Happy New Year and Farewell

From the ranch on New Year's Eve, he says 2025 was a year of valleys where many did not get the rally or regulation they wanted, and crypto must return to first principles.

Crypto exists to change the world's economic, political, and social systems and give back freedom of association, commerce, and expression, but lost its way by chasing success over substance.

After deep reflection at the ranch he is definitively not leaving crypto, despite live streams being misconstrued and amplified by hate groups like cryptocurrency Reddit.

The sad truth of being a public figure is that the more famous you become the less accessible you must be, as accessibility gets weaponized in hostile markets.

Guilt by association means some people will never touch Cardano or Midnight because of him, which is unfair to the believers, since people ask who made a thing not what it does.

Trump coin should never have happened, yet no major founder except Vitalik Buterin spoke out, staying silent out of neutrality, which he sees as a lack of integrity.

Cardano is the product of his most brilliant and least brilliant moments, and each new year he asks how to be better, concluding he has outgrown X.

His farewell to X means uninstalling the app, handing it to curators and AI in silent mode, and focusing on long-form writing, AMAs, and new media, maybe even a Twitch game stream.

He is going into deep product focus, spending the afternoon writing a CKVM specification, adding privacy to intents, and reasoning about chain abstraction from a CAKE or Anoma standpoint.

He is happiest building things a million then a billion people can use, and was sketching a Midnight strategy for a billion users and a trillion dollars of transactions by 2030.

He loves working with amazing people from company president Tamara Haasen down to an unknown intern, because each brings something original he could not.

2025 was the hardest year of his life: he did the bullet ant ritual but stress and biochemistry blocked the weight loss, traveling 260 days on 5.5 hours of sleep, unsustainable.

After Japan and Hong Kong he will travel less, stay at the ranch or farm, get back in shape, and spend time reading and studying mathematics.

Critics note he never finished a math degree despite dozens of advanced courses and running a 168-scientist, 250-paper research group, admitting he is a math enthusiast, not a mathematician.

Mathematics is a game of discovering the path to something you want to be true, so its lovers are never bored, and the saddest day is solving a problem, your old friend.

Explains the Japanese Yugen that Alan Watts describes, wondering what is beyond the mountain, and says the old value creativity and new things since unfamiliar peaks get harder to climb.

Having visited 75 countries, launched 100 billion dollar cryptocurrencies, and been a billionaire at 33 through luck and relentlessness, doing the same thing again brings no joy.

2026 must be a year of returning to originality and creativity and new approaches, a lifetime journey where getting one thing done now and then is enough.

Of clearing a lightning-struck tree off a back road with his brother using a UTV winch and a chainsaw, calling it the meaning of life, a side quest that makes a good day.

Asks how many, addicted to social media drama, truly found a tree and lived in the moment today, admitting most including himself did not, which is what growing up is about.

2026 could be a great year with wiser humble old hands working with new people, a remarkable year for Midnight and Cardano, or a world dragged down by greed and conflict.

The industry sells stories and hope, so choose to believe the better angels persevere and create the bull run and adoption, since crypto only fails if the industry chooses failure.

Asks if the alternative is federated banksters, endless wars, a 338 trillion dollar global debt heading to 500 trillion, and wage slaves who own nothing living on UBI table scraps.

The greatest con ever is convincing people they are powerless, and it is unreasonable to sleepwalk into a system of bondage where the few rule the many.

Crypto's purpose is the freedom to imagine you can make a difference and the right to dream big, not to launch meme coins, and he came from nothing.

He and every worthy entrepreneur came from nothing, unlike bank-implanted enclaves, so he does not care if he returns to nothing as long as he chose to do something different.

Cites Musashi's inner house from rule 12 of the book he wrote dying of stomach cancer in a cave, a masterless ronin staying happy by making integrity the core of that house.

Admits his inability at times to work with or get along with people has limited his opportunities and hurt others, but says you change and grow rather than obsess.

Asks whether society is so cynical it robs people of the right to grow and redeem, and calls empathy, love, and hope the best proof of divinity that make life meaningful.

A world of empathy versus hate starts with the listener auditing their own relationships with objectivity, asking where they could have loved more.

Unconditional positive regard, seen in Mr Rogers and Bob Ross, makes a person hard to hate, and why he loved the community on X, mourning lost friends like Pullman and Russell.

2026 is a year of compassion and building where RealFi finally realizes the Africa mission with a million Kenya loans in 18 months, Midnight launched after six years, and Leios ships.

It is the year Hydra gets good and the community gains full agency as more nodes turn on and decentralized governance hardens, and if all you think about is price you have lost.

The beauty is a community of dreamers regaining their agency as people equal to any president, like the self-selected people who signed Cardano's constitution in Argentina.

The ranch is magical because it is untouched by man, and the older he gets the more he loves silence, a coffee on a mountain with no goals or place to be.

Closes that 2026 will be a year of change, wishing everyone lives their dreams and enjoys the beauty and people around them, since this one-way ride does not last long.