Dear Reader.
In this report, you’ll be hearing from our third partner here at TRU Capital.
John Gillen is a former Executive of BlackRock and worked deeply in the digital asset adoption initiatives BlackRock conducted over the past few years.
This document was created to catch you up to speed and go over the developments him and I are seeing in the Digital Asset landscape.
You’ll hear a bit more of his story, our views on current events and our outlook as to wear this industry is headed throughout the remainder of the year for 2025.
John’s perspective on digital assets coming from the largest asset manager in the world you’ll find rather refreshing, rooted in fundamental developments with a net long view on the digital asset industry as we believe this will be over a $100T market over the next decade.
Whether you are brand new to Bitcoin, crypto and digital assets or are a seasoned investor following the market closely, we’ve put together this report to give you the latest signals rather than the noise that floods the media in this asset class.
We hope you enjoy this report and if at anytime you’d like to learn more about TRU Capital Fund 1, our digital asset hedge fund, feel free to visit TRUCapital.Fund and book a call with our team.
Sincerely, Robert J Miller.
I first learned about Bitcoin in the spring of 2013. I was a student at the University of Virginia, sitting on the couch in my friend’s apartment. Two of my friends were taking turns sending a few dozen Bitcoins back and forth on their phones and explaining how it worked. The price had just crossed $100 for the first time, and we were all joking about it.
No one’s laughing anymore.
I begin with this story because we have reached a similar point in Bitcoin's history. This time, it’s not just a few computer science nerds celebrating their favorite crazy idea hitting a small milestone. Nations are starting a global digital assets arms race.
I’ve now spent over ten years in digital assets. I’ve worked at start-ups, written hundreds of educational videos for crypto YouTube, studied digital assets at the Wharton School of Business, and worked with the digital assets team at BlackRock. The same people that “Orange Pilled” Larry Fink.
If you’re interested in learning about digital assets, you’re probably feeling a lot of uncertainty right now. A combination of FOMO and FUD. This is, without exaggeration, one of the most volatile and schizophrenic moments in the history of the digital asset industry.
Don’t panic. I know there’s a lot of noise and chaos. I know there’s a lot to learn. It can feel like everything changes from day to day. It’s hard to know what’s TRU. My goal with this report is to frame the current state of the digital asset market, highlight the potential for future growth, and lay out a strategy to capitalize on the biggest opportunity in the history of financial markets without falling prey to predators and pitfalls that might cause even the most well-intentioned investor to miss out.
This isn’t financial advice; it's a perspective. It’s meant to help you think about where this asset class is, where it’s going, and how you want to be involved. Digital Assets represent a transition from a world built on “trust” to a world built on “truth.” King Solomon, the wisest, richest man ever said, “Buy the truth and sell it not.” in Proverbs 23:23. That’s what we intend to do.
Welcome to TRU Capital.
Between Bitcoin's crossing of $100 and $100,000, a lot has happened. Let’s skip ahead to last year and where we are now.
The two biggest catalysts for digital assets last year were 1) the listing of the Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs and 2) the Election of Donald Trump, the first openly procrypto President in history.
For those unaware, institutions like BlackRock, Fidelity and others have launched an ETF for various digital assets. This allows individuals to have exposure in their brokerage accounts to Bitcoin and other approved digital asset ETFs.
Following their launch in January of 2024, the spot BTC ETFs ended the year with more than $105B in AUM. This smashed several records for the pace and scale of their growth in the market. The ETFs contributed to over one trillion dollars of market capitalization being added to Bitcoin, and the election of Trump pushed the price past $100,000 for the first time in history.
Since then, things have cooled.
The most recent downturn seems to be caused by mass liquidations and shortterm holders selling. In other words, traders who are over-leveraged or so new to the market that they don’t fully understand the long-term thesis are getting chopped up.
The above chart highlights how short-term holders have been capitulating and selling. An STH-SOPR value below one means that short-term holders are selling their Bitcoin at a loss. This indicates that recent first-time buyers are panicselling their Bitcoin. This is the opposite approach taken by veteran digital asset investors. Seasoned Bitcoiners and institutional investors know that historically, these dips are the moments that end up being the best buying opportunities. The worst times to sell.
Additionally, we’ve seen a series of recent liquidation events, some of which have been among the largest in history.
This chart indicates a single day realized loss of nearly $1.8bb in longs. We’ve recently seen several days of $1bb+ liquidations of both shorts and longs in early March, with the last week of February seeing the largest weekly outflows from crypto in its history.
Crypto funds posted a $2.9bb outflow for the final week of February, ~$500 million above the previous record. The lesson here is that leverage is a powerful tool but a dangerous one. Traders who use leverage in the crypto market often find themselves on the wrong side of a big move and end up losing their coins.
For further context, President Trump tweeted out an announcement of a national Crypto Strategic Reserve on a Sunday morning. He specifically included $SOL, $XRP, and $ADA in this list. He quickly followed up with a tweet mentioning $BTC and $ETH as well.
This sparked an immediate short lived rally. Several alt coins pumped by doubledigit percentages and Bitcoin put in its first ever $10,000 daily candle. However, within what seemed like hours, those gains were retraced.
Naturally, this has caused a lot of swings in market sentiment as retail and institutional traders alike continue to be whiplashed by the volatility.
The volatility has been historic and record-setting and has left many market participants hurting and confused.
Also weighing on the digital asset market during this period have been numerous unfavorable macroeconomic market conditions.
The theme here, again, is elevated momentary uncertainty.
There have been increased concerns about a trade war caused by Trump’s tariffs. Concerns are mounting about the outcome of the war in Ukraine and the possibility of World War 3. Also, even though Trump has promised a National Strategic Crypto Reserve, he has not offered a reasonable path to fund it. It seems unlikely he would be able to get the requisite congressional approval, and if he did it through an Executive Order, it might be short-lived or overturned by a court.
42% of respondents to a recent survey by Bank of America now see the potential for a global trade war as the most bearish development for risk assets in 2025, even bigger than AI competition from China.
Recent revisions to GDP data from the Atlanta Fed are making it seem more likely that economic conditions are worsening, and fears of a recession are growing stronger. Companies have drastically shifted their economic activities to compensate for the coming tariffs and potential trade war, which has led to this big unforeseen dip in the GDP data.
The US Treasury is selling assets from its Treasury General Account ($250B so far) and injecting it into the US economy – with more likely to come.
This is a clear sign that they are aware of these concerns and are trying to quickly increase liquidity to maintain economic stability. The problem is that there is a two to three month lag time between these injections of liquidity and their corresponding impact on risk assets in the market.
This chart captures this lag time. This is possibly the most important chart in all of macro analysis right now. This chart shows global liquidity measured in billions of dollars against the price of Bitcoin with a ten-week lag time.
This chart tells us that this drop in Bitcoin’s price is in keeping with the contraction in global liquidity that hit the market ten weeks ago. Since then, global liquidity has already begun to rise due to things like the Treasury selling assets from the TGA, this added liquidity just hasn’t had time to filter down into Bitcoin and other financial assets yet.
All of this noise is nothing different from past market cycles. It’s just much more emotionally charged and intimidating because the scale of the digital asset market has grown so much.
The lesson here is that until macro conditions shift and the uncertainty around the Trump Administration’s new regulatory framework for digital assets is cleared up, investor confidence is not going to allow a sustained return to the bull market uptrends in digital assets.
But as I said, all of these factors are temporary sources of uncertainty. They will rapidly solidify into a strong foundation for sustained economic growth and an expansion of investment in digital assets.
This presents a golden opportunity for those who understand the long-term potential of this asset class and who are not shaken out by short-term volatility.
It’s important not to allow the short-term volatility caused by these market events to distract you from the steadily increasing fundamental value in the digital assets space. One example of this is how hashrate devoted to Bitcoin mining continues to grow regardless of these price fluctuations or increasing energy prices.
Bitcoin’s Hashrate is often looked at as a good indicator of the overall health and security of the Bitcoin network, and it is signalling that Bitcoin as a network is only growing stronger and stronger.
Another important example of strong fundamentals is the steady increase in mobile wallet usage.
This rise in the usage of mobile wallets implies that the number of users in digital assets is increasing, but they are also much more likely to be actively engaged since they are using mobile wallets, not just browser or hardware wallets. This demonstrates that more and more people are actively engaging with crypto.
Mobile wallets reflect increased retail adoption, but the ETF inflows also show sustained and increasing investment in digital assets.
Of particular note here is a drastic pick up in demand for the Ethereum ETFs, which had lagged significantly up until Q4 of last year. This shows the market is expecting Ethereum to begin to outperform Bitcoin as we head deeper into the bull run and altcoins begin to show increased strength.
Following the Dencun upgrade to the Ethereum network, there has also been a huge increase in transactions and L2 activity on the Ethereum network.
The dencun upgrade significantly reduced the cost of transaction fees on ETH and has made the use of L2s much cheaper and more accommodating to retail users and investors. So even as ETH’s price has underperformed, the fundamental strength and public adoption of the Ethereum network have never been stronger.
I could continue with nearly endless examples of hundreds if not thousands of digital assets that are continuing to develop and bolster their already considerable fundamental value, but these examples illustrate the point.
Now that we’ve reviewed the state of the digital asset market today, let’s take a look at where things are going from here.
There have been many announcements and events over the past few months and without being too political, we’re going to see this administration acceleratre the digitization of reserve assets, US Dollar hegemony, and the frameworks needed to have the innovation of industry happen here.
President Trump and his Crypto and AI Czar David Sachs convened a crypto summit at the white House on March 7th. Shortly before, Trump signed an Executive Order to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve and a stockpile of digital assets that the government has acquired. The big difference between the stockpile and the reserve is that the order gives his administration permission to explore budget-neutral ways of accumulating more Bitcoin, but not other cryptos.
A lot of people are disappointed, but we see this move as extremely bullish and a clear sign that crypto is a top priority for the administration.
The biggest change that almost everyone in crypto overlooked came from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. It was just a letter released during the summit that included some changes. Namely, US banks are now allowed to run validators on public blockchain networks, custody digital assets for their clients, and hold stablecoins.
The implications of this are enormous and will result in trillions of dollars of value and economic activity moving into the public blockchain and digital asset space.
The Trump Administration is in the process of ending the Biden Administration’s unconstitutional war on crypto known as Operation Choke Point 2.0. It will take time for all of the regulatory and personnel changes necessary to reverse course on this to happen, but the administration is moving rapidly.
The SEC has dropped or dismissed cases against Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Robinhood, Consnsys, Uniswap, and others.
The incoming SEC commissioners have formed a working group on digital assets to streamline the formation of a market structure framework. This is expected to include definitions of digital commodities, securities, and collectables, as well as guidance on how to legally launch all of these within US jurisdictions.
Much of this will have to be formalized in legislation, but that will come in time. For now, regulators are leading the way to expedite the accommodation of this industry in the US again.
According to the most recent 13f disclosure filings, there are just over 150 institutional entities that now hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets via either direct ownership or investment in the ETPs.
Additionally, the United States is openly pursuing Executive Orders and legislation to hold Bitcoin. This could look like holding on to the large amount of Bitcoin the US justice department already has, or it could involve a bill passing to purchase more Bitcoin over time. The US Marshalls are currently assessing the exact amount and location of all of the digital assets that the US government has seized, and Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming is planning to bring forward legislation to buy more Bitcoin over five years until the United States has accumulated one million Bitcoin.
It is unclear at this time what exactly the outcome of this will be, but it is clear that the idea of the United States holding or acquiring Bitcoin is being taken very seriously at the highest levels of both the Executive and Legislative branches of the Federal Government. Senator Lummis also recently convened hearings as the chair of the Senate’s new subcommittee on Digital Assets. Their agenda will drive legislative focus on digital assets as well. For now, the United States has been instructed by the President to HODL.
Beyond the federal level, almost every state in the union has some kind of legislation regarding strategic Bitcoin reserves at some level of progress in their legislature. Not all of these will pass, but several are very close, and it looks likely that some will pass in the imminent future. Eventually, we expect many, if not all, states to follow suit.
Thirty-one states have some level of legislative engagement on a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR).
Outside of the US, there are already dozens of nations holding Bitcoin, and several that are mining it as well.
China recently convened closed-door hearings on how to evaluate its own Bitcoin strategic reserve. This is a huge change because it means that the US getting into Bitcoin is placing pressure on every other nation to do the same. Regardless of how these countries go about doing this, the game theory of this is pretty straightforward.
The risk of Bitcoin used to be that having some of it meant that it might go to zero. Now the risk of it is flipped. The risk of Bitcoin is that not having it means you might be the last one to buy and end up having to pay over $10mm per coin instead of just under $100k.
Larry Fink at Davos mentioned that sovereign wealth funds were asking him about their Bitcoin exposure and wondering if they should have 2% or 5% allocated. Fink said that if everyone started to have this conversation, it could push Bitcoin’s price above $500,000. Weeks later, it was announced that the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi had indeed purchased half a billion dollars of BlackRock’s IBIT Spot Bitcoin ETP.
The adoption of digital assets is happening rapidly and at every level of society, globally. There is no evidence to suggest that this trend will not continue, and in fact, every indicator seems to show that this adoption is accelerating.
Why is this so important?
Currently, dollar-pegged stable coins have emerged as the fiat currency of choice in the global digital economy. By creating legislation that supports this innovation, it endorses and supports the further adoption of stablecoins. This makes the dollar the de facto currency of the digital world and extends the dollar’s hegemonic domination of the world’s currencies.
It would also bring in trillions of dollars of new demand for US treasuries and help prop up the fiscal solvency of the United States at a time when many of our enemies are trying to divest from dollars and selling our treasuries. This is because most if not all of these stable coins are backed by the issuer holding US Treasury bonds.
Stable coins are also a key part of the infrastructure necessary to tokenize the entire legacy financial system and build what is being called by some “Wall Street 2.0.”
Many crypto-native pundits favor the idea that Bitcoin and decentralized public blockchains will replace and destroy the legacy financial system. A lot of people from the legacy financial system are still holding on to the idea that Bitcoin and crypto will just go away because they are “pet rocks” and like “rat poison squared.”
Neither is the case.
Instead, what we are seeing happen is a new hybrid system being created where crypto and TradFi are finding ways to integrate and assimilate. The old system is not going to be destroyed, rather, it is going to migrate into the digital asset space. And the new digital assets are not going to go away but rather join in to improve and expand the existing capital marketplace.
The global equity market is something like $300 trillion. The global real estate market is ~$275 trillion. The global bond market is ~$400 trillion, and the global derivatives market is ~$450 trillion. All of these markets, and more, are going to continue to function, but they are going to move onto tokenized rails. This means that quadrillions of dollars of value are going to be settled on digital assets and public blockchain rails in the near future.
There are several reasons for this.
First, it's technically superior to the legacy system. Visa transactions take days to settle. Stock trades sometimes take longer. Some trades in the legacy system don’t finally settle for nearly a month. This involves huge amounts of resources and operational costs and hurdles. Friction. Waste. Expense. Risk.
Blockchain fixes this. This results in an improved experience and reduced costs for all stakeholders throughout the system. The result of this innovation and integration is going to be the complete tokenization of real-world assets or RWAs.
Several projects are leading this effort, most notably Ondo Finance, which recently launched two new products that have some of the highest profile backing possible in the financial world, including leaders from TradFi, Crypto, and the Trump Administration Chairs of the SEC and CFTC.
This is something that is only a few months old but has trillions of dollars' worth of potential. And most investors are completely missing this galactic pivot taking place in international finance because they are too distracted by meme coin pump and dumps.
2024 saw a huge surge in RWAs, and Global investment giant VanEck forecasts that the RWA market will surpass $50 billion by the end of this year. Estimates vary for a market cap target by 2030. McKinsey says $2 trillion, Boston Consulting Group says $16 trillion, and a new report from Security Token Market forecasts $30 trillion in asset tokenization by 2030, led by stocks, real estate, bonds, and gold.
This chart from TIger Research Group shows their forecast of the RWA market’s march to $16 trillion by 2030. Keep in mind, this chart represents a kind of middle-of-the-road outlook, some forecasts are calling for RWAs to get up to $50 trillion in market cap by 2030.
Most investors in the digital asset space are completely missing this emerging market, however, the partners of TRU Capital have been closely monitoring the ongoing development of this space for years. As a result, we have been well positioned to benefit from its sustained outperformance. This is just one example of the kind of edge we’re seeking to offer limited partners of TRU Capital.
Now that we have reviewed where we are and where things are going, it’s time to think about how to get involved in the digital asset space. As an investor, there are ever-increasing options to consider, each with its own explicit and implicit trade-offs between risk and reward. As we’ve already seen, there are myriad ways that an investor in this space might lose their investment or simply be out of position or misallocated in the market. Avoiding that takes a very specialized and well-developed skillset specifically tailored to digital assets.
This is where we come in.
This is where most investment managers would try to talk over your head. They’d do their best to sound so smart that they convince you that you are too dumb to manage your assets on your own. That you are hopelessly lost forever if you don’t give them your money to manage for you.
That’s not what I’m going to do.
Einstein said that you don’t understand something well enough if you can’t explain it simply, so I am going to explain our strategy as simply and TRULY as I can.
ACCUMULATE.
HODL.
DFTU.
Let’s break it down.
Our fund will primarily focus on accumulating digital assets to compound a higher Bitcoin holding overtime. We have a few strategies in how we’re approaching current markets to do so.
One main component is guided proprietary signals and trading algorithms, that focus specificallly on Bitcoin. Deploying these algorithms in bear and ranging markets allows us to be best prepared for upswings and the overall macro positive trend.
Upon request we are willing to share years' worth of live trading history upon direct request. The performance of these algorithms has been staggering.
This is a key piece of the offering, in our opinion, because these algorithms give us the ability to generate considerable returns for our limited partners while remaining exposed only to digital assets, even in a bear or crab market, without having to take risks with investor capital chasing alpha foolishly.
In addition to accumulating Bitcoin overtime, as the main focus, we look to acquire and trade in market cycles alternative token projects that meet our requirements and bench marks. We know alternative projects typically have severe draw downs in bear markets so hedging between these two sectors i s important to us.
Now finally, we anticipate allocating up to 10-15% of capital into a select few premium alts based on our research and the timing of the market cycle. The goal here is not to miss the beta of the entire asset class as digital assets grow from a $3T market to a $100T market over the medium to long term. These are more long term projects that we see through cycles that have strong fundamentals and a bullish outlook on its sector.
The second phase of our strategy is simple as well: HODL.
We want to achieve and maintain exposure to Bitcoin and digital assets. The key to this market is not trying to predict the upside volatility but being patient, knowing that when it comes, the rewards will far outperform the rest of the market.
The risk of digital assets as we see it is in not having exposure. Volatility is a gift to the faithful. It is the cost all investors pay for performance. A mistake many investors make is trying to guess tops and bottoms when the market proves over and over again that the investors who are most rewarded are the ones who are willing to simply HODL.
This strategy lets the market come to us while our position grows and protects us from many of the mistakes that investors fall victim to.
The final stage is the most important and the one that so many investors unfortunately get wrong in the digital asset market.
That’s it.
ACCUMULATE THE RIGHT TOKENS
DOLLAR COST AVERAGE AT THE RIGHT TIME
PROTECT WITH CUSTODY
It’s simple. It’s so simple, it’s indecently brilliant.
In 2018, I had less than $10,000 to my name, now, I’m worth over seven figures.
If you think you can outperform Tru Capital, I strongly encourage you to do so.
However, if you’re like me and would like to make life-changing wealth without taking absurd risks, if you would like to front-run the global financial system’s transition to digital assets, and if you believe that a system of truth is better than a system of trust, then I think you’d enjoy being a limited partner at TRU Capital.
I began by repeating that the wisest, richest man who ever lived said, “Buy the truth and sell it not.”
That’s exactly what we intend to do.
Welcome to TRU Capital.
We’re glad you’re here.
- John Gillen
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