Bankless - ROLLUP: Bitcoin ETF Rumors | IRS Tax Rules | Ethereum Dencun

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Bankless Weekly Rollup First Week of 2024  ----- 🏹 USE PODCAST24 FOR 10% OFF https://bankless.cc/Citizen2024  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum   🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo   🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/Toku  ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 8:00 MARKETS https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin/ars  10:25 Bitcoin https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-birthday-15-years-satoshi-nakamoto-genesis-block-mine  https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1738547873967435907?s=46  13:00 ETH 15:10 MatrixPort Liquidations https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1742541738940510645  https://www.theblock.co/post/270125/sec-will-reject-all-bitcoin-spot-etfs-in-january-says-matrixport-analyst  https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1742597650791162271?s=20  19:20 SEI , ARB , OP https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/sei  https://defillama.com/chains  21:50 Narrative Investing https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/narratives  27:00 Bitcoin ETFs https://twitter.com/JSeyff/status/1742216237017342041  https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1742580887022125209?s=20  https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1742543503375106139?s=20  https://x.com/MetaLawMan/status/1742532353535180988?s=20  31:00 Insane IRS Crypto Rules https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1742246479593382207  https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1742257989195636978?s=20  https://x.com/NeerajKA/status/1742362328937746793?s=20  https://twitter.com/CryptoTaxGuyETH/status/1742366293649465782?s=20  https://x.com/jerrybrito/status/1742662203784744971?s=20  39:00 Ethereum Duncan https://x.com/christine_dkim/status/1737889041981575320?s=20  https://www.eip4844.com/  42:30 Devcon 7 https://devcon.org/en/  43:00 Avalanche Culture https://x.com/avax/status/1740538202346381605?s=20  45:00 Michael Saylor https://warpcast.com/rsa/0xd1b6a261  https://x.com/BitDeez/status/1742313181697945878?s=20  https://x.com/ecoinometrics/status/1740034802508796186?s=20  46:50 LUNA is a Security https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/12/28/terraform-labs-luna-and-mir-tokens-are-securities-judge-rules/  https://twitter.com/metalawman/status/1740785789234028840  49:50 No More SBF Trials https://www.reuters.com/legal/sam-bankman-fried-will-not-face-second-trial-us-prosecutors-say-2023-12-29/  https://www.theblock.co/post/268450/ftx-bankruptcy-could-go-on-for-years-legal-expert-says  51:35 Barry Dilbert Steps Down https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/12/26/barry-silbert-resigns-as-grayscale-chairman-to-be-replaced-by-mark-shifke/  https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001588489/000095017023072820/gbtc-20231226.htm  52:40 Dymension Airdrop https://x.com/dymension/status/1742185621299265738?s=20  https://x.com/dymension/status/1742185624696680823?s=20  55:00 Manta https://twitter.com/MantaNetwork/status/1678807287761195008?s=20  https://twitter.com/MantaNetwork/status/1735268753984864349  57:00 MEME of the Week https://x.com/BanklessHQ/status/1742662299087929472?s=20  ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ 

Everyone is getting ready for the spot Bitcoin ETF approval. Almost everyone. Is that why Bitcoin went down 10%? Eggless Nation, it is our first weekly roll-up of 2024. David, how you doing, man? Pretty good, my man. I'm down in Argentina. It's a good place to be.

Oh, I know. I want to talk to you about that. But let's give the folks a tease of what's going on in the weekly roll-up first. Number one, we got Bitcoin down. It was over 10% down in one day. Big move down. Yeah, why did it sell off? We're going to talk about that.

What else we got? Brian, are you ready to go to jail? No, not this year. Why? Because there's crypto tax rules that just took effect. And if you ever claim an airdrop worth, you know, $10,000, you have to report it to the IRS pretty damn soon or else you go to jail. So I'll see you in jail by the end of this year. We'll talk about all of that.

Ethereum Dengoon. We got a date for you as well for when rollups are getting it 90s. 50% fee reductions. It's coming very, very soon. It's coming in just a few months now. We'll give you all the details. And also, Ryan, I know I won't be seeing you at DevCon 7, but everyone who does go to DevCon 7, we just got the details announced.

So we will all see you when and where. We will find out. That's a good tease, David. It's in a very far away place. So that's another reason why I won't be attending. But I'm very excited for you to attend. Speaking of world traveling, you said you were in Argentina. And before we started recording this episode, you were waving around some fat stacks.

Okay. Can you tell me how the Fiat system works over there in Argentina? Like, what's your experience been so far? You want to see what $1,000 looks like? Or excuse me, $100 looks like in Argentina? $100 U.S. dollars in Argentina. 100 U.S. dollars. It looks like this.

Yeah. Looks like that. Oh, my God. Wow. That is a stack. That's a watt of cash. I think this is a hundred bills of Argentine pesos. This is actually, actually, these are 100 pesos.

There's a lot of a thousand pesos. Actually, just kidding, this is $10. This is $10. That's $10? Yeah. So their current conversion ratio is $1,000 to 1. And this is 100, 100 peso bills. 1,000 to 1?

Is that like fixed or does that vary based on the current market rate? That's the current market rate. It just happens to be 1,000 to 1. Yeah. Here's the largest Argentine peso bill, which is a 2,000 peso bill. It's about $2.00. Yeah. Yeah. So like I, when I go and I pay anything in cash, I'm carrying around like fat, stacks of bills. When I was in Argentina in 2016, the ratio, the conversion ratio was 16 to 1, which is like, you know, it's not crazy. Not terrible. You know, 2016, how many years ago was that? Seven years ago. So in seven years, it goes from 16 to 1 to 1 to 1, okay. So is this like when you're purchasing things, you're going to a restaurant, you're getting food or something, you're getting groceries. Are you buying things with pesos? Is it like all cash business? Or can you like use a credit card or something like this or yeah there's a means of payment i would say more frequently

than not you can use a credit card um some some things are cash only like there's a lot of street markets for example um credit cards are pretty well proliferated i'd say um or debit credit card debit card tap to pay but then also the decent number of times like you just you got to use pesos too wow that's crazy how has it been so far overall uh argentina or using pesos no argentina i mean i'm using pesos is got to be, like, it's probably a novelty if you're there for like a couple of weeks, but like, I'm sure that gets pretty damled if you're, yeah. So, like, Josh was asking me, it's like, so what's it like to pay in pesos? Is it like kind of cool because you have like a big wad of cash? I'm like, no, it's actually, it's actually really annoying because like,

okay, here's a $20 food bill. And I go, one, two, three. I just start counting. I'm like, oh my God, it keeps on going. These are, because so like the, the 100 peso bill, that's 10 cents. One bill is 10 cents. It's a dime for us. I've seen your wallet. You have a very small wallet. I've seen this person. No bills go in there.

Like, how do you fit that? I mean, like, you must have like gigantic grocery bags for a wall. I have a whole pocket full. I literally put one of these things in my pockets. And then I come back and it's like gone. Oh, that's crazy. No, no, okay. But aside from the fiat, which we know is destined for failure, no matter what country you're in,

eventually your fiat will fail. Tell me about Argentina. It's fantastic. Rico. Anote. There's a bankless meetup at a wine bar. So we put out the bankless meetup a while ago set for Friday and we were going to rent out half the wine bar. Wine bar is like a kind of a popular place in one of the nice neighborhoods. And for 100 people. And it instantly filled up. It filled up inside of 30 minutes. I was like, oh my God, I did not realize that, A, there's so many bankless fans in Argentina and Berners are ready to go. And so like B, we have to

move places. And so we went from, we went from Friday where we could rent half the place a Thursday, which is today, to rent all the place. And then it just instantly filled up, even though we doubled the capacity. And so I'm a little bit intimidated by that, but it's going to be a good time. You gave a speech. Some Malbec and some empanadas. Am I going to give a speech? Perhaps. I don't know. You know me. I make things up as I go. And tell all the bankless Argentinians, I say hello as well. And I will. I'd be there in person if I could. I have COVID right now, David. Yeah, you do have COVID. And so if I sound a little bit nasally or a little bit under the weather, then Bankless Station, that is why. But we cannot,

won't stop the weekly roll up. As we kick off 2024, we've got a message from ourselves that we want to let the bankless community know. And we have a special offer for everyone listening to this podcast, 10% off a bankless citizenship. We've had over a thousand new citizens join in the last 30 days, David. So things are really heating up. This is one of our most active seasons. Like there's so much getting built on top of a bankless citizenship. Could you tell folks what a bankless citizenship actually is?

Well, for the podcast listeners, the first and most obvious thing is the premium podcast RSS feed, the one that you're not listening to if you're on the free feed, obviously. there's one that has extra episodes and the one that has zero ads. So if you're a podcast listener and you just want a better podcast listening experience, you can sign up for the Bankless Citizen RSS feed. There's also the Bankless Nation Discord, which is like the most buzzing that it's ever been. People are talking about air drops, people talking about Defy Farming strategies, air drops on different chains, all these different strategies.

The AirDrop Hunter corner of the Bankless Discord is like super active because of the AirDrop Hunter part of the Bankless website, which you also get. If your friends are coming into crypto and they're asking, like, hey, how do I hunt an airdrop? Well, that's the product that we've built for them. They don't have to ask you. They just have to go to the AirDrop Hunter. Overall, also, there's also the Heath Denver meetup, which we're about to coordinate for bankless citizens. There's probably just no higher ROI time to be a bankless citizen.

So you should sign up to become a bankless citizen. Yeah, look at this. This is from In Quito. I signed up for bankless because I love the podcast, but the AirDrop Hunter function has paid multiples after finding. there might be a Gito AirDrop via Bankless. I invested 500 an M-Sol, converted it, and then got 10K. My daughter has more money in her 529 plan. That's a college savings account there.

And I started another 529 thanks to Bankless. So we have an AirDrop Hunter tax optimizer Barba spectrum guy on. We're paid for people's colleges, David. It's just absolutely fantastic. Anyway, Bankless Nation, we promised you a discount too. So if you use the code, Podcast 24, you can get 10% off a bankless citizenship for monthly or the year. And you can go access that at bankless.com slash join or there's a link in the show notes. As always, that code again is podcast 24.

There's also a QR code floating on the screen for people on the YouTube. Yeah, Podcast 24 QR code. Yeah, you'll figure it out. David, let's figure out Bitcoin this week. You wanted me to start this Bitcoin priced in pesos, Argentinian pesos. This chart looks nice because it's up and to the right, but not if you hold pesos. Yeah, it looks pretty scary. So the Bitcoin Argentine peso chart is a small squeakly line very close to the bottom.

And then right on the right side, it is absolutely vertical. Pesos just devalued by like 50% right before I got here in. dollar terms. The log chart, it's just up only. Bitcoin is setting like a crazy all-time highs every single week in Argentine pesos. This is what, this is what fiat currencies are all trending towards. It's just a matter of time. Yep. Well, speaking of that, tell me about Bitcoin in the fiat currency that is the global reserve currency priced in dollars. Where are we at on the week? Also up, just, you know, not as up as much versus Argentine pesos. It's up 3% on the week. The official, Ryan, the official starting price of 2024 for Bitcoin is $42,500,

up 3% to where we are now at five days into the week at $44,000. We got some yearly candles to look at. So these are candles where one candle represents one year. It's just kind of nice to zoom basically as far out as possible in Bitcoin's history and just look at one year. Big fat candles. Big fat candles. We're looking good. The 2023 candle almost completely erased the 2022 candle. So we are basically almost setting new highs in 2022 from where 2020 started. So we're looking at price discovery from a yearly perspective. These are looking really, really good on the yearly candle chart. We have some red candles, but it's all mostly green. So almost every year in Bitcoin has been green except for 2018 and 2022. Every other year is a big green

Those years were very, very red, though. I mean, this particular chart only goes to 2014 just because the data is not there. But yeah. Well, we're on Bitcoin, David. We should give a shout out to Bitcoin's birthday, 15 years after Satoshi Nakamoto mined the Genesis block. We just celebrated that. Was that on January 3rd? That happened.

It was on January 3rd. That was Wednesday this week. 15th birthday. I feel like we recently celebrated a Bitcoin birthday, but maybe that was just the white paper. That wasn't the Genesis block. Yeah, Bitcoin gets two birthdays. per year, the birth of the white paper and the birth of the blockchain, which... I don't know if that's fair.

I think that's fair. You don't celebrate... Bitcoin gets a conception day. No, I do not celebrate that. It'd be a bit weird, right? I think we get to celebrate Bitcoin's conception day and its birthday. Okay. All right.

Well, I'm just saying, like, most people only have one birthday. I bet, you know, I guess Bitcoin can celebrate its conception and also the Genesis block. Anyway, happy birthday, happy 15th Bitcoin. We started this whole thing. Fun fact, Bitcoin has mined 825,000 blocks. So I guess we got like four, three more years until 100,000 Bitcoin blocks. That'll be a big day. 100,000 Bitcoin blocks. I don't know. I just haven't really been paying attention to that number, but now I am. I'm all being excited to celebrate that day too.

One thing that's exciting for Bitcoin, though, is revenue via fee transaction. is up to like almost all-time high. It averaged nearly $2 million per day in 2023 all of last year. That's 400% year-over-year. This is from things like inscriptions, right? All of the Bitcoin NFTs and the BRC 20s, Bitcoin fee revenue is really just absolutely crushed it last year. And I expect that to continue going to this year.

I think this is all-time highs. This is definitely all-time highs in an area under the curve perspective from November of this year, like fee revenue has been significant as compared to marginal, which it's been marginal every other time in Bitcoin's history, except for May when inscriptions and orders were birthed. And then they kind of died off between July and November, but now they are back with a force. The Lindy behind Bitcoin's fee revenue is like growing pretty good, I'd say, pretty well. It's better than I expected it to. That's good. It's good for Bitcoin economics and certainly good for minors. It was really good.

of unexpected treat. Minors are going to be printing because like a year ago they were all on the verge of bankruptcy and now they're making more revenue than they never happened before. It's so weird. It's like Easter famine for Bitcoin miners. All right, let's go over to Eith Price. Tell me this in dollars, David. What is the price of Eith on the week? Eith started the year at $2,300. $2,300 is currently down 1% at 2270. So starting the week as we end or set of the year as we ended the year with ether, which is always down a little bit. Let's look at the yearly bars here, David. So we've got two red bars, the same as we had with Bitcoin and a lot of green.

But what does Ether look on a year-to-year basis? Yeah, it's 20203 candle. It was about half as big as Bitcoin's, which we know this. Bitcoin did a 3x in 20203. Ether did a 2x. Does that mean ETH has more to grow? Is that just my bias and my desire? I'll let the nation decide.

A little bit of both, maybe. Eith, Bitcoin, ratio, where are we out on the week? Down just a little bit. We have 0.052. Otherwise, decently flat. But the ratio, charts is what we're looking at right now. And that looks pretty good.

I would say that that is primed for a green candle. Yeah, I've actually never seen it like this. This is a very interesting chart. So 2017, ether far outperformed Bitcoin. Oh, yeah. Like huge green, you know, ratio there. 2018, 2019, it did not. It underperformed Bitcoin.

No, that's when we were being bullied by Bitcoiners. Yeah, 2021 was a huge year for Ether. 2020 was the year of Ultrasound money. Yeah. And then since then, it's been red candles. So, 2022 and 2023 versus Bitcoin. Yeah, I think we could probably get like maybe a small to medium green candle this year and then a massive green candle next year, one of these two years,

2024 or 2025 will be the year of the internet bond. I think we're going to get a green candle this year for sure. And I think it's actually going to be a big. Is it like the green candle that we got in 2020, which was just like marginal? Or is it the green candle that we got in 2021, which was Chad? I would split the difference here, is my prediction. All right, back to point away.

Yeah, total crypto market cap. Where are we at on the week? 1.75 trillion still kind of stuck in that 1.75 range. All right. I mean, we're starting the year at 1.7 trillion. It's total crypto market cap. That's not too bad. Another thing we're starting the year with is a $540 million worth of liquidations.

Do you see this on the chart? We breeze right past this. This is the Bitcoin chart. You see this red candle all the way down? What in the world happened on January? 3rd, 2024. Like, was this all liquidations? Did something precipitate this, this massive 10% plus price drop in Bitcoin and the rest of the

crypto market? Tell me what's going on here. Yeah. So in bull markets, there's this pretty regular ritual of the DGens getting liquidated in both directions up and down. And we had one of those, you know, we had one of those ceremonies not too long ago, a clearing of the leverage ceremony. So, yeah, like you said, over half a billion dollars was liquidated.

in the crypto markets when Bitcoin went from $44,000 down below like $39,000 and then and then popped right back up. $540 million is no small amount. What caused this? Why did it happen? So an article out of the block says that SEC will reject all Bitcoin spot ETFs in January, says Matrix Support Analyst. This is a huge headline to say. And then you realize like, oh, this says an analyst. But this report, this article just sent the markets just spinning because everyone thought that the SEC was going to reject all the Bitcoin spot ETFs. Okay, so we had a lot of margin on the books kind of looking for like, you know what's going

to happen at some point in time where all of this debris has to be cleaned. And this was just the match, right? This was kind of the spark that caused that cascade of liquidations that we routinely get. You know, every three to six months, we get one of these. And it just happened to be this article, maybe from the block. Block has a pretty wide circulation in crypto saying the SEC is going to reject all Bitcoin spot ETFs. And the funny thing here is they are quoting, it's kind of a random matrix port analyst.

Yeah, so here's the report in question, Matrix on Target. And basically, it gives a reason, just some analyst's opinion on why the SEC is going to reject Bitcoin spot ETFs again. We'll talk more about that in the next section. The fact that this particular event is being charged with this cascade of liquidations. Do you think that's fair? Do you think that's what happened? I think we can kind of chalk this up to being more of a coincidence than anything.

Whenever, you know, the meme of just like Bitcoin goes up 5% and then somebody, your dad or your cousin, text, he's like, hey, why is Bitcoin moving? And you're like, I don't know. Like, people are always looking for reasons as to why the market moved. And was this the match that lit the fire? Were the DGEN is going to inevitably be liquidated because this always happens in crypto? There's always a clearing of the leverage. And then people went to the nearest reason they can find and they just happened to find this article that says this analyst says that the SEC is going to deny the spot Bitcoin and ETFs.

I don't really know. We do know that the open interest for Bitcoin, which is people going long, had historically high funding rates. So we had the most leveraged long position leveraged long in Bitcoin's history. everyone is just taking leverage to long the approval of these spot Bitcoin ETFs. And so the markets are on a knife edge. They're on a precipice. Any short of uncertainty or change in the winds, we're going to trigger this liquidation wave. And again, we will see more liquidation waves in the future.

We will see them like five, six, seven times this coming bull market. We saw them like 10 times last bull market. This is a right of passage. It's a clearing of the brush. And there was this one matrix port article that was like, hey, we think the SEC is going to deny the Bitcoin ETFs. Really, it was the DGens. It was the leverage.

Yeah, yeah, it really was. I mean, the markets got spooked by a stiff breeze. It was absolutely like an analyst's opinion. Like, who cares, right? So it's funny. And they're wrong, by the way. Well, we'll get to that a little bit later. David, Movers of the Week, tell me about some tokens that were moving.

The first one you have here is say, up 70%? Yeah, up 70% on the week, over 100% on the month. Say it is a paralyzed EVM layer one has been just making a ton of moves lately. It's up to 80 cents. So it was at 20 cents just not too long ago. People are buying into the paralyzed virtual machine narrative after the success of Solana and the parallelization of the SVM. Now the parallelization of the EVM is kind of in vogue.

So say it's kind of one of the only horses you can bet on in that race. And so that's why it's up 70% in the week. Not just say, though, layer two's as well, particularly the R3. token had a fantastic week at all-time highs and also optimism. Yeah, congrats to Arbitrum for breaking $2. The Arbitrum layer two on Ethereum is also the number two chain in volume at the moment, beating Binance smart chain, which is a tough chain to beat coming in after Ethereum. It's nice to see an Ethereum layer two in the second spot behind Ethereum. Let me tell you that. And yes, also, like you said, optimism, the OP token also has reached all-time highs. Touched over $4.00.

back down to $3.8, just over layer two is just absolutely killing it in a kind of a sneaky fashion, I'd say. Yeah, another milestone reached in total value locked on layer two's. We are now exceeding 20 billion of asset value that's locked inside of layer twos, which feels pretty big. We were at 12 billion just in like a few months ago. Yeah, and this is Josh Stark putting a finer point on this. It happened. Ethereum layer twos are equal to 20.7 billion. Other layer, 1s equal to 19.67 billion. You can see this chart. In TVL is what you're talking about.

Yeah, I should say this. You could see the chart that he put up. It's kind of a flippening of sorts. Alternative layer ones, non-Etherium layer ones in blue. And of course, they got as high as $80 billion at one point in time. This must have been the heavy terrible. Well, no, that was it. No, it was that one developer on Solana who spun up like eight different

defy apps and they had the re-hypothication of the dollar. where $1 ultimately became $13, which is why it went so quickly down. Yeah, it was just like, it was like an accounting trick. And there was a bunch of like inflated TVL metrics. Anyway, this is not a metric I've been actually looking at, but it's a really interesting metrics. So Ethereum layer two is now have more total value locked than all of the other layer ones combined, which is quite a milestone here. David, before we end this market section, I want to show you this.

This is actually a really cool dashboard that I found on Dune Analytics is brought to my attention. And I think presents a great point that is important for us to remember going to this market. This is a crypto narrative dashboard. We've said before that there are three types of ways you can kind of deploy capital in crypto. One, you can either be a trader, right? A trader is very interested in kind of like TA. What are the charts saying? Like what's the catalyst?

You know, it's like the daily, even the minute by minute or like kind of the weekly numbers, right? That's you could be a trader in crypto. So the second. 20 to 50 plus moves a year, I would say. Yeah, exactly. The second type of investor in the way to deploy capital in crypto is you can be a narrative investor. Okay. So you can look at different narratives like AI and crypto or NFTs or like memes or like China or all sort, game five, maybe. And you can deploy against these narratives. And the interesting thing about being a narrative investors, it's a longer time horizon than you're trying to predict the next narrative that takes hold. It's a longer time horizon than a trader. You can have a bucket of assets and you don't actually

have to bet that the thing will work. You just have to bet that people will get excited about it. Yeah, it's a great of fool's game. Right. And then there's the fundamentals investors, kind of the buy hold, look at on-chain metrics. You can, you know, look at kind of fee revenue. you can look at developer activity, all of these things. Bankless, you and I definitely skew towards more towards fundamentals, right? I think you are deep fundamentals and I flirt with narratives. Yeah, I don't have more fundamentals. I don't have as much time for narratives as like, but like, but yes, I think that's true.

But this is a great, I think, resource if you are interested in narrative investing. So the publisher of this Dune Analyst dashboard, Crypto, Kiro, So publishes published over 30 different narratives, including like Bitcoin, NFT, you know, friend tech, wallets, RWA's, real yield, all of these things. And then he tracks the narratives over time. And so the layer two narrative, David, over the past week or so, was actually one of the best performing narratives. In the layer two bucket, he kind of groups assets, right?

So in the layer two bucket, you get arbitramental, ematic, medis, OP, is kind of a cross-section of assets that represent and exemplify that narrative. Anyway, it's a really cool way to be a narrative investor and to kind of sort out the logic of, well, am I going to invest in AI and crypto? Am I going to invest in real-world assets? Am I going to invest in indexes? And how are these narratives performing at various parts of the market? Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you because it's pretty cool.

Even like the meme 2.0, man, this is so outside of my lane. Bob, ladies, Pepe, Turbo, WoJack, like, what are these things? I have no idea, but the moment that Ranshan Adams buys into memes 2.0 narratives is the moment my brain breaks. Oh my God. What do we have coming up next? Coming up next, the Bitcoin ETF is about to get approved. We're going to talk about all the details and why we know that the Matrix Port analyst is totally wrong. Also, if you plan on claiming an air drop in 2024, make sure that you have

the social security number of someone on the team who's sending you that air drop. Otherwise, you go to jail. We'll talk about those details. And what can we expect from the next Ethereum upgrade, which is going live in March. That is Deng Koon. That is 4844. That's kind of the answer. But we'll talk about those details too. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Cracken, our preferred crypto exchange, in 2024. If you do not have an account with Cracken, consider clicking the link in the show notes below to get started with Cracken today. Cracken knows crypto. Cracken's been in the crypto game for over a decade. And as one is the largest and most trusted exchanges in the industry, Cracken is on the journey

with all of us to see what crypto can be. Human history is a story of progress. It's part of us, hardwired. We're designed to seek change everywhere, to improve, to strive. And if anything can be improved, why not finance? is a financial system designed with the modern world in mind. Instant, permissionless, and 24-7. It's not perfect, and nothing ever will be perfect. But crypto is a world-changing technology at a time when the world needs it the most.

That's the Krakken mission, to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrency so that you and the rest of the world can achieve financial freedom and inclusion. Head on over to cracken.com slash bankless to see what crypto can be. Not investment advice, crypto trading involves risk of loss.

Cryptocurrency services are provided to U.S. and U.S. territory customers by Payward Ventures Eek, PVI doing business as Krakken. Are you launching a token? Is it already live? How are you managing the legal and tax for providing token awards for your team? Toku simplifies everything about managing token grant compensation, and you can get started with them for free. You'll have access to top-notch legal and tax support to handle the distribution and management of tokens for your team. Toku caters to every step in the process, from user-friendly legal templates for granting tokens to tracking investing periods and calculating withholding taxes.

Toku understands every grant structure, token purchase agreement, restricted token awards, restricted token units, token options, and all the other ones. Toku is already simplifying this today for leading companies like Protocol Labs, DYDX Foundation, Mina Foundation, and many more. You can learn more about how Toku can help you streamline your token management and get started for free. Visit Toku at Toku.com slash bankless or click the link in the description below. Sello is the mobile first, EVM-compatible, carbon-negative blockchain built for the real world. And now something big is happening.

Introducing the Cello Layer 2. It's a game-changing proposal that's called. going to bring Sello's rapidly growing ecosystem home to Ethereum. Vitalik has shared its excitement for the Sello Layer 2 on the Selo Forum, so has Ben Jones from optimism. But why? The Sello Layer 2 will bring huge advantages, like a decentralized sequencer, off-chain data availability, and one block finality. What does all that mean? Rock solid security, a trustless bridge to Ethereum, and more real-world use cases for Ethereum without compromise. And real-world adoption is happening. Active addresses on Sello

have grown over 500% in the last six months. With the Sello Layer 2, gas fees will stay low and you can even pay for gas using ERC20 tokens. But SELO is a community governed protocol. This means that SELO needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard. Join the conversation in the SELO Forum. Follow at SELOorg on Twitter and visit sello.org to shape the future of Ethereum. All right. All right.

The number one question in everyone's mind in crypto right now. It's January, 2024. Is the Bitcoin ETF coming or not? We were talking earlier about the Matrix port incident, the report that came out. said the SEC was going to reject the ETFs, still the experts in this space. Eric Beltunis, James Seyfert, these are the people that we've talked to before in bank lists that seem to be tracking the Bitcoin ETF progress the most closely. They are still saying ETF is imminent. Here's James Seffert. Here's a view of the Quintucky Derby. It's nice, Quintuckie. Starting gate,

as of this morning, he lists all of these different Bitcoin ETFs expecting to be approved, expecting most of these to be filled over the next week, still looking for potential approval orders January 8th to January 10th. So James Seffert is still saying, yeah, we're still on track. Next week, essentially, we're going to have a Bitcoin ETF. And I leave for the mountains on January 7th. This is Eric Boutunis. I think responding to some of the fud is quote tweeting,

the SEC is actually holding meetings today with exchange. So it's NASDAQ, CBOE, New York Stock Exchange to finalize comments on the Bitcoin Spot ETF issuers. Eric Boutunis is simply pointing out, this is a thing you probably don't do if you're planning to deny it. If you're going to deny it. Yeah. Yeah.

So he's putting to rest some of the flood, I think, from a Matrix port. It also seems like, David, Matrixport maybe has some. They just changed opinions. Yeah. So Matrix Point first went out and gave that analysis. is like, hey, we're going to, we don't think it's going to get approved. We think they're going going to get denied. And within 24 hours, they flipped, too. They're going to get approved. Just kidding. It's some Bitcoin's going to 50K, which is why people are like, what the hell's going on

with these people? But other than that, yeah. So everyone has consensus that this is going to get approved between January 8th and January 10th. By the next weekly rollup, we will have spot Bitcoin ETFs. David, I'll be honest. The first time I've ever heard the name Matrix port has been like, this week. So I'm not sure why they are the focal point for all of this. But yeah. If you need any more evidence that we are going to get a spot Bitcoin ETF approval, here's Meta lawman who says, if the SEC were to deny all spot Bitcoin ETFs, the application applicants would immediately sue and the D.C. Court of Appeals would again rule that the SEC was arbitrary and capricious. Again, why again? Well, because they already ruled that when the SEC lost their case against

gray scale. As soon as they lost their case against gray scale, we were all like, in September. In September, we were all like, oh, the spot Bitcoin ETF is getting approved. And so, like, yeah, like, and who is going to sue the SEC? Not just some like Q crypto, like trusts like gray scale, it's Black Rock would sue them. And Black Rock would probably win. So congratulations prematurely on this spot Bitcoin ETF approval, everyone. Well, next roll up. I hope we're talking about it, David. If I'm wrong, I'm going to be so... I'm going under the bus.

Yeah, they deny them all next week. We just won't show up for the roll-up next week. We'll think that. I'll be in the mountains, actually. So you're going to be with Anthony Sizzano next week. All right. Well, you enjoy yourself. All right, David, so this is something that came across my attention this week.

This is a tweet from Jerry Brito talking about new crypto tax reporting obligations that took effect on January 1st. I didn't even know these existed. And these are the tax obligations. Of course, for U.S. citizens, you know, Atlanta the free, home the brave, yeah, all that stuff. If you receive 10K or more in crypto, you now have an obligation to report the transaction, including names, addresses, social security numbers, full AMLKYC to the IRS within 15 days or you're under the threat of felony charges. Okay. What is this?

What is this? Can you explain, because I know you know some details of this, why, like, what is going on here? So someone who receives $10,000 or more in one or several crypto transactions that are related must report it to the IRS within 15 days or face potential felony charges. So that's including air drops, but also just sending crypto. So if you send someone crypto or if you, excuse, if you receive crypto from someone, you, You need their social security number, their name, and their address, and you must report it to the IRS inside of 15 days or face federal felony charges, which is a lot of the transactions. Yeah, yeah. So the question is, like, why are we just hearing about this now? So apparently this was part of the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act, which passed Congress in November of 2021. Do you remember that? Oh, the Biden infrastructure bill? Yeah, yeah, the Biden infrastructure bill. There was a provision in there. amending the tax code to require anyone, as you said, who has 10K in cryptocurrency.

In the course of, here's a keyword, their trade or business, we'll get back to that, to make this report to the IRS. Now, they don't actually tell you how to report it, how to tell them. Yeah, they don't actually have. You just tweet at them? Yeah. So the problem is many will find difficult. The blockchain's public.

Isn't the blockchain reporting it to them publicly? Yeah, this is a quote from the blog post from Coin Center. More to the point, where do you even send your report? The law says that one must make a report, in quotes, in such form as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe, but they don't actually tell you how to report this. And this is something that came into effect January 1st. Now, some people have pointed out, rightly so, that this only applies to businesses. and so maybe it doesn't apply to individuals.

But that's not quite the full story because the obligation itself does apply to individuals if they receive 10K or more in crypto in the course of, here's the keyword, a trade or business, their trade or business. And how does the IRS determine what a trade or business is? Well, here's a definition. A trade or business is generally an activity carried on

for the livelihood or in good faith to make a profit. Well, that's the most subjective. So if I receive $10,000 and intend on keeping it, I intend on making $10,000. So therefore, I'm a business. I don't know. I mean, this is the most subjective, terrible. Like, of course, you're getting 10K. I mean, of course you're trying to make a profit.

I don't know what other. Let me tell you, I'm not donating myirdrops. I don't understand. There was another, like, I guess, subtlety here. Some people have said it's not actually starting now, so it's not starting January 1st. But Jerry Britta from CoinSenter says, actually, the statue is self-executing. So maybe this is just some bureaucracy, just some, like, I don't know, legislation that got passed and people didn't really think through the implications. So it doesn't necessarily mean that this is all nefarious because I'm sure there's people listening to this who have already received over 10K in crypto, maybe via a smart contract.

by the way or like via a Dow and like it's unclear how you'd get a social security number from a smart contract or a defy platform so there's a lot of ambiguity and lack of clarity around this and maybe it's it's you know going to be cleared out cleared up in the weeks and months to come but i mean it's kind of disconcerting that you could be potentially charged with a felony at least on the books for this type of thing what's your take yeah it's what's that line like don't ascribe maliciousness when there could be like ignorance and so this this is probably Probably ignorance. But the thing is, it could turn into maliciousness

because it could be applied arbitrarily and capriciously to random people based off of whatever the hell the Treasury or IRS or like whatever they want. And so, long story short, not great. Also very cringe, I would say. It's also cringe. All right, David. So I agree it's cringe.

We'll have to wait to see how all of this plays out. What do we have coming up next? Coming up next, Avalanche Foundation, trying to incent culture. Is that cringe? We'll talk about that. Mary Silbert's resignation. And what do you think was Michael Saylor's New Year's resolution? Everyone, hold your breath, place your bets, place your guesses. And also a new meta for airdrops has arrived with the dimension drop. We'll talk about all these details and more. But first, moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show

possible. Mantle, formerly known as BitDAO, is the first Dow-led web three ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle Network, a brand new high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 built using the OP stack, but uses Eigenlayers data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum Layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle network's gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle treasury is one of the biggest Dow-owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the Web3 space for Mantle. Mantle already has sub-communities from around Web3 onboarded, like Game 7 for Web3 gaming, and Buy Bit for TVL, liquidity, and

on-rowns. So if you want to build on the Mantle network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone-based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure, and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first Dow-ledd layer-2 ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantle.xyZ, and follow them on Twitter at ZeroX Mantle. Arbitrum is the leading Ethereum scaling solution that is home to hundreds of decentralized applications. Arbitrum's technology allows you to interact with Ethereum at scale with low fees and faster transactions. Arbitrum has the leading defy ecosystem, strong infrastructure options, flourishing NFTs, and is quickly becoming the web-free gaming hub. Explore the ecosystem at portal.

arbitrum.com. Are you looking to permissionlessly launch your own Arbitrum orbit chain? Arbitrum allows anyone to utilize Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own orbit chain, giving you access to interoperable, customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you are a developer, an enterprise or a user, Arbitrum orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum. Experience Web3 development the way it was always meant to be. Secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. Visit arbitram.combe.combe.

And get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities. Dankoon is coming. What is Dengoon? You might know it as the hard fork that brings in EIP 4844 or proto-dank sharding or really cheap layer two. choose onto Ethereum. We've got the date. What's the date, Ron? It looks like the schedule for test net upgrades is as follows. There's a goarly fast net on January 17th. There's a sepoilio fork on January 31st. And there's a Holski fork on February 7th. And this tweet from Christine Kim is saying a March mainnet activation for Dankoon still appears likely. So I heard

March, David, Q1. March. Maybe this could seep into April, but this feels like March is a strong possibility that we get this newest Ethereum hard fork update. Yeah, the idea here is that if the three test nets just successfully fork without hiccups, then once that happens, then we just schedule the main net hard fork. And so we need three green lights. We get our first green light, hopefully on the 17th, our second on the 31st, and then the third, hopefully on the February 7th, and that we'll clear the runways for Dengoon on main net.

Again, what does Dengoon do? It does a whole handful of things. There is a link in the show notes to Tim Bako's tweet thread and website that'll explain all this. But really the big one is EIP 48444, of which there's a website for, EIP4844.com. This will decrease layer two transaction fees by like 95% basically immediately. And then layer twos will start to use that extra block space and layer two fees will go back up. And they'll probably, this is a guess summation of Justin Drake, around full dang sharding, full dang sharding, fees will be on layer two's about as expensive as

they are today. There will be a lot more of them. And then full dang sharding will come and they will go basically to zero for years until we figure out what do we do with all that block space. So the reason for that is so we get like a 95% reduction as soon as this is released, right? But what you were saying, like in Justin Drake was articulating is, well, when things get cheaper, there's just going to be a lot more use. Right? So we get like a massive scalability increase

and then fees will creep up because more block space will be consumed again and then we'll have another Ethereum hard fork for full dank sharding to make data availability even more plentiful and even cheaper. That's the kind of the projection here. But what we get out of the gate is absolutely massive

for layer twos, right? Which is scalability and or fee reduction. depending on which side of the coin you want to look at. The thing that will go up, up, up, up, up is going to be total transaction volume on layer two's. A total aggregate Ethereum scalability. The transaction volume will increase massively, and it'll increase up to the point that we return to whatever fee equilibrium we already are. And then we're going to set up that hole in process all over again with full dang sharding. Very exciting.

We're all very excited. This is perhaps why OP and ARB are actually doing so well. narrative traders are starting to trade the Dankoon upgrade. This is the season, tis the season for narrative rotation. That makes sense because transactions will start to cost fractions of a penny, I would imagine, post this upgrade once it starts being used. David, you promised some DevCon updates. Where are we having it in DevCon next year?

Having it in Southeast Asia. You can find all the details at DevCon.org. We're going to Bangkok. We're all going to Bangkok in November 12th through 4th. I looked at flights Ryan. That is a full 21-hour flight from New York. So that's going to be super fun. Yeah. So I will see you all in Bangkok and Thailand. David, avalanche incentivizing culture? You mentioned this in the infreement. What is going on here? Yeah. So the avalanche Foundation has launched a culture catalyst, a programmed aimed at empowering creators, they say. And then they

say, meme coins have carved out a significant niche in the crypto asset landscape. These coins, often inspired by internet culture and humor, go beyond mere utility assets. The Avalanche Foundation intends to start using culture catalyst to recognize and encourage the culture and fun, symbolized by meme coins, by purchasing, select avalanche-based meme coins to create a collection. So how will they choose the assets? Several selection criteria, number of holders, liquidity thresholds, project, maturity, principles of a fair launch, overall social, social sentiment, aka vibes. And so as a following of this announcement, avalanche-based meme coins pumped like 25% because they realize like the Avalanche Foundation is going to be basically subsidizing meme coins

on Avalanche, which is just ridiculous, brother. So the Avalanche Foundation, the culture catalyst is they're just per-Avalanche meme coins? They're like liquidity incentivizing meme coins on Avalanche because meme coins are taking off on Solana. There's like the whole dog with hat thing. There's like the used card token. There was bald on base and their avalanche is like, where does Avalanche get its money? Is this like is this basically a percentage? From selling the Avax token.

That's where it came. And they raised money way back when, but I think ever since then it's been like funded by Avax sales. Why on earth would you want to like pump the value of meme coins in your ecosystem? Like artificially. Look, if I don't have anything nice to say, I probably shouldn't say anything else. Let's move on. Michael Saylor News, David.

Do you see this this week? I thought this was absolutely hilarious. So the headline was Michael Saylor sold 216 million of his micro strategy stock. And I was looking at this. I was like, oh, we knew he's going to sell. This is how he kind of exits Bitcoin. But it turns out, what is he going to do with the money? He's going to personally buy more Bitcoin.

That's what he's doing with the money. Okay. Oh, so Michael Saylor sold $216 million of micro-satogy stock from his personal supply, which is because he sells micro-strategy stock all the time. But now you're saying, okay, Michael Saylor himself is just selling his own stock. Yeah, I just found this hilarious. This is one of the greatest financial alphines of this century. I know, I know.

So he had a professional money machine. I don't know how that makes any sense. He had 260 million of micro strategy stock options, right? And so he sold all of that. And I was like, okay, well, he's exiting his, you know, micro strategy Bitcoin position. And the very next thing he said is he's going to pay off some personal debts, but mostly he's going to just buy more Bitcoin with it personally. And he's got.

quite the game going. Yeah, he's got quite the game going. So there, there you go. And by the way, micro strategy is well on its way to control almost 1% of total Bitcoin supply. It's almost there. It's almost there. Can he stop at 1% please? Why?

That's a lot of Bitcoin. 1% of Bitcoins, bro. He wants all the Bitcoin. Bro, that's so many Bitcoins. That's so many. He's at 9% right now, 0.9% right now. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. Anyway, it's Michael Seller.

Just living out what he believes through his asset purchases here. David, an update from the Tara Luna court case. This has been an ongoing court case. Luna was just labeled a security by a judge. Okay? On the face of it very much seems like a win for the SEC and a win for Gary Gensler. So a U.S. federal judge ruled that Terraform Labs violated federal securities laws when it sold its tokens to the public. They didn't register Luna. They also had another

token called Mir. There's another Terra token. And I think the SEC is probably going to use this court case as evidence that the courts support their view that, you know, Gary says, all cryptocurrencies are securities. So this on the face of it seems like an L for crypto. And, you know, like we had a lot of wins over the summer with with Ripple versus the SEC and Grayscale versus at the SEC, of course, this on the face of it looks like a loss here. So Meta Lawman, as usual, gives a fantastic analysis. And actually, the judge's decision in this case, he said, actually aligns with the ripple case, which we very much liked. And if you recall, David, in the ripple case, the investment contracts, the promise of XRP, those were deemed to

security, but XRP was in and of itself, the token was deemed to be not a security, not deemed to be a security, right? And so this is similar precedent, basically, with Luna and Mir. Now, there was a little bit of bad news here. So the judge in question this case also ruled that UST, you know, a Luna's stable coin in air quotes that eventually depagged, was sold as an investment contract. And he ruled this because it could be staked on the anchor protocol. So it was yield generating. And because it was yield generating, it was hence the security. So Meta Lawman says that part of the decision is the most spurious part of the decision. And so the most like the part of the decision that could be appealed. The problem though is the SEC might use that particular part of the decision against

its case with with Coinbase. So the SEC is likely to argue that Judge Rakoff, that's the judge in the Tara Luna case supports the idea that any token in Coinbase that can be staked or earned yield could be considered an investment contract and that Coinbase's own staking service is an investment contract in and of itself. So not an absolutely disastrous decision, but not great, particularly on the stable coin yield front. At the end of the day, it's just one, the 10,000th call to, hey, we need congressional, we need a bill. We need a Congress to do a bill. because like I'm tired of unpacking all the nuances from all of these court cases because they're all slightly like court decision regulation by court decisions is a great stopgap but if it's the final form

of crypto regulation like I'm going to stay in Argentina yeah well speaking of court cases David Sam bangman freed will trial actually I didn't know that this was the case that he had a second trial coming what would the second trial be before it's the second trial is kind of for a long tale of charges that they didn't get to in the first trial. The first trial was for like the fraud and collapse of FTX and defrauding customers. And then there's a bunch of other smaller things, of which there are many, like market manipulation and like bribes and like all these other kind of things. And the United States prosecutors was like, well, we kind of got him. So we don't need a second trial. This has ruffled some feathers because other people were, uh,

indicted, were like implicated in this second trial, including Barbara Freed. And so we could have gotten some mom, his mom, yes, exactly. And so we could have gotten some clarity. We could have gotten more information. Like there are many people who are like, yo, Sam's parents need to go to jail too. And now they will no longer go to jail. They won't be charged because of they were involved in the second trial. So some people are like, WTF, there's other guilty people that are out there that

this trial would involve, why aren't they getting their day in court because we would like to see them get their day in court? But so like there's there's some like kind of dubiousness about it that at least some people are pointing towards. At the end of the day, we will still have to wait for all of that to settle. Ultimately, the next really big thing in the Sam Bankman-Fried case is his sentencing date on March 28th. So right now Sam is in jail. He is guilty on all charges, all seven charges, which is a lot of things to be guilty for. And now we are waiting to see how many years he will spend in jail. And we will get that answer on March 28th. Also, to tie off some loose ends of the 2022 contagion, Barry Silbert and Mark Murphy are stepping down from DCG. Barry Silbert, he's, of course,

the founder and CEO. And Mark Murphy, the president of DCG, have both resigned from the board of directors at Grayscale, taking effect on January 1st. This is part of the submitted filing of the Bayscale Bitcoin Trust with the SEC, interestingly. that the SEC is reviewing. No official reasons we're given, but this is most likely to be in support of the approval for the conversion of GPTC into a spot Bitcoin ETF. So Grayscale is like, Barry, get the F out. We need to look good for the SEC. And Barry is like, okay, there's probably other reasons as well. Again, more things like this. We just need more details on and the dust will need to settle. Yeah, that's probably in Barry's best interest as well to just clean every.

everything up, so he has the best chance of getting the gray scale ETF approved. There's a big old hole in DCG's pocket, and they need gray sale to be as valuable as possible to help fill that hole. So whatever he needs to do to also not get charged with defrauding investors, you know, you know the deal. Okay, are you ready for a new meta in the world of air drops, Ryan? Yeah, tell me about it. Okay, so there's a dimension air drop. They're calling it a roll drop with a bunch of multi-chain criteria. So what is dimension first? It is what they call the home of role apps, a home for easily deployable lightning fast app chains called roll apps. It sounds like a Celestia competitor, to be honest. I need to look into this more.

But it's a pretty hyped air drop and the criteria for getting the dimension D-Y-N token. I thought it was pretty interesting. So if you are staking Celestia, everything is as of December 19th. So if you were staking Celestia as of December 19th, you got some amount of AirDrop. If you were active on Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and Blast by December 19th, you got some. If you were active on Solana using Salana D5 before December 2019, you've got some. If you are an atom delegator on the Cosmoses hub, or if you are an osmosis delegator on osmosis, you got some. If you are an NFT holder of a pungy penguin on Ethereum, a Mad Lad or a Tensorian on Salana, or a bad kid on Cosmos, you got some. So a very wide set of chains and criteria for getting a pretty,

like, desirable air drop. And I think we're going to see a lot of this moving forward, Ryan. I think this partly answers, like, why Celestia is, like, up so much in the last, like, two weeks ever since the air drop, when the air drop went from $2 to where it is now at 15. Part of it is because, like, Celestia is spitting out, like, 16% yield, but also I think people are using it as, like, an air drop farm. Yeah, all those criteria that you just mentioned, it's so hard to track. All these air drops are coming out, like the best way to track this. This is why we did that. We purchased a tool called Earnify last year, brought that into the bankless ecosystem. You can now access that. It's called the Bankless Claimables app. And all you have to do is plug in

your theorem addresses, your Salon addresses. Salon addresses. It will notify you when you are eligible. The airdrops will come to you. Exactly, because it is so, it hurts my brain to keep up with all of these different criteria for every single air drop. And, you know, people need an easy button for this because I think we're going to be getting a whole lot more over the coming year. David, this was also interesting, Manta Network. What is Manta Network?

They are, are they the new blast? I heard some mention of that this week. And there's some similarities, but also some differences. Yeah, the bankless citizens discord is all pretty buzz and. about Manta Network. A lot of the hype is going around this last week or so. There's just like marketing graphic that is very, very similar to Blass.

And it's, it's time to ditch other layer twos. And then it has their layer two compared to other layer twos. And they have blast in there as in like incentives, substantial, which is what Blast advertise as, why you should use, why should you ditch other layer twos for blast?

Oh, because of substantial incentives. And then now they have Manta, which is like, oh, actually, we have two times more substantial incentives. Which is both like, these are all fake numbers. Everyone's just saying like, oh, our incentives are even more substantial than the last ones. But this is tongue and cheek, right? This is satire. Like, they're making a mockery.

Like, under, it's all under the, it's all under the column New Paradigm, right? Already alive. This is actually so farcical that this must be facetious. So EVM compatible, already a live layer two, not a multi-sig, which is what Blass is. Cheaper gas, native yield. So they're doing the native yield strategy, access to your tokens on this new paradigm Manta network immediate. On blast, they have like in 10,000 days or something IDK. Yeah, so, okay, so this is basically a layer two.

And they're claiming it's actually layer two. It's not kind of like a multi-sig side chain type thing. And a full yield on anything you deposit. year, right? Like, E, E, E, SEC, all of these things. I don't want to be seen as promoting this network, but this is just what people are talking about. This is how they're doing it. Okay, so people can check that out what they want. Very cool. All right, David, well, this has been the first roll-up of the year. Should we end with the meme of the week? Mem of the week. Let's do it. What do we got here?

This is coming out of the bankless Twitter, and it's Elizabeth Warren whispering into Gary Gensler's ear. The coin telegraph intern was unavailable, so we settled for Matrixport. Okay, coin Telegraph intern. That seems like so long ago. What happened with that? Remind me. Yeah, so this was a false start of the approvals of the Spot Bitcoin ETF. So the Coin Telegraph, the Coin Telegraph announced the accepting of the Spot Bitcoin ETF way more prematurely than everyone was ready for. But then everyone realized that like no one was, people weren't exposed to the markets enough because the market just was pumped so hard. So it's like this false start that actually did trigger the bull market. We're going to be hearing about this meme, by the way, for the rest of the bull market.

The coin telegraph intern started the bull market. And so like now with it was also fake. So like the coin tegalov was like just kidding. That was fake. That was fake. And then and so like now it's just it's all about like Bitcoin fake Bitcoin ETF news. There you had it. This entire bull market was based on a lie from this paragraph intern.

There we go. Thanks so much for joining us, Bankless Nation. Disclosures, I don't think we have anything major to disclose. Of course, David and I own crypto assets. All of our disclosures are always at bankless.com slash disclosures. You got to end with this. Crypto is risky. But so is Fiat.

Some are those Argentinian pesos, right, David? You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.