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Kevin Warsh held rates steady at his first FOMC meeting but removed the committee’s easing bias — and nine of eighteen participating members wrote down a rate hike for 2026, a bigger shift than markets expected.

Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale Investments and a former Goldman Sachs economist, joins Steven Ehrlich to discuss. Pandl argues that rising real rates are a constraint equity markets are not pricing correctly, and that AI euphoria makes the downside case, not blunts it.

The conversation covers the SpaceX IPO’s low-float mechanics, why perpetual futures outperformed tokenized stocks around the IPO, Strategy’s preferred equity cracking below $90, and why speculative flows explain gold and Bitcoin’s recent turbulence better than fundamentals. Pandl closes with a buy-the-dip case for both stores of value and argues the DeFi revenue story, anchored in Hyperliquid and Aave, will define the second half of 2026.

Host:

    • Steven Ehrlich – Head of Research, SharpLink & Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview

Guest:

    • Zach Pandl – Head of Research at Grayscale Investments