Bankless - ROLLUP: Elon Twitter Takeover | Instagram NFTs | Art Gobblers & Goo | JP Morgan Crypto | Bitcoin's Birthday

Starting point is 00:00:00 Elon Musk is finally in charge of Twitter. Hey, Bankless Nation. It is November 22 already. David, what time is it? Ryan, it's the Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup, where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor. Yet we persevere into the frontier of crypto. Nonetheless, with what, Ryan? A cup of coffee. I'm drinking one. Do you have one? No, I, I met my max. It's just something you say? You're not taking your own advice, David? No, I had, I brewed one, one pour over in my chemics, and I drank the whole thing, and that's enough.

Starting point is 00:00:34 You got to limit yourself. I mean, but like a few weeks ago, you came in here with three. You really jacked up on coffee. I drank like two or three sips at the third, and I had to pour it out. It's like, this is going to be this to give me too much. Yeah. Yeah. You get the diminishing returns on the flavor. The flavor, it's, yeah, and it becomes not even about the flavor. It becomes about the kind of the caffeine. And then you, like, you know, you start to know you have a problem. Yeah. And then you're just owned by the caffeine. And, you know, on bank, Ryan, I'm just not about being owned. The self-sovereign individual. You don't want to be owned by caffeine.

Starting point is 00:01:04 You don't want to be owned by carbs. You don't want to be owned by banks. My God, what a freedom maximalist. Get these dopamine hits out of my face. Well, you didn't know you're signing up for an anti-coffee movement, but I suppose you are, even though David tells you to drink a cup of coffee with the weekly roll-up. David, we got some exciting topics for the week. First, Elon, Twitter, takeover, and what this means for crypto.

Starting point is 00:01:25 We're going to dive into that. What else? Coming up after that, meta and Instagram. Instagram going full send into NFTs. What does that even mean? And then, of course, Ryan, we were talking about this before the show. You and I both like Rick and Morty. Did you know the Rick and Morty creator is in the world of NFTs in a big way?

Starting point is 00:01:44 Art gobblers, it's called. Art gobblers. Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble. That was big. I feel like almost NFTs are back. We're going to get into all of that guys. Yeah, it's not your typical NFT drop, that's for sure. It's not.

Starting point is 00:01:54 It's not. This is not your typical air drop finder either. want to tell you about our friends and sponsors at Earnify. There are someirdrop finders in the market, but they surface a whole lot of spam. What's an air drop finder? You plug in your ETH address or your Binance address or your Cosmos address, any EVM chain, also Cosmos,

Starting point is 00:02:13 and it will automatically check to see if you are eligible for cool stuff, like AirDrops, like NFTs, like POAPs, also provide you some alerting for things like ENS. This is the way to find your unclaimed, Air drops, David, I've had a lot of success with Earnify. Probably made me $10,000 plus in perks. Wow. What you can do, David, is you can put your wallets inside of the Earnify tool and it will find you all sorts of irdrops that you can collect. Here's an ENS air drop and I picked up. It's some POAPs that I picked up as well. Oh, did we, did we miss an ENS on the bankless multi-sig? That's what it says.

Starting point is 00:02:56 Uh-oh. Did we really? Uh-oh, we should have signed up for Earnify a little bit earlier. Oh, man, that's sad. Oh, we lost $4,500. Oh, no. See what happens when you don't use Earnify folks? It shouldn't have been using Unify when we made it of multi-sig.

Starting point is 00:03:13 Damn. Well, how should folks get started with Ernify so they don't make the mistakes that Bankless has made in the past? Yeah, because as we clearly have, we already knew this, but also just as a reminder, airdrops also expire, which is why you need an AirDrop notification service. to be the century for all of your wallets and all of your airdrops. So the link in the show notes, earni.fi, earni.fi, to get started, plug in your wallets.

Starting point is 00:03:39 Sign up so you can get notified so you never miss an expiring air drop like Ryan and I did on our bankless multi-s dig. Whoops. That's embarrassing. All right, Bitcoin price. What are we looking at this week, David? Bitcoin, so did we get 20,600, down 1.7-ish percent to 20,300. Not that much.

Starting point is 00:03:58 Not that much. That's noise. Down a little bit. And how about Eith? Eth flat, started the week at 1550, ending the week at 1550. 1550. Interesting. Meen line number, 1550. And then, so what does that mean for the ratio?

Starting point is 00:04:10 Ratio is up 1.7%. Starting the week at 0.075, ending the week at 0.076. Probably noise. I mean, Rachel's still climbing a little bit, but like not much on the week. Does this mean anything to you? I mean, we like that 0.75 and above number, that's for sure. How about total crypto market cap we above or below a trillion? Above a trillion, 1.052 trillion up about $10 billion versus last week.

Starting point is 00:04:38 The highs on that trillion is we got to three trillion last market cycle. Wow. That was back in November 2021. Do you know that was the top? Yeah, I'm reminded of that meme of Wolverine, just like longingly looking at that picture. Do you know, are you like, so I wasn't really. excited about that right. You're excited at the top? No, I just felt like there was still, like, there was a lot of froth.

Starting point is 00:05:03 I mean, yeah, it felt dirty. It felt dirty. Just like the ICOMania felt dirty. It felt dirty in like late 2017. And it felt also dirty in like late 2021. Like I was happy about some of the, but there's, there was clearly so much that needed to be flushed out. And so yeah, once again, this is kind of a healthy process. Let's talk about the Fed. It's what they're doing healthy. I'm not so sure. We'll see. Stocks tumble after Fed signals. Rate hikes are here to stay. So the Fed, of course, announced that they are increasing rate hikes. They're increasing interest rate by 75 basis points. That was pretty much expected. And just to go through a recap of history, the 2022 hikes so far, March, we went up 25 basis points of 0.25 percent. May, 50 basis points. And we had four straight

Starting point is 00:05:55 basis point hikes of 0.75 basis points. And so now the Fed fund range is 3.75 to 4.0%. That's where we are now. At first, stocks were excited about this and kind of happy, David. And then prices took a tumble, especially when, particularly when Powell said, we have a ways to go. This is not quite a direct quote. It's sort of a summary. He said it's premature to think about pausing rates. The possibility of a soft landing is narrowed because inflation has not come down with the rate hikes. That is what we're looking at. An analyst said there were no hints of dovishness to indicate that the Fed may be poised to pause.

Starting point is 00:06:42 What do you think about this? Yeah, I mean, I think this is par for the course is more or less what we've been expecting. There's something really new here. I think the market is starting to get, like, fatigued about, like, asking the question pivot soon. And, like, there's, like, there's two players in the market. There's, like, ha, like, crypto prices went from $1,300 to $1,600. Like, we're off the floors, like, the bear market rally. And people are just, like, all being super naive that, like, the global macro economy is still kind of go into shit.

Starting point is 00:07:12 And, like, that is a long process, not a short process. So we're, like, punctuated by this overall bear market by, like, short-term blips of, like, livelihoodness in markets. But then when we zoom out, we're like, oh, it's still bad. It's still pretty bad. Well, what do you think about our episode with Macro-El earlier this week? Was that sort of is that what you expected, or was that more bearish than you expected? Yeah, that's kind of where I started thinking about, like, if you zoom in on the charts, things don't look so bad. Things look like kind of choppy with some ups and some things to be happy about. But if you, the more you zoom out, the more it looks like, damn, we are in a downtrend, and that downtrend has not been broken.

Starting point is 00:07:49 And macroalph and other people are like, yeah, guys, the downtrend. It's going to continue being a downtrend. Yeah, he's like it's part of the cycle. And that's what 2023 is going to be as well. It's either flat or down. We're not going to recover. It sounds like 2023's flat is like best case scenario. Yes.

Starting point is 00:08:04 And then macro elf thinks that there could be a cyclical change, you know, starting around 2024, but we still have a ways to go is the message. The meme is like, yes, the pivot is coming. But if the pivot is coming when like Bitcoin is below 10,000, $1,000. Who cares? Well, you know, that might mark the, a floor. Here's a take from Pablo Macro. Okay, quickly on the Fed, no pause coming.

Starting point is 00:08:28 Harder landing is likely, is what was said among many other things. But what was unsaid? Here's what was unsaid. Powell was asked about a plus 50 basis point in December, and he dodged saying, it's about the pace, what level we got, we get to, and how long we stay there. But he left it open. But also, he left open 75 basis points. and he implicitly left 100 basis points open in all caps here.

Starting point is 00:08:53 He does not know. The road is wide open. So the chairman is leaving all possibilities on the table. No dovish talk. And he also talked about inflation is where it was a year ago. If that is Powell, he needs to go to 8%, 3% real inflation. He will do it because he has an alphabet soup of programs. He can use to pick up the pieces.

Starting point is 00:09:15 He would rather break stuff and then patch it back together because that is easier than letting it get entrenched. So I think Paulo Macro here is saying that the Fed will, like from everything that Powell is saying, he is incredibly hawkish and he wants to break the back of inflation. And he's not going to change course until he starts to see inflation recede. And he'd rather get to the point of actually breaking things because it's easier to piece them back together than to cause kind of, you know, the precipitous. than to correct the precipitous problem of inflation,

Starting point is 00:09:51 which we're plagued with. So there's that take, David. I guess my only counter maybe to this take is just because Powell wants to break inflation and he wants to be hawkish, doesn't mean he actually gets to do that. So it's not like central banker Jerome Powell has infinite power

Starting point is 00:10:11 and the ability to do exactly what he wants. There are constraints. And one of the chief constraints is political will So what happens if the politicians start to push him back, try to rein him in? We've seen reaction to the politics of the scenario from Powell before. And I think that could mean like just because Powell is saying these things, just because this is his intent, what he would do if he were Emperor God King. He is not any of those things and has to respond to the political climate as well,

Starting point is 00:10:42 which might mean a pivot will come sooner than he would wish. What's your thought? Yeah, that was the other thing that stuck out to me about the macro alf episode that we did. And it's just like so aligned with everyone who's in macro, like Dahlio, Lin Alden, all these people that are like long-term cycle focused people. Like there's this universal acceptance that like once you go above the Federal Reserve, it's the people. And it's the structures of power. And it's like the people that are in power want to stay in power. And the only reason that they stay in power is they make like the plebs of the world not upset.

Starting point is 00:11:17 which makes, like, Powell, beholden to the emotional, like, aggregate of the entire economy. And so, like, the riled-upness of the people of the world actually does matter. It's, like, part of, like, fundamentals. It's, like, how riled up is the people. Well, and that goes to kind of the next chart we wanted to show. This is a chart showing the personal savings rate. That's the blue line here that you see. personal savings rate of citizens in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:11:46 And then the red line here is the consumer loans rate. So this is credit cards, other revolving plans. And look at this. This is the past since the early 2000. So I'll scroll this all the way to early 2000. And you see the blue line, personal savings rate, you know, kind of like edging in between five and let's call it 10% or so. And then during COVID, look what happens.

Starting point is 00:12:13 stimulus checks, 2022. We shot up to a personal savings rate of about close to 35% at its peak. And that was in March of 2020. Americans had a lot of money in the bank. Plus, also, they started to pay off their credit cards and other debt. You can see, like, as personal savings jumped up to, like, basically, you know, all-time high since this chart shows, it's the one time you actually see consumer loans actually go down. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:42 So credit card debt is being paid off a little bit here. But what you see from March of 2020 up to now is this not so gradual, I would say, pretty steep decline in personal savings rate. All the way, David, to where we are now is we have less than 5%. Lows. Since 2002. 3.1% personal savings rate. So we are...

Starting point is 00:13:05 Meanwhile, the consumer loans line just skyrocketed to all-time highs. So now we're even in a worse place. And to get a benchmark, this is a moment. is kind of like, it's not necessarily all-time, all-time lows, but for the past 20 years. Yeah, right. We're at the chart lows. And this is lower David than or about the same as 2008, okay, which is pretty crazy to me. So at the same personal savings rate right now as 2008.

Starting point is 00:13:31 And do you remember what 2008 felt like? I mean, I was a naive little kid, so. It did not feel like good times. It did not feel like good times. And so we're back there again. And so this is what Powell, I think, has to balance Fed actions and all politicians do. It's like Americans, I think people around the world, but this chart is the U.S. in particular, there's a lot of pain right now.

Starting point is 00:13:55 People are out of savings. Look at this debt, David. Consumer debt is at all-time highs as well. That is the most aggressive line up into the right on this whole chart. And the thing is, like, we're at this point now where we're like all-time, like chart highs on consumer loans, chart lows on personal savings rate. And if it just like stays here,

Starting point is 00:14:16 if it stays flat, that's like, you know, like boiling the frog. Like, if it stays here, it's bad. Like,

Starting point is 00:14:22 and it's, and it's trending upwards. I mean, no wonder, this is, uh, from our Ben Hunt episode, no wonder everyone's at each other's throats.

Starting point is 00:14:30 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, we're not growing the pie. We're not growing the pie. We're absolutely dividing the pie. That's what's happening right now.

Starting point is 00:14:38 Uh, anyway, that's the macro situation. Looking a bit grim. Let's talk about some brighter news on the crypto side of things, and what's this number we're looking at? Yeah, this is pseudotheos tweeting out the real flippinging already happened. Layer 2s now regularly execute more transactions than layer 1 Ethereum. The day has finally arrived.

Starting point is 00:14:57 We got more transactions on Ethereum's layer 2s than its own layer 1. Arbitrum leading the way with, I think, past days transactions per second, 4.5 transactions per second versus Ethereum's 11, basically 12. But that's because Arbitrum's not even congested. I think the numbers for Arbitrum is Arbitrum has scale for up to seven Ethereum's, 11 Ethereums, although the technical teams will say that that metaphor doesn't make any sense, but it's still useful. And so coming up after Arbitrum's four and a half transactions per second, we have immutables for transactions per second, optimism's three and a half, D-Y-D-X is 2.6. When you add all these things together, Ethereum's layer two ecosystem has been doing more transactions than the Ethereum layer one.

Starting point is 00:15:44 Cool. And that's been the case since October. Yeah, wow, that's been the case for a while. Oh, the reason why we know this is because Layer 2B, this website that we go to all the time, layer2b.com ship this new thing called activity and this new tab called activity. So we actually get to like consume this data a lot easier. So thank you, Layer 2 for shipping. Such a great feature.

Starting point is 00:16:02 Yeah, the red line is Layer 2 transaction activity and the blue is Ethereum. and it's been higher than Ethereum since October. Since October. Almost a month now. Click on Arbitrum. See if we can see the transaction activity just of Arbitrum. Activity? No activity.

Starting point is 00:16:21 Oh, yeah, activity. All right. Oh, that is great. Oh, these are some great charts. So Arbitrum activity looking like it's kind of coming to its big, yeah, it's all-time highs. Hit that max just to make sure. Max number.

Starting point is 00:16:33 Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a great looking chart. Nice job, Arbitrum. Look at that. Look at that activity. That's awesome. Arbitrum is like 62% I think of all Ethereum transactions right now. It's pretty impressive. When you add it all together, average transactions per second on layer twos are about 16 versus Ethereum that's 11. So this is how Ethereum is scaling right now.

Starting point is 00:16:54 It's really exciting to see layer two's catch on like this. Also, taking a look at total locked value. Did you know, speaking of Arbitrum, Arbitrum just surpassed Salana in terms of total locked value. David, do you see this chart? What's interesting to you about this one? Let's see. The interesting thing is that Binion Smart Train and Tron are such a goddamn large percentage. Binary Smart Train is okay. Tron's not.

Starting point is 00:17:20 But Arbitron, yeah, coming in bigger than Solana. There's a lot of old OG bankless thesis finally coming into fruition here. Yep, so it's fall, but I guess later two summer is finally here. Question mark, David. We've called it for a while. Don't say it. What do we got coming up next? Coming up next, we got the Elon Twitter takeover and all the drama associated with that.

Starting point is 00:17:40 Is Elon rumored, Ryan, Elon is rumored to be laying off 50% of the staff tomorrow, our tomorrow, listeners today. So we'll see if you follow us through with that. Instagram and meta, full sending into NFTs. We'll talk about all the features and capabilities that they have unlocked. And art gobblers, you've got to feed the art gobblers. They're talking about what the hell that means, all of this and more. but first we're going to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors to help you go bankless. Nexto is your financial hub for all your crypto needs.

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Starting point is 00:19:35 adopting the improvements made by the rust tooling ecosystem, letting the fuel development environment go beyond the limitations of the EVM. If you want to learn more, there's a link in the show notes to see how you can get involved with a fuel network. Elon Musk is finally in charge of Twitter. This was happening while we were recording the weekly roll-up last week, but we knew there was going to be a bunch of drama over the next five days, so we've decided to wait. So Elon Musk coming in hot into Twitter, firing people left and right, pew, pew, pew, pew. He's fired Ogrewald, the former CEO.

Starting point is 00:20:03 He's fired the previous chief financial officers. He's fired the head of legal. He's fired the general counsel. He's fired so many more other people. And like I hinted. I feel fired as you're talking. Can he fire me? I saw my Twitter account, right?

Starting point is 00:20:17 Well, he says he did say he's going to fire 75%. He's paired that back to just 50%. He's going to fire, of all Twitter staff, he's going to fire on Friday tomorrow, our tomorrow, listeners today. So that's what he said. Did you see all of these memes about people? like fake memes of people getting fired, like leaving the building? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:37 So like, apparently people like put up like they like, um, some people like showed up outside of Twitter headquarters with like boxes and they put like their office equipment, but they actually weren't employees. They just opposed. And they got like mainstream media to report that they were being fired. Okay. Uh-huh. And then, okay, but in addition to that, Elon Musk says, uh, has reportedly brought in over 50 Tesla engineers.

Starting point is 00:20:59 Really? Into Twitter to bring Tesla's talent into Twitter talent. And I think what he's thinking is that, like, you know, Elon Musk is just like, if you work at Tesla, like, you perform. Like, that is the expectation. Same thing with SpaceX. And so I think the vibe is that like Elon thinks all the Twitter engineers are just like lazy and they've just been like lazing around for the past like years and years and years. So he wants to bring his like, you know, super military engine. Here's people.

Starting point is 00:21:26 His like, this is what private equity always does, right? They'll acquire and then they'll like fire all of management and bring in their people to run things. he's kind of doing the private equity play here, right? Yeah, it kind of sounds like that. Like, I've heard that there's, like, certain features that he's put deadlines on, and whoever doesn't, like, ship and get that deadline done is, like, fired. So, like, yeah, coming in hot into Twitter. He's also ending all remote work, which is an interesting thing for a tech company to do,

Starting point is 00:21:53 requiring remaining employees to show up at their offices. People are going to hate that. Yeah, people are not going to like that. Anyways, he tweets out, the bird is freed. and he's just been tweeting on Twitter, which is now his company, all about like, oh, freedom of speech. We can talk about carbs now. That's an inside joke if you saw that tweet.

Starting point is 00:22:11 But just like how like there's not going to be, there's going to be like less like content moderation. But anyways, there's a lot of chaos going on. People don't really know exactly what the net effect of all this is. We're still kind of waiting and seeing. It's still pretty early. I mean, first of all, like I would say, it's like Twitter is kind of like crypto's government intention in a way.

Starting point is 00:22:29 This is where we have the public discussion. but there are certain questions of what does this have to do with with crypto and can crypto help solve some of the problems that the Twitter is facing right now maybe web three identities maybe other things but this was interesting this from binance what are we looking at here david yeah binance twitter account says GM Twitter and then it's a picture of z buttoning up his suit and then a picture of Elon poking through a little Twitter Twitter logo window the reason why this tweet exists is because Binance put in $500 million towards Elon Musk acquisition of Twitter. So through Elon, Twitter, finance owns $500 million of Twitter equity. Wow, that's a loss.

Starting point is 00:23:14 I heard this was, you know, I guess Twitter, Elon and the Twitter deal took CZ's money, but didn't take SBF's money. That at least is the rumor. So SBF is money. But he took CZ's money. I wonder if there are strings attached to that, but here's a headline from Bloomberg. Crypto Exchange Binance is creating a team that aims to help Twitter with things like bots. So Binance may be Sizi sending his army to go help Elon as well. What do you think about that? That makes sense. I don't know what to think about that.

Starting point is 00:23:47 Bots are definitely a problem. It would just be a huge problem. Is that why Binance is involved, though? Because Binance has like bot expertise? I'm not sure. I don't know. Anything I say is speculation. Yeah, for sure.

Starting point is 00:23:58 We'll have to see how it plays out. But how about this tweet, David? I want to get your thoughts on this. This is Elon Musk. Twitter's current lords and peasant system for who has or who doesn't have a blue check mark is bullshit. Power to the people, blue for $8 a month. Blue check mark. So for people who aren't into Twitter, David, what is the significance of a blue check mark?

Starting point is 00:24:18 What is kind of like the status quo of how you get a blue check mark? And what is this $8 per month thing that Elon is talking about? The blue check mark is a verified account, and it's really been reserved for high profile accounts that we need to have this mechanism to easily verify that that is the authentic real account. So that has been the purpose of a blue check mark. I think the main point is to like, if you are a high profile account, somebody will make like replica accounts and like impersonate that high profile account to do whatever, influence, scam, fish.

Starting point is 00:24:56 Like, Ryan and I each have like hundreds of fake accounts that are impersonating us. And so the idea of the blue checkmark is just to make it easy to verify who is actually the real one and who's not. The problem with that is that it doesn't really work like that because of how corrupted it is. If you want a blue check mark, you can buy one in like back alley Twitter channels with Twitter employees for $25,000-ish. You know, I don't know what market rate is. But like, oh, God, yeah, you got some, you got some bad one. bad impersonators. And so, like, the Twitter blue checkmark thing has kind of turned into just like a celebrity,

Starting point is 00:25:31 like, Chad thing, but that you can buy your way into. It's not really, it's no longer working as designed. It's more like a social signal. It's a social signal. Yeah. And also, it's just like completely falling apart in the past like two months or so. It's also impossible to get it. I've tried like five times.

Starting point is 00:25:45 And I think like you and I, many people in crypto have a valid case in that like there's going to be. We have the most valid case. We have the most impersonators. There are many impersonators. And like these impersonators are causing harm to people. Like fake Ryan Adams, I don't know how many times a day, literally, I get to answer people telling me, hey, there's a fake Ryan out there.

Starting point is 00:26:03 And like he just DM'd me. Is this you? And he's like, ask them something about your financial history trading strategy. It's super lame. I'm like, no, I don't, I wouldn't talk like that. But also, no, that's not me. But it's impossible to go through the process and get a blue check mark. Been denied like five times.

Starting point is 00:26:19 Don't know why. Just goes into a black hole. So what is the $8 a month? Where does that come in? Yeah, we don't really know. This caused a bunch of consternation, a bunch of confusion. Because the point of the checkmark is that you can't get it. You have to be, like, given a checkmark by people that verified you.

Starting point is 00:26:35 And so, like, blue for $8 a month. First, there's a thing called Twitter Blue, which is the thing you pay for, which I pay for, which gives you some extra perks. You can get your NFT profile picture there. You can, like, edit your tweets, stuff like that. What Elon seems to be implying is that for $8 a month, you can get a blue chart. check mark, but then that kind of defeats the point of the blue check mark. There's a lot of details that we need to figure out. Why do you think it defeats the point of the blue check mark?

Starting point is 00:27:00 I mean, my take on it was it costs money to do identity checks, right, for individuals. Right now, it's just a black hole. You try to go through a process. You try to submit. You never hear back. You don't know why you've not been submitted. And so for $8 a month, you can go through the process us and it can be funded to do the identity check. And so it's just like they're creating a funding model for it and it's easier to go through that process. Now, you know, skeptics would say, well, now rather than having a bunch of fake David Hoffman's, you're going to have a fake, a bunch of fake blue checkmark David Hoffman's.

Starting point is 00:27:38 So what have you accomplished? But I guess like one minor counter to that would be to say, well, are all of these bots going to pay $8 a month? So there is some like proof of stake, skin in the game. of like at least $8 a month. And then plus, in order to get a blue check mark, I assume you still have to go through some sort of like human slash alga verification check. And presumably those other fake David Hoffman's wouldn't be able to meet that mark. That's at least how I interpreted this. Yes. If that is how it is, then that is great. I think there's a lot of like speculation

Starting point is 00:28:12 as to what this will be. If that's what, if that is the net effect of that, then I'm 100% down to that. It's better at least, right? It's not perfect. But maybe it's not perfect. But maybe it's it's better. Yeah. Well, let's read out Vitalik's take on this about the $8. Yeah, Vitalik says how well this works depends on exactly how much due diligence is done to make sure blue checks are who they say they are. Yeah, pay dollars eight paid dollars month and call yourself for whatever would damage the blue checks anti-scam roll. But if there's more actual verification than the result is very different. Yeah, that sounds like what we were saying. Yeah, pretty measured. Maybe I stole from Metallic. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:28:44 So this caused like a ton of bunch of controversy. Everyone's angry about it. Everyone's have it as an opinion about it. And so Elon Musk says, to all complainers, please continue complaining, but it will cost $8. So Elon just turns into like complete troll mode, which he's fantastic at. Well, what's interesting? It's like, why are people complaining, do you think? Is it because they, is it people who have a blue checkmark are complaining because they don't want to pay and they just think it should be sort of a public good, you know, for like journalists

Starting point is 00:29:13 and for high profile people who need it? are they mad that it's like previously been a social status thing and now that's getting rescinded and it's becoming more common or do they just hate Elon Musk just they hate the guy I think there's a lot of that going around it's kind of like narcissistic billionaire trying to like promote free speech in quotes take over social media and it's kind of like a political left first right thing what's your take on that uh the answer is definitely yes yes to all to all of them yeah Yeah, people just want to complain. That's what Twitter is.

Starting point is 00:29:50 It's a platform for complaining. Anyways, here's Eric Voorhe's take. He goes, remember that Elon Musk charging $8 for premium Twitter experience means Twitter becomes the product again instead of you. And if it $8 is too much, you remain as the product, which I think is a good take. Yes, if we have to access Twitter for $8 a month, that makes us the people that are important rather than the advertisers. However, a large part of Twitter is like, let's make sure everyone has a voice here.

Starting point is 00:30:19 So like there's an interesting line that needs to be walked between not being the product and creating a free and open platform. Well, I mean, that is the point. How much are you paying monthly for your attention when you are the product? Like how much does Twitter harvest from you the same way meta does and other social media sites? And that's Eric's point here. There's less of incentive to do that. Yeah, this is David Sacks from the All-In podcast, who's also pushing back on the pusher backers

Starting point is 00:30:43 and says the entitled elite is not mad that they have to pay $8 a month. They're mad that anyone can pay $8 a month. Yeah. Look how many likes these things they're getting? Well, it's about Twitter, right? So like literally everyone on the platform is relevant towards. AOC comes in to give her take and goes, Lamow at the billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that free speech

Starting point is 00:31:07 is actually an $8 a month subscription plan to which Elon Musk replied, your feedback is appreciated. Now pay $8. That's funny. Look, CZ weighing in here too. Freedom and free and price are different concepts. You can choose not to pay and still use Twitter or not use it at all. Sometimes I wonder part of the funding of Twitter was just like to be in the cool clubs,

Starting point is 00:31:31 the cool kids club. Yeah. Right? So now CZ definitely gets to weigh in on this as an order of Twitter. He gets to ride on Elon's like trolled coattails. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you get to be in.

Starting point is 00:31:41 Elon's like maybe a text list or something where you can just, you know, pin him. Pay for access. My larger question is this, David, and I want to get your take here is, why is this so, why is it so hard on Twitter to prove person? Why do we still have all of the spam accounts? Like, why haven't we solved the blue check mark thing before? And like, why haven't we solved digital identity, centralized digital identity yet? So why is proof of personhood and digital identity so hard?

Starting point is 00:32:09 The boss are swarming us. It's impossible to tell who's a human. who's a robot. We have no defense. The world is begging for a solution. I want to sign my tweets with private keys. What's taking so long? I actually don't understand this. It's just like, people are like, oh, this is rich coming from somebody who doesn't code and like, you know, build things. And I get that perspective. But also, people are talking about digital identity, decentralized identity for so long. Since before crypto. Right. Why isn't it here? Like, how have we not solved this problem? And especially, in my opinion, I think it's a national

Starting point is 00:32:41 defense imperative, right? If state-sponsored bot armies can sow division among our social networks, democracies themselves become very fragile. Like, even from like national security, they're talking about banning TikTok. The U.S. is talking about banning TikTok. Why not be proactive and start companies? Yeah, and help make identity systems, right? Like, it seems to me that would be a solution to this problem of nation-state sponsored bot attacks. What do you think about this? I think that's right. My quick from the hip take is that a lot of people don't know how to, didn't know how to think in Web3 terms before Web 3 was in existence, right? Obviously, it's an obvious statement.

Starting point is 00:33:22 Like, we had ideas around decentralized identity and identity systems since before crypto, but we have now, like, this whole crypto corner of the Internet that is like this massive rabbit hole that's a huge nerd snipe and everyone kind of goes down the rabbit hole and they come out understanding what Web3 values are and that can now be these lessons and memes that are now in these people's heads can now go back to Web 2 and be like, hey, Web 2, you don't have to build Web 3, but let's take some Web 3 principles like community governance and community identity and apply that to our Web 2 platforms. And there were some takes I saw like out of Kobe, right?

Starting point is 00:33:59 Kobe had this take where he's like a green checkmark to signal support for climate change or like an orange checkmark to signal your support for like Bitcoin and a, you know, certain colored kind of checkmark to signal your tribe here. Make them all pay $8 a month or something. But like have more community aligned identity systems when that'll come to a take that I have later on in the show. But I think because we now know what crypto is, we can take some of that crypto philosophy and apply it to our web two apps. But without having crypto, I don't think there enough people out there to really think in these web three ways. It seems like the biggest problem that we're facing right now on the internet, honestly,

Starting point is 00:34:39 in social media, right? I mean, I feel like the first 10 years of crypto was about solving the whole money thing. And like it's continuing to do that. But I'm hopeful this decade we can start to solve the digital identity thing. Like that being the next step, decentralized money and then decentralized identity. And I do think crypto will play a big role here. But getting into our next web two app of the week,

Starting point is 00:35:02 Web 2 app, try to keep up Elon because meta, particularly Instagram, is now allowing mint and sell functionality for NFTs. Right, David, a few weeks ago, we displayed on meta on Instagram view functionality so you can view your NFTs. This is the next step and this is a massive next step because it means every Instagram user can now become a creator of NFTs using Instagram. Instagram. The ability to mint and sell NFTs on Instagram, massive, absolutely massive. And this is being deployed right now on Polygon. It's not live yet, but this is a tweet from Meta. Do you want to read this out? Yeah, meta says, soon you'll be able to make and sell NFTs on Instagram, starting with Polygon. You can also connect to Solana and Phantom Wallet and see more information about OpenC collections. And so some of the

Starting point is 00:35:57 features that are coming out here, they continue and say, we are adding new ways for people to show appreciation for their favorite creators through expanded access to Instagram subscriptions, gifting on Instagram Reels, and updates to Facebook stars. So not only is they're just generalized NFT integration with Polygon and Solana, but also they're just doing a platform revamp to allow for creator monetization, creator business opportunities. And so in addition to that, Meta has also pledged that neither creators nor collectors will have to pay for gas fees, which shows the importance of scale.

Starting point is 00:36:32 and they also gave a step-by-step video to CoinDesk, and CoinDesk reported that it appears that NFT creators will be able to choose their royals percentage between 5 and 25%. Creators can then link their bank accounts or PayPal accounts to get paid if they are still banked. I'm hoping that they can also link their wallets and just get paid directly in crypto. I'm assuming that's going to be the case. Obviously, that's the next step, and I do think that will be the case. Pretty amazing on Polygon as well. did they mention that they were adding any sort of app store type fee? Do you remember the news

Starting point is 00:37:05 last week was Apple wants to charge its 30% tax on everything? I don't think meta is taking that approach. I would love to see meta go after Apple should not pay that fee. Facebook versus Apple over the 30% tax. That would be awesome. Find it out. I just want to say it, Ryan. Like, I'm going to plant this flag. Meta is now, or at least Instagram, is fully Web 3. I mean, maybe like fully. I can't sign in with your Ethereum address. But minting and selling

Starting point is 00:37:38 NFTs natively in the application, that's what we're hoping for. That's what Web 3 is. Yeah. And using, okay, and not using some meta-proprietary tech stack to do that, but securing that with

Starting point is 00:37:52 a property right system based on crypto. That's what's important here. And I know, you know, Polygon is, Some people will say, well, it's proof of stake. It's more side chain than it is layer two. They have ambitious layer two plans. I tell you. That take's not going to last. That take is not going to last, regardless of what you think about that. But like, rather than, I mean, there was a few years ago, meta was talking about like, we'll just create our own blockchain.

Starting point is 00:38:19 And then I guess the world will trust meta as the property rights layer of the internet. No. And what do we say? It's like, some people are like, but meta's bad, David. Why are you supposed? Like, meta's evil bankless. What are you talking? about. They, like, they're part of the surveillance capitalism. They're praying on their users. And, okay, sure, yes. I agree with many aspects of that. But as we say so often on bankless, if they adopt crypto protocols, they adopt crypto value. And now what we've done is we've gone underneath meta and sort of forced meta to build on top of blockchain, secure, open, permissionless freedom technologies.

Starting point is 00:39:01 That is just such a massive leap forward. And let me remind you, META has 2.5 billion users, monthly active users. That's absolutely huge. Yeah. I would like to do a dive into the actual smart contract that is the minting contract of these NFTs and see what kind of powers and features they have there.

Starting point is 00:39:20 Not that I will be able to do that. I'll need somebody more technical to do that. If there's just a normal ERC-721 token, and like that is the new power. Meta adheres of the ERC 721 token standard. Open free public permission list can go across chains, can do whatever you want, gives the power from meta to the token owner.

Starting point is 00:39:39 I'm not going to say that this biggest thing that's happened this year, but like... It's big. It's funny that like this like doesn't really land for... I don't know why. Both people outside of crypto, people outside of crypto, like, great, I don't care about NFTs. And people inside of crypto are like, great,

Starting point is 00:39:52 I don't care about Instagram. There's no... There's no one in the middle who's like, I'm so stoked for this. Yeah, I think what'll happen is it'll be kind of quite launched, don't normally notice, and then they'll start to notice some sort of influence or some sort of Instagram account they follow doing this, using it. And it'll spread that way. By the way, everyone's also like, well, NFTs aren't cool anymore.

Starting point is 00:40:13 NFTs are so, okay, no. Also, not going to last as a take. That's not going to last either. I mean, we'll see how well that ages. So massively for it. Also, RWeave was up. Yeah, are we? Are we up 50?

Starting point is 00:40:25 percent because RWeave, it's like a modular data storage blockchain solution. So you can put a bunch of data there. It's part of the integration of meta. So they're putting an NFT data on RWeave. I mean, I would assume that's the actual like if it's like the image JPEG or if it's a movie that that part of the NFT goes on RWeave, which like, yo, that's not like that's a big deal. They're not, Facebook isn't storing the data themselves about the NFT. They're putting the data of the NFT on our weave, a public and open system, so it can truly escape from Facebook's clutches, which is why this is such a huge step forward for Facebook from a Web 2 app to a Web 3 app. That's huge.

Starting point is 00:41:02 By the way, a friend Anatoly at Solana wanted to emphasize, too, that it's also possible to view NFTs using Solana. This is not just a Polygon story, apparently, although Polygon is the only one with the minting and selling functionality, but now you can also view on Salon. Where did he say that? He wanted to emphasize what you just be? He was just like, you didn't say the S word. I'm happy to say the S word, Anatolia.

Starting point is 00:41:28 Salana, Salana, Salana, Salana, Salana. Oh, shit, it's in Atolli. Exactly. No, if you don't say it, then he pops up. Then he pops up, yeah. Yeah. All right. Tell me about art goblers.

Starting point is 00:41:38 All right. Okay, my God. I'm a huge Rick and Morty fan. Yeah. And I can't believe I missed this. And this is what I feel like I've heard everyone saying like, oh, this was so obvious and I missed it because art goblers were on a rampage this year. And what is the project?

Starting point is 00:41:51 Something to do with Rick and Morty. Yeah, okay. Brand new NFT project called Art Gobblers from the Rick and Morty creator, Justin Royland, in like a very strong partnership with Paradigm. So this was like a joint project from Paradigm the VC company, Paradime the VC company, specifically Dave White, mechanism designer researcher at Paradigm. So collaboration between Justin Royland, the artist, and Paradigm, the mechanism designers. So, yeah, we're watching a movie, Rick and Morty fashion, style movie.

Starting point is 00:42:21 It's kind of like debuting what are art goblers. And there are these weird creatures. And there's like this goo that is oozing out of like a hose that's in there. They're bleeding goo. They're just like goo faucets. And this like guy is like tied up by the art goblers. Like it's giving the context or the lore or something. Basically.

Starting point is 00:42:41 All right. So you ready for me to go into the mechanism of how that happens works? Yeah. Well, actually, can we look at the art first a little bit more? It's just Rick and Morty art. It's just even more just like weird and surreal. Wow. I do like this art style, by the way. That's the one you like.

Starting point is 00:42:58 First, we'll talk about some of the analytics. There's 2,000 art goblers that were able to be minted in this first wave. There's going to be 10,000 total. Eventually, there's a little bit like a Bitcoin issuance curve high at the beginning, slow it tapers off over time. Current floor price, 15 ether. Wow. 15 ether, not a low floor price.

Starting point is 00:43:19 Currently 1,887 goblers are out there. every time there are 10 legendary goblers that exist every time 581 goblers are minted a legendary goes up for sale but like the sale price there's been as high as 40th sales the volume on this thing is just like super crazy just like a ton of activity going on this is still permissioned so you needed to have signed up for to be on the mint list I don't know how you got there but yeah just like it's taken part of the NFT world definitely by storm. But also just like this is a high effort NFT project. This is not just like an NFT.

Starting point is 00:43:56 So like because there's mechanisms behind this. This is not just like by your art gobbler. This is not a collectible. Art goblers do things. They're actually productive assets. Wait, you can draw. You can draw stuff. Okay, so in order to explain this, we have to go through the mechanism design for how this whole thing works.

Starting point is 00:44:11 The paradigm, the big brain stuff. Yes. Okay. So actually, yeah, let's scroll down because there's like a tweet that kind of shows everything. So here's how this works. art gobblers Ryan can gobble art and the art is called glaminated pages. And so once a glaminated page has been gobbled, it is displayed on the art gobbler's stomach forever.

Starting point is 00:44:35 And so like the art gobbler is so like the people that are listening, think about like Dr. Seuss's snooze. What's the story of the Dr. Seuss with the stars on their belly? Oh, starbellied sneaches. Exactly, that one. Like start with that with your mental model, but like think telotubby. TV belly. So like we got a TV belly on these like Gynormous belly. A lot of space. Carebear style.

Starting point is 00:44:56 And so once an art gobbler gobbles some art, the art becomes displayed on its belly. So an individual art gobbler, Ryan, is itself an art gallery. And so since there's eventually going to be 10,000 of them, the meme is that they are, it's a decentralized network of art galleries. Each one is an art gallery.

Starting point is 00:45:14 And so the people who own these art goblers can gobble art. curate their art gobbler's gallery. But the thing is, Ryan, there's this thing called goo. There's an ERC20 token called goo. What? And goblers produced goo. So, uh, on some kind of recurring basis.

Starting point is 00:45:36 Yes, like, it's a productive asset. So, like, not only is a art gobbler, a gallery to display your art that they are gobble, gobbles, but they produce goo. They have this little pipe, this hose in the back of their backs that, like, put out goo. Gew, like tokenized goo. The goo is a token. The goo is an ERC 20 token.

Starting point is 00:45:55 So this thing like, like ether, staked ether, mince ether, and gargobblers mint goo. Same, same. Exactly the same. Ultrasound goo. Ultrasound goo. And so you need to consume goo to make the art that art gobbels, gobbler's gobble. And so there are these things called blank pages, blank there in NFT. when you combine goo plus a blank page NFT that is called glamination,

Starting point is 00:46:23 aka the minting of gobblerable art, of a glaminated page. And so you have these page NFTs, you spend the currency goo to add art onto a page nfts, so it goes from a blank page to a glaminated page, which is a gobbled. And then once there's art on the page, it can be gobbled. And anyone can draw anything. There's like this like windows paint kind of like factory where you can like put in art and make your art. And then have that be gobbled by the art and gobbler. And the page becomes a permanent part of the gobbler's stomach.

Starting point is 00:46:57 So once a gobbler gobbles some art, it's one way. It's permanent forever. Just like a tattoo. Just like it's a tattoo. Forever. It's a tattoo forever. It's irreversible. And the point of this is to make like, you know, people want to have intention about like what they put into their heart gobbler.

Starting point is 00:47:12 Like we could buy an art gobbler for the little. low price of 15. 15. And then we could start to put stuff in it. Tattoo bankless on it? Sure. If we wanted, the bankless art gopler.

Starting point is 00:47:23 Yeah. That would add value. Maybe subtract value. So I think the idea is like a lot of these gobblers will start to like differentiate themselves as to like the art that they have in their belly. So it's no longer about the properties like, oh my NFT has like a golden crown and it's shiny. And no, it's about like all right. Like what art has your art gobble cobbled?

Starting point is 00:47:43 This is awesome. Like, I mean, look, it's kind of a fun idea, right? But, like, you can see a lot of thought went into the... This is not the type of project that we saw in the late stage NFT market. No. This is fresh. This is new. It's building something.

Starting point is 00:47:57 I don't know. Are NFTs back, David? Well, remember my big takeaway out of DevCon is, like, gamification works. Yeah. People, the reason why there's a 15th floor is because people want to play the art gobbler game. The art gobblers. It's an economic game. It's a social status game.

Starting point is 00:48:12 It's just a fun internet thing. We would have previously have called it a futility token. Gou is a utility token, but when you pair it with an NFT, it works better. Goo is money, question mark. In the art gobbler ecosystem,

Starting point is 00:48:28 goo is money, yes. In the art gobbler economy, in the art gobbler metaverse, goo is money. This is hilariously fun. And I do like the art. Big Brains at Paradigm. Maybe that's the team up.

Starting point is 00:48:38 Artist plus big brain equals a really good project if you spend some time on it. clear that they spent some time on this one. Yeah. That's great. All right, David, what do we got coming up next? Coming up next, nothing as cool as our accomplishes. I can tell you.

Starting point is 00:48:54 J.P. Morgan, fulfilling the defy mullet prophecy. They once hated us, yet now they have a mullet. We're going to talk about that. The odd death of a maker Dow founder, not Ruin Christensen, and GameStop, launching something cool. So all of this and more, as soon as we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors to help you go bankless. The layer two era is upon us. Ethereum's layer two ecosystem is growing every day, and we need layer two bridges to be fast and efficient

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Starting point is 00:50:45 users. Wall extensions are a thing in the past. So get started with Brave's Web3 ready browser today and experience a decentralized web seamlessly without all the clutter. You can download the browser at Brave.com slash banklist and click the wall icon to get started. ZK Sync just went to Maynet. This is the first EVM to MayNet. So says ZK Sync. Baby Alpha is here in the tweet. We are proud to announce that today we hit our Baby Alpha milestone. we have begun the march to fair onboarding alpha and full launch alpha. Three different alphas there, I counted, David. This is the roadmap that we're looking at.

Starting point is 00:51:19 What part in the process of ZK Sync going to Mainnet are we in? It still feels like early days. I think like only a small permission team can actually access the Alpha on Mainnet. So we're not at full launch on Mainnet yet, but this is an important milestone. What's your take here? Yeah, so it is live on Mainnet. without access. So that has caused some controversy because what does it mean to be live on Mainnet if people can't touch it? Apparently, the ZK Mainnet is only touchable by the Matter

Starting point is 00:51:52 Lab's team, according to an optimism governance delegate. So there's caused a little bit of controversy, but that's because what ZK Sync has done is they've broken this apart into a number of like launches, right? So they have fair onboarding, full launch alpha, like, and then they have like the decentralization, layer three. So they have like, they're rolling it out in stages, which is why they're calling it baby alpha. So like, it makes sense.

Starting point is 00:52:18 Like I see the stages. It makes sense. But there's also probably an element of, uh, then why did you call it? Why did you? Yes. Yes.

Starting point is 00:52:25 Got it. Like they were all, all the layer of things. The brother like licks the piece of candy so this, so the, uh, so the sibling can't have it. As a brother who's done that before,

Starting point is 00:52:34 I can relate, yeah. Well, that's what's happening. But, uh, we should also mention, we are advisors on ZK. sync. Of course, you'll find that out in our disclosures, a fan of the project as well. Good to see some progress there. Google is launching a cloud node engine for who, for Ethereum developers?

Starting point is 00:52:52 David, I've been growingly impressed with this cohort of Google engineers that are on the Web 3 Crypto train, particularly in their cloud services division, I believe. But what does this mean for developers? I think it's mostly just a statement, and we already knew this about Google, but a statement from Google that they are here to support Web3. Like there was this other, like, I can't remember this other cloud providers, like Herzl or something. In Germany. In Germany, yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:20 Actually, the news that we actually didn't include this week is that a bunch of Solana nodes went down because Hertzl just kicked them off or whatever. Well, now we included it, David? Now we included it, yeah. And so in start contrast to other NGMI cloud providers, Google definitely GMI because they're supporting, like, notes. And they say, officially, officially called a blockchain node engine and Google's offering a fully managed service,

Starting point is 00:53:43 meaning customers won't have to hire their own teams to maintain or monitor their nodes. Instead, Google says it will actively monitor the nodes and restarts them if anything goes wrong. So, in start contrast to the node operating company that I can't remember that is kicking off nodes, hurts something, I don't know, NJMI cloud operator. They are helping node operators operate their notes. So thank you, Google. Thank you for your service. that's cool um this is some sad news coming out of the the maker community uh david we don't have a lot of details

Starting point is 00:54:13 here but why don't you just read the headline uh nikolai uh michelai michelai mcciguyen died at 29 uh in puerto rico he was found just like washed up uh the current uh allegedly of the portoican uh took him uh people are confused about this there's a bunch of conspiracy stuff not enough for us to really go into nikolai has been around for a long time uh before maker dow was a thing He was part of the Bitshare's community. Same thing with Roon Christensen. OG member of Maker Dow. Sadly, I was actually in DMs with Nikolai and Telegram a couple weeks ago about a potential

Starting point is 00:54:49 layer zero with him. Looks like I didn't do that fast enough. So I'm bummed about that. Yeah. Very sad and rest in peace, Nikolai. I think the community will definitely miss you and your contributions to the space. Very sad story. Anytime I ever heard of a Maker Dow friend, Mariano Conti, so many.

Starting point is 00:55:07 others talk about Niklai. It was in just extremely high regard. He was one of those guys that was, you know, considered a gigabrain, saw crypto before, before anyone else, saw what it could do, committed to that ecosystem, contributed not just to make her down, also balancer. I think he had a very, very strong role in actually writing the balancer white paper along with Fernando. Yeah, exactly. Far too young. He had, like, donated a bunch of money to, I can't remember some like academia to like to like to do defy research. I think he I think he made the Weth contract.

Starting point is 00:55:42 So he made Weth which means like you've all touched. You've all, we've all been touched by, by if you've interacted with Weth. So Nicolai. Sorry, brother. Rest in peace. J.P. Morgan trading on the public blockchain

Starting point is 00:55:58 in this monumental step. I love that the headline has a picture of Jamie Diamond, the CEO. It's famously called crypto, Bitcoin, and all of these things, a scam, and here they are using it. David, I think it might be helpful to kind of walk through what exactly is happening here. Details in the fine print. Walk us through it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:17 This is a tweet from Mihailo from Polygon. By the way, I had a big week with the meta-NFT minting stuff. But JP Morgan executed the first live trade on public chain. It's on Polygon. They used Ave, first ever tokenized deposit issued by a big. bank on chain verified with W3C standard verifiable credentials. We like the VCs. Pretty cool.

Starting point is 00:56:44 Verify credentials, that is. This is Ty Lobin, who is a developer, I think, at J.P. Morgan, saying they've executed their first live trade and public blockchain, everything that Mahalo just said. What did they do here? First, they used Polygon for the trade because they wanted to do it on Ethereum. They need cheap gas fees that's checking out so far. Second, they used Ave. so they could leverage their permissioned Pools concept.

Starting point is 00:57:07 We deployed a modified version of Ave Arc. That's what they did, a modified version of AVE, so they could set certain parameters such as interest rate and FX rate. Third, they issued a tokenized Singapore dollar deposit. So this is a stable coin, not of the US dollars, but of Singapore dollars. This is a deposit token, which is a general liability of JP Morgan. It's a native token giving stable on-chain value without the scalability issues of stable coins. This is the first issuance of tokenized deposits by a bank, in particular, on a public

Starting point is 00:57:41 chain. You can click here on PolyScan and see the tokenized deposit contract for Singapore dollars. And then fourth, and I think this is kind of cool, they used a verifiable credentials. This is the first time I've seen VCs really out in the wild solving a big use case. Verifiable credentials, Ty says, give us much more fine-grained control than just a allow listing addresses, risk limits, asset limits, et cetera, is all possible. And we built on-chain verification of verifiable credentials. He says, verified credentials are huge. It brings composability to identity. You can have these little verifiers that know how to verify certain things and use them across DAVs, bring further standardization and portability to identity. By the way,

Starting point is 00:58:25 this might be a way Twitter gets out of its current setup of paying $8 a month for blue check marks and moving something to centralize. Verifiable credentials are hugely bullish technology for that. He says, we, as a sidebar, by the way, if you're wanting to know why verifiable credentials, why identity is so important, because it's J.P. Morgan. I mean, they're a bank. As a heavily regulated bank, he says, we cannot enable money laundering and must undertake KYC using verifiable credentials and allow this was crucial for enabling us to use defy pools with certainty on these points, institutional defy, exclamation point. This is probably what it looks like when regulated banks start using defy. And I think that this is going to become a trend in the future.

Starting point is 00:59:14 And J.P. Morgan, despite what Jamie Diamond is saying, is doing big experiments in this world. I think it's pretty bullish. This is not the bankless future that we all signed up for in the self-sovereign future, of course. But again, I go back to kind of the meta thing. when they adopt crypto protocols, they adopt crypto values. Also, you can build a banked system on top of a bank list system. Of course you can. So that's what we're doing here. And like you said the word experiment, this looks much more than an experiment.

Starting point is 00:59:44 You're right. This is production level stuff. This is a means to an end. They used AVE-Arc and Polygon and verifiable credentials to get something done. Yeah. And then they did it. That's huge. Enterprise blockchain.

Starting point is 00:59:57 Energy. Do you remember that was a big thing back 2016? Polygon. I mean, but this is enterprise blockchain, this doing something for a bank. Like, this makes total sense to me. So I'm starting to see like these enterprise blockchain use cases and I'm like, okay, fine. We're getting there. We're making some progress.

Starting point is 01:00:13 I would like to take a quick victory lap for the world of verifiable credentials. People think soulbound tokens are super cool, but a lot of the reasons why they think soulbound tokens are super cool are actually like the domain of verifiable credentials. It's basically a soulbound token that's not on a blockchain. And it can do so much more by not being fixed down to the blockchain. If you listen to our soulbound episode with Fatalic Buteran and Evin McMullen, there's like these two tribes. There's like the soulbound token folk who like tokens. There's a verifiable credential folk who like privacy.

Starting point is 01:00:45 I would just like to say, can I be in both tribes? Okay, well, I am a firm VC tribor and I'm taking a victory lap. All right. Well, you take that victory lap. And I will also join you in that because I'm part of that tribe, but I'm also in the soulbound tribe. I don't know if you can do that. I think they're different for two different sets of use cases. And I definitely think that VCs were the right technology.

Starting point is 01:01:07 Yes, and I 100% agree with that. And I will say that the solebound token tribe is putting too many use cases into soulbound tokens in the same way that Bitcoiners think that Bitcoin is going to solve like the food system. David, trying to get all tribal around identity already. It's too early for the tribalism. We at least need tokens to fight over, okay? All right. What else we got? Robbie Ferguson tweets out, thrilled to finally announce that GameStop NFT marketplace is officially live on Immutable.

Starting point is 01:01:37 This is a huge step in making true ownership real for hundreds of millions of gamers. We knew this was coming. GameStop first integrated loop ring, I believe, is their first layer to you. And now they're integrating Amutable. Any thoughts on this? Nope. We, GameStop is very intentionally going after. NFTs in the same way meta is now. I mean, just add another one to the list of people that are doing NFT stuff. Another thing to add to the list, I think, is Twitter doing NFT stuff. So got to keep up with meta. Now testing NFT tweet tiles. This is a feature for Twitter. David, what are we looking at? This is like a small update. There's already NFTs in Twitter, right? Like our profile pictures,

Starting point is 01:02:18 but they are being given like a more of a first class citizen in tweet embedded into tweets. So if you post like an Instagram or a YouTube link or like they will treat links differently based off of what they are show like a preview right a specialized preview based off of like the URL so if it's a YouTube it'll give you a YouTube preview if it's an Instagram link it won't give you any preview because it doesn't want you to go there but they are giving special previews towards NFTs that like so they manifest in a specific way and so the NFT here is like Rocket to the Moon created by Twitter with a button to say see on marketplace. And I would imagine that that marketplace button

Starting point is 01:02:59 takes you to rareable, Magic Eden, Dapper Labs, jump trade, NFT, wherever they have like these custom fit links. So just NFTs are being given first class treatment inside of Twitter. I think what meta and Twitter are doing,

Starting point is 01:03:12 this is like the NFT space race. It's beginning only for social media. Dude, this is the NFT bare market. This is the build market for sure. They have to, all these social media apps have to keep up with this. Artifact. Fidgetal luggage flies on.

Starting point is 01:03:26 the shelf. Did I say that right? Fidgetal? What is figital luggage? Fidgetal is this hybrid word between digital and physical. Oh, I love it. Yes. I think everyone hates this word, but it's pretty damn sticky, sadly. So there is physical, there are digital renderings of luggage, Ryan, luxury luggage that is cool. And there are, I think, 888 NFTs that represent luggage. These things? Yes, exactly. Dude, luggage is boring, like, in real life.

Starting point is 01:04:04 Why are we, like, collecting it? I don't know, Ryan, but the reason why we're talking about it on the weekly roll-up is because $1.7 million worth of volume was exchanged on OpenC alone, pushing it to the top of a 24-hour leaderboard. David, this is not a bear market. If we could sell, how much millions of dollars, if we could sell millions of dollars worth of digital luggage pictures. Like, look at these.

Starting point is 01:04:29 These are literally just images of, look at this. I mean, it's like my carry on. People, for some reason, there is like this like luxury luggage, like world out there. I don't know. Is that like sneaker heads? There's like luggage heads that collect these things?

Starting point is 01:04:44 The most niche community we've ever talked about on the show. That's for sure. bet we offended about a bunch of luggage collectors right now. Oh, dozens of them. All dozens of them. But enough to like spur on a multi-million dollar market. It doesn't feel like a bare market. But we're not done with NFTs.

Starting point is 01:05:00 Yeah. Budverse. NFT. Dot Budweiser.com. The Budverse NFT collection is coming. During the FIFA World Cup, there is a mint now button. Budweiser. Like, remember it was like a couple weeks ago, maybe four or five weeks ago,

Starting point is 01:05:15 whereas like NFTs won. this week in the weekly roll up. They won again. NFTs won again. A huge week for NFTs. Like Budweiser, they were already in NFTs. I don't even know what this is, but like digital collectibles to go with the FIFA World Cup. You can select your team.

Starting point is 01:05:30 You can mint some stuff. Do you know, David, minting is not enough for me anymore. I need to gobble after the art gobblers. I want mint and gobble functionality. I'm not buying it. Okay. So here's what you get. You can follow your team through the World Cup.

Starting point is 01:05:44 You select and represent your team in your specific bud word, Budverse FIFA World Cup live scoreboard NFT. This is the first ever NFT where you can see your team's progression to greatness in real time. Your live scoreboard MT will also get you exclusive Budweiser football merch, cool. Access to holder only Discord channels

Starting point is 01:06:01 for an always on game time community and also access to the Budverse penalty kick mini game. May I just remind you? And this was from our so rare episode. 2.5 billion people around the planet are going to be watching the World Cup. If just 0.001% of them pick up a Budweiser NFT.

Starting point is 01:06:25 I'm not doing the math right now, but that's a lot of people. What's our friend Carly Riley? She just released this documentary that she's been working on for a while about her experience in Puerto Rico in the art and NFT community. What are we looking at here, David?

Starting point is 01:06:40 There's been a bunch of controversy in Puerto Rico about all the crypto people that have like invaded the island. But Carly wants to tell a different story because there's parts of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican locals who are using NFTs inside of their community to do stuff, to do cool stuff.

Starting point is 01:06:57 And so Carly went to Puerto Rico, boots on the ground, to tell that story of how NFTs are helping fix stuff in Puerto Rico and how different people are doing different things, leveraging NFTs to help the island. So very cool story, very cool documentary out of Colorado.

Starting point is 01:07:11 Also like probably the most well-produced piece of video from a, from a crypto content creator I've seen. Yeah. Like she really spent time talking to locals and like getting this right. So it's fantastic video. Go and watch it. It's 30 minutes. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:07:25 Drop your Netflix show and watch that this weekend. She's turning into the Anthony Bordane of NFTs. Yeah. Going around the world and doing an NFT thing. I think that's it. She went to the rainforest too. I think she went to the Amazon to talk about NFTs. Carly.

Starting point is 01:07:39 It's incredible. Bitcoin stuff. All right, David. Happy 14th. anniversary for Bitcoin. Can we just say it? We are huge Bitcoin fans. Like I'm saying that with no satire, no disrespect, Bitcoin got me into crypto. I will forever be excited about Bitcoin. I will forever hold some Bitcoin. I'm like 14 years old. That's what kick started this entire revolution. Incredible. This is a tweet from Edward Snowden with a screenshot of Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic

Starting point is 01:08:08 cash system. This is the original white paper from the great, the mysterious, Satoshi, uh, 14 years. That's pretty crazy, David. Yet he is still anonymous, Edward Snowden says, remarkable. Yes, it is indeed remarkable. If staying anonymous is a hard thing to do. Craig Wright comes in hot into, uh, into Edward Snowden's replies and says, I was never anonymous, you traitorous scum.

Starting point is 01:08:34 God a waste. God, what a waste. This is a man who claimed, by the way, if you're not familiar with this, a man who's literally claiming he's Satoshi and it's obviously not. It's obviously a fraud. He's also claimed he's got like 14 degrees or something. Okay. What a waste.

Starting point is 01:08:48 Anyway, chasing some clout for Bitcoin's 14th birthday. The second person to chase clout after Bitcoin's 14th birthday. Gary Gensler. Gary Gensler says, happy 14th birthday to Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper. Not even to Bitcoin. It has led to innovation and crypto asset investing. Let's make sure as crypto enters its 15th year that investors get proper protection. Absolutely F off, Gary. God damn it. Protection from what? The three trillion,

Starting point is 01:09:21 well, only one trillion, the one trillion dollars that has been created? Why don't you give a charitable view of this? Maybe, maybe Gary just wants to extend an olive branch to the Bitcoin community and just say, happy anniversary, happy birthday, Bitcoin weight paper. He knows that this phrasing would tick off his off all of us. Let's make sure as crypto enters its 15th year, that investor get proper protection. How about a Bitcoin ETF then that is spot traded Bitcoin miners? Blowing up simultaneously. Not great. So

Starting point is 01:09:51 Bitcoin prices down. That leads to minor blowups. They become less profitable. Yeah, what's happening here? So this is not yet a blow up, but Dylan Leclair, who works at Bitcoin Media, says Bitcoin miner Argo blockchain, negative down 41% today at the open. Should Argo be

Starting point is 01:10:12 unsuccessful in completing any further financing, Argo would become cash flow negative in the near term and would need to curtail or cease operations. This is what happens during bear markets. We've seen this before. The less efficient miners get washed out because of competition for mining Bitcoin. The more efficient miners can last through the bear market. And so every single bear market, there's consolidation. The least profitable, most inefficient Bitcoin miners lose. And the more efficient Bitcoin miners, stick around. When you say consolidation, I hear centralization. Is that what's happening to? Are we doing this on Bitcoin's birthday, Ryan? Oh, no. Happy birthday, Bitcoin. Let's go. All right, let's get two releases, David. This is Nifty Apes. Pretty Nifty project. Liquidity for your

Starting point is 01:10:56 NFTs. What does this do? Just released. Yeah, borrowing for your NFTs. So I loaded up my wallet and I got like a three or four offers on different NFTs that I own about like how much ether I could borrow over for what percentage over what period of time. Nifty apes dot money. If you would like to see the offers that the market might give you based on your NFTs, it's a normal NFT borrowing and lending service. Be careful. Those could get liquidated. And also disclaimer, Ryan and I are angel investors in Nifty Apes. So that's our disclaimer. Go check it out. This is cool. Zora is launching Nouns builder. So you're familiar with the Nouns project and maybe familiar with the Dow mechanism around Nouns. It looks like they built a tool. So you could spin up Nouns builder. So you could spin up

Starting point is 01:11:37 noun-style dows. What are the details behind this, David? Nouns builder. Yeah, I think just a big aha moment with nouns. It was, first, the mechanism itself was very cool, but then people realize it has actually nothing to do with nouns themselves, and it's more of a generalizable mechanism. So Zora has produced a build a noun, build a noun project. And so you can kind of tinker with the levers, tinker with the dials, create your art, and build a nouns like Dow. So it's like a Tao system, Dow in a box with a noun's mechanism. So the idea is that we can make a lot more noun like DAO's and have cool things. David, if I was a 14-year-old kid, like this would be a playground for like an absolute

Starting point is 01:12:16 playground for me. Could you imagine like creating like turning the gaming clan or whatever? Can you imagine all the tax liabilities you'd be able to make? Oh, shut up the taxes. Why am I the guy telling you to shut up about taxes? I'm 14. I don't care about taxes. I don't know they even exist.

Starting point is 01:12:30 So I'm playing with this tool and I'd like set this up for a clan or something. Like I would, I mean, it would be so much fun. Just have a discreet my own Dow. I mean, how incredible. Kids these days have a lot of opportunity in crypto. Can't wait to report on some IRS suing some 12-year-old kid for millions of dollars. Stop, downing the taxes. No, no one wants to hear about taxes, David.

Starting point is 01:12:50 Let's get to jobs, all right? Because there's opportunities for you to get a job in crypto. It's our weekly time to remind you that crypto is hiring and you should stop what you're doing. You should take a look. Get a job. Consider getting a job in crypto. Number one, bankless script writer. I'm going to read a few of these out.

Starting point is 01:13:06 Number two, Swell Network. They need a senior smart contract engineer. Swell also needs a front-end engineer and a back-end engineer. Unoswap Labs needs a director of product management. Open Hedge, a senior front-end engineer, optimism, head of security, optimism, senior infrastructure engineer. I could go on, but I don't need to because you can get these in your inbox. If you subscribe to bankless.com. Slopallet.com slash jobs.

Starting point is 01:13:31 You can see all of that. David, what do we have? coming up next. Coming up next, we got takes of the week, some more Twitter takes, but also some legal takes as well, some regulatory takes. And then we got what we are bullish on. And Ryan is bullish on something that perked my ears. So we're going to stick around for all of this. And more right after we talked to some of these fantastic sponsors that makes the show possible. In all of my years in crypto, I've never been hacked, scammed, or lost money to a thief. And a lot of that credit goes to my ledger hardware wallet. The Ledger NanoX and the Ledger NanoS plus

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Starting point is 01:15:02 security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar, and fully EVM compatible. On Arbitrum, both builders and users will experience faster transaction speeds with significantly lower gas fees. With Arbitrum's recent migration to Arbitram Nitro, it's also now 10 times faster than before. Visit Arbitrum.io, where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets, and start building your first app. With Arbitrum, experience Web3 development the way it was meant to be. Secure, fast, cheap, cheap, and friction-free. We're back with the takes of the week.

Starting point is 01:15:35 This is a tweet from Ron Hammond. David, this is based on our episode, which I feel like was the episode watched around the world, listened to around the world. Our debate on bankless between SBF and Eric Forhees, if you haven't caught that, go listen to it, podcast, YouTube. 60,000 people have watched that so far. Yeah. And I think the where it's echoed and where it's influenced has also been pretty crazy.

Starting point is 01:15:58 This is a tweet from Ron Hammond about that episode. this week in Congress and Crypto. It is not too often a podcast is the talk of the town in D.C., but the bankless debate between SBF and Voorhees was just that. As a former Hill staffer who worked on crypto legislation

Starting point is 01:16:14 and current lobbyists, that's who the originator of the threat is, Ron Hammond. Here are some thoughts. He says, number one, there are a number of reasons why crypto policy realm is unique

Starting point is 01:16:24 on Capitol Hill, but one element that I can see time and time again is the pop culture and fast-paced nature of it. bankless team did a great job marketing this is the can't miss event and few did i agree everyone in crypto still all the said no i mean all the settlers everyone was still here in crypto watched that episode after chatting with a few staffers and dc policy folks over the weekend the general consensus

Starting point is 01:16:47 was that at a high level both did a good job that's both sbf and vorhees representing the two camps in crypto on the dcpa crypto regulation generally many found their views in the middle of the two that is interesting. Some things that resonated before he said. If you aren't at the table, you're on the menu. Actually, I think you said that, but that is largely true. And the industry has recognized that since the infrastructure bill, the number of resources has tripled in a year. Crypto lobbying is a stronger force. Ooh, love that. SBF made a good point on lobbying efforts in the past, like Bit License. Most times, a lawmaker will tell staff, I want a bill that does XYZ and the staff engages with industry and others to craft it. Policy folks work to improve the bill,

Starting point is 01:17:30 but rarely do they write it. Did you know that by the way? I do not know that. Yeah, the lawmaker just goes, I want a bill that does XYZ and the staff is actually the one that writes it and they engage with industry in order to do that. That's how bills actually get made in the trenches. Many in the industry tend to go straight to the lawmaker for tweaks to the bill, but most times the member doesn't grasp everything because he, she is extremely busy and it is a complex topic. Usually it is just one or two staffers in their 20s or 30s who hold the pen. Do you know that, David? Is that comforting to you? That's not comforting. But maybe it is in a way, right? Because we have a largely geriatric set of lawmakers and then we have those in their 20s and 30s who are holding the pen.

Starting point is 01:18:09 Millennials whispering in their ear, I guess so. I mean, these are zoomers. If you're in your early 20s, some industry folks refuse to engage. That's not comforting. Oh, man. There's some generational maximalism here. Some industry folks refuse to, to engage on any sort of crypto legislation is potentially detrimental because it is easier to fight someone, something than to work to improve it, that is usually a bad tactic because the issue area is so tough.

Starting point is 01:18:33 Many times there are unintended issues. Therefore, while engaging with staff being respectful is important, SBF harped this well. I think that is one thing. SBF emphasized David, was he kept saying, Eric, but it was about respect. And Eric's like, but you're compromising too early and he's like, but you have to show respect, and you have to show

Starting point is 01:18:49 that you're willing to compromise in order to get that seat and earn that seat at the table. Ron says, it may sound weird, but the Hill does have its own language. Similar to crypto-Twitter has its own language and culture. Did you know that? That's an interesting point. This thread was extremely informative. Education leads to good policy. Staffers have a lot of other issues in financial services alone to deal with, like fiscal policy, budget, bank regulation. To bring everyone up to speed in a week before a vote is tough, so you've got to educate early and often. I think we are doing that. Finally, there are a lot of conversations in

Starting point is 01:19:20 DC regarding extremes. Staffers hear all the time. If this bill is signed into law, X disastrous thing will happen. These arguments are always worst case scenario and after a while fall flat saying this will kill defy won't help. That's interesting because I do say that. And Eric said that because I feel like that's a legit take. But also if it get the point, if a take is overused, then it starts to fall because imagine a whole bunch of lobbyists from every industry saying anything that you propose will kill your industry. Right. They hear the all the time. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Exactly. When staffers hear that kill DFI talking point, they naturally go to, what is DFI? I know that may sound trivial, but for a committee

Starting point is 01:19:59 that largely deals with rural development, biotech and forestry, that's the Ag Committee by the way. This is where the DCCPA bill originates, the Ag Committee, Agriculture. DeFi isn't that common of a topic. Anyway, this last tweet maybe was the most fun of this thread is worth commending those involved with the podcast, bankless, et cetera, for facilitating a great dialogue. This is it. Weird to think that this podcast was a hot topic in DC this weekend, but in the words of an overhearing staffer, not sure what you all said, but sounds cool. Now I want to work on crypto.

Starting point is 01:20:37 Yes. Nice. Yes. Good memes. That's exactly what you want to want. Now I want to work on crypto. Welcome. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:45 Vitalik had some takes about regulatory, too. Do you want to read out what he said? Yeah, this was Vitalik's kind of response to this, like, conversation about regulation. And he goes, should I publicly blab my opinions about crypto regulation more? Feels unfair to let other people get attacked by crypto titter, but never actually poke out my head. And so everyone obviously wants Vitalik. Yes, we do want your takes, Fatal. Yeah, we do want that.

Starting point is 01:21:10 He's actually decently up to speed with, like, regulation and, like, legal theory. And so, like, Vitalik can speak legal theory for sure. He's up to speed on almost everything. That's true. This is true. This is true. Do you want to read out his takes here? Because he puts down the threat. Sure. I'll keep on going. So first, he says that he's already given out his take on mixers and privacy in a recent Coinbase podcast two months ago around the block. So there's that. He goes, another maybe controversial take of mine is I don't think we should be enthusiastically pursuing large institutional capital at full speed. I'm actually kind of happy. A lot of the ETFs are getting delayed. The ecosystem needs time to mature before we get even more attention. That's interesting. What do you think about that? He gave us that take on a recent podcast. I think it's a fair take.

Starting point is 01:21:51 There's tradeoffs. There's tradeoffs. So Gensler, keep doing what you're doing, man. Well, no. I don't want to say that. What's next? Basically, especially at this time, regulation that leaves the crypto space free to act internally,

Starting point is 01:22:03 but makes it harder for crypto projects to reach mainstream, is much less bad than regulation that intrudes on how crypto works internally. I definitely agree with that. The KYC on DFI-Frent-End's idea does not seem very pointful to me. It would annoy users, but do nothing against hackers. Hackers write custom code to interact with contracts already.

Starting point is 01:22:23 Exchanges are clearly a much more sensible place to do the KYC, that's already happening. That is a great take. That's a sensible take. That's a great take. Very practical and pragmatic. KYC on front end only hurts the least technical people of the world.

Starting point is 01:22:38 The most technical people. The people who need an interface. Yes, the people that need help. The people that don't need help, the people that have the capacity to do harm, don't need the interface. That's a great point. So you just block it.

Starting point is 01:22:49 the people that need help. It was not a point that explicitly Vorhe's made, but I think is a fantastic follow-up point. Regulations on defy front ends that could be more helpful may include limits on leverage, requiring transparency for what audits or other security checks were done on contract code,

Starting point is 01:23:05 and usage gated by knowledge-based tests instead of plutocratic net worth minimum rules. I love this. I love the idea of a totally permissionless, fully on-steroids, full-tilt defy app, have a front end gated where like this defy app will let you take a thousand x leverage but the front end only lets you take three x and so like if you want to take a thousand x you have to go like actually get technical and go do it yourself i love that i love that idea yeah i think that makes more sense and then of course

Starting point is 01:23:35 like you know the plutocratic net worth right accredited investors unless you're accredited investor in the u.s unless you have over a million dollars uh in net worth you can't get in a whole bunch of the deals it's just a plutocratic gate. Why not make the gate more like education based, right? That's what you're saying here too. Yeah. Last take. Also, I would love to see rules written in such a way that requirements can be satisfied by zero knowledge proofs as much as possible. ZK. Proofs offer lots of opportunity to satisfy regulatory policy goals and preserve privacy at the same time. We should take advantage of this. Oh, that was such a soulbound token maxi take. Oh, gosh. Come on. These are great takes. And, you know, Vitalikus always is reasoned and measured and I would like to hear him publicly.

Starting point is 01:24:17 blab on his opinions about crypto regulation more, so I'm glad you did. I'll take any public fratelic blabs. Uh, what you got here, David? This is a, here's a blab from David. Here's that, here's my blab unrelated to legal stuff. I say, the future of verified accounts, this is going back to the Twitter checkmark, uh, is not going to be a top down, centrally permissioned system. The times they are a change in. Bottom up, community oriented mechanisms are in. All right. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan, uh, uh, future of verified accounts. Let's go. All right. What are you excited about this week? David, what do you bullish on? I am bullish on, Ryan, the O.P stack. Because you know how Ethereum is

Starting point is 01:24:56 going modularity thing? Well, so is all of Ethereum layer twos. And the O.P stack, Ryan, is like, is what O.P stands for. Layer two's, my idea, my claim, and this is what I'm bullish on, is that layer twos are also going modular. And the OP stack is going to be the great, like, motivators to get this done. So layer twos are also going to be broken apart into their component parts. And this is what the OP stack is. It's like the scaffolding. For people who don't know, OP does stand for optimism. Yes. Yes, it does. O.P. Stack. The optimism OPstack is this like scaffolding for modular layer twos. And so the idea is like the secret sauce of all these layer twos are going to be broken into little modules like Arbitrum's fraud proofs,

Starting point is 01:25:41 optimism's fraud proofs, ZKSink's Prover. Where's the data hell? Is it off chain on our weave? Is it on chain like a roll-up? And so all of the ingredients that make up a layer two are going to be broken apart into little modules. L2 Legos? L2 Legoes. L2 chain Legos. And the OP stack is like to build a bear workshop, the build a layer two workshop for like stitching

Starting point is 01:26:04 all of these layer two modules into each other. And so it's like this abstraction layer that allows the modules to interoperate with each other on like a seamless way. And so what's happening here is we're breaking layer twos in. into their minimum viable component parts, like tiny little genes. Some genes, and these genes are going to compete.

Starting point is 01:26:21 And so this is a reference to, like, Richard Dockin's selfish gene. Like, once we can break apart layer twos into their modules, it's not the layer twos that fight anymore. It's not these monolithic, very, like, vertical layer twos that fight in these layer two wars.

Starting point is 01:26:36 It's the modules that fight, the little genes that fight. And like these layer two teams are just competing to put out the best genes into the marketplace. And that's better because we get progress that much faster. Faster evolution,

Starting point is 01:26:45 faster progress. We get the OP stack is like the ERC 20 token standard of layer two's. And so like I'm bullish on this Cambrian explosion of many different layer twos from all of these different permutations of modules that could be put together. And that's what really just like gets my juices flowing, Ryan, is when I see like, this is David's next money legos. By biomimicry, exactly. Biomimicry, composability and competition in the market, which is what Defi is.

Starting point is 01:27:14 it's like the biggest competition marketplace of all time. And it's the same thing as like the survival of the fittest. But now we have like modular layer twos and the little modules can fight over each other. You like, that's what I'm bullish. You like little things fighting, don't you? Like little tiny Legos and yeah. Yeah, this is Ethereum. All you little defyyfite over my E.

Starting point is 01:27:30 Fight. Fight. Fight for me. Fight for me. Fight for my money. Anyways, that's what I'm excited about. What are you excited about, Ryan? Music NFTs, David.

Starting point is 01:27:38 No fucking way. I'm excited about music NFTs this week. So David, the bankless team put together. a newsletter issued titled, a bankless newsletter issue title, Finding the X copy of Music NFTs. X copy, of course, is a famous NFT artist, sells one of ones. The question is, if it's so early stage in music NFTs, can you find the next X copy? Oh, by the way, I watched this video too.

Starting point is 01:28:00 My friend David Hoffman also made me bullish on top of this. But I watched that video after I read this post and made some purchases. Finding the X copy of music NFTs. And so I decided to do some exploration myself. I went to sound. I researched some of these artists. I found some things that I liked. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:28:16 Yeah. Largely, they were suggestions on this article. Okay. So I'm still curating my own taste. All right. So I'm aping the taste of others as a first step. But it was really fun. Like the process of going to sound and open sea and actually purchasing some NFTs,

Starting point is 01:28:32 like here's kind of an NFT wallet I have and a few, you know, collection that I'm starting to build. It was fun. It was easy. When you pair that with what your video was saying, what the Cooper was saying about like a stock market for music NFTs and for artists, another mechanism for compensation. Like I was researching these artists. I mean, these are not like the Taylor Swift's of the world. These are kind of like small time artists with like fantastic music. And what they can do is they can

Starting point is 01:29:01 use Web 2 and Spotify as the distribution mechanism, but use NFTs as part of their monetization mechanism to find their true fans. I'm just repeating back what, what you're saying to me, I feel like, and what Cooper is also saying. But I guess there's a difference between hearing it and actually doing it and building a collection. And I don't know. It just feels like one of those things that's obvious. And it's obvious because it was fun.

Starting point is 01:29:28 I'm convicted. There's a monetization mechanism. I think this is going to be big. And when that tweet was put out, I think Baker's put out the tweet. And a bunch of people are like, I don't think NFTs are going to take off at all. Like, why?

Starting point is 01:29:43 because the only reason JPEGs have taken off is because they're so easily shareable on social media on Twitter and they're viral and sound requires like a music NFT it's a three minute song or whatever else. It just echoed of what I've heard in the past of like all three years ago, two years ago, all the 10,000 reasons why JPEGs would never take off

Starting point is 01:30:04 in the NFT way. The exact same sorts of arguments, right? And I don't know. So I feel like it's super obvious. I've switched on to bullish me because I've built my own, starting to build my own collection. And it's just like a lot of fun, honestly. So the most fun I've had in crypto in the last month, I would say. That's why I'm bullish. Hey, fun is a huge alpha indicator. So if you're having fun, like, that's how you know.

Starting point is 01:30:27 And like I was definitely one of those people that was like music, NFTs are just bearish in comparison to JPEGs because JPEGs, you can see it all like that all like instantaneously, right? Pictures worth a thousand words. You see the picture and you like the picture. But like for music NFT, you have to listen to it for three minutes to determine if you like the NFT or not. So that's too slow. That's not viral. I used to be one of those people. But then like the response of like, bro, it's music. Like I, when you and I are not in Zoom, Ryan, doing pinkless stuff, there's music playing in my apartment. Oh yeah. All of the time. Yeah. And you're attached to these artists too. Yes. Yes. And so like, is there any creator that you're more attached to? Any artist that you're more

Starting point is 01:31:08 attached to than kind of the visual artists that I'm more attached to than like my top 50 music artists totally it's not even close and like that's all it that's all it takes you want a piece of that you want a piece of their community you want to bet on these artists too like your tastes right like david has great taste in music right and so he knows he does so now you can bet on it we'll see what the rest of the world thinks i think the rest of the world likes the sheep dogs so i have my nftr frame and i have to go turn on my NFT frame to go look at my my visual NFTs. And like I mean, I'll go do it. I also have to go turn on like my speakers to listen to music. But I turn on my speakers every single damn day. Yeah. And so like again, like don't overthink it. It's music. Well, there's a reason why we call

Starting point is 01:31:51 it the Billboard top charts. The Billboard top charts is just like the precursor of the future stock market for music. Guess what I was doing in 2020 when we had those episodes and people are giving the bull case for NFTs like before they were a thing before Jimmy Fallon or anyone. the world cared, right? I was overthinking JPEGs. Yeah. A lot. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:32:11 And I was like, but right click save. Right. You know? And then I'm not going to make the same mistake, right? Like, this is just, it's fun, right? It's pretty easy. Gobbling art is fun. Goose is fun.

Starting point is 01:32:25 This is fun. Music NFTs. Anyway, bullish this week, David. You got me. Should we be the first ones to make music gobblers? music goblers? Music goblers? I don't have any music.

Starting point is 01:32:38 This is not my talent. We'll do a podcast, NFT, that can gobble other podcasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We do that. I think we can. All right, it's meeting of the week time. You've heard what we're bullish about.

Starting point is 01:32:48 What is this from Jameson Lop, the good old Bitcoin. Yeah, this is the shrew meme, and it's the European Union. Wait, the Gru meme. What did I say, shrew? Yeah. This is Gru. Gru is the European Union pointing to his poster saying, Bitcoin is too volatile. Also saying next panel, Bitcoin cannot be a currency. The EU finishes the third

Starting point is 01:33:10 panel saying, our job is to maintain the value of the currency. And then the fourth panel is a chart of the euro to the dollar. And it is down bad, down real bad. And it's probably more volatile than Bitcoin these days, because Bitcoin is super steady. We're not finding risk-free money anywhere these days. It's volatility all around. All right. Risk and disclaimers, guys, end of the show. Thanks for hanging with us. Of course, got to let you know. So, crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is the frontier.

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