Crypto Is Boring… So Everyone’s Levering Silver Now - The Chopping Block
Speakers
Haseeb Qureshi — Managing Partner at Dragonfly
— Dragonfly managing partner
Robert Leshner — CEO of Superstate
— Superstate CEO, Compound founder
Tarun Chitra — CEO of Gauntlet
— Gauntlet CEO
Tom Schmidt — General Partner at Dragonfly
— Dragonfly GP
Summary
- Context: The discussion takes place in February 2026. Gold has hit an ATH of $5,100, and AI agent "Maltbot" (formerly Claude) is dominating the tech zeitgeist.
- The "Boredom" Rotation: Crypto natives are bored with traditional crypto assets (BTC/ETH) because volatility has dried up. Consequently, massive speculative liquidity is rotating out of crypto and into Commodities (Silver/Gold) via on-chain perpetual futures (RWA perps).
- DeFi Evolution: "Trade.xyz" on Hyperliquid is processing volume comparable to spot silver markets, validating the thesis that DeFi is becoming a venue for real-world asset speculation, not just crypto assets.
- Agentic Coding: The release of Anthropic's Opus 4.5 and "Maltbot" has fundamentally changed software engineering. Companies like Anthropic no longer write code by hand; it is entirely agent-driven. This creates a bifurcation between "pre-agent" and "post-agent" startups.
Trade Ideas
"They've completely forgotten about crypto... I don't want to play with you anymore." Bitcoin is failing to act as a macro hedge (gold) or a risk asset (NASDAQ). Asset classes require narrative momentum. Bitcoin currently has none ("Apathy Phase"). The "Toy Story meme" reference implies that the capital allocators have mentally moved on to AI and Commodities. Without a narrative driver, price action will remain stagnant or bleed. AVOID. Opportunity cost is too high while liquidity is flowing elsewhere. A sudden macro shock re-ignites the "hard money" thesis for Bitcoin.
Trade.xyz (built on Hyperliquid) is seeing volume that rivals the global spot silver market ($30B). 8 of the top 10 markets on the platform are now RWA perps (commodities/indices), not crypto. This validates the "Hip 3" (Hyperliquid) thesis. If DeFi is successfully capturing market share from traditional commodity brokers (CFDs) and attracting mobile-first retail traders, the underlying infrastructure tokens (Hyperliquid) and application tokens (Trade.xyz) will re-rate significantly. LONG. This is a structural shift in where retail trades commodities. Regulatory enforcement against "bootleg" synthetic assets in the US.
"Crypto is boring... everyone's levering silver now." Gold is at $5,100. Speculators are explicitly saying, "I'm not trading crypto right now, I'm trading silver." Crypto traders are "volatility junkies." When crypto volatility dies (the current "doldrums"), this capital doesn't sit in cash; it seeks the next most volatile asset. Currently, that is Precious Metals (PMs). This introduces a new, aggressive class of buyer to the commodities market, driving parabolic moves. LONG. Follow the flow of speculative liquidity. Regulatory crackdown on RWA (Real World Asset) perps or a sudden return of volatility to BTC, which would suck liquidity back out of metals.
Crypto is launching tokens for every AI narrative (Maltbot, Ralph). These tokens are trading on pure sentiment regarding the AI agents' performance. This is the "Casino" behavior of crypto manifesting in AI. As "Maltbot" (Claude) continues to automate jobs and generate headlines, the associated memecoins will act as a high-beta proxy for the AI agent's popularity. WATCH. Purely speculative gambling instruments, but highly correlated to AI news cycles. Rug pulls, copyright strikes, or the AI model falling out of favor (e.g., getting replaced by GPT-6).
Tarun Chitra
CEO/Founder of Gauntlet
While discussing AI agents, Tarun notes that for "live research," math, and unsolved problems, Gemini is "a million times better" than Anthropic or OpenAI. The market narrative is currently obsessed with "Maltbot" (Anthropic) for coding. However, if the "smart money" (technical experts like Tarun) are using Google's Gemini for high-level reasoning and research because the others fail at it, Google retains a massive, underappreciated moat in AGI capabilities. LONG. Contrarian technical play against the "Maltbot" hype. Anthropic's coding dominance becomes the only metric the market cares about.
Up Next
This Unchained (Chopping Block) video, published January 29, 2026, features Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra discussing BTC, ETH, TRADE.XYZ, HYPE, SILVER, COPPER, GOLD, MALTBOT, GOOGL. 5 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers: Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra · Tickers: BTC, ETH, TRADE.XYZ, HYPE, SILVER, COPPER, GOLD, MALTBOT, GOOGL