Bankless - ROLLUP: The Debate | 1st DeFi Congress Hearing | ENS joins PayPal/Venmo | Coinbase’s cbBTC

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

This week in crypto, the Trump vs. Harris debate sparked chatter, but did the markets react? DeFi had its first U.S. congressional hearing—how’d it go? Friend.tech burned its keys—abandoning? EN...S integrated with PayPal and Venmo, while Coinbase launched their cbBTC, and Sony might release a stablecoin. Plus, did we see “war mode” Vitalik this week? ------ 🔥The Bankless Summit | 70% of for Citizens | 20% code WRU20 https://x.com/BanklessHQ/status/1832085867483083211  https://www.bankless.com/join   ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24  https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠  🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚡️ CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiGovernance  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle    🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT  https://bankless.cc/toku   ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/62  ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 5:21 Markets https://farside.co.uk/?p=1518  https://x.com/biancoresearch/status/1832806811088638440  https://x.com/matt_hougan/status/1833149076722081906  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation-cpi-fed-readies-to-cut-rates-next-week/  https://www.tradingview.c om/symbols/FRED-WALCL/    https://x.com/sonyasunkim/status/1832114732326957274  18:02 House lawmakers ended up divided in 1st Congressional DeFi hearing  https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=409354  https://x.com/fund_defi/status/1833556632027955694   https://x.com/coinage_media/status/1833593592373243915  https://x.com/NeerajKA/status/1833530974212387228   https://x.com/rohangrey/status/1833543531228762323  https://x.com/jchervinsky/status/1833557017023459526  27:29 The Debate - they didn’t mention crypto!  https://x.com/CNN/status/1833703753179857334  https://x.com/erikvoorhees/status/1833705605045051850  https://polymarket.com/event/who-will-win-the-debate-according-to-polls  https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1726028429396  https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1833127734844789106  https://x.com/Polymarket/status/1833679653191512442  https://www.theblock.co/post/315808/presidential-debate-risk-off-crypto  https://x.com/MikeIppolito_/status/1833874331539034448  36:49 War mode vitalik? If its not stage 2, its not a rollup https://x.com/vitalikbuterin/status/1834061075970683367  39:01 zkSync Stage 1? & New CMO?  https://blog.zknation.io/zksync-governance-system/  https://x.com/the_matter_labs/status/1833894141052494218  42:41 Sony Stable Yen https://x.com/delzennejc/status/1833243834563650038  43:21 Friend.Tech team renounces control of smart contracts https://x.com/friendtech/status/1832581118165709140  https://x.com/functi0nZer0/status/1833178200685318213  https://x.com/MacroMate8/status/1833393620407488542  https://x.com/friendtech/status/1833259362711986335  47:06 EigenLayer announced Season 2 Stakedrop!  https://blog.eigenfoundation.org/season-2-stakedrop/  48:55 ENS was integrated with PayPal and Venmo!  https://x.com/ensdomains/status/1833536140529570039  https://x.com/brantlymillegan/status/1833568986547818820?  50:16 Coinbase Bitcoin - cbBTC released! https://x.com/coinbase/status/1834208544247144949  https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1833603913888764064?s=46&t=2ZINVXJQKx6xO_6Wiiu_2gb  55:04 David Fighting at Permissionless 58:01 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures ⁠ 

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:03 Bankless Station, happy second week of September. It is time for the bankless weekly roll up. David, you and I are back to our natural habitat, which is looking at each other through screens rather than being in person together. That's right. I got a moment of 3D Ryan this last week. And man, it was weird. It was a little too weird.
Starting point is 00:00:20 It's not great, is it? David's like, quick, let's leave. Let's go back to screens. Make this normal again. Chat over Discord, please. And you're actually in Lisbon, so you're all the way in Spain now. Yes, yes. I have gone from...
Starting point is 00:00:33 New York, from Argentina to New York to Lisbon. Haven't done a weekly roll up in New York, actually. You and I live very different lives. Let me just tell you that with respect to our travel. It's great. Okay. But I know you caught this. This is a question for the bankless nation.
Starting point is 00:00:47 One of the things we're going to talk about today is the Trump versus Harris debate. Did you enjoy it? Did the crypto prices enjoy it? That's the question. Defi had its debut in the first hearing around Defi, specifically Defi, in the United States House of Congress. How did it go? We introduced Defy to Congress.
Starting point is 00:01:06 Did they like it? In the world of CryptoNatives, Frentec has burned their keys governing over the app. Are they abandoning the project? Or is this fulfilling the cypherpunk values of decentralized protocols? What's going on over here? Not your keys, not your app, I guess. Maybe it's everyone's app to find out. Also, DNS was integrated into PayPal and Venmo this week.
Starting point is 00:01:26 That's a pretty big freaking deal. And Coinbase released a tokenized version of Bitcoin, just the same. morning as we're recording the roll-up and Sony is launching a stable coin lastly David did we just catch a glimpse of Vitalik war mode Vitalik is that what's going on on Twitter dude he's a crescendoing and something spiciness something we'll talk about that spicyness uh David we got an announcement speaking of Ethereum and spiciness there's a spicy event coming up for you tell us about it because you've been planning this you David is the mastermind I haven't had almost nothing to do with the bankless summit what is the bankless summit David yeah I'm
Starting point is 00:02:02 achieving a lifelong, crypto-long, crypto-long, uh, bucket list, which is hosting something like TED Talks for Ethereum, which we're calling the Bankless Summit. This is the day after DevCon. It is a one-day event, one stage event with no panels. And so I have recruited some of my favorite speakers, some I think the best speakers in Ethereum who have. Name some names.
Starting point is 00:02:26 Uh, trust and Drake, of course. Uh, up and coming EF researcher Mike Noider. Um, Amin Soleimani, one of my personal. heroes. Matt Cutler, who I've watched him give multiple presentations. They're always fascinating. Eric Wall from Bitcoin Land. Wait, Eric Wall? That's a Eric Wall. A Bitcoin guy, huh? Uh, yeah, Bitcoiner, yeah. We got Anthony Sizzano opening it up. He's going to open up the whole entire thing. Sassano keynote, huh? He's going to give the opening speech. Yeah, exactly. Talking about just actually how well Ethereum is doing. He's going to solve very bullish.
Starting point is 00:02:56 Yeah. My friend Janine Ledger, who's going to talk all about this pop-up city revolution that she has been spawning ever since Zuzalu, Eccentary Planned Zuzalo, now is creating this whole edge city movement. Oh, you've been hearing about all these pop-up cities, right? She's at the epicenter, so she's going to tell that story. Mainly the idea is, like, really good content. The speakers that I've chosen, I am charging with making the most interesting content possible. I know you don't go to conferences, Ryan,
Starting point is 00:03:23 so I have to kind of fill you in on the conference meta, but there has been this, like, massive side event meta of, like, instead of people buying booths, they just, they host a, side event. And these people also don't tend to know how to, like, curate good content, in my opinion. And so I am doing something that's a little bit of the opposite of the kind of content that I find at these side events, which is like six person panels that are like just not optimized. And so no panels. The only time there's going to be two speakers in where Onzgar and Casper are presenting their ideas about the Ethereum monetary policy, because that's what they
Starting point is 00:04:00 care about. That's what they're passionate about. So all these speakers have been charged with producing the most interesting content possible about the thing that they are most passionate about. So six hours are the most interesting content that you can enjoy. If you are a bankless citizen, you have 70% off of a ticket price. Current ticket price is $100. It goes up as we sell out waves and waves and waves. There are is only 600 person capacity in this venue. So there's only 600 tickets. The first wave of 125 tickets, we released this. Monday. We're already like 50% sold out. And they're also the cheapest that they will ever be. If you are a not a bankless citizen, but you are a bankless weekly roll-up in Joyer, you get 20% off.
Starting point is 00:04:42 A little discount. There is a link in the show notes. Also, if you're a Daily Gway member, there is a disco for you somewhere in the Daily Gway Discord. Go find it. And then a few other communities as well. You will know them if you were in them. You almost got me, David. I was almost, you almost came out. I was briefly thinking about maybe going to another in-person event. but I might have to live vicariously through you yet again. There'll be some pretty cool perks if you are there in real life because at the end of every single talk presentation, there will also be an audience Q&A as well.
Starting point is 00:05:12 And so there is actual utility of going there and being in person. Yeah. We like our tokens with utility, don't we? Yeah, our conferences too. Utility tickets. Let's talk about prices, David. And we've got to thank Cracken for providing us these fantastic Cracken Pro charts.
Starting point is 00:05:27 And I guess fantastic because we're up on Bitcoin. Tell me about that. 2.3% on the week, started $56,000 ending 57,650. So, yeah, up a little bit. I'll take that. And how about ETH price? Currently at $2,330. I swear, this market hates ETH right now, doesn't it, David?
Starting point is 00:05:46 I think that's turning around, though. That's going to turn around this quarter. We're getting close. It can't get that much worse without something materially. Now we've got War Mode Vitalik, maybe. We'll get to that later. but let's go check in on some more bleakness, which is the Ethereum ETF flows.
Starting point is 00:06:03 Haven't been great, still kind of draining out of E3E. We did break that red phase. We did have one day of inflows on the 10th of $11 million. So we finally broke that like 10 day long streak. And then the next day, September 11th, half a million dollar outflow, which I'm called nothing. All right. So we just need.
Starting point is 00:06:20 BlackRock yet to sell. Blackrock has not had any ease go out. To break even though, David, we just need 50 more days exactly like September 10. That's it. Then we're even. It's not that many. It's not that many.
Starting point is 00:06:33 It could be worse. We haven't seen the tradfai reflexive formal into crypto assets yet. I would like to see how much foam would they have. You know who disagrees with you, though, is Jim Bianco. Jim Bianco had to take this week. He's been a little bearish lately. He's bearish ETS specifically. So what's Jim saying here, David?
Starting point is 00:06:51 He's kind of implying that the tides are turning with the ETFs and not in the direction that we want. He's saying TLDR, inflows have now turned into LATS. Outflows, holders have recorded losses now for the first time. Advisors hold less than 10% of all the ETF holdings, which he's saying implies that like boomers never came. This is all going to like kind of retail and investors. Like, Brian, you have a Bitcoin ETF in your retirement account, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:16 And I'm like crypto native. It's not the majority of my funds. So I'm old money, I guess. I'm not a net new buyer of ETFs. You're not doing the thing that the ETF was said it was going to do, which is like a new capital, attract new buyers. And then last he also says the average trade size is less than $12,000. Also, what he's saying is an indicator that the participants of these
Starting point is 00:07:38 ETF markets are just not in size. It's more individuals, not like, you know, multi-billion dollar institutions. So his conclusion is not an adoption vehicle. He says it's a small tourist tool and on-chain is returning to TradFi. So we're actually just kind of getting an outflowing of people being on-chain to people being on Black Rock. Yeah, he has some supporting evidence for this, too. But he basically kind of says, like, check back in 2008 is the TLDR.
Starting point is 00:08:08 Nice. I think that's like, okay, but that's like, okay, tires are turning. It's bearish now. But also I'm like, what? Like, boomers never came. That means they still haven't bought our bags. That's just great. Matt.
Starting point is 00:08:19 Matt Hogan actually disagrees on some of the points that Jim makes. So he says, Jim is wrong here. Investment advisors are adopting Bitcoin ETFs fast. than any new ETF in history. And investment advisors is kind of the class of investors that Jim was saying is not really here, right? These are third party, maybe baby boomers, like older retail investors that go through some sort of registered investment advisor. And then he looks at the data and says, per this table, the BlackRock ETF has attracted
Starting point is 00:08:47 $1.45 billion in net flows from investment advisor. Jim calls this small because it's a fraction of the $46 billion that has flowed into Bitcoin ETFs in total. But if you excluded all of their flows and just looked at the $1.45 billion linked to investment advisors, that would be the second fastest growing ETF. The BlackRock ETF would be the second fastest growing ETF launch this year. Out of 300 launches. So he's saying he agrees with Jim that, yeah, these registered investment advisor purchasers are small
Starting point is 00:09:19 in the context of all of the Bitcoin ETF flows. But actually, it's pretty large compared to every other ETF. So Matt Hogan, who is somebody, by the way, didn't he tell us, he talks to 20,000. Like, Bitwise talks to like 20,000 registered investment advisors. He's still is saying that the demand feels pretty strong here. So a bit of a back and forth going on on the ETF story. There is just this big conflation of the gray scale trust that really just cues up the purity of the data here. We don't really know how much is like organic adoption versus just people swapping out of gray scale and going into an actual real ETF.
Starting point is 00:09:55 But nonetheless, being bearish on the ETFs, I think is just categorically wrong. It's just about what are your expectations and how do they compare to those expectations? Do you want to talk about the ETH Bitcoin ratio or is that still sore? Speaking of expectations. Too sore. Yeah. Okay. Well, now the ETH Bitcoin ratio is so bad that I am just like, fuck it, make it worse. And just break it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:21 Just go down to 0.03. We are currently at 0.0404. Yeah. So we are fingernails above breaking into 0.3 terra. Okay. Okay. Okay. Just go down to 0.03 and bounce back up.
Starting point is 00:10:36 Like, just break it, make it hurt. In my experience, in my experience, that is the actual end stage of capitulation. You're not capitulating until David Hoffman is like, actually, I want it to go lower. Make it hurt more. Yeah, make it hurt more. That is actually Punch me in the face So we may have
Starting point is 00:10:55 We may have bottoms on this Or we may be about to bottom We'll see on that I mean I feel like that was partly My interest in bringing Kyle Somani on the podcast I was like just make it make it hurt Dave Take it
Starting point is 00:11:05 Tell me what I don't want to hear Crack another rib All right Crypto market cap What are we at on the week? 2.1 2 trillion still Keeping our head above that $2 trillion level You want to talk about inflation
Starting point is 00:11:19 David in broader markets So inflation? has dropped to a three-year low. Jerome Powell did it. Victory. Mission accomplished. Honestly, like, you can't hate Jerome Powell. We were shitting on him so much. They kind of nailed it. Well, yeah, I mean, he got this part, right? Consumer prices rose 2.5% in August from a year earlier. That's down from 2.9% in July. And from July to August, prices just rose 0.2%. So can anyone out there say that inflation is still running hot? I don't think so.
Starting point is 00:11:51 say it might come back months from now, years from now, but I think they've got to give credit to Powell. There has been like under 1% inflation for like four months. Right. Okay. So what this means, of course, is that the Fed is going to be looking at unemployment. We've talked about in this section a number of times. And we're looking at by the next roll up, Jerome Powell will have already given his guidance on what
Starting point is 00:12:15 the Fed plans to do next. And everyone is anticipated, the market is anticipating a rate cut. of about 0.25% to 0.5%. And that could happen on September 17th, 18th. That's kind of the time horizon. So many eyeballs are watching this right now. Yes. The whole, all financial markets are watching this right now.
Starting point is 00:12:36 And expecting it. So we're expecting some easing and rate. So if he doesn't, can you imagine if he doesn't? Oh my God, that would be so bad. No rate cut. We're just fine. I think that's very low probability of playing out. But Ben Cowan actually had a good perspective.
Starting point is 00:12:50 And his perspective was, don't just look at the rate cuts. That's important. But if you want sort of a turnaround in the crypto markets, particularly, he linked this to Ethereum and then down the stack of other alt coins. You got to look at the Fed balance sheet as well. So this is the balance sheet. And look at this spike from 2019, 2021, COVID, balance sheet expansion at the Fed. And we got all the way up to like almost $9 trillion.
Starting point is 00:13:15 And since 2022, look at this period of time. Remember what happened, you know, 8,000? April, June, like May, May June of 2022 as the balance sheet, the Fed balance sheet unwind. Do you remember what was happening in crypto at that time, David? All of our liquidations and frauds and. Oh, yeah. You know, the three hours capital, Tara Luna got liquidated. And it's because the tide was going out.
Starting point is 00:13:39 The traditional markets sneeze. And then we have the three biggest financial frauds in crypto history, all I could expose it once. Yeah. So anyway, Ben Count's perspective is, yeah, look at interest rates, but also look. at the balance sheet. And the question is, will Powell continue to constrict the balance sheet or will the balance sheet kind of reverse course and begin to expand? And if it expands, and plus you have interest rates going down. That is, my friends, what easy money, monetary policy actually looks like from the metrics perspective. So we'll be looking at that.
Starting point is 00:14:09 Remember when the Silicon Valley banking crisis happened and everyone was like, something broke. Now they're going to pivot. And you see that little blip upwards in the balance sheet. Like, we gain like maybe $200,000, $200 billion on the balance sheet. And everyone's like, they're going to pivot. This is the sun pivot. Something broke. And then like the Fed just called the bluff. It's like, no, no, we're keeping interest rates high. And we've gone down like a trillion and a half since then. Like, they're doing, they're calling them left and right. And they're getting them. They're getting it. Totally are. All right, David. We got more coming up. Defi just had its first hearing in front of Congress. And it turned out to be, of course, a
Starting point is 00:14:49 partisan battle, but we also got some pretty bullish statements from some of the lawmakers and politicians. And the crypto lawyers showed up, man. They were so on point. Have you thanked a crypto lawyer today? Everyone thank a crypto lawyer today. They were doing fantastic work. Also, Trump and Harris met for the first time and lots of meme coins were made, prediction markets were going crazy. Cats were being eaten, all sorts of cases. We'll talk about all that and more when we get back. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including Crackin, our recommended exchange to go buy some crypto. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support
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Starting point is 00:17:56 So go and download the Uniswap extension today by clicking the link in the show notes. Just another way Uniswap is helping you swap smarter. Something historic happened this week for the first time ever. We've, of course, had many congressional hearings about facets of cryptocurrency, about Bitcoin, about stablecoins, all sorts of things. we've never had a meeting specifically in front of Congress about decentralized finance. And that changed this week. It was historic.
Starting point is 00:18:20 So defy was on the menu. This is a hearing to break down the future of decentralized finance. And it was hosted by Representative French Hill. He's been on the bankless podcast before. He's a crypto advocate. And he leads this subcommittee called the subcommittee on digital assets, fintech and financial inclusion, that reports under the House Finance. financial services committee.
Starting point is 00:18:44 So it's a committee inside of a committee. There's not everyone in Congress, but there are a lot of familiar faces. And the subject matter was something near and dear to our heart. Bankless topics, defy. And we had some of our best representatives there. Amanda Tumenelli, Peter Van Valkenberg from Coin Center, Rebecca Reddick from Polygon. I think they all just killed it. So there's like a round of applause for all the crypto lawyers.
Starting point is 00:19:09 Like I said, you can't thank a crypto lawyer enough. Let's hear some of Amanda Tuminelli's statement because I think that they were awesome and everyone should hear them. That brings me to my second point. The existing approach of trying to apply rules for Tradfite and Defi will not work. The traditional financial system requires intermediaries to function. Brokers affect stock trades and clearing houses, settle transactions. And that means that we need to trust intermediaries to do their jobs reliably and honestly. And the existing rules evolved to prevent.
Starting point is 00:19:41 the abuse of our trust. But DFI doesn't use intermediaries. If I want to swap two digital assets using a DFI protocol, there is no broker and there is no clearinghouse. Defi's existence, the very reason that this technology was developed was to eliminate the need
Starting point is 00:19:57 to rely on intermediaries and empower people to transact directly with their peers. Existing law assumes that there is some identifiable entity that can take possession of my funds, collect information about my transaction, and even block a trade.
Starting point is 00:20:13 But that entity does not exist in Defi. This point that Amanda makes, David, is so important. This is the thing that the entire U.S. government regulators, Congress, the White House, everyone needs to learn the big difference here and why all of the previous rules cannot apply in the same way for Defi is defy does not have centralized intermediaries, guys. It's the one thing that makes the world of difference. I, and that's basically the neck that they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they they, they regulate the traditional financial industry. So I'm so glad Amanda started
Starting point is 00:20:49 with these comments. David, there was some opposition though from, uh, some of the people we've heard from in Congress, uh, from the past. Maxine Waters. What did Maxine say about this? Maxine Waters and then also represented Brad Sherman as well. They kind of, they were basically making the same points, which is highlighting the risks of defy, but also really talking about, but how do we control this thing? How do we surveil the financial system? How do we make sure there aren't like scammers and fraudsters and terrorists and drug dealers using the systems?
Starting point is 00:21:22 And they were just caught up on that point. Like, well, how do we control it? How do we surveil it? How do we get to 100% surveillance? And you could just really see the perception difference that between the Democrats and the Republicans where the Republicans are like the freedom of peer to peer money and finance. and the Democrats are like, how do we control it? And like, it's just such a stark difference, man.
Starting point is 00:21:44 Yeah, it was. Maxine Waters, specifically, she called out some of the Trump project, the Trump D5 projects. And she made the point that I guess there was a hacked Twitter account of some sort that created a fake scam coin for a fake Trump coin. And, you know, thousands of people lost money on this. It happens all of the time. And she's like, the government has to step in and help protect people. That was her point. Brad Sherman was caught up on this idea that only like tax evaders are billionaires.
Starting point is 00:22:12 The billionaire class is rampantly using defy to avoid paying taxes, which I think they have lots of ways to avoid paying taxes. Completely unfounded. I don't think any of them involve defy. Like, defy is just like not a good way to avoid paying taxes. Defi is such a terrible way. Everything's on chain, Brad. So there's that.
Starting point is 00:22:32 And then of course, they brought in their kind of key witnesses, the opposition did, one of which was an analyst at the Americans for Financial Reform. His name was Marquoise. And he basically said, this is a quote, crypto and defy industries is highly volatile, scam-laden, and extremely predatory, which exposes investors to substantial financial losses. And he also believed that the current security law paradigm
Starting point is 00:22:55 should totally apply to defy in the exact same way. Another person who did just a bang-up job, Peter Van Valkenberg from Coin Center, who I think you and I truly appreciate Peter because he makes the right points, but he connects it to American history. Hell yeah. In this really just, like, precise, sharp way.
Starting point is 00:23:14 And, of course, he delivered just beautifully here. So let's go ahead and listen to Peter. So what Member Foster suggested where the problem with anonymity is that we don't have 100% identification and control over financial transactions in the economy, I don't think we'll have 100% identity and control over defy transactions.
Starting point is 00:23:34 And I think we will have robot. unanimity, and that's an American constitutional right. So you have a constitutional right to anonymous transactions that support organizations and causes that defend against discrimination and violations of our constitutional rights. We've fought about this during the civil rights movement in the 1970s. As Thurgood Marshall said with respect to the Bank Secrecy Act, the law that actually requires financial surveillance of custodial intermediaries, though not non-custodial intermediaries, Marshall dissented from the constitutionality of even that level of surveillance. He said, the fact that some may use negotiable instruments for illegal purposes
Starting point is 00:24:13 cannot justify the governments running roughshod over the First Amendment rights of the hundreds of lawful yet controversial organizations like the ACLU. Congress may well be correct in concluding that law enforcement would be facilitated by the dragnet requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act, but those who wrote our Constitution recognized just more important values. Hell yeah. More important values. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:38 God, it just sends goosebumps down my arms the entire time. It's just so good. Imagine somebody in Congress saying, hey, guys, you actually don't have the constitutional right to financially surveil all of your citizens. The Bank Secrecy Act.
Starting point is 00:24:50 No, you can't do that. Yeah. The Bank Secrecy Act was probably unconstitutional, he says. But beyond that, how are you now trying to expand the Bank Secrecy Act to all peer-to-peer transactions? That's clearly a breach of the Constitution, like bringing it back to the basics here.
Starting point is 00:25:06 And it shouldn't be up to defied to defend itself. I mean, we should be saying, like, we have a right default de facto under the Constitution to be able to do peer-to-peer commerce. It was pretty cool to see friend of the pod, our favorite statist, Roe & Gray, retweet this speech from Peter who says, this is the correct position. And it's really embarrassing that an unforced error, how many liberals and center-left people have embraced propaganda to the point of dismissing payments anonymity as something of bad or pro-crypto-coded rather than the obvious defense of civil liberties that it is.
Starting point is 00:25:42 I love Rowan. I love Roan. Do you really? I disagree with him on so many things, so many things. But I appreciate his consistency. Except on privacy. On privacy, we are 100% aligned. Yeah, 100% aligned except with respect to the tactics.
Starting point is 00:25:55 Because Roan Gray somehow thinks, like, you can just pass legislation and suddenly... The government will give us privacy. Yeah, we'll just build a CBDC that gives you privacy. Yeah, I disagree with that. We could pass that in Congress. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, so I do agree he's right there. So how would you kind of summarize this?
Starting point is 00:26:13 So we talked about the Congress not understanding intermediaries, and this delta, it seems like, between those who want financial surveillance and complete surveillance, very uncomfortable with seating that control to protocols and to code, and those that are just, like, much more open to it. I mean, the title of the subcommittee is digital assets and financial inclusion. Look at all the benefits that this can bring. How would you summarize how this went? I think, well, we have our crypto lawyers, right?
Starting point is 00:26:40 Like all the three that I mentioned, who I think made some of the best points that we would want them to make. I don't really think these hearings do all that much with moving the needle. At the end of the day, like party lines are drawn before these hearings even start, like bills are drafted regardless of these things. But it is an educational moment. And we get to have some of our best educators. Crypto lawyers are some of our best educators in front of the people that matter the most and make really strong points.
Starting point is 00:27:07 And honestly, it teaches us how to also use those same points as well. So it's just a moment of education and with the right people that need it the most. This is zooming out from Jake Turevinsky. I remember years ago when D.5 was like 10 projects that no one thought it would amount to anything. Now it's on full display in the halls of power in D.C.
Starting point is 00:27:26 I think that's a fantastic take. of look how far we've come. Might how far we've come, but it might all end soon as well. Did you watch the debate? It might all end? What do you mean? Like America might end? I don't know, man.
Starting point is 00:27:38 I was watching the debate, and I'm just like, how is this real life? Yeah, not feeling great about the options here? Well, one gentleman's bet that you and I had, and you should have put some money behind this, David, was like, I was... I'm right every single time. I was thinking that crypto might get mentioned. Like, there's some probability, and you were like, hell no, there's no chance. chance. And indeed, we got dogs and cats and eating them mentioned, but we did not get crypto mentioned inside this debate. So congrats on your- Dogs and cats got getting, he got
Starting point is 00:28:07 mentioned before crypto. Congrats on your win. There was a lot of things that, you know, like, weren't discussed in this, including, as Eric Voorhees pointed out, and this might be the most bullish indicator for crypto yet, which is the US debt was not talked about at all. He made this point in every- That's not a problem. Just ignore it. Just ignore the debt. We can just get more debt. It's worked so far. This is Eric Voorhees. In every presidential debate, there's always been a question about the national debt.
Starting point is 00:28:35 Coming from the moderators, the debt is materially higher now. It is no longer being asked about. We can just print money. We can just print money. We can just print money. The absence of that as a topic probably speaks volumes. So I think he makes a great point there. The question of who won, I watched in the aftermath of this, there was all sorts of
Starting point is 00:28:55 political analysts. I think most of them were skewing on the side of like Harris kind of like won that debate. But the great thing about crypto is we actually get to see the market reaction for this. I think like previously to Polymarket, anytime anyone ever said who won the debate, it was always loaded. And you couldn't trust it because of the bias of whoever is giving that particular take. For now, for the first time, we have immediate, present, objective answers.
Starting point is 00:29:23 Yeah, it's so much better. to who won the debate. You're right. It's so much better. Like, because blue media will tell you one thing. They'll have their candidate and they'll skew it in one direction. Red media will skew in another direction. But like prediction markets, they're just like, yeah, they just want truth. With $1.5 million on the line, it is given a 99% chance that people will decide that Kamala won the debate. And that is the Oracle. That is the Oracle. To me, that is the deciding factor. Wait, so what happened? So I was, I was kind of looking at charts the next day, the polymarket, and I think going into the debate, Trump was ahead.
Starting point is 00:29:57 It was something like 52% on polymarket or 53%. Oh, no, you're looking at it right here. So leading up to the debate, Kamala had a 75% chance. This is winning the debate. But I was talking about winning the presidential election. But you know, on polymarket, there's- winning the presidential election, yes. So I think it came into like Kamala was like 48 and Donald Trump was 53.
Starting point is 00:30:19 Yep. And now Kamala's at 50, and Donald Trump's at 49. And you watch that happen. And I was actually sending that to my family. It's like, yo, watch this reaction in real time. Like Donald Trump has lost 3% odds as a result of this debate. It's great because it's quantifiable. You know, it's like, oh, it's 3%.
Starting point is 00:30:35 It's not the end of the world for his campaign. He can come back. It's just like not a big deal. But there's a quantifiable loss in his probability of winning as a result of this debate performance. And by the way, probably the Taylor Swift endorsement that probably factored into these numbers here too. But that wasn't the only thing being bet on. There is almost a billion dollars. on this market.
Starting point is 00:30:55 Isn't that crazy? $896 million between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? Yeah, it's a huge market and it's receiving like massive attention. But this is not the only market. They weren't just betting on who like who won the debate or the presidential election winner. There's like these smaller submarkets that you've been tracking to. Oh my God.
Starting point is 00:31:12 Like what are these? The Dgen markets. These are DGEN markets. Okay. So like people were gambling as to like what words will be said on the debate. And so there were words like Springfield because that's where. the pets were getting eaten. And so, like, Donald Trump just won.
Starting point is 00:31:27 People were betting whether Donald Trump would bring up Springfield, which they did. I watched a video of a guy, I think this was on Instagram or like TikTok or something. And a guy was like, he saw the lead up to it. And he was like, say Springfield. Say Springfield. He's like dancing. He's like jumping in front of the TV. Like, say Springfield.
Starting point is 00:31:42 And then Donald Trump says, Springfield. He goes, let's fucking go. Let's fucking go. I just won $5,000. What? I just won $5,000. Yeah. So people are just like live betting in real time.
Starting point is 00:31:52 about like whatever the hell like is being uttered on like cats and cats and dogs I think we're definitely on there as well they were also betting whether there would be a handshake I think so all of these like there's a handshake micro markets being bet here and uh polymarket is going mainstream david do you see this so polymarket markets are now being quoted on CNN in a pretty big way well this isn't just being quoted this is an actual uh interview about polymarket like this is them doing a feature of polymarket what did they say here? here. Oh, they're going through. I see this in this clip. They have Polymarket
Starting point is 00:32:26 streamed on their screen. You know, it's actually hilarious. So last week we were talking about polymarket being integrated in Bloomberg. And here you see it a CNN anchor, like, download, putting all of these metrics. This is like, you're on CNN, you're on Bloomberg. This is legitimacy. Will they shake hands? 28%.
Starting point is 00:32:44 See, it's so interesting. Media cannot help it. Trad media cannot help these numbers. Will they shake hands? 28%. It's content candy. It will gain more in the. in the holes. What will Harris say at the debate? It's all on Polly Market.
Starting point is 00:32:56 What's also crazy about this, too, and ironic, as much legitimacy as Polymark is receiving these channels, US users still can't use it. They can't be geoblocked. We're actually talking about foreigners betting on our prediction. You can see it in the market, right?
Starting point is 00:33:13 So you could go to the website. You'd see it in the market. But if you have a US IP address, it doesn't allow you to deposit and partaking these markets. It's because the laws are so dumb here. Because it's dumb. That is so funny.
Starting point is 00:33:27 That should have been brought up in the defy congressional hearing, I think. But it wasn't. Okay, so let's talk about the reaction in the crypto world to the presidential debate. So there is people going back and forth about whether or not the Bitcoin price is an oracle about the Donald Trump presidency versus the Kamala presidency. In the middle of the debate, while Kamala is. like will Kamala win the debate was going up to 99%. You actually saw Bitcoin sell off by like $800 and ether sell off by like $100. Wow.
Starting point is 00:34:00 Wow. Yeah. So that was what's that like 3%, something like that in that range? Yeah, like 3% or something like that. Which ironically like the odds of how much Kamala increased versus Donald Trump in the presidential election odds on polymarket. But not everyone agrees with that. So Mikea Polito says the coins don't seem to care about Trump's performance last night.
Starting point is 00:34:19 I'm gaining conviction that's his election. matters way less than everyone thinks. Markets hate uncertainty. As soon as that gets removed one way or another, the prices will respond. Because they did bump back up the next day. So what do you think about this? People are kind of undecided. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:32 Like, I'm, I could use some more data here. Like, it is really hard to imagine, like, like, Donald Trump says he's going to put Bitcoin on the balance sheet. This is what I mean. This is what I mean. If Kamala Harris wins, maybe it's not disaster scenario for crypto. But if Trump wins, how is that not the most bullish thing? ever for crypto
Starting point is 00:34:53 given what he's said like previously I don't know well I guess we'll see how this plays out but it's a coin flip at this point in time in terms of who might win
Starting point is 00:35:02 what do we got coming up coming up next to Friend Tech no longer updating the app what happened what will we do with the app now and also you can use
Starting point is 00:35:11 your ENS name to send ether stable coins inside of Venmo and PayPal and also my favorite part about this agenda Vitalik just laying down
Starting point is 00:35:20 the law on Layer 2s. We're going to talk about all of this and more, but first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors who make this show possible. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week.
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Starting point is 00:36:57 Starting next year, I plan to only publicly mention in my blogs, talks, etc., layer twos that are stage one plus with maybe a short grace period for generally new interesting projects. It doesn't matter if I invested or if you were my friend, stage one or bust. Multiple ZK roll-up teams have told me that they're on track to be stage one by end of year. I'm excited to see that happen. Of course, we should not be throwing away training wheels because we were actually confident that the proof systems are secure. That would be irresponsible. But stage one, which is a 75% threshold on the security council to override a proof system. Plus 25% of that council must be outside of the roll-up team is a very reasonable moderate milestone.
Starting point is 00:37:37 The multisigs I'm in have not had a single livenous failure in years, let alone 26%. The era of roll-ups being glorified multisigs is coming to an end. the era of cryptographic trust is upon us. So Vitalik saying, hey, like, if you are not a stage one multi-sig, you are not worth mentioning to me. Wow. Which is dope, which is dope.
Starting point is 00:38:00 Yeah. So this is applied social pressure, I would say, from, you know, the most prominent leader in the Ethereum space. He's not going to mention your project unless you get to the first stage of decentralization for your layer two.
Starting point is 00:38:14 Do you think this will work? Do you think that this will push layer two is in a positive direction? I mean, I think it was a heading this way anyways. And maybe it was heading there kind of, maybe perhaps lackadaisically. Is that, I pronounce that right? Maybe it was heading there slowly or something. But it's definitely like within reach by these teams.
Starting point is 00:38:35 Like if these teams want to be stage one, they can be stage one. Yeah. And so Vitalik is saying, just get there. And then I will continue to mention you whenever it comes time for me to mention you. Do you see, I saw this on Twitter, like Kane Warwick and others, sort of meming. This is War Mode Vitalik. It's great to see it. Warmo Vitalik. Being a bit more assertive. He was also, he was also just dunking on people who didn't deserve to be in
Starting point is 00:38:58 Vitalik's replies. And Vitalik's like, get out of my replies, basically. Well, interesting, but the very next day, or the same week he tweeted this, we've got an update from ZK Sync. Sink. So what is this? Yeah, ZKSink blog post saying, welcome to ZKSink on-chain governance. And so ZKSync has released their on-chain governance system, which might put them at stage one. They're currently in review process on layer two beat. But there are some things that are now true about the ZKSink governance system. Protocol upgrades to ZKSink are approved exclusively on-chain.
Starting point is 00:39:34 Protocol upgrades cannot happen without token holder approval. So the token is actually the object doing the governance. All protocol upgrades go through the Security Council review. that's pretty normal. That's the training wheels that Vitalik is talking about. And governance can assign a new sequencer. So if a sequencer starts to become a censoring sequencer,
Starting point is 00:39:54 governance can give them the boot as well as another other things as well. They call us three-body governance. So we have the token assembly, which is the token holders, the security council, which is like the sophisticated people who can review code and would overcome a fraud proof if we ever needed to.
Starting point is 00:40:10 And then ZK Sync Guardians, which make sure that governance proposals are consistent with the values of the ZK credo that ZKSync holds so dear. So this just got put out today. This could potentially turn ZKSink into a stage one. They need to release details about the Security Council thresholds for how much it takes for the Security Council to overcome a proof. And also, depending on if the ZKSink Foundation is considered an outside entity to ZKSink the platform.
Starting point is 00:40:40 And so there's some nuances that are being reviewed here by the layer 2B. And by the way, Layer 2B can't say enough great things about that they are doing the heart. This is actually what the greatest public goods. This is actually what regulation looks like in crypto. This is a regulator basically doing the thing. The most effective regulator. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:40:58 Gary Gensler, you should be doing this. Actually, we don't want him anywhere near this. Yeah, get out of here. Don't tell Gary Gensler about layer two. This is Layer 2B. We're looking at it right now. And you can see there's two prominent. layer twos that are stage one
Starting point is 00:41:12 and they're trying to get to stage two of course this is Arbitrum and OP mainnet but most of the rest are not I guess DYDXV3 is here but like base is not blast is not yet scroll ZK Sync era working their way towards it so a lot of work needs to be done in order for Vitalik
Starting point is 00:41:30 to mention your project next year can you hover over the ZKSink because they actually have a little question mark over their pie I think on their pie on the right I think that just means, yeah, Project Under review. It's already updated. They update this so fast. That's great.
Starting point is 00:41:44 Okay, which is the thing that gets the next stage one, do you think? I think base. I think base is hustling. I mean, ZK Sync might get it like next week. Yeah. And then after that, I think it would be base. Yeah, base has multi-rease. You know, another driving factor that people don't often talk about is not just social pressure,
Starting point is 00:42:04 but also I think there's some regulatory. There's going to be some regulatory pressure. so much regulatory pressure as as a layer two that's kind of like the bigger biggest incentive beyond just internal or crypto yeah do you want to be fully uh on the hook for all the activity that happens you want to be considered a money transmitter do you have a money transmitter license no no oh my matter lab is doing some other things uh zk sync they they just hired the former uh salana foundation chief marketing officer is that right little little snipe action going on yeah Sniped by ZKSing.
Starting point is 00:42:37 The Meg Hughes, Megan Hughes, going from Solana to ZKSink. So congratulations on the higher ZKSink. Not the only Layer 2 news this week. This was interesting. Remember we talked about Sony's layer 2. It's not a lot of information about it, but something new emerged, which is actually Sony is going to create a stable coin, a Japanese yen stable coin. Sony apparently has a bank called the Sony Bank, and so the Sony Bank is going to...
Starting point is 00:42:58 Somebody has a bank? Yeah. I mean, I guess they have everything. There's like, you know, Japanese megacorp, they do. everything. It's not just Walkman. The Japanese yen. Walkman and banks. Yeah, Walkman, Yen, sorry, Walkman, banks, stable coins, and layer two is now. So they're going to put this on their layer two. So we'll see how that emerges, but it looks like development is happening. It's pretty smart. It's a pretty smart move here. All right, so this was going around crypto Twitter this week. Frentek has renounced control over the smart contracts.
Starting point is 00:43:26 They called a function with transferred the control to Ethereum's null address. The null address is 0X-0-0-0-0. It means that no one knows that. So they cannot change. The French tech team cannot change the protocol going forward. It doesn't affect the web client. The web client is still like operational by the team. So the platform will obviously still work. They can still add new features to the web app. But the actual underlying smart contracts are like now immutable.
Starting point is 00:43:52 This has come with like a bunch of pushback of people saying like you guys are abandoning the projects. Like you guys earned like $44 million in fees and now you guys are just saying goodbye. Friend Tech, the actual Frontec official Twitter accounts, like we're not doing that. We're actually still going to develop the protocol. We're just like locking the smart contracts because of like decentralization and mutability. And like what more do you expect?
Starting point is 00:44:19 And so this goes to show like once again that if you make any money in crypto, you become vilified. That's kind of like a meme that happens in crypto Twitter. Oh, do you think that's true? Do you think that's true? I don't know. So I don't know about. Sometimes it's very much. People who make money in crypto.
Starting point is 00:44:34 often find themselves having to defend the fact that they made money. And also there is this history of crypto founding projects, particularly DeFi, that abandon their project too early. All these orphan projects that I see, which is basically in the name of decentralization, they're kind of like, release the token, sell some my token, get wealthy, bye, bye, have I created any value? Like, not sustainable value. So on the other side of this, and part of the narrative I think is coming from,
Starting point is 00:45:04 from people who are just like tired of all of the orphaned defy projects who quit too early in the name of decentralization. So that's kind of like another, I don't know what's going on in friend. I guess, you know, time. For what's worth, they didn't sell any tokens. Yeah. They accumulated $44 million of ether in fees. So they actually didn't, they didn't mint and sell a token. They did mint a token. They gave it to people, but they didn't profit from selling the token. I see. But this also, like, they did profit from the hype, right? And have, I guess my question is like, did they create anything sustainable. Well, no, they didn't, they didn't profit from the high. I would say if they sold the token, they profited from the fees that came because of the height. Let's create a new
Starting point is 00:45:44 benchmark. Do you think in 10 years, like, what will Frentec be to the world? Will it have been just like one blip that like decentralized and just like, you know, founders didn't work on it again? Or will it be like, oh, they decentralized? And now all of this entire, like this whole app community is building on top of it and is actually providing some utility and value to the world. Like which outcome is more likely do you think? I think statistically the outcome of just like it's a blip is going to be true. But that has nothing to do with Frentec though. Like that's just startups.
Starting point is 00:46:16 Startups statistically are always blips. Yeah. I mean, it's whatever. I just feel like it would be nice. Here's one thing I will say. It would be really nice if we saw the Frentec experiment completely play out. And the team, maybe they're still doing work on it. But I would love to see a year from now, two years,
Starting point is 00:46:34 from now, like an entire social ecosystem built on this thing. Because it had so much, do you remember it was a year ago? It had so much promise when it was released. They were doing kind of like, the user experience felt clean. They were doing something new. They had the full attention of like the crypto social community on it. And that opportunity just feels so much squandered right now. And I'm hopeful that they just don't allow it to just kind of like sink into oblivion
Starting point is 00:47:01 and nothingness. Sure. Yeah. I think it's a little bit of like a shrunk. like a Schroninger's position here. Okay, moving on to other news. Eigenlayer, the second stake drop for season two. So reminder, we've already had season one, season one had phase one and two. Those were both over. Those were over forever ago. Season two of the eigenlayer steak drop is upon us. This is going to be 5.2 of the initial eigen supply. I think 5% was for season one. 5.2% is for now.
Starting point is 00:47:27 And it's also kind of similar. If you are an eigenlayer v-staker or through an LRT protocol, you have, eigen that you need to claim. You can claim if you are restaking through a specific LRT protocol you can claim your eigen through that respective protocol. The claims open on September 17th. So that's five days from the day of recording.
Starting point is 00:47:49 Four days if you're listening to this on Friday. Claims.aigenfoundation.org be very careful about fishing links. And then there will be some other edge cases as well for people who are just beyond staking. So 70 more million. Igen tokens, congrats to all eigenlayer restakers.
Starting point is 00:48:03 Wait, wait. I had made myself a pot on the back there. What's harder, hard on tokens? Yeah, oh yeah, you've been working hard for those. What's the time horizon for season two, eligibility? Was that like April or something through August, looks like? Yes, okay. So if you were restaking in Egan, if you had Ethan Eagerl,
Starting point is 00:48:21 between March 15th and August 15th, you are eligible. Now, you can get the tokens. You can pick them up, but you can't move them, right? So they're locked tokens. They're still locked. I'm guessing that these tokens are going to be unlockable by end of year January
Starting point is 00:48:36 here's a sentence for you my guess as we approach unlock of the eigen token as we approach unlock of the eigen token that's in the official blog press so we're approaching it these are those are eigen layers words
Starting point is 00:48:47 not ours yeah eigen layer said that we are approaching the unlock they said it in their block up for interpretation all right ENS now integrated with PayPal and Venmo that's a big deal this feels like this would be absolutely huge
Starting point is 00:49:01 if you went for it in 2019 when we're very excited about dot eth's, and you said, hey, like five years from now, this is going to be in Venmo and PayPal, I would have been over the moon excited. And I'm still excited. This is a pretty big deal. So what does this actually mean impractically, though,
Starting point is 00:49:18 if somebody has a Venmo account? Yeah, so, like, there's been stable coins and either ether and other cryptocurrencies inside of Venmo and PayPal for a while now, and now you're going to send outbound to ENS. It's just, like, very legitimizing to ENS. Yeah. If you have a valuable ENS names, like they're probably a little bit more valuable today as a result.
Starting point is 00:49:35 It's like getting Polymarket in Bloomberg. That's the kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. legitimizing. This is brantley.eath saying it's been a tear this year for ENS, a recap for everyone who's been asleep. Google search recognizes ENS names. So we type trusslestate.eath, I guess.
Starting point is 00:49:51 We'll see all your accounts, see all your money. Is that right, David? GoDaddy supports... Yeah, all of it. I hold all of my money at Davidoffin. GoDaddy also supports DNS names in E&S. That was a big. deal. Coinbase and Uniswap have issued hundreds of thousands of subnames. Oh, that's right. You can get
Starting point is 00:50:07 all of your base subnames and the Uswab subnames. And now PayPal and Venmo support ENS for sending crypto. So Brantley pretty excited about the traction here. Big release out of Coinbase. They were teasing it a while ago, but CBBT is now released. Coinbase Bitcoin is now a token. I'm assuming being issued on base and also Ethereum. Yeah, also Ethereum. And so this was, I don't know how long they've been working on this project, but especially when the whole BitGo WBT drama happened. Coinbase was like, I see an opportunity here. And so now Coinbase CBBT is now out and about. Also, there's already a proposal to get it into Spark.
Starting point is 00:50:49 And so that's pretty cool. Spark is a lending facility that's part of the MakerDAO system. And so you can now put Coinbase, there's a proposal to put Coinbase BTC inside a spark so you can put BTC in withdraw-Dai. And the cool thing here, this is actually just from the press release, when users send BTC from Coinbase to an address on base or Ethereum, the BTC will automatically be converted to CBBT and vice versa. So you can send CB Bitcoin to Coinbase and it'll show up as Bitcoin inside of Coinbase, not as CB Bitcoin as a vanilla organic Bitcoin. If you have vanilla Bitcoin, you can send Bitcoin to Ethereum. and it comes out as Coinbase Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:51:33 Yeah. And of course, the value of this is now you can use Bitcoin in the Defy ecosystem more readily. Of course, there have been products like this in the past. Rapped Bitcoin was one of them from Bicco. That's been a pretty popular one. But now this has kind of like Coinbase backing behind it, which is a big deal. Question for you, Mr. Taxman. If I have Bitcoin and I haven't touched it in years, I send it to Coinbase.
Starting point is 00:51:57 And then I send it to Ethereum and it comes out as CB Bitcoin. Did I just incur a taxable event? Yeah. So what's your, first of all, I know this is not, this is hypothetical because my man, David Hoppin does not own any Bitcoin, at least last time I checked. That wasn't part of the question. Purely hypothetical. All right.
Starting point is 00:52:14 So imagine if somebody like David owned Bitcoin who went and did this. It definitely depends on kind of the jurisdiction and like what your tax folks will say. I think personally, not tax advice, not financial advice, all of these things. There's some uncertainty when you do something like you. stake your eth on coinbase if you take vanilla eth and you turn it into Coinbase eth right so see
Starting point is 00:52:38 a lot of accounts will consider that a taxable event that means you have to pay on the gains in that incursion okay and but accountants kind of like lawyers where they're kind of protecting themselves not you no I think there's I think that I mean they're not necessarily liable
Starting point is 00:52:55 I think that you get more conservative and like accountants interpretation of the tax laws the problem is and by the way this came up in Defi, the Defi congressional hearings is like the IRS has no, has provided no clarity how to treat these things. Anyway, but what I do think is an absolutely assinine, like, idea and not a position that I would ever take is, let's say you, you know, take ETH, vanilla ETH, and then you, you, you, you, you, uh, turn that into tokenized Eth. So it becomes weath, right? It's just, it's not a third party custody. It's just like a token wrapper. How in the world could
Starting point is 00:53:27 that be a tax event? There's like no way. You're just like wrapping it. in some smart contract code. Okay? So there's like some ambiguity here. I guess all this to say is like you should talk to you. Depends. Do you want to take a conservative? Don't listen to your podcast for your tax advice?
Starting point is 00:53:43 Yeah, this is probably take away too. Oh, one other thing I'll say is people should know there's a tradeoff here. This is not like Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain. This is custodied by a third party. Not your, not your keys, not your crypto. Okay? Also, Coinbase, because of regulations, they have similar white list, blacklist. blacklist ability to freeze capabilities that they do on USDC. So if you think this is like a
Starting point is 00:54:06 completely permissionless asset, it's not. Do you want a permissionless asset, you got to go get vanilla eth, not a custody eth or, you know, eth on a layer two or Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain. So I just want to be careful that the custodied banks don't start to take over this space and we forget like the reason we're here and why we're going bankless. Right. Say, for example, what was the executive order that forced people to turn in their gold in the 30s? Yeah, the FDR executive order. It's got a number. I can't think of the number off the top of my head, but yeah. Yeah, imagine that there's an executive order to everyone needs to turn in all their bitcoins and sell it for dollars. And you had to do that because of an executive order. If you have CB Bitcoin, that's being done for you on your behalf.
Starting point is 00:54:52 You don't have your keys. By Coinbase, you don't have the keys. If you have your Bitcoin, there's still under your control. You can still hide your private keys under your best. that's where David hides that's where I keep my private keys all right so as we close out this roll up we are now and this shocked me because I can't believe we're almost in I mean we're close to permissionless we're close to the conference
Starting point is 00:55:12 this is almost October so there's less than 30 days between now and your fight with Kane Warwick okay and I knew you were on like a training program but like you're going you're flying all over the world doing all these things I didn't realize
Starting point is 00:55:28 that you actually had to put on some weight for this in a large amount of weight. So this is, by the way, this is going to happen on October 11th in Salt Lake City. Friday, October, the last day of permissionless at the very end. So you have to stick around to the end of permissionless if you want to see this.
Starting point is 00:55:45 You are fighting King Warwick, and he is a significantly... Everyone's favorite villain. Everyone hates King Warwick. Everyone wants to do it. Everyone wants me to win. Everyone's talking about it. I really want David Hoffman to win.
Starting point is 00:55:55 Okay, so, but you have to gain some power. because he is a much bigger dude than you, right? He's way bigger, yeah. This is your tweet. Okay. He's like six two? Six two? Yeah, he's way bigger than me, dude.
Starting point is 00:56:09 All right, I have 30 days to gain 10 pounds before my fight with Kane. I need to do it in a way that doesn't allow me to use agility. Doing hell of sprints is making this hard. I need ideas. Okay, what ideas did you get from this? And are any of them good? No, they're all pretty bad. I mean, like, it's all kind of like the basic, basic stuff.
Starting point is 00:56:26 10 pounds in 30 days isn't that hard. I just have to like basically be eating every single day. And I also have this like gentleman's agreement with Kane where like I don't want to have this fight completely take over my life. But also like I don't know how hard Kane has tried. And he's got he's got brothers, bro. I don't have a brother. I have a sister.
Starting point is 00:56:45 Yeah. I didn't fight with my sister. He fought with his brothers. Yeah, you didn't like punch each other in the face growing up. I'm sure Kane did this. Wow, man. I did spar with it. guy who broke my rib the other day, though.
Starting point is 00:56:58 He said I got a lot better since I had a lot of fun. It's so crazy. That's a true story. It's so crazy that that's normal in like the fighting. He's just like, somebody broke your rib and then disappears for a few months and pops back. And I'm like, sorry, I did that, but let's fight again. Yeah, that's right.
Starting point is 00:57:15 That's exactly what happened. He's like, oh, it's you. You're back. And I'm like, yep, I'm still here. All right, David. We're cheering for you and looking forward to seeing the polymarket up on that one to place our bets. Got to end with this, of course.
Starting point is 00:57:25 If you have a permissionless ticket, you automatically have a ticket to Fight Night. Oh, right. So come come watch me, come watch somebody get their ass kick on October, on October, October, October, month. I think I'm going to stream it, I think. They've asked me to provide some color commentary. Ryan, trying to ask him to be commentating the fight on. He's streamed on bankless. Ryan, Ryan is nervous about commenting the fight.
Starting point is 00:57:47 I try to get out of that. I keep trying to get out of that. I'm like, I don't want to comment on it. And Dave's like, I'm fighting a dude, okay? At least you can do is show up and comment. All right. So I'm doing the absolute least as usual. Okay.
Starting point is 00:58:01 Risk and disclaimers. Of course, you know, crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is a frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

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