Disclaimer: This post contains thoughts on crypto, a volatile and risky asset class. It is not investment advice, and you should do your own research. All information is for educational purposes only. Please don’t take risks with money you’re not willing to lose.

In the past, a green September through November has only ever resulted in a positive end to the year. Perhaps expecting a similar outcome and further hinged upon the ‘The Santa Rally’, BTC price action was overwhelmingly frontrun by the holidays—achieving all time highs around $108k on December 17th before subsequently dumping as low as $91k just before NYE. Consequently, the monthly candle finished red, but vastly misrepresented the overall market sentiment.

The North Star

Perfectly aligned to the identity of crypto, BTC finally broke $100k before undergoing one of the biggest leverage wipeouts since the FTX collapse. To be exact, this would be to the tune of $1.5b in liquidations on December 9th alone. Leading to a rather brief retest of the lows, bulls then aggressively ran BTC to its current ATH just above $108k. Several key developments unraveled in the background amidst this volatile price action:

• Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell cosigns, comparing BTC to gold

• Microstrategy adds 59,960 BTC to their stockpile at an average price of $99,929; equivalent to roughly $5.87b

• Trump appoints pro-crypto Paul Atkins to replace Gary Gensler of the SEC

• BTC (and ETH) exchange-traded funds set multiple record inflow days—one week seeing $2.7b

• Texas files a bill to establish their own Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

A Christmas Gift

Kicking off the season of TGEs, or token generation events, the widely renowned NFT collection Pudgy Penguins officially launched their community token aptly named PENGU. For newcomers, the collection initially minted in 2021 and gained considerable traction throughout the year’s mania. Albeit most NFTs are now insolvent and as useless as they ever were, Pudgy Penguins was fortunately blessed with utilitarian direction via now-founder Luca Netz buying the ‘company’ and its rights. With the rest of the sector in shambles, Luca has not only kept his entire community engaged, but even managed to get their line of plushy toys in Walmarts across the US. He has created a genuine revenue stream for his holders and their increasingly important IP without diluting focus and (you guessed it) pockets. As the brand continually takes over social media, receiving millions of impressions every month, PENGU aims to provide a low-cost alternative to entering the Pudgy ecosystem. This comes with no token limits as to not be exclusive. Notably, PENGU resides on Solana whereas the genesis collection(s) exist on Ethereum. This neatly represents Luca’s ability to adapt to the ways of the market, understanding that SOL’s barrier to entry is lower both financially and psychologically—further enhanced by the cycle’s favorite destination for shitcoining.

If my tone hasn’t made it clear, PENGU is something I’m watching closely. I, like the rest of Pudgy holders, was blessed with a considerable airdrop upon TGE and haven’t sold any since. It may sound like bag bias, but I’ve even added more as to cement my conviction. A strong founder that has proven resilient in a dead market, now opening his community to the confluence of SOL’s meme mania is something I’m willing to bet on.

AI Meta Accelerates

Despite BTC.D (dominance) soaring, select alts saw insane valuations come to fruition. Notably, agentic AI tokens, a meta which I briefly touched upon in my October roundup, were up only for the majority of the month. Using the ever-divisive launchpad that is pump.fun, trench participants and somehow now institutions have found solace in tokenized LLMs and infra. The idea is that these models are set out to perform specific tasks based on their dev’s intent and well, capabilities. They often just mimic GPT wrappers (think quirky chatbots with CT personalities). As a result, the adjacent tokens and their value accrual is primarily based on speculation of future advancement. In its current state, this is really just a financialization of things that already exist and don’t actually need a crypto-native solution. Despite my criticisms, people innovate fast and I imagine we’ll see genuinely useful developments down the line. Plus, some signals are just too hard to ignore…

Amongst the month’s big winners are VIRTUAL, a Base-native agent launchpad which reached a peak market capitalization of $5b. FARTCOIN, a simply memetic AI, has not only brushed past the terminal of every TradFi bro, but achieved a valuation above $1b with ‘tailwinds’ of the community’s “hot air rises” mantra—sorry, I had to include this one. More akin to the spirit of building, AI16Z is very literally a new-age, decentralized venture capital firm entirely led by AI agents. The self-proclaimed DAO has saturated significant attention running to nearly $2.5b in the process.

Portfolio Update

My current holdings lack the aforementioned meta as I’ve been retaining my focus on proper risk management à la not over-rotating and potentially losing any value in large-caps. HYPE, or Hyperliquid, has become a larger part of my portfolio as it has almost 5x’d since my entry posted in last month’s newsletter. As mentioned earlier, PENGU has also entered the arena as I received an allocation and further sized in post-launch. I of course have several trading wallets active to pounce on potential opportunities, whether that be upcoming TGEs or the few runners that emerge from dust. Anyways, think the beginning of 2025 should treat us nicely. Cheers.