Some End of Year Thoughts

Frames 2025 as a donkey of a year for the industry, promised a pony and given an old donkey with duct tape on its hooves.

Recalls the hope of December 2024: the crypto czar talks, meetings with senators, and the end of the Gensler era and the war on crypto.

Institutional money did come in but got locked into Bitcoin, killing the trickle down to altcoins that helped in 2017 and 2021.

Recounts sending 10 people to the inauguration where Trumpcoin launched, which he first thought was a joke.

The chosen crypto czar is also the AI czar, an Elon Musk ally and Silicon Valley podcast figure with no real industry ties.

The promised crypto commission with Bo Hines was scrapped, White House meetings fizzled, and the strategic reserve shrank to Bitcoin only despite the Genius Act passing.

Argues World Liberty Financial and Trumpcoin made crypto partisan, turning once bipartisan bills into ethics referenda by mid year.

A split economy where his class does well and normal people stagnate, inside an AI bubble where Nvidia is worth more than Australia and Canada combined.

The US cannot sustainably commit over 1 percent of GDP to data centers and 50 power plants a year the way China does with top down planning.

Runs through geopolitics: the Ukraine war continues, a new Venezuela conflict looms, and people on his detail were activated to train Taiwan amid China war fears for 2027.

Retail did not return because the industry screwed them repeatedly, roping them into NFTs like the half million dollar banana.

Laments memecoin mania and the short sellers who bet negative 800 percent against Midnight and got burned by the volume.

Argues a president issuing a memecoin twice signals a parody market, even as real engineering progress like Solana's Firedancer shipped.

Advises a return to first principles, since no government, company, or investor cavalry is coming to save crypto.

Warns the billionaire class is building real robot armies, an I Robot scenario replacing every delivery driver and fry cook within 15 years.

Asks who you would trust to distribute UBI, a government or a blockchain, and whether AI as a public good should be controlled by private companies.

Frames blockchain as the controlling function for shared public goods: Midnight for computational privacy, Bitcoin for digital gold, with AI yet to enter the space.

You bring retail back by showing a vision of a better world, like the Christmas film imagining life without the protagonist.

Argues the industry sold buy low sell high financial freedom, a rigged game where 99 percent lose, which proves Gensler's point absent real utility.

A project's worth got reduced to its CoinMarketCap price, stripping away the special problems crypto could actually solve.

Would be builders that 99 percent fail because they do not want to do the work; only those who provide real long term value succeed.

Reiterates the global financial system is a Ponzi scheme with 338 trillion of debt heading to 500 trillion and a coming collapse.

Urges opting into new systems with sound money, self custody, and agency that protect freedom of association, commerce, and expression.

Defends Cardano being slower than Solana as the price of 50 percent Byzantine resistance, Nakamoto style recovery, and full decentralization, citing RapidChain at CCS 2018.

The mission is a system that lasts 30 to 100 years and cannot be co-opted, and Leios will make it fast while being done right.

Admits he was wrong that Bitcoin would hit 250,000 in 2025, having believed Trump would be good for crypto, but still sees a path in 2026.

People blame him as the guy at the top for their own losing trades, but crypto only matters if the people in it choose to make it mean something.

Recalls his 2014 TED talk and the Bitcoin education project, saying the train only rides as long as the community keeps riding it.

Frames it as a participatory revolution needing ambassadors, builders, and traders, not one guy barking at a microphone.

Would rather be left alone to build RealFi, Midnight, and Quantum Hosky and back Cardano projects like Iagon, SundaeSwap, and Midgard.

Rejects a world where every interaction is a robot or AI slop and every apartment is owned by BlackRock or Blackstone.

Celebrates Midnight trading 1.5 billion in Night tokens and flipping Algorand with no ICO, offering private smart contracts.

Wants to put a real cooperative DAO on chain by adding a privacy layer to RealFi's Reeve, willing to try and fail.

He has seen the elites' greed and disdain for the common man, and wants a world where everybody matters, not one that makes people useless.

Calls 2026 the reset to first principles after the hardest, most traveled year of his life, including a 26 hour day of workshops, a soft fork, and RealFi.

Closes wishing a merry Christmas, urging people off social media, and reaffirming 2026 as a return to first principles and retail via Midnight.