Bankless - ROLLUP: ETH Pumps 50% | Tariff Deal Boosts Markets | Coinbase Data Leak | Robinhood Buys L2

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

📣 BANKESS x FRAX MEETUP | Permissionless 2025 https://lu.ma/uf9mmcoa ------ This week, Ryan and David break down Ethereum’s explosive 50% surge and the surprising macro catalyst behind it: a U.S.–China tariff deal that has markets ripping. They cover Coinbase’s massive customer data leak (and Brian Armstrong’s $20M bounty response), Robinhood’s stealthy Layer 2 acquisition, and the rise of meme coins funding real apps. Plus, why Arthur Hayes thinks the bull market is just beginning. ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐SELF | PROVE YOUR SELF https://bankless.cc/Self 🟠HEMI | BTC & ETH, ONE NETWORK https://bankless.cc/hemi ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 0:06 “Who is laughing now?” statement from NYC Mayor https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1922036267685908761 3:47 Prices, Uniswap, & Aave https://x.com/jbrukh/status/1922315929578299580 https://dune.com/mud2monarch/countdown-to-three-trillion-united-states-dollars https://x.com/StaniKulechov/status/1921478583337312339 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1921925615923388864 https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary 14:10 Tariff Truce - US and China agree to slash tariffs for 90 days - We’re Saved!!! https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/12/us-and-china-agree-to-slash-tariffs-for-90-days.html https://x.com/biancoresearch/status/1921927955573264802 https://polymarket.com/event/us-recession-in-2025 https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/fatty-fatty-boom-boom 28:40 Bad Coinbase news first - Coinbase MAJOR customer data leak Coinbase $20m award leading to the arrest of hackers https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1922967787309256807 https://x.com/coinbase/status/1922967576209998133 https://x.com/0xBreadguy/status/1923006791031587248 https://x.com/adamscochran/status/1923018728800686532 https://x.com/lemiscate/status/1922984240318193934 35:48 Coinbase becomes the first crypto company in S&P500 https://x.com/iamdcinvestor/status/1922068706084970750 https://x.com/cbfutures/status/1920850444093448225 https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/NASDAQ-COIN/ 37:28 Internet Capital Markets Meta https://www.jellyjelly.com/ https://dexscreener.com/solana/3bc2e2rxcfvf9op22lvbansvwos2t98q6ercroayqydq https://x.com/gabrielhaines/status/1922293923420000346 https://www.believescreener.com/ https://x.com/believeapp/status/1922780481684148519 https://x.com/alex_leiman/status/1922075531966550488 https://x.com/msg/status/1922708357686743551 https://x.com/pasternak/status/1922493500504867290 https://dune.com/adam_tehc/memecoin-wars https://x.com/WazzCrypto/status/1922826087467204636 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1922635525992644770 https://x.com/pumpdotfun/status/1921941742854512924? https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1922006135520764094 50:29 Robinhood will acquire Kevin O’Leary-Backed WonderFi - Leads to ETH L2. https://x.com/RobinhoodApp/status/1922245928691421671 https://www.wonder.fi 52:12 CryptoPunks have a new owner! https://x.com/cryptopunksnfts/status/1922291088431448396 https://x.com/econoar/status/1922339944774664660 https://www.coingecko.com/en/nft 53:46 Is the SEC becoming awesome now? pro-capital, pro-crypto SEC Paul Atkins said that his priority is to develop new rules for crypto tokens https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1921977322871140360 https://x.com/SECGov/status/1922001045087027349 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1920585655039529220 https://www.sec.gov/files/ctf-memo-blackrock-05092025.pdf 58:42 Superstate is launching Opening Bell platform with their first client! https://x.com/superstatefunds/status/1920479311728869826 1:00:01 JD Vance will speak at Bitcoin 2025 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/politics/u-s-vice-president-jd-vance-to-speak-at-bitcoin-2025-confer 1:00:32 Meta is exploring stabecoins again! https://x.com/degeneratenews/status/1920557131201122806 1:01:59 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

This is New York mayor, Eric Adams. I was the first American mayor to have my initial three paychecks converted into crypto way back in 2022. Many people laughed at me. The only only I can say is who's laughing now. Wait, Ryan, didn't we already hear this? Didn't we already do this bit? Yeah, yeah. I feel like it was like three or four months ago.

And it was Eric Adams basically saying those exact words. I was the first mayor to get my paycheck in Bitcoin. Who's laughing now? And it's funny to me because he keeps saying it, David. This is the second time we have heard this. Yeah, yeah. And he's such a crypto person now, right? Just like reminding people that he got in early,

reminding him that it's such a contrary that everyone thought he was stupid. And like, who's laughing now? Eric Adams is one of us. I think he's actually hosting a New York City sort of crypto conference. something like that, that's also why he was like talking about crypto. So a complete crypto person. Right, right. So that's the news that this is being packaged up in is the New York City Crypto Summit

is what Eric Adams is announcing. I think kind of doing like a Trump alignment thing. Yeah, probably. It would be great if New York was more crypto aligned. We need to get rid of the bit license as a state. That needs to go away. But he can't do that. He's only a mayor.

He's only a mayor. He can't do everything. but he can definitely buy Bitcoin. He can definitely get his paychecks in Bitcoin. So you know Bitcoin's over 100K if he's bragging about it. David, we got a lot to talk about on the roll-up this week. First of all, the tariff truce, the U.S. and China, they came to an agreement on tariffs, at least an agreement to pause them. The market is up on the news. I got some macro takes for you. I've been trying to make sense out of macro. I think I got it, man. This week, I think I've got like, I understand what's about to happen. All right? So I want to

give you the take here. You cracked the nut? I'm excited to hear about that. Over in the crypto side of things. We got both good news and bad news coming out of Coinbase this week. The good news, S&P 500, our crypto company, the number one crypto company to go public is now in the S&P 500. We're going to talk about that. Bad news. There's a major, there's a customer data leak coming out of Coinbase. Hackers are demanding $20 million in ransom out of Coinbase, but Brian pulls the reverse Uno card, so we'll talk about that. And then I'm going to explain the internet, I'm going to do my best to explain the internet capital markets meta to Ryan. So strap yourself, and we're going to see if I can get anywhere close to what's going on in the trenches. Yeah, I think that's going to be a hard one to explain to me what the heck that means.

Also, Robin Hood is acquiring an Ethereum layer too. We'll talk about who and what's going on there. And David, you know what's making me kind of bullish on the week? Eric Adams? The SEC. What? The Securities Exchange Commission is actually making me bullish. I want to tell you about that, too.

Before we get into all of this and more, we're going to talk about our meetup. happening at permissionless. So if you are going to permissionless, it's happening in just a few short weeks in June 24th to 26th in Brooklyn. We are doing a meetup with FRAX. We're hosting a little bankless frack's meetup at permissionless. And so if you are a bankless citizen or a previous podcast guest or just a friend of the pod, there's a link in the show notes so you can come to our meetup at the Italia Beer Co in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. So there is a link in the show notes to sign up to join us. And FRAX, we're all just going to hang out and drink some beer. Beer is on us. We are paying for the beer, Ryan. Oh, nice. You said it's open to friends of the pod.

Is it open to enemies of the pod? Can anybody just drop it? Yeah, there's no. There's, there are a few enemies of the pod, but generally speaking, most people are automatically friends of the pod. That's right. That's right. All right, David, tell me about prices. I really want you to tell me about prizes. Please embellish it. Please take your time, okay, to let it sink in to my pores here, yes. All right. Okay, are you ready? Bitcoin is up 1.5.5. percent on the week to $103,000. $103,000. We got almost up.

I think we maybe we touched $105,000 on a couple exchanges. I think all-time high for Bitcoin is something like 106, 107. So Bitcoin is very close to striking distance of all-time highs. So overall, up 1.5% on the week, an okay week for Bitcoin. Ether price. Yes. Ether price is up 30% on the week. to $2,560 on the eight day.

If we just extended seven days to eight days, ether is up 42% on the week. It touched at its all-time high. It was a 51% gain over eight days from peak to trough, 50% on the week. The new recent high is almost $2,700 ether, but we are currently at $2,560. That is not something you see every week, is it?

I don't think I've ever seen a 50%. sent candle on Ethereum in a week. I mean, is there any, there's no explanation for this, right? I haven't seen any kind of like other than it was time, which is the obvious explanation that feels almost like a narrative. It was just like time. But we're not really see. One notable thing is we're not seeing an ETF flows, really.

So this has to be some sort of, it's not an institutional buyer buying an ETF suddenly. This is like more convicted crypto native types of buyers who are just saying, hey, like this number should not be this low. It should be much higher. And they're going. buying size. I think that's right. Yeah. I think there's a handful of like kind of narratives that you could put into this. Like one of them that I think is a minority of an explanation as to like why Eath did this is like everyone's looking for stable coin exposure and with 150 billion dollars

of stable coins on Ethereum, like ETH actually starts to look like that. But I think the real big thing is it was just oversold. 0.018 Bitcoin, which is where it started at, is just so goddamn low. It's so incredibly low. And so it went from 0.018 to point 025 versus Bitcoin. And I mean, it's still a low price. Like $2,500 versus Bitcoin's $104,000. It's still very, very low. And so I would say, yeah, like the market decided that this was too low.

And there were a lot of shorts going on Ether at the time because when it goes down for two years straight, like it's easy to short it. And so this thing finally just rejected the low price to still be a low price. It's still low, but now it's a high or low price. Yeah, if you want to get a sense for this, a few things that are interesting. One is the chart that I'm showing on the screen, I'll get to in a second. But another, just like the size of ETH in comparison to Bitcoin. First, maybe let me do the size of ETH in comparison to Solana. So this teleportation, this like 40% teleportation, that was basically one sole market cap worth in size.

Like, that's how large it was. It was like $90 billion. So an entire soul's worth of like weekly price movement on Ether, right? So ether's already much larger than Seoul, but it is much smaller than Bitcoin. Okay? It's like one benchmark that's interesting when Bitcoin was priced at the market cap of Ether today, you know, 310 billion, something like that in that range. The last time that was the case was November 2020.

Remember that? So Bitcoin would have been, I don't know, I want to say about 16K, something at the time, less than that, more than that, something like that. And so we're basically like, if you believe that Ether can do what Bitcoin has already done as a global store value asset, then this is like buying Bitcoin in 2020. If you're bearish and you don't believe anything will ever be like Bitcoin again, then it's a different story. And then here's a chart of, Jake is putting this, Brookman is putting this out. Bitcoin, Eth and Salana market share reality. You can see, look at the orange.

Orange is all Bitcoin. Bitcoin is so dominant. Bitcoin dominance is still so high. It is still so high in proportion to all other crypto assets in particular to Ether and Solana right now. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think there's like two perspectives about this where you say like, ETH added one Solana in a market cap in one week. That implies Ethereum's large. Like it's putting on a whole entire Solana in market cap. And then you look at it versus Bitcoin. You see Bitcoin dominant's like, well, ETH is small compared to Bitcoin. And it's all a matter of perspective. Like, ETH is both big and small at the same time. Yeah.

As always, you can interpret these price moves however you like, whatever your thesis says, right? Total crypto market cap on the week, we're flirting with $3.4 trillion. $3.4 trillion. Yeah, healthily growing back up to that $4 trillion number, which we have never touched, but we are trying to touch, yeah. All right. So, Movers of the week. Anything else move this week?

Yeah, in addition to, you know, ETH's 50% gain over eight days. Coinbase is up 30% on the S&P 500 listing. We're going to talk about that. EtherFi up 120% in two weeks. Maybe on the launch of their Etherfi credit card, which a lot of my friends have gotten their new credit cards, 3% cash back on a credit card that pulls from your on-chain account so you can get yield on stable coins.

That's awesome. Available in the U.S.? Available in the U.S. That's right. Yeah. Launch coin is up 1,000% in a new week. we're also going to talk about this because that's the internet capital markets shenanigans. Then like Dogwith Hat up 120%, Athena up 60%. So overall, like there were some very big moves over the last seven days in the crypto markets.

It was actually one of the more exciting market days in crypto that I can remember in recent history. David, and there's also some protocols that continue to ship and are hitting milestones somewhat in the background. So one of them was Uniswap. So Uniswap, kind of like the very first decks to actually reach some sort of, critical mass and takeoff, just hit $3 trillion in all-time volume. So look at this chart here, all the way from January 2019 and just like an assent-up

all the way past $3 trillion in value. So this team obviously continues to ship, building a chain, doing all of these things. It's just like fantastic to see kind of some of these long-term games also being played. I know you're going to tell me about the short-term meme games, but long-term games are being played. Another team that continues to ship is AVE.

So Avey just, past $25 billion in total value locked. So this is like these are the original D5 primitives that got us so excited about crypto, right? The ability to trade without a centralized intermediary, the ability to do lending and borrowing without a centralized intermediary. Ave at 25 billion right now. So if you were to kind of rank that, that places it at like number 83 in terms of the largest banks in the U.S.

If you were to give a bank AUM benchmark. Number 83, right? So, like, moving our way to top 10, moving our way to, like, past Wells Fargo. I think that's where Avey is going in the fullness of time. And they're just quietly building the background to accomplish that. You got to really give a tip of the hat to Avey. It has just been this absolute, like, staple of Ethereum defy and just a massive foundation for so much of the on-chain economy built on Ethereum. And, you know, it's just rock solid.

You know, it's had, it's like minor incidents. and they have all been minor. Like, when's the last time anything big happened to AVE? Like, almost never. And so you really just got to tip your hat to this incredible structure that AVE has built for the Ethereum economy. Yeah, totally agreed.

Another layer two also joined the stage one club this week that was Starknet. So look at this now, David. This looks pretty nice. This is a table from L2B. We've got the top five layer twos on Ethereum that have now achieved kind of stage one decentralization. This is basic protection

for user in property rights so that the kind of the centralized sequencer can't sensor transactions or like rugpole users. So that is fantastic to see. I was just looking at this. Do you see this clock on some of like the names here? So like base has this layer two clock. And it says this project, this is on L2B, this project will be downgraded to stage zero in 74 days, six hours, 48 minutes, in five seconds. There's like a countdown timer. And this is L2B saying, hey, we're actually changing our criteria for this. We're enhancing it. We're adding some more detail. And right now we won't consider base a stage one. We'll revert it back to stage zero unless you meet this criteria. And the criteria is not having compromising 75% of the Security Council as the only way other

than bugs for a roll-up to be indefinitely block an L1 to L2 to L1 message withdrawal or an invalid withdrawal. I was just looking at this and L2B has gotten so sophisticated. That's so good. It's sophisticated and clear. Sophisticated and clear. And what it's doing is basically it's playing the role of a regulator, David. I know we've made this point before, but I'm seeing it now more than ever.

They're just like creating objective criteria and then making it transparent. for when different roll-ups achieve various kind of like property rights guarantees, right? And they're publishing that. It's become a shelling point for the community. It's basically like, again, I'm going to say some good things about the SEC a little bit later, but this is kind of like what a regulator should do in crypto. This is like sort of the SEC of crypto. And it's an underrated asset that Ethereum has.

All of this criteria. I mean, look at all this stuff, right? You know, like look about all these new requirements that L2B is like putting in place in the background. Yeah. And it's just, it's, there's a difference between enforcement and standards. The SEC is about enforcement. Layer 2B is all about standards.

And standards is this kind of like market based bottom up opt in phenomenon. But it's great that we have layer 2B like establishing standards and then the community establishing norms around those standards and actually doing like social, uh, norm setting about like this is what's appropriate and this is what not, it is not appropriate. So, David, do you see this? We'll pivot to macro for a minute. Do you see this over the way?

I think it happened Sunday and then the news broke Monday. What are we looking at here, the headline? Yeah, the announcement that I think we first heard out of a truth social tweet that then started rocketing around Monday is the U.S. China trade war ending turning into an agreement. Yes. And so there's a 90-day slashing of tariffs based on this a trade breakthrough and trade agreement. And then Bitcoin didn't, the only, so this was announced on like Saturday or Sunday. So during the weekend when markets were closed.

And so then everyone, like whether you're a tradfai commentator or a crypto person, started looking at Bitcoin to see how Bitcoin would react. And Bitcoin did not react, which was interesting. But nonetheless, when the markets opened up on Monday, it opened up very, very green. And we've had a very green week ever since. Yeah, pretty much. So NASDAQ jumped 4% on that news. S&P jumped about 3%.

And this was on the back of negotiations between China and the U.S. So Scott Besant, Chinese representatives. they met in Geneva and both sides to agree to lower reciprocal tariffs. It was like in the triple digits, like 115%, 145%, something crazy to lower it back down to 30% and 10% respectively. And just some history, like all this tariff stuff, it's just barely a month old, David. So April 2nd was Liberation Day. That's when the kind of the tariff shock started.

And then we had this back and forth between Trump administration and China doing this tip for that game of like, no, I'm going to tariff you. I'm going to tariff you. more, more, and they went back and forth. And now it's kind of like reset back down to kind of a lower amount, at least for the next 90 days. So Mark Williams, chief Asia economist, the capital economics says, this is a substantial de-escalation. And I think that's how the market is viewing it. So what do you think, man?

Do you think tariffs are over? I think they are, I don't really, I'm not informed here. but I think I'm trying to like map Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0 and Trump 1.0 started in this very big way where he elevated tariffs to be a very big deal. And then like after one year into his presidency, no one said the word tariffs anymore. And so it was just like a first year negotiating tactic to get what he wanted. And so understanding that, like yeah, I think tariffs will slowly approach becoming irrelevant over time. I think that is the take. And so do you remember two weeks ago? I say, hey, there's three things I have an eye on with respect to. to macro. One is the tariffs and the possible recession that causes. Well, you know, number one, the tariff threat kind of went down. Polymarket, remember there's odds of U.S. recession in 2025. That week, it was at 66 percent. Now it's spiked down to below 40 percent. Okay? So high. Still high. Still high. Still high. But like not that much higher, I guess, than like February.

So still high, but significantly decreased. The second thing I was keeping an eye on was capital flight from the U.S. as a result of these tariffs, like foreigners exiting all their U.S. assets. And the third thing was global liquidity. And I feel like I got some answers on this, actually, David. Tell me. Yeah. So there was two, there's a lot of sources, but there's two people who had a big impact on where I think the market's going. And, you know, like their analysis was fantastic. One is Russell Napier. Have you heard of him? He's a Scottish monetary historian. He's kind of an investor. Okay. He's kind of like a, you know, a money guy, money systems guy. He looks at all this stuff through history. The other person, I know you know, it's Mr. Arthur Hayes,

the crypto trader. You know Arthur? I know Arthur, yeah. Yeah, so Arthur, of course, is a colorful character. Actually, I recorded, you were out, you were traveling, and I recorded with him earlier this week. That episode's going to come out on Monday and says, kind of thesis for what happens. And I think between them, they're kind of right about this. So what do you think Arthur's saying about right now? Arthur, I kind of understand to be a permapole. So I'm going to guess that he was bullish. Yes. Okay. That's all I have. That's all I have. What am I looking at? Okay. You're looking at his most recent post. I said he was a colorful character. Some would say offensive. All right. So he's starting this punt. He titled this post, fatty, fatty boom boom. I'm not going to get into why.

I'm going to give you the meat of his thesis, all right? Because he takes, he takes monetary concepts and he really like turns them into kind of trader D-Gen type language. But he basically thinks that this backtrack between with Trump and China, it's permanent. It's not a 90-day pause. Tariff season is completely over. Okay. Yeah, okay. Sure. So similar to you. He still thinks that there is a massive problem and a massive policy objective that the Trump administration wants to make. And this is they want to reduce the U.S. trade deficit. Okay? And they have monetary system reasons for this. National capitalism and reindustrialization. Okay? Remember those words. And then also what they actually want to do, you know how the Treasury is the World Reserve

asset basically? Treasuries, U.S. Treasuries. They don't want that to be the case anymore, according to you, Arthur. Now, they're not going to say the quiet part out loud, but they're going to take actions to devalue the dollar and devalue treasuries to stop the whole, you remember the Triffin dilemma to stop that whole thing and to stop the hollowing out of America's manufacturing. So they found they tried tariffs. They tried to accomplish these policy objectives by tariffs. They didn't work because there is geopolitical blowback with allies. And also, it's not super politically popular, right? So representatives in Congress said, Trump, you keep doing the shit, we're not going to get elected again. Okay? So they had to back off that. And now they're going

to pivot according to Arthur Hayes to something different. And this is capital repression. So capital controls, financial repression. Basically, Arthur thinks, and he outlines why in this essay, he thinks that the Trump administration is going to, through some sort of action, maybe executive order, something like this, slap a 2% tax on all, something like this, on all foreign assets in the United States of America. Okay? So the monetary system we have right now, right, is basically America is in like the debt. We import all the things. We kind of consume them.

Asia supplies, the cheap labor. What does Asia get in return? They get dollars in treasuries. They store those treasuries inside their central banks. The treasuries are great because it's petrodollars. It's linked to the dollar. It's the global reserve asset and they can buy things with them so they get purchasing power. America gets cheap stuff.

But we become completely hollowed out by that. But as a result, all the dollars that they've withdrewed, they pour back into our capital markets. They buy S&P 500. They buy NASDAQ. They buy even like more treasuries. Okay. And so that's the current system that we have going right now. And there's $33 trillion of foreign owned capital assets in the U.S.

And what are the Hayes thinks is that the Trump administration is going to be like, foreigners are going to pay for our taxes. And he's going to put together a 2% tax on all of that. Okay, so this is capital controls that are going to be implemented in order to get the dollar lower. So that's his, like, that's his base thesis. Are you with me so far? Yeah, I'm tracking this. This initially feels very aligned with Ray Dalio's post that he's been putting out on Twitter, where, like, China needs to stop being dependent on the United States dollar to fuel their manufacturing industry.

And so because why do they need to stop being dependent on the dollar? Because we are about to devalue the dollar and all of the bonds that they own. And then vice versa, we need to stop being so dependent on Chinese manufacturing just because of national security issues. And so we need to bolster our own manufacturing in the United States. And so we need to sever the Triffin dilemma. We need to stop having the United States be the capital center of planet Earth, which is going to be painful because the exorbitant American privilege comes from the fact that we get to buy things for free because we just print and export dollars for free. And I'm worried that I'm scared about that. And then I'm also understanding that like this

deal that we had where we would print dollars, we would sell them to the world, we would sell them to China, they would give us stuff. And then they would reinvest their dollars back into our economy. It was great when they were buying treasuries. But when they are investing in the S&P 500, when they are investing in the stock market, they are starting to buy American in companies. And so this like process is gobbling itself up the fat tail to like, okay, it was one thing to buy our bonds, which we can just inflate, but it's one thing to reinvest in the S&P 500. And now you own, now China owns X percent of Apple or Google or all of our, all of our companies. And so ultimately China's the net winner here. If they can just buy all

the companies with the dollars that we keep on giving them, then all of a sudden they own us. and that is the concern. But unwinding that, all of that sounds very painful. Yeah, the unwind could be interesting in it, but it's painful based on what assets you own. You know the most toxic asset to own, according to Arthur and Russell Napier? Bonds. Yeah.

Bonds. The solution here is just don't own bonds. But the question is like, okay, Besson has got to sell all these bonds. How does he do it? And the answer, according to Arthur Hayes, is money printing. The Fed just buys them. He sells it to the commercial banking in the U.S. He sells it to the Fed, basically, and we have a whole round of money printing.

And then other countries need to buy store of value assets rather than treasuries. What are they going to buy? And the answer is gold and Bitcoin, non-sovereign store of values. Hopefully some other crypto assets down the pike. But that's the basis of Arthur Hay's bull case for crypto and what he thinks is going to happen in macro. And Russell Napier, he's not a crypto person, but he basically agrees. They both agree, bonds are toxic, don't own any of them.

Russell's like, you should have 25% gold, and you should have 75% just like value-based stocks that are throwing off cash. Now, he wouldn't say Bitcoin, we would say crypto, right, in your allocation instead. But that, I think, is the most cohesive story for what might happen in the months to come under the kind of the next Trump administration move. So we'll see how that plays out. That sounds like it's QE, but being done on fiscally rather than the Federal Reserve, as in the government is just going to buy all of the bonds and buy and add liquidity rather than the Federal Reserve. Because the Federal Reserve, I think it's going to keep interest rates high because this is going

to be highly inflationary. But I think the government fiscal policy is going to override any sort of high interest rates because they are just going to print the money and buy the bonds. Yeah, Arthur thinks it's going to be both QE, probably under a different name. say QE anymore, but actually the Fed buying actual bonds. And then also, also fiscal stimulus. Okay. There we go.

It's a great setup. If like, you know, unless you own bonds, like, do you just, do not own bonds. That's why Bitcoin is at all time high and gold's at even higher than all time high. That's right. All right. So we're going to get to some crypto native news coming up to the coin base news, both good and bad as well as a bunch of other stuff. But first, before we get there, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Like Uniswap, it's a browser wall.

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It was him just talking to his phone, just reading out a statement about a $20 million ransom that Coinbase is being held for. And if they don't pay this $20 million ransom, that hackers are going to just release a bunch of customer data. Let's go hear this video. We're going to play the first 30 seconds of this video and then we're going to talk about it. Hey, everyone. I want to make you aware of a disturbing email that.

we received recently at Coinbase. It was a ransom note demanding $20 million in Bitcoin in exchange for these attackers not releasing some information they claim to have obtained on our customers. Now, we like to do things transparently here at Coinbase, and so I'm going to respond publicly to these attackers by saying, no. We are not going to pay your ransom.

In fact, I have a few next steps in mind that I'm going to share at the end of this video. No, we are not going to pay your ransom. David, what were those next steps, by the way? What's he doing here? Yeah, so if you continued watching the video, which again, will be linked in the show notes, they say that less than 1% of Coinbase's monthly transaction users

were affected by this data breach. This breach did not involve passwords, private keys, or any funds. It was just customers' personal information, like address, home, email, telephone numbers, stuff like that. The attackers demanded $20 million ransom with, which, of course, as we heard, Coinbase is not going to pay. Instead, Brian Arndtime is doing a reverse Uno card, and they are offering a $20 million bounty for any information

that leads to the arrest and the conviction of the perpetrators. And so there's a $20 million bounty out there for anyone who can help arrest these people. If a user, and so this has been plaguing Coinbase for years now, the Coinbase is losing something like $300 to $400 million per year. This is numbers modeled out by Zach XPT and other internet sleuths who are identifying just the incredible wave of fishing attacks on Coinbase customers who are getting them to answer their phone saying, hey, a transaction just got approved out of your Coinbase account to move all your funds. Call us if you did not approve this transaction. And so then users naturally will say, I didn't approve any transaction.

Let me go call this number. and then they call what is the actual attacker, what is the actual exploiter, who gets to them to give them their password and actually do the attack. And so, bankless listener, if you have a Coinbase account and you get a text message saying,

this asset transfer has been approved. That is likely a scam. Do not call anyone. Coinbase will not call you. They will not ask to call you. That's not how they communicate. And so just, you know, make sure you have 2FA on your account

and all this kind of stuff. They said that any users impacted by this will be reimbursed. and then they are working on figuring out how to enhance their internal systems to prevent future breaches. Overall, this is a huge problem for Coinbase because they keep on losing lots and lots

of customers' funds from these fishing attacks. Yeah, and it's not so much, it's not Coinbase directly losing customers' funds, but it's data like this in the hands of hackers who can use, like, this data to enhance their fishing attempts against customers, right? It's like you mentioned some of the data that was leaked, right?

It's stuff like phone numbers. It's stuff like email address. It's stuff like home address. It's transaction details. So they might know like where you live, what your email address is, your phone number, how to reach you. So what are they going to do? If they're fishing, they're going to send you text messages. They're going to send you emails.

They're going to try to impersonate Coinbase. They might have details on your account that only Coinbase should technically know about. So it's basically a honeypot for hackers to enhance their fishing. Right? and like that is what's happening. Did you see how it actually, this breach actually happened? It was on the support team at Coinbase. So Coinbase likely like most companies farms out some of its support

to kind of like lower wage support workers. I'm not sure exactly how this works. And basically the hackers went to the support teams, individuals, like I would think and just bribe them. Hey, I'll pay you X if you give me Y data. And like it was not a sophisticated breach. and because the support team had access to all of the data, including, by the way, government IDs,

a whole bunch of government IDs were also leaked as part of this. Now, it seems that Coinbase is, at least I've heard from some people who have been contacted by Coinbase, like maybe a more official email that says, hey, you know, you've been breached. But I don't know if they're doing this with everyone. So if you're a Coinbase customer, I don't know, TBD on you know,

and whether you know if your data was involved in this particular breach or not. But it's not great. Are you getting these text messages, Ryan? Because I get a couple of these text messages every single week saying, hey, you're like, there's been a transfer out of your account. I mean, I don't do anything with anything anymore, right? Just like, I'm completely off. Like, if you're not in my contacts, I just, you know, I do not respond.

I don't answer anything. Emails, I'm totally locked down, right? And it has been that way for a while. Yeah, so part of this is obviously depending on, you know, low paid support staff to safeguard data and like, you know, like shouldn't be doing that. But the other part and the deeper reason for like why this type of thing and why these honeypots even exist, I think it's like actual AML KYC, right? It's like AML KYC makes it such that if there's any institution that's doing anything with you financially, right, they have to take all of these details about you. And they have to put it in the database.

They have to collect your government ID, all the other details. They know about them. And they create these honey pots so that like all of these honey pots. are susceptible to hacks and data leaks. Like, we've created like a privacy nightmare here with our AML KYC legislation. I mean, the better way to do this is obviously something like AVE, something in DFI, where they don't actually collect this information in the first place. But if you want some sort of, you know, is this person a good actor or are they a terrorist waitlist,

then you use ZK proofs for that, right? It's cryptography is the answer for this. What I'm a little bit worried about, though, David, is, you know, we might get kind of like the worst of all worlds here. So, because you know there's a bunch of teams working on on-chain privacy, and that's great. But you know who the first actors to use on-chain privacy will be? It'll be some crypto natives. But it'll also be like a whole bunch of bad actors.

They'll be using the on-chain privacy. And if we have bad actors using on-chain privacy and all the good actors have to do the AML KYC shit, right? Then we get the worst of all scenarios because we still have the data leaks and then the hackers have the protection. They can use the privacy, right? And so we can't even track them down. We have no idea what they're doing.

And so this is the importance of, like, legislation as well as strong cryptography in the process, because we can prevent these things from ever happening in the first place if we get there. Yeah. Yeah, I've never gotten a text message about any of my assets out of Ave getting withdrawn. That never happens. And also they never get withdrawn either. So they also stay put there. So that's the bad news out of Coinbase.

But the good news out of Coinbase this week is that they are the first crypto company in the SMP 500. It's also worth noting that they did not enter at number 500. Apparently, that's not how it works. They are in like 139. So they're jumping up to like 139 or something. And so for foreign listeners who aren't aware of where the S&P 500 is, it's the index that tracks the performance of the largest 500 publicly traded companies in the United States. Criteria for inclusion, you have to be in the United States.

You must be listed on a major U.S. exchange like the NASDAQ and the YSE or CBOE. And you have at least a market cap of $20 billion. And 50% of shares must be in public hands. And then you also have to have positive earnings in the last four quarters and the latest quarter. And so with all of Coinbase meeting that criteria, they enter S&P 500. Replacing Discover Financial, which is a boomer tradfai company, which I think is great. Coinbase immediately jumped 9% on the news. And then it continued that rally to end being up something like 22% on the week.

So congrats to all coin holders. And congrats to Coinbase for making his way into the S&P 500. I feel like that's a huge milestone, right? Because that also means when you're an index like this, that means like the average American their 401k probably owns crypto stock now. They own Coinbase now. Yeah, if you put in $500 into your 401k every single week, you are buying Coinbase. And so there is this perpetual bid under all S&P 500 companies.

And so now Coinbase is just being owned by the, the average person in the United States, which is great. Yeah, it's a big milestone. All right, David, tell me about Internet Capital Markets. Okay, it's like, that feels very tradfai, actually. It feels buttoned up, but I don't think you're going to tell me it's not, it's something that. What are we talking about here? The concept of Internet Capital Markets, I think you and I are both very aligned.

The idea of Internet Capital Markets is kind of like a Roar Shock Test because it can mean different things for different people. when I hear internet capital markets, I'm like, yeah, like capital formation on blockchain. I thought that's what we were doing the whole time, honestly. I thought that's what we're doing the whole time. Yeah, that's totally right. There's a specific flavor and like meme going around this week about internet capital markets. You were gone, Ryan, for the whole jelly jelly thing. And even if you were here in crypto, I don't think it would have gone on your radar because it's just not your vibe. Do you know jelly jelly?

I have no idea what you're talking about. Jelly jelly is a meme coin that was launched in, combination of the launch of an actual real consumer application. And this thing, the consumer application, I still don't know what it does. But there was this, it's a product to launch from a startup. It's called Jelly Jelly. And they launched a meme coin in combination with the launch of the startup.

And the meme coin, it was like promoted by like the slow capital guys and like some of the people that, like the ex-Vemmo co-founder. So it had some clout to it. Wow. And the meme coin goes up to $200 million, like inside of a, couple hours of launch. And then it goes down basically to zero. And it got so low to the point where there's like a short squeeze on it on hyperliquid. But the meme coin went up to 200 million, like 280 million and then down to zero. And now it's a 400 million. Look at this chart, man.

Okay. Oh, you know, that's just the recent, most recent history. You have to go out and go to like the all time view where you can see it like spike up to a, yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah. Okay. It's like $280 million to the start. Okay. So this is what launched this idea of meme coins that launch in combination with apps. And there's this new thing in the meta today called Believe app. And it is a token launchpad, not unlike Pump. Dot Fun. In fact, it might actually just be the same thing as Pump.com. Except instead of just being a meme coin, there are meme coins associated with real consumer applications.

And so there are a number of startups, people are calling them startups, that have launched meme coins on Believe app. So, like, Yapper is one of them. There's this, I don't know what Yapper does, deep fake videos that have, it helps you make deep fake videos, AI dove, deep fake videos.

And it's this app. It's an app that does things, and now there's a meme coin associated with it. There's also noodle.g.g., Ryan, which is, you know, the old, game of worm. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's like a worm. It's a worm tron hybrid game. And so you're a worm and then you go out and eat these little dots and you grow as you eat the dots so your

worm gets larger. And then if you find another worm who's another player, you can circle them and you can kill them and then you can eat their dots and you get their money. And so you actually have to pay like $10, $25, $100 in Seoul to enter the game. And then if you eat other worms, you get more money. And so people are playing this. They're like making money here and there. But there's also a meme coin launched on Believe app associated with... When you say they're making money, are they making money denominated in the meme coin in the token?

No. In soul. Or are they making like money, money. You put up soul, because it's on Solana. You put up Sol. Okay. Yeah. And then you, so you buy a $10 entrance ticket or you can buy a $200 entrance ticket and

you start with a larger worm. But yeah, you buy an entrance fee and then that gets you in the game. And then you can go and you can go eat other worms. You can go eat other players. And if you eat another player, you get their money. money. Okay, that makes sense to me. But like, so where does the meme coin piece fit in? But there's also a meme coin. What do you mean? Where does it fit in? You just launch a meme coin and now there's a meme coin associated with the app. And that's what you're earning. Like if you're, if you're,

if you're the longest worm, no, if you're the longest worm, you earn soul. Yes. Yes. If you eat other worms, you earn soul. There's also a meme coin. There's just also a meme coin. Yes. In what ways are the meme coins tied to the functioning and utility of the app? Yes. Don't know. Don't ask that question. Like that's, no. It's not. But this has even attracted the attention of product hunt. So a product, the product hunt co-founder made a tweet that says product hunt, handshake emoji, believe app, hinting that product hunt might launch a meme coin with this new, this new believe. I see what's going on here.

The founder of Believe app. Passernack is this guy Passernack. He goes, he tweets out the amount of inbound talent from talented founders looking to launch on belief has been incredible. We are going to revolutionize. the entire startup ecosystem. And so this is the narrative that's going on is that we are able to fund startups earlier in their life cycle

before VC funding with meme coins. I see what's going on. You can launch the meme coin. You get the trading fees. And so these apps are talking about the revenue that they're making from their application. And noodle.com is making $40,000 a month, not from people paying the money,

but from the trading fees of the meme coin. And so this has become, now this has been the game of like, oh, how do we disrupt pump fund? And there are all these different like combinations of pump like token launch paths that are being thrown together to try and figure out how do we dethrone pump fund. And this is the latest iteration of that. And for some reason we are calling this internet capital markets meta. Okay, okay.

I see what's going. So it seems like what's happening is basically so, you know, Trump, the president launches a meme coin, right? So you just bust through the Overton window. It's like it can't be illegal to do meme coins. Like it's not, I mean, the president's doing it. The president's doing it, right? So what this is, internet capital markets is,

is like a new cohort of people discovering meme coins for the first time. And they happen to be web to app developers and like companies. And so they're basically discovering meme coins in the same way crypto has already discovered them. And it doesn't have to have a link for revenue. It's like beautiful. It's just kind of like a brand thing. It's like all fun.

And this is the start of kind of a new cohort joining the ranks here and starting to play around with meme coins, it seems like. I think that's right. Yeah. I think that's right. Yeah. Is it foolish? So, okay.

So you can go to the, we'll go to the Dune dashboard. And we will look at all of the different like pump fun competitors that have come on the scene. And I'll just say that like, okay, this has been the meta. people are now realizing that pump fund is not open sea of 2021. Like it's not a flash in the pan. It's actually here to stay. The more apt comparison is actually is Coinbase in 2013 rather than OpenC in 2021. Pump fund is a sustainable business model.

Are we sure about that? Do we have enough time to like actually validate that? Like Pump fund to this day, its revenue of Pump Fund is down like 95% from the peak. And on top of that, it is still making like hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. And so there's still tons of value. to dethroning Pump Fun and going after Pump Fun. So, yeah, I think token launch pads are here to stay. We are trying to find, everyone's trying to, you know, make the new Pump Fun.

So Radium, do you know what Radium is on Solana? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not that bad, David. Okay, all right, cool. So, you know, Pump Fun made PumpSwap, which is they are trying to kick out Radium out of their tech stack. Radium made Launch Lab, which is their competitor to Pump Fun, but not exactly.

It's not a Pump Fun competitor one to one. instead of it being a token launch pad, LaunchLab is a token launch pad's launch pad. I've seen this. We've seen this already. We've seen it all, man. I've seen it all. Here's my question to you.

When you say this is like durable, this is not like opens. By the way, open C is still around. Just NFTs kind of like totally faded out, right? I saw a report this week. There was basically said the thing that everyone knows, which is like 99% of new token launches on Pump Fun, are basically pump and dumps. And you could argue with the definition

of what's a pump and dump. Depends on what the definition of the pump and dump is. But let me just define it as like, I don't want to get into moral, you know, puritanical things. This is evil. Like what is morally right? Isn't that bad UX is all I'm saying?

Right. A certain amount of times in the casino, you buy your token, you lose money. It starts to become like, just like negative UX for you. You're just like, the reason you buy tokens is so that the number goes up. And when they,

and you're promised. said it would go up, you thought it would go up. And if it always goes down, over enough time for enough people, that's just bad user experience and then people leave. This is what happened with NFTs. Will the same cycle just like not play out with memes and launch like pads? So there are people who are pointing towards that this cycle has already started to show signs of playing out exactly like all the other meme coin metas previously. So if you go to Waz's, WazCrypto's Twitter, his tweet, he goes, he just highlights a token. that's two hours old.

And he just shows the first 10 people who bought the token. And they bought, like, one bought $21,000 of a token, cashed out $737,000 of a token. The third person bought $13,000 a token cashed out half a million dollars. Fourth person put in $5,000,

cashed out $188,000. So people are always saying, like, this is already pump and dumping itself into, which is the destination of all meme coins. All meme coins are destined to become pump and dumps, which is, I think, what many people think about meme coins. And this whole idea of internet capital markets

claiming that we are re-revolutionizing the whole startup pipeline by allowing founders to launch tokens sooner and not have to go through VC funding, I think is complete hopium. We've already done it. We've already done cycles of this, right? Yes, yes. So like my tweet, I tweeted out this tweet,

like 2017 we had all coins, 2020, we had all coins with food emojis. 2021, we had all coins with pictures. 2024, we had all coins with memes. And now in 2025, we have alt coins with five coded apps. And my opinion here is that the real internet capital markets comes when developers can issue equity coins that have real claims on real cash flows.

And everything else is just a bootloader to get there. That is internet capital markets. That's the internet capital markets that I want. David, speaking of that, did I tell you I'm pretty bullish on the SEC? Wait, is that why you're bullish on the SEC? Did we just pair these two news events together? I think we did. I think we did.

Actually, I think that's the way out. It might be the SEC. So we'll talk about that in a second. And Cryptopunks have a new owner. It's not you, David, though you are an owner of a crypto punk. You got to tell me about that. Robin Hood also acquires an Ethereum layer two. All that and more.

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and be part of the community that's uniting Bitcoin and Ethereum. And we're back. Robin Hood will acquire Kevin O'Leary's backed Wonderfi. And so Wonderfie, if you've never heard of this, this is a Canadian company, actually a pretty large Canadian company. Robin Hood is acquiring it for 250 million Canadian dollars.

That's 180 million Freedom Bucks. This is going to close in the second half of 2025. So this company runs Bit Buy and Coin Square, two of Canada's oldest, most regulated crypto exchanges. They have $2 billion in client assets. So it's not nothing. These are not shells of companies. And then WonderFi is also building WonderChane,

which is an Ethereum layer two, and also has a non-cosodial WonderFi wallet. So Robin Hood just acquiring a ton of assets here with customers and just like TVL or AUM. And so the market reaction here, Hood jumps 10%. That's a stock. Not a token. Yeah, that's the stock. Yeah.

Robin Hood stock. And this has really just been Robin Hood doing a buying spree. They bought Bit Stamp for $200 million last year, which also has a ton of licenses. And so they're getting a Canadian crypto exchange. They're getting $2 billion of assets. they're getting a proof of concept layer two and a bunch of other like families of brands as well. So people last, I think last week we reported or Bloomberg reported

that Robin Hood was designing a blockchain platform potentially on Arbitrum, potentially on Ethereum, potentially on Solana. With the WonderFi acquisition, they acquire the Wonder Chain tech stack, which is an Ethereum layer two built on the ZK stack from ZK Sync. So it's actually a pretty big win for ZK Sync.

It also just submits that Robin Hood is totally in the game. I mean, they're coming against CoinBiss. They are full on crypto. I mean, they're basically a crypto company at this point in time, for sure. David, tell me about the new owner of Cryptopunks. Yeah, okay, so the owner of the Cryptopunks IP is going to be transferred from Yuga Labs to a new organization, a Node, the Node Foundation. So the Node Foundation is buying the IP of Cryptopunks.

What is the Node Foundation? It's this nonprofit committed to the preservation and expansion of Contemporation. digital art. So I think it's like a sort of internet collection of art and internet museum of sorts, digital museum. Representatives from Yuga will join as advisors to this as well. Wait, wait, because they purchased it from Yuga, right? They purchased it from Yuga Laps.

Yes, yeah, board apes and me bits. I always thought it was weird that like Yuga, like board apes. I thought they were the art enemies of punks. You know, back in the day it was the apes versus punks. And then the kind of the apes bought the punk IP, it felt kind of lame. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't really have a take about that. I mean, it was...

What's the reaction? That's mixed. Like, I've never really thought that the IP of Cryptopunks is significant because, like, I don't really care who owns the IP of Cryptopunks because I own my Cryptopunk as according to the Ethereum blockchain. And no one else will be able to take that away from me. And that's... And the data of Cryptopunks is on chain.

And so I've always kind of thought of it. It's always been, like, an interesting note, but not actually substantial to my consideration of, like, my crypto-punct. It should remind people that punks are still the most valuable NFTE collection right now, and they were up 5% after this collection. So it seems like the punk owners are kind of happy. One punk is worth more than one Bitcoin. Finally. Yeah.

David, I actually think the SEC is becoming kind of awesome right now. And I never thought I would say that. You're a SEC fan boy? In the whole history of this podcast. I might be turning into one because they are pro-capital. They are pro-crypto. This is Paul Atkins. So he is the new Gary Gensler of the SEC.

I'm just going to play the clip. You tell me if this is bullish. A key priority of my chairmanship will be to develop a rational regulatory framework for crypto asset markets that establishes clear rules of the road for issuance, custody, and trading of crypto assets while continuing to discourage bad actors from violating the law. Clear rules of the road are necessary for investor protection against fraud, not the least to help them identify scams that do not comport with the law. Isn't that what we've always wanted from the SEC, David? That's great.

Clarity? Clear rules of the road? A framework for this stuff? I mean, I think this is great. We have been hearing this for ever since Donald Trump got elected. And so we've been hearing the right sounds and the right noises coming out of the SEC. Is there anything to show for? What do we get?

I think we are going to get some big things pretty soon, David. I don't have the specific thing I can show you, but I'll give you some more indicators that we're headed in the complete right direction. The SEC might just be becoming awesome. Do you remember this account? This is the SEC account on Twitter. And I remember a time when on the weekly roll-up,

we'd bring this out, and it would be some Gary Gensler troll coming to office hours. Like, don't forget, most cryptos is a scam, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, some influencer marketing video. Yeah, this is from the SEC account this time. It says this, this movement of securities from off-chain to on-chain systems

is akin to the transition of audio recordings from analog vital records to cassette tapes to digital software decades ago. Okay? They're basically saying crypto blockchain is the future. Wow. This is their account. Okay, this is not some crypto fanboy saying this.

Just as the shift to digital audio revolutionized the music industry, the migration to on-chain securities has the potential to remodel aspects of the securities market by enabling entirely new methods of issuing, trading, owning, and using securities. David,

internet capital markets. Internet capital markets. Let's go. The level of comfort that I think this statement, these tweets give to founders, should not be underestimated. Totally. And so now you have a leadership that's aligned,

but you're asking, like, do we get something out of this? Guess who's still there? Hester Purs is still freaking there. She's had ideas around this for like five years. They just haven't been able to be implemented. So I don't know if you read her speech, but it's just basically her sandbox idea where she's talking about

creating letting firms in a sandbox style issue trade and settle tokenized stocks just like totally on chain right cutting through the red tape allowing that to happen right now it barely happens because there's like no way to do it and this would be an SEC program that encourages tokenized securities rather than chills it there's not even a neutralization right

So I think some people, when thinking about the SEC model, they're like, Gary's out, so now the SEC's not going to come after us. That's true. But I think it's more than that. What I'm saying to you is, like, now we have a pro-crypto SEC that's actually trying to promote tokenized securities. That's what these statements mean to me. Yeah. What I'm saying here is that the SEC is seeing blockchain technology as an extension of its mandate rather than an antagonistic technology. Yes.

Imagine that. technology the self is the thing that helps fair and orderly capital formation, which is the mandate of the SEC. Yes. They're a mandate. We also have BlackRock talking to them right now. So I think, by the way, David, we don't have any official information about this, but it seems like an ETH staking ETF has got to be on the way.

I think this year, that that's got to be approved. Do you think the, if when all of the ETH ETFs get converted to ETH-staking ETFs, which I think is inevitable, it's just a near-term or long-term debate, how bullish do you think that that is. For price? For ETH price, correct, yeah. Do you know, I think that I hazard to guess at this point because I've been so freaking wrong on like the ETH since this summer, like, the inflows have been okay, but they haven't really like been super impressive. So I don't think that independently will actually

make price go up. I agree. I do not think that the conversion of the ETTFs to stake making ETFs will have a material impact on the dollar price of ETH. I get it. So maybe because we think that that's a counterindicator and actually will this time. So who knows, man? We should be bearish on ETH about everything. Oh, that's our big mistake. Okay, downstream of all of this very bullish news about the SEC giving us the words that we need, being awesome,

and we can begin with the words we need to put tokenized stocks on chain. Superstate is putting tokenized stocks on chain. They are launching their Open Bell platform with their first client. And so what is Open Bell? Opening Bell, that is the platform that for Super State. Super State is Robert Leshener's startup that is going to issue tokenized securities, basically, and puts them on chain. And so Robert Leshner wrote in this press release,

through opening bell stocks will become fully transferable, programmable, and integrated into Defi. Their first client's sole strategies, a Canadian public company focused on being the Microsoft, strategy for Solana. And then they're going to have a few other clients as well. And so it's nice to have this news and the same, in stark contrast to the fake internet capital markets, which are tokenized, vibe coded, meme coin issued apps.

You actually have Robert Leshner tokenizing real securities, putting them on chain, which I think is true. Yeah. And it would be so funny if Robert Leshner, the guy that made compound and is now tokenizing securities, tokenizes sole strategies. For the Ethereum blockchain. And those times as I'm on Ethereum. What am I bullish on in this situation?

I'm confused. Just buy all the things, I guess. It's being buying all the things. J.D. Vance, he is a Bitcoin holder, and he's going to be attending the Bitcoin 2025 conference. First time a sitting vice president is going to a Bitcoin conference, I believe, or any crypto conference. And Trump administration is just locked in.

I mean, this is another hats off to the Bitcoin community. They're just stacking up political win after political win. here and like playing the game well you know i cannot look at a picture of jd vance today and be like is that a real one or is that a fake one i can't tell oh i love the jd vans memes um david lastly you know meta that um mark zuckerberg's company they're talking about stable coins again all right integrating them with what's app so i don't if you saw the interview mark zuckerberg and um it's one of the callosins from stripe just talking about librae where that went wrong and what what Facebook is, what meta is actually doing with staple coins.

And the answer is they're like evaluating it seriously. I would not be surprised if you saw a stable coin in WhatsApp. If you saw a staple coin, maybe the Instagram, Facebook, they've hired around this. They actually picked up a new hire that's going to lead this effort, vice president. She's actually from Stellar, by the way. I don't know how this is going to go. But conversations are heating up and like, you know, every, if Meta does this, every single tech company is going,

social tech company is going to have a stable coin strategy. You know, it's hard to have, it's hard to be bearish right now. It's actually, it's quite easy to be bullish. Like everyone is trying to build a stable coin. We have all the macro news that we went through, which is leading into a gargantuan Bitcoin pump.

There's a lot of things to be bullish about. Yeah, I don't think there's reason to, like, I think it was harder. Like when I was out, it seemed like it was hard to be bullish, you know? Yes. Like February, March, that whole time. I came back. I skipped all the bear stuff.

You skipped the worst three months of crypto that I've ever remembered. All right, guys. Hopefully you are timing this as well as I am. Risk and disclaimers, God let you know, crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.