How To Position For The Institutional Crypto Frenzy with Arthur Hayes, Guy Young, and Omer Goldberg

The competition for stablecoin market share is more complex than most realize, especially as institutional adoption heats up.

In today's episode, we’re breaking down the nuances of this battle with Guy Young, founder of Ethena, Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstorm, and Omer Goldberg, founder of Chaos Labs. We mostly explore the macro landscape, which is now plagued with tariffs, and how Ethena's Converge announcement positions them at the intersection of DeFi and institutional finance.

Guy breaks down Ethena's journey from USD+ to building their own purpose-built chain, explaining that "if your product is not thinking about how it's trying to benefit from institutional capital flows, you're slightly dead in the water." He reveals a forthcoming $500 million seeding of their new iUSDE product.

Arthur Hayes doesn’t hold back when talking about Circle vs. Tether. His take? "Circle has no distribution. It's pretty much Coinbase and they have no defensibility on their net interest margin, unlike Tether." He also shares his thoughts on how the West and East approach trading differently, and how that’s shaping the institutional side of things.

We also cover the macro environment, Trump's tariffs, and Fed policy, with Arthur explaining why he's reallocating to Bitcoin as he sees liquidity coming back into play.

Great one. Enjoy.

The Rollup