Why Bitcoin Is “Preeminent” In The Biggest Macro Trade Ever - Dan Tapiero

**Scott Melker** (0:00)
Dan Tapiero says we're witnessing the biggest financial transformation in history, and almost nobody realizes how early we still are. In this interview, Dan explains why stable coins, tokenized assets and AI-powered agents are about to create thousands of trillions in on-chain transactions.

**Dan Tapiero** (0:16)
I would call this the integration moment of the old world and this new world. We think that there are going to be thousands of trillions, not tens or hundreds, thousands of trillions of transactions done by autonomous agents.

**Scott Melker** (0:32)
Why Coinbase could become the Amazon of finance.

**Dan Tapiero** (0:34)
Coinbase really has established itself as the preeminent company in the space now. It could be like an Amazon or a Microsoft.

**Scott Melker** (0:44)
And why prediction markets may completely reshape how the world prices truth.

**Dan Tapiero** (0:49)
If there are enough people wagering on how many tractors they're going to produce, there's a likelihood that wherever that market ends up is pretty close to the reality. So they have an ability to produce a truth. And I think that's fascinating.

**Scott Melker** (1:06)
He also reveals where institutional money is actually flowing, why crypto VCs are still overpaying despite the bear market, and why the convergence of AI and blockchain is happening much faster than most investors understand. Let's go.
We talked, what, three months ago? Yes. I talked to you more than I talked to my mom.

**Dan Tapiero** (1:42)
Well, I would say the same too, but then I'd have to apologize to my mother.

**Scott Melker** (1:46)
Okay, I think I just did already. So listen, it's a bit of sideways to slow market, but behind the scenes, it seems like there's more happening than we've ever seen before. I mean, I just get these insane announcements on a day-to-day basis that blow my mind.

**Dan Tapiero** (2:02)
Yeah, I would call this the integration moment of the old world and this new world. And I think that's what we're seeing, explosion in stable coins, RWA, the concept of tokenization, people finally coming to realize all value is eventually moving on chain. And so the pipes, the rails, the digital asset infrastructure that we've been talking about for five years is actually happening and it's still very early days.
So, I mean, this conference is, it looks like gangbusters here.

**Scott Melker** (2:35)
Yeah, it's.

**Dan Tapiero** (2:37)
You know, on the other hand, you've got like the DeFi world, you know, more hacks than ever in the last, you know, month or so.
And that, I don't know, that old, that old sort of crypto bro-y, I don't know, the more speculative component of our world has continued to get hit. And some of those alt coins, as they used to be called, I don't know, we call them alt, just have continued going down. It's somewhere down 80, 90% in the last, you know, six to nine months. And so, you know, crypto Twitter, where a whole bunch of our world lives or used to live, you know, the feeling there, I think, is quite negative still. And there's a bit of a toxicity. But then outside of that, in terms of institutional adoption, real companies looking at, you know, the infrastructure, but also payments, like credit cards have exploded. You know, Gemini's credit card has been phenomenal.
All of the payment rails behind the scenes, it's just never ending. And now, agentic as well. So that's gotten very exciting. You know, agentic payments, agentic finance.

**Scott Melker** (3:57)
Yeah, I mean, agents aren't going to transact with wire transfers.

**Dan Tapiero** (4:03)
No.

**Scott Melker** (4:03)
Right? Like it's obvious. Yeah, but we're already seeing it. I read a stat that said already half of stablecoin payments were agents or something, which I thought was exceptionally high.

**Dan Tapiero** (4:14)
Yeah, I think half that would be really high. I know that we've had tens of billions of transactions and of dollars values of transactions, and there are lots of smaller transactions, small scale. But I think all of our companies in our portfolio, we've got now 22 companies that's outside of the six realizations we had last year, with Circle and Figure, we talked about this last time. They're all pivoting towards enabling agents to transact independently, in one way or another. They're building out the digitalized infrastructure for autonomous agents. And so I said last time, you know, blockchain is the money of the agentic future. It's the money. And I think that's a completely new concept. It's not priced. It's, you know, the first inning of that.
So I'm hearing that also here.

**Scott Melker** (5:19)
Yeah, that seems to be one of the prevailing narratives. This conference just started, but I've already heard it four or five times.