Bankless - ROLLUP: 2025 Market Outlook | Inauguration Impact | Gary Gensler's Parting Gift | Sony Censors Ethereum?

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

This week’s episode dives into the evolving landscape of crypto as we approach a new administration. We discuss Donald Trump’s upcoming presidency and what it could mean for markets, analyze the recent market turmoil despite positive economic indicators, and break down the SEC’s case against Elon Musk. We also explore Sony’s controversial L2 launch and Tether’s move to El Salvador. Finally, some an exciting new privacy tool teams up with Coinbase.  ------ 📣 0x | Start building with 0x v2 https://bankless.cc/0x  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax  🦄UNISWAP | BUG BOUNTY PROGRAM https://bankless.cc/Uniswap-Bug-Bounty  ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  🌐CELO | BUILD TOGETHER AND PROSPER https://bankless.cc/Celo  🎮RONIN | THE FUTURE OF WEB3 GAMING https://bankless.cc/Ronin  ----- ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/base:0x4be6cd4d402fed49eb2de95fbc8e737e8ffd3e7f/17?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 00:00:00 Start 00:02:34 Markets https://macromostly.substack.com/p/bls-jobs-report-recap-december-95c  https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/market-strategies-insights/weekly-market-recap-report.html  https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/15/cpi-inflation-december-2024-.html  00:11:45 Strong Jobs Report https://imgur.com/MxHgOOe 00:18:28 SEC Sues Elon Musk https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1879305674594865284  https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1879322286291054653  https://x.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1879319142303498579  https://decrypt.co/301226/sec-appeals-ripple-ruling-seeks-reversal-on-xrp-classification  00:29:26 3 Days Until Trump Takes Office https://x.com/Polymarket/status/1879957585748734158  https://blockworks.co/news/trump-assembles-2025-cabinet  https://x.com/QuintenFrancois/status/1879093846493012042  00:36:24 What If Kamala Won? https://x.com/BillHughesDC/status/1877740571831193697  https://x.com/katiebiber/status/1877783826442723365  00:41:59 Sony Launches ETH L2 https://soneium.org/en/blog/soneium-mainnet-is-live   https://x.com/a1lon9/status/1879038646231429332  https://x.com/0xKawz/status/1879032105767928026  https://x.com/donnoh_eth/status/1879210463952818472? t=jlmQ8W1KoPgZSEzfP9oq4g&s=19  https://x.com/0xbreadguy/status/1879176334372401191?s=43&t=2ZINVXJQKx6xO_6Wiiu_2g  https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1879560670150017068  00:51:30 Coinbase uses Morpho for Bitcoin Loans https://x.com/coinbase/status/1879902780564951530  https://www.coinbase.com/blog/now-get-a-USDC-loan-without-selling-your-bitcoin  00:53:58 Aevo Moves To EigenDA https://x.com/aevoxyz/status/1879728286093479947  00:56:22 Veil.Cash Uses Coinbase https://x.com/Veildotcash/status/1877827571926053220  01:03:05 An Update From RSA https://blockworks.co/news/berachain-pre-launch-liquidity  https://tether.io/news/tether-licensed-in-el-salvador-strengthening-focus-on-emerging-markets-and-innovation/  ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ 

Bankless Nation, it is the third week of January. It's time for the bankless weekly roll-up. David, we got Donald Trump. He is three days from office from the great inauguration of the second term of Donald Donald J Trump, the first pro-crypto president of the United States of America. So the big question is, what's he going to do? What's he going to do for crypto, David? We're going to talk about that.

Markets saw a lot of red earlier this week. First, it was all over, but now we are back. Yep. Back on the backs of very positive U.S. economy data. So we're going to unpack a little bit of that data and what that means for 2025. Yeah. Also, Elon Musk, he's being sued by the SEC. Like, Gary's got like three days left.

Dude, Gary is shooting some shots in his last week in office. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is his last week. I want to say that's true. He's got four days left. Okay, but like the new SEC commissioner has not been confirmed yet. Anyway, we'll get to that. We'll talk about that. Also, Sony launched their layer too, but things didn't get off.

quite on the right foot. At least it was a little bit weird because they tried to censor some transactions, David. Vitalik weighs in on that and we'll cover that. Also, Tether is moving to El Salvador, another crypto-friendly nation, I suppose. But before we get in, we have a message from our friends and sponsors over at ZeroX,

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Honestly, everyone's size is sized, no matter what your size is. Your size is size. Everyone's size matters, okay? Let's get to the size of Bitcoin on the week. Where are we at for the prices? We are up 7.5% on the week to almost $100,000. We tapped and then briefly got over $100,000 on the week, but we are not currently there at the time of recording.

Yeah, back over 100K. Well, Mark, it's still in flight. Starting the week at 93,000, up 7.5% on the week. Coming in at $97,750,000. It could be over $100,000 by the time listeners are listening to this. Honestly, just open up your app and just check yourself. It goes without saying. These numbers are 24 hours old.

But something that will probably still be true tomorrow is ETH price lagging. That's probably going to not change. Yeah, we'll tell me about ETH price. Starting the week at $3,250 up of whopping $75,000 to $3,325. That's 2.5% on the week for Ether. Well done, Ether. If you sense the satire and sarcasm in my voice, that's because the ETHBTC ratio is down to 0.0334. For a while now, almost maybe two months, the ether Bitcoin ratio started to show signs of bottoming, started to show some optimism.

And now if you look at the ratio, it appears to be in that same old downtrend that has always been in for two years now. Not yet broken through past lows, but it's not. providing the same level of optimism as it once was. You know what? That just feels at this point, that just feels like home. Isn't that what Ben Cowan calls it? He's like, Heath is going to go home and he was totally right. And now I feel like it's within Ben Cowan's home range.

And I guess Heath is just comfy here. Have we given up? So he did call that and it did happen. He also called for the reversal of that. Yeah. And we are inside of that when that reversal window would theoretically happen. It's true. He said second week of January.

I'm pretty sure. I remember that, second or third week. So there's still a chance. Yeah, I guess, yeah. We're home, but we're right where we should be, according to Ben, and now everything is going to reverse, and it's up only. And, you know, okay, so here's a bigger picture. I think a lot of people are feeling bad last week. That was part of the theme of last week's week we roll up, right?

But now, Bitcoin, touching, going over 100K again, feels like the bull market's back on, right? I was like, was that it? Was that the dip that we're going to experience this year? Well, the total crypto market cap is at $3.66 trillion, whereas the all-time high of the market cap was in December. So about a month ago, it's been a month since we had market cap all-time highs of $3.87 trillion, and we are coming in at $3.66 trillion. We're right there.

We are not that far off of all-time highs. I think one of the reasons for that, Ryan, is because there has been a lot of down-market coins that have moved bigly. And I think started to eat into Bitcoin dominance. I want to turn to our movers of the week. Brought to you by Ununswap,

where you can buy sell trade tokens inside of the Ethereum ecosystem and on basically all of its layer two chains. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring this. I'm going to list off some of the movers of the week, Ryan, and I want you to tell me what year it is. Are you ready? Yeah.

XRP, Iota, stellar Cardano light coin are all up bigly. on the week. What year is it? All right. I mean, I know we're in 2025. I'm not that cooked yet. Okay. But, but that feels like it's 2017. We just said that portfolio of coins in 2017, there was a lot of net buying of that, I can't even call it a shit coin because they're doing so well right now. Whatever that portfolio is, it's back, baby. And including, okay, is this true about XRP? I haven't actually validated this, but I saw some tweets about this.

XRP fully diluted value. So that's the price of XRP multiplied by all of the token supply outstanding gives you the fully diluted value. So it's not necessarily what's available and unlocked on the market, but it's the fully diluted

market cap, okay? Is that getting close to Ether's market cap? Okay, so a pop quiz for you and the listener, you already kind of front ran this. So listener, this one's for you. What percent today on the 16th of January 2025, what percentage move away from flipping ether is XRP in fully diluted valuation? Oh my God. I'm not, wow, people are thinking about this, huh? So I haven't looked at

the agenda on this. It's on any end. It's in my calculator app right in front of me. I'm going to go, I'm going to go from like what I would guess at this point, just because it was getting kind of scary a few weeks ago. I'm going to guess we're within 40% of striking distance. We are 16. 15% away from XRP flipping ether in fully diluted valuation. Granted, the fully diluted valuation of Ripple is so inflated. It's almost double of what its circulating supply is because that's just the shenanigans of Ripple. But nonetheless. The shenanigans.

Do you know where the rest of the supply is? It's basically in the XRP treasury somewhere. You have XRP treasury, like Ripple holders. I don't know. But yes, it's still for how old. the XRP is, there's still a lot of, like, illiquid supply that's locked up. But, yes, nonetheless, that is a 16% move away from flipping ether, which is crazy. I feel bad, man.

Yeah. It still counts, though, right? Like, I think if the FDV flips Ethereum, then that counts. That counts. That counts. I mean, when the FDV flipped Solana, like, a couple months ago, everyone was like, that's when we were talking about it then. Ripple now today is almost three salinas.

It's almost three salinas. Okay. And it flips Solana like a couple months ago. All right. So you said we're within 16% of a flippinging, right? That might have been wrong. It might have been like 18 or 20%. Okay.

16, 18, 20%, whatever. It just did 45%, 46% of the last seven days. So it's basically three days and we'll be there at this current trajectory. Honestly. We should just, you know, this whole bankless thing. How about them banker chains though? Okay. What, I mean, I guess we already talked about this, like, when XRP was on a run back in December, but like, this is just, what, retail logging back on the exchanges and buying XRP?

Because, I mean, I know there's a little sort of segment of XRP5 going on, right? Yeah, which I didn't know was even possible, but yes, right. So there are maybe some users, but, like, mostly it's just this passionate group of retail buyers, isn't it? Like, I don't know anybody in crypto who's, like, like, actually in crypto. I'm a XRP believer. Yeah, I don't know anyone who says that. Yeah. Part of this, I think, is that retail's coming back.

Crypto is back on the menu in the United States. This is something that we're going to get into later. But Trump recently said that he would be, he would entertain the idea of promoting United States domiciled crypto companies, which materially boosts the confidence, the ability of Ripple, which is a very centralized organization, which can cozy right up to Donald Trump, pay. Donald Trump, the tax, the Trump tax to be the XRP. Yeah, they could totally do that. So XRP is like well suited to do that. And so perhaps that is also a catalyst for XRP on the work, on the, on the week. That also would explain Hedera, um, Hachgraph, which I think is a United States domicile company. Yes, Hachgraph is apparently Hidera is based in Dallas, Texas. So United States, uh, boomer coins. Retail coins. Retail coins up bigly.

Is Hedera, retail coin? Hedera's always been, I think, thought, kind of niche for. Crypto insiders. It's one of the, I don't know if it's insiders. It's one of those things where I've never met anyone like building in crypto in kind of,

I actually have met someone who works at the Hedera Foundation, who I would call her a crypto native. Okay. That's the only one. Well, I don't get out much, so I mean, and also karate combat.

Karate Combat is on Hedera. That was the one exception. I thought they had to like pay them a little bit. You know, come on build on our chain. Here's some grants. That kind of thing. Anyway, the market's a mystery.

as usual, but we'll continue to report it out. But tell me about the AI sector. So that had a massive loss last week. Has that recovered at all? What's going on? Yeah, so the AI sector market cap saw almost a 50% drawdown. AI agent market cap touched $20 billion last week. And then from January 6th, where it touched $20 billion to January 13th, which was the bottom,

the recent bottom, it went from $20 billion to $11.5 billion. And this is just AI agents. I think people are still coming into consensus as to have. how to count the AI market cap, but agent market cap, I think, is pretty good. So, yeah, almost lost 50% of total market cap down to $11.5 billion. Today, we are at $17.5 billion, which is up 30% from the bottom. So that is just a classic, frothy, high volatility, frontier tech bubble that is fun to play games in. Everything's recovering unless you own ether.

That's the case. Well, let's talk about the wider market then. So the markets tanked last week. We talked a little bit about that. And I was reading some material as to kind of why. And so here's some analysis. This is a macro substack, BLS Jobs Report Recap. And basically, last Friday, the U.S. stock markets tanked.

And this was despite the Labor Department's report that showed we actually had positive data. And so what's interesting about this is we had positive data. We had positive data about the jobs, as in the economy is doing good, and then the stock market tanked. That's what happened. Yeah. It's one of those things where, so we announced we had positive data on jobs. We announced the addition of 256,000 jobs in December. An expectation was only 155.

So, like, pretty large delta to the upside. And you'd think that would be good economic news. But stocks tumbled last week because actually people are like, oh, well, if the job market's going so well. and if inflation's not so bad, then that means the Fed's not going to cut anymore. All right? So good things happening in the job market and with inflation might lead to the Fed actually not cutting, which means more restrictive monetary policy in the wake of expectations that just like assumed there would be multiple Fed cuts.

In fact, the Bank of America is now even projecting that there will be no Fed rate cuts this year, which is kind of a change. What you thought, I was like mentally banking in my head. I hadn't looked at this in the while. At least a few. Yeah, I thought we'd get two or three, right? Especially Trump's in office. He's going to be like, hey, Powell.

Like, do you want to, I don't know how this doesn't probably work like this, but probably it kind of does. You know, cut some rates, you know, I want a good economy. I'm just taking office, you know, it's the Trump economy. Don't you want to make me happy, Powell? So anyway, that's, some of the good news was interpreted as like maybe not so good news. and so that was responsible for part of the market sell off last week. What do you think?

What do I think? Well, I think that is like a good thing because that is a good thing. That means that even though all this surmounting debt that we have is actually being able to be paid back with higher interest rates. So like strictly speaking, that is like a positive outcome for like the country. It's not necessarily a positive outcome for asset holders who are always asking for easy monetary policy. I think maybe it's not bullish.

Maybe we're not getting easy money, so it's not bullish, but it's not bearish either. It feels like this is downside protection while we are also trading off upside, like, risk-on territory. That feels like what that is to me. I feel like we also have some assurances that we're going to see Donald Trump enter office and start just spewing out Trump bucks everywhere. Wait, is that a new token? The U.S. dollar, baby. In four days, we get Trump bucks back.

And he's just going to unleads the fiscal canon. I think this is what Lin-Alden has been saying about fiscal dominance. Yeah. It's like spending from Congress, spending from Trump, is going to actually be the reason why we go risk on high inflation era. I think it's time, Ryan, that we do a macro episode to verify that take because I'm not a macro commentator. I only understand vibes. Good disclaimer. Good disclaimer there.

Just in case all of that was complete garbage and none of that it comes true. Well, we got more to talk about, including Trump and the Trump bucks, but first, we've got to tell you about the SEC's last stand. They were suing Elon Musk this week because of Twitter. They are suing Elon Musk. They are suing him. Yeah. And also, they're trying to get XRP reclassified as a security. I guess that's why XRP is up 46%.

So we'll talk about that. And also, Sony's layer two. So Sony released a layer two that we'll talk about. and they're already trying to censor things, but they weren't successful in that. We'll talk about all that and more, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors

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bug bounty. Head to the link in the show notes to dive in and participate in the Uniswap V4 bug bounty. All the details from eligibility and scope to the rewards are there. And we're back with everyone's favorite headline, the SEC sues Elon Musk. man, we should have brought up the tweet of me, Elon Musk saying, I do not respect the SEC. He said that a while ago, right? He said a number of years ago. And so this is kind of that same arc, though, is like the Elon Musk and the SEC have had beef.

And so, like, I'm going to talk about the details of this suit against Elon Musk and the charges. But really, like, the SEC and Elon Musk have just beefed. They're just beefing. They're just beefing. And this is the latest in that episode. So on the 14. Can I be honest with you for a second, David? It's like, I also do not respect the SEC.

I also do not respect the SEC. There are members of the SEC Commission that I do respect. And some people inside of that organization that I'm sure are respectable people. But by and large, the current leadership is like not respect. The current direction. Yeah. Uh-huh. But, but okay, so Elon Musk.

And by the way, some of the context for this too, I saw some of this on Twitter. If you go to other spots on Reddit, it's basically you see sort of the population. A lot of people cheering this on. Because what it looks like to outsiders is basically billionaire, cutting corners. Who bought Twitter, supported Donald Trump. Bought Twitter.

Change the Algo. Yeah, evil alt-wreck guy. And now here's the good SEC trying to rein this like robber baron. Good guy Gary Gensler. That's what they all say. And they clap for it. And that's kind of the simplicity of the message.

And like honestly, I don't know the details of this case. Maybe you'll give some details and talk about it. But like that's kind of part of the mainstream narrative. You're either like a pro-Elon Musk guy or you're an anti. And if you're an anti, then you're cheering on the SEC. You're like, go get them. That's what seems to be like going on in the public sentiment anyway. All right.

So here are the details. The SEC said in a January 14th filing in a Washington, D.C. federal court that Musk's late disclosure, his too late disclosure of his Twitter stake, allowed him to continue purchasing shares at artificially low prices and underpay by at least 150 million for his shares that he purchased after his beneficial ownership report was due. So they're saying that he's tardy on a report about shares that he held and was able to artificially suppress the price. The SEC said that Musk started purchasing Twitter stock in early 2022 and owned over 5% of Twitter's

outstanding common stock by March 14th of that year. Musk should have filed a report disclosing his Twitter holdings with the required 10 days after he owned more than 5% of the company's stock. but he did so 11 days after that report was due that he did it on April 4th, 2020. He then bought Twitter for $44 billion on April 25th, 2022. The SEC said that day, the day of the report, Twitter's stock price increased more than 27%

over its previous day's closing price. Musk responded on Twitter, which he owns now, totally broken organization. They spend their time on shit like this when there are many actual crimes that go unpunished. Well, I do feel like there are many actual crimes. that have gone unpunished. Musk's lawyer, Alex Shapiro,

told Coin Telegraph, one of our crypto-native media organizations, the SEC's multi-year campaign of harassment against Mr. Musk culminated in the filing of a single-count tiki-taki complaint against Mr. Musk. Today's action is an admission by the SEC that they cannot bring an actual case. Mr. Musk has done nothing wrong, and everyone sees this for a sham for what it is. So the SEC is asking for a jury trial and Musk to pay the disgorgement of his unjust enrichment along aside a civil penalty.

So if he does pay disgorgement for his unjust enrichment, who is he paying? Who does he pay? The SEC, right? The SEC? Yeah, I think so. I think that's right. I think that's right. By the way, did you say tiki-tack?

I've not heard that term. Mr. Musk culminated the filing of a single court. Tiki-Tack complaint. What is it tic-Tac complaint? I feel like that's a legal term somehow. Maybe. It sounds like a small fry kind of complaint Like it just like incidental details

Is that what that means? Well, if you, I'll tell you why If you Google TikiTac complaint into Google, it comes up with SEC Sues billionaire, you get on my It's all recursive. Dead internet through it.

All right. So what's interesting about this is like, let's see, it feels like it's kind of incidental like they're trying to smack musk down for being tardy. Maybe it's more significant than I really know. maybe this is a real breach and infringement,

but the timing is really interested. Interesting, right? It's like, what, four days? Four days, five days. Six days. Six days before Gensler is heading out. Yeah, so that's kind of funny. And speaking of funny things that Gensler is doing on his way out. That was not it.

That's not the only thing the SEC did. Well, tell us about the other one. Gary Gensler's reign. Okay, so remember, Ryan, when we were in the depths of the bear market, and everything was just looking terrible for us, and we had no bright light at any sort of tunnel. We did not have the Bitcoin ETF. We did not have BlackRock even filing for the Bitcoin ETF.

What happened, the thing that started to give us a glimpse of hope is that there was this court case that Ripple won against the SEC that restated what makes crypto assets into securities or not, where the position of the SEC was anything that was bought or sold on in exchange, secondary markets, is a security. Basically every token. Every token that's ever traded, basically. on card. Yeah.

And what happened was that a judge ruled that initial agreements to sell bundles of XRP off-chain, like just manual paper agreements to sell it to banks or whoever, these like partnerships from, from Ripple, those were securities, initial sales of XRP. The contracts. Like the contracts for the sales. Actual contracts. Yeah. But on-chain decks transfers or any transfers on any centralized exchange did not constitute a

security transaction. Like the token itself is not a security base. The token itself. Buying or selling XRP on Coinbase on Binance did not constitute the fact that that made that thing a security. At this time, Ripple had been removed from Coinbase. It had been removed from Cracken. It had been removed from all of the exchanges because the SEC had ruled Ripple to be a security. And this undid that. And this was the first glimpse that kicked off the upwards price movement of 2020.

23 was up, right? I think so. 2023 and 2024. It was the first glimmer of hope. The SEC is. asking for a repeal on that securities classification. Just, again, five days with Trump coming into office in five days. That's so funny.

They're trying to take it away from us. The thing is, Trump is just going to come into office and say, no. No. Okay, so this is a report from Reuters that says, commissioners Hesterpers and Mark Ayuda are weighing in initiating the process that would ultimately lead to guidance or rules, clarifying when the agency considers a cryptocurrency to be a security and reviewing some crypto enforcement cases pending in the courts, two of these people reported.

In the absence of Gary Gensler, who is bye-bye Gary in three days on the 20th, then Hesser Purs and Mark Ayuda weigh in and Trump's new SEC leadership says they're poised to kickstart a crypto overhaul, which includes expecting to fall back on potential new regulations and to kick off other positive crypto changes and freezing some enforcement actions. Basically, Command Z on probably everything that we just reported on. I totally think so. And including stuff that we didn't report on, but it's out there. So there's a big question of when Trump takes office, what is he going to do?

He's branded himself as the pro-crypto president. He's wrote some checks, let's say, to us on the campaign trail with respect to promises. And so what's he going to do? What's even going to do day one is a question. One thing I think he's going to do, David, is dismiss all of the frivolous. case from the SEC. And remember, it was like seven different U.S.-based crypto companies that got Wells notices in 2023, late 2022, 2023, Uniswap, Crackin, Coinbase, Robin Hood, I could go on. I think that those things probably evaporate. One other thing that was on the menu as well,

which this is still in the rumor phase. Okay. So some of what we're about to see, we'll see. We'll see next week. Some of this is speculation. But here is a post that says Trump receptive to the idea of a reserve with coins founded in the U.S. Okay? So you know that idea of a strategic Bitcoin reserve? And like he announced that at the Bitcoin conference last summer and the crowd goes wild, right? He's probably thinking, well, like, why does it just have to be Bitcoin? Maybe we just have a Bitcoin plus also coins founded in the U.S. strategic reserve.

grass-fed organic United States coins. Yeah, because why not? People will love that, right? Investors will love that. We love American manufacturing. All the coins that are manufactured in the United States need to go into the United States. Ninted in the U.S. All right.

So again, this is speculation, but this is Tier 10K, a post with a clip here that says, while many in the cryptocurrency community have been cheering on pro-crypto executive orders, Trump is expected to issue. One idea is causing more controversy. That's the idea of an American First Strategic Reserve that could prioritize digital coins found in the U.S. like Solana, USD coin, a stable coin. Doesn't even make sense. And Ripple, XRP.

In recent weeks, Trump has met with the founders of these coins and sources say is receptive to the idea. So I'm sure Brad at Ripple has met with Trump. He's like, you know what would be a great idea, Donald Trump? You know it would be a great idea. You like Bitcoin, right? Well, like, XRP is like Bitcoin bit fast. Us oligarchs. It's Bitcoin for the oligarchs, you know?

Just like put it in the reserve. I don't think it would take very much for Trump to be like, oh, okay, sounds like a good idea. Anyway, this is all speculation. We don't know if it could happen. Like, what do you think about this idea? Do you think this could happen? I think this is like news that is, God, me, I don't know, man. News that like, I think you're right.

I think Trump meets with the United States people and say, I like things in the United States from United States companies by United States leaders. I like those things. And that can get reported as Trump is receptive to those ideas. Like whether or not we are actually putting Ripple into a strategic reserve, I think is there's a huge leap there. But like this is some classic. This is a thing that would pump Ripple because this is what Ripple holders love. Do you feel like there's an element, a little bit of an element of like, okay, I'm like glad we have a pro crypto president, but like, oh, too much, too much. Like, like, not this pro crypto. I mean, I don't know if we want. XRP is part of a strategic reserve for the United States.

Like, we could go a little far on this, I think. We absolutely could. I'm kind of just like fatigued. Whatever. You know, one thing I think he actually will do, and this is a good report, something we totally need. This is breaking Trump to repeal Sab 121 on day one. Remember Sab 121?

That was Gary Gensler's little loophole. That band... Why banks can't custody crypto. Yeah. Any bank in the U.S. can own like custody crypto and that needs to be repealed. Biden, this got through both both like houses in Congress and then Biden vetoed it. Trump could just like reverse that day one. I sort of expect that that could happen. And then we also have the cabinet ahead. David,

give us a recap on who is going to be in the Trump cabinet who's projected to be here to set some of this policy. Yeah, this is currently underway. So Trump cabinet positions are currently going through the process. A lot of people who are currently getting reviewed aren't just not necessarily related to crypto. Starting with the Treasury Secretary, the replacement for Janon Yellen, right? Janet Yellen, the person who I am suing? She's going bye-bye. Unrelated to that fact. Scott Besant. Who is Scott Besant? He's an investor and hedge fund manager, partner at Soros Fund Management, founder of Key Square Group, a global macro investment firm. Besant was a major donor, fundraiser and economic advisor for the Trump 2024 presidential campaign, recognized for his

progressive stance on crypto. He has described digital assets as an integral to economic freedom and innovation, emphasizing that crypto is about freedom and the crypto economy is here to stay, which has generally aligned with Trump's goal to position the United States as a global leader in crypto. If he is confirmed by the Senate, Benet, Besant, fun fact, would also be the first openly gay secretary of the Treasury. Cool. Unrelated to crypto, but I thought that was interesting. And so that he is probably going to get confirmed. Polymarket is coming in at a, what is this? A whopping 98% chance. So that's basically assured, according to Polymarket. There's also the SEC chair. The Senate Banking Committee has not yet scheduled SEC Chair hopeful Paul Atkins confirmation hearing. But there's just widespread Republican support from Atkins. He's considered. to be a shoe in. In the meantime, Trump will either select Hester Purse or Marka UA UAA to serve as acting chair. We will probably see the timing on this, if not this week, then next week, probably.

CFTC chair. Trump has also still not picked a name for the CFTC chair. Current chairman, Rosson Benham, will step down on Monday. Rossum has not been our friend. He has pursued the crypto industry with a number of actions. Caroline Fam or Summer Messinger, who are both Republican CFTC commissioners are expected to head the agency in the interim. The shortlist is CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintends, former CFTC Commissioner who went to A16 Z Crypto's policy team. Former bankless guest. Former multiple bankless guest and permissionless host, what he's most famous for, obviously. Or it could be former agency official Josh Sterling, or it could be attorney Neil Kumar or it could also be current commissioner Summer Messinger. Also former bankless

guest. Also former being close guess. I think all of those outcomes, I think, are pretty good. Summer, I think, is great. Brian Quintends, I'm the most familiar with. I hope it's one of those two. I don't know Josh and I don't know O'Neill as well, but I think they're all good. Lastly, there's others as well, but as it relates to crypto, Howard Lutnik is Trump's nominee to run the Treasury Secretary of Commerce. And this is the latest cabinet contender to have a confirmed hearing held up by paperwork delays. So that's what's going on. I don't know how significant that is, but they're like paper. work delays. That's why we don't know the date, but he is going to be, he is the nominee for Secretary of Commerce, best known as the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, which acquired a 5% ownership stake in Tether, valued at 600 million. And then a date for Lutnik's hearing, like I said, has not yet been announced. So cabinet nominees are currently undergoing Senate confirmation hearings this week and next week, with many others still to be scheduled. We will probably do the segment again next week as well to update you all.

Look, man, that is a pro-crypto roster, all of those names on the list. One other name, like we should probably add, is the crypto and AI czar. You know, the crypto-Zar. Not a cabinet position, but like a advisor. Advisor. With influence, with like probably some ideas in terms of like what policy Trump should implement via executive order. So that's the executive branch. That's what you like Trump will kind of assume.

The other good news actually is on the legislative side. So we also know that that Republicans have. taken over the Senate and also the House. Representative Tom Emmer has been appointed as the Vice Chair of Digital Assets Subcommittee. So this is a subcommittee responsible for digital assets, finance, AI, that kind of thing. And he says, with President Trump in the White House and Gary Gensler confined to the waistpin of Washington. Wow. I wonder where they keep the waistbin of Washington. We have an excellent opportunity to ensure that the future of digital is guided by Americans with American values.

I look forward to working with Chairman French Hill and Representative Brian Stile. Style, I'm not sure. And the rest of our colleagues to foster an environment where digital asset innovation can thrive. So there you go. Okay, so you've got the executive branch unwinding some things, right, like making some other things possible. The big news on the legislative side, as Chris Dixon would say, legislation is how you get things actually like hard-coded into this operating system. into the software of governing the United States of America.

Out of the mempool and into the blockchain. Yeah, that's how you get things to kind of like stick and be lasting and be multi years that companies can actually build on top. So legislation is really important. And hopefully we get some key legislation, including stable coin legislation, possibly this year. You know, remember the Fit 21, the difference between a commodity and the security. Hopefully you can figure that out in this Congress and do some other great work. So, man, things are really going in a positive direction for crypto and a complete 180 from what 2022 and whatever 2023 was.

Yeah. Tom Iimer also shared his vision for what a Republican-led government could look like as it relates to crypto in 2025, prioritizing market structure frameworks like Fit 21, restrictions on central bank digital currencies and promoting global dollar-backed stable coins, which I enjoy all three of those things. I think those three things are great. Yeah, I also enjoy them. You know what? There's another side of this, too, which is probably the best thing about this outcome is the bullet that we dodged. Okay? Because I think there is a more than fair chance that a Kamala Harris White House would have continued the Biden policies, right?

Not 100% certainty. So there were moments, Ryan, where I was hopeful that Kamala was more crypto positive than she was letting on. Yeah. Was I naive? Was I being naive? Look, I'm not going to comment on my co-host's, you know, like, level of, you know, savvy or naivety with respect to politics. Because, like, who really knows? But we saw no evidence during her campaign that she was going to soften any of her crypto policies.

And she had ample opportunity. No real evidence. Yeah. We were like, Kamala Harris. Come on the bankless podcast. Let's talk. Do something. No answer.

No answer. Do anything. So an example of one of these bullets that would have maybe. continued to fire in a Kamala Harris administration was this. So this is an interpretive rule drop that actually happened last week. So again, kind of last minute coming out of the Biden administration, an interpretive rule drop from an organization, like a agency called the CFPB. So it's the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, I believe, right? So this is kind of like an Elizabeth Warren type of instituted institution. Anyway, what they want to do is apply the similar rules for

non-custodial crypto wallets as are on the books for banks, basically making them liable if something bad happens to the assets within those wallets. Okay. So let's say you had funds stolen from one of your Metamask wallets or your phantom wallet or something like this, or your uniswap wallet. Okay. So that would be the fault, the lie, who would bear that liability? Not you, but the wallets themselves. Okay. So if there were There's a fishing scam. If you lost your seed phrase, if something bad happened. If anything happens.

Pretty much anything. It's pretty broad with respect to liability. It's actually, it's not the user's fault. It's not your fault. It's the wallet manufacturer's fault. Okay? So it's like metamass fault. Uniswap's fault.

It would be rainbow wallets. Whoever gave you the wallet, whoever issued the wallet originally is their fault. And how many... You know how many reasons that doesn't work? Well, why? Yeah, it's crazy. I can take my private key. from Metamask.

I can put it into my Uniswap wallet. I can put it into my Phantom wallet. And then maybe one of those things is the reason why there's exploit. But the money in my Phantom wallet got drained because my Metamask got exploited. So that doesn't make any sense. Among many other reasons, if that's the case, then they're just going to stop me from exporting the private key so that they can have higher control over it. So every wallet becomes a custodial wallet.

And that's not even going to happen because they're all just. going to shut down because they can't take that liability. Yeah, they really can't take that liability because, like, lots of, there's lots of ways for a user to be irresponsible with their private keys or click a fishing link or, like, do something stupid. And that can't be the wallet's responsibility. That's just insane. Like, you wouldn't be able to run a non-custodial wallet in the U.S.

It's like... It's the same thing as making open source software illegal. Yeah, or think about this in terms of, you know, an analog. So let's say you buy like a nice leather wallet, you put it in your pocket. you lose that leather wallet one day or someone steals it. Okay. Is it the wallet manufacturer? Is it their fault that this happened? Can you drop a lawsuit on them? Should they have any liability for you losing your wallet at the bus or at the coffee shop or big nanny state vibe?

Anyway, that's the kind of stuff that was happening even as late as last week, which I anticipate would be reversed under Trump administration. Man, it would have been a rough next four years if those kind of Shannon again. continued. One last thing on the political note, something that's technically not crypto, but crypto adjacent, that I'm going to keep an eye on. Donald Trump Jr. has announced that he has joined Kalashi, the prediction market competitor to polymarket as a strategic advisor. There was a quote on Twitter says, the Kalashi team has worked hard, sued the Biden administration, and achieved the impossible feat of becoming the first legal prediction market in the United States. I'm now

excited to be a part of what they are building. Now it's time to trade on whether Biden is going to part in Fossey or List Trini. Law. I did like, they let they, I don't necessarily like this. On, uh, the first part of this tweet, the tweet says on election night at Mar-a-Lago, while biased consumer outlets called the race of coin toss, my family and close friends used the prediction market Kalashi to know we won hours ahead of the fake news media. Now, Ryan, this might surprise you, but I was not at the Mar-a-Lago on, uh, election night.

but I heard a very similar story that it was actually Polymarket that they had on the TV screens now they could have had both. I'm not saying that this is a lie. I'm just saying the last time I heard this story it was actually Polymarket, not Kalashi that was being displayed at Mar-a-Lago

and it was actually they called Shane to tell Shane that they appreciated. That is the last time I heard the story. Shane would be the co-founder of Polymarket. Of Polymarket, yes, yes. Well, it's like no question that prediction markets are a valuable thing

and that they are kind of going mainstream and getting more support. So I guess that's the positive. I would rather Polymarket win than Kalashi because it's based on crypto. Polymarket is the reason why prediction markets have gone mainstream. And then Kalashi also exists too. Yes.

Well, maybe the Polymarket didn't give up an advisory seat for one of the Trumps, which maybe that's a net EV good move for companies to do that. Maybe. Go meet in Mar-Lago, like right now. All right, moving on into some crypto-native news, almost totally crypto-native, not completely totally crypto-native. Sony has launched the SonyL-2, a little bit of controversy. It's an O-P-Sack layer two. This has been announced a while ago. But this is now the Sony, Sonium L2, O-P-Sack L2, that I believe is also part of the super chain, could be wrong, is now live.

There's a mainnet out there. Sony wrote in a statement, in this early phase, we aim to maximize creators, creativity, benefits, and fan engagement on chain. By protecting content rights and creating fair profit sharing mechanisms, we empower them to thrive across both digital and real worlds. Their test net, the Sonium Minato, was apparently very popular. 32 projects were selected from over 1,700 entries for the Spark Incubation Program for the TestNet across entertainment, gaming, social platforms, finance, and the state that they have partnerships with Sony Pictures, Sony Music, and Sony Music Publishing, makes sense, that might use NFTs to grant fans access to exclusive content.

Like, this would be like if NFTs granted Amazon Prime video users access to, like, you know, video content, for example. There are two projects on Sonium, a fan marketing platform that simplifies NFT issuance, data analysis to enable brands, creators, and enterprises to use NFTs for fan engagement and marketing. Wow, what year is it? Sounds like 2021. That's going to launch in February. Sure. There's also S-Blocks Exchange at Dex with his own mobile app that offers Bitcoin rewards for new accounts, trades to celebrate the launch alongside an NFT distribution campaign in 2025, available only in Japan.

There were mixed reactions from crypto Twitter. One of the founders of Pump.fun wrote, Sony's new Ethereum layer two is actively blacklisting meme coins they don't like instead of instantly nuking everyone's position to zero. what makes you think that the other layer twos won't do the same if push comes to shove. Don't take your freedom for granted. Another user pointed out that Sonium has frozen some of the deployed contracts and rugged users for over $100,000 in either to purchased meme coins. The details of this I would like to see verified, but I think the general vibe is that they are expressing that there is like centralized top-down power

on this like Sony layer two. Okay, okay. So like what I understand is like first of all, Sony doing a layer two, Big corporation launching a layer two. That's exciting, right? Isn't that what we always wanted the entire world to build on top of our crypto-native systems and layer two's? So from my perspective, that's cool. You know, hard for corporations to pull this off in a crypto-native way.

Let's be honest. But like cool that they're trying, the experiment seems interesting. But now it seems like what they're doing after Mainnet is a meme coin launchpad has sprung up. and some of the meme coins that have permissionlessly been deployed are infringing on some IP, right? So Sony's saying, oh, that's against our terms of service. And because they have a centralized sequencer, of course, as like almost all layer twos do, certainly all optimism layer twos, they are what, like, like blacklisting these transactions and because it's IP infringement effectively. And so crypto Twitter is saying, like, wow, you're already censoring.

this isn't cypherpunk. This isn't cypherpunk. This isn't what blockchains are about. And that's like the source of the two tweets you just read, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, that's correct. The Sonium's director told Coin Telegraph, the restrictions only impacted two specific contracts due to IP violations, like you said.

Users and developers could appeal the decisions and the team was already in dialogue with the project whose contracts were restricted. They are actively updating their materials to comply with policies, it said, if they meet the policy requirements, the contract will be removed from the blacklist. So this does sound like general web to content moderation.

No funds were frozen, he clarified. But I think people are kind of like poking, kicking the tires being like, what are my rights on this blockchain? What are my user rights? What are my property rights? Donna.eath, who works for Layer 2B, tweeted out, since I've seen a lot of bad takes regarding layer 2s and their censorship resistance, here's how I bypassed Sonium Sequencer and bought a banned token with a forced transaction through the layer one. And they went on to describe how to buy this like censored token through the layer one,

through like the hatch door. Crafted a call data, I called the swap, did the thing. It's technical. It's not going to be for the end user. But you can do it, which is always the point of layer two's. So like this is kind of in my mind, the point of layer twos. They can come in all sorts of shapes and flavors. And this is an extremely corpo layer two to do extremely corpoh.

things, which I think is totally fine because there are other more cypherpunk layer twos out there where you can trade your racist meme coins if you so choose or your IP meme coins if you so choose. And so that's always been the promise of layer twos. They're a rainbow. They're a kaleidoscope. You can get any source of flavors.

And this is one that's built by Sony to do IP-Soney things with their Sony IP. And so... What are your property rights? So your property rights on sonium are basically you have the ability... If they're centralized sequencer tries to your funds, like freeze your funds, then you have the ability to withdraw to

maintenance. So they can't steal from you, right? You can also do normal transactions on the Sony layer two. You just have to go through not the sequencer, but through the layer one smart contract. Do what Dono.com. You just did, basically. So you, they can still censor your transactions in real time. They make it difficult for you.

So you have to kind of go through the layer one. You kind of need some skills and experience. So your property rights are nerved, but not completely limited. And that's the trade-off of a layer two with a centralized sequencer at this point. Yes. Yes. Correct. Yeah. So. And for those same reasons, other layer twos have complete M-EV protection. And that's the same trade-off, where they haven't done any sort of like blacklisting of meme coins.

And they actually just protect all their users from M-EV, like sniper bots and all these other things. These are the trade-offs. Vitalik says, the Sonium situation is a good live demonstration of how launching an Ethereum layer-2 is great for businesses and users. Businesses can make very fine-graining choices around how much control they give versus give to users. I guess we saw that in this case, right?

They're, you know, terms of service and censoring some IP-infringed transactions. Vitalik continues. But whatever rules they choose, that's what the rules are. Everything is on-chain, transparent, audible by third parties. You can make a very close system

where there's no escape hatch and where their operator can edit the state route, but then users will know exactly what they're getting into in layer 2B, and armies of independent internet sleuths will help them. You can also make a fully open system. This is kind of the pluralism that Vitalik has always preached. I think it's been a core value of Ethereum is basically you can make layer two super centralized

or not centralized at all in exactly like the layer one or somewhere in between. And you have that flexibility. So I guess that's a pretty standard Ethereum take here. I think that's right. I think that's right. All right. Coming up next, Coinbase uses Morpho for Bitcoin, loans. What's the word for this, Ryan? What is that called? Defy Mullet, David. That's a

defy mullet, baby. Let's go. In addition to that, base is getting some privacy that I thought I was playing around with a pretty cool app this morning round. I wanted to tell you all about it. And also, Tether is moving to El Salvador. Interesting hodgepodge of topics that we're going to bring to you next. But first, we're going to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible, like FRAX and its FRXUSD stable coin. That's to offer some of the best yields in defy on the frax layer two. It's like Circle, Athena, and Maker all had a baby. so maybe you want to go play with that cool new toy on the fractal layer

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a player, investor, or builder, the future of Web3 starts on Ronan. And we're back. Coinbase allows Coinbase users on the Coinbase front end to get a Bitcoin backed loan using Morpho on the back end. Now, what's Morpho? Morpho is kind of like AVE is kind of like compound. It's a little bit different, but it's a basic you deposit assets.

You can borrow against your assets. You like Morpho, right? I like Morpho. I am currently using Morpho. We at Bankless have a few of our stable coins, a bit of our two stable coins in Morpho. We like Morpho. Good yield, right?

Good yield. Good yield. Yeah, good safe yield. So Coinbase is now offering Bitcoin-backed on-chain loans of up to $100,000 in USC. Again, this is to Coinbase users who are going to Coinbase.com, and there's no wallet in question for these users. Call it Tradfying the front, defy in the back. See it again, Ron? What is that? What is that? Defy Mullet. That's what the Defy Mullet. That's the defy Mullet. Yes. Yeah, it's suit in front and parting the back. Parting the back. Just like a mullet. That's right. Okay, so here's what happens. When a Coinbase customer opts in for an on-chain loan, their Bitcoin collateral is converted into Coinbase wrapped BTC, no cost to the user, transferred to Morpho on base. And the defy protocol then disperses the USC to the customer's Coinbase account in under a minute.

This is all happening on-chain. Somebody just, they don't even know they're having CBBT. They just, I have Bitcoin and I would like a loan. And they get USC loan. They're paying interest. And they just get USC in their Coinbase account. They don't know what's going on. They don't know what base is.

They don't know what base is. Yeah. Okay. So at launch, Coinbase's Bitcoin-back loans are available to anyone in the United States, excluding New York, womp, with plans to expand into additional markets. while Bitcoin is the only collateral option. Coinbase aims to add support for more tokens in the future. Again, all of this is happening on base.

I think this is so cool. This is something that I think we predicted, but that would happen to Coinbase for a very long time. Morpho just so happens to be a Coinbase Ventures portfolio company that's building on base. You can see some of the synergies here. And this is the on-chainification of Coinbase. This is part of their big arc of like, yo,

defy is going to eat our lunch. So let's just do it. Let's just do it first. Let's just cannibalize ourselves. Yeah. I love how excited you still get about D5 because like this feels very 2020 of like, this is what we hope would happen. This is the dream.

This is so, I mean, this is can't be evil. This can't be evil. Absolutely. It's very bullish, very exciting. And just the start, right, of a growing trend that we've talked about for a while here. Talking about a different corner of the Ethereum layer two verse Avo, which for those that don't recall, Avo is a. Layer 2 on Ethereum, almost kind of like call it an app-specific layer 2 because Avo is both the chain and the app.

It is a options, perps, other financial strategies, layer 2 built on the OPE stack, I think part of the super chain that has been using Celestia DA. They were one of the first big layer 2s to migrate to Celestia DA to save themselves a lot of money. Rather than Ethereum DA, right? Rather than Ethereum DA, which was very expensive. Well, they are moving from Celestia to eigenDA, which they wrote from day one, we believed in modular blockchain. Celestia was an incredible partner on our journey. However, as we evolve, we need even tighter synergy with Ethereum security, lower costs, and near instant data throughput. Igen, DA checks all these boxes.

Last I checked, Igen, DA was cheaper than Celestia, had more throughput than Celestia. So this was kind of the big prediction that everyone's making. It's like, well, if they're going to go from Ethereum layer 1 DA to Celestia to save on costs, they're going to also go from Celestia to eigenDA to also save on cost because eigenDA is basically zero-cost DA. And this is what's happening. Yeah, I guess eigen-DA is a slightly better. Well, probably, you know, like, maybe much better for ether the asset than you, because eigen-DA is all based on the value and the security, the economic security of ether the asset.

The reservation demand of ether. Ether needs to be staked for eigen-D-A to work, whereas Celestia needs to be staked. Tia needs to be staked, which is not eth. So this is kind of a win for Ethereum as well. But I think that the DA wars will continue to play out, right? It's like there'll be Celestia, there'll be eigenlayer, there'll be other alternative DA providers, and there'll be Ethereum like, you know,

premium, layer one blob space as well for data availability. Yeah. If this news of Avo moving from Celestia to eigenDA is like, if you think like, oh, like maybe I can delay is coming to eat Celestia's lunch, go check out how much a DA Celestia is consuming because that is also up only, especially with the launch of Eclipse.

Celestia is doing great. And like some people will say that it's all like low economically dense transactions. It's just like it's so cheap. It's easy to fill. That's also the point. That's also the point. Like, yes, we need more block space. So Celessia is also doing well in the world of providing much more DA to the world.

I mean, competition is good for consumers, right? Yes, that's right. This is really cool. I want to read this out and get you to explain it. So veil. Dot cash. This is, I believe, a protocol that is on base. Vail.Cash now supports

Coinbase on-chain verification via EAS, which is Ethereum attestation service, which we had them on a podcast, really cool service. Maybe you can explain, on base for verified pool access. This effectively, I think, means Vail can make transactions

on base private. I think that's what this means. What is this? Tell me how this works. Because right now, let's talk about the status quo, every transaction on base is publicly available. It's pseudonymous, but if somebody knows that you own this address, then they can track everything you do on base. And that's not exactly great for a lot of activities. Right. So in order

to understand Vail, I think it's going to be pretty simple. Start with tornado cache. It's basically like tornado cache. Basically is tornado cash. Add a gating function. So not everyone is permissioned tornado cache. And then you need to have the right credentials to get in through the gate in order to use tornado cash. Those credentials are a wallet that has been given an EAS, an Ethereum attestation service credential from Coinbase. Coinbase says, this is a wallet that has been attested by a KYC user of Coinbase. And so we know who this is. And if you have that attestation from Coinbase using EAS on your base wallet, then you can deposit ether into Vail and enter it into the privacy pool, which is how tornado cash works.

Then, if you've never used tornado cash, because you maybe have more recent listener of bankless and it's been under OFAC sanction the entire time. It's illegal. It's illegal. What happens when you deposit into tornado cash, rest and peace, is that you are given a note, basically a cryptographic note. And that's a note in that sense. It's kind of like a bill or maybe like a check.

It's like a written check. And that note is good for some amount of eth that's in the pool. And then you can transfer that note to yourself. and then send the amount of ETH that that note is good for to a new wallet. Ryan, what's cool, that new wallet does not need to have a Coinbase attestation. It could be any wallet on base. Only depositors require the EAS attestation in order to deposit ETH into, and the reason why that it works is because then Coinbase can tell the powers that be OFACFinson

that it knows every source that ever deposited ether in. to veil, it can give you them the information of who that is. It does not care. It is illegal to send that ether out to anyone, KYC'd or not. So this is the compromise that we have made. This is not perfect, cypherpunk privacy.

But this is right up to what is totally defensible in a court of law, in my opinion. This should be a hundred percent defensible. No one should have to go to prison for this. Well, in the tornado cash case, to be clear, no one should have to go to prison either. But also, this

is privacy with AML KYC, right? So the authorities should depositing privacy with KYSL KYAC AML, yes, not with drawing privacy because I could give it to my drug running narco friend and I could give them. Wait, wait, what? Wait, what? Wait, that might be again. What are you planning? I can, I, as a KYC user of Coinbase could in theory deposit ether into Vail, generate that note and I could go give that to a, drug lord trafficker. Wait, why would you?

Wait, why would you? I'm just saying I could. I'm not saying I will. I'm just saying I could do that. Or, yeah, like, or a political protest that the authorities like or something. Or yeah, or the more savory reasons. Okay, okay. Do you think this kind of like great compromise will kind of hold with the authorities that be? I think it moves people in a very good direction towards privacy because like there's,

there is a tug of war over the privacy over privacy. from like the nations, the powers that be and blockchain users. And this moves users into the middle ground of there are people. There are accessing privacy. It's totally legal. We're filling up some space. And it just allows us to fight from a better position. Yeah, because that tug of war has currently left us with basically no privacy.

No privacy. Right? Like no privacy in any Ethereum economy on Bitcoin anywhere. So this is great. And by the way, I didn't mention this, but over half a million Coinbase verified accounts are now eligible to use this. So a whole bunch of people on base. David, tell me about Barra Chain.

I don't know much about Barra Chain. All I know, Ryan, is that it's got $1.6 billion in pre-launch deposits. Rumblings, murmurings about Barrow Chain launch is getting louder in my feed, so I'm assuming Barra Chain Mainnet is coming soon, and it's got $1.6 billion in pre-launch deposits. On Ethereum, this is Ethereum TVL that will become BarraCain TVL in the future. Kind of reminds me of, like, the launch of the Beacon Chain. You've got to put money in, and then the beacon chain launches,

and the money's over there. that would make it separate layer one right separate EVVM equivalent layer one with this like new consensus mechanism that's called proof of liquidity probably we're trying to be super fast like monad and you know like I don't think that's its narrative but it's got to be like imagine launching a slower speed blockchain in 2025 I feel like it's narrative in my mind is like memes it's just like cultural stuff and casino funness And like that will be on bear chain because it's a fun cute bear thing. Yeah. That's about right.

All right. That's about it. That was the extent of my barretail knowledge. Lastly, Tether moving to El Salvador. So Tether has acquired a license to operate in El Salvador as a digital asset service provider and stable coin issuer. It plans to relocate its headquarters there, not just open an office there, actually relocate its headquarters there due to forward-thinking policies, favorable regulatory environment, and great. growing Bitcoin savvy community. This, I think, just shows generally that nation states that are favorable to crypto will get crypto to build inside of their countries. And so this is El Salvador,

of course, putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet, present being very favorable towards crypto, just like stacking up another major crypto company. Because like, let's not forget, Tether has what, like, $100 billion worth of, you know, treasuries and stable coins out there. I'm still a pretty major, major financial organization, particularly for El Salvador. This just reminds me of a book that I know is very important to both of us, which is the sovereign individual, which is countries will fight for internet businesses, internet companies, internet-based individuals to domicile there. And that's just what the future holds. Yeah. And we're seeing a little of that.

We're not seeing it all the way, but a little bit. Know me in the week this week, but I should tell people that I am actually going. on a little mental health break. So I will not be here next week for the bankless weekly roll-up. Somebody else will be here. Yeah. Yeah, somebody else.

So I think we'll have a different guest. We haven't decided who. And like maybe another guest for the next week. And well, you know, doing the crypto media thing, I think is it's hard on your mental health sometimes. And I have decided that I need a little bit of a break just to reset, relax, get some new software deploy. and you'll come back even stronger.

So that's what I'm about. So if bankless listeners notice my voice is absent from the next weekly roll-up, that'll be why. Well, Ryan, I hope you have a very relaxing time. I think the one bit of advice that I have for you is that if you are going to take away something from your life and have that work, you need to add something to your life. So what are you going to go do?

What are you going to spend your time on? You know what? I'm open to suggestion. So bankless community, if you have some ideas on hobbies, something that I could get into please do let me know how are they going to reach out to you want you're going to turn off the Twitter too and you better do it soon because I'm about to power down Twitter and everything else guys thanks so much for hanging with us this has been the weekly roll-up got to let you know of course

crypto is risky you could lose what you put in but we are headed west this is the frontier not for everyone but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey thanks a lot