The first exchange-traded fund filings for Bitcoin went in during 2013 and the funds did not trade until 2024, almost eleven years later.
The industry spent most of that decade arguing that it needed an act of Congress to fix the problem. Both guests here say it no longer does — the rules are arriving through the agencies instead, and the bill everyone has been waiting on probably will not clear the Senate before the midterms.
"So we're getting that regulatory clarity through agency guidance rather than through legislation."
Zach Pandl runs research at Grayscale, the asset manager that spent years in front of the SEC before any of these products existed. Michael Bucella co-founded Neoclassic Capital and was in the Swiss mountains the day the first Bitcoin ETFs started trading; the two of them were colleagues at Goldman Sachs before either went into crypto.
I listened to the full episode so you can skip it. 29 minutes of audio, 17 minutes of reading.
Here are the 12 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guests: Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale Investments; and Michael Bucella, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Neoclassic Capital
🎙️ Host: Dominic Chu, who presents the ETF Edge podcast for CNBC
📰 Published: 9 September 2026 on ETF Edge
🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 29 min | ✅ Time saved: 12 min
Key Takeaways
The industry stopped needing the CLARITY Act because the agencies started writing the rules anyway
Pandl points to the CFTC approving perpetual futures in the US and the SEC setting terms for token issuance
Bucella does not expect the bill to pass before the midterm elections
Bitcoin's rally is healthier than what sits behind it on the risk curve
Bucella has altcoin leverage back near where it stood before the October 2025 crash
The first Bitcoin ETF filings took almost 11 years to reach market; the SEC now hands issuers a roadmap
The crypto treasury companies that listed last year were the retail casualty of having no rules
Bucella: "And a lot of those structures are very toxic. And a lot of retail got burnt on those"
Grayscale's head of research expects the dollar to lose ground, and says that is part of the crypto story
The buyer he describes wants an asset that is not tied to one country's rules
Treasury buybacks treat the symptom while structural deficits stay untouched, whoever wins in November
Crypto's volatility is now a product feature, because it is what option-income funds sell
The next product is a basket, not another single-coin fund, in a roughly $3T asset class
1. Bitcoin's Leverage Washout
Dominic Chu opened by noting that the Bitcoin run has been fast but started from a long way below the record high, and asked Michael Bucella whether anything in the price action makes it look sustainable. Bucella's answer was about the composition of the buying rather than the level.
He dated the reset to a leverage flush on 19 August, after which shorts were liquidated and, in his description, spot ETF buying followed through — which he called healthy because it builds a base
Options open interest rose over the same stretch while futures open interest fell
"So leverage was reduced while spot buying increased and then upside buying was increased. So that to me indicated that there was real demand to own Bitcoin incrementally from here."
On where the rally runs into trouble: "The next levels to watch are roughly 83 to 86,000. We have a lot of long-term supply to chew through." Clear that, he said, and the position is good
The caution is about everything that is not Bitcoin. He repeated a point he had made earlier in the programme — "Altcoin open interest and leverage is getting a little bit worrisome" — and put overall leverage back around where it sat before the October 2025 crash
He was explicit that this is not a crash call: he does not take it as a flashing red light that a collapse is coming
His instruction was to keep buying but to change the mix: "I'm just saying you wanna tread carefully and in this environment, maybe just incrementally accumulate your Bitcoin and then be a little bit more cautious as you go out the risk curve."
2. Scarcity Plus A Rulebook
Chu turned to Zach Pandl with the observation that the conversation had been almost entirely about Bitcoin, and asked what macro forces had pulled money back into Ethereum, Solana, XRP and Hyperliquid as well. Pandl said there were two, and that they have been the same two for years.
The first is a flight into things that cannot be printed: "Number one is demand for scarcity. We have risks with fiat currencies created by unchecked government debt growth. That's driving investors into scarce assets, whether it's physical gold or digital Bitcoin."
The second only applies to digital assets: "But that's only half of the story for digital assets. The other half is regulatory clarity for blockchain technology and integrating blockchains into mainstream finance."
He argued the second driver is what separates the smart-contract platforms from Bitcoin. Ethereum, Solana and perpetual-futures venues such as Hyperliquid benefit from a clearer rulebook in a way that a scarcity asset does not
Pandl's framing of the first driver is the one the market calls the debasement trade, and he used the phrase himself while treating it as only half the case
3. The CLARITY Act Isn't Needed
Asked directly whether the CLARITY Act is crucial to the longer-term success of crypto in the US market, Pandl separated the principle from the bill.
"Regulatory clarity in general is absolutely crucial. This is financial technology. We need a clear rulebook to protect investors, protect consumers, to protect the financial system itself. We don't necessarily need the CLARITY Act, that specific piece of legislation."
The evidence he gave was a list of agency actions: the CFTC approving perpetual futures for the US market, and the SEC laying out ground rules on transfer-agent changes and on the issuance of crypto tokens, which he said the industry calls reg crypto
"So we're getting that regulatory clarity through agency guidance rather than through legislation." Stablecoins were the exception that went the legislative route, through the Genius Act last year, which he called a great step forward
His closing point was that the pace is what has changed: he said the industry is seeing it every day in announcements from the agencies
4. The Unbundling Phase
Chu reminded Bucella that the last time they spoke, on CNBC's Power Lunch, the CLARITY Act had just hit some last-minute obstacles, and asked whether his view had moved since. It had not moved much, and his answer put the private sector ahead of the legislature.
"I think we're kind of in this unbundling phase of the areas of regulation that we're looking to push forward," he said — different pieces of the regime advancing separately rather than as one bill
On the act itself, his position then and now: "I think back then I had said, you know, we'd love to see the CLARITY Act, you know, move forward, but we've done just fine without government direction in the past, and we will continue to do it and move forward"
He was blunt about how the lobbying works, without naming anyone: "And I think we had the right folks lobbying, obviously, you know, everyone has their own fiefdoms and people are going to lobby for the things that interact most kindly with their existing business lines"
He does not expect the act to pass in the near term, and pointed to the midterm elections as the event that could change the arithmetic on it
His summary of where the relationship stands is that the private sector has been educating the government and the regulators, and that support keeps coming from the people willing to hold a productive conversation
5. 11 Years To The First ETF
Chu made the case that exchange-traded products have widened the audience — "It's broadened out the total addressable market to investors and traders who aren't necessarily crypto-native but want to have some kind of exposure" — and asked Pandl how much of that came from cooperating with regulators. Pandl answered with the timeline.
"You think back to the first ETF filings for Bitcoin. We're in 2013. They didn't come to market until 2024, almost 11 years later."
What replaced that process is a published standard: "Last year, the SEC created something called generic listing standards, which gives an asset manager like ourselves a pretty clear roadmap" on when, where and how a new product can be issued
On why the wrapper wins even though there is no wrong way to buy crypto, he called the ETF "the easy button for crypto investing"
The four problems he says the wrapper solves for the buyer: "Where do you get the liquidity? How do you custody these assets? How do you do your taxes and your estate planning? The ETFs package all of those solutions into a single product" — often, he added, at a low cost
His forecast is a share shift rather than a flow number: he expects ETFs to keep capturing a rising share of the asset class because they make it straightforward for anybody
6. The Treasury Company Burn
Chu asked Bucella whether the wider range of products is pulling less-expert investors past Bitcoin and Ether. Bucella said yes, and then spent most of his answer on what happened the last time exposure to the long tail was only available through the wrong vehicle.
He opened with the coincidence that he was away when the wrapper he now argues for arrived: "I was actually in Switzerland in the mountains the day they first started trading in 2024." He and Pandl, both ex-Goldman, watched their old firm file what he thought was a call-overwriting Bitcoin ETF that same day — hedged twice, because he did not think it had been approved
His policy view is that issuance is still too slow: "I would say we probably need to get, we need to be quicker to allowing further ETF distribution or creation and distribution"
The cost of the delay, in his account, was an over-issuance of listed holding companies built to hold the long tail of altcoins, and what he called a bubble in digital asset treasury issuance last year
"And a lot of those structures are very toxic. And a lot of retail got burnt on those." He said the damage was concentrated exactly where people wanted the obscure exposure and had no other route to it
He set against that a sequence he thinks worked. Hyperion DeFi bought Hyperliquid inside a public company first and, in his description, engaged with the ecosystem and behaved like a fiduciary for shareholders; Hyperliquid Strategies followed; then came the Hyperliquid ETF, which he described as much more neutral, safe exposure
"So I do think the more ETF issuers become comfortable surrounding the assets that they'll issue ETFs in, the better environment and more transparency that we'll have from the investor base."
As options and futures markets mature, he said, yield-enhanced strategies become possible in crypto — the thread Chu picked up again at the end of the podcast. The conversation noted in passing that Goldman is active in that category after buying Innovator Capital and NEOS
7. The Allocation Trade
Chu's last question of the on-air portion was whether Grayscale can see the difference between people taking shots and people putting money in on a schedule. Pandl said the schedule is the whole change.
"That's absolutely the change that's taking place. It's not only the products that are changing. It's the investment strategy. It's the investor types that have changed over time."
He tied the timing to the same macro backdrop he had named earlier — Treasury buybacks and fiat currency risk — and framed the buyer's problem as a diversification problem rather than a crypto problem
"I have a lot of equity concentration, a lot of AI concentration. Where can I start to spread things around that give me a different type of exposure?"
His answer to that question is that crypto offers exposure to a new technology integrating with the financial system, and to digital scarcity, and that the ETF structure is where the allocation actually gets made
8. Rules Before Technology
The podcast's Markets 102 segment continued with Pandl alone. Chu put it to him that the SEC and the CFTC are more involved than ever, but involved in a way that has made product rollout less stressful, and asked whether that lighter touch is necessary. Pandl agreed and then described what the agencies are actually doing.
The transfer-agent case
He said some of the work has been rescinding old rules that did not make sense, and some of it bipartisan legislation in Congress, the Genius Act among it
The phase now under way is rule modernization, and his example was deliberately dull: transfer agents, the record-keepers of share ownership, which almost nobody thinks about
"We do need to find a way to change the rules to bring in things like 24-7 trading, instant settlement." Those, he said, are the benefits the technology brings, and the rules have to move before they can be used
He said the streamlining has already made Grayscale's job easier, and that the point of all of it is a more efficient, more resilient financial system
Balanced with lawyers
Chu pushed back that custodians and transfer agents are constructs of centralized finance and sit awkwardly against the decentralized ethos, then asked where the industry is in that cycle.
Pandl's answer was that it is a spectrum, and the balancing is done by counsel: "I think we balance it with a lot of lawyers is the answer."
"Look, the technology is amazing, but it has to be compatible with the rules" — the laws of the United States and of any other jurisdiction the firm operates in
He listed where the friction shows up once you look closely: custodians, transfer agents, exchanges, best-execution pricing. Whether the plan is to tokenize a stock or tokenize the ETF, the new technology has to fit the existing framework
"It's an exciting process and expensive process with the lawyers, but I think we're going to get to a very good outcome and a new and improved financial system with public blockchain technology really at the foundation in the future."
9. The Dollar Is Ours To Lose
Chu asked whether America needs to change how it views these technologies in order to be the leader rather than a leader — a distinction he made deliberately, on the grounds that it is debatable which country is ahead. Pandl said there were two sides to it, and the second one is a warning.
On the first side, he called the US an incredibly dynamic, resilient, large-scale economy with a lot of innovative entrepreneurs, and argued that if it writes clear rules now, other countries will follow those rules
The second side is the one he wanted on the record: he said the dominant position of the US, and of the dollar, in the global financial system is "ours to lose", and that this is "part of the Bitcoin and crypto story"
He listed the pressures on the current system as debt and deficits, foreign policy choices, and the development needs of other countries
The buyer that produces is not making a crypto bet so much as a jurisdiction bet: "How do I take a position in an asset class that isn't tied to just one country, one system, one set of rules?"
His own forecast, hedged as a personal one: "At the same time, in my personal view, the dollar probably will lose some ground in the global financial system as a store of value, as a medium of exchange. And one of the things that will pick up market share is the digital assets ecosystem."
He was equally clear that the US will still be a leader and an innovator, and that many of the technologists will come from the country
10. Symptoms, Not The Disease
Chu laid out the moving parts — a Fed at a crossroads over whether to raise or lower, a Treasury Secretary active in the long end of the government bond market, and a midterm cycle that could add volatility — and asked what the balance of it means for crypto into year-end.
On the buybacks, Pandl's read was that they do not touch the cause: "I think I would encourage people to think of this as policymakers treating the symptoms because they can't cure the disease. The symptoms is high interest rates. The underlying problem is structural deficits."
The election does not change that, in his view: "And regardless of the midterm outcomes, we're not likely to deal with those challenges. We're still going to have unchecked deficit growth almost regardless of the outcome." Which routes back to the scarcity trade — physical gold, digital Bitcoin
He warned against treating rate sensitivity as uniform across the asset class. Bitcoin behaves like an alternative currency, so think about it the way you would think about gold
The stablecoin issuers are the opposite trade: "But stable coins, stable coin issuers like Circle, they actually benefit in the way a bank does with net interest margin when interest rates move higher"
The midterm issue he expects to reach crypto is privacy: "AI technology is amazing, but it is raising a lot of privacy questions for people. Those questions are definitely being asked in the crypto ecosystem, bringing forward things like Zcash and other privacy preserving crypto currencies are very much in focus."
He described Grayscale's own role in all this as leading with education, walking clients step by step until they are confident enough to allocate
11. A $3T Alternatives Sleeve
Chu asked what the next evolution of crypto exchange-traded products looks like — when the market moves past single-coin funds to cap-weighted or custom-indexed baskets. Pandl said evolution was the right word and that the obstacle is understanding, not appetite.
He said newcomers arrive attached to a single use case: Bitcoin as digital gold, or stablecoins, or perpetual futures. The pitch is to treat the whole thing as an industry instead
"It's a roughly $3 trillion asset class of today, a mid-size alternatives category, lots of different interesting assets."
"We think people should take a diversified approach, capture Bitcoin, capture Ethereum, capture Hyperliquid, in the same diversified portfolio."
The honest constraint he named is on the product side, not the investor side. Staking — where some blockchains pay a yield or reward rate for helping run the network — cannot be done inside every fund today: "We can't do that in every single product today that holds back some of these capital allocations."
Where he thinks it ends up is a sleeve rather than a position, sitting alongside other alternatives like venture or private equity — "not just a Bitcoin, not just an ether"
12. Crypto's Volatility Pays
Chu closed by picking up Bucella's earlier point about yield-enhanced products, explaining for the audience what one is — "In other words, buy a Nasdaq 100 ETF that has an options overlay, that sells covered calls and generates a certain kind of yield for it" — and asking whether that translates into crypto, given it needs a mature options market to work.
Pandl said it is already happening, and that the thing that makes crypto awkward as a holding is what makes it good as an income asset
"And I think one of the attractive things about crypto for these alternative income strategies is relatively high volatility" — volatility is risk in a portfolio, but in an option-income strategy it is also the premium being collected
He attached the standard caveats himself, on understanding option products and working with a financial advisor
"Grayscale is offering a Bitcoin option income products today. We think that that will expand to other alt coins, some of which have meaningfully higher volatility and therefore higher potential premium income."
His framing of the trend is that it is not a crypto invention at all: it is a popular category in traditional finance that is bleeding over
Bonus Insights
Chu ran the episode in two parts, an on-air ETF Edge conversation with both guests and a podcast-only Markets 102 segment with Pandl alone; several of Pandl's longer answers exist only in the second half
Bucella's Switzerland story doubles as a comment on how fast the category moved — he was on a mountain when the first Bitcoin ETFs traded in 2024, and by 2026 he was arguing that issuance is too slow
Pandl described transfer agents as a slightly boring topic and used them anyway, on the grounds that modernizing capital markets is mostly made of unglamorous rules
Neither guest treated the CLARITY Act's stalling as a setback: Pandl because the agencies are doing the work, Bucella because the industry managed without government direction before
Chu's own framing of the US position was that it is debatable whether the country is the outright leader in frontier technology rather than one of several, and he applied that to crypto as well as to artificial intelligence and data centers
Pandl's bottom line was that the rulebook is arriving through the agencies rather than through Congress and that the buyer's problem has shifted from access to allocation; Bucella's was that Bitcoin has the healthier setup of anything in crypto right now, and that the further out the risk curve you go, the more the leverage looks like it did before the last liquidation.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Grayscale Investments (Pandl's firm; he says the SEC's generic listing standards now give it a roadmap for new products, and it already runs a Bitcoin option income product)
Neoclassic Capital (Bucella's firm, and the source of the argument that Bitcoin is set up better than the rest of the market)
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Hyperliquid (Pandl's diversified basket — the smart-contract platforms and the perpetual-futures venue he says benefit from regulatory clarity rather than from scarcity)
Hyperion DeFi and Hyperliquid Strategies (The two listed companies Bucella says bought Hyperliquid responsibly before the Hyperliquid ETF existed, against the treasury companies he called toxic)
Goldman Sachs (Pandl and Bucella's former employer; Bucella thought it had filed a call-overwriting Bitcoin ETF that day, and it is active in yield-enhanced funds after buying Innovator and NEOS)
Circle (Named as the stablecoin issuer that earns more from net interest margin as rates rise, the opposite rate sensitivity to Bitcoin)
Zcash (The privacy coin Pandl expects to come into focus as AI pushes privacy up the political agenda into the midterms)
The SEC and the CFTC (The two agencies Pandl credits with delivering the clarity the industry wanted from legislation — perpetual futures at one, listing standards and token-issuance rules at the other)
Books & Resources Mentioned
The CLARITY Act (The digital-asset market structure bill both guests were asked about; Pandl says it is not necessary and Bucella does not expect it near term)
The GENIUS Act (The stablecoin law Pandl calls the exception that went the legislative route, and a great step forward)
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