The State of Crypto, 2026 Predictions & Espresso's Token Launch | Jill Gunter

I think that we are winning. I think that crypto as a technology and dare I say as an industry, I know there's kind of a debate now of whether crypto even is its own industry anymore, or if it's all just fintech. But I think that all of that is a sign that it is winning. It is achieving its, its objectives. Suddenly all of these dream products that people have been thinking about and sort of theorizing about in crypto for so long start to make sense.

Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is for informational 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 companies, funds, or projects discussed. All right, everyone, welcome back to Empire. Very excited about this one. We have Jill from Espresso. Jill, welcome to Empire.

Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I actually think the prerecorded conversation maybe will be more interesting than that than the crypto coverage. Jill and I just kind of went deep into like, I don't know, tech bros having 12 kids and yeah, the pronatalism movement, parenthood, all of it.

Yeah, yeah, we can, we can give a little redux of that at the end if there's time.

So for those who don't know, actually, Jill used to run a podcast on the Blockworks Network called What Grinds My Gears. You and Malcolm. I actually still think that was second best crypto podcast ever, obviously behind Empire.

Yeah. I mean, okay. Yeah. Empire is a pretty high bar to hit, but I, I mean, I'm amazed. I still to this day have people, you know, at crypto conferences, whatever, come up to me and they're like, wait, you're the What Grinds My Gears host? And I'm like, we haven't recorded an episode of that podcast in 5 years.

We still get, we still get listens. I see on our megaphone on our Spotify, it's like, you know, like 4 a week or something.

Well, it was— I think it was a great combination of kind of before a lot of people started doing it, but like a combination of like trad-fi perspective. It was me and my friend Meltem who both had, uh, Wall Street careers. I mean, for me it was like a 3-year stint, but we're going to call it a Wall Street career before getting into crypto. And I think that there was a real kind of thirst for information that could meld the two at the time. But this is again going back to 2018, and it's It's really funny to think about how far we've come where now the lines between the two are so blurred. But yeah, that was my first experience working with you and Mike and, and the Blockworks team. And, um, yeah, from that moment forward, I've been bullish on Blockworks.

Bonded.

Bonded. Yeah.

Well, maybe we can actually use that as a kicking off point. Like you, so you, yeah, you were, I think if I remember correctly, a credit, I think credit trader.

Yeah.

Maybe a— Yeah, yeah.

I can remember. Goldman.

Yeah. Goldman. And then spent some years with, um, Sam and the team over at Slow Ventures. And yeah, just been like in, I would say around the industry for a while, but like I think full-time in the industry for almost a decade now. Yeah, the industry is—

or at least I'm old.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe I won't call that out next time.

Life comes at you fast.

Yeah, exactly. I would love to just get your take on— I think the meta and the conversation in crypto is weird right now. It's like, have we been successful here? Like, I don't know, Robinhood's doing things on-chain and like Stripe just launched Tempo, and I don't know, the government like likes crypto. So like, are we successful? Or like, I don't know, is crypto dead? Like, this is the most viral piece I've seen on crypto Twitter in a long time titled Crypto Is Dead. And it's like, or was this all just some big casino and we failed here? So I honestly love to just start with like high-level take on what is happening in crypto right now.

Yeah, God, what is happening? So, uh, another Blockworks podcast expansion, I was on that with Mike for a good 6 months or so earlier this year. And it was really interesting because it was myself who— I'm a co-founder at Espresso, which is a blockchain infrastructure company kind of in this like L2 modular space focused on interop. It was Uma from Sysync to obviously working on ZK proving and all of the ways that that's going to bring scalability to infra and crypto. And then Nick from Celestia. So again, kind of like big modular thesis. And so the three of us as these infrastructure founders, and then Mike, who has, of course, like a much broader view of the ecosystem, kind of being on like the media side and the data side and running conferences like Digital Asset Summit, um, see you there in March, uh, but you know, with a much broader perspective on the space and talking to, you know, regulators and institutions and so forth. And Mike would get on every episode of the show and be like, You guys, things have never been better. Like, did you guys see the note that Treasury put out the other day about the impact that stablecoins are projected to have? And the three of us as builders and founders would get on every episode so cynical, like, oh man, like, have you seen like how, you know, this airdrop got totally rug pulled and like, you know, this, you know, maybe a great project is like going down the tubes now, and, you know, it's all because of like the farming meta. And, and, you know, it's so difficult, I think, when you're building in this space to be able to take that step back and see the forest for the trees and see all of those great things that are objectively successes because you're just so close to the frame on all of the like messiness and casino dynamics and things that can really get you down. All of that's to say, I think that, I think that we are winning. I think that crypto as a technology, and dare I say as an industry— I know there's kind of a debate now of whether crypto even is its own industry anymore, or if it's all just fintech— but I think that all of that is a sign that it is winning. It is achieving its, its objectives. Uh, but I can also very much understand and at points have also been able to relate to the really cynical, dark energy that so many people, especially those for a long time, feel.

How do you think about the, like, what we are actually trying to solve here? Like, what, what we are doing? Are we building a better financial system? Are we building, I don't know, some hedge against the system? Like, what is it more the Chris Dixon thesis of, like, we'll be able to own the internet? Like, how do you think about what we're really doing here?

Yeah, I honestly, this is an area where my perspective has evolved a lot this year. Um, and if I go back to the reasons why I got into crypto or why it first kind of clicked with me, uh, I wrote about this last week. It was really 3 things that all kind of happened to me or that I got to witness while I was working on Wall Street that came together for me that made me think, okay, this Bitcoin blockchain thing is going to be the future. One of which was I was trading specifically Latin American sovereign debt, so I was trading the sovereign bonds of places like Venezuela and Argentina, and I got to see kind of firsthand how terrible the monetary mismanagement was in those countries and how there really was a need for an alternative to their local fiat currency. And so Bitcoin resonated with me from that perspective. The second thing that was really formative for me, I think, was I started working on Wall Street shortly after the 2008 financial crisis and kind of, I would say, at the peak of the Occupy Wall Street movement. And so there was all of this backlash of like against the unfettered greed of Wall Street. Wall Street is just a casino. And a lot of people viewed that, I think, from the Elizabeth Warren perspective of like, we need to shut the casino down. Like Wall Street should not be the casino. I didn't really crystallize this for myself until much later, but I think I viewed it as like, we should democratize the casino, which it sounds terrible to say, but I think, I think that there's a real perspective there. And I think something about the more kind of less paternalistic, more somewhat libertarian, I guess, perspective of a lot of crypto kind of resonated with me, like We should enable people to be able to, you know, make the same kind of bets and express the same types of viewpoints and have the opportunities to make money in the same way that Wall Street does. And then the third thing that I observed was just how terrible the legacy plumbing of like each bank running its own individual database was and how that resulted in so much breakage and so much opacity around the risk in the system and all of these things that then you look at blockchain, this universal transparent, real-time auditable ledger, you're like, okay, this, this must be a better alternative. And again, I think across all three of those things, so, you know, an alternative to fiat currencies or an escape hatch, I think undoubtedly Bitcoin has become that, at least in some niches. And I think stablecoins actually perhaps even more so than Bitcoin. I think on the front of kind of democratizing the type of financial access you can get on Wall Street, That has happened on a cultural level, even with the rise of things like prediction markets, even meme coins I would put in that category for better or for worse. And then, you know, in terms of upgrading the financial rails and financial system, you know, you just mentioned Stripe, what they're doing with Tempo. Obviously Robinhood is building an L2. Like, I think that these are all signs of those things. And so that's why it's hard for me, even in my darkest of moments from like, oh, crypto market structure is just terrible, or, you know, it's painful being a builder in this space. And the metas come and go. And, uh, you know, it's hard for me to look at all of this and say that, you know, we're not making progress. I think that— I think the progress is there. In my wildest dreams 10 years ago, if you told me about the things happening today, I don't think I would have believed you.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe you could riff a little bit on, uh, you know, if I saw you tweeted when Farcaster did their pivot about how, you know, crypto, you know, kind of made you realize crypto has always been just about finance and reinventing or reimagining what finance looks like. Maybe we could just riff on about that for a little bit.

Oh man, I mean, well, I, like you, came of age in this industry during this period of magical thinking where blockchain was going to be anything. It's exactly like, yeah, blockchain is— I think literally there were at times headlines like blockchain could cure cancer, um, you know, blockchains are going to solve like medical records databases. That was one of the most popular ones that like almost you could kind of squint and see it, but it consistently I've come back around on it. Like, I don't know.

I remember like Walmart had their ads with IBM that they were doing, like putting mangoes on the blockchain. So then you could trace all of the mangoes back to the, you know, food source. Yeah.

So, and there were just so many problems with so many of these theses around the things that blockchains could solve. And really what it always came back to was no blockchains are for digital assets. Um, for tracking and transfer and trade of digital assets. And I think for the longest time, part of the reason why as an industry we've had to reach for what blockchains are for is because there just haven't been that many digital assets. Like the digital assets that we've had, when I say digital, I mean digitally native. So like mangoes, not a digital asset, right? Um, you know, US dollars up until stablecoins really proliferated, not a digital asset. Uh, and you know, the digital assets that we have had have been either blockchain-native cryptocurrencies, and that could be anything ranging from Bitcoin, which obviously plays a real role in the network, to things like meme coins, which are just kind of for fun and the giggles and, you know, the ups and downs along the way. Uh, and then also, you know, in terms of like tokenized assets or real-world assets that we've made digital, again, for the longest time has basically been stablecoins. And I think only in the last couple of years, maybe I would say really the last year, have we seen that world start to open up in a meaningful way. You know, there's been headlines all along the way of, oh, you know, BlackRock's doing this, or, uh, you know, this crypto venture fund is tokenizing their fund on-chain. All of those things have been cool and necessary experiments, but really we're only seeing it kind of take off in a meaningful way with obviously Coinbase's big announcements this week about, you know, surfacing tokenized securities in their app. Obviously Robinhood about 6 months ago, always ahead of the curve, uh, rolling out trading of tokenized securities across Europe. I think we're really starting to see digital assets become a thing in a meaningful way. And once you have those, why would you waste your time trying to figure out how to pigeonhole blockchain technology into a space like social media where it doesn't directly apply? Like, it really is for the transfer and trade of digital assets. And again, this is why I'm really bullish for the next 5 years, because so much becomes possible once you do have assets on chain.

So does it— is it, um, okay. So I think maybe when you and I were getting into the industry, it felt like crypto was this horizontal technology that would eventually touch everything. Maybe the, the different way to look at crypto is it's actually a technology that actually just expands financial markets, probably the, like the TAM of financial markets by, you know, some, some probably 2 or 3 orders of magnitude. Is that kind of where your mind has gone with this?

Yeah, I think so. Um, and I think it expands the TAM in a bunch of interesting ways where, uh, if you think about blockchains as even just censorship-resistant technologies, in many ways, if you think about who's been censored in the financial industry, yes, of course, it's all of the unbanked people or people living in hyperinflationary regimes and things like this. But to a large degree, actually, the perhaps the biggest censored population in the financial service industry has been innovators and developers and entrepreneurs. Like the amount of friction that you had to go through even to spin up a fintech company, let alone a new bank, let alone new payments platform, anything like that was so high. The hurdles to that were so high. The amount of capital that you needed, you know, you couldn't be a developer tinkering in your basement and somehow access like, you know, the JP Morgan Chase APIs to be able to play around and try to invent new financial products or services. Um, you know, really there was one way through that door, which was to go to Silicon Valley and get, you know, one of a small handful of fintech investors to give you money and then help you get access into that system. And I think that that is the biggest way that blockchains expand the TAM of the financial industry, which is really cool.

Yeah. What, what, what does the future look like then? You had this great tweet, which is, uh, so many crypto products today are like if you tried to make ChatGPT in 1994. You needed all the information in the world to be digitized before the most powerful products could work. Now you need all the assets in the world to be tokenized before the most powerful crypto products can work. What did Maybe say a little bit more about what you meant with that.

Yeah. So I, this, this thought came to me as literally as I was drifting off to sleep the other night. But like, if you think about if you had tried to build an LLM in the '90s, there was so little data on the internet at the time. Like, what were you going to train on? You know, it would have been a handful of, of websites and message boards about pretty niche topics. You know, you wouldn't have been able to get to this powerful place. And so you needed people putting all of the data and information out there in the world online in digitized form in order for a powerful product like an LLM to make sense and to even be possible. And this is, again, this is kind of what I mean about being really excited about being at a place where assets, all of the assets in the world, are rapidly becoming digitized at, at an accelerating rate. I don't know if we'll ever get to all of them, but you know, I think that we're going to approach that. Um, and suddenly all of these dream, again, still financial, but dream products that people have been thinking about and sort of theorizing about in crypto for so long start to make sense. So I think a great example of this is privacy. Where we're starting to see, you know, people talk about like the privacy meta and the Zcash pump. I think that there's a reason why privacy actually really makes sense now in a way that it didn't previously. And that's because previously you could have, you know, a digitally native cryptocurrency that had privacy associated with it, but then like you've gotta get all of the people who you want to have transactional privacy with, like using that. Asset, if you have the assets already there, then suddenly you can do really interesting things with privacy and with compliance, with ZK, with attestations, with, um, you know, for example, the ability to, uh, have a portfolio, right? And to prove certain things about what's going on in that portfolio. Maybe you want to prove something about, uh, the risk of that portfolio, like the duration or the DBO1 of it. Going back to kind of my credit days, but you don't want to show what the whole portfolio of assets is in real time to the whole world because then you're showing your poker hand and, uh, you're losing kind of your competitive edge as a trader. So this is an idea, this is not like a new idea, this is something that people have been talking about, about as an application of ZK and, you know, the, the types of cryptographic applications that you can have if assets are on-chain. But again, that doesn't make sense until you actually have the digital portfolio of assets that is private, that can be private because they exist on chain and can be encrypted. And then you can prove the things about it. And again, I think that there's a ton of these types of products that are going to become possible now that we're entering this era where we do have the digital assets there.

This episode of Empire is brought to you by VanEck's On-Chain Economy ETF Node. If you feel like you are constantly missing alpha, never have time to scroll through crypto Twitter, Node is for you. Node is actively managed by an experienced team with years in both tradfi and crypto. That team at Node looks to capture the most powerful trends across all of crypto while actively managing volatility as markets evolve. Super important in today's environment. Check out Node's track record so far at vanek.com/empire/node. That's vanek.com/empire/node. Vanek.com/empire/node. You can also— a little easier— just click the link in the show notes. Thanks to VanEck and VanEck's On-Chain Economy ETF Node for making today's episode of Empire possible. This episode is brought to you by Geodnet, the world's largest decentralized RTK network, delivering real-time, centimeter-accurate positioning around the globe, powering technologies that enable precise navigation for drones, autonomous vehicles, first responders, farmers, and robotics. Geodnet shows that blockchain can be a truly transformative force by delivering real-time centimeter-level accuracy. Geodnet enhances emergency response, boosts construction precision, and enables advanced navigation for drones and surveyors far beyond the limits of standard GPS. To find out more, click the link in the show notes or follow them on X. The Uniswap Trading API solves the problem of adding crypto to your products without the hassle of needing deep crypto expertise, ongoing maintenance, or liquidity aggregation. The Trading API provides access to the Uniswap protocol, which has processed $3.3 trillion in all-time volume, handled over 465 million swaps from more than 25 million addresses, all with zero security breaches. Developed by Uniswap Labs, the US-based team behind one of the most used DeFi apps. Access some of the deepest liquidity in crypto, combining both on-chain and off-chain sources for optimal pricing. The same liquidity that powers billions in swaps now available via a singular API. Thanks to Uniswap for making today's episode possible. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Maybe we could riff on privacy for a little bit. I saw you were just at the, the SEC roundtable.

Yeah, yeah, that was super cool.

Yeah. Tell me about the talk and tell me about— I mean, I honestly, I'd love to hear about like, what was the conversation like in the room and like, what, like, why, why did it happen? What was the conversation like? And then maybe we can get into a deeper chat about like almost why privacy is worth something. Yeah, it's worth building. But let's get, let's get there in a second.

This is also a good segue into 2026 predictions, which I also want to hear some of yours as well. But, um, so the SEC, uh, the Securities Exchange Commission, for those of you who are not US-based and following these things, they are the regulator that oversees, uh, securities, as you can imagine from the name, and in particular try and provide a lot of consumer protection and kind of free and fair markets. You know, this is something that I think is particularly top of mind in the US since there was so much fraud that happened going back to like the 1929 crash. And so that's when a lot of these types of institutions, kind of regulatory atmosphere in the US came about. Now for the last more than 4 years, everyone always points to the Biden administration, but we have to remember like during Trump administration one and even before that, The SEC in particular has been very hostile to cryptocurrency. It was almost like a badge of honor if you were building in crypto and you got a subpoena from the SEC because just everyone was getting subpoenas. And so that meant that you'd like made it at like a level, level of relevance. Um, and you know, these subpoenas weren't always like charges of wrongdoing. Often they were just searching for information. But the very act of issuing subpoenas against entrepreneurs who are doing business in the US in this new industry had a massive chilling effect. And so for years you saw crypto projects moving offshore, leaving the United States. Um, and I think that, uh, yeah, it had a, a massive impact on the industry. Now for the last year under Trump, The crypto president, uh, the SEC has done a complete 180 on their approach and their policy. They have, I think, rightfully dropped a lot of the wrongful cases that they brought against crypto companies. A big part of the problem here too was not just that they were bringing cases that didn't really stand up, uh, when scrutinized under the law, but they also just were refusing to engage in a productive manner with any of these companies. Um, and so the SEC has thrown open its front door and started inviting, uh, crypto entrepreneurs and investors and, and legal experts and so forth in to present. And the latest sort of series of, of talks that they hosted, uh, was last week— or, oh my gosh, it was earlier this week. I feel like I've lived a thousand lives this week. Um, it was earlier this week, and it was on the topic of of privacy, which I think, yeah, again, if you had told me this a couple of years ago, I would have laughed. I couldn't have possibly imagined it. So very cool that they were doing that. Huge privilege, obviously, to be there and get to present.

Um, what do you think is their stance on privacy right now? And it's really not just about crypto too. I think it's like privacy and capital markets in general. Like, yeah, how are, how are the regulators feeling about privacy?

Yeah, I think, you know, I think it won't be surprising to hear that obviously in Washington in general, and I think in any of these agencies or organizations, sentiment has shifted dramatically in the kind of conservative direction. And I think specifically what that looks like with regards to privacy is just a much greater emphasis on personal freedoms and civil liberties. And kind of reining in government intervention. And that is, you know, we have to be honest, that is a trade-off and a change in the balance away from emphasizing consumer protection. And, you know, I think that if I observe the impact of crypto on the markets in general, on this kind of democratization or accessibility to financial markets, And even on the national political stage, I actually think that this is one of the greatest areas of impact that crypto has had, is rebalancing the conversation again, a little bit away from consumer protection and a little bit more towards personal freedoms and individual empowerment. And again, I think that that plays out in the privacy conversation, but I also think that plays out in the increasing comfort with things like prediction markets being accessible to the average retail user.

Yeah. Why do you think that— why do you think financial privacy is something worth defending?

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think that there's actually two major answers to this, which at first kind of sound at odds, because I think that there's the cypherpunk answer, or, you know, to move away from industry jargon. There's kind of the civil liberties answer, I would say, and then there's the corporate answer. And again, those two things don't sound like they would go together, but privacy, I think, really melds the two. Because if you are an individual who really cares about personal freedoms, and in particular if you are an individual in a place, in a time where your individual financial freedoms are coming under threat, then of course you really care about privacy. But at the same time, if you are a large global bank, you really care about privacy, but maybe not, you know, privacy from the government. You care about privacy from your competitors so that you can build a competitive business. And that obviously applies across, you know, banks, hedge funds, like all of these things. I think that there's also an answer that kind of sits in the middle of the two that is very specific to this moment. Which is that for the first time in history, all of the reams of data that exists about financial transactions, whether they've been collected sort of by the government, like regulatory complex level, or whether they've just been collected by your credit card company or by, you know, the merchants that you buy things from, it's all becoming legible. In a way and actionable in a way that it wasn't previously. And so previously, you know, we could kind of get comfortable with whatever organization having all of this data about our financial lives because you're like, they're not going to care about little old me. They're not going to, you know, be using this data. Now, absolutely.

And then the LLMs came and you can just put it in a chat box.

Exactly. It's wild, right? And, you know, you better believe that every internet platform is going to be monetizing this and taking advantage of the patterns that they see and influencing you. And yeah, I mean, that's a very scary sci-fi world. Yeah.

So who does well in this privacy game? Like, who are the winners? I mean, I know you guys— so Espresso, you guys have, um, you guys invented like a privacy product, I think, that allows for selective disclosure. Like, how does Who wins? Who wins here?

Yeah, totally. Well, I'll give you a bit of the ancient history on Espresso. We got started 4 years ago building effectively a privacy L2 on Ethereum. And we got that live on testnet. We, we never actually productionized it. We worked with a bunch of the kind of real-world asset players at the time to run various pilots with it. And one of the big things that we bumped into along the way actually was this problem of like, in 2022 at the time, there just weren't enough digital assets, like kind of real-world assets coming on-chain, being tokenized for a privacy product like the one that we built to make a lot of sense. We also discovered along the way though that there were all kinds of other problems of trying to build an L2 on Ethereum. And so we set out to solve those problems. And we kind of left the privacy protocol behind along the way, although maybe it's time to resurrect it because I do think, I do think the privacy meta is more than a meta and it's here to stay. But I think in terms of the winners, I think, and I think that maybe this again gets a kind of a prediction for next year and beyond in a bigger way. I think it's a lot of the infrastructure players. I think that You know, this isn't just me talking my own book. I think that if you look at kind of the pendulum swings within crypto, you'll always have these moments, these periods of a year or two where the products really take center stage. I think we've been in one of those periods for the last year or two where you've seen, you know, new DeFi products, things like Hyperliquid, really take center stage. You've seen the prediction markets take center stage, um, Stablecoins as products you've seen in the spotlight, but then you always have this swing back to infrastructure being where the value is and where the value ultimately accrues and where there's really durable value capture. Um, and so, I mean, I'm, I'm not gonna shill here, but I am very bullish on any of the projects that have been working on the really gnarly problems of privacy from that infra perspective, because I think that they'll be set up to capture a lot of value in a really durable way, and also to support, you know, whatever those next phases of, of products look like.

Yeah.

So yeah, I, I think it's, I think it always comes back to the infra side.

Yeah, I, I, I don't know if it always comes back to infra, but there's always a, uh, it always ebbs and flows between apps and infra. And there's this great piece that I always come back to, it's called The Myth of the Infrastructure Phase, Danny Grant and Nick Grossman wrote it in like 2018 from Union Square Ventures. And they talk about this dynamic between basically like the applications inspire better infrastructure and they demand better infrastructure, and then the infrastructure enables new apps. Those apps proliferate, but then they max out what the infrastructure can do. So then we go back into the infrastructure phase, infrastructure gets better, new apps get created, and you see this over time. It's like Totally. Yeah, I don't know, like messaging and email were the applications. Then it's— that demanded better infrastructure. So we got Ethernet and TCP/IP and ISPs, which then enabled things like AOL, which then made it so we needed better infrastructure. So we got things like Mosaic and, you know, AltaVista, which then allowed for the apps like, you know, I just pulled up the blog.

They have so many great examples of this, but it's so good. Yeah, it was written in 2018. And so like the apps that they're citing are like The Silk Road, uh, CryptoKitties, Augur.

It's like, oh my God, this is great.

Those were the V1 apps of crypto.

But I love that these were the apps of crypto. There's 5 apps, by the way, for people who aren't watching on YouTube. There's, uh, the apps, the crypto apps they mentioned: the Silk Road, tokens, aka ICOs, uh, VDice, RollEath, CryptoKitties, and Augur. Those were the apps.

Incredible.

Which then demanded, uh, you know, Lightning, sidechains, Infura, uh, Web3 APIs, 0x, ERC-721, and then they said apps to be seen, which we know is—

I was going to say evergreen though. Like if you look at, if you look at these use cases, you know, tokens and ICOs, that's still a thing. We call them variably, you know, meme coins or whatever now. Um, and then ICOs obviously are making a huge comeback. Uh, Rulith and Vida is— I'm honestly not even familiar with those, but I assume they're like casino gambling platforms. CryptoKitties, NFTs, and augur prediction markets. Again, all of these are—

nothing new under the sun.

Yeah, there's nothing new under the sun. Um, but the reason why I'll push back and say I, I frame it intentionally as it always comes back to infrastructure because I think that what we see is that the apps are so often replaceable or fungible and don't have really deep moats. You know, even if you look at, again, that list that we, we just ran through, uh, you know, Augur, Augur should, Augur should have been it, right? Like Augur should have ripped, but Instead, we've ended up with Polymarket and Kalshi, and I think that it's really hard to build a really robust moat in the application side. Whereas I think on the infra side, especially in something like crypto where so much of it is about, uh, interoperability and therefore liquidity, like where does the liquidity aggregate on this infrastructure and who owns the rails that are moving that liquidity around? I do think that infrastructure is really durable in a way. And again, I think even if you look at that list where like, you know, the infrastructure elements that they list are like Bitcoin, Coinbase, Ethereum, Infura, um, Zeppelin, 0x, like those, all of those guys are still around killing it. And you know, the likes of Augur and CryptoKitties, we don't see.

Yeah.

But yeah, this is— I'm always— I, you know, it sounds like I'm talking my own book, but actually—

Okay, wait, let me push you on the infrastructure thing in a different direction, which is who wins the infrastructure game? Because the— like, I think the big conversation that needs to happen or that is happening right now is, is it the crypto infrastructure players, right? Is it the Espressos and the L2s and the L1s of the world, or is it the— is it Circle building Arc, or is it— maybe that's a bad example, but is it Stripe building Tempo? Is it Robinhood building Robinhood Chain? Is it Sony building whatever they're calling it, Sony or something like that? Uh, yeah, is it— so is it— I don't know, how— what do you think? Honestly, what do you think of these corp— like, what are we calling them, corporate chains, enterprise chains?

Corpo chains.

Corpo chains.

He's saying the word corpo, and now I've started saying it, and when I say it out loud, I'm like, we need to not do that.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't love that. Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think with the exception of Stripe there, everything you just mentioned is building on crypto rails. I think that's worth noting, right? Like Robinhood is building an L2 using the Arbitrum stack that will ultimately settle to Ethereum. You know, ARK is building their own L1, but they're kind of like in this weird middle ground because Circle is obviously kind of a crypto-native company. Um, you know, Coinbase, if you're going to put them in that same category, is like they were kind of like fintech and they've gone obviously crypto-native. They built based on the OP stack, settling to Ethereum. Um, and I think that this is something that we'll see continue to play out where I do think for a small handful of fintechs and institutional players, it may make sense for them to try to roll their own infra and compete in that world. But I think for the vast majority, they will choose to build on crypto rails as long as they are sufficiently secure, customizable, and can meet their scaling demands. Um, you know, Espresso has evolved to be very focused on speed and fast finality. And I think that, you know, I've, I've read through all of the white papers of Tempo and ARK and all of these kinds of payments chains. And it's so interesting to hear them talk about transaction finality times. It's like a real, you know, that is like a real requirement that they have because so often that's pushing the more like crypto native L1s to think about it too. Totally. Yeah, totally. Well, so this though is, I mean, this is one of my. Predictions for 2026, I think that Ethereum in particular is going to be forced into another really kind of tough reconciliation for itself about, you know, the, like, which way Western man, like, do you continue to prioritize not just decentralization, but really kind of like World War III level, like, cypherpunk values, like quantum resistance, or do you go the more pragmatic route? And really prioritize things like fast finality, which they've talked a lot about and they've done a lot of amazing research on, but they haven't prioritized yet. And that's created space for competitors, which in many ways Espresso is, in many ways something like Celestia is, to come in and offer that as, as a service to many of the teams building ultimately on Ethereum. But I think that it does really change having these corporate players come in and use crypto infrastructure, it changes the priorities for those crypto infrastructure builders and providers in a way that, again, a lot of people who've been in the space for 10 years are lamenting. But I don't think that that's the right approach to it. I think that, yeah, you've got to be pragmatic.

How does it change it for you guys as Espresso? Like, take us into maybe some of the leadership conversations around like, All right, like maybe our customer is changing, like the end—

oh, totally—

the end customer is changing, like how they buy software or how they buy this stuff is changing and what they need is changing. What is that? Yeah, what, what's the impact of that?

For sure. And it's so interesting how it all comes down, I think, at least in the US, from this like administration change and just the general vibe shift around crypto where now corporates can do things and not feel like it's a liability to them, uh, But, you know, for us specifically, if I go back, if I turn back the clock a year ago, all of the customers that we were building for, they were all kind of crypto-native builders building L2s on, you know, the Arbitrum stack or the OP stack or whatever in Ethereum and building really for crypto-native customers. And so, you know, we have integrations with and built for folks like ApeChain and Celo. Right? You know, two of the biggest categories like NFTs and sell on the payment side, but again, really kind of crypto-native, uh, users and use cases. And now what we're seeing is that actually where the next wave of demand is coming from is not that category of crypto-natives, but very much newcomers, whether that's corporates or whether that's like, you know, the next like YC startups, right? Like, I think we get very fixated in this industry sometimes about the biggest names like the JPMorgans coming on-chain, or, you know, the Stripes or the Revolutes or what have you. But I think where a lot of the, the most exciting growth to me is coming from is once again seeing developers and entrepreneurs who are not crypto-native just looking at this as like, oh, this is a compelling set of tools to help me solve the problems that I'm trying to solve. I think that's the most bullish thing of all. I think that that's something we've been missing for the last are we still using the word cycle, like the last 2 or 3 years, is seeing that fresh blood kind of enter the space. So that's very much where we're focusing going forward. I think one exciting thing to me on that front is the flexibility that the L2 framework offers is really landing well with that kind of customer segment who really want to customize their environment. They're a lot less interested, I think, in many ways in just deploying on like a monolithic blockchain. Um, they need that customizability and flexibility that you get building multi-chain.

What do they— what, what are they asking? What are they prioritizing the most? Is it like fast finality? Is it, you know, Byzantine fault tolerance? Is it decentralization? Is it like, uh, you know, secure security? Like, what, what are the— and how is it different than what the crypto-native folks want?

Yeah, I mean, it really depends on the archetype. I would say, you know, like Japanese corporate versus US corporate, like very different from my conversations and experience. And then certainly, you know, startup founders and developers versus corporates, like very different. But I would say across the board, just speed and performance and prioritizing that in many ways over decentralization by the definitions that we would sort of traditionally use. They still, of course, care deeply about reliability and uptime, but you don't necessarily need, again, decentralization in the ways that the industry has often defined it in order to get that kind of reliability and uptime. Um, privacy is a huge one that comes up, which again makes me super bullish on that space. Uh, but I think that we're seeing the industry at a bit of a crossroads here where Again, there will be a portion of it that's so focused on that kind of cypherpunk and civil liberties set of values, and then there will be a portion of it that is much more pragmatic. And I think that this is a little bit akin to the way BitTorrent evolved and ultimately really influenced the creation of streaming platforms, of course, like Spotify and so forth, where, you know, it turns out Spotify was initially founded on BitTorrent rails, actually. I don't know if this is like a widely known thing, but the founders of Spotify initially tried to build on BitTorrent in order to enable the streaming experience that they wanted. And what they found was, okay, we don't need all of the like decentralization maximalism of BitTorrent because we're going through the front door here. We're not doing anything. That needs censorship resistance. We just need streaming technology. But I think that it was the fact that BitTorrent was around for the years prior to that that had kind of pushed the market structure of music and media into a shape and form where suddenly the records companies and labels and so forth were willing to strike deals to stream their music instead of having to buy a whole album or whatever else. Enabled something like Spotify to exist. And you know, if you look at the world, like BitTorrent still exists and has value to people, and Spotify of course exists and this has created tremendous market value. It's a little bit hard to say like, which is the winner there? Cause you're kind of talking past each other if you try to make that judgment. And I think that we're going to continue to have Bitcoin and possibly Ethereum. I think Ethereum has to kind of decide where it lands here. As that kind of very, uh, decentralization maxi, like, cypherpunk technology. And then I think that we're going to have a lot of Spotify equivalents that get created here. And so that's more of the, the realm that we're focused on playing in, is that more kind of like pragmatic application of the technology and the market structure that's been created out of crypto over the last decade. Uh, but I think that there's a ton of value to the Bitcoins of the world still, of course, as well.

Yeah. What does this do for the cultural side of the industry?

Yeah, I think, I think this is where a lot of people get really depressed, is because there is no longer going to be a crypto monoculture. There is no—

I actually think this under— is like the underlying frustration that you feel on crypto Twitter. It's obviously prices are down, but I think there's like fear that this thing that is like my personality is no longer my per— is no longer my ident— is the identifiable thing about me.

Um, I know you guys had Dougie DeLuca on, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

This week or last week about his article. The one line in his article that really stood out to me was the people who are buying crypto solutions today and going forward. They're looking for a solution. They're not looking for a new personality. Exactly.

That's exactly right.

I think, and I think that that hurts a lot of people for whom crypto is their personality. Maybe me among them.

Yeah, it's interesting. We were just talking to, um, I just had an interesting call with someone who was in the, like, a big entrepreneur in the telecom space in like the '90s. Cool. And he said there was this moment in time when like, you know, they used to hire telecom native people. People who are like deep in telecom. And then after 2000, I keep— I'm overusing this, this comparison to like 2000 to 2003, like the dot-com bust. And then, yeah, but he's like, after that, then like, you know, you kind of had like Google IPO'd and Facebook gets started and then just like everyone just got on board with it and it was no longer like a cult. It was just like, oh yeah, I'm looking for a job. Like, obviously I'll go work in the internet. And then 2008, 2009, it's like, oh, I'll just go work in SaaS. Like, you weren't like— and I don't know, I kind of feel that happening with crypto. And we talk about it too. Like, Blockworks almost has 100 people now and we're hiring a lot. And it's like, crypto nativity used to be like the thing I cared about the most. It was like, I need someone who's crypto native, I'll go teach them sales. I need someone who's crypto native, I'll teach them product. And now I don't. Now it's different. Now I think we can teach them crypto. So yeah, I don't know.

I think that's spot on. And I do think that that's a lot of the consternation that you see on crypto Twitter is that there is no longer this kind of unifying culture that exists and, and pervades it. And I think in many ways that's healthy, but that's also painful. It's almost like, it's almost like everyone has had been forced to like graduate from high school and go out into the real world and be a real human being and like have responsibilities and get a job. That kind of feels like the, the painful transition that's happening for a lot of people.

It's like when you find an artist online, I don't know, you find a DJ or something and you're like, oh my God, like, and like your friends bond over it. And then it's like, I don't know, Fred Again gets really popular and the whole world loves Fred Again.

It's like, oh, like, no, but that, that was my thing.

And then it's like, well, that's not that cool anymore. I need to move on to something else that's cool. Robotics. And it's really, you know, all these crypto people are like obsessed with other industries right now. It's like, well, yeah, because they, they like being into the cool thing.

I think something that's going to be interesting though on this is we have the midterm elections in the US coming up this coming year. And, you know, I, so one of the things that I started doing after having a kid is I sit down every Sunday and I read the physical paper. So I usually read the Financial Times or the New York Times. I know what the hated New York Times. Um, because it just helped me like maintain a modicum of sanity and have like a few—

how dare you read the New York Times?

Yeah, I know. Um, but it's really, I find it really grounding to read these mainstream media because one interesting thing is even over the last 2 years, you see so many more crypto-oriented or crypto-adjacent articles in these publications than you did again a couple years ago. But the vibe in them is still scathing. Like the FT hates crypto. Everyone knows the New York Times hates crypto. They just did this whole like exposé of like the SEC dropping all of these wrongful cases. Uh, this was just last weekend and then trying to make it kind of sound like this had to do with like crypto being in Trump's back pocket and it's just really, insightful for me, and again, grounding for me as someone who works in the space and whose whole personality is crypto. You're like, oh no, people still hate us. Uh, like, you know, it, it's really helpful obviously that Stripe is building a blockchain and that makes, you know, Thanksgiving dinner conversation, uh, easier. But no, people still hate us. And I think that this is going to come up in a big way next year as the Democrats make a big push to take back the House. And I think that it's going to become a talking point and part of the zeitgeist that Trump launched Trump Coin and that a lot of the, what we view as progress that's been made in the space looks from another angle, like it's just, you know, kickbacks and being in the back pocket of politicians. Um, and I think it may— it, I don't know, because I think it's gonna be hard to undo a lot of the momentum that, uh, crypto has made over the last couple of years. But I do think that it may make crypto a little bit counterculture again. So it, maybe if you want crypto to be your kind of like weird niche personality and you know, the band that you found that, that was cool, that may come back with the midterms. Mm-hmm. I don't know. You're much closer to kind of the DC and corporate circuit than I am, I'm sure. So I don't know what you would think about that.

I mean, I think there's a lot of— so we just met with one of the senators like 2 weeks ago, and what he told this group of people was, he's like, I love crypto. He's like, I'm in. He's like, I don't fully understand it, but like, seems cool. Like, DeFi, great. He's like, the thing that's going to hold this industry back is that it is giving the Trump family billions of dollars.

Yes.

And he's like, I don't know if it's true. I don't know if it's not true, but that's what everyone thinks in DC and that's going to hold the industry back.

Yeah. And so I think we could see a pretty big, meaningful backlash and then it's going to be interesting to see what changes from there. But I mean, selfishly, like, of course I, I hope not. And for the progress that I think we've made, I think again, a lot of it will be hard to undo, but.

Yeah.

Even I look at Trump coin and I'm like, yeah, I can't really defend this. I don't, I don't know what to do.

There's a lot of stuff you can't defend. There's a lot. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff. Um, uh, I know as we think about wrapping this up, any other predictions for 2026?

I, yeah, I guess I speckled in a few along the way. Um, let's see. I wrote down a few beforehand. One of them obviously is I think Ethereum is going to be forced to decide, like, do we go decentralization maxi? Do we become more pragmatic? Another was, um, this kind of midterm elections dynamic that we could see a big backlash. Uh, yeah, I think infra is going to be so back. I think that, um, we're going to continue to see products be very fungible. I also think we're going to see a lot more of what I would call like the Polymarket to Kelsey dynamic, where you see a company and a team that has been toiling away building on-chain and building on-chain both as a little bit of like a regulatory arbitrage, you know, kind of across jurisdictions. And I'm not saying that in like a problematic way, it's just an end run around a lot of the regulation that exists in the financial space. Um, you know, Polymarket had been building for 5 years before they had their sort of like mainstream application moment. And Kalshi is right on their heels. And Kalshi, of course, is not crypto-native in the same way, like not built on blockchain rails. In the same way, um, as Polymarket. And I think we're going to see a lot of those dynamics where I could imagine certain DeFi applications, maybe like in the lending space, you know, things that have gained success. I could see them gaining even more levels of mainstream success, only to then have another player pop up, either who's been there all along or who sees the opportunity, enters the market is not building on crypto rails the same way, but is using the design space that the on-chain company has opened up as an entry into the market. Um, so yeah, I could see that happening with like Aave, Uniswap, um, a lot of the DeFi products out there as we become more comfortable with retail having access to, uh, you know, things like trading and leverage and, and all of this. Um, yeah, I don't know. What are some of your predictions or what would you push back?

I can't spoil, we, we have a whole 2026 predictions episode for that. Yeah, I can't, I can't spoil the episode. I gotta get people to listen to that episode too. Okay.

Fair enough. Fair enough. I will tune in for that and get my—

gotta respect the podcast game. So, um, Jill, as always, so good to see you and congrats on everything with Espresso. And yeah, I think you guys have got a lot of, uh, tough decisions right over the next couple, uh, over the last couple of years. And yeah. Excited to see what you guys do next year.

Yeah, it's not— I, I will say it's not always been easy building an infra in crypto, but I do think it pays off in the long run. And, um, yeah, it's been a wild ride so far, and the starting gun is just going off for the whole industry, it feels like. So—

oh, I have a question. When, when will, uh, when are you going to launch a token?

So the plan is— the plan was actually for, uh, the end of this year. Uh, the Espresso Foundation had initially said Q4. Um, for some strategic reasons, they've decided to, to push it into very early Q1. Um, a big part of that is honestly some of the stuff that we touched on here, just the changing customer base and trying to get some, some major partners on that front, uh, on board and aligned before the token goes live. Um, so yeah, hopefully that all comes together pretty quickly. But nice. Yeah, the, the foundation has been doing its kind of series of announcements about you know, the token and airdrop and all kinds of things on that front, which has been exciting to see as well. That's obviously, uh, an inevitable and, and huge milestone for any infra company.

Yeah. Godspeed with that.

Thank you.

Yeah, we need it. All right, everyone, thank you for listening. Jill, thanks again. Thanks so much.