Bankless - ROLLUP: Bitcoin ETF | Coinbase NFT Platform | PleasrDAO Wu Tang Clan | Polygon & Draft Kings | Steam

Starting point is 00:00:07 Bankless Nation, happy third week of October. David, should I say uptober? We're talking all-time highs right now. This has been all-time high week. How are you doing? You got a big smile on your face. You must be happy. You're in your SpongeBob sweater.

Starting point is 00:00:20 Something's going right. High Fashion Fridays. It's what's going on. Yeah. Gosh, there's so many awesome things happened this week. Like you said, all-time highs for Bitcoin. We got the Bitcoin ETF as well. Lots to unpack there.

Starting point is 00:00:35 Also, a Dow. takes the mysterious, unreleased, famous Wu-Tang album from the cold hands of a hedge fund villain and is now making it accessible for the rest of the world. TBD on that as well. And also, draft kings and Polygon, a $40 billion public company now on Polygon. Whoa, that's pretty cool. So much to talk about. Yeah, we got some details on the Coinbase NFT platform as well. We're going to cover so much going on, David. Hard to fit it in. But, you know, we managed. somehow. Sometimes it's a it's an hour and a half. Sometimes it's two hours. We jam pack this episode with everything that you need to know in crypto this week. So we'll attempt to do that once again.

Starting point is 00:01:19 You think we're going to be successful? We're going to try and go real, real fast. So let's go ahead and get right into it, Ryan. But first we got some announcements. Want to take us through them? The first is pooled together has just rolled out their V4. They wanted bankless audience to know about it. And this is like my number one. When somebody asks me, what's the first thing I should use in Defy? I always refer to them to pull together. It's either Uniswap or pull together. But I do this because this is a no-loss lottery, right?

Starting point is 00:01:47 So they can't get angry at me if they lose anything because they won't lose something. By depositing their funds into pool together, you put USDC in. It's fun, easy to use your interface, just connect Metamask. And boom, you're in a lotto where you can only win. there's no loss in the principle. They generate the earnings based on prizes that are pushed out to the platform and based on the yield, the assets are earning. So it's like another way to save.

Starting point is 00:02:17 It's like a high interest lotto savings account actually. And their V4 has even more prizes. Also, it's whale proof. It's really friendly for the smaller minnows, only depositing smaller amounts of money. There's near zero transaction fees too, because The hack is you can now deposit into pooled together using Polygon and not have to pay EF gas fees. And they're launching with a million dollars in prizes.

Starting point is 00:02:44 So really cool to see this. I've won the lotto before. I don't know if you've ever won the lotto in Pulled Together, but it's like a magic feeling. You go and you check and you're like, oh, my God, I won this week. Isn't that awesome? Yeah. If you ever wanted to check the box of winning the lottery, pool together might be the best way that you can add that to your Instagram bio or maybe your Tinder bio.

Starting point is 00:03:06 Just let the people know that you win the lottery. You should not tell anyone you win the lottery if you win the lottery, folks. That's like, yeah, it's a recipe for, you know, too many acquaintances calling you up and and wanting things. Anyway, guys, check that out. That's at bankless.com. com slash pool together and jump in the pool with us. David, all right, all time high week.

Starting point is 00:03:27 You ready to get to markets? Let's absolutely do it. It is all time high week for Bitcoin. we crossed the previous all-time high of $63,500, setting a new all-time high of $67,100. Taking a little bit of a tumble back down to $63,200, but still broke the all-time highs. That's big, man. That's big. So the last previous all-time high, if I recall correctly, was sometime in April. April 13th, 191 days ago.

Starting point is 00:03:59 So Bitcoin holders, like through this, whole bull run, they've had to be very patient because they've watched all of these other assets pump since April. In particular, like, we had this Alt layer two, alt layer one summer. We had sort of a defy, two-d-o kind of resurgence as well. And Bitcoin holders, if you are a Bitcoin holder, you've been waiting patiently for this time to come. The big news was going to be the ETF, right? And here it is. It happened this week. And that's why we're seeing the Bitcoin pump. Does that explain all of this, David? I think a broader question that I want to ask is like we went through an all-time high

Starting point is 00:04:36 where we are now, 191 days ago, 27 weeks ago. Then we went through like this period where Bitcoin just got slammered with fud after fud after flammered, huh? China Fud, energy fud, ESG FUD, like regulation fud. And it took a beating. It went all the way like how low did it get like 29,000, 26, 7,000 or something before returning back to all-time highs. And so, like, pretty crazy, right? And like, what is it, 27 weeks, half of a year. Like,

Starting point is 00:05:08 there's always the conversation about Bitcoin goes in cycles. Like, was that a mini cycle? Was that a full cycle? Does it even matter as a cycle to talk about? Did we just go through like a full, like, seasonality cycle? I don't really know. Important story is. We are back at all-time highs. Yeah. The other, I guess, what that means as well is Bitcoin is rising up the ranks in terms of global currency. So it just passed the Swiss franc in terms of value, total value. There's, you know, Bitcoin, total outstanding supplies, more valuable than total outstanding Swiss francs. So it's the 13th largest world currency by market cap at this point in time. Unbelievable, right? What are we? 12 years, 13 years into this experiment. At the same time, that makes it feel

Starting point is 00:05:53 so low. Does it? That's it? Like, Bitcoin's only beyond like the only number 13. Friends, we are early. We're still early, right? It's going to be moving up these charts. Let's talk about something else that is moving up the charts. And that is the price of ETH this week. So Eith had a good week. Not quite ready to call the all-time high, though, David. We wanted to so much, but we're not there. We just touched it, right? Like, barely touched it. Almost got there, but not quite. What is Eith right now? And what was the previous all-time high? Yeah, currently clucking in at $4,100. We started the week at $3,800. In the previous all-time high, it was $75 higher than what is being reported on Coinbase. It always changes depending on which exchange you're looking at. Previous high was $4,375-ish dollars. And so, oh, look, we actually got closer than I thought. So we almost, we missed it by $20-ish, give or take. But interestingly,

Starting point is 00:06:46 Ether was up 14.5% on the week, whereas Bitcoin was only up 11% on the week. On the week that Bitcoin had the ETF announcement, which is kind of interesting. Good news for Bitcoin is good news for ETH as well, right? So people are just asking like, well, if Bitcoin's going with an ETH, then when ETH, ETF, it's got to be happening. And it is rising up the charts as well. We don't have a global currency chart open, but we do have this. Ethereum is now larger than all of the world's global banks. Okay. So it just passed in terms of MarketCast, J.P. Morgan in Market Cap. I've been watching this. for a while just because look, this is bankless and Ethereum is kind of the, you know, bankless

Starting point is 00:07:28 money platform for the world. And now it just passed the largest bank in the world. I don't know that they know this is going on, but it's like it's happening. It's picking them off one by one. Yeah. Do they understand that Ethereum is actually a banking competitor to them? It's pretty cool that Ethereum is bigger than the world's largest bank. But I think the bigger land milestone is when Ethereum is bigger than all of the banks combined. That I think is the real time to celebrate. Well, let's talk about the Bitcoin to Eth chart, shall we? So Bitcoin and Eith always in this tug of war and this in this tension. What are we looking at on the Bitcoin to Eith ratio this week? Yeah, it was flat on the week. A little bit up, started at 0.064, currently at 0.065.

Starting point is 00:08:13 but it's also when looking at that pattern, you see that, again, lower, higher lows getting painted over the course of the last like roughly 200-ish days or so. Again, interesting to see Ether, especially in the last two days, really run up against Bitcoin on the, on the, after the news of the Bitcoin ETF. So interesting dynamics. The Ether Bitcoin ratio really putting up a fight. Do you know what I tweeted out this morning because I genuinely feel this way? I have not been previously at the point of saying like the flippinging of Ether exceeding Bitcoin market cap is is inevitable but now I feel like I'm at that point like it's going to happen well I mean I had a very I had a high confidence

Starting point is 00:09:00 interval probably at the beginning of the year that that would happen call it 80% what changed is ETH became ultrasound bunny that narrative stuck EIP 155 where we're burning ETH every single block, every single day, every single week. The ETH as an internet bond is taken hold, talking to institutional investors in the way we have. They're all buying ETH, okay? It's being recognized as a reserve asset. Now we have the merge coming, and I have incredibly high confidence that that is going to be shipped. Last year at this time, none of the things I mentioned had happened, all right?

Starting point is 00:09:37 That's where I was like 80% confident that ETH would flip a. Bitcoin. Now I'm like closer to 100%. Like I think it is inevitable. Now we've just seen probably the most bullish thing that Bitcoin has in store short of another country maybe adopting Bitcoin in some way, which is the the ETF, right? That's kind of the news that everyone is waiting for. And it's up, but like it's not up that much compared to ETH. So I'm kind of ready to state that. I know you've been more bullish. You're always like, yeah, it's going to happen 100%. And now I'm feeling like very close to 100% as well. I think there's some things to unpack here, first off.

Starting point is 00:10:18 I actually think that this ETF is not the ETF that should make you bullish because it's a futures based ETF. And we'll unpack what that means later in the episode. But as opposed to a spot based ETF where actually like demand of the ETF actually creates buying pressure on the spot markets. And so like there's there's something to unpack there. also this is just the beginning of the ETF, the Bitcoin ETF story. And overall, I think really meaningful Bitcoin price appreciation is going to happen when that the bridge of the ETF actually translates towards more and more companies actually putting Bitcoin exposure on their balance sheets.

Starting point is 00:11:00 And so, like, while it's just like the first week of the Bitcoin ETF, a lot of institutions are not yet moving their money to do that, but they definitely will in the future. And so my take here is that, like, Bitcoin didn't react so strongly to this ETF, other than breaking all-time high. It's like decent, like still pretty strong. That's good, in and of itself. It's good.

Starting point is 00:11:18 But there's just speculation as like, all right, when does this meaningfully actually change the fundamentals of Bitcoin? Is it like right now or is it in the future when these institutions actually come and start using this product? And I will also say, like, I'm also very, very bullish on the merge where I think there's going to be a similar game being played as does Ether really move up against Bitcoin right before the merge? or really like is it going to happen maybe up to a year or two years down the line after the lack of issuance from proof of stake actually does show up in the market.

Starting point is 00:11:48 Because remember, where Bitcoin has institutions putting it on its balance sheet, ether has just like not issuing any ether and actually being ultrasound money. Ethereum, because of the concept of ultrasound money, the combination of burning transaction fees and minimizing the amount of ether issuance counts as like we get as many grace. scales as Bitcoin has every single year, like recycle. So it's almost like on Ethereum flipping Bitcoin is definitely like on a timer because like they get to Ethereum as a protocol just gets to generate its own gray scales like putting ether on the balance sheet. Anyways, there's a lot, there's a lot of dynamics to unpack with the flippinging. Yeah, for sure. And I'm not going to call a timeline on it. I'm just calling a probability of flippinging has gone way up, whether that happens before the merge, after the merge sometime in the next three to five years. I'm not sure.

Starting point is 00:12:35 I just think it's going to happen. More Bitcoin ETF discussion, too. We should have that when we get to news because I feel like the big thing is actually the narrative, is actually the U.S. government saying, okay, guys, you can have your Bitcoin ETF now. We won't stop you from having that. Anyway, let's talk about another all-time high, David, which is something we've been waiting for for the entire year. And that is Defi Pulse, the total locked value in D-Fi.

Starting point is 00:13:01 What did we just hit, David, the magic number? $100 billion. dollars. I'm pretty sure we said it was going to happen last week. We definitely did. And now we said we wanted it to happen. Yeah. Clocking in at $100 billion locked in Defi. And then the DPI at the mod has $345. So the defy tokens not following the amount of value locked inside of their applications. Look at this. Where were we? Let's see, 2020 this time last year. Look at this, David. 22 billion 5x in a year

Starting point is 00:13:35 Yeah and that was right after You know DFI summer It's pretty impressive And if you go back like before Defy Summer Yeah nothing You remember when we talked to like Cute little numbers

Starting point is 00:13:46 Van Spencer from a framework And like total locked value is like I don't know five billion or something Yeah didn't he make some insane prediction About how there's gonna be a hundred billion dollars locked in D5? Yeah he asked for the run Yeah and we were like Wow, Vance, are you allowed to be that bullish?

Starting point is 00:14:04 Are you sure? Is that legal? Is that a legal amount of bullishness? Yeah, like, stop pumping everything. Yeah, stop pumping everything, Vance, but he called it. And we're not stopping here. I mean, it doesn't look like the Bull Run is showing any signs of stopping. Speaking of which, let's talk about DPI.

Starting point is 00:14:21 This is the top DeFi tokens. What are we looking at on the week? We don't have to talk too much about it. It's a very flat number. It started the week at like roughly 300. $140. It went up to $365 and now we're back at $345. So flat-ish. It's funny.

Starting point is 00:14:38 Like some defy 2.0 tokens so-called are making a run. But the blue chip defy tokens are not right now. That's a really, really good, important point. I think we might be actually able to make the claim that the DPI is actually not tracking all of DFI because there's a lot of new protocols that have done extremely well recently. Rari Capital, Olympus Dow, that aren't included in the DPI. Can you double check and make sure that's true? Can you scroll down and look at the holdings?

Starting point is 00:15:03 Oh, I'm pretty sure that's true because many of these tokens are like too young. It's not in here. Yeah, too young. Yeah, younger defy is outpacing older defy. Yeah, catch up, old man. Come on. Let's talk about the- No, we don't have to.

Starting point is 00:15:19 The ETH DPI ratio is getting slaughtered at 0.084. Oh, my God. So I'm moving my flow of my bottom call from 0.13 to 0.013. Don't make calls anymore, dude. Stop calling the bottom, okay? There is no bottom right here. Well, look, eth is just looking really strong, particularly against these blue chip defy tokens.

Starting point is 00:15:41 And I don't know when that's going to change. I think it will eventually, but it's not looking that way right now. In the traditional stock market, we're used to indexes going up against the dollar, but I guess in defy, we see indexes going down versus ether just because eth is ultrotsound money. Absolutely. And, you know, I think to be fair, what you have to actually do in crypto is like you should, like, something like ETH should be your denominator. For me, personally, it's my denominator. It's not actually U.S. dollars and it's not Bitcoin. I know some crypto folks denominate everything in Bitcoin. I don't personally. I denominate in ETH. And so when I'm

Starting point is 00:16:19 making an investment outside of ether, I ask myself, do I expect this investment to appreciate versus ETH? Not against dollars. Dollars is easy, man. That's easy. It's easy. Come on. But can you actually appreciate and realize gains versus ETH is the question? And Defi did for a long time. It hasn't recently.

Starting point is 00:16:40 Let's talk about the way you can't lose, though, which is you buy all three. You buy Bitcoin. You buy ETH. And you buy DPI in equal 30, 30, 30, sorry, a third, a third, a third, a third, split. This is the bankless bed index. What are we looking at on the week, David? Started the week at $155 hit a high, a new all-time high for at $186 in line with all-time high season currently clocking in at $174.

Starting point is 00:17:07 Oh, that's nice. Hit an alt. So Bitcoin all-time high, total locked value in defy, all-time high, bed index all-time high. And just like $22 off, I don't know, it's like $22 off Eth all-time high. So we're doing it. Oh, another all-time high. Layer 2 beat, the total locked value in defy is also.

Starting point is 00:17:26 all-time high in this October season, this all-time high week. What are we looking at in total locked value in layer two? Clocking in at $4 billion. So nice to see that four number there. I think this is just going to be another following the total locked in defy marching up to $100 billion. So some of the leaders this week, Arbitrum, D-Y-D-X, optimism, all individually up about 8%. loopering clocking in at plus 15% at 130 million nice job arbitram got 60% dominance right now uh dydx coming in the second place with 22% but this is so early like this is not even the first inning of the game here uh but this is a chart to watch over the next 12 months for sure as things shake out uh token terminal let's talk about this man this is a story of the ip 1559

Starting point is 00:18:17 another reason i'm i'm bullish eth and bullish on the flippinging look at this Users of Ethereum have paid $1 billion in transaction fees over the past 30 days. Okay, so think about that. Ethereum as a protocol has received $1 billion worth of revenue. If you look at Ethereum like a business that has sustainable economics, Ethereum received a billion a month, a billion a month. Not too bad. And here's the part that where EIP 1559 comes in. People used to say, well, you know, so that's all going to miners.

Starting point is 00:18:51 Well, no, it's not. 83% almost 83% of that was burned. That's almost a billion dollars. 824 million was actually burnt and returned to ETH holders. So remember, this is as if every time Apple sells an iPhone, right, a portion of its stock is burnt. Is it eliminated? 83% of the value of an iPhone gets burnt.

Starting point is 00:19:14 83%, right? What is that worth? Even from a, ignore the ultrasound money case, I suppose, or the, you know, the, like reserve currency monetary premium case, just from a discounted cash flow. Like if you're, if you're viewing this as ether as you would as stock, it is, it is supremely undervalued even at even at this valuation. And it's just crazy to see. So look, we got room to run, David.

Starting point is 00:19:40 That's what I think. Last time. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, last time that ETH hit these current prices. Here's a nice little summary tweet. Last time ETH hit 4K, EIP 1,5. 555. Oh gosh, 1559 was not live. Ether issuance was roughly 57% higher. 2.3 billion ether were not burnt. Optimism and Arbitrum were not launched. NFT volume had not done like an insane 4x. And then ETH staked in 2.0 was literally half the amount it is right now. And the total octal value in defy was 20% lower. So nice summary of where we were just about 27 weeks ago in Ethereum land. Almost $3 trillion.

Starting point is 00:20:23 That's the total value of all of crypto. And like, do you remember when Vitalik asked this in 2017, a question of, have we earned it? Right? We were almost at a trillion dollars back then. Have we earned it? And his answer was implicitly no. This time I feel like not all of crypto, but I'm talking specifically about ether, maybe some other assets as well.

Starting point is 00:20:44 The question of have we earned it, I feel like is a resounding yes, right? Just look at the cash flows that block space demand. is generating right now. And look at all of the development and the path forward. And it feels like this is the beginning, once again, of a bull run and not like, oh, maybe we're kind of the midpoint, I suppose. But it's not over yet, in my opinion. None of this is financial advice, of course.

Starting point is 00:21:11 Let's talk about Polygon as well, because they're hitting some big numbers. What's this number? A hundred million unique active addresses on Polygon. So congratulations on the Polygon team. And with one of the big stories coming out later in the roll-up, it's going to be obvious as to why Polygon has done so well. It's relieving some traffic from the main chain, which is great as well. Look, Elon Musk, once again, summed it up, the meme master, I guess. What are we looking at here?

Starting point is 00:21:37 Yeah, Elon, Marcus were so hot this week that Elon Musk tweeted out this meme of just a guy and a girl, obviously a couple guys like hugging the shit, excuse me, hugging his girlfriend really, really hard. And they are together watching a TV on the wall where Bitcoin is priced. at $69,000 and ether's price at $4,200. So Elon Musk, the meme lord, nice job. Just a romantic night. What are you doing? You're not watching Netflix.

Starting point is 00:22:01 You're just watching the price of Bitcoin and Eath go up. It's been one of those weeks. Guys, we will be right back with some the hot releases of the week. And after that news, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Macha, everyone's favorite deck aggregator, has just launched an open beta for gasless trading. So if you're trading more than $5,000 in common eth and wrapped Bitcoin pairs, then your gas fees on Macha are free.

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Starting point is 00:24:22 and join the Discord to keep up to date with Alchemics V-2 and to get involved in governance. All right, guys, we are back after All-Time High Week, still in All-Time High Week. Now we're talking about releases. This is the reason that we are getting to all-time highs. So much is being built on top of Ethereum, on top of D-Fi, on top of all the protocols we talk about.

Starting point is 00:24:41 Let's talk about Future Swap. Future swap is a perpetual's protocol. They just went live on Mainnet, David. What's going on here? Yeah, fun fact, this is a nice piece of Ethereum trivia, but actually started off with the yield farming model before compound actually introduced it to the world. They were so successful that they had to shut down the contracts

Starting point is 00:24:59 because so much money flooded in. They were worried, right? It was like too early. Yeah, too much money came too fast into annodity contracts. But that was a long time ago. We are now into the V4 of Future Swap. So if you are a perpetuals trader and you want, allegedly 10 times more liquid markets with 30 times more capital efficiency and it's fully

Starting point is 00:25:17 composable including exotic assets like NFTs future swap might be for you. Exotic assets like NFTs. I'm actually going to have to check it out. That was available. Yeah, very cool. This is cool too. EnS just keeps getting better. That is of course, dot-eath, you know it well. But if you have metamask and you type in a dot-eath domain name like in your browser window, as long as you have that metamask extension in your browser window and you put a slash at the end of it, it'll just load. So if you go to Vitalik.eath, you have Metamask slash, then what pops up? It's the decentralized version of Vitalik's website.

Starting point is 00:25:54 I'm going to try this right now. Yeah, let's do this. Let's see if this works. Mine didn't work. Look at this. Metamask is wearing E&S. You might not be logged in. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:26:03 And then boom, where are we? This is an IPFS link to Vitalik's website, which is not loading. laugh out loud. Well, we're getting there. I tried it earlier this week, and it worked. But, like, I think the redirect works for whatever reason. The link is down on, oh, here it is. Oh, look at that.

Starting point is 00:26:20 It was just slow. It's a little slow. IPFS is slower. Decentralization is slow. That's how it works. So permanent. So permanent. Very cool to see that.

Starting point is 00:26:30 DotE addresses just keep getting better. This is really cool to see, too, David. Have you ever, like, tried to use a state website, right? It's tried to register an LLC or C corp or something like that? Not if I can avoid it, no. You try to pay your taxes or something. Anyway, the state websites are absolutely terrible. It's like they were developed in 2003 and then just like left.

Starting point is 00:26:51 They probably have something on staff called like a webmaster who just like maintains the website. I mean, they're absolutely terrible. Every single state is like that. Anyway, one thing that's cool is the Wyoming website, state website where you register a business has just gotten updated. And it's gotten updated and you see this one. You can register an LLC, you can register a nonprofit, you can register a corporation. What's this? You can also register a Dow, a decentralized autonomous organization.

Starting point is 00:27:23 Hit that nice start now button with the hover. And it's very cool. Like Wyoming law now allows this bridge between DAOs and LLCs and entities that are state recognized. And because, of course, the state of Wyoming recognizes a DAO, then that means the entire federal government of the United States recognizes a DAO. I haven't tried this, haven't done this. I know there are some things that are lacking from this kind of Dow registration, but just the fact that you can do this is a huge, massive step forward. This always reminds me that like crypto is this nebulous, like, organism from space with a bunch of tentacles. And it's just like

Starting point is 00:28:09 grabbing on to the real world in like every single way possible. And now it's found its way to the real world via Dauze. The crypto octopus has you in its tentacles Wyoming. That's what's going on. You are now part of the hive mind. Yeah, Connects as well. So this is a bridge protocol. We're really excited about these, but they just released and explore so you can kind of visualize this. David, this is loading up right now. But what are we looking at here in the Connects dashboard? Yeah, I think cross-chain cross-L-2 volume transfers of like cross-transfers of U-S-D-C, Ether, U-S-D-T, Matic, all these tokens. It's going to be really, really fun to watch because this economy is transparent.

Starting point is 00:28:48 And KineX has done a fantastic job making a dashboard of all these metrics so you can view the cross-chain L2 world, volume, number of transactions, which chains are going to, what assets are being transferred, how much total liquidity there is, how much total volume has been transferred. So congratulations to Connects for also cross-chaining $100 million since going live with their protocol. Yeah, that's huge. Guys, okay, those have been the releases. Let's talk a bit about some of the raises this week.

Starting point is 00:29:18 And I think the theme, David, is money is just rushing into this space. It's piling in. And it's not just piling in one area, right? It's not just like the protocols or the layer one level or like the blockchain level. It's saturating all of these different areas. areas we didn't even have a couple of years ago during the last bull cycle. So we got like at the protocol layer investments are flying, the defy layer investments are flying, new funds are being created, massive like hundreds of millions of dollars.

Starting point is 00:29:46 We've got crypto banks that are continuing to raise. We've got NFTs. We've got even mining. Like there are all of these different pools of capital that are raising right now. And maybe we should touch on a few. The first is from Obol. So this is a, they just raised $6.15 million. And I think of this is it's making staking more decentralized.

Starting point is 00:30:06 There's some cool tech behind this, some cool crypto magic, I would say. But that's at the protocol layer and really cool to see this race. Very deep down in the protocol layer. And the technology here is a shared secret validators, which allows you to split a validator key among multiple parties, kind of like sharing the password for running a validating node with 32 ether in it. And this is really, really important for organizations like Lido that have not yet fully figured out how to protocolize the whole validator network that they have. And this is a very important puzzle piece for actually turning that into a completely trustless organization. Oh, the OBLE team actually got a grant from Lido, $100,000 to help develop this technology. And this is something that we can also see rocket pool using.

Starting point is 00:30:51 And also overall just makes it easier to spin up a validating, a decentralized validating network. So pretty cool innovation here. Congratulations to Colin Myers. He's been in this world for a while. Yeah, he's definitely been in staking for a while. A polynomial is another one. So this is a, I believe, you know, the characterization of like it's a one inch, it's an aggregator for all of the various DFI option protocols that are happening right now. They just raised $1.1 million to build out this one inch style marketplace. Kind of cool. Any comments? The options ecosystem on Ethereum is definitely like, it needs to get built out. So it's really

Starting point is 00:31:28 nice seeing these aggregators getting added into the whole options marketplace. I mean, options are very basic financial contract. It makes a ton of sense to have them on Ethereum. Hasn't really seen the adoption that we've wanted to see it yet. But maybe it's something like an aggregator is really what needed to happen to make this done. The next one is element, doing a big boy raise. Okay. So $32 million in a series A round led by Polychain and A16Z. but the valuation here is $320 million for Defi Protocol. And what these guys are doing is they're sort of splitting the principle in an interest rate. And they're making it so that you can essentially get like a fixed rate.

Starting point is 00:32:11 All of the defy loans you get from compound or AVE, they're all variable rate. And element is changing it so that many of these things can be a fixed rate. But that's a big valuation and pretty impressive that they're able to command that. another ex-consensus individual, I believe, behind this. Super exciting to see. Yeah, we've had them on the show before. So an old state of the nation, if you want to go find out more about Elman. Also really pioneering into a brand new governance model, which has gotten a lot of praise

Starting point is 00:32:40 from people that I really like in this industry, like Mariana Conti. We should mention that David and I are investors in all three of those protocols, actually. We believe in them that much. Also, David, Polygon, they're getting a bit-wise invest. fund. So that is happening. Bitwise, of course, is the largest indexing organization, I suppose. They're centralized, of course, but now they're launching a polygon fund primarily to invest in polygon ecosystem of applications. What's happening here? Basically, it's just a wrapper around the Maddoch token and then making it available for institutional investors who want to invest

Starting point is 00:33:19 in the Bitwise fund. So, I mean, there's a ton of hype around Maddoch. There's a ton of growing adoption of Maddick. And so Maddick's a token in the same way that Ether is a great tool to get exposure to basically everything that happens on Ethereum. Madic is simultaneously a great token to get exposure to everything that happens on Maddick. And now you can get that exposure.

Starting point is 00:33:38 If you are a legacy tradfai boomer investor and just want bitwise to do all the hard work for you, you can, so there's actually going to be just like, it's a great bridge. Look, it's better to do that than nothing, right? The worst thing you can do is just sit out of these markets for sure because, you know, so if you can't do a Metamask, then do this is what I say.

Starting point is 00:33:59 Okay, so also some funds, David. So the first is Variant. That's a fund we've been pretty excited about. We've had Jesse from Variant on the podcast before. They just launched another $110 million fund. I think this is either their second, either second or their third. They've also added some new talent whom we've also had on the podcast. Lee Jin, talk about that. We actually had both of them on the podcast on a panel at the same time talking about the ownership economy. Also on that panel was Cooper Turley, who was an advisor for the invariant fund. So now all these three friends are just now running a fund together, focusing on building out the creator-owner economy. And so they have always been bullish on this industry.

Starting point is 00:34:42 So congratulations. The variant fund just becoming an absolute giant. Galaxy Digital Interactive is also raising $325 million as well. David, any comments on this? Another fund, A16Z, you know, Polly Chain continues to raise all of multi-coin as well. There's so many, we can't even list them all, but everyone is raised. All of these funds are raising money, and they're doing that on the back of these massive successes, and he takes on this Galaxy race. Yeah, Galaxy is, of course, Mike at Novigrat's fund, who has been at,

Starting point is 00:35:16 bullish as anyone on this base and also been here for a while, beating the same drum. We're big fans of Mike Novigratz. If anyone knows him and can get him on the show, please connect us. We've been trying. Anyways, moving on. Answer our emails, Mike. Just do that. The crypto banks are raising too.

Starting point is 00:35:35 Look at this, David, $420 million, and this is a memetic number, $420,690,000 from 69 investors. this is FTX raising at a $25 billion valuation. So, you know, SBF just continues to grow pretty incredible raises here. Not surprising that FTX is now worth $25 billion. So like Coinbase is, I don't know, $60 billion-ish. I don't know what Binance is. I heard rumor that Binance was trying to raise at one point in time earlier this year at $300 billion, which seemed a little bit rich.

Starting point is 00:36:12 But like, big money. I mean, these are some of the largest banks in the world now and they're crypto banks. Pretty crazy. How funny was it that we were last week talking about how Sam, self-reportedly, doesn't really believe in crypto. And he just has the most nihilistic number of a raise or his company at $420,690,000 from 69 investors. Like, he's in the right industry to do that.

Starting point is 00:36:37 But like, come on, like, you have FTX behind you. Can you take the thing seriously, please? It's memes all the way down, David. You know this. So, yeah, good for them on that raise. But crypto banks continue to raise. And they're all in a competition to raise funds and increase their value, of course. There's so many raises, David, you and I can't even keep up.

Starting point is 00:36:56 Look, Candy Digital, just raise a casual. No clue who these are. It's an NFT startup. Okay, so look at this line. NFT startup, Candy Digital raises $100 million in a series A round. Okay, so it's a group we've not heard of. It's a startup. And they're raising $100 million at a $1.4.4.

Starting point is 00:37:15 $5 billion valuation. Like a unicorn, Insta unicorn by their series A, how is this happening? SoftBank, I think might be the answer there. They're involved. But yeah, like,

Starting point is 00:37:28 the one thing to take away from this is like the NFT industry is so incredibly large that things are happening that even the crypto community isn't being aware of. This is like a part of the NFT world that's just invisible to us because it's so many people that just are not connected to us. or the other take is that damn, like things are getting real frothy.

Starting point is 00:37:48 People are raising way too much, way too early. Maybe both are true. Both might be true. Peyton Manning was in on this one, if not some of the, you know, crypto natives that we kind of know. But that's what's going on. Like, NFTs are going mainstream. The last raise will mention here as a category is the mining category.

Starting point is 00:38:06 And this is a mining company called Stronghold. They just raise $127 million in an IP. P-O. Absolutely insane, astounding. Look, man, how much did we just cover? And I bet we covered like 10 to 15% of the raises that happened this week. But it's happening across like funds, crypto banks, NFT market, defy, base level protocols, mining companies. It's happening not just in crypto. There are all of these subcategories that now have multi like unicorn level companies inside of them, wrapped around them. That's how big crypto has gotten in the last 18 months or so. And that's just the ones that we know about. Exactly. One thing we do know, of course,

Starting point is 00:38:56 is this is the weekly reminder for you to get a job in crypto. Get a job. Get a job in crypto. Guys, I know some people listen when we say this, David, because not a week goes by that I don't hear from somebody who's like, oh, I listen to what you said. I actually got a job in crypto. Thank you very much for that. Thank you for the kick in the butt. You kick in the butt. Sometimes that's what you need, right? Or an opportunity to explore it.

Starting point is 00:39:21 And we have the bankless jobs board where you can explore some of the opportunities that bankless has listed. I'll mention a few as CTO from a grower. Agronum. God. E agronum. Thank you. Thank you, David.

Starting point is 00:39:34 General counsel at SmartDFI. Finance and operations guru at Smart Defi as well. Senior backend engineer. You can also be a blockchain CTO. at Merritt, a community manager at Argon, a founding blockchain engineer at Highlight, and a senior software engineer at Popcorn or community lead course, the senior front end web developers open as well. That's not even like a fraction of all of the job opportunities that we have on this board.

Starting point is 00:40:01 Some people from the Ethereum Foundation, they're hiring a team lead, some people from Gauntlet. We've had them on the podcast. Everybody is on this board. Go check out the board. Go scroll if there's a job that fits your, skill set and description, something that piques your interest, and then go hit the subscribe button so you see updates. And we don't have to remind you every week. You actually get an email

Starting point is 00:40:22 when a new job launches that you might be interested in. You can just get these automated reminders to get a job. No one comes into crypto, gets a job in crypto, and he's like, I regret this. So just like, just let that be known. It does not happen, has not happen. Never been a single person. Impossible. Impossible. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, guys. Now let's get to the main event news items. David, let's start here, man, Bitcoin ETF. This is history. It's been eight years in the making, all right? The Winklevoss twins all the way back in 2013, they started this. They first applied for a Bitcoin ETF in 2013, hoping that the market was ready to get some retail exposure to ETFs. Didn't happen. Year after year after year, didn't happen. Eight years later.

Starting point is 00:41:09 It finally happened. Okay. So walk us through this, David. What's, What's going on with this new Bitcoin ETF? What is it? Yeah, the pro shares, B-I-T-O, futures-based Bitcoin ETF using the CME for the price reference rate. And so congratulations. We finally got the Bitcoin ETF. Yay. How happy are you about this?

Starting point is 00:41:31 There's a big asterisk. There's a big difference between a futures-based ETF and a spot-based ETF. And while we are happy that we have a Bitcoin ETF, the game is not up. It's just to start because... Okay, what's the difference? Okay, so the future... Bitcoin futures offered by the CME.

Starting point is 00:41:51 They have monthly contracts that end at the end of every single month, the last day of the month, or the last trading day of the month. I think that's how it works. And so there's one for October that'll be up in like 10-ish days. There's one for...

Starting point is 00:42:02 What's the month that comes after? November, December, January, for the next six months. It's a rolling six months. And then there's also the next December and then also the December after that. So you can pick, like, which, which date do you want to make your bet about the, the future price of Bitcoin? Sounds good. Right. And there was recently a report that was submitted to

Starting point is 00:42:22 the SEC saying that the onshore CME futures markets are actually driving the price discovery of Bitcoin over the spot market, which I'm a little bit confused about, but I'll take it on faith because people who write that report is no way more than me. The problem with this as a ETF model is that the way that the EETF works is that it tracks the price of the most, the next coming futures exchange. So like if we, if it was like November 2nd, right, the ETF would be tracking the futures price of the next month. And they, it would be rolling into every single, as the contracts, the futures contracts settle. Because it settles once a month, every, every, every month. It rolls into the next, the next futures month. And so there's these things, this things called contango,

Starting point is 00:43:10 where there's actually a discrepancy between the Bitcoin futures price of month one to month two. So like say, for example, the Bitcoin futures of month one is clocking in at $60,000. And then the next month, people of futures traders have predicted that it's going to be $62,000. The ETF will sell all of the $60,000 valuations of Bitcoin into $62,000 valuations of Bitcoin, and they will actually lose shares along the way. Of course, this can actually happen in reverse. So in theory, it cancels out over time. But really what this does is this allows a bunch of middlemen and traders and who want to take advantage of this arbitrage opportunity to just kind of milk out, just the leakage of value out of this ETF.

Starting point is 00:43:55 Right. So like, do you know how to trade around terms like contango? Like, is that something that you know how to do? Because if not, other people do and other people are taking advantage of this. But you basically, all you have to do is. is you just like the value of an ETF is that it's in a brokerage, right? So it's in somebody's Schwab account, their Fidelity account. They don't have to open up Coinbase.

Starting point is 00:44:16 You just buy it with all their other stocks. They buy the ETF. But what you're saying is because it's a futures ETF and not a spot ETF, it's less capital efficient for them to do so. And it's more expensive for them to do so versus a spot ETF, right? The best thing you can do, of course, is get over the hump, go open an account at Gemini or Coinbase and just buy spot market and let them custody it and then graduate into going bankless, that's the best thing you can do. But if you're locked into a retirement account, an ETF is

Starting point is 00:44:48 the second best. The problem is this ETF is a futures based ETF. It's not a spot based ETF. And so it's more expensive for you. You're actually losing money versus buying Bitcoin in a spot market on something like Coinbase. Is that right? Yeah, that's exactly right. So if you are interested in just buying and holding BTC Bitcoin on your traditional brokerage, this is actually just not, you're going to lose money over time than if you had just bought actual Bitcoin. And so that actually just puts people that actually compliantly can't go actually buy Bitcoin at a disadvantage because they have to pay all these fees, all these traders, their arbitrage opportunities, where they could have just done a spot-driven market. And the difference,

Starting point is 00:45:30 the very important difference about a spot-driven market is that when people buy a spot-driven market ETF, that ETF goes out and buys Bitcoin and puts it on the balance sheet, right? There's actually Bitcoin there. And so actual ETF demand is actual Bitcoin demand. And so this whole futures base ETF, if it has a ton of demand, it might not actually translate to actual Bitcoin demand, or at least it will, but it won't be immediate. In a roundabout way. In a very roundabout way.

Starting point is 00:45:58 And really, that roundaboutness puts money into the hands of intermediaries and scalpers. And like, when it comes to the SEC who approved this, by the way, what is their job? Their job is to protect investors. And so they are just shoveling investors into the place that they just get scalped. Like, what the hell, dude? It's, it's not the best ETF. Absolutely, right? I mean, the thing that they could have done is just approved a spot Bitcoin ETF.

Starting point is 00:46:27 I guess the argument is that this is a step in that direction. and this is a more gated regulator-friendly type approval because they know all of the intermediaries, all of the incumbents that are doing this. So I guess it's a big deal that they did approve it, right? That is a step in it of itself, that the government came and said, okay, fine, you can have your Bitcoin ETF after eight years of retail asking for it.

Starting point is 00:46:54 The question is, how long will it take them to get to a spot ETF, which is much more? Are we going to have to wait another eight years? God, I hope not. Are they going to use this as like a defense? Like, we already gave you your ETF. Why do you need another one? Also, I really want an ETH ETF.

Starting point is 00:47:09 I mean, if we have Bitcoin ETF, then where's our ETH ETF? That should be coming down the pike two. So it's kind of like, it's good news. But it's also a little bit like, come on, we could do better, can't we? I hope this is just the first step. One thing that SEC tweeted out shortly before approving this, this is the week before, I guess, is a reminder. For investing in a fund that holds Bitcoin futures contracts, make sure you carefully

Starting point is 00:47:34 wear the way the potential risks and benefits. This is the tweet that tipped everyone off. Like, oh my gosh, there's an ETF coming. Yay. I just think that there are some hidden risks and hidden costs that this type of structure doesn't actually tell you about. And it would be nice if those were acknowledged as well in this kind of a warning. I think in summary, like we can zoom out.

Starting point is 00:48:00 say, oh, the ETF that got approved is the one that is exactly what the incumbents and the current institutions would want the most and benefits them the most. Shocker. Weird. But like this makes sense because regulators know the incumbents. They know how to regulate them. They know how to, you know, put the stranglehold on them if they need to. And all of these new entrants are outside of their control, right? So they feel much less comfortable. So who are they going to let do it? They're going to let kind of their friends, the existing organizations whom they already regulate do this. I mean, but we want spot.

Starting point is 00:48:35 We want spot. We want spot. We want spot. We want spot. Gray scale wants spot too, right? So Grace scale has made a big ETF push filing to turn their GBT fund into a BTC

Starting point is 00:48:49 and the ticker name filed for a bit ticker name BTC ETF. And so they are taking this opportunity to take, they took opportunity by the horns and they are now making a very political move saying like, Hey, give us a spot market. Give us a smart market. So more power to gray scale. Well, it's interesting. It puts regulators in this position where they're kind of kingmaking, right?

Starting point is 00:49:09 I was like, we're going to approve these ETFs, but not these ETFs, right? And so what's the set of criteria by which they'll approve someone's ETF? And I think that's where great scale is like, hey, people are buying our trust anyway. We have massive amounts of Bitcoin inside of this thing. Why not just make this an ETF? Let's make it official. All right, David, second news item of the day is the Coinbase NFT. platform. We talked about it. We mentioned it last time that it was coming. That was the news last week.

Starting point is 00:49:34 The news this week is that we have more details on this. Let me rattle a few more details coming out, because this could be absolutely massive, I think, in the NFT space. As far as mainstreaming NFTs, even that much more, the Coinbase NFT platform will be open. So it's not going to be an invite-only platform. Okay, we do know that. We also know that the Coinbase NFT platform will rely on, decentralized storage solutions like IPFS rather than centralized service. So clap, clap, clap, more decentralized better. You can mint NFTs on Coinbase and sell them anywhere else. Okay, so they're not going to do this weird lock-in that maybe some other platforms do, maybe a flow. I don't know. List any non-coin-based NFTs as well. So they're opening this thing up another

Starting point is 00:50:23 smart move, I think. You will be able to use different currencies and different wallet solutions. They're not going to lock you into the Coinbase proprietary. wallet app store experience, thank God. Also, Coinbase NFT is going to start with support for Ethereum. Good move. And also plans to support minting in markets across other chains as well. Look, that's all good news. This makes them a bit more like, you know, open sea, I think.

Starting point is 00:50:50 Custodial OpenCee. That's basically what it is. A custodial OpenCfe, and I don't know, I think you'll have the option to do it custodially or non-custodally. It sounds like as well. I think a lot of this minting is going to happen directly on Ethereum. I don't know. The Coinbase wallet is non-custody as well.

Starting point is 00:51:07 So I don't know about custody versus non-custody. They'll definitely have a Fiat bridge, as we talked about last week, which will give them an advantage too. Well, anyway. Even if they're non-custodial, it's really the custodial nature of this that is the actual value ad, right? Because we actually don't have a custodial NFT platform. And there's just going to be so many more people who are ready to want to get into NFTs. but don't really care about crypto. And Coinbase is a solution for them.

Starting point is 00:51:34 I think the value ad is just the making this easy, right? They provided the easy button for Bitcoin. You'd buy it back in like, you know, 2013, 2014. And they did that for ETH. Now they're doing that for NFTs, which is a good move. And they're also mainstreaming it. So this is a breaking announcement last week. This is huge.

Starting point is 00:51:52 Okay. Coinbase is now partnering with the NBA. Women's NBA League as well, like all of the subsidiary NBA. And I believe David, they'll correct me if I'm wrong. This is like a brand marketing IP type relationship, right? So Coinbase NFT platform, NBA partnership means they can license NBA's IP, right? So they could create their own, I guess, version of NBA Topshots or maybe whatever else the NBA and Coinbase have in store. This almost went under the radar last week. I guess, well, maybe this is like,

Starting point is 00:52:27 you know, 10,000 likes. But this is huge. This is a very big deal. Yeah, just collecting the IP from these massive, massive ecosystems, which are basically all based on IP anyways. Really nice victory, really nice W on Coinbase. And wherever Coinbase puts these NFTs. And I think they'll be able to just let the user deploy the NFTs where on whatever chain they want, maybe.

Starting point is 00:52:50 So yeah, anything and everything crypto-related from the NBA is now Coinbase. So congrats, Big W. This is one-up on SBF who, you know, put, F-TX's name on some stadium recently, right? Where was that? Miami, Miami, okay, that's right, that's right.

Starting point is 00:53:09 And also all the empires of the MLB. Let's talk about this. Wu-Tang Clan forever. Wu-Tang forever. What happened here? Wu-Tang and Pleaser Dow. Match made in heaven. The story here is there's a,

Starting point is 00:53:21 there's a famous, mysterious Wu-Tang album of which there is only one of. There's one CD and it got sold, I think, for, it got auctioned off for $2 million as kind of like a middleman towards the, or excuse me, a middle finger towards the middleman of the music industry. This was before blockchain.

Starting point is 00:53:39 This was before crypto. What year are we talking? I can't remember. Like 96, something like that? I don't know. So yeah, they auctioned off their only, the one of one album that they produced.

Starting point is 00:53:53 The Wutang produced an album. Yeah, that was it. Yeah. And this guy, Martin Screlli, who's this hedge fund manager who everyone might remember for going to jail in 2017 for securities fraud.

Starting point is 00:54:06 And he's the guy that jacked up the price of an epipen from like 16 cents to $750. Like he's literally this hedge fund insurance guy like villain, super villain, hated by the internet. And he has all these douchebag videos of him listening to the Wu Ting album.

Starting point is 00:54:23 And he's like, I'm going to destroy this just because I can. And then he also says, some reporter asked him, hey, are you ever going to let anyone else listen to the Wu-Tang album? And the guy with like this anger in his face goes absolutely not. No way. Yeah, the guys just really mean.

Starting point is 00:54:41 He's just being a cartoon villain. He's just being, literally, that's great. He's a cartoon villain. He's also in jail now for securities fraud. He'll be in jail for 2024. And because he had to pay off his debts for this fine that he got for securities fraud, he had to auction off the Wu-Tang album. And so Pleaser Dow bought it.

Starting point is 00:55:00 Pleaser Dow bought the Woothing album. So there's James right there who's the chief pleasing officer over at Pleaser Dow taking a photo of the one of one famous Wutang album that has never been released to the public. And James, I know, and Pleaser Dow has a ton of plans as to what to do with this. Here's a picture of them and a bunch of other Pleaser Dow members as well. Dude, this story is such an amazing story. So congratulations to James. Congratulations to Pleaser Dow, of which I'm a member.

Starting point is 00:55:32 You just had your take, but here's your take as well. What's the juxtaposition here? Yeah, so this story got on to the front page of the Rolling Stone. And Rich, who used to work at Maker Dow, an old friend of mine said, this might be the first time I've ever read a trad media cryptido story that wasn't dripping in sarcasm or ending with a smug and alarmist hot take. This is a significant shift, talking about the tone of the Rolling Stone article. And so I follow up and say...

Starting point is 00:55:58 I guess it's like, because crypto are the heroes in this case, right? The crypto people are the heroes, right? This dude's hand. And so here's my take on this. I said, the juxtaposition of a Dow of homies buying a rare cultural artifact from the hands of a scumbag hedge fund manager is exactly the kind of positive PR that crypto needs. Oh, more of that energy, please. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:18 That's cool. This is how it started how it's going. Right. So here's the story of Pleaser Dow where Layton from Pool Together tweets out, anyone want to create a quick DAO to bid on this. This being people pleasers uniswap v3 x times y equals k uniswap animation. And so Layton just tweeted this out. A bunch of people said, yes, I do.

Starting point is 00:56:38 They all hopped into a Dow. They pooled their funds. There's a great story. We ran it on bankless forever ago about it. And that started off Pleaser Dow, which it was a Dow that was created to buy people pleaser's art. And then Pleaser Dow went from just a Dow of people that wanted to buy that one thing into a Tao of people that wanted to buy like all the cultural artifacts. So Edward Snowden NFTs are in there.

Starting point is 00:56:59 The Doge NFT is in there. We had James on a state of the nation to talk about this. Now, the physical asset, the Wu-Tang one-of-one mysterious album is now property of Pleaser Dow. And I know that there are plans in the Pleaser Dow world to actually open this up. So let me actually read out something that James said in the Rolling Stones article. Pfeasor-Dou has grand, but loosely articulated ambitions to make the album more available to the public, perhaps through listening parties

Starting point is 00:57:28 or gallery style exhibitions, or even to expand ownership of the album to fans, although how that would work would remain up in the air. We believe that we can do something incredible with this piece, said James, to enable it to be shared

Starting point is 00:57:42 and ideally owned in part by fans and anyone in the world. Again, think of the juxtaposition behind the hedge friend man who's like, I'm going to destroy this so no one can listen to it because I can, because my brand is being an asshole. Because I'm rich. Because I'm rich. And then this Dow buys it and we're like, hey, we're going to allow everyone to listen to this thing.

Starting point is 00:58:01 Like, it's perfect. It's such a perfect story. I hope it's good. I hope it's good after a little. We don't even know. But I guess we get to find out. That's really cool, man. Very cool. And exactly the kind of press. I think crypto needs at this point in time. Let's go to the next one. Every one of these have been big. It's a big week. This is really big in and of itself. A Polygon and Draft Kings have just entered into a strategic partnership. So Draft Kings is a $40 billion publicly traded company for like sports betting, I believe.

Starting point is 00:58:36 I've never used it. This is kind of outside of my area. But I believe they are going to include some of their IP and licensing, like NFT type forms. They're going to start deploying that on Polygon. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the sports. betting payment networks shifted to Polygon over time. They're not just announcing this partnership, but they're also becoming validators on the Polygon network, which is pretty cool. And look, a side chain is a great way to get started in crypto, like low gas fees. You know, the Polygon

Starting point is 00:59:10 team is pretty good with the onboarding process. It's all EVM. So if you ever want to go to Mainnet, you can quite easily. But major company in a different space that we haven't seen, which is sports betting now coming to crypto. It's pretty cool in it of itself. I really think the draft kings potentially becoming a validator to the Polygon network is really something to unpack because we all know that something like Polygon is going to take a decent amount of capital to run a validating node. They got to be like pretty beefy computers.

Starting point is 00:59:39 And so it's nice to pair a beefy computer with a $40 billion company that has things at stake on the Polygon network to lose, right, their own business. And so that seems to be a really smart strategic alignment between incentives. So really congratulations on the partnership Polygon well-deserved. And I mean, gambling is in like speculation is what Draft King is all about. Yeah, this is in our wheelhouse. We know about those things. We do, yeah, that's kind of what we do.

Starting point is 01:00:09 Not me, of course. I'm just long-term whole. Other people, yeah. I don't take leverage. Yes, I've known some people in crypto who have speculated a time or two. Let me say that. That's cool. You know, this is also cool. Again, almost equally big news, I thought. So do you remember in 2018, 2019, Facebook was creating its own Ethereum killer sort of thing? A blockchain, it was going to have a smart contract system. They were launching something at the time that was called Libra, which was going to be kind of the Bitcoin and Eith killer on their entire new blockchain. They came out with a whole like virtual machine as, you know, comparison to the, you know, the EVM and a whole scripting language rather than solidity, they had flow.

Starting point is 01:00:54 And they were just going to eat Ethereum's lunch with this new Facebook chain that was going to like own the entire world and bring crypto. They were also inventing their own currency. That was before Libra was or the currency was going to be a dollar stable coin, but instead a basket of currencies. Exactly. And I remember at this time, David, like the market was in the doldrums. This is before defy really took off.

Starting point is 01:01:16 Everyone was like, oh no, they're going to come and destroy Ethereum. and Bitcoin and Facebook's going to be the new champion. They'll have co-opted this amazing technology. Okay. What just happened is the Novi wallet from Facebook, which is their wallet that is the user interface for this whole thing, they just deployed their first stable coin. They announced they're going to deploy their first stable coin. David, guess what it is, man?

Starting point is 01:01:41 On Ethereum. It's an ERC20 coin on Ethereum. Weird how that works. Don't fight Ethereum. Just succumb. Just let it happen. That's what they did, right? So it's an ERC20 on Ethereum.

Starting point is 01:01:55 This is not USDC. It's a stable coin put out there by Paxos, basically. But using Ethereum as the settlement network and essentially resigning themselves to an app on top of it rather than be the base layer protocol. And the reason is quite simple. It's something that we predicted for a while,

Starting point is 01:02:14 which is just the protocol sync thesis, right? Facebook simply does not have, the credible neutrality to be a base layer system for the world, for identity, for money, for finance. How do we know this? They can't even get their own country to like accept them. Okay? Like every time Zuckerberg goes in front of, you know, Congress. It's true. It's just like Zuckerberg punching bag time. It's and the reason is like maybe some of that's deserved, maybe some of that's not. I tend to happen like I tend to believe that like much of that is deserved, but there's also politician's scoring points. Like, I get that whole world too. But, like,

Starting point is 01:02:52 of course they can't be a credibly neutral base settlement platform for crypto, right? Of course they can't be. Ethereum, on the other hand, is not owned by any single individual. It is a public good for the world. And of course they would use it for their stable coin, their money system. Anyway, it's just for me that was kind of full circle and really interesting to see. Web 3 or Web 2 can't even compete with Web 3 now. They are using protocols like Ethereum as their base settlement layer. It was inevitable. Just people didn't see it in 2018, 2019.

Starting point is 01:03:31 Now it's becoming super obvious. I think the credible neutrality is definitely an angle, but I think another angle is that building out Ethereum-type infrastructure, like nodes, EVMs, it's hard. Like, that's not a trivial thing. And, like, it's not like Facebook doesn't have the technical talent like Facebook has a lot of technical talent yeah but think about the the culture of that technical talent it's building facebook products for facebook ownership not open source software for global human

Starting point is 01:03:58 coordination right so like well maybe they do have the technical talent do they have the technical ethos no they do not they have the zuck ethos they do and do you remember like they rug pulled all of their game developers remember if facebook released this this open API a whole bunch of you know game developers built on top of it and then they would sort of extort some of these games, right? What was the one? The Farm game. Do you remember this? Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:04:23 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, FarmVille, something like this. Okay, I never played this. But anyway, Facebook would basically go to the game developers and be like, hey, you're going to do what we say. Like, maybe we want to buy your company. Or else we'll just shut off our API access to you.

Starting point is 01:04:38 Yeah. Sorry. Rugpole. Like, we are the, you know, we are the masters. This is like our platform. if you don't like it, see you later, right? No wonder no one's trusting them to do this kind of thing. They've done this in the past, so yeah.

Starting point is 01:04:51 But here's the interesting thing, David, is regulators, I find this just hilarious, are already throwing punches, are already fighting. Elizabeth Warren hates it. She's pissed. It just went live with this announcement and not hours later, but, you know, they get a statement from Elizabeth Warren's other folks in Congress who are like, We got to stop this. We don't want this to happen.

Starting point is 01:05:18 It's funny to me because I don't know if, I'm saying Elizabeth Warren, but it's a whole, it's kind of a whole group in Washington. She just happens to be the most outspoken, I think, and kind of like the recognized leader of them right now. I don't know if they hate Facebook or crypto more, right? What do you think? I think it's amazing when Facebook and crypto collide. And Elizabeth Warren just like wakes right up out of bed and be like, something's wrong and

Starting point is 01:05:42 I don't like it. Well, what's funny is we actually would say Elizabeth Warren that crypto is the solution to your Facebook problem. Yeah. You don't like Web 2? Do you think Elizabeth Warren just thinks that crypto is what Facebook is trying to make their own cryptos ecosystem into? I don't know. Maybe. I just really don't know.

Starting point is 01:06:02 I want some of these people to come on bankless. I want them to engage in the crypto community so we could talk about them. You don't like Web 2. You don't like Big Tech. You don't like Silicon Valley. Cool. Make it easier for Web 3 to think. thrive so we can destroy them. Okay. Disruptive innovation. Put the power back in the hands of the

Starting point is 01:06:17 peoples. And this is what we all want? I hope so. I think we've got some solutions for that tribe. They just don't realize it yet. We've thought about these things. We have a plan. We have a plan that's going to work, we think. It's called crypto. David, this is a funny story too. This is still, I guess, now we're moving to NFT stuff. But there was a massive bid for a crypto punk. You've got a Cryptopunk Bucati. I've heard of these things. Okay. So what was this bid? Why was it historic and what happened with his story? Yeah. So this guy, Richard, Richard with an E instead of an A, he tweets out, my punk is not for sale. I don't care what anyone offers me. And so like there's, there's that line that like, you know, everything is for sale for the right price, right? And so the owner of Poept

Starting point is 01:07:04 XYZ, his name's Patricio. He's not, he's not a secret, come, does the most Chad thing ever. and offers the largest bid ever for a crypto punk. So if Richard had accepted this bid, it would have been the largest crypto punk sale ever, clocking in at $10 million, $2.5,000 Eath. So the guy just says like, oh, what do you mean? Like you're never going to sell your punk? Like what about $10 million?

Starting point is 01:07:30 And Richard says, no. Okay. What's so special about this crypto punk, David? It's not the punk. It's like got 3D glasses, so that's kind of cool. But that's not the point. It's not the point. The punk is like a medium, a mid to floor punk. It's not, it's not special. It's just that Richard likes it. He's the guy that owns the punk, right? Like, there's probably

Starting point is 01:07:51 a valuation on my punk and I probably value it a two to four times higher than that, the fair market valuation. Oh, just two to four? So if I offered you two to four times more than what it's valued, you'd sell it to me? Yeah. Yeah. You would. Yeah. I'm not doing that. Like, we're not doing that right now. Well, if you offer me two to four times higher than the market price for it, of which I also determine, then yeah, I'd tell you, I sell you my punk. Oh my God. Okay.

Starting point is 01:08:19 So you're not never sell. You're not like this guy, Richard. Well, yeah, what happened with this story? Okay. Okay. What happened with this story? Yeah. So Richard, he doesn't accept the $10 million offer for his punk.

Starting point is 01:08:32 God, it's a JPEG, dude. Someone tell him. Okay, so like, I was talking to my friend about this and I was like, the reason why he's doing it is because like it's cool to deny the the offer right it's cool to say no to 10 million dollars uh is it well his his counter argument was like well you know it's also cool accepting 10 million dollars i just told a jpeg for 10 million dollars in 2021 yeah yeah yeah it's like a follow-up tweet coming out of richard uh i think two days later he tweets out diamond hands are not my girlfriend's best friend so he probably told his girlfriend that he declined to

Starting point is 01:09:08 a $10 million offer. You what, idiot? There's some degree of maybe she just like started screaming at him or said, like, why would you do that? Some scale of just like what the hell happened. But yeah. That's incredible. All right.

Starting point is 01:09:21 Well, now we know David has a price for his crypto punk. But the thing you should have said, David, I think, is use that reverse psychology. You should have told me you're never going to sell it. Like this guy Richard. Then I would have valued it higher. Then I would have really wanted it. For somebody listening to this would have really wanted it. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:36 If you wanted a punk by now, you would have gotten one. You're still stuck with your turtle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's stuck with it. My turtle and I are friends, okay? We're having a good time back here. It's just going really slow. It's not as fast as punks, okay?

Starting point is 01:09:50 It's going to take a while to catch on. Look, this is another big thing. It's another big news event. These could have been all could have been news events so far. All right, so what's this one? So here's, I think, the headline. Steam, this is Valve Entertainment. They are banning.

Starting point is 01:10:08 NFTs as crypto games on the Steam platform, which I think is the largest, like, gaming platform in the community. And then one of their competitors has something different to say. But why don't you talk about why are they banning crypto games? Yeah, they had a game that they actually removed from their platform. I can't remember the name of the game, but they, they were on Steam. They had a blockchain integration. They were connected into Ethereum.

Starting point is 01:10:31 They had NFTs in the game. And then they got kicked off of the platform because Steam has now a policy of no NFT. no financial assets inside of games. Is this because like all crypto is a scam, David? Or is this because like it's cannibalizing their business model or something? Maybe they don't know the like if I have a gracious angle on it. Maybe they just don't know the regulations around it. So they kicked them off before and now they're going to go do their due diligence

Starting point is 01:10:58 and they're going to come back and like, okay, we did we did the due diligence. We can now accept it. Maybe or maybe they are just like, oh yeah, blockchain. That's that whole scam thing. Like no, kick them off. Get them out of here. Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 01:11:09 Who knows? Who knows? Okay, boomer. The story is unfolding. Okay. Yeah. All right. Got it.

Starting point is 01:11:13 So then what did their competitor say? So Epic had something to say. Yeah. Yeah. An alternative gaming platform, Epic says, we, we love NFTs and financial assets inside of games. Come build your financial asset games on our platform. And so that story is going to unfold and it's going to be interesting to watch. Look, this is the game theory of it, though.

Starting point is 01:11:31 This happens at the nation state level, right? So like China, the U.S., neither of them like crypto. China bans crypto. US says, oh, we love crypto now, right? I'm not saying it's happening exactly that way, but that is like what happens when you have multiple parties who don't have unlimited power. They can't unilaterally ban something. And if they ban it just locally to their own economy, then they give all of their

Starting point is 01:11:55 competitors a massive advantage. And it just forces them into a situation where they have to end up capitulating and accepting this. The only question is, how long will it take steam to do that? Will they go through a year of pain, two years of pain? Will they go and they try to build their own like blockchain network that is the Steam blockchain? Will they waste all of this time and money? Or will they just get on board with what's happening in crypto and these open finance protocols?

Starting point is 01:12:22 That's up for Steam. And, you know, for Gabe, like where's Half Life 3? That's all I want to know. Yeah. Maybe they're doing some digital assets in Half Life 3. Who knows? Oh, you think so? You think that's happening?

Starting point is 01:12:33 They are not. Oh, David, let's talk about this while we're talking NFTs. Ross Ulbrick, what is he doing from jail, from a jail cell with NFTs? Ross Ulbork, the renowned Dread Pirate Roberts from the Silk Road, the very peaceful libertarian who believed in what he was doing and got sent to jail for, I think, two lifetimes for running an illegal marketplace using Bitcoin all back in 2013. He's been in jail ever since, but he has this Twitter account that his mom runs. Real Ross used.

Starting point is 01:13:05 Ross Ulberg's and he says we are auctioning off some of my art as an NFT. The proceeds will go towards charities that help prisoners and their families and towards helping me regain my freedom. One project we envisioned is to help kids travel to visit their mom and dads in prison. So cool, Ross Oldberg getting into NFTs from jail. Yeah, very free Ross. Free Ross. Also not a Bitcoin Maxwell I guess. Yeah. I don't think ever was. Yeah. I, you know, uh, yeah. Um, okay, Andrew Yang, What's he up to you, man? Okay, so we had him on the podcast. We made this joke toward the end, right? Because he started talking about, hey, I really think this podcast is a historic occasion because it's the first time that Andrew Yang has been on a crypto podcast, been on bankless. And also, it's sort of the first time where we've had a politician with some name presence. Just do like the crypto handshake. Give crypto the handshake and be like, hey, guys, I'm, you know, I support crypto. And I'm going to like let the world know that publicly. Anyway, we had this joke and we said, hey, if this is a momentous occasion, what we should do is create an NFT,

Starting point is 01:14:10 and we threw that back to the community and said, hey, community, if anyone wants to create an an NFT at the end of the show, go do it. And somebody did it. Actually, this is a crypto wife, I believe. She's known on, and she makes all sorts of memes for bank lists for the community. It's a fantastic artist. And she created this meme for Andrew Yang. So take us from there, David. Then what happened. Yeah, we also got Andrew Yang, Andrew Yang.Eath. We teamed up with Brantley Milligan, got into a Zoom with Andrew, connected him with his first ENS name, Andrew Yang.Eath. So Andrew Yang. com actually minted this NFT, and this NFT auction actually just closed about 30 minutes ago, and it sold for 6.9 Eath. So staying true to the memes. I guess we're not taking things seriously

Starting point is 01:14:57 today. $28,000 to the forward party. So really like a nice, a nice gracious gesture. to the crypto world saying, hey, I'm here, I'm in it. Like, I'm doing these things. I got Andrew Yang.eath, minted my NFT, donated to the forward party. So really, really pretty cool. Yeah, I'm glad that, you know, somebody did that. Somebody stepped that up. And, you know, 7th is not 6.9Eth, excuse me, is not a small figure.

Starting point is 01:15:22 So $28,000. And somebody gets this fantastic NFT. So more politicians will be coming to crypto. Crypto will be coming to politics. This is going to happen. and I think this is just the start of all of this. For the listeners out there, the NFC just has a bunch of tip of the hats towards the greater crypto world. Oh, they can see it right.

Starting point is 01:15:42 Andrew Yang has a chrome laser eyes, rainbow laser eyes, which I think is a nice touch. He's got an Ethereum and a Bitcoin lapel pin. And then there's a bunch of NFT profile picture icons out there. There's a cool cat. There's a pudgy penguin. There's a crypto punk. And then we also have a bunch of the crypto media platforms out there. The Defiant, Bankless, Daily Gwe.

Starting point is 01:16:02 And then we also have tips to the hat to Gitcoin and Coin Center. And so a lot of crypto thing is being represented here. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, people sometimes wonder how crypto is moving this fast. Like, how does it accomplish so much, right? And now we have politicians who are incented to come to crypto because they get votes. Maybe they get fundraising this sort of thing. So do our media publications, David.

Starting point is 01:16:26 This is the economist, and they are auctioning off their magazine cover. and this is actually a fantastic article. It's called Down the Rabbit Hole, The Promise and Perils of Decentralized Finance. The first article in The Economist I've ever read that actually portrayed a pretty accurate picture of what Defi is, and now they're auctioning that off. What's really interesting about it

Starting point is 01:16:46 is we've said this before. It applies to all of our listeners. Crypto literally pays you to learn about crypto. It pays politicians to advocate for crypto. It pays media company. to put crypto as the title as the heading of their magazine cover. Okay? Crypto has a built-in incentive mechanism to spread itself, to propagate itself.

Starting point is 01:17:14 It's almost like a life form, okay? It's almost like an advanced intelligence that is working through the mean layer of humanity and propagating itself and spreading itself and has the ability to like self-replicate and produce its own energy. out of human resources. That's what's happening. And that's why I think is the story. It's like, oh, cool, the economists released an NFT. Well, they release an NFT. They're going to make money on that. Other magazines will follow. They'll produce more articles about crypto and it will escape into mainstream. That's really what's happening here, which I think is super cool.

Starting point is 01:17:49 I think another illustration for what you're saying is that water flows downstream and crypto is downstream. Therefore, water, which is society, is going to flow downstream to crypto. Now that we've discovered crypto, the natural incentives of everything is society just likes crypto. Once, again, the most bullish thing about crypto is to be understood. Once you understand it, you are trapped. It's a virus. It sucks you in. The economist, it caught the crypto virus. It's all in. It's going to spread the crypto virus to all of its neighboring magazine companies. And then it's going to go from there. Absolutely. A lot of readers of the economists, too, like in the traditional world, institutional world. Jack Dorsey, he definitely has the crypto bug, but I wouldn't actually say a specific strain of the crypto bug, yeah. Just Bitcoin, right? He's a mean from all other crypto talk, I think. But Square is considering building a Bitcoin mining system. He says it's based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide. He has this Twitter thread about what Square is doing. And I think the net of this is basically like,

Starting point is 01:18:52 hey, proof of work is centralized. I want to make it a bit more open source in efforts to make it less centralized. We're going to create some hardware in Square to do this and some specifications for hardware to do this. So a noble effort, I think, I guess. I don't know, though. It's just, it's still proof of work, right? Is it Square's core competency, which is, payments of money, like, or is it something else?

Starting point is 01:19:26 It's funny to me just because I feel like Jack gets Bitcoin and then he just makes it a point just to fixate on Bitcoin when like, when is Square going to capitulate? Like, Square is being like Valve and being like the Steam platform, right? I'm just like, guys, we have this whole defy thing. And if you're not careful, some other enterprising fintech is maybe, God, maybe it's PayPal. Maybe it's even Visa. I don't know. they're going to come and eat your lunch

Starting point is 01:19:53 if you're just obsessing about like Bitcoin Bitcoin mining when there's this whole other experiment going on which is defy and Ethereum and like proof of stake like you could do Bitcoin but like why not also do these other things? I guess to be fair with Twitter they are doing more with NFTs

Starting point is 01:20:11 but is Square missing the boat David? Not not yet. The NFT thing actually is not live. You know what is live? Bitcoin tipping. And also who do you think want like what do you think the Twitter populace wants more, verified NFTs or Bitcoin tipping. Like I said this last time. And also at the same time, when we said this like two or three roll-ups ago, the total volume

Starting point is 01:20:30 transferred of ether and stablecoins is dwarfing all other value ever traded in the crypto world. And Square, you know what Square is doing? Building Bitcoin mining machines. It's so nonsensical. Square, you're a payments company. There's this brand new payments ecosystem. You can build a roll-up for your payments and hook into defy. Why aren't you doing this? Why are you focused on Bitcoin mining? It makes no sense. I'm not even worried about it, David, because they'll just find out later and be late to the party. And like, it'll happen.

Starting point is 01:21:00 It's just, you know, I guess, you know, some people have to be dragged along kicking and screaming. Speaking of which, Facebook, I don't know if they're being dragged along kicking and streaming. They're actually trying to lead the Metaverse. They've just hired 10,000 workers in Europe to build up the Metaverse. they're actually talking about David renaming their company as well. So they haven't announced the name yet, but they announced their intent to rename Facebook.

Starting point is 01:21:32 Must be because all of the negative PR that they've gotten recently. And I would guess it would be something Metaverse related. You have any thoughts on like new names for Facebook? Anything good coming in mind? God, it's such a, no, I don't. And it's like such a duct tape fix when like, you know what?

Starting point is 01:21:49 It really needs a reorganization. is the complete internal structure and business model of Facebook. You can't just like slap on a new name. It's like, oh, yeah, all those old problems. Jesus. Yeah. Well, so I asked this question to Twitter. I was like, what should the new Facebook name be?

Starting point is 01:22:08 I came up with the term Zucktherium, which I thought that was somewhat clever. Other people said social verse, okay? Faceverse, Zuckerverse, or my own personal favorite? board ants politics club that's a new name for facebook so maybe some ideas there for uh for zuck and creos as you're thinking about this rebrand um david let's talk about this coinbase they just released a digital asset policy kind of an alternative policy to all of the bad ones that seem to be floating around governments what uh what are they saying in this policy yeah it's basically like a skeleton they're proposing this be the way that policy happens and it's very logical very clear very

Starting point is 01:22:49 straightforward. It makes a ton of sense. I like all of it. Basically, there are two big things. There's more details in here, but there are two big things is regulate digital assets under a different framework than all the previous assets of the world. Oh, not the ones from the 1940s, a different one? Not the ones that we decided with pen and paper. Like digital assets need a digital asset framework. So let's make that. That's their big thing. And then their other big thing is designate one regulating body for digital asset markets. Alicate one. And they make them be, A crypto czar. A crypto czar. A crypto regulator, not the SEC, not the CFC, not the treasury, not the IRS. Make the crypto regulatory body, which just makes a ton of sense. Just pick one. Just point to someone and pick one and tell them that they're the regulator so that we can just know that. Can we do the third thing, which is make sure that the new crypto czar is actually good? Remember we talked about that guy in the White House? Tim. Pick your battles, Ryan. How much you want to ask? Okay. Pick any two of the three.

Starting point is 01:23:49 Just allow us to focus our lobbying to one direction. We'll start there. Start there. Good suggestions by Coinbase, to be honest. There's a lot more in here, so there's a link in the show notes if you want to read more. Yeah. Meanwhile, I think there's an attack kind of going on from regulators versus these C-Fi centralized crypto bank lending companies.

Starting point is 01:24:08 They're coming after, in particular, I believe, Celsius network and also named as maybe Nexo. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why we know that they're going after this, that actually wasn't public information. The Office of the Attorney General of New York released these documents that had redacted, like names.

Starting point is 01:24:26 So we actually, there was privacy retained. But you know what they forgot to redact? The file name of the documents that they are showing. So we have in the top left corner of each document, Microsoft Word Celsius letter, and then also Microsoft Word NXO letter. They just forgot, after doing all the redaction, they just forgot to clear out the names.

Starting point is 01:24:46 These are the people that are regulating digital assets, folks. There you go. Well, you know, you got to watch those document names. They'll get you every time. You also have to watch on calendars, David. It's like, make sure who you're sharing your calendar with. Like some information could be leaked. Do you ever done that? I did not know that that was a thing. Thank you for letting me know. From experience, okay? From experience. Careful what you put on your calendar. Yeah. So, I mean, I think the attack has kind of begun. A lot of these companies have raised some war chess, I'd say lately. I can't recall. I seem to recall a recent Celsius raise. There's so many. But like BlockFi did recently as well. And so these companies are going to fight this. This is only in New York. The question is, does the contagion spread? Do other states join in this? My guess is you'll have some states, maybe like a state of Texas, certainly Wyoming, that

Starting point is 01:25:31 will say, fine. New York doesn't want it. We'll take it. Right? And that is the beautiful thing about, again, this game theory playing out and crypto winning in the end. So all of the short-term stuff is fun. Also, I will say, like, there are some things regulators could do to help us.

Starting point is 01:25:49 with these C-Fi companies, right? Because this is not D-Fi. We can't right-click open-source and understand exactly where our interest rate is coming from on Celsius or BlockFi or NXO, right? We can do that in D-Fi, but it's not D-Fi. So where there's a trusted intermediary, there is some role for regulators to play. So let's be fair on that. Let's just not like shut things down without providing clarity. I mean, that's all we're asking. It's a great pairing. if centralized intermediary, then regulation, because that's what we need to be regulated, right? So those two things go hand in hand.

Starting point is 01:26:25 What we get frustrated about is when there is no central intermediary, there's just this application and some people that are... But we pretend there is. But we pretend there is, and therefore we try and regulate it. That's where things get iffy. Help us, Crypto-Zar. We know you're out there. Hopefully, maybe a bankless listener is going to be the future Crypto-Zar.

Starting point is 01:26:44 Well, in Australia, they're doing something. things right though. It seems like at least there's, I believe this was a report that the Australian Parliament has issued. And they called for an overhaul of basically the regulatory clarity with respect to crypto. They called for new laws to govern dows to centralized autonomous organizations, an overhaul of capital gains tax and defy, a tax discount when crypto miners are using renewable energy. I don't know if these ideas will actually be implemented. But this is what it looks like, folks. It's not that hard, right?

Starting point is 01:27:21 The crypto industry is asking for some very simple things, you know, clarity above all, but like also some friendlier treatment of this industry as a whole. Like make it a home in your country. Make the industry feel like you are welcoming it as you welcome the internet, as a new technological innovation, all the people that support it.

Starting point is 01:27:40 Hopefully Australia is heading in that direction and providing an example to other Western countries. It's just very sensible. Agreed. I want that for myself. You want that? In the United States. Do you want to move to Australia?

Starting point is 01:27:55 No, not really. Time zones are tough. Yeah. Yeah, a great place with time zones, right? Poor Anthony Sasano. All the way over there. He's out of lockdown as today, so congratulations to him. That's great.

Starting point is 01:28:06 That's good news. Hey, talk about this. This is happening in the financial sector in New York. What's this showing, this picture? Yeah, so not the first time that this has happened, but definitely the biggest statue, to get dropped in in front of the NYSE. There's this famous bull in front of the New York Stock Exchange.

Starting point is 01:28:22 Once upon a time, I think after the 2008 crisis, there was that like, you know, five, six, seven year old statue of a girl who's, like, very defiantly putting her hands up on her hips against the bull. Kind of a statement against, like, the 1% versus 99%. Now there is this massive ape that got dropped right in front of this bull. So we have this bull and this ape just staring each other down. And in addition to that,

Starting point is 01:28:46 a ton of bananas got thrown around the bull. And so this was done. This is a tip of the hat to, for those that remember, Harambe, the gorilla that unfortunately had a young child fall into its pit. And the gorilla was like,

Starting point is 01:29:01 you know, playing with a child, hanging out with a child, very, very fearful parents, as this gorilla could absolutely just rip this child apart with one hand. And so Harambe was shot by,

Starting point is 01:29:12 shot dead by the caretakers so that the child wouldn't be killed and there wouldn't be a bunch of, like, you know, court lawsuits. And then this Harambe ape got just, you know, martyred by the internet. And then Zawa a beloved internet icon. And so this artist came and made a Harambe statue and dropped it in front of Wall Street. But like there was no connection to like Wall Street bets or ape culture.

Starting point is 01:29:33 But it's one of those things like, not no official connection, but it's one of those things like they knew. They knew. There's now a massive ape in front of the stock market. I just feel like this has just nailed the Zkeist of being this new era that we've entered into, right? Like, the stock market is neither bull nor bear. It's ape now. It's right. And Rambay, like, he was killed by the institutions, wasn't he? Right. Not doing anything wrong. Right. Just being far as playing with a kid. Yeah. I mean, and inside of a zoo, like, what's the

Starting point is 01:30:04 metaphor there? Like, capture it be in a cage and just like trying to live his life. I don't know. There's metaphors on metaphors. And the fact that this is a stare down between the bull and the ape, I think, wow, this is how we're entering the 2020s, folks. This is what it is. This is the new era. Ape culture. You know how I keep on saying that crypto is moving closer to society and society is moving closer to crypto.

Starting point is 01:30:29 Well, if there's a goddamn ape in front of the stock market, that's a clear sign that society and crypto are coming closer and closer. It's just, and it's not like we're advocating like ape culture and degeneracy here, right? It's what the monetary policy is incentivizing. You've made a mockery. of your markets. Of your markets. You've made a mockery of it, central banks, people in charge, institutions.

Starting point is 01:30:53 And so how can you expect us to take it seriously? Right? Like the whole meme stock phenomenon, the whole GME phenomenon, we could go on. But this is brilliant. I love this art. Anyway, let's go through some quick hits, David. Very quick. Here we go to takes.

Starting point is 01:31:06 Okay. The CBOE acquires ERISX. So this is the CBOE expanding. Eris X was a crypto derivatives market. market. Now they're getting a little bit bigger. This is all very legal. Crypto and spot trade, crypto spot trading and derivatives. And I guess the CBOE is continuing to expand through these acquisitions. Next up, we have Society General. We talked about them. They're the bank, third largest bank in France that recently submit a governance proposal to Maker Dow. They are shopping for a crypto

Starting point is 01:31:36 custodian. So if you are a crypto custodian and you want to be bought by a big bank, Society General, that you might find love there. Yeah, I find love there. Wow. It's like classified ads, I guess, for custodians. BlackRock CEO says there's huge opportunities in digital currency, particularly in this article, he made kind of stable coins, other things, non-threatening things. But he's kind of in the Jamie Diamond camp of saying Bitcoin is useless. There's actually a quote in this article from Jamie Diamond that reminded me of where Jamie Diamond comments on Bitcoin. This is, of course, the JP Morgan CEO. He says this, it makes no difference to me. I don't think you should smoke cigarettes either, but our clients are adults. They disagree. That's what makes markets. I love that he compares owning Bitcoin to smoking cigarettes. My God, one of those things gives you cancer.

Starting point is 01:32:26 The other just gives you more money. Jamie Diamond capitulating to the market. I guess. All right, what's next, David? Uniswap hires a former Obama spokesperson as head of communications and regulatory conversations around Defi Swirl in D.C. Interesting. Uniswap getting political as well.

Starting point is 01:32:44 Defy getting political. Axi is now a top 500 website in the U.S. Site ranked 476. AXE definitely going mainstream, also with that global appeal. Guys, we will be right back with the takes of the week. These are some hot takes, and of course the meme of the week you won't want to miss it. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Arbitrum is an Ethereum scaling solution that's going to completely change how we use Defi and NFTs.

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Starting point is 01:34:07 There's so many apps coming online to Arbitrum. so go to bridge.arbitrum.io now and start bridging over your eth or any of the tokens listed and start having the defy or NFT experience that you've always wanted. Living a bankless life requires taking control over your own private keys. Not your keys, not your crypto. That's why so many in the bankless nation already have their ledger hardware wallet, which makes proper private key management a breeze. But the ledger ecosystem is much more than just a secure hardware wallet.

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Starting point is 01:35:08 Defi never stops growing and the Ledger Live app grows alongside with it. So click the link in the show notes to see all of the Defy apps that Ledger Live has and stay tuned as more apps come online. And if you don't have a Ledger hardware wallet, what are you even waiting for? Go to Ledger.com, grab a ledger, download Ledger Live and get all of your Defy apps all in one space. All right, guys, we are back with the takes of the week. The first one from Medvan, he says this. Today's NFTs are the cave paintings of the Metaverse. I like that analogy.

Starting point is 01:35:40 Cave paintings of the Metaverse. Very early on. Yeah. You think JPEGs, or excuse me, NFTs of the future are just going to be JPEGs? Think again. Think again. All right. These are just cave painting times.

Starting point is 01:35:50 We're going to evolve from here. Medvan with another take. I bought my first Bitcoin on Coinbase in 2013. Many will buy their first NFT on it too. This goes back to the story. We're talking about this is a mainstream moment, I think, for NFT. and Coinbase is going to be right there helping to onboard the world. Matt, two for two with great takes.

Starting point is 01:36:10 Good job, Matt. Good week. Another NFT take. Why don't you read this one, David, from Adam Sacks. Yeah, this was great. Adam Sacks says, look, NFTs are a scam. But websites that get you to post your hard work for free in exchange for hearts and likes, that's the real stuff.

Starting point is 01:36:26 That's amazing. What a great way to describe all of social media. We do all of this stuff for free, I suppose. We don't even own the property. on top of it. We're just renting. You ever think about that, David? Like your Twitter account is not your Twitter account.

Starting point is 01:36:41 Rented. Something you're borrowing from a... I'm making more and more valuable, although I don't have ownership over it. No equity, sir. It's not even yours. No equity in my Twitter account. You're just a renter. And web to social media are our landlords.

Starting point is 01:36:56 Our serfs, yeah. Let's talk about this. Dow to Dow is going to be the new B2B. This is Annon intern, not going to make it. I can't... Dow to Dow. I can't hear like one time of a Dow spinning up without them being like, okay, here's our token swap targets. Like I want to do a token swap at this Dow and that Dow and that Dow and that Dow.

Starting point is 01:37:14 And it just makes this mesh network of Dow alignment incentives. It makes it very like hard to rip, right? When bridges are built and they're built sturdily, it's hard to rip that ecosystem. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Every Dow launches with like five or ten like different partnerships basically or like, you know, that's the very first thing you do. And DAOs can't really work well with non-digital organizations either.

Starting point is 01:37:37 That just doesn't work. So talking about a new Dow economy, B2B, by the way, for folks I'm familiar, that stands for business to business, which is a whole like industry subsector, of course. And now it's going to be Dow to Dow. These are the new capital formation entities. David, here's a take from you. I'm going to read this one. Read the first read first.

Starting point is 01:37:58 Oh, really? I have to do. Okay. This is from David Greider. Yeah, we had them on a podcast once before. That's right, David. Hey, David, I hope you're listening. David says, what is the total addressable market for crypto?

Starting point is 01:38:10 What if the total dressable market for crypto, rather, isn't digital gold or the internet sector? What if it's all government spending? So he's saying, what if the total addressable market size is different? We always talk about like $8 trillion in gold. That's what Bitcoin's going to be worth. Or we compare it to the internet. And he's saying, what if it's all government spending? And then you replied and you said, I think Tam for crypto is just everything, to be honest.

Starting point is 01:38:37 So what do you mean by this? Yeah, everyone loves to play that game. It's like, oh, yeah, here's Bitcoin's valuation. It should be at least gold. Here's Ethereum's valuation. It should at least be all the fang stocks. Like, here's how much the government's in debt. Bitcoin should.

Starting point is 01:38:52 Dude, the total addressable market for crypto is every financial asset that exists. We are going to consume everything. We are literally a better financial. asset platform, exchange network, than anything that's ever come before it. So if you don't think any valuable asset isn't going to find a token on Ethereum to embody it, you're wrong. The total addressable market for crypto is everything that has value. Are you going to limit that just to the Earth, David? Would you expand that to the solar system, to the galaxy, to the multiverse? Are we talking the total addressable market size of like all of the possible universes in existence? Is

Starting point is 01:39:30 that how big this is? I'm not an expert on interplanetary block production and propagation. I don't know, like, it's, it's eight minutes. We run up against some speed of light issues, I think. It's eight minutes to get to the moon. I don't know how fast an Ethereum block can get there for actually make a network work, but once we solve that problem, yes. Once we solve that problem, yeah, then the value of the sun will be a token on Ethereum. Watch for David's next piece on the total will address. Ethereum as a settlement layer for the multiverse. Interplanetary settlement layer. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:40:04 This is Ryan Selkiss's tweet. I love this one. He says, we need a U.S. regulatory agency that will protect investors from the other U.S. regulatory agencies. A little snarky, kind of fun. Going back to how we want,

Starting point is 01:40:17 just say cryptos are, just centralize all the regulatory energy into one place so we can just all focus there. I mean, that's what Coinbase says, but what if we don't like the person? What if we don't like the guys doing that? Then we can all, yell at him collectively rather than having to split our energies between

Starting point is 01:40:30 Warren, yelling, Gensler. Like, no, just make one person that we get to be the person to yell at. Apply pressure. Yeah. But ideally, it's that number three. It's somebody who's good. Yeah. Back to that.

Starting point is 01:40:41 Hopefully. We'll see where we get. Okay, guys, those are the takes for the week or do we have another? No, next week of memes. But before we do, take, uh, what are you excited about, David? What are you excited about? I think that this whole Wu-Tang album thing, I think is just such a great. microcosm of what I want to see happen moving forward. I want to see DOWs make a bunch of

Starting point is 01:41:03 PR statements and PR moves that get picked up and reported on that are in direct opposition, in direct contrast. It's like positive? Yeah, positive contrast to the to the rest of the world, right? Like the opposite of the parasite guy, that's an analogy in that, like the, the parasite guy who jacked up the price of EpiPens, right? Exactly. Terrible PR for Wall Street for, you know, hedge fund managers and big finance guys. Makes people hate them. You want the opposite of that to happen. Right. Right. You're like, no, I want to Dow to distribute ownership of this prize cultural artifact that is like a meme about how it's a weld garden and break down those walls and share it with everyone. Share the culture. Share the value. The way that, and this is how I think crypto is going to

Starting point is 01:41:47 mainstream itself in terms of cultural acceptance is that we fix all of the problems that society has story by story. There's a mean that we ran about a number of roll-ups ago. It was like a broken existential crisis about the future of the world. There was a big crack in the asphalt and there was a band-aid spanning the crack. And the band-aid was labeled a Dow with the homies, right? Like, we have the answers and we just need these stories to propagate through the rest of the world, to show the world that, hey, we can fix stuff here in crypto.

Starting point is 01:42:18 Crypto is here to help you live your life. And I think this is the first story of many. I kind of see, specifically with Pleaser Dow, but also with these cultural artifacts. It's like crypto is building this arc and Dows are going to like buy up all the cultural icons, all the cultural stories and get them on the arc to make them part of the digital world. I think that's going to be kind of cool. Do you know what's so interesting about that, that hope and that aspiration though is it depends so much on the layer zero, which is the people layer, okay? Right? because some people can be assholes, right?

Starting point is 01:42:50 And some people are not. Some people are good people. They, you know, see pie expanding things. They are altruistic, right? And so our layer zero has to be awesome. It can't be full of like Wall Street assholes. I'm not saying all, you know, Wall Street people are assholes. I'm saying that there are many assholes on Wall Street.

Starting point is 01:43:13 It's left for them. prevent that because there are a lot of, you know, parasitic individuals who've come to crypto and are looking to scam individuals. We see very much this countervailing force of individuals who are here for the long term, but like it's not a given. I mean, crypto could become at the layers you're just as toxic as, you know, organizations and entities that have atrophied in the real world. And like that's why our layer zero is incredibly important to protect. Like we have to create a culture of like doing good for the world if we want this industry to be successful and sustaining like for generations. And it's not a given.

Starting point is 01:43:58 Like we actively have to make that choice, I think. Yeah. What's your thought? I have a ton of thoughts on that. And this is actually kind of like one of the subjects of one of the articles I'm trying to write. We have this open public transparent ledger. and that transparency, because everyone can see everyone else doing stuff, that transparency in my mind actually incentivizes open, collaborative,

Starting point is 01:44:21 transparent nature in the society that arounds these things, right? Because we incentivize collaboration on chain, you know, money legos, we incentivize collaboration off chain in the layer zero. And so there's this culture, at least in the Ethereum world, there's this culture of like everyone checking on everyone else to make sure that everyone else is being good. It's like, we're making, we're,

Starting point is 01:44:43 a society around Ethereum is a collaborative society. And when somebody does something wrong that we don't like, everyone acknowledges that and knows that. And it's like a, it's a social checking system, social collateral, social clout. And we have this society that is like trying to guide people

Starting point is 01:44:58 into this positive son, some collaborative, like, honorable, like society around Ethereum. And I think the nature of a transparent blockchain actually incentivizes that. Well,

Starting point is 01:45:09 to the extent we are, able to do that, I think we will create a lasting movement that is good for the world. So let's hope and that's definitely why we're here for sure. And I know many bankless listeners are here for those reasons as well. Absolutely. Ryan, what are you excited about? I'm just going to say all-time high, man, feeling good. What a great week, right? It was a great week. It was a great week. I feel like, you know, this time, Eith has earned it, right? I felt in 2017 like something was off. It felt very bubbly. Like there wasn't a lot of substance behind what was going on, right? There was definitely something. There was a vision and a promise and a hope, but there wasn't substance.

Starting point is 01:45:49 This time we have substance. The 2021 bull run has been just phenomenal. I think it's, you know, going to continue in the future. One of the last things I'll say, and, you know, what I'm excited about this week is actually after our conversation that we recorded this week with Eric Peters, podcast, by the way, comes out on Monday for podcast listeners. This is with a guy who made the largest institutional purchase of Bitcoin and Ether in 2020. So this is kind of a traditional hedge fund. And he really set all of my worries about regulators and nation-state destroying crypto to rest. So tune into that episode to hear exactly why, but just with a very pragmatic approach. I think from time to time in my crypto journey, I've always been worried, like,

Starting point is 01:46:42 oh, you know, are the regulators going to come squash this thing? Is the nation state going to disallow it? Are they going to ban it? And Eric doesn't think that's very likely. In fact, he thinks that there are a number of escape hatches that, like, prevent that from being the case. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm feeling good, all-time high. Everyone enjoy the bull run. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fun. We'll probably get more regulatory fud, other sorts of, you know, fud that's coming in the future that's fear and certainty and doubt.

Starting point is 01:47:16 Don't worry about this. Think about the long term in the long run. I've never been more bullish and I've never felt more that crypto is completely inevitable. So that's what I'm excited about this week, man. Yeah, this will be the second time we've reviews the water flows downstream metaphor. Like the regulators are just trying to stop water flowing downstream. Eventually, water find. its way around the dam. Like, it'll get around it. Yeah, absolutely. All right, David,

Starting point is 01:47:42 meme of the week time. We got two hot ones this week. Oh, dude. Two hot memes. Let's do this one. I love this. We spoil our listeners. Yeah. Well, I feel spoiled by this meme. Why don't you talk about it? Okay, so this meme went around the whole world. I had like three of my friends show me this meme on Instagram. That's how I know it's a big deal because all my normie friends sent it to me. So this is Frodo, leaning over Gollum's shoulder. while Gollum sits at a computer looking at a picture of the ring, the Lord of the Rings ring. And Frodo says to Gollum, you can't own the precious physically, but you can pay to have your name listed as its owner in an online distributed database.

Starting point is 01:48:24 Oh my God. Now do that in a Gollum voice, David. It's definitely a knock on NFTs, but I think it's in jovial jest. It's totally hilarious. Gollum's got this like incredulous look on his face. He just doesn't quite get it, but he's doing it. anyways and doesn't know why. Do you have a gullum voice? I want you to do this. I do not have a goal voice, David. You don't?

Starting point is 01:48:41 Okay. I'm not going to show my gullum voice. I do have one, but you know, that's for another podcast. Wow. Not a cryptic podcast. Brugged by Ryan. Next time, maybe. All right.

Starting point is 01:48:54 This is the second meme number two. Yeah, what's this? What are we looking at? Okay, so this is that meme that's going around where there's like an iconic figure and it ends in like ore really, really long. I really, I don't get why. but like this one is the tax optimizer. And there's a bunch of just like things, attribute characteristics of the tax optimizer.

Starting point is 01:49:15 Preferers selling out a loss, no taxable gains. Thinks the tax rate is 100%. Did you hold that for 12 months? For long term gains, only takes profits to pay taxes. Always says the words, just wait for taxes, wants to set you up with their accountant. You should have seen the taxes I paid in 2017. You know that's a taxable event, right? just a bunch of behaviors that like there are certain people out there.

Starting point is 01:49:41 Yeah, you guys might know one. He's on this podcast right now. Okay. Come on, man. I am feeling attacked right now, okay, by the tact optimizer meme. Because this guy looks a lot like me, number one. And these attributes sound super familiar in the way I think sometimes. But yeah, look, I think these memes are hilarious because they kind of characterize individuals

Starting point is 01:50:04 and, like, the tendency to go overboard. on something, right? In a, like, in a playful fun way. And, like, I have definitely fallen prey to being, like, the tax optimizer. But, like, there's another trap, I think, which is, like, the crypto dude that never thinks about taxes. It doesn't even factor that into any equation whatsoever, right? And I'm always, like, to that person, I want to say, like, oh, are you, like, not going

Starting point is 01:50:31 to, like, live in your country anymore? are you going to be a fugitive in the in like in the nation that you see then if you don't want those things don't piss off the IRS like pay your taxes right certainly uh but there is truth in that you can't let affect the way you like trade and make decisions and if you over index on that and just care about like you know taxes and optimizing those things you're going to miss out on opportunities when i've made mistakes i've probably done that before yeah i do have to say i'm definitely on the opposite side of the spectrum then running Ryan is, and that is why I pay someone else to care about my taxes for me. So if you are the

Starting point is 01:51:10 opposite of what Ryan is, but you also don't want to go to jail and you know that you're somebody that is not a tax optimizer, go find someone and pay them to care for you. That's my alpha there. In the words of the tact optimizer then, David, I want to set you up with my account. Can I help with that? See, it is me. It is me. Guys, not. of this has been tax advice. God knows it wasn't financial advice either. Eath is risky. Bitcoin is risky. All of DFI is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but thanks for joining us on the bankless journey.

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