2025 Year in Review

Transcript

Crypto had that first sort of eight years uh and plus of infer and sort of speculation and buildout and rails and now it seems like we're in the kind of beginning of the endgame of crypto of like what it's going to look like in maybe 5 10 years time of like great apps fully abstracted from the end user super high performance blockchains and also institutions and corporates and people all around the world using this stuff. So yeah, excited about what's to come and really feels like we're at the real middle point now in crypto is evolution. >> Quick shout out to today's sponsor, Katana. We'll hear more about Katana's 1 billion CAT campaign later today. But for now, let's get into the episode. Hey everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on

Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. How we looking now? >> Not as good as when you were hasslehoffing there before. >> Sometimes you got to break it out for the folks. >> You got to give the people >> on the live stream. >> Uh how you doing, buddy? How's the uh end of the year?

>> Good. Good. I think this is the year I finally got like a lot of presents. Like not just the big ones, but like small ones. So, our apartment is like Yeah. full. >> I've been waiting 32 years for this. I'm >> Yeah, exactly. Now's the year. Uh >> delivered. >> Yeah, I do. I do feel like Santa Claus. Like this year I am Santa, you know? >> I am I am the captain. >> I'm the captain. What any do you know what you got yet or you haven't opened any open any? How how do you do presents? Are you asking for present?

Are you are you making family lists of presents these days? >> No. No. Like I just will tell my sister to get like some cool guy, you know, clothing or accessory because I'm like totally incapable of doing that myself. So, pretty sure I've slotted in some sunglasses that I will without a doubt lose within, you know, at least 18 months. The last sunglasses had a good run. They were like, it was like almost three years, two and a half years. >> I I had a similar thing. I got uh I allowed myself uh at the beginning of last year to think that I could get nice sunglasses again. And uh got a pair. Lasted for yeah about just almost two years. So,

I'm actually pretty happy with those. Um, >> maybe we should just view them like subscriptions, you know, like >> sunglasses as a service. >> Yeah. Like that's going to be, you know, 200 a year for two years of a good pair of sunglasses. Fancy >> innovative way to finance sunglasses. Just advertise those. >> Exactly. Park, you know, some white labeled stable coins on the side. Um, just be streaming payments for my sunglasses >> when sunglasses interrupt. Exactly.

>> New business model for the for the VCs out there. >> But, you know, I get I get why Warby Parker was successful. They're like, "Everybody loses and breaks this Like, let's just make it look just close enough to designer quality um that people and and build like a cool brand around it." >> Also, I don't know if you feel like this. Sometimes I feel like when I wear the branded sunglasses is kind of lame these days. It's like >> it's like a lame flex. It's not Yeah. It's not It's not our It's not our MMO. Like I had that like little Prada on the side and it was like that was the only part that I loved the sunglasses but it didn't it's not me. That's not me.

>> I don't think any I think that's like the least Boston thing I've ever seen you do probably. >> I know. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, we're going back to our roots with this one. We'll see what Sydney cooks up for us. Um, man, what about you? Are you just stocking up on winter, you know, Montana You get a like a a a new a new saddle for Christmas? >> Mostly just, you know, everyone here, the clothing is so functional, you know, it's, you know, it's functional clothing, right? It's stuff that layers well, wicks your sweat, you know, no fashion out here, right? This is functional wear. Uh, some hot chilies,

you know, that type of thing. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah, >> the opposite of Milan. >> Correct. I think Montana's pretty safely the opposite of Milan. >> That's why I'm all dressed up today in my little jumper over here. >> There you go. There you go, >> guys. Um, all right. Well, should we just launch right into it? We got we got an hour and 15 minutes left and change and we actually have a lot of categories. So, why don't we just launch right in. Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Bell Curve. This is a special we're going to do a two-parter for you.

So, we've got a this episode is going to be a 2025 wrapup podcast. So, we've got categories. Uh we're going to do biggest winners, biggest losers. We actually have a longer list than that. and we're just going to go through the highlights of this last year and then we're going to return uh next week with predictions for 2026. So, this is easy listening. This is, you know, if you've got a long flight or if you've got in-laws with political opinions, you can just pop those earbuds in and uh listen to us.

>> Very useful here. Veryful. Yeah. >> Happy holidays. >> Happy holidays. Copy. You know, >> before we even get in and introduce these categories, can we just get a >> qualitative retrospective on 2025? I, whoever feels brave here, just spin us a yarn. What did the year feel like? I thought this was a pretty interesting year for for crypto in general. Was it a good year? Was it a bad year? We're going to get into specifics, but I'm curious on just how you're feeling leaving 2025 as a year. What do you think, >> Zave? You got you got any hot takes you want to

>> Yeah. >> off? >> Um, yeah. I think in general it was a year of like a bit of consolidation. Um, you saw major ecosystems like Ethereum and Salana sort of power through and consolidate a lot of mind share and attention as well as Hyperlquid as like an emerging ecosystem. But most builders I now speak to are pretty much building in one of those three ecosystems, maybe base as well. Whereas I think probably this time 12 24 months ago there was still a lot of chains launching and it was pretty fragmented. So I think in general this year was like a bit of a year of consolidation regulation

obviously and I think crypto as a sort of credible asset class that institutions can deploy capital into for the first time uh with a lot of certainty. I think it was the first time that's kind of happened ever in crypto. So maybe I think Mike we spoke about it in Denver earlier this year but um you know the beginning of the end I think is what we were calling it of like you know crypto had that first sort of eight years uh and plus of infer and sort of speculation and buildout and rails and now it seems like we're in a kind of beginning over the end game of crypto of like what it's going to look like in maybe 5 10 years time of like great apps fully abstracted from the end user super high performance blockchains

um and also institutions and corporates and people all around the world using this stuff. So yeah, excited about what's to come and really feels like we're at the real middle point now in crypto is evolution. >> Yeah, I'm going to actually start just to build on that. I think Zave, you were an honorable mention. you didn't do it publicly so I couldn't list it as best calls but yeah when we chatted in February of this year at ETH Denver I think you did a really good job of calling what was going to happen from a market structure standpoint but also from a sentiment standpoint and I I think that we are probably one year into a three-year rough time frame of consolidation and ideological churn in crypto and I think one uh to to foreshadow some of my best calls or you

know thoughts on best calls and um you know just category winners of the year. I think one cycle that we've seen play out time and time again in crypto, but it feels like it's shortening and you've seen this, you know, uh I forget Shashana Rubenov or Shashana, the technology hype cycle phase. I think you've seen that play out uh in shorter and shorter timelines in crypto. And I think the the phases go like this. There's a speculative boom and a whole bunch of capital that moves in to fund a new sector. And in crypto, we also have this weird premium around community or like shilling. Uh and then that drives valuations really skyhigh. And then there's a long period where two things happen, which is the game of musical

chairs stops and then multiples rerate and consolidation happens. Um and there's a number of years that sometimes needed to take place before the winners can truly emerge. And where we've seen that actually play out in 2018, this was CFI infra. So this was the BlockFi and Celsius and or like kind of the custodian prime brokerage phase of crypto. And people don't remember back then actually there was a huge discrepancy in valuations around tokens actually looked cheap compared to what was happening in the private markets for some of these C5 businesses. And so that the ideas were good. Uh but a lot of first of all a lot of companies had to

fail. There had to be consolidations and you know multiples and valuations had to come way way in before you could get a couple of winners emerge. You know Anchorage and Galaxy I would call kind of the winners of that that phase. And DeFi has gone through a similar I mean DeFi valuations peaked. If you look at many of these charts um even really good projects have not gotten back to their you know DeFi summer 2020 late 2020 early 2021 valuations. And I think it's been confusing to people because we're, hey, we're revenue meta, we're fundamentals meta, and why my revenue is going up, but my token price is going down. And my response is that you have to work through a lot of the the valuation overhang that you built, you

just started with the wrong multiple. If you if you looked at a bunch of charts and you just started in late 2021, they look pretty damn good. Then it makes a lot of sense, right? It only doesn't make sense when you have this crazy data point to start with. So I think that we are one year into that playing out writ large across all of crypto, but it'll be different for different sectors based on how mature the categories are, how bad the tokconomics are, and how much speculative premium has recently been injected. That'd be my, you know, summary of 2025.

>> I think that's totally fair. I mean, I think it's like um a year of two two barbells basically, like things that have, you know, we've been waiting for for a really long time that are really awesome like prediction market success, you know, stable coins just everywhere, right? Like even every single fintech outside of crypto is thinking about stable coins. Uh RWA's a big year for like RWA finally um I think getting traction on chain and being used in DeFi. And then like on the other end of the spectrum, you had so much like shitty noise. Like DATs were so annoying. I really hated DATs. Uh I think we all saw that how that was going to play out. Um I think the creator tokens, you know, that was not like

great. Um just hasn't been successful. Caused a lot of noise and you know builders. Yeah, I'm looking at you big guy. >> I know. I almost put as my >> chunk chunk coin. Yeah, I decided not to because I knew I was gonna get a lot of for it. I still think that's going to work. I still have a lot of long-term >> I know. I know. I know. And then just lots of noise from like the, you know, Trump coin and all that crap. So, like, you overall I think net positive. But, um, this is also the first year I've been, you know, first full year of being heads down as like, you know, an operator building, um, a new network.

And, you know, we're in like a pre-launch stage. So, I've been it's been nice not to kind of have to be in the weeds of, you know, crypto Twitter every day to figure out what's going on. >> I think this is the year that crypto Twitter fully died in terms of providing any signal to noise. I think it actually does provide a good amount of signal now. It's just a really perfect contraindicator. Um, it's really it's useful in the same way that the magazine contraindicator, right? By the time something makes it on the cover of Time magazine, you can fade it or treat it as a contra indicator. I think that's what CT has become this year. Uh >> yeah, I think maybe one thing that CT lacks a bit as of 2025 is like kind of unique insight and good research, which is what I personally try and use CT for

the most. And I think in the year of AI slop mixed with these things happening in crypto, uh fortunately I think you get a lot less out of CT than maybe you once did in the past. And yeah, I think there's room for that actually going forward for people to build profiles around that. >> Well, I would also say too, one of the reasons I think the signal is so bad is because you you effectively haven't had much market feedback in terms of what actually works for the last eight or 10 years. And when I look out at CT and a lot of the big names, you know, it's a bunch of people who are young and haven't built companies. And so now the market hasn't rewarded actual value creation and company building for the last 10 years. It's super rational and

reasonable for why that would be, but I see a lot of takes and it's just like what are you talking about? um just often and and I think it comes from just the makeup of this industry and you know I think having there's always been this one common trend that at least I've seen in crypto in the last eight years is you get people that have experience in tech or finance and they come in and they're like this is crazy man it shouldn't work like this and and the natives the the crypto natives right and they were like no you don't get it and you know I think those people have been proven proven right and what they did know I think I still think there's a big gap in between people that come in this industry and they don't have a good understanding of

the market they don't take the market seriously and want to play the game on the field but there's a reason why people that have more experience and years under their belt have felt like this because it is a crazy upside down industry where some stuff is disruptive but some of it just never made any sense I don't think to begin with and so I think we're in the beginnings of the rubber meeting the road on a lot of this stuff and maybe but so I think this is a good this is a good opening ramble for for this I think we did capture capture the mood or the zeitgeist but why don't we start by just I'm going to introduce our categories that we're going to go through here so these are the uh we'll make these annual bell curve awards but we've got some some classic ones and

some that will be kind of fun categories so we're going to do biggest winners biggest losers uh best comeback story of the year uh most overhyped Um, that that'll be a fun one. Rookie of the year, best calls, worst calls, Ponzi of the year, best conference of the year, and then cockroach of the year. That was a late addition by Miles here. I love that as a category, though. That's that's epic. Why don't Why don't we just start with the easy ones here? Who wants to kick it off with biggest winners of 2025?

>> Yeah, I'll I'll go. I'm I don't have something that creative for this one, honestly. Like I think I would call Kouchi the winner. Um just for like mind share uh out in inside and outside of crypto. Um I think you know it's one of the first apps where I have lots of friends that have never you know touched a crypto uh anything in like cryptonative. Um and they're on Koshi and and loving it. Um mainly for sports betting like I think dominant you know um amount of activity on there is is in sports bettings. So, uh, lots of, I think, you know, really strong support from like their investors that are trying to basically ground them as the

winners. Um, we'll see if 2026 is as good for them. Um, we're seeing like, you know, Robin Hood and, uh, Coinbase now vertically integrating their own like um, prediction markets. Um, so we'll see just how defendable of a moat they actually have. But yeah, that's my that's my that's my one winner. >> Yeah, I've got a few I can briefly get into. And funnily enough, I've started off with Poly Market. >> Nice.

>> Interesting that Miles said Couchi. Maybe that's just their own biases, but um I think Poly Market that investment from IC was like huge. the 2 billion investment. That's like a real uh signal of how credible crypto is now to large institutions and that's just like such a telling point I think in crypto's uh history. So yeah, I think what Shane's done in general, you know, from almost being sort of sent to prison, you know, a year or so ago with people banging down the door to now like, you know, running this massive new financial market that institutions are adopting in real time and investing into I think is huge. A big winner for me there. Another one I think too large to ignore is Hyperlid. I think in general like

massive launch, the product's amazing. They've got a bunch of builders building on it now. Um great yeah following. So I think that's super impressive. And the other one I think is actually kind of Coinbase. I think like Bass as an ecosystem has done super well postregulation. They've really solidified themselves as like the category leader of crypto almost like all around. So, I think those three for me, if there was a podium, they would be standing on it. >> Yeah. Well, maybe to be uh a little bit different, I could say the Trump family was the biggest winner of uh 2025. No, just kidding. Um although they did they had a good year in crypto. I I was I again, not terribly original here. I originally had three that I wrote down

which were actually they're kind of the category winners to me of big uh big sectors which I think that in general the way that risk has been priced in crypto is kind of backwards for how it has historically worked in startup funding which is the earlier the stage you are the more risky it is because it's much more risky to fund something that's an idea versus something that has product market fit and is you know series D and just about to go public that type of thing but I don't think that's how it's functioned in crypto And actually there's a lot more capital in the early part of the stack because the idea is that you know we're going to launch a token. It'll probably be one or two years and then I can get most of my investment out. But there is a we're

dubious on how much we can create value post token launch right it's kind of that's the way that it's worked and I I think that that's about to flip and I think that the winners will be the category winners of big existing categories. This is why I picked Poly Markets over Koshi just because I think their strategy of their to me the brand that has kind of emerged and they own their own audience which I think will be really important. Um, I also picked Robin Hood because I think Robin Hood was really down in the dumps back in the end of 2022 and they've built their business back up and done something I think only a founder business could do in their shoes which was to really fully embrace crypto prediction markets and it seems like they've executed extremely well and leveraged their you know uh

almost 20 million monthly active users or whatever it is extremely effectively and I see a lot of consolidation happening in the exchange category and I think Robin Hood is really really well positioned to execute uh to execute on that. So the other the other the last winner I was going to say is Morpho. I think Morpho is having a great year and we're talking and one I think the thing that they got really right I think they got a couple things right but they got isolated um you know risk in borrow lend uh there's a lot of nuance to that how they've actually structured it. It's not 100% isolated but I do think the modular lending was roughly right as a category.

I think they won big fintech deals like Robin Hood and they fully realized the DeFi mullet thesis and I think they're one of these rare crypto companies that pivoted from cryptonative into a more B2B strategy. So, and then I think you know we're talking about this at the same Avara Labs and you know the DAO are viciously fighting and the token is dumping because of this and I have no idea if that's going to continue. Kind of feel like once they resolve that it'll be okay. But yeah, it looks like they're at the precipice of potentially emerging from a massive incumbent. So yeah, I think Morpha had a really good year too, I'd say. This episode is sponsored by Katana. Katana is a DeFi first chain built for deep liquidity and real yield by redirecting chain revenue

back to active DeFi users. The 1 billion KAT campaign is live. Bridge and deposit directly into vaults in one simple click and start earning immediately on your Ether, Bitcoin, USDC, and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to get started. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. All right. What about biggest losers? Biggest losers. Uh this is always a fun category. Um >> Oh, yeah. I I'll kick it off. Um maybe like not super obvious, but I think it was a really bad year for optimism. Um, you know, I think like >> pretty much everything outside of base is not doing great, which means that the Super Chain thesis is like kind of in

shambles right now. Um, I think they've lost a ton of talent to other projects like, you know, Tempo. Um and yeah, I think there even things like that they promised for a long time like like um you know the interop solutions um I think like ZK sync is leaprogging them and things like that and also going like more effectively after tradi stuff. So yeah I think like the rollup thesis rollup centric roadmap is in a you know delicate spot. Um, and I think, you know, optimism, which was always kind of the uh, you know, the leader of that um, of that cohort, uh, is is probably um,

at at its like all-time low in terms of, you know, sentiment on how it's going to play out. >> I I maybe I can go next because I'll I'll just build on that. And I called the whole infra as a category the loser of 2025. And I would lump I would lump everything from genurpose L2s at large uh to uh you know RAS shared sequencing. I think all of that stuff has just had an unbelievably challenged year and I want to do a call back to this is the the sequence that I've seen play out a number of times. I think there is going to be a happy ending but you're going to have to cockroach through it because I think there was just a massive amount of

overfunding. There were broken mental models. I think infra because it was so close to L1's where there's still this open question of monetary premium. I think people assumed that that premium was going to extend to the infra layer and that they didn't really have to think through revenue models and talk there were some really wonky ideas that these teams even view their view their own revenue streams and business models and I think that's collapsing and I think that people now understand there's going to be consolidation and they're going to be valued just like regular businesses. So I think that there's a lot of intellectual uh yeah difficulties as the market is showing that the the previous mental model was not correct and I I do think there will be a happy ending for those

that can stick it out but I just called IM infra as a whole the loser of 2025. >> Yeah, I can again build on you guys. So I've got a few things here. Um I think one of the biggest losers is stream finance uh losing losing 93 million a few weeks ago I think um can't help anyone. So yeah, that was a huge loser for me. I think we still are understanding the implications of that actually in crypto and who knows if that's to blame for some of the market activities as of late. Um some other ones which are actually related to your point around inframike. Um so I've got in general the Bitcoin ecosystem.

So, not Bitcoin itself as an asset, but kind of like layer twos and uh you know, some ordinal stuff like that seems to me like that was very hot like 12 months ago and or six months ago even and might have fallen off a cliff uh more recently. So, yeah, curious to see if that does come back at all. Another one that maybe has been a loser now for several years, but this year again might even top the list is just gaming as a category. Uh, crypto gaming. Someone posted on crypto Twitter a few days ago like some of the amounts of dollars raised is just insane. And the amount of value they've delivered is is is very very little. So, not sure if that will ever play a role within crypto, but at

least for now, it's a huge loser, at least in my eyes, even though there are some cool games out there. Um, and then I think another loser, which you know, who knows if this comes back as well, but at least in 2025, I feel like the modular blockchain thesis in general. Uh, potentially as of this year, like it's unclear to me if in 10 years time this will be a thesis or things will consolidate around uh majors like Salana and Ethereum and maybe just like chains that own the pool stack. So maybe that as a thesis I think hasn't been their biggest winner and I guess some price um activity has sort of reflected that. So yeah, it chipped in a few there but there are a few in my eyes

that didn't do that well this year. >> Yeah, I agree. Um I think there's like a lot of hidden complexity uh in like in building rollups, right? And seeing Tempo become an L1, arc become an L1. Um, you know, I think there's probably more like new like appj1 like launches this year than than rollup launches. And that just, you know, I think like we're kind of wrong on some assumptions there. Um, and we're starting to see revealed preferences like, you know, going towards it's actually easier, you know, in a lot of ways to launch an L1. Um, so yeah, I couldn't agree more.

>> Yeah, I think that I would be a long-term supporter of modularity as an idea. I think the two things that people got wrong is it has to be one versus the other. There are large successful integrated ecosystems like Apple where everything is tightly controlled and then there are you know ecosystems like Android or you know Google which has a totally separate more modular quote unquote strategy and I think it was a mistake to ever say that one had to be like the other but in terms of the exist I think that the whole industry got the path dependence side of things wrong.

They vastly overestimated the size of the market and the amount of specialization that was required. Right? And I think people didn't really think that the Kyle Sanmani criticism of modularity I think stands today although I think long term he'll be wrong about it which is if you have a bunch of different folks in the value chain everyone has to make margin right and they have to coordinate together and that is just maybe at at a very large market size that makes a lot of sense but at the current market size it doesn't make sense for everyone to grab a margin and it's much quicker to coordinate if it's just one team making a bunch of calls versus all these different players in the stack that you need to work with. So >> yeah, and maybe I would I would push back a little bit on just like calling

infra as a category a loser because the top of the stack infra providers like have been huge winners like privy and turnkey um and even some of like the behind the scenes, you know, interop interop providers, right? So it's more like the stuff at the bottom of the stack and and truly like the middle that just, you know, I think is is um overestimated the size of the market. >> Yeah. I think two things there with regards to modularity. I think maybe we overestimated the amount of modularity that we need. You know, Ethereum as a chain kind of already is modular. You have the layer 1 and then there is some layer 2s that specialize. But we've seen now that a lot of the power has sort of consolidated to base and there's about

100 other chains that don't have a lot of activity and then Ethereum is trying to sort of bring the data availability side back in house and they don't want to outsource that to other chains. And so like I think in general probably both going to exist like as Mike said before you have your salas which are pretty monolithic and then you have maybe something like Ethereum which is like okay bit of a mixture like Michael was saying a bit modular a bit monolithic and some things it does and I think Miles your point as well around that layer that was successful this year totally it's kind of like the middleware layer which I think was a massive problem in crypto before 2025 of like just user experience it was impossible to on board I think now this layer has been built out really successfully In

2025, you've seen massive acquisitions. I think a lot of value has already been acrewed or acquired, let's say, by these companies and now it's really spurred on the application era. So, yeah, I think massive winner in 2025. >> All right, let's do comeback story of the year. I can start. I can start. I thought there was an obvious one for this category. I'm going to use Oiler um as the obvious uh the comeback story of the year. So, Oiler just I I know that many people are somewhat familiar with this story, but there was a massive hack which was there was I don't know exactly the details, but it was a a flash loan based attack which exploited some kind of vulnerability um in the smart contract layer of the protocol and there

was uh the rough amount stolen was uh around 200 million and I think at that point Oiler had been growing and we were early in this phase of modular lending and they had about 300 million of TVL and boom went to zero overnight and they spent the next year and a half rebuilding. And I thought one of the most impressive parts about this story was that they didn't rebrand. I thought that would have been an easy choice. The name Oiler is, you know, tainted forever, but they didn't. And they built back to in 202 uh sorry, in when did they they actually recovered uh I guess they they recovered um the funds uh which was the first big feather in their cap. Um there's a whole crazy backstory

around that that recovery. I don't know they actually did that but um yeah they they recovered that and then uh yeah they relaunched and now they have something like you know two billion um in TVL by the end of this year and it's just a phenomenal story of grinding it out and I can't even imagine what that's kind of every founder's worst nightmare to get a hack like that and I just have an enormous amount of respect for Michael Bentley and the team over there. So, I thought Oiler was the the one. >> Yeah, like by the numbers probably hard to argue with. Go from TBL like literally drain to zero and back to where it is today. It's super impressive.

>> Um my um comeback story of the year probably is ICOs. Um and I think everybody wanted to see ICOs for like come back for a very long time. there was you know obviously there's issues there were issues with the original ICOs like just being vaporware um but there was not I I think like the mechanism made sense and is like one of the best things that crypto has you know put out into the world and enabled right like we are very good at capital accumulation um and giving access to to earlier stage stuff now there's still always going to be tons of like adverse selection uh and retail is not always going to win, right? But like the fact that this is

now okay again. Um, and you know, as like we're I'm building like a layer one, the fact that we can do an ICO is awesome and we can price that ICO like at a reasonable valuation and like >> you know, I think I think the market has finally kind of like figured it out. So >> that's my uh comeback story. >> Yeah, my comeback story is a person. Um, I think CZ from Binance uh being pardoned. >> That's a great by by the new government. Huge comeback story. Served four months in prison last year, paid a multi-billion dollar fine and is now hosting massive conferences in Dubai. Uh like the one that he hosted recently and is again seen as someone that the space really looks up to even

after all of that and seems like he's going to live a very fruitful life from now on even after all that debacle. So yeah, very interesting to see where he ends up and also just a sign of the times in crypto of like, you know, some things that went horrendously wrong before 2025 can go very very right as soon as you get some good regulations in place and a good government that's pro crypto. >> Yeah, that's such a good one. I I would also just in the immortal words of LL Cool J, don't call it a comeback. I I think CZ I think CZ was always in the driver's seat probably. But yeah, he did he he's probably the I I kind of think of him as the Michael Milin of crypto in a in a way where he really pioneered a

massive category like Milin did for junk bonds and maybe he pushed it a little bit. He was certainly extremely ambitious and you know treated the the rules more like guidelines but he was ultimately I think proven right and vindicated in the end and like Milin was and I think it's similar for um CZ although maybe some of the tactics are a little more you know >> yeah well he's a he's a fierce competitor you know like I would not want to go up against Binance um and you know I think he's equally feared and like revered in the industry. Um because you know they have a ton of leverage. Um and they will exert that leverage to

extract. Um and yeah, it just depends on what side of you know uh the game you're on. >> Can I make a comment to on your IC? I thought the ICO was such a good uh comeback story for the year. And one something that I didn't fully understand until relatively like the last couple years is that you know every once in a while there are they happen more infrequently but the way that capital formation happens does get innovated on and the story that I always love for this is uh standard oil what they did for equity and you know equity was a concept that you know the joint stock corporation that was an east India company uh you know way of financing new expeditions and ships and things like

that which is selling ownership in a public enterprise and financing things that way. There was a long gap before that was really used and we have equity markets like we think of today. And the way that the reason John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil adopted them is because it was illegal when Standard Oil was incorporated in the US to do business in multiple states. And the way that they got around that was they created a trust where the trust owned ownership, you know, had a controlling stake in each of these state-owned corporations. Hence the phrase antirust. That's why that's why we use that language. And um and the way part of that, you know, having that trust ownership, you know, made JD

Rockwell think, hey, uh this equity stuff actually could be pretty useful here. and he was kind of the first one to really think about not generating creating wealth just by earning income but by equity appreciation. So I I think crypto it's been underappreciated the innovation that crypto has taken in that regard. So I thought that's a great I think ICOs are going to be massive. Uh Miles, great great prediction. Okay. Um most overhyped. Who wants to go first here? >> I thought of this one before. I'm on the fence if it's uh overhyped or underhyped. I'm going to take the side of overhyped right now and that is Worldcoin. I think uh in 2025

uh obviously Sam Alman's influence in Worldcoin and everything happening with OpenAI. Uh the price of Worldcoin has been in the multi-billions. um the orb as we all know is scanning people's eyeballs etc to on board them to the platform. It's TBD for me right now of like this is an ecosystem that people actually want to build in or if like a lot of it is being subsidized by the sheer amount of capital they have from their market um capitalization. But um it'll be interesting to see going forward if these people who are scanning their eyeballs are actual users and then keep coming back to the app or if they're just a user which you know scans their eyeball and then never comes back.

And I've spoken with some founders recently which are deliberately targeting Worldcoin as an ecosystem. But I've found these founders have already had allegiance with Worldcoin team and doing different things for them anyway. So they're kind of aligned. And I've also spoken with a few founders recently which have actually moved away from worldcoin where they started in that ecosystem because for the real users the brand etc and then realized that it didn't have many users and so they've gone to base or salana etc. So I still think the market cap is is pretty high for for what it is. So that's my call there.

>> That's that's a good one. I think um like I've also talked to a few founders that um you know they're building like kind of classic like crypto apps with you know a financial component. They want to go after crypto native traders and they're just not finding that in the world coin ecosystem. Um because I think worldcoin's been really good at penetrating like South American market. Um I think they have a lot of traction in uh Asia and Africa but it's not like the Salana crowd right. Um, and so yeah, I wonder if they'll do if the, you know, the story will shift more and more towards like B2B TOC for them. Um, so you know, they have like the Tinder integration and that's kind of where I

see this going. But, um, yeah, I think that's a good one. >> Um, >> what's the Tinder integration? Uh, so like they were scanning faces like on in the Tinder app to like like authenticate that you're a real person and not an AI. >> Yeah. So it's like when you like um in your Tinder profile you'll have a little Worldcoin badge. And I would say that's also like pretty bearish on your chances of success on Tinder if anybody knows that you're a crypto bro. But like uh it is like that is kind of the stated like need for this right from the very beginning. Uh it's just you know an increasing need to like be able to tell

who's an actual human. Um but anyways yeah my overhyped uh is probably you know Ze you mentioned it already but like the Bitcoin ecosystem and everything outside of people that just like hold Bitcoin in ETFs. Um like I think the ETFs continue to do great. Uh the whole like promise of doing anything DeFi related or anything you know like scalable um building apps on on Bitcoin is that you know you have this massive holder base right um and if only like 1% of them you know were to like actually adopt these apps then it would be you know we would have massive outcomes that would be bigger than you know the like

the TVL of Ethereum like L2D5 right um and it just continues to not happen. Like I think Babylon has had a tough year. They were trying to make Bitcoin staking, you know, a a category. Um the L2s like it's really really hard to build an L2 on Bitcoin in the first place just as like a engineering challenge. Um and I do wonder even if they're successful like who are these users and are they really here to do anything other than like farm points and then move on to the next thing? Um which I think for the most part that's what it's been. So, that is my overhyped award.

>> Yeah, I think that's a great one, Miles. Um, all right. I I had a couple ideas for this one. I was going to do AI and crypto. Um, that that's a I think they just got it wrong, but I I think the one that I am going to uh use for this category is incentives are overhyped. And like Zave to use your example here of looking at Worldcoin. This is I mean this is this is essentially the story of almost every single protocol in crypto. And this is what I'm showing here on Worldcoin is market cap. So this looks like a pretty good chart, right? Okay.

There's kind of steady, you know, higher highs, lower lows. Then you look at price and it is the exact opposite. And I think that there's ever and because I've actually been so so nice to Morpho, you know, this is kind of, you know, the I would love to own more Morpho here, but it's tough. I mean, if you look at the price chart and the market cap chart, they look very different. And I think that in general, this is a an idea that I understand why we started doing it, but I think that incentives as as a concept are generally overhyped and we should stop just giving away doing essentially rampant stock-based compensation that causes the price of

the token to go down. And my my assumption is that you know that old phrase, I know I'm overspending on marketing, I just don't know where. Uh I would I think it's just time to stop overspending on marketing because a lot of one as you know a lot of people want to pay in token and you know blockworks is always like okay we'll do it but we don't want to hold this token. Um right so you don't want it as someone who's receiving it you just want cash. Um and then it's just bad on the other side too because you end up spending far more than you really should. So no one's winning, I would argue. And I think that, you know, I very much understand that probably there are some areas where you just need to incentivize a certain behavior. I think we should just start

doing that in cash because it will force everyone to recognize what these things are, which is a real expense. And I think the marketing I think at this point it's better marketing to not dilute your token by 10% a year, even if it's leading to real business outcomes. the far better marketing would be to make your token price go up instead, which will lead to positive reflexive results for your ecosystem. So, I think in general, my most overhyped idea in crypto in general is this idea of incentive programs. All right. Uh, next category, rookie of the year.

I I can lead off on this category. I think this is going to be a relatively controversial one because this is a project that people have very differing views on and they technically started in 2024. But I picked Athena for this category. And I had a couple I had twofold reasoning here, which is one, you know, when you think of most popular coins or biggest appreciation or wins for VCs, like I think Dragonfly really ate on this investment um this this cycle. They did quite well with leading the seed. Uh and um you know I think the coin just did super not only did Athena do quite well but USDE um you know was able to attract a lot of uh you know a lot of TVL at one point they had like 15 billion of TVL FD went to 10 billion

market cap of five so big financial success. Um I also think they they pioneered a category here. Uh, you know, I think that they were the first one even that the they used to call themselves a stable coin. I understand they're not doing that anymore, but I think that they successfully tokenized a big, you know, hedge fund kind of carry trade. And I think they're the leaders of this new category of non-custodial onchain asset management. Um, and I think that that's going to be a huge category into the foreseeable future.

Um, primarily driven by this kind of vault infrastructure and modular lending. But I think they were the first. They didn't do exactly that, but I think they broke open the floodgates to this whole new big category. So I that was my rookie of the year. >> Nice. I have I don't have like a single rookie of the year that I feel like really strongly about. Um you know, I think I think Commonwe has had a really good year. So like they're like the darling of you know, I think like crypto Twitter research folks. Um they've executed really quickly. They've put out um you know a lot of I think like that's probably where like modular infra is going. They put out a lot of modular infra at the very bottom of the stack

and I think getting Tempo is like massive. I think that is a bigger win than any like RAS provider has had or any like L1 as a service has had. Um so yeah, props to them. Uh I think Doppler had a great year. So Austin Adams project um and Cooper like I think every product they've put out has been really good. Um all of their integrations have been really strong and I think like they've just you know got a lot to work with going forward. Um >> so this is bullpost right Miles. >> Hey the product works great you know uh and that is because of Doppler. So uh I will give them lots of credit there even

even for Chunk. Um, and maybe like prop AMMs on Salana just taking over like tons and tons of market share. Like this is not something I've dug super deeply into, but um I think they've really changed like the market structure of um of transaction activity like on uh Salana in general. So those are my rookies of the year. Yeah, I think great one on the prop amm's um chorus one released some research today which actually gave a great summary into how these things work and the spreads people get and how far we've come in terms of that kind of financial infrastructure which is super interesting for me. This is one that Mike and I talked about a while ago which I think is still potentially

flying under the radar a little bit which is Canton. Um, I think they've stepped up onto the scene and supposedly they have like 3 trillion or something in I don't know, TV or something like that. I can't remember what the actual number is. Whether or not that's actually uh concrete remains to be seen and on chain, but I do think that they might be the first of a few that could go live in future of these more institutional type chains. and they've done a good job at getting the right institutions involved and it's it's super early days, but um I think that they've yeah done a good job on the go to market side. It's been interesting to see where they go in 2026.

>> Nice. Great one. Three trillion in TVL. I think if that number is real, we just have to redefine. Actually, >> Google this because I feel like I've seen the number thrown around a few places. So, it's some outrageous number that I couldn't believe when I was reading it, but supposedly these are the numbers. >> Yeah, we'll return to we'll return to Kanton. I've got I've got them for an award in another category. >> I think I know uh I think I know you're going to use their milestone. >> Shout out to today's sponsor, Katana. Katana is a DeFi first chain built for deep liquidity and high yield. No empty emissions, just real yield and sequencer fees routed back to DeFi users.

Incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, Katana is launching with notable ecosystem of primitives, assets, and partners like Morpho, Chainlink, and more. Katana's 1 billion KAT campaign is live. Bridge and deposit directly into Vault in one simple click and start earning immediately on your Ether, Bitcoin, USDC, and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to get started. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. Okay. Uh, best calls of the year. >> I've got I've got a decent one I can go with. Um, I think the folks that um like uh I'll just call it white labeled

stable coins as a service. Like folks that thought that, you know, there was only going to be like one or two massive, you know, like USDC and Tether will like just continue to be, you know, dominant. Um, I think that was like not fully wrong yet. Um, but I think the like white labeled like stable coins as a service um, category emerged this year and like was was enormously derisked by the genus act and like this idea that every big fintech or every big institution will have its own stable coin I think is like um becoming close to consensus now and like we've seen just tons and tons of launches. like CLA, SoFi, like I think we'll just see

more and more of those. >> Um, so I had a actual specific Twitter post that I remembered and this will also probably be a controversial one here, but I thought Anom summed up 2025 and the future state of crypto actually extremely well. Um, and I it's a very long post. I'm just going to read uh read this. This was back in I did this a couple months ago back in September, but Doge is a good analog for this cycle. 2021 was absolutely batshit insane with how high we pumped altcoins. Covid crashed directly into never-before-seen Fed assisted economic stimulus. This cycle has been lower highs across the board for most altcoins and liquidity has flowed elsewhere. simultaneously believe that we have seen the peak of

crypto uh price action driven purely on speculation about future growth and also that we are entering the most bullish period for businesses augmented by crypto rails. Um I'm skipping around here. Two main drivers of majority of revenues in crypto today. Users uh that have willingness to absorb high fees because of how much speculation is present with users trying to hit home runs and efficiency and low cost of blockchain rails compared to traditional systems and went on to make a bunch of uh I'll link this post here a bunch of frankly good calls about you know not being a believer in like the doomer dollar thesis and bullish on stable coins. I thought the two parts about this that I just thought were articulated really well was kind of this

it's this summed up exactly how I feel which is uh my feeling is basically we're in you know 2002 you know for the tech bubble where we've gone through a lot of the speculative excess and you're going to see massive businesses built that's just a totally different valuation and way of creating value and I think this was summed up really well here but I also really like this ide this you know way of generating value which is Yeah, a lot of the early winners are basically the companies even like the Coinbases, right, and the Robin Hoods that uh but really a lot like Pump Fund is probably the best example of this, which is just rad users over the coals because there was this idea of, you know, 100x and contrasting that with what blockchain should offer, which I

think is better for the world and more sustainable in general, which is, you know, more efficient, lowcost access to finance for everyone. And I just loved this contrast. So yeah, I thought this was just a really good maybe less of so of a call. Uh the other thing I got to give him credit for actually is right when uh you know he basically called the bottom and top of Salana. I don't know if folks are paying attention to this but you know he bullposted Salana super aggressively at the bottom and then as soon as Salana crossed post Trump uh the 200 day moving average he was like it's over and literally nailed the bottom and top of basically the only thing you had to get right in the in the last three years. So yeah, props where it's due.

Anom had some really good calls. Yeah. >> Yeah, that's a good one. Um, my best call is going to go to the great uh Chris Beniski. I think he has called Market Cycles several times and I'm thinking that he's doing the same right now. I'm also going to quote tweet something Chris wrote uh back on November 17th. So he says, "The unfortunate truth is many alts are likely to revisit their 10th of October wick lows before this is all said and done." So I think pretty much since October, he's been relatively bearish, I think, on on the space and on Bitcoin topping. And not overly bearish in terms of like, you know, I feel like from his

views, maybe he thinks we've got 50% draw down on the top of Bitcoin. So maybe ending around the 60K range. But I certainly think that he does subscribe to the sort of the four-year cycle. And I think right now it looks like a great call because it seems like we're going to have a tough few months. But maybe things come back and it looks like a not as great call in hindsight. But I did see a website today actually and I'm forgetting the name right now. But it's got like the sentiment of the top sort of analysts in the space and how they feel about sort of prices in general and especially Bitcoin. and Chris was top 20 there and I think he was one of the very few which was you know relatively neutral to bearish where I think a lot of people are very bullish. So I think

we'll know in 12 months time how good this call is and it's potentially a very very good one but it's an early one and I feel like I'm maybe sitting more on his side right now where I do think things have a bit further to go before they get better um towards mid to late next year. >> Okay, the real fun category worst calls. Worst calls. What do people have for this one? >> I've got a good one that I that I just came up with just then because I didn't actually have on for this one, but um I think worst calls, Hayden Davis, the memecoin launcher. I think him launching meme coins with the Argentine president or whoever it was and scamming a bunch of people. Terrible call. He got done.

Everyone found him in a very short amount of time. So yeah, cracked on this one. >> I think that was it. That was >> I forgot about that. >> Very left go. I think that one >> nice. Um yeah, I was gonna say like just anybody who thought DATs were a good idea. Um, like every cycle we come up with some sort of financial new financial engineering instrument uh that just creates a bunch of noise for people and like now it's buying like a shitty pink pink sheet like stock for like a couple million injecting like a ton of you know tokens and cash into it and then just seeing what happens when this

thing trades you know you know above or below like um NAV um trades out premium or a discount. Like all this just adds noise. And if you're trying to just like get people to, you know, uh become interested in the space by like, you know, maybe buying an asset first, like why do we have to do this again? Um and I just think a lot of like, you know, folks um with access to capital, with access to be able to like, you know, raise these things just saw this as like a way to make a bunch of money. Um, so yeah, not not not a big fan of those.

>> Yeah, I thought the DATs are the most nakedly cynical uh thing we've ever seen in crypto in a way. Um, and I I think the reason that why they feel different they felt differently than me to memecoins is because the the backers of them were by by definition all very institutional. And you know, I I think I also think that there will be some DATs that survive or some, you know, even like thinking of Labs entities as potentially public companies. I I can kind of squint and see some value there.

But I think in the way that they were initially structured, they were so nakedly predatory and obviously retail was going to like the whole business model was largely predicated on retail losing money and it it felt gross. It felt really gross. Uh I I think so low point as an industry. I I actually had that originally in the most most hyped and then I moved it. Um because I thought everyone was going to pick on DATs. So um I thought the the worst calls of this this is not necessarily a 2025 phenomenon, but what we've been harping on dual equity and token structures. Um I I would just say that that's not a workable thing. Uh I I don't think that you can have two. And there's the investor perspective on

this, but I also want to just double down on and underline the function that one instrument, equity or token, the what that's supposed to serve is it's supposed to create alignment for a business at the highest level. And and then not to pick on them, this is playing out very publicly in Twitter and the forums, but what you're seeing at a is the exact opposite of that, right? and you're seeing okay uh I thought Mark Zeller had a really good post uh about this and where he outlined who actually took on the execution onus of a the protocol in the last three or four years and he pointed out a labs specifically took a step back they branded to Avara

so that they could be broader and not just be a and they had lens remember a lot of resources went towards lens uh which was their social media play and he to me pretty convincingly outlined the impetus being driven from the DAO and so yeah you can't really have it both ways and you now have two camps within a as a protocol and so it feels very misaligned and complicated and I just fundamentally think it's not a workable structure or will always be uh just not as good as having one instrument that unites everyone. So I just don't think it's a workable structure. I think that's the worst call of frankly the last 10 years,

but that's what I would say. Okay. Um, Ponzi of the year. Miles, this is your category here. Why don't you lead us off on Ponzi of the year? >> Yeah. Um, I'm My Ponzi of the year is Canton. Um, so, >> well, let me let me unpack it. And by I'm not like a total Canton hater. like they have um what they've done is impressive. But like my why I'm calling them the Ponzi at the year is because they they launched a while ago. Uh you had to be like an institutional sort of insider to do anything on the chain to participate. Um they have basically a um an incentive structure where like they

you know it's like app incentives. So, if you just spam the chain doing like anything, you are going to make a ton of like farming basically like mining rewards. Um, and yeah, I've talked to a ton of folks in like the RWA like Tradfi space that are like, >> "Yeah, we don't actually have an app. We just like, you know, set something up on a Canton subnet and we just kind of like spam the chain and we get paid a million dollars a year a month, sorry, in like Canton tokens like anywhere between I've heard like a hundred,000, you know, per month from some from some like uh companies, a million a month from others. Um, and uh there's only one way to like buy Canton token. Up until now,

you had to go through DRW um you know, a market maker. there's like no real like you know efficient liquid price for it. Um and so they've and and like Z comment like they've got three trillion in TVL. It's like nobody really knows what's going on over there but like they've now got a big you know they've pumped up huge numbers right on the chain. uh they paid out a ton of incentives like tokens to folks that are mainly like Tradfi orgs um or you know individuals working at those orgs like Citadel traders literally like wash trading like across the chain and now they've got you know all the numbers to back up a huge like very high FTV and they're going to

make a big push into retail. So like get ready for you know clones of all the EVM like DeFi apps you know launching in the in the next year retail coming on board and buying like you know 100x whatever these like earlier like insiders you know paid for the token. Um and yeah I think like uh I'm I'm a little skeptical but I got to give it to them. like they basically launched a token, got it up to a really high FTV like without ever having to list it publicly, right? Without having to like do the retail games super early. Um, and yeah, people have been like loading up on Canton tokens through, you know, DRW all year.

Um, so yeah, it's my Ponzi of the year. Non non-obvious Ponzi. >> Those Ponzi nomics uh seem to be the making of a good rookie to me. So that's uh maybe that's why they won rookie for me. >> Fair enough. >> Um so okay, yeah, Ponzi of the year. Um I'm going to go with leverage looping. So I think this year was definitely a big year for leverage looping especially of stable coins. I think people made some big gains uh you know using a high yielding stable coin like SUSD to take out USDC and then reloop that back in to you know then get more SUSD etc. So yeah I think that was a fantastic one that's

done really well actually this year and I think there was maybe some hairy moments uh more recently a few months ago about this unwinding but it seems like it's unwinded quite cleanly. I think this is poststream finance actually. So potentially one that is sustainable um and might end up growing in future years. >> Well I I I think actually it's a mark of how far the industry has come that neither one of those are objectively ponzies in my view. So I actually my I would just push back on both of those is like I uh I think the leverage looping stuff is actually to me that's taking a trade that's very like a very common activity in financing which is leveraging up you know more safe trades

and uh you know like kind of risk parody as an example or like putting leverage on a you know treasury kind of convergence trade that type of thing. Um, and I don't I don't know, Milo. Even like the Canton thing, I'm kind of like I sort of feel like they did a pretty good job actually. Uh, so I don't know, maybe it's a mark. I don't I don't actually have a great one for this category. Sorry, guys. I couldn't actually think of it. The closest one that I came to was like restaking farming points. Um, and that's not it's just like not a Ponzi. It was just it was a lot of bad behavior that went on around that whole narrative. And uh not necess Sorry, not necessarily restaking.

I was thinking of liquid restaking um on top of that was like really where they it it was just the part that just didn't make almost any sense and the farming rewards were so high and um there have been winners frankly like Ether actually Ether could have been a great rookie of the year. I just wasn't thinking about it. They've really transitioned and done super well, I think. But I think the way that that category was originally conceived of was just >> Yeah, I actually had I had a guy for another category which we haven't touched on yet.

>> Okay, we might have had one actually. >> All right. Uh we've got best conference of the year and cockroach. Uh let's go for best conference here. Uh let me just skip ahead. I know you all picked dats. Um but Uh no. >> Z, Z, you actually go to conferences, so you uh >> best uh best block works conferences are permissionless and DS. >> Best non-block works conferences for me. Okay, so Consensus Hong Kong started last year. I thought that was a super cool conference and very underrated. So recommend anyone who didn't go to it last year, who's thinking about exploring the Asian ecosystem to go to that and 26. And then the other one I think you just can't look past token 2049 Singapore. um that they're my

favorites outside Block Works. >> Uh best conference is no conferences. Uh I've had an amazing year of being like pretty much able to be heads down and like not have to go to another conference every single quarter and it's been awesome. Um and then yeah, no, I'll I'll give Block Works, you know, credit for bringing it back to the US. Um and yeah, I thought that was awesome, too. >> Thanks. Uh yeah, I'm not even going to try to not be biased here. I just picked D as a but if I had to defend it is as having run D for six years I think we were just way too early to that trend of institutions and I mean I spent you know four years ebe begging hey like please

come learn about institutional finance and now it's really just erupted uh and yeah I think we were almost a little bit painfully early to that category but um I think now it's we actually sunset permissionless because it just wasn't worth the effort. given how much natural momentum there is behind the institutional part of the space. So, um yeah, not even going to try to not be self- serving. Um all right, cockroach of the year. This is a great category. >> Dave, you want to bring back your Is this Is this the one? So, this is the one you had. Ether 5.

>> No, there was another category we had. Um >> cockroach of the year. Um I can give the next category if you don't have it but um yeah I don't know like I feel like some of these privacy ecosystems so maybe like a ZK sync or a stark net um I think these things are gone but not forgotten and coming back a little bit with the privacy narrative and maybe we'll continue coming back also actually aztec that's a bit of a co cockroach in itself of like that's been built for I don't know eight years almost I think and now just going live with the tokens.

So, these privacy chains, I think, that have been around forever since we never able to be killed and keep going back. >> Yeah, I had them on my list. Um, and I mean, they've they've had a rough go of it, right? Like you would almost be sent to jail if you were doing like anything in privacy. Um, that was actually launched and live, right? That was maybe Aztec's like advantage. Um, and you had like, you know, even the the infert providers like like Predicate and Fairblock. Um, Penumbra, like if they had just lasted another 6 to 12 months, they might have made it. Um, but yeah, my cockroaches though are I I had um had Securitize at the top of my list. These guys have been around forever, right?

Like like I don't know, 8 to 10 years. Um, and they've just they just didn't they were way too early. They didn't die. Um, and now they've got like an an incredible suite of of um of products, you know, between like issuance, uh, they have the ATS. They acquired a massive, uh, fund admin biz, um, called MJ MG Stove. Um, and I think they're going to be on the right side of history in terms of like um, you know, their their model versus what the DTCC is doing on on on Canton and like actually issuing like doing primary issuance onchain um, direct ownership onchain like and and doing this on public permissionless blockchains. Like I think

>> I think that's that's going to play out well for them longer term. Um, >> and the other one I had is Near. like Near just refuses to die and like I I think they're like Near intents are actually getting uh maybe more like real usage than anything like like directly on Near's blockchain um you know over the course of its history. So yeah, good for them. They've just built that like people actually wanted to use this time around. Um and you know I think they've done a bunch of work in AI that we'll see if like that comes around but Zave, you probably know that better than I do.

All right. I had uh my cockroach of the year was a combo of Tron and Justin Sun. Um and you know, going back to 2017 when when I first got into crypto, looking at the ICOs, if you had to have a list of people who would survive and thrive, Justin Sun would not necessarily have been at the top of my personal list. But he's undeniably done extremely well. And actually, one thing I think was underappreciated was how well they managed their treasury back then. I mean, they were one of the very few ICOs that raised a ton of money that converted that ETH into dollars at a good time. And that allowed them to take advantage of uh a huge amount of um yeah, they I mean Justin Sun personally

has I think what the largest, you know, whale probably in all of DeFi. I remember I think earlier this year, a couple years ago, you know, he personally moved like four or five billion out of a like whoa. Um that is that is a big move. Uh and so I think he's done really well and come a long way. I my favorite anecdote about him is when he purchased the Warren Buffett lunch annually for four and a half million and then couldn't come to the US to have a lunch. Um but he's come a long way and you know he has a a tight relationship with the folks at World Liberty Fi. You know that I think has afforded him some you know some some brownie points. And then I also think that Tron is going to end up being a, you know, out of all the, you know,

people are charting the Monero, you know, posting the Monero chart saying it's the best in crypto. I disagree. Um, I think the the chart of TRX is probably, you know, this is a nuts chart, but it's probably one of the best in all of crypto. And this is not a value judgment. I wish it was more transparent. But uh the last thing I would say about it is, you know, I know that Tether now is getting a little bit more opinionated and they have some sort of tie with Plasma, but I think it's going to be much more difficult than anyone thinks to, you know, we've talked about it in these platform episodes. I don't think even the apps that, you know, go across multiple chains have nearly as much ability to direct assets from chain to chain. It's certainly not

like Tether says, "Hey, you know, of this 60 billion on Tron, I want 20 to go here." That's just not how it works. Um, so I think that Tron kind of kind of kind of won from a chain perspective this really sticky use case and you know despite all of the CT has given it and whatever it's refused to die and I think it's >> kind of it's a big it's a really big winner big outcome of >> like if we were to like go back to 2018 and you would say like would Paulo from Tether like still be crushing it? Would Justin Tron still be crushing it? Like I think we probably would have been pretty skeptical and like those guys have just continued winning. Like like we didn't talk about Tether as a winner this year, but um they should be on the honorable

mentions at least. Like they started buying up a ton of Bitcoin, you know, before it had its run. They bought up a ton of gold. Gold's at like an all-time high and they're not fe sharing and it's all good. and everybody else is, you know, basically, you know, even like Coinbase and Circle are now, you know, I think their like margins are going to zero, but good old, you know, USDT on Tron is going to keep printing for them. Um, so yeah, I agree with that. It's a good one. >> Yeah. All right. That was I must have uh I made an error here because those were the categories that I had. Z, what's the last category that you built for here?

>> I have a last one and it's related to Eify. So, I have a most underrated category. >> Yeah, you did miss that. I had that. I had that. >> Yeah, my my my name for for most underrated is Eify, I think. What a year. What a pivot. We just spoke about it a bit before, but Ether Cash, I'm just looking at the numbers right now. Um, yeah, it looks like they're doing, you know, a few million in volume through the the debit card that they have. It's very much an up and to the right chart and I think they're leveraging uh restaking yield in in very unique ways to build a more consumerf facing product and I think that's just going to continue growing and they're one of the first in the space and I've used the product and really enjoy it.

It's one of the sort of crypto products that I use the most actually. So yeah, props to them for for coming back and I think it's a bit underrated by the entire space right now. >> Yeah, that's funny Z. I had like um I didn't have etherfi for that but I had rain um which is the project that and like enables etherfy to issue like a a cryptobacked debit card or credit card right um uh same with pay like pay was on this list as well pa y like a great payments app um and yeah rain is is powering it all um and they're crushing it and you know it's it's uh like super super underrated Um, so I'll redeem maybe my uh biggest

loser category here. I would actually say layer zero is a really interesting underrated category here. And you know, I think there are still questions around the valuation and business model and that type of thing. But I there are also a protocol that I think CT has been really unfairly harsh on over the years and it's not really clear to me why. Um but I think that the need for interop uh is manifest and I you know almost every day here you know someone's building on you know their standard and I think that they've quietly built an enormous amount of market share here in a really uh compelling category. I would also I would put chain link in this category as well. Um love chain link if you my link

marines are listening. Okay. The I think that the challenge with chain link is they've built such a speculative the link marines have like pushed the valuation up so high it's hard to get super interested in the token at these prices. But in terms of the underlying business I think both chain link and layer zo have really strategically valuable businesses that they've built and I think they're underrated. I agree with that. And the the the similarity between those two is that they both um they both make a ton of revenue and like off-chain uh service agreements, right? Um and so I feel like I saw something about chain link now like basically using the SAS you know revenue um which is all done by like a company or some

foundation like in a classic B2B like you know um motion to buy back the token which I think if you're chain link at this point like you probably are like at a buyback stage of maturity. Um, and for layer zero, I'm not sure what they're going to do, but um, I know they charge a ton for like new L1s to get connected. May have talked to them and yeah, it's expensive. So, like they're making a lot of money. >> Guys, I think we did a pretty good job here on on the categories and summing up the year. I'm sure there's, you know, be like, ah, you know, something that we missed. But, uh, yeah, I think that was a pretty good summary of 2025. And it was such an interesting year, right?

There was a I would call it a mixed bag year in a number of different ways. I I think that um the analogy that I have closing the year is it I think it applies across a number of different ways but I think simultaneously really good things are happening under the hood but the headline numbers might not reflect that for a while. That would be my TLDDR. And I think a lot of these I have always hated this as a it's there there are two things that I find it really hard to be just objective about because I'm so not rooting for them as futures. Um one is this idea of the gamblification of the economy. I just like can't tell you how

much I hate that and I'm not rooting for that future and it doesn't allow me to be objective in assessing whether or not it's going to be right because I just can't I just don't like that idea. Um, but I also really dislike this idea of everything's a meme coin and don't worry about creating value or generating revenue because, you know, the speculative assets do better. And I think that that attitude is going to be punished. And, um, I think, you know, it'll be really interesting. I almost did for cockroach of the year Ripple.

Um, and I think one thing that's going to continue to confuse people in 2025, 2026 is that fundamentals and every metric can get better, but the token price can still go down a lot. And Ripple would be a prime category where this this feels like this is going to happen for me because simultaneously that business Ripple is taking real steps to do incredible like they've built a phenomenal business. they did that acquisition of Hidden Road. Um, you know, they they launched a bit at Circle. I think that they're really firing on all cylinders and determined to make a really valuable business in 2026.

But I also think they've the speculative premium on their token and the difference in between market cap and FDV that is gravity and that has to come out and it will actually come out faster as the val like the fundamentals and the way that the story gets told changes. So, that would be on my I think that's I think that's going to confuse a lot of I'm just rambling to end this episode, but I think that's the the end of 2025 and going into 2026. I think that's going to throw a lot of people for a loop. Um, but that would be my maybe to tee up some predictions.

>> Bring on the 2026 predictions is what I say. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think it'll be a really I think it'll be a tough but a really good year. I don't know how you guys are feeling going into next year, but >> Yeah. And I think >> room for a lot of growth. I think next year Twitch >> gonna be a growth year for everyone. >> Yeah. Cool. All right, guys. Well, really going to wrap up app. This was a ton of fun. Uh thank you for um this. This was great. This was part one, guys. So, yeah, this was the 2025 wrap-up and we're going to get into 2026 next week, so stay tuned.

>> Happy holidays, everyone. >> Happy holiday. Happy holidays. See you.