Bankless - ROLLUP: ETH ETF Approved | Crypto Politics | Uniswap Wells Notice | Airdrop Reset?

Starting point is 00:00:03 Bankless Nation. It is the fourth week of May in the year of our Lord, 2024. And this is an absolutely historic week on the Bankless Weekly Roll-up. I think this might be one of the winningest weeks that I've ever seen in Crypto. Yeah. Yeah? I'm trying to think of another week that stands out in the way that this week stands out. And I would definitely say it's the most winning week we've had.

Starting point is 00:00:33 had politically. Maybe the most winning week in America since I've been in crypto. Maybe the most winning week ever. I think it's the most winning week ever because like we're not just talking about the ETH ETF, but we're talking about an entire political 180 about its stance towards the entire industry. And that is showing up like first and foremost in the price of ETH because of the ETH ETF. but this impacts the entire industry. I got to tell you, man, it feels real good. It feels real good. It feels real good.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Two years we've had, two and a half years we've had of all of the politics. Bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Like just pressing down against us in the U.S. government to actually clock in some wins. One thing we should say before we get into this roll up. Okay. So for bank listeners, you guys have an advantage of living in a future world where you actually

Starting point is 00:01:26 know the outcome of the Ethereum ETF approval or denouple. And if it was somehow denied, this is aging so poorly. So the way David and I record weekly roll-ups is we record them the day before. So right now, it's like we should clock in our time. It's Thursday, May 23rd at 1240 ESD. Eastern time. And as of now, we don't know for sure whether the Ethereum ETF will be approved or not. Remember, the deadline is today.

Starting point is 00:01:53 The deadline is Thursday, the 23rd at the time that we're recording. So we don't know us. We're jumping into this. You know, but we don't know. And I think, David, we just got to, for the, let's take this episode, we just got to assume approval and maybe just tell the story of this 180 where it seems like the odds of approval are approaching certainty here. One thing I'll also say is if it is approved, there's another episode already waiting for you. Yeah, one that we've shipped faster than this one. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:02:21 Yeah. And it's probably the episode, hopefully, where we're celebrating the approval of the Ethereum ETF. So go go check out your podcast feed to get that. or on YouTube or wherever you listen. But nonetheless, other things also happened in crypto. So in addition to the ETH-E-E-T-F approval that we are probably going to talk about how the approval swung in our favor at the 11th hour,

Starting point is 00:02:41 there's also the political changing wins in our favor as well. And then also a bunch of airdrops, perhaps on the back of just like being extremely bullish. ETH edition, big, big air drops coming out this week that are being teased by the protocols themselves. Meanwhile, we learn about what was inside, the Uniswap Wells notice. And then also, bankless,

Starting point is 00:03:02 unleashes phase two of our on-chain collectibles. So all of this and more coming up in the weekly roll-up. But first, a message from our friends and sponsors over at Transporter. Transporter is a brand-new consumer bridging app, powered by ChainLink's

Starting point is 00:03:15 C-C-I-P. We did a Twitter space with ChainLink God and Fishy Catfish. Really good. They're so smart. They're so precise in their speech. Really useful. If you want to learn about

Starting point is 00:03:25 how Transporter fits into the Chain Link ecosystem, Definitely go listen to that Twitter space. It's on the bank list, Twitter. You can just scroll down. After you scroll down through all the tweets of like bankless talking about how we're winning so hard. Transporter. If you want to use this bridging app to go through all out all the chains, Arbstrom, Avalanche Base, BNB, any EVVM chain, really.

Starting point is 00:03:44 And then you can bridge all your assets, ETH, Link, UCC, and more. Yeah, so all you have to do is go to transporter. Dot Io and just send it, just like the ETH price this week, I think. Just like the ETH price. We got to start with Bitcoin, though. Let's give the King his do. do. All right, Bitcoin is the number one crypto asset. So, David, let's look at the cracking charts and tell us where we are on the week because Bitcoin had a not a bad week.

Starting point is 00:04:07 A green week. Yeah, start of the week, 65,800. And then it went up 3% this week to where it is now at 68,000. Hit 71,000 at the top, but it has come down since hitting 71. On the backs of the ETH ETF news that it was very likely going to be approved, Bitcoin hit 71,000 came back down to 68,100 where we are now. Anyways, moving on to ETH price, starting the week at the low, low price of $2,950. Silly. Under three, we started this week under 3K?

Starting point is 00:04:39 Under 3,000, yeah. So dumb. Silly. Heath really pushing new lows on the price at the start of this week. Up 28% on the week. Woo! Currently at $3,800, hitting $3,900, above $3,000.

Starting point is 00:04:57 900 this morning. Definitely some some very strong volatility in the ETH price this week. 28%. So Bitcoin up up 3%. Nice drop Bitcoin. ETH up 28% on the week. David, look at the size of this candle. This was, this happened what, May 20th? Was that the big run? Monday, May 20th. Yeah. And we're going to talk later in the episode about the tweet that really started this God candle. And I think we want to get to maybe the size of this God candle in a second. But there's another chart we should look at, which is the good old Ethereum trust. You remember that thing?

Starting point is 00:05:31 Yeah. Things about to go away. Eth E. The Grey Scale Eth E discount was trading at a 24% discount. So you could buy Ether at 24% off because people just didn't want to hold the Grayscale ETHI discount by that much. It is now down. That discount has reduced down to 7%. So actually, they're still like from what? From like negative 24 to negative 7.

Starting point is 00:05:54 So there's still in the Grayscale Eth E trust. there's still a 7% discount at the time of recording. So you can still, as of this moment, buy E. 7% off. As of this moment, but they're going to hear it tomorrow. It's going to be post-approval. Yeah, close right up. We've also just seen some insane volume

Starting point is 00:06:11 in the Grayscale E-T trust. You just like three times more volume on a daily basis than we've seen ever before. Did you get in on some of this, David? Do you get in this in your 401K? Do you have any of those retirement accounts or anything? I don't have a 401k, no. This has been a bleeding goodbye for a very long time.

Starting point is 00:06:30 For sure. And we mentioned it a few times, more than a few times on the roll-up. So hopefully some bankless listeners benefited from this ARB opportunity here. Which there still is. Which there still is. As a recording. And we're just assuming this thing gets approved. Let's continue going with it.

Starting point is 00:06:45 Just reminder, if the Ether ETF does get approved, which the Grayscale will be one of them, the ETH trust gets converted into an ETF. And that premium just zips, it'll poof, gone. And now it's trades that par. Yeah. So let's get back to that God candle. How big was it? I'm going to start with the ETH market cap.

Starting point is 00:07:04 Started the week at $370 billion. It is now $460 billion. So in seven days, Ethereum added $90 billion to its market cap. That is one and one quarter's Solana added to the Ethereum market cap in seven days. on Monday, this Monday, when we got the news that there was a change of the winds in the political establishment about the ETH-ETF approval, Ethereum got its largest candle ever. And I'm not talking about green candle, like candle, red or green, the largest candle ever. Really? Yes. A daily candle, 24-hour candle, of $595. That is the most that the ETH price has ever moved in a daily basis.

Starting point is 00:07:48 I mean, we set this up in our live stream earlier this week on, I think, Monday, where we were talking about this news just came in. But before this, all right? So at the bottom of the candle, ETH was in some pretty negative narrative territory. People were not feeling good about Ethereum this bull cycle. And a lot of people had not priced out the idea that an Ethereum ETF was even possible. So this is the market just suddenly realizing, uh-oh. We're off sides. We're underway.

Starting point is 00:08:17 We got to get back. in. Yeah. I mean, granted, things changed. Like, there was previously...

Starting point is 00:08:23 New information. There was new information. So, like, you can debate about whether that means off-size or not. There's some

Starting point is 00:08:28 Eth Stal Wars out there that says, like, this was always a possibility that the market was totally, like, underserving. Yeah. But, yes,

Starting point is 00:08:36 nonetheless, there's like, and I still actually think that there's quite a bit of, like, off-sidesness in the crypto markets in this present moment.

Starting point is 00:08:42 But this is what, another thing that's nice about this candle is, it's fundamentals. It's very clearly. It's not just like a day of trading or like, you know, some whales buying. This is clearly fundamentals getting priced in.

Starting point is 00:08:52 Totally. Ether price is actually still 28% below all-time highs. And so there's like, right now there's a big conversation and it's like, okay, like, but what will the ETH ETF approval actually do to the ETH price? Will it, will it underperform in terms of its impact versus Bitcoin because there's just not as much demand for the ETH ETF than there was in comparison to Bitcoin? Will it overperform versus Bitcoin because of the price? sensitivity that Ether has and actually as a tech platform like an asset, there's actually more

Starting point is 00:09:23 demand relative to its market cap versus Bitcoin. Right now that that's a conversation that's currently unfolding. Let's talk about that. So all time high was what, what, 4,815 something, 4,800 territory. And I'm looking at the cracking charts here. The last time we hit that was November 2021. Yeah. I had forgotten that that was in 2021. So what was? What was? What was it like in Ethereum at that time? What was it like in crypto at that time? A much different market than the all-time high we might hit now. Certainly, nothing even close to an ETF.

Starting point is 00:09:58 Well, first and foremost, at that moment in time, we had 0% interest rates in November of 2021. That phase of the market was actually dominated by the sole Luna Avax trade. November 2021 was Sol Luna Avax territory. Luna, of course, would then pop just two months later, three months later. That was really the actual, the top of the market. I guess this just feels like a much stronger foundation as we're approaching this new all-time high than we had in November 2021.

Starting point is 00:10:29 So that's an interesting comp for you. Should we talk about the ratio for a minute? Yeah, ratio. Start of the week pretty like pretty piss poor at 0.058, which is a three-year low for the ratio. Yeah. It has now jumped up to 0.055, which is still. low. That's still a low number for the ratio. I'm going to guess here, David, that this is the biggest god candle we've seen in the ratio. Like, maybe in history? I don't know. No, in 2017, the ratio just

Starting point is 00:10:58 moves a lot slower now. In 2017, there are some bigger movements. Like, I actually kind of think, like, it's a good start. 2017, I guess. That was such a long time ago in, you know, like crypto history. But that was when Ethereum was just starting its price discovery is that, wasn't it? Totally. Yeah. Going from 0.045 to 0.05 to 0. 5 is like Ethereum getting out of the basement and is now back onto like level one. But like we still have we still have a lot of room to grow. They're still there. In order to get bullish, like I want to see 0.07.

Starting point is 00:11:31 Do you want to do the thing where you call the bottom the cycle on the ratio and you say it was like over here? It was like last weekish. Yes. That's exactly what I'll do. David just called the bottom. That's easy. Did you just make me call the bottom?

Starting point is 00:11:43 It's such an easy bottom call. I just gave you that part, man. I just know that's a layup for you. you're welcome let's talk about the total price in the crypto market cap where are we yeah 300 billion was added to the crypto markets in the last seven days started the week at 2.45 trillion ending the week at 2.75 trillion quite like i think like 90 billion of that reminder was out of ether but like also many other things are also up like generally the market's up finally even doing its part though you know to taking the lead yeah it was lagging some good um some good um

Starting point is 00:12:17 ETH bullfuel out of you guys. We've got some two takes that we want to highlight here. One from Van Spencer who says the ETH thesis has always been that there is a far lower supply of ETH than the market realizes due to years of burn, ETH in staking and restaking and ETH locked in DFI and NFTs. And that this supply imbalance will manifest when a demand shock hits. A jump in ETH demand will be the cladolus to reflexively push the ecosystem into overdrive. More fees, more staking, less ETH supply, more flows. we haven't really seen like marginal new ETH demand

Starting point is 00:12:50 since we've got it's the old same crusty holders in Wales basically like we have not since the merge since like the term ultrasound money is now like formally cringe but since the invocation

Starting point is 00:13:04 evocation of ultrasound money which was the merge and the burn we have not seen marginal net new demand for ETH in a material way we haven't seen a bull market ETH hasn't seen a bull market like that People don't know what the asset is or what it can do. And this is part of the institutional story.

Starting point is 00:13:19 I think that should this Ethereum ETF get approved, that will be told by BlackRock and Faneck and all of the large asset pushers. Yeah. And this is Uncle. Just shot out, Uncle, you're in this weekly role of twice. Eath has never seen Price Discovery with both proof of stake in EIP-1559. So that's something to look forward to. Very bullish, uncharted territory. This whole section is going to age absolutely, like, poorly if the Ethereum ETF is not approved, David.

Starting point is 00:13:48 So we're just going on this. We'll like to, we get to temporarily live in the moment of this implementation. I'm happy right now. Listen, I don't know what your state is, but I'm very happy right now. So is David. Let's go check out the layer two's over on layer two B. This section brought to you by Mantle, which is an L2 that we enjoy. David, are we at all-time highs in terms of total value locked in layer two's?

Starting point is 00:14:10 I think at least tied for it. I haven't seen it higher than this personally. We are a sliver below $45 billion in Layer 2's. I mean, as soon as ETH goes up by like half a percent, that'll hit $45 billion. So, congrats to Layer 2 ecosystem, zooming in on $50 billion locked in Layer 2's. Activity across Layer 2 is coming in at a healthy 9.5x scaling factor.

Starting point is 00:14:33 That means nine and a half Ethereums are being used as true raw, organic, grass-fed transactions per second on Layer 2's. base, of course, taking up the lion's share, but followed actually very closely by Arbitrum. So base and Arbitrum, neck and neck, coming in at 25 transactions per second and not really at capacity. Those are 25 transactions per second

Starting point is 00:14:53 of just what's going on. Big a price appreciation for all of crypto for the Ethereum community and outside of it as well, or Ethereum assets, ecosystem assets, and outside of it as well. David, we're going to get into how the Ethereum ETF turnabout happened in the next section.

Starting point is 00:15:08 But before we do, Give folks a taste. Let's go check in on the Bitcoin ETF, right? Yeah, because there's actually some positive news here too. Okay, tell me about it. It's actually pretty nice. So we have been in a doldrums

Starting point is 00:15:20 in the last like two months or so because of the equilibrium between outflows and inflows and the Bitcoin ETFs. We are actually at 10 days in a row of positive flows into the Bitcoin ETFs. So what's the day? The 23rd is the day today.

Starting point is 00:15:35 Since the 13th, every single day that the markets have been active, has seen net inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs. We are not yet at all-time highs in the total assets under management of all the Bitcoin ETFs, but we are really, really close. So not only are we getting the ETH ETF,

Starting point is 00:15:50 hell yeah, but the Bitcoin ETF is resuming to have up-only inflows. So good stuff, good stuff. Coming up next, how the hell did the odds of an ETH ETF go from zero to 100, almost 100,

Starting point is 00:16:03 inside of two days, a historic story in crypto and just an absolutely legendary story, that I think will go into the halls of crypto history. Also, the story that started with Elizabeth Warren's anti-crypto army ends with a full Democratic Party 180 and how crypto is now being fought over by both U.S. political parties, starting with Sab 121.

Starting point is 00:16:22 We'll pick up where we left off last week, the FIT 21 bill that was voted on by the House this week and how it's all heralding a new era for crypto's position in politics and therefore the world. But first, before we get to these stories, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors who all had a role in helping develop these stories of the crypto pivot in Capitol Hill. So let's go hear from them right now, starting with Cracken. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning

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Starting point is 00:18:59 It was like near zero. This is what analysts thought last week. And now it is near certainty. I think in order to tell this story, we have to pick up where we left off. So where did we leave off with political momentum in D.C.? I think this is an important part of the story. Yeah. So covering this on the weekly roll of last week, we were talking about SAB 121, which was a very

Starting point is 00:19:19 toxic SEC rule towards crypto that basically is considered a backdoor ban because it really just made custody in crypto assets. extremely capital-efficient, just treated crypto, not like any other asset, basically just invalidating the feasibility for banks and credit companies, yeah. For trad companies to custody crypto. This bill to repeal Sab 121, which was an SEC rule, this bill to repeal it was voted on in the Senate. And we got a final vote of 68 to 30 in order to repeal the vote. Now, Biden, the Biden administration has said that if the vote went this way, that there was indeed a vote to repeal that Biden would then go and veto it.

Starting point is 00:20:01 But the surprising thing is how many Democrats in the Senate defected from Biden's stated, from party lines saying that he's going to veto the bill. Well, the Democrats, a good chunk of them, more than what the Democrats should be comfortable with, just didn't care about Biden's statement and voted to repeal it nonetheless. So that bill, SAB-121 is going to Biden's desk. He has to either sign it, which will repeal it, or veto it. by Monday. But the point is, is that the Democrats in the Democratic Party have expressed alignment with the crypto industry and disagreement with Biden's stance towards crypto. That's where we left off.

Starting point is 00:20:39 So we talked about this in last week's roll-up, but analysts really hadn't brought this political analysis into the odds of an Ethereum ETF approval. And why not? It's because it was basically a week before the deadline for approval, and they're not seeing anything. They're not seeing anything from the SEC. They're not seeing updated filings. So basically the odds of approval felt like on Friday, last Friday were like zero percent. But David, had it at 7 percent. Yes, but David, you and I talked about the potential in the roll-up last week. Can we do that?

Starting point is 00:21:07 Can we play the clip? This was all you, bro. This is one of the best Ryan, Sean Adam calls I have ever heard. And I think you had to be a little bit, like, muted about it. But I think you actually kind of like really wanted to believe this more than you were willing to let on. Let's go pull out this clip from last week's weekly roll-up. Ryan laid out this exact scenario.

Starting point is 00:21:27 Let me give you two tail outcomes that could happen. Okay, that the tail, tail, I guess, positive and a tail negative, all right? So the tail event on the good side would be approval, all right? And this is not very likely to happen. I definitely give it under like 5% odds. But there is a chance here, David, and here's what I think it is. If, and this is a big if, Biden and the Democrats wake up, it's 11th hour, they realize that their party is getting pain.

Starting point is 00:21:54 as the anti-crypto party. And this becomes a November. Which wins them zero votes. Wins them zero votes. They only lose votes. They only lose money. And Trump steps in and tries to make this a wedge issue. If they want to counteract that, they might actually put some political pressure on the SEC

Starting point is 00:22:11 and Gensler to just throw a bone to crypto. Just to prove the ETF. Right. Okay? Just like call off Gensler. Hey, you can let this one slide. If you don't, it'll hurt us come November. is not worth David.

Starting point is 00:22:25 That is exactly what I think happened. To a tea. Well done, sir. Oh, man. Well, you know what. Yeah. Sometimes you get it right. Sometimes you nail it.

Starting point is 00:22:37 But, you know, it's just kind of the political tea leaves, I guess. So here's the tweet that really sent this candle that we were talking about in the market section earlier while this happened on Monday. This is now this week. This is Monday of this week. Okay. Now, we're fast forward to Monday of this week. It was that at 320?

Starting point is 00:22:52 So it was the afternoon? 320 Eastern. End of the day Monday. Okay. So what are we looking at here? The tweet. Eric Balachunis, who's one of the two ETF commentators out of Bloomberg, they're just ETF experts, have risen to fame since the incoming Bitcoin ETF.

Starting point is 00:23:06 He goes, update. James Safer and I are increasing our odds of a spot ether ETF approval up to 75%, up from 25%, hearing chatter this afternoon that the SEC could be doing a 180 on this increasingly political issue. So now everyone is crambling, like us, everyone else, assumed they'd be denied. See Nate's tweets below for probably order of events, but again, we're capping at 75% until we see more. For example, filing updates. And so I have a notification turned on for Eric for exactly, for tweets like this. And we were in a meeting. We had like our podcast like scheduling meeting or something. And I was reading this tweet and I looked at it.

Starting point is 00:23:45 And I read it twice. And I'm like, this is a prank. That's amazing. This is a prank. And I read it three times. Yeah. I saw you, I saw you in that meeting. I saw it in the one corner of Zoom. I saw it like a big smile like on your face suddenly. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:58 I think I just said like guys everyone stop. And I think we just stopped the meeting. And then we told our podcast seems like we have to go live right now. And that's exactly what we did. It's so crazy. I know they were saying 25%, but they're actually saying basically approaching zero. They were saying that dispel all, you know, opium.

Starting point is 00:24:18 We're going into the next week. It's 11th hour. There's no document updates. It's just not going to happen, right? Right. And so we got that good tail event that actually happened. And so here it is, Ether ETF filing process sees abrupt progress. So suddenly, everybody's updating their paperwork.

Starting point is 00:24:35 At the end of Eric Ballotrana's tweet, he says, we are capping our odds at 75% until we hear more. For example, something that we would need to see in order to have a higher than 75% is filing updates. The next thing that happened, filing updates That was like later in the week, right? That was like Tuesday and Wednesday

Starting point is 00:24:55 all of these filing updates pointing in. So what happened behind the scenes apparently is the SEC had a change of heart. Who knows why? Who knows who knows who called Gary Gensler? But all of a sudden, the SEC is phoning up the issuers of Ethereum ETS, Black Rock, Fidelity, Bitwise, Vanek, Galaxy, R21.

Starting point is 00:25:16 And they said, okay, we're giving you guys comments. we guys need you guys to update your 19 B4s, which is basically an ETF filing, yep, by like tomorrow Tuesday at 1030 a.m. Yeah. Or something like this. And like why they needed them to update their filing is because they needed everyone to remove this staking element out of the ETFs. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:37 So now this is now the final form of the 19B4s, the ETF filings from all these companies, is a what is seemingly being an about to be approved ETHETF without staking. Absolutely. amazing. And one thing I'll say. So I'll give another prediction because we haven't seen the approval actually happened. But I'm betting, and I said this last week, I'm betting, Gensler comes out and it's like, this has always been the plan. He's like, of course we did this the last week. We just need the document starting Monday. People were saying like they're just being really quiet about the ETHs. Yeah. Because they don't want the same shenanigans that happened last time.

Starting point is 00:26:13 Yeah. That's what he's going to say. I was protecting investors. We didn't want the same thing to happened so we had to wait until Monday to start um we didn't want the coin telegraph intern market manipulating it whatever i whatever gensler says at least he's going to approve it okay and if if you don't believe us that there's some political pressure i mean look at this letter this is what i call uh political pressure in the side of a document yeah bipartisan group house of lawmakers from from congress so this is led by majority whip tom emmer and also some democrats um that is basically to address to Gary Gensler and the SEC saying, you guys should approve the ETF.

Starting point is 00:26:52 That was just this morning and Thursday. Yep. This was sent this morning, Thursday morning, the day of the ETF approval. Interestingly, it says the letter is urging the SET to approve spot ether ETFs and other digital assets because it offers investors crypto access in regulated, transparent, and safe formats. Highlighting other digital assets.

Starting point is 00:27:13 So not just Ether, they're saying like, hey, like, be warmer to crypto. Yeah. If it's possible for Bitcoin and Ethereum to cross the gauntlet towards a decentralized network, then it should totally be possible for other assets to do that as well. And those should, in the fullness of time,

Starting point is 00:27:28 have ETFs as well. This is a trad media commentator, I think from like Fox Business or something. This is his take. If the SEC does approve the ETH spot ETF, it will be one of the biggest regulatory 180s in recent SEC history

Starting point is 00:27:44 and proof that the crypto-craft is a legitimate voting block securities lawyers tell me that's what he said i think that's exactly what it is and trad media is reporting it as such too on the flip side of the debate uh nat gerassi uh he is still in the side of the camp where actually politics really didn't have that big of a deal here uh he put out he put out the theory that the cc was always going to wait until the last minute to engage with exchanges and issuers um and so this is this was a theory beforehand this remains to be a theory for some people um so it's where it's where you're

Starting point is 00:28:17 noting that not everyone is convinced by the political theory. I'm definitely convinced. It was definitely political. There's plenty of data points to suggest that it was highly political. We should note, just because the Ethereum ETF is approved doesn't mean you can immediately buy it like next day, right? And this happened with Bitcoin. Although with Bitcoin is approved and there's just like a few days before these

Starting point is 00:28:37 ETFs came to market. With Ethereum, it could be longer. So James Safer is saying it could be weeks to months before we see S1 approvals and thus an ETH ETF. So there's still another box to check here, still some more paperwork to file, which is these S1 approvals. So even if Gensler and SEC say, yep, you can have an Ethereum ETF doesn't mean we go to market immediately. So that'll be another piece of the story. And this is different from how the Bitcoin ETF went to market.

Starting point is 00:29:02 The Bitcoin ETF got approved and then was trading the next day. Yeah. Yeah. So, Eric, or James is saying it could be like two to six weeks before we actually get alive Ethereum ETF. Does that matter? No. Yeah, I don't think it matters. It does not matter. It does not matter for the narrative.

Starting point is 00:29:19 I mean, because it does so much. I mean, we'll put out in an Ethereum EDF specific episode talking about the aftermath of this, but just clarifying that Ether is not a security does so much to just unblock institution, investment, involvement in not only Ethereum ecosystem, but all of crypto. It's actually one of the biggest events that has ever happened,

Starting point is 00:29:40 I think, in this industry. And it also gives people two to six more weeks or, like, front run, like, you know, Black Rock and all these other people. It allows the market to consider how incredibly off-sides it is. Chase it up beyond all-time highs. By the way, there's a side thing that happened. We're paying attention to this.

Starting point is 00:29:58 So controversial blockchain firm, Prometheum, launches the long-awaited Ethereum custody. They did this on Monday as well. So this is Prometheum. People have called this like a government plant or something because it seems ultra weird. It's this SEC-sanctioned exchange that keeps telling everyone they can custody ETH and ETHer is a security in the bounds of their exchange.

Starting point is 00:30:21 It's such a bizarre story. They claim to be the only compliant custodian of Eith because they have a license from the SEC to custody Eith, which is a security according to them. By the way, Dave, it's not just us with a tinfoil hat on this. This seems like a SEC or government plant of some type. There's actually Congress is looking into it. They find it weird as well. But what I found particularly funny was the timing of this.

Starting point is 00:30:47 So this happened Monday. And the CEO's name, this is the CEO, Aaron Kaplan. He was wheeled in front of Congress before just basically saying, yeah, it's very easy to come in and register for exchanges. Just look at what we're doing. We did it. Right. And so very interesting that this launch of Ethereum custody service for Prometheum just so happened to happen this week, right? A week.

Starting point is 00:31:10 I think that Kaplan and Prometheum were expecting the SEC to deny the Ethereum ETF. And wouldn't that be perfect? Because that's probably what the SEC told them. Like, yeah, we're going to deny the ETHETF and then you guys are going to be good to go. Yeah, so here's why I think this is funny. This is a service that no one's wants, that no one's going to use. It was brought to market. So Gensler has a pet example for Congress to show people that have come in and registered

Starting point is 00:31:33 and kind of like done it the law abiding the right way. And now Gensler is going to completely throw this company under the bus and abandoning. and abandon them by approving the Ethereum ETF. So, chef's kiss. It's actually hilarious how this all turned out. Again, so I'm not speculation. Gary Gensler, just like leaving his sock puppet out to dry. Just connect the dots, man.

Starting point is 00:31:53 Just connect the dots here. And this is a plus one to the fact that this was political and not a plan of the SEC to always approve it in the last moment because this was also a part of their plan if you believe the conspiracy, which I totally do. Yeah. All right, that's approval. That's not the only big thing that,

Starting point is 00:32:10 we expect to happen this week. Here's something we have concrete in our world, in our universe, in our timeline, David, we have concrete proof for a major crypto legislative event. The House passed the Fit 21 bill. What is this? What are we looking at in this tweet? Fit 21, otherwise known as the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, was voted on by the House and approved by the House. Pretty overwhelmingly, 279 yeas to 136 nays, including 71 Democrats who voted yay versus 133 Democrats who voted nay. Of course, 208 Republicans voted yay, three Republicans voted nay. Like 71 Democrats to 33, 133 who voted no.

Starting point is 00:32:52 Like that any amount of fracturing in the Democratic Party with the Donald Trump versus Biden election being so narrow, so razor thin, any amount of defection is untenable. for Biden. And so this is the thing that the crypto industry is celebrating right now is basically what we are seeing is a divided Democratic Party and an in-line Republican Party that's pro-Crypto. And so any amount of division on the Democratic Party, what we are seeing is that is polling the whole rest of the Democratic Party and saying, like, do you guys really want to be anti-crypto? Is that really the hill you're going to die on? This was another acid test. So we had Sab 121 last week, right? And now we have this, which is basically are you pro-cryptor or you're anti-crypto? And 71 Democrats in the House said they wanted to be

Starting point is 00:33:40 on the side of pro-crypto, which is incredible. I think even analysts who are plugged into this, like their hopes and dreams were around 50 or so. And we got 71. So this is like the biggest marker I've seen of the tide changing in D.C. And the wind's blowing in crypto's favor. David, we should just talk about the high level of what the Fit 21 Act actually is. So what is this thing. Okay, it is a bill that is being proposed by Chairman Patrick McHenry, which we had on the podcast and he explained it just directly to us. So that podcast is in your podcast player. But just as a quick summary, there's a few key areas and provisions here. It delineates for the crypto industry when the SEC or the CFTC has jurisdiction, so clarity. It offers consumer protections

Starting point is 00:34:25 around transparency and disclosures for promoters and endorsers. It prohibits agencies from preventing from using crypto, it asks the Treasury to study stablecoins. And it also, I think very importantly, gives crypto startups a path to become a commodity while also not violating securities laws in the process. There's this like trap that the Gensler SEC administration has, which is we really want a lot of our protocols in the fullness of vision of all of these protocols that are air dropping tokens. We want them to become as commodity like as Bitcoin. A path. But it becomes decentralized, right? But being a security, registering as a security, totally nukes the ability for those teams to distribute tokens to the public because it's a security. So it's a self-terminating path that Gary Gensler is like, there's totally clarity, just come in and register, but it completely nukes the whole vision of these things.

Starting point is 00:35:14 Be like prometheum. Yeah. Be like promethium. So it gives crypto startups the path to legitimately become a commodity. It's the biggest pro-crypto legislation that we've ever seen Congress contemplate, I would say. It's not perfect, though. not ideal parts to it. Right. So this is Archival from Electric Capital saying one of the bad parts is the SEC has to review applications and respond in 90 days, right? So there's still some

Starting point is 00:35:39 agency gatekeeping. And if the SEC determines an asset operates without a controlling entity, the asset is a commodity and the CFTC has jurisdiction, that's good, but it's still leaving the SEC as a determiner of this. And so there's some, you know, agency bias that could be at play. And so I think for people that are skeptical of the SEC, like us, of course, this is not ideal. But still, having clear rules is definitely a big step forward. And a lot of this might get dealt with in the Senate. There's going to be a different type of a bill. There's going to be an opportunity for a lot of revisions.

Starting point is 00:36:12 So we'll talk about that a little bit later. But the big news here is the political change in D.C. And that is even affecting the White House. What are we looking at here, David? This is a statement of administration policy out of the Biden administration, who says the administration imposes the passes of this bill, which would affect the regulatory structure for digital assets in the United States, but nonetheless, would not veto it if it came across his desk, which is the important thing.

Starting point is 00:36:38 I think it's safe to say that's the most pro-crypto statement ever coming out of the White House, at least in the Biden tenure. So interesting, David, Nancy Pelosi was also in favor of this. This is a statement from Nancy Pelosi. People are joking that like, well, Nancy Pelosi, the greatest trader on planet Earth. She already front of us. If she is pro this, she's probably already bought our bags and she's going to continue to, like, be pro-crypto. Big Pelosi.eath vibes here.

Starting point is 00:37:03 She's probably got some Eith bags coming to this. Fit 21, she said, is a first step to establish a regulatory framework for digital assets. And it must be improving by working with the Senate and the administration. So she's pro-crypto. There was tons of anti-crypto sentiment. We'll say that as well. It's from the usual suspects. Okay.

Starting point is 00:37:19 So let's play this clip because it's too good, not to play. Oh, God. This is so cringe. Brad Sherman here. But the long-term objective of the crypto billionaire bros is to create a new currency, and they've named it well. Cryptocurrency literally means hidden money. Cryptocurrency literally means hidden money, David.

Starting point is 00:37:43 Do you think he made that up? I don't know his writer. What is he even talking about? I don't know what this guy's talking about. You can kind of see what he's saying. And cryptography can help the privacy. But like, there's no way he actually yet. No, he just read, he just read something.

Starting point is 00:37:59 This tweet is absolutely legendary as well. This might be go down in history. It's definitely the most ratioed tweet I've ever seen. The most hated tweet maybe on the internet, certainly in crypto. What are we looking at? So this is FSC Dems Twitter account, United States House Committee on Financial Services. And it's asking the question, who benefits from the passage of the Fit 21 Purpose Act? green checkmark in front of wealthy crypto firms that have chosen not to register with the SEC

Starting point is 00:38:25 or otherwise comply with his securities laws. And then who stands to lose, Red X, ordinary investors trying to build wealth, which is a really hot take. Like Brian said, there are 91 likes on this tweet, which is not large. There are 1,100 comments on this tweet. And I'll go ahead and read some of them aloud because they're all pretty hilarious. An NFT, PFP, Anon says, as a perfectly ordinary person who is trying to build wealth, y'all can't be more in the wrong here. It blows my mind that I'll have to vote red this election.

Starting point is 00:38:58 You and only you will be responsible for losing the White House. Chris Berniske, he replies to this tweet as well and says, oh, gaslighting ordinary investors again, huh? Eric Voorhees, who also responds to the same tweet, says, The only investors that have built wealth substantially above inflation over the last decade have been crypto investors. Meanwhile, the dollar decays into oblivion. And then Ryan Shun Adams, my co-host here, he says,

Starting point is 00:39:21 you guys still trying to win elections or nah? You can just like scroll down on this tweet. It's like, it's worth it. It's pretty funny. It's basically a who's who in crypto. You have like laser-eyed maxis dunking on this tweet. You have soul bros dunking on this tweet. You have the Ethereum community dunking on this tweet.

Starting point is 00:39:38 It's just a great snapshot of just like everyone in crypto. Everyone's perspective too. Like I think the anti-crypto army accidentally unified all of crypto and I've never seen crypto so unified as over these policy issues. It's a really, really cool time. Of course, our friend Gary Gensler, was dead set against the Fit 21 Act. He published a statement here the morning that the debate for in the vote for Fit 21 was going. He says, fit would create new regulatory gaps and undermine decades of precedent regarding the oversight of investment contracts. Again, with this line, David, putting investors in capital markets at a measurable risk.

Starting point is 00:40:16 That's what would happen if it was approved. So Gensler against it. But Gensler doesn't get his way. Okay? So Congress voted approval. And let's talk about what this means. I think firstly, this is a major political win for crypto. It just signifies that we're getting better.

Starting point is 00:40:31 We're leveling up on politics. Remember two years ago it seemed like the only person really making gains in D.C. was Sam Bankman-Fried, right? How terrible that was. this is a Ryan Selkis tweet about that. SBF almost destroyed us in D.C. by acting alone. It took a large, loud, open, multiplayer, loosely coordinated grassroots, deep-pocketed band of misfits to brute force this result, a past house bill.

Starting point is 00:40:59 Congrats, crypto. You're now a major American political force. I really feel like that's true. It was so many of us acting. It was like bankless. Selkis from Masari. It was like, you know, crypto lobbyists. It was all of that.

Starting point is 00:41:11 It was politicians. It was like a group effort, okay? Right. And tip of the hat to specifically crypto lawyers, who I think are just some of the most Chad people that I know in this industry. They're just great people. Yeah, totally agree. I think one caveat of all of this is because, again, go back to the fit bill isn't perfect.

Starting point is 00:41:32 Okay. And the way Selkis frames this, which I think is right, is we made political progress. Political progress is not equal to policy progress. Okay? So the political progress we made is now crypto is on the register of every politician in D.C. They know that we are a faction that votes, a faction that funds parties, a faction that shows up politically in the U.S. We've never had that before.

Starting point is 00:41:56 A faction of the Democrats fear. Exactly. But we still need to make some progress in the policy. And the Fit 21 bill isn't perfect. But there's opportunity for that. So, like, one, I think we'll get better at crafting policy and, like, pushing that forward and educating lawmakers. but the fit 21 bill goes to Senate next and it probably won't be approved in Senate. So I'm hearing.

Starting point is 00:42:16 And should we be sad about that? I thought we wanted the fit 21 bill. Not really. Like I am personally not sad about this because it requires some revisions, honestly. So like because this is a political win, not a policy win. The fit 21 bill policy wise, not the greatest grade. That's actually not why we're celebrating. We're celebrating because it was a political win shown by the amount of defecting Democrats in the House.

Starting point is 00:42:38 Yeah. And now it has an opportunity. to be revised, basically. So the Senate, what they'll have to do, and they haven't done this yet, is a Senate champion has to pick it up and create a companion bill for this. And right now, like, no one has stepped up to lead the charge. So hopefully that happens. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. So this is not like the SAB-121, where I went to the House and there's a timeline where the Senate has to vote for it. Okay? It's just in the Senate's queue. They can sit on this forever, or they can come up with a companion bill that has some, like, more crypto-favorable policy

Starting point is 00:43:09 refinements and I'm hopeful they do that. Zuming all the way out, we started the 2023 year talking about this idea of choke point 2.0. And this was during just like the absolute depth of the oppression of the crypto industry by the establishment, by the banking sector, by the Biden administration, the democratic establishment. Choke point 2.0 was this effort to debank crypto and basically invalidate it as an industry by suppressing it through the banking means. And so this is really when the fight against Gary Gensler was really starting to heat up. This was when during the Silicon Valley banking crisis,

Starting point is 00:43:45 many of the very crypto-friendly banks that banked many of these startups and paid the payrolls of many crypto-startops was being targeted by the Department of the Treasury and FinC. FDIC as well. FDIC, yeah, exactly. And so a main leader, a main player in the coordination of Chokepoint 2.0 is FDIC chair Marty Grunberg, who is actually resigning for completely unrelated

Starting point is 00:44:09 reasons for the political reasons that we've talked about. It just happens so coincidentally to happen this week. But one of the main players of our chokepoint 2.0 is resigning, and that is the head of FDIC. There's some other players here who are worth noting. Gary Gensler, of course, main story, main character here, Elizabeth Warren, another main character here. And while Marty Grumberg, he's formally off of the board.

Starting point is 00:44:33 That chess piece is being removed. Gary Gensler just got nerfed this week. Elizabeth Warren just got nerved this week. And so there are, like, there's a huge weakening in the whole entire concept of chokepoint 2.0. So, like, I think if there's ever a week where choke point 2.0 formally died, it was this week. Oh, the anti-crypto army is in full retreat for sure. And this is like more, more of that.

Starting point is 00:44:55 It should note with Marty is he was actually forced to resign because there was like some scandals and workplace harassment, right? Like a toxic culture, all of these things. So unrelated to crypto. It's still worth celebrating. We'll take the dub. We'll take that. He should be out of office either way.

Starting point is 00:45:12 Yeah. All right. Well, so let's summarize all this. And I think Mike Novagrads actually did a fantastic job of summarizing this on CNBC. Let's just play the clip. And I think the Democratic regime woke up and saying this is crazy, right? They're more crypto owners in America than there are dog owners, right? We have 85 million people that own crypto, and a lot of them are single issue voters.

Starting point is 00:45:32 And the Democrats looked like they were the party against dogs. So you're speculating that a. phone call was made from the White House to Gary Gensler's office and Gary Gensler, who is, for the most part, as you know, been relatively opposed to these instruments. In fact, he was opposed to the Bitcoin ETF until the court told him otherwise. You think he's going to do it, quote, unquote, voluntarily or maybe pseudo voluntarily, if in fact the president's telling him otherwise? What I am sensing is a, I am sensing a widespread shift amongst Democrats that don't want to let crypto be a big election issue, right? The crypto super PACs have raised over $150 million,

Starting point is 00:46:05 dollars and they've targeted Sherrod Brown and John Tester, you know, elections that matter matter dearly to Democrats in swing states, in vulnerable Senate seats. Crypto should be bipartisan. And quite frankly, for our industry to do well, it needs to be bipartisan. And it has been really Elizabeth Warren and a small group of people that is kind of I think I think he's exactly right, David. That is exactly what happened. Maybe just a final, put a summary on this historic week.

Starting point is 00:46:35 that we've had in this political wind shift. You've got a short story that you want to tell. So tell your short story, David. I do have a short story. So this goes all the way back to March 29th, 2020. Does that date ringing a bell for you for any reason, Ryan? No, not really. What happened that date?

Starting point is 00:46:50 That date was the day that Elizabeth Warren tweeted out her infamous graphic of Elizabeth Warren is building a anti-crypto army. And this triggered just an insane uproar in the crypto industry. Just this picture alone, it's just like Elizabeth Warren, like, you know, visionary looking to the distance trying to save America through this. Stoic leader, building an anti-crypto army. And we were all, like, I think, very confused in the crypto industry. Like, who is this message for?

Starting point is 00:47:16 Yeah. It's like, her base of Massachusetts just, like, clapping is like, well done, Elizabeth. Go build that anti-crypto armor. It's like, that's what we want. We don't care about jobs or the economy or wealth and equality. Like, who, like, we were all asking, who is the marginal anti-crypto voter out there? And, like, what is she benefiting from this? Yes.

Starting point is 00:47:34 Anyway, zooming forward to May 22nd today. So two years later, one year later, Justin, Donald Trump's campaign says he will build a Bitcoin and Crypto Army to defeat Joe Biden in the presidential election. Followed up by a news report out of Bitcoin magazine says Joe Biden's campaign is asking for donations, saying cryptocurrency executives are backing Donald Trump and outraising them, rushing $800,000 checks at Gliteman. see events. This is the same day that Trump started accepting Bitcoin and crypto for campaign donations, followed by this next part of the story, which I thought was pretty interesting. And I don't think too many people saw this analysis going around on crypto. This is Sean Tuffy, who I think pays attention to the political establishment. He says, I mean, I'm more critical of crypto than most, but this is basically how any lobbying effort works. The issue is, and I'll put my hands up

Starting point is 00:48:29 and say, I'm guilty of this in the past, that the anti-crypto faction thought that the whole thing, being crypto would just disappear. So they had no plan B for the eventual possibility that maybe the crypto army doesn't disappear. So the calculus behind Elizabeth Warren and the Biden administration anti-crypto army was that crypto was just going to die. And then they would be able to take credit for like, yeah, we like we stamped out those like crypto bros.

Starting point is 00:48:57 Ha ha ha. And like you can't, you kind of can't blame their naivity because every single bear market, like people post articles like. Bitcoin just died. Bitcoin is dead. And so they, I think they just did that, but like a political version. Yeah, they were like, now's our time. FTCS.

Starting point is 00:49:12 Now's our time to like take this free real estate of claiming victory over this like crypto army by building an anti-crypto army. Meanwhile, it turns out the crypto army did not go away. In fact, we just got stronger and we got rallied as a result of this. And then today, this morning, Cynthia Lummis tweets out, Senator Cynthia Lummis tweets out, we are building a pro-crypto army in Congress after we are. all forced the Democratic Party to do a 180 and give us what we want. So now, as a conclusion of all

Starting point is 00:49:40 of this drama for the last like year and a half after choke point 2.0, the incoming election, Biden versus Trump, Gary Gensler and the SEC, we now have two political parties, Democrats and Republicans, both fighting over the crypto vote. So everyone, just give yourself a pat on the back. Because that was a very hard two years. And we did not deserve it, but we're coming out. winning on the other side. I think, you know, part of us did deserve it. But you got to Elizabeth Warren. I think we didn't deserve, we didn't deserve the oppression. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And we didn't deserve to be treated like how the Democrats have been treating us. You got a hand to Elizabeth Warren, though. I think what she accidentally created was a pro-crypto army through this

Starting point is 00:50:21 resistance. Again, never seen crypto so unified. David, we got more to talk about what's next. Coming up next. Now with all this bullishness, did this reopen the window for large protocol airdrops because there are not one, not two, but three A-tier companies that are all teasing their irdrop for next week and maybe the week beyond. There's also an update in the Uniswap versus SEC case. And also did Nigeria just kidnap a crypto executive from Binance? We're going to talk to you about all of this and more. But first, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. New projects are coming online to the Mantle layer two every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of layer two

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Starting point is 00:53:52 All right. Yeah, that's the one. The blimp literally says AirDrop. on it. It's not a joke. Also, ZK Sync, there has been rumors going around that ZKSink is aiming for an air drop in early June, that there's a token generation event. They're going to mint a token this week. And then the airdrop will occur 30 days after token generation event. And that's that's a big one. ZK. ZK. ZK. ZK. ZK. ZK. ZK. Sink has been around since I've been, I've been around in crypto. There are, the DKCCC was actually the first time I ever use ZK technology to pay for Gitcoin donations back in 2019. Very cool. And then layer zero tease their V2 coming in May 28th.

Starting point is 00:54:29 I mean, layer zero has been doing the whole anti-civil campaign, so that's actually not really a surprise. But they are just being much more explicit about V2. You can only imagine that V2 includes a token. So happy airdrop hunting. I think all three of these could be close to billion dollar air drops, like unicorn air drops. You mean billion dollars give in to users?

Starting point is 00:54:48 I think so. I'm not going to call it, but like the fully diluted evaluation of all of these, I'm guessing is going to be above $5 billion for, each one of these. Yeah. They feel pretty safe. So that means. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:58 Whether, whether they each one can give $1 billion away to users, I think that's a good, like, high watermark to like aim for. I hope so. They're big. They're going to be big. They're broadly distributed. David, what's the crypto punk news?

Starting point is 00:55:11 Oh my God. This is the one, this is the one bearish thing that happened this week. Really? So crypto punts, yeah, a crypto punk project from Yuga Labs announced super punk world, a 500 piece collection. More NFTs. they're like crypto punk-esque, but they're slightly 3D.

Starting point is 00:55:28 They don't want a crypto-punk-esque to me. Yeah, that was kind of the feedback from like the crypto punks. The joke was that like, crypto punks just, in order for cryptopunks to be bullish, you just have to leave them alone. Just like don't touch them.

Starting point is 00:55:40 Yeah. And Yuga Lobs touch them. It's like Bitcoin. Explaining like how these like little NFTs look on the visually is kind of hard. Kind of flat 2D creatures. But with a butt though, if you notice, like they added,

Starting point is 00:55:53 the one part of they added death too is the butt. Oh yeah. And the butt in the nose. It's trendy. People hated these. They're ugly. I don't want to collect them.

Starting point is 00:56:03 They were building these things for the crypto punk community and the crypto punk is like, thanks, I hate it. We don't want this. Just leave our punks along. Stop touching the punks. But didn't they say that? Isn't that part of the story? These were so rejected by public commentators that one of the members, the co-founders of Yuga Labs, had to put out this tweet.

Starting point is 00:56:22 I'm just going to read their last paragraph says, What about punks? Yuga will no longer touch punks. They will just be decentralized and preserved on the blockchain. The only thing that we intend to do is support a few museums and institutions in their request to acquire a punk and help educate their audience about them. So I think Yuga's Labs is like, yes, all right, guys, we're not going to touch punks anymore. In an effort to add value, they diminished value, I guess. So good lesson learned there.

Starting point is 00:56:46 David, tell me about the Uniswap Wells notice because we found out some details. There's always some speculation as to what was in. in the nastygram from the SEC, what it was that Uniswap did to offend the sensibilities of the good old SEC. We found out what that is, right? What are they charging Uniswap with?

Starting point is 00:57:05 So there were three things that we were speculating about when we heard about the Wells Notice for Uniswap, that Uniswap is itself an unregistered exchange. The wallet itself is a broker, so is the website. And then the UniToken is an unregistered security. Those are the three things that we thought the SEC we're going to talk about.

Starting point is 00:57:25 Two of those things were correct. Okay. One of them was incorrect. It turns out they are not going after the UniToken. They are instead, interestingly, going after the LP token and saying that the LP contract is a security.

Starting point is 00:57:39 How does that feel? Unitoken untouched, but if you are a liquidity provider in Uniswap, you deposit like ETH and USC into Uniswap, you're a market maker, you get an LP token back in return. That's the security. This feels even worse.

Starting point is 00:57:53 It makes even more, less sense. It makes less sense, but it also feels even worse because I was kind of wondering, like, why is SEC suing all these companies for the exact same things? And, you know, like, what it looks like they're doing is for some of the same things, but they're trying to create more precedent surface area for winning now against LP positions. Right. Right. If you call that a security, you basically, like, clamp down, shut down, like, a major faction of Defi. Right. And also, like, maybe the LP contract. The SEC is like, well, that's an investment contract. But where are in the UNSOP protocol are they promising a return?

Starting point is 00:58:29 Like, LPs actually lose money. Yeah, that's right. That's true. David, like, what is going on here? Does Gary Gensler just like losing? Because he has been having a big, like, terrible year. He's losing in Congress, losing the support of his own party, certainly going to lose some of these court cases.

Starting point is 00:58:48 This is Hayden Adams. What does he say in the fight back here? He says, we believe the SEC should. embrace open source technology that makes markets cheaper, faster, more safe. The SEC's reckless approach to crypto has not protected consumers and cause immeasurable harm in the United States, individuals, businesses, and the state itself. We should lean on internet innovation, not stifle it. We are proud of our work. We have nothing to hide. We're ready to fight for Uniswap and Defying Court, and we're ready to win. Uniswop Labs also had a response to the LP token

Starting point is 00:59:13 specifically. They said the LP token is used as a bookkeeping device to keep track of the asset the user provided to the smart contract and any fees earned. on the user's liquidity. In other words, the LP token are issued not for investment purposes, but instead as an accounting tool, and they are therefore not securities, literally just explaining how the Uniswap contracts work to the SEC. This is also down. Something that's notable about this, Ryan, is that if you map out some of the major tokens

Starting point is 00:59:41 in the Ethereum ecosystem versus ETH this week, all of the tokens are up versus the dollar and they're down versus ETH, which should be no surprise because Ether is getting the ETH. And so Ethereum Layer 2 tokens, optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon had pretty strong weeks this week, like 10 to 20% price performance. But down versus ETH. Uniswap, Unitoken is the only token I could find that actually held its value versus ETH. It is flat on the week versus ETH, which means it's up like 30%. It pumped just as hard as ETH. It pumped it just as hard as ETH.

Starting point is 01:00:14 And I have a take about this. What's your take? Because the SEC is going after Uniswap and also we thought the Uni token, we are seeing a shift in the wind about the SEC's stance towards crypto at least a little bit with the ETH-E-T-F. We're seeing a shift in the winds towards the Democratic establishment

Starting point is 01:00:29 towards crypto. I think we are seeing the regulatory boot of the SEC getting priced out of the unit doesn't matter anymore. It's like, we don't care about the SEC's impact on crypto. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:00:42 Yeah, I think that's a great take and I think that's exactly what's happening and I think that is even bigger than the inflows. That's why this is a, in some ways, a more momentous week. In some ways, not because Bitcoin was the first Bitcoin ETF. But in some ways, it's even more momentous than the Bitcoin ETF because it sets precedent

Starting point is 01:01:00 for everything not Bitcoin, the entire token economy, now has some space to breathe. Now there's some oxygen in the room in the United States. And I totally agree. Uniswap price. I totally agree. You're making me more bullish. This is so bullish. It's like, yes, yes, eat the asset had a huge dub this week.

Starting point is 01:01:18 Yeah. But everything else, crypto, got a. a huge job this week. If any other token ever wanted an ETF, this needed to have happened. This week needed to have happened. Wow. Wow. All right. Well, one more thing I want to mention because he said the crypto punk thing was the only bad news on the week. But there was actually some more bad news because here's a story. Binance executive denied bail in Nigeria amid a mid-35 million dollar money laundering trial. So a justice in the federal court of Nigeria refused a grant to bail out some of the executives that were held in custody. So there's two executives

Starting point is 01:01:55 from Binance held in custody. We've talked a little bit about this, but the story has just gotten super wild. It actually looks like David, they're kidnapping crypto people. Okay? I mean, I know that sounds Alex Jonesy, but like they have, Nigeria has a failing currency. The currency's not doing well. They're trying to Operation chokepoint, Binance and other exchanges in Nigeria. and they're actually picking up mid-level executives, arresting them, throwing them into jail, and not releasing them on bail. That's what's going on over in Nigeria.

Starting point is 01:02:30 So this is the new Binance CEO, not CZ, so somebody named Richard Tang that I think crypto industry needs to get to know. He says this, he writes a whole blog post about it. This was published earlier in the month, but to invite a company's mid-level employees for collaborative policy meetings, this is what Nigeria did. It's just like, come on, Binance, let's come talk. Only to detain them.

Starting point is 01:02:50 That's what they did. They detained them, but putting them in jail, they're under arrest, has set a dangerous new precedent for all companies worldwide. This is what happens when your government abandons rule of law and starts to go hardcore capital control anti-crypto. And I think it's like a warning shot because look at this. The top 10 overall apps in Nigeria. This is really, really cool.

Starting point is 01:03:15 These are the top 10 trending apps in Nigeria right now. Do you want to read some of these? Coming in, number one, Phantom, a crypto wallet, the Solana wallet. Number two, telegram messengers, number three, and number four, two different VPNs. Number five, Ton wallet for the Telegram blockchain. Number six, Soulflare, a Solana wallet, seven, Twitter, and then nine, by bit, and ten, another VPN. So basically, we have Solana wallets, VPNs, Telegram Messenger, and a telegram wallet. And so I think the story here is people are trying to get access to blockchain stuff.

Starting point is 01:03:46 It's all anti-Solana. So congrats to the Solana ecosystem. It's all anti-authoritarian tech, basically. It's all anti-authoritarian tech. Look at the trend here. And this is what happens in the late stages of capital control. Our best to the finance executive, certainly. David, something else that is relatively historic, I would say, is...

Starting point is 01:04:07 Probably the most historic thing that happened this week. Good week to do it. So Bankless just went on chain. So we did a first season of podcast collectibles. Some people collected those. We stopped that at some time early last year because gas fees were too high. We knew we wanted to pivot to layer two. We knew to evolve the strategy.

Starting point is 01:04:26 Yeah, and we just launched that. So we are launching podcast, bankless podcast collectibles on the Zora chain in some partnership with Zora as well. And so this is our phase two. And in phase two, you can, with a couple of clicks, mint the entire archive of episodes. And the gas prices on Zora just costs like cents. Nothing. You know, they're nothing. Mints are super cheap, too.

Starting point is 01:04:49 I think it's 0-000-000-700-7-7-7 or something. 0-0-0-7-7. For per-Eth per episode, Eth per episode. So it's like a couple dollars, you know, like your two or three dollars. And moving forward, we are minting every single episode. So this roll-up, the roll-up you're listening to,

Starting point is 01:05:06 there'll be a button that you can go click. If you want to collect this on chain, I don't know what we're going to do with it. At first, it's a collectible. It could evolve into other things, but it's your bankless on-chain footprint. It's really cool. I went and I collected this episode, David.

Starting point is 01:05:18 This is our episode with Patrick McKenry, the senator, who just talked about Fit21. We have 33 mentors of said episode. Shoutout Kenny.eath, who was my COVID walking buddy. Oh, is he our top mentor here? Yeah, well, he owns three of the episodes of these episodes. Ah, a wise collector then. So that is going to happen. Every episode from here on out, we probably won't mention it very often, but it'll always be there for you in the show notes.

Starting point is 01:05:44 David, alas, Monster Ray is we got to talk to. about is a Farcaster raised $150 million on a $1 billion valuation. Of course, Farcaster is an Ethereum-based social-fi type of app or, you know, I don't know if you'd call it SocialFi, but it's like a Twitter clone client. We've done episodes with Dan Ramirez on Farcaster. I would call it meaningfully differentiated from crypto. Yeah. What do they call it?

Starting point is 01:06:13 Minimum viable decentralization for a social app. Yep. Very cool, though. Absolutely Monster is. This is one of the most successful apps in crypto that have nothing to do with speculation, which is also... But you can also speculate on it. You can. Looks like that's what some VCs are doing here as well. David, let's end this historic week with a meme of the week. You selected this one, didn't you? Yeah. I did this. Yeah. So we all remember the Elizabeth Warren. I'm... Roosevelt Warren is leading a crypto army, an anti-crypto army. Same graphic, but instead of that, it just says, oh, fuck. Thanks. There you go, guys.

Starting point is 01:06:52 We'll have to end it there. Of course, risks and disclaimers, none of this has been financial advice. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This time, we've got an Ethereum ETF. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. Please, God, approve the Ethereum ETF.

Starting point is 01:07:08 Oh, my God. This will be a great collectible if it doesn't get approved. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot. They said it wasn't possible for ETF to be approved. Despite it and Democrats wake up, it's 11th hour. They might actually put some political pressure on the SEC and Gensler to just throw it on the crypto. Just approve the ETF.

Starting point is 01:08:21 Okay? I hope you're for sure. Yeah, pass whatever you're smoking. Looked out my window There

Bankless - ROLLUP: ETH ETF Approved | Crypto Politics | Uniswap Wells Notice | Airdrop Reset?

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