Bankless - Post-Merge Recap | White House & U.S. Crypto Regulatory | $160M Wintermute Hack | Do Kwon on the Run?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Is this cope, Ryan? Are we coping right now? You might be coping. Do you feel like we're coping? I think when people are coping, they don't know they're coping. And I was about to say, no, I'm not, this is not cope, David, but maybe that's what people who are coping say. Hey, Bankless Nation, happy 4th Friday of September. David, what time is it? Ryan, it's the Bankless Friday weekly rollup where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto,

Starting point is 00:00:23 which is always an ambitious endeavor. Yet we persevere into the frontier, nonetheless, every Friday with our morning coffee, of course. Yeah, grab a cup of coffee as you hear how David and I struggle through a roll-up post-merge. Post-merge. Because David, what is there to talk about now that the merge is done? Can we have any content? Bare market. Is this going to be a 20-minute episode here?

Starting point is 00:00:45 Yeah, the roll-ups are just getting, actually, even though there's nothing happening, I bet you we could find a way to make a 90-minute roll-up, yeah. But you know what? There actually is a lot happening because there's always a lot happening in crypto, even though we're in a post-merge world. Number one, we're going to talk about the white. House. They have some words to say to the crypto industry. This Biden report just came out. And I think people need to know, is it alarm time? Should we be freaking out right now? What else we got? And we have to

Starting point is 00:01:11 reset the hack counter. There's a $160 million hack. And it's never before seen way of getting hacked. Are you at risk? No, you're not. But it's an interesting story. Nonetheless, so we'll get into that. And of course, we covered it last week. Doe Kwan. Is he on the run? Where is he? Ryan, do you know where Do Kwan is? because people are looking for him. I don't know. He says he's not on the run, but I think Interpol has a different take on that.

Starting point is 00:01:36 It sounds like somebody who's on the run was what they would say. Yeah. It does. Before we get in though, David, got to talk about our friends and sponsors at Swell, who wants you to know that there is going to be a new eat staking opportunity in town. It's called Swell. David and I like these guys so much.

Starting point is 00:01:55 We're also angel investors. And they are now in a guarded launch territory. So they've started the launch process. It's in a guarded launch while they take care of a few more things. But what is Swell, David? Why is this a new entrant onto the liquid staking scene? What are these guys specializing in? Yeah, Swell is really going after the best of both worlds between Lido and Rocket Pool.

Starting point is 00:02:17 Rocket Pool, of course, the only decentralized permission list of validating staking as a service pool on Ethereum. Lido, a permission validator set. And Swell is doing a little of both. So you can stake your ether with Swell permissionlessly if you put up a 16-Eath bond, or you can also be in the Dow and get voted in as a trusted staking provider. And so you get a little bit of Lido, a little bit of rocket pool. And if you were, Lido came around in 2020. And so if you were too late for both of those things, you could still get in at the ground floor of swell.

Starting point is 00:02:49 So there is a link in the show notes to go and join the Discord and join that community. This is promising to be a community-owned protocol. So go check out the Discord and help them build this thing out. David, let's get to markets. All right, Bitcoin. What are we looking at on the Bitcoin Prize this week? Can we just skip the music? Let's skip the whole section.

Starting point is 00:03:11 No, tell us. Give us the hard truth, okay? We can hear it. We're ready for this. Bitcoin knot down so bad. Start of the week at $19,800. So start of the week below $20,000, ending the week at $19,000. dollars, a few dollars below $19,000.

Starting point is 00:03:26 So we are in the 18,000 range, down 4% on the week. Not looking so great. Not looking so great, not so bad. Typical bare market week for Bitcoin. The Bitcoin flashed down to 17 and a half during the liquidation, and then it popped right back up to 18,000 something. We're at the market lows. Like, we're not that far off the bottom.

Starting point is 00:03:48 There was a liquidation event this week. Maybe some are saying this is maybe Fed caused, Fed induced. We'll talk about that. But how about Ether? We are in a post-merge-Eeth world. Was Hal Press right, David? Was the merch priced in? So, Ether, down 14% on the week.

Starting point is 00:04:06 Ooh. Started the week at $1,500, ending the week just below $1,300. I guess the merch was priced in. I guess it was fully pre-the-merge execution was priced in. You ready to say that? I guess so. Yeah. There's no way for me to, like,

Starting point is 00:04:23 twist this. I got nothing here. Do you know your debate with Jordy Alexander on whether like the Mergers Price Center or not? I still like again, I'm you know, I've taken the role of the unbiased moderator, David, so I can't be in your corner, I can't be in Jordi's corner, I have to be unbiased. I will say as an unbiased moderator, you're not wrong yet.

Starting point is 00:04:43 Okay, maybe Hal Press was wrong. Some of the like the traders were wrong. You were not wrong yet because what I heard you say in that conversation with Jordy was it may not price itself in in the short term. You were talking about post-merge, you know, could take a few weeks, a few months. But your main argument was, in the mid-to-long run, the merge isn't priced in

Starting point is 00:05:05 because we have a massively decreasing issuance rate, less supply on the market. All we have to do is refill that demand bucket and then prices shoot back up. So, David, maybe some solace there. I don't think you're wrong yet. I don't think anyone can say that. It is pretty much a pretty big bummer to see Ether go down 14% immediately post-merge.

Starting point is 00:05:29 I mean, definitely one part macro, which we're about to talk about. Also, the other thing, the new meta is like, all right, post-merge, what the hell is next? Like, when you look over the horizon, what do you see? We should talk about that. There's not much there. So we're going to talk about that too, yeah. Do you know what this has cemented for me, though, David? That we are in a bare market.

Starting point is 00:05:47 Yeah. All right, we are in a bare market. It's going to be a sustained bear market, right? So I think there was some hope that this catalyzing event of the ethmerge might change things. Spark something, yeah, spark something wasn't enough. And this confirms when good news happens during a market cycle and the price goes down, it's generally, you know you're in a bear. So bear market confirmed. I think we could be here for months.

Starting point is 00:06:16 I think we'll have to wait until macro. takes over and we'll get into some of that story. But also, there are no big crypto catalysts ahead. This is nothing I can really think of beyond the merge. So we got that. It's going to be fun times on bankless. Is this a bearish weekly roll-up? Wow. There's only like three of those. I'm not really bearish. Honestly, I just think this is the sustaining the bear market. I'll tell you what did not drop Eith Price. And that was Gensler comments this week. I saw this headline. Had to bring it up. This is just scrolling. I thought that was an onion. article. No, this is Yahoo Finance. This is mainstream finance reporting and with the headline,

Starting point is 00:06:56 Ethereum price drops 20% as SEC declares control over the network. And we got a picture of Gary Gensler with a fist. Fist in the air, dictator king style, controlling the network, I guess, as depicted controlling the network. So if your friends ask you if Gensler is controlling the network right now, and if that's the reason price dropped, Bankless is here to say, no, that's not a the reason price dropped and no, the SETC didn't declare control over the network. Gensler was just saying things that Gensler says often, and we'll cover that later. Gensler gun on Gensler. You can't mainstream reporting of this. You can't associate the, you know, correlation is not causation here. So anyway, moving on, let's take a look at what actually

Starting point is 00:07:42 happened with ETH supply because that is a pretty cool story. We're actually not in the ultrasound territory, though. We are not. Maybe that's a bummer. But tell us what we're looking at here, David. Yeah, so we're going to just do a review of the ether supply dynamics post-merge. And you can see that little chart in the center of your screen. It is going up and to the right. So ether is inflating.

Starting point is 00:08:02 It's inflating at 0.19% a year, which is pretty damn low. And I see some Bitcoiners and some Ethereum bears looking at this chart and be like, oh, look, ether's not ultrasound. It's not deflationary. All the eth people were wrong. but when you see this chart and you go up into the right, Ryan, could you go ahead and hit that Simulate Pow button

Starting point is 00:08:23 on the right side so we can see what it otherwise would have? Now look at that. So that white dash line is what Ethereum was previously pre-merge. And then the blue line at the very bottom is what it currently is. And those are very distinct, very different slopes. And then Bitcoin is about

Starting point is 00:08:39 splitting the difference right in the middle there. Also, the other important thing is that since the merge, there has been 4.7,000 Ether issued. Where there was previously once 13,000 ether issued a day, since merge, there has been a net total issuance of 4.7,000 ether issued. If we were still in proof of work, we would have otherwise issued about 93 and a half thousand ether. So that is a net issuance reduction of 88,000 ether that has not been issued since the merge has gone in, a total sum about $14 million.

Starting point is 00:09:14 $14 million, not insignificant. And how long? as it hasn't been since the merge, about seven days, right? Yeah. It's been seven days. And this is the thing, David, just one week into this. And ether is not ultrasound post-merge on a one-week basis. But of course, it can always catch up, right? Two weeks from now, three weeks from now, maybe months later, and the next bull run, for example, takes issuance down deep into the negative territory and makes up for this. But for people who couldn't see the lines that you're pointing to, ETH was issuing or would have been issuing over the past seven days, 3.78%. And to your point, it was actually only 0.19%.

Starting point is 00:09:55 And that was as a result of the merge. So the difference being we issued 4,700 ETH with proof of work, we would have been issuing 93.5. Big difference there. Big difference. It's also worth noting that when gas is like basically, on its floor right now, right, at seven guay. If we had like a 50 guay 24 hour period, that makes up for like three days of net inflation, right? And so the amount of burn can is uncapped. And so you can burn like seven days worth of inflation inside of a very small amount of time. And so as soon as you get

Starting point is 00:10:34 out of like the depressed bear market era of gas fees, like you can make up a lot of lost ground in a very short amount of time. Is this cope, Brian? Are we coping right now? you might be coping. Do you feel like we're coping? I think when people are coping, they don't know they're coping. And I was about to say, no, I'm not, this is not cope, David, but maybe that's what people who are coping say. Honestly, I'm not that worried about this.

Starting point is 00:10:57 Like, you should only be worried about this, in my opinion, if you think block space demand will never recover on Ethereum. Well, if you think block space demand will never recover, you are also thinking crypto is not a thing. Those are synonymous statements. Right? Mm-hmm. So to me, like, it does not compute, is not compatible.

Starting point is 00:11:17 Like, that doesn't work because, I mean, and if bankless has a fault, maybe we have more than one fault, David, but our fault is that we are permibals on this industry and on crypto, not over short-term one-week time periods, okay? Over year-long, decade-long time periods. And, yeah, it's incompatible to me to be short blocks-based demand in that environment. But how does ETH stack up, Ethereum that is, stack up in issuance versus other networks right now? That'd be a cool thing to see. Yeah, this is where the ultrasound meme really takes hold. So Bitcoin currently issuing at 1.75%, which is issuing $17 million a day. Dogecoin coming in, and this is in terms of dollars, so the more dollars you're issuing that you come first.

Starting point is 00:12:05 Dogecoin is the new number two daily issuer in U.S. dollar terms, inflating at three, 0.6%, almost 0.8 million dollars a day. Coming in third is Ethereum at 0.15% issuing $700,000 a day of currency. And so, like, the 0.15% issuance rate is such a clear juxtaposition on every other, like, highly issuing money currency in this space. Like Cardano, 1.3%, light coin, 1.3%. I don't know where Avalanche or Solana is on this. Sometimes David Meehow gets a bug and he stops displaying them. I've seen five to seven percent. Salon is at seven percent.

Starting point is 00:12:47 Like, avalanches like at eight percent. Like, yeah, it's like, these are big differences. These are huge numbers. Yeah. I do think all of this will catch up to the price of Eath, but certainly not overnight. Eventually. A few things with respect to staking rewards. I saw this from our network newsletter.

Starting point is 00:13:06 This is very interesting. Look at this portion of consensus rewards, which are basically blog. block rewards versus execution rewards. So post-merge, the rewards to validators saw an increase of 172%. So definitely went up. Not as high as some people were saying. I saw numbers around like the high 5.9s to 6% APY, something like that. I mean, there was the hope during the bull run.

Starting point is 00:13:36 If you use the bull run block space demand, then you get like double digits staking yield. We haven't seen that. We're not likely to see that anytime soon, but 6%, not too bad. And more than half of that is coming from MEV and transaction fees rather than pure block space reward. One of my favorite things about just the post-merge world

Starting point is 00:13:59 is how many more metrics there are to look at. There's just so many numbers to talk about. As a content producer, I enjoy it. Yes, we will not run out of content, that's for sure. knock on wood Okay so this is MEV boost.org which is a new website

Starting point is 00:14:15 that's very very useful this is all about the block building side of the equation and so just a quick recap there's block proposers aka ETH stakers people are staking their ETH and sometimes they want to

Starting point is 00:14:27 outsource the role of building a block they are for whatever reasons usually monetary they will say hey someone serve me a block and I will propose that block rather than building that block myself because if you block building is a skill it's a competition vector for people to compete on

Starting point is 00:14:44 and there are new block builders on the scenes these are new entities in the supply chain of building an Ethereum block so there's flash bots of course there's a blocks route there's block native manifold and eat and these are all block builders and they are specializing in how to extract as much MEV out of a block as possible but then there's also things like block route ethical which is only extracting ethical MEV so no sandwich attacks and no other malicious stuff. There's also blocks routes regulated. If you choose to be OFAC compliant, you can have the regulated block

Starting point is 00:15:15 served to you. And these are all, these entities are all competing as to how profitable they can build you a block. So FlashBots is by far the most used block builder. It's built almost 10,000 blocks so far, producing almost 2,000 ether in rewards for people that have used flashbots, that's a block builder, coming in at an average block value of 0.193 ether per block. And then all of these people are competing

Starting point is 00:15:44 on various vectors has to how to make the average block the most profitable. Coming in first, block native at 0.23 ether per block is the most, the best block builder so far in the game, but it's so, so early in this brand new world of block building that we will see. Manifold, the one that I've right, is highlighting is a special case. They are integrating with certain defy apps like sushi swap,

Starting point is 00:16:12 which is why they have only proposed a very low number of blocks, 63, but their average block value is 0.6, right, that's their deal. They are low numbers of block proposers, but high value per block. What's interesting to me is like, okay, so relayers and block builders, they just got jobs on the network. They're newly employed. And this is the same time we said to all of the miners, on the Ethereum Network. Thank you for your service. Your services are no longer needed. We will escort you to your vehicle.

Starting point is 00:16:43 Right? And like miners left. Your watch has ended. And now we have new employees. But thank you though for your service. We have relayers and we have builders as well. And the builder market is actually like, it's actually fairly diverse.

Starting point is 00:16:56 Like there are a number of different block builders that are gaining some market share. On the relayer side of things, that's been interesting. Because if you run an actual validating node like David and myself, So you set up your validating node, and then you get to pick which block builder, which block relayer you actually want, and you can pick based on your values. So I want maybe an ethical builder and relayer. Grass fed, you can, yeah, grass fed, organic. Or you can pick maybe something that is super compliant, maybe the over-complier block builder,

Starting point is 00:17:31 like blocks are out regulated. You actually get to choose these things. Now, David and I had a conversation with Vitalik earlier this week, and he made the point that there are protocol upgrades coming down the pipeline that will actually nullify the need for relayers. And so we'll always have block builders, but not relays, which is good because relayers can represent a censorship vector. Anyway, more on that episode. A centralization sensorization, censorship vector, more on that episode, if you listen to it, that's coming out on Monday. But to your point, David, there are so many more numbers to look at, and the ecosystem has just gotten that much more interesting with these new relays and builders entering the network. All right, well, Ethereum is building blocks. The Fed is raising interest rates.

Starting point is 00:18:18 Maybe Jerome Powell is the guy we have to thank for the lower crypto prices this week. The Fed just went big again. This is their third straight, three-quarter point rate hike. So 0.75, 750 basis. points up. This was anticipated, I think, by the market. This is, of course, you know, Powell has been signaling this for a while. And in his comments, he actually signaled more to come. So the comments, I think, were a bit more hawkish than analysts thought. Quotes like this, the chances of a soft landing are likely to diminish to the extent that policy needs to be more restrictive or restrictive for longer. That's what he said. He also said, No one knows whether this process will lead to a recession or, if so, how significant that recession would be.

Starting point is 00:19:11 Not as much talk of soft landing in this discussion. Talk of maybe estimations of maybe a 0.75 rate hike again in November, followed by another half a percent in December. All right? So we are going up, my friend. Interest rates are rising. The Fed is really serious about. breaking the back of inflation. So we are now between the new target range of three to three point two five percent from an interest rate perspective. So that happened this week. And of course,

Starting point is 00:19:46 markets, risk on assets, tumbled as a result. Yeah, sick. I mean, okay, so we merge, we look beyond the merge, and we see nothing. And then the Fed says, oh, you know, you want something to look forward to? Rate hikes. And that actually, I feel like it does a pretty good job explaining the price action over the last seven days. Oh yeah, you think Powell was like he saw the merge and he's like, you guys are too happy. Uh, take this. You think that's what happened, David? Yeah, he's got it out for us. Yeah, that's probably what happened. All right, so like, when the hell is the pivot? I was promised a pivot. I thought, like, election. You know, maybe November pivot, post, post-November pivot? Isn't that November of 2023? No, there's the midterms are coming up this year. Oh, midterms. Oh, midterm election.

Starting point is 00:20:32 Okay. Yeah, we've got midterms. Okay, well, whatever. I don't know anything. But, like, I was always under the impression that the Fed can't raise the interest rates all that much without, like, bankrupting the United States. So, when's the bankruptcy happening? We're doing it. I was promised to bankruptcy.

Starting point is 00:20:48 Not at these rates. I mean, there's been lots of people, like Dan Moorhead from Pantara Capital, who's like, hey, the Fed has to raise to at least five to six percent. They should be doing it now. And this is more on kind of the aggressive side. and like they have to do it in order to be sustainable. So different macro people have different perspectives on this. But the line that no one knows whether this process will lead to a recession or not or how significant that recession would be kind of freaks me out because they,

Starting point is 00:21:16 their policy on the other side of thing, like I said last week, their policy on the other side of things were like, oh, well, this issue money. Like inflation is transitory. We don't know. It's like, okay, sick. Now we're going in the other direction. But here's the thing, of course, we know that like high inflation is not politically, tenable. Neither are recessions for those in power, right? So you kind of want to thread the needle

Starting point is 00:21:37 and get the balance right. And right now, Powell is in the mood to take a hawkish stance on things. But I'll tell you the prices of something is going up. And that is the price of a 30-year mortgage rate in the U.S. Now, this is raised to more than 6 percent for the first time since November 2008. So I have never seen rates in my kind of looking at homes lifetime. I've never seen interest rates this high, not even close, and they're still increasing, which is crazy. And if you want to look at how this looks to an average home buyer, here's a tweet.

Starting point is 00:22:15 The average 30-year mortgage is up from 2.7% to 6.3%. We've got a doubling. And that means monthly payments on a $500,000 loan last year, that's a home payment was $2,030. Monthly payments now, $3,100. Housing prices are down 6% in one month, and that is the biggest drop since 2011. This tweet ends. Recession is an understatement. So how much can you keep cranking the vice grip here, David, before other things break? And that's what macro analysts like Jim Bianca have been telling us all along. They will continue to hike until something breaks. is the housing market the next thing to break?

Starting point is 00:23:00 I'm not sure. We're looking at, you know, bonds in Japan. These are other things. Like, I'm not sure when the next thing to break is, but Powell and the Fed seem determined to continue this strategy of tightening. Yeah, I can't tell if, like, people that bought a house at the peak of the bull market, like in 2021,

Starting point is 00:23:16 where did they buy the top of the housing market, yet also the bottom of the interest rates, of the mortgage rates? At the same time, like, prices are down from all-time highs, but also interest rates, are up. So like, was it a good deal or was it not? Nice to be locked in right now to like a 2.7% fixed loan. 30 year fixed loan. What a gift that is in these rates. Yeah, but your house is down 6% in a month. So like, you know, pick your, pick your poison. Yeah, you can't get everything. But if you want

Starting point is 00:23:44 some comforting words, Powell has some words on shelter. He said this. I think that shelter inflation is going to remain high for some time. We're looking for it to come down, but it's not exactly clear when that will happen. It may take some time. Here's this one's for you, David. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, Powell said. I don't feel comforted by that at all. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. This is Stanley Drucken Miller.

Starting point is 00:24:08 Not much more good news in what he's saying. This is a video quote from an interview series he did. He said, there's a high probability in my mind that the market at best is going to be kind of flat for 10 years. Sort of like 1966 to the 1982 time period. That's not a favorable time in American history. with respect to like the prices of stocks and equities markets and that sort of thing. That is a huge take. Ten years of flat?

Starting point is 00:24:38 Yeah. Oh. So I mean, I don't know what this all means, right? But like I think one thing that we're seeing, of course, is like when prices go down, when it seems like there's bad news on the week or on the month, then things like this, Druck and Miller quotes surface, right? Who knows how long he's been saying this? Who knows how long other investors have been kind of saying this.

Starting point is 00:25:01 So there is kind of an information bias when it comes to bad news always gets magnified during bad weeks in the market. I think that's at play. But the question remains, I think, what would crypto do in a flat 10-year period? Is that going to happen? And if it does happen for equities, what does that mean for crypto as an asset class? I'm not really sure how to wait these, how to understand them, but I think it's more content we should do on bank lists to figure that out. The answer of what I want crypto to do during that time.

Starting point is 00:25:38 I mean, of course, I want the answer to be to go up, but that's, you know, you can't ask for that, obviously. What I want it to do is decouple. Do something else. Like, do something different. And, like, maybe that's how this, like, bear market slowly plays out is, like, the, you know, this S&P market, which moves slower. than crypto markets crabs for 10 years, but then four to five years into it, we have just another

Starting point is 00:26:01 classic growing season in the crypto world. That's what you want to happen, David? Yeah, I wanted to decouple sometime. Later in the conversation Drucken Miller did say, like during the 1970s was a good time for many companies. I mean, that was the time when Apple was founded. For example, Home Depot was founded. And of course, we do know that crypto markets tend to move much faster than traditional markets. So the pain is more severe. The dips are shorter in general. But yeah, we'll have to see. This could be uncharted territory. David, what do we have coming up next? Coming up next, the White House has some words for us in the crypto industry. Is it time to sound the alarm? We'll figure that out. A $160 million hack. Got to reset the counter on that one.

Starting point is 00:26:47 And what's next now that the merge is behind us? What are we going to talk about? What's the new meta? Is there? What's the new narrative? Can we create? one because there's definitely content bear market going on. So all of that and more, right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Arbitrum is an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution that is going to completely change how we use defy and NFTs. Some of the coolest new NFT collections have chosen Arbitrum as their home, while Defi protocols continue to see increased liquidity and usage. You can now bridge straight into Arbitrum for more than 10 different exchanges, including finance, FTX, Whoobie, and Crypto.com.

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Starting point is 00:28:33 And of course, you can store, send, and swap your crypto assets, manage your NFTs, and connect to other wallets in Defi apps. So whether you're new to crypto or you're a season pro, it's time to ditch those risky extensions and it's time to switch to the Brave wallet. Download Brave at brave.com slash bankless and click the wallet icon to get started. All right, guys, we are back. The Biden administration, the White House just released their first every comprehensive framework for responsible development of digital assets.

Starting point is 00:29:00 By that they mean crypto. And the Biden administration charged a whole bunch of branches in the White House to go and investigate crypto. And this is the report. This is what they came back with. David, what's some of the summary from this report? Now, there's just different headlines, different goals that this report. wants to see it out of the crypto industry. Coming in at number one, protecting consumers,

Starting point is 00:29:24 investors, and businesses, which, yeah, I mean, I guess that makes sense to lead with, especially coming from the White House who are trying to protect their citizens. This is no secret, that crypto is full of scams and exploits and hacks. How the White House and how the government plans to solve that problem, curious to see. Anyways, that's number one. Number two, promoting access to financial services. Number three, fostering financial stability for advancement. advancing responsible innovation. Five, reinforcing the country's global financial leadership and competitiveness. Six, fighting illicit finance, anti-money laundering, counterfeit, financing of terrorism, etc. And seven, exploring a U.S. Central Bank digital currency. I don't know how much I should

Starting point is 00:30:06 read into the ordering of these things, but it would make sense that the White House would put protecting consumers first. So that's like, let's not do things like algorithmic stable coins. let's not promote scams. Interesting that number seven, Blast is the CBDC, which definitely tracks with all the other institutions, like government institutions out there that are like, oh, we'll research and talk about C.S.

Starting point is 00:30:33 Let's explore. Let's think about it. Let's talk about it. What do your takes on this? Yeah, so when I read this, David, I guess a few things stood out for me, like just some keywords. Like if you did a keyword search,

Starting point is 00:30:45 there were a lot of like words that kind of, danger or risk or illicit finance. There's also some CDBC. Even though there's a section about competitiveness in America and protecting innovation, like there wasn't a lot of meat on the bone in those sections. And so for me, this report was pretty bearish. Now, I didn't go into all of the detail because there are many, like, branching reports and it's very long, but there wasn't a lot of talk about, like, the potential of crypto.

Starting point is 00:31:17 There wasn't a lot of talk about the value of defy in our economy. There wasn't a lot of talk about how America would lead the way from an innovation perspective. And I was left as kind of like a fellow builder and investor in the space in crypto being like, what's there for me in America? Like, why should I build here? It was pretty uninspiring, I think, for U.S. entrepreneurs and builders. Hopefully it's just a lot of like talk similar to the CDBC type talk. and maybe there won't be negative action kind of taken.

Starting point is 00:31:50 But one thing that became clear, and this was a take from Jake Chrivensky, of course, you'd expect them to come down pretty hard on like illicit finance and money laundering, that sort of thing, because this is the government after all, but also algorithmic stable coins kind of took center stage in the report. This is Jake Trevinsky tweeting this. It's hard to overstate the damage that Terra has done to the perception of crypto in D.C. many policymakers already disliked the notion of a permissionless digital marketplace and wanted to put all of crypto into a well-sealed box. Tara gave them unjust cause to push forward or maybe just cause.

Starting point is 00:32:29 And I think that's what lawmakers and those in DC are actually thinking. So Tara, Luna, Doquan, the ecosystem and the community, that entire thing that just happened, you know, six months ago. Oh, yeah, that $50 billion that we used. deleted, oops. I put a damper on this entire report. I mean, a lot of people think it could have come out of a lot different if Luna hadn't just happened six months ago. Now, how can you be optimistic on quote unquote defy, like when that sort of thing is going on? But can you help me understand what is this thing? White House releases comprehensive framework for responsible development of digital assets.

Starting point is 00:33:16 What does this really mean? Like, are they just issuing a report and like, we issued a report? I think they're issuing a report. They're issuing some guidance. They're starting to develop a posture, a policy on kind of what Biden might support, what might he not support the things that people should explore. This is for themselves, though, right? Like, here's our report for our own stance towards crypto?

Starting point is 00:33:39 It's influential, I think, across all branches of government, right? So everyone's reading this. What we're seeing... And a lot of branches or government are reading this. We're like, okay, this is how we should act? I think this is how Biden wants us to act,

Starting point is 00:33:53 or this is kind of the White House's posture. I think it's influential in that way. And we're starting to see some legislation, particularly on the stable coin front. So this week learned a draft stable coin bill in Congress. This is all about stable coins. We don't yet have the details of what this bill actually is. It's in the House right now.

Starting point is 00:34:14 But there's talk of bans on different types of payment coins that are not backed by outside assets. So similar to Terra and UST, the alga stable coin that of course collapsed. And so bans on maybe algorithmic stable coins. Now, I have to say, we haven't seen the details yet. This is all kind of closed doors. So we don't actually know what might be inside of these bills. but it's kind of alarming that we wouldn't pick on the centralized aspects of a terra and would maybe extend the blame to a class called algorithmic stable coins.

Starting point is 00:34:55 And who knows how far, like would Rye be included in that, for example, which is collateralized backed by ETH and not really pegged to the dollar as kind of a control mechanism. God, could you imagine how to explain Rye? Well, is Maker an Algo stable coin? I mean, it's enforced by code, right? maybe this definition is broad enough to include Maker, for example. Or how about frax, which uses a combination? And so if these experiments fall under the purview of such a bill,

Starting point is 00:35:21 I don't think that's a good thing for crypto. Like, that's a very bad thing. That puts us farther away from non-state money, at least the legality of non-state money in the U.S. Brian Armstrong made a comment about this. He said, one of the strongest policy arguments for cryptocurrency is that it's a national security.

Starting point is 00:35:39 issue. The U.S. missed out on semiconductors in 5G, which is now largely manufactured offshore. It can't afford to have cryptocurrency go offshore as well. Same for every country, by the way. And then he continues, regulation by enforcement has a terrible chilling effect and retoric matters. We've already seen a huge amount of crypto talent asset issues and startups go offshore. And he finishes. Coinbase is a global company. But we're based right here in the USA and we'll fight to make sure crypto succeeds here for everyone. It's too important for America. and the free world. And this is why Ryan, I was asking you, like,

Starting point is 00:36:12 what is this report really doing? What is, how is it moving the needle? Because every time I see a report like this, like, and we always joke about, like, oh, the United States decided to have a meeting to talk about and research CBDCs without actually implementing anything. And like, yes, it takes time to do regulation.

Starting point is 00:36:30 But the crypto industry builds so fast that, like, we're going to build faster than they're going to be able to comprehend this industry. And that is always going to create a source of friction. because of what you just said. Maker Dow, is that algorithmic? Because that's fully collateralized up to like 300%. FRAX, is that algorithmic?

Starting point is 00:36:47 Because there's only 10% of that supply that's algorithmic. And then there's Terra. That's algorithmic's a bad word. They don't even know, we don't even know the words that we need to describe our own industry. And so, like, there's so much just chaos and confusion in this space that, like, whatever regulation or report that they produce, I feel like it's always just going to lag behind

Starting point is 00:37:06 what's actually needed. I think what's most alarming, though, is if the first principles in the report are kind of wrong, right? Where we do need regulation, and I think we've always said this, is where things are centralized, they should be regulated. Where they are more decentralized, they don't require as much regulation. The regulation is the code. It's fully transparent. It's all unchanged. There aren't humans in the middle.

Starting point is 00:37:32 And so if they make that categorical error of taking, not mixing up the difference between centralized and decentralized and taking an entire use case like Algo stablecoin, pointing at that and saying, that's the bad thing. No more Algo stable coins. I just think the implications of sloppy regulation, sloppy legislation could impact our industry in a big way. And particularly when I say our industry, I mean, those in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:37:59 Because outside of the U.S., these experiments may continue to run. And as Brian Armstrong said, what's going to happen? The U.S. will be leapfrogged. Right? Just like they missed out on the 5G opportunity. They missed out on the semiconductor opportunity. That's what's at stake here. And so that was the White House report. There's a House bill on stable coins that's happening. There's actually been an earlier proposition of a stable coin bill in the Senate as well. But apparently on the Senate banking committee, we don't have many fans of crypto. This was an article that was released just yesterday. Right. The Senate Banking Committee is not fans of crypto. I am just shocked. Right. So the asked Senator Brown, who's the chair of the committee about crypto, and this was his direct quote, let's just say there's a healthier skepticism about crypto and banking, housing, and urban affairs committee than there is in the Ag Committee.

Starting point is 00:38:54 That's the Agricultural Committee he's talking about. Every single member of the banking committee, with the exception of one, has serious, serious skepticism of and concerns. about crypto. Well, do you know who the one is, David? One who doesn't have concerns. This is Senator Toomey, who's actually coming on the bankless podcast next week. And I don't know if you saw this, David, but he had kind of a sparring match. Did you watch this video with Gary Gensler? It was so good. It was so good. All right. It's like when politicians make sense, it's just like it feels like a weight is off your chest. Like, thank you to me. Thank you. Yeah, so there was some back and forth between Toomey and Gensler

Starting point is 00:39:36 and a Senate committee meeting. And Gensler is basically saying, hey, all tokens are securities. They're almost all of them that I've seen because most of them depend on the profits of others. I'm not saying this. The Supreme Court is saying this. There's something called the Howie test. And Toomey

Starting point is 00:39:52 was coming back and saying, yeah, but not if they're sufficiently decentralized though. And Gensler was kind of dancing around that term, sufficiently decentralized. And Tumi said, well, profits of others, that's just one problem. of the Howie test and there are like four are like he didn't say this but the question imposes like are Pokemon card securities how about concert tickets if the number goes up is that security

Starting point is 00:40:16 no is the answer to that question and he was pleading he was just saying please give us clarity there's a lack of clarity for the industry please Gary Gensler and SEC give us clarity and Gensler repeated but there's already clarity the Supreme Court said so in the Howie test and on and on it went for like four minutes. He's just passing the buck off to the Supreme Court, right? He's like, everything's a security. Go ask the Supreme Court. But he's just putting words in the Supreme Court now.

Starting point is 00:40:44 That's what he's doing, which is interesting, because maybe these sorts of cases end up at the Supreme Court level. Maybe that's how they ultimately get resolved. It's where he's funneling them, that's for sure. It seems to be. And, yeah, that's the White House report. That's what's going on in D.C. in crypto during the bare market.

Starting point is 00:41:02 David, we also got. a hack this week. What happened? $160 million winter mute hack. This was an interesting one. And so there's these things called vanity addresses. They're not like ENS addresses where you like buy a name. There's something where you like, you basically mine for an address. You use like a CPU or a GPU and you produce a bunch of hashes and you try and check for

Starting point is 00:41:26 something that you're looking for. And so like say you want an address that starts with zero X, zero zero zero zero zero zero zero. zero. You can't actually intently make that address. You have to just like discover a private key that corresponds to that address. And so that's what Wintermute did. They, they mined for an address with this application called profanity that helped them do this. And they got an address that started with like a large number of zeros. It was like six or seven zeros. People just do these things because it's cool. I remember there was like a big excitement when somebody in like Bitcoin land in 2017 found an address that started with Flame, and that was like super cool.

Starting point is 00:42:05 Obviously, you can't share the private keys because there's only one said private keys, but like people like to do these things. Anyways, Wintermute used this app called Profanity to make a profanity address, which started with like eight zeros. Turns out the code that profanity used was faulty, and so it was very exploitable, and that's what happened here. And so are you at risk of this same exploit? If you've used the app profanity, you might want to double check.

Starting point is 00:42:29 But for like 99.99% of people, you're fine. You're fine. Definitely not worth it to get that vanity address, right? Well, it's definitely, it's possible to do it in safe ways if you double check everything. Like all smart contract addresses, you just got to make sure you know what you're doing. I'm just kind of, why take the risk? Yeah, for, clicking buttons on your ledger in Mediask. Yeah, it's risky business sometimes.

Starting point is 00:42:53 In Winterbute, of course, they were a crypto market making firm. That's why they had so much money in a hot wallet, because this was a hot wallet. because this was a hot wallet as well. It wasn't cool storage. That's a lot of money at a hot wallet. Yeah, it's a lot of money. I do think the lesson here is, and this was a good summary from a website I found called Halborn,

Starting point is 00:43:11 the profanity of vulnerability address generator was abandoned by its creator. So this project was actually abandoned by its creator, which is not a good sign multiple years ago. So when performing high-risk cryptographic operations such as private key generation, it is best to use a tool that is reputable, audited, and still actively supported. That is the key takeaway for bankless listeners, I think. I mean, this feels like common sense. Anyways, moving on into our big news item of the week, which is an absence of news, actually.

Starting point is 00:43:44 And so the big meta question is, now that we're post-merge, like, what's the next catalyst? What's the next thing that we're going to focus on? What next? And I think this has been the meta conversation in crypto Twitter lately is what's on the horizon? Like what do we have to look forward to? And I feel like that lost feeling of where are we and where are we going when people don't have an answer to like what is next in the crypto world is like showing up in the price action. Like prices are down because people feel like they are confused as to like where is the next catalyst? It's not a supply problem.

Starting point is 00:44:19 It's a demand problem. It's a demand problem. And so like it turns out post-mer. that there's like not that much juice to squeeze out of crypto. Like there's the the merge was kind of it. And like, you know, straight up, retail just needs a rest. And this is just how crypto works. Like retail comes in.

Starting point is 00:44:37 They pump up the markets and they make institutions follow them. And then they get exhausted, right? Like the NFT gas markets are hard, defies complicated, bridges get hacked. So like they, retail needs a rest. But they always come back. Retail always comes back. You just got to let them sit for. a little bit and then we'll poke that door later.

Starting point is 00:44:56 There's also, like, macro fears on the rise. We talked about macro all, like, for the first, like, 30 minutes of this podcast. But then there's also the pivot on the horizon. And so, like, we have these, we have this period of time where, like, things just got really calm, really quickly and really depressed. And now we're, like, having to contend with, like, what's next? Ryan, what's your attitude with this? My attitude is, this is normal.

Starting point is 00:45:22 This should be expected. we've seen this before in crypto. We're going to see it again. This is a take from DC investor. And he says, if you were here from the crypto class of 2020, 2020, 2021, and are still here in 14 months, then I might from that point onward consider you legit.

Starting point is 00:45:40 This is the great filter, he calls it. So that's where we are in the market, the great filter. A whole bunch of people who just came in recently, class of 2020, 2021, are about to get filtered out. They're about to leave. And so this is an analogy we often use of the difference between settlers and tourists.

Starting point is 00:46:00 The tourists leave, the settlers stay, and we build, we rebuild for the next cycle. And I got to say, David, and this goes back to kind of probably my main take of the week that we'll get to is why I'm bullish. I'm bullish because the builders are continuing to build, my friend. I have never seen more building activity go on on the Ethereum protocol layer for, example, even just shipping the merge and everything that's next that we just talked to Vitalik with. But then on the application layer, I mean, bridge is being built, layer two is being built out and hardened. Defy apps, a whole new generation of these defy apps. GameFi is still happening in the background. NFTs, like, we are building more than ever before.

Starting point is 00:46:44 I think this market cycle to me proved that crypto has product market fit. All right? In 2018, Before defy, wasn't sure, didn't know for sure. It was kind of a guess. And that's why, by the way, prices of ETH are like, you know, 10x higher. It's because we have product market fit. But what's going to happen over the months to come is the tourists are going to leave, the settlers are going to stay, we're going to build and we're going to be ready for the next cycle because I do believe the next cycle will come independent of macro.

Starting point is 00:47:17 This is not even a bet based on macro. Maybe macro will help things happen faster. But I don't think crypto can be stopped due to macro. I mean, this is an exponential revolutionary technology, and it can grow past macro in the stock market quite easily. It doesn't actually take that much. It just takes some real-world use cases to completely expand. And there are things that are literally next.

Starting point is 00:47:44 We're going to have the withdrawals unlocked. Not that that's fundamentally bullish, but then there's EIP-4844. The ZK EVM, the gold standard, of scalability, the ZK Sinks launching in 36 days. So there are things, Ryan, technical protocol developments that are literally next. It's not, however, it's not the protocol that triggers bull markets. These protocols are the platforms for applications that then trigger bull markets. And this is the thing that people that stick around during the bear markets are able to

Starting point is 00:48:15 observe firsthand that newcomers that come because of a bull market are always catching up on, is that like the 2021 bull market was the defy summer of 2020 and NFTs exploded on Ethereum. And that was the Ethereum app layer bull market. This is where an Ethereum gas fees hit like 600 and like stayed there for weeks. What that triggered was another another bull market in protocols that wanted to like also share in this avalanche, Solana, Phantom. But like it always starts with the protocol. And so we are having protocols now like the ZKEVM out of ZKCCC,

Starting point is 00:48:51 polygon, like so many of all these seem Starkware. Oh, Starkware's not doing one, actually. But like, and then also 4844 where like the brakes get unleashed out of layer two's. So these are the things. These are the things that are next. They're not like fundamentally bullish, but they produce the platforms for bull markets to exist on. And you're only going to watch that if you were here. I remember Ryan going through 2018 to 2020, having this gut instinct that like, I have no idea when the bear market is going to end. But when it does end, it's going to end quickly and it's going to rock it

Starting point is 00:49:24 the prices are going to rock it and when ether broke $400 it broke $1,000 like two or three months later so you have to stick around to observe this Can you share that story because so bankless

Starting point is 00:49:35 bankless tweeted something out it said for real how did you actually become a millionaire in crypto like for those of you who did it how did you do it was the tweet and I actually didn't expect you to respond David but like you responded

Starting point is 00:49:49 with your story what is your your story? How did you do well in crypto during the last bare market? I got a job in crypto that made it easy to pay attention to crypto. So it was my job to stay up to date with the meta. And so that was, I was consuming information all the time, like learning, learning, learning about how this thing works. And then with whatever money I had after rent and food, I bought ETH, like 100% of it. And I remember when Ether broke down to $80 in COVID again, I literally stopped. I'm not saying that this is healthy, but like my friend was like, hey, let's go on a trip.

Starting point is 00:50:29 And I'm like, dude, the cost of this trip in ETH terms is astronomical. And so like, like you, I definitely did like cut off like general like life activities. But it was just because like I saw these prices in ETH terms on like this is that I can't justify this expense. An opportunity. Yeah. Uh-huh. And like then eventually. after a very subdued two years of activity

Starting point is 00:50:53 where I was just working at my companies, eventually starting bank lists and consuming and learning and producing content that all came to, I was able to cash in on that rapidly in 2021 when ether goes from $400 to $4,000 inside of 12 months, right? And so you can't afford to not pay attention because the alpha you get from being ahead of the bull market

Starting point is 00:51:17 is insane. It's a difference between buying the top and selling the top. The ability to see, not that I sold the top. The ability to see DFI, like DFI summer before it happened. I mean, we saw that. It was obvious. All people that participated in DFI summer saw the 2021 bull market a year in advance. Yeah, totally agree. This is a post that caught my attention from Maddie earlier this week. And he talked about some possibilities, some things. If you were a settler to look out for, an actual DFI 2.0, he mentions Web3 commerce, web three social, decentralized. science, D-Sai, the world of atoms where kind of like physical meets crypto.

Starting point is 00:51:56 There's all sorts of different areas you can take a look at. And I love how he concludes his post, which is just like, I don't really know what the next big use cases are going to be, but I'm here. And I'm going to watch them and observe them and find out. So that's what you have to do if you want to do well in cryptos. You can't be the tourists who just comes in during, you know, the tops of the cycle. You have to stay for the long run. So I think that's what's next for us, David.

Starting point is 00:52:21 We're going to keep staying. We're going to keep doing what we're doing with bankless. And what is literally next in the show, Universal Studios doing an NFT scavenger hunt. So this is kind of that story. The adoption of NFTs and creative in different ways. Universal Studios getting into it. Tether, once again, under the microscope. Seems to this happens every 12 months or so.

Starting point is 00:52:41 And Doquan, an Interpol notice. But we don't know where he is. So we're going to find out all this stuff and more right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors. that make the show possible. Juno is bringing crypto-friendly banking straight into your tracking account. With Juno, you can send money from your Juno checking account

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Starting point is 00:54:26 it's down 75% already. It seems like it's kind of dead. Is that a shocker to you? Not at all. While I was sad that the merge was definitely priced in, at least I got this one right. The East Powell chain was a nothing burger. I'm not surprised in the slightest.

Starting point is 00:54:44 That is some solace. Infura as well. They are a network that provides a lot of the data to different wallets that you use, a lot of the infrastructure, node infrastructure that powers Ethereum. And they are announcing that they are planning to decentralize their infrastructure. I think this is a long time coming and very hoped for for many in the Ethereum community that we would have more decentralized options rather than just the infuris and the alchemies of the world. Do you have anything to add to that, David? I think when somebody, a big protocol like Infura says, we plan to decentralize, it's fair to say token. Because if you want to continue development, how do you incentivize that development while also being decentralized?

Starting point is 00:55:24 It means a token. This is a very key piece of Ethereum infrastructure. It's a source of critique from external Ethereum people because, like, you know, your Metamask hooks into Infura to relay transactions. And if Inferia wanted to censor you, you probably could. So decentralizing Inferra is a very big deal. So this is a very big step out of a in Fira, also fitting with consensus's new meta of wanting to tokenize and decentralized as many of its products as possible. So, best of luck on the journey into the decentralized frontier in Fura. I'm still waiting on that metamass token though, David, someday. Yeah, keep on, don't hold your breath on that one. Something new out of the Stark X ecosystem. They tweeted out bug found and fixed shortly after launch, but how it was found and fixed is pretty cool. The bug was found by Blad Bichak out of Matter Labs and Ehor Baronblatt.

Starting point is 00:56:14 These are Russian names that I'm terrible at pronouncing. And StarQuare says we deeply share our deep appreciation and thank them for alerting us. This is an excellent example of good community spirit. And then DC Investor who retweeted this saying, A ZK Syncdevs found a bug in the Starkware ecosystem and communicated it to them to make sure that it could be fixed before anyone found could be harmed by it. respect to the right kind of ethos to move us forward. And then ZK. Sink says being mission-driven means helping everyone in the Ethereum ecosystem. Glad we could help Starkware stay secure. Nice job. Nice job. This is good. Good move. Harvest that Goodwill clout. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Starting point is 00:56:55 This is OpenC. excited to share that they just released OpenC on Arbitrim, or at least that's going to be happening soon. So adding other networks to the fray, I think they've added Polygon, maybe Solana, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, correct. And now Arbitrum. So excited to see all of the layer twos join the ranks of an open-sea-supported network. David, this is some cool NFT news. Universal plus NFTs and a scavenger hunt.

Starting point is 00:57:21 What is all this? Yeah, I thought this was pretty cool. It was a pretty clever use of NFTs. So basically what they're doing is they are just issuing, they're putting seven different QR codes around their Halloween era, like, theme parks. Like, you know, every Halloween, they theme their part. Halloween themed. And it's a scavenger hunt. And so people run around the park and they scan

Starting point is 00:57:41 seven QR codes and then you get an NFT when that's scanned and visitors who scan all seven of them receive a special NFT, which according to Moon Pay, the Crypto Payment Service that's partnering with Universal on this said can unlock additional perks. This is what you, like if you don't know what to do with your NFTs, this is what you do. You make it hard, you make them hard to get and then you make them unlock certain things and access to more things. Like it's the most basic roadmap for all NFTs, Universal doing a good job with this. And making it fun. And I guess congrats to MoonPay for partnering with them on that.

Starting point is 00:58:14 That was a huge, huge partnership. Tether under the microscope, again, stable coin issuer, Tether ordered to produce documents showing what USDT is actually backed by. This is, I think, a U.S. judge in New York requiring that Tether do this. I mean, it's all good. This is back to what we're saying is if you're centralized, you should be under the scrutiny of regulators. Like, we should know what USDT is backed by.

Starting point is 00:58:41 You shouldn't be able to ban it completely, but we should have full transparency and visibility here. So I don't hate this. I'm excited to get the definitive view on what tether is actually backed by because that's always been kind of a mystery in crypto. I will say this does happen every now and then. I think the last time this happened was in, like, 2019,

Starting point is 00:59:00 where Tethered was like forced to disclose his holdings and it was like, okay, it's all there, moving on. But like you said, that was a one snapshot in time that's now like three years stale. So I guess we'll just do this all over again. I'm expecting Tether to come back with plenty of reserves. Like USC does it every month, right? It feels like they have financial reports. It's like that's the way it should be if you're centralized.

Starting point is 00:59:26 So you should have audited financial reports for what actually backs the, the dollar here. David, there seems to be some back and forth between FTX, SBF, that is, San Bank-Bentfreened, and CZ. They are buying all sorts of things. These are the two crypto banks that have money in this bear market, and they are spending. It feels that way, David. So this is FTX. They're in the lead to buy the crypto lender Voyager. Remember that was the one that went bankrupt. Some of its assets are still worth something. Some of its customers, I assume some of software, and they're in a bidding war with Binance, CZ from Binance. So back and forth they go, trying to snap up all of these companies that have failed so hard and take their assets.

Starting point is 01:00:16 Yeah, so you said FTX bid was in the lead, but this article came out before it was disclosed that actually Binance's bid was slightly higher than FTX's according to what this article tights as some people. So I guess citation kind of needed, but this is what some people are saying. Yeah, SBF versus CZ. These two people with letters for names going after it. Meanwhile, Doquan is on the run, question mark.

Starting point is 01:00:43 This is the headline, South Korea asked Interpol to issue red notice for Tara co-founder Doquan. David, what is a red notice? Yeah, red notice is an international agreement. It's like, yo, this person, if you find or see this person, grab them. All of the world. All of the world.

Starting point is 01:01:01 There's like no hiding from it. Like most Western countries and, you know, most countries I think in the world are in the Interpol red notice list. Are they not? Yes, I believe so. So South Korean says they moved to invalidate his passport days after they issued the arrest warrant and then they have a definition of a red notice here is a request for law enforcement worldwide to locate and arrest the named individual and hold that person

Starting point is 01:01:26 until extradition processes can begin. Not 195 countries. Wow. Yeah. Can't hide, can't run. What's weird is earlier this week, Doquan tweeted this. I am not on the run in quotes or anything similar for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate.

Starting point is 01:01:46 We are in full cooperation. We don't have anything to hide. He's not on the run, yet he has an interpull red notice after him. One of these things doesn't make sense. of these things can check out. So, and this is like, I can't even believe all of this happened this year.

Starting point is 01:02:04 Do you remember, like, it was this year. March of this year, Doe Kwan was riding high, torching people on crypto, talking about ending die, talking about like how, I don't know,

Starting point is 01:02:17 Ethereum was over. Ryan Sean Adams doesn't know anything about crypto. Mike Novomaz's getting tattoos. Oh yeah, I remember that tweet. And now, like months later, there's an Interpol notice for him.

Starting point is 01:02:28 He's wanted in 195 countries. How crazy. How quickly things change. That's one of my like favorite things, bowl market shenanigans that happened is Mike Novigrats gets the Luna Wolf tattoo. You comment below that. This makes me question everything I know about crypto. Doquan replies to you.

Starting point is 01:02:49 Don't worry. It wasn't much to begin with. And then all of the lunatics like laugh at Ryan John Adams. then Tara blows up and now Doquan's on the run and like, and Mike and Overgats it makes a statement of like yeah this is going to be one of these memories I have like I have to live with for the rest of my life

Starting point is 01:03:05 Yes. It happened in the last like five months I wouldn't believe it If he gave me the script for this movie No way, no way This is cool What is the tribe community doing As a result of the Rari hack

Starting point is 01:03:19 Because there was word that they weren't going to pay back victims And now maybe they're changing course and they are going to pay back? Yeah, it looks like it. Yeah, the Tribe Dow team has said that they are going to call it quits. And this caused definitely a lot of consternation because there's plenty of assets in the Tribe Dow Treasury, and the tribe token holders were going to vote to distribute those assets to token holders

Starting point is 01:03:42 and then partially pay back people that lost money in the Rari hack, Rari now part of tribe. But it actually looks like that a vote was passed on-chain to fully pay back the victim, inside of 24 hours from this tweet. So this should have happened by the time you are listening to this. So it looks like hack victims are being paid out in full before tribe, Dow token holders are liquidating all assets.

Starting point is 01:04:06 That's awesome. That's awesome. So nice job. Dow's doing the right thing. I wonder if there was pressure on them or they just decided to do the right thing. Well, we may never know. It's certainly pressure. I'm sure there was pressure.

Starting point is 01:04:16 Helium signs a five-year agreement with T-Mobile for the Helium Mobile for the Helium Mobile launch. That is according to CoinDust. This is huge. This is from Tashar from Multi-Coin. Helium Mobile just launched their own cellular plans, which will combine the helium 5G network and the T-Mobile network. Helium mobile plans will start as low as $5 per month,

Starting point is 01:04:37 and subscribers will mine mobile tokens using just their phone. That's pretty crazy, David. What is helium for people who aren't aware? Helium is this mesh network of cellular connection. And so plenty of people, some of my friends here in Brooklyn, New York have these little helium router node things on their roof, kind of like where you would put like a satellite dish. And so people that are walking by that are connected to the helium network can tap into your little helium node and then use that node for data. So your

Starting point is 01:05:08 helium node hooks into your Wi-Fi or your Internet service provider, and then you bounce that Wi-Fi to somebody who's got their phone out that's local to you. And these things are short-range. I think it's something like maybe a quarter mile or perhaps even much less than that. So like, but the idea is like many, many, many people all put these on their houses. And so in densely populated areas, you can go and like get data from this helium mesh network, helium network thing. I don't really understand the tokenomics behind it. This is actually a project that haven't really dove in too much. But a partnership with T-Mobile is crazy. T-Mobile is great. That's nuts. Yeah, so I think the rough approximation of the token economics is early adopters win bigger, right? As the token price

Starting point is 01:05:50 appreciates. So this is kind of one of the use cases for tokens, which is, how do you bootstrap an entire like cellular network? And the way you do that is through token incentives, particularly reward the early adopters. And so maybe that's what's working out here. I think we should do more content on helium and figure it out in some more detail. But yeah, it's certainly a big move here. It got our attention.

Starting point is 01:06:13 The founder of Cracken, Jesse Powell, not to be confused with Jerome Powell, stepping down as CEO. So getting a new leadership and David Ripley, Cracken C.O. will be taking over as CEO. So that's the news. There you go. Jesse's watch has ended as well. Did you know, David, the NASDAQ is planning to launch an institutional crypto custody service.

Starting point is 01:06:37 This is the NASDAQ stock exchange, which is kind of weird because at the same time, Gary Gensler is talking about all your C20 tokens maybe being securities. And NASDAQ is getting into crypto custody. So what does that mean? I wonder. I think it's a good thing for adoption, particularly institutional adoption of crypto. I'm glad it's happening during the bear market where people are more focused on building and not pumpy headlines. So that's cool.

Starting point is 01:07:04 David, we also have Liquid Collective. Yeah. Yeah, Liquid Collective. It's a consortium of many centralized staking as a service entities, things like Coinbase Cloud, a few others, alluvial figment. And they are all coming together under this Liquid Collective. I haven't been able to parse out the details too deeply, but I think the gist is that this is a shared protocol, shared standard for staking as a service providers

Starting point is 01:07:29 to all produce a liquid staking token, and that can help mitigate some of the concerns around centralized stakers, because if they are all, like, forming one mega system, they're all actually checking and balancing on each other. And so that's kind of the gist here. I think more details are certainly needed, but definitely interesting,

Starting point is 01:07:50 interesting development out of the Liquid Collective. And speaking of Coinbase Cloud, they have just launched their platform for Web3 developers. And what's cool about this, so Coinbase Cloud, I think of it is almost like AWS for crypto, AWS for blockchain, that is Amazon Web Services, which many of the websites that use your daily life run on AWS. They're doing a cloud-based service, but for blockchains and for crypto. And starting today, apparently, developers, and this was a couple of days ago, now, have free and instant blockchain API access from Coinbase Cloud. So free and instant API

Starting point is 01:08:27 access. And I imagine they are running this kind of a promotion to fuel adoption of Coinbase Cloud. That's a big entrant into the space. I'm pretty excited about this. Yeah, big moves. In other worlds, FTX is reloading. They have raised a billion dollars for further acquisition in strategies. So they've already been buying up all of the blood in the market and they are raising another billion dollars, adding to the $400 million that they've already raised in January so that they could buy up more deals during crypto winter. Damn. Chats. Your move, your move, CV. Are you going to compete with another billion that's just like that's yeah. Uh-huh. This is cool. Masari, the crypto analytics and media entity, they just

Starting point is 01:09:14 announced that they raised another $35 million this time in series B funding. And David, you've been hanging out at Masari Mainnet all week. What was the temperature there? What was the feeling? Yeah, I was actually there just before recording this, moderating a panel of scaling solutions, avalanche, Arbitrum, ZK Sync, and Polygon. Decently decently populated, this is always the conference that's like one suits that are one foot in the crypto world. So can't really talk to them about EIP 4844, but can talk to them about like generalized scaling ideas. So not too technical, but definitely more than crypto-curious, I would say. Do you something populated? Definitely successful. It's always nice to see people attending

Starting point is 01:09:58 crypto conferences in bear markets. And congratulations to Ryan Selkis leading Masari over there, raising 35 more million dollars. Yeah, congrats to Masaria in the raise there. That's a big one. Good to have more crypto media companies. So we don't have stupid headlines that we have to deal with from like the Yahoo finance one I read out earlier. Ryan, you know, I remember Ryan, Selkises, like, war over Ripple and, like, Brad Garlinghouse? Yeah. Guess who was on stage together? No.

Starting point is 01:10:24 Brad and Ryan? Brad and Ryan. Yeah. Best friends now? I'm not. I didn't watch it myself, but I remember murmurings about this, about how this was going to happen. Ripple sponsored the event.

Starting point is 01:10:37 One of my friends came up to me, James from Fire Eyes. He came up to me, and it's like, dude, look at my hat. And it's like a Ripple hat. And it's like a Ripple hat. Old school ripple hat, huh? That's amazing. I haven't seen one of those in a long time. Well, it's not old school.

Starting point is 01:10:50 It's brand new. Ripple's still around. It's so hard for me to believe that Ripple is still around. I don't know why they have the market cap that they have. It's actually pretty impressive at this point. David, it's jobs time. So while we are in a bare market, from a price perspective, we are not in a bare market for jobs because what happens during bear markets,

Starting point is 01:11:11 builders build, and they need people to help build. the companies and protocols of the future for the next bull run. David, should I read out some jobs? Oh, please do, Ryan. It's my favorite part of the weekly roll-up. All right, well, you should dance then. Solid World Dow, Senior Web 3 developer, Rubicon, smart contract engineer, bankless. We need a social lord. That sounds awesome. Molecule, a head of engineering, a bankless, a growth marketer.

Starting point is 01:11:37 Both those are what, David? Non-technical. Econamia needs a lead designer, a silent protocol. needs a full stack software contract engineer super form of senior back end engineer, Big Green, a full stack developer, Misari software engineer market data. Masari also software engineer

Starting point is 01:11:54 of media. I could go on, but I don't have to. Get a job like David did. Last bull market. Excuse me, last bear market. He got a job and look at him now. You could be the next David. Oh God, you just turned. So many people just turned it off. Go to the banklist.

Starting point is 01:12:10 com website to get those jobs. Be the next David. Or just be Be yourself. Now is the time to get a job in crypto. We should say instead of a get a job in crypto, we should say become a crypto millionaire. Yeah. By getting a job in crypto during the crypto bear market. It's like it's one to one. It's guaranteed.

Starting point is 01:12:27 Stay tuned for David's book of 10 easy steps. Guys, coming up next, of course, we've got questions from the nation and some hot takes on Twitter from Hayden Adams, dropping a spice this week. He was spicy this week. Yeah, big time. We'll get to that and more. But first, we want to tell you about the sponsors that made this episode possible. Rocket Pool is your friendly, decentralized Ethereum staking protocol.

Starting point is 01:12:49 You can stake your eth with Rocket Pool and get R-Eath in return, allowing you to stake your ETH and use it in Defi at the same time. You can get 4% on your ETH by staking it with Rocket Pool, but you can get even more by running a node. Rocket Pool is the only staking provider that allows anyone to permissionlessly join their network of validating notes. Running a rocket pool node is easier to set up than running a solo node, and you only need 16Eth to get started. Why would you do this?

Starting point is 01:13:11 You get an extra 15% staking commission on the pool to ETH, so your API is boosted. So if you're bullish-e-staking, you can increase your API and get some extra tokens by adding your node to the decentralized rocket pool network, which currently has

Starting point is 01:13:22 over 1,000 independent validators. It's yield farming, but with Ethereum nodes. You can get started at rocket pool.net, and also join the rocket pool community in their Discord. You can find me hanging out there sometimes in the chat, so I'll see you there. ZK Sync is an Ethereum Layer 2 network

Starting point is 01:13:35 that is pushing the frontier of high-performance blockchains that don't compromise on security or decentralization. ZKSink has combined the power of zero-knowledge roll-ups and the Ethereum virtual machine, enabling developers to build the greatest web three projects possible,

Starting point is 01:13:48 ones we haven't even seen yet. Crypto needs its killer applications to onboard the world, but crypto killer apps need ZKSink as a platform to build on first. It's generally accepted that zero-knowledge roll-ups are the conclusion of crypto blockchain scaling technology, and ZKSink is leading the charge into the final frontier of crypto economics. So if you're a developer who wants to build your app on a future-proof foundation, which gives your users the best UX possible,

Starting point is 01:14:11 check out ZKSink's website as ZKSKS. And yes, there's also going to be a token, so give them a follow on Twitter to at ZKSync. Questions from the nation. A reminder, you can ask the question on Twitter. Follow bankless HQ on Twitter. Get your question in. We usually publish a post on Wednesday. We reply to that post with your question.

Starting point is 01:14:30 It may come up on the roll-up. Here is Ben Brown. He's asking the question, could you help explain the value of running a full note, even if you don't have enough EVE to be a validator? You're providing any security benefits to the network? and how would that play out if someone attacked or censored the network? Ben is asking here, David, why run a node if you ain't getting paid? If you're not a staker or validator, is there any point?

Starting point is 01:14:53 There are so many reasons why one would want to run their own node. And I think the easiest one to explain is that if you run your own node, you can point your metamask, your wallet provider to that node. And so your node natively connects to the Ethereum blockchain, or whatever blockchain you're talking about, in the same way that every other node does. And so as a first-class citizen, it's hearing the same transactions,

Starting point is 01:15:19 it's seeing the same data, it's taking in the same blocks as all the other nodes in the world. And so you have an Ethereum node in your house. You don't have to use Infura. You don't have to use Infura. You take your wallet, your Metamask, and instead of using Infura,

Starting point is 01:15:31 you point it to your node. And then when you write a transaction, there are no middleman. It's going straight to the Ethereum network because you are broadcasting your own transactions. There's plenty of reasons. reasons why you would want to do this, but it's one of those, it's going max bankless. And so there are no intermediaries separating your transaction from the Ethereum network.

Starting point is 01:15:52 And so this is why running your own node is like part of the bankless philosophy. Like having the option to run your own node is having the option to permissionlessly transact on the network. It's nice that we have things like in FIRA, but it's critical that we can route around them if we need to. And that's what running your own node does. That's like the first use case for me that comes to mind as to why someone would run to run their own node. What use cases come to your head, Ryan? Well, ultimately, it's about that. It's going full bankless and taking complete sovereignty.

Starting point is 01:16:21 But also, I will say there's a systemic importance to this of more people running their own nodes because it is a check on other validator power, right? So if you don't want to run the Ethereum software on your own node, for example, You don't have to. It's kind of like a vote in the Ethereum network, right? And so, like, it's really the non-staking nodes are an essential part, as well as staking nodes, of course, but non-staking staking nodes are an essential part of Ethereum's defense and security. It's kind of how you vote as a citizen inside of the network.

Starting point is 01:16:59 And so this is the problem if individuals don't have the ability to run their own nodes, then somebody else has to run them for them from a data center and they lose their vote. It's kind of it, it's sort of like, you know, some people vote in all of their local government elections, right? Some people don't. But imagine if you didn't have the ability to vote in your local government election. That would be a problem. That would mean you're no longer in a democracy. There's no longer, you know, some notion of the people rule.

Starting point is 01:17:30 You might be in some different type of a network. You might be in a monarchy. You might be in a government controlled by an elite few. And that is the difference between running a node. It gives you the ability to vote in the network itself. Take, for example, if two big entities like Coinbase or Lido had like the Army march in, even though Lido is actually 24 people, but say, for example, there's one person. The Army marches in, holds a gun to these people's heads and say,

Starting point is 01:17:58 hey, install this new client on your validators and make the Ethereum blockchain update to this client. think of like nodes as like minority power. So all like two thirds of Eastakers have a gun to their head say, hey, install this OFAC version of Ethereum. And like now we have two thirds of proof of sake validators going in that direction. It's the nodes that don't install that software that actually have the say. Because then we'll have a chain split and the community is going with the non-OFAC version of Ethereum. And that version of Ethereum will win if the community says it will.

Starting point is 01:18:34 and the community says that it will by running that node. And it's the same reason why Bitcoin 1 versus Bitcoin Cash in 2016, 2017, is because the Bitcoin community chose to run the Bitcoin as we know it, node software, and also bought that version of Bitcoin and prompt up the market price of that version of Bitcoin. So, like, running your own node is, like, how you have minority power over each stakers no matter the size of the stake. This is a question.

Starting point is 01:19:03 I think that's related. It's from Matt. Why are mobile phones not the ultimate device for solo staking? They're always connected on Wi-Fi or cell. The landline doesn't work in their battery feed for them last hours in case of electricity shortages. What about this idea? Why not stake on a mobile phone? It seems like this would be the ultimate computer for a validator or staker for someone to run their own non-staking node itself.

Starting point is 01:19:28 Yeah, it's a really good question. And there's definitely the possibility of mobile phones becoming staking. And the timing of this question is actually really interesting because we just recorded an episode with Vitalibuterine where we talked about this, where not only can we reduce the ether requirements for staking nodes potentially down to like eight ether, but we can actually reduce the hardware requirements

Starting point is 01:19:49 down to a cell phone. So why can't we do this today? I don't know what the exact bottleneck is. Bandwidth, I don't think, is the issue. CPU power definitely could be an issue, hard drive space, perhaps an issue. But then as soon as we get into light clients, which are like clients that don't have a lot of like data stored with them,

Starting point is 01:20:07 but are still fully self-sovereign clients. Like, then we do start to unlock like cell phone staking. This is a thing. This is a real thing. Imagine if there was an app you could just download on your phone that was just the staking app, the Ethereum app. Right?

Starting point is 01:20:21 It's just so much easier. There's one click and you have it and you're running a staking node on your phone. That sounds pretty badass. Yeah. Well, you, the bigger concern is like, you're taking your phone into wherever you're going, right? So if you lose your phone,

Starting point is 01:20:38 you're going to need to be able to recover those keys. I count abstraction, David, you know, social recovery. We'll get there, all right? We'll figure that out. It's not overnight. One of the infinity problems

Starting point is 01:20:48 we have left in this space. Takes of the week. Let's talk about the first one. This is from Joe Wisenthal. He says, I genuinely think that with the merge now having happened, much of the institutional

Starting point is 01:20:58 crypto space, think VCs, etc. They're now going to turn sharply against Bitcoin. The Ponzi, scams and fads built on Ethereum are now ESG. And this will be used as a regulatory cudgel against proof of work chains. So Joe making the case that because Ethereum is proof of stake doesn't have the energy consumption baggage that Bitcoin does, it will now be the institutional crypto chain. What do you think about this? I mean, this is one of the things we've been saying for a long time. Joe Wisendhal, of course, co-host of the Odd Lots podcast, he, uh, out of Bloomberg. So this is pretty crypto skeptical.

Starting point is 01:21:35 He's crypto-sceptical. Yes, he's definitely crypto-sceptical, but definitely also pays attention, uh, really close with like Nick Carter and people like that, like the academic side of crypto. Uh, but yeah, like Bitcoin has an extremely uphill battle to fight with this whole, like, energy consumption thing. And I don't know how they get through that. Here's, uh, maybe how they do get through that, David. This is a take from Dan held notable Bitcoiner, long time Bitcoiner. I would called Dan a maximalist. And he tweets this, say no to Bitcoin fundamentalism. And then someone asked the question of what does fundamentalism look like Bitcoin fundamentalism? And it's saying things like also immoral, according to Dan, lending is immoral, VCs are immoral, making money

Starting point is 01:22:20 is immoral. This is maybe Bitcoin hardliners softening a little bit, getting more pragmatic. Is that what this is looking like to you? Yeah, I'm actually in email correspondence. with Dan about potentially scheduling a show because I reply to this like, hey, I would love to talk about Bitcoin fundamentalism versus Bitcoin rationalism. This fundamentalism term is new. And I think that's a strategic not using the word maximalist because I think Dan held is, would self-identify as like, I'm fully focused on the Bitcoin ecosystem. Maybe he wouldn't call himself a Bitcoin maximalist in the same way we don't call ourselves Ethereum maximalists. But like other people call us that and other people call Dan held that. So if we do get Dan held on the show, I'd

Starting point is 01:23:00 love to see where he draws the line between Bitcoin fundamentalism and Bitcoin maximalism. Because I'm pretty sure Dan Hell is going to ride proof of work or die. I think that's a strongly held belief. I do too. He's going to ride Bitcoin or die, probably. But I will say this is a narrative pivot, I think, for the Bitcoin Fundamentalist community or the Bitcoin community as a whole. They're definitely looking at this and saying, hey, people don't like us.

Starting point is 01:23:28 You're losing. crazy. We're losing the crowd. Corey Clipston, you're crazy. This is a take from Hayden Adams, of course, the founder of Uniswap. In my opinion, thinking about Ethereum haters as a singular group is not particularly useful. He says, most people outside of crypto-twitter are not haters or like orers. I couldn't give less of a shit about Ethereum, except for how it affects things I actually care about orers. Really overusing the oars meme, but I love it. I mean, yeah, I'm just reminded of that line that, like, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. So, like, a lot of people just don't care about crypto except for the fact

Starting point is 01:24:08 that we're consuming a ton of energy, except a lot less these days. Until we build stuff for them that they care about. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Another take by Hayden. You want to read this? Yeah, crypto people blame others for being anti-crypto, but it's because, one, crypto has elevated horrible spokespeople, yeah. Two, crypto industry spends too much time fighting and arguing both internally and externally for theoretical futures rather than actively demonstrating value in the present. Yeah, I'd say that's an accurate summary. Although I will also say that crypto very much needs to look into the future to see what it will become because there are potential, many, many potential versions of crypto and we need to make sure that we find the right

Starting point is 01:24:48 one. So you do have to look into the future. Yeah, I agree. And I don't think Hayden is saying don't look into the future. I think what he's saying is let's build. Let's build something really useful. This is the call during the bare market for sure. David, this was another take and I enjoyed this tweet out of bank list as well. It says, what's your most cancelable

Starting point is 01:25:07 take? We got a lot of good cancelable takes. Ryan Scott Adams says it's okay to have a bank account. Hey, don't repeat that. Don't repeat that. It's not for the roll-up, okay? That was just the cancelable take. But seriously, it is okay to have a bank account. I have a bank account. David is a bank account.

Starting point is 01:25:22 What's this take from John? Yeah, this is John, and he says, John from Delphi, who wrote that insane reports on both Ethereum's Roadmap and Roll-ups, so very well-informed guy. And he says, roll-ups today mostly aren't actual roll-ups. And one of them will likely suffer a major hack at some point, which will make people question the whole plan to begin with. There's also a picture of a guy dropping a grenade into down a stairwell. It's a pretty good picture. What do you think he means by that?

Starting point is 01:25:51 roll-ups aren't actually roll-ups. Is it because we have some relaxed security assumptions? Yeah, if you want to go to L2B.org, oh my gosh. I knew you're doing it before I even asked. Yeah. So there's all these different risks that we need to like plug. And so there are like Arbitrum 1, optimism, D-Y-D-X, loop ring, all of these things still can be upgraded. They still haven't burned the private keys, right? And so that still needs to happen. There's still like fraud proofs that are needed. So there's like six or six or three. seven or eight different pieces that you need to have complete before you call yourself a roll-up. And John is just saying roll-ups are just like incomplete. They are missing pieces before they can

Starting point is 01:26:31 fully call themselves a roll-up. I will say though, well, he's totally right. Still yet to have a single roll-up having a big exploit. And like almost it seems every single cross-layer-1 bridge has gotten. You better knock on wood, David. Because things could change quickly. I know there was an exploit bug that was found on Arbitrum earlier this week. We didn't fit it into the roll-up, but that happened. So these types of things can happen for sure. And I do think that it is probably true that some of these roll-ups are kind of like their side chains with a path towards a roll-up future, right? Until they fully take care of upgradeability, state validation, validator failure, all of these risk scenarios, they do have some risk. They operate a bit more like sidechains.

Starting point is 01:27:16 Now, the difference between side chains and roll-up is they have a path to get there, the other side, and be fully secured by Ethereum. They actually have a future. They actually have a path to get there. They actually have a future. Let me ask you the question, though, David, what do you bullish on this week, my friend? Ryan, you know that merge video that I made that, like, 15-minute, what is the Ethereum merge video? Yes.

Starting point is 01:27:36 And it got, like, 20,000, views and got us a bunch of new subscribers. And it was, like, very edited. And, like, you know how we are, like, how long are we at right now? We are at one hour and 31 minutes into the weekly rollout? And like we keep every, we keep on talking about how like, yo, we have to trim down these goddamn weekly roll-ups. And then we do it once and then we never do it again. Same thing with the podcast. We record a podcast with Vitalik and we just need to talk about everything.

Starting point is 01:27:59 So it's an hour and 45 goddamn minutes. Part one, part two. Part two part episode of Vitalik because we can't do short episodes. You know how this is a problem of us? Yeah, I know that's the problem. Yeah. Why are you talking about it now? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:28:11 So I've got like four of those videos like in the hopper. Four 15 minute videos. Yeah. Yeah, one's 18 minutes, one's 12 minutes, one's like three minutes. What is Ethereum? What is ETH? This one's my favorite. Why is crypto full of scams?

Starting point is 01:28:25 I'm known to write very long essays. But when you take these long essays and you read them really fast into a teleprompter and then give that to your editors and they make a YouTube video out of that, all of a sudden David's infamously long essays turn into very short YouTube videos. Wow. Yeah. So all that's coming on a brand new bankless YouTube channel. And so this is coming out shortly soon, so stay tuned for that.

Starting point is 01:28:48 This is going to be the hyper YouTube optimized side of bankless, and your boy is pioneering it. I feel like this is the point in the show where we should edit in, like, subscribe to the new YouTube channel with a big button if people are watching this on YouTube. Do we have that capability yet? Is the channel? Oh, shit, you're totally right. No, it'll be out like next Wednesday or something. Almost. All right.

Starting point is 01:29:08 Stay tuned, though. Next week. Well, I'll talk about it next week, too. For all the people that are sticking around. Ryan, where do you bowl, Sean? Just like I already said it, the building, the building that's going on. I've never seen a time where more building is happening in crypto, more developers. You know, the thing that they always say is like following, follow the developers, right?

Starting point is 01:29:27 It's like, if you follow the developers, then, you know, you follow them regardless of what the price is. I mean, people can be bearish if they want, but like, I'm going to be here following the developers. And what are they doing? They're working on the ETH roadmap. That looks better than I've ever seen. episode where Vitalik goes through it coming out on Monday, layer twos, the building that's going on across all of the team, like ZK team, ZK EVM,

Starting point is 01:29:50 happening faster than anyone thought, building on optimism, building on arbitram. Defi, that's being built out. I think there will be a defy 2.0. It was not the DeFi 2.0 that we sort of saw the mean the round in 2020. Yeah, it'll be a real DeFi 2.0, which has all sorts of new ideas. that we've not even contemplated.

Starting point is 01:30:12 NFTs are building. It's all of these new discoveries ahead for us to. Bankless is building NFTs. We're building. So I just feel like when you have this amount of talent and, you know, developer, I keep building the space, like being bearish on crypto right now is like, okay, cool. Like, be bearish on the internet.

Starting point is 01:30:29 Be bearish on humanity. Be barish on software and code. Like, where did that get you the last 20 years? Go be bearish on those things. That's fine. I'll be settling. I love spicy Ryan. I'll be holding.

Starting point is 01:30:41 It's going to be okay, and I'm excited that, you know, there's still a bankless audience for us on the other side of this because we're going to come out stronger as we follow the developers as we keep building. David, what do we have? Meme of the week. Meme of the week. Let's do it. Let's look at this. I thought this was great. So this is actually going to be kind of hard to explain, but we have two dudes and another dude, and one dude is explaining to two dudes and they're out of party. and then the title is when I accidentally use personality A with friend group B

Starting point is 01:31:14 and the solo dude is like, I'm stoked that the Ethereum Proof-of-Stake upgrade was successful looking forward to tracking my staking yields over the next few weeks and then the other two dudes who are both wearing football sweatshirts saying proof of what?

Starting point is 01:31:26 What the fuck are you talking about? Excuse the French. And then Bankless, the Bankless Instagram DMs this dude who's talking about proof of stake at the party and he goes, Bankless says, hey, how is the party? And the guy says horrible.

Starting point is 01:31:38 And he's just crying. He's just sad. Yeah, I guess this meme works more when you look at it. You know what? It's funny to me because it kind of works in real life. Like, do you have like, I have a whole bunch of internet friends where I could celebrate the merge with, right? But like, I don't have that many in real life friends who just care at all about the merge, about Ethereum. And like, if I brought up to my like in real life normie friends, hey, the merge was awesome this week.

Starting point is 01:32:04 What are you talking about? Get out of here, nerd. Like, so I don't know if this is like you or maybe, David, your life, you've better integrated, kind of like your in real life friends with your crypto friends and they're one in the same. But like for me, it's very much two different groups. So my mom's birthday was the day of the merge. And so I called her up and I was like, mom, do you know what day it is? And she, of course, thinks I'm talking about her birthday.

Starting point is 01:32:30 Oh, no. I hope you were in that moment. I hope you pivoted. Do you hard pivoted to that? She's like, yeah, it's my, and I go, it's the day of the merge. Oh, God, David. But, okay, but my mom remembers when I had like these GPU miners in different corners at my dad's house.

Starting point is 01:32:48 And so my mom being like the liberal environmentalist that she is, she always like, this is consuming how much electricity? And so she goes, and so she goes, what's the merge? And I tell her, this is the day that Ethereum mitigates all mining and it goes proof of stake and we eliminate all of our energy consumption. You know what she says? That's great. I love the movie.

Starting point is 01:33:11 And also happy birthday, mom? And then I wish you're a happy birthday. Okay, perfect. Get ordering on that, David. Well, that was a gift to your mom then. Didn't know that the merge and environmental effects were all about a gift to your mother. But that's great, David. Should we end it here?

Starting point is 01:33:28 So we do have a moment of Zen. And this moment of Zen is coming out of Gabriel Haynes. He's this, if you're not familiar with him, He's this absurdist meme Joker account on crypto Twitter, and it's pretty funny. But first, Ron, it's going to read you some disclaimers. Of course, ETH is risky. Got to tell you, none of this has been financial advice. All of crypto is, so is D.I.

Starting point is 01:33:47 You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot. My friend told me that he's waiting for Eith to hit $500 before he buys. And I said to him, well, Eth only hit 800 because Suu and Kyle needed to liquidate their entire portfolio at the bottom. So it's very unlikely that we get to those numbers again unless there's some sort of catastrophic liquidation.

Starting point is 01:34:22 And he says to me, well, you know what? The macro is getting bad. The macro is going to send SPX to 200. You're a goddamn barista, sir. Not a macro trader. Just buy Ethan, shut up. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills

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Starting point is 01:35:22 roll-ups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the bankless nation.

Bankless - Post-Merge Recap | White House & U.S. Crypto Regulatory | $160M Wintermute Hack | Do Kwon on the Run?

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