Conversation with VanEck CEO: Memory Chip Stocks Are a Bubble, Bitcoin Will Stay but Token Ecosystems Will Disappear

Compiled & Edited by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Guest: Jan van Eck (CEO, VanEck)

Host: Wilfred Frost

Original Title: Memory Is A Bubble, But Nvidia Protected – Jan Van Eck On Semis Surge

Podcast Source: The Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost

Release Date: May 27, 2026

Editor's Introduction

This episode of the podcast features Jan van Eck, CEO of VanEck. His core judgment is: Nvidia has transformed from a single GPU manufacturer into the 'mainframe' of AI infrastructure, possessing moats in software ecosystem, scale, and power efficiency; however, the surge in memory chip stocks resembles a bubble driven more by cyclical supply-demand mismatches.

This head of VanEck, who manages approximately $225 billion in assets and was among the first to advocate for Bitcoin ETFs, compresses the key themes for the next decade into three things: AI computing power construction, the rise of India, and fiscal over-borrowing in developed economies like the US, UK, and Japan.

More impactful is his labeling of 2026 as the year of 'Corporate Controlled Chains', suggesting Wall Street will absorb the advantages of blockchain, stablecoins, and programmable money, but most crypto projects and software will become irrelevant in 5 to 10 years; Bitcoin, stablecoins, and blockchain will remain, while many token ecosystems will disappear.

Key Quotes

AI, Semiconductors & Memory Chip Stocks

• "From an AI perspective, the problem is simple. The demand for computing power is here, but the supply is below. Semiconductors are clearly at the heart of this structure."
• "Nvidia is no longer just a GPU manufacturer; it's more like the mainframe of AI. The old cyclicality and high competitiveness of being a pure-play chipmaker is not its whole story today."
• "Nvidia's advantage comes not only from scale in capacity but also from producing more efficient chips per dollar of electricity. With a forward P/E multiple just over 20, I think it's still a solid asset in a portfolio."
• "The profit explosion for memory chip stocks isn't primarily because they sold more product, but because prices rose. This means companies using memory chips will start finding ways to conserve usage."
• "I don't like to casually call tops, but I'm very cautious on memory chip stocks because, over the medium to long term, they don't have moats as deep as I think Nvidia does."

ETFs, Active Management & Asset Allocation

• "VanEck's investment philosophy is to look at today from the perspective of ten years hence: by 2036, which big themes truly changed the world and financial markets?"
• "ETF is a scale game. The bigger the assets, the more you can serve a broader client base. A lot of active management, especially in private equity and hedge funds, can actually be diseconomies of scale."
• "Even though the ETF tool itself is passive, the decisions on which ETFs you own, how you allocate them, when to add or reduce—those are inherently very active decisions."

Macro Debt, Gold & Hard Assets

• "If the market truly loses confidence in the US government's ability to pay, I don't know where to hide. Even though gold is a medium-to-long-term hedge, it could be sold off along with everything else in the short term."
• "I think gold is re-emerging as the world's number one currency because, if not the dollar, I don't think China or India will become the international reserve currency."
• "Government bond markets are some of the strangest, most inefficient markets in the world. They get locked into a certain mindset and disconnect from reality."
• "The nuclear ETF grew from under $20 million to $4.7 billion, which is a very dramatic policy reversal behind it. Both parties in the US, as well as countries like Japan, are re-embracing nuclear power."

Crypto, Stablecoins & Corporate Controlled Chains

• "I call 2026 the year of the 'Corporate Controlled Chain'. Banks, trading firms, and financial institutions want to absorb the best parts of blockchain but still control their own ecosystem."
• "I think we're going through a crypto winter, and it's not coming back. A lot of projects and software won't be interesting or alive in five to ten years."
• "The concept of blockchain will remain, stablecoins will remain, Bitcoin will remain. But a lot of the rest of the ecosystem, in my view, will disappear."
• "The stablecoin bill, for the first time, gives technology companies the ability to compete with the banking system. But banks have competed with money market funds before, and they survived."

India & SpaceX IPO

• "You can't fight demographics. India under Modi has persistently pushed through pro-business reforms. There's no reason such a country wouldn't grow at a higher speed."
• "SpaceX is huge. As an ETF issuer, we're happy to see it in the public markets. The liquidity flowing into the economic system next will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars."

The Frenzied Memory Chip Stocks

Wilfred Frost: Today's guest is Jan van Eck, President and CEO of VanEck and its associated companies. VanEck is an asset management firm founded by his father, now a significant player in the ETF industry with about $225 billion in assets under management. Jan is a frequent podcast guest, known for his very direct and clear views, which is why we're delighted to have him. Jan, welcome to the show.

Jan van Eck: Wilfred, great to be with you for the first time.

Wilfred Frost: I want to dive straight in with one ETF. Fair to say it's been a big driver of your performance in recent years and is at the center of the current market: SMH, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (tracking major global semiconductor companies). Its recent performance has been stunning. I understand it's now around $65 billion in AUM, correct?

Jan van Eck: That's about right.

Wilfred Frost: It's become a primary access point for investors wanting semiconductor exposure. Up 58% year-to-date, 135% over the last 12 months. Even more staggering is its ~29% annualized return since inception.

Jan van Eck: It's crazy, right?

Wilfred Frost: Truly remarkable. Compounding that is very hard to do. You could just stop right now.

Jan van Eck: Yes, should just stop now.

Wilfred Frost: But I believe you won't, hence you're here for the podcast. Over the last year or so, SMH has grown to $65 billion. How much of that is price performance versus net inflows?

Jan van Eck: A large portion is price performance. It's hard for me to imagine inflows making up more than 10% to 20% of that over the last 12 months.

Wilfred Frost: That's interesting. I would have thought the inflow percentage was higher. What do you think is driving it? Maybe it's a simple answer: purely the AI theme?

Jan van Eck: Yes. VanEck's investment philosophy is to try and look at things from a big-picture macro perspective. I call it '10-year macro'. Meaning, looking back from 2036, what themes will we say most profoundly impacted the world, and therefore financial markets? This perspective aims to filter out a lot of noise.

I think at least three things remain: AI, the rise of India, and the over-borrowing led by the US, UK, and Japan. From an AI perspective, the logic is simple: compute demand is high, and supply is lagging. Semiconductors are clearly at the core.

If you go further down, you get to Nvidia (the global AI GPU and accelerated computing powerhouse). One reason our ETF outperformed other semiconductor ETFs is that it focuses only on the top 25 stocks and allows the top holding to go up to 20%. So it has effectively ridden the Nvidia train significantly.

Nvidia itself is a whole separate topic. Are we still comfortable with semiconductors, with Nvidia today? My own answer is yes. No one can guarantee a company won't lose its competitive moat, but I believe Nvidia will definitely still be a leader ten years from now. Partly because it's already like the mainframe of AI, not just the single-chip or GPU maker of the past. That old business was not only highly cyclical but also highly competitive.

Today's Nvidia has software, cost advantages, production scale advantages, and higher power efficiency. In other words, more efficient chips per dollar or pound of electricity. Its forward P/E multiple is just over 20. So, even though over the last nine months Nvidia hasn't been the hottest stock within SMH, I still see it as a very solid part of the portfolio.

Wilfred Frost: Based on your recent disclosure, Nvidia is about 17% of SMH, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest foundry) is about 9%. I want to delve into them later. You mentioned getting that large Nvidia exposure is important; but it's also interesting that, at least this year or as you said the last nine months, the performance hasn't been solely driven by big names like Nvidia. Over the past few years, many semiconductor companies were left behind by the AI theme until recently catching up.

Jan van Eck: Absolutely. In SMH's methodology, some of it is by design, some luck. When you only pick the top 25 names, what has happened in the last 15-20 year investment era is that large-cap stocks truly led the market. There are definitely over 100 semiconductor companies, and filtering out the bottom ones, which are in more competitive spaces, removes drag.

Of course, this doesn't apply to all investment phases. But during this period, it has amplified the impact of these big winners.

Wilfred Frost: In the near term, up 58% year-to-date, the rally has clearly broadened significantly. Memory chip stocks have surged extremely strongly. Can this continue?

Jan van Eck: I doubt that performance is sustainable. We just saw historic performance in May, so I don't think it continues at that pace. But I also don't think market pricing is necessarily irrational. Again, from a super-macro perspective, if demand is high and supply is low, capital markets are essentially telling entrepreneurs and businesspeople: come here, we need your capital, we're willing to value your capital because we need to build AI compute centers. That's not surprising.

I think this 10-year perspective works because humans naturally tend to look backward. When a major trend emerges, whether it's the rise of a nation or a major technology, we can't just look back at the last few quarters of company earnings or past uses of the technology to understand the scale of its build-out.

Of course, not all tech trends pan out. The world has many fake trends, fake technologies. But AI is clearly grabbing global markets by the neck and shaking them awake.

Wilfred Frost: Another short-term question. The KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) hit another record high today. It's tripled over the past 18 months, which is staggering for a national index, driven largely by Samsung and SK Hynix (a major global memory chip maker). The Korean index was up 12% in a single day last week. Does this remind you of the opposite side? Like late 2021, with some meme stock mania, followed by a sharp correction in 2022. I know these memory chip stocks, especially those two companies, have very strong earnings per share expectations, so it's different from meme mania. But are there any similarities that would raise a red flag for you?

Jan van Eck: Within the AI ecosystem, I would say there are indeed some bubbles. Going back to late last year, the question then was about the financial sustainability of the OpenAI ecosystem. OpenAI is one of the leading model companies with ChatGPT. Would Claude (the AI assistant by Anthropic) surpass it? Within what I call the OpenAI ecosystem, companies like Oracle (enterprise software and cloud computing company), which levered up building compute for OpenAI, and CoreWeave (an AI cloud computing company) were also involved. Both fell about 50% at the time.

So even within the larger AI trend, you find local bubbles, or company-specific bubbles. Back to your question, I do think the memory niche is a moment in time. One is reluctant to call tops in such times, but personally, I'm cautious on memory chip stocks because over the medium to long term, they don't have moats as deep as I think Nvidia does.

There will be new entrants in this space. There is a shortage right now, which gives them pricing power. The main reason for their profit surge isn't huge volume growth, because they have capacity constraints; it's really because they raised prices. This also means users of these memory companies will start finding ways to conserve usage.

So I share your sense that it feels bubbly. In our actively managed funds, we are reducing exposure to the memory space.

Wilfred Frost: Nvidia is about 17% of SMH, the second largest is TSMC, followed by Intel, Broadcom, AMD, Micron, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, etc., each around 6% or 7%. Does TSMC also have a defensible moat similar to Nvidia's, though of a different type? Is the defensiveness comparable?

Jan van Eck: I think yes. TSMC not only has manufacturing capability but also the capital capability to build extremely expensive chip fabrication facilities. I guess one common advantage for both Nvidia and TSMC is that they work with a wide range of players within the ecosystem, seeing almost all customers. Therefore, they can see where technology is heading, how customer demand will evolve. Most would say TSMC will still be there in ten years; it will be a survivor.

Wilfred Frost: You mentioned earlier that Oracle or CoreWeave saw significant drawdowns from the October highs last year to the March 'Iran War lows', with Oracle almost halving, which is significant for its size. I heard you say on another podcast that one needn't be overly concerned about a broader AI bubble because it has somewhat already popped once. The question is, how do you have confidence to buy back into the right companies at such moments? Especially since a large part of what we're discussing isn't publicly listed, and investors can only participate through proxy plays.

Jan van Eck: This will sound very much like an ETF issuer's answer, but from a company perspective, diversification is certainly the more rational approach. From a timing perspective, if you're in such a trend, it's better to buy on pullbacks rather than chase it here. We talked about SMH flows earlier; I think a lot of the assets in this fund came from investors who bought in years ago and let appreciation happen naturally. That's healthy in a way, because there isn't too much fast money chasing it.

Sure, money is chasing memory chip stocks and will chase the hottest points in the ecosystem. But overall, in our broad portfolio models, we are still overweight semiconductors, just a bit wanting to take some profits here moderately.

ETFs & Asset Management

Wilfred Frost: Let's talk more broadly about VanEck the company. We just discussed SMH. I only realized while preparing that although the firm was founded in the 1950s, you truly entered the ETF game in the early 2000s.

Jan van Eck: It was 2006. We've been in ETFs for 20 years.

Wilfred Frost: I hadn't realized that. ETFs are clearly the largest part of your business now.

Jan van Eck: Yes, by far the largest. ETF assets should be over 95%. We still have active businesses, mainly focused on gold miners, resources, and emerging markets, which are also important for us. I sit with active portfolio managers and discuss.

Wilfred Frost: We recently had Jeremy Grantham on; listeners can check that episode. He was an early supporter of ETFs and greatly admired Jack Bogle's influence on the industry. Bogle's mission was to reward employees if they could lower costs for clients; that was the new thing Vanguard pushed about 50 years ago. Was that also a core theme as you developed your ETF business? That is, if you deliver value and lower costs for clients, it will reward the firm long-term?

Jan van Eck: It's certainly a scale game. I think in private equity and hedge funds, active management can be a game of diseconomies of scale. If there's too much money, you can't manage an early-stage venture fund or a small-cap fund. Those strategies have capacity limits. You can't manage too much money.

ETFs are the opposite; it's a scale game. The bigger the AUM, the more you can serve a broader client base. We don't compete with Vanguard in the core parts of client portfolios; but in the specialized areas where we compete, we try to keep fees very competitive.

The reason I do podcasts like this is to align with clients through research sharing. In private or active businesses, portfolio managers can align interests with clients through co-investment; but we have many niche ETFs, and we can't hold them all simultaneously. So our way of aligning with clients is to share our research, be clear about what we like or dislike at a given time. That's also why we do quarterly outlooks. Sometimes we're optimistic about many things, sometimes not.

Wilfred Frost: You've mentioned the word 'active'. Many think of ETFs as passive tools, believing you either invest passively via ETFs or give money to a traditional active manager to build a portfolio stock by stock. How quickly can you create a new ETF, say for a new theme? How do you adjust existing ETFs? Would you explicitly define yourselves as active ETFs?

Jan van Eck: There are two kinds of active decisions within ETFs. The first is: which ETFs do you own? There are many specialized ETFs like those from VanEck, and we also have broader products. Do you own semiconductors? That question itself is an active decision. Even if the ETF tool is passive, how you weight it, when you invest—those are very active.

From VanEck's view, this is almost the most important decision. Our way of looking at the world is that asset allocation and asset class selection are incredibly important for investors. Our history started with the first US gold fund; we believed gold was a very powerful diversifier in portfolios during certain periods. Though I'm not as perennially bullish on gold as my father was, it is indeed an active decision.

The second question is: is there a need for actively managed ETFs? This is bigger in the US than Europe. We do have some actively managed ETFs. Let me give two examples. One is a selection-based one, targeting the cryptocurrency or digital assets space. After we launched the Ethereum ETF, I started communicating with clients and found many simply didn't know what Ethereum was, why it would perform, what the risks were.

As an asset manager, our job is to describe the opportunity but also the risks. So I said, let's pivot and offer an actively managed fund in this space. Investors don't have to follow the volatility of Ethereum, a Bitcoin miner, or changes in a payments fintech like Revolut; let us track the whole industry and actively adjust allocations. That's an actively selected stock ETF.

Another example is an actively managed real assets or commodities allocation ETF. If you don't want to choose between gold and oil, or between oil and oil stocks, you can use this type of actively managed ETF.

Wilfred Frost: What are the tickers for those two ETFs?

Jan van Eck: The digital assets stock selection ETF is NODE. My colleague Matthew Sigel is very active on X/Twitter; if you want to see his daily commentary on the stock pool, go read it. The real assets allocation ETF is RAX.

Wilfred Frost: To emphasize for listeners, Jan obviously has an interest in these ETFs, and this podcast does not constitute direct financial advice. One last thing on the ETF industry. I'm curious about your view on the risk to overall markets from the rising concentration in ETFs. This question is more for large S&P 500 ETFs than the active or specialized ones you just mentioned. When bears list this as one of the major risks, do you think there's validity to this concern?

Jan van Eck: We probably don't have enough time to discuss all market structure implications. I'll mention two areas I'm particularly worried about, more in the fixed income space. First is the illiquidity of fixed income markets. If we have a bond ETF, maybe only 5% to 10% of the bonds in the portfolio actually trade daily. This means someone behind the scenes, like market makers, must make markets in these bonds.

In a market crisis, people de-risk, so these bond ETFs might trade less efficiently. Some would say they more accurately reflect price; I might say more accurately, but regardless, their bid-ask spreads will widen, trading costs go up, and prices may fall. The second concern isn't related to the ETF industry but is my biggest worry in financial markets: the spending issues of some developed market governments. Regarding ETFs specifically, my biggest worry is fixed income.

The Impact of Macro Debt

Wilfred Frost: Over the past week or so, excluding early this week, we have seen a clear rise in bond yields. US 10-year Treasury yields moved above 4.6%, having been relatively calm around 4.3% before. Does seeing this move bring that biggest macro fear to mind for you?

Jan van Eck: You can guess, I love multi-decade charts. I always say any chart less than ten years is 'chart crime'. Of course, provided you have the data; if not, find a longer historical analogy.

Wilfred Frost: We have one here.

Jan van Eck: UK and Japanese 30-year government bond yields hit multi-year highs last year, and that move is continuing this year. I think the reasons are slightly different for each country. You in the UK may have some political turmoil, or at least more high-level uncertainty than in the US.

Government bond markets seem to me some of the strangest, most inefficient markets in the world because they tend to lock into a certain mindset and disconnect from reality. For example, before the European financial crisis, Spanish and Greek bond yields were below German bonds, which never made sense. Then at some point, prices get violently repriced.

So, what's truly interesting and telling is that bond investors are demanding higher long-term yields from the UK and Japan. I'm also very worried about the US, but timing is everything in life. I watch the US 10-year yield; typically, I'm among the most worried; but I also know we're in a phase where others aren't that worried yet.

The US 10-year yield hasn't truly broken out to multi-year highs; it's still in a trading range. But this is something I watch very closely. For context, the US budget deficit peaked about two years ago at around 6.5%. Due to factors like Trump tariff revenues, the deficit had been declining, and I had predicted it would fall to the low 5% range this year, which is still high (theoretically shouldn't exceed 3%), but directionally good.

If the US spends $500 billion on this Iran war, that would suddenly push the deficit back to around 6.5% or 6.9%. I don't see how the market wouldn't worry about that.

Wilfred Frost: It's interesting that we've also seen very strong correlation over the last two weeks. Even if the trigger might be the UK or Japan, everyone is moving in sync due to worsening debt dynamics. Even if the US isn't in as dangerous a position as the UK or Japan, if 10-year or 30-year yields continue rising, the US seems to get dragged along. Do you think this would be directly negatively correlated with assets like SMH? Even if SMH is betting on a theme you believe in long-term, would the P/E multiples of growth sectors be compressed?

Jan van Eck: One hundred percent. I haven't discussed with enough clients what happens if the market truly loses confidence in the US government's ability to pay. But I don't think there's anywhere to hide. Wilfred, I often say gold is a medium-to-long-term hedge, but if everyone is fleeing financial markets, gold could be sold off too.

So I don't see why semiconductors would be immune. You could argue to some extent that the tech sector isn't as debt-dependent, so the direct link isn't strong. But if everyone is rushing for the exits, I don't think anyone can run the other way.

Wilfred Frost: Then let's talk about opportunities. If we enter a more inflationary decade, which could also be a key reason for higher yields. You think gold might be sold short-term but remains attractive medium-to-long term? Also, talk about GDX (VanEck Gold Miners ETF). At current gold price levels, even if gold doesn't go higher, aren't these miners making a lot of money?

Jan van Eck: Yes, they are generating very strong cash flows. For the past 15 years, gold mining companies have been in purgatory. First, the gold price wasn't high. Authorities like the Bank of England were selling gold at around $250 an ounce in the late 1990s.

Wilfred Frost: Thanks, Gordon Brown.

Jan van Eck: Yes, thanks to him. In that era, gold wasn't a major component of people's portfolios. Later, gold started being reintegrated into portfolios, but the mining companies themselves had too much debt and couldn't control production costs well. Investors were disappointed year after year, and valuations, or P/Es, kept declining. I think the bottom was around 2016. In fact, gold mining stocks fell 90% from 2011 to 2016.

In 2011, people thought after the financial crisis, with governments pumping huge money into markets, gold would benefit; but it didn't. So, gold miners faced many headwinds, and their share prices collapsed severely.

However, they have now rebuilt their balance sheets, borrowed less, paid down a lot of debt, and now have very strong cash flows. For me, gold is a very long-term trend. Even if you're not as worried about US government spending as I am, you're likely to marginally buy a bit less US Treasuries. Therefore, gold, in my view, is re-emerging as the world's number one currency.

If not the dollar, I don't think it will be China, nor India. They have capital controls to an extent and don't necessarily want to be the international reserve currency. At the same time, these countries are also culturally large buyers of gold. So I think gold will re-emerge as the number one currency. It's a multi-year process. It could also go sideways here for a while because it rose too much last year.

Wilfred Frost: Do you think gold will be correlated with the S&P 500 short-term but not long-term?

Jan van Eck: Gold exhibits different personalities in different periods. Sometimes it trades with the dollar, sometimes with inflation fears. But if you accept my thesis that gold is a global currency, then a lot of recent moves make sense. For example, last year, even with low US inflation, global demand for gold as an alternative currency was strong. So, what happened in the US mattered less.

Similarly, if Middle Eastern Gulf states suddenly lose income sources and need cash to pay bills, they'll sell what they can, and gold is a deep, large market. So, gold selling off after the Iran conflict started makes sense. This fits my view of global drivers.

Wilfred Frost: Looking at your ETF list, there are several products related to hard assets, inflation exposure. For example, the Nuclear and Uranium ETF, ticker NLR, nearly $5 billion; rare earths and strategic metals around $3 billion; OIH (oil services ETF) about $2.5 billion, which Larry McDonald has talked about on the show multiple times. Have you intentionally built these ETFs in recent years? Or have they always existed and just recently gained market attention?

Jan van Eck: They've always been there. When we first entered the ETF business, we leveraged our expertise in global resources, gold, and emerging markets. Those were our first ETFs. The ETF market wasn't as crowded then, so these products were often first to market.

We thought then, people will want to trade oil services, and they'll want to trade nuclear energy. The nuclear theme waited a long time. I recall NLR was probably launched in our second or third year in ETFs, around 2007 or 2008. But it was so unpopular that five years ago, this ETF had less than $20 million in assets.

Wilfred Frost: From under $20 million to $4.7 billion in just five years.

Jan van Eck: Because the policy reversal was so dramatic. I rarely see this. It wasn't heavily discussed by politicians, but in the US, the Biden administration basically supports nuclear, and some key Democratic governors support it too. So nuclear became bipartisan in the US. Internationally, Japan and many countries that had moved away from nuclear now have active nuclear programs again, though China has been pushing ahead. That's the reason for the inflows. Over the past few years, it's been primarily inflow-driven here.

Emerging Markets & Crypto Assets

Wilfred Frost: I hadn't realized the scale of that growth. Let's talk about EM (emerging markets). Is this a judgment on all emerging markets or specifically India?

Jan van Eck: Sometimes when I say '10-year macro', it sounds futuristic or uncertain. But I actually think certain trends become more certain the further out you look. Like demographics. You can't fight demographics. Whatever happens now, you pretty much know roughly what it will be like in ten years, whether it's population decline or other trends.

Under Modi, India has pushed through a lot of pro-business reforms and continues to do so. Even if these reforms don't make headlines in the US at least, like last year's bankruptcy laws, labor laws, and a series of deregulation, pro-business reforms were advanced. No country does that many pro-business reforms and doesn't grow at a higher speed. Projections suggest India's economy could reach continental European size in a decade.

The more important question for investors is: Can you make money from it? GDP growth doesn't necessarily translate into profit growth or stock market returns. Coincidentally, India also shifted to a more pro-equity culture decades ago. When Infosys and some early tech companies listed, they created a lot of wealth. India seems to have developed a social consensus that being wealthy, even very wealthy, is acceptable. So, combining these two points, that's why I'm macro-bullish on India long-term.

Wilfred Frost: As you said, India's demographics are very attractive, with the working-age population still growing, unlike China and others. I'm also interested in another ETF of yours. You talked earlier about Nvidia and some companies having wide moats, a concept you clearly care about. You also have a wide moat ETF.

Jan van Eck: If I asked you which company in financial services has the most equity research analysts, you probably wouldn't think of Morningstar. But it's true. I don't think they're great at promoting it, but they have built that research capability.

Their equity research methodology is exactly what you said: 'moats'. The premise is that markets are fiercely competitive, and unless a company is fortunate enough to have some competitive moat, it's hard to sustain excess profits long-term. Moats can come from technology, economies of scale, or other factors. Morningstar's approach is to screen all companies down to the few they believe have competitive moats. I guess only about 5% or so of companies make the cut; I should recalc the exact number.

Then, they use a valuation formula because they forecast future earnings and include the cheapest stocks among these moat companies into the ETF.

Wilfred Frost: This ETF has grown to $11 billion AUM. Was it steady growth or a recent surge?

Jan van Eck: Strictly speaking, comparing it to the S&P 500 isn't fair, but investors do it anyway. For many years, it not only outperformed the S&P in single years but on a cumulative basis, so most AUM growth happened then. It was quite an achievement to do that in 2023 as well, because 2023 was a bounce-back year after the 2022 tech sell-off.

The methodology has had great years. Recently, it has lagged a bit because it missed some of the explosive moves in semiconductors. So over the last couple of years, it has lost a bit of assets.

Wilfred Frost: Talk about your current view on crypto. When did you feel the pull, or when did providing crypto ETFs become justifiable? I'm also curious about the adoption of these products, e.g., if there are still many marginal first-time buyers of crypto in the market.

Jan van Eck: We were the first ETF issuer to file for a Bitcoin ETF in 2017. The reason was simple: I saw Bitcoin as a competitor to gold. Back then, Bitcoin was rising much faster than now. Some clients saw it that way too. So, we thought just as platinum and silver relate to gold, Bitcoin could become an alternative. It wouldn't necessarily replace gold but could be a complement.

Fast forward to today, I think Wall Street has largely absorbed the best parts of crypto over the past year or so: blockchain decentralization, visibility, 24/7 operation capability, and money programmability, etc. That's a bit technical.

Wilfred Frost: We love technical.

Jan van Eck: In 2026, I call it the year of the 'Corporate Controlled Chain'. Institutions like Bank of New York, JPMorgan, Cumberland Trading are all trying to create what I call corporate controlled chains, absorbing the best parts of existing blockchains but still controlling the ecosystem.

They'd think, this still needs to be the Wilfred chain, or some other chain they control, because I want to keep clients in my own network. That's where we are now. Almost every financial firm in the US is using some part of stablecoins or crypto and trying to capture an ecosystem. I don't think many will succeed. But this is how technology adoption is evolving in 2026.

As for the rest of cryptocurrency, the winners will be relatively few. I think we're going through a crypto winter, and it's not coming back. A lot of projects and software won't be interesting or alive in five to ten years.

The concept of blockchain will definitely exist, stablecoins will exist, Bitcoin will exist, but a lot of the rest of the ecosystem, in my view, will disappear.

Wilfred Frost: So Bitcoin itself or Ethereum, the two largest assets—are they still in the early innings, or are they in the middle or even late stages of their lifecycle? By the way, I love your Bitcoin ETF ticker: HODL, that made me laugh.

Jan van Eck: Who knows. My view is Bitcoin will ultimately reach about half the market cap of gold. Since gold has also risen, the target price for Bitcoin is still several times its current price. I also remind many US investors who seem to forget Bitcoin hit a new all-time high last year, and this is year four of the halving cycle. Every four years, Bitcoin falls significantly. So its decline this year isn't surprising. In fact, we basically predicted it.

Wilfred Frost: You're very candid. As a CEO of a financial firm, how important do you think related legislation is? The US has had two major legislative moves in this area. Is it very damaging for traditional banks, a huge opportunity for firms like yours, or just a marginal impact?

Jan van Eck: I think it's marginal. We design a tie theme every year; this year, besides commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we talked about the three most important things in US financial history: Alexander Hamilton, FDR, and last year's stablecoin bill.

The stablecoin bill is important because for the first time, it gives technology companies the ability to compete with the banking system. Otherwise, our financial lives always start with a bank account. Without a bank account, you have no financial life; everything flows through bank accounts. Now, tech giants can compete with banks.

But banks have faced competition before. In the late 1970s, money market funds offered higher rates that banks couldn't, and banks lost a lot of money. But banks, of course, survived. Their customer base is sticky, and I don't think that stickiness disappears.

View on the SpaceX IPO

Wilfred Frost: Nearing the end, I have a few more questions. One is a short-term outlook. There are some large IPOs coming in the next few months, with SpaceX being the most watched near-term. There are details people might not realize: how quickly will it allow insider selling, and how quickly will it be included in indices, especially the S&P 500. This creates an automatic buy-in that isn't traditional. For you, are these red flags, or at least amber lights? Or do you think it's reasonable?

Jan van Eck: I'm not dogmatic about it. SpaceX is massive; as an ETF issuer, we're happy to see it in public markets. I think the steps it's taking make sense. It's initially floating a very small percentage, maybe only 3% to 4%. Typically, if a company has such a small float, it may not qualify for index inclusion. So they have to release shares over time slowly.

As you said, the scale of money here is absolutely staggering. You're talking cumulative hundreds of billions of dollars. For comparison, what was our tariff revenue last year? About $300 billion. So it's like waves of liquidity hitting the economy back and forth. In the short term, I think they'll have a positive impact on economic growth and will be absorbed by the market.

There's an argument about why more companies aren't going public: active managers can buy IPOs in active funds, but ETFs can't buy IPOs. I don't fully buy that argument, but it's a reasonable one, that companies IPO less because they can't get into indices.

I think all assumptions deserve re-examination. When you have such a large, mature company, it's not some startup with no revenue trading at trillion-dollar valuations. It's a very mature company entering these indices.

Wilfred Frost: It will be fascinating. The roadshow, interviews with Elon and others on CNBC will be must-watch. I think there might be some large AI companies coming to market later. The next few months will be very interesting, and I look forward to seeing how it unfolds. Jan, we end by asking each guest a simple question: What is the single most important piece of investment advice you'd give listeners?

Jan van Eck: Take a macro, big-picture perspective. I think what VanEck has done since my father founded it in 1955 is bring in the perspective formed by Dutch and British investors four or five hundred years ago: look at political risk, whether a country is pro-business, likely to reward equity and financial market participation, and then have the conversation around asset classes.

When China was rising, how much allocation should you give it? India is rising today; how much do you give India? Do you just use historical weights from the past, or maybe I want to own more? Hopefully, everyone participated in the AI trade. What about gold? Are you participating? Should you? Why? These are the big questions to ask from a long-term perspective.

We always say we're not the only source of knowledge. Discussions like this are valuable, and it's also necessary to engage with others in the market to test your assumptions.

Wilfred Frost: I really like that answer. And complimenting the original financial wisdom of the British certainly suits me. Jan van Eck, thank you for joining The Master Investor Podcast.

Jan van Eck: Thank you, Wilfred.