The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 70 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Forman: Stablecoins Settled $27 Trillion in 2024, Double Visa's Annual Volume
“If you look at stablecoins today, they're a two hundred and thirty billion dollar market. Those two hundred and thirty billion dollars rotate on chain to the tune of about 27 trillion dollars last year in 2024, which was greater than Visa's total settlement vo…”
Forman: Stablecoin Market Will Grow 10x to 100x Within Ten Years
“This is a market that I think will experience 10 to a hundred X growth over the next five to 10 years.”
Forman: Sports Betting Books Cannot Compete With Prediction Markets at Scale
“But I think that it's going to be very difficult for traditional sports betting platforms to compete with prediction markets at scale.”
Forman: Tokenized Fiat Currencies Will Eventually Exceed Traditional Fiat
“Eventually, my view is the stablecoin market or tokenized fiat currencies will exceed Traditional fiat currencies.”
Forman: Having Zero Crypto Exposure Is Now Becoming a Contrarian View
“Not having a position today, despite the increased regulatory clarity, despite the institutionalization, despite the use cases, I think is becoming a bit more of a contrarian view than a consensus view.”
Forman: Banks, fintechs, and institutions will be DeFi's largest consumers
“And the largest consumers of DeFi will be banks, will be fintech companies, and will be institutions.”
Forman: Permissioned DeFi will be magnitudes larger than permissionless DeFi
“So for all those reasons, I still think permission DeFi is incredibly interesting, incredibly powerful, and probably will be Orders of magnitude larger than the DeFi that we know today.”
Forman: Over 98% to 99% of current DAOs will not survive
“I suspect that 98, 99% plus of the blockchain applications, the DAOs that exist today, are not going to be around long term.”
Forman: Human governance in crypto networks is a bug, not a feature
“And in some ways, governance and human involvement is almost a bug. It's not a feature. You want these systems and networks to stand on their own two feet, almost as public utilities.”
Forman: Bitcoin Is a Finished Product Needing No Technological Upgrades
“What's interesting about Bitcoin is that it's a finished product. There's no real additional tech that needs to get built. There will be improvements to the tech stack of Bitcoin, but that's not necessary for the thesis to play out. In some ways, it's better t…”
Forman: Memecoins Will Persist Because Investing Is Inherently Social
“But I don't think they're going away. So today meme coins are five percent of total crypto market cap. I think they'll always be here because investing is inherently about feeling like you're part of a community.”
Forman: Tether Generated Over $10 Billion in Profit Last Year
“If you look at Tether, last year they made over ten billion dollars of profit with a small team.”
Forman: Long-Tail Esoteric Assets May See Tokenization Before Institutional Assets
“We may see more adoption in the longer tail before some of the more institutional assets.”
Forman: Polymarket Called All Seven Swing States Before the Associated Press
“After the results started coming in from the seven swing states, Poly market reached 95% probability on each of those seven states, in some cases, many, many hours or a day or two ahead of when the Associated Press called the race.”
Forman: Hivemapper Mapped 10% of Global Roads Without Spending Corporate Capex
“It's a company called Hive Mapper, and they've now mapped roughly 10% of the world's roads in just a couple years without spending a single dollar of capex.”
Forman: AI Agents May Ultimately Become the Primary Users of Blockchains
“Well, we think the major users of blockchains just may be AI agents themselves.”
Forman: Strategic Bitcoin Reserves Are Actively Discussed in 31 US States
“We're now discussing a Bitcoin strategic reserve at the federal level in the U.S. And in 31 states.”
Forman: Tether Was the Seventh-Largest Buyer of US Treasuries Last Year
“Tether alone was the seventh largest buyer of treasuries in the past year.”
Forman: 99% of Crypto Industry Projects Are Completely Uninvestable
“And I look at the crypto space, I think, like, 99% of things in this industry are not investable, but one percent are.”
Forman: Finance captures 12% of GDP without producing anything inherently valuable
“Finance globally is Is 11 to 12% of GDP. And finance as an industry doesn't produce anything that's inherently valuable. It's just an industry that is a lubricant for other sectors like healthcare, education, et cetera, to actually, like, make the world a bett…”
Forman: Most Algorithmic Stablecoins Launched Over the Years Have Failed
“There are dozens of these algorithmic stable coins that have been launched over the years. Most of them have failed. Some of them have temporarily failed and revived.”
Forman: Self-custody and seed phrases cannot scale DeFi past 5M users
“So the concept of people downloading self-custodial wallets, writing down twelve-word seed phrases, understanding gas prices, and then being able to make risk assessments around which DeFi applications are safe or which ones are not, that doesn't scale beyond …”
Forman: Tokens represent the fifth global asset class
“Tokens are really interesting because they're very much a new asset class. They're the fifth asset class in the world. Pre-tokens, there were equities, fixed income, currencies, and commodities, and really every asset could be put into one of those four catego…”
Forman: DAOs will probably trade at lower multiples than traditional companies
“So because of that uncertainty, I think DAOs probably trade at lower multiples than companies, at least in the near term.”
Forman: Crypto regulation is an opportunity rather than a risk
“I think regulation is more of an opportunity at this point than a risk.”
Forman: Crypto's Bottleneck Is Regulation and User Experience, Not Block Space
“There's a surplus of block space, so there's a surplus of blockchains that you can use that are fast and cheap today. It's not really the bottleneck. The bottleneck is figuring out user experience, regulatory, understanding of KYC, AML, and making sure these p…”
Forman: BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin ETF Saw $37 Billion in 2024 Inflows
“So BlackRock's ETF had thirty seven billion of inflows in 2024. That was the third most of any ETF In the market. And by far the largest first year launch in history.”
Forman: $30 Trillion Wealth Transfer Will Provide Demographic Tailwinds for Bitcoin
“And as this greatest wealth transfer in human history plays out, 30 trillion over 20 years from boomers to Gen Z and millennial There's just a natural demographic tailwind for Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is very well positioned.”
Forman: 80% of All Blockchain Transactions Involve Stablecoins
“80% of all transactions on blockchains involve a stable coin in one way, shape, or form.”
Forman: Eurodollar Market Exceeds Total US Domestic Bank Deposits
“Today, the euro dollar market exceeds the total quantity of U.S. Domestic banking deposits.”
Forman: Ethereum Transaction Fee Burns Act Like Corporate Share Buybacks
“More and more people are contextualizing the valuation framework for Ethereum as a capital asset, and you can think about that burn almost like a company using its free cash flow to buy back stock. The units of ETH outstanding should decline as more and more s…”
Forman: Polymarket Saw Double Coinbase's Web Traffic in November 2024
“Polymarket.com in November was one of the hundred most popular websites in the world. Had about two X the website traffic as Coinbase.com.”
Forman: Aave Experiences Almost Negligible Loss Given Default via Programmatic Liquidations
“While there are defaults, as you would expect, there's been almost negligible loss given default because of the way the collateral is then liquidated in those scenarios.”
Forman: On-Chain and Off-Chain Private Credit Yields Are Roughly Equal Today
“For private credit, the incremental yield ultimately is roughly similar between a private credit product off-chain and on-chain. There's no real discernible difference between the two today because that perceived risk has migrated towards zero.”
Forman: AI Agents Require Crypto Because Banks Mandate Human Identity
“And AI agents cannot open a bank account. You have to be a human or a company to open a bank account. But if you're an AI agent and you want to send micropayments to other AI agents or micropayments to humans, that's really not possible on traditional banking.…”
Forman: Crypto Total Market Capitalization Remains Below Its 2021 Peak
“In today's market, crypto is two and a half to three trillion. We're below where we were in crypto market cap in 2021, almost four years ago, despite all the progress in the space.”
Forman: Digital Asset Infrastructure Finally Enables Long/Short Crypto Strategies
“Borrowing digital assets has historically been very difficult, but recently there have been massive improvements in infrastructure to be able to do that and to be able to execute on a more fundamental or event-driven long short strategy within the space.”
Forman: Money is a technology humans use to communicate value
“Money is a technology that humans use to communicate value with one another. It's just a technology.”
Forman: Henry Kravis was a day one investor in ParaFi Capital
“Henry Kravis was a day one investor in Perify, and is still a mentor of mine.”
Forman: Secured lending is DeFi's most mature sector with near-zero defaults
“Secured lending is a category within DeFi that is actually probably the most mature in terms of finding product market fit and having real volumes run through these systems, and very low If any principle defaults on the blue chip platforms”
Forman: Software-run DeFi will give lenders higher yields and borrowers lower rates
“In an equilibrium state, lenders should be able to earn more. Borrowers should be able to pay less and there's less rent seeking by these platforms.”
Forman: Brokerages capture all securities lending yield from retail investors
“If you own stocks on your Fidelity or Schwab account, you are earning Zero percent on them if you're a retail investor. And on the back end, to the extent people are shorting an asset that you own, Fidelity, Schwab, whoever your brokerage is, is making that sp…”
Forman: There is no limit on token rehypothecation in DeFi
“There's really no limit on the number of times a token can get rehypothecated in DeFi or on these digital networks.”
Forman: Lehman executives did not know the risk on their balance sheet
“One of the reasons that the financial crisis occurred in oh eight, oh nine is if you were to look at The TenQ of Lehman Brothers. Last filing before it went bankrupt. There's a big other line item on the balance sheet. You have to read into the footnotes. No o…”
Forman: Holding USDT or USDC Carries Issuer Counterparty Risk Like Bank Deposits
“So if you own USDT, you're taking tether counterparty risk. How do you price that? What return do you need to earn to make that worth your while? If you own USDC, you're taking kind of circle counterparty risk, and you're making a bet on their risk management.…”
Forman: The term DeFi will disappear in 5 to 10 years
“And my hope is that, and my sense is that people won't even use the term DeFi in five to 10 years. It will just be called finance because we don't call finance today centralized finance.”
Forman: DeFi scaling requires a DAO-to-business-to-consumer model
“So really DeFi scaling is, in my mind, a D to B to C distribution model, DAO to business To consumer. You need that kind of layer in between.”
Forman: DeFi instant settlement eliminates traditional finance's working capital drag
“So one, you have instant settlement when you're using DeFi. So it's not T plus two settlements for equities or T plus 20 for bank loans. These are all bearer instruments. So there's no global working capital drag from all the unsettled trades in the world. It …”