Our 2025 Crypto Predictions | Roundup

Transcript

you know the biggest years in the last Trump presidency were 2017 and then 2020 and so I do think there will be kind of an EV and flow over his presidency but I think people who are overfitting the 2021 fractal to what might be 2025 probably end up selling too early hey everyone this episode is brought to you by Unis swap Labs who is launching the largest bug Bounty program in the entire history of crypto it's a 15.5 million dooll program which follows eight independent audits of the Unis swap V4 protocol this is seeming to be the most rigorously reviewed code base ever deployed to ethereum so if you want more eligibility on the scope rewards payouts Etc just click the link in the bottom of the show notes tell them that I sent you you'll be hearing all about Unis swap

Labs later in the program hey everyone quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode nothing said on bell curve is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is for informational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions not Financial advice our guest and I may hold positions in the companies funds or projects discussed all right everyone welcome back to another Roundup edition of bker we got Michaels one and two Advance um all three of us here this week and this is going to be a really fun episode because we're getting into 2025 predictions but before we do that wanted to give a quick shout out to this episode sponsor a a is one of the longest standing most trusted most secure protocols in all of defi got over $20 billion worth of tvl so head over

there and you can um you know Supply borrow swap state do whatever you want and thanks a lot a all right guys uh yeah before we get into it here how's how's everyone doing doing well the the three MOS are back although we did pretty well last week just the two of us Mike we did yeah I think we held it down two you two should do your own pod and I'll just do a solo hour yeah like thing on show lagging around all these like the mic hitting the table every other second uh yeah this is gonna be a good one uh this is the this we're doing the 2025 predictions uh and we we talked about doing a review of 2024 and I think we're gonna largely skip over that we we'll Link in the show notes Here the 2024

predictions episode that we did but we got a lot of thoughts on 2025 in general and feel like it would just be better mostly to go into 2025 I mean I think the review of 24 is uh is frankly just that the election ended up way more bullish than anybody expected that overrides everything and um it's leading us into a 2025 who's who's Mark in the chat by the way Mark is our producer for the show no he's just uh just some guy on CT who's a big fan and we invited him on here he broke into the private chat nobody knows how nobody knows how we should keep this in Mark appreciate you buddy um all right so well maybe let's do a quick uh

I I'd actually love to get before we get into some of the more specific predictions so we sort of broke it out there were some more sort of macro and Market pred predictions which we're just going to spend a tiny bit of time on uh just to give you guys a sense of where we think the macro is going into this coming year and spend most of the time on a very specific set of crypto predictions but so I went back and just to summarize 2024 or what we were saying for our 2024 predictions I think we got it largely right um you guys were both actually extremely bullish in terms of uh just where we thought markets were going this year and I think that you know something that we've talked about offline a little bit is that the this feels very much like a 2020 sort of time

frame here especially as we gotten towards the end of the year and so I guess maybe just any commentary on you know how things have played out this year anything that was maybe different or similar to what you were expecting and then you know the follow on question to if this is 2020 or December of 2020 are we going into a 2021 like year I think um the main thing that is surprising but is kind of always the case at the same time is just how liquidity slashes around and how narratives rotate and how you know On Any Given year you probably have the opportunity to get like one new coin to like a 50 to 100 billion valuation and that was obviously salana in

2024 um and I think if we even tried to collectively think back on the year we probably couldn't name all of the narratives that happened like what was the narrative in q1 I guess it was the Bitcoin ETF yeah yeah yeah and then you know I I guess that was like oh my God you know and then it was like is the e ETF going to get approved yes or no we said yes obviously the market said no and then it got approved then it was kind of like the death of eth for probably Q3 um and now was outows of e ETF of e right and I think that's like um what were the outflows eight or nine billion from eth no three three and a half three

and a half I mean like three and a half maybe call it four just to be generous of of eth outflows and it wasn't what caused the entire retracement from 4K back to kind of like 2100 but it was certainly a driving factor and I think it just serves to remind you that like unlocks are real and you know certain projects are going to have those salana you know these other l1s like these other kind of BC coins whatever you want to call it but just it's been a a year of being reminded that price drives narrative drives adoption drives liquidity drives price yeah agree with that agree so what are your thoughts kind of maybe maybe we can um Advance we'll like this in the show notes and uh even though this went

out under your Twitter I hear there's this is both of your thoughts a little bit um Michael Le we can call it combined thoughts but you know I didn't see Michael writing last night all right so there's a little bit of a question about where these predictions are truly coming coming from here the Providence but uh here I'm going to share my screen and we can focus maybe just a little bit on the macro predictions or some of the US Centric predictions before we get into the more crypto specific spefic ones so here I'm just going to pull up my all right can you guys see that I'm going to zoom in a little bit oh man all right um okay I can't really zoom in much more than this but hopefully we can do something post

production here but I'm just gonna uh like I'm going to start with this us one here SPX to 7500 AI delivers onest promises so what are your guys thoughts just in general about where we end from a broader Market standpoint next year and I'll throw in by the way as well that inflation you're predicting at 2.5 to 3.3% and that the FED will cut rates significantly in response to a slowing job market so where do you think we end in general in terms of like the macro here well so I I think maybe one of the fair comparisons is where we were in relative time to 2020 so December 2020 what was going on we're at the peak of covid we were at the peak of trying to buy our way out of you know what was expected to be you know this Global p

mic that was in the last years we had not really any line of sight to potential vaccine um or or there was there was hope but it was a question as to whether or not it was going to be months or years away um and so this is kind of like peak bearish time and then what happened in 2020 was the or 2021 was the liquidity unlock really happened um I think that where this doveet tales in you know the differences here obviously is we're not going to see the same level of liquidity that we we saw in 2020 end of 2020 and 2021 equivalent um I mean this is back when tooth was doing ipoa through IPO Z spec you've got everything GameStop obviously was kind

of the the the start of this but everything just went absolutely nuts I I don't think that we're going to have the same effect globally but I do think that there's going to be a market rotation and this is where I I think the AI element actually does come into play you've got 120 million people using chat PT every single day my guess is that probably triples next year uh probably closer to like you know 500 million daily active users and they're going to be paying for it they're gonna be using it I I would also be willing to bet that open AI starts to really seriously consider an IPO if if they don't you know do one in 2025 it'll be on on the docket for 2026 that same level of liquidity intention in Market action is going to

come from Ai and it's not going to come from you know every single coin of the Earth as it did in 2021 but I I do think that we're going to start to see like the AI boom really kind of Crest uh or start to approach a Crest in 2025 on the heels of open AI just absolutely crushing it yeah I think the other stuff is um you know you're going to see a wave of tech IPOs that are going to lift the market maybe stripe maybe SpaceX maybe you know there's a couple crypto ones open AI you know maybe like andil like people want to buy these IPOs and I think it's going to be a generally bullish Market as a result 7500 is 25% from here give

or take and that's you know at the high end of most analyst expectations for where uh you know the stock market is next year but I think basically what I'm trying to communicate is at least just uh it's going to be a very bullish backdrop for crypto and risk assets and a lot of the current um crypto assets are probably equities are probably priced to Perfection like Nvidia or any of the big SAS companies but all these new IPOs are definitely going to be the thing that fuels the market in that same chamoth spack like context but much less scammy and frankly much better businesses so yeah I think it's a very bullish start to the Trump presidency you know the biggest years in the last

Trump presidency were uh 2017 and then 2020 um and so I do think there will be kind of an e and flow over his president prescy but I think people who are overfitting the 2021 fractal to what might be 2025 um probably end up selling too early is my guess the the other angle that I would say too is because it will be so dominated by specific categories that are outperforming I mean once again what happened in 2021 was if you bought any asset it went up was basically the effect of you know the liquidity Rising tide floats all boats and I I do think that you're going to start to see that in a lot of cases and you're going to you know see Bitcoin you know outperform

you're going to see all these AI companies outperform but it's not going to be I can go and buy you know some you know profitable SAS company that's doing nothing interesting but just because of the fact that it's in the NASDAQ it goes up 2x I don't think you're going to see that same effect and what that means is we're going to leave 2025 with a perspective of here are the industries that are doing well and here are the industries that are are doing fine but not doing as well as the others and it's not going to be this question leaving 2021 was that was that a fever dream was that a liquidity fever dream it's going to be you know separating wheat from chaff in terms of which ones are doing well crypto and AI are going to be those two and everything else is going to be

kind of sidelined in terms of growth all right so I've got some more you've got a couple of trump specific predictions here I'll just uh list through so Trump hits the highest approval rating of any president uh Trump will set new monetary Global framework similar to the plaza Accord in 1985 where the dollar is significantly weakened gradually and this might bring some manufacturing and U liquidity back to the US and crypto risk markets um and then also that doge is wildly effective this is less about Trump specifically but you know you think that they could cut two to three trillion from the federal budget so you know whichever one of those you want to take maybe just um just qu like what were uh some of those Trump what makes you so bullish on the Trump presidency in general and then

maybe we could talk a little bit about Doge frankly um and what you're seeing there in terms of um just cutting dollars out of the budget I think overall I mean America is very susceptible to a psychological boost right now that's at least my feeling where like you know America is usually at its best when it's like a little bit swaggering and a little bit you know just like cocky and I think like Joe Biden and KL Harris were basically like the antithesis of that and Trump is the embodiment of it um and so just from a psychological perspective feels like we'll have wi in our sales and um I think the things to consider are basically like if you look at the 10e which is one of the main things that we look at in terms of what's the cost of capital it's just been marching higher

despite them cutting rates which is effectively showing that there's way too much debt and way too much spending in the US itself and I think people have been fading Doge in terms of you know there's just too much bureaucratic you know process and red tape to really make any meaningful change into the us but you know last night seeing Elon kill a bill on Twitter was just like wild you know he's just like we're not doing it and if you're doing it if you're voting for it we're going to primary you and I expect that to basically be um the modus operandi for for at least you know the first two years but these programs are going to be successful in my view to the extent that you know he drops the deficit to near zero then you see a big kind of flush out of interest rates as they go down

and as the FED lowers them and then that kind of kicks off probably that back half of the Trump presidency you know Golden Bull Run where I you know I think you know people think like local top q1 maybe more Global top Q4 of 2025 but I think it's kind of all leading into 2027 um is kind of my view yep only things I'd add are uh I mean a lot of the stuff has changed yesterday with the Dot Plot that we got um where everyone expected that there' be four to five cuts next year now they're predicting two I actually think four to five is probably more in line and you know listening to the FED guy on uh on um forward guidance um you know same same perspective which is you

inflation's coming down I think this is peac hawkish for the FED um but what I think people are also undervaluing is kind of what Vance just touched on which is if you cut the deficit to zero what will naturally happen is that interest rates will come down in the market on their own they won't be fed funds guided down the 10year will will drop just because you know the is dropping in and of itself which will be I mean that's the factor that that underpins mortgages that's the factor that underpins car loans that's the factor that underpins basically all the consumer borrowing and so that's that's where you have the the pure effect on the consumer and I think we're undervaluing what the potential of Doge could do from just a general

sentiment and and US economic perspective in the fact that it'll drop interest rates uh the closer we get it to zero and then potentially even a surplus as well all right any other predictions on like the more macro or Global Market sort of perspective before we get into the crypto stuff no I think generally you know an end to Wars as well will be nice just uh I feel like just like that's another psychological thing where people are like constantly just like okay what side are you on for Ukraine Russia what side are you on for Israel Palestine what side are you on for you know whatever conflicts we're involved in globally just removing that stuff from the daily

discourse will take the temperature down a lot and I think just like a bullish era of peace and safety is probably what comes next Ju Just as Vance were talking about this yesterday but uh in October of 2021 um Vance and I actually dressed up as inflation for Halloween um it it was pretty funny um you know one dressed up as inflation out of curiosity what does that look we had we had balloons that said inflation on it like like ridiculous like Market dress it was pretty good um but what just to further this point um ju you know inflation was kind of like rumored to be starting in in the second half of 2021

it carried through all the way into the first half of 2021 but the Catalyst that actually drove inflation higher or the market to to assume that inflation was going to go higher which furthered inflation all the way to the point of 9% in June was the Ukraine Russia conflict you know the the war that started in January because that was an exogenous shock to gas it was an exogenous shock to you know Global Peace and and I think that that kind of froze things um in ways that catalyzed a lot of the inflation expectations and concerns in a way that if we were to remove those types of exogenous shocks whether it's you know directly solving the Ukraine situation or or what's going on in the Middle East those types of effects I

think are also extremely undervalued in terms of what they will do to markets and what they will do to confidence um so it it's interesting to think you know back on the timeline as to you know what were the things that caused those issues um but removing them I think will also be things that solve them yeah I'm broadly in agreement I just I still think 2025 is going to be an extremely bullish year for markets so less specific predictions in you guys but I got a bunch of stuff on the crypto side what's up I mean maybe maybe a question for you is just like how do you think people are thinking about 2025 just from a very macro perspective are they like I mean 2023 was just like the [ __ ] is dead nobody's bullish 2024 was like I guess kind of a continuation of

that mindset where it was like that was the rebound year get ready to get pile driven into the into the sand and then I think this year is like kind of like politically framed where if you're a trump believer you're bullish but if you're not you're just like this is not going to work and you know it's it's not going to be pretty like is that kind of footing with how you see it yeah I think so I think the I think that there's a an expect I think a lot of people are um have the four-year cycle sort of fractals playing out in their head right now that they're maybe overfitting a little bit too much to and so you know and I've like spoken to a lot of especially fund managers and stuff like that they're generally I think thinking Bitcoin tops out at 125

to 150 this cycle and it's like March or may time frame were like 107 like two days ago yeah that's I mean I don't know like that's generally the sort of sentiment I get and I think people are I think the risk here is that actually people are too I agree with you guys I think the risk is that people are too bearish or sell too early like too early in the year and then actually might have to buy back or something like that but I that's I genuinely sort of get the sense that there's still a little bit of PTSD which to me says that this is going to go longer than people think because no one's ever calling for no one's worried or skittish about the top when it's actually the top it's it's you get these really outlandish predictions and uh you

know really smart people actually like like I will I will sell when Larry Fink goes on CNBC and calls it a super cycle and calls for 750k Bitcoin like that's your top signal but people saying oh I think it's gonna top at 150k Bitcoin is just not it look let come this far let let those people top out there it will continue after them we will still be holding yeah um and I do think that there's a there's a tendency during especially it's during these prediction episodes especially people are very people tend to just extrapolate Trends linearly and usually the reason people get these predictions wrong is because you're doing that whether or not you know it and so I don't know um I think

the the point of these predictions episodes just try to think okay what if some of these Trends reversed what would the world look like um which is a lot of what my predictions look like for like when a company takes their one day Revenue extrapolates it over 365 days and calls it ARR the annualize yeah that's we could put a stake in that in 2025 hopefully but um all right so I want to get you guys here uh I'm gonna start with the first of your crypto specific predictions here which is um crypto and Bitcoin uh ETF inflows reach run rate parody driven by the launch of combined ETFs averaging $1 billion doar of inflows per day each by each two so um what's the so basically the idea there

is that it not historically we're going to get a match in terms of AUM um maybe managed by the ctfs but the Run rate of new flows coming in is going to be the same for each and it's going to be a billion a day by uh each two of this year what one um added point I think I I I share the same sentiment but one of the reason why I I view this as happening is I think H one you're going to get staking Allowed by the EFS which Drive an entire new cohort of buyers who are looking for yield but are also looking for you know asset denominated yield which is a unique Concept in and of itself historically when you have a yield bearing ETF it's cash flows and cash you know dividends or or cash

assets accumulated but when you have the underlying uh as something that is accumula in that fund it you provides amplification that is unique construct and I even Microsoft alluded to this in their um uh board uh notes where they said um while we aren't necessarily considering Bitcoin right now it would not preclude us from potentially adding yield bearing Assets in the future um and and Matt seagull from vanak commented that sounds a lot like an eth staking ETF um I I would imagine staking happens in you know pretty soon after the new SEC takes over um it's just a an upgrade uh to to the existing um staking

or to the exting ETF uh constructs um but that's the Catalyst that drives billion dollars a day into the eth ETFs in H2 I also think just like the sales motion of these things change in terms of uh you know people being like do you want Bitcoin or eth I don't think people really have a view on that especially people who are not crypto native I think they're just GNA be like give me the index whatever the index oh half its yield bearing that's great too give me that um so I think that basically becomes you know every night I check like uh okay what uh what were the inflows for Far Side you know Far Side as like a data provider Far Side okay how much is in the ETF all right how

much is in the Bitcoin ETF I think you're just going to be looking at like okay what was in the combined 5050 ETF that feels like what they'll be selling yeah and maybe an early harbinger of that is uh the coinbase 50 I don't know if you saw that index product launch from them it was I no opinions on whether or not that's going to be successful or not but I thought it was a cool idea and roughly the direction that things are going to go in the future um I had some ethereum specific predictions also uh you know the big thing that everyone's been talking about is this like Northstar debate and I think that's just I think that's going to be a a relic of 2024 and by the2 people are just gonna be done discussing that yeah and and I largely

think by the way like the two ways of framing it have been like rollup Centric road map or move a bunch of activity down to L1 I think that there are going to be some like some small steps to increase the throughput of uh the L1 and maybe keep some activity but I think largely the rollup Centric road map is going to be reaffirmed and you're going to get a whole bunch of new honestly probably like Banks and fexs that launch l2s um this cycle if I had to guess yeah um the other thing too that I I think is going to be interesting this cycle I have a prediction around Tik Tok on this but I think that the historically narratives have been manufactured exclusively on crypto Twitter for the most part and I think that's going to change a little bit this cycle and I

think if you want a good understanding of how eth is going to get framed you should listen to like Matt Hogan and the guys from vanak talk about it because that's ultimately The Narrative that's going to matter and so we can kind of uh you know debate about it internally but I sort of think our as crypto natives input is going to matter a little bit less and less and if you sort of want an idea of how Bitcoin or eth or any of these other assets are going to get framed I think you should listen to the institutional conduits um and yeah shout one of my cultural picks which is kind of the same thing was um the the majors in particular eth um are are going to move from a build mode to a distribution mode and what I mean by that is it's going to be less uh debate

and I mean it's still going to happen especially in Telegram and Twitter but the the vast majority of the conversation is going to get brought to an Institutional audience through the sales motion of the black rocks or the bit Wiis of the world um and and that's exactly to your point what's what's the narrative that they're hitting on because that's what's most receptive to the raas that are are listening to it y i I think your point about Matt wogan and those people being more important than CT definitely resonates uh I think this is the first cycle where we're actually transitioning to a net new you know base of of buyers for these assets so like doesn't really matter what CT thinks about ether or Bitcoin it just matters what the ETFs do um

so I think that is kind of a huge change but I do think the CT Echo chamber continues to be very powerful but probably definitely only in a manner of like one at a time and hard to sustain more than six-month narrative um so yeah it'll be interesting to see but really it's all about these ETFs and I don't think any new ETFs outside of the combined Bitcoin e ETF gets launched next year um and I think even like a lot of the ETF issuers are biased to say like yeah well I I fired for the xrp you know ETF but it's like look like if Valkyrie Holdings launches their you know xrp ETF and gets zero inflows like that's actually deeply bearish for the

xrp asset because it's like that's the Mountaintop and once you climb it you can't go back and if Black Rock and Fidelity don't support it I would probably actually throw in bitwise because they do a great job as well it doesn't really matter if there's a new ETF um so that I think many people will be either disappointed by not having an ETF in 2025 or actually getting one and being disappointed at the inflows that that come I've got I've got one more prediction on the or just the E thing and this would be so actually last year one of the 2024 predictions uh I've never liked the ultrasound money uh narrative and I do feel like that was a claim victory on a think that narrative

is largely dead and there's going to be a new one that gets reformed and the the debate has been around kind of like rollup Centric road map versus World computer uh I've always liked the world computer narrative it actually is what pilled me I when I talked to my dad about this years ago it like really locked with him very quickly but I don't think either one of those are actually going to be the mainstream narrative for eth I think it's just basically going to be Bitcoin with yield is what people are going to understand and yeah I've been a big like the yield on top of the L1 is powerful when when these l1s reach maturity and they're just like this deep very liquid uh sort of asset with a yield on top that's just a really powerful thing and yeah I think that's

going to be the thing that moves the needle with trafy and I think you're going to hear start to hear a lot of trafi conduits describe eth in that way that would be my prediction and if we actually get our eth staking ETF yeah it's G to be extremely bullish I i' actually so like I actually like both the world computer and ultrasound money maybe ultrasound money is a bit too cheesy but you know Bitcoin is what a one and a half trillion asset and it has 2% inflation per year you know give or take maybe 10 or 20 basis points and you know kind of succumbing to economic gravity I feel like that is going to be kind of how this like ultrasound money narrative is framed where it's like some of these chains are deeply

unprofitable and there's just massive amounts of inflation which like I think frankly they kind of correlate they being tradify correlate to like you know employe stock option programs just being overzealous at places like you know the mag s so I think there's going to be a focus focus on blockchain profitability which kind of backs into like this ultrasound money narrative we probably need a new terminology for that but is eth is ultrasound at probably 20 Quay in terms of their zero inflation um I would also expect to see inflation on eth and probably other major chains go down as people start to kind of key in on this narrative like inflation on full is what like 7% yeah that's a lot like if it's 7% and your assets a100 billion doll you need 7

billion a year just to ABB the inflation so maybe I don't know if you guys have any other I I sort of organized mine a little bit by um I kind of the major ecosystems and then a couple of just uh you know non ecosystem related projected but I had some Salon related uh predictions to get into um I I'll just I'll just sort of rattle off the list of of mine and and how I'm thinking about it but I think actually I had I also think that salana will either introduce a simd that gains a significant amount of traction or will actually change their inflation policy and lower it um in 2025 I would guess probably more a simd that has traction uh just remembering how long it took to get something like 1559 pass for ethereum like there's a lot of pilling

that that needs to happen there so I think it's going to be take a little while to do um I think salana is going to have a little bit of trouble sustaining the positive momentum that it had uh from a sentiment perspective in 2024 like salana has executed and done phenomenally they also had the benefit from both a sentiment and a price perspective of going off an extremely low floor and now I think they're starting to deal with some of like the quote like big boy problems that eth has been dealing with for a little while um and so that happens around like m in general like there's a I'm sure you guys have probably heard there's this I don't want to name any names but there's this actor who's basically gained access to somehow uh what it looks like private

order flow or private transactions um on salon swi yeah well happen I I I think I think there's some element here this is this is like my commentary on this um and I don't mean to offend anyone but I think one of the the critic ethereum takes certain issues much more seriously than salana does around uh like decentralization and like some of these thornier problems and I think there are pros and cons to it I I do think that sometimes it's easy for ethereum people to get lost in the sauce a little bit of but also they're dealing with really thy problems that matter a lot and so I think the salana solution to some of these problems have been like

what if we just what if these things don't matter and we're not going to actually create solutions to some of these things and I I think that has Unearthed some over Engineering in the ethereum ecosystem but it also is going to reveal some cracks and I think that probably a lot of the me solutions that ethereum has pioneered via flash Bots I would guess that you guys probably know better than me like jto is one of my favorite teams in crypto but like I guess a lot of their me related Solutions maybe gravitate towards more what it looks like on ethereum today um and so I think and the other thing too that I think is just going to be a little bit challenging is the um I think a lot of especially like the the forward the good Trends in like rev that Sal of

the network generates is linked to the mem coin market right I'm I know that a million people are typing out calling me a mid curver right now it's just very difficult to sustain that market I think over a long period of time and so I think momentum in some of these metrics is going to be a little bit challenged for Sol going into 2025 um that said I still one of my predictions for 2024 was that this is largely the salana dominant cycle I would still guess um I would still guess like positive momentum in terms of like so e Soul BTC pairs uh even just for no other reason than it's a smaller kind of higher momentum asset but that's why I think it's still going to be a good year for Sala but I think kind of cracks emerge a little bit and the exact trory

of that momentum is going to be a little bit more difficult to maintain going this year I I would say I remember when Dan Robinson basically discovered Mev on ethereum it was like that dark Forest blog post series and he like rescued someone's funds and it was just like the whole industry being like wait what the [ __ ] is going on in this chain like this is this is totally insane like how much are users losing and like is Flash Bots like the arsonist or the firefighter like you know can we we figure out something else and that was like basically peak of 2021 when that happened and it kind of set off this era of like growing pains for eth and I think it's basically taken three years for it to emerge from that I don't think the same thing is going to happen with

salana I think it will experience Growing Pains but like you know there's no bare Market imminent that it'll have to sort through all these things during and um I think you know the unlocks with soul like it just depends on how bullish the market is one thing I've been consistently reminded of is just like it's more about demand than it is about Supply uh it's a fixable you know problem in in many contexts but I think where things kind of R is just like if you're bullish on soul and you're like it's going to go through some unlocks and it has all these potential problems um and jto is generating the same amount of fees and and is probably Central to solving these actual problems like whatever fix ends up happening on Soul probably goes through goto I think people are going to kind of be more biased to the

application layer um I think the other thing with soul is just like are meme coins durable I personally think they are but there's so many different formats now that like you know the performance of like dog with hat which I would say is like a factory farmed you know memec coin unicorn versus like fart coin or like versus like ephemeral coins far coin's pretty funny though it is find discovering fcoin is an amazing Christ people for shitcoin why aren't they buying my deep value you know utility sof it's like we're busy we're very busy bumping fcoin but I think there's just a lot of dispersion

in memes and yeah I think the ephemeral stuff probably stays on Soul where it's like you know Peanut the squirrel dies five minutes later that's launched that that probably stays on soul I I would say I don't necessarily disagree but I would say we're starting to see the shift and I think that the shift continues to things that have mimetic value that also have some form of utility attached to it as well will outperform just the pure memes and I think you're starting to see this with things like ai6 or AI 16z where it's like okay you can actually build something and it's got real value and you know it they're training the model like the the Frameworks are working like that stuff has memetic value obviously and that's where it gets its

breakthrough moment but but what keeps it sustaining and what sustains it even higher is having some form of utility attached to it and so I I think you're going to see like I agree like the pure meme those are going to continue to exist on pump and but you're starting to see some of the fragmentation into things like clanker and and base um mcoins I think that that continues especially with um and I know that we're all patiently waiting with baited breath for the bear chain launch at some point in Q5 um but the the idea is that you know you're going to see further fragmentation but the things that have sustainable value actually are the ones that can break through with the memes and then also sustain with utility and I

think Solana will have to um if pump has been what has driven the growth or 95% of the growth so far salana will one of my predictions is that salana will have to change The Narrative of where the growth is coming from it'll have to have a new category that is sustaining the salon growth but it will find that and whether that's you know being competitive with Hyper liquid with a clob whether it's um you know having some sort of new kind of AI agents and and virtuals competitor I I don't know exactly what it will be but I think that they will have to find something new but they will find something new and and it has to be institutional I think the risk to salana from a narrative perspective it's the forchan chain and like you know when I go on pumped out fun it's like

everything's shaking like the comments are like absolutely wild from the people that are in there and it's like okay this is like very fun and I think the Chris Dixon thing where it's like you know big things you know start out looking like toys you're definitely in that phase but it's like how do get that next leg up and I think a lot of it is about institutional adoption and specifically the growth of stable coins on Soul like if I were the soul Foundation i' would just be trying to get as many stable coins and payments on that chain as possible and kind of being like you know like pump fund's great but like maybe not in the Forefront maybe just get in the back of the picture here's an interesting thought that I just had uh you know how you know vital was never at least initially like the

bigest supporter of Defi and I think this has been talked about more recently um [ __ ] Jesus Christ he was not and thank God finally is but you know defi is what built ethereum and U you know the NASDAQ of blockchains um was the narrative that was being pushed for salana but meme twins are what made salana it's kind of like every every founding team has this ideal of where they think their blockchain is going to go and what they're going to accomplish only to be superseded by what um you know Elon Musk law of the internet which is the funniest thing will will be what takes over um and and that's exactly what has happened yeah I've got a so one other uh

one other prediction as well was ju is just fire dancer and when they're so my prediction would be I actually think it shipped a little bit later than people think these things always do I would say a Q3 or Q4 I don't think it's going to be a million transactions per second but it'll be I don't know maybe north of 100K or something like that even TPS is a flawed matric it's like swaps versus send whatever like sort of a net Blended average if you will the the other thing though is that maybe this is more of an observation than a prediction but I think that um and you already see this a little bit from like the alliance style guys who are run that very early cohort of um of Founders you know their accelerator program but I think Bas versus salana feel very competitive Bas

is running away a little bit with the L2 market and you know to both of your guys points you know sometime the when a chain wins a category it doesn't really migrate to different chains like ethereum kind of won Defi and despite how successful salana has been in the last uh you know year and a half the defi scene on salana is much smaller than ethereum and it never really fully migrated and so I think the same thing is going to happen with meme coins I I don't see them ever moving I think frankly salana has just won that but one of the other uh you know predictions that I've had for this coming year and I'm not smart enough to know exactly how this plays out but you know Vance to your point about AI still being huge in um Regular markets uh I think that AI is

going to be still like a really dominant narrative in crypto for 2025 and it feels like there's a little bit of a budding War here even in between like virtuals on uh base versus like the new AI meme coin market and is that going to be on salana or base and I think there's going to be a big battle in terms of which chain ultimately wins that market like which is the AI mcoin infrastructure whatever it is my my bet is that that market ends up playing out extremely differently than people think where people are like we were doing what a year ago like launching like news themed meme coins like I think the biggest intersection of meme coins is going to be Ai and games and AI Arena uh they're kind of like pioneering a lot of

this at the moment in terms of like how do you add utility into meme coins how do you make them a bit more durable without taking them in this like totally like white paper Direction and I think that's kind of like what I see with a lot of the AI agent stuff where it's like well it started as mcoin but now it's like a new paradigm and like here's this like you know you know 40 page research paper I wrote on Meme coins and my philosophy behind them it's like if you have to write a white paper on a mcoin it's not a meme coin um and so you need something that gives utility to it without kind of like setting a long-term road map and I think it there's a chance that like a gaming chain maybe it's IMX maybe it's beam maybe it's Ronin kind of

takes this and runs with it and just says like we have most of the users most of the retail the most Direction connected to retail bidding and like therefore we get to say how mem coins take shape um and I also think like the other way this plays out if salana hadn't gone from $10 to $250 the wealth effect probably wouldn't have been great enough to create meme coins like period end of story and I think the same you can say for eth and all the Dy assets and all the memes that exist there but like the new l1s with a real wealth effect are going to be the ones that are teed up to create new meme coins and I think like bechain monad um I think those are the two that are like basically like appointment viewing in terms of like people are not going to

just like wait to see how it plays out they're going to be their day one involved in the ecosystems may maybe there's one or two others like abstract or something like that all right everyone listen up like I said at the top of the episode Unis swap Labs is rolling out the red carpet and launching a $15.5 million bug Bounty this is the largest bug bounty in the entire history of crypto to anyone that can find a critical bug with the Unis swap B4 protocol this bug b follows eight independent audits of V4 to date and aims to make it the most rigorously reviewed codebase ever deployed to ethereum now the Unis swap name is basically synonymous with security $2.4 trillion in cumulative volume has passed through Unis swap V2 and V3 without a

single hack so Unis swap V4 is dedicated to bringing that same level of security and transparency to the V4 protocol so if you want more information or eligibility or scope or Rewards or pay out or any of that good stuff there is a link in the bottom of the show notes I highly recommend that you stop listening right now go to the show notes click the link head over and tell them that I sent you start earning money today so I had I had also on a list of predictions here that the L1 trade is still you know cuz people ask every year is the L1 trade finally dead and I just nope still don't think that it is uh yeah I don't think that it is I my predictions were a little bit more I actually didn't so I didn't include monitor bear chain

because they just hadn't launched yet but what looks like the fastest horses to me right now that are live or sooi and Hyper liquid hyper liquid is one of those one I just missed it so I'm in a constant state of cope I've just like I've missed it this cycle that's like I'm okay with that just just just let it be yeah just letting it be uh but I I do think it just feels like one of those honestly the analog that I have is kind of BNB as a coin where like that thing just ran in people's faces and everyone was like why is this happening but it just kept running um and I sort of feel like that's probably the analogy there and suie I have less of a uh less of a strong opinion on I've just frankly I've just noticed like during pullbacks if

you like look at which coins bounce the hardest off like sui's consistently at the head of the pack there it just feels like it's got momentum um so depends on if it's durable or not right yeah know like I think a week ago people were like Phantom is the new soie yeah like these things are moving so quickly that like you know day to day it totally changes and I think like new L1 launching are kind of like clean slate more durable more professional frankly like probably better candidates for Mass adoption um hyper liquid I think my question is like has it ran too hard too fast like I think there's a point where you're like oh I missed it I'm gonna buy some and then there's a point where it's like oh I missed it I just missed it I'm gonna

go find something else right I know I like I it hasn't really given you any dips either I would say it's like people are now queued in that it's like this thing you know whatever Launches on binance at two or three billion like you're buying it there is no and I think you saw that last cycle where like basically like IPO flipping became a thing coin flipping whatever you want to call it I think that comes back um okay so I had I had one more this is like more of a I'm almost trying to think out loud here less than a prediction but I think that the actually maybe one way I guess you could phrase this is you know multicoin has always been very much like l1's or asset

ledgers type thing and I think in general I'm kind of coming around a little bit to that and I'm noticing a link in between how important dexes are to an L like the exchange function of an L1 to an actual L1 itself and honestly there are some things you can kind of squint at and see I think a similar driving design philosophy here which is uh uni chain Atlas hyper liquid and it's kind of like an execution environment that has a DEX at theer Center um and you call it like a purpose built chain for defi whatever it is but I think that as a sort of design architecture is going to be powerful um I think the the risk there is like people are very

bullish on new like hyper liquid actually the big risk to hyper liquid is is not really an L1 it's just a DEX and like the L1 stuff is just dressing and no major apps are going to launch there because why would you you're always going to be second fiddle to the first party decks on the Chain so but I I don't know call it whatever it's like purpose fil chains for defi I just think that construction of trying to get a bunch of Defi and transactions happening on one layer is gonna end up being like sort of winning I think the reason why you would assume that that happens is because an asset Ledger I mean it it it suggests that there's assets on the blockchain and if you can have the applications bring assets in then you've got liquidity there you've got users

there the rest kind of takes over but I mean this is one of the reasons why I I think you know proof of liquidity and Alignment is really you know like the novel aspects of be chain you're exactly right and and all the application developers all the third party developers that are building on top of be chain understand this in that if you if you enshrine all the things that everybody knows are going to exist in the blockchain ecosystem you assume that there's going to be people that bring over their assets and then they stay there and then you're going to want to be the application that's able to be the the you know whatever it is whatever application in that ecosystem because you got users in liquidity so I I I generally think that like that that Playbook could work but that's the bet

that you're making on hyper LGE right now you're you're making the bet that this is the best trading experience on chain and other applications will do well just because of proximities of that and and the wealth effect of the hype token right like bot coins are popping off on hyper it's like well the coin is at like 30 billion fdv and 30% of it is in the hands of retail like they're going to bid things with it I think with be chain too it's like even the even like the the negative stuff of alignment like negative alignment I would say is like you know polygon the bridge deposits like going off and using those for who knows what um I think the bear chain is going to kind of think about or put forward proposals for like how to reason about just using you know

stable assets you know Crypton native assets whatever you want to call them on be chain to kind of make the P flywheel really work and on one side you'll see like polygon on you know running away not running away but just like using people's deposits for things that they probably didn't consent to and on the other side you probably have like a broader consent mandate um where p is used for a lot of things that PE users may not even really kind of realize and so I think it's going to be a start contrast between those two but I think I don't know if the erir of alignment of nons is over like it feels like we put a nail in the coffin of like Lotto shouldn't have 33% of stake it's like doesn't matter doesn't matter at all and then it's like you know the gas limit and the L2 road

map alignment like that's kind of pushed aside but I think be chain still has kind of more to say on that front and it'll be interesting to see them laun whenever that is one thing that I got wrong going into 2024 was a lot of the prediction because if you remember back to the beginning of this year people were really you know Lio was like a huge uh Hot Topic and reaking and I pretty really overestimated the amount of eth that was going to go into reaking and also Al the percentage of liquid staking that was going to have like the St both the stake rate and the percentage of liquid staking um actually slowed down a lot which is why I'm not a like Lio alarmist uh because I actually think that there's there's more holders of eth out there that wouldn't stake to Lio or a liquid

staking solution than you would think and so I've never been as worried about the Sak rate going to something like 80% um but I got I just got that wrong going into this year um well here all right so here I have a I have a couple defi specific predictions here I want to I would love to get your guys take um we haven't really talked about this we talked about America within the context of trump but I think this is going to be a huge year for people moving back to the United States already has been already has thank God thank God super depressing seeing people move to like [ __ ] Lisbon because you don't want to you can't live in the US I get it but it's just like America was going down such a dark path for a while there I'm so glad it's

over me too I don't know how to put quantitative statistics around this but somewhere in the neighborhood of like 20% of either Founders will move back or offices will open in New York or San Francisco or something like that like I just think that there's this you know kind of American Renaissance meme going out there but I I really believe that it's real and we're just at the very beginning of it um and I think defi ends up being a beneficiary in a number of ways I've got one positive about Defi and one maybe a slight concern which is I think that this is going to be the the year that we turn fees on finally like I know people have been predicting that forever uh but it's already happened a little bit like there's a proposal for Athena right now to turn the fees Swit

on and I just think that Founders are gonna say this is this is go time basically and I think you're GNA see more Fe switches turned on um than you ever had before um oh did you have something to say I think the only stuff with defi that's like more quantitative is um calling for 500 billion of stable coins by end of year 25 and 10 billion of aggregate defi fees one of our LPS asked us like how do you judge the success of defi I think it just like it is aggregate fees there is no other metric that really matters maybe stable coins as well but you know I would say we're probably at three or four billion of fees in defi today and so way less than that I think

way less I mean you know you add up maker Lio uni I'm just talking about Revenue here not earnings you know maybe you have you know 750 at Athena maybe it's one and a half yeah you're probably right two billion of fees that's a 5x in fees and a and a probably two and a half X in stable coins and and it just feels like that is going to be if there's half a trillion of stable coins on chain people can't be like there's no use case just not possible I mean if there's if there's 10 billion of whatever you want to call Revenue income I mean we need better terminology but um if there's 10 billion of that yeah you it's undeniable that this is a massive industry like that

that is more Revenue than the applications of AI period in the story and yeah and oral one on just like maybe just like going back to culture and politics just for a minute is like I saw this take by Logic or brain genius I don't know if you follow this guy on Twitter he was like a XGC at some crypto fund but he's in a non and his whole framing is like uh Trump can't pump the stock market Market to like 15,000 S&P but he could probably get Bitcoin to like 300 400,000 and like you know Trump used Bitcoin is like this new version of the stock market that's uniquely his and identified with him and I think that's like totally totally right where you

know you haven't seen him tweet about the stock market really he probably can't because there's so many people in his administration that are conflicted out but like crypto is kind of this thing that nobody owns slash everybody owns slash is like I think in his mind is like the independent voters stock market um and so I think it's a really interesting way to frame it is like crypto is Trump's stock market well it's also the younger demographic stock market yes and that and and more more Hispanic more African American you know it's a crucial voting block for him coming into the midterms right yeah I think that the political influence of crypto in the United States has been permanently established that

was still like probably I couldn't even even if someone's very bullish on this industry that was one of the more bullish developments I've ever seen play out kind of above even Wildest Dreams expectations and Gotta Give coinbase a Little Bit of a shout out here as well 100 across the board we just absolutely crushed it yeah I completely agree um and there were a lot of like Fair Shake was massively influential there I think the stand with crypto initiative from coinbase has been really helpful not only for the dollars that they contributed but for the visibility that they contributed as well was massively important you know there was that very critical race between Bernie Marino and sherro brown and I was seeing something on my timeline every single day about it

and yeah uh so crazy I mean sherro Brown was the head of the sen of Banking Committee gone Caroline khaw gone like all these people just yeah so yeah I mean just because we're on the subject I I think this is pretty OB VI one uh but prediction for 2025 is that we do get a market structure Bill uh passed it probably won't happen until the second half next year um just immigration tax reform some of the hotter uh topics that will require a little bit more political momentum to get through um are going to be first and foremost but um yeah we're going to have something probably not exactly what you saw with the fit21 bill

but um I also think and this is like my broad prediction for 2025 is that 2025 is the year that we break the fouryear cycle and it actually extends longer and one of the catalysts not the only one but one of the catalysts for doing that is basically like 10 to 11 months from now like October November of 2025 is when we start to see when we see what the market structure bill is and that sets off basically like a whole new wave of adoption um because you've got you know entrepreneurship with the Playbook as to how to operate in the US you you've got a definition of what is sufficiently decentralized to be a digital asset commodity you know versus a security you've got ways of raising capital from retail participants in the

form of tokens I think all of that um basically just like opens up the floodgates of activity and attention in a way that we haven't thought of or seen before and that's that's probably not going to be till the second half of next year but also probably after uh a very bullish uh first half of of next year from a price action perspective all right I've got well actually I'll just build on that actually because one of my predictions as well was that we see The Return of the Ico meta and I think that is it's not going to be the same way that it was in 2017 as as first of all as dominant as it was in terms of ways to raise capital and it's not going to be nearly as Lawless as it was I think it'll look more just like uh you

know a crowd sale process which is roughly legal here in the US already under certain amounts and I think that's going to be uh that's going to return and I my solid prediction around that would be like you get five relatively Blue Chip protocols that raise money in that way so I I I think that's going to reenter um basically this idea of crowd if you want to call crowd sales instead of icos maybe to replace air drops I would say that is what's gonna happen careful what you wish for back huh yeah it's G to happen but at the same time what's also going to coincide with that is like disclosure requirements where you're going to literally be able to see whenever a

Founder sells some of their tokens they're going to have to file something with the SEC like that's just a crazy fact yeah yeah those two happen at the same time will be very interesting to see yep okay so uh one more prediction for you guys and I would be curious to get your take on this maybe a little bit more of a um pessimistic take would be at one point I was pretty convinced that when Trump won that the IPO Market would really open up in a big way for crypto startups especially I'm a little bit less bullish on that now and one of the things too that I've been sort of waiting for this cycle is when are you going to get those like Mega cap raises of 150 million or $200 million I still think the latter part like the grow stage capital is going to be I think

it'll be back is but I don't think it's going to be to the levels of 2021 because like the valuations that a lot of these companies got are so nuts they still haven't been able to grow into them and I think a lot of investors now are going to start to see through the cyclicality of crypto cycles and they're not going to give you credit anymore for these crazy ramps in like late stage late cycle Revenue they're going to see through that and be more Discerning in terms of how they're discounting that and I I still think that those companies that raised at nuts valuations are and so basically I think that the IPO market and like late stage growth Equity is going to be more challenged as a space because there's still valuation overhang to work through my I think that that is frankly what

happened in 2021 is more of a byproduct of that liquidity Onslaught that I was talking about ear yeah it it was just like we have billions of dollars to deploy the game the name of the game is deployed as fast as possible and clict 2% management fees on money deployed so I don't even care what the valuation is just like let me give you $500 million that was the name of the in 2021 it's obviously not the same environment from a liquidity perspective it's much more healthy it's much more realistic um yeah investors are a lot smarter to the you know take one day of Revenue extrapolate for a year to get ARR effect um like that just doesn't happen anymore but I do think that we are going one of my other kind of like broader predictions is um I I think that there still remains

to be seen whether or not traditional venture capital and what I mean by that is funds below a A1 billion fund size traditional venture capital is the right funding construct for AI period And what I mean by this is I think that um to play at the big boy table I mean you Larry Allison said you need a hundred hundred billion dollars to have a large language model that's competitive um based on the infrastructure the training the energy etc etc that's how much it cost that's just not something that should be funded by by Venture Capital that should be private credit it should be debt it should be you know other mechanisms of funding and there are only a few companies that are going to be

able to do that that and so I think what we're also going to see is u a broad rotation of all of these um traditional venture capitalist back into the market and that will actually have an effect of bidding up some of these stupid ideas um we're starting to see this like I I've gotten calls from from friends at other firms who are just like hey what do you think of this deal should I do this like I don't know I don't really know anything about crypto they're building a stable coin oh they're building an infrastructure for you know payments using stable like all of these businesses are starting to come back with the broad opening of the lens of crypto is back in Vogue but I think that the dumb money is also going to follow I

don't think it's going to be in the tiger Global you know level of crazy 2021 but I do think that there's going to be a lot of bad deals made um in particular by uh tourist traditional Venture capitalists who don't know what they're talking about with crypto good take completely agree with that yeah good take agreed also I would just say like on your growth uh you know growth isn't coming back growth Equity or you know late stage rounds Avalanche just raised 250 million so did they really all right maybe I'm wrong about that yeah it did but the contract of that is like it's a to a token sale you know blah blah blah but like look all of our peers are raising right now as far

as we can tell and it seems like they will raise is it's going to take a lot longer than probably last time but everyone's going to be cashed up by you know mid year is my guess maybe maybe maybe it takes a little bit longer than that but like you know all the big VCS raised kind of like when 2020 2020 in the last cycle and then kind of they had like 2022 funds like 2022 was a big year for just like there's a lot of crypto fund vintages there so I would say you know the game really only gets started once they're cashed up and and this is furthering of the point where I think we break the the four-year cycle which four-year cycle would mean that we're

peaking basically November of next year I think that we are peaking in terms of price action November of next year but I think that that's actually just the start from a structural perspective because you've got reloaded funds who you know are back in Market making Venture deals it's not going to be I mean the other aspect of Vance's point is basically every fund that raised x amount last cycle is going to come back and raise about 0.5x this cycle and so it's not it's not going to be the same you know massive funds that are that are going out and and being able to raise the best funds will be able to raise their fund size that they want but the vast majority of the funds are are smaller funds this this go around so there's less Capital broadly but I I do

think that the market structure bill and the reload of fresh VC capital is is denim make for you know the start of a structural bullish Market basically this time next year I completely agree with that I think there's a there's a lag effect in terms of when prices and business activity Peak and you saw that in 2021 versus like block works we had our best year ever 2022 um when everything was nuking and so there there is definitely like a lag effect I think that ends up happening um and one thing just on the note of uh like IPOs and there's kind of Being A Tale of Two Cities of like more protocols that have tokens versus more traditional Equity based companies I in the same way that like Sal just has this market for where

you launch meme coins I do think in general the Dynamics of launching tokens is so attractive that it's I think you're going to start to see more of a distinction between like is the is the path to like go public and you know you know be on US capital markets or do you just launch a token and that's your equivalent of a liquidity event and over time I think just moves more towards you just launch a token and it's just a separate Capital Market and this is why the market structure bill is going to be such a seminal moment it it provides a path of entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship that doesn't require you going through the NASDAQ IPO yeah so that's like that's not we're not going to prove that out on a one-year time Horizon but that's a

mental model I think um I think I think we will have the structure of it this time next year yeah um okay one one more um well one I'd be curious to get your guys take on this I feel like I've voiced this before but I do think that Tik Tok ends up becoming more important uh as a as a conduit for new money and new retail young people whatever you want to call it um that it has been historically it just does it get banned no I'm Trump and Jeff Y and in in to interesting yeah I would probably be on the I actually just don't know I'd be making something up so I'm not I'm not really sure going to the Supreme Court

in January yeah okay I've got one more for you guys and this is a little bit more on the pessimistic side so you guys walk me back from theist but I think on defi uh one thing that I've I mean you guys have probably follow this polygon Bridge drama um but it's I find it to be a pretty interesting discussion so Sam kazian actually came on an episode belel like a year and a half ago and just very very clearly Illustrated the the connection to me between like a lot of these D5 protocols that you think of as being very different under the hood from a balance sheet perspective look very similar like Bridges lsts stable coins lending like borrow lend markets it's it's all pretty similar right it's like there's the liabilities are like user

assets and then the assets of the protocol are you know something that you put into U you can either hold it in full Reserve which is what Bridges do today they just give you like a synthetic um you know obligation of the bridge you know to operate on base or optimism or polygon whatever um and then users yeah huh I said these iio users good as money these IUS are as good as money right um and I can link steakhous Financial actually did a really great uh if anyone wants to nerd out about this like they did a really great um overview of of the the transformation that's actually happening here but in general there's a little bit of a a push and blast was the first one that kind of got this which is hey we've got a bunch of assets that are just sitting in this

lock contract like we should just have these earn yield um as soon as you do that the bridge looks a little bit more like a you know it's a net interest margin it's a banking it's a little bit more like a banking type business and and then the other Trend too is you know you've got these um kind of vertically Integrated Solutions a little bit like fluid is a good example of this where you're routing liquidity for the decks through borrow lend protocols and so kind of when you squint at this the the it looks a little bit more like banking you know you're in you're chasing Capital efficiency so you're routing liquidity through multiple different products like just look a little bit riskier um to me and I would I don't know I don't have a solid prediction around this I don't think anyone's going

to blow up necessarily or anything like that but I would just be careful to not overe extrapolate why D5 performed so well last cycle because it was just way over collateralized to yeah if you start re hypothecating assets and uh you know you try to maximize Capital efficiency it's riskier than it used to be so that would just be like a trend that I see happening I'd be curious to get your guys take on that I I I agree with a lot of that I I I do think um look what happened after the the subprime mortgage crisis is that everybody started to look for other subprime risk and I think what we will probably fall into as an

industry is like rehypothecation bad like no no no no no can't do that you know high flow or low fdv or high high fdv low float tokens bad because you can use that for asset like all of that stuff I think we overfit to previous traumas that um probably don't necessarily materialize again in real size um and and so I think we're just GNA be like as an industry it's going to be extremely sensitive to anything that looks and feels and and could potentially be something similar to what we saw in 2022 and and so I I I broadly think it's going to be overblown in terms of risk um I do think that doing malicious or nefarious things is bad um and just

being open and transparent with it like blast is open and transparent with the fact that hey you send us your e we stake it you the protocol ear yield like that's how it works um and I think you just have to be open and transparent with it and that's how you solve it it is the first unauthorized use of retail Capital this cycle so like you know it's definitely a milestone but if it's disclosed in the right way I honestly don't mind it um as long as we're not like lending it to market makers under collateralized I think like that's like the the bridge that is too far or line on financial statements long on financial statements and frankly like we haven't seen any of that yet and it hasn't even really been close and you know people used to lend you money based on like your Twitter handle it's like it

doesn't happen anymore or or or Kyle from three Aros signs a letter on behalf of Aros saying that they are solvent bro you're not solvent um yeah I it's a it's definitely a signpost for where the bull market is and and just just you know people trying to pull out the stops to make their token frankly have fundamentals and and you know what's really crazy is like I think if you ask most people uh they would say polygon is in like a tough position there's a lot of chains that are fast and cheap there's a lot of chains a lot of stuff going on in them but in 2020 in 2021 polygon was like you know it was just going to eat all of e market share it

was going to be the only L2 it's just crazy how things Chang yeah and I think the the I I agree with what you guys are saying as well I I I generally think that this is inevitable it's just a better business model what polygon is describing here because you could do things like uh you know if you have basically a net interest margin business you don't have to charge people fees right on bridging and things like that so I think it's I view it as just being inevitable I just think we should go in with eyes wide open and be smart about it like maybe maybe here instead of um you know co-opting users that already Bridge their assets just make it for New users and they get to opt in or something like that I don't know whatever it is uh I think if it's done

correctly and risk managed properly I view it as inevitable so we might as well just make sure we get it right be my open and transparent that's all you need yeah totally all right pH that's those are the predictions I had any any closing ones any ones that we missed or any I guess just thoughts going into the new year we didn't get to I think people are not not bullish enough like I I'm I'm I am perplexed I'm befuddled why people are like yeah it tops out at 150 bro it's like 30% away from where we were two days ago similar mindset I think people are either not bullish enough or like way

too bullish on the wrong assets that's kind of my my framing it's like you know people are like fcoin is going to flip Dogecoin this cycle it's like what logic underpins that other than far coin being funny I'll probably eat these words too at some point no dude I know it's it's so true that you know what a lot of uh there's a very similar logic pattern that emerges here which is it's basically imagine if this flipped that what would happen and it's just you can't really refute that right like yeah if that flipped if that was a 20x from here that would be sick but you know there's a there's a little bit of a gravitation towards that style of logic and arguments and thinking and what you

see getting engagements on Twitter so I don't know if you're listening to this and you haven't been through Cycles in the past like take all of those posts with a massive grain of salt I would say and uh don't don't totally Lose Yourself either in the sauce um so I would say my my broader like probably more realistic approach um to what 2025 brings is that this is the year that we truly do get legitimized as an industry and it's what what you had with the liquidity SLO of 2021 was everybody walked away from 2020 and they were just like okay well that was fake because everything was fake like it doesn't count and there weren't real users there wasn't really adoption

there wasn't real consumer experience I think all of those get solved this year but then also the legitimization of having a new legislative framework for this industry and I think 2021 we walked out of the Year 2025 we walked out of the Year being like okay we are very clearly one of the top two Tech Industries within the us and we are protected as such that's a great take I love that take I completely agree let's end on that let's end on that all right fellas this was a good one another fun year uh under the uh on the books with you guys and yeah look forward to a very bullish 2025 it's going to be BL give me fun later [Music]