Bankless - ROLLUP: Memecoin Mania | Solana ATH? | Blackrock Ethereum Fund

Starting point is 00:00:00 We are seeing dexes on Solana surpassing Ethereum Dexas, at least for a couple of days. Do you think you've underestimated Solana up to this point, too? Banceless Nation, welcome to the fourth week of March. Yeah, David, I said it. This is the Bonkless podcast today. If you are a listener in the state of California, this is the Bonkless podcast. If you are a listener anywhere else, welcome to the Bankless podcast where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor.

Starting point is 00:00:31 Why are we bonkless in California? Well, California made us change our name. And there's a very good reason for this in the state of California is apparently in that state, anything, any brand name, any company name with bank, anywhere inside of it. Either prefix, a suffix, somewhere inside the name itself. That's illegal. You cannot do that in California. Unless we have like a banking license, which we don't. Yes.

Starting point is 00:00:58 And the reason for this is a very, very good reason. reason is we could be tricking people. People who see bankless in California could think that we are actually a bank. They might mistake us for a bank. Yes. And they might start depositing funds into the account. Yeah. And like, you know, we might be swindling them. We might be defrauding them. So this is to protect the citizens. Salana pre-sales. I think that actually is a pretty likely event, actually. Guys, this is actually a true story. All right. This is real. They keep sending letters to my house, by the way, David. They will not stop, even though we have officially, California sent us a cease and desist, said you can't be bankless. We went back to them and we're like, but like we're not a bank. We're not pretending to be a bank. And oh, by the way, what are you going to do with food banks? Yeah. Food bank. Did you ask them that? Our lawyers did. What about this? Look at this. Riverbank, LLC. River Bank. There's 187 infringers with bank in River Bank. What are they going to do with blood banks? What are they going to do with sperm banks, David? Wow.

Starting point is 00:02:00 They got to change all of it. These are important questions. Yeah, it's a blood bunk now. Just like how we are complete frauds and we do indeed have a bank account. We also have bonk as well. Okay, so I didn't know this. Yeah. This is actually, these are actually not company funds.

Starting point is 00:02:18 These are David Hoffman funds. Because when I bought my mad lad, I got the bonk air drop on Solana for bonk. And so I actually am not bonkless like the grifter I am. So now I do feel like kind of low integrity here in like renaming our company to bonk list because I didn't realize that one of us had one of us has bonk. See, I am legitimately bonkless. I have no bonk and I'm very sad about that actually. I would have loved some bonk right now. Sorry about it.

Starting point is 00:02:46 But yeah, your boy's got bonk. Sold my mad lad though. All right. Should we get in the bonk this weekly roll up then, David? Let's stop talking about California. Over the last seven days, the market crashed, which is why. you never invest in Bitcoin because it always crashes at least six or seven or eight times throughout a bull market. And we just had our first one. So is this the end? And we'll talk about

Starting point is 00:03:08 that. Salana meme coin presale meta. Over $100 million in Seoul was sent to meme coin pre-sales over the last month or so. Unrelated, but also definitely related. Salana all time high. What else we got, Ron? We got the blobs. We got to go check in on the blobs, see how they're doing. And maybe these blobs are actually triggering a base season. The L2 base, you know, Coinbase is L2. Yep. Getting real cheap over there. Also, David, huge, huge, huge breaking.

Starting point is 00:03:36 Black Rock is on chain. Black Rock has a token. Which chain are they on, Ryan? We can't share everything here, David. We've got to get into the episode, all right? This is why people listen. This is why people listen to the commercials. And also, is the Ethereum Foundation being investigated by the SEC, David?

Starting point is 00:03:52 That was a headline this week, if you can believe it. Unreal. There is a bunch of shenanigans that happened all throughout this week, so we're going to cover that. and more here on the Bankless Weekly Roll-up. But first, if you are- You said bankless. Oh, God.

Starting point is 00:04:06 The Bonkless Weekly roll-up, if you're a listener in the state of California. But first, there's also the Bonkless Premium Feed that is available on Spotify, too. There's going to be five ads in this show, but zero, if you are listening on the Bankless Premium Feed for Bankless Citizens. You also get the debriefs, extra episodes, the research episodes that I'm doing with technical co-hosts

Starting point is 00:04:25 that we're only putting on the premium feed. You also get 30% off of permission lists, which is in October, 9th or 11 Salt Lake City, 30% off you are a bankless citizen. There's going to be a crypto tax AMA from the tax people inside of the bankless discord, also for citizens. The value of bankless citizenship is up only. So click the link in the show notes, bankless.com slash join. Get 10% off.

Starting point is 00:04:47 You can become a citizen straight through Spotify. Spotify, 24, 10% off. Become a citizen through Spotify. Click the link in the show notes. David, are you dialed into this Spotify, bonclis premium feed? because it is for me awesome. I actually do not have that loaded up on my phone. I use the Apple iOS, but I should.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Really? No, you should switch over to Spotify. It's way better. And also, I'm very excited to see Spotify citizen wrapped at the end of the week. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to see how many hours our citizens get in particular. It's going to be fun. I'm going to beat you this year, too.

Starting point is 00:05:18 I listen to our episodes. You're listening every single bank this podcast. Great, every single one. All right, let's go ahead and get right into the markets. Thank you, Cracken for telling us all about the state of the markets right now. Bitcoin down 6.5% on the week. Just a huge sell-off. Start of the week is $71,300 ending the current week at $66,900.

Starting point is 00:05:40 Why did we sell off? Why did we go down? We never go down. Why did we go down? I feel like you're not taking this sell-off seriously enough, David. Now it's at 66, the time recording. It got almost down into the 50s for Bitcoin. We got down to like 61K, something like that.

Starting point is 00:05:56 And there was a little bit of. like panic. I'll call it minor panic because... Were you panicked, Ryan? Well, I was not panicked. No, no. As a listener of the bank, the bonclist podcast, I do not get panicked, panicked by these events. I just took this one in stride. I wasn't worried about it at all. But a lot of people were, maybe the end the, the bull market, you know? Give us some reasons. We hit the double top on the on Bitcoin. Like we hit 69,000 last cycle. We hit 73,000 last cycle. And you know what? That's all Bitcoin. had in it, you know? All bold markets come to an end, they all come to an end sometime. All right. So, you know, we're down to $63,000, you know, we got a lot further to go before we hit zero. Can you explain why? Give us some reasons to help us all feel better about this.

Starting point is 00:06:45 Because markets go down and they also go up. Here's actually, like all serious and all joking aside, seriously, here's what I think happened. The, what it's going on is right now, people on the margins, prices discovered on the margins. And when we saw a decreasing flows into the Bitcoin ETFs this week, they were very, that happened. That did happen. Flows were very strong last week, and they were weaker this week. And so people who are pricing Bitcoin on the margins had to readjust their expectations of flows because the trajectory of flows changed this week to decreasing a little bit, which we would totally expect to happen. And so as a result of the decrease seeing flows, there was a shift in expectations of the future price of Bitcoin. And so the buyers

Starting point is 00:07:35 stopped buying and they actually started selling once they saw the flows happening. And so like, you know, this, this just recorrected Bitcoin on future different expectations as to the state of flows going into the future. The thing is, these people who are pricing Bitcoin on the margins are pricing in what a few, what they think is fair for the future. But then they're just front running. They're front running the opportunity. So like the flows will actually produce the expected price in the future inevitably, they are just pricing and a difference in time. And so the people who are pricing Bitcoin, the margins, the traders, the people on leverage, said that, you know what, $73,000 is too far into the future to price this thing because

Starting point is 00:08:16 the flows are slowing down. So we're selling. And then it's sold down to $63,000. As soon as flows pick back up again, people will price in a more bullish future. Or you can also just wait and like that 73. thousand dollars will not become the future will become the present like the the fundamentals will be will actually be realized this is what happened i feel like you're telling me nothing to be worried about yeah just just wait longer and the future expectations will become reality like people are pricing in

Starting point is 00:08:43 flows expectation flows in the future then flows happen and then price is realized does that make sense i think so but i feel like we're on some sort of a you know like a flywheel here of like, you know, cause effect, cause effect. And it's just like, I'm not sure where. Markets are a hall mirrors. This is how Jesse Ectel put it. There are bearish selloffs and there are bullish selloffs. This is clearly a bullish sell-off.

Starting point is 00:09:07 It's flushing out the leverage and putting some healthy fear into the markets. Markets crawl up a wall of worry. We resume the climb soon. You agree with this? 100%. Yeah, we're saying the same thing. In all bull markets that we have ever seen, there have been very regular 20 to 40% sell-off. We've been seen them.

Starting point is 00:09:26 Expect them. This was the first one. We went so long without one of these. Like it was pretty crazy how long we've gone without a 30 to 40% sell off. Like it's been since, well, since the bull market started. This was the first one. And so like people kind of forgot that markets go down because we're just used to these like flows, which are also going to like legitimately push us up only.

Starting point is 00:09:46 But we are still, it doesn't matter if you can be up only because the frontier, the margins of Bitcoin will be priced at the maximum level of risk. There's like some efficient frontier of risk being priced in here. And so like, yeah, this is the first. Bitcoin actually was only down from peak to trough, Ryan, 17%. If you measure it, the absolute peak. So we didn't even get our 30 to 40% drop. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:10 Like it's between like 20 and 40. Like 30% has been the average. But Bitcoin is like it's the biggest mover. It has the most bids. Like the fact that we only went down 17% is extremely bullish. Yeah. Like yeah. I mean, maybe we don't even more.

Starting point is 00:10:23 But like I kind of think it's over. You think it's over? I think we're resumed up only now. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we'll see. I don't know. I mean, just because we should expect these 20 to 40% drops all the time and this didn't even hit 20%.

Starting point is 00:10:37 So like this doesn't even feel like it dropped to me. Well, Bitcoin didn't hit 20%. Eth did hit 25%. Heath peaked a trough is 25%. Okay. All right. Well, this kind of thing happens during infinite bull markets here. Let's talk about Eith, by the way.

Starting point is 00:10:50 So the crack in pro charts once again showing us the price of Eith. Look at that engulfing candle. What are you looking at? Four hour candles? Yeah, no, one day candles. Wow. Yeah, so like one day candles. Can I go four hour?

Starting point is 00:11:03 No, that's fine. ETH started the week, $38, $3,800 down 9% current price, 3540. No, excuse me, $3,4.80. It's about $3,500. You know that SEC investigating the Ethereum Foundation didn't seem to affect the price of ETH very much. We'll get more on that in a little bit. but interesting to observe here.

Starting point is 00:11:25 David. It gave ETH some volatility, but not some bearish price action. How about the ratio here, ETH Bitcoin? Yeah, ratio doesn't look great. It's a point 0.052, 053. Ethereum hasn't had his moment this bull. Well, because everyone is taking Bitcoin exposure because the whole market is in the middle of accepting flows from like everywhere, Tradfi.

Starting point is 00:11:48 And ETH is like, it's just not in the meta because like why would you, why would you buy ETH right now when like the Bitcoin is currently getting the bid and all the meme coins are on Solana. Like ETH is just patient and patiently waiting its turn. Like the traders will get there at some point in time when the ETH ETH ETF like finally gets priced in. But even if it is getting approved in May, which like there's uncertainty and maybe like we finally saw the last nail in the coffin for the approval. There are some like ETH ETH ETF approval holdouts who still think is getting approved. But like I think it just doesn't matter. Like once the ETH ETF gets priced in to the ETH.

Starting point is 00:12:22 to the to the to eath is just going to be like a gargantuan movement because of how price sensitive eth is between now and then we could just continue to trade meme coins right right we can just trade me coins why would i be an eth why would i be an eth that's the the short term look at it um i i want to why would i be an eth is on farming eigenlayers why you're in euths zoom out zoom out okay uh total crypto market cap just to talk about it for a second 2.65 trillion or less than three trillion have not hit all-time high total crypto market cap oh have we no almost did we did we real close no real close no you would know david because i know i know i know on the show you're the only person who gets to decide that's right whether we hit an all-time high or not finally finally you're with it so tell me

Starting point is 00:13:09 david did we hit a salana all-time high that's we got to talk about that because uh it looks like we did no we hit a salana market cap all-time high salana the asset the the actual sold token is still pretty far off of all-time high because of the issuance of the Solana network of which we have discussed plenty of times. You know what? In my book, because I get to say here too, in my book, Market Cap, all-time high is all-time high because it's the most legitimate all-time high

Starting point is 00:13:36 because it's the total value of your actual network. Sure, it's network all-time high, sure. Network all-time high, and that is the one to pay attention to you because it contains all of the sort of inflation, the increase supply. supply and the dilution. I think it's a big moment for Salana. Yeah, I agree. Can we go through some other stats here? So look at this. Salana peaks in popularity. This is a search engine traffic interest over time. It's like absolutely spiking. This is, you'll find this interesting,

Starting point is 00:14:08 Solana managed to flip Ethereum for 24 hour trading volume. Well, yeah, of course. This happened just last week. All of the meme coins are on Solana. Not just that. Look at this. If you use do mount's even more impressive. This is, this looks like a TVL volume absolutely spiking into 2024 and other things. Number of new addresses, 1.16 a million new addresses on Solana in March. Total fees on Solana. We'll get back to this in a second. 5 million in March 2024 does transaction fees.

Starting point is 00:14:43 That's total active addresses. Solana is just up only data. Okay, so like the whole repricing of Solana from $20 sole. up to like $100 soul in December of this year was pricing, was pricing in the future of basically this, like the retail coming in, experiencing the U.S. and the cheap fees of Solana and be like, yeah, this is the place where I'm going to buy meme coins. And so, like, honestly, congrats to all the soulholders who listen to this podcast, of which I'm sure there are just thousands. Who held Solana through the bear market and, like, had a conviction to, to, like, ride this wave all the way up. And also congrats to the people who haven't sold sold yet. You're like, wow.

Starting point is 00:15:22 Yeah. There was a flippinging as well in the app store. So Phantom, briefly flip-in metamask. Phantom is a sauna wallet, yeah. It's a primary wallet for Solana. One thing that impresses me most, because this is actually a fundamentals metric. Now, of course, this has just recently happened. So it has to happen over a longer period of time.

Starting point is 00:15:41 But this is actually impressive. Salana is selling blocks. Okay. What do blockchain sell? Blockchains sell blocks. This is a chart of fee revenue. Salana fee revenue over the past seven days. I took this earlier.

Starting point is 00:15:53 Wow, it's actually registering. It's surpassed Bitcoin fee revenue. By $300,000. Wow. Yep. This is seven days. And they got almost $20 million. It's behind Tron still, but not too far behind Tron.

Starting point is 00:16:07 Definitely behind Ethereum. It's one half of Tron. This impresses me, actually, because this is transaction fees. And by the way, There's no priority fee on Salana that's active right now. So if you pay extra, it's my understanding of things, if you pay extra, like you're not actually getting your fee ahead of every, like your transaction ahead of everyone's else's.

Starting point is 00:16:30 So I don't know, like, people are paying for transactions, but the priority fee might be included in this and it's just really not doing anything for users at this point in time. And I think, David, credit is actually due for that. I did not see this coming as quickly. We'll see if they can sustain it, but it's impressive. me as somebody who looks at these kind of fundamentals. Yeah, I wonder how much the fees showing up here on the chart is due to Solana MEV, because that's where a lot of the transaction, not demand, because like the MEV follows

Starting point is 00:17:00 actual real usage. And so because there's so much like meme coin trading on Solana, there's a lot of slippage. Like people are getting bitten into by MEV from like slippage on Solana. And that's generating like demand for congestion pricing, for contention pricing. So people really need to get that transaction in first. And so I'm guessing the fees not necessarily being paid by like meme coin traders, but they're being paid by MEPBOTs trying to capture the slippage on like Jupiter or whatever, any exchange aggregator. Yeah, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:17:29 I don't know. I don't know if that's the case. I mean, the Solana ecosystem right now is like focused on understanding its own economics. It's on like fee markets. And that's kind of like the new, the frontier of like Solana research right now. It has been like that for a while. Let me ask you. Do you think that you have.

Starting point is 00:17:46 underestimated Solana up to this point. And are you surprised? We've got the fee revenue. We just saw, we saw active users. We saw Phantom Wallet, Flippening. We are seeing Dex's on Solana, surpassing Ethereum Dexes, at least for a couple of days. Do you think you've underestimated Salana up to this point, David? I can't really remember what I've, if I had, like, estimations of Solana generally. Like, I've always been open to all possible futures. I have my, like, critiques. of the architecture of Solana and the choices that they've made fundamentally. But the success that Solana is seeing is not something I've really ever counted out. And so, like, honestly, just, like, congrats to the people that believed in the thesis and stuck around because they are definitely, like, rich now. True. Yeah, I want to say, I think I have, I didn't think that Salana was going to die. I like I knew it was going to come back.

Starting point is 00:18:47 I am surprised and I did not anticipate how quickly it would come back. And with such ferocity, I didn't know that it would get kind of the next bull market kind of meta. Right now it's sort of this index fund of meme coins. And I think that's a narrative that's drawing it higher. But like there's actually some underlying truth here to this is more than memes. There's innovation around VM parallelization, which I think I've. discounted in the past and just ux that people can use in the here and now yeah and i think i've been slower to appreciate the value of of that um i do think that the rest of the chains and the rest

Starting point is 00:19:27 of the community and layer twos are not that far behind if they are even behind at this point in time i'm not sure that's a durable advantage but i will say probably uh 18 months ago i underestimated that they would come back so quickly and so fiercely so longa came back so came back in 2020, 2023, 2024, faster than Ethereum came back after it crashed in 2017 and came back in 2021.

Starting point is 00:19:50 Like, if you go look at the Salana chart, it is like two vertical lines, first one down during like 2022 and FTX and then one vertical up starting December of this year. Yeah. It's actually impressive

Starting point is 00:20:03 from a price perspective. Not to say there aren't issues. And I know you are someone who points out the good things of Salana and also some things that like need in And one of them is this. What is this chart that we're looking at? Yeah, this is the current problem on Solana. This is the current thing, the current issue,

Starting point is 00:20:21 which is the Solana transaction fail rate. 70% of transactions don't go through on Solana. And like I've been watching some like of these like TikToks of like showing people how to buy meme coins on Solana. And like multi button like five times. Like inside of the TikTok where they're like, you know, buy Zincoin on Phantom wallet. Here download the Phantom app, blah, blah, blah. Like get moon pay. You're going to get wrecked by fees. sorry, and then get your soul on Solana. Oh, and then you go and you try and buy this token.

Starting point is 00:20:49 Oh, and then it's not going to go through. If it doesn't go through, just hit it a few more times until it does. And so when people are like shilling their meme coins, they're like, you have to just like, if it doesn't go through, just hit by like four or five more times and then it'll just go through. So this is the current like issue in Solana. This is actually from like networking stuff. There's so much spam on Solana because that's what you get when you get low fees. People are also just like spamming trying to get their MAV bots in. that like there's there's so much so many transactions that are just like being contested and

Starting point is 00:21:18 conflicting apparently it's like a networking thing i don't understand it it seems it's like this is a chart showing that 70% of transactions don't don't make it through at least the first time and i'm like it seems to have increased since uh jito stopped the mempool yeah as well yeah because jito was like solving this part like solving this issue and then then because of the whole like slippage MEV bots that Gita wanted to like be hands off on. All of that has now gone back into the global Solana just like not Mempool. I don't even know what they call their their menpool equivalent because Solana doesn't have a mempool but like the transactions that are going into the chain. So let's talk about one of the drivers for this which is a memes and meme

Starting point is 00:21:59 coins. So in particular there's been a recent meta that has been kind of like a little alarming, I would say, which is like let's mix. It's very reminiscent of the ICO era. Yeah. meme coins plus pre-sells let's just combine those two things together what could go wrong the worst two possible things let's put them together combine icos and memes wow okay so tell us about this what is going on in meme coin pre-cells so inside of a apparently 48 hour window over a hundred million dollars in Seoul was sent to meme coin pre-sales and so for people who weren't around in the ICO era in the ICO era you would send your ETH into this ICO contract and And then once the ICO was over, once the sale was over, it would spit you back out a token.

Starting point is 00:22:44 And that you would get like a token this way. And these were also very hotly contested. It's one of the first times. Pre-launch. You needed to raise capital in order to do the work to like realize the idea, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the whole ICO, ICO was honestly a crazy time in Ethereum.

Starting point is 00:22:59 They were all unregistered securities, to be honest. And once all of the token issuers realized that, then like the whole entire movement ground to a stop. the crazy thing about this is their meme coins. And so like there's literally no promise to build anything. It's literally just a meme because that is the thing that is like making the rounds in Solana. There's this book of meme, boom coin that went from zero to a one billion dollar market cap inside of like two days. And so now everyone now like this whole like euthanasia roller coaster is like taking on and like people are like spiraling out of control with it. Because like if you can make one meme coin that went to a billion dollars, surely we can you can do it again.

Starting point is 00:23:35 And so like the demand for meme coins is through the root. The difference with the ICO mania, Ryan, versus what's happening on the Salana pre-sale meme coin meta is that they aren't like making a smart contract on Solana that issues a token. They are taking in Solana and then they are manually distributing the token out to the people who sent the soul later without any sort of smart contract involved. Why? It's a trust me. It's a trust me, bro, meme coin sale. Why do you need money up front in order to launch a meme coin? It requires like no work.

Starting point is 00:24:10 Because the soul, like if I'm sure not all of the meme coins do this, but the soul gets turned into an LP token. So the person who makes a meme coin takes the soul, mince the l, mince the meme coin, turns it into a liquidity providing token like on the Solana AMM. And so there's liquidity for the meme coin day one, which is why this works. So it's not. The thing they're bootstrapping, the capital that they need is liquidity. liquidity. And it's going to like ideally pump the bags faster. In theory, yeah. It's like some sort of like investor protection because they know that they can immediately exit as soon as the meme coin is launched. Like the meme coin launches at like roughly an equivalent price of what people win in in Seoul. But then once you launch with liquidity, you can go to like Twitter or your telegram chat rooms or you're like your alpha and like you shill it to your friends trying to get them to buy the liquidity that you produced and then you have the meme coin of and then you know the token goes up.

Starting point is 00:25:04 Okay, so did I see a story, by the way, of somebody who received funds from a pre-sale, like, deleting $10 million worth of funds, like, accidentally sending into the wrong address or somehow mishandling the keys? Like, losing $10 million of pre-sale? So that LP token that I was talking about? Yeah, one of them, slurf. I think that actually is number three on that. Oh, this is it. Slurf. If you go back to the Jack XBT.

Starting point is 00:25:29 It's the number three largest meme coin pre-sale. So how much of it is? they raised 54,000 sole. So multiply that by like basically $200. For slurf coin? For slurf coin, yeah. Okay. And so here's this now famous tweet that will echo out throughout the bull market.

Starting point is 00:25:44 Slurf sole tweets out. Guys, I effed up. I burned the LP and the tokens that were set aside for the airdrop. Mint authority is already revoked so I cannot mint them. There is nothing I can do to fix this. I am so effing sorry. 5,000 likes. Wow.

Starting point is 00:26:00 As long as he's sorry, David. As long as he's sorry. All right. You know what? People reported this to the FBI. And so there is, yeah. So there is like a report that the like DGENZN's in Salon and took this to the FBI and put this on the FBI like tip website.

Starting point is 00:26:16 And so now there's like a FBI report out. Oh my God. FBI pursuing meme coin creators. Like I guess I guess the question is did this person really mishandled the funds or are they hiding somewhere? I'm sure you could track all of this on Chase. David, this blows my mind. The only person, the only group of people I think who could like,

Starting point is 00:26:33 go for this are people who did not live through the ICOM mania of 2017. Yeah. I wouldn't. First cyclers. This has got to be first cyclers. I have to believe. Sure, bro. When I saw this, you know that whole meme of just like that like dog with a thousand yards stare like as like the Vietnam helicopters like fly by?

Starting point is 00:26:52 Yeah. When I saw something that I was like, oh, it's the ICU mania. I don't want this. I don't want this. That's why I'm not getting worried about it all. I'm just like, oh, they're going to, you know, like the same mistakes and the same things are going to play out again and again and again. Why? Because every generation, like, they have to learn the mistake. They can't learn from previous cycles because they weren't here. So they'll have to learn

Starting point is 00:27:12 on their own. So this is why we repeat these exact same things, cycles, I COs, scams, like, oops, I lost my keys, like FBI. It's going to, it's going to repeat. And I used to get it bothered about this. Hey, everyone, everyone stopped trade. Stop being dumb. Be smart instead. And it's just so, it's yelling into the wind like like we could say on here and in fact let's just say this guys don't like don't engage in like pre-sale meme coins it's probably you're probably going to lose your money it's probably not going to work or sometimes it'll work but like a lot of times it won't be very careful it is a gamble and it's a game that you are playing but who cares no one like the people who need that advice are not listening to us they are on ticot they are somewhere else well the thing is it's it's actually going to make money

Starting point is 00:28:01 for people. Like the meme coins are generally going up except for the ones that die, which you don't go ahead of the time. So why can't you be happy about that, David? Why can't bankless be happy about that? Well, we'll like return at the end of this bull market when like all every single meme coin is at zero and everyone, because everyone is making money right now. And in the future, they're like not going to make money, but right now it's fine because everyone's having fun and numbers going up. Once number stops going up is going to stop being fun. But until then, we are boomers. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Everyone has learn from themselves so I am much more zen about it and lastly here we got to remember of course salana is only a toddler like just barely out of like toddlerhood uh it's four years old and happy happy

Starting point is 00:28:42 fourth birthday to salana fourth birthday uh all who uh celebrate i guess that happened in march uh like uh the first the first salana block happened in march four years ago 276 billion transactions i wonder if they count votes which they shouldn't you had to slip that in didn't you david votes aren't transactions. Ah, no one cares. It's a bull market. Let's keep moving. Let's talk about the blobs, all right?

Starting point is 00:29:07 Okay. Talk about the blobs. Enough with the memes and to the blobs. As we start this section, Ryan, we have a pop quiz brought to you by Mantle, our new consumer of blobs. Pop quiz. Class is now in session. What does blob stand for?

Starting point is 00:29:21 What does blob stand for? What does blob stand for? Blobs are a technical term. They have the technical term, like this is not just a, this is not just. us being like cutesy with our naming nomenclature. This is a term that came before Ethereum. Bitcoin likes our blobs. How about that?

Starting point is 00:29:37 Bitcoin likes our blobs. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You nailed it. Am I right? Blobs stands for binary large object. Well, what's the, oh, it's not even an acronym. B binary large large, large object. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:52 Blob, B, binary, L, large, ob, B object. Oh, okay, yes. I was starting wrong. Yeah, so a blob, a blob is a binary large object, as in all blobs are exactly the same size. Yes. There is, like, I can't remember the actual specific size. But some, when they are created by like optimist or armortem or whatever, the actual blob data is less than the size of a blob. And so what do they do?

Starting point is 00:30:18 They pat it with zeros to become a binary large object blob. A binary large, like, I'm just not going to remember that. Is that okay? If I don't remember that ever again. I just know that blobs. It's cool. That's a cool, fun fact. Why would you remember that?

Starting point is 00:30:33 Because, David, I'm done with being a nerd. Okay, I just want to buy meme coins now. I'd choose rich. Oh, my God. Okay, so you're hanging out on base then. If you like blobs and meme coins, you go to base. Really? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:48 Is it going to be base season? Is that where we're getting to? I think there is a crescendoing of base season. Yes, correct. This is the base daily revenue versus active users here. I've got this from Token Terminal. and it looks like a straight line up. Speaking of MEV bots

Starting point is 00:31:03 come from retail people who are trading meme coins, base is experiencing the same thing. The difference is base doesn't have any failed transactions. Well, you had to say that. The whole episode, is it going to be like this? It's true. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:16 Not on the bankless, the bonclist podcast. Okay, can we go back to the L2 fees, though, because I really care a lot about this, and we did a brief, well, I did a long update last week on LTVs. How are they this week? Are they still down or are we increasing in price?

Starting point is 00:31:32 Transactions are free on layer twos. They are basically free. They are before both optimism and arbitram, they are below a penny for a simple send. Yeah. For un-swap, for un-swap trade, they are a whopping one penny. How about are ZK EVMs pretty cheap too? Two cents? They have some improvement to do.

Starting point is 00:31:55 ZK Sync is by far the cheapest because it is both a ZK roll-up and a blob consumer. People are excited about ZK Sync these days because Alex, founder of ZK Sync, tweeted out, now that we are consuming blobs, it's time to focus on decentralization and decentralizing ZKSink to the community. Not means? I think you know. I think not means. No. Means later. Okay. I think everyone understands what that means.

Starting point is 00:32:19 I can read between the lines. Yeah. I understand that. Last thing to drive by, David, is assets. So we got a lot of assets on Ethereum, the layer one. and they need to move somewhere else, at least if you are a small user, if you're not a whale,

Starting point is 00:32:35 if you're not a chain consuming Ethereum block space, it's going to be really expensive to continue using ETH layer one block space. So we've got to move these assets, move these users over to the layer twos. How's that going? Pretty damn good, Ryan. We are all-time highs in TVL on layer twos,

Starting point is 00:32:51 and especially the flows since the start of 2024 into layer twos have been like pretty damn gargantuan just like, look at this chart. for the podcast listeners that can't see the chart, imagine the chart emoji on iOS that's going up to the right. That's what DPL looks like on layer two is moving from Ethereum layer one. Since January, it's been like, it went from like 12 billion to we are just over 25 billion. So like a doubling in the last like two or three months.

Starting point is 00:33:20 There you go. That migration will continue. I think during the rest of the cycle, at least in 2024, 2025, ETH users who remember transacting on layer one with still assets on layer one are still going to be upset that it's so expensive. It's just kind of like Manhattan's expensive and now Ethereum's asking everybody to move to the suburbs. And like it's kind of a pain to move to be honest. So I think there's going to be that overhang for the next like 12 months or so for Ethereum users. Yeah, for entrenched users.

Starting point is 00:33:51 All of the newcomers into the Ethereum ecosystem are going straight from Coinbase to base. and like we've seen that flow of users and that's why like base transactions or base wallet addresses are like just up only and they're not going to know anything about the Ethereum layer one the layer one if you didn't know Ryan is lava

Starting point is 00:34:09 don't touch it don't touch it don't go there don't touch layer one it's too expensive what do we got coming up next coming up next half the FOMC day to those who celebrate where are the rates going are they going up they're going down we're going to talk about that Black Rock is on chain with their new build build fund

Starting point is 00:34:25 We'll talk about what that actually stands for. That actually does stand for something. You know, BlackRock just doing some casual on chain security issuance on Ethereum compliant. That's what they're doing. Speaking of securities, is the Ethereum Foundation getting investigated? We'll talk about that and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible.

Starting point is 00:34:44 Also, the place I prefer to trade my meme coins on Cracken. If you do not have an account with Cracken, consider clicking the links in the show notes to getting started with Crackin 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, empowering you to make your first or your hundreds trade in just a few clicks. And there's an award-winning client support

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Starting point is 00:36:34 Sign up at cryptotaxcalculator.io and get a 30% discount with code Bank 30. Click the link in the show notes for more information. Sello is the mobile first EVM compatible carbon negative blockchain built for the real world. Driving real world use cases like mobile payments and mobile defyphes. and with Opera MiniPay as one of the fastest growing Web3 wallets, SELO is seeing a meteoric rise with over 300 million transactions and 1.5 million monthly active addresses. And now Sello is looking to come home to Ethereum as a layer two.

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Starting point is 00:37:26 sending crypto to phone numbers across wallets using Social Connect. But Sellow is a community governed protocol. This means that Sello needs you to weigh in and make your voice hurt. Join the conversation in the cello forums. Follow Sello on Twitter and visit cello.org to shape the future of Ethereum. Quick Fed watch update here, just because we got to know what the central bankers are doing. So there was a Fed meeting this week. That's the FOMC meeting.

Starting point is 00:37:49 they meet and they decide what rates are going to be. And Jerome Powell says, we are going to hold rates steady. So steady the ship. They forecasted about three rate cuts to come in the year. So not up, David. Steady for now. Okay. And then rate cuts later.

Starting point is 00:38:04 This is going to, of course, depend a lot on inflation. But Powell says inflation's not so bad. So he says the recent uptick in inflation. We talked about that last week is above like 3%. It's just a bump in the road. hasn't changed the overall story. So he takes the two of these things together, and he says inflation is moving down gradually. Sometimes the road is bumpy, but we're moving towards 2%. So that's the plan. Markets reacted favorably, at least risk-on assets reacted favorably

Starting point is 00:38:36 to this because there was nothing hawkish. It's kind of like as expected. And there was also talk of stopping quantitative tightening. They've been doing some quantitative tightening just kind of in the background. And if you stop quantitative tightening, does that mean you need to restore some liquidity and some measure of QE? That's also in the air. A lot of this, of course, though, depends on inflation, right? Like what happens next? So are we going to drop back down towards 2%? There's like a couple different directions that this could go. And Lynn Alden points out that inflation has been mildly re-accelerating so far of the past several months. And if it persists like that, if we continue on that re-acceleration, it would start to result in headline inflation numbers,

Starting point is 00:39:21 those numbers that Powell doesn't like going up, right? So we could go drop down towards like 2%, and that would make Powell happy and they would continue the plan of cutting rates, or if it spikes up, if we get, again, 3%, 4%, that starts hitting the headlines, then he'll be pressured to maybe hold rates, constant, or increase rates. I think the game for the Fed right now is trying to figure out, how to get okay with a higher than baseline 2% inflation and not feel like that's a loss for the Fed. Like inflation is going to be a thing. It's going to be a thing way more than it's ever been before.

Starting point is 00:39:59 A solid 4% of regular inflation, it seems like the new equilibrium, except if the Fed admits that and they say, like, you know what, we previously targeted to, but now we're fine with targeting 4 is going to look like a huge L for the Fed. But that's also what they need to do. So I think that's kind of going to be the dance for the Fed over the next like 18 months. Yeah, we'll see. I listen to micro podcasts. I know I'm talking about.

Starting point is 00:40:19 Okay. Then I trust you. They haven't capitulated on that 2% number, but maybe that's inevitable, as you say. They haven't cosmetically presented capitulation on the 2%. But internally, they're like, it's going to stay higher than 2%. Can we talk about the most exciting thing in my mind that happened last week, David? This is absolutely massive. We already talked about meme coins.

Starting point is 00:40:41 No, it's not meme coins. It's even better than meme coins. Okay. This is BlackRock tokenizing on Ethereum. Ethereum main net. Manhattan. Hot. Yes.

Starting point is 00:40:53 This happened this week. And I hit the headlines. We saw a contract deployed. We saw an SEC filing. And crypto, Twitter was kind of trying to scramble around to find out what this meant. Well, here's what it means. This is official PR from Black Rock. Black Rock launches its first tokenized fund.

Starting point is 00:41:11 Biddle on the Ethereum. network. Tell us about this. Okay, so Biddle actually stands for Black Rock, U.S.D, institutional digital liquidity funds. Are you serious? That's what it means. It means Biddle. Yeah. So like, Biddle is...

Starting point is 00:41:26 They started with Biddle and then worked with the way backwards, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, probably. For those who don't know what Biddle is, it is a play on the world word, build. I think this came out of John Poller and East Denver. Heath Denver kind of like invoked this as like their memes. It's an Ethereum meme. That was a derivative from Hoddle. From Hoddle, yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:42 Like the ancient hoddle meme that came from like the drunk Bitcorner in 2013 who bought the top of the 2013 Bitcoin Bitcoin bubble. And then he was like, I am hodling on the Bitcoin Talk forums. Then Ethereum comes along. And then instead of hoddle, we have Biddle because we're a community builder. And then now we have BlackRock. So black rock tapping into meme culture, though. Into meme culture. It's pretty impressive.

Starting point is 00:42:04 Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. So BNYMillion is the custodian. What is going on here? The tokenized, it's a tokenized treasury. Tokenized treasuries on Ethereum. There is a white list with this, so you have to be an accredited investor.

Starting point is 00:42:17 So this is an ERC20 token with a white list that you have to be manually approved by BlackRock. Minimum investment, $5 million. The way that this works is actually really, really cool. So the Biddle token is going to be worth $1. But since it is a on-chain treasury product, it pays accrued dividends directly to investor wallets every single month. So the yield that it gets from the treasuries underlying yield, yes. So it's like a stable coin. It is a stable coin.

Starting point is 00:42:44 It is worth $1. But it will pay holders at the end of the month its pro rata share of yield that it got from being a T-bill in the back. So my 5% annualized amount, it'll pay me in that to my Ethereum address. Yes. If you put in a $5 million minimum. Okay. Well, I'm not going to do that. I'm too busy gambling all of my funds on meme coins, as you know.

Starting point is 00:43:07 Yes, proud of you. Proud of you. DC investor says one thing notable. about the new BlackRock Fund on Ethereum. This isn't like old LARPs by governments who put some notional debt security on chain. I've seen a lot of that. This is the world's largest asset manager

Starting point is 00:43:20 actually putting $100 million in USDC on the Ethereum blockchain huge. So as an industry, we have had these like enterprise blockchain conversations, the institutions are coming, this tokenization of everything. We've had these conferences and podcasts, all about the subject.

Starting point is 00:43:41 for like a decade now. Yes. And is at this is it. This is it. This is it. This is a on chain. This is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, of a, of an off chain security inside of an ERC 20 token by the world's largest asset manager that pays

Starting point is 00:43:57 monthly dividends to token holders to token holders, to security holders to investors. The cool thing is, is like that, that, that, imagine like, say, say this grows into like, 10,000 holders, 10,000 people own, like, you, the minimum investment is $5 million, but then you can go and, like, sell it and so you can have less than $5 million. You just have to be on the white list. So, like, say they white list, like 10,000 people. And then Black Rock is spitting out dividends to these 10,000 people on the Ethereum Layer 1.

Starting point is 00:44:21 Black Rock's going to be burning, like, a nice amount of beef. Oh, thanks, BlackRock. Thanks, Black Rock. My valeditor, thanks you. Really proud of you guys. This is actually, may I remind folks as well, this is actually the world's largest asset manager, nine trillion. They own the planet.

Starting point is 00:44:39 They started with 100 million. they have more. I'll just say that. They have more. They can increase this over time. This is BlackRock paying 5.2 cents to move $100 million, probably nothing. By the way, five cents on $100 million is actually pretty cheap. So if you are a smaller user, you're not a whale and you're using Ethereum Mainnet and you're saying

Starting point is 00:45:03 five bucks to do this uniswap transaction or $10 or whatever, you're like, that's expensive. And I don't blame you. That's what layer two is for. for Black Rock, you want this level. The layer one is for BlackRock. Ethereum main chain security, right? And you're fine paying $5 for that. It's like, it's like worth it to you. The security is worth it to you. The uptime is worth it to you. Being on Ethereum plugged into all of the liquidity sources is worth it to you. So that's what I think increasingly main chain will be for. Large banks, whales, other chains to settle on. They're kind of moving in. They're like making Manhattan. They're building the skyscrapers and

Starting point is 00:45:40 Manhattan. That's what's going on here. Can I tell you my favorite part about the story? There's many favorite parts about this story. Here's my favorite one. Tell me your favorite. You just sent me this link. So the Black Rock Buildil token is open, like people found it. Like you can go look at it. People know what it is. And since we are in an open public permissionless ecosystem, people have been sending assets to the Black Rock owned smart contract because they know Black Rock owns and operates this, the smart contract. So this is a Black Rock owned address. Now we know what it is. So people are sending all of their meme coins into the BlackRock address. And so BlackRock now owns some Shib Inu, a bunch of just like absolute shit coins.

Starting point is 00:46:20 Somebody sent BlackRock a crypto dickbutt. So BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is a holder of one crypto dickbut. Congratulations to BlackRock. Fantastic investment. The other thing that's happened, Ryan, you know when everyone got dusted via tornado cash? I do know that. Yeah. I guess I was. on that list somewhere. Do you think, do you wonder where this is going? Black Rock got dusted. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:46 So BlackRock has to now file the same report that you and I have to file every single year for the rest of our lives. Because they violated OFAC sanctions. I didn't file that report. Did you file that report? So you're supposed to do it every single year. I did it for the first year, but I'm not doing it for the rest of my life. So I am actually- Did it?

Starting point is 00:47:07 Yeah, I did it. Well, because my lawyers sold me too because I'm. I don't know how to do it. Because I'm suing Janet Yellen. Okay. Well, I don't even know how to do it. So you and I are actually both like sanctioned individuals now because we're not lawfully reporting to FinCEN that we are.

Starting point is 00:47:22 Dusted. Of our, like, it wasn't me. Like, I didn't do anything. Somebody dropped this in my mailbox. Like, I can't. But now they're dropping in Black Rock's mailbox. Yeah. So Black Rock has violated FinCin.

Starting point is 00:47:33 Nice job, guys. A good way to get hazed in crypto, I think is getting some NFT memes. and some tornado cash dusting, I guess. Let's end this where we start, which is bullish. BlackRock launching a yield-bearing stable coin on Ethereum is still one of the most bullish things to ever happen in crypto. And the market has definitely not digested this yet. Bullish Eith, Santhony Sasano there.

Starting point is 00:47:54 The fundamentals are too good for this to be priced into the market. Like, you know, it doesn't work. Speaking of getting hazed, Ethereum Foundation getting investigated by the SEC. Did you hear about this? I did. And in fact, it kind of scared me when I saw this. here's the headline from Fortune Crypto. SEC probing crypto companies in Ethereum investigation as hopes for ETF dim.

Starting point is 00:48:16 Okay, and there's speculation here. Look at this. This is the first paragraph of Fortune. The Securities and Exchange Commission is waging an energetic legal campaign to classify Ethereum the second most popular cryptocurrency as a security, according to U.S. companies that have received subpoenas related to an investigation. Wow, David. They're like that sounds like Gary Gensler's going for it.

Starting point is 00:48:38 He's like, you can't defeat me. I'm invincible. Ethereum is actually security. You know, get ready. And tell us what the Genesis for this SEC probe of the Ethereum Foundation was. Yeah, so the Ethereum Foundation was sent a voluntary inquiry from a state authority that included a requirement for confidentiality, which was apparently added to a GitHub commit in February. of this year. So people are seeing this GitHub commit. They're seeing the request of information, this voluntary request of information to the Ethereum Foundation, which is a Switzerland entity,

Starting point is 00:49:15 by the way. And then people are jumping to the conclusion of Gary Gensler and the SEC is going after ETH as a security, which is like there's a pretty big like leap in logic there. Yeah, and you say people, it's not just people, it's journalists. It's apparently fortune crypto. I saw Naraj from Coin Center tweet this and just be like, I don't know where this is coming for this article is coming from Fortune at all. None of these facts are really substantiated. There's no evidence that there's investigation underway or that the SEC somehow thinks that Ethereum is a security is going for him. The thing, though, is with any good narrative, there's some plausibility to it. We all know Gary hates crypto. We all know he has not said

Starting point is 00:49:54 publicly in front of Congress when asked specifically if Ethereum is a security or not, if he could clarify, he's refused to answer that question in any coherent way, right? And there's a sense that he got some heat for approving the Bitcoin ETF and maybe he wants to reverse that. So that's why I think this narrative takes hold. So instead of amateurs completely speculating as to whether or not this is real or not, let's actually like talk to the lawyers who know a thing or two. Like you said, Naraj commented on this, but like here's Mike Seleig, who you've had on the podcast before, a very smart lawyer saying, it's extremely common for crypto protocol foundations to receive voluntary request for information from federal and state regulators. and subpoenas are about as sure as a sunrise for a crypto entity.

Starting point is 00:50:35 And so Mike is saying, yeah, this is more or less Paul, part for the course. Paul Graywall, the chief legal officer over at Coinbase, he tweeted out, SIE, again with the eth misinformation as we await a decision on the ETH ETH ETPs, the exchange traded products, ETF. And then he goes like, okay, let's talk about some basic facts about Ethereum. Millions of Americans hold ETH. It's been vital to crypto since 2015 launch. And ETH is a commodity, not a security.

Starting point is 00:51:02 The SEC has taken this position for years, and then he just lists and cites in, like, events that have happened over the last five plus years. Like lawyer style. Loyal style. Exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C, right? All of this evidence. He's basically saying it's absolutely futile for anyone

Starting point is 00:51:21 to try and claim that ETH is a security. This whole ETH is a security conversation, which has been a theme for, like, way too long, is like some of the dumbest stuff that we have to address very frequently on the weekly roll-up. Well, I think one big reason for this is people don't realize, and this is, maybe we will end this section with this and try to dispel what I think we both think is Fudd. This is from Ryan Quintends, who is mine folks, formerly on the CFTC. He was a commissioner for the commodities future exchange in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:51:53 He said this, a reminder, when the SEC allowed ETH futures, by the way, they did. This was several months ago. Was it back in October, David? When they allowed these ETH futures to trade on its regulated securities exchange, it explicitly acknowledged the status of ETH as being a non-security outside of its jurisdiction. We have ETH futures that are trading right now, and that in itself, the fact that that has happened, the fact that that has been approved by the SEC means the SEC has already stated that ETH is a commodity and not a security. Like, it's already done.

Starting point is 00:52:28 We have every single assurance under the sun that ETH is a commodity, except for the words coming out of Gary Gensler's mouth himself. Everything else we have. Oh, yeah, yeah. And by the way, when I said futures, I'm talking, this is a futures ETF. There's an Ethereum ETF. There's already an Ethereum futures ETF. Brian Quintends, again, if the SEC had any doubt about the regulatory treatment of the ETH in October 2020, wouldn't have approved the ETH ETH.

Starting point is 00:52:59 That is the ETH futures ETF that exists. If ETH were in fact a security, then the CFTC listed futures contracts as well would also be illegal. It's kind of a done deal. Even if Gary wanted to, he can't at this point without like an act of Congress. And importantly, like we don't know what is in that subpoena. But like it's not, it's most likely has nothing to do with E as being a security. It has to do with something else, probably. Well, I mean, let's flip to the good news.

Starting point is 00:53:30 Maybe the SEC is reviewing all of BlackRock and the other submitters, ETH, ETH, ETF, spot ETF. Oh, I like this. I like this. Conspiracy. I'm going to ask a couple of questions. So optimistically, they are taking those application submissions for an Ethereum spot ETF seriously.

Starting point is 00:53:48 And they have some like finishing touch questions from the Ethereum Foundation. Because of the ETHETF. Yeah, I love that. Do you like that? You like that narrative? This is the SEC just like doing regular information gathering for the eventual approval of the spot ETH ETH ETF. This is the most valid conspiracy that I've heard this week. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:07 Well, that's because it's bullish and you like that one. I mean, that's what I mean. We're all kind of speculating and we do not know. But I would not, you cannot translate this to say that the SEC is trying to turn Ethereum into a security. Yeah. People just have this knee-jerk reaction to ETH is a security and then everything like everyone loses their mind on Twitter. Anyways, let's check in on the ETH-E-E-TF actual news,

Starting point is 00:54:29 because some news happened this week, specifically about the ETH-E-TF in May. Both Fidelity and Grayscale this week, updated, amended their filing with the SEC to include staking. So there is an option for these ETHs to be staked ETHs. I don't think it's forcing it into being a staked ETH ETF. It's starting as vanilla. Adding some detail.

Starting point is 00:54:52 But they're opening up the door. They're adding a door. inside of their own filing, where in the future they can go through that door and that door is a staked ETH ETF. And so both Fidelity and Grayscale updated their amendments this week, their filings this week. Yeah, I thought that was bullish at first. And in a way, it is bullish, but it's not necessarily bullish that we'll get the Ethereum ETF by May, which is the next deadline. And James Seyfert from Bloomberg has a take here. My cautiously optimistic attitude for ETH ETFs has changed from recent months, we now believe these will ultimately be denied on May 23rd for this round. The SEC

Starting point is 00:55:26 just hasn't engaged with issuers on Ethereum specifics. And basically, everyone is saying the people in the know are saying that if the SEC was going to prove the Ethereum ETFs in May, they would have engaged more deeply with the issuers on the specifics. And there's none of that activity that they see. So the default, what's likely going to happen is they're going to be denied in May. Are you ready for a conspiracy on that one? Because I heard one that I really really liked this week. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:56 So the reason why there's not engagement between the SEC and the ETH ETF filings and the issuers is because we already have the Bitcoin ETF approved. And the ETH ETFs are basically carbon copies of the Bitcoin ETF. And so why do they need to engage? They've already did their engagement with the Bitcoin ETF. Since they're just carbon copies, the SEC is like, oh, you guys are the same things. Just come right on in. Have stamp of approval.

Starting point is 00:56:22 And like, please, please become and be an ETF. That's what's going on. Well, I mean, that would be great if that's what's happening. There's always a chance, right? There's a chance. And I think James would acknowledge that as well. I will say, David, you and I did a fantastic podcast with Matt Hogan from Bitwise. And Ryan Baskinson.

Starting point is 00:56:38 Yes, and he had a take. And he was actually, actually, I won't spoil it. Listen to the episode next week. He gives his estimation on a probability of the ETH ETF getting approved. sometime this year. And he gives another hopeful date for that. So stay tuned for that. All right. Coming up next, the first LRT in the Eigernlier ecosystem, the liquid resaken token drops is air drop coming in at a whopping $3 billion valuation. Is this the starting pistol for all the other future LRT token drops? I think so. We're also going to check in on

Starting point is 00:57:07 CZ. What's CZ up to? What's he doing over there? And then lastly, another judge accused the SEC from acting in bad faith. Surprise, surprise. We're going to get to all of that and more. But first, we're going to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Mantle, our preferred layer two for getting all the yield. Check out Mantle. There's a link in the show notes. Mantle, formerly known as BitDAO is the first Dowled web three ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle network, a brand new, high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 built using the OP stack, but uses eigenlayer's data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum Layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle network's

Starting point is 00:57:42 gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle treasury is one of the biggest Dow-owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the Web3 space for Mantle. Mantle already has sub-communities from around Web3 onboarded like Game 7 for Web3 gaming and BuyBit for TVL and liquidity and on-rass. So if you want to build on the Mantle network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone-based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure, and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first Dow-led layer-2 ecosystem, check out Mantle. at mantle.xyZ and follow them on Twitter at zerox mantle.

Starting point is 00:58:22 Uniswap is revolutionizing the defy space, not just by enabling swaps, but by empowering you to swap smarter with a comprehensive suite of products for faster, safer, and more informed swapping. Say goodbye to pop-up wallet extensions. The uniswap extension is coming soon, and this extension is not a pop-up. It is a sidebar in your browser that persists no matter where you are on the web. This means you can swap, sign, or send, and receive crypto anytime, anywhere without obstructing your browser window. But that's a sidebar. That's not all. The Uniswap web app now features limit orders, so you can buy and sell any token at your price on your terms without having to watch the market. And the best part, limit

Starting point is 00:58:56 orders are built on Uniswap X, which means no gas fees. Also new to the web app is the data and insights pages with real-time candlestick charts, price data, transaction logs, and detailed pool data, all integrated into the Uniswap web app. All of these new releases come together to create one platform to help you swap smarter every time, no matter where you are on web, mobile, or on the extension. Click the link in the show notes to sign up for the extension. waitlist and download the mobile app. Start swapping smarter with Uniswap. Are you launching a token?

Starting point is 00:59:23 Is it already live? How are you managing the legal and tax obligations for providing token grants to your team? It's no secret that token management gets complicated. Between learning all the legal language and tax obligations in every country that your team is in, token grant management can feel like an obstacle course.

Starting point is 00:59:37 But it doesn't have to. That's where Toku steps in. Toku provides practical tools to handle token grants, allowing for effective oversight of token distributions and payroll tax compliance for employees, contractors, advisors, and investors. They also handle tax withholdings through their real-time tax calculations

Starting point is 00:59:53 that can be done by Toku or integrated into any payroll E-O-R providers in any jurisdiction. Toku is a trusted provider of protocol labs, D-Y-D-X Foundation, Meena Protocol, and many more. Get started for free and make token compensation simple at Toku.com slash bankless. Etherfi launches their Dow, aka launches their token, same, same.

Starting point is 01:00:12 Some quick hits. This launch on the 18th. The Airdrop is now liveclaim.either.5. also link in the show notes. 6% of the total supply of the token is being airdropped in this particular air drop. They're calling that season 1. 5 more percent will be air dropped in season 2, along with a bunch of other innovations that they are launching. They also hinted at their own layer 2.

Starting point is 01:00:33 This is not the first LRT to have their own native layer 2. That seems to be the meta. Total supply 1 billion token, 68 million ETH FI were air dropped this season. Currently coming in at $4 billion. So yeah, $4 billion. dollars who was eligible if you whole held e'eath or wrapped e'eath and or inside of a pool in a pendle pool uh you were getting all of these points early adopter program blah blah blah blah all this good stuff basically we had an ether five points you kind of know a snapshot was taken on march 15th um so 11%

Starting point is 01:01:05 of the total supply air drop to users uh 6% in this first initial air drop closing window uh you need to claim by june 18th of this of this year so it's relatively small window this is me and the Gary Gensler firewall here. The points police do not allow you to use the platform from this location. Anyone in the U.S. is restricted from picking up that air drop, David.

Starting point is 01:01:25 I really wish some project when they have this page just has a Gary Gensler wagging his finger. Can we get on that on one of those? Can we get this? Yeah. We need this. Okay, so EtherFi,

Starting point is 01:01:39 the first restaking token and it's like a pretty big in terms of like how big is this? You said billions? Is it over $3 billion? $4 billion. How big is Lido? How big is Rocket Pool?

Starting point is 01:01:52 Less than $4 billion. How does that work? How does that make sense? New charts, buddy. New charts. New charts. New charts. They're up.

Starting point is 01:02:00 New tokens. Yep. Don't stop asking smart questions. Only ask dumb questions. This is the first of many LRT drops that we will see. And again, this is liquid restaking token. So this is all based on kind of like if you've been following the eigenlayer meta, which is you take.

Starting point is 01:02:16 you stake it and you stake it again and that's what etherfi is actually doing it's uh creating a like a tokenized way to restake tokens for all sorts of applications that have not been built yet but that will be that are in progress i mean we're seeing a lot of them yeah uh but uh they they have not come to market yet and this is all kind of the the speculation that's going on but the first of many i would say opportunities swell kelp renzo uh god there's so many to that they'll go on um And then, like, all the ones, all the LRTs drop, then, like, we get the Aveses. Eventually, we'll get Aigen itself. I think it's just going to be really good to be a re-staker.

Starting point is 01:02:54 This is, instead of playing in meme coin degeneracy, like, my strategy has always been just, just put your eth in Iguine there. Capture, capture, like, seven different airdrops. Well, it's more simple. Like, I'm a busy dude. I got a podcast to record. I can't be trading meme coins. The best thing, the best thing about this is you get to keep your ETH.

Starting point is 01:03:10 You don't have to sell your ETH. You get to keep your ETH. It's ETH. You are taking on some risk. I'll say this. Smart contract risk. Yeah, yeah. Opportunity cost.

Starting point is 01:03:19 Yeah, yeah. All that good stuff. You know who also did really well on this, David, is the almost 10,000 bankless citizens who qualified for thisirdrop. Do you know why they qualified, David? Because they listened to the bankless. Because we've been hell early to the LRT-Egan layer ecosystem. Yes. And they use the air drop hunter.

Starting point is 01:03:34 They use the bankless air drop hunter. They plug their address into claimables. They know they got this. And they received it. I actually think the average citizen got the. like something like $3,500. Oh, you got to pump those numbers up, buddy. The average bankless citizen got $4,500 worth of etherfi.

Starting point is 01:03:53 That's $1,100 etherfi tokens. The average, the average etherfi era drop was a little over $3,000. If you're a bankless citizen, you got $4,500 because you have the alpha from the bankless air drop hunter. Oh my God. How do I become a citizen? Tell me, tell me. You click the link in the show notes, Ryan, and bankless.com slash joint.

Starting point is 01:04:12 It pays for a cell. It pays for itself. It's $20 a month. It pays for itself. Just $20? It more than pays for itself. Like, do that ROI, man. That's like 100x.

Starting point is 01:04:21 It's better than gambling on meme coins. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So etherI is not just a token. Of course, they also have three other products. Steak, Liquid, and Cash is going to be built over the next 12 to 24 months. Cash is a layer two. So a layer two for payments.

Starting point is 01:04:36 And like I said, actually, like a good handful of LRTs have layer two plans. Swell announced their layer two. We talked about that last week. Pover is going to be. into a layer two. Zirion doing a layer two. Wallets? Related to LRTs.

Starting point is 01:04:47 Zirion is doing a layer two. We're going to have so many layer twos. Yeah. We're not enough. We never have enough layer twos. David, do we ever have enough crypto punk high value sales for you? Also, no.

Starting point is 01:04:59 This is a crypto punk that just sold for $16.4 million. And I'm told, actually, this tweet says, it's the second highest on-chain punk sale ever. So our punks coming back, are NFTs on Ethereum, making it come back? Are we going to see that this bull cycle? or they just is just meme coins? If this feels like deja vu,

Starting point is 01:05:17 this is because this also happened last week, another different alien punk was sold for a similar amount. So alien punks are definitely moving. This happened last cycle. Like a bunch of alien and ape punks were bought and then like the punk floors started to move. Like I said, alien because its face is blue, yeah?

Starting point is 01:05:34 Is that what makes it? Blue skin, it makes it an alien. So if the pixels are blue, they're worth more. That's the rule. Yeah, that's the rule. Why? Why is that the rule? Because we all decided that's the rule. Stop asking smart questions, only ask dumb questions. Actually, maybe, like, that's the secret to this bull market is just, like, be a little dumber.

Starting point is 01:05:53 Only be dumb. Speaking of dumb, David. The SEC. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A Utah judge finding the SEC engaging in bad faith conduct. Bad faith conduct. Okay, so this was another SEC court case that was kind of like on the side you probably didn't hear about with a company called debt box. This is a crypto company called the debt box.

Starting point is 01:06:15 Actually, I had never heard of them before. It's a crypto firm. It's kind of a scary name. A judge. In the ruling of the debt box versus the SEC, the judge placed sanctions on the SEC for a quote here, abuse of judicial process. Oh, and order them to pay the legal fees of debt box. Wow. And denied its motions to dismiss the charges.

Starting point is 01:06:38 Wow. That is a smackdown. It can't file the same charges at a later date. Yikes, big old smackdown and fine. Smackdown and fine. And a fine from a regular. By the way, wasting our money. Those are our taxes.

Starting point is 01:06:50 Yeah, those are our taxes. Like you and I paid for some of that. Sick. What do the crypto lawyers say? That the SEC is dumb and bad. Austin Campbell says the SEC lied in court and then doubled down after the judge noticed. He says, why would any American trust the SEC and believe that they act in good faith after this? Paul Graywell says,

Starting point is 01:07:10 worst of all, guess who pays the sanctions? You may have a U.S. taxpayer. So look, I don't know all the details of this case, but basically the SEC took this company, the debt box to court for quote-unquote excelling unregistered securities as usual. That's kind of their typical charge. And this is what the court determined. This constitutes a gross abuse of power entrusted to it by Congress and substantially undermine the integrity of these proceedings and the judicial process. David, I saw other crypto lawyers saying that basically this is like a, almost like quasi-criminal behavior from like it's just lying in court and this is what the the court case determined. And even despite all this bad faith activity, we would still have Gary Gensler on the podcast.

Starting point is 01:07:52 I can say that. I want to extend an invite anyone listening. If you know Gary. Gary. Come on Bankless. Just talk. Just have a conversation. Just come in and get on the podcast.

Starting point is 01:08:03 Yeah. Just come on. Just come on in. Come on in and talk. Okay. We know that Gary doesn't want to talk to us. I just can only assume. We got a plan B.

Starting point is 01:08:15 Have we tried Bob Gensler, his identical twin? We don't know what his stance is on bankless, boncless. I think he would come on the boncless podcast? I think he might. Not bankless, but he might come on boncless. This is actually Bob Gensler, who is apparently Gary's twin. He's actually, according to reports, pro-crypto. This is a true story.

Starting point is 01:08:34 So is old Gary Gensler was also pro-cropro. But Bob was the guy who actually introduced Gary to crypto. So Bob's the cool tweet. He's the cool brother. Open invitation to Bob Gensler. If we can't get Gary. Bob, come on. He's probably a listener.

Starting point is 01:08:49 Come on their show. You know who's someone else I want to talk to you to is this guy. CZ. Remember CZ from Binance? Yeah, I saw this. This makes me so happy. Okay, so CZ is doing a new thing. Since he can't do anything in crypto because he's like charged or whatever, he's doing another project

Starting point is 01:09:05 because he's a serial entrepreneur who can't sit still like. the rest of us. Giggle Academy. Free basic education for everyone. No revenue, he says, gamified adaptive. Giggleacademy.com they are hiring. CZ is going to redo education, which like, I think this is so cool. Like CZ, like one of the greatest builders of all time, like undoubtedly, is now going into the world of education, which definitely needs to be like redone, especially now that we have AI. And so CZ, to me, like CZ was always like kind of chaotic neutral. This is CZ on his good guy.

Starting point is 01:09:41 This is a nonprofit, right? It's just all good. It's a nonprofit. It is. I'm saying that. Hell yeah. It's a public good. It's a nonprofit.

Starting point is 01:09:49 CZ's going to fix education the same way that he fixed centralized exchanges in crypto in 2017 when he started Binance. I just have one question for you, David. Yeah. Will it be tokenized? You shut the hell off.

Starting point is 01:10:02 If it's not, I'm not interested. You shut, shut. Get the tokens out of children's education. Sorry. I'm just going wild. They're too young for the memes. All right, David. Let's end this thing.

Starting point is 01:10:13 First with a shout out. One more thing. One more thing. Hold on. What? Bankless is hiring. Oh, yes. Banceless.

Starting point is 01:10:19 If you want to edit out all of the shit that we say that we need you to edit out because of all the stuff that gets trimmed in this podcast, we need you to do that. Along with all the other things that takes to produce a podcast. If you are a good video editor, audio editor, you know how to manage Twitter. And you are also deep bankless. You know what it means to go back. We want to hire you to edit our podcast and all the other stuff that comes with it literally the most fun team in crypto I think it's a blast. It's great. You have you have the chillest bosses just as the rest of the company It's the best place to work. One of them is more chill than the other one of them is definitely more chill than the other

Starting point is 01:10:54 That's you don't have to guess. You don't know that is no one knows This is in case it wasn't clear a podcast video editor. That's what we need for media operations you can apply There's a link in the show notes of course So we need your help. Can you get this roll up under an hour? Can you get the host to shut the hell up? All right, let's end with the meme of the week. Here we are. We are looking at a van. What is this? You gave it the perfect name, so you have to actually explain this one. This is the presale van, okay? This is a grimy, dirty-looking white van that you should absolutely not get into.

Starting point is 01:11:32 And the compelling thing about this. But it says pre-sale on it. It says pre-sale. So come on over kids. Get in the pre-sale. sale van. We just want to give you some tokens. Going for a quick ride. My God. Everyone getting the pre-sale van. We can fit a lot of people in there.

Starting point is 01:11:49 The caption is how to get a D-Gen into a van, and all you have to do is put presale on the side of it. It doesn't matter what it looks like. All right. And with this, risk and disclaimers. Guys, of course, crypto is risky. Pre-sales. Pre-sale's very risky. So are vans.

Starting point is 01:12:02 White vans in parking lots like this. 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 bonkless journey. Thanks a lot.

Bankless - ROLLUP: Memecoin Mania | Solana ATH? | Blackrock Ethereum Fund

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