The Market Runup: Investing, Markets, Crypto & Wealth

Evan Gold  joins The Market Runup to discuss how the ETF market is evolving, why artificial intelligence may still be early in its buildout, and how investors are navigating higher interest rates, technology valuations, and new investment opportunities. ETFs were once associated primarily with simple index investing. Today, the market includes thematic strategies, leveraged single-stock exposure, income products, private-company investments, and new ways to access international markets. Evan explains why he believes the growth of ETF innovation could create new opportunities for investors and why choosing ETFs may offer a different approach to trying to outperform through individual stock picking.

We also examine whether the AI trade is becoming overcrowded, why much of the data center buildout has yet to come online, and how semiconductors, energy, autonomous vehicles, and robotics could shape the next phase of AI adoption. Evan shares his long term Nvidia thesis, why he's positioning for a world where the biggest technology companies could continue getting bigger, and why being first isn't always what determines which ETF products ultimately succeed.

Timestamps
00:00 Fed Policy, Rates and a Resilient Market

03:00 When Do Higher Yields Become a Problem?

04:19 Housing, Inflation and the U.S. Consumer

06:01 Why Yields May Be a Symptom, Not the Problem

07:24 How AI Is Changing Everyday Work

08:20 Is the AI Trade Getting Overcrowded?

09:21 Why the AI Buildout May Still Be Early

10:42 Evan’s Long-Term Nvidia Thesis

12:05 Learning to Invest With Small Amounts

13:00 Erin’s Early Investing Mistakes

15:04 Building Wolf and Playing the Long Game

18:03 Inside the Future Proof Conference

20:32 What’s Happening in the ETF Industry?

22:03 Why Evan Starts With Risk, Not Reward

22:25 How ETFs Became More Innovative

25:08 ETFs vs. Picking Individual Stocks

26:18 Why Evan Is Betting on Big Tech

27:02 Does Being First Matter for an ETF?

28:47 Building Financial Media That Helps Investors

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The Market Runup is powered by Synthetix  the infrastructure powering the next generation of onchain perpetual markets. Learn more at synthetix.io

➡️ Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.

#ETFs #Investing #StockMarket #AI #Nvidia #TheMarketRunup

The ETF industry has exploded into thousands of products,  but Jeff Weniger believes parts of the business are still operating with a decades-old playbook.

Jeff Weniger, Chief Investment Strategist at Corgi Invest, joins Erin Gambrel on The Market Runup to explain why he made the move to Corgi, how the company plans to compete in an increasingly crowded ETF market, and why cost could be one of its biggest advantages against established asset managers.

They explore the rise of thematic and highly targeted ETFs, from AI and semiconductors to cybersecurity and other increasingly specific market exposures, and ask whether investors are moving from simply “buying the market” toward building exactly the exposure they want.

Jeff Weniger also breaks down the debate over whether there are too many ETFs, why increased competition can benefit investors, and how asset managers are increasingly using media, charts and financial education as distribution.

Timestamps 

04:20 — Why Jeff Weniger Joined Corgi

06:53 — How Corgi Burst Onto the ETF Scene

07:45 — What's Outdated About the ETF Industry?

11:07 — Corgi's Biggest Competitive Advantage

13:58 — From “Buy the Market” to Custom Exposure

16:53 — Are There Too Many ETFs?

18:42 — Does More Choice Help Investors?

21:37 — How ETF Issuers Find the Next Big Theme

24:20 — AI's Second-Order Investment Opportunities

25:52 — AI Risk and the Cybersecurity Trade

29:17 — Why Asset Managers Need to Become Media Companies

35:08 — Are Shorts Changing Our Attention Spans?

39:00 — Career Advice That Changed Jeff's Approach

43:33 — The Long Game of Building an Audience

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The Market Runup is powered by Synthetix — the infrastructure powering the next generation of onchain perpetual markets. Learn more at synthetix.io

 Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.

Private tech employees can be worth millions on paper  while having limited access to that wealth in practice.

Terence McMenamin joins Erin Gambrel on The Market Runup to explain the liquidity problem facing employees, founders and investors whose wealth is tied up in private-company equity, and how Tech Dollar is building credit infrastructure around late-stage frontier technology assets.

They explore how AI, robotics, defense and other emerging technology sectors could evolve from speculative venture investments into foundational financial assets  and why borrowing against private equity could eventually become an alternative to selling it.

The conversation also examines stablecoins as global dollar and settlement infrastructure, whether digital dollars could extend US dollar dominance, the growing connection between stablecoin issuers and US Treasuries, and why banks could eventually become major distributors of digital-dollar technology.

Terence shares his take on AI agents and programmable money, tokenized assets and a future financial system where more assets can be sent, borrowed against and used without selling.

What happens when private equity becomes as financially usable as traditional assets?

Timestamps

00:10 Introducing Tech Dollar

00:29 Why Private Tech Equity Needs Credit

02:00 Rich on Paper, Broke in Practice

03:10 Are Stablecoins Becoming Dollar Infrastructure?

04:56 Where Tech Dollar Fits in the Financial System

06:49 Who Will Use Tech Dollar?

08:33 Could Stablecoins Extend Dollar Dominance?

09:59 Where Global Stablecoin Demand Is Coming From

10:56 Digital Dollars in Emerging Markets

12:47 Is Physical Money Becoming Obsolete?

14:13 Are We Underestimating Digital Dollarization?

16:08 Stablecoins and US Treasury Demand

17:40 Will Stablecoins Replace Traditional Savings?

20:53 Will Banks Distribute Stablecoins?

22:32 When Consumers Stop Noticing Stablecoins

23:12 Do AI Agents Need Programmable Money?

25:51 What Will Finance Look Like in 2030?

28:01 What Happens When Every Asset Becomes Borrowable?

28:21 The Legacy Terence Wants to Leave

28:35 Why Selling Private Equity Can Be So Expensive

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The Market Runup is powered by Synthetix — the infrastructure powering the next generation of onchain perpetual markets. Learn more at synthetix.io

 Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content

Stablecoins are quickly moving beyond crypto trading  and into the center of banking, global payments and financial infrastructure.

Brian Consolvo joins Erin Gambrel on The Market Runup to explain how stablecoins could reshape the way money moves around the world, why financial institutions are taking digital assets more seriously, and what growing stablecoin adoption could mean for banks and the US dollar. They explore the GENIUS Act, stablecoin reserves and US Treasury demand, cross-border payments, institutional adoption, tokenized deposits and the challenges financial institutions face when integrating digital assets.

The conversation also looks ahead to tokenized securities, 24/7 financial markets and whether today's blockchain infrastructure can actually handle the transaction volume required by traditional financial markets. As stablecoins and tokenization move deeper into finance, could blockchain eventually become infrastructure consumers use without even realizing it?

Timestamps

00:10 Why Stablecoins Are Becoming a Macro Story

01:18 How the GENIUS Act Changed Stablecoins

02:59 Could Stablecoins Strengthen the US Dollar?

03:45 Stablecoins vs Traditional Bank Wires

05:50 Do Policymakers Understand Stablecoins?

07:04 Stablecoins and US Treasury Demand

10:02 Will Stablecoins Compete With Banks?

12:48 Should Banks Issue Their Own Stablecoins?

14:16 Why Banks Are Still Early to Crypto

15:56 What's Slowing Stablecoin Adoption?

19:18 Crypto's Remaining Trust Problem

20:33 Are 24/7 Tokenized Markets Coming?

23:25 Can Blockchain Handle Wall Street?

26:00 What Will Wall Street Look Like in 2030?

28:50 When Tokenization Becomes Invisible

29:10 Brian's Career Advice

29:30 The Legacy Brian Wants to Leave

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The Market Runup is powered by Synthetix — the infrastructure powering the next generation of onchain perpetual markets. Learn more at synthetix.io

Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.

Bitcoin has just experienced one of its strongest weeks in recent history, raising the question: Is this the beginning of a sustained rally or a more complex market shift? 

In this episode of The Market Runup, John D'Agostino joins Erin Gambrel to analyze Bitcoin’s recent surge, discussing his perspective on why the traditional four-year cycle may be losing relevance and how institutional involvement is reshaping the landscape.

The discussion delves into the primary drivers of current Bitcoin demand, including the influence of ETFs, financial advisors, and rising concerns regarding inflation and monetary debasement.  John D'Agostino also highlights why, rather than a single macroeconomic event, the most significant risk to Bitcoin’s near-term performance may be the impact of inflated market expectations.

The conversation goes beyond Bitcoin, exploring the future of Wall Street, tokenization, and the state of global crypto adoption, specifically why regions like Japan, the UAE, Singapore, and Hong Kong are making strides while the US faces ongoing regulatory uncertainty. Additionally, John D'Agostino offers insights from world-class investors on the importance of information curation and shares strategies for maintaining focus during periods of market volatility.

Timestamps

00:20 Bitcoin Surges More Than 20%

01:28 Why Bitcoin Is a “Coiled Spring”

05:23 Is Bitcoin's 4-Year Cycle Becoming Obsolete?

07:22 What Replaces the Bitcoin Halving Cycle?

09:11 Monetary Debasement and Bitcoin Demand

11:32 Who Is Driving Institutional Bitcoin Demand?

15:05 Is Bitcoin Becoming a Normal Portfolio Asset?

17:42 The Biggest Risk to Bitcoin's Rally

21:43 Why Less Information Can Make Better Investors

24:22 Lessons From World-Class Investors

27:29 Erin Accidentally Learns Japanese

28:36 Global Bitcoin Adoption and Japan

31:52 Will Crypto Transform Wall Street?

34:32 The Future of Crypto Prime Brokerage

35:29 Staying Balanced During Hot Markets

38:00 Erin's Next Chapter

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The Market Runup is powered by Synthetix — the infrastructure powering the next generation of onchain perpetual markets. Learn more at synthetix.io

Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.

Benjamin Cowen joins Erin Gambrel on The Market Runup to break down where Bitcoin, crypto, and the broader market cycle could be heading next. Ben explains why he still views markets as being in a late-cycle environment, why Bitcoin may not have completed its reset, and why historical midterm-year patterns point to Q4 as an important window to watch. He also breaks down the relationship between Fed policy and Treasury yields, the possibility of another stock market correction, and what could invalidate his current thesis. The conversation also explores a bigger challenge facing crypto: declining retail interest. Ben explains why AI has captured attention and capital, how meme coins and industry speculation damaged trust, and why crypto may have “lost its way” by prioritizing price and liquidity over building useful products.

Timestamps

00:20 Why Markets Are Still in a Late-Cycle Environment

03:45 What Matters More Than the Fed's Next Move?

06:43 Why the Market May Be Telling the Fed to Raise Rates

09:39 What Markets Are Getting Wrong About the Fed

11:24 Inflation and the Real Cost of Living

14:18 Why Bitcoin Is Underperforming Stocks

17:27 Why Retail Interest in Crypto Is Declining

19:48 Meme Coins, Retail Investors and Crypto's Biggest Problem

22:34 The Bitcoin ETF Problem

24:47 Why Bitcoin Could Bottom in Q4

28:37 September's Fed Meeting Could Be Critical

31:43 How to Know When Bitcoin Has Bottomed

34:13 The On-Chain Indicators Ben Is Watching

35:37 Midterm Elections and Bitcoin's Market Cycle

41:31 What Could Break Ben's Market Thesis?

43:28 Could a Rate Hike Actually Help Markets?

45:18 Why Ben Cowen Is Launching His Own Conference

49:13 The Legacy Ben Cowen Wants to Leave

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The Market Runup is powered by Synthetix — the infrastructure powering the next generation of onchain perpetual markets. Learn more at synthetix.io

Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.

Erin Gambrel sits down with Anthony Anzalone, infamously known in the space as "Burnt Banksy," the CEO and Founder of Verona (formerly Xion), to discuss why the tech world is quietly pivoting away from traditional crypto infrastructure and betting everything on AI. 

Anthony breaks down the dangerous reality of the current AI boom: the internet is drowning in unverified, fake data, and the trust model is fundamentally broken. He makes a compelling case that the real opportunity isn't in building another flashy AI frontend, but in building the foundational layer of truth. He explains how Verona is turning personal data into a financial asset through zero-knowledge proofs, allowing everyday users to finally get paid in real dollars for their digital footprint instead of giving it away to big tech for free.

He also walks through Verona's strategic rebrand from Zion, detailing how they are successfully Trojan-horsing decentralized tech into massive enterprise companies (like airlines and malls) by completely dropping the toxic "crypto" label. Erin and Anthony also get into what the market keeps getting wrong about the current tech cycle, why most startups claiming to be "Crypto AI" are completely faking it, and Anthony's provocative legacy of using chaos, like burning a real Banksy painting, to push society forward.

Timestamp: 

00:10  Why Trust Beats Better AI Models

00:49 Meet Anthony Anzalone, the CEO Turning Crypto Builders Into AI Builders

01:03 Why the Crypto Infrastructure Playbook Is Becoming the AI Infrastructure Playbook

01:47 Do AI Agents Have the Same Trust Problem Humans Do?

03:20 Is Verifiable Data AI's Real Bottleneck, Not Compute Power?

04:46 How Verona Verifies You Without Ever Asking for a Document

05:58 Are We Entering an AI Infrastructure Cycle Instead of Another Crypto Cycle?

06:35 Is There Any Real Crypto AI Company Out There?

07:48 Why Anzalone Says Crypto AI Is Really Just Payments

09:18 Why You Still Don't Get Paid for Your Own Data

10:55 Inside Aera: Getting Paid Real Dollars for Everyday Actions

12:00 Is the AI Race Actually a Geopolitical Arms Race?

12:24 Can Decentralized AI Survive Against Trillion-Dollar Giants?

15:16 The Unsexy Industries AI Verification Will Fix First

17:38 Why Zion Became Verona: The Rebrand Explained

20:29 How Verona Hides Its Crypto Roots to Close Enterprise Deals

22:24 What Actually Separates Real AI Infrastructure From AI-Washing

25:04  Burning a Banksy and Staying " Agent of Chaos"

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The Market Runup is powered by Synthetix — the infrastructure powering the next generation of onchain perpetual markets. Learn more at synthetix.io

Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.

Host Erin Gambrel (The Blonde Broker) sits down with Jay File, CEO of Lite Strategy, exactly one year after the company closed its deal to make Litecoin its primary treasury asset — and he makes a compelling case for why that bet is just getting started. 

Jay breaks down what he calls DAT 3.0, the idea that just buying and holding crypto is table stakes now, and the real opportunity is in actively monetizing your treasury through covered calls, share buybacks funded without debt, and strategic investments into ecosystem infrastructure. 

He walks through Lite Strategy's $1 million lead investment into LitVM, the first zero-knowledge layer two built on Litecoin, which he argues takes Litecoin from a single-purpose payment network to a full stack ecosystem capable of DeFi, tokenized real world assets, and yield generation for the first time. They also get into what the market keeps getting wrong about Litecoin — it was never meant to replace Bitcoin, it was built to complement it.

TIMESTAMPS 

00:00 Institutional Adoption of Crypto

03:30 Regulatory Clarity and Capital Inflows

06:07 The DAT 3.0 Treasury Model

14:12 Debt-Free Share Repurchases

17:40 Litecoin, Payments and Privacy

24:47 LitVM and the Litecoin Ecosystem

29:17 Tokenization, Regulation and Litecoin’s Future

Host: Erin Gambrel (The Blonde Broker)

Host Socials: @theblondebroker (X) | @blondebrokerofficial (Instagram)

You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review — it really helps. 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5uNrU4WCIaMVJjgH6NlMUT 

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketRunup 

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Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content. 

Host Erin Gambrel (The Blonde Broker) catches up with her longtime friend Gav Blaxberg, Founder & CEO of Wolf Financial, for a conversation that's part market strategy, part behind-the-scenes look at what it actually took to build one of the most recognizable investing communities on social media from scratch. 

Gav makes a compelling case that the dumb money vs. smart money debate is dead. What matters now is fast money vs. slow money, and retail, with no committee approvals, no position limits, and access to the same real-time data as the big funds, is actually the faster of the two. 

TIMESTAMPS 

00:00 Growing YouTube in Finance

03:14 Retail vs. Institutional Investors

06:32 Smarter Investing & Portfolio Management

09:16 Building Wolf Financial & Career Success

12:27 Financial Media, Trust & Risk Management

19:13 AI Market Outlook & Key Risks

22:08 Building Investor Community & Legacy

This podcast is powered by Synthetix: https://synthetix.io/

Host: Erin Gambrel (The Blonde Broker)

Host Socials: @theblondebroker (X) | @blondebrokerofficial (Instagram)

You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review — it really helps. 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5uNrU4WCIaMVJjgH6NlMUT 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-market-runup/id1877489132 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketRunup 

Follow us on X:  https://x.com/TheMarketRunup 

Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content. 

Host Erin Gambrel (The Blonde Broker) catches up with Benjamin Celermajer who's been leading Synthetix’ day-to-day since late 2024, to talk about why perps are one of the most underrated financial innovations crypto has ever produced.

Instead of chasing the L2 trend, Ben believes building them on Ethereum mainnet will pay off long term. He makes a case that decentralization alone was never going to win traders over, and that the only thing that actually shifts volume from centralized exchanges to onchain venues is a product that's fast, liquid, and doesn't make you feel like your money might disappear.

TIMESTAMPS 

00:00 Macro Trends and Market Sensitivity

02:58 The Evolution of Bitcoin and Crypto as an Asset Class

05:49 Synthetics: Building for the Future of Finance

09:09 The Importance of Perpetual Contracts in Crypto Trading

11:46 Understanding the Dominance of Perpetual Futures

15:01 Synthetics' Unique Positioning in the Market

17:59 The Future of Decentralized Trading Infrastructure

20:57 Legacy and Vision for Synthetics and Personal Life

Host: Erin Gambrel (The Blonde Broker)

Host Socials: @theblondebroker (X) | @blondebrokerofficial (Instagram)

You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review — it really helps. 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5uNrU4WCIaMVJjgH6NlMUT 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-market-runup/id1877489132 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketRunup 

Follow us on X:  https://x.com/TheMarketRunup 

Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.