Where the panel landed
The panel mostly agreed that Bitcoin had become harder to dismiss in 2021, but they split on what best represented that change. Adam McBride saw MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, NFTs, and ConstitutionDAO as the clearest signals; Dan Eve emphasized network records, Taproot, Lightning work, El Salvador, and inflation; Mike Dupree kept returning to Mt. Gox, Craig Wright, and El Salvador as the strange unresolved business of the year. Thomas Hunt's official awards leaned toward Strike, Coinbase as the worst company, Crypto.com as the defining marketing moment, Jack Dorsey as Bitcoiner of the year, and NFTs as the story of the year.
What they were watching
The directional consensus was that 2021 had been strong but untidy: Bitcoin reached a one-trillion-dollar asset-class scale, set new network highs, and entered national and institutional arenas, while altcoins, NFTs, and marketing budgets took much of the public attention. Organic price levels came up as landmarks rather than a ticker crawl: Dan cited all-time highs around 66K or 67K, Thomas joked about Saylor arguing for 20K next week, and Adam predicted a correction followed by a possible move to 250,000.
Best Bitcoin Company
Adam and Dan both made strong cases for MicroStrategy, with Saylor's balance-sheet accumulation and public advocacy treated as unusually effective Bitcoin marketing. Mike jokingly nominated Mt. Gox on the hope of long-delayed repayments, but Thomas's official selection was Strike, framed around its fee competition, Jack Mallers, and El Salvador work.
Worst Bitcoin Company
The nominees showed the panel's standing grievances: Mt. Gox, Dogecoin, Chainalysis, Tesla, and Coinbase. Thomas landed on Coinbase, criticizing its shift into broad crypto branding and the listing of coins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu as a confusion machine rather than a Bitcoin company.
Defining Moment Of 2021
Dan listed a full year of milestones: trillion-dollar asset class status, 66K to 67K highs, hash rate recovery, high difficulty, low relative transaction costs, company treasury adoption, and El Salvador. Adam picked China's ban as the clearest demonstration that states could attack Bitcoin without killing the underlying individual option, while Thomas named Crypto.com's marketing blitz as the official defining moment.
Biggest Surprise
Adam chose ConstitutionDAO, impressed by the speed with which it raised 40 million dollars and the way it showed a new fundraising structure, even as the refund process exposed Ethereum fee pain. Dan chose inflation as the alleged surprise that Bitcoiners had already expected, and Thomas chose El Salvador's national adoption as the official surprise.
New Offerings And Technical Work
The panel moved from hardware wallets and packet-routing ideas to Taproot, Twitter tipping, NFTs, and Lightning tools. Thomas's official technical innovation was LNbits and Ben Arc's related work: jukeboxes, offline point-of-sale, vending machines, and a growing open-source Lightning backend.
Bad Technical Design
Dan and Mike focused on Chivo as a disappointing custodial rollout where stronger open-source options might have served better. Thomas instead named Chainalysis tracking the Lightning Network, placing surveillance back at the center of Bitcoin's unfinished privacy problem.
Enough Already
The panel's fatigue list included Twitter haters, Doge memes, Craig Wright, the lost hard-drive landfill story, too many conferences, and recycled Bitcoin FUD. Mike's complaint about conferences turning corporate gave the segment its social texture: the old builder rooms had become large, formal, sales-heavy events.
Bitcoiners And The Year Ahead
Dan nominated Peter Schiff as a backhanded Bitcoiner of the year because he could not stop talking about Bitcoin, while Adam selected Michael Saylor and Mike selected Miami mayor Francis Suarez. Thomas officially selected Jack Dorsey, gave Lamar Wilson an honorable mention, and closed the prediction segment with expectations of corrections, consolidation, Bitcoin advertising, inflation-driven attention, and continued Curio Cards rediscovery.
Strike is the best Bitcoin company.— Thomas Hunt
This was the year of NFTs.— Adam McBride
The Bitcoin ETF came kind of out of left field and then, you know, it was a three-day awesome link.— Dan Eve
I think it's lost a lot of that to kind of, uh, I don't know, ambition or the uniqueness that it used to have.— Mike Dupree
Cash app all in line with Bitcoin and now set free with his sites.— Thomas Hunt
I think Bitcoin's just had a blazing year.— Dan Eve
Story of the Week
NFTs Become The Year's Public Crypto Surface
The official story of the year was NFTs, not because the panel had become less Bitcoin-oriented, but because NFTs carried crypto into mass culture during 2021. Adam argued that nothing else dominated the year in the same way, while Thomas connected NFTs to Saturday Night Live, South Park, multiple blockchains, and the rediscovery of older historical projects such as Curio Cards. The episode treated NFTs as noisy, lucrative, sometimes absurd, but undeniably the broad cultural layer through which many outsiders first saw crypto that year.
This was the year of NFTs.— Adam McBride