Bankless - ROLLUP: ETF Final Countdown | Polymarket's Huge Breakout | Chevron Defense | SEC Sues Metamask

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup First Week of July  ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/26?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ 📣 MANTLE QUEST ON AIRDROP HUNTER | WIN 1,000 $MNT https://bankless.cc/MantlesAnniversary  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠  🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚡️CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiGovernance  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle    ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum   🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT  https://bankless.cc/toku  ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 00:00:00 Happy 4th Of July 00:08:04 Markets https://pro.kraken.com/app/trade/btc-usd  https://pro.kraken.com/app/trade/eth-usd  00:10:13 A Likely Outcome 00:11:59 When ETF? https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1807041501077110986  https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1807548524910850284  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaP5d1pmncY&ab_channel=Bankless  00:14:39 South America Is Growing https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/ethchile-highlights-triple-digit-growth-in-south-american-crypto-ownership  Crecimiento https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Mb1j9quuNAqZzuBfY60F9Y82emWjUktVfw8k--eeiw/edit#heading=h.u6pn408b547d  00:16:48 Why Are We Down? https://x.com/eli5_defi/status/1807712012342092145?s=46&t=2ZINVXJQKx6xO_6Wiiu_2g  00:22:40 Supreme Court overturned Chevron Deference https://x.com/JBSDC/status/1806799823107997893  https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/22-451_o7jp.pdf  https://youtu.be/JlsM_k7PutQ?t=1243  https://x.com/JTLonsdale/status/1806697088509469119  https://x.com/balajis/status/1806773841395675218  00:28:02 Negative Takes https://x.com/kylascan/status/1806706937083441274  https://x.com/JBSDC/status/1806809534322590069  00:29:38 SEC Sues Consensus https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024-79  https://x.com/MikeSeligEsq/status/1806834455962652760  00:35:51 US Marshals Service picks Coinbase https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/blog/u-s-marshals-service-chooses-coinbase-to-safeguard-trade-its-large-cap  https://x.com/ErikVoorhees/status/1806105760461726023  00:37:00 BNB and BUSD Sales Aren’t Securities https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1806896212173328850  https://x.com/MetaLawMan/status/1807075663666434311  00:40:53 ZKsync Elastic Chain https://x.com/zksync/status/1808125972434067699  https://imgur.com/nYDhE9u  https://x.com/hudsonjameson/status/1808326321728283093  00:47:19 Zerion No-Fee Chain https://x.com/zerion/status/1806364593352016174  00:48:16 Election Season is Polymarket Season https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/06/28/crypto-unmentioned-at-first-2024-presidential-debate/  https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1719919681564  00:55:53 Vitalik Likes https://x.com/vitalikbuterin/status/1808092065483436481?s=43&t=2ZINVXJQKx6xO_6Wiiu_2g  00:56:37 Coinbase and Stripe https://x.com/coinbase/status/1806425092513210492  00:57:06 Pay On Warpcast https://x.com/dwr/status/1806774735109562789  00:57:58 IRS issued crypto tax regime for 2025 https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/treasury-irs-issue-final-regulations-requiring-broker-reporting-of-sales-and-exchanges-of-digital-assets-that-are-subject-to-tax-under-current-law-additional-guidance-to-provide-penalty-relief-address  01:00:23 Circle's New License https://x.com/jerallaire/status/1807791418489889279  https://x.com/paddi_hansen/status/1808085759947124778  01:01:44 Raises Of The Week https://x.com/astriaorg/status/1808534932060614983?s=46&t=dAxCjT2P_GIrJMvMgWIpfA  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5809YJpbhFg  01:02:59 JokeRace Update https://www.jokerace.io/contest/base/0x0bac0ec9b6aeafa6c2212f67a67950940eda63a7  01:04:54 Meme Of The Week https://x.com/testinprodcap/status/1806735419792302142  ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ 

Bankless Nation, it is the first week of July, and it is one day early. But it's time for the bankless weekly roll-up. David, we've got a lot to talk about. Prices are down a little bit, but we are still bullish because what's about to happen? The ETH-E-T-F, this might be the last weekly roll-up without an ETH-E-E-T-F. That is the new expectations for the date. We'll talk about the expectations for the date. We don't know for sure, but we think that this is going to be the last roll-up.

So what are people? expectations for how it will trade. When is it going to trade and how it's going to trade? These are what we're going to talk about. Also, the Supreme Court just struck down something called the Chevron deference rule set in a landmark Supreme Court case. But like, what does that mean? What is Chevron deference? And is this good for crypto? We'll talk about that. The SEC has officially filed lawsuits against consensus and Metamask after it said that it wouldn't. It also named Lido Staked Eath and Rockapult-R-Eth as investment contracts. They're forced to Is there anything new here? Or is Gary just shooting the same shot that he's already shot before?

ZKSink announces the new upgrade for the ZKSink network stack. And of course, crypto might actually have a mainstream breakout app this cycle. It's one you already know. You've already know the name. We'll talk about that as well. But, right, July 3rd is today. July 4th is tomorrow, the day of listeners. Probably not super relevant for anyone outside of the United States because they don't have the freedom that we have. Oh, my God. How are you doing? How's your life, fourth? I'm doing great. Wow, that was probably the most American thing I think I've heard you ever say.

So this is why we're doing this episode a day early, because we're actually going to, you know, shoot some fireworks on the Fourth of July, spend some time with family. I'm going to hold Roman candles in my hands as they go off. You just disclosed to me. You were a big fireworks guy, which I didn't know that about you. I was a big fireworks kid, yeah. You're a fireworks kid and also like a little bit of pyro playing with fire.

It went a little bit too far. into my adult life. Are you still that kid? I will be perusing the fireworks as we go up to a family cabin, yeah. Wow. All right. Well, David's going to have a fantastic Fourth of July. And we should say, happy Fourth of July to our American listeners.

And why we celebrate? This is about the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which was America's breakup letter to a king over there in England. And there's a few lines from that that really, like, I think are embodied. in the layer zero of the U.S. that I think are worth calling out. One is this line about men having unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Also another line I love from the declaration. Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. I love these ideas because I think they are

very adjacent to crypto and why we're here. The right to fork, the consent of the governed, an opt-in network. These are all powerful ideas and the idea that we have. civil liberties on our blockchains, the ability to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and maybe gains in crypto. I think these are fundamental. And it was a good time to celebrate and reflect for our American listeners on the 4th of July. Yeah, I think we had the same idea about this 4th of July episode because I have also prepared some statements. When I do a little bit of writing, the Bankless Nation probably knows that I'm a little bit more long-winded than Ryan, so here we go.

Oh, wow. Okay. So for everyone is listening, there's a link in our agenda, and it just says David prepared statements. And when I go to click that link, it says you're blocked. He's not shared this document with you. So I have no idea what's about to happen. Because if I did let Ryan see them, he would be like, this is too long. Edit this. You have to trim this down. Strap in, bankless listeners. We'll see how this goes. But say it, David. I know it's on your heart. So let's hear. Okay. So here we go. As bankless listeners know from our 4th of July episode two years ago, fourth of July, after. actually began in the 1400s when technology allowed man to wake up and see the world through a new lens. This is the printing press and double entry bookkeeping. We've pounded this drum so many times. But these two things, these two technologies created the Renaissance and allowed man and woman to become self-dependent and self-sufficient. These technologies allowed us to see the permissioned world around us and gave us the tools that we needed to break free from it. By the time the 1700s came around, these ideas.

had become so large that they became larger than the monarchy state containers that they were born in. And so a bunch of people decided to go west to live in a land that was as free and as big as the ideas that drove them there. They did not ask for permission. They saw a blank slate on which they could build a better future, and they went for it. On July 4th, 1776, these ideas of freedom and individualism were codified into the decoration of independence, that all men were created equal, They were endowed with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is, however, never ending.

As technology advances, tools become available to vote both advocates and adversaries of freedom. The pendulum between free and open societies and authoritarian nation states is never at rest. It is always in flux. After the 2008 crisis, we began building the walls around our closed-source permissioned, financial system. After Snowden Whistleblue in 2013, we realized that we were walking into an internet-enabled surveillance state. Now, in 2024, we have the foundation, the ideas, and the motivation on how to escape these freedom suffocating pressures. But in 2024, we are not yet ready to sign our declaration of independence from Tradfai and Web 2. We have left Europe for the brave

new world of the digital age, but we have not yet had a digital July 4th. There is still work to be done, which is why we are here today talking about the news on today's weekly roll-up. Dang. That's my prepared statement. Wow, David. I feel like David Hoffman, 2024, that felt like a political speech to me. And I enjoyed it immensely. That was great.

What a great way to begin the roll-up today. That's about as patriotic as I will ever get. Except when there's fireworks involved. I'd much rather prefer to be a patriot of the bankless nation. And if you want to join the bankless nation by being a bankless citizen, which is somebody who pays for all the perks that we provide our citizens. So you get the premium podcast feed with extra researchy episodes and no ads. You get to access to the airdrop hunter and the claimables. You get 30% off of permissionless tickets. The idea is that this being a bankless citizen

pays for itself. One of the perks that we have this specific week to commemorate Mantle's one year anniversary. Congratulations to Mantle. We've made an NFT that if you claim enters you into the chance to win $750 worth of tokens. So 10 random citizens who go through the AirDrop Hunter quest for Mantle for their one-year anniversary quest. They mint an NFT, they make a tweet tagging Bankless and Mantle, and then you will enter into a raffle where 10 citizens will earn 1,000 Mantle tokens. That's currently about $750.50.

So there is a link in the show notes, bankless. com slash Mantles Anniversary. Just go click the link in the show notes. You can go through this process where you complete the quest, mint an NFT, and make a tweet, and then maybe win a thousand mantle tokens. And this is definitely a quest. So there's some precursor quest you have to do in order to mint that NFT on Mantle and be eligible for those 1,000 tokens, including adding mantle to your wallet, purchasing some MNT, bridging funds to mantle. So this is not for everyone. This is where we end every bank list episode.

Small pool. You got to earn it. You got to earn it, okay? But the good news is there'll probably be a small pool which improves your chances to win. David, let's talk about winning. Are we winning in the markets this week? I'm feeling like things are going down. We're going to punch on that winning thing.

Tell me about the price of Bitcoin on these cracking charts here. Yeah, down 2.7% on the week this week, started the week, $61,300 currently just above $60,000 this week. similar things for ETH price start of the week 3,360, down 1.7% currently just above 3,300. David, do you think these down percentages are justified? I mean, we'll talk about it later, but we've got some pretty positive Supreme Court rulings with Chevron deference. We've got the Ethereum ETF next week. That's what we're calling, which is like this is the last roll-up, hopefully, without the Ethereum ETF. So we're on the brink of that.

We don't rug our listeners, yeah. Why are we going down? I think we are at capacity with how much new money has gone into crypto. Like the last big upswing in price was, first to summarize the entire state of this like crypto cycle, if you can even call this a cycle, it was people re-waiting Solana in December, 2023 and had this Solana season summer, winter. And Solano, like, reprice. And that was bullish.

bull market for Solana. And then there was a global industry bull market with the Bitcoin ETF because new money came into the industry with the Bitcoin ETF. Like people bought Bitcoin, it recycled down the market cap stack. Like $15 billion came into the industry. No new money has come in in the same ways that it happened in 2021 with NFTments or like any of these other stuff. And so with the ETH ATF, we will get net new money coming in just like we did with Bitcoin. It'll be smaller than Bitcoins. It'll be like maybe a more Ethereum-specific price rise. But like that's our source of new capital right now.

And we can't, the prices can't go up anymore because we seem to be exhausted like people, crypto natives, selling all their stables for crypto assets. But the great thing about the Ethereum ETF is that that is the promise of new inflows and net new buyers, right, that aren't crypto natives. And that's what's so exciting about them. So I want to ask you, you know our episode that we did with, Alex and Matt earlier this week, where we went through kind of like I went through a scenario. And I want you to tell me what you think the chances of this happening is this pure hopium.

But basically, quiet summer, Ethereum ETF launches. It's sort of a sell the news event at first. Price goes down. There's flood about, you know, like gray scale exiting, not as much institutional demand for ETH, all of this. We go down maybe into the 2000s for the price of ETH. Like under 3K could be possible. be on the table or maybe it's just stagnant. But then we start seeing these inflows in the weeks after, in the months after. People come home from their summer vacations. They have already sold

in May, but now they're coming back. It's September. We get a glorious fall into the early stages of winter. And before the end of 2024, we are above all-time highs, ETH, with 10K ETH price insight because the inflows have surprised people on the upside. They weren't counting for this. What do you think about that scenario? Could it happen? Or is this pure opium? Are you saying we just copy and paste what happened in Bitcoin and apply it to ETH? Yes. Literally this just happened within the last year to a different asset. And it sounds, as I'm saying it, because the markets are in the doldrums, it sounds unbelievable. But yes, it's just a copy and paste of Bitcoin. Yeah. No, that checks out. I feel I've feel like that is the default scenario and anyone else would have to prove otherwise.

All right. Well, that's where we're going with. This is the, uh, the shakeout of buying opportunity before, uh, you like new all-time highs. So let's get into actually like, when, when is this going to happen? When, ETF? July 8th has emerged as the date to walk. This is a tweet from Nate Geraci. I need to DM him and ask him, make sure I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. Uh, he says that all of the S-1s have been handed back with light comments. The issuers have been ask to address the comments and refile them by July 8th. So maybe end of day July 8th, July 9th, sometime after 4th of July. As soon as it's filed and approved, we get it? Yeah. Well, so all the approvals will happen under a certain condition. The way that the works is

like the SEC wants all these issuers to file their S-1s in a particular way. And the issuers are free to file them differently, but then the SEC will make comments and be like, hey, address these comments and because they want something different. They want a certain outcome. But then so it's a little bit of just like tug of war between the issuers and the SEC. This is July 8th is the day to watch and that's the date that issues have been asked to resubmit. But that's not necessarily the date of trading, right?

Yes. And could there be further round that we know of? Okay. So this is not like, this could happen later in July then still. The first day it could happen is July 8th. So this might not be the last roll-up. I think people are assuming that, like, once they get these final comments addressed, then the SEC's like, great, green light.

It's kind of the next day sort of thing. Yeah, it could be the next day. But we'll see. It could be, I don't know, it could be whatever the hell the SEC wants, to be honest. But yeah, people are expecting Gary Gensler said it's having a smooth process. So when he says that, that's like the only positive thing I've ever heard come out of his mouth. Again, another Nate Gerrassie tweet about the bullishness of the etheliority. ETF. He goes early and easy prediction, he says. Spot ETH ETFs will be the second most successful

debut in ETF history, only behind Spot Bitcoin ETFs, which are the number one, obviously. So two most successful ETF launches in 30-year ETF history will occur this year, Bitcoin and Ether. Are you paying attention yet? Just saying, ETH is going to follow on show. It's going to be great. He's really, he's already calling it as the second most successful ETF in history. And so like his analysis was like, we'll just copy and paste Bitcoin and get that. Your analysis on the price action was we'll just copy and paste Bitcoin. Yeah. The Bitwise and Galaxy episode that we did with Matt Hogan and Alex Thorne was like just market cap weight average, just copy and paste Bitcoin.

Just control for the market caps. Everyone is just like just don't overthink this. Yeah. I sort of fall down on that too. David, there's some good news coming out of South America with respect to crypto adoption. Look this chart here. This is crypto ownership by continent. We've got Asia, we've got North America, Africa, Europe, South America, Oceania.

And we have total crypto ownership by continent. Interestingly, North America ranks number two with 72 million. Asia's number one with 326 million. I'd love to find more details on the source of these charts, but like let's assume that these numbers are correct. Directionally correct, yeah. What's interesting here, David, is from 2023 to 2024, South America. got a 116% increase change. More than doubling.

Just doubled. So in 2023, 25.5 million people own crypto. 2024, 55.2 million people owned crypto. And that was the largest percentage change of any continent. Very bullish on South America crypto adoption.

I know you've spent some time recently in South America and Argentina and in some other places. Yeah, like, what are these say to you? Yeah, the big drivers are here are just high levels in inflation across Argentina and Venezuela alongside Brazil has recently warmed up to the crypto ecosystem and inside of his banking apparatus as well. So there's just like meaningful like crypto adoption in South America, which is also highly motivated, like just global inflation, like pick a country. There's like

inflation there. Argentina has it like kind of the worst in Venezuela. And so you've seen a lot of outsized adoption there. I might be going back to Argentina in, uh, August for this thing called Crazy Miento, which is just like a glow, like a block of crypto founders in Buenos Aires and in Argentina, of which there are many. And they're trying to just make like, make Buenos Aires into like a crypto, a crypto like sanctuary, crypto haven. Millet is like really approximate to this movement. So like the idea is like get Malay's administration on board and just like really enshrine crypto entrepreneurship inside of Buenos Aires. You can actually apply to go to Crecy Miento. I'll put a link in the show notes as well if you're interested in that.

Bullish crypto adoption, though. David, you know another explainer of why we're down? I saw this thread and it was basically token unlocks. Just the token unlocked that were scheduled for July. And the three biggest unlocks are a project called Altlayer, a project called XAI Games and Aptos as well. And just like on, if you could go down the list, Arbitrum, World Coin, Immutable, all tons of Unlux.

We get to the bottom here, we're talking about just in the month of July, we're talking about almost $700 million worth of token unlocked. And let's recall what a token unlock is, right? So some set of VCs, insiders, like project team founders. Early investors and teams of projects. Yeah, basically they have tokens that are vested. They have some vesting period where they can't sell the token or do anything. with the token. And meanwhile, the tokens are tradable on public markets. The vesting period,

usually it's about a four-year vesting cycle or so for many of these projects. Some are actually shorter. Anyway, when that time period of vesting expires every incremental month or a year that goes by, it releases some potential selling pressure onto the market. I think this can explain part of the market doldrums that were in, particularly downmarket of Bitcoin and Ether. It's just There's a lot of VC-funded investor tokens that are unlocking, and there aren't net new buyers of these assets. Yeah, well, so so many VCs raised money last cycle, 2021, and also deployed capital 2021, 2022. And those tokens are like went into market, like networks launched, and now the vesting schedule is starting to tick forward. So that $700 million of token unlocks is like just like kind of a one cycle.

later of 2021. And this is also why we have this like U-shaped bull market, where we have Bitcoin Ether Solana up very bigly, and then meme coins being like up very bigly, and then like a void of price appreciation in the middle of these two things, because there are a lot of investor unlocks in that middle section of the market. I agree with that assessment. Yet also, it still doesn't explain some of the D5 blue chips that are really showing some strong fundamentals that have a lot of the online like they're they're fairly um liquid in terms of

in terms of float there are fully vested profitable defy projects out there coming up next chevron deference if you have never heard these words before you're probably like most listeners what's the deal with that and why should you know about it and what does it mean for it to have been overturned also in further courts SEC sues consensus and also thinks it's Ethan, Lido, and Rocket Pool are securities. So just another day fighting the SECs. We're going to get to all of this and more. But first, I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors

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secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. Visit arbitram.com. and get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities. Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a court case that's been in place for 40 years called Chevron deference. The question is, is this good for crypto? What does this mean in general? Okay, Chevron deference is this thing that happened way back when that put in this precedent about who makes the rules when the laws are ambiguous. And so just since it's July 4th, we'll do some civics lessons.

Congress, the legislature, writes the rules. And right now, the executive branch, which is the president's branch, he appoints people like Gary Gensler, to agencies like the SEC or like the EPA, the FDA, FDIC, like pick your three, four letter agency. And these agencies go out and enforce the rules. Chevron's deference says that if the rules or if the rules, if the law, legislature, the laws that are written are ambiguous, then agencies also, in addition to enforcing the rules, get to fill in the gaps of that ambiguity. They also get to say what the legislature really meant, which gives... They get to have their own rulemaking, if you've heard us talk about interpretive rulemaking. Yeah, they get to add a little bit. They have a little say about what the rules are.

and this has kind of increased the scope of what, you know, these agencies can do. It's a move, it's a shift of power towards the agencies. This thing, the Chevron deference, it's Chevron is the company, the gas company. Deference means they're deferring it. It's just this precedent that established this whole idea. That got overturned by the current Supreme Court. This recently in America, the Supreme Court has moved conservative as a result of Donald Trump appointments of two, I think, Supreme Court leaders, maybe.

more. And so they have struck down Chevron deference, which means that agencies no longer have interpretive ability of laws. And so this puts, puts, uh, takes power back to the Supreme court, the courts in general, which will be deciding things, but then also to Congress, who needs to do a better job to make more informed rules. So it's taking away power from agencies and giving it to, um, the courts, which the Democrats really don't like for some reason. and also the legislature, which is Congress, which is kind of nice because we need Congress to, like, write better laws, is the theory. It's really interesting because as part of the arguments against Chevron deference, cryptocurrency made an appearance. We had the head of policy from Paradigm on the podcast.

The name is Justin Slaughter, and he talked about this. And this was an actual quote from the court case where they refer to cryptocurrency. Let's listen. And this is what happens, right? Justice Sonia Sotomayor is talking with the plaintiff's lawyer, Paul Clement, great lawyer, I think he was former Solicitor General, which is the top appellate lawyer in the government, and asking him, you know, you're talking about Gridlock from Chevron, what do you mean? And he said, you know, no, what I'm saying, I'm quoting now, is Chevron is a big factor in contributing to Gridlock.

Let me give you a concrete example. I would think that the uniquely 21st century phenomenon of cryptocurrency would have been addressed by Congress, and I certainly would have thought that that would have been true in the wake of the FTX debate. But it hasn't happened. Why hasn't it happened? Because there's an agency head out there that thinks that he already has the authority to address this uniquely 21st century problem with a couple of statutes passed in the 1930s. And he's going to wave his wand. He's going to say the words investment contract or ambiguous. And that's going to suck all of this into my regulatory ambit, even though the same person when he was a professor said this is probably a job for the CFTC. Oh my God. That was our reaction to this on the podcast with Justin. So they were using Gary Gensler as exhibit A of this, of how the administrative state, these agencies can go too far in their rulemaking. And, you know, they're unelected regulators.

So why should they get to make the laws with respect to a new emerging field like cryptocurrency? I think in the crypto world, it's very easy for us to look at this and be like, well, this is good. because like our main relationship with agencies is the SEC. But that's not, that's not universally everyone's take. There are some positive takes. There are some negative takes. One positive take comes from Joe Lonsdale,

who says, the ruling in Loper Bright versus Raimondo, this is Chevron Devereign this morning, which overturned the Chevron deference, which allowed unaccountable bureaucrats to determine what laws means for their agencies. A huge victory to check the administrative state and restore the balance of power

the USA founders intended. Bology, he put out a very long tweet thread, which if you want to learn more, we can, there's this link to the show notes, it's very useful. He says, technology is about to accelerate because Chevron deference is over. And regulators can't just make up laws anymore. So, countless new startups just became feasible. And so he goes through a bunch of industries that had been suffocated by Chevron deference. Genomics, nuclear power, cryptocurrency, and just talks about how because of this, startups are going to be able to just, like, really hit rubber or pavement because they're unburdened by over-regulation.

There's some negative takes. Kyla Scalon says that it means the judicial branch, which we also don't elect, by the way, courts, judges, and also sort of life sentences have an immense amount of power. There's a lot of people out there who are worried that we are taking away authority from experts who, you know, just no matter what you say, about agencies, they are filled with experts. And we are giving them to uninformed courts who are also unelected. And so there might be some like other agencies which like don't fit the same pattern as the SEC, which maybe this is negative for. This isn't like universally good. It's not universally bad.

There's like pockets of goodness, which I will say which is the SEC and perhaps pockets of badness. But as it relates to crypto, very good. Like, like inarguably good, I would say. Yeah, after that episode with Justin, David, I came to the perspective that this is probably net good in general. Definitely net good for crypto, but I feel like it's kind of net good because over the past 40 years, the administrative state has kind of built up. And they're actually not the experts that we hope they would be. They move from kind of technocrats who are unbiased, you know, like the Hester Perth type of regulator, to more like political appointees who are pushing forward an agenda. And I think that that's bad. Yeah, and this will start to curtail.

But it does very much depend on Congress's ability to actually, like, do their job and govern. Because we do have a governance gap in general for a lot of these details that are being worked out. So good for crypto. There's some, you know, like tradeoffs in other areas. But, David, that's not it with respect to the SEC because even though this has curtailed their rulemaking ability in the future, they can still take enforcement actions, David. and they've taken a number of enforcement actions against crypto companies in the U.S. And it came out last week that they have now formally sued consensus.

Recall previously it was a Wells notice, which is like the promise to sue you later from the SEC. Now they have actually sued consensus. And further, according to their suit, they've stated that ether, staked ether in Lido, that is S-Eath, and staked ether in Rocket Pool. They've also alleged that those are securities. So that was the big news that dropped last week. Yeah, this is the SEC just continuing to go after staking. Staking as a concept, staking as like a service industry.

We got the news that the SEC was like dropping the lawsuit against Ethereum 2.0. Maybe that was just specifically the ideas of like the Ethereum Foundation and ether the asset, not being a security, but instead of being a commodity. but they're just like taking one small step backwards. They're taking one unit of retreat, if you will. And they're going after consensus as an unregistered broker and because of MetaMass swaps. And then also the staking as a service offerings that they are also going after Coinbase with. They went after Cracken with. Now they're classifying Lido and Rocket Pool as unregistered securities.

I made the mistake last week of saying, look, they're also suing Lido and Rocket Pool. They're not doing that. They just have classified dumb as unregistered securities. And so they just don't like staking. Like, SEC just does not like staking. They see staking as like a huge Achilles heel of the Ethereum ecosystem. And they're going after any like protocol, startup, project company that's offering staking services. Yeah, I guess as a side note, this probably doesn't bode well for an Ethereum ETF with staking, like as a function of it or as a part of it.

It's probably true. Yeah. But we knew that. Like staking was going to be a battle for a while. Mike Selig is a lawyer that we found on the show before. He says, In the Coinbase and Consensus Lawsuits, SEC spins staking services as, quote,

programs where stakers allocate funds to a pool managed by an operator with discretionary authority who deploys the funds to earn returns for stakers. This is a warped characterization of technical services. So this is the debate. Is this an investment? contract is staking an investment contract where people like coinbase like lido rocket pool are offering investment services and returns with discretionary authority or are they offering technical

services i mean isn't it pretty clearly like technical services here they're running nodes for you right you can like if i run my own eith node and i stake my eith it doesn't suddenly become a security, does it? Right. And so, like, what I'm doing with rocket pool is I'm getting a network of rocket pool nodes to sort of run the validators for me. Same, same with Lido. So why would that trigger this is automatically a security? Particularly, this is non-custodial as well. Like all of these services. It's a much different setup than something like, let's say, Celsius or BlockFi, where I'm depositing my Bitcoin or ETH, and they're doing all sorts of things with it. They're taking risks I don't know about imagine if they issued a liquid token as a receipt for like for for for

those assets that to me is like much closer to what a security would be than just like staking well they did call block five as a they did label those vaults as securities well but like again if it's centralized right and there's some risk and it's a black box you can't see it that's where that's definitely discretionary authority because black because block five would also choose as to like where to give, to get yield from. That's where regulators should step in. If it's centralized, it can be regulated, it should be. If it's open source on chain, if it's technical, right, it shouldn't be.

And they're having a hard time, like, figuring out the distinction here. I think the process of logic is actually pretty, I hope this is the process of logic that gets argued in course. The SEC dropped the case around Ethereum 2.0, which is Ethereum with proof of stake. So proof of stake is free and clear from any sort of like SEC. like indictment and it's SEC pursuit just vanilla proof of steak and vanilla like solo staking at home so

solo staking at home is not a security that's the thing that they've dropped what they are saying is like if somebody does it for you it is a security that's like because they're suing everyone who is offering a staking platform that's what they're implying and so the argument in court has to

they have to make the argument that because a third party is doing it it's therefore an investment contract even though they've created the foundation of solo staking is not an investment contract. That's not a security. And so they need to make some sort of argument that transmutes some sort of third-party platform

into an investment contract. And this very important word of discretionary authority over people's funds becomes really, really relevant. Is Lido doing anything other than getting yield from the Ethereum Protocol? Is it adding yield by any sort of discretionary choice? Is Rocket Pool doing that?

Or is it just providing technical services? And since we have this foundation that solo staking is on a security, and since Lido isn't doing any sort of like strategy to increase the yields, maybe this gets into Mev Boost, like MEV strategies, maybe like the relays are a conversation here. It's going to get like pretty unwieldy, but like the technical services argument I think is pretty strong. But here's the thing is thanks to Chevron deference being overturned.

against them in that CET doesn't get to make up its own rules. So like the default is if it's net new. They have to fight it in court, right? Yeah, they have to fight it in court or ultimately it goes to Congress. So maybe it takes active legislation to fully clarify this and we're free and clear in the meanwhile. Something else that's relevant here. The U.S. Marshals chose Coinbase to safeguard its cryptocurrency. I'm sure the U.S. Marshals picked up some cryptocurrency from some illegal activity. I'm sure they confiscated some funds. And they just used, they decided to use Coinbase as their custodial service. Eric Voorhees points out the irony of this, where on one hand, the U.S. government is declaring Coinbase an illegal brokerage through one of its branches of government, and then on the other, it proceeds to use Coinbase as a brokerage. So there's a little bit of hypocrisy going on in the U.S. government. Of course, it's not like all one entity. These agencies have different viewpoints on things, but the fact that one branch of the U.S. government is calling Coinbase and illegal brokerage, and another branch is just using them as a cryptocurrency brokerage is somewhat ironic, I think.

I mean, so like if the U.S. Marshall says like, okay, well, the SEC, they're suing Coinbase so we can't use them. They're suing Cracken, so we can't use them. Then where the hell do they go sell their crypto? I don't know. What? I don't know. I'm not sure that they've thought it through, David.

One last win in the courts this week. This probably snuck under most people's radar is that secondary. sales of BNB and BUSD are not securities. Once upon a time, the SEC actually went after Binance USD, that's BUSD, and called it a security. Yeah, they called a stable coin a security. Remember when they did that? And so this is pretty similar to the precedent where XRP secondary sales are not securities, even though XRP might have been sold as a security in the first place. That doesn't mean all secondary sales are securities. We have a second court case that deemed the same precedent, BNB and BUSE, secondary sales are not securities.

And so this is District Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed this SEC claim. So we are just layering on a second precedent confirming the first. And so this got picked up by legal Twitter and just like layering on just another win of clarity by the courts for the crypto industry. It's all good news. And we have some more good news coming up in the second part of the weekly roll-up. ZK. Sink. is introducing their new network upgrade. We'll talk about that.

Also, David, it feels like we've got maybe a killer app on the horizon that's being used right now that's maybe breaking out into mainstream. You'll never guess. We'll talk about that. It has to do with politics. And also, is Circle about to drop a EU stable coin? We'll cover that too. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible,

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chain. They say an of ever-expanding network of ZK.Roll secured by math and native interoperability under a uniform, intuitive U.X. Okay, what does this mean? What is elastic chain? So, elastic chain is what they are calling ZKSync3.0. ZKSink3.0. ZKSink light is 1.1.0, ZKSink era 2.0. Elastic chain. ZKSink, the elastic chain now is ZKSync3.0. Just adding dimensions onto to ZKSync. It actually is a pretty, like, logical order of operations. ZKSink light was basically just payments. So it was a ZK roll up, but without expressivity.

So just like it was like payments layer too. ZKSink era is a ZKEVM. So another ZK rollup, but this time with an EVM with a virtual machine. And now the elastic chain 3.0 is a new dimension to scale that out into like many, many, many new chains. This is basically ZKSink's version of the Optimism super chain. This is their version of the Polygon Ag layer. This is their version of the Polygon Ag layer. This is native interoperability and scalability version. They call elastic because elasticity refers to the ability to increase the supply of block space proportionally in response to rising demand. So elastic architecture allows the blockchain to expand capacity limitlessly by adding new

instances to match capacity for usage. From a technical point of view, the elastic chain is a federation of autonomous ZK chains that are interconnected natively at the protocol level, at the root level. From the user perspective, it's just a unified multi-chain ecosystem that feels and behaves like a single chain, which is what Optimism is super chain is going after. You have one address across all ZK Sync super chains, which might sound like how you have one address on optimism and Arbitrum and all the other EVM chains, but it's even better than that. You have your address on optimism.

You have your address on Arbitrum, and those are. the same addresses, like same 0x, 1, 2, 3, 4, but on different, on each of one of these EVM chains, the elastic chain is different. There's just one address, even though there's many, many, many chains. And so your single address, you make a transaction from one single address, and that will transact across all the smart contracts uniformly, seamlessly, across all the ZKSync elastic chains. And so the way that this works is there is one single bridge, one single bridge,

one single bridge. All the ZKSync chains collapse down to one single bridge and then your assets and your address spawn from that bridge and it can interact with all of the ZKSync elastic chains. It is basically

single universal synchronous universal composability for the ZKSink network. And so this has been the big update out of ZKSink. Polygon has found this disagreeable. Here's Hudson Jameson, taking a, who works at Polygon now,

showing the network topology of the ZK Sync announcement to the network topology of the Polygon Ag layer announcement and it's like basically the same picture but that's all true though they're all kind of building

the same thing they're all building everyone's building the same thing yeah it's like to me this is like well yeah because we're all discovering like the logical conclusion of like ZK rollups

yeah and so the fact that like both teams independently approached the same conclusion makes a ton of sense like Polygon will say that they're copying us but like everyone says that these days

arbitrage said that about optimism and vice versa I think it's a great development. I like the phraseology of Elastic. It reminds me of like cloud compute, you know, Amazon ECT, like Elastic Compute Services where you just like spin up new chains and scale it horizontally on demand as you need the capacity. I will say though, what this solves is like fragmentation and interoperability when you're inside of a chain network, right? But it's not like the holy grail. It's not global. Yeah. Right. Because now we have ZK Sync. We have Arbitur. We have optimism. We like we have Polygon. We have all. of the different ecosystems, and those are still fragmented. So we still have some work to do. It's not going to, like, Elastic Chain is not going to solve that problem, but it will unify the chains on like the ZK Sync.

I guess they don't call it Super Chain, Elastic Chain. I think it will solve the problem. It'll solve the problem. And here's why. So right now, how many chains are there on Ethereum? How many Layer 2s? How many Layer 2s in total? We probably have like a hundred or so.

You bridge around, that you bridge around. So you go to a cross and you hit the drop-down menu. Like, how many do you see? Like, 12, 15? Something like that. There's a dozen or so that are kind of relevant. And so if you want to go do something on Zora, you got to bridge from optimism to Zora, even though that Zora is in the super chain, right?

Like, same thing for the arbitralibs, same thing for the polygon, maybe not actually for the ZK rules. Too many bridges. But, like, if we collapse everything down to just five, you have Zee. K-Sync, Polygon, Arbitrum, optimism, excuse me, four. Just four. You have four economic zones. And if there are thousands of... A stark net, David.

If there are... A stark net, excuse me. Well, I don't know if Starknet's doing that. Oh, yes, they definitely are. They definitely are. Okay, five. Back to five. If you just have five zones,

and there are thousands of chains inside of these zones, and they are just solidified, they're adopted. And those five zones, with five different, like, trust assumptions, that's what creates the fracturing, that can be solved by the bridging layer and the UX layer. Like you can build assurances into like the concreteness and this hardness of each of these five foundations to the point where middleware and the UX layer

can just fix the fragmentation at the UX level. And so let's get 12 down to five. Let's grow an infinite number of chains inside of those five. And then let the apps kind of like abstract away the U.S. because they have the strong property rights settlement assurances, because these five things are, like, very well trafficked, and they can get a lot of economies of scale from this. That's how I think this gets solved. I get that. And I'm also optimistic that with what you said, we can also solve interoperability across those five, too. I mean, like, you know, Justin Drake has talked about shared sequencing and how an ag layer is not just a polygon solution. That sort of solution can be expanded across all of the ZK-proof type chains. Anyway, more to do there. Yeah, and layer once. Zirion launched one of these elastic chains, it looks like, and that was news this week. What are they doing?

They're doing a pretty cool experiment using zero fee chain, so a chain that costs zero fees to use. So it's completely gasless. There's no gas on Zerion's brand new layer two chain from ZK Sync. So they cover all the transaction costs using this thing called a paymaster. They are working on preventing spam using this thing called on-chain DNA. So it's also a strategy to identify bots versus humans and make sure that the bots actually do pay gas and the humans don't. So they're just running, they're running a gasless experience. And so Zerion used to be a and still is a portfolio manager.

Now it's also a wallet. Now it's also a chain. So a pretty fully integrated stack. Now they're experimenting with like, hey, what if we just like pay for the cost? There's no gas. We completely abstract that away, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's great. Very bullish on that experiment taking place. David, we ended last week's weekly roll up with a little bet because we are on the brink of the presidential debate, Trump versus Biden, that was going to happen. And there was a bet as to whether crypto would be mentioned or not. I lost that bet. Crypto was not mentioned. But in my defense, very little was mentioned during that debate in terms of substance. Hey, golf was mentioned.

It was an absolutely terrible train wreck of a debate. There's been much commentary on that. I'm sure bankless listeners have not missed. that commentary. But crypto was unmentioned at all during that debate. And who knows what's going to happen? Who knows whether we'll have the same presidential candidates in a couple of weeks versus this debate? That doesn't mean... Oh, wait. Somebody does know. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Well, that gets to what we introed beginning of this episode, which is we may have stumbled across a killer app for crypto this cycle. We've been looking for it. Is there more to this thing? It's under our noses this entire time.

Prediction markets. Polymarket is driving like historic unprecedented volumes and what it's doing. What is Polymarket and what are we looking at on the screen? Polymarket is a prediction market platform. So you can bet on the future outcomes of events. Prediction markets have been a thing before crypto. They're predicted is a prediction market that's like web 2 based and like just like ACH transfer based. It's kind of janky. I've used it before. I tried to bet on Andrew Yang last cycle. Didn't work. Lost. But I could probably bet on Andrew Yang again this cycle. At least some people are betting on Michelle Obama winning a 4% chance of becoming the Democratic or the presidential election winner. There is on the presidential election winner for 2024 on Polly Market.

There is $216 million. Wow. of TVL in this one market, this one single market. So this market is extremely liquid. And so the cool thing about prediction markets is that it allows the market to predict future outcomes. And it's an Oracle. It's a source of truth. And so not only is this just like kind of cool to have, but mainstream media organizations, like Bloomberg,

frequently cite polymarket, the crypto app polymarket as a source of truth because it is, it has a, 85% of all prediction market volumes as it relates to the presidential election or politics in general. So if you are looking to cite anything, what you do is you go cite the most liquid venue because that's where all the players are making their bets. And that is the best source of truth of what is the most likely fit. Oh, yeah. And it responds in real time. So during the debate, like the percentages. Like so right now we're looking at presidential election winner 2024. Donald Trump has a 61% chance of winning at this point in time. But guess what? Joe Biden is not number two.

You know who's hopped into number two? Kamala Harris is number two. At 17%, which is nuts. Right, because she's not even running at this point in time. So this is kind of the cool thing about prediction markets is that if you are an insider with insider information that you think that the market is not priced in because it's secret, you get to go to a prediction market and bet your life savings and you will change the market. You will change the outcome of this particular bet.

And so maybe I think it's insane just because I'm watching Kalama Harris meme videos about like unburdening ourselves from what have been. I don't know if you've seen these, Ryan. But like maybe someone knows something and they think that like the Democratic Party is going to conspire to swap out Joe with Kamala Harris. Yeah. I mean, we have Michelle Obama with a 4% probability. So it could get even crazier. Why is Michelle Obama in there? Well, so, I mean, what's interesting about this, too, is from the very early days of Ethereum and crypto,

prediction markets have been a thing that we had hoped to build, right? And so like Auger was a very early implementation. It's like one of our first big apps, Ethereum. Yeah, but the problem is the wallet UX hasn't been there. It's been like too hard to use, like gas transaction fees. It was priced in ether in the first time around. Yeah. And now here we are.

in 2024. And it's like with Polymarket, it's a pretty, it's easier to use than predict it. It's easier to use than Web 2. So very exciting to see. And also, as, as you mentioned, mainstream attention. They are citing this in like mainstream media as like a good source for truth on what the heck is going on in the election. $260 million is hard to argue with.

Bologi put out a tweet right after the debate. This is a tweet of Joe Biden's chance. of becoming the Democratic nominee, it plummets from like 85, 90% chance down to 25% chance right after the debate. Wow. In real time this happened. In real time. In real time.

So we're watching in real time things like play out. And of course, what happened after the debate, all of the Democratic Party is now saying like, oh, maybe Biden shouldn't be our nominee. Hayden Adams put out a tweet saying, Polly Market for Dem nominees is popping off. prediction markets are basically anonymous insider leaks at this point. So again, if you have, if you're an insider and you know something, you can leak that information to the public without saying who you are or what you know just by like smashing that buy

button on a particular prediction market. Politics is really a great place to bet. This is on the polymarket homepage. Like the most populated prediction markets are like presidential election winner for 24, who's going to be the Democratic nominee, the probability that Biden drops out of the presidential race, that's a 76% chance at this point in time. I actually believe those numbers, which is totally crazy. We're so close to Election Day, and we have the Democratic nominee, potentially 76% dropping out. And the numbers have been absolutely crazy. This is open market interest,

April 2024, all-time highs. And just like, you know, like these election markets have have propelled polymarket into incredible volumes here. It's like doing analytics so we can track all this stuff. It's really cool to see. Can I just rattle off some numbers here? And just in terms of size of the debat, the bets. Okay, presidential election winner, 2024, $217 million. Democratic nominee, 2024, $80 million.

Biden drops out of the presidential race, question mark, $10 million. Republican vice president nominee, there is $6.1 million. on the bet for the Republican vice president nominee. Presidential election popular vote winner, $43 million. Like, these markets are super liquid. Yeah. Did you pay attention to how much capital was on the me versus Nick polymarket fight? Yeah, I did.

Did I ever bet? I don't think I got to the stage of betting day. Oh, yeah, because you just took it directly with Kyle Simani. Yeah, yeah. It was like 40K or something like this? Or was it more 40 to 80K? It was about to hit $100,000. Yeah.

Yeah. That's crazy. People love betting on these things, dude. No, it's fun. And like I said, I mean, this now works on crypto. I believe this is all on Polygon as well. Yeah. That's right.

USC on Polygon. Yeah. Actually, relatively centralized of an app, except for the fact that it uses USC on Polygon underneath. It's using crypto in the right places. Yeah. This is Vitalik showing his support for prediction markets. He says prediction markets and community notes are becoming two flagship social, epistemic technologies of the 2020.

Both are truth-seeking and democratic built around open public participation rather than pre-selected elites. I want to see many more things like this. Vitalik coming out in support of prediction markets and what's going on with Polymarket. Did you see Elon responded to this tweet? Did you see what he said? No, I didn't. He responds, yeah. What is that?

That's it. He just responded, yeah. Is that good? All right. Thanks, Elon. I like that. Oh, Community Notes. That's why.

Vitalik said community notes. So Elon Musk was summoned. That makes sense. Community notes, by the way, it's great. It is great. It is great. Okay, USC being used in other places. Coinbase and Stripe are bringing cheaper payments to Stripe.

So this is news out of Coinbase. Three new integrations. You can pay out in USDC out of your Stripe account to over 150 countries. You can go Fiat to Crypto on ramp added to base inside of Stripe. And then Fiat to Crypto on RAM added to Coinbase wallet using Stripe. So Stripe and Base and USDC all holding hands. Love it. Very cool.

This is also a USDA update. Dan Romero from Farcester says, Introducing Pay on Warpcast as a Farcaster client. Pay someone with USC in under 10 seconds. Mobile first with your existing wallet and not having to look or remember an address, close to instant confirmations and zero fees on base. It's really cool because not only is a Farcaster building sort of a decentralized social network, because it's all on crypto rails, you get a wallet thrown into that, right?

So you also get like Venmo built in. Now they've just enabled USC functionality and some of the financial payments. Twitter is trying to do this too. Like X is trying to do this too. But they're doing it the TradFi way, at least up to this point. They're going through all the existing, you know, like banking infrastructure, whereas a Farcaster can just do this like quickly because it's already on crypto rails. Totally.

Ryan, I'm ready to hear about taxes. you really are do you really want to you got you have to really mean it david before i'll tell you about taxes okay i'm looking at my phone go for it this is the irs issuing its guidance on crypto taxes this is one of those rules by the way you know like the rulemaking we're talking about with um yeah chevron deference you have less ability to kind of like do this sort of thing uh but anyway um the good news is the absolute worst outcome was uh averted do you remember that that bankless podcast we did while ago when the IRS originally put out its rulemaking. And it was looking like they were going to ask every single defy wallet and user interface,

think EtherScan, think Zeran who we were talking about earlier, think Metamask wallets, all of them to actually identify the U.S. citizens that are using their service and go send them a 1099 for trading activity inside of it. Okay? That means they need to know who you are, like passport, like a physical address, like I don't need to tell bankless listeners how much of a nightmare that would be from a privacy perspective and just from like a you know and no one wants that no one wants that anyway that was kind of like the the doom type case well they have come out with their their formal rules and they've just kicked that decision down the road to 2025 so we're not out of the woods yet we're not in the clear but there was a scenario where they would start enforcing these rules and require all like defy front ends essentially to issue 1099s to U.S. citizens. And they're not doing that, at least not right now. They're kicking that decision down the road. And they say they're going to clarify it later. So how does Trevor

on deference impact that? Well, this is one of the rules. You know, like when, according to the APA, which is the Administrative Procedure Act, like basically these agencies have some rulemaking ability, right? And they have to post these rules in advance and get commentary from the public before they do it. This is just like one of those rules. And so if they do something like arbitrary and capricious, then they'll just have like less ability to kind of like enforce this.

Yeah. So it curtails IRS ability to just, you know, create stupid rules in crypto as well. That sounds good. That sounds good. It's good. It's just good. Goodish news, I suppose. And speaking of that, David. Speaking of goodish news. Yeah. Why don't you do this? Why don't you tell me about what's happening over in Europe with Mika and staple coins.

Yeah, this is my time to take the Mika reigns. Jeremy Aller puts out a tweet saying, Today, I'm delighted to share that Circle has been authorized as an e-money issuer by the ACPR in France and a MICA compliant e-money token issuer for both USC and UEURC. Wow, this is some compliant speak. Circle France is now the home to the headquarters of our European Regulial. financial activity and European customers can now access USC and EURC via Circle Mint France. All USC and EURC currently in circulation in Europe are officially mica compliant with

now holding 100% of EURC reserves under our regulated Circle France entity. All of the USC held by Europeans remains fully fungible globally and users can trade, transact, self-custody, use, and DFI, etc., with no changes. So I guess we're getting EURC, which is not roll off the tongue like UCC does, but nonetheless is a European stable coin backed by 100% reserves, but also European as people, citizens, Europeans can use EURC and USDC interchangeably. Rays of the week. Tell me about Astria, David. Astria, this is a bankless ventures raise. Astria is a decentralized sequencing layer.

You would know this as a shared sequencer. It's a layer one blockchain, because all shared sequencers are blockchains, that enable decentralized roll-ups. Let me say this again. Astria, it's a decentralized sequencing layer to help roll-up sequence both in the Ethereum ecosystem and the Celestialia ecosystem. You would know this as a shared sequencer. This round is led by DBA, John and also placeholder Chris. And also we're in this round as well, Bankless Ventures. And so this is, of course, trying to recompose all of those.

the roll-ups into a unified structure. I think, Ryan, and if the listener's peaked, you should watch this 20-minute bit of what I would call Stand Up for Nerds. You've watched this? Yeah, yeah. It was hilarious, right? Yeah.

It was basically the founder, Josh Bowen, the founder of Astros saying, we're all building the same thing in crypto, and here's why. Yeah, exactly. And it was hilarious. His delivery of it was, like, pretty funny. So it's basically start a stand-up for nerds. So if you want to meet,

Josh Bowen. He's not talking about Astria. He's talking about something else. There's a link in the show notes to watch this. It's pretty funny. David, speaking of shared sequencers, let's do a joke race update because on the top of the list of podcasts that bankless citizens want us to do, give them the opportunity to submit requests and then vote on. I think coming in at number one so far and like there's still some time to vote. I think there's like seven or eight more days to vote. Seven more days. Is the great sequencing debate with John Sharbonneau, Justin Drake, Josh Bowen, we were just talking about. and Ben Fish, that's coming in at number one with the most votes. And so that might be the episode that we do. Yeah. One more guest that you skipped over is M-Team. His name's Matthew, who also proposed this podcast episode. So the proposer is proposing himself as a guest, which is fair play. A hundred percent within the rules.

All you have to do is get the votes. All you have to do is get the votes. So this is coming in at number one. Number two is it's a miracle anything works in crypto with a guest named Max Howell, who talks about some of the open source supply chains that makes the crypto industry work. I think we all remember when that ledger module thing broke and we all had to stop using crypto. And then we all had this existential crisis about like, wait, what the hell is going on? Third place is Mert.

Oh, Mert's third. A good friend, Mert. All right. Well, what's the call to action here? People can still vote, right? People can still vote. So you have eight, excuse me, eight days to vote. So if you are a bankless citizen with a 2022, 2023, or 2024, POAP.

your wallet, sign in to joke race with that wallet. And you can vote on one of the submissions. The submission phase ended a week ago. And so now it's just the voting phase. Right now, the great sequencing debate is coming in. So if the great sequencing debate passes, John Charbonneau, Justin Drake, Matthew, Josh, and Ben are compelled to come on the podcast. This is how governance works. If the go through, you guys have to come. They're compelled as well. They're compelled. Yeah. I see. Now we know the rules. All right, let's close us out with a meme of the week. David, is this a Fourth of July week or something?

Is this a Fourth of July meme or something else? No, this was a meme from last week where this went out. There was a meme I found on Friday where Ethereum got, or Consensus and Metamask got sued by the SEC. The SEC deemed that Lido and Rocket Pool are unregistered securities and Solana got an ETF submission. So Solana is just sleeping like baby. And so this meme is Ethereum, the Army man, protecting the sleeping Solana from Gary Gensler. is how it felt out this week. Very nice with Ethereum. I'm going to do that.

Got to end with this, of course. None of this has been financial advice. You know, crypto is risky, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Happy 4th of July.