Bankless hosts weigh $57K bears against $1.6M Bitcoin bulls as Hyperliquid wins Wall Street

Bitcoin bears and bulls collide over a $57K-to-$1.6M range

The hosts open on Jason Calcanis's tweet arguing Bitcoin is heading for "a brutal year" and will retest the $57,000 June low within 12 months, citing ETF outflows and Bitcoin's lack of productive cash flow compared to AI assets. Ryan notes Calcanis made a similar "pivot to AI" call years earlier that, in hindsight, preceded a strong period for Bitcoin.

Against that, Willie Woo's 10,000-simulation Monte Carlo model puts the 28th-to-50th percentile 2028 top between $240,000 and $413,000, with a wider range in other simulations from $116,000 to $1.4 million. Michael Nado's DeFi Report targets a bear case of $200,000 and a bull case of $375,000 for this cycle. Bitwise's Matt Hougan frames a 2036 bear case of $130,000, a base case of $1.6 million, and a bull case of $3.6 million, based on Bitcoin capturing a share of gold, emerging-market currencies and offshore wealth.

David flags that Michael Saylor bought zero Bitcoin this week after declining weekly purchases, and that ETH ETFs lost 6% in AUM over two weeks versus Bitcoin ETFs gaining half a percent, calling it "pretty far on the far side of noise."

Hyperliquid gets a Wall Street endorsement

ICE, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, partnered with Trade XYZ to build a CFTC-regulated US venue for perpetuals built on Hyperliquid. Stanley Druckenmiller tweeted support as an investor, and Elon Musk retweeted it saying "interesting." Hyperliquid rose about 17% on the news, touching all-time highs in both dollar and Bitcoin terms.

"Hyperliquid is up like 17% touching all-time highs both in dollars and in Bitcoin terms." — the host

David calls it an endorsement for perpetuals as a crypto-native product and for real-world-asset price discovery on crypto rails. Trade XYZ's lead replied to Musk asking to integrate perpetuals into X, which the hosts link to Elon's ambitions for an X money app.

A fight breaks out over tokenizing stocks

ICE/OKX had listed roughly 63 tokenized stocks including Nvidia, Apple and SpaceX under an SEC exemption; more than 30 issuers, including Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman and Coca-Cola, requested delisting within the 30-day veto window. A full-page Wall Street Journal ad funded by the "Common Sense Leadership Fund" urged CEOs to act. The hosts question the motive, noting the listings are on KYC-whitelisted, regulated venues, and suspect rival trading venues want time to build competing products.

They note Robinhood listed a JPMorgan token on its offshore Robinhood Chain the day after JPMorgan objected to the onshore SEC exemption, since JPMorgan's objection only applies onshore. Hayden Adams highlighted Alphabet's tokenized price moving onchain after a 10% drop while traditional markets were closed, though David pushes back that this reflected after-hours trading catching up rather than true onchain price discovery.

Robinhood Chain's revenue collapses from its peak

Robinhood's crypto revenue hit $120 million, up 20% quarter over quarter, with about $50 million attributed to Robinhood Chain in its first reported quarter. But the hosts say that figure is a "flash": daily chain revenue fell to about $32,000 from tens of millions at its peak, a decline they put at 99.6%. CEO Vlad Tenev said Robinhood plans to ramp investment into the ecosystem.

"You should expect to see us ramping the investment because you just don't see growth of a new ecosystem like this." — Vlad Tenev

Memecoin holders on the chain criticized a $700,000 trading sweepstakes as disconnected from the activity that generated revenue. Ryan argues nothing is actually broken, comparing it to past cycles on Base: "the trenchers are just very temperamental and sensitive," while David says Robinhood should avoid listing chain memecoins to retail users who don't understand what they're buying.

Zcash's grant treasury sparks a governance fight

Zcash directs 20% of block rewards to grants: 8% via a five-person committee (ZCG) and 12% via coin-holder vote into a lock box. The treasury has grown to $125 million, adding roughly $68 million a year against only about $6 million in annual grant spending, after Zcash's price appreciation. Controversy erupted over a roughly $550,000 grant to an organization called Zexy for adult-industry conference booths.

Shawn Bow argues the 8% stream should end and be redirected to a network sustainability mechanism. Maxim Dal reportedly agrees with ending it, while Josh Swihart of Zoodle wants both the 8% and 12% streams ended entirely. The Zcash Hub has instead proposed a "soft landing," gradually winding the funding down to zero by 2036. The hosts say the dispute reflects political fighting over a treasury that outgrew its original purpose rather than disagreement on individual grants' merits.

Token buybacks, Athena yield, and the Anthropic IPO

Venice crossed $1 million in monthly VVV token burns, which the host says are growing about 1% a day, or 34% month over month, funded by subscription fees, a cut of API credits, and discretionary buybacks from profit. David says buybacks give the market "proof" a token is valued absent equity rights, but worries the commitment is not contractual and could discourage reinvestment in growth.

Athena's new Athena Pay neobank product, Earn Plus, is offering 12% yield on dollars, which the hosts describe as involving leveraged ENA rewards, cautioning they haven't examined the risk closely. On Anthropic's reported IPO valuation near $1.5–2 trillion, David says he is not a buyer, pointing to dispersion across many competing AI labs and uncertainty over whether token-selling business models remain durable, comparing the moment to the 2021 Layer-1 token boom.