Bankless - ROLLUP: SBF Pleads Not Guilty | Winklevoss vs Barry Silbert | Predicting 2023 | ETH Staking | Inflation 2023

Starting point is 00:00:00 SBF pleads not guilty. Bold strategy. We'll see how that plays out. Bankless Nation, welcome to the first roll-up of 2023. David, you ready for this? 52 more weekly roll-ups to go in 2023. How is that intimidating, mind? Do you think we can do it? Oh, I think we can do it. I've got the stamina. I'm coming into this year fully energized. Actually, that break was really good for me and some time to reflect. And I was feeling kind of burnt out by the end of the year. But no longer, I'm ready for 2023. I'm excited about it. How are your holidays, Dave? Do you get any special Christmas gifts? Anything cool? We only do stocking suffers in my family. And I got dry bags, which I think is just great, because dry bags are what you, or bags you put stuff into when you put into your mountaineering

Starting point is 00:00:48 backpack so you can, like, go walk through snow and rain and not get your stuff wet. So, yeah, your boy is going to be having a dry sleeping bag while he climbs some mountains this year. Just dry bag in it. Dry bag. It's like a disease. It doesn't sound too great. It doesn't sound like a sexy present. Let me tell you.

Starting point is 00:01:03 No, dry bags. But awesome, man. I know you're doing some mountains this year, so that I come in handy for sure, right? I also noticed, by the way, when you're setting up for this episode, that you've got a little portrait behind you. I don't know if people can see. Okay, so maybe our editors can kind of cut this in, or Dave's going to try a zoom in on the portrait. It almost looks like a shrine. It's actually there.

Starting point is 00:01:25 Yeah. is I think a memento from 2022. That will be a long time memento to help us remember that year, which is a picture of you tearing up. During a roll-up, this was a roll-up where we were talking about how bad everything was

Starting point is 00:01:46 and all of the scammers in the space, and I think it kind of hit you. And it became a meme. Like, I saw Twitch streamers talking about this. And somebody turned into... Normally Twitch streamers, yeah. somebody turned it into an NFT in like an art piece and it's just fantastic like crying crypto bro is probably what mainstream might might tag this. No, that's exactly why it got caught traction in like the

Starting point is 00:02:07 gamer Twitch sphere. The person that painted this actually a really phenomenal like piece of artwork. I'm going to zoom in on it again is actually a hexican. That was a hex community member that I bought, I bought that thing. That's just somebody from the hex community. Right. Yes, exactly. That's what they call them. Hexicans. Yeah. It's like a really, good like watercolor and I paid them a hundred USDC and they shipped it to me. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that.

Starting point is 00:02:33 I also think that so far that is marks the bottom. That marks the bottom? That's the bottom. I think you think, okay, well, so part of the topics for this week, guys, we'll get into the topics, but one of them is our 2023 predictions. And you may have already heard a tease. David sounds like he's calling a bottom. Yeah, pretty bottom.

Starting point is 00:02:51 I've been calling the bottom, yeah. I might check you on that. We'll see. We'll see when we get to the predictions. Also, we've got SBF pleading, not guilty, I didn't do it, he says in court. We're going to talk about that. What else are we covering today? The Winklevoss have picked a fight with Barry Silbert on Twitter.

Starting point is 00:03:07 The Winklevoss, of course, are operating the Gemini Exchange, which the Gemini Earned program has money stuck inside of Genesis, which is part of Barry Silbert's Digital Currency Group empire. And that's both twins, mind you, right? Because you mess with one, you mess with the other. Exactly. Yeah, there's two of them. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Yeah. And so we're going to pick apart that fight. And also some bad news on the Celsius court proceedings. Ryan, I'm sad to say that you are not a customer of Celsius. You actually are just a investor deposit or creditor just like the rest of them. Just a sucker? Just another sucker. Yeah. Okay. Cool. That gave my private keys to Alex Mischinsky and you ran off with them. That's exactly what happened. Yes. And yes, that's exactly right. And then, of course, we have to talk about 2023 predictions hours. We're also going to rate some of our 2022 predictions

Starting point is 00:03:55 and also talk about some other very awesome predictions that we've seen throughout the space. Eric Wallet in particular, I think we're going to go through his. But first, in the market section, we got to talk about all the things going on in the liquid staking derivatives ecosystem because that's a very hot topic leading into 2023 this week. So all of these topics and more coming throughout the show.

Starting point is 00:04:14 Guys, we're going to get right into it before we do. We want to tell you about our friends and sponsors over at osmosis. David, one of my New Year's resolutions going to 2023 was to do more defy stuff. I felt like 2022 last year was all about just keeping my head above water and just talking about all the craziness that was going on. This year, I've made a concerted effort to go use more things. One of those things I've started using is osmosis on the cosmos chain. This is really cool.

Starting point is 00:04:42 If you want to explore the cosmos ecosystem, particularly defied cosmos, osmosis is the place to start. The way you do it is you spin up the... wallet. It's called the Kepler wallet. You're from the Ethereum ecosystem. It's kind of like Metamask only for Cosmos. And you go to app.oposmosis.com. There's a link in the show notes. You can deposit atoms to this chain. You can bridge across USDC and Weth small amounts to start. That's all I would advise, but it's a great opportunity to start this chain. And David, start on this chain. And David, I was surprised at how easy and how good the UX was. It'd probably been like two or three years since I went down the cosmos rabbit hole. I hadn't been here in a long

Starting point is 00:05:23 time. And the UX has just like 10x improved. On osmosis, you can not only trade, it's kind of like a uniswap type app, but you can also stake. You can also view all of your assets. So it's almost got kind of like a Xerian zapper type flavor to it too. A really cool thing to try in 2023 if you're looking to explore the frontier of crypto. Yeah. And bankless listeners who listen to our episode about why unichane is inevitable with Dan Elitzer. This is highly synonymous with that whole thesis. Osmosis is basically kind of uniswap, but as an app chain in the cosmos ecosystem. So just wanted to connect that dot there. Ryan, you said one of your New Year's resolutions is to be more of a defy power user. And I think I want to draw your

Starting point is 00:06:10 attention to the suite. If we could actually just derail this conversation. Oh, sure. It's your podcast, David. Go ahead. DRAL. I stopped being a DFI, like, super heavy power user and just having, like, latent positions that I would hold open on, like, the blue chips, like, Ave Maker. And that's because in 2022, a lot of the DFI stuff, you and I didn't really vibe with. And so the tweet that I want to call attention to, if you can pull that up,

Starting point is 00:06:34 I just send it to you in Zoom chat. Oh, yeah, yeah. This is one year ago to the day when we got into a fight with Daniel Sesta. By the way, so this is just a one-year anniversary of our first of, many fights throughout 2020 through starting with Daniel Sesta when he came in super hot in my DMs after I said, Maker is the most unsustainably valued, most sustained, unfairly valued asset this industry has ever produced. And then Daniel Sesta, who I didn't know who he was at the time. I knew what Wonderland was. I knew what like time and spell and all that stuff was.

Starting point is 00:07:03 I just didn't know Daniel Sesta's name. And so he was a defy, he was a DFI developer doing some DGent. He's like a DFI wonder kid kind of person, right? Exactly. Yeah, right. And like big populist leader with big populist tweets. And this was like the after the time token and all of these like a Danny tokens were like at their all time highs. So he follows up and says, this is why I'm not surprised you've never invited us to your defy show. Fair to protect your bags.

Starting point is 00:07:30 In quotes. Yeah. And your suit friends. I have never ever been charged with having suit friends before. So that was a first. I was like, who the hell is this guy? Yeah. Bitboy did that same thing to me.

Starting point is 00:07:41 He called me a suit. Right. So it's the same people like going for. After popular tactics, right? Yeah. I just thought this is January 4th, 2022. So it's a dark time. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:51 I'm feeling so much better than I was at that point in time. Like I was just getting sick of it. And this like where is, where is Danny Sussinnell? Right. Kind of washed out. Projects were destroyed. Turned into kind of like just a short term pump and dumper. Right.

Starting point is 00:08:06 That's what it was. And it was revealed only like, what, six weeks later? That's just the case. Six weeks later. Yeah. And then we got in a fight with Doe Quan. And about six weeks later after that, that fell down. And then we did it again.

Starting point is 00:08:19 And then we, that was the story of 2022 is us getting in fights with people and then blowing them, them blowing up a few months later. So I want to be more of a defy user. I have time for that rather than kind of chasing all this, you know, speculation and all the craziness going on, right? I have more time for that too. Another thing is I don't intend to pick any fights like right now. There's no one to fight anymore.

Starting point is 00:08:39 They're all gone. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to say it's only the good people left. I mean, like, we could go fight Richard Hart right now if we wanted to, but I don't know as much energy as that guy. He's going to stick around. Yeah, so anyway, it's a refreshing way to start the year. And speaking of which, let's talk about markets, David, right? Because we've got to get to where we're starting in the market section.

Starting point is 00:09:00 Let's talk about Bitcoin. And we should get cracking on that right now. Thanks to Cracken for showing us these prices. What is Bitcoin looking like on the week? Bitcoin started the week at 16,600. It is up about 1.2% to $16,834 where we currently are. By the way, Ryan, since we're level setting because it's 2023, we are about a little bit more than one year away from the next Bitcoin having.

Starting point is 00:09:29 Early 2024 is when the next Bitcoin having is scheduled. I feel like no one's talking about it, David. Well, the having is not priced in. It's still a year away. It's still more than a year away. But still, I mean, I remember like previous having, it's the 2020 happening. I mean, there's such fervor, like even 18 months from the happening, 18 months out from the having Bitcoin community is talking about it. But it's actually becoming less and less impactful

Starting point is 00:09:52 over time. Yeah. I mean, and that checks out, right? Because every having having has like 50% less magnitude than the happening prior. It's like an asymptote, right? But also just like Bitcoin isn't as a center point of this industry as it was four years ago. Let's look at the year for Bitcoin down on the year, huh? Big down on the year. Big down on the year. Big down on the year. 60% on the year. 40,000 all the way down. How about ETH? What's that looking like on the week?

Starting point is 00:10:19 Eth. Eth, up 3.9% on the week, going up from $1,200, up to $1,250. And seven days that is just great. Yeah. It was like on January 3rd. There's a pump. We had a, you know, 3 to 4% rise in one day.

Starting point is 00:10:33 Yeah, exactly. And people are pointing at the ETHBTC ratio for, there were just a bunch of TA about convergence on the ETHBTC ratio. That was either going to break up or break down. people were placing their bets, and it turns out it broke up. It broke to the upside, which leads us to the ETH-BTC ratio, which is up 2.8% on the week, 0.072, up to 0.074, where we are today. And so, yeah, that's the state of the markets with ether and Bitcoin and the ratio. Well, let's talk about some other metrics, and we'll do a yearly recap here. So how about the total crypto market cap? Where are we under a billion? Oh, yeah, under a billion, 850 billion on the total crypto market cap. How does this compare on a year over year?

Starting point is 00:11:16 So when we look at the performance of 2022, some numbers coming in. So the S&P 500, David, was down. So this is stocks, down about 18% last year. NASDAQ, so this is like tech stocks, remember, growth stocks, which boomed like crazy in 2020, 2021, down 33%. So stocks down bad-ish, but not compared to crypto. Let's take a look at some of those numbers. Total crypto market cap, David, down 65% for 2022.

Starting point is 00:11:49 Now that includes the stable coin market cap. So there's some bad, just bad measurement there because a bunch of that market cap went flat. And so the actual crypto asset market cap is down worse than that. I see in terms of investable assets, the pain that people feel. Right. Yeah, that's a good note. Bitcoin down 65% during 2022.

Starting point is 00:12:16 Eth, down 68% 2022. Sol, Solana tokens, down 94%. Other alt-layer ones similar. DPI, this is the DFI Pulse Index. So these are the top DeFi tokens, down 80% on the year. Which doesn't sound so bad, but I'll remind you that it was down 80% the year prior to that too. Oh, okay. Back to back.

Starting point is 00:12:40 down 80%. So predictions. This is a comeback year, right? Can't get any worse. Right. Like, that's got it. Defi has been in a bear market. They're like, hey, welcome, guys. For a year now. We've already been down in the eighth circle of hell. NFT Blue Chip. This is the top 10 NFTs. This is a metric coming from Nansen, which is interesting. Only down 15%. Is that in ETH? I think that, yeah, down 15% in ETH. So you have to take this negative. 68% in dollars and then go down 15 more percent. Yeah. I guess the way to measure your NFTs is an ETH. That's cool. It's still, yeah, that's the right. Is that how you measure it? I don't think I don't think I think that's not how mainstream measures it. It's all dollars. Like you

Starting point is 00:13:23 bought a million dollar punk. You're not going, you're down in Eith to that. Somebody will talk about this. Well, somebody bought a punk for a certain dollar price. That's about the same dollar price that it was sold. So it was a wash in dollar terms, but they were up about three X in ETH terms. Was that a victory or was that not a victory? Well, you and I know the answer. That was a huge victory. That's a huge victory because it's money and it's the money you want to hold. Stable coin market cap. So to your point, this is the total volume, value, excuse me, of all stable coins out there, down 17%. So we had some exit from stable coins. DeFi, total value locked. This is like assets under management, down 76%. Lever. Layer two, total locked value is also

Starting point is 00:14:08 down actually on the year in dollar terms down 28% yet. Yo, that's a win. Tell me, but tell me the silver lining because if you denominated in ETH, what is it? Yes. Layer 2 TVL denominated in ETH is up a hundred and eighteen percent. So that, in the grand scheme of things, that's what a bull market looks like in 2022. You are only down 28.7 percent and your ETH denominated TVL is up 120%. The L2s are currently in a bull market, despite the rest of crypto being down an average of 65%. If you are only down 28% in U.S. dollar terms, that's a win.

Starting point is 00:14:49 That's a huge win. If you're down least, you're winning in this market. L2's had a good year. So that's how we wrap, 2022. That's what went on. We'll talk a little bit more about what we can expect in 2023 later in the episode. Of course, crypto spot volume on exchanges down as well. could see the peak here. Like the peak was around May of 2021. In terms of volume on exchanges.

Starting point is 00:15:14 What is FTX? Where's FTX here? Do you see out on the right? I don't see it. Huh. They must have stripped FTX from these charts, but legitimate volume. I think they're not counting that as no longer legitimate volume. I guess so. All right, well, take us to some traditional finance metrics as well. Give us some context for the SMP market that we're in, the stock market that we're in in this decline versus others. Yeah, so we're looking at a graph on on the screen here that basically has every single negative 20% or more decline from all time high of the S&P 500. And there's a bunch on a screen. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12 different 20% declines from all time high since World War II. And so you can see 2022.

Starting point is 00:15:59 In red, it's kind of hard to see because at the very beginning, they're overlapping, but I'm highlighting it here with my arrow here. Ryan can't see that. In red, we have a, have at 2022. And I would say it's among the herd. It's definitely on the lower end of the herd, as in it has dropped faster than the herd of these many, many, many different declines. But I would say mostly par for the course slightly worse, but also, like, we're in the middle of it. It could continue. It's not over yet. It's not over necessarily. It kind of looks a little bit at this point like the way 2007 looked. Right. And so we are a declining at about the right, the same pace that 2007 was, except we are not not at that point of 2007 where it was declining

Starting point is 00:16:43 as much as we were. And then it went down like two to two and a half times more. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. There's some fear for you guys. Well, so if we get a 2023 that matches in the stock market 2007, then we're down another 30% from here, basically. Yeah, we got it. We got way more to go. And that could take another, what, you know, nine months to play out, something like this? Yeah, exactly. That's like worst case scenario, for sure. We also had this, $8.3 trillion was wiped out of the stock market in 2022. If that's a headline number for you as well. What does Michael Burry's take on inflation? I thought that was interesting as we entered this year as well. Yeah, Michael Burry is calling for the

Starting point is 00:17:27 peak of inflation. He says inflation peaked, but it is not the last peak of this cycle. We are likely to see lower CPI, possibly negative in, what's 2H? 2020? The second half. The second half of 2023. And the U.S. in recession, by any definition, the Fed will cut and government will stimulate, and we will have another inflation spike is not hard. So that's what he's saying, we've currently spiked, but it's not going to be the last spiked. But it's not going to be the last spike that we will see, but we're going to come down for it and then we'll spike again. And then he's probably saying we're going to come down from that spike and then I'll spike again thereafter. I think that's what he's calling for. This is kind of when we talk to some of the macro experts who we like

Starting point is 00:18:08 and respect, Lynn Alden, for instance, in the summer. This is kind of what she was predicting, basically, that we would be able to slay the beast, but then it would return and it would just be basically chop from inflation from here on out. We're going to just trade blows between inflation and our insurmountable debt. problem. And so we're going to be like, oh, inflation, it's too high. We need to, we need to raise interest rates. And then we'll raise interest rates. And like, oh, interest payments, they're too high. And then we'll go back and we'll just bounce back between those two things. A bright spot in the crypto markets recently, crypto asset markets have been liquid.

Starting point is 00:18:43 LSD. What is what is LSD, David? Explain what those are and show us some members here. So LSDs are liquid staking derivatives, not the compound made by Albert Hoffman in 1947. Did you know an odd amount about that? Yeah, let me tell you. Albert Hoffman, yeah, two ends on his name. Okay, so to lead the pack, we have Lido, Rocket Pool, and Swize out of the LSD sector. Lido is up 45%, which is a big deal because it's a pretty high market cap. It's currently clocking in at $1.3 billion in fully diluted valuation.

Starting point is 00:19:19 What do liquid-staking derivatives do, basically? this is like these are eth like staking service providers basically tokens yes and so the idea is that you can stake your eth with one of these systems Lido Rocket Pool Swyze there's also a few others and they will return you a staked

Starting point is 00:19:36 ETH token as a result and so that staked ETH token is ether plus the staking rewards that that ether is also getting so the rewards are built into the token so Lido has staked Eth Rocket Pool has our Eth Swize has some I don't know I can't remember the name of it

Starting point is 00:19:52 but it's got something similar. And so then what we're talking about are the tokens associated with that protocol, right? So LDO is the Lido-DOW token, which is up 45% at a fully diluted valuation of $1.3 billion. That's a big move. And these are over two-week time horizons, by the way. So 45% in two weeks. A big move for a $1.3 billion valuation project. Rocket pool up 15% to $420 million fully diluted.

Starting point is 00:20:19 And then SWIS as the smallest of the bunch, up a whopping 60,000. 61% for a $125 million valuation. Ryan, did you know that we had exposure to SWISE and the bankless fund? I do know that. Nice job, Ben. Well done, Ben. Okay, David, you mentioned the bankless fund. What is this bankless fund thing? Yeah, so we've got a super Chad analyst, Ben, G.O.V on the bankless team.

Starting point is 00:20:43 He's also highly active in the inner circle. And he also does a ton of analyst research for the bankless newsletter, which ends up turning into the bankless token report and also the token Bible. So if you want some of this research, you can go get that if you are a premium subscriber. And using some of that research, him and me and Ryan are in a little discord room in the HQ chat. And we talk about what we want to invest in based off of the research that he is doing for the token Bible and the token reports. And so if you want access to some of Ben's research and what we are thinking about when we invest in the bankless fund, you can subscribe to bankless and get some of that research.

Starting point is 00:21:22 So Swise was in there. Spice was in there. RPL was in there. I do not believe we have Lido exposure. No. Yes. And of course, all of our disclosures are posted at all times at banklesshq.com slash disclosures where you can see the composition of all things bankless, everything we hold.

Starting point is 00:21:40 All right, David, let's talk about ETH staking because that number has gone up as well. This is, we're looking at total ETH deposited, 16 million or so ETH. I know what percent that is. about 13%, maybe close to 14% of all ether supply is now staked. That's a big deal. Of course, it only goes up into the right because withdrawals are not enabled. Yeah, I can't go down. This thing has never not gone up into the right.

Starting point is 00:22:07 That thing is just an absolute rocket ship. So 16 million ether state. Wow, like not too far away from 20 million. A big event catalyst, I think this quarter is the question of, will we actually get withdrawals enabled maybe this quarter or shortly after into the next quarter and what will what will happen to this number once withdrawals are enabled i think david and i've said before we don't think it'll go down that much others are a bit more bearish on this say it'll uh decrease dramatically and that will be a net negative for ether um you know i i'm still keeping the

Starting point is 00:22:38 bull position on that i don't think this number goes down very far even post uh withdrawals when when withdrawals are enabled i still think it creeps up and we definitely finish the year higher than when we started. But what's your take on this? Oh, I think that's exactly right. I think that there will definitely be a short-term decrease because people will withdraw. There will be more churn than there is a decrease, as in people will be able to finally withdraw from Lido. And this is kind of the meta that's going on right now with the LSD derivative like meta is like, all right, like a lot of stuff is locked when there's finally churn that's enabled, like, who's going to try and capture Lido's market share? Is Lido going to even lose

Starting point is 00:23:18 market share? But, like, you know, the fish are hungry and they're trying to capture some of that churn. I think there's going to be way more chin. Yeah. This is the-shaking of the snow globe. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And so this, and because of withdrawals as a conversation, people are just saying, thinking that just like the attention is going to be on the LSD meta. And so that's why we're talking about this right now. The trade, the LSD trade has definitely shown up in the charts. You can see it. And whether. I think the staking supply will go down. I bet you in the quarter, in the three-month period, it will be net up.

Starting point is 00:23:52 So I bet you it could be down for a month, maybe it's down for two months. By around three months, I'm pretty confident that whatever withdrawal, the net withdrawals happened will have already happened and we'll be up into the right once again. So LSD doing well. So was Arbitrum. Arbitrum had a big year. This is Sy's Chad saying Arbitrum sizes side. By the way, I met size Chad in person at permission list.

Starting point is 00:24:12 He absolutely lives up to his name. This man is a beast. He's like, four of me. That is an organically discovered name. Size Chad is truly size Chad. Do you know there's a picture out there somewhere? I've never been able to find it of me,

Starting point is 00:24:26 size Chad, and Cooper Turley all like standing next to each other and I'm in the middle. I have not seen that. No, it basically, it looks like I'm like Frodo and there's like Aragorn and like, you know, Boromere or something. Like I look like a child. I'm child-sized compared to these people.

Starting point is 00:24:41 Anyway, what's, What's the size Chad of Arbitrum? What's this graph we're looking at? So on the left, we have the deposits of ETH into Arbitrum 1, which is totaling a little bit over 800,000. And on the right, we have deposits in ETH to literally every single other layer two, which is coming up to 700,000 ether. Now, this isn't TVL.

Starting point is 00:25:06 This is ETH. This is ETH. This is ETH, bridged Eith. Which is, in my mind, the best kind of TVL, but you're right, not all TVL. And so Arbitrum is literally the size chad of layer twos. So congrats to the Arbitrum ecosystem. And one thing I've definitely noticed on Twitter is that the Arbitrum community has started to delineate into subcommunities. And so you're seeing that same sort of thing that we saw on Ethereum over 2020 to 2022 of Ethereum developing into its own subcommittees. You're seeing that in Arbitrum as well. So the Arbitrum like ecosystem is really strong.

Starting point is 00:25:41 Yeah. We'll see. This is another. Snow Globe, where this is just getting started. This competition for L2s is just getting started. And so I'll love to see this number at the end of 2023. David, what do we got coming up next? SBF pleads not guilty. Bold strategy. We'll see how that plays out. The wink of I of twins pick a fight with Barry Silbert of DCG and Genesis on Twitter. And again, like I said, a not so great update from the Celsius court proceedings. So that's all the big news of the week. And so we'll get to all these conversations and more, but first a moment to talk to Cracken, who is our strategic sponsor of 2023, because Cracken knows that if you're going to adopt crypto protocols, you're going to

Starting point is 00:26:20 adopt crypto values. And that philosophy has been why Cracken has stuck around for over 12 years now. And so we're going to hear from them right now. Cracken has been a leader in the crypto industry for the last 12 years. Dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto, Cracken puts an emphasis on security, transparency, and client support, which is why over 9 million clients have come to love Cracken's products. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the Cracken U.S. is simple, intuitive, and frictionless, making the Cracken app a great place for all to get involved and learn about crypto. For those with experience, the redesigned Cracken Pro app and web experience is completely customizable to your trading needs, integrating key trading features into one seamless interface.

Starting point is 00:27:00 Cracken has a 24-7-365 client support team that is globally recognized. Cracken support is available wherever, whenever you need them by phone, chat, or email. And for all of NFTers out there? The brand new Cracken NFT beta platform gives you the best NFT trading experience possible. Rarity rankings, no gas fees, and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash. Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that Cracken does? And if not, sign up with Cracken at crackin.com slash bankless. Hey, Bankless Nation, if you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free bankless RSS fee. Did you know that there's an ad-free version of Bankless that comes

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Starting point is 00:28:41 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey West. I'll see you in the Discord. David, I hope we left SBF in 2022, but he's back this time he's saying he's not guilty, but before that he also said, it wasn't me. What is he talking about here? This tweet, none of these are me. I'm not and couldn't be moving any of these funds. I don't have access to them anymore. What funds is he talking about? People think he moved some money? Yes, so on crypto Twitter, this conversation happened as soon as this one wallet, which was known to be SBF's wallet, started moving hundreds of thousands of dollars from one wallet A to wallet B. And then SBF retweeted a coin telegraph article talking about this saying, none of these are me.

Starting point is 00:29:24 I couldn't be doing this because I don't have access to them anymore. And then crypto Twitter replies, like, this is an address that you stated was yours. Like SBF frequently, like previously identified this address that money is coming out to as my address, as SBF's address. It's been noted by other people that it is SBF's address. And now SBF is saying, it's not me. And I don't know, maybe it's not him, but can you really trust him anymore? Like, damn. That was my comment. I was just basically, yeah, but what if you're lying? Like, I mean, come on. Which at this point, there's no defense for that. I have no idea. But remember, last we left him, before, at least I broke for the holidays, he was out on bail. So he's still out, you know, maybe on a house arrest. I don't know if that's the case anymore. But clearly he has access to Twitter now. So not in jail any longer. We'll see if that changes this year. And I think this meme really just summarizes everything. It's the they don't know meme, of course. But this time it has the curly hair of SBF as the guy in the corner. And the curly hair SBF guy in the corner says, they don't know. It's not me moving the funds. And then the people dancing are like, you docks the address, you dumb MF.

Starting point is 00:30:37 So, Yeah. He's also pleading not guilty to criminal charges. So he's had his day in court so far and when the judge asked

Starting point is 00:30:49 what do you plead? Sam Bangman-Fried, he said, not guilty, I'm innocent of all the charges. Why do you think so? I know there's been some conspiracy about this

Starting point is 00:30:58 that again, this idea that maybe he has some get-out-of-jail-free card, he has some politician, maybe the W-EF's involved. Somebody's in, involved like the global elites to get him off the hook. What do you think about this? Yeah. So there, I think there's the very simple take. And I think then there's the more nuanced,

Starting point is 00:31:17 let's read into this take. And I'll let you take that conversation. The first one is that the plea deal that he got was so bad that he was like, it wasn't a good plea deal at all. So he's like, damn it, I'll just fight this. Right. Because he is so incredibly guilty that they basically gave him zero compromises on his plea deal. And so he decided that I'll, because the plea deal is so bad, I'll just, I'll just fight it because it's a lose, lose scenario. I think that is a pretty simple explanation. But I know that there's another explanation that you've got that you want to talk about.

Starting point is 00:31:51 Well, this is an interesting opinion piece that I read in Coin Desk. But basically the idea that maybe Sam Bankman-Fried actually is so diluted that he thinks he's innocent. he thinks that he is the victim. You know, it's often said that nobody ever sees themselves as the villain. And I think that's the case with Sam Bank been freed. I mean, he might legitimately think that he is innocent of at least some of these charges. I don't know what kind of moral framework he operates under. It's been incredibly confusing for me to see over the last six months to, you know, or longer.

Starting point is 00:32:29 But he may be really diluted enough to think that he's going to, got a chance to fight this. And that would be consistent with all of his interviews and the press to where he was going on before he actually got put in jail. Still, though, David, I would have thought some nights in prison in the Bahamas would have woken him up to the reality that, like, he's in deep and he's not going to get out of this with an interview and an awshucks and saying, I'm sorry, 10 more times, that these are serious charges laid against him. And he doesn't really have a way out. there's mounting evidence. I mean, his two partners in this, Caroline and who's the other, but they've effectively, you know, ratted him out. They are effectively, you know,

Starting point is 00:33:14 telling everything and divulging everything. And I would imagine behind closed doors blaming him. So I don't know if he gets out of this, but he might just be deluded enough to think he can try. Yeah, I mean, I'm always happy to try and put on armchair psychologist, David. But like some sort of Prince syndrome might be in effect here by his like Harvard highly educated elite parents, treating him like a prince and telling him. And this is a quote from the article. Sam Bainte's free self-image, in other words, is both of a gifted and good person. We are watching that clash with the reality of his behavior, that of a conniving, stimulant addicted screw up. And they also talk about the disposition of his parents. We saw signs during the hearings in the Bahamas that

Starting point is 00:33:55 his parents are struggling in similar ways to reconcile their idea of their son. with the reality of his actions. Barbara freed, Sam's mother, was seen laughing at descriptions of her son as a criminal. Wow. Yeah. That is delusional. I don't know what to make of that. Again, we'll have to see how this turns out.

Starting point is 00:34:14 But what's the probability that Sam goes to jail this year? Do you think that's a slam-back going to happen? I would bet my, I think it would be rational to bet my net worth. Yeah. Your net worth? Yeah. It would not be rational because there's no upside, David. You don't have to do that.

Starting point is 00:34:30 What do you mean this outside? Well, I bet it like double or nothing? If I'm right, yeah, it's a double or nothing. Yeah, if I'm right, my net worth doubles. Oh, no, I wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do that? I definitely wouldn't do that. I think that's a rational bet.

Starting point is 00:34:42 I think so. Well, I would say I'm 90% certain is how I'd phrase it. Okay, so will you put 90%? No, I'm not going to put any money. This is like betting on Ripple or doing something like this. I don't do that. Either down or up, I don't bet against it. Who knows what could happen?

Starting point is 00:34:59 The world is a very strange place. Let's talk about the Winklevoss's versus Barry Silbert, talking about a strange place that we're in. They put out an open letter on Twitter this week. What does this say from Cameron Winklevoss? Yeah, it's basically a damnation of Barry Silbert and Digital Currency Group and how it is up to Barry to make things right again, that Barry has the power to make things right again,

Starting point is 00:35:24 and he's not doing that. And so I'll read one specific paragraph. the idea in your head that you can quietly hide in your ivory tower and that this was all just will just magically go away or that this is someone else's problem is pure fantasy. To be clear, this mess is entirely of your own making. This is Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to Barry Silvert. Digital currency group of which you are the founder and CEO owes Genesis $1.67 billion. That is the money that Genesis owns to Gemini earned customers and other creditors.

Starting point is 00:35:54 You took this money, the money of school teachers, to fuel Grudy. yeah, right, to fuel greedy, greedy share buybacks, illiquid venture investments in kamikaze gray scale net asset value trades that balloon the feed generating a UM of your trust, all at the expense of creditors and all for your own personal gain. It's now time for you to take the responsibility and to do the right thing. Wow, pretty damning. And that actually kind of paints a picture that is pretty similar to what was going on with FTX, right? Like taking in customer deposits, doing a liquid venture capital bets and like share buybacks and all. That's kind of what SBF did, perhaps in a much more above board fashion.

Starting point is 00:36:35 But this is what the Gemini twins are charging Barry Silbert with. Barry Silbert, who's been very quiet on Twitter lately, woke up from his hibernation, if you will, and responded and said, DCG did not borrow $1.67 billion from Genesis. DCG has never missed an interest payment to Genesis and is current on. all of its loans outstanding. DCG delivered to Genesis and your advisors at proposal on December 9th and has not received any response. And then Cameron Winklevoss responds on Twitter, there you go again.

Starting point is 00:37:05 Stop trying to pretend that you and DCG are innocent bystanders and have nothing to do with creating this mess. It's completely disingenuous. And basically the fight. That's basically the fight. Sparring back and forth, right? And this is Cameron Winklevoss really turning up the heat on Barry and making this public and disparaging him quite openly.

Starting point is 00:37:24 So I don't know what this is. Negotiation tactic. They're obviously talking behind closed doors as well. At least their legal arms are. But this still doesn't look like it's close to getting resolved. And I do feel for everyone who has money and earn accounts, right? It's, you know, I don't know that we're any closer to seeing those deposits, you know, freed up with this ongoing dispute. It's crazy to me that all this takes place publicly, too, over Twitter.

Starting point is 00:37:52 Like, what a weird time we're looking. living in. At least we get to talk about it. In the last update on the DCG Genesis case that we have actually happened right before we started recording, so we are still waiting for further details, but a tweet out that seems to be corroborated and accepted. Update DCG slash Genesis is under active investigation by the SEC. Sources confirmed that there are multiple whistleblowers that have come forward. So this is just breaking as we are recording this.

Starting point is 00:38:17 We're probably going to hear about this in further detail, perhaps Friday and throughout all of next week. And I guess we'll have to recover that on the next weekly roll up. This is still some mess carryover from last year spilling into 2023. So hopefully this gets taken care of soon. David, there's some bad news, though, for Celsius deposits. Why don't you break it to us? Yes.

Starting point is 00:38:37 So in the Celsius bankruptcy court proceedings, it has been ruled that if you are a customer who deposited money into Celsius, that is not your money. And it belongs to Celsius at the moment of deposit. And so you are a creditor, not a customer. And so that you have to, as a former customer of Celsius, line up in bankruptcy court just like everyone else. And you're last in line behind other creditors as well, unfortunately, right? Yeah, exactly. So this is another stark reminder that not your keys, not your crypto.

Starting point is 00:39:12 If you have to read the fine print in order to understand if you are an owner of your own deposits or not, you should probably consider yourself not the owner of your deposits. This is from Martin Glenn, who is the bankruptcy judge here. He said, as explained below, the court concludes based on Celsius' unambiguous terms of service, did you read those? And subject to any reserve defenses that when cryptocurrency assets were deposited in earn accounts, the cryptocurrency assets became Celsius' property. Oof.

Starting point is 00:39:45 David, once people hit that deposit button, it was no longer their money. According to the terms of service. Yes, according to the terms of service, they gave it to Alex. They entrusted Alex Mishinsky with it. And of course, he was off gambling with it in all sorts of ways. So how brutal is that? And remember, of course, Alex is warning to us all on his t-shirts. If we could put that image up, Luke on the screen, Banks are not your friend.

Starting point is 00:40:13 Thank you, Alex, for letting us know. What a reminder. Pretty brutal. So my cell used to pause never coming back, huh? Sorry, brother. Sorry about that. Well, what is the Attorney General of New York doing about it? Yeah, this also came out just a few hours ago.

Starting point is 00:40:29 So New York Attorney General tweets out, I'm suing the former CEO of Cryptocurrency Platform Celsius Network for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars. Alex Mishinsky lied to people about the risk of investing in Celsius, hit it from deteriorating financial condition, and failed to register in New York. So the NIAG going after Alex Mishinsky, which I definitely think is like probably right.

Starting point is 00:40:53 Please prosecute the villains. Yeah. Please prosecute him. I'm worried about overreach and overflow into the crypto world. So it's like, hey, let's regulate crypto as a result of this. Like just nice, let's place it on the table. We should regulate and criminalize fraudsters who do bad things. And if they happen to use crypto to do that, that is an adjacent fact.

Starting point is 00:41:16 It's not crypto that is about this. I would like to place that on the table. Yeah, look, I agree. I'm glad that Attorney General James is taking this action. It's fantastic, but I do get worried when the last line of her tweet is, we will continue to protect people from the risks of investing in cryptocurrency. Brian, the risks of investing in cryptocurrency are why I'm here. Yes, and you also can't protect people from them without, like,

Starting point is 00:41:43 how do you do that? Yeah. So I'm just worried about that last line. line. What it should say, ideally, is continue to protect people from the risks of centralized banks. Banks. Banks. Providing cryptocurrency services. Trust. That's where we need protection. Yes. In that area where we don't have public information, that area where we give up our private keys, we need protection there. If there's small print, we need protection. If there's a terms of service, we need some help. All right. That's exactly right.

Starting point is 00:42:18 So what do we got coming up next, David? I think we're getting into prediction zone, huh? Yeah, this is going to be super fun. We're going to talk about our predictions for 2023. We're going to talk about other people's predictions for 2020. And, of course, the rest of the news as well. A Bitcoin Coredev has all of their Bitcoin stolen in a self-custodial fumble. I love to talk about that as well as the rest of the news,

Starting point is 00:42:39 some Cuba news, some NFT news, as zombie punk got stolen and a bunch of other cool stuff. So all of this and more, right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors to help you go bankless. Arbitrum 1 is pioneering the world of secure Ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the Web 3 landscape. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum 1, producing flourishing defy and NFT ecosystems. With a recent addition of Arbitrum Nova, gaming and social daps like Reddit are also now calling Arbitrum home. Both Arbitrum 1 and Nova leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar, and fully EVM compatible. On Arbitrum, both builders and users will experience faster transaction speeds with significantly lower gas fees. With Arbitrum's recent migration to Arbitrum Nitro, it's also now 10 times faster than before.

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Starting point is 00:44:07 But that's just Defi. Uniswap is also an NFT aggregator, letting you find more listings for the best prices across the NFT world. With Uniswap, you can sweep floors on multiple NFTs, and Uniswop's universal router will optimize your gas fees for you. Uniswap is making it as easy as possible to go from bank account to bankless assets across Ethereum, and we couldn't be more thankful for having them as a sponsor. So go to app.uniswap.org today to buy, sell, or swap tokens, and NFTs. Predictions for 2023. We'll get to ours, but first let's start with Eric Wall.

Starting point is 00:44:44 David, let's read these one by one. You got the first one from Eric Wall. He's got a bunch of them here. Number one, Binance and Tether survives. I agree. That's they've already survived all these years. They're going to survive again. What's number two? Also agree. I agree with that. Number two is Sam Bankman-Fried goes to prison for 10 plus years. Yes, we already said. I agree with that. That's going to happen this year. Yeah. David's really, he's really going for that one. What's number three? I am now susceptible to a huge flight risk from Sam Bankman-Fried. Number three, Bitcoin's 15.

Starting point is 00:45:15 $4,000 was the bottom. Agree. You agree? Wow. You guys call on a bottom? Yes. Come on, Ryan. I'm not going to agree with that. Oh, you. What, you dirty. All right. Ryan, Ryan's out for that one. Number four. I'm not going to bet my net worth, David. Numbers four, Noster interest fizzles out. Elon resigns. What's Noster? I don't know what Noster. I don't know. Okay, skip that one. Elon resigns, though? Do you think that will happen? Resigns from what? Twitter? I guess so. Yeah. He was unclear. So he's got three shots at it, I don't know what's going on.

Starting point is 00:45:47 I mean, companies in Elon. Okay, Ethereum enables withdrawals. That's a big yes. That's happening. Big yes. You're right, Eric. Go six. You should like the ones that you agree with.

Starting point is 00:45:57 Number six, the most interesting thing in crypto continues to be AI, LLM's, GPT, and stable diffusion. So Eric's saying that crypto is going to be super boring and we're all going to be talking about AI stuff throughout 2023. Nope. Down vote. I don't know, actually, man. AI is pretty interesting. going to be talking about a crypto. It's not going to be the most interesting thing in crypto. Come on. That would be a super

Starting point is 00:46:20 boring year. I'm not a slam dunk no on that one. Or yes on that one. Okay, moving on. I will bet my network. Solana $8 was the bottom. Agree. I disagree. I don't think so. I don't agree so much as ether of Bitcoin on that one. But yes, I do agree. Eth. ETH BTC touches 0.09. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I definitely agree. By the way, the flippity is at 0.16. 0.072. 0.09, I think, would be a high. It's a good call. It would be a high.

Starting point is 00:46:56 It's a good call. I'm going with a yes on that. Mount Gawks coins are finally redistributed. I have no idea, honestly. I have an opinion on that one. How about this one? NFT slump stops returns one billion monthly? Yes, so he is calling the bottom on NFT volume.

Starting point is 00:47:12 I don't have a strong opinion on that. one. I'm neither going to high. I don't have a strong opinion on that one. It's going to be a good year for NFTs, but not a crazy year in my opinion. Bitcoin pumps above $30,000. I think odds are that volatility will take it above $30,000 and then it could return to below $20,000 in the same year. And so I agree with that one. That's the thing is I don't think we've hit lows yet, but I also think we'll be over 30K at some point. At some point, yeah, 12 months is a long time. Ethereum, 80% OFAT compliance was the top. Agree.

Starting point is 00:47:46 Big agree. OFat compliant blocks are down only from here on out. The SEC brings a case against hex, drops below a cent? What do you think? At least one of those two things will happen, yes. Okay. I'll go with one of those two things. Do you know where the price of hex is right now, Ryan?

Starting point is 00:48:02 I bet you don't even know. It's not a thing that's burnt in my memory at all. It was like 1.7 cents last I checked. Oh. It's at one. point nine cents right now. 1.9 cents. I mean, so he wants a 50% drop in Hex.

Starting point is 00:48:17 There could be, SEC brings a case and heck, hex explodes to $10. Who knows? Trump NFT 4 revisits all time high. This is not something I have an opinion on David. I don't have an opinion on that one. Celestia launches above one billion fully diluted valuation. If Celestia does launch, it will certainly be

Starting point is 00:48:35 above a $1 billion fully diluted valuation. How about this one? 16. Taproot adoption doubles. hits 3%. Okay, I'm not sure if this is a real prediction. This is actually Eric Walders being mean about Taproot and Bitcoins. He's just saying that Taproop adoption doubles and that means it's going to hit 3%. He's just being mean in that one. No new Bitcoin soft fork. Agree. Yeah, that's probably a pretty easy one. Look at this one's hard though. 18. Cardano finally drops out of the top 10. I'm not sure I could say that. It's at number nine right now, Ryan. And with

Starting point is 00:49:11 It's got Polygon on its heels at number 10. But the next biggest thing that I believe in that follows after that is Lido. And that's at number 12. And so the Lido market cap right now is $6 billion. I think this is hard to define because, of course, it's going to fall out of the top 10 at least once next year. Easy, slam dunk. But does he mean for a sustained period of time? You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:49:38 Or fall permanently out? I think he's implying it stays out of the top 10. That's what I think he's implying. Yeah. I'm not, I don't think that's going to happen. There's not strong contenders. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:49:49 Cardano's got $9 billion for, valuation. Somebody'd have to replace Cardano right now. And who has, it's like right now, a lot of these top 10 are trading on mean power. Who has the mean power to replace it?

Starting point is 00:50:00 Yeah, we would need another stable coin to make its way to the top 10. That could happen. A stable coin, die could pump, could knock Cardano out. Anyways, let's move on.

Starting point is 00:50:10 Die? That'd be big. Risk zero changes the game for ZK roll-ups, Enable Smart. I don't know what that. Risk Zero. It's an EVM parallelization, I think, startup.

Starting point is 00:50:21 Ashley Schap was explaining it to me in ECC. This must be something Eric invested in. Yeah. Sorry, Eric. Maybe not. Ethereum layer 2 TVL reaches above $10 billion. I want to say yes to that. Definitely yes.

Starting point is 00:50:36 I want to say yes to that. No, I'm a hell yes. We have a long way to go. seven right now. No, it's, we're at four. We're at four right now. Four. Okay. Well, we've been near before. We've been close to seven. That's why I remember that number four. I think it can hit 10 billion. Yeah. Lightning network public channel capacity stays below 10K. So he's bearish on lightning. Yes, he's always been, uh, yes. Oh, wow. Coming into 22, Larry and Frank leave the block and start their own competitor. Wow, that is a hot, hot prediction. At this point, this has to just be

Starting point is 00:51:06 meme predictions. Huh. I mean, I think they could. I think they could. They seem to really care about their jobs and care about the block, but there was that drama at the end of the year. This turns out to be decent called both Lido and coin will 10x at least. Yeah, so that's his, and he agrees with, this is also DGent Spartans bags, is Lido and Coinbase. What's this number 24, David? I think we are. Man, we're really getting into the bottom of the bail predictions from America. Kobe tweets, comments, JFC, more than eight times with 1,000 likes each, probably. Suzu and Kyle Davis, Davies miraculously become influential Bitcoin Maximus. I could totally see this.

Starting point is 00:51:50 Honestly, yeah. Vitalik graduates from crypto after Ethereum's migration to proof of sake. Vitalik will feel like he owes both it to Ethereum and himself to step back slightly, probably by taking up a few non-cryptor responsibilities like AI or charity. You know, I don't know if it's 2023 that Vitalik does something like this, but I can totally see like, yeah, I can totally see this. Yeah, not quite yet in my opinion. But I think this last part is taking up a few non-cryptor responsibilities. I could totally see that. But graduating from crypto is too strong. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so. Re-hypification of Eithsteak becomes cool. It's called restaking and liquid staking. We'll see a lot more of this. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. That will happen. No regrets doesn't get any. any new tattoos. Yes, he does not get any new tattoos.

Starting point is 00:52:37 Or at least he doesn't tweet about it. 29, Doe Kwan is caught. I don't know. He's in Serbia. He's like in the place that you can't catch him in. You can catch anybody anywhere, don't you think? Is he tweeting? Who's coming after him?

Starting point is 00:52:51 I don't know if anyone's coming after him. So you think, no, he's not going to get caught. I'm saying I'm not betting. Red notice, man. Oh, that's right. All I'm saying is I'm not betting my net worth on it. All right. Last one.

Starting point is 00:53:02 A bit late, but Luke Dash Jr., loses his Bitcoin. Yeah. This is how you talk about that later. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, what are the bankless predictions, David?

Starting point is 00:53:11 I think we're maybe less spicy with some of those. But first, before we get to the 2022 predictions, we should get to our 20, our 20, our 2023 predictions. We should get to last year's predictions and give a report card here. How do we do in our layup predictions for last year? So, Ryan, you and I, this time last year, were bullish and it was also the top. Okay. Sounds like your job.

Starting point is 00:53:34 restifying something. I'm just saying we were bullish when we, when it was the top. And so all of our bullish predictions are, so crypto crosses new all-time highs. That did not happen. These are our lay-up predictions. And so these were the ones that we all kind of felt were true as a company. We all kind of came together. It's like, all-or-the-easy ones. We didn't do so great. Crypto crosses new all-time highs. Did not get that one. ETH2 merge happens. That totally happened. total crypto market cap reaches $5 trillion. We only hit $3 trillion, so we did not get that one. Bitcoin gets adopted by another nation state.

Starting point is 00:54:11 We got that one, but I will say just barely. C.A.R. What's C.A.R? This is a country in Africa. So this is Central African Republic. Okay. Adopted it in June. It did happen. Ethereum becomes a trillion dollar network.

Starting point is 00:54:27 We didn't get there. We only got to about 0.56. Half a trilly. Half a trilly. Yeah, layer two reaches $25 billion in total locked value. We only got to seven. Oof. NFT sales hit $30 billion, which totally happened. It hit $30 billion by April.

Starting point is 00:54:45 One DFI protocol will reach the top 10 in market cap. We are almost there, but it did not happen. Wait, with what? Lido. Lido. Oh, okay. Fair, fair. That did almost happen.

Starting point is 00:54:57 Yeah. And Dows will make an eight-figure. purchase for an in real life item. I don't really think that happened. No, it didn't happen. But we're giving ourselves, again, we're creating this report card, David, so we can be nice to ourselves. So we're giving ourselves partial credit for this because Ukraine Dow, legitimately, but obviously

Starting point is 00:55:17 tons of military gear. And it was almost eight figures. It was something like $8 million, right? But the item that was bought was an NFT of a... Yeah, partial credit. All right. Partial credit. Wow, we're really being leaning here.

Starting point is 00:55:29 Yeah. And then the last one, of course, Michael Saylor buys more Bitcoin. That was just a free space. He totally did. That was very easy. My predictions, I did worse than that. This is, okay, now we're getting into Ryan's specific prediction. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:42 So here's Ryan's predictions. Also, I said crypto would be above $7 trillion and it only reached $3 trillion, so I was overly bullish. I said ETH would get to $10K. And by the way, that's what all of this was based on. That was the bull market, yeah. Yeah. And so look, I mean, the basis was I thought we would do another 10x from last all-time high. which was in the thousand zone.

Starting point is 00:56:02 We didn't. We only hit 4.5K. Doesn't mean 10x isn't happening. It means it didn't happen in 2022. It's still happening. And probably won't in 2023. Layer 2s enter the top 10. I think that's a yes if you count Polygon,

Starting point is 00:56:16 which I do. Bridges to billions. So across and hop issue tokens, bridges, I was more bullish on bridges going into 2022. Cross layer two bridges specifically. Yeah, exactly. Bitcoin to a, 100K. It only hit 63K. This should actually be an X. I don't know what that's a check. Web3 gets

Starting point is 00:56:35 social. We had some launches, farcaster lens, D-So. It's still too early for Web3 to really succeed on social. We're punting on that one. David, I said defy would return. It definitely did not return. And yet, David, it did serve us when C-Fi failed. And that's a big plus. I thought there'd be some crypto banks that would IPO. Nope. We almost got that one with Circle. And then the SEC said no. So there you go. Blocked by the SEC. Dow's get weirder.

Starting point is 00:57:05 I'll count Ukraine as kind of a weird Dow that, you know, fighting a war raised like for a Dow that's kind of interesting. NFTs add extensions that what I meant is that they would expand into other media properties. Board of Yacht Club definitely did that.

Starting point is 00:57:19 I thought GameFi would build a niche. It didn't. Way too early. Overall, my grade is a C-minus. And I think this is because I expected the bull cycle to have about 50% more upside than it did. But by April, the Fed was tightening. And then after April, just everything unwound as the tide was coming out. And apparently no one had shorts on in

Starting point is 00:57:42 crypto. So you didn't expect everyone to be completely immature and irresponsible. Well, I didn't. And I think like some of these predictions just don't take into account macro, right? Because we kind of ignore it because like who knows what's going to happen with macro. So that's what messed me up. This year I'm being more cautious, David. Sure. I think we're going to, I think there's going to be a lot of ups and downs in crypto, but we're going to finish above $2 trillion. That is more than a two-x, brother. Yep, I think that's ahead. But there'll be ups and downs. Heath withdrawals will be enabled. That's probably an easy one. But I also in hopeful for proto-dank starting in 2023. Now, that's going to be hard to hit. If it happens, it'll be down to the wire. I think ETH will spike down to three digits. Sorry, David. If it does, that will give us

Starting point is 00:58:29 one last final generational buying opportunity, because I don't think we're going back to three digits again. It's not happening. I can't tell you for sure if that's going to happen, but I think it is. And I'll air on that side. Um, Ethereum outperforms Bitcoin, but we don't get a flipping next year. A crypto law almost gets through Congress. It won't be the end of the world. It'll just be something watered down. I am super bullish on layer two still, David. This is probably the biggest call, um, the biggest reach here. I think layer two's reached 25 billion. Eric Wall called for $10 billion. I'm saying $25 billion in TVL.

Starting point is 00:59:04 Whoa, bro. That's bullish. I just carried over. I copied and pasted from last year, right? It's going to happen. And if it doesn't happen next year, I'll just copy and paste. It's going to happen in 2024. Defi rebuilds back to TVL of $125 billion.

Starting point is 00:59:19 We'd have a ways to go there. I think that's like a 5x or 4 or 5X or something like that. So those are some of my predictions. What do you got? Do your report card first. All right. All right, here's my report card. I led with the bear market never comes.

Starting point is 00:59:33 I don't think there's a phrase I could have phrased that by and not been more wrong. David. So that was wrong. So you were a supercyclor last day this time. I mean, dude, we had just broken off into all-time highs. We had just hit all-time highs, and the momentum was continuing. Like, I had the east to 10K mine slight, just like everyone else. I was dishing out that Kool-Aid.

Starting point is 00:59:55 But you said it this way, which is different. The bear market never comes. Bear market definitely comes. My next comment was Crypto Nubes care less about centralization worries and I'm claiming victory on that one because what did we learn?

Starting point is 01:00:09 Celsius, FTCS, FTCS, like exchanges, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm also betting on the complete opposite for 2023. So I'm going to take the victory on that one. The merch happens. I got that one right. ETH competitors try to fix

Starting point is 01:00:23 their monetary supply schedules. I have not seen any lick of that whatsoever. all of these... It's still not. It's still not. Yeah. I'm claiming all of these ETH competitors still have currently their heads buried in the sand about the oversupply of block space and therefore over supply of token issuance schedules. Solid fee markets arise on an ETH competing chain that did happen for a moment on Avalanche and then it went back to zero. My next prediction was optimism and arbitrum develop

Starting point is 01:00:49 into thriving metropolises. And I think that happened definitely. Big time. And I also thought that EVM equivalence will push optimism into dominance. Didn't happen in 2022, but I'm still holding out for this one. I think EVM equivalence is the long game, and optimism has been pioneering that. NFT flipping, you loses steam. Definitely did. Yeah, definitely did. Retail ran out of money, so it became less profitable for everyone.

Starting point is 01:01:16 I made a claim that Rye receives adoption tailwinds. This was during inflation, big inflation moments. And so I said, as a result of inflation, Rye will receive adoption tailwinds. I will say that Rye certainly received mind chair adoption, but that did not translate into your adoption. No, not at all. It's unfortunate because it's a really cool project. Yeah. Bored Apes Flips Punks, I predicted that. And I also linked to a video because why did board apes flip flip punks? Because security like properties. Did I just trigger a bunch of board apes? Then go watch the video that's linked in the release that we're talking about right now.

Starting point is 01:01:54 Web 3 will become adopted as a household name. That kind of happens, but not really in the way that I wanted it to. Yeah. It's definitely a household name. And then the last three predictions I made, the bankless meme picks up speed. That happened because of FTX. So thanks for that. Politicians rise to defend Web 3 protocols.

Starting point is 01:02:15 Tom Emmer and Pat Toomey, shout out to you guys for helping me be right on that one. And then bankless keeps delivering. This was when I was in control over. And so that's a free space. Yeah, that's a good one. And we got a lot of things coming out more. So I was given a grade by our newsletter editor, a B. That's good, David.

Starting point is 01:02:34 Some good predictions there. So what do you have in mind for this year? What's your 2023 predictions? My first and foremost prediction centers around Ethereum scaling factor. And this is this metric that is being pioneered by Layer 2 beat. Ethereum's current scaling factor is 2.4, as in all of layer 2s are doing 2.4 times the amount of transactions of the Ethereum layer 1. I think we are going to see that number increased to 5. So there will be five times the number of transactions on Ethereum layer 2 as the Ethereum layer 1. I think that's safe. I definitely think

Starting point is 01:03:06 that's happening. At least one generalized ZKEVM will open up its playground for users. So this is ZK Sync, this is scroll. But I do think this dark net ecosystem, system will maintain its lead ahead of the rest of the ZKEVMs. Collectible NFT communities will increasingly look like Bellagie's network stake thesis and the only ones that are going to make it through the spare market will survive by injecting utility into their assets. That's my hot take there. Ethereum DFI blue chips will outperform alt layer one tokens and layer two tokens, by the way,

Starting point is 01:03:38 for that matter, because Ethereum DFI has already been in a bare market one year ahead of everyone else. Wow, that's maybe your boldest prediction yet because we're, had two back-to-back, 80% down years. Well, maybe we have an 80% down year in blue chips, and Defi actually has an up year in that. Dows still will not have their shit together, figured out, probably. Most Dows will continue to operate at a loss in a, this is fine while the room is burning

Starting point is 01:04:04 manner. One or a few Dows will attempt to focus on their P&L, and that will eventually come to be reflected in their token price, whether that happens by the end of 2023, hard to say. I always like to say, Ryan, on bank list, there's always, always a bull market somewhere, and I think this one will be signed in with Ethereum. This will be a current reoccurring topic throughout 2023 as we see more websites with signing with Ethereum powers. How do we measure that, though? There's not really like a token. You just think a number of instances of logins with private keys. Logins, instances with private keys. And then the last three here,

Starting point is 01:04:36 Bitcoin Maxis will continue to become more and more insane and disconnected from reality. Corey Clipson specifically will spearhead this effort. Nice job. dual encroachment from the CFTC and the SECC will push crypto into its only safe place, the intangible land of decentralization, aka they're coming for us, and the only way out is through decentralization. And then lastly, Richard Hart will still be here. He'll find a new scam to promote after Pulse Chainware is off. And also, Ryan, did you know that his last name was Shuler?

Starting point is 01:05:09 I have no idea. That is Richard Hart's real last name. I had you find out. Google. Okay. Yeah. It doesn't have the same ring as Hart. No, Hart's a great last name if you're trying to pump a Ponzi scheme.

Starting point is 01:05:22 So that's good, David. We'll see how that plays out then, man. So those are the 2023 predictions for you. You know, bank, let's get some of these things right. Directionally, I think we are right. When we call for specifics, not so much. Not so much. But directionally, and eventually some of these predictions will happen.

Starting point is 01:05:40 The longer we're here, the more right we are. That's right. optimism this week. A bunch of people are forking it. What does this mean? Yeah, so this is a tweet from an optimism person. Another day, another startup planning to fork optimism. The OP stack narrative is very strong.

Starting point is 01:05:57 From my startup data sample, it's becoming the go-to repo for startups to deploy their own roll-up. And so this is actually a continuation of the thesis that I said, that EVM equivalents will help optimism with its slower start. And for those, I made this video called the OP stack, which explains the OPE stack. which explains the OP stack and the philosophy behind this prediction. It came out the day that FTX went under. So there's this super awesome video that is super informative

Starting point is 01:06:21 that got drowned out by the FTX debacle. So if you want to go down the OP stack, Rabbit Hole, definitely watch this video. We got some NFT stuff too. So a zombie punk was just sold for what looks like, to me anyway, a lot of money. But maybe this is down

Starting point is 01:06:39 from what it was worth at some point in time. $1.3 million for this punk, you're looking at it right here. What's the significance of this sale, David? It's just one of the biggest NFT sales in a very long time. I accidentally said when we led into sponsors that a zombie punk got stolen. No, a zombie punk got sold, but it was a steel. And coming in at a 1,155 ETH price tag, we got a zombie punk. And so that, in my mind, is very cheap. That is a good purchase. And are they up on their Eth from that sale? The seller of the owner? click that link and we'll be able to find out what it was last spot for. Yeah. So if you scroll down to previous sales, oh, it was, okay, it was last sold, Ryan, for 500 ETH in May of 2021. So that was, they are up 660 ETH on that trade. That's the way to be a denominated in Eth. You denominate

Starting point is 01:07:32 an Eth during the bear market. It's the only way to do it. This was an article I noticed. I don't know if you saw this, but from PC Gamer got a lot of traction on Reddit. And the title of the article is, good job internet. You bullied NFTs out of mainstream games. And I saw so many threads on Reddit this week about, yeah, I'm glad they're gone, hate NFTs, glad, like, they're the worst, they're kind of a scourge on gaming. And I was just reflecting on how just negative the world has turned on NFTs,

Starting point is 01:08:03 particularly NFTs in games. This was a meme. I also picked out from Reddit, which was, whose opinion matters. the least. And it picks on all of these tribes. Furies, webes, influencers, discord mobs. And then crypto bros too, an NFT artist. And look who's in the crypto bro picture. It's Vitalik. Wow. Vitalik is the least crypto bro person. Like I know, I guess if that's what you think a crypto bro actually is. Anyway, I was just reflecting on this.

Starting point is 01:08:33 Well, Ryan, I'm going to go ahead and guess that any representative in any one of these quadrants are probably saying the same thing about their particular quadrants. That's probably true, David. That's probably true, right? We just don't know. And I was just reflecting on, I remember the early stages of the internet and there was this new idea. This is like kind of the birth of Wikipedia

Starting point is 01:08:49 and, you know, reviews, Amazon reviews, and Yelp and all of these things. Web 2, it was like wisdom of the crowds. Remember that phrase? Wisdom of the crowds? Well, like, internet mobs are kind of dumb. Yeah, like stupidity of the crowds. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:05 And so, I don't know, this is just another example of the internet, I think, not getting it. not seeing the potential of these things and people making comments on things they actually don't know about. And yeah, I think the internet is completely wrong about NFTs. It's just like being mad about a file format like JPEGs or JIFs. Maybe you don't like how they've been used, but how can you be mad about NFTs as property rights mechanism? I think it's actually pretty easy to push back on that one because the NFTs in their current form are not doing the things

Starting point is 01:09:40 Ryan, that you imagine that they will do in their heads in the future. And so the internet is currently pushing back on NNTs as they stand today because we as an industry have not learned how to actually produce an NFT that is actually desirable towards mainstream. So you are basically, your take is, well, we haven't actually deserved their respect is what you're saying. And you also, we need to go back to the drawing boards. The crypto bro, you know, scaped to because that's also being scapegoated right now. The crypto, a bunch of scammers, that sort of thing, right? Do you think that crypto deserves this, too, this kind of mockery? Or do you think this is a broad brush? To talk about, like,

Starting point is 01:10:20 this meme at a high level, whose opinion matters least, like NFT artists, Andrew Tate fans, crypto bros, webes, discord mods, influencers, these are all like communities of people that have members of them that believe in what they're saying and doing, right? For better or worse, right? And like, it's, it's like you could also put in like a crossfit person here. or like a vegan or somebody who like has principles that they stand on and like are annoying on the internet about it. And so this is just an amalgamation of like all of those people. That's a good take. That's a good take. Anyway, yeah, it's the internet still doesn't like NFTs. Maybe we deserve it. Maybe we don't. But I think this warrants further investigation

Starting point is 01:10:58 is probably some upside opportunities while everyone else is ignoring it. David, what's this story about the Bitcoin core developer losing all his Bitcoin? Yeah. So there's this Bitcoin OG core developer Luke Dash Jr. who tweeted out that he lost over to his bitcoins, over 200 Bitcoins in a hack. He had a PGP pretty good privacy. If you have been listening to our for Bitcoin series, you would know what that is. He says his PGP was compromised and he had all of his Bitcoin stolen. He says he has no idea how. And there's two kind of main takes that I've seen as a response to this. It's what the hell is a Bitcoin core dev holding on PGP keys onto a hot computer that is exposed to the internet. That's bad opsec. And then the other take is like

Starting point is 01:11:45 a nice boating accident, bro. No one really knows. There's also another take which is like if a Bitcoin core developer can lose their private keys, what hope is there for Normies? What do you think about that take? I mean, I've definitely at times held private keys and insecure. ways, but I've always logged that in my head and then like, okay, I need to get rid of those private keys. I don't know. It's a personal responsibility thing more than it is like if this one guy can't do it, none of us can. And then also the solution to that is always innovation, innovation, innovation. Bitcoin doesn't have account abstraction. No, I'm super bullish on the future smart contract wallets to make U.S. easy and opsys. Yeah, I think we'll build them.

Starting point is 01:12:28 What about this, David? OpenC. blocking Cuban artists from the platform due to U.S. sanctions. What do you make of this? Yeah, I mean, the headlines basically the news. OpenC had to de-platform some Cuban artists because of sanctions. It's a sad day. A lot of people are mad at OpenC for this. But at the end of the day, like, they want customers. They want every customer under the sun. Why can't they do this? Because of regulation. This is the design choice that OpenC has chosen, like a web 2.5 thing, which centralized front end in the front and just uses Ethereum rails in the back. And so this is a result of that. So sad day. Yeah, it's unfortunate, but as long as these sorts of prohibitions don't happen on the protocol layer, that's where they matter most, right? So NFTs can still be deployed with you're in Cuba or wherever you are in the world. And you can access it. Just can't open, access open C unfortunately. All right, for the first time in 2023, we're going to remind you that this is the year. You should be getting a job in crypto.

Starting point is 01:13:26 We're not stopping. We're not stopping. We've got some jobs. I'm going to read them on the bankless job boards. as usual, it's bankless. pallet.com slash jobs. Uniswap Labs has a senior software engineer. They're looking for, alchemy, a backend engineer, Webacy, software engineer, Webacy, also a QA analyst, dimension, a crypto-native content marketer and more. You guys can find that at the bankless job site. That's bankless.com slash jobs. All right, David, what do we got coming up next? We got to get to some questions from the nation. We used to ask the Twitter. We used to ask Twitter, what questions do you have? But we have changed that up. And now we are asking

Starting point is 01:14:01 the bankless inner circle, what questions do you want us to cover on the bankless weekly roll-up? And so we got three questions that we're pulling out out of the inner circle. And this is a perk for the bankless premium subscribers. If you are a premium subscriber and you are not in the bankless inner circle, you should definitely go there. We've been having a ton of fun there lately, and this is where we are now asking the questions for the weekly roll-up. So this is a place where me and Ryan and the rest of the bankless team hang out. This is where the token report that we talked about earlier from Ben Giovi gets talked about and discussed. And you guys can ask all of us questions and more.

Starting point is 01:14:33 Ryan's got a little bit of the inner circle up on the screen. Yeah, I'm sharing it on screen. This is kind of like, I think of this as like a watering hole for the bankless community. Like it's, you know how you always say, David, like, it's the bear market. So go find a bear market buddy. Yeah. This is where you guys find a bear market buddy. All right.

Starting point is 01:14:49 David, I met on Twitter. And then that just quickly transitioned into Discord. Discord is a fantastic tool for meeting friends in crypto, especially when, if you don't go outside, like me, or you don't go to conferences or you can't get out. out there. You want to meet some people before you go to the conference. This is the place to do that. So there are something like 15,000, close to 20,000 people on the bankless journey in the Inner Circle Discord. And look at these channels. We talk about general stuff, NFTs, we talk about the podcast. We talk about token ratings. There's off-topic areas. David, you and I jumped in and

Starting point is 01:15:23 did an AMA in here not too long ago. We've done a few of those as well. So there's a section in the inner circle discord with a question we're going to answer in just a minute from hashira is there a layer two that is iBC compatible this is cosmos standard ibc or would it be possible to build one such an l2 would remove the need for multi-sig bridges between different ecosystems and would greatly benefit the entire crypto universe we ask are asked questions like this we answer questions like that in the inner circle so it's a great place to to meet the bankless community and level up on the crypto journey and david how do people become inner circle members and go premium?

Starting point is 01:16:03 Sure. There is a link in the show notes for you to go click that button and I'll take you to where you can sign up for bankless premium and then you can ask some of these questions here. We're also in the middle of planning our ETH Denver in real life event for the bankless inner circle. It's going to be our first one. We're super so for that.

Starting point is 01:16:17 Shall we get into the questions right? Yeah. So why don't we start with that first question that was just asked? So is there a layer two that is IBC compatible and would it be possible to build one? What's the answer to that question, David? Yeah, sadly, this is where the lines are drawn between what Ron and I call different countries. IBC is the rules of the cosmos ecosystem. The EVM are the rules for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Starting point is 01:16:42 And sadly, you cannot cross those lines without having to change languages. And what that means is that we cannot cross lines with our assets either without having to have a trusted intermediary in the process, facilitate that service. So there is no way to build an IBC layer two because if you are building a layer two on Ethereum, you are specifically creating a very formalized relationship with the Ethereum layer one. And you cannot have two layer ones that you consider equal. You have to pick a single layer one to adhere to the rules towards. So if you are building a layer two on Ethereum, you cannot build an IBC compatible, a Cosmos compatible app chain as your Ethereum layer two.

Starting point is 01:17:22 It just doesn't work like that. I'm sad to say. Is it possible that it will in the future? I mean, is there research on going about this? I don't think that's possible. I do not think that that is a possible thing to do. So this kind of goes back to why you and I are like kind of like maximalists in the sense of there's going to be a very low number of ecosystems because all of these cross layer

Starting point is 01:17:43 one like communication bridges are just fundamentally insecure. And so it makes sense for, from a security perspective, for there to be a fewer number of chains that all adhere to the same rules. And that's why Cosmos actually fits inside of a lot of the bankless philosophy that we've been talking about. And why the multi, multi, multi, layer one thesis just does not work. Yeah. What's, what's interesting about Cosmos, if you want, like we did an episode with Zaki about, uh, and Sunny from Cosmos about this very thing. And they talk about this idea of mesh security, which is sort of interesting, where a set of app chains can kind of share the same security in some way that starts to simulate a little bit what Ethereum is doing. Of course,

Starting point is 01:18:27 Ethereum is just saying with its layer two ecosystem, hey, everything is secured by and settles on layer one. So you don't have to worry about that problem of, you know, diluting your security when you transition from one chain to the other with IBC. This question is from PD in the inner circle. On the return of the bull, ETH become significantly deflationary. And at the time, a significant amount of eth is staked, scarcity could be an issue. Well, good for price, could it be damaging for the system? Is there a mechanism in 1559 to control the level of deflation? And so this is the concern that the ultrasound economics of ether are so good and so strong that ether becomes so scarce that its price is so high that we just don't want to use it inside of defy. We don't want to

Starting point is 01:19:15 interact with gas. It's just overly deflationary. And this is actually, a question that I asked Justin Drake directly. And so if you want to hear this answer from Justin Drake, there is an interview I did with him on YouTube about this very thing at DevCon. Basically, first and foremost, there is a limit as to how much ether we can burn. As ether goes up in price, you burn less. And so it doesn't just burn straight to zero supply. The more you burn the harder, it becomes to burn more. So the lower supply of ether there is, the more resistance there is to further burn. And so this is why people like Justin Drake thinks that we of asymptote somewhere between like 60 and 90 million supply of ether. And so there will always be

Starting point is 01:19:55 enough ether to go around. And then the other thing is like Justin Drake and his answer delineates between what he calls collateral money and debt money. And collateral money is like ether, bear assets, bear instruments, and you want collateral money to always go up in price. And then you want debt money like dollars to always go down in price. That's kind of how our economy works out because then no one ever gets liquidated if their collateral goes up and their debt of denominated value goes down. And so this is actually the foundations

Starting point is 01:20:23 of a very robust economy and there aren't the concerns that there's just not enough ether to go around doesn't really like actually play out in economic terms. Yeah, another way to term that is you know, collateral money is like store of value money right? And debt money is more

Starting point is 01:20:41 what you want for a medium of exchange. We don't actually think that ether is going to make a good medium of exchange, right? Something like a stable coin is a much better medium of exchange, something like dye, for instance, or even Rye can be a much better medium of exchange than Ether. But as Ether accrues value and gets more valuable, then it becomes a better collateral money. There's more economic bandwidth. We haven't talked about that concept in a while, but that applies here too. All right, last question for you, David. This is from Cell Norocos.

Starting point is 01:21:12 Norocos, yeah. Cell Norocos asked, he's thinking about, are there? they're thinking about Heath Denver for the first time this year. What's the best way to make the most of it? And this is from a non-technical person. So going to the Heath Denver, that is a conference in February, of course, in the Ethereum community, but really welcomes all ecosystems. If you're non-technical, what's the way to make the most out of that type of an experience? There's a bunch of different answers that I've got for YsL, no Rokos. And since you're in the Inner Circle Discord, I hope to see you at the meetup that we're going to host. So the Bankless HQ Meetup where you'll be able to meet other members.

Starting point is 01:21:49 Generally, people in the bankless community are non-technical, so that's a great place to start. But also, I'm also a huge advocate of non-technical people joining hackathons, which seems to initially be like, what? That's weird. That's the opposite of what I want to do. Let me tell you, technical people need non-technical people to explain their shit. And so if you can market something or promote something or write a presentation

Starting point is 01:22:12 and present things that technical devs aren't very good at, there is always a supply gut for non-technical people joining hackathons to be like the marketers, the promoters, to actually do the pitch. And that can really make or break a lot of hackathons, hackathon projects. So that's definitely a very strong way to get involved there as well. And then overall, Denver, Heath Denver has developed into a more and more and more non-technical conference, even though it is a hackathon first and foremost. The first, uh, Heath Denver I did in 2018, I just went to every single booth one by one by one. And I was like, hey, what are you guys doing? Hey, what are you guys doing? You just talk to people. You just talk to people. And then you meet other people who are listening

Starting point is 01:22:53 to your questions because some people are just really shy and they have questions, but they just don't, they're too shy to answer it to ask them. So they'll listen to you ask questions for people at the booth. And if you're asking good questions, people will pick up on that. And so like a, booth is our conversation starters. And so that's what I recommend. If you are non-technical person going to Heath Denver, go to the inner circle meetup, sign up for the hackathon as a non-technical person, and talk to people at the booths. And talk to everyone. Talk to everyone. Talk to everyone. Yeah. Come see how to meet. All right, takes of the week. We got the first one. What are we looking at from Taha Zoffer? Taha Zoffer. So this is a meme. This is a very old meme. And it's funny to see this

Starting point is 01:23:34 resurface. And it's basically a picture of two Legos. One is Ether. One is Bitcoin. And Ether actually has the little Lego dimples that let other Legos like latch onto them. And BTC is just completely smooth. And so it's just a funny illustration. I think this meme actually came from from the Money Legos meme, which I created way back one. I don't know if I can pat myself in the back on that one. But yeah, so this is the Money Legos meme except Bitcoin's without the like, you know, the composability part. Why remind people of this? Like this tweet got a lot of traction. Yeah. I don't think people have seen this meme in a very long time. Yeah. Uh-huh. So they're like, oh, this is new. What a great way to articulate it.

Starting point is 01:24:12 No, we got that one. This is an old name, yeah. This is interesting from Domitie. So he says this. This is about the ossification in particular of Ethereum. I think the question is about when is Ethereum going to ossify? So when are all of the changes going to be in? You know, the roadmap fully complete and the code is not touched anymore.

Starting point is 01:24:33 Domothi says, ossification is a Bitcoin meme. In my opinion, the Ethereum equivalent should be homeostasis. The chain self-regulating. to keep its core properties intact forever. Through cryptographic means first, then crypto economic means, then through the social layer as a last resort. Really interesting, really good take. I think ossification is out.

Starting point is 01:24:59 Homeostasis should be the goal. What's your take on this? I just thought that this was a really elegant way of differentiating the end game of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin loves to talk about how ossified it is, and from the Ethereum perspective, we consider that like fragile and also they did it too soon.

Starting point is 01:25:16 The homeostasis balance of Ethereum, whenever I hear a biology word in crypto economics, Ryan, you know I get super excited. Homeostasis just means in balance and self-regulating and if something is deviated from a particular set point,

Starting point is 01:25:32 then it naturally and organically returns to a homeostatic balance. I just really, really like that. And then also the order of operations of first fix things with cryptography, and if that doesn't work, then do it with crypto-economics. And if that doesn't work, then you have to go to the social layer in order to fix something that breaks. Well, a perfect example of this to me is like, let's say quantum computers come out.

Starting point is 01:25:57 And both Bitcoin and Ethereum need to be quantum resistant. If you're ossified and the code doesn't change, how do you become quantum resistant? Well, you really can't. You have to break the ossification principle, right? but if you're going for homoestasis, then you acknowledge that the principle of both Bitcoin and Ethereum is for it to be secure.

Starting point is 01:26:19 And obviously that means quantum resistant. And so you upgrade the protocol as necessary to adapt to that new reality. Now, nothing fundamentally has changed about the core values of the system. You're just updating the cryptography. But you can't say it's ossified if you're still making code changes.

Starting point is 01:26:38 And of course, we're going to need to be making co-changes for both Bitcoin and Ethereum moving forward. And I think Ethereum acknowledges that. I really like this mental model. Hummustasis. I'm going to start using that. Thank you, Domit. 100%. Here's another take, David.

Starting point is 01:26:50 You say this one. Yeah, so this is a take from Ryan Sean Adams. Let's be clear on one thing. David and I are not journalists. We just like talking about crypto stuff. Ryan, when you tweeted out this meme, this tweet, I definitely saw the same tweet that you did right before that caused. Oh, really? Yeah, that inspired you to write this tweet.

Starting point is 01:27:08 It was the person who was in our Twitter was like, why doesn't Ryan and David talk about Pocodot? Like, at some point it's like, it just doesn't interest me. Yeah, it's bad journalism. It's bad journalism. You guys aren't doing your jobs. I'm like, who defines what my job is? No one does.

Starting point is 01:27:25 And we just, Ryan and I just talk about stuff that we like. And that's like as people like sometimes read into like there's this grain conspiracy as like, we're not covering chain link and we're not covering Pocod. and we're not covering my favorite ecosystem. And like, why, what's the conspiracy here? It could be because we just haven't gotten there guys because we're busy. Yeah, we're super busy.

Starting point is 01:27:48 It could also be just like we're not interested in the moment, right? But it could also be like this idea, I think of a journalist is something different. It's almost like, in a way, David, a true journalist is doing something even like more sacred than you and I are doing it. Right. Like what I would say is what are we? We're just like investors on the crypto journey and the bankless journey. Like we care deeply about these values. We're going to talk about them.

Starting point is 01:28:10 We're excited by the technology, by what's going on. We're excited about the social movement. What a journalist does is something different. They need to be getting at kind of like the ultimate facts and truth of circumstances. So like even in these roll-ups, I mean, we're doing our best when we report on things, where we talk about things to uncover the truth. But we're not doing like deep journalistic investigation on the things. We're just giving our takes.

Starting point is 01:28:37 We're giving our takes, right? And so, but that, like, I have a ton of respect for real journalists. And I would love to have more real journalists who are doing the deep work in this space to uncover truth, even if it's uncomfortable, and talk about that truth. It's just not what you and I are doing. It's not what we do. I just tweeted this out just to kind of make that, you know, make that clear. And I hope that's clear to you, bankless listeners.

Starting point is 01:29:04 You know, we try our best on here. we're pursuing what we think is interesting in 2023. It would be a different standard if we started calling ourselves a journalist. And I never will. I don't think you ever will either. It's just not a thing that we are. That's the wrong mental model to consider what bankless is.

Starting point is 01:29:23 Bankless is a thesis-driven media company. We have biases and attitudes about the way that we want the future to be. And those biases and attitudes and theses all are enveloped under what we call the bankless movement. Absolutely. Well, on that note, David, this is not journalism, of course. This is not the news, but why don't you tell me what you're bullish on? One of my thesis, Ryan, is the flippening.

Starting point is 01:29:49 And so I'm bullish on the flippinging. One of your 2023 predictions was that the flippening is not going to happen this year. I'm not necessarily going to predict that it is, but I definitely think it's on the table more than what people think that it is. I think Ether versus Bitcoin can go up way faster than what people expect because of proof we are in proof of sake with with EIP 1559. Like we are in a new paradigm of ether price action. And so like the previous coupled relationship that we had with Bitcoin from proof of work, I think is much more broken. And so I tweeted out this tweet, the lappening is going to be 10 times easier than the flippening.

Starting point is 01:30:30 What's the lappening, David? Oh, I'm so glad you asked right. That's your private meme. Yeah. Yeah. And so the flippinging is when ether flips Bitcoin and market cap, as in with Ether as an ecosystem, Ether market cap is worth more than Bitcoin. The lappening is when Ether is worth 2x what Bitcoin is. And I'm saying, what I'm saying here is that it's taken a ton of work to even come remotely close to the flippinging. We're like less than 50% of the way there, although I do think we're closer than we actually we perceive it to be. What I'm saying is once we do flip Bitcoin, when we get, we, we to 2x Bitcoin, which is the lappening. The lappening is when we go 2x the market cap of Bitcoin. That is going to be 10 times easier than getting to the flippinging. Because once you flip Bitcoin, it's so easy just to do it again and again and again. Can I ask you, why do you care about this? For someone thinking like, oh, is this just David's bag bias? He has much more

Starting point is 01:31:23 eth than he has Bitcoin. I don't even know if he has any Bitcoin. So of course he's talking about Heath. Right. Does this matter beyond like your bags, David? So this goes back kind of why we made bankless in the first place is we had theses and ideas about how crypto economics works and we didn't feel like the rest of the crypto world had heard these theseses and had no one

Starting point is 01:31:45 was broadcasting them and the whole eth is money thesis is largely where bankless started back in 2018, 2019 when you and I were first getting to know each other like the whole like eth is money thing was a very contrarian bet and so we came together over that

Starting point is 01:32:01 shared like frustrations like why don't people understand ether like this protocol. Also defy, David. Also defy, yeah. And so like the ether is the best crypto asset of all time, if not the best asset in the world ever is one of our foundational thesis that has pioneered like our own thinking in this space. And as a result of my belief on that, I have purchased a bunch of ether because that it aligns with my thesis and beliefs about how the future of crypto will be. And so my claim is that the crypto economics of Ethereum is just 10 hundred times more sound than bitcoins. And I expect that to show up in the price sooner or later,

Starting point is 01:32:40 especially after the merge and proof of stake and EIP-1559. So this is a bet based on a thesis. How about this? What are we looking at? This tweet, David. Right. Okay. So there's two charts here,

Starting point is 01:32:54 and we're looking at the first one. This left chart is how bullish, if you believe in the flipping thesis, this is roughly about how bullish you are. The ether flips Bitcoin. This is the ETH to Bitcoin ratio chart. And I've drawn a green line at the end to indicate where I believe that we are going. We are currently at 0.074.

Starting point is 01:33:11 And I think we will, this is what people who believe in the flipping thing that we're going to do. It's like, oh, we're going to flip in Bitcoin at like 0.17. And that will take somewhere between one and three, four more years to get that done. And so that's what this chart shows. This is what the typical flippiner believes. Here's what I believe, Ryan, which is. What have you done here? And so...

Starting point is 01:33:32 You shortened the time range here? No, I've actually increased the time range. And so this arrow goes all the way out to 2030. But where people think the flippinging happens at 0.15, yo, keep going, guys. Because once Ether flips Bitcoin, there's no reason why it can't keep going after that. It doesn't stop after flipping Bitcoin. We flipped Bitcoin a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And it definitely takes time.

Starting point is 01:33:58 By the way, so when you put... you put it the ratio, the other way you could like, that this could play out is Bitcoin collapses. Sure. Sure. It could go down versus ether for sure. Do you think that's a possibility? I don't think that worries some people. I don't think Bitcoin collapses.

Starting point is 01:34:13 I just think it has a cap on growth. Yeah. Proof of work is fundamentally a cap on growth because as your price of your proof of work token goes up, so does the net average sell pressure. And so the arrow at this point, where it's pointing to Ryan, is at 0.7 eth to BTC. So that is Ether being worth 10 times more than it is right now in Bitcoin terms.

Starting point is 01:34:36 So that's five Bitcoins. So I'm saying by 2030, Ether is five Bitcoins. You're creating content again about this too. I watch this video. It's like a 13-minute video on our other bankless YouTube feed. Did you know we have a bankless YouTube feed? There's two bankless YouTube feed. This is the bankless podcast that you're listening to, but there's a bankless short video feed. And this is a 13-minute video about ETHs. season. Got me bullish. David.

Starting point is 01:35:02 That's my job, brother. It's fantastic. I get people. All right, so David's bullish on Eith. That's what I'm bullish about. Relative to Bitcoin, huh? Yeah, that's exactly right. What are you bullish on, Ryan?

Starting point is 01:35:12 I'm just being a user again. I get to be a user again this year. Everyone was obsessed with speculation last year, and I'm really excited about using some new tools in crypto. I feel like I have more time to do this. I feel like the builders are continuing to build, and it's the whole narrative is, less about speculations, more about try new things. This is crypto. It feels very much like

Starting point is 01:35:34 2019 to me, 2020 to me, where we're just like trying a whole bunch of things. So some cool things that I tried recently is I mentioned the Kepler wallet. That is a wallet like Metamask for exploring the Cosmos ecosystem, all of the app chains. I recommend that. It's a really cool place to start. Also, this, David, I don't know if you've seen this browser extension. It's called Fire. But you know that problem that you have where in Metamask, you don't really know when you're clicking on buttons what is actually happening here. Yeah. Well, fire is kind of another extension that explains exactly what's going on. So look at this. I am transferring this NFT to this particular address. It's explaining it in human terms what I'm actually doing. A really

Starting point is 01:36:18 useful extension that you can add on top of metamaths to sort of explain the transaction before you click a proof. So it's an extension for an extension? It's an extension for an extension and very useful one at that. Even recently I was going back through Uniswap, and now with Uniswap, there's a Fiat on ramp on top of Uniswap. There's NFTs. You just trade NFTs on Uniswap. Yeah, most people don't realize. You can trade NFTs on Uniswap. I almost haven't realized it because I've been so busy not actually getting to use these apps. So anyway, I just high level here, everything's great in terms of the tools that are available versus the last bear market. And yet people are down in the dumps, but I think it's a great time to be a user.

Starting point is 01:37:02 So ignore price, start using some more apps. This is what we do during the bear market is we level up on these sorts of things. And as always, there's rewards on the other side. So I'm bullish about being a user again and having that opportunity. Yeah, I hope you get some time to do that too. Try some things out this year, David. Yeah, I have to take a break from making content. Usually I just ask other people's experiences.

Starting point is 01:37:25 Yeah, exactly. All right, what do we got? Meme of the Week this year. Meme of the Week. Meme of the Week. Okay, so we have a picture of SBF in a nice suit and a backpack, and I'm not going to bother to try and sing this, but you can hear it in the background.

Starting point is 01:37:39 Making my way downtown, scamming fast, made Luna Crash. I'm homebound. I don't know how the song goes, but you can hear it right now. And just like, it's so perfect. Hearing this music, looking at this picture is so great. There we go. Guys, your first roll-up of 2023. Hope you enjoyed it.

Starting point is 01:37:55 I hope you enjoyed the meme the week. We're excited to bring 51 more to you in the coming year. Risks and disclaimers, as always. Got to let you know that crypto is risky. So is Defi. So is Eith. You could definitely lose what you put in. But we're headed west.

Starting point is 01:38:07 This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us. Once again, for another year on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot. Buhnaw Bona, Bona, Bona, Bona, Bhawn up Bannab, Bannabon, Bannabha, bhawnau,

Starting point is 01:38:32 Chahruppah, Bha-da-da-a-a-da-a-ha-ta-a-ta-a-ta-a-ta-a-ppoh-du-pba-pah-dha-poh-dha-poh-dha-poh-a-poh-poh-a-poh-poh-tta-poh.

Bankless - ROLLUP: SBF Pleads Not Guilty | Winklevoss vs Barry Silbert | Predicting 2023 | ETH Staking | Inflation 2023

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