The Chopping Block: 2025 Winners & Losers + 2026 Predictions - Ep. 998

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2026

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. It's a new year, and that means the crew is back with their annual year-end awards and predictions episode. First up: the 2025 winners and losers. From Trump's meme-coin windfall to Gary Gensler's legacy getting torched, from prediction markets going mainstream to Web3 getting its official eulogy — no one is safe. The team debates the biggest surprises (Circle's shocking IPO run, Ethereum's pivot under new leadership, Zcash's unlikely comeback), the best new mechanisms (ICO 2.0, DATs, federal preemption), and the year's best memes (including the Chopping Block's own tariff factory video). Then comes the flops and comebacks: AI agents that overpromised, Berachain's fall from grace, and Tether somehow winning again. Finally, the crew reviews how badly their 2025 predictions aged — spoiler: not great — and lays out fresh calls for 2026 including AI-powered hacks, stable-coin-funded AI capex, and equity perps taking over DeFi. New year, fresh takes, brutal honesty — let's get into it. Show highlights 🔹 Biggest winner debate — Trump's meme-coin empire, prediction markets going mainstream, and M&A consolidation reshaping the industry. 🔹 Gary Gensler's legacy destroyed — Haseeb declares his SEC tenure the biggest loser as every initiative got reversed. 🔹 Web3 pronounced dead — Tarun writes the epitaph on the "ownership economy" thesis as NFT sentiment hits rock bottom. 🔹 Bitcoin as biggest loser? — Robert's controversial pick: BTC underperformed in a year that should have been its best. 🔹 Circle IPO shocks — From skeptics to $70B market cap, the stablecoin thesis briefly took over Wall Street. 🔹 Ethereum pivot surprise — Vitalik's leadership shake-up and new EF direction restored optimism no one expected. 🔹 DATs dominate mechanism talk — Robert calls them highest "absolute value of impact" — amplifying volatility both ways. 🔹 AI agents flopped hard — From mania to annoyance, the speculative thesis collapsed and sentiment turned hostile. 🔹 2025 predictions reviewed — The team confesses their misses (150K BTC, 5x AI agent caps) with Tom winning at 2/3. 🔹 2026 predictions dropped — AI-generated $100M+ hacks, stable-coin-funded AI capex, and equity perps hitting 20% of DeFi volume. Hosts: ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:26 Crypto Industry Overview 02:39 Biggest Winners of 2025 07:32 Biggest Losers of 2025 13:29 Biggest Surprises of 2025 22:24 Best New Mechanisms of 2025 28:49 Best Memes of 2025 33:24 Best and Worst Pivots of 2025 39:15 Biggest Flops of 2025 41:31 Biggest Flop of 2025 42:58 Bitcoin's Disappointing Year 45:30 Biggest Comeback Stories of 2025 49:12 Favorite Guests of 2025 52:40 Reflecting on 2025 Predictions 56:33 Predictions for 2026 Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Don't curse.
0:01.0	Cool.
0:02.0	I would never.
0:03.0	You just did.
0:04.0	Welcome to the fucking chopping block.
0:06.0	Boom!
0:07.0	Not a dividend.
0:08.0	It's a tale of two pawn.
0:10.0	Now your losses are on someone else's balance.
0:12.0	Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways.
0:15.0	Unnamed to trading firms who are very involved.
0:18.0	Like that E is the ultimate problem.
0:20.0	D5 protocols are the antidote to this problem. Hello everyone. Welcome to the shopping blog. Every couple weeks, the four of us get together and give the industry insider's perspective on the crypto topics of the day. Quick intro is first you got Tom, the Defy Maven and Master of Memes. Hello, I'm fine. Next, we've got Robert, the Cryptoconucer, and the Tsar of Super State. Happy New Year. Next, you got Tarun, the Gigabrein, and the Grand Puba at Gauntlet. Yo, happy New Year. And I'm Hib, the Head Hype Man, at Dragonfly. We're early-stage investors in crypto, but I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. Please see chopping blocks at X, Y, Z for more disclosures. So boys, it is a new year. It is now 2026. I know Robert loves to celebrate with profanity, so I thought we'd put a little bit of a curveball in there. I am anti-profanity. Are you anti-profanity, actually? Yes. Listen, I have young kids. I try to have a profanity-free lifestyle and house, so no profanities. I did not know that. Do you like not curse on the show? No, I do not curse on the show. You do not curse on the show. We can play back the tape.
1:28.2	We'll see if I'm correct.
1:29.2	Wait, wait, wait.
1:29.7	Now someone's going to watch the show, Robert. Someone's going to get the highlight reel of every time I've like. Yeah, yeah, all right. Are you going to put money on this? You want to put money on this? No, I won't put money on this show. I tried it, especially New Year's Resolution from all of us.
1:43.9	Okay, the young, young Leshners, we're going to get a mixtape.
1:46.8	I love how this turned into a New Year's resolution for all of us. Okay, the young, young Leshners, we're going to get a mixtape.
1:46.8	I love how this turned into a New Year's resolution.
1:50.3	We're going to get, we're going to get a mix tape of all the time that Robert is cursing
1:53.6	and the show and put out a special episode, just Robert cursing set to music.
1:58.6	Anyway, okay, so it's been another year, which means another year of winners and losers
	...

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