Welcome to Bankless. It's the first Friday of 2026. And on this Friday, we are bringing in Anthony

Cizano to substitute for Ryan, who got stuck in a little bit of a source, snowstorm. So we're bringing in

our favorite substitute t-shirt to go through the weekly news in crypto with us. Anthony, welcome to the show.

Thanks, David. It's good to be here again. And happy New Year. And it's funny that you mentioned that Ryan got stuck in a snowstorm when it's like really hot here anywhere I'm in Australia. So it's like snow. Why is it snow? Oh, that's right. Yeah, right. Yeah, we're in the middle of winter up here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are some ever some evergreen subjects that are, we're going to talk about, Anthony. We're going to talk about the first, the silver, gold, and S&P 500 breaking all-time highs because that all happened in the last seven days. And then we're going to go back and touch on Avey in the Civil War because while it was kind of like two weeks ago, there was still some updates and I also want to get your takes on it as well. Meanwhile, while AVE is diverging, uniswap is converging.

So there's a lot more alignment in the uniswap ecosystem. We're going to talk about that

news as well as Michael Selig, the new CFTC chairman that just got named, who is a very big

pro-crypto CFTC chairman previously from the SEC. We're going to talk about that. And then also we're going to talk about Quantum's threat because, that's what I know you. I know you know about Quantum and otherwise focus on chain security. So I want to get your takes on all of these subjects and more. But before we get into all of that,

it's the 1st of January.

So what's your take on 2025 as a whole?

And then also I want to pick your brain

about what you're excited for,

what you're looking forward to,

where you think Signal is coming down the pike this year in 2026.

So let's start with 2025.

What do you think about

2025? Yeah, I think 2025 was a kind of, you know, obviously volatile year in the markets in

particular, but I think it was like a kind of maturation year for crypto. Like for a long time now,

I remember, like a lot of people in the ecosystem have wanted like a cleansing of crypto, like

get rid of the scams, get rid of the grifts, you know, all these tokens are worth so much when remember, like a lot of people in the ecosystem have wanted like a cleansing of crypto, like get

rid of the scams, get rid of the grifts, you know, all these tokens are worth so much when they shouldn't be worth as much as they are because they're fundamentally worthless. And I'm not talking about, you know, people can argue about what token should be worth what, but I'm talking about like these tokens that are part of projects that are dead. So everyone wanted this cleanse. And it felt like we got that cleanse to an extent, I think, in 2025. And I think that was from the fact that, like, crypto is no longer like this niche thing, right? When you have the president of the United States talking about it, like every other day, crypto is not like a niche thing anymore. And then we have all these tradfired institutions coming in and they're kind of like, I mean, they're coming in a different way. Some of them want to be supportive and additive. Some of them want to just obviously control everything and be extractive. But they're coming in in a really big way. They're getting excited about things like stable coins. We've kind of gone mainstream on the tech side, I think. Obviously, on the asset side and the market side, everyone already knows about Bitcoin. But when it comes to like the tech side of things, I think we've gone a lot more mainstream now.

And I think that it was a funny thing watching people's reactions to that because I think a lot of crypto natives didn't like that because they felt like, well, you know, are all the gains gone now? Because we're not early anymore. Like, where's the excitement? Like, where's the kind of fun stuff? Like, is it just going to be boring stuff, like stable coins and, like, low-risk defy? You know, people gave Batalek crap about it for talking about it because they're like, oh, this is boring. You know, we came to crypto because we want the fun, exciting stuff. But, you know, I think that really is kind of, I guess, like the main theme of 2025 to me is that graduating and coming into like the real world and not just being a teenager anymore.

Like crypto kind of went from being a teenager to like an adult now.

...