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NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;32;07
Derek
I just love starting these podcast episodes with, with the numbers going up on the screen. It's so. It always fires me up. It's Friday morning. I'm. I'm here. I'm here on the West coast. It's about 830, am. And, the markets look good. The markets look very good.
00;00;32;10 - 00;00;38;04
Aaron
I, I happened to close CoinMarketCap with what's been going on with ripping it just across the board.
00;00;38;10 - 00;01;13;20
Derek
Well, I think there was like a very healthy consolidation after I think market's pulled a lot of, a lot of exciting news forward after the election. I think there is a little bit of like, front running or at least, enthusiasm for the next administration and their policies around finance and markets and in particular crypto. And I think what we found in December was a lot of healthy consolidation in terms of resetting and try to really think deeply about how markets would would work in 2025 and beyond.
00;01;13;20 - 00;01;32;02
Derek
And I think markets were digesting some of kind of like that, that first move. And so December was really it was flat. And in many ways, from a narrative perspective and from a price perspective and didn't help that I think our larger markets were where we're seeing kind of some end of the year sell offs there.
00;01;32;03 - 00;01;42;27
Derek
You know, I think it's a new year. It's year, it's a new tax year. A lot of the obligations have have already been thought through. And Matt and and it's now January 3rd and people are excited again.
00;01;43;04 - 00;01;47;05
Aaron
They're bullish. It feels like there's a bullish sentiment floating in the air.
00;01;47;08 - 00;01;51;02
Derek
I think that's right. What about what about you guys. How are you thinking about everything.
00;01;51;08 - 00;02;17;08
Aaron
Well, that's a I think that's a good, you know, intro. So welcome to kind of episode 12 of Net Society here with Derek and Chris on Net Society we talk about lots of different things, including crypto, culture. Today we're going to dive in and chat a bit about some predictions for 2025. So before we get started, friendly reminder that nothing we say here represents the organizations that we're affiliated with.
00;02;17;12 - 00;02;27;08
Aaron
It's in our individual capacity, and nothing should be construed as investment advice. So should we dive into it? Some 2025 predictions. You guys ready? Chris, what's your prediction for this year?
00;02;27;10 - 00;02;58;03
Chris
Well, look, first of all, I just want to say like starting the episode off of the intro is really freeing. You know, now I can, just really run wild knowing I've got the NSA dealer air cover out of the way. Look, I'm excited for this year. I think it's going to be a big year of integration. A lot of pieces coming together, people finding new ways to combine them, maybe a lot of just latent potential, finally reaching a point where it can be applied.
00;02;58;03 - 00;03;06;06
Chris
And so I don't have a ton of specifics going into this year. I just feel, you know, very broadly good about the whole damn thing.
00;03;06;08 - 00;03;28;00
Aaron
Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat. Just I happened just because it's the way my brain works. I put together a list of 2025 predictions, and then I, I asked, oh one pro to grade what if viewed each one of those predictions, or grade each one of those predictions and give a probability of how how likely it thought these events would come true?
00;03;28;00 - 00;03;28;21
Aaron
Should we go through it?
00;03;28;22 - 00;03;47;21
Derek
Let's do it. I'm happy you did this. I love I love the way you, you put these lists together, and I'm looking at them now, Erin. And I love that that you've got a little percentage. Is that the AI has predicted the accuracy and efficiency around the prediction. So why don't you run through each one? You give what the AI predicted, and maybe we respond.
00;03;47;21 - 00;03;50;18
Derek
How does we all, all three of us respond? Does that sound fun to you guys?
00;03;50;22 - 00;03;55;22
Aaron
So I was thinking slightly different. I'll run through it. You guys react, and then I reveal that,
00;03;55;24 - 00;03;56;27
Derek
Like it? Let's do that.
00;03;57;01 - 00;04;12;11
Aaron
All right, so the predictions, I kind of broken down into a couple buckets crypto, some AI predictions, some crypto, plus AI, predictions and some culture. I don't know if we'll get through all them, but let's go. All right, first one prediction continued eath strength and NFT market coming back. What do you guys think.
00;04;12;15 - 00;04;20;00
Derek
Chris you want to take this one first? You're the, teaser for, the big market Vol or an NFT strength.
00;04;20;03 - 00;04;22;00
Chris
What a softball. To start this one out with.
00;04;22;00 - 00;04;23;00
Aaron
We gotta start easy.
00;04;23;04 - 00;04;53;23
Chris
Yeah, I, I agree with this. I think, look, people came out of the gate swinging this year. The folks who have bags to pump are very committed to pumping their bags. You know, we saw 65, 29ft, some, you know, a 60 tweet mega thread around the relative market size of these things versus everything else. And it fired folks up in the active, I don't know, categorizing and reifying their NFTs, and it's good for the NFT space to have that level of things.
00;04;53;23 - 00;05;13;05
Chris
Gang, that wing of the party that just wants to be bullish and support the historical canon. But more broadly than that, we got a lot going on. We have a lot of different ways to apply these things. There's a real comfort with them and, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. And so, you know, the first half of that prediction was around each strength.
00;05;13;05 - 00;05;17;01
Chris
And look, we're all eth axes here. We love our Ethereum.
00;05;17;03 - 00;05;17;28
Aaron
It's handsome.
00;05;18;01 - 00;05;35;18
Chris
It's a beautiful boy. Beautiful boy. But when everything starts coming together right. Like ether is the canvas. It is the operating system on which these things will all play out. And so I don't want to steal Derek's line. Derek, over to you. Let's fucking,
00;05;35;20 - 00;05;57;09
Derek
Yeah, I'll, I'll I mean, I enthusiastically agree with all that. I'll take both of those separately really quick, but they're very related. So in terms of each strength, I think one of the one of the big there's a lot of narratives right now. I think floating across the crypto space, there's I, there's a renewed interest in DeFi. And I think one of the there's I think bio I just saw went live today.
00;05;57;10 - 00;06;16;21
Derek
So decentralized science, which we've covered here on the podcast before, but I would say maybe the most important narrative for Ethereum over the next 12 months is its intersection with kind of the an institutional base. We've seen this. We've seen these pipes get built around the Bitcoin Spy ETF. We start to see those pipes get built with the spot ETH ETF.
00;06;16;26 - 00;06;39;05
Derek
And I think, you know, an important, important thing to keep an eye on. And I credit Ronin on. My team has been following this story very closely for the last six months. Is the incorporation of, you know, staking yields into kind of the ETF products, which would create like a a more interesting total or total return product than just providing investors a way to kind of rely solely on price appreciation.
00;06;39;12 - 00;07;02;15
Derek
It's a really unique kind of vehicle. And so I would probably at this point pegged the likelihood that we see these rewrites for these, these ETH ETF products to include staking yields. I'd probably put that at like a 70, 80% likelihood at some point over the next 6 to 12 months, which creates a really interesting demand driver for Ethereum and Ethereum beta.
00;07;02;15 - 00;07;23;27
Derek
And ETH as a institutional yield delivering product. So I would say that's part one of like why I think we see ETH strength is just like it's it's continued and renewed intersection with with institutional interest. Just given kind of like how unique ETH is as a asset. We talk about this a lot on on our NFT calls and our Dao calls over the last four years.
00;07;23;27 - 00;07;51;08
Derek
But there's a tremendous wealth effect that happens when the number goes up for peace and it starts to halo or out to eat beta. It goes to protocols, it goes to objects, it goes to early stage private deals, that are building on the EVM. And, and I fully expect that there is kind of positive momentum that, that that correlates back to high value NFTs and the Etherium ecosystem once that momentum starts to hit.
00;07;51;10 - 00;08;12;03
Derek
And so the NFT market, you know, it's something like 10 or $15 billion in the aggregate today, a large majority that operates on the EVM in Ethereum. And these assets are very Lenzi. We continue to see if it ends up sell for 40, 50 eath. We continue to see squiggle sell for 4 or 5 six years. We continue to sell Cryptopunks sell for 40, 45, 50 ETH.
00;08;12;06 - 00;08;43;21
Derek
And these economic behaviors have persisted for years at this point. And I and there's not that many of them. There's 10,000 punks. There's 512 autographs, there's only 10,000 squiggles. And you know, the the N for high value store store value objects on Ethereum is small. And so you start to see as culture starts to, and digital culture and crypto are all kind of start to see renewed interest as a result of the EVM and Ethereum economy starting to kind of rise again.
00;08;43;21 - 00;08;51;02
Derek
I could see a tremendous amount of attention go back to this asset class. So I totally agree, and I'm very excited.
00;08;51;06 - 00;09;13;25
Aaron
I obviously agree to that's why I did it and included this. So the AI also agrees. So they gave it a prediction amount of 65 to 75% likely. So this is O1 Pro. All right. Next one. And it's just because you touched on that before I had also had staking based ETF for Ethereum which it sounds like Derek you think that that's coming to pass Chris I don't know if you have a view on that.
00;09;13;28 - 00;09;15;00
Chris
It makes sense. It should.
00;09;15;05 - 00;09;37;12
Aaron
Yeah. Yes. And then I also agreed gave it a 65 to 75% likelihood. All right. Next one I think by the end of 2025 into 2026 we'll see kind of the rise of regulated ICOs. So not just ICOs. And token launches, but kind of like a legal pathway to actually launch and release and raise capital, related to a project using a token.
00;09;37;16 - 00;09;39;06
Aaron
What do you guys think of that one? Yeah.
00;09;39;09 - 00;09;41;02
Derek
You want to kick us off, Chris?
00;09;41;04 - 00;09;49;14
Chris
I mean, I'm not a DC policymaker. I have no idea where the fed bill stands. Who knows? Sorry, man. I'm over my skis here.
00;09;49;18 - 00;10;07;03
Derek
Yeah, I'll take a swing at it. And I don't have, like a strong view on this one way or the other. But I mean I mean, the SEC, as Aaron knows, Aaron's, the resident attorney for the for the Dao economy, but the SEC was really created with like a couple of mandates. But the most important one was to protect investors after the Great Depression.
00;10;07;07 - 00;10;29;28
Derek
And it created kind of guidelines and rulemaking and allowed them to kind of and we've we've been able to kind of chart their, their roles and responsibilities with case law over time. But really it's it's prevent fraud. It's to protect investors. It's to make sure markets. I think the third maybe mandate is, facilitate, you know, smoother, smoother frictions and contracts, but mostly it's to protect investors and prevent fraud.
00;10;30;00 - 00;10;56;01
Derek
And ICOs historically have been a way for teams to protocols, projects to launch economic, get allow retail to get economic exposure without maybe the disclosure or the available information that would I think the SEC would like to see that would reach that bar of, the bar that you see with disclosures when, you know, there's a regulated securities offering.
00;10;56;04 - 00;11;13;04
Derek
And as a result of that bar being so low in terms of giving retail the right types of information, there's been a lot of fraud that, like people can point to at the rise of ICOs in 2017 and 2018. And I think it's one of the reasons why we saw the pendulum swing away from that as a vehicle to raise capital.
00;11;13;10 - 00;11;36;16
Derek
Now, that being said, I think there's there's probably a hybrid approach where the right protection, the right level of protection starts getting baked into this concept of being able to raise capital globally. 24 seven on this database that is public, that anyone can read or write to. And I don't know exactly where those points are. I'd have to just like think about from a policy perspective what makes the most sense.
00;11;36;16 - 00;12;06;04
Derek
But I could definitely see let's call it like ICO plus. And and I think, Aaron, you call it regulated ICOs coming in favor so that we're not like throwing the baby out with the bathwater in terms of the benefits of being able to kind of spin up these projects in these protocols and allow network participants to participate and for capital to get raised unduly, you know, tempering some of those benefits, but making sure that the SEC is still able to kind of like, you know, do the do their dual mandate of protecting investors and overseeing, potential fraud.
00;12;06;06 - 00;12;28;01
Aaron
Yeah, exactly. I think it I think there's definitely a pathway to to kind of handle those dual mandates. The US is going to want to own the next generation of capital markets. You saw even the incoming president, do you know, basically an ICO. So I just think there's a pretty high likelihood that all those pieces come together and we see kind of regulated ICOs come back in a in a pretty big way.
00;12;28;05 - 00;12;51;13
Aaron
I tended to agree you gave it a 60 to 70% probability of coming true. Next one. This is a little bit more kind of regulation focused passage of stablecoin bill. Comprehensive token reform kind of related to the above law clarification on tax and accounting rules. I don't think there's that much to kind of say on that outside of what we said before, I predicted that, with a 70 to 80% likelihood, the.
00;12;51;13 - 00;13;07;26
Derek
Only thing I'll add to that, and I know we've talked about it on here, is like, I think is probably the first thing that happens is like, this is the stablecoin industry is absolutely ripping right now. It's up. I think something like 20 acts just in the last four years in terms of assets on chain and tax issues continue to burden.
00;13;08;03 - 00;13;19;17
Derek
Yeah, just like how people interact with this technology. And so to me, the the passage of some congressional bill around both of those points is probably like the first thing that happens, in this new administration.
00;13;19;24 - 00;13;44;16
Aaron
Yeah. I think, you know, probably the stablecoin bill is the most fully baked on, token reform, probably more discussion, I think, on the tax and accounting rules probably don't need anything congressional. They're just more guidance from the the IRS and and relative relative but relative bodies, related bodies I think as part of that, this was kind of another prediction that I think people talk about this as much as they probably should on, crypto Twitter.
00;13;44;16 - 00;14;07;25
Aaron
But I think more and more and more focus is, is going to be on tokenized securities. So kind of related to the above bills, I think you'll start to see more and more kind of infrastructure being placed around tokenized securities. I tended to to agree there with an 80 to 90% likelihood of that happening. All right. So that's kind of like the predictions and kind of the regulated side had a couple more broad market based ones.
00;14;07;29 - 00;14;16;10
Aaron
So Igen launches and the Avs market is growing. That's one of my predictions for 2025. What do you think?
00;14;16;18 - 00;14;25;09
Derek
I don't have a strong view here. I think that's probably right. Yeah. I'd be curious to hear what Chris thinks. You have a strong view on the, on the abs market. Chris.
00;14;25;12 - 00;14;47;17
Chris
Conceptually, it makes a ton of sense. You know, yield on yield provides a service. We just need some better tooling around it. We need to give it a little more time. I don't think I can did a particularly wonderful job of coming to market. You know, I think you're seeing there, I don't know, cryptography, engineering kind of bias coming through there, but like the rest of that will catch up and, you know, this will be out there.
00;14;47;23 - 00;15;06;07
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of my view. Not maybe not maybe there are some issues just kind of bringing it to market. People forget about that, especially in a bull run. I think the tech is super strong. If you assume that there's going to be, you know, staking based ETFs, then you can imagine, you know, I can even supercharging that.
00;15;06;12 - 00;15;27;24
Aaron
I said, more likely than not that that's going to happen 55 to 65%. So a little bit less optimistic on that one. But so more likely to happen than not. All right. Next one significant advancement in xlk tech and reduced block cost. So I think this is going to be a pretty big year for for xlk stuff. Just feels like it's kind of crossed the technical Rubicon.
00;15;27;28 - 00;15;52;12
Aaron
And we're going to really see some of the research and hard work that's gone into that sector really come to fruition. And that most, most notably just going to be super low cost transactions like across the board, whether that's like based Ethereum, whether that's, you know, Altus, I think you're going to really start to see like xlk stuff get implemented and incorporated and kind of act like the catalyst for broadband in the crypto ecosystem.
00;15;52;12 - 00;15;54;14
Aaron
So I feel pretty strongly about that one.
00;15;54;17 - 00;16;16;28
Derek
Yeah, I'll make one comment there, which is I would probably, maybe I would probably maybe halo that prediction out to kind of like all privacy preserving tech tech in some way. And that includes, to me things like TS and FH and, and a lot of kind of like, let's call it like the, the, the heavy lifting that's been done creating kind of, networks around private compute and privacy.
00;16;16;28 - 00;16;33;21
Derek
And I think zero knowledge is a big part of this as well. I do just think there is an upgrade that has been kind of getting circled around for the last few years that allows, let's just call it, private information to coexist with public blockchains. And there's a number of different ways that teams have been kind of tackling this.
00;16;33;21 - 00;17;01;17
Derek
There's like threshold cryptography networks. There's ZK stuff. I think the, the, you know, the Advantech intersection with TS is really ramping up that technology very quickly. And I think my view is we're kind of set for a really interesting revolution here around those two things, which historically have been quite separated. So I think I'm just enthusiastic about privacy and transparency kind of colliding in the right in the right ways this year.
00;17;01;19 - 00;17;30;09
Aaron
Yeah, I think that stuff's super interesting. I think there's so many really knotty regulatory questions related to it. I'm usually like of mixed minds on, on some of the, some of that intersection. I think it's really tricky. This is just pure escape proving right. Just being able to like compress down proof more stuff, verify more stuff. I think that just going to really open up kind of broadband crypto, you know, where you just have a lot, a lot of very, very low cost transactions that are able to come through.
00;17;30;09 - 00;17;43;27
Aaron
And that opens up kind of lots of new token models, business models, etc., like the world. I think will increasingly be lost, not just in AI tokens, but crypto tokens too. So it's kind of where I'm coming from on that one.
00;17;44;03 - 00;18;13;16
Chris
It's also a good reframing for a larger space. Everyone and you know, down in Lismore and land use cryptography from a lens of money laundering. When we get over this side of the world, it's about secure computing, and all the computing in the world tries to operate. At least, you know, a network environment in some secure way. And so as we get block stays way down and we're using this technology to, you know, securely run transactions that, you know, or just work or be transactions.
00;18;13;16 - 00;18;33;06
Chris
We're not having some warlord hide $2 million in Bitcoin, which, you know, is a farce to begin with. But as we get into the world of this is for productivity, this is how, you know, technology works. It's really going to reframe how people think about this. And, you know, from a regulatory or an accepted standpoint, hopefully stop throwing headwind.
00;18;33;07 - 00;18;53;03
Chris
I mean, you know, the spaces I kind of been trying to run uphill for the last four years and think of like how much further along we could have been, you know, had we not had those obstacles in our way. So a little bit of a tangent there, but it's it's helpful to think, right. Some of this is technology, some of this is mindset acceptance.
00;18;53;05 - 00;18;56;07
Chris
And if we can get past that hurdle, you know, let's go.
00;18;56;10 - 00;19;13;23
Aaron
I think that's kind of what's happening. Right. Like you're seeing Morgan Stanley and E-Trade kind of going to different regulators to make sure that they can deal in digital assets. So I feel like we kind of are in the acceptance phase and, and we're just going to see certain things that have been percolating just move a lot faster.
00;19;13;25 - 00;19;33;08
Aaron
Seems like the I tended to agree with us here gave it a 75 to 85% likelihood. So I don't think that's going to hit till like the middle to the end of the year. But I think like a story of 2025 will just be that reduced cost of transactions like across the board and new stuff that hopefully it gets built in and around it.
00;19;33;16 - 00;19;42;05
Aaron
All right. Next one increasing view that Solana is really just competing with base is increasingly viewed as a monetary asset like Bitcoin. What do you guys think?
00;19;42;07 - 00;20;08;24
Chris
So I think for starters a lot of this like is confusion. It was simply like fighting from unconverted folks right. Like I never lost my my heart, my love for Ethereum, its purpose, its place in the world. So like to me like if you know ether's in the sun, it can do so many different things, you know? But part of that is like it does drive like primary production within this ecosystem, like it is.
00;20;08;24 - 00;20;27;15
Chris
It is the oil of the world. And so treating it like a commodity money asset is fine with me. I've always been of that mindset, maybe where I got some sauce to throw on this is I don't know if your comparison is correct there. You know, that base is in any sort of a catbird seat and it's Solana that it must compete with it.
00;20;27;17 - 00;20;41;20
Chris
I'd actually, I mean, just from a volume perspective, flip that on its head and say no salon is in the catbird seat for critical mass and cheap transaction. That side of the world, and that everyone else who you know is trying to catch up to it.
00;20;41;26 - 00;20;45;24
Aaron
Yeah, I think that's a fair point. Darren, do you have anything to add here? Yeah. I mean, I.
00;20;45;24 - 00;21;07;14
Derek
Don't know if that if that's how I think about it. I, I do agree with the, the second point here, which is like ether increasingly is viewed as a monetary asset like Bitcoin. I think that is that has been happening for, let's call it the last five years. And I think that will continue to persist. I do I don't know if I would comp sold to an L2.
00;21;07;14 - 00;21;41;18
Derek
I just think these things have very different jobs and they serve very different roles. But at the end of the day, they are environments that people are deploying products and services. And from that perspective, I think they there's some shared DNA from a monetary perspective. I mean, base doesn't have a token. And so does I think, you know, depending on how, base evolves, I would probably, you know, see it more as kind of an appendage to the Ethereum economy and, and serving kind of a role in, in, in that vertical stack of, of scaling.
00;21;41;18 - 00;22;01;27
Derek
Then I would kind of a independent economic environment where people can get exposure that may change where there could be a base token. And at which point I think maybe the calculus probably evolves. But I do think that as a selling point for the SVM and for kind of, you know, no burgeoning single state environments, Solana is kind of like it.
00;22;01;27 - 00;22;14;15
Derek
It's very different in terms of the marker that it is for that economy than base. But I do think that there's there's enough shared overlap and enough maybe competition for block space there that I could, I can I can see some analogy making sense.
00;22;14;18 - 00;22;36;06
Aaron
Yeah. Like to me I'm assuming at some point there probably would be a base token. I don't know if it's in 2025. I'm assuming they're going to wait until there is a bit more regulatory clarity before that happens, but I think it's fair to say it's hard, or at least hard for me to see Solana ever being considered a monetary asset, even though there's some people building applications and services on top of it.
00;22;36;09 - 00;22;56;22
Aaron
So it really is going to stand in this awkward place where Bitcoin and eath are increasingly viewed as monetary assets. And Solana is kind of like the the stepchild of that family. So kind of it kind of sits in this awkward middle increasingly like as costs go down across the board from, ZK tech. So I know that there was like a lot of excitement from it.
00;22;56;22 - 00;23;21;03
Aaron
But I think that that, like, excitement will probably fade as it kind of gets into this like awkward area where it's not a monetary asset and it probably won't be able to compete as well on some of these, like, lower cost transactions across like either other blockchains that may have innovations, or blockchain like systems that have innovations or stuff like L2 is getting upgraded via ZK tech, etc. kind of gets lost in the middle.
00;23;21;10 - 00;23;50;03
Chris
I'm going to throw a curveball out here for a second. If you're saying like Bitcoin's gold, for instance, you know you're talking about a monetary asset. Just remember, like how big airline miles are is a part of our economy or Starbucks gift cards is huge parts of our economy that no one actually thinks about monetary assets. But like it's some absurd percent of, you know, credit card transactions, slow or through this vehicle of like airline mile capture that it's kind of staggering.
00;23;50;03 - 00;23;52;08
Chris
And so this might just be a semantic thing.
00;23;52;10 - 00;24;11;25
Derek
Yeah. I was actually going to make that same point, which is there are different flavors of risk and reward associated with different flavors of monetary assets and monetary goods. I think airline miles is as a good one. Chuck E cheese tokens are, you know, the monetary, the store value asset and the unit of account and the medium of exchange.
00;24;11;25 - 00;24;32;06
Derek
When you walk into a Chuck E cheese and you know there are trust assumptions with converting your dollars into Chucky Cheese tokens that some people may want to bear. And I don't know if the upside vol is any is interesting to holding a Chuck E cheese token. Maybe if you're a long Chucky cheese and they're never going to make any more Chucky Cheese tokens, and you know that more and more people are going to go Chucky Cheese every year.
00;24;32;06 - 00;24;52;04
Derek
And and so like maybe there's an ARB there, but but but I but that's how I kind of see like the soul is BTC stuff. It's these things are tackling different things and they have different risk reward profiles associated with them. But I don't know if I would kick one of them out because it doesn't fit the traditional monetary asset definition.
00;24;52;04 - 00;25;10;11
Derek
I think these are all kind of like they're clearly exhibiting monetary asset like prints, like, features, just because people are using them in that way. And I think the question is, is whether or not that resonates with some people or doesn't, or if people are serving different jobs to be done by holding either Bitcoin than they are by soul.
00;25;10;11 - 00;25;15;25
Derek
So I, I kind of agree with what Chris is saying. It feels more semantics to me. But I also take your point. Aaron.
00;25;15;29 - 00;25;22;24
Aaron
Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree that Solana feels like the chuck-e-cheese monetary asset of crypto, but, let's see what the.
00;25;22;29 - 00;25;27;03
Chris
Oh, God, Derek, I served him up. I don't know, I don't know, that's.
00;25;27;06 - 00;25;51;21
Aaron
What I'm saying, but but the I tended to agree on this one to, 50 to 60% prediction there. I don't know, it's a lot. I just think it's going to it kind of has like an awkwardness that I think people haven't been paying attention to. And I think you're going to see, like the hard core monetary assets like Bitcoin and, and eath especially like eath with staking, with re staking, with ETFs that are providing staking, just acting much more like a monetary asset.
00;25;51;25 - 00;26;20;09
Aaron
I don't know if Solana is going to be in that conversation to the same degree. And there's a lot of pressure coming on just lower cost transactions. I think that there's been kind of this false argument that somehow that was going to impact Ethereum, low cost transactions, but in reality, like there's going to be scores of networks L2, Z, you know, ZK power rollups, all the like low cost, high throughput networks like, monad, Barry Chain, Mega eath.
00;26;20;09 - 00;26;48;07
Aaron
I'm assuming one or more of those, or maybe a next generation will launch and that's really kind of competing there a lot more. That's in part why I kind of thought that was a reasonable prediction. All right. Here's another one. Just talking about the different layers. I think in 2025 probably because of some of the ZK stuff, we're going to see a lot more composability between Eath and Bitcoin, like being able to use that ZK tag to kind of bridge Bitcoin more natively into eath without wrapping, and that may stunt the need for Bitcoin alts.
00;26;48;07 - 00;27;10;10
Aaron
I think that was a pretty big narrative at least last year. A lot of investment kind of related to that. And I, I do think some of the advancements in ZK may just stunt that too. And so you'd have a structure where, you know, Bitcoin is like a monetary asset. And then a little bit like what you said before, Chris, you can bring Bitcoin over pretty easily into eath natively and kind of interact with that broader operating system.
00;27;10;17 - 00;27;18;11
Aaron
And so I think we'll start to see glimmers of that coming up in 2025. Any thoughts on that? It's a little bit more niche, but I think it's kind of an important one.
00;27;18;13 - 00;27;45;19
Chris
The people are always trying to like shift BTC ease of interoperability because it makes a ton of sense. And then it never really happens because some other thing, right. You know, I think when Bitcoin was was having this identity crisis of needing to to prove itself. Well the proof came from the store of value digital gold. And you know, sort of like except inside of the host which then delayed this need for like expanded functionality on Bitcoin.
00;27;45;26 - 00;27;58;29
Chris
And so to me like this, this makes a ton of sense, but it's a bit like trying to ship someone in a TV sitcom, you know, Ross and Rachel will. They won't want like, I'll see it. I'll believe it when I see it, but it makes sense.
00;27;59;07 - 00;28;03;00
Aaron
They're going to get together this year, Chris. It's going to happen.
00;28;03;03 - 00;28;05;09
Chris
I don't know. Derek is loving the air.
00;28;05;11 - 00;28;24;18
Derek
Between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Yeah yeah I think so. I mean like I don't think for the rest of my life people are going to stop trying to bring these economies together. It's just like you have like the world's largest commodity money asset in digital form and the world's largest programable environment. People are going to try to feel like I try and bring these things together.
00;28;24;18 - 00;28;45;02
Derek
They they have been forever. And so, I didn't invest in any Bitcoin I'll tos. I love what's going on over there. I love the innovation. It doesn't. It's I don't feel like I have an edge. I do feel like these things are definitely coming together at some point, whether that's through xQc or through some sort of scaling tech, through Bitcoin, or through some core protocol upgrades that they end up eventually making.
00;28;45;15 - 00;29;04;25
Derek
I don't know, it's it's, but it does feel obvious to me that more and more every year, these economies are inching closer and closer together and and the rest from there is just optimization. People are going to find ways to reduce costs and complexity and frictions. And before you know it, these things are kind of, and are operating with one another in a meaningful way.
00;29;04;25 - 00;29;06;25
Derek
But yeah, that feels that feels right to me.
00;29;06;29 - 00;29;21;20
Aaron
Yeah. And I spent a good chunk of this year looking at a lot of the Bitcoin L2 stuff, and none of it hung together fully with me, at least the newer stuff in the market. I think some things that are existing look pretty good there, but I do think this is the year Chris, Ross and Rachel are going to get together.
00;29;21;20 - 00;29;42;29
Aaron
It's going to be great, and if not, then I'll added to the list again next year. The I tends to agree here. It gave it a 60 to 70% likelihood of happening, which is pretty cool. All right. Let's transition over to some more like NFT meme coin stuff. Here's a prediction. New set with a meme coin element baked in at the start, like a new major piece in like breaking through.
00;29;43;00 - 00;29;58;15
Derek
Is this prediction, Aaron, that the the let's call it the the technology of NFTs and meme token and like so a fungible component and non-fungible component are intertwined. Or it's just that these things launch simultaneously.
00;29;58;17 - 00;30;17;19
Aaron
I think it's it's either one. Right. It's just having just like how bitcoin and ether are coming together. I think NFTs and meme coins are going to come together, and there'll be a project where it's not, oh, here's an NFT set, and then here's a token like we we've seen with our fungible token, like we saw with Bored Ape and I guess now Pudgy Penguins instead.
00;30;17;19 - 00;30;21;06
Aaron
It's kind of like baked in from the start. And there's some interaction between the two.
00;30;21;09 - 00;30;40;08
Derek
I think. So we're already starting to see this desire happen with the opposite. So meme token launches could be XRP, it could be Harry Potter Bitcoin, Shiba. You know it could be I don't know take your pack. There's a bunch of them. And and then you know there's a community that forms around it. They're really excited about it.
00;30;40;08 - 00;31;05;12
Derek
And so somebody in the community, maybe one of the contributing developers to the original meme token, launches a PFP project we just saw was, Cerebro with, just like an AI agent chat bot. It's kind of evolving into kind of a network and a tech stack on the Solana economy for agents. They just launched a, NFT project of it, of AI agent called Zero Born.
00;31;05;21 - 00;31;21;06
Derek
Like a, like a month ago. We're seeing it over and over again where it's like there's tens of thousands of people can own the meme token, and then maybe they launch a NFT collection of 3000 or 4000 or 5000 and like the core, the hardest community members want to buy one and speculate on the rarities and so on and so forth.
00;31;21;08 - 00;31;39;01
Derek
I think what you're flagging is just like that delta between like launching a meme token and then launching an NFT project, or the inverse of launching an NFT project and launching a meme token that's basically going to collapse to zero. And these things are just going to functionally launch at the same time, and people are just going to go cuckoo for just grabbing whatever asset they can.
00;31;39;01 - 00;31;46;23
Derek
I think that's right. I think that feels directionally where we're going. And I probably would I probably would say that there's probably going to be a couple of breakouts in that category.
00;31;47;00 - 00;32;11;03
Chris
Yeah. You know, Derek, as you were finishing up there, like you're kind of leaning into where my head headed that it's we're going to see blockbuster. We're going to see a blockbuster this year. And what I mean by that is someone's going to bring the total package to market in a way that's integrated. It's multimodal across different token types, different media types, and just deliver this complete experience.
00;32;11;03 - 00;32;33;21
Chris
And so I don't see this as, oh, a marriage of a PSP and a meme coin. I think that's a little too simplistic. I think someone is going to create the jaws of like, digital culture and drop it on us. And that moment is going to blow the window open like we're really close, you know, like I think we've talked a bit or I talked a bit to start us around integration.
00;32;33;21 - 00;32;54;28
Chris
This being a big year for integration. And part of that is understanding the entire toolkit and how you can bring that to bear in a unified moment. No, to me, it's just a matter of when. And the sequencing of all this, because right now the attention is being hogged by, you know, one like the revival of an old meta in which a few projects are issuing meme coins.
00;32;54;28 - 00;33;08;01
Chris
But then two the emergence of AI agents and their ability to play coins. And so we need to work through that backlog, wait for a window to open up. And I, I can see this coming.
00;33;08;04 - 00;33;23;19
Aaron
Awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think I could definitely see it. That's why I included it, like some new blockbuster. I think that's a better way to describe it. I was a little less optimistic about this one. Only gave it a 40 to 50% likelihood of happening. So maybe we won't see kind of a blockbuster.
00;33;23;21 - 00;33;30;10
Chris
So that's a structural bias and a little training. It can't see what comes next because it's pattern matching to the past.
00;33;30;11 - 00;33;55;03
Aaron
Through that I don't know I don't know. We'll find out. We'll keep this list. We can look at it at the end of the year. All right. I like this idea of kind of like meme coining or meme coins, kind of looking less like toys and moving more into kind of real world use cases. I've called it, in my mind at least, like meaning for a purpose instead of it being around like, like, funny or interesting concept, like a joke, etc. it's more like a social movement.
00;33;55;09 - 00;34;04;22
Aaron
So I could see that catching a wave. I think people are still interested in meme coins mean tokens, as you call them. Derek and I could see them kind of maturing at that in 2025.
00;34;04;28 - 00;34;25;07
Chris
Moral hazard is a big issue here. Over the break, we had, a feel good story with a token mirror. I wasn't following it to super close, but, you know, basically, issuing a coin for a cause, having it, the take off, this guy, you know, has a he ends up holding a huge amount, starts responsive selling and donating.
00;34;25;07 - 00;34;46;09
Chris
But then he goes and he creates another token. And that's the moral hazard right there. Right. Like, every time you feel like this thing, you know, could turn a corner, human nature gets in the way. And whatever the intentions are like, you should know better at this point because we've seen this pattern play out over and over and over where someone can't can't resist going back to the well and then they poison it.
00;34;46;15 - 00;34;52;06
Chris
I don't know, then, you know, I know you want this one to happen, but like, human nature keeps getting in the way. Yeah, I don't.
00;34;52;06 - 00;34;59;14
Aaron
Know if I want it to happen. I just think it it is going to happen, Chris. But I think that's like a fair critique. I don't know, Derek. You could you see this happening?
00;34;59;16 - 00;35;13;04
Derek
How could I mean, I, I could go either way on this one. It's a it's I could I could definitely see it. I could also I kind of agree with Chris that there's there are some headwinds here, human behavior headwinds.
00;35;13;12 - 00;35;38;05
Aaron
And, you know, it's interesting I think that I agreed. So it only gave it a 45 to 55% likelihood of happening. So maybe it it was able to pattern match Chris and and sense the hesitation. All right. Next one Programable NFTs become a new meta. I think we've seen Kim as a dwarf. Just, kind of announced some interesting work where you're seeing a kind of a token in a fungible token, like interact with an NFT set.
00;35;38;05 - 00;35;50;05
Aaron
I could just see this finally catch its moment. I know we spent a lot of time in the DAOs over the past year talking about this, but it feels like the the timing is becoming a little bit more likely now. What do you guys think about that?
00;35;50;10 - 00;36;21;27
Derek
Yeah, I could, I think, I listen, you know, the folks like Transition Labs have done a, an immense amount of work here, which is bringing functionality enhanced functionality to how objects on chain work and moving away from kind of static or or media based objects into things that people can play with on an ongoing basis and have an experience with those objects that evolves or changes depending on how humans or agents or the weather or time affects those things that live on chain.
00;36;22;00 - 00;36;51;16
Derek
I to me, it's just this feels inevitable that more and more experimentation, more and more artists, more and more collectors are going to interact with NFTs in this way, especially as the way people, you know, interact with the stuff in spaces or on their computer or on their phones or on display tech improves as time goes on. This feels like, it's directly correlated to kind of just more people in this space trying more things with better ways to view and interact.
00;36;51;16 - 00;36;56;15
Derek
It feels like Programable NFT will will directly benefit from from some of those trends.
00;36;56;17 - 00;37;14;12
Chris
Yeah, forms evolve towards complexity. Radio back in the day, you know, maybe your grandparents, the only one in their house or had to go next door to listen to a show. Now you're on your treadmill listening to a podcast. Same thing will happen for NFTs, and it's just more about this integration and about like easing out these touchpoints.
00;37;14;13 - 00;37;34;00
Chris
You know, when you start getting agents into the mix or intent where you're not asking for the time to jump in and do these things themselves, where that, you know, they they sort of happen more conditionally based on, you know, parameters, environmental feedback, etc., etc. like this is this is going to have its moment. It's about that integration we keep talking about.
00;37;34;00 - 00;37;55;01
Aaron
So I like this one. I was a little bit more optimistic on this one, 55 to 65% chance. I don't think that this is going to be this is going to happen this next prediction. But I think a lot of folks are thinking about it. I don't know if it's going to happen necessarily in 2025, but, it was kind of curious with the I would have thought here Bitcoin becomes a reserve currency and Bitcoin surpasses gold's market cap.
00;37;55;04 - 00;37;57;18
Aaron
Do you think that's going to happen in 2025. Yeah.
00;37;57;21 - 00;37;58;04
Chris
No.
00;37;58;12 - 00;38;00;16
Aaron
All right. What do you think Derrick.
00;38;00;18 - 00;38;01;12
Derek
I
00;38;01;14 - 00;38;02;02
Chris
So two.
00;38;02;02 - 00;38;03;15
Derek
Very different questions.
00;38;03;18 - 00;38;04;16
Aaron
I think they're the same.
00;38;04;16 - 00;38;22;24
Derek
I don't I, I okay so you know, to be honest, you know for bitcoin to become like a, you know, a major reserve currency, I think there's a lot that has to happen there. I, I think there's we're still seeing kind of like a cultural shift in favor of a reality that includes Bitcoin as a reserve currency.
00;38;22;24 - 00;38;42;26
Derek
But I don't think we're quite there yet. In terms of, you know, whether or not we we reached goals, market cap I haven't looked for, I think gold was something like 19 or 20 trillion the last time I looked. And Bitcoin is what, two and a half three at current prices at 100 K. You know there's like a 910 x in there a little less than that to kind of like achieve parity with with gold's market cap.
00;38;42;26 - 00;39;00;21
Derek
And I think Bitcoin is going to try I just don't think it happens in the next 12 months. I think that's a listen, I'd love to be pleasantly surprised. And, you know, for there to be $1 million Bitcoin in the cycle, I just that's a a lot structurally has to change to support a reality like that, I think I.
00;39;00;21 - 00;39;19;17
Aaron
Believe all right. Well, your skepticism, Chris, the I shared, it only gave it a 15 to 25% chance for 2025. All right. I have a couple other more geeky ones. Just kind of looking at the clock. I'll do maybe one more. Just on the crypto side and then maybe transition to crypto. Plus I, which I think are some pretty fun ones.
00;39;19;17 - 00;39;31;06
Aaron
All right. By the end of the year, we'll we'll see the rise of consumer crypto, mostly driven by lower cost box space. What do you guys think when we start to see actual consumer applications of crypto in 2025?
00;39;31;09 - 00;40;13;19
Derek
So my my hot take here is the cheaper block space is definitely a converging tailwind to why we'll see consumer adoption. But I actually think the thing that lights the fire for consumer adoption is natural language, abstracting away a lot of blockchain's complexity. And I think by midpoint of this year, I think my hot take is the highest rate of adoption into crypto is going to come from people using a tech protocols and platforms to be able to streamline and kind of, collapse the friction of putting on a trade or buying an asset or engaging in a swap or sending a transaction, and instead of clicking and, you know, pointing your mouse around navigational
00;40;13;19 - 00;40;36;17
Derek
UI and signing transactions, a lot of economic activity will be will start being facilitated by infrastructure like, that looks more like a tech and agent like. And so I think the real catalyst here isn't cheaper box space. I think it's actually like historical frictions in terms of using crypto starting to collapse down to zero for the first time ever.
00;40;36;17 - 00;40;44;14
Derek
And I think that happens through natural language and an agent like technology that allows that, that onboarding to, to start happening.
00;40;44;17 - 00;41;06;02
Aaron
Yeah, I think that's a good point. Yeah. I do think a lot of the barriers just for like, you know, collecting like a work or monetizing a like or, you know, kind of a lot of these like microtransaction type use cases for consumer crypto, of which I think that could be a big category, is is like the cost of, of black space when you boil down.
00;41;06;04 - 00;41;18;08
Aaron
But yeah, there's tons of abstraction that needs to happen on the UI, UX and usability side. So I think that's a fair addition there. Derek. Chris, what do you think 2025 is the era of consumer crypto?
00;41;18;10 - 00;41;40;20
Chris
I could argue absolutely every side of this and make a compelling case around just, you know, consumer crypto is already here. It exists. This subculture is the same way. Skate punk, you know, whatever your favorite little thing was, consumer crypto is one of those I could say, what is consumer crypto? Is it even a thing? But I think Derek has it.
00;41;40;20 - 00;42;03;10
Chris
Rightists of the bunch in that by the time we have a breakout consumer crypto app or service, we won't be calling it consumer crypto because it will be sitting in a stack with other things, especially, I think agenda AI is a pretty good use case. And so, you know, by the time we get this, you know, elusive mythical breakout, I think it's going to look more like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
00;42;03;10 - 00;42;09;03
Chris
And you won't even be you won't be calling it consumer crypto. You'll be calling it some new thing.
00;42;09;05 - 00;42;27;28
Aaron
Awesome. Yeah. I think that's a great point too. I tended to agree here, gave it a 60 to 70% chance that we'd see the rise of consumer crypto, whatever that means. To your fair point, Chris, in 2025. All right. Let's just quickly transition to crypto. Plus I know pre wanted to kind of hop in on some of these.
00;42;27;28 - 00;42;33;15
Aaron
Maybe we could do some AI and culture predictions for next episode. What do you guys think about that.
00;42;33;18 - 00;42;34;10
Derek
Love that maybe.
00;42;34;10 - 00;42;39;21
Chris
We give give pre her own addendum episode. Yeah just 30 minutes of pure free.
00;42;39;21 - 00;42;43;06
Derek
When was the last time she was on one of these episodes? It's been a couple weeks.
00;42;43;11 - 00;42;46;26
Aaron
I know. Well, she she took a trip with her family, so.
00;42;47;06 - 00;42;47;23
Derek
Got em.
00;42;47;24 - 00;43;03;09
Aaron
So I think, you know, Self-custody AI is going to become a bigger deal as models become smaller and smaller and are able to run on phones, etc. and I think crypto is going to play a big part in kind of securing that. Self-custody I what do you guys think about that?
00;43;03;12 - 00;43;09;02
Chris
I'm not technically deep in here, and I feel the pros and cons of, you know, crypto versus other approaches to.
00;43;09;02 - 00;43;14;14
Derek
So I understand maybe you can give an example, Aaron, just so I can, really lock into kind of the argument here.
00;43;14;22 - 00;43;29;01
Aaron
Yeah, I think the argument is a little bit like how we've seen with digital assets, the demand to custody your own assets. I think you're going to see the demand from more and more folks to custody their own AI. Right? They don't want it to be running on servers that.
00;43;29;19 - 00;43;30;05
Derek
I see what you're.
00;43;30;05 - 00;43;40;20
Aaron
Saying. I a third party, they're going to want it to run locally. And yes, security is secured locally. And I think crypto will play a big part in helping to facilitate that in some way.
00;43;40;27 - 00;44;05;02
Derek
Yeah, there's local models. And then there's also privacy preserving interactions with models that allow you to get the benefits of, you know, running inference on, private compute that's not yours or but also having kind of your interactions or your data or how you interact with these things and, you know, privacy preserving. And I think, yeah, I could I see both of those up into the right, I think kind of like crypto.
00;44;05;02 - 00;44;25;16
Derek
It's like everything is public. And over time, people have explored ways to kind of make certain pieces of information private. I mean, privacy is a it's a core human right on so many dimensions. And so I think it's why I'm so confident that, like, the ball will continue to move forward around different ways to explore privacy preserving technology.
00;44;25;16 - 00;44;48;00
Derek
And I definitely think you're spot on here, Aaron, I think that desire to to run things locally, to bypass some of the transparency around how people are using this stuff, will continue to march up into the right as well. People trying different ways to use and apply privacy, preserving tech to the usage of models. I think that both of those things are definitely going to be major themes.
00;44;48;03 - 00;44;58;15
Aaron
I agree, and I tended to agree on this one. Gave it as 60 to 70% probability of happening. All right. Decentralized inference systems become useful by the end of the year.
00;44;58;17 - 00;45;21;11
Derek
This one I definitely think this is where, like all of the exploration is right now. I mean, we talked about this on the last episode, but the there are new dimensions for scaling models that are being explored outside of just throwing more interested in more more data, more compute at these things, which has traditionally been the way to withhold these the scaling laws and like test time compute and, inference time testing.
00;45;21;11 - 00;45;43;02
Derek
And this is like the battleground now and inference and inference and inference as, a measure of ways to derive more, let's call it productivity or efficiency out of these models is like where major trends are going to kind of originate. And when I start to see that, then the thing that happens next is like lots of teams are going to start working on that problem.
00;45;43;02 - 00;46;02;28
Derek
And I think what you're flagging here, Aaron, is like, as that trend continues to process, more and more teams are going to work on technology to decentralize that piece of the stack. And we may even see some breakouts. And I think, you know, whether or not that's a 2025 or 2026 outcome, I do think you're you're right here.
00;46;02;28 - 00;46;04;26
Derek
I think this is like a trend to watch closely.
00;46;05;03 - 00;46;08;05
Chris
They're going to try for sure whether they get there next year or TBD.
00;46;08;07 - 00;46;30;03
Aaron
Yeah. And and that's where the I landed only gave it a 30 to 40%, probability. I guess for me I just feel like people and maybe even the this AI prediction or the existing AI models ability to predict, I think things are going to move a little bit faster than, than people can comprehend. And you're going to see that bleed into, some of these inference systems.
00;46;30;03 - 00;46;53;24
Aaron
So I could see I could see that really being the shining star out of this last year of kind of crypto plus AI exploration, I don't think there's compute networks are going to prove to be that useful. I think you're seeing kind of like less computationally intensive models come out, particularly over the past month. So if something's going to work in crypto plus AI, it probably is going to be an inference system and could move a little bit quicker.
00;46;53;25 - 00;47;06;04
Aaron
That's why I included it. All right. Last one. And then maybe we call it and give me an opportunity to weigh in here. Decentralized memory becomes a bigger deal. So I know we talked a little bit about this, and I think the last episode or the episode before, but.
00;47;06;04 - 00;47;36;17
Derek
Yeah, I think you brought it up then I like it, I like I would say like, I'm not super, I'm not super scoped on this right now, but I think it's I think you're I think directionally feels right to me for a variety of reasons. I think this is, as a, as the use cases start to become a little bit more robust, I think improving, you know, or offloading in centralized ways into decentralized ways, kind of like the complexity around memory just feels right to me.
00;47;36;20 - 00;47;55;07
Derek
2025. I mean, I just I've spent such little time thinking about how to apply protocol behaviors to this stuff. Like, I would even hate to make a guess of when this happens, but I don't know, I could I, I think, yes, this decade I'm unclear whether this is a 2025 thing or not.
00;47;55;09 - 00;48;20;04
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, I think you're going to see like the reason I include this, I think memory is going to be the big meta and more traditional. I think the large language models seem to be, if you're reading through the trees of what's been reported, they're now just kind of training themselves. So I think you're going to see those really move much, much quicker because, you're going to need these like longer run times to get answers, memory just going to become more and more important.
00;48;20;04 - 00;48;40;18
Aaron
So I think there's going to be a race to build that system. And I think people will quickly realize they're not going to want all their thoughts, etc., stored by one centralized service. And and that will put some rest in some decentralized memory service. Or I know Chris, you're using kind of like another concept related to that.
00;48;41;05 - 00;48;48;26
Aaron
I forgot the exact phrase last week, but something along those lines feels like we're going to see that at some point in 2025. On the crypto side.
00;48;48;29 - 00;49;18;14
Chris
Yeah. I mean, the common theme here seems to be as you hit limits, and you want more, you just have to radiate outwards and just keep pushing the boundaries. And some of that ends up involving unbundling the stack and moving towards specialty solutions. So we'll see. But I think you're a little further out in the digital frontier than I am at the moment, which is, you know, a credit to your insatiable desire to learn ARIN and also the fact I've been writing a novel for three months.
00;49;18;14 - 00;49;22;03
Chris
There are tradeoffs in this world. So we'll let you lead the way here.
00;49;22;05 - 00;49;35;06
Aaron
All right. Well, the I tended to agree here to give it a 45 to 5055% prediction. So we went through a bunch guys. So those are some predictions for crypto a little bit of crypto an AI. And maybe we'll pick this up next week's.
00;49;35;09 - 00;50;03;18
Chris
Love it LFG. Well that's fucking All right. Good session guys. Yeah we covered some ground there. Well done. By