Steady Lads 100th Episode Year End Spectacular w/ Special Guests

GM everybody. Happy holidays and happy 2026 coming. We're excited to bring you episode 100. This will be our year- end episode as well. So, pretty big one. We'll have three guests coming on and as episode 100, guys. I mean, we wanted to see where it all started three years ago. It was a different world. It was the deep bare market. It doesn't feel maybe too different, but some of the we're looking at some of the prices back then and and they were pretty different.

For context, I think the Steady Lads podcast started July 28th, 2023. And when we started, Bitcoin was at 30K, ETH was 1900. And we see all these altcoins here still on a much lower. I feel like some of these alts are lower today than it was than it is now. But I guess you can kind of see like the theme, right? Like Bitcoin up 3x, ETH up maybe 50%. So, it's doing okay still. But yeah, it's crazy to think that we started at these prices.

We were not feeling feeling that good at the time but I feel like we've done fairly well in the past two and a half years and we and look at like look at everything past like you know Tron which is you know has also done well but if you look at Polygon, Litecoin, Polka Dot on wow I mean I guess Bitcoin Cash has done okay but you know Shiba Inu bunch of that stuff that that hasn't done amazing and I think like one of the themes is that there just are not that many great digital assets of quality yet. And one of the things we want to maybe look forward to in 2026 is how do we get better quality assets that can do well? Because I've been like seeing silver and palladium on my newsfeed over the last few days and it like the numbers are just like all-time high, ripping off faces.

It's clear that there is liquidity out there and it's just needing maybe like some kind of more fundamental aspect than than our coins have had.

I saw some tweet that said, "If you held silver for the past week, you've outperformed holding heat for like the past four years or something." Those tweets are always really like kind of kind of funny.

Like what what's it gonna take? Like why hasn't people bought Bitcoin yet? You know, isn't it digital gold?

I mean, just to double click on that, it's interesting, right? Like go I mean, Bitcoin shouldn't mean more of a fundamental reason if gold is doing so well, right? I completely understand the alt complex of why that's been lagging, but Bitcoin that was, you know, supposed to be the one thing that's that's our digital gold that thrives in times like this. And I don't know, I'm kind of starting to wonder if the alts are actually holding Bitcoin down because like the sentiment that we have in the rest of the crypto space is so negative right now that it makes it a little harder to even buy Bitcoin if you think the rest of it is really just not going to perform well.

I mean, it is kind of bullish that we are having some of like the huge whales you know sell their tokens. You always want the average price and the distribution to be wider and the average price to be higher. And when this happens, even though it's very annoying to wait months and months for this to like flush out, it is like very bullish for that next leg because ultimately, you know, people are always going to sell if they're up a,000x and you want people to, you know, reset reset the clock. And, you know, I always knew that was going to be part of any process higher. It's a healthy process hired to to go through this, but it is frustrating given that, you know, the real gold is is doing well and we got Peter Schiff, you know, running laps around.

But let's see you know the other thing of course is the the quantum background which started being talked about and I think you know we said it before like it's kind of good that those conversations are are happening now and and you know get getting some preparation going because there is like a good dev community that can start thinking about this problem and and and addressing it and it's better that they're doing this instead of you know spending time on inscriptions and you know all those like random things that we had going on on on Bitcoin.

Are you worried about quantum sort or do you just think it's just FUD and prices down so people are finding reasons?

I'm worried about people being worried, right? Like that's kind of my job. It's like what are people going to be thinking about? And I think it it's going to probably like break into the consciousness of of the public a little bit more as we kind of go into the next few years. But, you know, I have to balance that with with the fact that Bitcoin does seem very undervalued compared to these other assets. And I think Dim was saying before that there's just so much being traded now at these levels that it's still unlikely that we kind of break down, you know, into the 70s given how much has already been absorbed here.

I don't know, Dim, how do you how do you see the Bitcoin chart?

Yeah, I I think it's note definitely noteworthy that uh in terms of point of control, in terms of volume being traded since all-time highs, this is the level 87 and a half where most volume has been traded. I think that kind of at least locally decreases the chances that we get a a fat break and and loss of that level. you might have, you know, kind of deviation or something, but that's that's that's really like the mean the mean price where there's there's agreement by participants that is is fair value. And I think what we're looking for now is is a reason to break out of that. And I think there are many reasons that are um where you know that would allow us that would allow us to to break out of that and and the most key one is kind of technicals like the the complete apathy is just is just top and I think it really doesn't take much at all for Bitcoin to just trade into the into the 90s again and and sustain them for for a while.

It has seemed like we're getting a a Bart every day though, right? like as soon as we get back to 9091 and then we just immediately retrace it. If you look at like a

I need to ask about this Jordy. Uh cuz all the sentiment when I when that happens the tweets are all this is happening because of 1010 some market maker got carried out. There's no one to market make. Is that the reason we would be seeing something like this or is it something else going on?

Not in Bitcoin. No. I mean those those things might be you know seen in in some smaller alts but but not not in Bitcoin. And yeah, I mean I've been trying to trade the range, but then you know I'll buy more at 87 and then as soon as I start just selling a couple clips at 90, it'll just like fully bart and then you're like, "Oh man, I barely got off like 10% of my position and then you put on the 10%." So I've been able to like swing trade 10% but I haven't been able to get like a a proper chunky because I am expecting that we do break upwards at some point. So I'm I'm keeping you know very long even even at 90.

You know you look at things like silver and gold and it's clear that people are looking to hyper gamble and to you know buy breakouts and breakouts cause excitement and the news flow will kind of get more people in. There was a an article I think it got thousands o of likes that you know probably most of us at least have seen on on Twitter which um we can put the link up here but it's talking you know once again about people just want to have some chance of escaping um the Maslo's trap as it's as it's put where you have you know enough to survive but you don't have enough to thrive and you're con constantly being inundated with um you know, Instagram and Twitter stories of people, you know, doing better than you.

I think this one hit home for a lot of people because, you know, it's not the first time we're we're talking about this, but it it's sort of putting in in pretty stark terms why um you know, this AI anxiety is is overriding a normality that you know used to exist where you would just try to do well in your job.

Dim, you read this article. What were your thoughts on it?

Yeah, I think the most interesting part is that casinos create a sense of agency somehow, which is counterintuitive for people. Um, yeah, I I love that line. Um, and in a world where people are feel completely lost, that's really the way to, you know, escape escape the matrix. And I think, you know, crypto has been the market for that. I think we're we're entering into an even more hyper financialized kind of world um through prediction markets and stuff and that's that's only going to proliferate. Um and so yeah, I don't know. I guess what do you own there? You you either you either need to bet as well and get some of that conviction and and and try to make money being part of the casino or own the casino.

No, I have a hard time like like talking about this topic because you know the guy says in there how you know the people who tell you that hyper gambling is not good you know those guy not like those guys but there like you know those guys have already made it and it's easy for them to talk from their perch of like financial security and say like oh you guys you know be responsible and like okay so fair enough but you know growing up I've experienced this like fake agency. Uh, you know, I think I put my my first sports so you know, in Cypress, sports betting is like a it's a national pastime. There's not much else to do. And, you know, there's not a lot of like high paying jobs. And I would say that I've seen this like decades ago.

You know, I think I put my first sports bet on. They let me put it on was like maybe like 13 or something something. I went to like the the sports fun and started like betting like, you know, maybe it was like a few dollars at the time on like Champions League games, but you know, you do get this like fake feeling of agency that you can somehow beat the odds or that you know better, you know, this player is good. And so, you know, your mind starts to play tricks with you. And I, you know, in the meantime, I've like hung out with a lot of like Chinese high rollers that, you know, love Bakarat and um it's the same thing where like you don't actually like really have that much agency, but you get to bet on bank versus player and you start just like finding patterns or they start like writing down and they they think they see something and and you know, like you're not seeing like it's all it's all just like it's all against you.

But I think what what matter is again getting back to like it's not about if I'm worried about quantum what other people are worried about. It's just if people feel that there is agency there then this explains why you know the sports betting boom has has gone crazy and um we talked about these prediction platforms ultimately like they're they're mainly uh just regulatory arbs for for people to do more of this kind of you know betting.

Damn, Cypress is really early, you know. We got Binance launching Binance Junior to get the kids into trading. But they they hooked you up early, you know, Jordy.

But hey, like Poly Market Junior got, you know, yeah, we need Hyperlid Junior, Lighter Junior, need all these in our circles, we hear a lot about this hyper gambling, financial dumerism, but when I talk to normal people, this just isn't part of the conversation. A lot of people I know are excited about AI. they're excited about their careers that aren't in crypto are not concerned about AI replacing them that obviously they could be wrong but I do think in crypto we're always looking for the end of times like with Bitcoin you're looking for the end of the US dollar you're looking for fiat to collapse you're looking for a new system uh we're looking to rewrite the financial system so I think we're always sort of like peaked to look for these problems in society when for me the base case is things keep chugging along and it's okay and I don't think it's going the gambling is going to get out of control I

You're hanging out with the right people, Justin, that are measured like you. I I feel like most of my friends are, you know, they think if they have a ton of conviction, it will pay that the conviction itself is what will make, you know, a bet payoff, right? So, I have so many friends that are just like all in the stock market levering up, doing options and stuff like that, and they're they're super confident because of that conviction itself.

I think I think what you said is is like very key because uh we we're seeing this stuff play out in crypto time and time again where like people get very um psychologically attached to their asset like if an asset is is doing well for them they they get this conviction and they're like it's because I believed in Luna that I'm up like this much and yeah um but at this point like most of these cults have have done poorly and I would say that the the last remaining one was the hyperlquid cult which um you know because of like it had these like great characteristics of uh you know this like con like ma magic conception and and and people just got like money out of nowhere and and and you know it was just this magical thing.

Obviously even that asset has has struggled and you know we'll talk about it a little bit with uh with Vlad from lighter in a little bit but you know this concept of like just doing buybacks and buying tops um because you're indiscriminately just buying hasn't worked out too well when the market turns because you know the multiples get too big they expand too much you're pushing them to expand further. We've seen this with other good assets like Jupiter for example um which also has you know large buybacks where it just sort of overextends goes way too high and then like the the pullback is very painful for the community who has this conviction and like is really trying to like believe in something you know you want to believe in something um and that and that's been maybe like part of the reason why you know it's been depressing on on crypto Twitter.

I feel like every time or the hard lesson the past few years is whenever you believe in something, you just get wrecked and then at some point people stop believing and then at that point like Twitter becomes toxic like it's there's we're entering this apathy phase where it's like oh like what do I even believe in anymore? Um I do think we'll get to the other side eventually, but who knows? You guys are optimistic. I'm more pessimistic, but you know we'll we'll we'll let the market do the talking for us.

Are you are you are you are you pessimistic pessimistic ETH or are you pessimistic like everything or what are you what are you doing?

I mean I'm bullish Bitcoin. I'm pessimistic ETH which means I'm pessimistic altcoins. I think I feel I think if if I'm bearish ETH you can't be bullish any altcoin right unfortunately I I'll trade lighter you know if it goes lower. Maybe we can talk about that later with the blood but I don't know. I don't think that's that's true generally. There's so many coins right now that are moving by themselves and they're not moving based on what ETH is doing. And I don't think that's been the the story about ETH this year anyway. It's I could I mean the case about Salana being that coin is more relevant in 2025 than ETH. I think so Solana is actually the the the risk proxy instead of ETH.

Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, maybe I'm too I'm being too harsh on ETH. But I don't know. I feel like Yeah, maybe we can talk about it more when comes on. I feel I feel like I feel like Vicki might have more interesting thoughts. You know, you'll be surprised. I think I think uh Thicki has some interesting takes on the market right now, so we'll get him on.

All right, so let's uh let's look at last year's predictions before we move on to next year's. Um I think we have a Grock conversation here that summarizes it. So Justin, your your predictions, what do you think?

I mean, you did pretty well. I think like largely pretty good. Soul and ETH remain pretty flat throughout the year. Mostly true. uh clearly very wrong on point 2. Monad bearish doing well. Uh that was completely wrong. I think the one I'm most proud of is the micro strategy related event will trigger the next bare market. Obviously, there's no like event that has happened yet. Although I do think it's still possible, but the premium to NAV turning negative or getting very close. I think I nailed that was one of the big predictions I had end of last year was that all of these dads have to die. Um and I think they're in the process of doing that.

This was pretty non- consensus. Coinbase will launch its own token for base chain. Um, they announced they're going to launch it. Uh, but obviously it hasn't launched yet, which I'm happy about. Um, stable coins become the do the dominant narrative. That was definitely true. Um, Poly Market emerges as a serious competitor to sports betting. Very true. And Democrats intensify anti-crypto stance. I think also true. So, I'm I'm really happy with these. I think they did well. I wish I played the market as well as I played the prediction game, but um maybe there's a lesson in there.

Have Democrats intensified or like you know I like given like how pro Trump is I I wouldn't say that I'm seeing Democrats like you know go full full crazy on it obviously.

That's fair. Yeah, they've gotten quiet. But I I think I mean one of my predictions for next year is that in 2026, this midterm year, one of their big campaign points is all of the corruption and scams in the crypto space that Trump has been a part of. So, we'll see. And then this like Bricks

Yeah, the BRICS nation, unfortunately, like you know, they haven't really gone after Bitcoin. They're all after gold still, unfortunately. So, that's that's being part of the issue.

Yeah, I missed this one, but this point was this was completely wrong. Yeah. no Bitcoin strategic reserve conversation and bricks nations, you don't hear anything about the bricks dollar anymore. So, I think we're unfortunately still too small to be a geopolitical like to be in that game theory uh phase where, you know, the nations start thinking about exactly their strategy. I think it's still, you know, maybe like a 2x away from from starting to be relevant in that aspect.

Taiiki, you uh I see here you you kind of nailed the first one. I mean, this is um not exactly in the alt season. There was no alt season, but um the the ETH alltime high. That was that was kind of exactly it hit.

Yeah. Yeah. My thesis has always been once ETH hits new highs, you you want to sell everything. Um unfortunately, it didn't even go above 5K. So, it was pretty basically did though. Like, let's Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll we'll give it to we'll give it to the maxis. He went to 5k. Um and then I predicted that everyone's going to call for 10k price targets and then random things are going to pump and then you know people's hopes and dreams are going to get crushed again. And is it really that simple? Yes, it was that simple. Um this I also made these predictions when it was AI season, you know, with by the way I I checked the market cap of AI6Z. It's like 2 million now.

Well, they they migrated you a coin. Yeah, I think it's done well today. It's up a lot. Okay. No. Okay, never mind. But yeah, sometimes I look back on those coins. I'm like, wow. Like I can't believe you believed on like all these things. But anyways, yeah, like the AI coins didn't really do much. Um, yeah, like the last two points is kind of stupid, but you know, I feel like I got ETH right, so that's all that matters. I'm happy with

Yeah, I mean, Tikki, like at like this time last year, I think you were probably longing GOAT or like excited about Goat and like just think about how far Yeah. Just think about how far away we are from that now. I mean, that feels like 10 years ago. It's like seems inconceivable that anyone would long that token anymore.

Yeah. So, yeah, pretty good. The whole the whole AI sector, you know, we've been waiting for the resurgence of it. Um, it hasn't happened. Um, I don't know if we need like even more of a technological leap forward on on that side before we we get it. I think the world coin thesis that you know I had you know it's not it's not done worse than other altcoins but um I saw a week ago that Sam Alman and and um you know uh the crew behind WorldCoin did like a presentation and they're still you know so proud of their app that they've done and they're integrated into Tinder now. Like if you if you use your world ID on Tinder it'll like verify you that you're a real person and you're of age and all this stuff.

I don't know if like you I think it's like Tinder Japan, so it's still like a pretty small market. I think to go after

Yeah, Tiki can you can use Tiki is married. Tiki Tiki is uh he's off the market, Justin.

I'm off the market. Yeah, but just for market research though. Uh market research. Just the world coin research. No, I mean Jordy, the tech, it's like Tiki has been saying for a while, right? The tech is amazing, but the coins are not. Um, and so we we have to redesign these things.

What about your predictions, Jordy? How did they how did they pan out?

I don't know if like these are exactly my my predictions. I don't know if Grock is like hallucinating. He he may have uh did I say that um a severe bare market hits. There was going to be a severe bare market. I I don't know. Um I mean, you should just you should just claim your victory. This has been pretty bad, right? It's been pretty severe right now.

Yeah. I mean, you know, ETH did did did like have did did pull the move that we that we uh spoke about. I mean, literally the ETH BTC ratio after bottoming went did like a a clean like 2 and a halfx in a very short amount of time. And um you know that that's now it's found its stable point. Now it seems like it's forever pinned at like 0.03. But um we did get a move there. Um, you know, we will see the the midterms next year and I'm curious to to see how much of a topic crypto is going to be uh dur during during that period. Um, but yeah, let's let's um let's let's check if Grock is hallucinating. I'm not I'm not sure. I'm not sure about these these pieces. Um, and then I guess we had Sebon. Uh he supposedly said that um agents are going to act as tireless ks. I mean look we have had we have had I do remember I definitely said that that is that is real.

did AI XPTt. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't had much of this AI XPTt. Uh, you know, like no one really talks about any AI influencer at all, but my responses and I think other people's responses. I saw Charles Hoskinson complaining about this saying he's leaving Twitter, but uh the responses are like super heavy on bots these days and they're getting a little bit more sophisticated with the responses. like I sometimes like have to check their profile and you know um once I see that there's no like followers that we share and stuff like that then I kind of assume that they're bots but uh I think like in a year they probably get even better. I don't know what the purpose of these bots is like what exactly they're trying to do by sibling these accounts but I'm sure whoever's spending all that effort has some plan for it.

One of the interesting things that I've been looking at this week was the exploit that happened on the flow blockchain. So, there was a exploer who managed to print tokens, which is never a good thing. Print the native token of the the chain. So, I think it's supposed to have 1.5 billion tokens and he printed 43 billion tokens. And I saw that uh there was a tag on his address that said big holder. So if you went to the blockchain, it said like big fish. So yeah, we have we have this exploer who uh printed 40 40 something billion tokens. So 40 times what it's supposed to exist. And the flow scan explorer gave him a tag of big fish with an exclamation. And I would say it probably deserves at least three exclamations if you have 40 times the entire tokens of of the whole chain.

And things got a bit chaotic because the exploiter did manage to extract whatever liquidity was on chain. They, you know, they sold into the LP pools. They they bridged out some, you always want to go to ETH and Bitcoin, I guess, and that's what they did. So, they managed to um get about $4 million worth of of those tokens drained out. Um, and then uh the blockchain got halted, you know, once they realized what was going on. And then things got very interesting because I think the initial plan of um you know this uh reaction was to roll back the chain which we've seen you know in a couple other chains obviously with uh Ethereum early on and and and other chains when they've done a roll back. Uh the problem with doing a roll back is that you know there's already a lot of activity that's happened and there's maybe the deposits happened on centralized exchanges that starts to create like a a huge mess for all the other partners.

And so we had um Alex Mir from Dbridge uh talking about how you know the bridges and the sexes and dexes and and everybody starts to you know have to clean up this mess of rolling back the chain. you know there's there's tokens that have been deposited, there's double balances. So he you know I kind of like what happened here. He he wrote um a public response saying that they should not do a roll back. He urged them not to do this roll back and he gave an example of you know how this will create a problem and um I think it's for the best but uh they actually decided to you know h have some discussions with them and he was able to change the plan um and then uh from my understanding they did not roll back the chain and instead have just frozen they've like uh continued the blocks but they've just frozen in place anyone related to the exploer

And um you know on the one hand I don't want to get into like the whole centralization decentralization thing. I think we're we're all past that. We kind of understand that if there's an exploit and you have a way to centrally fix it, you just do it like at this point like you know there there's no decentralization theater. Uh I guess it's interesting to see what happened to the price. I've been trying to think if there's a trade to do here. It did fall from 17 18 cents down to uh about like 9 or 10 cents. So it fell about 50%. And um you know it's unclear if this is just like a sentiment thing or if there's actually like you know more supply that's gone out. M maybe there's like a little bit extra supply that's been created. We're kind of waiting to see.

It's funny because we we began the the episode talking about like hyper gambling and stuff and like no one would think to long flow like before the exploit now that they are exploited it's like whoa do I buy this here you know it's like like what is this chart like wait what this does flow even do you know does like they do they have like five NFTts on there like like so the I think they might have pivoted I I'm not familiar but I was on their Twitter when we for researching this and it said they're the DeFi chain. So they're the DeFi chain. What? What is going on?

Yeah, it's crazy. There there was kind of like an interesting opportunity. This is kind of where my knowledge of uh you know perpetual markets and funding rates and stuff like this gets uh gets used where um the perpetuals of the of the token kept trading, right? like it doesn't matter if you stop the chain like the the assets perpetuals don't need to stop. So I kept trading but it has an oracle price and you know you can't move tokens between exchanges. So you you you had like OKX trading at 13 cents, you had Binance trading at 10 cents. You know the oracles are obviously very confused as to what the real price is. And then the perpetuals are you know starting to have some blend of those and there's like a funding rate. Um there was an opportunity to uh you know go long and get a lot of funding and um the funding went to like hourly funding on on Binance and was paying uh quite quite a large amount. So I I did end up uh going along about a million dollars of flow on on finance per and getting getting paid like a good amount on on funding uh like a very decent amount and um yeah we'll we'll see how how it plays out.

I it it's crazy how per have like gamified it the whole token game, right? Like it doesn't the token is irrelevant, right? It becomes like a funding game, a supply control game. It's it's so interesting. It's like obviously you're you're not longing flow to get you're longing for the funding. you're longing that like you know structurally there's a reason why um you know the perpetual is more of a long than a short and and that can be for for for different reasons but generally you know when you have control of the chain I I did expect that they would have some solution that would not like wreck the token because that's their priority and it's different than you know in the past we've had like UX link um had a similar exploit but you know they don't have their own chain maybe So, you know, if you're on Ethereum and you're you can't like roll back or you can't freeze the chain. If you're on somebody else's blockchain, uh but if you're on your own blockchain, then one of the benefits is, you know, somebody exploits it, then then you can you can be pretty heavy-handed as to uh as to what you do about it. And we saw this with Blast in the past and and and other um L2s.

Blast from the past.

As for the past Oh my god, I remember. Wait, when did Blast launch? Was it this year?

No, it must have been last year. Okay. No, when when Blast first got announced, I was like, yo, like I'm bullish blast, you know, L2 with native yield. That makes so much sense. And now we're just like not we can't believe it. Another L2 again.

All right, we have our first guest uh ready to join. Dim, you want to introduce our guest?

Yeah, let's do let's do it. Um yeah, so for the 100th episode, uh we wanted someone, you know, I'm generally lucky to call a friend. So beyond being one of the smartest guys I know in the market, he's he's uh uh who, you know, I also talked to off off camera and and trading alongside for the past year. He's uh he's someone who's made my thinking better in the markets. I think he's a he's a phenomenal researcher, investor, and and a better friend. Uh so Satrini, welcome to the pod.

Thanks so much for having me, Jim. I I uh I you know I I would say that you are uh one of the best crypto investors that I know but you introduced me to so many other people that that uh also contend for that title. So I'm glad. Um so let you know let's kind of get into it. Uh would you would you we're going to talk about your prediction piece a little bit but do you want to kind of uh kick off by talking to us about where you think we're macro wise? That's very very important for us in crypto.

Yeah. But we we own some longs and we need to see if uh we're going to get liquidated before you end.

You know, um it's interesting right now crypto for a while has kind of been this like macro release valve, but it's very difficult to imagine a more supportive macro environment than the one we have right now. You know, fiscal is like full tilt. Uh the Fed is, you know, cutting expected to cut more. uh the economy is like relatively uh strong on the high end and crypto has has kind of entered this period of underperformance that uh I I would say maybe has to do a little bit with the reflexivity of the asset class and and kind of uh how the more that crypto has embraced becoming a macro asset class the more it's become subject to macro flows whereas you uh when you get the ETF when you know micro strategy has this huge run when you you know you you just become increasingly subject to uh the idiosyncrasies of those flows. So it's it's it's something this divergence that we've seen between uh this macro environment classically let's say any time between you know since uh Bitcoin was incepted and a year ago would be a pretty excellent environment for crypto in general but but recently we've seen this underperformance that uh I I haven't like paid super close attention to but I would say like the the macro environment in general for risk assets is pretty amazing right now like there there's and and the most supportive aspect is that when you look at like uh analyst revisions to the next 12 months and you look at uh like where the price targets are for the S&P 500 um we keep building these walls of worry and that's not typically what you see when the cycle'