Bankless - ROLLUP: Buy Signal? | Fusaka Launch | Polymarket Mainstream | Trump’s Fed Chair | SEC Crypto Shift

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

Bitcoin hit a rare signal this week, dropping to its cheapest level relative to gold in nearly 15 years. Is that a buy signal or something deeper in the macro picture? Ryan and David break down what t...he BTC–gold anomaly really means, how liquidity, rates, and Trump’s surprise Fed Chair pick factor in, and whether the market is entering a shallow cycle instead of a true winter. We also cover Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade, Vitalik’s push to bring builders back to L1, Polymarket’s mainstream breakout and CNN–Kalshi deal, and Aztec’s 16K ETH privacy auction. Plus, the SEC’s coming innovation exemption and the growing alliance between Larry Fink and Brian Armstrong. ------ 📣REYA | ETHEREUM FOR TRADERS https://bankless.cc/reya    ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, EARN  https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | GLOBAL HACKATHON 2025 https://bankless.cc/mantle-hackathon 💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 4:09 Spotify Wrapped  https://x.com/AviiWeb3/status/1996326825736487062 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1996331131164373441 7:17 Markets https://x.com/stacy_muur/status/1995761132527911338 https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/11/29/why-gold-is-winning-over-bitcoin-in-2025-liquidity-trade-and-trust https://x.com/simonkim_nft/status/1993744596908802121 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1996543833753174365 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-new-federal-reserve-chair-be-announced-early-next-year-2025-12-02/ https://polymarket.com/event/who-will-trump-nominate-as-fed-chair https://thedefireport.io/research/macro-risks-are-mispriced#rate-cuts https://www.strategy.com/press/strategy-announces-establishment-of-1-44-billion-usd-reserve-and-updates-fy-2025-guidance_12-1-2025 https://www.tradingview.com/chart/52u4tG3f/ https://x.com/BlackRock/status/1995537254022869438 https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1996264980241617007 https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1996275431625159096 https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/12/02/bank-of-america-greenlights-wealth-advisors-to-recommend-up-to-4-bitcoin-allocation https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1996270024663957881 30:20 Polymarket Live in the U.S. on 60 mins & Kalshi CNN https://x.com/Polymarket/status/1996231420117688701 https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/charts/6004 https://polymarket.com/event/will-polymarket-us-go-live-in-2025 https://app.artemisanalytics.com/asset/polymarket https://www.forbes.com/profile/shayne-coplan https://youtu.be/ZA5bY4K9XPs https://x.com/60Minutes/status/1995293602612691238 https://x.com/WhaleInsider/status/1995886355713589307 https://x.com/WALLACHLEGAL/status/1994039650877628546 https://x.com/Kalshi/status/1996233186251075862 40:27 Ethereum Fusaka is live! https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1996336227474423991 https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1996342458234605895 https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1996442356464361817 https://etherscan.io/gastracker https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1995209899182375024 https://ultrasound.money https://x.com/haydenzadams/status/1995349830265159782 https://x.com/nero_eth/status/1995480367050920265 https://x.com/nero_eth/status/1995487640309944639 50:05 Tether Fud https://x.com/CryptoHayes/status/1994915256150495652 https://x.com/JosephA140/status/1994943733054542124 https://x.com/MonetSupply/status/1995187007803285936 53:21 The AZTEC token sale just crossed 15.9k ETH committed https://x.com/aztecnetwork/status/1996054062450786392 https://x.com/haydenzadams/status/1996088299354497325 https://x.com/BillHughesDC/status/1995851990082224151 55:28 SEC announced Innovation Exemption https://x.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1995839722854514838 https://x.com/DeItaone/status/1995849795219378590 56:22 Uniswap & Revolut https://x.com/Uniswap/status/1995873897334669428 56:45 Bullish UK Crypto? https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/29/pdfs/ukpga_20250029_en.pdf https://www.theblock.co/post/381181/uk-new-law-crypto-property 55:25 Meme of the Week https://x.com/jonwu_/status/1995483574238347289 58:58 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:03 Bankless Nation, it is the first week of December. It's time for the bankless weekly roll-up. David, you're back in the saddle, man. It's so good to have you. I've had to do three of these with, I'm not going to, with fantastic substitute guests, okay? Not the same as David Hoffman, but they are fantastic. There are fantastic talented podcasters out there that aren't us in crypto. That's right.
Starting point is 00:00:23 And we found all of them, actually. Yeah, but I miss you, man. You were climbing mountains. I saw the photos looked absolutely incredible. I don't know how you're doing that, but you were telling me that it might be over for actually. I think I don't need to climb any harder mountains than what I have climbed. That one was particularly hard and I was exhausted like four or five hours into it and I knew that I had more than 12 hours left to go. Yeah. And at that point I was like, you know what? I think I'm going to find
Starting point is 00:00:52 something easy to do for 26. So that's going to be my New Year's resolution is do easier things. Yeah. All right. That sounds good. And you know, I think you reached your max level, right? You don't need to level up anymore. You've done all the mountains. Now go focus on something super easy. So I can't wait to hear what that is. If anyone has got a good easy hobby idea for me, let me know. I'm open to suggestion. I think you should knit. Especially doing this bear cycle. What else are you going to do, man? Make a little sweater for your grandma or something. Is it a bear cycle? Is that determined? I kind of feel like consensus is moving in that direction. I have not quite given up hope, but I'm It's a green week this week. It's pretty green. I want to get your takes on this actually. So you're
Starting point is 00:01:32 coming at it with fresh eyes. Maybe you can tell me something I don't know or I haven't seen. But we got to talk about Bitcoin, of course. It is cheaper than ever in gold terms. You know that? Because gold is up. Is that a buy signal? It has been in the past. Ethereum got its second big upgrade of the year. Fusaka is live. How to
Starting point is 00:01:48 go? And what does it actually bring to Ethereum? And is Vitalik happy with the progress? I hope he is. Yeah, Metallic collapse. Why is he inviting everyone back to the Ethereum Layer 1? Is the Ethereum Layer 1 ready? for more stuff. We're going to talk about that.
Starting point is 00:02:04 Also, Polymarket is going mainstream. They were on 60 minutes, which I feel like is a mainstream moment. Also, Shane, the founder of Polymarket, becomes one of the youngest billionaires ever. They're open to U.S. users now. Also, Kalshi, so the competitors to Polymarket, they became an exclusive partner of CNN. So this is like prediction market season. We'll talk about that because there's also some speed bumps ahead for prediction markets. Aztec, token sale, it's live.
Starting point is 00:02:30 There's privacy meta going on. We're going to talk about the neat little auction as well associated with that. And the SEC is about to roll out an innovation exemption for crypto projects. Why Ryan think that's a very big deal. And Donald Trump has pre-announced, we think, speculation around the next Fed chair. So which Donald Trump acquiescer is being nominated to the Fed chair. And then lastly, Larry Fink and Brian Armstrong, best bros. You know the two male men holding hands emoji?
Starting point is 00:02:59 That was Larry Fink and Brian Armstrong this last week. Oh, yeah. A lot of love to love that. Before we get to all of that and more, we have to talk about some of our friends and sponsors over at Raya. They've got a solution to the crypto perps trading problem. What is that problem? You either get the speed of a centralized exchange
Starting point is 00:03:15 or the security and censorship resistance and property rights of a decentralized exchange. Hard to get both. But Raya is closing that gap. They've built a base roll-up with ZK. ZK proves that delivers sub one millisecond trading. Did not know that that was possible? Zero trading fees.
Starting point is 00:03:31 and inherits all of Ethereum security. Not only that, but the token model, the fees collected by the Raya PURP Dex, 20% of those fees will go to buy and burn. Ether. Yeah. Did you know that? This is a really cool design, actually.
Starting point is 00:03:46 I was talking to Simon about it, and the whole thing is a first of its kind, so I'm super excited to see how that goes with the PURPS deck. Yeah. Trade like how Ethereum wants you to. Bankless.com slash Rea. That's R-E-Y-E-E-E-E-E-E-E. Ryan, you know why December,
Starting point is 00:04:03 one of the many reasons why December is the best month? Christmas. Christmas is one of them. Spotify Rapped is also definitely one of them. It's your birthday. It's your birthday this month, right? That's why December is one of your favorite months, I'm sure. Yeah, that's right.
Starting point is 00:04:17 That's why it's one of my favorite months, see? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's Spotify Raps season. I always thoroughly enjoyed the Spotify Rapt. We currently have the record holder of the bankless listener with the most number of minutes coming in at Avi, A-V-I-I-I, 10,089 minutes of bankless
Starting point is 00:04:33 listened to Dubai Avi in 2025. If you think you can be Avi, I want to see your Spotify Rapp. If Bankless is in your Spotify wrapped, we want to see it. It's the one time of the year that we actually get to really connect with the people that truly are committed
Starting point is 00:04:50 to listening to the massive amounts of podcast episodes that we release. So we want to see it. So tweet it out, tweet at us. I'll put a threshold for me personally, Ryan. if I see somebody tweet a bankless podcast listenership of 3,000
Starting point is 00:05:06 3,000 minutes? I think that's where I'll give them a follow Because I just... Yeah, because that means that they know what we're about They know what I care about And they're tapped into the signal. That's 50 hours though, David. All right?
Starting point is 00:05:19 So 10,000 minutes is 160 hours. That's about 50 episodes. Yeah. A little under. I guess that's worthy. 50 episodes. Now that's a lot of... episodes. I will follow anyone who listens to one out of three episodes. Okay, I actually, I would really
Starting point is 00:05:34 love to see your Spotify wrapped and particularly, I know you got, you know, like, excellent music choices, but I want to see your podcast choices, because as the podcast officianto here, like, that's the most interesting part to me. This is my list this year. Do you see this? Dwar Cash number one. I don't. I don't listen to a podcast on Spotify as a problem. You don't? Why not? No, I listen. I'm a boomer. I do Apple Podcasts. Oh my God. Everything I do is on Spotify. So I don't, Maybe you could project what yours would look like, but Duar Cash got the number one slot for me. First time ever.
Starting point is 00:06:04 Yeah, that, nice. Bankless premium, because I got to catch up on episodes. I'm not on. And sometimes I listen to good episodes again. The rest is history. Club, I love these guys. Two British guys, all they do is talk about history. Lex Friedman, of course.
Starting point is 00:06:18 And I'm still on Dimitri Coffinus with Hidden Forces. That was my number five. I've got a long tale of like Sam Harris and other things. But yeah, that's my list year. What do you think? It's pretty good, pretty good. I think the ones that would show up on mine are the daily. Odd Lots.
Starting point is 00:06:33 Odd Lots is good. Oddloss is very good. And then Sam Harris probably doesn't make it on the list simply because he doesn't put out too many episodes, but I listen to every single Sam Harris episode. That's got to count for something. And also On the Brink with Castle Island. That would probably be up there for me as well. Would that be your number one crypto podcast, you would say, apart from Bankless on the Brink?
Starting point is 00:06:52 I never miss a On the Brink Friday Weekly Roundup, Which maybe that name sounds eerily close to the Friday weekly roll-up. Who copied who? Who came first? Well, see, we call it a roll-up because that's Ethereum-centric. And Nick Carter would never dare to go there. He's got to be a round-up. They'd do a round-up, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:16 Well, let's honor Nick Carter by talking about Bitcoin prices. How are we doing on the week? Up or down? We are up 2% on the week. $92,350 is where we currently. are 90K in the 90K range. Not at the highs, but God, feeling way better than the 84,000 that we were at earlier this week. So we really pumped up in the last few days. November was terrible, David. You missed a lot of November and it was absolutely terrible. So seeing any kind of green on the week
Starting point is 00:07:45 actually feels pretty good to me. So I'll take that 2%. I'm really bummed that my climbing correlates with green market's track record is broken. Pretty violent too. Yeah, it's completely broken. I don't know what happened up in the mountains, but it was not good for crypto prices. Let me tell you, maybe it was good for gold prices. Here is something interesting. Bitcoin is now cheaper relative to gold than at almost any point in the last 15 years. If that sounds confusing to you, it's because this is on a ratio type score. Bitcoin gold ratio just dropped below. The US dollar not relevant here. That's right. Below the statistical floor of a 15-year power law model, something that's only happened once before late 2017.
Starting point is 00:08:24 So you take the Bitcoin gold ratio and you power a lot because I guess we can do that because Bitcoin has appreciated so much faster than gold recently. You get kind of this correlation. You back test it. You get this correlation. The only time it's below the gray area here, the very bottom was a brief period of time in 2017 and then it's kind of caught up. So relative to gold, Bitcoin from a power law perspective might be
Starting point is 00:08:51 looking cheap. And there could be some catch-up here. People are saying the reasons, this is an analyst take actually, Mark Conner at Credit Suisse, formerly Credit Suisse, I should say, say the reason gold is doing well and Bitcoin is not is just because of institutional preference. I would summarize this and I would say it's too early. Like the central banks and the major asset allocators and the big sovereign wealth funds, they still prefer gold for that store of value, you know, like fiat hedge versus Bitcoin. That's certainly true of China's central bank and everything that PBOC is doing lately.
Starting point is 00:09:30 So that's just where we're on the cycle. I mean, Bitcoin is still a newcomer, what, 15, 16 years old? And gold is catching the bid right now for that debasement trade. Yeah, and it's no coincidence that I think Bitcoin or gold has appreciated relative to Bitcoin over the last two and a half years during the time of higher interest rates. like lower interest rates would definitely benefit Bitcoin. And also I'll also say that's a symptom of Bitcoin's maturity, which is like eventually Bitcoin is going to stop just absolutely crushing gold
Starting point is 00:10:03 year after year after year after year. And so gold's got to get one win every now and then. Yeah, I guess you're saying like this may not hold, right? This kind of curve up, this power lock curve up may not hold completely. But it does feel like Bitcoin has some catch up to do for gold. They will catch up at some point. Tell me about ETH price. Ether 3,200, up 6% on the week.
Starting point is 00:10:27 6%. Okay. That's not too bad. I think now during these dark times, people ask themselves questions like, hey, what should Bitcoin be worth? And hey, what should Eith be worth? There's this website that came out
Starting point is 00:10:40 called EithVal.com, which I actually really appreciate it, because it has all of the different ways that people have used metrics and numbers and fundamentals, let's call it, to value eth, it's all on one single dashboard. So if you are tradfai brained and you like discounted cash flow for measuring eth,
Starting point is 00:10:59 you can see that, price of sales ratio, has all that stuff. Then it also has the crypto-native metrics, like if you take a TVL multiple, all of the value, all the assets on chain, and you do that as a multiple, you get a different eth price. Anyway, it's a composite of all of these different things,
Starting point is 00:11:16 and if you add them all together, the fair value of ETH is actually 5K, not 3,000, David. So it's undervalued at this point. And you can sort and change these numbers at a whim. Maybe you don't believe in price to sales ratio like me or revenue yields. And then the price goes up to 6,200. I think you do believe in them,
Starting point is 00:11:39 but you just don't believe in them as like a main character or they're much more marginal. I think they're much more marginal. And actually, I would say I don't really believe in them. No, I'm like more of an atheist when it comes to a price to sales ratio for valuing store value assets like gold or Bitcoin. Do you believe in the triple point asset? I believe in the triple point asset, yes. Which has capital asset a revenue dividend paying angle as a component of it.
Starting point is 00:12:06 That's a little bit of my staking, though. That's my staking rewards here. That's that 2% annual. It doesn't have to be the fee revenue, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more characterized by, what are these, staking scarcity? That's a metric that's used here. Actually, did you catch that debate with Santee and Haseeb?
Starting point is 00:12:26 I know it's out there. I'm going to go listen to it after this. Okay. Well, Santi's perspective is that Ethereum is super overvalued because he's like, hey, it's 300 price to sales ratio. And Amazon at its peak was 28 price to sales ratio. And so, like, that's crazy. It can't be.
Starting point is 00:12:43 And I'm like, don't use price to sales ratio. Price to sales ratio. It's not funny tweet. It was like, yo, this guy had like a week to prepare and he just goes with a price to sale. I mean,
Starting point is 00:12:54 here's a fundamental reason, besides the store of value thing, I don't like price to sales for assets like ether. I don't like it for Bitcoin. By the way, if you did Bitcoin price to sales, it's about 17K.
Starting point is 00:13:06 Very bearish. Very bearish. And that's why you don't do it. It's silly. It doesn't explain how the market is actually valuing it. But the reason I think is because of something we saw even this week
Starting point is 00:13:14 with the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade, we got a lot more blocks, a lot more block space and fee revenue compressed. So we got scale and the sales goes down with scale, right? So are you telling me,
Starting point is 00:13:27 if you believe in price to sales ratio, is the one true way to value E? If you're telling me that as Ethereum scales, you get more bearish because sales goes down? What we should do is we should make blocks so small that you can only put three transactions per block. And price of sales would go through the roof.
Starting point is 00:13:43 A million dollars per block. We could get that. We could get that for like three years until everyone moved off of Ethereum, right? Right. Yeah. Anyway, that's why it's an indicator. It's helpful, but like it's not, it can't be the only metric. It's certainly not the primary metric that I use.
Starting point is 00:13:58 David, tell us about the total crypto market cap. Where are we? Three and one quarter trillion dollars. I was looking at it like three or four days ago, and it was threatening to go below three, which I really don't like. If I saw it two handle in front of the trillion dollar total cryptocurrency, to market cap number. That'd be a sad day.
Starting point is 00:14:16 But that is not this day. We had 3.25 trillion, which still wanted to be higher. What's the top? 4.25 or something, we're a trillion dollars off. You're not, you don't think we're in a bear market. I can tell by the way you're saying, like I think we are heading towards twos. The weight of probability to me is we're heading towards the twos
Starting point is 00:14:33 before we hit the fours and the fives. I don't want to believe this. I think we could touch, I think we could be in twos for a brief moment of time, but like, yeah, no, I don't, I'm not saying, I don't think we're in a fair market. You know, I think we could grind lower, but like nothing, I don't think anything is going to blow up. There's no career's capital. There's no FtX. Yeah, we haven't seen that. So I think we could grind potentially down for like a quarter and people just get really like bored. But I don't think
Starting point is 00:15:07 there's going to be blood. And I don't think there's going to be blood. So a muted dip, not kind of a crypto winter that we've seen in cycles past is what you think? Correct. I do not think. I think that if you're going into winter, it's going to be a very mellow one. How about how much of your faith in that is based on the Fed? So Trump hinted this week that there would be a new Fed chair. I don't know so much as he hinted as he basically flat out kind of said it, you know,
Starting point is 00:15:33 Trump fashion. The guy's name is Kevin Hassett. He is the leading candidate to replace Jerome Powell when Powell's term ends in May. and he had it. He said, thank you, Kevin. Let's see. This is Polly Market. Odds of Kevin has it.
Starting point is 00:15:49 Actually, he dipped a little bit. Kevin. About 70% right now, but they were above 85% earlier this week. But the clear leading candidate to replace Fed Chair Powell. What do we know about this guy?
Starting point is 00:16:02 Not too much. He's pro-growth, strongly dove-ish. What we do know about Donald Trump is that he gets who he wants. He very clearly wants stuff, whether he's finding a judge
Starting point is 00:16:16 to do his litigation or appointing a Fed share. He wants certain outcomes. He wants certain outcomes. Wow, yes. He's the outcomes-driven guy, yes. He's an outcomes-driven guy. And so he will find some candidate who is like, I'll give you what you want.
Starting point is 00:16:31 And then Donald Trump appoints that person to do his job. And that's what I see here. And so what does Donald Trump want? He wants rate cuts. So who is Kevin Hassett? Kevin Hassett has advocated. He's the right-cut guy. He's a raiding McGrath, man. Yeah, he is.
Starting point is 00:16:45 He chaired the Council of Economic Advisors in Trump's first term. He now directs the National Economic Council in the White House. Widely regarded as crypto-friendly. Oh, wow. Disclose a seven-figure sake in Coinbase. What? Yeah, wow. Me and Ryan are reading our notes for the first time.
Starting point is 00:17:03 And it has been one of the key figures shaping Trump's digital asset strategy. So, pro-crypto guy who wants to cut raids. He's one of us. So my question is, did that factor into your decision to be, to be bullish, basically? No. No. It's a rate cut guy's coming. I wasn't really thinking about that. Some people think this means easy money and what does easy money mean?
Starting point is 00:17:24 It means risk on assets, means prices go up. That might not be the case this time, okay? This is Michael Nato. You wrote a blog post earlier this week and he said, Not so fast, what you have to look at is this right here. Did you catch that Michael Howell episode where you talked about the global liquidity index, right? Yes. This is my Bible now.
Starting point is 00:17:40 first half, yeah. I don't care what the Fed's doing. Okay, I'm looking at the GLI. This is the GLI. And you see that dip there? That's the GLI. Michael Nato gives kind of the reason for this. And it's basically that fiscal spending is down. So the deficit is actually down on the year. So that surprised you at all? Like, we have more tariff income and government spending is down a little bit. So we're kind of down versus before. This has an effect. Oh, is that what Donald Trump promised? I guess he kind of did. I mean, it's not down that much, so don't get so excited. Anyway, so less spending, less liquidity. You got to look at the GLI. It doesn't, it's just not as simple to say Dovish Fed means money printing and this is, you know, it does lead to more bank lending, but that
Starting point is 00:18:28 might not be enough to impact global liquidity. Yeah. Yeah, the negative catalyst that no one really ever expected is that the government actually decided to spend less money and more and safe. They're probably only doing that for a little laugh. You can't do that for very long. Do you see strategy? So strategy has been struggling with MNAV recently. And if you recall, strategy has some debt. So Michael Saylor has some debt.
Starting point is 00:18:53 He, of course, buys Bitcoin at the market sales, right? But a lot of, like a portion of his Bitcoin is actually funded by, like, pretty reasonable debt, not crazy amounts of risk in the debt. But with debt, that means he has to, to pay interest. Okay? So he has to pay interest on that debt, denominated in dollars. And if price of Bitcoin goes down, he still has the interest payment, where does he get the money? Where does he get the money to pay? So maybe he has to sell his Bitcoin? Ah, not so fast. This is Michael Saylor's strategy to not sell the Bitcoin is he sold more of the stock,
Starting point is 00:19:31 sold more of strategy in order to squirrel away, not this time Bitcoin, but dollars. So he could pay his interest payments for the next 12 months or so. That's the headline here. 18 to 21 months. Oh, even longer. Dividends and interest raised from $1.4 billion of Class A common shares that micro strategy stock just sold into the market,
Starting point is 00:19:54 which finally I think we're actually seeing some rationality show up in the micro strategy chart. If you want to pull up in the chart, it looks not great. Yeah. But also I think people are just taking out the massive premium because people are realizing that MSTR is being cucked by Bitcoin. So Michael Tragedy, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael Salyer just infinitely prints the equity so he can fund the debt, fund the interest payments, fund the dividends requires,
Starting point is 00:20:25 and he can buy more Bitcoin. And now, finally, two years later, MSTR holders are kind of realizing it. It's like, oh, wait, we're equity. We're back to one MNF. We're the liquidity here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but yeah, it'll go back up. up in time, but not during a bear market, right?
Starting point is 00:20:40 By the way, this is every DAT strategy. It's not just Michael Saler's strategy. If Michael Strayler has to be doing some of this stuff, which is like bolstering up his defenses, you know that every other debt is under a lot more pressure. I think it's like if micro strategy is the eases, then everyone else catches a cold. I think that is true.
Starting point is 00:20:57 But also I will say a strategy has more debt than any of these other entities. So they've got interest payments to make, but they also have the payment. They also have more Bitcoin than everyone. So let's talk a little bit about Larry Fink. I feel like he's proving that he is no tourist to crypto, David. So I read this article in The Economist that he wrote, Larry Fink. So you have BlackRock.
Starting point is 00:21:19 Basically, tokenization could transform finance. This isn't the economist. I cannot imagine a more mainstream financial publication than the economist and a more mainstream bellwether financial guy than Larry Fink writing an article. I want to read you a section of this. He said, if history is any. guide, tokenization today is roughly where the internet was in 1996 when Amazon had just sold 16 million worth of books and three of the rest of today is mag seven tech giants hadn't
Starting point is 00:21:49 even been founded. tokenization could advance at the pace of the internet faster than most expect with enormous growth over the coming decades. He is all in on tokenization. He wrote this whole love story article about tokenization and this is even when prices are down. I think he's pretty serious about it. When I read this article, I felt like I was a boomer being read to by Larry Fink.
Starting point is 00:22:15 Larry Fink is like looking at me in my eyes and he puts his hand on my shoulder. Oh my God. You saw that? tokenization. My fellow boomer, tokenization is a real thing and we are now bullish. We are now bullish on blockchain technology. It's okay to be bullish
Starting point is 00:22:31 on blockchain technology now. I've got this. So something Something else he said is he envisioned a future where investors use a single digital wallet to buy, sell, and hold all types of all assets from equities and debt to real estate facilitated by programmable digital ledgers. A single wallet. That's pretty cool. Wow. When Larry Fink says this, this is just the shot across the bow of all boomers. Everything is like boomers. It's okay. We are now bullish blockchain. So the Larry Think romance with Brian Armstrong, I think continues or maybe heats up. This is a picture of the two of them together.
Starting point is 00:23:11 So they were at a meeting as well. Somebody put the two men holding hands emoji on the screen. Brian Armstrong and Larry Think here. Actually, Andrews, Ross Sorkin, interviewed both of them and asked Larry Think about changing his mind and crypto. Let's play the clip. Called Crypto an index for. from money laundering, Black Rock. And thieves.
Starting point is 00:23:36 And thieves. Yes. Money laundering and thieves. You now have the biggest Bitcoin ETF. So what happened here? I have very strong views. But that doesn't mean I'm not wrong. But by having strong views, you have to test yourself and ask yourself.
Starting point is 00:23:56 And in my role, I see thousands of clients a year. I have, you know, governmental leaders. And we have these conversations that my thought process always evolves. And this is a very glaring public example of a big shift in my opinion. Look, that's great. And what a signal. If Larry Think can admit he's wrong, you can also admit you're wrong about Bitcoin as well. For any tradfai listeners that are still holding out here, okay?
Starting point is 00:24:26 It's okay now to admit you're wrong. It's okay. Now, okay, so the one take, the positive take, the optimistic take is like, oh, Larry Fink just changed his mind. It took him a while, you know, he's older, so it takes them a little bit longer. Or he just had a product to sell
Starting point is 00:24:42 and it was all about money and it's just like finally found a way to charge fees on it and that's what changed his mind. You know what really does a good job changing people's mind? What's that? Yeah, well, both can be true, David. I think both things can be true a little bit. Not just Larry Fink though,
Starting point is 00:24:58 Other institutions who? Yeah, as well. Who else? Both Bank of America and Charles Schwab are just leaning into Bitcoin, more and more and more Bank of America now lets its wealth advisors recommend up to 4%. Recommend 4% of a Bitcoin allocation. And then Charles Schwab says it will offer Bitcoin and Ethereum trading in early 2026. I wonder if they're going to use the whole Coinbase white listing program.
Starting point is 00:25:23 You know how this works? This is what Coinbase is trying to do is like instead of, brokerages like Charles Schwab doing like live trading of Bitcoin Ethereum on their exchange or on or through them, they just pipe into Coinbase. Oh, you mean white labeling? White labeling. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:25:39 Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's what's going on. That could be. Yeah. So this is part of, I remember when you talked to Matt from Bitwise. Yeah. He was like, oh, the Bitcoin ETF is just going to age like fine line because now that we have it launched, that's great, but it's going to just take a while for people to get comfortable with it. And it's just
Starting point is 00:25:57 a slow opening of the pipes of between boomer capital. I know I'm not supposed to use the word bear market. Just like disciplined older capital with like a dollar cost average in that's not as volatile. That's our argument, right? Yeah. And to me this is more evidence as to why stuff like the four year cycle is dead. And also why I kind of see we're going to have a muted bear market is because globally everywhere across trot-fi, the pipes are just widening.
Starting point is 00:26:24 And capital is slowly trickling in. And so while we had just a complete evaporation of liquidity in 2022 and 2023, that's not what we have today. We have an increasingly slow grind upwards of legitimacy and acceptance and capital allocation from larger and larger pools of money. I see that take. The only thing I'll say to that is every four-year cycle, we always say the four-year cycle is dead. Every time this has happened, we've said this. Do we? Last time it was super cycle.
Starting point is 00:26:55 the time before that, everyone was like, oh my God, crypto's changing the world, ICOs, whatever, it's going to change everything. Every time we have some variation of this, I kind of think that my take is the cycle holds, but it's going to be shallow. It's going to be a shallow bare market. And I guess maybe you could start to say
Starting point is 00:27:13 that's sort of super cyclic-esque and the cycles have changed. But to me, it's just like a sell-off. It's just a more shallow sell-off and then things resume. But we'll have to see how this plays out. David, a few things coming up. Polymarket has. launched their mobile app. They're now accepting U.S. customers.
Starting point is 00:27:28 Call she in trouble in the courts? I want to find out why you're a little bullish on this. Also, Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade. It's now live. What's next? And why does Vitalic want all the apps to come back to Layer 1? I shouldn't say all of them, but at least some of them. Did he say that? Something like this. I'm paraphrasing. We'll get into all this and more. But before we do, I want to thank Uniswap, the best place to do Defi. Go check them out. Ethereum's Layer 2 universe is exploding with choices. But if you're looking for the best place to park and move your tokens, make your next stop Unichain.
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Starting point is 00:30:54 because that's how we do it. Most people are on their phones. So Polly Market is now opening up to the United States with their mobile wall. It already ranks as number four in the U.S. App Store's sports category. And the Polly Market will Polly Market U.S. go live in 2025
Starting point is 00:31:10 is currently at a 99% chance. It hasn't resolved, but I think that just means that this is basically done. In the process of about to resolve. How did this happen? How did Pollymark? market speed run the U.S. entry after the regime change. It actually takes quite a while to get clearances and like certifications and
Starting point is 00:31:28 approval to trade in the United States. Well, they just bought a couple exchanges. They bought QCX LLC and QC clearing for $112 million. So they just bought the licenses that they needed in order to make this work. And that acquisition expedited CFTC authorization in just four months. So that's how they are live so fast. Last month, Polymarket had a record $4.3 billion in spot trading volume.
Starting point is 00:31:56 Colchie, just for comparison, recorded $5.8 billion over the same period and briefly topped the app stores' free sports category. So Polymarket and Colchie have just been neck, neck in volumes, largely driven by sports, as I understand it. I need to probably check on this take, but I think Colchie is more sports than Polymarket. Solly market has a lot more elections.
Starting point is 00:32:19 It's more true the last time we checked, I think, yes. Yeah. And I think the reason why is because Colchie is just the back end to Robin Hood. And then Robin Hood has just like dominant U.S. retail, which are very aligned with sports stuff. But nonetheless, polymarket sports is also very large. Notable that Coinbase has not made a move in prediction markets yet. But there's a December 17th announcement. What do you mean by that, Ryan?
Starting point is 00:32:43 I know nothing. I'm just connecting some dots here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, it's pretty cool here. Like, the nice thing about Colchie and Plymarket is we just really have, they're increasingly apples and apples. They used to be decently apples to oranges, both prediction markets,
Starting point is 00:32:58 but Kalshi was inside the United States. Polymarket was like this tether outside of the United States, but there's increasingly convergence. Convergence over the same thing. One of those two things is youngest billionaires ever. So Shane, 27 years old, is now considered the world's youngest self-made billionaire. Granted, all of that wealth is tied up in the company equity that's valued after the ICE investment in $9 billion. But he's not the only one.
Starting point is 00:33:28 Luana Lopez-Lara, 29-year-old is the co-founder of Kalshi, world's youngest self-made female billionaire. Wow. After Kalshi's recent funding round that purchases Kalsi's valuation up to $11 billion. I swear, whenever you see one of them in the news, the other one's got a one-up. The other, they're always like neck and neck, no matter what. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. So, yeah. So Kalshi has the youngest female billionaire. Shane is the youngest got 27. So nonetheless, the tale of Tuesdays continues. Yeah, Shane did secure an interview on 60 Minutes, which Kalsh has not yet. So that aired last Sunday. I was actually out with my family.
Starting point is 00:34:05 And I was just like the TV for the 60 minute interview. I was out with my family. And then I just like, I look at the TV. There was a TV playing. And it's like, up, pop Shane Copeland. I'm like, oh my God. I know that guy. Like what? It's crazy. Anyway, so it was a good interview, I think. People are starting to understand. This is the mainstream moment for prediction markets. I feel like Kulshi also executed a deal with CNN. So Kulshi and CNN, they're kind of integrating.
Starting point is 00:34:31 I don't know what these deal partnership things are. They're partner. Both Pollymarket and Kalshi are partners with everybody under the sun right now. I don't even know what that means. Yeah. But I really enjoyed seeing Shane. I'll paraphrase a little bit from the interview. He was explaining.
Starting point is 00:34:45 he was explaining how prediction markets work to the interviewer. He said, you make money if you're right, you lose money if you're wrong. And as a result, it creates this information that's really useful for people. The percentages next to the questions are the odds determined by other bets that have already been made as more people wager and news breaks? The odds change. I feel like it's pretty simple to understand. And it's highly visual as well.
Starting point is 00:35:04 Now, he was also asked about taking Trump Jr. on the board of Polly Market. Here's what he said. Three months ago, Copeland named Donald Trump, Jr., already an advisor to Kalshi to Polymarkets advisory board, and Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital Fund invested around $10 million in the company. I think there's going to be people watching who think that you put the President's son on your advisory board to get influence, to be able to protect yourself.
Starting point is 00:35:33 So it's definitely not to protect myself. I mean, look, like they invested, right? We're in this admin. This admin is very pro-innovation and pro-Crypto and pro-Polymarket, which is amazing. The administration. Yeah. And, you know, I need help navigating that, right? I'm a young entrepreneur.
Starting point is 00:35:48 If I have people who believe in what I do, who understand how politics works and can help me, help guide me and teach me, you know, there's nothing wrong about that. There you go, that's what you said. Not to protect himself. It's because Donald Trump Jr. is super, I mean, useful as an investor, all these things.
Starting point is 00:36:03 What do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I, I am not media trained, nor will I ever be. But if I was in that seat, I'd be like, what do you expect, dude? They invaded my home. With a battering ram. What do you mean?
Starting point is 00:36:16 Of course I need protection. They were coming after me, bro. What do you expect? For real. Yeah, that's something along the lines of what I would have said as well. There was actually that part where in the other part of the interview, they asked him about like getting, so you were raided by the FBI. So they came knocking at your door.
Starting point is 00:36:35 And he goes, yeah, with a battering ram. He said that, dude. The thing that I really liked about this interview the most, and maybe I'm biased. And like you, I know Shane just from being around crypto, I found him very relatable. Very personal. This is a very personable. Authentic. Just a guy on 60 Minutes, a kid who had a belief.
Starting point is 00:36:56 Did you see the email that he wrote to the SEC when he was like a junior or senior in high school that he tweeted out about? No, I missed this. Yeah, he tweeted out a picture of an email. He wrote the SEC. It starts off with, hi, I'm Shane Copeland. I'm a senior at some high school in America. Can't remember what it was. I am building an exchange that I think I will need to register.
Starting point is 00:37:20 Can we chat? And he's in high school, bro. He's in a high school right in the SEC. We're naive days, huh? No, they're going to use that against you, Shane. Okay? They're going to take that. Gary's going to take that email and they use it against you in court.
Starting point is 00:37:34 I don't think it's over yet in terms of regulatory pushback or government pushback or incumbent pushback. for prediction markets. In fact, we've seen some of this with some of the lawsuits coming down the pike for Kalshi. This is one. They were hit by a nationwide class action lawsuit.
Starting point is 00:37:51 This is Kalshi for operating an illegal betting platform. What's happening here? Yeah, so a federal class action lawsuit in New York that alleges that their event contracts for sports are actually illegal online sports bets. Two, customers are wagering against Kalshi rather than against other users,
Starting point is 00:38:08 contrary to how the platform is marketed, and that culture has an unfair market advantage. I might be just, what's the word, bias here, but whenever I see a class action lawsuit against someone in crypto, I just have flashbacks to the class action lawsuit against pool together and latent QSack, and it was completely frivolous and dumb.
Starting point is 00:38:30 And class action lawyers can be like ambulance chasers who just, you see like, oh, there are three million people I can win 50 cents for. because they were harmed by 50 cents worth of harm and out pocket $15 million of legal fees. So that's my kind of like initial reaction whenever I see class action lawsuit. Maybe there's something here.
Starting point is 00:38:50 The reason why I'm bullish about this, you said, you said, why is David bullish about it? Yeah, why are you bullish? Kulshi gets the opportunity to just like put this to rest. Yeah. And then hopefully set some like court precedent. So the core allegations is that they are duping their customers, that it's an illegal sports betting versus financial derivatives
Starting point is 00:39:08 and that Colchie has an unfair market advantage because they think that they're trading against their own customers. If Colchie is trading against their own customers, that's terrible. And I would hope that a lawsuit would discover that. If they're not, then we get to know that and always just put that to rest. You know, without seeing the core, of course, it feels like it could be frivolous. I'll tell you the bigger threat, though, that I see David from the regulatory front is actually states fighting against this.
Starting point is 00:39:35 So prediction markets right now, they're regulated under the CFTC, So it's all federal, right? So all states, you know, it's a CFTC thing. It's not a state thing. Some of the states are saying, hey, no, this is sports betting, legal sports betting. One of the states to put them on notice was Nevada. Of course, what does Nevada have? Vegas odds, Vegas sports betting.
Starting point is 00:39:54 A federal judge in Nevada said it fought an injunction against Kalshi for breach of gaming law. And there's other states that have done this too. Massachusetts and York and Maryland and Ohio. they have their AGs going after Kalshi. So it's not just these civil court cases, it's also the states that have something to lose. What do they lose? They lose some tax revenue from gaming licenses
Starting point is 00:40:20 and kind of gaming proceeds. And then also they lose some control. And I don't think they'll give this out without a fight. So prediction markets versus the regulators, round two, I think. Yes. This is a necessary, we just have to go through this as an industry.
Starting point is 00:40:37 We have to push through this part of just courts and regulation around prediction markets, and will be better for it. It's just going to be a natural process. And so you do have to tip your hat to call sheet to who seems to be going and fighting some of these big fights. Ethereum's second hard fork of the year, the Fusaka upgrade, just went live. Anthony and I discussed all of the features last week so we don't need to reiterate them. But it went live without a hitch. Without a hitch, David.
Starting point is 00:41:03 The second one of the year. That's not true. Well, there was a minor hitch. We lost 26% of the network, dude. That was a huge speed bump. I guess there was a hitch. Actually, do you want to start there? So what happened?
Starting point is 00:41:18 Prism, one of the consensus clients in an Ethereum had a bug, which lost 26% of the network. Thankfully, Ethereum has a multi-client architecture. So the rest of the clients held Ethereum up while the Prism team fixed the prism bug and got their portion of the network back online. This is just how awesome. So multi-kind designs is so beautiful and elegant. So that's already in the rear-view mirror.
Starting point is 00:41:44 It would have been way worse if there were two bugs, but there weren't. And so that was the one- It's actually, so it would have been worse, but not that bad. Okay, so I want to describe what this would have disrupted. It wouldn't have disrupted block production. It just would have disrupted finalization. Finality. So if lighthouse went down, just 48%, blocks would still come,
Starting point is 00:42:04 but finality would stop after about 15 minutes. and the chain would enter this like slow recovery type mode until it came back. Actually, Vitalik says like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with losing finalization once in a while, in my opinion, he says. Yeah. And yeah, I don't think that's cope. I think that's true in the design of Ethereum. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:25 The way that I would say this is like this is Ethereum, unlike every other blockchain, has redundancy. And so when Ethereum is not finalizing, it kind of just resolves back down to like what most other blockchains are, which is just only one layer of defense. Yeah. And so Ethereum's multi-client architecture with finalization across clients is an extra layer of defense that no other blockchain has. And so when it's not finalizing, it's kind of just like what other blockchains are,
Starting point is 00:42:52 which is totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. So without a hitch, right? There was no hitches. It just kept producing blocks. Because the multi-client architecture is designed for this. So if you weren't listening to last week's episode, I'm going to talk about the two main
Starting point is 00:43:04 things that came with Fusaka. Peerdas, peer das is the big thing here. That is sharding. Ethereum has always been talking about sharding since 2017. Like, Fatalic and others said, like, oh, we're going to scale the blockchain with sharding. Databases, that's how you scale a database.
Starting point is 00:43:19 You shard it into multiple redundant copies, and that's how you scale. Does that word still make you laugh, by the way? Are you over? No, only when you make me laugh, bro. Go ahead, go ahead. Continue. And so originally we were going to do execution sharding.
Starting point is 00:43:33 That plan got pivoted into data availability, sharding, data availability is blobs. Blobs are what layer two is used to post their transactions on the layer one. And now that we have Pyrdast, which is sharding, data availability, sharding, we have eight times more blobs when we sharted the blobs.
Starting point is 00:43:50 Man, I'm sharting blobs left and right. I am sharding myself just thinking about how great this is. Do you know, okay, so this is sharding, you're right. Vitalik says, Peer Das is in Fuzac as significant because it literally is sharding, he said. It was not full sharding,
Starting point is 00:44:05 then, though, okay? Because we're just sharding the data availability, data availability, he continues this. If we want to scale to benefit the theorem L1 as well, the full vision of sharding
Starting point is 00:44:16 from 2017, we need to get to ZK EVS. That's the next unlock. Unprocessed, yeah, listen to Michael Dong's talk from the bank with something about that.
Starting point is 00:44:26 Pretty cool to have 8x more blocks on layer two. The layer one did also get an upgrade. Default block capacity went from 45 million to 60 million, which is a 25% increase in layer 1 throughput, which is great. David, that's the reason why, I don't know if you've seen this, but look at the L1, like the gas prices.
Starting point is 00:44:46 Have you seen gas prices this low? Layer 1 has been cheap for, wow, I've never looked at a Ethereum transaction gas feed forever. Yeah. Under 1 cent. Yeah. Ethereum's been free for a long time. This is what I was saying earlier of the Vitalik tweet. You could just build on L1.
Starting point is 00:45:04 That's what he said. said. I don't think we're quite there yet. Fees are low, but this has been one of the rumblings that has happened since Fusaka. We have quite a lot at scale now. We have more slack in the system than what apps are currently using. Well, yeah, so what's just like, okay, one thing I would say is you can build on L1, you can just build on L1, asterix. Okay, asterix. Unless you're doing something like a high volume purpose exchange. And unless you're trying to do like lighter, okay, go build that in an L2.
Starting point is 00:45:36 But the difference now is there is a plan that is like a roadmap towards scaling the L1 pretty aggressively. Like I do think 2x, 3X next year is totally possible. And I do think within three years, we might have fully sharded ZK EVMs. So why not just build on the L1? Yeah. Yeah. Get ahead of it.
Starting point is 00:45:59 Yeah. Get ahead of it. And in addition to all of that, like I have definitely seen some consensus around the Ethereum Foundation that faster block times are a priority. Yeah, you like this. I really like this. I really like this. So this is a tweet inception. So I'm just going to run through other tweets.
Starting point is 00:46:15 Mark Twineway from Optimism says, as a reply to Italic, my hypothesis is that the long transaction confirmation time is the biggest bottleneck for increasing layer one usage. Hayden Adams from Uniswap says this is very clearly the case. Don't even need to frame it as a hypothetical. If we want to increase layer one usage, lower the block times. And I'm like, hell yeah. I love this.
Starting point is 00:46:36 But then Tony, Tony Worcester, who is it about the Ethereum at the Ethereum Foundation, says, and retweets Hayden Adams and says, six second sloths, which is 50% faster, twice as fast, because we currently have 12 seconds, are fully specced prototyped in Gethen Prism and ready to ship next year. Easily one of the most impactful upgrades we can deliver
Starting point is 00:46:57 in the hector Bogota Forks, which are the incoming hard forks that will happen next year. And then he replies to someone who says, will three or six second block speeds really change anything? And he goes, yes, three seconds is vastly better than six seconds, and we shouldn't stop there. We should keep pushing inclusion times down, not cap our ambition.
Starting point is 00:47:19 The if we never reach X, Y, try mindset is exactly what holds progress back and exactly the same reason why we never scaled later on. Let's fucking go. I was so pumped to come back to my mountains. I saw this. I think it's less, I think it is block times for you, but it's less that it's more like builder momentum. It's more like ambition.
Starting point is 00:47:34 It's more like the fact that Ethereum just shipped two hard forks this year. First time, I think they've done that. It almost feels like a promises made, promises kept type of thing for the EF and Ethereum. Like the momentum for building is back again for the Ethereum protocol. But with the focus on block times. Three second block times on Ethereum. That's years, yeah. It will be great.
Starting point is 00:47:57 People can wait three seconds and still use Ethereum habitually. David, we got some tether flood on the week. we got to discuss. So Arthur Hayes is asking questions about what happens if Tethers reserves of Bitcoin and gold dropped 30%. Could they be insolvent? Also, the Aztec token sale goes live. It's pretty unique, pretty interesting. And the UK does something bullish for crypto. We'll talk about all that and more. But before we do, want to thank Frax, our sponsor, the decentralized central bank with a stable coin. Go check them out. Introducing at Frax USD, the genius aligned digital dollar from Frax. It's a secure, stable, and fully backed by institutional grade real world assets,
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Starting point is 00:50:09 Link in the show notes for more information. It's time for Tether Fudd. Again, must be bare market. Is Tether in trouble? Is it solvent? Actually, someone with more credibility here is raising this question here recently on the week. This is Arthur Hay is saying a roughly 30% declining gold in Bitcoin position would wipe out Tether's equity and the USDT would in theory be insolvent.
Starting point is 00:50:30 Okay, he's taking a screenshot of this. Yeah, so explaining the screenshot, Tether has about $181 billion outstanding. That's the bottom line number. And it backs that by a lot of different things, including about $140 billion worth of cash and cash-like equivalents, right? Tibles, et cetera. But that delta, that $40 billion delta or so, that's all like gold in Bitcoin. And Arthur is just making the point that if that value goes down, say by 30%, then like we don't have enough. We don't have enough reserves to actually back the tether that's been issued.
Starting point is 00:51:06 That's the point that he's making. So I'm not going to call it fractional reserve, but it's not like genius bill, stable coins that are one to money. For every dollar that's minted, you know there's a treasury behind that. For tether, there's a portion of a treasury behind that. There's like, I don't know, 80% treasuries and cash equivalent. But 20%, it's other more exotic things that have volatility. Gold and Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:51:28 It's pretty much gold and Bitcoin. So he's calling that into question and he's saying like, what happens if we get a crash, then does Tether become unbacked? Well, it's not a binary. First off, it's, there's 140 cash like instruments and then there was like $20 billion dollars of golden Bitcoin. And like, so the worst thing is is like Tether would trade on like 95 cents to the dollar. But like he says the equity of Tether, it would get wiped out.
Starting point is 00:51:59 Like, no, it wouldn't. They could raise so much money so quickly. Did he say the equity would get wiped out? Is that what he said? Yeah, he did say that. Yeah. Like, no. I would wipe out their equity.
Starting point is 00:52:07 No, they've got... I'm not worried. Okay. I mean, there's some other analysts who kind of went through this, including Meneas Supply. And I don't know if he can give kind of the TLDR. So where does this leave tether? It has 50% reserves, which is quite high compared to commercial banks,
Starting point is 00:52:23 but of course, much less than the 100% required of a genius bill type, centralized issuer, stable. So they're playing it a little bit fast and loose from a, you know, reserve perspective. It's nowhere near what fractional reserve banks do today. Totally. So this, and they don't really have solvency risk because they have massive amounts of equity and also massive amounts of cash and cash like instruments and other assets off balance sheet. They could redeem like 80% of tether before they would have to sell their Bitcoin and gold.
Starting point is 00:52:59 Yeah. You know what? No, 80% of the other's not getting redeemed. Yeah. So, I don't know. It seems fine to me. Seems fine to me. Seems fine to me.
Starting point is 00:53:09 They should buy even more Bitcoin. I don't know. I'm like, they're taking some riskier, but it's not like excessive risk. That seems pretty reasonable risk. Not sustainable to me. Into the Aztec's token sale. The Aztec token sale has crossed over 16,000 ether in bids with a mechanism. co-developed with Uniswap, a continuous clearing auction.
Starting point is 00:53:33 I think this is pretty in the weeds to explain how this works, but basically there's an auction over a long period of time where you can just submit your bids and you don't have to get worried about like MEPBOS or anything like this. It's just an organic, on-chain way of discovering the price of the price of the ASIC token from the free market.
Starting point is 00:53:52 And so the way that this works is as more bids come in, the price slowly ticks up with this auction mechanism. and it's pretty hardcore in the same way that like Aztec they're a bunch of cyphre punts. Yeah, they are. Hardcore cyphraprunks like privacy maxis. This is an ICO, a defy ICO, is it not? Like why like and MegaEath and Monad, they did their ICOs with, you know, tether and, you know, stable coins. But no, Aztec did it with Eth.
Starting point is 00:54:16 Why do they do it with Eth? Because they're just cyphre, hardcore cyphre puns. And they did it on Ethereum. They didn't use a coin list or even a coin based ICO platform. It's just completely defy. One of the cool stories happening right now is the different mechanisms that ICOs are using to do ICOs. And so that is a podcast episode that we are going to work on in the future. Well, this is Bill Hughes also making the point.
Starting point is 00:54:42 A Aztec issued a legal memo analyzing the token's legal implications in four different jurisdictions. And he makes the point to Bill, Bill is a crypto lawyer. He makes the point that this would never have happened under the Gensler administration, right? because no project would release something like this because they'd be fearful this type of a document could be used in court against them in some way by the SEC. But Aztec is just making the strong point that, no, they're a utility coin,
Starting point is 00:55:10 a monetary instrument for the Aztec network. And the United States and the EU in Switzerland and the UK, this should not run afoul of any securities regulations or securities laws. They're putting that out there. So this is another big reason that ICOs are, back. It's just because the SEC, the SEC is now like fine. They're like friendly or they're embracing of innovation in a way that the Gensler regime obviously was not. And by the way, David,
Starting point is 00:55:38 the SEC, you know their whole project crypto thing where some sandboxes, some clear guidelines for crypto projects. They're expected to release that in a month or so. So in January, if you're wondering where that was, hopefully it's coming in the new year in January. I guess the government shut down, slowed them. down, but SEC Chair Paul Atkins said he expects the innovation exemption for cryptocurrencies to be released in a month or so. So that's good news on that side and should provide some clarity, some safe harbor, something that crypto projects can kind of bank on to know what's going to run afoul of SEC enforcement
Starting point is 00:56:17 action. And what's not? Importantly, what's not? Right. Last quick few things. Uniswob is teaming up with Revolut. Revolut's probably the biggest neobank in Europe. Huge Defi mullet plus neobank movement,
Starting point is 00:56:31 there's a big neobank movement going on. So there's now a Fiat gateway into defy front ends for Revolut. Inside of the Uniswap web app and Uniswap wallet using Revolut. So that's just pretty cool. Pipes into Defi, it's getting way larger. And the last thing, something bullish
Starting point is 00:56:47 coming out of the UK on crypto, actually. And this has got to be the most British thing I've ever seen for crypto. So this is a property rights act on digital assets signed by none other than the king. The king of the UK, the king of the British Isles here, Charles III, okay? So this is actually, it's a very short act document
Starting point is 00:57:08 that was enacted by Parliament, of course, and given the king's seal. And it basically says that crypto assets are property, a third type of property. So before, the only property that, the UK recognized was physical stuff you could hold or IOUs that you could sue on, say, you know, deposits in a bank that someone owed you, you could sue. And there was no real room in the property rights apparatus for digital assets for, say, crypto private keys. Well,
Starting point is 00:57:40 now there is. This law is basically saying digital assets can be this third bucket, doesn't have to fit in the first two, and is a legitimate property. recognized in the United Kingdom. So that's kind of cool. I know you're a property rights guy, David. And so this is like the biggest property rights change in probably the last century for the UK. So it's under the radar,
Starting point is 00:58:06 but it's actually notable that we're getting legitimacy here for self-custodied crypto assets. Cool. Cool. I just kind of think it's funny that a king, King Charles signs into law. Hey, that's just British stuff, man. You got to be there. Yeah, I love it though.
Starting point is 00:58:23 You know, I like the tradition. You got a meme for us on the week. What is this? Yeah, this is John Wu tweeting out a very early picture of Santa. We haven't done a meme a week in a while. A very early picture of Santa. You ever get pictures with Santa, Ryan? Of course.
Starting point is 00:58:39 You got kids. Yeah. I guess you say, though, this picture looks like a sad Santa in an abandoned mall with no visitors and no children. Yeah, he's kind of waiting for people to show up. and John Hu's comment is this is how it feels to be optimistic about crypto right now. It's just a solo Santa,
Starting point is 00:58:56 a little bit too early in the season. Well, if you're feeling lonely, Bankless Nation, if you're feeling early in the season, we are here with you. Of course, we'll end with this. You know crypto is risky. None of this has been financial advice
Starting point is 00:59:08 you could lose what you put in, but we're 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. No, let me do that again.
Starting point is 00:59:39 Sorry. Because sales goes down? You get more embarrassed? You're sharting blobs left and right. I am sharding myself just thinking about how great this is.

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