By：

Matt Hougan

Chief Investment Officer

The most bullish document I’ve read on crypto wasn’t written by some yahoo on Twitter. It was written by the chairman of the SEC.

Last week, Paul Atkins, the chairman of the SEC, gave a speech to the America First Policy Institute, titled “American Leadership in the Digital Finance Revolution.” 

You should go read it now.

No, seriously. Go read it. It’s a roadmap for how to invest over the next five years.

In the speech, the chairman lays out his vision for how financial markets will work in the future. Spoiler alert: It all centers around public blockchains like Ethereum. He argues that:

It’s the most complete vision of how crypto can reshape financial markets that I’ve read.

I can’t imagine reading the speech and not wanting to allocate a significant portion of your capital to crypto; or, if you work in finance, a significant portion of your career. (Side note: We’re hiring at Bitwise.) It’s like the chairman of the SEC took all the best ideas crypto supporters have been promoting for the past decade and packaged them in a single speech, along with details on how the SEC can actually make them happen.

“It is a generational opportunity,” he writes.

A few years ago, I’m not sure my compliance department would have let me say that.

What This Means for Investors

There’s a lot to unpack in the speech for investors; you could build an entire venture capital firm around the chairman’s vision, creating companies to capitalize on each opportunity he lays out. But there are three immediate investing opportunities that stand out to me.

Opportunity 1: Ethereum (and Other Layer 1 Blockchains)

The first and most obvious opportunity is to invest in Ethereum and other Layer 1 blockchains that support stablecoins and tokenization.

“Today I am announcing the launch of 'Project Crypto,'" Atkins writes, “a Commission-wide initiative to modernize the securities rules and regulations to enable America’s financial markets to move on-chain.”