Bankless - ROLLUP: Trump Pump | ETH ETF Next Week | Mt. Gox & Germany | Crypto Wars 2.0

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup 3rd Week of July 2024 ------ 🍵MATCHA | NEW PRICING ENGINE https://go.0x.org/matcha-v2-pod   ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙 KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠  🛞 MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  🦄 UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚡️ FUEL | EARN FUEL POINTS https://bankless.cc/fuel    ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUMa ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🗣️ TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/toku  ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/34  ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 3:44 Politics and Crypto  https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/15/bitcoin-jumps-as-markets-see-increased-odds-of-trump-victory.html  4:28 Trump selects JD Vance as his VP https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112792061935980928  https://nypost.com/2024/07/17/us-news/trump-picking-jd-vance-as-vp-is-big-for-the-bitcoin-crowd/  https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1812933662880514479  https://www.standwithcrypto.org/politicians/person/jd---vance https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1812936021543149758  https://x.com/taylorjbarr/status/1812930126843126174  https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1812931244621000896  https://polymarket.com/  13:05 Trump considers Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary  https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1813666502526329035  13:59 Trump wants the US to beat China in the crypto race https://www.theblock.co/post/305771/trump-wants-us-in-charge-of-crypto-before-china  15:46 Vitalik released a Blogpost:  https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/07/17/procrypto.html  https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1813596134020895138  https://x.com/valkenburgh/status/1813634877910319499  https://x.com/tusharjain_/status/1813663311591870495  https://x.com/jchervinsky/status/1813635524026048908  https://x.com/MarconiWight/status/1813320579631706598  25:02 MARKETS L2 Update Scroll TVL increased by 21.9% to $1.01B in the past 7 days https://x.com/WuBlockchain/status/1812732829345947915  Base now 30% bigger https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1811080797706932468  34:19 Bitcoin liquidity Events (Gox and Germany)  https://x.com/News_Of_Alpha/status/1813167748115292467  What can MtGox do to the price?  https://x.com/ki_young_ju/status/1813277728998609338  Germany is most likely done with selling https://x.com/ArkhamIntel/status/1811830991708639719  How much Germany sold?  https://x.com/ArkhamIntel/status/1813601540516524291  38:24 ETH ETF next week!!  https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1812930206933655759  https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1812961815833305104  https://x.com/jseyff/status/1813693107214717181  https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1813698463403765780  https://x.com/coinage_media/status/1813539741851365812  https://x.com/jchervinsky/status/1813571352105979946  . 49:14 BTC ETF daily net flows trending up over the last two weeks https://x.com/WClementeIII/status/1812996129648439633  https://x.com/ericbalchunas/status/1813187237762244840  https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1812864261170905281  53:39 Uniswap Extension is now open to everyone!  https://x.com/Uniswap/status/1813212643139711384  54:58Crypto Wars 2.0 Positive developments in Roman Storm's Tornado Cash defense https://x.com/valkenburgh/status/1811851516833394994  https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/07/12/conduct-versus-code-may-be-the-defining-question-in-roman-storm-prosecution/  58:15 Molly White launched her new crypto initiative  https://x.com/molly0xFFF/status/1811836793353884053  https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1812950495218045424  1:03:27 MEME of the Week https://x.com/GoingParabolic/status/1813012646339465334  1:04:47 Moment of Zen Bitwise’s new ETH commercial is out!  https://x.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1813553235703263276  ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ 

Bankless Station is the third week of July. It's time for the bankless weekly roll-up. I feel like in this roll-up, David, I got to get you up to speed because you've been out climbing mountains again, haven't you? I feel like that's been in that way for two weeks in a row. Last week, I was at ETHCC, and then this week I just got down from a mountain like 12 hours ago. And so these episodes are actually Ryan just gets David up to speed with-cooked. We got a lot to talk about, man.

It was a bit political out here in crypto, David. So I got to get you up to speed. So Trump chose a pro-crypto vice president. I'm going to give you his name. And he says he wants to, quote, beat China to crypto. Also, all of Silicon Valley is aligning behind Trump. And many in the crypto space are as well. And Vitalik gives a rare glimpse into some of his politics and his take on all this.

What else we got? The market foul out of Gox and Germany. Is it all over? Gox coins are finally getting distributed to people this week. What happens next? And this is the last roll-up. before the ETH ETHETF gets approved. How do I know that?

Because I just went and got the horny crux. So this is the last time. You're ever going to hear that statement come out of this podcast. I promise. Thanks, man. We appreciate that. So this is definitely the last week.

This is definitely the last one. Okay. I'm coming home. I'm climbing up to mountain to make this happen for us. I got the horrocks. I'm bringing it back home. Also, Uniswap has a big new wallet extension. We'll talk about that. And an update on CryptoWars 2.0.

I think this is the most important case, court case in Cryptos history. It's the Roman Storm case, and there's been a pretty big update on the week, so we'll talk about that. But first, politics? Yeah, I just, so I was gone for four days. And so you had a great, fantastic, like, phone, you know, social media Twitter cleanse for four days.

Yeah, that feels good. And then I was able to, like, kind of look at Twitter, look at, look at, like, all my feeds with fresh eyes when I came back. And it is just politics on politics. It's crazy, right? On, all like my podcast feeds, which are both crypto and non-crypto are politics content. Yeah. The crypto Twitter timeline feed is all politics.

Granted, we just had an attempted assassination of what might be the next president. So, like, of course, people are going to be talking about politics. Yeah. But politics has just swarmed everything, just left and right. Yeah. I mean, you can't say it's not justified. This is a pretty massive election. And an assassination attempt.

Okay, so where were you when you heard about this, the assassination attempt? I was on my way out of Brussels to head to Chamon, France. Okay. It was at the end of ETHCC. You see a pop up on Twitter and you're like, what is going on? Yeah. Was it one of those situations? Yeah.

It was right as I was about to go to bed because I was six hours ahead of United States time. And it's just like one of those things where I'm already aware that we're on the craziest timeline ever. And so like, I guess like, okay, here we go. Like there's another weird thing that's unfolding. Can you believe how close it came? That was crazy for me. It's like when I first saw the news, it just flashed and like, what happened? Like, is he okay?

And then fortunately, it didn't take long for me to like tell that he was okay. It's like, thank God. But in the aftermath of that, looking at how close we came, like an inch, a tilt of the head away. Like the wind blowing in like a different way in a different direction would have been a completely different outcome. And I just feel like what timeline are we living in here? Like this is, I mean, could have been completely. different roll-up today. Could have been a completely different country.

Could have been a completely different reality. Yeah, there's something, there's some like reference to like Schrodinger here. We're just like where we have chosen a particular fork of the universe. And it was very clearly like a choice that happened. Apparently we're in the universe in which Trump gets a clip off of his ear and crypto prices start like rocketing. I remember like just noticing that like watching the videos, going through the Twitter feeds, looking at the Trump assassination and then looking at the crypto prices, which all like

immediately jumped like two, three. 3, 4%, which, but it was very noticeable, like, right after the failed assassination, crypto markets pump. And the stock market was closed, if I'm remembering correctly. And it was just like such a strong, like, correlation of just failed assassination, crypto prices pump. Can you imagine? So assassination attempt is, that would be absolutely horrible.

I imagine the markets would go in the other direction, probably amplified by like a massive amount because just like a massive amount of uncertainty. So that happened Saturday, David. Trump didn't get assassinated. And then I believe this was Monday, he announced his vice president pick, a gentleman by the name of Senator J.D. Vance. This is his post after lengthy deliberation thought considering the tremendous talents of others. I've decided that the best person suited to assume the president of VP of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance. So the question is, who is J.D. Vance? You did some research on this while you're out, yeah?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I was actually like prepping for the show. And since I'm six hours ahead of you, I actually did have time to actually catch up on the news. People might know this book, Hillbilly Elegy, which was a big book that kind of catalyzed a lot of the populace sentiment right before the 2016 election. It's this book that is set in the Appalachian about this highly educated Appalachian lawyer. And Appalachia is known to be not educated for it. And it was kind of like a rallying cry for a lot of the conservative. right, of the lower class conservative right, that ended up just, it put a lot of sentiment into words about the rights feelings towards the social elite and the kosoli. And so this was

a kind of an influential book that helped cataly what came to be a very populist ran election. Like even Bernie Sanders, a populist president was still very, very relevant back then. And so J.D. Vance is the author of Hillbilly, Elegy. He is also a Republican senator. And so, you It's kind of an interesting pairing where you have Trump, the media man, with this Republican U.S. Senator who wrote this book, who also understands, like, culture and media. And it's another step away from just, like, the traditional, like, lifetime politician. Interestingly, as it relates to crypto, J.D. Vance has previously drafted a bill that would completely overhaul the SEC and the CFC stance on crypto.

So this is a populist right-wing senator who has explicitly made pro-crypto legislation and try to get it pushed through Congress. And so this, in addition to the sentiment that the markets felt positively towards the failed assassination tempt, which I think markets are just pricing and like, oh, the failed assassination attempt is probably going to lock in the Trump election. So that was bullish. And then on Monday, we get this J.D. Vant guy who's going to be Trump's vice president who is explicitly very pro-crypto

and has tried to push through positive pro-crypto legislation. So we get this like one-two punch in like the positive direction. Yeah, so J.D. Vance is very pro-Crypto. Actually, I was on with Representative French Hill who you just mentioned J-D. Vance in passing. I asked him about him and apparently J.D. Vance may be taking the lead on some legislation. You remember Fitt 21? It was going to the Senate.

J.D. Vance is the Senate. He may be catching the ball right now and actually working on his version of legislation of Fit 21. So I don't know all the details yet, but Representative Hill mentioned this in passing. We do know a few other things. So he's young, particularly for a U.S. politician and senator in these times. So he's like 39 years old.

So he's a millennial generation, and that's interesting. He also has voted for the SAB-121 repeal, as you can imagine. He's a crypto holder. So as of 2022, he owned at least 20, $450,000 worth of Bitcoin, likely he has more now. He slammed Gary Gensler in open letters. We have a clip we're going to play coming up. It's basically further evidence that he is a pro-crypto candidate and that the Trump White House

will be pro-crypto, right? And this, he gets an A on standwith-cropto, the standwith-crypto.org website. I think the big question right now is, is this J.D. Vance selection as Trump's vice president? Is it the fact that he is pro-crypto? Is that a coincidence? or was that like an explicit influence in Trump's selection of him as well?

And I'm kind of thinking it might be the latter. I'm going to, we're going to, I'm going to go ask David Bailey, who is the founder, operator, owner of Bitcoin Media, Bitcoin magazine, who is the policy advisor to Trump. He's the guy like kind of steering the ship in terms of like Trump's crypto policy. So I'm going to see if we can get him on the podcast and get his perspective. I think you sort of like have to broaden it too. So I also didn't mention he's,

a VC under the Silicon Valley VC under the tutelage of Peter Thiel. I don't know if you saw that this morning as well. Also very conservative pro-Trump. There's like a tech play here, which is very interesting, right? And we'll talk about that a little bit later. It's Silicon Valley is really rallied around Trump in the past week. And I think J.D. Vance is all part of that. So that's J.D. Vance. This is him. Maybe we should play a clip surfaced by Crypto-Twitter of previous statements of Senator Vance. He's actually talking about Gary Gensler and Crypto-Twitter. surface this. I think it's pretty interesting. If there's a candidate for worse person in my view, at least in terms of my substantive disagreements, I'm sure he's like a nice guy, is Gary Gensler.

Okay. So Gary Gensler is sort of the complete opposite of my view. And there are two problems that I have with Gary, one of which is that I think he wants to inject politics way too much into the actual business of securities in the United States of America. But in some ways, the more fundamental issue, or at least the most relevant issue for this particular conferences, The approach that Gary has taken to regulating blockchain and crypto seems to be almost the exact opposite of what it should be. I'm oversimplifying a little bit, but the question the SEC seems to ask in regulating crypto is, is this a token with utility? And if it's a question, if it's a token with utility, then they seem to want to ban it. And if it's token without utility, they don't seem to care.

I almost think we should be the opposite here, right? I worry about financialization. I worry about, frankly, whether a lot of the crypto stuff is fundamentally fake. But if a token actually has utility, that's the sort of thing that, you know, by all means, regulate it. By all means, be careful about, you know, how consumers interact with it. But you don't want to just get rid of this stuff. And here's where I really, really worry about this is a lot of the newest challengers to social media, the social media incumbents of 2024 are going to recall.

He seems to be opening the door for tokens that do more than just represent memes, like tokens with cash flows, tokens that are real and opening the door to that. Yeah. And expressing a pretty deep knowledge about what's going on in the industry, like beyond just like, oh, money on the internet. Like he's talking about like, he's alluding to like social platforms and, you know, underlying blockchain technology beyond just like sending tokens around. Another win for crypto related to politics was an actual app. You know, people say, where are the apps? Here's an app that works. called Polymarket, okay? And the great thing about Polymarket is a prediction market. It actually

predicted that JD Vance was the best predictor that J.D. Vance was going to be Trump's VP pick of any prediction market. It was the most accurate. And it reflected the probability, like, you saw it spiking up right before the announcement to like 70% odds. And if you go to the polymarket page right now, it is doing a fantastic job predicting some of these political outcomes. I've even heard on the podcast. It's just extremely relevant. Yeah. And it's getting, starting to get mentioned referenced in mainstream.

I even heard Sam Harris podcast mentioned prediction markets as like, like, you know, just in the context of what's going to happen. Is Biden going to drop out? Well, right now, Polymarket says there is a 76% chance that Biden drops out. That is high. Given its previous performance, right? I actually rate that as probably pretty accurate, you know, with respect to probability. So this is, particularly with these political decisions.

Well, I don't think you know more than Polly Market, Ryan. I don't. Nobody does, right? But, like, that's the beauty of it. That's what prediction markets should do. And, like, it's just a great use case for crypto here. It is very refreshing seeing Polly Market, either explicitly or implicitly alluded to, like, on all of my non-crypto media feeds, like, prediction markets are being referenced.

And I know they're all talking about Pollymarket because I can go, like, reference the numbers. but also because polymarket has like 85% of all market share, of all prediction market volume. And so this is like where liquidity and accuracy are actually intersecting. And liquidity kind of actually matters in like what is more of a like a downstream market to place bets on is like who's Trump's vice president going to be. There's at least four more markets, five more markets that are ahead of that. Anyways, on other things that are about politics and also bullish crypto, Donald Trump is apparently considering Jamie Diamond as treasurer. Secretary. And not just that, but I will also add that a Forbes headline reads, Trump reveals JP Morgan CEO's sudden Bitcoin and crypto flip. And I want to emphasize, Donald Trump is saying

that Jamie Diamond is now bullish crypto. Like the fact that Donald is the harbinger of this message is crazy. Right. I mean, what happened, I'm sure I was like, hey, you want the job, Treasury Secretary, you got to be pro crypto. You got to be pro-Bitcoin. This is like part of the criteria. You think he said that? A hundred and ten percent. Really? And it's just like, like not hard for Jamie Diamond to flip. I mean, Larry Fink, like, admitted he flipped on crypto as well. Like, at first he hated it and then he flipped on it because he did more investigation, had some products to sell. I mean, this is exactly what's going on. When it's opportunistic, Wall Street will kind of like flip towards crypto. And this is what we're seeing here. Also this week,

Trump says he wants the U.S. in charge of crypto before China. It's a crypto race, I suppose. He said, if I throw it aside, it's going to be picked up by another country, most likely China, they're pretty advanced in this sphere. So you have to look at it. What I want. again is what is good for the country. And so again, he's talking, but he's putting crypto in the geopolitical context and said this is another reason for why he is pro-crypto

and wants to foster innovation here. I think Trump's pro-crypto stance and other things, as well as the nomination of J.D. Vance's his vice president, has really kind of won him. A lot of hearts and minds, it's been slowly crescendoing in the last month or so,

but I think in the last week, and especially since the assassination attempt, just like so many tech giants have just lined up behind the Trump administration. Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz came out as pro-Trump, Brian Armstrong, Elon Musk, the Winklevye, Kathy Woods, Jesse Powell, Eric Torrenberg. Like, Silicon Valley is just like lining up behind Trump,

which is kind of funny because Silicon Valley, once upon time, used to be a pretty, like, liberal bastion. But now they're all kind of like a seeing that, like, Trump is just pro-innovation and pro-markets, and they're all kind of, like, lining up. That's it. You know how we've said about the Democrat platform with respect to crypto is just they're leaving free real estate open, right?

That's exactly what they're doing with crypto and the Republicans are taking it and Trump's taking it. But more broadly, they're leaving free real estate open when it comes to tech, big tech, AI, this sort of thing. They don't have a strong platform. And Trump is saying, hey, I'm the pro tech, pro crypto, pro whatever you want me to be, pro markets president, right? And so they're like lining up behind them.

There is a podcast, I haven't listened to it yet, but, you know, Mark, Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, on just like why they're supporting Trump basically. It's still in my cue to read, but like all of Silicon Valley is kind of lining up behind this candidate. Now, there is a counter to all of this, and there's another discussion at play in crypto.

So, David, you might have seen a lot of pro-Trump takes in the crypto sphere for sure, but there was another take with a bit more nuance, you know, Vitalik-style take. In fact, Vitalik wrote a blog post entitled, Yeah, against choosing your political alliance based on who is quote-unquote pro-crypto. Did you read this article?

Did you get the gist of what he's saying? Yeah, it's actually the first thing I read this morning. And the way I would just summarize this is that Vitalik is advocating for a notion of crypto values or crypto politics in of themselves, cypherpunk values. And he's saying, instead of simply supporting pro or anti-cryptocurrency politics, we should instead view politics from a crypto ethos and decide on the merits of candidates based on their alignment with the values that crypto as an industry tries to enshrine.

You know, freedom, censorship resistance, the ability to, express freedom of speech and freedom of, uh, to transact. Uh, and so he's like kind of differentiating just like politics and policies that will like make more tokens legal and allow more ETFs to happen and do things that are good for our bags and like kind of reminding like, why are we here in crypto in the first place? Like, why do we value censorship resistant, uh, technologies? Uh, what about like other facets of crypto that aren't cryptocurrency, but cryptography? And he's basically saying like, hey, let's kind of view these candidates. as like who they are as humans rather than the policies and the things that they are trying

to promote and judge some on their character, which I thought was like refreshing, but also needed further unpacking, which is kind of what crypto Twitter did. Yeah, it does need further unpacking, but it's interesting the way he opened this article was a picture of him with Vladimir Putin in 2018. And I think I recall him saying he actually regrets this meeting. He sort of felt sort of used. at the time, many in the Russia government expressed willingness to become open to crypto. And then it turned out they really weren't.

Like, it turned out Russia was maybe open to it from a government perspective to evade sanctions. Exactly. But they weren't open to it to give, like, crypto freedoms for their citizen. They're people. Yeah, it wasn't. Russia's not pro-crypto for the people. It's pro-crypto for the oligarchs. Exactly.

And so that, you know, I think Vitalik is citing that as an example of a disalignment here, where somebody could have a stand with crypto binary. Yep, they're an A plus, because. They like fit, you know, 21. But really behind the scenes, maybe they disapprove of privacy on chain. Maybe they don't actually support custody. You know, self-custive assets. Maybe they don't support the other like freedoms associated with crypto.

Things like you can imagine, like you can own Bitcoin in the ETF, but not with a private. Exactly. Like a policy like that. Oh, and could you imagine Jamie Diamond being pretty excited about that policy? Yeah, Jamie Diamond would love that. I mean, that's so there's a private key. a lot of nuance when it comes to pro-crypto. This is the way I've kind of stated it

because, David, you noticed, we've had to make some decisions on bank lists lately with respect to what guests we have on the program, right? And so we've been having Republican guests. We've had Democrat guests in the past. The question is like, should we have someone like J.D. Vance on the podcast? Should we have someone like even Trump

on the podcast? And I think our platform has always been like, we're open to any guest, regardless of party, that wants to talk about crypto. so we can hear their stance. So I kind of articulated this. I want to see if you agree with this. This is just like not the bankless editorial policy, but it's kind of like my personal editorial policy because I felt like people would say, oh, like they want you to pick a side.

Team red, team blue. You got to pick a side, right? Of course. And even pro-crypto people. There's like, Republicans are clearly pro-crypto. So pick aside. David, Ryan, why aren't you guys there on like voting on the Republican administration? They're the pro-curity ones. Yeah, yeah. And first of all, I just like don't want to disclose who I'm voting for. I don't feel like people come to Bankless for political insights. And I don't want them to either. This is kind of how I've articulated it and I want to see how far off or close this is to you. But my lane is pro-crypto and anti-authoritarian.

I'm not a single-issue voter personally, though I understand people who are. I support pro-crypto policy from both political parties and at Bankless give voice so the voters can hear transparently where the politicians land. I avoid dishing strong opinions on areas I have limited expertise. My deep wish for America is that avoids 21st century trap of authoritarianism. And my contribution to this task is propagating crypto. And in doing so, restore some power to the people. This question that has come up of, you know, sure, you've got some pro-crypto candidates, but they're authoritarian in all of these other ways.

And they present a list, right? That's a challenge because maybe they are. It's just like outside of my lane. I just like don't have the expertise to kind of like do the deep dive analysis. So what I have decided to do from an editorial perspective is bring various politicians on and basically just talk about crypto. Because in that lane, I have like enough expertise to understand what the pro-crypto, like, anti-authoritarian policies are and like what, where position, where politicians should be on this issue. What do you think about this? Yeah.

I will reflect upon your take with my take after I read everyone else's take. So I'll summarize at the very end because I think other people. people had some useful takes. Starting with them more favorable and agreeing to Vitalik, moving and moving away from that as we go along, starting with Peter Van Volkemberg from Coin Center, he says, another headline for Vitalik's article could have been, don't sacrifice your cypherpunk ethos for a particular pro-cryptopolitician or policy proposal. I agree with that entirely with that principle.

Politicians will come and go. Privacy speech and the rule of law must be preserved. So Peter totally agreeing with Vitalik. Tushar, Jane from Multicoin, says, I believe that Vitalik fundamentally misses misunderstands the real politic on how most Petalotian politicians pick their policies. Policy choices are rarely based on some deep

beliefs that they hold. They pick policies based on what will win them elections. In my opinion, the job of a politician is to reflect the will of the constituents, not, quote, be in it for the right reasons. And then lastly, Jake Chavinsky says, too many people will read this headline as Vote Biden and Miss the rest. That said,

overall, much of this seems too clever by half. Good crypto policy requires electing pro-cryptopink candidates period political reality beats idealism every time so like a splattering of responses and like i think my my first takeaway after reading the vitalic piece was that this is very idealistic i would ideally enjoy to have candidates that i know had like wore their values on their heart on their sleeves it was very open and transparent and i would agree with those values and i would vote for them but that's simply not how things work uh i kind of resonate with two char's take of just like well like

at the very worst, like being pro-crypto is a pro-crypto currency is a Trojan horse for crypto values. Like if you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. And so this is just the way that elections work. No one votes on like their deep-rooted morals. They vote on who gets elected and how they get elected. And at the same time, what you're saying is like, I think the way I would interpret your tweet, which is like, if I see a candidate, a presidential candidate, a policy of something, I'm going to view that policy on like, does, this make people like me more free or less free? And that's kind of how I view both the left and the right. And honestly, neither the left or the right makes me feel very good about like that

lens of viewing things. And so I kind of have to view like which, which are these like two camps are going to make me more free? And that's why I'm generally become like pretty like politics agnostic. But now like all of the crypto industries shedding its political agnosticism because there's now an administration that is like explicitly good for our bags and I think that's a problem that Vitalik is like having a problem with. Yeah, yeah, it's pick a team season for sure.

And I will say many of the positions in the GOP right now are just like pro-crypto and pro-freedom with respect to crypto in that lane. I don't know if I can say that about the broader Republican platform and I don't know that our expertise is commentary on all of that either. And that bankless nation is the last time we will talk about politics in this entire weekly roll-up.

We just front-loaded all of that, so welcome to the rest of the weekly roll-up. And before we get there, a moment to talk about our friends and sponsors over at Macha, who is building the first serious decks aggregator for on-chain trading. On-chain trading has typically been harder for traders because there's a bunch of other things to work on. But Masha has built a new pricing engine. So it is unbeatable on large trades with smart routing that splits trades and uses intermediate tokens for the deepest liquidity. and also has one-time token allowances

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I love Macha. I'm a power user of Macha. I guess that makes me a serious trader. Am I a serious trader, David? No, you are not. But when I trade, I'm serious about that button that I click. That one trade, when you're trade, you're serious about that trade.

That high conviction, hold for a long time. trade. Speaking of that, conviction, let's see where the markets are in terms of conviction on the week. Bitcoin price. What are we looking at? 10% more convicted this week, sort of the week at 57,300, ending the week at 63,700, which is a pretty good week. 10%. Yeah, the Trump, the Trump, the Trump, nice. I don't know. Is that a thing? Should be. ETH price starting the week at $3,100, up eight and a half percent. Touched $3,500. Well done, Eith. And now currently that $3,400.1.1. And now currently that $3,401.10. Total crypto market cap, $2.46 trillion.

Coming in to our Layer 2 update brought to you by Mantle, who's not just a Layer 2, but also an entire ecosystem of an LRT and is Layer 2 and also in Defi apps. Two big things I want to bring out on this Layer 2 update. Scroll TVL has jumped by 22% in seven days. That's impressive. 22% in seven days, becoming the eighth largest layer 2 by TVL, 80%, 87. 7% of that is eth, 11% of that is stable coins. Scroll if you don't know what scroll is.

It's a bytecode equivalent ZKEVM is one of the first big ZKEVMs that are, that's bytecode equivalent. And so, congrust to scroll for getting $200 million on your layer 2. Yeah. And you know it's also notable here, David, is in addition to achieving all of that in a short period of time, they also crossed a major threshold. So they now have over a billion dollars in total value locked. So this makes them the eighth chain, the eighth layer two to achieve that on Ethereum.

So there's seven other layer twos that have that they're basically TVL unicorns, of which now scroll is one of those. So a big milestone achieved here as well. Second big layer two update base is now 30% bigger. So base had a hard fork, one of the good ones where things improve instead of one of the bad ones where we have two different tribes. Improved transaction compression by 20 to 30% which means that base uses 20% to 30% less blob space for every transaction.

also reduced smart wallet fees, smart contract wallet fees, by 90% as well. And so definitely as even the Ethereum layer one is getting into the smart contract wallet world, so are layer twos, which I think is going to be very needed by the time we actually do have like a retail driven bull market because this is going to be the way

retail presses more buttons that they want to press and less buttons like approve. And also like abstract gas. And so when I hear that we are reducing smart contract wallet fees by 90%, I'm like, okay, this is, we're going to remove an entire just like logistics transaction from retail, which is like having to pay for gas. Imagine that. More updates on the week to talk about Mount Gox coins. They're on the move. So how is this impacting markets? Are we done with the dumpage?

Also, some ETF updates, both for Bitcoin, but most importantly. Lots of ETF updates. Yeah, most importantly, Ethereum. I feel bad that we don't have the ETF this week, but we will the next week. This will be the last roll-up. It was the last roll-up. It's what we said. Right. And Larry thinks it's getting real bullish. We'll play the clip. So all this and more. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including the exchange to go pick up your crypto. Now's the time to buy. Go create an account on Cracken. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support teams, then head over to Cracken. One of the longest standing and most secure crypto platforms in the world. Cracken is on a journey to build a more accessible, inclusive, and fair financial system, making it simple and secure for everyone, to trade crypto. Cracken's intuitive trading tools are designed to grow with you, empowering you to make your first or your hundreds trade in just a few clicks. And there's an award-winning

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Yeah. This is also going to be true for a number of other exchanges that also are like signed up for this program, which this is how Bitcoins from Mount Cox are going to be distributed. David, should we just say also if you're a recipient of Mount Cox, if you're like part of that group, congratulations. Yeah, congrats for holding. You are one of the OGs in the original exchange. Yeah.

That's kind of sick actually. That started at all. There are some people who, I mean, I'm sure they have made plenty of money. because they were in crypto in 2013. But, like, that's going to be a massive windfall for a lot of people. Oh, 100%. Well, and that's the question. Will this result in some selling pressure?

So this windfall, this locked Bitcoin that people have been forced hold for like 10 years, are they just going to sell it? Are they going to dump it? And what's the impact on the market? Yeah. So whether or not it's a forced hold, I don't really think it counts as a force hold because the liquid supply of Mount Gauk's claims has been it's been pretty liquid for a number of years now.

So it's technically not a forced hold. It's just been a forced lockup of a supply of Bitcoins. So like people who really wanted to sell if they were truly motivated to sell before this Bitcoin distribution, they had that option. So this is one of the many reasons why people don't think the Mount Cox Bitcoin's distributions again impact the markets that much. In addition, there's just like apparently we have the data that there's just meaningfully sufficient liquidity to absorb any like meaningful. amount of sell pressure. So even if people were materially selling their bitcoins from the Gox distribution, it's just not going to impact the Bitcoin price that much because Bitcoin's like pretty liquid and there's just actually not that much to be sold. I think some hedge funds

might have just bought the Mount Gawks claims because they are directionally long Bitcoin, so they'll buy discounted Bitcoin anyways no matter what. And maybe that's like kind of similar to the gray scale GPDC trade that happened that resulted in GPDC. outflow, so maybe there's some sell pressure that. But I think overall, like everyone has, everyone generally has to take that this is not going to impact the market that much. So we've got the liquidity. We've got the buying pressure to absorb all of this. This is a tweet that corroborates what you said, even if MT. Gox, $3 billion is sold on Crack. And it's just 1% of the realized cap increase in this bull cycle, manageable liquidity. And of course, we have a new

pool of buyers, which is the Bitcoin ETF buyers, which we'll get to you in a minute. And they keep buying, David. It's also worth noting that, like, if you're you are a Bitcoin or in 2013 and you're still holding these like Mount Cox claims like what else has come around since 2013 that you haven't been able to buy because your Bitcoin has been locked up Ethereum Solana literally basically every other blockchain so if we're talking about like where will this Bitcoin go it'll either go it will either go nowhere and that is going to be neutral on the price it might take leverage on Bitcoin and that will be bullish the Bitcoin price but I

don't think a lot of that's going to happen or Bitcoin is going to be sold for Eth or Solana or anything else. And so actually, this event is bullish the long tail of crypto assets. And at this point actually just not be a big deal. I might just be hypothesizing here. But like technically, it's actually more bullish for everything else other than Bitcoin because it's buying pressure for everything else and selling pressure for Bitcoin. So it's bullish, longtail.

Spoken like a true alt-coiner, David. I can't believe you take this position. I know Mount Cox was kind of thrown on the bus for causing some of the recent dumpage that we've seen in the markets, but I actually think it was more the other G in the room, which is Germany, the country of Germany, the German government. They dumped a whole lot of Bitcoin. One point six billion dollars with the Bitcoin. The good news, though, is they dumped it all. They've got no remaining. The German government has zero Bitcoin to dump on us. So that was resolved last week. They just quit selling their Bitcoin.

That's such a hilarious, like, bullish thing is that we are stopping. The dumpage is stopping. Yeah. And it's funny. Okay, so the German government sold 50,000 Bitcoin for $2.89 billion. Oh my God, it's more than I thought. I thought this was less. An average price of almost $60,000 per Bitcoin. I think historically, this is going to be seen as like a terrible trade. Yes, a terrible trade. Maybe they were forced to. I'm not sure. I haven't gone in the details of German law.

No one in the German government is in charge of getting, of like holding Bitcoin. Like there's no one who's like make sure you like like yeah. But David, should there be? Should there be? What about your central bank? So I was looking at this just because I was curious. So here are the top five countries by Bitcoin holdings. Okay.

The United States is number one actually. USA, number one. What department is holding Bitcoin? The Department of Justice. Like this is all from seizure. Like they've seized these assets. I'm assuming this is all from seizures. There's no other than El Salvador.

FBI and yeah. This is all just people that have seized Bitcoin. Oh, and Ukraine. Ukraine for maybe like donations and other things. Yes. So I'll read the list. But like the top three are all because like criminal activity in the country and the Bitcoin was seized. So it's not like it's on the treasury like backing a central bank monetary policy in the way that that gold is in the country.

But still, the United States, if it doesn't sell, has the most Bitcoin, 207 Bitcoin. Is that a bit more than Michael Saylor? $27,000, I should say. Yeah. Number two is China. That is not more than Michael Saylor. It's not more? It's less than Michael Saylor.

It's less than Michael Saylor. Michael Saylor has more Bitcoin than every single nation state on Earth, huh? Okay. The United Kingdom has number three, 61,000 Bitcoin, and then Ukraine, 46,000 El Salvador, 5,700. El Salvador, like, actually purchased the Bitcoin. Ukraine was donated to Bitcoin. The top three was all for Caesars. Now, Germany.

I don't know. Ukraine donated, had all. that's 46,000 Bitcoins. They didn't have like $10 billion donated to them. I don't know where that came from. Yeah, a bunch of it was donated, but maybe not all of it. Some of these numbers are a little hazy. By the way, this is only the assets we have public records for.

So I think you could say, yeah, but all of these countries are like buying in secret. But the Federal Reserve is secretly DCA and Bitcoin. Yeah, wouldn't you be? Germany was number four. Now they got zero. So they're no longer number four. idiots. Yeah, no, I don't know.

Oh, by the way, you know what I learned as well? Do you know that Canada sold all of its gold reserves? Gold reserves? All of its gold reserves. Oh, that's right. Because I saw your tweet using the word rodogging. I'm like, Ryan. Yeah, so they sold all of their gold reserves.

So they actually had no gold. And they had a ton of gold in 1960s, and they just went complete fiat. There's the only G7 country to do this. It's like, it's down to mind. you ended up using the word rod dogging to explain this? They're just raw dogging their monetary policy, David. It's pretty clear in the context. I'm just going at it alone.

I don't know. Aren't the kids using this terminology? I don't know what I'm saying. No protection. Just drink fiat. They have no gold. They have no hard asset currency. There's nothing there.

Bond, SDRs. Like, how does I make you feel? I mean, probably nothing because you're not a Canadian. But like, I'm just like, why, guys? This doesn't seem sensible. Anyway, no.

Definitely not. Let's talk about ETS. The raw dog, your monetary policy, kids. Eric Baltunis, gives us a date. Is that what we're talking about for the Ethereum ETF? What's the date? It is sometime this coming a week. And so you're listening to this on Friday next week,

as soon as I get back to the United States with my horny crux. 723. What day is that? Tuesday. For Tuesday. You don't know this, David, but I'm actually out that day. And you're already scheduled, man. We already scheduled podcast for you.

Is there Eric Balthus is coming in the podcast? Yeah. Well, I was gone while you're going to be gone, guys. Perfect. Thank you for doing that. So you're talking to Eric Balchunis on Tuesday around 3 p.m. And you're live streaming. Just so you know.

I'm literally finding this out for the first time. And you're going to be talking about the launch of Ethereum ETFs. The ETHs. Yeah, that's the plan on Tuesday. Because I'm going to come. I get back on Monday past market hours. Yeah. And so, of course, it launches on Tuesday.

Yeah. Oh, thank you for your work in just trying. It's a very hard. Okay, so this is a date, though, and they're all going to launch. Let's talk about who's launching on this date. Let's see. All of them, aren't they? Yeah, all of them, but who are they?

To least three of the eight spot ETH ETF issuers begin trading on Tuesday, so the products will be available to trade on Tuesday. This is a whole bunch. So Franklin, Templeton, Vanek, BitWise, 21 shares, Fidelity, I shares. I always forget which one's Black Rock. Is that I Shares? I Shares is Black Rock. Yeah, that's Black Rock.

Gray Scale, of course, they get their mini-trust, pro shares, Invesco, all of them. So it's another horse race to see who can grab all of the Ethereum ETF liquidity. It's also a rates on fees. Franklin Templeton is coming in at the cheapest fees of the ETHF at 0.19 bips. With a waiver. I don't know how long the waiver is, but the waiver means like maybe six months, I think it's standard three months.

And so like months of months of. no fees and then 0.19% fees for Franklin Templeton. Varnak at bitwise are at 0.2%. 21 shares at 0.21%. Fidelity, I share, gray scale, mini trust, 0.25%. Okay, now I can see why people say 25 bibs. 25 bips. Yeah, get tracked 5.

In Bestco Galaxy, also 25 bips, but no waiver, whereas Fidelity, I share, I shares and the gray scale mini trust will have a waiver. And then the gray scale, Eth E, 2. 5% 250 bips, but they will convert 10% of the fund into the mini trust and their mini trust has 25 bips. Yeah, it's a lot of bips. Why are they doing this? Why are they, like, if they can change their fee, why are they spinning up the mini trust at all? Why don't they just lower the fee on the 2.5% the 250 bips?

Why don't they just lower it down to what their mini trust is? Why do they even need a mini trust at all? I know I have my conspiracies. I don't think it's a conspiracy. It's probably like a pretty rational short-term business decision, but what is it? If you are an owner of the Grayscale ETHE trust paying 2.5% and then the ETHE gets converted into an ETF, you will need to do something to roll that into the mini-trust. Or you will have to like sell it and to buy like one of the others.

So you are going to actually have to open up your brokerage app, press that sell button, and then incur your capital gains. And so if you are one of two people, you are caught paying this 2.5%. fee. Two types of people. One, I'm going to call AFK capital away from keyboard capital. People who just aren't aware, don't know, just lazy, like retirement brokerage account. It's summertime, clarification, man. Yeah, right. 2.5% fee, like, fees, whatever, like, fine, whatever. So that's you. Or somebody who bought ETHE at a very low price and you do not want to pay that capital gains tax bill. So one, both of these two populations are like basically cornered into paying this 2.5%

gray scale fee. Well, it's a business system that gray scale is making, I guess. And so we'll see how it plays out in the horse race here. A question was asked by, of Hester Perce, so Commissioner Hester Perce, what about staked ETF future? So we have a regular

ETF as of Tuesday of next week. How about an ETF, an ETH ETF with staking? And her response was this, that the SEC is always open for reconsideration as far as I'm concerned. I think that makes sense as far as Hester Purse is concerned. I think that would also happen in a post-Gary

Gensler SEC, maybe on the back of a pro-crypto presidents. You can see all of this starting to come together. It's not that difficult to convert this into a staked ETF either. It's just some paperwork and approval. Right. And you see the path towards that actually happening. J.D. Vance, the VP that Trump has nominated, Trump likely going to win the election now. J.D. Vance, very aware of who Gary Gensler is and disagrees with his position. And so we'll probably give Gary Gensler the boot if and when Trump gets elected. And we need to put in a new SEC commissioner. I don't know if it will be Hester Purse, but I would sure love it if it was.

I do know that Hester Purse was like kind of like on her way out of the SEC, like kind of fed up with Gary's shit. I wonder if this new administration might change her mind and maybe she could stick around, please, Hester. Yeah. Yeah. And then also give us staking in the ETSP please. Hey, this is Jake Trevinsky. By the way, did we just get into politics? We promised no politics.

I guess this is markets politics, but, you know, breaking our promise already. ETH ETF next week, we promise. Last roll up without it. This is Jake Trevinsky. There's no good reason why the SEC should prevent ETH ETFs from staking. Staked ETH isn't a security. Yes, it's not. Investors can fully understand the risk of a stake product plus decide for themselves.

They want to take that risk. It'll take a while, but this is a when, not an if, in my opinion. All right. That's the ETH ETF. Next roll-up, it'll be live available. We'll have some episodes about it next week. I'm sure David will be doing all of them. He doesn't know it yet fully.

The question is, are people going to buy the Ethereum ETF? And if we can take the playbook from the Bitcoin ETF, if it plays out the same way it did for Bitcoin, it is very bullish for the price of eth and for ETH ETF inflows. Especially when in the last two weeks, we have seen actual material inflows into the Bitcoin ETF. So two weeks in a row of ETH. which is actually kind of a record since it tapered off in the first place forever ago. So a new all-time high in assets under management of the collective Bitcoin ETFs of 887,000

Bitcoins. Eric Balchunis, he also said Bitcoin ETFs are in two steps forward mode after one step back in June with another $300 million of inflows and a billion dollars for the week. And so really seeing some healthy Bitcoin activity. I think like I would like to see, like I would like to know like inflows, high inflows means high Bitcoin price, but also just like pro-crypto sentiment as a result of all the politics of which I won't bring up again will also create more inflows. So I think like price and inflows are actually going to be like more meaningfully one-to-one coupled

than them being decoupled. So like any sort of like pro-crypto sentiment that happens in the geopolitics macro world is going to result in inflows. Do you want to hear some more pro-crypto sentiment this time? from Larry. It was a really bullish week, but yes, it hit me. Yeah, okay. So this is Larry think. We were talking about Jamie Diamond earlier. This is kind of Jamie Diamond's colleague in Tradfai. Larry Think, this is what he's saying about crypto this week. As you know, I was a skeptic. Yes. I was a proud skeptic. And I studied it, learned about it. And I came away saying, okay, you know, my opinion, five years was wrong.

Here's my opinion. Say this is what I believe in today. I believe the opportunity today. I believe Bitcoin is legitimate. I'm not trying to say there's not misuses like everything else, but it is a legitimate financial instrument that allows you to have maybe uncorrelated, non-correlated type of returns. I believe it is an instrument that you invest in when you're more frightened, though. It is an instrument when you believe that countries are debasing their currency, debasing their currency by excess deficits,

and some countries are. I believe we have countries where you're frightened of your everyday existence, and you have an opportunity to invest in something that is outside your country's control, then you can have more financial control. And so I'm a major believer that there is a role for Bitcoin in portfolios. I believe you're going to see that as one of the asset classes that we all look, I look at it as digital gold, as I said before, and I do believe there's a real need for everyone to look at it as one alternative to, I would say, the optimism that I have in the world.

If you want to hedge hope, Bitcoin is not an instrument for hope, unless you're hopeful you're going to make a lot of money on it. But I look at it as a vehicle in which you're expressing your financial acumenical. in something that you're more frightened of the world, you're more frightened of your existence. And I believe there's a great industrial use for it. And I think a lot of people are missing that. He goes on, David, for about another turn.

Like, this is Larry Fink fully converted, preaching the good word of Bitcoin. He's also, did you hear him almost leaving an opportunity, an opening for other crypto narratives and other crypto assets? I mean, this is why BlackRock is just like the largest asset manager in the entire world is because, like, he knows how the narrative game is played with large institutional investors.

So he's saying, this is the asset, digital gold, debasement, like monetary policy. Like if you're concerned about the world, you're like fear in the world, leaves a space open to talk about Ethereum. As, you know, like tokenization, you're optimistic about the world, like look at all the, you know,

restructuring the entire financial system, the entire world will be tokenized. That's Act 2. He's going to do the exact same thing months into the Ethereum ETF, as he did with Bitcoin. And the other thing I'll just notice is note that what a pivot that Wall Street has taken. Right.

They just had to have products to sell. Now that they have products to sell. They have products to sell and they needed it to be politically accepted. And I don't know what Flair Fink's politics are, but they are markets aligned. So like, pick your base. It's making money is the politics, I think, of Tradfai. Also, the Black Rock Digital Assets team is called the Digital Assets team. It's not called the Bitcoin team.

Oh, okay, there you go. That's broader appeal then. And after all of that bullish sentiment, content, conversations, there's another bullish thing that often gets overlooked, but I think it's definitely worth paying attention to. For the first time all year, Bitcoin miners are producing more Bitcoin than they are selling, which means that they are profitable as companies.

And when Bitcoin miners are profitable and they don't sell their Bitcoins, that means just more supply gets reserved from the markets. Miners, Bitcoin miners, really set like the clients, the climate around markets, they aren't acute. They aren't acute sellers, but when Bitcoin miners aren't not dumping because they actually are profitable, Bitcoin supply gets withdrawn. And this has been actually a pretty good kind of background indicator as to the health of the Bitcoin markets and therefore the rest of the crypto markets is like, are the miners selling or are they holding? And if the miners are holding, that's bullish. And that's basically been bullish every single cycle.

So there's just another indicator of like we're kind of set up to, we're really healthily set up in the markets. I'm wondering if you think that maybe I'm extrapolating. I don't know as much about Bitcoin miners, but it feels like Bitcoin miners are the absolute smart money when it comes to Bitcoin because they have to be. Because if they are dumb, if they don't do this exactly right, precisely right, they die. They go to business. So it's a matter of survival. So we've gone through the evolutionary process. We've got like, so all of the dumb mining companies that made poor decisions with respect to should I buy or should I hold, they're all, they go out of business and they lose every cycle. So now you have the smart Bitcoin money remaining and they are

holding at this point. And this has actually been empirically proven. Bitcoin miners are some of the best traders in the crypto industry if you look at like when they elected to sell and when they elected to hold. Coming up next, Uniswap has a big new browser extension wallet, but you know what a browser extension wallet is. So why is this one any different? Stay tuned for that. And how much money is crypto spending on politics? Are we outspending big oil? Oh, you said politics, David. I'm just for invoking politics and an update on Crypto Wars 2.0 one of the most important cases in crypto history.

Roman Storm's case. We got an update on that as well. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible, especially Mantle and the Mantle ecosystem, the vertically integrated layer 2, CMEth, and all the other fun things you can do on Mantle. Check them out.

You're going to go hear from them right now. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the front of layer two design architecture since it first started building mantle DA powered by technology from eigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming onto the mantle layer two to capture some of the highest yields available in Defy and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by

the $3 billion mantle treasury in the Mantle reward station. Maybe it's because the mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto or your user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's Defy apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle. The Uniswap extension is here. The self-custody wallet created by the most trusted team in Defi Uniswap Labs designed to make swapping feel effortless.

This extension lives in your browser's sidebar, letting you swap, sign transactions, and send or receive crypto without ever losing your place on the internet. Plus, with human readable transaction messages, you'll always know exactly what you're signing. a multi-chain world effortlessly with support for 11 chains like Ethereum mainnet, base, arbitram, and optimism. No more chain switching or token importing. All your assets are right where you need them to be. The Uniswop extension is designed to level up your swapping experience with other Uniswap Labs products as well. Easily onboard to the extension using the Uniswop mobile wallet to begin managing your assets across platforms and take advantage of smooth, seamless

synergies with the Uniswap web app. 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. Launching a token? Don't let complex legal and tax issues slow you down. Toku provides specialized support to optimize your launch and ensure that you as a founder and your team and your investors get the most tax efficient outcomes. The Toku team understands the crypto space inside and out and will ensure your token launch is fully compliant while maximizing tax efficiency. Toku can connect you with the best attorneys if you need them to make sure that you have the best advice and Toku can help to optimize your taxes so you pay the least possible amount of taxes while still maintaining legal compliance. With Toku's guidance, you can concentrate on building your company while Toku handles the logistics. Token launches don't have to be complicated.

Talk to Toku today to get a free initial token valuation. And we're back. Uniswap wants you to say goodbye to pop-ups, that little pop-up browser in your browser extension wallet, because now the Uniswap browser extension wallet is a little sidebar. And this one is unique because, well, it doesn't pop up, not like most other browser extension wallace. But when, Ryan, when you're browsing, I'm going to assume you use Chrome. is there a little pop-up bar on the right side of your window. That is the new location for the Uniswops browser extension,

and it's permanently there. So it's permanently embedded in your browser extension. And so instead of your browser extension wallet, like popping up and like taking over your screen, and if you're in full screen, you have to swipe back and it's confusing, this sidecar, I think of it like a motorcycle sidecar,

is the Uniswap wallet. And it's just like persistently there. And if you have a Web3 JSON-enabled website, Uniswap wallet will just be right there ready to go. And so it's a new form factor for a browser extension wallet, and I think it's going to be pretty sexy. Yeah, I love it. I think it's a really smart move. It feels like a much more integrated kind of like way to display a wallet inside of a browser, right? So it's just like, it's almost like it's part of the browser in this type of experience. Yeah, much more seamless.

And I think this opens the door for all sorts of things that we can do with crypto, beyond just like the trading verb that Uniswob's been known for. Yeah, we need, we need buttons to be closer to the action. and I think a sidecar extension like this definitely does that. Moving into Crypto Wars 2.0, we got some positive developments in Roman Storm's tornado cash defense. There was a motion to delay the trial date. And whether that notion was approved or not, doesn't really matter. What does matter is that we actually got the judge, Judge Falia.

Oh, God, I'm so sorry for picturing that name, is apparently asking really good questions about the details of the case. and apparently appears to recognize the danger in establishing a mere negligence standard for money laundering, which is what the Dutch did to Alexi Persev. And so some of the arguments that were brought during this process, the judge mused on what the tipping point should be for when a service ought to be shut down

when it becomes aware that criminals are using it in the process of bad actions. And so the prosecutor, Thane Wren, argued that any legitimate business that becomes aware of criminal activity should be required to take steps to stop it. And then the judge respond saying, that's a lot.

I'm not sure what you expect Mr. Storm and his colleagues to do. Should they have shut down tornado cash? Exactly. How do you saddle him with liability? And asked whether charges were comparable to criminally charging the creators of WhatsApp before criminals used it, which is the right question to ask. Thank you, Judge.

So this case is not over. This is just like one procedural event in this case. But we now just got an insight to the judge asking the right questions and taking the right perspective. We don't know how she will rule, but she seems informed to the arguments for both parties. And in my opinion, the law is on Roman Storm's side. And so hopefully if she's asking the right questions, we get to the right conclusion. Yeah, absolutely.

She's asking the right questions in this kind of like pretrial. And she's thinking about this in the right way. This is what the defense said, by the way, about this, which kind of encapsulates the entire case. This is the only money laundering case ever where the defendant didn't have control over the funds, period. That's such a hotline. Right? I mean, this is a smart contract. Put the code out, put it in production, right? Similar to like encryption or similar to like WhatsApp. You can't be responsible for every criminal use of a tool that you create, can you? I mean, that's just an extension of liability that is just like unprecedented. I think the judge might see this. So it's very

bullish. So this motion to delay the trial has been approved, which means it's going to happen in December now of this year. So it'll probably be like a multi-week trial. We'll talk about it then. I think it's an absolutely massive case for crypto because it's like smart contract law, autonomy, like, you know, whether code is speech. Huge bellwether. Oh, yeah. It's massive. This is really, this is what we call kind of Crypto Wars 2.0. This is like the 90s with Zimmerman in terms of the outcome here and the precedent that this will set. And as essentially, you mentioned Alexei Perzav, just a reminder. So he was actually in the Netherlands. He was actually convicted for something similar. He's the co-founder of Roman steward of Tornano. By the Dutch. Yes.

He's been trying to appeal, but that appeal has been denied. So he is in prison. Basically, his conviction was 64 months in prison. So he's serving that time now and continues to serve that time. That's absolutely long time. Pivoting gears here. Back to politics. Just betraying my listeners left and right. Molly White, previous bankless podcast guest, has released her new project to follow thecrypto.org, which is a website that provides real-time lens into the cryptocurrencies industries to influence the 2024 elections in the United States. And I would assume after the 2024 elections, it just pivots into crypto's money in Capitol Hill. And so you can see candidates that have received donations from crypto packs, whether the candidate won that election, the list of crypto packs and where they fall. recent donations and total expenditures in various states and races. And so Molly White, if you guys

remember, if you guys listened to that episode, we had her on as a crypto skeptic. And so it was somebody who doesn't like crypto and doesn't think it's necessarily good for the world. And so she's making this website to track crypto's influence in politics, which I think is just great. I love this website. I think this is awesome. What do you think is great? So it's like my reaction is, I think it's great. First of all, more transparency is good. We should see where the money's flowing, who's receiving it, how it affects outcomes, how it affects decisions. I think she's kind of, because she's obviously thinks that crypto is in net negative for the world, she's framing this as a bearish thing. It's just like, look how crypto is buying all of the politicians, right?

I think the crypto perspective on this would be like, we have to play this game in order to survive. This is the game. It's not our game. Yeah, we didn't create it. I wish money wasn't involved in politics. I wish this wasn't the way it worked. But if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, right? This is the, and we saw this. I mean, the administrative state is very, very much coming for crypto. And the way we turned it around was we organized, we created, like, stand with crypto, we started donating politically. We started to get involved in the way that the political process forces the crypto industry to get involved for our survival at this point in time. And because if we didn't, like, who knows what restrictions the U.S. would put on crypto freedoms.

It is notable, though, David, that crypto is actually outspending any other industry. So this means... Number one. We're number one. Outspending oil and gas, outspending the communications industry, outspending labor, outspending transportation with respect to its political contributions. Now, I don't know if tech is included in this because, like, you know, like A16Z and those others, they're definitely, you know, spending big.

Part of that goes to crypto, but part of it's more general. Anyway, that was my takeaway from this. It's just like, I can see how it can be a corrupting influence, but like, don't hate the player, hate the game. And like, we've had to do this to survive. Getting money out of politics is, like, one of the few political things that I have in my history. Like, I was very motivated as that political alignment to get money out of politics. I have since given up on that effort.

But I think having crypto be number one, even though when crypto is like a comparatively small industry as compared to like pharmaceuticals and oil, it makes sense if you understand that crypto is an industry that like we learned how to print money. Bitcoin is the removal of the power to print money away from the nation state. Like if you disagree with nation states, like usage of the money printer, buy some Bitcoin. And so it makes sense that we are punching way above our weight class because we have our own money, our entire industry is money printers. And so we are defending our rights to use our tools. And I kind of think if you like look at this, I know you know that I like to look at these things in a biological lens. Like this is a crypto industry like using

its weapons, being a parasite, in stepping its way into the politics of nation states, and buying its way into protection and like a strong, healthy foundation for itself. I just think, I mean, it's an inevitable outcome. Like, don't go up against an industry that can print money. Yeah, no, I think it's good.

And it showcases crypto's ability to coordinate this cycle in a way that's just never had. So it's a bullish indicator to me. Although I can also see, you know, back to full circle of Vitalik's critiques at the beginning, I can also see how this, like, while it's net good right now to me, I can also see how this could become a corrupting influence. Imagine there's a world where...

Which is why I like having this website. This is a check on us. Exactly, exactly. So you can imagine a world where, like, crypto exchanges or like the baddies of the world, maybe Jamie Diamond, J.P. Morgan buys up Coinbase. They become the banking establishment. And then they start to push things that aren't like citizen aligned and freedom aligned, self-custodial wallets.

And they start to push like financial, products, right, and like their banking services and start to really corrupt the process. I can totally imagine that as a possible outcome because... Honestly, it's probably the should be the default scenario. We should be wary of that. And that's kind of what Vitalik is saying in his post. And so I think we need to go into this of eyes wide open and we have to play this game, I suppose, but it's a dangerous game to play.

We have to be wary of the corruption that can fall out. Molly, if you're listening to this, you should apply for a Gitcoin grant because crypto people who appreciate your effort will send you money via Gitcoin grants. 100%. Yeah, yeah. I forget, Molly White was like an editor of Wikipedia, right? She's very open source friendly. She's very kind of like internet, native, internet aligned.

She just hasn't made the leap to crypto. She kind of thinks such a trucking force. Yeah, she just doesn't like the financialization. Yeah, yeah, yeah. David, Me With the Week, what are we looking at? This is a meme that I thought was pretty funny. This is the two universes that we were referencing at the beginning. the top one is the universe in which the bullet did go through Donald Trump's head,

and as a result of that, we have a civil war. Like, honestly, something like that would have happened, something very bad. But with the Trump head movement, the head movement where Trump just tilted his head just slightly to the left, stocks and crypto rip. So these were the two universes, and we got the one where stocks and crypto rip. And also, like, we didn't have a political assassination, which is also good. Do you think there's a version of the roll-up with David and Ryan living in a very different world and having a very different roll-up

in that kind of first scenario. I don't want to think about that. Yeah, forget those guys. Where, like, Bitcoin is down below 30% and, like, the left and the right are, like, at each other's throats and, like, we're living in a, where markets are just totally confused

and unsure about the future. No, I'm very happy to be in this one. Literally, dodged a bullet. Also, metaphorically dodged a bullet in all possible ways. We dodged a bullet on this one. David, because this is the last weekly roll-up without Ethereum ETF,

I think we should leave him with the moment of Zen. This is the new, bit-wise commercial around Ethereum, enjoy, and I will end with some disclaimers. 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 everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot. Hello, I'm Ethereum. And I'm Big Tech. What's going on here? Oh, I'm all about helping people connect. It's just some of these people don't belong here. What do you mean? Well, like this guy. He said something awful.

What do you say? Called soccer football, totally un-American. Seems pretty random. Well, this one plays accordion. Nickelback fan. Only speaks with caps lock on. Oh, well, I didn't mean to do that one, but how do you deal with this? I'm not into random deplatforming. What? You just let pickleball fans in? You're nuts.

What's wrong with pickleball? Everything.