Solana + X Integration: The Hidden Bull Case Nobody Is Talking About

0:00So I think it's just, the momentums are there. I think it's just a matter of time where, you know, as those aim all the stars align, we'll see a big jump at the market to escape this, you know, choppy prize. Crypto might be coming out of the bear market, but builders are not slowing down either way. Today we're going to break down why prediction markets might be the next big financial primitive and what's going on in the Solano ecosystem, as well as these new cash tags on X and what this all means for investors. Hello and welcome to the Millcro show, the daily crypto show that knows that just because there's a dollar sign in front of it, does not mean that you should buy it. I'm your host, John Gill. And today is Thursday, April 16th. And today we are joined by DJ hot track. DJ is a crypto veteran and the head of the research team at Bird Eye, a prominent token tracking platform that offers live prices, charts, and trading insights across various blockchains, specializing on Solano. She previously served as the research lead at sub wallet and as a polka dot ambassador, DJ knows crypto inside. Now she's going to give us a lot of great alpha today. If that all sounds good to you,

1:00make sure you like and subscribe, share this episode with someone who's going to enjoy it. Today's episode is brought to you by Consensus Miami, where the next cycle starts some turn crypto tax chaos into confidence and nexo, earn interest, borrow, and trade crypto and without further ado, welcome back to the Millcro show, DJ. How are you? Good, how are you? Really happy to be here again. I'm really happy to have you. I think I enjoyed our last conversation very much. I'm excited to catch up with you again today. But I thought a good place to start this for our audience would be to just cover a little bit about Bird Eye. You all describe yourselves as a crypto data intelligence pioneer, powering internet capital markets. Exactly what does that mean and what does that look like? What is Bird Eye? Yeah, so Bird Eye is a crypto intelligence company and our mission is to democratize assets to blockchain data so that everybody can understand and check on blockchain data to power their investment decisions. And you mentioned about internet capital markets. So this is actually the term coined by

2:01Solana Fetish and CMO Ashkay in 2024. And you mentioned internet capital markets as opposed to the traditional capital markets. The problem now with traditional capital markets is that it's very fragmented and hard to access, right? So it's gatekeeping and the decline in IPOs, meaning that high growth deals are only accessible to accredited and verified investors and not like low capital investors. And permission list serves this, right? As just as the internet democratized assets to information, blockchain democratized access to capital. So the idea of internet capital market is that just as the internet democratized assets to information, blockchain democratized assets to capital. So the idea is that any type of asset can be traded, can be owned, can be issued, can be represented on the blockchain and can be accessible to anyone everywhere in the world.

3:03So how does that internet capital market is that if you go to bird eye and you use bird eye either as a retailer app or an API, you will get access to every asset on the blockchain. Either tokenized stocks or tokenized commodities or meme coins or blue cheap tokens, it's all available on bird eye where you can see stats and you can see traits, you can see how smart money flows and you can use that information to make the best decision for your portfolio. If you're not seeing this, you're trading blind right now. There are real moves happening behind the scenes that most people don't see until it's way too late. Inside Milcro Pro, you can track exactly what our analysts are buying, selling and what's on their watch list before it moves. Martin recently unloaded 40% of his cash off of one signal and Melvin is up multiple calls by like 50% and we're already up 30% this month on some ALTS. This is all happening every week.

4:03You can try it out for just a dollar for seven days. The link is in the description. Okay, great. So you're democratizing access to information, which is also helping as we're democratizing access to capital markets and helping people get connected in this evolving landscape of products and services. I want to ask you about something that got a lot of headline attention recently, which is Nikita Beer, who is the head of product for X and also an advisor for Salana, I believe, announced that X is going to be launching or has launched, rather I guess it's already live, cash tags so that users can get the latest news and prices about different stocks or tokens directly in X. Talk to us about this product. What is your involvement been and why is this such a big change? Yeah, so the idea of X cash tag is that when you search for or you post a cash tag, it's literally like a dollar sign and the ticker of the token. X will automatically suggest news and information and the price of that token so you can select the asset that you had in mind. So I think this is a very natural evolution of X

5:08because previously, if you talk about a token on X on previously Twitter, you will also use that cash tag in order to track all of the mentions of that tokens. And now, apart from the mention, you have the life price chart embedded in it and you also have like one minute price chart, 30 minutes price chart. And I think at some point I can even see like off-hours price of stocks so that the hour is like, off-hour price is like taken from on-chain data. And yesterday was available in the US and Canada and today it's available globally. I think what's really interesting is that not just blue cheap stocks and blue cheaps token, you can also search for mume coins on X and you will see the price chart, the historical data on X. And I think that's just powerful, right? Because the total user base of crypto and I think traditional finance to a lifts on X,

6:09they share news on X, they discuss everything on X and it just makes sense to have the token, the data of the token they're talking about directly on X and it just keeps the conversation flow very easily. How bird-eye it's involved in this new feature is that we collaborate with dialect and dialect is the team that works with X in collaboration with the Solana Foundation to develop the X cash tag feature for Solana-based tokens. So underneath that, they orchestrate infratime and data team, like Helius, like bird-eye and like Jupiter to make sure that the data shown up on X for Solana tokens are stable, precise and real time. And this is a team effort with very close support from the Solana Foundation. So if you search Solana-Token on X, the data you see, the price is from Jupiter, the historical data is from bird-eye and is supported by Helius infrastructure. So that's how we are involved in this whole new phenomenon.

7:11Got you. Okay, so there's a lot of different team members, different stakeholders that are kind of collaborating on this to support this as it rolls out on X. I'm kind of curious your thoughts on how big of a signal this is because I think a lot of people were very excited about this and then once it was announced, we're a little bit like, I don't understand how this is that much different than functionality that X already had. Can you talk to me about how you see this fitting into X as a platform? And is this just another step towards X money or X becoming like another super app or like talking to me about how you see this fitting into the progression of X as an app? Yeah, I think there has been a lot of discussion about how X, how the team behind X is trying to drive this into more than just a new speed. And I think that you can see pretty clearly that this is the super app is the direction that the app is veering towards. Because I think X has the advantage of the user base. And as I've mentioned before, everyone on crypto, everyone on an intratify and even politics, right?

8:13Politicians are living on X. And so for the longest time, I think X has been the go to new sources. It's like even faster than news outlet in some cases. And there's a lot of launching happen on X. There's a lot of, you know, politician sitting on X that can move market. And it just makes sense to integrate more financial functions and features to serve this specific and ever growing user base. And if you look at, I think if you look at the cash cap UI, it's really familiar for crypto users because it resembles a crypto wallet so much, right? You see this on like Phantom and Minimask. It's so familiar. And I feel like they can just add a roll of button that says buy cell and swap. And it just, you know, it just becomes a mobile wallet. And I think this is something that mobile wallet teams need to watch out for. Like how will they compete with such a huge platform

9:16that has like this massive and ever growing user base? So yeah, I think next thing definitely will be buy cell and swap and X money may be in the future. But yeah, it's obviously like very clearly becoming this super financial super app. Gotcha. Okay, I want to ask another question about this. Does this directly drive value economic activity or just any other thing, I guess in general, directly back to Solana or is this just right now, at least as it currently exists? You know, you guys are just helping to support with the historical token data for Solana and provide that to X. Is that just like the start of state of play now or do you see any other sort of like value being driven back to Solana by this at this stage? Like you've described it may change in the future, but like where are we right now in terms of that relationship? I think this is the first step is to provide the data infrastructure to display, you know, token prices and historical data on X. But as X integrates more function, as I mentioned before,

10:18I think Solana can very readily be the infrastructure that powers a lot of financial functions that happens on X. So say you can swap token on Solana, you can buy and sell token on Solana, you can do a lot of financial activities on Solana because Solana is and it's being designed to serve that purpose. As a general purpose blockchain that serves every financial activities, right? It's a home of internet capital markets. So I think if the opportunities present itself, I think Solana should be able to rise to the occasion and be the infrastructure that powers financial activities that are happening on this very huge platform. GG, this is very helpful. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you after this came out because this is, this project's gotten a lot of attention, but I think people are still figuring out some of these details of like how this works and how bullish is this, what does it mean? So that's really helpful on that.

11:19Thank you so much. I ask you about something else that you guys have written about recently at Bird Eye, which is this large report that you've co-authored in collaboration with Jupyter and Chainlink, all about prediction markets. The title was prediction markets as a new financial primitive. And I wondered if you could just unpack for us a little bit about what this means. What is a financial primitive, first of all? And then why do you think the prediction markets are becoming such an important new one? Yeah, so financial primitives by definition is the foundational composable building blocks that upon which all financial activity derives. So you can imagine it as a legal brick that tights the whole financial world together. For example, you can imagine in the Traffa word it's loans, it's equity, it's derivatives, it's insurance. And in the DeFi world, it can be lending protocols, it can be AMMs and whatnot. So, and what is another thing that's important about financial primitive is that these are composable and they can work together to create

12:19even more complex products. And so, how prediction markets are now the new financial primitive. It's a primitive for conditional pays out for risk hedging that can be composable with lending, right? You can use your positions to ask collateral to borrow assets, or you can stack the positions with themselves to create a more complex product such as tokens pay out if event A and even B happen together simultaneously. So, as in the report, we argue that prediction markets serve as the new outcome based financial instrument and a risk hedging tool. So for outcome based financial instrument, the price uncertainty and probability. So is there essentially like earning profit or taking losses with these financial assets, right? And people have real financial incentive to use this product. And you can see in the data,

13:21like I think they're now close to three million users of financial prediction markets all over. Pauline Market has like 80% something of their user base. The user base on Solana, especially guns Jupyter, predict it's also like increasing past 16K. So more and more users are interested in this new outcome based financial product. But also a very, another very powerful function of prediction markets is risk hedging. So previously in traditional models, you either take risks as like a constant factor or you see risks as like something that is continuously moving. And it's really hard to pinpoint the risks that is associated with discrete event. Like who's going to be the president, the US president for this election cycle? Will the Fed cut rates essentially?

14:23Those are discrete event that is really hard to price into the risk management model. So you can kind of price it through a proxy. So like will you know, oil price go up or oil price go down that it's related to the political the news that are happening, right? But with prediction markets, you can price the event itself. And at any point in time, the probability of the event happening reflects in the price. So for analysts in institutions who are building, you know, risk management model, it's really easy to just factor in the probability, aka the price of the event itself into the model. And you can do to calculate what is the most perfect timing to take action. And so I think that is one of the reason why prediction markets are gaining popularity

15:23in the recent years. And I think it will continue to become a very strong financial primitive in the coming years. The way we build wealth is changing. Stocks, savings accounts, real estate, that playbook is getting rewritten in real time. Nexo is the platform built for what's next. It's an all in one digital wealth platform where you can earn interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling and trade a wide range of assets. All in one place with 24, seven support and institutional great security. Oh, and by the way, Nexo is back in the US with new U.S. clients getting 30 days of wealth club premier access. That means elevated interest rates, lower borrowing costs, and crypto cash back on trades. Benefits usually reserved for loyalty program members. Get started at milkgrove.com slash Nexo. Crypto taxes are a nightmare. You've got trains across 50 exchanges, DeFi positions you forgot about, NFT flips, staking rewards, air drops, and somehow you're supposed to report all of this to the IRS. Good luck. Queue the solution.

16:23Some, you may know it by its old name, Crypto Tax Calculator. The some platform connects to over 3,500 exchanges while it's in crypto projects, including full support for DeFi, NFT, staking, and air drops. It finds deductions you'd miss, reconciles massive transaction histories without losing track, and generates IRS ready reports that will help you pay the least tax possible. Oh, some is also the official tax partner of Coinbase and Metamask, rated 4.6 out of five on Trust Pilot. Turn crypto tax chaos into confidence. Get started for free at milkgrove.com slash sum that's suwm.com. Milkgrove listeners can also unlock 20% off their first year subscription with code milkgrove20. That's really helpful analysis. And I think a lot of people are aware of prediction markets, but I hadn't really thought about them so much in terms of this composability with other financial primitives that you're talking about about how this could have implications for things like insurance, for lending, for other things too. In this report, you noted that prediction markets are much more accurate than traditional forecasting tools like expert forecasts or polls,

17:24like taking a poll of people who want to give their opinion on something. You said that Polymarket achieves a 90.8% accuracy four hours before resolution, but also an 86.2% accuracy one month before resolution of event. This is incredibly accurate. Talk to me about what this unlocks for the market. How does that accuracy unlock new kinds of value or products for the market? What do you see as being some of the implications of that high accuracy of these prediction markets? Yeah, so I think accuracy turns prediction markets from just interesting signals into usable infrastructure. And as I mentioned before, how now a lot of institutions are starting to use prediction markets and starting to factor in the probability that prediction markets give into their RICS management model. If probabilities are reliably close to reality and a lot of financial system can safely depend on them.

18:24So previously, when you do RICS management, there are several types of models that are economically proven that you can rely on, but these models, the witness of these models is that they cannot do anything about this grid event. Like, will there be a new president? Will there be a new fat grid cut? Will there be a new candidate showing up, et cetera? Because prediction markets are gaining great accuracy, they can help in use cases such as a hash that can automatically scale as the RICS increase or decrease or teams can reliably looking at the probability of a certain event and allocate resources more rationally. But I think one of the interesting things to note about here is that accuracy increases according to liquidity.

19:25So very thin markets don't have good accuracy and we see in the market, the BRIA score is lowest in markets that has more than $1 million in liquidity. So thin markets can show high in accuracy and that means that in order to make this a very reliable infrastructure, I think more liquidity should flow into prediction markets. And I think institutions are very much aware of that. We see movements like bitwise filing for ETFs for the 2028 president election. And we see like institution like prop trading firms are thinking and considering adding prediction markets into their portfolio. So I think we'll see more and more in higher accuracy as more liquidity flow into these markets. Gotcha, because the price of the accuracy goes up and if you want good information, you got to pay for it. So that seems to correlate that sense there.

20:27Another thing you guys noted in this report is that the prediction market total notional volume has grown over 13x just in the last six months. It's now over 150 billion. This is enormous growth, obviously, but a lot of users have come in. It's really been one of the fastest growing sectors of the financial markets. Do you have any ideas around how big these prediction markets are likely to become? Because obviously, like you said, there's going to be more capital, more players coming in. But how big of a sector of the market do you think this becomes? Or do you have any way of forecasting how big this might get? I think we should have a prediction market on that, don't we? I was afraid of that. Well, this is what everybody's going to start doing this for everything now, you know? Exactly, exactly. I think they can go to the trillions very easily in the next year. Especially as, you know, more sports event are coming, like the World Cup is coming. And election cycles in 2028, it's coming. I think more capitals will be deployed into prediction markets. And indeed, the market is not yet saturated.

21:28Do you see Polymarket and Kalshi hitting new all-time highs? Like almost like every week, you see new all-time highs in volume, new all-time highs in open interest. And other than Polymarket and Kalshi, other entrants, other new players in the field also experience all-time highs. I think limitless on base, the prediction market platform, also hitting new volume eight all-time high this week. And you see multiple players are entering the field on B&B chain, like Opinion, like predict.fun. And institutions are also adopting, but just starting to do so, I think. According to the survey by Acuity that we were quoting in the report, only 6% of the surveyed institutions saying that prediction market won't be the new big thing in the next three to five years. So meaning that 94% of them are positive, that it will become like a really major thing, carving out like 5% of the whole of the whole economies

22:30in the next three to five years. So that is a very positive sentiment from prop trading firms that are surveyed. And I think they are correct. I think 94% positive sentiment signalling that institutions are ready and are willing to deploy more and more capitals into this market. And it's fair, right? The market's reward, those who have good information that can predict the right outcome with such event. Gotcha, yeah, when you have that much consensus around something and you're seeing the market adopting it this rapidly, those predictions forecast make sense. We talked about this a little bit, but I want to kind of bring this conversation a little bit full circle back to Solana here because we talked about how the historical data for tokens on X is being supported by a lot of different players in the Solana ecosystem. We talked about prediction markets. How does this come back to Solana? Because I feel like I've heard a lot of different

23:31financial companies launching predictors to markets, obviously Kowshi, Polly Market, but there's like perpetuals have become a big product as well, but a lot of that's happening on hype. How does the Solana ecosystem benefit from this and how do we kind of like center the sole token behind all of this economic activity that's happening? Yeah, yeah, I think to be fair, you have to admit that Solana is a little bit slow on the perps and the prediction markets for. Even though like Kowshi, it's live on phantom and Jupiter is also serving prediction markets to Solana users, but the market share of them, it's quite marginal compared to other chains. But I think coming back to the point that I mentioned previously that Solana has been focusing on the infrastructure that powers great UX and powers like cheap and easy financial activities on the chain, right? So you see that Solana is pulling a lot of capitals

24:33into the chain. You see Ford and L1 tokens launching on Solana, you see tokenized stocks hitting new old time highs in trading volume on Solana. I think Solana is infrastructure ready for this kind of activity of like high volume trading, of fee trading on prediction markets and perps. And I think Solana is slowly gaining wins in fundamentals. And this will, I mean sooner or later, reflect in the price of Sol. I think I mentioned in the last podcast that I was in that Solana will go into 2020, stick a little bit slow, but it will eventually move back to its old time highs. And I'm still positive on that. Okay, well that's exactly the question that I did want to ask you and I went back and watched our last conversation too. So I wanted to revisit this because Solana is now sitting around $85 and it's been seeing like you said, a lot of different competition, but it's also one of the most robust ecosystems

25:35in all of digital assets. You know, I hear you saying you think it's gonna go back to new old time highs. Do you expect that to happen in 2026? Do you think that time horizon has extended? What's your outlook in the near to medium term for Solana here? Yeah, I think I think the 100% positive on the long term, I think it will come back around the time of the next election, it normally is, right? So 2028 will be a big year, but 2026 and 2027, I think we'll just like sideways, move up and down a little bit around 100, but yeah, I'll positive that, well, the latest will be 2028 and we'll get back the old time highs. Gotcha. Okay, yeah, and I think that's something that a lot of people have been seeing and sort of struggling a little bit with that frustration of just like this choppy price action right now. Another question I wanna ask you around this is, what are you guys focusing on at Bird Eye for your next report? Because I know you have some products coming,

26:35which I'll ask about those in a second, but you write a lot of great research and I learn a lot from your reports. Obviously, this one on prediction markets was really illuminating on that. What are you working on writing about next or do you have something in mind that you're gonna be covering next in your research reports? Yeah, so I'm gonna ask her two questions at once because it ties together. So Bird Eye has just launched a new product called Bird Eye Purps and with this Bird Eye Purp, we provide the decision layer that turns raw perps data into visual intelligence and actionable insights. So we're starting with hyperliquid and we're moving into other chains very quickly. So what you have with Bird Eye Purps, it will be bird eye dot SO slash perps. You get overall market exposure across different tokens. You can see directional bias like long or short for each of the specific cohort. And the traders cohort that we curate, it's filtered by wind rate, by P&L and by capital size.

27:36So you can see different views of where the tokens, where the capitals are being deployed. And in each of the cohorts, once you identify like a profitable cohort, for example, you can jump into that cohort and see what wallets are driving the profits within this specific cohort. You see full P&L history, you see wind rate and performance breakdown, life position, leverage exposure, until can level conviction signals and you can mirror the moves or you can front the crowd. Yeah, that's my one minute pitch of the new Bird Eye Purps. That was beautiful. Thank you so much. It was great copy, very well done. And the next report that we're gonna do, I think it's probably gonna be about Purps. I think it's like the one of the two major narratives right now, alongside prediction markets, we're having Purps and we're having like, hyperliquid, the biggest winner of all time and we see other chains trying to compete with HyperLiquid.

28:36And in Solana being one of the major chain that wanting to compete in this purp war. And I think now that Bird Eye has provided Purps data, it will be very interesting to look at the data that we have and see what is the state of perpetuous trading at the moment and where is heading next. So stay tuned. Okay, well, I'm definitely gonna do that. That was a great plug and really great answer. Very thorough. I wanna get your thoughts on something else here. We talked a lot about financial primitives. We talked about prediction markets, we talked about perpetuals now as another thing you guys are moving into. And these are relatively new financial primitives that have found huge market adoption, product market fit. And you described a lot of the things that Bird Eye does in terms of being transparent, giving users information, allowing them to see a lot of information to inform their decisions on these things. Do you have any thought about what it looks like

29:37once these users shift from being human to being more of agentic operators or AI agents coming into the space using these financial primitives? Have you thought about that all? Do you have any take on what you think that might look like and just how that might drive the next wave of adoption for these financial primitives that are so popular? Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's a very important question in these days. Now that AI adoption is everywhere and we are moving into like a new kind of internet which is like a agentic internet, right? Bird Eye is actually now support X for zero two. X for zero two. Yes, Bird Eye data has launched support for that. And now Bird Eye data, we have MCP two and if you using our API, your agent can easily read the data that we provide via MCP. So we are fully aware of the agentic internet and we are doing our best to make our data available and readable and consumable by agents

30:39so that users who want to get the information and tick actions via agents they can do so very easily with Bird Eye data. Wall Street is here, the White House is here, all of crypto is here, we're talking about consensus, the world's longest running it and most influential digital assets conference happening in Miami may fit through seven. This is where 20,000 plus decision makers from 100 plus countries gathered to shape the future of finance, 72% are director level or above representing over 4 trillion in crypto AUM. Three days, six stages, 500 plus speakers, including Michael Sailor, Brad Garlinghouse, Anatoly Yakovanko, and Eric Trump tackling the three forces driving trillions on chain, crypto scale, institutional integration and agentic commerce. Deals get signed here, funds get raised here, the next cycle starts here, register and save 20% with code milkwrote at consensus.coindes.com. Yes, okay, so you're preparing for that as well. This has been really interesting. DJ, I always learn a lot from our conversations.

31:41I really appreciate the way that you're so focused on data and so closely tied to that. But then you're also really great at staying current of what's going on in the news, what narratives are developing. I'm curious what you're looking for in terms of a catalyst in the market. It feels like, you know, just like you said, it's been a lot of chop. There might be a lot more chop. Are there specific catalysts in the market that you might be watching for to kind of kick off the next wave of bullish momentum here? If it's the Clarity Act, if it's the end of the conflict in Iran, if it's something else, what do you think is the next catalyst for crypto and maybe even particularly for Solana here? Yeah, I think that we need to see a little bit more stability on the politics side for crypto to get stabilized a little bit. Now that people are like feeling a little bit calmer in this recent news. But I think we are actually seeing a lot of momentum in terms of institutional adoptions. And I think it's just a matter of time, really. Because we're seeing like,

32:43capital being deployed into this industry every day. Like, you know, new institutions are tokenizing something news on chain. And somebody launching a stablecoin, somebody is collaborating with like a payment infrastructure to bring stablecoin payments adopted more widely. So I think it's just, the momentum's are there. I think it's just a matter of time where, you know, as those in all the stars align, we'll see a big jump at the market to escape this, you know, choppy price period that we're talking about. So yeah, I think we just need to wait and see. Wait and see is sometimes one of the hardest things to do in the markets are also one of the smartest. So I appreciate the call for patients here. DJ Hatrang, thank you so much for coming on the milk road show and sharing all of this with us today. Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online? Okay, so go to X, your favorite news source.

33:46If you want to look for me, you can go to DJ Hatshap or you look for bird eye, you can search for bird eye. SL or bird eye data will have all of the newest updates on Twitter and all of the new data available from bird eye will be delivered to you via Twitter. So go to X, try some X cash tag that is powered by bird eye data and follow us. That was great. Thank you so much for coming on, for plugging all this stuff, for sharing all these, it really like you're really close to the source on a lot of these important updates and news that's coming out. So just thank you so much for being here. I hope we can talk again soon. Thank you so much. See you. See you and thank you all for joining us. I hope you all learned something today. So until next time, as I always say, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milk Road Show. Thanks for being here, everyone. Bye. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel, join the Milk Road Daily and Pro News Letters, and start investing like the top 1%.

34:46This shows for educational purposes only, nothing we say is financial advice, investing is risky, never invest more than you can afford to lose.