A comprehensive breakdown of the June 2026 episode, where AI goes public, Bitcoin's evangelist sells, 11 people out-trade NASDAQ, Jamie Dimon goes to war, and US equities move on-chain.
One episode. Five seismic shifts reshaping global capital markets simultaneously.
In a single hour of conversation, hosts Austin Campbell, Rahm Alawalia, and Chris Perkins navigate the most consequential convergence of crypto and macro forces since the 2008 financial crisis. The June 2026 episode of Bits & Bips captures a world where AI companies seek trillion-dollar public debuts, Bitcoin's most famous evangelist is forced to sell, a decentralized exchange run by 11 people eclipses NASDAQ volumes, Jamie Dimon declares open war on crypto legislation, and the DTCC commits to putting the US equity market on a public blockchain. These are not separate stories, they are one story, told through five interconnected themes.
The first real test of AI valuations hitting public markets, and the race with OpenAI
Anthropic has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, targeting a public offering as early as fall 2026. This sets up a direct race with OpenAI, which is reportedly preparing its own confidential filing within weeks. Alongside SpaceX targeting a $2 trillion valuation, the IPO calendar is white-hot, and the numbers are staggering.
Anthropic's last known valuation: $965 billion post-money (Series H). Revenue: $4.7 billion annualized as of early May 2026, per Simon Willis, up from ~$2 billion earlier. That's 10x year-over-year revenue growth. Private exchanges are already trading the name at $1.3–1.8 trillion. The S-1 is confidential, so all figures carry a grain of salt, but the direction is unmistakable.
"In January of this past year, Anthropic added to its revenue all the revenue it had generated in the prior year cumulatively. It's extraordinary."— Rahm Alawalia, describing 10x YoY growth in a single month
Anthropic's revenue appears real and growing. The company is nearing operating profit. Both Pimco and BlackRock assert the CapEx cycle is still accelerating. AI infrastructure spending is not slowing down. The technology remains early in adoption: medical diagnostics, biotech, and pharmaceuticals are largely untouched by AI, representing enormous untapped markets.
Apollo's Torston Sløk, BofA's Michael Hartnett, and Michael Burry are sounding alarms. Burry specifically compares this moment to the final months of the 1999–2000 bubble, questioning circular accounting at places like Nvidia. Apollo and BofA point to unprecedented S&P 500 concentration. Torston Sløk argues these companies are more overvalued than they were in the 1990s. The "SaaS apocalypse" that Anthropic triggered in February–March, sending public SaaS valuations into freefall, may be rebounding, but the memory is fresh.
| Metric | Anthropic | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| Last Valuation | $965B (Series H) | $852B |
| Revenue Run Rate | $4.7B annualized (May 2026) | $24–25B |
| Revenue Growth | ~10x YoY | Strong but more mature |
| Private Market Trading | $1.3–1.8T | Nearing public filing |
| IPO Target | Fall 2026 (S-1 filed) | Fall 2026 (filing imminent) |
| Profitability | Nearing operating profit | Not yet profitable |
| Key Differentiator | AI safety + enterprise | Consumer reach + ChatGPT scale |
| Market Impact | Caused SaaS apocalypse (Feb/Mar) | Broader consumer AI narrative |
If you IPO at a trillion-dollar valuation, a 10-bagger is $10 trillion. That is larger than the entire GDP of every country except the US and China. The law of large numbers makes venture-style returns mathematically impossible from these entry points. As Austin Campbell notes: "If people feel big company IPOs are just dumping on retail, you'll have a negative reaction to capital markets."
Why 80% of $100M+ revenue companies are private, and why it matters
The Anthropic IPO is not just about AI. It's the latest chapter in a structural crisis: companies are staying private far too long. Imagine traveling back to the 1990s and telling a venture capitalist about a Series H round. They would have been confused. Today, Series H is the norm for the most valuable private companies. Eighty percent of US companies with over $100 million in revenue are private. As Chris Perkins puts it: "That doesn't seem right."
"How do you make a more inclusive market? 80% of companies with over $100M revenue are private. That doesn't seem right."— Chris Perkins, Coin Fund
The hosts trace the root cause to Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in the wake of Enron and WorldCom. By increasing fixed compliance costs, SOX created an environment where only the largest companies could afford to be public. Chris Perkins notes: "When you introduce regulation, you increase fixed costs, and then you need to drive scale to be successful. The big get bigger." This applies equally to crypto regulation, the Genius Act and Clarity Act will force consolidation, leaving only a handful of winners.
Beyond SOX, Austin Campbell identifies another creeping problem: nuisance shareholder lawsuits. The pattern is simple: buy 12 shares, claim the company did something wrong, and demand $50 million in legal fees while collecting $12 in damages. It's a legal extortion racket that disproportionately hits small-to-medium public companies.
The fix? Texas has copied Delaware's corporate structure and added a simple reform: a minimum percentage share ownership requirement to sue as a shareholder. A lawsuit against Tesla was recently dismissed in Texas on this exact basis. No more buying 8 shares and filing a nuisance claim.
The late-stage IPO ecosystem isn't broken by accident. VCs benefit from it. Management fees are higher in private markets (2% on large pools). VCs can engineer controlled exits at inflated prices. As Rahm notes: Stripe shares have been unloaded in private markets at multiples far above what public payment companies trade at. And who ultimately buys from VCs? Retirement funds and pensions. The public eventually pays the inflated price, just without any of the upside.
Crypto enabling real price discovery before public debuts, the missing link for inclusivity
While Anthropic and SpaceX prepare their IPOs, crypto infrastructure is racing ahead to solve the price discovery problem. Trade XYZ and Hyperliquid are launching pre-IPO derivatives markets. Y has launched 24/7 markets. For the first time, there is potential for real price discovery before companies go public.
"For the first time you have potential for real price discovery. We've never had deep liquid pre-IPO markets before."— Chris Perkins
Chris Perkins frames this as "the missing link for inclusivity", retail investors have been boxed out of IPOs for decades. Pre-IPO derivatives could give issuers better tools to time and price their offerings, leaving less money on the table. The hosts agree that IPOs tend to be mispriced; these crypto-native tools could fundamentally change that.
But there are tensions. Austin Campbell warns that anything trading on a secondary for hard-to-access assets with tightly controlled cap tables will always trade at a premium and inevitably compress once the issue starts trading publicly. Rahm agrees: "It's a bad idea if you try to buy on these secondary markets at an inflated valuation."
Currently, these products are banned in the United States. But they're being built anyway, and the hosts see them as potentially transformational for capital market efficiency.
Chris Perkins: "It feels like the missing link for inclusivity for retail and also for more efficient IPO markets." When you combine pre-IPO price discovery with 24/7 trading and tokenized assets, you get a fundamentally more accessible and transparent capital market structure than what exists today.
When Bitcoin's most famous evangelist is forced to sell BTC to pay preferred dividends
For the first time since 2022, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) sold Bitcoin, 32 BTC, approximately $2.5 million. While this represents less than 0.01% of their holdings, the symbolic weight is enormous. Michael Saylor called it a "big nothing burger," but the market disagrees. STRC and STRF both traded below par after the sale. The cost of financing went up, not down.
"Unless Bitcoin is coded to go up in perpetuity, you have issues."— Rahm Alawalia
Strategy's capital structure has three layers in irreducible tension, what Jeff Dorman calls "Saylor's three-body problem":
| Layer | Instrument | Obligation | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — Equity | MSTR Common | Share price appreciation | Under pressure as BTC stagnates |
| 2 — Preferred | STRC / STRF | ~$1.5B/yr dividends | Trading below par after BTC sale |
| 3 — BTC Holdings | ~500K+ BTC | Non-yielding inert asset | Must appreciate 11.5%/yr to service preferred |
Chris Perkins lays out the math: "If you raise $15 billion and hold Bitcoin, if it doesn't go up 11.5% per year, selling BTC just reduces the amount of Bitcoin you have. Period. Full stop."
Rahm introduces his concept of Bitcoin as an "attention asset." Bitcoin competes for investor attention with AI and biotech, both of which are also "going up and to the right." In a momentum market (currently two standard deviations into momentum territory), an asset that's supposed to have velocity but isn't running fast cuts against itself. "Perception is reality," Rahm argues. The 0.01% sale doesn't matter mathematically, it matters narratively.
Austin Campbell draws a chilling comparison: Silicon Valley Bank. SVB had assets yielding 6% while short-term rates rose inexorably. Eventually, rates went up enough and the bank died. Strategy faces a structurally similar asset-liability mismatch: a non-yielding asset funding an 11.5% dividend obligation.
MicroStrategy was a bid for Bitcoin. Now they must sell Bitcoin to fund obligations on Bitcoin. This creates procyclicality, selling pressure when Bitcoin is down, amplifying drawdowns. Austin: "If rates go up enough, you just die. The name of that bank was Silicon Valley Bank."
The hosts note an emerging shift: as Bitcoin dominance faces its first real challenge from the Strategy narrative, altcoins with fundamentals are outperforming. Chris calls it a "fundamental alt season", projects with real revenue and utility are eclipsing Bitcoin for the first time in a while. Hyperliquid is the prime example.
How a tiny DeFi team is scaring the founder of ICE and forcing traditional exchanges to adapt
At Bernstein's May 27 conference, ICE CEO Jeff Sprecher said something that shook markets: "Hyperliquid is bigger than NASDAQ by volume." Sprecher, the founder who bought the NYSE because he understood that derivatives matter more than spot, has met Hyperliquid's founders multiple times. His assessment: "The team is extremely smart. I salute these guys for doing it. I don't think you can ignore it."
"How many times have we seen startups push the edges of regulation? These protocols are delivering real utility."— Chris Perkins
Hyperliquid has expanded beyond perpetuals into prediction markets, pre-IPO derivatives, and synthetics. During the Iran conflict, HYPE was cited as the price of oil over the weekend, real-world utility that traditional markets couldn't provide. Jeff Dorman of Arca called it "one of the few things purchasable as a liquid token investor in crypto."
| Problem | Description | Solution Path |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Regulatory | No US licenses; keeps institutional capital out | Buy/build licenses; deploy people in DC |
| 2 — Security | Open-source protocols attract bad actors | Policy, insurance, privateers, AI-assisted defense |
| 3 — Risk Management (ADL) | Auto-deleveraging rips up hedges when risk is too high | Decentralized capital pools; better waterfalls than traditional CCPs |
Chris Perkins introduces the concept of the "DeFi mullet": business in the front (a regulated entity, a "throat to choke"), protocol in the back (the decentralized liquidity and settlement layer). This structure could bridge the gap between institutional requirements and DeFi's efficiency. The business front can take risk, get insurance, and deliver backend liquidity to regulated institutions.
Austin Campbell identifies ADL (auto-deleveraging) as the single biggest barrier to US regulatory approval. In traditional markets, the equivalent, "recovery and resolution", sits at the very bottom of the capital waterfall, with massive risk-based capital pools in front of it. It almost never triggers. In crypto, ADL can hit retail traders directly. "Regulators will never be comfortable with direct-to-retail ADL," Austin warns. The fix requires better capital structures, and the teams are working on it.
Chris Perkins explains Jeff Sprecher's psychology: "He's a founder. Founder companies are wired differently. If you've been a disruptor your entire career, you're also a lot more paranoid because you know what a disruptor can do. He's sitting on a $90 billion company, he bought the NYSE, and he's like, there's 11 guys over there killing it." The CME's rush to go 24/7 is a direct response to the Hyperliquid threat.
When the most powerful banker in America declares war on crypto, and crypto punches back
On Fox Business's Mornings with Maria, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon torched the Clarity Act and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in terms rarely heard from a Wall Street titan: "Armstrong is full of sh*t. We'll fight it. If we lose, we lose and we'll live. No one's gonna bow down to this guy." Armstrong replied with a hockey rivalry meme, not an argument, but a signal: crypto is no longer afraid of the banking lobby.
"Brian Armstrong is full of sh*t. We'll fight it. If we lose, we lose and we'll live."— Jamie Dimon, on Fox Business
Chris Perkins frames this as a historic moment: the banking lobby, massive, entrenched, with thousands of banks and millions of employees, is going toe-to-toe with a still-small digital assets industry that most Americans don't think about at the kitchen table. The banking industry has only truly lost once in public policy: Dodd-Frank in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, when the stars aligned against them. And yet, crypto is punching way above its weight.
"This is peak political power for digital assets. It will not be this high again after midterms."— Chris Perkins
The banking lobby missed the fight on the Genius Act (stablecoins). Now they're redirecting their anger at the Clarity Act (market structure). The Genius Act contains what banks see as an "interest loophole": stablecoin issuers can't pay rewards directly, but third parties can distribute them. Chris Perkins is frustrated: "We already did stablecoins, guys. The war's over. But they're so angry because they missed it in Genius, they're coming back to suppress Clarity."
When regulatory arguments fail, the banks are now playing the national security card, claiming crypto is bad for national security. Chris Perkins calls this tactic "what makes me mental." The irony: the US just seized $300 million in crypto assets, demonstrating that the transparency of blockchain is actually a national security advantage.
Austin Campbell delivers a precise, mechanical rebuttal to the claim that stablecoins destroy bank deposits: "Anybody saying US dollar stablecoins cause deposits to leave the banking system in aggregate does not understand how bank deposits work. It is not mechanically possible. Bank deposits are destroyed when you take money out of an ATM, when you repay a loan, when a bank sells an asset off the balance sheet, or a couple of things the Treasury and the Fed can do. None of those involve a stablecoin. Unless you think buying a sandwich destroys a bank deposit, you don't think buying a stablecoin destroys a bank deposit."
The reason large banks pay near-zero on checking accounts isn't because they can't afford to pay more, it's because their G-SIB (too-big-to-fail) status creates an implicit government guarantee. Depositors trust fortress balance sheets like JPMorgan even without FDIC protection. Austin argues: "If you want FDIC insurance, you should have to pay risk-free on your checking account. You can park that money at the Fed and earn that, pass zero through and get a guarantee."
Banks were given an unintended monopoly on electronic payments. Fifty years ago, nobody used a bank for sandwich purchases, you involved a bank when buying a car or a house. Debit cards attached to bank accounts are a historical accident. Stablecoins and fully-backed narrow banks threaten to unwind that monopoly.
| Argument | Banking Lobby Position | Crypto / Reform Position |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit flight | Stablecoins will drain $6T+ in deposits | Mechanically impossible — deposits aren't destroyed by stablecoin creation |
| National security | Crypto enables illicit finance | Blockchain transparency aids seizure (US just seized $300M) |
| Interest on deposits | Regulatory costs prevent competitive rates | G-SIB status creates implicit guarantee — pass risk-free rate through |
| Level playing field | Crypto avoids bank regulation unfairly | Banks have monopoly on electronic payments they never earned |
| Political strategy | Attack Clarity Act after losing Genius Act | Genius Act is law; Clarity Act provides needed taxonomy |
| Reform risk | Deregulation threatens stability | Senate offices are now asking about re-examining Gramm-Leach-Bliley |
Austin Campbell: "You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you say you're too fragile to face market competition, but also don't regulate us in any way, you're going to get one of those." Senate offices are reportedly asking serious questions about whether Gramm-Leach-Bliley should be revisited. The banking lobby's aggressive posture may backfire.
The world's largest securities settlement system picks a public blockchain, and everything changes
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the backbone of US securities settlement, has selected Stellar as the public blockchain for tokenized US equities. The initial rollout targets Russell 1000 names, ETFs, and US Treasuries, with deployment expected in the first half of 2027.
"Equity is a $127 trillion market. I think it's going to be steady, steady, steady, then all at once everything goes tokenized."— Chris Perkins
The Stellar selection traces back to DTCC's acquisition of Currency, a blockchain infrastructure company. It also connects to Franklin Templeton's Benji project, which originally chose Stellar as its issuance chain. DTCC CTO Dan Doney, a Naval Academy graduate, has been driving this vision. But Chris Perkins believes this won't be a single-chain play: "You're going to see a number of other integrations equally exciting."
Chris Perkins introduces a powerful concept: the fiduciary argument for tokenized assets. If a tokenized version of an equity exists with sufficient liquidity, a fiduciary must trade the tokenized version. It offers 24/7 price discovery, real-time settlement, and lower counterparty risk. When DTCC makes tokenized equities the standard, fiduciaries won't have a choice, they'll be compelled by their duty to clients.
Citi projects $5 trillion in tokenized equities by 2030. Chris Perkins calls this "way too light." The equity market alone is $127 trillion. DTCC safeguards trillions in assets. The transition follows a classic pattern: "steady, steady, steady, then all at once."
Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, views stablecoins as creating demand for US Treasuries. The DTCC's inclusion of US Treasuries in the tokenization program makes strategic sense: it creates more plumbing infrastructure to help the US government finance its debt. But Chris Perkins identifies an even more important unlock: allowing stablecoin purchases of US Treasuries directly, not necessarily tokenized. "That is the next foundational unlock."
Chris Perkins frames the DTCC move as the third phase of a historical progression: Phase 1: Voice, manual, paper-based markets. Phase 2: Electronification, computers replace paper. Phase 3 (now): Blockchain-based finance, 24/7 price discovery, real-time settlement, tokenized assets. "This is the obvious next iteration."
Austin Campbell cuts to the core: "The US government is slow to do anything, but it's inevitable. If we're going to continue spending at this level and running a deficit, you need financing and you're going to need to go where the money is." The only alternative is dramatically cutting the budget, and there's no appetite for that.
How the threads of one podcast episode reveal a fundamental restructuring of global finance
What makes the June 2026 episode of Bits & Bips remarkable is not any single story, it's the simultaneity. Five structural forces are colliding at the same moment, and each accelerates the others.
Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to public markets at trillion-dollar valuations. Pre-IPO crypto derivatives are providing price discovery for these debuts before they happen. AI companies need public capital; crypto infrastructure is building the rails for more efficient capital formation. The convergence is already happening, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
Markets never sleep. Hyperliquid operates 24/7/365. The CME is rushing to match. DTCC's tokenized equities will enable round-the-clock settlement. Y launched 24/7 markets. The 9:30-to-4:00 trading day is dying, killed by crypto-native infrastructure that traditional markets are now scrambling to copy.
The regulatory window before midterms represents peak political power for digital assets. Sarbanes-Oxley fixed costs, shareholder nuisance lawsuits, and VC incentives have combined to keep 80% of $100M+ revenue companies private. Texas's minimum-share-to-sue reform offers a model. The Clarity Act fight and Genius Act implementation will determine whether public markets can become inclusive again, or whether the trend toward private concentration continues.
Strategy's three-body problem exposes Bitcoin's fundamental limitation as a non-yielding asset. When the world's largest Bitcoin evangelist is forced to sell BTC to pay preferred dividends, the narrative shifts. Bitcoin as an "attention asset" now competes with AI and biotech for investor mindshare. The law of large numbers makes 11.5% annual appreciation mathematically harder as the market cap grows. The sale of 32 BTC may be small, but it signals a structural vulnerability.
DTCC's commitment to put US equities on a public blockchain is the institutional seal of approval that tokenization advocates have waited for. When the world's largest settlement system, safeguarding trillions in assets, moves on-chain, the question shifts from "if" to "when." Citi's $5 trillion projection for 2030 is probably too conservative. The equity market is $127 trillion. The fiduciary argument creates an unstoppable force: when tokenized assets have sufficient liquidity, fiduciaries are obligated to use them.
These five themes are not independent. AI companies going public drives demand for better IPO infrastructure (pre-IPO derivatives, 24/7 markets). IPO reform creates the regulatory framework for those markets. Bitcoin's yield problem forces capital to seek returns elsewhere, into productive crypto assets like Hyperliquid. Tokenized RWAs provide the on-chain settlement rails for all of it. And the Clarity Act fight determines whether this ecosystem can be built in the United States or offshore. This is not five stories. It is one story, told from five angles, occurring simultaneously in June 2026.
"If people don't feel like they're participants in these stocks and they instead feel like big company IPOs at extreme valuations are just dumping on retail, you're going to have a pretty negative reaction to capital markets. If you look back at the last batch of mega IPOs, the price performance is pretty ugly." The solution, more inclusive markets, better price discovery, reformed regulation, real utility, is being built. The only question is whether traditional finance embraces it or fights it.
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