Bankless - ROLLUP: ETH CC Paris | BED Index | Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Cathie Wood & Bitcoin (3rd Week of July)

Starting point is 00:00:07 Bankless Nation, it is the third week of July. David, what time is it? It is the Friday weekly roll-up. The special David in Paris edition of the Bankless Weekly Roll-up. And this is where we go through the weekly news of crypto, which there always is a lot of. So we go through the market, what's happened in the market, we go through what got released, and then we hit what happened in the news cycle. And then we finish up with what the ecosystem takes, who has some interesting takes in the world of crypto. We finish up with what David and Ryan are excited about and then we top things off with the meme of the week. You might have a moment of Zen at the end, but I'm excited about this. This is the first weekly

Starting point is 00:00:47 roll-up broadcasting from Paris. So pretty awesome, man. How is Paris, by the way? I am absolutely exhausted, but it's been kind of fun. Yeah, it was the, it was the Rave. The Ave Ray, where you out? Ave Ray, yeah, wore me out. Yeah, I got home at like four in the morning last night. Oh, man. Well, thanks for doing the weekly roll-up. David, I know the crypto community appreciates it, all your hard work and dedication. David, before we get in, we should talk about the Smart Contract Summit that's coming up. I am psyched about this thing because it's basically a free Defi conference that anyone can register for, whether you're a developer, you're not a developer, you're just trying to learn about automated market makers,

Starting point is 00:01:26 layer two, M.EV, oracles, all of these subjects will be covered. There'll be 200 plus DFI projects and founders and speakers. Lots of different panels, lots of different sessions. David, you and I will be there. This will be a couple of days, hopefully, right after the deployment of EIP 1559. So we are hosting a panel on EIP 1559 and the progress. It's just fantastic that this kind of a conference is being put out as a public good. It is a smart contract summit.

Starting point is 00:01:57 You can find a link to it in the show notes. Make sure you grab a free ticket August 5th through the 7th. Oracles are really important to blockchains because they, allow blockchains to connect to the rest of the world. And so any type of application always can have the Oracle side of it, right? So oracles touch everything. So every time we, everything that Ryan and I talk about, there's always the Oracle conversation of right alongside with it, which is why ChainLink is throwing a summit. So makes a ton of sense. So see you guys there. Yeah, they're a perfect aggregator for that. All right, David, you ready to get into market stuff? Let's do it.

Starting point is 00:02:32 All right, Bitcoin Market. Tell us what is going on in Bitcoin world. Where did we start? where'd we end? Hey, we, so we dumped down below $30,000, which is a scary number to break through, and then we hopped right back above it. So we are currently at the price of $31,700. We started the week a little bit higher, but overall, I would kind of call it a flat week. A flat week. A trip into like the terror zone, and then we didn't like that.

Starting point is 00:02:59 Then we got right back out of it. Yeah, below, again, it's just this holding crab week, crap season. I can't even remember how long we've been here. It's like one of those things where it's like, have we been here for runs, years? How long have we been in? Pergatory season? Yeah. But like under 30K for Bitcoin does not feel happy.

Starting point is 00:03:17 And under 2K for ETH does not feel happy. So tell us about ETH because we're kind of, we went way under 2K, not way under, but decently under 2K. And now where are we? Yeah, we found a new bottom at around 1730 in the middle of this week's, 1,730.730. started the week off right at about $1,920-ish dollars. And yesterday and this morning, depending, I'm in Paris, France, so depending on, you know, whatever that means for you, we actually jumped above $2,000. So we jumped almost $300, which is a big move for Ether, especially inside of one week. So definitely a volatile week.

Starting point is 00:03:56 And I think this might be on the kind of the hype of Elon Musk announcing that he owns Ether. But I kind of also think that, like, decently, the market was ready to gobble up a lot of $1,700 E. So I kind of think this pump might have been under its own weight. And then with the Elon Musk, I own ether announcement, also just kind of added a little bit of momentum to that too. Yeah, some people say there's like part of the reason we're in crab seasons, because there's really not a lot of sellers under 30K Bitcoin under 2K Eath, right? Especially when you get to 1700 Eath. I'm not sure, honestly. But you really think that that hop-up was due to the Elon announcement in that Elon conversation.

Starting point is 00:04:39 The timing was there, certainly. But like I said, I think also Ether just completely rejected like 1700. I think that there are a lot of buyers at that level. And to say, to go on what you were saying, the reason why we're in crap market is that there's a lot of buyers at like the 1700 level. And like there's also turned, they turn into sellers at like a really low level of like, a really low level of like, 2,200, 200, that's when the buyers turn to the seller. So like there's like a narrow band. We got buyers at the floor, but like sellers on the ceiling, right? I don't deal with any of that, David. I'm just a holder, man. Just a simple lowly holder. You know, and you're a buyer too. I'm a buyer. Yeah. I've been buying dollar cost

Starting point is 00:05:23 average in guys. That is the way to do it. I saw this on coin metrics, David. I thought this was super interesting. This is actually Google searches for Bitcoin, keyword Bitcoin. Google searches. Google for keyword ether, Ethereum actually. And so what's really interesting is during this sort of bull cycle 2021, did you know Bitcoin and Google Trends did not actually hit its all-time high search? You can see this graph here. It hit all-time high search in 2018, the last bull cycle, which is interesting. It's down, of course, from the all-time high.

Starting point is 00:05:57 So the all-time high was probably like April, May or so, for not the all-time high, but the local high for the Bitcoin search in Google Trends. That just means people are searching Bitcoin as a keyword. Like there's buzz about it and it's going into Google search. What's interesting about Ethereum is all-time high was actually this bull market cycle. See the difference? That's twice as high as it was in 2017. Twice as high, which is interesting.

Starting point is 00:06:24 Now it's, of course, way down because, you know, people stopped searching, I guess, NFTs, SNL, you know, Ethereum, whatever they, researching, but the fact that it got much higher, sort of the conclusion from coin metrics is, well, does that indicate that Ethereum has been more driven by retail this cycle, whereas Bitcoin has been more driven by institutions this cycle? Of course, institutions don't have to Google Bitcoin. There's fewer of them. They just have lots of money to pour into it. I thought that was a really interesting takeaway. And I was actually surprised that Ethereum far exceeded its last all-time high in Google trends in this in this bull cycle we'll see where

Starting point is 00:07:04 this goes next even where we're at right now in in 2021 Ethereum Google search trends is actually like meaningfully higher than most of Ethereum in 2017 and so that that's also interesting the other thought I had is back on the the Google of the Bitcoin chart while Bitcoin got the like the all-time high of search trends was was in 2017 look at the area under the curve which is I think is like sustained Google searching because in 2017, it really looks like a flash in the pan. It's like a spike. But in 2021, it's like sustained Bitcoin searching for the last like year or so. There's a lot of area under the curve for that. So that's something to note as well. The other thing I note is like A, everything's a fractal. Look at this early 2017. You had that spike up and then a way spike down.

Starting point is 00:07:51 And the summer of 2017, no one, people weren't searching for Ethereum as much, right? Kind of how we today. And then you got a huge spike, you know, October, November, December, January, February, back again. So maybe this is just a local, you know, down. This would be the theory that, hey, after this summer, this is going to repeat similar to 2017, and the bull market shall resume. We'll have to see how that plays out. All right, let's talk about this. David, I thought this Lil Moon Lambo tweet, great name, by the way, great handle, Lil Moon. Well, done. was very, like, it felt right for this week. And he says this.

Starting point is 00:08:33 A year ago, Bitcoin was 11K and ETH was 320. A year later, everyone is panicking because Bitcoin is 29K and Eath is $1,700. The lesson here is don't worry about the short-term price movements when you're in it for the long run. When in doubt, zoom out. Good reminder. Look, man, 29K of Bitcoin, 700, Eith. a year ago, if you had told us at this date a year ago, these would be the prices a year from now. Everyone would be excited. Everyone would be jubilant. It would be considered a smashing success.

Starting point is 00:09:05 But human nature just has this weird effect. When you rise really fast, really high and you're off those highs, you feel like you've lost something. We have not lost anything. We are up on the year in a big way. The fact that this tweet got over 5,000 likes and the meat of this tweet is using the word panicking. He says a year later, everyone is panicking. That's just like a by signal to me. It's like, if people are panicking, everyone is liking and retweeting this tweet because they're all resonating with the word panicking. And so like, that's just a buy signal to me. And I've been, there's been a number of people that have come into crypto that are in my, my own circles, my non-crypto circles, people from college, from high school, just friends.

Starting point is 00:09:49 And they're unicyclers, right? This is their first cycle. I keep on trying to convince them that the best thing for them that could ever happen to them is ether dipping really, really hard. Like, if you are bullish on ether, you want the price to go down. You want it to go low. And this has been one of the most frustrating things with ether at like $1,700 or $2,000 because I was spoiled when I got into ether, I was buying,

Starting point is 00:10:15 ether between like one and three hundred dollars and so now when i go to gemini and i make my purchases i'm like oh i only get this amount of ether these days with this is as far as one thousand dollars gets me one thousand dollars you should get me three ether now it's like one half of an ether like that's frustrating and so like i keep wanting ether to go down more and more more so i can finish accumulating so if this is your first cycle for you be okay with the number going down like that's You get bullish, yes. Be happy about it. It's a buying opportunity.

Starting point is 00:10:46 Yeah, I agree. But it's really hard to get people to you. I mean, these conversations didn't happen in 2019, 2020. No one was interested in crypto exactly when they should be. Yeah, it's such a mind trap that way. All right. Let's keep moving. Ether Bitcoin ratio.

Starting point is 00:11:04 What's the ratio telling us this week, David? Last week, I was talking about how Ether is starting the BTC ratio started dipping below 0.06 and that is starting to get into like the danger red territory but also kind of fitting with that trend of a higher low and that's exactly what happened we painted that floor at like 0.058 a couple days ago and then with the jump in the markets yesterday we are now back to 0.062 which is a great number and like I've been saying the ETH BTC ratio above 0.6 is a historical high and it's holding that level really really well in the midst of

Starting point is 00:11:41 market bear season whatever so the fact that ether is holding that ratio versus bitcoin is is just indicative of i mean straight up of crab season because it's not going anywhere but it's holding its ground in the midst of a testing time and i think that's really awesome look i do think that this is indicative of a people aren't letting go of the bull market right this thing could recover when this ratio starts to go like bull markets are to ether's benefit and if we're going to have a bull market and we talked about this before, but ETH needs to go up. The ratio needs to change in ether's direction. And it's holding steady. So it's not losing ground right now, which is good to see. Let's talk about total lock to value in D5. That is also holding steady. We're like $55 billion

Starting point is 00:12:27 last week. I think we're like $58 billion this week. Just hang in there. And AVE dominance up about a percent and a half. So congrats to Avey for continuing to dominate. Let's talk about the DPI. is the desk index. Yeah, the best index. These are defy tokens, but it's down on the week. Why down? I guess the pump was really focused on the L1 assets, Ether, and Bitcoin. Some tokens have definitely recovered since when Ether dumped down to 1750, so did a lot of the tokens. Not as a strong recovery in the tokens, but I'm going to call it noise. Elon does not own Defi yet, so maybe that's why. But I do consider Ether. Bitcoin, too, for that matter.

Starting point is 00:13:11 We'll talk about this later, but we need to get Elon Musk to get into the bed. Get its bed. Well, you should probably, well, we'll explain it later. That might not make sense to you right now, but we'll explain it later, listener. Okay. This is interesting. These were two contrasting headlines that we picked out this week. The first is this headline.

Starting point is 00:13:30 Institutional demand for Bitcoin evaporates as Bitcoin struggles below 31K. This is from CoinTelegraph. Justipose that. Okay, juxtapos that with this headline from Blockworks. Fidelity says, this is a survey from Fidelity, 71% of institutional investors plan to buy crypto. Even amidst a major sell-off, the majority of institutional investors surveyed by Fidelity expect to hold or invest in the future. Super interesting. Institutional demand for Bitcoin evaporates. This one's saying, institutions are going all in. The majority continue to buy and are holding during this period. What do you make of this? contrast. So here's some alpha that came straight out of ECC that it can speak directly to this. And so I talked to two people that have privileged information. One of them is Donnie from AVE. The other one is Santiago from Parify. And Tani, while I was interviewing him, which is going to be out on the podcast on Monday. So definitely tune into that. I asked him about AVE Pro, which is actually

Starting point is 00:14:29 now going to be called Ave Arc. It's the institutional version of Avey. It's like the coin-based treasured It's a better name. I like that me too. And it's like Coinbase treasure. but for AVE, you know, kind of white listed accounts. You mean compound treasury? Yes, that's what I meant. That's what I meant. And so he said, I asked him, are you building this so that you can then take this to institutions or are you building this because of demand? And he goes, oh, we need, we have to build this because everyone, all these institutions keep on asking for them.

Starting point is 00:14:57 And so there's institutional demand for Avey Arc and that is why they are building it rather than the inverse. So that's really important to take away. The other thing, I was just talking to, to, um, uh, Sondon, Santiago from Parify Capital, this is in line at coffee, casual conversation. And he goes that, you know, institutions and funds are hitting us up like every single day knocking on our door to ask questions about ether, specifically ether. And he said, uh, we kind of like, specifically ether. Specifically ether, right? And the train of thought was that like ether just has a lot of surface area for investments. Like funds, they like, they like the tech startup vibe of ether. They like the fact that there's products on Ethereum rather than just. Bitcoin, which is just Bitcoin. So Ether and Ethereum has this product-focused thing with all the surface area for investments. That makes them like Ether the asset. And so institutions knocking on the door to ask Santiago, who's a great brain, he's one of the Defi panelists that we had. So you should also be watching that video saying that there is institutional demand for specifically Ether.

Starting point is 00:16:02 Yeah, look, I tend to go where the data goes, right? And like those stories, Those stories are definitely important. And so is Fidelity saying seven out of ten institutional investors hope to gain crypto exposure in the near future. I think the juxtaposition of these headlines is, one is just short run. You know, like you got to say something when, you know, prices going down. And the other is like Fidelity has been doing this survey for a while and they've been charting it over time. And these numbers are up, up, up from the last time they did this survey.

Starting point is 00:16:34 So look, the institutions are here. It sounds like they're getting excited about Ether. It sounds like they're getting excited about Defi. I don't think they're going anywhere this round. This is a real asset class. And the thing is, it doesn't take a lot of institutions to meaningfully move the market. And so that's why you should really still be optimistic.

Starting point is 00:16:52 There we go. We are not bullish today, guy, or we are not bearish today. Maybe we never are. We are literally never bearish. Token Terminal. This is super cool. It's hard to be, it's hard to be bearish when you see stuff like this, David. We are literally seeing a new asset class being birthed before our eyes.

Starting point is 00:17:11 Caught this tweet from Token Terminal. This is about Uniswop's past year, okay? We talk about the birth of a new capital asset, something that has discounted cash flows that Wall Street can even value. Trading volume for Uniswap over the past year, 273 billion in trading volume with a B. A little tiny protocol, 15 people, 273 billion dollars. Unicorn logo.

Starting point is 00:17:35 Unicorn logo, like weird, like, weird vibes. Simple interface. Yeah, definitely not Wall Street, definitely not like banker, you know, friendly, I guess. LP revenue, 812 million. That's how much liquidity providers made in this protocol. Uniswap revenue, 130 million, 16% of LP revenue. The costs for Uniswap, just 10 million grants. Uniswap earnings then, if you do the math there, 100.

Starting point is 00:18:05 10 million minus 130 million, 120 million. What is the fully diluted market cap right now, about 12 billion? So what does that make the price to earnings ratio? 102. 102 price to earnings ratio. If you benchmark that with other exchanges, traditional exchanges, you've got CME group that has a PE ratio 40. You've got the ICE exchange, which is 30. You've got CBOE, which is 27. You got NASDAQ that's 28. Super interesting that Uniswap is being priced at a premium, but not at an excessive price to earnings premium to these legacy exchanges that are barely growing, right?

Starting point is 00:18:46 And you've got Uniswap, which is just crushing it in terms of growth. So also, I would argue like a fair market value based on price to earnings ratio, maybe undervalued. Anyway, it's super cool because we've been talking about the birth of a new, of defy as capital assets. And here it is, it's happening. We have the numbers. We can do the analysis.

Starting point is 00:19:09 We can show the valuation here. And man, I'm just psyched about that. And just one small asteris, and I'm pretty sure this is true, is that the token terminal tweet says uni revenue as 16% of LP revenue is $130 million. That's once the fee switch gets turned on. So the fee switch is five basis points of fees goes to the protocol. and that would represent 16% of LP revenue. And so that's where they get that number from.

Starting point is 00:19:35 Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, Facebook pre-revenue before they put on, they turned on all of their, you know, advertising models and that sort of thing. So you see the growth, you see the potential. They just have to turn the switch and put it on, but they haven't done that. So it is also somewhat pre-revenue. That's a good asterisk, David. All right, man, we are going to get to releases in just a minute. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

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Starting point is 00:22:19 All right, guys, we are back with the hot releases this week. We've got to start with this one. David, it's finally here. The bankless bed index. Jump into bed. Now you can say it. What does that mean? It means we're getting into bed.

Starting point is 00:22:33 We're all getting into bed together. You, the listener, we're all getting into bed. Bankless bed index. It's live. Rapped ether, wrapped BTC, and the DFI pulse index, 33% each. And that composes the bed index. I think that this is going to be one of the best passive tokens that you can buy.

Starting point is 00:22:50 And the advantage of buying. it is a multi-purpose. It's nice because it's all on Ethereum, so you don't have to own Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain, which don't tell us to a Bitcoin here, but it's really cumbersome to do that. Just own it on Ethereum. And now you can get that portfolio of Ether, the store value of Ether, the store value of Bitcoin, and then the Ethereum app layer in DPI, extremely passive, all-in-one asset, tax-advantaged, very low streaming fees, and Bankless Bed Index, brought to you by the Bankless Dow. So nice draw, Bankless Dow. Yeah, it's super exciting. I mean, this is basically the bankless thesis rolled up into one single asset, right? Because it's a bet on crypto monies. And it's also a bet on defy. So it's a bet on the entire banking system that is being created in crypto. So super exciting. What I love about this is you could protect your friends from buying stupid, crappy crypto assets and like phomoing into things and then selling other things too early. And the way to protect.

Starting point is 00:23:51 them is like one click, you buy bed. And what do you get? You get a tasted defy. You get some Bitcoin, which you need. You get some ether, which you also need. And it's all bundled up into one asset, right? So this is like an ETF, except it's tokenized. And all you have to do is own that. So I'm super excited that the tools are available to make a product like this. It's also a cool story that the bankless Dow actually collaborated with index co-op, Dow to bring this to market and to launch this thing. So save your friends. One quick, one click, like no hassle, just get crypto exposure, set it and forget it,

Starting point is 00:24:29 sleep well at night, get in bed. That's all you have to do. Yeah. And I think now that this is out the door and actually on Ethereum, the next step is to turn this into collateral. And so the next steps is for the bankless Dow to go reach out. to Ave, reach out to compound, submit collateral requests for these applications to turn bed into collateral. You know where I'd also like to see it right on Fiat exchanges? I'd like to

Starting point is 00:24:53 see bed on Coinbase. I'd like to see bed on Gemini. Oh, Cameron, Tyler, get it on, get it on Gemini. They will. They need to see the liquidity. He's already almost close to 650,000. That is a high number right out of the gate. Not bad. All right. Who else is releasing things? Sushi swap is releasing things. Trident. I think they released this at ETHCC. So were you there for the announcement? Do you see this? What's kind of, what is this thing? What is the buzz? Yeah, I followed up with Joseph DeLong, who was the person that announced this at ECCC. And so this is actually a, a, one of the reasons why sushi swap was always different from uniswap to begin with is that sushi swap is not uniswap. It's not just a fork of

Starting point is 00:25:35 Uniswap V2. It is a Dow that it can do anything it wants to do. So it doesn't have to follow the progression of uniswap. It can take its own path. And so what sushi has done is they have built out a suite of new products that are completely independent from the original, you know, a fork of Uniswap v2. And so they have these concentrated liquidity pools, which is kind of what Uniswap V3 is doing. But they also have weighted pools, which is kind of like what balancers doing. And they got hybrid pools, which is kind of what curve is doing that is specifically good for trading like kind assets. They also have this bentel box application. And so what applications can do is they can be.

Starting point is 00:26:12 build on top of sushi swap and they can deposit assets into sushi swap. Sushi swap and then Sushi swap will credits those applications with those deposits, but then it goes and gets yield in DFI with those assets while they are also getting liquidity in the AAMM. And so it's just a collection of a bunch of the really cool products that we've all been using, but now it's all collapsed and condensed into the Sushi Swap Protocol. So really, really bullish for Sushi. That's a really cool step into a brand new direction.

Starting point is 00:26:44 And it's always just one of the, one of the, if you buy our bullish on sushi token, you're really bullish on their ability to build and ship new products, which they have been proven out to do. Joseph DeLong has been in a Twitter, a fun, like, friend. What's this? Is this fun, dude? Is this fun? Yes. I tell this.

Starting point is 00:27:04 Yeah. Why don't you read the tweet? It's pretty fun. And so Dan Robinson, who is at Paradigm and basically built Uniswap, V3 and Joseph DeLong, who is one of the lead devs behind Sushi, they've been having like a Twitter war of sorts. I don't know how, how mean it is. I kind of thought it was always like, it's frenemies, frenemies, like, you know, good, good, but also hard-hitting jabs at each other. And so Joseph DeLong on May 8th, so this has been a while in the making, he tweets out to Dan Robinson,

Starting point is 00:27:35 I want you to watch me destroy the house you built on 72021, which was ETH C, C, and that was two days ago. And so that was the announcement. And so Joseph, you know, fiery, fiery tweets. Yeah, it's kind of funny to see the rivalry between Uniswap and Sushi Swap. I like it because it keeps them both on their toes, to be honest, David. I think, like, even when we had Hayden on the podcast, he basically said, yeah, we saw what sushi was doing with their token.

Starting point is 00:28:03 We moved up plans to issue Unitokin. That's been super successful for Uniswap. So I like this little rivalry. As long as it remains friendly, we're all trying to. trying to build a decentralized financial system, of course. This was interesting to me. I read in the tweets part of this announcement, David, one existing piece of the roadmap coming post-launch is franchise pools, and these are designed to be compliant with KYC AML requirements. Think AVE's institutional lending pools. Somewhat interesting, sort of buried in the announcement, looks like Sushi Swap is

Starting point is 00:28:37 getting into this institutional DFI theme as well that we've seen, compound go down the road of, and you just mentioned AVE too. So kind of cool. Team continues to ship. David, you know what else I thought was cool this week was this graph was put together by CAD Labs, the CAD Labs org team. But this is like a graph of EIP 1559 and the merge. And you can basically model out based on different scenarios like validator adoption or at what

Starting point is 00:29:10 date the merge actually happens or how much ETH is actually being burnt like the Gway price on a given day and average, you can actually model ETH issuance, right, and see where it gets into deflationary territory. I thought this was super cool education material and people can actually like there's a GitHub with this model inside of it. So I encourage the team to like post this on a website so that people can actually start taking. with the dials, not have to be developers. Right. But pretty awesome that this is so close.

Starting point is 00:29:47 EIP 1559 and that ETH's issuance policy, its monetary policy, is really getting, I think, cleaned up and solidified with this move. And that's super exciting. In this screenshot, it looks like they have the dial set to 100-gway gas environment. And I remember during DFI summer when gas would get down to 100-Gye. Gway, people would tweet out on Twitter, go, gas is below 100 Gway. Like, do all your things because that gas is so cheap. Now we're in crab season, and so gas is really low.

Starting point is 00:30:19 It's been between like 10 and 30. But even at 10 to 30, you're still deflationary. And at 100, if we ever get back to like 100 for Gway on the Ethereum main chain, Ethereum isn't just like a little bit deflationary. It's really, really deflationary. Look how steep that curve is. I mean, granted, this goes out to 2026, but like, I mean, I'm going to be around in 2026.

Starting point is 00:30:40 and the target of hitting 100 million ether, that looks like we could hit a supply floor of a hundred million ether before 2030. That's crazy. That's crazy. Somebody I know once said there is no supply floor in this new paradigm. Sounds like a really smart guy. Well, I mean, look, if you set the model, right,

Starting point is 00:31:01 it's kind of when we had Justin Drake in the podcast, like ether supply doesn't get above 120 million, very likely, and could indeed drop all the way close to 100 million over the next five years or so. Really cool to model this out. And of course, it's variable. It's based on validator. It's based on when the merge actually happens. And it's based on block space demand.

Starting point is 00:31:24 But if you know those variables, you can model out exactly what ETH's issuance policy will look like in the future. And we've not been able to do that up to this point. So super cool. Let's talk about this. So urine continues to ship. This looks super interesting, David. What are we looking at? Something that assesses the risk of various urine vaults.

Starting point is 00:31:45 Right. So urine vaults have all these various different strategies, and there's different assets, and there's different applications for every single vault. And so what urine has shipped is like a risk management or risk disclaimer, I guess. What's the right way to describe this? It's just like transparency, right?

Starting point is 00:32:03 Risk exposure, yeah. Transparency, transparency, risk exposure. And so it tells you for every single vault what the exposure to specific defy apps is. And so as different strategies get built out and deployed to yearn, it'll tell you is like this strategy is like 55% dependent on compound and 32% dependent on sushi swap. And so it's a great way to just actually transparently look at the risks that you are taking on when you use yearn. And this is something that only you can only do in defy. You can only do something. something that you can query the Ethereum blockchain and get all of the data you need.

Starting point is 00:32:41 And so this is like basically a live update system because we have all the data at our fingertips. And so it's like it's like risk in the moment that you need to know it. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's so cool. It's like the traditional financial world. I don't know if you've ever invested in like a mutual fund, but like I literally still have some mutual funds and they'll send me paper copies of what's called a prospectus. right like once yearly and if you go through like this this book-sized uh description of everything that's in

Starting point is 00:33:13 there you can maybe glean what the mutual fund is kind of invested in what the risk exposure is um this does that automatically in real time and there's no accountants no boyers involved you just query the blockchain uh so crazy so cool that this can be done and it's good to see more transparency about risk i think in defy because um We need some of that in order to make investment decisions. Like, where is the yield coming from when you deposit USC in a year in vault? This kind of shows you that. And also, one of the big problems with risk disclosures in the legacy world on paper

Starting point is 00:33:48 is that it's largely the lawyers just like doing everything that they need to do to CYA, to cover their app. They'll just put in every single like risk disclaimer possible, even if it's like not even like relevant, like, you know, acts of God, like stuff, crazy stuff like that. It's like lawyer speak. And this is not that. This is straight up. Let me tell you the actual parameters of the actual protocol in real time with a visualization. Paradigm shift. Yeah, it's huge paradigm shift.

Starting point is 00:34:17 All right. Let's talk about this. This is kind of a paradigm shift, I think, grayscale, which, of course, they have the Ether E gray scale trust that you can buy inside of a brokerage in a, if they're in U.S. in a retirement account. They also have a Bitcoin trust product. They have just launched a DFI. trust product, David. So now institutions who maybe for whatever reason can't hold defy assets and custody those defy assets. Or if you're looking for to buy defy in a brokerage account,

Starting point is 00:34:50 you don't want to go the self-directed IRA route, which we recommend by the way, and custody it yourself. You can actually just buy this product inside of your brokerage account. Now, there's fees associated with it, but I'm pretty impressed by the index. And it's weightings, right? We've got uniswap, we've got ABE, we've got compound. This is sort of a, it looks like some sort of market-sized index of the top, maybe 10 or so, defy assets. So it's cool that this is now becoming available. The other interesting thing about this is that this is a partnership between Grayscale and CoinDest.

Starting point is 00:35:26 So Grayscale made the index and CoinDesk is, is, gray scale holds the assets and CoinDesk is doing the portfolio like management. into indices, that's exactly what index co-op is doing, but on defy. And that's what bankless Dow did with index co-op, right? And so bankless or DPI or DFI is also doing it. Like in the index co-op model is like, hey, we'll actually do the infrastructure. And but you guys make the index and then you guys market it. Right. And so yeah, that's what DFI post did. So they partnered with index co-op to make the DPI. And then this is the same thing, but in, in legacy finance, which is actually kind of cool. But also, uh, what's cooler is doing in defy it's way cooler let's be honest it's way cooler like i don't know why you'd buy this product unless

Starting point is 00:36:10 you really had to compare to like a token regulations getting it inside of your retirement account if you're an institution i get it if you are crypto native man go buy some sets right it's way better totally totally the other thing about this is that uniswap is for 50% of the whole entire index that seems a little bit high uh oh i just noticed that yeah yeah i mean obvi's at 10% compounds at Why? Curves at 7%. Maker is at 6%. Sushi is at 4%.

Starting point is 00:36:38 Synthetics is at 4%. If I was designing... This is not market cap weighted then. Yeah, I would have cut down... Uniswops are great asset, but like 50%. That's a large allocation. I would have diversified that out a little bit more. Yeah, that's interesting, guys.

Starting point is 00:36:52 Well, do your due diligence on this if you choose to use it. I'm not sure actually, now that you mentioned it, David, what the index is based on. They have a link for the index methodology right there. So you can click that link in the show notes. and then click the link in there to go find out. We're not going to. We're going to move on.

Starting point is 00:37:08 That's up to you. We've got token sets. We can do that there. This is cool, David. OKX is an exchange, fairly large exchange. They now support Polygon, main net deposits, and withdrawals. David, we said this was going to happen. It's happening with Polygon a side chain.

Starting point is 00:37:25 It's going to happen with roll-ups layer twos. These are additional Fiat to roll-up, fiat-to-layer-2 bridges, that are starting to come online, starting with Polygon. I love it. Super exciting to see this happen. OKX, not an exchange that I've ever used personally. I know it has a lot of users,

Starting point is 00:37:43 but it's just a harbinger of all of the other exchanges that are going to flood into providing this Fiat gateway directly to layer two. Super cool. So the metaphor that we always use is that defy and Ethereum L1 is the Manhattan. And now with Polygon and the other layer twos, those are like the suburbs. And so, you know, you fly into New York and then you have to take the cars out to the suburbs because, you know, in the Ethereum metaphor, there's only Manhattan. There's nothing else in the world exists.

Starting point is 00:38:12 But now this is like we have a new airport that's dedicated out for the suburbs. So when you fly into the world of crypto and you're coming from your centralized exchanges to get over the hump into the crypto world, you actually now have the option to not actually land in Manhattan and you can go and straight and land in the suburbs. And so that's the metaphor there. You can land in the suburbs. You can live there. You can shop there.

Starting point is 00:38:33 You can do all of your commerce there. If you want to pay the extra Uber ride and get to Manhattan, you can, but you don't have to. Manhattan is now optional. Yeah, exactly. All right. Let's talk about this. Oh, my God. I can't.

Starting point is 00:38:47 So, Axe, body spray. Do you remember Axe body spray? Yes, in middle school. So if you want to smell like a middle school locker room, I guess you can do so with crypto now because, body spray has just come out with Dodge Can 8A Doge, DogeCan, sorry, DogeCan, Doge Body Spray. I guess I'm not, I have no idea what that smells like, if that smells like success or mooning, or it says a crypto scent with a dank musk.

Starting point is 00:39:19 Had to include this one. Not super important, but I would love to know what a crypto scent is. What do you think crypto scent smells like? I have no clue. I'm almost curious enough to buy this. Yeah, a little bit actually. Okay, and so that's my take here, is that this is why I actually think Doge has way stronger fundamentals

Starting point is 00:39:39 than what people give it credit for. Because companies like Axe or like Taco Bell gives out free promos for Doge coin holders or whatever. Free marketing. How much would you pay for this? If you're trying, how much would you pay for this? I have no clue, but a lot of money, right? And so Axe, I don't know who follows the Axe's Twitter account,

Starting point is 00:39:58 but this tweet got 2,200 retweets and almost 8,000 likes. People use Doge for engagement and they do it consistently. And that's the fundamentals behind Doge and why Doge I actually think is kind of an underappreciated asset. Yeah, it's hilarious. Is this is this crypto culture, David? Is this what you're talking about when you're talking about crypto culture? I guess so. This wasn't really exactly what I had in mind.

Starting point is 00:40:20 But okay, I guess it's what I signed up for. It's something seeping into mainstream. All right, moving on. let's talk about immutable. They have just announced the launch of IMX, a token that is going to power the growth of layer two for NFTs on Ethereum. This is some cool tech behind Immutable, what they're doing with Layer 2, and I guess a token to economically power that, David. What's the scoop here? Yeah, so this is part of the Layer 2 summer narrative, the thing that we all thought was happening. And so the IMX token, the token that powers the Immutable Layer 2, is getting released.

Starting point is 00:40:55 It's not released yet. It's going to be released in the future. So I guess this is an announcement of a future release date or something. But the whole concept is that layer twos are probably going to have tokens too. And those things need to be owned by the community. And so they want to get the IMX tokens distributed. Maybe they do yield farming. We'll see the details for the token distribution are in the post.

Starting point is 00:41:17 We had Robbie Ferguson from the Immutable team on a, on Defi Apps on Layer 2 panel forever. It was a fantastic panel. And we also had representatives from synthetics and loopering there as well. And so congratulations to the team to get this out the door. I'm stoked to have the token out in the wild. Disclaimer, I'm an investor in the token. What's cool about this is it's ZK roll-up tech, right, which is different, specifically for NFTs, which we haven't seen.

Starting point is 00:41:47 And, of course, immutable is the company behind God's Unchained. So you can at least expect God's Unchained to adopt. this probably many other NFT games and marketplaces as well. This is also part of NFT Renaissance. This is some of the NFT building during the NFT bear market and why people are still really bullish on NFTs and NFT infrastructure. This is stuff like that. Let's talk for leases, David.

Starting point is 00:42:13 So the first is visor finance. Visor finance is just gotten $3.5 million in funding from one confirmation. This is an active management protocol. So I think the idea here is generally becoming sort of a more active manager of something like Uniswap V3. And do you remember when we had Hayden Adams on, he talked about the advent of these professional market makers on the new Uniswob V3 curves? It takes a bit more skill to come up with the right liquidity setting for Uniswap V3. It seems like visor is trying to execute on that. Totally, totally. And this is going to, this, the cool thing about Uniswap, it has so much surface area for stuff like this, Uniswap V3.

Starting point is 00:42:56 But also the bad thing about Uniswad V3 was that it killed lazy liquidity providers. Like in Uniswitv2, all you had to do is throw in your assets and you could be an LP. There was no, there was no competition. And so it really democratized access to being a market maker. It also was really capitally inefficient. And so there was tradeoffs with Uniswop V3. We have way more liquidity in Uniswap V3, but now it's super competitive, kind of pushes out the small guy. But then protocols built on top of Uniswad V3 come back and reenable lazy liquidity providing for people who just want to collect the fees and don't want to be pressing the buttons all the time.

Starting point is 00:43:30 So I expect this product to be pretty well used. Yeah, I'm actually really excited about this and really excited about this segment developing because providing liquidity to Uniswob V3 is challenging. It's not for the faint of heart and you have to constantly sort of adjust your position and know exactly what you're doing. So it can be tricky. And anything that democratizes that is, I think, a step forward, particularly for the passive investor. Let's talk about this. Massive raise, absolutely massive. OpenC, NFT marketplace just secured $100 million in their Series B.

Starting point is 00:44:07 That's a round valued at $1.5 billion. This is like the first NFT marketplace unicorn that I've seen. Incredible valuation. OpenC's been crushing it. so well deserved. Also, wow, like billion dollar valuations for Ethereum applications, essentially, not just layer one chains, which is what we saw more in 2017, 2018. That's a shift too. What's your take on this? Yeah, and it's a $1.5 billion valuation without a token. Usually the unicorns that come out are come out because tokens just have some sort of

Starting point is 00:44:45 premium to them. This is a pre-token. I don't even know if they have plans for a token. I hope they do. What do you think? They've got to have plans for a token, right? Yeah. How do you not have it? Everyone wants tokens.

Starting point is 00:44:54 Tocons are product market fit. And so maybe this is like the last round that they do before they do a token. This is just speculation. But yeah, $1.5 billion. Congrats, guys. Remember we were talking about last week that SBF wanted to buy JPMorgan. Right. At that time, valuation was lower.

Starting point is 00:45:12 But apparently now FTC's valuation is $18 billion in their newest funding round. If I recall correctly, JPMorgan is still 130 billion. So SBF has a ways to go. But this is an absolutely massive valuation round. And take a look at the investors involved. There are a whole bunch of hedge funds. Paul Tudor Jones, Alan Howard, third point, millennium. We're all among those participating in this funding.

Starting point is 00:45:40 They are definitely piling into crypto bank investing at this point in time. Absolutely massive round. What's your take? Also, soft bank, big, big investor as well, which is always interesting to see what they are throwing their money at. It looks like FTX is going to be here to stay. Yeah, so what do you think? They're going to take on JP Morgan.

Starting point is 00:45:59 I'm not going to buy JP Morgan. It's not going to happen. Guys, those are the raises. I will eat my sock. Don't promise that, David. It's just a sock. It could be worse. Other people have promised worse things in this industry.

Starting point is 00:46:12 Yes, I recall. David, let's talk about the jobs of the week, man. And the jobs board is hopping this week. We've got a senior solidity engineer in demand from quant finance. We've got a chief investment officer that Yield app needs. We've got a software engineer that Arbitrum is looking for. Also, senior designer from pool together. Man, the talent market is hot, guys.

Starting point is 00:46:33 If you are looking for a job in crypto, now is the time to get on that. Demand is in shortage. Labor supply can kind of set the terms. And they want you. So take a look at that. If the jobs link will include that in the show notes, lots of great companies, lots of great protocols hiring.

Starting point is 00:46:54 There are 31 jobs available on the job board of all different types of labor and skill set. So go check it out if you want to work in crypto. And like Ryan said, and this is what I've been experiencing at ECC. Everyone is talking about how finding and retaining talent is difficult, which means that you have the ball in your court and you have the advantage as the person with talent.

Starting point is 00:47:15 And so get a job. Go to the bankless job board. All right. Let's talk about some news of the week. You know, we've got to start here with Elon Musk. So we mentioned that in the market section. So apparently, did you see the conversation that Elon Musk had with Kathy Wood? I think Jack Dorsey was there too.

Starting point is 00:47:32 Right. Yeah. Was it a Twitter event? Was that the deal? I wasn't there. I'm not sure. It was the B-word conference. I missed it, but I saw some of the headlines.

Starting point is 00:47:41 I think one of the major headlines was Elon actually came out and said, crypto assets that he owns. So outside of his company stock, Tesla and SpaceX, he said he owns just three crypto assets. And those are Bitcoin, no surprise, Dogecoin, no surprise, and Ether. Surprise. I was surprised by that. I was not really surprised. He's tweeted about Ethereum before, but yeah, everyone was what was looking for confirmation that Elon Musk does indeed own Ether. He's never actually stated it before. Now, he did say he has much more Bitcoin than Ether or Doge, which is also probably not a surprise. So this made waves, I guess.

Starting point is 00:48:21 I mean, people like to know what Elon owns and like to ape into those investments. I think they also talked about a number of other things. Bitcoin as a base layer of the monetary system. Elon says it can't be by itself a base layer for the world monetary system, but it could be on a layer two, depending on how it's implemented. They talked about some energy production proof of work sort of thing. I'm going to go catch up on that conversation. Sounds like it was at least interesting.

Starting point is 00:48:51 Any other thoughts here? Yeah, it's always interesting to see what Elon has to say. I'm kind of worried that like Bitcoiners are like hopping right back into like, you know, Elon. Elon's in our. Billionaire worship. We like Elon again because now he's saying good things instead of bad things. And so I think we learned our lesson. You know, he's just a guy.

Starting point is 00:49:10 He's just a guy. He's just a guy figuring this out like everyone else. It is interesting that he owns zero other equity assets other than his own companies, though. That is kind of interesting. I mean, it's a pretty interesting portfolio right there. This is Tesla, SpaceX, Bitcoin, Eith, and Doge. That's what he owns. It's the millennial portfolio.

Starting point is 00:49:28 That's a Zuma portfolio right there. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Let's talk about this. Ethereum is settling $8 trillion in transactions this year. That's trillion with the capital T. I think we may have mentioned this on the last roll-up. What's super interesting to me is Jerome Powell in a congressional hearing.

Starting point is 00:49:50 He said that cryptocurrencies have completely failed as a payment system. I caught that. Completely failed as a crypto system. Yet Ethereum is on track to settle $8 trillion in transactions this year. It's $2.5 trillion so far. But if it just basically continues in the way it's been going, $8 trillion transaction. We must have a different definition of what failed means.

Starting point is 00:50:16 Because $8 trillion in settlement on a global peer-to-peer permissionless network, that is nothing to scoff at, even if you're a central banker like Jerome Powell. What do you make of this? Is this just unaware? Is this intentionally misleading? Is this, you know, ostrich with this head and the sound? Yeah, what is this? Why is Powell saying this?

Starting point is 00:50:39 kind of thing. I bet you $8 trillion that Powell has never made a crypto transaction. Like, it's the only explanation. Everyone in this industry jokes about going to banks and making money transfers. And like all, all funds are just like, please just send us stable coins. If you want to invest in us, send us stable coins. Uh, seed investors, we use stable coins. Like everyone just uses stable coins. It's way easier to use stable. Way better. It's that's the US is just orders of magnitude improvement. This has been a constant theme between you and I, ever since we started bankless. It's like, it's just easier to use crypto. What the hell does completely fail to even mean? Like, no, you're just saying random words, Powell. Like, get out here. Yeah, it's like every time I have to

Starting point is 00:51:20 write a check. I wrote this in the Market Monday this week. I, um, it's just like, why are we writing paper checks? It's 2021. Right. You know, and we're still writing paper checks and we're waiting days for ACH transfers to settle. We're signing them with a pen. We're saying. What? What? I don't even own a pen. The legacy banking system feels like it completely failed. It's failed to innovate for the last 15 years. How long have we had the internet, David? We're still writing with a physical pen on a check.

Starting point is 00:51:53 Pen and paper? What? We have computers now. I don't understand. I don't understand how people can think that the U.S. is the best banking system in the world. This is not even a debate about centralization versus decentralization, which we can have that debate.

Starting point is 00:52:06 It's just a debate about like shitty banking. and like good banking. And the U.S. has shitty banking right now. Sorry, pal. Plus, we'll revisit the subject when we talk about MasterCard later in this weekly roll-up. But we'll, yeah, moving on.

Starting point is 00:52:22 Let's move to happier news. This is cool. Maker-Dow has come full circle. That's the post headline. You know more about this. You're actually with the team this week. What's happening with Maker-Dow? Yeah, so the Maker-Dow foundation

Starting point is 00:52:34 is finally dissolving, and this has been on the roadmap for forever, and Maker has been very much, a move slowly and cautiously kind of vibe. That's their deal. And so the foundation is finally dissolving. The foundation has spun out into what they are calling core groups. And so the Tao is being a Tao, right?

Starting point is 00:52:53 And so people are taking the leadership of different sort of like micro-dows. And this is how sophisticated Maker is. And people really just underappreciate Maker and what it's done. Maker Dow is now a Tao of micro-Dows. And so there's different core groups, which are like the Dow, like little-Dow's, of the overall bigger MakerDAO, and each one is taking on certain responsibilities and roles. Just like how Bankless Dow has guilds, MakerDAO has core groups. And so the Maker Foundation is finally dissolved, so people no longer are employees for the foundation, and they are now

Starting point is 00:53:25 taking the reins for the Dow, and they have to now go to MKR token holders and ask for permission to have funding for their core group. And so that's what's going on. And so the whole the Maker Dow is now going full circle is actually because when MakerDAO was started, it was started with tokens on Ethereum. And then they made the foundation because they thought that they needed to start this thing off as a centralized company. And then they have finally dissolved the centralized company and they are going back to tokens. And so they've gone full circle. Congratulations to MakerDAO.

Starting point is 00:54:01 This was the plan all along. And so shout out to Roon and the leadership at Maker. they had this vision from like 2015 or 2016 when they started MakerDow. And they haven't wavered in this path. And so the MakerDow story, I think, is one of the most underappreciated and undertold stories in all of Ethereum. And I'm going to see if I can figure out how to weave this story together because so many different stakeholders in the maker ecosystem have only their side of the story

Starting point is 00:54:30 of what has happened over the last four or five years of MakerDow because it's a really awesome one. Yeah, I think it's really awesome. And look, a lot of people were skeptical that Rune Christensen and the leadership would actually leave. I mean, I know people called him sort of like maybe a benevolent, but a dictator, right? And like, do dictators ever, you know, leave powerful positions? And here he is doing what he said he would do, the community doing exactly what said it would do. I'm just impressed that Maker kind of set out with a mission six years ago is kind of delivered on that mission, right?

Starting point is 00:55:03 I think dye itself has, you know, there are some things that aren't amazing about it, right? The fact that it's largely collateralized by USDC at this point in time. I have a take on that if you want it, by the way. Okay. So I want that take. But like that aside, this is exactly what they said they were going to create with multi-collateral dye. And they delivered it and they did it at a time. This is one of the first DFI projects I ever use.

Starting point is 00:55:32 And so when I had a magic moment with Defi, when I realized, oh, my God, I can get a collateral-backed loan without going to a bank, filling up paperwork with a few, like, clicks. And even the janky interface they had at the time, it's like mind-blowing to me. I know you kind of got your start in crypto, too, at least down the rabbit hole, actually writing about Maker. This is a very special project. And it's really cool to see them make this progress and completely decentralized and basically keep their commitment to the community. Very cool. Yeah, they have not skipped a beat. They have not missed a step at all. And like you said, before I started writing about Ethereum and Ether, I was actually writing about Maker Dow and MKR. It's because that's kind of what captured my attention to begin with. Going back to how 60% of dye is backed by USDC, I was talking to a few people from the team there. And they completely understand that it's a tradeoff and it's like less than ideal. But the tradeoff is, do you want a stable die and have it be backed by USC? Or do you? do you want an unstable die and have it be backed by like non, non centralized crypto assets?

Starting point is 00:56:37 Basically, it was a tradeoff for stability versus, you know, purity in the collateral. And as a stable coin, you've got to promote stability. You had to pick one. It's a tradeoff. You can't have everything.

Starting point is 00:56:49 I totally understand. This is the legacy they left to, the financial legacy they left. You can kind of see that their quarterly earnings are triple digit percentage growth. So they've produced, 43 million in earnings up to Q1, maybe Q2, 2021. So, you know, pretty impressive financial growth, too. St all around, great protocol, great story.

Starting point is 00:57:15 And a great group of people, too. They're one of my, the Maker-Dow community is like one of my favorite groups of people in this place. Every time I go to a crypto event, as I am right now and Maker-Dow-Sowing event, I go to the Maker-Dow event. It's like the best group of people. Shout out. That's awesome. All right.

Starting point is 00:57:30 This is kind of cool. the Ethereum documentary we mentioned last week was completely funded, 2 million in funding. David, I think you have a story about these guys because you've met them actually at ETHC. What's going on? Yeah, I'm in the documentary. I mean, they filmed me interviewing Vitalik

Starting point is 00:57:48 and IMAIaguchi and a few other people at ECC. And so it's really, really cool to see like full production, like big heavy cameras, boom mics, going around the Ethereum, world. And so I'm really stoked for a high... About time. Yes, it's about damn time. And really excited to see what they put together. The name, the Infinite Garden of the movie is absolutely fantastic. Shout out to Mariano Conti, who's number three of the funders for this movie. Mariano Conti was the lead smart contracts at MakerDAO. And so like I said, amazing community. And he's super excited that

Starting point is 00:58:23 he's the number three funder of this whole entire project. And I'm looking forward to seeing this movie when it comes out. Ryan, I met with the director while here at ECC, and she said she wants to talk to us. Interesting. D.D. I have to discuss that. All right, Masterpiece, what is this? This is in our NFT section. Is this a new NFT platform? Yeah, I don't know if it's new. I actually just met the guy here at ECC. God damn, ETHCC is so hard to say. ETHCC. And he showed me this website. And I thought it was really cool. And so I just kind of wanted to shout it out. It's masterpiece.S.O. And he kind of branded it as like the coin market cap or coin gecko for NFTs. And so if you want to like figure out what NFTs are and like you want to show your friends what NFTs are, Masterpiece.S.O

Starting point is 00:59:09 is a great website to point them towards. It's kind of. So this is an aggregator of NFT platforms, basically. Yeah. It's like a catalog of NFTs. That's awesome. Very cool. All right, let's talk regulation and traditional finance. The first is, well, actually, before we do, let's talk about Bitcoin stuff. Jack Dorsey is launching a new Square division that will create defy. It's defy offerings, apparently. We're not sure the details of this. But he made it very explicit that this is defy on Bitcoin, likely Bitcoin only. So it's interesting because it's Jack Dorsey.

Starting point is 00:59:45 And also Jack Dorsey, of course, not just CEO of Twitter, but also he's still CEO of Square, very influential payment processor, payment platform in the U.S. of course, and he is getting into defy, but doing it on Bitcoin, what's the take here? Yeah, the take here is he's just trying to make Ethereum. And so that was basically, he got blown up on Twitter in the comments by all the Ethereum people. It's like, dude, you're making Ethereum. Just admit it.

Starting point is 01:00:13 Is he, though? Because Ethereum is decentralized, right? Like, it feels like he wants to maybe make a crypto bank like a blockfi, but just call it defy or launch a side chain and call it defy and i thought that's this is what sovereign is doing why is the take here is like why is it so goddamn hard to do defy on bitcoin is why are we doing a theorem in the first place is the answer that question like it's hard to do defy on bitcoin it actually perhaps is impossible so uh jack just give it up man just give it up it's not happening it's not also come on bankless and talk about i want defy to be on bitcoin but it literally is not

Starting point is 01:00:53 of being built on Bitcoin. And that's what we realized. And that's what we realized like six years ago. And that's why we have Ethereum. But so why this insistence then? Is it just I'm Jack Dorsey. I own a lot of Bitcoin. And, okay, that's it.

Starting point is 01:01:08 I mean, that's my very unsophisticated take. I can't find a different explanation that makes sense. But we'll see what Jack comes up with, given the benefit of the doubt, maybe he's got something brewing there that we don't know about to be continued. All right, back to you, regulation. And TradFi MasterC is using Circle, that's USDC, for a settlement pilot.

Starting point is 01:01:30 So this is payment networks like credit card companies. We've already heard Visa doing a lot in this space, starting to use stable coins. Good sign for adoption. Yeah. So this is what I was talking about with Jerome Powell, who said that cryptocurrencies have completely failed as a settlement network. Well, MasterC, which is literally a payments company, is experimenting with USDC for a pilot. And so watch what people are doing, not what,

Starting point is 01:01:53 you know, regulators are saying, like see what's actually being going, what's actually happening in the real world. And in the real world, MasterC and USC are moving closer and closer together. Let's talk about what's actually in USDC and Tether. Some interesting information came out about that. I don't know if you've ever thought about that. But when you own one USDC, you don't actually just own one dollar that's redeemable in a bank. So USDC has had a recent audit. 61% of every dollar in USC is cash and cash equivalence, right? So that is a dollar in a bank account somewhere. 13% is certificates of deposit, 12% is treasuries, 9% commercial paper, 5% corporate bonds, and then just a little bit municipal bonds and U.S. agencies. All in all, a very conservative

Starting point is 01:02:44 backing for USDC. But it's interesting that it's not just straight like dollars in a bank account. there are some highly higher yield assets that are bundled in this thing too. And that's just being financially prudent. Now, USDC releases these audits, I believe now maybe like regularly. I'm not sure if it's monthly. And Jeremy Lair, CEO, talked about actually oricalizing this, David. So like publishing some of this information on chain. So maybe that sort of creates another audit trail for USC.

Starting point is 01:03:19 But it's not just a dollar in a bank account. It is composed of some other assets that you are trusting. Now, what's interesting is we could talk about this in a second. Contrast that to Tether. They have a much more diverse and risky set of assets that are supposedly backing. Allegedly, we don't even know. Allegedly. But this is what you're buying when you are buying a stable coin like USDC.

Starting point is 01:03:46 I find this kind of interesting. Yeah. So there's two take. that I have here. One take is that this is just straight up the circle business model, right? Like very low, pretty low yields on a lot of supply. And so $22 billion, even just a couple basis points of interest that they get behind the scenes with all of their money, it's actually pretty lucrative and also a relatively simple business model. And what was my other take? Oh yeah, my other take, you talked about how Jeremy Aller wants to protocolize the or oricalize

Starting point is 01:04:16 the actual treasury reporting and audits. The rumor I've heard is that he's just trying to really just get ahead of regulations. And he knows that it's coming anyways. And so I'm just going to do it. He's just going to do it himself. And so, yeah, very smart. And also just a really good look for the industry. Good looks for the industry.

Starting point is 01:04:35 But this is a bad look for the industry. I think Tether. I don't know if you've heard Jim Kramer from Mad Money, CNBC host, is grilling Tether and has been, you know, talking smack about Tether for the last few weeks. And it's because he's basically like, we don't know what's inside of tether. This is a tethered general counselor telling Jim Kramer on CNBC that an audit is months away. So like it's still months away. I don't know why this is so difficult unless they have some shady deal.

Starting point is 01:05:07 Fix some stuff. Yeah. Pick some stuff first, right? Like USDC has an audit. This goes back to like we all have choices over what assets we use, what stable coins. we use. I'm not sure why people would would choose tether over usDC in like in like any kind of legitimate case. But tether is still larger than us DC. Do you understand this? Is this just the finance exchange kind of effect? I thought usc would flip in tether like months ago,

Starting point is 01:05:38 sometime this year anyway, but it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. The thing is like tether has such a strong lindy effect that I think it's kind of here to stay. And there has been like probes into to tether that were done by, like, I think the New York Attorney General a while ago, and they come up and they didn't find anything, which, like, kind of ease a lot of people's minds. But, yeah, just overall the lack of options for taking a peek under the hood is decently concerning and also kind of, like, a magnet for regulation of this industry. And what concerns me is that, like, there could be a world where, like, regulation begets regulation. So, like, tether gets, like, you know, regulated. And then that, that just starts the whole process

Starting point is 01:06:17 of even more regulation. So I'm a little bit more. worried about that. Well, maybe we'll skip to this. This has been a off-sided white paper, actually, in Congress congressional hearings this week called Taming Wildcat Stable Coins. Right. And so this is a paper put together from the Yale School of Management. Anyway, the TLDR of this paper from academics is that they want tethers and they want USDCs to actually charter a banking license and to be regulated as banks. And of course, this would put a ton of regulatory infrastructure. This would essentially make the banks,

Starting point is 01:06:56 only banks could be the issuers and owners of stable coins. And this puts a lot of regulatory overhead that's probably not needed on top of stable coins. And anyway, the industry is dealing with this among other regulatory pushes this week. And it's kind of concerning to me on that story. It's just the recent vitriol against stable. coins. Yeah, we'll see what comes out of this. This definitely feels like MMT energy and stateism,

Starting point is 01:07:24 which is definitely antithetical to crypto. So we'll see where this goes. All right. New Jersey Attorney General issues cease and desist order against multi-billion dollar Bitcoin financial service provider. This is BlockFi that they're talking about, cease and desist order. I think the crux of this is New Jersey Attorney General is saying that the BlockFi interest account, might be securities. What? Not awesome. How does that work?

Starting point is 01:07:55 How are they securities? I mean, I don't know. I don't know what their argument is. But here's a Jake Trevince. That's definitely less than ideal that this is happening. The Bureau's action comes amid rising concerns. This is a quote from the action itself. The Bureau's action comes amid rising concerns over the proliferation of decentralized financial

Starting point is 01:08:14 platforms like BlockFi. So New Jersey actually thinks BlockFi is. is defy. And Jake Trevinsky says that's how badly we need to educate our regulators. As a defy bro, that's kind of funny and also terrifying at the same time. It's just like granted when you come into the space, like you just don't know how to use the words correctly. But again, that's why Jake is saying we have to educate our regulators. What is concerning is that like are they going after blockfi because they think they are defy? Because does that mean that defy is in the crosshairs or blockfi is in the crosshairs?

Starting point is 01:08:47 Who's in the crosshairs here? I can't really tell. I don't know either. Do you think they know? Do you think regulators are just... I have no clue. This story definitely needs to get unpacked and evolved. It's going to have to be a wait-and-see type thing. Zach Prince, CEO of BlockFi, thinks they're going to be fine.

Starting point is 01:09:06 They remain optimistic through this, but we will see as that story evolves. He would think that, though, wouldn't you? You'd have to say that if you're Zach Prince, definitely. Let's talk about this. Binance is ditching stock tokens. Finance squeeze. Yeah, these are like synthetic stock tokens that they recently, I think, announced that they were going to start trading on Binance. And this is like the ability to buy a synthetic Apple on Binance.

Starting point is 01:09:32 Who do you have to trust? You have to trust sort of finance in order to do that. They are ditching that entire plan in order to, I think, quell some of the regulator concerns recently. Yeah, this is the third week in a row where the Binance squeeze has been a theme. Binance, they just got squeezed out of one of their products by regulators. And so the Binance Squeeze Titans. David, we're going to talk a bit more about regulatory takes when we get to the subject. But first, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

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Starting point is 01:12:26 Let's start with this one from Jason Choi. Does this feel like 2018 to you? He says some of you weren't around in the 2018 crypto bear market. Here's what it felt like to him. He said everyone was bitter on Twitter. Defi wasn't even a thing. NFT was just. a few guys, bag holding crypto kitties. Just a few discords active. That's it. Many investors in the

Starting point is 01:12:47 space completely abandoned tokens. They pivoted to equity. Small crypto funds shut down left and right. People went back to tech and traditional finance. Media attention completely dried up. Crypto, Twitter traders who LARP's VCs and builders today were just mostly shit posting, had nothing else to do besides that. Even people within crypto stopped producing content. Fundraising, was tough. Investors wouldn't pay a dime for today's tier one projects. On the good side, you had some time to build, but on the bad side, that's all what 2018 felt like. I think he's painting this picture, David, to kind of contrast. Some people are saying we're in a bear market now. And he is painting this picture, I think, to contrast what a real bear market feels like

Starting point is 01:13:34 versus where we are now. I'm curious, you were there in 2018. Like, does this land with you? Is this what a bear market feels like? How did you feel in 2018 versus how are you feeling like now? Yeah. How did I feel in 2018? I was so in 2018, I was still like in my learning process about crypto. I was still like coming to terms with what crypto is and so that was still exciting for me. And that's the difference between people that like, you know, only come for the bull markets versus the people that were born in the bear markets. But yeah, like like a lot of what we know of today was built and like established in 2018, 2019 by the people that stuck around and it doesn't this, and era right now in crypto does not feel like that at all.

Starting point is 01:14:14 There's still a ton of attention. There's still a ton of energy. News cycle events, just like, you know, tweets going into the mainstream. Elon Musk tweeting about crypto still, like, no, this does not feel like 2018 at all. Granted, like, you know, we're still on the, you know, the recent super highs of 60,000 Bitcoin and 4,000, ETH is still, like, relatively recent. And so, like, in theory, if we kept on going down and longer, that's what this would turn into. So maybe it's not the right comparisons.

Starting point is 01:14:43 But yeah, the 2018 bear market was absolutely brutal in terms of a price action. But also, I think really, really rich in terms of the people there. And in his number five tweet, he talked about like only a few people were producing content. Or number four, was it? But like the people that remained in the world of crypto during the bear markets was like the people that you definitely want to hang out with, right? Because other people who are definitely in it to win it over the long term. And I actually still feel like I see that now.

Starting point is 01:15:13 I feel like that energy now. I think the difference right now is that people are coming into crypto, even with these slightly down prices that we've seen, right? And so I think the amount of like the snowball of crypto is rolling and rolling, and it's already hit escape velocity, and more and more people are going to come into this industry, regardless of prices, just because there's so much more things to do here.

Starting point is 01:15:37 And that is a very, like, very different from what we saw in 20, 2018. Totally agree. Totally different feeling right now, even though we're off all-time highs by a decent amount than 2018. 2018, just the level of like sadness. Like crypto was dead at the time. Ethereum was dead. Defi would never work. It was never coming back. It was just this niche thing that blew up with ICOs. No one was talking about it at all. Completely different feeling than where we are now. So yeah, echo that sentiment. The last thing I'll say is that in 2018, we felt like there was, it felt like we were in like a Schroenegers position of like everyone was really, really like excited and bullish and optimistic about the future because we saw that there was these really cool things happening in Ethereum and Defi. Yet the prices were just completely separated from that.

Starting point is 01:16:28 Yeah. And when prices separate from what you see as fundamentals, like you wake up, you wake up every day and you're just like, am I wrong? and you're like, and then you dig in, you're like, no, I can't be wrong. Right. Like, this is the future. I'm absolutely not wrong. You start using this stuff. But it's a, it's a constant assault, I guess.

Starting point is 01:16:48 You don't have assurances about if you're right or not until the markets actually turn around, right? So, like, am I crazy? Am I for thinking that this uniswap thing is absolutely groundbreaking? It's like, am I crazy for this? Why do I, why do I think this is so cool? And why does no one else think this is cool? Why does no one else think this is a big deal? why is known paying attention to this?

Starting point is 01:17:08 And look, if the markets say you're wrong for long enough on a long time horizon, you're wrong. Right. Right? Like, if that goes on for, I don't know, I don't know what the time span is. All of your life? All of your life. You were definitely wrong.

Starting point is 01:17:24 And it is important as an investor to like peel away from wrong decisions and not delude yourself into something that the market is clearly. That's why it was so difficult, completely different feeling. market the market is still validating this but so is mainstream and we don't have the level of of depression and sadness we had in 2018 um maybe it's because of this david want you read this next tweet yeah this tweet uh from khao wang crypto is the first genuinely new asset class since the 17th century let that sink in and that's that's kind of like what i always felt like in 2018 is like it doesn't matter like i'll always like have my insecurities about whether like

Starting point is 01:18:03 this is actually just going to be a niche thing and crypto isn't going to take over and I'm spending all this time in this industry. But wait a second, crypto is a new asset class and it's the first new asset class in like 400 years. Like whatever that is sounds exciting. And so I'm here for it. I'm here for it too. But these could be some headwinds in the short run. This is from Jake Trevensky, who we quoted before when he was talking about the New Jersey, yeah, BlockFi issue. But he said, I don't have much hope you. It is how it looks pretty grim. That's how he starts this tweet.

Starting point is 01:18:40 And for background, we've had Jake Trevensky on the show. He is formerly legal counsel at compound. Actually, he might still be legal counsel. No, he's at a variant fund now. Variant fun now, okay. But he's very plugged into the regulatory landscape talks to regulators, legislators, often just plugged into that world. And for him to say he doesn't have much hope,

Starting point is 01:19:03 is kind of concerning to me. Now, Jake has always been one to basically raise the flag on we need to educate regulators, and we need to educate the world about this. So I think part of this is a message for crypto. Look, we should be worried because our regulators and our government institutions don't actually understand crypto. So I think this is partially him raising the flag and saying, we need to work harder to educate those in power, those in charge. But also, I think it's him reacting to some of the news about stable coins this week, a New Jersey blockfi, like the Binance squeeze, all of these things kind of compounding together to maybe put a vice on the crypto industry and like marginalize it.

Starting point is 01:19:59 I think that's what, I don't think, look, governments can't kill this thing, but they can attempt to marginalize it and squelch it in the short run. What do you take here? It is concerning because Jake has like a vantage point that no one else has. It's one of the best vantage points in the industry. But also, the nature of crypto is to route around problems. And so I believe in our ability to overcome through innovation, any problem that that we see ahead of us. It's just a matter of just like, is this going to be easily solved without any problems? Or is this going to take us a little bit longer and we'll have to problem solve for a few more years first?

Starting point is 01:20:37 That's kind of my take there. People have asked him to expand his thoughts and he says he's writing. So maybe after he publishes something, we'll definitely push that out in the bankless newsletter and maybe have him on the podcast to talk further about what's going on, the regulatory. But that could definitely be some short run headwinds if some regulatory action comes down the spike. In better news, though, Preston Van Loon says there are 100,000 blocks left until London activates on Ethereum Mainnet. This is the next Ethereum hard fork. This is the one that contains EIP 1559, 100,000 blocks left.

Starting point is 01:21:15 David, I'm not sure that I can translate that into time, though. Like, what is 100,000 blocks? Oh, 100,000 blocks is 100,000 blocks. I don't know. It doesn't matter about the time. It's 100,000 blocks away. And this is actually two days ago. Is that how you keep time now?

Starting point is 01:21:28 I'm working on it. Yeah, blocks. Now that I'm in Paris time and then you're in, you're in EST, I'm in PSC. We should just start using block time. Block time. Okay. Yeah. So we're going to do the next week to roll up.

Starting point is 01:21:41 Yeah, in roughly 50,000 blocks or so. 50,000 blocks. Something like 50,000 blocks. There you go. And speaking of the hard fork, David EIP 1559, Tim Beko does some calculations about making ETH a deflationary asset. But why don't you talk about this? Yeah, so there's been some controversy about whether ether it will be deflationary after EIP-159.

Starting point is 01:22:04 And there's a take here where like straight up the fact that we are burning ETH gives it a deflationary element. And then ether becomes actually deflationary when gas burning or ether burning actually supersedes ether issuance. And ether issuance at the moment of EIP-159 will still have proof of work. so there will still be ether issuance, which means for ether to become actually deflationary, as in the actual supply of ether is going down in number after EIP-159, that gas number is 150. And so every day that you see gas at 150 or higher, ether is deflationary. We are burning more than we are issuing. Once we go to proof of stake and once ether becomes ultrasound money, because we don't have to issue

Starting point is 01:22:50 very much ether at all under a proof of stake paradigm, that gas number goes down. to 11 11 and like ether has Ethereum has almost never been below 11 guay ever since like probably the start of 2020 and so ether's definitely going to become deflationary like I can't imagine a world where we don't have like there's less than 11 guay on the main chain and so in proof of stake Q1-ish 2022 ether becomes definitely deflationary I'm more surprised about this first number actually I hadn't like run the math in this way but so this first number says that even before the merge, while we still have like 4.2% issuance on the proof of work chain, if we have gray prices of 150 or above, we are actually turning ETH into a deflationary

Starting point is 01:23:40 asset on the days that we maintain that average. That's pretty crazy to me. I didn't realize that. Yeah. And like there has been times where Ethereum has stayed above 150 gray for for months. And so these are not crazy numbers. All right. Let's go to this take. This is a take from Fatalic. This is from ETHCC. I don't know if there was much buzz about this take, but why don't you read it out, David? This is just one of the slides that he had while he was presenting his talk yesterday. And I thought the slide itself was interesting.

Starting point is 01:24:08 And this was about what his talk was about was non-financial applications of Ethereum. Ethereum is a world computer. It's actually, the vision for Ethereum is not just decentralized finance and money and assets. It's actually a complete reconstruction of the Internet itself. And so that's a whole, like, rabbit hole that. We actually haven't really gone down much of bankless. Maybe we should do that. But the take on the slide is the vision for Ethereum and much of crypto beyond Ethereum

Starting point is 01:24:32 has always been to take decentralization, trust minimization, and mechanism design experimentation far beyond finance. And so one of the examples that Vitalik talked about was like logging in with your Ethereum address. We've talked about that on the bankless podcast plenty of times. All you have to do, like no more email passwords, just sign a message with your ledger. And then you can log into a website, establish your idea. identity there. Identity is another Ethereum use case. The whole money and finance things, that just comes first because that's like the fun part. That's the part where everyone gets rich.

Starting point is 01:25:02 But there's plenty of other technological innovations brought on by the powers of cryptography and Ethereum that have nothing to do with money in finance. And so Vitalik is turning his attention there. And that was kind of the purpose of his talk at ETHC was to call attention to this side of Ethereum that he thinks is getting too little attention these days. Yeah, I think it's interesting. So Vitalis maybe talks like five years ahead of where things are, right? So he first actually used the term Legos, like Money Legos, in 2014, right, before anyone could sort of conceive of it.

Starting point is 01:25:42 So he actually said Ether, the Money Lego. I still have my claim on the Money Legos meme. Oh, I know that's important to you. I want to differentiate that. But like, yeah. And so he was like talking about that in 2014 when no one saw that. And I think now he's talking about stuff that that is kind of like no one sees and it's like five years in the future. I still do very much feel though.

Starting point is 01:26:09 This is kind of a take that I think people like Hasu have and Arthur from Defiance Capital. It's still like digital scarcity, the creation of digital scarcity, like money is going to be one of if not the price. primary use case for this thing that we've created, right? Like, I agree. So like I think that Ethereum will do other things in decentralization and identity. But like even even if you look at ENS names, right? EnS names, well, some might not call that finance. They are an asset, aren't they?

Starting point is 01:26:49 Right? Like you buy it and trade it. They're an NFT. So I don't know. I'm not saying I'm totally I'm like skeptical of this take I just think it might be farther in the future than than people think and still there's like so much left to do with creating a decentralized money system we're still like in the 1800s of that like we still have collateral backed loans now and we're still just getting the lending building money like those TM David Hoffman built out so like yeah it's but it is cool I guess that's all I'll say about that. Yeah, I think we can definitely take the trend that we've seen in Ethereum is that if you build out this cool thing on Ethereum, it's cooler if you can add an asset to it.

Starting point is 01:27:36 And then the community likes it a lot more. And so if it can have an asset, it probably will. It probably will and maybe should. Let's talk about this. Oh, what's this, David? You got a selfie in here. Yeah, this is a selfie. So this is the first ever Maker Dow event that is not led by the foundation.

Starting point is 01:27:53 So this is the DAO throwing a DAO event for MakerDAO. And while they were presenting, I totally hijacked their stage and I ran up on stage and took a selfie with the Dow. Because like I said, Maker Dow is so underappreciated. And I'm actually really excited to see what the Dow can do now that it's out of the umbrella of the foundation. The foundation was really restrictive on like what a lot of the Dow members wanted to do, largely around marketing and promotion. And so now they broke free of the foundation. They took off the chains, took off the shackles. Now they can actually be MKR and maker shills, which there have never been ever.

Starting point is 01:28:31 And that's why people consider Maker to be like boomer finance is because the foundation prevented them from shilling MKR as like a regulations protection like strategy, which probably probably a good strategy. And so now they can be less conservative. They don't have to be as conservative. They can all be maker shills. They can all be major shills. And Maker Dow definitely could use some shilling.

Starting point is 01:28:53 and so this is what I'm doing right now. She'll only make it out. There you go. Make it out. You're part of it. All right, man. What are you excited about this week? Yeah, I'm excited for the podcast that is coming out on Monday.

Starting point is 01:29:03 And I recorded it while I was here at ETHCC. And so that will be in your ears on Monday morning. So definitely tune into that. The podcast is the ETHC experience. If you did not get to experience ECC yourself, you stayed home, couldn't have made it, didn't get a ticket. That was me. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:29:19 And you once you feel like what it was like to be at ETHCCC. you should listen to the podcast. So I interviewed a bunch of different names from the ECC events. Donnie, Cain, Vitalik, I.M.I. Gucci, a number of others. And so like 15-minute clips about what ECC is like for them. And then also a little bit about each project, right? So some really big names, and it was a ton of fun recording at ECC. I had a little studio to myself.

Starting point is 01:29:43 So it's going to be one of the most off the, it's going to be a brand new podcast format because Ryan wasn't there. Ryan wasn't at ECC. and Ryan actually interviewed me at the intro for what it was like for me to be at ECC. So that'll be in your podcast, RSS feed Monday morning. So check that out. And then the other thing I'm excited about, Ryan, is that the bankless podcast has never missed an episode since Genesis. What?

Starting point is 01:30:12 Every single Monday for like over a year and a half now. And then we started doing the state of the nations and we have never missed a state of the nation every single Tuesday. And then we started doing the bankless weekly roll-ups. And we have never missed a bankless weekly roll-up in your inbox every single Friday. And so what I'm excited about is, dude, consistency. This is a bankless shill moment right now. We did it, man. Like, we don't miss. And so people thought it was weird that I literally checked my IMac computer on the plane so I could take it to Paris. Like, dude, this is your first time in Paris and you brought your IMA computer? What the hell? No, got to deliver the bankless podcast. Bad ass, David. David Hoffman.

Starting point is 01:30:51 Absolutely. Look, if you are a content producer, consistency is key. It's like a trust relationship that you set up with everyone who tunes into your material and you have to keep it consistent. Yeah, wow. I didn't realize it's been that long and we've been so consistent, but we really have. Yep. Incredible. And like I definitely feel the energy and the appreciation from the community here at ECC. Like it's hard to walk like 100 feet without somebody saying like, hey man, I love the bankless podcast. And my default response is like, hey man, me too. Dude, that's awesome. We should meet in real life some time to celebrate.

Starting point is 01:31:25 Right. So that's the third thing that I'm excited about. I got three this week is that if we can convince the Infinite Garden people, if they're actually going to include us in the documentary, which I hope they do, I think it would be really cool if the part that they actually, what they actually interviewed us is like when we meet for the first time. Yes. A fun little bit.

Starting point is 01:31:46 Yes. Where should we do it? Yeah, we'd have to meet in the middle. We have to meet in the mutual territory. Colorado? I don't know about the middle. Yeah, Colorado would be nice. I'll do Colorado. Yeah, mutual in Colorado. We'll see that. Let's see. All right. Um, yeah, cool, man. I'm excited about the bed index. It's finally here. So this is exciting on multiple levels, right? So it's exciting because it's kind of the bankless thesis and it's really played out, right?

Starting point is 01:32:08 This thesis of there's going to be crypto money. You should invest in that. Bitcoin ether and defy and you should invest in that. We've had this thesis since like 2019. We've been preaching it. Now there's a product that embodies it. That's the first level. Second level is this is a way to onboard your friends, right? When we started bankless, the mission was really simple. We want to onboard a billion people into Defi, into going bankless. And the first step to going bankless is actually holding some bankless assets, some assets that aren't backed by a central bank,

Starting point is 01:32:39 some assets that you have complete custody over and control over. And now Defi has evolved to the point where you can do that in one click, right? So a really easy product that you could just like talk to your friends about, getting to crypto. If you want exposure, you just like purchase it and buy it. That's really cool. The third thing that's cool is the Dow like created this. So do you remember you and I like thought this would be a good idea? We talked to the index co-op folks about it. And we post on their governance form. This evolved into the bankless Dow kind of taking it over, bringing it across the finish line. And now you've got index co-op and the bankless Dow and they're bringing a product to market.

Starting point is 01:33:17 Awesome, awesome, awesome. Those three things. Plus this. The memes that are going to come out of the bed, get into bed, like you hop into bed, ditch your other assets, and go sleep in bed. I don't even know what the meme potential of bed index is going to be, but I know it's going to be hot. And I'm excited to see that fulfilled in crypto Twitter and other social media. I'm excited for the memes, David. Very excited for the memes.

Starting point is 01:33:43 That's why I'm excited about this week. I hope crypto wife, who has produced some very, very good bankless memes. I hope she makes a bankless bed meme. So maybe we can reward her with some bank tokens if she does that. There you go. Kevin Oahuaki's talk at East D.C. was about coordination because he's all about coordination. But he talked about a mesh network of Dow's all coordinating with each other and making that rising tide.

Starting point is 01:34:07 And when I see bankless Dow and index co-op producing a product together, no centralized companies needed. We don't need any of that. All we just need is discord and Ethereum. And all of a sudden, we can make products. And so I'm really bullish on Dow to Dow collaboration. And having a brand new bed product is fantastic. Yeah, so my man. It's awesome.

Starting point is 01:34:27 All right, David, you ready to get into the meme of the week? Meam of the week. Let's do it. All right, man, this one kind of hit me. What are you looking at here? Yeah, so we're looking at a picture of payment with a big crack in it. And then the crack has a band-aid over it. And the text is, and this is labeling the crack,

Starting point is 01:34:45 the soul-crushing reality of being a young person in this late-stage capitalistic hellscape. And then the Band-Aids got a label and the Band-Aid label is a Dow with the homies, indicating that the Band-Aid's going to help you help you cope with that. But that's what Dow's do. Dows are just like, you know, you and your homies like doing Dow stuff and allows you to like, you know, come into a new world that is separate from our old world, which I think causes a lot of existential angst to young people. And so that's the meme of the week. I think this meme of the week is really good because like I don't think anyone's saying that Dow's in the here and now in their current form, none of us are saying they're going to solve all of the wealth inequality

Starting point is 01:35:22 problems, all of like the political instability, all of the late stage capitalist type problems that the U.S. is facing or the world is facing. No one's saying that. But like they do give a little bit of hope, don't they? And when you're partaking in a community, like a self-sovereign community, so people forget this isn't just a movement about self-sovereign individuals. It is that. Absolutely is that. It's also about self-sovereign communities. And when you're part of a Dow and you're sort of, you know, creating something, collaborating together on a project, that does give you some hope, right? This is a new coordination mechanism that is kind of outside of our existing, I guess, late-stage capitalist world. It's something I think a lot of younger generations are going to

Starting point is 01:36:07 resonate with. And maybe they kind of need, David, right? Like millennials, zoomers, when they look around about the future and like what's going on, where do they find hope? I mean, I feel like crypto is the most hopeful thing. Like that is happening. It's the most hopeful social revolution. It's about building something brand new that is like doesn't have the problems that our existing system has, not tearing it down, but building something new from the ground up. So, man, I didn't expect to get this deep on a meme, dude, but like, that's why this hit me. It's a good, well, sign of a good meme. And shout out to Kevin O'Waki again. I was watching his talk at ECC, like I just said.

Starting point is 01:36:50 And he had this line that also hit me. Ethereum is a shelling point for the hopeful. So if you are hopeful, you find Ethereum. All right. We are going to lead out with the moment of Zen. David, you're going to have to explain this for the podcast listeners. What's happening? Yeah, so this one came out of Aston Coutcher's Twitter account.

Starting point is 01:37:07 And so this is actually going to be easier if you are watching it on the YouTube, but it works on the podcast as well. So you're going to hear three voices. Ashton Kutcher asking his, I think wife, Milakunis, a bunch of questions, because Milakunis is actually getting into the world of NFTs. She has her own NFT platform. And so he's asking her some, he's just making a joke, asking her some random questions about crypto. And then the last question gets answered by somebody different. And I think you'll recognize that person's voice. Hey, babe. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:37:39 What's crypto? It's digital currency. Hey, hey, babe. What's blockchain? Information stored on. So, like, it's, you know, what information is stored on? Hey, babe. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:38:06 What's decentralization? Oh, there's not one person in charge of anything. So it's everybody keeps everybody else in check. So there's not one big, like, unit or entity to uphold everybody to the same code. It's the people holding each other responsible. Hey babe. Yeah. What's Ethereum?

Starting point is 01:38:30 So Ethereum is a general purpose blockchain. So unlike other blockchains like Bitcoin, for example, that are just designed around one application. So the way that Bitcoin is designed around digital money, Ethereum is an open platform that allows people to build their own applications on top. And anything built on top of Ethereum, It's protected, secured, everything is checked by this entire network of thousands of computers around the world that are protecting and checking every transaction on the blockchain. But because it supports the programming language, developers have this unlimited creativity in what kinds of things that they actually create on Ethereum. So you can use Ethereum to make cryptocurrencies or NFTs or many other kinds of things. Yeah, that makes sense.

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