SYRUP (SYRUP)

Since I first immersed myself in crypto in 2020, I can confidently say that 2025 was the best year I have ever had in the space. I didn’t make money on NFTs 2 cycles ago. I did not make money on memecoins last cycle. What I did do was stick with a simple belief: if you invest in what you genuinely believe in, your time eventually comes. In past mania cycles, I did not have a real edge. During the NFT boom, I was in college and still learning, more of a journeyman than a killer. During the memecoin frenzy, I was working full-time outside of crypto, trying to keep up while getting drained along the way. It is hard to play a PvP game when your opponents are chronically online and you are squeezing research into whatever hours you can find. Some people would say I was not “locked in” enough. They were right. That reality shaped how I approached 2025. I stopped trying to win every fight and leaned into a more patient strategy: buy assets that show real adoption, where the fundamentals are improving and the price has not caught up yet. That mindset got me into $SYRUP back when it was still $MPL and brand unification was a top priority. It pushed me to deploy most of my savings into ETH during the tariff chaos, and for once, I actually sold part of it near the top instead of round-tripping the opportunity. It also gave me the confidence to keep buying beaten-down altcoins with strong fundamentals over the past few months while the market bled. When fear takes over, opportunity usually shows up. But 2025 was not just a year of better investing. It was also the year everything changed professionally. After four attempts over three years, I finally landed my dream job: Research Analyst at Messari, one of the best companies in the industry. After five years of obsessing over crypto, I got the opportunity of a lifetime to work in it. And of course, right after that, the market topped. We saw the largest liquidation event in crypto’s history. Sentiment turned sour fast, and plenty of participants started calling for the end of crypto, or simply quitting. I recognized the vibe immediately. It looked a lot like 2022, which made me think we were closer to a bottom than people wanted to admit. Heading into 2026, I feel optimistic that we will emerge from this bear market stronger than ever. A lot of the “consensus” still sounds like this: a dead cat bounce, then lower, or straight down to 50 to 60k early in the year. I get why people think that. I just struggle to fully buy it, because 2025 was the year institutional adoption went from narrative to reality. We saw major regulatory progress, with the GENIUS Act passing and the CLARITY Act still moving forward. We have an administration that is focused on dollar dominance through the use of stablecoins. We also have active participation from institutions such as JPMorgan, BlackRock, Fidelity, and others. Institutions are not chasing tops. They accumulate when the market is quiet, sentiment is bad, and prices are meaningfully off all-time highs. If the market dips 30-40%, they will take it as a buying opportunity. That is why I am excited about 2026. I am excited to see more publicly traded companies, beyond just DATs, put BTC and ETH on their balance sheets. I want to see endowments allocate to crypto as a treasury asset, family offices step further out on the risk curve into alts, and sovereign states continue to treat Bitcoin like strategic infrastructure. I am excited to see neobanks evolve into the savings accounts of the future, where you can earn, swap, and spend in one place. I am excited about the future of trading, and the rise of trading as a sport. There is a world where this becomes entertainment at scale, similar to what esports did for gaming, with audiences that follow traders the way fans follow teams. I am excited to see more of my normie friends become curious about prediction markets, especially since people often feel like they have an edge when the markets intersect with culture, politics, and sports. I am excited to see how privacy develops as the world moves deeper into a surveillance-first posture. Crypto has always been about optionality, and privacy is a form of optionality that will matter more, not less. And I am excited to see token design mature, where tokens behave more like ownership in a growing software network and less like a meme with no connection to value accrual. There is a lot to look forward to. Do not let the doomers scare you away. 2026 is going to be a great year.

$16bn Total Loan Originations broken in 2025. @maplefinance / $SYRUP / So Much Higher // #SYRUP2026 https://t.co/h4NBOCu2Ez

So far in 2025, @MapleFinance bought back 7.95M $SYRUP as part of the buyback program. Buybacks are completed once a month and are funded by up to 25% of monthly protocol revenue. At present revenue, this is over $500k per month. Imagine the volume of buybacks at $50m or even $100m ARR?

The Mapliest Maple Tweet @maplefinance / $SYRUP

What an amazing year for @maplefinance. Massive growth for Maple in 2025 across AUM, ARR, originated loans, scaling partnerships, multi-chain yield products and more… Exactly what you would expect from the largest onchain asset manager. Big shout out to the team and all Maple & $SYRUP believers. Read through @rektdiomedes thread and Maple’s co-founders letter you will understand why you should strongly believe in the Maple 2026 journey. Merry Christmas Rekt 🫡

$SYRUP TEAM-LINKED FLOW Less than 30 minutes ago, $SYRUP worth approximately $780K was deposited to Binance from a wallet that previously received funds from a team wallet This $SYRUP had been withdrawn from exchanges in portions over the past month The wallet still holds around $150K in $SYRUP Wallet: 0x83971EDb4F24DF6CF97B1b17d0e692BF11c63DCd