Our 2026 Crypto Predictions

Transcript

I think Ripple has a higher probability than pretty much any other crypto network in the top 10 to reach that all-time high. Whereas I'm very bearish Ethereum going back to its all-time high. Wow. All right. >> I think Santi just really wants to be on that first clip in the beginning. Like that's what's happening here. >> Santi like wrote on a whiteboard then the community is on Twitter. He's like how can I troll each and every one of these? >> Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in

the company's funds or projects discussed. Playing music maybe next time, you know, like we all kind of run into this new music. >> Yeah, bring your ukulele. >> Okay, Rob. Rob does strike you as a ukulele guy. >> Big ukulele guy. >> Big ukulele guy. Actually, like I was actually more like a banjo guy growing up. I don't know if you knew this, but you know, from >> Don't tell people that. Don't tell people that. >> Got it. Got it. Well, anyways, uh this is the the episode we've been waiting for. We are going to spend the time doing uh about maybe I don't know 10 15 20 minutes at the top talking about 2025 review some of our predictions and then spend the majority of the time talking about where we think things are going

our 2026 predictions. Um but quickly before we do that quick uh congratulations is in order Rob. I saw you join the uh digital assets market subcommittee of the CFTC. That's pretty cool. So congrats. >> I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm excited to um you know, just be able to be a part of kind of shaping the new era of regulation for the space. >> Yeah, I was I was laughing seeing that because I know how much you like to shill your port codes and how much you are a defender of the port co. So, I'm picturing you in like some meeting and you're like just every sentence is some dragonfly port.

>> Well, I am sure that prediction markets will be a topic of conversation uh going forward. >> Unbiased takes only on who should win that. >> Awesome. >> Well, no. I mean, no, but but in all seriousness, right, like this is about furthering the industry and furthering and bringing, you know, common sense regulation and rules to um a space that is, you know, innovating very quickly and like reinventing financial rails. And so, uh, everybody wins when we do that. And so, yeah, I'll definitely not be shilling any port codes or, you know, trying to be biased around who would actually win. I would just be biased around making sure that we, you know, continue to push forward innovation.

>> Yep. Nice. Nice diplomatic way to put that. I like it. All right, let's get into 2025 review. Rob, you were not with us when you made these. You probably got wiser, smarter, better looking since creating these, obviously, as with your, you know, involved empire episode, but let's look at some of your 2025 predictions. Do you want to walk us So, you had 15 of these. Um, do you want to walk us through maybe some of the highlights of these, what you got right and what you got wrong? >> Yeah. All right. Uh, so I actually I tweeted out that I gave myself like a B or B+ on this. Um, I probably got like, you know, call like 10 of them at least like partially right. But the ones that I were really really bad at, I'll start

there actually because I think you like started on the bad ones. >> Yeah. >> Were uh one that the total crypto market cap would hit 7.5 trillion. Uh so that is um a big miss. uh I think for all of us honestly that was that was number 15 >> and uh also the the one right before that that uh the the dollar would actually continue to stay strong. So US stable coins did proliferate but um and they continue to be used even as part of really as part of like national security and continuing to be part of the monetary policy. But that said, um everything else that the Trump administration has done has been uh you know, weakening the dollar and so it's been a been a really really bad year for

for the dollar. Um that said, probably the thing that was most right on was prediction markets. So I think in in number seven, I said that um we see significant growth from prediction markets uh this year. And I think there's a lot of people that are still pretty dubious about that because they said oh like you know poly market grew into the election but then you know it's only election product and you know we were obviously um you know very uh very bullish on prediction markets having put a bunch of money into poly market and that turned out to be right um and you know there's a lot of stuff on here specifically around call it decentralized finance continuing to gain market share which was it did gain market share it wasn't quite as um I think quite as big as I I thought it

was. Spot did hit about 20% of total uh spot volume indexes versus sexes. Derivatives hit 20% as well, but they didn't stay there. And so um that's one where I think you know direction of travel has been right. >> You had two um you had two interesting stable coin ones. So number eight was Coinbase buys circle just before or within 12 months of the IPO and M&A picks up otherwise but mostly in smaller aqua hire type situations as tradfire acquireers remain cautious. Your other interesting stable coin one was Tether market share drops to 50% or lower fueled by continued USDC resurgence and explosive growth of optimized use case specific stable coins. Uh you got both these wrong.

>> Well, you know, I'm going to give myself a little bit on eight, right? So, Coinbase obviously hasn't bought Circle yet. I still have uh like six months. So, you know, don't don't count me out yet. I said within 12 months after IPO. Uh the that said, I mean, considering how well circle's performed in the public markets, like you know, I think that's less likely today. Um, however, on the M&A side, like it I'm pretty much right that it picked up, but it mostly only picked up with cryptonative acquirers, right? So, all of the big acquisitions this year have been done by Coinbase, they've been done by Kraken.

>> Um, there really hasn't been M&A yet by big, at least like Splashy M&A by traditional buyers. There's been some rumored stuff. You know, obviously the Mastercard Zero hash has been rumored, but, you know, let's see what happens there. It's been a long time. So that, you know, doesn't, you know, imply anything good. And then there's been a lot of acquireers. So I think I was I was relatively right to be more bearish on the M&A market than I think you were, for instance, and then I think a lot of other people were. >> Yeah. >> To start the year. >> Uh the Tether thing, it's also the direction of travel. So the Tether has lost market share this year. They've gone down to about 60%. Not 50%. It's been slower than expected. But also the thing I was probably most surprising to be or it was most surprising to me that

I was wrong about this year was that like stable coins continued to do well and it took more market share in terms of crossber payments but it didn't grow nearly as quick as I thought they would in terms of issuance in terms of like real volume. I I think that is just um I think I'm wrong based on timing but not in terms of like the direction of travel but um that has been uh one that I've been been a little bit surprised on and I do believe as you know stable coin usage and we'll talk about a little bit about that today in 2026 predictions continues to pick up I do think tether will continue to lose market share they'll still do an incredible job obviously and be the largest but >> continue you you uh you nailed the regulatory predictions you said stablecoin legislation and a strategic

Bitcoin reserve legislation oh you I mean you didn't get the Bitcoin reserve thing right but >> no no I was I was right about this okay so um >> you got right >> no no no so so yeah so I got that right right so what ended up happening I I would get myself right about this so I said stable coin legislation would get passed the CRA SAB121 would be repealed both those things happened um first half of the year and then uh I thought we would get a strategic bitcoin reserve legislation but we basically did right because the um what what ended up happening while we get a its own bill.

Right. What we did end up uh getting was that we got a writer that said that we wouldn't sell Bitcoin in uh the Genius Act. >> That's right. And you were right about this. The But you said the strategic Bitcoin reserve would be mostly toothless and just for headlines. So, and you also nailed this. You nailed that. Market structure would get pushed to 2026 and ultimately after the Oh, you think market structure Oh, I'm curious if you still believe this that market structure gets pushed to after the next midterm elections, but we can hold that until the 2026 predictions. Um, but yeah, I thought this this was good. Anything else in your 15 predictions that you think uh you had a nice call with embedded wallets? You said embell embedded wallets, shout out privy start to take significant market share from general purpose browser wallets. Um it's

very tough to actually measure the market share of wallets I've found but uh you know embedded wallets obviously and pre specifically obviously had a massive year. So I think that was a nice prediction and then you had a nice prediction on ICOs and launchpads. Yeah, I mean the ICO launch pads I gave myself like kind of mostly right here because what I said was that they would be come back to relevance. Uh but you know there would be a lot of like anti-VC conversation but that we would become kind of a wash in a lot of scams and rugs. I don't think that actually happened. We didn't come with washing skins and rugs, but that I expected that founders would continue to basically do this hybrid financing strategy where most of the financing actually comes from VCs, but they do this as, you know, maybe a way to align incentives and

bring people, you know, people around the table and that has mostly been right. There's been a lot more people using launchpads, but it's not in any way replacing VCs or VC capital. And I think that was a lot of the conversation this time last year. >> Yeah. Yeah. The last two and then we'll I want to move on to Santiago's are um you said a trady institution will launch a purpose-built ETH L2. You also said uh a large US bank will launch its own stable coin. I had very similar 2025 predictions on that front. Um yeah, large bank didn't launch its own stable coin. You did however get, you know, Brian Moyahan saying BFA was exploring it. You had JP Morgan um you know rolled out USD deposit token, right? So it's we give >> I think deposit tokens I'm going to like I gave myself this to be honest like

deposit tokens stable coins I think it's close enough >> oh this tells a lot about the standard that we hold ourselves to I didn't give myself this one I should have given myself this >> you should let me grade you this is Harvard grading okay >> and it's not a trady institution did not launch an L2 but you know people like Robin Hood did so >> yeah so awesome >> we got a cur here Jensen >> well I'll answer that after I see how your predictions did Santi let's uh let's Let's get into yours. Santi, you um if I remember correctly, I mean, we we we had a great episode at the beginning of the year, but yours were a little more of just like thesis on what the year will look like. Maybe you want to walk us through like some highlights and what you got right and what you got

wrong here. >> Yeah. And look, I I published 2025 cheating a little bit, which was under the assumption that I'm never going to it's so hard to predict what would happen in a year, but it was more Trump had just gotten elected and you had a visibility into the regulatory environment changing. And so I was like thinking more about what are the big tectonic shifts over the next kind of two to three four years. Um however I will grade myself on what happened this year versus what I thought would you know happen in four years. And I I just published a piece around really more you know 2026 but it's very much focusing on what happened in 25. Um so the first point was look return to Spursion um is

going to continue to be a thing in crypto. I I just continue to believe that as the industry would mature, you would have big disparities whereas before it was so tightly correlated. I would I think that very much happened this year. You have clear outperformance of Bitcoin and hype and and a few other protocols and the vast majority of other protocols just kind of it wasn't like other cycles where you could have just punted a thematic and it you would have done super well. I think it it shows up in the unrealized losses and a lot of the kind of the pain that you're seeing in crypto markets. So, I I would say that I was largely correct there.

Um >> I I agree with that. I think that was a I think that was a good take. >> Yeah, I think before the episode, one of my biggest predictions, I didn't post it here, but was that, you know, Nvidia would be more important than Jerome Powell. Uh, I think that was just a reflection of the AI trade >> and and how it was so, you know, important. And I think >> I actually think that was your take of the year. Correct. I think I wouldn't underplay. I think that was your take of the year because at the time it, you know, it's funny looking back at these predictions because they feel the ones you get right feel obvious. It's like, oh, of course he said that stable coins would be big, but at the time, you know, I think we, the three of us pushed to

make nonobvious predictions. And the one about, you know, everyone was talking about interest rates so much. Interest rates, interest rates, interest rates. And I remember when you said, you know, the market would hinge on Nvidia earnings more than it would hinge on Jerome Pal's interest rate talks. And that was not an obvious thing then, but it's so clearly obvious today. >> Yeah. Here's one where um in investing it, you could be right about the thesis, but wrong in the expression of it or the timing of it. And so I was very um kind of bearish on I was I was my point was there's going to be a very clear divide between the have and the have nots like chains like incredibly scale and that was at the time where like Salana was really having a lot of kind of coming off of a lot of memecoin activity.

Um I I would have thought that there would be again more disparity. It would have been like way like the divide would have been much more apparent in the crypto asset prices. But I would say like now that prices have come down, everything just gets chopped pretty mercenarily. And so I think um even the deployment of certain chains like Robin Hood launching as an L2, but you have then Tempo launching as an L1 with a muscle of of paradigm. So I I I think I was I would give myself like I was I was wrong there. I think I was too optimistic around what I was seeing that like a network like Salana has been able to process so

many different so much more transaction in the value capture versus like Ethereum L1. But a big part of this is like I probably overintellectualize that where it's like how do these things trade and I think they just continue to trade based on you know good brand and mimetics and Tom Lee going on TV telling retail that Ethereum is going to go to 62,000 or something like that. You know it's it's very much not like price to revenue you know insert vest Patagonia vest meme.

>> Yeah. I like I like looking at these predictions for for you because you know I think you and Hib have had these great conversations around valuations and it became kind of like a yeah like you said kind of a meme of you talking about these valuations but you've been talking about this since January right where you said most of the current valuations are rich and predicated on some future state. This isn't something that you just started talking about in the last 30 days. Yeah, exactly. And that was I'm glad you bring that up because a lot of people are saying, "Wait a minute, you've invested on the venture side a lot of these projects." Uh like why are you so skeptical overnight about valuations? And I mean I I think there's a record here of you know I I was coming into the year thinking we got to we got to put

numbers on the dashboard because you know we have a very clear regulatory 180 and once protocols like like once you have a protocol like really showing you what mainstream adoption looks like then I think it just exposes some of the others that have not been able to scale have not been able to acquire customers. And I don't know how much of that like played out this year candidly cuz you know look I mean Ethereum has been kind of stuck in this range for the last four years. It hasn't like Ethereum like ETH um and Salana but but you know Salana also came down a lot of transaction fees have come down. So, I don't know. I I think I could have been better at just inspecting like and when I went back and

looked at is like what percentage of revenue of these chains is tied to like certain types of activities and I would say that like I think the market is sufficiently smart in understanding that mo most of these a large part of the revenue and generation is happening from uh just speculation and memecoin activity. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Anything else that was a highlight here? I mean, one one that I might highlight maybe that you got wrong was you said every major app that hits scale will launch their own chain. I had something similar. Um, the app chain thesis did not really play out this year. I think a lot of people went into the year uh probably overweight what hyper the hyperlquid strategy of being an app that launched a chain and this didn't really play out.

>> Yeah, I agree with you. Other than Robin Hood launching their own L2 and Stripe launching their own L1, >> I would say I would have perhaps maybe we're a bit too early on this. Maybe you're going to see Poly Market for instance, and I have no knowledge of this, launch their own. Um, so that was that was a miss. Um, >> I think some of these are are probably though like for something like that like I don't know we should talk about this more in the going in the in the future, but it does still seem like that's a topic of uh that might just be a timing issue or >> Yeah.

>> One thing that's interesting here is you said stable coins are the you said DIN and stable coins are the killer combo to scale and onboard the next mass wave of users on chain and retain them. You got half of it right with stable coins. Deep um yeah, Deep Deepen I feel like didn't have a good year. I'm, you know, it's actually part of my 2026 prediction, so we'll punt on talking about Deepen into too much detail, but I don't think Deepen had the massive year that some people thought it would have. >> Certainly not on the token price. >> Yeah, >> I would say on the adoption front, yes. Like you you have Helium posting pretty impressive numbers in terms of number of uh users growth and the on the MVNO side. Hivemapper continues to make progress. But again, I don't think the

market's dumb. The biggest problem that I think we're going to talk about in into next year predictions is this equity token disconnect um value acrruel disconnect. You're seeing it at a you're seeing it with Helium. You're seeing it with a lot of these projects that had to design tokconomics in a very different regulatory environment. They're they have that overhang that needs to be cleaned up or they will really struggle and it opens up an opportunity for a new player to attack the same opportunity with better tokconomics and value acrruel and and so that was yeah I definitely was very hyped up and and I still am on deep end as a as a use case but the if you were if you look at that and said

none of this financial advice and you said oh I'm going to go buy a basket of deep in a basket of deep in was probably one of the worst performers other than GameFi. It it was it got I mean it did not perform well at all. In fact, I can't think of a single deepend project that did well. >> Yeah. From a token price perspective. I agree. You know, one thing one thing that not none of us had was anything around RWAs and tokenization, right? We had like the market cap of RWA's tripled, right? Hit like 17 billion or 18 or 19 billion. And you've got like Black Rockck's Bidd is the reserve asset behind a lot of, you know, onchain cash products. We It's interesting that none none of us mentioned that.

>> You know, >> yeah. >> But again, I mean, >> the thing with the RWAS though, right, and and this is still true, is that the by far the largest product there is continues to be figures helock product, right? And you know with Figurelock product that's you know it's it's almost yeah it's a tokenized product but like it's within their like closed loop ecosystem and like you know their um it's not something that like necessarily has call it like I think like broad use cases in crypto and DeFi, right? And so I think like that's been part of it. I think this is also what's happening with like a lot of the conversation around like Canton, right? which is that you know there's a lot of people talking about Canton and like oh it's really interesting they do all of this repo

volume and they're using all of these real world use cases but um again there's like it doesn't have any kind of movement uh or interoperability with not not even other Canton networks let alone anybody outside of Canton right and so I think there's a a little bit of um a wait and see about how tokenized assets go from like these like basically you know closed loop distributed databases to like you know something that you know affects like the that is more open source. >> Yeah, I think that's a good point. Santi, anything else on your predictions before I want to get into my 25 review and then we can get into 26.

>> I'll be quick here. Uh I came into the year thinking that um crypto projects with big treasuries should be very strategic in using them to acquire and grow into the valuations. I think I was probably one of the first ones to really really be very vocal about that. I think the only really project that did that was Ripple. And and then I had another one which was wrong which was I said you know um narratives will matter less and it's going to be harder to sustain that but then you had the company that has been probably the best in the space to paint the narrative also go out and use their treasury and I think that's coming into 2026 I I think it will be interesting to reunderite

a thesis on something like Ripple which a lot of people the crypton natives have and mocking them, but they've they've done some really interesting acquisitions that we've talked about here during the year that as I look to next year, I'm actually more optimistic about Ripple and their beating muscle than any other probably any other project in the space other than of course inver >> they all Yeah, exactly. Second. Yeah, exactly. >> Wait, can can you say that again? You are more bullish on Ripple's BD effort than any other project in >> 100% 100%. >> 100%.

>> Do you own XRP? >> I do not. because it is it is hard for me to underwrite that and I wrote about it in the blog piece like it's just hard for what I'm doing. I just don't have the time. I'm not a trader. But I will say it's it's one of those things that the cryptonators have been wrong every year. They fight the momentum. They fight the narrative. They fight the memes. And and Ripple is a interesting exercise where they they actually might grow into their valuation given the acquisitions that they've made. Like it's impressive. Like they they raised a really big round this year. They did how many acquisitions, Rob? Three acquisitions. Hidden road. A couple like three or four.

>> G Treasury. Uh big. >> Yeah. And they did rail. So those are the three that come out to mind. There's probably more. There is a couple more, I think, but three that are like I think really sizable. >> The last thing I'll say holistically, I went into the year being quite um having a sense of urgency that we needed to put numbers on the dashboard to justify valuations and I was very nervous about valuations. across the board. Uh and and as I look to now of which project actually executed the most was Ripple because because I I will say Tom Lee is not a I don't see that as BD even though Ethereum cleaned up its act on the margin. It is a very disconnected. It's all I I think it actually does more harm to Ethereum having a figure like Tom Lee

publicly say one thing and privately say another to his investors and then Ethilla change its tune and sell ETH like these DATs are not your beady muscle that you want contrary to like that that that's no one really kind of predicted the DAT game here I think maybe you did have I mean that like oh >> who could have right >> but what I'm saying is Ripple I think is a force not to be reckoned with. Wow. All right. All right. Let's bring Let's get Brad on the pod in 2026. That's the That's a prediction. Um Santi, >> I'm not saying it's worth what it is today. I'm just saying it it has strategically used its token >> to show at least >> I want to ask you a question because I

and we're this is I think this conversation needs to come back up on the 26 side but do you think that XRP or Ripple equity will be worth more in terminal value? >> I mean what what is your terminal value in 10 years? >> Yeah, 10 years let's call it. >> What's it at now? Uh what is the token at 2008 180 >> Ripple is sitting at ladies and gentlemen $188 XRP fully diluted valuation of 188 billion. >> Do I think that that >> and what's Ripple like 40 40 billion.

>> Yeah. Although that there was like some uh reports that came out that was basically saying that the there was like downside protection given to that investment which means it's probably not you know call it what >> yeah so the the foundation has roughly 90 billion of XRP I believe or give or take >> it's probably less than that at 180 but yeah >> less than that okay do I think that they can I this is I wrote about in my blog piece I think 2026 is going to be a really tough year across the board in crypto and across and and and equity markets. >> I'm I'm I'm moving us past this conversation because I want to get us into 2026 and then we'll we'll come back to >> I'll answer this question. I think Ripple has a higher probability than pretty much any other crypto network in

the top 10 to if everything goes down, they actually have a higher probability to reach that all-time high. Whereas I'm very bearish Ethereum reaching it all going back to its all-time high. You're more bullish on Ripple hitting an alltime high than Ethereum >> and ETH. Yes. >> Wow. All right. All right. >> I think Santi just really wants to be on that first clip in the beginning. That's what's happening here. >> The number Santi like wrote on a whiteboard the community is on Twitter. He's like, "How can I troll each and every one of these?"

>> Listen, I I I think the most important it's it's sort of like distribution is king, but I also come around product is super important. I think Ripple, this is the last point I made is that decentralized product strategy in BD does not work. Decentralized security but centralized product decision-m is the way to win. Ethereum does not have that. You had Justin Drake, right? Leave the stripe across the board like ETH as an asset is not worth 300 and whatever billion 350 billion, dude. Ripple at least is 182 billion. Visa 600 billion. Now we're we're using we're valing everything on a relative basis.

I think Ripple has more breathing room to use its currency to buy real businesses to build distribution and a product and has more time to figure this out whereas some of the other projects do not because the market is losing its patience. >> All right, I'm moving us forward before people turn off this episode. I love you Santi. Um all right, I'm going to cruise through mine and then we'll get into it. Um the ones that I got right really right were uh okay I'll start with the ones I got right and then I'll get I got many of these very wrong ones I got right I said stable coins are going to become great for crypto's brand banks will issue banks issuing their own stables increases consumer trust and accelerates global adoption of crypto normies and regulators understand crypto understand stable coins crypto finally

has a use case this leads to stable coin legislation passing in the US I got that right ICOs we'll see a hund00 million ICO but unlike 2017 ICOs these are more buttoned up on actual platforms. This gets seen as crowdfunding's golden moment. Institutional investors participate in these ICOs which drives significant capital uh could which drives significant capital. Um I got that right. Pump Fund, how much did Pump Fund raise? Pump Fund did like a $600 million ICO. Monad couple hundred. >> Yeah, Monad was like 187 and was oversubbed.

>> Yeah. >> Um and I think Pump Yeah. was a little bit higher, right? It was it was like 800 million. So uh another one I got right was M&A. I said we'll see a crypto company acquire a non-crypto company for 100 million. Few examples of this biggest one is probably Kraken acquiring Ninja Trader for like 1.5 billion. Um what I didn't get right is I said this will be an L1 or L2 because they have the funds. This was kind of playing off Santiago's thesis that you know these companies these protocols with huge treasuries had to make some acquisitions. I I said we're going to get another $1 billion crypto acquisition. I think we saw that with Coinbase and Darabit. Um, uh, a couple that I got wrong. I said both memes and AI agents will win. I would say both of them definitively

lost. Um, I said one of the biggest chains will be from a chain will be a chain that an application builds. I definitely got that one wrong. Um, I thought that centralized crypto companies would start launching tokens and the thought process here was uh overvalued valuations from 2021 and 2022 combined with an extreme mismatch in equity versus token valuations would drive this. I I thought there were a lot of companies that had raised it, you know, five, six, seven, eight, n billion dollars didn't see any way to get out of that and get liquidity and exit and so they'd start launching tokens. I think I got that wrong. Um, I thought a Bitcoin fork of sorts would become contentious. You're kind of seeing this. I don't know if you guys

have been following Nick Carter and the quantum resistant Bitcoin stuff. You're starting to see some contention there, but not to the point where there's a fork. And I got this extremely wrong. I said social would get hot again. Uh, people would build apps on top of existing platforms that pull in your social data. Something will happen with Instagram and Tik Tok to get this token uh to get tokens. Creates a weird convergence with normies. Uh, normies flood in, celebrities flood in, and that's the top. Uh, we saw the opposite. Farcasters pivoting away from social. Maybe the closest thing to this was Zora in the middle of the year, but yeah, I got that wrong. So, this episode of Empire is brought to you by VanX onchain economy ETF, Node. If you feel like you are constantly missing

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always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply. Another drum roll, please. Santi, don't do it. Let's get into 2026. The way that we're going to do this is we all have a bunch of predictions. instead of doing like Santi's predictions, Rob predictions, Rob's predictions, my predictions, um each of us are just going to throw out one of us will throw out a prediction and if the someone else has similar predictions in that bucket, we're going to talk about that topic. We'll talk about it then move on. Santi, kick us off with your first prediction for 2026.

Um I'll go straight to it. Ethereum lower or higher at the end of the year, next year? Well, this is your this >> basket basket of I'll I'll spare Rob the regulatory uh you know the compliance headache. A basket of L1's lower or higher? >> Well, what's your prediction? Lower. I'm guessing lower. I did not have a prediction around this, Rob. Did you? >> No. And I I don't agree that we'll have I mean, it depends on your basket, right? I think we'll just see more dispersion, right? And well, but I I would guess that if you took like, you know, call it the ones that you think are doing well today, whatever. ETH, Salana, name whatever ones else you want

to name Santi. Um, I would guess they're higher next year. >> All of them? >> No. Like what Rob's saying is if you take a basket of like the top five to seven, those will go will be down at the end of 26. Rob, you think they'll be up? >> Yes. >> All right. Prediction number one in the books. Rob, give us a prediction. uh stable coin start card settlement. So the there's been a lot of talk about these like you know stable coin neo banks they continue to just skyrocket next year. I think that right now Visa is saying that they're doing annualized 3.5 billion of stable coin card settlement.

They announced they're starting to open that up for banks in the US. That was 250 million uh back in May. It's been growing really quickly. I think that goes from 3.5 billion to over a hundred billion. And I think Visa starts talking about it on every single earnings call and starts breaking it out in their >> uh in their earnings >> next year >> within the next year. Yeah, >> I had very I had two very I had two predictions around stable coins. So my predictions around stable coins where I said stablecoinbacked USD bank accounts will become a very mainstream product in at least a few emerging markets. There's going to be very visible um like yeah capital flow effects of this. I think you'll see central banks start talking about stable coins because of the geopolitical uh impact that it'll have

in those places. These are essentially USD bank accounts in the front, stable coins in the back. You'll see fintexs and banks in emerging markets launch these USD accounts, but you also see upstart competitors. Um you're already starting to see a couple of those and I think you'll just see Yeah, Rob, I agree with you. You'll see a lot more. I also said uh the stablecoin conversation will expand beyond just payments to uh international payments uh crossber payments AI agents and treasury management. Stable coins will become the default settlement asset for at least three categories. AI agents, corporate treasury cash management and crossber payments. Um so I agree. Yeah, same page as you Rob. I >> I've got a lot of stable coin uh 2026 predictions if that surprises anybody

out there. Uh but the the cardament is one of I I agree with a bunch of what you said. So I think um I also had that I think they will over 25% of crossber payments will be done in stable coin rails by the end of of 26. >> I said 30% actually which is an aggressive aggressive >> I mean both of us are aggressive. >> 30% of international payments. >> Let's give some context. That's less than 1% today >> probably. Yeah. I mean it's $200 trillion market right? like we can verify that there's probably a few hundred billion dollars done. I mean I maybe it depends I mean JP Morgan Kexus so it depends on how you think about Kexus right in these types of products but if JP Morgan Kexus is always doing

already doing a trillion dollars of volume then maybe it's um one to two% >> there was a there was a Mackenzie estimate that said 3%. My gut says that's a little high >> wrong. I actually actually I was going to send it to a large corporate because we were pitching to them and and I was like this feels wrong. We inspected that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, >> that exactly. It's wrong. It's wrong. >> Uh it's a B team in Mackenzie that is putting these reports up. Uh I don't think it goes to 30%. I think it grows a lot, but it's like sub 10%. >> Yeah. Not I mean nothing like it's very tough to grow something 30x a year. Um >> dude, that that just will not happen.

>> Well, here here's why here's why I would say it's possible, right? Because uh right now most of crossber payments happens, you know, correspondent banking system, right? uh JP Morgan connects us and JP Morgan and they're launching the tokenized deposit platform. They're, you know, continuing to do more of these pilots. If we see more of the banks start to try to do, you know, tokenized deposits and tokenized um, you know, assets and use, call it stable coin rails or token blockchain rails to do these types of of products, then you could see it just blow up really quickly. It's definitely not true that like all of these like you know airwalles and wises and you know alternate APMs of the world can grow it that quickly. The banks have to be a big

part of that otherwise it'll just be you know >> you know here's the counter though these banks move so slowly Rob that even if the end I I actually think we are going to be right directionally on a three to five year time horizon. I think I will when I publish these I'm going to adjust my 30% number down because at hearing saying it out loud I don't think the banks will move fast enough. I was every time I >> is already doing it, right? So, like they could just start to push that forward, right? Like, you know, I I don't know. It feels like people have been working on this for a while. So, this could be the year.

>> Here's like a as an aside, I feel like every time I interview someone like on the and they show me a pro form of what a business does with crypto. It's like what where I think we're missing in a lot of these assumptions is what's the incentive and who's the gatekeeper there and do they have the incentive to actually implement that? And I'm not sure like when you say 30% like I hear you DP Morgan could turn it on. PayPal could you know all these guys could all just I just don't think so I have a prediction. I have a pred I think you're spot on. I have a prediction around this actually. It was my first prediction. I said people are going to start talking about onchain businesses as more efficient. Onchain businesses will start to become a framing for public company CEOs to talk about driving efficiencies.

In the same way that AI became a thing that got mentioned on every earnings call. there was the opportunity of it and then there was the cost reduction of it. I think you'll see start seeing earnings calls and investor letters um and quarterly reports that mention stable coins and onchain rails as a cost or a margin lever and then boom that's that's your incentive to do it. >> Here's a prediction. I would I think a basket of crypto enabled businesses outperforms a basket of crypto infrastructure providers >> by a country mile. And so let's put a finer point to that. Western Union outperforms Salana.

Clara outperformed Circle. And for context, Clara implemented its own stablecoin. >> And has been relative to Circle since they both IPOed has been awful. It's been a dog. >> CLA has. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And Circle is the second best performing IPO or the best performing IPO of the year. >> Circle was. >> Yeah. Circle is. Yeah. Exactly. I think going forward in 2026, if I were to buy today Salon or Western Union, I buy Western Union. If I were to buy CLA or circle, I buy CLA by a country mile because it's mean reversion. You just had CLA trades like a BMPL and then they implement a stable coin and that that the interesting says a second order effects of that. Maybe maybe circle

catches a bid because you know or or paxus goes public. But I I still think that uh to your point Jano businesses that start talking publicly about using not piloting just real usage and it shows up in the margin those businesses will will rerate. >> Yeah. I I I you know I probably my best investment the last two years was just buying Robin Hood somewhere around 20 bucks and uh the only my thesis this is I'm you know peak retail trader here. I saw them buy I think it was Bitstamp was like June of 2024 maybe or like May of 2024 I was like boom they're pushing into crypto load up and it actually wasn't the worst thesis and I think some uh you need two things for it you need

companies that are in my why why I like your cla thing but don't like Western Union is I think there's actually two criteria one is pushing into crypto the second is founderled businesses I think there's too much risk for uh boards and CEOs to push into crypto right now and uh I'm very bullish on founder public companies and less bullish on like you know decision by committee to push on Jane >> and I and I want to put even a fireproof on that too which is that like these businesses still have to be able to go and build product right Western Union has not shown that they can build a usable digital product ever basically right and this is you know they can maybe talk about stable coins and they can you know use rain and use privy and

or I think Maybe they're using turnkey not private I don't know which one and they can use all these service providers but if you just pull together a bunch of service providers if you don't know how to manage and build product internally like it's not going to be able to be something that they can actually distribute right and so I think there's >> there's a reason why there's a reason why trades at a level does the CEO is is crony capitalism the board is terrible if you're listening you know like to have a chat but um I still I still think it's just like a It's it's a rerating that happens. It's like you can buy a terrible asset and it doesn't take much to rerate. And again, if the market I'm thinking a little bit more now, left curve, if the market is just going to go

long stable coins, like why circle the most per the best performing IPO of the year? God damn. If you just know rates go down, that business gets crushed. But retail doesn't think like that, right? And so I'm just saying it trades at a such a low multiple. And it has historically been a a so forgotten. This is one of my core themes, which is I'm bearish techno optimism. I'm long the forgotten companies because they were deemed dead and you can revamp them. And I think I think it doesn't take much. I don't disagree with the founder is not it's not a founder.org but it doesn't take much to to light a fire and then the market wake up to it.

>> I have another prediction um semi-related to this which is uh the DeFi mullet comes back but it comes back 10 times stronger. Full steam ahead for the DeFi mullet. I think you'll basically see most fintexs and brokerages adopt DeFi rails under the hood. Not we've been talking a lot about stable coins, but I think it's lending, it's yield, it's settlement, it's trading. Um the UX will remain very mainstream, right? What you know the the UX of Robin Hood and CLA and Revolute and uh people like that. But behind the scenes, you'll get DeFi. And the reason for this is it's just way easier to you know, Revolute's like I want to like offer like lending and borrowing. Okay, I could go spin up a lend borrow team or I could just integrate with a um or morpho or someone like that. So, >> can can I ask Yeah. Can we can I push

you in that question a little bit which is like do you expect it to be actually like a and morpho and it'll be like kind of public permissionless pools uh or do you expect it to be you know okay we use blockchain rails because it's simpler to you know call it execute atomically across different types of transactions but it's you know call it permission pools right or something that's like specific to each different uh organization >> I think you have to segment the pools I don't know the the final form factor um like I don't know if like morpho gives revolute their own vault or something like that. Like I don't I actually don't know how that works out or per um I don't think it's permissioning in the sense of like hey you have to KYC necessarily but it's permissioning and like we have you have to segment

accounts um you have to do some sort of like you know SMA like separately managed accounts here uh that that would be my take but I do think it'll happen on public blockchains and it'll happen on platforms like a and morpho but the a and morphos and commaminos of the world will figure out how to do that >> who who so what do what do I mean let's make it practical for the folks listening to this stuff should they buy a token. Should they call Stani to buy A Labs equity? Um or should they um buy Stripe equity in the secondary or circle or who's the greatest benefactor? Because like I don't think any of us are disagreeing like DeFi like like more liquidity is going to come on chain. How do you express that thesis?

>> It's interesting. Um I think so if you look at a their liquidity and their brand and their like their liquidity and their brand remains probably one of the most underappreciated moes in crypto. It just it just sticks around. It just stays and it just grows. Um and it's still so much larger than everybody's uh everybody else. Uh the but Morpho has I think grown the most this year from a product and integrations and partnerships perspective and I think Morpho is pretty well positioned to gain market share. I don't own any of them. I don't own Camino or Morpho or a or any of them, Spark or anything like that, but um I think Camino might be the most held asset by blocks research analysts outside of like Bitcoin, ETH, Soul and Hype. Um I know yeah, a lot of funds

that are very long Morpho and then I mean a token, we're recording this on December 23rd, 2025. A token has obviously gotten whacked. Somewhere around these prices is probably a good buy. Yeah, I would say um is it's actually kind of funny, right? So, I think we talked about this last week. There's been so much discussion at the traditional asset managers about like vaults and you know, tokenized assets. Uh I actually I I had a call yesterday with one of the largest asset managers in the world who reached out and they said, "Hey, can you come speak at our leadership summit?" Uh specifically about what is happening on Vaults and these like kind of like tokenized

curated, you know, investment strategies and what that means for our asset management business and like what we should be thinking about doing. I'm actually going I'm going to do that next month, right? And this is one of the largest asset managers world. did the same thing with another asset manager back in October more about stable coins but it's like become a very large uh and very important topic even at the biggest warehouses even at the biggest asset managers about how to think about this um the question becomes I think is does and we are having a a lot of discussion around this with the different corporates I think more gets brought up more than a in terms of infrastructure today at least in the conversations I have but then there's also a lot of conversation around these like more I think specialized vault products that

are have a little bit more bells and whistles for potentially institutions, things like Upshift or um I think there's Midas, uh things like that, right? >> And so I it'll be interesting to see because I think this will be a really really competitive space, but we're going to definitely see a lot of asset managers, warehouses, brokerages enter this space this year. >> Can can you double click on that, Rob? Like cuz um if it becomes more competitive uh crypto protocols the deal making like is moral cutting deals with Coinbase and and who like >> Morpho's already integrated into the two things Coinbase Revolute and I actually think uh like if you pull up the I was playing with the worldcoin app. You go in worldcoin there's like four apps like four things you can do. One of them is

like interact with morpho. So I think as this def mullet becomes a bigger and bigger thing. Morpho is pretty well positioned there. Yeah, BTC uh through the Coinbase app is now over a billion dollars lent I I believe. >> Well, what what is the economic share of that? Like because Circle and Coinbase have that agreement and and Coinbase disproportionately benefits from that? All I'm saying is who has who has more bargaining negotiating power on the table when you're a DeFi protocol competing for a business of Robin Hood or insert financial institution. Do they do they have what are kind of those terms and are they going to be able to defend because my my thesis between 26 is you continue to see adoption but the the value cruel might not happen at at that layer. It might just be captured by

the large financial institutions that just has better lawyers and negotiates out of that contract. Well, I will I will tell you one of the things that I've been talking a lot about on Twitter and I have a general thesis about and this is one of the things I'm going to talk about that to this asset manager's leadership next month is that you have to be close to the customer. Value acural for intermediaries today is going down. And so if you're just a tech layer, right, we continue to see those things underperform. you know, the embedded finance era of just general fintech, you know, has done that was probably the hottest era, one of the hottest things that people were investing in fintech in 2020 and 2021.

And it's most of those companies are not around or they haven't done particularly well, right? And I my belief today and I we've talked about this with the prediction markets, we've talked about this with a bunch of other, you know, types of products. My belief today is you the thesis for everybody in financial services should be get closer to the customer. If you are not closer to the customer, you're more and more likely to get not have a good share of economics, right? And so that that includes these protocols. >> So what do you think of this pred? So one of my predictions, Rob, is about vaults. I said onchain vaults are going to at least two and a halfx their AUM.

Right? Now onchain vaults um AUM is roughly 6 billion. I think it hits at least 15 billion. Um Bitwise had a nice way of putting it. Bitwise said vaults become ETFs 2.0. Um, yeah, I really think vaults will become one of the biggest uh like DeFi narratives of 2026. Agree or disagree? >> Nob brainer. Yeah, I agree. >> Yeah. And what what this will actually kick off is a whole wave of like risk management, infrastructure providers, like basically service providers for the vaults, curators obviously. So yeah, very I it's a it's a prediction I feel pretty confident on. Okay, Santi, give us a prediction, sir.

Um, give it something spicy. I feel like we've been like a little bland. >> Stable. >> I'll give I'll give you this one. Uh, a basket of L1s grossly underperforms a basket of defi of DeFi applications. >> Okay. Okay. >> Like like >> I like I like that >> reason because like L1's this is a 1KX report. Shout out to Lass and those boys. They create a really good um revenue report and it's basically this is the generational pair trade of the year. This is the pair trade of the year I will say and I may be very wrong in the timing by the way.

So here's a setup blockchain like layer ones layer 2s are 90% of the aggregate market cap today in crypto they're they capture less than 12% of the total fees and that trend line has come down quite a lot. Meanwhile, DeFi protocols capture 70% of the fees and account for less than 10% of the market cap. But man, you could have heard me back in the Parfy days say like there's going to be more and more DeFi protocols. Like DeFi is a percentage of crypto market cap. It's going to grow orders of magnitude. And we're not there yet. Four, five, six years later.

Maybe this time's different. Don't believe me, ladies and gentlemen. But I do think that um again my holistic view is that we have a rough time in markets next year in macro and then also certainly in crypto. And so and so you hide in things that have defensibility and revenue because investors just become the revenue meta all of a sudden pops up when prices go down. So I think I actually do like certain DeFi protocols where where you just have continued fee generation against the backdrop that you guys were talking about that I don't disagree with and the market cap is just not not there and that includes a basket of you know a hyperlquid morpho some other stuff in there right because I I get excited about that I've been a DeFi

bull I I still believe in your DeFi mullet so I think like layer ones are just going to rerate down and apps should rerate up because the incremental flow from Claras of the world and banks comes to the apps and I think it's it it they're going to just spit out cash flow. But look, my partner Ben loves Sky and and the framework boys love Sky Maker. You could have been in Maker for the last six years and and and you're in pain, man. So, I don't know. Market's just irrational.

This pod is is Santi's bearish 20 26 pod. Like that is >> Yeah. Yes. I I I am I am very like historically I shied away from I am extremely bearish next year. For sure. For sure. >> So, what do you do? Let me take us in a slightly uh go away from the conversation for a second here. Santi, what do you do if you're this bearish with your port? >> I go to cash. I'm I'm holding 60% cash. >> Wow. >> Yeah. I I I I I I've been selling uh consistently partially because for better or for worse, I just don't have time, but also because a lot's just really priced to perfection. I I'm quite worried. So, and look, it it's it's if if I if I forego a year of gains, I

just think at some point shit's going to get really ugly. May not be 2026, but it likely is 2027. And there's like reasons why I would re-underwrite like I have in my blog post like look that the the the argument here would be like dude the affordability crisis is real so people are always going to want to long like go long the casino thesis because like casinos actually do well during a bare market like downturns but like you just don't see that in the revenues of these base layers. So like I am willing to be like long like structurally crypto and flows but I am quite bearish >> like that pair trade the apps versus the you know chains Will you go long some of the apps?

>> Not right now. No. >> Yeah. >> No. Because No, no, no. Because dude, AI, it takes a mouse fart from Powell or Jerome to derail the entire and crypto. Crypto, by the way, is not going to behave like an uncorrelated asset class in your portfolio. Ladies and gentlemen, it never has. Anyone that tells you is is a scammer. Just don't believe it. It is tripled QQQ in your book. Treat it as such. Size it accordingly. And so I just think >> we've decoupled since since October just in the wrong way. >> Okay. Th like like heavy metals like you should have long actual metal silver.

>> Yeah. Copper hit an alltime high. >> And maybe someone's like look may you're an idiot man. Like mean re you talk about mean reversion. So like the S&P is at 30 times and growth is going to come from AI and like crypto's gone so down and it's going to go up. Like mean revert. But on the other side I'm like no man we haven't we haven't seen pain. You know what I mean? like people are just secondary market of watches is still attractive. People are still buying Birkens on the secondary market. Like I track a lot of these stuffs and you know people are not feeling the pain. I I remember talking to >> I don't actually I don't actually think that's true at the and we don't need to make this a macro pod but if you what I think what we're actually seeing is

we're just seeing the gap widening and the wealth disparity, right? So yes, the Birkin market's still okay. Yes, the the Rolex market is still okay. I mean this it's not what it was in 21, but it's still okay, right? Like yes, you know, equities are continue to hit all-time highs. Uh but like if you look at auto defaults right now, like they're pick they're uh picking up way higher, right? If you look at general consumer sentiment, it's really bad. If you looked at, you know, the um uh the Black Friday sales, right, that was lower than expected and growth has >> Yes. But the the and the market is still up this year >> against >> But this is the point, right? is that the if you have assets and you're rich like that will the market will continue doing well for you and we're this is I

mean this is a much broader conversation >> but explain that point though why why would the market continue to do well like if if you have exposure like shouldn't you like if you're very exposed to markets and they go down because of this issue you're not >> right because the people buying the equities today are the ones who are saying okay well you know AI is going to continue to you know do incredibly well and the AI capex will have a good ROI and it's it's people like you and me and and Jana um or you know all these institutional investors, right? But the what we're starting to see is breaking of the normal economy, right? We're starting to see people look like they I mean we had the uh the GDP this morning and annualized 4.3%. Right? And yet at the same time your average buyer is saying

that I can spend less than I could last year. I can buy less than I could last year. I'm defaulting on more loans than I was before. And as that starts to that I mean that's a warning sign right if that permeates through the economy like everybody who's in those risk assets now they're going to they're going to risk off right and so like maybe now I'm I'm I'm you know on your side right about being more more bearish here but I don't I think what we're seeing is we're just seeing a huge dispersion of you know outcomes right and that will affect the asset markets in a very weird way because of the fact that like they may still do well even when the real economy is doing awful.

>> Rob, give us a prediction. >> All right, so I'm not I'm not going to give you another stable coin one because I had one more that I want to talk about, but we I want to move off that. I I actually this one's related to what Santi was just saying about, you know, the L1s and value acrruel. I And maybe this is a little bit of spicy. I think we'll see an Ethereum proposal or upgrade this year that has Ethereum charging much higher rents to L2s. >> I like that prediction. I don't hate it. I think Ethereum is going to come out and say, "Listen, we we need to start figuring out a way to increase our, you know, value acral and not have, you know, continued um just, you know, all

of the the continued value seem to, you know, move towards, you know, equity businesses that are sitting on on top of us and are using our security." So, I think that's what what we're going to see this year. >> Yeah, I like that one. Um, all right, I will give you one. Do you guys have anything around privacy? >> I don't. >> All right. I have a privacy one. I think most of the major chains and wallets start including some sort of opt-in private transactions and they charge for that. So I don't think privacy will be limited to the privacy chains. I think everybody will try to offer privacy. Uh let's use bass as an as an example. I think on base you'll be able to send transactions for essentially free public. Um but if you want a private transaction you have to pay a small fee.

Um, I think the privacy network effects end up being the moat and and lock in on privacy networks ends up being stronger because bridging an interop is extremely hard with privacy. It's very tough to bridge privacy. So you end up like if you end up just kind of basically being locked into the chain once you start using it. Um, if it's if you're you know if if privacy is the thing you care about. I don't think privacy will be limited to the Starkware and Canton and Aztec uh you know uh and Zcash of the world. I think everybody will push into privacy including Salana, including Bass, including BNB, all the chains will try to do it.

>> Yeah, an important topic. So, I think we're going to see that that continue to be um something people are focused on. So, >> at the same time, I've got another prediction. At the same time, I think onchain identity is finally going to have a year in 2026. Um, I think you'll see things like uh, you know, Worldcoin just integrated with Tinder. I don't know if you guys saw this, but you'll see like these integrations with mainstream applications. And I think there's some group that cares about privacy. There's another group that just says, take all my data, put it on chain so that you'll allow me to do things like take better, bigger uh, undercolateralized loans out on chain, for example. So, uh, onchain identity breaks out, has a big year in 2026. You see mainstream applications start to adopt some of these technologies and you

also see new things built on top of onchain, uh, identities such as credit and stuff like that. >> Yeah. Can can we can we talk about that a little bit because one of the big topics about fintech more broadly right now is um called like the alternative credit scoring, right? that continues to be a major major focus for uh next year a major major focus for what's happening at these you know all these individual uh fintexs I think block is starting to do it and they're starting this is the way that they I think they think they can compete more the traditional banks in terms of lending so I kind of but there's like this like garbage in garbage out problem so do you use off-chain uh data is it just onchain data and then the world point I think is

like kind of an entirely different point because like that's more around like deep fakes for you know uh tinders and and things like that and then there's the even the different point which I think most of the time people have talked about onchain identity has been like these like identity backpacks which is like okay well now I can take my identity across different chains across different applications and I get paid for that data right so I guess do do you have a specific area there that you think is most likely to succeed or ones versus the others like maybe just dig in a little bit more >> um no I have no specific I have no specifics on what will get built on top of like the the identity, but yeah. No.

>> Yeah. You would take the other side though. It sounds like >> uh I I'm very bearish on these like identity backpack things, right? Uh which has been I mean we we we funded a company doing that, you know, in 2021. A lot of people did. Um I I just don't think that consumers care to be honest, right? Regulators care more than consumers do. Um I >> don't consumers want to be able to do more things on chain and for that to happen you need some you need some sort of identity on chain >> I think that but I think this will probably just happen at the wallet layer right like privy is like most well connected to be able to do that right it's like okay now that privy knows who I am based on email and now everybody uses privy or turnkey or like one of

these guys >> right I think that's like that's probably how you know quote unquote identity works at the application layer is that whoever actually owns the customer which gets back to the earlier conversation is the one who knows who I am and the company that's using Privy will, you know, have to probably KYC me in a lot of these cases, right? Or maybe they won't, but we'll see what happens with the regulation, but I don't think that like, you know, protocol level identity is is is going to matter to be honest, right? And so, um, I do agree that alternative lending is going to continue to have its moment. I don't know how you do it on chain in a way that's like particularly, uh, fruitful at the moment, to be honest.

>> We are officially 1 hour in. Nobody has mentioned PERPS. We have had zero mentions of PERPS. Let's hear PERPS prediction. >> Uh well, you know, I'm I'm going to say something before before PEPS actually. So, because I want to talk about prediction markets a different derivative. Prediction markets 10x next year in terms of volume and >> volume or real volume? >> 10x next year in terms of volume. >> Yeah. >> And the open interest is also up 10x. Does that answer your question, Santi?

>> The open interest does for I think I'm happy to see that you included both. Um uh yeah, who um what category within prediction like the World Cup's coming up? Yep. >> That could be a catalyst. There's insurance companies kind of percolating. Koshi's doing an event next year. What what across volume and open interest? Where is the incremental volume and open interest coming from? on which categories like what said differently what is the fastest growing category and what is the category that loses market share >> so I mean sports probably has to lose market share just because it's like 90%

of Kashi's volume uh and it's like 40ish% of of poly markets that said I actually think sports continues to grow on a volume basis tremendously quickly on an open interest basis sports gets crushed in terms of market share, right? Because like most of Sorry, go ahead. >> Go ahead. Go ahead. >> Well, I was just gonna say mo most of the volume on on the couch. You can look at it right now. It's like Sunday. Like it is actually Sunday morning, right? And they people are, you know, betting on the NFL. And so, uh, that obviously doesn't have like sustainable open interest over time necessarily, right?

Because these are short-term bets and people kind of come in and come out during, you know, when there's more games on. Um, but I do think we'll see open interest grow significantly on everything business related. I just think like everything that a hedge fund cares about is going to grow, you know, more than 10x. >> Yeah. Uh, I think I agree with you. I think prediction markets are going to continue to have its moment. It's probably the fastest growing category of crypto um, across however you want to slice it. um where I I'll just add a layer of I think you'll see more and more more competition. So right now it's just a duopoly. I think um that does not hold. I think you invite you're going to

see a whole number of other financial institutions do their own and legacy players like DraftKings and others try to get into the game and that is going to be just an interesting battle. it this year. If I were to put a headline, you know, back back in 2017 or 2018, we had the L1 wars, uh, the scalability wars. 2026 is the prediction market wars. You're going to see a whole blood bath and you're you're already kind of seeing it within within Kali and Poly Market. I think that will just intensify because you've invited a lot of traditional players who want to get into the mix and it will be very revealing. It will

be interesting to see maybe the new the question there is what is the market share of poly market versus kos sheet today how does that end up in December of next year I think both go down I think koshi a bit more just given what happened with Robin Hood which is a bit of like a cheating of a prediction and the investor base of poly market likely allows it to be kind of have more defensibility but I still think that both both like cap market share goes down quite significantly. >> Yeah.

>> Total volume up, market share down. >> Total volume up, market share down. And then other categories, >> not enough to make a huge dent like insurance and some of these others, but interesting into >> interesting new things. Yeah, I don't hate. Yeah, go ahead. >> I just want to say one thing though, like you mentioned DraftKings, so they they launched their product uh like last week, right? And it was awful. Like it I mean they acquired a company, you know, in October. So they, you know, kind of rushed out this new product like you couldn't see the order book. They have no IC deal. Like they you couldn't see um what was happening on the two different sides in terms of uh the pricing like their the fill and the liquidity was worth worse than any other uh any of the other products that are

out there right now. Um so you >> but others will do this well Rob like Robin Hood will Coinbase just acquired the clearing co like others will do this well. Well, yeah, but I mean the the Coinbase, listen, they've done an incredible job of of being early to the space. I think you can argue that Coinbase has not had a single successful product launch in 5 years. >> Oh, I don't Okay, I need I don't know if I want to do that. Let me think about that. I I I mean actually >> are we all are we all too sensitive to be debanged from Coinbase because you make a bad comment or like >> No no no >> Jeff Dorman Jeff Dorman certainly didn't shy away from that. I think he still I

think Arca still has an account on Coinbase. >> Oh yeah. Why are they so upset? I wonder why. Um yeah Bass dude Bass is a huge success. >> Okay so Bass has been from a user perspective a huge success. Um at least today from a economic perspective has not been right. their credit card >> future. What's that? >> Their credit card. >> Don't think anybody's using it. Like the the um NFT marketplace was bad. Like the wallet hasn't really picked up particularly well. Like you know, we'll see, right? Um there's actually like a viral Twitter post that went around uh a day or two ago a little bit about this.

>> Yeah, but it was from Beanie Maxi. >> I don't know who that is, but like >> not who we're taking our takes from these days. So >> yeah. No, but I'm but I but I actually like I think a decent amount of that resonates which is that they from a product perspective like you know they've done the core thing really well but like I I guess I'm >> they're at risk of doing too many things. I get what you're saying. It's what >> happen a bunch about how they've I think they've they've done too many M&A transactions. Like I've I've said that like probably four or five times uh because it's just hard to integrate, right? And it's hard to launch new things. And so >> is Darabit not going well?

I I uh it has Darbet has lost market share since they acquired it. >> I will say uh like Echo integration I'm seeing it live product support is just not where you want it to. >> I have a prediction around this. Um I I well one of my predictions number 11 is that US crypto exchanges will face major competition from two different sides. one is the brokerages. So both the new brokerages and the old like the Charles Schwabs and the Robin Hoods, but also from the Asian exchanges. Um I think you will see Binance push into US bybit will push into the US. OKX >> push into the US. Uh this is probably

the second half of 2026 that the Asian exchanges come, but yeah, I think uh you will see a lot of competition from the US uh to the US crypto exchanges. Now, I think they're operating well. Like I I'd take the other side of your Coinbase thing. I'm I actually think Coinbase is operating very well right now. I think Kraken is operating very well right now. >> Yeah, I Kraken's done a great had a great year, >> but you're gonna and Kraken will go public, which will be great for their brand, but yeah, I think you'll see more. They'll they'll have more competition than they've ever had. >> Yeah, I mean, and I and I think uh I don't want to sound too harsh because I I know how that came across was very harsh. Clearly, like with the event that they had, what was that earlier this

week or was it was last late last week? uh you know they came out and they announced all of these things that they're working on and it's you know we've we've talked about or we've known that they were probably going to launch like white labelled stables for a while. They're obviously been pushing into payments like they're you know they're trying to do prediction markets obviously they're trying to do um you know stocks etc. And so they're the ambition is I think to be commended and they're clearly trying to like you know capture a large part of the market but I it's really really hard to do that and I think they've they've struggled in the past around doing too much and just not having enough focus to really nail something right and so that's what I really worry about with them.

Can I ask you guys uh it wouldn't be a 2026 thing. I, you know, I'm going to ask the question, what would you rather own and hold it for the rest of the year? Uh, and I'm going to give you some some data points. Hyperlquid at 24 billion FTV. Um, Coinbase at 65 billion, Poly Market at 15 billion or 12 billion, whatever it's worth on the secondary market, or a 2.4 billion. And they're >> and yeah, Rob said poly market. Um >> or or or or actually because I'm gonna give >> are they all liquid? Is are they is is uh is poly market equity liquid?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Assume you can I mean I get pinged every other day. Um Athena and add Athena to the bag. Uh three billion >> because that has a couple bags of Rob. Who's your favorite child? Rob. >> No. No. But but you you guys are acting like this is like bag bias. Uh, and and it's not it's not untrue that like I invest in things that I think are going to do well, right? Like the the correlation goes the other direction though, right? Or the causation goes the other direction, right? The I think the reality is is like Coinbase is a big mature company. I think they'll, you know, they'll do I think there there's a lot of pressure from like new people coming into the US market. I think, you know, obviously they're trying to do a lot, right? And so do I think like

Coinbase is going to double in value next year? I don't. Right. Um do I think that does I do I think that poly market will 10x its volume next year I do right and so that's not bag bias it's just like what I actually believe um I think Athena is going to do really well next year as well so uh but Athena is very much a pro-yclical you know asset right and so you have to believe that Ethereum is going to do well and Salana is going to do well and that you know there's going to be a lot of of of people who want to trade tokens and you know we're having that discussion on this pod right now that you Maybe uh 2026 will be a tough year for that, right? And so then if that's a tough year for that, then Athena obviously is not gonna is going

to struggle on a relative basis, but I I listen I think Athena will do really well next year as well. And I'm much more bullish on 26, I think, uh than than Santi is. >> Santi, what are you holding? >> Uh no, you got to answer that question. >> Um I don't think on a one-year time horizon because I think I'm too busy as a founder to be like actively investing in trading. And I think that >> I'm I'm gonna say the same thing. >> Yeah, I know. And so I'm like I don't actually invest on a one-year time. Like I'm like let me close let me own some assets or if the market went down 50% I'd be happy and let me just have a 5 to 10 year time horizon. Are you gunned to my head right now?

>> To your head. >> Gun to my head. >> Coinbase market, Athena, a hyperlquid. >> Uh probably Coinbase. >> Why? Um because I think yeah I I agree with Rob that poly market has done phenomenally well um and they will do well but their valuation went from like is already up like 15x in in a year. I don't know what it was at the beginning of the year you know 30x in a year and yeah I just don't you know you got a mean reversion and things calm down and I'm yeah bullish poly market longterm but yeah it just went up 15x in a year so if if a if a stock went up 15x in a year you know I probably wouldn't be buying it. Um >> that's why everyone missed Nvidia. I look and that's why people I mean like the counter there's many counters like

look at ramp like ramp's valuation just I mean just triples every six months. So um there's many there's many counter arguments. Uh Athena I used to it used to be one of my biggest positions this year. I just I don't know enough about the unlocks and all that kind of stuff to it just that that part scares me but I'm like extremely bullish on Athena's business and guy as a person long term. Um >> yeah, A um A is probably a buy at some point too and I forget I forget your oh and Hyperlid I think Hyperlid um is at risk of I just remember Breakpoint 2021 Salana how exciting Salana was. had just hit 2 like 50 or 260 and it had to for Salana to become Salana it had to fall to $8

and it had to go through the trials and tribulations that come with that and I think at some point I don't know if it's 26 or 27 like every startup goes through this and I Hyperlid hasn't had their trials and tribulations moment yet. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um not not too dissimilar. Um, I would I skew towards uh a uh I think the the market probably punish a little too much given this vote and snapshot. Uh I think deposits are stickier and they have been for a while and I'm I think it's a interesting optionality if they can deliver on the NEO bank thesis and actually kind of vertically integrating up and acquiring

users. I think it bodess well with increased regulatory clarity and adoption. I think they have an interesting brand and staying power and Lindy and it's Flo's perspective. I think that the I think it it might be the shining light of the the the the app trade that I talk about of capturing more fees and and just the valuation being a bit more sensible. It's the lowest valuation across the board. So I think from that standpoint also interesting paired with uh you know really high TVLs. I think the the the pretty interesting perhaps narrative that you might catch on to is it just gets comp to a traditional financial institution or a neo bank and if that happens I think that I I think the team

is positioned well to execute on that but all this like I'm not necessarily thinking what triples or doubles from here I'm thinking what actually if the market goes down 20% like where do these things trade I think Coinbase can go very easily down to 20 billion Poly market I think can very much rerate down hyperlquid too if like if like people stop trading because they you know they don't have any money to punt. So I think like the biggest moat like which protocol has the biggest moat I think it's a because deposits are sticky and they have been sticky for a while and they just continue to dominate. Um, and I think it could be an interesting entry point given this vote that's

happening. But Athena is second there. Like Athena would have been my second choice cuz to Rob, Rob, I think made an interesting point. I got I think Circle actually does in a rate environment like they're just Athena actually benefits from if it's a hedge against my bearishness >> because if if I am if I'm very wrong and markets rip, I think Athena benefits from in that environment where rates go down and funding rate persists. I think that business does quite well. >> Yep. >> And and I think the market the stable coin narrative continues to be really strong. So from from an adoption standpoint, I think the team is we've interacted with them on the inversion side of like plugging them in. And I think in those conversations like I think I've appreciated the bey muscle

that guy and the rest of the team have. And I think across all the other different stable coin issuers, Athena is more like a credit fund and the yield. From my standpoint as a as a builder, I think that they offer a compelling product that some of the other stable coin issuers do not. And from that standpoint, I sort of like it too. >> Yeah, I'm going to keep us moving forward. Um, I've got two more predictions that are in a same similar bucket. One is I think in 2026, most teams disband their governance teams um and start to merge the labs and the foundation. Actually, I think you'll see mergers of labs and foundation or just people disband the foundation. You'll see people with that disbanding governance teams and I think a new

function will get created. This is a little self- serving because we have a product in this market now which is investor relations. But I think uh teams with tokens especially teams where let's say you're like at you know let's put a number on it like above a $300 million FTV teams will realize they really need some sort of investor relations function. In that same light I think uh equity verse token starts to merge. I think we're still m multiple years away from you know it fully merging. I think eventually many years out it merges but I think the best founders will start to drive returns and employee alignment to one mechanism not two. So investor relations one mechanism not two is my prediction for

>> I had a um a related but not same prediction which is that I think a major company a major like listed you know call it you know fortune 500 acquires an L1 Devco and LabsCo >> hops >> a major one I'm not going to >> wait you think a major company or >> company acquired a big L1 or L2. >> I actually could see this happening, but not a major L1 or L2 because it's too expensive. I think they would acquire like a kind of second or third tier.

>> We'll see. >> Rob, do you have knowledge of this happening? Because you can't cheat on your predictions, man. >> Rob's cheating with all these. Wow. Appto is sub a billion. Is that right? Oh, no. No. Two billion FTV. But but remember by the way if you're a if you're a acquirer >> and you want to buy so what we've seen obviously and we can talk about this we don't need to talk about this again but we've obviously seen this thing where you like acquire the you know labs entity and like nothing goes with the token holders. No >> but in the thing I'm talking about of course you want to be able to operate the chain itself. So you need to be able to buy the the the labs entity as well or the devco as well sorry. And but for all of these guys that have like you

know a lot of the tokens sitting on the quoteunquote balance sheet, right? And and that's what you know is driving this FTV really high like if the if the actual like public float is a lot lower. Yeah. Like you don't actually need to pay out that many people. >> You're not paying two billion for Aposto. If Aptos is sitting on 1.5B themselves, then you're paying, >> right? You're paying, you know, and you'll pay out some token holders and so >> All right. Interesting prediction. Um Rob, do you have any regulatory or political ones related to the midterms or related to just anything with policy and regulation? I so I don't um I will say this is somewhat maybe uh related uh because this is a big topic at the CFTC right now and something that um the the thing that I'm joining the digital asset

market subcommittee has been talking about but it's about putting uh tokenized collateral into traditional like trading markets right uh either through the DTCC or through um uh you know maybe at the from um uh like directly at a broker or dealer um or or an FCM or something like that. And I do believe that there will be a major either FCM or you know directly at the DTCC or uh or a clearing organization that will take tokenized collateral as a major part of their business by the end of the year.

>> I like that prediction. Can we can we uh can we ask just a question like what what do you think uh maybe not in your predictions but what's the biggest risk to derailing your predictions? >> The biggest risk is that you're right and that like AI blows up and uh I here's here's the risk. The Blackwell here I'll get concrete. The Blackwell chips from Nvidia do not produce the same gains essentially um like in output that people think they will. So then it turns out the whole capex cycle in AI is not right. And then it turns out, yeah, Santi, you're right, the whole market's levered to AI. So if the if we if the Blackwell chips suck and it's like, oh damn, we we're actually not improving

the AIs anymore. Um and these LLMs are not getting better outcomes, then um yeah, we got to pull back a bunch of spending and that's going to impact crypto. And I mean, it's just tough to do well when the whole market's pulling back. Um and that's that's the biggest risk. Before you go, Rob, like specific to crypto though, like let's put let's put like macro aside, but like okay, crypto, you know, time and time again in this industry, we do some [ __ ] that's self inflicted pain and so that that's sort of like what I'm focused on. Is there something specific to the industry that would like you be like this doesn't pan out?

I'd really kind of restructure my book. I mean, I think the biggest risk is just that because of the fact that token prices haven't done well, if we can't get people really excited about an onchain economy where token prices do well, then things will just continue to bleed out, right? And, you know, we've seen, I think, you know, continued liquidity kind of moving out in the space. And the you know the bear uh in in me if I if I were to you know really try to bring out my inner santi you know would be that while there continues to be new users but not a single person wants to buy a token and if nobody buys the tokens maybe the users don't come either right and that is the question >> yeah would would I don't disagree with you

guys obviously but I think it's going to be for me what I would make me flip bullish I guess is would be the way I would answer this question is um if putting aside AI and all that stuff continue because I you know don't really I would say maybe like a a a highlight of an app like a DeFi protocol really hitting a lot of a lot of volume and maybe it's Visa really breaking out earnings and and then the trick like you know a of the world or uh you know some of the

some of the apps that deserve a little bit more bid actually start catching it. I don't know if that's a good answer but that is some something that I'm sort of paying attention to that would invalidate my bearishness but obviously yeah I'm I'm a as I said last year I think I'm going to I'm paying a lot of attention in AI and what's happening in that development. So, like if I were to do expert calls, I would want to figure out how good those chips are coming in and I listened to one of the podcasts of a GA guy, the chairman of GA, and said, "Hey, listen. We're not actually jumping out of our seats to make investments in AI. We want to see how AI runs through our book first, our portfolio companies, and they have hundreds to inform everything else." So, better for worse, we just have to pay attention

to that. So, I don't know if that if that persists and companies really set differently if EPS growth is like off the charts in Q1, you're like, "Oh, okay. I could see I could see I could see uh you know, I probably dial back down the the cash as a percentage of of my portfolio." Let's um I know we're coming up on time here. Any predictions that you guys have that we didn't get to cover that you guys want to bring up? >> I had a bunch of stable coin ones, but I we we'll uh we'll talk about those another time. So, >> how about you Y?

>> I um I I have two hotter ones. One is I think the decentralized storage narrative is going to return. And this is probably my take that is prediction that is most likely to be wrong. I will say, but I'm going to give it anyways. Um I think the decentralized storage uh this idea re-enters the narrative as like um and I think like Filecoin was just too early becomes the line here. I think um if you look at what some of the smart some of the smartest people that I know in this world, right? Um like some of the best people at Jump and Appdos, some of the best people at Sooie, say what you will about Aptos and Sooie and their tokens are down. I know we were talking about that, but like you know, some of the smartest engineers I know are actually working on this pro uh this

problem. Um and I just saw the thing that kind of pushed me. So I was already thinking about it a lot and then the thing that pushed me over was uh the telegram founder Pavle Pavl Durovv um uh he they they just announced that they're working on this exact like you know the biggest product they've ever built outside of the Telegram messaging app. I watched his launch presentation and it's the exact same idea that Apttos has with um it's like I think called Walrus or something like that or maybe Suie's thing is called Walrus >> Su thing. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah, APTOS has another one that they launched with Jump that I'm forgetting the name right now. Um, but yeah, Telegram's launching some something is happening in this space. I don't know what it is yet, but >> do would you would you would you go long

projects that embed it or or like like Filecoin is is is a two 2.6 billion val >> I'm not I'm not buying Filecoin, nor am I buying [ __ ] nor am I buying Sooie. But I think that there's something here and I think other companies will get funded. I I'm not smart enough to know what >> what's the uh what's the problem? like what's the um demand case for it? I think the demand is that a lot of like decentralized crypto stuff is still built on um is here here's the as I understand it decentralized crypto stuff is still built on very very very centralized uh AWS and yeah if like Cloudflare and AWS go down we shouldn't have Ethereum go down um not that that necessarily hap so I'm not sure of that I think you need some sort of AI thing to show up with decentralized storage um

again not smart enough to actually have a concrete idea here but I'm just seeing people way smarter than me start to work on this as a as a problem. Um, that was one of my predictions. I have another prediction around DPIN. I think we finally get DPIN summer or DPIN 2.0. Um, right now onchain revenue, I was trying to find this. I think onchain revenue is only at like 40 or 50 million bucks from DPIN right now. I think that grows 3x. I think uh deepin companies lead the way from being incentiveled protocols to revenueled protocols. I think if you look at like Dawn and Daylight and Hivemapper and Helium and Geonet, um these guys are going to start generating real revenue. It won't be crazy. It might be five million bucks a year, 10 million bucks a year. Um but a

lot of those founders are I think built very different than crypto founders and they actually will talk about the revenue and talk about um I don't know the like growth of the actual business underlying business and I think deepen will have a nice year. I grew that a lot and I was wrong about it in my prediction earlier this year. I think it will happen in the next 12 to 18 months and you're seeing it in Helium just the number of users and the burn hive mapper I was talking to you know founder there and geonet like across the board I think you're seeing some real real demand that I think transcends the pure speculative drive and I think that's very real.

>> Yeah. My very last prediction number 15 is I think pers come to tradi. Um and this looks like a couple things. I think stocks move on chain and get perpified. I think onchain trading venues um I think onchain trading venues will be the winner of this. I think they'll do well. The deck to sex ratio will keep going higher. Um and I think actually the inverse is true which is per will start coming to traditional venues, exchanges, brokerages um rather than just being this clear like purely cryptonative play. And I think a lot of traditional Tradfi folks will see PERPS as just a really, really, really good product. Um, and also stocks will come on chain. I mean, it's already starting to happen, but I think that'll only increase.

>> Yeah, Brett Harrison announced uh the deal for today, earlier today, which is >> Did you guys do that? >> No, no, no, we didn't do it. My ex actually let it on the strategic side. >> Um, but you know, obviously he's trying to bring >> I thought you saying I thought you saying I thought you were saying my ex like my ex-girlfriend. I took a second there. Yeah. >> No, but um you know, obviously he's trying to bring purpose to traditional markets. There's another startup called QFAX trying to do that. Uh that's been obviously a topic of conversation at all the um all of the major, you know, crypto brokerages. I um I think pers are a really really good retail product and I agree with you that we'll probably get pers that will one I agree with you that

you know decentralized exchange will continue to take more market share decentralized and two I agree with you that we'll see ps on more and more products I mean trade xyz has done an incredible job uh here um I don't but I don't know if ps end up being a huge institutional product uh in the traditional markets yet I think it's more of a retail uh business but um I do think it It'll be an interesting year for for that. So, >> anything else before we wrap, guys? >> Last thing I'll I'll say it. I think Agentic Commerce disappoints. So, that maybe maybe that's the the final one.

>> I like that. I like that. I think it's a little over overhyped right now. Um, cool. Well, before we wrap, I just want to say thanks to everybody for listening. We I don't know if we'll record another episode in 2025. Um, maybe we will, maybe we won't. But yeah, it's been a good year. Big shout out to Will, our producer, for just everything, putting in the work behind the scenes, making the show go out. And um Santi, Rob, thank you guys. And yeah, to all the listeners. We've had uh hundreds of thousands of people listening to this uh every month and every quarter, and it's crazy to see. And yeah, just appreciate all you guys. So, >> absolutely.

>> Yeah. >> Cool. Cheers, folks.