Bankless - Top 10 Crypto x AI Predictions for 2025 | Bitwise's Matt Hougan & Ryan Rasmussen

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

2024 was a breakout year for crypto, with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana outperforming traditional assets and spot Bitcoin ETFs attracting $31.7 billion in record inflows. Coinbase surged toward S&P 500 inclusion, stablecoins doubled, and tokenized real-world assets began their rise. Nations embraced Bitcoin as a reserve asset, and AI-driven memecoins fueled fresh mania. Bitwise calls 2024 a prelude to 2025—a year poised to redefine crypto’s place in global finance. Bitwise’s Chief Investment Officer, Matt Hougan and Head of Research, Ryan Rasmussen join us to share Bitwise’s top 10 2025 Predictions. Trust us anon, you don’t want to miss this.   ------ 📣AMBIRE | SIGN UP! https://www.ambire.com/legends  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠  🦄UNISWAP | BUG BOUNTY PROGRAM https://bankless.cc/Uniswap-Bug-Bounty  🐧CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiSimple  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle     ⁠  📈iYield: YOUR FINANCIAL PICTURE, SIMPLIFIED https://bankless.cc/iYield  🔒SAFE | INTRODUCING SAFENET https://bankless.cc/SAFE ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/110?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E  ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 5:19 Summarizing 2024 8:58 Bitcoin, Ethereum, & Solana 2025 Price Targets 21:40 2025 Bitcoin ETF Flows  27:20 Coinbase Surpasses Charles Schwab 32:13 Year of the Crypto IPO  38:01 AI Agent Memecoin Mania 47:39 Countries Holding Bitcoin  53:14 Coinbase S&P 500 & MicroStrategy Nasdaq-100  56:54 Crypto 401(k)s  1:02:48 Stablecoin Assets Double 1:05:26 RWAs Surpasses $50B  1:09:12 Bonus Prediction: 2029 Bitcoin Price  1:12:32 Closing & Disclaimers  ------ RESOURCES Bitwise 2025 Predictions  https://bitwiseinvestments.com/crypto-market-insights/the-year-ahead-10-crypto-predictions-for-2025 Matt Hougan https://x.com/Matt_Hougan  Ryan Rasmussen https://x.com/RasterlyRock   ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures ⁠ 

Welcome to Bankless where we explore the 2025 frontier. Today on the show, we got Bitwise's 2025 predictions. They got 10 of them. They're extremely bullish. Matt Hogan and Ryan Rastinson from Bitwise coming on the show to give us their, I think, very well-polished, very strong predictions. I enjoyed every single one of them. So strap yourself in. It's that time of the season, December.

We're wrapping up the year. We're going to reflect very quickly on 2024, but then really get into what they think is coming down the pipe in 2025. It's some pretty exciting stuff. Before we get into that content, however, a message from our friends and sponsors over at Ambire, which is the first hybrid account abstraction wallet hosting both smart wallets and existing EOA accounts with a browser extension that's currently enclosed beta that they want you to become a part of its a gamified testing campaign for its browser extension called Ambire Legends, which is an on-chain quest if you are looking at Ryan's Green, a very polished-looking game,

which you can pick a soulbound NFT character that evolves as you play. So on chain actions on Ethereum, base, optimism, Arbitrum, scroll with the Ambire will earn you XP points, which will result, of course, in future rewards. But also your cute little character will also level up as well. The game is available for Ambire Extension beta testers. So if you want to become a tester and try this out, there's a wait list, bankless. Bankless.c.c. slash Ambire hyphen legends, there's a link in the show notes. So you can just go and click that. So you can go and get your exclusive Ambire XP.

So we've got 10 predictions today. some about price, some about the ETF, some about countries and what they're about to do with crypto. And then toward the end, we've got actually a bonus prediction. At what point in time will Bitcoin surpass flipping gold? We got that number for you too. So let's get right into the episode with Ryan and Matt, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible, including our recommended exchange for 2024. That is Cracken. Go create an account. Want to know the exchange we have bankless used to buy, sell and trade crypto? it's Cracken, one of the longest standing and most secure crypto platforms in the world,

with tools for every type of trader to get started. Over 13 million users trust Cracken with their funds because they lead with transparency and privacy through top-notch security measures. Plus, they'll have access to professional 24-7 365 client support from real humans because your financial goals deserve real attention. Cracken also has a trading platform for advanced traders called Cracken Pro. Professionals and D-Gems love Cracken Pro because it's one of the most customizable, high-performance and intuitive trading platforms in the industry.

design your ultimate trading interface by choosing from over 25 widgets for market data, analysis, execution, and other order management tools. Save multiple layouts and switch between them effortlessly on any trading scenario across 300 different assets. Manage your trades on the go with Cracken Pro's highly rated mobile app or use the all-new desktop app to unlock ladder trading in a native Rust application. With Cracken Pro, you can truly trade like a pro. Ready to take control over your crypto journey?

Visit crackin.com slash banklist to get started today. Not investment advice of crypto trading involves risk of blog. and is offered to U.S. customers through Payword Interactive Inc. View legal disclosures at crackin.com slash legal slash disclosures. Are you ready to take control over your entire financial life? Crypto, defy, and fiat, all in one place? Meet iYield, the free financial planning tool built for crypto natives. Unlike traditional portfolio trackers that just show you the value of your assets,

eye yield goes deeper. It consolidates everything, assets, debts, income, and expenses, offering you a complete financial picture across 16,000 tokens, 40 defy-fifi protocols, and all fiat currencies. With real-time defy yield tracking for platforms like Ave, Athena, Eugenlayer, and Uniswap, IEyield ensures that you're always on top of your staking rewards, investments, and cash flow. And the best part, it's 100% free with no ads and it's secure. No personal data, no ID requirements, no compromises. So head over to iYield.com. So sign up today

and get the guesswork out of financial planning. Have you ever felt that the tools for developing decentralized applications are too restrictive and fail to leverage advancements from traditional software programming? There's a wide range of expressive building blocks beyond conventional smart contracts and solidity development. Don't waste your time building the basics from scratch and don't limit the potential of your vision. Cartese provides powerful and scalable solutions for developers that supercharge app development.

With a Cartesey virtual machine, you can run a full Linux OS and access decades of rich code libraries and open source tooling for building in Web3. And with Cartesi's unique roll-up framework, you'll get real-world scaling and computation. No more competing for Blockspace. So, if you're a developer looking to push the boundaries

of what's possible in Web 3, Cartesee is now offering up to $50,000 in grants. Head over to Cartesey's grant application page to apply today. And if you're not a developer, those with staked CTSI can take part in the governance process and vote on whether or not a proposal should be funded. Make sure your vote ready by staking your CTSI before the vote to open. Bankless Nation, the year is coming to a close. And to help us close out the year, we've got Matt Hogan, the chief investment officer

over at BITWISE, along with Ryan Rasminson, the head of research at BitWise. Guys, welcome back onto Bankless. We had you guys on together in the ETF part of this year. I feel like we might do like a little bit of a Spotify wrapped, kind of reminiscing of the year that was. But man, I think this year really started off not great and is ending on one of the highest notes that Crypto has ever had. So really honored that you guys are able to join us and kind of wrap up this year and project forward. Matt, Ryan, welcome to Bankless. Thanks for having us.

We're excited to be back. Looking forward to it. So yeah, I do want to do that Spotify wrapped of Crypto 2020. if you guys don't mind. How would you summarize the year that was? And maybe just to really set the tone here, we're going through your guys' 2025 predictions. You guys got 10 of them. They're bangers. I loved every single one of these things. It's one of the better yearly predictions that I've ever seen. But I really want to set the stage before we get into the predictions. I want to kind of, again, do the Spotify Rapt of 2024. How would you guys characterize 2024? How will you place it as in crypto's

broader legacy? How will it be remembered? start with you. Oh, man. I almost want to say it's the goat. It's pretty close to that. It was a fantastic year. I think if you think back to where we were a year ago, there was no Bitcoin ETF. The idea of institutions moving in en masse was a long way coming. There was no Ethereum ETF. The administration was extraordinarily hostile to crypto. In fact, a year ago, almost today, Jamie Diamond testified before the House Financial Services Committee that the government should shut down crypto. That's where we were. And you fast forward to today, we have, you know, crypto assets at or approaching all-time highs. You have massive institutional buying. You have a

pro-crypto administration coming in. You have a crypto czar that understands crypto coming in. You have a chair of the SEC coming in that used to work for the Digital Chamber of Commerce and the token project there, it's unbelievable. So I'd say, you know, maybe not the goat, but pretty close to the goat from years. Yeah, I think if you zoomed out and you were heading into 2024, you might hope for one or two of those things that Matt just mentioned. And it's kind of crazy sitting here in December to think about that so many things have really happened, Bitcoin ETFs.

We had, you know, a bunch of progress in Congress in May or June of this year, Ethereum ETFs. We've had a crazy amount of rallies across every crypto asset. We have tons of wins in the U.S. 2024 election, the SEC. We have new positions in D.C. that are headed by crypto enthusiasts. I mean, any two of those things would have made 2024 a great year. And I'm sure we're missing 10 other things that happened over this past year that really contributed to how great every year it was. So I've never been more excited about the outlook for crypto.

I think maybe if I were just summarized this year, I would definitely say whiplash, but in a very positive direction. As in coming, the 2023 might have been like crypto's worst year in terms of just sentiment, onslaught, just regulatory oppression. I mean, we had, there was once upon time there was Mount Cox, but it went in Mount Cox was catastrophic, but the industry was so small. FTCX was also catastrophic and the industry was large at that point. And we were attracting a large amount of attention.

And that really defined 2022 and 2023. And now in 2024, towards the end of 2024, it seems to be a complete reversal of that. So I think it kind of went from like industry lows in terms of sentiment and, you know, price action into just industry high. So one of the biggest just gaps between where the year opened up and where the year finished. Absolutely massive. Absolutely massive. We're still facing Operation chokepoint 2.0. You couldn't say crypto in polite circles. I don't think people have really grasped the degree of the switch that's happened over the last year.

I think whiplash is a good word to describe it, although sort of a positive version of whiplash, to be sure. That sets us up, I think, for the predictions going into 2025. And, I mean, we're feeling bullish finishing the year. That was 2024. So let's dive into the predictions. As David said, there's 10 of them. And these are neatly bundled up in a report that you're. guys issued that I believe comes out with the airing of this episode. So we're going to include it

in the show notes today. So why don't we start with number one? You guys lead with price, which is like the thing that most, you know, guests make us wait for on these episodes, right? They don't lead with price, but you lead with price. So give us the price point for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana, the Mag three. Give us the historic what they did in 2024. And then what's your prediction for the price on these big three assets in 2020? I'm excited, excited to talk about this. This was a big debate at the team at Bitwise. Where do we land for our price targets for 2025? In the big three, I think it's a really great way. Great way to put it here for, or the Mag3 is a really great way to put it here for crypto.

First, of course, you have to start with Bitcoin and price predictions. I think this one's a little bit funky in the sense that our estimate of 200,000 might be on the lower end of a lot of the price predictions out there for next year. But that's kind of for Bitcoin, to be clear, not Ethereum. Not yet. It's 200,000. We love our Ethereum, so you know. We'll get to it there. Okay, okay.

I would love to see 200,000 Ethereum. I don't think our compliance team would be happy if I came out here and said that was going to happen. But for Bitcoin, nonetheless, we expect Bitcoin to hit 200,000 next year, driven by a bunch of different catalyst, continued adoption from institutions via growth of these ETFs. We think more and more corporations will start buying Bitcoin. We're already seeing signs of corporations leaning into the mini-microstratory. model over the past few weeks and months. Now, if governments start buying Bitcoin, everyone's talking about a strategic Bitcoin reserve, we think if governments start to buy Bitcoin, we could see that 200,000 price target become 500,000 or more pretty quickly. So we're really excited about what Bitcoin

could do from here. Matt, you want to take Ethereum? Sure. Yeah. I also feel like our Ethereum price target is conservative. So, you know, we're looking at Ethereum to trade up to $7,000. I think it may take an eye towards $10,000. My view on ETH is it has both actual momentum and sort of catch-up momentum built into it, which you're starting to see over the last few weeks. We think the market has somewhat overlooked the strong progress we've seen in the ETH ecosystem, particularly the growth in activity on the layer two networks. And it's going to come back to it.

We see it as almost a contrarian bet. So I don't know if Bitcoin or Ethereum is more sort of understated in terms of where we think these prices are going, but I feel pretty confident about both of them. I'm going to try and put my Bitwise hat on. 200,000 Bitcoin, $7,000, ETH, $750,000. This is a doubling of all three. All three you guys are participating is a doubling. And the consumers of this report, the audience of this report, which maybe we should touch on a little bit, is going to be, you know, crypto outsiders. mostly. You guys are reaching out, like, doing God's work, trying to bring, you know, crypto investors

into crypto. And I think the crypto people are looking at these numbers and like, man, those are rookie numbers. You've got to pump those numbers up. But for outsiders, they're thinking a doubling in a year, because they're not used for numbers to double so quickly. And so I think what you guys are, the strategy here is like, let's give the highest number that we are like 100% confident that that we can hit. And then there's more upside beyond that, you know, for the wink-wing crypto-natives. That's kind of what I think is going on here.

All right. So check my bias here. Give us the real numbers then. You also want the crypto-native numbers. Oh, man. Yeah. I love the idea of our paper weaking. I mean, look, I think that's about right. I will say last year, you know, Bitcoin was trading at about $40,000. We only had a Bitcoin price target.

We said it would get to 80. And that turned out to be too pessimistic. We'll see where it ends the year, but certainly above 80. I think, you know, particularly to the first two price targets, the thing about Bitcoin, once it gets above $100,000, is where would it stop? There's vastly more buying of Bitcoin than there is new Bitcoin produced at this moment. Corporations alone bought 250,000 Bitcoin last year, and it only produces about 170,000 Bitcoin a year. So there's more demand than supply. That's before we get to ETFs or governments.

it's been hitting price bubbles at all-time highs and $100,000 because those are levels where people will sell, long-term holders will sell. Once you get above 100, who knows where long-term holders will sell? Will they sell at 150? Why? Would they sell at 200? Why? I think it could easily get to 250. I think, as Ryan mentioned, if there's a strategic Bitcoin reserve, you're talking about $500,000 Bitcoin. And for people who think that's crazy, you got to remember a few. years ago, Bitcoin was at $3,000, right? And it ripped straight to 60. So you can have those kinds of returns. I feel something similar with ETH and $10,000. I think if East narrative turns around and people look at the sort of massive growth of transaction activity on things like base or they

look at what's going on at Starknet and other layer twos and they get excited about this space and the growth, I think you'd have a gravitational pull to $10,000. I don't know. what Ryan thinks about that. At $10,000, I imagine there'll be a lot of long-term ETH holders who would be willing to sell, and that would be significant behavioral overhead. But, you know, once we get above new all-time highs, there's almost this price gap or this air gap until you get to the next behavioral sell level. And for ETH, that's $10,000. So I do think that is like a gravitational pull that we could see if we get a momentum above previous all-time highs and then good narrative. if I could easily see it running up to 10 grand and then sitting there for a bit.

Yeah, I agree with Matt on that. I would just say a bit of how I feel about Ethereum this year is I feel it's kind of taking the spot of where Solana was heading into last year. Bibes in the Salana community had never been lower end of 2022 coming in in 2023. And then the narrative turned. Matt just spoke about if the narrative turns for Ethereum, what could possibly happen? And I think we're already seeing glimpses of that coming through over the past month or so. Ethereum's performed really well since the election.

And I think if the Ethereum, or the narrative for Ethereum continues to shift the way it has so far for the next month or two months, and we see price continue to gradually rise, I think it gets some of that Salana-esque momentum that Salana had last year for Ethereum in 2025. Now, it's not as big of an asset, so it probably won't have the same amount of impact on price as this narrative shift for Solana did. But I think Ethereum is really well set up for 2025. What would you say are the inputs that are blowing into the sales of all of these crypto assets, Bitcoin, Salon Ethereum, the whole entire industry? What's really the input driving the bullish year that we think 2025 will be? That's a really good question. I think there's a bunch of catalysts, a potential catalyst for next year, that are blowing the sales forward for crypto. And then there's a few potential head ones.

You kind of have to weigh the pros and cons lists into me. And I sit back and look at where the market's headed. There's so many more pros or catalysts then. potential headwinds. Some of those, I think, are going to be led by institutional investments, corporations, governments, institutional investors. One anecdote that we had last year going to 2024 was that majority of wealth managers and financial advisors had no expectations that Bitcoin ETFs would start trading in 2024. More than 90% or something like thought it wouldn't happen in 24. And then two weeks in, we had Bitcoin ETFs and they're now the most successful ETF launches

of all time. So weird, though. Why were they so wrong? Just, I know that's a side point here, but like, why are they so wrong about that? It's anchoring bias, I think, because people have been talking about those ETF approvals for year after year after year and they had been wrong and wrong and wrong. So, you know, it's a little bit of the boy who cried wolf. And I think that just colored everyone's views and made them not as positive as they should have been. Okay. Well, I interrupted your flow, Ryan. You're talking about it. So the institutional investors are arriving and now they see it, right? They have products that they can buy. What else?

Exactly. Now they see it. They're still waiting in some instances. You have these large wirehouses like the Morgan Stanley's, Merrill Lynch's, Bank of America's of the world. This is majority of the wealth controlled in America by wealth managers. And they're still being held back by the different approvals and compliance requirements and investment committee meetings and approvals that are happening at these large firms. So majority of wealth managers actually haven't even been unleashed to these new products. So we see a huge level of demand coming from those investors when they get access. And we believe that the doors will open in 2025 for a majority of those money managers. So that'll be a lot of institutional capital. Of course, if we get a strategic

Bitcoin Reserve, we think that that will just create this Bitcoin arms race where governments all over the world are buying. And then there's a better regulatory environment. It's impossible to not know that going into 2025, the regulatory environment for crypto in the U.S. has never been better. We've never had a better setup for pro-crypto legislation, for relaxing some of the rules and some of the, you know, back-of-office or back-channeling that was happening to restrict crypto's growth. That all is gone in a matter of weeks now in January.

And so we think that the institutional adoption, the regulatory landscape shifting, the macro tailwinds, right? If we have many interest rate cuts, if we see global stimulus, we see China stimulus happening, that's more wind in the sales of crypto assets. And then you have kind of crypto-specific things like Bitcoin's supply shock continuing from last year's having layer two scaling on Ethereum. We're already seeing what's happening with the growth of base in the past few months

when it's now, you know, got its leadership in the L2 position, but it's continuing to attract more eyes and attention from the Salana community. And so you have these kind of network-specific tailwinds, and then you have macro-tail-wins, and you have broader crypto-industry tailwinds, everything headed kind of in the right direction in our opinion. I get this visual of like a dam bursting, right? Like it really feels like that's what's kind of happened. When you guys use terms like strategic Bitcoin reserve, I'm like, that is so crazy. Can you imagine that the like large governments like the United States of America stockpiling Bitcoin? How crazy is that that we've entered an era where

this is like indeed possible? Just a quick question on the ETF flows. So it has seemed that the last quarter or so, Ethereum ether ETF flows, have really been picking up. In fact, I looked at last week, and it looked like from a market cap-adjusted perspective, Ether got more inflows than Bitcoin, actually, on the week. And so I think that's a first. We've started to see inflows picking up.

Does this help the price of eth? Is this kind of... I know you guys have always been bullish on Ether that the institutions would want it, that there is a market for it in this ETF format. We're starting to see that now. Is this the beginning of something big? What do you see when you look at the ETH ETF flows?

Yeah, it's absolutely the beginning of something big. And we talked about this when before the ETH ETFs launched, I think I mentioned that I was like hoping there would be a delay. You know, they would launch like a year after the Bitcoin ETFs because TradFi needed time to digest the Bitcoin ETFs before they could move on to what's next and start thinking about what's next. You're starting to see that happen, right? people are coming around.

They, the early adopters have moved into the Bitcoin ETS and now they're expanding their knowledge in the rest of the crypto market in the same way that almost every crypto investor through time has entered in some through ETH, but many through Bitcoin and then expanded on. And they all get their favorite asset. Many of them end up indeed with ETH. So we think it's a small down payment on what's to come from an ETF flows. the ETH-EFs have already been relatively successful in the scale of most ETFs. They should have overshattered by Bitcoin.

But I think in 2025, you're going to see the flows really accelerate, and you're right that we've seen a little bit of a down payment on that in the past few weeks. This transitions nicely into prediction number two. So moving on to number two, Bitcoin ETFs will attract more flows in 2025 than they did in 2024. And I'll just read a bit of an excerpt here. when the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024, ETF experts forecasted the group to see 5 to 15 billion of inflows in their first year. They passed the higher end of that range within the first six months.

Wow. So bullish. Since launching, the record sending ETFs have gathered almost 32 billion in inflows. We expect 2025 inflows to top that. Wait, wait, wait. At least $32 more billion into the Bitcoin ETFs is being predicted by Bitwise. But 32 is the flow. It only goes up from there.

Matt, give us some more color here, if you will. Look, I think this one is a gimmy. As you guys know, I come from an ETF background. I'm CEO of ETF.com, spent 15 years in that industry. I've watched 5,500 ETFs launch. In almost every single case, year two is bigger than year one, and year three is bigger than year two. And there are reasons for that.

These ETFs need to be approved on multiple platforms. investors need to do their due diligence. We move a lot faster in the crypto world than traditional investors do in the traditional world. This is a great chart showing exactly this, comparing the inflows into the gold ETF versus what we've seen in Bitcoin. There are two takeaways from this chart. One, you can see that the inflows into Bitcoin vastly outweigh the inflows into gold in

the year one. But the more important story, the story you don't see sort of totally. hold is watch how the gold inflows grow year after year after year, right? It's straight up and to the right in an accelerating factor. It doubled from year one to year two. And here's the thing. Everyone was so excited in year one that they launched. Everyone was like, this is the fastest growing ETF of all time. It's amazing. It's pulled in a billion dollars in the first week. This thing is outrageous. And the assumption was all the money that had been sitting on the sidelines, to come in, had already come in, and you're going to see this asymptotic top where it was just

going to level off and you get a few hundred million dollars in. But that's exactly not what happened. It hasn't happened for any ETF in the history of ETFs. I don't know why it would happen for Bitcoin. We're going to see these ETFs approved on Morgan Stanley, on UBS, on Wells Fargo. We're going to see sort of the regulatory overhang, the gray shadow removed from these ETFs. And I think $32 billion is absolutely the floor. I wouldn't be surprised it was significantly higher than that. And I don't think the market understands this because they assume that all the flows have happened and now it's just a trickle.

It's exactly the opposite. The slope goes up, not down. And this was our easiest prediction to make. The Bitcoin ETF launched during like a pretty dire time in the crypto industry. It was kind of the light that brought us out of the hole. It was the thing that really kind of kick started the first phase of the bull market. And we all know what is the biggest marketer of Bitcoin? Bitcoin price.

And when Bitcoin price breaks $100,000, all of a sudden, you know, it's not so scammy anymore. You know, it's a little bit more than just, you know, terrorists. And it's actually just, you know, the future of finance. It's a digital gold. And so all of a sudden, I think public acceptance of Bitcoin is coming back at year two at year two and so if the number of this year was 31.7 billion

uh give us Matt if you will I don't know if this is allowed but give us your your percentage odds of it doubling that at 64 billion dollars what's your percentage that it breaks 64 billion dollars in 2020 and this year? I think it'll be close if you'd given me

50 billion dollars are up I would have said it's at least like an 80% chance if it'll actually get to 60 I mean that would be that would be great. But, you know, I'm bullish on price. You also have to combine this with our prediction that price will go to 200k, which means the number of Bitcoin has to acquire is smaller. So I think it's at least, you know, it should be better than 50% odds that it doubles. That's what happens in ETFs. I keep seeing people expecting things to change in crypto. They're like,

there's never going to be an alt season. It's only, well, guess what? That happens every time. And then we get NFTs or debt. guess what? They've come back. There's no four-year cycle. Well, guess what? In ETF land, it's year two will be bigger than year one. I think it's going to happen. I'm pretty, confident about it. One other effect here, you guys mentioned as one of the points for these numbers. Investors are laddering up. Three percent is the new one percent. Okay, three percent is the new one percent. You're talking about assets under management. Let's remember how unallocated traditional finance actually is to this asset class. They just got off zero, what, in the last like year or two? And some of them are still kind of on zero trying to play catch up. And now the frontier is going to move away from them

because 3% is the new 1% when it comes to assets under management. So there's a lot of catch up to do here. That's the point you guys are making. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And that includes people who, you know, have allocated to Bitcoin ETFs already doubling down. I think all these trends are working in our favor. All right, let's move on to prediction number three. Coinbase will surpass Charles Schwab as the most valuable brokerage in the world its stock will top $700 a share. So, okay, a coin is currently trading at $340 a share when I checked it this morning. And so your eyes, this third prediction is that it's going to hit 700, which is in line with the crypto assets. Let's just double the prices. Seems kind of safe. Talk about the significance

of if Coinbase, I've never heard of this kind of flippinging before, Coinbase flipping flipping Charles Schwab is the most valuable brokerage in the world. What is Charles Schwab? Yeah, what is, I don't even know. I don't know. I'm not a client of Charles Schwab. Talk to us about the significance of Coinbase flipping Charles Schwab and just like public mind share.

Ryan, you want to take this one? Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to take this one. I mean, when you think about what Coinbase's business is, I think we all know because we probably use Coinbase in a number of different ways, it's much more than just a brokerage. You can use it as a checking account in a lot of instances where you can instantly earn four or five percent yield on USDC, on stable coins. They have a infrastructure business that spans everything from custody and staking to wallet services. They have a subscription-based model. They have huge exposure to the booming stable coin ecosystem. So in some ways, it's kind of

unfair to compare them to Charles Schwab because they're very different businesses. But when you zoom out and you think about the fact that Charles Schwab is kind of the king of the trading world when it comes to traditional equities, then it kind of starts to look really impressive if Coinbase flips Charles Schwab, because here's this, you know, little industry of crypto that was born 15 years ago, that now all of a sudden has a single company that's worth more than the behemoth, Charles Schwab. So I think this flippinging is a really, really significant one for financial markets. I think it's very likely to happen. And I, and I can tell, David, thanks for being too bearish here. But, you know, I'm so excited about Coinbase's business model.

They continue to be undervalued by Wall Street. Last year, one of our predictions was that their revenue of Coinbase would grow by more than 100% in 2024. But Wall Street had their year-over-year revenue. After 2023, which we've spoken about, was a bad year for crypto, Wall Street had assumed that Coinbase's revenue would only grow 9% year-over-year. So they just fundamentally misunderstand this business. They actually do view it as a replicate of Charles Schwab, but for the crypto industry. And as we know, it's so much more than that. So I think as Wall Street continues to get surprised by the growth of Coinbase, as Coinbase continues to infiltrate every single corner of the crypto market and continues to, you know, see growth and benefit from this shifting

regulatory environment, from this, you know, potential pro legislation on stable coins to these growing ETFs, most of which custody with Coinbase, if they start to benefit from all of those different types of tailwinds, I think Coinbase hit in 700 is a slam dunk. And I just looked like relative market caps wise. So Charles Schwab is 150 billion, I believe, does not currently make the top 100 assets by size. So that you like the top 100, the lowest on that is 162 billion. But I'm sure Charles Schwab is in there from time to time. So you're calling for a coin base to go higher than Charles Schwab's 2025 price, which would place them, I don't know, 150, 160 billion or something like that, one of the top 100 assets in the world. That's what

you're saying? I think it could go higher than that. I mean, if you look at this list, I do this sometimes, look at that list of companies and ask yourself, what company do you think could be a trillion-dollar company? Try to, like, you think Motorola is going to be a trillion-dollar company, the National Bank of Australia, it's going to be a trillion-dollar company. Some of these are on the decline, aren't they? Yeah. Illinois Toolworks, bigger than Coinbase, it's going to be a, like, those, they may be great companies, but Coinbase, for various reasons, including that it got through the regulatory window before competitors could build up, has this extraordinary position in the fastest-growing, most exciting

industry in the world, nearly, like, not quite a monopoly position, but something approaching that with multiple different business lines, I think in a few years, you could be looking at this as a trillion-dollar company. I could think you could be talking about the MAG-8. I think it's that scale of opportunity if Coinbase continues to execute well.

Is there something about, is there at some point where Coinbase would get into the SMP 500? Is that a catalyst for things? Like, it starts being included in indexes and such? That's exactly right. We have a prediction about that later on. We'll get to.

Okay. Well, I'm front-running the opportunity, as usual. Good suggestion. What's our next prediction, David? Prediction number four, 2025 will be the year of the crypto IPO with at least five crypto unicorns going public in the United States. Now, I don't think there's that many selection of possible companies that could go public. So I think we're picking from a pretty small crop here. So when you tell me that five crypto unicorns will go public, I'm pretty sure that you guys have some idea of like which ones these are. So walk us through who these

possible contenders are for the companies that can join the ranks of Coinbase and like Bitcoin miners as the only public companies that are coming out of the industry. Which ones should we be paying attention to this year? Yeah. I mean, I think there are quite a few, actually, but we listed out five in the report. Circle probably being the most obvious one. You know, Circle has been trying to go public for a number of years and has a huge position in the stable coin market. And that is a market we're very optimistic on on the year ahead. So we think Circle could be one of those. Figure is an interesting company that makes really extensive use of blockchain technology behind the scenes to do mortgage lending. You almost don't know it when you're using it,

that it's blockchain based. But indeed it is. And if you talk to them, they derive enormous cough savings from doing that. But there are others. We think Cracken, Anchorage, Chainalysis. The reality is there are a variety of really high-quality firms out there that are earning revenues in excess of $100 million a year across exchange, custody, trading, et cetera. And I think, you know, a lot of those could be liable to go public in the year ahead. The IPO window has been more or less closed and deeply closed for crypto for a while. So there are, these firms are really almost bigger than you would expect to go public. They're already way to, way, in excess of that.

But there's a longer tale here. I think we could see, you know, as many as 10, but certainly five in the year to come. This is definitely because of the new regulatory apparatus that's coming because of the new administration. I don't, I cannot imagine that this prediction would be in here had Kamala secured the nomination for president. Or if Gary Gensler was still.

Which also means that there's like four years of pent up going public demand that we have not expressed over the last four years. that is now going to be brought forward into these four years, which makes me very excited because they were squeezing eight years of companies that are wanting to go public into the next four. Well, we've barely seen any crypto. It's just like, it's a bunch of Bitcoin miners, and there's just like Coinbase.

And when did Coinbase do? Is that like four years ago? 2021. Yeah, it was the top of the market. Yeah, it got through the window. And this is important for a couple different reasons, right? You know, there are a lot of traditional investors who don't believe crypto is a real industry because there are only one or two publicly traded companies.

You also see Wall Street firms starting to build analysis and hire analysts to cover this space, which improves the focus on it and the quality of coverage in the space. There are a number of knock-on effects that are positive for the industry to have more names in the public equity circle. Yeah, I really actually want to double tap on that. The second order consequences of having many public crypto companies in the United States seems to be significant. And I think maybe as we see one or two happen, people, maybe it snowballs. But I think this does a lot for crypto legitimacy, for crypto branding.

Once there's sufficient supply of public crypto companies, it really just gets hard to tarnish the name of crypto as like some in the political apparatus have done as, you know, just for like the dark web of the internet, shadowy super coders. That brand gets harder and harder to justify. Talk to us about just the second order positive impacts of this, Matt. Yeah, I think you called out those. Those are very real, and I think they have a very long impact. I mentioned the analyst coverage being a big deal, the media coverage being a big deal. It also recycles money back into the crypto VC community, which then gets reinvested in the next slate of startups. And you just get companies paying much more attention. I'll tell you that Stripes acquisition of Bridge opened up the eyes of other payment companies to what's going on in Stablecoin in a major way. right, that did not get unnoticed and nor would a billion dollar, you know, stable coin issuer coming to market or a firm that was using blockchain to innovate on costs like figure

come to market. That really, you know, raises the profile for competing firms to look at this space. Oh, yeah. I wonder if some of the knock on effect here is some acquisitions. Even from existing publicly traded company, it's like rather for some of our crypto startups and that have kind of made it big, rather than them going public, maybe they're just acquired by publicly traded companies, and that becomes a more legitimate path in the wake of this as well. I think you're going to see a lot of this. I particularly think you're going to see a

lot of this once we see the first major acquisition and we see the stock rally on that fact, right? If Stripe had been publicly traded and acquired bridge and rallied, you can better believe every other company like them would be looking at it. So there is a snowball element to this. Yeah, I was just going to highlight one more thing around the knock-on. on effects of this. I mean, we spoke about if, if crypto companies go public, venture capitalists then have some profits, they can then cycle back into the ecosystem. But if you look at what happened with Coinbase after they went public and how many early employees of Coinbase then made some wealth. And we now have this like Coinbase mafia across crypto where they've then gone and started

all these different companies that are now growing into, you know, very great products, fast-growing products, getting a lot of attention. I think you start to see that happen across some of these other companies once they go public as well. So going public is where crypto touches Tradfai. The next prediction is where AI touches crypto. Prediction number five is tokens launched by AI agents will spearheading meme coin mania even bigger than 2024. Now, this is a prediction that has gotten me very excited that I'm currently very excited

by the bankless is investing some of our time and energy and content sphere into this sector. So I'm very excited about this one. You guys are calling for an AI agent spawned meme coin mania. Maybe you could add a little bit more color to this prediction. Ryan, why don't you take this one? Because I'm guessing, no offense, Matt, but between you and Ryan, that I think Ryan might be a little deeper in the trenches on this AI meme coin mania. So that's why I'm throwing it to Ryan.

Hey, don't fade Matt. Okay. There you go. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. We'll compare for portfolios, Ryan. Let's go. Yeah.

Matt loves to laugh at these AI meme coins that I throw his way. And what my portfolio is doing any given day or a week when I'm deep down these rabbit. But this is an area to me that's so fascinating. I mean, Memecoins in general, I get the excitement around it. There's tons of hype. People are making crazy amounts of money. It's hard not to see that. It's hard to ignore that when you see it happening.

And so you get drawn in. I've been victim to that as well, going into the, you know, salon of Memecoin rabbit hole trying to chase, chase the money. But I think what's happening in this AI agent-driven meme coin kind of narrative or meta that's boiling up is you have these two really interesting. really high growth and new disruptive technologies, finding a way where they together create value in a way that people probably wouldn't have thought of two, three, four years ago.

When you were talking about crypto a few years ago, we wouldn't have been talking about AI agents launching crypto coins. And we were talking about AI a couple years ago, we wouldn't have been talking about AI agents launching tokens on blockchains. But today, we have a bunch of these different AI agents launching tokens on blockchains. Of course, a lot of that's being triggered by people in the real world, tweeting or casting at these different agents to launch tokens. But to me, it represents a really, really interesting conversion of technology that particularly for the crypto culture is really

exciting. And it's hard if you're an enthusiast about crypto to not be consumed by this. I spent the week of Thanksgiving, like, refreshing clanker on my phone and opening deck screener and like coin-based wallet over here and like, just doing like, I just found it so fun. It was honest. It's exhilarating. And I just think it's super interesting. And then you have things like anon, right, where you can now take the different technology layers that goes into all of this, right? You have AI agents, you have stable coins, you have blockchains, you then have Farcaster, right, this decentralized social media app where you're using that kind of as the base layer to trigger these token launches and you have wallets on your phone that makes it easy

to trade in and out of them. You start to see this technology stack that I think nears what happened in DeFi summer, but in a world that we're ready for today, which is low, cost, high growth, decentralized social, easy to use wallet infrastructure, stable coins that are easy to access and to get in and out of quickly. And to me, it just feels like this is a convergence of two super exciting technologies and a really strong narrative. We are totally with you on the AI agent like bull case. Like we're totally there, right? And it's a very crypto native crypto frontier case right now. Let me ask you guys, because you guys talk to the suits too. Do you have to sort of whisper this one? Like, are you allowed to talk about this to them or is that just for us? Is that

just for the crypto natives because this is frontier stuff and they we you talk about meme coins they don't necessarily see where AI agents can like move inevitably so is this is this kind of a whisper type of you know thing or it's in the report it's in the report i'm surprised it made it honestly yeah i'm shouting it from the rooftops myself but i do think there is generally especially these slightly bigger firms there's generally always one or two really deep crypto enthusiasts that you go in and when you're meeting and doing presentations, they start to, they're thinking about these things. They're deep in the weeds of crypto. And so I think it resonates with one or two of them. And then they talk about it at work. They talk about it at the water cooler and it starts to kind

infiltrate the mines. And again, you see these massive amounts of money being made or, you know, for lack of a better, better thing happening, right? You see, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but the Hock Tua meme coin rug that happens last week. And it just, it infiltrates mainstream media, in ways that's hard to ignore. So I think as this becomes more popular, it will peak the interest of those kinds of, you know, traditional investors. But they're not going to be investing client money in these. And I don't think they'll be investing in these for the most part.

Yeah. I mean, I would just add a nuance to that, which is, yeah, I really love this example. Because if you back up 12 months or 24 months, you had people talking about the intersection of crypto and AI. And people are like, oh, yeah, crypto will be the native money of AI. And I think when the people we talked to heard that, what they imagined was like an AI bot buying their airplane tickets using stable coins or something like that. But this is an example of how those two technologies really do overlap. You're seeing proof of concept in how it can grow.

And even if Ryan's going to zero meme coin portfolio isn't a great investment bet, the idea that the crypto native money and AI agents come together. You now have a proof of concept. And we can talk to investors all day long about, yeah, this is the proof of concept. It's going to a thousand X in the future in all sorts of interesting ways. And you can see that it works here. And that's where this story can be discussed with sort of suits. So when my Ryan, bankless Ryan, said that we totally agree and see the same writing on the wall on this, you know, meme coin, AI-driven meme coin mania.

I do want to put a pin in the AI, memecoma mania and differentiate it from the other manias that crypto has spawned before it, the 2013 blockchain fork and fair launch mania, the first ever bull market, followed by the ICO mania, followed by defy, some of followed by NFTs. All of those were insular technologies that we made ourselves internally to crypto. AI is the first, if this bull market is spawned, AI is the first time that two separate frontier technologies are coming together to make something new. And that's different.

That's a little bit more legitimizing because it's these, like, AI is already impacting people's lives. People can understand it. People can relate to it. People are using it with chat GPT. And now it's also infiltrating crypto. And so it's different that it's an external technology coming in and creating something new with crypto. And so the optimistic case is that difference does put dividends, does put wind behind the legitimacy of this particular mania. Even though all manias, sometimes people resist them and they find them distasteful, you know,

It is a bubble. Nonetheless, I do think there's something a little bit more real about this one. So you're saying we got two manias, right? And they're both going to smash into each other, like two massive hype cycles. They're smashing into each other in 2025. That's great. I'm here for it. All right, guys.

So that is predictions one through five. We got six through ten later that are going to come up. They got a number of countries holding Bitcoin, Coinbase entering the S&P, the Department of Labor. And what is going to do to our bags. So I'm going to get you guys' predictions on all of this and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening?

Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA, powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming onto the Mantle Layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in Defi and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion dollar mantle treasury in the Mantle reward station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with giving you grants, liquidity support,

and venture partners to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto or your user looking to claim some ownership

on Mantle's Defi apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle. Imagine if the world's GDP moved on chain. Well, say hello to Safepnet, built by Safe. The project set on actually making that happen. It's not a blockchain.

It's not a layer two. It's a transaction processor network built to send money anywhere and swap anything on thousands of layer 2s, all from a single universal balance. With sub-500 second execution guarantees and zero cross-chain latency, SafepNet delivers a salana-like user experience for Ethereum and its layer 2s, making transactions lightning fast and seamless. SafeNet connects Safe Smart accounts across multiple chains, allowing users to access any chain with a unified balance, all with Supercharge security, scalability, and speed. So get involved today. Join the waitlist and follow Safe on X. And check out the SafeNet docks. There is a link in the show notes.

Uniswop Labs is making history with the largest bug bounty ever. $15.5 million for critical bugs found in Uniswop v4. This isn't just any update. Uniswap V4 is built with hundreds of contributions from community developers and has already undergone nine independent audits, making it one of the most rigorously reviewed code bases to be deployed on chain. And it was 2.4 trillion in cumulative volume process across Uniswap V2 and V3 without a single hack, the commitment to security and transparent.

is rock solid. Now Uniswap Labs is taking an extra step to make V4 as secure as possible with a 15.5 million dollar bug bounty. Head to the link in the show notes to dive in and participate in the Uniswap V4 bug bounty. All the details from eligibility and scope to the rewards are there. Bankless Nation, and we're back with Bitwise's 2025 predictions coming in at number six. The number of countries holding Bitcoin will double. I think it's no surprise that people will know that United States, UK, China, El Salvador. These countries all hold Bitcoin. Nine countries hold Bitcoin in total.

I'm learning this from your report. Thank you very much. You guys are calling for a doubling. Maybe you could put the why behind this one. Why are countries ready for Bitcoin? What makes 2025 the year in which there's going to be a doubling in crypto-owning companies? Excuse me, countries. Matt, why don't you take this one?

Yeah. I mean, the short answer to that is because the U.S. said it might. And if the U.S. says it might, you might as well do it before them, right? We're already hearing that there are a handful of countries that are moving forward on their own Bitcoin strategic reserves. If you're a smaller nation and you're looking at, you know, America, the largest economy in the world talking about buying a million Bitcoin and there's maybe a, you know, 30, 40, 50 percent chance of that taking place. Why wouldn't you go ahead and buy your own? own Bitcoin. And it's really as simple as that. There are other elements to it that of course matter, right? There is the breakdown of dollar hegemony. There is concerns about the seizure of central bank assets post the Russia seizure. There are the brick nations, which are looking for ways to buy real world assets without using the dollar. Maybe they want to use an apolitical alternative. So there are these longer term forces, which have been in place for the past few years, that we're

going to eventually get us to the point where Bitcoin is held by most countries around the world. But the massive accelerant has to be the U.S. election and the talk about the U.S. acquiring Bitcoin for a strategic Bitcoin Reserve, I just don't see how other countries don't try to front-run this. And I think, you know, our prediction of it doubling may be low. I think you'd be higher than that. That's crazy. Let's just read off because a lot of people like David and I are who might not be familiar with the names of the countries on this list right now. So the U.S. has Bitcoin, the U.K. has Bitcoin, Finland, Bhutan, Ukraine, Georgia, China, Venezuela, El Salvador. And some of them are small. Finland has 90 Bitcoin, right? Where the U.S. almost has 200,000. So, you know,

this definitely varies. Notably, somebody's not on this list. Germany. Fumbling the bag. Could have been Germany. They fumbled the bag. They sold all their Bitcoin. They could have been like fourth. Yeah. We're in this era of geopolitics, and this plays out exactly like, honestly, Bitcoiners sort of predicted. I mean, so if we're looking here, the United States is 198K, China has 190,000, do you think the U.S., its geopolitical rival to China, wants to have less Bitcoin or more Bitcoin than China? And how about China? Do you think they want to, like, just keep that Bitcoin just in case, just to have around the same amount as the U.S.?

Like, this is just a basic space race, you know, kind of dimensions. It is pretty funny. It's like game theory at play. The United States in China, the United States has a hundred and ninety-eight thousand Bitcoin. China has a hundred, 190,000 Bitcoin. Those are real close. Yeah. And both the primary geopolitical rivals right now.

Right. I guess like one bit of pushback let's have on this is let's talk about how these countries have acquired them. Mostly through seizure, right? That's how did the U.S. get 200,000 Bitcoin? It didn't buy these Bitcoin. It like took them from different. you know, seizures, Silk Road, this kind of thing. And so is this really like permanent? Do you actually

think they're going to hold it? Is this, yeah, how sustainable is this? That's a really good point, Ryan, is if you look at this at this visual here and you look at the nine countries, majority of these countries have acquired this Bitcoin through seizing it, right? Through some kind of law enforcement action or a number of law enforcement actions where they've seized this Bitcoin for people who acquired it maliciously. And you can't, you shouldn't hide around that fact. it's very true. With the exception of El Salvador who went out and purchased Bitcoin, but the number's relatively small compared to majority of the other countries on this list, most of them acquired it through law enforcement actions or seized it. But I think what really is important here is that

if the U.S. decides not to sell it and we definitively know the U.S. isn't going to sell it, if Trump says, yes, let's make us strategic Bitcoin reserve and let's start with the 200K Bitcoin that we own and let's keep that. I think that. that's a signal to the market that we've never had before. I think even as recent as last week or the week before, there was some commotion on Twitter about Bitcoin or the U.S. government moving its Bitcoin around and are they going to sell before Trump takes office? I think you remove that fear or that potential cloud over the market if the U.S. decides to stockpile the existing reserve. And then anything that's on top of that they decide to add or acquire is really just

gravy from there. And, you know, we're all familiar here with, you know, Donald Trump's personality. And I think he doesn't like being second at anything. And so if other countries start to acquire Bitcoin and start to have this strategic reserve, I think the U.S. follows in suit very quickly. And I think that creates this kind of space race that you spoke about. And will these countries sell? I don't know. Germany sold, obviously. I think they sold somewhere around 50K. So they're missing on a 2x here. I think I must have some some German. in my DNA. Because I've got that once or twice, too.

All right, guys, coming in at prediction number seven. Coinbase will enter the S&P 500. Micro Strategy will enter the NASDAQ 100, adding crypto exposure, adding crypto exposure to nearly every U.S. investor's portfolio. Can you just walk us through the significance of this for the people that don't speak Trad, which is me? What is the significance of Coinbase entering the S&P and for micro strategy to enter the NASDAQ 100?

How does that change the game? Look, this changes the game in a major way. I think there's two things that this really impacts significantly. The first being that most investors say the average investor have no crypto exposure in their portfolio. Most investors own index funds, ETFs. They aren't going out and buying Bitcoin on Coinbase or some hardware wallet or something like that.

And we know they're not even allocating to ETS today. But what they do allocate to you, whether it's in their 401K or their traditional brokerage account, they do allocate most likely to some kind of index that tracks the S&P 500 or some kind of index that tracks the NASDAQ 100 or is benchmarked against that. To give you a sense of how much capital that is, there's $10 trillion today directly indexed against the S&P 500. So that's $10 trillion in funds out there that buy the assets that the index, the S&P 500 index holds. That means if Coinbase enters the S&P 500, which we believe

it will do at the annual reconstitution this December. That means that a portion of those that $10 trillion will buy Coinbase stock. They'll be forced to buy Coinbase stock. We calculate based on the current market cap of Coinbase relative to the other constituents of the S&P 500, that Coinbase will be, somewhere around $15 billion worth of coin stock will have to be purchased if they enter the S&P 500. So going back to my point earlier is that now you have all of these investors who have no crypto exposure, gaining exposure to crypto,

through owning the S&P 500, whether they like it or not, whether they even know it or not. Most people don't pay attention to the companies that are shuffling in and out of the SP500 on an annual basis. So you have this element now where most U.S.-based investors will have some kind of crypto exposure to either micro strategy or Coinbase, buy them entering one of these indexes, Coinbase into the S&P, micro strategy into the NASDAQ, and you have this billions of dollars in buying pressure going into these stocks from these funds. And by the way, most of these funds that track these indexes,

People are funneling new capital into them every month, every two weeks, every year as they get paid and have automatic allocations to these funds. So it's a really big deal. It gives exposure to investors who haven't had it and it adds buying pressure to the stock. But I'd love Matt to double click on that a bit. No, that's absolutely right. I mean, it's worth noting that $15 or $16 billion is a big chunk of Coinbase's market cap, right? It's only a $75 billion company. So that's a lot of buying pressure.

The NASDAQ 100 is much smaller in scale in terms of the amount of assets tracking it, but it's some buying pressure for micro strategy as well. But I just love the idea of every large institution and nearly every investor in America owning some coin-based stock. It brings me great joy, right? You don't like crypto? You already own it. You know, you're already starting to get off zero.

So I think it's a big sort of signal moment that crypto is matured and made it. and it'll have an immediate impact on the stock itself. Yeah, it's funny because if you own the S&P 500, basically through a micro strategy, you're owning straight Bitcoin. That's all Michael Saylor's doing over there. And through Coinbase, you're owning a piece of a layer two. You're owning non-custodial wallet.

Like, that's a chunk of actual real-world crypto. Let's go to number eight, which kind of dovetails nicely with this. So prediction number eight, the U.S. Department of Labor will relax its guidance against crypto in 401K plants, enabling billions of dollars, to flow into crypto assets.

I think we have to set the stage here. So some people are listening to this and saying, wait, there's guidance against crypto and 401Ks. And I'm wondering if my story is actually relevant to this. And David, this is a fun fact for you, a little bankless company fact. You know, we have a 401k provider at bankless. And, you know, they keep telling me,

I don't know if they're telling you the same thing. We can't invest more than like 5% of our 401K holdings. Bankless, our own 401K. We'd like to be like 98% allocated to crypto in our 401ks. And they won't let us. They only want us to have 5% of our 401ks inside of crypto, I guess, because it's risky or there's some sort of law on the books. Does that relate to this at all, Matt?

What are we talking about here? I mean, first of all, say you're lucky. Most people, that number is zero that they'll allow. And second, it's not a law. This is almost an Operation Chokepoint 2.0 style tactic. You had the Department of Labor, which oversees 401K providers, come out with a warning basically out of nowhere in 2022 that told 401K providers that they should exercise, quote unquote, extreme caution when allowing people to allocate to crypto through 401Ks. And then if they did, they would face audit risk and close scrutiny of their entire business if they proceeded down that path. Oh, my God.

So that's what's happening. Because so we specifically, we set up 401Ks for bankless this year, and we specifically found, like, one 401K provider who would do crypto, right? So we're like, oh, we found a crypto-friendly one. And it turns out every time we asked for more than 5%, they act like we are like, I don't know, dealing some drugs or something. They seem, we're like, no, it's okay. Like, we're fine. We're comfortable with the risk. And they are just like not having it at all.

And it's because regulators put the fear of God in them that they can't have. They are heroes. Regularies, I've never seen a letter like this. You know, I've been looking at the 401k market for 20 years. I've never seen the Department of Labor come out and say, thou shalt not invest in this, or we're going to audit your firm and make your life a living hell. It's really smart.

Right? It's wild. Yeah. God forbid American people saving for retirement should have exposure to the best performing asset class of all time. I'm glad that we have cordoned that off and protected people. from that. I think crypto's up a couple hundred percent since they put this regulation out. So it's it's absurd and kudos to you for finding the one out there that lets you do anything at all.

So but you're saying this will be lifted. You expect this to be lifted. This is an operation choke point thing that I don't think we've covered. Probably most in crypto aren't aware of it. But just to make things clear, any, most 401k providers will not allow you to have Bitcoin in any way or crypto in any way, right? The tiny fraction that do, it's only a 5% max, basically. And you're saying that in 2025, that all goes away? You can max up to 100%. I'm really hopeful that it goes away. You know, I think most of crypto missed this because it's a trad-fi tool, right?

There's nothing more trad-fi than 401Ks. The last thing most crypto people want to talk about. But this is a big deal, right? I mean, look at the chart there. You're talking about $8 trillion in assets. We use the example of this one percent of this allocated to crypto. you'd be talking about $80 billion of inflows, but we just said 3% is a new 1%. So 3% of this is a quarter trillion dollars, right?

And then more than that, every month when you save money in your 401k, you would have an exposure to crypto. Right now, like bankless is maybe one of the only firms for which that is true in the world. Imagine if everyone had that opportunity. I think this would be a game changer. Everyone has their particularly regulatory thing that they're looking for in the year to come. I haven't seen much discussion of this, but I think it's a really big deal. It's my personal windmill, so I hope it comes down.

I really want to drive this point home. And 7 and 8, prediction 7 and prediction 8 both have the same theme of flows. Coinbase entering the S&P 500 means it gets flows of people buying the index. The Department of Labor relaxing guidance for 401K plans means crypto asset, crypto companies, crypto assets can get flows. 401K flows. And you just said, Matt, that 401K is like it's boring. right like it's people don't really want to talk about it it's not thrilling that's why it's so big

that's why it's massive it's massive and boring because this is the whole united states economy's money this is all of the all of the country's money and so yes it's boring but also i feel i feel like once you are an asset that is receiving flows either from the s&P or from 401k's you've made it that's the end like gg game over and you just ride these flows in into one million dollar Bitcoin, Coinbase, rise these flows into the top of the charts. I kind of wanted, that's the message that I think I want to send out to the world. Do I need to be checked or is that about right? No, that's exactly right.

Yeah, this is the end game. This is the end game for where you get the permanent asset flows. You're part of the ecosystem. It's incredible we've gotten to this point with effectively 0% of the way most people in America invest. even being able to allocate to crypto. Think of us getting to multiple trillions of dollars without that. And then think of what happens when that switches. And I'm hopeful that we see this switch in 2025.

It's hilarious that that's the prediction I'm actually most excited about. The nerdy 401k tax one. I guess that's kind of on brand. But that's something I didn't know. Amazing. So let's go to the ninth prediction here. And we're almost through two more left. So stable coin assets will double to more than $400 billion,

as the U.S. passed as long-awaited stable-coin legislation. Wow, that's a big deal. Refresh me, I think we're at, what, $160 billion, something like that now? Oh, there's a graph. Almost $200 billion? We're already halfway to that prediction. Okay, tell us about the stable coin prediction and the legislation that you expect in 2025. It's really funny that you frame it that way, Ryan, because Matt and I were just talking about this on Friday,

that we've been working on these predictions here for the past month or, so. And in that time, the market has grown from that that 160, 170 number up to 200 billion. Like, if we would have released these a month ago, we'd already be filling up the progress bar on this prediction here. But it's really exciting. Stablecoins, to me, is one of the most interesting and fascinating areas of crypto, despite it being, you know, in many cases, kind of relatively boring to many people. But stablecoins address so many different types of markets. There's tradings, their remittances, their savings, there's access to the U.S. dollar. These are all really, really big markets. They're huge markets. And we haven't yet had stable coin legislation in the

U.S. We still get questions all the time when we're out talking to financial advisors. Well, what about a CBDC? Is the U.S. going to launch a CBDC? And is that going to make other stable coins or I even get the question, is that going to make Bitcoin non-existent? I think that just highlights that fundamentally people don't understand stable coins and they're afraid of them in this weird way. And I think once we get pro-crypto stable coin legislation in the U.S., and I think that will happen next year, because it's kind of low-hanging fruit for this new admin in D.C., I think that will open up the market for a lot of growth across the stable-coin industry. We spoke about the acquisition that Stripe made earlier this year of a $1 billion stable-coin platform. And I think that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to stable-coin growth. And then another area of this that I'm super excited about is fintech integration. We've seen PayPal launch its own stablecoin that has started to grow. It's starting to get really popular. Robin Hood recently announced plans to partner with a handful of crypto firms to launch a global

stablecoin network. And I think once we start to see stable coins integrate into the fintech apps that we all use every single day, integrate into cash app and Venmo and PayPal and into bank platforms like Zell, the growth of stable coins is going to melt faces. and I'm so excited for that. I want to just jump right into the last prediction, prediction 10, because this is related to stable coins. Everyone is on board with real world assets in crypto. Your guys' 10 prediction is the value of tokenized real world assets will surpass 50 billion as Wall Street eyes crypto revolution.

Real world assets, good for everyone's bags in the industry, kind of like stable coins. That's just the tide that lifts all boats. But real world assets are slow. It takes a while to kind of get the real world asset engine turning, and bitwise here is predicting the current $15 billion real world asset space will become $50 billion by the end of this year, which is over a tripling, which I'll note is faster than all of the growth that you guys are predicting in Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, or stable coins that we've seen so far. So why are you guys more bullish on real world assets than you are the rest of the industry? Why is 2025 going to be such a big year for RWA? Oh, fascinating framing. You want to take it, Ryan? You look to eager to jump in there.

Yeah, well, I was just going to say, before talking about anything else, just look at this chart. Have you seen a more beautiful chart that's just up into the right than this chart? This is a chart. So let's describe that this is a chart of real world assets. And when we're talking about real world assets, this is not inclusive of stable coins. So even when stable coins are kind of real world assets, this is not including stable coins. So we've got private credit, U.S. treasuries, commodities, institutional, alternative funds, non-U.S. government debt and then other. And most of this is just like up

into the right, including 2024, which has been already a big year for real world assets. A huge chunk of this is private credit and U.S. Treasury debt. Maybe you could talk about those categories, too, guys, because I'm more familiar with like treasuries on chain. What is the private credit portion? What are some of these other categories of RWA where you see the growth? You see some of the private credit stuff on platforms like Maple and such, right, where you're seeing that direct lending, a tokenized format. I mean, the thing, and treasuries, of course, you can think of as interest-bearing stable coins is a way to conceive of that.

These are funds like the BlackRock funds and UBS has a fund that take government treasuries that pay interest and bundle them into a token and put them on public blockchains, mostly on Ethereum. I would know this is a very Ethereum story. Virtually all of the interesting real-world asset stuff has taken place on Ethereum because it's the blue-chip programable blockchain out there. You know, as I look at this,

it's interesting, David, that you framed it as a bullish narrative. I look at this as one of our, like, least bullish predictions because the scale of the real-world asset space is something, you know, $100 trillion. dollars. This is still just a down payment. The reason the growth is so high, and you're right to frame it as high growth, is because we're still so very early, right? We're just at the initial stage. I mean, real world assets on blockchains have been effectively illegal in the U.S. And still are. And maybe that gets repealed in January. But we haven't even seen, you know,

Wall Street firms have been building in this space, even though it's been effectively illegal. And even though it invites regulatory scrutiny, they've been finding their ways through the cracks. If you imagine a world where it's not just allowed but welcome, that's where you start to get the flood of assets. And we could see, you know, 50 become 100, become 250, et cetera, in pretty short order. Those have been the 10 predictions. Matt, Ryan, this has been very good. Thank you for joining us. There's actually, though, I've been informed a bonus prediction here. and this is another price call. Okay, we're saving this for the end, I think you guys are.

This is a Bitcoin price call. Can you give us this bonus prediction? I don't even know. Is it in the report? Oh, it is. Here it is. Bonus prediction. Here it is.

I'm going to read it out. In 29, so this is not next year. This is 2029. Bitcoin will overtake the $18 trillion gold market and trade above $1 million per Bitcoin. So you guys calling not only a number on that of $1 million per Bitcoin, you're also calling a year for the flippinging of gold, which is 2029. Tell us about this prediction. What's the math here? Well, maybe I'll start.

Ryan can fill in some of the math. You know, this was a fun prediction to make because usually when you sit down and do predictions, you're thinking one year ahead. And then one day Ryan and I were chatting and we're like, why are we in this box? we could literally make predictions for any time period. And so a natural place to start is when will Bitcoin match gold? My own personal view is everyone is early in crypto, to use your guys as phrasing, everyone is front-running the institutions until Bitcoin matches gold. That will be the signal moment that we're passed early and now we're in the sort of mature part

of the crypto market cycle because it's at least reached that level. and the question become, when would that happen? The natural space, if it doesn't happen this cycle, would be in the peak of next cycle, which would be 2029. But Ryan, maybe you have more to add on it. Well, I would add that I would love to see Peter Schiff's reaction to this prediction. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that room. But, yeah, I do think it kind of just comes down to the math here.

If you look at gold, which, by the way, is the most valuable asset in the world at an 18th, trillion dollar market, we think Bitcoin actually addresses a larger market than gold. So for us, it makes sense for at some point, Bitcoin to overtake gold. And we talk about four-year cycles a lot here at bitwise, because if you look at the returns for the past tranches of four years, you have three really strong years and then a year of pullbacks. And that cycle has repeated three times. Right now, we're heading into year three of what would be the current cycle if that continues. So we do think maybe there will be, you know, a pullback in 2020. six, but then that bull market resumes once things kind of reset, once you flush out or flush out

that leverage in the market and kind of the overzealousness. And I think once that happens from there, we continue to have higher highs and kind of higher lows when these cycles happen. You can see that with the price here in the table we included in the report. And we think that the next wave, after this cycle, the next wave is going to really push Bitcoin beyond gold. And then I'm most excited about what happens from there. Most excited about what happens from me. there. Exciting times for sure on the precipice of a very bullish year, which is 2025. And as a Heath Bowl, I've got to say, I'm also looking forward to the point where Ethereum, flipping silver. Maybe we could do that. Okay, silver 1.9 trillion. That's just a four X away.

Maybe we'll do that sometime this decade. Matt Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been great to talk to you as we close out the year. Thanks for having us. This was a lot of fun. Thank you guys. Of course, as you guys know, crypto is risky. none of this has been financial advice. We really can't give serious price predictions. Entertainment purposes only. Which I was thoroughly entertained. But we are headed west.

This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.