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Tom Shaughnessy and Jordan Clifford on Layer 1 Wars, Token Economics and a Shift to Applications
The big story of 2019 was "quiet" building. When it comes to 2020, however, watch out for fireworks.
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 11:53 a.m. Published Dec 31, 2019, 8:00 p.m.
Tom Shaughnessy is a co-founder of Delphi Digital as well as the host of the Chain Reaction podcast. Jordan Clifford is managing director of Scalar Capital.
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In this end of year interview for The Breakdown, Tom argues that the big story of 2019 was actually the fact that it was all about "quiet" building. When it comes to 2020, however, watch out for fireworks.
Tom predicts we’ll see a major increase in the Layer 1 smart contract platform wars, as well as growth in the perceived importance of token economic design. Meanwhile, Jordan argues that the crypto industry is likely to see a shift back to development at the application layer.
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- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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The crypto exchange also took note of a so-called AI bubble that continues to go strong and a weaker U.S. dollar.
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- Coinbase Institutional is seeing a potential December recovery in crypto, citing improving liquidity and a shift in macroeconomic conditions that could favor risk assets like bitcoin.
- The firm's optimism is driven by rising odds of Federal Reserve rate cuts, with markets pricing in a 93% chance easing next week, and improving liquidity conditions.
- Several recent institutional developments, including Vanguard's crypto ETF policy reversal and Bank of America's greenlighting of crypto allocations, have contributed to bitcoin's rebound from recent lows.
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