Zach Pandl from Grayscale stopped by NYU to discuss with students and professors at the Blockchain Lab, and honestly, the conversation was captivating. He touched on the big macro questions on everyone’s minds right now, especially how gold continues to rocket while Bitcoin is going through a consolidation phase.

What struck me was the way he connected the dots between macroeconomic dynamics and the movements of digital assets. The evolving political landscape clearly plays a key role in the direction cryptocurrencies take, and Pandl offered a fairly nuanced perspective on how these factors intertwine.

The discussion made it possible to look beyond simple price movements. There’s a whole macro layer that many people forget when they only look at charts. Between gold’s trajectory, Bitcoin’s repositioning, and the political implications for crypto markets, there’s really plenty to think about what 2026 has in store for digital assets.