Welcome to the year end edition of the Kingpost newsletter. In this issue, our team curate the top social media posts of the year across crypto, politics, and sports, based on their personal insights and evaluations.

The period following the black swan pandemic in 2019-2020 has been marked by social, economic and political uncertainties, disrupting the industries and daily life globally. But, 2024 stands out as the year in which the steel cocoon of this challenging phase began to crack, offering glimpses of renewal on local and global fronts.

The U.S. presidential election dominated daily conversations, shaping public entertainment, interpersonal dynamics. Meanwhile, the crypto industry grabbed its share of the spotlight, driven by the growing popularity of blockchain-based prediction markets.

In times like these, the boundaries between crypto, politics and sports blur, as memetics permeate every domain, weaving their threads tighter across disparate narratives. Accordingly, I have a list of posts that cross-pollinate all. Here we go.

On July 14th, AP Chief Photographer in Washington, Evan Vucci posted a now-iconic, near-baroque image of Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, his fist raised in triumph, following his survival of an attempted assassination. In my view, it stands as the political post of the year, capturing the now president-elect's remarkable antifragility in the face of adversaries, paired with Vucci's fearless mastery as a photojournalist.

In my view, Nic Carter stands out as one of the most rational and incisive voices in the crypto-economics space. His research and critiques have cast a glaring spotlight on the debanking practices certain agencies have unilaterally undertaken.

His X post on September 25th, announcing an in-depth research piece on the debanking crusade targeting the crypto and tech sectors, has continued to resonate, further amplified by Marc Andreessen’s commentary on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

For this reason, I nominate Carter’s post replicating the Pirate Wires article as a long-form X post as the undisputed king of 2024 in the realm of crypto.

Not everyone is a pizza enthusiast, but most athletes I know wouldn’t turn down a good slice every now and then—even if it might disqualify them from the most hype longevity clubs emerging in network states where crypto and AI waltz.

Beyond presiding over Barstool Sports, the sports-meets-pop-culture powerhouse, Dave Portnoy, aka El Presidente, is a self-proclaimed pizza connoisseur. During a Christmas pizza binge en route from Philly to DC for the Army-Navy game, Portnoy and his crew stopped at a Baltimore pizza joint on the brink of closure due to an alcohol license dispute. As it turns out, the reheated pizza earned a staggering $60K valuation that would be just enough for the shop to continue their operations for another year.

For me, these videos are the real halftime entertainment. If one-biting counts as a competitive sport, this takes my pick for the best sports post of the year.

For me, the biggest meta-story for 2024 was the swan song of legacy media. Twitter transitioned to X, new upstart social platforms found their communities (FC, Lens, Bluesky, Threads). TikTok and podcasts created the narratives while Polymarket stood in for the pollsters. These tools empowered independent internet and media personalities eg Joe Rogan, Hawk Tuah, to amplify their cultural sway. At the same time, traditional media journalists and talk show hosts seem to have lost their long-held influence on the public.

The one political post that will resonate I think for a long time is the clip of Morning Joe's monologue claiming Biden is "the Best Biden ever" amid speculation about his age and acuity. It was apparent to many online who follow independent news that our sitting president was not in good health with observably degraded cognition.

However, the pundits continued to provide air cover against these suspicions, until the assertions of his fitness became too obviously false once Biden and Trump had their one and only televised debate. Morning Joe's a talented host, and his strongly worded anecdote defending Biden while apparently unable to "read the room" seemed to tip the propaganda past a point of absurdity, breaking the media's kayfabe.

The biggest story in 2024 was ETH vs SOL. Solana has a move-fast-and-break-things culture which has enabled it to prioritize UX over liveness. And Ethereum has a long-standing commitment to prioritize security and liveness over UX. These differences were most at odds as memecoin launchers found PMF and enjoyed superior growth on Solana's network. One poignant illustration of the sentiments behind that came from lito.eth commenting on the reaction to Justin Drake's 5 year plan for network upgrades.

At Devcon 7 Justin Drake, an ETH researcher who had recently stepped down from his post at the EF after a successful PoW->PoS migration, presented the plan for the remaining work left on the protocol to bring it to a new level of security and performance while addressing UX shortfalls. Many on CT panned this proposal, indicating it falls short of their desired end-state with a less-than-ambitious timeline.

It's worth noting that the Merge took about 5 years from the 2018 "Ethereum 2.0" keynote at Devcon 4.

I'm not a huge fan of Swift’s music (at least since '1989') but I have great respect for Swiftie power. And, when the biggest pop star in the world falls for the TE of my hometown team as they decisively turned a postseason drought into an enduring dynasty and win the Superbowl, I'll stan for that. Here's to a bigger and better repeat of this moment in '25 :D

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