URGENT! Crypto Has a Major Problem it' Needs to Solve Before the Next Bull Market! | Bill Barhydt

**Bill Barhydt** (0:00)
Our job is simply to build on top of those platforms, to build the future of wealth management and banking. We have a brisk business in lending against Bitcoin, and as a fiduciary, we want to simply have as many viable options that are liquid, easy to get in and out of, and technologically safe.

**Tony Edward** (0:18)
I'm a big believer in the free market. However, there's been a lot of controversy with insider trading and much more. What are your thoughts on prediction markets in the future?

**Bill Barhydt** (0:26)
Prediction markets are a quagmire because of that exact issue.

**Tony Edward** (0:35)
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thinkingcrypto, link will be in the description.
Hey folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and joining me is Bill Barhydt, who is the founder and CEO of Abra, which is a global digital asset wealth and treasury management platform, providing clients with a suite of sophisticated digital asset products and services. Bill, great to see you. Great to have you back.

**Bill Barhydt** (2:24)
Always great to see you, Tony. Love your work.

**Tony Edward** (2:26)
Bill, certainly want to get your perspective and thoughts on the markets and everything that's happening around Clarity Act and much more. I think it's a good time that we're going to be talking. There's also the potential. I don't know if you can give us a timeline of when Abra might go public, but let me not get ahead of myself.
Bill, where do you think we are in the crypto bear market? Do you think we're near a bottom?

**Bill Barhydt** (2:48)
Yeah, I do. I think we're chopping around what I think is a price bottom.
It could go on until end of Q3, early Q4, but I think we've been range bound. Look, I probably see this a little bit differently than people who look at stock market returns as the basis for what it means to invest and speculate. I think we're dealing with exponential growth, and right now, AI basically clearly has the narrative around exponential growth. It really is a very unique time and opportunity. But I think crypto is still an exponential growth mode. We haven't even gotten into tokenized real-world equities, which is worth trillions of dollars on top of what we have. The stablecoin narrative has died down a little bit post-circle IPO, but the usage is ballooning. Actually, it's accelerated since the narrative of last summer.
The space is in hypergrowth, but the narrative shifted away from L towards institutional. If what you're focused on is price, you need retail. Right now, retail money is looking at AI and certain tech stocks like crypto during COVID. That's unsustainable, in my opinion. There's a real profitability problem with AI, in my opinion. I'm super bullish on AI, right? I mean, I spend so much of my day on AI strategy. It's crazy, but I think the stock thing is going to play itself out in the next six months. I think you're going to see a big rotation into, I think L1s that lend themselves towards AI crypto integration, are going to get a big bump in the next 18 months. That's just my personal opinion, right? I'm not telling anybody what to buy. I don't really think that's going to happen. What do I know? But long-winded way of saying, I do think we're chopping around a short-term price bottom, but it's a very big range, right? Because, yeah, it does feel like a big drawdown. But first of all, 50% on Bitcoin means volatility has compressed significantly since the last cycle. It's hard to believe that the last cycle was significantly worse, but it was. It was significantly worse, right? So in my mind, because I think in exponential terms for crypto, this is a big sideways channel. You just have to basically have a time horizon that allows you to chop in a big sideways channel so that when we do break out, you understand the difference, right? And when we're at 250,000 Bitcoin, which I'm pretty sure is coming, people are going to look at this like a long, like a seven-month sideways channel.