Bankless - 2022's Biggest Crypto Moments
Episode Date: December 14, 2022Tap in for a special Bankless Episode -- the biggest moments in 2022 for Crypto. We're all ready for this year to be over, but not before we recap the best and the worst of what the industry had to of...fer. It's a time for reflection. Let's absorb the lessons, so we can get off on the right foot in 2023. ------ OPOLIS | Sign Up to Get 1000 $WORK and 1000 $BANK https://bankless.cc/Opolis ------ SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/?utm_source=banklessshowsyt ️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave LEDGER | NANO HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger ️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/Fuelpod ----- Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 5:00 Top 5 Worst Moments Tornado Cash Ban https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0916 Terra Collapse https://www.coindesk.com/learn/the-fall-of-terra-a-timeline-of-the-meteoric-rise-and-crash-of-ust-and-luna/ 3AC Contagion https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1536876343815983104?lang=en Ronin & Wormhole Hacks https://cointelegraph.com/news/wormhole-token-bridge-loses-321m-in-largest-hack-so-far-in-2022 FTX https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/ftx-bankruptcy.html 21:00 Top 5 Best Moments Supporting Ukraine https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1497594592438497282 Layer 2 Transactions https://l2beat.com/scaling/activity Social Media NFTs https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/12/05/minting-of-reddit-avatar-tokens-climbed-to-record-high-over-weekend/ The Merge https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1570306185391378434 29:00 Top 5 Villains Richard Heart https://twitter.com/richardheartwin/status/1533892570996166662 Alex Mashinsky https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/06/celsius-executives-withdrew-millions-before-freeze-on-customer-funds.html Su Zhu & Kyle Davies https://twitter.com/KyleLDavies/status/1522813352665403392 https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1462216210116853762 Do Kwon https://twitter.com/stablekwon/status/1523733542492016640 SBF https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1591989554881658880 44:00 Top 5 Heroes Michael Saylor https://fortune.com/2022/07/02/microstrategys-bitcoin-holdings-take-a-record-3-4-billion-hit-the-company-says-its-playing-the-long-game/ Anthony Sassano https://www.youtube.com/@UCvCp6vKY5jDr87htKH6hgDA Cobie https://cobie.substack.com/ ZachXBT https://twitter.com/zachxbt?lang=en ETH Developers https://twitter.com/icebearhww/status/1431970802040127498 Parithosh Jayanthi https://twitter.com/parithosh_j Marius Van Der Wijden https://twitter.com/vdwijden Ben Edgington https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz Tim Beiko https://twitter.com/TimBeiko 54:10 Honorable Mentions Gary Gensler https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/technology/gary-gensler-crypto-sec.html Budweiser https://twitter.com/budweiserusa/status/1507507766759411712 Pixelmon https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/pixelmon-nft-project-kevin-meme/ The Fed https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2022/12/05/jerome-powell-most-influential-2022/ https://imgur.com/rcvd3Ex 1:00:50 The TOP Moment https://twitter.com/0x_Lucas/status/1526237799699169281 ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, bankless nation. I hope you're ready for a special bankless episode. David and I are about to go through
the biggest moments of 2022 in crypto. David, I am very much looking forward to this episode
because look, this is a chance to like review the the year that was this year of craziness,
this year of corruption, this year of scams, this year of the highest highs and incredibly low lows.
and it felt like an entire like a blur to me.
We even know what months of the year what happened.
And so this is a good way to calibrate.
It's also for me personally, David,
I just want to be done with 2022.
Like can we move on?
Can we wipe the slate clean?
Can we start again?
Yeah.
So closure would be nice.
That's exactly what happens.
As soon as we get to January,
this all goes away and we all get to start all over again.
We're done there.
All right.
So we're going to go through the biggest moments of 2022.
And David,
you were kind enough to put together this program,
this kind of, I guess, a ceremony for us.
And God is through it.
I think we have 25 or so different moments
that we're going to talk about.
There's the top five worst moments of 2022.
I can't wait to see what you put there.
The top five best moments.
The five biggest villains, that had to be fun.
A lot of selections there.
The top five heroes, we still have those in crypto.
and you've got some honorable mentions here too.
Anything else you want to say before we start getting into this?
Yeah, this is a, you know, December is a month for reflection.
Let's go through the biggest events of 2022 for better or for worse,
the heroes and the villains.
And just like, let's make sure that we absorb the lessons.
So we don't repeat them again.
It is worth noting, Ryan, that the top five villains and top five worst events of 2022,
whereas that was a lot, both of those sections were a lot easier than their inverse.
Let me tell you.
Wait, wait, wait.
It's harder to find heroes than villains.
It was what you're saying?
Because like I wanted to make it as 2020 specific as possible, right?
So I didn't want to pull back from history.
So yeah, you can't just be like, Satoshi.
Yeah, Satoshi Nakamoto, the hero of 2022.
Like, no, like not relevant.
And so it was the villains and the worst moments of 2022 was pretty damn easy.
I was also going to do a section of the top most infamous tweets of 2022,
but that actually also happened to correlate very, very strongly with the top five villains of 2020.
Oh, wow.
The villains were tweeting the evil tweets.
They were the worst tweets.
So that section has been collapsed.
So if you are also interested in seeing the top five worst tweets of 2022, that's going to be the villain section.
Stay tuned.
It's 2022 all inside of one episode.
Ready?
Yeah.
But before we get there, David, want to show you.
shout out some heroes that I know in Bankless, the Bankless community, that is the folks over
at Opelis because they are doing something. They're heroes of healthcare and heroes of payroll
benefits. And they are providing those to Web3 workers. These are contractors in the Web3 space.
David, tell them a bit more about Opelus what they do and how folks can get started with that
in December as they move into 2023. As we say at the end of every single bankless podcast, working on
the frontier is risky, especially without healthcare, because there are all of these nation-state
burdens and these nation-state requirements that we all must partake in order to live our life
in this physical world. But if you're working in the metaverse, you kind of need some help
to couple your Web 3 world and the nation-state world. So what do you need? You need health care
as an independent worker. You also need compliance with taxes, payroll stuff, just all of the stuff
that you would get if you worked at a very large company. But since you are a worker on
on the Web 3 frontier.
You're an NFT artist, you work in a Dow,
you work independently, whatever you do.
You can use Opolis to get all of your perks
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So what is Opolis?
Oplis is a co-op that can help negotiate on your behalf
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And so to help you do what you do best,
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use OPLUS to negotiate
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If you sign up for OPLUS by December 31st of this year, which is coming up, you can get a
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So there's a link in the show notes to go ahead and get started with OPLUS.
Definitely go do that.
All right, David, you know what?
We should get right in.
We can cut for breaks later.
This is too important, okay?
Got to get to you.
I think we start here with the top.
five worst moments.
Gotta get out of the way.
22.
All right.
Let's do the vegetables before we get to the dessert.
Okay.
Top five worst moments.
And how are we doing this?
Are we going from number five and counting upwards?
Yeah, yeah.
So starting with the fifth worst moment and then leading into the worst moments.
So starting with number five.
Number five, coming in hot, tornado cash, a smart contract was deemed illegal by the
most powerful nation on the world.
Tornado cash was sanctioned.
For the first time ever, a smart contract was deemed illegal by the same entity that has
the biggest army.
That's bad.
So that was the fifth worst.
Why is it the fifth rather than fourth or third or anything more severe than that?
Because I think it could be worse.
Because this gives the crypto industry surface area to fight back.
So while it was bad,
while this action by the United States
removed the ability to access privacy
by United States citizens,
it also gave us an opportunity.
And so coming at number five, the tornado cash ban.
Let me talk about that opportunity.
Actually, it's an opportunity that my co-host,
David Hoffman is taking,
which is to sue the Department of Treasury.
David, you spelled Treasury wrong in this year.
Yeah, I love it.
I did. I did spell the Treasury wrong.
Anger and disrespect, all right?
You don't even get the A in Treasury Department.
So that's kind of cool.
And like you said, this is an opportunity to push back and reestablish our civic rights.
Americans, if you believe that American citizens or people around the world, whatever nation state jurisdiction you're in, should have the right to interact with smart contract protocols without their nation state, creating a blacklist that effectively makes it illegal for them to do so, particularly on-chain privacy, then you might be supportive of some of the actions that the industry is taking.
to push back. So you're right, David. It's been a great rallying cry. We still have somebody,
by the way, in jail in the Netherlands, Alexei Persef, who is in jail as a result of this,
one of the developers behind Tornado Cash. But it gives us an opportunity to kind of stand up for
these rights and reestablish them and fight it in the court system, which is exactly where the
industry is taking it. So that's number five. All right, what's next? Number four, sadly,
there is very little silver lining on this one. There's no coming back from.
the Terra Luna collapse.
One of the largest capital destruction events in human history,
$50 to $60 billion went to zero over the course of a week.
And so we all know, we all know the Terra Luna collapse.
Started in February until it really crescendoed in May where everything went to zero in May.
After Doquan, Icarus, probably did the biggest icerasing of all of the 2022 icercing,
although, I mean, that's debatable.
but Terra Luna collapse again the biggest most destructive capital destruction event in I think I'm
pretty sure in human history I'm I'm betting we're going to see Doquan again on this list in some
former fashion I was just this is this is not Doquan this is Tara Luna you know what blew
blew me away though is how fast this happened do you remember and this was like textbook collapse
we had just four weeks previous so this happened in what in like May it's like first part of May
maybe the end of April, something like this.
Wait, this is an August 19th article.
Oh, this is a whole...
This is a recap, yeah.
Okay, anyway, I remember it, well, it happened.
And not like three weeks prior, maybe four weeks prior.
We had this debate on bankless.
And there was the bull case and the bear case.
And Jordi Alexander was the bear.
Somebody from Delphi Digital was a Luna, Tara.
A bull was the pro.
And I remember doing that episode and getting completely slammed.
For what I thought was a lunata.
But yeah, by the lunatic community.
Like, there was this frenzy of like, hey, Eith Maxis, you shouldn't like, you don't know what you're talking about.
Jordy Alexander's completely out to lunch, all of these things.
And then textbook, this all happened in a week.
In 24 hours, it was obvious this thing was collapsing towards zero.
And then it happened.
Pretty crazy event.
All right, what do we got?
Number three.
Number three, three arrows capital triggers all of the contagion that put us into this goddamn mess.
And so, just to tie off number four, terror collapse, reflecting, going, looking backwards,
what did we learn?
Algorithmic stable coins don't work.
That was the big lesson that we walked away with.
Going into number three, three errors capital, what did we learn?
Don't put traders on pedestals.
No one is a god in this base.
No one's special.
Huberous is the downfall of everyone that crashed in 2022.
And this also happened as a result of the Terra Luna collapse.
Why is this bigger and worse than the Terraluna collapse?
Because while Doquan's toxicity and hubris definitely caused the destruction of the Terraluna ecosystem,
it was three Eros Capital and other hedge funds like Alameda that took that destruction and spread it out to the industry.
Because rather than taking the L themselves, Ryan, what did they do?
If they had just like taken the L and not just like closed up shop, that would have been one thing.
But what did they do?
They borrowed from BlockFi.
They borrowed from Genesis.
They borrowed from anyone who get Voyager, not even a lending service, a centralized exchange.
They borrowed from anyone who would ever give them money because they refused to take the L.
And so they socialize their losses to the rest of the industry by taking every single credit facility down with them,
which ultimately flew into retail and customer deposits.
So three hours capital coming in at number three.
for spreading all of the contagion and not being willing to take the L.
It's a big list to be on.
Number three, coming in at number three,
and there are a lot of worst moments in 2022.
All right, but tell us about number two,
because I'm curious, there's two slots left here, okay?
So I know what one of them is going to be, undoubtedly,
but I'm a little curious what the other one's going to be.
Why don't we open up number two?
Number two, the Ronin and Wormhole Cross-Chane Bridges Hap.
Wormhole got hacked in February of 2022 to the tune of $321 million for the largest hack so far in that bull market.
Wormhole was actually replenished by Jump Capital, which actually ended up being one of the reasons why some of the contagion was so bad because Trump didn't have fresh powder to save the industry because they already saved it with Wormhole.
Wouldn't have been so bad, Ryan, if Ronan also hadn't also been hacked later in that year to the tune of 600 and 50.
million dollars of crypto. Over half a billion dollars. This is like those two combined. That's like a
billion dollars. A billion dollars. Absolutely. And one of the reasons why the Ronan chain, the Ronan chain
exploit was so bad, was because of the way that private keys were held. Five out of the seven
nodes to multi-sign nodes that was operating the multi-sig cross-layer one bridge were all held in the
same server. And so when North Korea, if you remember, hacked the Ronan side chain, it was because
they put all the private keys online on one server allowing North Korea to seize $615 million,
which, Ryan, one of the reasons why this event was so bad was because it led to the sanctioning
of tornado cash because the money out of the Ronan side chain went into tornado cash. So because
of the incompetence of the Ronan side chain and these insecurity of layer one bridges,
I have to go sue Janet Yellen. God damn it. It's all. It's all.
all linked together. Yeah, it just gave Treasury sort of an excuse and a reason to take these actions. And what a massive
hack. You know, I was going to, I was going to doubt you for putting them at number two and not like Luna and Terra and Three hours capital higher.
But I think the justification that that you just gave like sloppy code, just sloppiness in general, taking shortcuts is kind of the common theme that that led to this. And two absolutely massive security shortcuts, even though they were mistakes.
They led to some pretty disastrous outcomes for crypto.
So what did we learn?
What did we learn with that one with Ronin and Wormhole?
Cross-chain bridges are insecure.
If we're going to live in a polychain, multi-chain world,
is not going to be through a mesh network of insecure one-off bridges.
I love that you're teaching along the way.
So these aren't just like worst moments.
These are teachable moments for us, huh?
Because, Ryan, I do not want to do 2022 again.
Let's not do this in 2020.
All right.
Well, number one, probably then,
let's say not only the number one worst moment of 2022, which is saying something,
but also the number one most teachable moment,
because David, you're going to give us a lesson at the end of whatever is that number one.
But I'm pretty sure I know what it is.
You ready for it?
Yeah, let's do it.
One more.
This is SBF saying a competitor is trying to go after us under false rumors.
FTCS is fine.
Assets are fine.
This was tweeted by SBF on November 7th of 2022.
just a few days before Chapter 11 bankruptcy was filed.
As it turns out, assets are not fine.
November 11th, four days later,
FTX, FTX, U.S., and Alameda Research,
and over 100 more affiliates filed for bankruptcy in Delaware,
not after Ryan sending over $70 million into political donations,
$135 million to buy the FTX Arena naming rights,
$256 million in 35,000, $356,000,
different Bahamian real estate properties and also $300 million into the pocket of FBSBF,
all coming with personally cashed out.
Personally cashed out.
Yeah.
And so why is this coming in at number one?
I think I know why.
It kind of teaches itself.
But just like three arrows capital, what did they do when both Alameda and FTCS were going under?
They borrowed and they spread the contagion and they took as.
many people down with them as possible.
And so the hubris of FTX took that their mistakes and they spread it out into the industry
and is why the word contagion has been said so many times.
The other reason why this is the worst event in 2022 was actually it started in 2021.
FTX was a fraud to begin with.
It's becoming pretty damn clear that FTCX, the entirety of its lifespan, has always been
Sam Bakeman Street's personal slush fund starting in 2021.
And it wasn't until 2022 that we actually learned that the entire FTX system was a fraud.
He defrauded absolutely anyone that would give him money, investors into the company, customer deposits, anyone that would borrow and lend against his money.
Once he was tapped out out of those lines of credit, he printed funny money in FTT, whatever he could do to get his hands on cash.
Ryan, what did we learn?
What did we learn as a result?
you learn as a result of FTX? I learned something that I've said on the podcast a few times now,
but was something I actually learned from some of the Bitcoin OGs in the space, Andreas Antonopoulos,
most specifically. And that is this, not your keys, not your coins. Andrea said when I first
enter the space when the first things that was impressed upon my mind is you have to use an exchange like
a public bathroom you go in you do your business and you get out you don't leave stuff in the public
bathroom you don't hang out and have a party in the public bathroom you don't set up lending and
borrowing inside of a public bathroom okay you're in it's kind of gross and then you get out and
you're done that i think is what was reinforced on me
and across the entire crypto industry,
it's a good time to do it
because we were getting a little complacent
and a new generation hadn't learned that lesson yet.
And these types of lessons are certainly hard.
It was a hard lesson to learn.
We touched the stove and it was very hot,
but I think that's what we learned.
What else, though?
I'm sure you've got some other things for us.
Yeah, and you can tie this into all the ones above,
three hours capital and all the contagion.
Guild, Ryan, was a black hole.
that it happened slowly, but it slowly sucked up and produced a gravitational center into one
single point of failure. So BlockFi got yield from Genesis. A bunch of assets went into BlockFi,
BlockFi went under. FTX bought them. So that shifted the black hole from BlockFi to FTX.
Alameda plugged up Voyager shifted the black hole of yield into Alameda. All this yield and all this
risk started to collect and converge into one central point. And FTX as the
biggest fraud in this base ended up being the operator of that black hole because all of the
yield. It was all just like, hey, you want you want 2%, you want 3%, you want 4%, come give us your
money, come give us your money. And as that yield, which again was the theme of the 2020 to 2020
crypto years was that yield, yield, yield, yield, yield. And eventually that black hole grew and grew and
grew and that hot potato ended up in the hands of FTX.
And eventually, as interest rates rose, that black hole was no longer able to be hidden
because what that hole was was a hole in the balance sheet.
And so that was really what I learned.
It's just the nature of yield and financial contagion and how ultimately it's always going to be
caught in one central party.
And it only is invisible if it's a centralized exchange, which you can't audit.
But guess what?
Bankless Nation, we are still here.
Crypto is still here.
so the black hole of FTX and all of the other worst moments has not swallowed us up.
We will be right back with five of the best moments and some more in the bank list,
2022, top moments of the year.
But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.
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All right, guys, going through the 22 most memorable moments.
Here we are with the top five best moments.
Count us off at number five.
What are we looking at, David?
What's number five, best moment?
Number five, the crypto industry shows up when it comes time to fight against totalitarianism.
Tens, $54 million of crypto donated to the entire country of Ukraine when Russia invaded
Ukraine in crypto industry while all the banks and all the traditional payment rails were too slow
to do anything effective. Tens of millions of dollars poured in USDT, Bitcoin, Ether, stable coins,
a crypto punk was all donated to Ukraine to fund their military to help move people away
from the front lines and to overall help support a minority country against a much bigger bully
and it actually ended up hugely moving the needle.
I believe it was one of the first arrivals of extra aid on the scene was metal like bulletproof jackets,
bulletproof armor, was paid for from crypto to, I think, a neighboring country, Poland.
And the reason why that was able to get done so quickly and to get bulletproof jackets to the front line so quickly was because how crypto is permissionless and instantaneous payment rail.
So coming in at the best moments of 2022, number five,
crypto helps fight against
totalitarianism. Also, while
NFTs were all kind of down bad and kind of tainted,
the most expensive NFT ever sold in 2022 and 2021
was this very simple NFT of the Ukraine flag
auctioned off for $6.5 million in ether
to help support Ukraine Dow,
which really moved in the deal. I actually didn't know.
That was the biggest one, huh?
Yep, yep, exactly. The most expensive NFT.
Really cool.
It's after this, too, Ukraine passed some legislation
that was very pro-crypto, like loosening crypto, any crypto restrictions.
And so, I mean, the entire country took this very favorably.
All right.
Well, let's talk about number four.
What are we looking at, David?
Coming in at number four, L-2s, the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem finally passes the layer
one in transaction activity.
There's not really any one moment, Ryan, when we can, like, slap the galvel on the table
and say that Layer 2s are here.
They all kind of came independently, optimism, arbitram,
polygon ZK sync.
When did they all kind of arrive?
Well, their alpha led to their beta.
One came before the other.
When did the L2 moment finally come?
I'm declaring that it came when the total transactional volume of layer two's
surpassed the transactional volume of layer one.
And that happened just earlier this year.
I believe in November or October of this year.
That's when it happened in a sustained way.
You see some spikes earlier than that.
But yeah, in a sustained way in October, actually.
Yeah.
And so L2's finally passing the L1
in transaction activity.
This is in stark contrast, Ryan,
to one of the worst moments of 2022,
the Ronin and Wormhole side chain bridge hacks.
And so we are already still solving the problem
that centralized layer ones
and layer one bridges created for us.
And so coming in at number four,
layer two is past the Ethereum layer one
in transaction activity,
officially saying that layer twos are now here.
All right.
What's number three?
Number three, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok,
all adopted NFTs.
As it turned out, Ryan, when you and I were predicting
what was going to cause the bull market,
the next bull market, we were like,
defy, defy, defy.
We weren't wrong, but we kind of didn't really see
NFTs coming into how integratable they were into Web 2.
So one by one, the biggest platforms of the internet,
Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok,
all integrated NFTs.
So NFTs really are the Trojan horse.
for all of crypto to get into these social media giants.
Huge deal for all of that to happen in 2022.
Some hugely bullish news there.
But, okay, bring us to number two, David.
I know what one of these is going to be.
Let's see if I'm right.
Number two, the merge.
The merge finalized.
Probably the greatest, most significant upgrade
to any public blockchain ever went off without a hitch.
So seven years in the making proof of stake
finally came to Ethereum, the proof of sake system, unlike any other blockchain out there,
making Ethereum, the most secure blockchain in existence, with the fastest time and most
highest amount of settlement assurances. Bankless listeners will know the whole name of the game
in the crypto industry is settlement assurances, settlement assurances, settlement assurances,
with proof of sake Ethereum, Ethereum has the strongest settlement insurances in all of
crypto, which means the strongest property rights. It costs billions of dollars to go backwards,
six minutes on the Ethereum blockchain.
Also, of course, as we know, with the merge, the ether issuance went down to its absolute
theoretical minimum.
Hazu's tweet here says, ETH is now the commodity money with the lowest rate of supply inflation.
That is the definition of ultra-sound money.
And that happened, Ryan, in 2022.
Yeah, so that is number two.
That is huge, man.
Do you remember that that was like September?
And this was a Vatelix tweet, September 15th.
And that was at 3 a.m. Eastern, 2.59 a.m. east time.
And I know you were on the Ethereum Foundation live stream.
I was plugged in watching.
I woke up in the middle of the night to kind of watch this and witness history.
I don't think I'll ever forget it.
I mean, it was like 30 to 40,000 people on the stream watching this happen.
And it was kind of cool.
Like it was really at this stage.
It was all of the settlers.
The tourists had kind of left because this is in the wake of some major crypto collapses.
and I think I'll forever remember 22 for that reason.
September 2022 when the merge happened.
It's also the moment when what was that electricity stat?
Something like 0.2% of all electrical energy consumed.
Yes.
Just went away because Ethereum stopped consuming so much of it.
Also, underappreciated is how regular the Ethereum blocks are.
I don't know if you notice Ryan, but how easy and consistent it is to get a transaction in on Ethereum these
days, and that is a combination of EIP-159 and proof of stake the merge. A commenter in chat
token show said, had a nerd garage party in L.A. That sounds awesome. Very, very checks out.
You ready for number one run? Yes, give us number one. What's number one, David?
You got to save number one for the end, man. Are you serious? Yeah, so this is the biggest rugpole
of the bankless episode series. Number one is going to be saved the biggest and best moment in 2022.
All right. You got to save that one for the end.
That one's coming up the end.
It's coming.
David's not going to perma rug us, all right?
It's just a delay.
It's not a rug.
All right.
Well, the next category, I think, is villains.
Top five villains of 2020.
Yes.
All right.
Give it to us.
Number five.
And I know probably who all the names are.
I just don't know in what order you're going to put them.
Maybe there's some question about some of the names, actually.
So give us number five.
Coming in, hi.
And number five, you got to go with Richard Hart,
twerking his ass in your face in a Gucci track suit.
This guy just exudes what's exuberance and just cockiness.
Exuberance?
And in your face, just assholesess.
And for some reason, he's been able to convince a whole community of hexacons that he is a
Chad and he was right about everything.
So not only is he creating systems that take money from your pocket to his pocket.
he's also convincing an army of hexicans that he's somehow good at the same time.
He's also convinced them that he managed to make you cry on a bankless episode.
Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. That's part of it.
So like top five villains as in like top five worst people, but also to some degree, you got to give him credit.
Richard Hart is a really good villain. He's very successful.
Well, he's still around. He's still here. Somehow he's just like out doing his continuing the hex scam.
like Ponzi, whatever it is.
And I can't wait for him to tweet this, by the way.
This is turning into a clip, too.
Oh, 100%.
Number five, villain.
Richard, Richard.
You were number five on...
Well done.
Congrats, Richard.
You deserve this one.
All right.
And with an esteemed group of colleagues, so who's number four, David?
Number four.
This one's my favorite.
Alex Mishinsky wearing specifically a Banks are not your friend's t-shirt.
Well, he wasn't wrong.
He was not wrong. That is that. Again, well done, Alex. You called it. You saw it for what
what it is. Banks are definitely... You just forgot to tell us that you are also a bank. Yeah, that's exactly right.
So Alex Wichinsky, of course, the CEO founder of Celsius, who is just being a huge populace saying
banks are not your friends while he created a bank. And reminder, Ryan, that the Celsius executives,
including Alex Mishinsky, all withdrew millions of dollars just days before Celsius
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and froze customer withdrawals out of Celsius.
So well,
well done.
Huge successful year for Alex Wischinsky.
He's not in jail.
Walking free.
Number four villain.
And I would have called this the worst bank maybe I've ever seen in my lifetime,
the worst crypto bank.
But then something else happened later in the years.
The worst crypto bank from May of 2022 to November of 2022.
Yeah, you got a good five-month reign on that, Alex.
Banks are not your friends.
I'm going to get that shirt, by the way.
Just wear it unironically.
Unbelievable.
All right.
Give us number three then.
Number three.
Okay, Ryan, this is also when we simultaneously do the top tweets, the most infamous tweets of 2022.
So not only are we...
So we get to see the villain reaction.
Number three, number two, and number one all had the top five worst tweets of 2022.
So are you ready for this?
Coming in at number two, the pair, the duo themselves, Suzu, and Kyle Davy.
Here's Kyle Davies.
Again, tweeting exact truth in May 7th of 2020.
A couple more liquidations than up only.
I love how they're telling us in advance.
Banks are not your friends.
A couple more liquidations.
They're just giving it to us, man.
Yeah.
They've told us the whole time.
Wow.
Kyle Davis.
And Suzu, they're one unit to you, huh?
That's exactly right.
Yeah, Kyle Davies and Suz.
Here's Suzoo's most famous tweet.
Yes, I have a band.
an Ethereum in the past despite supporting it. Yes, Ethereum has abandoned its users despite
supporting them in the past. The idea of surting around jerking off of watching the burning
cock cockocting purity tests while newcomers can't afford the chain is gross. Well, I feel personally
attacked by that last sentence. But also, you know what's gross is completely screwing over your
investors and dragging the entire industry with you on the way down. And that's what that's what
Suzu and Kyle Davies did. They're kind of in the midst of what feels like a little bit of a comeback
to her. Trying something. Yeah. I think people are rejecting that comeback to people. People thought it
was cute and then people really and then people like, oh, like three hours capital, Susu,
they're back. Wait, what are my values? Let's just hold on to that for a little bit longer.
Okay, guys. Give us another year. Give us all of 2023 before this industry goes crazy again.
All right, what's number two, David?
Oh, God.
I couldn't really pick out the worst tweet out of this guy because he has so many.
So this guy's got five tweets.
Who do you think it is?
This guy has five tweets.
Number two, he's got five tweets.
I know who he is now. You gave it away.
Yeah.
Coming in hot at number two, Doe Kwan, the man who tweeted out, by my hand, die will die.
The guy who destroyed tens of billions of dollars of a stable coin because, of course,
algorithmic stable coins don't work.
And the MakerDow community knew it.
and he tweeted out just about six weeks before the collapse of Terraluna, by my hand,
die will die.
If you just scroll down just a little bit, Ryan, you'll see a response saying, my money is on die.
David Hoffman.
But what were the responses to your response?
I bet you got a lot of like, you know, we got that.
You don't got to scroll down.
We got that linked up in the, okay.
It's all here because he led a whole army.
That's part of Doquan's villainous behavior.
Okay, what other tweets we have?
Of course.
deploying more capital steady lads
May 9th, the last few hours
of the whole entire Terra Luna ecosystem.
Deploying more capital steady lads.
Brian, do you know where he got that capital?
The capital that he's deploying?
Okay, wait, wait, wait.
I'm just sorting out my villains and my scammers
from last year.
Where did you get this?
This capital.
No, VC.
Wait, no.
He probably got it from one of our other friends,
Kyle Davies, Suzu, FTX, Alameda.
Yeah, so he got it from selling UST to Alameda and Avalanche and for all those Avax tokens.
But where did he get the money to buy all of that money?
He printed it out of thin air.
U.S.T.
While there was an algorithmic sable coin with backing of Luna and U.S.T.
He printed and minted U.S.T out of thin air, sold that U.S.T into the market to buy Bitcoins,
to buy locked Avalanche tokens.
Oh, no, they weren't locked.
Just kidding.
And that was the Treasury for the Luna Guard Foundation.
So he paid for $48,000 Bitcoin,
and when it came time to deploy that capital to defend the peg,
the peg that he disrupted by minting U.S.T. in the first place,
that same Bitcoin that he bought was worth about half as much as when he bought it from.
So not only did he print funny money,
which actually was the trigger of the collapse of his own ecosystem,
the thing that he bought lost half of his value when it came time to be defensive.
The worst possible central banker in history.
Absolutely.
Name me a worst central banker.
You couldn't find worse in the Wymer Republic.
This is like banker, scammer, like, just terrible.
Don't worry.
That's only the second of five tweets.
So here's, I think, one of my most favorite memes out of 2022, which is Doquan tweeting out by my hand,
Die Will Die on top of a grave, and then Die is the guy giving the P sign over the grave.
Oh, all right.
And we have one more tweet.
Yeah.
So this is Mike Novigratz getting the Tara Luna tattoo.
And my co-host, Ryan John Adams, just, you know, instincts so sharp saying this tweet makes me question everything I thought I knew about crypto.
It legitimately did.
This was an honest tweet, 100% honest.
Yeah.
And then Doe Kwan coming in, don't worry, Ryan, it wasn't much.
You didn't know much about crypto.
How did that make you feel, Ryan, in that moment?
You know what?
And look at kind of, look, I got ratioed on Twitter.
Big time.
know that happens i got you know six to six to six to uh sorry three to one ratioed on
twitter basically in this and um you know i had to like you got me but then um a few months
later it turned out he got got yeah and i would not have wanted to support this tattoo into
twenty twenty three uh that that tattoo is um kind of a relic of of 2022 and uh you know
doquan apparently did not know very much about the algos stable coin he was running or about
crypto or about crypto values. You would think he did because if you remember, this was not the first
Algo stablecoin that he spun up and ran. He also saw basis cash algorithmic stablecoin go to zero.
David, just people were so dumb at that time. Can I just say that? Like, this industry was so dumb.
Like, we are much smarter right now. And I don't know, like, it's, this is why I'm not sad about
2020. Like, 2022 needed to happen. This was January. This kind of crap was going on. We needed this.
Don't get a tattoo of a cryptocurrency.
Don't do that.
Okay, but last tweet out of Doquan, because there were too many good ones.
Wait, really?
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
So this was his response to me saying, my money is on die.
And he just goes, oh, no effing way.
And then he gave me the bicycle helmet, whatever that means.
No, like the, excuse the word, the redacted brain, smush brain,
saying that, oh, that's exactly what an ETH maxi would think.
Only an ETH Maxi would bet on something he has aroused.
already lost. My die that I have is still $1, Ryan. Really? Hasn't gone zero? Yeah, hasn't gone zero.
Yeah. All right. So that's number two. That's number two. The second worst villain. And obviously,
we know who the first worst is. So why don't you just tell us? Why don't you just share it?
Coming in at number one, the worst villain of 2022. The guy that tweets out, I'll buy as much soul as
you have right now at $3. Sell me all you want. Then go fuck off. You know why he said that, Ryan?
You know why he was able to say that?
Because he was taking in customers Bitcoin and Ether.
Depositors money.
And buying Solano with it to pump that thing to the absolute moon.
Of course he tweeted this out.
He controlled the price.
Also January 10th.
Tell me like less like a year ago, this needed to happen.
Go on.
Go on though.
Oh, this was January 10th of 2021.
But I couldn't ignore the suite.
The reason why this tweet's in there is because of the CoinMamba tweet right below it,
which says, I'll buy everything you have at $3.
Sell me all you want because that is the value of Sam Bankman-Fried's current net worth $3.
Followed up by probably one of the most infamous tweets, perhaps infamous tweet number one.
How did he do this?
Number one, parenthesis, what?
That's the tweet.
That's the whole thing.
The what happened.
It's just wasted so much of my time, David, for this.
What was the payout?
Absolutely.
40 chess.
We have some stuff to talk about on the roll-up, by the way.
I don't think this man was playing 40 chess.
No.
I think this man was playing like Jenga for toddlers.
I don't think he had a master plan.
As somebody who's played many, many thousands of games of chess, Ryan,
it's actually really hard to play chess against beginners
because you just don't know what the hell they're doing.
That's what he feels like.
He just didn't know what the hell he was doing.
Anyway, by evidence of the fact that he tweeted,
I don't do I have this out?
Beckman Freed
This is a tweet from Ryan Selkis
Hours before he was literally arrested
said this and I quote
I don't think I will be arrested
He's now in jail
He's now in jail
Now arrested as of yesterday
And that's how we finish the year
Incredible fine
That's a great way to finish the year
Okay Richard Hart
Alex Michinsky
Suzu Kyle Davies
Doe Kwan SBF
Those were your villains
Those are the villains
Crypto
We met that
them. We got to know them. We're leaving most of them behind in 2020, and we can move on. Let's talk
about the heroes. Ryan, I think, well, we got the heroes left. We're going to go through all five of
them. Also, five honorable mentions, best supporting actor in a comedy, Normie brand of the year,
the biggest oof of 2022, the most influential and the best memes of 2022. And also, we got to revisit
the top moment of the year. But first, Ryan, we have to talk to some of these sponsors to help you go
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or launch your own portfolio at trufi.io. All right, on to the good news of the year. Who are the heroes?
The heroes of 2022. Brian, I put Michael Saylor as number five, which I think it might be a
decent surprise to most people. But I think Michael Saylor is one of the heroes of 2022. The man took
a $3.5 billion loss to the face and kept on buying. Uh, if that is not,
does this sound like a reverse compliment, like a backhanded compliment now? Thank you for
taking a $3.4 billion hit for crypto, Michael Saylor. Hey, man. Is that what you're saying, David?
Hey, he, every, every person comes into the crypto industry. They buy,
buy the top and they lose it because a crypto goes down.
But you know Michael Saylor's here for the long term because he's still buying, man.
I'm not saying he's a believer.
He's a believer. He's a believer.
He got Elon Musk to buy Twitter.
He's the number one.
To buy Twitter or Bitcoin?
Oh, excuse me, to buy Bitcoin.
Okay.
He is the number one holder of Bitcoin in existence by a long shot holding a current value
of $2.3 billion of crypto with a cost of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin with a cost basis of $4 billion, and he is still buying.
He's just like us.
He's down like greater than 50%.
Wow, even after dollar cost averaging in.
Yeah, exactly.
So, like, you got to give it to him.
Like, he's unequivocally one of the most bullish people in crypto.
I don't get it.
I'll be honest.
Like, I don't get a lot of the things that he does, but I can't say I disagree that he's on
your list.
And look, when we talk about bank lists, it's where it's heroes for everybody.
This might not be the Ethereum community.
He's not my hero.
He's not my hero.
He's kind of a chat.
You got to give it to him.
Okay.
Look at Sailor on this list, huh?
Where is micro strategy?
Number one.
Not even close, dude.
There is no second best.
All right.
Who we got?
Number four.
Number four.
We got to go with, okay, this one is one of my heroes.
Anthony Sizzano.
And you know why I think Anthony Sizano is a hero?
What?
And I'll take this line from Outa Kobe's book.
Because Anthony Sizzano makes a YouTube video about Ethereum 30 minutes long every single day.
And writes a newsletter, dressed in himself, every single day, day in, day out.
He scans crypto Twitter and updates you as to the state of Ethereum, the progress of Ethereum, the progress of crypto.
Every damn day.
The consistency behind this man is absolutely insane.
Look at this guy.
Look at that guy.
That just exudes a hero.
Hey, do you want to know a fun fact about Anthony, actually?
Tell me.
So I was doing some fun time with Mid Journey yesterday.
You know the AIs like to hang out, right, David?
So fun time with Mid Journey and myself, and I typed in David and Ryan, David Hoffman, Ryan Sean Adams' bankless podcast.
And like, because I wanted to get like what Mid Journey would paint us as.
It got you pretty perfectly.
But it kept putting Anthony's beard on me.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And I think that's because, like, it confused me and Anthony's.
Anthony in some way or like maybe because Anthony's been on bankless stream so many times.
Wait, I want to go check our faces together.
You got to check our Discord channel.
Oh, I'm looking right now.
You see it?
Yeah, I see it.
He kept putting a beard on me.
Even when I was like mid-jurney, no beard, no beard.
Wow.
Yeah, that, yeah, I don't know, man.
Sasano's everywhere.
I'm going to have to talk to Anthony about that.
Anyways, tip of the hat to Anthony, Sizano.
He's supremely useful for staying up on the frontier of Ethereum.
So he's coming in at number four heroes of 20.
Okay. Number three, who do we got?
Another influencer?
Well, we're all influencers if you've got like a Twitter account over $10,000.
Coming at number three, you've got to give this one to Kobe.
I think Kobe, I mean, everyone knows who Kobe is.
To say that he doesn't give get credit is, I mean, he definitely gets a lot of credit.
But I just want to remind people, Kobe for a while went on this stint where he would go
and live stream and have thousands of people watch his stream, and he would stream the streams of
normies, musicians who had anywhere between like 10 and 100 views, and he would tell his stream army
to go watch their stream, try and do a little Easter egg hungry, where they were like pest with
them saying, hey, download Metamask, and the musician would be like super confused, like, why,
why, first off, are there thousands of people in my stream that, like, I only have 10 to 100 people for?
why are they all trying to get me to download Metamask?
And the ones that do it, they would send them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And so Kobe would go out and just like send his stream armies into just like normal people who want to be creative, musicians, and just donate.
One musician received $200,000 after his Twitch raid.
We got a tweet pulled up that's of Kobe, blinking out to this one musician's, uh, uh, uh, uh,
Ethereum address or eth address that they had just downloaded.
There was just another one where somebody who held it up a sign saying,
thank you crypto Twitter for the donations to pay for health care for like one of the
dads or something.
Also, Kobe funded the lawsuit against BitBoy.
So BitBoy, remember when BitBoy sued that YouTuber who tried to expose him, Atozy?
He's at Atozzi on August 23rd of this year.
It says, I wish I didn't have to make this thread, but I'm being sued by YouTube Bitboy
crypto for a video I made roughly nine months ago about how we promoted a project called
Pamp and then somebody tags Kobe so Kobe will notice it and Kobe goes, I'll send $100,000
or something later when I'm at my PC a few hours later he follows up with a tweet that says
sent. Kobe funded this guy with $100,000. BitBoy as a result of this dropped his lawsuit and
Kobe let the guy keep the money to pay for a vacation or something. So got to give it to Kobe.
Actually, most of this happened.
The Bit Boy happened in 2022.
Some of the music streaming happened in 2021.
He's also got a fantastic substack writing some of the most clear and sober in thought analysis of crypto.
If you want to level up in crypto, Kobe's substack is fantastic.
So you've got to give it to him.
Coming in number three, Heroes of 2022.
Kobe.
There you go.
Kobe.
All right.
We've got some other people in the list, too, maybe specifically, because we have two more slats.
Who is number two, David?
Coming at number two, Zach XBT, the guy that you do not want sleuthing around your Ethereum address.
He has a notion site where he has all of his victims, I'll call them victims, and it's again a notion that you do not want to be on, all of his on-chain analysis.
So if you don't know who Zach XPT is, he is a guy that makes sure that influencers, pump and dumpers, VCs, people aren't dumping on retail in ways that are illicit or bad.
this is a guy that this is a crypto self-regulating while we're kind of waiting for regulators to catch up
Zach XBT is making sure that people like BitBoy are not dumping on people when they totally are
he's a vigilante he cares about this industry he she they them we don't actually know because he's in a
completely anonymous account which is fantastic too yeah yeah and he's caught a lot hasn't he he
He has probably, it's kind of hard to say if he saved money.
He's definitely created the very strong incentive to not be a shiller pump and dumper.
That's saving money.
That's just holding the industry accountable.
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's very hard to do it in this space.
And there's a reason why that guy has to be old.
He's also the guy that discovered that the ex-Quadringa founder, the scam artist, can't remember his name, was Zero X-Sifu out of Wonderland.
He was that guy.
And that happened earlier in the year.
I mean, yeah.
invaluable. All right. So our number one, biggest hero for 2022, who's filling this lot, David?
I can't give it to one person, Ryan. So we gave it to the cohort of the Ethereum developers
who helped ship so much in 2022, mainly the merge. Give it a hand to all Ethereum developers that's out
there. So huge. Crypto grows absolutely insane in 2022, but the Ethereum developers kept their heads
down and shipped the merge.
This is, uh, I'm just going to butcher some of these names.
Yeah, just don't even say all the names.
You don't have to, David, but we'll show them on the same.
Siao Wang, I think, is how you pronounce it.
Uh, she first off created the merge pandas meme.
Uh, she works on consensus layer specs and made the, made the merge meme.
Uh, paritos, uh, paritoch, uh, I'm so sorry, uh, led the testing of the beacon chain,
helped coordinate all of the shadow forks.
Marius, of course, coming up next.
also led the connection between the consensus layer clients and Geth.
You got Ben Edgington leading the take you client.
You have Tim Bako helping coordinate the merge.
You got Danny Ryan helping coordinate the merge.
There are so many people who worked on the merge that are just simply not enough.
This guy right here.
Danny Ryan.
I give a big hand to Danny and Tim, of course.
So many people helped ship the merge.
Again, some of them look at what we do on the application layer and they're like,
God damn it, these crypto degenerates.
Yet they help us ship the merge anyway.
So anyone who's ever helped with the merge, and that includes all the listeners running full nodes, validating nodes, staking nodes, anyone who tested the merge.
If you helped in the merge, absolutely thank you.
Tip of the hat.
It was one of the most foundational innovations out of the crypto space.
So thank you so much.
David, so that was our biggest heroes.
We went through the villains, and now we got the heroes.
Give us some honorable mention, some things that didn't quite make the regular list, but are in a category.
of their own. What do you got here?
Coming in at
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy
Gary Gensler.
Okay.
Oh, no, we can't get his picture of.
We can't get his picture up. Gary Gensler.
By the law. Best Supporting actor in a comedy.
Peter,
I just want to give a hand to Michael
Wong, who came up with that name.
Supporting actor, as in like, he's not a crypto person.
He's outside of the space.
Supporting, as in very much an influence
onto all of the things that made 2020, 22,
did not allow the GBDC to become an ETF,
has provided absolutely zero clarity as to what is a security token,
yet is charging exchanges with listing security tokens,
yet not listing what they are,
telling people to come knock on his door and come into his office
so we can work together.
And so then he can sue you, making an absolute farce out of this industry.
And so best supporting actor in a comedy, Gary Gensler.
All right, Gary, you made the list.
And seriously, come on bank list sometime in 2023.
God, look at that photo, man.
That is a creepiest.
He looks like the penguin on the backman.
It's classic.
It's perfect.
All right, what else we got?
Normie brand of the year.
You gotta give this one to Budweiser,
who paid 30th for beer.eath.
They bought a nouns before nouns were cool, Ryan.
They put that in the nouns classes in the Super Bowl.
They bought some very esoteric, very niche, high culture memes.
So Normie Brand of the Year, who absolutely killed it on the NFT front.
They actually got the Budweiser.
The beer pint head on their noun.
Yes, they killed it.
Whoever was leading NFT strategy at Budweiser, absolutely well done.
Give them a raise.
I don't know what you could have done better.
Hold out for 2024, okay?
Congratulations, sir.
You get to keep your job.
No pay raise for you, but you are not getting fired.
All right, that's awesome.
Okay, what's another honorable mention here?
Biggest oof.
You ready for the biggest oof of 2022?
I feel like we did a lot of oos.
No, this one's appropriate.
Other stuff is like face palm, my God, self-exessential prices.
What have we done?
Yes.
This is just like a big oof.
Okay.
This is the worst NFT project ever.
Pixelmon and Kevin.
It's Kevin the Pixelmonds.
Did this come out in February?
Yeah, this was February of this year, yeah.
Wow.
And, okay, what was the joke with Pixel Mons and with Kevin?
It's like, the art had yet to be released or something like this, and everyone had spent
a whole bunch of money on this, like, PixelMond.
It was supposed to be.
It was a three-eath floor.
It was a three-eath mint, which was extremely expensive.
This was in February of 2022.
So this was near all-time high.
So, three-eth was something like $8,000 plus.
And it was going to be like Pokemon plus Minecraft.
The art was extremely hyped.
It turned out to be just a bunch of libraries of code pulled off the shelves and some very bare bones work.
And Kevin, who is a Pixelmon, was deemed to be so bad.
I think that's what the internet named him.
I don't know that was, is this Pixelmon actually called Kevin?
It doesn't even matter anymore.
This is Kevin to us.
So Kevin, Kevin was deemed to be so incredibly atrocious that it went full circle and
is good.
Zach, this whole Pixelmon thing
was a subject of,
look at that price chart at the very end.
That thing goes absolutely just straight
down to zero as it's revealed.
That reminds me of 2022.
That chart right there.
It's a familiar pattern.
So Pixelmon was actually a subject
of a Zach XPT investigation
to see where all those funds flowed,
being deemed a pretty damn obvious cash grab.
Did you know, Ryan?
You can still buy a Kevin.
A Kevin?
There's more than one.
No, I think there might be just one, Kevin.
Well, that's actually pretty cheap for this kind of, this level of culture.
1.6ith.
Yeah, I hope that's the red link.
But yeah, well, best offer at 1.6th.
It was last hole, we're 6th of number.
Okay, we'll keep that on your Christmas list.
Ladies and gentlemen.
All right, what else do we have?
Any other things that just missed the cut?
Honorable mentions.
Yeah, we got most influential.
The Federal Reserve, J-Pow, and interest rate.
You got to say that interest rates were the most influential thing.
Yes, this man, this man successfully killed crypto as soon as interest rates cut.
You can't kill crypto.
Well, okay.
He killed Doquan.
He killed Doquan.
He killed three hours capital.
You got it all wrong.
This guy cleansed us of all of the 2022 villains.
That's a good take.
That's a good take.
This guy pulled out the tide.
Turns out Doe Kwan had no trunks.
Turns out zero, three hours capital had no trunks.
Block F5, no trunks.
FTCs, no trunks.
And this guy revealed him all.
So yes, I take that back, Ryan.
This guy killed all of the unsustainable short-termism inside of crypto.
So while we're all down bad because of it, it was the washing, the cleansing that we need.
This is such a creepy photo, too.
What's with the creepy photos?
This looks like Powell at a wax museum or something.
Powell from Mid-Jurney for sure.
Okay.
What do we got?
I think you've got best meme on the list too.
Best meme.
That's a hard one.
What do we got?
GM.
GM.
So this particular is a meme of a guy pushing a cart full of boxes, and he's looking
over at a friend who's just got one tiny little box, and he goes, is that all you need?
And the man with the tiny little box is named GM, by the way, is just saying yes.
Yes, it is all I need.
I still feel like I can say GM at the end of 2022.
some of the other memes created in 2022 did not last.
Like, I think it'll be a very long time before I, like, say we're all going to make it.
Yes.
We're all going to make it.
Definitely worst meme of 2021.
Yeah, we're not all going to make it.
One of the reasons why GM is the best meme, Ryan, is that there actually is no canonical GM meme.
It is a, as all good memes are, decentralized.
There's where did GM come from?
Where is this epicenter?
Somebody started saying it.
No, we all started saying good morning and somebody shortened it to GM and then GM just proliferated.
Just bam, bam, bam.
So GM, the most decentralized meme that we've ever come up with.
Well, GM to you, David.
All right, look, that was it, right?
We went through all of everything, but we still have something on the list, which is you never,
when we went through the list of top moments, you stopped right before we got to number one.
So I think we're ready for the top moment of.
of 2022. Can you give it to us? What's coming in at number one? Coming in at number one,
I never thought it would actually happen. But in, when was it, May of this year? Yes, May 16th of
this year, absolute history was made in all of crypto where Ryan, Sean Adams was confirmed
a real human being. And I met this man in West Palm Beach, Florida. Oh, my God.
It's where Ryan and I met for the first time. But da-da-da. That's it. That's it. Well,
look, it had to be self-serving because, you know, it's bankless at the end of this.
So this is, by the way, I'll note that David put this ahead of the merge.
So, sorry, Metallic, all the developers know you guys worked hard.
But look, David and I met this year for the first time.
And that's a pretty big deal.
That's it, man.
What a year.
We can wrap this one, though.
It's over.
That was our, that is a wrap.
That was a wrap.
That was our week in wrap.
Like, we've got some more stuff coming up content-wise actually shows the end of the year.
So we've got, I think, a Voorhe show coming up.
We got Vitalik coming to the podcast.
I think a major theme for us, guys, in next year is going to be how we rebuild in the aftermath
of all of this, right?
How do we build crypto back on strong foundations?
And so we're going to get into all of that.
Of course, we also have Ryan Selkis giving us his crypto theses next week, which I always enjoy.
This is kind of an annual tradition for us, too.
But so is the bankless moments.
We did one from last year too, and it's just a fun way to recap the year.
So thanks for putting this together, David.
Yeah, I'm sorry the year was so bad, but hey, it's over now.
Was it bad?
Needed to happen.
Look, do you remember that tattoo in January?
It needed to happen.
Guys, thank you for hanging with us.
The chat, Ryan, is not convinced that you are a real person.
Okay, AI technology is not this advanced.
How can you simulate this?
This looks pretty real to me.
It felt real, David.
Let me just say that.
All right, guys, let's end it here.
Risk and disclaimers, this is our time to let you know.
None of this has been financial advice.
Never is on bankless.
ETH is risky.
Crypto is risky.
Defy is risky.
If you need more evidence of that, go listen to the podcast again, all right?
We've got villains here as well as heroes.
You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west.
This is the frontier.
It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey.
Thanks a lot.
