Everyone is wondering whether the four-year cycle is still alive or whether this is an echo bubble. If the cycle is intact, we're in the stretch where the big multi-year spot entries get made. If it's dead and this is an echo bubble, we're in that stretch too, only about a month after BTC's first impulse move up. And if both camps are wrong, we go back to cope-posting and hamster racing.
So: six things I think happen from here. Some have already started playing out since I began drafting, which is what you get when two pieces sit in the drafts folder for months. Others are prospective, and a few are deliberately vague because the point is to know what to look for when it shows up, not to pretend I already know the ticker.
- The Monetary Endgame (BTC) and/or privacy coins (XMR + ZEC) starts to play out
I have been writing about this thesis for many years and it was what originally attracted me to the space 13 years ago. I noted in my last piece that I felt it was weaker than I did some years ago due to mostly temporary headwinds, but the longer term case is still very much there.
All roads lead to money printing, inflating away the debt, and potentially taxation/confiscation regimes. Alongside the generational bequeathing of wealth from boomers to their heirs, this is the largest tailwind to the store-of-value (SoV) bearer assets thesis.
The 2028 election sets up the strongest case for privacy coins. The Trump administration has seen the pendulum swing aggressively on digital assets, with the admin, the SEC, and the CFTC all outright supporting crypto. This is a far cry from the prior Biden and Gensler status quo which made existing in the industry difficult. If a Democrat wins in 2028, it wouldn't be surprising to see the pendulum swing back the other way aggressively. At the rate crypto is ingraining itself in the financial system, I doubt we'd be headed towards any sort of blanket ban, since it will be too integrated by then. I imagine that by 2028-29, AI will have become incredibly powerful and contributed to even worse wealth inequality than we have now. Taxing AI and redistributing wealth will be a major campaign promise of the Left.
The obvious risk is that privacy coins are first in line if the pendulum swings back: delistings from US venues, pressure on shielded transfers, or a regulator deciding privacy itself is the offense. That's a real risk and it's the other side of the coin for the trade. The more hostile the environment gets, the more valuable privacy becomes and the harder it is to access. When the state is looking for revenue and your ledger is public, privacy stops being a niche preference. This isn't unique to the US, and I suspect wealthy people in other countries are already moving capital out of traditional assets and into privacy coins.
Inflation is the way out
2. Social Trading and the Casino Thesis will continue to grow into a major cycle theme
Regardless of your thoughts on this, social media keeps taking up more of people's lives, and everything online moves faster than it used to. Things spread and go viral quicker. This is the loop that makes social trading attractive enough to suck people in. The apps are slick, easy to use, and exciting. Dudes go crazy over their fantasy football leagues with their buddies; this is the next level.
Fomo (left) and Pump Fun (right) Leaderboards
Fomo: https://fomo.family/r/Evan_ss6 (reflink)
While there is a lot of "well ackshually"s about uPnL on the leaderboards, ultimately this is what has always expanded the crypto userbase: people seeing other people make obscene amounts of money. I don't see that changing. Whether it's BTC, ETH, DOGE, or SHIB, it doesn't really matter-- people love memetic reflexivity that gives them hope of becoming wealthy. The people just really love memes. One thing I've noticed on CT is the people who discuss memes a lot have the most engagement and largest audiences by far. Like it or not, there is something there that just taps into the everyman far more than cringelording about BTC's immaculate conception and Satoshi's deified status.
Launchpads
Pump Fun and other launchpads continue to rake in revenue. While I have been skeptical of memes over the years, the clear reality is the earnings are good and I'm bullish on speculation as long as the economy is okay. My background is from gambling, so I'm not here to moralize, people should be able to participate if they so desire, accepting the significant risks that accompany the potential rewards.
Pair Against SOL, Not Stocks
We are seeing emergent launchpads like Pons and Stonk and a few others which are worth keeping an eye on. I'll probably catch some hate for this, but I'm not sold on two of the trends here. 1) We've seen tax coin metas (anyone remember Unibot?) get going before. There is really nothing groundbreaking there, and eventually it becomes net negative because it's a drag on every trade and once volume slows down it fizzles out. 2) I'd argue that pairing against a stock/RWA instead of SOL is actually net bad for two reasons.
First, the buy SOL -> buy meme with SOL -> SOL and meme both go up is a nice reflexive flywheel while the market is good. Replacing SOL with a lower vol asset works against this. Second, there isn't really the same crossover in the holder bases of the memecoin vs the asset it is paired against, which removes some of the wealth effect from when the flywheel actually gets going. I'm open to being wrong about this, but I think net-net, pairing against a major cryptoasset is better than pairing against a tokenized stock or RWA. I assure you this opinion has nothing to do with my very modest investment in Pump Fun, just thinking it through from first principles and incorporating our shared experiences in prior cycles.
I still like the broader RWA tokenization trend, and expect it to experience breakneck growth if (big if...) regulation doesn't get in the way. It is less clear what is the best way to invest in that thesis.
Really showing my plumber unc status here
3. USA Perps will happen in a major way
I went into a good amount of detail on this in my last piece so I'm mostly just echoing that. The key insight now is almost all perp volume is done by crypto native participants. I expect the big shift to be the more mainstream acceptance of perps where you can trade them from Robinhood, IBKR, or whatever app you trade on. You can already trade perps directly on Fomo, Phantom, Telegram, and many other crypto apps/wallets. The Pie Grows.
Vlad Tenev in Cannes announcing their crypto and perps ambitions
Aside: there has been so much TradFi cope around perps and Hyperliquid, largely from people who haven't even bothered to place a single trade on the platform (sidelined?). It is bewildering to me why these people would rather FUD on the internet for likes instead of come take advantage of the most [Wealthy x Mentally Challenged] counterparties they will find available in any market.
https://app.lighter.xyz/?referral=1UPN7CNHU6DP (reflink)
4. DATs make a comeback, but only a select few
This was a thesis I had in the summer chop. I assumed there would be some DAT activism and M&A. Maybe it takes another quarter or two but you are seeing DATs get real attention from people who matter, with Stan Druckenmiller's Duquesne having taken a position in Hyperliquid Strategies (ticker $PURR) recently. While he may be busy fudding the US10Y (bagwork) and the global economy in public, they're still deploying to misunderstood/under-appreciated opportunities in the market.
That's a shark; watch what they do not what they say
Battered DATs thesis (USDE aka StablecoinX)
I theorized that a good opportunity for this thesis would have the following characteristics:
-big discount to mNAV (around 0.15x mNAV at summer lows)
-top tier team still shipping despite coin down 95+% from ATH in a relevant market sector (stablecoins, perps, etc)
-fundamentals will improve over the next few years during which vesting/unlocks end (USDE in circulation rising, basis yield coming back, expand to equity perpetuals basis, and more institutional partnerships that boost TVL and protocol revenue)
Ultimately I thought the Ethena DAT hit on these the hardest. They've since shipped their Neobank product and increased USDE in circulation by over $1B.
USDE (stablecoin) market cap from Coingecko
As I mentioned in my prior article "Have Fun Staying Poor", I expect equity perps to grow massively over the next 12-24 months and Ethena will be a key beneficiary of that. As such, it's easy for me to imagine USDE (the stablecoin, not the DAT-- this can be confusing!) hitting a new all time high above the roughly $15B market cap it hit last cycle based on the return of the BTC/ETH/SOL basis trades as well as the growth of equity basis.
Recently, StablecoinX signed a Waiver Letter with Ethena OpCo and the Ethena Foundation that, effective October 5, permanently terminates all lock-up and vesting restrictions on StablecoinX's ENA, including the 48-month contractual lock-up from the PIPE. That helps anyone who was worried about illiquidity or token locks.
Bears will point out that disposals still require Foundation consent under the Collaboration Agreement, so the company can't simply sell tokens to buy back shares. Partly true, though the consent clause says it can't be unreasonably withheld, and the same Waiver Letter sets up a "Funding Sale" framework: the company gives five business days' notice, the Foundation can take the tokens at the proposed price, and if it passes, the sale proceeds. So the mechanism I'd been hoping for already exists on paper as of September 14.
It's worth noting the discount isn't just an outside thesis. CFO Young Cho said on the Q2 release that they remain focused on "narrowing the discount between the Company's current market capitalization and the value of its digital asset holdings."
StablecoinX Inc., Prospectus (Form 424B3), filed September 14, 2026, "The Offering" and "Use of Proceeds." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2080215/000121390026099731/ea0305435-424b3_stable.htm
Per the September 14 prospectus, StablecoinX has 19,124,586 warrants outstanding: 11,500,000 public warrants (USDEW) at an $11.50 strike, 3,267,679 Tranche A sponsor warrants at $11.50, and 4,356,907 Tranche B sponsor warrants at $15.00. The company states that full cash exercise would bring in approximately $235.2 million, with the public tranche alone accounting for roughly $132 million. The filing notes the warrants were far out of the money at the time (the stock closed at $7.61 on September 8); with shares near $14.50, the stock is now much closer to the $18 threshold that lets the company force a cash redemption of the public warrants.
Two caveats: the company can only force a cash redemption if the stock closes at or above $18 for 20 of 30 trading days; between $10 and $18 the redemption is cashless, which converts warrants to shares but sends no money to the balance sheet. And the sponsor tranches are non-redeemable with cashless-exercise rights, so they can't be forced at any price. The cash path runs through the 11.5 million public warrants and needs $18.
I suspect there will be other wins in the DAT space, but this is so far the only position I've taken. The mega bull case for a DAT is to reach the state where they can issue equity accretively above 1x mNAV to buy the underlying. We've only seen MSTR, BMNR, and PURR meaningfully achieve this so far, but I suspect a couple more will get there.
Thesis really starting to play out
5. A Real AI Coin
It is no secret that I believe AI is far more interesting than crypto, but I still hold out hope that crypto generates some real [AI x Crypto] winners that people can enter low. Last cycle was TAO, this cycle is... I really don't know. This is currently an area where I am under-researched and need to catch up on. I've had this idea that we'd eventually get this AI coin that'll retire bloodlines, and maybe it hasn't launched yet or is sitting at a very low market cap. I largely missed VVV, which is enjoying its own success now.
Jensen Huang aka Leather Jacket GCR from BusinessInsider
On the agentic infra side, I have a [private] investment in Ritual, which appears to be launching very soon. Ritual provides an infrastructure for autonomous, self-executing AI agents that operate directly onchain.
I have no clue what the winner(s) will be, but this is what I'm looking for:
- Real demand from outside crypto. Developers or businesses paying for compute, inference, or data because it's the best option, not because of token incentives. Understandable to normie retail and getting outside flows.
- A token that's actually necessary. Usage should require or accrue to the token. No equity/token conflict.
- Revenue that is durable and isn't circular. This is pretty straightforward.
- An entry that's still low. Reasonable float and a market cap that hasn't already priced in pie-in-the-sky expectations.
If you've got something that clears that bar, pitch it below. All I know is that done properly, this has real potential to go mainstream, and this would be the cycle where it happens.
6. The Onchain 300-400m circulating "ceiling" gets broken
This was a lot bolder when I started drafting a few months ago. In recent history, nothing onchain could crack 300-400m circulating cap before crashing. As such, participants became conditioned to aggressively take profit in that range and a little below, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy where few are willing to hold a coin above 300m. I think this ceiling will break. I don't know which coin or exactly when, but several are already in the 100-300m range. This break will have real knock-on effects.
Resistance is made to be broken
Once that ceiling is shattered, people will, one by one, dare to dream and hold again. When this happens, people sitting on huge gains from majors and major alts get looser with capital right as new users flood in and multi-billion dollar targets become a reality again. Once one coin does it, others are free to explore the heights of yesteryear as well.
Posted damn near the bottom :(
(And just an obligatory hat tip to Bonk Guy for his conviction on this one. I was making dank memes when I should have been bidding. You live and you learn.)
Cheers
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Disclosures: This reflects the author's views at the time of writing. Views and positions are subject to change, and the author may trade in or out of any position mentioned without notice. The author holds BTC, ZEC, LIT, HYPE, USDE (StablecoinX DAT), RITUAL (private, not launched yet), PUMP (including private investment still vesting), and a small number of onchain bags. Nothing herein is trading or investment advice. Do your own research. This post contains referral links from which the author may receive compensation.
