Bankless - ROLLUP: One More Dip? | Saylor Sold | IPO Season | Ethereum vs ETH

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Bitcoin is back at Biden-era prices, ETFs are bleeding, and Saylor just did the thing he said never to do: sell. Ryan and David unpack whether crypto has one more drop left, what trillion-dollar IPOs reveal about broken capital markets, and why their ETH debate may be the real fight for Ethereum’s future. --- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY APP https://app.okx.com/en-us/join/usbankless  --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS 🦊 METAMASK | DOWNLOAD NOW https://go.metamask.io/BL-Pod-Download 🌐BRIX | EMERGING MARKET YIELD https://bankless.cc/brix 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 3:07 Markets https://x.com/aggrnews/status/2063954465678410121 https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/06/01/analysts-agree-strategy-s-bitcoin-sale-was-immaterial-differ-on-future-signals https://imgur.com/SDyYiQS https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/2063964293478101014  https://x.com/zoomerfied/status/2062288919853490553 https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitmine-immersion-technologies-announces-pricing-of-upsized-series-a-perpetual-preferred-stock-offering-302792359.html https://thedefiant.io/news/tradfi-and-fintech/bitmine-files-300m-preferred-stock-offering-9-5-yield-eth-treasury https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/06/03/tom-lee-s-bitmine-to-offer-preferred-stock-with-9-5-dividend-seeking-to-raise-usd300-million https://imgur.com/tvIDofV https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2065049515384582205 https://polymarket.com/event/fed-rate-hike-in-2026 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/ https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/11/ecb-eurozone-interest-rates-iran-war-inflation 30:11 IPO Season https://app.lighter.xyz/trade/SPACEX https://app.lighter.xyz/trade/ANTHROPIC https://app.lighter.xyz/trade/OPENAI 36:29 Bankless Guys Are Fighting https://x.com/steweycrypto/status/2062796930326094216 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/2062598415482245528 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2062599824491372906 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/2062612677466202281 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2062644365533622705 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/2062669134614466707 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2062674368195686809 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/2062745848673427471 https://x.com/Tommyb631/status/2062613008304451756 55:39 Morpho Flips Aave https://morpho.org/blog/morpho-association-raises-175m-to-build-the-open-credit-network-for-the-world/ https://x.com/0xLouisT/status/2063963380000407881 58:04 ZEC Vulnerability & Jason Calacanis’ Crypto-to-AI Tweet https://x.com/Jason/status/2064083020257055193 coindesk.com/.../zcash-plummets-30-as-developer-reveals-a-major-bug forum.zcashcommunity.com/.../orchard-counterfeiting-vulnerability 1:02:55 Hester Peirce Almost Out https://x.com/hesterpeirce/status/2064768651488608612 https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/peirce-remarks-chamber-commerce-capital-markets-summit-060926 1:06:03 World Cup Starts https://polymarket.com/event/world-cup-winner 1:07:26 Closing & Disclaimers --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

And we're back for another bankless Friday weekly roll-up. It's the second week of June. Ryan is back from vacation. Ryan, we were fighting. I guess we made up. Wait, fighting on Twitter, are you talking about? Yeah. That was not a fight.

Come on. I was on vacation, and I just felt compelled. I just had to tweet at you, David. It actually wasn't about you at first. It was kind of subtextually about you. It was about my take. It was about some of your takes. I was like, I read that tweet and it was like, okay.

Okay, dude. Well, we're going to discuss that, right? I saw a meme, babe, look, bankless guys are fighting. What's happening? So we got to resolve this and actually see where the daylight is between us on the question of the old asset that you formerly loved, and I still do love, Eith, the asset. Do I not love Eith? I love Eith as an idea, but we'll get into that. The topics of the week, the crypto crash, the third 25% drawdown in crypto since November, the deepest yet.

Bitcoin has round-tripped the entire Trump presidency. Ryan, we are back towards Joseph Biden Bitcoin prices. Oh, my God. Thanks, Obama. Yeah, and you never thought, thanks, Obama. $4.4 billion flowed out of the ETFs in over 13 days. And then Michael Saylor sold Bitcoin. He did the thing that he said you should never do.

What? And then he bought more. So why did he do that? Why did he do that? I don't know. It's also IPO season. The SpaceX IPO is. is coming up tomorrow, which will be today for you listeners,

if you're listening to this on Friday. Fortunately, in the crypto side of worlds, we have pre-markets. We have pre-IPO markets, which is something new out of crypto. So we can take a look at what the valuations are saying. It's too high. It's too high, I think. Oh, you think the IPOs are too high.

God, they're so high. They're in the trillions. Well, they are too high, but, like, they could go higher. Too high to buy. I mean, they could go higher, but they could also go lower. This is the kind of analysis that people show up for in a week, It could also go lower. That is right.

Why don't you take us to charts? Yes. Because it was gross on Friday. I looked a couple of times at prices and it looked disgusting. Before I started sharing my screen, Ryan, we got to talk about OKX. Our friends and sponsors over at OKX, the Intercontinental Exchange, which is the parent company of the NYSE, they backed OKX at a $25 billion valuation with a plan to launch New York Stock Exchange stocks and derivatives later this year on the OKX platform. TradFi and Defi in the same app, all in one place, finally, trusted by over 120 million users globally.

OKX is bringing products to the U.S. market that Wall Street has been talking about for years, but OKX is delivering them. This is the new money app by OKX, not just a vision, a roadmap with institutional backing to execute it. If you are not on OKX yet, go and get a 6% match on RLUSD, that's Ripple stablecoin through the bankless link, not available in New York and Texas, so I won't be able to get it.

But you can, Ryan, but that's not investment advice. Okay, let's go right into the charts. So the Iran War was technically bullish for Bitcoin because it was up. Bitcoin was up about 30% over the course of the war. I think we invaded, when did we invade Iran? Like something like March 1st or something. No real reason why, though. I thought like maybe stocks were up and it just dragged Bitcoin up as well.

I think it is a complete anomaly. It was just because Bitcoin had fallen from its high. If we're looking at the charts from its highs down to the ill-around world, negative 50%. And so it recovered a little bit, but then we fell from the peak about another 25%. Bitcoin is right on the 200-week moving average. It wicked below it. Yes. It tagged, Bitcoin tagged $59,000, it's firmly below it.

It has since recovered to above it. First time below the 200 week in the spare cycle since November, right? That's right. Well, also, if we go back, we're going to zoom out on the charts here, right? because since you have taken a vacation last week, I am now a pro-charter. Yeah, I see that blue line. That's got to be the 200 week.

Yeah, okay. So the only time we spent below the 200-week moving average in Bitcoin's history is briefly during the COVID crash for like maybe five to seven days back in 2020. And then the meaningful time spent below the 200-week moving average was after the three-error's capital, F-TX drama, like the worst bear market, like cataclysm in crypto.

below there. Months, months below. So it spent 280 days below, popped back up, went back down below. But then as BlackRock issued or announced the filing for the Bitcoin ETF, that's when we popped up to the upside. Yeah. We've never been below the 200 week moving average before that. So I think this is kind of the question that, like, Mark, the people who are buying Bitcoin

or not buying Bitcoin right now are asking is, will we do the historically normative thing of bounce off of the 200-week moving average? Or are we going to be due for one more 25% drop? You say historically normative, we see both examples. Sometimes we bounce, but in 2022, as you just said, we stayed below for a while. We camped there. Only once. Granted, we camped there for a while, that it was only one time. And again, it was after FTX, three hours capital, the worst contagion event in crypto's history. Actual force-selling capitulation, which we really haven't seen. The highest interest rates in all of Bitcoin's history as well. And like they jacked up interest rates quickly. Now, you can say interest rates are actually still somewhat high. And so, you know,

maybe in a higher interest rate environment, Bitcoin is more likely to go below the 200-week moving average. But there was just so many events lined up in 2022 through 2020 that pushed Bitcoin below. And I don't really see those same events this cycle. Yeah. I mean, there's a comment Michael Nato made, which is like we haven't paid for our sins yet. So maybe there's still some sins to pay for? What sins? We had a lot of sins in 2021. I don't know if we have as many sins now.

I think if we saw some big sinning, like if there was some big sinning, we would have seen it already. Remember the spooky stuff in October? Never found the dead bodies. Yeah, 10-10. Yeah. Like, who knows what that was?

We still don't know. Maybe there's still some sin that's just hidden from us. It needs to be washed clean by this bear market. I mean, we didn't, no one expected to throw up to go under because Suzu and Kyle Davies projected so much confidence. But who would be the sinners this cycle?

Like Michael Saylor, clearly, could be the sinner. I mean, there was a lot. Trump, meme coin shenanigans. I guess you pay for that in mean coins. But Trump isn't in Bitcoin leverage, you know? Sam Bankman-Free was selling paper bitcoins. Trump is not doing anything like that. Yeah, the person we know with billions of Bitcoin in kind of.

Is Michael Saylor. He doesn't like to call it. Let's buy an aggressive amount of Bitcoin this week. Well, so maybe it's Michael Saylor. That's going to be coughing up blood by the end of this. I can't see how it dips and sustains below the 200 week if AI stocks continue to do okay. But if they could pitch late, that could just be full risk off. Oh, my God.

You know, it's over where F'd get out of this market. And then I could see it sustained. So I guess the question is, what do you think? Do you think that now is the time sort of to buy? Or like if you're a betting man, are you waiting for one last competition? situation down into the 50s or even lower. My cognitive brain tells me that I can't find a big forced seller in this market right now. And I don't, I think sailors generally sound.

I'm looking at this chart, I'm like, dude, it's totally going lower. I think it's going to. You think it's going lower? Yeah, I think it's going lower. I mean, I think if you're deploying, like, look, if you had 100% of cash, you're trying to deploy it of that 100% 50 here and then 50 for final wickdown, not a bad, not a bad play here. I feel like that's right.

And we're eight months into this thing. They typically last 12 months. It is early on the bear market. It's not that early. It's like mid late. You know what I mean? It's like if we're eight months in, we usually bought them after about 12 months.

And so that's kind of the back third. Well, 12 months I'm counting as like the middle of the bear market. And on the second half of that, you're on the up and up. You are. You don't know it's still. It still feels bearish and still feels really shitty. But like you will have bottomed by that point, hopefully. If this continues.

Okay, but what was with the sailor selling 32 Bitcoin? He sold 32 Bitcoin. Stretch has been and continues to actually trade off par. And we don't really know why he sold the 32 Bitcoin. Because it was $2.5 million that funds Stretch like dividend obligations for like eight hours. But he only has six months of dividend obligations and cash in the bank to fund STRC holders, which might be why it's trading off par right now. Right, right, right, right.

Why he sold 32 Bitcoin and then this week bought 1,550 Bitcoin, why he sold 32 at all? I don't know. I know. You sell 32, you create all the fud, Bitcoin price goes lower, you buy a bank, back at a lower price, you go, ha ha, market can't predict me. You thought I was selling, I'm actually buying. I'm Michael Saylor, F you.

And you tweet about it. You put a meme together, an AI-generated meme. And you go on your way and people don't know what he's doing. Is he buying or selling? They don't want to try to predict him because he's unpredictable. He's a maverick. Okay. That's the mischievous plot-plotting version of Sailor.

Yeah. What version of Sailor do you think there is? I think that he was signaling to the market and he's getting the market used to him selling so that if he has to sell in the future, the market has digested this. And he sold 32 Bitcoin, knowing that he was going to pile on a F ton of cash

to buy more Bitcoin. He didn't plot the malaise of Bitcoin to buy lower intentionally. It kind of just worked out like that, but he knew he needed to provide confidence to the market. and so he knew that he had hundreds of millions of dollars of powder

lined up ready to go. It wasn't intentionally pushing the market lower somewhere in between these two things. Probably, okay. I mean, I think we might be saying the same thing. He's taking advantage of the opportunity

to say, you are an STRC holder. How do you feel with it trading? I hold a little bit of SCRC. Okay, it's not trading par right now. It is not trading at par. Six months cash to pay your juicy 11% dividend. You getting a little nervous, Mr. STRC holder? Uh, the amount of capital that S-E-R-C is off is, is recovered by like two dividend payments.

This is down lower than I thought. We went down to like 93% or 93 on... It went all the way down to 10% off of par. It has recovered to 9641 when it should be trading at 100. So it is not clear yet. There's clearly a lack of confidence here. it is slowly being restored. That's a buying opportunity, I guess.

If you buy it at 90 then and you make that 10%... If you buy it at 10%... Yeah, you're making... The yield of 10, 11%. Yeah. Yeah, so $90 buyers are... But, like, in the moment, you don't really know... Like, some people are comparing this to Luna,

which is just not like... What? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. How is it like Luna? It's just because, like, I actually am slightly worried about this, although at the same time... It's not under collateralized in any sense. No.

it's not, but the lower it goes, like there's a positive feedback loop between stretch and the Bitcoin price. And if stretch goes down because Bitcoin is going down, it just means that there's an even greater lack of faith or confidence in strategy and sailor. And if he ever does become a forced seller of Bitcoin, he has to sell Bitcoin at worst terms. What he did to solve his problems is he just hammered the ATM on the equity, on strategy, on the MSTR. Yeah. Which like, who the F is holding MSTR? Like, why would you ever hold MSTR?

Because you are like last. I would hold MSTR at some price. Sure, at some price. But over NAV premium? Yeah. I mean, over NAPS. It's been trading at one. And, I mean, it could be, it's not down that bad, but it could be down worse.

I don't know. I, um, it's possible. SDRC and the whole, uh, strategy complex is the final wick down and the sin we have to pay for. I still don't think that it will. It's just so much more sound. It is. It's not GPDC.

It's not GPDC. Like, come on. That was, they're not comparable. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I agree.

How about the, the Michael sailor of, um, Ethereum. So Tom Lee, impressing with some major buys, even on the week in this bear market, He's down bad right now. He's down $10 billion. So what does he do? He piled $18 billion into ether. There's blood in the streets.

It's Tom Lee's own blood. And he's looking down at his blood and he's saying, I want more of this. You've got to admire that. Right. So if he's right, you got to admire that. Tomley bought $213 million of ether on Monday. Ryan, you don't know this because this happened about 10 minutes ago, but he also just bought 25,000 more ether.

This was announced just now. It was seeing on chain, so $41 million. So he's bought a quarter of $1 billion of ether this week. Legend. That's crazy. That is crazy. Absolutely crazy. In my opinion, we'll talk maybe more about this,

but Tom Lee is the most important thing happening in the Ethereum ecosystem. Right now, it's not even close. Justin Drake with quantum, that's all cool. But like Tom Lee for ethie asset is the story. for Ethereum right now. That's right. That's right. Now, when I wrote my, I sold my ETH article, somebody asked, what events would you say to like, would make you like bullish ETH again? And I said, the layer one burn, yeah, followed by Tom Lee issuing a stretch like asset

that leverages the yield of Ethereum, especially under the conditions of the burn, to provide a stronger, more sounder version than Strategies Stretch. and last week we talked about this last week with Hasee but I want to talk to you about this now that you're here last week Tom Lee announced that he is going to copy

Stalers Playbook to offer 9.5% yield with a preferred stock offering what do you think about that Ryan? Do you want to talk about this now because I know we have a section and talk about it a little bit later do you just want to talk about it now?

Yeah let's get out of the way I talk about it now, let's talk about it now So I was kind of like What in your mind what so I think we had a discussion about this and you were like hey Ryan what do you think the probability of of Tom Lee doing this bit mind doing this and my take was like almost a hundred percent like above 80 percent and that just because the Tom Lee playbook has been to take what's working with Michael Saylor and have the second mover advantage here where you get in a duplicate. it. So discard all the failed projects. So if he could, he would was my take. And I don't think he originally intended to or wanted to. But how is he not looking at STRC and saying, oh, this would work fantastic for ether, in particular, because I have this native yield and I'm throwing

off $200 to $300 million on my 3% staked eth anyway. And I have my own validators. Duh, why wouldn't I do this if I could? So I rated it higher. I think you rated it maybe lower. It was lower probability. So I would ask you, why did you think this was lower probability possibility? And it's not out yet. They filed SEC filings. There's probably still some hurdles in order to get this to market. But it seems like they're going to execute on this.

Yeah, they're going to do it. Yeah, this is happening. Yeah. So there were two reasons that's why I was less sure than you. One, we had a call with Tom Lee and we literally asked him this. Well, well, well, we probably can't disclose all of those details. But, well, we had to call with Dumbly. We asked him, what do you think about Michael, Michael Strategies, stretch?

And he goes, if we do that, it closes down optionality to us. And so we want to preserve optionality. And so it sounds like they chose the door that they want to go through. Some doors as a result are going to close. But I think he was compelled by Strategies Stretch. Yeah. And now he's going through the door. stretch or something like this?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, 3% internet bond native yield. Easy. Do it. How comparable is this to STRC? Because we understand that product.

We had Michael on the podcast. He described it in detail. When I looked at the filings and I got kind of a LLM summary, it seems like it's basically the same thing, except that part of the yields, at least, gets generated from staking plus any kind of defy magic on top of that. Yeah. The staking element is important. Does Tom Lee sell the staking yield to fund part of the dividend is a question mark?

Because you're not supposed to sell. And this is the other thing that... That's the same thing with STRC aside from like, you know, does Michael sell his acquired Bitcoin or does he... Right, but he seems to be hammering MSTR at the ATM in order to... in order to pay for the dividend sooner than... And Tom has that option, and then he just also has the additional option

of the 3% yield, which he could also pull. Yeah, but whether he sells ether staking yield or not is important in my mind. And the other reason why I wasn't totally convinced that Tom Lee was going to do this was because he said, we're going to hit 5% and we're done. You know, the alchemy of 5%.

I think... Now I will rewrite the chances of this happening, which is I think Tom Lee's, needs to blow past 5%. He needs to not stop. He has to, if he's going to do the strategy playbook, he has to do the strategy playbook, which means like stop capping yourself.

They earlier said that they are going to slow down their eat buys as they approach 5%. I think they need to not do that. I think they need to go like 15%. They need to just go. 15%? As much as possible. That's the whole deal.

He's at 4.6% right now. He did this in 11 months from zero. insane. At this rate, he would have 15% in two more years. Yeah. I mean... If the price goes down even more, it can go even faster than that. I'm blown away that he has acquired the capital to do this in a bear market. Blown away at the conviction of launching this in a bear market. Like, this is the product to launch in a bear market.

I totally agree. People were making fun of Tom Lee for like launching it in the same week. That stretch was like coming off of its peg. And I'm like, no, this is the best time. to launch you want to launch it in the hardest possible moment. Yes. Launch your token and weakness, you know? Like, because then you create a bunch of holders. It's all upside. But he's doing the thing, David, where, you know, Michael Saylor's thing is saying, oh,

I've converted, Bitcoin is not just to store value of money. It's also a capital asset. And I'm doing my alchemy and actually turning this into a monetary capital asset. that's what's also happening to ETH at scale. It is a checkmark on one of your like big, ETH has to do this in order for me to buy back in.

I don't know why you still need a burn. This is worth way more than any kind of puny burn to me. I think you should buy back Eith, David, on this news. Okay, so can we look at the ETH chart? So we were talking about Bitcoin. Bitcoin's hovering above the 200 week moving average.

Bitcoin tagged $59,000. It's now up to $62,000. Is this Ether? Now we're looking at Ether. Now we're looking at Ether. Ether tagged $1,500. It is now at $1643. Ether is 34% below the 200-week moving average.

And the 200-week moving average for Ether has not gone up, Ryan, in a year. Yeah, I know. It is flat in a year. You're bearish because price is low and has been low, and this cycle is super shitty for Heath. And so here are the two idiosoph. moment of ether was going from 2020 at $300 up to $4,600 at the end of 2021. That was the COVID bubble. That was the stimulus bubble, helicopter money, the NFT mania.

Ethereum won that cycle. And then we have the return from like $1,500 to $4,000 with the ether ETF. And it was really just following Bitcoin. Bitcoin broke all-time highs. Ether did not break all-time highs. And so this is when ether malaise started to happen. And so I'll, and I'll say that was ether starting to lag behind everything, behind the market. And then the next idiosyncratic event in Ethereum was with Tom Lee.

When when Tom Lee started buying, when ether was $15 or $1,600 back in April of 2025. He's route, tripped all that. That's what's crazy. And it went up to all-time highs, $4,800. And now we are back at pre-Tomley levels. So Tom Lee has almost bought $20 billion of ether, and we are at the same price. And so we had the COVID bubble with helicopter money and Zerp and stimulus checks and the NFT mania. And that allowed Ether to have like the 60X that it had.

Yeah. Then we had Tom Lee, and we have erased Tom Lee. Where does $20 billion of buy pressure come from? I mean, look at your chart, and you could look at this chart, and you could choose to be bearish or bullish. You can interpret it in both ways. You could look at this chart and you could say, hey, last cycle, the 2021 cycle, ETH, like, grew so much, it packed two cycles into one and got way ahead over its skis. I think that's true. It was destined to have a more muted second cycle.

And this is the more muted second cycle. And now you have a lot of strong fundamentals being created, particularly the Michael Saylor of Either. And he is viewing ETH as a monetary asset As an internet bond using yield Doing the same play that Michael Saylor is doing at scale And it's Tom Freakin Lee And the guy has 5%

Like if you were bullish Tom Lee Last summer Which everyone was This is what the chart shows Right and he was just promises Yeah maybe I'll get to 5% And you look at him and you're like Are you really are you?

Yeah Like that's cute but are you going to be able to that? Why are you not even more bullish when the guy has executed on 5% and now he's got validators? He's looking to get involved in probably the Ethereum Foundation roadmap.

I'm just saying you could look at this chart and you could take either side of that argument and I understand what you're saying. It's like, oh, where's 20 billion more? We're never going to have Zurp and helicopter money and it's over. That was the one spike we get. We don't get anything else.

It'll just trade flat for infinity. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not, though. Maybe not. I think the thing that concerns me the most is that, like, you know, for every buyer there's a seller. And there were so many people willing to sell Tom Lee their east to the point that it was just, we netted out. It's all the people from last cycle that were just like, yeah, well, like made so much money and just kind of, you know, it didn't happen as quickly as they thought. Yeah. It is a timing thing. I'm going to work on you. I'm getting to you. I know it. Like, this isn't this place for the weekly roll-up, but like we'll leave little breadcrumbs as well.

There's like strong versus wheat crypto I want to talk about. But let's just get into the trad market because we have to move on to the weekly roll-up. And so let's talk about inflation numbers. The May PPI inflation came in surging to 6.5%. That is above expectations of 6.4% and is the highest. level since November of 2022. Yikes. Here is the polymarket for the Fed rate hike in 26. It was Ryan just at 14 or 15% in May

last month. It is now at 51% chance that we get a federal rate hike in 2026. Europe is increasing rates. The ECB raised Eurozone interest rates as the Iran war has stoked inflation

in Europe. They're front running the Fed, basically. Their Fed is front-running our Fed. And then here is the Fed graph that, Ryan, I know you like this chart. Yeah, it's a CPI. So you mentioned PPI, which is kind of a leading indicator for CPI, right? And that was high. It was 6.5%. The headline number that I think, like, probably is being reported on CNN and people are pissed

about, is 4.2% in May. CPI. 4.2%. That feels like a lot. It was kind of like, oh, you know, the Fed's, our aim is 2%. And then post-COVID, we'd like, oh, I guess 2%. When you get to 4%, that feels high, doesn't it? 4% is high.

When was it last? 3% is tolerable because Fiat is weak and all of our central banks have a ton of debt and we owe a bunch of money. 3% is tolerable, 4% high. That was, and a lot of this was driven, of course, by energy prices, which we're starting to feel from Iran. Although oil is not crazy at the moment. What's the price of oil?

I mean, like, okay, the whole entire oil price during the Iran war, like the whole thing is crazy, but we have high crazy and. low crazy and we have settled in low crazy. We're new normal crazy. We're new normal. Yes, we're normal for being crazy. So WTI is trading at $89. Just again, for context, it's ranged between $85 and $110.

And so the fact that we're in the 80s is good. I really want to see this breakdown below $85. I don't really know if it makes sense to talk about oil breaking down because that's very charty TA stuff. And what's the point of charting when there's Donald Trump versus the Islamic regime. Like, you can't chart that. But nonetheless, it just looks like this and you can only do it historically.

Look at this thing. Granted, there was an escalation in the conflict this week. Like, we're approaching a deal like we are every week, the week before and the week before. And nonetheless, like, missiles were thrown, bombs were dropped, strikes were had. But oil price stayed low during the market, during the turmoil. And so it is kind of indicating that like the oil is like settling out and there's a new equilibrium being established and we're able to supply the world with oil as we need it without prices going too high. And so that there is some cause for optimism. If this drops, if this is goes down and like drops below and also we do we do get the opening of a whore moose, that could be so goddamn bullish.

I just don't think that's going to happen. I think this is the new normal. Big macro questions right now. The AI trade will it continue? And then also, when Warsh gets in, what's he going to do? There was talk of him. So there's talk of him actually moving the goalposts on the definition of CPI using a different definition. It's like a lower definition.

You know? We're just changing how we count things so we can report better numbers. Yes. Ask how well that worked for the Soviets. That's right. David, we should cut for sponsors. What do you have coming up? Coming up next, we're going to talk about the IPO season.

We've got this base X IPO coming in tomorrow, Friday. Friday, today, if you're listening to this on Friday, the largest IPO in history. We're also going to talk about Anthropic and Open AI. We got pre-market perps out of crypto that show us information. We're going to look at that information. And then Ryan and I will resume our fighting after we talk about it. Oh, were we fighting? Now the real fight comes.

It's round two. Come up after sponsors. But first, you have to listen to these sponsors to get to the fight. So let's go hear from them right now. $100,000 is up for grabs. Metamask and Ando are giving it away in the Ando trading competition. Five weeks, three tiers. Whoever earns the best percentage return in each tier wins the biggest cut.

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Largest IPO in history, 3.2 times bigger Saudi AmeriCo, the previous record holder. The perps market, we're looking at Lider. Lighter is a purse market that is trading SpaceX. It's been trading actually on Lider for like a number of weeks now. The purse market is valuing SpaceX at 2.13 trillion. And so there is an implied

a little bit of a pop coming if Lider traders on lighter are valuing it correctly. Traders on hyperliquid did do the job of appropriately valuating Cerebris, which is an AI IPO that happened like a number of weeks ago. So, you know, still data out there needing to be found. I think it's accurate. I think it's probably accurate. But we're going to find out.

So if we all open up our brokerages and we see SpaceX tomorrow trading at $2 plus trillion, traders on lighter did their job. Not the only IPO, right? You said it's IPO season. We have Anthropic, OpenAI, some of the AI native companies coming on the scene. Is that all happening this summer as well? And what's the estimated market cap in the perps markets for those puppies? So both Anthropic and Open AI have filed.

Neither of them have dates. Open AI is not soon. It's going to come at the end of this year. Anthropic could be soon, could be Q3. we don't really know. But the implied market cap for Anthropic Unleiter is 1.6 trillion. Also about a Bitcoin or so. The entirety of all Bitcoin supply.

The entirety of Bitcoin, yeah. And then OpenAI, 1.25 trillion. There's an interesting revenue story. Okay, so SpaceX made $18.5 billion of revenue in 2025, reported a $5 billion loss because it just burns cash. Rock is expensive. Yeah. But out of that revenue, out of the $18.5 billion,

Starlink made... 11.5 billion. So the satellite business, which is like, it's like its own, it's like a first party product inside of the larger products. It's a killer app.

The killer app. Yeah. The killer app. Yeah. It's like the unyswap to Ethereum. Yeah. Back in 2021. Yeah.

And so, Sherlock May is making two thirds of SpaceX revenue. Anthropic. Run rate reported revenue cross $44 billion annual lies as of May.

2026, the company is on track to post their first ever profit, approximately 550 million in the second quarter of 2026. Incredible product. Have you tried the Fable model? Totally. Yeah, it's great. Just incredible. Yeah, super smart.

It's just like, it makes me feel dumb because when I get a response back from Fable, I'm like, oh, my prompt was so stupid. Like, what I'm getting back is, it's like I'm asking a genius, like idiot questions. Yeah, pretty soon I'm just not even in a prompt. I'm just going to blah blah. Just lean on my keyboard and just it'll know and it'll do. Fable, I want something. It'll prompt, yes.

Find out what I want and then make that thing. Help me figure out what to ask you. God, what does that make us? Like, we just get dumber, dumber? Dumber is super dumb. Okay. Okay, but then opening eye revenue. The last private round for opening I valued it at $850 billion in March 2026.

Revenue has blown past $25 billion annualized run rate But their cash burn Is $27 billion for $2026 So OpenAI is not yet pulling a profit Yeah I just have to say, as we always say Look, I hate trillion dollar IPOs

It's just Something about that is bad at wrong It's wrong. I mean Who can we blame? I like Paul Atkins Regulators Gary Gensler, why did you do this to us? It's

Look, it's not any SEC person It's the laws on the books. It's regulation. It's, who do we blame? Sarbanes-Oxley. Who do we blame? Too much money. Too much fiat money.

It's a fail. But it's just a, but it's not just that. It's not just that. It's also a fundamental failure of U.S. capital markets that you have to be an accredited investor. Yeah. That this all happens privately. It didn't used to happen this way.

It's like, tell your kids, this is not normal. In the 90s, you could IPO Amazon and it would be $400 million. And the public, 401Ks, the average investor retail, could actually realize 100x, you know, 600X, whatever, upside on that. That is no longer the case. So the IPO and then your exit liquidity and whatever. It goes up a few trillion. Who cares?

Yeah. I think there's two parts of the story. One part is that it is encumbering to be on the public market because of compliance and regulation and it's costly. And so only big companies can do it in the first place. So we need to open. We need to stop being public be such a stick. We need it to be more of a carrot than a stick. Yeah.

And so we create more incentives. Lower the barriers. The other set of the equation is that it's just so much benefit, so much better for founders and companies to take private money. Part of the reason is because... I think that's the same side of the equation, honestly. The point I want to make... You're saying they just don't want a ticker or they don't want like quarter leave reports? That's all part of the...

Is that they can take private money because there is so much private money out there because there is so much money out there. There's so much money out there. I think it's both sides of the same coin, but it's the same root issue. It's just a failure of the U.S. capital markets, but whatever, we're not going to solve that today. I just, this is not good for populism, is it? No, it's not. It's not.

I do like that we are trading these things on an Ethereum layer two ahead of the IPO, months ahead of the IPO. For sure. It doesn't quite solve the problem at hand, but it's pointing in the correct direction. It's more democratic. It's more democratic. Waiting for your brokerage to list this thing after it's hit like $3 trillion. Yeah, that's right. All right.

At least we got it. Okay, round two? Yeah, okay. So there was a tweet. I think this is the meme. the bankless guys are fighting. Oh, I actually didn't see that one. You don't see this?

This isn't one of the replies. Okay, so I was on vacation last week, and there was, it was like, it felt like I very, I didn't look at my X timeline very often. The few times I did, I looked and I was like, God, man, ETH sentiment is so bad right now. And I understand why. And we could take back to the chart, the price chart you were just showing. It's been flat for five years.

Right? Like we haven't done anything from a price perspective. This is why there were errors made in the L2 roadmap, all sorts of reasons we could get to. The one thing, none of that, I mean, it's disappointing. That's disappointing to me. None of that triggers me. The only thing that triggers me just a little bit is the idea, this mental fallacy, that Ethereum can be a successful platform with,

without ether the asset being worth a shit ton. And by that, I measure shit tons in the trillions. Many, many trillions of dollars. It has to be a global reserve asset. Or else, the alternative. Because the entire purpose of the platform, so says bankless thesis, so says the reason, like, I started talking

or writing about ether, the asset and Ethereum to begin with, is strong defy. Okay? So you can't have strong defy on the back of a dollar custodial stable coin called USDC or tether. You have to have strong defy on the back of a crypto native asset that does not settle in meat space that settles on chain. And in the shared security strong defy setup of the Ethereum ecosystem, that asset is ether. And so I don't care so much that people are like, hey, it was a good run.

We put 10 years into this thing. And it's just like, it's not working out or it's kind of working out. But it's just like, oh, we're not going to get there. And Bitcoin has taken all of that narrative. I understand people thinking that. I don't blame them. And I think that way too. I'm like, oh, I thought we'd be, you know.

further along than we are actually now, I thought some of the strong defy experiments actually might work, like single collateral die, or like other crypto-native stable, and they haven't. A lot of those things just haven't worked, and things have gotten more trad-fi. But the fact that those things haven't worked

just points to the possibility that Ethereum is a failed project. In other words, you can't say, oh, Ethereum has, succeeded without ether the asset also succeeding. I'd rather people just say, looks like it's not working out. We had high expectations. The project is just like not working out. What triggers me a little bit is when there's some sort of idea that, no, Ethereum is successful. It's just ether the asset is successful. No. If ether the asset is not successful, Ethereum wasn't

successful. It was an urban-esque niche like sideshow thing. that didn't change the world at all and actually didn't achieve the crypto-native aspirations it's set up. And that's it. That's all. And so that's what I tweeted out, which is just like,

hey, I find this triggering. You can't have Ethereum succeeding without ether the asset succeeding. And so that was not targeted at you necessarily, although I felt some kind of inclinations towards that, where it was kind of like in your post, why I sold my ETH, there was an idea that Ethereum could be, oh, the EF could be a successful nonprofit, right?

Remove the successful piece out of that sentence. And I probably might agree with you that that would be the failure. It would just be a failed niche nonprofit type project that just didn't succeed or impact the world. And I guess the reason I feel somewhat strongly on that is because it takes me back to like 2019 and 2020, which was just like the same sort of thing. Eth is gas. Ethereum could be successful.

ETH doesn't need to be money. And it just was like, oh, I thought we already talked about this. No, it may not be successful. It may not be money. But a precondition for its success is that ether becomes a store of value reserve asset. So when I put it like that, I'm wondering how much daylight is actually between us in this debate.

Not too much. What I want to emphasize and see if I can get you to agree with so we can stand on that foundation and move forward is that what you are, what I see you doing here is that you are prescribing a win condition for

Ethereum that is your opinion and aspirational and what you want to happen. And it is not inherently what is capital T true about what Ethereum is. Kind of in the same way where, you know, when Bitcoin was born, it was born as a peer-to-peer

digital cash system. And then it turned into, I don't know, what the next narrative was. And then the next narrative was Bitcoin is digital gold. And now Taylor's trying to adapt the narrative into Bitcoin as digital capital. Bitcoin was never a peer-to-peer digital cash system. It was never digital. I actually don't think it's digital gold. we are collectively learning and prodding at what Bitcoin is. We still don't know what Bitcoin is.

We are learning how it fits in people's portfolio. We are learning how it works as a financial instrument. And we are updating our models as we go. We can do the same thing with Ethereum, where in 2019, when you are saying like this was triggering to you because it was back in the old days of like eth is just gas, in 2019, we had strong defy ahead of us. Strong defy was being built.

We were excited about it. It was somewhat working, and it was going to be working even more going into DeFi summer in 2021. Strong defy and strong Ethereum was like the big thing. Now we are looking back on that. We're like, it's not exactly working very well. And what is working very well is that Ethereum is like a really good ledger upgrade technology for the back end of the world's largest financial institutions who are paying $20 a year and layer one settlement costs to have and improve ledger technology as their database.

And that's just not strong defyred and strong crypto, and that's not strong ether, the asset, but that is Ethereum being adopted, you know, that is institutions building on Ethereum. That is Ethereum, the ledger technology, proliferating across the world. And so I'm what I'm trying to do as an investor when I talk about Ether and my decision to sell my eth and saying that, like, ether price is what it is, and I don't really see it going anywhere is that I'm trying to not be prescriptive about what I want Ethereum to be, although there is zero daylight between you and me about what we want Ethereum to be. But I'm trying to like not, I don't think it's prudent to have my financial position be

aspirationalable about what I want Ethereum to become and what I want Ethereum to be used for. Because if the market is not using it for that, then I need to reconsider my position. I see. I think that maybe this is more semantics then in terms of where it kind of breaks down. Because I guess to me, I don't know if you'd agree with this, but to me, so goes strong defy, so goes Ethereum, basically. So if, and this is kind of the strongest case that you make with respect to looking at this as an investor and saying strong defy hasn't worked out so far. Right. And like I see that too. It hasn't worked out. What has worked out is some of the ledger technology. What has worked out, by the way, is the thing that Bitcoin is, which is whatever you want to call it, store a value asset, right, on Shane, bear, instrument, that kind of thing. So you could say that strong defy is not worked out, but I think if you have to say, at least I believe this, this is not necessarily just a subjective win condition that I'm making. It's certainly my preference.

I think it's actually more objective. Because if weak defy is the only thing we get, we get Bitcoin and we get weak defy, Ethereum is way over provisioned. It's back to, it has too many nines. It doesn't need the security guarantees and the censorship resistance and the privacy and the open source and the, I think I did crops right there, right? It doesn't need all of that. You just do it on Canton Network.

Fine, you're done. Call it a day. We got some super validators. Done. We got some nice ledger technology. We got some, you know, you don't need Ethereum. The only thing you need, it was back to, do you remember when Donkrad was like, what apps actually need crops?

And then people are like, this, this, this and this. And he's like, at the con, my submitted, I was like, ether the asset needs it. And some defy like, Uniswap does. And he was like, oh, yeah, that's probably the answer. That's the only thing that needs crops, guys? Strong defy, ether the asset, store of value. And so I guess what I'm saying is, what you'd have to do is you'd have to look back at, Ethereum and be like, yeah, it was a cool attempt and it did the EVM and then a bunch of,

then blockchain proliferated. And it has a spot in history. But ultimately, the dream kind of failed because ether never became a store of value asset. And strong, strong crypto didn't work anywhere outside of Bitcoin. So to me, this is why it's probably semantics. To me, describing what your case is and why you sold your eth, that's just called Ethereum failing. and you could be like, I'm selling my eth because I think Ethereum is going to fail, and ether the asset is not going to appreciate.

Again, it's probably just semantics. We're probably saying the same thing, but that's the piece that triggers me just slightly is because I feel very strongly that Ethereum is nothing without ether the asset, aside from like we tried that thing and it didn't work. Like we tried Webvan back in 2000, and we were really waiting on like Uber Eats for food delivery. something like that.

Yeah. There's a lot of people on Twitter are saying, like, the whole eth, not Ethereum, is just a reincarnation of blockchain, not Bitcoin? Yeah. And I want to throw a flag at that because that's an incorrect comparison, because when the whole, like, phenomenon of blockchain, not Bitcoin was literally just blockchain technology, not Bitcoin the blockchain. And so they were going to use IBM HyperLedger, you know, intra-d database blockchain technology.

Literally the blockchain technology, but without any sort of asset. That was a complete failure. The actual reality is public permissionless blockchains, not your private intranet. That's the real innovation here. But the same, there was a similar thing, which is they're fading the digital bear asset, the store of value. That was rat poison squared. That was a Ponzi scheme. That was speculation.

That's not the thing that's important. Oh, it turns out that's the only thing that's important for Bitcoin. And I'm just saying that's also the only thing. Really, that's important for Ethereum. is ether the asset plus some strong defy around it. Everything else you could do on the Kansan network or something like that. Yeah. There's some benefit to like, you know, using a public permissionless blockchain,

credible neutrality, censorship resistance, all of that stuff. And that's why Wall Street is using Ethereum, not Kantan, because of the public permissionless blockchain nature of it and as a shelling point of where everyone else is building. Yeah. But any time, like I talked to the figure guy who's putting Helox on chain. so you can go buy Helox and get like 9% yield, great financial opportunity,

we're democratizing access to that. They get to tap the world's capital markets, people get access to Helac investments. That is Ethereum the blockchain. Yeah. Using ether of the asset is just not relevant in that flow. Oh, I agree. I agree completely with that.

But like, I think that they are using it and they're issuing on Ethereum first because of network effect. Mm-hmm. And I think that part of the reason Ethereum is getting that network effect is because of crops. and that propels it.

So, for example, I noticed Circle this week, they launched a Bitcoin custodial kind of tokenized product. Right. And they launched it on Ethereum first. It's because Ethereum has that strong network effect. I don't think they're launching it on Ethereum for like crops for their wrapped Bitcoin products. Definitely.

And their second chain is their own chain. It's Ark, right? That's the other place they're launching it. So I think the benefit is kind of a side benefit and it comes from network effect, not because the real-world tokenized asset actually needs the crops guarantees of Ethereum. Does that make sense?

I think that's probably a subtle to you to agree with. Yes, yes. And overall, the point that I'm making is that, you know, ether the asset, and I have said this on bank lists thousands of times throughout the year. Bitcoin the blockchain by Bitcoiners is viewed as an encumbrance upon BTC, the 21 million hard cap unit. And if the philosophy of Bitcoin could do this, they would do away with the blockchain so that they could just have 21 magical units.

But turns out you actually just need the blockchain and proof of work as these minimum viable mechanisms to secure the assurances of 21 million units. And so you have to deal with the encumbrance. I agree with that. But the philosophy is Bitcoin is 21 million units and that is Bitcoin and everything else is just a means to that end. Here's the last thing on this. Oh, did you have more to say? Yes. Because when we talk about Ethereum,

that relationship is inverted, where Ethereum the blockchain is the point. Ethereum, the block space with crops is the point. But an ether, the asset, has been a means to an end of providing World War III resistant block space. And when we were talking about eth as money in 2021, a lot of that money talk was out of an emergence of properties, not any one specific mechanism other than the burn, not any one specific mechanism. But that's because the economy is built on Ethereum, Ether, emerges as money because of all these money episodes that we did.

I think part of the reason you're saying that is because that's how Vitalik and crew have pushed it and the narrative has been set. That's also the era that we are in now is strong crypto is out, retail crypto is out, crypto is out, crypto believers are out, and Wall Street is in. And it seems to be we are just handing the torch to Wall Street and be like, here's our sick ledger technology. Put any of your assets on it and forget about Ether. Maybe I don't think it's over yet. If you're right, the second thing, that makes Ethereum a failed project. By my definition. By your definition.

When you say Ethereum's a failed project, it's still producing blocks. It's still crops, it's still crops strong. It's not crops. USC is not crops. Ethereum blocks base is crops. For what, though? For something that Jeremy Aller can freeze? Anyway, we could debate.

this for long. I just have one last kind of thing that I think is kind of somewhat interesting or somewhat funny. And this is not a like a poke. I think it's the actual truth. So what would you be saying this if ETH right now was trading at 10K? Certainly not. There you go. But no, my counter argument to this. That's not an argument. That's like, that's I think the truth of it is that you will believe it when you see it. Totally. The problem is when you see it, it's too late to appreciate. It's too late to appreciate. the upside of it and you will buy ether at the price you deserve if this all comes true. If this happens. That's the Bitcoin thing too.

I'd also like to emphasize that this is not necessarily just like a lack of faith about Ethereum the project. This is an existential questioning of crypto the industry. Yeah. Strong defy is crypto the industry. Largely represented by Ethereum. And so when people say like my conviction in crypto, is gone.

Ethereum gets the brunt of that because it represents crypto in the hard sense. I get it. But it's just like, dude, what are our products that generate and capture value? It's perps and it's stable coins. I get it. And then maybe it's also privacy. Like maybe we can get privacy here too. And that's why Zcash is cool.

And if we had privacy on Ethereum layer one, it'd be better. And we're going to get that. Yeah. Let's leave it here. I think this may be an undoing. ongoing discussion as I come in as guest hosts for the weekly roll-up. But I appreciate the engagement here, David. We got a few more things to talk about, though. What else you got for us? We're going to talk about Morpho raising $175 million and flipping ABE in market cap and then Z-Cash dropping 60% right

after I buy it. What did I do? What did I do? We're going to get to all of that and more. But first, some of these fantastic sponsors that makes the show possible. Trading is changing. Not gradually right now. OKX just launched trading bots directly inside the OKX app. Grid trading. A.C. Arbitrage. You set your strategy once and it executes around the clock. No staring at charts all day. No manual entries. No missing moves while you're asleep. And for the first time, automated trading actually feels simple. But OKX is thinking bigger than just trading. They also launched the agent payments protocol, an open standard that lets AI agents execute full commercial transactions on chain. The Ethereum Foundation, Unoswap, and AWS are already building on it. And now it's live inside the United States. And new users who deposit in trade can get up to $500. in Bitcoin through the bankless link. The link is in the show notes to learn more, not investment advice, not available in New York or Texas. Some exciting news.

We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael Nato. He runs the DeFi report. This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 1010 price drop happened. His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point. I've been following him for years. And this year, we started recording weekly podcast episodes.

Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle, there's new episodes that are released every Wednesday. They're 30 minutes. They're short. They're punchy. I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. So let's do it together. Go subscribe to this podcast. Search the DeFi report. Wherever you get your podcast, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find a link in the show notes. There's a new episode waiting for you now. Announced last week is Morpho raising $17 million, co-led by Paradigm, A16C, and Ribot, with also participation from Apollo Circle Ventures Van Eck. In that same week, Morpho, $1 billion market cap, $1.2 billion FDV, flipping Ave at $970 million market cap and a $1 billion FDV.

To me, Ryan, not to be a dead horse, this would be the last thing I say about this, but when Morpho flips Avey, it is... Back-end financial infrastructure for the world's largest financial institutions, minimum viable use of Ethereum, flipping strong defy. This is weak crypto flipping strong crypto. I don't know. I think Morpho is pretty strong defy. It's as strong as AVE. It's definitely as strong as Avey. From a smart contract perspective, I get that there's all stable coins doing this. I think that the way it's sort of a weaker defy is they're not as Dawey as Avey, which by the way, to me, has been like,

a millstone around Avey's neck and a hindrance is like, oh, first we got to talk to the Dow. And like, Morpho is just like, no, we've aligned all parties. And, you know, like, Paul is running the thing. And it's got the founder energy. And it's not like tyranny of the structuralistness. And he just, like, runs the thing and he does it well. But the smart contract level, really, I mean, you tell me if I'm misunderstanding it, but the difference is you have segmented vaults with risk, whereas Avey, it's all pulled

together. In some ways, morpho is even more, like, strong defy, particularly if it was with crypto-nated assets. It's hardened to defy, but the idea of everything being on-chain and then on-chain assets governing over-risk pools, to me, that is strong defy. And so, like, Dow's are strong defy. And so what you're saying is like, yeah, these are a centralized team who can move fast and, like, shake hands with Apollo, the largest private equity firm. And I'm like, yeah, dude, that's weak. Crypto, that is ledger technology for the world's largest financial institutions. And then, like, AVE token holders, risk managing on chain is strong crypto.

And that's just slower and harder. I guess so. That was like V1 crypto. I think Dows were a bad idea. I think Dows were one of the bad ideas. Dows are strong crypto. There was like structurelessness. Like, you know, we're all going to make it crypto, which ended up being the wrong path.

Tell me about Zcash. Okay. So what happened? Okay, so this is actually an AI topic. On May 29th, a security researcher was using Anthropics Opus 4.8, and he basically typed in the prompt, Find Me an exploit in Zcash. Make no mistakes. And it found one. A critical flaw in the orchard pool.

So Zcash has privacy pools. So you have the transparent supply of ZEC. That's the UTXO set. That's a set that's on exchanges. You can also just hold this as an individual. and your ZEC is like accounted for. Or you could put it in the privacy pool and then you shield it in and you mix it up with everyone else's.

There was a vulnerability discovered in the privacy pool that it would allow an exploiter to mint unaccounted for a ZEC. And so if you... Infinite basically, as much as I wanted. Up to the amount that is deposited in the privacy pool. So you could only withdraw the amount that's in the privacy pool. Double your money. Yeah, exactly.

And so it would be a transfer of ZEC from privacy pool. pool depositors to the theorized exploiter. There is no proof that this exploit was ever exploited. But there's no proof that it wasn't. There's no proof that it wasn't. This is true. It was patched and then a hard fork

was shipped very quickly before it was announced. So a hard fork on June 3rd fixed the privacy pool and then the public disclosure came on June 5th. But the news that no one can prove that it wasn't exploited sent Zek tumbling about 50%, 100 million dollars

of liquidations. And then Arthur Hayes saying that he's out. There is an upgrade coming, iron wood hard fork that brings in a new shielded pool and Zcash does this. There's like new pools every now and then to upgrade the cryptography, make it stronger,

just like software updates, you know how you update your phone, like software updates for the privacy pool. And then this time it's also going to be formally verified. And then there's also AI-assisted circuit analysis of the ZK circuits. Just a much more rigorous assurances around the privacy pool.

it was stronger assurance is that this doesn't happen again. That's right. This vulnerability was active since 2022, right? So it was a long... It was possible to be found in 2020. This is a long possible window. But in my understanding things, I think I read this, that with the new upgrade, they'll also be able to tell if it was actually exploited. So it won't forever remain in a mystery. And that's a key part of the puzzle. Once this upgrade happens, you can tell if someone triggered the, you know, double my money button a few times. Correct.

Every time we hop from privacy pool to privacy pool, every time there's a privacy pool upgrade, you can get their assurances that it was not exploited in the past.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that this is sort of quite possibly if you're bullish Zek long term, which I'm not sure if you should be.

But if you are, this is sort of a buy-the-dip type moment probably because people did buy it. It's up like 40% since the bottom.

There's a bathtub curve with AI related issues. Have you seen this with you, you have flaws at the beginning stage of something and then they dip down, right? And you get kind of a bathtub floor and then maybe they dip at the end and not that everything fails or whatever.

But anyway, I guess what I'm saying is we're going to see a bunch of these types of issues with the advent of AI, but then we're going to find them all with the advent of AI and resolve them, protect against them, equip with tools and then they'll be stronger than ever. and then they'll be stronger than ever

and we won't have these flaws in the future. That at least is the hope, but I think that's kind of what I expect to happen here. Yeah. Part of my calculus in my decision to sell Yeath was that like, dude, everyone's scared to put their money in defy.

I get it. But also on the flip side of that, there is the equal and opposite to exactly what your point. The other side of the bathtub. They'll be scared of it. Weirdest mean we've ever used. We'll be in the bathtub.

We'll be in the bathtub. And it feels good. The water feels good. And then everyone will hop back in into the bathtub. We all one shared bathtub together. Dude. Okay. I told you I'm out of F's to give, dude.

We're going from Bankless Boys or fighting to Bankless Boys are in the bathtub. What about this? Jason Calcanus, three years ago, he tweeted this. And I remember being absolutely livid. He said this. Really? If you're in, kind of. I was just annoyed.

Can't you say something nice about Crypto Jason? We're dying out here. This is 2023. If you're in crypto, pivot to AI. Did that age well? Did that tweet age well? Yeah, I mean, you can't. Hard to say it's not age well.

You can't say, yeah. But at some point, at some point, crypto is down bad and AI is IPOing at multi-trillion dollar valuations. Yeah, maybe at the point Jason's taking victory laps. Maybe that's when it ends, huh? I guess we're wrapping this up, but I did see Hester Pierce.

We would like to give a shout out. Perce is resigning, yes. To Hester Purse, who wrote a blog post typed or gave a speech titled Purse Almost Out. Hester Purse, Commissioner of the SEC, has been at the SEC as long as we've been doing the bankless podcast. She has been a light for when we needed it the most in the darkest of nights. When Gary Gensler was releasing office hours, Hester Purse was releasing. incredibly poignant remarks, critical remarks.

And so, as she's been on the podcast, like, eight times, she's been at the regulator of regulators. You want every regulator. Just like,

just a round of applause for Hester Perce. But also, like, just like base fundamental principles of like, why am I a regulator? What are the principles I am as a public servant

to uphold? She hit those ethical standards and she delivered such eloquent speeches. Actually, she's such a well-spoken person. I think maybe bankless podcast

could use a co-host energy. I don't know if Purs is looking on the market. Hesser, if you're looking for a job, the revolving door, you know? You'll leave regulation. You come into crypto. Join a podcast. Let me read a few remarks, just a few sentences

from her statements. I'll just read the beginning of the end. So this is the very beginning. Thank you, Jim. She says, thank you to the person who introduced her. I'm delighted to be a part of the summit. My views are my own as a commissioner and not necessarily those of the commission or my fellow commissioners. My days of giving that disclaimer are rushing to an end. After nearly 30 years in D.C., I am leaving the city and moving to the beach. Then she gives a number of points. Her main points in this speech is that capital markets succeed because governments stay out of the way. United States capital markets are the world's best because the government acts as a referee,

not as a player. Government power must be tied to consent. And recently, the SEC Commission has been correcting course in a way that feels more aligned with her. But that did not stop her, Ryan, from giving further dissenting marks about where she thinks the SEC continues to need to improve, regardless of who is in the chair seat. I think she's always been the SEC's biggest critic, which is why we love her the bus.

And then she finishes with, thank you for indulging the meandering reminiscences of a soon-to-be former regulator. I'm sad to be leaving a place that has allowed me to engage in the important work of regulating the finest capital markets in the world, alongside fellow commissioners

and wonderful staff who are committed to doing that task as well. Happy 250th anniversary to the nation I'm so honored to serve. Well done. Thank you, Hester. Yep. Thank you.

Thank you for the service. And does that wrap this up? Thank you for listening to the weekly roll-up. One last Polymarket before you go, Ryan, as the world's greatest soccer fan, who do you think wins the World Cup? The World Coin Cup. World Cup. Okay, I'm not going to look at these answers. Isn't it probably a South American country, right?

European. You can pick Argentina. Argentina? Argentina. It's going to be my guess. It's up there. It's up there. So it's pretty close between Spain and France at 17 and 16%.

Portugal is number three, Anglin number four, and Argentina at number five. But, you know, it could be anyone's game. Dude, there is $2 billion on this market. Okay. $2 billion on the Polym Market World Cup winner. Why didn't Ethereum do sports betting? Oh, my God. Put sports betting on chain.

Oh, wait. Oh, wait. Oh, okay. Anyway. It's on Polygon. Put it on the layer one. Yes, yes. Burns some Heath.

And then David will be back in. By the way, are they stopping by because it's in the U.S. this year? Is the World Coin Cup stopping by New York City, your hometown? The World Coin Cup is in New York. It is in Atlanta. It's in Seattle. It's in Florida. Those are places you can get to?

I might go to a game. Maybe I'll go home and see my family in Seattle. I'll go to a game there. Think you should go to a game. Tell me how it is. Good sports fan. All right. Well, we'll stay tuned for the world's best coverage of the World Coin Cup.

That's it this week. Bankless Station, thank you much for sticking with us. Ryan, we'll be back on vacation next week. Just one week he's in, one week he's out. You never know what he's going to throw at you. But nonetheless, crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. This is Frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey.

Thanks a lot.