Our 2024 Crypto Predictions | Roundup

Transcript

you'll see eth is the underdog once again like the takes that I'm seeing on Twitter are like nation state level fud um but that's kind of what you need you need your coin to get beaten down to the point where it's the underdog and it's just a Death March and once you're on the Death March it's like [ __ ] the price like we're just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other and that's when cool things happen all right everyone we will be back to the program in just a moment but before we do I want to share something that block has been cooking up for these last couple of months March of this coming year in l L blockworks is hosting D London the largest institutionally focused conference in all of crypto Goldman JP Morgan 72 all in one room so you can

know what the big money is doing so click the link at the bottom of this episode it'll take you right over to the homepage and use Bell 20 for 20% off I will see you in Sunny London Town in March all right everyone welcome back to another episode of bell curve before we jump in quick disclaimer the views expressed by my co-host today are their personal views and they do not represent the views of any organization with which the co-hosts are associated with nothing in the episode is construed or relied upon as Financial technical tax legal or other advice you know the deal now let's jump into the episode all right everyone welcome back to another episode of B curve you got Michaels one and two and Vance for our special end of year predictions episode

Bell is pump for this one these are fun oh yeah these are a blast these are good um uh maybe it it makes sense to to start this one off by just going back and we did one of these last year at the end of the year and we should kind of score ourselves here on I was going to say t typically these predition episodes are just like let's throw anything out and like there's no retribution whatsoever and so let's let's you know hold ourselves in check here let's see how we did all right I think that's a good idea I think that's a good idea very high integrity move of us to do um all right let's start with uh bance's predictions here so so ZK EVMS disappoint those things take longer to come out I would score that as correct

overall what do you think I think the optimistic rollups are still in the driver seat and I feel like we're still waiting on a lot of the ZK stuff I was looking at it uh last night ZK polygon ZK evm has had a total of 13,000 transactions I I I think it's just um like it's weird the ZK EVMS I guess ZK Sync has had a lot of transactions because people are like farming the air drop kind of mercenary like but I I would I would say next year is what we think will be a breakout year for ZK evm just because immutable X is launching uh their ZK evm alongside passport and like you know I I think like generally one prediction that I have and Michael has

and and probably you too Mike uh iolo is the second one of these platforms gets like a million users like the ground can really shift beneath people's feet in terms of like oh is it like saloner or near or is it like immutable with like a shitload of gaming users um and so maybe we'll save the prediction but I still think zkm is going to have a nice year next year just because like it's becoming the platform of games on on the evm at least yeah save the prediction uh I think this is probably not right in 2023 but probably correct in 24 yeah well I think that was your point as well it was just like sort of a pattern matching thing of this is obviously going to be huge but it's just going to take a little bit longer than

everyone is expecting everyone was kind of pricing in like it was going to be huge this year which it wasn't um okay uh visa and MasterCard will build out featur payment rails I would also score that is I don't really know about MasterCard but I feel like Visa leaned in pretty big this year like just in terms of they're doing really interesting stuff around account abstraction um I feel like maybe they haven't rolled out a ton of stuff yet but I do feel like they leaned in so in in September they they had their partnership announcement with usdc and circle where they would start settling transactions in usdc the announcement of the partnership who knows how long the activation will

take but I I'd say you know at least at least from a PR perspective that's a win yeah we can score that on we can score that's a half point there um all right these next two are interesting these are both l2's uh L2 predictions so one point and L2 might blow up we haven't had that happen yet but things are looking a little riskier on some of the some of the L2 y fronts so you might have just been a little early on that prediction we'll still see uh maybe score that as a half point to and then uh there won't be a L1 with more tvl than an L2 which I would actually again score that on a half point because I think tvl some of the alt l1s did uh fall pretty

drastically in tvl but there are are some other l1s today that have more TBL than l2s so maybe maybe not as much on that one salana I'm guessing is the one salana yeah I think Avalanche as well actually but um but yeah salana ref Flippin some of the l2s Half Point yeah half Point baby all right Michael I actually think Michael gets the uh my personal Award for best best prediction which was broad Bitcoin cohort comes together to realize that we need to change course which is that we didn't get exactly how this was going to happen we didn't call the nifties but uh I think that that was a really

interesting prediction that played out in a pretty non pretty interesting way but I would call that a win I actually thought that kind of ended up being the best prediction of the bunch well didn't know how it would happened but I knew it would happen but uh yeah I mean inscriptions I think are like by far are the biggest transaction uh type that's happening on the Bitcoin Network right now and Bitcoin is hitting all-time highs in terms of feed transactions going through the network um we were talking about this a bit before the show but like all the different you know Meme coins dogs with Hats dogs Without Hats frogs uh you know ordinals BRC 20s um I think people

are just you know looking to uh looking to farm and looking to have fun um how we we'll save it for later but you know there there is sort of a second part to this um which is you know that translates into actual value you know I'd say we have yet to kind of see how that will play out yet but moving in the right direction for the Bitcoin Network I think this is a nice we'll we'll have a category later of feel-good story this for me could have fit in the feel-good story because I think like I personally love Bitcoin and the a lot of the the arguments that that Community makes really resonates with me me but I do feel like it was co-opted by pretty extreme I would characterize it as religious viewpoints so it's cool to see

a Resurgence of something that looks a little bit more normal and a little bit less cat Eatery as a Vibe so uh and then the Michael you had Michael you actually had fewer predictions here but your your other one was D5 versus CI activity flipping so you said there was going to be a fliping it wasn't going to be the one we necessarily expected but there's going to be more onchain activity than uh sort of CI activity moving forward how do you feel like that one played out I don't think it hit yet but I think it's definitely trending in the right direction um you know it's tough having the timing element of all of these be a year um everything everything in everything in software always takes longer than you expect right but I think we're definitely heading in the direction of um defi overtaking

CI um and you know maybe I'll just Ki the can down the road and and push it into 24 as the timeline to do it yeah I I think in some areas though like the we talked about the nft exchanges I mean that feels like a pretty drastic flippening right there so maybe it didn't happen in the you know centralized versus decentralized spot markets that we were looking for but I feel like there are definite parts that ended up playing out and and there's a ton of stuff coming out on decentralized perss decentralized derivatives that I I think will make a pretty sizable change in in 24 yeah I agree all right um so the predictions that that I had were L1 survive and thrive which I do think has played out largely in salana World um

but I think you'll see some like one of my predictions for this coming year has to do with like monad I think you're going to continue to see um new l1's launch and do pretty well but I think a lot of the other ones will probably die and Fade Into IR relevance yeah um me emerges as the dominant business model in crypto I think that just an ill-formed uh prediction to be honest I I don't really feel like they're it's the dominant business model in crypto although I do feel like it was a huge theme of this year and I think there's going to be if I could go back and reword that I it would say there it would be a redistribution of Mev away from proposers today to back to applications and users but I would so I think there was a lot of focus on Mev

this year but I don't think it was I don't think it emerged as the dominant business model in crypto um equities have further to go but Crypt bottomed so called the bottom in crypto that said equities were still going to go down so uh I would call that a half right but probably wrong because I was just wrong on the the idea generally there um but the uh December 20 2022 was the bottom in in crypto and then uh the rise of specialized guilds uh that will provide labor to Dows this one I also it didn't obvious that was kind of an out there weird prediction I don't think it's happened yet but I do end up like it is a huge problem for Dow still they have to find a way to Source labor in a more efficient sort of scored way than

they're doing it right now um we actually tried to do something like this with the arbitrum Coalition which is in the process of getting reformed but I think that'll be something going forward so I don't know fellas I feel like predictions are always hard that was uh can I give us a 50% hit rate that feels that feels it was also during FTX and stuff I think we get points for just like believing you know like we joke about a lot of like uh sometimes this job especially like you know your too because you got to stay convicted like it tests your courage more than your intelligence quite a lot yeah so just just stay bullish you know even when it looks bad like last year you can still kind of see the future to some extent and it's not not terrible most of the

time no I I think going into uh 2024 I'm more optimistic than I've been in some time I feel really excited about the Catalyst that we have on the horizon but also the like also there's so much cool stuff that's coming out in the next six months we'll get into some of that with predictions but like I feel I feel really good going to 24 um so so I think we've talked about for this episode we're going to do ecosystems uh then we'll do themes then we'll do like you know best worst comeback Rookie of the Year whatever you want to call it um most improved most improved yeah

um I don't even know who most approv would go to certainly not certainly not s SPF or Doan or any of those people um but I think we we should probably start with uh just like 2024 what what do we think you know New Year potentially new us I mean what happen new US same us for sure yeah my my general sentiment about 2024 is we have dismantled all the Bad actors and put them away um we we have the right foot moving in the right direction in terms of positive crypto trajectory and we've got macro head wins

turning into Tail wins over the next 12 months and I we've said this you know externally to to folks we've said this internally to people that we talk to but um I I think we're at the first inning of the next bull market over the next couple of years I think 2024 will be the representation of the broader realization of that where we don't start having Normie fervor but we do start having Normie realization of what is happening um and what I mean by this as an anecdote if you were to pull 10 of my friends not people in crypto but just people that I'm friends with outside of crypto I I guarantee you seven of them

would still think that bitcoin price was below 10K or or somewhere in that range um and I I think nobody has been paying attention to what's happened over the last you know three four five months um and 2024 will be a a realization of that for most people I think that's right I mean it's it's funny the extent to which normies are are not engaged at all and like you kind of forget that like it takes that all-time high break to get everyone back in the pool fully and you know just like at the end of last year everyone was like really pessimistic and that set the stage for optimism I think everyone's optimistic this year and that

sets the stage for like you know a Bitcoin ETF like we've we've hyped this thing so much that like almost anything under like 10 billion dollars of inflows in the first like few months is going to be like kind of a letdown and so it feels like it could be a choppier year and it to me it's just like the algor or the analogy is very clean like this year was kind of like 2019 next year is 2020 and 2020 was full of like like you know we had covid we had like the like the 70% crash then we had like the Melt up and you know you have the happening you have the you know the potential new Trump election or Trump Administration but like it does feel like the end of the year is kind of when everything comes to pass and just talking with like

people with like enan Lair and monad and like a lot of games like I think people are going to be surprised how much stuff launches in the first or second quarter of the year but like there's a lot coming in Q4 on like the real work being delivered s so you know Kobe posted on Twitter or like liked some you know tweet about like how the cycle is going to be much shorter and like we're going to top right before the ETF I think it's going to be a lot longer um because if we have like this Paradigm Shift of Regulation like 2024 to 2028 are open season so it'll be mixed bag is my prediction yeah I think it it's always very tough to to predict with what the

market is going to do on like a 3 to six month sort of time Horizon I feel like there were kind of two options available to us which was going to be I feel like the time you maybe could have gotten a little bearish if like the market had just totally melted up alltime high before the ETF which probably isn't going to happen now but that looked like it was in the cards even a month ago and that was probably the time to say we got way out ahead of our skis I think the longer we sort of tread water and chop and if the ETF isn't a huge you know if there isn't some sort of parabolic Spike after then I agree I think it's going to get drawn out more I could see it sort of going either way but I do think just

based on everything that's launching this coming year and I don't know just intuition I feel like if you're not trying to tra trade on like a monthly sort of basis I feel like there's very little risk that we're not going to be in a better spot at the end of 2024 than we are today so I go in optimistic um yeah although uncertain about how it plays out in principle you know so well we were talking about this like one you know because one thing that I so we're looking at these meme coins right there's a dog with a hat and that's up a million percent in the last couple weeks and you know there's an avalanche one and all these things but so on the one hand that feels really toppy but on the other hand we're still so far off the highs I mean we're still like over 50%

off all-time highs in many of these coins so kind of just coming back to like we've got so much more room to run here I mean the um I think the people that are tracking that um and and saying this feels like you know fervor this feels like top blah blah blah I I think the only Counterpoint to that perspective is these are people who are taking like a thousand bucks and turning it into you know a 100 grand um you try to turn a million into 100 million in those markets like you're not good luck um and so I I think all that this really signals is that animal spirits for for some small portion of retail is back but we're you know it's like if you want to

play with real size like let's talk about the real markets let's not talk about you know these these tiny little things that pop and then drop um and in those large markets you know we were talking about this too Mike but um whatever the signal is that Wily wo wants to talk about you know like that that you know signal MVR mvrv mvrv um is you know it's basically at 1.37 the only times that it's gone above three have been good times to sell and and we are well away from that um so I I think we're just starting in terms of the real markets um these small little things are just canaries in the co mine for what's to come I also think there's an element of

PTSD here and it's very difficult to get yourself you know crypto goes through extreme Euphoria and periods of extreme depression and it's actually very difficult even having gone through that a couple times to mentally reorient yourself if you've been experiencing ing two years of Max pain to be really hopeful um and then the same thing on the other side when things have been going extremely well to say hey our revenue is probably go gonna go down 60 70 per. that's just a really tough mental pill to swallow at that time so I I do feel like actually in Bull markets the biggest mistake that people make is letting go of your winners too early like everyone has these stories about how they sold way too early and I don't know I know I'm sounding a little uh

Hopi aesque but that's where my that's where my head's at honestly into this year I I think people are most concerned with upside maximization versus downside minimization and that's just like you know a sentiment barometer of where things are and people are going to be tested all throughout 2024 nothing's free and you're gonna have to go through some some nights where you're not sleeping so well it's all part of the process all part of the fun all part of the fun all part of all right let's go let's move on to some of the specific ecosystems Bitcoin how are you guys feeling about it in 2024 definitely comeback year this year yeah definitely a comeback year I think um now that we've got sort of two camps

which is the like ordinals inscriptions um tap rout like there are there's functionality within the Bitcoin ecosystem or at least there's potential of it um I think you've got that as one side of it and then you've got the hardliner like hard money digital gold institutionalization inflation hedge don't touch my Bitcoin don't mess with it you know don't pump the fees through it don't clog the network you've got that side of the camp as well and I I will be very curious to see what happens with the institutionalization it seems like you know at this point 95 98% chance that it gets the ETF approval in early January um and then you know everybody and their mother is going to

just get bombarded with advertising for Bitcoin um and everybody's going to know about it it's like I I I don't know if you've walked through airports recently but you've got even you know SFO we were in Hawaii recently for my brother's wedding and they've got you know even gbtc advertisements there it it's crazy like but imagine that and there's 12 participants and one of those participants is the largest asset manager in the world um so I I think everybody's going to know about it by the end of the year um but it will it have to really go through a process of what is Bitcoin now because there are two you know pretty legitimate cans um and you've got the institutions on one

side this is digital gold this is an asset category now and then the other side you've got this is a tech platform where we could do things other than just hold assets yep I think um someone described inscriptions to me as the blockchain version of an STD and all these different blockchains are like catching it and so like I I I just you know it's awesome to see them hit all-time highs in terms of fees again it doesn't mean quite as much because it's a proof of work system but like proving the sustained demand of of what's going on and like you know putting the Luke Dash Jr like I'm gonna eradicate this spam from the blockchain fud to B to bed

like kind of feels like where Bitcoin is going to go but it's interesting like this is the uh the spot ETF is the final boss um like it's got to be kind of like roll your own Catalyst from here on out uh so it'll it'll be interesting to see but um I I think Bitcoin continues to do to do well in 2024 yep I don't have much to add to what you guys said I just wouldn't fade Bitcoin right before it's about to get its spot ETF a super left bell curve I just think it's probably going to do well I I I there are a lot of arguments like this always kind of comes up the the Bitcoin Camp about whether bitcoin's going to flip this trend of the last couple cycles and start to outperform eth or salana or some of the newer

chains I would I'd probably go out on a limb and say I don't think that's going to happen I think the same period that has held in the past is going to continue to hold so even though it's going to be a great year for Bitcoin I would say and that's kind of the destiny of all these these l1s right like the bigger you get the less volatile you get the more your absolute returns are going up but risk adjusted looks a little better because it's the risked and that's just kind of the destiny of all of these really large assets over time so if we were to actually make the prediction here just based off of what we've been talking about you know I I think we would all probably agree but like who wins in those two camps is it the institutions and you know the hard money

perspective or is it you know the inscriptions and the uh the experimental BRC Camp institutional for me 100% I would I would say institutional um also like you look at the user numbers on a lot of these things things um and it kind of looks like the same cohort of people who are trading like the dog coins you know it's like 50 people versus like 50 other people um and inscriptions like you can really ramp the fees so like we'll see you know um if it doesn't sustain I think you fall kind of naturally back into this like it's digital gold that's all it is agreed yeah should

we yeah I would love to get your guy persp and just to just to set the scene here I mean the narrative has shifted a little bit against ethereum I would say kind of shifted from this super consensus bet to one that's I I don't think it's really a total Underdog like it's still the the second biggest crypto but like the narrative has certainly shifted against it no no it's the underdog now yeah it's the underdog um yeah I just be curious like how how do you guys how are you guys thinking about the E ecosystem going into 24 this is like very similar to what happened in 2019 where eth BTC started the year at 0.04 and about in the middle of the year I think it was in July or August it was

0.16 so it had like a 50 to 70% Decline and you know that was when uh udy held the death of eth uh Twitter spaces party and literally I just retweeted this guy saying you know we're witnessing the death of ethereum and so like we're we're kind of there um and I think what you're going to see from eth next year is is kind of like twofold number one um I think you're going to see some sort of solution to the ethereum alignment problem through things like reaking and that's going to be kind of like just like the eth devs came out with eth 2.0 during the last bare Market in 2019 like you're going to see

response from the L2 teams from the application Level Builders and also from the EF and we've heard that the f is kind of like interested in in repositioning eth's money um and kind of like you know you emphasizing that property and so like I think just like you saw a lot of the Bitcoin Community come together you're probably going to see some of that from ethereum as well um and then I think just the really like and we can talk about salana in this context but like staking is one of the killer use cases of crypto and seeing you know like things like blast and things like reaking driving additional eth to be staked like we could see the eth staking rate at like

50% and like at that point the community is extremely aligned like you know you're yield farming crazy apy ponies with your eth and like the thing that's that we're trying to help with jeto with is like getting Soul stake and getting people to use Soul like eth does not have that problem right now um and so you'll see higher fees you'll see kind of like an aligned response and um you'll see eth is the underdog once again like the takes that I'm seeing on Twitter are like nation state level fud um but that's kind of what you need you need your coin to get beaten down to the point where it's the underdog and it's just a Death March and once you're on the Death March it's like [ __ ] the price like we're just going to keep putting

one foot in front of the other and that's when cool things happen like think about jetto just building for the past like two and a half years just eating glass people including myself being like salana might be dead that's kind of what you want the uh totally agree with all of that um the additional flavor that I'd add is um Danon which is the upgrade that's supposed to happen in q1 reduce 4844 reduces um call data cost by 90% um for l2s built on ethereum um there are tens of portfolio companies that we have or that we're talking with about

this who are looking to launch their own app chain that frankly cannot right now because they're waiting for Dan [ __ ] to come in um and this is the major difference of like it costs you know2 or $3,000 a day to like2 or $300 a day to run the infrastructure it it's like a real material cost for some of these you know cost constrained companies protocols and so I I think the proliferation of the app chains post Danon is also one of the the reinvigorating narratives um that will come about and you know it's a couple months away it's not that far in

2024 um but I I think yes it has a a slight narrative void right now it's also in in the opposition to basically everything that's launching right now or raising right now or announcing their raises right now and so it's sort of you know it it is um it all es and flows in in crypto narrative land and right now it's a you know a flow or an e whatever the opposite would be but I I think that that changes pretty quickly with the launch of you know probably hundreds of l2s as app chains yeah I agree with what both of you guys have said and I would just reiterate to folks that um this is actually not this is sort of what happened actually in 2020 it was like

Bitcoin dominance actually went up for a while well into the Run and Bitcoin LED and eth would follow and then eth eventually started leading this this is just a really good reminder of how price leads narrative I think and people have drastically overstated the death of ethereum actually one you sort of uh front ran one of my predictions actually two of my sort of predictions Vance but that's interesting to hear that uh the ethereum I thought this was going to be an out there prediction but I think ethereum is going to get a Rebrand away from ultrasound money this year that was going to be my one of my big predictions I I was never a huge fan of the ultrasound money because I felt like that is competing with Bitcoin but I I just think people are very bullish on

reaking but they don't really fully aren't grocking the the full implications of that and I think one of the things that eth does best is actually yield um I'm totally with you on the staking piece and you know eth I think has very secure block space people want to hold their assets on the L1 and stake and get yield that solves a huge problem that Bitcoin can't compete with Bitcoin doesn't have it's not a productive asset and this is the reason why most institutions don't hold gold it's not productive eth has the ability to be productive and you can keep your assets on the L1 but earn incremental yield elsewhere in crypto through reaking I just think that's such a powerful primitive um and I would I don't know if if this will actually happen but I would love to see the

narrative reform around eth as I don't know like a productive yield bearing asset I think that would be extremely powerful differentiated and fix a huge part of the problem that like when I talk to my dad he still says it's about Bitcoin it's not productive it's like gold sit there you know yeah just sits there but let let me let me let me read one one thing so I I was reading this Igan Lair blog post this morning and I thought it was just like a good summation of kind of like that thesis um in 2021 siram Khan uh Kanan loved ethereum however eth was limited because apps had to be built within the ethereum virtual machine um Ian laay now enabled ethereum validators to secure arbitrary programs not running on the ethereum

blockchain you no longer need to bootstrap to decentralized network to run a decentralized program like I I I don't maybe alround money isn't the right way to put it but like eth is going to become the first asset to transcend its virtual machine and consensus layer and that's like a totally new version vision of like what is eth and it's just like super cool and like if you think about the evolution of a blockchain and like kind of like let's just take salana right now you know the first thing is like you kind of need people to like get like an LST that's bootstrapped you know secure the network with with mostly lsts and then like I think the eventual hope for all these crypto assets is like we can use those validators and take them and do other

things but like all these blockchains need to still make progress outside of eth on liquid staking and that's going to be kind of like something that eth has already checked the Box on is like cool what else can we use this asset for in the same way that you're describing it and we denominate a lot of our Fund in E because not only does it Trend the market you know have yield you can use it on apy stuff you can borrow against it for 4% on maker um you can swing it around onto different chains and LP with it like it's the only asset you can do that with still and so that's kind of the money use case maybe that's not the right way to think about it though yeah I think it I think it it's just one one other thing there too is

like bit bitcoin's done done this many times Bitcoin gets a new narrative uh is every cycle right like and a lot of people knock it it's like oh a man for every season I I don't think that is true I just think we've invented something new we've invented this new commodity called block space and we inherently try to jam it into like uh it's money or it's an internet Bond it's like it's just a useful thing it's just a useful thing and that's what eth is it's a super it's a super useful thing and I think it's about to get a redefinition of why people find it useful and it has a money and that people want to hold it but then you can also get all this extra incremental yield and it actually solves a massive problem for purchasers of security I'm front running an episode that I just

recorded with Shri RAM and Zaki but it's I just yeah I remain extremely excited about this last one on eth I think we're going to see a supply squeeze at some point all the staking all the eth that's been burnt I think once demand returns for real you're going to see the net effects of the past couple years take shape so um one of my predictions for 24 is that we see an eth spot ETF I agree with that agree with that and so I I think uh that's one of the catalysts obviously for demand um narrative will probably front run that

but I I agree with the supply shock especially um and it'll be emphasized based off of the demand shock that's pulling it forward all right everyone we will be back to the program in just a moment but before we do I want to share something that blockwork has been cooking up for these last couple of months March of this coming year in London blockworks is hosting Das London the largest institutionally focused conference in all of crypto we are gathering 1,200 of the world's largest asset manager so thank trafi macro funds Crypton native funds big allocators and financial institutions so Banks payment processors Etc all in one spot it's very rare to get the likes of Goldman JP Morgan 72 what whatever all in one room so you can know what the big money is doing we're diving into the themes that

they care about so we're talking about the intersection of macro and crypto where we are in the cycle real world assets so everything from stable coins to unchain treasuries to tokenized assets it's going to be a blast but the other reason you really want to go it's London baby center of the world at one point you got Pub culture you got fish and chips great beer it's going to be a blast so because you're such great listeners to bell curve there's a Code Bell 20 that's going to get you 20% off so click the link at the bottom of this episode it'll take you right over to the homepage you'll see all of our speakers and use Bell 20 for 20% off ticket prices are going up soon make sure you go use that code I will see you in Sunny London Town in March all right should we

move on to salana Big Year for salana um Underdog Story of the Year probably although it's uh very hyped at the current moment what do you guys think going into 2024 uh obviously the underdog winner of 2023 I mean think about where it think about where it started um you know it it was like post FTX uh this time last year I don't I I think I don't think SBF had been arrested um but probably talking at the New York Times Summit I mean exactly it's like day by day so who knows the timelines um yeah I mean listen they they win the narrative

um they win the comeback Story of the Year um I think it was also pretty ble for the most of last year of most of 2023 um you know if we we kind of forget but like in June it went back down to eight um dollars and has been on a tear since um and I think breakpoint was sort of the Catalyst for a lot of this new narrative build um and there's some pretty interesting stuff going on you know um the there are some projects protocols that are taking the SPM and not using salana um as a settlement layer um I think there's a lot of things that you know are building interesting applications on top of it um I would say

in 2024 my prediction is and so I think the biggest thing that salana lacks right now is that um it has all of the hype but it doesn't have the distinct narrative definition of why um in 2019 if this is you know the equivalent you could kind of see where things were trending with Defi and you had a ton of new protocols that were launching and kind of scaling at the end of 2019 and then you know it took another six months but then we had defi summer in 2020 Summer 2020 and that was all you know ethereum obviously um I think it's unclear right now what that new kind of application category that salana will

own and and what it will be um and so my prediction is that we find that out in 2024 I think salana is going to continue to do well in 2024 I don't have many I think it's going to I guess I have a couple long-term thoughts about it it has this Advantage right now over one of the disadvantages of L1 or l2s and actually Cosmos as well that we'll get to is uh interoperability like we haven't we haven't solved this like fragmentation of liquidity and haven't solved perfect interop at least for eal 2s and the ux for Cosmos I still find pretty tough so I think salana has a leg up on ux in the current moment what I think they are going to struggle with is they need to fully overhaul

their fee Market um like they they haven't like the local fee Market is a very cool First Step but in its current implementation it's not as useful as it's sort of touted touted to be and really I think what they're uh why they're able to have such cheap fees and good execution currently is like they've got parallel execution which is kind of carrying them but there's just a lot of problems with fee markets and if you talk to Builders that's the number one thing they're kind of focused on and there's an enormous amount of debate in that Community um so you know not to be a futter but I I I wouldn't be actually surprised if something ended up kind of breaking with salana again I don't know if that means a full um liveness failure or outage but I do think you'll start to

see as more and more activity moves on to it it's going to start to sort of shudder underneath it and I think salana I don't think it'll happen this coming year I'm front running another prediction but I think they will have the beginning things of their 1559 I think they just need a fee Market overhaul and that's a really difficult thing to organize because it's inherently a redistribution of fees and value across multiple different stakeholders this is really difficult in ethereum as well but I think that you that's what salana is going to need this coming this coming year but I think it continues to do very well honestly yeah I think it continues to do well I think it continues to I think continues to do well to the extent that its you know

main application teams continue to succeed um and like the Bonk meme coin frenzy driving all the stable coin transfers in volume like you know we like Pepe was on ethereum earlier this year like you know those things last for like a period of months um but they're just going to have to like figure out how to get more soul on chain like that's the biggest problem that we're running into right now is like a lot of the soul is locked a lot of the soul is in centralized validators um like to the extent that it's a bottleneck on Def activity and so like that's kind of what's been bricking tvl um and things like nfts are kind of differentiated and you know they've had

like a nice seven days versus e um but like what's next and maybe it is just the price keeps going up and that's like just like Euphoria you certainly can sustain that for for longer than like a mem coin but um I think generally you're going to see a new group of leaders in the market just like the leaders this year were much different than the year prior um so so it'll be like a test of of faith in in Salon holders in some ways so to take this further um I one of the things we were talking about internally is um defi within salana and and I I can't remember off the top of my head I think it's about

390 something of um so out of the fives whatever is State um so really really high staking rate the vast majority of that is State um either through direct staking on a validator or a centralized Staker but what that limits is the use of that asset as a collateral asset my my prediction is that without Soul stake um moving to a liquid staking model um without it moving to less than 40% centralized State you're not going to be able ble to see defi take off on salana stake your soul people in J preferably Theos I agree I know I'm biased too I'm a minor bag holder but I

just I also just got to know Lucas this last year and man like talk about just building through an absolute [ __ ] environment where everything was going against you like I just root I just personally root for that team to be honest um so yeah they're they're clearly like the Giga brains of that of Community outside of like toally and those folks like they like know like the physics that underpins like the blockchain it it's it's wild to hear them talk about it but but just think about the comparison of defi kicking off in ethereum what was the collateral asset of choice well it was eth because nobody because no one was staking and it was proof of work well now you have to do the reverse which is instead of getting

stake rate up you have to get stake rate down and put it into a liquid staking option and use it as a collateral asset so they they've got the opposite problem to solve for defi to actually take off on salana you know uh there might be end up being sort of different Market structures in salana D5 versus eth D5 that are difficult to predict now like one interesting example is uh like Jupiter like aggregators on salana versus eth so the market structure for exchanges on eth has been Unis swap is extremely dominant like one inch gets is done well but like most of their volume is just UNIS Swap and the reason is is because of gas costs primarily like you have to Route multiple different things and with e gas cost is just tough so

you'd rather just trade on Unis Swap all the liquidity is but on salana obviously gas cost is much less so it makes sense to use an aggregator and there could be weird little small things like that that affect the path dependence of how Market structure develops in salana compared to ethereum so I'm not smart enough to predict what that would look like but it could develop in different ways um you guys want to move on to Cosmos Cosmos SL yeah well how are you guys feeling about Cosmos into 24 it feels like Cosmos isn't even like one cohesive ecosystem anymore like like I guess just like we've known it as like atom and and that like that seems to have just taken a different path in terms of you've got dydx chain you've

got risk haror or andalusa now you've got you know say you've got I think objective is Cosmos as well um chain is is Cosmos as well so it kind of feels just like this Federation of smaller chains and um it's hard to Define it as one thing honestly it seems to appeal more to folks who are like we want one monolithic integrated app chain um but I think you know Dy DX's growth has been slower than we would have expected out of the gates like I still think they've got sub 50 million in open interest um and maybe that has to do with the UI but they've got in incentives and programs to get people

over I I kind of Wonder Maybe it's like noble and usdc that kind of breaks that pattern finally um but I I I think they're kind of like in the same ways that people are trying to get Soul staked on uh these different chains like they definitely have that dynamic in the cosmos chains where it is like liquid staking primarily but like they need other assets to flow on these chains for them to be real in 2024 yeah Cosmos I think suffers from someone called them recently the lab of crypto and I agree with that there's so many ideas that come out of Cosmos that's just right I think I do think Cosmos suffers from this problem of being ahead

of their time like Antonio is I think one of the most Visionary Founders basically when I hear him say something like you're directionally correct but maybe the timeline of it is is a little bit difficult like I don't know you know there's a whole idea of building for distribution or building for product and I you should build for product but you shouldn't undersell distribution and the distribution strategy has been huge for eth and I think ultimately their vision is correct these a lot of the value I think ends up uring to the app layer you need interoperability between that app layer so it feels seamless but in the interim it's almost like they kind of skipped to the end there um and there could have been like a they missed they missed the opportunity to make Adam just

get gas and a shelling point we're missing a shelling point in Cosmos I think really tough really tough to have apple steal all of your ideas at Xerox Park yeah yeah I I do I do think generally like there's a lot of ogs of crypto in the cosmos ecosystem and and one broader theme that we can talk about is like I think the crypto ogs have a very nice year um just because they've been putting the most amount of work in but like dydx chain is is like a very interesting engineering feat I I think you're right it's just probably a little bit oh my God yeah I I do think one maybe if I had to make the bullish argument for Cosmos as well is I I do think there's a sequencing which is again the big thing in crypto is I don't think we have many

apps that have a traditional definition of product Market fit and we're talking about everything can kind of shift under the ground if there's this sort of runaway app maybe it's a a DEX or a nft or a game or something like that and as soon as you do that then the the idea of paying gas you you don't really need distribution as much and the idea of paying rent either to an eel 2 or to salana becomes much less tenable and then I do think you look for your own little island because you're like I don't need distribution and I want to capture all my economics and I want perfect granularity over my product experience and in that sense Cosmos makes a lot of sense I just think they're so I've always viewed Cosmos as kind of a really good end game but I do

have questions it's less clear to me if Adam is going to do particularly well yeah so that's my my my specific prediction on Cosmos is that the applications that are built on the tech stack of Cosmos do really well and that it's unclear as to what Cosmos you know RIT large does I we we should talk about themes but like to the extent that someone has an app that has 100,000 to a million users congratulations you're like a top five blockchain and so like are things can shift very quickly um and Cosmos ecosystem doesn't seem like the most applicationm minded people um but like it's on the table for

everyone it it just doesn't seem like it's going to be defi like defi is not the thing that can help you Leap Frog to the top 10 it is something that you kind of need as a table Stakes version of a blockchain to be top 10 but like gaming is how you go from like the eighth page of coin market cap to you know top five so whoever focuses on that you know they have a shot maybe it's Cosmos yeah I I do yeah I also just I have yeah you never know we gotta get Scott on the podcast at some point he I think is is a really bright guy and Cosmos I just I love that ecosystem and I always I will always root for it um

all right let's go into the themes what are some of the big themes that you guys saw yeah yeah the um what do you think I I mean one one is um cliffs and and unlocks it it's weird like in the last bull market there were kind of like no teams really uh there were like no projects or like there was no like you know Cliffs that had already happened I think the Avalanche like public sale was in like you know early 2021 or late 2020 um and so like the clips of that bare Mark or bull market came like almost like after the peak here we have just like a lot of l2s and a lot of like you know things like arbitrum with like

a huge unlock in in March and Celestia in like November December um where the market is just going to have like hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of alt Supply to digest and like there was a time when unlocks were bullish um and I think the question is like you know if you if if like people just eat these air these unlocks in March I think you have a pretty good idea of like what the market is going to look like it's probably going to rip um but if it like kind of Str go and we reset valuations and like valuations are mimetic like people are willing to pay a billion for an L2 because arbitrum is a 10 um You probably see the cycle get longer and extended and and things get a little bit more subdued but I think how

people deal with these unlocks is going to be a huge impact because all of the funds that we know are focused on raising obviously but like a precondition to that is like heavy return money um to LPS so so that's just kind of like the inside baseball of like what the Venture and hedge fund people are looking at um and so it'll be interesting to see if if chips are taking off the table in that regard and how that makes the market react um actually kind of dovetails nicely but one of my meta predictions is that um we're going to have a reshuffling of the deck of who the best investors are and I think that um we

you know there's always been the big fundraises you know the big Brands um you know the the main characters um and we've seen a lot of a lot of those main characters get wheeled out um but I I think 2024 is where we start to actually put together who's the next crop of the Next Generation and it's the people that are survived um and I think that becomes more obvious as we start to see you know as Vance alluded to these these funds who are out raising right now who are you know needing to be able to raise to be able to put more dollars to work uh raise less uh has smaller rounds you know cut the size of their teams Etc um and kind of

restructure um and so I I would imagine that you know 2024 is a year of recognition of that uh just to get a little Saucy do you have any predictions on how that reshuffling uh goes any any this Rising Stars uh for for new funds or falling falling we were talking about this today I yesterday like um there was like a few funds um that like either caught the defi wave in a massive way or like you know caught the salano wave in a massive way and they were up like you know just just so much like just like yeah and they left everyone in the dust and like we we were definitely part of that just on the def5 side this this time around

there hasn't been that like like maybe like Celestia or things like that like we'll see kind of what it trades at during the unlock but like you haven't seen anyone like have like the 150x fund quite yet and so I I think like dovetailing from that is you know a year ago when everything was falling apart and we were buying liquid tokens it was just like if the industry is surviving these tokens are going to do well and now it's like um what is the Venture meta is it like these monolithic l1s that people are going to bet on is it like you know we've seen like 15 da layers come to Market in the past like two or three weeks and so like is it is it that um is it games you know does that finally happen but like one of these things will hit and I think that's

kind of like how you reorder the deck um and I think there's funds that are just like solid that have a good track record that aren't going anywhere but if you're Adventure only fun you don't really do liquid like you really need to be in tune with whatever that meta is and it's not just like a narrative um because like people can produce da layers faster than like you know the existing incumbents can build a moat it needs needs to be like a real use case um and I think that's what we're still working on frankly we hope it's games what I'll add to that is um I I'll just do it based off of fund size uh what Vance is talking about is like the sub $25 million funds in 2019 2018 2017 whenever whenever they launched um many of those did really really well some of them you

know in in the like alltime Stratosphere of a venture funds um I and I I don't think that those funds this cycle are going to do as well um basically because they're competing against the multiple hundred million dollar funds who can still play down at their level but and and take those you know THX 2000x uh return in Investments but the smaller funds just don't have the brand to win those deals and and so I think that that's where they get squeezed I think the bigger funds the Billion Dollar Plus funds or close therefore um those ones are going to have a really really tough time returning capital and so I think you're going to see the reshuffling happen where the early funds the smaller

ones you know funds one and two that are sub 25 million they're going to have a tough time transitioning to their next fund or or their third fund whatever it may be and I think you're going to see um you know the larger funds have have to whenever they come back to Market whenever they announce have to come back with less money I think that's a good prediction I I've got one for you guys and uh Vance you're were just talking about a little bit I think a big narrative um that's going to be probably H1 of this year is the da Wars but my take is that they were over before they started I think Celestia and Ian da have probably won the da Wars and there's going to be quite a bit of money burned trying to catch them and I think there's a very

interesting debate on whether or not da is a commodity or how these different da layers are going to compete and I would say over time da is a commodity and it's probably going to be sort of a race to the bottom on cost but I don't think that's how da layers are going to compete in the interim I think it's going to be very much a brand thing you're already seeing this with Celestia underneath um and probably the competition is going to heat up between Ian da and Celestia I think they're both going to compete first for the big eth l2s and probably aan has a slight leg up because you can be like eth alined um but then o over time I think Celestia ends up the battle that they need to fight is getting more new l2s to launch as Sovereign rollups on celesa as

opposed to Ethel 2s uh but I but I do think the da Wars is going to be a big narrative and I don't know I saw some of our analysts are really bullish on near as a as a DA layer for ethereum and I I don't know I just I haven't looked into it I don't know but I feel like the da Wars have are over before they started and it's just celes end I da I I just there's not enough Revenue that is going to be ascribable to Da layers for it to be like a real category over the long term is is my guess um but like what we've heard is that igen lay is significantly or Igan da is significantly significantly more performant than uh Celestia da and it's launching in q1 and like you know if you if you think about like kind of like eth

being like slowly disassembled by like modular blockchain Theory and all that stuff like Ian da and like reaking eth is kind of like the reassembly of that like that's how all the pieces kind of fit back together um and you know like maybe the Community cares or maybe not but like look if you launch an L2 blockchain and you get like like think about what Blast has done like this is a good example they launched an L2 and they made it super ethine by saying like send us eth and we'll like do something you know with it and like you know now we have all this TBL we have all this community versus like congrats you launched on Celestia your your da is marginally cheaper you don't have any other real

Community like it it's going to be more of a community bootstrapping mechanism in terms of like why would I put a DA over Celestia da and I think that's kind of what you're talking about is like it's the brand and that's the thing that matters it's not like the cost or performance I I guess that matters but like it's more about bootstrapping the community which is kind of like if if you had a L2 pick between a community and slightly cheaper da theyd pick a community I that's exactly what I'm saying yeah right totally yep but it's going to be interesting um and paradoxically like Celestia at 12 billion has a higher chance of success than Celestia at 1 billion I know so kind of dependent but like you know the rubber meets the road when the

tokens unlock and you know price can drive sentiment up but it also can deflate it on the way down we'll see we shall see um all right I've got one more for you on this lately nerdier camp but I I think uh sort of Steel sharpen steel a little bit I think we're going to see innovation um in the evm for the first time basically ever and uh I think salana svm is going to push I was actually I went to one of these um uh you know John charbo DBA kind of research hangs and it was it was very interesting to hear I think manad is like a really good example of this where people are finally like yeah okay we need parallel

execution in the evm and it was actually really interesting to hear from some of the folks on the east side of the the table basically articulate the idea that the evm was designed for eth but the Hope was that there was going to be experimentation at the execution layer on l2s but the l2s kind of all just took the evm and didn't innovate on it because they were focused on other stuff at the time but I think now with the the Advent of the svm uh people are going to I think it's going to be a huge trend of like parallel execution u parallelization in the evm is going to be a big thing to watch this coming year monad will be a part of that but I think l2s will experiment with that and start to push that more and then the other thing I think that the l2s are going to

have to figure out although I'm not really bullish on them figuring it out this year is interop in between them because if the idea is to move off eth Main chain like we got to figure out some interoperability between these layers so I'm I'm pretty bullish on interop next year like ccip socket kind of feel like the two approaches that are winning the most users like socket Powers polygon they power matcha they power coinbase internal stuff uh chain link is kind of like synthetics um like all the D5 protocols to use their oracles like I would expect by the end of next year we have that as like a solved problem um so I'm I'm more bullish on that and I think that's going to be a sneaky big category where it's

like yeah like you launched your own L2 but like you're playing on this shared messaging layer that like kind of is a blockchain so like which which one are you really deployed on if your users are just doing things you know this there and the other place it's just like a different way to think about it so I agree that next year we have um ideas around what's working but I think that this is a ux issue that basically just gets better over time I don't think it's like a okay yep mission accomplished we solved it I think it's like a we know who the winners are but it slowly gets better and better and better and better every single year just like you know https it just like it used to be a a [ __ ] to to try and connect and like switch from one network to

another and it's like oh you're on Juniper you know like no just over time it gets abstracted more and more on on the parallel evm side I I think you are we we were doing this math last night where um I mean Michael what are the numbers what does the ZK evm cost right now I mean it's it's about a $150 on average so like 250 to swap uh like I don't know maybe a dollar to to send e um but like call it a $150 per transaction right and then Denon you know you assume that's like 15 cents yeah 15 cents you know like maybe there's something in 2024 that helps get that to like sub 10 cents but

like like one way to think about it which Michael pointed out is that's less than credit card transaction fees uh which is like 30 cents plus 3% on most stuff uh for the merchant um but the user obviously bears that cost and so like we're cheaper than all major mainstream payment rails likely at scale and I think one of the questions I have with the parallel evm is like do you need 0.00001 Cent transactions and if you do need that what does that get the network uh because it certainly doesn't get a lot of fees like you need some sort of like some sort of different use case other than like swapping and buying nft like you need some high throughput use case to match High throughput TPS so I I think there's there's questions about

like the extent it's needed and like what are the final benchmarks raming for does it need to be free so if it's free that's not like a great business model well I'll I'll add some color there too um so first off I think the big the big difference here is um you know 15 cents sub credit card fees for most assets also that scales so you could buy you know a $10 thing you could buy a thousand thing and it's still going to be 15 cents whereas with credit card transactions you have that variable fee baked in which is totally different um and the other thing I'll add is um a kind abstraction I think changes a lot of this uh where it's not the user who's

paying it it's the merchant effectively who's paying it just as in the same way that you have person to person or point of sale transactions uh or yeah not person person but point of sale um and so all of this leads to my broad 2024 prediction that 2024 is going to be the year of web three gaming because you're going to see 50 to to 100 games launch there's going to be a account abstraction to where users and gamers are not going to have to pay the transaction fees themselves they're going to get aird dropped tokens they're going to get aird dropped assets that they can use in these games um and I would go so far as to say you know the nft market at the end of next year is going to look like

game assets it's not going to be pfps anymore and and that you know is is basically the broad trend of the technology is there the wall at wall will be solved um or it kind of has been solved a meatable passport officially announced um I think yesterday the day before um and we've got you know hundreds of games that are set to launch the good news about making uh this gaming prediction every year is that eventually we will be right I was trying to say I don't think we made this prediction last year I'm I'm just [ __ ] around like we we've just been bullish on this for a long time and underestimated how long it will take but um it does seem like finally just like the launch of passport

yesterday and the zkv I'm like it's gonna happen and you know this year is more likely than the last and I and I think it will happen in 2024 and and just to so sorry the last point on ztm and transaction fees I think what games will realize is that it's not you know all the transactions all the movements all the activity that lives within that game is going to be something that lives on chain it's when you have a monetization element that's when you have something that settles back to the blockchain and that's where that 50 15 cent fee actually does come into play um everything else will live in a semi- centralized or or you know fully centralized ecosystem just as you have with digital game ecosystems but it's going to be the monetization moments

that are put on chain I had return of game five as a prediction too I thought you guys would appreciate that one but I also had it this year I just feel like it feels like the obvious thing I I don't know dude it's it's but some people don't believe in it like some people are just like this is never going to happen like we're going to be trading like dog with a hat for the next you know 50 years that doesn't sound that interesting like something else I'm with you I don't know look I I have no there's this whole debate about meme coins are they good are they bad is speculation good or bad and people feel the need to come out like really hard against it or really hard for it and it's like it's kind of cringe on both sides like just take it

for what it is so cringe it's so cringe yeah it's so lame to be like this is ruining crypto or like this is the future of social it's like no it's not it's just some intermediate thing just take your little gains while you do it have fun trading with the dog with the hat um it's a bunch of kids on the internet that are bored until as we wait for the next narrative you know to 100% 100% um I actually I had uh I this is not going to be a surprise because I feel like I've talked about it on this on this show but uh I think nfts are gonna I think it's going to be a big comeback year for nfts also o o one of my Darkhorse bets is uh nfts pfp nfts die in 2024 oh nice well I there's a

possibility of that happening I do think you what has been interesting for me with nfts is you're starting to see experimentation across different business models like what Luca is doing on Pudgies is like here's the thing that is absolutely 100% broken 10,000 pfp models that monetize via basically new mints that is a model that is never coming back um but I do think you'll see more tra like what Luca has done from at least my perspective is fit it into a traditional IP model okay I've got my social media up here I sell my little plushies in uh in Walmart and then I have my thing that sits at the bottom of the funnel and some royalties acrew to that and that's my Evangelical Community that's going to scream about my Pudgies forever that just that's a neat easy simple business model to understand and

yeah but that's not that's not like okay that's not what I'm defining as pfp nfts I'm saying like the new collections that launch once every month and we've got you know know hundreds of collections where you've got 10,000 per like that that is over yeah the the AI effect too where it was like hard to create those in years past now it's just like you can spin up a 10K pfp like when the last time you saw anyone sell a 10K pfp collection I had we're skipping ahead to a flop but I had a big flop on on that on that flop let's do the flop Elementals isuki Elementals was at objectively hysterical thing to happen

which was like this super hyped nftd collection and everyone's like man I wonder what it's going to look like and it was the exact same that was to me they're facing the opposite direction and one of yeah the opposite direction and it actually was one of the only times I've ever seen crypto behave perfectly efficiently the price went down like exactly 50% in like a day it was amazing um 50% less exciting now yeah but but I I don't know Michael I mean I know the one thing about pfp nfts that still makes sense to me is that there's people will always pay for dumb status things and there is this really neat little viral Loop of people making it their profile pictures you're already starting to see that again and people in especially new ecosystems when there's

just like they've made dumb money they look just buy dumb [ __ ] and I sort of feel like nfts I don't know I feel like nfts will make their comeback it it may be a niche thing but it's not going to be anything like it was last cycle and even if we have a new cycle I don't think and maybe it'll be like one or two collections maybe it'll be Penguins maybe it'll be punks maybe it'll be board Apes who knows but like two or three collections that have value and maybe there's IP that's built around it okay sure but that's there you can't have like multiple trading venues and business models around you know like the the massive amount of nfts that are being created each month and people want to swap in and out of them that's not coming back I I do think punks will hit

a new all-time high same with like fenzza like I think there's like very unique interesting assets where where I disagree if nft is coming back is I don't think that is enough for openc to be like you know a 10 billion dollar business again no comment on openc partic specifically that's a challenge yeah I I don't i' never like to root against anyone like they were The Underdogs they built it into a crazy business it's a really smart team I'm sure they'll figure something out but yeah that think they're going to have to figure something else out yeah just the high water mark for nfts like you know like we like the openc team it's just like it it they have a great product it's just they're not going to be selling the same

thing it's gonna be and and anecdotally uh the games that are building nfts that will have at least in-game utility none of them I mean maybe some of the high value assets they're like sure you can put it on OPC if you want but like we want to control the marketplace for our game like the the disin mediation of uh marketplaces for nfts is going to be the the other big kind of sub Trend here interesting yeah I guess you saw a little bit of that with axi in their own Marketplace Thea Marketplace too for that reason we didn't get to it but flops of 2023 um Michael Lewis dude that was my biggest loser I had my Biggest Loser Jesus I mean just on fire too like

why multiple times imagine looking ATF and being like this is the horse I'm going to back I just I don't understand how he came to that conclusion so he was my biggest loser for 20 2023 I'm trying to think of my Biggest Loser for 2023 I you know I mean this is it's no one in particular but I think about this kind of every cycle like people who sold the bottom and like didn't come back like the the mental Agony of watching something rip in your face is just excruciating and it's like it's a religious experience you know and oftentimes those people don't come back

to crypto becau because it's just too much and so you know you don't hear about these stories as much as you do about the guy who made you know a million bucks from a dog with a hat or whatever but like we left a lot of people behind in 2022 and you know rip rip I've got another uh I've got another flop actually the party that borap yach Club hosted where they burn those people's eyes out the wrong lights dude I was like you have this can't be serious and it was it was yeah tough look tough look um makes you think what about uh what about biggest winners for this year probably

soul and goo I was gonna say I was GNA say uh salana but particular person probably an a toi yeah probably probably toally um I also think the builders won this year it feels like the people who are left have very strong degrees of degrees of clarity about what to build and like that's going to manifest over the next year so like the people who stuck with it really did well the people who rotated to AI that that might be another big flop it's it's seriously tough sledding in AI land right now like maybe not quite the bare Market that crypto is going through

but you know big companies are winning but everybody else is kind of getting crushed there's a lot of YC companies that that went off and trudged up that hill someone should make the uh calanis inverse ETF same way that they did with uh with that that call to Pivot to AI was like the exact that's got to be the exact bottom that was just well it was that in the ECB call for uh you know Bitcoin to go to zero like those were the two tweets that it was like if we're not back now we we we should be at some point I had another one uh this was kind of the obvious one would be coinbase and uh Brian yeah like that guy has eaten glass for so many cycles and I mean

going into this this uh bare Market it was like they have way too many people they haven't shipped a good product in forever and then they just like chop their head count reduced used their loss they shipped uh base they're doing all this stuff that just makes an enormous amount of sense and it just feels like no one has been positioned better like from a c like they're awesome uh I just like so rude for that team so they've got the exchange business base interests with circle they've got staking they're just murdering it on all fronts so je Jesse Pollock too is a big part of that and it feels like he's been kind of like the MVP I mean like obviously Brian is the CEO and and the guy who's call the shots but like Jesse has been the loyal foot soldier Lieutenant

whatever you want to call him and he's like you know I saw him at the build on base Miami art basil like he's doing a stream there he's like buying stuff on chain he's like an avatar for for what crypto could be and I think it's just like cool to see like the next generation of folks step up and and start leading yep agreed uh well I already called it out a little bit actually one other group I want to give a shout out to was udy and Eric on uh just ordinals or uh you know tapro Wizards and Casey I guess at ordinal too like it takes a really special type of person to be like this thing is great it's been sort of co-opted by a very religious community of people that are just going to yell at me and not thank me for what I'm doing

but I'm gonna do it anyway and yeah I thought that was a very cool win for the year too but tough to do battles with the lunatics you know agree but they they took him head on so defin definite winner one more uh prediction for for 2024 um the defi 1.0 Founders have a massive comeback tour I hardly agree with that yep yeah bolster bolstered by new uh young like all the block Works guys are in the in the synthetics Community which like we found out like this year they've got like a new group of core contributors like maker kind of has the same thing a is having a Resurgence um and there cool ones yeah uni unii

exactly there's there's also some cool ones like sparland which is like kind of come out of nowhere but is also part of the maker ecosystems like I think their ecosystems will do well also and that's kind of like the the super contrarian like a lot of those are like 10 or 100 million micro cap coins um which are similar to the dog hat you know themes just small enough for other people trying to turn a th000 into $10,000 and I just respect them like they have been in one of the toughest I mean that's got to be one of the toughest business models ever across extreme volatility I just have so much respect for those guys so appreciate all you Builders out there and I know we got to wrap it up here but uh guys this has been another fun year um and uh yeah

guys this is this is a lot of fun to do so I just appreciate you guys and framework and this has been a awesome relationship from Jason my perspective so appreciate you guys thanks everyone for listening this year Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah Quanza whatever you celebrate 2024 let's get it yeah exactly thanks everyone peace [Music] guys