Hivemind: Crypto's 2024 Winners & Losers, Bitcoin's 2025 Price Target, and AI Agent Mania

Transcript

I think the pure AI agents and Frameworks is about 10 to 15 I think the whole thing could go to like half a trillion in in 2025 honestly like I'm so bullish on AI I think sacking Bitcoin is probably the single best thing most people could do over time um I think probably most people in crypto just like don't outperform Bitcoin because they try to do too many different things it's just hard to see I think a bigger win overall than Bitcoin but Salona is definitely the other one I think that it is it's the first real credible threat that ethereum has ever had nothing set on the hive mind is a recommendation to

buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is strictly for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions not Financial advice [Music] hello everyone and welcome to the hive mind podcast the goal of the podcast is to provide an inside look into what we like to call the deli hive mind bringing together some of our brightest Minds from each of the divisions to share insites Alpha and [ __ ] posts today with us we have cedus parabus who heads up our institutional research arm Yan liberman who's managing partner Dela adventures and then Jason uh 3x

liquidated on Twitter who is our head of of markets at at Deli research and a a regular guest on the podcast I think our our shitcoin scavenger is still on on holiday so uh I think he'll be back probably for the for the next episode so for this episode it's the first one of the year uh we want to do a special special episode we're going to go over some of our highlights from from 2024 so we have a few categories um we have biggest winner Biggest Loser biggest disappointment best founder best investor um and then we also have a bunch of predictions for for 2025 so this should be a good one going through all this with with with the crew so to start off let's start with with biggest

winner who is everyone's biggest winner of of uh of 2024 and maybe let's start with you cedus yeah I was gonna say um Salon originally for this and I still think it's like Salon is the biggest winner just from like overall ecosystem standpoint and everything but I think you have to say Bitcoin is the biggest winner um like Bitcoin have performed both eth and soul in 2024 uh it's it's really I think any obviously there's some people that still believe in flipping and all this stuff but I think for the most part it's really kind of like broken away from that it's really cemented itself as a macro asset and yeah it's just hard to see I think a bigger winner overall than

Bitcoin but Salona is definitely the other one I think that it is it's the first real credible threat that ethereum has ever had um and they just like continue to execute and uh yeah and like so I think I think those are like two biggest winners I guess in my opinion that makes sense anyone else have have Bitcoin or maybe Jason you want to you want to go next sure yeah I mean Bitcoin was the one I was going to pick for sure um as somebody who who loves the orange coin uh you guys know probably in our chats I I say you know I'm like I guess kind of like sailor in that like I think

stacking Bitcoin is probably the single best thing most people could do over time um I think probably most people in crypto just like don't outperform Bitcoin because they try to do too many different things like um so yeah and then you got ETFs at the start of the year uh and then the end of the year you get you know rumors of some kind of Bitcoin strategic Reserve Fund in the United States so like you you got like the whole range of the Gambit pretty much with with all the positive things that could happen to bitcoin like CED said it outperformed both um soulen eth I believe over the course of 2024 and I do think there's probably a de like

depending on how 2025 goes right I do think there's a decent chance you you see Bitcoin outperform most other assets asss again in our markets year ahead report I think like 60 or 70% of the Assets in the top 100 crypto by crypto list by market cap underperformed Bitcoin as well um and I think you probably will see something similar to that again in 2025 depending on how the first couple couple months of of the new Administration goes right I think we'll get clarity around um like the new cryptos are position and what that means I think you'll get clarity around stable coins and legislation there and I think he'll

probably get some clarity around a possible strategic Reserve fund and what that could look like I know there's you know varying thoughts of what people think and and you know how likely the Strategic Reserve fund is to come like come into existence and like what that looks like is it like the Lumis bill is it something more like just holding the existing Bitcoin somewhere else within the government um but regardless yeah Bitcoin was definitely my my biggest winner of 2024 I think it's probably good for crypto in general go ahead Yan yeah um yeah I mean for the first 10 months I would have said Bitcoin for

sure and and I I still think you can defend that and you know not going to rehash the the previous points that were made and then with the election I would kind of say like crypto and as a whole and kind of in the US I think in particular um which you know you'll likely see Bitcoin be the biggest beneficiary of in the short term through the reserve but in the long run I think ideally you see kind of uh an improved regulatory framework which brings talent and um and experimentation and growth and so um I think with the new Administration that crypto in the US crypto as a whole and in the US in particular will kind of be the biggest winners nice yeah I I I agree with all those um maybe just to be to be

different I'd say C defi like um pretty much all the biggest winners of this cycle um hyper liquid Athena AI agent stuff they all have various points of pretty serious centralization uh it's very far from the the sort of stuff that vitalic had hypothesized early on and and you know in terms of purely on chain stuff um decentralized front ends all this kind of stuff we've we've strayed very far from that um and as of right now I think that trend is is sort of set to continue like I think we're going to see more semi- centralized like companies issue tokens uh we're going to see more projects sort of focus on

growth and and and product in ux over decentralizing every single part of their stack and so far that's proven to be the absolute right decision for everyone that tried it and everyone that's sort of gone the opposite way has has gotten screwed in in in various ways so um yeah I think that's definitely a a trend that like one in in 2024 uh and the market kind of showed it doesn't really care about purist decentralization stuff yeah for now until like there's a reason you have to care I mean yeah we'll see yeah I think that I mean I've I've I've sort of been this is probably against myself this this this trend I do

think that everything that can be attacked will be and sort of all these points of centralization will get pressured as these things grow but as of right now it's like pretty tough to to argue against it I think and if you're advising portfolio projects or whatever on on on strategy you'd probably not say to spend too much time on on you know like thinking about how to decentralize your front end or um yeah decentralizing every single part of the stack and rather like take shortcuts to have a good user experience and decentralize later once you have a once you have a working product with traction yeah I mean I wrote in the infro your head like should hyper liquid even try and decentralize I think the reason why you

would is it you know if you're a relatively centralized uh product and you have a lot of money that you're custody you're like you're going to get attacked uh a lot and so I don't know yeah like it's like people forget people forget when things people forget you know after a while of Honey Poots not getting like exploited people kind of forget about it um so I'm not saying anything's happening to like hyper liquid I'm just saying you know people don't care when the times are good yeah I think the middle ground is

basically though where you you kind of decentralize enough to get rid of this single point of failure level Honeypot um risk but not enough to the point where performance degrades yeah so in the sense everyone tried to find that sweet spot to some extent well no no no like it it would it's basically The Sweet Spot is a lot closer to centralization I think I think it's just like I think Athena is in in a pretty good spot with it with having you know uh a bunch of individuals kind of or entities having uh like the multisig access where not like a single point of failure you know with hype you don't

necessarily need to get to an insane amount of nodes um just enough where it's not four out of Japan kind of thing but expanding beyond that you know enough to where it's like it's yeah good I just do think with something like hype it it's going to be tested like you know they will eventually like some regulator will subpoena all the validators like clearly you know there's so much money going through this there's and this this is like um you know as as Gabe likes to call it butt [ __ ] jail stuff you know like money laundering and and things is is not it's not like uh white color crime it's actually like uh yeah so I don't know I do think this stuff will get tested and

and a lot of the things that people talked about early on will will kind of prove to be right in terms of decentralization but I mean 2023 2022 and even 2021 to some extent was like people going to the extreme of like this governance theater right and like the the founder calling himself like a steward of the network or something like that or like I don't I don't do anything I just like guide this thing you know whereas now I think we've we've really swung the other way like you have Antonio Juliano talking about founder mode and coming back and and making dydx happen and and you know people Founders posting about fee switches and things like this um so I think we're very much on the other side and and and sort of it seems to be just paying off like the the yeah Regulators don't seem to be going

after this stuff uh as much at least so yeah should we go so maybe the Biggest Loser is the uh teams who are building decentralized from the start 100% like the rise of the world and yeah yeah so so let's go to Biggest Loser then U and maybe let's start with uh with Yan this time on on The Biggest Loser who who is your biggest 2024 loser Gary Gensler yep I think that that you know kind of speaks for itself um he's he's gone from being you know the the the darling of the party of the

specific part of that party you know the Warren camp and and kind of trying to cop on the beat yeah get get himself into a higher position in the administration to effectively kind of tarnishing his reputation and being a bit of a pariah and not liked by really anyone to this extent because he's no longer useful right so um I think part of his uh his his appeal was his utility and and and now that um so many things have failed you know things that no one expected like the Ripple case everyone thought that was a layup and um you know regulation by enforcement um and and kind of even

blocking the the BTC ETF right like it's crazy that you know so many of these things took place um and and just you know huge miscalculations that I guess in a world where you think you can go unchecked those those decisions make sense right to try and block something which is pretty obvious um it's something that should have been passed uh considering the other things that have been allowed Nam like the the future ztf and so um I think now yeah he's in a position where he probably just retires or or maybe goes back into uh private life if he wants to work but I don't know from Goldman to

Elizabeth Warren back to Goldman maybe he starts no no maybe maybe he starts an [Laughter] L1 GG gonna raise money for a crypto fund it's going to make it all back yeah who's Your Biggest Loser Jason uh uh I would have like I guess it's tough uh for me I mean I guess this could be like kind of part of an upcoming segment but for me like um it was eth for 2024 um compared to something like salana even or even you know like bass right like Bas and eth like everybody's

like oh like base is is is ethereum but like it's like kind of not right um all of the activity happened on salana for the most part and then you know when activity did start moving over to evm land it happened mostly on base with like virtuals and stuff and and the AI agent like I guess meta that happened since early November so um and it just seemed like yeah like you it's it's very I don't really want to rehash everything we've talked about all year right with you know Rinko writing in his Salon verse eth um reports over the last year as well as in the markets year ahead report there's just like a pretty big um you know narrative I guess dis

dispersion here like it's pretty pretty clear like what the investment thesis for something like um salana was heading into 2024 and even you know the back half of 2023 and it just wasn't as clear like what would happen with eth like okay like where do I invest if I think eth's going to do well is eth even going to do well you had the ETF launch and then pretty much for the first several months after the eth ETF launch you just had like outflows and on good days NE not zero inflows it was just like not a great year for eth from just like a cultural standpoint an ETF standpoint pretty much until the election happened and you kind of had like the floodgates open for for crypto risk appetite which you know did make its way to eth for for a little bit um but even then like I

said it seemed mostly Silo to to places like Bas as opposed to like eth mayet or something like that or or even some of the other l2s so yeah for me eth was just a pretty big disappointment for the past year plus and I'm not sure that's gonna change too much honestly going into 2025 but we can talk about that so I so that was also mine I think to get a bit more specific um so definitely eth just because I mean it underperformed massively both Bitcoin and soul Salon is like a real competitor now the market caps are getting a lot closer ethereums had to go War mode that just means there's a war like worth fighting and

that wasn't always the case before so it's definitely a loser in the stance that now they have to like fight a war I think uh the biggest biggest loser though is like these I call them first gen rollups um you know I wrote about this in the infro report it's basically all Bas and arbitrum doing everything and even arbitrum like a lot of that uh they they have like a big Eco there but like who's getting the recent metas it's salana and base right um all of these you look at a lot of these there's this tweet yesterday that I saw blast went 13 minutes without a transaction right like that's insane to go 13 minutes without a

single transaction so I think and and you're seeing all these high throughput chains now um after the success of salana right another thing like I kind of wrote about um you know in evm land you're seeing stuff like Mega eth seeing uh rise you're seeing Ithaca by Paradigm right you're seeing I mean uni chain is kind of going to be like this you're seeing uh Bas is like jacking up the gas limits pretty much every week um and I think it's just going to be tough for you have these you know ZK snc scroll optimism main chain blast like it's very hard for me to see

how these ecosystems like really Thrive um especially if you believe that Bas is going to continue and I think that base being the leading rollup is a loss for ethereum like straight up it it would be a much better outcome if arbitrum I think was like leading rollup for etherum versus base um so yeah that's my biggest loser I'd say the other Biggest Loser is probably just Celestia like they've my hot take for 2025 which I guess we'll get into later is that I think Celestia is going to like destroy every other da layer when it comes to like data posted to it but I think Tia is still going to be a pretty bad asset to

own um and so yeah I don't know it was just so hyp I think modularity in general was so hyped over the last like year and a bit uh and like reaking and all this stuff and the biggest winner has been what monolithic right I think these distinctions are like kind of dumb moving forward anyways um like who cares at the end of the day that like it doesn't really matter too much to me but yeah yeah you guys kind of said all on mine so um I'll just go with everyone who pivoted out of crypto at the at the bottom like bunch of people I know uh I'm sure we all know a couple people who

who like it's funny it was most for most of it like that the highest volume was definitely very close to the bottom like of people I know sort of capitulating out of crypto calling it all a scam um and crypto continues to sort of prove that you really need some long-term conviction to to make it it's it's not uh it looks like easy money in in the good times but you kind of have to make it through the bad times to get there and it's really hard to do to stomach to volatility if you don't have conviction I I have a tweet from the literal Pico bottom that says um the best way to be early for the next cycle is to never leave and that's like yeah

basically you just have to like not leave Bitcoin was like 16 or 15K then so would like just hit eight or whatever but it's true like yeah I don't know if you just believe if you just have Blind Faith that this industry or you have no other that that gift I didn't hear no [Laughter] Bell yeah I think a lot of the people who stayed also have like no other career prospects which turns out to be a great Mo right like I mean dude I left my old whatever I didn't I mean I I went full-time April 22 right which is right before like I left and I left those first six months I was like

dude just but but I knew I could always kind of go back to what I did before um but it was a good that was a good entrance you know I thought I was joining in the bare Market because Bitcoin was already down like 50% and then it was just six months of like yeah um okay let's go surprise I can never feel lower than that what's the what's up biggest positive surprise and we can start with uh you start with Jason on this one oh biggest positive surprise huh um for me it was besides my meme coins doing way

better than could have ever imagined um Bitcoins flows ETF flows we're we're like I remember I was writing uh like when when they were going live I guess like January like pretty much a year ago almost to the day maybe like a week off right now um everybody's like trying to estimate like what the flows would be and like oh like if they got like you know maybe a couple billion dollars of flows in the first like year like you know maybe like5 10 billion dollars in flows in the first year they'd be like really good especially when you compare it to like gold flows and then over the course of the year they've pretty much exceeded all Expectations by a significant degree and like not just my like everybody's expectations the Bloomberg analyst expectations all funds

uh they outpaced gold AUM at this point um it's pretty incredible I think I think uh I think I think it's pretty anomalous to see like an ETF do something like this and obviously based on you know like statistics of what most ETF launches do and what What flows they get in the first like year or so what their AUM tends to be like obviously this is slightly different um you know Bitcoin I guess you could see look at it as like a commodity digital gold so I guess like the Tam for like a Bitcoin ETF is probably probably higher than you know General launch ETFs for you know different like Equity type strategies or or whatnot but even still uh the the flows that we saw last year were were nothing

short of uh incredible for Bitcoin ETFs and I think a lot of it you know comes down to what we saw happened in you know 2023 with like the whole banking crisis I think a lot of people started um losing losing some faith in the general uh banking system and like one thing I always kind of like point to is like imagine we had those bit like these bit imagine we had these Bitcoin ETFs when we started having that banking crisis back in March 2023 like what would Bitcoin have done uh like H how would Bitcoin have moved could trafi actually invest in Bitcoin at the time right and I say that because like these banking crises like like that wasn't like a

oneand done like you're definitely going to see another you know macro banking crisis especially as yields continue to kind of like pick up like I think the the risk of you know kind of banking related issues probably continues to rise uh at least while we have this kind of environment and it kind of just like okay so like if something like that happens again I think you could see like another you know surge in in in ETF flows into 2025 as well so for me Bitcoin ETF flows for 20224 was probably the craziest thing um that I could have expected crazier than I expected um and I just didn't want to say meme coins

going up like they did but I did like that too yeah who wants to go cedus you want to go next I mean the yeah the ETS definitely blew out my expectations um I don't know I think like probably just the everything since the election I mean uh we had the podcast after that and I said 100K by like Q3 or something uh I just very severely underestimated how much of a positive that that was going to be um it's kind of like biggest positive surprise is Trump

moving his head a couple inches maybe that's like the biggest like positive surp like it's it's kind of scary to think about if that didn't happen where we would be um kind of like wake up get nightmares wake up up in the middle of the night over that but uh yeah I think the ETF flows is overall um yeah my one was was similar it was like just crypto's political power and and relevance honestly was surprising to me um like how much of how much it got mentioned by by Trump um like the fact that he's doing uh you know BTC 100K you're welcome tweet like like the president of the United States

and the fact that we're talking about a strategic Reserve um the sort of overwhelming consensus that that gendler is an idiot you know and like just a not just from like it's probably the only thing that like Mark cubin and the oin guys like agreed on on that podcast they did was you know the gendler's an idiot um and yeah just like the the sort of realizing the importance of stable coins like it just seems like it happened suddenly where where crypto went from the ginger stepchild that that you know is is not just like actively hated but at some point like also like ignored like it just seemed like everyone was in different to uh just like seemingly obviously from my from my perspective

like seemingly a pretty central theme in and and played a pretty important role in in in the 2024 election and is a pretty big part of like Trump's um mandate like there's literally an AI and crypto Zar like even the fact that crypto is included with AI in that in that role is is is so insanely bullish um and I would never have predicted this like a year ago uh yeah it was it was such a different political situation like a year ago it's it's almost hard to to Fathom so that's my biggest biggest surprise yeah that's good I actually think my biggest positive surprise that more think about it is uh just crypto in the courts like they just we just did really well in the

courts um with basically everything like we didn't really lose a lot of cases and this goes this goes hand in hand with like gendler being the biggest loser but I mean there's just been a lot of positive Court wins that it's like we can't it's that you know you're going to get tired of winning so much um that's definitely I didn't my expectations were not that high for that yeah I mean like some of the Court wins made a lot of sense others were definitely surprised like the the I mean the BTC ETF ruling right they ruled that that blocking it was arbitrary and capricious relative to kind of um allowing the future ctfs but then I

think the Ripple case caught everyone by surprise everyone assumed they were toast and that was the biggest layup of all and then seeing that reverse kind of kickstarted um a lot it's like all right if if that's winnable then what else is um yeah yeah mine was get Ripple yeah yeah it's it becomes a resources thing too right um they go after companies that are capital constrained and and can't necessarily fund the same quality of Defense um yeah mine and I had ETF flows right we I I I thought there'd be 10 to 15 and we came in at I think 35 um which is which is nuts if you think about it um

in the first year before even having you know a lot of these advisers fully equipped to to go shill and and now you're seeing gradually uh increased um allocation recommendations from one to you know two some as high as five um yeah so that that that's pretty nuts and then and just um it's hard to see a world where it stops um without some crazy negative surprise yeah let's let's move on to biggest disappointment uh biggest negative surprise maybe just just keep

going with you Yan what was your biggest disappointment 2024 um yeah so I guess disappointment and and loser can kind of uh overlap a bit I I had uh it was It was kind of between eth just in terms of uh I think their their scaling road map and and and you know listing out 2029 dates I thought seemed pretty ridiculous thinking that that would go over well um and and just not really having a road map at all and then I think the other has been uh and and this will tie into you know part of an answer for 2025 is is kind of uh lack of quality games

launching and and I and I I think the the bullish element to that is it's not that we've seen games launch and they were incredibly underwhelming it's more just a lot of delays um and so I think that that that was a bit disappointing but I you know that that sets up for a strong 2025 in that area which we've said for the past three three years to be fair but yeah true uh M mine was similar it was l2s and and ux um like just going between between l2s is still such a nightmare and the fact that you know most of these l2s are still running on on like don't even have

like fraud proofs in in production um yeah and and just the ux of of going between them like you think with the amount of billions of dollars that are that are like at stake someone would have fixed this issue like there would be incentives for someone to fix it there would be incentives for the EF to to like enforce standards which I know like vitalica has started to do later in the year but it's just it I would never have thought that it would be this this bad by the end of of 2024 um and yeah I guess eth is is there too like seem the the foundation was pretty disconnected um it's just this like my my biggest thing is like all these blogs by the ethereum researchers that the

example is always like Alice pays Bob you know and there is no Alice paying Bob on chain like I I this has been the thing since 2015 like nine years ago and like Alice still isn't paying bub like Alice wants to ape meme coins you know or trade trade tokens on Leverage like and they just refuse to to accept that right they have this this like sort of Ivory Tower view of like what people should be doing on chain and public goods funding and and and like futari and prediction markets and stuff and and and Alice paying bub um and they just don't use the chain and it's it's like very clear from the criticisms of salana as well that a lot of them aren't using salana um and yeah I still hold decent amount of eth and I'm I'm bullish eth

for reasons I can't really uh I guess like verbalize that well but uh yeah that was a disappointment for sure I think l2x is the biggest disappointment for me for me it's uh it's the L2 security which you kind of talked about the fact that they're all if you look at l2b they're pretty much all stage zero there's a few that are like stage one like arbitrum think based now uh this has been like four years uh and it's still basically the whole optimistic rollup thing is just going to be skipped basically we're just going to go to ZK rollups because the tech is just like going a lot faster um but yeah I think like no

excuses on that front in 2025 like if you haven't made a stage two you roll up stage two by the you want to explain the stages briefly just for people who who don't know I got to go to l2b don't worry no it's like you could go to l2b and look at it and basically there's like five criteria it's like the da the exit window proposer failure sequencer failure and like State validation and it's kind of like you know how centralized are these um you know where do the multi kind of exist can users actually exit like on optimism and base like there's no exit window right which is kind of the point of

rollups is that if something happens with the L2 you can always exit to the L1 yeah yeah getting getting rid of the multi stes is like something that's never going to really happen in my opinion but they can still be a lot better disappointment I feel like disappointment is similar to like Loser yeah to I guess it implies expectations yeah yeah uh I guess like the the quick thing I joted down was um the lack of like uh because the lack of like uh

centralized like lending and institutional lending that has like never come back to the space since FTX collapsed uh and kind of blew everything up um there's a huge driver of last Cycles gains right you had a lot of funds um borrowing a lot of different players borrowing money a lot of that coming from institutional lenders and then pretty much since the end of 2022 when everybody blew up like you really haven't seen any big players enter the space to kind of fill that void which I think was a pretty big missing ingredient for most of last year um which is probably why we saw a bit of dispersion across all the sectors right you only really had like one or two sectors do well at a time um as opposed to everything do well at the same time

and I know coinbase has you know started to launch their institutional lending program uh and has kind of grown that loan book um I think last time I looked it was around like 700 or 800 bill or million uh and when you just like compare that to to like 2022 or 2021 Genesis had like a loan book of like 15 or 16 billion dollars on his own and that doesn't you know include a bunch of the other ones um so just like the lack of institutional Lending that has not really repopulated the space um it's kind of been a a pretty big disappointment for me at least from just like you know what what that means for for prices and and just general uh crypto our performance across the board

it's kind of hard to to see uh the cycle or to to to see different sectors doing as well as they did last cycle without that kind of thing right and hopefully you know as rates decrease over the next year and continue to hopefully tick down you might see that that uh Dynamic start to play a bit more but again I'm I'm not too not too bullish on that even heading into next year as well um I think most of the growth will probably have to come from stable coins yeah actually I'm going to change I think biggest disappointment is that I didn't find my wife uh let's move on to what do we got best founder you had some high

expectations has been on a lot of dates it's like it is disappointing it'll I mean your market value should should increase with with crypto with crypto too to be fair you to tell them you're in crypto now you can start to tell people you're in crypto maybe next year maybe so there's like pros and cons to that true yeah all right best founder I'll I'll start I don't think this will be a surprise to anyone but it's it's guy from from Athena um they launched it's hard to believe but they launched in February 2020 uh 2024 and in less than a year they went to six billion Supply uh they they outpaced die to become the largest stable coin outside

of the big two uh tether and and usdc they generated over 100 million in in actual Revenue uh became the second fastest app to ever get to 100 million Revenue after pump up fun actually um and they also like just became integrated with centralized exchanges in a way that no other stable coin outside the top two has ever managed it's it's now listed on three out of five of the big five centralized exchanges um and I think this is this is probably one of the biggest markets that um that was ignored by a lot of the decentralized stable coins and a lot of the the the sort of usdc USD competitors it's it's an over 100 billion in in sort of centralized exchange collateral for perss uh and and they're really I think

as like the LTV goes up they're really gonna have a a strong chance to to to be the winner there um and then they obviously partnered with black Ro Rec recently to launch usdb uh which eliminates one of the biggest points of fud for USD which was this negative funding uh an overall guy I think has just like combines having a massive and very specific vision of delivering this like internet money with consistently like taking incremental steps and executing towards it across like all Dimensions like he understands the Crypton native side of of how to tap into to the right narratives with with Athena chain how to make the right strategic moves with integrating with centralized exchanges but at the same time um also just like

consistently executes on these on these Partnerships um on on the air drops which was like the best air drop outside of hyper liquid and yeah a lot of people don't know we we've actually known guy and been impressed by him since way before Athena in like 20120 when we were early on starting Deli he was a research subscriber at on the highest tier we had at the time which was institutional plus um and we used to talk to him all the time and uh he he impressed us so much that we actually offered him to to kind of join Deli early on and and be almost like a a co-founder type but it was still that early where where you could do that uh and at the time he he had like an actual real job at a at a in trafi and and turned us down but then

obviously came back and just crushed it out of the park with Athena and he's also just like a really nice guy um with who yeah so so I think definitely that's my my pick for best founder my pick is going to be Mt um because I he's probably he's like just important as toally for Salona um he's also you know I don't know if we're going to do best ship poster but he's also up there for best ship poster too uh I think the way he ends when he replyu someone he just ends it with hope this helps I think that's like a great way to end a uh reply after you take someone down but no I mean the guy hustles he's I

don't really know how he does it he's 247 obviously he's working on helius uh like big Salon RPC uh but I just think he's very important to salana like I remember it used to be the guy who used to defend salana on like Twitter was Zen Lama who ended up going to monad um like a year and a half or so ago and then M kind of came on the scene and was doing that it's like such an important role um for an ecosystem just like dispelling and he's also like a really good spokesman right like he's pretty intellectually honest like will regularly admit and and like Steelman

Solana's faults yeah it is pretty he's a pretty impressive guy actually it's a good pick yeah so that's yeah that's my pick uh I guess I could go um this might not be a surprise I don't talk to too many Founders too frequently it's just not uh not really where my time overlaps uh not nearly as much as these Ventures guys obviously or or or or Labs but um I guess I'll just have to say Jeff from hyper liquid with building out a product that everybody uh regardless of the centralization aspect of it and you know the risks Associated I'm not going to talk about that I don't know anything about that really my opinion on that

stuff is pretty uh invalid but in terms of a good product that everybody wants to use uh it's it's up there with some of the some of the best um you know trading exchanges that I've used in crypto for sure they you know have have a decent little ecosystem starting to grow uh with a couple of their other you know projects like they have their own uh pump do fun with with h fun they I think like 60 or 70% of usdc on arbitrum is pretty much in hyper liquid so it's it's pretty much arbitrum is what people use to go do stuff on hyper liquid at this point uh in terms of like trading stats they have like I don't know somewhere between five to 10% of open

interest that binance has which is really impressive considering the exchange um launched fully I think in January of 2024 and um only really got popular in the last several months as people realized you had this airdrop coming and then obviously the tge with the airdrop was a huge you know wealth generation event probably one of the one of the better airdrop you know executions that's happened there wasn't really any issues claiming um there's no issue doing any of those things like you've seen with with recent air drops and it kind of just goes to show that like if you build a product that people want to use right in crypto and there's not many not many you know uh not many like straight up use cases that

everybody agrees on besides you know spec speculation stable coins things like that right and this allows everybody to kind of do what they want to do right you have pers you have spot you have I guess you know pre-launch markets you now have these you know pump. fund type markets with h fund um it kind of just goes to show that if you build a product that works well and everybody wants to use it'll probably be successful because there is a lack of those types of products in crypto and then obviously tge was was really good for a lot of people which kind of goes hand inand with building a community right like a thesis that like or like a theme that we we've written about quite a lot is like um like making patrons of the chain like effectively if you make

like early users of your platform pretty wealthy like they are more likely to stick around and help you know facilitate growth of the project and of the ecosystem over time it's kind of what you saw with like Bitcoin early on with eth early on even with soul um and I think you're kind of starting to see that with like the cult forming around hyper liquid post tge um and yeah so that's I guess that's what I'll probably go with yeah no I think that that makes a lot of sense um I'm I'm also going with with guy no surprise um yeah I mean the the the current success of it has been pretty I think the growth has been

pretty unprecedented um yeah like Z mentioned we we met him back in 2020 I I think his background is is kind of perfect for this in the sense that he was deep in the defi trenches and like as D gen as it gets but you know was at the same time uh you very successful kind of private Equity background and so I think that the combination of the two um W with a very driven individual sets himself up well for you know executing um but there's still a lot more to do and he's really nailed it on on fronts with without without a hitch really the guys you know on 247 um at every hour of the day it's it's pretty

absurd and and so yeah across you know the the design itself in the early stages to the to the growth to to the Partnerships um and and the the broader Integrations uh I think it it really helps plus he's you know very personable and so I think you know part of that growth is is just meeting with these exchanges and and and teams and and um getting along well and so I think you know all of that really plays in well it's funny yeah we did um try and bring him on and considering the the current success and and future success it would have been a decision he would have never financially recovered from so for for his

sake he made the right call and and so um yeah I think they're they're poised to do really well right as interest rates come down the appeal for their product comes up it's also now really you know we we talked about trying to bring in um non- crypto users into the space and so you know we talked about gaming being one of these channels but um you know the there's broad consensus that stable coins are and and likely will be the Top If if not one of the top kind of products and so um being able to bridge the the yield that's that's generated from speculation in crypto as a product to normies to to to bring them

in and and get them interested I think is is huge and so um you know stable coin Supply is is likely going to go up quite a bit uh I think it's like 200 or so right now um I can see that likely doubling uh next year as as rates come down um and and just you know there there people are looking for additional ways to Source yield and and get more comfortable with with kind of the environment um and and they should be a really strong beneficiary of it and are positioned really well to do so nice so those are good moving on to best investor um this one's obviously tough

um because you never know like we're investors into few funds uh only a few but even there it's it's really interesting sort of the ratio of people people being loud on on Twitter and apparently doing well versus actually doing well is is pretty skewed like there's people that are very loud on Twitter and you think are absolutely crushing it who have like abysmal returns is the only way to put it and others who you never hear about who just absolutely crush it silently so it's it's hard to do this one um I kind of wanted to focus on someone that I that I do know uh and with the it's it's Yan actually on the on the Pod he's it's going to be a surprise for him too but

yeah I've been following obviously like very close friends for for a bunch of years and following his his trading career and for most people who don't know it he crushed it on the first cycle in 2021 and then got the double whammy of Luna and FTX both of which were like very sizable net worth hits uh like very sizable um and since then he's pretty much caught like every single meta on on PA other than soul I think you caught like pretty much every single one and like executed with with size on it like in the bare market like GMX uh robit uh then memes you you quote in size like Trump with Doge uh like Ena

the AI stuff you've been you've been crushing like virtuals and and stuff so it's it's been pretty impressive to to watch um and I feel like you've also like improved a lot over over the years like you used to be just like a giga ape uh I think you told me once that you took like three 90% draw Downs in the 2020 2021 bull cycle like in a bull market which is which is pretty absurd um and he's definitely like his your risk management is definitely improved from from I guess getting getting bummed by um by by FTX and Luna but uh so yeah think think that's my my one uh and then maybe some shout outs on the fun side I think I think dragonfly

uh yes s you wanted to say something no I was say that's that's really kind of you I appreciate that a lot yeah thank you I I would appreciate it if you managed some money for for us for us all on the liquid side um and yeah so on on the fun side I'd say uh tangent and dragonfly really impressive like tangent has always been good they're like similar setup to us with like prop Capital um they hit SE Athena Mega eth and then I think dragonfly at scale like hit it out of the park this cycle with monad Athena I think Mag and monad will both do well um and a few lesser known ones I'd say is is sort of bit scale like zabit bit scale actually like silently crushes it has done has done really well in a bunch of stuff and then uh brevan Howard Nova

like Kevin and Ashwin those guys have have have crushed it on the liquid side with with serious size and still have time to be very active angels and and be in a lot of the really good Angel deals um so yeah those are my those are my picks who wants to go next on this one I don't really like I don't really have is is hard again because yeah you don't really know what people's returns are like and also in a bull market I don't know how some people like some some out there one that I was going to say was that Bonk guy um who's just been like a giga ape and but he's been right on like everything that he's aped but at the same time I also he's like I don't think he's taking profit and so it's like I don't know if this guy is just going to

like lose it all when the turn right um the tides will never turn it's hard it's hard to say like obviously there's the standard like funds you can go with that we know have done well um I don't know I would probably say like just like what I know personally also I guess on this pod too like I thought Jason was like pretty good on being early to from being the bear King to being the dog King is like a pretty wild rotation um you know being having the conviction on bit like Bitcoin sold the memes that was like youro and that was

the place to go and so um you never got like mid curved on anything and till AI came around yeah till guess yeah yeah well you were right on Goat um so yeah that's probably what I would that's a good one cuz yeah I don't I don't know a lot of people yeah there's like a few people on Twitter that you know the AI stuff they they've been pretty right on but again you don't know if people are just like tweeting about stuff right like I I even do it too sometimes I'm like right about stuff and then I kind of get lazy with the actual like execution so yeah that's

the thing I think across the the hive mind like that Deli pure Alpha chat has hit pretty pretty much every single uh like meta this cycle which is pretty insane like from the bar to here everything was hit in that off chat it's just I think Jan is the most disciplined about like executing in in size as well on on these on these narratives um yeah and then yeah Jason's a really good pick from from yeah the bear King to Doug King thing was pretty insane and the pivot was very close to the bottom as well yeah yeah I remember and I we used to talk like Jason Jason's be case makes a lot of sense uh but is he just someone that's going to be stuck in this that that's just an you know there's these like

Perma Bears right like the the shifts or whatever of the world is he someone that's G to be stuck in this Perma bear and he wasn't at all he went full somehow that's become Duncan now yeah who gave me the bar King name you and Duncan switch places it's wild yeah I don't know Duncan still did pretty good I think no no we got I can't talk [ __ ] he's not on the PO he's got to defend himself so I think he did really or I think he did pretty well obviously he didn't do any of the memes but he he definitely had a few good things this cycle or so yeah he's got a good he's got a good he plays a different game like the pi and shovels baby yeah uh for me I don't know who I would pick

honestly I don't I don't have I'm not like an LP in many of these funds so I don't even get to see what their returns are I just see screenshots that people share in different group chats and some of them are really [ __ ] bad um there's that uh that that guy on Twitter Eugene Ox enosa uh he posts I think like monthly binance um screenshots of his uh like Roundup p&l card type thing and they're always like [ __ ] absurd uh OB I don't you know I don't know him personally I just you know kind of follow him and and read his takes and I think a lot of his

his trading takes have been good I think he's based on what I see and I'm assuming these aren't you know like edited screenshots I'm pretty sure if they were somebody would have called them out at this point um so he seems to be very good with his perpetrating he does uh he's consistently I think on the binance leaderboard as well um on these different you know monthly roundups and stuff so I've seen him hit a lot of decent trades from goat to to wh uh to a couple of these ones um and he also posts when he's wrong too which is you know usually people who fake and lar don't usually post when they're wrong so I do appreciate that um and yeah I

just he he reminds me a lot of um the Cycles like Hasa or however you pronounce his name right I don't know what happened to him where he went If he if maybe this is his alt who knows um but just catching a bunch of different rotations um and this was before like he had a ton and ton of a ton of followers um I know you know as you get more followers as you break like 100k 200k followers it's relatively easy to to move markets in the short term with with a tweet right um a lot of people it's it's kind of their strategies right like go take a position in something tweet about the ticker and then you get like a nice five 10 percent pop in the in the in the

stock price and um it's just been interesting to see this guy absolutely Crush perss because I don't think there's many who who Crush leverage trading in perss and ass like I said assuming these binance p&l scor cars are real which I'm sure somebody would have called it out for clout at this point over the last six seven months um putting up 10 plus million dollar months is kind of absurd uh so yeah I always kind of take a look out for what what he's posting different ideas he has he also kind of puts out long form thoughts he's done some on Athena in the past uh as well so uh whenever I see his his name pop up on my Twitter feed I always take a few minutes to to look at what he's saying what his

trades are stuff like that yeah no I mean Jason's absolutely crushed it uh he was the like one of the earliest to the dog coins um especially on soul and and just kind of realizing that that they were going to be the fastest horse this cycle um and and yeah the entries he got on on some on like whiff and Bon pretty absurd um I'm I mean I'm I'm really happy with with how our funds done and in terms of the Investments we've made um and I'm I'm looking forward to to seeing a lot of those kind of come to fruition in 2025 and and even just the ones in

2024 and uh there's individual guys on on Twitter for sure it's always tricky so yeah same guy Jason mentioned you know there there's evidence that I'm inclined to believe um showing that he's crushed it I think there's some of these other guys uh that have called out a lot of these tokens really early um there's like uh him and M sluth these guys have have crushed it on the uh the AI agent side and and kind of the AI meme stuff but the tricky part is knowing you know how much they've held um there's there's no way of knowing um and and you know how much of it got paperhand it um because of you know just getting really

early entries it's really hard to kind of sit on your hands when when something starts to balloon massively and you just need to like kind of you know take a step back and and think about it relative to where everyone else is and and understand that just because you know it's a monster position for you doesn't necessarily mean you need to downsize if you think there's still a material amount of upside because everyone's pretty exposed um and then on the fun side yeah like um I think brevan has crushed I think it's it's really hard to to do well in size in this space so I think you know it's it's impressive for sure for some of these guys in the trenches but they're you know working with much smaller size portfolios and then it's easy to get easier to get monster returns but I think you know

some of the larger funds it's really hard to because you know your your space is limited um and and so you you kind of need to be pretty Nimble um and and and make a decent amount of moves to to outperform because of of I think it's been the hardest bull market so far um narratives have changed bids will go you know from Uber strong to just absolutely zero overnight and so um I think holding positions for too long has been pretty unforgiving um if you've used even been any amount of Leverage and not managed risk you've probably gotten wrecked just

because of of how big some of the swings have been and and how quickly they've happened so um I think yeah to continue outperforming has been tough and and and you just seen meta shift on a dime and and these like kind of like smaller Cycles last weeks at times and so it really has been um a much harder Market to navigate but I think it creates opportunity for for out performance um because it's not just all up only cool I'm I'm going to join together the last one's like best researcher and best [ __ ] poster and I'm going to ask us to be fast on this because we we're an hour in and we haven't gotten to 2024 predictions which I feel like or 2025

predictions rather which I think will will take us a while so yeah best researcher and best [ __ ] poster uh for me the best [ __ ] poster is this is probably going to be a a common one but it's guart like he just had some some bangers in in 2024 just sort of [ __ ] on on absolutely everything um and then I think like Rinko at Deli who who probably has like I don't know like a thousand followers or something he has some underrated uh really good tweets and and memes so I'm G to mention both of those and then best researcher um I think punding durian was my pick like he just crushed the the dii series uh like before this narrative went went uh to to

what it is now uh just an an awesome writer and and like a lot of alpha as well like actually on Earth's Alpha because there's a lot of people who are good writers good like explainers but but don't really provide much Alpha and he kind of combines combines both um and then I also think yeah your your pick Jason he's actually been a pretty good researcher as has like a few other people on Twitter like D Squared um has also had done some pretty good some pretty good research uh yeah yeah those are my pcks I have the exact same picks as you um so I'm not going to add more to this nice uh you go y I was to say yeah research-wise pondering yeah the the the

quality of writing quality of alpha um the way he can kind of synthesize a bunch of topics in a in a complex way and and have it flow really well um I think it's really impressive and it's been kind of the best research I've seen by a pretty wide margin on the topic and so excited to see uh everything else he puts out and then ship posting uh I like uh base 16z that guy's pretty funny on Twitter uh he he does a lot of like regular tweets and reply gu stuff that that's that's really funny so I enjoy following him um yeah I like I think we're all going to probably say PD for for uh or pondering durian on Twitter for those

who don't know uh for best researcher um yeah I didn't know [ __ ] about AI stuff and then I was like all right I guess I should spend a couple days just reading all of PD's reports well he also ties everything back to like history and like he very well read yeah he's a big lit guy he loves uh loves his his lit his history uh it's good yeah just read his stuff it's good you'll like it there's no way you won't um for sure and then uh best [ __ ] poster uh honestly I don't I don't really know I like how uh flawed the thinking USD guy on on Twitter is is bull posting and [ __ ] posting my hype bags so I guess I'll just say that it's not for everybody

though but I appreciate it somebody's got to do it yeah he's definitely done really well this year I think he's probably one of the I bucket him one of the best Traders yeah because he he he's been trading on that platform so his airdrop must have been disgusting and and I know he's just been sizing in since day one and and he has size yeah his size is size yeah for sure interesting I didn't know that actually yeah good to have some diversity this podcast definitely like the Obama putting a medal on Obama meme some some extent the last few categories but uh but yeah all right let's let's move on to the 2025 predictions so we have a bunch of different predictions let's

start with Bitcoin price um and maybe we can say like the highest you can say like what do you think the highest price it reaches and and when uh I'll start I think it reaches 200k at some point in 2025 driven by yeah lower rates Trump strategic Reserve discussions igniting like Global fomo um yeah I think uh like 150 I have it at 170 which is basically like I think it hits 250 if you get the reserve and then if it doesn't I think it hits 140 without the reserve and I'm saying 25% chance of Reserve 75% chance

of no reserve and so just the some product uh I'm pretty much exactly where Yan is with that honestly like 130 to 150 without a reserve with a reserve 200 plus um yeah without a doubt and I think that H I think the peak is Q4 or yeah late Q3 early Q4 do you think summer do you think it's like The Summer's been pretty [ __ ] the last few years it's always [ __ ] yeah yeah q1 will be good I think generally good I think Q2 and Q3 will be generally [ __ ] and by [ __ ] I mean just sideways and choppy and I think Q like end of Q3 Q4 will be

good yeah it really depends on how many other countries join in the uh the race too right which that domino effect strong opinions loosely held as the as Peter Brandt would say all right total crypto market cap um what do we think what do we think there what's right now like three and a half or something three and a half I think it's three and a half yeah I'm I'm gonna say um eight is an ambitious number I think there's going to be a lot of tokens created in 2025 like there's a bunch of big launches still to come um and I think like if if we assume that Bitcoin does go to 200

then that by itself or or even 170 that by itself is going to drive you know um couple trillion so yeah I think I think um a trillion is my is my number especially with with a rate cutting environment and I think stable coins could touch like 350 to 400 billion in in 25 that's I'm definitely being ambitious in these predictions but yeah um this the stable con one I think is has has legs especially with with rates um in a rate cutting cycle yeah mine's seven which is like pretty similar I don't think uh I know a lot of people calling for 10 that seems a bit too ambitious for me because it's

just like that's just Bitcoin it's it's I mean here's the thing it's like yeah my my BTC was like 150 because I don't think the reserve will be implemented right obviously if the reserve gets implemented everything changes so it's just without I don't know seven is a lot that's a double um after an already really good 20124 yeah damn yeah goad Jason uh yeah I was I'm somewhere between like five and five and seven honestly um I think a lot of that's going to be Bitcoin couple hundred billion of that will be um stable coins I guess and

then I just don't see like eth doing that great like like which is a huge another huge you know percentage total crypto market cap um so maybe I'm wrong maybe eth those really well and doubles and helps helps out with that but I'm not too sure yeah I'm at I'm at like six and a half seven basically if you know I think BTC goes to 170 um I think that that puts it at uh like 3.4 right and and I don't think dominance is is going to go that much lower in a world where like you know I see dominance probably staying in the

the the 50s low 50s if BTC makes that crazy of a run and so I'm I'm I'm in the six and a half seven range makes sense all right um what do you what do we think the best performing sectors and tokens are going to be and I think maybe we could use cis's spreadsheet for this as is like the the categories I don't know if you want to run through that we actually we're actually are we're actually updating it on the portal we just added uh agent platforms Frameworks as a category and we added agents as a category too um okay I do think it's just like I I don't know man like maybe this is the [ __ ] top on all this AI stuff but I still feel like the the the

Frameworks um I don't know it's hard I have like obviously like taken profit on this stuff too because it's run up so much um but I still think like you're trying to pick the best performing you know it's only been like a couple months of this AI stuff and like it is by far where all the attention is um I don't think it's like meme coins I don't think it's defi I think like you know I still think Soul like you'll have your L some of these l1s do well um but it definitely just feels like the most

explosive one for 2025 yeah um I also think it's going to like be absolutely brutal once it ends uh and so it's like yeah yeah I'm I'm in a similar Camp uh just also you know you have a lot of prevailing Tailwinds with with these models improving I think right now the main criticisms are are that they're they're kind of rappers but I I I think you know that ends up being a bit shortsighted plus I I do think um you know for for certain specialized ones um the fact that you have a way to monetize them and ACR value to them via

token you know we were all in the camp that that tokens are crypto's are one of crypto's biggest unlocks and so I think the combination of the two and the incentives it provides um will will help that space grow it's still I think like 10 or 15 bees alog together um and so it is relatively small and it's come up quickly and so you know you're seeing a pause now as there's just kind of end of year profit taking and and they're just it's it's been more or less up only for a couple weeks so I think it's reasonable to expect some churn and and it's combined with you know the the doubt that comes up but I think it it misses what how much these can improve and and and what else can get built on

top and so um yeah I think the the Frameworks and and agents for sure um even you know even like something I know Kang's been chilling at a bunch I think it's really compelling uh after asking a buddy of mine who's like a you know PhD in in the space and and a Founder uh in in AI particular on the the uh science side and so um and he he thought it was a really interesting model that yes no maybe I think um or yes no error rather um some you know specialized bot that goes through and checks uh errors through a lot of historic papers and so I think a lot of these kind of hypers specialized ones are going to come out and and so that that space is as a whole

will grow um and you don't really have you know it it takes a lot of boxes not most of these aren't VC originated um tokens and so you don't have the future unlocks kind of element being a big headwind and and so a lot of these are kind of uh organically created without needing a lot of upfront Capital so I think you know the setup is certainly there for for them to to go up quite a bit and and so you know that combined with the space growing outside of crypto um should really kind of keep interest and focus on it but you know I definitely expect it to be pretty volatile but relative to the others I think it's just a very interesting space

that's still relatively small and and so I think it's a reasonable bet to make as as the best performer yeah um it's tough right like uh last year I had like a pretty you know ideal it was pretty easy for me to be like okay like what's going on right now what's going to what's probably going to do really well and it's a bit less clear to me this time around like looking looking ahead um in terms of sectors I know we mentioned this dashboard that we just updated on the website it's free for everybody I don't even think you need to have like a subscription for it you could just log in and check it out maybe we'll share the link in the in the notes or whatever of the of the episode um but looking at

this right it's very it's very difficult to like uh bet against like the AI type of type of like narrative or meta going on right now um some of these charts look absolutely absurd though like uh like I don't I don't see how something like virtuals or ai6 Z like like continues to rip like obviously they're like at like going parabolic at this point so like you never want to be like oh like I'm going to fade something that's mid Parabola um but at the same time it's like I don't think it's like early anymore I don't think it's super late um interestingly since the start of the Year AI since

okay which is three days not a lot but the AI sector like agents Frameworks whatever right all the different categories they're actually the worst performing sector so far year to date in the last three days and I think that's a lot to do with what cedus mentioned of you know profit taking on Jan one after you know going up so much but even with that like I what's the best sector going to be in all of 2025 right I think the obvious answer is probably AI given you know Yan mentioned all of these external AI catalysts going on in trafi um which probably just you know add more fuel to the fire for these I think you'll probably get like actually you know useful agents that do things I

think I mentioned last time I was on the show I'm like I just haven't aped anything because like none of these like it's not clear what these agents like do it seems like they're just kind of like memes and now you're starting to see a couple examples of more specialized ones uh which is interesting somebody tagged me on Twitter uh about that yes no error he's like oh Jason based on the last Hive mine this kind of fits your criteria of like an agent that does something right and I was like oh okay take a look at that and I do think things like that are pretty interesting um I do think you could see like a sneaky like Renaissance and not like the whole defi sector but like specific names I don't know which ones like things like like Ena is not even really defi but like C defi I guess

right like I think you could see like a really sneaky year out of some of these um some of those names as well especially given all the uh Tailwinds from regulatory Trump Administration Etc so I'm kind of split between those two but I think it's I think you can't you can't really bet against AI at this point like the sector super strong it's not old it's not like super new so you have you know enough like price history and enough history of everything going on to like make some more educated bet bets and guesses and you just have things in trafi and just like outside of crypto like just normal Tech AI where you have all these new um advancements coming and all of that I

think just flows through into crypto via attention and you'll probably just see bids throughout throughout the year in a lot of these sites yeah I think like the bull case on this like the chart thing is that normally these charts are hitting because they all happen in private markets and it's just the fact that this whole AI thing has just been on chain and like public from day one and so you're not used to seeing things go from literally zero to a couple bill in such a short period of time but like the speed of just with with the AI stuff is actually accelerating it's hard to like kind of fade but yeah like someone uh was asking the other day like what's your top pick for 2025 and like I had a pick and I was going to put it on but

then it's like it's been up 25x in like a month and it's kind of it's tough because you just know at some point anything that goes up so much at some point there is a lot of like profit taking right and so that's just um the I guess the tough part for that yeah yeah as you guys know pretty bullish I think we were we were pretty early to this narrative on the hive mind and at Deli generally um I do think yeah depending how you measure like coin gecko counts it as like 50b which includes like n and and you know a bunch bunch of other stuff I think the pure AI agents and Frameworks is about 10 to 15 I think the whole thing could go to like

half a trillion in in 2025 honestly like I'm so bullish on AI I I literally think it's like a once in a actually so so actually this is a good resource sentient mark. Market they have it as 12 12.38 and that includes like 16z virtuals fcoin turbos zbro goat so that like it looks like a pretty good so 12.38 Bill you think half a I don't think yeah I'm saying not just but I wouldn't count I wouldn't like just include those though I'd add like I grass I'd add a bunch of tokens which are clearly AI tokens like a cash um

like yeah the whole sector of like actual AI things I think I think would go to 500 billion yeah and for me it's just there's so many big launches as well in for for AI in in 2025 like potentially na uh which is I guess the Darling by the way we're investors so obviously bias there uh will launch um ritual you know a bunch of the I ones that people have been working on and I I think I don't know I think we kind of maybe already have AGI like uh an 03 even upset even more and I think if if progress just stopped here like there was no more AI progress I already think you know 01 or 03 would would would like create multiple like trillion dollars of value you know in in the economy and and

progress is not going to stop here it's actually going to like keep accelerating like if you look at capex budgets for the hyperscalers uh like they they've all been pretty clear they're going to keep spending like crazy in in 2025 um you're gonna have more efficient chips like I I just think like AI is is is not priced in like I think AI is the first thing which is like this time is different it's just like up only for AI and and like the economy kind of driven by it um and like you said I think crypto captures a lot of that via VIA attension and I do think there'll be some legit crypto AI things built my my take is that the things that exist now are kind of like the the tows um you know they they they they're like

shelling points that that liquidity flows into but they're not the long-term winners I I don't think the long-term winner has really been been born yet um although I think like grass and iow are both executing really well and they're both portfolio companies again for for disclosure but I I do think the winner probably uh hasn't been hasn't been born yet um so I think it's like a really exciting that that's my pick for the most exciting sector and and I probably the second I think would do really well is like I think l1s will will unfortunately like continue to do really well just because they have in the past past and and I think the trend will will keep going and we'll have a bunch of like ail ones launching a ones like ritual and um some of the some of the

ones that that we invested in as well ambient and and others um so yeah that's my but then I do think there in other sectors there's going to be a lot of dispersion like I'm not bullish eth defi as a whole but obviously I'm super bullish Ena and I'm I'm bullish stuff with pmf like a too um and then I'm not bullish like modular really uh at all I think there's a lot of vaporware in included in that sector like a lot mean this is my worst performing sector pick yeah like basically will crush it I think initia will crush it though like within modular I think they'll show like what what ux can be the same with gaming like I'm not super bullish gaming but I think like ocg Off the Grid is gonna is gonna crush us I think there's going to

be like intense dispersion in these sectors where you'll have some things that are huge winners um and then most of the sector will will like flounder I would say yeah I was going to touch on like gaming there'd be I think a handful of plays that I think will do well um yeah Off the Grid and then these are all bags right so bias included um Godzilla Off the Grid uh Utopia I think fa born is going to do really well and and Cipher um they have Tatum Miko own play um and and there's definitely going to be others that are missing but um a lot of these yeah are launching in 2025 and and um if they don't what's the other one

that the gaming teams bullish on that that we don't have a bag of is it Maple Bor or or something um it was in the gaming year ahead I forget now anyway doesn't matter too much we got to wrap this soon are we um worse performing I mean we kind of just talked about it I just think like L2 tokens in general right like if base had a token to do well and it doesn't and so that's why that's also why I think virtual has done uh a lot better than some of the Soul AI stuff because it's the proxy to Long base season as well it's kind of like the L1 token in that sense um I just think yeah like I'm not listen I think Celestia is gonna basically get a lot of like the most da posted to it I still I'm just not

interested in that token there's just a lot of things you can you can own stuff like igen I'm not interested in like you know all these L2 tokens I it's just I just feel like there's better places to be I also think some of these new l1s coming up will get bids um like there's a lot of stuff that's still coming so yeah definitely not interested in like the modular thing like they can do okay it's just hard to see them like really outperforming right and at the end of the day like you know in a market where everything goes up sure you might feel better because it's up in USD but it's like what's really going to outperform it's just really hard for me to see that that sector like really out performing agreed I think AI is the only

sector where you'll have like broad outperformance like just a lot of things going up I think everything else is going to be very high dispersion just flows right yeah um yeah yeah I I think you know uncompelling uh VC bags with big unlocks are probably going to suffer right there's just not going to be that strong of a bid there um they might go up in in USD but it you know uh I think there's be pretty significant underperformance um I think some of the uh there's a few L ones that that or like there are going to be l1s that just don't perform well because there's no narrative for them right that that have existed and have kind of have gone past

the point of of being interesting and and are now just kind of you know searching for a narrative rather than than having one that they're going to Market with from the beginning so yeah for me it's going to be mostly those um just yeah heavy unlock coins that aren't that don't have a reason to exist and and um some of these l1s yeah all right I wanted to end with just some wild predictions that anyone has that wants to throw out like um you know it can be anything any any any sector and then we can end it there and that's again maybe maybe try and keep it a little bit short given given how how much we' overan although I think it's been it's been a pretty good chat overall I think uh I think soth is 0.1 I don't know if that's

wild mhm it's like 06 now yeah um you think it hits you think it hits 0.1 yeah which is close to it's close to a double on the ratio it's like an 80% move on the ratio it's like pretty big move that's like kind of the meat at this point I feel like for for that but I do think it hits 0.1 um I think the like you know the mem coin critique is kind of going away now because you have all this AI stuff it's like the it's just I uh you know what as my also hot take that the monetary premium is dead uh except for Bitcoin and so if

you don't have fundamentals um for like uh like infr type token people are not going to give that monetary premium anymore yeah okay um Yan Jason any you guys want to go next you go ahead I'll you sure yeah um I don't know I don't know if this is really a super hot take um at all to be honest but I think um I don't think eth BTC gets above 0.05 the cycle I think

it just kind of flounders and go sideways um I think it could even make a new low in the coming months depending on how the Trump Administration uh releases plans on nsbr um yeah I've I've tried to get bullish eth like I like eth I just don't think I can buy it I I don't think there's any there the way I look at it is it has to come from one one of my buckets Soul or Bitcoin and I'm more bullish the other two than I eth still and I know a lot of people think it you know this could be the year where eth you know outperforms and does really well I just I don't I don't think so

so yeah no I'm I'm in a simar the spr kind of changes things for sure where in previous Cycles you know people Pile in a Bitcoin and then pretty quickly look to rotate elsewhere because everyone else was going to do the same but with you know spr and and and just the flows that that can that continue to go into BTC it makes I think other very large assets difficult to get excited about on on a risk adjusted basis um I think they're going to be like pockets of of outperformance right and so if you see things swing too far in One Direction you'll you'll definitely see you know poor positioning get punished on on eth and eth will have its rallies but I

think it'll kind of be that that like roller coaster that declines or like epbc in particular um I I think Soul e yeah uh 2.1 is is not really a hot take I think it it's pretty reasonable um it's yeah what like a 70% move so in terms of our performance um I think once you're through the unlocks or at least like yeah the question is like where where does where do those get priced in um I I'm I'm kind of in the camp that I I don't think you know Soul goes new lows from like 20 you know it like it ended in December was like in the 190s I I would be pretty surprised to see it Go below that um because the

unlocks themselves are like on a percentage basis of Supply it's not that much right you can kind of churn through that I'm assuming there's a decent amount of hedging and and so yeah they're they're gonna they're gonna sting a little but I think you know they'll they'll get priced in beforehand and so souls should have a a pretty good year um I think with soul just on that like I think there's not a lot of I just don't think there's a lot of downside on the ratio for soul like so it could o it could just oscillate between like 05 and 08 all year but I don't see it going like below 04 or something like that yeah all right my I'll just do quick predictions to I don't have much

to say on the eth stuff um I need to capitulate I guess I don't know I'll have a long think about it tonight um I think yeah I think my eye sector prediction was pretty pretty outrageous like yeah 5 million is yeah it's a lot is outrageous it's with the l1's I think it's reasonable with the like l1's start getting pretty big I think it's like if you said AI Frameworks in agents that would be crazy no no no yeah no no no no not AI Frameworks in agents um then I think there's going to be some wild agent stuff happening like agents making like becoming like nine figure millionaires you know um like multi-agent swarms agents paying each

other crazy stuff like that um I think pump fun is gonna like win crypto social like I really think that the which which is going to be like very unexpected for people I think their streaming launch like the amount of attention uh to be fair a lot of it negative but the amount of attention the their streaming product got kind of shows like I don't know I I think the the the thing always believed and I think about crypto social is just that you have to put financialization at the core of it because that's that's the crypto superpower and I think uh like pump fun with streams like the way you can insert tokens into that in in so many different ways is going to be like insane um and I think they will do that

and and it's gonna it's like be careful what you wish for in terms of you know crypto social taking off because I think that's going to bring a lot of a lot of negative and and positive attention to crypto um and then I think crypto payments might finally take off in 2025 like crypto stable coin payment driven by stripe and and their Bridge acquisition and stuff like this um and like just just overall stable coins growing you know if they grow to 400 billion or 350 billion I just think people are going to want to start spending stables and we we'll finally have that that takeoff um yeah that's pretty much that's pretty much it I guess none of those are that wild but um

yeah yeah how much do you think the the AI Asian speculation cannibalizes kind of the the pump fun meme demand because we we've definitely there's definitely an inverse relationship there right if you look memes struggled while the agent space ripped and right now you're seeing a bit of a reversal where agent and Frameworks are taking a breather and and memes are are going but I think you could also point to just broader Market strength for for memes and and the fact that they're pretty under owned some of these are built off off of pump though some of these agent framework launching platforms just use pump contracts so that's it yeah and I also I don't know I think the AI agent stuff is going to look really different in 2025 like I think these social agents are pretty

boring like these just like influencer agents which is basically what you have now and I think you're gonna have like specialized platforms com in huh I saying we should get Jordan on here to to give us takes about the uh agents yeah xbt especially um yeah old man screams at wind Jordan hates something um the yeah I think I think they're going to look pretty different you're gonna have like a lot of specialization in these agent platforms um and I don't I think these Frameworks like I don't know um yeah the the the best agents are still I think uh for the for seable future going to be like closed Source um and but anyway that

that that doesn't matter too much it's a bit of a mid curve honestly yeah I I I and I agree with that the Swarm stuff is is massive just because you it it you know increases the amount of kind of activity by a magnitude or two uh because it can just all happen in the background and so and if you can strap on some compelling value of cruel right I think that's where the the fly wheels can go nuts yeah I mean you already saw that right like Luna paid some other bot for like a design or something didn't they and they pay like Luna paid someone for a for an album too I thought like another bck yeah like partnered with some musician yeah which is pretty pretty wild yeah I think it's going to get pretty crazy in in

2025 um yeah I do think that Meme like you have five years to hyper gamble your way out of the permanent underclass or whatever it is uh holds some some truth like if you actually get like AGI and then Super intelligence then it's like either you you own capital you know in the means of production you own these things or or the companies that own these things or it's going to be hard to to make it you know to to to like out compete yeah I don't know maybe the Haves and Have Nots will will much more goth Gotham City exactly exactly and on that cheerful

note yes we'll we'll call it on after having the most bullish podcast ever SC yeah you better [ __ ] make it this year um all right guys thanks for joining us think this was a good one uh thanks Jason for for for jumping in and we'll see you again in two weeks and happy New Year to everyone and excited for another year of the another year of the hive mind [Music]