Steady Lads Live From TOKEN2049 in Singapore (2026)

Summary

• Zcash was the panel’s defining high-conviction, high-fragility trade: Taiki called it “the coin of the cycle” and argued it can compete with Bitcoin for narrative inflows. He is still “Texas hedging”—“hedge my longs with more longs”—partly because Project Tachyon should arrive within the next few months and address the quantum overhang. His mental stop is three-digit Zcash, selling probably begins above $2K and around $3K-$4K, while the long-range aspiration remains $20K-$30K.
• Crowding has concentrated crypto’s active risk into ZEC, HYPE, Lighter and NEAR, leaving valuations vulnerable if momentum stalls. Jordi warned that HYPE and Lighter buybacks now barely affect price because they are pricing in “100 years” of revenue; Zcash’s recent underperformance could similarly make momentum holders fall away “like flies.” His practical advice to Taiki: close the perps and retain spot rather than repeat the Fartcoin round trip.
• Justin’s post-10/10 portfolio reset captures the year’s rotation away from legacy majors. He sold 5%-10% of his ETH near $4,850 and the remaining roughly 90% near $3,850, later exiting Lighter around $4.21 while retaining Zcash. Against year-ago levels—BTC around $118K, ETH almost $4,400 and SOL roughly twice its current price—ZEC and HYPE have displaced assets such as DOGE as the cycle’s preferred speculative vehicles.
• Variational is betting that a scarce TGE calendar makes its Q4 launch unusually consequential. Justin cited more than $4 billion-plus of daily volume, mostly TradFi perps, and a 32% airdrop—“1% more than Hyperliquid’s 31%”—which it describes as the largest known crypto airdrop. The broader hesitation is rational: Coinbase/Base can attract farmers by merely promising a token, while Kraken’s Ink must prove that token utility will justify diverting cash flow from equity holders.
• Pearl offers a classic bull-market setup—strong narrative and terrible access—but its issuance burden makes the eventual listing a supply-demand test. Korean traders repeatedly pitched Justin the “AI Bitcoin,” currently purchasable only through a sketchy KYC-free exchange, yet Dim estimated roughly $1 million of daily inflation and Justin said supply may double within a year. Justin’s formulation was that Pearl is “a left-curve play with a right sprinkle of right curve.”
• “Crabification” was the episode’s framework for why crypto products converge on dopamine, gambling and personalities regardless of founders’ original ambitions. Taiki’s version is that compressed real returns create “long degeneracy,” leaving investors to “own the casino” or the best casino chips; Jordi mapped memecoins, TGEs and trader-following into different casino games for different gamblers. Even attempts to escape the game merely produce “a better crab,” with the rare transcendent personality becoming a “lobster.”
• The panel sees a bottom behind the market but expects dispersion, not an indiscriminate alt rally. Jordi said the bottom was at $60K and that Bitcoin needs the gold narrative to pick up for a sustainable move; another panelist worried BTC had only fallen about 50%, versus 75% previously, limiting the energy of the rebound. Jordi pointed to fear-and-greed recovering from 9-10 a few months earlier to about 70 and Robinhood buying $25 million of BTC as evidence that “speculation is back on the menu,” while still finding few assets genuinely cheap.

Deep dive

1. One year erased the old hierarchy

• The anniversary board made the reset tangible: Bitcoin had been around $118K, XRP $3, ETH almost $4,400 and SOL roughly twice its current price. DOGE subsequently lost about two-thirds, while Zcash and Hyperliquid entered the top 10; Tether and USDC FDVs barely changed, and TRON moved only from $0.34 to $0.33.

• Taiki challenged Justin over his supposedly “guaranteed” $7K-$10K ETH call, and Justin gave the actual exits: 5%-10% sold around $4,850, then roughly 90% around $3,850 after 10/10. What initially felt late became “the best thing I could’ve ever done”—a clean exit that let the cycle reset before he bought Lighter and Zcash.

• His later execution was less dramatic but still solid: Justin exited Lighter around $4.21, “not quite the top,” while keeping Zcash. The portfolio shift mirrored the board itself—capital had migrated from familiar majors and DOGE toward a much narrower collection of new consensus trades.

2. Zcash’s upside case comes with an intentionally loose eject button

• Taiki’s premise starts with Bitcoin’s quantum overhang: people he spoke with estimated BTC might be worth $120K-$150K, and “definitely above 100,” if that risk were addressed. With Project Tachyon expected in the next few months, alongside the privacy narrative, he sees Zcash challenging Bitcoin for flows just as SOL challenged ETH and ETH once challenged BTC.

• Jordi’s pushback was crowding, not technology. At trading dinners across Asia and the US, Taiki repeatedly heard the same portfolio—HYPE, ZEC, Lighter and NEAR—and Jordi argued this herd behavior has already pushed HYPE and Lighter toward “100 years” of implied revenue, leaving buybacks too small to support price when sentiment turns.

• Zcash’s recent weakness sharpened that concern: Jordi described momentum holders losing dopamine and dropping “like flies.” Justin therefore pressed Taiki for an actual stop; Taiki said getting past $1,000 matters, and contrary to traders expecting a “perfect retest,” losing it would be bearish. His stop remains mental, so he conceded he could wake up to $300 ZEC.

• Taiki still floated $20K-$30K over several years if Zcash captures Bitcoin-like narrative inflows, but plans to sell incrementally above $2K and around $3K-$4K. Jordi heard echoes of Taiki’s $10 Fartcoin target and recommended closing perps while holding spot; Taiki’s complication was that leverage also farms Variational points.

3. Token launches must now justify themselves against equity

• Variational intends to TGE in Q4, potentially as the year’s only substantial launch. Justin said the platform is processing $4 billion-plus in daily volume, largely from TradFi perps, and will distribute 32%: “the largest airdrop that we know of,” exceeding Hyperliquid’s 31% by one point.

• The panel framed Q4 DEX launches as a recurring playbook—dYdX, Hyperliquid, Lighter and now Variational—but noted the broader drought: no new token had even reached a $1 billion TGE, much less threatened the top 10. Base, Ink and a possible Polymarket token remain promises rather than completed launches.

• For Coinbase, issuing a Base token might hurt rather than help the stock: the possibility itself drives activity, whereas farmers can leave once distribution occurs. Polymarket has more flexibility because a token could raise capital and behave like “pseudo-equity,” but large companies with substantial equity valuations must decide whether another claim on economics damages existing shareholders.

• Dim said Kraken had pitched Ink as an integrated wealth platform spanning asset management and trading, potentially resembling BNB. Jordi kept the tradeoff explicit: fee utility paid in tokens removes dollars from the equity business, perhaps sacrificing “20% or whatever” of cash flow, though a highly valued balance-sheet token might make that sacrifice worthwhile.

4. Pearl combines “AI Bitcoin” reflexivity with brutal inflation

• Justin discovered Pearl by repeatedly asking Korean traders what was new; it was their most common answer. His immediate thesis was distribution: buying requires a cumbersome, “sketchiest KYC-free centralized exchange,” so a proper listing could release substantial demand. Taiki added that the access edge was the only reason he bought it: “It’s very hard to find.”

• Dim supplied the bear case: the team still faces the economics of a network with about $1 million of inflation per day, an amount that cannot easily be sold safely into the market, though it might be sold OTC. Justin added that supply may double over the next year, meaning demand must exceed issuance “over a prolonged period,” not merely create an opening spike.

• Jordi placed Pearl at the memetic end of a barbell: cash-flow assets such as HYPE work on one side, monetary assets such as ZEC and Pearl on the other, while ordinary L1s occupy the “mid-curve.” Pearl’s “proof of useful work” uses AI inference compute for mining; his hoped-for improvement is democratized on-chain mining rather than miners, often operating from low-electricity jurisdictions, rotating into hot coins and dumping them.

5. Every crypto product eventually becomes a casino game

• Jordi borrowed “carcinization”—nature repeatedly evolving toward crabs—to explain why ambitious crypto hedging products collapse toward “quick dopamine variance distributions,” while media converges on attention-shortening clips. The question was whether trader personalities inevitably become the celebrities organizing those bets.

• Justin rejected the conference slogan: “I don’t think anyone that’s not sponsored by FOMO has ever said that traders are going to be the new celebrities.” Taiki countered with Ansem’s million-plus following and “long degeneracy”: as real returns compress, people increasingly seek life-changing outcomes through financial speculation.

• Jordi’s casino map reconciled them. Memecoin trench traders, TGE launch bettors, personality followers and studious blackjack players prefer different games, but “they’re different kinds of crabs, and they’re all crabs.” New listings always attract one constituency regardless of quality; human faces create another ride-up-and-down market around tokens.

• Dim extended the metaphor to ETH veterans becoming better crabs, citing David Hoffman trading beyond ETH and Eric Conner buying Bonk coin. His speculation about Tom Lee involved a possible 5% threshold and roughly $400 million of balance-sheet cash: perhaps long BMNR/short ETH, or long ecosystem assets that could benefit as Lee redirects attention toward supporting his accumulated bag.

• Dim’s punchline was that those who transcend the crab game become “lobsters,” while everyone else evolves into a better crab.

6. Perp platforms are converging on options as the next battlefield

• Justin joked about reports of $500 million in Kalshi “coffee sales,” referring to allegedly inorganic perp volume alongside only a few million dollars of open interest. Variational’s planned Kalshi trading competition was canceled after Kalshi pulled out in Singapore amid the controversy, though Justin separated the products: Kalshi’s prediction market is “great”; its perps simply have not caught on.

• Dim called HIP-3 structurally monopolistic and Hyperliquid’s core perp product exceptional, but said HIP-4 prediction markets lack the interface prediction-market users want and have gained little traction. HIP-5 may bring options, while Justin expects Q1 competition around options and favors Variational’s RFQ model for importing TradFi liquidity over rebuilding an on-chain order book.

• The closing outlook stayed selective. Jordi expects dispersion between “incredible assets and the rest,” said the bottom was at $60K, and wants the gold narrative to strengthen before trusting Bitcoin’s next sustained leg. Another panelist thought many assets were fairly valued or overpriced and worried that a mere 50% BTC drawdown—versus 75% previously—may limit the energy of the rebound.

• Taiki argued smarter markets may finally reward belief in the right assets, prompting Jordi’s objection that winners are always retrospectively called “right.” Jordi’s more concrete evidence was fear-and-greed near 70 versus 9-10 a few months earlier and Robinhood adding $25 million of BTC: the four-year script has accelerated, the bottom is likely in, and “speculation is back on the menu.”