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- [00:03]
A
You think that crypto culture is powerful to aggregate capital, wait until 100,000 Morgan Stanley burgers are out there on the golf courses pushing these mean reversion trades for this, these baskets of altcoins.
- [00:15]
B
Here's my prediction. Altcoins will have a negative return as a space in 2026.
- [00:22]
C
I'm concerned that there's going to be the mother of all hacks next year.
- [00:26]
A
Is the Trump administration. I know they're pro crypto. Are they pro DeFi?
- [00:30]
B
I think AI is still crypto in 2022. You have people being like, all right, welcome everyone to another episode of Bits and bips. This will be our last one for the year of 2025. Today, I'm your host, Austin Campbell, the high scholar of Zero Knowledge Consulting. I'm here with my usual co conspirator, Chris Perkins, the Golden hand of Coin Fund. And today we are joined by John d' Agostino of Coinbase. And I've got to stop here momentarily to say I am super happy to have John on, specifically because we have previously had a number of connections doing research in this space, presenting things in front of Congress. And if you learn nothing else from this episode, John is one of the people that actually brings data and knows what he's talking about to this debate. So everybody should follow this guy now. On that note, disclaimers first. Nothing we say here is investment advice. And in general, don't take investment advice solely for podcasts. Check unchanged crypto.com bits and pips for more disclosures and we'll get to predictions right after a word from some sponsors.
- [01:44]
D
You're about to make a trade. Which u do you listen to? Is it get optioning those options or let's do a little research. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart Mantel is launching the Global Hackathon 2025 to accelerate the future of real world assets. With a $150,000 prize pool, backing from a $4 billion treasury, and direct access to Bybit's 7 million plus users, this is the ultimate ecosystem for builders.
- [02:20]
B
All right, welcome back, everybody. I promised you some predictions, so let's start with those and get moving off the ground. Chris, myself and John have not shared these with each other beforehand, so. So one, there's a non zero chance that we either predict the same thing or directly oppose things, which will be hilarious. But two, you will get our genuine reactions. We have not shared these as of yet. So, Chris, I'm going to give you the choice. Do you want to go first or do you Want to pick one of us to go first?
- [02:52]
C
I think we should have the guest go first. I mean, he's here. We have to give him the honors, right?
- [02:57]
B
Works for me.
- [02:58]
A
All right, I'm going to dive in with a juicy one for you, Austin. So a major global brand, its own economic system. So think Disney, Amazon, something like that, which powers its own kind of tight, tightly coiled, sticky economic system, will announce a stable Point in 2026. So you will not be able to, though it'll be optional. You'll be able to use Fiat, but you'll be strongly encouraged to use either Amazon or Disney or Netflix's or some other economic systems, stablecoin as value transfer within that system. And we'll see a how sticky their brand actually is. Might be. Temu. Not sure that's my first one.
- [03:43]
C
John, you didn't mention, you didn't mention X Twitter.
- [03:46]
A
It's in there. It's in there. I, I just don't, I just know how, my, how, how is, is the, the way you engage with X value transfer? I think, I think it has to be, it has to be a brand where value transfer is the core of its, of its economic model versus data transfer. And then we'll see if people are willing to deal with the friction associated with moving into stables writ large, not crypto natives, to stay in that economic system or reap the benefits of it.
- [04:15]
C
So is this a front to back, like building their own infrastructure, getting their own, you know, Seriously, are they going to, Is it white or is it.
- [04:26]
A
Like they're going to outsource it? They're definitely outsource it.
- [04:29]
B
Well, I, I was going to pile in to say, I think legally they have to outsource it, right? Like if you read Genius, these companies are technically prohibited from launching their own stable coins if you're not a financial services company. But that doesn't say anything, John, to your point about, say, take Starbucks for example, right? As somebody who's dabbled in crypto in the past, they could easily go to a coinbase, like a Circle or like a PayPal and simply adopt the stablecoin that somebody else has. Like maybe put their name and brand on the front of it. But if you're not legally running the thing, like you're not managing the reserves, you're not handling the payments, then it's probably kosher under Genius, because they have a very clear definition of what the issuer is. And I like so to unravel this a little bit. Maybe for people who are not familiar with US Payments when you currently go to somewhere like the deli and you tap a card to pay, there are like three to four different people taking a cut out of that thing depending on what you've done, right? Like you have the issuing bank, you have the acquiring bank and you have the card network itself, all taking money out of that. And I say four because sometimes they're also paying rewards back to the consumer depending upon the card. And those margins for retailers are significant, Those could be 2 to 3 percentage points easily. And look for somebody who's selling like extremely high value legal services, like that margin is kind of irrelevant. But for somebody who's an extremely high turnover business like John, I believe you referenced Amazon where their margins can be low single digit percentage points. Capturing any portion of that is transformative for the business. So if we're thinking about core economic drivers, I agree with you. Counterpoint, like I want to throw this back to the two of you. Do you think that is actually a 2026 line item or is this the classic case of getting a UI UX people will adopt? Getting everything button down, getting everything implemented will push it into 27.
- [06:36]
C
So John, I want to ask, before we get to that, you guys just made a huge announcement about people being able to brand their own stable coins using your kit. And is this what you're talking about, essentially that business line taking off?
- [06:48]
A
I think, I think.
- [06:49]
B
Well, it's, it's.
- [06:51]
A
You can argue that or you can argue that we, we felt the need to announce it because we see this coming. Right. I think, I think most are true quite frankly. But, but also to your point, you know, the safe bet is that yeah, it'll believe. I, I guess I'll refine it by saying the announcement will happen in 2026. Whether implementation can occur in 26, I'm not sure, but I think, I think you're right. I think that'll take a, that'll take longer. So if it's, unless it's a Q1 announcement, I don't think we see it go live by Q4. But I'll stand by an announcement in, in 2026.
- [07:23]
C
I totally agree with you, John. I think it's a no brainer. I talked about it last week. Stablecoins are the new net interest income. You know, today you're not making money on those payments and if someone's capturing that interest, if. I imagine as you start issuing your stablecoin you're going to capture a share of the net interest income, it makes sense for any business model. You're In So like I totally agree. I guess the, to me this is just an obvious, you know, next step in the industry. Like very, very linear. We all knew this was coming. So I think the question is timing. So like my question then is this is my first prediction. How big is the stablecoin market by the end of the year, next year?
- [08:02]
A
That's a question, not a prediction.
- [08:04]
C
I got my. I have my number, but I want to know yours.
- [08:06]
A
You can't offload your prediction.
- [08:13]
B
Chris is in the eternal trader move of no, you make the market first.
- [08:17]
C
I'll give you my number. My number I think is a little bit weak, but I'm going with 600 billion, which is about I call 500 this year. I was wrong. We ended up around 310. Austin, correct me if I'm wrong, 310 billion. I think it doubles next year. I'm just going to round it and say 600 billion. I think years after that it goes vertical. But I'm being a little bit weak I think this year saying 600 billion by the end of next year. Thoughts?
- [08:41]
B
My number for the end of next year, what we would traditionally call stablecoins today day is probably about 500 billion. But the lurking variable within that is we don't know what's going to happen with people potentially tokenizing their own balance sheets. And that number for some of these things can be exponentially big, right? Like good example, if one of the big four banks says we're just moving to a 247 collateral system, it just tokenizes all the collateral in there. Stablecoins. If we're defining that as like the money object, that being like T bills, tokenized deposit could easily be over a trillion. Right. With one flip of a switch just because of how people essentially run their internal ledger. So to me the problem there is a definitional one. Chris, of like what do we mean when we say stablecoins like our tokenized bills on Onyx or Connexus or whatever, J.P. morgan. Yeah, stablecoins. Because if so that number could be trillion.
- [09:43]
C
Well, I'll up you there. Is Athena a stable coin? I think we agree that it's not. It's a tokenized basis trade. So I would say fully backed, obviously genius compliant. Which genius doesn't even go into effect until January 27th, you know, or latest I guess. But like I'm thinking about like truly backstable coins like the tethers, the circles and, and similar folks. Not just genius compliant. I don't think you include tokenized bank deposits in that Number that's a separate product. That's a, as our friend Omin Malakin says, it is a receipt on a fractional bank, which is not a stablecoin. So yeah, I think I might counter.
- [10:17]
B
That Genius says otherwise given that bank deposits are one of the assets within Genius. Like, so this is going down the rabbit hole of why I.
- [10:25]
A
Yes, I think banks are stable. That would be tokenized banks spots would be stable coins. Austin, you think we're not.
- [10:33]
B
Well, they. So here's kind of the hilarious thing that I've been pointing out to some of the bank people who've been lobbying for an even harder yield ban is I'm like, you guys realize that tokenized bag deposits are stablecoins under genius. So you're arguing to ban your own ability to pay your customers. Right? And so like, I didn't know the banking industry wanted Reg Q back that badly. That's news to me. But yeah, like, guys, tokenized back deposits are a fully permissible asset under Genius. Meaning I could have a stable coin filled with 100% tokenized back deposit. So if I wrap my tokenized bank deposit, put it on a blockchain in a literal sense, that is probably a genius stablecoin. So like all you banks with tokenized deposits out there, think very hard about what you're saying as you talk about these things. Because if you break that and now you want to tokenize your derivatives collateral, but you can't pay the interest on it anymore, you can't use your blockchains.
- [11:30]
C
All right, so we just got, we just really confused everybody.
- [11:37]
B
Let me give a, let me give a super stablecoin hot take. That is my first prediction. If everybody is right, after that US dollar stablecoins will be completely banned in at least one major foreign nation in 2026.
- [11:51]
C
Come on, that's obvious as well.
- [11:53]
B
Is it us, Stone?
- [11:54]
C
I think so. Like, I mean, I mean this is one of the big challenges we're already hearing. You know, the BIS is concerned how many senior regulators, particularly coming out of Europe, are very nervous about dollar supremacy. Dollars are going to displace emerging markets. It's taking an avenue of control away from leaders that maybe shouldn't be leaders. I think this is a no brainer and I do think you're going to see dollar stablecoins ban.
- [12:21]
A
Well, let's take it further. So Austin, would you refine it by saying, is this going to be a eurozone country?
- [12:31]
C
I think, I think it's the developing world.
- [12:33]
B
I would say the Eurozone are the most likely sets of candidates because they seem super happy to get into a fight and attempt to base technology in all forms. So yeah, probably Eurozone. My number, my number two is China.
- [12:48]
A
Oh, that's super.
- [12:51]
C
Yeah. And I also think across the developing world like Africa, it's gonna, you know, it's, it's, it's hard but it's, it's.
- [12:57]
B
I'm not sure from a currency standpoint I would classify anybody in Africa as a major player. Brazil would count.
- [13:03]
C
Fair enough.
- [13:04]
B
Y but my punchline is, I think somebody would call it the G12ish range is going to ban US dollar stablecoins because. Exactly Chris, as you got to these things give their citizens a way to get out of the local system and hold dollars instead. Which is not just important for the fx, that part matters. In fact it matters even more in the developing world but equally so it gives people a way to get out from like legal norms and rule of law. Because let's say I'm in Europe and I say a bunch of things that people don't like and they want to hit me with a massive fine under some of their essentially anti free speech laws. Well, if all of my money is in a dollar stablecoin do you think a US court is going to be responsive to that under speech grounds? Probably not. And that sort of like challenge to sovereignty? I think people are going to essentially a little bit like what's going on with speech, have a reckoning with how the Internet actually works. Which is to say if I'm in, let's pick a country, Germany. Do I get to tell the Americans how the Internet works in America just because a German used it?
- [14:10]
A
I think if the argument is protection against capital flight, I think there's a higher probability of China doing it than Eurozone.
- [14:17]
B
That's where the China prediction covers it.
- [14:19]
A
Yeah, I mean if China does that then I think the probability of them either soft or hard moving on Taiwan goes up materially in, in, in sync with that. That's a, that's a total rejection of bilateral monetary relations. And then I think the probability of it, I, I, I was thinking about that being one of my predictions that China does a softer hard move on Taiwan in 2026. I backed off on it because I think they're going to wait until our chips manufacturing is at a point where US retaliating doesn't make economic sense. But I think I'll add to yours. If they do what you just said said they'll do, I think they move on Taiwan and sink.
- [14:54]
B
I mean certainly what's the right way to say this? My prediction is premised upon decreasing global coordination across all major nations, which has now been a multi year view basically since COVID that has been ongoing. Yeah. Deglobalization. Well, not just deglobalization, but also desynchronization. Right. It's not just we're doing less with each other, it's also we disagree with each other more. More. And I think that is a point that has maybe been underpriced in markets generally. And dollar dominance is terrifying to a lot of people who'd like to do that. Exactly. As Europe's economy is hollowing out. So. All right, Chris. That's right. That's what.
- [15:33]
A
Disagree with each other. This is too, this is too. We're too much. Insane. Come on.
- [15:37]
C
This one is kind of related actually, fellas. I'm concerned that there's going to be the mother of all hacks next year. It's going to be greater than $2 billion in size. It's probably going to be by our friends in North Korea and it's going to lead to a material downturn drawdown and it's going to require a complete policy rethink. I'll give you some stats. This year we're going to look like we're closing out the year with 3.4 billion. It's a 51% increase. Remember, the Buybit pack kicked the year off at 1.5. So I don't like to say it, but it's something that keeps me awake at night. And I say it because I think we all need to be thinking about it. It's the one thing that's going to derail. Like, we have so many good things coming together except for price. But it's the one thing that keeps me awake at night. John, I know that you guys just sorted through that $400 million issue you had. I don't know, I hate to start with bearish themes, but that's one thing that I'm worried about. Hack greater than 2 billion forcing a major rethink.
- [16:40]
A
So, so let me, let me agree and disagree with you. So I, I agree with you that there's a high probability of a major hack occurring. People are really underestimating the importance of having a nation state backed group like the Lazarus Group that is able to act with impunity. I mean, when I was reading about them recently, I called up my buddies at MIT and I was like, hey, are they just smarter than everyone? And they were like, no, they're like, they just get to act with impunity like their nation state back, they don't have to worry about getting arrested. Obviously we have hackers in the nsa, but I don't think our hackers are trying to kill specific companies and rob money. So they're the only large scale nation state backed hacking group that has the support of the government. So I'll agree with you there high probability of a big value money hack. I disagree with you that a money hack will disrupt much. What I think disrupts more are hacks like Panama Papers where information about so, so if a hack includes data and information about people using crypto in nefarious ways, not just loss of value, then I think we have a big structural problem. If it's, if it's just people lose their. If it's just people lose money. We're not a sympathetic audience, let's be honest. Yeah, nobody, nobody cares if crypto but.
- [17:57]
C
We also have trillions coming on chain and that's the difference, you know, as you have the wrong.
- [18:02]
B
So I agree.
- [18:02]
A
If it's, if it's moms and pops and dentists and doctors who are touching crypto for the first time, then it's a problem. If it's a hack that information of nefarious activity is revealed, then it's a problem. If it's just a bunch of crypto natives having the bitcoin stolen, nobody cares.
- [18:16]
C
Nobody cares. But I think that's the problem.
- [18:18]
B
Yeah, it would have to be one of two kinds of hacks for this prediction to be true. One is for instance, what are the big ETFs, right? Like if everything gets stolen from like IBIT or fbtc. That is an existential event.
- [18:32]
A
Dentists.
- [18:33]
B
I agree the. And the other one would be somebody actually compromises the smart contract keys for one of the major stablecoin issuers. Because like if I hijack Tether and could just mint 3 trillion of tether and go buy everything, right? Like you have a very big problem. In fact, back to Omid, he and I had this debate on Bankless at one point where I was saying I do not think the current crypto market infrastructure works for tokenized real assets because we've created a huge single point of failure on issuer security. Right? Because like I, I want to be clear, I think they have very good security. But if somebody compromises Tether's smart contract keys now what? Yeah, right.
- [19:13]
C
All right, that's my last merit. That's my last bearish one of the day.
- [19:16]
B
Well, so I want to. What's the right way to say this, take that in the opposite direction to throw one out. That will go back to John. Part of what many of these discussions reveal is that these issues are vastly more complex than people realize. And as you start call it descending down the stairs, it's like, oh, I'm in the basement and then basement level two and then basement level three. That basement. How many basements are there? So one of my predictions for 2026 is clarity will not pass in the United States. And I think it will not pass because as Congress continues to educate itself here, this stuff is just way too complicated.
- [19:59]
A
John. I think if it doesn't pass, it will not be. I'm trying to disagree, but Austin, Austin notes team better than me. But, but I do think this, I think that if it doesn't pass, it's not because it's too complex, because I think they pass things they don't understand all the time. I think I'm, I, if I were to agree with Austin in not passing about it not passing, I think it's because the Democrats have momentum right now and I think serious momentum. And in fact, I was, I was interviewed about two, three weeks ago and I was asked about the price action in crypto. And I said the only thing I see that's different between now and two, three months ago is growing confidence in Democratic momentum down in D.C. so I, I'll say I tentatively, I, I won't disagree with Austin because I just don't know the political scene as well. I hope that's not true. But if it is true, I think it's going to be because of shifting political momentum. Not necessarily because for the first time ever, politicians have decided they need to be thoughtful and understand a policy before they enact.
- [21:05]
C
Yeah, I think that's becoming consensus, Austin, on clarity, that it probably won't. We're pretty much assured it's not going to get passed before midterms. Question is, does it get passed after midterms? I don't know, man. I agree with you. Having been in D.C. in and around D.C. long enough. It's just a super complex bill, John. Not because of the like, the policy's not complex. The power is complex because you're moving power from one, from ag to banking, banking to ag. It just makes it a lot harder. And we saw how hard genius was. So I tend to agree. I think the question that I would come back to you with, professor, would be modular, right? Instead of getting one big beautiful clarity act, are we going to get pieces of it? Are we going to get, you know, are we going to break it up? We asked Patrick on that, Patrick Whitt at the White House, and he said, you know, we're not considering that yet. There's probably going to be a time when they pivot to modularity. Do you think that's possible? And like, if so, the taxonomy that we focus on.
- [22:08]
B
Yeah, I would say one, I will remind everybody that the White House said that we're not separating market structure from genius until they realized, well, could definitely get genius. And if we attach it to marketstar, I'm sure it's not going anywhere that that was when you make that deal. So I do think there's a chance you do that. I would tell you, I think the least controversial part of clarity is actually the taxonomy. I know a lot of people at crypto have views about it, but there's something in there that is good enough that Congress could get to that I think we don't have a problem with. I think the parts where there's going to be like really severe heartburn and the political dynamics get exceptionally gnarly are around. How do we define defi? Like, what is that? What is control? Where do we draw the boundaries? And I would tell you, I don't think there's consensus there. And part of my complexity one is, you know, you had people propose some things that facially were like, oh, we think this works and it's simple. And then you get things coming in horizontally to the debate that you didn't even expect. Like, what do you do when a web browser company suddenly shows up and goes, wait, why the fuck do you think we're a money transmitter? And they're like, well, we didn't mean that at all. And they're like, that is what you wrote down. And then the whole debate, the wheels just come off. So I think defi is going to be really hard because step one is what do you think you mean when you say defi is a very complicated process? Two, the AML KYC debate is broken. Right? And I say that because you have the banking faction who wants everybody to have to KYC everything, not because they think it's the right policy, but because that's the best way to protect their current walled garden, is force other people to like hammer into that shape so that you can't do new things that they're not intermediating. You have a bunch of, I'm going to call it crypto natives who don't want KYC at all and are strongly opposed to all of the these things. And then I would say you have a bunch of like tech and intelligence people who are like actually we like blockchains for open source intelligence reasons and maybe we should KYC less things but have more information transparency. And all three of those groups disagree with each other and none of them, I would say have a majority opinion. Right. And so that makes it very hard to move that bill because we can't set an AML KYC standard for interacting with things on chain. Right. Like that just becomes an absolute blocker. So if you're thinking of modularity, the token standards I think are pretty doable. And any requirements you're going to attract attract or like attach to call it centralized entities like Coinbase, the Exchange for instance or like crypto custodians, probably more in the realm of doable.
- [24:52]
A
Yeah, the mlkyc. I agree with you. It's becoming increasingly intractable. There's a wide disconnect. I see. It's funny, I flew to Dubai a couple weeks ago and for the first time ever, I didn't take my passport out of my luggage the entire trip. I did, I did biometrics in the U.S. i've been doing it for years in the UAE. But the first time I ever came through us went through global entry en route back pure biometrics. So I was shocked at the market jump in modernization of tsa, aml, kyc, know your citizen at least. And it seems like, and Austin, you're the first person to put it this way. I was wondering why sort of the traditional financial sectors had stayed so analog, remains so analog around it. By the way, it's not just the U.S. i sit on Cayman boards, I have to go to notaries a couple times a month. It's an unbelievably arduous process. And you're the first person, Austin, to come point out the obvious, which is that's a feature, not a bug of protecting that moat so that we're, it seems like we're a long way off just, just philosophically from being comfortable with it and then the technology has to catch up. So I, I, I, I, I tend to agree that we're not going to cross the AML KYC hurdle here in the US for, for a very long time, I think.
- [26:10]
B
And Chris, I would be super curious about your opinion on this, but I'll say it this way. I actually think the divide that will eventually break that long jam is not between the crypto people in the banking industry. It is between the security people and the banking industry where Enough nat SEC people are going to get annoyed at how analog this is and how hard it is to see things while they see things like Lazarus happening. That it's one thing for you to be a bank executive in Washington arguing, well, those crypto people are untrustworthy. Look at all those scammers, like why would you let them set the standards? Fine. Very different argument to have like, oh, I don't know, senior folks from the intelligence agencies on the other side of the table saying, actually you guys are damaging US national security by not doing a good job with this information. Those are two very different problems.
- [27:01]
C
Yeah, I tend to agree. I think defi is going to be really hard to get done, so they're going to probably have to carve it out. The other issue that we didn't talk about was two other issues that are stopping it from going we talked about in the past. They just hate Trump and they don't want to give him anything. And ethically they want to address ethics big problem and then stablecoin interest. So yeah, I'm with you on that prediction.
- [27:23]
A
Is the Trump administration, I know they're pro crypto. Are they pro defi specifically? Is that nuance teased out in your understanding?
- [27:32]
C
I don't think there's coherent, I guess focus on defi. There's a lot of agendas in and around how that policy should work. I think if you talk to the executive office and the Patrick Ricks of the world, they get it, they want to make it work in a thoughtful way. But I think there's a lot of agendas, both Republican and Democrat.
- [27:51]
B
I would also say if I want to steel man the Democratic view on that for the informed ones. Their objection really is more around things like World Liberty that specifically CEFI or DeFi. Like if you want to read into the Democratic thinking of the informed people, go read the text of what Representative Torres proposed for an anti corruption amendment, which is basically essentially, if you're a federal legislator, executive branch, senior employee or anybody in the judiciary, you just can't be involved with this stuff, period, full stop. And then there's also an attachment to family members, which I'll be transparent. I've given them feedback that's way too over broad, but you could definitely put a thing in there about like acting in concert or delivering benefit too. You can't just capture all family members because like if a senator has a brother who hates it, but that guy gets elected to the Senate, you can't ban that guy activities.
- [28:42]
A
Yeah, it seems like we'll have kind of clarity around how we, how we expect our politicians to engage with crypto faster than we'll have clarity around how we expect our politicians to engage with the stock or credit markets. Like that's, that's kind of funny, right? I mean, because as my understanding is there are, there are not clear rules. Right. Which is why the Republicans accuse the Democrats of front running markets, sends them to Pelosi indicator and all this. And I know there's shenanigans that go on, but I'm sympathetic because it doesn't appear that as a society we have codified rules around how we expect our government officials to engage with capital markets. So it's funny that we're going to lean with crypto.
- [29:25]
C
That's what we've been telling him. Yeah, you got an ethics issue, but it's not a crypto issue, it's an ethics issue. Address it across products. And another good reason to maybe modularize things. Modularized things.
- [29:36]
B
I'm, I mean, I, I'll tell you right now, I think it would be a hugely positive thing for the United States to just have a generic like federal and congressional sort of ethics bill around all of this stuff. Because it shouldn't be the case that somebody can launch the Nancy Pelosi ETF and massively beat the market. Right. Like something is wrong there with that.
- [29:55]
A
It is kind of weird. I mean, every company I've ever worked for has pretty clear personal trading rules. Like, it's not like there's nothing enormous precedent around this. Just, you know, go, go grab whatever Goldman Sachs is doing and, and, and just implement it for Congress and Senate. But yeah, but crypto. So crypto will lead the way. That's wonderful.
- [30:12]
C
Yeah, that's right.
- [30:13]
A
Clarity for equity and credit vis a vis crypto.
- [30:17]
B
All right, let's, John, let's do one more prediction of yours and then we're going to have to do one more roll of ads before we keep.
- [30:24]
A
I have an, I have an anti prediction, meaning I'm going against Twitter, Twitter conspiracy consensus. And I will say none of these three things will occur in 2026. It's a prediction because everyone seems to think they will. So none of these things will happen. We will not achieve AI general intelligence. Quantum computing will not be a scalable, viable threat to crypto or any form of shot to any form of substantive crypto. Cybersecurity and alien life will not be confirmed. Those are my three countercultural predictions from at least the Twitter algorithm. But my algorithm is full of people claiming this is absolutely certain. None of it's going to happen. Deal with it.
- [31:06]
B
All right. Well, I am on the record as being a pretty deep AGI skeptic saying I think people are misunderstanding how these models work. So I am definitely on board with that one. Right. Like the, I think the problem we have with the AI debate right now actually is a little bit like the problem we were having with the crypto debate in 2022, which is to say you have people making fantastical claims that this thing will reinvent every single thing in the world and replace everything forever, always. And other people saying it's a flaming tire fire that will destroy humanity and with nobody in the middle or with a nuanced view other than like tens of people at the time. And I, I actually think a lot of that is washed out in crypto and we're starting to have more granular discussions, which is good, but it took us like 4ish years to get there. I think AI is still crypto in 2022. You have people being like, AI will run everything, agents will do everything, there will be no jobs, like, it's all over. And then you have people on the other side being like, essentially the Paul Krugman, like, I don't see how this is better than the fax machine type critique. And the truth is somewhere in the middle, which is like, if you understand the functional process of an LLM, there are certain kinds of brute force tasks that are not super accuracy demanding, where they are incredibly powerful, like incredibly powerful. They will have transformative effects of those spaces. They are very good at sub levels of heuristics, they're very good at being approximately right. And they're very good at doing that at scale and finding connections between data sets that might not have otherwise been found. But the idea that you can take that, which is essentially, call it a scaled, sort of like super librarian, if you will, and generate totally new forms of intelligence from it. Like citation needed. That's the old math gag of like, first this happens, then a miracle happens, then this happens. It's like citation needed for this step, guys, right? And I, I'll just say, if people want to send it to me, great. But I've seen no evidence so far that any of the LLMs are falsifying the prediction of it gets harder to get gains as they get better. And while they're very good at finding links between data sets, they are not good at generating wholly new data or new ideas. And you need that for AGI.
- [33:25]
A
They're not creative.
- [33:26]
C
Yep, I am excited about Quantum. I'LL be honest with you, I've been starting to dig into it a bit and I think when you bring AI together with Quantum, you're going to be able to accelerate. You know, people have been studying Quantum for a long time. I think I was looking at Columbia the other day. They started in like 1909. They've had a Columbia program focused on quantum. But I think we're now starting to see some acceleration. And I don't think that, you know, ubiquitous quantum capabilities are going to be online in the next year or so. But I think, you know, as we get towards a few years from now, five years out, it's good to start thinking about it now like other technologies. It's not going to be good or bad. It's going to be unleash, amazing compute, incredible iterative modeling. You're going to see a lot of diseases being, being cured that we didn't think were curable. And there's going to be some bad, bad parts to it too. But, but I do think it's starting to accelerate. Not next year.
- [34:24]
B
I mean, I think the other question with Quantum, you know, sort of back to John's maybe original point earlier about the hacks is like, is Bitcoin really the thing we're worried about? Right. Like, if we can break encryption as we currently use, there are much more valuable targets than Bitcoin. Like it. This is sort of being like, I have created a device to become completely invisible and I'm going to use it to steal candy from Target. And it's like, what are we doing?
- [34:52]
A
Yeah. The analogy I keep thinking is it would be, it would be the equivalent of teleportation.
- [35:00]
B
Right, Right.
- [35:00]
A
That would be, that would be it. So if tomorrow teleportation was a real scalable thing, then locks, doors, all types of physical security, everything goes away.
- [35:11]
B
Right.
- [35:12]
A
Our entire way of thinking about physical security is, is, is completely transformed. And the last thing we'll be worried about is, is I guess you worry about like theft, but you worry about personal physical safety, you know, first and foremost. And so that's kind of where I just, I think what I look at, I'm lucky that for AI, for AGI, I'm lucky to sit in this position where I'm a fellow at CSAIL at mit, so I get to hear what they're saying. And it seems that for both Qubit production on Quantum and the way AI is growing, they're suffering from the same thing that I've seen every bad trader suffer from, which is just linear intercalation. Of recent trade and it's like I just, maybe it's just beaten into me, Chris. And also because I've seen it, people fail in trading for so many years just taking that short term data trajectory and expanding it up. Like if that's true, we the human beings be running a sub 1/2 hundred yard dash. Correct. But as we all know it just gets increasingly harder to get that marginal unit of return. So I just see them falling into the same, into this and then also the, the, the marketing gimmickry. I'm like, like Austin, you mentioned before, like these two camps of it's going to change everything, it's going to kill us. I actually think those two extremes are towards the same marketing goal because what better way to get you to invest in my thing than to say oh my goodness, if we don't stop it, it's going to kill everyone. Right. That's a very important thing that you absolutely need to invest in. So I think the fear mongering and the Hopium are kind of the same silliness and the end result is like you said, which is massively transforming some industries, definitely transforming how we do certain things, freeing up time in some areas, increasing the amount of time we have to devote to other areas. But I, and I'm not a Paul Krigman on this at all, but this notion that again, massive unemployment in the near term, in the next like let's say three years beyond that, who the hell knows is just kind of silly.
- [37:07]
B
I mean it's kind of like as a final thought on that one before we flip to the ad, the personal computer did not destroy the economy. It may have transformed a lot of jobs. It changed how to do things. Accountants vanish because of the personal computer. Mathematicians are not gone because of the calculator. Right. It will just change how jobs work. So. All right, on that note, let us go to our ad roll here and then we'll come back and argue about some more predictions.
- [37:36]
D
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- [38:31]
B
All right, welcome back, Chris. I'm going to counter your bearishness by hitting you with a prediction that is simultaneously bullish and bearish and will make a lot of our listeners mad. So here's my prediction. Altcoins, which I'm going to define as everything other than Bitcoin and ETH and stablecoins before somebody yells at me about that, will have a negative return as a space in 2026. And that TradFi will capture way more of the value than many of the crypto protocols.
- [39:06]
C
Depends how you define it. Right. So I think everyone agrees that alts are having a rough go. I think based on the index you use, they're down about 60% year over year, depending on your definitions of alts. We've always known that you can create tokens out of anything and a lot of them have no worth. But I, I think you're right that there's going to be a return to fundamentals. I don't see like, it's hard to group them into, you know, just this huge monolithic group. You have to look at each project individually, you know, what is, what is its utility. And I think that that discipline of looking at fundamentals is going to drive dispersion in the price and the value of these altcoins. So it's like easy to say, alter this, alter that. I do think that you're going to see derivatives on shoring in 26. Remember Gary Gins, we talked about this. He forced all derivatives offshore. Next year is going to be a battleground for derivatives in the United States. And one of my predictions correlated to this, Austin, is that US will gain market share, CME will lose market share on shore. Okay. Like right now, I'd say, you know, they're a very small part. I think they, you know, they're just a tiny amount of the global volumes. We can go through them if we want to, but I think they're going to face very, very tough competition from our friends at Coinbase. You're going to see the Asians marching in. I think Binance returns. I think OKX comes on strong. So it's going to be the battleground. Why is this related to alts? Because the alts with functional futures will win. Why? Because again, as we're seeing institutions enter the space, they need to be able to hedge, they need to be able to trade basis. That basis is going to be ETF vs future DAT vs future futures power alts. Alts with futures win bifurcation of value between the haves and the have nots in the alt space.
- [41:04]
B
I think part of the other problem though, like, as I'm looking at why I believe this is two things. One, back to thinking about fundamentals. A lot of the design of tokens and protocols was a counter reaction to the nonsense from the SEC over the past like 4ish years under the Biden administration. But now we're starting to have a reckoning with the compromises that were made there as people can start operating. So like, look at the drama around a right now as an example, which is if we come to a place where it's like actually the token doesn't really give you any meaningful rights and the revenue can just be taken away, then the appropriate price for most of these tokens is way lower. Right? Like way, way lower than it currently is. And the problem that you will run into is while crypto natives have had some sort of call it community slash mythological slash ethos belief around tokens, tradfi people don't share that. And so they're not going to be coming into this space and saying, hey, the way to do things is buy a giant stack of AAVE and introduce governance. No, they're just going to build their own borrowed protocols. And so I think we're going to hit the rubber meeting the road on what is a token, what rights does it have? And I think for a lot of these things to survive, they're going to have to transform into much more equity, like instruments that grant people actual legal rights. Right. Because again, the days of like the call it valueless governance token are probably coming to an end now that like, and there's been a string of these, right? Like AAVE is not the only one. Look at like the Axel takeout right by Circle. And you could see these things starting to emerge of the differential interests between the operating company and the token holders are really becoming an issue.
- [42:55]
A
Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna hedge a little bit and say that I think everything but Bitcoin lumped into all coins is, is a challenging, is a challenging heuristic. So Salana, I'm assuming, so you, you know, equate Solana with sort of a meme coin. I'm assuming, right.
- [43:10]
B
Or are we thinking about. I, I mean, I will tell you right now the only thing I would confidently carve out there is like eth in the major stable coins. I think even if you include Solana in the space. It's probably a negative.
- [43:22]
A
Okay, okay, so I'll disagree with you on Solana because I think that Solana is going to be the architecture for a major US equities exchange to start experimenting with onchain equities. I think they'll use Solana because ironically, meme coins improved the resiliency of that infrastructure.
- [43:36]
B
But hold on, I'm not disagreeing that that will happen. I'm asking, does the value then accrue to the token?
- [43:42]
A
I think it does. And not because you're not. I think you're right about the fundamental value. I think there's a, there's two, two other forces I think that are countering it with three. One is just mean reversion. People love mean reversion trades. I think that's one thing. But for mean reversion trades to work you need capital flows. I think there's going to be a full series of ETFs and access vehicles and so, and there'll be for the first time ever, there'll be an army of brokers selling them and shilling them. And if you thought, if you think that crypto culture is powerful to aggregate capital, wait until 100,000 Morgan Stanley burgers are out there on the golf courses pushing these meat reversion trades for these baskets of altcoins. The last thing is, and this is getting a little bit philosophical, but I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what Scott Galloway is going on about, about this, this growing nihilism amongst Gen X and Gen Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And I'm seeing him, I, I do a lot of public speaking because this book that was written about me is really popular with college kids. I've spoken to my nephew's fraternity and I, I get 25, 30 college kids a month reach out to me because they still love this decade old book. I sense it from my conversations with that generation. So I think that this, this, this and for any members don't know Scott Galloway and Scaramuccinos are talking about this problem affecting not just young men, but mostly young men who summarized by financial nihilism. They believe that there's no, that inflation beats interest. So this whole idea of saving and compounding, you cannot work your way out of the basement and therefore there's no hope. Even if you get a decent job, there's no hope. So you might as well just ape into some shot, might as well just gamble away some shot and it ties it to the sort of gamblification and Financialization of all assets assets And I think that, that that's not going away in 2026. So I think you're going to see inflows into any beaten down asset class that's viewed as a potential 10x or 20x or mean reversion trade. And I think there'll be easier access vehicles for off points and I think you'll see more nihilistic Gen Z heading into these trades. I think it's what's driving silver right now. I think, I think the memification of 10 potential 10x ers. I think that zeitgeist is not going away.
- [45:58]
C
So John, what's the next meme man? What's the next memification?
- [46:02]
A
Good asking, sober and thoughtful, you know triple tax free MU bonds in New York State. Like that's.
- [46:08]
C
I thought it was gonna be, I thought it was gonna be coinbase. Coinbase equities.
- [46:10]
B
No.
- [46:11]
C
All right.
- [46:14]
A
Sorry, sorry, one quick thing on that. So I, I hope, I hope that the, the everything app, I hope it starts with high quality assets and then filters down. I think people should be allowed to buy whatever they want. But I think if you lead with idiosyncratic high volatility assets you increase the probability of a micro or macro blow up in the building stages of that market and then things get complicated. So I'm hoping for onchain gold on chain, crude oil on shade large cap us equities on chain, bitcoin and then you get the benefit of that all at scale in one place.
- [46:51]
C
Yeah. So Austin's saying that securities, he sees more value accrual to securities or security like properties. Right, that's what you're saying. I don't agree with it.
- [47:04]
B
Part of it is that, but part of it is also like. All right, so it's important to understand the mentality of some of the people here. I was having a late night discussion with a friend about nihilism recently amusingly and the, the important thing to understand is there's not a central meaning there when you're thinking about that. If you look at the behavior of like the financial dialyst sector, they just run around chasing the next hot thing looking for wins. And sort of part of my thesis here with the altcoins is that's old and dead and gone and I don't think it's coming back like they're busy around back again in like stocks or like poke prediction markets right now and there's going to be something new that we can't predict but it's not going to be, oh, we go back to that thing only like a year or two later. If those come back around, it will be many years later. That's how retro things work. And so I think part of it is the hot ball of money left alts. And it's probably not coming back to alts because that's not how hot balls of money work. And so when you combine that with the fact that all the people who would normally come in is like, oh, that thing's incredibly beaten down. I'm a value investor. Let me go look into that, go, oh, like is there any value here? Like if you're a distressed person and you look at a lot of these tokens, you look at that go, nah, that might be zero.
- [48:23]
A
That's interesting. Okay, so, so alts are so 20, 25. They're just not again through.
- [48:31]
C
It's not forever though. This stuff is cyclical. And, and again, like I don't agree with value just accrues to the securities. And by the way, like, securities are no longer a death sentence. Right. On the commodity side, it depends how valuable that commodity is and what is its utility. Right. So I do think that there, you know, you gotta be a little bit more discerning. But I hear you and I do think there's gonna be a push into that secure the security esque asset because we can now, we're not going to jail if we do it right. All right.
- [49:02]
B
Yeah. And that's, that's part of the prediction is now that you can actually do securities, maybe you just want to do that sometimes.
- [49:10]
C
All right, so I got another one. All right, so we had 21 was DeFi Summer. I'm going to say 26 is M& A summer. M and A is going to be freaking everywhere. So this year I think there's about 8.6 billion in M and A activity. John, you guys led the way with your acquisition of Deribit. Kraken did ninja trader. I think this M and A is going to be so dynamic. You have a lot of new public companies, public company CEOs that want to go buy stuff. That's why they went public in the first place. You're going to have the dat. M&A. Two different types of dat. M&A. Dat against dat. Right. You know, whether it's I'm buying a debt of the same token or a different token, I'm going to dump it. Maybe that's one flavor, but I think a bigger flavor is DAT buying or merging or acquiring foundations and labs. That's the Other, that's the other M and A trend. So obvious to me you got the trading to crypto M and A if you're a trad player. Many of them, they've ignored crypto for years because the regulators said don't touch it or I'm going to get you. Now they're like oh I got to catch up. So trad into crypto and then you're going to have crypto into trad because people like Austin are saying you need to have those securities capabilities, you need to have that equity infrastructure. So going both directions and then the last flavor is I see offshore coming onshore to buy things. Asian exchanges and players, you know, European perhaps coming onshore where you're going to hear some CFIUS debates. But like I think it's going to be M and A, M and A and M and a in 26.
- [50:49]
B
What do you think?
- [50:51]
A
So I think you're right about the dats. I think the, the dats I'll add, I think the, the dats that are in a position where they, they have any sort where they have a year or more of run of run rate and they have any capital available, they have to go by cash flow. Their business models are non sustainable, right? They're burning for every say 100 million of assets they're burning somewhere between 5 and 10 million dollars a year to keep it up and running. Staking doesn't cover that staking unless you get, you can't go into the really risky stuff if you're a public debt. So the, they just, they're just non economic. So I think you're right, they'll consolidate. I think the ones that can go out and get def financing or have some capital left over from their despacking or wherever it is they, they, they, they listed, they have to go buy ebitda. Like that's actually go by cash flow. So they, you may see dats buying like oddly normal analog businesses just to get, just to get cash flow to show hey I, I can be around over the next five years and become this thing, this access vehicle that you want me to become. Chris, real question back to you. All the other M and A stuff is most of that distressed?
- [51:59]
C
Oh no, not necessarily at all. I think that there are people that are looking for the best companies, the best capabilities. I have buddies in traditional markets. They're like come back to me when you know when your company's making $100 million in revenue. I think the problem right now frankly is that there just aren't enough crypto companies that are capable of meeting the standards that need to be met, like that's the unfortunate truth. But the ones that are, they're either racing to go public or someone's going to try to scoop them up as soon as possible.
- [52:29]
B
Well, I. So I think you hit on something important about M and A that a lot of tradfi people are not understanding really well. So if you're one of those and you're listening to this, pay close attention. There are really only like three profiles right now that are potentially M and A able and one of them you're just not going to get which is crypto companies that have done quite well are going public. If you look at the IPO valuations of like a coinbase, a circle, right? Like the people even bullish as an example, the people who have been able to IPO have by and large done very well and they don't need to do an M and A transaction. They're going to go public and then you're going to have to try to take them over at traditional capital markets. And so if something's got, call it 200 million of revenue and it's a crypto company, it should not sell to you, it should ipo. And so I think they face this problem of like actually the public capital markets are probably a better buyer. Two is companies that are specific types of strategic acquisitions. Like we have seen stablecoin startups like the Bridge and like you know, sort of like bvnks of the world being scooped up or potentially scooped up, that makes sense to me because that's a strategic bolt on. But you're going to need to know what those are, which means you need to know what you're doing in blockchain space. And a lot of tradfi companies quite frankly are 10 years behind, right? Like if you're any of the like major financial or bank companies and you don't have a totally cracked team of people in this space already and the one or two of you who do know who you are just you are very behind, right? And I don't know if you could evaluate this well, three is there's a handful of like these mid tier companies that are probably acquirable but that's purely because it's a business model that may not itself want to ipo. Like a good example of those, Chris, you and I are both familiar with them is like Inca Digital, right, Which is an intelligence company. Like they literally do anti financial crime and financial intelligence. I don't know how much public reporting they want to do so that makes sense for a private acquisition. But like that's not most protocols which either don't have revenue or have complicated user bases of tokens. That's not the IPO crowd. So like my one pump the brakes on the M and A thing is there may be like at best low tens of companies that are acquirable, like functionally.
- [54:57]
A
I also think also to your point about that big tradfi making these acquisitions, I am, this is entirely anecdotal and I will not name names but, but I got into the partnership level of one of these companies recently and I think we're still underestimating the degree of reticence amongst 30% or more of some of these senior. And by the way, these are not like 80 year old guys, curmudgeonly guys. These are like 50 year old guys who have put it on public record over the last seven to 10 years that they think crypto is bullshit. And it's incredibly embarrassing. So I was asked recently, like, what do you think about where's crypto skepticism going? I don't think there's crypto skepticism anymore. I think there's crypto resentment. So you're this guy, you're this incredibly powerful partner at xyz. You are not just quietly shitting on crypto. You have been very, very, very public about it. To turn around at this stage of your career and greenlight a major acquisition, empower that team. By the way, Chris, the team you mentioned, and I think it was awesome, they're there, they're at every, they're just impotent. They're just, they're just stuck in a corner somewhere with no real power to elevate that team, to take over a P and L to greenlight an app. It's to, it's to admit that you are not just wrong, you are catastrophically wrong. And if I'm that guy and I'm a senior partner one of these firms, 53 to 57 years old, you know what? I'm going to retire in three to five years. I'm going to just say this is bullshit for the next five years until I'm out and let that next generation deal with it. Because it's embarrassing to admit it. I think we dramatically underestimate the degree of reticence that still exists. And that's why I don't think we'll see a major bank acquisition.
- [56:43]
B
And the, by the way, the number of Fords who are going to be willing to accurately like police that behavior and fire that person and replace them with somebody who will do the right thing is very low. Not maybe not zero. There probably will be. Actually, here's a prediction that I didn't intend to make. There will probably be one or two big blowouts where management or a board gets forced out by activist investors over things like this over the next year. Because if you're somebody who's been at the forefront on the technological front, you're still out there shooting all over. This is like Citadel and like NASDAQ and NYSE and the CME are all going on chain. Like, if I'm on the board, I'm asking a lot of questions. And if I start investing and taking.
- [57:25]
C
Board seats, the other thing is like, you know, when I was in Wall street Also, you remember BlackRock says jump, you say, how high? Yeah, if they're going on chain, they're like, hey, you're settling with me on chain. I'm settling with you on chain. You know, you pay me hundreds of billions of dollars every year to my, to my, my bank. I do think what is consensus? What is consensus at this level, John is going back to 2017 or whatever. Blockchain, not bitcoin. If you are saying I'm in, I'm investing in infra. No problem. No problem. It's infra. Right. If you're saying I'm buying tokens, maybe we got to pause a little bit. But that blockchain, not bitcoin concept is alive and well in these boards. And at that level, I believe.
- [58:09]
A
Oh, we saw. Against my point. We saw master. The rumor, but it's been a confirmed rumor that mastercard's buying zero hash and I think there'll be. Yeah, I think that's fair.
- [58:19]
B
Fair.
- [58:19]
A
I think I'm distinguishing some of these commercial companies from. From the investment banks. But, but. And the dad's. The DAs problem is going to be that a lot of them have very inexperienced boards and they're going to be panicked and their lawyers are telling them, you're going to get sued. And so they're going to. They're not going to want to sell it below at below stock price, which they'll have to do to get a deal done. And I think they're just going to lock up for the first six months of the year until. Until activists has also said come in and force. Force m and a activity.
- [58:49]
C
You know, I want to go back to something you said around staking doesn't pay the bills. It does if you're Tom Lee. He came out today, he said, I'm making a million dollars a day on staking. Right. So what does that mean? It means scale. Right. And, and so if you are able to achieve that scale, then you know it's the haves and have nots which is something that Sears markets mature, as markets mature, things scale. That's why to me it's a no brainer that consolidation is going to happen 26, particularly amongst the dads.
- [59:17]
B
All right, so before we run out of time here, since we should do at least one prediction, I'll, I'll give a prediction that I think again will enrage everybody. I think the Democrats will win the house in 2026 and I think they will immediately regret it because it will probably take them for the presidency in 2028. Back to the financial nihilism components. The thermostatic effect in politics is getting stronger over time. That is to say voters are pissed and there's major intergenerational warfare and you do not want to be the main character right now. The easiest way to win is to be an outsider. And so I think the Democrats taking the House, getting on the main stage, pushing a bunch of their priorities are only going to piss people off and actually make people hate them too. The reality is voters are not happy with either of the major political parties and the best thing you can do to be popular right now is stay off the stage.
- [60:15]
A
I agree that there's no short term political solution that can solve the problems that are enraging most Americans, particularly around inflation, to go on affordability. It does appear that the short term political actions will exacerbate those issues. Whereas before I think you could spend your way into a good stock market and mollify people, I think those days are gone. And so it's damp if you do, damp if you don't. So I agree that whoever's in power is going to have the target on their back and I don't think there's any right. As Lynn all then always says, there's no way to stop the train. I think both economically but also culturally. Not to sound too pessimistic, but I do think we will be in a, I think the US will be as a society will be further fractured at the end of 2026 than it is now. I'm hopeful eventually there's a turnaround. But I, I, I tend to agree and that that kind of plays into my, my belief that altcoins and other types of videos and credential will will go up as people just make that, make that what the hell trade. But But I, I tend to agree things are looking worse, not better on that front.
- [61:31]
C
That sounds to me like it's going to be really good season for prediction markets.
- [61:35]
A
Yeah. Oh, I think prediction markets are going to step topple and I think off chain lending. On chain lending and prediction markets will both 5x to 10x will want to take leverage, to take risk and people are going to want to bet on absolutely everything. It's not, I don't think gambling I'm going to that but they're going to want to make a prediction on almost everything.
- [61:55]
C
Lending has to come back. Lending has to come back. What about NFTs? What about NFTs? Are they coming back next year?
- [62:01]
B
So I'm going to say something really outside the box on NFTs. I actually think NFTs are going to turn out to be incredibly important but not in the way they were originally designed. I think where they will be important is tracking ownership of things that are currently on either broken crappy ledgers or things that are not currently ledgered.
- [62:21]
C
Right.
- [62:22]
B
Like if we could just create an NFT for all the cars in America and track those or like let's get into luxury good markets and things like that. There's a lot of value to be unlocked there with tokens that are unique and only transferable in the right sort of circumstances. I just think the initial wave of hey, we're going to produce programmatic digital art. It's like guys, those are JPEGs. That's very easy.
- [62:45]
A
That was silly. Yeah, I, I think entertainers, sports teams, venues will start to figure out how to monetize the economic and data relationship with their fans via NFTs better. I think they experimented a bit before. I know like a buddy of mine, Imran Ahmed who runs this company called the Business of Fashion, it's extremely influential fashion company. You know, they're going to figure it out. There's, there's ways of this pro if you. It's provenance which is important, it's data and communication with your fan base which is important. And then it's that, that ephemeral like you know, I own this thing, that Taylor Swift endorses thing which my daughters love so no one's kind of got it yet but it's just so obviously there that it's a great way to engage with your fan base and extract information and provide, provide value back in community. So I think, I think whether it's a sports team or entertainment entertainer, I think someone will crack the NFT code and figure out how to make it really, I wouldn't say useful, but really desirable there.
- [63:45]
B
But there's a whole, there's a whole different layer too to this, right. Which is like, God, who is it? I think it's the state of California is putting like driver's license information on Avalanche as an nft. Right. These are just subways property records, guys.
- [64:02]
A
Right.
- [64:02]
B
Like let's stop over complicating it.
- [64:05]
C
Yeah, I think, I think there's some value in social graphing as well.
- [64:08]
A
Right.
- [64:08]
C
So as certain people have certain types of assets in their wallets, it's going to be very valuable data for introducing other types of things that are similar to people of that data set. Right. Like punk holders, penguin holders. You know, that's what we're looking at today. In the future, it's like, oh wow, this wallet has X, Y and Z. I think they would like for me to sell them or airdrop this, but.
- [64:33]
A
Maybe those privacy I conversations with an NFL team, sports team a long time ago and this, this idea they put in my head of okay, you buy, you get your ticket stub, which is your nft. Fine, whatever, it's, maybe it's collectible, but you could program in effectively a lottery mechanism. And so let's use soccer for example. If you're, if you're, if you, if you do certain things that, if you use that NFT in certain ways it stays active and it goes off and messi tweets out your name or calls your phone, who the hell knows? But, but some, some engagement component can be written into the contract. And that, that's extraordinary that, that takes, that takes client, that takes entertainment customer or fan dynamic from static to dynamic over time. And look, I don't give a shit about that stuff, but there's hundreds of millions of people who really do and they will figure out a way to engage you in your off time with that, with that brand.
- [65:27]
B
It also does the most valuable thing in crypto, which is compressing the intermediary stack. Right. Like we're going to now live in a world where creator, team, company has a direct relationship to the customer. On the other side of things without like three layers of intermediation, it's, it's Pat and I.
- [65:46]
A
My favorite comedian is Patton Oswald. I buy his tickets through his website now because he realized he was big enough to mark. I follow his Twitter account. I'm going to be in Brooklyn. He was in Brooklyn a couple months ago and I bought the ticket directly from Patton Oswald. It was demonstrably cheaper. I'm sure he's making a shitload more money and everybody wins.
- [66:06]
B
Feels like a business coinbase could get into John.
- [66:08]
A
I, I think well according we're doing everything we, we are, we're updating the whole system.
- [66:12]
C
So it wasn't.
- [66:15]
B
All right, well I was going to say let me throw this to you too if you have one more prediction you want to throw out since we're slightly over time but then we will end up calling it.
- [66:25]
A
So hacking aside, I don't think there's going to be another big blow up in 2026. I don't think there'll be a big crypto bankruptcy insolvency. I have come to the point where I'm so annoyed every time there's a volatility move in price. Twitter goes nuts with like these nebulous oh some Asian hedge fund blew up or a big bank couldn't make their silver margin calls. It's a great way to know who's a non serious person. Like look, in the immediate aftermath of a blow up it's a possibility but like a week later if they're still saying there's some big unknown that's not how these things work. The rumor mill starts immediately. You know, insolvencies happen right away. I think the probability of a major incident insolvency, non hacking related insolvency has gone way down. I think October 10th scared the shit out of people. I think they de risked. I think there wasn't a blow off because they weren't over levered. They might have been a little too much levered and they took down risk and that's what you're seeing now with reduction in liquidity. But I think, I think the major players have learned their lesson and I don't think we're going to have an FTX style blow up in 2026.
- [67:30]
C
That's one of the reasons they're coming on shore John, right as they come on shore they're, they're going to avoid all the ADL shenanigans and that's why I think that's going to be rocket fuel this year with derivatives. Why would I go unregulated? If I can go regulated now, now that I'm allowed to do it, that's where liquidity is going to move. My last one, Austin, Bitcoin and Ethereum hit all time highs in 26.
- [67:53]
B
I could totally see that. I could totally see that. But I want to, I want to pile on with the point to John here. If there is a major failure of something in crypto in 2026. One, it's going to be a stablecoin. And two, which people are really not expecting, it will be because a bank failed where the stablecoin held their money. That will be tradfi blowing up something in crypto, not the other way around. People think the systemic risk goes from stablecoin to tradfi. It goes from a bank to a stable. Couldn't agree more.
- [68:24]
A
There's been 600 bank failures in the last five years. And is it the very high chance of being more? And if there's ubiquitous stablecoin creation, I think it's almost impossible there won't be a bank fail. A stable. A bank failure caused stablecoin failure.
- [68:39]
B
Yes, if that. If anybody from House or Senate financial services are listening to this, remember, you have to protect stablecoins from the banks.
- [68:47]
A
And crypto will dip lamp.
- [68:49]
B
Yes.
- [68:51]
A
This was fun, guys. If I had this.
- [68:54]
B
Yeah. Thank you.
- [68:56]
A
And if I'm wrong and aliens are confirmed, we can invite an alien.
- [69:01]
B
I was gonna say you could just blame the aliens for controlling you to make the prediction to disguise the fact that they were real.
- [69:07]
A
Right.
- [69:08]
B
This is great, guys. Appreciate.
- [69:09]
C
My professor's definitely not from Earth. All right, guys, good to hear.
- [69:14]
B
I see how it is. All right, thank you, everybody. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Bits of Bits. Happy New Year. We'll be back in one week to discuss more about how the worlds of crypto and macro are colliding. Until then, stay safe out there.