Unchained - Why 2026 Is 'Too Chaotic' to Make Crypto Predictions

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

Thank you to our sponsor, Mantle! In this Unchained podcast episode, guests Alex Thorn and Ryan Graham share their 2026 outlook for Bitcoin and the broader crypto market, exploring why the year looks unusually uncertain. The conversation also digs into questions around Ethereum’s long-term value, whether killer apps are enough to drive adoption, prediction markets’ push into sports betting, and why the privacy meta could continue in 2026. Hosts: Laura Shin Guests: Ryan Graham, Research Analyst at Messari Alex Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy Digital Links: DAT Stocks Are on Sale. Are They a Buy? Plus, Why Crypto Is Dead Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Says Blockchain Trilemma ‘Has Been Solved’ Solana Withstands Week-Long DDoS Attack Solana Mulls Proposal to Lower Inflation Rate Western Union Files ‘WUUSD’ Trademark After Solana Stablecoin Reveal Why the Privacy Coins Mania Is Much More Than Price Action The Chopping Block: Hyperliquid vs. Tarun, ADL Transparency & The Coming Perps Arms Race How to Trade Prediction Markets Without an Opinion on the Event Why Wall Street Banks Need to Launch Their Own Stablecoins How the GENIUS Act Creates a Built-In Advantage for Banks and Deposit Tokens Klarna Launches Stablecoin Built on Stripe’s Tempo Chain How the x402 Standard Is Enabling AI Agents to Pay Each Other Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now with the regulatory burden easing on crypto, it's kind of put up or shut up. Like, we've got to deliver something here that, you know, the average person really wants to use. Privacy is probably in a super trend. And I think that's just because, like, fundamentally privacy is important. And it never was not important. It was just like you ran the risk of going to jail to actually, like, support these projects and work on them and be an investor. That is. Hey, everyone.

Happy New Year. Welcome to Unchained. You're no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shen. 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 hold assets discussed in the show.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to conicsontera.ca. And direct access to buy bits 7 million plus users. This is the ultimate ecosystem for builders. Today's topic is 2026 crypto predictions. I'm here with Alex Thorne, head of firm-wide research at Galaxy Digital, and Ryan, aka Average Doe's Crypto, Research Manager at Masari. Welcome, Ryan and Alex.

Yeah, hey, Laura. Hey, what's going on? So I have been asking this question over and over again to multiple guests over multiple episodes, But I feel like when I ask it, it still elicits different answers from people. So I'm curious to know, do you guys think that the four-year cycle is dead? Or do you think that we are headed into yet another bull year, I guess? Like 25 was sort of mixed in terms of whether it was a bull year. But, you know, some people think that we're in this going ahead into a prolonged bear market. So I'm curious.

What do you guys think? Alex, why don't we start with you? Do you think 2026 will be a bowler bear market for Bitcoin? I actually think it's too chaotic to predict, frankly, and refrain from making a Bitcoin price prediction for 2026 so far. I think the four-year cycles empirically broken. Bitcoin had, you know, gone up halving year, subsequent year, and the third year, the last two havings, right?

And so now finishing 25 is a technically, a not technically, literally a down year would theoretically invalidate that very simple design of this or understanding of this four-year cycle. Look, I think one way to just summarize how chaotic the investing landscape is, is to look at options markets, which are pricing basically an equal likelihood of 50K or 250K for Bitcoin by year-end, 2026. And I think that underlies a significant uncertainty about crypto market. cycles, crypto markets, Bitcoin as a macro asset, which has been underperforming gold for, you know, the last six months and a variety of other, you know, geopolitical and monetary policy conditions in 26 that are unclear.

So, you know, I don't, I'm not sure. I think you're, you're possibly going to see low, new cycle lows and possibly new all time highs all inside 26. I think very possible. Ryan, what about you? Yeah, I think, I think at this point, we can definitely say the four years. cycle's dead. Some of the points Alex mentioned earlier, 2025, if we were still believers in the four-year cycle, would have been a green year and it was not for Bitcoin. Bitcoin also made a new all-time high prior to the happening. So I think we could definitely put to rest like this idea of the four-year cycle in terms of like, where does that lead Bitcoin in 2026? I tend to agree with Alex. I think it's going to be very tough to predict. The one thing I do feel comfortable kind of putting my, throwing my hat out there,

saying that I don't expect Bitcoin to continue underperforming other asset classes as much as it did in Q4 of 2025. I would not expect like continued weakness against commodities or equities. I think a lot of that is just simply due to a lot of turnover in terms of a long-term holder selling. And I think we are starting to see that kind of slow down and perhaps flip. So yeah, maybe I think Bitcoin at this point is very much a macawatt. it and like to actually like answer if it goes up or down you need to answer more important macro questions but I think we can I'm comfortable saying that I'm not expecting further underperformance. Okay. Well yeah. So let's talk about the macro bit because we are entering the year in a way

where it definitely seems like that's going to play a big role. So, you know, before so before all this recent news about Venezuela and everything, you know, people were looking to the fact that the Fed is already back to quantitative easing, which tends to be correlated with bull markets and crypto. But, you know, obviously, like I just mentioned, we do have a lot of geopolitical events that could affect the macro environment. Obviously, the removal of Maduro is kind of just creating a lot of speculation. And there's definitely a Bitcoin angle to that one in case you guys haven't been seeing some of the viral tweets on Twitter about how perhaps they've been circumventing the Petro dollar by using Tether.

converting that to Bitcoin. I have not looked into whether or not that's verified. It's just something I see people talking about. You know, there's talk about how much Bitcoin in Venezuela has. And then there are some people just looking at the bigger geopolitical landscape saying that we're potentially in a pre-war period with contention maybe breaking out in other strategically important areas, Greenland being one of the ones mentioned. So I wondered just, you know, when you look at all of those factors, plus, you know, as we mentioned, the Fed, like, does that sort of give you a hint into what direction you think Bitcoin or the broader crypto markets might go? I mean, I would just say that the markets have largely priced in rates coming lower.

That can still be supportive for risk assets. But, you know, I think you've really got to look towards, you know, let me say it this way. You know, Bitcoin's starting off the year quite well, I think is a good indication that, people thought it had underperformed too much, right? And you have portfolio managers that are starting off the year saying, you know, everything else is up. The equity markets are again near all-time highs. Gold and commodities across the board have been ripping. Even oil, despite the turmoil in Venezuela near term, has been trading pretty well since the news of Maduro's capture came out. So what looks undervalued, right? And Bitcoin looked pretty low to start the year. So I think

it's reasonable Ryan's point that, you know, it can start trading sort of back in a, non, you know, idiosyncratic way to other assets. I think the macro, look, you've got a midterm election. You've got the economy that's potentially going to be run hot by the administration, right? They're looking for ways to, you know, you've got the big beautiful bill. Spending hasn't fully hit yet. There's plenty of reasons why you're going to see, you know, fiscal spending and thus risk asset prices go higher. And that should benefit Bitcoin. On the other hand, you know, you've got a real risk of inflation in that environment. And so, you know, I think it's, it, Fed loosening is definitely a strong narrative. It's, it's also potentially strong for like actual impact. But on the other hand,

right, we know that there's, there's real risks here, right? Inflation remains a big risk with loosening. AI is a big risk for employment. You're starting to see like significant advancements in AI. That was something that I paid a lot of attention to over the holiday break was all of these prominent engineers coming out and saying one of them was the principal engineer at Google saying effectively that they did over a weekend what it took their whole team to do at Google two years ago. Right. This is not like far on the horizon now, the amount of job displacement that you could see could create real, you know, macro pressures in the economy. So I think there's there's countervailing forces here that are both positive and negative. And that's why it's so chaotic, I think, to be an investor. I mean, just today I saw, I think platinum's up 7%, right?

Nickel was up 10%. Right. Like, your people are, you're in an environment where people are sort of buying everything to start the year. And it's, I really struggle to predict what it could look like. But you do know, both on the monetary and fiscal sides because of the change, you know, a doveish Fed plus an administration that's looking to show some real, you know, force. They want people in the midterms to go into those. bowling booths feeling wealthy.

So, you know, these are, these are bullish, no doubt. It's just, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty out there. Yeah. I'll echo similar thoughts. I think, like, there are a lot of forces pulling in different directions that if you're a bull, you can paint a pretty picture of a bull scenario. And then if you're a bear, you can do the same thing. The one thing I will say is that the, the long-term levers of like what actually

drives Bitcoin higher, dollar debasement, loss of trust in institutions. monetary easing, I think on a long enough time frame, like, that's not changing at all. In fact, that trend is probably accelerating. So, yeah, maybe it might be hard to predict out like the macro in 2026, but if you take like a five, 10 year approach, I don't see any of the trends that have driven the bull market for Bitcoin over the past three years changing. I think they even get better. I think that's where, you know, and I think it's, I'm happy you said that, Ryan, because

I don't want to sound like it's all doom and gloom or uncertainty. there are both positives and bullish catalysts in 26 for Bitcoin and crypto. But I think longer term, things like geopolitical uncertainty or, you know, one of the most interest, they bode well for Bitcoin in the medium and longer terms. They continue to. They perhaps are, and when you combine that with the maturation of institutional adoption and market structure and market access vehicles and regulatory easing for crypto is very bullish, I think for Bitcoin and crypto in the medium term, maybe even in the near term.

I think one of the most interesting things we saw last year was during the April tariff tantrum when sort of markets collapsed and Bitcoin traded down to like 74K. Equities came down a ton. The dollar, DXY index also went down. It was the first time out of the prior 13 SMP 500, 10% corrections or more that the dollar didn't appreciate. And then you saw gold go on this crazy rally. And what it tells you is the world is looking for non-dollar, non-US. hedges, hedging instruments. And that I think plays a big part in the rise of gold, which was, I think,

frankly, driven a lot more by speculators than central banks, which has been a big question. Speculators, meaning people looking to park their money in something that isn't dollars, isn't treasuries, isn't U.S. denominated. I think in that, that's only going to increase as geopolitics becomes more multipolar and fractured. And Bitcoin looks very good, very good in a world that is more chaotic and more, you know, based on realism rather than, you know, international liberalism at the geopolitical level. Yeah, I did a show with some people from Delphi and they basically were saying that gold is frequently a canary for Bitcoin. And so in that regard, Bitcoin looks good. And I agree that like the reason that we did see, you know, gold and these other metals shoot up this year is there is some. I think, like, understanding about kind of the changing of the geopolitical balance and people

just, you know, feeling like what they've trusted for so long maybe isn't what they will be trusting going forward and kind of looking to park your money elsewhere until everything shakes out. So I do also want to ask about something that was a big storyline in crypto in 2025, which is Dats. They were kind of the center of some sort of bubble, you know, whatever the 2025 bubble was, in my opinion, was around Dats.

That bubble's already deflated. You know, and like even MSTR is doing things that kind of reflect sort of doubt about what will happen going forward. So I was curious, like, what do you see happening with Dats in 2026? Yeah, I'll take this one to start. I would say at this point, I think the only Dats that really matter are strategy and bit miner.

I think all the other ones you can kind of put on the back burner for now. I'm not bullish on the long tail of Dats prospects at all. I think they're kind of one-trick pony and kind of over. I don't think you can ever write truly write off like Sailor and Strategy. They've done this before where they looked like they were dead in the water and only came back stronger than ever before. They have the cash on hand to kind of weather a bear market for the next. year or two years. But with the same saying, if there is a bare market and Bitcoin is weak, that kind of defeats the purpose of strategy. So it's tough to say, I'm not particularly

concerned about like them blowing up in 2026 or changing course. I think they've made the decisions they needed to. I think Bitmine also represents a very interesting opportunity. They still find cash every week to buy ETH. And I'm curious to see if they kind of start replicating some of the playbook that strategy is dumb. I saw recently that they are now staking their eth and then the thesis we talked about like if they use their staked eath as collateral to basically borrow and lever up and then they can kind of use the interest from their state to eat to pay off whatever interest rates that have from that. So I would say the big picture or what I'm looking for in 2026 to see how bitmine bitminer evolves in 2026 to see if they start replicating

the sailor playbook. Alex? Yeah, I'll just add, you know, I think there are some. I think it's fair to say that strategy and bit minor are probably beyond a significant amount of risk. They also don't, strategy is one of the, basically the only debt that actually holds debt that they have to pay. And I think you were alluding Laura to their, you know, the last month and a half or so where they've actually raised some cash, some Fiat preserves, which they plan to use to pay some of the dividends on their preferred securities or whatever else. is sort of a way to stronghold and assuage doubts that they may have to sell Bitcoin to meet their debt and dividend obligations.

I think it's obvious that that's were a huge bubble. There were definitely more than 100 and maybe hundreds that attempted to launch. I think the reality is the vast majority of them don't have debt, weren't able to raise through debt. So the question about whether they become for sellers, I think, is a little bit of overblown. It doesn't mean they're going to perform well or be able to do much. But I think the risk that they have some kind of overhang to the spot market is probably overblown. Still, I don't think that there's room for that many in the long run. But I also, you know,

some of these ones whose, you know, equity prices haven't performed well still hold an enormous amount of spot crypto, you know, even well beyond, you know, micro strategy and bitminer. So I think the question kind of becomes like, is there a, you know, a lot of DAT 2.0, what does it look like? Maybe one way that it does is some of these Dats, you know, emerge to become the primary champions of their coins ecosystems. You could see consolidation among that's. I think it's reasonable to believe that most major coins will have one longer term successful that. Does that mean, I don't know what that means for their equity prices, but particularly in proof of stake networks, you can, you can imagine, you know, big validators. Ryan talked about bitminers

staking now. You could imagine building other operating businesses around those validators, whether it's block building or MEV or selling access to block space in some way. So like you could imagine perhaps, you know, something similar that's happening in the on-chain governance world, which is the collapsing or combining or evolution of the labs and foundation versus Dow structure. You could imagine, you know, a sort of primary dat emerging as like the chief cheerleader, possibly even taking on the role for an ecosystem that was previously led by a foundation or, you know, a labs organization. I think it's reasonable to believe that, you know, maybe one or one or two might have durability over a longer term sort of in each ecosystem. But, you know, that's far fewer

than the 100 plus that have launched. So I don't know whether, you know, if they're not, if they don't own debt, they probably aren't for sellers. If they continuously trade below their, you know, net asset values. Maybe they become targets for roll-ups or consolidations or mergers or buyouts or something. But yeah, it's clear that the playbook from last summer isn't going to be rerun anytime soon. Yeah, this is interesting what you're saying about how they could potentially form like a labs function or or a foundation function because there's been a lot of drama in the Dow world lately. But before we get into all that, I did also want to ask about Ethereum. You know, you guys both brought up Tom Lee's dad that buying immersion, which, yeah, is sort of has seemed to,

it's sort of like, yeah, just doing quite well. It's like in its own universe, I guess, among the deaths. And you could say that same as MSTR of MSTR. So I wondered, just when you look at Ethereum, there's been, you know, some travails in recent years. It looked like in 2025, they kind of righted the ship. And then when that more line, you know, was doing quite well. That also, you know, looked good very narratively for Ethereum because the price was going up. But I just was curious to hear how you think they're position now. And especially for Alex, or sorry, for Ryan, I saw that in the Missouri theses you guys talked about because this is something that I think about a lot. It sort of feels

like the tokenomics around Ethereum hasn't quite been figured out yet. During that period of the ultrasound money meme, it sort of felt like. it was. And then after the introduction of gloves and the scaling of the L2s, that kind of has, that narrative has broken. And so in my, in my view, the tokenomics around the theorem there's like a question mark hanging over them. So yeah, just tell me, where do you think Ethereum will go in 2026? And yeah, last thing is I will say at the same time, there's definitely a lot of positive things happening in the ecosystem and the focus on privacy, you know, But Pertoli just posted that they solved the blockchain

Trilemo with Pyridost, CK, EBMs. That's interesting. So yeah, just curious to hear your thoughts and where it's headed in 2026. Yeah. So I think it's helpful to now think about Ethereum in two separate manners. So you have Ethereum the platform, which I absolutely agree right at the ship in 2025. They're in a much better trajectory now than they were at the end of 2024. But I think you also have to separate ETH the asset from ETH. platform. And ETH the asset, I still think has a ton of question marks around it. I feel confident saying, like, I'm not bullish on direct value accrual to ETH anymore. So what I mean by that is

like Ethereum network fees, right? Like, are Ethereum staker is going to make a ton of revenues? I think we can definitively say that's not the case. Revenue has been declining by like 50, 60% every single year now for the past couple years. That doesn't mean ETH the asset can't be valuable, right like bitcoin has absolutely zero value accrual right like there's holding holding bitcoin state you can't obviously stake it but let's say you could it does not it's entitled to any cash flows of the bitcoin network right that goes to the miners so eat the asset can still be valuable but it can it's only going to accrue value indirectly right like it's purely now just a monetary asset right are people willing to ascribe some monetary value to eat the asset i think the answer to that is yes right

like obviously eat does not trade at zero it trades at some fraction of bitcoin However, we quite clearly see in like trends like betas and correlations, like this ETH monetary asset story is fully reliant on Bitcoin, right? Like, no one is switching from Bitcoin to ETH when Bitcoin is going down 50% over a three-month period or whatever. They're only ascribing an heightened ETH monetary premium with Bitcoin's also going up. So for the foreseeable future, like, I think ETH is connected at the hip to Bitcoin. Like, I don't see any scenario in which Bitcoin is losing its monetary value while

Ethereum is also increasing its. Longer term, maybe you can make the case that the Ethereum network is so valuable that ETH the asset has to have value because it's the centerpiece and the most or the soundest money

at the network level. But yeah, like I think ETH at this point, you're not going to get direct value accrual. You're not going to benefit from revenues. However, that doesn't mean you can't benefit from like a monetary narrative that Bitcoin has benefited from. Yeah, I agree with a lot of that.

think, you know, it's worth noting Ethereum had two pretty consequential upgrades in 2025 in Pectra and Fusaka. I have to totally echo Ryan's point about direct value cruel. I've been very critical of single sequencer optimistic roll-ups, which, you know, base, Coinbase's base is the biggest one. And aside from, and it's got a super majority of all of the L2 activity of any type of L2. And Cornbase pays more to the optimism foundation in licensing fees for the technology than it pays in fees, blob fees, to the Ethereum network. So it's, you know, I worry and it didn't use to be as big a worry, but with the rise of

Solana, which is a meaningfully differentiated design of a blockchain, I worry that, you know, Ethereum's building for a high, throughput, low fee future that may never come, right? Even with Fusaka, they dramatically expanded, you know, the amount of blob space there is to make it even cheaper for roll-ups to pay. And with this roll-up-centric roadmap and design, which I think, you know, this hub and spoke model with Ethereum mainnet as the, you know, settlement layer, final settlement layer, I think it makes a lot of sense intellectually, but it isn't accruing value. And it's not meaningfully competing well with Solana, which itself has had enormous gains. 2025, particularly in terms of institutional adoption, whether it's stablecoin issuance or tokenization of securities. So I, you know, I think Ethereum, it's a very, look, it's very hard to dislodge sticky capital. TBL is very sticky. Ethereum's still a great blockchain with a lot of activity on it,

a lot of high value defy on it. There's no doubt about that. But, you know, it's never had as meaningful of a competitor for the role of being a general purpose blockchain as it does today with Solana in particular, and that's totally discounting any other sort of like newer, more frontier layer one blockchains like a monad or a sui or what have you, right? Just Solana is, I think, providing meaningful competition for Ethereum for some of this year's most, you know, anticipated hottest use cases like real world assets and stable coins and tokenization. So, you know, I think I admire some of the decisions and design decisions that the Ethereum community is made. I think the Talek making the point that it's not about throughput and instead it's

about resilience. And I think that's a very fair and an admirable way to build a blockchain. You know, I'm a big big corner. And so I relate to that a lot. I just wonder if that's not the game people look to play or are looking to play. And so just to understand exactly what you're saying, are you saying that they're building for this long term vision, but they might lose the competition in the short term, which would keep them from winning in that long term? vision is that? Yeah, I think that's a fair characterization. It's like they're building for a future that may never exist or that may pass them by without ever occurring, right? And I think, you know, it's partially consequence. Bitcoin development ecosystem suffers a very similar,

you know, issue here, which is, you know, how to how to corral these. And Ethereum is much more active development wise than Bitcoin, but still suffers from this, you know, sort of myopic and, you know, many cooks in the kitchen problem of, you know, are we, building for what people want today and where the market is today and and what the use cases today are, or are we building for an idealized vision of the future that, you know, while, you know, and again, it wasn't that big of a deal, but Solana and its ecosystem is so much more like singularly focused on delivering quality and, and usability today, right? That it, it's presenting such an interesting contrast. And I, and I dare say, you know, Solana has

gain ground against Ethereum in terms of what people are using it for. That's not to say Solana has it all figured out. I mean, the vast majority of its usage, right, had been meme coins and sort of like speculation. So it has its own things to figure out in terms of long-term durability. But I just, the contrast between the two has never been, you know, clearer. And by the way, like, you don't hear the institutions, trad-fi institutions. They're not coming.

I mean, right, people are, Stripe is building tempo. It's not on Ethereum. like the DTCC's first like thing is with Cantor, with Canton, which is private blockchain, right, from digital asset, a blast from the past, right? They're not flocking to Ethereum to build the way the Ethereum community said that they would be, right? And tons, obviously, of course, are building on Solana. So I think that's, that should be a wake up call for the Ethereum world. It's not clear exactly for whom they're building. And whereas for some of these other competitors to Ethereum, it is very clear.

Yeah, yet another wake-up call for them, I guess. Something that I just realized talking to you both is, so both Bitcoin and Ether are the two most important crypto assets. They're the two biggest. But with something, something that's so interesting to me is I just realize there's something that's like a little bit broken about both of their tokenomics. And one is the Bitcoin security issue, which was talked about in the Masari Theses. And that, I mean, that's been something that's been talked about quite a lot. I think I've even had debates on the show about that. And then the other is. You know what we just talked about, about how it, like, there was a theory at one time that activity on Ethereum or in the Ethereum ecosystem would translate to token value. And that relationship has not, you know, been correlated ever since the Dengoon, I think, was the upgrade. So, yeah, just interesting commentary. No question really, but just a realization I had. But let's talk about Salana because, Alex, I thought you made such good points there. I'd like for you to expand on them because, you know, Salon, so obviously the token had a down year, but not so different from, you know, Bitcoin or Ether or any of the other cryptos.

But on fundamentals, it really did look quite good, like in terms of, you know, TBL and Defi. And there were just, you know, a number of ways in which it really, you know, if the criticism used to be that, it's just a casino, it's just for mean coins, whatever, like more real economic activity. So how do you think things will play out for Solana this year? and, you know, where do you think they're going to get some wins and what do you think their weaknesses are? Well, I think, one, this, every good trend needs a meme or a narrative name, and they've adopted this one, Internet capital markets. You know, not so much different than, you know, the Ethereum's community's old future of finance or future of France that they used to joke about. Frankly, quite similar. I think, I think the question is, you know, can Solana,

transition as a community and sort of, I don't mean that there's like it, that it's necessarily a central hand actually doing it, but like, will it transition from, you know, revenue and activity very focused around meme coins and launch pads to clear more durable capital and revenue generating businesses. I think that that's a real question. I think RWA is in tokenization is what many people hope and think will be a catalyst there that can, you know, enshrine longer term revenue to the Solana ecosystem, you know, one of the areas that it's significantly lagged and continues to lag Ethereum is in just Defi-TVL. And one of the reasons that, you know, I believe that's the case is that the Solana inflation rate is so high, right, by comparison to Ethereum

that, you know, you're kind of better off just, you know, risk-free, quote-unquote, staking it, rather than, you know, entering lending markets there or doing ARBs with Ethereum lending markets. So that's been a big debate, whether or not to lower inflation on Solana. There have been a couple of attempts. Galaxy research put forth an idea of using a few Tarky to decide what it should be. There's another open proposal. We don't think that proposal is going to happen in 2026 for a variety of reasons. So I think that's a question about what to do with inflation.

I think they have other interesting, you know, technical things on the roadmap, as does Ethereum that could impact this. A lot of it comes down, though, I think, to, you know, crypto broadly needs. needs like a killer app. It still does. I think outside of owning Bitcoin, which people really like to do. What about stablecoins? Again, like that, you know, Tom Lee had had been all over Twitter and, and, you know, TV saying that the bull case for Ethereum was the Genius Act and the adoption of stable coins. But we've just talked about, I mean, like, you can, you barely have to own any ETH in order to send a transaction anywhere in the Ethereum ecosystem. And they're only making it cheaper, right? So like, just needing to send or receive a stable coin does not necessarily

you like stockpiling a bunch of Eath. And by the way, I agree it. It shouldn't, right? But like that's, that would be a key value accrual mechanism. Um, I think that, you know, the value for stable coins, like, where is the value from stable coin growth going to accrue? To me, it's going to accrue more likely, if anywhere on a network that can send and receive them more simply and more quickly. And I think Solana's probably a better platform for that. Solana's meaningfully more decentralized than base or any other single sequence or

optimistic roll up, which let's face. it is basically a computer in some company's basement, right? And there's no reasons why, you know, maybe a unilateral opt out. Like, there's some mitigations to that, but like the Ethereum community is kind of abandoned as far as I can tell the idea of decentralizing sequencers. So I think like, you know, again, NFTs didn't, you know, I mean, they worked. I mean, they're fine or whatever, but like they didn't, they're not driving the market, right? ICOs could come back, but I sort of put that in the same bucket at this point as sort of tokenization and, you know, real equity ownership coins could be a very interesting area. But I just think there's a lot of questions. And so,

you know, what do you want to build on something that's decentralized enough or something that's so decentralized that, you know, it's not as not nearly as usable? So I think there are questions here. I think the corpo L1s are new, interesting sort of entering the chat as a thing to see how that plays out. Like tempo and arc. Tempo and arc or even Canton, which I kind of consider to be a, A corporate, you know, it's a federated blockchain basically with, you know, a private validator said. It's effectively enterprise blockchain from the 2018, right? Which I mean, I'm not saying it won't have a place, but I mean, that's additional competition. I think you've really got to see something at the app layer that's not based on pure speculation.

This has been the case. I mean, I said this a year ago that, you know, now with the regulatory burden easing on crypto, it's kind of put up or shut up. Like we got to deliver something here that, you know, the average person really wants to use. I think you're going to get that in tokenized securities. The question, you know, to which platforms does it accrue? I think just Solana is really well placed there because of its speed and, you know, and it's, you know, it has the separate fee markets that make it cheap. And there's a bunch of reasons.

I think Ethereum's also well placed. You just, you really aren't seeing. I mean, if you Google like institutional tokenization headlines, you're going to see a lot more about Solana than Ethereum. And to me, that's problematic for Ethereum, since that's the biggest, like, regulatory catalyst out there right now. But wait, but one last question on the comparison between them is just, you know, Ethereum has zero downtime in its history. It's been going for over a decade.

And Solana cannot say those things. So, you know, just I think financial institutions, because of the way they approach risk, Don't you feel like that alone kind of gives Ethereum an advantage? I think it depends on the activity, but keep in mind, most activity in the Ethereum ecosystem, today is happening on base. And it's had downtime, right? And Solana hasn't had downtime in quite a while, like more than a year. I don't have the number in front of me, but it's been a while.

So, I mean, it depends on what type of activity, right? If it's high frequency stuff, then if you have an open loan that could get liquidated and the network is in downtime, then, yeah, that's a huge problem. And perhaps that's another reason why Solana has lagged Ethereum in lending is because of that. But of course, saying that Ethereum didn't have downtime. I mean, remember March 12th, 2020 when everything was liquidated because nobody could get things through the network? Like I would consider that downtime. And then again, like the L2s have had downtime.

So I think it's a little bit spurious, the question. But it's, yeah, I mean, this is absolutely something people think about when deciding where to build, no doubt. I think Solana's mostly fixed those problems. but it's a reasonable question. Okay, so in a moment, we're going to hear Ryan's take on Solana, but first we're going to take a quick word from the sponsorsu to make this show possible. Mantle has entered a new phase as the distribution layer connecting TradFi and on-chain liquidity. To accelerate this vision, the Mantle Global Hackathon, 2025,

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Back to my conversation with Ryan and Alex. So Alex, not Alex, sorry, I keep mixing your names. Ryan, tell us your take on Salana. It sounds to me like Alex gives Solana a little bit of an edge over Ethereum. I guess he'll interrupt me if I'm misquoting him. But okay, Ryan, what's your take? Well, again, I want to bring back the point. I think what L1s now, you kind of have to separate the platform from the asset.

And I want to like, I think it's very interesting to talk about killer apps. And I would actually say a network that probably had, you could argue, had the most killer apps the cycle was Polygon, right? Like they had Polymarket, of course, which is dominating headlines. And they also have like some other interesting apps like Courtyard, right? Like courtyard is actually something that has been gaining adoption like outside of crypto circles. Like my friends that are like into trading cards and stuff like actually talk to me about courtyard. I've never talked to them about crypto at all. So I think it's interesting that Polygon is

here is a chain that actually has developed, you could argue, two killer apps, one definitively a killer app, another may be like a Rising Star, and its performance has been awful in 2025. So not only do you have to develop a killer app, but you have to develop a killer app that either generates a ton of speculative activity or uses your base asset as the monetary asset. And neither Polymarket or courtyard do that, right, like their USDC, based and they obviously don't drive a ton of transactional volume like they like mean coins do on Solana. So yeah, like I'm not bearish unnecessarily like Solana's growth prospects in terms of like in onboarding

new stable coin supply and onboarding new tokenization efforts and stuff like that. I just question like is that actually going to be value of creative? I'm much more bullish on like the Solana ecosystem. Like I think if you're building consumer applications and crypto, I think it's probably the best place to build, right? Like I think they have definitively like the biggest like consumer user base in crypto at this point. So I'm much more interested there.

I think like the exotic RWA space is very interesting. Some apps on Solana that are like really running in stride on this is stuff like collector crypt. Like that's another like TCG gasha competitor. Baxos, which is like tokenized wine. So like I'm actually a lot more interested in like kind of these consumer applications that are building on Solana rather than

the Western unions. like these tradfai incumbents building because I just question like how much is salana actually going to be able to monetize or not just salana that that's any layer one network or or two like how are they actually going to be able to monetize uh all this activity coming on chain and then like the other thing i think salana needs to definitely level up on is the perp deck space i think um they're not even really competing at this point if you just look at volumes like an open interest it's hyperliquid is definitively number one you can make the case like lighters maybe number two and then like ask

or Edge X, but notably Salon is absent there. And I think that's probably the space they need to push the hardest in, especially when you have like your biggest ecosystem champions like Phantom right, building hyperliquid builder codes. So I think for for Solana, that should be like a huge focus for them in 2026 is like kind of figuring out how you get perp X's to work on Solana. That makes a lot of sense to me. That gives me the perfect. segue to our next topic, which is hyperliquid and perp-dexes, because as everybody saw, I mean, Hyperliquid clearly was, you know, just one of the biggest successes in 2025. You know, just the fact that it spawned, like a whole category of competitors just shows you

what a success they were, you know, and the fact that their name was repeatedly used to, in comparison with Binance's name, like that, you know, the memes with like, Jeff and CZ and even the fact that they were like sub-tweeting each other. That that says a lot about about just how successful they were. So I was curious, you know, now that there is such heavy competition in that space, you know, especially between the ones that Ryan names. So, you know, hyperliquid lighter, Astor, Ejax and there's tons of others. Who do you think could come out on top? Like, what do you think will make or break these different perp dexes? Yeah, I'll start. I think the first thing to note is just how much of a cash cow these businesses are, right?

Like Hyperliquine makes more money now than any L1, right? Makes more than Solana, makes more than Ethereum. So running a successful perplex is like probably in terms of like, if you want to build a sustainable business and crypto, outside of if you're tether, like this is like the next best option. So that's why like so many are kind of pivoting to this. And this is why it's such an important place to build. I would say it's going to be tough to dethrone hyperliquid,

unless you have like built in distribution. I would say that's probably the angle where you can beat them. So I know like people have been talking about Lider's connection with Robin Hood. If if they go fully in on that and maybe Lider can like somehow form some partnership with Robinhood that they can leverage like their app and their user base, like that's a sustainable and definitive mode that you can take on hyperliquid. But again, like I think you need to to find distribution partners that already have like big user bases that will be willing to to try out perp-dex trading.

And I think it's tough to say which ones are actually going to do that. Maybe Aster with finance, obviously, like, finance is the biggest perp-dex,

centralized perp-dex, right? So if they could tap more into that user base, that'll be huge. But I think we're probably past the point where like technical differences alone are enough to steal market share.

Like, I think that was hyper-liquid. Hyper-liquid represented, like, a meaningful improvement over-existing, uh, perp-exes. So at this point,

I think it's going to down to like distribution and like where you can find the the marginal user. And what I just out of curiosity, what do you think about what happened on 1010 and how lighter handled it like handled the many liquidations versus hyperliquid? Because there was some criticism about, you know, how hyperliquid did it. Do you have a do you have any thoughts on like how that might affect interest from users? Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't like lighter not work during the event like you couldn't at some point you couldn't open or trade closed open yeah but oh gosh I wish I could remember

the details they ended up um doing something where like it was more beneficial to the users um okay I I mean I forget exactly what they do but like I would say the the absolute priority for any perp decks during something like that is just like giving users the ability to open and close trades and if you're just completely bricked out of your account you can't do anything it's it's it's very tough to to actually like be a perp-dex. So as far as I remember, hyperliquid still worked, obviously like spreads blew out and that's more of like a market maker issue and whatnot.

But I would say like if you want to like say you're a better perp-dex, you have to have like 100% up time during these market meltdowns. I would just say the lighter air drop, they air dropped 25% of the of their tokens, whereas I think Monad was like 3.3. and I forget what hyperliquid was, but it was much less. So I don't know if that's what you're referring to, Laura, but which I thought was interesting.

They also did not commit to buybacks the way that hyperliquid does. They said it would be allocated between growth and buybacks, depending on market conditions, which is perhaps another trend that I won't delve into at the moment here, but about like the token design evolutions that are happening out, particularly for sort of revenue generating apps and their DAOs, if they have them. You know, one, I'm going to throw this.

out here, a competition in the in the perp space, not perp deck space, CME, right? CFTC is poised to allow perp few perps, I think possibly for equities, certainly coinbase like with their, you know, perps exchange, like you're going to see in this, and this I think dovetells nicely with Ryan's point about distribution. Again, like this is one of the many areas where crypto may be cannibalized by Tradfai for its good ideas, right? You've got the ETFs. You're giving you know, spot Bitcoin, ether, soul, and whatever else to tradify in the form of ETS, perhaps in exchange for higher prices. You've got tokenization, right, where, you know, you've got Jamie Diamond even saying that this might be a great idea, DTC doing it,

you know, not necessarily like a crypto-native entity at all. Even by the way, using Canton, which again I've said is kind of like a corporate blockchain, not really a decentralized L1. And PURPS may be another area where the crypto-native world finds competition. from TradFi, it appears. CFTC is, you know, sort of on the verge of normalizing or bringing that product into traditional markets. Obviously that, you know, that's a different audience, probably than those that would use a hyperliquid or a lighter or an astor or a perp decks in general. But I think it, you're definitely right also, Laura to point out that hyperliquid basically created the category. You had perps before, obviously, you know, at least as far back as Bitmex.

but this sort of, you know, decentralized, version of it has a lot of adoption, no doubt. And synthetic, the interesting nature of perps is that they're, they're synthetic. So, you know, I think you'll see a lot more of types of assets purpified than, you know, can easily be, you know, created in a rapid token or, you know,

in a sort of more spot context. So you probably see more of these. And I think you should watch out for, you know, perps on equities coming to real equities. I mean, like through the CME or CBO or an existing sort of derivatives exchange in the U.S. Yeah, I've heard some people like expressing puzzlement and wondering at how much uptake there will be of those. But we had another guest on one of the shows who said that they think like all the finance will be purplified. So yeah, that is probably coming.

Let's talk now about prediction markets because, you know, that's another area I think where crypto. Well, it depends on whether or not it's crypto. But you could say there, you know, at least the version of it that is crypto has found product market fit. So what I mean when I say that is, as hopefully most of you know, polymarket is, you know, on Polymarketer, as Ryan mentioned. Kalshi is, you know, more centralized. But the point is so these are the two main contenders right now in the prediction market space. I'm just going to say it. It seems to me like they hate each other.

And there's also new contenders. You know, we saw the limitless, you know, launch, which was very controversial. People were kind of upset about their token launch. But so these two players, Polymarket and Kalshi, they have quite different strengths, in my opinion. You know, Kalshi is more regulated, centralized. But it has these huge partners, like Robin Hood being probably the main one. Polymarket, of course, it is punch. chain. It's more decentralized.

Probably has a bigger world my name. And it's going to launch a token, airdrop a token this year. So I'm curious, who would you put your money on and why? Yeah. Or like, you know, what do you think they should do to dominate? So here. Here, I'll start this one. I mean, it's such a good question.

You know, remember when there was the election, the 2024 election, saw this huge spike in volume on the polymarket at the time. And I don't think maybe Cal Calci had just like won that court case or whatever against the CFTC. I think they probably saw outside as volume two. They were able to sort of start allowing trading right before the election. But in general, the election, you know, decision market betting had really exploded their volume.

And then everyone was like, oh, when the election's over, they'll probably come down a lot in volume. And they did a little bit. But one of the interesting things that they've both done is move into sports gambling or sports prediction markets, I should say. I guess that leads into the point I want to make, which is there's a lot of really interesting reasons to use a prediction market for hedging in general. And we could go into those. But in general, I think information markets do have a valuable place in our markets and for society to get odds on events happening. And that can be really important for individuals and businesses alike. But they really moved into sports gambling extremely in the U.S.

and that's provided a really steady and consistent source of revenue for them and volume, right? And so, but that is the huge question in the U.S. And they're both proactively suing. Coinbase is also suing. Robin Hood is suing proactively state regulators in federal court. And then in some cases, they're being sued by state gambling officials. And I think the one to really watch is Cal She's declaratory judgment lawsuits in the third, fourth, and ninth circuits.

But Coinbase also is suing in other disc federal. digital disc circuits with so very likely that if we get split rulings in these cases, the Supreme Court will ultimately decide whether sports prediction markets are akin to sports gambling. And I think it's very possible that if they don't win these cases, the prediction markets, polymarket, as far as I can tell, not really involved in these cases, sort of like biding their time waiting to see what happens. But they could face real problems because as far as I can tell, you know, outside of a couple niche markets, it's really. been elections in sports that have been like runaway successes for these platforms. I don't know

what I would pick. I think both Cali-She and to your direct question, Laura, both Calci and Polymarket have a lot going for them. They're different, right? They're meaningfully different. I think Coinbase is going to be launching their prediction market thing like with Calci, right, and using Calci. And not Polymarket, by the way, which is interesting, another sort of like Ethereum ecosystem, like not playing out the way people thought it might. I, you know, I, I can't help but want to bet on Polly Market because of, you know, it actually puts this stuff on chain. It's more crypto-native. And I respect that a lot.

I think most people that have been working in crypto for a long time would pick Pollymarket for that reason. And it's true, there's no love loss between the two. But in general, I really, I think, like, you know, the question about whether they can challenge sports, whether sports prediction markets can be a financial derivative that's regulated by the CFTC and not sports gambling that's regulated by independent gambling. regulators is a huge question for these platforms since gambling and sports gambling, sports outcomes, I should say, Hart, and election outcomes are the two, you know, biggest volume markets that they have. And I think that's actually probably the biggest story to watch in 26 for prediction markets, bigger than internecing fighting between different platforms and other questions in my view. Yeah, obviously the political landscape is quite interesting

or rather the regulatory landscape. But one thing I will add to this debate is that I'm not sure the prediction market's going after the sports books is the right choice. I think it's like low hanging fruit. Like I think it's easy to get some volume there because it is quite similar. But I think at the end of the day, like I don't think many consumers, at least my friends or people that I know that sports gamble ever were like, oh, I wish this was a prediction market. Like I think by and large, the existing user base of sports gamblers are happy with the problem. product. I don't think prediction markets like meaningfully improve the product for them. So yeah, I think like going after sports markets is probably a great way to like ramp up vines and

whatnot just because there's a ton of activity already there. I'm sure you can get some whales and market makers to switch over to your platform. I am much more interested in creating new markets with prediction markets. So kind of like cultural events and seeing if like you can kind of replicate the success that sports books had with sports to maybe maybe people start gambling on reality the TV shows like the way that we gamble on football games and whatnot. And to me it seems like Polymarket is moving more in that direction than at least Kyle she is. So yeah, I'm definitely more interested in that rather than like how these can replace

sports books. I think it's a great way to like boost short term volumes, but I question if this is like a long term winning strategy. All right. So just in the interest of time, I'm going to move us quickly on through the last topics. So privacy coins suddenly became a thick thing. in the fall of 2025. I wondered, you know, where you thought that trend was going, especially because the two,

you know, leading coins or three, if you want to include Solana, they, you know, don't have privacy. And so it's just interesting to think about because it does sort of feel like the future of all of this does need a privacy component. And if Bitcoin doesn't have a privacy component, Ethereum, you know, is making that a priority. So question mark, that could, that could, you know, change its status to be. more privacy focused and to put it in that bucket of being like a privacy coin. So yeah, talk about where you see that trend going and like how you think that could shake up,

if at all, you know, the leading coins. Yeah, I think like privacy is probably in a super trend. And I think that's just because like fundamentally privacy is important and it never was not important. It was just like you ran the risk of going to jail to actually like support these projects and work on them and be an investor. that is seemingly de-risk and like I think you have to be optimist here and hope that like that trend continues that privacy is normal and like you were allowed to use privacy preserving objects. So I think that's like why you saw the return of stuff like Zcash and like even Minero right like Minero didn't have like a singular month of like crazy outperformance. But Minero I'm pretty sure like outperformed Bitcoin throughout the entire entire year of 2025. So there is definitely like a bid for privacy and I don't see this to change any quickly. Like I don't expect capital allocators to completely. allocate to the way in privacy that they want to in one year and think this is going to be a

gradual trend. I think stuff like Zcash and XMR, like they're interesting as hedges against Bitcoin failing to ever like adopt any sort of like meaningful privacy solutions, whether that's like through scaling like layer two stuff, which obviously that's a whole other debate of if Bitcoin should ossify or not. I'm very interested though, like how we start applying privacy to stuff outside of crypto money in the sense of like, can I start using? using Ave privately? Can I start using perpdex as privately? So I'm bullish on like practical

privacy on 2026 in terms of just like can I send my stable coins in a private manner? I think that will probably be like the next leg of growth for privacy, but that isn't necessarily mean to be bearish on like the private private crypto monies. Yeah, I don't know if Bitcoin itself needs to adopt like clear privacy measures. The lightning network is already quite private. And I I should point out that the UTXO model of a blockchain, which Bitcoin employs, is significantly more private than the account-based model that's used by basically every other blockchain. So as long as you take some steps and do coin selection, you can spend Bitcoin quite privately without revealing all of your other holdings. That is possible. I'm not saying that many people use it.

And I'll get to a bigger point in a second. But to echo Ryan's point, if you pay somebody, USDC from an Ethereum, like someone that works for you, a contractor or whomever, right? an employee or any, any person at all, ETH or USDA from your Ethereum account, they can see all of your holdings. They can see everything you've ever done with your Ethereum account, which, you know, could be fine. It could not be fine. If you're a business, it might be terrible, right? And so I think, yeah, I can't really put my finger on what started that Zcash revival in the fall. It seemed like the type of thing that would happen when there was a major privacy breach that frightened everyone. And I didn't see that catalyst out there. It's like,

Yeah, in another episode, somebody basically said it's probably because they wanted to form that Zcash debt. And so people who knew about an advanced bought a bunch of Zcash. And I was like, oh, okay. I think there's some, there's likely some truth to that. It doesn't mean it's wrong that privacy coins go up or they become more important. I want to echo that. I mean, again, I don't know why I keep talking about Canton, this enterprise blockchain, but it's private. That's one of its core features that they advertise.

And I think a lot of, you know, with the growth of co-oponization and, and, and sort of traditional businesses operating on chain, they're going to want privacy. You know, when you're competitive, you can't run an entire business on chain and have your competitors see every single payment that you send and receive, right? Like, there are practical reasons that aren't even philosophical and ideological, though I agree with the philosophical and ideological reasons for privacy. They're very practical reasons why privacy is important. And so, you know, I think there's a lot more to be done on privacy and crypto for sure.

I mean, people, you know, they focused on number go up and speculation. for so long. They, you know, Z-Cash has been around forever. The Electric Coin Company been around for a long time. And, you know, people didn't really care that much at scale. And I don't know if Zcash is the solution or some kind of, you know, others zero knowledge technology or upgrade to existing L-1s or whatever. But I think it's going to be important. And just to put a finger on the, you know, a point on the ideological and underpinning reasons for privacy, you know, people should note, we made this point when the tornado cash.

sanctions were first done, I guess what was that summer 23 that the Treasury added tornado cash to the OFAC SDN list. You know, obfuscating the origin of funds is not a crime. It's not money laundering. It's only money laundering if the origin was illicit finance, was a crime. So I can do this all I want. I can blow out my bank account into 50 different banks if I want to try to make it super hard to track my money. As long as the money doesn't come from crime, that is not money laundering. People, you know, there's nothing inherently sketchy about being private, right?

In fact, all of our phones and all of our chat apps are all encrypted for this reason. It's not crazy to think that, you know, finance could do for some more privacy. And by the way, your traditional finances are quite private. So I think, you know, it is a big trend. I hope it generally continues. I don't know if it's going to be a big investment theme in 26. I know some people think it will be. There are still obviously like huge sort of like political.

hurdles here. I mean, one of the big things they're debating on the market structure bill is how to handle defy. And one of the big fears that some of the opponents have is that, you know, North Korea or terrorists are going to use defy. Well, the same fears will be raised and have been raised in the past about privacy on chain. So it's going to mean, there's some headwinds. I don't know if it's going to be, but I it's a very important area in crypto. And by the way, just in the world broadly. Yeah, I mean, North Koreans are already using defy in case they didn't know. But actually, Ellen, I want to ask you, so do you agree with Ryan when he said that he views Zcash as a hedge about like Bitcoin, you know, I forget how we phrased it? Yeah, it's a hedge against like a super dystopian world where Bitcoin is no longer enough to protect you. I think that could be right. I think if pure on chain privacy is a huge need. And, you know, like I said, you can operate Bitcoin privately. but it's it's not encrypted, you know, or in any meaningful way. Yeah.

And by the way, actually never mind to me. When you said that you can basically use it privately, I would just caution for anybody who thinks that you can get away with money using Bitcoin. Please don't try because so many criminals had that thought and they got caught. So, yeah, I mean, like I said, like. Private, not actually private. Well, I mean, if you receive coins from somebody and you never mix them with your other coins, then you're never going to expose your other public keys and your other coins.

So there are ways to segregate it, but it's, yeah, it's not that easy. And you can, you know, if you're an activist operating in a, you know, hostile regime, like you need to be extremely careful. Like, that's a fact. Don't get me. My main point is that the way that that model works is inherently more private than Ethereum and Solana, which are basically privacy nightmares today, where you have one address that you consistently reuse.

By the way, that also makes Ethereum and Solana more vulnerable to quantum. attacks than Bitcoin, but that's another discussion probably. Yes, which I do plan to have on the show. I missed out on talking about the quantum thing in December, but it's coming. Okay, okay, because we're kind of over time, but we have to talk about staple coins. There's no way we can not talk about stable coins. So as everybody knows, 2025 was the year of the big stable coin race getting started. You know, Tether obviously is already the king, but, you know, just everybody else can, like, there are so many players that can see this pie is only going to grow way bigger and they all want to get in the game. So I was kind of curious how

you thought this competition will play out. You know, we have so many contenders. I'm not going to try to list them all. But, you know, in addition to tether, there's, you know, obviously circle, tempo, arc, plasma codex. I mean, there's, Athena, there's like many out there. It's not technically a stable coin, but close enough. So, yeah, where do you see the stable coin competition? petition headed in 2026. I can, I'll take this one to start. You have, well, you've got banks. You've got Genius Act compliance stable coins, which we, by the way, do not exist today.

If anybody tells you their stable coin is Genius Act compliant, that's not a thing currently. Those rules are still being implemented. But you are going to see U.S. dollar denominated stable coins that have licenses or registrations with the OCC or that are otherwise licensed by state or federal regulators and have very clear reporting and collateral types and variety of other things emanating from the Genius Act, which, you know, passed both houses of Congress in June and July of last year and was signed by President Trump in July. So the Genius Act, clear catalyst for the growth of stable coins, makes it totally legal pari Pasu one to one with other forms of cash. You're going to see

banks use it for interbank settlement. Many times that you send someone a Venmo, it may end up being a stable coin in the back that you don't even know is there. I think that's, that's a clear, clear trajectory for the use of stablecoins. They're undeniably better in many ways than things like ACH or Fed Wire or, you know, an actual wire, Swift. It's just, it's a shocking improvement. I don't view it as truly that crypto. It's really more of a blockchain thing.

I think the best stablecoins will be, and the biggest will be issued on decentralized layer one blockchains, you know, with surely on some layer two's as well, as opposed to, you know, some kind of DLT or enterprise blockchain. But how does you classify tempo and arc? Are they, what are you? Yeah, I would not classify those as layer one blockchains, decentralized layer one blockchains. They say that they're permissionless to build upon, meaning that you can deploy an app or access it, but if you can't, you know, run a full node and stake or validate, then I would put

it in a different category. I mean, I think it makes sense, by the way, why some of the issuers are going to want to run their own blockchains, because it's, you know, it's a lot of the same. especially if rates come down, their source of revenue will decline, which is mostly interest on their collateral, right? It's net interest income. And so they'd like to try to capture some of the transaction volume as revenue, which is why, and they think the, you know, L1 transaction fees might be the way to do that.

I think it's one reason why you're seeing them launch their own. But, no, I still think the, you know, the most widely, the best money is the most widely accepted money. And a new fangled corporate L1 or L2 blockchain is not nearly as easy to. connect to and accept funds on as Ethereum Solana, these globally adopted platforms. Another big area that was going to be interest, right? And who gets that interest income? Right now, you know, Circle and Tether capture all of it for themselves. There's a debate in the crypto market structure, you know, legislation that's happening

and being discussed about whether to, you know, add further prohibitions to prohibit the sharing of interest with stable point token holders. there's many on-chain alternatives like the Athena's and whatever else that give you interest, right? And there's many sort of defy. One interesting thing could be is if you see stricter clamp down on, you know, Genius Act compliance, stable coins providing interest to their token holders, you may see growth of, you know, interest bearing things in defy. Keep in mind, Genius Act doesn't make it illegal for any token to provide interest on underlying treasury holdings to token holders.

It makes it illegal for a Genius Act, stable. coin, right? So you can call yourself something else probably, say we're not a stable coin and maybe actually be totally legal. So you might see if it's impossible for token holders of genius stables to get that interest. You might see some more movement and growth in DFI TVL as, as, you know, dollar exposed individuals seek out that yield. But look, broadly, you're going to see this infiltrate card networks, banks, like fintech apps. It already is. It's just certainly. Between the different players, like, who would you give an edge to you? Like, so tether is kind of maybe obvious.

Who is like who do you feel like are the best position to sort of win? I mean, the existing issuers Tether and Circle are well positioned. I think it's unclear what the big banks are really quite doing. I mean, banks in general are sort of opposing, you know, aspects of stable coin adoption while probably also building it. You've seen a number of consortia be announced among banks. I think, you know, it comes down mostly to distribution. I think the big fintech apps can be great at pushing their own stables. I think even PayPal, which has done work with PYOSD and incentivizing its use, mostly in DFI,

I think you could see it become widely used simply because of how big the PayPal and Venmo ecosystems are. Even Cash App has now said they're going to do stables after spending, you know, years saying they wouldn't even go near those. They were only, only Bitcoin. So I don't want to give too many names, Laura, but, Like, I think platforms that have big distribution, they lose very little by, you know, converting what is otherwise a bank deposit into a stable coin.

Lastly, I think tokenized deposits, which some banks have talked about being a big thing. I know JPM is a tokenized deposit thing with Coinbase. I think they're very stupid. I think you're going to see significantly more growth out of Genius Act stables and other forms of stable coins than you will from tokenized deposits. Deposits are not fungible. One bank's credit is not as good as another bank's credit. and separately, when I send you money from my bank account or your bank account,

we're not trading IOUs for the deposit sitting in my, just kind of a stupid use case, in my opinion, that doesn't add a lot of benefit, much more likely to see growth of stable coins. I think a big question is what happens to Tether. They've announced that new entity, USAT is going to be their US version one, like what kinds of fungibility with USDT will that have? How will that actually play out? I mean, people forget Tether is one of the most important companies in the world.

They're not just one of the most important. in crypto. They are a massive owner, pharmaceutical and AI and robotics and agricultural concerns. They've got huge crypto. They've got this new NISI listed entity 21. They've got, they're massively embedded across whole ranges of the economy, not just in crypto. And they've got like a 180 plus billion dollar circulating supply of USDT. So I think really interesting question is like what is the clash between Tether and these new genius issued genius compliance stable coins, whether they're from fintechs or banks or other entities, what will that clash look like? Because their entrenched lead is so massive.

And I think that's a huge and fascinating question to see play out. Yeah, I feel like it's like an entrenched lead outside of the U.S. And so that sort of makes the competition in the U.S. look more interesting. But, yeah, I do wonder if the competition could lead them to not be able to, you know, keep all of the interests that they've been keeping, which is fascinating. But Ryan, what do you think? Yeah, on that note, I actually, I'm more interested in the clash between these genius compliance stable coins and circle. I feel like that's where the real disruption is going to be. I'm much more confident in Tether's market positioning because I think they actually have, they kind of own the user, right? Like people seek out Tether USDT and in a non-Western countries and whatnot. And I think like that's a huge push from the admin, right? Like Tether is able to kind of dollarize the world in a way that previously not possible. I'm not sure Circle and USDC kind of has that reach outside of the. the non-Western world. So I think a lot of these, like, newer stable coins and these banks are, or whatnot that

deploy these genius compliant stable coins, they're going to be gunning after USDC rather than USDT. So I'm more interested in that aspect. I would say I'm interested in some of the stable chains like tempo more so just like, I think if Stripe goes full in on that, they can onboard a bunch of their massive user base on chain and that's net good. I'm not interested in like tempo, like stealing. users and like existing like crypto use cases and like everyone's going to go do defy on tempo now like

i don't really see that kind of playing out um but yeah i think like more broadly i think stable coins are going to keep growing that's probably the most lukewarm take possible right now um but yeah like it's it's going to be exciting i'm much more confident in tether's positioning than kind of circle and also interested in like kind of how paypal us d us d d d u sdddddd u sdddddd yous SD plays out how Athene is able to rebound. They, they've had a massive reduction in stable coin supply over the past couple months as, as the market kind of cooled off. So it's curious, I'm curious to see how they kind of, to come back and whatnot. But yeah, I definitely think it's going to be a very interesting field to pay attention to over the next couple years.

Okay. So I know we're over time. So I'm just going to ask my last question. Let's do quick answers. This is an area that people are super, super interested in, which is agentic carmers. And, you know, people were very excited with this X402 standard, you know, when it like came out or started being used earlier this year. Maybe try to keep a prediction on how much, you know, we'll see in transactions in agentic commerce, like the dollar amount. I'd be curious in volume. Do either of you want to take a stab or just make any other prediction about agentic commerce? I think if we stick with the X402 standard, I think, on payments that use that standard will reach 30% of bases daily transactions and 5% of Solana

non-vote transactions in 26. Shout out to Lucas Chain on my team for that prediction. But that is our prediction. We think it's going to grow a lot. And look, agents using on chain dollars were very bullish in this. The one thing I'll add to that, I think this is more of a 2027 than a 2026 phenomenon. Okay. All right, you guys.

Well, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for. sharing your predictions around 2026. And thank you to everyone who joined the live stream, and we will catch you all here. Thanks, Laura. Thank you.