an incredible read by @Eli5defi on the overview but i wanted you to ask yourself one question going into 2026, who owns the flow?

i strongly believe that winners will:
> not be who has the best tech.
> not be who has the loudest narrative.
> its who controls distribution,, and can be trusted at scale.

in these 500 pages of 2026 outlooks, the consistent insight is showing that crypto is getting absorbed into finance and finance is a flow business.

my 4 strong themes:

1) the 4-year cycle is no longer a strategy, its a lagging indicator.
too many new exogenous drivers (ETF plumbing, stablecoin velocity, regulatory regimes, AI capex/liquidity) dominate the old miner-supply narrative. If your mental model is still halving → alt season, you’re trading a meme.

2) tokens are being forced to grow up.
“ownership coins” is changing how we view tokens. if a protocol behaves like a business (fees, margins, product distribution), the asset that represents it can’t be a vibes-based governance token forever. either it evolves into something with explicit, durable economics (fee share, buybacks, burns, rights), or it gets repriced as what it functionally is: a speculative instrument with weak linkage to fundamentals.

3) agentic finance is real, but what about KYA
we’re moving from trustless execution to trust-minimized delegation. if agents become persistent economic actors, crypto rails make sense because they’re always-on, programmable, and natively composable. the hard part is that once agents transact, finance stops being “human intent + click” and becomes delegated, machine-executed authority.

the winners will be whoever builds the missing middle layer: agent identity + permissions + policy enforcement + monitoring + rollback / recovery

4) super-app consolidation is inevitable
crypto today still looks like an ecosystem of tools, ro the market compresses to equilibrium. so the end state looks like:
- a few consumer + capital aggregation surfaces (super-apps)
- with many interchangeable protocols behind them
- and stablecoins as the interface layer

distribution will consolidate into a few surfaces and everything else becomes backend.

own the flow because if you don’t, you’re exit liquidity for someone who does.

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2003879260453507338

I think @arndxt_xo thesis is sharp and uncomfortable:

The U.S. has effectively moved onto an "S&P Standard."

In this modern feudalism, asset prices are the protected class (the Lords), while labor and the real economy function as the shock absorbers (the Vassals).

The system’s feedback loops have been rewired so that wage growth is punished as "inflationary," while asset price wobbles trigger immediate policy rescue.

Why this matters now:

— Volatility Suppression
Policy isn't designed to stop recessions; it's designed to stop disorderly asset repricing. This keeps the index stable but makes society brittle.

— The AI Paradox
As highlighted, the AI boom is currently benefiting hardware and supply chains first. For the numbers to work long-term, we may see massive labor compression, expanding margins while thinning the consumer base.

— The Crypto Hedge (and maybe why I am still bullish on crypto for long-term)
Amidst this "feudal" stagnation, the crypto market acts as the only distinct exit valve.

Last week, we witnessed significant shifts in institutional behavior:

- Visa settled nearly $3.5 billion in $USDC
- @SoFi launched a bank-issued stablecoin
- Bhutan held $1 billion in BTC.

These moves indicate that capital is constructing parallel financial pathways.

Long live Crypto and DeFi.

https://x.com/Eli5defi/status/2004417411672617098

This is the most crowded bull market setup of the cycle.

I caught the last local top with this signal.

Alt OI > BTC OI is a local-top signal, not a start of a bull.

Here are the obvious signs:

- Alt OI > BTC OI = leverage migrated down the cap curve

- Thin spot liquidity + perp positioning = small shock → forced de-risking.

- 2025 ≠ 2021
2021: liquidity expansion → broad beta bid.
2025: fiat erosion → selective flows into quality + attention.

- FOMC is the catalyst

Some tell tale signs right now

- BTC $88.9k, still 30% below the Oct peak ($125k).
Price is holding up while positioning risk has been rebuilding.

- Spot BTC ETFs have flipped to net outflows into year-end.
They remove incremental demand and make price more sensitive to macro volatility (because there’s less passive absorption when sellers show up).

- US 10Y ~4.15%
High risk-free yields raise the hurdle rate for everything that’s effectively long-duration / long-liquidity (most alts).

- Stablecoin supply is huge (~$308–310B), but their flow matters more.
But if supply is flat/down near the highs, it often means we’re seeing rotation within crypto rather than fresh fiat inflow. The real green light is re-accelerating net issuance + rising velocity (stablecoins actually moving)

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2004438013217329572

Genuine question:

Can you still say "Merry Christmas" although it's over?

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2004851070594642400

impressive share by @DeRonin_ on how to grow your first 10k on X.

most small accounts die because they’re tweeting into an illiquid market, unsexy but it works:

- route flow into liquid venues (big threads/communities)
- convert with a credible profile
- retain with consistent niche + repeatable formats
- accelerate trust via Spaces

tldr: boring market = cheaper attention

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2005157802520740192

I’ve been reading a lot over the last few days about how it’s supposedly a no-brainer to short LIGHTER right now.

https://x.com/KittaKitka/status/2004921970224246918

The Dumb Money System That Forces Us to Buy the Top

It’s the system doing exactly what it was designed to to make us deploy capital into risk assets right as the economy and labor market starts to crack.

This is the market doing what it always does in late-cycle easing:
- policy compresses cash returns → flows go risk-on
labor weakens → recession probability rises
- but earnings (concentrated in tech) stay hot → the index keeps levitating
- valuation becomes a decade headwind, not a one-year timing tool
- the endgame looks more like 1999 than 2008 — until something breaks
- $20B just flowed into the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. $125B has gone into the index this year.

At the same time: 1.2M job cuts, unemployment up to 4.6%, and the “recessionary” Sahm-rule-style alarm is starting to blare.

Twitter: https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2005631994663940315

FULL Article: https://threadingontheedge.substack.com/p/the-dumb-money-system-that-forces

Crypto + Macro Stuff I'm Looking At Today

https://x.com/rektdiomedes/status/2005384318684672099

study @the_smart_ape‘s polymarket bot, backtested with +86% roi in just a few days

most ‘arb bot’ threads are just PnL screenshots. this one is has undergone a through a research methodology

tldr:
@Polymarket
arb is a parameter + execution game.

this is a case study in microstructure + parameter design:

- the same both show 2 vastly different results with diff parameters: conservative +86% (fees+spread), aggressive –50% in 2 days
- the strategy is exploiting temporary orderbook dislocations early in each 15-min round, then engineering a hedge where UP + DOWN < 1 (after costs).
- so he did the correct thing by building a first hand dataset (6GB of 1s best-ask snapshots) and replay deterministically
- record more stress slippage/latency, model fill probability, and define kill-switches.
- then optimize infra (colocation/VPS, Rust, dedicated RPC) only after the strategy is robust.

the bot is the easy part.

the hard part is building a repeatable calibration + risk framework.

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2005809072453640406

➥ Three On-Chain Signals That Triggered the $JOJO 30x Pump

https://x.com/cryptorinweb3/status/2005978417531953387

Watching Theses 2026 on DeFi: Perps & Equity Perps, Prediction Markets, Stablecoin Yield w/ @MessariCrypto Alumni.

Top narrative: equity perps.

The thesis: Equity perps are hitting an inflection point where the infrastructure is finally good enough (60-70% complete) that novelty alone drives adoption.

The numbers back this up -
@tradexyz
reached $6B volume and became the 8th largest perp DEX by open interest after just one month of launching equity markets.

Why this works:

• Crypto natives want higher leverage on familiar assets (stocks > memecoins when returns compress)
• TradFi retail wants cleaner directional exposure than 0DTE options provide
• 24/7 trading with no brokerage accounts needed is genuinely novel
• Onchain platforms have structural regulatory advantages over traditional exchanges

The critical insight: This isn't just a crypto trend. It's where ALL trading is heading - people want more asymmetric returns. Perps deliver clean levered exposure better than short-dated options.

But the skepticism is valid:

• Perp DEXes were the ONLY DeFi metric that wasn't "down only" in 2025
• Hyperliquid already proved product-market fit for crypto perps
• The question is whether equity perps expand the TAM or just fragment existing volume

Prediction: Equity perps will be bigger than anyone expects (like stablecoins and prediction markets before them), but 2026 is the execution year - whoever gets from 60% to 80% product completeness first captures the market.

https://x.com/stacy_muur/status/2006022520559001841

shedding some $LIT airdrop stats

people are not selling their airdrops (75% still holding) and some have been accumulating $LIT instead.

price have been holding up $2.5 to $2.7 very strongly

the perp meta is not dead but going to get more competitive from here on

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2006244101277331615

Prediction: @arbitrum ’s RWA ecosystem 3X in 2026

Not because RWAs are trendy -but because distribution + compliance are converging.

Today:
• ~$850M RWA TVL
• Highly concentrated → top 3 protocols drive ~77%

That's a sign of early institutional consolidation

The real signal wasn’t just TVL growth → it was Robinhood and Exodus choosing Arbitrum to tokenise stocks & ETFs

Stocks are just the start

The next phase is multi-asset RWAs:
equities → ETFs → metals → structured products

The real RWA race isn’t L1 vs L2 or app-specific chains - it’s who institutions trust to settle value.

https://x.com/thelearningpill/status/2006002396695351783

Been spending this past week with family, but I wanted to share an update on the bets I’m taking going into the next year

https://x.com/Rafi_0x/status/2006130773888553167

- 2025 End Of Year Crypto Edit -

https://x.com/rektdiomedes/status/2006403691696287997

i’ve come to think most traders make the same mistake. we optimize for getting in cheap when we should be optimizing for being right about the market setups.

undervalued is a model output.

markets do not pay you for having a model. they pay you when other participants are forced to update their positioning.

that’s why i’ve started separating two behaviors people lazily call the same thing. buying like an owner versus trading like a trader:
- owners underwrite a long duration thesis and accept noise as the cost of compounding.
- traders are usually trying to catch the repricing after tge chop.

when supply normalizes, attention rotates back, and the market stops being dominated by sellers. most of us say we are doing the first. in practice, we are doing the second.

if my objective is a post tge recovery swing, then cheap is not an edge. it is often just the market telling me supply is not done and demand has not shown up yet. bottom bidding becomes a bet across multiple variables at once.
- that selling pressure is exhausted.
- that marginal buyers are imminent.
- that the narrative will not deteriorate further before price recovers.

you can be correct on fundamentals and still lose.

what i’ve learned is the real tax of buying lows is not even the drawdown, it is the uncertainty. it is open ended time risk and narrative risk. being right but trapped for months while opportunity cost compounds elsewhere. and while your mental bandwidth gets spent defending a position as the market keeps rewriting the story. that is not alpha. that is endurance training. and most traders are not actually paid to endure.

post tge assets make this worse. early price action is often less discovery and more market structure:
- incentive sell pressure
- unlock overhang expectations
- points farmers exiting

and attention moving on to the next shiny thing. trying to size aggressively inside that phase feels to me like trying to do intrinsic valuation while the cap table is still being liquidated.

so my trading rule has gotten simpler and more thesis-backed. i want size to follow thesis. i will take small exposure only when the dip is extreme not just in price but in sentiment. but i reserve my main allocation for the moment a breakout is confirmed. even if it means my entry is worse off than bidding the bottoms.

because what i am really buying with a breakout is information. information that buyers are willing to defend. that supply is being absorbed, and that the asset has transitioned from hope to pricing.

i would rather be slightly late and aligned with demand than early, cheap, and stuck in a six month conviction test i never actually intended to take.

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2006768631984828675

You can be right and still lose if you’re early

2025 had a very specific kind of psychological violence.

Crypto in 2025 looked less like finance and more like advertising.

Markets (always) moved fast, valuations > fundamentals, and yet the real work, building, surviving vesting cliffs, still moved at human speed.
The defining variable of 2025 was not price. It was time.

Time exposed fragile cap tables, fragile traction, fragile security, and fragile leverage. It punished anything that required just a few more months to become real.

I spent the year living inside that contradiction: switching from a defensive support role into an investing deal + execution role, while watching projects pump and dump around, and trying to stay honest about what everything else say.

This is my post-mortem of 2025 and what I’m carrying into 2026.

(read till the end for that, will drop some of the projects that I will be bullish on in 2026)

Twitter: https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2007074378455134655

FULL article: https://threadingontheedge.substack.com/p/you-can-be-right-and-still-lose-if

I filtered over 100 articles into one recap that will change your approach in 2026.

https://x.com/0x_dynamo/status/2005570693883179355

read @stacy_muur's take here and made me realize that i've been preaching the same thing.

i've earlier shared my thesis about "fat participants", its essentially distribution, distribution and distribution.

i am now more confident in my thesis having validated not just by myself.

the meta-trade for 2026 is going to be FULL ON focused on institutional, where rails become default when money, credit, identity, privacy, and verification become internet primitives.

stacy shared some things which reasonated with me:

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2007294363735343581