Our 2024 Predictions

Transcript

every time I see this chart of like you know we keep burning more eth it's like yeah but like are users also going up is activity going up like are you onboarding more people relative to other ecosystems and I think there will be a shift and I think it starts with l2's being more successful and onboarding more people and building great products which I think is is a thing right all right everyone so on Empire you obviously know that we talk a lot about the institutions coming into crypto and that is why we are super excited to share that we are hosting the digital assets Summit we've hosted this since 2019 it's coming up in London March 18th to 20th don't miss your chance to get ahead of the curve you can get 20% off with code Empire 20 we'll see you in

London what's up everyone before we jump into today's episode I'm excited to share Empire's first ever security partner Harpy is the best tool to prevent your wallet from theft in real time Harpy is not just a security solution they are a piece of mind solution but don't just take our word for it Harpy is the only wallet security solution that protected 100% of its users from attacks like The Ledger one and Q4 which was an offchain signature attack to learn more about Harpy click the link in the show notes or visit Harpy doio Empire all right so uh so we got the predictions episode uh for anyone who listened last Tuesday we had our kind of

review of the Year Recaps uh you know best product founder that we met upand cominging company things like that so this episode's going to be different we're talking about 2024 predictions um Santi said he was bringing five he brought 13 so we are going to uh we're going to walk through maybe all 13 of them and then if you stay until the end we might give you some price predictions here not Financial advice obviously um Sant you want to kick us off what is your first prediction I'll be very brief 2024 is a riscon year right are down liquidity is injected into the system and but maybe we have a shorter cycle I feel really good about 2024 not so much about the second half in

2025 does that just apply to crypto or do you think things like NASDAQ and everything rips yeah election year interest rates what Market's predicting two two rate Cuts maybe we do three yeah watch watch money market uh flows away from you know uh money market accounts and into the market and naturally crypto hits a bit in a very meaningful way retail is still very much scarred um and but uh I'll get later on the predictions but where that money is going to flow is very different than last Cycles it's going to be mostly salana and other chains yeah I mean it ties into my rwa idea from from last Tuesday which was that rwa were a bare Market phenomena

and RW are obviously still exciting bringing offchain assets on chain but when there's you know defi summer led by reaking which I'll talk about in a little bit and all these other things and tech stocks are ripping again like the last thing you want to do is plop your money into a 4% you know treasuries right uh categorically uh gambling is a huge category C Mark cubin Stevie Cohen like it is on the rise and so it's not stopping and you know people can express that in a 247 Market my second prediction you want to hear it let's hear it salana surprise closes in on the market cap of eth I've been very public about this I don't see a reason why Solana shouldn't be worth as much as ethereum as an ecosystem all right so

let's update the probability I think a month ago or maybe six weeks ago you said 20% chance salana flips eth what is your updated probability that salana flips eth and is that a by by end of 2024 look I mean you can do probabilities and like there's an expected value kind of calculation you can do a range of outcomes I'll keep it very simplistic I look at ethereum is worth roughly 265 billion salana is worth roughly 65 billion so the ratio of the market cap there is like a quarter give or take 23.7% I basically think that 2 X's over the next year year and a half probably let's call it a year end of 2024 I'm saying the market share of salana

relative to ethereum to X's the the so what all right so what is Soul eth at right now Soul exactly Soul eth right now is at 06 I'm saying that goes to like Point uh sorry the all it's at point it's it's at 0.04 right right right the lowest it went was 06 uh right now it's what 0 04 Sol e is 04 correct the highest it was um like when Soul Peak was 06 I'm saying it probably goes to like 0.15 to 0.2 0.15 to 02 so so that so 3

X's basically sold to eat three X's yeah there's a couple ways to look at it um you also it's a tricky exercise because like I also think eth catches a bid right so like eth probably goes through alltime highs as well so if eth is sitting at like five to 10,000 you know then then that also like that also competes in my mouth like how much flows are we going to get into crypto and how does that so there's a couple ways I I slice it the more simplistic just to recap I'm going to just say the percent like if you look at the aggregate market cap of ethereum not combined with l2s and all that stuff just eth as an asset and salana I think that market cap percentage of market cap will grow meaningfully um

so that is again 24% today I think that can reason go to 40 to 50% at the end of 2024 all right give me prediction number three by the way I'm going to share my predictions once some of these tie into yours um and I'm GNA save my price predictions until the end but I've got some thoughts on that none of this is Legal Financial or any advice we're all terribly wrong here I don't know why anyone's listening to these predictions um uh there is a huge wealth effect in salana in the same way that the ethereum Ico movement happened you already started to see it with jto airdrop with um uh what was the other one Bon um and you have a few in the

Horizon I think Jupiter coming in January I believe is likely going to be a billion dollar air drop to the community it's huge that ties into my prediction which is nft floors rip people like to buy jpegs with this wealth effect and so when you compare categorically I think floor is 2x It's Tricky right because as the base asset that it's priced in that Soul continues to rise you got to think about okay like is the floor on on the soul basis gonna maintain itself or it goes down and in the we kind of saw this there was some degradation like priced on eath it probably goes down a bit uh but some collections actually held up so let's

just go through like mat Lads right now is 142 Soul that's like 14k Clay noara is 36 Soul that's 3 . 6K qu are like 2.8k SM smbs are like 10K torans 9k what I'm saying is if you compare like the most expensive popular collection in salana is 14K today let me ask you a question when you look at the collect the prime you know Blue Chip collections in ethereum the prices are much higher and I would argue that as more wealth this wealth effect in salana happens in 2024 the these collections will see a meaningful rise in in kind of the

floor I very much agree with both those predictions so first one of one of my predictions I had was huge wave of air drops in q1 going into Q2 money flows a lot of that Capitals in salana uh you mentioned Jupiter I also think maybe margin fi Camino tensor um so there's that bucket then there's also it also happens in eath too like I think there's big bridges that are going to have air drops um whether it's well I won't mention them but I think there's going to be some big Bridges warm right exactly exactly so I like that just flows Capital like very heavily into the salon ecosystem but also like a wormhole air drop a layer zero air drop that that is a lot of capital moving into the just

into the ecosystem um Everybody right now B basically what happened I think because of the goo airdrop is that when you talk to these Founders they have accelerated their token launches and their airdrop timeline so if Jupiter was planning on doing it in April they're now planning it on doing it in January you know Wormhole is planning on doing it in September maybe they're planning on doing it in March whatever whatever it may be um like someone like Jupiter is gonna do multiple rounds and they've been you know multiple airdrops and so that's just more activity more incentive for and this is sample size of one but like look what happened to salana nfts after the goo airdrop basically fresh Capital comes in people move from salana into into you know something else new wealth

in the in the ecosystem they move into jpegs I think that this idea that like jpegs are dead and nfts have to become this like consumer use case and stuff don't love it jpegs are gonna have a monster 2024 I love paying attention to to to retail chats and I just poke around yeah always when there's wealth when there's the prices pumped they're like what collection am I going to buy that's it people have to buy this stuff so one of my so I agree with this so one of my predictions was huge wave of air drops in q1 going into Q2 money flows SE one of my second predictions was um this is one of my main predictions for the year actually I have like these you know 10 15 predictions uh but like five main ones one of them was NFS have a monster

year as crypto natives make a lot of money that's as left Bell c as you can get but crypto crypto natives are going to make a lot of money nft that capital is going to flow into nfts I think nfts are one of my highest conviction bets going into 2024 um and I think they basically there's going to be this like L1 trade probably that continues whether it's Bitcoin with the ETF after the ETF maybe it's it's probably eth catches a bid there like paral folks parallelizing the evm whether it's like sui and apos or maybe SE or monad like some of them Avalanche I think catches a huge bid in 2024 after those run PF I think pfps yeah that money flows into pfps I'm gonna go say I'm gonna go and be

concrete and brief because someone said in the YouTube comments that I was should be brief so I'm honoring that uh I think there's going to be one Salon maybe two collections that are priced at 100,000 USD each floor oh I agree I think Ma I think madlads is a no-brainer to get above is 14K right now I think that 50 to 100K and then maybe another yeah what if you had to pick another one which would it be I don't know I mean I listed madlads kosaras cuz they're cute and the guy used to work at Harry Potter so you know have soft spot for that it's like a 3.6k today so qux which you know is just like super native I you know but it's

2.8k SMB I don't know much about but it's a 10K so what ISB I don't even knowb oh it's Sal a monkey business Monkey Business yeah so torans I think a lot of people playing the airdrop they're at like 10K maybe they do a huge runup ahead of the airdrop to like get that 20% you know play that I don't know they're cute I own a few of these um just a few just just a few uh yeah yeah I think I also think other other things outside of salana have a huge have a huge year I think P okay here's tied into my nft prediction I think uh Pudgies have a massive year I think anybody who raised

a boatload of money does horribly Yuga and B Apes Doodles isuki moonbird anyone who raised these like 30 50 hundred million doll rounds I'm very bearish on that let's just put it this way the ARB here is Bard Apes continue to be priced at 65k penguins are at 26 that flips that's the pair that's the pair trade of the year right there one NFD trade it's betting that Penguins flip Bard Apes not so much because board Apes go down just Penguins go up this just like the game they launch the game the vision is clear this they're stitching the real world connection they're going to crush yep all right take me into your next prediction continue on the salana theme

and this probably is my last salana one which we kind of talk I was gonna say people are gonna stop listening to the show it's okay I don't care go [ __ ] off uh I don't even know why they listen candidly I mean this is free melatonin I remind people they shouldn't listen this is a Fool's Aon to do these predictions more so to laugh at ourselves at the end of the year and say God we were so dumb and like you know we're doing this for ourselves no one else uh at least 10 unicorns are born in the salana ecosystem across defi nfts gaming wallets AI memes oracles and dpin primarily primarily Defi and dpin why defi you're seeing way more Capital efficiency and velocity there just look at what happened in margin fi Camino drift um you have um nfts like tensor um

as an infrastructure Marketplace gaming star Atlas R um wallets to the extent that they launch and have a token like Phantom and soul fler uh AI you know believe render um obviously memes play a role uh we talked about oracles but really deep in is a category top two deepin and defi um gaming as a third but uh yeah I think those two categories will produce three maybe four unicorns each uh this is a billion plus fully diluted market cap but I have I have one last salana prediction and then I'll stop the others are non salana go ahead let's hear fire

dancer launches and it is mind-blowing say more like toally toally talked about like it launching before a breakpoint in in September I think it does launch um I guess when I say launch like uh there's there's like the beta now but I think it launches like more fully flesh version and it really dispels a lot of the criticism of salana you know halting chain there's a lot of and to's been very public there is a lot of still resiliency and like client there's only one client so fired dancer has major major improvements to the efficiency of the chain like throughput and like resiliency liveness like it just I think it just um people will see that and then

appreciate more of the benefits of salana there's a great post by the he helium team about the Helios helos hel helius sorry M's gonna kill me the helius team about the significance of fire dancer people just go read that don't listen to what I'm regurgitating in a very stupid way read that take time and then appreciate if it launches why it's so impactful that's it yeah yeah we'll put that link in the show notes great peace shout out Mt um all right give me your next one Bitcoin wakes up the Dragon will rise and will say okay we have all this dormant Capital yeah we've been around

we're here miners always have the last say and there's a lot of fees that if people are starting to see with ordinals and I think at least this is my top prediction there is for Bitcoin at least there's one Bitcoin L2 that launches and starts a frenzy of activity and I'm cheating because I kind of know who's to do that at least have one team that is going to do that and they're very very credible Builders and they've built a lot of projects that then complete the vision for an L2 and yeah you're going to see a lot of continued ordinal activity but also just again Defi and like a whole host of

things right so it's going to be really interesting to see how again the Bitcoin Community but like the idol capital is there and it's going to be put to use who's the company who's building it or is it can't say well private cool we'll have on q1 yeah I mean we haven't been talking about what's happening with ordinals at all but very very exciting I mean we should we should do a little more Bitcoin content going into the new year yeah you basically solve the security budget for Bitcoin miners gonna love it do you have a do you have a Bitcoin ETF prediction I didn't want to get into that at all but probably q1 like it's just it's

going to happen right yeah maybe the up like the do you think there's gonna be like a surprise on the downside like we actually don't get we only get no I think we Pro I think we probably get it I think that it's probably a like a maybe a let down I don't think it like drives the price an insane amount in the in the moment in like that month or that quarter um I actually think probably q1 is like kind of a the beginning of q1 like January is probably a slower start to the year like I think every there's been a lot of hype going into going into the Bitcoin ETF and I think it probably might be like light flows to start and maybe a little bit of a let down however what I think people in crypto don't fully understand or appreciate is how good trafi is at

selling Financial products they are like basically this into the selling machine you've given someone a whole host of financial advisors to earn a higher fee on this ETF than other ETFs they're going to Pedal that yeah yeah not I mean it's just the the how the traditional like financial institutions have been selling commoditized products for decades and they've mastered it um whether that's pushing it to the in into their private bank whether it's commercials whether it's whatever it may be like they know how to sell and I think uh people don't realize how crazy it's going to be to have these huge institutions selling a Bitcoin ETF basically I'll put quotes around this for us so

indeed um all right I've got one for you okay um did you look into reaking since our last conversation I had one yes all right I I have it in my list oh you have it on your list all right give me give me your reaking prediction then I'll follow it up with mine there's gonna be a major bug and it's gonna it's going to Rising is going to be a thing it's hot narrative but I think it's going to make people question this rehypothecation of security and the fragility that it introduces into the system so I think there may be a hiccup a bug I hope it's not a major one I hope it's not when these things have massive

amounts of tvl but even when we had the a layer looks not F on them particularly I think they're incredibly sharp competent team shout out to them and I think they've done it in a measured way these like you know opening it up but I I am worried about it and I think it maybe I'm not calling a specific project I just think it's going to make us question if it is all worth it and if it is introducing more fragility than benefit to the system yeah I so I have a two-part prediction on reaking I think reaking becomes the hottest thing in crypto in 2024 at some point um you know

we it feels like defi summer was driven by Goo and the salon aird drops reaking is going to be much larger um I think it gets really really reaking basically ignites this huge yiel farming craze super high risk um pointless tokens everywhere rakers are going to layer several different you know layers on top of them simultaneously reaking basically becomes the hottest thing um and then the narrative about eth shifts from eth's money to back to like eth's yield so reaking becomes incredibly hot I think it also means that reaking becomes kind of the new leverage in the system dozens of reaking companies launch uh and and probably goes fine in 2024 I think this ends tragically in 2025 um

and I think is in a huge unwinding liquidation like uh deep pegging like oral I don't know there's could be a million things well first off I I first off I think there'll be a huge re uh reaking related slashing event that will occur um so that that's one bucket but I think the other bucket is just like there's a lot of claims on the same underlying eth and uh yeah that's just that's just a dangerous game like as much as I love Financial Innovation we've seen this movie before yeah I mean here I'll I'll push even further out on the predictions side here like if you think about what is the next there

will be another fraud that gets built in crypto or another Luna type thing or whether it's fraud or luna or huge blow up and I think that will be a re a reaking protocol I think you probably get hundreds of billions of dollars locked in value in something it grows incredibly quickly um and and then it blows up some something happens that blows it up I don't really know what it'll be but I think the next Luna will probably come from reaking probably yeah all right I got another one for you AI coins reach Peak Mania they cross like 100 billion in aggregate market cap that's a 10x from 9. billion today so like like theashes of the world render a bit

tenser aash more projects to launch IO and a bunch of others as a category I think people are GNA go Bonkers uh and and this is going to catch a major bid as more projects launch and um yeah I think you know yeah I'm not I'm not saying I believe in even the valuations today I'm just thinking of narratives and I think it's a 10x from here um there's 100 billion in market cap and you're probably going to see one come in the top 10 um you know so all right so here here's why I uh I agree with you on this prediction actually my dad was in town my dad was in town and um I was like try to get him to do

crypto stuff when I'm with him like you know set him up on a whatever like a new wallet or whatever it is and um so he goes yeah I actually have do have something I want to do on chain he goes I want to buy um I want to buy I think it was it was either a c or rent I think it was a Kos and I was like really why he goes well I'm like AI is taking over I read about it in the news all the time um the only thing I know how to do like the only like way I can get exposure to it as like a non-institutional investor or a non- like private Market person is uh is buying Nvidia Nvidia seems like crazy overvalued right now like missed missed the trade so let me get exposure to Ai

and he's like I read in a newsletter that AOS is uh is like is the is the AI play and I was just sitting there being like and he bought it and he got it outperform right and I was just sitting there if that isn't like a peak into what is gonna happen in 2024 like I don't know are you saying your dad a is retail b as a left like left curve um you're in for a holiday treat my man I'm not gonna talk about whether or not my I mean my dad buys crypto like it's retail that's what I'll say honestly probably I'll perform most

funds I dad buys crypto like it's retail um I mean because he's not sitting here reading about you know makers endgame like that's when you start to like he's not an Institutional Investor trying to like write beler vit getting all you know reading 50 page research reports he's not sitting in the middle of you're giving institutions way way too much credit I don't think many by the way for what it's worth I think institutions are no different than retail institutions are going to sell the sell the top excuse me are gonna ape into the top and sell the bottom like they always do they're just people at these companies so I like the AI prediction I didn't have that on any of my pred I didn't have ai on any of my predictions but I I actually like that yeah my next one was reaking we cover that all right I got

one for you um I think the defi ogs the eth defi ogs help take crypto mainstream I think um you will have a Hu so I think if you look back at the last Market defi was the first thing to really catch the bid and then it underperformed everything else in 2021 2022 2023 um but every but that market kind of kicked off with Bitcoin first with Paul tutor Jones fastest horse in the race then Capital flowed into defi summer and for the last three years it's been pretty quiet in defi land and I think when you look at what Kane is doing with infinex uh Lesner is doing with superstate stonie is now doing with avara this you know they acquired family like this kind

of like group of companies now um and what uh what Hayden's doing with Unis swap I think D ogs have a huge Resurgence and a massive year um I'm not saying like those coins those tokens are necessarily going to do best but I think they help whether it's the Unis swap wallet um whether it's staning with aara and like social fi and like the family app that they acquired like I think they help us take us they help take us mainstream not like a consumer founder coming in and playing in crypto I disre that as a as much as I love defi I don't agree with that um I I didn't have defi even in my predictions and maybe that's because and maybe

that's well you did you did you did talking about jup like all that is defi I I would say I'm more excited about I think just salana capturing a lot of defi activity and I would not be surprised this ties into the prediction that I that I that I have actually is well I want get they they're the next two actually so so I'll just go directly to that I think move based languages get way more attention primarily because of security fixing re-entrancy attacks like and so um it really is about security and I think this is apos suie say I think uh move as a category like move as a

programming language I think gets way more attention that has a direct impact on these l1s it also probably more importantly full disclosure of an investor but movement connect like connecting the you know the evm chains with move like move based chains that connectivity is very important um to for them to get more attention right to draw in more users and liquidity from um evm chains but it's really all about security and when you think about defi every most exploits can be boiled down to an oracle problem or re-entrance ebog and move as a programming language like solves that

so I I had one of my predictions was eth moves be I said eth moves beyond the evm actually um and like I mean we're both an investor movement and shout out to rushi over there but like yeah I I agree with you here been a huge evangelist of of just security and I think he's right uh ties into my second prediction around this particular topic SPM is also a wild success uh you have like Eclipse why because not only it it's like a soft way for the ethereum folks to save face on salana as an architecture and I think uh but in a soft way you know you always have to give people like that way to interact with an SPM and the Sal when I saym Sol virtual machine so it's eclipse

and there's another project I forget the name I mean you have yeah I this e moves beyond the evm right whether it's like polygon miden showed you could do this fuel Network Eclipse uh Stark net even showed you can do this like the the counterargument to this is that Dev tooling support for anything beyond the evm is atrocious it's taken us probably what eight years uh to get to to you know like the dev tooling levels for the evm to be comparable to maybe where they are in web to and it's not even close to comparable but it's it's at least gotten a lot better anything beyond the evm dev tooling is horrible um so I think I'm hoping that that's actually something that gets built in 2024 yeah so that that was my two predictions around like

just developer activity um and like connectivity of ethereum well I guess there's a third one um I think as there a third in this kind of bucket I think IBC Cosmos in general but IBC uh has its moment uh ux talked to so many teams the last couple weeks do more research on Cosmos I think IBC has starts becoming more appreciated as a connectivity layer into many chains um I think also I'd be remiss not to look at what has been happening with injective and Celestia purely from a hype perspective and you know it takes two of those projects to really draw in a lot of users interest into the broader Cosmos ecosystem a lot

of Builders have reached out um that focusing on um improving usability um into Cosmos which I think is is a higher hurdle uh like all the different chains all different addresses like that is being abstracted away but I spoke with Sam Hart from skip yeah yeah yesterday I was talking to him yesterday too actually yeah yeah oh look at you he was giving us he said our website design sucks so he was giving me some candid feedback anyway he was very kind with his time and I I've been asking him and others is like how do we he he made a very good point which was when you think about it Cosmos fix and ux within Cosmos is so applicable in a cross chain world where you need to abstract like chain

abstraction is going to be a major theme next year um and Cosmos is has always had that problem since day one and I think there might be a project within the cosmos ecosystem that really Nails it around this chain abstraction and IBC fits very much in into that so anyways I think um unbiased I've been spending more attention in Cosmos not just salana Cosmos and I think Cosmos and IBC have have a good um have a good year I'd probably take the other side of this I think yeah I'd take the other side of this I think Cosmos has led the way for things for several years and kind of the rest of the industry has

actually followed What Cosmos has done they've never been able to well actually here's what I'd say I that I'm just saying the perception is my point the is my point okay all right let me actually ask a followup question here does what catches a bid in the cosmos ecosystem because injective and Celestia you know CAU a major bid yeah so these so the app chains like different things on different things okay it's not like an atom token or anything no I don't think Adam I've always struggled with Adam I think it's other stuff okay then I tend to okay then I would then I would agree

with that different I mean d you guys are thinking out fantastic research uh and part of my greater appreciation look it's it's hard to yeah e effort capital is putting the cosmos ecosystem on his back good stuff yeah I still need to learn way more and look I have like 10 calls with Cosmos Builders of the next two weeks so um I you want to go next I have two more and then a discussion but I have two all right everyone so we talk a lot about the institutions coming into crypto on Empire Santi and I are both headed out to London March 18th to 20th for blockworks his eighth ever digital asset Summit D this is an Institutional

buttoned up conference that we've hosted since 2019 I like to joke that it is probably the last remaining kind of suit and tie event in crypto people are still wearing suit and tie it's pretty funny you'll actually hear from a lot of the largest institutions in the world coming from Standard Charter FIS JP Morgan framework folks coming out winter mute vanc Goldman Sachs there are a couple big themes of this conference one Bitcoin catalysts the having and the spot ETF two A View From the buy side three rw's tokenization and stable coins four Global regulatory Frameworks five institutional infrastructure including Banking and payments and six the macro case for crypto if you have anything to do with the institutional side of crypto

you have to be there Santi and I got you back we hooked you up with a 20% off code it is Empire 20 there is a little competition running internally at blockworks to see who can drive the most number of tickets so help Santi and I out register with our code and you get 20% off that is Empire 20 for a lot of Empire listeners your crypto is not just another number on the screen it's part of your future I know Santi and myself feel that way our security sponsor of this episode Harpy takes this responsibility seriously and is the only wallet security tool that Shields users from both onchain threats and sneaky off-chain signature attacks if you've ever been in that situation where you're moving quickly you approve something

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hp. SL Empire you want it to be even easier just click the link in the show notes do you have any L2 predictions like what happens with optimism you're big investor in arbitrum like ZK I have too much here to to make I mean I've already given you my predictions on l2s which is uh and you and you push back strongly but uh I'll I'll give it again and I'm curious what you think because last time we talked about it was a couple weeks ago I think there's basically two things that happen with l2s one is there's a big uh all of them try to Rebrand is something about parallelizing the evm um here here are my big buckets of L2 predictions one is they all start to

talk about like parallelizing the evm that's one thing uh they wake up to the fact that they should have done that years ago and now they all kind of scramble and race to try to do it um uh second thing is that uh I don't think ZK will have the huge year that everyone thinks it'll have in 2024 I still think it's a little too early um my scroll bag is not going to do well I I'm sure you'll be fine uh I don't think any I don't think anyone solves interoperability for l2s in 2024 one day they will but I don't think that's a 2024 thing and the big thing that we've talked about is I think l2s follow blast and add native yield and it gets out of hand pretty quickly

and I think like eventually Bridges start offering native yield um and like everyone starts offering native yield and like between l2's offering yield I think the the blast uh people really underestimated how successful blast was going to be and continues to be and uh you know like that that capital is sticky like that capital is not moving back to the main chain right once it's on blast like you don't really see money go onto an L2 then back to eth um it kind of just sits there so I think a lot of l2s are going to add native yield and it's going to get out of hand pretty quickly so yeah I have two more uh around this narrative shift I think ethereum and inspired like valital post yesterday I

think was offered a good window into what might happen um I think ethereum Community changes this narrative away from ultrasound money and figures out a different um term and maybe it's I ped it as like monetary premium more so like away from ultrasound money more towards like we're the daddy chain everyone else connects to us but we're like the daddy chain and then you figure out like economic Arrangements within between chains so whether it's monetary premium or base asset I don't know but I think uh it it it shifts away from away from like this we're burning so much eth because fees are really high and I think

that moment happens when you start seeing way more usage you're already seeing more Dex activity more volume in salana and and so that continues when that in the face of that I think the Community rebrands itself and says maybe because l2s also have much more activity I think it they it almost feels like you're bragging about how fat your margin is and I don't think that ever has played well like you don't see lvmh saying oh you're buying a bag yeah our margin's like 80% you dumb idiot we're Manufacturing in China same leather as like normal Brands but we're we're we you know what I mean like you never want

to like be and I think that's that narrative will change um because I think it It ultimately um sort of like you never want to be bragging about how fat your margin is and I think that's that's basically how sound ultrasound money is every time I see this chart of like you know we keep burning more eth it's like yeah but like are users also going up is activity going up like are you onboarding more people relative to other ecosystems and I think there will be a shift and I think it starts with l2s being more successful and onboarding more people and building great products which I think is is a thing right I don't want to impress on

people that I don't believe ethereum is going to be a viable ecosystem I think it will serve its very clear purpose for certain use cases I agree there's a phenomenal piece by DBA uh I think it was John charb who wrote it called eth is not money eth is not ultrasound money um give a shout to I also want to give a shout out to a few people that like as you think about like how fast things move that you should listen to DBA is one for sure uh Logan um the frictionless guy his podcast also really good from a technical standpoint helped me understand other ecosystems much much better yeah those two are really good pieces of

content um last one 13 for me 13 coinbase becomes a bank fullon bank you do there is no reason why you shouldn't be using coinbase for everything and I think Brian's Builder that he is he's going to do that and I think coinbase has a very good shot at becoming a top 10 financial institution in the United States and globally um and naturally I'm biased and I have exposure but I as we start thinking about price I think it you know this is a hundred billion dollar plus company at least and it's sitting at like

36 shy of 40 I think if they really get again I don't want to just say blows because look in a bull market everything blow everything blows past alltime highs I'm just categor going to say it uh vaporware and real stuff maybe VAP Weare more than real stuff um but I think uh when I think about like a bet that I can make probably with the most amount of conviction because it gets me very excited about the first second and many order effects that it can have on the ecosystem is coinbase becoming like this financial institution it plays into the ETF uh narrative it plays into ETF it

plays into onboarding it plays into like onboarding people not just to buy stuff on Co coinbase app but also Bas and onboarding into like this app store it also plays into their focus on funding like non-speculative use cases like Blackbird and loyalty programs and like I just think this is like I'll say it over and over again I and when I tweeted Brian was like very like humble about it but I liken it to this is like an iPhone moment where Bas will be when you pop up your iPhone you have a set of apps that are preloaded and in the very first versions of the iPhone there's not much and internet was kind of expensive now we're figuring all these things out now you're GNA see more

apps there that are not just the Swap and buy it's like Stitch it to your daily interactions when you go to restaurants when you do things social and so that becomes I guess like I'm not I wasn't ready to make it a 2024 prediction but like over the next 5 years the percentage of non-speculative use cases in crypto will grow and in large part Bas is playing a central role in that and so yeah that was my last prediction yeah I love that prediction we I've been speaking with some folks in still talking to some of the big companies the you know big big brands of the world and they basically said base is the biggest unlock they've ever had they can't go

tell their they can't tell their CEO they're building on something no matter how amazing arbitrum is like they're like I just can't build on it and now they're like we have a publicly traded company um that is regulated we can go build on on those rails so um sure I mean yeah I'm gigal along coin Bas like coinbase is an incredible I actually almost tweeted out uh an acquisition I'd love to see is coinbase buying Mercury I don't know if you know Mercury but I yeah they're one of the best like B2B Banks right now I'd say uh like up and cominging like startup Banks and I'd love to see that um yeah it'll be I I would love to see them get into both individual like individual banking as well as um yeah I mean B2B banking would

the AL room insurance as more like more and more of block works' payments are happening in usdc and more and more of like my individ like most wires these days are in usdc so last you did I actually had one last week where they requested a wire I was like yeah actually yeah W one D5 salana project same with wired today actually I shouldn't be saying um did it start with an e okay never mind um all right I've got I've got one more for you H I think I think it's a monster year I'm gonna make this prediction every year until I'm right it's a monster year for prediction

markets I think it's the year that prediction markets go mainstream I think two two two maybe three main two maybe three things cause this uh first is it's an election year uh the general general public has lost trust in mainstream polls like when I used to look at polls I'd be like oh polling data shows this now I'm like oh polling data like can't really trust that polling data like they don't really know anything um and I think it's a monster year for prediction markets uh because of like yeah just an election year second thing is I think whether it's poly Market or someone else they launched the ability to create your own prediction markets instead of the company creating prediction markets I think you'll be able to almost like how you can you know launch your own

Shane reached out look I'm I was an early investor in poly market and Shane I think they might have a pro Shane's the founder he I think they might have like a a group of curators that like create these prediction markets that are not just company employees I'm talking to Shane about it too yeah I uh I've gotten a little sneak peek into what poly Market's building next year and like I'm I'm very excited about it and then I think the third thing is if you look at why like why hav pred think do you think a particular Market reaches like 50 million in volume because right now the most which is like Trump based prediction like will he be a candidate Will he win or is like at most five million liquidity has always been the challenge do you think we get like a

market maybe the Olympics the election where it's like a 50 to 100 million um I I think there's yeah I think there's a 50 I haven't looked at the numbers too closely but I think there's a $50 million Market I mean think about like why haven't prediction markets gone mainstream yet they're not Dent enough for crypto people right I don't want to make a a 3X or 2x they're super inefficient dude and then when there's for non- crypto people the ux is too tough you have to connect your wall it whatever it may be there's no liquidity there's a mar there's no like it's hard to balance your order book like it's it's difficult I think I think that'll I think that'll get fixed yeah basically need to balance it and you know having someone to take the other side is difficult sometimes like it's yeah yeah

so um um do you have more uh I had valuations one I said there's going to be a wide Divergence between companies with tokens and without I think it's going to be I think there's going to continue to actually be down rounds um for private companies like some of the series C Series D companies that raised it you know five to 10 billion like they're gonna raise it like they're gonna they're gonna raise but it'll be you know one maybe two maybe three if they're lucky um but the token companies are I mean the rounds are already getting really like really different than they were six weeks ago um no gaming predictions from you I I do have like it was a good point

like I it was it was the things that I wanted to discuss I wanted to discuss Catalyst overall risks things that could derail our predictions in a meaningful way things that could exponentially like yeah oh I have one I have one more for you I have one one more um I have I have about as big as big of back biases you can get here but I also think I have a kind of unique view into this world which is uh there'll be a new new wave of media companies in crypto so going into 2017 there were only it was only coindesk and coin Telegraph and uh in 2018 as the like actually really 2020 like this new wave of media companies got like they were already around but

they really like went mainstream in crypto like whether it's block works the block DC Bank list like there was this new wave of media companies and now if you look today like I think coin Telegraph is decently irrelevant um coindesk and the block both just got acquired by you know exchanges and and a VC firm um and I think there's like this new wave of media companies that's gonna that's going to pop up and I think they'll be deeply Crypton native um and really respected and actually my hope we'll probably end up competing against them but like I do hope that they they build on chain and do something with onchain media um that I think is like so I'm excited to see what happens

there I would agree hope to but I also think it takes way more than a year to build a media company I think there are probably some folks who built in the bare Market um who end up having their their time in the sun there's someone has a good vantage point near that I don't it's you so be interested to watch um so I I think like should we just talk briefly I mean we've been ranting for 48 minutes should we talk about just major Catalyst risks things that could alter these predictions maybe you know the predictions that you talked about that have the highest conviction or highest probability of happening versus you know I know I didn't talk about gaming that for me was a huge onboarding Catalyst I don't want to be specific I mean I've talked but that was I was save this

discussion uh biggest risks yeah go ahead you you biggest Catalyst gaming I like biggest Catalyst for onboarding ETF approval of people that have been on the sideline number one that from a flows perspective most important and liquidity injections you're already seeing in China you're already seeing in other places central banks easing so that continues to happen so from liquidity inflows perspective that's a huge Catalyst from an onboarding user perspective I think it is gaming there are major games that are going to launch it may be the fast casual Candy Crush Angry Birds type of game on chain that has escape

velocity combined that with like really good wallet onboarding and ease like I think it's so that's a huge one I think gaming is like going to be from a retail perspective huge along with meme coins like the speculation that has like always been a constant but it's game that is new in this cycle um and um I think also the the low fee environment of a network like salana is um huge to like when I compare the activity that you saw in Def summer very whale Centric pricing out so many people to what I'm seeing now in Jupiter it is a very different type of crowd and the velocity of that Capital it just unlocks nonlinear consumer

Behavior across everything that we've talked about nfts um you know investing in different categories that are emerging it just you know when you think about for instance your dad how many trades would he do on Unis swap if he lows a wallet with 100 bucks how many trades will he do on Jupiter the average holding period for in the stock market and in crypto is days maybe months so the velocity of that capital is going to go up is is already much much more up in a lowy environment so anyways that's a that's a catalyst so yeah um have a cat I have a catalyst for you which is I think social fi ends up

really having its time in the sun I think friend Tech comes back ends up some something that's either friendtech or looks like friend Tech um gets huge and my really far out there prediction would be that something happens with music nfts um that actually like really pulls people in to the industry and like I think you could have a friend Tech like product but maybe only for like betting on musicians or favorite artist or something or maybe there's they figure out some integration directly with Instagram like some huge unlock like that um that I think comes from either music or like social or something like that that could spark millions of people and not chain only pans I mean don't sleep on

it definitely not someone's off building that I'll fund it in a any like really obvious risks that you could think of out outside of okay Bitcoin ETF gets delayed they don't um uh Pal doesn't take Rate rates down to where people think it might go uh tether blows up anything outside of the the obvious ones I'd say there's always regulatory like there's always walls of worry in crypto since day one about regulation I think if we see a major ruling that so far the courts have been very much I think proc crypto at least like you know um if if there's a major drawback or I

don't want to say delay in a piece of legislation because those take years it's going to be interesting year the elections I don't think much is going to happen but yeah I don't know I think if coinbase loses against the SEC it might be I don't know uh so regulation is I mean it's always a risk uh I think more like maybe the FDA unwinding and if it's very messy it might have uh I don't know I think it's drawn out and I think yeah it impacts a subset of crypto not much but yeah it's really liquidity liquidity doesn't come nothing catches a bit

that's it like it's really just one trade is there liquidity in the system and are people rates are low and people want to take on more risk y everything else Falls after that of course this is a secular Trend y y y when we talk about year predictions not 10year predictions you have to focus on macro you have to focus on liquidity it's something I've appreciated over over many years so yeah awesome man anything else uh that you're thinking about going into the year maybe things that don't change over the years that'll be I was like thinking about oh yeah go ahead goe a lot about like new things but

there's actually comical that like so many things in crypto don't change and it's important to inform your view right but so any I wanted to ask you that I have like five or six things what what doesn't change yeah yeah like things just don't change this year no and it doesn't have to be like bad things just like things in general like say your first one let me think about this cuz I didn't TBL isxy for popularity it's like eyeballs right people continue to be like oh TBL TBL TBL uh brand and marketing matters more than the technology um we didn't even talk about da layers but like there's going to be

this I mean it's like celesia vers uh you know near vers enan like you know the with the l2s like I'm sorry like I know some of your technology better than the other ones but like they've got better marketing and better brand and it always comes down to marketing and brand no matter if you're in crypto or not in crypto so that's one that will stay the same people will always chase mem coins in a bull market um Doge Bon whiff whiff [ __ ] on Avalanche co Q like those I mean those are those will go parabolic at some point in 2024 great post by Shia on the importance and relevance of meme coins

not just tokens but just memes in general yeah yeah I mean attention drives everything so that will stay the same uh there will be scammers um and like some shady folks who end up getting pretty successful in crypto uh just like any new industry and I think that'll stay the same that'll continue happening um the US gets really hot again that would be a prediction of like that will stay basically I think what ends up happening is like you just got have this kind of hot ball of money that moves between like Asia to the US like one year like Asia's super hot then China shuts down mining then it goes to the US then us regulatory apparatus shuts it down and like you saw how

successful token 2049 was this year I think that moves back to the US like the US is just it's the Hub of capital in the world um and I think that will stay the same people will lust after building in the US and getting us investors yeah I had most of those there will always be walls of worry to climb in this industry those are never going to go away uh trib tribalism continues tribalism is not going away anytime soon tribalism is going to get even worse in this bare in this bull market um I'm starting to feel it you know observe one day I'm an eth maxi and then the other day I'm a eth like you sold your account of the

salana foundation I'm like yeah sure um you want to do price predictions I mean we talked about price a lot but sure like concrete yeah let's do it all right I got I give me Bitcoin eth soul and any like anyone anything else that you feel that you want to actually give a concrete price on whether it's like an L2 another L1 but the three main I'd be curious about are Bitcoin Ethan Soul should we set the stage of what was a prior all-time high for all of these I think I want to start there Bitcoin 69k I believe ethereum 4.1k is salana 20 what is it

40 right 220 I thought yeah I'm looking now two well the top was like 260 actually oh damn yeah categorically all of them blow past the all-time high in 2024 all of them I think Bitcoin reaches 100k I think ethereum reaches 6K and I think salana between 700 and a th000 what was your Bitcoin 100 you said 100K as a as

a I have the most conviction on salana I'm being probably more in the fan of returns I think s has more like a see uh maybe I'm being a bit conservative on ethereum and Bitcoin but that would assume 50ish perc higher on the all-time high for both Bitcoin and eth and salana more than that right that's a meaningful outperformance of salana uh relative to the all-time high so in conely I feel

yeah 100K Bitcoin I think there's a probability you see like 125 150k um eth I think 50% off its you know six 6K would be like 50% above right the alltime high I think driven by an ETF um more L2 activity and whatnot um but the one I have the most amount of focus is probably salana and I think it's uh you know if it hits 700 that would be you know yeah at least a two lik from the

alltime high all right I had Bitcoin 80k I think attention on bitcoin actually is higher is maybe peaking right now um I think after the Bitcoin ETF people will get excited about the next new shiny thing and that will become eth and that's really when eth catches a bid so I've got Bitcoin at 80k I said eth at seven to 8K but let's call it 8K about a three and a half X from here twox from the altim yep um I said Soul at 600 okay um and I actually think avax is going to catch a massive bid and go to I think probably 250 on Ax as

well I think and look at first off look at coins um look at how it's performed yeah yeah no I get it I get it how it's performed in Q4 I think it like I think subnets catch a huge like a big narrative I think like app chain like app chains I'm less excited about Cosmos than you are and I think like this idea of app chains could end up happening I don't know maybe it's app chains and subnets or maybe it's a institutional like defi ends up happening in like subnet land um I'm probably biased from a couple conversations I've had with big

traditional financial institutions and they're talking about avac so yeah I think I don't know I just I think avac catch is a big bid yeah I think the L2 is at some point also I this isn't a price prediction but I think the l2's at some point catch a catch a huge bid I mean they're starting to right now but yeah um I'm just looking at like if Sol hits like 700 that's like roughly 340 billion of Market cup and I think all this math is uh in ethereum right now is like 270 I think uh again going back to this discussion it is liquidity right so

Bitcoin does X I think there is more beta to these younger ecosystems with lower market so it takes a relatively less amount of flows to believe that an ecosystem can you know 2x 3x 4 10x it's it's it's um it's market cap um and and so I think it really starts because of the how tightly correlated the space will I think that's one of the things that doesn't change actually there continues to be so much correlate like tight correlation space um and beta toward like against Bitcoin right so Bitcoin like is sitting at 80 to 100K that's massive I mean think about it from that standpoint the amount of flows that need to come in for that to

happen you basically have that would mean at 80k taking your prediction at face value it would mean another close to a trillion dollars flow into Bitcoin 800 900 that's more than that's like basically think about it that that's like 80% of all crypto now like you know what I mean like you basically have printed and so yeah in this exercise a lot of it just boils down to what does Bitcoin do what is then the other and what are the trickle down effects and the relative share of new capital both from Venture

and institutions and also tail going to flow in What proportion so that that was like the exercise that that I kind of went through um but yeah so a lot of this is predicated on more flows coming in and it is again going back to it's all macro and it's yeah is a huge part in that I believe right yeah actually a question here like the ETF like the the maybe we should save this for another discussion but like I would love to understand in what version of this world can the ETF be a huge success but not onchain crypto not native crypto right can like can you see this Divergence of we've this might be a

good place to End Food For Thought can you have a version of this world where the ETF is widely successful catches a bid but the rest of crypto doesn't on a relative basis yeah on a Bas yeah you I I think you certainly can I think that that world is a world where crypto it's five years from now cryp still hasn't solved a single real world use case is not useful um we're in the same place from a user perspective as we are today and this idea of crypto kind of goes away um and on the other side you have like rampant monetary stimulus um and maybe like a increasingly hostile United States like internally and there's kind of like people are wor worried about this kind of fourth turning idea and

there's a people it becomes the like the end of the world World Trade right and that's people yeah people want to buy Bitcoin in that in that trade yeah or the Bitcoin L2 um very good my friend uh I think this is good as place as any to wrap it up I don't know if there's anything else no no thanks everyone for listening this year it's uh I will reemphasize this we did this just purely for us to laugh at our terrible predictions in at the end I can't wait for the next 12 months and be like was like terribly [ __ ] wrong you know someone someone said on Twitter I was like how can we improve block Works in 2024 they're

like you and Santi need to get more exciting in your voices I was like I we are not performers here this is there are a lot of podcasters out there who are performers with the crazy faces on YouTube and stuff and that is that's not the game so we we appreciate you guys listening and sitting through our monotonous voices and listening to our mid curve uh predictions but rambling and you know we need more brevity and what not so I appreciate the hard criticism that What Makes Us I think we've come a long way we've been doing this but is this our third year we're going we started yeah this is our second full year that was well we start we launched Empire March 2021 and then you joined probably six months later I think September 2021 we

did a we did a ba pilot episode with stonnie and then that worked decently well and then we said okay let's do this but it was September right yeah we're still here still here baby things are don't change in crypto Empire baby that was the prediction Empire becomes number one pod highest conviction bet we'll be sitting on this chair because we you know we got other stuff to do but we'll be sitting on this chair we be sitting here all right folks happy holidays hope you guys have a great New Year um and uh 2024 Baby Big Year big year let's do it let's make it happen see you guys hey everyone thank you so much for watching today's episode really hope you enjoyed

it we wanted to take a second to just remind you about our upcoming digital asset Summit in London March 18th to 20th Santi and I got your back seats are limited and we hooked you up with a 20% off discount code it is Empire 20 if you heard it earlier in the podcast there's a little competition running at blockworks to see who can drive the most number of tickets so when you register for the digital asset Summit make sure you use our code Empire 20 see you in [Music] London