# Top stories on Kiwi News, week 50 2025 Mon 8 to Sun 14 December 2025 Page: https://news.kiwistand.com/weekly/2025-W50 The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 8 to Sun 14 December 2025, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 11 comments in total. Most-shared sources: x.com, farcaster.xyz. Summaries are AI summaries of the linked article. ## 1. 20 Predictions for Crypto in 2026 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/20-Predictions-for-Crypto-in-2026?index=0x693849b92530f30016f5c93a8340dda05ab48d0029b98c4e96bc11a176d86bfb32fa9956 - Source: https://research.auditless.com/p/my-crypto-predictions-for-2026 - Submitted by auditless.eth, 7 upvotes, 0 comments Twenty predictions for crypto in 2026 forecast that fintech L1s will accrue no value to ETH, that DAO delegates will become a dying breed, and that rollup cluster arrangements will end. Stablecoins are predicted to outnumber L2s, and non-USD stablecoins such as CHF or SGD are expected to see adoption, while privacy applications are described as still a couple of iterations from mass adoption. A trustless asset management protocol is predicted to be exploited for more than $100M, and Futarchy is predicted to overtake Retro Funding. AI vulnerability tools are expected to find smart contract bugs but not replace audits. ## 2. TerraUSD creator Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years over $40 billion crypto collapse - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/TerraUSD-creator-Do-Kwon-sentenced-to-15-years-over-dollar40-billion-crypto-collapse?index=0x693be1f6a3ff0b20036f614d42f40af798c7a6f82e744fd1987dd4034351d4720909541f - Source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/terrausd-creator-do-kwon-be-sentenced-over-40-billion-crypto-collapse-2025-12-11 - Submitted by ayomide.eth, 8 upvotes, 2 comments ## 3. The Leftist Tactic of Labeling Opponents as Nazis or Fascists - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Leftist-Tactic-of-Labeling-Opponents-as-Nazis-or-Fascists?index=0x693ae6b7461d4cc10bdaa4d969e65664097f1184f7473835d242ddc19c5238249705426a - Source: https://selsey.substack.com/p/the-leftist-tactic-of-labeling-opponents - Submitted by solgirl.eth, 6 upvotes, 2 comments The modern Left indiscriminately uses terms like "Nazi" or "fascist" against political opponents as a deliberate way to delegitimize, silence, and morally discredit anyone who challenges leftist orthodoxy. Jerome Lloyd argues that this labeling replaces substantive debate and enforces ideological conformity. The visible portion offers no specific cases, names, or figures, because the rest of the piece is behind a "continue reading" prompt. ## 4. Vibe Coding is Mad Depressing - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Vibe-Coding-is-Mad-Depressing?index=0x693ebf7c179ec2f5491ab1eb8c4fa75036f1ed4dd9d81176692401809c97bf7fe02c96e9 - Source: https://law.gmnz.xyz/vibe-coding-is-mad-depressing - Submitted by misha, 3 upvotes, 1 comment ## 5. Robotics 2026 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Robotics-2026?index=0x693927388cebfe8a7a5160e44b7b6a8c88b0f935e36ccb02b41abfed21ab307cdccde7a1 - Source: https://castlelabs.substack.com/p/robotics-2026 - Submitted by rvolz.eth, 5 upvotes, 0 comments The Trump administration is exploring a "national robotics strategy," with a possible executive order in 2026, according to the article. It describes this as the next step of the US government's AI push, based on the view that "AI cannot remain trapped in data centers." After the news, most robotics tokens pumped and then retraced within a few hours. The newsletter also reports that NEAR launched its AI Cloud and Private Chat products, which use hardware-backed, verifiable privacy, and that NEAR intents have over $7b in all-time volume. ## 6. @vgr: Farcaster didn't test if people want decentralization - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/vgr-Farcaster-didnt-test-if-people-want-decentralization?index=0x69372db7a9c5baa71ba2e9d86848493f154cec9e383a3235dcab4ff02179d97d46339381 - Source: https://farcaster.xyz/vgr/0x071c16d4 - Submitted by @timdaub.eth, 6 upvotes, 0 comments Vitalik Buterin's critic, @vgr, argues that the claim "most people don't care about decentralization" is unsupported, and that Farcaster did not test whether people want decentralization. He says people adopt decentralized options like private messaging, Mastodon and Bluesky when they are meaningfully available and within their capabilities. He writes that Farcaster instead tested whether a subset of technically sophisticated users would run decentralized infrastructure under some incentive schemes, which he calls a narrow question about one company's business model. ## 7. Context Creator: The Zero 10 Edition - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Context-Creator-The-Zero-10-Edition?index=0x693a021ef6b1b5d1b24ad42e99f048e83d7e9101e826ad19ad7ccf8cd9978e47d5d427a0 - Source: https://outlandart.substack.com/p/context-creator-the-zero-10-edition?triedRedirect=true - Submitted by misha, 5 upvotes, 0 comments Zero 10, Art Basel's new section for NFT-based digital art, is a permanent fixture inside the fair rather than a satellite or novelty, yet it does not fully assimilate. Beeple's Regular Animals, in which robotic dogs photographed visitors and dispensed prints, produced 1,024 prints, and 256 of them were also minted as NFTs and given away free. Unlike Digital Art Mile, which in 2024 set up a parallel fair a ten-minute walk from the Messeplatz in Basel, Zero 10 sits within the main fair, and Mat Dryhurst described its mood on X as "two entirely different worlds, no middle ground." ## 8. Building Real-World Blockchain Technology in Bhutan - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Building-Real-World-Blockchain-Technology-in-Bhutan?index=0x693a718d7dca3fd9803ebde95fb9739fd8bc1192a8c48d2de3d66c754f06c53aa7724de2 - Source: https://blog.sui.io/real-world-blockchain-bhutan - Submitted by rvolz.eth, 3 upvotes, 2 comments Kostas Chalkias, Chief Cryptographer at Mysten Labs, argues that blockchain infrastructure must work when the internet is unavailable, and describes a Bhutan test in which sensor data reached the Sui blockchain without a direct connection. Devices in remote areas sign a message, which is carried by long-range radio relays and, where radio fails, by drones through several hops to a gateway with internet access. The message is then verified and published on Sui. The approach compresses transactions to their minimum size and has sensors sign on-device, so signatures stay valid regardless of how many relays handle the data. The article describes this as a proof of concept rather than a product launch. ## 9. US plan requires visitors to provide social media information from last 5 years - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/US-plan-requires-visitors-to-provide-social-media-information-from-last-5-years?index=0x6939e1170d4f96da9ffd30db23ffb78efb3b80225dd94c2fd7ad3b53486d21ca5af96b15 - Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/10/us/us-visa-waiver-social-media-check - Submitted by misha, 3 upvotes, 3 comments US Customs and Border Protection has proposed requiring travelers from visa waiver countries to provide their social media history from the prior five years as part of the ESTA electronic application. The proposal, posted on the Federal Register, would also make phone numbers and email addresses from the prior five years mandatory, along with close family members' names, birth dates, birthplaces, residences and phone numbers. Social media information was added to the application in 2016 as an optional question, and the proposal is open for public comment through February 9. ## 10. I cloned a Polymarket market-making bot and ran it: Here’s what I learned - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/I-cloned-a-Polymarket-market-making-bot-and-ran-it-Heres-what-I-learned?index=0x693926641bdac0439f01bcd5907c573871dd7377bd45bbd5439c0e1eb24f8cdc825df4a0 - Source: https://tezlee.substack.com/p/i-cloned-a-polymarket-market-making?triedRedirect=true - Submitted by rvolz.eth, 4 upvotes, 0 comments The author cloned and ran a Polymarket market-making bot, forking a shared GitHub repo and adding features such as market scraping, position merging, and stop-loss and take-profit logic. The bot earns rewards from passive limit orders and spreads, with the reward score computed from a formula sourced from Polymarket's website. The author reports that directional risk was the main threat, since a single adverse move of 30–40% could erase accumulated gains within minutes. The experiment ended without net profit, as early mistakes, execution bugs and misconfigured logic offset the gains. ## 11. @zapper_fi: A new Zapper, a new way to experience the onchain economy - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/zapperfi-A-new-Zapper-a-new-way-to-experience-the-onchain-economy?index=0x693b48fd39c7c042a1f0bd2f259e521311da8b2d0299bccd940f789a85091fa4a4e4a801 - Source: https://xcancel.com/zapper_fi/status/1999185967324758222 - Submitted by misha, 4 upvotes, 0 comments ## 12. @SahilBloom: Stop getting dopamine from information gathering, start acting - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/SahilBloom-Stop-getting-dopamine-from-information-gathering-start-acting?index=0x693b4b412b18a2c6cbec04c1324518d52d2cbd3b96e40f2ba5b79610fd7472ff57fd6c2c - Source: https://x.com/sahilbloom/status/1999112266923323842?s=12 - Submitted by tim, 3 upvotes, 0 comments ## 13. @vgr: memecoins are useless information traded fast, not real value creation - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/vgr-memecoins-are-useless-information-traded-fast-not-real-value-creation?index=0x6936bfad674fdbbd1c4710ec0ef16fd1133cbd23d401c73c074af822e29c4254cc04b064 - Source: https://farcaster.xyz/vgr/0xc83e7323 - Submitted by @timdaub.eth, 3 upvotes, 0 comments Vitalik-style essay? No, the title attributes the piece to @vgr, so the argument belongs to vgr. Central point: memecoins are not real value creation because trading useless information quickly does not make it useful. Supporting points: a joke does not become worth a billion dollars because a penny is traded 100 billion times in an hour, or because a million-dollar flash loan is used for one minute. Trading value should track how materially new information enters a market and changes the world, and creator coins are said to fall into the same category as memecoins. ## 14. What if bigger models, like bigger stars, fail faster? - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/What-if-bigger-models-like-bigger-stars-fail-faster?index=0x69374e48b7907ac02c2d0c5c922f67492c26a08072ddd4ea69b46e86332f173575f8ad74 - Source: https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/what-if-bigger-models-like-bigger - Submitted by misha, 3 upvotes, 0 comments The essay argues that OpenAI's "too big to fail" risk stems less from financing than from model overfitting: larger models trained on a slowly growing stock of high-quality data fit a static cultural snapshot ever more precisely, so they degrade quickly and fail sharply. It says the trillion-dollar infrastructure built for these models, including Oracle's data centers, Microsoft's GPU clusters, Broadcom's networking pipelines and Nvidia's supply chain, could lose its economic justification if returns shrink. It proposes that 4D video and physical-world data, which the author describes as unbounded, could break this trap. Emmett Shear's remark that frontier models are barely regularized and massively overfit is cited as support. ## 15. Becoming Illegible - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Becoming-Illegible?index=0x693a00b654ebbaf31c78981fb0150bb9ddf105fafb9e04e9aa5bee5469fdfd9754d25601 - Source: https://x.com/sunfishposting/status/1998184344817389703 - Submitted by misha, 3 upvotes, 0 comments The author argues that modern life has pushed people to make themselves increasingly legible to institutions, advertisers and each other, and that a backlash against generative AI and "slop" is beginning to create interest in illegibility as a counter-strategy. They point to Adam Harvey's STEALTH WEAR collection, which uses designs meant to evade machine vision, as an early example of this idea. They also cite the 2015 Cambridge Analytica and Trump campaign era, the 2021/22 peak in political striation, and the spread of Palantir-linked surveillance concerns as signs of the trend. ## 16. Kiwi News Weekly Digest — Dec 12, 2025 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Kiwi-News-Weekly-Digest-Dec-12-2025?index=0x693c4014f2968013b2ed0d0bbf685878d0751489ff5b36778794febdf8be8951cf861eff - Source: https://buttondown.com/kiwi-news-weekly/archive/kiwi-news-weekly-digest-dec-12-2025 - Submitted by tim, 3 upvotes, 0 comments ## 17. @princeofprawns0: physics-based model and simulator for orbital compute - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/princeofprawns0-physics-based-model-and-simulator-for-orbital-compute?index=0x693db6408b7ba26a0ec35d414e8df891c2b414716dd495b56a6f701ee97fada71bc35680 - Source: https://x.com/princeofprawns0/status/1999595641367068991?s=46 - Submitted by thatalexpalmer.eth, 2 upvotes, 1 comment The author presents an interactive physics-based model and simulator for orbital computing, covering radiator temperatures, radiator mass budgets, failure curves, orbital repair capacity, and power-to-compute limits. The model includes an interactive view of Earth and space where satellites can be selected and an AI-driven routing logic decides where workloads run based on thermal limits, bandwidth, uptime, and marginal cost. The post says the hardest problems are autonomous maintenance at scale and deploying large thin-film radiators, and that under the right engineering some scenarios let space compute beat Crusoe in Texas. The post's own opinion is that over 90% of AI compute will be in space within 10 years. ## 18. imex opencall 2025 — bianjie research group - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/imex-opencall-2025-bianjie-research-group?index=0x6939f942ccee3c8ba8c270432fceb8d049298fdd92abb99176451cc6f240839967e78818 - Source: https://bianjie.systems/imex-opencall-2025 - Submitted by misha, 2 upvotes, 0 comments ## 19. I mean it's one Thought, how much could it cost? Ten dollars? - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/I-mean-its-one-Thought-how-much-could-it-cost-Ten-dollars?index=0x693efd5431d7059552ab2c136ef0fc85cb433584ff60defa8d7a5b630a01987ce7900f98 - Source: https://npcmemo.substack.com/p/i-mean-its-one-thought-how-much-could?triedRedirect=true - Submitted by misha, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Commodities are the infrastructure that makes goods standardized and tradable, not the goods themselves, and AI language models are now being turned into the same kind of billable unit. Kepner and Soothill's 1935–1936 book The Banana Empire described how United Fruit's railways, telegraphs and ships standardized bananas, much as grain elevators once merged distinct harvests into uniform grades. The text holds that debates over whether models are truly intelligent miss this shift, and notes that cloud providers now charge per thousand input and output tokens. ## 20. The Gambler's Goal is Not to Win but Simply to Continue - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Gamblers-Goal-is-Not-to-Win-but-Simply-to-Continue?index=0x6936c1c498c0c4a47caa874183e8aaa670de977b2101c8b546bfa4962ce0abca93dbe395 - Source: https://www.dopaminemarkets.com/p/the-gamblers-goal-is-not-to-win-but - Submitted by tim, 2 upvotes, 0 comments The article argues that financial products, sports betting and memecoin platforms are increasingly designed to produce the "machine zone," a trance-like state in which the jackpot becomes irrelevant and players keep betting for its own sake. It describes this state as suspending time, space, monetary value and social roles, and says slot machines were the first setting where it was applied. Options expiry moved from monthly contracts in the 2000s to daily expiries after 2022, with zero day options rising from 5% of total options volume in 2016 to 61% by May 2025. The article cites 93% of options traders and 95% of bettors losing money, and says 98.6% of Pump.fun tokens are worthless.