Bankless - ROLLUP: Bitcoin Breaks Below $60K | Saylor’s Three Bad Options | ETH Labs | The Quantum Clock
Episode Date: June 26, 2026Markets are bleeding as Bitcoin breaks below $60K and Strategy faces its biggest test yet. Ryan and David unpack Saylor’s three-way squeeze, ETH Labs vs. the EF reset, quantum timelines moving up, a...nd Illinois’ new crypto tax. --- 🧭OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🦊 METAMASK | DOWNLOAD NOW https://go.metamask.io/BL-Pod-Download 🌐BRIX | EMERGING MARKET YIELD https://bankless.cc/brix 📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0 https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 3:35 Bitcoin Below $60K and Strategy’s 3 Body Problem https://www.tradingview.com/chart/KZYJV3ef/ https://www.strategy.com/ https://x.com/saylor/status/2069028571880845340 https://x.com/saylor/status/2069682624956612731 https://x.com/Pentosh1/status/2069797143917855024 https://x.com/jdorman81/status/2067616073479078386 https://x.com/jdorman81/status/2069857950202835258 https://x.com/ki_young_ju/status/2069646523668033833 https://x.com/PeterSchiff/status/2070146847692185798 https://polymarket.com/event/what-price-will-bitcoin-hit-before-2027 17:59 ETH, Stocks, South Korea Selloff, and the AI Trade 20:59 Why Crypto Is Down: AI Attention, Debasement Pause, and the 4-Year Cycle 27:06 Mover of the Week: $CARDS and Pokemon Cards as RWAs https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/collector-crypt 31:32 Ethereum’s Center of Gravity Shifts: EF Cuts and ETH Labs https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/2069431500035023121 https://blog.ethereum.org/2026/06/23/ef-structure https://x.com/aerugoettinea/status/2069017140846330107 https://x.com/tkstanczak/status/2069454499509596582 https://x.com/bobbyong/status/2069965817882755342 https://x.com/ethlabs_org/status/2069104073245159573 https://ethlabs.org/thesis.html https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2069110440903196810 https://x.com/trent_vanepps/status/2067593124398989551 51:50 White House Quantum EO: Are Crypto Timelines Moving Up? https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2069154174818754759 https://x.com/projecteleven/status/2069151681015627881 https://x.com/drakefjustin/status/2061793725299224676 57:25 Illinois Passes a 0.2% Crypto Transaction Tax https://x.com/0xBeaconLayer/status/2069120528238121154 https://x.com/manwithadogg/status/2069158605664756205 https://x.com/DarrenBaileyIL/status/2070149517102469527 59:50 Portfolio Check and Crypto Bottom Watch --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Bankless Nation, it's time for the weekly roll-up.
It is the last week of June.
And for what feels like the third time this month, three or three out of the four weeks,
there is just blood in the streets.
We got Ryan back this week, back from vacation.
You picked a bad time to come back from vacation.
You should actually just go back on vacation.
I came to find out if Michael Sailor is death spiraling.
Because that's what I heard.
The whole micro-strategy ecosystem.
We are currently death spiraling, but like you don't really know how far it goes.
Maybe it's just a baby death spiraling.
spiral.
Anyways, Bitcoin is trading below $60,000.
Master Micro Strategy is trading below $100 for the first time since March of 2024.
And Stretch is trading at $74, billions of dollars off of where it ought to be trading
at $100.
So strategies, they've got $1.7 billion in preferred dividends obligations in like nine,
10 months of coverage left.
So we're going to ask the question.
Is it all over for Michael Saylor?
I think that means just nine months and then we'll be in a bull market.
I think you plan this perfectly.
Dude, I think if Bitcoin, we'll talk about this, but the easiest solution is that Bitcoin just goes up and then Michael Saylor's just free and clear.
Not going to be a problem at all.
Also, I saw this, David on the week, ETH Labs has just been announced.
People are asking if this is the new Ethereum Foundation.
It is not quite a fork, but is started by some former EF members.
We'll talk about that.
also the Ethereum Foundation itself, reducing headcount quite significantly, like something
like 20 to 40%.
So is this a restructuring?
Is this a crisis?
What does Vitalik think about this?
And there was an executive order as well.
Coming to the White House this week, it caught my attention because they were talking about
quantum.
Apparently the U.S. wants to build a quantum computer and get this, they think quantum relevant,
crypto-relevant computers might come by.
Yeah, cryptography, according to the technology.
We've got to watch that clip later.
Cryptography.
The cryptography relevant quantum computers could come as early as 2031, and they want all systems
to be ready for that.
So we'll talk about what that means for the U.S., what that means for our crypto protocols as well.
David, before we get in, you got a shout out to make to our friends over at OKX.
Yeah, OKX.
So the ice, the intercontinental exchange, parent company of the New York.
Different ice.
The markets-oriented ice, which is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange,
they backed OKX at a $25 billion valuation because they want to launch tokenized New York Stock Exchange
stocks and derivatives later this year on OKX specifically.
This is Tradfai on one side, coming to defy on the other, all in the same app.
This is the new money app from OKX, trusted by over 120 million users globally.
OKX is bringing products to the United States.
This is now a U.S. company that Wall Street has been talking about for years.
And so if you are not on OKX, they are offering you a 6% deposit match using the link and the show notes.
So click that and get onboarded to OKX and get your 6%.
Unless you are in New York or Texas, it is not available to you.
Sad.
Sorry.
Sorry, New York.
It's weird that it's Texas as well.
Usually New York's common.
Texas is not so common.
Yeah, usually you don't hear that.
It is good to have another exchange available in the U.S.
more options are better, specifically coming from the people behind the New York Stock Exchange.
But David, let's get into the blood in the streets that you were teasing about. So show us some
blood. This is Bitcoin and on the U.S. price charge. I think you have a moving average line here.
Yeah, so these are four hour candles. This blue line going across my screen is the 200-week moving
average, which historically Bitcoin just does not stay below the moving average, 200-week moving average very often.
We are currently 5% below the 200-week moving average.
I will say it did for a while for a good bit several months, many months in 2020-2003 bear.
Yeah, okay, let's do all the way out.
I will say, I think we talked about that last summer.
It has spent maybe 5% of its time below the 200-week moving average,
and it's dominantly in the 300 days right after FTX.
The 300 days after FTX is when it spent basically all of its time below the 200-week-moving
average. So how many days will we spend below the moving average? What number is that? 62.
Right now, $62,400. And Bitcoin is trading at $59,500 right now. We're in the 50s. We're
officially in the 50s. Is some of that on the week due to some of the concern around the Michael
Saylor universe? This is a question I have is how big of a deal is Michael Saylor as it relates to
the Bitcoin price, or does Bitcoin not care and Bitcoin happens to Michael Saylor, but Michael Saylor
does not happen to Bitcoin? I don't know the answer to that. They're two gravitational
objects, right? Bitcoin is clearly the bigger one, but Michael Saylor is maybe a planet orbiting
that star. Maybe he's a really big planet. Maybe this is a binary star system, too.
If it's a binary star system, Ryan, that means that Bitcoin is dependent on Michael Saler,
which in my mind means the Bitcoin project has failed. That's Sacrilege, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, they have, a strategy has 800,000, 850,000 Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Quite material.
Yeah.
Still, in the broad streams of things, it's, it's, what percentage is that of total
Bitcoin supply?
I don't know, three, something like that.
God, that's a lot.
Okay.
But like, yeah, yeah, I mean, fair point, but he is kind of the marginal buyer.
And he is the, the bull of all bulls, right?
He sits on the throne of being, you know, chief bull officer of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
But what's happening over in micro strategy?
Because you tease in the intro that strategy was actually down.
What is it down?
What chart does this remind you of, Ryan?
Down, let me see.
Down seven?
25% off of, it doesn't have a peg, but I call it par.
It's supposed to trade.
Oh, this is stretch you're showing.
This is not, this is not MSTR, right?
Yeah, well, I'll show MSCR in a second.
Okay.
So what's, can you remind people what stretch actually is
and why this is significant that it's down so much.
Stretch is, actually, I'll just show you this ad.
Do you remember this ad, Ryan?
Mm-hmm.
This is an AI ad of some babe in a pool in the Bahamas
or like in Asia drinking a margarita.
And she goes, I'm not meant to live a comfortable life.
I put all of my savings into Stretch.
What is Stretch?
Stretchers is a stock that pays me 11% a year in dividends
for holding stretch, 11.5% paid monthly.
So that's what stretch is.
It's meant to trade at $100 because when it's trading above $100,
strategy just gets to hammer the ATM and they mint more stretch and they pocket the cash
and then they can buy Bitcoin with the cash.
They pay out also with the cash that they have.
They pay out the dividends and the supply of stretch has grown so large that they have
annual dividend obligations of $1.7 billion a year.
year. And then they also have, in reserve, $1.4 billion. And so they have, they also have
debt obligations elsewhere as well. And so they have about 10 months. This is on their website.
They have 10 months of dividend coverage for stretch. But there is simply three things are going down
all at once. The Bitcoin price is going down. MSTR. I'll pull up MSTR now. MSTR is going
down bad, very bad, and then also stretches going down. And so MSCR from the very tippy top
is down 84%. Okay, 84% of, whereas Bitcoin is down what, like 50, 60%, 60%, 60%, 53%. Okay.
Yeah. So all of all three of these things are down, which is really cornering strategies,
Michael Saylor's options. Sure. When all three go down, he just doesn't have a lot of options.
He does have time.
He has 9.8 months of dividend coverage, so he has time, but he does not have a lot of options right now.
And I guess the reason why Stretch is trading at $75, even though it's in theory supposed to be trading at $100, is people are worried.
It's like a lack of confidence of the solvency of Stretch.
Because like, say, Ryan, I tell you, hey, Ryan, there's this company.
It has amazing dividends.
It pays you 11% dividends, but the company is going to go defunct in 10 months.
Like, what's that company worth?
Not $100 a share.
Yeah, I think I would ask, like, what is the probability of the company to pay me back, right?
So how much cash do they have?
And then, like, cash in dollars, because I'm getting paid in dollars.
So same either account.
And then I would say, what else does the company have in terms of their balance sheet
to be able to sell to go pay me back?
And of course, if you look at strategy, there's a lot of things they could sell.
It's called Bitcoin, and there's tens of billions of it, and they could just sell some Bitcoin
and pay me back.
But of course, in the three bodies that you described, that, you know, a market sale of Bitcoin
at some level that kind of tanks the Bitcoin price, which isn't good for MSDR, isn't good for...
He did sell 32 Bitcoins.
Bitcoin, the pre-coin price did not respond positively.
Yeah.
He did sell this week a bunch of MSTR.
So he sold MSCR.
It was trading earlier this week at like 1.3 nav value.
Premium to nav is just barely a premium to nav, barely above one.
30% premium.
It's not bad.
Yeah, but you know what it was barely a premium to nav?
1.03, which is where MSTR is today.
The fact that it's still positive is actually incredible.
But it was 1.05 at the time of when I woke up this morning.
So it's down to 1.03.
Wait, but, wait, okay, strategy is still at a premium to nav?
It's not under...
It's a 3% premium to nav.
Okay.
So what does this mean?
Is that the value of all of the Bitcoin that strategy has, which is $50 billion,
is what strategy is worth, $50 billion.
The stock, basically.
The stock.
So he can't do any more ATM.
He can't mint very much more.
He can do 3% more.
Well, no, he could go below if he wants.
He can go below.
But every time he does this,
that's breaking a social contract.
Well, yeah.
I mean,
every time he does that,
I mean,
we've talked about
the way that's are structured,
right?
Every time he,
like,
Bitcoin is scarce,
but strategy stock is not scarce.
So it does have a money printer,
and the money printer has a name.
His name is Michael Saylor
because Michael Saylor owns
massive amounts of strategy.
So he's basically governance for strategy.
So he can just continue to dilute
MSTR holders
and MSTR can get punished.
That's why MSCR is down, what, 83%.
And a Bitcoin is only down like 53%.
Also, MSCR had a ridiculous MNAV premium previously.
Totally.
It was like two, three X, something like that.
Four.
Not up to four.
It was insane.
That couldn't last forever.
Yeah.
But anyway, now he's right on the cusp of like, what does he do next?
Type of question, right?
It's like, he's running out of tricks.
He's running out cards in the sleeve to pull out and just be like, I've got another bailout.
And he also this week, make this make sense, he's still buying Bitcoin, right?
So it started the week.
The MNAV of strategy started the week at 1.3.
It's now down to 1.03 because they sold a bunch of strategy to finance 300 more million dollars to add to the USD Reserve, which is why they're at $1.4 billion.
And then they also bought 520 Bitcoin for $35 million.
So they're still buying Bitcoin.
He's still buying Bitcoin.
Not much, though.
It's a little bit revealing that they bolster the USD reserve by $300 million and only bought $35 million of Bitcoin.
Like it feels a little bit like a token buy of Bitcoin.
You said the word, the three bodies.
We're invoking this three body problem idea, which I like got from Twitter.
And this is a tweet from Pentosh, he said.
I kind of feel like the market keeps telling Saylor, he can't keep all three things.
Stretch MSTR and Bitcoin.
there's just like three different incentives for three different groups and you can't you can't juggle all of them because there's three social contracts here and in the under duress sailor has to break one so what are the three social contracts he can't sell he can't mint new msterr below an mnav of one because the whole point of owning msr is that your bitcoin per share always goes up and if he mince ms ms tr
EMSER equity below MNAV-1, you're breaking that social contract.
Like, why own MSCR when you can just own Bitcoin at that point?
You can't sell Bitcoin because that's the social contract.
That's the whole deal.
You are the Bitcoin buy guy.
You don't get to sell Bitcoin.
That's another social contract.
You only buy.
And you have a social contract to pay the dividends of your stretch equity preferred offering,
which he only has 10 more months of.
And so under duress, Saylor has to break a,
social contract, and I think when
Stretch trades at a
25% off of the par, off
of the $100 peg, I think
that is the market saying that
they think that they might get the
short end of the stick. Sure.
I mean, Jeff Dorman had a take,
which is basically like
what probably, the 70%
probability is
Michael, Michael Saylor
will continue to do what he's doing,
which is continue to ATM
mint strategy,
as long as he can every month
and just hope things get better
with the Bitcoin price.
And that's what he's doing.
That's the course that he's played.
So far.
And maybe he'll be able to build enough runway
so that some of these other bodies
and the three-body problem don't spin off
and cause him bigger issues.
But there is always the possibility here
and he knows he has this card
to rip off the Band-Aid,
sell three to four billion of Bitcoin
and then just, you know,
be like, hey, stretchholders, see, we have it.
Maybe he could use some of the,
that cash actually buy some SDRC, that could be value accrued, accretive if he gets out of a discount
to MSDR holders.
And like, that's probably what's going to happen, one of those two options.
I don't think he is like, I don't think, unless this goes on for a long time, I don't see
a death spiral scenario here, unless Bitcoin death spirals down, of course.
Or like the more probable scenario, if you're kind of like bearish on market conditions,
is that it's just like a slow melting ice cube.
I think Austin Campbell made this remark in a recent post I saw,
which is just like over five years,
this whole thing could like melt away
if Bitcoin doesn't get the creative price performance
that all investors expect,
and then quite frankly, you and I expect.
So I don't see the Terra Luna death spiral still.
I definitely don't see that.
But like if I, you know,
there is the possibility that he burns his bridges
with the preferred share STR.
type of instrument and that those, like, holders get pissed.
And he loses that.
I don't think they'll get wiped out, but they can't be happy.
They're not happy now.
No.
I mean, is anyone happy with this trading like 24% off of the principal price?
No, not when I saw this babe drinking this margarita.
And she's asking, answering the question, why is her lifestyle so good?
And her answer is, I bought streff.
No, anyone who listened to this head's not happy.
Yeah, that's right.
And, of course, there's bears like Peter Schiff.
I see all over Twitter warning that this is the Bitcoin bubble, that, you know, is going to get.
Like, basically, dancing with glee that this is happening.
Yeah, I am noting that in my head is like Peter Schiff is getting really loud right now.
I will say that, like, I think Michael Saylor's backed up against a corner with stretch because he truly can't.
Like the idea with stretch is like, yeah, in theory, they have no claim on the Bitcoin.
We don't have to sell the Bitcoin.
In theory, they could be wiped out.
They have no legal claim.
But then you have like this, the AI ad of the babe drink and the margarita.
I'm like, dude, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Sure.
And so he, legally speaking, he probably doesn't want to go down that route, even though he might technically check out.
Like, it's still going to be messy.
And the thing that he's been doing, which is minting and hammering the ATM and MSCR seems to be.
the path of least resistance.
Yeah.
I still think it's going to work out.
I don't think.
I kind of think it's still going to be okay.
Maybe not.
Maybe not.
And it all depends on what Bitcoin price does, really.
Right.
Speaking of that, what's the Polymarket saying on the week?
Yeah, let's check this out.
Let's check this.
It's been a while since we looked at this.
Bitcoin, Polymarket is giving Bitcoin a 48% chance of hitting $45,000,
a 31% chance of hitting $4,000.
$40,000 and it basically stops there. Yeah. Yeah. What about the upside? The upside. Let's see. We have a
50% chance that it hits $75,000. And this is all in this year, this year, to 2026. So there's equal
probability that Bitcoin hits $75,000 as it does $45,000. Yeah, the bearish numbers are growing.
Should we check in on our little friend, Eith, David? Yeah. Yeah, let's check out. Let's check it.
Let's check that out. Eith is not looking great. ETH is not looking great. Is that blue line,
200 week as well?
Yes.
Yeah, the blue line.
It's well below the blue line.
What's notable to me is that the blue line, the 200 week moving average is not going
up.
Like, that's just...
It's an ugly 200 week.
Yeah.
It's a fly.
It's been flat for over a year.
Miss a cycle.
Heath is now 36% below the 200 week moving average, which it's never been that low.
It spent some time below, though, in 2025, right?
The whole tariff thing.
Right.
Oh, yes.
And it was, it was here.
And then Tom Lee came in and hammered $18 billion into Eath.
And Eath hit all time high.
And we're kind of back to that same price range again.
Okay.
Well, more on Tom Lee a bit later in the episode.
How are regular markets doing and how the trad markets stocks?
Okay, yeah.
Let's look at the indices.
There's been a little bit of a topiness in the indices.
Like you can kind of see it like rolling over at the top.
This is the S&P.
But really, in the grand scheme of things, it's fine.
Like we're down 3% from the top of the S&P.
The NASAC's doing the same thing.
There's definitely been a lot of market volatility.
You might have noticed, Ryan, that your portfolio got absolutely obliterated in overnight trading on Tuesday of this week.
Yeah.
This happened because South Korea regulators made some comments about cautioning retail investors on leveraged ETFs.
Apparently leveraged ETFs.
I wonder what ETFs.
Semiconductor ETFs.
Leveraged semiconductor ETFs in South Korea.
regulators were like warning about them.
And then as a result of that,
this South Korea's benchmark K-O-S-P-I index plunged 10%.
They triggered a 20-minute halt.
People got liquidated.
You know, people got carried out.
It was a very brutal day.
And then it carried over into our market.
So on Tuesday, that's why the NASDAQ fell 2.2%.
And the S&P dropped 1.4%.
But then, Ryan, you know what?
Saved the day.
You know what the new Nvidia is?
What's it?
My crime.
M-U.
MU earnings got posted yesterday,
and they just obliterated earnings.
So they had $41 billion in revenue,
which would be an estimate of $36 billion.
Incredible.
Yeah, wild.
And then their Q3 revenue is up 75% from Q2.
Wild.
This is the thing that's already trading
well over a billion dollars.
This thing, if you bought MU, Ryan,
in January 1st of this year,
You would be up 330.
Don't tell me that.
I don't want to do that.
330%.
That's amazing.
Six months.
It's incredible.
So MU earnings came in yesterday and it was very, very good.
And like every single day, every single week the market is like, is the bubble popped, you know, is the memory stonks over.
Like is the AI trade over.
And it's seemingly every single week, we have something like this.
And it's like, no, no, throw the dice again.
We're back in it.
We got more.
We got more.
Actually, I have a take on this.
I have three reasons why I think.
crypto, the crypto market is down. When I, when I've been thinking about this over the past
couple of weeks, you ready for it? Sure. All right, the first reason is basically exactly what you
said. All the attention, all the auction in the markets, all the capital is in AI. And so
crypto is very much an attention economy. I mean, I think a store of value asset of which like
Bitcoin is predominantly most of the crypto economy and then either another store of a store of value
is still the underpinning of the crypto market cap, right? And that is very, and that is very,
very much an attention asset. It's very much a memetic. Like, gold is too, but gold has 5,000 years
of history here. Yeah, you don't need as much attention on gold. You don't need, because it's
always been here. There's always the gold bugs. There always will be at some level, but crypto's
really suffering from the attention shifting to AI. That's the first one. It's probably pretty obvious.
Yeah, everyone's looking at Micron and Nvidia, and they've moved their capital and attention from
crypto. But I think it, you know, bears repeating.
Second is the debasement trade is on pause.
And we can see evidence of this in the gold price.
So gold is creeping closer to $4,000 per ounce.
Which is down, right?
It's down, right?
It was $5,300 or so at the highs when Peter Schiff was dancing on the other side.
It's down significantly since.
Michael Howell actually had a great post on this.
And he talks about the reason why it's on pause.
And it's because over the past few months, China has really paused on kind of
their money printing printer.
And so liquidity is actually reversed coming out of the PBOC.
He's not actually sure why.
People aren't sure why.
You know, he points to maybe the Iran conflict causing China just be like, oh, pause.
We don't want more production.
We don't consume more oil.
But for whatever reason, they have paused liquidity.
The dollar is strong.
You know, the Fed isn't printing much more liquidity.
So liquidity cycle has changed.
And he thinks this will be temporary.
But as long as that is happening, the debasement trade is not gone, but it's just on pause.
It will resume because it has to resume because you've seen the charts.
You've seen U.S. debt to GDP ratios.
China's in a similar situation from real estate, all sorts of things where they need to print their way out too.
The most bullish thing for liquidity was the Trump administration doing their damnedest attempt to doge the government and then the spending just,
linearly increasing upwards.
Yeah, but people are like, oh, the debasement trades, it's over, right?
Gold is going, Bitcoin's going.
It's not over.
It's just on pause right now.
And that's how it was always going to work.
It would pause and then resume.
But this paused right now.
The third reason is this.
It's just the four-year cycle, David.
And Michael Nato...
Four-year cycle, unfazed.
It's unfazed.
And Michael Nato wrote a post this week that thought was really good.
It was just talking about what we have to do every four years.
You talked about the reason why.
is we have to de-leverage.
And so this is the realized price here,
$1.9 trillion in Bitcoin.
This is the valuation we got to
in the last bull cycle,
$2.5 trillion.
That premium from the realized price,
the amount everyone bought in at effectively,
and the valuation,
that $1.5 trillion premium,
that was all a lot of credit.
There was perps,
defy loans,
stable coin loans,
centralized loan,
all of these loans on top of that.
And every single four,
years, we have to purge the credit, the excess credit. Is that what we're doing right now? We are purging.
That's what we're doing. We're purging all of that credit. Michael Saylor's got to cough something up, dude.
Well, he took on some leverage. Like leverage is sin, right? So he took on some leverage. He didn't take on a lot.
But like, I guess he did take on much more than he has in previous markets. So maybe he'll have to cough it up. Maybe he won't.
But this purple, you know, graph right here might have to get close to the blue graph.
might have to even get below it.
And in previous cycles, it's gotten about, you know, 20 to 30 percent below it.
This is realized price.
Below it.
This is 50.
If you want to translate this to Bitcoin price, below 54K.
Okay.
So those three things are happening.
We have AI attention dominating.
Unless AI attention slows, it's hard for crypto to get a run.
You know, secondly, debasement trade on pause.
You could see this in the global liquidity.
and then third, it's the four-year de-leveraging cycle that we're seeing.
So some of this has to get washed out and de-leveraged.
No, I don't think crypto is over.
No, I don't think it's like the end.
This is just the point in the kind of the big meta cycle that we're in.
Do you listen to my episode with Arthur Hayes?
Not yet, no.
He's got an interesting brand right now in Crypto Twitter land.
I've seen some of his brand is like Grifter Schiller and Dump.
like pump and dump type of brand.
That's what.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is there a little bit of that?
That's not what I talked to him about.
I just kind of moved on to just like, he has this broader idea of you want to sell the
AI top to buy the crypto bottom and those things will happen at the same, roughly around
the same time.
When?
Did he say when?
He gave a bunch of reasons as to why it will be a bubble.
Okay.
And then why it will pop.
And then in like classic Arthur fashion, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like,
Like this credit event is going to be bigger than 2008, and the government is going to start printing, and that's when you want to buy Bitcoin.
But like, the details of that, I'm sure, are going to be incorrect.
But directionally, I find it very interesting of just like there's going to be AI.
The AI trade is going to get wiped out at some point.
Like some people made way too much money way too quickly, and they're going to get wiped out.
Sure.
And it seems like there could be a timing there of like crypto can't live until AI dies.
I think that's right.
I think it's a narrative.
But I don't want AI to die either.
I don't want AI to die.
But it's a narrative that I am interested in tracking.
Yeah.
Meanwhile,
the only crypto asset that is pumping,
you call this chart into the agenda,
is something called cards.
Is this a real world asset for Pokemon cards, David?
That might actually be what it is.
Pokemon cards,
the whole gotcha universe is pumping right now.
What's the gotcha universe?
That's like,
I don't know why it's called that.
But it's the trading card ecosystem.
Okay.
So it's just Pokemon cards.
Pokemon cards.
There's like there's one piece cards.
There's other cards out there that are trading.
Okay.
But dude, these are just like alt coins for millennials.
But they're real Pokemon cards.
And like there's a huge trad real world asset like non-crypto trading card ecosystem
happening.
Kind of like how people were like buying and selling Rolexes in COVID.
Yeah.
Some of it is making it on chain and cards is that.
Cards is like a virtual platform for buying and selling.
I've never thought about this,
but it'd be interesting to go deep,
deep dive in the Pokemon cards ecosystem
and just understand how the central fiat issuers of Pokemon cards,
how they like manage supply,
like how they make sure that they don't print too many Pokemon cards
or like what that,
because it's an economy that they've built.
It's a pretty valuable one.
That's why there is a little bit of that.
I asked Andy, Andy 805-2, he's running Monster,
and it's literally just like a virtual,
you can open up Pokemon cards virtually.
And he literally has a treasury of Pokemon cards.
And he said that, like, Pokemon as a brand,
they did a very good job maintaining the brand
and preserving the value of the OG cards
while still minting new cards that are different.
And a brand that failed at that was Yu-Gio,
where they just hammered the ATM.
if you will, and they overinflated their cars
and they destroyed the value for all the collectors.
So there's a little bit of an art
to the issuance of new editions of cards
because you still need to preserve the value
of all your old cards.
I swear. Seeing Pokemon cards going to tear
gives me some optimism for NFTs again,
the rise of NFTs.
These are just NFTs.
These are just NFTs.
They're real world NFTs.
David, we've got more to talk about
the EF is cutting back, but ETH Labs
is stepping in.
What does this mean for Ethereum,
all that number of other topics.
We'll see in a minute.
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on it. And now it's live inside the United States. And new users who deposit in trade can get up to
$500 in Bitcoin through the bankless link. The link is in the show notes to learn more, not investment
advice, not available in New York or Texas. The center of gravity of Ethereum stewardship is shifting
pretty formally, I would say, this week. So this week we had two announcements. The EF cut its budget by
40% and its staffed by roughly 20%, which was 54 people. So 54 people no longer work at the EF,
which means that the EF is like 200 people still to this day.
That's pretty big still.
That's pretty big.
There's a restructuring into five clusters.
So there's now clusters at the EF.
And the EF is now kind of just intentionally framing itself
as just one node among many when it comes to like this stewardship and direction of Ethereum.
On the other side of the aisle, ETH Labs was launched as a new independent nonprofit research
and Development Lab with just kind of a different emphasis than the EF,
like ETH as an asset and Ethereum, the network being co-developed,
placing Ethereum to be the settlement layer of the global economy,
putting points on the board for Ethereum, trying to win.
And so ETH Labs is entirely compromise of former EF technical talent.
Some very big names, Ansgar, Casper, Barnaby, Josh Rudolph, Julian Ma.
If you're in the Ethereum world, you recognize these names.
So there's a little bit of a tale of two cities going on here.
Yeah, I guess maybe let's talk about the EF, their structure, and getting smaller.
So Vitalik put together a post.
He actually ends this post and said this.
The past years have been challenging era for Ethereum.
I think a lot of eth investors certainly feel that.
A lot of people in the Ethereum ecosystem feel that too.
Good to see him put that into words.
He said, I personally favor when talking about, like this post was revealing because
there's a number of, you know, vitalic thoughts, which are always very important for the stewardship
of Ethereum. On ossification of the Ethereum protocol, he says this. I personally favor a soft
lean and done approach to Ethereum. Once the straw map is completed, that's the current
Ethereum roadmap, generally stick to security fixes and small, high value changes and have a
much higher bar for considering new features. So I think the idea here is that the current EF
structure and funding gets it crops, that's censorship.
resistance, open source, privacy, security, those being kind of the priorities. And then once the
straw map is done, like the rule of the EF shrinks even further still. And so this post was, I thought,
good for Vitalek. I'm glad that somebody from the Ethereum Foundation publicly addressed this,
glad that Vatelic did, because what we were seeing over the past three to six months was kind of
a leakage of what we thought were key people in the Ethereum Foundation.
I mean, starting with Tamash, but then Choway, the other executive director, leaving a number of high-profile departures.
Now, some of those have joined this new org that we're going to talk about in a second.
But, you know, Vitalik has been pretty much pretty quiet on this until now.
So I guess it was all culminating in this.
There's another post from Bastion, who is the new current executive director of the EF, making a pretty clear post about what the,
The scope of the EF is moving forward.
So he started with what the EF is not going to be for.
The EF is not for going to be like important.
The EF is not trying to make itself important.
The EF is not for corbo.
God, that's clear.
I mean, I feel like that's been super clear for a long time.
But okay.
The EF is not for corpo appeal or for ecosystem popularity.
All right.
We are not here to please short-term speculators or prop up TBTF Neo-EO
Siffis? I don't know what that is. What is that? A TBTF neosophie. Let me look that up while you're going through it.
And then also there, the EF is not for marketing every app on Ethereum. What is the EF for is eliminating Ethereum weaknesses.
So they want the EF to help defensively strengthen places where Ethereum is or still can become extractive, totalizing, or vulnerable to cartel or estate capture.
So, Cropy stuff. Like what is the EF doing? It's narrowing us focus onto Cropics.
copy stuff.
Something that he said was the EF exists to harden every surface of Ethereum.
Crop is the centers of resistant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Privacy, security, all that kind of stuff.
I was glad that they put some priorities here, too.
Privacy being one of them.
Quantum resistance.
Quantum resistance, which is huge.
We'll talk about that later.
Now, with the dates, you know, continuing to, I guess, you'll fall back for when we'll
get a quantum breaking computer that seems even higher priority.
even some question whether Ethereum will be ready, let alone Bitcoin, but having that as a
centerpiece.
The EF was just able to deliver that.
That would be actually incredible.
My favorite part of Bastian's Post was actually this, where he talked about ETH, the asset.
Glad they said ETH the asset.
Making ETH normal digital cash is how he put it.
And you define it like this.
A private dignity respecting debasement resistance and surveillance resistant, medium of
exchange and store a value as well as the native asset, a private computation, and private
coordination for both humans and their agents. So good to see some emphasis on ether,
the asset, and not just Ethereum the network, something that I know you love to see, and I love to
see as well. I do have a definition for TBTF, Neosif. Yes. Too big to fail is TBTF.
and SIF is a system
systemically important financial institutions.
That's big banks, basically.
So that was the departure from the EF,
and then we had EFLAMS.
The downsizing and restructuring
and narrowing of scope over the EF.
An important point about the EF
is that they were consuming 15%
of their treasury per year.
That was their intentional part
of their treasury strategy
as the run and maintained structure of the EF.
And now that is going down
to 5% of the EF.
of the EF budget per year.
They're also, I think, just downsizing some mega projects.
So this might be the last DevCon, the DevCon India, I'm in Mumbai.
So things like this.
So they're just really leaning up and kind of hunkering down.
Which needed to happen, right?
Bobby Ong from Coin Gecko makes the point.
The organization was 270 people before they laid off 20% of their staff.
And Telegram has a total team side purportedly of like 50 people.
Yeah.
Hyperliquid.
I don't know, what are they like a dozen right now?
14, yeah, 14.
So 270 is a lot of people for developing a crypto protocol, right?
So maybe they just needed to lean down as all organizations eventually do.
Should probably keep going.
Tamash was pretty favorable towards this, too.
I don't know if you saw his post on this.
You read this?
Tell me.
He basically said this is generally the direction that I would have wanted the EF to go into,
so he's pretty supportive.
Okay.
But he ends it with this.
He says, my base worry is about execution.
If you look at the diagram, you know, this diagram of all the different seven areas,
he said it's still pretty like messy, pretty unclear the structure.
You know, maybe it's too hierarchical rather than flat.
And so he said this mostly likely reflects the team's challenges
and controlling pressures for people to keep titles.
People keeping titles, general org stuff, right?
Yeah.
The F is not immune to the bureaucratic tendencies of government.
And I think that's sort of some of the malaise that has befallen the structure over the past 10 years.
I mean, my confidence in the EF, like fixing itself and, like, becoming new again and being effective, like, I just don't think that's where it's going to happen at the EF.
And so, yeah, they're leaning up, but it doesn't mean that they're turning into this polished, well-run organization.
It kind of seems to be that the lack of being well-run.
well run is a little bit intentional by design because they don't want the EF to be like important.
Maybe?
I don't know.
This seems like a step in the right direction for sure.
But let's talk about what at least I am more bullish on.
I think you probably are too.
Tell me about ETH Labs.
So this is a net new entity.
We got a blank canvas.
Yes.
We can do this thing right with this organization.
What is ETH Labs?
Who is behind it?
Heath Labs in my mind, this is my words not theirs.
I'm recording with Onzgar and Casper, Tom.
tomorrow. That episode will come out on Monday.
Some of our favorites from the EF.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The, I don't like to pick favorites, but I really like Casper and
Oscar. Yeah. I'll say that like Heath Labs, in contrast to the EF, wants to be important.
Here's a line out of ETH Labs that I really like. Principles do not change the world until
people benefit from them. And the reason why that's important to speak.
speak through the lines is like, sure, a lot of Ethereum's values the crops, the decentralization,
the censorship resistance is great. It doesn't matter if those things aren't relevant.
And I think E. Labs is trying to make Ethereum as relevant as possible. And so like I said,
this is Ansgar, Casper, Barnaby, Julian Ma, again, some heavy hitters with funding from Bitmine,
Sharplink, a handful, and like a number of other just individual contributors. And so this
is where they're getting their funding from,
a bunch of grants from organizations.
Commercial entities.
Commercial entities.
And they have a whole website.
And so this is,
think of this like as a small,
lean,
refined group of very competent protocol specialists
who want to do things
that the EF isn't going to do.
And this has to do with scaling.
I think, like, layer one scaling
is now kind of in the realm of ETH Labs.
Because I don't think the EF is taking on layer one scaling.
And so Eath Labs is now doing layer one scaling.
And they are, I think they're kind of still working on exactly what like step one, step two, step three is.
But this is really about an organization that wants Ethereum to put points on the board.
Yeah.
There's like this one central slot in the crypto world where they're a single settlement layer for all of internet finance.
Ethereum is the only ecosystem that fits in that slot
and they want to make sure that Ethereum inhabits its spots
are the best of that ability.
And so this is the eth is winning.
Ethereum is winning org in my mind,
whereas the previous one was like,
we're indifferent to eth meaning.
The hopeful vision here is this is like a bronze age mindset,
lean EF basically that wants to win.
And I really did like their thesis,
as you said part of it,
but they also said this, we believe ETH matters.
Yeah.
The asset is.
It's called ETH Labs, guys.
It's not called Ethereum Labs.
The most valuable, programmable story values, how they define it,
a decade of broad distribution, deep liquidity,
maximum trustless asset on Ethereum.
Yes, that's exactly it.
That is something I was never convinced the EF fully believed.
I know Justin Drake.
I know some members of the EF believed it.
It was never convinced that the EF fully believed that.
Or for that matter of Italic, fully believed it.
They also said this.
We believe defy matters.
Thank you.
That's the use case.
That's one of the four points.
of the pillars of their thesis.
And we believe adoption matters.
I believe those three things too.
I wasn't sure that the EF prioritized those three things.
So it's good to see an organization spin up and do it funded by people with commercial
interests in this too.
So this is a nonprofit, but commercial interests are funding it.
So Tom Lee has got $300 million in staking revenue that he throws off of EF staking every year.
How much does it cost to fund this team, do you think?
Not that much.
A couple million?
Not that much.
Not that much.
And so what a great ROI for him.
With a salary that they're used to getting from the EF, their expectations are probably pretty low.
I'm glad.
Now, the question for me is, like, of course, like any new or can they execute?
Will they be able to, and what parts of the roadmap will they execute on?
Like, if the Ea, will there be conflict?
Will the Ethereum Foundation be like, no, you know, like, you can't work on single slot
finality or whatever they try to work on because we've got that.
I don't know how this is all going to be worked together.
but like, good to see the blood stay in the Ethereum ecosystem
and for us to have a new org to actually propel the platform and vision for it.
So I'm bullish.
I'm like cautiously bullish because it's a new org,
but like imagine these developers and protocol engineers
like leaving the Ethereum ecosystem.
Oh my God.
Joining in, you know, another blockchain company or something.
Or going to AI or whatever.
And they didn't.
They stayed here.
And so I think the net story.
here is actually bullish Ethereum.
At least that's my interpretation of it, but we'll see.
Yeah.
And the timing of the EF announcing their restructuring plus the launch of ETH Labs.
Maybe that's coincidental, but I think it's very illustrative because now the EF is
explicitly saying that they just want to be one node in a network.
And ETH Labs is like, hello, we are also, thank you for the invitation into this network.
We are also a node on this network.
power dynamics, I think, are TBD to be played out.
Well, the EF did not fund them.
Notice, that's kind of interesting.
I'm sure they had the option to fund them.
Probably, but also, like, the EF is in potentially a funding crisis.
We'll talk about that in a hot sack.
Like, maybe it's like, oh, like, get Tom Lee to do it.
He's got plenty of money.
But, like, who has the steering wheel?
There's a huge synergy here in my mind where, like, the ETH
is looking at the EF and being like,
you guys got crops.
And Battalick is like, yeah,
and Bastion is like, yeah, we got crops.
Crops, we are taking care of crops.
So now, ETH Labs doesn't have to worry about crops
because the EF's got it.
And the ETH Labs is going to worry about, like,
market adoption, scaling, you know,
commercial relevance.
And those two things are synergistic.
But I do imagine they're being like,
who's got how many hands on the steering wheel?
And the thing is like, Ongar, Casper,
Barnaby, Julian, Josh, these people are very influential when it comes to the EIP process.
They have some earned legitimacy.
They have earned legitimacy.
And so I am hoping that we can take some of the power, the leadership power of the EF,
and orient it towards ETH Labs.
And that, not to be, not to be, like, dominant, but, like, let's give ETH Labs some, like,
leadership over the direction of Ethereum.
I think we will.
I think that's exactly what's happening.
I think this is part of kind of a new era for Ethereum that's just starting to build.
But you mentioned a funding problem or funding crisis.
I've heard other people talk about that.
Is that Trent's take here?
So Trent was formerly EF of the Protocol Guilds.
I'm not sure if he's still in the Protocol Guild, but he had a post this week called succession after subtraction.
What was he saying?
Yeah, a handful of points here.
His first points, which kind of echoes what I was just talking about, is that legitimacy
tends towards power law pooling,
and the EF still holds quite a lot of legitimacy.
There's the Ethereum brand.
Vitalik is at the EF.
The EF has the pre-mine treasury.
They own Ethereum.org.
They own Ethereum at Ethereum on Twitter.
They have a decade of just Lindy.
And there's a ton of just legitimacy pooling
that all kind of concentrates there.
And so he's illustrating it's difficult for new nodes on the network
to emerge when the EFERN.
EF sucks up all of the oxygen, whether it wants to suck up the oxygen or not.
However, he is saying also at the same time that there is just like a funding crisis.
So $30 million a year of core dev funding.
It costs the EF with their limited budget remaining.
And so to some degree, they are giving up.
There is an open window of opportunity for a new organization with new funding to come in
because there's that power vacuum being set up.
But I think what Trent's real point is is that we need legitimacy to be spread away from the EF.
That's the succession part, but also the difficulty in doing so.
That's kind of the through line of the article.
I got transposed.
I kind of disagree with parts of it because he talks about a funding crisis, but I think there's actually an execution crisis in Ethereum.
It's like a shipping crisis.
Yeah.
What's the point of funding incompetent shipping?
That's right.
If you talk about 30 million a year, and let's take that number, let's say that, that's
10% of what Tom Lee makes on eth-staking every year.
Yeah.
10% could defund the whole thing.
You think he's not, you think that Heath stakeholders are not willing to do something like that.
Yeah.
I think they would do it to a competent organization that could execute, that could actually, like, move the dial on Ethereum and the assets.
So I think that's where the EF has fallen short in some ways.
And I think this legitimately shift will happen so long as other organizations step up and are able to execute.
So this is all good.
this part of the process is just like taking way longer than I hoped it would.
Can I give you a bit of a teaser for, these are Onsgaard's words that's part of the
Eath Labs and a little bit of a teaser for the episode that I'm about to record with him tomorrow.
Okay, yeah.
Eith Labs wants to co-develop Ethereum and Eith.
I don't know, co-develop Ethereum and Eith?
Yeah, yeah.
They're an Ether, Ethereum R&D Lab.
Yeah.
I thought it was the hottest line ever.
Why are you so muted?
We need co-developed.
They're going to develop Ethereum.
Oh, the two things together.
The ETH and Ethereum together.
They are going to co-develop Ethereum.
Yes, okay.
That's hitting me different now.
Thank you.
Say it like that.
The second time it hit me.
David, we got more to discuss,
including the Illinois governor signed to the worst crypto tax I've ever seen.
I can't believe this is real.
I saved this part of when you were back.
I didn't want to talk about this with Tom.
No, this is going to be so fun to talk about.
All right.
We'll get to all that.
more, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.
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are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it.
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His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point. I've been following him for years.
And this year, we started recording weekly podcast episodes. Each one we get into his portfolio,
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There's a new episode waiting for you now. Ryan, I think everyone reasonable will say that the Donald
Trump presidency is mixed. You know, maybe there's some good things, but there's definitely
some bad things. Sure. One positive thing I will firmly say,
about the Donald Trump presidency
is their approach to technology
is serious and correct.
It's much better, yeah.
They're taking like structurally important technology
very seriously and we're hitting the gas pedal.
So this week out of the White House,
a tweet that said,
investing in American quantum leadership like never before,
President Donald Trump signs executive orders on quantum,
supercharging a national effort
in innovation in quantum.
technologies, ensuring national security, and continuing American growth in a critical industry.
Yes, correct. Full points. Let's listen to this clip right now.
Quantum technologies represents the next generation of innovation across computing, sensing, and
networking with enormous significance for our country's economic growth, scientific research
and cyber security. It's really a big deal that we're doing today. And the country's doing
really well, as you know. In 2018, I signed the National Quantum Initiative Act into law,
which led to doubling the federal government investment in quantum research and development.
I think you all know about that. That helped unleash billions of dollars of private investment in
America's quantum industrial base promoting significant scientific and technological progress,
like progress like we've never seen before, actually. We want to keep that positive momentum going.
in America with the orders that I'm signing today,
and these will really have a, I think, place at a big step forward.
We're already the leader by a lot.
And we're going to be now the leader by a lot more.
Great job.
Love it.
Taking it seriously.
That was a serious clip.
Sorry, Ryan.
I have one more clip that I want to play.
This is a hilarious clip.
We're going to be investing in American quantum leadership like never before
to stay ahead of the pack.
We're way ahead right now.
we'll keep it that way.
The second order I'm signing directs federal agency
to transition to what is called
quantum cryptography.
Do you anyone know what that is?
Does anyone know what that is?
Quantum cryptography.
That's amazing.
Does anyone know what that is?
That's great.
Well, we know a little bit of what it is.
I've been talking about on bank lists
for the past couple of years.
It's a little bit.
Okay, let me summarize everything in the executive order.
Yeah, what's in this thing?
Okay, so we are migrating the timeline forward for being quantum secure by four years from 2035 to 2031.
That's great.
That's all agencies have to have quantum resistant cryptography algorithms by 2031 rather than 2035.
That's a massive, that's like a 40% increase forward in timelines here.
We're also going to build a quantum computer.
And so the executive order establishes the quantum computer for application development and discovery science.
And we are, we, the United States of America, are aiming to build a powerful quantum computer for scientific discovery with a planned deployment at the Department of Energy Facility and potential access for the broader scientific community.
Reporting points to a target, a targeting a meaningful capacity by 2028.
By 2028, the United States government is going to have a cryptography relevant quantum computer for scientific discovery.
Yeah.
I think this is a really big deal.
This is the U.S. saying this is a national priority.
They're going to invest in it.
I'm sure they are getting the tip off from the leading frontier labs in quantum in the U.S.
and maybe in U.S. allied countries like Google, I'm sure, is just being like, hey, we're making huge progress
on this. And this is all a national defense type thing. Because, like, imagine all of the communications
that could be tapped into and hacked if somebody had a quantum computer. I mean, the U.S.
absolutely has to beat China to this in order to maintain its kind of position in the world
and not to be at national security risk. But this is moving faster than, I think, anyone thought.
Remember, Justin Drake put out that post in March, um, 20.
Well, in March of this year, and he said that, what did he give it?
A 10% chance by 2030?
Is that it?
Yeah.
That we would have quantum?
Uh-huh.
I now put the odds of Q-Day by 2032 at 50%, 10% by 2030.
And I would expect his estimates have even, like, increased, have fallen back, you know, since then.
So this is happening very fast.
not sure that Bitcoin will be able to
to make it in time.
It's even unclear that Ethereum will be able to make it.
Well, I mean, they'll figure it out.
It just could be really bumpy if this happens
within the next five to six years.
Yeah.
Bitcoin is not ready.
They're just so not ready.
Even, like, even Ethereum has so much to do.
It's a lot of work.
It has a lot to do between now and then.
I mean, at least Ethereum's taking it seriously.
But, man, dude.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's finish with this, David.
Do you see the Illinois governor?
You did see this.
I did see this.
I was talking about it.
I saved it for you.
Okay, this is a 0.2% crypto transaction tax on everything.
This was signed by the governor of Illinois on June 16th.
So it's already signed.
It's a law that has passed now.
It's not effective yet.
So it's effective January 1st.
So within six months, it's going to be effective.
And this is in play for anyone in Illinois.
It's the first statewide transaction tax of its kind.
It is called the digital asset privilege, the digital asset privilege tax act.
So implying that if you have digital assets, you are a privileged individual.
And what it's doing is this is not a capital gains tax.
What an assumption.
I don't feel very privileged right now.
This is not a profits tax.
This is a tax on movement.
So if you do anything to move your crypto assets from one place to another, there's a tax on it.
0.2% is the tax.
There's a tax for keeping it in custody, 0.2%, just like touching your crypto, there's a 0.2% chance.
Not for stocks, not for bonds, not for Bitcoin.
It's unclear whether moving crypto assets from a self-custodial account that you hold to another self-custodial account that you hold,
that you hold also incurred this tax.
It could.
The language is unclear and vague.
And all of this happens in Illinois, like, place like Chicago.
What if you're a listener, a bankless listener in Chicago?
Like, how livid are you right now?
Do you just have to, like, go and drive over the state boundary?
What's the state that's next to Illinois?
No, I'm sure it's a residency type thing, right?
Yeah, so you'd have to, like, move to Florida for six months every year or something like that.
This has got to be illegal.
That's state tax.
It passed.
It's law.
It doesn't feel right.
I mean, I think it will be challenged.
So a repeal bill was introduced within days.
I think it could be challenged in the court system.
But for now, it's a law that's going to affect January 1st, 27.
And it's the worst tax I've ever heard of.
It's just so confounding.
It's just like that just in nukes everything.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's end with this.
We haven't talked about this in a while,
but David, I know you are.
buying some things in crypto.
I don't know if you're bottom ticking anything right now.
What's your portfolio looking like?
I have a portfolio of hype, VVV, NIR, and Zcash, which is like kind of like...
It's very trendy.
It's a very trendy portfolio.
I will say, like, people were harping on me for, like, hopping on the trend when I tweeted
that, like, I tweeted this one thing.
People, I was like, after I sold all my eth, I bought those four things.
And then in the tweet, I said, and now I'm buying lit.
but people are like, oh, David bought Zcash.
All of those positions, I will say, are in the green other than Zcash.
Yes, still.
Wow.
Still.
Yeah.
Still.
Yes, that's correct.
Yeah.
In the green relative to Eath.
No, dollars, dude.
Okay.
Yeah.
Zcash, I bought it like 550 or something.
So that one's kind of down bad.
But like near it is still up and, and, oh, no, Venice might not be up anymore.
Venice might be down.
Venice might be down.
Anyways, lit, lit is the token that I'm the most concentrated in.
Just because, like, it seems so damn cheap to me.
You know, lit lighter.
Of course, yeah.
I think it's a great founding team.
It's basically an Ethereum app.
You can think of it that way.
Perps are huge.
The question is, it's like such a power law winning game, right?
With hyperliquid.
Like, there could be a world where...
Because how many exchanges have there been that are worth many billions of dollars?
Yeah, Coinbase, you know.
Because it's an exchange.
business. So it is a Dex, it's a ZK layer 2 on Ethereum that is a Dex, a Perp Dex. It's got
spot, it's got perps. But like it's going to, it's competing, is trying to compete with
the biggest exchanges out there, not just Hyper Liquid, but also Coinbase and like Binance and
OkX. And it just wants to have, it's like internal operations be ZK circuits on an Ethereum
layer two. Yeah, I could see it. I mean, the architecture makes sense. The team is fantastic. It's
can they run faster than some of the big competitors they're trying to execute against, right?
Did you know, Vlad, the founder, is like on the CFTC, like, board of advisors or something?
That's cool.
Very cool.
I mean, he's in the right spots.
So that's my most concentrated bet.
Yeah.
Well, are you thinking about anything else?
Or you just wait and see right now?
And everything else is in the stock market.
I'll say, buying lighter has been the first time my money has flown from the stock market to crypto in a lot.
time you really have been going the other way. Yay. Sign of the time. Sign of the time. I think
am I eyeing anything else? I don't think I'm eyeing anything else. Yeah. I think it's an interesting
time for the market. I think that I'm probably pretty convinced that we'll bottom some time
in the second half of this year and that'll be a great time to buy. All sorts of things. By what?
I'm still trying to decide. I mean, certainly store value assets will have a comeback.
You mean, certainly Bitcoin. The majors. The majors.
I'm still, you know, I still think Heath could have a run.
I understand some people don't think that.
Apps and crypto, big deal.
I mean, say what you will about Eith.
It is at a discount.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think everyone will say that.
It is 30% below, 35% below the 200 week moving average.
So, like, it's a deal, probably.
It could be.
It could be.
It could be very well be.
Could be a deal.
And it could still go down a little bit more before it goes up.
But I think we're close to the bottom now.
we just spot a bono mesh a bit more.
Bankless Station, that is it for this week.
Ryan will be back next week.
He is not going on another vacation.
He'll be back in pocket.
Until then, though, crypto is risky.
You can lose what you put in.
But we are headed west.
This frontier is not for everyone.
We are glad you're with us on the bikeless journey.
Thanks a lot.
