Bankless - ROLLUP: Stocks vs. Crypto | EthCC Recap | Trump BTC Conf Speaker | ETH Documentary Release

Starting point is 00:00:03 Bankless Nation, happy second week of July. This time for the bankless weekly roll-up. David, this is the last weekly roll-up without the ETH-EF, right? That's what I heard. This one. This is the one. Yeah. This is the most likely weekly roll-up.

Starting point is 00:00:17 For real this time. For real this time. Yeah. Well, we're going to keep saying that until it actually is the last weekly roll-up without how many times until it's annoying? Well, we definitely have an update for you there. And David, you are in Brussels. You're recording from Brussels today.

Starting point is 00:00:29 So you're at a conference, right? Yep, that's right. ECC usually happens in Paris, but when Ethereum goes up against the Olympics in an in-person conference, we lose. So we're in Brussels. We got booted off to Brussels, which there are already some stories about Brussels. We'll talk about them in a little bit. I've seen some tweets. I want to hear about those stories.

Starting point is 00:00:51 But what else we got on top? Bullish week for tokenization. We're going to talk about the Black Rock Builder Fund passing a threshold as well as other people coming into the tokenization play. Bitcoin had its first 25% drawdown after 427 days without one. So is it over? Can we go up now? When can we go up? Can we go up, please?

Starting point is 00:01:15 What else we have, Ryan? Yeah, please go up. Republicans are adding crypto to their official party platform. This is actually a pretty cool statement, including the right to go bankless, David. And also, Trump might be a crypto conference. Was he at ECC, David? I don't know. Maybe you could fill me in there.

Starting point is 00:01:30 Trump was not at ETHCC in Brussels. Ah, he should have been. He missed the best crypto conference. And finally, Ethereum got another based roll-up. We're very excited about the based roll-up space. And actually, why don't we just start there with our friends and sponsors over at Puffer? Puffer Unify. Puffer started off as an LST platform, which adapted into an LRT platform.

Starting point is 00:01:51 And their whole unique thing is they're leveraging TEEs trusted execution environments, just to add just a really strong layer of security around Ethereum. staking around restaking and then also for the security around their incoming based roll-ups. So the Puffer Unified chain leverages Puffer's restaked validators, of course, to sequence the Puffer chain transactions on Unify can interact directly with other base roll-ups, including non-puffer base roll-ups like Tyco, no bridges, a unified liquidity and app layer. This is one of the paths of Ethereum to solve its fragmentation. This whole thing, base roll-ups and pre-commitments have been just a major topic here at ETHCC, one of the big themes.

Starting point is 00:02:32 They get fast 100 millisecond pre-confirmations on the Puffer Utify chain, also with the native yield. This chain actually has not launched yet. So if you are a developer, they want you to fill out the forum that is linked in the show notes. That's bankless.c. That's puffer builders. There's also a light paper for you to read for all you researchers out there who just want to keep up in the world of TEs, space sequencing, layer twos. This has definitely been one of the themes of, like, LRT project. also expanding into a layer two.

Starting point is 00:03:02 At face value, like why is an LRT doing a layer two? It's probably a question that many people have. But once you dig into it, there's like a lot of synergies there. And Puffer is definitely leading the way here. Yeah, very cool. I think based roll-ups have a very exciting future in the Ethereum landscape. So exciting to see Puffer expand into that. And speaking of that, you were talking about ECC and some of the topics.

Starting point is 00:03:20 So what are the vibes at ETHC, David? Give me the download. I've been watching a little bit on Twitter, but I got to confess. I saw a Vitalic tweets and Vitalic videos, that sort of thing, but I don't think I have a sense of like what it's like to be on the ground. Yeah, and I would say other ETHCCs, it has been easier to identify a pretty core theme, just a phase, a check-in of Ethereum. ETC always kind of feels like going one year around the sun because it's so consistent. It's middle of July in Paris, the same in Brussels. The content sphere is a little bit more spread out than usual.

Starting point is 00:03:55 pre-commitments, pre-confirmations is a big theme. Base roll-ups, very adjacent to that is a very big theme. How to approach MEV on various layers, applications, layer one, layer two's, app chains, how this all ties together. And then also ZK proving is showing up a little bit more. But these are, so like the whole base roll-ups conversation is also happening on the back of like the paradigm people, Georgios and Charlie, providing alternative paths. to scaling Ethereum. That is maybe direction... Throwing some shade at base roll-ups.

Starting point is 00:04:30 Yeah, throwing shade at base roll-ups saying, like, we don't... That is an unsolved problem, and that's really complicated. And so people are talking about just this kind of like pretty really deep level infrastructure as it relates to Ethereum fragmentation, kind of like kicking the tires all around it. So I would say maybe if I was going to draw out one theme of the content of ETHCC, it has been just the refragmentation, the defragmentation of Ethereum with a specific benefit. on base roll-ups and pre-commits. Then Vitalik also kind of set his own meta of content

Starting point is 00:05:02 because he is doing like 10, over 10 talks. I asked him this morning... He's doing 10 talks? As of the Thursday morning, he has done six talks and four panels, and he says he's not done yet. These are just his words. I asked him because people were talking about, like, how many talks did Vitalik do?

Starting point is 00:05:19 And I watched one of these talks. And I just assumed, like, oh, he's probably like doing the smart thing, which is like presenting, like putting together one talk and giving it in 10 different spaces. And I asked him that. It's like, like, are all of these talks different? And yes, apparently all of these talks are indeed different. He said he spent most of Tuesday writing the slides for every single one of his talks.

Starting point is 00:05:39 So he's just like running around ETC firing off presentations. Like no notes, just his slides. And like throwing banger talks are pretty great. Do we have a clip of Vitalik running in the rain to get to a talk here, to a conference? Yeah. So these are the two tweets that have like. a pretty good theme to him, which is that one of them says, when Vitalik Abudoran makes an entry like this into a Web3 event

Starting point is 00:06:01 in a stormy Brussels rain, it like stormed the first day I was here. There's no stop. You know there's no stopping Ethereum. And this is Vitalik, like, running over a puddle, like, double landing on both feet, like, ready to go. And then there's like another one of Vitalik coming in a little bit late to his talk, but just like running right into it and then starting his talk, banging out his talk, and then running away from it to go to his next talk.

Starting point is 00:06:22 just like Vitalik doing talks a ton of talks this time. Here's a follow from Mike.D.Eith. This man changed the history of innovation in blockchain, and he's a billionaire without a bodyguard. Maximum humility. He just kind of lights up a room when he enters it, doesn't he? He's just such an Ethereum vibe there. Actually, speaking of Vitalik, like one of the quotes,

Starting point is 00:06:42 I don't know if you saw this talk, David, but I saw this story published in the block. I haven't seen anything recorded of what he said. I'd be the interesting looking at some of the talks, but Vitalik Buterin pushes for Ethereum to respond to 51% attacks in a more automated way. Apparently, this is one, at least the block picked up on, is the ability, rather than to solve a 51% attack at kind of the social coordination level, you know how messy that gets, right, with all of the various stakeholders and parties

Starting point is 00:07:08 trying to decide is having a strategy to automate that a bit more. So it's kind of like executed in code or like ready to go. I don't know if that was part of the substance of his talks or if that was just like a side note. Anyway, do you have any highlight? of what Vitalik's talking about here? This one, this is where we can invoke the word intersubjective. So this is an intersubjective fault of Ethereum. He says, like, we can, like, fix in an automated way. In the same way, eigenlayer is doing the same thing with restaking.

Starting point is 00:07:36 And I was not at this particular talk. All of his talks, generally the theme of his talks are like, okay, here are some, like, so here are the next frontier problems for Ethereum. And also, like, we also know what the solutions are. So let's move forward on them. kind of just suggestions for layer two design, all that kind of stuff. There was also a panel that I walked in on with Justin Drake on a restaking panel with David Saye from Babylon. And so, okay, great.

Starting point is 00:08:03 Like, I know pretty good about Ethereum staking in Eiglare. Let's learn about restaking in Babylon. Let's learn what the differences is. And I get into the panel. And is Justin Drake just arguing with David Say, the founder of Babylon, about the Bitcoin security budget? He's just doing the Justin Drake thing of like, Bitcoin's not secure. They didn't get into restaking for like 20 minutes into the conversation. It was interesting.

Starting point is 00:08:27 I mean, I'm always compelled by Justin Drake's arguments. And so Justin Drake was like doing like jujitsu with this guy. And it kind of felt like he had one arm behind his back in a good way. But that's just me. Babylon, if people remember, that's basically an eigenlayer for Bitcoin. They're behind. I think they've got more research to do so they're not deployed. they're not yet, but that's the idea is bringing restaking to Bitcoin. So I imagine that was

Starting point is 00:08:52 interesting. There's reports of people being robbed in Brussels as well. Like, what's up with that? What is going on? Yeah. I'm hearing like two to three stories, unique stories a day of like something bad happening. Either like one, a bankless employee, by the way, like was like taken like not far away. She's like, taken a couple blocks away by her taxi driver. And he's like, oh, the car machine doesn't broke pay me cash also we happen to be at an ATM uh and like a different bank this employee had to like go over there and like strong was just like be a presence to like allow her to get out of the taxi so like and i've heard of multiple stories of like shady taxi drivers another friend got her purse stolen uh this is a tweet that went viral of a guy who is now limping around brussels

Starting point is 00:09:36 because he was mugged at 7 p.m which is broad daylight in brussels uh uh uh lucca netty got his passport stolen from his hotel room. All of the conferences I have ever been to, there's always been conversations of just like, oh, we're in Bogota, be safe. And Bogota was completely fine. Like, I have never gone to an Ethereum conference where there was like crime and like robberies and anything, except it's for some reason happening all over Brussels in the middle of Europe, with the EU center of Europe. So that's been a theme of Brussels this year. Speaking of crime, Suu is here for some reason. I didn't know that Suu could go. go to Brussels.

Starting point is 00:10:16 Suzu was at Rave, apparently. Just like raving at Raveh. We have the picture of this? No, I do not have a picture of it. One of my friends said she also interviewed him for her podcast that she's doing, because she's doing a bunch of podcasts. So I kind of figure that I think we have an extradition treaty with Belgium. Apparently, he's not ready to be extradited or anything.

Starting point is 00:10:41 Apparently, he says can go to Europe. So that was interesting. We also had the bankless party as well. So on Monday of ECC, we just had the bankless party for bankless citizens, a bunch of podcast guests, and some friends of bankless. Sadly, I missed it because I missed my connection in Chicago. So while everyone else was partying at the bankless party, I was in Chicago doing nothing waiting for my flight.

Starting point is 00:11:06 So that was a bummer. But overall, it's been a great time. Been a great ECC. Awesome, man. I know you're a bit jet-laked. You know, we had to coordinate. to find a good hour to record this. So thanks for being here.

Starting point is 00:11:16 Another week for the bankless nation. We never miss. We have never missed a weekly roll up. Let's talk markets for a second. So Bitcoin, what's the price in the week? Started the week, $57,300, ending the week, $57,800, up about a little more than half a percent. So up a flat. Upby flat.

Starting point is 00:11:35 So the bearish factors, I guess. I mean, people in general, I don't know what the vibes were at ECC. I know it's more research-focused. have focused type of conference where we talk about like serious things like you know based rollups fixing fragmentation all of these things but uh i'll tell you the the the crypto narrative has felt very bearish uh lately like we're not enjoying this this flat summer flat down summer flat is down now yeah it it is um so bitcoin had its first 25 percent drawdown this is after a a streak of 427 days okay so we're 25 percent down at least we were 25 percent down at least we were

Starting point is 00:12:13 at some point during the week on Bitcoin. And this, but I guess the flip side is, this was an incredible run, 427 days of a streak. And it beat the 2012 record by 63 days. So I guess another way to look at this is like we had an incredible run and we were due for a correction. I mean, 423 days essentially up before and now down 25%. It's not the end of the world. But people are blaming the German government. Apparently, they keep selling their Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:12:45 Recall, we talked to a couple roll-ups ago that, you know, Germany had a few billion, I think, in Bitcoin seizures, right? So they just sold another 362 million on the week, and they still have more. They still have $1.3 billion that they might sell. It is very large numbers. This is a tweet in German, so I use like, I can't, yeah, my German's a little rusty. Hit translate post. Hit translate post. Let's do.

Starting point is 00:13:11 Translate posts. Okay, so this is a German MP, I believe, who is saying that instead of holding Bitcoin as a strategic reserve currency, we are selling it. We shouldn't be doing that in Germany. We should be a bit more like the U.S., which apparently, like the U.S. is debating whether they should sell some of their seized Bitcoin or keep it. Or hold it. Yeah, I'm not sure. That's news to me as well, but maybe the pointing at the Americans who are thinking about this. But like, it's a good point.

Starting point is 00:13:40 Why are we selling all of this Bitcoin? We have this Bitcoin. That's what I said when we were dumping our Bitcoin. Just take it from one department and put it in the treasury. Just give it to the treasury. Exactly. The MP added, instead of selling, I recommend developing a comprehensive Bitcoin strategy. So like, why sell when you can hold and maybe support the euro at some point in time?

Starting point is 00:14:02 So anyway, Germany's dumping on us. This was known, but apparently the markets don't like this dumpage. There's also Mount Gawks, of course. that news is out there where the distributions are finally happening, and that's still in the news. They are happening in two more months. So according to the agreement with Mount Cox trustees, BitStamp has 60 days to distribute the token. Krakken has 90 days to BitGo, 20 days. So there's a lot of Bitcoin that still could be sold as a result of Mount Cox.

Starting point is 00:14:34 So this type of cell pressure and the prospect of cell pressure is contributing to the flatty down market right now. Yeah, there's a lot of just overhang. I think everyone has oversold the Mount Gok sell pressure. I think I gave this take last week. I think the Mount Gok sell pressure is not as much as people are at least fudding about. Like, maybe the market has digested it, but like in terms of perception, that's much less sell pressure. Like the German, Germany's like dumping $1.3 billion of Bitcoin on us after they've dumped like $600 million of Bitcoin. That's sell pressure.

Starting point is 00:15:07 Gok sell pressure. I don't really think is all that real. Anyways, we got some bullish factors too. So the Bitcoin ETFs are absorbing a lot of this cell pressure. So while Bitcoin is being sold by all of these entities, on like July 8th, the BlackRock ETF took in $187 million, so $187 million, a buy pressure. The next day, total buy pressure of the ETFs came in at a quarter billion dollars. So we're painting in some numbers of inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs.

Starting point is 00:15:40 finally waking up again, no longer dormant. We'll see how long this holds. But we're pulling in a lot of this self-pressure Bitcoin into the ETFs. It's actually super impressive. This is James Safer, like summing up. Bitcoin ETFs doing the exact opposite of dumping during this dumpage in the first 20% drawdown since the launch. They're buying. They're doubling down.

Starting point is 00:16:01 So last week, $650 million in net inflows on the week. I got to say, I'm impressed with TradFi here, David. Like, it seems like the crypto. Natives and traders are the paper hands here. And Tradfai is she's diamond-handed it. They see the dip and they're buying. So, like, well done. I mean, this is a more robust set of purchasers than I think crypto anticipated.

Starting point is 00:16:24 And it's great to have that support from a price perspective. Hopefully. Yeah, on July 4th, when I think it was the peak dumpage, I just looked at the ETH price. I think it got down to like 2,800s. And I was like, this is stupid. And also, it's the day of freedom. So I'm going to buy the freedom currency. I just bought in solidarity with the ETH price.

Starting point is 00:16:43 It feels good to buy $2,800. The freedom currency? Yeah, ether. It's the freedom. It's a sovereign. Everyone's be your own bank. It's the freedom currency. Freedom Day, freedom currency.

Starting point is 00:16:53 I thought you were trying to make a dollar as the freedom currency kind of joke. But it's like, get off the show, David. No, ignore that. You know it's funny. When I was looking at the spot Bitcoin ETF charts, I noticed these gaps in the charts. I was like, wait, what happened those days? Oh, it's because the market's closed. The weekends.

Starting point is 00:17:08 Of course. It closed. Weekends. those happen. Well, let's check in on our friend, Eith. So where are we on the week? Also, upy flat starting the week at $3,500, ending the week at $3,5500. Almost got above $3,200 right there. But yeah, there's that dip down to $2,850, which your boy bought, your boy bought right there. Right at that needle. Right at the bottom. I could see you on the screen. Yeah. Yeah, so I got down pretty low. And now we're back above $3,000. Yeah, it's hard to like feel good about these like relatively low eth prices.

Starting point is 00:17:45 I would like it to be higher. But nonetheless, I mean, this is the buying. We know we're about to get the ETF. When we got the ETF announcement, it went from these prices up to almost $4,000. And now we are back down to these prices. So you get to buy pre-ETF announced ETH price after the ETH is announced, which I think is a blessing. Yep. You get another roll-up to purchase.

Starting point is 00:18:08 and is a great opportunity to do that. Thanks to Cracken for the price charts, of course, and that is the place. If you're going to go buy some crypto, buy some ETH, go do it at Cracken. Create an account if you haven't already. Let's talk about the ETH, ETH for a second. So it's not here.

Starting point is 00:18:24 We said that in the intro. So what's going on? What's going on is more paperwork is being filed. So here's Eric Balchunis, and he's going through a whole thread of all of the various S-1s. It's the final paperwork from all of the issuers. You know, you've got very. Vanek, you've got BlackRock, you've got Bitwise, on and on, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:18:42 The quote from one of the issuers is, it's close to the finish line. I think that about sums it up. We're like very close to the finish line. So it could happen anytime. It could happen before the next rollup. I'm sure it will, David. This has got to be the last rollup where we don't have an ETH ETF. There's also a little bit of news from one of the issuers.

Starting point is 00:19:01 An issuer that is, I think, top of mind because they've had the trust, which is gray scale. So they have billions of dollars of ether. right now and a big, I guess, source of cell pressure might be, could that ether drain out of gray scale and, I don't know, go on the open market? But they're taking steps to prevent that, to patch that hole. What is Grayscale doing with the ETH-E mini-trust strategy? Yeah, so the mini-trust is basically a sub, another version of their ETF, but this one with extremely low fees. And so we saw the GBT-T-C outflows out of the gray-scale Bitcoin ETFs. And this was just the reason why we could not go up in price right after the Bitcoin ETF was approved because the Grayscale

Starting point is 00:19:44 the ETFs were just getting, they were to selling because the fees were like 2.5% when everyone else had fees of 0.2%. And so they eventually rolled out the Grayscale GBTC mini trust with a very low fees. And you could roll your Grayscale ETF into the mini trust without taking a taxable event. You say it eventually. It took them like months, right? Yeah, like multiple months. Now, we are getting the gray scale ETHE mini trust, apparently right out of the gate. And so they are trying to plug their own wound before it even opens. And so this is a difference between the Bitcoin ETF and the ETH ETF. When the ETH ETF launches, we will have this mini trust. And so anyone's selling as a result of the very high gray scale prices will, in theory, just not sell anymore because they

Starting point is 00:20:33 have the option to roll into the mini trust without paying capital gains tax and also enjoying low prices. So it allows holders to be holders. And so this will see how much this plugs up sell pressure out of the Grayscale Fund when the ETF gets approved and starts trading. It's only bullish. It's like in this most bearish format, it is equivalent to the Bitcoin story. It can only, this is only a bullish addiction, addition to the ETH ETF story. This is a chart. I was just looking at prior to recording here. This is the ETHI discount or premium to NAV, which we've talked about in the months before. Remember, it was not April. We were 25%

Starting point is 00:21:10 Whoever was buying ETH in April, well done. Congrats on your games. Remember we shouted this out? This is a nice arbitrage opportunity, but I got to say, not even we were anticipating that we'd get an ETH,

Starting point is 00:21:22 ETF so soon. Anyway, now that arbitrage opportunity has basically completely closed. We're about, like, within a press, the actual spot price. So ETHE was trading at a discount

Starting point is 00:21:33 to spot price of Ethereum, and now it is no longer. Dude, run us by the total crypto market cap. Where are we at on the week? 2.27 trillion. Wow, that's low. I haven't seen 2.2 in a while. Barish.

Starting point is 00:21:48 Wow. Okay. Sick. Also, on layer 2 beat, we are hitting a 20.6x scaling factor. 20 Ethereums are happening on Ethereum layer 2s. Brought in by some of these new layer 3s on the scene. Zai is consistently posting like 100 transaction per second. days consistently. I don't even know what Zai is. I guess I need to go investigate this.

Starting point is 00:22:12 I don't even know where it settles. Arbitrum. Arbitrum train with Arbitrum any trust. Cool. I'll have to investigate that. But yeah, that's been on like the layer two beat for like a number of weeks now. Anyways, just blasted through a scaling factor to new all-time highs and Ethereum scaling on layer two's. We've got more market stuff to talk about, including the reason why maybe stocks are up, but crypto is flat. We've got to talk about that. There's a conversation. to be had here. Could we be wrong? Is the question I have for you, David. Also, tokenization seems to be really taking off in a big way.

Starting point is 00:22:45 Black Rock hit a major milestone. Goldman Sachs is now throwing a hat into the ring, so we'll talk about that. And then ETH gas fees, they are down. So this is bad for fee revenue, but is it good for Ethereum or bad for Ethereum overall? So lots more to talk about. But before we get there, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including our recommended exchange for 2024. That is Cracken. Go create an account.

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Starting point is 00:25:49 Make sure your vote ready by staking your CTSI before the votes open. We're going to talk about stocks in just a second because they're all-time highs, basically. And we got some good inflation numbers on the week here, which partially contributed to that, the anticipation of that. So we're at 3% inflation. That was a bit better than analysts expected. So, of course, this leads to, of course, this leads to more speculation that perhaps Powell is going to dip into that easy monetary policy and begin bringing rates down. But let's talk about stocks for a minute.

Starting point is 00:26:24 Have you seen this chart, David? This is the QQQQ chart. It looks kind of like a crypto chart actually during the good days. Yeah. Yeah, during the good crypto days. NASDAQ has been on an absolute tear. And I don't know if you've seen this, but this is a correlation chart between Bitcoin and NASDAQ and SMP. And we are at lows that we haven't seen in terms of the correlation between stocks and Bitcoin that we haven't seen since November

Starting point is 00:26:54 2023, so about a year ago. So stocks and crypto assets over the last two months have become increasingly discorrelated. Maybe some of the reason for that, is stocks don't have Germany dumping on them. Stocks don't have a Mount Gox unlock. That's part of the reason. But I think we also have to be open to a broader reason. And a question I have for you is like, do you think we are overly, like,

Starting point is 00:27:20 do you think we could be wrong about this bull cycle? It seems like AI is getting a lot of attention. Do you know the narrative from VCs 18 months ago was like pivot to AI? Well, it seems like stocks have really pivoted to AI. And they're getting a ton of the attention, a ton of the inflows here. If we look at the biggest stock gainers, the S&P 500, the top 10 biggest stocks, number of these

Starting point is 00:27:43 are kind of like the tech stocks, contributed 77% of the index's total returns. So these big tech companies, these big, like AI plays basically that are driving the stock market up to this point in time. And they've outperformed crypto in a lot of ways, at least recently. You think we have something to worry about here? Usually when we are meaningfully decoupled from the S&P and the stock market, it actually is like in the negative way, as in they're going up and we're going down. I've never seen us be meaningfully decoupled to the upside, maybe except for a few acute circumstances. I don't know why that is.

Starting point is 00:28:19 AI is like the, at least winning the attention game, I think, as you said, just because like it's easy to understand AI. It's still hard to understand crypto. That is maybe another theme of ETH CC that I've noticed is like all the contents are. getting like more technical, not less. We are talking about even deeper infra and even like more niche parts of like scaling strategies and stuff like this. We are not talking about consumer apps. And like it's definitely in, it's getting more insular in our world, in the crypto world.

Starting point is 00:28:52 Like people aren't coming in. Like you can see that in crypto media like YouTube numbers. Meanwhile, like this AI content sphere is exploding. It might just be an intention game. also at the same time I think this industry is kind of splitting between between the four-year cycles. I think part of this industry is trying to stay on the like crack cocaine addiction of the four-year cycles. And then another part of the cycle, another part of the industry is like, okay, like we're professional now. We have tokenization.

Starting point is 00:29:18 We have ETFs. We're going to smooth ourselves out and like get off of this rodeo and just like be incrementally better every single month. And that between, I don't know, that's just like kind of like, I think contributing to some of the bad vibes. also definitely the bad vibes are like we don't have the bull market and there is a bull market somewhere else and it's in the tech stocks getting a little jealous here maybe yeah yeah we're getting jealous people are i i my my base case is still be patient slow summer and then we're going to pick back up in in fall and uh e thetf is monumental and crypto hasn't had its full uh bull cycle and i'm with ral i don't think we have a bull market i think we have the etf inflows well sure sure but

Starting point is 00:29:59 I actually think we'll get banana zone, as Rao Paul likes to say. I still think that's coming. That's still my base case. But it's not inevitable. There is some sort of risk in my mind. Something to watch out for is like, well, what if we miss this cycle? Right. It's like I want to be open to that potentiality as well that kind of like AI sucks all

Starting point is 00:30:19 of the auction out of the room. And this cycle, we just haven't hit the consumer use cases here. Like we are too insular. We're too focused on our infrastructure. and we're not really developing like new use cases. That said, let's get to tokenization, because this is a major narrative and major use case that is just heating up that Tradfi is,

Starting point is 00:30:40 yeah, they're falling over themselves excited about. So you remember the Biddle Fund, which is the tokenized treasuries brought to you by BlackRock on Ethereum. So it's BlackRock opening a bank branch, let's say, on Ethereum mainnet. That just hit $500 million, which is a major milestone,

Starting point is 00:30:58 and is going up only. Look at, look at this. This is the tokenized treasury market. Now it's getting close to massive growth. A year ago, we were less than a hundred million. And so we are, well, a little bit over a year ago. There's like massive growth in tokenized treasuries. And you can see it's really accelerated recently. David, I went over recently and I signed up for one of these tokenized treasury platforms. And I deposited a little bit into Biddle. So I got the full UX experience. I got to tell you, there's a lot of paperwork still involved. This is not like going through like. You have to do KYC, right?

Starting point is 00:31:33 Yeah. KYC and like accreditation and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's like paperwork. And at the end of that, you get like, yeah, your wallet can do some tokenization things. Yeah, you're added to the white list. Right. It's this weird hybrid. It's this weird hybrid.

Starting point is 00:31:49 But it's easier than going through kind of like the buying T bills in a, like a brokerage, at least like for me, for someone who's crypto-natives. So I think there's a lot of potential here. And Black Rock certainly thinks so. I know when we were going through our ETH narratives, we were like, what's the big one that's going to sell for TradFi? And tokenization in both of our pitches came to the forefront. I think that's here. I think that is going to do big things.

Starting point is 00:32:12 And once the Ethereum ETF comes out, I think all of these major Wall Street Tradfai shops will start talking a lot more about tokenization. Yeah, I think that's right. 500 million is a pretty good milestone. I would like to see it hit a billion. And I think it's just heading straight there. Like the growth on it is like not slowing down at all. And once BlackRock gets in like people FOMO, like BlackRock putting in like a hundred, a billion dollars on chain is going to cause people to like follow on and do the same thing that they're doing. It is worth shouting out that Franklin Templeton did get there first.

Starting point is 00:32:43 Franklin Templeton has done like the tokenization play, the real world asset tokenization play on Ethereum. But when BlackRock does it, it's different. Coincidentally, Goldman Sachs announced this year that they plan to launch three tokenized funds this year. We didn't get too much details about, like, where the funds will be. But, like, my default is Ethereum layer one. That just makes sense. They say the primary focus of these funds is the U.S. fund sector, the European debt markets as well. And then they also want to create marketplaces for tokenized assets, which is a pretty strong investment into the world of tokenized assets coming out of Goldman Sachs.

Starting point is 00:33:19 A pretty interesting report from McKinsey says that they are forecasting $2 to $4 trillion market cap. of just real world asset tokenization by 2030. So a little excerpt from their report here, which was definitely worth reading. There's a link in the show notes saying, we estimate that the tokenized market cap across asset classes could reach about $2 trillion by 2030, excluding stable coins.

Starting point is 00:33:43 So not cryptocurrencies, not stable coins. So $2 trillion of stuff tokenized that aren't dollars. And then they say the pessimistic and optimistic scenarios range from $1 trillion to about $4 trillion. And then they kind of list off. an order of operations of what could be tokenized. Cash and deposits, which they excluded from the total. Total total comes to number one.

Starting point is 00:34:04 We already have that. That's stable coins. Mutual funds and ETFs coming in number two. Loans and securitization. Bonds and exchange traded notes. That's kind of like wave one. Alternative funds, alternative assets, unlisted equities, precious metals, which we actually have, we did get some gold tokenization earlier like last month.

Starting point is 00:34:23 Publicly listed equities. These are stocks and tangible assets. assets and derivatives would be like the last of the things to come. But they all, they start to predict some of these things will all happen by 2030. So, uh, Tradfai getting really bullish tokenization. Yeah, this is just Tradfai swapping out their infrastructure, right? Replacing kind of like, you know, the fax machine and mainframes with something new and more open, more permissionless with more innovation. David, one thing that has also happened. We, we talked about the scaling factor of, of layer two as being like 20x. And, and that's a great thing. A byproduct of that is,

Starting point is 00:34:56 Heath gas is low, very low. I don't know if you've gone on main net recently. But it's pretty cheap to do things. And of course, there's a bull case for this and a bare case for this, as always, right? So the bulk case for this is, hey, eth fees are cheap again. That's fantastic. And they have just... We fixed the fee markets.

Starting point is 00:35:18 We fixed the fee market. Ethereum is expanded into blob space. You know, traffic is kind of migrated to layer twos. Layer twos are incredibly cheap. This is the rent paid from layer twos to layer ones. Do you see it in March just like falling off the cliff? It goes to zero. It looks like the chart breaks, actually.

Starting point is 00:35:37 And the reason is, of course, Ethereum upgrade with the most recent Ethereum upgrade, we had blob space, really cheap transaction fees. We call it the HOV lane for layer twos, essentially. And the fees layer twos are paying to Ethereum just dropped off the cliff ever since, which is great for consumers because transaction fees are super cheap on layer twos. Now, that's the bull case. The bear case is, where'd all of our revenue go? Ethy asset is no longer deflationary, at least right now.

Starting point is 00:36:07 And so, like, where's kind of the revenue for this? So I don't know if you've seen some of these comparisons, but there've been some reports recently. You know, we've talked about ether, the triple point asset. And one of the points on that is a cash flowing asset, right? A productive asset, something that, you know, distributes. cash flows. Well, Ether's cash flows haven't been as high as they have been previously. In fact, Tron is catching up in terms of the cash flows that it is producing. And for the month of June, it was actually like you're verging on higher than Ethereum. Here's a report from Michael from

Starting point is 00:36:45 the Defy report. I'm actually going to have on next week, David, while you're out and you'll chat to him about this. But he compares Seoul and the fee revenue that Seoul is generating through MEV and transaction fees to ether and I asked the question should sold that Solana be trading at an 83% discount to ether when their fees aren't you know like an 83% discount. I don't know if you have any takes on this and this is kind of an unresolved you know question that I'm going to be and I think we will collectively be digging into more of but eth fees as it's outsourcing its execution layer to layer twos. ETH fees are going down at least in in the short run. Do you have any takes here? Yeah, just to put one more metric on it, we have printed about 140, 150,000 ether since the middle of April, because we have not just been able to sustain high layer 1 gas fees.

Starting point is 00:37:38 I think this was kind of like a big conversation as to what would happen once we spin up the layer 2s and we also introduced 4844, we introduced blobs. My kind of default scenario was that layer 1 gas fees would hold steady and stop increasing and then demand for layer 2s would also. go up. So induced demand, but we still transact on the layer one. It does actually seem that, like, people are just migrating away from the Ethereum layer one. And I actually, like, finding that in myself, like, whenever I'm using Ethereum, it's actually generally like layer two most of the time. And so I've seen some of my own behavior shift on to... That was always the plan, though. Away from the Ethereum. That was always the plan. Yeah, that was always a plan. We would say, like, yeah, you, like, the layer one is not for users.

Starting point is 00:38:18 It's for chains. And I guess we just don't have enough chains to displace the loss of users. But In terms of priorities of what we want, like, I prioritize layer two free transactions over prioritizing the fee bird. Like that we want, I want to grow GDP, not grow revenue. And when I see like layer two activity at all time highs at 20x scaling factor, which like a blue through 10 went straight to 20. To me, that's, I'll take the gambit of a lesser value accrual to eth a asset if I can get more activity on more block. I agree with you there. I think that is Ethereum's long-term game and certainly what it's playing to make layer two fees as cheap as possible and accrue to all of the GDP and prop up ether as a monetary asset. But we'll see how that plays out. The market's trying to figure out the pricing of all these various assets in comparison. We have more coming up and this is big. So crypto has been formally adopted as part of the Republican platform.

Starting point is 00:39:15 So what does that mean? It actually includes the right to go bankless. So we'll talk about that. Also, a long-awaited Ethereum documentary is about to get released. I think you've got the inside scoop on that, David. I want to hear. And Celsius wants its customers to return money to them? It's going in the wrong direction here. And before we get to all that hot, juicy news, we're going to go here from our friends and sponsors over at Mantle, the ecosystem with the multi-billion dollar treasury that goes

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Starting point is 00:42:05 Just another way Uniswap is helping you swap smarter. David, did you know 2024 is an election year in the U.S. anyway? I am, there's one thing that I'm aware. I wish I wasn't aware of it some week. But this is a good outcome, at least for crypto. So the GOP platform, that is the Republicans in the United States of America, they have rolled out a paragraph. They put together their platform documentation. This is what the party stands for.

Starting point is 00:42:34 This is our party platform. They had a section in there called championing innovation. And the very top of that section, there's a paragraph about crypto. So it said this, Republicans will end Democrats. unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a central bank digital currency, we will defend the right to mine Bitcoin and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their digital assets and transact free from government surveillance and control. That paragraph is actually exactly what we want.

Starting point is 00:43:08 The right to self-custody means the right to go bankless. Of course, we should have that. It's great that a major political party is enshrining that. and to transact free from government surveillance and control. Well, that's very interesting. That has implications for privacy technology. And some of the court cases we're hearing about tornado cash. The right to mine Bitcoin is great, too.

Starting point is 00:43:28 And then ending the Democrats' unlawful crypto crackdown. So it's acknowledging that regulators have overstepped, that Operation Shookpoint has been a thing. I don't know. Great paragraph. You couldn't ask for better. This is Nick Carter saying they're going to end the crypto crackdown, no CBDC, the rights of mind right to self-custy right to transact freely couldn't really ask for anything more i was talking to uh some of my more liberal friends about this and because i remember having a conversation with um

Starting point is 00:43:55 way back when when donald trump was first saying some positive words about crypto and the reaction was like well he can just say anything he wants he basically has a blank check he doesn't have to actually fulfill anything uh where are the party where's the party platform i would like a party platform and this is that okay we actually got in in in writing a party platform. And so this is like a very meaningful step forward. You said we can ask for more. I can ask for a little bit more.

Starting point is 00:44:23 Like it's kind of a short sentence. I would like a crypto like section. Like more bullets. It was a lot like kind of packed into that that sentence. Yeah. They said the right things but there's not a lot of detail behind this. It's a very strong foot in the door. You can't hate it.

Starting point is 00:44:39 I get it. I do have some advice for for the Democrats though if they want to like check this. and you know, like, counteract this from the Republicans. Make a better one. Just say the same thing. Just copy and paste the statement and do that. And then you neutralize it. And if you don't, it's kind of telling.

Starting point is 00:44:58 It's kind of stupid and also kind of telling. But like, why are you letting the Republicans have an advantage for you? Just like these, just say the same thing. Like, what's wrong with this? Like what? Yeah, especially that last line. The right to self-custody, their digital assets and then transact from government surveillance and control.

Starting point is 00:45:15 Yeah. God, I feel like there's a tornado cash element in there. Like, transact free from government, state, surveillance, and control. That feels freeing of tornado cash to me. Yeah. Well, I mean, but to your friend's points, now it's a matter of holding them to it, of course, and holding all of our political leadership to this. This is interesting, David. Donald Trump is going to be speaking at the Bitcoin Conference.

Starting point is 00:45:39 Bitcoin 24. Which Bitcoin conference is this? This is July 25th. At the end of this month. When is that? That is in like two weeks. Crazy. I think this is absolutely massive news, right?

Starting point is 00:45:52 This gives you a scope for how much on the radar like in kind of 2024 election, you know, crypto actually is. So it didn't show up in the Biden v. Trump debate. Maybe it will in future debates. Biden barely showed up to that debate, though. I got to say. Like, I mean, it was, they didn't talk about a lot of substance. I still.

Starting point is 00:46:13 I think this is one of the top. top 10 things, would you say? 10, 15 things, though, in the election. Events that happen in crypto history? Or just issues. No, no, issues in the election. In the 2024 election, I think crypto is in the top dozen things to be like kind of wedge issues.

Starting point is 00:46:30 This is where I'm different types of things to talk about. Like, it's high up there. It's on the list anyway. I think when like Republicans and Democrats are going head to head, they are not going to talk about crypto, but that actually underserves how big of a crypto, of a thing crypto is. Like, I think like basically every single Bitcoin, not every single, I think a lot of Bitcoiners are like politically reserved. Like, think about Eric, the Eric Forrehe's types. Yeah, they're libertarian. Highly libertarian. They like resent the concept of voting because

Starting point is 00:47:03 they hate the two-party system. They don't forget it. But then like, but then Donald Trump comes and like they the Donald Trump is going to pull so many non-voting bitcorners out of like the corners of the of America and it is like going to be this party that like runs under the radar of like general polling because they've always been like an anti-voter I agree I agree Donald Trump orange orange president orange coin you know it's like it works I so here's here's a fascinating poll done by a grayscale it's actually a Harris poll can inducted on behalf of Grayscale. So this is funded by Grayscale operated by the Harris Bowl. Yeah. So 2024 U.S. election, some of the key takeaways, 47% of voters, of all voters they surveyed, expect some of their investment portfolio to include crypto. That is a lot.

Starting point is 00:47:56 That's a lot, right? And this partially, I think, is from the ETF, the Bitcoin ETF. A lot of people who are like, I don't know, it could be illegal. I don't know how to buy this thing. It's like, oh, it's my Schwab accounts and Fidelity. Okay. Great. Yeah, like, I want that. All that upside. I don't want just the people who use, you know, crypto exchanges, the crypto grows to get all that. It's up from 40% last year. So 40% this year, 40% last year. So we gained 7% of all voters now own more crypto. Yeah. Wow. And voters, people don't like to vote against their bags. Like, we know this, right? No, absolutely not. That is a direct financial relationship. Do you have to your ballot?

Starting point is 00:48:33 This is also, I think, telling crypto is a bipartisan topic. So there's similar ownership rates among Republicans. 18% and Democrats, 19%. Democrats even have more crypto than Republicans. 18% of voters are more interested in investing in Bitcoin and other crypto assets. Thanks to the Bitcoin ETF. This is hugely

Starting point is 00:48:51 legitimizing and 20% were compelled by the having. Oh, cool. That's great. Well, they got some education to do. Some other stuff going on in Congress, by the way, I don't know if you know, but as we're recording this, we record this on Thursday, it comes out tomorrow. So you guys might have

Starting point is 00:49:07 more information about this. You know the SAB-121 bill that the repeal of that got passed, made through the House, made through Senate, and then Biden Banhammered, vetoed it? Well, there's a way to unvito a veto, right? You have to get... You can

Starting point is 00:49:23 trump a veto. Two-thirds majority in the Senate can trump a veto, right? So that'd be a lot of Democrats. We did not get that in the first vote. So some people will have to change their votes as a result of like a new information that they've had in the past like And as far as these things go, it wasn't even close, right? Like a whole bunch of Democrat senators

Starting point is 00:49:42 would have to totally throw Biden under the bus and be like, we don't respect to your veto. So very unlikely to happen. But what if, I'm just saying, what if that vote is happening actually today? And if that happened, like call it a 0.1% chance. That would be absolutely crazy, David. I don't even want to think about it. So it's good. But like, it's in front of the Senate. And the nice thing about this, it gives all of the senators another kind of, you know, are you, are you pro-crypto? Or are you? Yeah, that's what I'm interested about. Put you on the record.

Starting point is 00:50:17 How many people, like the vote is maybe will change and what in what direction is it going to change in by how many people? Even if we don't get there, it would be cool to see like three more senators, four more senators come over to the crypto side. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Celsius. You remember old Alex Machinsky and Celsius,

Starting point is 00:50:37 is scammed a whole bunch of people. My favorite man. The guy that's the t-shirt that says to not trust banks. He was right. He didn't tell us that Celsius actually a bank. And not to trust him. I was in the disclaimer on the back of the t-shirt. But anyway, Celsius is suing their users.

Starting point is 00:50:54 You might ask for why. Like, why is Celsius trying to get some clawback? So apparently within 90 days prior to a set of savvy users, you know, who knows if they read the tea leaves, they saw something in advance, but... Savvy or lucky or something. Lucky or something. Maybe they knew something. Who knows? But they withdrew some of their funds from Celsius, as one does, right? I'm a little bit nervous about this. I'm going to withdraw my crypto, keep it, or withdraw on sell it or something like this. Celsius is looking to claw back

Starting point is 00:51:22 the funds from those who withdrew, I think within the past 90 days, I believe. 90 days before it froze withdrawals. Not only are they looking to claw back funds, they are looking to claw back funds. They are looking to claw back funds. in kind, but you pay them back in dollars. So if you withdrew Bitcoin at like the $25,000 Bitcoin price that it was at, you now owe them $65,000 Bitcoin in, that's the bill that you now have from Chelsea. Wow. Right.

Starting point is 00:51:54 And so like, so how long ago was that? That was over a year ago. So now people are receiving bills at somewhere between two to four times the value of what they withdrew. in dollar man like 18 months later yeah like that's that

Starting point is 00:52:09 maybe they gambled it away on on DJ coins like that is just too long it's too long did something else yeah 100% you can't expect if you wanted to do this

Starting point is 00:52:19 you needed to have done this immediately after not a year and a half yeah and so imagine like your Celsius experience and like you know like I got out or I got some portion of my funds out

Starting point is 00:52:31 and then you get this nasty letter to your house or email They probably send it in multiple ways just saying, yeah, you owe us X thousands of dollars, right, for the funds that you withdrew 90 days to us going bankrupt. Wow. And if you want to fight that, you have to go hire a lawyer. Just like screwing over retail yet again. So anyway, that's going on. Apparently, this is pretty common in bankruptcy cases, by the way. Right.

Starting point is 00:52:59 So, like, there is this window. If you go to other bankruptcy cases that have been like this, not in crypto, but like, there's this window of time where you can claw back some of the funds. So this is not without precedent. It's not coming out of completely left field. But the one thing that is incredibly weird is to ask for, you know, the crypto assets themselves that have appreciated by, you know, massive amounts, you know, two to 10x since the time that the bankruptcy occurred. That's going to be fought in court. Because there's like, there's probably a lot of retail people who are very upset about this.

Starting point is 00:53:33 but there's also a few, like, whales who can definitely fund a legal campaign. Yeah, I'm sure they'll class action. I'm sure they'll figure it out. Anyway, it's just kind of annoying. It wasn't a year and a half ago. It was a year ago, by the way. Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 00:53:45 Time does not fly, I guess, in this industry. Yeah. Well, here's something that's been in progress for a while, which is the ETH documentary, at least this is one of several documentaries, I think, being created about Ethereum, but this is one I was particularly excited about. So a trailer is coming up pretty soon. Anyway, give us the scoop. Yeah, so this used to.

Starting point is 00:54:03 to be called Ethereum the Infinite Garden. This is Kerry Warpens documentary, which many Ethereum community members are in it. We, I don't know if we are in it, but we were filmed in it. Cameras came to my house, and then they recorded a weekly roll-up with you and I. Oh, that's right. I don't even remember doing that. That was like, that was when I lived in San Diego, bro. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:24 They also have some footage of, like, an interview I did of Vitalik in 2021 at ECC, so three years ago. So they've been just like every single. single Ethereum conference, like just collecting footage. They did this fundraise via mirror where they raised $3 million in ETH. Mariano Conti and a few other people are like producers of this because they minted the NFT by donating to, by donate to just the fundraising effort. It's finally coming out. It's finally coming out.

Starting point is 00:54:52 So July 23rd on Zora is the official trailer where anyone can mint it to support the distribution. And then there's also rewards for being a top 20 minter. So if you're a top 20 minter, you get a. ticket to the in-person pre-premier. There's a bunch of other rewards as well. I am very excited about this. I would love to,

Starting point is 00:55:11 I've been waiting for this. This has changed form over the years. Like I said, it started off as like the Infinite Garden. Now it's like Ethereum Stories. The website is Ethereumfilm. XYZ. The official premiere September 18th, available on traditional streaming platforms

Starting point is 00:55:27 in the winter of this year, which is pretty cool. What do you think we're going to get? It's streaming platforms. Do you think we'll get Netflix? Hulu? I hope we get one of the big ones. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:38 We get some wide distribution behind this. It'd be great. Moving on to Rayses. Bankless Ventures Rays happened this week. This is Rome Protocol, who raised $9 million. This is a Solana Ethereum hybrid protocol. Pretty interesting. This Rome uses Solana as a decentralized shared sequencer for Ethereum roll-ups.

Starting point is 00:55:59 So Ethereum roll-ups can use the, level of decentralization that Solana has for their sequencer to sequence transactions, process transactions, and then create a proof to submit it to Ethereum. So Ethereum layer two, Solana the layer one as the sequencer, and then back down to the Ethereum layer one. So confirm transactions faster. You can enhance privacy and scalability, reduce blockchain costs, leverage composability for across-trans transactions. That's what a shared sequenceer does. So multiple roll-ups can use Rome and they can shared sequence between each other. Pretty cool. It's like kind of taking the components of both ecosystems and smashing them together.

Starting point is 00:56:36 I'm pretty excited about it. Will this bring peace and harmony across all the tribes and unify them? No. No. You know, we're all getting along here. We're all collaborating on this solution. Yeah, we'll still fight on Twitter, but we're also like, I do think in the fullness of time, crypto projects just do meld together.

Starting point is 00:56:54 Yeah. The modular world will also be a highly composable one. And that's what's happening here. The components all kind of fit. together. What's this coming out, David? When it's been in that, I am unsure.

Starting point is 00:57:06 I'm unsure. That's because Rome wasn't built in the day. Did you just ask that question just to say that? Oh, man. Let's get to the meeting the week. You know I did. You walked right into it. I walked right into that.

Starting point is 00:57:21 We were looking at the shout-out to the event that you were talking about earlier, but I guess you were on a flight. You're on some death flight, right? From Chicago. Yeah, so on Monday, the first day, I have ECC Bundy. We bankless through a party at a cute little cocktail party on a rooftop. I was not there.

Starting point is 00:57:37 I got so many pictures of friends at my party. Well, I was in Chicago, and they were like, hey, where are you? And I'm like, I am in Chicago. I am sorry. Neither you nor I went. Unfortunately, couldn't make it. But a lot of bankless citizens there and members of the bankless team as well. I heard it was a great time.

Starting point is 00:57:52 I heard it was a great time. Well, glad to everyone who made it out, thank you bankless citizens for supporting us and for being there. It's a great opportunity. I hope the drinks were yummy. I always say there's a great opportunity to meet in person yet I'm almost never there I will be at permissionless though in October very excited about that so that's happening David let's end with a moment of Zen and since this will be the last weekly rollup without Ethereum ETF absolutely 100% guarantee 100% we got a guarantee okay so we've got the David

Starting point is 00:58:20 Hoffman guarantee we should go celebrate by watching a bitwise ETF commercial which a new one popped out this week so enjoy that I will end with Some disclaimers, of course, you know, crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everybody, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot. Hello, I'm Ethereum.

Starting point is 00:58:42 And I'm big tech. Oh, losing a user? We are really going to miss you, but that stays too. We like to make sure that they don't take anything with them. So her posts or photos or followers? Yeah, they all stay here. For safekeeping. And with me, users can keep all their things when they leave an app.

Starting point is 00:58:59 Yeah, but then we'd have nothing to remember them by. Miss you already. You play guitar? No. Why would I do that?

Bankless - ROLLUP: Stocks vs. Crypto | EthCC Recap | Trump BTC Conf Speaker | ETH Documentary Release

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