Our 2025 Predictions

from a macro standpoint, Jensen Huang and Nvidia are more important than Jerome Powell. Like everyone will be watching their earnings and if that softens, everything goes down. Like that is just, the market is anchored to that and that is the proxy you gotta watch. I'm not watching Powell, I'm watching like, yeah, the treasury rate. Yeah. If the treasury rate holds 5 and is sub 5, the most important thing will be looking at Nvidia and their earnings and what that stock is doing because if that doesn't do well, we're going to have a problem on our hands.

In an industry as volatile and vicious as crypto, sometimes all you need to do is survive. The amount of growth and money that you personally can make and your company can make if you're a founder is just— this is the year. However, this is the year that can also kill you in 2026 and 2027 if you don't make the right decisions this year. Tired of losing track of all your tokens? Uniswap Wallet is designed to easily manage, store, store and swap your crypto all in one place. Access thousands of tokens across Ethereum and more than 10 other chains instantly by using Uniswap's wallet today. Download it today. It's available on Chrome, iOS, and Android. Hit the link in today's show notes to get started. Uh, what's going on everybody? We missed you. We missed you. What's up? Happy New Year everybody. Santi, what's happening, man?

Happy New Year. Can we all stop saying Happy New Year in every single chat and email, please? Thank you very much. Yeah, it's like, uh, I just— anyways, it is Sunday. I'm very jet-lagged. I'm not saying this as a caveat that my predictions are going to be wrong regardless if I get like 12 hours of sleep or 0 hours of sleep. There is no upside, ladies and gentlemen, to doing predictions. But as part of this exercise, yeah, no, this is sort of a tradition because we're going on how many years here at Empire?

I think this is for year 4. No, 2021, 2, 3, 4. This is year 5.

5 years. That's— it's like the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. We've probably done more than 10,000 hours at this point. I ain't getting better in predictions. So I'll preface by saying it is still a very interesting exercise to reflect, like you and I were talking about, like we obviously put out predictions in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021. Uh, so we've been doing this for a while. Should we?

Yeah, let's reflect on 2024. I do just want to say like a little housekeeping on Empire. I feel like Empire has kind of been sleeping the last couple of weeks. Like we've like, it's been a little slow the last couple of weeks. And I just want to, I think we're coming out with a bang this year. That's my, that's one, that's my first prediction for the year. So first off, I haven't even told you this. We are going to do a lot more in-person recordings in New York because I know you're spending more time in New York. So we're building a studio. So I think that'll bring some, some fresh energy. And then the other thing is I'm just looking at our upcoming guest list. We've got like Tether CEO, we've got Richard, the Binance CEO, recording this week. We've got a very spicy stablecoin app. I think we missed a lot of the AI agent stuff. So I would love to have like Virtuals and some of those folks on. So yeah, just appreciate everyone for listening last year and I think it's a big year ahead. Absolutely. Okay, let's review 2024. The big— so our theme that we said I actually think these were our— you never get predictions right, because with predictions you want to kind of stretch your predictions a little bit so they seem like they're crazier predictions, right? Because if you just do like, you know, high probability predictions, it's pretty boring. But I will say our big theme that we said for 2024 was this is going to be the risk-on year. And I think we, I think we got that big theme. So I'm looking through some of your predictions from, from 2024. Um, I mean, I can pull it—

I can share my screen if you want.

Yeah, you want to share your screen and let's talk through them, and then we can talk through mine.

All right. And I adopted this format from— how do I do this— from the JPMorgan The Alchemist report, which I found really good. It just came out recently. I think, uh, the first prediction, the most important one, you just mentioned. And these are all color-coded for people that are watching. So the green is obviously got it decently right, which was 2024 rates come down, liquidity gets injected into the system, um, and it's a pretty good year. Um, I debated whether to put it yellowish because rates have come up again, uh, after the election, uh, you know, in the Fed, uh, you know, just so rates like the technically 10-year Treasury is, um, up again. Um, but throughout the year, I think the bigger picture there is still true.

Yeah. Let's start with what you got right, then what you got kind of right, and then what you got wrong. So let's go through the greens.

Yeah. The, the one that I obviously got right was, uh, I predicted 10, at least 10 unicorns in the Solana ecosystem. And that was very much true. Um, a lot of it was, to be fair, not in the maybe areas that I anticipated, like it was sort of like, uh, Pengu, didn't anticipate that happening. A lot of the AI stuff, like meme coins, um, you know, at the time we came out with these predictions, like, you know, WIF and some of these, like, you started to see a lot of activity, meme coin activity. But I would say that if you had asked me a year ago and said, hey, out of, out of these unicorns, what is the composition? I would have said like more like blue chip type of protocols, like the Jupiters of the world, Helium, Jito. Um, the one that really surprised me was, uh, Radium. Actually, it was sort of like something that I tweeted about the other day, which was like, you would've said you were sitting there and seeing all this activity and like, if you're using Jupyter, everything's routed through Radium. So that was a trade that I really missed. But anyways, as a category, that was very much right. The other one was I was bullish on Move-based languages and protocols. So that was, I think, categorically like, you know, Movement just launched and that's been very well received and there's a lot of excitement there. Sui had a fantastic year, Aptos as well. So just move as a category and move-based protocols really, um, I think hit stride and the momentum is really strong going into this year. And by the way, I don't know if you want to add anything to that, but feel free to jump in on these predictions.

No, no, you can do yours, then I'll do mine.

Your fourth, your fourth one that you got right, my fourth one was, yeah, Ethereum shifts narrative to monetary premium. Um, that was really a point of like the Ethereum community just had to like go through this like come-to-Jesus moment and like really revisit the narrative. Um, I, I wasn't as vocal, so that was like right, um, where I sort of made a comment here that says like, I sort of didn't anticipate Base being like the saving kind of face of Ethereum, and that being like the Ethereum community, that being like a mechanism for the Ethereum community to really rally behind that. Um, you know, a lot of the Ethereum community is very critical of the activity happening in Solana, and then as soon as it happened on Base, like, it was like, yeah, like memes on Base are cool, memes on Solana are not cool. So that was like very much the anchor point for the Ethereum community. And I think going into this year, not to jump ahead too much, but I think that Base combined with real-world assets like, you know, Bitwise, sorry, like, what is it, BlackRock really building a lot of their stuff on Ethereum. I think that has been like something that the Ethereum community has really kind of re-centered and projects like MegaETH really kind of like really low latency stuff on Ethereum is really, I think, helped reorient and give more focus to the Ethereum community in spite of like Justin Drake's presentation, which was like 40 years out in the future kind of thing.

Yeah. What did you get kind of right? We'll do green, yellow, red.

What did you—

what were the yellows?

See, I just gotta say, Yanowitz is great. Like normally I would have gone like, what did you get wrong immediately?

So there's some more good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, true, true. So, so in yellow, I was pretty much— I was very bullish on Solana coming into the year. My prediction was that Solana would reach 40% of ETH's market cap and that the SOL price in a very extreme scenario would go up to $750, like definitely break all-time high. And I predicted that ETH would be at $5K. So that was like more of a price prediction. Uh, it's in yellow because Solana reached 30%. Of Ethereum's market cap. Like, it went from 0.04 to 0.06, it's 50%. But I would have thought that, um, the market would have woken up to that a lot. And I think if you go and listen to the episodes with like Avichal, Hasib, we did a number throughout the year, the number of activities, VC activity in Solana. I think that the momentum, like second half of 2024, suggests that like the activity I think really picked up, especially after Breakpoint. Uh, but you know, Firedancer is still kind of— oh, I thought it, you know, still like haven't— to my knowledge hasn't really launched fully yet. Um, but anyways, that was in yellow because SOL did break and touch all-time high, but, uh, it didn't get to that level. Um, the second one, um, that I got that was sort of a Directionally in line, but is in yellow is Bitcoin Layer 2s. I predicted the Bitcoin Layer 2s, there would be many launches and then Ordinals would continue to grow.

I actually remember this one. It was slightly different. It was there would be one Bitcoin Layer 2 that launched, kicking off a renaissance of, of people building on Bitcoin. I actually would have put this in green for you.

Okay.

Yeah. To give you a little credit here, I remember talking about this. You said there would be a Bitcoin Layer 2 that launched. And it would kick off a frenzy of people building on, on Bitcoin. Right. And I don't think the prediction was like, you know, TVL would flow on Bitcoin or anything like that. It was just that this Bitcoin renaissance would kick off. And I think that very much happened. And we were last year, I would categorize as like the fundraising year for and like the launching year for some of these companies. And I would, I would say if we're going to see this happen, like this is probably the year we see Users and TVL and stuff like that.

Yeah, uh, Ordinals definitely came down, the hype really came down. So, so that— but yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, you have Babylon, you have Mezzo, a lot of activity on those protocols, you have a lot of fundraising happening. So yeah, the other one I was perhaps really bullish, I predicted AI coins would reach $100 billion in market cap. Um, as of today, it's like half of that, so $51 billion. Per CoinGecko.

And then for context, I think we started the year around $10 billion, right?

Yeah, I said it, this is like a 10x.

Yeah.

Um, I put it in yellow because obviously it didn't reach $100, it did a 5x. And more importantly, the composition of that, like a lot of it, like especially recently that you mentioned virtuals, like the AI meme, AI meme coins is something that I definitely didn't see happening. Um, But yeah, yeah.

And this gets to a broader theme that I want to talk about with predictions, but I'll save that.

Right. So I'll keep moving faster now. I said parallelization becomes a hot narrative. I think like it wasn't like a narrative. It's more, I don't know, it's, I didn't think it'd get any hotter than 2024. Because you ended 2024 with Monad raising a big round. Obviously, a lot of these Move-based protocols are like like Avalanche, like parallelization is, is a thing, but it wasn't like talked about as much, you know what I mean? Um, more so like infra on the backseat and like people not really thinking about that as much. Um, the one I got yellowish or really wrong was like Cosmos getting more traction. This I would actually put in red.

Candlelight prediction that just kills everyone.

It's just, it's, it's a widowmaker. To be fair, like Celestia, I think sovereign rollups, I have spent a lot of time over the last couple weeks, like just exploring that. And I think that for that reason I put it in yellow. Injective, I didn't hear as much. Like I single-handedly pointed out those two protocols. I also, I will make a point here. I missed Avalanche because Avalanche, I think, like has adopted a lot of really like mechanism design and stuff from Cosmos, but it's just a better implementation. Tell you the truth, like I didn't even have Avalanche in my predictions in 2024.

I remember. Do you remember the price predictions from last year?

You—

I included Avalanche in a price prediction. You said, why are you including Avalanche?

Right?

Yeah. I think it's— I think there's something interesting happening there.

Credit to you. So, uh, the last one was I was very bullish on— I said Coinbase would surpass all-time high, it would reach $100 billion valuation, so that would imply $500 per share. Coinbase did break all-time high, prior all-time high, but it peaked at $350 and it's now in that $200-ish level. Yeah, so I think that's really it. The— on the things I got quasi like, like in yellow, the ones I got really, really wrong So let's start there. These are the ones I love the most. Uh, I predicted there would be a huge wealth effect in Solana, primarily a lot of airdrops, and that would flow into NFTs. I think the NFT, as throughout most of the year, just NFTs didn't get much love. A lot of the flows just went into AI meme, like meme coins. Um, but like just for context, like MadLads, which is probably the premier before Pink, I guess we want to include Penguins there, but I think MadLads is a category, just like NFTs, like peaked in January of 2024 and then is down 61% on the year. So if you would have gone long NFTs in January, you would have gotten crushed. Sorry, folks. None of this is—

we just— one, we did have one good NFT prediction. The NFT trade of the year is sell your Bored Apes, buy Pudgy Penguins.

Yeah, Pudgy Penguins. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I'll credit you for that, actually, you and Mike. But you guys really— and then Luca coming on the pod, but like you were talking about this way before. Anyways, um, the other one I got really wrong was, uh, in a good way that I'm happy— I'm happy it didn't happen— was I, I think we were very nervous about restaking and it having some like major bug. Um, thankfully it had not happened to my knowledge. Um, you know, but I still think it's something to look out for. Yeah. But I, I'm happy that is in red and not in green. Yeah. I was very hyped on SVM, the Solana Virtual Machine. I think it has been delayed, like Eclipse hasn't, you know, more so on the sentiment side, I think it's come down. I think there was a lot of hype in 2024 and now it didn't really kind of truly materialize as much as I wanted to. So for that reason, it's kind of in red. Could argue it could be in yellow, but I put it in red. And then the last one, this is probably something that is worthy of a discussion after you go through your list, but is, I would've thought, and it's tied to the Solana price prediction that the Ethereum team TVL would drop dramatic, like from 55% at the end of 2023 to, to 25%. And it's still at 56.

Hmm.

Like it didn't really change. And you know, I guess you could argue it's a lot of L2 activity, like BlackRocks of the world, like RWAs.

Are you counting the L2 activity in there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very much so. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's like a CoinGecko mark. So I use the exact same.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Measure. But yeah, that, that really surprised me, I'd say.

All right, so, uh, how many predictions do you have here? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. So we got 4 out of 14 are green, we've got 6 out of 14 are yellow, we've got 4 out of 14 are red. All right, we'll, we'll take it.

To be, to be fair, I think you just need to get one prediction very, very right. And you said at the beginning of the episode is it was going to be a good year, you go long.

Do you want to talk about any of these? What surprised you the most?

Yeah, I do this a lot in reflecting, but the divergence of returns was pretty interesting, right? If you weren't in Bitcoin, memes, or AI, or Solana, you, you were just on ETH, like, good luck. And I think I see that in the returns of a lot of funds that I'm an investor in. Yeah, it was very much a have and have-nots. You had to get a specific Things, right? Whereas in prior cycles, prior years, probably wasn't the case, right?

Yeah.

Uh, so that was— I, by the way, think that that continues to persist as this asset class matures more and more. So like, I think, uh, you'll see a lot of dispersion, right? Like, and, and not this cycle, but it would probably take many years, but like there will be a time where like Bitcoin doing its thing is uncorrelated, very like less, less, less— the correlation between— the tight correlation between Bitcoin and other crypto assets will come down over time. Um, the second one was, in a good way, the US election and the rapid change in mood across the country. Like, I spent a lot of time in New York during the election and just traveling and talking to people. Like, a complete 180, top to bottom. Like, people, like, in crypto— not just in crypto, but like in the tech industry, in Wall Street, in, in Main Street, every— I just felt that the country really kind of whether you voted for Trump or not, like, people just were in a position where it's just a breath of fresh air. And it's like really exciting to see that because for me, the US has always been a land of aspiration and I feel it again. And I didn't feel that for the last 4 years, which is really tough. And maybe it was COVID tied to that, but like pro-innovation, right? And obviously the elect— how Trump has made key cabinet hires, Doge, you know, all that stuff. Really, really surprised me in a good way. And at a personal level, it just kind of coming to terms that investors can be builders too in investing, like in building an investing firm that I've, you know, obviously was a big part of ParaFi, but also just like a lot of it was like, you've heard me talk about time and time again here and or last year about the Founders Podcast. And that was like super instrumental to my like re-underwriting of, of seeing myself as a builder and obviously starting something new at the end of the year.

Good. 4 for 14. We'll take it.

All right.

All right. Let's look at mine. 2024 predictions. Look at this. Yeah, we got a big old doc here. Okay, so the first one I said was L2s pivot again. Actually, we both had this. I don't know what we were thinking with parallelization. I said L2s pivot again, rebrand as parallelized EVMs, they add native yield. I said L2s would follow Blast and add native yield and that this was going to— I remember talking about this, this is going to get out of hand really quickly. I don't think that ended up happening. I don't think a bunch of L2s went and added a bunch of native yield. You just saw this with like, you know, Polygon's bridge, like they're adding some yield onto the bridge, it seems like. But yeah, I don't, I don't think you saw a bunch of L2s follow Blast's lead. Let's see, bridges start offering yield. We didn't see that this year. We might, I would guess we'll start seeing it again this year.

By the way, on the yield thing, I think Athena just took the world by storm and it was like Blast really kind of faded.

Yeah, yeah.

It's not a fair kind of comment, but I just think like the—

No, I think that's right. I said people will not solve interoperability between chains. I think that was generally correct. And I said ZK will not have the year people think it will. And I think that was generally correct as well.

Very correct.

The second prediction that I definitely got right was prediction markets. I said monster year ahead for prediction markets. This is the year they go mainstream. And I said the thing that's going to drive this is actually less about the prediction markets being, being so, so good, but more of a lack of trust in traditional markets. And I said traditional prediction markets— I meant in traditional media— is going to bring them mainstream. The thing I got wrong was I thought someone would launch the ability to launch your own prediction market, which was going to drive this market like 100 times bigger. Like I thought you would be able to go on Polymarket and launch your own market. But yeah, I would say I got this one right. Monster year for prediction markets, institutional adoption beyond what you could have imagined. And I broke this into a couple of categories. I said you're not bullish enough on the Bitcoin ETF. I said ETH So I got that right. At least one more country buys Bitcoin publicly. I don't think I got that right. I, I'm pretty sure some other countries are buying Bitcoin, like I saw Bhutan bought Bitcoin, but like I was thinking like one major country is going to publicly announce that they're— and that did not happen. And then I got this one wrong. I said ETH has a Paul Tudor Jones moment, but for tech investing. Gets seen as a tech platform as users flock to crypto apps. I did not get that right. And then I also got this one wrong. I said most of the big CeFi and TradFi players launched their own stablecoins. So I, it's kind of tied to 2025 predictions. But yeah, I got that one wrong. I also got this one wrong. I said DeFi OGs help take us mainstream. I said there's a resurgence of DeFi OGs. Kain with Infinex, Lechner with Superstate, Stani with Avara. And then Mike and I had a similar one. I wrote Mike's thing here, but Uniswap has a breakout year. Wallet ends up being a sleeper hit. 2024 is the year they turn on the fee switch. I would say most of this did not happen. I think— I mean, Kain had a big year with Infinex and raised the $50 million of the patron NFTs. But yeah, I don't think this was the thing that took, took us mainstream. Okay. NFTs.

Compared with that, like you could say the ETF was kind of like flows of— that was mixed, I'd say.

Yeah, yeah.

Certainly not like Bitcoin effect.

Okay. I got this wildly wrong. I've said NFTs have a monster year as crypto natives make lots of money. I said NFTs are one of my highest conviction bets going into 2024. I want all— I want exposure to all parts of the ecosystem. Sometimes it's good to just have a little egg on your face.

Um, you remember I was going to put on that trade? Oh yeah, oh yeah, Longton's audience.

Boy, that leverage.

Yeah, I'm happy I didn't do that.

Yeah, so for context, Santi called me one day and he's— do you want— I mean, do you want to share what you're gonna do?

Yeah, you go for it.

I mean, Santi called me one day, he's like, I'm thinking about levering up all of my Solana and just moving the whole Solana stack into Solana NFTs like Madlads and Tensorians.

Like borrow against my SOL stack, go long NFTs because I thought like NFTs would have higher beta, like on the upside. But this was like, it actually did the complete opposite. Like Mad Lions went down 61%. I would have been very much in the hole there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I said NFTs make a major comeback. They become the rotation trade after L1s start to really run again. PFPs aren't dead. They will still be the dominant use case. Oh my God, this is the worst. Said music NFTs make a comeback. Token-gated playlists, song royalties, membership, friend tech for music happens. Solana NFTs outperform nearly everything in crypto. Okay, so I'll just period at the end of that sentence. That was wrong. What I got right was I said Pudgy Penguins have a big year. Anyone who raised a boatload of money, Yuga, Doodles, Azuki, Moonbirds, etc., does not do well. Companies adopt NFTs to reach crypto natives, not to reach their existing audience. Crypto natives become one of the most sought-after groups, similar to Henry's. Henry's are high, high income. What is it? High earners, net, whatever it is.

I don't know if you're curious, whatever Henry's thought.

It's a very sought-after advertising group. I should know this because we—

high earners, rich, not rich yet.

Higher earners, not rich yet. They're like the most sought-after group for fintechs and banks and stuff like that. Um, and then I said Pudgy's have— yeah, massive year.

Okay, so, and then I said, by the way, I will give you credit here because I know that you were very big on E and you expressed that you were very— the Pudgy Penguins. Oh, great year. Like with the airdrop, like you would have killed it. And I think it was again, a lot of dispersion, right? You have to get that right for NFTs. Everything else.

Yeah. And we also talked about, we said Solana airdrops would drive wealth into that eco and have a huge wealth effect, which would flow into NFTs. And then the last one, and then I actually want to talk about CIX again is And I said there would be this new wave of media companies in crypto and some of the legacy players would go downhill and there would be new players that started in the bear market. They would hopefully do things on-chain. And I would call out a few new, new media companies I'm watching, like Blockspace Media, I think is doing a good job. The Rollup, Andy, the Rollup are doing a really good job. Yeah, there's just cool things happening. So And okay, so one of my biggest takeaways here, Santi, is we actually got a good amount right. I know yours was 4 out of 14 and mine was— I had egg on my face reading those. We actually got a lot right thematically, like airdrops would drive this massive wealth effect, but then the actual second-order impact of that we got wrong. And if you just said if you picked the actual coins that we were talking about on January, January 2024, and you like AI, I was like, I think you call that like Render, Akash, like BitTensor, things like that. That was actually wrong. But you nailed AI or like NFTs. Like, would you— Mad Lads didn't, but Pudgies did. But Pudgies did. So it's like thematically these predictions are interesting and I think it's something for people to remember as they're listening to these episodes and reading people's tweet threads and things like that. It's like, think about it thematically and then make your own decisions on how you will allocate based on that strategy? Don't just blindly follow— blindly follow people's token picks and then make sure you are comfortable. This was actually probably the biggest lesson of this year investing for me was making sure you're comfortable readjusting. Do remember I went into the air like, 'I think you want to sit and hold.' Oh yeah, here we go! You were like no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, you got to be adjusting. Yeah.

To be fair, I think this was a year where I was way more agile. Yeah, in the public, in the liquid stuff. On the venture side, I just, I was fortunate to, um, I kept investing through the bear last 3 years and I'm just sitting on that. I'm not like, I'm not like jumping out as valuations have come up. This year was more like, I feel really good about the venture side of the house. Valuations have come up. Like I'm not jumping out of my seat to invest above $100 million val. Like that's not my thing. But on the public side, I was way more agile and it was a year where it paid, it paid to be agile. Like if you were paying attention, if you were, for me, a lot of it was just paying attention to sectors that otherwise I would've probably just kind of been like lazy to jump on.

But I mean, we got a lot of like what we thought was gonna happen, right? But it, but the, the TL;DR is it flowed into memes. Yeah. It didn't flow into what we thought.

Like, yeah, I think what you said, I would dovetail that and just say You know, none of it matters if you don't get the asset right. So like, you'd be right about the theme. So like, it's just the nature of the game. It's not meant to be easy, but I think you, you have to— you can't all be dispersed. Like, if you were to pick AI, like, it pays to be there and just paying attention. And like, there's always like one or two— there's always two or three like bets that you can make. And the nice thing about crypto being venture is that you can express that view in a liquid manner and like quickly rotate. If it wasn't the— if it was the, the Virtuos competitor, and you had a position in both Virtuals and the other one, you could have like probably cut the other one and like just adjusted the bag so that you're— but you mean, but expressing the view on both, I tend to do that a lot. It's like, all right, AI, and then I'm pick two and then see those how they perform or like GOAT and the other one or like, you know what I mean? Like whiff and bonk. Yeah. These sort of things, right?

The last thing was our price predictions, which will tie into my other takeaway. So you said $100K BTC. I said $80K BTC. So we both got that. You said 6K ETH. I said 8K ETH. You said 750 SOL. I said 600 SOL and I said 250 Avalanche, which hopefully did not take that bet because I was wrong.

Avalanche is probably around $40. Okay. What made you say that, by the way?

I had— I remember saying this. I said I had just had like 6 different conversations with people who, they were all there like 6 different institutions because we were like doing DAS and we were talking to a lot of the institutions. They were all, they were all doing things with Avalanche. I was like, wow, that is so— yeah, yeah.

Avalanche was at $34. I mean, it's flat here, flat on here, basically flat. Yeah.

And it traded down to like $20, I think, and then came back up. But yeah, that was, that was wrong. My other— so one of my takeaways was we got a lot right. But if you listen to the actual coins, that, then, then we were wrong. But like, the theme was right. The other takeaway is, I think we did the classic overestimate what happens in a year, underestimate 10 years. It's like, you know, like, like Coinbase, your Coinbase call was right. And if someone listened to you, you know, they could have bought Coinbase at $50. It's trading at what, $250 now? But you said a 10x, not a 5x, right? So, or, or Solana, you did get Solana right. You just, it wasn't as bullish as Jason Yanowitz.

Yeah. Yeah. It would've outperformed a lot of other stuff, but yeah, you're right. The other thing that we totally missed was dinosaur coins like Ripple.

Yeah.

Like, my God. You know, the thing that surprised me the most, a lot, one thing is the TikTok effect. TikTok is a new, new flow to crypto that is very important. You could argue it's been important in prior years, but I think a lot of the flows for Ripple just come through that channel.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I agree with that. Let's do 2025 predictions.

You wanna go first? Yeah, sure. My first prediction, I think there will be a continued growing distinction between have and have-nots, particularly like L1s, and that will show up in real usage. Like I think this year will continue. You know, we've been in a storytelling, everyone says they have the best KPIs, the highest throughput. Decentralization, security, whatever. I think it will become more tangible to really just say, okay, there are clearly certain chains that are getting a ton of adoption. So all, all that is predicated on— I don't have a concrete number, but I just think that there will be far more users coming into crypto, um, that are, um, inactivity coming on. Like whether it's AI agents or just institutions and users through a combination of largely stablecoins and DePIN. And I think it will become, you know, you're already starting to see that, like where BlackRock decides to build, where like, um, and that leads me, and I singled out a few protocols that I think will be the haves, and that includes Solana, Avalanche, Celestia, particularly sovereign rollups, Barachain, and MegaETH. The only one there that is, you could argue also like Move as a category. I know it's a lot of protocols, but I do, those are the ones that I think particularly MegaETH, like across all of them, I think low latency is a common, is a very important component there. I'll credit Hasib came out with really good predictions that I agreed with a lot of them. So I would agree. He also had like low latency being a key thing. A lot of the projects that I'm investing in, in MegaETH, are like— MegaETH is like that low latency thing in Ethereum. So I think that really lends itself to really interesting applications. So all this to say is that the user will— the loyalty on L1s and L2s largely goes away. It's more of, all right, where can real usage start happening? And I think this year I may be overestimating, But from where I sit and what I'm building, I think that, and in my process of going through RFPs, of going deep in which, like which chain can support like millions and millions of users through that exercise, I think that's my biggest prediction. It's like there, there's, I think, a very clear divide in tech. Loyalty doesn't matter, but you, it'll be very clear of like, put the KPI discussion. Away. It's like, I have 30 million users and you don't, or I have 100 million users. Right now, A16z puts out a— has a report saying there's only 30 to 60 million, like, active monthly wallets. Um, where do you think the next 100 is going to be? And I think it'll be— that is what, uh, I think I'm excited about. I think it will start to happen this year, and it will be very clear where they go is gonna be a very big indicator of like which protocol you wanna be in those ecosystems. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you think the returns flow to those chains or to the apps on those chains?

Excellent question. More so the applications. Interesting. Like I would, I would say it's a levered bet right now. You could say, for instance, like if everything is on, we can go into a discussion how these things are valued. I think it's all relative valuations. Like everything is comped to Ethereum. So, you know, what's ETH at now? ETH is a $437 billion, uh, protocol. And you have SUI at 40, Avalanche at— what is it, 18? Yeah, like I'm looking at fully diluted, right? 18. You have Aptos at 5, 10-ish, fully 11 fully diluted movement at 10. So again, if you, if you believe Ethereum should be valued and is, that's a comp. Yeah. Automatically that compresses. Like now you could argue Ethereum's overstated. And then, you know, that's like, because there is this effect, like the Maker effect, as soon as you start seeing real usage and cash flows, like, I was like, wait a minute. Is trading at like a really absurd multiple. But let's just say that that's a promise— internet settlement, you know, layer of the internet kind of stuff— then that's a number. Yeah. And there's certain protocols in there that are at least a 10x, a 20x that you can do in size. Yeah.

Including, you know, yeah. So let's call this our chains prediction. So that was your chain prediction. My chain prediction, I have a couple like sub-bullets here. One is that general purpose chains are dead. I think that you will see a lot more chains that become hyper-specific on a—

what'd you say? No pun intended.

Oh yeah, no. Yeah, exactly. Actually, that's related to another one. So think about things like Abstract, which are like the consumer chain. Now, I don't actually know what they've done in the chain to make it a consumer chain. I think there are some things that they've actually done to make the wallet experience better on Abstract than you can do anywhere else. So it's the consumer chain, you know, Atlas and like UniChain doing things to make them like the DeFi chains. There are actually things that you can do. And I think you will see a lot more very specialized chains and do well, and the general purpose chains will not do well. On the back of that, I think this is actually the year you're going to see an app chain really break out, whether it's Hyperliquid or Athena's chain or UniChain. I don't know what it's going to be, but instead of saying, hey, there's these chains and others trying to build apps on top of them, I think one of the apps that builds their own chain will become a breakout chain. And then the third, the third bucket of like my subchain-related predictions are I think you will start to see crazy forms of native yield and some crazy, crazy, crazy incentives. In the form of fees, insane APYs, grants to applications to come build there, uh, fee switches turning on. Uh, Mike had a good prediction, I think, which is that, uh, DeFi protocols will increasingly hypothecate customer assets as a business model, including bridges, LSTs, et cetera. I think a lot of this yield will end up flowing into just like, it'll just be like general chain yield. Where if you move on to insert chain, you will get that yield. And so that will be a new thing that will probably get out of— it's actually very similar to my 2024 prediction, which is people will follow Blast and offer native yield. I would just double down on that prediction for this year.

Yep. General purpose. I want to go back to something you said. So, so like if you're sitting here in a portfolio of 100 bucks, like That you would include Solana, Ethereum as general purpose?

Um, yeah, I would include them as general purpose. I mean, I think some of them will still do well, but I think the ones that will do— I think there will be the ones that will start to do better will be the specific chains.

I'm going to add on to that just by saying that what you saw in Ripple this year is very indicative and is a strong, strong signal that the market likes specific narratives. Yeah, Ripple is the— this is the DeFi. Normies think of Ripple as payments. Yeah, and it's very easy to understand that. You can— yeah, I went through this exercise. Go look at the TikTok commentary. They take the clip from, you know, uh, what is it, Brad, um, Garlinghouse. Yeah, yeah. And on CNBC and it's like, it's like the, for normie, it's like, it's easy to wrap your head around that. And the, in most of my conversations around crypto, people hate the abstract. It's like the generalized stuff. Yeah. So, all right. Those, those are the chain. I think, yeah. Ripple, Ripple. What I'm trying to say is Ripple, the phenom, the strong performance of Ripple last year would, it makes me excited to see, okay, what else can I around this sort of theme and app and I would agree with you, the application specific stuff is going to do well.

Uniswap Wallet is designed to easily manage, store, and swap your crypto all in one place. Access thousands of tokens across Ethereum and 10+ chains including Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, and more. Uniswap's wallet has built-in MEV protection and zero gas fees with swaps that go through Uniswap X. You can also swap with the peace of mind that the code is completely open source and independently audited. Download it today. It's available on Chrome, iOS, and Android. Yeah. All right. Let's do— do you have any stablecoin predictions? Because I have a couple. Yes. Okay. First. Yeah, sure. I'll go first. I have 4 stablecoin predictions. My first one is that at least one major bank, one major tech company, and one major fintech launches their own stablecoin. And this will be— what this will do is it will— the payment narrative will start to go mainstream for the first time since— I mean, I don't know when, when, when payments was really the narrative of probably 2013 or something like that. There's going to be real businesses adopting payments and it's going to be very boring to crypto natives. But the stablecoin market share is going to go parabolic, I think. And this will have this second-order impact of, uh, increasing consumer trust and increasing mainstream adoption of all crypto. And I think will actually be one of the best, best things that has ever happened for crypto's brand. So prediction number 1 on stablecoins is that a major bank, a major tech company, and a major fintech are all going to launch their own stablecoin. So I would say maybe it's BlackRock, maybe it's Robinhood, maybe it's Facebook again tries it, whatever. The second is this is going to become the best thing for crypto's brand. The third is that this is going to help get stablecoin legislation passed in the United States, which is going to have this nice flywheel, which is going to cause more stablecoins, which increases the brand, which gets regulators happier. And then the fourth thing is in terms of the, the landscape, I think that Tether will keep doing really well because of Howard Lutnick and his position and proximity to Trump. I think that USDC will lose market share this year because of a couple of factors. One is you're seeing the rest of the market launch stablecoins, whether it's leveraging folks like Agora or like Anchorage. And I think it was Anchorage, Paxos, Kraken partnered. Robinhood, I think, will launch their own. And the only thing that I think Circle could do to counter this is rapidly launch on a bunch of other chains because they have that competitive advantage. But the other thing is they're going to have to give a higher amount of the, you know, quote unquote fee switch back to folks. They're going to have to pass back a lot of the yield. So I think it will be an interesting competitive year for stablecoins. I think USDC will— everyone is a winner in stablecoins this year, but I think USDC will lose some market share.

Yeah. Can I add to that? Yeah. Definitely agree. Stablecoins explode from here. You have currently, looking at CoinGecko, $212 billion in market cap. That includes all the majors. Um, so that's roughly shy of 6— 5.8% of the entire market cap of crypto is stablecoins. That, that grows to like 10.

You think stablecoins make up 10% of the crypto market?

They should, I think. Just in terms of flows, right? And, and, and I think to your point, the dominance has been fairly well defended by Tether, like, throughout the year. Tether really kind of— the, the composition didn't really move. Like, Tether was like, like, three-quarters of the market cap. Like, if you look at dominance and CoinGecko, it's Tether is like 74% throughout, super flat. And I would definitely agree with you, where, where this bucket really changes over time is USDC. Um, I think Tether will continue to— could dominate, ex-Europe, obviously, because I think with Mika coming on, like, I think Tether is no longer supported. Uh, Tether, but nonetheless, I mean, I think the USDC share goes down. That, that's the one. And USDC currently is 20% of the market cap. So that, that I think, um, may grow as a whole, but I think the percentage definitely, I would say, comes down like 15. As you see more, uh, you know, PayPal's of the world, other fintechs. What you just said, I think that the one to lose the most is USDC.

Yeah. All right, those are the stablecoin predictions.

Anything else there? Uh, it, it— the only thing that is not quantifiable, but it increases, to your point, uh, non-speculative adoption in crypto, like payments, e-commerce, like stuff like that, that is really Yeah, I've just noticed even at like just on this brand of the brand of crypto is still really bad.

I would say like if you're at dinner parties or holidays or whatever, the thing that, that hits and that like people do understand, you're getting those BCAs in.

Oh, you know, trying to get, trying to get to your level.

If you stablecoins are the thing that really people understand, they're like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

So I just think it's like deep in, it's like a no-brainer, right? Especially again, offering dollars, tokenized dollars to the world is like if we just stop there, that's a massive market. All right.

Next bucket I had. Do you have any Bitcoin-related predictions?

$150K.

Clean and simple.

That's it.

All right. I have, I have, I, so I agree with that. I think Bitcoin ends the year around $150K. That's what I put as well. I think that there are—

I don't know if it ends, it will touch $150K at some point during the year.

Uh, yeah, yeah. Okay, better. That's— I agree with that. I don't think it ends. I don't know what the price is on December 31st. Okay. I think one thing that, uh, I think one thing is going to happen is that corporate Bitcoin treasury purchases heat up, not because it makes sense, but because it moves the stock price. Do you remember when like Long Island Iced Tea became like the Long Island Blockchain Iced Tea or whatever it was? Um, I think that you will see I'm looking at some like, like Semler Scientific announced a $40 million Bitcoin investment. Their stock surged 30%. There's a bunch of these kind of like, I think it was Rumble, like a video company announced a Bitcoin purchase. Their stock went up. So yeah, Rumble plans to buy $20 million in BTC and new treasury strategy. Uh, Cooler Technology announced a Bitcoin treasury with $21 million investment. Genius Group, like, I think you'll just start to see if you're a CFO and you say, hey, I could take $20 million of cash and turn it and move it into $20 million of BTC, and I could move my stock price more than $20 million. Like, I think you'll start to see some CFOs do that. Um, I think a Bitcoin strategic reserve actually will happen. That is my, Far out. I think a Bitcoin strategic reserve will happen, but it will be much smaller than people think. Um, like quantum-wise, but it's like, like Lummis is, I think Lummis says we should go buy a million Bitcoins, right? It's like 5% of all the Bitcoin outstanding. We should go buy a million Bitcoin. I think a Bitcoin strategic reserve will happen, but it will not be a million Bitcoin. It might be 10,000. It'd be much smaller, maybe 1% of that or 5% of that. And then the last thing is, I don't know if you listened to the Bitcoin episode that we did that you couldn't make, unfortunately, but I think a Bitcoin fork will become contentious for the first time since 2017. There will be something— it won't be as big as the big block, small block debate, but there will be something about like, should we add this OP code, this opcode into into Bitcoin, or, uh, there'll be some sort of big debate in Bitcoin. I'm not smart enough or deep enough in the weeds of Bitcoin to, to really know what it's going to be, but I think there'll be some contentious debate in the Bitcoin world. Yeah, interesting.

Yeah. Um, I didn't— any AI predictions? Let me ask you one thing. If the Strategic Reserve happens, in your Fana returns, 150, 200, 250, $250,000.

If a strategic reserve happens, Bitcoin's hitting $250,000.

Uh, yeah, I, I think so because of the game theory of other countries.

Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's off to the races. Other countries— you remember when Paul Tudor Jones in May 2020 announced that Bitcoin's going to be the fastest horse in the race? And the thing that that did was it removed all of the career risk of a hedge fund buying Bitcoin. If the US government announces a Bitcoin strategic reserve, now we're talking kind of like, you know, there's probably a small— like, that's not the bad predictions. So it cuts all the career risk of a central banker.

Like, I would argue how much of it's priced in? No, but the fact that it's being talked about— go back 5 years. Yeah, 7 years.

And what it does is it takes out the career risk for everyone in the world to buy Bitcoin because it's like, oh, the US government is now doing this. So okay, you're an endowment. Okay, boom, you just got the gold stamp of approval.

The second-order effects of that are just huge.

Yeah. So great. Okay. Any fundraising or like deal-related predictions?

Echo continues to be a major central hub of how—

For those who don't know what Echo is, give a little context.

Yeah, Echo is just like a crowdfunding platform, basically. It's for the community to invest in these projects. Like, in the more noticeable raises recently is MegaETH. They raised at, I think, the exactly the same valuation as what most institutional investors, including myself, invested in. And they offered the community a very decent size. I think it was like $10 million or so, or $5 million. I think it was like a pretty decent slug. But yeah, I got sold out like within seconds or minutes. And so I think you'll see more of that. Like, it's not pure on the extreme. Like, I had in my predictions, like, ICOs make a comeback. Um, I don't think— like, there, there may be some ICOs, but I, I would say that perhaps this is a prediction that I want to talk about, which is I think the extent by which things change, there's going to be disappointment. There is, yes, a lot of— like, you have President that launched an NFT collection. He, he talks about crypto. He is pro-crypto. But I still think that, you know, perhaps people are just— it's very exciting. But I think the way rulemaking and lawmaking works is that that takes time. And even though like you have like, there's a separation of power kind of thing, like you have— ICOs are talking about regulation, or it matters because if you're like, your lawyers are not going to say, yeah, go do an ICO. Like, not like Jason Yanowitz actually sent a very good email to folks like when Trump got elected. and he was just like, yes, it's, it's obviously super, you know, important that, you know, there's a, there's a shift in the tone and the stance, but be cautious, right? Like, there's still certain things that your lawyers are going to tell projects like, hey guys, like, yo, there's a way in the process. So I'm not like advocating, and I don't think it's going to happen where you have like full-on ICO mania like you did in 2017. No, I don't believe that. I don't. I think it will be more so expressed in Echo funds. Echo, CoinList. And that just changes the meta around how fundraising works. I don't know how much it— I still think institutional rounds are going to be a thing. I think VCs are still going to be very much a big part of this industry. Like, that's not going to go away, but it might just change the dynamics.

Yeah, I also had something around ICO. I— it's funny. I— okay, on the regulatory side of things, I said Trump's impact on regulation ends up being less than people think. Bingo. So I agree with you. I did say Trump's impact on the US Renaissance ends up being much larger than people think. So the impact on regulation is less than people think. The impact on this US Renaissance is larger than people think. So that is related to what you're saying on—

I— on this point— oh, sorry, finish that thought.

On ICOs, I said my prediction is that there will be an ICO of more than $100 million. There will be a $100 million ICO. The difference from ICOs from 2017 to today is they're going to be slightly more regulatory. They're going to be like more buttoned-up ICOs. Like, like if you, if you sign up for, for Echo, like the Echo onboarding is pretty thorough. It's accredited investor questions. It's Are you aware that you're probably going to lose all your money? There's going to be greater investor protections. I think they're going to be subject to stricter regulatory scrutiny, but I think they will still happen. And I think this could be seen as like— remember those crowdfunding platforms that like none of them worked like outside of crypto? This could be seen as like a kind of golden moment for crowdfunding again. Right. And I think the difference is Uh, it, you know, back then it was like there were— basically now I think the VCs will actually also participate in these ICOs. Like, I think you will see VCs signing up on Echo and Legion, or at the very least just participating at the exact same terms. Um, and so that will bring a lot of capital. It will also demand that these projects have higher standards and better due diligence.

I would say that last part I think is the most important. Like, like, to be fair, like, go back to 2017, like, some of the larger ICOs were done in this manner. Like, you want to do like Filecoin, DFINITY, um, um, Basis, Basecoin, um, Tezos, all of those that were really large, though, all of, all of those required like this onboarding and you had to like KYC. Yeah, but it was more so like maybe on this point, ICOs, and we— when I say ICOs, and I think it's what you— when you classify them as ICOs, it's like it's just everyone on the same terms, bigger rounds, one round, and the token is launched, and there's higher float out of the gate, and that has healthy dynamics. From an information disclosure standpoint, I think there will be a standard, and a lot of that will be enforced by folks like ECHO, right, which is like submit the deck. Like when you invest in AngelList, and I appreciate not everyone can do that, but I think the combination of you have a way to fund a deal, which is called the stablecoin that you have to onboard through some sort of way, combined with some KYC/AML, which is only becoming easier to do, right? Proof of identity and source of funds and all this stuff. All of that, you can do bigger raises, everyone on the same terms and launch a token. And by the way, it's like, I think that that phenomenon is going to really—

but I mean, yeah, I agree with all that. What I mean by ICOs too is just, it's less about big raises or anything like that. It's more just the ability for the general public to participate in something.

Right. Yeah. Accredited. Yes. If you're in the US. Yeah. Yeah. Does that include US persons or not?

Well, Is Echoes open to US people or is it not? Interesting.

Not sure, actually. I gotta go check. Most apps like are exclusive US persons.

Anyways, moving on from that one. Moving on. No comment. Anyways, I do think so. It's some other fundraising and transaction-related things that I, that I put down for predictions. I think we'll see a crypto company acquire a non-crypto company for over $100 million for the first time ever. Maybe it's you. I don't know who's going to do it. No, but I think, I think what I wrote is I guess it's going to be an L1 or an L2 because they're the ones with the big treasuries. And this is going to get really interesting, right? Because the regulators are not going to know what to do with it. The both sides will really want to do with the deal. There'll be like weird compliance and regulation, like the regulators will just have no clue if they should approve the deal or not. But it'll be really interesting. And I think it'll start an interesting trend of, I mean, what you've talked about with, with what you're doing, which is like bringing traditional businesses on-chain. I think that someone will probably beat you to the punch. And if you're an L1 or an L2, you should be probably thinking about this. Because there's actually a really crazy valuation discrepancy. Like if you were buying, I don't know, like media, like media in traditional world trades at like, I don't know, nothing. But like, I don't know, tokenized media trades at a lot. Like, so there's actually just a valuation mismatch there. And that's, that's an easy It's like an easy opportunity.

So I think that will happen. Absolutely right. I will just leave you with this historical anecdote, which is AOL at the peak of the dot-com bubble used its stock to buy— the first thing they did when they saw how much their stock was worth was they went out and bought a real business called Time Warner. Yeah, yeah. One massive acquisition, right? It was massive. They swallowed a Time Warner. It was like, uh, uh, there was—

yeah, it was, uh, and you gotta know that that is $182 billion acquisition back then. Back then. That's crazy.

They used an inflated stock to buy a real business and grow into that valuation. If you're sitting on a bill, 2, 3, 5, some of these treasuries are sitting on L1 or L2 treasuries are sitting on like sizable amounts like $10 trillion, $10 billion, $20, $30 billion.

Who has $20 billion? Solana's treasury's got to be up there. Solana's treasury— Solana's probably got them just—

yeah. I mean, a lot of this, they typically own like anywhere between 5% and 10% of the total token supply. Now, is it liquid? Like, is it— can they sell? Yeah, but do the math, right? Collectively, these foundations have massive amounts of treasury value and they're not doing anything with it. Yeah, yeah. Like, like, they— I would— I don't want to say activism is going to be a thing, but, you know, the— how, how projects and foundations allocate resources is one of the biggest opportunities, to your point, in crypto. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So definitely I'd be doing it. I'd be doing it in a much different way if I had. Yeah.

So, so I think, I think that will happen. I do think you're right. Like something around buttoning up how these treasuries are managed will probably happen. But yeah, I think, I think an L1 or an L2, this is my prediction, L1 or L2 will acquire a non-crypto company for $100 million. I also think there will be another billion-dollar crypto acquisition. We saw Stripe do the stablecoin acquisition for a billion. The biggest one before that was Galaxy acquiring BitGo for $1.2 billion, but that deal fell apart. That fell apart. Yeah, that deal fell apart. I think you will see another billion-dollar acquisition. I also think you'll start to see— I'm just continuing with my predictions of fundraising and deals and transactions. I think you will see a lot of funds announce big raises in the first half of the year, but it will be smaller than their last round. They're like Fund 3 will be smaller than Fund 2. But I think by the end of the cycle, you'll see the return of the mega raise, right? L1s and L2s raising $300 million, $400 million, $500 million. And then the very last thing I'd say, there's a lot of predictions on this bucket for me, is I think you will see a lot of successful companies with small, like sub-10-person teams that don't ever really raise venture. Maybe they raise like a seed round on Echo. But they never really raise venture. And you mentioned Hasib's predictions. I thought one of the most interesting ones was around software engineering agents. Right. And I think he's dead right about this. He said in a post-AI era, instead of having to raise millions of dollars for a seed round, you'll be able to launch an application with $10K of AI cloud compute. And so I think what this will do is there are projects, right, like Hyperliquid and Jupiter that never really raised either much venture or any venture, and they just have these small teams. I think that will start to be the norm, um, and, uh, I think that's a really interesting, exciting opportunity. You're just going to see 100x in the number of companies like Wanchain. So agreed. What's your next category? Any AI predictions?

Yeah, uh, one is tied to just crypto focus, the other one is more macro. Okay, um, AI as a narrative and projects continue to grow. You will see some of the more exciting and dominant projects in, in the category of, uh, top 5, top 10. The composition of the top 10 AI projects in crypto will change. A lot of that will be newcomers that launch a token that have been working but don't have a token yet. Um, and I'm biased because obviously, like, I see it from my portfolio. I think some of the best quality AI projects haven't launched the token. Hyperbolic, I mean, obviously I'm biased, but like projects like Hyperbolic, MyShell, Kuzco, like those three I'm very excited on and obviously look, I have a position, but I think that the quality of those, they don't have a token, but eventually if they do, I think those type of projects along with others that I haven't backed, I think will eventually launch. And once they do, they will become more like top 5 or top 10 AI projects. The category grows as a whole. Currently it's what, $50 billion? We said, yeah, $50 billion. So that grows probably to $100 billion. And a bucket is not just infra, not just, but a lot of this AI agent stuff that you're seeing, like powered by virtuals and other projects. Yeah. The last thing I'll say on this bucket is from a macro standpoint, Jensen Huang and Nvidia are more important than Jerome Powell. Like everyone will be watching their earnings and if that softens, everything goes down. Like that is just, the market is anchored to that and that is the proxy you gotta watch. I'm not watching Powell, I'm watching like, yeah, the treasury rate. Yeah. If the treasury rate holds 5 and is sub-5, the most important thing will be looking at NVIDIA and their earnings and what that stock is doing. Because if that doesn't do well, we're going to have a problem on our hands. Like, that was the only thing that derails my super bullish— we're both super bullish on 2025. I'm positioned that way. I think it'll be a breakout year. You look at, like, I was reading JP Morgan's The Alchemist report that came out. He draws on two like historical analogies, like, or one, which is I think useful, which is we've had two years of the, you know, S&P and NASDAQ go up like plus 20%. The probability is the odds are stacked historically speaking, like once you have those two break, like really strong years, like third one starts to become like the historical precedent is not strong there. But again, AI, I think is the saving grace. It's the thing that like pushes us forward. I'm worried because on AI specifically, in crypto, we all know what the hype cycle is, right? I think AI will go through that too. Like the amount of savings that you can realize, the amount of actual tangible results, like it's, you're already seeing the cost of H100s go down a lot this year. This is like the, you know, for people tracking this throughout the year, like for a while there, it was like all the supply, you know, the constraints around getting your hands on these chips to do inference and training and all this stuff. Like companies like Tesla and others, like, were just putting in massive orders, right, for H100s. Now that price has come dramatically, like, really, really low. People should go listen to the episode I just recorded with Sam from Kuzco. So the question is like, okay, like, throughout the last year and a half or so, people bought all these chips. Now what do you do with them? And how quickly does it show up? And I think that might be the only thing that really kind of derails us in 2025. Like, you know, it just doesn't materialize as much. It will happen to your point around 5, 10 years. Absolutely. But people need to see the P&L impact and I just don't think it's going to come to fruition as much. And for that reason, I want to have liquidity this year. I'm not jumping on like, especially if the rate is 5%. Fuck, man, I don't get paid 5% to just chill. I'll do that. I'm still super long on crypto. I don't have to be super exposed, but from a positioning standpoint, like, just taking AI is the central most important thing that I'm focusing on this year. Because if that doesn't do well, then we have a problem on our hands.

Say more about what that means for you, for how you position. Like, AI is the number one thing you're—

I'm just— I'm not a macro guy, but I just think that, like, again, if, if Treasury rates don't blow up— they're like 4.6 right now, 10-year Treasury, something like that. If it holds that line, it doesn't blow up above 5. There's something very psychological about 5, and I think the market disagrees on that. If it doesn't— if it holds that level, and there are reasons why you should be worried, like inflation might come up with some, some, some of the policies that Trump has been vocal about, like tariffs, right? That has an inflationary impact, right? But you know, you can argue that there's like other things that, you know, technology always is disinflationary. So AI can be disinflationary in ways. So like, again, it just needs to show up in the P&L. Yeah. And if companies, you know, everyone's excited because you can rip and replace stuff, like companies become more efficient. But I think usually humans just tend to overestimate with technology, the impact in a short period of time. And I think we've been in those like 3, 2 years of like massive ramping up of like the hardware and the And it's like, okay, well, so what? And it's not to say that like the benefit is not going to be there. It's just like the difference between the spread between the actual expectation and how much of and what is actually realized. So for that reason, that's my takeaway. Like I'm very focused on, I think the treasury rate is at a point where I feel comfortable like getting that 5% holding liquidity because I am worried about just AI and NVIDIA not just performing as well this year. And if that doesn't do well, nothing, nothing will do like just, just innate. Yeah. Can you imagine a world where Nvidia goes down 20% and Bitcoin goes up like crypto as a whole goes up 50%?

It's an interesting take that every, you know, the last couple of years is everything was trading on the rates and now everything is trading on— I mean, when I think the next earnings is like mid-February. So it sounds— it does feel like that's what the whole market is watching.

And by the way, that might be a great opportunity to put in a multi, multi— like a cycle trade, which is, man, if assets go down 20%, 30%, whoo. And you have liquidity, boy, I mean, that's great because you have a 4-year administration that is like very much pro-innovation, pro-AI, pro-crypto. You've never had that. But if Nvidia doesn't do well—

We're going to end this by talking about the cycle.

By the way, any comment on that? Like, from a— I'm just trying to be concretely tell folks that I am of the mind that I'm bullish 2025. Like, none of these predictions matter really. We're going to get them wrong. I will. You know, this, it's all on the margin. I think the most important thing for me that I want to get right every year, I want to get one or two things very, very right. And for me, it's the setup for crypto has never been better in the history of this asset class. I believe it. You've never had this pro stance. You've never had the setup of Bitcoin, you know, the excitement there, the administration, the regulatory stuff that will take time, but it's just, it's a big inflection point for the industry. But I'm very mindful of macro, and I'm not an expert, and, and I'm just holding some dry powder to really jump. Because if you see Bitcoin at $70 or $50— could happen— you would love to have, you know what I mean? So I don't feel super compelled to, like, I don't— I never advocate for leverage ever, because as we all documented, like, our predictions were very wrong. Some of them, like, last year. And that's just the nature of the game. But liquidity is just essential to bid when others don't want to.

Yeah, I, I wrote this piece. I mean, just talking about 2025, I wrote this piece like 2024 Reflections that I'll send to you. It was like a look back on the past year and what we're aiming— Reflections from our 7th year in business. Blockworks just finished our 7th, like, full year. And I wrote this thing. I said, folks at Blockworks are sick of this story, but I'll tell it again. 3 months into starting Blockworks, Mike and I met with a successful entrepreneur at his office in New York. We wanted his advice. How could we compete with the incumbents like CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, the upstarts like The Block and Decrypt, and the institutions like Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal? And I remember very strongly feeling like this was just a Herculean task. And he gave us this one piece of advice, which was, in an industry as volatile and vicious as crypto, sometimes all you need to do is survive. And this, this became and continues to be a foundational principle for Blockworks. And as this relates into what you're saying, we have run Blockworks very differently than many of our competitors, which is instead of chasing every last ounce of growth, we, we've intentionally made decisions that sacrifice all-out growth to stay default alive. And that is how— that is like what I'm thinking about a lot going into this year is like the amount of growth and money that you personally can make and your company can make if you're a founder is just— this is the year. However, this is the year that can also kill you in 2026 and 2027 if you don't make the right decisions this year. So like I want to make as much money as possible this year personally, and I want Blockworks to grow as much as possible, but I'm not willing to let either me personally, like my personal portfolio, or more importantly, Blockworks die in 2026 and 2027. So I will start to think about how to be a little more risk-averse than I was in 2022, 2023, and 2024. I was very risk-on. And this is the year I will start to think about how to get a little more risk-averse, even though I know I will leave a lot of money on the table.

Man, you nailed it. Survive. I'm of the mind that I'm never going to capture 100% of the cycle. 80. I'm happy if I capture 50. I, I, that's just something that I've adopted. And boy, do I take a lot of risk. Like, I'm not shy to take it. I've thankfully was in a position to really allocate to private deals, like early stage stuff when a lot of VCs were not showing up during the Luna bust, during FTX, post FTX. It was crickets, man. You'd send a lot of deals that I would, you and I were looking at and a lot of VCs just didn't do them. And it was a lot of them were just composed by smaller funds or that had just raised capital or just a lot of angels. And I think right now, like, you always want to be bidding when no one wants to do it, when everyone is turning down that deal, and you're like, okay, it just, it feels uncomfortable. But we're not in that position. So, you know, I think it's wise to, to trim, to be prudent, to just be cautious. And always, I don't want to be sounding the alarm. I don't want to be a canary in the coal mine kind of thing. But it's like, there's always things that you don't foresee. And, um, I think there's a lot of reasons to be really excited about this industry. I think we, the, the share of speculative activity that crypto has right now is at an all-time high. Like it's just really high. I think one of the things that we haven't really touched on is DePIN, but DePIN and stablecoins for me is really what shows the world that this is not a piece of abstract technology. It is like concrete, it's useful. And you start not even like leading with crypto. The word crypto becomes irrelevant. The word Ethereum becomes irrelevant. The word Solana, all these brand names that we talk about as Kryptonite has become absolutely irrelevant. It's like you have a tokenized dollar and you're earning yield and you can punt tokenized stocks. Like, let's go. Like, drop the tokenized, you can punt stocks. And that's just the way to do it. And it's why I'm so excited about why I'm building an Inversion is because that's our, that's our focus. It's like, you know, I want to take what Deepend, the proof points you have there, and I never want to build distribution. I think there's really good businesses in the real world, to your point, that could really— you could tap into that distribution and do a pivot or just layer on crypto, and the setup is good. Yeah. But honestly, there is— we have really, as an industry, it's a call to action, really. I know there's fantastic builders that have been really building relentlessly, and the drive is there, but we have really kind of 4 years to prove that this is actually— I mean, the reasons we've got the golden setup, now is the time to you got a penalty shot, you got a free throw, like you got, you're in the whatever red zone, whatever sports analogy you want to use, you got to score. You have 4 years to figure that shit out. So we should be as an industry really aggressive. And I think a lot of people are, but there's always reasons why it could be derailed. But yeah, I think it's time to really go at it hard.

Yeah. All right. Wrapping up with my last predictions, my AI predictions here. Are— I'm seeing a lot on the timeline about like, if you're in meme coins, pivot to NFTs. If you're in meme coins, pivot to AI. AI is overhyped, pivot back to memes. Sell your, you know, sell your AI for Pengu. I think that both— I'm actually very curious to get to see if you agree with this or not. Both memes and AI agents will win this year. I think it's not a sell all your memes, buy the AI agents, sell all the AI agents. I mean, I just don't make the distinction.

I think it's just, it's all, they're all like memes. And within memes, like AI, I think, well, I guess you could argue there are like non-meme AI agents-ish, right? They're trading like memes.

So yeah, that's a good way to put it.

There's no, Bitcoin's a meme. Everything, everything in this asset class trades like a meme.

I think, I think it, I think they all work. I do think AI agents are the metaverse of this cycle. It is both very correct long term and people will make a lot of money this cycle. But also most of these are just ChatGPT wrappers and most of them will go down 99% in the bear market and it will look— it will be the top thing at the top of the cycle where it's like, I mean, AI agents like probably rip like 10x from here, 5x, I don't know, like they probably are a great trade, but you probably get smoked on the downside. Um, but if they have liquidity, I got—

the reason why I've been vocal about some of these coins is as a category, memes have a lot of liquidity. So, um, you know, you want to make sure that the door on the way out is pretty wide, um, to be able to capture, you know, 80, 70, 50% of of the return profile, right? Because you're not going to tick-tock it. But, um, so anyways, as a recap, um, we are not oracles, ladies and gentlemen, as you can tell from 2024. Uh, I think we're thematically very right, obviously. Um, it all really just, uh, it pays to be in the trenches. It pays to be focused, I think. Um, but also express your view, which is one of the things that I find to be one of the more interesting features of this asset class is that it's venture. With liquidity. And so that allows you to make multiple bets on a particular sector and category. And I've always thought that like the ability to put on a— construct your portfolio as a way to like where you're going to focus your attention, understanding that it's fairly limited. But like going into this year, I think, you know, I'm— my focus is on obviously my portfolio, my venture portfolio, and seeing how that performs. Like we didn't talk about Bera, but, you know, Bera, for instance, is about is, well, you know, there's interesting phenomenon happening there. I mean, they've just probably going to close on a billion of commitments. Proof of liquidity as a concept is fascinating. You know, talk about like the, a lot of the work that Cosmos has done. We want, we want to be right about Cosmos. It's just going to be right with like Avalanche and like Bera or something or Celestia. But I think super interesting stuff. Like I've spent a lot of time with Layer Zero guys, like the interoperability, like the tech is very much there is what I'm trying to say. So now it's like, you know, really, will be really interesting this year on the application layer and what happens there, both on the venture and like the funding stuff, like, and the projects that come out of that, not just like your— because I felt like over the last couple of years, there wasn't like a ton of innovation. There was a lot of copying from ecosystem to ecosystem around NFTs and DeFi. But I think as you have like really low latency, protocols like Mega and, um, you know, others. Like, I think it's like, there's, there's some really good projects out there that are like trying to do really new stuff. Yeah. So, yeah.

I have one more prediction I forgot to say, which is centralized crypto companies are going to start launching tokens. No chain, no tech, just a token. And it ties back to this mismatch in valuation multiples. Um, And specifically, I think it'll be a lot of the 2021, 2022 cohort of overvalued crypto companies that where their back is basically against the wall. They raised at too high evaluations. And the way to get out of that is to launch a token. And I think there's a lot of eyes actually on Kaito right now. Not saying Kaito isn't overvalued. They're, they're, Kaito is a great company. They're not—

Kaito, for people that don't know, is like the Mindshare. It's like a social analytics platform.

Platform. Yeah. And I'm watching that very closely because they have, they're just a research and data business, basically. Like, they're just like, they should just be like a SaaS business, but they've got these YAPs and they've got the YAP leaderboard and there's a lot of hinting that they're going to launch a token and they drop these NFTs and they're trading at 4 ETH right now. And I think, you know, just talking to a lot of founders in different chats and calls over the last couple of weeks, there's a lot of people looking at what Kaito is doing. Because if Kaito launches a token, Kaito doesn't have a chain. They don't have a— there's no tech. Like, they're just like launching a token, right?

And I mean, there's tech on the actual business.

Yeah, but no, no, the business is great tech. Like, yeah, but like, there's no— there's no token to secure a blockchain or anything, right?

Yeah.

And I don't know, it's just like, it's a token as a financing mechanism, not a token as a way to secure a network, right? Great.

Yeah. I mean, that's the promise of crypto, always has been. Like, it's just like it is a very good way to like make your customers stakeholders and like, yeah, serve for customer acquisition, scale, like scaling your business, funding your business. Like it's just a, it's a more efficient market, presumably, because it just is a global capital market. I think there's a lot of, I just want to add to that very quickly. There's a lot of, to your point, a big cohort of companies that raised and just are kind of not going to raise another round, but could go this route. But the other one is, Like maybe you see a lot of these projects like earn, like launch their own rewards program is how I think of it. Like, and it's just a token. Like it may not just be, it may be an NFT, like, like patrons for Infinix. And then maybe that morphs into something else. But like, I think there's like already interesting experiments happening and they've been well received. Like Infinix raised $53 million for their patron sale. That was pretty good. Yeah. So node sales too, you know, there's different things, but yeah. Big year ahead, man. Yeah. You know, we're going to be here in this chair whether you like it or not.

I'm very excited to have you in New York more. We're building this like a podcast studio, so we'll do more in-person showings. Maybe we could do like a live podcast at the Blockworks office. That'd be fun. Oh, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, I'll commit to doing that at least once a quarter. At least maybe once every month or two.

I'll believe it when I see it.

But yeah, sure. Yeah.

Let the record show you got an office, right? Yeah. Yeah.

But let the record show that I, when I was in New York, I texted you and said, hey man, can we do an in-person recording? I know, crickets, crickets. All right.

That one was on me.

That one was on me. Okay. I will, I will, I will record straight. Yeah. But anyways, big year ahead, guys. Look, no matter what happens, we'll be here. We'll be bringing on some of the best people to talk about stuff. And if you do want to hear about, now that we have that Telegram group, I think it's been great addition. So hopefully more in-person events and some great guests, right? So if you have any ideas around that, please drop us a line, a comment on YouTube, Telegram. And yeah, thank you everyone for listening. It's a real treat, honestly. As I was reflecting on 2024, when people ask me what are the best things that I do, it's like, this is like top 2 or 3 by far. Yeah. So thank you, sir. Cheers, everyone. Yeah. Let's make it a big year. Indeed.