Where the panel landed
Thomas Hunt and Josh Shigalla partially agreed that 2024 was defined by institutional and political capture, but they split on whether that was mostly useful or corrosive. Thomas treated BlackRock, MicroStrategy, and political Bitcoin as victories with hollow centers, while Josh was more willing to credit Trump, the ETFs, and the exchanges for changing market structure. Both landed on caution around custodianship, meme coins, and quantum-computing headlines, while leaving the Trump-era regulatory promise unresolved.
What they were watching
The directional consensus was upward but not clean: Josh said his technical read pointed up for the next week, while Thomas said it felt lower but he remained bullish. The organic price discussion centered on Bitcoin moving from roughly 40,000 through 100,000 after the halving, with Thomas treating 100,000 as a psychological and historical threshold rather than a final destination.
BlackRock Wins And Loses
Josh first nominated Trezor as the best Bitcoin company because it quietly kept private keys private, but the show's envelope named BlackRock. Thomas credited BlackRock for bringing billions into Bitcoin through ETFs, while Josh immediately named BlackRock the worst company for the same reason: it centralized custody and had not visibly supported Bitcoin development.
MicroStrategy As Hollow Advocacy
Thomas named MicroStrategy his worst Bitcoin company because it teaches holding rather than using Bitcoin and concentrates coins in one large corporate pile. He argued that Michael Saylor's advocacy borrows older Bitcoin ideas while drifting away from self-custody and Bitcoin's original currency ethos.
One Hundred Thousand Arrives
Thomas chose Bitcoin breaking 100,000 as the most defining Bitcoin event of 2024, presenting it as a psychological threshold that made one whole coin feel permanently out of reach for ordinary people. Josh agreed that 100,000 was a human round-number milestone and a sign of Bitcoin's survival as a hardened security honeypot.
Meme Coins And Solana's Year
Thomas called fart coin the biggest surprise and used it as the emblem of a year when anyone could mint a joke and sometimes turn it into a fortune. Josh connected the same phenomenon to Solana, saying its rise surprised him because his own attempts to use the chain had repeatedly failed.
ETFs Become The New Offering
Josh used the best-new-offering category to explain The Standard, his DeFi borrowing platform, while Thomas chose Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. Thomas described the ETFs as the mechanism that put Bitcoin beside Apple stock in institutional portfolios, opening the door to further crypto ETFs even as the whole scene became absurd.
Nostr, Ordinals, And Spam
Thomas treated meme coins as a kind of technical-societal innovation, while Josh chose Nostr for decentralizing social feeds and allowing sat payments. On the negative side, Josh returned to ordinals and the old SatoshiDice spam debate, asking whether paid blockspace can really be called spam.
Quantum Fear And Environmental Repetition
Thomas named meme coins as the worst technical innovation and put quantum-computing panic as runner-up, calling the headlines far ahead of the actual threat. Josh agreed more sharply, calling quantum computers a venture-capital scam, and later named "Bitcoin bad for the environment" as the issue he had heard enough of in 2024.
Bitcoiners Of The Political Year
Josh named Donald Trump his Bitcoiner of the year because Trump's turn toward Bitcoin moved the political field. Thomas kept the running gag by naming Mad Bitcoins, then gave honorable mention to David Bailey, Brian Armstrong, and political Bitcoiners for winning the election-side gamble while warning that the actual returns remain unknown.
Our enemies are now our friends— Thomas Hunt
my worst Bitcoin company this year is for much the same reasons of yours. Mine is micro strategy— Thomas Hunt
Bitcoin hundred K was one of these things that it was like written in the stars.— Josh Shigalla
I don't understand why anyone would build on it— Josh Shigalla
the worst technical innovation for 2024 was meme coins bringing out the worst in humanity basically degenerate gambling— Thomas Hunt
don't let politics divide you that's how they get you— Josh Shigalla
Story of the Week
Trump's Victory Reprices Bitcoin Politics
The episode's dominant story was the political turn of Bitcoin after Trump's 2024 victory. Thomas framed it as horrible for America but useful for Bitcoin only in the alleged and still-unproven sense, while Josh saw the win as a major sentiment shift and perhaps the reason Bitcoin's political position changed. The story absorbed the year-end categories: defining moment, Bitcoiner of the year, regulatory expectations, Ross Ulbricht speculation, and the uneasy bargain between Bitcoiners and government power.
Trump wins it's horrible for the world horrible for America but wonderful for Bitcoin allegedly— Thomas Hunt