Unchained - The Crypto Market Structure Has Changed and Rising Tides May No Longer Lift All Boats

Episode Date: January 3, 2026

Thank you to our sponsor, Mantle. Sign up for their hackathon here! Crypto markets this year failed to live up to expectations, raising questions about the trajectory for next year. The situation is further complicated by speculation that Bitcoin is about to kick off a multiyear decline in line with the so-called four year cycle. In this Unchained podcast episode, Delphi Digital analysts Jason Pagoulatos and Jordan Yeakley break down the market and applications outlook for next year. They look at whether the four year cycle would hold, what gold's run means for Bitcoin and the conditions that have led to recent market apathy. They also discussed whether the recent resurgence of privacy coins is a fad and who would come out on top in the race to become an “everything app.” Is the four year cycle the result of multiple coincidences? And, is X the dark horse in the everything app meta? Guests: Jason Pagoulatos, Head of Markets at Delphi Digital Jordan Yeakley, CFA, Research Analyst at Delphi Digital Previous appearances on Unchained: What Went Wrong With Pump's ICO and Where It Goes From Here How Crypto Markets Are Post-Selloff, With Election/Fed Uncertainty Links Unchained: Will Bitcoin’s New Phase Change It Forever? And Is the 4-Year Cycle Dead? The Chopping Block: Hyperliquid vs. Tarun, ADL Transparency & The Coming Perps Arms Race What Ethereum Will Look Like When It Implements Its New Privacy Focus Why the Privacy Coins Mania Is Much More Than Price Action Coinbase Launches Stock Trading and Prediction Markets Inside Robinhood’s Big Super App Plan: ‘There’s Still a Lot of Work to Be Done’ How the x402 Standard Is Enabling AI Agents to Pay Each Other Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In prior cycles, you could be pretty passively allocated and do very, very well. And I don't think that's, I mean, it's clearly not the case anymore and hasn't been for some time, at least the last year and a half, right? I think in order to do well, you've needed to be very, like I mentioned, I think earlier, very discerning, very disciplined, and really pick your moment. I think, like, we're missing a massive consumer out. in crypto and the social fi angle is fundamentally like a massive use case that could onboard, you know, the next billion people. I know that's cliche at this point, but it's like we can

Hey everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. And my guest and I may hope. hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures, visit UnchainedCrypto.com. Looking to unlock your crypto's liquidity, figure offers crypto-backed loans with an end-ed... The ScoreBet app here with trusted stats in real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking. Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want

hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions. That's not really what I do. Is that because you don't have any knees? Or... The score bet. sports content, seamless sports betting. Download today. 19 plus, Ontario only. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to conicsonterio.ca.com.com. History low, 8.91% fix rate. They're the only major provider with decentralized MPC custody and new liquidation protection. Take out a loan at figuremarkets.orgas.com Today's topic is 2026 predictions. Here to discuss are Jason Pagalottis, head of markets at Delphi Digital,

and later in the show, we'll have his colleague, Jordan Yakely. Just a heads up that we pre-recorded in this episode on December 19th. So if any other news has happened since then that we are not discussing, that is why. Welcome, Jason. Hey, thanks for having me. So Delphi produced three huge reports about what's ahead for 2026, and we are going to dive into the main takeaways from the markets report and the app report. Let's start with a question that a lot of people have been talking about. talking about, is the four-year cycle dead? And if so, will we still see new highs in Bitcoin

next year? Or are we now entering yet another multi-year bear market? Right. All right. Kind of loaded question, right? There's a lot in there. So yeah, right? Like, I guess like to preface, right, pretty much most of crypto, if not all of it, has gotten pretty bearish over the last several months and it's kind of you know easy to see why given price action um and yeah you kind of hinted at it like the question is like oh is a four is that it like is that it like is a four year cycle in is it topped right or are we kind of going into something different and like i mentioned you know price action does look eerily similar similar similar like technicals or market structure you have like similar like double peaks long term momentum indicators have started rolling over you see like few

and greed index type sentiment gauges hitting extremes, right? If you like overlay having cycle charts, right, it looks very much the same. So it's like, you know, I guess it is easy to kind of construct the argument that, you know, this time isn't different. It's just like last time four year cycles in, wherever it's done, wrap it up. But kind of like our big counterpoint is like the cycle doesn't play out in a vacuum, right? Like all of these charts, things, technicals do look like that. you know we've we've admitted that but past cycles have kind of been driven by bigger trends outside of

crypto namely like liquidity based trends and right now like we're kind of starting to see a lot of those headwinds that have been present for the last year or so we're starting to start of kind of turn around and start maybe acting as moderate tail not like huge tailwinds but at least not headwinds heading into 2026. And so, like, what we're seeing is, like, a lot of the things that have previously killed bull markets are actually kind of flipping in the opposite direction. And it, like, the big theme of our report is, like, this macro bifurcation from the last year or so, kind of turning into a macro convergence across, you know, central bank policies

around the world and things like that. So to kind of answer your question, it's like, we don't necessarily believe in the four-year cycle. we kind of believe in something bigger than that. We think the halving cycle has just more coincidentally lined up with broader liquidity cycles, debt refinancing cycles, right? Every four years or so, most central banks have to refinance their, or most governments need to refinance their debts. So, right, you get these big liquidity injections into markets, which then tend to flow into risk assets and crypto has generally been a big beneficiary of that. So we've had like these two things

kind of coinciding at the same time, which has, you know, led to, you know, to the narrative of that four-year cycle in crypto. And we just don't think that it's that simple. It's more nuanced than that is the best answer I can give, to be quite frank. It's more nuanced than we think a lot of the things that have, you know, like held risk assets back or crypto back this year are starting to abate, at least on a macro front. But we don't really think that it's going to flow through to all alt coins, right?

we think we're going to see a lot of dispersion like we saw most of the last 12 to 18 months, or 12 to 24 months. It's not a market that we saw in 2020 where we just have massive liquidity stimulus injections and every alt coin on your watch list is up 10, 15, 20%. We believe investors are going to have to be more discerning and be more disciplined in their allocation approach, much like the ones who have done decently well over the last 18 months have been. Yeah, I mean, honestly, from reading the report, it almost felt like what you guys were saying, and correct me if I was interpreting this incorrectly, is that obviously, so the having clearly does have some effect. Like we all know it has some effect. But this particular halving cycle had this other effect where,

you know, we were in this period of like quantitative tightening and stuff like that. And so some of the macro conditions that in the past had coincided with the halvings to supercharge the crypto markets were actually going the other direction macro-wise. Yes. And then now that the typical boost that crypto gets from the halving has dissipated, we're in this moment where the macro now is going to be more favorable for crypto. So that could be another reason why the four-year cycle will just look different from previous ones. I think that's a great read on it.

Yeah, I think that's a takeaway we're trying to get readers to come to. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, like we also, we also had like a bunch of other things that have kind of like captured that narrative, so to speak, right? Like the having is like a very good psychological narrative. It's an easy thing for people to get behind. It's very easy to look at. You know, it's just it's clean. It's easy.

It's simple. It might not be the most nuanced argument, but it's it's one that a lot of people get behind. And for lack of like a better explanation, right? Like the more that people believe in something, the more likely that thing is, to come true in markets, right? Maybe not over a long period of time, but like, you know, animal spirits drive markets in the short term. So when you get a confluence of all of these, you know, types of narratives, a halving narrative, a liquidity injection on the macro front, ETF approvals, spot, right? You get all these things. And it's easy to see how markets can, you know, either get ahead of themselves

or not in, you know, shorter term timeframes and how the having narrative can kind of play into that in one way or another like we're seeing now. Okay. So there is something else I thought was really interesting in the report. You talk about gold being a canary in the coal mine for Bitcoin. And I'm sure, you know, everybody in crypto saw who is happening to the gold price this year. So explain what you were seeing there and why you view it as a harbinger of things to come for Bitcoin. Yeah, right. So like Peter Schiff is right, right? Like obviously like gold has absolutely tear to the upside. And yeah, so like we view gold and Bitcoin and kind of like the same bucket. in terms of like the expression of the investment thesis you're trying to,

you know, portray. So like we look at gold and Bitcoin as, you know, policy hedges, monetary debasement type trades, right? If you think, you know, if you think, if you think governments are going to continue running huge deficits, which all major governments have to, given the deficits they currently have, right? And, and their current refinancing cycles, you're going to have to issue more, more debt. It's going to have to cover all of the deficits. expenditures in the future, right? Every trend is clear, right? All major developed countries are running deficits and will continue to run deficits until they can't anymore. Like there's,

it's pretty clear at this point. And we believe that Bitcoin and Gold are the clearest expressions of that trade. And Leah, if you look at like the last year or so, gold has completely outpaced Bitcoin. But if you look over like the last two or three years, it's, it's kind of a different story. So like when you look at like these bigger, bigger trends, right? Like monetary debasement and and that whole trend playing out isn't a one, two, three, four. It's a multi-decade trade effectively, right?

You could have put trades on similar to it in the, you know, post-GFC era and just it's effectively going to play out over many, many, many years. So I think like looking at like these short term timeframes kind of misses, you know, the forest for the trees a little bit, at least with respect to, why we think, you know, gold and Bitcoin should be bucketed together. I also think there's like also a big difference in the two. Gold is a super, super mature as it. Thousands of years of history.

10, 20, 30 years, maybe at the almost 30 years of ETF history trading, right? You've had minor, you've had gold-based equities forever at this point, right? Bitcoin is relatively new. Yeah, market cap is two trillion, maybe a little bit less right now. Whatever it is, right? still relatively small and new in its infancy. And the market structure around Bitcoin is entirely different than the market structure around gold, right?

And I think that accounts for why you see these more shorter term fluctuations and how these assets work, right? Over the last several months, like from 2024, January, 2024, when ETFs were approved for Bitcoin, up until pretty much December, like last December or so, have been a huge driver of Bitcoin's appreciation and spot demand. And so it stands to reason that if those buyers step back, a huge amount of demand is going to be taken off the market. Therefore, price is going to be pressured to the downside.

It's very, you know, standard. And then if you add other types of buyers, like the Dats we've seen, right, they were a pretty big buyer, people like Sailor pioneering it. And then you had all these, you know, copycats with Bitcoin and Eath and Tom Lee and everything spinning up their funds. obviously a big source of demand when they were buying, but it's very clear, none of them are buying anything now. So when you remove two of these big buyers, like structural buyers off the market, for lack of a better word, it's kind of easy to understand or explain the dislocation

in Bitcoin and gold over this three, six, eight month period or whatever, right? And that's kind of like we say like it's a canary in the coal mine because it's still effectively the same trade. You just have some structural differences in the market, kind of pushing prices of Bitcoin in a different direction than gold, right? Absent these things, I think Bitcoin's probably trading, you know, significantly higher. And I just have to kind of work through this at this point, right? Like these just is what it is. All right. So now let's talk about the other big event that appears to be affecting the markets right now, which is the 10-10 liquidations. Everybody in crypto can see that those liquidations have had a huge negative impact on the crypto sector.

And there's just, I feel like every single day I'm like seeing rumors about what happened. But, you know, broadly, like, what do you think happened there and how do you think it will continue to impact the markets going forward, if at all? Yeah. I mean, it's clear that 1010 was the day when crypto's market broke, like actually broke. And so, yeah, there's tons of rumors like market maker blew up, people blew up, whatever. Like we haven't seen anything come to the surface yet. So if somebody blew up and we haven't seen anything in the last two months, three months, like it's kind of crazy.

Yeah, there's one I heard about, but they were so small that was like, well, that's clearly not. That wouldn't be like systemic, right? Like, you have to be a systemic thing. So like the way I look at it is I don't know if a market maker blew up, right? It does like effectively that doesn't really matter to me. Like what matters is like obviously the aftermath and what you can draw from it. So, like, very clearly there's no bid for pretty much anything at this point. And so, like, the conclusion you can, or I can draw from that is when you look at 1010,

10 10 was like a liquidation that was like very different from the liquidation cascades we saw in last cycle, like on the way up, for example, or even on the way down. Like, everybody lost on 1010. Like, nobody won. Shorts didn't really win. Longs didn't really win. dip buyers didn't really win. I mean, like one entity that I can think of that one, but just one.

One. So one person may be one, right? Obviously, you need somebody to win. But like the vast majority of people lost, people who were running very conservative leverage trading strategies lost, people who were hedged on other exchanges lost because they had their things closed here. Right. You just had a huge surface area of losers that generally don't lose that bad during liquidations.

And what this means is everybody's. And then on top of that, I think with the PURP Dex wars that started up about a month or two before that, you had taken a bunch of who was left trenching on chain, brought them over to PURPS to farm these protocols for airdrops, only to then slaughter them on 1010. So you pretty much just like, and pretty much anybody who had any leverage on above like 1.3 to 4x got liquidated, right? And that isn't usually what happens. Isn't usually what happens. Usually you can get away with that. And then this happened after you had a huge bleed out period for many alts too. So it's just like the bid is effectively gone.

People don't want to buy into your end. There's no reason to really buy into your end if you have cash, right? So many things are down. You expect people to tax loss, harvest. Most liquid funds I would have to expect are very down on the year. The best ones are probably down 20%, maybe, maybe better, maybe closer to 10. Or if you're lucky, maybe you're flat, if you caught some, you know, hedges or shorts or something. But like the vast majority of participants this year are down.

So you're going to see selling into your end of the things that are down the most. Tax loss harvest carry forward your, you know, your losses into next year. And you can effectively just like reset. There's no reason. Like as somebody who like, I mean, I got hit hard on 1010 for sure. But I still have money to deploy, and I just have no real interest in deploying before I see what, you know, tax loss harvesting looks like. If anybody's up, they're probably going to sell into your end, right? Like, if they haven't already, there's just no reason really to buy into

your end. I think you kind of just like wait and see. And I think all of these factors combined kind of lead you to see the apathetic market that we've seen and just like the total bleed out across the board. Okay. So I only want to touch on one more macro thing before we talk to the rest of the conversation just because, you know, we kind of painted like a rosy picture for the macro market, but there is one risk that you guys highlighted, which has to do with this sort of like hedge fund basis trade. So can you explain what that is and why this is sort of like kind of just a wild card feature of the current market and how that could actually cause a lot of volatility and, you know, more like risk off scenarios for next year.

Yeah. So we kind of like call this like, you know, like a glass house is like the way we kind of like described it in the report. And so I think like the main takeaway here is like the U.S. Treasury market. U.S. treasuries are like fundamentally the most important asset in the world. They are the most liquid collateral asset used across all markets and all jurisdictions. They're the asset that everybody wants for literally everything. Most people, most, or not most, but a lot of emerging markets have debt issued in dollar. Treasuries are the most important asset for the global financial plumbing. And so with, you know, $1.5 to $2 trillion in annual deficits in the United States,

the Treasury has to continually issue massive amounts of debt, treasuries, right? And they can do this in one of two ways. They can issue debt on like the front end of the curve or the back end of the curve. And what they've been doing is they've been front loading. So they've effectively been issuing short-term T bills, which keeps yields calm and avoids bond market volatility, which is good because we just mentioned that treasuries are a huge aspect of collateral in the global financial system. And if bond volatility spikes or treasury volatility spikes, that causes lots of tension and lots of stresses across many different areas. right and so the marginal buyers of you know these longer duration bonds are effectively like highly leveraged hedge funds running massive basis trades like a two trillion dollars in basis trades and

they're funded effectively through funded through a tightening repo market where the fed where buffers like the fed's reverse repo facility are basically drained and bank reserves are down sharply you also have foreign buyers like japan pulling a away from the treasury market as buyers amid shifts in their own policies, right? So effectively, the marginal buyer of these things has been hedge funds running massive basis trades. And so if repo cost spike or profitability of the basis trade unwinds, like rates going down, you might see the base hedge funds start unwinding this trade, dumping, right, dumping

treasuries onto the market, which then would, you know, cause bond market volatility, send yields soaring, and cause maybe like a broad risk-off spillover effect. Like we've seen it other carry trade unwinds, namely like the Japan one in August, 2024. Not exactly the same mechanisms are different, but like that's what you could like kind of think of as like what happens when like liquidity in these markets deteriorates and volatility spikes.

That's like how you can think about it is like the easiest way I can think about it, right? And so effectively, Bessent faces a very hard decision. It's pretty much impossible, right? And it's something that he criticized Yellen of doing. And now he's kind of in the same position, right, front loading the debt. You can't possibly turn out the debt without triggering yields going up and a lot of chaos, right? And you can't keep front loading forever. So it kind of like leads you to the question of like, okay, they're going to need to do some things to alleviate some of these stresses and what could those things be.

So we're kind of like highlighting the risk is there, but we're saying, you know, if, If Bessent and the Treasury and regulatory officials are smart, there are things they could do to like kind of alleviate some of the pressures, which, you know, would be like, you know, QT ending is one of them. Maybe reserves get supported. Regulations get loose in, you know, SLR banks are maybe, you know, exempted from certain things. And then stuff like that. So like we're effectively, like I said, highlighting the issue, but saying like just because this is there doesn't mean it's like going to break. There are things that can happen. So just like, watch and look for these actions. And if we don't see these actions while we see this basis trade start to unwind, if we see it, like, that would be big cause for concern. So one other thing is that you mentioned, you know, because obviously we can all see that we're in this era here where there's all kinds of new different tech type industries that are starting to grow. And you know how that could catalyze more industrial growth in the U.S., which would then create an environment where Bitcoin performs well. Explain what those sectors are and like, why

you think it would have that effect on Bitcoin? So, like, I think, I think that's definitely part of it, but I think a big part of, of this, of this section is like, kind of talking about more like, like, like, crypto's like maturity, for example. Cryptos like market maturity and kind of tying in like why we think things are the way they are and why we think they're probably likely to continue like that for at least next year and and probably the year beyond. And we kind of liken it to like a lot of these other really cool exponential technologies, as we call them, the AI robotics, AI robotics enabled things like

bioengineering, stuff like that, energy, which is AI robotics adjacent, right? All of these really cool exponential technologies weren't actually super investable up until a year or two ago for a lot of people. And we think this has actually played a big role in like when you look at this market cycle, compared to prior ones, like when you have these big, you know, risk on moves in the market, like we kind of looked at it as like, well, obviously money is going to flow into crypto. There's nothing else that's like that far out on the risk curve. That's also like a very cool, exciting pioneer tech that has really, really awesome potential TAM and traction, but, you know, but that isn't really the case anymore.

So today you have crypto, which isn't super new anymore, right? It's been around for a bit. and then you have all these other things which are newer. Some of them have more traction. And they're investable now. The surface area for these investable cool things is greater. So when you look at like for every dollar of like speculative liquidity that would have otherwise directly flow or like flowed into crypto previously now has several other

alternative. So you see less of that money coming into crypto, which we think. has certainly had an impact on why you've seen such a big dispersion from majors and things like hype or whatever that have like a structural bid behind them. And the majority of speculative alt is those dollars have bifurcated and kind of been, segmented into other places. We're just seeing less of a flow that we've otherwise seen. And it's not like that's a bad thing.

Like, that's just like crypto is entering the big leagues, right? It's not, it's not this new thing anymore that is traded by 20 people in telegram channels or whatever. And, you know, the same 1,000 traders are taking money from each other. It's, it's different. It's fully embraced by institutions, maybe in ways that people didn't want to happen. But, you know, it is what it is. That's how, how markets go. And crypto now has to, we kind of like left it, like, left it off.

It's like, 2026 isn't like a coronation anymore, right? Like, 2024 was more of that with ETF approvals, regulatory acceptance, effectively winning on that front. 2026 is not really like that coronation. It's a crossroad. It's like crypto now has to prove itself. It's in the spotlight. It's in the big leagues and it really big leagues in it and it has to prove itself.

And we are kind of drawing those parallels to those other industries to kind of drive that point of dispersion home and why we think it's going to continue. It's like, I don't think the universe of investable assets for AI robotics and these other errors is going to get smaller. It's going to get bigger. Therefore, crypto has to prove itself and start delivering on some of the promises that it made over the years. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, I, what you're saying, there reminds me of, I'm sure everybody's seen this on Twitter. I can't remember who posted this, but they have the chart of the dot-com era and how there was the dot-com bubble in, I think it was like 2000, 2001. And then, you know, the price of all the stocks like just dips for a little while, but that is the period of like real internet adoption and that, of course, the prices go way beyond that previous bubble. But yeah, it's basically like the same thing that you're saying. One thing that I also noticed in your report is you talked about how you feel like the

crypto markets are now what you are calling a stock pickers market. Whereas before you said that it was like you would describe it as, the majors in mean coins market. So explain like what you mean by the stock pickers market and, you know, how that maybe could influence how people think about the markets for 2026. Yeah. So I think like the way I think about it is in prior cycles, you could be a, you could be pretty passively allocated and do very, very well.

And I don't think that's, I mean, it's clearly not the case anymore. It hasn't been for some time. At least the last year and a half, right? I think in order to do well, you've needed to be very, like I mentioned, I think earlier, very discerning, very disciplined and really pick your moments, right? In crypto over the last 18 months, we've seen majority of, like, the vast majority of the performance has been down over that time period. We've seen some silos of outperformance. So think like memes, like you mentioned, you had a period of time where memes just absolutely ran to the upside. and if you weren't invested in memes, you underperformed massively,

and you hated your life and we've had these, you know, weekly long debates about financial nihilism and is there anything valuable in crypto and blah, blah, blah. And then that meta shifted to something else, right? We saw like the launchpad wars, right, with Pump. Dot Fun and Bunk and some of the other competitors, right? You've even seen kind of like adjacent things like Zora or whatever, right, kind of in that launch pad realm.

You saw the privacy meta kind of balloon in the last couple months ago with Zcash pulling like a 10x or something in a month. Well, everything went to zero. But like the similarity here is that while you had this siloed out performance, I'm sorry, I just hit my mic. While you, while you've had this siloed out performance, everything else has just gone down. So if you weren't in that, you just bled out. And the real, the real truth is nobody's hitting all. of these at the city. Like nobody's go, oh, I got this one. I got this. Nobody doing that. You might hit one. You might hit two if you're lucky, but you're probably giving a lot of it back when you're not

hitting it. So that's kind of why we say, like, it's, it's kind of that stock pickers mentality. You have to be very clear in what you want and know why you want to own it. Like, I could just own bonk with faith back in 2023 and 2024 because I knew the bull market was very early. I knew Silvano was going to go up and I didn't need any other justification to hold this other than that. I should just delete my wallets if I was to use that same thing and justification today. It's just not the same market. So you have to understand the market that you're in.

And it's not really that much different in stocks, right? I mean, you know, indices are at all-time highs, but when you look at the dispersion of returns, a handful of names account for the vast majority of index outperformance over there. So if you want to outperform, which is why you're in these markets to begin with, you need to own the few winners and then something else. Or not a couple, right, you have to pick the winners. And it's been kind of true in equity markets as well, right?

Like to an extent, right? Obviously, passive allocation with ETFs is what most people do. But we're talking about people who are actually trying to outperform, which is why you're buying alt coins on, you know, super far out on the risk curve. You're not a passive investor. You're active. So you have to play the game that you're, you know, understand the game that you're actually playing.

And, and, um, 2026, I don't think it's going to be much different than that. I think you're going to have to anchor to things that you can build some kind of conviction in. And that, you know, that's how you're also able to hold through some kind of, you know, like drawdown as well, right? Conviction allows you to, you know, buy more when your position goes down or, or hold through a period of, uh, underperformance as well. Yeah, I also just want to like, so I'm sure you saw that Bitwise release this, or sorry, they upgraded their index to an ETF. And what's so fascinating to me is when I looked at the allocations, Bitcoin is 75, more than 75% weight and Ethereum is 15.

It's just a Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, Solana is less than 3%. And then XRP is like almost 5%. So there's just something like I agree that that idea is good. But then even like the options that people have for that is are not great. No, it's.

And I think we actually, we we we we did like a like a hive mind podcast with this guy, Dougie who had a really, you may have seen his. Yeah, it was on our podcast. Yeah, okay, good, good. Yeah, right. So you'll know what I'm talking about here. kind of talked about like how crypto, it doesn't have like a tech problem. It has like an asset problem. There aren't that many great assets. So when you go to like we've looked at trying to build, you know, indexes and potentially maybe ETFs at some at at one point. And we just looked

at the universe of assets and we're just like there isn't really enough to build a, a good index that is something differentiated from a simple market cap weighted index. And even a market cap weighted index doesn't have that many great assets in it either. So yeah. I feel like it would have to be more, yeah, mutual fund style where you're just like actively picking things because even if I just look at like coin gecko, hype is at 27, you know? I wish it was at 27. Like there are certain ones where I feel like, okay, it would make sense for that to be in there, but, you know, it's not in the top 10 or, you know, whatever. So, all right, well, we are going to talk a little bit more specifically

about which assets might perform well in 2026, but first we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors to make the show possible. Today's episode is sponsored by Figure, which is transforming financial services using blockchain. They're the largest non-bank mortgage lender in the U.S., with over $19 billion unlocked on their lending platform. Now, they're offering industry low, crypto-backed loans at 8,000. point nine one percent interest rates at 50 percent LTV for BTC, ETH, and Sol. They differentiate themselves

by offering decentralized MPC custody, which protects your crypto ownership in a segregated wallet. They've also recently launched liquidation protection to protect you from liquidation during large price drops. Whether you're funding a major purchase, investing, or even buying more Bitcoin, figure makes it transparent. Visit figuremarkets.com slash unchained to take advantage of their crypto-backed loans today. Back to my conversation with Jason. So as you mentioned briefly before, Hyperliquid performed very well in 2025, but as I'm sure everybody knows, it's faced increasingly stiff competition. Plus, it did not have a great 10-10. And it's also in a phase of token unlocks, as everybody who follows Arthur Hayes definitely knows. So what's your view on hype in 2026?

I really like hype. HIP. NFA. I own hype. I got an air drop. I've never sold hype. Probably should have, but it is what it is. I really like hype just from a business perspective, like a protocol perspective, like a fundamental business perspective. It's one of the strongest in crypto without a doubt. It occupies one of like the three areas that crypto has demonstrated product market fit or like what people are willing to pay for, stable coins, exchanges, perps, right? Stuff like that. It, it very clearly occupies one of the, those silos, it's a, it's a leader in one of those, right? It's one of the only, I think it is actually the only perp decks I've seen that hasn't really gone away after like a year or lost

most of its traction and, like most of its traction, TVL or even just like price performance over the year after it launched. I think the fundamentals of the business are quite strong, daily revenues like I mentioned, you know, it has a structural buyback mechanism through the assistance fund with, you know, from fees generated on the platform. It has a lot of cool things with like the HIP3 builder codes where you can, you know, launch equity perps and things like that, building out the eco ecosystem hyper EVM. So, you know, it's kind of building out to try to effectively be its own, you know, ecosystem. And the way I look at it is all of the things you said are true. It had a very good 2025 up until 10-10 blew up the market, which makes sense, right?

I think as an exchange, if a lot of your users get absolutely slaughtered, makes sense that you might go through a period of underperformance or lower revenues, fees generated, things like that. And you kind of have seen a decrease in that, right? Open interest declined post-10, fees, average fees over, you know, like the period since then, versus the period, like the same period before then is, is slightly lower. So like, obviously you're seeing the impacts on the, you know, business that you would generally expect to see given the event that happened.

So I don't think that's any different than any other exchange either, right? Every, every exchange has the exact same issue here. You mentioned perp-dex wars, right? Lighter, Aster, Paradex, all of these people coming to market because they saw just how successful hyperliquid was, the market they were able to capture. and like, oh, obviously, we got to try for that makes sense. So, you know, that's why you've seen some of the volume metrics shift from hyperliquid dominance, right? From above 50% to now, like, around 20%.

I think the telling thing is what happens to all of these metrics once you start to see TGE events or TGEs of lighter, paradox, right? All of these other ones, you get to quickly see, like, what the mercenary capital is, where TVL flows after the fact, etc., etc., which should be a really good litmus test for who the one or two big winners in this space will be heading forward. That's like the way I'm looking at it. And I think there's ways you can like really gauge organic usage or stuff like that, like volume OI ratios and stuff like that. And a lot of people have done really good work on this. I think Trevor from Delphi has posted some really good charts on Twitter that kind of like shows this for all the major perplexes. So long-winded waves.

Oh, and Unlocks. You mentioned this. Huge, huge elephant in the room. Like 10 million hype tokens a month, every month for the next year or two years. It's a lot. $300 million. It's a lot of money a month. So what does this mean?

Well, obviously, all of this is from the team for the most part, right? They have no VCs. Nobody's up $1 billion from their private Allo round at $1 million, whatever. so you don't really have to worry about like VC style profit taking forever. What you do have to worry about is what the team decides to do with these unlocks, right? I think you can think about it in one of two ways, right? Either the team just, you know, they try to secure the bag and they sell and they just make their, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 million dollars each and they, and they fuck off,

which I don't really think makes sense, right? Like, I think Dave, I think the team has Jeff and the team have, clearly demonstrated like a long track record or a track record of long-term kind of decisions that they've made over the past two years, right? Because I was using them before they, I was using them in TestNet right before they were live and all this stuff. So everything I've seen from the team from when I started following them in May 23 to today would indicate the opposite of short-term thinking.

So that's just my personal take. With respect to the actual unlocks, we saw what the team did on the November 29th unlock. We saw how much was unstaked. We saw how much was sent to OTC desks to sell. We saw how much was restaked and where. So we got a really good idea of what the cell pressure from that event, from that unlock would look like. And it is significantly less than many people were expecting relative to what it could have been. And I think it's still too early to really extrapolate one month of unlock out for the next.

two years. I think the market and market participants are trying to gauge this and underwrite what the cell pressure is going to look like. And I think they're probably waiting for another month or two. And like I mentioned a while ago, there's no reason to buy anything into year end anyway. So you saw what they did in November. You saw what they're going to do in a week or 10 days for this unlock. And then at the end of January, you'll get three months of really good data around how the team is thinking about what their post unlock, unlock actions are going to be. And then I think that's when the market probably starts to re-rate a little bit higher because I think there's probably a pretty big delta and what the market was expecting cell pressure to be and what the, sorry again,

what the actual cell pressure will be, if that makes sense. Okay. Okay. So potentially things may not look as dire as some people. Yeah. And obviously, you know, if Bitcoin goes to 50K and we go into a, you know, say we're wrong and macro turns bad too. And then we go into a bare market. You know, hype's not going to outperform in that environment either, right? Like, it's very clear. But I would like to make the point that hype also has, you know, the structural buyback that's very, very strong and very durable. And most projects don't have something like this. So if something, if you have a project that, you know, is fundamentally sound in its and its business strategy, its fundamentals, has these structural mechanisms to buy back, has a, obviously an

S-tier team right now that we've seen. And this token is underperforming. Like, what do you expect the end iteration of some borrow lend protocol token to do? Right. Like, it's, it's clear that, like, if the strongest, best tokens are struggling, why would anything that's not even comparable to that do well? So that's kind of why it's like the spur. It's like the spur. and discipline and like if we see that kind of turnaround and like that's why I'm looking at like hype as like a good example of like a very clear strong token that you know you can you can have a thesis around the metrics and kind of follow it over the next couple months and it should validate or invalidate what you were thinking and just last piece on hype is you know there is so much

new competition in the perp space like is that something that you feel like you know you you've noticed yeah anything that could indicate what would happen to hype so i think i think a like i think i think i mentioned like how these the the the metrics of each of these competitors so like parodex lighter austium right all of these other you know perp decks type competitors edgeax pacific whatever right all of these ones um when they tgee i think it'll be very telling not necessarily the immediate price action but i think you want to see like does tvL leave the protocol immediately after TGE. Does trading volume decrease materially?

Do you see spreads? What do you see happen after the incentive to be there is no longer there? I think hyperliquid was such a big success for the for a big reason is that they didn't, obviously didn't have VC funding and stuff. But they also like they weren't a super hyped incentive thing to farm for the vast majority of its existence up until maybe a month or two before. TGE. I was asking people if they knew what hyperliquid was in early 2024 and nobody knew what it was. And then everybody's farming it in, you know, November, like early November, October, late September,

when they realize, oh, points, oh, blah, blah, blah. And what you saw after that, after TG is you actually saw TVL continue to increase. You saw trading volumes continue to increase, which clearly demonstrated product market fit, organic traction, et cetera, et cetera. So I want to see this, I'm going to use the same, you know, criteria rubric for all of these other protocols when they launch as good litmus tests for them to see, like, which if any will be a competitor. I do think the perp deck space is big enough for more than one winner. So I think hyperliquid is clearly the one right now. It could change, right? Something could happen. Whatever. North Korea could hack them and steal all their money or something like they were talking about on whatever right like right now it's it's in

the driver seat and i think there's room for other drivers to be in the driver seat too but um i'm i'm i still don't know which one is which i've used a bunch of them um i don't like some of them i think some of them are actually kind of good so i'm i'm curious i'm watching it with a with a very open mind because i have to be because i like i said i i own hype so like i don't want to get caught with my pants down if something better usurps it, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, just to bring in Robin Hood, because we do also discuss about in this episode, just they invested in lighter. So, you know, and yeah. So I did want to ask you about one thing that actually wasn't really covered in the report, but you mentioned it briefly. So these are sort of more like off the

cuff remarks. But obviously the privacy thing just came out of nowhere and, you know, it was a big deal after 1010. And I just wondered, like, do you think that's just a fad and it'll go away, or do you think that that will continue in 2026? It's tough, right? Because Zcash is still holding pretty well, all things considered. The bit is strong over there. So it's hard. I don't know is the answer. My gut feel is that if it was just a fad, it probably would have died by now, given the overall market. All the other privacy coins have pretty much died. Like they all like kind of pumped like had their sympathy runups after ZE Cash, right? As people are like, oh, everybody's going to buy Minero now, which actually I think looks pretty good. But like, you know, whatever else. So short answer is I don't

know. My my speculative answer is I think there might be something there, right? Like Zcash is an OG, you know, Dino coin. It's been around longer than I've been here. And at this point, you know, the supply of the token is very, very well distributed. It's not something, you know, that was held all by one person. Maybe it had, you know, maybe the fact that it was distributed and, you know, range bound and down for so long, allowed people to accumulate, you know, which then could, you know, make moves like this easier and, you know, a less liquid market. So I think that plays into it. I think the fact that Zcash was delisted from a ton of venues also allowed for its massive run-up.

So prior to its 10x run-up, Zcash was like delisted from most major exchanges. There were no perps for people to short or hedge or do anything with. So it was effectively like a, it effectively traded like an on-chain coin for most of its initial rally, which is really kind of, I thought it was really interesting, actually. And I was kind of kicking myself for not recognizing that earlier. And I do think, you know, privacy does, it's a very easy narrative to sell. especially when you kind of overlay the whole direction. Things are going with AI, surveillance states.

It's a very easy narrative to spin and sell and talk about. And Bitcoin is very clearly not private. It's anonymous but not private. Zcash is private. So you can kind of maybe sell that narrative a bit. I don't really know if people are using the shielded pools very much and actually using it for privacy. Like it's only like 30% or something last I checked but that. Okay. So so so yeah. So like maybe there's

something there and and you know if I if Bitcoin you know kind of recovers with with like a decently better macrish outlook potentially into 2026 and the market kind of stabilizes I could see it going on another run right. It's got a lot of really smart and and good KOLs right like I think toli is all like behind Zcash you got Merk right like all these guys who are all really smart. They're obviously talking to smart people, wealthy people. Mertz isn't he in Dubai now? He's probably talking people about privacy, right? Like I could totally see there being something behind it.

I'm very open to it. I just don't have a great answer or any alpha on it at all. Yeah, I think for me, the question that I think about is, you know, if Bitcoin and Ether adopt privacy, which Ether like already has said that, Ethereum, or sorry, that privacy is going to be a big priority. and they're already like working on it and they have been and they were even before the privacy coins surge in the fall. I just wonder like, yeah, that could spell the end for the coins that are specifically devoted to privacy. Very possible. It's something that I have on my list of things to look into over the next week or two when I unplug around the holidays.

Well, yeah, I would say that's not unplugging, but. That would pay in a little bit, right? Let's be real. I'm still going to log into telegram, so I might as well figure something out. Okay. So in your report, you also mentioned a few crypto projects that I was not super aware of. And you named these as being indicative of where you think the future of crypto would be headed in 2026. Three chain, OPEX, DeFi, there are a few others. But explain, you know, like why you chose these. And, you know, give a little bit of explanation. of like what they are. Yeah. So credit for this section definitely goes to LTR, right? LTR is very good with kind of like seeing the future and like where things are heading in like a general sense, right? And so we talk about how, you know, credit has, credit was a really big part of last cycle and has been an absent for pretty much ever since everybody blew up in the in the 3AC FTX fallout, right? And so we talk about how, like, you know, credit is like a fundamental aspect of all types of financial

markets. So like crypto obviously needs it. And we kind of like highlight AVE dominating like trustless lending. It's, you know, somewhere around the 40th or 50th biggest bank by, I guess bank by, you know, if you look at TVL or whatever. And so we kind of highlight this area as something that like we're very interested in and we're excited to kind of follow. You know, you've had things like maple and centrifuge do do well in scale like private credit with real world stuff. So you're starting to see, you know, traction there. But yeah, we highlighted stuff like 3J and more, more so highlighting the shift from just like over collateralized lending at this point to back, back in the direction of under

collateralized credit using innovations, you know, like ZKTLS for like privacy and stuff, AI verification and things, you know, 3JN uses this. So right, you can like log into 3Jane, put in your info, connect so connect some wallets that has like and get like a credit line against it. Like it's a really cool, useful project that I think is, you know, very interesting. And I don't know if that's going to win, but like, I think that's, like, the direction. And I think that's what LTR is like kind of expressing here. So like, that's a direction that we think at least that's going, right? At least with credit. And then, yeah, you mentioned like DeFi and we kind of talk about like RWA's, but like beyond stable coin or beyond just

like T bill stable coin yield. Right. Like it's very clear that if you're like a stable coin now launching like you can't just compete on clipping T-Bill yield and passing it through to your customers, right? Like at this point, Heather and Circle have a monopoly on that. You have like things like Athena doing kind of like synthetic delta neutral type stuff where they pass on the yield in that way. And so we highlight, we're looking at like other really cool interesting things that defy type technology and blockchain rails actually enable like true, cool, like on-chain crypto innovations and and day five being one of them so you know like RWA backed by energy infrastructure

like virtual power plants or like USDA AI right like stable coin that has AI compute and and yield baked in there right like interesting specialized things that you know kind of incubate and and you mentioned OBEX right and like incubating next gen or next gen yield bearing assets like that's kind of like the whole theme is like we're looking for really interesting cool things like that like stable coins, obviously big product market fit, but like I'm not buying circle. Like I'm not buying tether, right? Like I, how do I get exposure to to this type of very clear spot that people are interested in? But in a way that like is unique and different that you can't do otherwise and has some kind of moat around it. Like t-bill clipping is not a moat. So that's kind of like

the the gist there. And I think there's also like one more really awesome thing that LTR actually wrote about in his first report with us many, many months ago in maybe early spring. And he talked about like the token identity crisis with all of these corporate chains or all of the, you know, corporate chains and all these, you know, equities issuing tokens. So you have, you know, coin base with base and chain with or crackin with, you know, ink chain coming. You have, there show me more. I don't even know why I'm blanking right now. Worldcoin is, you know, equity with world or whatever.

World equity, Worldcoin. You have the Seeker Salon a thing recently, which is kind of interesting, which we'll get into. And so what we did is we kind of looked at WorldCoyne as like a case study of like tokens used not as like a investment vehicle, but more as like a customer acquisition. position coin or like a CAC token is what LTR kind of coined as as the term for it. And what he says or what he like kind of postulates in as like kind of chewing chewing on with this idea is that all of these like big token launches from like coin base or or or cracking with ink chain or whatever all these IPOs, all of these like public companies that are

now launching tokens, they are very, they might be inclined to use the world coin model. right? Because what WorldCoin has done is they effectively use their token as a customer acquisition tool. People, you know, scan their Skynet orb eye thing, right? Then they get their tokens from World and then they sell them. And it's, and, you know, they use the orb and the token emissions to acquire new customers. And what you see is there's a chart in the in the report when you, when you chart at like total users or like new users, right, versus token price and market cap. What you see is something very interesting. New users up into the right. Token price down into the right.

And then market cap is effectively pretty stable. So what this tells us is that it's actually so far, it's been a very, very good acquisition tool for world to acquire new users. They've effectively spent $300 million of world to acquire $2 billion users or something, is what I think what I saw on like a recent highlight. And that's, I think what a lot of, you know, and I think what a lot of like companies like Coinbase might try with their base token. Because effectively, I think, I think at some point and, and again, a lot of this is LTR. So he's the thinking behind this section here.

The thinking is like at some point, like having an extra dollar on the balance sheet is less useful for the company than acquiring an extra user. and that's why these tokens are very good tools for that, right? And it also kind of answers the question of like, okay, like how does equity work with the token, right? How do Coinbase holders, shareholders, how do you know, how do you marry that with base token economics and things like that? And I think if you frame it in the way of this is now a tool to acquire new customers for the platform, etc., etc., I think it makes a lot of sense and answers a lot of questions. So like maybe these tokens aren't the best investments for next year, but I think they might be great tools for the companies behind them to, you know, expand, expand their footprint, so to speak.

So it's kind of like a shift from like tokens evolving into equity like distribution instruments, if that makes sense. And the Solana Seeker phone thing is effectively that, right? They have the Seeker phone, I think, recently announced. And when you look at the tokenomics, it effectively is, follows like the blueprint of like a CAC token. Okay. Pay people to use this phone.

And it's very similar. Like PayPal had done this in the past, right? When PayPal launched, it spent, it paid $10 to every user who signed up on the platform, burning, you know, $60, $70 million of VC funding to do that. But now you see how well that, you know, acquisition cost strategy worked. And I think this is kind of playing that back again in a more innovative way. Okay, yeah, it's really interesting. The one thing is, wait, you said like to World gained two billion customers, but I think they didn't or at least in the report.

I may have misread it. Okay. Yeah. Let me get the, I can get the answer. Yes, 32 million. Sorry. I don't know why I saw two billion. I was like, when I said that, I was like, that seems very big.

No, 32 million, right? And if you compare it to where they were at, say in where they were at in, say, like March of 2023 or 2020. 24 right there. They were sub sub sub five million in using. Okay. Right. They spent $300 million to acquire all of those 32 million users since, since inception. And like I said, market cap is effectively flat. Obviously, fluctuations depending on what token price did or didn't do. But it's effectively flat and you see the the two curves go the opposite direction. I think that's effectively what you can use as like a blueprint for what a CAC token is. So if you take these three things and plot them and this is what you see, that's a CAC token. Right, right. Okay. So last question, AI agents have

been one of the sectors of crypto that have generated the most buzz. And I think everybody's wondering where this trend is going. I also want to ask, you know, how you think it could be investable. Yeah, that's tough, right. It's definitely one of the most interesting ones. And I think, you know, I think the the app guys or maybe the info guys covered like X402 stuff more in depth. But effectively, like, what it is, is it just like allows like agents and stuff to kind of like transact with each other, do like one-off purchases or like one-off things and stuff. It's very interesting. And I'm not entirely sure what the best way to play it is.

It's definitely something that corporations are clearly are clearly building to. words. I think in the report we mentioned several institutions have built with this in mind and have these capabilities enabled. And so I don't see anything in crypto, like a crypto specific token or something right now that is like a clear fundamental thing that isn't like a very obvious moonshot. Obviously, I think value, it's hard right now. Like right now, I'm not sure where the value will accrue the most. I think if you want access to this narrative or exposure to this narrative, if you're going to go through crypto,

you have to get really niche in the trenches and find something that kind of straddles it nicely, whether or not it's an agent or a payments thing or something like that. But I think you can probably get exposure to it through, like, owning the equity of the companies that are enabling it and starting. to use it. I think that's probably the easiest way. But again, it's a trend that I think will, it's a trend I think is going to play out more in 2026. I think the clarity around potential investments will will get better. I just think it's, it's something that's like a bit early. And I think it's something that you have to have on your radar, but I'm not sure it's super deployable

at, like at this moment. That's how I feel. I mean, honestly, so I agree. And a part of me is like, oh, the way to do it is to like have a really good agent just to make money for you. But I don't know if you saw the Wall Street Journal's article. Oh, aren't they all terrible? So the, but the article was about how Claude, I think, like gave them a vending machine AI. Yeah, and basically the newsroom convinced it to give away all the items in the vending machine away for free. and also to buy a PlayStation and a fish.

And they were like... As you would, yeah. Yeah. And so like basically the... And what ended up happening was so after the first version failed, then the company sent them like an AI supervisor so that the supervisor could enforce the rules for the vending machine. And even then they got persuaded to make everything free.

So it's like, yeah. So I was going to say, oh, maybe the way to... plate it is to have your own AI that makes money. But clearly from the Walshuternal article, even the ICA set are programs to make money. Yeah, they're not great. Yeah. So like, yeah, I mean, it's very like, uh, I think, I think you could probably do like a like a like, like, I think like making like a like, you know, I mean, an AI like, I don't know, a systematic trading strategy and like an AI executing a set of instructions for trades feels almost exactly the same to me. Like, I don't, I don't think any of these, you know, agents are going to come up.

with like a novel trading strategy or anything like that. I think the way I've used it to help me is I've actually like worked with a couple different to like build or like test out ideas I have for trading. I would never give it the money to trade, but I would definitely use it to help me flush out a trading strategy, backtest different things, write some code that I'm not good at. Like I think that's the way you monetize it. But like with agents right now, it's it's very tough. And like the most I would do is like give it like a thousand.

bucks to play around, right? And expect that it spends it all on fart coin or something. Like at this point, it's a super interesting area. It's one that I, like I said, I just don't have a great way of expressing a position in it at the time. But I don't think that will be true in three or six months, which is I highlight it. That will probably follow up with a report on something when we see an interesting idea start to percolate around people's thoughts. Okay. Well, Jason, this has been super fun discussing 2026 markets. Thanks so much for joining.

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great. So listeners don't go anywhere because in a moment we will move to the apps portion of the discussion with Jason's colleague. We'll be right back. And now to discuss the apps portion of the Delphi predictions, we have Jordan Yateley, Defi Research Lead at Delphi Digital. Welcome, Jordan.

Hey, thanks for having me. So Delphi has produced a whole bunch of reports, and one of them is this app report. And in the report, you go in depth on this kind of like super app thesis, and you talk about sort of the main contenders for it. Why did you reveal who those contenders are and like just give an overview of where you see them placed, and then we can go in depth on each of them? Sure. So just to start out, like typically in prior years, we've had like a defy year ahead and a gaming year ahead and whatnot. And this year with the apps year ahead, this was supposed to be a bit of a celebration of like this new direction for crypto where like everyone is focused on apps now. There's been a long time of like infrastructure chains.

And now it's like we're reaching this moment where we're at a turning point and we're on the cusp of like these these consumer facing apps. And the pioneer behind this is this super app thesis that everyone's sort of starting. to gravitate towards. We point out the major leaders here being Coinbase, Robin Hood, finance, Cracken and X, with like really the three standouts there being Coinbase Robin Hood and X. X is a bit of a dark horse considering there's nothing really confirmed there, but there's been some rumors. And if they were to go in this direction, they would have a huge edge. All right. So, yeah, why don't we start with Coinbase? I'm sure most people in Crypt. know that this is probably the big giant in the space in terms of just the sheer number of

different lines of revenue it has and the way it's gotten itself covered, you know, from doing things that are related to back-end institutional type offerings to more directly consumer-targeted products. What are the main parts of its business that you're looking at in 2026 and why? Well, Coinbase has this sort of barbell approach of like they're extremely fortified as the leader in the U.S. market as far as the go-to centralized exchange for the U.S. And they also have this emerging like base app, social media, like self-custodial like social media apparatus with like farcasters, Zora and the base app. There was a little bit of controversy yesterday when Ryan Armstrong tweeted this sort of like,

oh, which direction should we go in and prioritize? That sparked a lot of discussion on X as far as like, okay, well, why don't you have this direction? Why haven't you committed? But I think the bigger takeaway is that Coinbase has two big bets and they're not entirely related, but they're both very powerful visions if they were to execute on both. So talk about what those are? So the social media portion is the one that I'm personally more excited about. I think we're missing a massive consumer app in crypto. And and the social fi angle is fundamentally like a massive use case that could onboard, you know, the next billion people. I know that's cliche at this point, but it's like we can bridge to financially agnostic users and free this legacy social media infrastructure that doesn't really work for creators and allows like users to port their, port their algorithm across different applications, have more control over what they consume.

It allows creators to have the ability and more leverage as far as their ability to negotiate with the platform. They can port their audience to different apps seamlessly. So there's a lot of principled reasons why we need a more open social graph-based social media platform. And I think it's a worthy goal of Coinbase. It's very much like a public good that they're working towards. I think this is one area where the space has a bit of a bias. against Coinbase and should probably recalibrate, reconsider our position here. This is definitely something that crypto needs to be working towards.

On the other side, you have this financial application, this Everything app, which is more of the Robin Hood angle and where they sort of clash as far as everyone pits Coinbase and Robit Hood against each other. Who's going to achieve this financial everything app that lets anyone speculate on stocks, crypto, have this self-custodial bank account that can interact with crypto? So, yeah, like those are the two angles there. And just to be clear, when you're talking about the social app, you're talking about like kind of the base app and this whole kind of creator coins thing

that they're trying to foster this culture around tokenizing posts. Is that okay? Like, what do you, how would you kind of grade them so far and how they're doing with promoting that? Yeah, that's a good question. So I think I like the vision. I like what they're doing. I think the Zora. So the BASAP sort of has the Farkaster Social Graph with the Zora content coin tokenization,

with the base app being like an alternate client for those. And it also allows like mini apps to come on. It's like an app store for like crypto apps that's built on top of Farkaster and Zora content tokenization. I like a lot of what they're doing here. I think it's easy to see why this takes the thesis a bit farther than say, Pump Fun. Whereas Pump Fun is just like, okay, if you want to stream on Pump Fun, you have to have a token and it's your streamer token and like that's what it is.

Right. Whereas Zora is almost creating like this spot market for content where it's easier to build around and compose around. So I think from a first principle's perspective, like this design is a bit more ambitious. more future proof. It's easier to create like a robust ecosystem around. That said, I think they've, they've had some comms fumbles as far as communicating this vision, explaining like where the value drivers for content coins come from, different sort of conflicting comments from different

people across the organization. I think there's, there's been some issues there. And I think that Crypto Twitter specifically has been a bit harsh in receiving this, and the backlash has been extreme. I think Coinbase needs to do better with their comms. Crypto Twitter needs to be more open-minded to this grand vision that's very important and is beneficial to the crypto industry at large if they succeed. Yeah, it feels to me like they, and frankly, I think this is also a VC thing, you know, like you see A16C talking about this all. I do think that they have identified a real problem with Web 2.

And I think like, you know, we all sort of sense that crypto could solve that problem. And I feel like the backlash is more just crypto tends to be so grassroots that this is, it has a feeling more of being topped down. And I personally think that that's what people are reacting to. But I bet like in five or 10 years, we will be doing similar behaviors to what they're trying to promote. So I did want to ask you, you know, obviously there was a lot. a lot of buzz around the fact that they are now considering a base token. Sorry, exploring a base token. And I wondered, you know, if you had me thoughts on how you thought they should do it or how that could either benefit them or hurt them, you know, in their efforts to promote this everything up.

So I think my biggest question and I think a lot of people's biggest question about this is how it will work with the coin base, the coin stock, right? because the base sequencer fees is obviously a big money generator. And so there's questions about, okay, like, what of that goes to the base token? And who has the right to that income and whatnot? I think my big theory is that this unlock of the base app to everyone that just happened on the 17th, I think that is the sort of start of like a season zero for a points campaign to farm the base token hair drop. right? Because if you think about it, like in reverse, if they did an air drop next week, right? And it was like using the base app over the past six months, then there would be a lot of backlash because it was invite only and people couldn't come. So now there's no excuse for anyone to not be on there. And so I think it logically follows like, all right, the season zero, like the base token is able to be farmed right now. As far as like how it fits into their vision, the way I would like to see at work is the base token sort of becoming this almost like a like an Amazon Prime currency

where like you have Amazon Prime is Coinbase 1 and you have this like membership that allows you to access all these different ecosystem applications and many apps and stuff and the base the base token is sort of this alternate lever to distribute value across creators and users and align people within the ecosystem. You could have some sort of thing where like

there's a universal basic income based on your consumption of like different content right and that's in the base token and the only way to sort of vest that is by like awarding some of it to like other creators i think that be a really interesting way to um initiate a flywheel um but either way like like you know you never know they could they could treat that i think there's a decent chance is quite controversial right because if you think about the zoro token when that came out that had no utility it was branded as a mean coin it had really bad like you know insider vesting conditions and like there was a lot of backlash against

Zora token. And then later they came out and said, like, oh, here's this really cool thing that we're going to do with Zora token. It's going to feature this flywheel. It's going to be paired against all these assets. So, you know, who knows, like, maybe there's solution to this alignment issue with the stock is that they just come out with this token. It's going to be an ecosystem alignment tool. It's going to have no rights to the sequencer fees. And then we'll figure it out from there. And then I wonder what, like, the public reception would be. Yeah, it'll be an interesting few months. on that front. All right.

So let's now move to Robin Hood because, you know, I think most people look at Coinbase and they feel like Robin Hood is the main player probably that at least at this moment is, you know, kind of moving into pretty much the exact same space. You said in your summary that you feel it sits in the Goldilocks zone, which I thought was really interesting. So explain, you know, how you view Robin Hood in this super app space and what you about it taking that Goldilocks spot? I think Robin Hood sits in this Goldilocks zone where it's not seen as a crypto app.

It's a financial services app. And it's quite respectable in that, like, people use Robin Hood as, like, they main it as their go-to for, like, banking, right? Like, people will use Robin Hood or Fidelity or Schwab or, like, TD Ameritrade. Like, it's that legit in people's eyes. Whereas Coinbase, like, people aren't really doing that with Coinbase. To use Coinbase, you have to already be interested in crypto. And it's not quite ready to be your full banking suite, right?

So like Robin Hood turning on all these crypto features allows people that are financially savvy and like have a lot of money ready to deploy like within this account to all of a sudden access crypto. And that's that's where like they're really well positioned. But then, you know, not to get too far ahead, but like X, that's where like, okay, you have you have crypto, which is you have to be interested. in crypto. Robin Hood, you have to be interested in finance and X, you don't have to be interested in like any of this and you're still sort of coming into crypto. I mean, if they head

that way. Yeah. So, you know, the report covers finance and Cracken as well. But as you said at the beginning, you feel like the main contenders really are Coinbase Robin Hood and X. And as you admit, I think this might have been before we started recording, but you said like there, there There aren't even that many details about X. So, like, why do you view it as being kind of the third possible contender there? So, well, the social element is the hardest part to crack, right? Like, there's been all of these other social apps over the years, like, blue sky. And, like, even, even, like, MySpace proceeded Facebook.

And as soon as Facebook came and, like, one, MySpace faded. And, like, there's been these other, like, you know, social media, there are a lot of network effects involved with social media. And, like, there's been a lot of people happy about Elon's takeover at Twitter and other people like not happy about that but either way like it hasn't mattered right like x is you know debatably maybe usage is down or up or whatever but like x is x has um a moat and and they have a a massive user base and they do like like they have the AI stuff they have this x money thing that they've teased Elon has came out and said like x is going to be the everything app and so it's easy

to see like if if you were to create a WhatsApp sort of of app with the crypto rails. And it'd be really easy for them to just turn that on and overtake Coinbase and Robin Hood in a few weeks or months, like if they were really to like set their sites on this. So I think like that's where X is important because even if they were to fall behind as far as in this race for a super app, they could catch up like that. Okay. So for this moment in time since obviously the details about X, you know, actually, you know, heading in this direction are sparse. It feels like for this moment, we're going to see Coinbase and Robin Hood really competing. And obviously, Coinbase, with its recent announcement, is about getting into stock

trading and, you know, prediction markets and stuff like now. It's very obvious that they're going to be competing on the same territory. So how would you expect the competition between those two to play out for, you know, like, I don't know, the first half of 2026 or, or. the whole year. So I don't see them as pitted against each other as a lot of people do. I do, like if you look at the coin to hood chart, it's really easy to say that they're, you know, they're fighting and Robin Hood's winning, right? Because that chart's down only. But I do think, like, I think that they have slightly different angles and they're both, they can both succeed together, right? I do think, like Robin Hood has this financial super app. They have the lead on a lot of this stock

tokenization stuff, I think, since so many people are already accustomed to using Robin Hood for stocks and stuff. And so it's easier to just add crypto than for a crypto app to just tack on all the finance. Right. Whereas Coinbase, that's where like to circle back to like Brian, Brian Armstrong's, you know, Fork in the Road tweet. Like I think they need to lean more into this app store, like this become the apple of crypto innovation, right? And that's sort of what they're trying to do. with the base app. So if Coinbase does that and focuses on that and succeeds there, they become the Apple of crypto innovation and decentralized apps and onboarding that to like their distribution of like 100 million plus users in like the US that are already interested

in crypto, whereas Robin Hood bridges crypto use cases with personal finance and speculation with a lot of these tokens to like all of these people that are more like. traditional financial users. Okay. So if you were to give the edge to one of them or the other, it feels like you're saying Robin Hood? I mean, so I think Robin Hood's like a safer play, right? Like I don't like, I'm more excited about Coinbase because I think it has the most immediate impact on the crypto ecosystem and what we're building here and sort of expanding the

skill tree of what we're capable of, whereas Robin Hood is like a very safe bet on, expanding to new audiences and the like the institutional angle, right? Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. So I think we're going to have to see how it plays out. Honestly, I think the last thing that this conversation makes me think of is that viral essay, crypto is dead where, you know, this really is the moment where, okay, Coinbase

definitely has the crypto crowd, but is that going to be enough? And that's why it almost feels like, you know, Robin Hood already has. you know, this app that is very plugged into the traditional financial system and has these users that really care about that. And so introducing them to something new almost feels like a little bit easier, whereas like, you know, starting with the nation and going more mainstream might be harder. But I definitely wouldn't count Coinbase out because I'm sure everybody knows Brian Armstrong is incredibly smart. He's a great business person. He has an amazing team. And, you know, there's a reason Coinbase.

money's in crypto. So we'll have to see how. That's always going to be there though, right? Like Coinbase is always going to have to overcome the crypto stigma. So unless you're able to like remove that stigma, you know, and maybe that's why they're calling it the base app because they don't want to be, they want to like shed the crypto sort of, you know, stigma, I guess and just be able to reach people with apps, right? And that's where, I mean, I think that that's. if it works like that's a really smart play. But that speaks to this issue that they have and why they're a bit behind Robin Hood.

Because Robin Hood's meeting people where they are. Yeah, yeah. And it's unfortunate even just that use of the word stigma. Like I feel like in certain places around the world, it wouldn't be a stigma. And it only is in certain places where somehow crypto has become like this weird political thing. Like, in my opinion, actually wasn't for the longest time. But anyway, all right. Well, Jordan, this was super fun chatting.

Thank you so much. And, yeah, we'll have to see how all these different theses and your analysis plays out in 2026. Awesome. Thank you for having me.