Bankless - ROLLUP: Crypto’s Nasdaq Problem | The CLARITY Act | Saylor Selling? | ETH L1 Scaling

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

Stocks and AI are ripping to new highs, and crypto is getting pulled along for the ride. Ryan and David break down whether this rally is real or too frothy, what the CLARITY Act still needs to survive, why Coinbase layoffs are colliding with billion-dollar crypto raises, and what Saylor selling Bitcoin would actually mean. 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast  🟦 COINBASE ONE | GET 20% OFF  https://bankless.cc/coinbase-one 🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS 🦊 METAMASK | DOWNLOAD NOW https://go.metamask.io/BL-Pod-Download  🌐BRIX | EMERGING MARKET YIELD https://bankless.cc/brix 💰NEXO | Get your 30-day access to Wealth Club Premier https://bankless.cc/nexo --- TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 1:29 Markets  https://www.coingecko.com/  https://imgur.com/a/xfVRCtd https://thedefireport.io/research/btc-is-nearing-an-inflection-point#btc-vs-nasdaq-correlation https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/.INX:INDEXSP https://www.reuters.com/business/stunning-us-profit-strength-ignites-stocks-charge-record-peaks-2026-05-06/ https://x.com/claudeai/status/2052060691893227611 https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2052247071491604672 https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2052042082185809991 https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade/vntl:ANTHROPIC https://x.com/jasongoepfert/status/2052110616622485834 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/2049971216413343991 https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2050566239961956630 https://x.com/WhitePine009/status/2050578574348845271 https://x.com/Sam_Badawi/status/2050710130766074085/video/2  https://polymarket.com/event/us-x-iran-permanent-peace-deal-by/?via=bankless? https://x.com/RealStockCats/status/2052042448944124110 23:06 CLARITY Act Clears a Hurdle https://x.com/SenThomTillis/status/2051464145384489270 https://x.com/faryarshirzad/status/2050325150747484421 https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/05/01/clarity-act-text-lets-crypto-firms-offer-stablecoin-rewards-while-shielding-bank-yield https://x.com/intangiblecoins/status/2050331808240156721 https://x.com/kalshi_crypto/status/2052106907511320920 https://polymarket.com/event/clarity-act-signed-into-law-in-2026/?via=bankless? 31:20 Coinbase Layoffs vs Crypto Fundraises https://x.com/brian_armstrong https://x.com/0x_Lucas https://x.com/katie_haun/status/2051318562497716655 https://x.com/cdixon/status/2051633104549502989 https://x.com/emilios_eth/status/2051704246798549176 34:55 Is Saylor Selling Bitcoin? https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/2051802384943194431  https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/2051797790494261301 40:44 Arbitrum DAO Meets U.S. Courts https://unchainedcrypto.com/u-s-court-freezes-71-million-in-kelp-dao-eth-after-north-korea-terrorism-creditors-file-claim/ https://x.com/aave/status/2051329772190347560 https://x.com/tayvano_/status/2050407082084663430 https://x.com/ImperiumPaper 47:09 Ethereum L1 Is Scaling Again https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/2051773131807690847 https://blog.ethereum.org/2026/05/02/soldogn-interop-recap https://forkcast.org/upgrade/glamsterdam 51:16 Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Update https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/05/06/u-s-bitcoin-reserve-update-coming-in-next-few-weeks-white-house-s-adviser-says https://www.dlnews.com/articles/people-culture/bo-hines-exits-white-house-crypto-post-amid-bitcoin-mystery/ https://polymarket.com/event/us-national-bitcoin-reserve-before-2027/?via=bankless? 59:31 Closing & Disclaimers --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Bankless Nation is the first week of May. We've got another all-time high week with the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ, dragging Bitcoin, ether and the rest of crypto up with it. I think the question, though, is with all the corporate earnings, with all the stocks at all-time high, are things getting a little too frothy out there? And I think the price of crypto might depend on the answer to that question. Not just that, though, but also the Clarity Act got over a huge hurdle this week,

which also caused a bump in the crypto markets. The fight's not quite over yet. There are some still some hurdles that we need to get over. What is left to get clarity signed by the new date of July 4th. It's also layoff season. It seems like big announcement from Coinbase laying out four, laying off 14% of its staff. By the same time, we've got fundraise season. Two multi-billion dollar VC raises deployed directly into crypto.

What's the counter ballast here? Like what's going to outweigh the other? Also, David, Michael Sailor? Is he selling? Speaking of raising funds. Yeah. We also have an update on the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, the U.S. Strategic Reserve, and David, Ethereum Layer 1, it might be back, David, okay?

And that's a thing that you wanted to happen. You were talking about scaling that one. I do want the layer one to come back. It looks like it's scaling. There was a meeting of the devs in the Arctic Circle. This is real, actually. And out of that comes more. ETH scaling.

We'll talk about all that and more. But first, let's get to crypto prices. on the week. They've been okay, a little bit down at the time of recording. What are we looking at? Yeah, the morning of recording, but really the week was pretty good for Bitcoin up 4.5% this week. We cleared $80,000 yesterday with confidence. We got up to like $82,000 at the peak yesterday, a little bit below that at the time of recording, but still overall a good week. Eith up 1.2% on the week, a little bit more of a modest week for Eith. Like Ryan said, the markets are kind of like coming back a little bit off of its euphoric highs yesterday.

If you were on Twitter yesterday, there was just green euphoria everywhere. Oh, really? In the trad market, not in the triad markets. In trad markets. In trad markets. In trad markets. Well, I do think trad markets are really the story here. This chart was really the chart of the week for me.

This came from the DeFi report, Michael Nato. And he points out that 2026 is the most correlated Bitcoin has ever been to the NASDAQ. This is correlation by year. You're seeing a chart here. So we are more correlated right now with the NASDAQ on Bitcoin price than we ever have been. I have a question for how this chart works. If the NASDAQ goes up 1% and Bitcoin only goes up by like a quarter of a percent, but that relationship is consistent?

Is that still strong correlation? Or is it less correlation if Bitcoin is going up any number that's different than how much the NASDAQ went up by? Does that make sense? No, I'm not sure I understand your question. But a correlation means that obviously Bitcoin price goes up or down related in a correlated way. Yeah. In this case, the correlation. I guess my question is like if the magnitudes are different because the NASDAQ is going up more aggressively than Bitcoin is, but they are still both going up.

Yeah, this chart doesn't measure that. It doesn't measure the magnitude. But it does say when stocks go up, when NASDAQ goes up, Bitcoin follows. That is confidently happening. Yes. And by the way, 2024, the correlation coefficient was 0.1, and now it's 0.48. Yeah. So this basically means that our destiny is in the stock market's hands right now. Does this kind of mean that we're kind of like cucked by AI?

A little bit. It feels like buying Bitcoin right now feels like, at least in 2026, a worst play on the NASDAQ at this moment in time. It's not going to stay like that, but that's what the regime. That's the regime. You're getting price exposure to the NASDAQ, but you're not. not getting as much as returns of the NASDAQ. That's right. That's a worst NASDAQ? I don't like saying that.

I don't think that will always remain true. There were some crypto assets that outperformed. Bitcoin's new framing went from digital gold to a worse NASDAQ. Yeah, you can take that, Michael Saylor. Take that and run with it. Zcash, a better NASDAQ, though, on the week. Dude, what are we looking at? Zcash has confidently returned, not breaking all-time highs, but it is up to previous

all-time highs, $570 for a Z-cash. for some reason privacy is just catching a bid, catching a narrative. There are some other like downmarket privacy coins like Railgun that also caught a bid this week. Also in the in the crypto world VVV, which is Eric Forhey's Venice Project, which is private AI. So it's both AI and privacy is right in the Venn diagram of where you want to be. Market loves that right now. Yeah. Hitting highs that it hasn't seen since token launch, which I don't even really count as like real price action. So $12.75 for a VVT token.

What's the market cap on VVVB? right now. It's pretty impressive, right? Yeah, the market cap, this is not fully diluted, but almost 600 million market cap on the VB. A billion dollars fully diluted. Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and the market cap Z-cash right now, 9.4 billion. By the way, did you see multi-coin came out and said, we've been buying Z-cash for the last couple months? Mm-hmm. Ever since Kyle left, huh? They're into the store value trade. Okay, let's talk about stocks for a second, because that's the big story. Let's look at it on your screen, David. I'm the chart guy.

I'm the chart guy. So this chart's going all the way back to like December Q4, 2025. But you can see at the bottom of the Iran War. And God, we are just, since the very bottom, the SPY is up 17%. And that's across 39 days, which is just nuts. Last week we were talking about how strong the SPY was. And it hit a record high, a monthly high of 7,200. And today we are at 7,360.

Still strong. Or not today, but yesterday at the all-time highs. NASDAQ's even bigger. NASDAQ gained 24% over that same time. And so, you know, these are indices. That's crazy. Can you just pause over like what, almost 40 days, not even 40 days? NASDAQ is up 25%?

Yeah, 26% from peak to trough to peak. What? That's just gnarly. That's gnarly. Like you really have to zoom out pretty far to put it in like perspective. But the Iran, war, it is up double that then the Iran war took it down, if that makes sense. Okay.

So are there sectors that are winning? I remember we were talking about the Saspocalypse, that's still getting blown away. I saw on the Mag 7, like Google just crushed it in terms of earnings. They were up like- Google briefly took over Nvidia as the world's most valuable company. That is no longer true at the moment of recording. Invidia is back on top. But Google had a big day yesterday.

So like the sector that is really leading the market is semiconductors. So semiconductors are up 12 and a half. half percent over the last two weeks. Yeah. Which is nuts. And so that, who is that? That's Nvidia.

That's Intel. Intel's up 60% over the last two months. AMD is up big. So anything that's chip related, Sandisk is putting in a record, like it is the best performing stock over the last 12 months and it's all AI related. The second best performing sector, Ryan,

is infrastructure, uh, industrials. And that is a combo of, uh, conflict defense companies, but also AI CAPEX. build-out companies. So also the correct Venn diagram to be in in this particular moment. And those

two sectors are just leading the market. And so really what's happening is AI is dragging the whole entire market up in a very big way. Industrials is also contributing. Financials is a wash. Like a lot of other stuff is a wash. And then things like utilities and energy, which is down on the week, which we'll talk about when we get to the Iran War section, that's dragging the rest of the market down. But it's just like not in any way that overshines AI. Well, thanks AI for We're bringing Bitcoin above 80K. Corporate earnings were part of the story here, right? I mean, what's that like overperformance?

Was it 84% of all corporate earnings this quarter beat analyst estimates? So we're in earning seasons at the moment. 63% of SEP 500 companies have reported earnings so far this quarter. Like you said, 85% of them have beaten earnings. And this isn't like they eeked out a earnings beat. They crushed. They, broadly, they crushed. Companies are reporting 20% earnings above estimates on average.

And also, this marks a sixth consecutive quarter of double digit earnings growth for the S&P 500. So corporate returns, corporate earnings? Strong, strong. Yeah. You know why it's all in the back of AI, right? Anthropic is a huge company in this. You know, Anthropic locked a deal with SpaceX to get more compute. so compute was a limiter.

I mean, part of this story is, I can tell you that my demand for AI tokens is insatiable. I'm consuming more tokens than I ever have. Oh my God. I ran out yesterday for like this fourth or fifth time. Fourth or fifth time I have to buy more. For what period of time? This year, like last month.

Okay. I am now running out. So I do $50 increments. Yeah. I'm running out two to three times a day. My AI spend? You're just pulling out the credit cards like swiping it again. Well, I did my first $250 purchase today.

Yeah, because you get on the Trumpbook, you get a bigger discount the larger you pay. Yeah. So I was like, oh, I mean, no, I'm going to use it. But it's, I don't know if it's becoming a problem. It's just so damn useful. I think I'm channeling it into something that's productive. Yeah. Absolutely do.

But my demand is insatiable. And I got to think, like, if the rest of the market is doing this as well, it's kind of dawning on everyone that this can make them more productive, that this can save them time, that this can drive revenue and efficiency. everyone's demand is insatiable. That's what's causing all of the overperformance and the AI boom here. So there's been a ton of conversation of just like the AI bubble, the AI bubble, it's all a bubble. Like it's going to come crashing down.

Anthropic earnings are growth, revenue growth is up 80x in Q1. That's never happened. That was not the dot-com boom. 80x earnings and year-over-year growth in revenue and usage in Q1, 2026. Can you say the words this time? different. Like, I don't want to say those words, but, like, this is a different story. I've never seen this before in markets. I mean, this goes back to the debate of, like, we did this debate on bank lists. Like, is AI, like, normal technology, or is it a fundamental paradigm shift?

The thing is, like, 80X earnings, you're over here? Wild. All I can say is just, it's not about reading headlines. I think that the closest thing any investor can do is look at how they're actually using it. And my demand, my use, the utility to me has only gone up into the right. And so until that stops happening, that's not a narrative. This is my lived experience. You agree, right? I'm not crazy.

And you see some of the output of like that some of the ways I'm using it with AI. I'm not in some kind of AI psychosis. It's useful? Is it useful? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

I mean, so we can actually take kind of take a look at Anthropics valuation in the market from various derivatives. This is on hyperliquid. Anthropics coming in just shy of $1.2 trillion in the private market. This is all implied. He's not actually trading shares. This is a derivative, but it's useful. It's directionally useful. 1.2 trillion as a pre-IPO valuation.

Bitcoin is $1.6 trillion. What? Anthropic is almost a Bitcoin, dude. What? Does that, is Bitcoin cheap or is Anthropic just that damn good? Bitcoin is definitely cheap. What would you buy at this price? What would you rather own at this price?

Would you rather own at the same price, Bitcoin and Anthropic, which seems like, you know, total market cap is about the same? Which would you rather buy right now? Oh, that is a really good question. I don't really like, I like buying Bitcoin in trillions because of just what it is. Yeah. I don't like buying any equity in trillions unless it's like in a retirement savings context. Like Google, for example, whatever that is, like $4 trillion, but I feel safe with that. Well, good news, David, you can't actually buy it, right?

You can own a little perp. Why are you even bothering me with this? But it's private. You get none of this until they go public and, you know, they IPO on retail, dump on retail. So the question is, is all of this getting a little bit too frothy? There are definitely some people who say yes. So this is a tweet from Jason Goepfert. Is that how he say his name?

Sure. Sure. Okay. He said, today will be the second consecutive day. The S&P 500 closes at a record high with more than 4% of its stocks hitting 52 week lows. Okay, so two data points here. Second day, the S&P closes record high

with more than 4% of its stocks hitting 52 week lows. And he says, anyone want to guess the only other time in 100 years this has happened, and there's a book called 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin in the tweet. What's the point he's making?

I think I would be more scared if all equities were going up into the right, but if some equities are going up into the right and up or going down, to me, that's like, yes, that's how the market ought to work. Somebody's clearly being rational somewhere. I feel like this is just maybe

two data points that he found on 1929 that are not to today. You can do a lot with two data points. But, okay, there are other better, let's say, bear cases. One is just like, we know what's happening with US federal debt, don't we? Like, this has got to hit us.

I saw last week, David, that this is the first time since 1946. You remember what happened in 1946? Yeah, I was there. Yeah, okay. In one of David's previous lives. We just, the U.S. had just fought a war. And so all the war bonds,

all the debt, we just passed. The federal debt held by the public as a percent of GDP 100 percent, and the only time we've ever been higher was 1946. So that just means that the government owes the public a lot of money? Mm-hmm. That's right.

Our government debt has never been higher is what that means. We're at wartime level debts. The level of debt that it took to go defeat Hitler and the Nazis, that's the level of debt we're in right now. And look, look at this. We did this in 2000, the year 2000, which is in our lifetimes. We were at 31%. Okay?

So since the year 2000, we went to 100% of federal debt held by the public as a percent of GDP. What did we spend it all on? do with all that money? What did we get out of that? I mean, there were some wars. It wasn't a World War II, but where else did it go? Yeah, I don't know, man. Okay. Well, that's... That's the debt story. You also have firms like Berkshire Hathaway. They have announced their cash balance is now up to a record, almost $400 billion. They are aggressively selling into the market, which is what they do when markets go up. Markets go up, Berkshire sells. Markets go up even more. They sell even more. But like, there is an acceleration here.

Look, this is the 14th consecutive net quarterly sale. 14 consecutive sales. They've been selling into this market for a while, and the cash on reserve they have is above 30%. This is Warren Buffett. This is what he says about the market. I want to play this for you, David. What does this feel like to you?

Does it feel expensive? Does it feel like there are opportunities in some places? Well, it feels like, you know, I've compared to the markets to a church with a casino attached. and people can move between the church and casino. And I always said there are more people in the church and more people in the casino. But the casino's gotten very attractive to people. The casino has gotten very attractive to people, is what Buffett says. This is the reason for their cash position.

Stocks are not cheap. He said, in his 60 years of investing, there's only been about five years that felt inexpensive to him and cheap. So he is absolutely playing the long game. Does not like the price of stocks right now? Does he have time left to play a long game? He's a legend, dude. Warbuff is 95 years old. Yeah, dude, why is he like the long game?

Look, he's built a legacy, Berkshire. He's playing the live dude. But like, yeah, legendary investors. So, I mean, what do you think? Are we frothy or like, are the AI token demand insatiable? Is I going to pull everything else up? I'm not one to play the long game. No.

I'm one to be in the market. That is the long game What are you talking about? I guess But he's selling Because he's like These are expensive And I'm going to wait for

These things to be cheap Sure I'm in We are in unprecedented times AI is novel and unique You're scared to be out I'm scared to be out of this market I'm always scared to be out of

I don't want cash I want I want Well why would you want cash Look at the cash chart Look at the debt to GDP Yeah man I understand that

I understand that too All right, well, we'll have to see how this all plays out. But what about Iran? What's going on there? Yeah, both not a lot and something at least somewhat notable. And so Monday Trump announced Project Freedom, which is basically an attempt to open the Strait of Hormuz by brute force. He said that the U.S. will just manually guide and protect ships to assist them in crossing the Strait. Iran, of course, didn't like that.

They really depend on the Strait being closed. So they sent missiles and drones towards the U.S. Navy, which the Navy, which the Navy, be intercepted. Iran also sent missiles and drones to strike a UAE oil facility. One actually did land in cause a fire, which I think is what might have caused Trump to put a pause on Project Freedom, just less than 48 hours later. He said that we are now back to talking in Pakistan to get a deal done with Iran, which is basically where we stand now. After a quick skirmish in the straight, we are now back to pausing while a deal is potentially being formulated and discussed. And so it seems nothing has really changed this week in Iran's trade over moves still closed.

We are still talking about a deal. The deal is being dangled in front of investors by Trump as it is every single week. Okay. I'll kind of propose that like even though nothing's really changed, something kind of has fundamentally changed. What's that? And that is oil is down big this week. Sure. Oil is down 15% to 18% depending on what you look.

Why? Because it is. Because I don't know. I don't know why. It just is, and that's important. And so if oil is down 15 and 18% respectively between WTI and Brent, that's really good for the global economy. So pain is being felt less. 10-year yields down 2.7% over the week.

Also great for the United States not experiencing as much pain. So where did we leave things off last week? It's like, oh, this is a pain tolerance. It's a pain tolerance. And with the equities at all time high yields down. and oil down, all of a sudden, like the Iran is still feeling all of the same pain that it was prior, because they're isolated and cut off, and the rest of the world is feeling less pain. And so that's what's changed.

Well, I guess we'll check in on the week to week. We'll check him on where the pain pendulum shifts next week. And just checking in on the polymarket that we usually do. So the odds of a permanent peace deal between the U.S. and Iran by June 30th, which, man, that's coming right up. We're almost there. It's 53%. So it's still pretty high. by the end of the year, 74% on Polymarket.

Notably, the June 30th date, 55%, as you said, is up 14% week over week. So a big green jump in that over the week. Okay. Well, I mean, Polymarket knows things that we don't somehow. So I'm sure that's a good sign for this being ended a little bit sooner. David, we got more to talk about, which is when will the Clarity Act actually happen? We have a date of July 4th. What's the probability that we hit that?

Also, did the banks win that deal or did we get what we wanted out of it? Coinbase layoffs, we'll talk about that. And Saylor on the record, he said this. He intends possibly to sell Bitcoin in order to pay a dividend. But he used to S-word-Selted. A sentence never uttered before by Microsoft. Yes, what does it all mean? We'll get to all that more.

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The result is a substantially improved consensus-based product. Our compromise prohibits stable coin rewards from resembling interest on bank deposits. Our core concern over deposit flight, some in the banking industry may not want either of these things that happen, and we respectfully agree to disagree. But nonetheless, there seems to have been a comprehensive. We'll talk about the nuances there. But then we also have a date, a target date for signing by July 4th.

And so we're not there yet, but that is kind of this. The 4th of July, really? Yeah, the 4th of July. Yeah, that is the date being projected and like, hey guys, everyone rally, get the troops, get the last bits of things debated on because we want this signed by July 4th. And so we're over this one potential hurdle. Well, where we left things, it was all about yield, right? And the banks wanted their yields back.

They realized that they forgot to negotiate harder over the genius bill last week. And so they wanted kind of a do-over. And they didn't like the fact that Coinbase and other crypto exchanges could essentially give their users deposit a staple coin yield. Yeah. In a roundabout way. In a mind. Yeah. Like the bankless stake here has always been, look, guys, you know, the banks are just taking the yield.

They're trying to protect their monopoly interest. They don't have any good reason for keeping monopoly over that yield. And that remains true. This is why previously Coinbase backed out of the negotiation. Still, they are a powerful lobby group in D.C. And in order to get things done, apparently you have to appease the banks in some way. So there was a compromise that seemed to have been reached over this stable coin yield issue. It's somewhat nuanced, though.

We'll have to talk about who really won the issue. but what are the details here? So Fariar, the chief policy officer over at Coinbase, he treated out. In the end, the banks were able to get more restrictions on rewards, but we protected what matters the ability for Americans to earn rewards based on real usage of crypto platforms and networks. And so big asterisk there, big, like, that's the compromise here. Wait, what is that? Can you go over that again?

So if you, if the stable coins are just sitting there, they can't provide rewards. But if the stable coins are being used in some way, then possibly there's a backdoor to provide rewards to users? Yeah. So Alex Thorin, probably the tweet from Alex Thorin is probably most helpful here. He's the one who drilled right into the actual verbiage. He said stable coin yield cannot be paid solely in connection with holding, is the words. So idle balances or in a manner economically or functionally equivalent to bank deposits.

And so I think that wording is like, if it looks like a bank deposit, you can't pay yield. I wonder what that means. So probably if it's just on Coinbase, sitting in a custody custodial Coinbase account, that probably looks like. If you are doing set and forget behavior, I think the banks will then argue that that is like a bank deposit and you cannot pay yield on that. What if the stable coins are on base in DFI or something like that? That does not look like bank deposits. Yeah, it doesn't look like bank deposits. Right?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is where it gets very squishy. And so what is banned in Section 404, this is the section we're talking about, covered parties paying interest or yield to U.S. customers solely for holding stable coins. What's allowed is, these are the words, activity-based or transaction-based rewards, payments, transfers, market making, staking, governance, or loyalty programs. And this will get a continual, this will get updated within one year by the SEC, CFD, FD, or Treasury joint rulemaking about more clarity around that. Oh, the SEC and CFTC and Treasury get to jointly rulemaking. Yes. And so this issue is in some way kind of being punted,

but with a pretty clear like flag planting by the banks saying if it looks like a bank and it quacks like a bank, you guys don't get to pay yields. But then there are these words, activity-based, transaction-based rewards, payment transfers, market-making, staking, governance, loyalty programs. And then within one year, the SEC and CFTC and Treasury will do joint rulemaking, which, by the way, those are our guys. Those are our guys. Right now they're very crypto-friendly, right? Yeah.

Okay. So that's why Coinbase must have thought that this is a compromise that they could somewhat deal with. Yes. Okay. So my understanding, though, is that this issue is kind of closed, but not all the way closed. There was a report from Eleanor Territ that banking trade groups plan to actually revamp and ramp up outreach to additional members in the coming days. And so they're not quite sure that this is enough of a closure of.

I think what they're doing is they're kind of just like may drawing the lines, but then also punting the fight. Okay. And so there's like, yeah, no idle yield. If it looks like a bank deposit, you can't do it. But then also we're going to give this up for interpretation later, which is why it feels like we kind of got over the hurdle by simply moving the hurdle to a different place. I see. Now regulators get to decide if you have crypto-friendly, they might do that. If you have anti-crypto, they might do that. Wow, that's fun. Okay, so did the banks win in your mind? It's TBD, it is TPDD. Partially because they got their line in the sand. As in like you can't just have naive bank deposits, which is kind of what I was excited about, like going bankless, doing, like taking banking away for the banks, like all this kind of stuff. The simple path to get there seems to be closed.

Well, maybe it's still there for you, David. The creative, complex, a little bit convoluted path, definitely still open. Yeah, like if it's on base, for instance, and it's like... What does loyalty participation look like? I mean, you look pretty loyal. You're pretty loyal guy. Yeah, I look loyal. I'll press a button every now and then.

Remember to claim your rewards. I'll be as loyal as you want for 4%. And now you get your hand. And also vote on something, you know? That's right. That's right. Okay. There's still some stuff left to do here, though.

You remember the developer in D5 protections that was kind of baked into earlier versions. It was called the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act. Carol, a lot about this. Coin Centers talked about this. That is still a little TBD. They're going to have some negotiations about it this week. It doesn't seem so contentious. But if we got that in clarity bill, that's a huge win.

So still crossing our fingers on that. And also, this might actually be the thing that derails the entire clarity bill. All of this might be just for nothing. The ethics provision, David. What's the ethics provision, Ryan? There are some senators that are hardlining on Trump's, the Trump family crypto activity. In the White House basically saying, hey, like there can't be conflict of interest here. You have to tone down the World Liberty Finance, probably all of these things, right?

And the White House says it's not going to accept any language like this because, of course, the president doesn't want to be individually singled out. So this is another thing that requires a different type of compromise in order for the clear. Act to go through. It might derail the whole thing. Polymarket, David, has shot up, though, to a probability of, at the time of recording, mid-60s. So it got as high as almost 70% in terms of clarity acting signed into law. It was like 45% not terribly long ago. It was. I mean, just last week it was down in that. So we went from, we went from 46 to 66%. Yep. Yep. So this is pretty good. I like these odds. It's much better. It's better than a coin flip. And I think it's pretty accurate. So we'll we'll hope for that.

Dude, the real question is, what are the odds that Donald Trump refuses to budge? He's like, no, I like, I like my grifting. Don't take my grifting away from me. I don't know. Maybe he'll have some sort of drift loophole still, you know, just if he's actively gripped. Based on loyalty. Based on loyalty. There were some layoffs this week from Coinbase as well. They let go of 14% of their staff. At the same time, we have. have two pretty large multi-billion-dollar VC raises. Tell us about this. Yeah, so this is actually kind of a market cycle right of passage. Coinbase has laid off employees at the bottom of every single cycle. I remember this happening in 2018. This happened in 2022 and now this is happening again in

26. As you said, 14% workforce reduction. Talked about AI saying like we're rebuilding the company to be less layered. So five maximum layers from Brian down to the bottom, whatever you recall it, the bottom of the org chart, five layers max, and also no peer managers. So there are no pure managers at Coinbase, according to Brian. Everyone is at least somewhat of an individual contributor. I don't think this was AI, though. I mean, I think it was like-

I think AI is a useful scapegoat. It makes everything more tolerable. Yeah, and I don't even know if it's a scapegoat, really. Like, he didn't say that this was the reason necessarily. He just said, we're going to take this opportunity for efficiencies, right? But to your point, they've done this every single cycle. There have been 1,200 layoffs in crypto in the past five months. Yeah.

So Coinbase being the big one. Yeah. That's the big one. And to your point, you know, fun fact, these layoffs previously from Coinbase have marked the bottom. So June 22, 18% of the workforce they laid off. Wasn't quite the bottom, but pretty close. Yeah, pretty close. So this happens.

I will call it, we won't call it a bottom tick. but it is a bottom signal. I agree. I agree. Now, let's talk about the raises, though, because this is the other side of that. So if that's the bearish news, layoffs, there were some pretty big VC raises. A16Z and Hahn Ventures, is that right?

Yeah. And the total between them, $3.2 billion. Yeah, the timing of this was actually kind of funny. Han Ventures announced their $1 billion raise on Monday. And then Tuesday, A16Z comes in and says, we raise $2.2 billion dollars. and just like dropping it. 3.2 billion is not a small amount of money by any standards.

These are crypto funds. These are crypto funds. Okay. And they're not the only one. So Dragonfly previously raised 650. Parify raised 125. Blockchain capital raised is raising 700 million paradigm, which is not just crypto. It's also AI and robotics, $1.5 billion.

So closing it on $6 billion. Crypto and now crypto adjacent funds. And so you can't really be bearish. This is healthy for the industry. New capital. New capital. New capital. New round of startups.

Refreshed for what it takes in 2026. I think kind of the big question is what are these people deploying into? Well, did you read it? So it was new financial infrastructure. A lot of stable coins mentioned. Yeah. New assets and markets. Agentic economy.

That kind of thing mentioned. Things not mentioned. I didn't hear much defy. Yeah. For instance. No. Now, Haseeb. reminded everyone that all of these funds,

including, by the way, Dragonfly, their mandate is broad, so they can totally deploy into Bitcoin and Ether and Zcash and any other liquid crypto token out there as well. But that was not the stated reason for the fundraise this time. No layer ones, no defy apps, no NFT platforms. Notably missing. What else?

Yeah. Lots of tokenization, lots of Wall Street stuff, lots of neobanks, lots of payment stuff. As you'd expect in 2026. David, Michael Saylor said the words out loud, the thing he should never say, that he was thinking about maybe at some point selling some Bitcoin. This was all over my feet this week. Why would he sell Bitcoin? What would he need to sell Bitcoin for?

I think he's got to pay some of the people that are lending him funds, David. Dividends. Lending him funds to buy Bitcoin. Yeah, that's right. So he's being lent funds to buy Bitcoin. And then he's selling Bitcoin to pay the dividends for the dividends for the dividends. for the capital requirements for the people who he sold the equities do. He's selling a little bit in order to raise kind of the interest payment dividend type fund.

I don't believe it. It's fake. He never said it. It's not fake. Let's play the clip so people can hear it. You buy Bitcoin with credit. You let it appreciate and then you sell Bitcoin to pay the dividend. And as long as you're issuing credit and access of the break-even point, then this business works. and grows forever. I love about this, Ryan. Yeah. You and I would debate with Bitcoiners as a past time in years past.

One of our most fundamental arguments against Bitcoiners is that they always have this fundamental assumption that Bitcoin just goes up forever. It's in the Bitcoin security budget arguments, and it's now in Sailor's quarterly earnings report of you buy Bitcoin, you wait for it to appreciate, you sell a little bit of Bitcoin to pay. payback the dividends.

Yeah. All Bitcoin has to do is appreciate. I mean, I think it works, though. Honestly, I just don't hate it. I think it all works. It's not a lot of Bitcoin that he would sell, but this is him opening the door in order to do that. And I think this is, he needs to do that with products like Stretch, right?

You need to have this option. The structure of micro strategy this time around is much different than it was previously. and the only way you're going to entice more stretch buyers is to actually open the possibility that you may have to sell some of the underlying Bitcoin as collateral in order to pay them back, or they're not going to continue buying your stretch product and your other preferred shares products.

I think that's totally right. As, like, I think you and I, I bought a little bit of stress, like a $500 of stretch just because. And like the reason why I'm not doing more is because, like, oh, what if Sailor wipes me out? Like, what if he goes like, ah, I ran out of money, but I'm definitely not selling my Bitcoin. So Stretch is going to zero. So that's why it can't be a savings account.

But if Saylor is publicly saying, I will sell Bitcoin to fund the yields, it probably opens up the Tam for the interested buyer of the stretch, which opens up his ability to buy more Bitcoin now. And really, I actually don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with this. Of course, there's nothing wrong. What is his whole deal is he is arbitraging timeframes. And so if people want 11% now and Michael Saylor wants 30% later because he thinks that's what Bitcoin is going to appreciate by over the long term, he will give you that arbitrage opportunity. That's right. What's wrong with it, if there's anything wrong, is it's off script. Sure.

Michael Saylor at every point ever, never sell your Bitcoin. Never ever sell your Bitcoin. He literally tweeted out, sell your kidney if you have to to buy. Yes. So is he going to sell his kidney before he starts to sell Bitcoin to pay back? I think he's got to pay some preferred shareholders. I think he should do it as a bit. Before he pays actual kidney?

Before he sells any Bitcoin to pay stretch dividends, he should sell his kidney first. Yeah, that's right. How convicted is he? Come on. He's not willing to sell his... Come on. He's got two. He said it. How many chairs are you sitting on? How many kidneys do you have, Michael Sailor?

How many do you need? That's a great idea. I hope he's listening. David, coming up next, we've got to talk about Ethereum. It is scaling. There was a meeting of the devs in the Arctic Circle. I want to tell you about that. The High Summit. Yeah, a summit.

Also, the strategic Bitcoin reserve an announcement that within weeks there's going to be something to announce. I actually have a bullish take on this. We'll get to all this and more. But before we do, let's thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. In 2024, emerging markets generated over $115 billion in annual yield for investors. with yields ranging between 10 to 40%. These are some of the highest, most persistent yields on Earth.

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And as always, this is not investment advice. Ryan, let's get back into the Arbitrum Dow Layer Zero Kelp hack story. Do you remember where things left off with that? Arbitrum had frozen some funds on its chain that they were just kind of waiting for Avey and the rest of the ecosystem to figure out what they want to do. They were part of Defi United, right? And so those frozen funds were going to contribute towards the restoration of the RS-Eath collateral. Yeah, there's like 116 ether hole from the exploit.

Arbushram was able to recapture 31,000 Eth that it yoinked from North Korea. Is that like 60 million? 70 million, something like that? Yeah, 70 million, I think. Okay. There's a small little hiccup that happened, which is kind of posing a big question about Dow's and DFI. There was a court order from the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Unork issuing a restraining order on Arbitrm Dow from moving the 31,000 ether that it froze

from North Korea. Why and how and what happens next? The order introducing is a competing legal claim. Okay. From a completely unrelated case. Unrelated people who also have damages, damage claims against North Korea for unpaid terrorism judgments against the DPRK

for claims totaling over almost a billion dollars. Nothing related to crypto. Nothing related to DFI. But there are these people who have legal claims. against North Korean assets. Okay, there's some U.S. court that said, okay, yes, Kim Jong-un and North Korea owes you guys $877 million. Yes.

And that claim has just been outstanding somewhere. Yes. And so these people's lawyers argue that the frozen ether constitutes North Korean property. Oh, oh. Because layer zero attributed the April 18th hack to the North Korea Lazarus Group because the hack was done by the Lazarus Group. And so therefore, it's North Korean property. and there are these people who have claims on North Korean property.

And so the New York court said, Arbitrum, don't move that ether. That ether is contested. It's contested. They didn't make a ruling on it. There's no way this holds up. There's no way you can say if a thief steal something. I'm not a lawyer, but like, holy hell, no way, dude. That's what Avey is essentially saying.

I did see this tweet. Ave LLC has filed an emergency motion to vacate a restraining notice served to the Arbitrum Dow. So Avey getting involved here about the 71 million in Eith. And they said this. This should be pretty obvious, I think. A thief does not gain lawful ownership of stolen property simply by taking it. And the law is clear on this. All right. So if the law is clear, what's up with this hold order? How to, like, why is the court doing this? And what's the legal team behind this? Yeah, I think it's really who is the legal team is the very big question because this is the same lawyers that in 2021 sued compound in Avey in frivolous lawsuits and also pooled together.

Okay. This was, there was this Elizabeth Warren staffer or ex-staffer. They were involved in that? Who, yeah, who put like $26 into pool together, a prize-linked no-loss lottery, and then lost the money because of gas. There's like gas payments or something. Right. They like lost because of gas payments.

They go to this same law firm and they file a frivolous lawsuit, which pooled together had to fight for years and won, but completely sucked pooled-together dry of funds fighting the legal case. Yeah, so the intent. And these are the same lawyers. The same lawyers. Okay, the intent there in that case and the pulled-together case seemed to be just to cause a ruckus. Cause a ruckus. Just so some chaos.

Is that the same intent here? Or are they actually more, like, because, you know, obviously the ambulance chaser type of lawyers with frivolous lawsuits, their incentive is generally to get, you know, some commission on the legal pay out there. There's a profit incentive there. Are you saying this is more of a like, we hate defy when it shows some chaos, or is there a profit incentive here for this law firm? I don't know how else not to interpret it as these people just hate crypto and they keep doing frivolous lawsuits that always lose, but they just cause a ruckus in the meantime. And they just drain legal funds. All right. Well, so this probably, there's no way this holds up in U.S. courts, of course.

But it does open the nexus for the security council, right? It's 12 multi-sig signers, and they don't get paid a lot in order to be a multi-sig signer. In fact, I thought it was something like 5K a month or something like this. I guarantee you when the people who signed on to be an Arbitrum Security Council multi-sig signer, when they agreed to do this, they did not think about how the Southern District Court of New York would might potentially hold them liable if they violated a court order. And that's why it's a real story. Yeah.

So when I saw some of this, I'm like, okay, these layer twos, they want to throw away the keys and get rid of their security councils and get to stage two as soon as possible. Because if this vector does exist, you're going to get more of these types of cases. And they don't want that. It's kind of interesting that this has happened so quickly post the recovery of the assets where like the big question was like, oh, is this going to put more liability on the security council? And now here we are just a couple weeks later with a court case. Yeah, it's exactly, like, as, you know, as we predicted, as we expected it to play. Do you say Taylor Monaghan, she was having a meltdown? I'm not even going to read this tweet, dude.

It's hilarious. You have to read it. Yes, little effing who can't do the work. So they come chase after people who did the work. Bite me worse than effing ambulance chasers. STG? What's STG? Swear to God?

I think. This is part of a series of tweets. Little B can go F themselves. You want some money? Go effing do the work? If you don't know who Taylor Monaghan is, that's kind of important context or understanding why Ryan is laughing. Taylor, by the way, she is a fantastic person. I think, like, I, she's just on it, unhinged on Twitter.

Usually, it's pretty entertaining. Yeah, but sometimes it's accidentally pointed at you, but usually it's just entertaining for everyone involved. So I'm enjoying the entertainment of this. She's part of the, you know, the SEAL team. Like, she's done so much for the crypto space. She is angry, expressing some anger against these lawyers who are just trying to. Yeah, so see chaos here. David, you want to hear about Ethereum and what they're doing with L2, L1 scaling?

Not L2, L1 scaling? I have always wanted to hear that. I know you have. I know this has been a passion project of yours around scaling the L1. Well, do you remember that thing that came out last year was an EIP, kind of a Donkrad EIP, and he said, wouldn't it be great if we could 3x L1 scale every single year for? from here on out. Right.

Yep. You remember that? I got really excited. It looked like this. And then there was a slide that Justin Drake put together. It looked like this. And it had different megagas targets, gas limit targets for 2025, 2025, 26, all the way to 2030. And if you do accomplish the 3X per year, you get to one giga gas by 2030.

Well, there is another hard fork coming. The Glamsterdam hard fork. EPBS is in that. The bow. What is that? access list update was in that some kind of esoteric updates. One of the other things, though, is the increase of max block space from, I think, 60 million to 200 million. Yeah.

And so I charted this out. I had my quant chart this out. Oh, this is a Ryan Tran Adams chart. Oh, this is where all your tokens are going. I was spending some of those clot tokens, dude. This chart probably costs 20 bucks. Okay. And this is like showing TPS and block space of Ethereum and projecting that based on the 3x per year line.

And David, with this Glamsteram upgrade, we will be right on track, right on the 3X trend line. We are lagging behind the original prediction. But this catches us right back up. This catches us right back up. So it catches us back to the trend line. So this would be a 3x, sorry, excuse me, a 7X in transactions per second. and block space availability on the L1 in 12 months. Yeah.

Which is pretty astounding because we went to, you remember this, we went to 30 million. We were at 30 million for like four years. And then just last year, we went from 30 to 45 to 60. And now we go from 60 to 200. And that results in something close to 80 to 100 transactions per second. So L1 is actually scaling. Like they're actually doing it.

I think this means that we're not going to, see any L1 fees anytime soon. I think blockchain fees as a concept are kind of just gone. Oh my God, I've been saying this. Yeah, I've been saying this. Like no chain has fees anymore. What's one chain that has fees? Why would they?

Bitcoin has no demand, so they have no fees. Of course. Ethereum scaling. Yeah. Also has much less demand than in the past. And then what other chains are left? Like, Megaheith, brand new chain is like negative fees because it's the theoretical limit of throughput.

Salana is going even faster. You only get fees. You are right. Tron has fees. You only get fees on a blockchain if there's block if demand exceeds supply. And if you are creating more supply and supply exceeds demand, you don't get feeds.

And so, you know, like if your bullcase on ether is just about fees, then you also have to not care about scaling, right? Anyway. This is why for decentralized blockchains, my thesis on how they accrue value is all about store of value. It's all about money. Bitcoin's always been right.

Ether is a store of value. My opinion is always right. There will be times where we'll oscillate and we will generate some fees and that will go into the burn and that will slightly reduce issuance. But eth is either a store of value asset and a money or it's not worth very much

because it's not worth much on fees alone. Right. There's a whole separate rant. You guys know my position on this. Basically, Ryan is saying that as Ethereum's throughput increases, ETH becomes more and more money-like rather than revenue-like. That's right. That's right.

I believe that. David, you want to hear about the strategic Bitcoin Reserve? Yeah, there was something out of Consensus Miami, which is happening right now. Oh, yeah, yeah. Actually, I forgot to tell you, by the way, because we talked about the Arctic Circle meeting. The Glanced your damn upgrade was all the devs. met somewhere in the Arctic Circle. Can you pronounce that? You pronounce this place? Solvbard?

Solvbard. Salvbard for the Solugan interrupt. What country is that? Is that like Finland? It's somewhere very cold. All right. Anyway, the devs met there and that's where they grew. Everyone's in Miami and they're in Solvborg with a weird line through the O. It doesn't seem real. It else is in Miami. Yeah, the ETHs go to the Arctic Circle. Like, why, guys? You don't have to go there. I mean, they definitely don't want to go to Miami. So, yeah. Anyway, all right. So back to the Bitcoin, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

So this is the third tease we've had, and the biggest tease over the past three weeks. So you remember last week we talked about Pete Higgs, as the Secretary of War, talking about Bitcoin as Matter of Security, saying there could be an announcement in the future. Eric Trump was in Miami. He said, big things are coming that the U.S. government has 300,000 Bitcoin and won't sell it, he said. Now we have Patrick Witt, who is actually the guy at the White House, who is responsible for crypto in implementing the policy. And he said this, the strategic Bitcoin Reserve is coming. An announcement is coming in the next few weeks. All right.

So what could he be announcing? We got an announcement of an announcement? Yeah. And it's going to be a big deal. There could be all sorts of possibilities here. What do you think the possibilities are? Oh, God, I have no clue. Really?

Like, no clue at all? I mean, yeah, I have no idea, actually. Okay, so Patrick Witt, do you remember Bo Hines? He's now, he used to be in Patrick Witt's situation. He used to be the Crypto Council Executive Director. He's now at Tether. Patrick Witt is the guy who replaced him. I think what they're going to do here is,

I don't think they're going to announce a program for purchasing Bitcoin. What I think they're going to do is actually announce the execution and implementation of Trump's executive order, his strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order that really hasn't been implemented. And I think what they're going to do is go down the process of creating a Fort Knox for crypto. I think that's the part of it. So if you recall, there was an executive order of March of last year that called for a few things. one centralized cold storage of all of the Bitcoin that the U.S. government had. You recall all the Bitcoin, all the crypto assets seized were scattered across the DOJ, you know, cold wallets and desk drawers.

Remember that U.S. Marshall's case where somehow 30 million of... There was like a seed phrase in the evidence room and then the associated Bitcoin magically disappeared because the police officers stole it or the... That's right. So you need something centralized, some cold storage, some Fort Knox type of. of infrastructure in order to do this. I think also an audit framework will be part of this. I think they'll formalize that we're not selling Bitcoin, the teeth behind this. And I think they will do this. They will give Bitcoin, maybe some other crypto assets, a reserve asset

designation. So that puts it in kind of the class on the Fed balance sheet alongside gold, alongside other fiat currencies that they might hold and SDRs. So I think that's what they're really going to do. And the U.S. government does have about 300 to 328,000 Bitcoin, although a chunk of this is court bound, is tied up in courts, is victims have claim over it. Not necessarily the governments. That's right. Ode to people. So the Fort Knox pile, the part they would put in the strategic Bitcoin reserves, probably like closer to like 150 to 200K Bitcoin. That's what I think they're going to roll out. And that is, in my opinion, very bullish. Now, it might not be as bullish. Yeah, like, the reason why I kind of thought this was a nothing burger is because, like, there's no

way that they're announcing that they're buying Bitcoin. And that's really what people want. And that's just not, it's just so unfeasible. Yeah. I think what you're saying is that, like, this is just an increasing legitimization of Bitcoin. Because we're creating process and structure and commitment to holding Bitcoin. Yeah, a giant government vault for it. Yeah. Like if you told, if you're not excited about this, you don't think this is. Thumbs up. Thumbs up. Dude, five years ago, if you were to tell me that the U.S. government was going to create a Fort Knox for digital bear instruments, I would be blown away.

I'd be like, okay, well, we won. It's over. Yeah, you're right. But like, we already had the announcement. It's just like, hey, we're doing the thing that we said that we're going to do. Yeah. And it's 2026 and it's 42 years later. But like, yeah, okay, you're right.

You're like, we got there. Yay. You're right, though. I mean, they're not going to announce that they're going. I don't think they're going to announce that they're going to be purchasing Bitcoin. There is a way that the Treasury could do that, by the way. It's called an ESF Exchange Stabilization Fund. They could.

So Besson could, outside of Congress, actually start purchasing Bitcoin. There's no way he's going to do that. And then you remember Senator Lummis, she had a proposal called the Bitcoin Act, which was to actually buy $1 million in Bitcoin. That's a congressional act. That's not going to happen either. That's not going to happen. Not in the same time where our debt to GDP ratio just past 100 or whatever.

I mean, it's probably the right time, though. It's probably the right time. Yeah, right. Actually, that's bullish. So the probability, according to the polymarket, of the U.S. national Bitcoin Reserve as defined, you know, in the way I defined it, is 33% right now. But rising. But a rose on the week.

So there you go. You don't seem excited about it. I guess it's just remarkable in the sense that, like, I kind of. forgot that they didn't do it. They just announced that they did it. That's right. That's right. They did. Now we're actually doing it. But I just don't want to like applaud for them for just being late. It's it's so exciting to me to think about what a, what a cryptic Fort Knox would actually look like. Sure. Yeah. Like how are they locking that down? Is the government doing this? Like, oh my God, that's kind of scary. I mean, does. Because that means like the government will have a

Ethereum wallet and a Bitcoin wallet. Well, it will be a Bitcoin wallet. Well, they already do, of course. right? I wish they had an Ethereum wallet because then we could send meme coins there and like other shenanigans like that. Like yeah, isn't it cool to just like this is a government's Bitcoin wallet. It's this.

And also here is the Ethereum wallet. I mean, will it be protected physically like the way Fort Knox is? I could imagine. But like you can still expose the publicies. Yeah. And we can send meme coins. I mean, will foreign adversaries

be trying to attack it? For instance, trying to infiltrate it, trying to break in? Like, just the thought. Why wouldn't you? Like, if you're in North Korea, why wouldn't you go after that? Of course. That would be an incredible prize for them. And, like, is the U.S. government actually competent enough to pull this off?

Or do they really, like, I don't think I trust the U.S. government more than a Bitcoin base. No, they should just hire fireblocks or Anchorage or something. But then that's like a nation state target. Anyway, I find a very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Can the United States government self-custody is Bitcoin? Is Trump going to just have it on his, you know, beside the nuclear launch codes?

Didn't Trump steal a bunch of files and hide them in his bathroom after? It's going to end up in Mar-a-Loc. Dude, Trump's just going to take the private keys with him when he goes. It's on a ledger somewhere in Mar-a-Lago. That's the, you know, the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. I'm just picturing, you know how there's like the drawer in the desk of the president is a, I don't know if this is still true. But it's a drawer full of gifts that, like, I just like, I just like, remember this old story of Nixon when Elvis visited the White House.

Nixon needed to get a gift for him, so he pulls open the drawer and is like, here's a watch. I can just imagine just like a gold ledger just being in that drawer. That's just where it is. I think you could give that to Trump but not actually have the private keys on there, just say they're on there. And he would be pretty happy with that. You'd hold it up. Oh, my God. All right, guys, got to end it there.

You know, crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. but we are headed west. This is the frontier. Not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.