Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, December 22nd, and that means it's time for Long Reade Sunday.

Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it,

give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation,

come join us on the breakers discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. All right, friends, welcome back to a pre-Christmas

LRS. We are fully in the thick of prediction season and today is no exception. The piece that I will

be reading, or rather I will turn over to an 11 Labs version of myself to read, is Pantera

investor Paul Varad Attack. It's eight predictions for crypto in 2025. Paul did this last year and did a little

summary of how well his predictions performed, and then gets into two categories of predictions

that he grouped into rising trends and new ideas. Let's listen to what Paul has to predict,

and then I'll come back for a little bit of discussion at the end. Every year, Bulls and Bears use

short-term case studies to forecast crypto-armageddon

or exponential growth. And every year, neither group is right. Some notable events this year.

Ethereum's Denkin upgrade, the U.S. election, crypto-ethefs, Wyoming's Duna, the WBTC controversy,

Robin Hood's Wells Notice, Hyperliquids near $2 billion air drop, Bitcoin hitting $100,000,

and SEC Chair Gary Gensler's January resignation announcement.

2024 was a year with no major market shocks. And though it didn't bring in an explosion

of new capital, it proved that a growing number of companies in the crypto ecosystem are

sustainable. Bitcoin is worth $1.9 trillion,

and all other cryptos are worth $1.6 trillion. The market cap of all crypto has doubled since the

start of 2024. The diversification of crypto has strengthened its ability to react to shocks.

...