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Remember FTX? It was SBF’s exchange that scammed the industry a few years ago.
Well…I have some good news – they’re going to start repaying creditors on January 3, 2025.
We’re all gonna benefit because around ~$12 billion in stablecoins are coming back into the market. I imagine quite a bit of it will flow into buying some of our bags adding fuel to the alt season.
SBF’s going to have to watch the craziest bull run ever behind prison walls. Here’s me playing the world’s tiniest violin for him.
Here’s what we got today:
- Future of crypto. Crypto’s predictions for 2025.
- Daos.world 101. The next big consumer app on Base?
- Around the web. Sushi went live on Sonic, US Treasury dept released restrictive rules for DeFi, the Industry is fighting back, and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Sui — the fast, secure, and affordable L1.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
Predictions
What Awaits Crypto in 2025?
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2025 is shaping up to be pivotal for crypto.
Our infrastructure is finally ready for global scale, there’s a pro-crypto US administration, AI agents are taking crypto mainstream, and more.
Now that it’s the end of the year, the crypto community is filled with forecasts and reports about 2025.
Here are some reports:
- Messari thesis for 2025.
- Infrastructure trends for the next year.
- Steady Lads’ podcast on 2025 predictions.
- Delphi Digital’s take on 2025 market & prices.
- Redphonecrypto’s article with 2025 predictions was very popular as well.
There are a ton more reports. Here are some common themes that summarize the general view of crypto’s galaxy brains.
#1. No Supercycle Yet: The 4-Year Cycle Lives On
Every cycle, someone claims the 4-year crypto market cycle is dead. We call for a “supercycle,” where crypto escapes its boom-and-bust pattern.
Here’s the 2025 supercycle argument: for the first time, we have a pro-crypto U.S. administration. With their support, crypto can go mainstream and break free from cyclicality.
I’m not buying it. Yes, crypto will see way more progress. But crypto’s degen culture hasn’t changed. People will overleverage, markets will go euphoric, and eventually, it’ll all blow up. Even Michael Saylor is telling people to take on debt to buy Bitcoin.
The general consensus on markets? The alt-season is already heating up. It’ll continue to 2025. Euphoria will peak around 2025 Q3, and in Q4, we’ll transition into the bear market.
#2. Dominant Narrative will be AI Agents.
I’ve been screaming about AI Agents for a a few months now, and it’s looking to be THE sector of 2025.
Other narratives like DeFi & decentralized stablecoins will have legs, but AI Agents will outperform by a big margin. We’ll see agents for anything and everything. It’ll be the sector with the highest growth.
We’ve already seen trading & personality agents explode. DeFi Agents are another category that’s especially on my radar.
Redphonecrypto made some bold AI x Crypto predictions in his article.
- An AI Agent will build a portfolio of $250M+.
- Time “Person” of the Year will go to an AI Agent.
- Crypto agents will get “embodied” into IRL robots that we can interact with.
Some other narratives to track are RWAs, DePIN, DeSci, and maybe GameFi as well.
#3. Crypto Infra: Rise of Hyper-Performant Chains
Base and Solana are already fast, but in 2025, chains will push performance to new extremes.
Chains like HyperLiquid and Eclipse set the tone in Q4 2024. This trend will only grow.
Monad is the first example. It is an Alt-L1 that can deliver Solana-level speed with an Ethereum VM. We’ve talked about them before.
Personally, I’m more excited about MegaETH.
- Already built a cult-like community of users & builders.
- Its architecture is so unique that existing chains won’t be able to match its speed and scale.
- Most apps launching on MegaETH are new, which means a lot of wealth effects from airdrops.
There’ll be other infrastructure trends like broader adoption of zero-knowledge tech. But such infra trends will be interesting for tech nerds only.
If you are a tech nerd, Delphi Digital has a solid report on infra trends for 2025.
#4. Road Ahead for Majors
I don’t have any specific price predictions for BTC, ETH, & SOL. But here’s what’s ahead for majors:
Bitcoin. There are two major camps in Bitcoin.
- Those who want it to remain “Digital Gold” and do nothing else.
- Those pushing for BTCfi—Bitcoin DeFi.
BTCfi showed promise in 2024 but didn’t fully deliver. I expect more growth here, especially with BTC L2s and DeFi becoming more attractive.
One thing to monitor is if BTC will update to include “OP_CAT”. If they do, ETH-like L2s can be deployed on Bitcoin. StarkNet has been working on it.
Ethereum. Fragmentation is the biggest challenge for Ethereum right now. And they’ll be focusing on that in 2025.
- From the user perspective, ETH will feel like a single L1 for most use cases. The tech behind that are intents, common standards, and account abstraction.
- From the dev perspective, Ethereum will start to divide into multiple competing clusters led by teams like Optimism and Zk-sync. Interoperability outside the cluster will be clunky.
- Based rollups are an attempt to make such an interoperable cluster around ETH L1. In 2025, we’ll see if this vision is possible.
Ethereum is also shipping its largest-ever upgrade, Pectra, in Q1 of 2025.
Solana: SOL community jokingly summarizes their roadmap as “increase bandwidth, reduce latency”.
In 2025, Solana will focus on becoming even faster and cheaper, fueling its strong builder community. Expect continued wins for Solana as it evolves.
The picture for 2025 is clear. From AI agents to hyper-performant chains, we’ll get a couple of good months.
Real challenge will come afterwards: cashing out when the euphoria peaks. Paper profits don’t pay the bills.
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Sui DeFi is Booming—Here’s How to Get In Early.
Sui DeFi is booming–You know the drill, ride the wave when it’s early!
Sui is one of the biggest names for 2024 and a powerhouse as we enter 2025. The growth expanded across the whole ecosystem.
Here are some indicators of Sui’s growth:
- TVL hitting ATH of $1.8 Billion.
- Net Flows. According to Artemis, Sui is the rank 3 in net flows over the past 3 months ( with over $1B flowing into Sui).
- Stablecoins rapidly expanded to Sui. USDC, FDUSD, USDY, and more. Stablecoin TVL surpasses $430m now.
- Major partnerships with Phantom and Backpack Exchange.
The ecosystem is thriving, and new opportunities keep emerging.
- Suilend, the leading DeFi platform on Sui, just launched the $SEND token.
- Bluefin. Sui’s top exchange, released its native token, $BLUE.
There’s plenty of room for Sui to keep growing. When I see a chain booming, my rule is simple: Bridge some funds and start playing around.
Sui’s wave has just started.
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New Protocols
DAOS.WORLD: Hot New App on Base
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What if there was a platform where every token launched is up more than 2900%?
Meet DAOS.WORLD. It is a platform that’ll allow users to launch their own hedge fund DAOs. These DAOs usually have attached AI Agents as well. And yes, all launches on the platform so far have delivered jaw-dropping returns.
(For newbies, DAOs stand for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. It’s the web3 replacement for companies)
How does it work? Here are the mechanics of the platform:
- DAO managers raise ETH from investors for DAO tokens.
- From 1.1B of the new DAO token supply, 1B will be given to investors and 100M will be used to create liquidity. Price of this pool can’t drop below the amount of ETH raised.
- When the fund reaches its expiry date (which can be extended by managers), the treasury’s assets are distributed pro rata to token holders.
- Fund managers receive 0.4% of the total trading volume on their token as well. For more details on how everything works, click here.
If that sounds familiar to you, it’s cuz it’s a copy of DAOs.fun on Base. We’ve talked about DAOs.fun before. Ai16z was launched on that platform.
You can stake the DAO tokens on DAOS.WORLD as well. In return, you’ll get whitelist tokens for the next DAO launches, which had high demand until now.
One caveat: they’ll be pausing new DAO launches for now. Instead, they’ll be focusing on adding new features to existing DAOs. Quality > Quantity.
So, if you want exposure to these DAOs & the platform, the only options are the existing four DAOs.
- AicroStrategy ($AiSTR): AI-first hedge fund trying to maximize Bitcoin holdings.
- Alchemist Accelerate ($ALCH): They’ll be focusing on the intersection of AI and Web3.
- DR3AM Fund ($FDREAM): AI-assisted fund that invests in other AI tokens.
- Almeda Research ($AR): Their lore is a “fund run from SBF’s jail cell”.
Are they worth it? If you can get a whitelist for their next quality DAO launches, it’ll be lucrative. All DAO tokens are trading above the initial price during the fundraiser.
Once they are in the market, it’s a completely different case.
Since DAOs are supposed to be investment DAOs, we’ll naturally be inclined to value them by looking at assets under their management.
If we do that, we’ll learn that these tokens are trading at insane premiums. For example, $AiSTR only has $417k in tokens, but it’s MC is ~$13M.
On top of that, this is a really new project. So, it is a higher risk as well.
So I’m definitely NOT recommending this investment to anyone.
If you want a detailed analysis of these DAOs, check out this thread.
But “Investment AIs” are a hot narrative. And a DAO structure, where humans and AI can collaborate to make investments seems to be the best design for now.
Even Jesse Pollack, the lead of the Base chain, has aped into $AiSTR. So this project should be on your radar.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Sushi went live on Sonic. It improves Sonic app ecosystem and give a new market for S
Berachain has started accepting stablecoin pre-deposits for Boyco with Ethena and Concrete XYZ. Technically, it’s a “pre-pre deposit”.
Avalanche AI teased its launch on Avalanche C-Chain. This can be the platform that starts the AI Agent narrative on Avalance.
Bio Protocol, a leading DeSci protocol, is voting on bridging its token to Solana. It should give them more distribution.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Airdrop hunting is still good for those who are starting out. Here’s a massive list of airdrops to farm in 2025.
Slinky airdropped 10% of its total supply to 27.7 million wallets holding >0.006 SOL during the Aug 30 snapshot. This was the largest airdrop in Solana’s history by the number of addresses.
Elys Network‘s first airdrop claiming campaign ends on December 31 at 6:30 PM UTC. You have to claim your airdrop before that.
🚀 New Launches
(These are really new projects. I haven’t done deep research on them. So, make sure to DYOR before putting money in these apps.)
DeFi App will launch an all-in-one SuperApp on January 6. You should be able to do most onchain activities from a single interface.
Starbase is live. It is a DEX aggregator on Base that has features like limit order, Dollar Cost Averaging, and traditional swap.
📰 Industry News
US Treasury Dept. has released regulations that’ll require DeFi frontends to implement KYC checks.
Blockchain Association and two other groups have sued the IRS to challenge the rules that would require DeFi front-ends to report user data.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Five trends to watch in 2025.
- Comprehensive thread on Sporedotfun.
- Comparison of Pump.fun, Virtuals, Ape.store, and Clanker.
- Guide for sifting through low caps and finding gems.
- Macro updates for the week.
