Joining Connie Willis (email) for the full show, the 'Godfather of Bitshares,' Stan Larimer, discussed the good, bad and the ugly in crypto trends for 2018. He related crypto to the Biblical end of times, and also examined Christmas and how the paranormal compares to miracles. Larimer’s son Dan started the crypto-currency site Steemit, and together, they are developing other types of online currencies as well as cutting edge tech such as autonomous software for use in specialized parking lots. In 2018, Larimer sees a "flight to safety from dollar abuse," where more people will seek other ways to protect their assets from what Larimer sees as dangerous and restrictive regulations and rules imposed by bankers and the government.

Larimer warned that the way the banking system is set up at present can be used to silence dissent by essentially shutting off an individual’s ability to buy and sell, and ruining their lives, which is why he sees more people moving towards methods that bypass this sort of control, such as cryptocurrencies. However, Larimer also sees a sort of backlash against Bitcoin and others in the next year because of the abuses of the system that have crept in, allowing charlatans and criminals to take advantage. He said that scams and hacking of the system took "a wonderful idea and has rendered it a wild west." This has created a worrisome situation where people will start to ask the government to step in and regulate cryptocurrencies, which were ironically developed in an effort to eliminate regulation.

The idea of the "Blockchain" is that a network of computers are all running the same code, which keeps a check on any inequities or abuses by making them impossible to hack and completely open to all who are using the system. The ultimate vision of Larimer and his son is a decentralized system of online trade, where people can be allowed to conduct transactions with each other without appealing to a central authority, and which is incorruptible and can’t be modified. He sees it as the best hope of limiting government power, which he views as dangerously omnipotent. Larimer also listed companies that will be moving into the bitshare markets in the next year, such as one which will use advertising and surveys to allow users to buy such things as big screen televisions at half price.

In the spirit of the season, Larimer also discussed his view of the birth of Jesus story from the perspective of an engineer and scientist, theorizing that the Star of Bethlehem may have been "one of the first UFOs in recorded history." He stated that anything outside of the Earth’s atmosphere could not have pointed out anything on the planet’s surface as the Star supposedly did, so that it must have been, as he remarked, an "inside-the-atmosphere event." Larimer further believes that the Star could either have been extraterrestrial or "spiritual" in origin, perhaps entering from another dimension.