Bankless - ROLLUP: Curve Exploit | BASE Memecoins | Richard Heart vs SEC
Episode Date: August 4, 2023Bankless Weekly Rollup First Week of August, 2023 ------ 🚀Join Ryan & David at Permissionless II in September. https://bankless.cc/GoToPermissionless ------ 📣 STADER LABS | ETHX LIQUID STAKING... https://bankless.cc/Stader ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 🦊METAMASK PORTFOLIO | MANAGE YOUR WEB3 EVERYTHING https://bankless.cc/MetaMask ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 👾POLYGON | VALUE LAYER OF THE INTERNET https://polygon.technology/roadmap 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/Toku ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 3:40 MARKETS 5:45 25m ETH Staked https://twitter.com/ultrasoundmoney/status/1686670146427813888 6:40 US Debt Crisis https://twitter.com/stackhodler/status/1686276924773982208 https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/01/fitch-downgrades-us-long-term-ratings-to-aa-from-aaa.html https://twitter.com/LukeGromen/status/1686516760680214528 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-happening-economy-great-wealth-transfer-ray-dalio/ 16:10 Tether T-Bills https://twitter.com/paoloardoino/status/1685993811774738432 https://twitter.com/collins_belton/status/1686084175697211392?s=20 20:00 Curve Exploit https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1685693202722848768 https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1685829565158162432 https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1685829579334938624?s=20 https://twitter.com/autismcapital/status/1686251750632853504 https://twitter.com/DefiIgnas/status/1686323974563909632?s=20 https://twitter.com/MilkRoadDaily/status/1686422244594012179?s=20 Learn More: https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1686190496019017730?s=20 https://www.youtube.com/live/I1bVLQdUkMw 24:20 BASE Mainnet Launch https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1687087044579966976 https://twitter.com/MacnBTC/status/1685589663963078656?s=20 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2XvGTsXwAAm9SW https://twitter.com/notEezzy/status/1685994199819190272?s=20 29:00 SBF Conspiracy Theory https://twitter.com/hype_eth/status/1686126115947941890 https://twitter.com/ryansadams/status/1686148330139639808 https://twitter.com/FrankResearcher/status/1686184372485976065?s=20 32:00 Passing Arbitrum https://twitter.com/TheDeFinvestor/status/1685962819051675648 https://twitter.com/westiecapital/status/1686417439372812288 https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1686194472689000448 34:55 SEC Sues Richard Heart https://twitter.com/SECGov/status/1686042971190272000?s=20 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-143 https://imgur.com/saLUKNd https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1686687165575520256?s=20 https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1686491323908452353?s=20 37:20 Uniswap Delisting HEX? https://coinmarketcap.com/headlines/news/uniswap-delists-hex-token/ 45:00 3AC No Longer US Citizens https://www.theblock.co/post/242675/3ac-co-founder-says-us-court-can-no-longer-tell-him-what-to-do 46:30 Justice…? https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1687086457075236864?s=20 48:20 Richard Heart Documentary https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1686491323908452353?s=20 51:15 Binance vs DOJ https://www.semafor.com/article/08/02/2023/us-prosecutors-worry-binance-charges-could-cause-run-on-exchange https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1686757050464813056?s=20 https://twitter.com/NoelleInMadrid/status/1686808699904344082 54:24 Ethereum’s Birthday and Futures https://twitter.com/LefterisJP/status/1685577856502382592?s=20 https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1685672504616968192?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1686510111123030016 https://twitter.com/DegenSpartan/status/1686563092061462528 57:30 EIP1559 https://twitter.com/ultrasoundmoney/status/1686419775868620820 https://dune.com/arixon/mev-burn 59:10 MetaMask Staking MATIC https://twitter.com/metamask/status/1684263257450610697 1:00:55 EIP 6968 https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1683916090831937538 1:03:22 Celo Temp Check https://twitter.com/marek_/status/1685982906655662081?s=20 1:03:50 Worldcoin Contd https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1684939802083282944?s=46 https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1686318014034026496?s=46 1:06:50 Microstrategy BTC https://twitter.com/stackhodler/status/1686633880051200000 1:07:50 DCG Bankruptcy Agreement https://www.theblock.co/post/242350/dcg-says-its-close-to-reaching-agreement-on-genesis-chapter-11-appoints-new-cfo 1:10:00 Questions from the Nation 1:16:45 Important to Internalize https://twitter.com/pythianism/status/1684981202275667968 1:19:45 Bull Market Starting https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1686671529768079360?s=20 1:20:00 What David’s Bullish On 1:25:00 What Ryan’s Bullish On https://twitter.com/ryansadams/status/1686428210991419402 1:27:15 Vitalik’s Take 1:28:45 MEME of the Week https://twitter.com/pseudotheos/status/1685743250127433728 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Binance could face fraud charges from the Department of Justice.
But what is the Department of Justice waiting for?
Bankless Nation, happy first Friday of August.
David, what time is it?
Oh, Ryan, it's the Bankless Friday Weekly Roll Up where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto,
which is always an ambitious endeavor.
Yet we persevere into this bullish frontier.
I'm claiming it's bullish this week.
It's a very bullish week to me.
I think it's a bullish.
David came down from the mountains bullish.
Okay, so what was the elevation of Matterhorn?
And how did that go?
The elevation of Matterhorn was 14,690 feet.
Okay, mark that number, bankless listeners.
You can't necessarily judge a mountain by its elevation.
Matterhorn's very steep.
Yeah.
I mean, but that elevation is high, though, right?
That elevation is high as far as mountains go.
I mean, high is relative.
I wouldn't call it super high.
Like Everest is 26,000 feet or something like that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I was definitely like feeling the altitude.
That's for sure.
Do you see my comment?
That's going to be the elevation of Matterhorn is going to be the top price of ether during the next bull cycle.
So give us that number again, 14,000 what?
14,690.
There it is.
It has been prophesized.
I'm looking forward to like as ether pumps through this next bull market, it's like,
oh, it passed my summit at Baker.
Oh, it passed my summit at Pollux.
Oh, it passed up my summit at Rainier.
You need to tweet that every single time it does, man. That's great. Well, it's great to have you back, Dankl.
It's really good to be back. I'm just called you Dankless. David, David and Bankless is bankless.
It's great to have you back, David. It's not the first time the word dankless has been uttered. I'm very excited to be back. It's a very good time to be back. It's a very good week to be in crypto. I was a very entertaining week.
Good things happened. Some bad things happened. More good things than bad things, I would say. And like I said, I'm feeling pretty bullish. I don't know about you.
All right. No, I'm feeling bullish, too. Although there were some bad things that happened this week.
the curve exploit, which we've got to talk about, that led to a cascade of events across all of
defy. Everyone's talking about the CRV token right now. We did an entire episode on that. I think we've got
to get the recap in today's roll up. David, what else we're covering? What else we got? The base launch
date is announced. We're about to drop the base and a meme coin frenzy has already happened on base.
So it's already had its mean coin frenzy cycle or at least the first of perhaps future cycles.
Richard Hart is sued by the SEC for fraud
and issuing unregistered securities.
Man, like, I never thought I'd see the day.
But here we are.
So we're going to talk about all of that
and why some people are thinking
that the Department of Justice
is not far behind.
And then also, Binance is in the hot seat.
Speaking of the Department of Justice,
investigation for fraud,
are they too big to fail?
Does that matter for Binance?
What else we got, Ryan?
We got some birthdays, don't we?
We got a birthday to celebrate in the episode.
I'm not going to tell you what birthday
we're about to celebrate, but it's a big one. It's an important one. So stay tuned in the show,
guys, for that. David, while we're here, we got a shout out our friends and sponsors over at
Stater, a new staking protocol that is also decentralized, which is very exciting. David, what's going
on with Stater? What do they want the Bankless Nation to know? Brand new staking as a service protocol
on the scene with as low as four ether for your bond. So if you want to run a node with Stater,
not just stake with Stater, but run your node with Stater because it's a permissionless protocol. You can do this.
You only have to stake for ETH.
It's one of the lowest capital requirements that I've seen.
They also are issuing SD token, the native token of the protocol, to people who stake.
So if this peaks you, there is a link in the show notes to get started staking with stater.
Staking with stater.
Kind of rolls off the tongue.
All right, let's go see what's cracking.
Oh, thanks, cracking for these fantastic charts.
What's Bitcoin price on the week?
When did you think of that one?
Not going to lie, it was a while ago.
You know, I've been waiting for that.
I've been waiting for you to come down the mountains.
Oh my God, I'm glad you did.
Bitcoin started the week at 29,400, down 0.3% to 29, 330.
Bitcoin lost a whopping $70.
So that is flatter than flat, I would say.
That's pancake flat right there in the week.
How about ETH price?
ETH price, a little bit, a little bit actually down.
A little bump.
Yeah, down 18,00075 down 1.5% to 1840.
I didn't say 18,000.
We're not there yet.
That's later.
1875 down to 1840.
Yeah, 18,000 would be past your Matterhorn peak there.
You've got to climb a higher mountain for that to happen.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
That's a great excuse to go climb another mountain.
Don't.
Don't.
Man, I was, I'm not going to lie, a little bit worried for you on this one.
You know, you're posting about like snow conditions and, you know, whether you should do it or not.
And, yeah, so I think we're good for now.
How about the ratio, eathcic-bik coin ratio?
Yeah, down about 1.5%.
So 0.062.
It stayed in the low 0.006s for a while now.
Can I zoom out here for a second?
It's been kind of flat summer, hasn't it?
Yeah.
Well, it's been flat since the start of the last bull market.
It's been flat for a very long time.
It's been like two years now.
I'm looking back in June.
And this is what Ether does.
It is a stable coin and then it goes vertical.
All right.
Well, it's great.
We found our stable coin finally,
the centralized stable coin we've been waiting for.
How about the crypto market cap, David?
1.2 trillion, over 1.2 trillion.
All right. Hey.
Man, we've been up, the total crypto market cap.
I mean, it goes up, it goes down,
but it's been on an upward trend
for seven months in a row now.
Yeah.
Ever since FTCS.
Yeah, I mean, not too bad to be above a trillion,
as we would say.
David, let's talk about all of that eth,
what it's doing, what is it doing?
It's getting staked.
This is crazy to me.
Look at these numbers.
Can you read them out?
I mean, this isn't new news.
It's just the news is that there's more of it happening.
25 million ether staked is the threshold that we have recently passed.
22 and a half million is actively staking with 2.5 million over 10% is actively
queued up to stay. Waiting to get in.
Wow. Yeah. And I think there's like a 30 to 40 day wait time now.
Like if you're in the queue, you got to, in order to get in the staking club, you got to wait
40 days, which is pretty incredible. Man, a lot of interest there. But what happens when
more ethos stake. That means yield goes down. You'll go down. Yeah. Okay. Is that okay? Are we happy with that?
I don't care. Yeah. It goes down. Yeah. It's part of the game. Part of the game. I mean, y'all can all
please unstake, and I will gladly take your issuance. They'll take the issuance. Dave,
they'll take all the MEV. Let's talk about another type of yield, and that is interest payments.
Interest payments are the fastest growing U.S. federal expense. Did you? Did you?
you know? What is this chart that we're looking on? They're about to pass one trillion dollars. I'm, of course,
talking about how much the U.S. government has to pay in interest on its debt because, yep,
the U.S. government is in a lot of debt. Look at this chart right now. What are we looking at?
We are looking at the chart of government debt. It looks like a shit coin parabola. That's how I would
describe this. So in 1991, we were looking at maybe $4 trillion of government debt. It had already
started to increase pretty fast at that point for the decades prior. Moving up to like 2005,
we're at a doubling of $8 trillion in debt. Moving into 2012, we're at $16 trillion, so another doubling.
2019, $22 trillion of debt to where we are now at $32 trillion in debt. And that makes,
according to this tweet, about $1 trillion in interest payments that the government has to make this year.
That's a lot of money. This is more than the U.S. spends on defense.
Yes. And you know the U.S. spends a lot on its military. That sounds like spiraling debt. That sounds like spiraling debt.
Well, related to this, Fitch. Fitch is a ratings agency. So they rate various debts of different kind. Fitch downgraded the U.S. debt rating, basically their creditworthiness to AA plus from AAA. And that apparently...
One grading lower than AAA is double A plus. These ratings, I think, could...
do it with a redo, but whatever.
Crypto can't fix that yet, David.
Their statement was why.
So why did they downgrade the U.S.?
A few reasons?
Three, primarily fiscal deterioration
over the next three years.
Okay, that means they expect the legislators
and Congress and the president
to continue to spending.
Number two, a growing general debt burden.
Oh, we just saw it.
$32 trillion.
Number three, erosion of governance
related to its peers.
So the U.S. having an inability to actually govern itself?
Some of the comments that they gave are pretty funny.
The U.S. government lacks a medium-term fiscal framework.
I think that's related to the governance issue.
Like they just, you know, we can't govern our own spending.
The budgeting process is extremely complicated, they cited.
U.S. politicians don't really know what's going on with their own budget.
I think that seems right.
You're too confusing to even be a proper government.
Wait, who said that?
Okay, I'm quoting Kyla Scanlon.
Who's quoting?
So we're hearing this for the great fine a little bit.
But then also they cited the rising cost of social security and Medicare.
We got an old population.
And just like shout out to Kyla in her humor.
Boomers are booming.
Very true.
Luke Rahman has a take here.
The U.S. cannot mathematically sustain their debt and deficits without sustained
negative real rates.
That's a problem when you raise rates.
So don't tell me the downgrade doesn't make sense.
Tell me which suckers at the card table collectively have a big enough balance sheet to hold $32 trillion in debt at negative real rates.
Yeah, that's the question.
I don't know who's buying bonds, David.
Do you?
Who's buying bonds?
You buying any bonds?
Not me.
I'm buying ether, the internet bond.
Yeah, yeah.
The bonds that are both giving you real yields and also capital appreciation.
Yeah.
I remember talking last week, we were talking about like the Fed.
because the Fed race interest rates last week, a quarter, quarter, 25 bips, if you will.
Ooh, Bips?
I like, I like the cut of your jib, David.
You learn these finance terms.
But the comment I made is like, man, I haven't thought about macro or interest rates.
We haven't talked about the Fed pivoting in forever now.
It's like the market, A, kind of has, like, written off how big of a deal these interest rates are anymore.
Because they are also slowing down and getting smaller, but also inflation is coming down.
but also like all of the points that people have originally made is like sure we can jack up interest rates to combat inflation
but the Fed has a date with destiny and that destiny is to print money at some point in time and so I think
there's a decent possibility that the markets have written off the pivot we've forgotten about it
but at some point in time the money printer must resume and whether that's one year three years five years
10 years, I don't know, but like, I think the market has written that off.
David, you're starting to sound a little bit like radio to me.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Oh, I guess you're bullish crypto.
You're bearish government debt.
Do you remember, I think it was a couple of roll-ups ago where I asked this question
about, you know, all this Fed tightening.
I mean, interest rates raised from basically close to zero percent all the way to, you know,
above 5 percent, right?
And I remember being told at that time and a lot of the prognosticated.
were saying that will absolutely devastate everything.
Like that will be a catastrophe.
Widespread job loss.
Like stock market will go down.
Like all of these bad things would happen.
And so, I mean, I was told the Fed tightening would nuke everything.
And the question is, why didn't it?
Guess what?
I think Ray Dalio is a listener to the bankless podcast because he heard that question, maybe,
and wrote his entire post about that this week.
And he answered the question.
And I think he did a good job answering it.
Here's the take from Ray Dalio on why.
There was a big government engineering shift in wealth from, one, the public sector,
the central government and central bank, and number two, the holders of government bonds to
the private sector, which are households and businesses.
This made the private sector relatively insensitive to the Fed's very rapid tightening
to a more normal monetary policy.
And as a result of this coordinated government maneuver, the household sector's balance sheets
and income statements are in good shape
while the governments are in bad shape.
So that's why unemployment is low.
Feels like the private sector is doing okay.
The stock market is almost all-time high
because you know who took all the bullets for us?
The U.S. balance sheet, that $32 trillion that we were looking at over there.
And bondholders, that was the take.
He simplifies it a little bit.
More simply, central banks took on a lot more debt
so their balance sheets deteriorated, and the central banks printed a lot more money, which caused
inflation to rise, and bought a lot of the debt to get money into the hands of the private sector,
which now, as a result, is in relatively good shape financially. So yeah, bondholders took a haircut.
The government's balance sheet took all the bullets. The private sector's doing okay.
Wealth inequality increased even more, and that begs the question of what's the next phase of all of this.
And I think the answer, according Ray Dalio, is more money printing, as you're saying,
but a different type of money printing.
We already did the QE thing.
We already did, you know, the buying bonds thing.
The next step, according to Ray Dalio's, you know, long-term cycles.
And his planning is basically like helicopter money directly to the people to decrease wealth inequality,
all sorts of government programs, fiscal and central bank programs kind of,
become the same and we're just printing money and giving it to the people. That's kind of the next step.
Why do the people get the money? That's what's the motivation there? Well, because look at things.
Like the stock market's at an all-time high, right? But also wealth inequality has increased in the US.
But don't the people need to like, you know, grab their pitchforks in order to induce the
motivation in order to get the helicopter money? Ah, yes, David. Right. And then we're not going to be like,
hey, we've decided to give a distribution to the people like, no. I mean, look out there. Are you seeing
pitchforks? Because I see pitchforks. They might be a little bit in the distance.
I'm not seeing peace force. There's so much anger, like politically. I mean, look at our political
climate. I think so much of... Yeah, I see there's a number of step, a gap in that happening and
then also helicopter money. I don't see those things like having a smooth direction.
I don't think it'll be smooth, but I think that there is increasing anger.
You know, we blame social media for some of these things, blame the internet for some of these
things, I think a lot of the anger, just in general, the question, answer to the question of why is
everyone angry all of the time is due to wealth inequality, due to like shrinking pie, due to
lack of economic opportunities. There's, again, the, you know, the top 10%, the top 1% are doing
fairly well in this type of environment, but a lot of people are left behind. The whole rural versus
urban thing, you know, that's, that's another lens on this. I mean, we're, we're, not to get into
politics, but
2024 in the U.S.
political scene is going to be real rocky.
For many reasons,
for lots of reasons,
but one of them,
I think,
is part of the wealth inequality story.
Yeah,
yeah.
And I think one of the big things
that people were looking for
is a depreciation of house prices,
housing prices,
and that has not happened.
Like,
if you bought at the real estate
at the top of the market in 2021,
you're doing just fine.
Like, you're doing great.
Student debt is another example.
That, you know,
a whole large conversation. I mean, there's, there's many things, areas where this is spilling over
into political. Let's move on. Let's talk about tether for a second. Did you know, David, that tether
now holds more U.S. T bills than Australia? It's pretty crazy. All righty then. Okay. I mean,
I don't know how many Teebles, Australia holds. Less than Tether. Yeah. So Tether, David,
has 72 billion dollars worth of T bills. And apparently this is, uh,
larger than the nation state of Australia.
So there's a comment from Collins Belton about this.
Wow, if true, Tether is apparently holding more T-bills than Australia and also the UAE and many other countries.
At this point, regardless of whether you believe on their history, I think it's hard to see the U.S. government railroading these guys easily anymore.
What does that mean?
You think about that.
Who's the U.S.G and what's railroading?
US government. He's saying the U.S. government is the U.S.G.
What's real-roading?
I think what he's saying is basically like,
the U.S. government is not going to shut tether down, is not going to completely like excommunicate them.
Oh, is it too big to fail? Yeah. I think that's what he's saying. Basically, when something like this gets too big, the government doesn't kill it because that would be
too painful for everyone involved. Instead of killing it, they just legitimize it in some way. And so Collins is making the point that this seems to be what could be happening with tether.
I mean, they got more T-bills than most countries.
I'm not sure how I feel about that.
That's probably bullish for crypto assets because it reduces the systemic risk of tether.
But then crypto just made another bank that's too big to fail.
I'm not sure how to feel about this.
I don't know.
I don't know how to feel either, Dave.
I'm going to take the bullish side.
I'm bullish because of it.
All right.
It's bull week.
So when in doubt, you choose bullish.
David, what do we have coming up next?
Coming up next, Curve Exploy and its founder's mega loan sends DeFi into a hot
seat, base surpasses arbitrageeum in daily transactions and it's not even live yet. And a protocol
has celebrated its eighth birthday, starting to throw a little bit of breadbreadcrumbs your way.
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Curve finance was hacked this week and it sent shockwaves across all of Defi and crypto. David, what happened here?
Yeah, so there was a vulnerability in the coding language, Viper, that Curve used for some of its pools. So this is actually pretty damn deep in the tech stack. And so I don't think it was anything in the way that curve pools were built, but because they used Viper and because Viper forgot to have these re-entrancy checks in the,
their in their code base. As a result, it allowed for a re-answerency attack, which is a pretty
known attack. It's actually how the Dowhack got drained back in 2016. And so Curve had a re-entency
attack thanks to, I guess, thanks to the coding language Viper that forgot to have re-entrancy checks
in it. 70 million dollars was drained from four curve pools, the Pindle-Eath pool, the
metronome-Eth pool, Alchemix, eth pool, and then the curve-slash-Eth liquidity.
pool. About $20 million was actually recovered by white hat hackers and MEV bots,
interestingly enough, which is an interesting little side quest of this story. But the big story
is that because of the curve-eath pool, $5.1 million of curve tokens, 7.2 million curve tokens,
was drained and then taken into the exploiter's wallet. Now, that's one thing. That's bad,
because this exploiter gets $7.2 million. The reason why this goes from,
a bad story about curve to a bad story about defy is because the curve founder Michael
Igorov had taken out about $110 million of stable coin loans against his 460 million
curve tokens, which was almost $300 million at the pre-exploit price.
Then once you put $7 million of curve tokens into the hands of an exploiter, people start
to react to that because that is, you know, we are just one button press away from dumping $5.1 million
dollars of curve tokens into the market.
So people start to withdraw liquidity.
People who are providing liquidity to curve across defy, either in stable coin pairs with
curve or ETH pairs with curb, they start to yoinkled liquidity because they don't want to
get dumped on.
So liquidity starts to dry up around curve.
And so that makes the liquidity profile around curve very precarious.
And especially when Michael has $110 million of collateral, of borrowed stable coins against
his curve collateral, he is under duress.
his positions were under duress.
And if that curve exploiter decided to liquidate his curve,
they would cause a cascading liquidations if Michael was not able to bolster up his positions.
He has since sold about $16 million of curve to pay back some of his loans,
but he still has $90-something million in loans to pay back across DFI protocols.
Now, here's all of the DFI protocols that Michael has put curve tokens,
into and borrowed stable coins from.
Ave v2 is the biggest one coming in at 3,300 million curve tokens, which is 34% of the circulating
supply of CRV.
Abercadabra has 51 million.
Fraxlens had 41 million, inverse finance at 25 million.
Dakedow had 3 million.
Silo had 2 million.
This guy put curve across DeFi and then borrowed stable coins.
Like I said, 110 million stable coins.
And so all of these are in precarious positions.
if curve goes down to the price of, I think, 34 cents.
It's currently at 38 cents last I checked.
But if it ever went to 34 cents, he would be liquidated.
And that would cause-
Wait, 38 cents?
Did it get that low?
It did flash crash that low, but not to the point of it actually being liquidated in
Defi protocols.
So we're still good here for now.
Curve price is currently at 58 cents, which is where it was 24 hours ago as well.
So he's looking good for now, but he's still.
not a good place to be. Why? What did this man do with the $110 million that he borrowed from all these
defyprop protocols? Well, just a few months ago, he happened to have bought a $40 million mansion
and also a second one. So he's got two million, like multi-million dollar mansions in Melbourne,
Australia that he bought, one of them he bought just a few months ago. I don't know about the other one.
It seems like it could be related to the stable coin.
borrowing, but we don't know for sure.
We don't know for sure, let's say.
So that's, you know, a question, I suppose.
Yeah.
So there's actually a ton more in this story, and we did a 45 minute, an hour-long episode
yesterday that got released.
So we are just kind of giving the highest level of recaps.
So if you want to catch up on this and go dive down into this, there's a, there's
a fantastic article that Bankless, the Bankless Newsletter team put together.
Shout out Jack.
And then also we use that article to inform a podcast that we,
put out yesterday. And so that you, we have just given you me the high level recap. The story
goes very deep. But that's it right there. I mean, the TLDR is we're going to be okay.
This is not systemic beyond right now the CRV token. Yes. And also, and also if you are a
Defi protocol governor, then you who has CRV as collateral, you need to pay attention. But other than that,
you're fine. Some cool things going on in the Layer 2 world. This is, after all, Layer 2 summer.
It's been layer two summer for about two years now, but it's definitely layer two summer now.
The base mainnet has just been announced that the launch date for that.
That date is, you ready for it, David?
August 9th.
Okay, this is next week.
The next roll-up you hear, Base Mainnet will be launched.
There's already been some activity on base mainnet as well.
Should we talk about that?
Yeah, sure.
So base has been open for developers to go build stuff, and some developers.
have definitely built stuff. And some people have just went on and minted tokens and meme coins and
started trading them. And so this has been like the news of base in this last week or so.
This bald token was launched on July 30th, so just like four days ago. It's literally called
bald, right? It's called bald. Why is it called bald? Because there's a meme that bald founders
are bullish. I'm pretty sure that was D-Gen Spartan that started that. And so, you know, this is
Brian Armstrong's chain. It's not actually, but you know, associated with Coinbase, therefore
associated with Brian Armstrong, who is a bald man, who was a bullish bald man.
And so the ball token was made.
And so that launched on July 30th.
When all tokens are minted, they all start at a valuation of zero.
And that went to $50 million in market cap in just under a day with over $100 million
of trading volume.
Now, this is a pre-mainnet base.
One of the reasons why this just, you know, rocketed to $50 million in market cap is because
you can't actually leave base.
You can only go on base.
You can't go out of base.
There's no off ramp.
There is now since an off ramp, but while this thing was pumping, there was no way to get off
of base.
And so Bald token, which has created $50 million out of thin air.
And you know what happened next, Ryan?
Tell me.
It was a rug.
And so as soon as it hit $50 million, the bald deployer yointed to over a thousand ether
of liquidity and others removed 6,800 ether of liquidity.
and another person released 1,800 ether of liquidity.
So over about 10,000 ether was joint of liquidity.
And this thing goes from $50 million down to below $10 million.
We are the valuation of bald, not that it matters or you should care,
but if you are curious, the valuation of bald is about $11 to $12 million.
As of now.
As of now, after falling about 90%.
And so a short little token meme coin mania in base.
But the founders removed about 32,000.
million dollars. Now, we've seen meme coins before. I mean, that, you know,
I've seen a lot of mean coins of first. This is the first on base, and it was certainly
the largest last week. Congrats. Congrats, base. You got your first meme point. And you were just
talking about the liquidity being drained. There's more to that because the person, the individual,
who removed the liquidity, seems to be the founder of Bold, the instantiator of the meme
coin. And this individual, the founder, was actually the lead rug puller here and withdrew
$32 million of ETH liquidity. So it was basically a founder rug meme coin that happened on
the base blockchain. Do you get to call yourself a founder if you just founded a meme coin?
I shouldn't have said founder. I mean, what is that? Scammer? Like, scamer? Is it a scam? Is it a scam?
because like
you're
what is the scam anymore
it's a you're ruggedity
but you never
I'm assuming they never
brought like advertised
here's what I'm going to do
with this base token
it's gross I don't know what
it is gross
we use for it but like
we'll call it gross
that's for sure
but there's some
conspiracy theories
going on about this
on who is the
the mentor
the scammer in chief
behind Bob
so there's a lot of
this conversation
going on in crypto
Twitter this is one
accounts
hype saying
to summarize thousands of ETH between FTX and Bald.
The Ball Deployer was the first voter on all sushi proposals.
Listen to these clues.
The Ball Deployer tweets the same sentence structure as who?
SBF.
What?
First time we've used those initials in a while.
The Ball Deployer was the biggest DYDX farmer.
The Bald Deployer's DYDX post sounds a lot like SBF in terms of sentence structure.
The on-chain activity lines up with court dates and bail of who?
SBAF.
We know SBF was doing stuff through VPN recently.
Okay, a lot of the sleuthers are doing sleuth stuff, okay?
And there is, there was the possibility of all the people, of all the lines going across all the different like clues.
This is total crypto Twitter conspiracy theory.
But there is the possibility, at least crypto Twitter was considering the possibility that the Rugger in chief was actually our friend SBF.
And can you imagine, David, that one of the biggest frauds.
in history, just like hypothetically, imagine, okay, Charlie conspiracy theory, gets out on bail
from his parents' basement launches a $30 million rug on one of his biggest competitor's chains
called bald. And he thought no one would notice. Like, if that's the case, that's what happened.
Now, I personally don't think that's the case after the sleuths on crypto Twitter have kind of
batted this around, but I will say it does seem like the individual who deployed this has some
ties to automated research. Right. That is a fact. That is a known fact. That is a fact. That is a fact.
And it's absolutely crazy here. This is another take. Somebody who's been doing some sleuth-sloathing.
What does this say? Yeah, they say, Igor says, all right, I've been sitting on this news all day,
but let's look at the bald base, bald Twitter account, which is the account that issued the base token,
deployer address.
This is definitely someone from Alameda,
but I don't think we can safely say that it is FBS.
This is definitely someone from Alameda,
but we cannot safely say that is SBF,
even though he's a psycho,
is what this person says.
And so, yeah,
so if you just sleuth around
and you go back to the originating address,
there is a,
it's associated with Alameda research.
So, you know,
scammers are going to scam,
what they do.
Wow.
And they say that Sam has no access to a laptop
or a limited access.
So,
Yeah, it's like, I don't know the details of it, but it's like he can access like the New York Times and, you know, government approved websites. I bet you he cannot be issuing contract addresses on Ethereum. I bet that is not allowed. So they say, but the conspiracy theory lives on on Twitter.
Anyways, as a result of all this, Bald has made base surpass Arbitrum. Again, before base is launched, Bald transaction surpass Arbitrum transactions in daily.
transaction volume, 5.3 million transactions settled in one day, which interestingly enough,
Ryan, has made base profitable. So the layer two base sequencer has accrued $700,000
dollars of profit in just three days, which is about $85 million on an annual basis.
Now, this is straight alpha for coin price, in my opinion. Do you think Wall Street analysts
understand how to value that thing? It's like, it's not even, it's not even on main net and
Coinbase, whoever is validating base, I think 15% of these profits goes to the Optimism Collective,
actually.
But on an $85 million annual basis, pre-mainnet launch, that's what Coinbase would get.
I doubt Wall Street's considering this, although Coinbase does have an earnings report
that that's coming out shortly.
So maybe we'll see something in that.
Go out take a look at that.
I don't think Wall Street's considering it, although.
And so you're saying this could be a bull case, although you could also.
You could also make this a bear case because the driver of all of this profit was a scammy
meme coin.
And it's possible that U.S. regulators point to Coinbase and say, ah, so this is your crypto
chain that you say is going to revolutionize finance in the world.
And the very first big hit on it and a driver of your profit is a scammy meme coin rugpole,
right?
So I don't know bearish or bullish on this initial use case here.
I choose to interpret the bullish scenario.
It's that kind of weak, huh?
Although, like, yeah, it is that kind of weak.
But, you know, base is a permissionless chain.
And just in case anyone was confused,
you do not need to go through KYC to get on base.
You can go to the base layer two through the Ethereum layer one
without doing any sort of KYC.
Anthony Sazano had a really good take this week about this.
Funny thing about this launch of base
is that it's only meant to be for developers.
The official public launch
are scheduled for early August.
That's August 9th.
But DGens are so starved for volatility
that they aped anyways.
Amazing.
See, bullish appetite,
trading appetite is on the table.
People want to buy tokens right now.
For this crap, though,
it's like casino stuff.
I hate it.
I hate it.
Hey, you know.
Sorry.
We're going to get there.
Token's going to token.
David, at some point,
the like high utility,
good for the world use cases will crowd out and buy the block space from the crappy ones.
The dumb use cases come first. The better use cases are harder and therefore come second.
Yeah. Say that again, so I believe it. The dumb, stupid, easy use cases come first. The harder
public goods, good for humanity, bullish use cases are harder to do, but they come second.
Oh, well, speaking of that, I've got another story for you. Richard Hart, do you remember that?
A dumb, stupid meme coin token called Hex?
What happened with that this week?
Not just Hex.
Yeah, so the SEC has sued Richard Hart over Hex, Pulse Chain, and PulseX,
alleging that he raised over a billion dollars across three different unregistered
securities since beginning in 2019.
He also defrauded investors by using investor funds for personal goods.
I think there's plenty of evidence for that on crypto Twitter.
And he just flashes that around.
The lawsuit says that Hart continually touted these investments.
as a pathway to grandiose wealth for investors,
claiming that Hex, for example,
was built to be the highest appreciating asset
that it's ever existed in the history of man.
Although Hart claimed these investments
were for the vague purpose of supporting free speech,
he did not disclose that he used millions of dollars
of Pult Chain investor funds to buy luxury goods for himself.
As a result of this suit,
Hex, Pulse Train, and Pulse X have all dropped a lot.
I got a chart tab if you want to open up that one.
Hex went from one penny to half a penny,
down 50%,
is pretty bad. Pulse chain went from 0.001 dollars, so 1 tenth of one pentee, down to
six hundredth of one pennies. This is really annoying because the denomination on these are so low.
That's part of the strategy here. And then Pulse X goes from, I'm sorry about this, point zero,
zero zero three down to point zero zero zero one eight.
We should do these in market caps.
It's also hard to see the market cap on these things just because of the way that these,
Yeah, but anyways, Hex is down 50%, pulse chain is down 40%,
pulls X is down 40%, which is pretty bad.
I put these two charts together.
I've layered on the Hex chart on top of the Terraluna chart
and also scaled it up to market cap.
Did you know that at its very peak?
Hex was double the market cap of Teraluna?
Wait, what?
Yeah.
It was worth $80 billion?
At the peak of Hex.
It was a top 10 token, bro.
At the peak of Hex.
It was. Yes.
What is wrong with this industry?
Dude, this is what we've been doing, man.
What?
It's not great.
Hex was $80 billion, $2x the valuation of Luna before Luna went to zero.
Ah.
Yeah.
Oh, man. Okay.
This is another part of the story, David Uniswap, at least on the user interface side, delisted the hex tokens.
The official uniswap user interface basically delist.
it. Now, does that mean that Uniswop the protocol has also delisted hex? No, does not. It does not mean
that. Why is? Specifically the front end. So Uniswop.com does not let you, the front end website that
you find in your browser does not let you buy or sell hex anymore. Uniswap protocol does not know
about the Uniswop.com front end. Those are different pieces of technology. There's many different
ways to access the Uniswap protocol. So hex is still trading on Uniswap. No, to
can be, has ever be, or will ever be delisted from Uniswop the protocol, but the Uniswop Labs
company who operates the Uniswop.com front end has not disabled the ability to buy or sell or
interacts with Hex in any particular way, which I think is just completely fine.
Can I ask you something?
Right.
So as I'm, as I was thinking about Hex, right?
So there's no question of my mind.
This was sort of a self-promotional meme coin for this individual.
Richard Hart. His real name is Richard Schuyler, by the way. So I'll call him that.
Richard Scholar, Richard. Richard. It's not as, as cool as Richard Hart.
I mean, he used this to personally get wealthy. I remember David, you know, as part of the
ledger league, all sorts of addresses were leaked, these sorts of things. I actually received
a physical mailing from hex and pulse chain promoting their token.
No way. I don't know that this came from Richard Schuyler or
who this came from. But like on Twitter, everything, it was, it was very clearly a pump and dump
memetic scam coin promoted by an individual, right? So I, it's incredibly distasteful, not what this
industry should represent. We could go on about it. I think the question of my mind is,
what is the actual difference between hex and XRP though? All right? So here's, here's the
problem. I worry with the SEC. I cannot defend this individual.
this project, cannot defend it at all. But if you give the SEC an inch, they'll take a mile.
And I expect they will make similar arguments that they made an XRP case in the Hex case.
And who is willing to defend...
Richard. Who is willing to defend Hex? Who's willing to defend Pulse Chain? I'm certainly not,
right? But is it a security? Is the asset itself a security? Is Bald Coin a security? Are all of the
dog coins a security? I don't think that.
they are. So I'm not entirely excited that the SEC is coming for a token. I'm sort of excited
about the outcome that, you know, hey, we get another kind of scammer off the streets, right?
That's great. That's great. But what about the precedent? What's your reaction to that?
What do you think about this? Yeah. I think the point that you are making is that XRP and a hex
it can be claimed that they serve very similar purposes,
which is to enrich the issuing entity.
The major difference between Ripple is that
they actually had some intent of doing interbank settlement transfers,
as scamy as one might think Ripple is.
They actually had some intent of building something.
And one might say that Richard, well, he did build a chain.
He raised a billion dollars,
and maybe he spent $1 million,
dollars actually building the thing that he promised to. But the intent is just so different.
Also, I don't think ever Ripple directly like touted financial gain about XRP. And if you,
the lawsuit says Hart continually touted these investments as a pathway to grandiose wealth for
investors claiming that Hex was built to be the highest appreciating asset that has ever
exists in the history of man. I don't think Ripple ever did that. I guess what I'm saying is I don't
know that
this passes the how we test
any more than XRP does.
Yeah, if we went through the litigation
process, I think what you're saying is like,
yeah, you would find similar, the reasons
why XRP is not a security might be
similar to the reason why Hex is not a security.
Yeah, the intent of the founders
is so subjective, or like the
intent of the issuers is so subjective.
And then you're saying, like, okay,
while we can't support Richard Hart
and I would like to see him punished,
is this the method that we want to see
that happening and I think you're calling into question that and I'm happy just to take this isn't
the appropriate way of using Occam's Razor but just taking the simple approach of saying like I don't give
a fuck I want the man in jail I just worry about the president the sets in general is like Gary Gensler
stacks it up as a win what an easy target it's kind of the same thing they did with SBF basically which is like
of course SBF was a scammer and no one could defend him and like then they go and they present and they
they see Exhibit A, this is what crypto is.
Here's your God.
Here's your hero.
His name is Sam Bank of Free,
and he perpetrated one of the largest scams in history.
That's all crypto is.
And they win their cases that way.
And they chip away at us.
So that's what I'm worried about,
kind of the credible neutrality is.
But like what's weird is,
now it sounds like I'm defending Richard Schuyler and Hax and Pulse Chain.
And I'm not doing that.
I am not doing that at all, to be clear.
I just, I worry about the precedent this sets.
But it might not just be the SEC.
Yes.
Bringing a case against him.
What's this piece of the story?
Okay, so this is now speculation.
But Martin Screlli was engaging with Eric Wall.
And Eric Wall is, he's been interestingly a part of like the whole hex ecosystem,
not as a promoter as like one of the guys trying to take it down and like help help prove the
fraud to the hexicans even though they don't want to see it.
Anyways, Martin Screlly is replying to Eric Wall.
and Martin Screlly is the guy who went to jail for jacking up, I think, like, EpiPen cost, remember him?
And now he's in crypto.
And so he goes, if you look at page 90 of these sentencing guidelines, he has already at 40 points,
which if you look at the sentencing chart in the same PDF is recommended life sentence.
With all the victims, it's a rough situation if he gets cuffed.
So this is, I think, this is talking about the Department of Justice.
And so Martin Screlly is saying that he might rack up enough, whatever these points.
points are, rack up enough points. And Martin Screlly would be very familiar with this as,
as somebody who he racked up, he's had 39 points. And if you get to 40 points, the sentencing
chart can put you in jail for life. What are these points? Is this like fraud?
I think, yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I've never, I've never racked up any
points. I've never been charged by the department and justice. Misappropriation. Yes.
Right. It's a different set of causes. And these caught, these things seem more relevant to the individual
question, at least in my opinion, rather than the SEC making a determination as whether some
particular meme coin is a security or not. I just don't want them to do that. But I do want our
justice system to catch scammers. Right. That would be nice. So I asked Martin Screlly,
what do you think the odds are that the Department of Justice picks this up? And he goes,
99% if they have the goods on misappropriation, which I seem they likely do. And he goes,
it's likely that he copse, he like settles to 10 to 15 years.
in jail if he goes to trial 25 to 30 years is easily on the table. So I don't know. I'm trusting Martin Screlli
is not something that I would do, but he has, he's got experienced in this matter, having gone
through this. And so he's saying that it's likely that eventually we will find Department of
Justice charges upon Richard Hart. Meanwhile, David, in another court, do you remember Kyle Davies,
the Three-Evers Capital co-founder? How could I forget? Well, he said he, uh, said he,
renounced his U.S. citizenship.
Oh.
And so as a result of doing that,
I'm no longer an American citizen.
U.S. courts have no jurisdiction
over him. Is that how that works, David?
Can you do that? Can I
just say I'm not a citizen?
If you break a law and you just
you know, I was not a citizen.
I actually listened to it. There's an old planet money
episode about this. I used to love planet money.
It hasn't been so great lately.
But they did an episode on people who just like
declared independence from citizenship
so they wouldn't have to pay
taxes. Really? Yeah, there's been
like a handful of court cases about this who people
just say, I'm not a citizen anymore. And they're
also living inside of the United States when they do this.
And there's been a whole series
of like legal efforts about this. It's, you
can't do it. They won't let you.
It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work like that.
No, not at all.
So that, I mean, he's just trying to abscond from
participating in bankruptcy and all these
things that he has to do.
He is currently in Dubai, I believe,
which is a non-extradition
country. But
Yeah, basically Kyle Davies is saying that the United States courts can no longer tell him what to do because he declares to no longer be a citizen of the United States.
Which, again, the United States says, you can't do that.
Well, certainly racking them up this year, David, you have a tweet here.
Doug Juan, jailed in Montenegro awaiting extradition, Alex Mishensky, charged by the Department of Justice, check, SBF, house arrest awaiting trial, check, three hours capital, permanently exiled from the U.S.
and all extradition countries will see, check.
Richard Hart sued by the SEC,
speculation of DOG indictment.
Why are you putting this checklist together, David?
This goes back to our permission to be bullish.
Weekly roll up, was that last week's?
Permission to be bullish?
Man, like, we're cleaning up the industry.
Like Richard Hart, sued by the SEC,
I will say fingers crossed that the Department of Justice
is not far behind.
Three hours capital, like, they're not in jail,
but they are quarantined as far away from the young,
United States is possible and all United States allied countries, you know, the West.
They could go to jail.
I will give like a two-thirds, a majority checkbox, but there's still left to be things to be
done there.
Same thing with SBF.
He's under house arrest.
He's awaiting trial.
I'm assuming he's going to go to jail if I want to have place faith in society.
Alex Wysinski charged by the Department of Justice, Doe Kwan is in Montenegro,
awaiting extradition to the United States.
It's, who else is there?
We got him.
We got them all.
You know another question here is, does this act as a deterrent for the next cycle?
When a new scammer thinks there's easy prey out there in crypto, and I'm going to launch my token, I'm going to do my fraud, I'm going to do it this way.
When they look back and they see, well, the previous cycle, look what happened to the scammers-in-chief last time.
Justice was served.
Does it act as a deterrent?
Because if so, that is also bullish moving forward.
It means, hopefully, we have less scammers entering the space.
because works like the real world, right?
If you commit fraud and it's egregious, then justice will be served.
And, you know, I think that is bullish as well.
Yeah.
Richard Hart got away for all of his trainees for way too long.
Do you know there's a documentary being made by him?
About Richard Hart?
About Richard Hart, about Hex, yeah.
August 4th and 5th?
Wow, that's in two days.
Oh my God.
The timing of this is great.
The documentary industry has to love this.
Like Hollywood's got to love what happened in crypto.
in the last few years, so much material, so much content.
There are so many stories that are some of the craziest sitcom-y stories,
ones that Crypto-Tweter does know about,
ones that they don't, that I wish all of them could come to light,
but there's too many of them.
We'll get a few, though.
I think we'll get a few.
David, speaking of great content, what's coming up next?
Coming up next.
Heath is getting an ETF, at least a futures ETF, perhaps.
Binance could face fraud charges from the Department of Justice.
but what is the Department of Justice waiting for?
We'll talk about that.
Two protocol birthdays this week.
These answers these birthdays keep on changing.
Something turns eight, something else turns two.
The world coin debate continues, some angles that we might have missed that we're going to cover.
And also $750 million magically appears in Bitcoin buy pressure.
Where did it come from?
I don't know.
But we're going to get to all these stories and more.
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Finance could face fraud charges from the Department of Justice. The U.S. DOJ officials are
considering fraud charges against Binance, but they're concerned about the cost to consumers,
according to people familiar with the matter reported by semaphore.com. Federal prosecutors
worry that if they indict Binance, it could cause a run on the exchange similar to the one that
befell the now bankrupt platform FtX, causing customers to lose money and potentially spurring
a panic in the crypto market. Binance and his co-founder CZ are already facing charges, of course,
from the SEC, in addition to the commodities futures trading commission. So the Department
of Justice wants to charge finance with fraud, but they're not going to, out of fear, that it
will cause an FTX style run on the bank, which is interesting. Do you want to interpret that as
bullish this week, David? Okay. So either.
CZ and Binance are completely solvent.
There's probably fraud,
but there could be completely solvent
and they're not getting charged by the DOJ
because the DOJ doesn't understand
how to tell the difference between FTX and Binance.
Or Binance does have a hole in its balance sheet
and the Department of Justice does know something
and so this is a real concern.
I'm going to cautiously go with the former
because I kind of am grouping
Binance and TetherFud is the same.
things. Like I've heard 10,000 Tethers
fuds. I've heard about 5,000 finance fuds.
But that is the news.
Yeah, who knows?
It's always been our take.
Like, it's really hard to speculate.
You just don't know.
I guess my speculation, though, is
there's no way this is as bad as SBF
if there's something here. No, no way.
There's no way.
But there might be something here. We don't know yet.
But CZ's response, as usual, is what?
Four.
Four. What does that mean? He tweeted this out for
the morning of
his
his shorthand for
ignore Fudd, fake news, and attacks.
So,
nothing going on here, just four.
What would you expect me to say, right?
Yeah, yeah, no matter what, four.
Yeah.
David, did you know this, though?
China is actually
Binance's largest market by far.
20% of their trading
happens in China. And I thought crypto
was illegal in China, but apparently it's
the largest market for finance.
You know what I don't know is
how does China?
feel about Binance?
How does the Chinese government,
what is their stance towards finance?
Do they care about it?
Do they not care about it?
Do they think it's good?
I think it's bad.
I don't know the answer to that question.
I don't know the answer either.
Although didn't Binance originate in China?
Yeah.
And then had to move.
Yes, because they got kicked out.
It's not friendly jurisdiction.
So it can't be super friendly.
They're not in great terms.
But this is crazy.
Do you know, even if finance
totally pulled out of the U.S. and Europe as a result of this,
they'd still be the largest crypto platform in the world in terms of trading volume.
That's how big Asia is.
It's pretty hard to state how big Binance is.
Bynance is like, like 70 to 80% of all crypto trading volume and Coinbase is not 15.
Maybe it is 15-ish.
Yeah.
We'll watch that.
We'll have to see how that evolves.
David, it's birthday time.
We've been teasing an entire episode.
Whose birthday was it this week?
It's Ethereum's birthday.
Ethereum turned eight.
Ethereum turned eight on July 30th.
is when the first proof of work block got minted by Ethereum in 2015.
It's been a crazy, crazy journey.
Here's a Left Harris on the day of the,
and I'm pretty sure that's Vitalik on the day of the first block of Ethereum.
Yeah.
Wow.
Eight years.
You know it was crazy?
I came in,
I remember coming into crypto,
and this is something I tell all newcomers into crypto.
I came into crypto in 2017,
two years,
two and a half,
two years after Ethereum got started.
And I felt so late.
so incredibly
and now we're eight years
into Ethereum
and people are gonna
people coming in
probably in 2021
probably feel the same
crypto has a way
of making you feel late
eight years man
eight years
look that's what
like second grade
that's still pretty young
like just an eight year old
yeah it's very year
yeah it's very young
yeah
400 billion dollars
in secured value
you add up all of the tokens
3.6 billion
in annualized profits
thanks ultrasound money for that
and a total of
17.8 million blocks of uncensoredable digital property. That's not too bad for an eight-year-old.
Not bad. Yeah, it's not a better than me at eight years old, that's for sure.
Happy birthday, Ethereum. And maybe to celebrate, something's going on in the Ether futures,
ETF race. What's this? Yeah, so here's what Ether gets for turning eight. It gets an
ETF futures. And so a handful of companies, Bitwise, Van Eck, Pro-Shares, Great Scale,
volatility shares have all submitted an ETF futures for ether, six of them. All at once,
interestingly enough. That's actually when you think about it, you know, eight years time to get here,
that's not too bad. Not too bad. Like all the way from like a, just a project and a white paper
and somebody's head all the way to like the CME regulated futures for a new type of digital
commodity. That's pretty amazing. How much is ether market cap right now, 150 billion?
I think it's like 200 or something.
It's like top, top 50 assets worldwide.
Yeah.
$220 billion market cap.
There you go.
Doing great.
That, that ETF might happen before the Bitcoin ETF, which might be interesting.
Now, this is not a spot ETF.
This is a futures ETF.
And Bitcoin already has one of those, but this would be the first time.
So that's kind of cool news.
And David, as usual, the Canadians are ahead.
While Americans are fumbling around with the futures ETF for E, powerful Canadians will
start staking ETH in their spot ETHETF later this month. This is DJED Spartan.
Canadians already have a spot ETH ETH. So what is America waiting for? Wow. I think that's the
question. I love how it's staked. That's so good. Yeah. So the ETH isn't ether. It's staked
ether because of course it would be. That's way better. That makes sense. Yeah, buy your
internet bond. Oh my God. There's going to be so much ETH staked. They're going to nuke our yields, bro.
They're totally going to need our yields. God damn Canadians.
David, you know, that wasn't the only birthday, though.
We also have to celebrate another, like, baby birthday, a two-year-old.
Yeah.
Coming up, coming up this week is not yet.
So we are on the cusp of EIP-1559 turning two.
This was August, early, the first week of August, 2021 is when ether started being burned for the very first time.
As of now, as of two years, 10 billion dollars of ether has been burned, which is just nuts.
$9.6,000
of ether burned every single minute
for two years in a row.
You know, David,
somebody brought this to our attention.
So that is EIP-159.
So that's a different type of burn
on kind of transaction fees.
What would happen
if we started burning M.EV?
Oh, you mean as in what it's going to happen
in the future when we put MEV burn into the protocol?
I mean, that's a likely future trajectory.
What are we looking at here?
We're looking at a chart of Ether.
burn with and without
M.EV burn.
With MEV burn,
we would be what?
Very deflationary
this looks like.
So without MEP burn
we have been at net deflationary
by negative 0.285%.
With MEP burn,
we would have been negative
half a percent.
So we would be twice as deflationary
with MEP burn
than we currently are.
Almost twice, almost twice.
Almost twice.
Man, the furnace just keeps getting bigger.
Love it.
And Ryan, it's still a bear market.
The bull market's ahead of us.
Imagine the burn then.
This is a release from MetaMask.
Attention Stakers.
You can now stake your Matic with MetaMask portfolio.
Check it out.
We talk a lot about MetaMask portfolio.
MetaBast is actually a bankless sponsor,
but this is really cool to see.
They're user interface in the portfolio app,
and you can actually stake your Matic token.
You can take ether as well.
But adding another verb to the MetaMask portfolio stake, two stake.
Yeah, so, okay, so this I think is, A, this is cool because MetaMas portfolio,
we're going to talk about with what I'm bullish on and it has to do with setting up my battle station,
my bull market battle station, which you should do, a teaser.
But MetaMask is now making it easy to stake for a layer two network.
Do you think it stops at Polygon?
No, it doesn't just stop at Polygon.
all layer two networks once they
decentralized, once they become permissionlessly validated,
you're going to be able to see that stake button
of, am I allowed to do this?
Yes, tomorrow, I don't think the announcement is out,
but today, Offchain Labs is announcing shared sequencing,
permissionless validation of Arbitrum.
So you're going to be able to stake your ArbToken
and validate the Arbitrum chain.
So Arbitrum, stake, optimism, stake, ZK Sync, Sink, stake.
Any layer two that gets to,
to the point of decentralizing the sequencer
and allows for permissionless validation,
there's gonna be a stake button.
I mean, probably.
So, there should,
there definitely should be.
And why stake?
For yield, right?
For the yield, bro.
Yeah.
Peace.
Stake your ether for the layer one.
Stake your layer two tokens for the layer two.
Everyone pick your layer two
is that you think's gonna get the most yield
and press the stake button
that's probably coming to MetaMast portfolio eventually.
So much cool stuff going on.
This is another cool thing going on.
an EIP that almost escaped my attention. EIP 6-9-68. This is Kevin Owocky's writing this.
6-8, 6-9-6-9- oh, I'm sorry. It's waiting for you to get that one. Cut me not getting that
joke. No, don't do that. Keep it in. Keep it in. Enables ecosystem chains. What is an ecosystem
chain? It's a chain with contract secured revenue, CSR. That means the contract
Deployers can earn sequencer fees when their contracts consume gas. Okay, break this down for the layman. What is this EIP proposing?
Yeah, so this is, remember Canto? Remember the Canto chain that had a brief moment of, yeah, uh-huh, but no longer.
Don't slam. Don't slam, David. So Canto was all, you couldn't help yourself. Canto was all about a chain because of CSR contract secured revenue. So if you built a chain, a contract on Canto,
you would get fees at any time as a developer,
you would get fees any time that you,
somebody used your contract is like a sustainability mechanism.
So this has, like all things,
anything that's been put into a chain
is now an EIP for Ethereum.
This is the way that it goes.
This is, never mind.
EIP 6968 is contract secured revenue for layer two.
So this is meant to be for layer two specifically.
And so any layer two can accept this EIP
to create a contract secured revenue primitive
on top of their layer two.
And so it's an incentive to get devs like,
it pays devs. Like if you are a dev and you make a contract on a layer two and people use your
contract, you get money. So it's a financing mechanism. It's so huge. I think this is massive. I
think it's incredibly bullish. So what this means is basically like if you create a kind of like a public
good, you don't have a monetization mechanism. Like let's say you create a very cool stable coin
on a layer two that starts to accrue a lot of value, a lot of, you know, transactions around it.
You actually get paid sequencer fees in order to do that.
It's a whole new business model, I think, on top of layer two's. And that's what's exciting here.
There's been a lot of debate about contract secured revenues and the economic models behind it and whether they're good or sustainable or not.
We haven't seen them actually meaningfully get adoption. And perhaps there's good reasons for that. Maybe we haven't seen enough experimentation.
But now we are seeing this experimentation move to the layer twos. Speaking of moving to layer twos, the layer, the temperature check for cello.
this is the temp check of the cello layer one.
The governance checks like,
hey, do we want to move to a layer two?
Past 100% to zero.
Okay, not it's completely zero.
56 million to 632.
Call that 100 to zero.
So cell is officially going to be a layer two.
Yeah.
We spent a lot of time last week talking about WorldCoin.
I think there's just a couple of things to tie off.
The first is this tweet thread from Eric,
It's actually almost like a Twitter post these days.
It's pretty long, so we probably can't read all of it, David.
But what's the TLDR here?
Eric Wall does a fantastic job just unpacking technical subjects for Lehman.
And so it's simply too long.
There's maybe, it's almost a thousand words, I'd say.
So I can't read it.
It would take five to ten minutes.
But there's a link in a show notes to go read this tweet thread.
I think if you want to understand the strength and weaknesses of WorldCoyne and
specifically where those weaknesses are and why this thing might not work,
this tweet thread is for you.
He just unpacks all the nuances
very, very well.
And so if you just want,
if I feel actually like complete
on the World Coin conversation
because of this tweet thread,
this is just such a weird,
awkward photo of Sam Altman.
This is a mid-jurney photo, David.
Is it?
There's no way this is real.
There's no way this is real.
It's got to be.
Yeah, you're right.
I don't,
that you,
a human would not know
not to pose like that.
Okay, so that's the call to action.
If you want to read this tweet thread,
I highly recommend it.
also this week I saw a tweet here that Ryan's got pulled up from Martin Copleman who's also
a creator of a different decentralized identity protocol and so he was retweeting this tweet that
did some address analysis from WorldCoin addresses so they've detected like in this tweet
in this image three different clusters of WorldCoin addresses that all appear to converge down to
one address. And so it looks like
130 individual
addresses actually are just three people.
So this...
So this... Exactly. So it has been
Sibble attacked. And so
if you read the Eric, well, Twitter
Twitter, Twitter thread,
X thread,
basically the TLDR is like,
yeah, every single World Coin account is
100% verifiable, a unique
pair of eyeballs. That doesn't
mean that it is in the hands of
a unique person. And this is what we
are seeing here today. So this, the whole premise of WorldCoyne and even anyone giving legitimacy
to WorldCoyne, which included me, base is based on the fact that they can actually produce civil
resistance. And if they can't do it, then this thing is worth zero. And so, uh, it's not,
yeah, that's the base requirement for decentralized identity is you have to be civil resistant.
If you're not, then the solution just doesn't work. So, um, just because you can prove unique eyeballs
does not mean you can prove unique humans.
And so this is the weakness that seems to be appearing
with the World Coin, with the World Coin thing.
Binance received a deposit address
of a bunch of World Coin tokens
from 150 different wallets
within 48 hours after launch,
profiting about $10,000.
So this is, you know,
hey, that UBI World Coin distribution,
somebody is farming that.
Many people are farming that
and they're profiting from it,
which breaks the whole system.
You've got to fix that if you're going to do this well.
Micro Strategy, David.
They're continuing to buy Bitcoin.
Micro Strategy's about to pump another, what, $750 million into Bitcoin?
Dude, thin air, man.
They're minting micro strategy shares out of thin air just to buy Bitcoin, and it's working.
I totally knew this would work.
Sailor is channeling demand for Bitcoin ETF into demand for micro strategy shares.
He's printing infinite micro strategy shares and buying thin it.
Finite Bitcoin, yeah.
Finite Bitcoin.
Central banks and governments should take note.
Maybe the next ones to do this is kind of the point.
You know, I was looking at like an old E-Trade account I have, and there's a
boomer.
There's a crypto section in E-Trade.
And you know what they recommend?
Because you can't actually buy, you know, a spot E-TF.
Of course, the gray scale products, that kind of thing.
Also, micro-strategy.
No shit.
If you want crypto exposure in your E-Trade account, then buy micro-strategy stock.
And they're not wrong, but it's...
So messed up.
I'm just going to chalk that up to Tradfly failings.
Last bit of news here from DCG says it's close to reaching an agreement on its Genesis chapter 11 bankruptcy.
So in a letter to investors, DCG says, after a month of tireless negotiations led by DCG leadership,
we are close to reaching an agreement in principle to resolve the claims in the Grayscale chapter 11 cases.
So we expect to bring these cases to a close soon.
So maybe the Grayscale, excuse me, the,
DCG story is coming to a close here, which is just around the mark the time for the bull market
to start. So that makes sense. Yeah, and getting that story close would be bullish. David,
we got some bullish questions coming at us. Number one, will OP tokens a true value?
How does base fit in? That's a question from a bankless listener. Also, are L2s as safe as Ethereum?
We'll get into that. And there's also a pretty hot Vitalik take this week on the state of
crypto right now, and it's bullish, of course. The theme of this episode. Would Vitalik say that is
bullish? I don't know. I'm putting words in his mouth, but guys, we'll be right back. We will be right
back with all of that just after we thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.
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Question from Kifu.
I think I've heard of value accrual to OP from the main OP chain via fees and MEV, but will there be any value accrual from other OP chains like base to the OP token itself?
How is a layer two token like OP going to accrue value, David?
Yeah, so this is a really, really good question.
I think from the early days of base mainnet launch,
they said that they committed that they,
A, want to be a part of the O.P.
Collective because they used the O.P. stack chain
to create base.
And being a part of the O.P. collective
means that you need to contribute
some of your sequencer fees of your layer two
towards the O.P. Collective to help finance
the retroactive public goods funding efforts,
basically put the money in the O.P. collective.
It's like a tax on revenue kind of thing.
I think the number is 15%.
10 to 15% I think is right.
We are, like I said earlier in the episode,
we were doing a episode with Ben Jones and Jesse from base
about the law of chains,
which is how this standard is going to be set.
And if you are an OP stock chain
and you want to be a part of the super chain,
you must abide by the law of chains,
which assures some level of block space quality and assurances
and also like what does it mean to be a part of the OP collective.
And that's probably where a certain number,
I think, again, I think the number is 15.
But it's probably up to governance anyways. That's kind of cool. It's like a confederation of chains.
It's a union. Yeah. It's a union of chains. Yeah. You can choose to be a part of it or not. But if you do choose to be a part of it, you have to pay your taxes.
Yeah. Exactly. Right. So 15% of that base revenue that we were talking about earlier goes to the optimism collective. The Zora chain, you know, 15%.
World coin. If that is a thing that lasts, 15%. I think, again, we do your own research if the 15% is the correct number. I will ask Ben and Jesse what that number is.
is when we do the episode with them. But I think that episode, that number is public somewhere that
was announced way back when with the base train. Anyways, we will get those details. So that's how
this works. This is why, this is the model for the OP stack chains. If you want to be a part of the
super chain, if you want the composability, if you want the network effects of optimism, you got to
pay the tax to the optimism collective. Here's a question from Kiwi Dog 4. Once we have ZK
roll-ups with permissionless sequencers and trustless bridges, will L-2s have basic
the same security guarantees as L1.
This has also been a Twitter debate recently
that I've heard.
So the question of,
will layer twos have the same security
guarantees as their layer one?
What's your take on that?
The operative word is,
will layer twos have basically
the same security guarantees as layer one?
And yes, basically they will.
There will always be some nuances.
There will always be some smart contract risks
because layer twos are smart contracts.
But with permissionless sequencers,
trustless bridges, all of the things that decentralized layer two chains. Also with some time,
some Lindy, layer twos will give you basically the same security guarantees as layer ones. And that is
why we are doing the layer two roadmap. That's why Ethereum is a roll-up-centric roadmap,
because we have found ways to make scalable chains have the same security guarantees as the layer
ones. It's always been part of the vision. And so I don't even necessarily think ZK
roll-ups are the only, we'll have a monopoly on this. It's just,
they have a little bit faster path there.
Optimistic roll-ups will also have the same security guarantees,
but that is the layer two vision.
The layer one and the layer two's,
those lines blur once we get to permissionless sequencers,
tresteless provisions, etc., etc., yeah.
So a couple thoughts on that or follow-ups,
addending what you just said,
it's important to realize none of the chains are there today.
All right, so you can see this on layer two beats.
That's what I have in front of us.
A lot of them are at stage zero,
doesn't offer that full decentralization or stage one,
which is kind of training wheels,
they need to get to stage two.
And that's where everything is permissionless.
All the sequencers are completely whitelisted.
Upgrades are handled correctly.
Well, those are the caveats.
And we're certainly not there yet with layer two.
The other thing I'd say is there is this dependency
on the trustless bridge from Ethereum to a layer two on that working.
because there's some smart contract code there, of course,
and smart contract code can have bugs.
So there's that dependency as well.
But for all intents and purposes,
it's almost the same security guarantees
as the layer two once we get to this stage two level
for across these roll-ups.
Remember when layer two only had layer two,
but only had like four or five layer twos on them?
Oh, those are the days.
Scroll down, how far does it?
Oh, my God, it keeps on going.
29. 29. 29 layer 2s.
We just got started, David.
After, once this, once we, once ether hits all time highs, how many layer twos are going
to be on layer two B question for you? Make a prediction.
Either all time highs. You mean that, um, the summit amount? What's all time highs? You
talk about this cycle? $4,000, $4,900 for ether. Once ether breaks all time highs.
And how many, how many, how many matter horn elevation?
hitting the Matterhorn.
Yeah.
How many layer two is
will be on Layer 2 be?
Ooh.
I'm going to guess,
I'm going to guess
900.
900.
That's, sorry,
that's my Matterhorn number.
Oh,
that's your matter.
Okay.
Maybe all time high.
I'll say 300.
Okay.
Back.
I was going to go with,
I was going to go with
a hundred,
but that seems a little low.
I'm going to go.
Can I,
I'm more bullish than you.
100 to 150 layer two is on layer two B
when ether breaks all time high.
All right. It's on. The bet's on, David.
Some takes this week. This one from Vance Spencer. What's he saying?
Van Spencer says it's important to internalize.
Blue Chip Defi or anything was a meme last cycle.
Nobody was generating sustainable cash flows. And to be honest,
the industry was a shit show. Yeah, it kind of was.
Launching a successful protocol and 15 VCs funded forks would come in with tokens
and vampire attack you.
this cycle is different.
Real sustainable cash flows with paths to scale.
Large markets.
All competitors now dead or thoroughly discouraged.
No VC money to fund second, third, fourth, fifth place, consolidation, blue chippery.
I think what Vance is saying is we're off of the shit coin roller coaster and we are focusing
on quality and fees.
That was one of my big takeaways from ECC is like the maturation and verticalization of
so many defy protocols.
And this is the take that Kane Warwick gave.
me ECC 2020 a year ago.
We are in now a bull market for fees.
I mean,
we turns out we were going through a bear market,
actually,
but, you know,
Ethereum people were always just like a couple of years
ahead of the curve and
our takes are just a couple of years too early.
But, you know,
we're in,
we're witnessing a layer two summer.
You're talking about protocols that capture
fees,
fees, fees.
Yeah.
Now, they don't flow to the governance token yet, though,
right?
Yeah, it'll get there.
have its fee switch. Well, it has the fee switch. This is not on. It's not on. Yeah. Turn that,
turn it on. Let's stop it. He, uh, he continues and Vance says, we figured out where aggregation
points are and who the long-term incumbents, incumbents in D-Fi will be. We figured out some
protocols are features and likely to be rolled into larger incumbents. Exactly what I was saying.
If you squint a little bit, you can see the fang of D-Fi is assembling. The fang of D-F-I-E-F-I, which Vance
is saying is smell, S-M-E-L-L. I don't actually know if.
he's actually articulated which ones they are.
S is probably synthetics.
We know what they start with, though.
S is synthetics.
M is Maker.
I don't know what E is.
L is Lido and the other one.
The second L is,
I don't know.
Well, for people who aren't familiar with Fang, though,
that these are the tech companies, right?
Like we got Facebook, Apple, Amazon,
Netflix, Google.
Yeah.
Does Netflix still belong to be there?
I don't know if Netflix belongs to be there anymore.
Is the other A alphabet or is that
Apple.
That's a good question.
Anyway, it's up for debate.
Maybe it's, uh, well, who else with the GV?
It's Apple, it's Apple and Amazon.
Oh, yeah.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google.
We figured it out live.
Look at that.
Look at us, David.
This is a tweet from my co-host here, a take for the week, maybe.
Can you feel it?
The bull market has started.
I feel it, David.
I'm hitting like.
I'm hitting retweet.
The, uh, the comments.
Not all, not everyone feels it in the comments.
Oh, really?
Yeah, not everyone feels it.
I feel it.
Anthony Sasano feels it.
No, he says the bull market never left.
Anthony's like a, he doesn't, it doesn't count when you say you're bullish every single day.
Can you feel it?
The crab market keeps crabbing.
That's a reply.
Maybe it's just a crab market, David.
We have doubled the market cap over the last seven months.
All right.
I'm claiming the bull market has started is what I'm saying.
I'm going to matter horn.
I think you can feel it.
Yeah.
What do you bullish on this week, David?
So, well, what I was bullish on last week was that, hey,
I'm just bullish, which is also what I'm bullish on this week.
I'm just bullish.
But I will tell you I'm doing something about it now.
I'm setting up my battle station, my bull market battle station.
And so what does that mean?
What is that?
Yeah, what does that mean?
That sounds awesome.
Yeah.
Well, I bought a cheap little computer to do all my signing, which is not my work computer.
So I'm taking my signing and having a cheap little computer that is my crypto signing computer.
I recommend this for anyone who downloads files or works on their computers like me,
and so I'm getting a dedicated signing computer.
And also just setting up all of the websites and infrastructure that once was a skill
which got rusty in the bear market because appetites for tokens are gone in the bear market.
So this is like, you know, DexSreener.com for people that want to stay ahead of the game on Dexes.
And just making sure that you have your situation prepped to make moves and make moves quickly
during the bull market.
Because if you want to make money in the bull market, you need to be present.
pressing, send transaction. You need to be approving transactions. You need to be doing things.
And so I think it would behoove everyone to get their wallets in order. Make sure that they're,
I've had problems with my web browser attachments, my extensions, getting those fixed,
making sure that you are moments away from making a move if you need to make a move. And just setting up
your setup so you can know the state of your things, perhaps metamass portfolios for you,
sponsor. But just like setting up your battle station, making sure that you're ready to go,
collecting data and being able to purview the defy landscape because I'm saying we are in the
first out of a nine inning game. And here we are. That's cool, David. I'm, you know,
the defy, the crypto battle station is a great idea. Bull market battle station is a great idea.
I will also say, and just to take that, you know, the traditional Ryan boring type approach here is,
you also don't have to do that.
Oh,
you can do that.
This is a game that you choose to enter.
You do not have to play.
Yes. The game that you can just choose to play
if you're kind of like just, um, tired right now is dollar cost average in.
I'll just counter this with the point of like the game that David's playing.
I know because I know David, he's not playing with his entire stack.
So he's got a portion kind of set aside, right?
He's playing this game.
Right, David?
Right.
He's not.
The staking, that is a different game.
One could play the staking game, which is a different game to play.
Yes.
And I just want to, so that you don't hear from what David just said, all right, I got my
bull market battle station.
I'm going all in with all of my assets on whatever kind of pumping, whatever I'm
feeling good about in this bull cycle.
I'm going to make it all back this bull cycle.
I will just say, I think that boredom has stolen more money from crypto investors than
Sam Pegman Freed.
Yeah.
All right.
The worst mistakes I've made in crypto,
have been because I was bored and I wanted to click buttons when I shouldn't have.
Sometimes you have to click those buttons.
Sometimes you have to be cautious and can just dollar cost average it.
So the way to manage this in your mind is just partition things.
Yes.
You know, have your staking game that you're playing, your accumulation game,
you're kind of like maybe your ETH game,
and then have another game on the side that you play and separate those interests,
separate those accounts and separate them in your mind too.
I think it is worth noting that there are different,
games to play. The game that I'm talking about, what I'm setting out by bull market battle station,
is the game that, like, there was two main two, yeah, two big victories that I had in,
in terms of financial game during last ball market. One was YFI at like $2,000 and loot at two
ether. Yeah. Oh, you sold loot. That was a good idea. I did sell. I did sell loot.
Not at the perfect top, but I definitely made money. I mean, I definitely made money on loot.
And YFI wasn't so fast, but it was still pretty fast. And you needed to be ready and understand
things and make your move, loot was extremely fast. And that's the game that I'm talking about.
It's the phenomenon comes and you press buy early and you just ride it and it's a kind of a
gamble. Lute was absolutely a gamble. Like it was a fucking text on a JPEG. But that's the game that
I'm referencing. And it did not work out long term. It did not work out long term. It worked out
for the short term for people who sold. There's other games to play. There is the self-staking
at home optimization game where, you know, Ethereum yield is not homogenous.
You, like, you, if you play the game well, can increase your yields just by staking.
And so you're not like perusing Twitter.
You're not like making gambles.
You're not, you are just refining your system.
I can't play that game nearly as well because I leave and go away from home.
And so I can't play that game nearly as well.
But that is a very valid game to play as well.
So figure out what game you want to play and then set up your battle station for that.
Another way to say that, and this is kind of classic bankless is as you enter
crypto, choose your character class.
Yes.
You start like your Diablo account and some RPG you're going to play.
What are you going to be?
Amazon.
Amazon.
Amazon.
All right.
So David is doing this hybrid character class of like settler slash traitor.
But he has like a separation of those things.
And like you have to choose your character class.
You can't like jump from character class to character class or you'll get beat up in this market.
Right.
There you go.
Yeah.
All right.
So I've got my battle station set up, Ryan.
What do you bullish on?
What's your battle station look like?
You know what?
Well, it's not exactly a battle station, David.
but I will tell you what I'm bullish on this week.
I am bullish on founders that stayed.
The founders, the protocol, the DFI founders in particular,
that did not orphan their projects early.
I feel like that happened with a lot of DFI projects, right,
as they got orphaned, kind of the founders left,
the parents left before they could grow into functional adults.
But there are a number of founders who stayed,
and I'm very bullish on those founders.
And as a result, I'm bullish on those projects too.
So synthetics, cane is one.
He kind of left, but now he's back a little bit.
He left with good reason to decentralize the protocol, and then he came back also with
good reason.
Yes.
Avey is another, Astani.
Uniswap, Hayden Adams is still there.
There's a whole list that this Twitter thread pumped out.
Defi Dad talks about the founder of Curve, the founder of FRAX, the founder of Instad,
the founders of Balancer, Liquidity, Nexus, all of these founders stayed.
And I just want to give a big shout out to the founders who stayed.
They are settlers, not tourists.
And yeah, I think we have the potential to build the fangs of defy, as Vance was saying.
And it's going to be done not over one cycle, but over multiple cycles.
And so a big shout out to all of the founders who have just dug deep and had the grit to actually stay through these cycles.
I think the results will show for themselves.
Yeah, 100%.
And also I also say that Maker Dow, not just Roon Christian.
Not just Roon Christensen, but there's a number of very early Maker-Dou.
who are still working on MakerDAO and then also have gone off to found other projects.
And so not to say that like, hey, you must stick with your first project and your first baby
until the end of time, but just staying in crypto, like bankless was not my first job.
So sticking around generally is always the way to wealth and success.
I totally agree.
You know what, David?
We just missed the Vitalik take.
We did miss the Vitalik take. We promised that.
We teased it.
Okay.
What did he say?
This isn't a tweet.
This is just what we were talking to Vitalik about.
privately, where he says, I feel like crypto culture might actually be the best that it's ever been
in 2023. People's biggest complaints, amazingly, seems to be that, quote, there's too much
focused on infrastructure, which from the point of view of almost any other sociopolitical system
in the world today, sounds like not a complaint, but a success story. It's honestly really
heartening to hear Vitalik say that crypto culture is in the best place that it's been because
Cryptoculture has not always been so great.
We're kind of a toxic bunch.
We spent some of this episode talking about the bald token and Richard Schuyler.
So, you know, yeah, it feels good when Vitalik says it.
What do you think about this point?
That it's actually kind of, I all use the words bullish.
Vitalik wouldn't use these words.
The focus on infrastructure is actually bullish, though.
Yeah.
Well, I think he's saying this, he's comparing this from socioculturally.
He's saying, like, yeah, this is compared to like governments.
like cities and, you know, city, like organization planners, like crypto, we're complaining
that like everyone's building infrastructure where the rest of the world generally has failing
infrastructure, at least the United States says.
Yeah.
And so can we get more infrastructure?
Right.
And so I think even if we're like over indexing on infrastructure, good because crypto is supposed
to last for generations upon generations.
Like that's a good thing that we're over indexing on infrastructure.
So bullish.
You ready for meme in the week, David?
I am ready for a meme in the week, yeah.
There it is. I think this is you when you came back down from there on.
This is exactly what are we looking at?
Okay, so this is pseudo-theos from this role team. So this is the meme of the guy coming back
into the room with pizza boxes. And the quote is me taking a day off of crypto.
This is how I felt because I left to climb the Matterhorn Sunday morning and then I came
back and all of this was happening. Vipers zero day bug, curve exploit, Avey Stables,
depegging, base one-way bridges into ball tokens. This all happened into like not even
in 24 hours here. This is 12.
hours, all of that happened. That was insane. He comes back in the apartment with pizza boxes,
and it's just absolute chaos. There's fires and fighting. That's what it feels like to be in crypto for
sure. That's why you can't take a day off. We hope you don't take a week off the weekly roll-up,
because our job is to absorb all of this chaos and then relay the signal to you.
Our mental health is great. I hope you enjoyed. Wristen disclaimers, got to end with this.
Of course, none of this has been financial advice. Crypto is risky. You could lose what
put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're
with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.
