Bankless - ROLLUP: 1st Week of April (Visa on ETH, SNL NFT Skit, PayPal Crypto, Bankless & Wells Fargo)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Bankless Nation, it is the first week of April. This is April 1st as well. David, how are you doing today? I'm doing absolutely fantastic, trying to sift through the sea of both real and fake news, trying to put this weekly roll-up agenda together. April 1st is a harder time in crypto than in any other industry. And for those that aren't, this is their first April 1st in crypto, congratulations. We take this seriously in the crypto world. I remember one of, to this day, Vitalik released a proposal to hard cap the ETH supply on April's 1st. And no one knows if it was an April Fool's joke or not, like to this day. So it's a special day in the world of crypto. Oh, Bankless has certainly carried on that tradition more when we get to the new section. Wait, we did an April Fool's joke.

Starting point is 00:01:03 Maybe. I mean, it's up to, it's up to the listener to decide whether it was an April Fool's joke or not. Anyway, guys, you're a new section. We're listening to this on a Friday morning. We hope you are enjoying this with your morning routine, with your morning coffee. We're hitting the market releases news. Take ending with what we're both excited about. The schedule. This comes out every Friday morning. We release it on YouTube. We also release it on the podcast. David, you ready to get to the markets? Let's do it. There's so much to talk about in the markets. All right, David, let's talk about Bitcoin, King Bitcoin. How's Bitcoin hanging in this week? Almost above $60,000 once again, $58,940, fluctuating in that very high $50,000 range. And hopefully we are breaking through all-time highs with Bitcoin sometime soon. Traders are getting bullish. The market is getting bullish. But also, Bitcoin not being the leader this last week.

Starting point is 00:02:00 That is an interesting story as well. All right. We'll tell me who the leader is. Actually, I'm going to flip to it. Is Eith the leader, David? I think Eith is the leader. Still also not at all-time highs, but closer to previous all-time highs than Bitcoin. Ether coming in hot at $1968, $1,968.

Starting point is 00:02:19 A strong show of force from the low-low price of $1,600 that we started this week at. For the entire, this last week, it's been up and to the right. Sentiment really brewing positively for Ether. ETH 2K, my friend. I'm excited to get back out the party hats and celebrate another 2000 milestone. We'll see if it hits this. Maybe it will have hit this by the time you listen to this tomorrow morning. David, let's move to total locked value in DFI.

Starting point is 00:02:50 Looks like I'm zoomed out to the 90 day here, but what it's been doing recently is kind of flat hanging at $44 billion or so. Yeah. And again, really kind of just looking like the ETH chart, especially as ETH. ether prices going up and more ether's in defy. It's basically just an extension of the eth chart as it kind of has been. All right, let's talk DPI. And I hope you tell us whether it's DFI season or not, or maybe we're in this in-between world. What is DPI doing this week? Yeah, DPI $430 at the time of recording. I believe it's down versus ether over the week.

Starting point is 00:03:28 And that's always to me the more interesting metric, DPI versus Eth. But DPI versus dollars, doing a strong show of force. Not as high as its previous all-time high, which I believe is around $480. But still, if you're in DFI tokens, you are doing pretty okay. Doing pretty okay. And someone corrected me. Actually, last week, I think I said there were 10 tokens in DFI. I believe there's now 12 tokens of course in the DPI, rather. New tokens get added to the DPI all of the time. They have a methodology. They have a criteria for doing that. You can read all about it somewhere else. Maybe we'll put it in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:04:05 But the defy pulse index is always changing, but what it tries to do is serve as a benchmark, an indecis for the top defy tokens. And that's certainly what it has been this year. Okay, there's my favorite chart. Yeah. You want to zoom out to that three-month time horizon, Ryan. You want me to zoom out to three months. Okay.

Starting point is 00:04:25 Yeah. Yeah. Still down versus ether, right? So in the cycle of Bitcoin to ether to defy tokens, I think perhaps we are still in that ether, it's still ETH time. DFI season is still on pause waiting for ETH to actually maybe take the reins, question mark. It's been down versus ether since all of March. DPI has been down versus ETH against ETH or all of March. That's pretty crazy. Interesting. So we're maybe in this in between season. We're not quite sure what season we're in. We're just about to

Starting point is 00:04:55 transition rather maybe to Bitcoin, maybe to ETH, maybe to DPI. We'll see. David already knows. What's Chris Berninski saying these days? Look, I'm looking at a sharp. Let me read the tweet first. Our friend Chris Berninski is saying with Bitcoin at 60K and ETH Bitcoin, that's the ratio, looking like it wants to push towards the 200 week moving average again. That places ETH around $2,500. Chris is bullish. He's doing some technical analysis. You know, I think of Chris as a fundamentals investor, but he also dabbles in the technical analysis here in the trading. What's he telling us. Yeah, chart Chris is the best Chris in my opinion. We all want chart Chris and he only gives it to us a very little bit. But yeah, what he's saying is that the ETH-BTC ratio is, from what he's

Starting point is 00:05:44 saying, there seems to be a band that is it is marching up a channel that is going up into the right. And we are on the low end of that channel, perhaps going to the high end of that channel. And that high end of that channel is the low end of that channel is roughly 0.3 ether per Bitcoin. and then he thinks that perhaps we're going to that high end of the channel where there is 0.42 ether per Bitcoin. And again, that puts ether at a dollar price of $2,500, which seems totally reasonable. Just $500 that will get above previous all-time highs seems about right. Yeah, I'm not sure.

Starting point is 00:06:19 So I like chart Chris too, but I also like price prediction, Chris. And Chris has always been calling for like higher highs this cycle, a lot higher highs, right? So like 10K, Eath is not out of the question. Certainly for Chris, he's been bullish the whole way. All right, who's this? Lemonade Alpha. This is somebody from the index co-op, which actually manages the DPI and other associated tokens. But this is index co-op daily revenue.

Starting point is 00:06:49 And what's cool about this is index co-op is a Dow that manages these indices, these sets that are put out of tokens that you can. by like DPI is one such token. And the revenue growth has been pretty crazy here. This is daily revenue growth. And if these assets just continue, you can see that, you know, like the potential for this to keep going up and up and up. What's your kick here? Yeah, I think there's so much dormant potential in the index co-op. I think they have a really streamlined process. Bankless has been talking to them about an index question mark. Hmm, what's going on there? The interesting story here is the ETH 2X FLI token, which is brand new.

Starting point is 00:07:32 The Flii, I believe, stands for a flexible, long index. Yeah. And so it's a single token that has a dollar price associated to it, and that dollar price goes up or down twice as fast as Ether does. It's a single token that leverages a 2X to long position on Ether, the asset. It's got some crazy defy magic behind the scene, so it's got a debt position in it as well. And so when you buy it, into it you are buying into a debt position that is leverage long ether. And this has really

Starting point is 00:08:01 been part of the conversation in crypto Twitter and DeFi trading Twitter. And I believe there is over 10 million dollars allocated into the 2XEath FLI token. And that's been growing up, growing very fast. And so it's already become a very substantial part of index revenue. And I think this is just going to be the first of many leveraged index tokens. BTC next, other defy tokens next. Why not? Let's just get this FLI, you know, model out for every single token. Let's leverage everything. Yeah, leverage everything. Yeah. Why have one X the pain when you can have two X the pain and two X the gain? Of course. I'm sold. David, sign me up. Fli. Sounds great. It's product market fit. It is, especially for this market. Guys, be careful when you're trading

Starting point is 00:08:51 leverage products. Of course. I hope that goes without saying here is not F-L-I, this is F-I-L-F-L-Filecoin. Completely different. So, file-coin, completely different. What is, this is a fully diluted valuation I'm looking at of 383 billion. Billion? Billion. Billion, yes.

Starting point is 00:09:09 Yeah. So here's a lesson. This is bigger than, this is bigger than ETH right now. This is, uh, I think it's tied pretty closely to Eth, which is absolutely crazy. It's, um, I know, I think you're actually right. Yeah. No, you are right. because it is higher than Wells Fargo, or not Wells Fargo, Walmart. It is the file coin. Why did you say Wells Fargo, David?

Starting point is 00:09:29 Well, we're going to get to that. F-I-L, which is the FileCoin decentralized storage protocol, has a higher market cap than Walmart. And this is a lesson in the difference between market cap and fully diluted market cap. There's not very many trading tokens out there. And yet, because people keep on buying them for some reason, the diet, if you take in the market cap of all the non-circulating tokens, you come up to almost $400 billion, making it, I think, like the world's 17th most valuable asset.

Starting point is 00:10:03 There's no way that this is worth that much. This is just, it doesn't make sense. It's a byproduct of bull market froth. It doesn't make sense. Yet people are buying into it. I would proceed with caution is what I have to say with this. Yeah, you know, like fully, fully diluted valuation is an interesting. interesting metric because it can also depend on what the future issuance rate is of the asset,

Starting point is 00:10:27 right? So you have to factor that into. But in any case, the interesting thing about many protocols is that the issuance can be sort of changed. You know, NBA Topshots, I throw a tweet about this, but it's fully diluted market cap with something like 50 billion. Yeah, a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure what it is now. And I know that's some news. But like, make sure you're checking the fully diluted valuation these tokens in total supply and ask yourself carefully if this is a good buy based on who has the current supply and what the future issuance is. 383 billion dollars with a B does not seem like a good valuation to enter in for almost any asset in crypto besides maybe ETH, Bitcoin, those sorts of things that have proven themselves.

Starting point is 00:11:18 All right, David, we're going to get to the news in just a minute, but before we do, we want to tell folks about the sponsors that made this roll-ups episode possible. Gemini is the world's most trusted cryptocurrency exchange. I've been a customer of Gemini since I first got into crypto in 2017, and it's been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells. Gemini is available in all 50 states and in over 50 countries worldwide. And on Gemini, there are markets for over 30 various different crypto assets, including many of the hot defy tokens, and it's one of the few exchanges that has liquid dye markets. Gemini just launched their Earn program where you can earn up to 7.4% interest on 26 various crypto assets. If you're tired of paying fees in Defi, or you don't want to worry about

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Starting point is 00:12:56 With AVE, you can leverage the full power of defy money Legos, yield, and composability all in one application. On AVE, there are a ton of assets that you can deposit in order to gain yield, and all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have deposited collateral. Here you can see me getting a 200 USDC loan against my portfolio. of a number of different defy tokens and ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option, but I could choose the stable interest rate option if I wanted to lock that interest rate in permanently.

Starting point is 00:13:30 One of AVE's V2 features is the ability to swap collateral without having to withdraw your assets. Trade them on Uniswap and then deposit them back into AVE. Avey does all of this for you all in one seamless transaction, so you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of you have back in them. the power of AVE at AVE.com. That's AAVEE.com. All right, David, let's get to the news. The first one, this is hot, ZK-EVM in May. This is ZK-Sync. Okay, so just some context here, right? We've talked a lot about the difference between Ethereum side chains, which are not secured

Starting point is 00:14:06 by Ethereum and EtherToken and Ethereum Layer 2, which is secured. Anything layer 2 is secured by the Ethereum network and Ether token. We've talked about the different roll-up. that are layer two. So optimistic roll-ups is one, Arbitrum is another, there are other roll-up solutions. And then we've also talked about ZK roll-ups. If you want more info on these things, go check out a podcast we did previously from Metallic. I think he explains the difference very well. But the promised land for all of this, even according to Vitalik, the long-term goal is to have an EVM, so that provides the expressiveness of the Ethereum mainnet inside of a ZK roll-up. That's kind of promised land for scalability. And here's ZK Sync talking about presenting an update on that,

Starting point is 00:14:53 potentially a ZK EVM in May. What's this about, David? Yeah, this gets into cryptographic magic, which is a little bit beyond me, but they are implementing a main net version of ZK Sync, which is much more full feature, which is much more full feature than I think we initially expected to be coming this year, which is kind of crazy. Included in this is NFTs, are available on ZK Sync, which is not something that I thought was anywhere close because NFTs are harder with ZK roll-ups. But the fact that this is getting announced sometime soon is pretty crazy. The through line here is there's always going to be some sort of tug-of-war between something

Starting point is 00:15:34 like optimistic roll-ups and something like ZK roll-ups. And each one is going to provide its own benefits and merits at some sort of timeline. It seems like this timeline is maybe getting moved up. Yeah, it's awesome because all of these layer two solutions are competing, they're rushing to get out the door and to develop and build on top of it. So the public test net for ZK Sync is in May 2021, May net August 2021. I haven't looked into all the details, not sure how full-featured it's going to be, but it is exciting. Nonetheless, the prospect of a ZK roll-up with an EVM inside of it. Let's just talk about Ethereum's layer too.

Starting point is 00:16:11 Diversify put out this fire tweet, which just puts a bunch of logos on the screen. and categorizes these logos, infrastructure, you know, wallet, swap, everybody in the Ethereum ecosystem that is working on Layer 2 specifically. David, if I'm a competitor and I'm looking at this slide, right, maybe that gets to our meme of the week. We'll talk about that later. If I'm looking at this slide, right, I mean, this just looks like I'm not just competing with Ethereum.

Starting point is 00:16:42 I'm competing with like the entire Ethereum ecosystem. That's pretty hard. Those network effects are pretty entrenched. What are you getting from this image here? Yeah, the cool thing is that they actually have, granted, they have multiple logos in different spots, right? So loopering, you see that in infrastructure. You also see it in wallets. You also see it in exchange. You also see it in payments. It's actually kind of one of the cool things about loopering is it does all of these things. And so we're kind of double counting here. But it's also one of the powers of composability and just expressiveness in L2. why expressiveness in ZK Sync is so powerful. One L2 can do multiple things.

Starting point is 00:17:24 The network effect, and Ethereum people have been chanting this for years now. The network effects on Ethereum is almost too late. And like I can't say that it is too late because I don't know the future. But like you said, like imagine having to reconstruct all of this stuff, which is being built out in so many different directions by different teams. It's, it's, you can't keep up. Can't keep up. David, you know what I think is a good heuristic? It's kind of the 10x rule, right? Which is like in order to get an ecosystem or, you know, people to switch something, the technology has to be a 10x improvement. You know, Bitcoin's 10x improvement over any sort of store of value in the real world gold. Ethereum, I would argue is a 10x improvement on Bitcoin, right? With its expressivity, its programmability, with this defy ecosystem, with proof of stake, with all of these things, 10x. I'm struggling to see the next 10x improvement. on Ethereum in the current crop, right?

Starting point is 00:18:18 So I do think if there is a successor to Ethereum, it'll probably look a lot different than Ethereum. Like we might not even see it coming or we might not even call it an ETH killer. That's sort of a rule of thumb I've thought. Of course, it doesn't seem like that in the bull run. I think the 10x, the way that we 10X Ethereum is on Ethereum, not replacing Ethereum.

Starting point is 00:18:38 It's something like the app layer, right? If we want to improve of what may it make Ethereum 10x better, it's going to come out of the app layer. That's kind of the whole point. Yeah, absolutely. All right, PayPal, PayPal launching crypto checkout service. That means all PayPal customers, 29 million merchants as well, will be able to receive funds in crypto.

Starting point is 00:19:02 So basically what this is, I understand it. You have ETH, you have Bitcoin, you have like like coin, things like that. You can just use those currencies in your PayPal wallet and check out any PayPal merchant, 30 million of them. almost. How big is this? Oh, this is huge. This just makes the usability of these crypto assets as money far better. Like we can finally, like check out with crypto. This is now the thing. Like, we can now check out with crypto with the PayPal integration. And so being bankless, but also purchasing something on your, you know, while you're just shopping is now done,

Starting point is 00:19:40 done on PayPal, right? So like you can hold all your crypto money and then you can go buy your thing and you can pay with your crypto money. It's absolutely fantastic. Interestingly, they still had the, there's still some improvement that needs to be done, I think, in the marketing, because if you look at the picture that they use, they have the XRP. They have the XRP icon in there, along with Bitcoin and Lightcoin. For some reason, people still think that we want to pay in light coin when we don't. We would like to instead pay with USDC and die. I do believe that they have USDC, but I don't believe that they have die. Yeah, but not going to knock them. Nice job, PayPal. Keep it going. How about some ERC20 tokens?

Starting point is 00:20:14 Let's get those more of those integrated. Like this is the defy Mila thesis, right? Which is the FinTech in front and Defy in the back. And that's exactly what PayPal is building. They're building on crypto rails. ERC20s are coming. That's next. Tablecoins virtually guaranteed after this move.

Starting point is 00:20:33 David, let's talk about this. Actually, you know, I said this whole section was news. It's releases, isn't it? We're talking about all the releases that happened. Introducing Element. David, what is element? Elementify got some big investors behind it. Is this a cool new DeFi primitive, defy thing? What is it? Yeah, yeah, new DeFi Money Lego. And so I tried to figure out how this totally works and I didn't really get too far. So I'm just going to read out the section

Starting point is 00:20:58 that I think is important. The Element protocol at its core works by splitting the base asset positions. And so think of a collateralized lending application like compound or Avey. splitting the base asset positions, ETH, BTC, UCC, into two distinct separate tokens. The principal token, the deposit, the collateral, and the yield token, the upcoming interest. And so there's now two tokens as a result of your deposits. And so this splitting mechanism allows users to sell their principle

Starting point is 00:21:26 as a fixed rate income position, further leveraging or increasing exposure to the interest without any liquidation risk. The competitive activity, along with custom curve built, A custom curve built on Valencer v2 is what drives the high fixed yield markets, bringing liquidity to fixed income yield while minimizing slippage and fees as the discount decreases, ultimately of opening the door to a number of new Defi Primitives. So more surface area is my takeaway. Now instead of just depositing collateral into Avey and then that being a position, now we are more granularly able to, are we talking about the principle of that position or the yield of that position? and which one of those do we want to build off of.

Starting point is 00:22:08 Now we have tokens to build off of each. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, fixed rate income markets. Like we have a lot of variable interest rates. So if you deposit an AVE, right, like, you know, your interest could be 5% one day, could be 10% the next, could be 2% the next, right? Getting to fixed income rate assets is important. It's all part of the movement that we're seeing in DFI,

Starting point is 00:22:31 which is speed running traditional finance. So that's what's happening next. Speaking of which, optimistic Ethereum, layer two, synthetics on layer two, they've now integrated staking. What I think is cool about this is if you look at sort of Metamask, look at this, David. Oh, God, that's so awesome.

Starting point is 00:22:48 You just switch networks, right? So in Metamask where you're on the Ethereum, main net, you can just swap over to optimism. Synthetics is there. Now you can stake with synthetics on the optimistic roll-ups. Like the cool thing about all this stuff, especially with optimistic roll-ups and arbitram roll-ups and this sort of thing is everything that you use today in Defi just works right out of the box. So your metamass wallet, like Ledger, all of the stuff is just going to work.

Starting point is 00:23:20 And it's the same protocols you know and love, but fast. UX is going to be great. So this is in production right now. Synthetics, of course, has been kind of pioneering the way with optimism. And next is Uniswap. They're going to be on there too. So it's pretty exciting, I think, in the world of Ethereum layer, too. Yeah, this little gift is just a really good job of explaining how L2s work.

Starting point is 00:23:42 There's like, it's going to be a contract on Ethereum where you send your money, and when you put it in that contract, it sends it over to the L2. And then you just switch your metamask, you point your metamask to a different implementation of the EVM. One will be the OEVM if it's on optimistic roll-ups, and you're just pointing to a new chain. And the cool thing is that chain has the same assurances that Ethereum does. And now you don't have to use any new infrastructure. You went through the portal and now you're on the other side.

Starting point is 00:24:12 And now your money and your transactions are instant and cheap. And it's the same infrastructure that we are all familiar with. So it's one thing to build out scalable L2s. It's another thing to make the UI and UX seamless. And the fact that we can use and recycle all of our same infrastructure is really awesome. Can't wait. All right. Fay Labs. Fay had a genesis this week. I still in process as we're recording this. Fay is kind of a, it's a stable coin. It's a different take on a stable coin. Similar in some respects to Maker except, rather than sort of collateral being controlled by individual CDP creators, it's actually controlled by the protocol. There's a lot of detail here and honestly a lot of complexity here. We have covered all of this in an alpha leak that we sent out to bankless premium.

Starting point is 00:25:00 members. We set that out the day this thing launched. The cool opportunity, to the extent it still exists, is you can actually deposit your ETH into the FAA contract. You get Faye, but you're also rewarded in tribe Genesis tokens. These are the governance tokens for the Faye protocol. I know a number of folks in the bankless community have tried this out and use this and are excited for this kind of quasi-elements of a fair launch, the governance community getting distributed. to the early Genesis believers of the project. I'm not sure where Faye ends up. There are a ton of stablecoin solutions these days, David,

Starting point is 00:25:39 but like we're super excited to see the innovation in stable coins because ultimately we have to move from stable coins like USDC and Tether to crypto-backed stable coins that are 100% trustless and decentralized. And this new crop seems to be moving in that direction, things like Rye. You said this last week, Rye is being a real, staple coin rather than crypto dollars. So it's exciting to see these sorts of things. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's just fitting in a thesis that what can be built will be built on Ethereum. And this is not built yet. I believe the contract will finish receiving Ether

Starting point is 00:26:18 by end of my Saturday, end of U.S. Saturday. And so you as a listener to this on Friday have roughly one and a half more days to figure out if you want to be a part of this or not. do your own research all right david you ready to get to news let's do it we're starting with finally announcing we're announcing it all right sold out bankless acquired by wells fargo was the headline published congratulations ryan all right so this was published on april first okay april first right keep that in mind and the title of this bankless article I sent it out. Bankless acquired by Wells Fargo. Dear Bankless Nation, huge news today.

Starting point is 00:27:06 Break up with your bank has been our mantra since day one. But today I'm happy to add a slight addendum to that mantra. Break up with your bank and join Wells Fargo. Bankless has been acquired by Wells Fargo. Okay. So I sent this email out because it's April 1st. It's April Fool's Day, guys. Sent this out.

Starting point is 00:27:24 And look, man, I didn't think it was super serious. Like there are a lot of, I mean, hints that this is all a joke. Not everyone got the joke. I know. It's crazy. Yeah. So we've been recording basically all day today. We've had like two big, long episodes.

Starting point is 00:27:48 And I barely got into my email, but I looked at it a couple of times. And my email is wrecked. We got some haters. Like, there is a, there is. So, well, it's a combination. So some people are like, I was mad at first, but then I got the joke, well played guys. That's probably 75% of people. And 20% of people are just like, F you, you guys sold out.

Starting point is 00:28:09 This is terrible. Unsubscribe. Cancel my subscription. I hate this, right? And it's funny because there's another 5% that are like, congratulations, guys. Well done. Pat yourself on the back. You made it.

Starting point is 00:28:22 How much did we sell bankless for, Ryan? Oh, my God. Well, it wasn't even disclosed in this email. in this in this newsletter so undisclosed um can you imagine what wells fargo would want even to do with us wells fargo has been the trope for us like from the very beginning of of of being sort of the um like the bank that we're trying to get away from nothing against wells fargo i actually have a wells fargo okay so do i funny okay and then there's this picture of you standing in front of a wells fargo that like you use as your profile shot which you know that is that is the new leak information is like oh david's

Starting point is 00:28:58 profile picture is actually in front of a Wells Fargo bank. That is true. That was not a joke. That is a real thing. So, guys, if you're part of that 20% who's angry about this, don't be, this is an April Fool's joke. Bankless is not selling any of its media assets. We'll never to Wells Fargo or any other bank. This is not what this movement is about. If you're part of the 75% who got the joke, thank you. I'm not sure. It's too early to know whether I regret sending this out or not. I think it was okay, but we definitely lost some people. And if you're part of the 5% congratulating us, like, I don't know. Why? Why? What is it? Don't congratulate us? We don't

Starting point is 00:29:37 deserve that. Yeah, we don't deserve that. Anyway, it's good to see that the 20% of the bankless community as well is holding us accountable for not selling out on our court police here. David, optimism. Back to real news. Back to the real news. Okay, that was some of the fake news, David alluded to do. Back to real news. Optimism launch moving from March to July. Okay, so we're talking about how bullish we are in layer two, but now here is optimism announcing another delay. Are you worried about this? Well, yes and no. I wanted optimism in March. I was calling it optimistic March. But what I've gathered is that when they do finally release it in July, it's not going to be the same release that we were going to have in March. It's going to be with

Starting point is 00:30:24 everyone. There's going to be a full suite of applications in July. That's my takeaway. That is not something I've verified with the optimistic team, but that's what I've gained from reading through the through lines in their post, is that when they do go live, it's going to be with a whole entire suite of fun things to do. So I will be patient and I will excitedly anticipate the launch in July. Yep. Well, the Uniswap team put the pressure on too. They said Uniswap VC is launching May 3rd and then optimism shortly after, an optimistic version of Uniswap V3 shortly after. So hopefully shortly means sometime in July. And we will see.

Starting point is 00:31:06 Hopefully it's an even stronger launch at that point in time. David, this has been kind of the news of the week. Visa now settling payments in USDC, of course, is a stable coin on Ethereum, settling payments on Ethereum. They're doing this through the crypto.com. Visa card. I guess previously, the settlement of the Crypto.com visa transactions happened in the old traditional banking system. And this is here Visa saying, hey, it's okay. Why don't we just settle USDC on Ethereum on the Ethereum mainnet through our custodian? I think they're using Anchorage as

Starting point is 00:31:44 their custodian. But David, this is just like, I think it's a small step in some ways, but it's a highly significant step because this is the largest payment. company, largest credit card processing company in the world, effectively settling transactions for the first time on the public Ethereum network. To me, it means Visa is becoming a side chain of Ethereum. Of course, people will say, like, that's hyperbole. You can't say that. You're exaggerating things. But this is how it starts, man. It starts with one settlement. And then what's it going to be next? What are we going to see next? Yeah. And it's not just like, you know, Visa would be like, oh, we're, you know, let's get all of our old infrastructure.

Starting point is 00:32:27 We use Ethereum now. Like, no, that's not what's going on. Perhaps that was, that's what happens in 40 years, maybe 20 years, maybe less. But the way that this starts is that Visa puts one transaction a day on Ethereum to settle up, which is where they are starting. And then they are, we'll learn about how they can use Ethereum block space to manage payments. and Ethereum block space is really advantageous for people that want to settle payments. And so it starts with one transaction a day, but Visa will find a way to make use of Ethereum's block space to better suit their offering that they have as a payment provider.

Starting point is 00:33:04 And perhaps that even includes going on to an L2 roll-up or doing just other things. And so this is the foot in the door that will, in my opinion, lead to a just much longer, larger, more rich relationship between Visa and Ethereum. Yeah, I think so too. And some people, when I tweeted this out, said, but what about the gas fees? Here's the thing. A company like Visa doesn't care about a $50 gas fee

Starting point is 00:33:33 when it's settling billions in transaction volume. Think of the Visa network as an entire side chain. And in one transaction on Ethereum, they can literally settle billions worth of, stable coin value, right? So they don't care about a $50 transaction here or there. This is an entire side chain doing the settlement. Yeah. And I think that might come from the misconception that like if you swipe your visa card, then visa has to pay like a $50 transaction on Ethereum. No, no, no, no, no. That's not how it works. When when a 10,000 people swipe their visa card over the course of the day,

Starting point is 00:34:09 then that all gets bundled up and that's one transaction on Ethereum. That's what the visa payments network is. it collects and bundles and aggregates and then settles on whatever settlement infrastructure they have available to them. Usually that's banks, but now it's also Ethereum. Feas is going bankless. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, this is back to something we've said for a while, is that transactions on the Ethereum network will become more and more economically dense.

Starting point is 00:34:40 So more and more value per transaction will be settled. All right, David, let's move to this next. tweet, well, actually, this is sort of a bit of news. So Tether just released some assurances that they are fully backed. This has always been a question. Is Tether fully backed or is it not? Now, this is an independent auditor saying, yes, they are. This is more, I'm not sure who this independent auditor is. It almost doesn't even matter who it is. Do we have to trust this independent auditor, Ryan? That's the point. We have to trust this independent auditor. You contrast that to another stable coin, which is the die stable coin. And all of the backing is is, is basically

Starting point is 00:35:20 transparent and open and evident and auditable on the Ethereum blockchain. And that happens every 13 seconds. Every time a new Ethereum block is released, we have the assurances that die is backed. We don't need auditors. I just thought this was an interesting juxtaposition between, you know, Tether, which is kind of in this in-between place of not really being D-Fi. It's sort of a like a tokenized version of traditional finance and die, which is purely a defy protocol. And man, it's it's so cool that like, you know, we could show the difference and start contrast here. Yeah. With, with, you know, Tether, you have to trust the auditor, but with Dye, you are the auditor, right? Well, like, where does the power lie?

Starting point is 00:36:07 Well, said. That's a good line. All right. David, let's talk about what AVE is doing. They've got some layer two plans as well. What are their plans? Yeah, they are integrating AVE on Polygon, which seems to be like the billionth integration I've seen, like, happen on Polygon. For some reason, everyone seems to really want to deploy on Polygon. It's here, you know?

Starting point is 00:36:26 Yeah, it's here and it works. It's true. And so I guess congratulations to Polygon. And I'm looking forward to moving my Avey position over to Polygon, because every time I do anything on Avey, it costs like $150, which is ridiculous. Yeah, that's no fun. Got to go to layer two.

Starting point is 00:36:43 All right, David, let's talk NFT stuff. Man, do you see the, did you see the S&L on NFTs? This is actually a great explainer. Like, my wife watched this. Like, I was like, if you want to understand NFTs,

Starting point is 00:36:52 don't listen to bank lists. Watch this. This is an Lskit. Should I play it? It hurts. Yeah. Let's watch a short little clip. Now what the hell's an end? Apparently cryptocurrency.

Starting point is 00:37:04 Everyone's making so much money. Can you please explain what's an NFT? I said, what the hell's an NFT? It's like real geek. Can you please help? Son, I didn't understand a word you just said. That's amazing, dude. So it's like, it's like got a version of Janet Yellen and people in the classroom are trying to explain to her what NFTs are.

Starting point is 00:37:32 And like the explanations get increasingly complex, but also increasingly accurate, surprisingly. Like, S&L writers, you guys understand what an NFT is. Maybe we've got some bankless, you know, list. in the audience. But yeah, it's just a great three and a half minute explanation of NFTs for mainstream. So look, if we're on SNL, it means we're mainstream, right? Yeah, but does that also mean it's the top question mark? People have been saying it's the NFT top for like months now, so I'm not convinced. I think the NFTs are just in the beginning of integrating their way into public consciousness. Well, Michael Jordan agrees with you. So Michael Jordan just joined a $305 million investment.

Starting point is 00:38:14 in NBA TopShot. So this is the NFT platform, the NFT train produced by Dapper Labs. So what's your take on this, David? Yeah, yeah, I don't like. I've been cordial about flow in the past, but I'm losing my patience. If it's a L1 blockchain, it needs to have nation-state level censorship resistance, and this does not have that. and therefore these are not NFTs.

Starting point is 00:38:45 And so I'm worried about the future of Dapper Labs and the future of NFTs if they begin to be associated by Dapper Labs on flow. I'm not worried about the future of Dapper Labs because it looks like they are just minting revenue right now. So I think they're doing quite okay. I'm speaking to regulatory landscape. Oh, interesting. I think that it'd be great to have somebody from Dapper Labs to sort of articulate the points

Starting point is 00:39:10 on this and have a discussion on it. Certainly in the past, the flow blockchain has been counted as an Ethereum killer in some ways, an Ethereum alternative. I'm not sure if that's the posture they would take now. But sort of the reason Cryptokitties didn't work, we needed flow is sort of the thing. But I think that there's maybe a more nuanced take, and we should have some folks from Dapper Labs on at some time to kind of explain what Topshots is. One thing I will say that's awesome is they are getting more people.

Starting point is 00:39:43 at least talking about NFTs, talking about crypto. Now, whether they're NFTs or not, maybe you might debate, but it's certainly a gateway of some kind. Sure, they're not NFTs. They're fake NFTs. There you go. This is David Hoffman. All right, let's talk about an Ethereum story.

Starting point is 00:40:00 A real NFTs. Y equals K. All right, what's this story? Yeah, X times Y equals K. That's the Uniswap V3 animation that came out from a people pleaser, which the animation itself pleased a lot of people. so true to her name. And I did a little, I put on my journalist hat, and I went out and I interviewed Leighton Kusack, who helped form Pleaser Dow, which generated enough capital to put over half a million

Starting point is 00:40:24 dollars as a bid down on People Pleasers' NFT. And also, People Pleaser is donating all of that money to charity to help support marginal communities. And so I think the through line here is that this is really just a fantastic story of what makes Ethereum so great. And I give that summary, Ryan, you're scrolling down, to it right here okay x x times y equals k was sold for over half a million dollars because it leveraged the best of what a theory and it has to offer capital formation in the dow a financial asset in the nfti cultural expression in the animation and market values based on human values which is the legitimacy and so right if you scroll down just a little bit more i put a graphic in there that i think it sums it up nicely i use this image of a camera to illustrate what's going on here a camera has a

Starting point is 00:41:10 a lens in it, which focuses light, and it allows people that perceive beauty to focus their perception through a lens and allows them to see an object that they find beautiful. And what Ethereum does is allowed people to all come together in a Dow and focus their capital on purchasing this NFT, which they found had market value and that they wanted. And so the story, the through line here is that Ethereum enabled people to get what they wanted to get done that was aligned with what they wanted to see in the world. And I think it's a pretty cool through line. That's super cool. I'm interested to see what they do with this NFT. It seems like the people please or doubt maybe have the idea of like creating a almost like a digital museum of artifacts

Starting point is 00:41:54 from the early defy history. This being one such artifacts. Are they going to have a capital formation event for further capital to purchase further defy art? Question mark. I know somebody who wants to get in on that. I want in on that for sure. I'll be covering that. All right, David, NFT marketplace OpenC plants.

Starting point is 00:42:15 We're in the NFT section, by the way, in case you guys didn't notice, NFT marketplace OpenC plans to integrate layer two protocol immutable X. Excited about immutable X because this is a way to scale NFTs in a decentralized way. So this in some ways, if you were worried about flow, this is kind of the answer to flow.

Starting point is 00:42:35 It's backed by Ethereum. secured by Ethereum. Maybe flow is a different thing. I don't know if they kill each other. But, but yeah, it's definitely the answer the Ethereum native answer to flow. It looks like OpenC is planning to integrate immutable into their protocol. When we talk to OpenC, Devon from OpenC, they seemed really open to integrating everything, though. I'm not sure that they had a bias in one direction or another. I'm sure they're going to have flow on there. I'm sure they're going to have immutable. I'm sure they're going to have every other chain that has so-called NFTs. Yeah, OpenC is just an NFT explorer, right? And so naturally, as Mutable X, which is very hyped

Starting point is 00:43:11 NFT, NFT optimized L2, OpenC is going to be able to take NFTs that are on your Immutable XL2 and display that as assets that you own on OpenC. So that's pretty cool. David, I'm going to burn through these last ones because we want to get to takes with some remaining time, but Bitcoin, Goldman, is introducing Bitcoin to their high index. net worth individuals. I feel like Goldman Sachs always knows where the gold is, always knows where the money is. Looks like they can see the writing on the wall. Large high net worth individuals want to hold assets like Bitcoin, so they're offering them that service. I always feel like I see a headline like this in most bull cycles. Goldman is doing something in crypto. Maybe they're for

Starting point is 00:43:57 real this time. This is one on regulation, but Coinbase has paid a fine to the CFTC for some purported wash trading. And I guess a related story to this, I'm wondering if you could link them, Coinbase's direct listing, again, they are IPOing. They're going to list directly on the NASDAQ. And that's actually planned for April 14th, which I didn't know. This is like breaking news, I feel like, where this is new as for me today. Are those two bits of news related? Yeah, probably. I'm guessing that Coinbase needs to come clean because it's about to go public. and so perhaps it made the mistake of allowing wash trading on its platform in its early days. And so now it's atoning for its sins.

Starting point is 00:44:41 So it's coming clean to Uncle Sam so it can go public. And I think this is a lesson in playing long-term games. And so Coinbase, regrettably for a short period of time, forgot to play long-term games and now had to pay a fine. And so perhaps this is a lesson to be learned for every young upstarting project or company or whatever. if you don't play long-term games from the very start, you're going to have to pay the fines in the future. So play long-term games. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:45:09 All right, let's get to what's next. This is maybe the last news item, FTX. So that is a crypto exchange, a crypto bank up-and-comer, almost like a Binance Jr. That's what I think of FTX. They are getting their name put on the side of a stadium in Miami. So a major sports stadium. Dude, you know what?

Starting point is 00:45:35 This reminds me of like a banker play. HSBC slap at its name on the side of stadiums, been doing that for a while. Like other big banks do this all of the time. Is this just like a banker move or what is this? Yeah, the difference here is that FTX is an unregulated offshore exchange that is serving U.S. customers in ways that it should not. And so my mind goes to the Icarus metaphor. flying a little bit too close to the sun, Sam Banking.

Starting point is 00:46:04 Now U.S. regulators has definitely heard of you if they're attending that stadium. David, let's get to takes in just a minute, but before we do, we want to tell you about the fantastic sponsors that made this roll-ups episode possible. If you are looking for a product that connects your Fiat bank account with defy tokens and products, you need to download the Dharma mobile app. Darmah is a non-custodial smart contract wallet and comes with a bridge that connects you right into your bank account. Darmah is the fastest and most efficient wallet between your fiat in your bank account and any token on uniswap or even any vault in year. With Darmah, you can get over $25,000 per week into the DFI universe and you can do it non-custodially.

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Starting point is 00:47:36 visa is accepted. It's really a fantastic tool that lets you use Ethereum for what it does best, which is holding and managing your financial assets, but also keeps you connected to the rest of the world's payment rails. Monolith also offers on-ramp services for getting your Fiat money into the world of defy. So it's trivial to top up your monolith card if, ever you need to and your deposited money goes straight into your non-custodial wallet. So your money is never held by a centralized intermediary because your monolith wallet is native to Ethereum. Monolith helps you transcend both the legacy and the crypto worlds because the money that you hold in your monolith wallet has the power of defy behind it. Swapping assets on uniswap

Starting point is 00:48:16 or earning yield in defy is at your fingertips. But with Monolith, so are the groceries at your grocery store or the coffee at your coffee shop. Go to monolith.com. to sign up and get your monolith visa card today. All right, David, you ready to get into the hot takes? Hot takes. Let's do it. My favorite. All right. Naraj has always got some hot takes. He's talking about NFTs, and he's saying, he's like, who's buying all this shit? And this is the response. Maybe you should read it and give me the interpretation here.

Starting point is 00:48:47 Yeah, I thought this was really interesting. This is a really good point. What if art people bought stupid shit all the time, but already, but blockchain lets us see how large that market actually is. Like, wow, actually a really important point. Like, what, like all these stupid NFTs that are that are being bought, well, there's a lot of stupid art out there too. Maybe the only difference is that it's actually just transparent and we get to see all the stupid shit that people buy because it's art. Like, maybe that's what's going on. You're just saying who's to say what's stupid and what's not? Sure. Sure, yeah. Because the market kind of decides, although a job rule, fire festival, painting, that sounds pretty stupid to me.

Starting point is 00:49:24 It sounds pretty stupid to me, but not to draw up. And it sold for 122K. So there's an element of values and I are the beholder, particularly for NFTs. What's this next take? Oh, dude, this was on a great Reddit thread that is actually, I think, inspired by our ultrasound money post and Vitalik kind of led the thread on R-Sash Ethereum. But what's the take here? Yeah, the take is that this is from Bobot on our Ethereum.

Starting point is 00:49:53 is it possible that proof of work was needed as a way to create the preconditions of token value and decentralization that make for a successful proof of stake? This is something that we've mentioned on the bank of those program here and later. Proof of stake is not actually a distribution mechanism. It's a security mechanism. Proof of work is, by proxy of its inefficiencies, a distribution mechanism because Bitcoin is secured by sell pressure on BTC. Miners have to sell the BTC they make, and this is a... distribution mechanism, Bitcoiners like this because it prevents any one minor from just having a monopoly on not having to sell any of their BTC. And so the second half of this take is that I keep, he says, he or she says, I keep thinking back to Netflix spending many years mailing

Starting point is 00:50:42 people DVDs as a way to build a streaming service. They needed an early iteration on the concept that bridged the older, more physical world into the newer, more virtual one. And so, you know, when we were renting DVDs from Netflix and they would mail them to us, it's because literally the bandwidth of the internet wasn't good enough. And so they just mailed us the DVD. And so the corollary here is that proof of work is this kind of old system that's rooted into the physical world that's not yet optimized for the virtual world. But now with proof of stake, we do have that optimization where we can, instead of mailing DVDs,

Starting point is 00:51:19 we can just start streaming. I like the parallel here. Yeah, I like that analogy. I'm with it. I got it. Let's go to the next one. So this is from Jacob from Twitter. So just a reminder, Vitalik coined Ethereum as the Lego of Crypto Finance in 2014. Here, David, I thought you came up with the Money Lego mean, but apparently Vitalik front ran you in 2014. Lego of Crypto Finance. Yeah, Money Legos is more catchy, though. Yeah, it's true. You perfected it. Well done, sir. Second, the white paper calls out defy is the first category of applications for ethereum and i think his point is this critics will

Starting point is 00:51:57 tell you that ethereum's narrative keeps changing in quote no you just caught up sweetheart he says nice a little sassy there um i look man i i've never understood that that that critique that ethereum's narrative keeps changing because no it hasn't it's always been about defy um always from the very beginning like i've hopefully if if you're listening to this like go back and read the white paper. And these are use cases that Vitellic talked about in the white paper, decentralized finance use cases that are coming to fruition. It's come to fruition. Money Legos was predicted in 2014. This has always been partially about a decentralized money system, money platform, a bankless money system. DFI was always part of the vision.

Starting point is 00:52:42 I think one thing that might be true from the critics' perspective is that the ETH narrative, ETH, the asset, that narrative has changed. And to that, I would say, okay, fair enough. When ETH was presented, it was very much presented as an asset to pay for Ethereum transactions, almost like a cryptocurrency to pay for a commodity, the commodity is Ethereum block space. That's changed. But the reason it's changed is because people started using it as money, David.

Starting point is 00:53:14 That's why it changed. You know, it changed because the use case changed, essentially. It didn't change because, like, some mastermind is trying to pull an over on you and sneak in new narratives, right? And look, the Bitcoin narrative has changed as well over the years in the same way. So what's your take on this? Yeah, I think people that point out Ethereum's changing narratives have it backwards. Like, narratives don't lead crypto systems. Crypto systems lead narratives.

Starting point is 00:53:46 When we created the internet as humanity, we didn't know what we created. We had to discover what the internet was. And the same thing with Bitcoin. Like, we didn't know what Bitcoin was at Genesis. We didn't know that there was going to be a civil war between block size over store of value asset or cash payment Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:54:03 We didn't know what that was going to become. We only knew it in hindsight. The Bitcoin narrative changes just as much as the Ethereum narrative. We are discovering what Ethereum is. We are discovering what these things will be. be. We do not create them. They happen to us. Blockchains aren't created. They're discovered. Hatsu quoted that from our Monday tweet. I think he's

Starting point is 00:54:24 actually quoting Vitalik as well. Yeah, Vitalik's got fantastic. He's always at the root of everything, dude. Sorry. All right. Tweet from Hayden Adams, who, by the way, we're having in the podcast soon. Available today. Available today. After you finish watching this. Well, here's what he says. If you're building something valuable for the Uniswop ecosystem, consider replacing venture capital races with a governance proposal. Wow. The Uniswop community will fund your project, guys. You don't need a VC.

Starting point is 00:54:55 You don't need capital from outside investors. You can just apply for a Uniswap fund if you're building something related to the Uniswop ecosystem. Pretty cool. Yeah. The fantastic thing is, is that Uniswap is just allowing builders to not have to sell part of their company. And so, I mean, Uniswap has $2.7 billion denominated in Unitokens.

Starting point is 00:55:17 So if that goes up, then the Treasury goes up. $2.7 billion is effectively infinite money. And so I think this is a great, just, it's part of the whole cool stuff about Ethereum, is what does this enable? You don't have to sell out your company. You can just go get free money from Uniswap if you are built something that is in alignment with what the protocol wants. Let's talk about cool stuff.

Starting point is 00:55:41 Crypto culture is tight. Crypto culture is tight. Why is that? Why is that your take? Why is it tight? What's awesome about it? We have funny jokes. We have funny memes.

Starting point is 00:55:51 We have funny lingo. We have a good time. We don't have to sell our companies because crypto culture is tight. We just apply for grants. We exist on the internet. We have digital relationships. We are pioneering what will be, in my opinion, the future of culture of humanity. and it's going to be digital.

Starting point is 00:56:10 It's not going to be changing the legacy culture, the worldwide culture, because humans are moving online. And so we are pioneering digital culture, and it's really tight. And we do not have to sell to Wells Fargo. And we don't have to sell the Wells Fargo. Who would do such a thing? All right, David, let's talk. What are you excited about this week?

Starting point is 00:56:32 I'm excited about rugging the Fed. And this idea came to me when I was writing the Market Monday piece, which was about the visa settling on Ethereum. And so this is how we slowly rug the Fed. And Ryan, if you want to go into my article, I kind of gave a nice little illustration about what this means. And so Visa is using Ethereum as its settlement layer.

Starting point is 00:56:51 It's using USDC, but it doesn't always have to use USDC. Ryan, if you want to scroll down to that first graphic. And so we have this visa just incorporating itself between its merchants, Coinbase, BitPanda, crypto.com blockfi settling USC denominated payments on Ethereum. But Visa is just a profit maximalist company. They will do what the people want. And they will settle assets, even if they're not dollars, if the people want them. And so all of a sudden, instead of perhaps settling USC, maybe we're settling die. Maybe we're settling Rye. Maybe we're settling an Algo stable coin that has

Starting point is 00:57:32 nothing to do with the Federal Reserve that's not pegged to the dollar. And so this is how we rugpole the Fed. First we get Visa to settle U.S. dollar payments on Ethereum. Then we get Visa to settle perhaps die on Ethereum. And then we get Visa to settle something that has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve. And then if you scroll down to the last graphic, Ryan, then we have a new bankless, one more. Then we have a new bankless infrastructure where Visa is settling payments and it has nothing to do with the dollar or the Federal Reserve. And that is how we rug pull the Fed. You know my response to that is, David? Tell me. I'm excited. Shh.

Starting point is 00:58:09 Don't tell them. Quiet, quiet, sir. This is the secret. Not until our plan is closer to conclusion. I mean, but the good thing about this is, even if you very much believe in the central banking system in the U.S., I'm not sure that we have a lot of those listeners,

Starting point is 00:58:25 but even if you do, let's say you do, you know, isn't it a good thing that central banks around the world now have to compete for the people, right they don't carte blanche get to be our reserve currency they actually have to compete with alternative alternative store of values that the market has created that the people have created from the ground up that's going to be a net benefit even if the the the fed doesn't get fully rugged the fact that maybe there's the threat of them getting rugged like makes a better central banking system too. So even if you're not fully into the idea of the Fed rugpole, like the presence of crypto is going

Starting point is 00:59:08 to hold central banks more accountable. And this is a net good thing for society. That's my take. Yeah, this is an extension out of the sovereign individual thesis where the ability to exit is new. And that is what crypto systems offer. And now we can finally exit from the Fed. Maybe you don't want to exit from the Fed. But like right, like you just said, Ryan, having that option is always advantageous to the people. All right, Ryan, what are you excited about? David, I'm excited about the Hayden Adams podcast. This has been a year in the making, over 12 months in the making. We've been in Hayden's DMs. We've been asking him publicly on Twitter. It's almost become a running joke because it's been like Hayden Adams from Uniswap. He is, of course, the creator of Uniswap when he's coming on bankless.

Starting point is 00:59:51 And he's always been like, oh, the time's not quite right. Like soon, but not yet. It finally happened. We got him. We got Hayden Adams on the podcast. We actually just talked to him today. And this is a long podcast, two and a half hours long, but we go through the entire history of Uniswap from Inception. I think this is going to be a story that the history books will tell, like in line with the start of Apple computer, the start of Microsoft, early Silicon Valley companies. This is a story for the ages. And so we wanted to chronicle it well. So we go through that history. And then we talk about Uniswap V3. which Hayden thinks will be even more important to the world. Like Uniswap V1, V2 has been just the start on this journey,

Starting point is 01:00:39 and he believes that V3 is kind of the next chapter. That's going to send Uniswap into the trillions in terms of volume, exceeding the S&P 500, exceeding NASDAQ, exceeding the traditional financial exchanges. So go watch it. David, I guess it's a question to you. I know you're editing. busy editing after this podcast. When's it coming out? Right now. It's available right now. If you're

Starting point is 01:01:04 watching this on YouTube, go watch it, but not before you watch the meme of the week, which comes next. Shall we get into that? Yeah, absolutely, David. Let's get into the meme of the week. What are we looking at here? Yeah, so Diversify put out that fantastic Ethereum L2 ecosystem. And they also released their Cardano ecosystem as well. Look at it. Oh, it's nothing. No, there's nothing there's a skeleton. because Cardano doesn't have smart contracts. Are we being mean here? Is this sweet meme or is there a lesson here? I wish when I was getting into crypto back in 2017

Starting point is 01:01:39 and I thought about like a poly chain universe of, oh yeah, every single chain will exist. I wish somebody was mean to me back then so I would get some sense slapped into me. Cardano is not a real system. It's not live. It doesn't have contracts. It doesn't have an app layer.

Starting point is 01:01:56 It just has Charles Hawkinson, who is a bitter developer who is trying to, I don't know, grasp for straws for attention. That's my hot take. That's some spice. I mean, the thing about Cardano is that its market cap is something like $50 billion, 30 to $50 billion. So it's a massive market cap. It's being valued as if it is a legitimate threat or a legitimate defy platform. And the reality is like there's, there's no ecosystem there.

Starting point is 01:02:29 There's nothing there. There are no smart contracts there. And I think that the message is like through this meme is make sure you do your own research, folks, right? Like it's very easy to watch somebody on YouTube tell you that some token is going to go to the moon, not tell you why, but like hype it up. Like have you used the system? Have you ever done anything of value on a system like Cardano? If the answer to that is no, if you can't even use it, then you've got to question what you're buying. This has always been core to the bankless platform, the bankless thesis is you only become an informed investor because you use these systems in the real world.

Starting point is 01:03:10 And if you're not willing to spend the time to go use the system and test it out and see it do something of value, don't buy it. You're not an informed investor until you do that. You're just buying into a narrative. Narratives can be dangerous. They can be destructive. That's the message here behind the meme. Yeah, that's the nice message. I prefer the mean message.

Starting point is 01:03:31 There you go. But I won't reiterate it. I already said it. Guys, risks and disclaimers, of course, ETH is risky. Bitcoin is risky. All of crypto is risky. So is D-Fi.

Starting point is 01:03:40 You could lose which you put in. Cardano is really risky. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But thanks for joining us on the bankless journey.

Bankless - ROLLUP: 1st Week of April (Visa on ETH, SNL NFT Skit, PayPal Crypto, Bankless & Wells Fargo)

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