Crypto got boring. That’s exactly when Wall Street showed up

JP Morgan estimates that $50 billion dollar has flowed into crypto this year, even in the midst of a bare market. Meanwhile, we have Catrini Research, one of the biggest investment firms on Wall Street, presenting an extremely bullish case for crypto. We're going to talk about that and a lot more on the last Daily Wolf of the Week. Let's go. What is up everybody? Welcome to the Daily Wolf. on Yahoo Finance. I am your host, Scott Milker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets. My main story today was once again going to be about ETF inflows and outflows. The fact that this week after we had yet another seemingly historic run of inflows, we've seen outflows as Bitcoin dropped from the high 88,000 region to the low 80,000s. About 700 million coming out of those crypto projects this week. But then I decided that looking at daily inflows and outflows remains as stupid as it was every other day that we have covered it and it's more important to zoom out and look at the longer trend. And our good friends at JP Morgan have provided us with a reason to do that. JP Morgan pegs 2026 crypto inflows near 50 billion momentum building into Q4. They actually extrapolated this forward forward saying that they think that we will have an annualized pace of roughly 66 billion which could actually increase if the bull market progresses. So obviously when they talk about float into bitcoin this is not all in ETFs. This is combining fund flows, futurebased movements, venture funding and purchases by corporate treasuries and miners which is interesting. You talk about purchases by miners. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if we look to see that miners have sold more Bitcoin than they've bought as they make the transition into being AI data centers. But that is not the story we are discussing today. It's also includes private companies and government related entities. This is a lot of money flowing into an industry that has been the narrative has been that it's dead and we've been in a bare market and that we're never coming back. $50 billion is a lot of money. 66 billion by the end of the year, especially because if you read more deeply into it, they're extremely bullish moving forward and thinking that that trend will continue to increase and become much larger. So, is it really a story that the Bitcoin ETFs lost $729 million on Wednesday and Thursday, or is it a bigger story that the industry at large has gained about 50 billion even as market cap has dropped and we've gone through a bare market? I think it's important once again to remember that we should always zoom out and look at the longer trend and not get too caught up on what's happening on a dayto-day basis. So the next story is one that very pleasantly surprised me and somewhat blew my mind to be quite honest. It's this one right here. We have Catrini Research. They're mapping the winners of Wall Street's onchain push. They wrote a 79page report here called Breaking the Wall yesterday. And as it says there, has blockchain finally reached its moment? Spoiler. Yes. You don't need to read the 79 pages. It has. I just spoiled the entire thing for you. Listen, Catrini Research, uh, they've gone wildly viral over the past couple of years. They're the ones who sent a guy into the straight of Hormuz and like a rowboat with a beer to see what was happening over there. But the treaty research has not traditionally been a firm that talks deeply about crypto or blockchain. They're a trady firm that does research for Wall Street. And now, not only are they breaking down the cross-section between trady and crypto and AI agents in crypto, but they actually put together basically what you could view as a model portfolio here. Breaking the wall crypto token basket. So this would be the tokens you would buy for exposure to their thesis derive lighter etherfi athena salana hyperlquid aerad drrome layer zero chain link backpack maple unis swap pendalondo now they also put together a basket of public market stocks that you could gain exposure to this thesis securitize circle coinbase bitwise hyperlquid ETF Robin Hood bullish figure technology solutions black rockck and wisdom agree. So, listen, I you can choose your own adventure when it comes to the tokens that they have chosen here. I tend to agree that they're probably on the pulse at least of how institutions are viewing crypto and where they would want to allocate. First of all, this would make a hell of an index fund, right? Going back, I think that uh if someone was like, I broadly want exposure to the cross between Tradfy and crypto and how AI is going to use crypto, what should I buy? if you put together this index, uh, you know, I mentioned this to Matt Hogan at Bitwise this morning on my morning show. You should watch that. Uh, he said, "Yeah, this would probably make a really good index because these are the kind of things that people are looking at and looking for." But to me, it's the very fact that we have a broadly watched firm like Catrini deciding to write a 79page report about our industry. This is something that would not have happened in a million years in 2021, 2017, certainly 2013 or 14. It shows the maturity of the asset class and how compelling the narrative really has become for certain use cases of blockchain. Now, yes, I know that Bitcoin and blockchain and crypto feel a lot more boring than they did in previous cycles. In previous cycles, you could buy a board ape alongside Justin Bieber for $2 million, or you could invest in land in the metaverse next to Snoop Dogg's house. That was a lot of fun. It was also a form of mental decapa, a lack of mental capacity, which is what I just showed trying to get those words out. Friday. It's Friday. But seriously, right, we were doing stupid things back then and now it's boring because we're talking about the way that institutions or AI agents are going to adopt and it really has acred value to a few great ideas. Tokenization, AI, real world assets, stable coins. These are not the things that the crypto degenerates originally got into crypto for because they were so excited. But this is real hockey stick level adoption where blockchain becomes the underlying technology for everything. And this is a major firm showing you exactly how you could potentially invest in that. Now on to our next story. Bitcoin lifeurer meanwhile raises $37.5 million. So how does Sam Albin just like get his name into headlines that have nothing to do with him? Like this is a story about a really cool Bitcoin insurer raising money and of course we get Sam Alman's name there at the beginning, right? But that's fine. Okay. So that's Zack Townsen right there, the CEO. I've had him on my other podcast. Really impressive guy here. So as that headline said, they've uh secured 37.5 million more uh in Bane Capital crypto le round. Bane Capital uh also was in their earlier rounds. This is more money from existing investors to my knowledge, but also meanwhile has signed 15 brokers serving high net worth clients across markets I Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the UAE. They also have products that are available to Americans. So I found this extremely interesting when I talked to Zach about what they were offering. So they do have products for international clients that are not available to us in America because as you know Americans hate fun and and innovation and good ideas but they have a product I think it's called 10 pay uh something like that where basically you have a 10-year horizon. This is life, the whole life insurance. And you invest one bitcoin every year for 10 years, right? And obviously the second that you make the first payment, like with any life insurance, your payout is guaranteed. And depending on your age and health profile, how much Bitcoin your family gets on the unfortunate event of your passing uh is different. I think if you're probably 30 and healthy, I believe, don't want to quote me on this, but you know, a 10 bitcoin investment guarantees your family 20 for an extremely uh good-looking, imperfect health, athletic NFL quarterback level uh physique like me at almost 50 years old. I think it's about 13 to 15 Bitcoin paid out for 10 right now. Listen, it's it's interesting product because everything that Meanwhile does is denominated in Bitcoin. I think they're Bermuda based. So, not only like if you take a loan against your portfolio like you can with whole life, it's in Bitcoin. Everything you invest is in Bitcoin. Everything is denominated in Bitcoin. I believe they pay their employees in Bitcoin. They do their taxes in Bitcoin. This is an entirely Bitcoinbased insurance company and I'm here for it. Really, really interesting stuff. something probably to look into, but clearly some of the biggest names are backing them and will continue to back them. And it's interesting because there's a huge custody question when it comes to this, right? So, like you're obviously transferring a meaningful part of your net worth. If it's whole life insurance, they have to put that Bitcoin to work in some sort of way to, you know, uh to offer yields and the loans and all those things. But is your Bitcoin safe in custody with a highly regulated insurance company in Bermuda? Is your Bitcoin safe on an exchange? Is your Bitcoin safe if you give it to a Bitcoin back lender? Is your Bitcoin safe in self-custody? That was a segue to the next story cuz nobody knows. You ever seen the Grand Theft Auto meme where the guy's walking? It's like, oh, I don't know if I can say the word. It's the sword. Oh sh here we go again. Right. That's how it's starting to feel with hacks in crypto. Ledger users reportedly drained of over 86 million across several blockchain. So everybody in in crypto obviously at this point has PTSD after the cold card hack because we believe self- custody was always safe. You could be your own bank. Uh and that shook the Bitcoin community to its core. This is an ongoing story that just broke at about 10 a.m. today. So, just about two hours ago. So, we don't really know what's going on here. An onchain analyst named Spectre estimated suspected losses around 86 million involving hundreds of wallets across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron. I have not seen a comment from Ledger yet. According to B in crypto's reporting of Ledger support statement, the company is investigating loss funds involving customers of crypto bilis a souththeast Asian reseller. So you'll remember that uh these that treasure recently lost everyone's data because of their shipping partner. Now Ledger had had their breaches in the past. It seems to always come with one of the third parties, but it remains. The question is when you participate in self- custody, who are you actually trusting for all the steps in between? The whole point of self- custody was no counterparty risk. But there's a lot of counterparties you don't even know exist like the third party resellers who have your data or can gain some sort of access. So, we don't know if anyone's individual device was hacked to be clear. We don't know if this was a fishing scam like you know some you get an email from this third party telling you you know you need to move your coins from one device to another and you get hacked but we do know that there has been an exploit that money has been stolen and that it's coming exclusively in this case from Ledger devices doesn't mean that somebody broke Ledger's hardware security. So man it's hard to keep reporting on these things honestly. So, I'm going to hope that uh this one is not as bad as it seems. Next story is interesting and it's not a crypto story, but we talk about prediction markets here quite often because it really does tie into what we're doing. I found uh that I wanted any excuse to show an ESPN article on the Daily Wolf. NFL asked US Supreme Court to take up prediction market case. So, the NFL filed an amicus brief Thursday supporting New Jerseyy's requests, I told you about in the in the past, for Supreme Court review and its dispute with Khi. The central question is whether sports event contracts obviously fall under federal financial regulation or state gambling oversight. And curiously, the NFL is stepping in on the side of the states. Now, I'm going to imagine that the NFL makes a hell of a lot of money uh in the current iteration with gambling and sports books and that they probably want to protect the incumbency and the way that it's done and that prediction markets make that more difficult for them. But I will reserve judgment until we see it later. I think it's pretty funny that the NFL here is literally stepping in saying it's about consumers. They want to remind you that gambling is dangerous, but then you can just watch the commercial from their sports book partner on on the game. Like it's not that they can act like they want you to gamble responsibly, but really they just want you to gamble, right? As we know, the football gambling industry is much bigger than the football industry itself, but the battle between the federal government, the states, and now even the NFL stepping up massively uh and everybody's taking sides, and it's pretty crazy that it seems almost inevitable at this point that prediction markets are going to make it to the Supreme Court. We have one final story before we go. ESMA, the European Securities and Market Authority, sets out supervisory expectations on services related to unauthorized stable coins. Give you the TLDDR on this. Uh we know that Mika has been in place in Europe. Well, they are ramping up getting rid of the non-compliant entities. We know they had an issue with Binance, but now ramping up massively on which stable coins can and cannot be available in Europe and telling everyone within 3 months to delist get rid of the ones that are not compliant. So, this is just a stepping up of the rhetoric that we've seen there before. It's the end of the week. I choose to uh take a broader view and say 50 billion coming into Bitcoin against notorious crypto hater from notorious crypto hater JP Morgan is better news than the small outflows that we saw this week. It's all we got for you. I will be back on Monday with the Dex Daily Wolf.