Bankless - 2025 Crypto Predictions with Altcoin Daily | BTC, ETH, Memecoins & L2s

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Ryan and David were interviewed by Altcoin Daily on Oct. 1st, 2024. In their interview, they chat about what's next for Ethereum, their best Ether price prediction for 2025, and all of the other tokens and more!  ------ 📣GET YOUR ALL ACCESS PASS TO THE PODCAST https://bankless.cc/podshownotes   ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2  ⁠ 🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum   🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle     🤖 dYdX | UNLIMITED LAUNCHING SOON https://bankless.cc/dYdXUnlimited   🐧 CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiSimple ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/93?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E  ------ TIMESTAMPS 2:52 Intro 4:18 Background 10:30 Crypto Outlook for 2025 13:23 How High Will Bitcoin Go in 2025? 15:11 "Ethereum Is Incredibly Undervalued" 17:37 Why Ethereum L2's Are MASSIVE 20:26 When Will Ethereum Flip Bitcoin? 24:40 Ethereum Price Prediction 2025 29:03 What's The Next Ethereum of THIS Cycle? 32:10 The Memecoin Supercycle 33:49 Secret to Growing on Social Media 36:26 Thoughts on Cardano 39:56 Best Advice for Crypto Investors ------ RESOURCES Altcoin Daily Interview https://youtu.be/h4ifYPBLM24?si=JRAoS2WrlbV_UXBC  ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Hey, Bankless Nation, something a little bit different on the podcast today. Ryan and I were on the Allcoyne Daily podcast on the other side of the microphones. So this is that episode coming to you in the Bankless podcast feed. So if you ever want to hear what it's like for Ryan and David to get interviewed, you are about to hear that right now. So let's go into the Alkoyne Daily podcast right now. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support teams, then head over to Cracken. One of the longest standing and most secure crypto platforms in the world.

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the bankless guys, David and Ryan, thank you for joining me. Honored to have you here. What's up, guys? It's great to have you guys. Oh, my God, I said it's great to have you guys. Whoa. The number of times we've been on somebody else's podcast is like four. Yeah, it's very rare.

Very scarce. That's a great segue because I know a lot of people do know you and your names in the space, but just what is your background? Like, how did you get into crypto and then crypto media? Yeah. My first job. My background is crypto. I was trying to get into a career in the world of health sciences beforehand,

but I never really got that whole thing started because I just got sidetracked by crypto pretty soon in my career. I think I became like full-time crypto at 24 years old. So there's like three years of like post-college, two years post-college. So then I found crypto. I graduated in 2015, found crypto in 2017, and then like went full-time crypto in 2018. So yeah, my background is crypto. That's kind of what we did going full time in 2018.

Yeah. What were you guys before? Like in kind of like your previous lives. If you let Ryan, he will drive the podcast. Sorry, no, no, no. My co-host here, I find it so interesting because like I would say everything he did prior to crypto is actually still applicable here because he formerly has like experiences basically like a social worker therapist and a psychology degree.

And these things are key to understanding crypto markets. definitely psychology and we still need your background Ryan but yeah how we started was our original it was a basically you know we graduated undergrad we studied filmmaking and marketing

we moved out to Los Angeles pursued filmmaking and acting we're in the union did a you know a handful of stuff and you know the thing is in the filmmaking business there's a lot of gatekeepers and discovered crypto YouTube where you can post as much as you want

no gatekeepers, crypto in general, no gatekeepers. So the more you put in, the more you can get out. And, you know, at the time, I discovered crypto YouTube as a retail participant in 2017. And there were some good ones. You know, Ivan on Tech was back then. There were a lot of good ones, but there were some, in my opinion, where it left me wanting more. And I thought, well, I could do a crypto YouTube channel half as good as some of these guys. And so decided to start, I didn't know it at the time, but the very beginning of a deep bear market at the very beginning in 2018, we started the channel. Yeah, it's a good time to do it, actually.

Yeah. You, David, please. Ryan. Ryan. Yeah, so I get, okay, so I discovered Bitcoin, I would say, through like a 2014 prentizone trip. So I had these things called cluster headaches that just sort of came on me. And like cluster headaches, if you're not familiar, they're sort of like a, it's like the worst headache imaginable. So people describe these as like suicide headaches because like when when you're

in the midst of a cluster headache, like you just don't want to be alive in that moment. Anyway, I was having these and one of the potential treatment options was to go on like a prednisone, which is like a steroid. And during a like Thanksgiving weekend prentazone for my cluster headaches kind of trip, it caused me to get intensely focused, and I fell down the rabbit hole of crypto, and specifically Bitcoin. Now, the good news is my cluster headaches went away, actually this treatment worked. The weird thing about it was, like, I did every Andreas Anapolus, Antinopoulos, like, YouTube thing I could get my hands on. I went and I read, like, his book. Like, I opened accounts with, like, five crypto exchanges. For whatever reason,

Prednisone just like gave me intense focus. It was almost like this, you know, Ritalin thing. And by like Monday, it was like a long weekend. It was the Thanksgiving weekend. I actually wanted to quit my job and go all in on this Bitcoin thing. Like it was that powerful for me because I'd been totally captured. Now, I don't know if that was the drugs or the ideas, but like once I was off this, it didn't go away. But the thing for me was like Bitcoin was interesting, but it could only do one thing,

which is like, what do you do with Bitcoin? You just, like, hold it. And so I was still working this job. I didn't, like, give my notice on Monday. I kind of hung in there. It was a corporate job. So I was working in medical software tech. I'd formerly been sort of an entrepreneur

and sold the company, big corporate environment. And I stayed there. But in the meanwhile, I was doing all of my, like, nights, weekends, hobby time, researching this new thing that was coming alive in 2015, 2016, which is Ethereum. And the potential for Ethereum was so crazy to me, Because with Ether and Ethereum, it wasn't just about just holding an asset.

It was about actually doing, we didn't have the words at the time, but like decentralized finance. And there was this thing called a Dow when they were organizing. It was just like there's many more possibilities here when you have a programmable money system. And at that point, I was like fully captured. It didn't require second prednisone trip to like go all in on crypto. And so that's what I decided to do in like, you know, 2016, 2017. was just like quit my job, make this my focus. And I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do at that time.

I sort of thought I wanted to like start a fund or something, you know, be an investor. Everyone did it in 2017. And then 2018 hit. And I was like, oh, shit. Was I wrong about everything? You guys remember 2018. It was bleak. It was desolate.

That was my cluster headache. Right. Exactly. I mean, it was like it was so painful to be there at that time. And in the midst of this, like rediscovering my thing. thesis and why I was here, David and I met. And we'd come to some similar conclusions, like, he was writing and, like, his writing, writing was fantastic. We met on Twitter. And then one thing led to another. And suddenly, David's, like, you know, writing articles for this new thing. We called

Bankless. And he's like, hey, Ryan, want to start a podcast? And now here we are with like almost a thousand podcasts, I think, on Bankless up to this point. Wow, a thousand episodes. I think we've stopped counting, but there's a lot of them. There's a counter. And we're at like 950 something, David. Oh, really? Yeah. Where's our counter? In close.

It's on Lipson. I show it to you after. Guys, we're like, we're all bullish on crypto long term just for 2025. What is your outlook? What do you think will be the strongest narratives? Hmm. I think the final conclusion of all crypto narratives is always the irresponsibility of central banks. And I think we probably are going through like phases of,

of irresponsibility of central banks, where COVID was extreme irresponsibility matched with some sort of reaction to that of an attempt to be responsible. And I think right now we're going back into an era of irresponsibility. And this is just the hardening and then the softening of the money cycle, right? This is also the business cycle. But like things always trend more and more irresponsible over time. And so like it's like a random walk of drunkenness by these Federal Reserve by these central banks. But the conclusion is always just like all fiat currencies are going to ultimately drop to zero in real terms.

The dollar will probably be the last to go. But even the dollar is on top of crypto rails. And so people escaping the collapse of their fiat currencies will use crypto to access the dollar. And then they'll be pilled by crypto in general to access Bitcoin and ether. And I think in 2025 specifically, we are resuming. Like, we don't have a crisis like COVID, but we are still resuming just irresponsibility around the money printer. And I think that's going to kind of mark 2025.

I mean, I pretty much agree with that. I think like 2025 is like 2020. It's sort of similar. I think so like my base prediction is like bullish 2025. Like this is the next bull cycle for crypto. I think something that could delay it towards the latter part of 2025. or even worst case scenario, like I could be wrong, is some sort of recession that could happen. Again, we don't read the macro T leaves because like the entire, you know, bankless thesis, investor thesis is just like long-term bullish on crypto assets, particularly those that are their money and store of value types of assets.

And so whether we get the bull cycle in 2025 or if it's delayed, you know, 2020 COVID-style by some sort of recession, it's coming back. I mean, this market cap is only $2 trillion. It's just scratching the surface of what it's going to be, and particularly because of exactly what David said, is even if we get a recession, the way out for monetary authorities and governments all around the world is going to be to press the money printer button. And you could see it. It's totally primed.

And so that's going to be on the other side of this. And crypto, in comparison to that, will just gain more and more legitimacy. in the years to come. So Bitcoin as this hard monetary asset getting adopted, sounds like you're bullish in 2025. I see you guys ask this question all the time, the quintessential Bitcoin price prediction. We ask this to our guests all the time. I'm sure you hear like a spectrum of theseses for, you know, where Bitcoin could go in 2025. But what is your kind of base, bull or bear prediction around Bitcoin?

At least six figures, six figure of Bitcoin in 2025. like as a floor, as a floor price, that's kind of my take. I don't, I think estimating the upper bound of Bitcoin is pretty high, hard, because it can just be so chaotic up there. But as a floor, I think six figures is pretty safe. Yeah, I would say I feel like between 150K and like 250K is kind of like the range I'm thinking of. In 2025? 2025 into 2026, right?

It's kind of a range. I think that's something that's probably a bit more contrarian. like more of a bankless belief is like we actually remain bullish on ether the asset despite what's you know going on in crypto twitter and part of the reason for that is because you know this has kind of been a bankless chance since the early days as well and like this um very excited about decentralized finance and like bankless money systems also very excited about ether as a store of value and so the thing that's maybe more uh contrarian is like eith to 10k in 2025 or like beyond 10K, 10 to 15K is a real possibility on the table. And I think a lot of the general crypto

listeners in the market is like fading eth right now. So if you talk to David, you talk to me, we're probably bullish on the Bitcoin-Eth ratio, like pretty heavily. And that's a, that's a contrarian a trade right now. Why so bullish on ETH today? We're all bullish on ETH, but I guess talk to those people that are now big Solana heads or Cardano heads. What is the the thought process for ETH specifically when it does have all this competition. Mainly because it's been faded so hard. Like a part of the answer is simply just because of the relative prices of these things. The ETH Bitcoin ratio is that like coming up on a three year low,

lows that we haven't seen since like before DFI was like known as like a, once upon time, defy was like a niche Ethereum thing. And then in 2020, it became a global, oh, and this is what crypto is kind of thing. Defy for everyone. everyone wanted in on defy. And like the ETH Bitcoin ratio is currently at a valuation that was like before Defi was even understood by the entire crypto industry.

So like we're going back in time to a point where just like fundamentals of Ethereum are just completely misunderstood where Ryan and I started the bankless podcast to like basically espouse about the dislocation of the fundamentals of Ethereum and the purpose of defy. And then there's a then so that's Bitcoin on one end of the spectrum. And there's this narrative that like Ethereum is just squeezed. Now, it's got Bitcoin sucking up the monetary properties on one side of the value spectrum. And then it's got Salana sucking up the execution powers on the other side of the spectrum. And then Ethereum is in this weird no man's land in the middle.

And it's getting just like barbell on both sides. And there's always been like the Ethereum barbell perspective. I've always been of the opinion that the unity of all of these things is actually far more valuable than the barbelling of these things. Ether is better money because it's intimately connected with its own financial. platform, its own defy. Solana can sure, it can execute very well. Its execution capacity is very, very strong, but it's never going to be able to be as strong as Ethereum layer two's.

That's the whole point of the Ethereum Layer 2 model. And then even the Ethereum Layer 1 at the end of the day is also going to be the first one to actually land a ZKVM that's robust on the Ethereum layer one. And so it's also going to be able to execute faster than Salona at the layer one, given enough time. And it's basically going back to like something that's always been which is Ethereum just has kind of just all of the researchers of the cryptospace, you just invest where the researchers are.

Like that we are on a new frontier of like exploring this new world of crypto economics, like to go where the researchers are innovating. And that's definitely where Ethereum is. And Ethereum layer twos, can you help us understand this? Because I see some detractors saying that, oh, Ethereum layer twos are kind of sucking up value capture from the main chain. How do you guys think about it? My idea here is, and this has actually been identified by Pellenia,

who's an Ethereum kind of like adjacent researcher, kind of community researcher. He was saying this on his blog forever ago. The idea here is that like Ethereum has layer one execution. We used to be predominantly doing our defy activities on the Ethereum layer one and therefore producing fees for the Ethereum layer one. It would make ether very deflationary. And now a lot of that defy activity, that general financial activity is moving on to the layer two's, leaving nothing much for capture in the theorem layer one.

And so, like, detractors will say base is actually like intercepting Ethereum's value capture. Arbitrum is intercepting Ethereum's value capture. Like Arbitrum, all of these sequencer fees, all these chain fees are going to the Arbitrum Dow or to the Coinbase P&L and nothing is left for Ethereum at the end of the day. This is the roll upcentric roadmap. This has been the plan. The idea is when you take Ethereum's business model of, you know, execution fees being burned by EIP 1559, and you democratize that to a permissionless set of layer twos. All of a sudden, like, all of these layer twos are super profitable. As a business, it's like the best business in the world is you just resell the most valuable block space in the world, the Ethereum layer one.

And you resell it as your layer two and you just pocket the difference. This is the most sustainable, replicatable, reproducible business model that has, has ever been found in crypto. And what do you get when you put all those properties together? You just get a complete blossoming of layer twos. And so this is where ETH turns into money, because the Ethereum monetary network, the Ethereum property rights network,

has this just like chain of chains, this literally internet of chains that all collapses back down to Ethereum. And the argument here is like, well, people can still say, well, at the end of the day, like the fundamentals, the fees, the deflationary nature of ether, is actually still just that doesn't solve any of your problems. My response to that is like, actually every single chain is on this roadmap. Bitcoin is on the roll up centric roadmap.

Solana is on the roll up centric roadmap. Celestia is on the roll up centric roadmap. And actually credit to Celestia, Celestis is the only one that's on the roll up centric roadmap and actually knows it, whereas Bitcoin and Solana are on the roll up centric roadmap and are in denial about it and think they're on something else. And so like there's, if you re-roll the dice of crypto, you will always get the roll-up-centric roadmap that's not ethereum's invention it's actually ethereum's discovery and ethereum is just much further along on this whole entire path Ryan this cycle specifically same question but also i want to extend it also to uh do you think ethereum can flip bitcoin in the short term this cycle it's going to be tough to flip bitcoin

uh i would say um so i am still a believer in this is again in my minority opinion that one day Ether will actually flip Bitcoin, but that could take many years to play out. And the reason is just like, I am super, uber bullish on Defi. It's just the whole thing, the whole crypto thing, and this is the thesis for Bankless, is like, Defy is a big deal. Store of value is just a subset of decentralized finance, right? Ethereum can do the super set. It could do store of value, and it can also do the other money verbs, the lend, the borrow, the trade, all on chain, all in a decentralized way, right? And Ethereum alone, as a smart contract platform, preserves similar censorship-resistant guarantees as like Bitcoin. I think

there's a lot of competing, let's call it layer ones, that are actually more like open finance type systems. And by that I mean like, yeah, sure, you're going to get stable coins on there. You're going to get real world assets on there. You're going to get like game tokens and like maybe meme coins. But is it going to be censorship resistant to government attack, for instance? Like if you deployed a tornado cash on Solana, I'm not saying anyone should do this. This is illegal, whatever, all these things aside. But if you did that, how soon do you think it would be until the validators say, oh, we're not processing those transactions? On Ethereum, for the good and the bad, those transactions cannot be censored by the most powerful government in the world,

which is the U.S. government saying, OFAC sanctioned, that is a testament to the censorship resistance of Ethereum. And that's like what DFI means to me. That's kind of the distinction between decentralized finance and open finance and even the Tradfi world. So I think that's important. I would say three things about catalysts in the short term for ether of the asset. One, people don't understand right now, ETH is money. They just don't. Okay, so digital gold with productive yield. That's a meme that has not been explored and exported to the world.

So to me, that represents upside because that's how I see it. And that's essentially like what it is, digital gold with yield that's barely understood. A second thing is Ethereum is going to have some upgrades probably in 2025 that are going to stimulate role up development, data availability stimulus. So I already did one of these stimuluses early in the year where it provided blob space, and that's why I roll up transaction fees have gone to zero. It's going to introduce a new stimulus for roll-ups and bring transaction fees even closer to zero, increase the throughput of them. The roll-up strategy has been unsung success of Ethereum. Like, no, Pocodot tried, cosmos tried, all of these other ecosystems tried to execute on this hub, this chain.

of chains type vision, only Ethereum is actually doing it with shared security. And people are now looking at a successful roadmap where you have like base transactions, arbitram transactions, like optimism, all of ZK sync, all of these ZK rollups. They're looking at the success of this. And they're being like, oh, I'm bearish Eith. That is ridiculous to me. And it's only a matter of time before the market wakes up to that. And then thirdly, I think based rollups are actually going to be a big deal. I don't know if your listeners have explored this side of, the new roll-up frontier, but it's basically a roll-up that uses as its sequencers, the Ethereum validator set, is a much more aligned form of a roll-up with eth value accrual

than the traditional roll-ups. And it's not fragmented, complete interoperability. And so I think we'll see some existing layer twos convert to based roll-ups in the future. We'll see a blossoming of new based roll-ups. Anyway, like, I look at the ETH strategy, everything that's going on, and I'm like, this is all going according to to plan, and ETH is going to be a digital gold and will accrue value as the Ethereum economy grows. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA, powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming

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I mean, in the context of 2025 cycle, you said 100K, David, for Bitcoin, 150K, K. Ryan, what are you guys thinking for Ethereum? I mean, I'm still at, you know, 10K plot, like 10K is bearish type of take. Like, if we don't hit 10K in this cycle, then, like, you have no other option other than to kind of load up the truck and buy more because it's stupid. Like, I think that's the barest scenario for Ethereum. Now, whether we fully kind of propagate this narrative and whether ETH receives the value accrual that it's due this cycle, I'm not sure.

Bitcoin has done a fantastic job in terms of narrative propagation, and you have to hand it to them. I mean, the Bitcoin conference, they had Trump speaking. We have senators like Senator Lummis talking about a strategic reserve of Bitcoin. This is like, oh, this is like, so. Oh, this is like, so Bitcoin has out executed Ethereum on every level with respect to like the store of value narrative. But to me, that's just the market kind of underpricing the narrative potential of ethos money. But I mean, I guess to directly answer your question, I think the market will start to realize this in 2025.

And we might see kind of a 10 to 15K eth price. But it might take more time. So like the timing thing is the only question. but I just don't care. It's just like hold and stake. And if it's underpriced, then that's just like a, you know, a fantastic opportunity for acquiring more ether. There's this a meme out there, I think from Amin Soleimani,

who called Bitcoiners, the Spartans and Ethereum, the Athenians. The illusion here was like the Spartans are all just completely in unison, pointed towards a direct, like a focus goal. When the movie and the 300 movie all do the same chant at the same time, time. And then the Athenians are like the Spartan would go off to the Athenian be like, who are you? And one Athenian would say, I'm a, I'm a blacksmith. And then you would go to the next Athenian. They were like, who are you? Like, oh, I'm a farmer. Next guy. We're like, oh, I'm a, I'm a leather smith or whatever. Just a disconnected, disparate, just like group of people

with different expertise in different directions. And the Ethereum narrative, I think, is very similar. This is like who the core devs are. This is who the Ethereum culture is, like a very pluralist culture that has different values and different focuses. And, you know, the Bitcoin has one narrative, which is Bitcoin is digital gold for the internet. That's why, like, people buying the iBit from Black Rock is so easy to sell. So it's like it's digital gold on the internet. And then Ethereum, even like our own roadmap, our own internal community, it's always split amongst like 17 different directions to Ethereum's benefit, I think, but I think it's a very long-term benefit. It's very much like the long game. Whereas you have like the ethos money.

camp who's like yeah, Ethan's money. And like there's another camp of Ethereum over there who like just doesn't care. And they're actually building like a decentralized social media, social graph protocol. And they'll just like use USC but for whatever. And I think this strategy,

this like emergent strategy, this emergent property of Ethereum is actually why Ethereum is so, such a good fit for like my personal values and what I want to see out of the internet because Ethereum to me looks the most like society. it looks the most normal, whereas Bitcoin has got this super homogenous

group of people with a very narrow set of values. Same thing kind of with Solana, like a very narrow set of people with very homogenous values, not as homogenous as Bitcoin, but still kind of like constrained. And Ethereum is just like this very pluralistic, open network of people.

And the way that this turns into like the conversation around the ETH price is that like, I think it could be a really long game for Ether to really win the mind chair of money on the internet. But I think Ethereum has the properties of money on the internet that will inevitably arrive at because these like, you know, community of, of differentiated people with different values are all are on the same network. And if everyone's on the same network,

if everyone with different values are on the same network, that to me, this is like a long term, long game of just like winning monetary properties. Ryan, let's say you have $1,000 today and you put 900 of that into Ethereum. You have 100 left. You have 100 left. left, cannot put it into Solana or Bitcoin. What's another L1? What's two other L1s that you think are doing it right? They might put 50 and 50. Wow, funny question. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, David uses this line of like, oh, by the way, we get to come on other podcasts and be like, like, sound like, ETH crazy, ETH maxis, right? And that's what people accuse us on. But like, we're deeply exploring other ecosystems all of the time. And I think there's

some really interesting ecosystems emerging. And David uses. this line like the L1 trade, the L1 trade is always on. That's because like basically, you know, Bitcoin sets the price for Ethereum and then like Ethereum sets the price for every alternative that can become Ethereum, right? And so I'm really excited about Monad. I think that that is growing a community ecosystem. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a token that's available, but like I think that's one that's going to gain some steam. Well, it's just, it's, it's, it's um it's it's it first it's EVM uh compatible right so you get to leverage that network effect directly and then you have transaction fees uh you know like and and throughput as similar to the level

of what salana promises with with fire dancer and then you already have like um like yoni the the founders already cultivated like kind of a cult type of community it's just like a lot of ingredients for success here it's like i think the the worry for uh salana right now for example, is all of these new alternative layer ones that are kind of like entering, entering the scene in addition to the layer two's as well. So, I mean, I guess you can't buy Monad unless you're like accredited investor and like to its detriment. But like I think that there are some high throughput chains that I would bet money on with

that remaining like 10% that are like fairly low market cap in comparison to Ethereum. But like I wouldn't hold that forever. All right. I would then go back and eventually cycle those gains back into a better crypto denominator, which is something like ether. David? So yeah, I think the game now is of the Alt Layer 1 trade. You know, the Alt Layer 1 trade is dead.

Long live the Alt Layer 1 trade. Is now we're trying to identify who's number 4. So Bitcoin, Ether, I think most of the market will agree that Solana has kind of clinched number 3. It probably needs some more time to formally clinch it. but it's on its way there. So now the game is like, all right, who's going to win number four? And I think now the answer is going to be either the fastest EVM layer one or the fastest move chain.

So it's either going to be Monad and Say, which are the two EVM ones, one of those two, or Aptos and Suey, which I think are both move. I think those are the two really, like these are where the categories have collapsed down to. So fast EVM, fast move, one of those two. One more question than I know Aaron had a question. But did you guys see Marad's talk at Token 2049? I saw the title of it. I saw the title of it.

And I've like known Marad for it. Like he was actually one of the first people I met at a crypto conference. Like back in 2017, 2018. Most people think Marad is new. Marad's not new. He's been around. He had a fund previously. Fun fact.

I remember when he did that podcast with Pomp way back in like 2017. It was like Bitcoin explained for beginners. I said that one to my mom. I think it was a great one. Anyway, you don't watch the thing, but he essentially laid out, in fact, in detail, the bull case, why meme coins, why retail prefers meme coins, which we already kind of figured, but like the data to back it up and facts, just what's your take on meme coins into 2025?

I don't hate them. He's probably right. I mean, meme coins are going to, like, outperform a lot of things if you can get kind of like the right meme coin. And you can play that game by like sort of speculating on the blue chip meme coins, right? There's kind of like bet bet on the church meme coins that already have a following rather than the cult meme coins that are just like super speculative and you don't know. So I could see an allocation to meme coins. That said, it's hard for me to justify like denominating my wealth in meme coins, right?

So I like if I were to approach it, I would approach it as a as a traitor. And you're sort of doing a like a narrative cult community, almost like you're betting on a new religion type of investing that's like it's i don't know i can call it investing trading that's a little bit foreign to me so i don't partake but like also he's probably right altcoin daily is um the number one crypto youtube channel in the u.s bankless is the number one crypto podcast in the u.s what is the secret guys to getting where you are you guys do great work if you could impart some practical advice on our listeners and what would you say is the secret to growing a successful crypto podcast God, I feel like there's a handful of things that I think we have accidentally done right.

I think we, A, got lucky just by finding each other and, you know, being able to do this and have fun. Like, if we wouldn't be doing it, if it wasn't fun for us, like, the weekly roll-up, I think is the most consistent thing that we do. And it's also kind of like the most fun podcast that we do because we're just like shooting the shit, basically while we're recording. Like, we're trying to, like, we try to make it like a little bit funny at the very least. And so that produces some level of like sustainability. We also just really want to do, we're also just long-form people. Like both Ryan and I were podcast consumers before we started a podcast. And always long-form podcasts, we always like Sam Harris, Lex Friedman,

some of these really like inherently curious people. And I think Ryan and I are also both inherently curious. So we're inherently curious, long-form people that are having fun. And those three things, amongst many others, are like really good foundations to like make this whole thing sustainable. because at the end of the day, if you're going to have a podcast, you need to be consistent. Like, we've been doing three episodes a week for four years. Like, whatever magic ingredients, you know, whatever magic ingredients you need to make that happen is part of whatever the answer to the secret is.

In addition to consistency, I'd also add another C, which is like curiosity. I mean, like the bankless podcast is just like basically open sourcing our crypto journey. That's kind of what it is. And so the questions that we have on the frontier are sort of, We just assume that those are the questions that our audience has. And so staying curious in the space without getting locked into a specific, you know, like focal area. But also having like some, another C, conviction about how the space is going to play out. I mean, the reason we think crypto exists, the thing that brought both David and I together and, you know, is the reason for the bankless podcast is decentralized finance.

It's like says it in the name. It's all about our ability to go bankless. And that has been the consistent message from day one. And so we see things like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, all as tools to help the world go bankless. And that's always going to be and has been the North Star for us. My final question, then I'll let Aaron bring it home. But you guys had a public TIF with Charles Hoskinson, Cardano. Could you just give for the community?

What are your thoughts on Cardano, the community, the CEO? The founder, founder. Founder. I think Cardano is a funny, emergent property of the modern internet when you mix it with cryptocurrency. Yeah, I guess my take on it is I would love to have Charles on the podcast, and I don't know why he won't come on the podcast. That'd be great. It's weird. Every time we just try to do that, he will splice together clips of us just like edited to like saying bad things about Cardano.

And like, a lot of people think these things. There was one time I was on a podcast and somebody else's podcast without you, Ryan. I call it Cardano a scam. Oh, well, thanks, David. Yeah, so part of that's on me. I just think it's an opportunity for Charles to just be like, if David's saying it or if people are saying it, right? People are saying. Address it.

People are saying. Come on and talk about it. I mean, like, there's not a gotcha question. So it always reverts to like something we did in the past that's unfavorable. And like, I don't know. I would just love to just do a reset and have Charles on. I do think Cardano has some interesting properties, specifically with respect to the distribution of ADA.

Commitment to decentralization. It's super distributed. And there's like an active live staking community. And it's actually a lot more decentralized, quote unquote, than I think a lot of people give it you credit for. I'm still waiting to see the emergence of applications on top of it. And those are coming, DM. but like the decentralized

property decentralization properties of cardano are actually like a lot better than a lot of chains so maybe maybe we could clip that and send that to Charles see if that helps and while we're at it you know obviously collabing talking that'd be the best option but David any possibility

you want to do a fight karate combat style fight with Charles Hoskinson Oh there you go so I'm doing this karate combat fight with Kane Warwick because I was almost going to do a karate combat fight with Nick Carter. And then like two weeks before that fight with Nick Carter broke my rib. Uh-huh. And then I had all of this like two months of training that I was like, well, well, F, like I just, what did I do for the last two months? I'm

just not going to do anything with this. Nick had already scheduled his fight. And so I reached out to Kane Warwick. Say, hey, like, Kane, let's like, let me bookend my whole like karate combat thing. Let's fight it permission unless he accepted. That's happening in like 10 days. And then my plan has always been to like stop and go back to what I normally do, which is like climb mountains and like do, you know, PVE stuff. Just one more fight, David. This is a very long way of saying yes. I do not want to just one more fight my way into.

So that was my current plan. Bit Boy is another challenger, by the way, if you're ever interested, David. Bit Boy is going to eat Anson's face. Did you see? Is that happening? Bitboy versus Ants. Apparently, it's happening. Yeah.

Crypto fight nights. Yeah, Bitboy's going to kill that guy. Wow. Well, BitBoy's going to try, and Anson's not going to try. So Anson is much bigger, but I mean, my money would be on BitBoy as well, Ben. I think bit boy has, like, extreme levels of internal motivation. But I don't think, I don't think. Like a ferocity?

Yeah, like, Bit Boy, like, gives a fuck. And I don't think Anson gives a fuck. Hot take. Yeah. Gentlemen, my final question. Thank you so much for joining us today. guys everybody go subscribe to bank list below follow them on twitter and youtube uh final question just general best advice for crypto investors coming into the space today what practical doable advice

would you impart don't take leverage leverage leverage is a drug you'll get addicted is that from experience david oh yeah my first discovery is like wait i can just print die i can mint die that's so cool wait how how much die can i meant can i meant all of the die yeah that was my first first experience in defy i mean my take would be like i feel like sort of a crypto boomer when i say just like um long term long term long time horizons with respect to if you're investing and so you can play the short-term games but realize that's that's kind of a game the majority of your portfolio should be uh allocated towards the things that you want to hold for like five year periods of time and 10 years periods of time.

I think that's important. And along those lines, I think the information that you consume will kind of like, you become what you consume. So choose very carefully what channels you consume, how you subscribe and like make sure that the people you're listening to also have the long-term horizon holding patterns that you do

or else you'll just like ape into really bad decisions. And we've seen it happening so, seen it happen so many times in crypto. I love it. Thank you guys so much. That's why I subscribe to you guys. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Thanks, guys.