Lark Davis: My Bull & Bear Thesis for Digital Assets in 2026

Transcript

The vast majority of these coins will not go back to all-time highs and they do not deserve to go back to all-time highs. And we're not talking about random scam meme coins. We're talking about stuff like Polka Dot, Cardano. I mean, look, I think a major trend going forward will either be no token or tokenized equity. Anything in between will be uninvestable. Welcome back to the rollup. I'm Robbie. >> I'm Andy. Robbie and I met at the University of Florida in 2017 [music] where we first found out about digital assets. We learned a lot along the way and we're bringing you face to face with the leaders of our industry. >> Sit [music] back, relax, and enjoy today's episode.

>> Welcome to the show, man. >> Yeah. Thanks for having me on. >> I'm I'm digging the hair >> haircut, man. It's a fresh fade. >> It's a holiday fade, >> man. Putting yourself out there on camera every day, as we know. It requires a certain level of uh of of self-care as well of uh of as well as self um self-belief, you know what I mean? I think I went crazy a long time ago to be honest. It's it's been over for a while. [laughter] >> Well, man, thanks for thanks for joining. Longtime uh listener of the show, man. Lark Davis in the house. We got a lot to talk about and I was talking about that token versus equity dynamic. We got market dynamics. We've got institutional dynamics. I'd like to

just give you a bit of a bit of context as to how I'm seeing things and and I'm super curious your opinion. So we're we've kind of started this contractionary phase within the cryptonative ecosystem. So cryptonative companies protocols projects investors, speculators, we're kind of going through this like um return to reality, this kind of trimming of the fat, this revenue, uh this return to fundamentals, this token holder equity dynamic, all these things, you know, what is your buyback schedule? Who's what is the demand side for this thing?

there's this very like contractionary almost like coming to the senses of of like this maturation phase within the cryptonative space. So I kind of view it as like contractionary. Then in the institutional kind of realm, it's this massive expansionary regime. You've got just this absolutely diabolical desire for institutions to launch chains, launch stable coins, uh launch crypto products, uh come into the space, you know, treasury companies. And so you've got this like massive cognitive dissonance happening right now in the space where on a 10-year time horizon things have never looked better. But on the if you look at the best performing asset of this year, Hyperlid, it's officially red on the year. And so this entire space is looking at and I think

we're all like looking around either trying to figure out who to blame, what's going on, how to make sense of this. So, Lark Davis, how do we make sense of this this juxiposition that we found? >> We got a lot to cover there. And um we'll just start off with this. It's been a weird year. Essentially, the majority of altcoins have been in a bare market for the entirety of the year. A lot of them sort of had their price performance back in December, January. Many of them didn't even come close to getting to previous all-time highs. Even quote unquote good coins like Chainlink, for example, didn't even come close to getting back to previous highs. So, we had a lot of disenchantment. And it was very interesting because it went from this financial nihilism which was what typified the end of last year where

everything's and nothing has any value. And that was very much the meme coins, right? Memecoins are more honest about it. Yeah, they do nothing. It's just a picture of a cat or a goat or a dog or frog or whatever. Okay, very honest. Means nothing. Most were scams. Everybody went into know most of them were scams. Whereas you had on the other side all of these layer 1 tokens, layer 2 tokens, governance tokens for DeFi protocols which put on the theater of having some kind of value but were more valueless than the memecoins. I mean, who's going to go and govern this random DeFi platform? Nobody cares. And the tricky part, as we've just seen with Axelar, Axelar just sold to a bigger company and so good for them. The equity

holders just ate token holders. Sorry, bad news. Nobody cares because you have zero rights as a token holder. And this has been a part of the big problem, which is why the revenue meta popped up this year, which great, you have a token, there's doing buybacks. There's actually some kind of reason to hold the token to hope that it'll go up in the future because there's some kind of business model attached to it that's driving real value through buybacks or revenue shares or whatever it might be. So people have gone through a big cycle of emotions with coins over the last year. And of course most of the altcoins have proven themselves to be virtually worthless. Maybe there's about a hundred investable assets across the crypto space. Quite a few speculatable assets obviously.

But we've come through this weird phase where throughout 2025 most of the altcoins have been slaughtered. Okay, that's obvious. Everybody knows. Everybody's seen that. We've had a few weird areas out performance. We had Zcash go on its run, for example. Hyperlid go on its run. A few others had some interesting moves throughout the year. Bitcoin hit a new all-time high. ETH hit a new all-time high, but barely. Bitcoin only by about 10K. ETH only by 100 bucks. And Salana didn't quite hit a new high in the rally this year. It came about $40 short. So, that was some of the biggest price action. We've had a very disappointing year for crypto.

Meanwhile, people who have been disenchanted with crypto and become overly cynical with crypto, they're not coming back to play in the casino as much as they used to. No, they will when we get some green candles, don't get me wrong, but they've gone to other places. They've seen data center stocks go up 10, 20, 30, 40, 50x, all kinds of AI stock plays. So when you actually buy a share in a company, even if it's a quantum computing company that's kind of BS and might go bankrupt in a few years, at least you're playing a better game than buying these literal scam tokens that are being launched in the market by VCs who only want to extract. And what happened to the days, can I just say what happened to the days, man, when you would have an ICO and you'd get it would come out at a 20, 30, 40, $50 million

valuation. Everybody had a chance to eat, man. Now it's like, oh, 20 billion dollar fully diluted valuation on day one. Everybody's screwed. No one's gonna buy it. The only people who win are the VCs who funded the seed round at 10 million bucks. That's it. And >> I mean I mean and luckily we've actually seen some sort of return to this ICO idea. I mean we saw Aztec this past uh week or two. We've seen I think football.f fun has theirs today. Um but but still that that like the core primitive of you know this equal opportunity playing field has been sort of taken away. How do you how do you reason about um the the kind of idea of maybe some of these tokens may not go to

all-time highs in in in the future and perhaps they've seen their time in the sun. again kind of coming back to this like bifurcated outlook on the space, right? You've got, you know, you laid it you laid out the kind of lay of the land extremely well with regards to kind of how people are expecting the performance like for for people who are holding different crypto assets. You know, is there a framework that you've been using this year as to like how you want to manage your portfolio given the uh state of the altcoin market? Like have you changed your views on like your portfolio management this year?

>> Yeah, absolutely. I think you have to be forced to change in these kind of market conditions. One of the things for me is really just to there's a few altcoins I'm still holding as spot positions. It's probably not a great idea, but I'm still doing that. You know, something like Bitcoin or Salana, okay, fine. That's different. I don't mind the volatility. I can hold those. The other altcoins anyway, you know, it's not a good time. But for the most part, really, what's been rewarded over the last year, it's been chasing the trends. whatever the hot coin of the week or the month is where the hot money ball is going you know like Zcash I faded when Nal Robbie Kant started chilling it was 80 bucks said ah it's this old dino coin who cares wherever where the money's chasing doesn't matter what it does right so

there's been a bit of that you need to be very very very rotational right now and here's the fact too the vast majority of these coins will not go back to all-time highs and they do not deserve to go back to alltime highs and we're not talking about random scam meme coins we're talking about stuff like Polka Dot Cardano I don't know. I mean, look, maybe at some point they we get some crazy risk on season and Cardano for some reason goes to all-time highs, but they don't deserve to. They're wildly overvalued at their current valuations. They have almost no users on chain. They have almost nobody using any products on their chain. There's almost no apps built on their chain. There's almost no stable coins built on their chain. There's almost no daily perpetual volumes, swap volumes, anything. They're ghost towns. Absolute ghost towns. These

things not they're worth multi-billion dollar valuations. So there's a bit of healing of nature that needs to come in here. Whereas other things like Salana probably feels relatively undervalued. Why is Salana worth 1/5if of Ethereum when it's beating on most metrics? So there's areas of opportunity within the mispricings of some of these assets. And there's also areas of it doesn't make any sense and these coins really don't deserve to go back to new all-time highs. Maybe like Cardano does because it's kind of like a cult coin. But a lot but a lot of these coins probably won't and they don't deserve to either. And there's there's a a question that investors have to look at themselves in the mirror and say, >> be honest with your asset, man. What you're holding, does it actually deserve

to go back to new all-time high? You just have bag bias because you're underwater and you're hoping and praying that it goes back up. Sometimes just cutting that dead weight and moving on with your life can be the best thing you can do. >> Yet is built for big moments, the most fun you'll ever have with your crypto. Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game. Not your keys, not your coins. From the team that pioneered cold storage, Treasure has just released its new wallet. Guys, if you are still using hot wallets in 2025, [music] 2026, you are missing the entire point. Secure your coins. Get [music] a treasure at treasure.io. Holiday is unified crypto payments. Give your users more wherever they are. Go to holiday.xyz to never write a smart contract again.

>> Yeah. Yeah. No, I I totally hear you and it's been it has been a year of um concentration being the strategy. I mean, you know, ever since I entered in 2017, the market always moved together and you know, I remember Djen Spartan in 2020 was like guys um diversification in crypto is the silliest idea because uh there are the whole market moves together for the most part and the winners are just they always you know if you can identify the winners they outperform consistently. So why not just hold a lot of your assets in like you know the the tokens that you want to own that you actually believe in and I think that has continued to prove true uh here this year you know I'm curious how you keep an optimistic outlook on the market

right so let's kind of flip towards this more institutional I call it Wolf of Wall Street's tokenization bull run I I was in New York a couple weeks back uh for SmartCon with Chain Link it was unreal uh it was an absolute you know it was wild now Bitcoin was still 105k Okay. But but it it was a pure it was pure mania mode and and it still is now to this day and we'll still you know it will still be I'll spend a lot more time there next year. And so for a lot of us who are just in the kind of cryptosphere we see the kind of lack of of performance from our favorite tokens. But what we don't see is what's actually happening behind the scenes in these offices in these institutional spaces. Perhaps you can give us a bit

more of the optimistic outlook here as to why you think that, you know, or why you could be led to believe that this is the best time, you know, to be in crypto for the long haul given the the adoption. Or perhaps you don't feel that way. >> I do feel that way and it's been a very tough way to feel for some months now because we diverged from stock markets five, six months ago at this point where they kept running and crypto stalled out. Then we had 1010. The big crash washed a lot of people out and we have not recovered from that. We are still seeing the ghosts of that event in the market charts every single day. So there's that to deal with. Then at the same time all this has been happening and there's been such an extreme amount of pesticism and cynicism in markets. We

have had some of the biggest announcements possible from the market. We have Vanguard getting into crypto. >> Year ago they said never on our watch. They fired that CEO and said, "Get get get everybody into ETFs because Black Rockck's making so much money here. We need to get our clients in on this." So, we got Vanguard late. >> Yeah. But, you know, better late than never. They're late, but they're not late. Right. Exactly. Was that Tom Lee made a good point. There's only what, four million Bitcoin addresses, but there's 20 million people with uh IRA accounts or whatever. $10,000. So, it's interesting. Um, so there's that. So we have definitely we are early to adoption for the mainstream for the trady money right it feels like we've gone a long way because we've seen so many big

buyers come in the ETFs absorbed so much but it's going to keep happening over time so we've had Vanguard we've had Bank of America we had Charles Schwab we had a Mundy over in Europe which one of their biggest asset managers we've had all these really really big stories JP Morgan okay now it's just these crazy crazy stories that everybody's become totally numb to it now >> I know right it's like if this happened in 2022, 2021. We'd be like, "What?" >> We'd be freaking out. But it's it's like every week now. Every week there's like one of these like today it was Visa stable coins on Salana.

>> Heads would actually explode. Back in like 2017, if you told anybody that Black Rockck's going to launch an ETF and that Vanguard's going to come in and Fidel's going to come, people be like, "You're an idiot. Get out of here. It's never going to happen." Whereas here we are with these things happening. And to an extent, we become numb to the good news. And that's very much a sign of bearish market conditions that all this good news and nobody cares. Prices just keep going down. People keep having a lack of faith. So look, we are going through a reckoning right now. It's been a very if this was the top, if 126k was the top, it's one of the weirdest tops ever for Bitcoin because it was the quietest top. I remember the day that we were at 126, I said, "This is a really

weird top for Bitcoin or really weird new price high because >> the timeline's dead. I guess nobody owns Bitcoin anymore. Nobody cares. Like nobody's celebrating the fact that Bitcoin is under 126K. Like normally you'd see, you know, all kinds of posts and stuff. Now obviously there was a few people posting, but it was very very quiet because there was no altcoin season. People were not broadly making money. Most people were basically screwed. You had Bitcoin top barely, no altcoin season where we're also now heading into this weird situation where there's been no business cycle breakout because the US PMI manufacturing index has not broken out over 50 and sustained. We had a we had two months where it was above 50 just barely back in uh January and February and then it fell back under 50. So there's been no

breakout in the business cycle. Normally it takes about a bit year for the business cycle to actually reach its peak. Hasn't happened. Okay. So it's been a very weird cycle so far. Normally Bitcoin tops with the business cycle >> whereas this time Bitcoin topped without the business cycle. >> If we topped and that's truly the peak of peaks and we go down to 40 50k by October next year which is really not even that far away guys in the grand scheme of things. But that's what Ben Cohen's calling for. >> A lot of people, the technicals would say, technicals would say, this is the thing. If you believe in the four-year cycle, simply all that has to happen is for 524 or 530 days need to pass after the Bitcoin having that just simply marks the top every time. Ignore the fact that it always topped with the

business cycle. Ignore the top that it topped with the credit cycles. That that none of that stuff matters apparently. Ignore the ignore the fact that in 2021 when Bitcoin topped, it partially topped because the Fed started talking about a tightening cycle and rate hikes and all this stuff. None of that stuff matters because 524 days passed from the day of the Bitcoin having therefore it's all over and buy Bitcoin [laughter] 20K in a year. >> So, I'm getting the vibe that you're not a believer in the four-year cycle this time around. So, you know, this is another interesting kind of like I I keep using the word juxtaposition where it's like technicals are saying rounded top dats, you know, you know, ran out of steam, uh markets topped on apathy, tough time, >> fundamentals and liquidity foes are suggesting rate cuts coming, uh QE

starting, business cycle kind of hasn't even really started in this regime. Uh you could make an argument that 2026 is going to be the most stimulative monetary policy year since 2021. Uh just basically off off the last five years of kind of a restrictive policy. [snorts] But yet here we are and it sure looks like the this time is not different. >> No. Well, that's the crazy thing. But ironically to argue that this time is not different is to argue that this time is different. That's the the tricky part about it.

Well, because the things we just talked about, if you're arguing that this time is not different, well, it's different because normally Bitcoin tops the business cycle. Again, we're just making basic argument that 524 days have passed since Bitcoin having, therefore it must top. >> Okay? And look, had 1010 not happened, we'd probably be in a very different place. The market makers have been aggressively just wrecking the market every second that they get because they probably lost tens of billions on that day. I can only imagine. So, we have to deal with that. But there's a lot of reasons why you'd say, "Okay, well, this time is different because we didn't hit any of the top signals for Bitcoin." Like none of the on there's like 30 onchain indicators. Not a single one of them got hit as a topping signal. Okay?

So this time is different except the 524 days passed, right? So then you have of course we've lost the 50WE, we've lost the 200 day, the monthly MACD is trending down. Like these are all bad things on the technicals and this is all screaming that we are currently in a bare market. The question is what kind of bare market is it? And that may be the thing that actually tricks people. That may be where we find >> find out because this is the thing. Everyone's expecting it's going to be a year-long bare market. >> I don't think it's going to be. I think this bull market was so different. You have to assume that the bare market is also going to be different.

>> It would really mess a lot of people up if we had a three or four month bare market. We didn't go much lower than like 75K for example or something like that. remains to be seen exactly how it's going to play out. If you just go with the traditional way of okay, a four-year cycle, X% draw down afterwards. None of that nothing else really matters, then yeah, we're probably going to see Bitcoin bottom October next year at 40 to 50K around the somewhere around the 200 week, which is around 55K right now, maybe dip a little bit under. And that's basically it. Some simple process and then we try to run the four-year cycle next time. Next time it doesn't work out. But but here's the thing is that the four-year cycle is a very interesting narrative, but the four-year cycle's been primarily driven by the

liquidity flows, right? And so >> right now to argue that the four-year cycle should simply stay in play because it's always been in play, you're essentially arguing that you're fighting the Fed. Again, we want to talk about this time is different. What's what's the grand rule in investing? Don't fight the Fed. Yeah. Everybody said, "No, no, I want to fight the Fed." They just ended QT and 10 days later instantly capitulated and started. It's not quantitative easing. It's reserve management. It's not QE, guys. It's reserve management. Okay, we're not going to use the two letters. But they're buying back $40 billion of Treasury bills a month. And the estimates from the big banks that they're going to buy up to half a trillion dollars of T bills next year.

That's massive stimulus. Massive. That's an environment where Bitcoin tends to thrive. Plus, you got a new Fed chair coming in. Trump's Trump's litmus test is will you put rates down to 1%. Yes or no? Basically. >> Yeah. >> So, you're fighting the Fed. This is a good place to be. >> There's a bit of like there's a bit of patience required here, right? I think, you know, that the Fed chair is probably going to be elected, you know, in the next 60 days or so, 30 to 60 days. That should be a nice like boost for the markets uh sentiment, but that won't actually take effect till May. [snorts] then the actual effects of the QE and and the rates they probably won't really kick in till middle to end of next year.

I don't know. It it's going to be very interesting to to kind of watch play out. I think we can speculate uh as we want. I think like the important thing is to make sure that for those listening, you've got your tax uh capital allocated for this year. You're nice and cozy and you can weather whatever storm or you know good times are ahead. So l kind of shi sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh shifting off of the market uh you know speculation and just kind of like where we're looking. I'd like to get your take on this uh token versus equity dynamic here. So you mentioned Axelr, >> right? So let's just start with them as

this example here, but just this broad problem. Um and you know I'll I'll give some context in the in the tweet which is basically uh or a tweet that I saw. He's like I Grant from BlockMate said I think a major trend going forward will either be no token or tokenized equity. Anything in between will be uninvestable. And so for those watching basically we had this regime with the SEC where you had to create a foundation and a labs company. The foundation was usually in the Cayman Islands and the labs was kind of wherever either in Switzerland, in the US, Singapore and basically the the labs was the development company for the foundation typically. Um, and so yeah, I mean, I'm just curious your take on how how you

see these companies uh playing out in the future, how you kind of think about this this transition because again, it feels like the gig is up on the token plus equity dynamic. How do you think this changes over the next couple years now that we're in a better regulatory regime? >> I think the market's told us quite clearly the market's sick of it. They don't want to buy these overly inflated, useless governance tokens for VCs anymore. Back in 2021, you could throw money at basically anything and it would probably go up. Okay? Especially hot new coins hitting the market. Now, it's just not been the case. The market's smartened up a bit to that reality. And therefore, people are not one to take these uh useless tokens anymore. Well, it's a utility token, a governance

token. Yeah, why why don't I get some actual stake in this? Which is of course why the revenue meta has taken off with, you know, pump fun and hyperlquid and all this kind of I know what a crazy idea, right? Companies that actually make money. [laughter] >> I need to get some uh I need to get some uh revenue meta hats. >> I think they're coming. I think I think they're coming. >> Yes. >> So, >> but I understand the frustration from investors. That's >> Yeah, I've been in a lot of those deals and they've sucked. I mean I our our angel port our like fund angel portfolio is looking really rough to be honest. Um I think that goes for a lot of people.

So so okay so the market is tired of this hyperlquid also helped to really push this forward where it was like all right guys we're going to do things this way. Uh we're going to be buying back with 99% of our profits and you guys can figure the rest out. Obviously they were uh highly rewarded this year. So what does this look like going forward then? you know, let's say so Axel obviously got acquired by Circle leaving I think to be the the token holders in the dust completely >> completely. >> Um h >> so how are are app tokens even investable then because if if you can just sell the sell the equity to and get bought out and the equity holders own all the equity which is likely the founders and any of the investors who did a safe plus a token warrant. H how

are what what is the incentive to buy app tokens? It's >> very thin. It's a very thin incentive. This is the thing you have maybe you could take someone like a for example. I would be very very surprised if a sold out and left the token holders in the dust, right? So then you got to okay you got to trust somebody, right? You don't have any sort of legal representation in terms of a token holder. So the only way forward really is to have better ICOs where when you buy a token it gives you some kind of digital rights to the company as a shareholder. That's probably the only way it's going to make sense. And until we start getting more of that, a lot of altcoins are uninvestable. That's why I said there's maybe a 100 investable assets in crypto right now. And the 100 number might be

generous. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean this dynamic it it's hard to overstate how much Fugazi Gary Gendler's regime forced on this space. So maybe we can flip that on its head. I just saw SEC chair Paul at Paul Paul Atkins will be speaking at digital assets uh digital asset summit in New York City this upcoming year. He's gone on and said that they're going to bring all markets on chain in the next two years. Larry Frink is saying tokenize everything. So it it remains more and more clear that the big investable category right now is this tokenization RWA category. The issue here though,

Lark, is people like you and myself, we don't necessarily have access to these deals. You know, we don't have access to the Tempo deal. I mean, we don't have access to the, you know, um, whatever it is, circles arc deal, or we don't we don't have access to some of these, uh, like I guess what I'm getting at is if if I asked you how to get exposure to stable coins, you could say Ethereum, plasma, stable, circle stock. Um, and and there's a couple others, but like this is a mega trend. And people in our community are kind of poed because they're like, well, how do we even get access to this? This is clearly the dominant investable narrative of the entire sector. payments, stables, tokenization, but how do we even invest

in this? >> That's the problem. You can't outside of the few options you listed. And okay, investing in Ethereum or Salana because of stablecoin adoption, that's just like one of the many reasons why you may invest in those assets, right? Circle stock, I mean, it was felt kind of overvalued when they came out and with interest rates going down, I'm not sure that's a great buy. And so that's it. You're left with a few protocols. Athena's got absolutely whacked since the 10-10 crash. So, you're left with very few options. And the problem is you what you just shared about Larry Frink and Paul Atkins. Oh my gosh, RWA is so incredibly bullish. We're going to have trillions of dollars on chain and I'm going to be able to like take a mortgage on take my house mortgage and put it in a earn stable coins, all that stuff. But

you know what? There's no great way to invest in that. Sorry. Oh, I'm going to buy Finance. It's a governance tok. It's a governance token. You don't capture any upside. You don't have any legal rights to the company right there. That's a freaking governance token, man. Ono, super bullish protocol doing all the amazing stuff. You as a token holder. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man. Um, man, so I I I know that you were, you know, somewhat active in the AI crypto kind of trend that happened at the end of last year. I thought that was going to come back a bit like you know a yearly kind of cyclical thing where we would see it kind of pop up again. Completely has not. Yeah. I mean NER is doing a great job of capitalizing there and a couple

others but >> price action and just general flows or interest in the AI crypto uh construct is pretty much at alltime lows. >> Yeah, >> basically. Look, that's that's basically everything. I mean, we've had again a few things like perpetual swap decks that had their little moment in the sun this year, but >> but even that lark, we've seen these for freaking five years. We saw GMX, DYDX. Like, it's like >> nothing new under the sun when people come out and say like, "Oh, we're doing info fire, social fire, prediction markets. We were doing prediction markets back in 2017, guys. Come on.

It's nothing new." But again, like this sentiment, I try not to get pigeonhold into this sentiment because I know I'm going to spend a lot of time in New York next year and I know it's going to be a massive mass, it's just this expansionary regime. It's just that same issue of like, all right, well then how do you benefit from, you know, uh, uh, BN or BKNY or whatever it is getting a two billion dollar offer from, uh, Circle or Stripe or or whatever it was like, well, you don't. It it's like it's this really weird dynamic right now and it's causing a lot of apathy. Um yeah, it's causing a lot of apathy >> because they're better off buying uh of stocks and data centers and AI and space companies and biotech and stuff right

now because you actually have real shares of a company until we make the token model better and we see broader access get rolled out to regular investors which is going to come. I think Coinbase and others are working on those very things. I think we'll see more um regular investors get a chance to get a seat at the table, which will be a good thing. But for a lot of this stuff, it's not going to be the case. And for a lot of the best ideas happening in crypto right now, we have to accept we invited Wall Street in. Well, they invited themselves, but they still came and now they brought all their tricks with them. And that's part of the process here is that they're going to be doing these things. They're going to be making their own little things, making their own little deals.

And no one's really going to be invited except for, you know, Naval Rabby and his buddies, you know, and that's the San Francisco money crowd. And they're always invited everything. So it's not really different than things usually play out. Trade on anything, [music] economics weather sports crypto and more. All on couch.com [music] 24/7 for the world's biggest prediction market. >> Havachi is fast and private [music] per trading secured by ZK with Celestia underneath. Go to habachi.xyz [music] to start trading today. Looking for yield that stands out? Infinify gives you just that. Deposit stable coins and earn far more than the current savings [music] rate. Infinify is a battle tested, reliable DeFi platform that is ready to go. Head to infinifi.xyz.

Lark. Then I I guess to kind of put this into the perspective that I've been thinking about it is I've been thinking about I' I've kind of uh structured in my mind like there is like a there's this 10-year Silicon Valley outlook towards their investments, right? They go into these deals and they're like these are exponential type of deals. And Hi put this whole thing about exponential investing. And I think if you're a crypto bull you have to adopt this mindset at the current phase where it's like look guys um these are exponential technologies. We're in decade one and a half of the biggest crypto asset.

>> We're in decade one of Ethereum. If we're in this for the next two to three decades, then you know that's kind of the 10 year 20 year vision that you have to have with some of these uh kind of like liquid venture bets. Um but at the same time, you've got to be extremely extremely extremely kind of paranoid and pragmatic about like what it is that you're holding and like very very understanding of what it is you're buying and holding on to. So, I I guess like the way that I've taken these these two outlooks that we've kind of built the context off of for this conversation and applied it to the investing side is like, all right, here's stuff that I want to just take a 10 to 20 year bet on and and look back and I don't want to be like I sold Amazon in 2002, you know,

and and I don't want to be like I sold Tesla, you know, in 2011, but at the same time, I also don't want to be the guy holding Enron and the guy holding um, you know, MySpace. And so it's like it's kind of this uh apples to apples with some of the early tech companies that have been thinking about this. Um and I think it would help a lot of people to take a 10-year view on their really strong convicted crypto asset bets. However, being very uh paranoid, pragmatic, and being willing to adapt their thesises along the way, >> it's a good idea. The problem is that there's very few assets you could realistically consider holding for more than a year in crypto, maybe more than a few months in crypto. And that's just

the harsh reality of it. I mean, the AI agent thing, great idea. All these AI agent things, even virtuals, great idea, great platform, token slaughtered. Will it do well in 10 years? May not be here in a year. Hard to say. >> Yeah. >> Whereas you could look at, okay, Bitcoin Ethereum Salana okay, 10-year bets, sure. uh apps, a Sky, they're probably going to go the distance. Chainlink probably going to go the distance. We start running out of names real quick though, to be honest. And that that's the problem. If you're if you're going to go out and buy Monad, for example, gosh, so much hype. Monad, Monad, Monad came out, boom, instantly down. Launched at a terrible time. A whole bunch of reasons why things will do what they do.

But do we really need another layer 1? I mean, really, it's 2025. Your idea is to launch a layer 1 blockchain. We already have like 900 of them and n and only four or five of them have any users. So is Monad going to be the next Amazon? Is that the one that we hold on to for 10 years? >> I have my doubts. Right. >> Yeah. >> But you do agree that there is a next Amazon that is in front of is in front of your face and that you have to be able to like the winners will be the ones who are able to hold out. >> Absolutely. I think that's I think the name of that Salana by the way.

>> Really? That's your [laughter] that's your uh that's your Amazon bet >> potentially. I feel like that's one you could uh could hold for years. Although that being said, if we do get some kind of big season in uh 2026 and it goes to like five, six, 700 bucks, take the profits, reby it in the next bare market. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh last thing for you. Do you think um so so XRP has kind of been like this massive >> uh polarizing asset, let's say, for various reasons. Seems like this year they've really capitalized on this whole um you know, let's just say like crypto legislation, polit like political environment, etc. Um chart looks pretty rough. I don't know what's going on over

there. What's your take on XRP? Do you think X XRP is going to survive for for for the next 5 to 10 years? >> Probably. Um, look, I I I've never been the world's biggest XRP fan, but I'm also don't not anti- XRP. People like freak out. Oh my god, you don't own XRP, but don't you know about all like, yeah, I know you guys tell me all the time. I've looked into it. We'll trade XRP when the chart looks good. It's fine, man. Now, look, XRP is a very interesting one. Will it be here in 10 years? Probably. Does it deserve its current valuation of some mind-boggling number? What's what's the current market cap? Let's have a quick look here.

Current market cap is $116 billion. No, I don't think it deserved it. 170 $180 billion market capitalization either. Now, RLUSD is gaining traction. It's got about $1.3 billion market cap for their stable coins. So, that's not bad, right? And there are RWA coming on chain and stuff like that. But I think the market is pricing in some unbelievable future for XRP. Now again, not anti-XRP. When I learned about XRP back in 2017, I said, "That's a cool idea." Now it's like, "But why wouldn't I just use Salana to send USDC for a fraction of a penny?

What What do I need XRP?" But the banking partnerships, man, don't the banking partnerships. Yeah. Okay. But they're stable coin. Yeah, we have a whole bunch of other stable coins, too, man. What do we need our all USD for? Like it's it's its value proposition in 2025 is just not what it used to be. And you got to be honest about that. That's why like I'll I'll I'll trade it, man. I'll date it, but I ain't going to marry XRP. >> What about the XRP chain link rivalry? How [laughter] do you feel about that one? That'll get the people going. Who's I think I think Chainlink's going to mob them over the next 10 years. I think Chainlink dominates, but I don't think the XRP uh army is going to feel too fondly about that. What's your take on this on uh who really owns the Swift

banking partnerships? [laughter] >> Apparently Lineia. I don't if you saw that. Apparently they got a big Swift partnership as well. But anyway, I think Chainlink is an infinitely better asset than XRP. Okay guys, come on. Just relax. Relax. Okay, I don't own a chain link currently, but I think it's an infinitely better asset. Their CCIP technology is incredibly persuasive. They've got the great partnerships and all that kind of stuff. But more importantly, XRP is very much a silo, right? They've got everything going on in their XRP silo and it's really not that much going on if you look at the daily user metrics and stuff like that.

But, okay, sure, they've been around for 10 years and still don't really have that great of a user base, but they got a lot of holders and people are really excited about the vision that um Brad and Charles or Brad and uh Chris, you know, push out to the world all the time. So, I get it. I understand why people invest in XRP. Again, it's not a very persuasive asset for me, but I understand the reason why people do. And if they pull it off, if Chris and Brad really pull it off and make everything magical happen with XRP, man, it's going to go to, I don't know, 10 bucks or something at some point. But anyway, >> but I know, but I know. But chain link though, chain link, gosh darn it, it is one of the most fundamentally important protocols in the entirety of the

cryptocurrency industry. Okay? And that's a very very different value proposition. It's everywhere. It connects to every silo essentially and it has the infrastructure to make all the silos talk to each other and bring assets, you know, move corn from silo to silo. It's a pretty amazing piece of technology. And now they finally started doing uh buybacks and stuff like that. So now there's finally after years and years and years some kind of exactly some kind of reason to own it finally. So, I think Sergey is very much aligned with the things you like in crypto, you know, the decentralization, the good tech and all that kind of stuff. I think he's the right kind of founder with the

right kind of vision. >> Whereas, um, I feel like Chris and Brad have really just, man, they've made so much money. They made so much money. It's crazy. They're both billionaires just from dumping XRP in the market. >> Weekly dump. Just a monthly weekly dump is insane. >> Oh, man. Amen. Ah man, Lark Davis, man. Uh what's your what's the rest of your week look like here? You got a busy one? >> Just grinding out some videos before we get to the uh holiday season. Basically going to try and take uh a good week or so off. You know, I might sneak in the occasional live stream if something exciting is happening. But try to take off a little bit time over the holidays, but still, you know, grind out some videos, get some stuff pre-recorded. Got some juicy ones coming like the Bitcoin Epstein connections. That's going to be

fun. >> Oh. Uh where can our audience find you, L? Just come over to Axe, look for Lark Davis. I'm there. You'll find me. We're always sharing charts, talking about stuff, having a good time. So, I'd love to see you there. >> All righty, man. Thanks for joining today. It's been uh it's been a fun start to the stream. Appreciate your time and your content and just general contributions to the space, man. We'll see we'll see where we end up. We will see where we end up. Talk to you three to six months hopefully. >> Peace. Peace, buddy. Bye.