UNDER EXPOSED: 2026 Outlook and Crypto Year End Awards

Recorded: Dec. 16, 2025 Duration: 1:09:38
Space Recording

Short Summary

In a reflective discussion on the crypto landscape of 2025, the hosts analyze significant trends, including the rise and fall of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and ETH, the impact of stable coins, and the evolving role of prediction markets. As they look ahead to 2026, they emphasize the importance of projects that deliver real value, while also addressing the challenges posed by declining market sentiment and speculative investments.

Full Transcription

Thank you. I'm out. Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Underexposed, our weekly macro show hitting all the biggest topics and trends impacting crypto and Web3.
Today is Tuesday, December 16th, 2025.
Folks, 2025 has been a hell of a year.
We went from sell the inauguration to new all-time highs on Bitcoin, on ETH,
a fun summer, and then a brutal Q4.
And now we're asking, what is in store for 2026?
And we'll also do some lookbacks and awards for 2025 as well.
We're going to break it all down on today's show.
I'm your host, Tyler D. I've got my co-host in the house.
First up, D's GM. How are you doing?
Doing okay. Could be doing better.
Prices are a little lower than the last time we talked,
but glad to be here.
Glad to have a different show than usual
and glad to give away a bunch of money at the end.
That is going to be a nice way to wrap up the year.
Folks, yeah, this is going to be our last show of 2025.
We'll be going into the holiday break starting next week.
Kiddos are at Domo school starting on Friday.
So Christmas is around the corner.
Peter, I'm sure you're getting ready for the Christmas season as well.
Jim, how are you?
Jim, doing great.
Yes, bummed I missed last week,
but I got to play one of the top golf courses in the country.
Got a magical day of golf.
Cypress Point and Pebble Beach all in one day.
Basically from sunrise to sunset.
So that was special.
Yeah, and markets are certainly not as exciting as when they're going up.
But I need to be thoughtful about how to allocate capital and look forward to discussing
kind of what what coming in 2026 a lot to recap uh certainly mistakes as always but uh some things
to be proud of as well and hopefully we can make good decisions in 2026 yeah that's uh cheers to
good decisions in 2026 maybe that will need to to be the refrain here over the next couple of weeks.
Folks, as always, a couple of housekeeping items.
We are live on Kik.
Make sure to follow us over there.
We're also streaming live on X.
And holiday giveaways, baby.
You came to the right place.
We're doing five $500-y giveaways today.
As a thank you to our loyal listeners who have been with us throughout this year.
I think a variety of ways,
I think maybe one silver,
two bronze,
two random.
We'll see what producer Charlie has,
has come up with behind the scenes.
So make sure you pay attention to the code and do all the,
all the things to make sure you are eligible or that it as always, before we get started, a quick disclosure of the opinions expressed on this
podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the views or opinions of any organizations
they are associated with.
We are here to share insights, provoke thought, and maybe even stir some debate.
But this is not, I repeat, not financial advice.
While we talk about markets, investments, and trends, remember, your financial decisions
should be made with the help of your own research or with advice from a licensed professional.
All right,
we'll get into it.
I guess this is a quick preview.
We'll start with a little bit of macro where we're at now.
I want to talk about 2026 outlook.
We went there a little bit last week with Jeeves since that was our last
show with Jeeves last week,
got his thoughts,
I'm excited to get your thoughts.
We're going to talk a little Trump crypto person of the year and then do some of our crypto awards
across apps, tokens, NFTs, artists, letdowns. Letdown is going to be a juicy one. A lot of
contenders for letdown of the year as I was preparing my thoughts. So we'll get into all
that and more. But for starters, I'll go ahead and pull up the crypto board as we always do.
I added this year to date column and maybe that was my mistake because the
year to date numbers are not so great.
I'll start zoomed in.
So we're at Bitcoin 87,
seven 50 is down 7% since last week's show.
ETH is down 13% since last week,
29 50 and lost three K support. since last week's show. ETH is down 13% since last week, 2950,
and lost 3K support.
Solana down 11%. The numbers, if you zoom out even more,
so year-to-date Bitcoin's down 6%.
So from our very first show,
we're basically $6,000 or lower.
ETH down 11%, but Solana, down 32% year to date.
That one is tougher and I think also just kind of symbolic of one of the macro trends of this year
and just kind of the fallout of the meme coin trade in general and Solana now kind of going through this rebranding effort
and disning itself from being the the meme coin chain um and certainly
the frustrations that are on the timeline are are understandable when you look at these numbers
then when you filter by year to date it tells me arguably a worse story uh like so this is the top
movers of the top like 100 crypto coins over this year. Zcash is up 600%.
A public trade, a lot of folks caught that.
OKB up 100%.
Monero also in the privacy bucket.
Gold tokens are number five and six on the list.
Then BNB, then Bitcoin Cash, then Tron.
Tron's up 10%, and it's in the top 10.
Hyperliquid's up 12%.
And then you're getting into stable coins.
It is just an absolutely brutal list.
just kind of paints the picture in summary.
Like there,
there's really have not been good year long macro trades in crypto.
Like you had to,
there have been plenty of good trades but you had to get in
and out like it was not the year for buy and hold by any means um peter i guess i kind of shared some
initial thoughts but i guess how are you feeling about crypto december 2025 where we're at right
now and then we can start talking about looking forward.
Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of the things we've discussed on the show have come to fruition.
You know, the majority of these projects aren't creating real value and utility to society, and they're going to get priced accordingly.
The industry is maturing, and there's projects now that have revenue and other things.
that have revenue and other things.
So that's being priced in.
So that's being priced in.
I still am a big believer in Bitcoin as digital gold.
And I think Bitcoin,
my view is that Bitcoin and gold
will continue to go up nominally
as a big part of the debasement trade.
And I believe Bitcoin should,
obviously there's some outside risks,
quantum's become a big one.
There's some other risks that we can discuss, but should continue to eat into gold's market
cap as a percentage and just from a nominal perspective.
So to me, that's going to buoy the space.
And I still think that there's this debasement trade happening.
The big issue, and I've been really enjoying kind of the Sante versus the Sieve
debate on like all the L1s, is, you know, how to value a lot of these projects. And I think a lot
of them are grossly overvalued. I tend to decide more and think about things more in like the
Sante lens. So in that regard, I think things are really overpriced. But we do have the best,
you know, administration we've ever had for crypto.
I think we're getting real clarity.
And then the big concepts I think will continue to grow and hopefully provide a lot of utility to the world are stable coins next year and how that interacts with payments.
I think the tokenization and financialization of everything is going to be really beneficial.
So all the DEXs and technology around that.
And then prediction markets are just exploding
in popularity and growth.
And my view is that prediction markets
will continue to get bigger and bigger,
not just with sports,
which is a whole other rabbit hole,
but outside of sports,
I do think that people want to speculate
on more specific variables.
And I am excited about the opportunities that prediction markets will bring and the utility that prediction markets will bring outside of sports to the world.
So there's some really big tailwinds. There's some headwinds. A lot of stuff still overvalued in my eyes.
So, yeah, just being really thoughtful around allocations is important.
So, yeah, just being really thoughtful around allocation is important.
And I think the other thing that you can put to this year is crypto was the big beta trade on technology for the last 10 years, maybe last eight years, especially.
And now AI is really taking that.
So that's one other just big macro force when you're going out on the speculation curve.
Crypto is a shiny new toy for a while and that is not the case anymore so there's a lot of a lot of things
going on but curious to get your guys perspective and uh i'm still happy to be here yeah i mean ai
i think the clear market force for 2026 and that was in blackRock's report. It was stamped all over it. Notably, they also included stable coins as a macro force for 2026,
which, which you mentioned as well.
Though is maybe a little bit of a trickier one to quantify how to trade.
I guess you can, the stocks of stablecoin providers like Circle, which Peter, I think you were more bearish on.
I actually seen some bulls takes recently.
Maybe it is priced correctly now.
Perhaps headed into 2025, 2026 rather.
I want to go through some of your points, but I guess just kind of reactions to a few.
So you mentioned prediction markets.
Do you view prediction markets as a crypto sector? I do. I don't think it's
completely a crypto sector. It's in this speculation bucket, which I think crypto is
directly correlated and tied to in a lot of ways. And I do think blockchain is an amazing technology
for prediction markets i
think it makes sense i think it should be open you should be able to see what's happening and
the transparency uh with blockchain i think is quite good so um i'd say it's it's it's in the
speculation bucket which crypto you know you have the venn diagram is part of and then also
some of it's not. What do you think?
Deez, I'm curious for your thoughts in that way.
Yeah, I mean, I think at least Polymarket's definitely in the crypto bucket,
and it seems like Kulshy has made strides to be.
So I think of Polymarket as like a,
you know, completely crypto-native prediction market.
So I don't have any...
I don't know.
I think there's a fair delineation of protocols
that have a token or are working towards a token
versus not, I guess, in my mind.
And then I guess the second question is,
do you need a token to be a successful crypto company?
I don't think the answer is yes.
That is a good question.
I think the answer has become increasingly,
it doesn't matter as time goes on here.
And we're seeing all these aqua hires of companies that have tokens
and then the companies acquire them and the token goes to zero anyway
because they don't get anything.
But yeah, I think Polymarket is completely crypto-native.
I think Kalshi is kind of crypto-native.
I mean, they have a bunch of crypto investors
on their cap table
and they're definitely pushing to be more involved with crypto.
But I guess crypto-native isn't the right word for them.
And they're definitely making strides, right?
Their markets are all tradable.
On Jupiter now, they're integrated in Phantom Wallet, so they're clearly leaning
in. That much can't be denied.
Peter, you commented on tokenization and tokenizing
everything. That's clearly one of the biggest trends of this year. You can make a
case it's going to be the biggest trend of 2026. I think there's going to
be a lot to unpack from that.
what will be that trend's impact on crypto and prices specifically?
There's ways to take this discussion,
looking at it from a trading lens.
You can make the argument.
I think that when you're tokenizing everything and you're blurring the lines between tokenized equity, like what's the difference between equity and a crypto company versus its token?
And like we're talking to the Rainbow Wallet founder tomorrow and he's like starting to blow those lines.
So like they're going down the route of true tokenized equity.
So is that going to shift the valuation methodology of a lot of these new crypto companies and apps?
My view is yes.
And perhaps we're already seeing some of that.
There will be no more vaporware if we continue going down this path.
down this path and I think that would be a good thing. You'll have more realistic
And I think that will be a good thing.
You'll have more realistic valuations.
valuations but does that also mean there's no more explosive
parabolic runners of course which then are followed up by their
parabolic crashes?
I think there will still be the parabolic stuff happening too. I think
we're going to need to see a big winner come out of
the tokenized equity cohort first.
And then I think that's how more people will be persuaded to go down that route.
Like, I don't think right now it's as exciting as if, you know, after Rainbow does it.
If Rainbow does very well, then people are going to be more excited.
I would agree.
We definitely want to see
the shiny use case, but you
mentioned kind of like the
circle just echo hired
Interop Labs, and as part of the
deal, they're taking the team, they're abandoning
effectively the protocol
and the Axle token.
That token
is $130 million FTV
token, and now it's effectively worthless? that token is $130 million FTV token.
And now it's effectively worthless.
It's not exactly worthless,
but this is the third or fourth example we've had of this where our team is effectively pulled and separated from its product and token.
And if you were backing that team and token,
you feel rubbed. You have to, product and token. And if you were backing that team and token, you,
you feel robbed.
You have to,
I don't want to,
I'm not an investor,
I'm putting words in other people's mouths,
but I think I would feel like I was,
I would definitely feel wrong.
I think it makes it hard to invest in things that aren't like,
Bitcoin pipe,
or just like fart coin., I don't really want
to be in the middle there. Like, I feel like it's hard, like, best case scenario that you would
think would happen before you buy these tokens is that they get acquired, the token value goes up
and everyone eats. And like, actually, that's kind of the worst case scenario is that they get
acquired, you were directionally correct on your thesis behind either the team the app or both and you don't get any
rewards you get slapped in the face and told to go fuck yourself like that's the worst case scenario
so the last year we went from total financial nihilism the maraud thesis meme coins are all
that we have left and we're going to show it to the man the pendulum swung too far then it swung back like no we're going to go all in on app tokens
show us the revenue baby and that's how we're going to evaluate these things that's all we
want to trade then guess what you move too fast because that is not equity in those companies
what you're trading you were just trading their token and that's yeah the truth is somewhere
always in the middle right like it's not in either of these extremes that we swing to but like
reality is somewhere in the middle it's like are all buybacks good no some buybacks should
actually be like capital expenditure to make the company better in other ways rather than just
buying the token back um and i think we'll get there it's just this space maturing i think but i'm curious
if we're maturing or if we're just reinventing the wheel for the 50th time um like we love to do
thoughts on that peter
i mean i just i think that we're going to continue to see this trend of assets and projects and things that don't provide real value and utility get priced appropriately.
And I think that that's going to continue to go down.
So you just need to figure out what projects are providing utility and value to society.
And Bitcoin is clearly that.
It's digital gold.
It's a way to get store value.
I think that that makes a ton of sense. I think some L1s clearly can win and be really helpful.
That's a more nuanced, longer conversation. And then, you know, I really am excited about
payments. I think what Tempo is going to do and do is going to be awesome. It's great to see.
I mean, like real big companies like Stripe leveraging blockchain.
Now you have JP Morgan and other companies and entities that provide real value to society
that are going to be using this technology and creating things that I think will be quite valuable.
And then you have all the decentralized stuff.
We haven't talked to anything about privacy,
which if you go back to your board is like the one area that's done really well.
I think a lot of the initial goals of what Bitcoin is supposed to be
and what crypto is supposed to be are not where we are now,
which is why you're seeing a lot of OGs selling.
So that's another thing to discuss.
But yeah, the macro trend, which is good and a sign of maturation in the industry, is that the pure speculation of like, oh, this can be so big because the TAM is so big.
Projects that don't create value or utility are getting priced appropriately now.
And that does present challenges to a lot of these things that were priced really highly in the past, purely based on speculation. So it's kind of a reset. And I do think there's some really
positive trends. I'm really excited about stable coins and payments and the financialization of
everything and how crypto plays a role in that prediction markets and speculating on literally
everything, being able to hedge. If you're a farmer, being able to hedge on the weather in your area, as an example, that to me is really, really cool.
There's so many things I think will come to fruition here in 2026 that I think are going to be awesome.
And, you know, we need it as a, you know, speaking from the U.S.'s perspective, we need buyers of our treasuries.
us's perspective we need buyers of our treasuries so stable coins are great for that uh so there's
So stable coins are great for that.
a lot of positive things but you know the market just going up only and like the whole basket of
crypto just going straight up uh i think those days are are over and it's going to be specific
projects that are providing real value yeah i think that's right but also the reason this year
has been so tough is you went through a lot of the bullish news. And BlackRock's tokenizing on Ethereum.
JP Morgan's tokenizing on Ethereum.
I think overall this has been a fundamentally bullish year for Ethereum in adoption.
And yet price is down 12% year to date despite Tom Lee buying $3.5 billion worth.
Or maybe $10 billion worth, rather.
And it's a similar story for Bitcoin as well, which I think has been the frustrating aspect.
A lot of the fundamentals seem better than ever, and yet price is down. So that's been tough,
though I agree with your, your, your broader view headed in 2026. What's your even broader 2026 outlook across all asset classes? Like, how are you thinking about
being positioned into next year ahead of the midterms? Are you concerned about midterms?
Kind of what's your short to mid-ish term view?
I'd be extremely bullish assets from a nominal perspective,
given what I think the administration's going to do. I think they're going to throw everything
at they can to pump the economy, including some form of helicopter money to people who aren't
doing as well. It's very clear we're in this K-shaped economy, and then the administration
is highly aware of that. So I think they're going to do everything they possibly can.
The one thing that gives me a little bit of concern and one market I'm watching closely is the government shutdown, which seems like it's more and more likely at the end of January, which is going to stifle this plan.
So that's my one concern.
And then my expectation is that the Democrats are going to do really well in the midterms. I think Trump's likability just keeps going lower.
So I think we'll see that reflected in the midterms,
just like we saw in recent elections.
And because of the K-shaped economy and the top 1% to 5% doing so well
and then everyone else doing so poorly,
we're seeing this rise in socialism, which I think will probably come out in the midterms. And if that happens,
then markets are going to adjust, and that's probably bearish for assets. So it's kind of a
weird setup where I'm pretty bullish early part of the year, and then a little bit more concerned
in the middle part of the year. And generally, I do best as a capital allocator
with like long term trends, stuff that I can just allocate and try not to interrupt compounding. And
I feel like 2026 is a year where you're going to probably have to be more nimble. And that's
not necessarily my personal forte, but a lot of people who are in crypto can do that well. It's
just it's hard to trade. you're either really good at trading or
not and maybe one percent of people are good at trading and 99 people aren't so it's gonna be a
really really tricky year in 2026 um and i would say bullish on privacy at all in 2026 um do you
think this trend of monero and zcash being in our top year-to-date list is going to continue? Or do you
think that's kind of played out this year and done? Because I just looked at the Monero chart
again and yeah, Tyler pulled it up. It's one of the better charts I've seen in terms of bullish
versus bearish. This thing is looking ready to break out again. I've always been bullish on
privacy. I think it makes a ton of sense. I think it's one of the original reasons we had crypto. You don't want
states or governments or anyone to be able to seize your funds. You want to be able to transact
and exchange value in a private manner. I think that's critical to society. And I've always been
excited about it. For whatever reason, the market has not been excited about it until recently.
We've gone through kind of these different waves of people caring about privacy and normally just correlated with the price going up
on privacy. So I'm generally not as bullish, but I hope it becomes something. I mean, my issue
when thinking about privacy outside of crypto is that we're constantly trading in our privacy for convenience.
That's the trade that basically everyone is making with almost all of their life. So why would it be
different in crypto? And maybe there is a segment, there definitely is a segment in crypto that cares
immensely about this, but will that be enough to buoy the price action? I'm not sure. So I hope it
works out. I hope it's something
that is a big trend um are you guys bullish in privacy for 2026 i'm like i'm at a point now
where i feel like i need to have like 100 zcash and 100 monero just thrown in a wallet that i
forget about forever and if something happens with those you know 100 of each coins something
great happens and i'm happy if If I need to get out of
a jam, I got a little bit of a jam
bag. And then other than that,
I don't feel confident enough
to put a ton of money into it. But I do feel
like I should have some
get out of jam bag with them.
So I'm holding
a couple hundred Zcash right now
and I need to probably
have some Monero. But I'm kind of looking at it likeash right now, and I need to probably have some inero.
But I'm kind of looking at it like I don't want to have a big portion
of my portfolio in it, but I do see more value than I did in previous years
of just having a little bit set aside that I'm kind of not actively checking
or worrying about.
I think that's where I am.
I'm still somewhat biased towards zcash
as the top dog here but like could there be a newcomer so so the thing to be bullish on monero
is that in all the semi illicit things i've seen or dabbled in, people want Monero. They don't seem to want
Zcash. So in terms of true privacy, I still feel like Monero is the leader there. I do think Zcash
has a better institutional narrative with the Winklevosses and the Dats and people who have a lot of social clout pushing it.
But I do think if you hold some Zcash,
you should hold some Monero as well,
and it's not best to pick one or the other
if you're actually like a privacy maxi.
Then you've got new protocols being spun up
to bring some of these privacy stuff interesting
but like the lindiness of your privacy network is very important and like the fact that monero has
been the lindy illicit privacy network for the whole time i've been in crypto like that to me is not going to be unseated by anything new in the next decade
yeah i agree with your thoughts it feels like stack some spot like i don't want to be 5x long
no you don't want to be levered long but like start quietly stack it put it away look come
back to it in 2028 it's kind of the view peter one thing i want to come back to it
when our government is socialist and they're trying to take more of your money um like that
that's kind of my thought just quick so like near-term future and outlook so we're facing
the sailor strategy exclusion from the msci i think january 15th is the date for that i could
be wrong but it's mid-January.
And then two weeks after that, we're facing a government shutdown.
So January is going to be bumpy.
We prayed, we puked for a Santa rally.
It doesn't look like it's coming.
There's not much time left for that to happen,
even though historically today is the day where stocks actually start to
march up towards all time highs.
I was looking,
I shared the data behind that.
But then Bob Lucas,
who I think my read on Bob is he,
he reads the price action.
He interprets it.
He has his views,
but then he also just like reacts to the actual trend and what's happening.
And he is now saying 2022,
2026 four year bear cycle,
no new highs.
That's where the dads push things up higher than they would necessarily
would have gone.
But it bodes well for the next cycle,
at least first half of it into late 2028,
which is far out there and probably not the news that a lot of folks want
to hear mid December,
basically like 2026 is going to be rough,
but that lines up with your view about midterms,
if you think Dems coming into power in the midterms,
which is probably a favorite scenario right now is.
You can check prediction markets on that,
Let me like,
what are the best ones here um there's a couple last i saw it's like the house the senate
yeah i'll search these up um i'm seeing individual markets
there's one i think like who will win the house
Okay here we are
Oh DEMs are 77% to win the house
So if you think that's
neutral bearish
maybe it's not but I'm saying if that is your lean
then it's hard to be mega bulled up in the Q4 2026 unless you think other factors are going to outweigh that.
There's going to be a lot of liquidity plowed into the market.
That is the biggest thing to be bullish about just on assets from a nominal perspective.
be bullish about just on assets from a nominal perspective. But again, to me, the big thing that
is happening overall that you just have to be aware of is crypto is no longer the shiny object.
It just has to create real value. It's no longer just going to win purely on speculation.
Speculation will still be a big part of it, but it's not the shiny object uh ai is we'll see how
that plays out i think that's another risk and bull case i would lean more bullish than on the
risk side personally but for how things play out is just you know as the capx been overdone all
the circular spending there's a lot of smoke around open AI certainly easy to paint the bear case for
that to me I'm still quite
bullish having
you know I'm doing like AI training
I love learning how to code with it
I use AI in a lot
of my daily life now
with the LLMs I think the VLMs are going
to be unbelievable
I own a Tesla
I think the robotics and AI is like the real huge unlock that we'll see in the next five years.
So there's a lot of things to be really positive about.
And I'm generally pretty optimistic.
I think technology is a reason people are so excited about kind of human beings and like where we go.
That's just like always how we win is technology.
So I'm still going to bet on that.
But there are reasons to be concerned about that.
That's another thing to look at in terms of where, you know,
bullish or bearish crypto is just like, how does that play out, you know, in 2026?
Real quick, you brought up Tesla.
So I shared this market.
This is a fun one that I just saw today when I was looking through.
Tesla unsupervised full self-driving by June 30th at 76%.
Dude, I just might vote no on all these.
Just as a hedge, or you don't think it's coming?
I don't think it's coming.
I don't think it's coming.
Oh, I think it's coming.
Oh, I think it's coming.
I will bet highly against that.
I will bet highly against that.
Elon told us like five, six years ago
that fucking Tesla was going to be an autonomous Uber
that has its own cash flow and pays for itself.
And that was like before I could even dream of owning a Tesla
because I was broke.
The only regulatory hurdles are going to keep this from resolving, yes,
in my view.
The tech is ready.
It could be doing this today is my view um waymo is actively expanding it's like how does this actually resolve if it's
anywhere in the country yeah we don't need to get tied up to the specifics of this market but i guess
where i was going with that i drive this stuff all the time like the self-driving
is unbelievable they have these cars now that don't have drivers in austin it's happening like
it it's there it's just i think this market is properly priced the only thing that can
slow down is regulation and the the way that regulation amplifies and accelerates is, you know, these outlier horrible events. I mean,
all we need is like a bunch of people to die in a self-driving accident and then things will change.
But it's exponentially safer. I think it's one of the coolest things in society. I think for sure
in the next 10 years, you'll get in a car, you'll have like a couch or some comfortable seat a table and the car is just
going to drive you everywhere uh it's absolutely insane the leading cause of death in the u.s for
people under the age of 40 is car accidents that's going to completely go away hopefully in the 2030s
um that's my my optimistic uh thought and then it's really cool how far self-driving has come.
When you look how safe airplanes are,
there's no reason that we shouldn't be able to figure that out
with cars and everything else.
Man, Tesla is up 27% here today,
but off the bottom, it's up over 100% now.
Where I was going with that prediction market is
I think that's going to be a big unlock.
I tweeted this yesterday.
As soon as they roll out their marketing campaign it says you can text and drive like everyone's
going to go nuts because guess what i live in a suburb and every 16 year old girl i see driving
a jeep is on our phone uh so when she can do that safely and i'm stereotyping here i realize that
uh but when when they when these kids and everyone
I think most people generally have their phones in their labs
probably at this point as well
they're distracted driving as soon as you can just do it
and the car says
yeah you can actually do this
it's going to be bullish for Tesla
that's my view
maybe that's
various cryptos.
There's going to be more other assets to look at.
Well, a little TBD on that one.
Well, we've gone through the outlook.
We've kind of talked through the year.
I guess one interesting talking point,
I'm curious for your guys' thoughts on this.
this. Decrypt name Trump crypto person of the year 2025.
Did crypt name Trump crypto person of the year 2025?
And I shared my thoughts in my newsletter this morning.
I encourage folks to go to check that out. They're interested.
I think there's a couple of ways to take this discussion. One is like,
do you think anyone had a larger impact on crypto in 2025?
I think it's hard to say anyone had a larger impact.
I think where the discussion comes in is, is it net positive or net negative?
Deez, I feel like you've got some thoughts on this.
I'm curious.
I feel like if you're going just off of broad impact,
it's probably directionally correct.
But if you're going off of positive impact,
I don't think it's close to correct.
I still look at the Trump and Melania shitcoin days
as like 9-11 in my head.
Like top two most traumatic days of my life, 9-11 and then Melania launch.
Yeah, I know that's his wife and not him, but I mean, they're the same fucking people.
Um, so yeah, net, I, I honestly think Trump is a net negative for crypto, uh, from, for
So yeah, net.
the next like five years.
And then maybe in like five plus years, we'll argue he was beneficial.
But I think from sentiment and the polarization angle, it's a net negative
peter do you have thoughts on that positive net negative
probably not negative i mean i'll never forget where i was i had just gone to the gym after
staying up all night really thankful for for you guys uh definitely my biggest misplay of the entire
cycle was just the greed after uh uh the trump stuff because i was so firmly in the
campus of the inauguration uh i felt great about it and i was really positioned well uh had taken
a lot of risk and just had mapped out exactly what i was going to do and then we get the trump coin
made a bunch of money real quick every time you do do that, you just, I don't even say it.
For me, it's normally not greed.
It's just like, I don't even know how to frame it.
It's, you get overconfident, I guess, when things go really well.
And then I was just like, okay, well, this is happening.
Like, clearly I misjudged what's going to happen with this administration.
It was so easy to get so excited about what was going to transpire.
And man, just totally misplated.
And one of the low points for me for sure was I had finally gone to the gym.
I'd just been basically up all night, slept for like an hour with all the Trump stuff.
And then finally went to the gym to just try to like work out, try to free my mind.
And as soon as I get there the melania token
drops everything breaks and i lost a ton of money and then didn't sell enough solana and whatever
else all these things compounded to basically ruin my initial plan which in hindsight was a really
good plan it's incredible how hard it is to stick to something so simple. It's like you were saying on this show for a month or two,
we're going to sell the inauguration.
It's going to be great.
Very simple plan.
Sell the inauguration.
Three words.
We can't execute it because prices go up.
Our monkey brain is like, oh, we're so wrong.
This is going to keep going up forever.
And we don't follow our plan. And the next thing you know, we're so wrong. Like, this is going to keep going up forever. And we don't follow our plan.
And the next thing you know,
we're down 50% from all time.
Yeah, I mean,
Salon hit 290 at peak,
but let's call it.
You had to really catch it
to sell it there, right?
But it was...
But it went back there
in fucking September.
We had another chance almost.
Two chances at 250.
I mean, in hindsight,
selling the inauguration... Oh, no, mean, in hindsight, selling the inauguration.
Oh, no, no.
You can say selling the inauguration.
Honestly, selling Melania, just cutting everything,
was a good trade.
Trade of the year.
I hate to say that.
As someone who did not execute that trade.
And there's been opportunities, of course, over the last 10 months.
But from a macro perspective,
if you sold everything that day,
you were net up
because everything's down.
If you sold it all
and then became a privacy maxi
at any point in the next six months,
that would have been,
that's the trade.
Yeah, if you hit that.
That's a very tough parlay to hit very very
kudos to anyone who hit that parlay i can't imagine there's many no but um but that was a
real warning sign like that wasn't one like that was a catchable warning sign i guess is my point
right it's like that plus then uh the malay thing which i was in vegas fortunately uh i saw it and i
fortunately didn't get hurt on that i know a lot of people got really hurt that was
really the start of the downfall broadly for solana and then it kind of bounced with everything
else in in september but uh that was another one correlated with melania that i think was
another huge red flag because then hayden came out and was doing all the content and there's just very clear that there's a lot of nothing's
ever happened to him he's just walking around dogging it like it's crazy i don't get it i
wouldn't be able to sleep at night i mean between pastor knack and and some of the other people
we've had come up this cycle it's like man we've really put money in the hands of some of the worst people i mean i guess we do that every cycle
yeah i didn't have scammer of the year award um no that would be uh those two are on it
probably probably the top two right i'd have to go through. I think it's like, yeah, Hayden would win scammer of the year in my head.
Or just saw saw heels in my DMs asking for me to loan him to soul.
Like, I don't know what's going on.
So I'll, but he gets honorable mention for fucking DMing me once a week for a year straight with no reply.
Let's turn this around.
Let's end on maybe a little bit of a lighter note,
at least a fun note.
So I walked through.
We got a lot of good stuff to talk about still.
Can we go to one other thing
that I think was an obvious sign too?
That we talked about briefly in the chat
and the one thing I actually did do well
and I still think a huge overhang on the market
10-10. 1010, granted it didn't impact a lot of the retail, certainly didn't impact institutions.
It massively impacted the crypto native and the people who are really active on chain
and some of these market makers and a lot of the people that are the lifeblood of how
crypto moves and behaves. And I still think that's a huge overhang and that's a big part of the people that are the lifeblood of how crypto moves and behaves.
And I still think that's a huge overhang.
And that's a big part of the reason we're seeing this price action.
And there's a ton of people out there, given where crypto is, that are tax loss harvesting.
And there's a lot of negative things in the short term, which to me is why I think there's
some asymmetry to the upside in Q1,
especially if we didn't have the government overing. I think a lot of people are selling to take
losses. I think a lot of people got really hurt on 1010. And that's another just really big sign.
I think in general, not even just with crypto, but if you ever see something systematic happen,
that's normally a good time to take risk off.
When there's a systematic event that really hurts liquidity specifically,
something to pay very, very, very close attention to.
Yeah, we even got a debt cap right after it too to exit.
It was hype back at 50 bucks.
Yeah, everything.
I remember specifically looking at a good portion of my hype stack
and thinking like, oh, next month is like long-term capital gains.
Is it more beneficial for me to sell at 50% here and take,
or to sell at 50 and to take 40% of my, you know, gain off the table?
Or is it more beneficial for me to sell it next month
and only have to pay 20%?
And obviously the answer
was a screaming
take the short-term capital gains
buck holding for long-term.
That was an important lesson
one that I kind of whiffed on.
Dude, I've learned that lesson
every cycle for three cycles.
I still fuck it up.
I've talked about it at length.
I've learned the lesson many times.
And when the time comes down to it,
I'm like, yeah, I'm a month away.
How much worse could it be?
And it's like, oh, it could be like 50% worse.
All right, well, maybe next time I'll learn again.
It's such a trick too, right?
So we had this systemic event.
Everything rebounded.
It's like bitcoin went 100 it
went back to 115 in that moment you're like okay you know we're in the clear the fundamentals are
all still the same but obviously it wasn't and then and then november happened
and every chart is basically the same except monero and see and fucking gold so when does it resolve i guess
do you think do you think it's resolved now there's just other forces at play or do you
think we're still working our way through it i feel like it feels like we're working our way
through it until the end of the year for sure working our way like p said, you have a bunch of people who have to tax loss harvest stuff.
They might still have things on their books that they're down on now,
and they got to be capital efficient going into the year.
So that's still kind of bearish.
But why does it change in January, I guess?
Well, then people have to redeploy.
People have to start making wins again,
and they don't have an incentive in January to take losses.
And I think people are going to be eager to deploy capital.
And my base case, again, easily could be wrong.
Of course, none of this is financial advice, but I think we'll see a ton of liquidity.
I think we're going to see a very dovish Fed share.
That market's moved a lot that's something else we
could talk about but uh i still think assets likely to win that one personally uh i think we'll see
some form of helicopter money like i mentioned before and oh has it's moving back to 54 yeah nice i was gonna bet more on that i wanted the 40 cents that's so annoying
um damn it that's been your market i'm like really tilted about that i was gonna go bet a lot on uh
i he was 40 cents like whatever very recently uh and i was like a 40 and not one pass number one
task to do uh after this show it literally happened during the
show yeah that's so annoying but but basically this administration has to do everything possible
to make the economy home that is the that is the number one thing that drives voting and sentiment
and they're gonna throw the kitchen sink at it is my base case. We've seen them do all sorts of grifty things.
I don't, I expect that to be the same.
So I would, if that's happening, markets are going to go up.
Like if they just flood the market with tons of liquidity and try everything they can to get the economy going, I just don't see how that's not a positive for asset prices in
the beginning part of the year.
And then we'll see with the midterms
like we talked about but so that's my basics for q1 it's a bullish q1 maybe h1 and then
this is a setup for selling man go away oh yeah and enjoy your summer how valuable is it to just
touch grass and like be happy and into draft 500 best ball teams so
that you get the sweat 100 of on week 15 only so that five can go through because you didn't take
kyle pitts enough like yeah i can't imagine yeah it's not as fun um we might have some time on our
hands i i just to me it's one other thing
that is a huge takeaway
after I de-risked big time after
October 10th my sleep got way better
like understand the game you're trying to play
understand the life you're trying
to live and obviously everyone's
in a different position and we've talked about that a ton
that's something I always hammer home is
you can change your life do it
and then think about what game you're trying to play.
The number on the screen going up and down isn't going to generally bring you
happiness unless it brings you freedom.
It's a good lesson.
And I was still personally a little bit too levered up on things,
not like 20X hyperliquid leverage, but other forms.
And I just took pretty much all that off and
similar to what you just said like just kind of a layer of stress just resolved gone away
just kind of get through the rest of this year i've got the core positions i'm holding
and then we'll be looking at you know moves into next year um And I still think there's going to be opportunity.
I think this ICO wave is actually a really fun one.
And folks now have a chance to actually invest in projects.
And you get to choose.
You get to see what's their pitch.
What are their revenue numbers, all this.
And you have a chance to play VC, so to speak.
Do you want to buy in or not?
And it seems like we're getting more and more of that,
which is a fun new trend.
Well, I've enjoyed this discussion a lot.
I promised the folks at war.
So maybe we'll do somewhat rapid fire.
So I've kind of come up with some categories.
I've got some options.
We can all kind of vote.
First up, crypto app of the year.
On my list, I've got hyper liquid pump fun
polymarket fomo and kaido curious what folks thoughts on crypto app of the year
see i forgot about kaia i like literally forgot kaido existed um i jokingly mentioned when you
you threw this in the chat that my answer for everything was hype or liquid hype or something related to hype.
But I think you can make a really good argument.
It's Polymarket.
I would have no problems with that.
For me personally, the apps I use the most are Polymarket and FOMO.
So that would be my two.
But I think FOMO is a little bit more of a fun thing
to say. Like saying Polymarket or hype is just kind of like, it's like pretty consensus. So just
for shits and giggles, I'll say FOMO. And just for, you know, clarity, I'm not an investor in FOMO at
all. I have no capital tied to if they succeed or fail. Yeah, I think you can make a sort of fun, like surprise.
I thought social trading was pretty good, but I find myself using FOMO more than all
the other social trading apps we've used before then, including ones I've advised that have
been acquired.
So I only have good things to say about it.
Peter, what's your vote?
Polymarket by a mile, and it's not close.
And I think polymarket and prediction markets
are going to have an insane influence
on society going forward.
It's obviously going to change.
We'll get some guardrails.
We'll get more regulation.
But being able to speculate on everything
and then being able to specifically speculate
on specific variables is immensely valuable.
And I think that it's going to grow a ton and it's already had a huge impact.
I mean, look at when we're talking about things, we're going to see what the Polymarket odds are.
I think Polymarket will effectively be the biggest content company in the world because the best content is the markets.
Hard to argue.
On Polymarket, I think there is a ton of people who literally just use Polymarket for sentiment
and like probability, but they don't trade on it at all.
When you look at like the amount of views that Polymarket gets compared to the biggest
apps, it's like they're top two, three they're they also dwarf kalshi um at least
on like website visits from what i've seen and actually it was just for a second i think that's
where kalshi is off on some of their messaging it's like i don't i don't think everyone wants
to bet their friends on like every conflict or every debate they have and i think there's
large cohorts of people who care but they just want to know what the odds are. And they love the fact that they can get real odds on events that people have
put capital up,
but that doesn't mean every single person in the world actually wants to have
bet on that market.
They just want to know where it's at.
And I'll be very curious how the messaging around all this continues to trend,
but wrapping this up,
I think the only contention against polymarket would be if they were the app of the year in 2024.
And if you point to the breakout around the election.
But I think the growth they've had this year and the explosion in valuations and...
I would push back hard on that, Tyler, just because of what you just said.
2020, they were massive, too.
They did one thing really well,
is the election.
Same thing in 2024.
It's hit massive growth
in other markets for the first time.
Someone who's been heavily involved
in polymarket for a while now.
All right, next up, token of the year.
This was a harder list to come up with,
especially after I showed
the year-to-date numbers.
I've got my list,
Fartcoin, Hype, Zeke, Trump. list to come up with especially after i show the year-to-date numbers um i've got my list fart coin
hype zeke trump um i'm open to other suggestions on what might be the token of the year there's
certainly ways to define this and everyone might have their own definition um that's
important token of the year best potential trade of the year? I think most important token of the year is hype.
I'm definitely biased.
Maybe Trump is the most important token of the year
for the reasons I don't like,
but I think those two are the clear ones.
Clearly hype, in my opinion,
given the trend that started,
not just from the price action standpoint,
but the buyback is clearly how a lot of these companies are going to,
that's a trend that I think is inevitable.
And yeah, the alignment with their ecosystem and community,
I think is really smart.
And have a comment honorable mention
punks are absolutely punks are for multiple reasons one it was innovative and two i mean
it was public on the timeline at 1 million ran to 300 million it was at 300x
yeah i think i'd say wrecked is my other uh yeah you know very biased honorable mention but
had an insane year trump is on my list is from like the trading perspective
like will we ever get another op like that where you could throw infinite size and hit a 70x in two
days i don't know it's gonna be harder to beat even if we we have any other president make a
token it's not trump making a token which which makes that hard to beat you would basically i
think the only thing that could maybe beat that is like an Elon Musk
token that he put out,
but I don't know what that looks like.
We'll see. Airdrop of the year.
This was a trickier one.
Not a whole lot of amazing airdrops.
I've got Meteora,
Kaido, Boop,
and Monad.
The Pengu count?
I think that was last year i think that was last year um i mean in terms of size kaido was i think the biggest airdrop i got this year and i it's funny
i forgot about it um in terms of like the most people got it
I feel like Monon gave
everybody a few hundred bucks but like it wasn't
a few hundred to like a few thousand
and then Boop
like fuck Boop I made 20 grand
off Boop but like that was a
a fucking KOL scam
token that they put together
and they're like hey we're just gonna let
KOLs who are incentivized to pump
this dog shit token that everyone knows they're going to dump
to get this other token that everyone knows they're going to dump.
That was stupid.
So I would say Boop is the dumbest airdrop of the year.
I would say Monad impacted the most people I know.
And I would say Kaido in terms of value that that I actually got was, was by far Kaido.
any thoughts on your end?
The matrix.
He's back.
My computer froze there for a second.
I'd say pump, I guess it would be my airdrop of the year,
even though it hasn't done well.
They didn't have an airdrop.
I love that. I love that. Pump airdrop of the year that didn't have.
I guess that's true. It's not an airdrop.
I was thinking about the Pump token launch.
Yeah, it was not an airdrop.
I like that. I like Pump airdrop of the year. Why?
Because they didn't do it.
They didn't do one.
So ironic that i said that um man i i don't have any i mean the one that was most impactful to me was meteora but i thought it was i thought it was kind of clever how they did it with uh
the pools the dlmms that they had set up but man i guess no good air jobs
and pump pumps had a bad bad run i still think
that's an interesting asset to follow which it's at its lows basically the lowest is ever traded
outside the wick so if it's there's ever time we'll see i'm not i'm not catching that my resident
yeah are you still holding i'm still a pump fool. We're going down with the ship.
Well, I guess that's a good saying.
Letdown of the year.
This is a juicy one.
Pump airdrop.
Pump airdrop is on my list.
Yeah, Melania is by far, I think, just...
To me, it literally felt like 9-11.
It felt like it changed the fabric of reality for me like 10-10
was you know terrible nfts have had a terrible run since 10-10 um the pump hairdrop hasn't happened
info 5 has completely ruined the timeline with ai slot bots and replies and it gets to the point
where people like us we don't even respond to half the messages we get because we don't really think it's another person.
And we don't want to waste time talking to,
an LLM that isn't us in Grok or Claude or fucking Gemini or whatever.
So all those are terrible letdowns,
but like by far the most annoying one to me is still Melania.
I think Melania is like the obvious winner of this.
let's just talk about the second one because I think there are other big
Like it's impossible.
Like Melania is the biggest letdown of the decade.
I think the second one for me would be info five then just because I,
I think it's not only info five to blame,
but it's the Twitter creator payout incentives with like getting 5 million
impressions and stuff.
But that has like,
I'm someone who likes to use Twitter for hours a day.
I've been using Twitter for 4 to 16 hours a day for the last basically 10 years.
And it has never been more useless
than it has been this year.
It's like information and also just like conversation platform.
And I think a lot of that is to do
with the info fi incentives and the twitter creator antennas stealth i don't have a job i sit on my
desk for 12 plus hours a day like that's 16 hours a day is light work next year i'm gonna be a dad
so it's gonna be a little different but until then yeah it's light work i think twitter's at
a real crossroads they got they got to fix this. Between the algo and feeding rage bait
and bots everywhere.
Dude, I woke up this weekend
with four shootings and Trump saying,
you know, this guy's terrible
and it's good his son killed him.
Like, fuck this algorithm, man.
Peter, do you have any thoughts on letdown of the year?
Well, I need toania by country mile.
I mean, and it wasn't as correlated.
It was obviously different teams,
and who knows how much Trump and her discussed it,
but it was just the way it came out.
It just, we already knew it was a grift,
but then the grift just looked even worse.
And then the image, right?
The image that's just going to be ingrained in our minds.
Let's see if I can find it.
But I think, Deez, I actually agree with you.
I'm just going to quickly share this.
This image just gets violent reactions anytime that anyone here sees this at this point.
Just so brutal.
InfoFi, I was an InfoFi bull and I just thought it was promising.
And I think their vision for it was a good one.
And I think they had a lot of positive intentions.
And then the unintended
consequences just spiraled.
I think that's been a frustrating part of this year.
And it's, I mean, it's had a major impact on CT as well. Right.
So it's had some pretty big impacts.
Those were the main ones. Like I had data of the year.
That's not super interesting. I think Bitminer probably wins that.
NFT of the year. That's not super interesting. I think Bitminer probably wins that. NFT of the year.
I'll toss that to you.
NFT of the year. I actually have a good answer for this.
Well, actually, okay. There actually are a few.
was a legit one.
Regular Animals.
I think Moonbird is on
the list. GVCbird is on the list.
GVC is probably on the list.
You got a winner?
In one single NFT?
Or in a group? NFT collection.
I like regular animals a lot
in that I'm always going to be biased
and say Sam,
like anything regarding
the masquerade was that this year I remember was yeah it was yes that was this year um
so master and then maybe I would say like the infinite objects um get together in Toledo
like the the whole museum exhibit for all the generative art and like that that to me was like it's not one nft
but that was by far the highlight of nfts this year for me was that exhibit in toledo
so between mass and regular animals in terms of new projects like pfp is i think it's pretty
easily gbc yeah um but they lose compared to the others i think yeah i i do i i think regular
animals is really interesting i i bought one for like six years on a couple of days after they
came out when do we buy punks that's a good question i'm biased to say around 50 grand
um i think i saw one trade for 77 yesterday or something so we're we're getting maybe close to
the 50 grand range but uh i would say if you can get
one for 50 grand that's a it's a decent bet and they're really i am i mean i'm not bearish on the
palo alto punks opening in january um i don't think that's gonna hurt so 80k for a punk they
know they really sell out oh dude after 10 10 mean, they were like 200K, right?
And then when people need to get rid of stuff for liquidity,
I mean, the punk's going to be one of the first things to go, sadly.
Unless you're my dumbass.
It's not going to be one of the first things to go,
but for most people.
Yeah, let's sell the 200K picture.
When we're saying goodbye to 2025,
I will be happy to say goodbye to some of the top blasting I did.
And top blasting a punk is going to be on my resume now on chain for a long time.
So that's going to be my favorite.
Peter with the smile pipe.
Dude, mine is way worse than yours.
Like, it's just absolutely egregious.
Coming back to the same guy that I've top blasted before,
that I just, it's such a...
That's like me not selling
for short-term capital gains knowing that i'm gonna lose more waiting for long-term capital
gains but i still do it that's peter with the punk that's my biggest regret by far and it's not all
the timing stuff or you know i said sell the inauguration a million times, had it all planned out. There's things that cost me more money,
but top blasting that punk was so freaking bad.
I guess if that's your biggest regret of the year,
it was probably a pretty decent year, though,
but it still sucked.
All right, well, we got through the rewards.
Awards, rather.
The rewards. Yeah, the Here's Our Sign award. Now it rather. And the rewards.
Here's our sign award.
Now it's time for some reports.
All right.
So we want to thank our loyal listeners.
so we're going to do five giveaways.
Bruce or Charlie,
if you 2,500 already, I run about 2,500 bucks.
this is two morning minute affiliates,
different tiers.
I think we're going to do one spin just for silver,
a couple of spins for bronze, and then two for random.
The reason we do this, we try to find ways to filter out the bots.
It's a hard problem to solve.
We're just doing this to be nice.
So I don't want to hear complaints.
Let's give it a spin.
All right, first word.
Is that sugary?
All right, sugary.
So hopefully we can get a look at their yeet handle as well.
But Sugary, if you're here, you win.
All right, Charlie, let's – we might need to evaluate that one,
but let's keep going.
Let's get the next one. sorry there's glare on my screen our sonic fan helped me win
that guy's luck is is very good with this did that person win last week either last week or
two weeks ago yo fat fungible if you bitch and win we're gonna re-roll it dude
we understand no one really cares we're giving out free money i'm just saying it now if we win
and you hit a winner we're gonna fucking re-roll it so throw that out there all right producer
let's get the next one
all right so we've got two winners sugary our sonic fan help me win
oh man drake was so close yeah oh man drake one off no one knows self definitely no one
no sell you won no one no self all right um i No one, no self. All right.
I don't think that one is one recently.
All right.
So this looks like a different wheel.
So maybe this is a heavier weighted one.
What's that silver wheel look like?
Is there two people on it?
That's fine.
We can do a spin for two people.
We're just doing it.
This is just one.
It's not like it's all five.
Yeah, no, I love it. I it they wanted they wanted the threshold tyler they wanted a threshold you wanted to thresholds here here you go here you go all right shouldn't be shouldn't cut
all right so i'm pretty sure charlie's telling me we need to re-roll the second winner i'm sorry our
sonic fan help me win since you won last week.
You can't win two weeks.
I'm sorry.
We got to, we got to help spread the love.
So we're going to do a re-roll for that one.
So what, we got two more rolls, Charlie.
Let's, let's let them rip.
Oh, fat and fungible oh man you're
you apologize i'd let them win it and say merry christmas all right fat because you apologize
you get it uh some nice karma pay it forward we'll just say that pay it forward this holiday season all right
are we gonna do one more charlie all right this is our last one guys and we're gonna sign
all right guy you won as well those are our five winners i got some questions in the chat the
producer and team will reach out to you i'll work with you and the yeet account to get this all
sorted but congrats you won gentlemen thanks for doing the show all year uh it's been fun
i love you boys i love talking about this stuff it's it's good for accountability
and uh hopefully we can help some people. Thank you. Wrapping up. Peter was just giving us some flowers there. I love doing the show with Peter every week.
Deez, love doing the show with you.
Best holiday wishes to you and the family.
I want to shout out to all of our listeners.
Thank you all for tuning in this year.
Listen to our thoughts in the markets, listening to us ramble a bit as well.
Wish you all a great holiday season.
And we'll be back 2026.
Until then, enjoy your holiday.
Have a great new year.
Talk to you soon.

Insights

P