At Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas, Eric Trump and Calamos Investments CEO John Koudounis sat down with Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas for a panel that covered bitcoin’s maturation from speculative instrument to global reserve contender.
The conversation ranged across institutional adoption, government debanking, currency debasement, and the challenge of winning over ordinary investors who still view bitcoin as too risky, too complex, or both.
It was a panel that reflected how much the room has changed — a mix of long-time bitcoin believers and fresh institutional money that, a decade ago, would have dismissed this gathering entirely.
Trump: Bitcoin is a sticky, limited supply asset
Trump opened on a structural theme, arguing that bitcoin has become “sticky.” The U.S. government now holds approximately 300,000 bitcoin and will not sell, he said, a claim consistent with the creation of a U.S. strategic bitcoin reserve.
Corporate treasury buyers like Strategy and Metaplanet, which surpassed 40,000 bitcoin in holdings by the end of the first quarter of 2026, are doing the same. The world’s largest financial platforms — Trump named Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley — have also moved in.
American Bitcoin, the company Trump co-founded, is mining bitcoin and holding every coin rather than selling.
“We are compressing bitcoin,” Trump said. “There is a limited supply.”
The argument, in essence, is that the natural sellers are leaving the market while a new class of permanent holders takes their place.
Koudounis put the bitcoin supply compression argument in the context of a broader capital shift. He cited research projecting that 124 trillion dollars in wealth will transfer across generations through 2048, and said the 60 billion dollars that have moved into spot bitcoin ETFs so far represent a fraction of what is coming.
For context, 60 billion dollars is roughly the size of a mid-tier U.S. asset manager’s total book. Set against a 124 trillion dollar transfer of accumulated Boomer wealth to Millennial and Gen Z inheritors who are far more comfortable with digital assets, it reads as a starting line.
Koudounis told the audience that the institutional conversation has already moved on. “The question used to be, ‘Are you buying bitcoin?’” he said. “Now it’s, ‘What percent are you allocating?’”
And his conclusion on what full institutional entry means for the asset: “Once institutions get involved, it’s game over.”
How can bitcoin attract retail clients?
Balchunas pressed both men on the retail challenge, asking how they would sell bitcoin to his mother — a stand-in for the generation of older investors who remain nervous about volatility and complexity. It is a question the industry has never fully answered.
Bitcoin’s price history, with its 80% drawdowns and euphoric recoveries, is not a comfortable pitch to someone managing a fixed retirement income.
In response to this quandary, Koudounis said that Calamos has built a line of protected bitcoin ETFs that cap downside and smooth returns, turning a perceived deterrent into a feature for conservative investors who want exposure without the full ride.
The goal, he said, is to add bitcoin exposure to products that already feel familiar to traditional investors.
Trump’s answer to the same question was more direct. Fixed income, he argued, is not a genuine alternative at current yields.
“Do yourself a favor, go invest in fixed income at 4%,” he said. “I’ll invest in bitcoin. I’ll ride out the volatility and we’ll see who wins that equation in a 10-year period of time.”
He claimed BTC has averaged roughly 70% annual growth per year over the past decade and called it “a better gold,” adding that “every country in this world needs it.”
The macro case Trump made was not only about returns. He pointed to currency weakness and geopolitical instability — citing Iran specifically — as reasons traditional store-of-value assets are under pressure, and argued that BTC’s ability to transfer value across borders without a bank intermediary is a feature that becomes more valuable the more fragile existing systems look.
Currency debasement, he said, is real and ongoing, and bitcoin is designed to resist it. “Would you rather have the euro,” he asked, “or would you rather have bitcoin, an asset that’s grown at 70% a year on average, year over year for the last decade? It’s not even close.”
Koudounis: Banks can ‘debank’ you at any time
On the question of why he became an advocate at all, Trump’s answer was personal. He described how major banks shut down hundreds of Trump Organization accounts — covering buildings, golf courses, and restaurants — following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
JPMorgan has since confirmed it closed those accounts. Trump and the Trump Organization later filed suit against Capital One over similar closures.
“They threw us away like dogs,” Trump said on stage.
The debanking experience, combined with what he described as slow, friction-heavy bank wire transfers, pushed him toward bitcoin’s censorship-resistant architecture. “That’s why I advocate like hell for this industry,” he said.
On usability, Trump conceded that early crypto technology was clunky, but said banks entering the space will be the force that finally makes the experience simple.
“The industry will grow,” he said, “when the user experience is simple and easy and not torturous.”
Koudounis broadened the debanking argument beyond the Trumps. He drew on personal history, recounting Greece’s 2015 debt crisis, when the government imposed daily withdrawal limits on bank accounts that lasted roughly four years before capital controls were fully lifted.
Citizens woke up one day to find the state had placed a ceiling on how much of their own money they could access.
“You don’t have to be the Trumps to be targeted by banks,” Koudounis said. “This can happen to anybody. You, me, any of us.”
Banks told you to stay away, then ‘snuck into’ bitcoin
Koudounis then turned the spotlight on the financial industry’s own behavior. While banks spent years publicly dismissing BTC and warning customers away from it, they were constructing the infrastructure to invest in it out of sight.
“Banks got the clue,” he said, and delivered a pointed summary to the crowd: “You guys won.”
Trump closed with three statements that drew the loudest reaction of the panel. He called government spending “dangerous” and pointed to a federal investigation that found some government spending to be fraudulent, citing it as evidence for why a transparent, programmable, decentralized form of money has real-world value beyond trading.
If fraud of that scale is hard to eliminate in the best-administered country on earth, he argued, it is a structural problem that BTC’s transparent ledger is built to address. He acknowledged the macro backdrop has been rough for holders over the past three months but told the audience to stay the course.
And then he closed his remarks in plain terms: “I have absolute conviction that bitcoin is going to hit one million dollars… I’ve never been more bullish on this asset class in my life.”
