Bankless - BREAKING: The ETH ETF is getting approved?!

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

The ETF approval deadline is coming on May 23rd and the odds just got.... wayyyy higher! Ryan and David explain.  ------ 📣 SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24  https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠ 🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo  ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum   🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/toku  🌐 CARTESI | APPLY FOR A GRANT https://bankless.cc/CartesiGovernance  ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 0:45 Bloomberg Analyst Update https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1792636523050906102  https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1792636774067413502  4:20 $ETH GOD CANDLE https://pro.kraken.com/app/trade/eth-usd  7:25 Eleanor https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1792640682374393894  8:05 .ETH People https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1792637403682701422  https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1792638235799122269  18:10 Jake Chervisnky https://x.com/jchervinsky/status/1792645992463978533  20:58 Warren Meme https://x.com/BillHughesDC/status/1792646322551451718  21:10 Mike Ippolito Sentiment Bottom Call  https://x.com/MikeIppolito_/status/1791829053881602454  https://x.com/MikeIppolito_/status/1792641028844904753  24:51 Institutional Narrative  28:58 $COIN Stock Price 29:20 S-1 Approvals https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1792650597377757456  33:08 SEC Asks Exchanges to Update Filings https://x.com/tier10k/status/1792655223103566116   35:16 $ETHE 36:26 Chart TA'ing  40:23 Polymarket https://polymarket.com/event/ethereum-etf-approved-by-may-31?tid=1716234132508  40:48 Ryan's Bear Case 46:23 Closing & Sassano Victory Lap https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1792640883042443578  ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures ⁠  

What is going on, David? Do we have an Ethereum ETF on the menu, possibly? In the middle of a meeting that we were having a bankless, we interrupt the meeting because Eric Balchunis, who knows a thing or two about the ETFs. He's one of the two, quote-unquote, ETF boys, ETF guys. Bloomberg Bros is what they call them. Yeah, the Bloomberg Bros.

The ETF Bros. Tweets out, Update, James Safer, the other ETF bro, and I are increasing our odds of spot Ether ETF approval to 75% up from 25%. Hearing chatter this afternoon that the SEC could be doing a 180 on this increasingly political issue. So now everyone is scrambling,

like everyone else assumed they be denied. See Nate's tweet below for proper order of events. And so this has got to be a reaction to SAB-121, the 60 to 38 vote with a meaningful amount of high-ranking Democrats defecting from Biden's stated policy of the fact that he's going to veto Sab 121, many Democrats nonetheless disregarded that and voted to repeal Sab 2121, indicating that not all of the Democratic Party are in alignment with being anti-crypto.

As a result of that, it seems, that's speculation, but it's pretty, that's pretty clear. I think, look, he said it. He said increasingly political pressure. This is what we've said. And so something is going on behind the scenes. Eric and James would not. know about the SEC and the ETHETF being approved. Yes. To me, like, they are upping it to 75%, which means, of course, there's a one in four chance that is getting denied. In my opinion, the fact that this is happening at all, it's happening now.

It's pretty binary. It's just a few facts. Very bullish. So Thursday, May 23rd is when the SEC has to either approve or deny it. Okay? So it's Monday right now. So the fact that it's happening now tells you something. and both Eric and James,

their sources for all of this. Basically, all along, they've been saying the same message. If it was going to get approved toward the end of May, we would have seen it in the paperwork. They monitor the docs. They monitor the filings. They sort through the sifting of everything that's going on

in like the filings. They keep track of it. And their constant refrain has been, there's no way it's getting approved. Like under 25% odds. In fact, David, let's go to James's Twitter right now, because I recall like seeing earlier just today that like, look at this.

This is from May 17th. All right. This is not today, but he said, it's just not happening, guys, talking about the Ethereum ETF. And that's an accurate take for the data that he had at the time. Exactly. Because they haven't seen anything come through. But this is kind of the Hail Mary pass, like the if that we talked about on the roll

up last week. We said if, and this is a big if, if Biden and the Democrats wake up at the 11th hour and realize anti-crypto Gensler is about to lose them the White House, they may pressure Gensler to achieve. Basically, politics trumps all, particularly in an election year. And this is what Eric is saying, basically. It could be political pressure that is motivating Gensler and the SEC to actually approve. Now, again, we don't have 100% certainty here.

But what we're taking from Eric and James is that they are seeing documents move. They're seeing like good signs, paper filing at this 11th hour, and what else could that mean? So they have increased the odds of approval by over 200% right now. Yeah, up to 25%, which was very low. Probably even, I think people were counting for even lower than that, up to 75%. To me, this is binary, right? If it is indeed political pressure, then it is getting approved and it's getting approved in the final hour because the Biden administration has realized that it's a close election

and there is enough of a crypto vote out there to be meaningful. And they want to be reelected more than they care about denying the spot Ether ETF. Can we pull open the Cracken price chart so we can look at the price of ETH right now? Oh, please. Yes. When ETH pumps, it pumps in slow motion. Actually, this is all we got? Well, that's a one-day candle.

Let's shorten it down to the 15-minute candles on the left side. Thanks to Cracken for the charts. Oh, by the way. Beautiful, beautiful, there you go. That's what we like. Whenever I have seen Ether pump. However, it always pumps slowly over a long period of times. Because this market hates a period.

It has not gone down since this news got improved. So this is like the market is currently digesting this. We are currently on the four 15 minute candle. Yeah. What's that? Well, that's on this on the 15 minutes. On the 15 minutes. To me, like we are currently pricing in $3,430 on the ETH chart.

To me, we are if, again, if it's getting approved, we are so far away from actual meaningful price equilibrium. Like this is so cheap. This is so dumb. We are not done yet. We got 12% pump. 12% pump on an ETF for approval. This is like 1% if approved.

This is at like 1% priced in. Not financial advice. David is saying buy now, but not financial advice. Somebody might suggest to me. I mean, okay, so the price is pumping. Let's go back to James Sayford's tweet, week because you read Eric Baltunus. He says, things are taking a turn for the better. Spot Ethereum ETF approvals this week, upping our odds to 75%. He says this.

Never going to hear the end of this. I mean that they're not hacked. Yeah, he had to confirm he's not hacked. Never going to hear the end of this from the dot-eath people in my replies if this turns out to be true. But it's what we're hearing from multiple sources. Should see a bunch of filings of the coming days. We're correct. I will know that both David and I reached out to James and Eric. And I don't think they can Actually, we invited them to come on on the live stream. And by the way, James Eric, if you guys are listening, come on the live stream. Tell us what you know. We got the sense that they actually can't reveal more than what they've already revealed on Twitter at this point in time.

They have to push it through Bloomberg, their media organization. Yes. And also, I think that this is happening. So last minute, they're still trying to figure out like what exactly is going on. But glad they got this tweet out. David, is this a little life on the ratio here? A little bit. God, that's so low.

An eth ETH-EF approval with the ETH Bitcoin ratio below 0.05 is insane. You know that the market isn't even pricing this in appropriately. When Polly Market, I think you have that tab ready. Polymarket is pricing it in at a 50% hit refresh and then hit like the one-day time. This is the Polly Market, the prediction market odds of approval of the theorem ETF approved by May 30th. Oh, okay. So it is getting up to 75%. Yeah. Okay. So like basically this information is informed by the Bloomberg. But David. Look, dude. It was it was 13% this morning. 13% up to 75% approaching 75%. Currently, it's 69%. Nice. Also, Eleanor Territ, who is another like commentator on the markets and

crypto news. She says this is her, her as a primary source now, saying an issuer, one of the ETF issuer sources, tell me that things are evolving in real time. But like, Black Rock, BitWise, Fidelity. They are reacting right now in real time. Anyone who works at one of those companies right now is currently in their Slack channel, like asking what the F is going on. In a good way. What do we need to change about our ECTF like application?

Like what's going on? Are we going to get approved? I'm sure the SEC office is also freaking out right now. Shout out Gary Gensler, who I'm sure is watching this channel. I'm sure you're freaking out. Yeah, so what do you mean freaking out? I mean, I think he's probably pretty calculated in this. He probably got some phone calls over the weekend in late last week.

Who knows how this works behind the scenes, but there's political. Okay, so the reason I'm in a collared shirt, by the way, is just like, I know you guys think I usually dress like this. David switched. I didn't get a chance to switch is because earlier today, we had an episode recording with Representative Patrick McHenry. So this is a former chair of the house. interim chair of the house, I should say, and a crypto advocate. And he was talking to us about the

political pressure that's happening in Washington. Basically, D.C. has just woken up. And they're realizing right before the 2024 elections, a major presidential election, a historic election, that the crypto populace has a chance of swaying election outcomes at this point in time, which is absolutely crazy, because like 20% of people, people in swing states are potentially, you know, crypto voters and care what politicians think about crypto. And so what's happening is last week and then also this week, basically politicians are having to go on the record as to whether they're pro-crypto or anti-crypto. The Sab 121 repeal was them going on the record. And you saw even Senate majority lead, Chuck Schumer, the most

Democrat of Democrats, forsook the White House. And like and and and and, you know, against against their policy and he actually voted pro crypto. And so there's another bill going from the House this week that Patrick McKenery is talking about, which is called Fit 21. And this is more pro crypto legislation. It's going to be yet another opportunity, maybe even a bigger opportunity for politicians to get on the record and say whether they're pro crypto or anti-crypto. And he was very clear that like this has become an. actual election issue in D.C. And politicians are waking up to it. And not just an election issue. People have been saying crypto is now a partisan issue. It's now like the right versus the left.

But what we saw with the SAB 121 bill is it's actually splitting the Democratic Party where you have the establishment like older generation Democrats, the Biden, the Warrens, the Gensler's, as the anti-crypto party, but the younger Democrats and like many of those people not in those circles as like pro-crypto. So it's basically the entire Republican Party pro-crypto, younger Democrats pro-Crypto and the current Biden administration as anti-Crypto. And so the Biden administration realizes that they're on an island with not very many voters in an election year and in a contested election. So like it's a simple calculus.

Can we just take it in for a minute of just like if this is how it happens, this would be the most crypto thing ever. This timeline is fantastic. Which is basically everyone expected the SEC to deny it. It was just denied, denied. Guys, they have lawsuits against five crypto companies. Joe Lubin just came on the bankless podcast three weeks ago and it's like, they're out to get Ethereum, right?

They're looking at the GitHubs. They're trying to make the case that Ethereum itself is a security. It's all of this evidence. And he said there's no chance that they'll approve it. And now potentially, again, we don't know for sure about this, but potentially this could be approved. This would be the most crypto thing ever if this happened, David. Yeah, the timeline, I think, is like pretty perfect.

Mike Abolito was calling for like ETH sentiment bottom calls just last week. East sentiment just like in the absolute like dumpster, like just vibes, just really bad. What was that? Okay, so I was barely paying attention to this on like crypto Twitter, but it just like felt very much that, I mean, people were blaming Farcaster. Yeah, like the Ethereum leadership, Ethereum thought leaders just have like abandoned Twitter. They're all on Farcaster now. No one is left on Twitter defending ETH sentiment. The narrative.

The narrative is dead. Magshed. Yeah. Like meme coins were on Solana. Eth's not getting its ETH. Like all this kind of stuff. We actually have a bunch of these tweets talking about this, like lined up. We got some tweets from Eric Connor.

We got some tweets from Jake Shravinsky. We got James Seif. We were talking about how the dot ETHs were wish casting. Then we also got some technical analysis, not from me, but from other people who I trust that I want to pull up on the screen. And then we got some gifts about Anthony Sizano. So we're going to pull up all. all these tweets and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security

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goddamn dot-eaths are about to become insufferable again. If you don't know what a dot-eat is, that's somebody on Twitter. That's an Ethereum tribe on Twitter, people who who have .eath in their name. As you can see, that's one of, it's what I have. As a Cryptopunk.eath, I would call myself an archetype of a dot ETH on Twitter. And this is just like, the sentiment is going to shift. With the spot ETH, ETH, I know you know this, Ryan. If the spot ETH ETH gets approved, the market is so underway ETH.

It's been underway ETH this entire bull market. The market became overweight ETH in the bear market because it was like the flight to safety. ETH and Bitcoin performed shoulder to shoulder in the 2022 decline of crypto prices. but since the bull market has resumed, like, just people have, people are already overexposed because of the safe haven that ETH was. And in the bull market, people were dispersed away from ETH. Now, like, the market is completely under-exposed to ETH. People have priced in an EATF disapproval.

Meme coins are on Salana. Bitcoin has the spot ETS approval. So people, and, like, ETH has all the regulatory pressure. Like, ETH has all the lawsuits. Like, the Department of Justice is going after applications on Ethereum. And so, like, I think the, the, sentiment pendulum shift is going to swing so strongly just because it's so under exposed.

The market is so under exposed. Oh, it's going to be, it's going to feel like whiplash, right? I think, I think there's going to be a lot of eat bulls that are very excited because this has been a very lackluster bull market for Ethereum up to this point, right? And it's just so let's talk about this for a second. If this happens, again, it's an if. So if you missed the first part of the show, we were talking about, you know, the approval odds of an Ethereum ETF going up. This is according to Bloomberg. They're seeing stuff

happen in the background, right? They're seeing papers being filed. They're seeing issuers giving positive sentiments. And this is kind of breaking as of the afternoon of May 20th. But if this happens, David, I want to ask you, do we just like do something similar to Bitcoin pricing in its ETF approval? And I feel like that started happening, would you say, around like October 2023? October 2023 is a good time. I was going to say September, October 2023, because that was when the Grayscale case was pretty won definitively in Bitcoin's favor.

But like that time's... No, I think October 2020, excuse me, October 22 was when it was announced that Grayscale had filed. And then it took the market like six months to really absorb what that meant. And then it was November of 2023, about a year later when that actually got approved. Yeah, that's right. It was like six months leading up to that approval with a... slow crescendo of price action. They started getting priced around this, this area right here.

And then we saw just like this steady march upwards of Bitcoin price. I think that this will, Ethereum will do this and more because like more because it will be an amplifier effect because of a smaller market cap, of course. But also Ethereum had like higher regulatory risk. You know, that Gensler was always cagey. The SEC was always cagey about whether eth is security or not. And so it had this perceived regulatory risk. And so institutional investors who wanted access to crypto, right, they had no ability to buy

crypto aside from Bitcoin. And if all of this is wiped away, I think Ethereum has like a bigger runway. It's going to be an amplifier of what happened to Bitcoin. Yeah, I think you have Jake Stravinsky's tweet somewhere towards the end there. And he just echoes this same sentiment. He says, if the spot ETH ETF is approved, it will be a true shock to everyone. I know in D.C. who's close to this process. It means approval could shift a major shift in U.S.

crypto policy after the SAB-121 vote, perhaps more important than the ETF itself. And so like, in the Capitol Hill about Ethereum, ethia asset, about like securities versus commodities, about like, there's less political like foundation for everything as a security. Because like now we have like the top two assets not a security.

Yeah. I wonder if this puts an end to sort of the extreme regulatory headwinds that we've been facing for the last basically 18 months to two years, right? We had an operation chip point. The anti-crypto army. Like this feels to me like it's more than just Ethereum ETF being approved as Jake is saying, this is like a shift in DC. And it's basically Democratic establishment saying, hey, you know, being anti-crypto, we don't want to fight that fight. It's not going to win, you know, like Biden, the presidential election. And so like we maybe, they lean into, start leaning into being pro-crypto. I think there's a marker of that, too,

which means we might get the headwinds in our favor for some brief period of time. Right? We've never had that. What we learned from the consensus interview with Joe Lubin and Matt, the lawyer, is that there is like a back room, like smoke-filled room of people who do not want the ETH-E-EF approved because they're trying to suppress Ethereum. They're not concerned with Bitcoin because Bitcoin doesn't have smart contracts. It doesn't have a banking layer. It doesn't offend the banks. It doesn't offend the, like, the Clinton types that want the control. These were George, these were like Joe Lubin's words. And so, like, they, the political establishment, the Democrats have shifted the way away from like, okay, we understand that our like, these people don't want

the power of Ethereum to be unleashed, but we also want to get reelected. And so this is the reelecting emphasis, taking precedent over whatever powers that may be that are pushing behind the scenes for the Gary, for the Gary Gensler SEC to disapprove the spot EATF. This is why Gary Gensler was always resistant to saying, is ETH a security or is it not? He would very clearly said that Bitcoin's not a security. He very clearly was extremely ambiguous around ETH as a security or commodity because he could not claim that ETH was a security because he wasn't ready for it, but he couldn't claim it was a commodity because they didn't want that.

Now, all of that precedent is like being wiped away from them, which is what he, which was the foundation that he was standing on to claim. that all tokens are securities. So, like, so much of the entire argument foundation of the SEC is now gone, again, if the ETF gets approved. David, are you looking at this tweet here? This is Bill Hughes. Elizabeth Warren making phone calls right now. I don't care that he's in a meeting. I want him on the phone now. Anti-Crypto Army in shambles. I want to go back to a Mike at Bolito take. He says, this feels like the bottom sentiment in ETH sentiment. He posted this on May 18th. Just the backdrop to this, because we didn't talk about it enough, I don't think.

ETH sentiment to me was at sort of like a cycle low in the last couple of weeks. Months. It's had, it's had, it's had poultry performance in the bull market. Bitcoin is overperformed. Other alternative layer ones have like overperformed. So Salon has been crushing it. Heath really just like hasn't kept up. And so the market, the market sentiment is basically like, why buy Eith?

right like salana and these alternative layer ones are lower market cap and like um are appreciating faster they have the meme coins and then you have bitcoin which has institutional demand so ethereum is like stuck in this middle and so this cause not only like the anti-eth like sentiment on twitter but like even even the bulls are starting to get shaky right this is a talk in the ethereum community about changing the narrative and like what do we do and who's defending the narrative and so this is mike Epilito on the 18th saying, this feels like the cycle bottom in ETH sentiment. First time and a long time, ETH isn't consensus? Yeah, it lost consensus, didn't it? None of the arguments on my timeline feel that meaningful. It's mostly bickering or airing old grievances. ETH will send in a few months

when everyone remembers the ETH. I think the market is about to start remembering the ETH. Yeah, that's currently priced in or getting priced in. But also really, like I said, really slowly. The, okay, ETH is up 11.7% in, on the one day. Salana's up 9%. So like, ETH is actually only up 2.5% versus Salana. But also, like, all the long tail of crypto assets should definitely get a boon from this because of the regulatory green light that this is giving the collective industry. So, like, even Bitcoin is up 5% on, on the one day.

Just because, like, this is just bull. This is not just bullish for ETH. This is bullish for the crypto industry. Like anyone with any sort of crypto asset exposure should be very happy about this. Yeah. And so do you recall some of the numbers we went through with the, I feel like some of these numbers slowed with like how big the pipe, the capital pipe is from Bitcoin, institutional like purchasing of Bitcoin from all of the RIAs?

And I mean, we're talking about like trillions of dollars. How big is the Bitcoin ETF market right now? It's like. I'm actually looking it up right now. Yeah, look that look that up. I think we're in the, what are we in the like the 30 to 50 billion dollar market cap, something like that. And like to catch gold, if I recall, I figure it out.

Okay. Well, these are just numbers off top of my head, but it feels like we're in the 30 to 50 billion range in terms of Bitcoin ETF. And it's been the like the most bullish performing ETF in history. I feel like to catch gold, it was something like 90 billion to catch gold's numbers. And so you sort of wonder what Ethereum will do after this. It's got some narrative headwinds, I think, for institutions. Did you say how many billions?

I said 30 to 50. How wrong was I? 12 billion. Oh, really? Okay. I'm ahead of myself. Interestingly, in the last two weeks, you know, we've been at some sort of like market mill use, market like quiet period, some doldrum, some crabbing in the last one, two,

three, four, five months or so. We are entering second week in a row this week of inbound ETF. Bitcoin flows. And so Bitcoin, the actual flows are going into Bitcoin once again after being kind of like at equilibrium on pause for like the past two or three months. Okay. So we've got some, you know, like positive strength there. And can we talk about the institutional narrative for Ethereum, David? I think it's a little bit different than Bitcoin. So we've got productive asset. These ETFs, to the extent they get approved, they will not be staked ETFs. It'll just be plain, vanilla, eth, right? But you still have the narrative.

of this is a positive yield-bearing asset, right, once ETH is staked. I think that's important. I think, you know, institutions have talked about tokenization. Ethereum is really the ecosystem that pioneered tokens, tokenization. So we got the BlackRock. All those tokens that you know about, all those NFTs that you know about, those RONT theorem. Right. Even the Black Rock Biddle Fund, which is pretty major, which is like, I don't know, up to like 400 million, something like this, close to half a billion. in T-bills. That is on Ethereum as well. So that is kind of like complimentary. So I think you've got the internet bond narrative. You've got the productive yield-bearing asset narrative. Actually, you know what? I'm going to pull this up. Coinbase put together. I think those are all great narratives. I think the biggest

narrative is the one that Sandy Cool from Franklin Templeton was talking to us about, about how Ethereum is a tech platform. So if you want to own real estate in the same way that like you're kind of familiar with by owning Facebook shares or owning Twitter shares, Ethereum is that. It is a platform for people to build on and the value of ether grows as this open platform gets built. And so, like, Bitcoin is like the digital gold play and digital source of value, but Ethereum is a tech platform. And, like, mapping ether, the asset into a financial institutions like tech category makes a lot of sense and definitely resonates. That's what she was saying. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that's a different, you know, like, valuation.

Although we would also argue Ethereum, Ether has similar monetary properties as Bitcoin, of course, and should be and could be viewed as a store of value as well. So I think that's going to be exciting to watch institutions kind of price that in. I guess there is maybe the bear case here that like the institutions don't care about Ethereum at all, right? It's kind of like the opening act. This is what Eric Balchunis has said in the past. And this, to be fair, this is the, Ethereum futures markets, there is an Ethereum kind of like futures-based ETF out there.

And its performance has been pretty paltry compared to Bitcoin. Yeah, but compared to Bitcoin's futures? Yes. Yeah. Like I don't expect the ETFs to be bigger than Bitcoin, certainly. But the thing is, is like $1 of capital into an ETH ETF mean something like 3x more than $1 into a Bitcoin ETF because ETH is one-third the size of the market cap of Bitcoin. and so like it just simply moves the market cap more.

And that's also just not even controlling for the amount of Bitcoin on Bitcoin liquidity on centralized exchanges of which Ether has much less liquidity on centralized exchanges because there's a lot of demand to pull in Ether into Defi and pull it away from centralized exchanges. So Ether price happens on Coinbase. The ETH ETF price, whenever there's a buyer of the ETH ETF, that buying pressure will go through Coinbase because they're the custodian. and that will actually move way more than it moved the Bitcoin ETF because there's just simply much less liquidity of Ether on Coinbase.

And so like $1 dollar of capital into ETH ETF means a lot more. You know what's crazy is the ETHEE still has a 20% discount? Every single crypto fund right now is like looking out how to buy ETH ETE. And I know that because we are thinking about that at Bankless Ventures. We should have already done that. We should get off this live stream and go do that right now. So, ETHE, of course, is the gray scale Ethereum Trust. Which will become an ETHETF.

Which would basically... That gap will just smush. Yeah, it would automatically become a Bitcoin ETF. And like, I think the... Yeah, so it's a 20% discount. You could still buy ETHE at like 20% discount. So it's crazy that that exists as well. It's also cool to watch the Coinbase.

stock price also pump on this news as well again this is probably the well a coinbase will be the custodian for the ETH ETF but mainly it's just like the regulatory risk of the industry is like pumping everything coinbase is up like 12 8% on the day today there's a new tweet from James okay cool you've got it pulled up so James she did this out a few minutes ago 20 minutes ago quick note Eric beltunis and I increase the odds to 75% for the ETHETF approvals but that's for the 19 May 23rd deadline van Eck we also need S1 approvals, it could be weeks to months before we see S1 approvals and therefore a live

ETH ETF. And so we get it approved, but the actual launch will be later. Do I care about that time discrepancy? No, because this is like the Coin Telegraph intern, like accidentally flagging false star in an ETF. Like it doesn't matter. Once the market has assurances that it will get approved, people will build. Like we saw Trad hedge funds front running the actual Bitcoin ETF.

launch who don't care about Bitcoin. They just like, well, this is bullish. So they're going to buy Bitcoin. A lot of the Bitcoin price appreciation came from outside capital who were just front running the actual approvals. So this is different than how it happened with the Bitcoin ETF though, right? Because Bitcoin ETF was approved and then basically days later we had open like Bitcoin ETFs that you could purchase. So this would be a little bit of a delay. And I guess that's just because of the scheduling. So the May 23rd was just Van X deadline. New projects are coming online to the mantle layer two every single week. Why is it? is happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of layer two design architecture

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Oh, okay, I'm telling you another tweet. You need to open up this tweet. I'm sending it to you in the dock. I'm hiring it. Tier 10K. This is bullish. This is bullish. I love all the bullish stuff.

All right. Tier 10K. SEC asks exchanges to update What? Yes. For spot Ether ETS. Yes. Eric, you got to pump those numbers.

numbers up, baby. So, whoa, 75% is bitch. Let's look at the price here. There we go.

Oh my God. That is a confirmation. 3,500. We're seeing it. Thanks to cracking for the charts. He's cracking for the charts. I knew you guys could make him go green. Oh, man.

That is huge. So the SEC asked exchanges to update 19B filings, B4 filings on accelerated basis for spot ether ETFs. Do you fully know what this means? Why did they be talking? Yeah, I mean, Gary Gensler got a phone call from Daddy Biden.

Why did they call sooner? Dude, that has 1,200 likes on a four-minute old tweet. That's great. Oh, let me send that one. Did you send it? Do your part, do your part, David. Oh, okay. I'll retweet that.

I think being noisy on Twitter actually helps. Let's take from political lobbyists who I've been talking to over the weekend to just like see what's going on in D.C. and they were basically like, look, political DC, they live on Twitter. They're just, you know, you're addicted. You think you're crypto-native and you're addicted to like Twitter or whatever the social. But like, so are they because that's where media is like kind of born. So they actually hear us on Twitter.

It's a way of influencing the platform. And so I think they are very much paying attention to. And I guess I would say, you know how it feels that we have been so powerless the last two, three years in political, like, crypto. Like the politicians aren't listening to us. This is the first time I've really felt like our voice has actually carried weight in DC. And we are like maxing that.

So you're retweeting. You're like the stuff that you're doing going to in-person political events and asking politicians on stage, just being like, what's your crypto policy? Did you support SAB 121 repeal? Like, if not, why? all the while knowing whether this is supported or not, right? And record that, post it on Twitter. That's how we amplify and make our voice heard.

And I think it's working. Can you open up the other tweet that I posted in our doc? This is the ETHE price. ETHE price is up. Is it closing? It's closing. Yeah, it's up 24% in the last day today. Wow.

But it's closing, but it's still like, we still get a premium. I don't know. I can't. This is like paywalling me, but it still looks like maybe 20% premium to have, although whether this is, uh, yeah, that's a big question. I don't know what the discount is. I don't know what the discount is. Man, okay. Somebody in the bank is discord or a daily way discord knows what the discount is. Let me know. This is crazy. This is awesome. This is awesome. Uh, I don't, that's a great William piece room. I don't get it, but sure. It does look like him. Yeah, you want to do some T.

I want to open up the TA charts. Yeah, of course. On days like this, I do. Only days like this, though. This is not my TA, nor is it Ryan's TA. This is a person who does TA that Ryan and I both. Oh, right here. What is this?

What are these lines? So this is the, these lines are monthly and yearly resistances. And then this is the ETH giga candle that we're currently watching. This is also. Ethan Dollars. Ethan Dollars, which is, this is missing $100 off of the candle because this screenshot is like 15 minutes old. because we were still pumping.

So we've broken through two monthly resistances. There was this big descending triangle, which everyone who I know who does TA on ETH was like, this looks like shit, this looks like shit, this looks like shit. Oh no, sell, sell, sell. Oh, it's going down. Sentiment is like so dog shit, like descending wedge, like it's bad. Heath is dead.

The chart looks like dog shit. And then we get this news and we just like blast through it. And so we are somewhere between the last monthly resistance. the second of the two monthly resistances that's been like highlighted here. We're somewhere between that and the yearly resistance. What's it going to take to get to yearly? 3,600 or 3,700? Fuck yearly, dude. Like, if the ETH-EAPF gets approved, like the ETH price should be multiples of its all-time high because the price is going to be so sensitive to outside capital. Like, look beyond 5K in the first half of this year. Well, no, the ETH actually has to get approved.

Once the ETF gets approved and then it's live and there's bids coming in, like we're looking at beyond 5K. Yeah, I think people don't realize like, people don't realize how Una-centered the institutional world has been on crypto. It's just basically just Bitcoin. Everything else has some regulatory, like, haze over it. And once the Ethereum ETF approval happens, then you've got a second asset in there. I think it'll be a while before there's a,

a third crypto ETF or a fourth crypto ETF or a fifth crypto ETF as well. Because each one has to be evaluated on its merits. And so like just because the big brother and yeah, the two big brother coins get, approved doesn't mean like all the Longtail gets approved. Right. And you have to. Appetite for them. But like each one has to go through its own hurdles, starting with a futures.

Futures. That's what I was going to say. Right. So an Ethereum got that what back in? Was it like sometime midfall of last year, I believe something like this, right? over a year ago. Right? So it takes it takes about a year. You have to get like a futures ETF and then it has to go through the gauntlet. So chances are it's going to be Bitcoin and Ethereum as sort of the ETS for this cycle. Now I will say that doesn't mean down market doesn't benefit.

I totally, and we're seeing it already today, downmarket crypto assets that don't have ETFs are going to benefit as well. Like Solano will pump all of these other like chains and crypto assets will pump as well because it's not that hard. to go find your way to the crack in exchange and go purchase a down market. You can't do it in your 401K, but you certainly can in a U.S.-based crypto exchange. So everything will benefit from this, but disproportionately Bitcoin and Ethereum will have the institutional flows. Yeah.

Being able to buy it. The Bitcoin TA too, because this is just concerning the entire market. The McDonald's ads is so funny, dude. you don't need McDonald's anymore man we're on a 10k we get the gawk on our tripoli back okay the descending channel

which is what we're looking at apparently is what this called we're breaking through that too and so like this could be the start of a new phase in the market well actually it probably is unless like May 23rd happens and this is all a fluke and we get denied

which 25% chance I'm not entertaining that idea let's go look Let's go look. I mean, that was last week's idea. Let's go see what Polymarket says now. 66% chance. With that new news, because like, okay, so the Bloomberg boys updated it to 75% with the words that they've been hearing. But then that new tier 10k tweet came out saying the SEC has asked exchanges on an accelerated timeline. So to me, that's like 75% is now low because that's new information,

unless that is the information, but I think that's new. Let me just entertain this for a second. This is an Ethereum ETF Bull episode. Okay. What happens if after all of this... It gets denied? Not only gets denied, but Gensler comes out and says Ethereum's a security. And we just resume the previous course that we were on? I don't know.

That would also be cryptic. Somebody gets sued. That would also... Yeah, I know. But that would also be something that could happen in this crazy universe that we're in. Yeah, all possibilities are possible, I guess, yeah. I don't want to entertain that though right now. Like I feel like things are moving in in our favor for sure.

Okay. So yeah, like I think that this this does unlock, again, aside from the very bearish scenario that Ryan for some reason just decided to articulate. This is a new phase of the of the market. Like we were all like the last two, three months of like flat like grinding like everyone being unhappy for some reason. Like that's over. Like we are entering a new phase of the market of, of, positive sentiment. Yeah, and I think we'll have that until the election, basically. I think that politicians are now in a mood to do us favors until the votes are counted in November.

It turns out the crypto bros are actually like a force to reckon with. They kind of want, they want money, they want votes. There's no benefit to them being anti-crypto. I think we've broken the back of the anti-crypto army, at least until after November. Okay, this is not, we have not defeated the the final boss. They're going to come back once the votes and money don't matter so much in their campaigns. They're going to be back. But until then, I think we have momentum on our side. And if the Ethereum ETF passes, it's because of political pressure on the SEC and Gary Gensler. That's why. Which came from us. That was us. The reason why there's political pressure, it didn't start with Biden. It started with the crypto community pressuring the Biden administration who pressured

Gary Gensler. That was us. We did that as a community. So like that's right. Make note that like this is what we can do when we have collective action towards a shared goal. Yes. So like don't be nihilous about your ability to influence politics. I hope this shakes people out of our bags. That's right. I hope this shakes people out of this helplessness like feeling that you feel with respect to politics. I was listening to a podcast this morning that it was basically like percentage of US population that are millennials is like 25%. Baby boomers are 20%. Like, we outnumbered them.

Yeah. Ensure like voting block. We're bigger than them. It's stupid. Like why don't we let our voice be heard? The issues we care about, as you mentioned earlier, this skews very much like old versus young in terms of Congress. Like congressional representatives who were, you know, Gen X and younger voted overwhelmingly. Regardless, Republican or Democrat, they voted overwhelmingly in favorably.

of the Sab 121 appeal. They'll continue to vote with us. Speaking of the Sab 121 repeal, I think Biden has seven days to veto that. Well, he had 10 days when it was approved. So I guess like on Thursday of last week. Yeah. So it's going to be like up to Monday of this week of next week. Yeah. But like if if this is indeed the calculus of the Biden administration saying we need that's a good point. He has to be. Why wouldn't he just veto it? Well, I don't know. He could still, he could still, so he might be horse trading here. I'm going to, I'm going to veto your sab thing, but I'm going to give you the Ethereum ETF, right? It's a possibility. Or he could go

full send and be like, I'm not letting Trump. I was wrong. I'm vetoing it. Like, yeah, if he's actually doing it for to make sure. I'm not vetoing it. We want him not to be doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if that is indeed the calculus, wouldn't we see him not veto the Sab 121? I mean, a full Democratic Party, like all in White House and everything, like anti-crypto armies just kind of eliminated would mean we get no veto on the Sab 121, which would be incredibly push. But it would be a loud no veto. Like the Biden administration would say, hey, I'm not going to veto this.

Yes. You won't say, I'm sorry. But it's something like that. You have to interpret that piece of it if you want. And it will also be Ethereum ETF approval, full send. So that would happen. right and you'd be like yeah our appointee gerry gensler is approving the ethereum etf right and gary gensler would be like i always want i was always going to improve this this is a part of the process this is just

yeah you just had to come in and register and now you checked all my boxes of course i was going to improve this all time that's what he'll say and then uh which will be great and then it would also there would also be some strong approval maybe it won't pass like congress and get um like approved through Biden's desk, but this Fit Act that Patrick McKenry was talking about, we would see some strong support on that, whether or not it's approved. And the Fit Act,

you can find more about that in the episode that we're putting out tomorrow, but is basically, you put, defines the difference between security and commodity. And basically, you know, SEC has securities. CFTC has commodities.

And by the way, in this bill, Ethereum is very, very much decentralized enough to be a commodity in this bill. So it would also take care of this. So you'd see thumbs up on that as well. Totally. Okay. So we recorded that episode with Patrick McHenry this morning. That'll probably come out today or tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. We're going to get the ETF boys on the show as soon as we. Are we? Were they responding to our DMs yet? Not yet. Like they need to go and do their jobs at Bloomberg. And once they're done doing their jobs at Bloomberg, we're going to get them on the show. So also stay tuned for.

that. So if you're watching the live stream right now, make sure you're actually subscribed to bank lists so you can see those interviews when they come out. One will be coming out in the next 24 hours. We're going to get the ETF boys on this show as soon as possible. So just, A, like the live stream because we're bullish. We're feeling good. Subscribe to bankless so you guys can get those videos. And like, just like stay tuned for all the ETF news because this is now an ETHETF media company. Wow. Yeah. At least until May 23rd, when Gary Gensler eats Crow and approves the Ethereum ETH. Not 100%.

75% chances for that. But yeah, very exciting. One last three. I do want to shout out Anthony Sizzano, who relentlessly never blinked and has always said that the ETHETF will get approved on May 23rd.

And so he's currently on a Twitter break just because everyone needs to take a step back. But like, I can't wait for him to come back and just like take a victory lap around all of crypto Twitter and everyone. Like, I'm usually kind of resistant to Anthony Sizzano victory laps, but this one is like, the most deserved victory lap that I will have ever seen Anthony take. Yeah, especially because you're speaking, a mental health break.

Mental health break, yeah. So, like, not trying to jinx anything here. Like, it still has to get approved. Like, we still don't know what's going on. We only have limited information here. But, you know, things, the tide is turned. There you go. The tide is turned. Guys, we'll keep you updated. You will know what we know. As soon as we know it. I hope you enjoyed this bankless live stream edition. Oh, man, I'm going to... It's been a while since we've done a live stream. An emergency live stream.

We're going to party hard on Thursday if this happens. All right, guys. See you later. Odds of David Hoffin beating his fight with Nick Carter also up. Last thing. Let's just check the Polly Market for that. Where's the Polly Market? For some reason, that Polly Market is not looking good.

David is very, very undervalued by the market. Oh, down bad, Dave. Down bad, yeah. Man, this is some market manipulation, I think. This can't be true. All right, guys. We'll see you later. Bye.