Bankless - ROLLUP: Crypto Bullish Again? | OpenUSD vs USDC | Robinhood Chain | Trump’s $1.4B Haul

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Crypto looks bullish again, but the receipts are complicated. David and Ryan unpack OpenUSD’s USDC threat, Robinhood Chain’s tokenized stocks, Saylor’s hedge-fund pivot, Venice’s token dilemma, Cloudflare’s stablecoin payments, and Trump’s $1.4B crypto haul. --- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY APP https://app.okx.com/en-us/join/usbankless --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS 📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0 https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES  0:00 Intro 2:37 Market Bounce + Fed Watch https://x.com/KillaXBT/status/2072288076928266434 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/kevin-warsh-ecb-forum-live-updates.html https://polymarket.com/event/fed-decision-in-july-181 https://thedefireport.io/research/52-of-the-btc-supply-is-now-in-the-red https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/2072660106035028395 8:37 Strategy’s Digital Credit Capital Framework https://x.com/saylor/status/2071565162377568377 https://x.com/Strategy/status/2071565225699004761 16:37 The Rise of Robinhood Chain https://x.com/RobinhoodApp/status/2072390893181481419 https://x.com/charliekerr/status/2072477658802217187 https://x.com/EntropyAdvisors/thread/2072395320752050212 https://x.com/trent_vanepps/status/2072405895313588351 https://x.com/Lighter_xyz/status/2072394977729040722 https://x.com/Lighter_xyz/status/2072401925094441109 26:10 Venice AI Becomes a Unicorn https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/01/venice-ai-becomes-a-unicorn-with-65m-series-a-as-its-privacy-first-ai-platform-takes-off/ https://x.com/ErikVoorhees/status/2072326370206581037 https://x.com/ErikVoorhees/status/2072336126912630921 https://x.com/MikeIppolito_/status/2072353260795572281 https://x.com/ChainLinkGod/status/2072378849921577306 https://x.com/CosimoCapital/status/2072450958270050394 35:07 OpenUSD vs USDC https://joinopenstandard.com/blog/introducing-open-usd/ https://x.com/stripe/status/2071948464762618051 https://x.com/jerallaire/status/2072252803163255179 https://x.com/lorenzoark/status/2071997238713127404 https://x.com/HadickM/thread/2072286093744234864 https://x.com/koeppelmann/status/2071961529671418065 https://x.com/paoloardoino/status/2071982330915225771 46:10 Ethereum Institutional Launches https://x.com/ethereuminsti/status/2072304960142729373 https://www.ethereuminstitutional.org/ https://x.com/fundstrat/status/2072318453248094708 https://x.com/Sharplink/status/2072307000298397834 https://x.com/ethlabs_org/status/2072326438594748921 49:03 Trump’s $1.4B Crypto Disclosure https://x.com/aggrnews/status/2072059335081967812 https://x.com/AC360/status/2072128334666879070  https://x.com/business/status/2072069350060617837 54:28 Solana Memecoin Revival https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2072653822283874481 https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/the-black-bull https://x.com/Adam_Tehc/status/2072183263893065930 https://polymarket.com/event/what-price-will-ansem-hit-in-2026 59:20 Cloudflare x402 Stablecoin Payments https://blog.cloudflare.com/monetization-gateway/ https://youtu.be/TKVY4hVAd9g 1:02:08 Meme of the Week https://x.com/pubity/status/2072436231284072635 https://x.com/FoxNews/status/2072357302942752993 https://x.com/RidazLp2/status/2072563280602927377/photo/4 1:03:35 Closing & Disclosures --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Bake the station, it's the first week of July, and we have a huge week of news this week. The world's largest financial institutions just launched a brand-new stable-coin co-op to compete with Circle and Tether, calling it Open U.S.D from Open Standard. Names like Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, BlackRock, Google, Coinbase. 60-plus names, Circle dropped 17% on the news. is this the first USD killer to come on the scene in a while or just the world's biggest letter of intent? We also have a continuation of the Michael Saylor story. Is that whole thing going to unwind?

Possibly a bookend? Possibly a bookend. Maybe a bookend. He deferred it even longer. They just raised, I don't know, one to two billion more. We'll talk about how that happened and whether that can get them out of this current predicament. There's also Robin Hood Chain.

There was an event from Robin Hood in London where they announced and launched Robin Hood Chain. So many things to talk about. tokenized stocks trading on UNisop, 7% stable coin yield, perps via lighter, really just the rise of Robin Hood Chain. And also the rise of Ethereum Institutional. That's another thing that launched this week. The second org to roll out of the EF in two weeks specialization

or talent sprawl. Nice. I like what you did there, David. But we also have Venice we're going to talk about. And I want you to get me to fill me in on Trump, all the money Trump made. And we get to see, just we get to quantify how much was possibly grifted from the crypto industry. Big story there. Who would you rather be all of crypto companies or Donald Trump, who made more money?

Yeah. We're going to get to all this and more. But before we do, we got to talk about OKX. The Intern continental exchange, this is a hot week to talk about this, which is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. they backed OkX in a $25 billion valuation to launch, tokenize New York Stock Exchange, stocks and derivatives later this year on OKX. That's TradFi and Defi all in the same place,

the defy mullet all on one head. Trusted by over 120 million users globally, OKX is bringing products to the U.S. market that Wall Street has been dreaming of for years, and OKX is finally delivering them through their new money app. If you are not yet on OKX, You can get a 6% deposit match using the link in the show notes unless you are from Texas or New York. So if you're from Texas or New York, don't do that. Not investment advice.

Let's go ahead and get right into it. Okay. Ryan, Bitcoin started the week, $61,000. Dropped to a new low. It broke through new lows of 57,800. Right now at the time of recording, it is actually higher than it started the week at 62,000. Same story for Eath. Eith is up 2% on the week.

It started the week just below. low, 1700. It hit a new low, new low in like years of 1500 and is ending the week at just above 17. I think there's a decent probability that that was the bottom for both. For crypto, for the blue chips, I think that could have been the bottom. What probability? I agree that's a decent probability, but I'm curious what probability you'd assign versus what I would assign. 40 to 50% probability. That that was the bottom? That that was the bottom. That that was the bottom. Oh, interesting. Okay, that's lower than I thought you'd be because you sounded a bit more bullish. I would assign it like, that's pretty bullish. That's pretty bullish. Really? Okay. I think so.

I thought from the sound of your voice, I was like, oh, David's like 80%, 90% that this is the bottom. No, you can never be that high. You can never be that high. I'm probably pretty close, 40% to 50% that that was the bottom, but that, you know, leaves 50% probability, a coin flip that it wasn't and that we're actually going to go lower. I want to, does this sound? Right. Bitcoin went down in 2018, 84% from the high. In 2022, 76%. With this new low, 2026, it would be 54%. Doesn't it feel like if you want these numbers to kind of line up symmetrically and the time range to line up as well, 12 months of a bear in each of these, we hit the lows, 12 months of a bear, we hit the lows. We're not yet 12. 12 months were nine months. And doesn't it look like this instead of 54%. Just like Squint and look at this.

Doesn't it look like it should be in the 60s? 62, 63, maybe 65% from the high of the previous cycle? Like, look at it. It depends on whether you're a cycle maxi and you don't care about anything. There is no other choice. Historically, if you are not a cycle maxi, then you have been washed out of these markets because you've over leveraged yourself or you've been disappointed and you just like quit these markets. Most people still remaining are cycle maxis or at least they should be if they're on their like third or fourth cycle.

Like this keeps happening guys. What do you think it means? Do you think it means it could happen again? Yes, I do. Clearly I'm talking to a cycle maxi here. Look, Sailor, we're going to talk about this in a second. Saylor bought himself like almost 20 months of cash USD runway for dividend payments. Yeah.

And so the only other bottom I could see is like when that starts to like evaporate and we get down to like eight months of cash runway and then the market starts to really care about what Sailor does. But we got 12 months before we get to that point. Now, bear markets last about 12 months. So maybe we hit another bottom at the tail end of the bail market and that's the bottom and then we rock it upwards because Sailor was forced to cough up Bitcoin. I would give the recent bottom a higher probability of being the bottom if sales. Cray coughed up Bitcoin, but he didn't. He just dumped MSTR. And so I will give you that, that like,

Sailor didn't cough up Bitcoin. And so, you know, he hasn't eaten his humble pie. He's still thinking that he can hold on to every single Satoshi that he ever bought. And that is what worries me. But, Ryan, he's got 20 months of runway. That's a long time. Okay. But this isn't just about Sailor, right?

There's other things that are bigger than Sailor. okay, including Bitcoin, of course, but including macro. And there is a question as to what the Fed does next. People think that it will be maybe in the middle type Fed, not overly doveish, not overly hawkish. You mean a Fed that's just balanced and responsible and does their job? Kind of. It's not just doing what Trump wants and just slashing rates,

but is like thinking whether we should raise them or not, that's still in the water. If it turns out that Warsh is a bit more hawkish than the market, specs, that could turn things on a dime and that could cause equities to go down. If equities go down, let's say, David, AI, NASDAQ went down 20 to 25%. You think Bitcoin remains, you know, like 60K? No, no. There's lots, there's chum in the water for those types of things to be catalyst for us to

hit the final capitulation zone and the final bottom. And I think that's remaining. In fact, I think we're up a little bit. The stock market is quite high and has a lot to fall. There you go. If it does decide to fall. There you go. There you go.

And I do think we're up a little bit, at least on the day, because... We're up on the week. The SPY, the SMP 500 is up 2.5% this week. NASAC up 2% this week. Oil prices continue their decline. They are WTI and Brent down 3.5%. WTI traded below $70 this week. Yeah.

And we had some, I guess, good news recently on the week. for markets at least. Fed Chair Warsh had a meeting at the ECB. It was just a forum and he said expectations of inflation have actually come down. You can see that in oil prices that you mentioned earlier. Inflation risks have come down, which if they're coming down, then the Fed doesn't have to raise rates, certainly could leave them where they are, could think about decreasing them in the future. I think the markets got some bullish catalyst on that. There was also a pretty good jobs report. the polymarket on the next Fed decision, which happens at the end of July, you know, peaked up a little bit. Like the probability of no change went from something like 75% to something like 90%. So the

market is anticipating that Warsh is not going to do anything in the next meeting, either up or down. But let's get back to Sailor. Okay. So where we left things last week was he had this three body problem. He has MSTR holders. He has the STRC holders. And, And then he has Bitcoin and they're all kind of orbiting one another. And, you know, which course will he take? They're all pulling on one another. So what's he going to do? So what did he do on the week?

He released the digital credit capital framework, which is just strategy speak for we're a hedge fund now. What do you mean? What do you mean? With Sailor and strategy, they are such a force and they need to keep their cards close to their chest to preserve maximum optionality. Okay. that they are starting to look like the Fed when it comes to Bitcoin. And so there's like, you know, Fed speak versus like real language.

So I'm going to do my best to put everything into real language. Yeah, what was the language, at least? We're a hedge fund now. They didn't say that. They didn't say that. No, they said they released a digital credit capital framework. I'm saying that what they are saying, we should interpret this as, they are just a hedge fund. And so here's some of the just the core measures that they did.

they increased their USD reserves to $2.55 billion that's 17 and a half months of dividend coverage. That was up from the last week. They added a little bit more than a billion dollars. So they more than doubled their time that they have to pay for stretch. And was that MSTR ATM sales? That I can only imagine. He did not sell Bitcoin.

He did not sell Bitcoin. So I had to be. But, Ryan, they gave themselves a formal authorization to sell $1.25 billion of Bitcoin. Wait, they gave themselves permission to sell? This was always allowed.

This is kind of my issue with this. It's like, they were always allowed to sell Bitcoin. Well, it's called Ford guidance, right? Yes, yes, exactly. Ford guidance to everybody who... But they're not going to sell more than $1.25 billion of Bitcoin.

So if you are worried, if you're a Bitcoin holder and you're worried that they're going to sell more than $1.25 billions of dollars, you are relieved. Well, unless they give themselves permission to sell more. It themselves. Yeah, right. Okay, so the funky math that they get to do with this is that you get to add $1.25 billion worth of Bitcoin to their dividend coverage. So now their math is you add these things together. They have $3.8 billion of reserves. If you add the funny money, $1.25 billion of a big. That's so funny money. It's real money. Bitcoin they haven't sold yet. Okay. But this gives them 26 months of dividend coverage. So because of their authorization, they are often. authorized to add on a fake nine months of dividend coverage because they've authorized it. Well, it was always real. They just are acknowledging that it's an option, I suppose. But yes,

I get your point. 26 months is a long time, though. Is it is a long time. Yeah. And then they increase this stretch dividend yield from 11.5% to 12%. What this does is that informs the market that they are going to try and keep their capital market window open to them by trying to get stretch back up to $100 so that they can issue more stretch to buy more Bitcoin. They want STRC holders to be happy. They want SGRC. Yeah, also, they're kind of backed up against the wall because of all of the promotion and

marketing that Sailor has done around Stretch. And so they really want stretchholders to not be unhappy in case they get sued. Sure. Yeah. And then they also have a buyback program for Stretch and Convertible Notes or MSTR. They say, like, hey, if we want to, we can buy these things back, which once again was always allowed. Well, more punishing, I can imagine, to the MSTR holders on the week, right, with some additional inflation of MSTR.

Yeah, but it was above MNAV anyways. And so, I mean, MSTR, it bottomed out at $82. Yesterday, it got up to $104. Oh, wow. It's now at $99. Okay. So it has recovered, and also so has stretched. So stretch is at $88.

You know, it bottomed around $70 to $73. So it's walking its way closer back to $100. Well, it was a buying opportunity last week then, SDRC at least, right? I mean, that would have been a good one to lock in. For sure. If you, if you, like this, because this was very likely what Michael Saylor was going to do. He was going to run the ATM as hot as he could. Yes.

And then give some indication that, hey, like if you're like, we're willing to sell Bitcoin too. The thing about selling Bitcoin, though, is it does, I think you made the point last week that there's this social contract that Sailor has a I never sell. Like mortgage a second home, mortgage a third home. Sell a kidney. Yeah. Like we do whatever you have to to hold Bitcoin. And so he has been doing that over the past four years.

And it breaks that social construct. He has three social contracts. Pay, stretch dividend holders, their money. Have it traded 100. Don't dilute MSCR holders below one of MNAV and don't sell Bitcoin. And he hasn't broken any of those social contracts other than selling the 32 Bitcoin, which I don't think counts. was so small.

Yeah. Just to know about the three body problem, like all three bodies do orbit one another. It's just the orbits are unpredictable. So it's not. But there are, there are like solutions to the three body problem. There's like 20 or 30 and like, you know, you have three in a circle. It's perfectly balanced. There's no solution.

You can't. That's the whole thing with three body problem. You can't predict the orbits. In a vacuum. In a mathematical vacuum, there are constructions of the three body problem that are perfect. I'm asking a lot about this after that episode. Go for it. I mean, there.

There's a graphic I can say you. But it's like one of those things where it's like such a perfect mathematical vacuum that is actually impossible. I see. So it's theoretically possible than not possible. Yes. Anyway, aside from that, this is not the death spiral. There's not the three bodies spinning out of control. Correct.

It doesn't look like that's the case. And that's more confirmation this week. That's right. Should we talk about Robin Hood chain or should we wait for the break? Dude, big news of the week. Let's see how far we're into it. I think we need time. We need more time.

We need more time. So next we're going to come back. We got to talk about on chain tokenized stocks. 24-7, 365 markets, 7% APY deposits, AI agents to trade. It's pretty big. Uniswap on Robin Hood chain, Arbitrum's a big winner here. Lighter is a big... Well, you're already talking about it.

Let's save it. Okay, okay. We'll be right back talking about Robin Hood, talking about Venice. Also, the new stable coin that just jumped on the scenes. OUSD. Yeah, OUSD, all that. But before we do, we got to thank the sponsors that made this possible. Markets don't move one asset at a time.

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And now it's live inside the United States. And new users who deposit in trade can get up to $500 in Bitcoin through the bankless link. The link is in the show notes to learn more, not investment advice, not available in New York or Texas. Okay, Ryan, are you ready for me to once again list all? all of the stuff that happened. I got tokenized stocks. I knew that was coming.

On chain, Robin Hood tokenized stocks. Okay. Which enables them to do 247, 365 marketplaces. And these are real stock? Like, what,

these aren't, these aren't the weird synthetics that don't have any backing. Like, are these actual stocks? I would like more details about how Robin Hood actually tokenizes the stock.

But they are a brokerage. Yeah. So if they're a brokerage, they just keep the stock. They're piped right in. We're going to say it is. We're going to say this is real deal stocks. It's real deal stocks.

Yeah. So they have. bit stamp, which they purchased, right, which has perpetual futures and the exchange. And so they get to use some of bit stamp to do 24, 7, 365 markets. But they also, lighter, the

ZKL2 on Ethereum, lighter built a brand new instance of lighter on the Robin Hood chain, which is an arbitram orbit chain. And so there's now two lighters. And so a lot of the Robin Hood token I socks will go onto their chain and get perp access directly through lighter

right on the exchange. What's the explanation for why I know why lighter would be warming up to Robin Hood. Why would Robin Hood be warming up to lighter? Is there anything like, well, we're all part of the Ethereum community? Like, why not hyperliquic.

Well, Robin Hood invested in lighter at their last round. Okay. And so they are lighter investors. The lighter engineering team is like straight up cracked. They have a lot of forward deployed engineers which built this lighter instance on the Robin Hood chain. Why does Robin Hood want that on the Robin Hood chain? just tons of block space consumption from later.

So they're kind of making a decision, hey, this is our favorite. Among the, you know, defy perps winners rather than hyperliquid. What other perp exchange would be able to build a new instance directly on the Robin Hood change? I'm sure hyperliquid could if you asked. I don't think they would. I don't think they would do that. They want everything to go on the hyperliquid platform. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. I see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So big win for lighter. And then also they have just part of the announcement.

is like just region and jurisdiction expansion. So they're in 160 countries. A lot of stuff not in the United States, Ryan. A lot of stuff is excluded from the United States. Oh, all the tokenized stock stuff is excluded? Yes, the stock tokens, the PURP futures. And then also non-cryptopurps, non-cryptopurps were announced. Can we blame Gensler for this?

Why can't we have tokenized stocks in 2026? Because we just don't have clarity. And I think Mike Seelig from the CFTC is like trying to get us clarity. Clarity, the literal. act, are you saying? No, no, just more clarity from the CFC. From regulators. Yeah, so I don't expect that to be a long-standing issue in the Grinch

scheme of things. By the end of the year, you think maybe we'll be clear to trade here? By 2027, in 202027. Okay, geez. Vlad, Vlad from Leiter. So we have Vlad from Robin Hood, Vlad Tenet, the CEO of Robin Hood. Oh, that's why they're together. They're both named Vlad.

They're both named Vlad. Vlad from Lider, he is on, like, the CFTC advisory board. And so he talks to, like, Mike Zilig. And so, like, he's in the loop. And, like, Lider is explicitly going for a U.S. license. And so that's why Robin Hood chose them is like they can work with them to be compliant.

Okay, so that's that. A lot of this was both the launch of the Robin Hood chain, but also the glowing up of the Robin Hood wallet. The first time we ever talked to Vlad, Ryan, was at permission list number one, where Robin Hood launched Robin Hood wallet. Remember that? And that was a self-custodial defy type wallet,

almost like a Meta-Mas competitor, but mobile first. And we were very excited about their ability to bring the Robin Hood level UX to crypto and defy. Exactly. Still the case. It's been pretty vanilla so far.

It's just like a vanilla, a very sexy vanilla self-cissotia wallet. They are doing, let me just like tell you a bunch of things and see if it reminds you of anything. So first we have Robin Hood wallet. Now we have Robin Hood chain. And that's the self-custodial thing.

The self-custodial. We're not talking about Robin Hood. No, new app, new, brand new app. Wow. Self-cissodial wallet on the Robin Hood chain. Okay. 7% depositors for the Robin Hood stable coin, which is USDG issued by Paxos. Ooh, Paxos?

Yeah, uh-huh, not USDT or USDC. So Robin Hood gets the yield for all of the stable coins on the Robin Hood chain, and they are giving 7% more than 6% issued by a competitor who rhymes with schmoin Mace. And they're giving 7% using Morfo. So Morphos hooked into the back end here. So they're making Packer. Axos their USDC, like the way circle. Because because Paxos will pass back the yield because that's how it works.

Yeah. That's how it works. Okay, okay. Go on. Does that just remind you of any other tech stack, maybe a blue-coded tech stack? And this is the coin base and base tech stack. So we have base and the coin base wallet. And then we have USDC, which is the Coinbase, stable coin equivalent.

And we have an equivalent stack on the Robin Hood side. but with tokenized stocks. Yeah, with tokenized stocks in the EU, and so you can get up to 10% 10x leverage on gold QQQ, do Euro-USD pair, ETFs and foreign exchange if you're in the EU. And then that all gets served to you on lighter. There's also an $11 million light token incentive program.

So if you go and trade perps in the Robin Hood wallet, you get some lighter tokens. This is exciting. I'm excited about this. So I think the big question is like, who are the big winners? here. So there's a bunch of different partners. Arbitrum is literally the chain provider. There's like murmurs of just like will the Robin Hood chain be Robin Hood's like 14th 100 million dollar

revenue yearly product that they have. Will Robin Hood chain be the 14th one of those? Sure. Well, if it is like Arbitrum gets 10% of that. So Arbitrum is very clearly a winner here. Let me pull up in coin. Gekos. Our token up 3% on the news. Oh, that was yesterday. Let me let me look at it today. Let me look at it today. 3%. Okay, what about Uniswap? So Uniswap is deployed, and that's pretty cool because that is... There's tokenized stocks on Uniswap, on Robin Hood chain.

That's pretty cool. That's really cool. Just like to note, okay, so this is a whole thread about the total value locked that the Robin Hood chain launched with. There's a dune board for this, and it launched with some pretty big numbers, like $100 million. in stable coins already. That was day one launch. You know, 4.4 million index liquidity. That was from Uniswap, right?

Morpho. It's like these D5 blue chips in the Ethereum economy that are benefiting from this big launch. Yeah. Utiswap what I put in my notes yesterday was only up 2.5%. But today it is up 12%. So maybe some delayed price.

That's what I'm talking about. Double digit. Thank you. Chain link is a big Oracle provider. Chain link up 5% in the last day here. Morpho, which is the yield supplier for that 7%

of the Sablecoin and among other things, up 3%, up 3% respectable. And then lighter, which is the Perp Dex supplier, got a huge boost up 17%. That's good.

And I saw, I see in the notes, Hood itself was up 8% on the news too. Crypto is bullish again? Crypto is bullish again? Yeah, this was a big deal. I don't think too many people saw this coming, even though like Robin Hood has been like telegraphing this for forever.

So this compares to base. It's kind of a lot of equivalencies, but just with tokenized stocks, I might say. Are there other like it's the arbitrum stack rather than rather than optism? I did see that they're actually using Ethereum for data availability too, just in case you're an L2B nut. There's some like Ethereum is winning here as well. Well, it's, and you can clearly see Ethereum winning. DA, whatever, aside, right? That's some net benefit for the Ethereum ecosystem.

They're believing the L2 roadmap. This is a partial, this is a victory for the L2 roadmap. We don't, yeah, we don't talk about victories in this day and age enough for the L2 roadmap. The way that this is a big victory for Ethereum in ETH specifically is if Robin Hood Hocut token stocks can migrate off the chain and onto the layer one. Yes. And that is a question I have when I record with Johan, the VP of Crypto of Robin Hood, in like three hours. Oh, three hours.

Okay. I'm looking forward to that episode then. Okay. So not just that, though. It's that. But it's very clearly a boon to Ethereum defy. I would say... Which does benefit.

Especially if the stocks can come off the chain. But even if not, if it is successful, uniswap wins, Morpha wins, like Ethereum blue chip wins. And then also I would say, I think Ethereum has... a new wallet on the scene that, I mean, Robin Hood has been there, but like, now they're incented to make improvements in it. And, you know, Phantom has been a fantastic competitor in the Solana ecosystem. Good to have another wallet on the scene. That's right.

That's right. And also, I think you just have to also give a tip of the hat to Paxos. Paxos isn't trade, but, like, they won Robin Hood with a stable coin deal. So, like, Paxos gets a dub here. Overall, like, everyone was just pretty thrilled. Like, no one really had any bad things. No one had anything bad to say about anything. the hyperliquid people are coping a little bit about lighter, but that's okay.

Yeah, they don't like to lose, do they? Let's talk about another story this week, which is Venice AI became a unicorn. So valuation of Venice now north of $1 billion. And this was... At $1.1 billion. Okay, at $1 billion. This was on the back of a raise that was announced. So what happened here?

$65 million raise Series A led by Dragonfly along. with North Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Morgan Creek, for Venice. And so this was a hybrid equity token. There's a token warrant here, but this is also an equity deal. Eric Voorhe is the founder, CEO of Venice, of course, just tweeted out some actual bangers. A line that he wrote in his article about like the motivations for Venice and the importance of privacy in the world of AI is, we are going to use this capital to uphold the first. First and Fourth Amendment to the Constitution as they relate to mankind's interaction with AI.

I just got shivers. Unrestricted intelligence, right? Self-sovereign AI. This is part of the story of Venice, and it's not completely self-sovereign AI, but it gets us a big step closer, I would say. Yes. I somewhat wonder if Forhe's at some point in time going to find himself in Venice in regulator crosshairs once again. going toe to toe to toe with the state.

I think, like, Eric is like, I know what to do here. Well, they had a problem with self-sovereign money. You think they're going to have a problem with self-sovereign intelligence? I mean, like, yeah. I mean, the U.S. government already. I hope he does go toe to toe. That's what I'm rooting for. It's very interesting.

Eric, Forge's versus the state again. Let's fucking go. Yeah, it's going to be. And it's, like, you can already see the state cracking down on delaying, like, mythos, restricting that. delaying the newest chat GPT model. Anyway, go on. So that's his mission.

That's what Venice is all about. That's what they're doing. So what else does he say? Yeah. They got an article in TechCrunch, which is what pumped the token a little bit. So the raise was announced in like the VVVT token pumps like 14%.

It's retraced because this has spawned a whole conversation about equity token misalignment, which is a story that we have seen before. Eric knows this and he kind of got ahead of it when he did the raise announcement in a tweet thread, he said, to raise such capital, this $65 million, we could have either sold some of Venice's treasury of VVVV directly to the market or sold equity. We chose the latter.

Despite the VVB token equity, not VV. Correct, yes. Despite the VV being up 700% year to date, we don't want to sell a token. Venice, the company, remains the largest holder of VVV, owning more than 30 million out of today's 80 million supply. The company and team each hold more today than at Genesis. The company has not sold any to date. So the details of the capital raise, series A investors, with the $65 million that they raised,

they bought 9% of the company and a vesting grant of $1.5 million VV token. So part equity, part token. And they also bought a right to buy $5 million more VV over the next eight years. So they did buy some token, too. It wasn't just equity. Yeah, you're right. It was hybrid. It was both.

They sold Heguity and tokens and also a right to buy future tokens. And so I think Eric knows the equity token misalignment problem. His solution seems to be, A, the company holds a lot of tokens and also doesn't want to sell tokens, which like if the company wants to not sell tokens, that's Polish. That's bullish in my mind because they value their tokens. They consider their tokens precious, so they'd rather sell. equity than tokens. That's a bullish token interpretation. And so the fact that he's like lumping everything together and he's preserving alignment by keeping a large supply of the tokens inside of

the equity does align incentives more than if they were completely dislocated. But the problem is that's a fixed, you know, point in time. Correct. They're aligned now, but they're two separate instruments and they don't have to stay in that exact configuration, do they? Yeah. Yeah. So I take Eric's point that he's making, which is if the equity owns the token, there's alignment, which I think is correct, and that's more alignment than there's been the past. But then also, if the equity owns the token, why have a token? Right. So this is what, this is the conversation that has spawned. Mike at Bolito just tweeted out dual token equity structures do not work. Two owners, one pie. Shareholders get Delaware law. Token holders get a pinky promise. You know, tokens are junior equity.

That's a hot line because the problem with tokens to date has been lack of shareholder. rights that Delaware C-Corp's have. The problem with Delaware C-Corp's is they're not digitally native, crypto-native, and they're kind of shitty for smart contracts and all sorts of things, and they're walled inside. So it's a worse rails, but it's better in terms of

shareholder governance. A lot better, in fact. In fact, I mean, if they named me a token project that has like succeeded with the split ownership structure. With an equity and, like, some of them have partially succeeded. Maybe you could point

to like an Ave or Uniswap, but a lot of them have failed colossally. BNB is an example of Binance, the company and B&B the token, but what did Binance do? They burned a crap ton of BNB and CZ owns a ton of BNB. There's one example.

And Venice wants to burn a bunch of VVV. But it's still like up to CZ, like it's up to CZ, up to equity holders in terms of how much. It's up to Eric Forhees. And if there was going to be one man to just like brute force alignment without any sort of elegant solution. I agree that there's no elegant solution

to solving the token and equity misalignment problem. Are you sure about that? Just have a token. Well, yeah, but that's, yes, that is the solution. Don't have two instruments. Just kind of like force the Delaware structure into the token. I think the most important thing that you said, and I agree with, is that the equity alignment problem is like pseudo solved in this moment of time, but this is going to become a bigger and bigger issue, especially if Venice raises more. Like as time goes on, this is going to be a larger and larger problem.

It's also, it's being kind of, it's launched in this lemon market. By lemon I mean like, you know, like a lemon car, which is just like, you know, all the kind of the use cars with all the problems. Those are the ones that get kind of left over. They become the lemons in the market that no one wants to buy. I mean, tokens are kind of the lemons of assets right now.

Yeah. It's because even if, Vortes and Venice does the right thing and keeps this thing aligned, you know, somehow by like just like brute force and kind of will and just like pushing it. The rest of the tokens in the market of other assets are all lemons. And so like you're going to be grouped in with them too. It's another problem. Plus at some point fiduciary duty takes over and the fiduciary duty belongs to the shareholders and not to the token holders. So like I think Eric is going to do his best, But there's something fundamental and existential about having two vehicles.

Well, isn't it trust in Eric then here, which is kind of anti what Eric actually wants as a strong libertarian? You shouldn't have to trust me, you know? You should trust in protocol. You should trust in incentives. But you're saying if one man can make it work, it's Eric. That's kind of anti-principle. I think he can make it work for the short and medium term. For the long term, I think there needs to be a structural change.

I know you're bullish. You have been bullish, bullish on VVV. I'm a great product. How do you feel as an owner? Yeah, like. Would you also want to, would you rather have the token or equity or both? And are you disgruntled that you just have the token? I mean, like, with a token, I get liquidity, and so that's a perk that I have.

Sure. So you could change your mind later. Yeah, I don't know if I would want to flip to equity. I don't want illiquid equity, do you? You don't want it? I definitely don't want a liquid equity. But wouldn't you like to have the option? Like get whatever the equity owners also get?

Yeah, I don't know, man. There's something about tokens that I really, really like. And the fact that Eric is, like, very loudly defending the structure. It's a good sign. He's, like, fighting. I do think it's a little bit, I would like to hear him, like, agree that there is misalignment in the structure. of equity versus token and say that like over the long term there needs to be a better solution,

that would make me feel better. I don't know, man, but I like the token. All right? I like, I still like tokens. I know you do. I know. I still like tokens. I've been disappointed many times, but still like them.

Still keep coming back. Let's talk about OpenUSD from Open Standard, this new stable coin with like every logo. My God, I could read a few. Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, American Express. Scroll down to the section in this announcement where they just have all of the company names listed. Oh, my God. It's just like, I can't fit them on one page.

It's a wall of text. They have Jack, who's Jack Henry? I have, Cloudflare. They have Big Banks, BlackRock, B&B. This is not alphabetical. I guess it's crypto. B&Y, not B&B. They have Google.

Okay, so they have all the big payment companies. DoorDash, Samsung, IBM, and all the big banks that you can think of. Mercado Libre. All the big tech companies. Coinbase, Tempo, buy, American Express. They got everybody.

They got everyone. They got everyone. So what is it? Okay, it is basically a Dow. This is a Dow. You're talking about the governance. I want to, what is the actual thing? It's just a stable coin.

OUSD. It's OUSD is a stable coin. And this is a genius compliant stable coin. Genius compliant stable coin. Stripe is at the gravitational center here. So the CEO of Open Standard is Zach Abrams. The CEO of Bridge, yeah, who you interviewed when he got acquired by Stripe. So Stripe has something to do with this.

Stripe says that it's making OUSD the default stable coin for businesses transacting on Stripe. So they're saying we're putting our talents. Like OUSD is our stable coin when we are using it. We're adopting it. Okay, but to your point, this was launched in an institution, a nonprofit, standards body. join openstander.com is the blog post or reading. Oh, is it a nonprofit? Well, whatever it is. It's not a...

I don't think it's a nonprofit. I don't know what it. But like it's not a... Well, what is it? What is it then? You know what it is? It's a for... It's a consortium. A consortium. It's a consortium. I don't know if it's like an officially a consortium, but it's just like, their strategy was to list every single partner name under the sun and like just come

out swinging with like, look how legitimate this is. Look at all the launch partners that we have. But the economic... Equity owned? by these people or is there no equity? Is it just a kind of like a shell type of protocol structure thing that makes no money and passes off all the revenue to all of the revenue profits to all of the stakeholders that we just mentioned based on their level of participation?

Yeah, the legal entity, a TBD, I would like to know that answer. But the latter thing that you said, like the economics of OpenUSD is exactly what you just say. So businesses can mint and redeem OpenUSD at no cost and no limits. that's different from the Tether and Circle model where there are mint and redeem fees. OUSD is designed to return most revenue generated from its reserves

minus a small management fee to participants who adopt and distribute it. Exactly like Robin Hood and Paxos that I just talked about. So Robin Hood issues Paxos global dollar. Robin Hood gets all the yield. Yeah. So it gets a little bit.

And so the board of Open Standard is made up of a board of OpenUSD partners ensuring decisions are made for the collective interest, not a single entity. So this is just Dao-y socialist vibes. We're like, oh, we're all going to share in the upside and, like, everyone who mince gets their act, their share of the yield.

And, like, we don't have to pay for circle or tether's, like, yield. You're saying the governance feels dowey and socialist vibes of, like, well, it has the tragedy of the commons, like, who's actually responsible, who's going to push this thing forward, that sort of problem. But it does achieve what I think I talked to Zach Abrams a year ago about, which is he's like, hey, Tether and Circle are stealing all the revenue from the apps and companies that are actually using them. And look at Tether's margins, right? Was like 9 to 12 billion a year with 150 people, something like that. And they're just taking that for just being Tether. And that should be passed to apps and users and the participants. And so that is a market force. He's just like passing this to the

of value rather than having rent collectors kind of like take it. That would be the argument. And I remember my comment to that was like, oh, really, Zach? Like you think there'll be a world of like thousands of different stable coins? And at the time he said yes, now it looks like you're looking for network effect with one particular stable coin that. Thousands of different partners. Yes, one stable coin.

And maybe that's for network effect reasons. Yeah. Yeah. So all the attention around OUSD evoked a response from Jeremy Aller, who put out a pretty lengthy tweet. Well, also... The first thing you notice about this tweet is how long it is.

But also because Circle was down, right? Oh, yeah. Circle dropped like 17% on the news. Was it just this news or do you also think it was the Paxos Robin Hood News too? I think it was just this news. Okay. I think it was just who this. So Jeremy Allard, summarizing his response, his very long response, is that why he's

like arguing why USC's position is defensible, network effects, like thousands of apps already integrate USC, Circle's own infrastructure stacks, CCT, T, blah, blah, blah. Liquidity network effects. UCC is the top three most liquid digital asset after Bitcoin and Tether. Competitors are 10 times smaller. Regulatory entrenchment. It's just regulatory, like, clear.

And then he rebuts OUSD's three main selling points. The free mint and burn, he calls naive. Fee-free redemption makes you an off-ramp for every competitor's stable coin because you can just swap USC to OUSD and use their own off-ramp for free. and that it's actually just, he's just, that's going to benefit my network effects, like my network effects win here. I see. Everyone shares in the revenue.

Circle already shares most of its income with distribution partners. I think we are well aware with that with Coinbase. Yep. But giving away all of it, starves infrastructure investment and guarantees a limited platform. It's like very capitalist versus socialist to me. Sure. Like, well, we're the capitalists. We're making the money and we are going to grow the business.

A consortium where everyone has a voice, he says, has a dismal track record, misaligned incentives, poorly funded, Circle tried this in the early years at USC and it failed at a small scale. He says, members will publicly kiss the ring, but their operating units will still partner with the market leader. Oh, you might be right about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, consortiums have worked a few times, right?

Visa is a consortium. Visa is a consortium. Was, now it's a company. Zell, I believe, from, like the banking app. I don't know. I know you're a big Wells Fargo guy. I know you love Wells Fargo guy. will as far ago. Well, Wazel, that's a consortium banking type of protocol app standard that's

been somewhat successful. So there are examples that, you know, mean that consortiums can sometimes work. They also, they deployed on, is it tempo first as far as the chain? No, they're deploying everywhere. They're on Solana. They're on Ethereum. They're on tempo. They're just not picking winners. Okay. So they're not picking winners, but, yeah, except for the participants in this. So what do you think happens with this? Do you think this will... Paolo had this tweet. Do you see this from CEO of founder of Tether? Welcome OUSD. Player 2 has entered the game.

That is so dirty. Obviously player two is USCC. It's a USC. Yeah, he's throwing some shade. He's the saying I've never had any competition before. I don't even, I just don't, I think this is a flop. I think this is a flop. You call him this a flop already? I'm calling this a flop.

Why? Because it has no owner. It has no motivated party. If you have 5,000 board members, you have zero board members. There's like, who is going to get the upside of, like, really winning this here? There's just your problem with DAO's basically. It's a DAW, this is a, this is a TradDAO. Yeah.

I can absolutely see that. Maybe if there was, maybe if literally there was only tether or circle one or the other. But there are literally two competitors that they have to fight. Like Paxos is this. We already have Paxos doing the same model and they had to do this model because they're a third. Well, the second question then is, do you think that the 17% 20% price drop on Circle is justified? Does this lower their modes? I'll just point out one thing.

I don't even know why Circle is still as high as it is. And so, like, I think the 17% price drop on Circle is justified anyways. Like, if you look at the Circle chart, it's been trending down for forever now. Right. Well, I will point out that I think this is the year, that that that, they have to renegotiate their every three years with Coinbase and that deal structure. And Coinbase is named as a participant in this OUSD consortium. Right. Coinbase signed on with OUSD. That's so funny.

Well, I mean, for Coinbase's perspective, just use it for negotiation leverage, even if you're not going to do anything with OUSD. Again, it's free to sign up. It's got to compress some of the margins. Bankless is a partner of OUSD. We'll put our logo on the board, too. All right. What do we have coming up? coming up next we're going to talk about Ethereum institutional another unbundling of the EF to spin out into its own different org and also we have the exact numbers of how much money Donald Trump made from all of his cryptographs and Ryan I know you are you are just baiting your breath to talk about this but we have the first stable coin in like years to break a hundred million dollar market cap stable coin excuse me meme coin those are very different those are very different those are very very different

Yeah, so we have a meme coin to talk about. And so we're going to get to all of that and more, but first we have to talk to these sponsors that make this show possible. Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it.

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Cheers to a good 2026. Ethereum institutional launches as an independent nonprofit to accelerate the institutional adoption of Ethereum. There was an announcement this week. Who's the team, David Walsh, Marius Smith, and Matthew Dawson, funded by same exact setup as the Ethelabs announcement that we talked about last week. Bitmine, Sharp Link, Joe Lubin. This is just another spinout of the EFTs. Most of this team used to be at the EF. Now they're in their own independent org,

and they're funded by the Dats and Joseph Lubin. Because there was like an institutional part of the EF org that had kind of just started over the past couple of years. And you could imagine that Vitalik's like, hey, you guys, I'm not going to fund you guys anymore. Yeah, it's not very crapsy. Yeah, so they spun out and now they're being, and rather than looking for work elsewhere,

they are now forming another nonprofit institution, similarly structured as eclabs and also similarly funded. But with a different mission, what's the mission of this group? Dedicated to accelerating the institutional adoption of Ethereum, it's Layer 2's, application, and ecosystem overall. This means, like, I think part of their case is if a large bank wants to use Ethereum, like, they just can. But, like, who do they talk to about that?

They need to talk to someone. They need to do CYA. They need to do cover your ass. And so they have to, like, meet with someone and have a handshake and, like, have a call. Do you think that's true? I mean, if somebody wants to use Linux, they don't have to do that. You don't have to do any of that. They don't need, like, Linux evangelists.

I think it helps. Yeah, but they don't put, they don't deposit money onto Linux. Yeah. I, have you ever talked to these people with this group? I have not. I don't know of these individuals. Is that on your quest list of things to do? To talk to them?

Yeah. Are you going to wait? talk to them? I mean, it wouldn't hurt to just talk to them. All right. I don't know if it's worth a podcast at this point, but like you could. Yeah. Wouldn't hurt to talk to them, I guess, see what's up.

I mean, do you think this will move the dial, I guess, is another question? Yeah. Maybe phrase differently is like, is this bullish or not? Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's more bullish than had they been at the EF, but like the most bullish thing was that the EF just did all of this and was good at it in the first place? Yeah.

This is a solid second place to what would have been just like one single competent markets driven foundation. But again, that's not what Vitalik wants. And so in lieu of that, this is bullish. This is a bullish reaction to that. Well, it's interesting. Another option could have been for Bitmine or Sharplink to just pick up this team and push them forward.

But this is a another separate. That is what they're doing. They're just not doing it internally. I guess. So then they had the option rather than to perpetually fund it internally. Yeah. Okay. That's probably good news.

Probably good news. We'll see what they do. Yeah. Okay. I ready to talk about Donald Trump? Always. Okay. What?

Okay. So June 30th, 2026, the U.S. government office of ethics, which wouldn't we have doge to that? Whatever. I'm glad. I'm glad it's there. They released President Donald Trump's annual financial disclosure report for 2025, a 927. page filing. Are you ready for the amount of money that Trump reported in crypto-related income in 2025? Tell me. Just fiscal year 2025, he reported $1.43 billion of income. Income. Income.

That's not in 2025. That's not net worth from crypto. That's how much his income, his net worth went up by from crypto-related income. He might be one of the most successful crypto entrepreneurs of all time. I think that's right. $635 million in royalties from celebrity coins slash CIC Digital, which is the issuer of Trump meme coin, and over $500 million from World Liberty Financial token sale and income from World Liberty Financial. The filing also showed, Ryan, that's the grifty part. Maybe this is the bullish part, is that he owns at least $100 million in Bitcoin and ether. That's it, $100 million versus $1.4 in income? Yeah, yeah.

Man, I guess he's keeping that money in Fiat rather than recycling them back into his Bitcoin and Ether positions. Yeah. What do you think about this? I'll give you actually a clip. This is how it's being reported in places like CNN. Karen, I mean, obviously we know the president's been raking in a lot of money. It's amazing to see the details. Even those Bibles he's been hawking have brought in like $200,000 plus.

Yeah, he's doing very well. The presidency has been very good for his bottom line. line. And, you know, as I've always said, this is a coin-operated presidency, really, and you just put money in and to give to him, and then he gives you other things. And this is exactly what's happening with the crypto stuff, which is he's getting a fee no matter what, even though the price, the value of the crypto has gone down, I don't know, 83%. So everybody else loses. So he's taking it from the people who buy it. And at the same time, this deal with the UAE is just astonishing. They're getting what they need for what is essentially, I mean, they just they're paying him in order to get something else. And so he can do this all day long. They're doing it in Kazakhstan. The New York Times had a great piece about that. They're doing it all over the place, no matter where they are.

Yeah. Right. That's another deal that they're making in Kazakhstan that the son, Trump's sons are involved with a whole bunch of other businesses related to it. Well, everywhere. I mean, what they do is they go in advance of Trump showing up and do some kind of deal whatever country. It doesn't matter to go around from country to country, shaking people down.

This is, you know, this is very, it's a VIG is what's happening here. And if you know where that term comes from, that's exactly what's happening here. He's getting a VIG for everything he does as president. Yeah, it's a loan sharking term, or mafia term two. Unfair, what do you think? Is this, is that pretty much what's going on, coin operated presidency? It is an extra big slap to the face that Trump made $1.5 billion when Bitcoin went down, like 60% or something, like 50%. like 50% at the same time. I mean, I think this is pretty hard to defend. Like,

Oh, yeah. What? Obviously. Like, but like, I don't, is anyone defending it? No. I guess. I don't think any, even, even the position on kind of in the Trump camp is no, I've heard no one defending this. And. Yeah. I think maybe like a lack of criticism is kind of equivalent to defending it. It's like we could be more critical of Trump. The Democrats are plenty critical of But they're critical about Trump, about everything. And so just add this to the list. I would like to see the Republicans more critical of Donald Trump. We had said for a long time that in order to get Trump on your side, you have to pay the

Griff tax, right? Yeah. And it turns out the risk tax is $1.5 billion. Just this year, right? Just this year. Yeah, just this year. It didn't have to be like that. But with Trump, it is like that.

I mean, he has moved like in positive directions in terms of like what the U.S.'s position on crypto actually should be, but for the wrong reasons, right? Yeah. And the only time, it's interesting, the only time I hear crypto mentioned in mainstream media now is talking about Trump's crypto corruption. That's right. Trump's crypto schemes. That's right.

And so, I mean, that's like, that's a narrative that's going to take some time to resolve and to get over. So I feel like during the Trump presidency, we've constantly been asking ourselves, like, net good or net bad. And like, we're not going to. be able to answer that question until after we have a Democratic, a Democrat presidency and we see their reaction. Like, hopefully they just kind of like forget about us. Forget about going anti-crypto. Yeah. Completely. But like they could prosecute like corruption or

I mean, this should, this should not be the way our government works. Can we just say that this is, this is insane. This is, yes. That this is how things can work. Yes. And there's going to be some amount of blowback as a result of this. And hopefully it's not too bad upon us and it's only bad upon criminals. Well, speaking of which, you wanted to talk about meme coins, David. So what's the hottest meme coin and why are they back? Okay, so this was, this, something has been brewing in Solana land. There's just a few accounts out there that are like kind of emphasizing Solana has bottomed and we need to like pump it back.

Okay. So like, you know, and some like famous crypto, Twitter, trader kind of spawned the whole like celebrity meme coins of last cycle. The meme is like they are CTOing soul. What's CTO mean? I mean, it's chief technical officer. But when you CTO a meme coin, it's like an meme coin has been abandoned. You become an ambassador of it.

You buy a lot of the supply and you like revitalize it. It wasn't yours, but you if you CTO. So there's trying to CTO Solana. And part of it is just because they think Solana is oversold. Soul Eath is at a particular ratio that they think is bullish. They think Solon is bullish. They think Solon is going to have a revitalization.

And so they're trying to get people back into the meme coin trenches. Like the other meme that they're saying is like return to memes, like get back into the meme coin trenches. Somebody minted a token with ticker Ansem, which is the name of Ansem. The Black Bull, that's the name of it,

sent a very large amount of the supply to Ansem and Ansem claimed it And then now he gets the trading fees and he has endorsed it. And this meme coin is now up to like a $160 million market cap, which is pretty crazy. In the depth of a bear market, $180 million fully diluted valuation. Now he's taking a very significant amount of the supply that he has and he's just airdropping it. So he's airdropped like coming up on like $10 million of this token to people in the Solana ecosystem. and the ripple effects.

The reason why this is news is, A, when a meme coin gets to $180 million, when we haven't seen anything like that in over a year, that's news. Another reason why this is news is that if you go to the pump dashboards, you'll see that there are tokens graduating from pump fund at a three to four times higher rate than they were prior. And so this is like a little resurgence of meme coins growing in market cap. and downstream of all of this Solana, sole price, is up like 15%

versus the 2 and 3% of Bitcoin and Ether. And so there's just all I'm saying is like there's activity happening over there. And it's all down from like Ansem and his crew pumping the hell out of this meme coin and then air dropping they're trying to give people in the trenches stimmy checks is the meme. And so they're dishing out all these dimmy checks so people can go back to the casino and go gambling

again. I want to not give any kind of like take on this of whether it's good or bad or like any kind of moral case. I feel like we've said things like this. I still don't understand meme coins. Well, I guess maybe my biggest question is do you think that this can be sustained just from a buyer perspective? You look at all the meme coins of the past. They are down. They have kind of like failed expectations in all sorts of ways. Attention is back. Will this be a sustained thing or is this just a short burst of activity and, you know, we won't be talking about this in a couple of weeks. Probably, probably the, well, I don't know about a couple weeks. I'm maybe a little bit more longer term bullish than that, but like meme coins fundamentally are not sustainable. That's kind of

the whole bit. But I don't think that stops anyone because everyone, everyone, if you're still in the trenches on Solana doing meme coins, that's your, I play video games. Have you ever, have you ever, have you Have you ever read a report from Michael Nato on TDR about Pomp, actually? Do you know he's a big Pomp bull? I think I did know that, yeah. I did know that. And it's just like just be neutrally objective on kind of the casino, whether it's good or bad or whatever.

Pump is still like printing money significantly. Have you heard of the conspiracy as so why that's the case? No. Because it's money laundering. Okay, of course. Because not that the Pomp team is doing that. But somebody who needs to launder a bunch of money, they will make a meme coin.

They will pump their meme coin. They'll sell their meme coin to themselves, and money will change hands, but it looks completely inoculus otherwise. Interesting. It does generate a lot of revenue then. Which generates a ton of revenue for pump. Hmm.

Okay. More to look into. But it could also be, money laundering aside, I don't have the data to make an assessment on that. It could just be people like playing with memes. And it's their form of video games and gambling. It's their form of video games and gambling.

Yeah. Let's talk about something I saw this week, David, as we draw this to a close, which is Cloudflare on the Cloudflare blog. You remember the episode we did a couple weeks ago now with Matthew Prince? Months, that was already months ago? I don't know. It feels like months. It could have been just six weeks or something. So he's the founder of CloudFlare, and this is a major initiative.

This is essentially Cloudflare doing, executing on the roadmap that Matt laid out. in his post, which is they are now putting X402 stable coin payments. They're integrating this everywhere inside of if you have an API, if you have a web page, if you have a data set, if you have any tool that you want to expose to an agent or anybody else and have kind of a pay per use structure, they will now, they now allow that with stable coins. They mentioned they name check OUSD actually and USC as settlement assets for this. So there's no sign up, no API key, nothing you really need.

The payment itself is like the settlement of I just consumed some API resources. Here you go. And it's cool how they split this up, right? So like you'd see behind the scenes, if you have a different API like objectives like put or get or delete, you can charge different monetary units for this. So this is just Matthew and the Cloudflare team executing on something massive. Remember, his core thing was like AI strip mining the web content providers. It's destroying the eyeball-centric business model that we've had.

Destroying the user-generated content inside of the internet. We'll lose all the content unless, and we will inevitably adopt a pay-per-use, pay per-crawl. Right. Paper-consume. Yeah, paper-consume X-402 type model. So this is something that's happening. I think it's pretty bullish. Cloudflare is like 25% of the internet.

People don't know this. and they're just like adopting stable coins and agenic payments and X4 or 2, and they really aren't scented to make it work. Yeah. The, every time I see structural intertwining between AI and crypto and stable coins, and just on the internet, I'm like, okay, I don't know how that turns into a catalyst for crypto, but that is just real good underbrush to be laying down that will one day spark. I mean, Matthew was very bullish on.

He was so bullish, in fact, he's like, you know, when we turn this thing on, no blockchain in existence can handle the type of scale we're going to need from it. Dude, my DMs blew up from people being like, please connect me to Matthew Prince. I can solve his problems. That's why you ignore all DMs like I had these days. No, no, I connected them.

It was the Mega-Eath team, I connected them to Starkware. I connected them. We'll see. You are a wonderful person then. You got a meme at the end of this episode. Okay, so Ryan, yesterday in New York, Did you see these two people who climbed the Empire State Building? My family showed me this.

It's had links to me, but it's not on my radar. Two stunt performers, people just doing a publicity stunt, they climbed the Empire State building with a flag. You didn't see them, did you? I didn't see it. I can't. Actually, I can see it, but it's too far away. I'm in Brooklyn.

And so go to the video. There's a video of a helicopter circling them. Oh, my God. They had a flag, and the flag was like, you know. Love? Uh, love, love. When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace. Wow, that's great.

Yeah. So it's just, it's a guy and a girl, uh, and he proposes, a couple, yeah, he proposes to her on top of the Empire State building. Uh, they got down, they got arrested, a judge just let them go free. Are you about to tell me there's a meme coin involved associated with this? There's probably a meme coin, but that is not what I have to associate. So people, the internet is now obsessed with these two people, these used some performers. Uh, and,

And so they were crawling through the ladies history. And if you go to the meme of the week, right? She was in a years past. No way. Wearing a board eight yacht club tank top. This is her. This is her. Wow.

And I just think it's hilarious. One of us? I don't know, dude. Not you. I didn't expect bored apes to become relevant downstream of this story. Oh my gosh. It's all attention economy. Like all the way down from NFTs to stunts to meme coins.

Let's end with this. David, I almost gave the sign off, but it's you. You sign off. Yeah, crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, we are headed west in the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey.

Thanks a lot.