing huge ramps and yields around the world. We're seeing a lot of chatter out of the G20. I think there's a possibility that another macro catalyst will give us another leg up. So while I would expect some short-term consolidation over the next few weeks, maybe next week, I think the market is going to start to look ahead to uptober to contrast, direct timber. And we may start to see that come a little bit early. Let's talk about some of those macro catalysts, which we'll be looking at for. Yeah, I think anything that suggests there will be further intervention into the markets to control the upward trajectory of long-term interest rates globally will be welcomed by crypto investors. That could be best-ent intervening. That could be more activity from the bank of Japan. It could be more global activity on the yen. It could be concern over in Europe. There are lots of things. I think we're at the point in the market where any small piece of news

3:05will be blown into a very big story. So it doesn't have to be a big intervention. We're now at the point of the cycle where we reward any little hint of good news. I think a little piece of positive macro news would go a long way towards re-igniting a second phase of the rally. Well, that brings me to a post you shared on X recently. If Besson is right, we grow our way out. You want to be long. AI stocks if Besson is wrong. And we inflate our way out. You want to be long bit coin if you want to win an either scenario own both. Talk to me a little bit about that. And how you might be allocating a portfolio under the current conditions. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you look the big whale of a story is the $40 trillion of debt going to $50 trillion going to $100 trillion. As an investor, you need to take that into account. The traditional portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds is 100% fiat currency. You're completely exposed to that. What Besson has said is he'll grow his way out of this thanks to the AI boom. He may be right. We may get that one in a million chance

4:05that it plays out exactly perfectly. So own AI stocks. If he's right, you get that. If he's wrong, the other way governments get out of this is by inflating away the debt. In that case, Bitcoin is the fastest horse. So you want to own that. That's what I was driving at. In terms of what I see investors doing from their portfolio, look, I see them maintaining total allocation to equities. I actually don't think that's going anywhere. People are excited about AI. The changes I'm seeing are on the bond side of the portfolio. People wanting to take less risk there. That means shortening duration instead of owning 10 year treasuries. Maybe you own three month treasuries and then adding back risk with the crypto allocation to get the return you need. So maybe it's 60, 35, 5, maybe it's 60, 30, 10, but I think I have 0% in Bitcoin at this point is a misallocation and put you at risk in the future. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I caught up with Stellar's D'Nel Dixon for brand new rails. We'll take a look right after this. If you're serious about crypto investing, you need more than headlines.

5:06You need research you can trust. That's the stack. The blog where grayscale's research team breaks down what's actually driving digital assets from Bitcoin and Ethereum to the emerging trends shaping what's next. No hype, just sharp analysis and insights from the team that's been navigating crypto markets since 2013. Visit grayscale.com, slash the stack and subscribe today. This episode is brought to you by RealFi. Most stable coins leave capital sitting still. RealFi is different. It connects on chain capital to real world markets like US treasuries, money market funds and private credit, real transparency, real impact, real fire. Launching August 2026, join the testnet now at realfi.co. Hey everyone, welcome back to market's outlook. This is brand new rails are a weekly look at the latest developments in tokenization. It's brought to you by real fire. Most stable coins leave capital sitting still. Real fire is different. A smarter stable coin backed by real world assets like US treasuries, money market funds and private credit. Launching August 2026, join the testnet

6:07now at realfi.co. All right, Stellars RWA market has surged roughly 360% this year to nearly $4 billion up from under $900 million at the end of 2025. The growth spans US treasuries, private credit and money market funds. But what category is standing out? Non-US government debt. Stellar now holds around $490 million in tokenized sovereign debt, including Mexican satis and Brazilian government bonds and its number one in that asset class globally. I asked Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denel Dixon where she sees the next leg of growth. I think we're going to see private credit. We're going to see sovereign debt from countries that are outside the United States. We're already seeing that grow on Stellar. It's pretty remarkable to see that growth there. And I think that we're going to see more and more money market funds and US back treasuries. It's what all of these different players are getting into it. They're going to actually compete to deliver the best for their customers, whether that be retail

7:08or the institutional side. Dixon told me the opportunity in non-US sovereign debt is bigger than most people realize and it's central to why she got into this industry in the first place. I think that it's so important to recognize that real-world assets do not just belong to the United States. When I think about non-US debt and I think about the opportunity to be able to have those governments export their debt so that they can not just sit in their boundaries and have people in their boundaries utilize this debt. It's global and we see that on Stellar. We're number one with respect to that right now and I see that growth and it changes the globe. It makes it so that it's not just the United States and Western Europe that are part of the story. It is actually the globe that is part of the story. And for me, that actually is the reason why I got into this business. It's to make finance accessible to everyone. That's a wrap for this week's brand new Rails. We'll see you next week as we continue exploring how blockchain technology is reshaping capital markets liquidity and investment opportunities. All right, let's get back to our conversation with Matt now. If we talk about crypto markets, we leave AI stocks aside. We are looking at Bitcoin,

8:11Ether, ZCash in the headlines recently, hype, soul. How are you looking at allocating import portfolio if we're talking purely crypto? Yeah, I think there's three stories to pay attention to. Bitcoin is an obvious story. It's the debatement head. ZCash is this unique story about sort of privacy. I think the more that Bitcoin enters the institutional part of the market, that creates a portion of the market that's going to want something sort of outside of that institutional realm. ZCash is filling that. The middle piece is everything involved in tokenization and real world assets. I think that's a super cycle that will last for a decade. So that starts with Ethereum and Solana, but it goes down to assets like hyperliquid, uniswap, Ave, Morpho, anything that's touching tokenization is going to have a bid behind it for a long time to go. I'd remind people there's about $300 billion in tokenized assets total right now. There's $600 trillion of assets in the world. That market has 2,000 X to grow. That's a lot of growth behind

9:13that market. So I think all those assets will do spectacularly well actually over the next handful of years. If you had to pick the top three, which ones would you say? Well, I think you have to have an allocation to Bitcoin right now. As we discussed, I think it hedges you against a basement. I think there's real upside as wealth comes into that market. The two others of that list that I would call out, man, it's hard. I think look, Solana is becoming a leader on tokenized stocks. I think it's undervalued on a relative basis on an L1 base. And then I really like what's happening in both hyperliquid and you just swap there. I stole one I did for. Hyperliquid is this incredible story that has a catalyst of moving into the US market. You always love a good fundamental story with a catalyst. That's a great example. And then you just swap is cleaning up with integration on Robinhood. I think that asset is still at $5 billion, remarkably too small for its global brand. So Bitcoin, Sol, Hype, and Uni, I think is a pretty good for some. You mentioned the tokenized real world asset market growing. If you had to pick the top three bets on that specifically, what would you pick? Yeah, I look, I think your best off taking a portfolio bet. So on the L1 space, I would want to own

10:18ETH and I would want to own Solana and I want to own Avalanche and maybe some XRP. But if I had to make the top three bets, I mean, look, Ondo is a very specific pure play in that space. I think it's doing well. I think Uniswap will integrate extremely well in that space. And then I think hyperliquid is misunderstood by the market. They think of it as a crypto market, which is serving a $2 trillion market. I think it's serving all global assets. That's a $200 trillion market. If you size up its tam 100X, it looks very attractive at these levels. So I would call that out as well. I didn't hear Ethereum there. Is there a reason why we leave Ethereum out when we're thinking about tokenized assets and making a bet on that? No, not at all. I would absolutely include Ethereum as part of that portfolio of the L1 portfolio. The thing I feel about the L1 space is that it's not 100% clear who the winner is going to be. So rather than picking one, I would rather pick a portfolio. I would rather own Google and Yahoo and Ask Jeaves, then to bet it all on Ask.com and get the Internet bubble wrong. I feel the same in the L1 space. So I'm a huge Ethereum fan. It's the

11:22second largest asset in our index fund. I'm bullish and it's been performing well and it's been getting great inflows. I just would also own other L1s as part of a package. Now we're here at the New York Stock Exchange, Jorn Town for the Real World Assets Summit, which is very topical, given what you and I have been talking about. What's the, what's the energy been like there? Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. I think people realize that this tokenization super cycle is among us. You have true crypto natives standing side by side with the largest institutions. You look at the speakers on that panel or in that conference. It's an amazing combination of folks who are listed on this exchange and then folks who are from the true crypto DGN native side, suddenly talking to one another. I think we can now do the kind of things we've talked about with Real World Assets in an increasingly regulated format. I don't know, it's probably the most bullish conference that I've been to in crypto in, I don't know, eight years. Isn't that kind of wild the types of names we're talking about? The types of names we're seeing participate in conferences like this. I mean, just a few years ago, I think we would laugh if we said,

12:27you know, the Black Rocks, they could more against, they would all be in the room at the table, looking at how, how they can lead some of these conversations. It's absolutely true. I mean, we used to run whole media cycles on one of those firms hiring a junior associate. And releasing a report. Yeah, to me, that was like, that was all we talked about for a week. We're finally there. And now it's the CEO's on panels going to Brooklyn to speak at the Real World Assets. I mean, I think it's an incredible change. And look, again, I'd emphasize this. It's still extraordinarily early. Remember those numbers, 300 billion in assets on chain, 600 trillion on assets available. That gap's going to close. So this is a story that's going to be with us for a while. And what does this tell you? I guess I just wanted to hear from you. You know, what does it tell you about the future we're heading towards? I'm hearing a lot about, you know, retail kind of dying, retail getting left to the side when we look at what's happening from an institutional perspective when it comes to crypto. Like, what's that future you're building towards? And where does retail fit into it? Yeah, retail is an important part of crypto. They got us to where

13:31we are today. I continue to think they'd be their major drivers. You're seeing a huge growth in social trading. I don't think that slows down anywhere soon. The thing about it is is that institutions control most of the money. And right now they have a 0% allocation to crypto. So they're going to increase that allocation to 1, 2, 3, 5, 10%. And that's just going to be a huge amount of capital. But retail is still important. They'll still be pushing us on the edge of where we're going. If you're not paying attention to that market, you're not thinking about what will be quote unquote institutional in a few years. I bet in a few years you're going to see the names on this exchange talking about social trading and those things. So there's still a huge amount of signal in that retail space. It's just the institutions are coming with a huge amount of money and a huge amount of cloud. Okay, you know I love a Bitcoin price prediction. I won't go end of year. We'll go by 2030. I think that the prediction is at 180 now. Yeah. If I'm correct, I think that is that what you said? By which by 2030. Oh, by 2030. I think it'll be substantially higher than that. So our long term prediction is we get to 1.3 million by 2035. I think we have a

14:36good chance to get back up to 100K this year. I think the conditions are extremely bullish. Remember, we're just getting traditional Wall Street back in their seats after their August break. I think as they come into their seats and they look at this macro setting, they look at crypto forming a nice bottom. They're going to want to start allocating. So I'm bullish on the short term. I'm very bullish on the long term. I think 1.3 million by 2035. It's going to be relatively easy for Bitcoin. Matt, thanks so much for joining me at the New York Stock Exchange. I hope you enjoy the rest of your time in New York. Thanks for having me.