Unchained - The Chopping Block: 2025 Winners & Losers + 2026 Predictions - Ep. 998

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. It's a new year, and that means the crew is back with their annual year-end awards and predictions episode. First up: the 2025 winners and losers. From Trump's meme-coin windfall to Gary Gensler's legacy getting torched, from prediction markets going mainstream to Web3 getting its official eulogy — no one is safe. The team debates the biggest surprises (Circle's shocking IPO run, Ethereum's pivot under new leadership, Zcash's unlikely comeback), the best new mechanisms (ICO 2.0, DATs, federal preemption), and the year's best memes (including the Chopping Block's own tariff factory video). Then comes the flops and comebacks: AI agents that overpromised, Berachain's fall from grace, and Tether somehow winning again. Finally, the crew reviews how badly their 2025 predictions aged — spoiler: not great — and lays out fresh calls for 2026 including AI-powered hacks, stable-coin-funded AI capex, and equity perps taking over DeFi. New year, fresh takes, brutal honesty — let's get into it. Show highlights 🔹 Biggest winner debate — Trump's meme-coin empire, prediction markets going mainstream, and M&A consolidation reshaping the industry. 🔹 Gary Gensler's legacy destroyed — Haseeb declares his SEC tenure the biggest loser as every initiative got reversed. 🔹 Web3 pronounced dead — Tarun writes the epitaph on the "ownership economy" thesis as NFT sentiment hits rock bottom. 🔹 Bitcoin as biggest loser? — Robert's controversial pick: BTC underperformed in a year that should have been its best. 🔹 Circle IPO shocks — From skeptics to $70B market cap, the stablecoin thesis briefly took over Wall Street. 🔹 Ethereum pivot surprise — Vitalik's leadership shake-up and new EF direction restored optimism no one expected. 🔹 DATs dominate mechanism talk — Robert calls them highest "absolute value of impact" — amplifying volatility both ways. 🔹 AI agents flopped hard — From mania to annoyance, the speculative thesis collapsed and sentiment turned hostile. 🔹 2025 predictions reviewed — The team confesses their misses (150K BTC, 5x AI agent caps) with Tom winning at 2/3. 🔹 2026 predictions dropped — AI-generated $100M+ hacks, stable-coin-funded AI capex, and equity perps hitting 20% of DeFi volume. Hosts: ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly  Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:26 Crypto Industry Overview 02:39 Biggest Winners of 2025 07:32 Biggest Losers of 2025 13:29 Biggest Surprises of 2025 22:24 Best New Mechanisms of 2025 28:49 Best Memes of 2025 33:24 Best and Worst Pivots of 2025 39:15 Biggest Flops of 2025 41:31 Biggest Flop of 2025 42:58 Bitcoin's Disappointing Year 45:30 Biggest Comeback Stories of 2025 49:12 Favorite Guests of 2025 52:40 Reflecting on 2025 Predictions 56:33 Predictions for 2026 Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don't curse. I would never. Hello everybody. Welcome to the Fripping Block. Boom. Not a dividend. It's a tale of two fun. Now, your losses are on someone else's balance.

Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways. I'm in the trading firms who are very involved. I like that eat the ultimate problem. D5 protocols are the antidote to this problem. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the chopping blog. Every couple weeks, the four of us get together and give the industry insiders perspective. on the crypto topics of the day.

Quick intro is first you got Tom, the Defy Maven and Master of Memes. Hello, I'm fine. Next, we got Robert, the Cryptoconisur, and the Tsar of Super State. Happy New Year. Next, you got Tarun,

the Giga Brain, and the Grand Puba at Gondlet. Yo, happy New Year. And I'm A Sieb, the head hype man, at Dragonfly. We're early-stage investors in crypto, but I want to caveat

that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. Please see chopping blocks at X, and X, for more disclosures. So, boys, it is a new year.

It is now 2026. I know Robert loves to celebrate with profanity, so I thought we'd put a little bit of a curveball in there. I'm anti-profanity. Are you anti-profanity, actually? Yes. Listen, I have young kids. I try to have a profanity-free lifestyle and house, so no profanities. I did not know that.

Do you like not curse on the show? No, I do not curse on the show. We can play back to tape. We'll see if I'm somewhat, wait, wait, now someone's going to watch the show, Robert. Someone's going to get the highlight reel of every time I've like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Are you willing to put money on this? You want to put money on this?

No, I won't put money on this, but he won't put money on. He tried it, especially New Year's resolution for all of us. Okay, the young, young listeners, we're going to get a mixed tape. I love how this turned into a New Year's resolution. We're going to get, we're going to get a mix tape of all the time that Robert is cursed in the show and put out a special episode. Just Robert cursing set to music. Anyway, okay, so it's been another year, which means another year of winners and losers and notables for 2025. So for those of us who remember, a lot of ups and downs, we started in the year with the election, the AI boom, you know, Ethereum going through its ups and downs, meme coins.

It's been a crazy year. But we are going to, as the chopping block team, look back on a year of episodes of ups and downs and tell you who were the biggest winners, losers, surprise, best new mechanics. best meme best or slash worst pivot biggest flop biggest comeback story favorite guest and then finally you top it all off we'll go through predictions for 2026 so without further ado let's start with the first category which is biggest winner robert tell us who is the biggest winner in your mind for 2025 well there's two biggest winners but i'll start with the boring lame one first the biggest winner in my mind is the equity-based companies in the crypto industry that have benefited from regulatory clarity, a friendly administration, and the floodgates of institutional interest opening

them up. This is M&A season this year, both for the acquirers and the acquiries. We've already seen a lot of consolidation starting to occur. This year we had bridge and privy and deribit and hidden road and echo, and the list goes on and on and on. The biggest winners are really the sort of like companies in the space that are consolidating and forming alliances and sizing up. I think this is going to lead to a totally different landscape this year in 2006, but the biggest winners are the growth stage equity companies. That's my lame one.

The second biggest winner is all of you here at home who get to go into 20206 with a fresh experience after a roller coaster of its first. 25. What? I thought you're going to say, like, because prices are low, so you can buy, you can buy cheap alt or something. Yeah, yeah. That's roughly what I mean, you know. That's what you mean. Okay, that's what he means. He means prices are low, this investment advice. A fresh cost basis. Yeah. Fresh cost basis. Yeah. Welcome to 26. I love the sentiment. Okay. Tom, biggest winner. Biggest winner. Biggest winner, I had prediction markets. Obviously, the crowd favorite, polymarket, but everyone gets included. You know, it's at the end of the year,

feeling, feeling happy. I mean, this was like a category that was so fringe two years ago. And now it is so extremely mainstream. It is constantly written about it is in media. There's a South Park episode. It gets cited. Like, I just can't remember the last time something got this big so quickly. And obviously is very cool. We're still kind of discovering new applications for prediction markets. And so yeah, prediction markets are, are my 2025 winner. Congratulations to Kalshi. This episode is sponsored by Kalshi. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. They're in the others bucket. It's a polymarket. Got it. All right. So biggest winner, I had a tie between Tom Lee, for obvious reasons, being the eth-shill and, you know, Heath doing what it's done, and BitMind becoming now the contender right behind micro-strategy as being the biggest debt, second-biggest debt in existence. And then I had Donald Trump. I think Trump has basically crushed it in crypto. I think he got in an enormous sum of money from launching his meme coin, the Melania, which I think in Turun on the show coined, as a

the second tower, or the second plane, I think it was, I think he called it. And going from that to, you know, World Liberty Financial, Trump Media, like all of the different ways in which he has made himself in times at the expense of the industry, but also gotten a lot of policy and agenda wins for himself with respect to the crypto goals of his administration, establishing strategic Bitcoin Reserve, all of that together. I would say Donald Trump, probably one of the biggest winners of 2025 within crypto. Terun, what do you have? Best winner. Biggest winner. I had crypto derivatives platforms on chain. So perpetuals dexes, I count prediction markets in the derivative camp.

Because I kind of think they both grew a lot and they fed off each other. You know, like in some ways, the prediction markets having a ton of press about them, despite the volumes being a lot lower versus the perpetual's markets where there's tons of volume and like no press coverage. But yet people in both of those words, who are working on it, kind of talking about it with each other. I think the overall, you know, Dex market share overall spot end derivatives has gone up. And, you know, I think being crypto for a long time, getting into crypto full time partially because of like hoping prediction markets work one day, despite it's feeling like it took 15 years too long or something, it does feel kind of like

a winning day. And I think on the perpetual side, obviously I'd say, you know, we've had lots of versions of it, but it's interesting to see that people are finally moving their money from centralized exchanges on chain. And even with all the security stuff and it being harder, et cetera, I think you can't really knock those two. So to summarize hyperliquid, is that what I'm hearing, Trun? All perpetuals, Texas. I like Tom, I can't bring himself to say hyperliquid. I know, I think hyperliquid too, but I think I said hyperliquid last year. You did say that was right after the air drop. So I just kind of wanted to broaden it because I love the same prediction twice.

Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. Okay, cool. So inverse of biggest winner, we now have biggest loser. Tom, why don't you get us started? Who is the biggest loser in your mind for 2025? Biggest loser was kind of a triple whammy. I have alt coins for a couple of different reasons. One, you can obviously say a performance for alt has been.

really bad this year. Everyone's been hoping for an old season of some sort that has never really manifested. New launches have not really gone well. I mean, we really have not had new coins breaking into the top 100 other than like hype and, you know, in the past two years. I think people are hoping clarity would get past this year. And like, obviously we've had a, you know, much more, you know, favorable administration. We have a bunch of more favorable, you know, regulators. And that's all been well and good in terms of providing some breathing room for the industry. but like we want actual regulation to get to get passed. We haven't had that legislation get past.

We haven't actually had that happen. So that's been a bummer. And then we've also had these other issues between now these fights between equity holders and token holders with these acquisitions happening more recently or where, hey, you know, the company gets bought and token holders sort of get chafed. And so it feels like this is kind of so much of the industry and there's so much hope for, I think, what tokenization can do. But it's really just been this year where like altcoins have really kind of gotten left in the dust

in various ways. Nice. Yeah. I mean, that hits close to home, but yes, that sounds right. I had biggest loser for 2025 was the legacy of Gary Gensler. I think basically what we've seen this year

is just a complete dismantling of everything this man stood for over the four years of his tenure at the SEC. Basically, like when we started this year, I thought like, oh, you know, maybe they'll offer some guidance, maybe they'll, like, settle some of the cases. But no, we saw complete 180, everything that he fought for

has been completely dismantled and destroyed and just forgotten. So he went from being one of the most hated SEC chairman in recent memory that I've ever seen in terms of just the absolute uniform level of hate that he's gotten and for absolutely nothing.

Nothing that he stood for or worked for has survived in this SEC and good riddance. But I think that's, to me, very clearly, biggest loser of 2025 is that, you know, It's just like a gravestone, not even a gravestone, where Gary Gensler used to sit. Tarun, what do you have, biggest loser, 2025? You know, I think I've said this on the show many times this year in different shapes and forms,

but I think Web 3 as a thesis, I think I'm willing to write it off. I think the NFT market, if you look at the capitulation in some of the larger names, it's like, I feel like there's a death tombstone. stone waiting. And I also just feel like a lot of the reputation of Web3 is just so poor amongst creators, artists, what anyone who would like have benefited from the thesis that it just feels like it gets worse every year. And it does feel like it's at a certain bottom right now where I don't even know if there's a way it can go up. So I really just think the Web3 thesis is a big loser. I mean, even in, I believe in, like, Andresen's predictions for 2026, they don't call it out

explicitly, right? They're focused on privacy. They're focused on stablecoin usage and maybe AI. But, like, I think, like, even the people who are the biggest proponents probably don't necessarily, at least publicly efface it anymore. So I'm willing to write the epitaph now. Do you count IP tokenization as Web 3? Is that counts Web 3? if I knew what the IP was sure you know like it feels like I don't know what IP is being tokenized no no as I don't know examples to like if a lot if a lot of the IP was actually like royalty streaming from like movies or art or something sure but if it's like oh mostly IP is like chip IP that is being sold between SK Heinix and Samsung then no right like you know there's like a huge spectrum of IP so okay Fair answer. Okay. Biggest loser.

I'm sad about this one, unlike Haseeb's where I was happy. I think the biggest loser this year, starting from how much optimism and high expectations I personally had at the beginning of the year, the biggest loser is a strategic Bitcoin Reserve, in my opinion. And I'm sad about this because there was a lot of excitement when we started the year. A lot of us thought that this was the year that we would have. the most important sovereign nation on earth really utilizing Bitcoin in a geopolitical way. It sort of fizzled a little bit. It became, oh, well, we're going to hold on to seized Bitcoin. And we're also going to evaluate other ways to build this reserve that don't include buying

it, which fine, it's lukewarm. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, all the way up to this moment of time where there was just a story like yesterday that the U.S. government seized Bitcoin from the samurai wallet developers and then sold it in violation of executive order 14233, which said, we're going to build this solely over time by not selling seize Bitcoin. It's like there's been no progress from the U.S. government effectively on building a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And yeah, there's things that could change in 2006.

You know, people are joking around that we're going to seize Venezuela as Bitcoin and that they've been secretly building up a stash. And that's going to become our strategic Bitcoin Reserve. But none of this has happened. It's kind of been negative momentum for the past year. And I think these incredible ambitions and hopes that occurred are at this point, you know, quite wounded. Fair enough. I actually had strategic Bitcoin Reserve for a different thing.

But I'm going to change that. I'm going to wreck on that. Okay. So next category is biggest surprise, Turin, what do you have? Biggest surprise of 2025. I'm excited about this because I don't want to get front run. which is Zcash. I think Zcash coming back.

I had Zcash. I was like, someone's definitely going to say Zcash, so I'm taking that out. Yeah, that was why I wanted to go first. All right. Zcash,

a couple of reasons. A, I have a soft spot for Zcash. I think I mined Zcash in 2016 and blew up an old GPU I had and old computer because I overheated it. And it was just sort of like

an experience of actually getting to read a research paper, seeing it implemented, running on your computer, and seeing it actually work. And like, I think that was one of these things that like really sort of made me kind of end up being more in crypto. And I think Ccash has kind of gone through a lot of phases, right? It's had a lot of fights over the developer funding over the years have a lot of fights over like how slow it is or the inflation bug. It's kind of had a lot of punches and never many advocates and many people trying to to push it. And I think, you know, Mert and Co. And of all, I guess, like, I think that's the Zcash 2025 cabal. I think they really pushing privacy is actually like a good meme. Like compared to a meme coin, like, there

is actually a real reason and Zcash has gotten better. And you can just see the shielded address pool growth, which is awesome. I think like, you know, the other podcasts I'm often on is zero knowledge podcasts about new things and zero knowledge proofs. And there's been tons of things that have been improvements on Zcash, whatever. None of them have ever really been able to get commercial success or growth, I think, because they, because Zcash itself never really kind of did. And there's sort of this hopefulness to me that the kind of interest in Zcash also will spread down the privacy well. And so that surprise, I think I'm hoping for the trickle-down privacy economics of 2026. The best new mechanism as well of 2026.

Okay, fair enough. Robert, what do you have for biggest surprise? The biggest surprise, in my opinion, was the Circle IPO and the days that followed. Damn, Scoop me. Oh, Ch-Chene. So Circle briefly flipped Coinbase in Market Cap early this year. You know, when Circle was considering going public, they really led the wave of crypto companies filing. And up until that moment, there was a lot of skepticism. A lot of industry insiders were like, is this thing worth $4 billion?

Like, you know, how can they go public? you know, the people were reviewing the S-1, you know, and getting really nervous about it. It then debuted above everyone's expectations. And the narrative took hold that stable coins were going to win finance. And that Circle was the only pure play stable coin company that was public. And that the way to bet on the future of finance was to bet on Circle. And this went from a company that people were skeptical about a four or five billion dollar valuation to one in which it was $70 billion. not very long after.

I mean, that is a shocking run for a public company in a short amount of time. And so this surprised everyone. I mean, those weeks where Circle was, you know, flying through the stratosphere to the moon were an exciting and heady time, I think. And it shocked even the most, you know, skeptical and experienced investor class of the crypto industry. That is very, very true. I remember that.

I mean, it has come back down to Earth. It's now post lockup. So I think that's what a lot of people were saying. It's like, oh, man, just wait until that lockup expires. But still 20 billion. Yeah. Still $20 billion. Yeah.

It's still $20 billion. It's expired. You know, it's not coin-based size, but it's definitely a lot bigger than what people were anticipating when they release their S-1. Oh, yeah. Kudos to them. So very, very big success story. Tom, what do you got?

My backup. My backup. I'm scrambling. I got a backup. I had tempo as my backup, actually. I think like it's pretty good. I mean, I think crypto has had this long history of kind of Fortune 500 adoption kind of happening in like these fits and starts where it's like, oh, someone's doing some partnership and, oh, maybe they'll accept Bitcoin for payments. But it never really felt like, oh, this is actually going to be something that people are actually going to invest into.

Or they'll only do it if, hey, this could be a revenue driver or a profit center versus like something actually requires R&D or investment. obviously so very, very early in the days of tempo to say, hey, if this is going to be a success or not, and all as equal, I would probably say that the odds are stacked against them. But, like, I think impressive, just the fact that it seems like they, it is much more real this time. There is like an actual real consortium of real large companies investing serious money into building a totally new payment system from scratch. And I think, obviously, that obviously having a dent in the industry.

And it's just thrive in green oaks that are investing the money, to be clear. It's still $500 million. Like, you know, what was the last time you saw around that big for what is ultimately, you know, zero. And obviously, Matt also, you know, putting his time onto it too. So I'm like, I don't know. It was just, and I feel like it also just came out of nowhere. It's not just like, oh, we accept USC, which is everyone else is doing. It's like an actual investment into building something.

I felt like what's surprising was not that Stripe did that, but rather that paradigm did that. Yeah. I feel like that's the really surprising thing about tempo that, that, you know, if you, if you told me at the beginning of the year, like, Stripe is going to try to launch up, you know, their own blockchain. I would have been like, oh, okay. I mean, that's cool. Good for them. But if you told me, like, Paradigm's going to build it and, like, their whole team is

going to work on it, I'd be like, what? That's fucking insane. And they're going to convince half the EF to go work there. Then also, yeah, speaking of which, so my biggest surprise of the year was the Ethereum pivot. So there was, you know, recent consternation going on around Ethereum and Battalik talking about, oh, what's the vision for Ethereum? we were talking on this podcast toward the end of 2024 basically that Ethereum was cut.

We thought that the sentiment was just unrecoverable. They were driving themselves into irrelevance. There was nobody there who cared about price, who cared about the actual attractiveness of Ethel 1 relative to L2s. And this narrative set in of like, okay, the L2s are parasitic and ETH is just never going to do anything about it. And it was, what was it, February? that Vitalik saw religion, fired Ayah, put in Tamash and Xiawei,

and now we've seen this tremendous recovery of Ethereum, something that I think for many years people were saying like, man, Ethereum is just under-delivering, they refuse to be commercial, they refuse to be realistic about their competitive position.

I was very surprised. I was not expecting it. And I think it was actually, I think on the show I said, immediately after the EF turned over, I actually feel really, optimistic about Ethereum now, and I was not expecting to say that this year. Well, I think Tom Lee was the big driver, but, you know, that's for debate.

Well, Tom Lee was downstream of that. Tom Lee was downstream of that. I don't think that Tom Lee alone could have made this happen. And I think Tom Lee was in part a response to the fact that Ethereum had gotten his shit together. Tom Lee might be working on Solonodads. If it worked out for the fact that Ethereum had the momentum, yeah, that Ethereum had the momentum, yeah, that Ethereum had the momentum that was already starting to recover by the time that datmania had kicked off.

I don't know. Well, I feel like Tom Lee has been pretty easy. East Targeted, I believe, was the phrase. Yeah, that's right. He started. He was on the show. On the show. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, I feel like that's been true for a while because I remember like, actually. I mean, he was like a Bitcoin maxi in the past. He was like talking constantly about Bitcoin. I don't think he had an event in 2020 in. It might have been 2019. 2019. Yeah. I forget exactly.

Yeah. And he was speaking at it and he was really hyping Ethereum. So I guess I've always had this impression that he's like not so. He came to an early defy event in San Francisco and was like hyped. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. In a way that like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, okay. Fair enough. So I just always kind of had this impression you loved Eath, but also at that time, Eats was the only place you had DFI.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure how that cuts. Fair enough. Okay. All right. Next category is best new mechanism. Best new mechanism. Tom, why don't you kick us off? What do you think is the best new mechanism of 2025? I don't know if you can kind of this is new, but I would say this like wave of ICO 2.0, kind of like tasteful buyer sales, I would say is kind of in this bucket. I think we've been complaining for years that air drops are kind of pointless anyway. And there are so many issues, the data supports this, all these teams are expressing this. And then obviously, as we were discussing earlier, we as the most vulnerable group, the venture capitalists and this ecosystem, get so much flack from retail investors.

It was a joke. And it's like, how do you kind of tell all these two issues? Hey, well, maybe we bring back token sales. But we do so in a way that's not 2017 free for all, extremely early. Just give me a lump sum of money. I'll go promise to build this thing. but it's more like a, you know, true, hey, crowd sale, cap it, we can kind of place our allocations with people who think it can be long-term aligned and obviously puts them skin in the game. So it just feels like, okay, this actually kind of solves all these like miscellaneous problems that were happening in terms of token distribution, capital formation.

And I don't know, it seems like, hey, if we do get, you know, clarity or market structure passed in your 2026, maybe that would also just unlock the floodgates even further for this. So that's my best new mechanism. Tasteful ICOs. tasteful ICOs. Kobe, you can take that. Nice. Okay. Robert, what do you got?

Best new mechanism of 25. Well, this is a combination of best and worst. I think this is just the most impactful mechanism, and it's not even new. But I have to say the DAT structure in general, this was the year where it was the highest impact mechanism on the crypto markets. And I don't know if it's best. Yeah, I don't know if it's best. Yeah, I don't know if you call that best, but okay. Yeah, like maybe a special third thing.

Correct. This is a third way. Absolute value of impact. Absolute value of impact. Dats are the runaway highest absolute value of impact. They have what's the opposite of dampening volatility, amplifying volatility. They have amplified the volatility of spot assets. They have added a whole new layer of animal spirit.

both good and bad. I think they've brought back what will become the bull market even though they are toxic in their own way and value destructive in other ways. But Dats have totally reinvented the game. They're going to go in and out of favor, but biggest magnitude impact mechanism of the year.

All right, fair enough. Therun, what do you have for best new mechanism of 25? So I would say 2025 was a pretty weak year for mechanisms I would say that there weren't a lot of new innovations on the defy side. Because when I think of mechanism, I think of purely defy stuff. It was certainly a lot more innovating on execution, implementation, different things like that, maybe like having different trust assumptions. But one mechanism did shine through as actually being novel,

even though it's not completely de novo new, and also being used a lot, which is the prop AIMs on Solana, which are basically sort of a mix of request for quote systems and automated market makers like Unisop. And so the history of this is, you know, a lot of Defi relied on this passive liquidity, sitting in liquidity pools, being available at all times for trading, very capital and efficient. You have to have way more capital than you need to facilitate trades. on the other hand, you have this kind of RFQ system where someone fulfills your order just in time. It's capital efficient, but it has this problem that it can go down. Like if all the solve all the people who are fulfilling orders can't reply, then things don't work as well.

And so you kind of saw this dichotomy in the spot market on chain of pure passive liquidity, pure RFQ. And, you know, there's everyone who's still dreaming of like passive only will work. and then there's people who, there's still problems with the RFQ system. It's not like, perfect. But the prop AMM kind of tries to get a little bit of both worlds where market makers quote a wider spread of liquidity, and you're sort of getting a temporary order book that people can cross. And it's a little more complicated than that, but at a high level, that's what happens.

And it has really taken over Solana in terms of Dex volumes. It has really made spreads compressed quite a bit. also has a bit of better on-chain provenance than pure RFQs. And so I think while it's not sort of like, again, like a totally new thing, it's sort of like a mixture of things that already existed. It's clearly new. It's clearly working. And I think it's deserving of the title.

We were debating this earlier is that like it's basically Kiber, but it's like, you know, one admin key. Yeah, with like slightly exactly. That's my problem with it being like, is it a new mechanism? Yeah. So it's an old idea, but it's finally working. because of the latency and the people who are actually running it are very, very sophisticated. So it's working. It's working and it's taking over Solana.

And I think it's also proving that I think we will see, maybe I'll save this for predictions. Never mind. Okay, okay. All right. Say it, save, save, save. All right. So I had for best new mechanism of 2025 was federal preemption. So for those of you who do not know, the reason why call sheet and polymarket can operate in all 50 states, and offer bets on, sports, and so on, is this mechanism known as federal preemption, which is that if there's a federal law, it overrides state laws. And that's the reason why you're seeing so much growth in these prediction markets

that they're available in all 50 states at all times. Now, this is being challenged in the courts, TBD, whether or not this is going to actually survive the various fights with state attorneys general. But I think in terms of a mechanism that is actually impacting the landscape of prediction markets, this is probably the most important term, which you're going to hear again and again is federal preemption. That's why I had it for the best new mechanism of 2025. So, okay, now we got Best Meme.

This one's a banger. Robert, we'll start with you. What did you have for Best Meme of 2025? So who remembers when the Trump administration initially released tariffs? Raise your hand. Oh, the board. Yes. The board.

So, no, the best meme, our social media intern at the chopping block, when the video AI tools were still earlier, I mean, 2025 was a long time ago, released, I think the best video content we have released as a podcast, which was the four hosts working in a Chinese toy factory with the sad music, meming videos that were going around TikTok and like Chinese. media about like we got to play a little clip of that just for everybody who doesn't who didn't see it best meme of 2025 that's very nice that could be a meme right I clip that so I had best meme of 2025 was digital asset stockpile so I don't know if you remember this but Trump said there's going to be a stockpile of other crypto there's an executive order to get included a digital asset stockpile that's right Right. I forgot about that. It was supposed to go into it. Ada's supposed to go in there.

Ada, yeah. Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely. Zilch doesn't exist. Probably will never exist. But there's an executive order about it. You know, red meat for the crypto industry.

I say best meme of 2025. Tarun, what do you have? Best meme, 25. So I don't know if it was like quite a meme, but it was the thing that stuck to me the most. You know, I think oftentimes when there's a hack in crypto, people have, You know, the crowd is like loves to find the worst in everything and like, you know, whatever. The person who's like dealing with it, oftentimes isn't necessarily the best of crisis comms and things don't go well. But the by bit hack post hack and being such a large hack and still having such a good response and like the memes of the video of like Ben, I thought that was pretty good because like how do you get memes out of like.

like a billion dollar plus hack. And if you can do that, that means you've like, ACE crisis comes. And it's not, again, it wasn't like the most funny meme or, but I thought it was like,

somehow taking this thing that was like a huge negative and flipping it, I thought that was very impressive. I was really hoping you were going to say the Tarunneobot meme, where there's Tarunot, like,

folding clothes in the house. That was pretty good. That was pretty good. You're really up them, on the shopping block intern. Yeah. I feel like Robert really saying, Robert's really saying best meme chopping block intern.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our social media team is the best follow underscore chopping block on the intern. Yeah, great word, Tom. The intern. Tom, what do you have? Best meme. So I thought this meme not only the aesthetics of it

appealed to me, but also it was very topical for a year where so much happened and so many things people thought. we're going to happen, kind of happened, but also a lot of things didn't happen. And in some ways, nothing ever happens. And I think that was very much a theme for the year. You thought you were going to get the U.S. government buying Bitcoin. No, you're not, it's, that's not going to happen. They're going to get tariffs. That's not really happening either. But you can believe it for a small

period of time. And, you know, some might say you even, you could, you could fall for it. And so this is, I really love the, the Fell Ford again Award meme. Have you seen this? It's also, it's really just this template with like really high skill expression. And people have just gone, you know, really, really crazy building all sorts of, you know, very elaborate landscapes and portraits using the never, the Felford again award meme. So that's my, that's my meme in the year. Wow. Spoken like a true meme, Lord. Thank you.

That's a, that's a very deep, very deep cut meme. That's like a Michelin starred meme right there. You need the high brow and the low brow together. Yeah, yeah. I respect that. Okay. All right. Next category is best slash worst pivot. I'll go first on this one, so I haven't gone first yet. So my vote for best slash worst pivot is Galaxy pivoting to a data center company.

Oh, this is so close to my one. You're scooping me. Okay. Yeah, so Galaxy, for those you don't know, of course, Galaxy Digital, which is like a crypto merchant bank thing, they thought that the business they IPOed was a crypto business. Well, it turns out that they acquired this data center company from a Bitcoin miner that became this company called Helios, which became a subcontractor to Corweave and is now contracting over a billion dollars in annual recurring revenue, over 15 years with CorreWeave. It is now the lion's share of the enterprise value of Galaxy. Galaxy is now an AI infrastructure company.

The crypto business is tiny compared to this gigantic AI bet that they have that's paid off. So good for them. but yeah, quite a pivot. I'd say best pivot. This definitely counts as like best pivot in my mind. So that's my vote for best pivot. Tom, what do you have? Best slash worst pivot of 25.

Well, for best pivot, I actually had Heath and Tom Lee and basically Tom Lee rebranding Heath as stable coin layer. And I think it was like one of those things. Chat Chb to be for crypto. Chat Chats. Anything and everything can be really. But I think it's one of the things where I think people have been very frustrated by

the EFs, like for luck. to embrace defy and make stable coins as a product of that for so long. And then you just get Tom Lee going on TV to be like, no, this is how people are going to pay each other in the future. What do you mean? This is like the future of finance. And that was kind of all you needed. And so I don't know if it's a pivot.

I don't know if it counts, but I think it's sometimes just like having someone almost with beginner's mind, beginner eyes from the mouth of babes or from the mouth of Tom Lee. That's kind of all you need sometimes. Tom Lee is kind of a babe. I get it. Robert, what do you got? Well, this is closely related to Haseeb's already, but I'm going to go with Corweef. So Corweave was an Ethereum GPU mining company.

They were literally mining ether. And then everything over time, you know, Ethereum switched to proof of stake. And I don't really know what happened to Correweave. And then you blink and Corweave goes public this past year and is now a $40 billion company because they've pivoted their Ethereum GPU mining business into an Aetherium. AI Data Center company. And this is a, you know, if you want to take the meme of like pivot from crypto to AI, this is a true historical pivot from crypto to AI that generated a lot of value.

And yes, Galaxy is a subcontractor for Corweave, but Corrieve is the big dog, right? And they've pulled off an incredible pivot and they have really done something successful there. Are you a shareholder? I'm not a shareholder. No. I... Oh, shoot. Yeah. If only, I could have seen the pivot from crypto to AI. Yeah, damn. All right, Tarun, what do you have best slash worst pivot? Yeah, so this one is a very

long time pivot, but I think it's kind of worth remembering that they've pivoted. And I think I have to give this in the best category to Lighter, because Lighter's kind of a crazy company by crypto standards. They were founded in 2017 as a networking app for co-founders called Lunch Club

in San Francisco. In fact, there were like two of these types of things that have led to crypto companies. Like Alchemy was this before and lighter was this. But lighter, you know, like in a world where everyone's always talking to you about how fast a company is growing or like time to X revenue is like three days. This is a company that like took a long road and its company split in two and the other companies is a successful AI company in cognition. But you know, they kind of took a long road, went through a lot of different ideas, built this product for a while, coming at it from like, hey, we're a bunch of people who

worked in trading, but we also like ZK. And then, yeah, like they got user. they TGE'd. I think like you can count that as like the full cycle of the pivot getting to this point and I think, you know, yes,

they probably officially pivoted 2024, 2023, but I feel like realizing a successful pivot probably is this year. And so, I did not realize

that lunch club was co-founder dating. That's... Kind of. It's like in networking that matches people to like... Yeah.

It's like such bad founder market fit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, like the founder market fit there for Vlad and co-founder dating is like so incredibly bad compared to lighter, which is so incredibly good. But that's why I'm saying. Like, later is exactly what Vlad should be building. But this is why I think, it's why I'm giving the best pivot. It's a good pivot.

No, no, that's a, I obviously agree. I also think in crypto, very few companies persist. People constantly start something, toss it off, start a new thing, right? So it's like, it's almost nine years. And I think like that is something, it's like kind of a crazy thing. Like most people would have just killed the old company, sorry, a new company, but he sort of kept the cap table some employees over such a long time period in very volatile industries.

You know, I think that that does sort of deserve a really good pivot story. And like I think it probably just hasn't been told because I don't know if you want to highlight the co-founder dating stuff in 26 because I don't think that's like in 2016, I could see that being in the meadow, right? Like, now I don't think. Yeah, it's a good one. Okay. So next category we have coming up on the end here is biggest flop. So something for which there was high expectations, did not quite deliver, biggest flop with 2025 to ruin, why don't you start? What do you got? I mean, I guess I've sat down on the show. I've gotten, I've both been on both sides of the iron for it. But definitely October 10th and sort of the liquidation mechanisms.

Just like October 10th. Well, liquidation mechanisms flopped. Liquidation mechanism. Okay, that's your flop. Like the October 10th, like event showing the liquidation event. Yeah. Showing the ADL. Yeah.

And like I fundamentally agree with Don Wilson's point, even though I don't agree with the solution he proposes of like, you're not really going to grow the market 100x unless you fix this. and I think that just showed how brittle some of these things are, especially in a decentralized environment. And I think it's obviously the biggest thing that has to get fixed if we want 100x volume overall, like stuff like that for the average user.

So, yeah, but I'm sure I'm going to get a ton of hate in my Twitter, which I have for saying this even. All right, I'll go next. I have for biggest flop of 2025. was AI agents. Obviously, we went into the year. Is this a crypto podcast? Around AI.

Yeah, well, I mean, like, think of virtuals. Think of Zero bro. Think of AI16Z. Like, this was everywhere when we started the year. And all this stuff is now, it's not just that the tokens went down. It's that it's fucking annoying. Like, nobody likes any of these things anymore. It's like, oh, my God, it's so good.

Look, it's something that has crypto and it's talking to us on Twitter. And now it's just like, oh, man, like tell AI, XPT. you shut the fuck up. Like, I do not want that thing in my comments. So the sentiment shift, but also like the fact that, I mean, obviously the speculative mania has died away, but also just the fact that these things have just really underdelivered in terms of value. Now, it's not to say they never will.

It's not to say that agents don't matter. Obviously, outside of crypto, you know, people are very excited by coding agents and what they can do and the ability to automate real valuable economic work. But the idea that they're going to be these token speculative things, I think that is been the biggest flop of 25. Tom, what is your pick? Biggest flop, 2025. I always kind of don't really love this category

because I always feels like we're punching down a little bit, but in this case, it is kind of very explicitly. I have Barra Chain. It's hard to remember, but take yourself back a year ago, and Barra Chain was a hot, one of the hottest up-and-coming new chains mentioned in the same breath as a Monad or a Mega-Eath, raising it multi-billion-dollar evaluations,

someone she posted a picture today of a photo of their like token 2049 picture party from last year. There was just like, you know, mob, they were like the Barra Baddies. It was this whole thing. And then they launched the token about a year ago. And it's really been down only since then. I guess down like 90%. And it's just I can't remember the last time I've heard someone mention Barra Chain to me in earnest. It was like the chain that didn't take itself seriously.

And then, of course, you know, no one took it seriously. And so I, again, I feel a little bad. putting down, but in this case, it is kind of hard to believe that that was just a year ago. So that's my big flop. Okay. That's, I mean, it's accurate. Robert, what do you have, biggest flop at 25? Well, this one will be controversial, and it's also a little bit sad.

And this is, I should, you should curse. You should curse to sell the controversy. No, no, no, no, no. This is a flop on a relative basis. Okay. I'm going to say Bitcoin because this was a year. Hold on. Hold on.

Let me explain. Yes. it was only down 6% for 2025. But this is a year that should have been Bitcoin's year. Gold was up a very, very significant amount. From a macro perspective, everything was up. Equity is rampaged, right? On a relative basis, Bitcoin was a flop this year.

And that goes for the crypto asset complex. Maybe we should be counting fiscal. If you do fiscal year, Bitcoin outperform the NASDAQ. Sure. but my expectations were higher. I think the investor class in general was expecting a bigger thing from Bitcoin and therefore crypto in general. This was a very soft year, very soft year when it should have been a very strong year.

And so, you know, I don't want to give Bitcoin the prize, but I think Bitcoin is the biggest flop in my opinion for the importance of the asset for the industry. Okay, fair enough. No, that's a strong. Mother fucking strong answer, Robert. No, conversing on the show. Actually, is the flop Bitcoin or is the flop the four-year cycle? The having cycle.

Because it's kind of like... How is that? No, that's not a flop. That's like a guarantee. Like, that has been reinforced. The four-year cycle came true, no? Like, how is that... I think Bitcoin being down on the year for some people is a sign that the happening has...

has lost its impact on supply shock. Like no one cares anymore. But when did it happen happen? Wasn't that years ago? It was April, April 24. So I don't, not happening. Yeah, no. Like the four year, yeah, the four-year cycle predicts that this year is the end of the cycle

and it should go down. Right. But there is sort of something weird about the end. I was, this is the part where I like, I haven't really. All right, we need to get some rainbow charters up on here. Actually, can we cut my... No, we can not. We're keeping that.

No, we're not getting that. We're going to put that in the intro. We're putting that in the intro. Permanently. I like, yeah, I mess up. All right. No, it's good. Perfect.

All right. Tarun doesn't care about Bitcoin. He has no idea what the four-year cycle is. All right. I only know Eric Wall's rainbow chart. Okay, that's like the only... That's what I live and die by. Okay.

All right. Comeback story. Biggest comeback story of 2025. I will go first. I have biggest comeback story of 2025 is Near. So Near basically had this renaissance with Intents where all of a sudden now, I mean, it's kind of tied in with the Zcash story. Zcash coming up, near, I think it kind of been left for dead.

People are like, oh, you know, what does this chain do? Who cares about it? All of a sudden it's kind of re-entered the zeitgeist with the growth of intense. And for anybody who's bought Zika, or not everybody, but many people who bought Zcash because it's not available in a lot of jurisdictions, precisely the reason why something like near Intense is attractive is because you can buy any asset on any chain using multi-party computation using near Intense. So I had comeback story near.

Turin, what do you have for comeback story of the year? I have Maple Finance, which if you look at the TVL chart kind of says the entire story, you know, like they've gone through everything. hack issues, counterparty issues, etc. But I mean, just look at the chart. I don't, there's like not that much else to say. Like that chart is very impressive and is a very real comeback. Yeah.

But syrup is the asset you want to look at now. Yes. Yeah. Because NPL has been. Sure. Yeah. So I don't mean their token. I mean just like the overall usage of loans associated to Maple,

the complex of them because like now there's multiple products. But yeah. Yeah, great, good. Robert, what do you have? This is, in my opinion, the biggest. Tether. Tether is a company that people. Yeah, wait, they're the biggest winner last year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a comeback. This was, this is the comeback from winning to win again. Fine. You don't like my controversial pick for biggest comeback. No, we're sorry. I apologize. I apologize.

Please tell us why Tether's the biggest comeback story. Let's just call it. Fine, we'll rephrase this. You ready? Tether as a respected asset and company. This was their comeback year with the Trump administration. Reputational Tether. Yeah, reputationally Tether.

This is a year where, yes, Tether had a lot of stable coins last year and they were printing money last year. But this is the year where they're out there raising at a $500 billion valuation from U.S. institutions. Okay. This is the Tether comeback year from a reputational perspective and stickiness perspective and acceptance in the broader socioeconomic. economic, political, economic, industrial complex. They're no longer the bad boys. That's actually your comeback came back. I was, you know, I had really low expectations coming to the comeback.

That's good. That's good. Going from biggest winner to biggest comeback, that almost impossible to do, but they pull it off. The intern is going to have a field day with this episode. Yeah. All right. Tom, what do you have for biggest comeback?

I also had the by-bit hack. So I guess it could be a mean. I was going to say by me, but I was like someone else is going to say that. So I'm going to leave that off. Yeah, I think sometimes those obvious ones we actually don't get to because everyone's afraid someone else is going to take it. But I mean, I feel like getting hacked for a billion dollars and then handling it so gracefully having that all come back, like kind of actually reabsorbing like pretty much

all the loss in terms of volume and consumer interest. And I just like would not have been able to predict that. I think that would have sounded absurd. If you told that to someone, you know, four or five years ago that one of the largest exchange is going to get hacked, but it's actually going to be totally fine. That's like kind of a crazy story. And I think speaks to like, again, how much the industry is maturing and sort of progressing and also just frankly how well they handle it. So props to them. Good, very, very good. Okay. Second and last category is favorite shopping block guest of

2025. We had a lot of guests through the year. We had some big heavy hitters. We also had some crazy people who came and joined us on the show. So who do you think, Robert, we'll start with you, best guest of 2025. Who's your vote? My vote, just from a hosting perspective and who I enjoyed the most having on the show. I don't know if this is your favorite, it probably is, but Hester Purse, Crypto Mom, SEC commissioner leading, you know, the comeback of crypto in the United States of America. Absolute joy to have her on the show.

This was early in the year. This is the USA's comeback. We could have picked USA as well. But, you know, she's kind of the vanguard of leading the charge to make the U.S. the crypto capital again. It's almost like having Trump on the show. Yeah. Coming on the tail end of the, you know, the Gensler exit.

I mean, that was my favorite guest. You know, I just think it set the tone for the year so well. And maybe we can outdo ourselves by this year having Paul Atkins on the show. You know, you're invited Paul if you're listening. but favorite guest. Yeah, that sort of is great. Tom, favorite guest. I thought I was going to get scooped under this one.

I had Joe Wisenthal from Oddlots. Oh yeah, early. He was really great. Well, I got scooped. Yes. All right. All three of us are Joe? I mean, we could just, that's fine.

We could just all give our, if it's true, it's true. Joe is fun. Yeah, it takes a professional podcaster to really be a great guest. It's true. The thing about Joe that I really enjoyed was that he was just so earnestly, like, not in crypto. He was like, just in crypto enough to know enough to ask good, like, probing questions. And he was game.

And also because it was in person, it was just like a lot more, you know, flowing than I think a lot of the other video interviews. But yeah, Joe was great. He was just like, I think also having a skeptic who's good at paying it at good at, like, framing things is like, good because I kind of think it's obviously if you're running crypto podcast it's very easy to have guests who are in crypto or live and breathe every day right but like getting someone who's like every once every hundred things they read is in crypto maybe less than that but then like has it gives a good kind of holistic view I think like that's something maybe maybe we can we can do more of in 26 because I do feel like that episode came out yeah I do think it's the vibe of the show that we are

kind of cryptoskeptics, despite the fact that we're also crypto insiders, is that we talk shit, we call things out, we're very blunt, we're not just cheerleaders for the industry, and I think that's part of the reason why people like the show, is that we try to keep it real. At the same time, we also try to be positive and constructive on the things that we do think matter, and we don't just try to fall into this vibe of negativity or just criticism for its own sake. But yeah, I do agree, having somebody who is a competent skeptic is very refreshing, and it's, I think, very necessary to just be able to hear back, like, here's what it sounds like you guys are doing. Is that what you guys are doing?

Because it's kind of what it sounds like. And yeah, it was, yeah, we should, we should definitely, I agree. Let's try to find more of that energy in 2026. So, okay, last section is predictions. And as we're going through predictions, what I want to do is actually go back to what our predictions were for 2025 when we made them at the end of the year in 2024. Spoiler alert, not good. Yeah, I bet we're like zero for four.

Don't worry about, go. Okay, we're going to go through the one by one, okay? Because each of us made multiple predictions. So my predictions were that Bitcoin is going to hit 150K and then dump. Now, I was kind of right. All right, all right. It did dump, but it did not hit 150K, maxed out at 126. I said that D-Sy tokens were going to turbo pump.

They did momentarily. That's what a pump means. A pump can still dump. So they did momentarily, but that, you know, didn't totally age well. And then I said AI coins go bananas, but little protocol adoption. I'd say, you know, they did go bananas. They were already bananas by the end of 2024. So I'm going to say this is mostly partially right, partially wrong.

I'll say kind of a mix on that one. Okay. So that was me. Robert, you said that Bitcoin was going to hit 180K. So you went up me. So you were more wrong than I was. You did not say it was going to dump. You said that critical civic legislation would be signed.

into U.S. law. Genius accounts. Genius. All right. Yeah. That genius counts. So I'd say that would be good. AI-based system becomes a crypto scammer in a newsworthy way. That's going to be published on the block or on CoinDesk. I don't think. I don't think so. I don't think. I don't think that happened.

On the other hand, scammers are definitely using AI assistance. Yeah, they are. But like, scammers are using every, like everyone's using everything. You know, like my assistant is using AI. Does that mean that? Yeah. No, I agree, I agree. But I'm just saying like there's a, we also, it's a little underspecified. It is a little underspecified.

But let's, you know, we got to give a, we got to give a fair shake. Okay. So, Tarun, yours was more than one app chain slash L2 merge. I don't think we've seen any mergers. I think that one's a miss. Yeah, I kind of think there were like these consortiums, but yeah, I don't think they're. Yeah, there's no mergers. There's no.

No, no. Okay. So then you said that AI agent market capital at least 5x from where it was, which was $10 billion to $50 billion. Okay, that was your claim. So I'm going to put that as like five wrongs in making that claim. And then you, the last prediction you made was that Solana emissions would decrease by more than 25%. I believe that's also wrong.

I believe it didn't pass. Yeah, SMD-228 did not pass. So you are zero for three. And then Tom, your predictions were that a money game is going to go mainstream viral, as big as the national lottery. Definitely not. No. Did not happen.

No, did not happen. Did not happen. Next year. You said a new lame crypto ETF will launch like XRP or Lycoin. I'll give you that one. XRP et f-tif launched, XRP ATF launched, Lycoyn launched, HBarr launched, Doge launched. And then you said a massive application level compromise in a library or an application. I think, yeah, that happened multiple times.

There were like supply chain attacks against various libraries. There's just one like a week ago, trust wallet, right? that was like a yeah yeah yeah so you got this one so i would say the one who did the best is tom tom got two and three i think i need a swing a little bigger you know i think i think these were the little two basic yeah the supply chain time was pretty safe supply chain time was pretty safe but lame crypto etf i feel like that's a little bit more of a reach next time i but this year i want to do something bold from you like to runes okay i want to hear i want to hear a five x i want to hear a five x all right okay i i feel i feel like i was bullied into big predictions so

No one bullied you, Tarun. File battery claim against the rest of your co-hosts. Yeah. All right. Tarun was bullied. Let the record show. Okay, so let's do 2026 predictions. Tarun, we'll let you go first so you don't feel bullied.

What are your non-bullied predictions? Make sure that these are as little influence as possible by potential bullying from the four of us, three of us. AI generated hack generating greater than $100 million of damage. So I'm giving a number, not just, hey, there will be one. I feel like that's almost already occurred. Not provably. Well, people talk about the balancer hack being maybe AI vibe coded. Yeah.

Which is 70 million. Yeah. Almost occurred. Yeah. Okay, that's not a huge. I feel like this is pretty safe. This sounds pretty safe. This is not a 5X.

This is not a 5X. That said, I'm not bullying you. That said, I'm not bullying you. I'm taking this Tom's strategy this year. Okay, okay. All right. Safe bet. All right.

So 100 million. in an AI powered hack. Okay. I think a non-trivial percentage of AI CAP-X will be funded in stable coins. Okay, hold on.

All right, all right, these are too vague. All right. Give me a point estimate. So you said at least 100 million. Give me an actual point estimate. And we'll decide at the end how wrong you are from that estimate.

Between one and five percent. It's like zero now. Okay. One and five percent. Okay. So let's say 2.5%, or 3%, 3% of AI funding will happen in stablecoins. Yeah. Okay.

That's a big one because that's a larger number still. Okay. All right. Do you have the third? Okay. The answer is no, it's fine. You don't even make a lot of on this fund. Yeah, I have some bad ones.

I can see the computer running. Yeah, it's defragging. I have some bad ones that have written and I'm like, I don't really even think they're worth. You don't want to tell us that. You got to tell us the bad ones now. I mean, one of the bad ones is like, we'll actually have private defy usage grow. Like, you know, the Zcash that, you know, my trickle-down privacy economics thing. Of course, triple-down privacy economics.

There will be, that will happen somewhere. That will happen. I don't know. Okay. Yeah. It sounds like a very difficult to verify. Yeah, very difficult to verify. Yeah.

That's a bad claim. That's why I was like, all right. All right. I think that's good. I think that's good. We'll take the two. I'm really good.

I'm really good. It's not writing the market descriptions on polymarket because this would just be like UMA drama, like every single. That's true. I think my main thing is I made two precise and large predictions last year. And so the natural tendencies like trying to make the opposite. Gunshy. That's not good.

That's not good. You can't be results oriented. Okay. I'll go next. So I had, so obviously, every year I write down my predictions. I'm just quoting from some of the predictions I've already made publicly. So my first prediction is that Bitcoin is going to go to 150K by year end. Second is that a big tech company is going to launch slash acquire a crypto wallet.

It might not go live, but they will at least announce that they're going to be shipping a crypto wallet. So when I say big tech, I mean like, you know, one of the top seven big tech companies, like a consumer tech, not like a FinTech. And then lastly, that equity perps will grow to, 20% of D5PURP volumes over 2026. Okay, that's that one is the big, that's your big one. Yeah, it's a big one. Okay, Tom, prediction.

Pretty good. I also had a equity perps one, but I was going to say equity perps for at least one asset will match spot for that asset one date is here. So like you'll have the same amount of volume for like in video, not token a spot, but spot spot spot. Spot spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's also, that's a big.

Wait, but like long tail, like we're talking with like long tail random stuff that people are putting on chain? Okay. I mean, it can be more long tail. You know, I would include, have you seen any equity perps for longtail? They don't add long tail right now. Yeah, but you could like circle. Everybody's somebody pump and dump some long tail thing and then technically drum. Well, I think everyone's afraid of the Oracle stuff.

So there is some bias towards a large cap. Right, right. That's why because somebody could totally, you know, yeah. I'm aware. I think that's why it's a beautiful. That's your prediction. That's your prediction. We'll let you have. Next one, I think we will see, I'm going to say, at least three Dino Chain Foundation wind downs.

We've obviously already seen like one or two over the past year. I think we'll probably see more if like, hey, these things don't actually rally. We're kind of reaching that point where people are running out of funding and maybe there's other better things to do. Maybe token holder revolt TBD. And then three, there'll be some sort of major scandal about insider trading for a non-securities or non-sports-related prediction market. So there's already kind of rumors about this floating for, like, you know, Maduro. I think something like will actually happen and maybe there'll be a smoking gun and it'll be this whole kind of kerfuffle. So, yeah, that's my third prediction.

Okay. I'd say that last one sounds pretty safe. But yeah. All right. Because I feel we, I think we might have already had that in 2026 because Maduro just happened like two days ago. It's true. But I did write this down before that. So I'm going to count it.

It's more like a retradiction at this point, but okay. I don't like it's scoop by Maduro. That's bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. The hard part about predictions is doing them about the future, but okay. All right, Robert, what do you have for your 2026 predictions? I will just read out from what I tweeted on December 31st.

These are boring. These are not like to the grade that the chopping block requires. BTC and metals all time high, lukewarm. Crypto industry consolidation, lukewarm. Market structure legislation. What does consolidation mean? What does consolidation mean? There's going to be more M&A.

I think we're going to see some like big boys. Operationalize. How do we know you're right or wrong? Okay. Okay. Okay. Minimum acquisition price should be something. You know, like, I think that's like.

Yeah, yeah. All right. I think there will be at least $5 billion of crypto M&A this year. Okay. Total. It's not cool. Wait. There was.

There was already been more than $5 billion last year. Yeah. There was way more than five last year. There was, but that was my, that was my biggest winner. from earlier in the show was talking about consolidation in 25, and there was like $5 billion, you know? So like 26, let's go with $10, $10.

Okay. I think there might have been $10. Well, I think, anyway, all right, fine, fine, we'll have our fact checkers. All right, because I appreciate, like, Hidden Road was two, then there was Ninja Trade, there was like also two, and then there was like, you add it all up. $15 billion.

Let's stop it. 15, there we go. Okay, that's a real prediction. That's a real prediction. Market structured legislation passes. you know, this is a medium lukewarm one. You know, I think the odds are good. People say they're 50-50.

Probably market has it at 75. Well, that way. Safe ones. Lay up, lay up. That's good. Take them where you can get them. Yeah. And that's pretty much it.

I'm not much for it. My track record is. It's all right. That's how you're going to win next year. That's how you're going to win next year. Okay. That is it. That takes us a 20th.

So last thing, I guess I'll ask you guys is like, it's been 2025 as harrowing year. We've talked about the ups and downs and all the different little sub-dramas that took place over the year. How are you feeling about 2026? Like, what's the vibe? What do you feel inside going into this new year? And what personally are you setting as an intention for how you're going to be approaching crypto this year? Tom, why don't we start with you? I think in the grand scheme of things, 2025 was not nearly as harrowing as like any of the other past years.

I think actually one of the least harrowing years in memory. I feel like actually this is kind of more like, you know, when pilots are like setting up their flight plan and they like put, you know, all their like waypoints into the flight, the autopilot and then the plan kind of just flies itself from waypoint to waypoint. I feel like we already have the waypoints locked in. Everyone kind of knows what the game plan is at this point. More or less, maybe there'll be some turbulence.

Maybe it'll be good, I don't know, some wins, whatever. But like, for the most part, I'm kind of like see what the future's going to look like. And it's not super exciting. it's, but that's okay, like it's good. So I think if, I think that's kind of what I think 2026 is going to be more like is like there's, there are fewer unknowns, which is, is good and bad for the, for the industry. It's just something we haven't really seen, seen it before. Fair enough.

Deroon, how are you feeling? I think last year everyone was like, wait, like, they're in the middle of the party, took too many drugs and like everyone was like at the peak high. And then like very quickly, like by April or something, they kind of, or March maybe, things kind of washed out, started washing all of it. And then everyone tried again. They're like, okay, I need a new substance. It's called Dats. And so then they got high off the Dats. High on Dats. I got high on Dats. Yeah. And then and so I think there was a lot of substance abuse issues last year with the crypto industry in this metaphorical sense. That's good. That's good.

So I think this year is the year of temperance. Temperance. Yeah. That was like, okay. I like actually, you know what? Robert is a great way to end that off with his no profanity. I think we should make 2026 the year of no profanity. It's straight out of you. No, that's so hard. That's so hard. I know.

That's your resolution. It's all of our resolution. Robert, what's your, what's the spirit with which you're taking 2026? I'm excited. I think this is a big year. I think we've been saying this for like years and years,

but the institutions are coming in a big way. I don't know about retail. If retail might not be coming, we'll see. The developers, are coming. I think there's more use cases that are coming. I think our government is still here. I think legislators are here. I think it's just going to be a great tailwind bullish environment for the whole ecosystem. I think we're going to have a very good 2026. Well, yeah, I will say I'm feeling

really optimistic and really energized. I think like the fact that as you opened, Robert, you know, prices are reset. It feels like kind of a clean slate, although 1010 was a very traumatic event. it also is a big giant reset. And one of the things that I was saying on a previous show, there's a lot of bad sentiment, horrible vibes, especially in November. And there's a lot of talk from people who are leaving the industry. And one of the things that I said at that time is that like, actually this is necessary.

This is good. Because the people who are disillusioned and who can no longer fight, those people need to go home for the war to continue. And it's like, okay, we got to stop. We got to regroup. We got to, you know, make sure nobody's left behind. But we chopper them out of here. and we move forward.

And so I, yeah, my feeling is that 2026 is going to be a fucking great year. So I'm feeling good. If only you didn't curse. Sorry. I mean, yeah, if only, okay, starting now, starting now. Now is the moment that 2026 truly starts. No more. January 6th when Haseeb celebrates the new year.

January 6th is fiscal year. You're going to have a cursing dry January, okay? All right. I'm going to work on this. That seems easier than the whole. year. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll start with January, and we'll work up to see if we can do it for all of

2026. Okay, that is it from us. We'll be back next week. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in as always. And we look forward to enjoying 2026 and explaining it all along the way.