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- [00:01]
Jason Pagaladis
In prior cycles you could be a, you could be pretty passively allocated and do very, very well. And I don't think that's, I mean it's clearly not the case anymore and hasn't been for some time, at least the last year and a half. Right. I think in order to do well you needed to be very, like I mentioned I think earlier, very discerning, very disciplined and, and really pick, pick your moment.
- [00:26]
Jordan Yeagley
I think like we're missing a massive consumer app in crypto and the social fi angle is, is fundamentally like a massive use case that could onboard, you know, the next billion people. I know that's cliche at this point, but it's like we can.
- [00:49]
Laura Shin
Hey everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hive resource for all things crypto. Laura, I'm your host Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Before we get started, a quick reminder. Nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only and my guests and I may hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures visit unchained crypto.com looking to unlock your crypto's liquidity figure Offers crypto backed loans with an inde. You're about to make a trade which you do you listen to.
- [01:18]
Jason Pagaladis
Is it get optioning those options.
- [01:22]
Laura Shin
Or let's do a little research. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart industry low 8.91% fixed rate. They're the only major provider with decentralized NPC custody and new liquidation protection. Take out a loan at FigureMarkets Co Unchained. Today's topic is 2026 predictions here to discuss are Jason Pagaladis, head of markets at Delphi Digital. And later in the show we'll have his colleague Jordan Yakeley. Just a heads up that we pre recorded this episode on December 19th so if any other news has happened since then that we are not discussing, that is why. Welcome Jason.
- [02:04]
Jason Pagaladis
Hey, thanks for having me.
- [02:06]
Laura Shin
So Delphi produced three huge reports about what's ahead for 2026 and we are going to dive into the main takeaways. And from the markets report and the app report, let's start with a question that a lot of people have been talking about. Is the four year cycle dead and if so will we still see new highs in bitcoin next year or are we now entering yet another multi year bear market?
- [02:31]
Jason Pagaladis
Right. All right. Kind of loaded question, right? There's a lot in there. So yeah, right. Like I guess like to preface right. Pretty much most of crypto if not all of it has gotten pretty bearish over the last several months and it's kind of, you know, easy to see why given price action. And yeah you kind of hinted at it like the question is like oh is that it? Like is a four year cycle in? Is it topped right or are we kind of going into something different. And like I mentioned, you know price action does look eerily similar, similar to past cycles. Right. When you look at like kind of technicals or market structure you have like similar, like double peaks, long term momentum indicators have started rolling over. You see like fear and greed index type sentiment gauges hitting extremes. Right. If you like overlay having cycle charts, right. It looks very much the same. So it's like, you know, I guess it, it, it is easy to kind of construct the argument that you know, it's this time isn't different, it's just like last time for your cycles in where over it's done, wrap it up. But kind of like our big counterpoint is like the cycle doesn't play out in a vacuum, right. Like all of these charts things technicals do look like that and you know we've, we've admitted that. But past cycles have kind of been driven by bigger trends outside of crypto, namely like liquidity based trends. And right now like we're kind of starting to see a lot of those headwinds that have being present for the last year or so or starting to start of kind of turn around and start maybe acting as moderate tail, not like huge tailwinds but at least not headwinds heading into 20, 26. And so like what we're seeing is like a lot of the things that have previously killed bull markets are actually kind of flipping in the opposite direction. And it like the big theme of our, our report is like this macro but bifurcation from the last year or so kind of turning into a macro convergence across central bank policies around the world and things like that. So to kind of answer your question, it's like we don't necessarily believe in the four year cycle. We kind of believe in something bigger than that. We think the having cycle has just more coincidentally lined up with broader liquidity cycles, debt refinancing cycles, right. Every four years or so most central banks have to refinance their, or most governments need to refinance their debts. So right. You get these big liquidity injections into markets which then tend to flow into risk assets and crypto has generally been a big beneficiary of that. So we've had like these two things kind of coinciding at the same time, which has, you know, led to the narrative of that four year cycle in crypto. And we just don't think that it's that simple. It's more nuanced than that is. Like the, is the best answer I can give, to be quite frank. It's more nuanced than we think. A lot of the things that have held risk assets back or crypto back this year are starting to abate, at least on a macro front. But we don't really think that it's going to flow through to all altcoins. We think we're going to see a lot of dispersion like we saw most of the last 12 to 18 months or 12 to 24 months. It's not a market that we saw in 2020 where we just have massive liquidity stimulus injections and every altcoin on, on your, you know, watch list is up 10, 15, 20%. We believe investors are going to have to be more discerning and, and, and be more disciplined in their, you know, allocation approach, much like the ones who have done decently well over the last 18 months have been.
- [06:04]
Laura Shin
Yeah, I mean, honestly, from reading the report, it almost felt like what you guys were saying, and correct me if, if I was interpreting this incorrectly, is that obviously, so the having clearly does have some effect. Like we all know it has some effect, but this particular halving cycle had this other effect where, you know, we were in this period of like quantitative tightening and, and stuff like that. And so some of the macro conditions that in the past had coincided with the halvings to supercharge the crypto markets were actually going the other direction, macro wise.
- [06:36]
Jason Pagaladis
Yes.
- [06:37]
Laura Shin
And then now that they, the typical boost that crypto gets from the having has dissipated. We're in this moment where the macro now is going to be more favorable for crypto. So that could be another reason why the four year cycle will just look different from previous ones.
- [06:54]
Jason Pagaladis
I think, I think that's a great read on it. Yeah, I think that that's, that's a takeaway. We're, we're trying to get readers to come to. Yeah, for sure. And, and yeah, like we also, we also had like a bunch of other things that have kind of like captured that narrative, so to speak. Right. Like the having is like a very good psychological narrative. It's an easy thing for people to get behind. It's very easy to look at. You know, it's just, it's clean, it's easy, it's simple. It might not be the most nuanced argument, but it's, it's one that a lot of people get behind and for, for lack of like a better explanation. Right. Like the more that people believe in something, the more likely that thing is to come true in markets. Right. Maybe not over a long period of time, but like, you know, animal spirits drive markets in the short term. So when you get a confluence of all of these, you know, types of narratives, a having narrative, a liquidity injection on the macro front, ETF approvals, spot flow, right. You get all these things and it's easy to see how markets can, you know, either get ahead of themselves or not in, you know, shorter term timeframes and how the having narrative can kind of play into that in one way or another, like we're seeing now.
- [08:00]
Laura Shin
Okay, so there is something else I thought was really interesting in the report. You talk about. G. Sorry, you talked about gold being a canary in the coal mine for bitcoin and I'm sure, you know, everybody in crypto saw what was happening to the gold price this year. So explain what you were seeing there and why you view it as a harbinger of things to come for bitcoin.
- [08:20]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah, right. So like Peter Schiff is right, right. Like obviously like gold has, has absolutely teared to the upside. And yeah, so like we, we view gold and bitcoin and kind of like the same bucket in terms of like the expression of the investment thesis you're trying to, you know, portray. So like we look at gold and bitcoin as, you know, policy hedges, monetary debasement type trades. Right. If you think, you know, if you think, if you think governments are going to continue running huge deficits, which all major governments have to, given the deficits they currently have.
- [08:55]
Jordan Yeagley
Right.
- [08:56]
Jason Pagaladis
And their current refinancing cycles, you're going to have to issue more, more debt. It's going to have to cover all of the deficits plus expenditures in the future. Right. Every trend is clear. Right. All major developed countries are running deficits and will continue to run deficits until they can't anymore. Like there's, it's pretty clear at this point and we believe that bitcoin and gold are the clearest expressions of that trade. And if you look at like the last year or so, gold has completely outpaced bitcoin. But if you look over like the last two or three years, it's, it's kind of a different story. So like when you look at like these bigger, bigger trends, right, like monetary Debasement and, and that whole trend playing out isn't a 1, 2, 3, 4, it's, it's a multi decade trade effectively. Right. You could have put trades on similar to it in the, you know, post GFC era and just, it's effectively going to play out over many, many, many years. So I think like looking at like these short term time frames kind of misses, you know, the forest for the trees a little bit at least with respect to why we think, you know, gold and bitcoin should be bucketed together there. I also think there's like also a big difference in the two. Gold is a super, super mature asset. Thousands of years of history, 10, 10, 20, 30 years maybe at the almost 30 years of ETF history trading. Right. You've had minor, you've had gold based equities forever at this point. Right. Bitcoin is relatively new. Yeah. Market cap is 2 trillion, maybe a little bit less right now, whatever it is. Right. Still relatively small and new and in its infancy. And the market structure around Bitcoin is entirely different than the market structure around gold. Right. And I think that accounts for why you see these more shorter term fluctuations and how these assets work. Right. Over the last several months, like from, from 2024, January 2024 when ETFs were approved for Bitcoin, up until pretty much December, like last December or so, have been a huge driver of Bitcoin's appreciation and spot demand. And so it stands to reason that if those buyers step back, a huge amount of demand is going to be taken off the market. Therefore price is going to, you know, be pressured to the downside. It's very, you know, standard. And then if you add other types of buyers, like the DATs we've seen, right. They were a pretty big buyer, people like Saylor pioneering it. And then you had all these, you know, copycats with bitcoin and ETH and Tom Lee and everything spinning up their funds. Obviously a big source of demand when they were buying. But it's very clear none of them are buying anything now. So when you remove two of these big buyers, like structural buyers off the market, for lack of a better word, it's kind of easy to understand or explain the dislocation in bitcoin and gold over this three, six, eight month period or whatever. Right. And that's kind of like we say like it's, it's a canary in the coal mine because it's still effectively the same trade. You just have some structural differences in the market kind of pushing prices of bitcoin in a different direction than gold. Right. Absent these things, I think bitcoin's probably trading, you know, significantly higher. And it just has to kind of work through this at this point. Right. Like, these just is what it is.
- [12:15]
Laura Shin
All right, so now let's talk about the other big event that appears to be affecting the markets right now, which is the 1010 liquidations. Everybody in crypto can see that those liquidations have had a huge negative impact on the crypto sector. And there's just. I feel like every single day I'm, like, seeing rumors about what happened, but, you know, broadly, like, what do you think happened there? And how do you think it will continue to impact the markets going forward, if at all?
- [12:43]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah, I mean, it's clear that 1010 was the day when crypto's market broke, like, actually broke. And so, yeah, there's tons of rumors like, market maker blew up, people blew up, whatever. Like, we haven't seen anything come to the surface yet. So if somebody blew up and we haven't seen anything in the last two months, three months, like, it's kind of crazy.
- [13:06]
Laura Shin
Yeah, there's one I heard about, but they were so small. That was like. Well, that's clearly not.
- [13:10]
Jason Pagaladis
That wouldn't be, like, systemic. Right. Like, you have to be a systemic thing. So, like, the way I look at it is I don't. I don't know if a market maker blew up. Right. It does. Like, effectively, that doesn't really matter to me. Like, what matters is, like, obviously the aftermath and what you can draw from it. So, like, very clearly, there's no bid for pretty much anything at this point. And so, like, the conclusion you can, or I can draw from that is when you look at 1010, 1010 was like a liquidation that was like, very different from the liquidation cascades we saw in last cycle. Like, on the way up, for example, or even on the way down. Like, Everybody lost on 10 10. Like, nobody won. Shorts didn't really win. Longs didn't really win. Dip buyers didn't really win.
- [13:57]
Laura Shin
Mean, like, one entity that I can think of that one, but just one.
- [14:00]
Jason Pagaladis
One. So one person may be one. Right. Obviously you need somebody to win, but, like, the vast majority of people lost, people who were running very conservative leverage trading strategies lost. People who were hedged on other exchanges lost because they had their things closed. Right.
- [14:15]
Jordan Yeagley
You.
- [14:16]
Jason Pagaladis
You just had a huge surface area of losers that generally don't lose that bad during liquidations. And what this means is everybody's toast. And then on top of that I think with the perp Dex wars that started up about a month or two before that you had taken a bunch of who was left trenching on chain, brought them over to perps to farm these protocols for airdrops, only to then slaughter them on 1010. So you pretty much just like. And pretty much anybody who had any leverage on above like 1.53 to 4x got, got liquidated. Right. And that isn't usually what happens. Isn't usually what happens. Usually you can get away with that but. And then this happened after you had a huge like bleed out period for many alts too. So it's just like the bid is effectively gone. People don't want to buy into year end. There's no reason to really buy into year end if you have cash, right? So many things are down, you expect people to tax loss, harvest. Most liquid funds I would have to expect are down on the year. The best ones are probably down 20% maybe, maybe better, maybe closer to 10 or if you're lucky maybe you're flat if you caught some, you know, hedges or shorts or something. But like the vast majority of participants this year are down. So you're going to see selling into year end of the things that are down the most, tax loss, harvest, carry forward your, you know, your, your losses into next year and you can effectively just like reset. There's no reason like as somebody who like, I mean I got hit hard on, on 1010 for sure, but I still have, have money to deploy and I just have no real interest in deploying before I see what you know, tax loss harvesting looks like. If anybody's up, they're probably going to sell into year end, right? Like if they haven't already. There's just no reason really to buy into year end. I think you kind of just like wait and, and see. And I think all of these factors combined kind of lead you to see the apathetic market that we've, we've seen and just like the total bleed out across the board.
- [16:21]
Laura Shin
Okay, so I only want to touch on one more macro thing before we dive into the rest of the conversation just because you know, we kind of painted like a rosy picture for the macro market. But there is one risk that you guys highlighted which has to do with this sort of like hedge fund basis trade. So can you explain what that is and why this is sort of like kind of just a wild card feature, the current market and how that could actually cause a lot of volatility and you know, more like risk off scenarios for next year.
- [16:55]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah, so we kind of like call this like, you know, like a glass house is like the way we kind of like described it in the report. And so I think like the main takeaway here is like the U.S. treasury market, U.S. treasuries are like fundamentally the most important asset in the world. They are the most liquid collateral asset used across all markets and all jurisdictions. They're the asset that everybody wants for literally everything. Most people. Most most or not most, but a lot of emerging markets have, have debt issued in dollar. Right. Treasuries are the most important asset for the global financial plumbing. And so with, you know, $1.5 to $2 trillion in annual deficits in the United States, the Treasury has to continually issue massive amounts of debt. Treasuries, right. And they can do this in one or two, one of two ways. They can issue debt on like the front end of the curve or the back end of the curve. And what they've been doing is they've been front loading, so they've effectively been issuing short term T bills which keeps yields calm and avoids bond market volatility. Which is good because we just mentioned that Treasuries are a huge aspect of collateral in the global financial system. And if bond volatility spikes or treasury volatility spikes, that's cause causes lots of tension and lots of stresses across many different areas. Right. And so the marginal buyers of, you know, these longer duration bonds are effectively like highly leveraged hedge funds running massive basis trades, like a $2 trillion in basis trades. And they're funded effectively through, funded through a tightening repo market where the Fed, where buffers like the Fed's reverse repo facility are basically drained and bank reserves are down sharply. You also have foreign buyers like Japan pulling away from the treasury market as buyers amid shifts in their own policies. Right. So effectively the marginal buyer of these things has been hedge funds running massive basis trades. And so if repo costs spike or profitability of the basis trade unwinds, like rates going down, you might see the basis hedge fund start unwinding this trade dumping, right, dumping Treasuries onto the market, which then would cause bond market volatility, send yields soaring and cause maybe a broad risk off spillover effect like we've seen in other carry trade unwinds now, namely like the Japan one in August 2024. Not exactly the same mechanisms are different, but like that's what you could like kind of think of as like what happens when liquidity in these markets deteriorates and volatility spikes. That's like how you can think about it is like the easiest way I can think about it. Right. And so effectively Besant faces a very hard decision. It's pretty much impossible. Right. It's something that he criticized Yellen of doing and now he's kind of in the same position, right? Front loading the. Front loading the debt. Right. He can't possibly term out the debt without triggering yields going up and, and a lot of chaos. Right. And you can't keep frontloading forever. So it kind of like leads you to the question of like, okay, they're going to need to do some things to alleviate some of these stresses and what could those things be? Right. So we're kind of like highlighting the risk is there, but we're saying, you know, if, if Bessant and, and the treasury and, and, and regulatory officials are smart, there are things they could do to like kind of alleviate some of the pressures which you know, would be like, you know, QT ending is one of them. Maybe reserves get supported, regulations get loosened, you know, SLR banks are maybe, you know, exempted from certain things and then stuff like that. So like we're effectively, like I said, highlighting the issue but saying like, just because this is there doesn't mean it's like going to break. There are things that can happen. So just like watch and look for these actions and if we don't see these actions while we see this basis trade start to unwind, if we see it like that would be big cause for concern.
- [20:54]
Laura Shin
So one other thing is that you mentioned, you know, because obviously we can all see that we're in this era here where there's all kinds of new different tech type industries that are starting to grow and you, and how that could catalyze more industrial growth in the US which would then create an environment where bitcoin performs well. Explain like what those sectors are and like why you think it would have that effect on bitcoin.
- [21:18]
Jason Pagaladis
So like I think, I think that's, that, that's definitely part of it. But I think a big part of, of this, of this section is like kind of talking about more like like crypto's like maturity for for example, crypto's like market maturity and kind of tying in like why we think things are the way they are and why we think they're probably likely to continue like that for at least next year and, and probably the year beyond. And we kind of liken it to like a lot of these other really cool exponential technologies as we call them, AI Robotics, AI robotics enabled things like bioengineering, stuff like that energy, which is AI robotics adjacent, right? All of these really cool exponential technologies weren't actually super investable up until a year or two ago for a lot of people. And we think this has actually played a big role in like when you look at this market cycle compared to prior ones. Like when you have these big, you know, risk on moves in the market. Like we, we kind of looked at it as like, well, obviously money is going to flow into crypto. There's nothing else that's like that far out on the risk curve that's also like a very cool, exciting pioneer tech that has really, really awesome potential. TAM and traction. But you know, but that isn't really the case anymore. So today you have crypto, which isn't super new anymore, right? It's been around for a bit. And then you have all these other things which are newer, some of them have more traction and they're investible now. The surface area for these investable cool things is greater. So when you look at like, for every spec, like every dollar of like speculative liquidity that would have otherwise directly flow or like flowed into crypto previously now has several other alternatives. So you see less of that money coming into crypto, which we think has certainly had an impact on why you've seen such a big dispersion, dispersion from majors and things like hype or whatever that have like a structural bid behind them. And the majority of speculative alts is those dollars have, you know, bifurcated and, and kind of been, you know, segmented into other places. So we're just seeing less of a flow that we've, you know, otherwise seen. And it's not like that's a, a bad thing. Like that's just like crypto is entering the big leagues, right? It's not, it's not this new thing anymore that is traded by 20 people in Telegram channels or whatever. And you know, the same 1000 traders are taking money from each other. It's, it's, it's different. It's, it's, it's fully embraced by institutions maybe in ways that people didn't want to happen. But you know, it is what it is. That's how, how markets go. And crypto now has, we, we kind of like left it, like left it off. It's like 2026 isn't like a coronation anymore, right? Like 2024 was more of that with ETF approvals, regulatory acceptance effectively winning on that front. 2026 is not really like that coronation. It's a crossroads. It's like crypto now has to prove itself. It's, it's in the spotlight, it's in the big leagues. And it really big leagues in it and it has to prove itself. And we are kind of drawing those, those parallels to those other industries to kind of drive, drive that point of dispersion home and why we think it's going to continue. It's like I don't think the universe of investable assets for AI Robotics and these other areas is going to get smaller. It's going to get bigger. Therefore, crypto has to prove itself and, and start delivering on some of the promises that it made over the years.
- [24:54]
Laura Shin
Okay. Yeah, I mean I, what you're saying there reminds me of, I'm sure everybody's seen this on Twitter. I can't remember who posted this, but they have the chart of the dot com era and how there was the dot com bubble. And I forget what I think it was like 2000, 2001. And then, you know, the price of all the stocks like just dips for a little while. But that is the period of like real Internet adoption. And then of course the prices go way beyond that previous bubble. But, but yeah, it's basically like the same thing that you're saying. One thing that I also noticed in your report is you talked about how you feel like the crypto markets are now what you are calling a stock pickers market, whereas before you said that it was like you would describe it as a majors and mean coins market. So explain like what you mean by the stock pickers market and you know how that maybe could influence how people think about the markets for 2026.
- [25:47]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah. So I think like the way I think about it is in prior cycles you could be a, you could be pretty passively allocated and do very, very well. And I don't think that's, I mean it's clearly not the case anymore and hasn't been for some time, at least the last year and a half. Right. I think in order to do well you've needed to be very, like I mentioned, I think earlier, very discerning, very disciplined and, and really pick, pick your moments. Right. In crypto over the last 18 months, we've seen majority of like the vast majority of the performance has been down over that time period. What we've seen some silos of outperformance. So think like memes. Like you mentioned, you had a period of time where memes just absolutely ran to the upside. And if you weren't invested in memes. You underperformed massively and you hated your life. And you, we had these, you know, weekly long debates about financial nihilism and is there anything valuable in crypto? And blah, blah, blah. And then that meta shifted to something else. Right. We saw like the, the, the, the launch pad wars, right, with Pump Fun and Bonk and, and some of the other competitors. Right. You even seen kind of like adjacent things like Zora or whatever. Right. Kind of in that launchpad realm. You saw the privacy meta kind of balloon in the last couple months ago with Zcash pulling like a 10x or something in a month, well, everything went to zero. But like, the similarity here is that while you had this siloed out performance, I'm sorry, I just hit my mic. While you, while you've had this siloed out performance, everything else has just gone down. So if you weren't in that, you just bled out. And the real, the real truth is nobody's hitting all of these at the same, like nobody's go, oh, I got this one, I got nobody doing that. You might hit one, you might hit two if you're lucky, but you're probably giving a lot of it back when you're not hitting it. So that's kind of why we say like it's, it's kind of that stock pickers mentality. You have to be very clear in what you want and know why you want to own it. Like I could just own Bonk with faith back in 2023 and 2024 because I knew the bull market was very early. I knew Solana was going to go up and I didn't need any other justification to hold this other than that I, if I, I, I should just delete my wallets. If I was to use that same thinking and justification today, it's just not the same market. So you have to understand the market that you're in. And it's not really that much different in stocks. Right. I mean, you know, indices are at all time highs, but when you look at the dispersion of returns, a handful of names account for the vast majority of index outperformance over there. So if you want to outperform, which is why you're in these markets to begin with, you need to own the few winners and then something else or not, not a couple. Right. You have to pick the winners. And it's been kind of true in, in equity markets as well. Right. Like to, to an extent. Right. Obviously, passive allocation with ETFs is what most people do, but we're talking about people who are actually trying to, you know, outperform, which is why you're buying altcoins on, you know, super far out on the risk curve. You're not a passive investor. You're, you're active. So you have to play the game that you're, you know, understand the game that you're actually playing. And, and, and 2026, I don't think is going to be much different than that. I think you're going to have to anchor to things that you can build some kind of conviction in and that, you know, that's how you're also able to hold through some kind of, you know, like, drawdown as well. Right. Conviction allows you to, to, you know, buy more when your position goes down or hold through a period of underperformance as well.
- [29:29]
Laura Shin
Yeah, I also just want to like. So I'm sure you saw that bitwise, Release this or Sorry, they upgraded their index to an etf. And what's so fascinating to me is when I looked at the allocations, Bitcoin is 75, more than 75% weight and Ethereum is 15.
- [29:52]
Jason Pagaladis
So that it's, it's just a Bitcoin eth.
- [29:55]
Laura Shin
E. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, Salana is less than 3% and then XRP is like almost 5%. So there, there's just something like. I agree that that idea is good, but then even like the options that people have for that is, are not great.
- [30:11]
Jason Pagaladis
No, it's. And I think we actually, we, we, we did like a, like a Hive mind podcast with this guy Dougie, who had a real. You may have seen his.
- [30:21]
Laura Shin
Yeah, he was on our.
- [30:23]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah, okay, good, good. Yeah. Right. So you'll know what I'm talking about here. We kind of talked about like how crypto, it doesn't have like a tech problem, it has like an asset problem. There aren't that many great assets. So when you go to like, we've looked at trying to build, you know, indexes and potentially maybe ETFs at some, at, at one point and we just looked at the universe of assets and we're just like, there isn't really enough to build a, A, a good index that is something differentiated from a simple market cap weighted index. Right. And even a market cap weighted index doesn't have that many great assets in it either. So.
- [31:00]
Laura Shin
Yeah, like, I feel like it would have to be more, yeah. Mutual fund style where you're just like actively picking things. Because even if I just look at like Coingecko Hype is at 27.
- [31:12]
Jason Pagaladis
You know, I wish it was at 27.
- [31:18]
Laura Shin
Like there, there are certain ones where I feel like okay, it would make sense for that to be in there but you know, it's not in the top 10 or you know, whatever. So. All right, well we are going to talk a little bit more specifically about which assets might perform well in 2026. But first we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors, make the show possible. Today's episode is sponsored by Figure, which is transforming financial services using blockchain. They're the largest non bank mortgage lender in the US with over $19 billion unlocked on their lending platform. Now they're offering industry low crypto backed loans at 8.91% interest rates at 50% LTV for BTC, ETH and SOL. They differentiate themselves by offering decentralized MPC custody which protects your crypto ownership in a segregated wallet. They've also recently launched liquidation protection to protect you from liquidation during large price drops. Whether you're funding a major purchase, investing or even buying more bitcoin, figure makes it transparent. Visit FigureMarkets Co Unchained to take advantage of their crypto backed loans today. Back to my conversation with Jason. So as you mentioned briefly before, Hyperliquid performed very well in 2025 but as I'm sure everybody knows, it's faced increasingly stiff competition. Plus it did not have a great 1010 and it's also in a phase of token unlocks as everybody who follows Arthur Hayes definitely knows. So what's your view on hype in 2026?
- [32:47]
Jason Pagaladis
I really like hype. Hype NFA. I own hype. I got an airdrop. I've never sold Hype, probably should have, but it is what it is. I, I, I really like hype just from a business perspective like a, a protocol perspective, like a, like a fundamental business perspective. It' one of the strongest in crypto without a doubt. It, it occupies one of like the three areas that crypto has demonstrated product, mock market fit or like what people are willing to pay for stablecoins, exchanges, perps. Right. Stuff like that. It, it, it very clearly occupies one of those silos. It's a, it's a, a leader in one of those. Right. It's one of the only, I think it is actually the only perp decks I've seen that hasn't really gone away after like a year or lost most of its traction and like most of its traction TVL or even just like price performance over, over the year after it launched. I think the fundamentals of the business are quite strong daily revenues. Like I mentioned, you know, it has a structural buyback mechanism through the assistance fund with, you know, from fees generated on the platform. It has a lot of cool things with like the HIP3 builder codes where you can, you know, launch equity perps and things like that. Building out the eco ecosystem, hyper evm. So, you know, it's kind of building out to try to effectively be its own, you know, ecosystem. And the way I look at it is all of the things you said are true. It had a very good 2025 up until 1010 blew up the market. Which makes sense, right? I think as an exchange, if a lot of your users get absolutely slaughtered, makes sense that you, you know, you might go through a period of, of, you know, underperformance or, or, or lower revenues, fees generated, things like that. We. And you kind of have seen a decrease in that, right? Open interest decline post 1010 fees, average fees over, you know, like the, the, the period since then versus the period like the same period before then is, is, is slightly lower. So like, obviously you're seeing the impacts on the, you know, business that you would generally expect to see given the event that happened. So I don't think that's any different than any other exchange either. Right? Every, every exchange has the exact same issue here. You mentioned per Deck wars, right? Lighter, Aster, Paradex, all of these people coming to market because they saw just how successful hyper liquid was, the market they were able to capture, and they're like, oh, obviously we, we got to try for that makes sense. So, you know, that's why you've seen some of the volume metrics shift from hyper liquid dominance, right, from above 50% to now like around 20%. I think the telling thing is what happens to all of these metrics once you start to see TGE events or TGEs of lighter paradox, right? All of these other ones you get to quickly see like what the mercenary capital is, where TVL flows after the fact, et cetera, et cetera, which should be a really good litmus test for who the one or two big winners in this space will be heading forward. That's like the way I'm looking at it. And I think there's ways you can like really gauge organic usage or stuff like that, like volume OI ratios and stuff like that. And a lot of people have done really good work on this. I think Trevor from Delphi has posted some really good charts on Twitter that kind of like shows this for all the major perp dexs so long winded waves. Oh, and unlocks, you mentioned this huge, huge elephant in the room like 10 million hype tokens a month every month for the next year and a half or two years. It's a lot, $300 million. It's a lot of money a month. So what does this mean? Well, obviously all of this is from the team for the most part, right. They have no VCs, no. Nobody's up 1 billion X from their private alo round at 1 million whatever. So you don't really have to worry about like VC style profit taking forever. What you do have to worry about is what the team decides to do with these unlocks. Right. I think you can think about it in one of two ways, right? Either the team just you know, they try to secure the bag and they sell and they just make their, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, $100 million each and they and they off. Which I don't really think makes sense. Right. Like I think they've, I think the team has, Jeff and the team have clearly demonstrated like a long track record or a track record of long term kind of decisions that they've made over the past two years. Right. Because I was using them before they, I was using them in testnet right before they were live and all this stuff. So everything I've seen from the team, from when I started following them in May 2023 to, to today would indicate the opposite of short term thinking. So that's just my personal take with respect to the actual unlocks. We saw what the team did on the November 29 unlock. We saw how much was unstaked, we saw how much was sent to OTC desks to sell, we saw how much was restaked and where. Right. So we got a really good idea of what the, at what the cell pressure from that event, from that unlock would look like. And it is significantly less than many people were expecting relative to what it could have been. And I think it's still too early to really extrapolate one month of unlock out for the next two years. I think the market and market participants are trying to gauge this and underwrite what the sell pressure is going to look like. And I think they're probably waiting for another month or two. And like I mentioned a while ago, there's no reason to buy anything into year end anyway. So you saw what they did in November, you saw what they're going to do in a week or 10 days for this unlock and then at the end of January you'll get three months of really good data around how the team is thinking about what their post unlock unlock actions are going to be. And then I think that's when the market probably starts to re rate a little bit higher because I think there's probably a pretty big delta and what the market was expecting sell pressure to be and what the act. Sorry again what the actual sell pressure will be, if that makes sense.
- [38:57]
Laura Shin
Okay. Okay. So potentially things may not look as dire as some people.
- [39:04]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah. And, and, and obviously, you know, if, if bitcoin goes to 50k and we go into a, you know, say we're, we're wrong and macro turns bad too and then we go into a bear market. Like you know, hype's not gonna outperform in that environment either. Right. Like we had very clear. But I would like to make the point that Hype also has, you know, the structural buyback that's very, very strong and, and, and very durable and most projects don't have something like this. So if something, if you have a project that you know is fundamentally sound in, in its, in its, in its business strategy, its fundamentals has these structural mechanisms to buy back, has a. Obviously an S tier team right now that we've seen and this token is underperforming. Like what do you expect the nth iteration of some lending, borrow, lend protocol token to do or. Right. Like it's, it's clear that like if the strongest best tokens are struggling, why would anything that's not even comparable to that do well? So that's kind of why it's like dispersion discipline and like if we see that kind of turnaround and like that's why I'm looking at like hype as like a good example of like the, a very clear strong token that you know, you can, you can have a thesis around the metrics and kind of follow it over the next couple months and it should validate or invalidate what you were thinking.
- [40:28]
Laura Shin
And just last piece on Hype is, you know, there is so much new competition in the per space. Like is that something that you feel like, you know, you, you've noticed? Yeah. Anything that could indicate what would happen to Hype.
- [40:42]
Jason Pagaladis
So I think, I think like, I think I mentioned like how these, the, the, the metrics of each of these competitors. So like Paradex, Lighter Ostium. Right. All of these other, you know, perp Dex type competitors, Edgex, Pacifica, whatever.
- [40:58]
Jordan Yeagley
Right.
- [40:58]
Jason Pagaladis
All of these ones when they tge, I think it'll be Very telling. Not necessarily the, the immediate price action, but I think you want to see like does TVL leave the protocol immediately after tge? Does trading volume decrease materially? Do you see spreads and Right. What do you see happen after? The incentive to be there is no longer there. I think Hyper Liquid is such, was such a big success for the, for a big reason is that they didn't, obviously didn't have VC funding and stuff but they also like they weren't a super hyped incentive thing to farm for the vast majority of its exist existence. Up until maybe a month or2beforetge. I was asking people if they knew what Hyper Liquid was in early 2024 and nobody knew what it was. And then everybody's farming it in, you know, November, like early November, October, late September when they realize, oh points, oh blah blah blah. And what you saw after that after TG is you actually saw TVL continue to increase, you saw trading volumes continue to increase, which clearly demonstrated product market fit, organic traction, et cetera, et cetera. So I want to see this. I'm going to use the same, you know, criteria rubric for all of these other protocols when they launch as good litmus tests for them to see like which if any will be a competitor. I do think the perp Dex space is big enough for more than one winner. So I think Hyper Liquid is clearly the one right now. It could change, right? Something could happen. Whatever. North Korea could hack, hack them and steal all their money or something like they were talking about on whatever. Right. Like right now it's, it's in the driver's seat and I think there's room for other drivers to be in the driver's seat too. But I'm, I'm, I still don't know which one is which. I've used a bunch of them. I don't like some of them. I think some of them are actually kind of good. So I'm, I'm curious. I'm, I'm watching it with a, with a very open mind because I have to be because I, like I said, I, I, I own hype. So like I don't want to get caught with my pants down if something better usurps it.
- [43:05]
Laura Shin
Right, Right. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, just to bring in Robinhood, because we do also discuss that in this episode just they invested in lighter, so.
- [43:15]
Jason Pagaladis
Exactly.
- [43:15]
Laura Shin
And yeah, so I did want to ask you about one thing that actually wasn't really covered in the report, but you mentioned it briefly. So these are sort of more like off the cuff remarks, but obviously the privacy thing just came out of nowhere and, you know, was a big deal after 1010 and I just wondered like, do you think that's just a fad and it'll go away or do you think that continue in 2026?
- [43:38]
Jason Pagaladis
It's tough, right, because Zcash is still holding pretty well, all things considered. The bid is strong over there, so it's hard. I don't know is the answer. My, my gut feel is that if it was just a fad, it probably would have died by now, given the overall market. All the other privacy coins have pretty much died. Like, they all like kind of pumped like had their sympathy run ups after zcash right? As people are like, oh, everybody's gonna buy Monero now. Which actually I think looks pretty good, but like, you know, whatever else. So short answer is, I don't know. My. My speculative answer is I think there might be something there, right? Like, zcash is, is an og, you know, dyno coin. It's been around longer than I've been here. And at this point, you know, the supply of the token is very, very well distributed. It's not something, you know, that. That was held all by one person. Maybe it had, you know, maybe the fact that it was distributed and, you know, range bound and down for so long allowed people to accumulate, you know, which then could, you know, make moves like this easier and, you know, a less liquid market. So I think that plays into it. I think the fact that zcash was delisted from a ton of venues or also allowed for its massive runup. So prior to its, you know, 10x run up, Zcash was like delisted from most major exchanges. There were no pers for people to short or hedge or do anything with. So it was effectively like a. It effectively traded like an onchain coin for. For most of its initial rally, which is really kind of. I thought it was really interesting actually, and I was kind of kicking myself for not recognizing that earlier. And I do think, you know, privacy does. It's a very easy narrative to sell, especially when you are. When you kind of overlay like the whole direction things are going with AI surveillance states all. It's, you know, it's a very easy narrative to like, spin and sell and talk about. And Bitcoin is very clearly not private. It's anonymous, but not private. Zcash is, is private. So, like, you can kind of, you know, maybe sell that narrative a bit. I don't really know if people are Using the shielded pools very much and actually like using it for, for privacy.
- [45:59]
Laura Shin
But like, it's only like 30% or something last I checked, but that was okay.
- [46:03]
Jason Pagaladis
So. So yeah, so, like, maybe there's something there. And, you know, if I, If Bitcoin, you know, kind of recovers with, with like a, A decently better macro outlook potentially into 2026 and the market kind of stabilizes, I could see it going on another run. Right. It's got a lot of really smart and, and good KOLs. Right. Like, I think totally is all like behind Zcash. You got Merck, right. Like, got all these guys who are all really smart. Right. They're obviously talking to smart people, wealthy people. They're, you know, merch. Isn't he in Dubai now? He's probably talking to people about privacy. Right. Like, I could totally see there being something behind it. I'm very open to it. I just don't have a great answer or any alpha on it at all.
- [46:46]
Laura Shin
Yeah, I think for me, the question that I think about is, you know, if Bitcoin and Ether adopt privacy, which Ether, like, already has said that Ethereum or. Sorry, that privacy is going to be a big priority and they're already, like, working on it, and they have been, and they were even before the privacy coins surge in the fall. I. I just wonder, like, yeah, that could spell the end for the. The coins that are specifically devoted to.
- [47:16]
Jason Pagaladis
Privacy, but very, very possible. It's something that I have on my, on my list of things to look into over the next, like, week or two when I unplug around the holidays.
- [47:26]
Laura Shin
Well, yeah, I would say that's not.
- [47:28]
Jason Pagaladis
Unplugging, but that'll play in a little bit. Right. Let's be real. I'm gonna still gonna log into Telegram, so I might as well figure something out.
- [47:36]
Laura Shin
Okay, so in your report, you also mentioned a few crypto projects that I was not super aware of. And you name these as being indicative of where you think the future of crypto would be headed in 20, 26. Three chain Opex, DeFi. There. There are a few others. But explain, you know, like, why you chose these and, you know, give a, Give a little bit of explanation of like, what they are.
- [48:01]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah. So credit for this section definitely goes to. To ltr, Right. LTR is very good with kind of like, seeing the future and like, where things are heading in, in like a, A general sense. Right. And so we talk about how, you know, credit has. Credit was a really big part of last cycle and has been absent for Pretty much ever since everybody blew up in the, in the 3ac FTX fallout. Right. And so we talk about how like you know, credit is like a fundamental aspect of all types of financial markets. So like crypto obviously needs it and we kind of like highlight a dominating like trustless lending. It's you know, somewhere around the 40th or 50th biggest bank by I guess bank by you know, if you look at TVL or whatever. And so we kind of highlight this area as something that like we're very interested in and we're excited to kind of follow. You know you've had things like maple and, and centrifuge do, do well in scale like private credit with real world stuff. So you're starting to see, you know, traction there. But yeah, we highlighted stuff like 3 Jane and more more so highlighting the shift from just like over collateralized lending at this point to back back in the direction of, of under collateralized credit using innovations, you know, like ZKTLS for like privacy and stuff, AI verification and things. You know. 3Jane uses this so right you can like log into 3Jane, put in your info connect so connect some wallets that has like on chain assets and get like a credit line against it. Like it's a really cool, useful project that I think is you know, very interesting and I don't know if that's going to win but like I, I think that's like the direction and I think that's what LTR is like kind of expressing here. So like that's a direction that we think at least that's going right? At least with credit. And then yeah, you mentioned like Defi and we kind of talk about like RWAs but like beyond stablecoin or beyond just like T bill stablecoin yields. Right. Like it's very clear that if you're like a stable coin now launching like you can't just compete on clipping T Bill yield and passing it through to your customers. Right. Like at this point tether and circle have a monopoly on that. You, you have like things like Athena doing kind of like synthetic delta neutral type stuff where they pass on you know, the yield in that way. And so we highlight, we're looking at like other really cool interesting things that Defi type technology and blockchain rails actually enable like true cool like on chain crypto innovations and, and Defi being one of them. So you know like RWA backed by energy infrastructure like virtual power plants or like USD AI. Right, like stablecoin that has AI compute and yield Baked in there, right? Like interesting specialized things that you know, kind of incubate. And you mentioned obex, right? And like incubating next gen or next gen yield bearing assets. Like that's kind of like the, the whole theme is like we're looking for really interesting cool things like that like stablecoins obviously big product market fit. But like I'm not buying circle, like I'm not buying tether, right? Like I. How do I get exposure to, to this type of very clear spot that people are interested in but in a way that like is unique and different that you can't do otherwise and has some kind of moat around it. Like T bill clipping is not a moat. So that's kind of like the, the, the gist there. And I think there's also like one more really awesome thing that LTR actually wrote about in his first report with us many, many months ago and maybe early spring and he talked about like the token identity crisis with all of these corporate chains or all of the corporate chains and all these equities issuing tokens. So you have Coinbase with Base Inkchain with. Or Kraken with Ink chain coming. You have, there's so many more. I don't even know why I'm blanking right now. Worldcoin is equity with World or whatever World Equity, World Coin. You have the Seeker Solana thing recently which is kind of interesting, which we'll get into. And so what we did is we kind of like looked at worldcoin as like a case study of like tokens used not as like a investment vehicle but more as like a customer acquisition coin or like a CAC Token is what LTR kind of like coined as, as the term for it. And what he says or what he like kind of postulates and is like kind of chewing, chewing on with this idea is that all of these like big token launches from like Coinbase with Base or, or, or, or Kraken with Inkchain or, or whatever. All these IPOs all, all these like public companies that are now launching tokens. They are very, they, they might be inclined to use the worldcoin model, right? Because what worldcoin has done is they effectively use their token as a customer acquisition tool. They people, you know, scan their Skynet Orb, I thing right? Then they get their tokens from World and then they sell them and it's, and you know, they use the orb and the token emissions to acquire new customers. And what you see is there's a chart in, in the, in the report when you, when you chart at like total users or like new users, right, versus token price and market cap, what you see is something very interesting. New users up into the right, token price down and down into the right. And then market cap is effectively pretty stable. So what this tells us is that it's actually a, so far it's been a, a very, very good acquisition tool for World to acquire new users. They've effectively spent $300 million of world to acquire 2 billion users or something is what I think what I saw on like a recent highlight. And that's I think what a lot of, you know, and, and I think what a lot of like companies like Coinbase might try with their base token because effectively, I think at some point, and again, a lot of this is ltr. So he's the thinking behind this section here. The thinking is at some point having an extra dollar on the balance sheet is less useful for the company than acquiring an extra user. And that's why these tokens are very good tools for that. Right. And it also kind of answers the question of like, okay, like how does equity work with a token, right? How do Coinbase holders, shareholders, how do you, you know, how do you marry that with base token economics and things like that. And I think if you frame it in the way of this is now a tool to acquire new customers for the platform, etc. Etc. I think it makes a lot of sense and answers a lot of questions. So like, maybe these tokens aren't the best investments for next year, but I think they might be great tools for the, for the, the companies behind them to, you know, expand, expand their footprint, so to speak. So it's kind of like a shift from like tokens evolving into equity like distribution instruments, if that makes sense. And the Solana Seeker Phone thing is effectively that, right? They had the Seeker Phone, I think recently announced and when you look at the tokenomics, it effectively is, follows like the blueprint of like a CAC token, okay, pay people to use this phone. And it's very similar like PayPal had done this in the past, right? When PayPal launched, it spent it paid $10 to every user who signed up on the platform, burning, you know, 60, $70 million of VC funding to do that. But now you see how, how well that, you know, acquisition cost strategy worked. And I think this is kind of playing that back again in a more innovative way.
- [55:43]
Laura Shin
Okay, yeah, it's, it's really interesting. The one thing is, wait, you said like to world gained 2 billion customers, but I think they Didn't. Or at least in the report, I.
- [55:53]
Jason Pagaladis
May have misread it.
- [55:54]
Laura Shin
Oh, okay.
- [55:54]
Jason Pagaladis
Okay. Well, let me get the. I can get the answer. Yes, 32 million. Sorry, I don't know why I saw 2 billion. I was like, when I said that, I was like, that seems very big. No, 32 million. Right. And if you compare it to where they were at, say in, where they were at in say like March of 2023 or 2024, right there they were sub, sub, sub 5 million in. Okay, right now they spent $300 million to acquire all of those 32 million users since, since inception. And like I said, market cap is effectively flat, obviously fluctuations depending on what token price did or didn't do, but it's effectively flat. And you see the two curves go the opposite direction and you think that's effectively what you can use as like a blueprint for what a CAC token is. So if you take these three things and plot them and this is what you see, that's a CAC token.
- [56:49]
Laura Shin
Right, Right. Okay, so last question. AI agents have been one of the sectors of crypto that have generated the most buzz. And I think everybody's wondering where this trend is going. I also want to ask how you think it could be investable.
- [57:06]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah, that's tough, right? It's definitely one of the most interesting ones. And I think, you know, I think the, the app guys or maybe the info guys covered like x402 stuff more in depth. But effectively, like what it is, is it just like allows like agents and stuff to kind of like transact with each other, do like one off purchases or like one off things and stuff. It's very interesting and I'm not entirely sure what the best way to play it is. It's, it's definitely something that corporations are clearly are clearly building towards. I think, I think in the report we mentioned, several institutions have built with this in mind and have these capabilities enabled. And so I don't see anything in crypto like a crypto specific token or something right now that is like a clear fundamental thing that isn't like a very obvious moonshot, obviously. I think, I think value, it's hard right now. Like right now I'm not sure where the value will accrue the most. I think if you want access to this narrative or exposure to this narrative, if you're going to go through crypto, you have to get really niche and in the trenches and find something that kind of straddles it nicely whether or not it's an agent or a payments thing or, or something like that. But I think you can probably get exposure to it through like, owning the equity of the infra. Of the companies that are enabling it and, and, and starting to use it. I think that's probably the easiest way. But again, it's. It's a trend that I think will. It's a trend I think is going to play out more in 2026. I think there will. I think the, the clarity around potential investments. Will, will, will get better. I just think it's, it's something that's like a bit early and I think it's something that you have to have on your radar, but I'm not sure it's super deployable at, like, at this moment. That's how I feel.
- [59:09]
Laura Shin
I mean, honestly, I. So I agree and a part of me is like, oh, the way to do it is to like, have a really good agent just to make money for you. But I don't know if you saw the Wall Street Journal's article.
- [59:19]
Jason Pagaladis
Oh, aren't they all terrible?
- [59:22]
Laura Shin
Oh, so the, the. But the article was about how Claude, I think, like, gave them a vending machine. Yeah. And basically the newsroom convinced it to give away all the items in the vending machine away for free and also to buy a PlayStation and a fish. And they were like, yeah, yeah. So like, basically the. And, and what ended up happening was so after the first version failed, then the company sent them like an AI supervisor so that the supervisor could enforce the rules for the, the vending machine. And even then they got persuaded to make everything free. So it's like. Yeah, so I was gonna say, oh, maybe the way to play it is to have your own AI that makes money. But clearly from the Wall Street Journal article, even the AIs that are programs to make money.
- [60:15]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah, they're not great. Yeah. So like. Yeah, I mean, it's very like. I think, I think you could probably do like a, like, I think like making like a, like, you know, I mean, an AI, like, I don't know, a systematic trading strategy and like an AI executing a set of instructions for trades feels almost exactly the same to me. Like, I don't, I don't think any of these, you know, agents are going to come up with like a novel trading strategy or anything like that. I think the way I've used it to help me is I've actually like, worked with a couple different to like, build or like, test out ideas I have for trading. I would never give it the money to trade, but I would Definitely use it to help me flesh out a trading strategy, back test different things, write some code that I'm not good at. Like, I think that's the way you, you monetize it. But like with agents right now, it's, it's very tough and like the most I would do is like give it like a thousand bucks to play around, right, like, and expect that it spends it all on fart coin or something. Like I like at this point, it's, it's, it's, it's a super interesting area. It's one that I like I said I just don't have a great way of, of expressing a position in it at the time. But I don't think that will be true in three or six months, which is why we highlight it. That will probably follow up with a report on something when we see an interesting idea start to percolate around people's thoughts.
- [61:46]
Laura Shin
Okay, well Jason, this has been super fun discussing 2026 markets. Thanks so much for joining.
- [61:52]
Jason Pagaladis
Yeah, thanks for having me. This was great.
- [61:54]
Laura Shin
So listeners, don't go anywhere because in a moment we will move to the apps portion of the discussion with Jason's colleague. We'll be right back. And now to discuss the apps portion of the Delphi predictions, we have Jordan Yeagley, defi research lead at Delphi Digital. Welcome Jordan.
- [62:11]
Jordan Yeagley
Hey, thanks for having me.
- [62:13]
Laura Shin
So Delphi has produced a whole bunch of reports and one of them is this app report. And in the report you go in depth on this kind of like super app thesis and you talk about sort of the main contenders for it. Why don't you reveal who those contenders are and like, just give an overview of where you see them placed and then we can go in depth on, on each of them.
- [62:36]
Jordan Yeagley
Sure. So just to start out, like, typically in prior years we've had like a defi year ahead and a gaming year ahead and whatnot. And this year with the apps year ahead, this was supposed to be a bit of a celebration of like this new direction for crypto where like everyone is focused on apps. Now. There's been a long time of like infrastructure chains and now it's like we're reaching this moment where we're at a turning point and we're on the cusp of like these, these consumer facing apps. And the pioneer behind this is this super apps thesis that everyone's sort of starting to gravitate towards. We point out the, the major leaders here being Coinbase, Robin Hood, Binance, Kraken and X with like really the, the three Standouts there being Coinbase, Robin Hood and, and X. X is bit a bit of a dark horse considering there's nothing really confirmed there. But there's been some, some rumors and if they were to go in this direction they would have a huge.
- [63:31]
Laura Shin
All right, so yeah, why don't we start with Coinbase. I'm sure most people in crypto know that this is probably the big giant in this space in terms of just the sheer number of different lines of revenue it has and the way it's gotten itself covered, you know, from doing things that are related to backend institutional type offerings to more directly consumer targeted products. What are the main parts of its business that you're looking at at in 2026 and why?
- [64:00]
Jordan Yeagley
Well, Coinbase has this sort of barbell approach of like they're extremely fortified as the leader in the US market as far as the, the go to centralized exchange for the US and they also have this emerging like basap social media, like self self custodial, like social media apparatus with like Farcaster, Zora and the base app. There was a little bit of controversy yesterday when Brian Armstrong tweeted this sort of like, oh, which direction should we go in and prioritize? That sparked a lot of discussion on X as far as like, okay, well why don't you have this direction? Why haven't you committed? But I think the bigger takeaway is that Coinbase has two big bets and they're not entirely related, but they're both very powerful visions if they were to execute on both.
- [64:50]
Laura Shin
So talk about, talk about what those are.
- [64:53]
Jordan Yeagley
So the, the social media portion is, is the one that I'm personally more excited about. I think like we're missing a, a massive consumer app in crypto and the social fi angle is, is fundamentally like a massive use case that could onboard, you know, the next billion people. I know that's cliche at this point, but so like we can, we can bridge to financially agnostic users and free this, this legacy social media infrastructure that doesn't really work for creators and allows like users to port their, port their algorithm across different applications, have more control over what they consume. It allows creators to have the ability and more leverage as far as like their ability to negotiate with the platform. They can port their audience to different apps seamlessly. So, so there's, there's a lot of like principled reasons why we need like a more open social graph based like social media platform and I think it's a worthy goal of Coinbase and it's very, it's it's very much like a public good that they're working towards. I think this is one area where the space has a bit of a bias against Coinbase and should probably like recalibrate, reconsider our position here. This is definitely something that crypto needs to be working towards. On the other side, you have this financial application, this everything app, which is more of the Robinhood angle and like where they sort of clash. As far as everyone pits Coinbase and Robinhood against each other, who's going to achieve this financial everything app that lets anyone speculate on stocks? Crypto have this self custodial bank account that can interact with crypto. So yeah, like those are the two, the two angles there.
- [66:37]
Laura Shin
And just to be clear, when you're talking about the social app, you're talking about like kind of the base app and this whole kind of creator coins thing that they're trying to foster this culture around, around tokenizing posts. Is that okay? Like what do you, how would you kind of grade them so far and how they're doing with promoting that?
- [66:59]
Jordan Yeagley
Yeah, that's a good question. So I think I like the vision. I like what they're doing. I think the Zora, so the base app sort of has the forecaster social graph with the Zora content coin tokenization with the base app being like an alternate client for those. And it also allows mini apps to come on. It's like an app store for crypto apps that's built on top of Farcaster and Zora content tokenization. I like a lot of like what they're doing here. I think it's easy to see like why this takes the thesis a bit farther than say Pump Fun. Whereas Pump Fun is just like, okay, if you want to stream on Pump Fun, you have to have a token and it's your streamer token and like that's what it is, right? Whereas Zora is almost creating like this spot market for content where it's easier to build around and compose around. So I think from a first principles perspective, like this design is a bit more ambitious. It's more future proof. It's easier to create like a robust ecosystem around. That said, I think they've had some comms fumbles as far as communicating this vision, explaining where the value drivers for content coins come from. Different sort of conflicting comments from different people across the organization. Like I, I think there's, there's been some issues there and I think that crypto, Twitter specifically has been a bit harsh in receiving this and, and the backlash has been extreme. I think Coinbase needs to do better with their comms crypto Twitter needs to be more open minded to this grand vision that's very important and will is, is beneficial to crypto to the crypto industry at large if they succeed. Succeed.
- [68:47]
Laura Shin
Yeah, it feels to me like they, and frankly I think this is also a VC thing. You know, like you see a 16Z talking about this all like I, I do think that they have identified a real problem with Web2. And I think like, you know, we all sort of sense that crypto could solve that problem. And I feel like the backlash is more just crypto tends to be so grassroots that this is, it has a feeling more of being top down. And I personally think that that's what people are reacting to. But I bet like in 5 or 10 years we will be doing similar behaviors to what they're trying to promote. So I did want to ask you, you know, obviously there was a lot of buzz around the fact that they are now considering a base token or, sorry, exploring a base token. And I wondered, you know, if you had any thoughts on how you thought they should do it or how that could either benefit them or hurt them, you know, in their efforts to promote this everything app.
- [69:42]
Jordan Yeagley
So I think my biggest question, and I think a lot of people's biggest question about this is how it will work with the Coinbase, the coin stock, right? Because the base sequencer fees is obviously a big, a big money generator. And so there's the questions about, okay, like what of that goes to the base token and who has the right to that income and whatnot. I think my big theory is that this unlock of the base app to everyone, that just happened on the 17th, I think that is the sort of start of like a season 0 for a points campaign to farm the base token airdrop, right? Because if you think about it like in reverse, if they did an airdrop next week, right, and it was like using the base app over the past six months, then there would be a lot of backlash because it was invite only and people couldn't come. So now there's no excuse for anyone to not be on there. And so I think it, it, it logically follows like, all right, the season zero, the base token is able to be farmed right now. As far as how it fits into their vision, the way I would like to see it work is the base token sort of becoming this almost like an Amazon prime currency. Where you have Amazon prime is Coinbase one and you have this membership that allows you to access all These different ecosystem applications and mini apps and stuff. And the base, the base token is sort of this alternate lever to distribute value across creators and users and, and align people within the ecosystem. You could have some sort of thing where, like, there's a universal basic income based on your consumption of, like, different content, right? And that's in the base token. And the only way to sort of vest that is by like, awarding some of it to, like, other creators. I think that'd be a really interesting way to initiate a flywheel. But either way, like, like, you know, you never know. They could, they could treat the. I think there's a decent chance it's quite controversial, right? Because if you think about the Zoro token, when that came out, that had no utility, it was branded as a meme coin. It had really bad, like, you know, insider vesting conditions. And like, there was a lot of backlash against the Zora token. And then later they came out and said, like, oh, this here's this really cool thing that we're going to do with Zoro Token. It's going to feature this flywheel. It's going to be paired against all these assets. So, you know, who knows, like, maybe their solution to this alignment issue with the stock is that they just come out with this token. It's going to be an ecosystem alignment tool. It's going to have no rights to sequence their fees and then we'll figure it out from there. And then I wonder what, like, the public reception would be. Yeah, it'll be an interesting few months on that front.
- [72:22]
Laura Shin
All right, so let's now move to Robinhood because, you know, I think most people look at Coinbase and they feel like Robinhood is the main player. Probably that, at least at this moment, is, you know, kind of moving into pretty much the exact same space. You said in your summary that you feel it sits in the Goldilocks zone, which I thought was really interesting. So explain, you know, how you view Robinhood in the super apps space and what you meant about it taking that Goldilocks spot.
- [72:52]
Jordan Yeagley
I think, I think Robinhood sits in this Goldilocks zone where it's not seen as a crypto app. It's. It's a financial services app and it's, it's quite respectful in that, like, people use Robinhood as, like, they main. It as their, their go to for like, banking, right? Like people will use Robinhood or Fidelity or Schwab or like TD Ameritrade, like, it's that legit in people's eyes. Whereas Coinbase, like, People aren't really doing that with Coinbase. To use Coinbase, you have to already be interested in crypto and. And it's not quite ready to, like, be your full banking suite. Right? So, like Robinhood, turning all these, turning on all these crypto features allows people that are financially savvy and, like, have a lot of, you know, money ready to deploy, like within. Within this account to all of a sudden access crypto. And that's, that's where, like, they're really well positioned, but then, you know, not to get too far ahead. But like, X, that's where, like, okay, you have, you have crypto, which is, you have to be interested in crypto. Robinhood, you have to be interested in finance and X, you don't have to be interested in, like, any of this. And you're still sort of coming into cryptops. I mean, if they head that way.
- [74:02]
Laura Shin
Yeah. So, you know, the report covers Binance and Kraken as well, but as you said at the beginning, you feel like the main contenders really are Coinbase, Robinhood and X. And as you admit, I think this might have been before we started recording, but you said, like, there, there aren't even that many details about X. So, like, why do you view it as being kind of the third possible contender there?
- [74:25]
Jordan Yeagley
So. Well, the social element is the hardest part to crack, right? Like, there's been all these other social apps over the years, like Blue sky and like, even, even like MySpace preceded Facebook and as soon as Facebook came in, like, one, MySpace faded and like, there's been these other, like, you know, social media. There are a lot of network effects involved with social media. And, like, there's been a lot of people happy about Elon's takeover of Twitter and other people, like, not happy about that. But either way, like, it hasn't mattered, right? Like, X is, you know, debatably, maybe usage is down or up or whatever, but like, X is. X has a moat and they have a massive user base and they do like, like, they have the AI stuff. They have this X money thing that they've teased. Elon has came out and said, like, X is going to be the everything app. And so it's easy to see, like, if, if you were to create a WhatsApp sort of app with crypto Rails, and it'd be really easy for them to just turn that on and overtake Coinbase and Robinhood, like, in a few weeks or months, like, if they were really to, like, set their sights on this. So I think, like, that's where X is important because even if they were to fall behind as far as in, in this race for a super app, they could catch up like that.
- [75:41]
Laura Shin
Okay, so for this moment in time, since obviously the details about X, you know, actually, you know, heading in this direction are sparse, it feels like for this moment we're going to see Coinbase and Robinhood really competing. And obviously Coinbase, with its recent announcement, is about getting into stock trading and, you know, prediction markets and stuff. Like now it's very obvious they're going to be competing on the same territory. So how would you expect the competition between those two to play out for, you know, like, I don't know, the first half of 2026 or, or the whole year.
- [76:16]
Jordan Yeagley
So I don't see them as pitted against each other as a lot of people do. I do, I do. Like, if you look at the, the coin to Hood chart, it's really easy to, to say that they're, you know, they're fighting and Robin Hood's winning, right?
- [76:29]
Jason Pagaladis
Because it's.
- [76:30]
Jordan Yeagley
That chart's down only. But I do think, like, I think that they have slightly different angles and they're both, they can both succeed together, right? I do think, like, Robin Hood has this financial super app. They have the, the lead on a lot of this stock tokenization stuff. I think since so many people are already accustomed to using Robinhood for stocks and stuff, and so it's easier to just add crypto than for a crypto app to just tack on all of finance, right? Whereas Coinbase, that's where like to, to circle back to like Brian, Brian Armstrong's, you know, fork in the road tweet. Like, I think they need to lean more into this app store. Like this become the apple of crypto innovation. Right? And that's sort of what they're trying to do with the base app. So if Coinbase does that and focuses on that and succeeds there, they become the apple of crypto innovation and decentralized apps and onboarding that to like, their distribution of like 100 million plus users in like, the US that are already interested in crypto. Whereas Robinhood bridges crypto use cases with personal finance and speculation with a lot of these tokens to like, all of these people that are more like traditional financial users.
- [77:45]
Laura Shin
Okay, so if you were to give the edge to one of them over the other, it feels like you're saying Robinhood.
- [77:51]
Jordan Yeagley
I mean, so I think Robinhood's like a safer play, right? Like, I don't, like, I'm more excited about Coinbase because I think it has the most immediate impact on the crypto ecosystem and what we're building here and sort of expanding the skill tree of what we're capable of. Whereas Robinhood is, like, a very safe bet on expanding to new audiences and the, like, the institutional angle.
- [78:17]
Laura Shin
Right, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So I think we're gonna have to see how it plays out. Honestly, I. I think the last thing that this conversation makes me think of is that viral essay crypto is dead. Where, you know, this really is the moment where, okay, Coinbase definitely has the crypto crowd, but is that gonna be enough? And that's why it almost feels like, you know, Robinhood already has, you know, this app that is very plugged into the traditional financial system. It has these users that really care about that, and so introducing them to something new almost feels like a little bit easier. Whereas, like, you know, starting with the niche and then going more mainstream might be harder. But I definitely wouldn't count Coinbase out, because I'm sure everybody knows Brian Armstrong is incredibly smart. He's a great business person, he has an amazing team. And, you know, there's a reason Coinbase dominates in crypto.
- [79:13]
Jason Pagaladis
So we'll have to see how that's.
- [79:15]
Jordan Yeagley
Always going to be there, though, right? Like, Coinbase is always going to have to overcome the crypto stigma. So unless you're able to, like, remove that stigma, you know, and maybe that's why they're calling it the Base app, because they don't want to be. They want to, like, shed the crypto sort of, you know, stigma, I guess, and just be able to reach people with apps. Right. And that's where, I mean, I think that that's, if it works, like, that's a really smart play. But that. That's. That speaks to this issue that they have and why they're a bit behind Robinhood, because Robinhood's meeting people where they are.
- [79:56]
Laura Shin
Yeah, yeah. And it's unfortunate, even just that use of the word stigma. Like, um, I feel like in certain places around the world, it wouldn't be a stigma, and it only is in certain places where somehow crypto's become, like this weird political thing. Like, it, in my opinion, actually wasn't for the longest time, but anyway. All right, well, Jordan, this was super fun chatting. Thank you so much. And, yeah, we'll have to see how all these different theses and your analysis plays out in 2026.
- [80:26]
Jordan Yeagley
Awesome. Thank you for having me.