My guest on the show today is Jacob Stephan, Senior Research Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets. He recently authored a “Crypto Industry” white paper, and I invited him on to break it down. In this episode, Jacob lays out why digital assets have crossed into institutional viability—a “normalization phase” driven by clearer regulation, enterprise-grade infrastructure, and real corporate adoption.

We discuss the internet-style adoption curve (crypto at ~7% global penetration), why regulation is the cornerstone of investability (FIT 21 progress, the new FASB fair-value accounting, and pending clarity in the U.S.), and how stablecoins—“dollars with an API”—are emerging as the killer app with multi-trillion settlement volumes. Jacob walks through concrete examples from Visa, Mastercard, and JPMorgan moving beyond pilots to on-chain settlement, and contrasts stablecoins’ payment utility with Bitcoin’s treasury/“digital gold” role.

We also cover the nuanced risks: centralization at the access layer (custody, cloud, compliance), state-by-state regulatory differences, speculative micro-cap “crypto treasury” raises, and why bipartisan momentum reduces—but doesn’t eliminate—policy risk. Finally, Jacob shares the “picks and shovels” angle—cloud, fintech/payments, and semiconductors—as scalable ways to participate in the build-out without direct token exposure, and why even low single-digit institutional allocations could materially move the asset class.

We discussed a number of crypto currencies in today’s episode. Jacob owns SOL, SUI and BTC, and for full disclosure, I also own BTC.

For more information about Lake Street Capital Markets, please visit: https://www.lakestreetcapitalmarkets.com/

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Crypto at a Crossroads: Institutional Viability and Remaining Risks with Jacob Stephan, Senior Research Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets

Planet MicroCap Podcast | MicroCap Investing Strategies

Crypto at a Crossroads: Institutional Viability and Remaining Risks with Jacob Stephan, Senior Research Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets