ROLLUP: The Debasement Trade is Back | Bessent Put | Tokenized Stocks | AI Capital Crunch

**Ryan Sean Adams** (0:04)
Bankless Nation, it is the last week of August. It's time for the Bankless Weekly Roll Up. David is out, he's at Burning Man, somewhere in the desert, I'm sure. Right now, we've got Haseeb Qureshi filling in, backed by popular demand.
A lot of exciting things going on in crypto in the week. We gotta talk about the Bessent put. It is week two.
Is Bessent really gonna use $1 trillion in the treasury in order to impact and enact yield curve control? We'll talk about what he's actually saying, how the market's interpreting it, what this means for crypto, whether the debasement trade is truly back on. And his former mentor, Stan Druckenmiller, even a little slap down on the week, so there's some drama going on. Also, Coinbase entering the tokenized stock wars in a big way. Can they win the market? Ethena turning on a fee switch. It's up 20% and toward the end, since we have Haseeb on, I gotta ask him a question about the AI trade. How long it can continue before it eats up all the capital in the world? Stay tuned for all this. Haseeb, it's great to have you back on. Am I imagining things or has there been a big energy shift back into crypto? And I'm not just talking about prices. This is more than prices, isn't it? What's happening here? Are you feeling this energy shift?

**Haseeb Qureshi** (1:23)
I'm definitely feeling it. I think we have to give a big salute to all the people who left the industry over the last six months. I was thinking about that this morning. Just all of the big blog posts that people wrote and the Twitter was like, oh, so long guys.
This industry is not for me anymore. All the haters, all the losers. Everybody who quit at the bottom, look, we needed you. We needed you to move on so that we could be here now. So salute to everybody who moved on because it, you know, look, a forest needs a wildfire in order to stay healthy.

**Ryan Sean Adams** (1:58)
Yeah. So is that a bit of a victory lap coming from you?

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:01)
Is this earned? A little bit.

**Ryan Sean Adams** (2:03)
But like, seriously, I mean, is it just prices or is there something fundamental going on here? What do you think has been the driver of this energy? Is it just it's time now the builders are building or was there something fundamental that's happening?

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:17)
Well, I mean, look, we're going to start with this, obviously, macro is what initially catalyzed this move. But it's clear, the macro part is done, right? It's not like there's more yield curve control. I mean, there's more, the story's not over yet. But a lot of this is that crypto is intrinsically reflexive. Reflexivity breeds reflexivity, upward moves breed upward moves. And the reality is that the sellers are done, sellers are exhausted.
It's been so many months of just everybody telling you that crypto is dead. And the bear market ends when the last seller sells, when the last weak hand turns over. And once that's done, it's just like, yeah, what else is there to be sad about? Who else is there to exit? Who else is like, yeah, you know what? I'm done at 80K. That's all I wanted. I'm out.
I think the reality is that you need this clearing of a full cycle to give the next cycle permission to begin.

**Ryan Sean Adams** (3:12)
Maybe this is why we always have cycles in crypto. We're going to start in the markets before we do. Want to thank our friends and sponsors over at... Okay, let's take a look at the charts here because we got to do it. Man, seven days looking good. Bitcoin up another 10%.
It is hovering just above 80K at the time of recording. ETH got a big bump last week. Another smaller bump continues. So up about 7%. Solana was a big mover on the week. On the seventh day, it's up about 20%.
Last week was the largest weekly dollar gain in Bitcoin history. So in absolute terms, in dollar gains, it was a 14K up week. That is absolutely massive. But we also have to zoom out a little bit here, Haseeb, and we have to look at prices from a year-to-day perspective. This felt huge in the last two weeks, but we are back to approximately May 10th pricing. So we just went back in time about four months. What do you think of these price moves? Do you think we've seen the lowest of lows on Bitcoin for the cycle? That would have been, I guess, 630 June 30th, Bitcoin hit about 58K. Is that as low as we go in the cycle? Is it up from here, at least above 58K from here?