Bankless - ROLLUP: ETH Price Target | ETF Launch Date | Celebcoin Drama | Major New L2s

Starting point is 00:00:03 Bankless Station, it is the last week of May. And what a May it has been, David. We are one week off the Ethereum ETF. So I know we're going to talk about that. And we got a lot more in store. But you know what? You were scheduled to be leaving today, I believe. No, I would have been at consensus.

Starting point is 00:00:22 Consensus is happening in Austin right now. I would have been there on like Monday or Tuesday. Tell us about the rib. What happened? Breaking to us. Astute listeners would notice that I'm not a consensus. I'm at my apartment in New York. So, okay, the fight with Nick Carter was going to be on today,

Starting point is 00:00:38 Thursday night, May 30th. Instead, I broke a rib, so I will not be fighting. Yikes. Different things happened. Which rib? Which rib? Here's the x-ray. Rib number eight, yeah.

Starting point is 00:00:52 Did you feel the need to post this x-ray just so that haters couldn't say you were trying to dodge the fight with Nick Carter? 100%. 100%. That's why I have. There was no way I was just going to be able to get away with a tweet saying, oh, I broke a rib. Like, I did to post an x-ray. I know, I know.

Starting point is 00:01:09 So this was your ninth rib, fully fractured. Oh, ninth rib. Excuse me. Yeah. How are you feeling? So, okay, it broke Monday of last week, so coming up on like 10 or 8, 10 or 11 days ago. And then the next five days, I broke it on Monday. The next five days that just got worse and worse and worse.

Starting point is 00:01:26 I got x-rays on Thursday. I was like, okay, this is, this pain is now very real and not going away. Yeah. And then X-rays come back and it's fully broken. And then on Saturday it was like peak pain where it's like getting out of bed was just like a two-minute-long process. Like sneezing sends like shivers down my spine. We're on the men though. So it was like that was last Saturday.

Starting point is 00:01:48 So I've got like four days of like feeling better since then. With a with a rib fracture or rib break, you just have to ride it up. There's nothing you can do. There's like you can't get cast. Like your ribs still have to flex because that's how you breathe. So like you basically just. can't do anything extra. So like walking is fine, but bending over, not fine. Like doing anything, like, how about laughing? Even laying down, laughing, no. There was, there was a time I was,

Starting point is 00:02:12 like, scrolling through, like, Instagram reels just, like, mindlessly and just, like, chuckling at some of the stuff. And I just had to stop because it was, like, funny stuff was, like, too painful. Dude, I'm sorry. I know this was disappointing because I had, I had seen the amount of work that you put in for the last two months. And that amount of work, by the way, is why I bet on you, David. People don't know. Earlier that week, I took out a bet with Kyle Simani from Multi-Coyne that David was going to win. So I know you put a lot of time into this because I saw it.

Starting point is 00:02:42 And I saw you show up to podcast recordings like battered, battered and bruised. So I'm sorry this happened. Yeah, same for Nick, too. I'm sure he was disappointed. Nick put in a ton of work. Yeah, he was going through a whole camp. Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 00:02:55 So we never know? I don't know. I, we are working on things. We are figuring out. where like the first ever Nick Carter versus David Hoffman fight will be. So it's not canceled. It's just...

Starting point is 00:03:07 Not canceled. Postponed. Merely postponed. To an unknown date. But yeah, we both intend to do this thing. All right. Very exciting. Well, let us know on the details around that.

Starting point is 00:03:18 David, that's the fight. We got to talk about the fight Ethereum one last week. We are one week out from the Ethereum ETF approval. We're talking about when we can buy an ETHETF. Some more paperwork has to get filed. Will that take weeks? Will that take months? Also, I have a question for you, man.

Starting point is 00:03:33 Why isn't the price moving? It's a really good question. It's a really good question. I hope you have answers. Why hasn't the price moved? In the world of politics, Trump has been doubling down even harder on crypto and Biden finally coming around a request for help came out of the Biden administration as it relates to crypto.

Starting point is 00:03:52 So crypto nonetheless, stacking of political wins no matter what side of the aisle you're on. And then Caitlin Jenner releases Jenner coin on Solana, followed by another of other celeb coin releases. What the hell's going on over there? Are these scams? Are they good or bad for crypto? What are people's takes about them? And then we also have a big fat layer two update section.

Starting point is 00:04:12 We got a based roll-up framework that just launched. EnS building its own layer two. The base chain is increasing its capacity. Lots of great layer two updates as well. Before we get in, want to shout out our friends over at Transporter, which is a bridging app that we enjoy a lot. It's based on chain link CCIP technology, which is some. really cool tech. What can folks do with Transportor right now, David? I can just bridge all their

Starting point is 00:04:36 assets across all the chains, Arbitrum, any EVM chain, really, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB, and then they're working on just adding more chains and more assets, of course. And so chain link CCIP, there's a bunch of different ways to build a bridge. CCHIP is built with security first, and you'll be able to, and Transporters like the first, like, consumer app that's built around the chain link infrastructure, which is a theme that I think we're seeing in crypto these days, is apps building infrastructure, infrastructure building apps. Finally, we're getting some apps these days. So check it out at transporter.io to just send it.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Just send it. Just send your assets. Explore the world of layer two. That is the new frontier for sure. All right, give us the new frontier of prices on the week, David. Let's start with our good old friend, the orange coin, Bitcoin. What is the price on the week for Bitcoin in U.S. dollar terms, David? Bitcoin, starting the week at 68,000.

Starting point is 00:05:31 $3,000 up 1%, basically flat, call it flat, $68,000 and a half thousand dollars is where we are ending the week with Bitcoin. Ether started the week at $3,800, down 1% to $3,760, $80 on the screen, down 1%. Can we time out here? Down 1%. Down 1% from last Thursday. From the time of... From the time we were recording, the roll-up last week. We didn't know whether the Ethereum ETF was approved.

Starting point is 00:05:59 There was speculation. Correct. And then it was approved. We are 1% up from... No, we're 1% down. 1% down? We're 1% down. That's even more insulting. We got an Ethan...

Starting point is 00:06:11 We got a confirmed ETH-EF approval and we are 1% down from that moment. I mean, granted, we had a 25% increase. And so, like, a lot of that... We had a 25% increase that we were celebrating. Yeah. Well, like, last week, that was on the speculation that we might get an Ethereum ETF. And that was Monday.

Starting point is 00:06:30 We called that the God candle. That happened the Monday, like last Monday, basically, not this Monday, but the previous Monday. And now after approval, we've been basically like flat. Did we even break 4K? No, we did not break 4K. We didn't break 4K. We didn't break 4K.

Starting point is 00:06:46 What is wrong with these charts? I don't know, dude. They're the wrong charts. All right. Well, you know what? We're not going to dwell on that too much right now because I know we have an Ethereum ETF update a bit later in the episode. And we got to talk about price.

Starting point is 00:06:59 We got to talk about when it's getting priced in, if it's going to get priced in. What is going on here? But how about the ETH Bitcoin ratio? What's that looking like? 0.055 flat on the week. Nothing moving there. And then, of course, total crypto market cap coming in at $2.69 trillion. Still hovering below 3.2.7.

Starting point is 00:07:18 Still below cycle all time highs. We're still below cycle all time highs. Let's do an Ethereum ETF update. All right. So where we left things last week, we were very optimistic that would be approved. I'm glad that that held up in the roll-up, David. I'm glad we got it approved because that would have been quite an inaccurate roll-up if we didn't. What has happened since that time?

Starting point is 00:07:40 So we got the approval on Thursday at what, like 5.30, something like that. We've got lots of bankless episodes about that approval. What happened this week on the course to actually getting these products out to market? Nothing actually too much. BlackRock has filed their S-1, which is the second of two. steps that comes with an ETF actually being launched. The 194B is getting approved

Starting point is 00:08:05 is like 99% of the battle and then the final 1% is just the S1 is getting approved. So BlackRock has amended their S1 registration. Interestingly, they have also ceded their own ETF with I think $10 million. So BlackRock actually bought $10 million of ETH last week to cede their own ETF. The BlackRock ticker will be ETHA,

Starting point is 00:08:27 ETHA. And so James Safer just commenting on this activity saying this is almost certainly the activity that we were looking for on the S-1s. Again, once the 19-4Bs or whatever got approved by the ETF, it's basically a shared bet with this small little like 1% bump, which is the S-1s. But then James Safer comes in and says this is almost certainly the engagement we were looking for on the S-1s following the 19B4 approvals. Issurers and the SEC are working towards bot Ethereum ETF launches. So, If last week we had, with the 19B4 approval, we were at 99% chance. We're moving towards like 99.9% chance. Basically, we're getting there. Okay. And how long will it take? Here's a tweet from Nate G. Who asked the question, when will the SEC approve spot-Eith registration statements?

Starting point is 00:09:15 Nobody knows for sure, but my expectation would be next few weeks. So sometime this summer. He also says two to three months max. The heavy lifting is already been done. Yeah. Yeah. So it's happening this summer, right? We're going to get the Ethereum ETFs trading sometime in the next couple of weeks. And hopefully, like, it won't take that long. Has the SEC commented at all about this? What have they said? What is Gary Gensler said about this? Notably little. When we had the Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:09:46 ETF approvals, you actually got to see the votes for the ETF, who of the SEC chairs voted yes, who voted no. This part was actually hidden for some weird, like, bureaucratic reason. There's like a vote, it was like a decision by delegation or whatever. And then the conspiracy, of course, is that, like,

Starting point is 00:10:02 they were just called up by the Biden administration and told to approve it. And so they didn't want to have the voting process because they didn't want that part, like, disclosed. And so overall, like, the new really has been kind of just incremental because all the news happened last week. And then now it's been basically like trad finance media like CNBC and like fast money and all these like traddors like getting caught up on this getting caught up and like getting people's takes,

Starting point is 00:10:27 which we're going to cover people's takes when they were like asked to present like what is the Ethereum. So the SEC is just saying nothing and that is so different from the Ethereum or from the Bitcoin ETF. Because they were dragged kicking and screaming. So a spokesperson for the SEC said the agency won't be commented. beyond the approval order. So don't expect anything. They'll never mention it. It's just an unmentable product that they just approved, I guess. Never mind how we are now a political tool from the whims of the president instead of a biased or unbiased neutral like market regulator.

Starting point is 00:10:57 Hey, that's why they can't comment. At least it's politically in our favor this time. I mean, I'm, I guess I'm okay with that. That's the game. It sounds like we all have to play. So here's the big question, though. Let's get back to the ETH price. So we are flat on the week, basically, even 1% down, as insulting as that is. The big question is, is this going to be a price driver? What will the inflows look like? We had James Safert on the podcast last week, and I think he and Eric Balchunas, who are the Bloomberg analysts behind ETFs, think that the flows will actually be pretty small,

Starting point is 00:11:30 at least relative to Bitcoin. They're the more conservative ones, yeah. I'd say more conservative trending towards, I wouldn't, maybe don't call this bearish, but they think 10 to 20% of Bitcoin's net inflows. So that's their take. That's the baseline. I'm going to show you. I would call them as tampering expectations.

Starting point is 00:11:47 Yeah. I would say their takes are. I want to get into maybe some more less conservative predictions, maybe some more bullish predictions about inflows. Is that okay with you? Oh, yeah. You want to get some more liberal predictions? I do.

Starting point is 00:11:58 Yeah. Let's do it. Because I think we deserve it after like a 1% down on the week. So here's one case study for you. I read this in the gray scale report this week. So, you know, Bloomberg projects 10. to 20% of Bitcoin net inflows. But if you look at ETP products, so ETP products are what ETFs are outside of the U.S.

Starting point is 00:12:19 So if you look at, you know, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden for a benchmark, the flows DTP ETP products and the AUMs have been a total of 25 to 30% of Bitcoin. All right? We're not talking. So if one mixed ETF in abroad has a dollar in it, 70% go to Bitcoin and 30 cents go to ETH. that kind of thing. So if you look at kind of like AUM and flows and that sort of thing, it's, it's not 10 to 20 percent. It's more along the lines of 25 to 30 percent. So my question of Bloomberg, or the more of the bull case is like, why only 10 to 20 percent? We already have these ETP products

Starting point is 00:12:58 outside of the U.S. and they're getting 25 to 30 percent. So that's like some bullish fodder for you. Here's another take from an analyst QCP. And the analysis here is just like, what if, what if Ethereum pulls a Bitcoin, pulls what a Bitcoin just did. So it surprises people with demand? Well, no, just like in terms of price, not demand. Oh, okay. So ignoring spot, just ignoring, like, let's talk about price. So QCP capital, their expectation is a price of eth increasing 60% in the coming

Starting point is 00:13:29 weeks post the Ethereum ETF. And that would take Ethereum above all time highs, which it should be right now, to 6K. And Bitcoin rose. Bitcoin rose about 66% in the kind of like the time after the approval. So Ethereum could rise 60%. That would take us to 6K. That seems like a very simple analysis. You recall Bitcoin went from about 44K to 73K in the two months following the approval.

Starting point is 00:13:57 If Ethereum just did the same thing, we'd already be at 6K. All right? Okay. So, I mean, that still feels conservative, doesn't it? It still feels conservative. Here's another. Yes. There's another take. Both Bitcoin and ETH at like a little bit over their previous all-time high still feel conservative for just a general crypto market. Okay. Here's another take. Consider, and this is quantifying, how much ETH is locked away. It's in supply. There's less ETH on centralized exchanges than there is Bitcoin right now. So this is...

Starting point is 00:14:30 Consider how much more sensitive ETH price movements are to mark the marginal dollar. Yes, they should be. Okay. So in terms of ETH supply, Grayscale research believes that around 17% can be categorized as idle or relatively illiquid. 70%. It means 83% is like locked. It's not liquid. All right. Where is it? It's staked eath. Look this. All this steaked eith. All this ETH, 32.6 million there. All this ETH in smart contracts. Dormant ETH. That's ETH that hasn't been touched in like five years. ETH and ETH. Ethan ETPs. Ethan protocol. Like you add all of that up, all of that locked away, illiquid, eth, not on centralized exchanges. And you get a huge portion of supply that's kind of like likely not to move, not to be touched.

Starting point is 00:15:15 So you only have 17% of supply that is liquid and tradable. That's got to have an effect, right? I mean, that's been the narrative. There's always been the narrative. It's like there's just very low supply of eth on centralized exchanges and just really able to be bought. Like not many people are willing to give up their eth. I know it's the narrative.

Starting point is 00:15:34 And I'm also saying it's, it's in the numbers. Yeah. But the numbers aren't reflecting in ETHPrice, David. The narrative is reflective of the numbers. Like the people who I know who like chant this chant are like Van Spencer. It's an informed narrative.

Starting point is 00:15:47 It's an informed narrative. Yeah. This was a great report put out by Michael from the D5 report. And he says that the drivers, the main questions to ask if you're trying to compare Bitcoin and Ethereum are this. Number one, what percent of Bitcoin ETF holders might read? be balanced to ether. Remember we talked about this with Matt last week? There's some percentage that just want a diversified portfolio. And most traditional investors aren't complete Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:16:17 maximus. And they want to buy more of the crypto market. And so they're just going to take a portion of their Bitcoin or their crypto allocation and balance it across maybe 3070, maybe 50, 50, who knows. And so that's the number one source of inflows. And that makes sense because we know how bad like the ETH Bitcoin ratio has been doing ever since the Bitcoin ETF was approved. And then it also bounced back marginally from 0.045 to 0.55 once it was approved. And so that ratio probably has still legs in it because there's like $60 billion in Bitcoin ETFs and zero billion dollars in ETH ETFs. Yeah. And I think there will be some amount of investors who just go to a 50-50 allocation, just 50 on Bitcoin, 50 on ether. There's also a percentage of investors

Starting point is 00:17:03 who might outright opt for ether instead of Bitcoin. And that's going to be a factor. There's some amount out there. It's greater than zero anyway. Who will just directly buy ether. And maybe it's because they were on the sideline and they missed the Bitcoin ETF. So they're like, okay, we missed that one, saw how big it was, didn't anticipate it.

Starting point is 00:17:22 Now we're going to pile in ether. And that's like a sensible trade right now. And then you also have momentum hits. So when price starts to rise on ether, there are people phomo and we get kind of like a momentum type trade, that could be a source of inflows too. And if the ETH market price on centralized exchanges is indeed extremely sensitive to the marginal dollar, like people say that it is, that reflexivity boost carries more weight because you just get more reflexivity. Exactly. So let's do some, Michael does some napkin math here.

Starting point is 00:17:55 Okay, so just napkin math, broadest of strokes, assume this cycle, we get to a $10 trillion dollar market cap. And I think you and I called a cycle around that. It's a 10 to 15 trillion, something like that. So that seems reasonable. Maybe there's a CRISPRNesty number as well. Totally. Okay. And so Bitcoin was 43% of total crypto market cap last cycle. Let's assume this cycle it's 40%. All right. So 43 to 40, pretty reasonable. And then Eith, last cycle was 50% of Bitcoin market cap. This cycle, let's assume it's dialed down a little bit. So let's assume ETH is 45% of Bitcoin. Okay. That means cycle. Which is it currently is at 35% by the way. Which is low. Like again, that ratio is lower than it should be. That would put, again, not financial advice, subjective

Starting point is 00:18:52 opinion, whatever, saltiness. That would put ETH market cap at the cycle peak of one $10.8 trillion. All right. So that's roughly a $15,000 price of ETH above 10K, 15K price of ETH at cycle peak. Numbers check out, bro. 15K. Sounds pretty good. I feel like, I feel like that was our napkin math like at the very beginning of the bull market. What's your sell? What's your sell target? It's like at the highest point. It's like 15th. Okay. We just got we just got to poke the charts every week. We're getting closer. We're getting closer. We're getting more informed napkin math as we get closer.

Starting point is 00:19:31 Well, I want you to talk about the eth narrative. That's important. So in order for this napkin math to work out, there has to be demand for ether. A monk tradfi for this theorem ETF if we want to get the flows that we ask for. Let me set you up with this tweet, and I know you've got some comments

Starting point is 00:19:47 about the current eth narrative and what that's shaping up to be in tradfi. But this is Zach Light. I just spoke with a friend who is a big investment manager in New York City. It's the first time he has shown genuine interest in Ethereum before the ETH-EETF regulatory barriers made it impossible for them to invest in ether. Ethereum has now entered the mainstream, but institutions are significantly under-exposed

Starting point is 00:20:10 due to previous regulations. We may be going much higher and faster than I thought. Now, Zach Light, I spoke to a friend. I don't know what account this is. It's an an-on account. But it kind of captures the spirit of it, which is Tradfai is significantly under-exposed, maybe due to regulatory concerns. That would be the hope you.

Starting point is 00:20:29 And this is not just about the ETF getting approved. This is not just about like traditional financial institutions. They can only buy ETFs. This is also about the clarity that ether is getting because it's now formally a commodity. Something that died last week is the idea that Ethereum ether might be an unregistered security. So dead. While like, Ryan and I and many in the Ethereum community is like that's silly. Of course it's not like nonetheless, financial institutions still like if there's a 5% chance,

Starting point is 00:20:57 a 3% chance that ETH might be an unregistered security, they can't touch it. So now with the ETH ETF, they can buy it as an ETF, but also it's given regulatory clarity as a commodity, which de-risks the asset in a very significant way to financial institutions. Who might have otherwise have got and bought vanilla spot ether on the centralized exchange because they have an account. So ETH is also benefiting from that. It's getting tailwinds from that, and the market is currently digesting this. Right now.

Starting point is 00:21:25 David Hoffman, so what narrative do we take? take to them. This is your tweet here. This is the big question. I think the Ethereum community is kind of processing is how do we sell ether? How as sales people of Ether, how do we describe it, how do we pitch it, how do we form, like when people are listening to us, how do we sell it to them? People are now interested in the Ethereum ETF. They need to understand what they're actually purchasing. One of the things that we've said on Bankless many times is one of the most bullish things is to be understood. So how do we get people to understand Ether? Like what is a memetic descriptor about ether of the asset?

Starting point is 00:22:00 And there's a bunch of different ideas that are being floated around. Digital oil is a common one. An internet bond is a common one, programmable money. tokenization platform is one that I've seen come and go throughout the years. And so I kind of just put that out this tweet as like asking like, let's collect all the ideas. And let's also hear how people are explaining it actually to like in the in the Tradfi context. By the way, in this tweet, did you get other ideas beyond digital oil, internet bond, programmable money, tokenization. Did you get other

Starting point is 00:22:28 new fresh ideas? Yeah, like dog shit ones, yeah. I'm sorry, like, we cannot go to like Black Rock and say, hey, guys, Ethereum is a world computer. This is how you should pitch it to your clients. Like, World Computer? Like, no, that generates further questions. That is

Starting point is 00:22:46 confusing. Yeah. Like, Ether, Ethereum, it's Web 3. It's like, it's the Defy backbone. You know, these are not good like sales of Ether. I kind of of I kind of liked Matt's, Matt Hogan's approach to it, which is like Bitcoin is digital gold, if you want to believe that, Bitcoin is digital gold. There's more to finance than gold. Ethereum's everything else. That kind of simple line. Everything else, basically.

Starting point is 00:23:11 Well, so Matt Hogan called it a software platform, which is actually one of the themes that I'm seeing a lot of people actually illustrate Ethereum to be. Let's kind of go through some of these. So here's Vance Spencer on Bloomberg technology, giving the pitch for Ethereum versus the Bitcoin ETF. Should we rate this pitch afterwards? Let's play, let's play Vance. What are the principal differences in Bitcoin spot ETF, ether spot ETF? But I guess what we're actually asking is the principal difference between an Ethereum-based blockchain and Bitcoin blockchain. So Bitcoin's digital gold, right? And you know, you can view the rigidness of its roadmap. You know, there is no future roadmap for Bitcoin being either a future of a bug or a bug in

Starting point is 00:23:56 the sense that, you know, Bitcoin is going to be Bitcoin. for the next 100 years. ETH is at the forefront of the tokenization movement that is going to really define the next few decades of traditional finance. We're going to start with the stable coins, the $100 billion of stable coins that are on chain today. But now Black Rock's bringing on fixed income.

Starting point is 00:24:12 People bring on equities. People are bringing on commodities. People are bringing on private credit. And so ETH is at the forefront of that movement, and it's also just a very different asset. It does about $2 to $3 billion of profits per year. It dividends those out. The asset itself is deflationary.

Starting point is 00:24:28 You know, it's proof of stake. It's a very different asset than Bitcoin. I would say it's more of a textile growth play. And if Bitcoin is digital gold, ETH is Apple. It's building the App Store of Finance. And just like people thought that, you know, the app store was a toy or a gimmick, you know, 10 years ago, people are going to be really surprised at the uniqueness of the fees and just the scale of the business that Heath is going to generate from the tokenization way that's taking place. And it's Larry Fink, it's Paul Tudor Jones. It's all these guys. You know, they're all in the stream. Okay, I, so he went through a couple of different angles here. He started with tokenization. Yep. He, uh, then talked about on-chain assets, real-world assets moving on-chain, starting with stable coins and then name dropped to Black Rock and the bill, Biddle fund, private credit, which, which we're doing. So talking about real-world assets that Tradfai already knows exists coming on-chain to Ethereum. And then he moved into it being a textile growth play with an app store like property, a developer ecosystem. Yeah. And then did you see they showed the apps on the screen?

Starting point is 00:25:30 Totally. They showed the apps on the screen, which, like, people can resonate with. And so this is, these are mental models that Tritefai already has. Like, there's already assets out there that they know that they're, that are huge. There is already, like, a developer ecosystem based off of Apple. And Ethereum is something like that. And then Ether, the asset, he named dropped, like, things like, it's a dividend, it pays off dividends, which is, like, actually, like, technically not true, but meaningfully,

Starting point is 00:25:54 definitely true. The asset itself is deflationary. It's kind of true. It's like stock buyback is the burn. Well, stock buyback is a stock buyback. A dividend is a dividend. Sure. But I'm being like...

Starting point is 00:26:06 I get it. I get it. Go on. Yeah. Yeah. And I really like that pitch. I really like that pitch. And I think it's actually smart.

Starting point is 00:26:12 Even though like when you ask to explain, hey, what's ether, starting with tokenization is actually adjacent. Yeah. But I don't think it matters. Like I think like if you're talking and selling this to a tradfai, like I think tokenization is actually like very resonant with them. So give it a letter grade. What did you get that?

Starting point is 00:26:28 I give that one an A. I give that one an A. I do too. Well done, Vince. Well done, Vince. Okay, so next up, Anthony Pompeano. This one's much shorter. Only 20 seconds long on Fox Business.

Starting point is 00:26:38 Let's hear how Anthony Pompeiano pitches the ether ETF. Wait, Anthony's pitching. Pomp is pitching ETH now? A little bit, yeah. All right. Let's get into it. Well, just think Bitcoin, I think, is this unique thing that has a very clean story, right? It's a store of value.

Starting point is 00:26:52 When you get into these other things, they're technology platforms. So now you start talking about what's the difference between Facebook, Amazon, Google, et cetera. They're all competing for different kind of aspects of the consumer. And so I think when you look at Ethereum, Salana and many others, their tech platforms competing with each other. And so the story just isn't as clean as Bitcoin exclusive. So still promoting the Bitcoin story as like the unique one and calling all the other ones tech platforms. But another big plus one to tech platform at least. It's still not advanced level. I mean, I would give a different letter grade to that. Yeah, we don't have a video for this one.

Starting point is 00:27:21 This is just Jeff Dorman on Twitter who says, attention, BlackRock, Vanek, digital assets, bit wise. once the ETH, ETF goes live, please erase the words, supercomputer, ultrasound money, and internet bond from your memory. This does not resonate with anyone. What does? Ethereum is an app store. Heath is Apple Pay.

Starting point is 00:27:39 I kind of throw a grudge with the Apple Pay thing, but like he's doing the same thing, which I'm saying. It's like ultrasound money, like, we're not selling. Ultrasound money is for the crypto insider. That is for the crypto settler. Ultrasound money was so important in 2019, 2020, 2021, like when Ethereum was like was not recognized as a global reserve asset store of value the way the way Bitcoin is. But it was for internal.

Starting point is 00:28:07 It was like a frame of reference. The crypto industry to come to consensus about what Ether is. It's also importantly was also a jab towards the Bitcoiners who bullied Ethereum for years and years and years. It's meant to be facetious. About its issuance policy basically. Exactly. Exactly. It's never meant to be like, hey, we're going to pitch BlackRock on ultrasound money.

Starting point is 00:28:25 That's never how it was intended to be. Bitcoin's narrative to Black Rock isn't sound money even. It's a dish of gold. Totally. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Well, Bitcoin, it's gold is sound money, but you don't actually say those words.

Starting point is 00:28:36 Exactly. Yeah. And so, like, again, Jeff's really saying, hey, like, all your, like, crypto-native words, like supercomputer and internet bond, like, no, no, no, get rid of that. It's another, it's a tech stock growth play. And so, adjacently, but actually extremely relevantly, uh, Patrick McHenry announced a digital assets, financial technology, and inclusion subcommittee hearing. And so this is a subcommittee of the House. The title of this hearing is Next Generation Infrastructure, How tokenization

Starting point is 00:29:05 of real world assets will facilitate efficient markets. So there's a hearing being called to Congress by Patrick McKenry on one under this title. Next generation infrastructure, tokenization of real world assets, and how it will facilitate efficient markets. I think that that's a lot of words just to say Ethereum. I think that is a great. great description of what Ethereum is. Yeah, no, I agree. It's all very cool. And for people who look back at this and be like,

Starting point is 00:29:30 ah, it's all so contrived. Narratives don't matter. Marketing doesn't matter. I'll just point to, like, go back to the 90s and how people were trying to describe the internet. They used all sorts of different mental models and unlocks to try to propagate, help understanding of the internet.

Starting point is 00:29:44 Do you remember information super highway? Some of these sounds like cyberspace. Something about surfing? Yeah, surf the web, surf the web, right? And the idea around that was like, go on your own kind of like a fun experience with like you know search directories and websites and you'll find things yourself all all of these uh medic stories and narratives were used to describe the internet and it was important and some of them have a shelf life and some of them are no longer

Starting point is 00:30:09 necessary but they were very useful and helping people capture and imagine what what the potential of this technology is so we're just doing the exact same thing here and it's going to be a different narrative that works on a more mainstream tradfai uh... than the narratives that work on crypto natives. Totally. All right, Ryan, I would like to challenge you. Oh, since I'm not fighting Nick, I'd like to fight you about something else. Uh-oh.

Starting point is 00:30:34 I think next week, next Thursday weekly roll up, we each go and work, do our own homework and come back next, it was seven days from now with a one-minute pitch for ether of the asset. Ooh. I will pitch you mine. To who? To trad-fi. To trad-fi. To trad-fi.

Starting point is 00:30:51 Yeah, Tradfi is the black rock as the audience. Our best elevator pitch? Our best elevator pitch. Should I wear a suit for this? Should I wear a tie? Yeah, you should definitely wear a suit and tie. That'll help your presentation. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:02 And then the bankless audience will pick a winner between you and me. Oh, I love this. Challenge accepted because this won't cost me any broken ribs. This is the easiest. Yeah, this is my kind of challenge. You don't have to go anywhere. All right. I'm getting in the fight.

Starting point is 00:31:15 That's amazing. Game on. Game on. I'll see you next week then. Be ready, David. What do we got? Coming up next is Michael Saylor. Of all people warming up to Eith.

Starting point is 00:31:26 How is he going to pitch Heath? Donald Trump also doubling down on being the crypto presidential candidate. And how is the Biden administration reacting to that? And also, celebrity meme coin influenza launching on Solana. What does Jenner coin mean for the future of finance? Really important questions. Very important. All of this stuff coming up next.

Starting point is 00:31:46 As soon as we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Crackett, our preferred crypto exchange for crypto assets in 2024. for. If you not have an account with Cracken, consider clicking links in show notes to getting started with Cracken today. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support teams, then head over to Cracken, one of the longest standing and most secure crypto platforms in the world. Cracken is on a journey to build a more accessible, inclusive and fair financial system, making it simple and secure for everyone, everywhere, to trade crypto. Cracken's intuitive trading tools are designed to grow with you,

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Starting point is 00:34:55 And I don't know if this is a full pivot. So we'll let the audience decide. But of course, you know, in the past, Michael Saler has been a laser-eyed maxi, let's say. He's been... Mono asset maxi. There is no second best. How many chairs are you sitting on right now? How many chairs are you sitting on right now?

Starting point is 00:35:14 Can you sit on two chairs? No. Can you hold more? Ironically, Ryan has a chair behind him as he sits on a different chair. I have multiple chairs. I have an entire couch behind us. Of course you can have multiple chairs in your house. Anyway, that was Old Sailor. And he sounded a little bit like this.

Starting point is 00:35:29 This is Michael Saylor. Let's play a clip from three weeks ago of Michael Saylor. I think he was talking here about the potential for the Ethereum ETF. Let's play this. When Ethereum is not going to be approved, sometime this summer, it'll be very clear to everyone that Ethereum is deemed a crypto asset security, not a commodity. After that, you're going to see that. you're going to see that Ethereum, B&B, Solana, Ripple, Cardano, everything down the stack is just a crypto asset security unregistered.

Starting point is 00:35:58 None of them will ever be wrapped by a spot ETF. None of them will be accepted by Wall Street. None of them will be accepted by mainstream institutional investors as crypto assets. This is the one universal consensus accepted institutional grade. crypto asset in the world, there won't be another one. He's very certain of that. Mind how things change. Wow.

Starting point is 00:36:22 Just three weeks ago. This came out very recently. This was on Peter McCormick's What Bitcoin did podcast, post-EatF approval. Let's hear from him, Michael. Yeah, Michael Saylor is. And, you know, so here's what I think. I think two weeks before the world looked like Bitcoin was going to be the only asset securitized and offered as a spot.

Starting point is 00:36:46 ETF by the Wall Street establishment, and it was going to spread as the one legitimate crypto asset. I think right now the best expectation is the crypto asset class will be legitimized, supported by both parties. There's an industry. Crypto is an asset class. There's an entire range of use cases, 24-7 digital trading, digital art, NFTs, tokens, you know, decentralized this, functionality, defy.

Starting point is 00:37:20 There's a lot of things that will be considered in a more open light. And Bitcoin will be the leader of the crypto asset class. And if you look at it and say, well, is this good for Bitcoin or not? Yeah, I think it's good for Bitcoin. I think, in fact, it may be better for Bitcoin because I think that we are politically much more powerful, you know, supported by the entire crypto industry. right? They obviously have a lot of political power, a lot of users, and they serve as another line of defense for Bitcoin. So I think instead of someone saying, well, there's one crypto

Starting point is 00:37:58 asset, maybe I'll allocate one percent of my money to it, I think mainstream investors might say, oh, there's a crypto asset class now, and maybe we'll allocate 5 percent or 10 percent of the crypto asset class, but Bitcoin will be 60 percent or 70 percent of that. So I actually think it could accelerate institutional adoption. We're back to indexing. It's good for marketing. Yeah, there'll be all these other things that will happen. And you just kind of have to rethink, you know, all of your models and, and move forward

Starting point is 00:38:30 in a new world. I don't feel like I need to rethink many models here. But this is maybe Michael Saylor rethinking his model of there is only one crypto asset. And it's funny to me that it took the Ethereum ETF. to just have him pull a 180 on this? Like, how do you make sense of that? I don't know if he is fully pulling a 180. Like, he's very much still a bitcoiner,

Starting point is 00:38:54 but it is a tampering of his tone. And it's also like also a big tent mentality as well. So being a little bit more inclusive to like the crypto industry and I think discovering that maybe it's best not to fight them, but to just align with them because that helps promote Bitcoin, which is true. And I agree with it. Do you think maybe he saw how powerful politically the crypto faction is when they're unified

Starting point is 00:39:19 and working together and he doesn't want to fight against that current as part of it? Definitely, definitely. This is Anthony Sasano making a prediction here saying Sailor will buy Eith within the next six to 12 months. Now, that's a big prediction. However, Anthony's last big prediction was that the ECTF was going to get approved. So I'm not in the camp of like fading a hassle prediction. David, why wouldn't he just like, rationally, economically, just run the same playback? He basically did this.

Starting point is 00:39:48 He started stacking Bitcoin when it, you know, like was on the cusp of kind of like regulatory approval, not a security. He could just take out all of those loans and all those bonds and all those bonds and start buying ether as well. Well, yeah. As a beta plate. But he could also take those same things and also buy Bitcoin. I don't know. I'm going to actually. It's not like he has another company that he's like, oh, I'll just.

Starting point is 00:40:12 I'll just run this playbook with some other company that I have for Eath. He only has one fuel tank. I'm going to give this some high probability here. I think. About 50%. Above 50% in 6 to 12 months. Micro Strategy owns Bitcoin by the end of 12 months. Of ether.

Starting point is 00:40:29 Yeah, yeah. Wow. That would be bullish. Let me just also make it another call. Michael Saylor, I think, should just come on bank list. He hasn't been on bank list before. That's when you will, that will be the same. that the band-aid's been ripped off, that the hatchet is buried with like Ethereum

Starting point is 00:40:47 hating if he comes on bankless and gives us the case of why Ethereum is good for Bitcoin. We'll do that podcast for sure. I don't know if he wants to give that take. I don't know if he wants to get that take. Well, he will when he's ready to buy ether, I think. Yes. If he is buying ether, then he will likely also come on the podcast. Let's talk about some more presidential pivots.

Starting point is 00:41:09 And I guess we have to class Trump as this, given that a couple of years ago, he was very anti-crypto. Right. But he's here just in the past a few days, doubling down on crypto yet again. Let's watch this clip. I will ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in the USA, not driven overseas. I will support the right to self-custody to the nation's 50 million crypto holders. I say this with your vote. I will keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:41:42 And I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency. I will all... David, self-custy. He said the word self-custody. He said keep crypto Bitcoin away from Elizabeth Warren and her goons. Yeah. Like, these are the talking points. But these are the talking points that crypto, like the crypto community really wants to hear.

Starting point is 00:42:08 These are not Trump's words. This is a Trump advisor telling him what to say, which is fine. I'll take it. A hundred percent it is. And the word self-custy. I mean, that is, that is. The word self-custy came out of a presidential candidate's mouth. It's like pretty damn cool.

Starting point is 00:42:25 He actually didn't stop there. This was even more like niche in crypto-native. Donald Trump says that he vows to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to time served if he's elected president. So Ross Ulbricht, the dread pirate. Roberts of the Silk Road, famous case. He's in jail for life, basically. And Donald Trump says that Ross Holbrook is like a martyr of libertarian Austrian values, the Bitcoin movement. He like the whole like Silk Road was actually one of the first big Bitcoin apps to use Bitcoin. Just like a hero in the libertarian space. And since he's already served 10 years, Donald Trump is saying that's enough.

Starting point is 00:43:03 And he will pardon, he will pardon Russell Bergton and let him go free, which is, It's like, again, deeply crypto-native, very bit-o-o-of-him. David Bailey from Bitcoin Media is an advisor to the Trump administration. So, like, if it's not David Bailey, it's somebody like him who's, like, telling Trump to say these things, and it's, like, definitely working. Just, like, months ago, I don't think crypto was on the election issue list of issues at all. And now this is quickly turning into, like, a crypto election. At least crypto is one of the election issues that Trump is trying to differentiate. himself on. And so, like, the big question is, what's the game theory? So, like, what does Biden do

Starting point is 00:43:43 next? And this is interesting. I don't know if you, do you catch this article yesterday? This is from the block. The Biden campaign ramps up crypto industry outreach and surprising tone shift. Okay. So apparently the Biden reelection campaign is reaching out to people in the industry, people in crypto, for guidance on crypto community and policy. So they're reaching out to people in crypto saying how can we please help with our help we need help help us say like words like self custody and like crypto and like do the thing that that trump is doing this is what the campaign is actually advising Biden to do so which i think someone should step up for like i know Biden leaves a very bad taste in people's mouths but like we need both people like people in the crypto

Starting point is 00:44:34 industry we don't want we want somebody on whispering in trump's years we want somebody whispering in Biden's ears shouldn't matter. We just want both political parties to have a strong crypto advocate telling them what to do. Crypto should not be a partisan issue, right? It's complete American values here. Granted, Donald Trump's like ability to like move very quickly on this is winning him the crypto vote regardless because Biden is so like tepid about it. And he's confused. The Biden administration's track record under Elizabeth Warren has been absolutely terrible for the past a couple of years. And I think it'll be very telling. So you remember the Sab 121 repeal that is still waiting on Biden's desk for signature or veto. And he has previously said he's going to veto it.

Starting point is 00:45:18 This is like not too long ago. It's like three weeks ago. He said he would veto it. The deadline, David, is Monday, June 3rd. And the big question is, will he veto it or will he let it pass? If he does nothing, by the way, it de facto passes. Hayden gives a take here, Hayden Adams. He says, the too late, little too late slash this is pandering to the crowd. people about the Biden pivot. It's missing the point. The Democratic establishment finally realized being anti-crypto by letting Warren run financial policy will lose elections. This is a big deal. Nothing politicians care about more than winning elections. It's a new era. So I think there's some people here who's saying like it doesn't matter, ignore Biden. He doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:45:56 Trump is the crypto, the crypto president candidate. And Hayden is saying like both both can be crypto candidates. And that's good for us. Yeah. Certainly wins in our favor as well. And David, we've got more congressional hearings as well. Our bow tie evangelist in Congress, Patrick McHenry, you were mentioning that hearing on digital assets and financial technology, and you gave the name of it earlier. That is happening next week as well. Wednesday, 9 a.m. Eastern Time, June 5th. I mean, it's a hearing. It's a congressional hearing, so it's probably going to be boring. But I'm pretty sure this is the first ever congressional hearing that's strictly about crypto other than the audit of the FTX collapse. So ignoring that one,

Starting point is 00:46:39 this is the first one that's totally about crypto. That's also about crypto the technology, not crypto the fraud. And so whatever conversations come out of that, we'll hear about Wednesday of next week. It's also like how exciting that's going to be is going to be determined about who they call up to testify. Like you could see like Black Rock or like securitized, anyone doing tokenization, like advocating and like giving their testimony for crypto. And so that would be pretty like interesting to hear. Yeah, I think it's spreading education and awareness. And he'll get much more eyes on this, on this hearing than previously since it is an election issue. All right, let's talk about celebrity coin influenza. I have been paying almost no attention to this. I'm not sure like I

Starting point is 00:47:23 even want to in this segment. But let's give it a go. What in the world happened with Caitlin Jenner and these celeb coins last week? Okay. So Caitlin Jenner on Sunday randomly just tweeted out an address and a pump dot fun link and about her token, the Jenner token, hashtag Jenner, that she launched using Pump. Fun on Solana. And everyone was like, what the hell is going on? What the hell is Caitlin Jenner doing launching a token on Pump. Is this AI?

Starting point is 00:47:51 Is this an AI scam? Like what's going on? But it was her Twitter account. It was her Twitter account with a video of Caitlin Jenner in a robe, by the way. with like her initials on the robe. Can we actually play this video? Because it's like kind of surreal. Sure.

Starting point is 00:48:06 I guess so. Here we go. Caitlin Jenner saying this is not a deep fake. Yeah. Hi, everybody. This is Caitlin Jenner here. I know. Actually, I'm just,

Starting point is 00:48:16 I've been running around all day playing golf. And Sophia, my CEO, has been doing a wonderful job with my new crypto coin. Yes, this is for real. Get involved. It's going to be very good. So I'm very excited about it. And I'm looking forward to the future for the next couple of hours.

Starting point is 00:48:38 So keep the sales going. This is exciting. Yes. Did you just say, I'm looking forward to the future for the next possible. Next couple of hours. Keep the sales going. This is exciting. My CEO is doing a great job.

Starting point is 00:48:51 I'm excited. Saying nothing about the coin. Okay. And so it turns out, okay, so the market cap of Jenner got up to 43. million dollars in the first 24 hours. I don't know what the market gap is now. Six million. Six million. Later, she discovered, she said that this dev, which maybe like approached her to give her this idea, Sahil was like the dev helping them like do this coin. Sahil has apparently done this a number of times with other celebrities. He will just like sigh off them into launching a

Starting point is 00:49:26 coin. And then like being the dev, he kind of like runs off with the liquidity. Apparently he's this a few times. I don't know the full story. So Caitlin discovered this and she says fuck Sahil, excuse my language. He scammed us big time after being told that like Sahil is behind

Starting point is 00:49:45 the Jenner token. You would think that she would stop, but she has like an hour later David. This is an hour later. Yeah. Yeah, 820 was the original and then let's see, 942 PM she tweets. He scammed us. Nonetheless,

Starting point is 00:50:00 she like doubles down on her own token. And so she has like further tweets and videos just like the one that we watched about her talking about her token. It's Salana Summer. Hashtag Jenner isn't going anywhere but up. Especially now that son of a bitch isn't involved. I bet he won't be launching any more celebrity again based on the conversations I've been having.

Starting point is 00:50:21 Not that you know what it's going on in the crypto world. I hate to do this around, but there's a second clip of her launching a token on Ethereum. So this is like the very next day or two days later. This is the next day. This was yesterday. This was Wednesday, the 29th. All right.

Starting point is 00:50:37 Let's watch this cringe here. Jenner is now live on Ethereum. Let the trading begin. Oh, that was a big idea. That was it. Let the trading begin. And you might think that she bridged over her Solana Jenner tokens to the Ethereum network and like launched the token with liquidity on Ethereum.

Starting point is 00:50:56 If you thought that, you would be wrong. This is a separate. It's a separate. Not even linked liquidity and... Not even linked. No, it's just a new token. What is this? We're looking at a tweet from CoffeeZillah showing that go directly to jail Monopoly card here.

Starting point is 00:51:13 Yeah, so CoffeeZilla is like the YouTuber who exposes like scams and frauds. He like did a whole bunch of stuff from crypto when we were doing that like last cycle. He's attracted to the attention of Coffee Zilla, which is all I have to say. But I wish the story ended here. Ryan, but it does not. Do you know who Iggy Isalia is? Oh, yeah. I know Iggy, for sure. Oh, I don't.

Starting point is 00:51:37 I actually don't know who here. She's a singer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, just to recap the story, I put this into Grock on Twitter. Iggy Izzylia has recently made waves in the crypto world with the launch of her meme coin, Mother Iggy, hashtag mother on the Salon network. However, this venture has not been without controversy. Allegations of insider trading have surfaced with claims that insiders bought a significant

Starting point is 00:51:59 portion of the coin supply before its public launch, resulting in profits of approximately $2 million. So you get the just like, if you go on to Iggy Azalea's Twitter, it's like manic tweeting about like crypto ship posting and chilling her token. Just like blatant, blatant chilling, like it's going up, it's going to go up like, like mother, mother, mother, mother. Yeah. It's like straight, straight meme coinery. And like, again, nothing against meme coin specifically, but a central like a mentor and then promoter with celebrity influence of a token.

Starting point is 00:52:33 It feels so gross. It just feels so gross. Yeah like like there's nothing to these tokens. There's nothing to celebrate here. There's no cultural artifact. It's just somebody like basically shilling using their influence to just like dumb on people who are buying this thing, right?

Starting point is 00:52:46 Totally. Totally. Yeah. So there's like if you, they could have done it through friend tech. They could have opened up a friend tech account and given like their token holders, some utility of being able. Some kind,

Starting point is 00:52:55 something. thing, some utility, but no, it's just straight token. Just straight token. This is, someone put together a list of all of the celebrity coins. I guess maybe, no, is this NFTs from previous cycle? Both NFTs and tokens, yeah. So this is like the latest manifestation of celebs just launching just super lazy NFT projects or tokens.

Starting point is 00:53:16 And this is kind of like the ROI and how, like Kevin Hart's on here, Ozzy Osbourne is on here, Floyd Mayweather, Chris Brown, Milakunis, all of these things. and they're all like either dead down 100% or like down 90%, 98%. I would like to say it's really hard to get to negative 100% in crypto. It's really hard to go to zero. This never works. You usually stop at 98 or 99%. Yeah, I feel like, you know, Milakunis, even the Stoner Cats thing, at least that had some artwork.

Starting point is 00:53:46 There was like a bit more effort than something like this. But even that is down 100%. Well, that's actually, that's out on a technicality. The Milakunis and StonerCat's NFC was actually the highest performer here because the SEC made them give the money back. Oh, that's right. She actually did like a full, like good faith effort of trying to like make a weird TV show. Like you can, you can judge how weird it was.

Starting point is 00:54:09 The SEC came after. I forgot Stoner Cat was in the, uh, so the SEC's going to come after these things, right? I'm sure Gary Gensler would love this is like free real estate for Gary Gensler. Yeah. Well, it's like perfect. I mean, he targets like he goes after celebrities. These are the ones that are making it. And this is very clearly like shady, like shilling, like pump and dump.

Starting point is 00:54:30 It's like something is illegal here. I don't know what. It feels super gross. It feels super gross. All right. Well, that's the future of finance. We knew it was going to end here, right? We knew it was going to end here.

Starting point is 00:54:42 Oh, God. Roller Coaster. What do we got coming up? Anyways, back in the layer two world, Ethereum gets his first base roll up. What the hell is a base roll up? Solana on-chain governance votes to change the. The economics of Solana, interesting story, and Gemini earn holders are getting their money back. And should they be happy about it? Or is it more like FTX? We'll unpack that.

Starting point is 00:55:01 But before we get to all of that and more a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Like Mantle, the Layer 2 with yield. Go check out Mantle. There's a link in the show notes. New projects are coming online to the Mantle layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of layer two design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA, powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming onto the Mantle layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in Defi and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion mantle treasury in the Mantle reward station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with, giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your mantle application.

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Starting point is 00:56:40 Arbitrum allows anyone to utilize Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own orbit chain, giving you access to interoperable, customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you're a developer, an enterprise or a user, Arbitrum orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum. Experience Web3 development the way it was always meant to be. Secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. Visit arbitram.io and get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities. All right, let's get into the layer two news. This update is also brought to you by Mantle.

Starting point is 00:57:15 So let's talk about total value locked. we are close to all-time highs, total value locked on layer 2s. One thing that I observed, David, in the top 10 here is the ZK EVMs have been kind of lagging. In TVL, you mean? In TVL, if you look at the market share of optimistic roll-ups versus ZK, it's like 95% to like 5% or 90% to 10%, something like that. And I do sort of wonder if maybe the ZK Sync era token launch will start to change that. But so far, optimistic roll-ups are. Like, they have an early lead.

Starting point is 00:57:50 I don't know if you have any commentary on that or thoughts on that. It does seem like ZK. Technology is like the better technology and the fullness of time, but they have had a slower start compared to optimistic roll-ups. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the right commentary. Like the $19 billion that's on arbitram is just an absolute gargantuan. And it's just like liquidity against liquidity, early movers. They just get a big moat.

Starting point is 00:58:13 Big, big moat. Well, one of those early movers, number three, rather in terms of total act values base. And they just brought an update that expanded base's capacity by 25%. What's cool about this, of course, is no Ethereum hard forks were required for this. They just upgraded the base chain. Just a base hard fork. Tell us about this.

Starting point is 00:58:34 This has been part of the plan for base for a while at the target to one gigagas. Is that right? So we're at 6.25 milligas. 1,000 milligas will be one giga gas. So we're at 6.25. We wanted to get to a thousand. 6.25 and 1,000 feels very far away, but not when you increase capacity by percentages every single time.

Starting point is 00:58:55 So 25% increase this week. And then he says that they are looking, Jesse says that they will look to do 7.5 mill of gas later this same week. That's so cool. Later this same week. Now what also came out of the base ecosystem last week was this tweet from ZeroX Designer who says, it's cheaper to send money on base than over Venmo. And this is actually an announcement from Venmo saying that starting July 1st, so we got one month,

Starting point is 00:59:23 transaction fees for receiving payments tagged by the sender as goods and services will be added 2.99% per transaction. And so that's actually kind of a hefty amount. And so using USC on base is now under a penny. And now using Venmo is like 3%. So use base instead. That's awesome. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:59:45 Honestly, Venmo, like, keep going with those fees, baby. Let's back those fees up. It's very cool to see, like, base bandwidth, basically, you know, just rise on a weekly basis. You can literally watch the bandwidth increase. That's not the only layer two update we got, though. E&S has announced that they are going to roll out a roll-up, E&S V2 as part of their V2 update.

Starting point is 01:00:07 So what is an ENS roll-up? What are the benefits of this and what are their plans? I think the benefits are pretty simple, right? like just lower gas fees for managing your ENS, which is a relatively like contract heavy application. So just, you know, lower fees, faster Ux, faster transactions. Every.eath name will have its own personal registry. So it gives users more control over the ownership of their names. And so I actually own David, no, I own Hoffman.

Starting point is 01:00:34 Dot David. dot,eth, which is the owner of David.eath sent to me. And so he sent me Hoffman. David. D.Eth. Yeah, so I have the, yeah, and so he, as the owner of David. David.D.Eth, can control that a little bit more granularly with the ENS layer two. I would call this an app chain.

Starting point is 01:00:50 This is an app chain for ENS. They are still looking for their framework provider. So I'm sure every single framework provider, optimism, arbitram, polygone, see-kasing. Yeah, they got to pick a framework. They're not going to, they're not going to roll their own layer, too. I'm sure they're just going to pick something off the shelf. And so I'm sure everyone is, like, vying for trying to be the E-Casing. The ENS framework.

Starting point is 01:01:14 Yeah. What I love about this, too, is they're improving a multi-chain and dropability. And they're using some chain-link technology to do this because so, yeah, the ability from any chain to just descend to, you know, David. Hoffman. Is it Hoffman. David. . combe.

Starting point is 01:01:28 You can just do that. You should be able to do that from any chain. And V2 will make that possible as well. And then last in the layer two updates, Tyco is that live on Mainnet. What is Tyco? Tyco is a ZK EVM. but it is also a based roll-up. So we all like the ZK-AVM

Starting point is 01:01:44 because everything's going to the ZK world and eventually, but the based roll-up is the first of its kind that's kind of the shiny new technology that Tyco is bringing to Ethereum. A base roll-up is a roll-up that uses Ethereum validators as sequencers for the roll-up itself.

Starting point is 01:02:00 So it actually kind of starts with a leg up in terms of decentralization of the sequencer, but then it also gets to tap into the state of the Ethereum layer one as it produces blocks on the Tyco layer two. And so liquidity between like you want to swap on Ethereum mainnet and liquidity inside of Tyco are not perfectly the same pool, but like highly interoperable.

Starting point is 01:02:24 And so like Tyco and the state of Ethereum layer one have like a very strong bond because the operators of both networks are the same people, which are the Ethereum validators, which is pretty cool. And they're also being pretty explicit about their token launch. They're saying they're going to distribute 5% of its one billion. supply a few weeks after mainnet goes live, how they intend to release their, distribute their token, TBD. That's really early in the lifespan of a network to also release their token.

Starting point is 01:02:50 But hey, who knows? I kind of wonder what Tyco will look like on L2B. Well, just like because it's using a decentralized sequencer's out of the gate, does it have like all the pie slots full? Yeah, that's part of the pitch of Tyco is like they get some green slices. It's going to launch with training wheels at first. So it'll be like multi-sig upgrade. So like that won't be green.

Starting point is 01:03:08 Those slices won't be green, but it does have decentralized sequencers, I guess, right at the right of the game. Very cool. Okay, speaking, going into the Solano world, there was a on-chain governance vote in the Salana world to change some of the transaction economics of Solana. And so maybe people actually don't know that Solana has an on-chain delegated proof-of-sake coin vote governance mechanism. This has been like a model for chain governance that, like, Tezos is like, I think, pioneered on-chain governance in the first place. Salana being delegated consensus, delegated proof of sake, also has a very similar mechanism. So that means people can vote on improvement proposals, yes? Or like there can be a token vote. So you as a sole holder delegate your soul to a validator and that validator participates in an on-chain governance vote.

Starting point is 01:03:56 And so all the logic for that vote is contained and then activated on-chain. Token vote governance, got it. Yes. Okay. So previously, the transaction dynamics of Solana would take 50% of the transaction fee for Salon transaction and burn it. It's very similar to EIP-1559, just raw 50%. Instead, now because of this vote, this vote, SIMD0096, Salana is like the Salon Improvement Proposal equivalent, passed with 77% in favor, that instead of that 50% being burned is being passed to the validators as just additional compensation. Some takes from Solana leadership like Anatolia Merck have indicated that this vote makes sense and it should go through for various more nuanced reasons. Some other people have said that this is validators being

Starting point is 01:04:42 greedy and this will only further the inflation of solely asset. I don't think either Ryan or I are informed about like the depth of these conversations and what's going on. My take is like I don't like on-chain governance. Why? It's just because the elites, like the validators, those with the most tokens can really influence the outcomes of what gets shipped in a feature. And when it's an economic outcome every validators do you vote yes yeah would you like to vote yourself into more further fees yeah yes so sure there can be legitimate reasons but it's like it we we have seen delegated proof of stake systems before and there it's like a not a stable equilibrium in terms of governance um none like despite the the vote passed so 77% approval but of who like of the entire

Starting point is 01:05:32 so long a stakeholder set or of like 77% approval of just like the ballot And like the average user is unaware, uninformed, doesn't care. And even if they don't care, like I would say like it's still an important decision to measure the stakeholders. That is a very Ethereum take if you, David. It's a very Ethereum take of you. If you want an Ethereum versus Solana take, okay? We have the ultimate debate that is going to be released. In fact, it might be already available for a bankless listeners on a premium fee.

Starting point is 01:06:00 If you are a citizen, a bankless citizen. If you're not, you should just upgrade for this episode. So you get early access to Anatoly. versus Justin Drake. And let me tell you, it gets a bit spicy. It's a little spicy at the end. It's a little spicy at the end. It starts off.

Starting point is 01:06:14 Have you ever seen those hot one interviews where they like eat the, um, like eat the, um, okay, so like they eat the chicken wings, the sauce gets hotter and hotter. It starts off and it's super mild, right? Right.

Starting point is 01:06:24 Complementing one another. It's so spicy towards the end. Anyway, uh, that, that is a place to go check that out and I'm sure you'll enjoy it. David, Gary Gensler took another L last week.

Starting point is 01:06:34 Oh, yeah, right. Can you believe it? Well, actually just, no, taxpayers actually. Let's all of us take an L when Gary takes an L. So this is your taxpayer dollars at work.

Starting point is 01:06:45 Judge Shelby ordered the SEC to pay attorney's fees of a million dollars and receivership fees of about 750K after finding that the commission engaged in bad faith conduct. This is a judge saying this. This was a court case that was going on in the background. Let's see. It was SEC filing a complaint against debt box. I don't know all of the details. But this is a judge basically saying that the commission engaged in bad faith conduct and said it was so bad that the SEC actually has to pay the defendant's attorney fees.

Starting point is 01:07:18 All right. Let me tell you. If Gary was on a crusade to like just end SEC legitimacy with respect to crypto in like one term under his tenure, like he's well on his way to doing that. The courts are just like thrown this trash out and suing like counter suing him as well, counter penalizing the SEC. I'm pretty sure the SEC lobbied the administration for an increase in budget. And having to be forced to pay somebody else's attorney fees $1.8 million is not really good evidence to support your case for that. Yeah, look, okay. The judge is saying the SEC's case was marred by false statements and misrepresentations lying.

Starting point is 01:07:56 They were lying. That's what that means. Not great. I mean, I'm happy that the reign of Gary Gensler will hopefully be over with both parties being pro-crypto now. I would have liked a little bit more justice, but I'm also happy just for him to be shown the door as soon as possible. I don't know, man. I don't know if he's gone yet. I think we haven't heard the last, actually.

Starting point is 01:08:15 So to be continued, we're feeling high on recent wins. And speaking of recent wins, David, today, Gemini Earned users, this is, as of yesterday, I believe, received $2.18 billion of their digital assets in kind. So Gemini was one of those earned programs that was locked. Like if you had your funds in Gemini Earn, you could. withdraw it it like went down because of the genesis from DCG shenanigans with grayscale and gpdc and all that stuff yeah if you had funds in here you you know three eros capital blew up which blew up genesis which locked up Gemini or 2020 yeah okay so what's happening here

Starting point is 01:08:51 what's the what's the good news uh a 232 percent recovery of assets and so users are being paid in kind unlike ftx where users are being paid at the like you're you get your bitcoin back at a 16 dollar Bitcoin. If you, as if you sold in November 2022. Exactly. Yeah,

Starting point is 01:09:10 probably incurring a tax event. Uh, so if you had one Bitcoin in the Gemini earn program, you will receive one Bitcoin. So congrats for holding. Which is great. Guess who had some, uh, Bitcoin. I had some crypto at least in Gemini.

Starting point is 01:09:27 What, which crypto assets? Why are you being? It was ether. I think, I don't think I had any Bitcoin. I may have had a sliver of Bitcoin, but, uh, it was, um, it was ether. Congrats for getting your ether back.

Starting point is 01:09:38 It's cool. It was a forced hold. I don't think you have a problem with holding your ether. Yeah, that's true. I don't. But yeah, I mean, I think people should be excited about this outcome. And I guess the side benefit is Gemini forced them to hold through the entire bear market. And now they get it. They get it back in kind. That's pretty cool.

Starting point is 01:09:54 Still continue to hold. Please continue to hold. Well, that is actually a question of, you know, like how much of this? There's $960 million worth of Bitcoin and $600 million. of ETH that get unlocked as a result of this. And so, you know, we'll retail users dump some of this? Maybe that's why we're down 1% on the week, David, in the ether terms. Please hold.

Starting point is 01:10:18 All right. In privacy news, this is actually pretty interesting. Privacy Protocol Railgun has surpassed $1 billion in volume after the tornado cash crackdown. Railgun, I think this might be the first time we've ever mentioned Railgun. It's a private, it's a ZK privacy app. I think it's actually like a strict technological improvement to tornado cash. Have you ever used railgun before, Ryan? I have not.

Starting point is 01:10:39 I think that's not illegal yet, right? It's not illegal yet. If I said I did use that, I won't go to jail? Correct. For now. For now, I've used railgun, and it's great. It's great. It's great way to get to.

Starting point is 01:10:52 You are no longer our tornado cash user. I'm no longer, well, it can't be. But I have used railgun at times to put ether from one wallet to a different wallet. And it's legal. It's not on the OFAC sanction list. It's super legal, not on the OFAC sanction list. I'm sure it will be. because, sorry, it sounds like North Korea has also discovered railgun,

Starting point is 01:11:10 and it seems that the Lazarus group has pushed some amount of money. I can't, we don't have it in my notes, but it seems like the Lazarus group has actually discovered railgun, and they are now using railgun. And so, yikes. Yikes. Maybe I won't be using that anymore just as a preemptive. The thing is, though, the thing is they're still using tornado cash,

Starting point is 01:11:31 because tornado cash is not shut down. You know what I mean? Correct. Yeah. Like when you, when you make a privacy protocol on an unstoppable network illegal, then you just make it illegal for the good guys. Right. Like North Korea is not going to be like, oh, it's OFAC sanctioned.

Starting point is 01:11:46 I guess we can't use it. Why do they care about privacy in the first place, actually? Like, what are they going to do? Like, oh, like, why do they need privacy? I guess so they can mix it and sell it and. Yeah, they have to sell it. Do you identify their accounts? Like, how do we know it's North Korea?

Starting point is 01:12:02 I mean, if privacy was working perfectly, then we would. can even know it's Lazar's group or North Korea in the first place. Yeah. Well, so, like, they're still using tornado cash, but, like, any amount of privacy, there's a bandwidth there of, like, the TVL and the protocol. So, like, Railgun and Tornado Cash have the same concept of us, like, a privacy set. Yeah. And so there needs to be, like, innocent bystanders for, like, the nefarious actors to actually

Starting point is 01:12:26 leverage as, like, a shield. And so if it's all North Korea in Tornado Cash, then it's actually not helpful. Yeah. And so. There is something that's different about railgun versus tornado, though, is railgun uses privacy pools, like that concept of a separate pool, which makes it harder for bad actors to join. So I think there's some sort of segmentation. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it's like an improvement on tornado cache, which kind of commingled everything. Does that make sense?

Starting point is 01:12:55 I see, yes. Yes, yes, yes, cool. So there could be some hope here. Yeah. Depends what OFAC and Treasury actually want to do. And one case to watch for all of this is a Roman Storm's case, which motions are happening. A hearing is set for July 12th. So we'll be talking about that soon.

Starting point is 01:13:10 There's one of the two tornado cash developers, the one being prosecuted in the U.S. This is a district court of the Southern District of New York. So that's one to keep an eye on. I think it's going to be a pretty monumental court case in the U.S. with respect to do we get privacy with our crypto peer-to-peer transactions or not. One PSA as we close this out. David, we launched, Bankless launched a warpcast frame. Did you know this for our claimables product?

Starting point is 01:13:37 So you can now go on Farcaster or Warpcast, the client, check your claimables right here in a frame. We talked to Dan Romero when frames first came out. I thought there was super cool technology, and our dev team has just put this together. So now you can go like this. I'm doing this on screen. You can connect your wallet, click, you know, check.

Starting point is 01:13:57 And then for me, it found two clambles. and then you can view and claim. Actually, I did this last week, okay, for the first time. For some reason, I had my alerts on the bankless claimables app off, so I wasn't receiving email alerts. So I went and I checked this. And lo and behold, I had a claim worth $1,800 in there. Hell yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:17 A token or an NFT? It was a token. I'm not going to say which one, because I sold it. I sold it free. Yeah, but it was sitting there waiting for me. And this is the thing. You can't be everywhere at once. can't watch all of your wallets at the same time. So I have a whole bunch of my wallets in this

Starting point is 01:14:32 claimable tool. And this automatically finds claimables for you and throws it your way. So this is free. It's free. It's available for everybody, you know. Go click the frame if you're on Warpcast. Click the frame. David, what do we got? Close us out. Meme of the week. meme of the week. This is kind of a dig at Solana. This is the guy looking at the butterfly saying, is this blank meme format? And it's Salana Bros. Looking at political and racist meme coins, blockchain only fans, and celebrities running pump and dups, asking, is this mass adoption? Is this what mass adoption looks like?

Starting point is 01:15:09 Is this Austin? Is this a tweet from Austin from Slana saying Iggy is single-handedly starting a revolution? Yeah, but if you scroll down, he goes, but most definitely revolutions don't end well. So he's both promoting Iggy's shenanigans and also saying, but also I'm not endorsing it. Yeah. All right. That's fair enough. and we should end with the risk and disclaimers.

Starting point is 01:15:30 Of course, celebrity coins are risky. Don't buy those things. Don't put money in celebrity coins. Don't just don't do it. It's an option. You don't have to do it. You don't have to do it. Also, crypto is risky.

Starting point is 01:15:40 You could lose to which you put in. We're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us in the biggest journey. Thanks a lot.

Bankless - ROLLUP: ETH Price Target | ETF Launch Date | Celebcoin Drama | Major New L2s

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