Bankless - ROLLUP: Coinbase is Suing the SEC

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Bankless Weekly Rollup 2nd Week of April 2023  ------ 🚀 TOKEN HUB 🚀 https://www.bankless.com/join?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Intro&utm_campaign=Intro_CTA1  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  📣 SAFE (Gnosis) | ACCOUNT ABSTRACTION https://bankless.cc/AA ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken  🧠 AMBIRE | SMART CONTRACT WALLET https://bankless.cc/Ambire  👻 PHANTOM | FRIENDLY MULTICHAIN WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom-waitlist  🦊METAMASK LEARN | HELPFUL WEB3 RESOURCE https://bankless.cc/MetaMask  ------ Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 4:30 MARKETS 6:30 Mt Gox https://twitter.com/tier10k/status/1651317391626846214?s=20  10:00 ETH Staking https://www.theblock.co/data/on-chain-metrics/ethereum/cumulative-eth-deposited-to-beacon-chain-and-validators  12:00 Staking Dashboard https://dune.com/hildobby/eth2-staking  15:25 Polynya Post https://polynya.mirror.xyz/1ZTJ3_BG2-wnBTy6dJLM5E3TPH8wvLGKQVDAnv7VLIw  20:30 Coinbase Suing the SEC https://twitter.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1650655451720318976?s=20  22:00 MetaLawMan Comments https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1650847807480135681?s=20  24:50 Coinbase Responds to SEC https://youtu.be/pvbWPUCFdKA  36:30 Shield NFT https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1650612986980048897?s=20  38:30 John Oliver  https://youtu.be/o7zazuy_UfI  51:00 Voyager Binance Deal https://twitter.com/investvoyager/status/1650921887512272917?s=20  52:45 SBF Parents https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66631291/133/united-states-v-bankman-fried/  54:30 Lens Bonsai Layer 3 https://twitter.com/lensprotocol/status/1651270830729592832  55:05 DevConnect Istanbul https://twitter.com/EFDevconnect/status/1649069463797481472  55:45 Mad Lads https://twitter.com/Pinapaan/status/1651413751378354176?s=20  57:30 MiCA Going Through https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1649070968579452933?s=20  59:53 TransUnion DeFi Credit Score https://newsroom.transunion.com/transunion-spring-labs-and-quadrata-partner-to-deliver-credit-scoring-to-blockchain/  1:00:45 Phi Bankless https://twitter.com/phi_xyz/status/1650801856329949184  1:02:10 Swell Maine https://twitter.com/swellnetworkio/status/1650672099382685698?s=46  1:02:50 Jobs https://pallet.xyz/list/bankless/jobs  1:06:20 Questions from the Nation https://www.bankless.com/join?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Intro&utm_campaign=Intro_CTA1  1:12:00 Chamath Says Crypto is Dead https://youtu.be/WvTTDxMuAis?t=4870  1:15:50 Running an ETH Node https://twitter.com/EthereumOnARM/status/1650805006872768512  18:30 AGI Alignment https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1651538022360285187?s=20  1:22:45 What David’s Bullish On 1:24:40 What Ryan’s Bullish On 1:29:00 MEME of the Week   ---- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Coinbase is suing the SEC, or as David would say, we are suing the SEC. We're suing the SEC. Bankless Nation, it is the last Friday of April, 2023. What time is it, David? It's the Bankless Friday Weekly Roll-up where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which has always an ambitious endeavor. We got some lawsuits to talk about. This time, in our favor, we're the ones doing the suing.

Feels good, man. But in order to prepare for all of that content, make sure that you have your morning coffee. You got your coffee, Ryan? You're going to need it. Yep. Also, we should clarify, it's not you and I suing anybody. At least not in this case.

We as the crypto industry are doing the suing. We the people are suing the powers that be. This is Coinbase suing the SEC. It's taking a while to get into the event. I guess I should just say that. We'll talk about that. Also, John Oliver, he's got some fighting words for crypto. Well, I think, you know, it's mostly fair.

coverage. We're going to talk about this. I think it was the mainstream take, though. We'll talk about what that means. David, what else are recovering? Authorities are looking into SBF's parents. So SBF, the Bankman-Fried name back in the menu today. But then, of course, we're going to get back into our roots. Talk about Chappellea two weeks forward, some more rocket pool stats. And something on Solana, I think, is cool. So we'll talk about that as well. Yeah. Go figure. Is it a phone, David? It's not the phone. It's not the phone. It's a backpack. It might be a backpack. I don't know what the backpack is. To be continued. Guys, and of course, if you like bankless and if you like crypto, make sure you like and subscribe, rate and review. That's how we pop to the top of the charts. I want to get the top of the charts in Spotify and YouTube and any other charts that exist. We want to get the crypto message out there. David, see how much I run AI Ryan is. If that's a chart, I want to be there. It's a chart. Let's optimize. Speaking of this, speaking of optimization.

the safe wallet wants you to know about account abstraction, which is an optimization that they are working on. So safe, of course, used to be called NOSIS safe. It's now called Safe. It's the multi-sig that everybody in Ethereum uses, including bankless. You've heard us talking about account abstraction before as well. Account abstraction is kind of the new smart contract wallet that is going to put fintech user experience to shame. And now safe has something they are rolling out a way for you to tap into their account abstraction. David, tell them about this SDK. So if you are a developer, and like we all know, have been chanting on bankless, we are in the paradigm of externally owned accounts. It's a terrible name. They're called private keys.

99% of wallets are private key externally owned account wallets. Eventually, in the future, 99% of wallets will be account abstraction, all. also a bad name, smart contract wallets. And NOSIS Safe, also called Safe, is helping us get there with this SDK for developers to build more smart contract wallets so that we can fix all of crypto's goddamn terrible UX problems. And so safe and their safe core account abstraction software development kit. Devs name stuff so weird. But they've got a dev package for all the devs out there. So it helps you build on ramps.

It helps you build your protocol. it helped you build relays for gassless transactions and meta transactions. It's got a little plug-in for your Fiat on ramps because you're going to need to get money into your wallet. And so if you are building in the world of account abstraction, if you're building a smart contract wallet, or you need something like this for your Web 3 game or whatnot, the core SDK, which is available in the link of the show notes, is for you. And also, there's a hackathon going on on Monday. This is Monday, May 1st. So if the dev stuff didn't appeal to you, this is a hackathon for you. This is a hackathon for everybody. They call it an

anything goes. Hackathon. A, anything, it's really hard to explain. The word anything, but with two A's, and they're both capitalized, because it's an account extraction hackathon, but anything goes. So anything goes. If you're non-tech, if you're non-developer,

you can do stuff just like explain a project. You can do the marketing, the presentation, you can make memes. Anything goes hackathon. So it's literally like everything else is non-technical. Also a great way to start and get on a team and to get some practice and sharpen your sticks in the Web 3 world. Yeah, more inclusive hackathons. That's cool. I hope this trend continues. David, let's get to

the market. Speaking of trends and whether they're continuing or not, got to start with the Bitcoin price today. Are we continuing the trend up, down, or flat? Dude, crypto prices were super weird this week. Net flat. Net flat on the week. So Bitcoin is down. 3%, so it's flat. We are currently at 29,000. almost touched $30,000, almost broke below $27,000. But here we are at the end of the week flat. But I will remind bankless sister, you should probably just pull open your phone and check the price right now because I don't know what it's going to be like in 24 hours. Well, speaking of which, before you do pull out the phone, let's talk about the Eith price at the time of recording.

Did that do similar things to Bitcoin flat on the week? Slightly down, but it's flat. It either went down 2% this week. It's really funny. Do you see these red candles? You see them both on the Bitcoin chart and the theorem chart. This happened while we were recording. So, yeah, the red candle happened while we were recording with Ledger.

Ether pumped from 1800, almost up to 2000. And we were like, we're back, baby. Same thing with Bitcoin. Bitcoin almost hit 30,000 and it bounced off of it. And then like five hours later, everything dumps back down. Ether goes from almost 2000 down to 1800. Bitcoin goes from 30,000 down. to 27,000. And now we're back right in the middle of those two things. So, Ryan, what the hell

happened? Well, this was happening, by the way, during, we don't usually do shows on just prices and just charts, but we did a show on just prices and just charts. And this is the candle we experienced during that show. Do you see that, like, talk on Twitter, people were blaming the thumbnail of that show as the problem. It's like a big goofy, a picture of, like, ledger with his, like, mouth of me, scared. That one might have been our fault. But that, that wasn't the, Okay, so I don't think we can be blamed for this, at least, David. There was news breaking during the show. Mount Gox and the U.S. government wallets making transactions,

the infamous original Mount Gox wallets that were supposed to be sort of locked up, maybe doing things, maybe causing a sell-off, this news sort of propagated. It turns out, David. So the TLDR of Mount Gox is that there has been a decent amount of Bitcoin, something like 10 to 20% of the supply of the Mount Gox hack Bitcoin, that has been locked up in the core. court proceedings because some of the amount of got forever because some people keep on delaying and delaying delaying I don't know why the strategy is behind that anyways the the mountain gocks

bitcoin unlock fud has been with us since I've been in crypto like oh yeah it's like that that meme of like the truck running into the wall but the camera cuts every single time it's been like for like four four years and so the news broke that a mount gox wallet actually started sending transactions, implying that the FUD has finally arrived. The truck is finally going to crash into the wall. And so an alert, like a bot alert about like, hey, this wallet's making transactions went out, which is what triggered this tweet from DB, who does all of these breaking tweets saying Mount Gox, Mount Gox wallets are moving. They're going to sell. They're going to sell. The implication is that like the 10 to 20% of the Mount Gox exploited Bitcoin's are basically

going to be sold because they were, right, because they were, $1,000 to, they were like $300 to $1,000 at the time of purchase, and now it's whatever the price it is now, $30,000. So you're going to assume that these people are finally going to liquidate that like almost decade-long force hold. So that's the story. And then these things actually start moving on chain to set off this alert, this Arkham alert, which triggers this tweet, which forces the market to sell off. That was all that backstory. Turns out it was an errant bug. So once again, the truck did not crash into the wall. So turns out, we just totally wasted your time by telling you this. Just like the markets wasted our time in like producing this

errant signal. I feel like this is a bigger picture of the markets right now, David, which is like no one really knows what to do. And so there's all of this noise. This is just more noise. People asking like why the price up and down, well, it's a false alert. But now it's kind of stayed down, at least from the highs. But like it's a little bit. There's so much noise in this kind of market. And I just kind of filtered out. I'm just done with it. I'm over. How about the ratio? You done on the ratio? I'm also done with the ratio.

Okay, because it's going down? It's at 0.065. So like downer-ish, but it's still within the last range. It's been in the last two years. Nothing is significant below until we start to get below like 0.055. Or above 0.8. Ledger had good commentary on the ratio. Yeah, he did.

That's a really good episode. People should go watch that. Did it change your mind at all? Are you still holding it? the ratio for a, you know, well, yeah, because like, because he was like, David, like, if, like, you know, Bitcoin goes, Bitcoin Hulk mode and Bitcoin's at $100,000 and ether's only at $5,000, that is a ratio of, like, point, I'm going to catch you the math, it was something like 0.05 or something. And I'm like, well, that's, I held that my, my ratio trade,

but down to the three hours capital liquidation when it got down to 0.04 or something. So, like, come at me, bro. Like, I'm not scared. Yeah. No, eath is a different ETH than the last bare market. And that was the main thrust of Fletcher's argument. Last bare market, it was weak. It was so weak in comparison to Bitcoin. We've got a much stronger ETH this time around. Global crypto market cap. I'm going to say it this time, David, because it's so uninteresting. Oh, you're taking it from me two weeks in a right while. We're above a trillion. 1.2-4 trillion. That's what you need to know. Tell us about this story, though. Humulative Eth deposit of Beacon Chain and Valedator. Should we shook the snow globe? What's happening with all the

the Eth that was staked? Is it being unstaked? Is it staking elsewhere? What's going on? So I've become a connoisseur of Chappellella metrics, dashboards, etc. This particular dashboard from the block, I think, is the best one to illustrate the Chappellella Snow Globe. So this is the ether supply deposited into the beacon chain since the launch of the beacon chain in December of 2020. And of course, the chart is up only the entire time up until the Chappellea withdrawal fork that happened two weeks ago. And so the line is literally cannot go down. up until two weeks ago, and then the withdrawals happened.

And this was like, though, the withdrawals are coming. The withdrawals are coming. Everyone's going to withdraw. And you can see, you can see the first moment that this line goes down at the teeny little top right there. And it goes from a whopping 18. something million ether stakes down to like 17.7, 17.5 million ether staked. And we have continued on the same uptrend that we've been on since December of 2020. withdrawals seem to have slowed down and deposits I have continued. And so the withdrawals seem to be over two weeks.

David, I want to take you back down memory lane, Crypto-Grantpa. Do you remember when it was, we were worried, the theory of communities worried about getting 500K-Eb staked? Because we needed 500K to kickstart the beacon chain. And like we weren't necessarily getting there. Are we going to get it? Look, look at it. That's way back here. 500K-E. And now we're talking about like just, you know, 18 million.

Yeah, 800K, ETH got withdrawn. And that is a blip. Yeah, it's just a blip. What about this? Another dashboard for the fine connoisseur of dashboarding that you are. How do you rate this Hildobie dashboard? What can we take away from ETH staking here? This Hildobby dashboard is a top tier, very fine, very fine dashboard.

It's very nice. We are net inflows since the Shanghai Chappella hardfork, a negative four. $440,000 ether in the deposit in the beacon chain. So that is the number of ether that has been net withdrawn. That used to be lower. I think it was as low as something like 0.7 million. Now we're at 0.44 million. The total supply of ether on the beacon chain,

18.7 million. And the, actually the cool parts about this thing, if you go to scroll down a little bit further. So stakers, the delta of stakers in the last month. So you can filter that, Ryan, by market share. and so you can see who's won and who's lost in the last month or so by clicking on the market shareword. That's in the last week. But go over to the one. Go over to the month because it's been more than one week. So Cracken, obviously the big loser because lost all their stake teeth because Gary Gensler forced them to.

But even Coinbase, who was unforced also is a net loss of ether, net net outflows of ether. Hobe, Gemini, decentralized exchanges. Now if you click that one again, we will see who who the winners are. So the market share increase, if you order by who has won the most of the snow globe. So where has all that snow landed, that good old ether? Unidentified is the winner here at 1.5% growth in market share, which is big, by the way. Who's identified? Unidentified. Who is that, Ryan? It's probably a lot of solo stakers. Right. They're identified because they're solo stakers. Those are the many people. At 1.5%. Coming in second is staked.us. I think that is staked-wise. in second at, they gained 0.6% market share, steak fish, P2P, OKX, followed by Rocket Pool at 0.2%.

And so that is the winners and the losers. Pretty cool. So the snow globe is happening to some extent. And, you know, what's really interesting is this is just a blip off of the high. Do you think we've bottomed already, David, on the withdrawal to deposit ratio? I think we've bottomed. Yep. I'm famous for Colin Botton, for column bottoms. calling the bottom. You know what? I'm going to agree with you. It's both David and Ryan calling the bottom

so you know it can't be wrong. That doesn't happen off. Two bankless hosts calling the bottom right now. The other thing that's worth noting actually is that Lido has not yet enabled withdrawals. They have had like two, they have had like two or three more weeks.

I think it's at the end of May when they, so like they still have their snow globe moment. And honestly, like when you're in the lead of the staking derivatives and you're like taking your time to like enable withdrawals. Like yeah, I bet you guys would take your time to enable withdrawals. Well, maybe I shouldn't have called the bottom just now because who knows what could happen with the Lido?

That's a pretty large person. I wouldn't be too worried about that because you can always exit as a Lido person with Stake-Dath. And so there is an exit route. But yeah, there will be some pent-up demand. Lido has definitely got a lot of net inflows. but that's because it's kind of unfair because they literally don't allow outflows

so it's still in only for Lido. You know it's a market piece I really enjoyed this week was a piece by Pellania, who is an L2 researcher in general, pseudonymist, had them on the bankless podcast before, and they do a quick tour of the top five chains by economic activity. This is a post I think is worth reading.

We'll include a link to it in the show notes, but I'll go through the kind of the breakdown. Number one, top chain by economic activity. It's got to be. Of course, you know it, Ethereum, at number one, by a lot. Okay, Ethereum secures $420 billion across ETH, ERC20s, and NFTs. Plenty goes through different dimensions to kind of judge both passive and active economic activity. And Ethereum is the lead on both, both passive and active.

Of course, it's far in the lead over the number two, which is Bitcoin. on active. And number two, indeed, is Bitcoin. After that, Plenia mentions this very large gap, this very large delta. Yeah, there's like, it's a two-horse race, basically, with Ethereum leading by a lot on the active side on economic activity. But then after that, you get into Arbitrum. It's number three on Plenia's list, followed by Tron and Binance smart chain. What's interesting is if you have been mostly absorbing bankless content, right? We don't talk much about the Tron story, do we? We don't talk much about the Binance smart chain story.

The reason we don't is because these are like- We're biased-eathe-maxis. Well, we're biased decentralization maxis. And I totally will admit that. Like, I am a biased decentralization maxi. Like both of us are. And so, but Tron is doing a lot of activity. And somewhere in the spectrum of like, is it sort of a bank?

Is it fintech or is it crypto? Is it an open banking system? I think the answer to that is yes. And it's doing a lot with tether right now. Binance smart chain as well. So if you talk to people in Argentina right now and what crypto are they actually using, it's like stable coins on Tron and Binance Smart Chain, that's what's happening. And that you said, I think is...

That Toronto has great adoption in financially underserved parts of the world. I think it's great. I'm not mad about this. It's more private keys in the hands of more people. Hopefully it doesn't rug everyone at some point, but it's got some rug resistance in it, not a lot, a little bit. It's got some more than maybe a banking system.

Yeah, that's kind of cool. Anyway, that's the break down. He does follow up, excuse me, they also follow up saying that the once dominant number two player Binance Smart Chain and also Tron has been dethroned by Arbitrum 1, this last bear market. If the YouTube viewers are confused about the tweet

that was on screen that didn't go by the list that Ryan and I just said. That's because Pauline and you elaborates further on about his reasoning. Oh, yeah, yeah. I show him a faulty tweet. All right, David, what do we got coming up next? Coming up next, Coinbase, suing the SEC. That's us. I claim.

And a public response. Interesting strategy. They're posting their response to the SEC, both has a written letter because that's what you do, and a YouTube video, taking a leaf out of influencer Gary's book. So we're going to watch a clip out of that YouTube video. And we'll also take a peek, Ryan, a case study of some character development, if you will, of a pre-SEC Gary Gensler at MIT giving some takes.

So we're going to watch some clips. We've been clip-heavy on the weekly roll-up in the last couple weeks. And that continues. Speaking of clips, John Oliver, got some John Oliver clips as well. And he's got some takes for crypto as well for the mainstream. So we're going to play all those scripts and talk about them and all that stuff. as soon as we talked to some of these fantastic sponsors, especially Cracken, our strategic sponsor for 2023,

the one that we always look at when we look at prices earlier in the show. So thank you, Cracken, for helping us look at these prices. And let's go hear from Cracken right now. Cracken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I used to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade. On Cracken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real-time market data and lightning-fast trade execution,

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check out Ambire. Ambire works with all the EVM chains. The layer two is like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon, also the non-Etherium ecosystems like Ablanch and Phantom. Ambire lets you pay for gas and stable coins, meaning you'll never have to spend your precious eth again. And if you like self-custy, but you still want training wheels,

you can recover a lost Ambire wallet with an email and password, but without giving the Ambire team control over your funds. The Ambire is coming soon for both iOS and Android, and if you want to be a beta tester, Ambire is airdropping their wallet token for simply just using the wallet. You can sign up at ambire.com

and while you're there, sign up for the web app wallet experience as well. So thank you, Ambire, for pushing the frontier of smart contract wallets on Ethereum. Coinbase is suing the SEC, or as David would say, we are suing the SEC. We're suing the SEC. This is a tweet from Paul, the chief legal officer at Coinbase. He says, today we filed a narrow action in the U.S. Circuit Court to compel the SEC to respond yes or no to a rulemaking petition we filed with them last July, asking them to provide regulatory guidance for the crypto industry. All they want is a simple yes or no.

David, what is happening here? So I've never heard of this narrow action phrase before. I'm assuming it's a legal term to sue. They're suing them to do this one thing, which is reply yes or no to this petition, which you've got pulled up, that they filed with them last July. So they filed a petition.

If you want to skip over to that one, Ryan. They filed this petition forever ago and Coinbase is suing the SEC to get them to just say yes or no to this petition. Reply to our letter. And Paul follows up his tweet saying, the SEC is required by law to respond to petitions, quote, within a reasonable time. But they have not yet responded to our petition from last July, which we are coming up to almost a year on, being May, almost.

And so they are suing them for not doing their job in a reasonable amount of time. Cool. I mean, it's not that big of a deal. Like, it's just a yes or no lawsuit. But the implications of that are large. Have they not gone in for office hours with Gary, David? Is that simple? They have not gone in for office hours. Come on, Coinbase. All you have to do is go to office hours. So we found this Twitter thread from Meta Lawman, who is a lawyer who comments on this. And so here's everything you need to know about this real quick.

This case will move fast, he claims, unlike the ripple case. This will begin in the appellate court, not the trial court. I don't know what an appellate court is. There will be no discovery, just a briefing and a hearing. He follows and says, Coinbase has an all-star legal team led by Eugene Scalia, former secretary of labor and son of Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia. Coinbase is seeking a writ of mandamus, which is, God, the legal system,

which is a court order compelling the SEC to do its job and announce a decision on Coinbase's request for rulemaking. This action does not necessarily affect the SEC's timing for suing Coinbase as it has threatened to do. Again, it's a separate issue, which we'll talk about. And then he follows up and says, I expect major industry players to pile in with amicus briefs supporting Coinbase's position, we might also see the House Financial Services Committee or individual members come in with briefs in support of Coinbase, which we recently saw from last week's hearing that, yes, there is a lot of support for this. The SEC commissioners will have to approve any response to Coinbase's action. There's a tiny chance that the SEC will blink

and agree in exchange in rulemaking. If just one commissioner withdraws their support for Gary Gensler's regulation by an enforcement strategy, he's done. Wow. While Coinbase's action does not directly affect pending SEC cases against Ripple, Bitrex, and others. It does a great job in shining a spotly on the SEC's contradictory positions about its authority to regulate digital assets. Other judges will take note. I remember, I think a month ago, I can't remember when, but one theme of the roll-up was like Gary Gensler is egressing. He's flying too close to the sun. He's gone too far. It was probably the weekly roll-up where the SEC announced the Wells notice against Coinbase. and what we said is like, oh, they just,

they're, this coin base is too big. They're going to fight them tooth and nail. And also, they're going to lose because they're standing on shaky footing. And so all of that is seemingly shaping up, and this is where we are. Yeah, by the way, in that thread that you read, if just one commissioner withdraws their support for Gary Gensler,

what Meta Lawman means is one additional commissioner. We already have some SEC commissioners. Esther Perce, of course, has famously dissented with just about everything Gary has tried to. do with his crypto policy, if she can get one more commissioner to dissent and defect from Gary's side of things, then Gary is done. What does that mean? He's done, though.

He's like, that's a great question. What does this mean by done? Like, I don't think it means he's fired. I just think it means he has to like capitulate to this one particular issue. There's some other things going on from Coinbase as well, including this video, which was just released as of this morning. David, what are we about to watch? Okay, so this is the Coinbase response to the SEC in video format. It's a longer video. It's 13 minutes. This is a four-minute clip. They are releasing their response. They're also filing like a normal document that looks

like a legal document. But they're also doing the 2023 thing, which is apparently to also You got to wear suits. You got to wear suits and you also have to fight on social media. And so we're taking the we're taking the fight to the algorithms. And so they are posting this video on the Coinbase YouTube. And here is Brian and Paul with their response to the SEC Wells notice, the icquerasing of the SEC. This is their response. So let's watch this. Actually, Ryan and I have not watched this. So we are watching this for the first time right now. Let's go. To the chair, other commissioners and staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission, I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak directly to you. My name is Paul I'm Coinbase's chief legal officer.

And with me is Brian Armstrong, the chief executive officer and chairman of point official. I'd like to start by turning things over to Brian to say a few words. Brian? Yeah, thanks, Paul. So again, thank you for the opportunity to respond to this Wells notice. And I thought I'd share a few words just about the founding story of Coinbase and why I decided to base it here in the U.S. and how we've practically sought out compliance over the last 11 years.

So back in 2012, I had just read the Bitcoin white paper, and something clicked in my head when I first read this, that this might be a very important technology breakthrough that could help update the financial system globally. You know, I had a first-hand experience seeing how difficult and challenging certain aspects of the financial system were. I had been a software engineer at Airbnb, and I had seen how difficult it was to send and receive payments globally to 190 countries. It was slow and inexpensive and difficult. I had lived in Argentina actually for a year studying abroad and working abroad, and I had seen what a country looked like that had gone through hyperinflation, where people had lost trust in the currency and they didn't have access to good financial services.

They couldn't get loans, for instance, to buy a car or a home. And so when I read the Bitcoin white paper, I thought this might be an important breakthrough, something on the order of what we saw with the Internet, a new global and decentralized system that could make it easier for people to transmit value and update financial services globally. The next decision I had was, where do I want to start this company? Once I realized I wanted to start a company. And I went to some early Bitcoin meetups in San Francisco, and people were telling me, you shouldn't base it in the U.S.

It's going to be too challenging. There's 50 state regulators and multiple federal regulators, and you should start it in Hong Kong or Singapore. And there was other firms that were starting at that time that did that. But I made the choice at that moment to start. the company in the U.S. because I knew that even if it was more difficult, the U.S. was a major market. There was respect for rule of law. The U.S. was a financial hub, a technology hub. It was a place where I felt entrepreneurs could work in good faith with regulators to help

define clear rules for new industries as they emerged. And so I was lucky enough to raise some venture capital money. You know, the prototype on my laptop nights and weekends turned into a small company, and we went off to the races. You know, 11 years later, fast forward, This strategy of proactively working with regulators in cases where it really wasn't clear what we should do because it was a new industry, we tried to do the right thing in the absence of clarity and demonstrate good faith effort that would allow us to bring this technology in a safe and thoughtful way to hopefully a billion people someday. So here we are as a public company. I think we've made enormous strides. And I think the message I'd really like to leave with the commissioners and the SEC is that we're committed to working within the regulatory perimeter. We want to see a clear market structure for trading crypto securities.

Not all crypto assets are securities. There's also crypto commodities. There's stable coins. There's crypto that's artwork. We're going to work with multiple regulators to make this industry safe and trusted. And a Wells notice at this stage when there is not a clear rulebook is not constructive and it's not good for America. We are prepared to defend that position in court, but it doesn't have to come to that. We welcome a true dialogue about a workable path forward for our industry.

Now I'll hand it back over to Paul. Coinbase has been talking to the SEC about our business for many years now, including sharing our legal views on our asset listing and staking services. We've repeatedly asked the SEC for its own views on how securities laws might apply to Coinbase and our industry. And to be candid, we've mostly gotten silence in response. Coinbase will defend itself vigorously in litigation if it comes to that. But it does not have to come to. come in that. We will show up at your offices any day, any time to discuss a workable path forward

for our industry. But we won't find that path without true dialogue. Yo! Bringing in the lawyer. That's interesting. I think it's a great format, actually, rather than just a press release or a letter, it's just like a four-minute YouTube video. You would say that as a podcaster. Well, of course I would. I'm a video maximumist, podcast maximums. But also, I think that it's interesting, the way. Brian started with telling his personal story. And it's like the story that kind of like,

I chose to base this company in America. And I'm a patriot. I did the American dream thing where you start with an idea and then you develop that in America. And then you like turn it into a publicly traded company. Right. I did all the things that I thought you wanted me to do. Right.

And now we're getting penalized with, with regulators who are just unworkable, and you sent Wells notices that there's going to be enforcement and like, just stop it, right? Like, you're not even willing to talk to us. What's going on? I think it's effective.

I hope it lands. What do you think? You think this video is going to land? Well, I think when you compare and contrast this video versus the Gary influencer video, like they didn't need to make this video. They just needed to submit a document, a legal document, which they did.

which so few people are going to watch. So many more people are totally going to watch this video. And like, if you compare this video to Gary's stupid stock footage influencer video, this is going to resonate way more. Well, do you know, it's the reason everyone's doing these videos is because I think they all recognize that this is a battle for hearts and minds at this point in time. 100%.

Right? It's not just, it's not just, well, see you in court, even though that was kind of the not so veiled threat there, which is thank God we have another check and balance. once. It's like Brian showing up to tell a story and then his lawyer next to him, the bad cop, being like, and we're going to sue you. Anyway, I think it's effective. David, you want to do some throwback clips of Gary Gensler the way he used to be before accepting the job here? Yeah, this is a, this is pre-SECD Gary Gensler. This is before he turned into a paid show for the banking sector

when he was a free man, if you will, giving his free unadulterated takes as a professor of knowledge at MIT. So here's what Gary has to say about how you start a decentralized crypto network. Let's hear from Gear Bear. And it could be something that has no central authority right now, no central intermediary, and it's just how to jumpstart something. I think in that circumstance, it's more likely you need a native token. Hmm. Hmm. So you want to start a decentralized network. You need something to jumpstart it. And so Gary, says that's why you use a native token. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. But Ryan, do you think that those native tokens are securities? Let's ask 2018 Gear Bear. Here we go. So we already know in

the U.S. and in many other jurisdictions that three quarters of the market are not ICOs or not what we could be called securities even in the U.S., Canada, and Taiwan, the three jurisdictions that follow something similar to the How we test. that we've talked about. Three quarters of the market is non-securities. It's just a commodity, a cash. Three quarters. Three quarters of the crypto market, according to Gary.

And what's a security and what's not a security relevant, relevant and important debate? But for three quarters of the market, it's not particularly relevant as a legal matter. As a regulatory matter, Brodish. Wow. That is Gary. Teen Gary sounding like he's making a lot of sense. I would get a beer with that guy. That guy sounds great.

I like that. I would take that class. That's incredible. This is Brian Armstrong actually responding to this, to this tweet. He's retweeting it. The clip. And he just goes, wow. Wow.

Okay, so that could be interpreted. Like, how do you think he actually intended that to sound? Was that like a, wow. Or was that like a, wow. or do you think that was like a, whoa. How do you think he meant that? You know, I think it's up to interpretation and all of the above are fantastic interpretation.

So, you know, do that in your head. But like I got to say the same thing. Wow. Wow. Completely different person in 2018 where he said 75% of the market, the security versus commodity thing is not even up for debate, right?

At least 75% of the 2018 market. By the way, that market was less clear than today's market, I think, too. Yeah. The 2018 market was very different. They were all ICEOs. There were a whole bunch of things. So what has changed with Gary? I can't wait to see Gary Gensler be presented with this in the court.

Just like, hey, curious, Gary. What made you change your mind? On state, like on trial? Yeah. You're talking about like an actual prosecution. When did you go from everything is a security? When did you go from three quarters of these things are not security? and we need native tokens to bootch up a network to 99% of our securities.

Where was the change? What changed? Because something happened. Something acute happened. There's a clear before-after moment, and I would like to know what caused that. I think it's like you get in a position of power and then your incentives totally change. So you're not incentivized towards kind of like truth and actual communication of the story. You have a different agenda, whether that's more power accrual is maybe part of the agenda here.

whether this is more like political influence as part of the agenda where there's actually some kind of like lobby group that is drastically influencing you. We may never know, but we can only judge him by the 2018 Gary versus the 2023 Gary. And these are two completely different people.

That's the thing. Do you remember at the time when Gary Gensler was actually replaced Jay Clayton as the SEC chair? And there was actually an air of maybe hope about this. There was cautious optimism about Gary Gensar, including us. We knew these 2018 clips. And we're like, finally a regular that understands this industry.

And now he's used that understanding and completely like abandon it in pursuit of some different agenda. It's very unfortunate. Yeah. But let's talk about what we can do. So there is some action that we can take. What is this, David? Can I mint an NFT and support a cause here? How does this work?

That's exactly what you can do, Ryan. So Coinbase is starting a stand with crypto campaign where you can mint a. a commemorative shield NFT. It's an FD with a shield. It's literally an emoji. And it's a very, very low price mint, something like 0.007 ether, I think. So Ryan's going to go there right now.

He's going to connect our friends and sponsors at Metamask, the wallet there. So he can go and mint this thing. Are you making me mint it right now? I'm making you mint it right now. Yeah. The mint is free, but there is a Zora.

Zora charges a fee. That fee is like 0.077 ether or something, so like a couple dollars, which goes to the Gitcoin advocacy round. So all of the fees from this Shield mint NFT plus 100,000 die donated, I believe by Coinbase, is going to the Gitcoin advocacy round. So Ryan is going to mint his NFTA with Metamask, our friends and sponsors at MetaMask, thank you for doing that. And then a little bit of, oh, excuse me, 0.00077-Eether.

It's real cheap. The gas will cost you a lot more than the actual price of the NFD. Let me tell you. about $10 in total right now. Okay, so Ryan just minted one. So thank you for donating to the Get Coin Advocacy round. And that's going out. And thank you for supporting crypto, Ryan.

I appreciate that. I also burnt some ETH in that transaction. You also burn some ETH. That's awesome. So we are fighting back. We are pushing back on this. David, we actually have Paul, the chief legal officer at Coinbase,

coming on the show a little bit later too. What's happening there? Yeah, it will be out by the time the bank station is listening to this. So Thursday night, We are live streaming with Paul, who is going to come on, and we're going to talk to him about suing the SEC. So that's going to be pretty sweet. Looking forward to that one.

I can't wait to hear this. I prefer to talking to the bad cop in this scenario. Yeah. David, another fight for crypto, though, is the mainstream narrative. That's a fight I think we still need to put in some work on. John Oliver on his show last week tonight covered crypto. It's a second major crypto episode in about a 25-minute segment. And I think he really expresses what the mainstream thinks about crypto right now.

Of course, he covered the events of 2022. So he talked about FTX. He talked about Terra. He talked about Celsius. And his conclusion was pretty much that crypto is mostly a scam, almost 100% a scam. And I don't blame him necessarily for reaching that conclusion given 2022. And yet it falls so short.

So, David, I think we should maybe play some clips. and give the bankless listeners a flavor of what the conversation was. But FCX has been just one of the many dominoes that fell in the crypto world. Over the past two years, the market value of all cryptocurrencies fell from around $3 trillion in late 2021 to around $1 trillion last year. And there are small investors who got badly hurt by all of this. One in five Americans has invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency. And you can find countless stories of people losing most of their life savings in the recent

implosions, underscoring that everyone in crypto was never actually going to make it, no matter how much Randy Zuckerberg scream sang otherwise. So tonight, we thought we'd take a look at what has been happening in the world of crypto, by looking at three of the biggest collapses over the past year. Each of these companies was founded on the promise that they would replace some part of our financial system. There is terror, a cryptocurrency, Celsius, a crypto bank, and FTX, a crypto trading platform. In theory, they were supposed to be our next.

dollar, our next Bank of America, and our next stock exchange. But in reality, they are fiascos. So far, David, he's not wrong on these takes. These are the exact takes that we had in 2022. It's just these platforms. Well, we didn't think of these specifically, but we are replacing the dollar. We are replacing the stock exchange. It's not FTX. It's uniswap. It's not Terra. It might be something like die. It's not Celsius. It's defy. Right. Yeah. That's the thing. But these are our narratives. These are the words that we use.

He's not wrong, is what I'm saying. Let's play another clip. Just as a reminder, every single crypto coin is just something, someone with a laptop made up. That is true for all of them, like Dogecoin, cat coin, panda coin, furry coin, cum rockets, Elon sperm, and monkey jizz. Those are all real, by the way. We were going to come up with a fake one as a joke, but then we saw monkey jizz, and it felt like a hat on a hat. To the extent any of these coins have value, it's based on whether people believe they do, which often comes down to their confidence in the person or group who made the coin.

And that basic fact makes the crypto business very attractive to a certain type of person. One columnist who's covered this intently sums it up like this. If you are running a scam, you will be drawn to crypto. You are running a confidence game, and crypto offers the most efficient market for turning confidence into money. David, I mean, he's also right about that, right? He's also right about that. Money is a confidence game. That's what we've been saying on bank lists this entire time.

He's just applying it in this more narrow. It's like, yeah, the largest most chest pounder dude or developer is the new winner in this world. Well, the idea that scammers are attracted to crypto is also right. We've also talked about this, yeah. He's right about everything so far. Okay, okay. So that was that was a flea. 3.3 million views.

Yeah, this is mainstream. This is what mainstream actually thinks. And they're not wrong about FTX and Celsius and Terra. I mean, they're exactly right. But let's finish with the conclusion here, which is where I think John Oliver goes off track. And the thing is, there are still companies out there making all the same claims that you've seen tonight.

And I'm not saying that they are all scams. Maybe these three are the exceptions, although they would be joining all the other exceptions that we haven't had time to talk about tonight, from BitConnect to Quadriga to so, so many more. But the truth is, in a financial system where the only real currency is confidence, scammers are going to thrive. And I know that we usually like to point to a solution at the end of our stories, and that often means calling for more regulation. But I'm not sure that's a good idea

here. The danger is regulation might give this sector more legitimacy. It'll make a risky investment look safe when it is clearly not. And that in turn might entice banks to start getting more involved in crypto, giving the sector even more legitimacy and also exposing all of us to its volatility. It really says a lot that one of the leading advocates for the government to strongly regulate crypto was Sam Bankman-Fried. And look, I'm absolutely not saying that we should get rid of crypto entirely. It could eventually be useful. Maybe the third time that we talk about it will all be using a digital coin to buy everything. I doubt it, but I can't predict the future. after all, I'm no Jim Kramer.

But we should recognize that right now, the main thing you can really do with crypto is gamble with more crypto. This is all still a casino. So if you do want to invest, do your own due diligence, never put in more than you can afford to lose, and if you ever see someone doing this wrong.

This is Alex Mishinsky doing like the Archer Post. Yeah, that was a rough conclusion. That was a rough conclusion. Not entirely wrong, but what parts are rough to you? Oh, how we shouldn't regulate it to give it legitimacy, because then if you give it legitimacy, it might integrate and, oh, well, the regular financial system will absorb the scams and the volatility of crypto. It's like, no, you regulate it, so you get rid of the scams and volatility.

See, I mean, I think... I'm not saying we should do that either, but... This is, this, though, David, is the narrative that crypto is up against in 2023. and it's both kind of a headwind. This is what 2021 costs us. 2022 costs us, yeah. It's both a headwind. 2021, like you're talking about the bull market run up and 22 is when the scammers.

That whole period. The last bull market cost us this. That's exactly. Here's, I think, the interesting part about this and why I think there's an opportunity. For me, the scam slamming he just did was actually cathartic. I mean, we did a lot of that ourselves. and the ridicule for SBF and Doug Kwan and Mishinsky is totally deserved. But the conclusion that all crypto is a scam, that's where I think there's some hubris, right?

And I think the problem with the mainstream narrative here is you can finish John Oliver's show, and I watch the whole thing, and you could feel like you completely understand crypto. Right. Like that is the, I guess, the hidden problem with a show like this is you're like, oh, that crypto thing, all the, everything that was going on, the big price runup, it was just a bunch of scams. Ha, I thought so. And then you're going to dismiss it. And you're going to miss out on the alternative to Celsius, which is defy, and the alternative to FTX, which are uniswap and Coinbase type regulated exchanges and Cracken. And you can miss the alternative to, you know,

a stable coin, for instance, like Terra, and you'll miss something like die and everything all the innovation that's going on. So the reason it's an opportunity, David, is because I think right now, just like in 2019, when crypto was dead, and the cycles before that, we're getting the same sentiment. And I am happy to have the counter trade to that. Because I think this is what the mainstream narrative thinks right now. And so to me, this is a massive buying opportunity if you believe the opposite. If you believe that crypto isn't a scam, if you believe there is real innovation here. If you believe that stable coins will be absolutely massive,

if you believe that defy will actually change the world and be the way we bank in the future, this is a massive counter-trade opportunity. No, that's exactly right. Yeah, this is a great signal of how, when you are being a contrarian investor about something that you know

have high confidence in being right about. It gives me 2018 to 2025 when we felt that about a theory. Dare we call this a bottom signal? Oh, certainly. I mean, it's one of the bottom signals, right? And the same way Randy Zuckerberg video was a top signal, we're all going to make it. Sure. I mean, and like also this John Oliver's audience is the exact kind of people.

I'm going to Blake a statement here is like all of the people who were bitter about the crypto people making a bunch of money in 2021, 2022. This show is for them. They want to watch the show and be like, oh, I'm. I believe in myself. Yeah. All the crypto haters that got bitter that their crypto friend made a bunch of money, I'll call them fart smellers,

are watching this show and being like, oh, yeah, that's great. That's totally what happened. Right. And so that is his audience, right? And that's why the conclusion he has of like, don't even give it any legitimacy, don't even regulate it.

The conclusion of that show doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be a good take. for him to conclude to get the views, to get the people to smell their farts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly how he was going to end the show on exactly that note, because that's what the audience wanted. Right. And you know that he would never produce a counter show in the peak of a market talking about like how the crypto is doing the crypto thing. You know, you would never see that. You would only ever see the show in the bear market. Yeah. So I don't act. I mean, crypto gave him all of the ammo to produce that show that he needed.

We just served that to him on a platter. I do not blame him at all for that take. I'm just pointing out that it's an incredibly shallow take. That's what the overall mainstream narrative thinks is that right now. And so if you counter trade that, I think it could be a good move right now if you believe the opposite. David, what do we have coming up next? Coming up next, we got some updates on the finance Voyager deal. Sad for Voyager.

We're also going to talk about SBS mom, of all people. SBF's mom. I won't sing the song. Lens launching in Layer 3 and Solana has got a thing that's making me feel things and we're going to talk about that.

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meant to be. Secure, Fast, cheap, and friction-free. Voyager tweets out, today we received a letter from Binance terminating the asset purchase agreement. While development is disappointing, our Chapter 11 plan allows us for direct distribution of cash and crypto to customers via the Voyager platform. So Binance, U.S. is backing out of the crypto deal. They cite regulatory challenges for that termination of that deal. And so Binance says, while our hope throughout this process was to help Voyager's customers access their crypto and kind, the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the United States has introduced an unpredictable operating environment impacting the entire American business community.

Oof, thanks, Gary. So, poor one out. They're blaming regulators for Notina. So Voyager, of course, was like another Celsius. in that a bunch of depositors were left hold in the bag. Retail depositors. Well, Voyager Lentz, $300 million unsecured. So that was pretty dumb of them of retail money.

They did a ton of dumb things. But this was also an opportunity for all of the creditors to actually do a little bit better than kind of a pure asset sale bankruptcy. And Binance is blaming that on regulators if not going through it. But imagine if you're a Voyager creditor, right? This is basically what happened to you. Right.

First, you thought FDX was going to save you. And then FDX imploded. Then you thought Binance was going to save you. and then the U.S. blocked the sale. Now the court allows the sale to go through, then Binance pulls out. That's the full story.

If you're a Voyager creditor and you had funds tied up in Voyager, very sad, just getting dunked in the tank again and again and again. Feels bad to have put money in any kind of, quote, unquote, crypto bank these days.

Yeah. And it's because of Gary. It's because of Gary. 100%. Right? Right. Gary, everything that represents.

He's become the main character, for Operation Chokepoint. So yes, I agree. It's Operation Chokepoint. It's Gary Gensler and friends. Speaking of Friends, does SBF have any friends left, David? I guess his parents are still friendly because he's living back at home with Mom and Dad. And now there's some scrutiny on SBF's parents. What's going on? Yeah, so a judge has approved restrictions for SBF's parents. So SBF's mom and dad are now getting strict cell phone monitoring while he is under house arrest because they are fearful that SBF will just say, hey, mom, can I use your phone? So a consultant will...

Just one tweet, mom. Just one post. A consultant will review keystroke logs and screenshots of Joseph Bankman and Barbara Frankman's cell phones at least three times per week. Monitoring software are on the Bankman Freed's parents' phones. And they photograph the user every five minutes to make sure it's not Sam. So the phone takes a picture every five minutes, and if Sam Binkman's face is there, they get in trouble.

Dude, that's hilarious. Can you, like, how mad would you be at your son if this was like the situation here? The weird thing about this, though, is we don't know if they're innocent part, that their innocent parties at all. Like, there seems to be a lot of evidence that they may have actually been tied up in this whole criminal enterprise. Like, I think, like, Nick Carter and friends call it the crime family or something of SBF, yeah. Crime syndicate. And so you don't know how deeply they're involved, but it's

hilarious to think SBF back at home, can't use mom and dad's cell phone even. Is he completely walked out of that? That's so funny. I have so many jokes I can make. And we just need to move on or else I'll make them. Lens protocol. What are they doing? An optimistic layer three solution. So Lens deploying a layer three to process transactions at hyperscale, they say, and designed to support the next generation of Web 3 social users. This is, call it a roll app, an app chain as a roll up as a layer 3. I like that. Roll app. Yeah.

Yeah, you've heard that before, right? No, that's the first time I've heard that. Well, I sadly can't take credit for that one. But to you, I will. So yeah, Lens, Layer 3 Rollap. I'm assuming this is deployed on Polygon because that's where lens is. So cool. Bonsai is what they're calling it because of the whole plant metaphor.

That's very cool. DevConnect, Istanbul. Well, Ryan, this is not necessarily for the bankless nation, although they're welcome to listen to this announcement about DevConnect, Istanbul, 2023. This is actually for me to you to tell you that I'm going to be in Istanbul in the 13th to the 19th of November for DevConnect. Also, if any bankless listeners wants to come, I'll be there too. DevConnick is different than DevCon, right, David? Yes. So think of it like a binary star system and one's bigger than the other, and this is the little star.

But they rotate. And so it goes DevCon, DevCon, DevCon. every like nine months or so. Oh man. You're traveling all over the world, David. Are you ever at home anymore? God, it has been a while. It has been a while.

But tell us about this. So you are excited about a Salana project. That's a lot of project, yeah. It's an NFT project. So I, you know, maybe people would have suspected that's the way they get you.

They hook you into the Salana community. Mad Labs. MadLads. What is it? I mean, I don't know. It's an NFT project. They look really cool. Their volume was the number one most traded volume, at least in the last seven days.

So they are just eking above board apes and mutant apes. And so this is why this is news. That's because they are dominating the seven-day volume, at least on NFT sales. So the mint went live. They had some like mint drama, but they're past that. I think they look pretty cool. I like the art. I like the art.

I do not own one because I don't. I don't know how to use Salana. Wait, what did you say? Wait, what did you say? I've never used it. I own some sole tokens and I bought it like $9 or something. It's super easy. Just grab a phantom wallet.

Just connect. I've done stuff on Solana. I have a podcast NFT on Solana. Yeah, I know you do. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll probably go buy one of these on Salana and I'll be the first time I use. You heard it. Salana community.

You heard it here. Tweet it out when you do. I mean, look at these. They're pretty cool looking. So like the 20s mobster themed. Like it's like a comic book, noir theme, I'd say, like a noir movie type. Yeah, I think they're pretty cool. I think they're pretty cool.

Yeah, I get this. I vibe with this. Yeah, you like it. It's a denominator in Seoul if you buy it the. Yeah, I don't know about that one. Okay, anyways, moving on. You want to take this one? Well, David, we can't just talk about U.S.

regulatory system. We've got to talk about what's going on in Europe. Mika, we did an entire episode on this legislation. Looks like it is going through. After more than two and a half years of consultation, heated debates, last minute amendments, and very close votes in the committee, the EU's parliament today passed the new EU crypto framework with an impressive majority, 517 MEPs for and 38 votes against. This is the most comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto that's ever been passed by any major government body. We did an entire episode on this, and the conclusion from our crypto, EU, Mika experts was this was about a B-minus in terms of its quality and its goodness for crypto. So it could have been a lot worse. We could have had a

failing grade, an F or a D or something like that. Average would have been C. They rated it as B-minus. And I think I mostly agree with that. It leaves much to be desired, but it provides some clarity. Like, for instance, Europe, David, doesn't have the problem of, is ether a security or a commodity or not. There's no Gary Gensler of Europe blocking all of these things. It's quite clearly detailed as to what the nature of ether, the asset is. It's a commodity in EU legislation. A few comments from the panel that we talked to.

the U.S. is getting its pants beat by global regulation as a comment. We're getting our pants beat by a B minus. Nice. Yeah, it's a B minus ahead, but there's still room for the EU to fail here. There's some other regulation that might be upcoming. AMLR, the Data Act is one of them. There's some more. So before anyone in the U.S. says, we're moving to Europe and throws that party, I think we've got to get through this heavier regulation and see where we come out on the other side.

So there's still room to fail the semester. This is just one test. But B minus on the first test. It's better than the United States. That's for sure. Okay. All right. I don't know if I should be optimistic or pessimistic.

B minus. My first reaction is like, B minus, cool. We can start from there and get better. But then I guess you could start from there get worse. Anyways. You can. Whatever.

So some of the most boomer news that we'll ever put into a weekly roll up, trans union, the credit scoring company is working with some partners, to deliver credit scoring to blockchain. Hey, that's cool, though. So, TLDR, they are allowing, they're basically being an Oracle for credit scores on a blockchain. So you have your credit score.

Like your FICO score. Your FICA score. Yeah, you can put that on a blockchain so that something like AVE could like review that credit score and be like, okay, I'll give this person a line of credit. It's not going to work exactly like that, but that's kind of the deal. I think that's awesome, actually.

It's not a terrible use case. There's like, you can get, it's private. as well so you can get some privacy. It's one of the earliest most primitive building blocks for building like uncollateralized lending. It's a thing. We do need credit in D5. We have none.

It's all collateral backed loans at this point. Speaking of releases, Fee has released something here. P.H.I. That's Fee. What are they doing? Fee land. So this is like a super cute project that I just think is awesome. Fee land, we talked about it before. It's like this 3D landscape for building a little metaverse for yourself. that you put objects on based off of what you've done in your Ethereum wallet.

So if you've traded on Uniswap, you get a little Uniswap building. If you bought on OpenC, you get a little OpenC ship. Bankless has got some stuff. So if you're a Filand user, you got some bankless things that you can claim. So if you are a bank holder, you get a little wagon. If you are a podcast NFT holder, you get a little, cute little version of me and Ryan, a little icon to claim. If you are a POP holder, you get a wallpaper.

So if you are a user of Filand, if you're not a user of Fee land, If you're not a user of a Fee Land, you should definitely check it out. It's like the most fun identity Web 3 non-financial app. So checks all those boxes. And it's just pretty fun. It's also a great way to like do, you go on quests to claim these things, right? And so some of these are what we're looking at, these four quests that we've got. And so if you are a Filand user and you are a Bankless Nation member, you have some objects that you can go claim and go put in your little Fee Land.

So go do that and then take a screenshot and tweet. it and tag bank lists so we can see and we'll retweet it. This is like your on-chain resume or maybe like your on-chain trophy case or something like this? It's just a lot of fun to build your profile. The artist behind this, by the way, is the same artist for the noun style. This is why it's pixelated and it looks like that. Very cool. Another release this week's Swell Network. What are they up to? Swell Network we've talked about them before. Live main net is now in public beta.

So this is a staking as a service like Rocket Pool like Lido like all the other ones, brand new Dow with plans to integrate distributed validator technology which is more technology that I get super hot on and so they are launching their main net is launched

so they would like you to join their community is their deal and also steak also steak yeah should also mention both fee and swell David and I are angel investors

in these projects really excited about them jobs of the week David speaking of excitement here we got some jobs at Coinbase a staff blocker chain engineer, a staff smart contract engineer, I think working with Jesse Powell and team. Jesse's a nice guy.

That's what I've heard. Phantom, software engineer mobile. Phantom's hiring software engineer front end. They just released their wallet, by the way. It's a polygon and Ethereum, awesome project. Lots of jobs here today. Premium wants a Web3 product management and architect. Denera wants a smart contract engineer.

Uniswop Labs needs a senior backend engineer. Senior product designers for you. going to swap as well. There's a ton of jobs. Dude, scroll down. There's so many jobs. There are so many. There are so many jobs there are. Look how many jobs there are. It keeps on growing. It's one of those things that you keep on scrolling and it keeps on loading. There's so many drops. Crypto, this is a bare market in crypto and it's still hiring like crazy, which is impressive. Coming up next, we got the questions from the nation. We're going to talk about AI and blockchain and what that intersection looks like. So that's the question from the nation. It's also a similar

a take from the All-In Podcast. Gets a take that Crypto is dead. Do we disagree with that take or do we not disagree with that take? We'll talk about that. And then we're going to talk about what we are bulletron. So all of that and more. But first, I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. The Phantom wallet is coming to Ethereum. The number one wallet on Solana is bringing its millions of users and Ux to Ethereum and Polygon. If you haven't used Phantom before, you've been missing out. Phantom was one of the first wallets to pioneer Solana staking inside the wallet and will be offering similar staking features for Ethereum and Polygon. But that's just staking. Phantom is

also the best home for your NFTs. Phantom has a complete set of features to optimize your NFT experience. Pin your favorites, hide your uglies, burn the spam, and also manage your NFT sale listings from inside the wallet. Phantom is of course a multi-chain wallet, but it makes chain management easy displaying your transactions in a human readable format with automatic warnings for malicious transactions or phishing websites. Phantom has already saved over 20,000 users from getting scammed or hacked. So get on the Phantom wait list and be one of the first to access the multi- There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to phantom. dot app slash waitlist to get access in late February.

Bankless is launching the bankless token hub. At bankless, we've been studying the crypto markets ever since 2017, and all of our research has led us to this, the token hub. You're a one-stop shop for Alpha to help you navigate through the crypto markets. Have you ever wished for a trusted resource that would share their thoughts, ratings, and their opinions about tokens? Boy, do we have the product for you. The Bankless Token Hub is where we provide bankless citizens,

with the alpha on the hottest tokens in crypto. We do the research so you don't have to. The bankless token hub includes the token ratings where our team shares their research and outlook on the hottest tokens in crypto. Also the token hub includes bankless bags, our own internal investment club. Bankless bags is where we put our money where our mouth is.

And for the bankless power user out there, you can access the analyst team 24-7 inside the Bankless Nation Discord. You can ask them questions and learn from a group of people deep in the weeds of crypto investing. The last feature of the token hub the ability to up vote or downvote token ratings. The bankless token hub lets you learn from your fellow citizens to rate these tokens

yourselves. The bankless token hub is launching right now and has already been beta tested by your fellow bankless citizens. So stay tuned in the bankless Discord for updates. And if you're not a bankless citizen, well, you better sign up if you want access because this corner of bankless is available for citizens only. I'll see you in the Discord. We have a question from Rocket Polster this week.

David, you ready for this? Yeah, hit me. Rocket Polster goes. Given a future of AI, deep fakes, disinformation, and blockchains, what companies and projects are at the forefront of ensuring provenance and how? Is in brackets hardware, question mark? So we acknowledge all of these problems with AI becoming, like, we don't know who the robots are online, you know,

whether the robots created this piece of content or a human did. and robots are like infinitely scalable, okay? Very, very cheap to spin up. We've always had sort of a, when it was just the humans on the internet, there was a cost to kind of producing information. And now there's this ability to mass spread all sorts of information, like information that's not credible, all sorts of things. So is there a blockchain solution to this,

or is there any solution to this that you've seen? Yeah, so really prescient question, I'd say. I think there is, and dare I say, Rocket Pulster is looking for Alpha. About like, okay, what are the companies here? Because they're probably, I'm assuming that they are bullish on the intersection of AI and crypto and specifically Providence, right? This was one of the really early use cases of crypto that we've seen before. Once upon the time, there was fake news shared about Vitalik's death and about Vitalik's assassination

and the ether price started to plummet. and so Vitalik took a selfie with a piece of paper of the current block height of Ethereum and just to prove that it was recent enough and then tweeted that out. Like proof of life, right?

Proof of life, right? And then the price recovered and we moved on. So like you could use the same sort of format with like AI, right? And this is just called timestamping. You just like submit a hash and a block about the origination

of some content before you release it to the public so that when everyone's like, what's the real source of this, you can prove that you have the most original piece of content. And you could sign that with a private key as well, right? Send that with a private key, right. Yeah. And like that's actually not really a revolution in cryptography. That is, or cryptocurrency, that is a revolution in database design as a blockchain.

That's a database solution. And cryptography. It's totally a cryptography solution. Yes. Yes. That's actually an solution that's absent of the currency other than we need a system to secure the database and that's what we use, need the currency for. Anyways, I digress.

I kind of see two venues here. There is the venue of just like identity. So like WorldCoin is implicitly going after this. Any sort of identity on a blockchain, the identity play is a part of this. Like provenance in the world of AI, we need human AI. You can trust me because you're listening to me on bankless and I'm a human and you've been listening to me for a while.

I'm going to tell you that I own David Hoffman. d. And another human like me is going to socially verify that you own David Hoffman. Right. And that's kind of enough to prove that you're a human. Yeah, but you're an AI. So that does get precarious. So there could be more perfect ways of doing that.

But there's like the, what I'm saying is like there are companies that will go directly after this problem. And then there are other ways that are adjacent to this that provide solutions to this problem adjacently. And that's the identity world. And then perhaps there are companies that are going directly after this, which is just like a time stamping company. I remember in 2017 there was like an ICO that was like a time stamping company on Bitcoin. And for some reason, the Bitcoiners said it was bullish. But I don't know of any, I can't name any specific ones, but it is a very, that is a worthwhile place of research to explore, I would say.

I think it's huge. I think it's so important. Yeah, this tidal wave of manipulative content, it's about to hit the internet. So we got to find out who the humans are and who the robots are. It's also a national security threat. Like this is kind of nation states, like when nation states can attack other nation states with robo propaganda, right? Like how do you actually can, like, this is just a massive tidal wave that's going to hit everybody. And what I've seen, David, is like we have the building blocks in crypto.

It's going to be something crypto or crypto adjacent. Like we have the ability to store uncensurable, provable data on computers that are always running, cannot be taken down, cannot be censored. we got that. We got the private key cryptography and kind of the management. We have some of the early stages of identity type systems. WorldCoin kind of takes it to the, we can actually prove a human using like Iriscan type data. And by the way, I think we want to get WorldCoin on the podcast at some point to discuss this. Oh, it's scheduled. We have that scheduled. Sam Altman and the co-founder are coming on. I haven't seen anybody who's put this together in a way that's like scalable and

going to work. There's like a lot of slides and a lot of companies promising and decentralized identity has been a theme. Verifiable credentials have been a thing that people have talked about, but who is actually putting it all together? A lot of talk, right? But like who's actually putting it together and making it scalable and making it ready for the world? So the solution is completely clear. I know it's going to, I feel very strongly it's going to be crypto or crypto adjacent. What can I invest in? Like, where's the alpha? I mean, that's what I want. I'm kind of back with Rocket Polster. and the truth is I haven't quite seen the project that really excites me on this yet. But it's got to come, right?

We've got to solve this. Someone's going to solve it. Yeah, yeah. I think the big question is just like, does this get solved emergently by a collection of adjacent technologies, like I was saying? Or is there one particular startup that's going to tackle this problem head on? Like, that's an interesting question. Yeah, I agree. All right, we'll keep our eyes peeling and let you guys know, Rockapolster.

Let's get to some takes this week, David. The first take is one we teased earlier from Chimoth, from the All In Podcast. He says, David, crypto is dead in America. I saw this tweet from CNBC. He said in the U.S. it's dead. But I think we should go straight to the source and actually hear what he said in context. So let's play that. I was just curious to get your thoughts.

SEC obviously sent to Wells, known as we talked about this before, to Brian Armstrong of Coinbase. He said he's thinking about or considering relocating out of the U.S. if the regulatory clarity does not improve. Crypto's dead in America. It is dead in America. Crypto's dead in America. I mean, now you had Gensler, you had Gensler even blaming the banking crisis on crypto.

So they've, the United States authorities have firmly pointed their guns at crypto. Is it a scapegoat or was it a fuck-around find-out moment for crypto in your mind? Or a little bit of both? I don't know. I just think that they were. probably the ones that were the most threatening to the establishment. Okay. And they were the ones that, in fairness to the regulators, did push the boundaries more than any other sector of the startup economy.

And yeah, so now they're paying the price for that. The bill has come due for them. What do you think about that take day? I love how they talk about us as like all of them, them, the crypto industry. And I'm like, we do the same things. Of course. Everyone does this. But it's like interesting.

You blanket an industry with. Yeah. The crypto people, their check has come due, right? I was like, that's not my check, Chimoth. I didn't cash that one. Well, what do you think of his overall take then? Yeah, that was our take for last week on the weekly roll. I was like, yeah.

Crypto is dead in America? I mean, that's a hyperbolic statement. Chimoth is a little bit of a diva. All of these guys are a little bit of divas. So are we. Content producers are kind of divas. He's being a little bit of a diva. He's not wrong.

Everything he says right. By saying his statement. so emphatically and hyperbolicly, that's what you're saying. And you agree with the tone and the thrust of that statement. But I bet you'd have some quibbles with, it's not actually dead in America. I mean, we haven't like outlawed crypto. We just were in front of Congress last week and Gary Gensler was thoroughly grilled for his anti-innovation, anti-cryptu posturing.

I think it's, for me, it's a step too far to say crypto is dead in America. 100%. It's 100%. And I think if you, if we were having. a conversation with him and we were nitpicking, he would become much more moderate about it. Yeah. Just like as the high level headline is dead of America. Yeah. And it's like it's a little bit of like a quote unquote bottom signal, right? Like he is he is presenting a specific snapshot in time.

And what he's saying, a way to interpret this is like this is the worst moment in crypto's American relationship ever. Yes. That's accurate. And Coinbase is going to sue the F out of Gary against are in the SEC and we're going to come back. And so it's up only from here in terms of the health of our relationship with America. I think so. If he's also making the broader point, like one purpose of the sound by that headline on CNBC is like

you could phrase this another way. The regulators or the government is killing crypto in America. That's also hyperbolic but that also kind of like prompts for some action. What are you guys doing? You're screwing this up. You're leaving America behind.

And I hope that's kind of the the takeaway here too. I get some more takes here. David, here is from Ethereum on Arm. This is, what are we looking at? We're looking at some hardware here? Yeah, so I put this one in here. This is an Ethereum staking node. You can tell like how close up we are to this tiny little box because of the

blur effect on the, on the camera. This has got to be what? Three inches by three inches by one inch of a computer. Full computer. That's an Ethereum staking node. This is I had to phrase it this way. but it's so awesome.

This is the smallest, most powerful dissident technology form factor that exists. This is a nation state. This is a network state. Freedom technology. There's no, like, you can't, this is Ethereum. You cannot shut this down. One of these things in every person's home in like one in 100 people's home. It doesn't matter.

It's like so powerful. There's capital on this thing. It's verifying a network. It is an online network state. it is cryptography, it is cryptocurrency, it is just the instantiation of everything that is so cool about the frontier of technology, the industry that we are building. And it's, it's, it's, like, I hate to be an anti-statist. I am an anti-statist, but it's like big FU to nation states, because like, look what we can do on top of our, in our little computer box.

I actually don't think you're as anti-status as, as you just may be expressive, somebody took that, you know, that sound clip out. is I think this, another way to put this, and guys, we're coming out with an episode on liberalism, the protocol of liberalism on Monday, is not necessarily anti-status. It is anti-authoritarian, I think. And this is liberalism protocol preserving.

So property rights, censorship, resistance, freedom of speech, you know, those things in the amendments in the Constitution that we set up our Democratic Republic protocols with. It's that kind of technology. a new institutional form factor. It's so awesome. I know. It's awesome. I like that. You pulled that out. I didn't know what you're going to say on that image, but that's, you know, way cooler. This is the part two of this take, actually, so it continues. You'll be happy to hear. So here's a take from tycoon.eath.

When your ETH validator gets chosen to build a block, you got to step back and appreciate one of the greatest miracles of open source coordination and collaboration. For 12 seconds, your tiny machine in your bedroom is responsible for carrying on a network worth billions of billions of dollars. It's so awesome. It's so awesome. It is. Wow. That's why I'm in this community, David. That's why I'm in this industry. I really believe in this technology is a force for good. Yeah. All right, cool. You got a take too. Let me read David Hoffman's take. Bankless is an AI alignment podcast until further notice. Track record so far. Eliezer Yudkowski, 99% chance of doom. Paul Cristiano, 50% chance of doom. I just recorded with somebody's sort of name at, uh, Muri. He says there's a 95% chance of doom. Oh, that's bad news, David. Yeah, that's not

95% chance. Yeah, the guy that works with the machine intelligence research institute, he's at 95%. He works with, um, Elyzer Dukowski. So I expected he'd be in like the 80s to 90s, but 95% isn't awesome. Um, and then you finish it with this. Want Eith to hit 10K? We got to solve AI alignment. I don't know. I think we can hit 10K before that, but, you know, what's the good of your 10K if the robots come and destroy it anyway? Right, yeah. I think that's the take year.

So what did you want to say about this? Yeah, that's it. Our hands are, what's the word? Our hands are forced. Like, what's the point of doing anything else if we can't solve AI? Why are we giving this one more special attention? There's all sorts of existential threats, right?

There's nuclear proliferation. There's biotech. Why do you think that? It's one level, one dimension higher than all other existential. It's the meta existential threat because it can cause all the other existential threats to happen or not happen. I kind of agree with this. And the other thing is if we get it right on the good side, it starts to solve all of the other existential threats. Okay.

Not just potentially. So that was actually, so I'm here in Montenegro doing this whole like network stake thing with a bunch of different experts from different corners of the world. And so Nate, I was talking to Nate, just at the longest interview. I usually do 20 to 40 minutes while I'm out here. I did over an hour with him. The last question and the last point that we, the point of things that we talked about is like all of the doom that these people feel. Because I started to get into the personal. I was like, okay, dude, like, how do you wake up in the morning? How do you keep going when you, when you are at 95% trussed? I'm glad you did that. I'm glad you got into that, by the way. So that was the end of it. And he, and he just talked about

like, I had my, same thing with Eliezer, dude. I had my cry. And then, picked it up and I kept on going because what else am I going to do? I'm going to solve this problem. And then I did the whole bankless internal optimist thing because we're optimist. And I'm like, okay, well, understanding that there's a 99% chance of doom, that we can't solve AI problems, it's Terminator, it's the worst, it's hell, it's all that we all get our atoms, repurposed, all the bad stuff that is the apparently likely, most likely outcome for the AI alignment problem.

under the conditions that we do solve AI alignment, and I'm not saying that we know how to do that, but under the assumption that we do get there, we do thread that very small needle, it's not just like, oh, few, we solved AI alignment, we're not dying. It's actually all of the evils that we are trying to avoid invert, and they go from evils to positive because we fix AI alignment. And so it not just goes like, oh, no, few, we still get to operate society.

society starts to become literally perfect. It becomes a utopia. It becomes heaven because we solved AI alignment and because we are working with them and they are producing the heaven that we want. And so like maybe the 99% is bad, but the 1% chance that we solve AI alignment is so good. You're telling me there's a chance. No, I'm not telling you that there's a chance. I'm telling you that if once we, if we do get through that chance, the other side of

that chance is so cool and awesome because AIs are doing. cool stuff for us alongside us, shoulder to shoulder with us, that that should be motivating. And it cancels out how bad the 99% is. I don't know if it cancels it out for me, but I think it's definitely the stakes are, like, we don't often talk about the other side of this if we do get it right. I mean, all of our episodes have been Dumer, but like, I think it can solve a whole bunch of the existential problems that are outside of the category of AI. Not just a whole bunch.

All of them. That's the whole cool thing. It solves every problem. Is that what you're bullish on this week, David? I think I saw that. Is this what you're bullish on? Tell me what you're bullish on. Yeah.

So actually, that goes back to a rocket poolster's question. Yeah, and that topic. I am bullish on all of a sudden, this AI alignment problem is going to like sweep the world slowly, but surely. We're front-running opportunity here at Bankless with this. Eventually, everyone's going to be talking about this because we're going to be faced with the problem.

Crypto is going to provide some tools and some like time stamping, like proof of humanity, like all of this stuff, is going to provide parts of the solution we need to live in an AI world. And it's going to start to legitimize crypto because we've been thinking about these problems for the last decade. And Web2 has not. And nation states have not. We are creating future technologies in crypto that we need to live in an AI world. And we've been building them for a decade now. And so we as an industry are the most prepared to help humans live in a post-AI world. And that is going to be extremely legitimizing.

And so AI is going to come in. And then people will be like, okay, that crypto thing, we kind of need those guys. Thanks for building the identity stuff. And that's what I'm bullish on. Oh, I'm also bullish on. Prescient bankless listeners will notice that it's a different time in the day from the last pre-sponsor break. That's because we have to pause the episode, go do like three meetings and come back. because Ryan and I were super busy.

In that amount of time, I bought one of the NFTs from earlier, the Madlas that I was talking about. You did Salana. You did the Salana thing. I touched Salana for the first time. I bought, so here's my little dude.

I try to get one that looks like me. Did I get good enough? Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. So this is a Mad Lad. There's a Mad Lad, yeah. Yeah, that's good. There you go.

I'm now bullish mad lads and I own one. So that's what I'm a lot of Marla. I'm now a Salana Maxi. Eat the Maximus. Sorry, he's turned. Sizzana, Sissana's going to be so mad at me. Okay, Ryan, what are you bullish, Ron? I am bullish that we won't go the way,

that the U.S. won't go the way of China in terms of banning crypto. We're already seeing, like, Europe do something that was much more measured with Mika. That's great. But, like, actually reflecting on the hearing, the grilling of Gary Gensler last week, crypto has a lot of friends in Congress. Pretty surprised, right? Patrick McHenry, Tom Emmer, these people, Maybe they, hopefully they care about Western liberal values.

They care about things like free speech. But even if they don't, maybe they're just doing this for the money or whatever, crypto also has some of that too, like votes and dollars. And so I'm bullish that we won't go their way of China. And I'm also bullish that we have a court system that can check nation state regulators and powers. I don't know if this works in all the countries around the world, but the fact that a company, an entrepreneur,

can effectively sue the SEC and Gary Gensler and that there is another power, a higher power in the court system and check and balance on a regulator that wants to completely quash this industry. That's another bullish signal. I also think that we can win the court of opinion, right? So you heard the Brian Armstrong's like,

hey, I started the company, entrepreneur, I decided to locate it in America. what Gensler is doing, he's driving this out of the U.S. How is it fair? How is it fair? How can you be called a credible regulator of securities when after seven years, you don't even know, you can't even tell us, you won't give us the clarity on whether ether is a security or not. It's not that freaking hard. In fact, we saw this clips earlier. Gensler knew it was a commodity in 2018. It was obvious. And now he can't tell us it's a commodity. I think we win that battle in the court of public opinion. And I do think, like, in a democracy, hopefully that's what the U.S.

still is, it has that semblance. It calls itself a democracy. That will matter as well. And so I think we win there, too. So winning in Congress or early stages of like turning the ties in Congress, court system check and balance, I think we can win the court of opinion as well. So all of this to say, you know, this has almost been the year. We've been talking so much about regulators in 2023. And it's all because of the backlash of SBF and Doquan and Mishinsky in 2022. And I get it. But I feel like, I feel like we've seen the worst. I don't want to say it's the bottom. Like there could still be some things in Operation Chokepoint that are happening. But I'm starting to see blue skies ahead and the tide turning a little bit. And I don't

think that this ends with kind of a, you know, US ban on crypto or some disaster scenario. Yeah, I think that's right. And when we were doing our Ledger show, the state of the nation we did yesterday, the chart show, for a brief moment, we were talking about how, like, you and I got very bullish on Ether in the 2018 to 2020 Bar Market. And it was perhaps one of the most contrarian things that you and I will ever do with her lives was be bullish Ether in that time frame. And, like, one thing I mentioned in that show, and I've been reflecting on it in the last day or so, was that I haven't been able to feel that level of contrarian since. Because, like, well, it was easy to be contrarian at $100 ether.

It's 20 times less hard to do it at $2,000 ether. But, like, reflecting on the current state of the world right now, Gary Gensler and the SEC, John Oliver, just like public opinion about crypto and NFTs, everyone in like crypto, Petunamapagia, crypto is dead, NFTs are scams. We don't need crypto. Upon reflection, it actually is. is once again, very contrarian right now and makes it feel very safe because we know crypto's not going anywhere. They don't even understand how AI is going to come force their hand and make them use crypto.

They don't even know that. We know that. That's why we're here. That's what we're doing. I agree. It doesn't feel quite as contrarian, but it's still like the ageal trope, but we're still early. Can I say that without saying cliche and dumb? right? It's still actually true. We're still early.

Guys, to prove that, we have a meme of the week, a combination, moment of Zen for you. The Normans want to understand this, David. Balenciaga, if Belencia met crypto, that's what you're about to see. It's super weird, but I hope you stick around. It's super weird. I'll do the risk and disclaimers. You won't get it. Risk of disclaimers, of course. Crypto is risky. 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. There's only crypto in fashion, and fashion is Balenciaga. If you're not wearing Balenciaga, you will get liquidated. Crypto is risky, but we're headed west dressed in Balenciaga.