Ideas
Crypto now favors disciplined stock pickers.
In prior cycles passive crypto allocation worked, but now returns are concentrated in a few silos while most altcoins bleed; investors must be discerning, disciplined, and pick specific winners because a broad liquidity wave is unlikely to lift all altcoins.
Gold and Bitcoin hedge monetary debasement.
Gold and Bitcoin are both policy hedges and monetary-debasement trades as major governments keep running deficits and refinancing debt; gold has led recently, but Bitcoin's underperformance is due to structural ETF and DAT buyers stepping back, and absent those outflows Bitcoin would likely be significantly higher.
No bid into year-end for crypto.
The 10/10 liquidation broke crypto's market structure: longs, shorts, and hedged traders all lost, the bid is effectively gone, and with tax-loss harvesting and no reason to buy into year-end, the market is apathetic and bleeding out until flows clear.
Watch Treasury basis trade unwind.
A crowded $2T Treasury basis trade funded in a tightening repo market is now the marginal buyer of long-duration Treasuries; if repo costs spike or rate cuts hurt basis-trade profitability, hedge funds may unwind and dump Treasuries, causing bond volatility, higher yields, and broad risk-off, unless policy and regulatory measures relieve pressure.
HYPE is strongest perp DEX business.
HYPE is one of the strongest crypto businesses, a leading perp DEX with structural buybacks, a strong team, and product-market fit; post-10/10 volume and revenue weakness and unlock selling are being watched, but actual unlock pressure looks lower than expected and the market may rerate as the team's actions become clearer.
Watch perp DEXs for multiple winners.
The perp DEX space is large enough for more than one winner; Hyperliquid leads now, but competitors like Lighter, Aster, Paradex, and others should be judged after TGE by whether TVL, volume, and spreads persist without incentives, which will reveal the durable winners.
Zcash privacy bid may continue.
Zcash has held up and kept a strong bid despite broad crypto weakness; its long rangebound and delisted status, well-distributed supply, and lack of perp shorting enabled a sharp rally, and if Bitcoin and macro stabilize, the privacy narrative and smart-community support could drive another run, though he lacks strong alpha and shielded-pool usage is low.
Watch undercollateralized crypto credit revival.
Crypto credit was a major part of the last cycle but has been absent since the 3AC and FTX blowups; it remains fundamental to financial markets, and new undercollateralized and trustless lending models using ZKTLS, AI verification, and on-chain assets, such as 3J with Maple and Centrifuge traction, could revive the sector.
Next-gen RWA yield products merit watching.
Stablecoin competition on T-bill yield is saturated by Tether and Circle; the opportunity is in specialized RWA and DeFi-native yield products with moats, such as energy infrastructure and virtual power plants, USD AI with AI-compute yield, and OEX incubating next-generation yield-bearing assets.
Avoid CAC tokens as investments.
Public and corporate chains may increasingly use tokens like Worldcoin as customer-acquisition tools rather than investment vehicles; user growth can rise while token price and market cap stagnate, so these CAC tokens may not be good investments even if they help the companies.
Coinbase can become crypto app store.
Coinbase has a barbell: fortified US centralized-exchange leadership plus the Base app, a self-custodial social and app-store ecosystem built on Farcaster and Zora content tokenization that could onboard the next billion users and make Coinbase the Apple of crypto innovation; comms and crypto stigma are risks.
Robinhood is safer super-app play.
Robinhood sits in a Goldilocks zone as a mainstream financial services and banking app rather than a crypto-only app; its users are financially savvy, adding crypto is easier than Coinbase adding all of finance, and it has a lead in stock tokenization, making it a safer play on new audiences and institutional adoption.
This Unchained (Chopping Block) video, published January 03, 2026,
features Jason Pagoulatos, yeak__
discussing ALTCOINS, GLD, BTC, Crypto Market, TLT, HYPE, Perp DEX sector, ZEC, Crypto credit / undercollateralized lending, RWA / next-gen yield-bearing assets, WLD, Customer-acquisition tokens, COIN, HOOD.
12 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers:
Jason Pagoulatos,
yeak__
· Tickers:
ALTCOINS,
GLD,
BTC,
Crypto Market,
TLT,
HYPE,
Perp DEX sector,
ZEC,
Crypto credit / undercollateralized lending,
RWA / next-gen yield-bearing assets,
WLD,
Customer-acquisition tokens,
COIN,
HOOD
