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Matt Hougan
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Matt Hougan

Things Matt Says on Podcasts

“The institutions haven't generally been concerned about the hacks. … If you look at the 10 largest hacks in Bitcoin's history and look at the 30-day return after that, in five cases, Bitcoin is up. In five cases, Bitcoin is down.” — Matt Hougan, Unchained “Committees exist to say no. That's their job, right? And they're not seeing any upside to being a pioneer in this space. They can identify a downside, which is something funky happens on pricing, people get upset… They can't identify an upside, and it's costless for them to opt out, because there will be other pioneers that do the dirty work.” — Matt Hougan, Unchained “Our average client allocates to us after eight meetings. … If you count from when the ETFs launched, which was like two and a half-ish years ago, if you did a meeting every quarter after they launched, you're just sort of now getting to the point that you're accepting of Bitcoin. … Central banks probably do one meeting a year, but after eight years, they're going to get there too.” — Matt Hougan, Unchained

Where to Find Them

Matt Hougan hosts The Milk Road Show and hosts Inflection Point . They have also been a guest on The Wolf Of All Streets (31 times) , CoinDesk Podcast Network (14 times) , Markets Outlook (9 times) , WEALTHTRACK (7 times) , Thinking Crypto News & Interviews (7 times) , CRYPTO 101 (6 times) , Unchained (5 times) , Masters in Business (4 times) , Forward Guidance (4 times) , Trillions (3 times) , The Pomp Podcast (3 times) , Bitcoin Magazine Podcast (2 times) , The Compound and Friends (2 times) , On The Brink with Castle Island (2 times) , Layer One , Bogleheads On Investing Podcast , How I Invest with David Weisburd , Closing Bell , The Long View , Enterprising Investor , Facts vs Feelings with Ryan Detrick & Sonu Varghese , Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell , Wealthion - Be Financially Resilient , The David Lin Report , The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing , Bankless and Squawk on the Street .

Recently: “Why Bitwise's CIO Says the Blue Wave Won't Derail Crypto's Bull Market” on Unchained (November 2026); “Bitwise Says Near Could 30x - And That's Just the Base Case” on The Milk Road Show (October 2026); “Bitcoin Is On Sale - And Wall Street Is Picking THESE Altcoins Next | Matt Hougan” on The Wolf Of All Streets (October 2026); “Bitwise x Base: How Crypto Could 2,000x Sooner Than Anyone Expects” on The Milk Road Show (October 2026); “Bitcoin Nears $80K As Hunter Biden’s Token PUMPS Then DUMPS | Matt Hougan” on The Wolf Of All Streets (September 2026); “$1.3 Million Bitcoin Will Be “Relatively Easy,” Says Bitwise’s Matt Hougan | Markets Outlook” on Markets Outlook (September 2026).

What They Said

“The institutions haven't generally been concerned about the hacks. … If you look at the 10 largest hacks in Bitcoin's history and look at the 30-day return after that, in five cases, Bitcoin is up. In five cases, Bitcoin is down.” — Matt Hougan, Unchained

Shin had opened with the $6.3 billion Binance theft and asked what institutions are saying about this year's string of hacks. Hougan said they mostly hold Bitcoin through ETFs and institutional cold storage, which has not been affected.

Unchained · 2026-11-11 Permalink → Listen →
Unchained Around 12:47 into the episode
Matt Hougan

…anything, politics is moving towards a more economic populism orientation, which means probably yet more spending and probably to get that done, yet less tax revenue on whole. So I don't think the deficits are going anywhere. I think the debasement trade will be back in sort of full force in 2027.

Laura Shin

…this endless number of hacks this year. And it seems like they're coming from all directions. It's like North Korea, the AI thing, then there's these quantum scares that have been happening. So what have institutions been asking you when it comes to this issue? And how are you responding to them?

Matt Hougan

Yeah, you know, the interesting thing about that is the institutions haven't generally been concerned about the hacks. I know that is surprising to hear, but in underwriting crypto, they've underwritten the fact that we've had these hacks before, that it's part of the ecosystem, but it's not part of their ecosystem, right? They are focused primarily on ETFs or institutional custodians with true cold storage. The track record there has been exceptional. So somewhat surprisingly, these hacks haven't come up in a…

Laura Shin

Oh, wow. That is so fascinating because I would have thought that they would view some of that as an existential threat or, you know, yeah, I would have thought that they would be entering that into their calculations. Well, because you do talk to so many institutions and you have done so for…

Matt Hougan

Yeah, they've really changed a lot. Actually, there's been a remarkable change of tone, even in the last three or four months. So I would say that if we went, if we had this conversation five years ago or eight years ago, we would have been focused on family offices, which are really individual…

Laura Shin

Wow, that's so interesting. And why is it that you think this last group is finally coming online now?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“Committees exist to say no. That's their job, right? And they're not seeing any upside to being a pioneer in this space. They can identify a downside, which is something funky happens on pricing, people get upset… They can't identify an upside, and it's costless for them to opt out, because there will be other pioneers that do the dirty work.” — Matt Hougan, Unchained

Shin asked why a few dozen public companies have opted out of having their stock trade in tokenized form. Hougan said it is not surprising given how corporate decision-making works, and that he does not think it matters over the long term.

Unchained · 2026-11-11 Permalink → Listen →
Unchained Around 19:53 into the episode
Matt Hougan

…market at some point in the future absolutely do we monitor developer forums to see how the discussions are emerging in that space absolutely is it like a nine alarm fire at this point no from a allocator's perspective but is it a like is there some smoke that we monitor yeah definitely for sure

Laura Shin

…that it would cause so much controversy in 2026 you know we're seeing all these public companies a few dozen now who've already rejected the opportunity for their stock to trade tokenized at least for the time being i guess they could change their minds but what's your take on why this is happening

Matt Hougan

well yeah in that case the reason is that committees exist to say no that's their job right and they're not seeing any upside to being a pioneer in this space on the u.s exchange they they can they can identify a downside which is something funky happens on pricing people get upset their lawsuits they can't identify an upside and it's costless for them to opt out right because there will be other pioneers that sort of do the dirty work um so i think that that's all that's going on you can imagine being in that board meeting when the topic comes up and someone says what if this happens and then they say well we'll just let other people go ahead so i'm actually not that surprised given they were given so much sort of time space to think about it that they've just decided to opt out long term i don't think it matters i actually think like we in the u.s are overly focused on tokenized stocks replacing our schwab account which i don't think how is how this happens laura i think with any disruptive technology it gets adopted for people who don't have a good solution at all right now the people who don't have a good solution at all…

Laura Shin

yeah i mean i it's sort of like you know just a very natural human phenomenon of people not wanting to be the first on the dance floor so hopefully after trading starts like we'll see more of them come online I don't think anybody disagrees that it's a superior technology. It's really more about…

Matt Hougan

Yeah. Well, first of all, kudos to the Avalanche team. They're one of the hardest working teams in crypto, relentlessly business focused. And it's wonderful to see them get that win. They've had a number of wins recently. So we're very sort of pleased with their progress there. So I think that's…

Laura Shin

And out of curiosity, how do you think this deal between NYC and Avalanche will affect the Avax token?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“Our average client allocates to us after eight meetings. … If you count from when the ETFs launched, which was like two and a half-ish years ago, if you did a meeting every quarter after they launched, you're just sort of now getting to the point that you're accepting of Bitcoin. … Central banks probably do one meeting a year, but after eight years, they're going to get there too.” — Matt Hougan, Unchained

Laura Shin asked why pension funds and sovereign wealth funds are only now coming online for crypto. Hougan, Bitwise's CIO, said it is mostly the passage of time, and laid out his rule of eight for how long institutions take to normalize a new asset.

Unchained · 2026-11-11 Permalink → Listen →
Unchained Around 15:37 into the episode
Matt Hougan

…market is starting to come online, but it's still early. The real big change is we've gone from individual wealth managers to largest wealth management platforms in the world, treating Bitcoin and crypto as a normal asset. And that is a dramatic change from where we were a handful of years ago.

Laura Shin

Wow, that's so interesting. And why is it that you think this last group is finally coming online now?

Matt Hougan

Yeah, I've said this before, but an old fact from early days of Bitwise, we've been doing this since 2017, is that our average client allocates to us after eight meetings. And the reason that I bring that up, Laura, is that if you count from when the ETFs launched, which was like two and a half-ish years ago, if you did a meeting every quarter after they launched, you're just sort of now getting to the point that you're accepting of Bitcoin. And it's just that number of meetings is what it takes to normalize Bitcoin. I'm not just saying it's Bitwise doing it. There are other great firms doing it, Fidelity and BlackRock and VanEck and Franklin. I think they have just been doing this for many years and it's normalized crypto and Bitcoin in their mind. It's just, if you think of even retail investors, no one just sees it for the first…

Laura Shin

Wow. So it's not even anything related to crypto itself.

Matt Hougan

No, I mean, it's almost like anything new, right? Anytime you're assaulted with a new technology or a new idea that's out the norm, you have to learn about it. You have to digest it. You have to ask hard questions. You have to come back. You have to do it personally. You have to tiptoe in. And then…

Laura Shin

So to go back to the security question, I did also just want to get your opinion. So I find it fascinating that these institutions have not actually been asking you about security. That really blows my mind. But I'm curious for your thoughts, because obviously we're talking about the quantum…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

Collections They Appear In

Crypto & Web3 Startups & Venture