Stablecoins and the bullish institutional outlook: DAS takeaways

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DAS was incredible. 

It was a jam-packed session of inspiring and motivating discussions about how the institutional adoption of digital assets is unfolding. I was honored to be at the center of it all, hosting a number of panels. 

Here are my top takeaways from the conference:

Stablecoins are taking over

I had the good fortune of meeting Austin Campbell a couple of times during the week, and we discussed, at length, the innovations around stablecoins. I came out of the conference incredibly bullish on them. 

The climax of this discussion emerged during a panel I hosted with Campbell and Joseph Wang. We nerded out on the cross-currents between macro and digital assets. 

Austin’s explanation of how he thinks about stablecoins:

“So if we think about marginal buyers of US debt, a lot of foreign governments have been reducing their holdings of treasuries. And the great irony…[and] countervailing weight is that the people in those countries are increasing their holdings of US Treasurys through stablecoins. 

“Generally, people overcomplicate the discussion around stablecoins, and also call a lot of things ‘stablecoins’ that shouldn’t be called stablecoins. But a properly constructed stablecoin is just a box that basically holds stuff that looks like T-bills and treasuries. Very simple. And it’s just represented on a blockchain. Now the important part of that is, there’s two criteria. One is that you’ve got the internet, and the other one is that you have something of value to exchange for it.”

If that quote got your wheels turning, check out the rest of the panel here:

Institutions are just getting started

One of the biggest themes for me was just how bullish institutions are on the digital asset industry. This bullishness comes at a time when the entire retail industry has been imploding via the nuclear detonation that is memecoins. The dispersion between the two worlds is quite incredible. 

One of my favorite institutional bullposters is Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan. Matt’s good at eloquently explaining why digital asset adoption by TradFi is just beginning. 

We sat down to discuss this dispersion, to which he said:

“That’s the biggest dichotomy in crypto right now. The crypto-native, degen world is in existential depression, while all of the institutional players are coming into the market thinking that this has never been better and [that] we are on the cusp of a multi-year bull market — the scale of which you haven’t even imagined. And I think that’s absolutely true. 

“Look, I think memecoins will always exist. I also think they were great stress tests of this infrastructure that we’ve built, and they showed it can handle real throughput. But…from an institutional perspective, when I look at what’s happening on stablecoins, tokenization and institutional investment — those are all up and to the right. 

“The crypto-native world will come back to that in the future.”

To listen to the rest of our interview, check it out here:

Chatting with a fixed income legend

Interviewing someone like Mohamed El-Erian in front of tens of thousands of listeners was a career highlight for me, full stop.

The way El-Erian can clearly and simply explain complex macro topics shines a light on how much more I can improve within this realm.

The context for our conversation was fascinating. It feels like every major trend of the last 30 years is being reversed. For the first time in decades, investors are more excited about European equities over US ones. That is a wild change. 

El-Erian unpacked just how unique this situation is right now:

“We are living in a really fluid world. I mean, the word ‘uncertainty’ is used a lot, but ultimately, there are three things that people care about. Fundamentals, technicals and valuation. And all three, Felix, are being upended right now. And that is a world [the likes of which] we haven’t seen for quite a long time. 

“[In terms of fundamentals], these are things that are being created internally, endogenous to the system. That means that the operating paradigm on fundamentals is in play. What does the trade regime look like? What does the public sector look like? How would other countries react? Lots of uncertainties [including] the positive ones, the innovations…[like] how quickly will it take for AI life sciences and quantum robotics?

“Then you have the technicals. Before, it was ‘The US is better’; now we’ve had the largest drawdown in the US relative to Europe. 

“And then even when you go to the third one, valuations: it’s no longer clear what valuations should be in a world like this. So this is a really, really tricky time, and it doesn’t surprise me that gold is at a record high.”

El-Erian’s excerpt really hits home about how significantly the world is changing right now. 

When you have fundamentals, technicals and valuations all going through regime shifts at once, you need to pay attention. 

Find the rest of our conversation here:

This was by far the most exciting and inspiring digital asset conference I’ve ever attended. I’ve seen a lot of chatter from people saying this was the best conference they’ve been to and that the vibe was completely different from the crypto native corners of the internet. 

I’m here to tell you that’s a fact.

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