Stablecoins Are The Next Big Buyer Of US Debt | Matt Hougan LIVE @ DAS
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What's going on, everybody? We are reporting live from the Digital Asset Summit here in New York City. Super excited to be joined today by Matt Hougan of Bitwise, and we're following up from a conversation that we had a few months ago where we started to outline what are our key views for 2025. So I thought I'd grab Matt from the crowd. He's been a busy guy today, but we figured we'd sit down, catch up, hear what's going on. And so it's great to have you here. Thanks for having me.
It's a great event. Lot of people and, excited for this conversation.
Yeah. The energy is incredible here. It
really is.
It's really exciting. People are excited. There's a lot happening. We're gonna tie in a lot of our conversation to what's going on with with the digital asset side of things and stablecoins we were just mentioning before we started recording. But before that, I do wanna ask you, what's your general macro framework right now? How are you thinking about the interplay of what's going on on the fiscal side with Trump and everything? We had the FOMC meeting tomorrow. What's your outlook there, and how is that all starting to those cross currents come into your outlook on digital assets? Yeah.
So when I think about the value of any digital asset, let's take Bitcoin for example, I think about two things. I think about where I think it's going long term. Like, let's say, I think Bitcoin's going to $200,000 by the end of the year. And then I think about the discount rate back to present value. The discount rate is based on the economic uncertainty in the market. I think what's happening right now when you look at the macro condition, it's actually playing into the long term case for Bitcoin. So it's making me more bullish long term because there's economic instability. The government i
It's always this interesting one. Right? Because, you know, as as people that are believers in Bitcoin, we often view it as as a hedge on, you know, monetary inflation and increasing liquidity. But then we hear what's going on on the fiscal side, and they wanna decrease deficits. But at the same time, there's also a lot of governmental inefficiencies. There's a lot of, you know, I wanna go as far as say, you know, fiscal chaos, but we're we're not totally sure on where things are gonna land with tariffs. So how do you square up this idea that, you know, there's a lot of positive fundamental ta
I think I'm glad that you raised that. I don't think crypto talks about that enough. It would be bearish, but I don't believe it. I mean, I basically don't believe it. So, you know, look. We're at a 2 and a half trillion dollar deficit right now. I don't think there's any real realistic way to trim that to a trillion dollars or less, which is where you have to get to if you start to wanna sort of support the dollar long term and make Bitcoin have less space in the world. So it is absolutely true. If we see real austerity and we somehow trim that deficit substantially, that's a headwind to Bitc
I mean, you're definitely on the right side of history of, you know, if you're trying to fade the idea that they can't kick the can down the road, they always kick it. They always find a way.
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