Loading summary
Transcript70 lines
- [00:00]
A
Now with the regulatory burden easing on crypto, it's kind of put up or shut up. Like we got to deliver something here that, you know, the average person really wants to use.
- [00:08]
B
Privacy is probably in a super trend and I think that's just because like, fundamentally privacy is important and it never was not important. It was just like you ran the risk of going to jail to actually like support these projects and work on them and be an investor that is seemingly.
- [00:26]
C
Hey everyone. Happy New Year. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing new here on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. And my guests and I may hold assets discussed in the show. For more disclosures, visit Unchained. Crypto.com 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, you're about to make a trade which you do listen to. Is it get optioning those options.
- [01:09]
A
Or.
- [01:10]
C
Let'S do a little research. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart and direct access to Bybit's 7 million plus users. This is the ultimate ecosystem for builders. Today's topic is 2026 crypto predictions. I'm here with Alex Thorne, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital and Ryan, AKA Average Joe's crypto research manager at Masari. Welcome, Ryan and Alex.
- [01:41]
A
Yeah. Hey Laura. Hey.
- [01:43]
B
What's going on?
- [01:45]
C
So I have been asking this question over and over again to multiple guests over multiple episodes and but I feel like when I ask it, it still elicits different answers from people. So I'm curious to know, do you guys think that the four year cycle is dead or do you think that we are headed into yet another bull year? I guess 2025 was sort of mixed in terms of whether it was a bull year, but some people think that we're going ahead into a prolonged bear market. So I'm curious, what do you guys think? Alex, why don't we start with you? Do you think 2026 will be a bull or bear market for bitcoin?
- [02:24]
A
I actually think it's too chaotic to predict, frankly. And refrain from making a bitcoin price prediction for 2026. So far I think the four year cycle's empirically broken. Bitcoin had, you know, gone up having year subsequent year and the third year, the last two halvings. Right. And so now finishing 25 is a technically, a not technically, literally a down year would theoretically invalidate that very simple design of this or understanding of this four year cycle. Look, I think one way to just summarize how chaotic the investing landscape is is to look at options markets which are pricing basically an equal likelihood of 50k or 250k for Bitcoin by year end 2026. And I think that underlies a significant uncertainty about crypto market cycles, crypto markets, Bitcoin as a macro asset which has been underperforming gold for the last six months and a variety of other geopolitical and monetary policy conditions in 26 that are unclear. So I'm not sure. I think you're possibly going to see low new cycle lows and possibly new all time highs all inside 26 I think very possible.
- [03:44]
C
Ryan, what about you?
- [03:46]
B
Yeah, I think, I think at this point we can definitively say the four year cycle's dead. Some of the points Alex mentioned earlier, 2025, if, if we were still believers in the four year cycle would have been a, a green year and it was not for bitcoin. Bitcoin also made a new all time high prior to the happening. So I think, I think we could definitely put to rest like this idea of the four year cycle in terms of like where does that leave bitcoin in 2026? I, I tend to agree with Alex. I think it's going to be very tough to predict. The one thing I, I do feel comfortable kind of putting my throwing my hat out there is saying that I don't expect bitcoin to continue underperforming other asset classes as much as it did in Q4 of 2025. I would not expect like continued weakness against commodities or equities. I think a lot of that is just simply due to a lot of turnover in terms of long term holder selling. And I think we are starting to see that kind of slow down and perhaps flip. So yeah, maybe. I think bitcoin at this point is, is very much a macro asset. And like to actually like answer if it goes up or down, you need to answer more important macro questions. But I think we can. I, I'm comfortable saying that I'm not expecting further underperformance.
- [04:59]
C
Okay, well, yeah, so let's talk about the macro bit because we are entering the year in a way where it definitely seems like that's going to play a big role. So you know, before, so before all this recent news about Venezuela and Everything, you know, people were looking to the fact that the Fed is already back to quantitative easing which tends to be correlated with bull markets and crypto. But you know, obviously like I just mentioned, we do have a lot of geopolitical events that could affect the macro environment. Obviously the removal of Maduro is kind of just creating a lot of speculation and there's, there's definitely a bitcoin angle to that one. In case you guys haven't been seeing some of the viral tweets on Twitter about how perhaps they've been circumventing the petrodollar by using tether and then converting that to bitcoin. I, I have not looked into whether or not that's verified. It's just something I see people talking about. You know, there's talk about how much bitcoin Venezuela has and then there are some people just looking at the bigger geopolitical landscape saying that we're potentially in a pre war period with contention maybe breaking out in other strategically important areas, Greenland being one of the ones mentioned. So I wondered, just, you know, when you look at all of those factors plus you know, as we mentioned the Fed like does that sort of give you a hint into what direction you think bitcoin or the broader crypto markets might go?
- [06:26]
A
I mean, I would just say that the markets have largely priced in rates coming lower that can still be supportive for risk assets. But I think you've really got to look towards, let me say it this way, bitcoin starting off the year quite well I think is a good indication that people thought it had underperformed too much. Right. And you have portfolio managers that are starting off the year saying, you know, everything else is up. The equity markets are again near all time highs. Gold and commodities across the board have been ripping even oil despite the turmoil in Venezuela near term has been trading pretty well since the news of Maduro's capture came out. So what looks undervalued, right. And bitcoin looked pretty low to start the year. So I think it's reasonable Ryan's point that you know, it can start trading sort of back in a non know, idiosyncratic way to other assets. I think the, the macro look, you've got a midterm election, you've got the economy that's potentially going to be run hot by the administration. Right. They're looking for ways to, you know, you've got the big beautiful bill. Spending hasn't fully hit yet. There's plenty of reasons why you're going to see, you know, Fiscal spending and, and thus risk asset prices go higher and that, that should benefit Bitcoin. On the other hand, you've got a real risk of inflation in that environment. And so I think Fed loosening is definitely a strong narrative. It's also potentially strong for actual impact. But on the other hand we know that there's real risks here. Inflation remains a big risk with loosening. AI is a big risk for employment. You're starting to see significant advancements in AI. That was something that I paid a lot of attention to over the holiday break was all of these prominent engineers coming out and saying one of them was the principal engineer at Google saying effectively that they did over a weekend what it took their whole team to do at Google two years ago. Right. This, this is not like far on the horizon now. The amount of job displacement that you could see could create real macro pressures in the economy. So I think there's countervailing forces here that are both positive and negative. And that's why it's so chaotic I think to be an investor. I mean just today I saw, I think platinum's up 7%. Right. Nickel was up 10%. Right. Like people are, you're in an environment where people are sort of buying everything to start the year and it's, I really struggle to predict what it could look like. But you do know, both on the monetary and fiscal sides because of the change, you know, a dovish Fed plus an administration that's looking to show some real know force, they want people in the midterms to go into those bowling booths feeling wealthy. So it, you know, the, these are, these are bullish no doubt. It's just, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty out there.
- [09:20]
B
Yeah, I'll echo similar thoughts. I think like there are a lot of forces pulling in different directions that if you're a bull, you can paint a pretty picture of a bull scenario and then if you're a bear, you can do the same thing. The one thing I will say is that the, the long term levers of like what actually drives Bitcoin higher, Dollar debasement, loss of trust in institutions, monetary easing. I think like on a long enough time frame, like that's not changing at all. In fact that trend is probably accelerating. So yeah, maybe it might be hard to predict out like the macro in 2026, but if you take like a 5, 10 year approach, I don't see any of the trends that have driven the bull market for bitcoin over the past three years changing.
- [10:00]
A
I think they even get Better, I think. Yeah. That's where, you know, I. And I think it's. I'm happy you said that, Ryan, because I don't want to sound like it's all doom and gloom or uncertainty there. There are both positives and bullish catalysts in 26 for Bitcoin and crypto. But I think longer term things like geopolitical uncertainty or, you know, one of the most interesting. They, they bode well for bitcoin in the medium and longer terms. They continue to. They, they perhaps are. And when you combine that with the maturation of institutional adoption and market structure and market access vehicles and regulatory easing for crypto is very bullish, I think for bitcoin and crypto in the, the medium term, maybe even in the near term. I think one of the most interesting things we saw last year was during the April tariff tantrum when sort of markets collapsed and bitcoin traded down to like 74k. Equities came down a ton. The $DXY index also went down. It was the first time out of the prior 13s and P510% corrections or more that the dollar didn't appreciate. And then you saw gold go on this crazy rally and what it tells you is the world is looking for none of that dollar non US hedges hedging instruments. And I think plays a big part in the rise of gold, which was, I think, frankly, driven a lot more by speculators than central banks, which has been a big question. Speculators meaning people looking to park their money in something that is in dollars, isn't treasuries, isn't US denominated. I think in that that's only going to increase as geopolitics becomes more multipolar and fractured. And bitcoin looks very good, very good in a world that is more chaotic and more, you know, based on realism rather than, you know, international liberalism at the geopolitical level.
- [11:44]
C
Yeah, I did a show with some people from Delphi and they basically were saying that gold is frequently a canary for bitcoin. And so in that regard, bitcoin looks good. And I agree that like the reason that we did see, you know, gold and these other metals shoot up this year is there is some, I think, like understanding about kind of the changing of the geopolitical balance and people just, you know, feeling like what they've trusted for so long maybe isn't what they will be trusting going forward and kind of looking to part their money elsewhere until everything shakes out. So I do also want to ask about something that was a big storyline in crypto in 2025, which is D. They were kind of the center of some sort of bubble. What, you know, whatever the 2025 bubble was, in my opinion, was around debts. That bubble's already deflated, you know, and like even MSTRs doing things that kind of reflect sort of doubt about what will happen going forward. So I was curious, like, what do you see happening with DATs in 2026?
- [12:58]
B
Yeah, I'll take this one to start, I would say at this point, I think the only dats that really matter are strategy and Bit Minor. I think all the other ones you can kind of put on the back burner for now. I'm not bullish on the. The long tail of dats prospects at all. I think they're kind of one trick pony and kind of over. I don't think you can ever write, truly write off like Sailor and strategy. They've done this before where they looked like they were dead in the water and only came back stronger than ever before. They have the cash on hand to. To kind of weather a bear market for the next year or two years, but with the same saying if, if there is a bear market and bitcoin is weak, that kind of defeats the purpose of strategy. So it's tough to say. I'm not particularly concerned about like them blowing up in 2026 or changing course. I think they've made the decisions they needed to. I think Bit Mine also represents a very interesting opportunity. They still find cash every week to buy eth and I'm curious to see if they kind of start some of the. The playbook that strategy is done. I saw recently that they, they are now staking their eth. And then the theses we talked about, like, if they use their staked eth as collateral to. To basically borrow and lever up and then they can kind of use the interest from their state to pay off whatever interest rates they have from that. So I would say the big picture or what I'm looking for in 2026 to see how Bit Mine Bit Miner evolves in 2026 to see if they start replicating the sailor playbook.
- [14:25]
C
Alex.
- [14:25]
A
Yeah, I'll just add, you know, I think that there are some. I think it's fair to say that strategy and Bit Miner are probably beyond a significant amount of risk. They also don't. Strategy is one of the basically the only dad that actually holds debt that they have to pay. And I think you were alluding Laura to their, you know, the last month and a half or so where they've actually raised some cash, some fiat reserves which they plan to use to pay some of the dividends on their preferred securities or, or whatever else is sort of a, a way to stronghold and, and assuage doubts that they may have to sell Bitcoin to meet their debt and, and dividend obligations. I, I think it's obvious a huge, that that huge bubble. There were definitely more than a hundred and maybe hundreds that attempted to launch. I think the reality is the vast majority of them don't have debt, weren't able to raise through debt. So the question about whether they become for sellers I think is a little bit overblown. It doesn't mean they're going to perform well or be able to do much, but I think the risk that they have some kind of overhang to the spot market is probably overblown still. I don't think that there's room for that many in the long run. But I also, you know, some of these ones whose, you know, equity prices haven't performed well still hold an enormous amount of spot crypto, you know, even well beyond, you know, microstrategy and bit miner. So I think the question kind of becomes like, is there a dat 2.0? What does it look like? Maybe one way that it does is some of these DATs, you know, emerge to become the primary champions of their coins ecosystems. You could see consolidation among DATs. I think it's reasonable to believe that most major coins will have one longer term successful dat. Does that mean, I don't know what that means for their equity prices. But particularly in proof of stake networks you can, you can imagine, you know, big validators. Ryan talked about bit miner staking. Now you could imagine building other operating businesses around those validators, whether it's block building or MEV or selling access to block space in some way. So like you could imagine perhaps you know, something similar that's happening in the on chain governance world, which is the collapsing or combining or evolution of the labs and foundation versus DAO structure. You could imagine, you know, a sort of primary DAT emerging as like the chief cheerleader, possibly even taking on the role for an ecosystem that was previously led by a foundation or know, a labs organization. I think it's reasonable to believe that, you know, maybe one or, or one or two might have durability over a longer term sort of in each ecosystem. But you know, that's far fewer than the hundred plus that that have launched. So I, I don't know whether you know, if they're not. If they don't own debt, they, they probably aren't for sellers. If they continuously trade below their, you know, net asset values, maybe they become targets for rollups or consolidations or mergers or buyouts or something. But yeah, it's clear that the playbook from last summer isn't going to be rerun anytime soon.
- [17:34]
C
Yeah, this is interesting what you're saying about how they could potentially form like a Labs function or, or, or a foundation function, because there's been a lot of drama in the dao world lately. But before we get into all that, I did also want to ask about Ethereum. You know, you guys both brought up Tom Lee's dapp that mine immersion, which, yeah, is sort of has seemed to, it's sort of like, yeah, just doing quite well. It's like in its own universe, I guess, among the, among the dats. And you could say the same as MSTR of mstr. So I wondered, just when you look at Ethereum, there's been, you know, some travails in recent years. It looked like in 2025 they kind of righted the ship and then when Bitmine, you know, was doing quite well, that also, you know, looked good, very narratively for Ethereum because the price was, was going up. But I just was curious to hear how you think they're positioned now. And especially for Alex or sorry for Ryan. I saw that in the Masari theses you guys talked about because this is something that I think about a lot. It sort of feels like the, the tokenomics around Ethereum hasn't quite been figured out yet. During that period of the ultrasound money meme, it sort of felt like it was. And then after the introduction of blobs and the scaling of the L2s, that kind of has. That narrative has broken. And so in my view, the tokenomics around Ethereum are. There's like a question mark hanging over them. So, yeah, just tell me, where do you think Ethereum will go in 2026? And yeah, last thing is, I will say at the same time, there's definitely a lot of positive things happening in the ecosystem. The focus on privacy. You know, Vitali just posted that they solved the blockchain trilemma with pure DOS CKebm. So that's kind of interesting. So, yeah, just curious to hear your thoughts on where it's headed in 2026.
- [19:32]
B
Yeah, so I think it's helpful to now think about Ethereum in two separate manners. So you have Ethereum, the platform, which I absolutely agree right at the ship in 2025. They're in a much better trajectory now than they were at the end of 2024. But I think you also have to separate eat the asset from eat the platform and eat the asset I still think has a ton of question marks around it. I feel confident saying like I not bullish on direct value accrual to ETH anymore. So what I mean by that is like Ethereum network fees, right? Like are Ethereum stakers going to make a ton of revenues? I think we can definitely say that's not the case. Revenue has been declining by like 50, 60% every single year now for the past couple years. That doesn't mean ETH the asset can't be valuable, right? Like Bitcoin has absolutely zero value accrual, right? Like there's holding, holding Bitcoin state. You can't obviously stake it, but let's say you could. It does not entitle it to any cash flows of the Bitcoin network, right? That goes to the miners. So eat the asset can still be valuable, but it can, it's only going to accrue value indirectly, right? Like it's purely now just a monetary asset, right? Are people willing to ascribe some monetary value to eat the asset? I think the answer to that is yes. Right? Like obviously ETH does not trade at zero. It trades at some fraction of Bitcoin. However, we quite clearly see in terms of like betas and correlations. Like this ETH monetary asset story is fully reliant on Bitcoin, right? Like no one is switching from Bitcoin to ETH when Bitcoin is going down 50% over a three month period or whatever. They're only ascribing a heightened ETH monetary premium when Bitcoin's also going up. So for the foreseeable future, like I think ETH is, is connected at the hip to Bitcoin. Like I don't see any scenario in which Bitcoin is losing its monetary value while Ethereum is also increasing its longer term. Maybe you can make the case that the Ethereum network is so valuable that eat the asset has to have value because it's the, the centerpiece and the most or the soundest money at the the network level. But yeah, like I, I think ETH at this point you're not going to get direct value accrual, you're not going to benefit from revenues. However, that doesn't mean you can't benefit from like a monetary narrative that Bitcoin has benefited from.
- [21:46]
A
Yeah, I, I agree With a lot of that I think, you know it's, it's worth noting Ethereum had two pretty consequential upgrades in 2025 in Petra and Fusaka. I, I, I have to totally echo Ryan's point about direct value cruel. I've been very critical of single sequencer optimistic roll ups which you know, base, Coinbase's base is the biggest one and aside from, and it's got a super majority of all of the L2 activity of any type of L2 and Coinbase pays more to the Optimism foundation in licensing fees for the technology than it pays in fees, blob fees to the Ethereum network. So it's, you know, I, I, I worry and, and, and it, and it didn't used to be as big a worry but with the rise of Solana which is a meaningfully differentiated design of a blockchain, I, I worry that you know, Ethereum's building for a high throughput, low fee future that may never come right there. Even with Fusaka they dramatically expanded, you know, the, the amount of blob space there is to make it even cheaper for rollups to pay. And, and with this rollup centric roadmap and design which I think, you know, this hub and spoke model with Ethereum Mainnet as the, you know, settlement layer, final settlement layer, I think it makes a lot of sense intellectually but it isn't accruing value and it's not meaningfully competing well with Solana which itself has had enormous gains in 2025, particularly in terms of institutional adoption, whether it's stablecoin issuance or tokenization of securities. So I think Ethereum look, it's very hard to dislodge sticky capital. TVL is very sticky. Ethereum's still a great blockchain with a lot of activity on it, a lot of high value defi on it, there's no doubt about that. But it's never had as meaningful of a competitor for the role of being a general purpose blockchain as it does today with Solana in particular. And that's totally discounting any other sort of newer, more frontier layer one blockchains like a Monad or a Sui or what have you. Right. Just Solana is I think providing meaningful competition for Ethereum for, for some of this year's most, you know, anticipated hottest use cases like Real World assets and Stablecoins and tokenization. So you know, I think I admire some of the decisions and design decisions that the Ethereum community has made. I think Vitalik making the point that it's not about throughput. Instead it's about resilience. And I think that's a very fair and an admirable way to build a blockchain. You know, I, I'm a big bitcoiner and so I relate to that a lot. I just wonder if that's not the game people look to play, are, are looking to play.
- [24:29]
C
And so just to understand exactly what you're saying, are you saying that they're building for this long term vision but they might lose the competition in the short term which would keep them from winning in that long term vision is that.
- [24:41]
A
Yeah, I think that's a fair characterization. It's like they're building for a future that may never exist or that may pass them by without ever occurring. Right. I think, you know, it's a, it's partially a consequence. Bitcoin development ecosystem suffers a very similar, you know, issue here which is, you know, how to, how to corral these. And Ethereum is much more active development wise than Bitcoin, but still suffers from this, you know, sort of myopic and you know, many cooks in the kitchen problem of, you know, are we building for what people want today and where the market is today and what the use cases today are or are we building for an idealized vision of the future that you know, while, you know, and again it wasn't that big of a deal but Solana and its ecosystem is so much more like singularly focused on delivering quality and, and, and usability today. Right. That it, it's presenting such an interesting contrast. And I, and I, I dare say, you know, Solana has gained ground against Ethereum in terms of what people are using it for. That's not to say Solana has it all figured out. I mean the vast majority of its usage. Right. Had been meme coins and sort of like speculation. So it has its own things to figure out in terms of long term durability. But I just, the contrast between the two has never been, you know, clearer. And by the way, like you don't hear the institutions, Tradfi institutions, they're not coming. I mean, right. People are. Stripe is building Tempo. It's not on ethereum like the DTCs. First like thing is with Cantor Canton, just a private blockchain, right. From Digital Asset. A blast from the past. Right. They're not flocking to Ethereum to build the way the Ethereum community said that they would be. Right. And tons obviously of course are building on Solana. So I think that should be A wake up call for the Ethereum world. It's not clear exactly for whom they're building whereas for some of these other competitors to Ethereum it is very clear there.
- [26:38]
C
Yeah, yet another wakeup call for them. I guess something that I just realized talking to you both is both. So both Bitcoin and Ether are the two most important crypto assets. They're the two biggest. But what something is, something that's so interesting to me is I just realized there's something that's like a little bit broken about both of their tokenomics and one is the Bitcoin security issue which was talked about in the Masari thesis and that, that, I mean that's been something that's been talked about quite a lot. I think I've even had debates on the show about that. And then the other is, you know, what we just talked about about how it like there was a theory at one time that activity on Ethereum or in the Ethereum ecosystem would translate to token value and, and that relationship has not, you know, been correlated ever since the Denun I think was the upgrade. So yeah, just interesting commentary. No, no question really, but just a realization I had. But let's talk about Solana because Alex, I thought you made such good points there. I'd like for you to expand on them because you know, Solana, so obviously the, the token had a down year but not, not so different from you know, Bitcoin or Ether or any of the other cryptos. But on fundamentals it really did look quite good like in terms of, you know, TVL and DeFi and there were just, you know, a number of ways in which it really, you know, if the criticism used to be that it's just a casino, it's just for meme coins, whatever, like more real economic activity. So how do you think things will play out for Solana this year? And you know, where, where do you think they're going to get some wins and what do you think their weaknesses are?
- [28:14]
A
Well, I, I, I think one, that this, every good trend needs a, a meme or a narrative name and, and they've adopted this one Internet capital markets, you know, not so much different than you know, the Ethereum's community's old future of finance or future of France that they used to joke about frankly quite similar. I think the question is, you know, can Solana transition as a community? And sort of, I don't mean that there's like that it's necessarily a central hand actually doing it but like will it transition from you know, revenue and activity very focused around meme coins and launchpads to clear more durable capital and revenue generating businesses. I think that that's a real question. I think RWAs and tokenization is what many people hope and think will be a catalyst there that can enshrine longer term revenue to the Solana ecosystem. One of the areas that it's significantly lagged and continues to lag, Ethereum is in just defi tvl. And one of the reasons that, you know, I believe that's the case is that the Solana inflation rate is so high, right, by comparison to Ethereum that, you know, you're kind of better off just, you know, risk free, quote unquote, staking it rather than, you know, entering lending markets there or doing arbs with Ethereum lending markets. So that's been a big debate whether or not to lower inflation on Solana. There have been a couple attempts. Galaxy Research put forth an idea of using a few tar to decide what it should be. There's another open proposal. We don't think that proposal is going to happen in 2026, so for a variety of reasons. So I think that's a question about what to do with inflation. I think they have other interesting technical things on the roadmap, as does Ethereum, that could impact this. A lot of it comes down though, I think to crypto broadly needs a killer app. It still does, I think outside of owning Bitcoin, which people really like to do.
- [30:10]
C
What about stablecoins?
- [30:12]
A
Again, Tom Lee had been all over Twitter and TV saying that the bull case for Ethereum was the genius act and the adoption of stablecoins. But we've just talked about, I mean you barely have to own any eth in order to send a transaction anywhere in the Ethereum ecosystem. And they're only making it cheaper, right? So just needing to send or receive a stablecoin does not necessitate you stockpiling a bunch of eth. And by the way, I agree it shouldn't. Right? But like that's, that would be a key value accrual mechanism. I think, you know, the value for stablecoins, like where is the value from stablecoin growth going to accrue? To me it's going to accrue more likely if anywhere on a network that can send and receive them more simply and more quickly. And I think Solana's probably a better platform for that. Solana's meaningfully more decentralized than bas or any other single sequence or optimistic rollup, which let's face it is basically a computer in some company's basement. Right. And there's no reasons why, you know, maybe a unilateral opt out. Like there's some mitigations to that. But like the Ethereum community is kind of abandoned as far as I can tell. The idea of decentralizing sequencers. So I think like, you know, again, NFTs didn't, you know, I mean they worked. I mean they're fine or whatever, but like they didn't. They're not driving the market. Right. ICOs could come back, but I sort of put that in the same bucket at this point as sort of tokenization and you know, real equity ownership coins could be a very interesting area that. But I just think there's a lot of questions and so, you know, what do you want to build on something that's decentralized enough or something that's so decentralized that, you know, it's not, it's not nearly as usable. So I think there are questions here. I think the Corpo L1s are new, interesting. Sort of entering the chat as a thing to see how that plays out.
- [31:59]
C
Like Tempo and Arc.
- [32:00]
A
Tempo and Arc or even Canton, which I kind of consider to be a corporate. You know, it's a federated blockchain basically with you know, a private validator set. It's effectively enterprise blockchain from the 2018 era. Right. Which I'm 2015. Yeah. I'm not saying it won't have a, a place, but I mean that's additional competition. I think you've really got to see some, something at the app layer that's not based on pure speculation. This has been the case. I mean, I said this a year ago that you know, now with the regulatory burden easing on crypto, it's kind of put up or shut up, like we got to deliver something here that, you know, the average person really wants to use. I think you're going to get that in tokenized securities. The question, you know, to which platforms does it accrue? I think just Solana is really well placed there because of its speed and it has the separate fee markets that make it cheap. And there's a bunch of reasons I think Ethereum's also well placed. You really aren't seeing, I mean if you Google like institutional tokenization headlines, you're going to see a lot more about Solana than Ethereum. And to me that's problematic for Ethereum since that's pretty much the biggest like regulatory catalyst out there right now.
- [33:08]
C
But wait, but one, one Last question on the comparison between them is just, you know, Ethereum has zero downtime in its history. It's been going for over a decade and Solana cannot say those things. So, you know, just, I think financial institutions, because of the way they approach risk, don't you feel like that alone kind of gives Ethereum an advantage?
- [33:33]
A
I think it depends on the activity. But keep in mind, most activity in the Ethereum ecosystem today is happening on base and it's had downtime. Right. And Solana hasn't had downtime in quite a while, like more than a year. I don't have the number in front of me, but it's been a while. So I mean, it depends on what type of activity. Right. If it's high frequency stuff, then if you have an open loan that could get liquidated and the network is in downtime, then yeah, that's a huge problem. And perhaps that's another reason why Solana has lagged Ethereum and in, in lending is because of that. But of course, saying that Ethereum didn't have downtime, I mean, remember March 12, 2020 when everything was liquidated because nobody could get things through the network? Like I would consider that downtime. And then again, like the L2s have had downtime. So I think it's a little bit spurious the question, but it's. Yeah, I mean this is absolutely something people think about when deciding where to build. No doubt. I think Solana's mostly fixed those problems, but that's a reasonable question.
- [34:28]
C
Okay, so in a moment we're going to hear Ryan's take on Solana. But first we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors. To make the show possible, Mantle has entered a new phase as the distribution layer connecting TRADFI and on chain liquidity. To accelerate this vision, the Mantle Global Hackathon 2025 is inviting developers to build scalable RWA and DeFi project products. Why build on Mantle? It's an ecosystem built for builders. You get direct access to Bybit's 7 million plus users for potential listing exposure, support from the $4 billion mantle treasury and mentorship from top VCs like Spartan and Animoca brands. With six tracks, prioritizing RWAs and RealFi and a $150,000 prize pool plus grants. This is your chance to deploy on a high performance modular L2 register. Now the link is in the show notes. Back to my conversation with Ryan and Alex. So, Alex. Not Alex, sorry, I keep mixing your names up. Ryan, tell us your take on Solana. It sounds to me like Alex gives Solana a little bit of an edge over Ethereum. I guess he'll interrupt me if I'm misquoting him, but. Okay. Ryan, what, what's your take?
- [35:52]
B
Well, again, I want to. I wanna bring back the point. Like, I think with L1s now, you kind of have to separate the platform from the asset. And I want to, like, I think it's very interesting. We talk about killer apps and I would actually say a network that probably had, you could argue, had the most killer apps this cycle was Polygon. Right? Like, they had polymarket, of course, which is dominating Headlines, and they also have like, some other interesting apps like Courtyard. Right, Like Courtyard that has been gaining adoption, like, outside of crypto circles. Like, my friends that are, like, into trading cards and stuff, like, actually talk to me about Courtyard. I've never talked to them about crypto at all. So I think it's interesting that Polygon is here as a chain that actually has developed, you could argue, two killer apps, one definitely a killer app and the other maybe like a rising star. And its performance has been awful in 2025. So not only do you have to develop a killer app, but you have to develop a killer app that either generates a ton of speculative activity or uses your base asset as the monetary asset. And neither polymarket or Courtyard do that. Right? Like, they're USDC based and they obviously don't drive a ton of transactional volume like they, like, mean coins do on Solana. So, yeah, like, I'm not bearish on necessarily, like, Solana's growth prospects in terms of like, in onboarding new stablecoin supply, in onboarding new tokenization efforts and stuff like that. I just question, like, is that actually going to be value accretive? I'm much more bullish on, like, the Solana ecosystem. Like, I think if you're building consumer applications in crypto, I think it's probably the best place to build. Right? Like, I think they have definitively like the biggest, like, consumer user base in crypto at this point. So I'm much more interested there. I think, like, the, the exotic RWA space is very interesting. Some apps on Salana that are like, really running in stride on this is stuff like Collector Crypt. Like, that's another like, TCG Gacha competitor backslash, which is like tokenized wines. Like, I'm actually a lot more interested in like, kind of these consumer applications that are building on Solana rather than the Western unions and like the. These tradfi incumbents building because I just question like, how much is Solana actually going to be able to monetize? And not just Solana, that's any layer one network or layer two, like, how are they actually going to be able to monetize all this activity coming on chain. And then like the other thing I think Solana needs to, to definitely level up on is the perp deck space. I think they're not even really competing at this point. If you just look at volumes like an open interest, it's. It's. Hyper Liquid is definitely number one. You can make the case like Lighters may be number two, and then like Aster Edge X, but notably Salon is absent there. And I think that's probably the space they need to push the hardest in, especially when you have like your, your biggest ecosystem champions like Phantom, right? Building Hyper Liquid builder codes. So I think for, for Solana that should be like a huge focus for them in 2026 is like kind of figuring out how you get perp Dexs to work on Solana.
- [38:47]
C
Hmm. That. That makes a lot of sense to me. That gives me the perfect segue to our next topic, which is Hyper Liquid and Perp Dexes. Because as everybody saw, I mean, Hyper Liquid clearly was, you know, just one of the biggest successes in 2025. You know, just the fact that it spawned like a whole category of competitors just shows you what a success they were. You know, and the fact that their name was repeatedly used to. In comparison with Binance's name like that, you know, the memes with like Jeff and CZ and like even the fact that they were like subtweeting each other, that. That says a lot about, about just how successful they were. So I was curious, you know, now that there is such heavy competition in that space, you know, especially between the ones that Ryan named. So, you know, Hyper Liquid, Lighter, Azure, Ajax and. And there's tons of others. Who do you think could come out on top? Like, what do you think will make or break these different per Dexes?
- [39:51]
B
Yeah, I'll start. I. I think the first thing to note is just how much of a cash cow these businesses are, right? Like, Hyper Liquid makes more money now than any L1, right? Makes more than Solana makes more than Ethereum. So running a successful perp Dex is like, probably in terms of like, if you want to build a sustainable business in crypto outside of if you're tether, like, this is like the next best option. So that's why like so many are kind of pivoting to this and this is why it's such an important place to build. I would say it's going to be tough to dethrone Hyper Liquid unless you have like built in distribution. I would say that's probably the angle where you can beat them. So I know like people have been talking about Lighter's connection with Robinhood if, if they go fully in on that and maybe Lighter can like somehow form some partnership with Robinhood that they can leverage like their app and their user base. Like that's a sustainable and definitive moat that you could take on Hyper Liquid. But again, like, I think you need to, to find distribution partners that already have like big user bases that will be willing to try out perp Dex trading. And I think it's tough to say which ones are actually going to do that. Maybe Astro with Binance. Obviously, like Binance is the biggest per deck centralized perp Dex. Right. So if they could tap more into that user base, that'll be huge. But I think we're probably past the point where like technical differences alone are enough to steal market share. Like I think that was Hyper Liquid. Hyper Liquid represented like a meaningful improvement over existing per Dexes. So at this point I think it's going to come down to like distribution and like where you can find the, the marginal user.
- [41:27]
C
And what I just out of curiosity, what do you think about what happened on 1010 and how lighter handled it, like handled the many liquidations versus Hyper Liquid? Because there was some criticism about, you know, how Hyper Liquid did it. Do you have a, do you have any thoughts on like how that might affect interest from users?
- [41:48]
B
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't like Lighter not work during the event? Like you couldn't, at some point you couldn't open or trade clo open?
- [41:55]
C
Yeah. Oh gosh, I wish I could remember the details. They ended up doing something where like it was more beneficial to the users.
- [42:06]
B
Okay, I, I, I mean I, I, I forget exactly what they do, but like I would say the, the absolute priority for any perp Dex during something like that is just like giving users the ability to open and close trades. And if you're just completely bricked out of your account, you can't do anything. It's, it's, it's very tough to, to actually like be a per deck. So as far as I remember, Hyper Liquid still worked. Obviously like spreads blew out and that's more of like a market maker issue and whatnot. But I would say like, if you want to like say you're a better per deck you have to have like 100% uptime during these markets meltdowns.
- [42:42]
A
I would just say the lighter airdrop, they airdropped 25% of the of their tokens. Whereas I think Monad was like 3.3. And I forget what Hyper Liquid was, but it was much less. So I don't know if that's what you're referring to Laura, but which I thought was interesting. They also did not commit to buybacks the way that Hyper Liquid does. They said it would be allocated between growth and buybacks depending on market conditions. Which is perhaps another trend that I won't delve into at the moment here, but about like the token design evolutions that are happening out particularly for sort of revenue generating apps and their DAOs, if they have them. You know one, I'm going to throw this out here. A competition in the, in the perp space, not perp deck space. Cme. Right. CFTC is poised to allow perks, I think possibly for equities, certainly coinbase like with their perps exchange you're going to see. And this I think dovetails nicely with Ryan's point about distribution. Again, this is one of the many areas where crypto may be cannibalized by TradFi for its good ideas. Right. You've got the ETFs you're giving spot, Bitcoin, Ether, Sol and whatever else to TradFi in the form of ETFs, perhaps in exchange for higher prices. Um, you're, you've got tokenization, right, where you know, you've got Jamie Dimon even saying that this might be a great idea DTC doing it, you know, not, not necessarily like a crypto native entity at all even by the way, using Canton, which again I've said is kind of like a corporate blockchain, not really a, a decentralized L1. And perps may be another area where the crypto native world finds competition from TradFi. It appears CFTC is, you know, sort of on the verge of normalizing or bringing that product into traditional markets. Obviously that, you know, that's a different audience probably than those that would use a Hyper liquid or a lighter or an Aster or perp Dex in general. But I think you're definitely right also Laura, to point out that hyperliquid basically created the category. You had perps before, obviously at least as far back as Bitmex. But this sort of more decentralized version of it has a lot of adoption, no doubt. And synthetic. The interesting nature of perps is that they're synthetic. So I think you'll see a lot more of types of assets perpified than can easily be created in a wrapped token or in a sort of more spot context. So you'll probably see more of these. And I think you should watch out for perps on equities coming soon. Real equities, I mean through the CME or CBOE or an existing sort of derivatives exchange in the U.S. yeah, I've.
- [45:22]
C
Heard some people like expressing puzzlement and wondering at how much uptake there will be of those. But we had another guest on one of the shows who said that they think like all of finance will be purpefied. So yeah, that is probably coming. Let's talk now about prediction markets because that's another area I think, where crypto, well, it depends on whether or not it's crypto but you could say there, you know, at least the version of it that is crypto has found product market fit. So what I mean when I say that is as hopefully most of you know, Poly Market is, you know, on Polygon, as Ryan mentioned, Kalshi is, you know, more centralized. But the point is. So these are the two main contenders right now in the prediction market space. I'm just going to say it, it seems to me like they hate each other and there's also new contenders. You know, we saw the limitless, you know, launch which was very controversial. People were kind of upset about their token launch. But so these two players, polymarker Market and Kalshi, they have quite different strengths in my opinion. You know, Kalshi is more regulated, centralized, but it has these huge partners like Robinhood being probably the, the main one, Polymarket, of course it is on chain, it's more decentralized, probably has a bigger worldwide name and it's going to launch a token airdrop, a token this year. So I'm curious, who would you put your money on and why? Yeah, or like, you know, what do you think they should do to dominate? So.
- [47:03]
A
Well, here, I'll, I'll start this one. I mean it's such a good question. You know, remember when there was the election, the 2024 election, you saw this huge spike in volume and on the Poly Market at the time. And I don't think maybe C. CI had just like won that court case or whatever against the cftc. I think they probably saw outside volume. Two, they, they, they were able to sort of start allowing trading right before the election. But in general the election, you know, decision market betting had really exploded their volume and Then everyone was like, oh, when the election's over, they'll probably come down a lot in volume. And they did a little bit. But one of the interesting things that they've both done is move into sports gambling or sports prediction markets, I should say. And I guess that leads into the point I want to make, which is there's a lot of really interesting reasons to use a prediction market for hedging in general. And we could go into those. But in general, I think information markets do have a valuable place in our markets and for society to get odds on events happening. And that can be really important for individuals and businesses alike. But they're really moved into sports gambling extremely in the US and that's provided a really steady and consistent source of revenue for them and volume. Right. And so. But that is the huge question in the US and they're both proactively suing. Coinbase is also suing. Robinhood is suing proactively state regulators in federal court around and then in some cases they're being sued by state gambling officials. And I think the one to really watch is Kalshi's declaratory judgment lawsuits in the third, fourth and ninth circuits. But Coinbase also is suing in other federal dis circuits with so very likely that if we get split rulings in these cases, the Supreme Court will ultimately decide whether sports prediction markets are akin to sports gambling. And I think it's very possible that if they don't win these cases, the prediction markets, Polymarket, as far as I can tell, not really involved in these cases, sort of like biding their time, waiting to see what happens, but they could face real problems. Because as far as I can tell, you know, outside of a couple niche markets, it's really been elections and sports that have have been like runaway successes for these platforms. I don't know what I would pick. I think both Kalsheet and direct to your direct question, Laura, both Kelshi and Polymarket have a lot going for them. They're different, right? They're meaningfully different. I think Coinbase is going to be launching their prediction market thing like with Kalshi. Right. And using Kalshi and not Polymarket, by the way, which is interesting. Another sort of like Ethereum ecosystem, like not playing out the way people thought it might. I can't help but want to bet on Polymarket because of it actually puts this stuff on chain. It's more crypto native and I respect that a lot. I think most people that have been working in crypto for a Long time would pick polymarket for that reason. And it's true there's no love loss between the two. But in general, really I think like, you know, the question about whether they can challenge sports, whether sports prediction markets can be a financial derivative that's regulated by the CFTC and not sports gambling, that's regulated by independent gambling regulators is a huge question for these platforms since gambling and sports gambling, sports outcomes, I should say Hart and Election outcomes are the two, you know, biggest volume markets that they have. And I think that's, that's actually probably the biggest story to watch in 2026 for prediction markets. Bigger than internecine fighting between different platforms and. And other questions in my view.
- [50:36]
B
Yeah, obviously the political landscape is quite interesting or rather the regulatory landscape. But one thing I will add to this debate is that I'm not sure the prediction market's going after the sports. Sports books is the right choice. I think it's like low hanging fruit. Like I think it's easy to get some volume there because it is quite similar. But I think at the end of the day like I don't think many consumers, at least my friends or people that I know that sports gamble ever are like oh, I wish this was a prediction market. Like I think by and large the, the existing user base of sports gamblers are happy with the product. I don't think prediction markets like meaningfully improve the product for them. So yeah, I think like going after sports markets is probably a great way to like ramp up volumes and whatnot. Just because there's a ton of activity already there. I'm sure you can get some whales and market makers to switch over to your platform. I am much more interested in creating new markets with prediction markets. So kind of like cultural events and seeing if like you can kind of replicate the success that sportsbooks had with sports to maybe, maybe people start gambling on reality TV shows like the way that we gamble on football games and whatnot. And to me it seems like polymarket is moving more in that direction than at least Kyle she is. So yeah, I'm definitely more interested in that rather than like how these can replace sports books. I think it's a great way to like boost short term volumes but I question if this is like a long term winning strategy.
- [51:59]
C
All right, so just in the interest of time, I'm going to move as quickly on through the last topics. So privacy coins suddenly became a big thing in the fall of 2025. I wondered where you thought that trend was going, especially because the two leading coins or three if you want to include Solana, they don't have privacy. And so it's just interesting to think about because it does sort of feel like the future of all of this does need a privacy component. And if Bitcoin doesn't have a privacy component, Ethereum is making that a priority. So question mark that could, that could you know, change its status to be more privacy focused and, and to put it in that bucket of, of being like a privacy coin. So yeah, talk about where you see that trend going and like how you think that could shake up if at all, you know, the, the leading coins.
- [52:52]
B
Yeah, I think like privacy is probably in a super trend and I think that's just because like fundamentally privacy is important and it never was not important. It was just like you ran the risk of going to jail to actually like support these projects and work on them and be an investor that is seemingly de risked. And like I think you have to be optimist and hear and hope that like that trend continues that privacy is normal and like you were allowed to use privacy preserving objects. So I think that's like why you saw the return of stuff like zcash and like even Monero. Right? Like Monero didn't have like a singular month of like crazy outperformance, but Monero I'm pretty sure like outperformed Bitcoin throughout the entire, entire year of 2025. So there is definitely like a bid for privacy and I don't see this to change any quickly. Like I don't expect capital allocators to complet allocate to the way in privacy that they want to in one year and think this is going to be a gradual trend. I think stuff like zcash and XML are like, they're interesting as hedges against Bitcoin failing to ever adopt any sort of meaningful privacy solutions, whether that's through scaling like layer two stuff which obviously that's a whole nother debate of if Bitcoin should ossify or not. I'm very interested though like how we start applying privacy to, to stuff outside of crypto money in the sense of like can I start using AAVE privately? Can I start using Per Dex privately? So I, I'm bullish on like practical privacy on 2026 in terms of just like can I send my stable coins in a private manner? I think that will probably be like the next leg of growth for, for privacy but that isn't necessarily mean to be bearish on like the, the private, private crypto monies.
- [54:26]
A
Yeah, I, I don't know if Bitcoin itself needs to adopt like clear privacy measures. The Lightning network is already quite private and I utxo model of a blockchain which Bitcoin employs is significantly more private than the account based model that's used by basically every other blockchain. So as long as you take some steps and do coin selection, you can spend Bitcoin quite privately without revealing all of your other holdings. That is possible. I'm not saying that many people use it and I'll get to a bigger point in a second, but to echo Ryan's point, if you pay somebody USDC from an Ethereum, like someone that works for you, a contractor, whomever. Right. An employee or any, any person at all, Ether USDC from your Ethereum account, they can see all of your holdings. They can see everything you've ever done with your Ethereum account, which, you know, could be fine. It could not be fine. If you're a business, it might be terrible. Right. And so I think, yeah, I can't really put my finger on what started that ZCASH revival in the fall. It seemed like the type of thing that would happen when there was a major privacy breach that, that frightened everyone. And I didn't see that catalyst there.
- [55:30]
C
It's like, yeah, in another episode somebody basically said it's probably because they wanted to form that ZCASH debt. And so people who knew about in advance bought a bunch of zcash. And I was like, oh, okay.
- [55:42]
A
I think there's some there, there's likely some truth to that. It doesn't mean it's wrong that privacy coins go up or they become more important. I want to echo that. I mean, again, I don't know why I keep talking about Canton, this, this enterprise blockchain, but it's private. That's one of its core features that they advertise. And I think a lot of, you know, with the growth of tokenization and sort of traditional businesses operating on chain, they're going to want privacy. You don't want your competitor. You can't run an entire business on chain and have your competitors see every single payment that you send and receive. Right. Like there are practical reasons that aren't even philosophical and ideological, though I agree with the philosophical and ideological reasons for privacy. There are very practical reasons why privacy is important. And so, you know, I think there's a lot more to be done on privacy in crypto, for sure. I mean people, you know, they focused on number go up and speculation for so long. They, you know, zcash been around forever. The electric coin company been around for a long time and you know, people didn't really care that much at scale. And I don't know if zcash is the solution or some kind of other zero knowledge technology or upgrade to existing L1s or whatever, but I think it's going to be important. And just to put a finger on the, you know, a point on the ideological and underpinning reasons for privacy, you know, people should note we made this point when the Tornado Cash sanctions were first done, I guess was that summer 23rd that treasury added Tornado cash to the OFAC SDN list. Obfuscating the origin of funds is not a crime. It's not money laundering. It's only money laundering. If the origin was illicit finance was a crime. So I can do this all I want. I can blow out my bank account into 50 different banks if I want to try to make it super hard to track my money. As long as the money doesn't come from crime, that is not money laundering, people. You know, there's nothing inherently sketchy about being private. Right. In fact, all of our phones and all of our chat apps are all encrypted for this reason. It's not crazy to think that, you know, finance could do for some more privacy. And by the way, your traditional finances are quite private. So I think, you know, it. It is a big trend. I hope it generally continues. I don't know if it's going to be a big investment theme in 26. I know some people think it will be. There are still obviously like huge sort of like political hurdles here. I mean, one of the big things they're debating on the market structure bill is how to handle defi. And one of the big fears that some of the opponents have is that, you know, North Korea or terrorists are going to use defi. Well, the same fears will be raised and have been raised in the past about privacy on chain. So it's going to be. There's some headwinds. I don't know if it's going to be, but it's a very important area in crypto. And by the way, just in the world, broadly.
- [58:24]
C
Yeah. I mean, North Koreans are already using defi in case they didn't know. But actually, Alex, I wanted to ask you. So do you agree with Ryan when he said that he views zcash as a hedgehog about like Bitcoin? You know, I forget how we phrase it.
- [58:40]
B
Yeah, it's a hedge against like a super dystopian world. Where Bitcoin is no longer enough to protect you.
- [58:46]
A
I think that could be right. I think if pure on chain privacy is a huge need. And you know, like I said, you can operate Bitcoin privately, but it's. It's not encrypted, you know, or in any meaningful way.
- [59:00]
C
Yeah. By the way, actually never minds me when you said that you can basically use it privately. I would just caution for anybody who thinks that you can get away with run using Bitcoin, please don't try. Because so many criminals had that thought and they got caught. So.
- [59:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, like I said, like, not actually private. Well, I mean, if you receive coins from somebody and you never mix them with your other coins, then you're never going to expose your other public keys and your other coins. So there are ways to segregate it, but it's. Yeah, it's not that easy. And you can, you know, if you're an activist operating in a, you know, hostile regime, like, you need to be extremely careful. Like that's a fact. Don't get me. My main point is that the way that that model works is inherently more private than Ethereum and Solana, which are basically privacy nightmares today, where you have one address that you consistently reuse, by the way, that also makes Ethereum and Solana more vulnerable to quantum attacks than Bitcoin. But that's another discussion probably like.
- [59:58]
C
Yes. Which I do plan to have on the show. I missed out on talking about the quantum thing in December, but it's coming. Okay. Okay. Because we, we're kind of over time, but we have to talk about stablecoins. There's no way we can not talk about stablecoins. So as everybody knows, 2025 was the year of the big stablecoin race getting started. You know, Tether obviously is already the king, but you know, just everybody else can. Like there are so many players that can see this pie is only going to grow way bigger and they all want to get in the game. So I was kind of curious how you thought this competition will play out. You know, we have so many contenders. I'm not going to try to list them all. But, you know, in addition to Tether, there's you know, obviously Circle, Tempo, Arc, Plasma, Codex. I mean, there's Athena. There's like many out there. It's not technically a stablecoin, but close enough. So.
- [60:50]
A
Yeah.
- [60:50]
C
Where do you see the stablecoin competition headed in 2026?
- [60:56]
A
I can. I'll take this one to start. You have. Well, you've got Banks You've got Genius act compliant stablecoins, which we, by the way, do not exist today. If anybody tells you their stablecoin is Genius act compliant, that's not a thing. Currently those rules are still being implemented. But you are going to see US dollar denominated stablecoins that have licenses or registrations with the OCC or that are otherwise licensed by state or federal regulators and have very clear reporting and collateral types and variety of other things emanating from the Genius act, which, you know, passed both houses of Congress in June and July of last year and was signed by President Trump in July. So the Genius act, clear catalyst for the growth of stablecoins, makes it totally legal. Paripasu one to one with other forms of cash. You're going to see banks use it for interbank settlement. Many times that you send someone a Venmo, it may end up being a stablecoin in the back that you don't even know is there. I think that's, that's a clear, clear trajectory for the use of stablecoins. They're undeniably better in many ways than things like ACH or Fedwire or, you know, an actual wire Swift. It's just, it's, there's, it's a shocking improvement. I don't view it as a, as truly that crypto. It's really more of a blockchain thing. I think the best stable coins will be and the biggest will be issued on decentralized layer one blockchains, you know, with surely on some layer twos as well, as opposed to, you know, some kind of DLT or enterprise blockchain.
- [62:23]
C
But, but how would you classify Tempo and Ark? Are they, what are you.
- [62:28]
A
Yeah, I would not classify those as layer one blockchains. Decentralized layer one blockchains, they say that they're permissionless to build upon, meaning that you can deploy an app or access it, but if you can't, you know, run a full node and, and, and stake or validate, then I would put it in a different category. I mean, it, I think it makes sense, by the way, why some of the issuers are going to want to run their own blockchains because especially if rates come down, their source of revenue will decline, which is mostly interest on their collateral. Right. It's net interest income. And so they'd like to try to capture some of the transaction volume as revenue, which is why, and they think that, you know, L1 transaction fees might be the way to do that. I think it's one reason why you're seeing them launch their own. But no, I still think the, you know, the most widely, the best money is the most widely accepted money and a new fangled corporate L1 or L2 blockchain is not nearly as easy to connect to and accept funds on as Ethereum, Solana, these globally adopted platforms. Another big area though is going to be interest. Right? And who gets that interest income Right now, you know, Circle and Tether capture all of it for themselves. There's a debate in the crypto market structure, you know, legislation that's happening and being discussed about whether to, you know, add further prohibitions to prohibit the sharing of interest with stablecoin token holders. There's many on chain alternatives like the Athenas and whatever else that give you interest. Right. And have there's many sort of defi. One interesting thing could be is if you see stricter clampdown on, you know, genius act compliant stablecoins providing interest to their token holders, you may see growth of you know, interest bearing things in defi. Keep in mind Genius act doesn't make it illegal for any token to provide interest on underlying treasury holdings to token holders. It it makes it illegal for a genius act stablecoin. Right. So you can call yourself something else, probably say we're not a stable coin and maybe actually be totally legal. So you might see if it's impossible for token holders of genius stables to get that interest. You might see some more movement and growth in DeFi TVL as dollar exposed individuals seek out that yield. But look broadly, you're going to see this infiltrate card networks, banks like fintech apps. It already is.
- [64:48]
C
It's just simply better between the different players. Like who would you give an edge to? So Tether is kind of maybe obvious. Who's like who do you feel like are the best position to sort of win?
- [65:01]
A
I mean the existing issuers Tether and Circle are well positioned. I think it's unclear what the big banks are really quite doing. I mean banks in general are sort of opposing aspects of stablecoin adoption while probably also building it. You've seen a number of consortia be announced among banks. I think it comes down mostly to distribution. I think the big fintech apps can be great at pushing their own stables. I think even PayPal which has done work with PyUSD and incentivizing its use mostly in Defi. I think you could see it become widely used simply because of how big the PayPal and Venmo ecosystems are. Even Cash app has now said they're going to do Stables after spending years saying they wouldn't even go near those, they would only, only bitcoin. So I don't want to give too many names, Laura, but I think platforms that have big distribution, they lose very little by, you know, converting what is otherwise a bank deposit into a stablecoin. Lastly, I think tokenized deposits, which some banks have talked about being a big thing. I know JPM is a tokenized deposit thing with Coinbase. I think they're very stupid. I think you're going to see significantly more growth out of Genius Act Stables and other forms of stablecoins than you will from tokenized deposits. Deposits are not fungible. One bank's credit is not as good as another bank's credit. And separately when I send you money from my bank account to your bank account, we're not trading IOUs for the deposit sitting in my just kind of a stupid use case. In my opinion that doesn't add a lot of benefit. Much more likely to see growth of stablecoins. I think a big question is what happens to Tether? They've announced that what a new entity, usat is going to be their US version one. Like what kinds of fungibility with USDT will that have? How will that actually play out? I mean people forget Tether is one of the most important companies in the world. They're not just one of the most important in crypto. They are a massive owner of pharmaceutical and AI and robotics and agricultural concerns. They've got huge crypto, they've got this new NYSE listed entity 21. They're massively embedded across whole ranges of the economy, not just in crypto. And they've got like 180 plus billion dollar circulating supply of USDT. So I think really interesting question is like what is the clash between Tether and these new genius issued genius compliant stablecoins? Whether they're from fintechs or banks or other entities. What will that clash look like? Because their entrenched lead is so massive and I, I think that's a huge and fascinating question to see play out.
- [67:27]
C
Yeah, I feel like it's like an entrenched lead outside of the US and so that sort of makes the competition in the U.S. look more interesting. But yeah, I do wonder if the competition could lead them to not be able to, you know, keep all of the interest that they've been keeping, which is fascinating. But Ryan, what do you think?
- [67:47]
B
Yeah, on that note, I actually, I'm more interested in the clash between these Genius compliance, Stable coins and Circle. I feel like that's where the real disruption is going to be. I'm much more confident in Tether's market positioning because I think they actually have, they kind of own the user right. Like people seek out Tether USDT in, in non western countries and whatnot and I think like that's a huge push from the admin. Right. Like Tether is able to kind of dollarize the world in a way that previously not possible. I'm not sure Circle and USDC kind of has that reach outside of the non western world. So I think a lot of these like newer stable coins and these banks or whatnot that deploy these genius compliance stable coins, they're going to be gunning after USDC rather than usdt. So I'm more interested in that aspect. I would say I, I'm interested in some of the stable chains like Tempo more so just like I think if Stripe goes full in on that they can onboard a bunch of their massive user base on on chain and that's net good. I'm not interested in like Tempo like stealing users and like existing like crypto use cases and like everyone's going to go do defi on Tempo now. Like I, I don't really see that kind of playing out. But yeah, I think like more broadly I think stablecoins are, are going to keep growing. That's probably the most lukewarm take possible right now. But yeah like it's, it's going to be exciting. I'm much more confident in Tether's positioning than, than kind of Circle and also interested in like kind of how PayPal USD USD USD plays out, how Athena is able to rebound. They, they've had a massive reduction in stablecoin supply over the past couple months as, as the market kind of cooled off. So it's curious, I'm curious to see how they kind of to come back and whatnot. But, but yeah, I definitely think it's going to be a very interesting field to pay attention to over the next couple years.
- [69:35]
C
Okay so I know we're over time so I'm just going to ask my last question. Let's do quick answers. This is an area that people are super, super interested in which is agentic commerce. And you know people were very excited with this X402 standard, you know, when it like came out or started being used earlier this year. Maybe try to keep a prediction on how much you know, we'll see in transactions in agentic commerce like the dollar amount. I'd be curious in volume. Do either of you want to take a stab or just make any other prediction about Magenta commerce?
- [70:12]
A
I think if we stick with the X402 standard, I think payments that use that standard will reach 30% of base's daily transactions and 5% of Solana non vote transactions is 26. Shout out to Lucas Chain on my team for that prediction. But that is our prediction. We think it's going to grow a lot. And look, agents using on Chain dollars, we're very bullish in this.
- [70:35]
B
The one thing I'll add to that, I think this is more of a 2027 than a 2026 phenom.
- [70:40]
C
Okay. All right, you guys. Well, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for sharing your predictions around 2026. And thank you to everyone who joined the live stream and we will catch you all here.
- [70:53]
A
Thanks, Laura.
- [70:53]
B
Thank you.