Why 2026 Is 'Too Chaotic' to Make Crypto Predictions

Bullish:

• $BTC - Long-term drivers of Bitcoin like dollar debasement and monetary easing are accelerating, with both fiscal and monetary policy supportive despite short-term uncertainty.

  • “the long term levers of, like, what actually drives Bitcoin higher, dollar debasement, loss of trust in institutions, monetary easing. I think, like, on a long enough time frame, like, that's not changing at all. In fact, that trend is probably accelerating.”

    Ryan·9:18

  • “You've got the economy that's potentially gonna be run hot by the administration. Right? They're looking for ways to, you know, you've got the big beautiful bill spending hasn't fully hit yet. There's plenty of reasons why you're gonna see, fiscal spending and thus risk asset prices go higher and that should benefit Bitcoin.”

    Alex·7:07

  • “Bitcoin starting off the year quite well, I think is a good indication that people thought it had underperformed too much. Right? And you have portfolio managers that are starting off the year saying, you know, everything else is up. The equity markets are again near all time highs. Gold and commodities across the board have been ripping.”

    Alex·6:26
• $SOL - Solana is winning institutional adoption for tokenization and stablecoins, providing meaningful competition to Ethereum with better speed and usability.

  • “Solana, which itself has had enormous gains in 2025, particularly in terms of institutional adoption, whether it's stablecoin issuance or tokenization of securities.”

    Alex·22:54

  • “I think Solana's probably a better platform for that. Solana's meaningfully more decentralized than Base or any other single sequence or optimistic roll up, which let's face it, is basically a computer in some company's basement.”

    Alex·30:39

  • “I think if you're building consumer applications in crypto, think it's probably the best place to build. Right? Like, I think they have definitively, like, the biggest, like, consumer user base in crypto at this point.”

    Ryan·37:00

  • “Solana is really well placed there because of its speed and it has the separate fee markets that make it cheap.”

    Alex·32:26
• $STABLES - Stablecoins will see massive growth with Genius Act making them legal and banks/fintechs adopting them for settlement, representing a shocking improvement over traditional payment rails.

  • “the Genius Act, clear catalyst for the growth of stablecoins makes it totally legal pari passu one to one with other forms of cash. You're gonna see banks use it for interbank settlement.”

    Alex·1:01:18

  • “They're undeniably better in many ways than things like ACH or Fedwire or, you know, an actual wire, Swift. It just it there's it's a shocking improvement.”

    Alex·1:01:40

  • “you're gonna see this infiltrate card networks, banks, like fintech apps. It it already is. It's just simply better.”

    Alex·1:04:27

  • “stable coins are are gonna keep growing. That's probably the most lukewarm take possible right now.”

    Ryan·1:08:43
• $PERPDEX - Perpetual DEXes are the most lucrative business in crypto, making more money than any L1, with Hyperliquid proving the model works.

  • “the first thing to note is just how much of a cash cow these businesses are. Right? Like, Hyperliquid makes more money now than any l one. Right? Makes more than Solana. Makes more than Ethereum.”

    Ryan·39:38

  • “running a successful PerpDex is, like, probably in terms of, like, if you wanna build a sustainable business in crypto outside of if you're Tether, like, this is, like, the next best option.”

    Ryan·39:47

  • “hyperliquid basically created the category. You had perps before, obviously, least as far back as bitmex. But this sort of more decentralized version of it has a lot of adoption, no doubt.”

    Alex·44:25
• $PRIVACY - Privacy coins entering a super trend as regulatory risks decrease and practical business needs for on-chain privacy become apparent.

  • “privacy is probably in a super trend. And I think that's just because, like, fundamentally privacy is important, and it never was not important. It was just like you ran the risk of going to jail to actually, like, support these projects and work on them and be an investor. That is seemingly derisked”

    Ryan·0:07

  • “with the growth of tokenization and and and sort of traditional businesses operating on chain, they they're gonna want privacy. You don't want your competitor. You can't run an entire business on chain and have your competitor see every single payment that you send and receive.”

    Alex·55:43

  • “There are very practical reasons why privacy is important. And so, you know, I think there's a lot more to be done on privacy in crypto for sure.”

    Alex·56:04

Bearish:

• $ETH - Ethereum's tokenomics are broken with no direct value accrual, building for a future that may never come while losing ground to Solana.

  • “I feel confident saying, like, I'm not bullish on direct value accrual to ETH anymore. So what I mean by that is, like, Ethereum network fees. Right? Like, are Ethereum stakers going to make a ton of revenues? I think we can definitely say that's not the case. Revenue has been declining by 60% every single year now for the past couple of years.”

    Ryan·19:39

  • “I worry that Ethereum is building for a high throughput, low fee future that may never come.”

    Alex·22:20

  • “Coinbase pays more to the Optimism Foundation in licensing fees for the technology than it pays in fees, blob fees to the Ethereum network.”

    Alex·22:00

  • “They're they're not flocking to Ethereum to build the way the Ethereum community said that they would be. Right? And and tons, obviously, of course, are building on Solana. So I think that's that should be a wake up call for the Ethereum world.”

    Alex·26:02
• $MSTR - MicroStrategy and other DATs were a huge bubble with hundreds attempting to launch, most without sustainable models or debt to service.

  • “I think it's obvious a huge that debts were a huge bubble. There were definitely more than a 100 and maybe hundreds that attempted to launch.”

    Alex·14:49

  • “I'm not bullish on the the long tail of that's prospects at all. I think they're kind of one trick pony and kind of over.”

    Ryan·12:53

  • “it's clear that the playbook from last summer isn't gonna be rerun anytime soon.”

    Alex·17:13