Bankless - ROLLUP: RSA Returns! | ETH’s Pivot? | Bitcoin’s Decoupling | Bear or Bull?

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

This week, the one, the only, Ryan Sean Adams makes his return to the Weekly Rollup and crypto, after a 90-day crypto detox to find a radically changed landscape. Ryan and David break down crypto’s shifting cycle, what Ryan missed, and Bitcoin’s dramatic decoupling from equities as it earns a strategic reserve in the U.S. Treasury. Meanwhile, Ethereum faces an existential pivot as it tries to reclaim lost ground against Bitcoin and Solana. Plus, Zora sparks heated debate with “content coins” amid new regulatory wins—and new fears of political corruption. Did crypto lose its soul chasing mainstream adoption, or is this the messy price of progress? It’s an essential Weekly Rollup you can’t afford to miss.------📣 WALLET CONNECT | ONCHAIN UX ECOSYSTEMhttps://bankless.cc/WalletConnect ------BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFihttps://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAINhttps://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORKhttps://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐SELF | PROVE YOUR SELFhttps://bankless.cc/Self 🏦INFINEX | THE CRYPTO-EVERYTHING APPhttps://bankless.cc/Infinex ------TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES0:00 Intro0:47 Are we still in a bull market?3:01 Ryan’s unplugging 5:35 Ryan’s last 90-days https://x.com/ryansadams/status/1915115437505049055 24:50 Bankless’s choices moving forwardhttps://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1914312548897219006 32:58 Markets since Ryan’s break40:35 Trump’s memecoin 48:31 Bitcoin Strategic Reserve52:34 $LIBRA memecoin 1:03:29 Contentcoins, Zora, & Jesse1:16:39 Ethereum pivot & Bitcoin decoupling 1:18:18 Closing & Disclaimers------Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Welcome Bankless Nation to the Bankless Weekly Roll-up where we cover everything that's been going on in the Wild West of Crypto. Today, I'm joined once again by the one and only, Ryan, Sean Adams. Ryan, welcome back to Bankless. Oh my God, what did I miss? Did I miss anything? You miss nothing, dude. Nothing happens. Don't worry about it. Okay, so my big question going to this episode, I was like trying to figure out after coming back. So for people who, like, don't know, I've been on hiatus for 90. There's a lot. probably not make this list. I don't know how they don't know.

For 90 days, I've been out. Okay, so my big question coming back to this episode and just like getting back into crypto, because I've been on a complete like disconnect from almost everything. Internet detox. Yeah, and I could talk more about that. But my big question, David, is like, okay, are we still in a bull market? Like, what is going on here? Because there's some, I don't even know.

This is broken the cycle in my mind. So like, what's the consensus around crypto? I don't think that there is consensus, and I think that is actually a very big signal about what crypto is now. Dispersion, differentiation, there's different sectors of crypto. Crypto is large. There's different corners, and there is no global consensus. There is no one single thing about what crypto is. And I think, in my opinion, is that the four-year cycle is broken.

And so are we in a bull market? Are we in a bear market? Well, you can look in different sectors of crypto and have different answers to that. So there is no one clear answer. Okay. So like traditionally when we say bull market or bear market, we're talking about those four-year cycles, like as you said. And now it seems like the consensus is, it sounds like it's your opinion. You share this.

It's my opinion, yeah. Is it broadly the consensus in crypto that, okay, we don't get those anymore. There's no four-year cycles. We've kind of, we're at the adoption curve where just like stuff just happens. It's like the regular market in that way. and we're not going to have a repeat of like Bitcoin goes up, you know, like all the alts kind of go up and, you know, this, you know, it's either bull cycle or like a bare market and we just get that. I don't know if it's consensus, but I think that that is right. All right.

Because it's hard to have consensus when there is dispersion. Like people's voices are all over the place. All right. Well, that's interesting. It's a phase change of crypto. There has been a phase change. I will say that. There's a lot more I want to get caught up with you about because I think I missed a whole bunch of things.

So I hope would you just indulge me a little bit in this episode? I hope bankless listeners indulge me. It's like, give me some highlights from the last 90 days as we get into this and like get me up to speak. Because I feel like there's some major things I may have missed. I wasn't in the action at those times. Yeah. And maybe it's also worth providing the context about like how like I'm sure you heard about

the Trump meme coin. Yeah. But like you have been on a media content detox. And so it's worth. think laying down the impression of no Ryan has been unplugged maybe you could share how unplugged have you been very so I like the Trump meme coin right that's something I would have like heard probably within seconds yeah right you know I caught win of that a week later from an in real life friend a week after it launched and he asked my opinion on it because he like knows I'm in

crypto what's your opinion I was like oh that happened okay like I don't I used shooting from the hip on an opinion on that, but I do have an opinion on that, actually. But, like, I didn't, that's how disconnected I was. The president of the United States. Seven days late to the Trump meme coin is incredibly disconnected. Yeah, that's my latency right now. So, yeah, there's a few things you're going to have to get me up to speed on. Also, like, some things, as I'm getting plugged back in on the week, there's some

Zora drama, these content coins. Bitcoin is decoupling. Like, gold is on a tear. That's all interesting. And also, Vitalik had a execution. layer plan for the EVM. He's talking about maybe replacing the EVM with risk zero. So definitely want to talk about that with you too.

Yeah, that's definitely the tip of the chain. So we're going to go through. I have the four biggest things that happened in the last 90 days, and we're going to go through those. And then we'll also get to the tip of the chain, which is like some of the events that you just talked about. Before bankless nation, we get to all of those things. A message from our friends and sponsors over at Wall Connect.

has been used by over 255 million connections from 40 million unique users all across the internet who are simply just connecting their wallet to the applications that they want to use and Wall Connect is entering their final form of decentralizing and protocolizing Wallet Connect. And of course, in order to do that, they are releasing the last piece of the puzzle, the Wallet Connect token. Ryan, if you're familiar with like, you know the story of Visa or Swift messaging networks and how they came to be and how like it's not, they weren't like startup companies. How would you explain the creation of those two things?

Visa was like a consortium, right? Yeah. Of all of these different kind of like financial, like payment providers and banks and all of these things. And so they're almost like a collection, a consortium that sort of came together and they coordinated this consensus layer. And they sort of like just formed that way. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So that is exactly what's happening to the Wallet Connect infrastructure, which I thought was pretty compelling.

I had a conversation with Pedro Gomez. That's available on Twitter. link that. That's exactly what's happening to the wallet connect token and how the wallet connect token and infrastructure is being spun out. So if that has you peaked bankless nation, bankless.clic.c slash wallet connect to stay ahead of what's next. I think the first news of the week is this article, Ryan, that you posted called How a Reboot fixed my burnout and upgraded my mind. This is also your welcome back post to Twitter. So welcome back to Twitter. Sorry to have you back on that particular medium of the internet. But again,

and go and lay us down on the last like 90 days of Ryan Tron Adams and what you've been thinking about and why you needed to take the break and what it feels like to be back. Yeah. So I guess like firstly in the welcome back to Twitter, like I'm going to do things differently this time, I think, with respect to how I engage with an app like Twitter. And I can kind of get into that. But I just posted that it's sort of a short post. And I think it might resonate with people.

It's like nothing to do with crypto. Well, it kind of is actually. But it is to do with like life. and modern living, I would say, and doing, I think it's a post for what I call it, like, grind addicted overachievers, which was like, I think, I don't know, you tell me, David, we've worked together for like five years now. It's like that feels like my personality type. Like, I can get in these grind cycles of just like, I do the same thing and I can, like,

bear the pain to, like, just get through it. And then I also have this problem in that, like, the thing. that I'm doing, I'm not quite satisfied. Like, I get to the place. I'm like, oh, but there's another place further out. And like, I should go. There's a higher peak. There's always a higher peak for me. And so all of this compounding over time in January, I would say it like kind of snuck up

on me, but like I kind of knew it was happening. But I just hit a moment in January. It was after, do you remember our like the one Solana token? And I go like, yeah. And it was AICC. The one time you touched Alana. Yeah. And there was a whole like public pitchforking, you know.

Actually, we did sort of make a mistake on that. But the pitchforking was absolutely crazy. And this was like the, I don't know, the 10th time it had happened. And all of this combined, I just, I didn't have the skin thick enough to get through it. And something in my mental operating system just crashed. Like I just felt done. I felt exhausted. I felt burnt out.

It was this question of like, I wake up in the morning, why am I doing this? Like, why am I doing this? And I think if you're listening and you're asking yourself that question about whatever you're doing in life, whether it's like a relationship,

a job, like just anything in life. And there's this repeated question of like, why am I still doing this in your mind? Then that might be a sign you're like in burnout territory. You've lost track of yourself. And you need to do what I did which was take a reboot.

So this was really hard for me, David, and you were the first person I talked to about it, but it was really hard for me to come to the realization that I needed to completely disconnect from everything, like kill all my commitments, like all the pod. We plan podcasts like six weeks out, right? Cancel all of those, at least for me. Have you, my business partner, like take on the mantle

of like carrying all of the, load of bankless where I did nothing for 90 days, like no meetings, no work, nothing. All opportunities that were like things we could do, possibilities, just let those evaporate. That was the reboot and that was the decision I had to make to come to you, talk to you, talk to the team and just be like, hey, I'm going for like 90 days. And by the way, I can't tell you confidently if I'm going to be back or not. All right? And I wish I could say that was like I rationally came to that conclusion.

Like this is all part of, you know, a process of just like upgrading and just like figuring my shit out. But it wasn't like that. It was like capitulation, you know, is like I compared it to being margin called liquidated. You know, like it wasn't on my terms. You called it an emotional margin call. It was an emotional margin call. And I think that that can happen. If you're, you know, grinding high achiever, that sort of thing can happen.

you. It's better. I would just say it's better for it to happen on your own terms and not be margin called. But regardless, I was margin called. I needed to kind of disconnect and go figure stuff out. Go answer my question of like, why am I doing this? Yeah. I think it's worth emphasizing that there was a moment and it lasted for a while actually, maybe even a couple months where you did not know if you were going to come back to crypto. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To crypto, to bankless, I just like, I really didn't know. And so I set this time aside for myself to go figure it out. And like once I disconnected, once I cleared everything, I really had just the space to

diagnose what was wrong. Right. And so this is where you reboot and you upgrade, right? This is the cycle. And I think for my cycle, life happens in these cycles of progress, right? And what I needed to do, I didn't know I needed to do it. But what I needed to do was sort of like N1 cycle. in order to begin the next.

And that's what the reboot did. But now the question is like, what's the next cycle for me? And there were a few problems I had with the way I was doing things previously in like crypto media investing, this crazy world. Like one was just,

and some of this is pretty simple. It's like not, it's not rocket science, but you know, like that's the beauty of it. Anyone can kind of do these things and apply them. But for me, number one, I was way too online.

I was, I couldn't go 15 minutes without checking something. Whether it was like socials, whether it was like price chart, whether it was Discord, whether there's telegram, it was dopamine drip

right into like my veins. And I didn't even realize it. I think you've told me before when you've gone on like mountain expeditions and stuff, like when you completely disconnect from screens, you realize how addicted

you actually like were to it. And so like I would find myself just kind of like when I disconnected from these things. Like I'm talking deleting apps. everything like just complete cold turkey I would find myself like reaching for my phone I'd reach for my phone dude I pick it up and I look at my like home screen there's like nothing fun on it anymore and I'd be like I put it down I'd be like why did I even do that right uh huh why did I pick up my phone

yeah yeah why did I pick up my phone so that was clearly a problem um I just I got rid of that by just treating myself like a child so I went into the you know settings my phone app screen restrictions, screen time limitations, again, like deleting things. And it totally, it felt like detoxing from something. How long was that process? Like, were you, were you irritable? How long did that last? Like, what did that feel like? The first week, I felt like jittery. I mean, it wasn't super irritable, but I felt jittery. Like, a little bit like trying to get off caffeine. And this only like hard substance. I, you know, I've lived a pretty clean life, David. So it's been, you know, social media and caffeine for me.

Are your vices? Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty, it was kind of like that. But it probably felt it took like a week. And I got the first round of just like clarity, just quiet in the mind. And then after 30 days, like a lot more of that started to return. And I found like I could focus. I could be present. I combined some of this with like, you know, just like some daily, just quiet time,

like meditation type stuff. and I could think again. So that was the first thing I did. The second thing I did was I felt lost. Like I felt like I didn't, again, answering a question of like, why am I doing this again? You know, like the reason you and I both got into crypto

and started on this bankless journey was like the word freedom. We keep returning to that, right? Like freedom. Like we want to use crypto technology as an escape from all of the systems that try to control us, right? Like the banks or, you know, like the centralized tech companies.

But somewhere along the road, like, I found myself a slave to, like, prices? Okay. I, you know, crypto prices? Crypto prices, but just kind of the concept of, like, wealth. Do you know what I mean? Like, okay, so this goes back to the Gold Post moving. We've talked about crypto wealth. many different times on bank lists over the years. What I had never done before, never,

my history, is actually defined what like enough was. Like, what's the number where, like, that's enough for everything I want to do in life and my family, like, wants to do, and where I can provide for those that I love. And I don't have to look at the scoreboard anymore. And maybe to emphasize this is not coming from a place of greed or greediness. This is coming from a place of you love the game. You love the game of like growing a business and playing that particular game investing in the right ways because what are you going to do with your life? It's a fun game. It's an enjoyable game and you love the game. Yeah. So I'm not the type of person like to do sort of the flashy status symbol thing of like you know buying the Lambo and whatever like that's not.

Yeah. You bought a used Toyota Highland. under like four years ago. Yeah. And like so, but it wasn't that for me, but it was very much like the high score, like the arcade game. Or like, just like, it was just kind of this endless cycle of, you know, and crypto prices rise or didn't fall. You never know, like, you know, something that starts that like one could turn into

a hundred and like you just extrapolate that forward. Anyway, I had not taken the time to actually define with those in my life, my spouse, like, what is enough? Okay. So that was a big piece of it. The other piece I was missing was my definition of wealth was way too narrow. It was like when I thought about wealth, mostly I thought about like net worth, right? Which is definitely a key part of wealth, but that's also the part that society,

um, he composes on us. Like we're sort of taught like what is success? It's net worth. It's kind of number to go up. Um, a key book for me was, uh, Sawhill Bloom's book, which is kind of ironic because we actually had Sawhill, I think he was like booked. Yeah, we had him booked for a, for just a podcast. Yeah, just talk about it. Anyway, I received the book in the mail, you know, because he had sent that book as pre-reading material for the podcast. I was like, okay, this is interesting. Well, I'm not doing

anything else. I may as well read this. It was fantastic. It's called the right book at the right time. Right book at the right time. It's called the five types of wealth. And it just expanded my framework. So he talks about like, yeah, financial wealth is one type of wealth. But there's also like time wealth, relationship, social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth. And I looked at that and I was like, oh my God, I'm completely over allocated in sort of the financial side of things. And I'm not like taking care of the other four types of wealth, right? Like I was time poor, I was relationship light. I was like mentally scattered. I was physically, like I hadn't worked out in probably a couple of years, like at least not consistently.

so I just felt physically like just soft. And I was just focusing on one type of wealth. I was missing all of the other types. You know, he has just like questions about your relationship wealth and your social wealth. Who are the people that are going to be at the front row of your funeral, right? Are you investing in those relationships? And how are you investing? Are you dollar cost averaging into them?

And so that was another key piece for me in sort of finding my new map is creating a wealth plan that was more than just stacking, you know, ether, Bitcoin, like crypto wealth, right? And that was broader. And it was using money. You know, Naval often says this money as a tool, right? And so it's like using as money as a tool to also allocate to those other types of wealth. And so I'm working out now. I'm like eating far more nutritiously. I'm like taking time for that. I'm investing in my relationships, both like my family, immediate family relationships,

and then just like friendships that I'd sort of let atrophy. And I created a whole plan around this. So it's like one thing to read the book, but like what was pivotal for me is creating like a dashboard goals, habits, systems, you know, like feedback loops. You know how I work. So it's just like grind it into a discipline.

Right. Yeah, you turned the other four types of wealth into processes for yourself. Yeah, yeah. Which Ryan loves process. Let me tell you. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's, I feel like I just need reminders, right? Yeah. And so this is like when you have processes and systems, when you drift,

you can just get back on course. So that was the second thing. And the third thing was, uh, was, I felt in everything I was doing, I was being, I was stretched too thin.

Like, I was doing too many things. You know when you have too many browser, windows open and Chrome's like, that's too much. I'm eating all of your system resources, crash. Uh-huh.

You know, you just had too many browser windows, you know? And so I needed to, like it was a result of saying yes to all of these things. Oh, that looks interesting. That looks, I can do that. I could do that. I could do that. And what I needed to do was like correct the overachievers delusion, which like for me was like three things. It was like, I'm the only one who could do this is what I thought.

If I don't do it, it won't get done. And being busy is good. Those three things were like delusions basically. I was feeding into myself. And it turned out, and this really impressed upon me like 30 days in, everything was working still. I just peeked in. I had a meeting with you and Rachel on our team.

I peaked in. RCOO. I was looking at the podcast feed. All the episodes shift. Thank you very much, David. I appreciate it. A roll-up was not missed. No, up wasn't missed.

We still never miss a roll-up at bankless. Yeah, like, ETHPrice wasn't great. But, like, the network was still great. It's out of our control. Like bankless ventures was backing deals. Like everything was happening. The team was kind of covering the gap. And so I look at what I used to believe.

And be like, because I thought, maybe I thought subconsciously that if I left, I don't know, the world would burn. Like, I don't know what would happen. Things would crumble. Yeah. And this was hard evidence that showed me otherwise. So now I'm doing this thing where I'm just like operating on energy accounting, which is like if a task, drains more than it pays, right? It's delegated.

It's automated. Or it's deleted. And I'm deleting a lot of things right now for my life. And I'm just focusing on core areas of competence, right? The zone of genius, as people call it. Storytelling. So that means doing this podcast with you, telling stories about the frontier of crypto, AI, something I've been rabbit-holing recently, like all that stuff and allocating capital.

So that is the upgrade. So there was the reboot. the system was down, had some downtime, you know, just like Salana. Sorry, had some downtime. No, Salana's doing great. It's really great to see. I can't wait to talk to you more about that. And then also, I just upgraded the software.

So that's what RSA too is. And yeah, I don't know. I don't often share personal things like in general. I'm pretty not that way. But I thought this might be helpful for some people. So that's why I published the article. Yeah. And it's also just good to hear the story. And good to see that you have invested in the other side of your life. I was very happy to see that you followed through on not a single tweet for nine months.

Yeah. And like the gray icon. 90 days. Yeah, 90 days. Excuse me. And then also the gray icon next to your name, you know, on just great for 90 days. And it was good. It was good to see. I've always perceived that you've been way like better balance than me. Is that like? Yes. So you talked about how. you said you now operate on energy accounting. If a task drains me more than it pays, it's delegated, automated, or deleted. I have operated on that. I think maybe as a, not like an admiral quality of me,

but just like if it drains me more than it pays, I ignore it, which is something I personally have to deal with because like ignoring something is not always the best solution, but it has allowed me to be more sustainable. like I it's a little bit more innate in me of like if this is not fun then I am just not doing this and I'm going to pivot into something that I do find fun and I'm going to apply my my energies that way now again like I said that has cost me 2021 taxes let me tell you but but this has also made like just my being a little bit more sustainable naturally I'm not saying it's the optimum strategy but this is why I think this is stuff like this, like the Twitter mobbings, don't get me in the same way that they get you.

Yeah, I think you are much more bomb-proof than me. It's like just more endurance runner type quality when you're that way. And I do think that that's the ying and the yang, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes you need a little bit of the grind and the over-it, like, what could we do? Like the overachieving. And sometimes you just need the, you know, like balance, you know, finding energy, actually, like, loving what you're doing and focusing on those things. So, yeah, that's good stuff.

Now, you have had some thoughts, I think, about just like bankless. Yeah. And, you know, I read your tweet earlier this week as I was logging back in about your thoughts and on like what to really focus on. Tell me about that. Yeah. Well, so maybe this comes down on the back of like your big realization. You said, you know, 30 days power down proved that, you know, the bankless media company

would keep on shipping podcast. Bankless ventures would keep on going. And, you know, to be clear, the shoes of Ryan Chod Adams are very large. and there is no there's no truly filling those shoes but yet you know the with the void that that was left that was created you know the mycelial network did fill that in like we learned to like route around the void like that they get filled in it's not perfect but things things did keep on going and we learned to fill that gap but also that like we also learned about how to like with that gap there there was an opportunity for everyone to kind of like step up and put on the new hats that needed to be donned on.

And there's been, it's been generative, I would say, on the backside of the company. And especially me, because I'm the person who has had to fill that void the most. And it was also a moment for the company to ask, like, do we need to do this thing? Like, what are we doing that we actually might not need to do? Do we have to do things this way? And so downstream of that has been some choices. I put this out, this tweet saying there are four things that. we're going to do at bankless. And this is like actually maybe just not completely relevant to what

I was just saying of filling in the void, but you know, choices that I think we ought to make moving forward. One, during the last 90 days, AI has just, you know, been as amazing as crypto was in 2021 in terms of hype and attention. And I am AI-pilled. I think you have mentioned that you are AI-pilled. We have a team member who is AI-pilled and then also a Jaws who is crypto and AI-pilled. And so we actually have found solid podcasting talent that is AI-pilled. And we actually have a lot of podcasting talent that's AI-pilled. And not just AI-pilled, but Frontier Tech-Pilled. And we have been making more AI content, which I think many people have enjoyed.

And some people have caused like elevated frustration that like, oh, my crypto podcast is now an AI podcast or Frontier Tech podcast. And I understand that. So we are creating a new podcast, a Frontier Tech-focused podcast that we are going to incubate. you're still going to see those podcasts episodes on this feed, but we're also going to incubate this new podcast. We're calling it limitless. Nice. Bankless for crypto,

crypto and markets, and then limitless for Frontier Tech. And so we're going to spin up that podcast vertical. So you'll see that as well. All the frontier tech stuff is going to go over there. Also, the next thing, renewed Ethereum focus. And the reason why I think this, this, again, has nothing to do with your departure.

And it actually has everything to do with Ethereum, to me, becoming interesting again. Whereas the last two years of Ethereum have been often a direction that hasn't felt aligned with what the universe wants or what the universe expects out of. And I see Ethereum in the last six months realigning itself to a new future. And Bankless has always had Ethereum in our DNA. There is no ripping Ethereum out of bankless DNA. Our first love. It's our first love.

It always will be. And I think there's an opportunity now where bankless can actually support Ethereum. because I don't think there wasn't supporting much to support about Ethereum in like 2023.

It was it needed to like how you needed to go and like realign yourself. Ethereum also needed a reboot. And we are, I think we are slowly watching Ethereum reboot

in a way that we, I think we can support. And so now that opportunity exists once again, I think I wanted to take it. I think we should take it. Love it. Thumbails.

This seems small, but our thumbnails also need a reboot. Oh yeah. And thumbnails like seem like such a small thing. But people judge podcasters, YouTubers by what their thumbnails look like. No more stupid open mouth face,

like kind of YouTuber face. We were always pushing against it, but the incentives pointed there. And so we're trying to figure out how to keep on optimizing for click through rate, which is what you do when you optimize for thumbnails, while also kind of like restoring legitimacy, which, you know, we once had.

and like the podcast feed does have, but I want to go back into just optimizing for legitimacy. And I think this relates to what you are thinking about with like your energy level and how to not deplete your energy level. And this means like we're going to optimize for what we feel is legitimacy and legitimate conversations and like things that we find interesting

rather than like the dopamine of click through rate. And then, of course, the last one is Ryan Chon Adams returns back this week. So I... all of those things. I think that's really awesome. I think that the two most exciting technologies in my lifetime, aside from the internet, it was just like growing up, whatever, crypto, 2010s into now, right? That's the story.

And now AI 2020s. And so I'd like to be exploring both of those frontiers is like a pretty rare opportunity. If you ever need a guest host on Limitless, okay? You're interested? I'm kind of, I dabble, okay? I've been using, you know, the tools on a daily basis, learning about. transformers and just like the way all these systems are structured. So that'll be really fun.

I think you will be, you've been listening to the Josh episodes on Frontier Check and also the AI roll-ups with Adjaws and Josh. Josh and Josh, I'm very bullish on as podcasters. And when I've stepped into that role with the AI roll-up, Josh, Josh and David, is actually, I just feel like the Jason Calcanus. And I say that in a negative way, and I'll leave that there. But Josh and Ajaz are very smart. And I am very bullish on them as podcasters.

And I think you will definitely enjoy being a part of that conversation because I walk away from those podcasts. Very bullish on AI and very interested in what happens next, which is how I felt about crypto in like 2019. Well, bankless listeners, thanks for indulging David and I in a little catch up, a little bit of housekeeping. We appreciate you. After the break, you're going to have to fade out to sponsors, David, because I don't even know who's sponsoring us anymore. But you got to update me on some of the big things that happened while I was out because I have so many questions. So let's get to that. Banklessation, we're going to get to the Trump meme coin, the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve and the Libra debacle.

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That's what I remember. I remember it was in the $3,000. $3,400. Yeah, well, it's $17.50. Hopefully you weren't on margin when you left. Bitcoin, Bitcoin USD is down 7% from $100,000 down to $93,000. Solana USD is down $30% from $2,210 down to $150. And the total crypto market cap is down from $3,000.

3.6 trillion to 3 trillion. And interestingly, Bitcoin gold. Bitcoin is down versus gold. 25%. Interesting. Yeah, since your departure. What's your reaction? What's your reflections on these numbers? I mean, honestly, it looks, okay, so it looks most painful for Eith. It seems like Bitcoin's doing just fine. As of right now. I mean, like, I know it was down, like, I think I was looking at the charts. I think it was down like a lot more when the tariffs got announced, all of that stuff. Salana looks like it's doing pretty well as well. It seems like the sort of the bear market right now is ether. I don't know about the other long tail of assets. I've looked at kind of like defy tokens and such that I hold. I don't think that they have had a resurgence

L2 as well. So it's like the entire Ethereum ecosystem is kind of, it's down fairly bad relative to Bitcoin and Seoul. Like Bitcoin relative to gold is pretty, interesting. Only down 25%. I mean, I see... Only down 25%. 20%, gold moving 25%, I think, is pretty big deal. Gold is crushing, though, right? And it's all because of, you know, another theme that seemed to have emerged while I was out, which is like the end of the dollar, the, like, end of Pax Americana. You know what I mean? Like the end of Bretton Woods? Is that seriously happening under Trump? It seems like it might be. At least it's the beginning of the end. And so I think

like gold is kind of repricing that. That's the way it seems. And, you know, so it's definitely been on a tear. Bitcoin seems like it's doing really well, though. But yeah, like it's ETH that's really suffering right now. Bitcoin, so as you know, I did this Bitcoin, Bitcoin versus Ethereum podcast before Bankless. It was called POV Crypto.

It was me, the Ethereum guy and a Bitcoin or co-host, and we were just debating. We just yell at each other since we were college friends. It was fun. a lot of what he said in the early days of that podcast in the 2018 to 2019 era is coming true where the brand and lead that Bitcoin has is actually large and more large than what like Bitcoin detractors say and that eventually Bitcoin will be purchased by central banks. And we are not seeing Bitcoin being bought by our central bank,

but I would say the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve is like pretty damn close to exactly what that idea, that concept was, where the Bitcoin brand is so incredibly strong and the Bitcoin story in the immaculate conception, which I, like, minimized back then. I was like, no, it's actually about like scale and productivity and revenue and innovation and software updates. That's actually the real thing. Yeah. I think Bitcoiners have, like old school bitcoins that we would debate with back in 2018,

2019 were had more foresight than I gave credit for back then. Yeah. I think that I got a couple things I would say. I don't think it's over for ether at all. I think right now it's losing the midgame. And your comments about it kind of like, I think I read a tweet from you where the, you know, the theorem ship is kind of, it's taking a long time,

but it is turning the big ship to turn and it is turning. I definitely see that. you've got an article coming out that you've been working on right about the Ethereum and sort of the you know like the shift and the signs of life that you're seeing and like maybe call it a pivot in some ways like this emphasis on the L2 I've been ruminating on the L1 the L1 excuse me yes I've been ruminating on like another article about what I think the Ethereum community kind of got wrong and what it needs to do particularly so actually what the Ethereum community needs to do is

actually what I would say my article is about. Okay. And I think you're probably talking about more the Ethereum network, which is important. Yeah. I have some thoughts on ETH the asset. Basically, the TLDR from my perspective is, holy shit, ETH just got totally outplayed by the Bitcoin religion. It did not, like, you know, Ethereum talks about building, right? It's like we're a community of builders. We build. That's what we do, right? That's our advantage. Okay, building on the technical side, but has not built the meme base layer, has not built the cult, has not built the religion. And we are seeing, and it's not something even the theorem culture would kind of acknowledge, right?

It's like it doesn't, it doesn't do maximum. I don't think Ethereum culture has that DNA. Well, that's the, that's a problem. And that's where you suffer if you're trying to become a global store of value asset. Anyway, I want to take that angle and kind of explore that a little bit. But that's the other side of why. Bitcoin's been super successful because it's gotten to the level of central bankers. But in order to get there, dude, you needed this cult.

You needed people like Michael Saylor. You need people like Dave Bailey, who's like rubbing elbows with the politicians, getting to speak at conferences about this asset. Like, you have to work your way up to central bank. And Ethereum hasn't done that on the community side. Anyway, not to say it can't because it's got all the raw ingredients there. And some, like many that we've argued are like better attributes for a store of value than Bitcoin. but it has to really work on on that side of things so yeah that's why i've been thinking about

what's your take on the story of the immaculate conception of bitcoin leading to its very strong credible neutrality like the elimination of satoshi uh so bitcoin has very strong credible neutrality in that context versus the mere existence of vitalic buterin and it's like send like more like the ethereum foundation while ethereum we like we like ethereum because of credibly neutral compared to Bitcoin and compared to Bitcoin as a monetary asset. It doesn't have that same story. And so it disqualifies it from central bank inclusion. What's your take on that? My take on that is just that it's a religious proposition. And it's a fantastic religious proposition for Bitcoin. But there are different types of religions that you can form.

And that doesn't have to be the only way a religion takes root. You know, it is one of the strengths of Bitcoin. But that does not preclude ether from becoming a global monetary asset. Now, it feels bad because it's like not winning that midgame right now. And even I was thinking compared to like 2021, 2022, I feel like ETH has fallen behind on the global store of value reserve asset like conversation narrative, right? And like I think that that ground needs to be regained if we're going to see material price appreciation in the future for Eith.

And it's an open, open story. There's like some probability that happens and there's some probability that it doesn't. And I think part of what we're seeing is the market pricing that in. So, Ryan, you had your departure on January 16th. And if you had left three days later, at January 19th, the ratio between Seoul-Eath would actually have gone down by 10% because that was the day that Donald Trump launched his meme coin. And that was the day that Solana broke all-time highs. Seoul, USDA, broke all-time highs.

Yeah. I mean, Seoul, the ratio of Solana to Eth has been going up pretty consistently in a pretty consistent trend since like December of 2023, which, I mean, it violently went up from 2023 into 2024 and then it's been consistently trending up versus Ethereum. And so the recent, both dollar and ETH ratio terms has been marked to top by the Donald Trump meme coin. You said that you didn't see the existence of the Donald Trump meme coin until seven days later and congratulations for, you know, being able to dodge that mess.

So let me kind of guide you through some of the conversations that has been happening downstream of this. Of course, Donald Trump launches the meme coin. It's on Solana. All meme coins in that one moment of time on Solana had their liquidity sucked out from them. And I was trading meme coins on Solana at this time. I had like four or five or six meme coins. I dumped all of my meme coins for the Trump coin. All of them.

Did you buy Ivanka or just Trump? I did not buy Ivanka. Okay. When Ivanka, when the, no, not Yvanka, Melania. When the Melania. Yeah. Yeah. How dare you invoke Ivanka's name into it?

Yeah, when the Melania meme coin came out, that caused the Trump meme coin to dump because it was dilutive, right? Like, Trump is the meme. Too many tokens. Too many tokens. Scarcity. Yeah. Got it.

Apparently, like, we're going to talk about the Libre debacle. Yeah. But apparently the same guy that launched the Libre coin was involved with launching the Melania coin. Okay. What? Wait, did you not know that? No.

And the Libra coin was Javier Malaix? Javier Malaix? Javier Malae. But in the back end, there was this one mastermind who was trying to like find the most clouded people possible, convinced them to launch meme coins. And so he got a hold of Melania somehow. And then also got a hold of Javier Malay. But that's jumping forward in this story.

Okay. When the Melania coin launched, the Trump meme coin lost like four. 40% of value, 30% of value, billions of dollars swapped out. It was a completely like unforced error because everyone wanted to speculate on this Trump meme coin. Everyone was like holding a superposition of, oh my God, this is so bullish for Solana meme coins versus, oh, no, this is a terrible grift. And we don't know, we don't exactly know what's going to be. No one really knew what was real. And then when the Melania meme coin got launched, the superposition collapsed. And everyone was like, oh, no, this is a grift. It's a grift. It's a

Rift. Okay, okay. Can I ask you a question? All right. So I know you're talking about this happening last quarter, but it's an ongoing story. So I was reading, even catching up this week, right now, the top 200, 250 holders, something like this of the Trump token, they're now going to be invited to a private dinner with Donald Trump. Yeah.

Okay. The most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump, president of the United States, okay, you buy a meme coin to get access to the most powerful man in the world. Like, you're like, that that's a political thing. That's like lobbying. That's like Trump's adding utility to his meme coin, David. Isn't that what we always dream? It's Gary V.

It was Gary V's strategy. Dinner with Gary Vee. Okay. So my question to you is like, how is this, like, how is this perceived when it happened and now? Like, is this a good thing for crypto? Because the other thing I was catching up on is like all of our wildest dreams on the regulatory front are coming true. Do you remember the twisted world we lived in two years ago,

where Gary Gensler was God King and he was coming with this, you know, Thorhammer to smash everything in crypto and the whole administration was backing him and we had like FDIC, we had operations the whole apparatus of the government was going after crypto aggressively. Now all of that's reversed.

They're all friendly. We're going to get stable coin legislation. I was watching a clip from Mark Ueda who's a commissioner of the SEC and catching up with like on Hester Perst stuff. He basically said, Hey, you know the Gensler regime? That's all gone.

Now we're super crypto favorable. And we're doing all of these things to support the industry. It's like Trump literally fulfilled his promise on that front, right? Like the regulation, regulatory wins have completely shifted in crypto's favorite. Treasury Secretary, Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik, he's doing stuff with Tether. Now it feels to me, David, like we no longer are at risk from the government of being squashed. were at risk from the government of being corrupted. Okay?

And so like we moved to a different vector of... The pendulum has swung. Yes. And so the Trump coin itself, like, is this viewed as like, oh, this is what true adoption looks like the president doing this? Or is it viewed as, oh, God, another vector for corruption and this, like, long term will not go well? It was initially considered the former,

and it is lately considered the latter. And this was what Vitalik Buteran tweeted out pretty quickly after the launch of the Trump meme coin. He treated out this tweet that said the risk of politician coins comes from the fact that they are such a perfect bribery vehicle. If a politician issues a coin, you do not need to even send them any coins to give them money. Instead, you just buy and hold the coin. And this increases the value of their holdings passively. And then, of course, Donald Trump announces that the top 200 holders gets to have dinner with Donald Trump, which means like if you hold enough of the market cap of Donald Trump,

you just get to whisper in his ear directly in this dinner. Well, how's the Trump token doing on that news? Oh, it pumped to market catalysts. It pumped like 60% with the announcement of that. Yeah, so here's the chart. It was down 89. It was down 90% over 92 days. And then so there was a three-month lockup.

So the Trump team, which owned 80%. 80% of the supply of the token had a three-month lockup. We are now 92 days into the issuance of the Trump coin. So the unlock happened three days ago. And now just recently, it pumps up 70, 80%, just two days after vesting unlocks. So is someone going to come up with, like some analyst group going to come up with like the thesis for Trump coin,

which is like all the lobbyists in Washington, D.C., will have to bid on this thing in order to get, you know, like influence to curry favor with Trump, not only all the lobbyists and corporations and such, but other countries. Like you could create a bull case for Trump token based on its kind of like naked influence with the president of the United States.

Like, by the way, society, societally, that sounds like a complete disaster to me. Like further corruption of our political system. But I guess it's not like illegal. I don't know. Where do you think like where do you think this leads? It's not great.

To fill you in on what the crypto community has been doing in response to this. Like to go back to what you're saying about like the Gary the Gary Gensler's out and you know now it's crime season. Yeah. That's the that's the meme in crypto. But people are like actually posting like somewhat satirical but somewhat serious tweets of like Gary Gensler and me like I missed this man. I miss Gary Gensler.

Did you see? I think I saw this in passing again. I'm not up to speed yet. But Richard Hart, the case against Richard Hart, SEC case was dropped. I haven't tapped into the details of that. I've been waiting for someone to synthesize that. Okay. Okay.

All right. So that's happening. What else? Okay. So the other one is the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. And so Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic Reserve. Wow. Around this time, there was a ton of just jostling, positioning by companies, foundations, corporations to become Trump aligned. And so, like, Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse started,

what's it called, like, proximity posting. And so everyone started posting like the United, like, United States pro USA, USA, like tweets on Twitter. Brad Garlinghouse was talking about how great. Trump was, Solana released this marketing video that was just like regurgitating the cultural shift from the left to the right about, like the line was in the video, I don't want to invent genders. I want to like innovate on ideas or something. And the crypto community just rejected it because it was so cringe. It's not well executed. It was it was it was too cringe. They ended up deleting the video. But there was a bunch of like jostling. Did Anna totally apologize? Did he have to? He did. Oh, okay.

people accepted his response. It was a good response. It was a good response. So yeah, there was just like jostling, like of everyone trying to become aligned with being pro-United States because everyone wanted to be in the strategic reserve because we didn't know what would constitute being in the strategic reserve. And then Donald Trump on truth social. You're saying that there was actually other assets that were like contemplated for this.

So Donald Trump tweeted out on truth social about the existence of a strategic reserve. Yeah. And he tweeted out how it's going to be things like ripple, Cardano. Why? Salana. Why those? I think. No one knew.

No one knew. And then I think one more. Made the U.S. was that? Yes. I think it was like U.S. coins. But it was also just coins that had like, I think, successfully jostled their way into

position to get the pro tweet from Trump. Then also there was somebody taking like a margin long position on something like, I can't remember what it was, one of these, one of the shit coins like XRP, hours before that truth social post. Nice. Nice. Okay, but the story of the reserve is that it's just a Bitcoin reserve. It's just a Bitcoin Reserve.

There's also something else that I can't remember what it's called, but like, oh yeah, digital asset stockpile, which is just the assets that the United States already has, and that includes like Tether, ether. They have a lot of ether still, right? They have a decent amount of ether. And Bitcoin in the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve cannot be sold. That is what the Bitcoin Reserve is. In the digital asset stockpile, there is discretion and there is somebody.

going to be in charge of like a long-term plan for the treasury. So they're treating the digital asset stockpile as a treasury that someone is going to sell and make strategic decisions on. But the Bitcoin strategic reserve is not going to be sold. And that's the whole point. Wow. I mean, this kind of stuff is why Bitcoin is so strong right now, right? It's like you were talking about other assets like Jocelyn for kind of power.

You could argue that that Bitcoin did that too. The community did that in a decentralized way. And actually like one. And they started 10 years ago. And they started 10 years. ago and they won. You know, remember that David Bailey having Trump at the Bitcoin conference, right? Yeah.

It's like that whole thing, that grassroots effort to swayed the Republican Party that Bitcoin was the asset. I mean, that's part of their religious victory here. Yeah, the reason, I would say the reason why it has the Bitcoin strategic reserve and everything else has either nothing or a digital asset stockpile is like the Cardano, ripple, Solana, tried to jostle position in a top-down way. leadership made decisions to try and get close to Trump. And the best that they could do was getting in the stockpile.

But Bitcoin being a bottom-up movement, one itself, has a strategic reserve because it's bottom-up. It's grassroots. And then there's votes, too. They gave him votes. Gave him votes and money. And then also there's Ethereum, which is just like opting out of this whole entire thing. We're too good for that. We're too good for that.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, okay. That's what's happening. All right. What else? What's it? Libra, you said?

Leave the Libra meme coin. Okay, so this is, this, uh, this ended the meta of the meme coin meta. This was the blow off top of the meme coin. Like ended it permanently for everything? Like all meme coins are down? But I think meme coins will never be as big as they were leading up to that point. Okay. I think the Donald Trump meme coin, it was the top of Solana USD.

It was the top of meme coin volumes. And then the launch of Libra was like the jumping of the shark. So this was like 2017. Katie Perry with her like nails with all of the crypto assets on her nails. Okay. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so February 14th. This erupted after the Argentine president, Javier Maler, Millet launched a meme coin called Libra with a Salana contract. This isn't all in Spanish. He has since deleted the tweet. And that launched off this frenzy. And I remember where I was. I was at dinner with a friend And I got my tweet, Twitter blew up.

And I was like, oh, my God, Javier Millage was launched me. And this was like after I had been down in Argentina for a month at this like crypto grassroots just like pop up city. Yeah, basically the theme for that. It's like Argentina really gets it. Argentina crypto. Argentine crypto. Yeah, I got it. Yeah.

Yeah. And Javier Malay just never came. And I think it was because our reputation as an industry is pretty bad. And apparently he's also more. This helps. This helps. Right. And so.

So it hits $4.5 billion market cap. What? Like 45 minutes after launch, it hits $4.5 billion. And he's just running the Trump play. This is the Trump play. This is Trump token. So he, I think Javier Malay had very low context about what was happening. He got used.

He did not know exactly what he was doing. He was getting directions from people like pulling the strings, puppeteering him. at the peak of a $4.5 billion market cap, this guy who orchestrated this, Hayden Davis, and many other insiders, cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars. And the price went from $4.5 billion down to less than $1 billion

inside of two hours, which is insanely rapid price movements. Like $4.5 billion got created and then $3 billion got destroyed inside of two hours, kind of nuts. And this international uproar, there was an attempt to impeach Javier Malay in Argentina that didn't go through because Javier Malay's party controls like what is equivalently the House and Senate. Like he's in control, so he's not getting impeached. He's fine.

But it was very embarrassing. And if there's one thing as a politician in Argentina, you do not do. You can be corrupt as a politician in Argentina. You cannot be embarrassed as a politician in Argentina. That's the culture down there. That's cultural. Okay. Yeah.

And this was embarrassing. Did this was incredibly embarrassing? Did he have to apologize? What did he do? He deleted his tweets. He said that he he said that there were people inside that corrupted him

and he's going to out the rats that got into his like, you know, in his like sphere. There's this guy Hayden Davis. Do I have a picture of him? I need to show you a picture of him. Did you ever see Hayden Davis the picture of this guy?

Who is this? Oh my God. So he's the guy that orchestrated this. This guy. Chief villain? This guy? This is a mastermind? This is a mastermind.

All right. He looks pretty young. Yeah. How did he do this? How did he get in with like, you know, world leaders? I lost the picture. So apparently he found a way to, he found Javier Malay's sister and was texting his sister. Well, that's scrappy.

Yes, it was, it was very scrappy. It was very scrappy. I can't get a picture to load, but you can kind of see it. Here we go. All right. He texted his sister. And this sister was the way that Hayden Davis got his. way into convincing Javier Malay to launch a meme coin. And this is what this guy does. He realizes

that he can find people with clout. He can convince them to launch a meme coin. And then he can extract the meme coin because he knows the game better than anyone, except this one last thing happened, Ryan, where this meteor, which is kind of like, maybe it's like a uniswap or balancer or like liquidity on liquidity launching pool on Solana. Ben Chow is. the name, this came downstream of Jupiter, a Meteora, which again, the liquidity pool on Solana was working with Hayden Davis to launch these meme coins, but Ben Chow was the one guy who could M-E-V Hayden Davis. So Hayden Davis was trying to snipe the supply, and he was working with Ben Chow who owns and operates the infrastructure. And Ben Chow was like, oh, I'm going to

snipe the sniper, which is what he did. Ben Chow realized, and people in the meteor community realized that this had been going on, that Meteora, Hayden Davis, and like many other people, had created this influencer meme coin infrastructure complex, like industrial complex, where they would find influencers, they would pump up meme coins, and then people earlier and earlier and earlier in the stack would snipe the supply and eat and like max extract. And this, with a launch of the Libra token, was everyone realizing that this meme coin influencer, infrastructure industrial complex existed and that's why the game was up because everyone saw how exactly corrupt it was it was not fair at all and it all collapsed down to the person who was able to

snipe the supply quickest and earliest in the stack. I can't help but wonder if like the things that are going on today will cause a backlash among the neutral kind of observer, the kind of the hearts and minds that we have been trying to get on the crypto chain, right? Which is like now you have major politicians rolling at these meme coins that seem to be a perfect surface area for vectors of corruption, right? And the good news about this whole story is all the regulatory wins are blowing our favor. And maybe we can use that to actually build things that are useful for the world, like a non-sovereign store of value and like stable coins, everything, and all of the like the good things, the pure things. But I can't help but wonder if this is like just going to be super bad for our reputation long term

and that there's going to be a backlash and some hell to pay at some point in time. This was my and I think our concern about the whole political season and the three months leading up to the election where you and I were resistant to the idea of throwing unanimous support behind one single party, the Republican Party, because we want crypto to be neutral. Yeah. We would like to hedge our bets. We don't want it to just only be partisan. I think that is that what's happening here, downstream of that is vindicative of that position. I know you and I both listen to, in respect to Sam Harris.

I have listened to Sam Harris mention the corruptibility of the Donald Trump meme coin three or four times. Yeah. And I think I'll go so far to say that the current brand of crypto right now is worse than it was post-FTX cloud. Really? You think it's that bad? They pong a certain subset, like neutral third parties? Among public non-crypto sentiment, like outsider sentiment of crypto. One way I judge this is like, how embarrassed are you to tell people that, like, you love crypto or you work in crypto or something like that at like a cocktail party among like normie people? Yeah.

And is that higher? I have for the first time in that context. I work in media. I said I run a Frontier Tech podcast. So that's where we are right now. This is previously, like, post-FDX, I was still beating my chess about, like, crypto, crypto. Like, yeah, FTCS is exactly why. Freedom tech for the world.

The FTCX is an example why we need crypto, actually, not that crypto's bad. And now for the post of all of that, I was like, no, I do frontier tech. Okay, so good news is huge regulatory progress, everything we could have wished, that is actually happening, and that counts for something. Bad news is we may have chipped away some of our soul. And I wonder if the tradeoff's worth it. Yeah. I wonder.

I think it might be still, but I don't know. I don't know. We will see. We will see. This is the frontier. You know, I'm glad you're with us. This is the journey. All right.

Just last thing, you got to catch me up on the news of the week, but I think we got a break for sponsors first, yeah? Okay. Yep, that's right. So, okay, news of the week, content coins. Jesse Pollack, base, Zora. You like Zora. So I want to actually get your take on Zora before you left

because you were a Zora Bull, and I want to get your take about what you thought about Zora because I will update you about what Zora has transformed into as of recently and then it's all about the Ethereum pivot and then we're also going to talk about Bitcoin as well. So

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$1 billion in AUM by Q1. It provides optimized exposure to Bitcoin, E, Solana, and USC, complete with built-in yield opportunities. Next, Mantle banking promises to revolutionize global value transfer through seamless blockchain-powered banking services, bridging crypto into your daily life. Finally, Mantle X blends AI with Defi to deliver an intelligent, user-friendly experience for everyone. And the best part is that this is all in addition to their already launched products like Mantle Network, ME, and FBTC. Ready to step into the future of finance, follow Mantle on X at Mantle underscore official and join the on-chain revolution today. Ryan, let me tell you about content coins. Okay. So content coins are what Jesse Pollack and

Jacob from Zora are talking about when they say, you can take a bit of content, you can take a 10 minute short, like long clip. You can take a JPEG and you can make an ERC 20 token out of it. And generally you would do this on Zora and this to you might sound like a meme coin. And I would say that it structurally is the meme coin. And Jesse's advocating for it is, it's not like different from a meme coin, but it's where it does differ is the culture and the intent around these things. And so it's where a meme coin is, you know, meant to have a super high market cap. content coins are really just meant to be traded more than have a high market cap. And they're for creators, right? They're for creators, yeah, not for not, they're not kind of the TikTok crowd or like whatever the influence. Yeah, okay.

So the idea here, this is a friend of mine who you know as well. He posts on Instagram and he has an Instagram account that has 120,000 followers and he makes clips that have like hundreds, hundreds of thousands of views. And so he tweeted out for three million views last month, Instagram paid me $3,000. In the 12 hours since Jacob and Jesse showed my Zora Post some love, I have earned 28 in rewards. Not dusting off the catalog, but it's not hard to see the vision, very cool, and feeling thankful, Zora isn't just for crypto. So the idea here, and I would also say it's very important to open up the Zora mobile app and scroll through it because it looks and feels like Instagram and TikTok. Yeah, I have.

But there is a market cap associated with a post. And the idea here is like, you know, meme coins on Pump Fun look like. 4chan and are optimizing for traders and meme coin speculators and that's great and then Zora is optimizing for creators and it's not in trying to have like a 500 million dollar banger it's much more optimizing for like quantity and creators to do like what early Instagram was doing and TikTok and just allowing people to speculate on whatever the rise of the attention the virality of the post which isn't too different from meme coins but they're trying to make a cultural distinction between content coins and meme coins.

What do you think about that? Well, so let me ask you, what's the reaction been to this? Very negative. Is that crypto Twitter? Is that all circles? Is that different? Which tribes are saying what? You know, Bitcoiners hate it all.

But I imagine a lot of people hate it because it's like, Ethereum ecosystem base, that sort of thing. And then some of the more purity-focused people are like, why is Jesse doing this? Why is Coinbase doing this? It's a meme coin. You shouldn't like pump. meme coin prices is that kind of the reaction?

Yeah, I would say that's a reaction. Yeah, Salana, Salana people are looking over at the Ethereum camp and they are saying that this is Ethereum doing what it's best at, which is taking stuff that is like Salana figured out and making it highbrow and like pretty good in an ivory tower.

These are like just highbrow meme coins. Yeah. And, you know, it's meme coins at the end of the day and the Ethereum community has been shading on meme coins for years, but now they've made their version of meme coins and their highbrow and they're holier than thou. And now meme coins are good. You're re-braining it's content coins and you're just like doing the same thing.

Yeah. So that's a lot to take. I would say like I would say more than half of the Ethereum community is not bought in on content coins. It is specifically like the Jesse or Azora base culturalists, I would say, that are convinced by content coins. Here's what I don't understand. What's wrong with the experiment? It doesn't have to be your thing. I mean, there's tons of things that haven't been my thing in crypto.

I mean, NFTs was never really my thing, but I, like, I respected that it was, you know, for some people. Like, what's, I guess, what's the, what's the, what's the downside in doing this experiment? I guess the good side from what I see, the Zora, first of all, which I know, we've known Jacob, founder of Zora from, from like, the very early days, right? I should disclose. I've also, you know, previously been in, I've been, I'm an investor in Zora and have been since the early days as well. So maybe that, that colors my bias, but I'm trying to be super unbiased. year and just say like Jacob has been trying things in this creator economy, ownership economy, vision from for the last like, I don't know, six or seven years.

He quit Coinbase to do this. And I've watched him kind of like pivot to try different things. Does this work? Does this work? Does this work? Continuing to build and pivot. And he's stayed true to the original vision, which he actually thinks every single bit of content on the internet is mintable. He sees minting as a verb. And I've watched him try different experiments

on this, right? And it takes so much time in crypto because it's taken up to now to get an actual user interface as like comparable to something like TikTok. And that's like, because he's been doing it the sort of the right way, you know, with like L2s and making sure that all of the creators have like full ownership of the actual assets, not taking shortcuts. Anyway, this is the most recent pivot of that same vision, but it's been the same experiment that he's been playing, like trying at since day one. Why not give this a shot? Like, what's the downside? I mean, if you don't want a piece of content, like don't buy any content. When I see the app, I see, oh, cool. It doesn't even feel like crypto. It feels like a mature app to me. I love that they're,

they're using L2s. They're using base. It's all quick, fast transaction times. Actually, for the eth uh heads out there they're actually pricing everything in the unit of account for of ether yeah which is great for your eth like bags if you're like an eth is money type of advocate um anyway i see a lot to like about this project and sometimes i just feel like the tribes are a little bit too uh quick to um shoot something down but again i'm just getting like up to speed i don't know like you know what's was there like a scam here was there some impropriety or in propriety here? The critique of Zora

and the content coins meta is that it has been very top-down pushed by Jesse. And Jesse, I trust Jesse. When Jesse says something, I believe him. But the critique is that like it's in addition to that Coinbase Ventures

invested in Zora, Zora deployed the Zora app on base, and they also have the Zora chain, which is like aligning you know, Jesse base and Coinbase ventures to pump Zora and content coins because that's that's the base cabal. And then Jesse says he did not know this. I heard through the apparently he said that on Twitter somewhere, but three, four or five days after Jesse really started pumping Zora.

Zora, the token is launched. And so this token got launched yesterday. And inside of that token, it was announced that this token is for fun. It is a fun token. It is a meme coin. Yeah. And it's also being given to investors pro rata, their investment into Zora, but it's for fun. And data setting people off the wrong way. And I had a good conversation with Dan from Blockworks on Twitter here. So maybe I'll just kind of run through that.

Dan says there's a very real reason to be disappointed about a for-fund token with a short investing schedule in 2025. And he says that there are United States-based development companies. that have launched tokens and have DOWs actively discussing doing distributions to tokens inside of the meta context of Donald Trump and his administration. I was pushing back and I was saying that, you know, the SEC still hasn't, you know, delivered regulatory clarity. There's no market structure bill passed. We have a new admin, but no actual new regulation has been passed.

So they could still be using that this is a meme coin as cover as regulatory cover. And he's just declining that and saying like that is not actually, the meta has shifted, development companies are issuing tokens that aren't like that. And so that doesn't really hold weight. And so people are frustrated about the launch of the meme coin downstream of, you know, Coinbase Ventures investing, Jesse doing this top-down pivot, this top-down push of content coins in Zora. And then the Zora token just happens to go live. So people are throwing flags at that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't feel like like Jesse and Coinbase are kind of like, you know, they can make money in other ways.

They've already, like, shown that they are long-term players. I think what Jesse's probably looking at the end of the day is, like, base, more content, more growth, more users, more activity, more things to do on base. I think that if I had to guess, that's where his true motivation lies. It's less about, like, the Zora token itself. I guess, like, the other piece of it, when you just look at Zora itself, it feels like sometimes in crypto, we produce too many assets, like too many tokens. right?

It probably makes sense for Zora to, if it even has a token, there's probably an argument for like, why do you have a token, right? Like, why even have a token in the first place? But if it has a token, maybe it's just a fun utility token.

Because when I look at Zora, the app itself, I'm like, this is an app that doesn't need a token. Right? The money is ETH. You don't need a utility token there. You're not staking.

It's doing everything on base. So you don't need a token to secure. There's no like work token, right? To put a token in there is, is like, pointless. I mean, so maybe all you're left with is either no token or a fun token. And then maybe the argument is like, then why do the meme coin? Why do the fun token?

But like, it's a meme coin platform. I don't know. Why can't investors be happy with owning equity in Zora? Like, they can make money off of fees and revenue. And I think, are we unhappy with equity? And I would say that that is probably where the true value accrues. If Zora takes off it is successful. It's probably just like any other startup with an app.

It's like equity in an actual like quote unquote security. But understanding that, I understand why Twitter is pushing back. Like the majority of Twitter, 85, 90% is like saying is rejecting the Zora token because they think it is just a way to just dump the token on just it was just exit liquidity. Like all the other reasons why like all the same reasons why people reject tokens in the first place. Now I put out this one tweet where somebody was, basically alluding to that fact. And, you know, like, rejecting the token,

the Zora token is worth the zero, don't buy it, blah, blah, blah. And I tweeted out, like, this frustration that I have with crypto Twitter, which is that there's this meta of, if it's not your bag, destroy it.

Yeah, and it's insufferable. And it's very, it's toxic and it's frustrating. But since putting out this tweet, I have since appreciated the idea that, Anatoly replied here saying survival of the fittest. And what I think he means by that is, yeah,

the crypto-twitre meta is so toxic and destructive of other people's bags. If the meta doesn't agree in the validity of the existence of the token, people will fud your bags. And I do think that it is this very fast rat race, the Queen's race, where like if you aren't swimming faster than everyone, you're going to get eaten. And if that is the meta that token's a moment, must find their existence in, you need to be the best token possible or else you're going to get just chewed up and spit out and people are going to reject you.

Yeah, you'll be part of the 99.9% of all tokens that are heading directionally to zero, right? Relative to the dollar, relative to Bitcoin or Ease. Yeah. And so I do think there is this like auto, like white blood cell process that's happening on Twitter where people are rejecting low quality tokens and telling token issuers to, you know, hold yourself to a higher standard with creating a token. And that's totally fine.

You know, what the normal response to that would be is just don't buy it then. All you have to do is just not buy it. What kind of is a little bit annoying is when you have builders who have proven themselves kind of long-term oriented, not pump and dumpers, like Jesse and Jacob from Zora, how all of their motives are in question, how they're like put in the same group as that guy's name, who's name Hayden. Hayden Davis. who is doing the, like all the politician meme coins, I don't think that based on their reputation, they should just be put in that camp, right?

They're clearly doing something different, much more long term. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I would also say this whole survival of the fittest is partially contributed to your burnout. Yeah.

Because that is a terrible milieu to be a part of for five years straight on Twitter. Yeah, absolutely. It's like, yeah, It's, you know, all the turtles don't, you know, turtles on a beach. They have tons of turtles and they all die. They get picked off by seagulls before they go to the ocean. Like, you're watching that carnage play out.

And it's emotionally scarring, I guess. So you just zoom out. Just zoom out is one thing I've learned. What else we got? There's two more topics to talk about the Ethereum strategic pivot, which is underfoot. In this episode, I put out with Donkrad and Ansgar with my help of Mike Apolito to discuss what changes are happening at the core of Ethereum. And my takeaway from this episode is that, you know,

the Ethereum pivot has been ongoing and happening for the last like six months. I think we could talk about this for like honestly an hour. And I also think we're going to do more episodes on this. So I don't necessarily think we need to hash it out here. But like I kind of alluded to in the beginning, I'm pretty stoked about what's happening. That's more the L1 is just like asserting some strength relative to L2s. We are reprioritizing the layer one.

You know, when you're in a plane and the oxygen mass drop down and you're supposed to put it on first. Yeah. The L1 is putting itself first. And I think that's great. Yeah, that's been interesting. The other thing that that was really been happening over the last couple of weeks as the crypto market has started to repair is it looks like Bitcoin is starting to decouple from all of the risk on assets, all of equities, all of the fangs and everything, you know, inside your stock portfolio. It's acting a bit more like gold. and that is starting to happen, which is very interesting because I think this gold trade is going to,

the non-sovereign store value trade, right? The U.S. dollar post-Bretton Woods kind of era trade is just heating up. We're seeing that in the price of gold, and Bitcoin is just catching a bid because it's got that narrative of like new digital gold. So watching that will be obviously very good for crypto and Bitcoin as a store of value. I think the Ethereum pivot and Bitcoin's elevation to a non-sovereign sort of value is like the two most interesting stories in crypto right now. Well, we're going to talk about all of those things. I imagine, David, in the weeks and months to come.

So why don't I just take us out? You guys know, crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. But we're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.