The REAL Reason Bitcoin Hasn't COLLAPSED Yet... (Not What You Think)

**Scott Melker** (0:01)
Something very strange is happening in the markets right now. Investors' sentiment around crypto is absolutely terrible, yet adoption keeps accelerating. And while traders panic and the stock market wipes out 800 billion on war and oil fears, the biggest institutions in finance are quietly moving deeper into crypto. However, cracks are forming across traditional finance, private credit funds are restricting withdrawals, banks are tightening lending, and defaults are rising fast. There's so much to unpack. I'm not sure that I'm the right person to unpack all of it, but I'm going to go ahead and do my best on my Friday Freestyle here, my solo show.
Good morning, everybody, and happy Friday. I hope that you're all having a wonderful one and not paying too much attention to the news because that will just give you anxiety and make you sad and hate yourself and everybody else around you. But magically, if you just don't open Twitter or CNN or Fox or whatever is your flavor of choice, you just go outside and play with your kids. And probably, unless you unfortunately live in a war-torn country, you can probably just go about your day and not worry about any of it. But here we are, 9 a.m. on a Friday, having to worry about all of it because that's our job. Now, as I said in the beginning, we have a very strange kind of push and pull right now where sentiment is in the dumps, but institutions are massively adopting crypto. Now, before we dive directly into that, I want to tell you about one amazing institution that has adopted crypto. And that, of course, is our amazing sponsor, Abra. Wolves grow crypto wealth with Abra. I've been telling you about them for quite a long time. You guys know that I'm good friends with their CEO, Bill Barhite, but they provide individuals and institutions with a more secure way to control, manage and grow digital asset wealth from your own separately managed account, which is extremely important. You control all of your assets. You can get exposure to crypto, crypto products, like yield and lending through one full service platform. What I love about them is that they're always accessible to help you even though this isn't the type of service you can just go on the website and choose a product. It's very simple. You can take a loan. It's all very easy. You can actually discuss with one of their professionals what your priorities are, what you want to accomplish, how you want to use the loan, how much you should take. They'll break it all down for you and work with you very closely to make sure that you take a loan that will be very safe, very easy to manage, and that will fulfill all the priorities that you have. I can't recommend them enough. It's a product that I obviously use, which is why we're talking about it. So go check out Abra. Now, speaking of institutions that are adopting our beloved asset class, digital assets are entering a new phase. But once ran in parallel to existing financial systems, it's increasingly being applied to solve practical real-world needs, often behind the scenes. Today we introduce the Mastercard Crypto Partner Program, a global initiative that brings together more than 85 crypto-native companies, payments providers, and financial institutions. It's news to me today that there are actually 85 viable crypto-native companies. But I guess they did also include payment providers and financial institutions there. They're creating a forum for meaningful dialogue and collaboration as this space continues to mature. Now, when I read that story, what I actually think is Mastercard is really, really scared that crypto is going to eat their lunch, which is already happening. We know that stable coins and payment processors like Stripe and others are using stable coins and that nobody is going to be wanting to use the Mastercard and Visa payment networks. Now, to their credit, they've been on top of crypto and blockchain technology for quite a long time trying to find ways to adopt it, trying to avoid being the blockbuster of this generation. But I'm not sure it's going to happen because nothing stops this stable coin and payment trade on blockchain rails that isn't heavily leading the station. So yes, I think there's big news for Mastercard. I think that they're trying. This yet again is just one of those stories that we'll forget about completely, but is important for the plumbing of crypto. And one day we'll look back at the bull market and go, man, a lot of important things happened back then. But definitely worth noting that Mastercard is all over this right now. They're not the only ones. Wells Fargo, fire emoji big.