Bankless - ETH ETF Officially Approved! | James Seyffart
Episode Date: May 24, 2024✨Mint the episode on Zora✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/3 The Ether spot ETF has officially been approved marking a landmark day for Ethereum and cry...pto as a whole. We're going live today to discuss the extent of this approval and what it means for Ether the asset, and more broadly the entire crypto industry. This is a big deal and we're stoked to be sharing this moment live with the Bankless Nation. James on X: https://x.com/JSeyff ------ 📣 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 00:00 It Happened 05:09 ETF Approved! 07:24 Boom Approval Surprise 09:11 Why Did This Happen? 13:38 When Will The ETFs Go Live? 15:47 ETF Inflows 19:18 ETH Education Campaign 21:37 Staked ETF? 24:14 What Coin is Next? ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Bankless Nation, it happened.
The Ethereum ETF has been officially approved.
Last week, all the best ETF analysts told us the ETF approval was just not happening.
But then, today, it happened.
We got a complete 180 pivot from the SEC.
So David and I were on a live stream.
We were just like waiting and watching for this to happen.
It was like watching paint dry.
And we were about to leave the live stream.
David had to go do something.
when we got this confirmation tweet from Bloomberg analyst James Safer.
I want to play a clip of what that felt like.
Guys, we got to go do things.
I'm sorry, we have to go.
You guys, man the screens for us, okay?
And let us know.
I'll be checking my phone.
Don't.
Don't.
James Safer.
James Safer.
Don't.
Don't.
We were about to log off.
I can't deal with another false alarm, David.
It's approved.
Shut up.
Let's fucking go!
Let's fucking go! Let's fucking go!
James, get him on, get him on.
Get him on the podcast.
So we did get James on the podcast shortly after that.
That's actually the episode you are about to hear.
And I'm sure you heard the excitement in our voices.
And here's why we were excited.
Number one, this clarifies Ethereum status in the U.S.
It's never had this before.
But Ethereum can no longer be called a security.
in any courtroom, in any institution anywhere, ether the asset is a commodity in the U.S.
And that is big.
Number two, this creates a massive new pipeline of capital to flow from Tradfai to Ethereum.
That's big in and of itself.
And number three, and I think in some ways this was the biggest.
This is regulatory relief to a crypto industry that has been under relentless assault from the U.S.
government, and in particular from the SEC.
And here's the biggest thing.
I think probably the most exciting thing about this news, and you heard it in our voices,
we helped to make this happen.
And by we, I mean us.
I mean you.
I mean the bankless nation.
I mean the crypto community.
Our voice, our votes, our actions actually put political pressure on the SEC chair,
Gary Gensler to last minute approve an ETF that he wanted nothing more than to deny.
The battle's not over for crypto. We've got many fights ahead. But let's enjoy this victory for a moment.
We've got Bloomberg analyst James Safert coming right up. He tells us how this story happened,
how the Ethereum ETF approval unfolded, what to expect next. So we talk price, we talk inflows,
we talk who are the issuers, we talk a future staked ETH ETF when we can expect to see that,
and also what the next crypto ETF might look like. Let's get right in the episode with James,
but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible.
including our number one recommended crypto exchange for 2024.
That is Cracken.
Go create an account.
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.
Cracken is on a journey to build a more accessible, inclusive and fair financial system,
making it simple and secure for everyone, everywhere to trade crypto.
Cracken's intuitive trading tools are designed to grow with you,
empowering you to make your first or your hundreds trade in just a few clicks.
And there's an award-winning client support team available 24-7 to help you along the way,
along with a whole range of educational guides, articles, and videos.
With products and features like Cracken Pro and Cracken NFT Marketplace and a seamless app to bring it all together,
it's really the perfect place to get your complete crypto experience.
So check out the simple, secure, and powerful way for everyone to trade crypto,
whether you're a complete beginner or a seasoned pro.
Go to Cracken.com slash banklists to see what crypto can be.
B. Not investment advice, crypto trading involves risk of loss.
Arbitrum is the leading Ethereum scaling solution that is home to hundreds of decentralized
applications. Arbitrum's technology allows you to interact with Ethereum at scale with low fees
and faster transactions. Arbitrum has the leading defy ecosystem, strong infrastructure options,
flourishing NFTs, and is quickly becoming the Web3 gaming hub. Explore the ecosystem at portal.
dot arbitram.io. Are you looking to permissionlessly launch your own Arbitrum orbit chain? Arbitrum
Orbit, allows anyone to utilize Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own orbit chain,
giving you access to interoperable, customizable permissions with dedicated throughput.
Whether you are a developer, an enterprise, or a user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project
to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum.
Experience Web3 development, the way it was always meant to be. Secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free.
From.io and get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities.
Launching a token, worried about the IRS.
Talk to Toku for five minutes to learn how to save hundreds of thousands of dollars for you,
your team, and your investors.
Now, if you do an initial consultation, Toku will cover the cost of your token valuation,
which is what you need for your launch.
So don't wait.
Reach out to the team right now at team at Toku.com.
That's team at toku.com.
Bankless nation, we've got a breaking live stream.
James Saferit over here. He's an analyst at Bloomberg. He's an ETF expert. And we just got
some incredible news, exciting news, I think, for the crypto community, James. What just happened?
Yeah. I mean, the SEC came out and just accelerated and approved every ETH filing that got in
their 19B4. So this is a 19B4 order. And what that really is, it's a rule change proposal.
Basically, all these exchanges, they had to do this with the Bitcoin ETFs too. You have to basically
submit these filings and ask the SEC to change a rule. In this case, the rule is we want to
trade Ethereum ETFs. In the case of Bitcoin, it was we want to trade Bitcoin ETFs. And the
FCC has to go through and basically say this is allowed. So this is the first step. There's two
main steps before these things can be in trading. And this is number one. So this is the number one.
It's also the big one, right? Because it's the thing that has been that SEC has been reluctant
to say. So that's the 19B. I think we've got some of the issuers on the screen. But I think
there's maybe more. You mentioned, did you say, 17, 19, something like this?
Oh, no, no, no. No, no. That's all of them plus the gray scale mini, but actually
hash decks didn't submit a 19 before. So they're not actually going to launch one. It doesn't
look like. Okay. So are there more issuers, fewer issuers, or is this pretty much similar to
the issuers for the Bitcoin ETF? There are less issuers here. And especially if you take into
accounts. So right, if you include gray scale. So gray scale, everyone's been talking about that
Bitcoin mini trust. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar, but especially they're,
they're spinning out 10 or 15% of GBDC into the smaller ETF. It's called a gray scale mini
Bitcoin trust. Like low fees and such, right? Exactly. We don't know exactly the fee.
I think people are saying it's going to be 15 basis points, but it's going to be the lowest fee.
They're doing the same thing with ETH. And they filed that in here. So that's also going to
launch at some point in the near future. But essentially,
scale is going to launch two of these things. I don't know if the eth mini trust is going to be included.
I haven't had a chance to really dive deep into this filing since it just dropped, but I've
skimmed through it. There's a lot here to go through. There's 23 pages. So as soon as we get off
of this, I'm going to basically have to dive into that. Okay. So when you say boom approved,
you're talking about all of those filings, we're just approved all at once. I think this is,
this is pretty crazy because of the setup here, which is it was like Friday of last week. It
looked like none of this stuff was going to be approved, right? Like, you didn't see any movement
on your side as you're going through the paperwork and stuff. Here's a tweet from Friday,
which is, it's just not happening, guys. Sorry. And I think he tweeted that, James, because, like,
it didn't look like it was happening. I guess the broadest of questions here, did the SEC just do
like a 180 on this? Or like, what is going on? How did we get from here? It's not happening.
There's no signs of movement to Monday suddenly. I think either you or Eric Valcunis had tweeted
this out where yeah your your probability of approval just just shot up to 75% on Monday when like on
Friday it was like near near zero yeah so early afternoon we started here rumbling so we're like this can't be
true can it like can this actually be happening and like we were scrambling so we know people
that are like somewhat in the process some people are like outside but kind of know what's going on we
we have a lot of people we talk to in the space obviously there's a lot of signs and tea leaves we read
but we also have sources that we're talking to,
to try to make sure we're getting this stuff right.
And we had one or two people tell us, yeah, something's happening.
And then we got more and more people be like, yeah, this is insane.
I can't believe this is happening.
And that was Monday afternoon.
And that's when, so Eric and I actually were on the phone for like 30 minutes going over,
like, fine tooth comb about exactly what wanted to tweet because we knew it was going to be market moving.
We actually offered it to Bloomberg News and they didn't want to put it out there yet.
Because it seems so tenuous.
It seems so bad.
Yeah, exactly.
So last minute.
but we trusted our sources and obviously we were we were very we didn't think it was going to happen
as you see i tweeted that on a Friday life comes out of you fast but explains this it's the it's the
political wins it has to be like people are trying to say this was always the case like that is
not what happened here this is a complete shift from what i understand specifically the division
that approves is 19b-4s is they're called the division of trading in markets they're they're mainly
worried about fair, efficient
or early markets. That's what their whole thing is.
And with these 19B4s, they want to make sure there's no
fraud, manipulation, things like that.
So these ETFs, these products can't, like,
help other people commit fraud and manipulation
or get stuck with other people doing fraud and manipulation.
That's what most of this is about.
That division from what we here didn't, like, know about
this until late last week.
They were on the assumption they were denying.
So, like, it's not like the SEC knew this was going to
happen all the time. I've based on,
everyone I'm talking to, this is a complete political shift.
And if you just look at everything else that has happened here, like you look at some of the polling for the elections, you look at the SAB-121 votes in the House and then the Senate.
And then you look at what happened today with the Fit 21 Act, which is a market structure bill for crypto.
Trump's saying he's pro-crypto here.
And like there's so many things that point to like the Dems basically decided like we can't go this way.
So I'll be interested to see at some point we'll get there was probably a vote on this.
So basically last vote was like three to two, right? And Gensler was the kind of a breaking tie vote.
Because what is it? The commissioners have to vote. Each of the SEC commissioners have to have to vote. And two voted no for the Bitcoin ETF. Three voted yes. And the third was Gary Gensler. So did this break a similar way? Or do you know yet? We don't know. We don't know. At some point, we'll find out. I don't know exact timelines of that. It's not on the site now from I just checked like literally three seconds.
ago, but essentially the commission is five-member commission, two Dems, two Republicans, and then
usually whoever the president is at the time gets to pick the commissioner, which is usually a tie-break.
So the commissioner gets to decide where things go.
But it's not impossible to have people break.
So it would be very interested to see how this goes down.
So Lizaraga is in Crenshaw, the two Dems other than Gensler, and if one of them, which there's
no way was Crenshaw based, she wrote a dissent letter.
She might have, she voted no on that, and then she wrote a dissent letter.
Lizaraga did not join her in that dissent letter for approving spot Bitcoin ETF.
So it's theoretically plausible that Gensler was planning to deny and the other DEM
Commissioner wanted to do it.
But this is all just speculation.
So it'll be interesting to see.
So you think this was politically motivated.
That's how it seems.
This is how most of the crypto community is sort of interpreting this.
But it would also be odd.
And I don't expect anyone at the SEC to acknowledge this, least of all, least of all,
Gensler, even if that's what really happened.
If what really happened was like some phone call that he would.
got or the SEC got that told them that, hey, this is not worth losing an election over,
that won't be acknowledged, I've got to imagine, because the SEC is supposed to be politically
neutral. It's supposed to be a merit-based regulator that looks at the law and approves or denies
these things based on their reading of the rules and the law and doesn't get involved in the
politics. So that would be contrary to what they say. I can't imagine they would say,
hey, it looked like Biden was going to lose an election here, or it could cost him some votes.
And so, therefore, we decided to approve it, right?
So, I mean, supposed to be is the key word you use there, right?
And I don't think it's just about the presidential election.
I think there's Senate and House elections that people realize they actually care about this.
I don't remember exactly who tweeted it, but it's like, I don't know if the numbers are right,
but there's thousands of people who are very staunchly pro-crypto at the very least.
And it's an orders of magnitude greater than the people that are staunchly.
anti. Like, they're very vocal, but there's just not many people that care about it in a great way. And I
think that kind of got through in the last month or so. And they couldn't let the Republicans do an
end around on them on this piece, right? Do I think the Dems are going to come around and just be
completely pro-crypto now? Absolutely not. Are they going to be as staunchly against? I don't,
I don't think so. I think this is a tide shift, a complete pivot, a 180 from the Dems.
here. I mean, James, this feels really good to a lot of people listening. And the crypto community
feels like in a world where we don't feel like we have much political agency, it feels like we
really had an effect, like the crypto vote, the crypto community had their voice heard in
D.C. Maybe turn the tide on this. On as late as Friday, this wasn't going to happen. And then
things changed and now it's happening likely due to politics. I want to ask you the question,
though, as to when these ETF products might become available, because you said there's two
pieces. And you said the 19B4 filings were all approved today. But there's another piece,
I believe, before we could start getting these products out there into like Fidelity accounts
into the RIAs and all of this. What's the time lag from here until these products actually
get released in the market? One, you're 100% correct. And two, the real short answer is we have no
idea. That's a lie. We have some idea, but we really don't know. There's not a ton of precedent here,
obviously. But even if you ask me Monday morning, like, is there any way they can approve? I would have said,
no way they don't have enough time to do it. There's just not enough time to do it. It usually takes weeks,
if not months, to get an approval order. But I guess they can work fast when they have to, right,
when they're up against the deadline. So the other process is they need the S-1 approvals or the prospectus
documents, offering documents, depending on what you're used to hearing. But they're just the documents
that have all the risk disclosures, exactly how the trust is going to operate. Anyone involved with the fund,
that's what's going to be in these documents. And the SEC's to be.
of corporate finance, which is another division, not trading markets. This is a separate division
that has to go through those with the fine tooth comb. And these documents are hundreds of pages
in many cases. So this is not something that's going to happen overnight. I think if they really
want to accelerate it, the gap between the 19B4 approval and the S1 approval could be weeks. But there
are plenty of examples of this taking months. There's examples of it taking five months. I think
they'll be faster than that. The Bitcoin ETFs, for example, we know they started in early October
and then they were approved in early January, which is three months, 90 to 90 some odd days.
I think it'll be fast on that, like I said. I just don't know. We'll have a better idea in the coming week or two, but we just don't know yet.
So we don't quite know when exactly the pipeline will open to all of this capital. Although that said, this does feel like Ethereum is clearly in the territory of commodity now.
if the SEC is even capitulating on this and like approving a spot Ethereum ETF,
it's going to be basically impossible for the SEC to come back later and argue that Ethereum
was an ETF all along.
I want to ask the question of what we might expect with respect to inflows.
And I think the Bitcoin ETF has performed above and beyond, even what some of the, like,
the biggest bulls were predicting in terms of inflow.
Am I right in saying, like, I'm looking at a screen here, are we at like close to like
60 billion in terms of total AUM and market cap? Are these numbers correct here?
Yeah, those numbers are correct. They're like 59 billion-ish right now.
And like gold is like, like, $13 billion. Gold is like what, like $90 billion, something like
like this? Like we're in around 100. It's just shy of 100, I think. Okay. So what do we,
what do we expect? If we've got benchmarks for Bitcoin, it's just like, just launched this year,
and we're already at like $60 billion. Gold is $100 billion. What do we expect for Ethereum? Do
do we have any way of knowing this?
Yeah, so I mean, the two things is, one, a lot of those assets came over with GBT, right?
So GBC came over with like 30 billion in assets when it converted.
So like just going on assets isn't necessarily the strongest way to do it because that's like
a massive head start, right?
So if we go on flows, I think that's the better way to do it.
And if we look at ETH, which is converting, that has about 11 billion in assets.
So that converts over, that's 11.
But if you just look at flows, the net flows, the ETFs so far in the first primary months are we in, four months of trading, almost five, they're about 13 billion.
I think the numbers, the flows that are going to come into these Ethereum ETFs are probably going to be something like 20% of the flows that went to Bitcoin.
And I'm going to explain those numbers.
So my colleague Eric Bucanus thinks like 10 to 15, I think more like 20.
Who actually knows?
Percent of the flows, yeah.
So if say it was 10 billion, so we're talking, then we're talking about a billion to 2 billion, maybe, of flows that would come in over the first couple months.
And some people were like jumping down on the throat.
It's like, that's crazy.
It's going to be way higher.
But I think people are just, those Bitcoin ETS, those flows were they broke every single record in the book, right?
Like, first, almost the fastest to a billion.
They were the fastest to 10 billion.
Ibit did it in 49 days.
The previous record, the previous record was like 650 trading days.
That's like three years.
So, like, they did it.
It's just not even comparable, right?
So, like, those numbers, even if you do 10%, that's a very successful launch.
But the reason I think 10% is if you look at ETH versus the market back of Bitcoin, what, 30% right now, I think the number is going to be less than that ratio for a few reasons.
One, you lose less with a Bitcoin ETF or Bitcoin going into an ETF wrapper than you do with ETH going into an ETH wrapper.
The first and obvious one is none of these are allowed staking.
So like you're giving up that staking yield by not staking your eth if you're just holding it as an investment.
The other thing is there's a lot more utility with ETH.
Like you guys, you're going to use things to do different D5 protocols, NFTs, you name it.
Like it's just way more, there's way more utilitarian value of an Ethereum token, right, in my view.
So like that's just going to decrease the interest in ETH as an ETH wrapper.
That's my personal view.
So that's why I think you have to discount that, again, 30% of the Bitcoin size, I think it's going to be less.
than that number. I just don't know how much less.
So what does that come out to? So if we get the the 10 billion from just like gray scale kind
of converting over, what does this come out to? Like about, you know, like 15 billion, all
tolls, something like that compared to Bitcoin's $16 billion? Yeah, 10 to 15, probably.
10 to 15 in that range. Is it also fair to say that Tradfai and like the institutions understand
Ethereum less like relative to Bitcoin? And what do you think the education campaign is like that's
going to happen because we saw this. We saw it with, you know, once Fidelity had a Bitcoin
ETF, it was sort of like all these papers and just like learn about Bitcoin, all of this
educational material kind of went forward. Do you think something similar will happen? And do you
think that there's some opportunity for Ethereum to be more broadly understood as a result of
this because maybe Tradfide just like doesn't understand it in comparison to Bitcoin?
Yeah. So I think that's part of it, right? There's just less interest, I guess, I would say,
overall, from my experience, talking with people in the Tradfair world, in the institutional world.
There's just less interest in ETH. It's also easier to understand, like, digital gold, call
option, a store of value. The ETH story is way more complicated in my view. Digital scarcity is very
simple to explain. It's like way simpler to explain Bitcoin. And a lot of people, like, when they hear
crypto, they just think Bitcoin in the space. Not all. There's plenty of people that are educated.
There are plenty of people that are interested in this. I think there's going to be a lot of people
they're going to look at this and be like, all right, I already have Bitcoin at a part of my portfolio.
I should diversify my digital asset exposure.
And now that Ether coming, I'm going to put some money in there.
There are some people, obviously, that are going to think that they prefer ETH over Bitcoin.
But I just think those numbers aren't going to be like massive, I guess, is the answer.
But at some point, who's saying that can't change?
But right now, based on all of my experience and interactions with different people, there's just less demand.
And if you look at what happened, so in Hong Kong, they launched Bitcoin and ETH.
ETH is that they have the assets, a little less than 20%, I think, is the number I haven't checked in a couple of days of the Bitcoin ETFs.
And if you look at the Ethereum futures launch year that happened in early October of 23, they did nothing.
Like I had very low expectations for the futures ETFs, and they did way, they did even worse than my expectations as far as follows goes.
Complete done. No one really even cared at all. So I think that just kind of is all pointing to the fact that this is going to be,
not as big as the big coin launches.
It's going to take longer for Tradfi, I think, to understand Ethereum.
It's got some more complexities.
And two more questions, James, and then let you go.
Part of that education process, probably the upside of that for something like Ethereum
is that it gets a couple shots at this.
So first, of course, there's the vanilla Ethereum ETF.
And then at some point, there's got to be, I imagine, a staked version of an Ethereum
ETF. And once you get into a staked version of an Ethereum ETF, then you start getting into a
different narrative conversation, I would imagine, which is like, hey, yield bearing, productive
asset type of conversation. But realistically, how far are we away from some sort of next approval
of a yield bearing Ethereum staked ETF? Is that, is that like months out? Is that years out? Does that
require another round of approval process? What do you think that looks like?
So one, it probably would require another round of approval process. These do not allow staking in these
19B4 order. So I believe you would have to file another, you would have to go through the
SEC again to basically say that can we use staking. They're not allowing it right now. One of my theories,
even back when we thought these ETSs were going to be approved was we had low odds of these
getting approved, but I had extremely low odds of these ETS allowing staking. I never expected
that to happen, not initially. One of my pet theories is everyone, I'm sure you remember,
back in early May, late April, everyone's like, oh my God, they're going to go after Ethan
call it a security here. That's why Gunzer is talking to consensus. That's what the consensus
lawsuit that they filed were trying to say. That's what Joe Lubin literally thought. He was like
they're coming after Ethereum as a security. And I think he might have been right about that
before the political tides changed. I think they were dotting their eyes and crossing their
tees and trying to look for a way. My theory was I never really thought they were going to
haul ether security in what they were going to do is denials. I think they were going to kick it down
the road. It opens up a massive can of worms with the CFTC with the futures market. If they call it a
security and they're deemed correct, you have to shut down the futures because the futures are,
the Heath Futures on the CME are registered as Commodities Futures. So you can't, that's not allowed.
Yeah. So the futures would be delisted, then the futures ETS would be delisted. My pet theory, and I've said
this in podcast before, is I thought they were going to basically try to thread this needle and say
that ETH itself, they're not going to call a security. But State ETH might be a security. And they obviously
have problems with steak teeth you look at what they're in coin base lawsuits the crack in lawsuits you look at
all these different things they do not they think staking is as a security and i don't think they're going
to give that up um anytime soon so that's that's broadly my expectation um so it we need some clarity
and obviously with the changes right now going on to congress maybe that like provides and speeds up
some of that clarity that's right it does it does feel like the individuals can think what they want
but it sounds like they can bend to the political pressure as well okay so last last question for you
James, and then I'll let you go. I know you want to run through these, like, filings.
Are there any other ETFs on the horizon, particularly this cycle? So people see Bitcoin,
they see Ethereum. This is happening, like, relatively close, months apart. So then they think,
what else could get an ETF? Is anything close or like, can you just refresh people on how
this actually works and like how it would happen, what signs to look for?
Yeah. Before I even get there, I want to hit on something that I just thought about.
You asked about the security stuff.
these things are commodities-based trust shares.
So the SEC by approving these is explicitly saying they're not going to go after ETH itself as a security.
So that's one thing I would just say real quick because part of the approval process here is they're approved as commodities trusts.
Like this is pretty much a done deal.
I will say personally, I believe the ICO was a securities offering.
That's a long time ago.
That was eight years ago now, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then so what's next?
Not much. I don't think anything's happening
anytime remotely soon.
You need a regulated futures market,
a federally regulated futures market or
surveilled futures market before you can get an ETF.
That's clear. I skim the document that was in there
blatantly. So the reason these are getting approved is because of the
CME ETH futures market. There's a lot of questions about what's going to be
deemed a security or a commodity with these other assets. There are some that are
like pretty much accepted as commodities here. Like ironically enough,
Doge is almost certainly not going to be deemed a security, make the same market.
Like coins probably in the same camp.
No way to know for sure, but those theoretically have the less hard regulatory
approval path.
But also, like, are they, is a CME really going to launch Doge futures, maybe?
I mean, Coinbase, I think might be trying.
Those would be theoretically CFTC regulated.
So that could satisfy that.
The next one that most people would think about is Seoul, which I saw, I've seen a lot of
talk about that. Again, you need a regulated market. Unless, like, even if the, even if Congress
steps in and does something and clarifies what's a commodity and what isn't, like even if these
things are deemed to be a commodity, it's not just getting approved because it's a commodity. The SEC
needs somewhere they can surveil. So you need to get some spot markets under surveillance with the SEC,
or you need a regulated futures market. And even then it's not like you get futures and then
you automatically get the ETF. Like, you need some history. These these futures listed in
2019, I think, or something like that.
It's like 20.
I don't even know when it was.
It might have been 2021.
But you need like, you need more history.
You need significant capital there.
Like if there's $100 million in like some like, I don't know, some random tokens futures contract and it trades like a little bit every day, like that's never going to get approved.
Like they're looking at one minute candles for correlation to approve these things.
And something that's not trading enough or doesn't have enough assets is not going to help them, you know, surveil and look for fraud and manipulation.
So I don't think that part of this is ever going to change no matter what Congress does,
but they could theoretically push some of this along.
Absolutely monumental week here, James, with the approval of the Ethereum ETF,
the second crypto asset to be approved in the U.S. as an ETF,
and clearly demarcating both Bitcoin and Ethereum as not securities,
which is something that we've wanted certainty from and clarity from our regulators for a very
long time.
So certainly bullish.
Also bullish that we can politically push things in the right.
direction. Is there anything else you would leave folks with? Any other lessons from this or are the
week? You got to be exhausted, man. You're going to get some rest after all this or what are you doing next?
I'm going to be reading these documents, which is not exactly. It's probably not the week you thought
it would be, huh? Different week. No, not at all. But I will be in consensus next week, so in Austin. So are you
going to be there? I know, I obviously know David will be there. David is scheduled to for a boxing match.
So, and I'm scheduled to, from the comfort of my office, actually live stream that.
So I'll be here.
But if he's there, I'm here, I'll be there.
And he'll say hello.
James, this has been great.
Where can folks follow you for future updates?
Yeah, I mean, if you are the, if you're a terminal client, that's the, I have like a whole bunch of clients responding to me.
So I have to reach out to them right now.
But that's the fastest, easiest way and quickest where I'll reply.
After that, for people who don't, it would definitely be Twitter.
I'm fairly active there as probably you and many people know.
so J-S-E-Y-F-F.
We share a little bit of our research and our work and immediate update stuff,
but the real bulk and body of our efforts are unfortunately behind the paywall of the Bloomberg terminal.
So if you have access to one, that's where you can find us easiest.
Amazing.
Well, thanks so much, James.
Thanks for keeping us up to date on all of this and on a successful week.
You know, congratulations.
Another ETF in the world.
I know you're an ETF maximalist, so it's a good thing from your perspective.
And we certainly appreciate it at bankless as well.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Good to see you, Ron.
See you later.
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 onto the Mantle Layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in Defi
and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion
dollar Mantle Treasury in the Mantle
Reward Station. Maybe it's because the Mantle
team is one of the most helpful teams to build
with giving you grants, liquidity support,
and venture partners to help bootstrap your
Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these
reasons all put together. So if you're a
dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations
in crypto, or you're a user looking
to claim some ownership on Mantle's
Defy Appes, click the link in the show notes. So getting
started with Mantle. Have you ever felt that the tools for
developing decentralized applications are too
restrictive and fail to leverage advancements
from traditional software programming?
There's a wide range of expressive building blocks
beyond conventional smart contracts and solidity development.
Don't waste your time building the basics from scratch,
and don't limit the potential of your vision.
Cartesey provides powerful and scalable solutions for developers
that supercharge app development.
With a Cartesey virtual machine,
you can run a full Linux OS and access decades of rich code libraries
and open source tooling for building in Web3.
And with Cartesey's unique roll-up framework,
you'll get real-world scaling and computation.
No more competing for Blockspace.
So, if you're a developer,
looking to push the boundaries of what's possible in Web 3,
Cartesey is now offering up to $50,000 in grants.
Head over to Cartesey's grant application page to apply today.
And if you're not a developer, those with staked CTSI
can take part in the governance process
and vote on whether or not a proposal should be funded.
Make sure your vote ready by staking your CTSI
before the votes open.
Sello is the mobile first EVM-compatible carbon-negative blockchain
built for the real world.
Driving real-world use cases like mobile payments in mobile defy
and with Opera MiniPay as one of the fastest growing Web3 wallets,
cello is seeing a meteoric rise with over 300 million transactions
and 1.5 million monthly active addresses.
And now, Sello is looking to come home to Ethereum as a layer two.
Optimism, Polygon, Matter Labs, and Arbitrum have all thrown their hats in the ring
for the cello layer two to build upon their stacks.
Why the competition?
The cello layer two will bring huge advantages like a decentralized sequencer,
off-chain data availability secured by Ethereum validators,
and one-block finality.
What does that all mean for you?
With Cello layer 2, gas fees will stay low and you can even pay for gas natively using ERC20 tokens,
sending crypto to phone numbers across wallets using Social Connect.
But Sellow is a community governed protocol.
This means that Sellow needs you to weigh in and make your voice hurt.
Join the conversation in the cello forums.
Follow Sellow on Twitter and visit cello.org to shape the future of Ethereum.
