Bankless - ROLLUP: Trump’s DeFi Project | CFTC vs. Uniswap | Brazil Bans Twitter | Coinbase AI | Polymarket & Bloomberg

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

This week in crypto, Trump’s new DeFi project sparked debate—is it legit or a grift? After the SEC, the CFTC targeted Uniswap—what’s going on with regulators? Brazil’s Twitter ban also made ...waves—what does it mean for free speech and crypto’s role in resisting censorship? Markets are asking if the 4-year cycle is dead, and Ryan has three takes on the lackluster crypto prices and what it could mean moving forward. On the bright side, Polymarket is now on the Bloomberg terminal, and Coinbase is looking to bank the robots—an exciting step for AI and crypto. ------ 📣 SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24  https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium  ------ 🌊 KELP | Deposit ETH with Gain today https://kelpdao.xyz/gain/?utm_source=Bankless  ------ 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/58?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E⁠ ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 2:03 Markets https://x.com/Negentropic_/status/1830685688662040961  https://outlierventures.io/article/token-trendlines-2-bitcoin-halving-the-four-year-cycle-is-dead/  https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1831316995691671641  https://x.com/Fiskantes/status/1831302629651042637  https://x.com/SplitCapital/status/1831317921089642915   https://x.com/iamDCinvestor/status/1831318267367145492  18:30 Trump revealed more about his DeFi project, World Liberty Financial!  https://www.worldlibertyfinancial.com/ https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1829141447087648796   https://x.com/lex_node/status/1831084542377206220  https://x.com/lex_node/status/1831105068952961399  https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1831145983847137451  https://x.com/worldlibertyfi/status/1831348462635397271  https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1829500453152837828  32:07 Brazil banned Twitter https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1829778143449698764  https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1831015509384364428  37:17 Binance exec Tigran Gambaryan entered Nigeria court on crutches https://x.com/_RichardTeng/status/1830869029705441553  41:47 Arbitrum released Stylus!  https://x.com/arbitrum/status/1831020553211089243  https://x.com/joeykrug/status/1831367181885698392  43:30 Euler V2 is back!  https://x.com/eulerfinance/status/1831331399619756375  48:03 Celestia releases technical roadmap https://blog.celestia.org/roadmap/  48:39 Bloomberg added Polymarket election data to Terminal https://x.com/M_McDonough/status/1829166689516442043  https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1830984489259901203  50:13 CFTC charges Uniswap with illegal derivatives trading https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8961-24  https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/phamstatement090424  https://x.com/MinarikLaw/status/1831363800542634459  53:11 AIs are now paying other AIs with crypto https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1829623778726592804  56:32 MEME of the Week https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1831386476841726226   59:03 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 Nation, it is the first week of September. It is time for the Bankless Weekly Rollup. This is Back to School edition on Bankless. Kids are back to school, so I feel like we should be getting back to school. Back to work. Summer's over. Prices can go up. All these things.
Starting point is 00:00:21 Oh, my God. As somebody who doesn't have kids, thank you for reminding me that kids go back to school every now and then. All right, what are we covering this week, Ryan? We got number one, Trump's new DFI project. Is it a grift? or is it the most exciting thing to happen to crypto yet? We don't know.
Starting point is 00:00:37 First, the SECC comes for Uniswap. Now is the CFTC's turn to go at Uniswap. What is going on? What did Uniswap do? If anything at all, we'll cover all that news. And Brazil banning Twitter, some big moves in the world of authoritarianism versus freedom. We're going to get some takes on that. Also, the markets are pretty important to talk about.
Starting point is 00:00:56 The markets aren't feeling good right now. So the big question is, is the four-year cycle dead? Gotcha. Some investors think the four-year cycle is dead, David, so I want to bring you into that. And also, I've got three takes on why crypto performance, price performance is so lackluster. Ryan John Adams is pretty much. Not original, you know, borrowed, but I think good. Curated by John Adams.
Starting point is 00:01:20 All right, Polymark it was added to the Bloomberg terminal when talking about that. And also, Coinbase is working to bank the robots, the first ever AI to AI transaction using crypto rails. A lot of big stuff happened this week. so we're going to talk about all that end more. But first a message from our friends and sponsors over at Kelpdow who want to save you time with our brand new product, Gain, so you can farm all the air drops possible just using the Gain Vault.
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Starting point is 00:02:00 You can withdraw as well. well at any time is non-committal. All right, let's get to the market this week, David. I'm feeling like we have a down week. Is that right? What are the charts telling us on Bitcoin? Yeah? It's hard to have an up week when on Monday the trad markets just got clobbered by some just like
Starting point is 00:02:14 kind of bearish macro news, something about the jobs. We don't have that in the agenda this week. But as a result, crypto market is also not in doing so great either. Bitcoin started the week at $60,000, down 6.2% this week currently at $56,600. So remember, okay, Ryan, last week we did this whole site. segment about how October was the most bullish month for Bitcoin, like, historically. It's the month that Bitcoin goes up the moment. October. What month is it right now? It's not October. It is actually September. It is actually September happens to be the most bearish month for
Starting point is 00:02:51 Bitcoin. In the same way that October is the most bullish. September is on average, apparently the most bearish month. So I don't know why we did that segment last week. But since this month in September, this is apparently, allegedly, the most bearish month that is has a sole of Bitcoin. Our message was like basically just, you know, don't look at prices for September and come back in October. And that remains true. So I'm looking at that column for September. This is all the way, Bitcoin price all the way back to 2011. And the most red on the monthly of any month is very much September.
Starting point is 00:03:26 The most blue is October. Well, actually, blue. Yeah, October is a pretty good month. that makes sense that the worst and best months are back to back with each other because then like October's just like the bounce back out of this September dump. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know.
Starting point is 00:03:40 I thought September would be better, but not starting out promising. It's kind of funny that the first day, the first Monday of September that the markets open, just everything just crashes. Again, in the trad markets and then it carries over, spills over into the crypto markets. Ether, start of the week, $2,530 down 7%. Currently at $2,390. Lost $150 on the week about also. the Ethereum ETF flows.
Starting point is 00:04:02 Ryan, looking pretty abysmal. Not great. The ETF, the outflows, the net outflows every day has been somewhere in the single two double digits for the month of August. There was one double-digit outflows on the 26th where we lost $13 million in total AUM. The first two days of trading in September,
Starting point is 00:04:22 the 3rd of September, negative 47 million. And then the 4th of September, negative 37 million. So over $75 million of outflows in the first two trading days of September, as bad as it gets. Well, actually, so before we get too depressed, if you look at these numbers, the vast majority, in fact, almost all of it,
Starting point is 00:04:40 more than all, in both cases, on September the 3rd and September the 4th were actually from ETHE, which is nice. Oh, yeah, right. It's just like, for some reason, ETHE just had just two big days. Yes. And then yesterday, man,
Starting point is 00:04:53 yesterday there has been, some 3 million of the 40 million outflows went back into the Grayscale ETH, which has the lowest fees, but zero million, $0 million went into all of the other ones. BlackRock didn't get anything, Fidelity didn't get anything, no inflows. Yeah, so basically everything else,
Starting point is 00:05:10 the inflows are kind of flat, but ETHI continues to drain. That's kind of the story that we're looking at. So it's bleak, but it's just like not worst case scenario bleak. There are some diamond hints on the institutional side. If Black Rock was outflowing, that would be a different story. That would be a worst case scenario. That hasn't happened yet.
Starting point is 00:05:25 Well, wait for later in September, maybe for that time. Oh, God. Things could always get worse. Before they get better, the total crypto market caps, where are we at in the week? $2.07 trillion, hanging on by our fingernails above $2 trillion. All right, here's the big question. You know how crypto has traditionally gone in these four-year cycles, right? So the bull market, and then we have the bust all in one, like, nice four-year unit,
Starting point is 00:05:51 and then we kind of repeat. We've done this a few times in crypto, like, you know, three times at least. you know like some are calling this like the fourth cycle but the four year cycle is dead according to some investors this is a report from outlier ventures and let me lay out the case for you here and get your response to this basically the fact that following the 2024 happening uh bitcoin experienced the worst price performance uh more than 125 days after the the event so the prices now is the happening happened in april right it's april um I believe the price is now down 8% compared to previous cycles last time last few times this has happened we had a 22% increase so 8% down compared to 22% up traditionally and the report continues we believe that 2016 was the last time the having had a significant fundamental impact on bitcoin price action every having gets more muted in terms of the you know like total percent of bitcoin supply so that
Starting point is 00:06:53 would kind of make sense and they're saying basically 2020, the reason that Bitcoin prices went up in 2020, that was kind of just coincidence. It was more to do with COVID and the liquidity injection than it was to actually do with the happening. So the conclusion is the argument
Starting point is 00:07:09 that the four-year cycle still holds in 2024, but that the Bitcoin ETF approval just pulled for the demand is flawed. It's not true, this report says. The Bitcoin ETF approval was demand-driven, and the having supply, the having is supply-driven,
Starting point is 00:07:25 Anyway, basically the report is saying it goes on to kind of like offer some more data points here. The four-year cycle is dead. It's not a thing anymore. What's your take on this? I think that checks out. The four-year cycle is and always was going to die. Like you can't just have algorithmic four-year price increases. Like eventually that gets priced in.
Starting point is 00:07:46 You know, markets are efficient. The fact that like this claim that the 2020 cycle was a coincidence, I also think is very strong. We just had this idiosyncratic event called COVID. Adiosyncratic money printing happened to line up with a four-year halving. And the claim that just like the reducing Bitcoin inflation is just getting becoming a smaller and smaller impact on the market also just checks out. So I believe it. That makes sense to me. I'm not sure yet personally whether I'm ready to abandon the four-year cycle just because-
Starting point is 00:08:16 I feel like it's concurrently being invalidated. Yeah. We're watching it being invalidated. Right now, but it's September, David. It's always done. darkest until the dawn. And by the way, it's not because of Bitcoin having supply. It's more kind of the global macro liquidity that Raul Paul talks about so much, right?
Starting point is 00:08:33 So the tides of liquidity ebb and flow, and that tends to happen on these four-year cycles as well. Anyway, that's something like that's what you're supposed to be like internally to the crypto industry. That's like what we do. Yeah. I think explaining it, justifying it due to exogenous factors, I think also is antagonistic to the idea of the four-year Bitcoin cycles, which the rest of the crypto industry follows. I mean, this is the conclusion of the report. It's time for founders, investors, trying to time the market to focus on more significant
Starting point is 00:09:02 macro economic drivers rather than relying on the four-year cycle. They're basically like, don't worry about the four years. Just like go focus on other things that are happening in macro. David, I've got three takes for you on the lackluster price performance. I want to run by you. These are like answering the questions of why isn't crypto doing anything in this market. So here's the first one. Maybe we are in the show me phase of crypto.
Starting point is 00:09:28 So what's that? My base case is still that we get a strong Q4, crypto rockets, 2025 is going to be good. Similar to, you know, you did that episode with Ledger on kind of like charts and what that looks like. And he's like, hey, this is just the com before the big bull market in 2025. That's still my base case. But there is another theory, which is we might be in the show me phase of crypto.
Starting point is 00:09:51 there's a fair chance that we don't get the new inflows, the new attention from investing. We haven't seen retail come aboard this cycle, like, at all. It's all the old, you know, crusty people have been in crypto for a while from last cycle. We're still here. I do feel crusty. I feel a little crusty too. But until crypto actually shows the world the new apps, it won't actually get the new retail interest. And like, here's a, here's data point. You know, after the dot-com bubble and pop, it took Amazon 10 years to reach all-time high after that. Like, 1999 all the way to 2009. That's Amazon. Different rules apply for crypto. I'm not saying it's 10 years, but I am saying there could be this show-me phase that the market
Starting point is 00:10:40 expects from us this time around. They're like, hey, we don't believe it anymore. You can't get away on that kind of the hype chain. We actually have to see something. So the first possible reason why we've had blackluster performance is maybe we're in the show me face. Okay. I mean, that I kind of think checks out. The dot-com bubble, like, brought awareness about the internet to everyone. And so, like, I think that's what happened in 2021. Like, everyone knows about Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:11:08 Everyone knows about blockchains. Yeah. Like, everyone knows what crypto is now. It's no longer, like, a lack of awareness. And it was also pretty accessible. It's also been pretty accessible. Yeah. So that checks out to me.
Starting point is 00:11:21 Okay, so that's the first one. The other is the Fiscandis take. Basically, crypto isn't the cool kid anymore. Okay? And this kind of pairs well with the first take. He says this. Another point on why pure narratives won't save us, crypto is not the coolest kid on the tech block anymore.
Starting point is 00:11:36 So it needs real products that people use. This cycle, AI, is firmly taking the spot as the cool kid on the block. As digital finance has nothing to do with a digital super intelligent god, basically retail and investors, they've pivoted to AI. You know, there was a time where there was kind of a gap. You know, we'd gone through our mobile phone phase. We'd obviously prior to that, gone on the internet.
Starting point is 00:11:59 We stretched all the Web 2 type use cases, and blockchain was the next narrative, big tech thing. Well, the world has moved to a different narrative, and that's AI. AI is getting all this. AI is the cool kid on the block, no longer crypto. And so that's another reason for lackluster performance. Also checks out.
Starting point is 00:12:18 I also think that's right. Okay. Well, and here is a third take that is maybe optimistic in a way. Depends on what happens, I guess post-November. But the poster says from split capital, a more unpopular take, crypto has never had a product market fit problem. It has only had a regulation problem. If regulations were clear and flexible for new products to work at scale,
Starting point is 00:12:41 financial institutions would integrate directly with on-chain products. The take here is basically like the other, for lackluster performance is actually not product market fit. Like we do have the killer apps. The regulators just won't let us deploy them. They won't let us like legalize tokenization in a way that brings this to the masses. So until we get through that, we actually, we have the product market fit, but they're just like holding the entire industry back. And this probably applies. I also think that checks out. Okay. So those are the three reasons for lackluster performance and all of those check out in your mind. Yes. The bleak side of this.
Starting point is 00:13:18 is that all of those are very hard problems. Like, okay, in order to get out of the show me phase, we need real products. In order to get real products, we need good regulation. And good regulation, even with a more favorable administration in the White House, still will take time. Like, we still need Congress to, like, draft good regulation and pass it. So, all of this might mean this cycle is going to take a little bit longer.
Starting point is 00:13:45 I mean, that would be the conclusion here. I mean, things after November could possibly accelerate things. If you had the regulatory tailwinds in our favor post-November, maybe you get this faster. I think that's going to be important on the regulatory side. But to your point, it takes a while to build things. And the builders are doing things in the background. I mean, there's, you know, like polling market.
Starting point is 00:14:06 There's great things going on in Layer 2s. But it'll take a while to build out the kind of the mainstream use cases, probably. I do really like this last take, though, where like crypto never has had a product market fit problem, even though everyone's the memes like, where are the users? Like we do have a product market fit. That's kind of a contrary intake. I guess that's why he leaves it being unpopular.
Starting point is 00:14:25 But there is this idea that like if this is true, which I do kind of think like tokenization is super real, like Wall Street chomping at the bit in order to like make this work, there is this like pent up value that's being created that's not being expressed in the tokens because builders are still building. Progress is being made by the industry. When we finally get the stars to align,
Starting point is 00:14:43 if that takes one year, three years, five. years, the longer it takes, kind of the more explosive the bull market is as a result of that. Like, once we clear some of these cloudy skies and the AI is no longer cool, and then AI learns that it needs crypto, and then we also get rid of the regulation problem. Like, all of those things line up, the longer it takes, the better that everything will line up is kind of my hot take. The question, though, for people listening, is like, okay, like, what should I do? And I think this is sage advice from DC investors. It's kind of the consummate holder archetype. He says this, look, I don't know when we go up. I just know that I've held through hell and back and hell and back and
Starting point is 00:15:17 again and again. And I simply don't fumble the bag during boring times like this when everyone is getting angry and anxious and thinks it's all over. The worst possible time to fumble the bag. Just accepts the bleakness because that's what happens. That's the last thing that happens before things go up. October is coming guys. What do we have coming up, David? Coming up next, Trump's brand new defy project. We know more stuff now. Grift, revolution in crypto. It's definitely unexpected. We're going to talk about some of the details
Starting point is 00:15:49 and let you decide for yourself. And why the hell did Brazil just ban all of Twitter, along with some of other products out of the Elon universe? So what's all of that about? So all that end more, but first a moment to talk about
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Starting point is 00:18:18 And if you're not a developer, those with staked CTSI can take part in the governance process and vote on whether or not a proposal should be funded. Make sure your vote ready by staking your CTSI before the vote's open. The Trump DFI project that the Trump sons have been talking about, more information has been revealed about this. There's this mysterious page I have opened up. It's called world libertyfinancial.com. This is coming soon.
Starting point is 00:18:43 World Liberty Financial. Yeah. World Liberty. Very American. The tagline is B defiant. This has been the DeFi Project. And like it's been unclear so far what this is. And it's not now clear entirely what this is.
Starting point is 00:18:59 But I think we have a few more hints, a few more detail. There was a time a couple of weeks ago where it seemed like maybe this was like a tokenized real estate. type project? Yeah, it turns out that was wrong. Yeah, it doesn't. Tell us, what do we know so far, David? Okay, apparently there's metadata on the website that says, the only crypto platform supported by Donald J. Trump,
Starting point is 00:19:19 it will connect users to decentralized finances best tools for secure high-yield crypto investments, which I think tells us two data points. One, the branding is that it's the only crypto platform supported by Donald Trump. So branding, marketing that to whoever is compelled by that statement. and then it's a tool to connect finance to secure high-yield crypto investments. And so it's talking to like the capitalists in Trump's orbits that just really like Trump. CoinDesk attained excerpts of a white paper that's apparently not publicly available.
Starting point is 00:19:55 It is built on Ethereum. It will include a credit accounting system using Ave to facilitate decentralized borrowing and lending, and will offer a smart account and a brokerage. So I'm getting kind of like images of something like Keynes Infinix, which is a more centralized kind of thin front end that hooks into defy in the back and offers like kind of like wraps up and productizes defy as a service. And it's really good UX because that's what is like one role is. It's like kind of a centralized UX login with email and password. and then it gets like, you know, savings and yield and investment opportunities stores straight from defy. So it's kind of like white labeling defy, if you will.
Starting point is 00:20:39 That's kind of like the vibe that I'm getting. I mean, a few things that are positive, I suppose, right? Because when you hear kind of Trump endorsed and like be defiant and they use defy, you're like, is this really defy? Well, it's on Ethereum. And it looks like it's using AVE. So there's going to be some smart contract platforms. And obviously AVEA is a totally like legit money market defy protocol. so some good indicators here.
Starting point is 00:21:02 But what about a token? What's the word on the World Liberty token? Why so curious about a token right now? Yeah, I'm just wondering. So reportedly there will be a non-transferable governance token, WLFI. That eventually, I'm assuming, will become transferable. Why would you ever release a non-transferable governance token? So eventually there's going to be this token, WLFI.
Starting point is 00:21:29 there's this like weird association with Doe finance, which is a similar like borrowing lending platform. It's like kind of a compound of a fork derivative, which hadn't been hacked for previously by for $2 million, although there's currently no indication that the vulnerabilities that caused the hack are now part of World Liberty Financial's tech stack. People will be looking at this thing. So we're going to get more details when there's actually more code to be released. But four people from Doe Finance are listed as World Liberty Financial. Liberty Financial team members. Zachary Folkman, head of operations, Chase Harrow, Strategies lead, Octavian Longita, smart contracts lead, and Bogha, a front-end developer who is listed as
Starting point is 00:22:12 an author in Doe Finances source code. So that is the World Liberty Financial team. Apparently the previous Doe finance team members. Maybe this was an acquisition. Yeah, that part's unclear, but it is clear that some of these are actual solidity, smart contract, defy developers. It doesn't necessarily bode well that Go was hacked in the past, although DeFi protocols get hacked. CoinDesk was reporting, you know, Zachary Folkman and Chase Hero.
Starting point is 00:22:37 They've been involved in some other projects, one which is notable. Fokman previously registered a company called Date Hatter Girls LLC, and he posted seminars on YouTube on how to pick up women. So he apparently has a history as a pickup artist. Wow. He's running operations there. Okay, I guess at some level the question is. like why are we talking about this, another sort of, you know, AVE compound, money market, like fork thing. We've seen like dozens of these. It's because the possible next president of the
Starting point is 00:23:08 United States is endorsing it. Has a defy protocol? It's kind of a big deal. There's actually a video for this thing tweeted from the official Trump account on Twitter. I'll play this in the background, but what is this? This is like clips from him glowing up, like crypto at the Bitcoin conference. promo video with a bunch of different clips of Donald Trump being Donald Trump. And then the speech in the background, the audio in the background is just excerpt from his Bitcoin 2024 conference speech. We were talking about Bitcoin. Talking about crypto.
Starting point is 00:23:39 Yeah, saying I want to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the world. So he's like tying his campaign somehow to this like project and promoting it in this way. Also, Eric and Donald Jr. will be involved. They're the Web 3 ambassadors, I should say. Baron Trump has been purported as the D5 visionary behind this. So a lot of members of the Trump family involved here. Defy visionary.
Starting point is 00:24:03 Oh, my God. One question I was asking is, is there anybody we know from crypto here? Like anybody who's been here in previous cycles, and one name popped up as an advisor, Corey Kaplan is an advisor to this project. Do you know much about Corey? I don't know much about Corey. Other than that, I notice him whenever I'm cruising through Twitter and maybe he likes one of my tweets, I'm seeing one of his tweets. He's just got like my punk doppelganger.
Starting point is 00:24:32 Him and I have the same punk except mine has a smile and his has a goatee. And so I naturally know him because of he just got my punk doppelganger. He's been around. I've seen this guy for like multiple years now. And whenever I would look into this account and be like, oh, I don't actually know this guy personally, but like it's just a normal person in crypto doing normal things. not grifting. I know that. Like, he hasn't grifted anyone. That's right. And so, like, been like a normal participant in the crypto,
Starting point is 00:24:58 crypto Twitter universe. He's actually a founder of a money market platform on Arbitrum called Dolomite, which I'm not used before. He was on the flywheel podcast with Defi Dave, who I consider very trustworthy and legitimate. And so the fact that he was on that podcast means that he's like, passing some of my, passing my sift test. All right.
Starting point is 00:25:20 So some legitimate. here. Like, this looks like a grift from the way it's kind of like marketed, yet we have real smart contract code. It's on Arveh. Like, what? Okay, so it's safe to say we have no idea what this is. Also, another person that we know, Gabe Shapiro, who's kind of like a crypto legal guy in Twitter, he is involved. Apparently his firm is getting 1.3% of all of the WLFI token in exchange to I imagine for legal services. Exactly. And he said that, you know, not Gabe didn't do this, but his co-founder, Alex, did all of the legal work. And he said, I'm fully supportive of it while not knowing much about it. And I believe it's likely been a very thorough legal process with AM Law 50 law firm advising. So they've checked that box too. I mean, Gabe, Gabe's outfit is a legitimate crypto legal company. And the question I think people are wondering is based on this limited information, what is this? Is this a good thing? Is this just a grift? And I guess there's maybe two takes here. So the most
Starting point is 00:26:28 charitable explanation of this and possibility, I think, is again from Lexnow Gabe Shapiro, who said, my personal guest, and I hope it's presented accordingly, is that this is similar to the Trump NFT thing. It's a way for Trump supporters to signal their support and learn, experience a bit about defy at the same time. Ave is real defy. It just deposits into Ave as far as I know. That's a next note. So maybe it's just like defy, but for Trump supporters? Yeah. Hey, do you like defy and Trump? Deposit into world financial, world liberty financial, whatever is called. So that is one possible explanation. But there are some more cynical takes as well, more on the
Starting point is 00:27:09 I'm sure there are. Yeah. This is Adam Cochran. He said, you're supportive of it? The re-skinned of the poorly coded Ave rapper by a former YouTube pickup artist who had their protocol drained by doing no address validation on user initiated loops so the hacker could just change the address to their own. You support that being promoted by Trump to a lot of clueless people, basically you're saying, like, this is just a Me Too protocol by something that's already been hacked. This is a bad idea for Trump to promote this to like a whole bunch of people who are just going to deposit their funds without knowing the risk. Nick Carter, who is very much in support of Donald Trump's candidacy in support of crypto, he says
Starting point is 00:27:49 I think it generally damages Trump's electoral prospects, especially if it gets hacked. It'll be the juiciest defy target ever, and it's forged from a protocol that itself was hacked. It's also an obvious target for the SEC. At best, it's an unnecessary distraction. At worst, it's a huge embarrassment and source of additional legal trouble. I think, what do I think? He sees a lot of risk here. Yeah, I think there is a lot of risk.
Starting point is 00:28:14 This is keeping the card up at night. It is funny that Donald Trump is doing this flying in the face of the SEC. see. Like, what do you think Gary Gensler is thinking about Donald Trump? Like, does the non-transferable part of the token? Is that going to stop Gary Gensler? Like, I don't think so. Like, that hasn't stopped him. Yeah. Like, why wouldn't he? I mean, if Trump gets elected, Gary's job is gone anyway. If he doesn't get elected, then Gary's coming after him. But so are a lot of people. Gary versus Trump. That, I don't know. I want that. I want that. I actually want that. this to me this is a surface area for a lot of potential risk imagine the two most litigious people going after each other i mean nick carter is going further he's like is there something that we as crypto twitter can collectively do to stop the launch of world liberty coin like this is keeping nick up at night he he doesn't want trump to go here at all because like okay if this turns out to be some sort of a grift a scheme or a
Starting point is 00:29:10 hack. I mean, imagine North Korea is looking at these smart contracts right now, and they're looking for holes. They're looking to probe this thing. If they can hack... And imagine North Korea hacking the president of the United States Defy Project. There's just so much surface area for risk here. And, I mean,
Starting point is 00:29:26 in the past, when Alex Michinsky has effed around and SBF has effed around and Doe Kwan, they've all, like, done this, all of the costs have been socialized to our industry. Like, yeah. Shortcuts have cost us a lot. Are you ready for I'm ready for
Starting point is 00:29:42 To give my official opinion I was really what's your official opinion I don't think it's a grift You don't think it's a grift I don't think it's a grift I don't think it's a grift I think it's and yeah Well it depends on what you mean by grift
Starting point is 00:29:51 But like I think There's no intent to like pump this token And then run away Like I think it's I think it's I kind of I'm closer to Gabe Shapiro This is like kind of brand affiliation thing Where if people who like
Starting point is 00:30:07 Want to just simp for Trump Want to deposit in some Trump's Aave front end, then they can go ahead and do that. And like, you know, some people buy JPEGs of Trump and they love them. And I'm like, I don't know why you do that, but I'm not going to stop you. So you think it's something like, you know how Trump has Trump stakes and he brands them with the Trump logo or whatever and they're just stakes, but because they say Trump, he charges a premium. It's something like that.
Starting point is 00:30:32 Is Gary V selling like little tiny like marker drawings of things that gets you like drinks with Gary Vee somewhere for like a thousand dollars? Is that a grift? Like, some people don't like it. No one is, like, feeling harmed by it. I think the problem with that is, like, that's totally fine if you're just doing NFT collectibles. You're just buying JPECs and such. When people are, like, depositing, I don't know, thousands of dollars and millions of dollars
Starting point is 00:30:54 than this thing. But that doesn't make it a grift. I don't think that makes it a grift. It might make it a very bad idea, though. That's a separate conversation. Well, I'll have to see. The World Liberty, Twitter account, put out a whole threat on this, David. Rumors are flying, but here's the real story.
Starting point is 00:31:11 We know the magnitude of what we're building, and its potential impact on both crypto and our country, especially with the upcoming elections. And they're saying we're not taking any chances. We're working with top security experts in the world, and they name them, and they go through this whole thread. And, I mean, there's something here. We want the U.S. pegged stable coins
Starting point is 00:31:29 to remain the world settlement layer for the next 100 years. Hard to know. I guess we'll have to give it more time. We'll find this out with by way. The Donald Trump DNA is when it sees a business opportunity, It goes for it. And so that's kind of what I see here.
Starting point is 00:31:41 Don't screw it up, though. Please. We can't afford another one of these things. Just not scared up. We'll see what happens. I mean, he had success with the Trump NFTs. I think he gets to take another shot. He gets another shot.
Starting point is 00:31:57 Yeah. The NFTs haven't done anything wrong. They've been totally fine. He gets to go again. Just a little bit closer to the sun. Just a little bit more. Yeah. David.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Okay. Brazil banning Twitter. I saw this in my feed all weekend. Like, what's going on here? Okay, so Brazil's telecommunications regulator suspended access to Twitter in order to comply with a Supreme Court order following a months-long case related to hate speech and censorship. The judge said it will remain suspended in Brazil until it complies with all related court orders, including covering a $3 million fine.
Starting point is 00:32:32 The judge also frees Starlink's bank accounts in Brazil's. Yeah. So, like, really going after Musk. Twitter refused to comply with legal orders to block accounts, accuse of spreading fake news and hate messages. Twitter claims Judge Alexandre de Morales threatened to arrest their legal representatives in Brazil if they do not comply. Musk has shut down all of its braille of Brazil offices because of censorship by the judge. But the service has remained available.
Starting point is 00:32:59 Okay, so on last Friday, Brazilian court required Twitter to name a legal representative in Brazil. But Twitter didn't do that inside of the deadline. Musk argued that the Supreme Court justice was trying to, enforce undjustified censorship. The judge insisted that social media needs hate speech regulations. Here's a quote from the article. This decision implemented in late August 2024 is part of Brazil's broader effort to combat disinformation and regulate tech platforms.
Starting point is 00:33:23 Musk criticized the move framing it as censorship and judicial overreach while the court framed it as necessary for enforcing Brazilian law and protecting democracy. Okay, so that's kind of the news. It's quite the juxtaposition. Is this censorship and judicial overreach? or is this just a sovereign country, you know, of Brazil protecting their law and protecting democracy, right? Like, I guess everyone's forced into an opinion on this. I'll say one thing that happened as well that is kind of crosses the line for me is VPN. So if you're in Brazil,
Starting point is 00:33:58 you're a Brazilian citizen and you're using a VPN to access X. There's actually now a fine for doing this, up to $9,000 for users. for individuals? Yeah, for individuals. So if you're using a VPN to kind of like bypass all of the like the blocks that they have set up, the fee is $900,000 per day for doing this. Wait, wait. So wait, you can, you can, it's still legal to use a VPN in Brazil.
Starting point is 00:34:27 Correct. You just cannot use a VPN to access X. Correct. Which I think is on the path to making sort of VPNs for things we don't like de facto illegal, right? or like find because the list of things that they're blocking could just grow and grow and continue to grow and obviously yeah and like how do you how do you enforce a VPN block of this like well don't you have to start tracking tracing and tracking how citizens are using VPNs who they actually are in order to fat anal probe territory basically so i mean i think we should all
Starting point is 00:35:02 just be able to agree that making VPNs like illegal in some form or fashion is like bad if you're doing that, that's just like not a good thing. But what one reaction that Brazilians had is actually to switch over to completely open permissionless protocols like Blue Sky. That's the Jack Dorsey kind of Twitter thing, I believe. They announced on Saturday that they had registered 500,000 new users in Brazil over the two previous days alone. So it became the number one app in the app store in Brazil. So citizens looking to kind of like bypass this speech censorship. I guess my take, David, is...
Starting point is 00:35:40 Current population of 220 million people in Brazil and 500,000 of them signed up for Blue Sky in like one week? That's a big move. Yeah, it's not nothing. My take on this is... It's concerning. Again, it's kind of like the Pavel case we were talking about last week. Like, I don't like where this is going, right?
Starting point is 00:35:58 You arrest Pavel Derov in France. You make VPN access of Twitter de facto illegal in Brazil. We've got Tornado Cash developer. is getting jailed. I feel like this honeymoon period that we've enjoyed in the internet over the last, say, 20 years between governments and the internet where they're like, it's innovation, it's job creation, it's great for productivity. I feel like that's coming to a conclusion in the 2020s. Like that's over. Now they're like, we want control. This stuff is dangerous. And so if it's not decentralized and if it can be controlled, it will be controlled or it will be killed. I think the world's moving that direction.
Starting point is 00:36:34 and it's concerning. Yeah, yeah. There's just this consistent, like, a rock and a hard place by everything like this these days. Like, Musk's version of X is not the bastion of free speech that he tells it to be.
Starting point is 00:36:48 Like, the algorithm is just, like, out of control. Anyone on Twitter can see it. Does banning it, like, does a sovereign country banning it mean that's the correct solution? Like, ooh, also yikes. Like, neither of these things are great.
Starting point is 00:37:01 I agree with your line that banning VPNs is like, now that's a, like, objectively a bad thing. But like, Musk versus Brazil, like, I don't, I don't really have, like, I'm not going to align up behind Musk here. It's hard. It's hard. Yeah, I think there's a lot of these cases that are going to be difficult moving forward. Sadly, this isn't the only topic of hostile governments approaching these new technologies. This was probably the worst thing that I saw on my timeline this week. The Binance Executive Tigran, who has been in custody in Nigeria for like six months now.
Starting point is 00:37:31 There was a video of him that surfaced walking around limping on crutches as he was walking into court demanding, like commanding that he is innocent and that he cannot be treated like this. He's saying, I'm not okay. This is effed up in the video as a guard, as he's like asking for assistance from a guard to go walk into his courtroom. He's been denied the use of a wheelchair. The fact that he needs a crutch or a wheelchair at all is like ridiculous because he was
Starting point is 00:37:59 fine when they arrested him. So these injuries he's sustained has been sustained in Nigerian custody. This is a United States citizen. This is a finance executive who was a United States citizen. Tegren has a background in anti-money laundering and counterterrorism finance. He was an official, U.S. government official. He's been in Nigerian prison for six months without due process and has not had any support of any of our American governments or officials. We need to go get this man and bring him back to the States. The fact that he has just been left in Nigeria without having any sort of due process,
Starting point is 00:38:37 being abused in prison for six months, and like no one, no government official in America is just like caring about this. It's kind of egregious. I mean, I've seen, you know, French Hill, represented in French Hill, who we had on bankless. He's spoken out about this. I've seen a handful of, you know,
Starting point is 00:38:54 Congress representatives speak out about this, but the White House has been completely silent. on this. And this is, again, as you said... Is it because of their crypto stance? I don't know. I don't know, right? We need to send people and go get him and bring him back home. Yeah. Put him back with his family.
Starting point is 00:39:12 Negotiate hard. Like, I mean, we do something. Yes. Because he is just like... He is a hostage. There's a country that is holding a United States citizen hostage without due process. Go get him. I think that it's safe to say he'd be, I mean, he's a crypto political prisoner. and... Yes. He's a political prisoner.
Starting point is 00:39:32 Anyway, hopefully things turn around in that situation. Moving on to more exciting things that are less depressing. Coming up next, the CFTC is coming at Uniswop this week. Are they the new SEC? Uniswop just collecting
Starting point is 00:39:43 all the four-letter agencies badges, but also some big releases in Ethereum land. Remember, Oiler, that defy lending protocol that got hacked? Well, it's coming back. Arbitrum is releasing
Starting point is 00:39:55 its much anticipated stylus upgrade. What is that going to do for Arbitrum, Polymarkets inside of Bloomberg, and AIs are using crypto to transact with each other. Really cool stuff, much less depressing. So let's go ahead and get into all that stuff. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening?
Starting point is 00:40:16 Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 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 2 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
Starting point is 00:40:50 looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's Defi apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle. The Uniswap extension is here. city wallet created by the most trusted team in defy 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. Navigate a multi-chain world effortlessly with support for 11 chains like Ethereum mainnet, base, arbitrum, and optimism. No more chain switching or token importing. All your assets are right where you need them to be.
Starting point is 00:41:26 The Uniswap 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. Arbitrum releases Stylis. All right, what is this, David? Okay, stylus has been under development by the Arbitrum theme for a very long time.
Starting point is 00:41:54 It enables developing solidity smart contracts in any language. So if you're a developer that knows C, C++, Rust, Go, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, Kotlin, didn't know that that was a programming language. You can now become a smart contract developer. You don't have to go through solidity. You can just use your normal language. And stylists will collapse everything down into the bytecode that runs on Ethereum. So no longer learning solidity.
Starting point is 00:42:18 So that means yesterday, 30,000 developers who knew solidity could build smart contracts. now with Silas, $15 million, as in like all the people who knows all the aforementioned coding languages. It's kind of all of them, yeah. Yeah, it's the great thing about Wassum is it supports all of these languages
Starting point is 00:42:33 out of the box. So if that's been a holdup for some of these developers, hey, I don't want to learn another language. I just like, I love JavaScript or I love Python or I love Go, they can now write smart contracts in those languages. This is a really big upgrade. David, I remember a time when entire layer ones
Starting point is 00:42:49 were built on this premise of like, we are like Ethereum but we're better because we have WASM support and we can onboard all of the developers over the world whereas if you're developing on Ethereum you have to learn solidity so now that's come to Ethereum which is pretty fantastic I don't I don't know anything about like deep programming like this but seems really hard like you don't have to write solidity you can just go like compile straight to buy code with other languages
Starting point is 00:43:17 I don't know I don't get it but nice job arbitrageum congrats on the relates I know you guys have been working on this for a long, long time now, I would like to see how this works in the wild. Like, does this actually attract new developers? Like, what are the big strengths here? Another big release this week, oiler is back. Okay, so what is oiler? You might recall it as a defy lending protocol has some permissionless features. It's sort of like an Ave or a compound. We could spin up like all sorts of separate tools and support other assets. But in March 2023, it was hacked. I believe this hack was associated with North Grives,
Starting point is 00:43:53 like a Lazarus group type of attack. No, that was everyone's first impression. It ended up being this like freaking kid who was just like that and way like punching way above his weight class who ended up giving all the money back over the month or so. Well, it was a lot of money.
Starting point is 00:44:08 It was like $200 million or something like this. Yeah, $200 million. Yeah. And Oiler just did a fantastic bang up job or covering all the money like contacting FBI. They totally figured out who the exploiter was. I can't remember if it was like a high schooler. it's a really young guy who just got totally outplayed by Euler and then they were able to manage to recapture,
Starting point is 00:44:28 give all the money back. There was this huge distribution process where like victims of the oil hack were able to get their money sent back to them. But it also just like caused a really big stain on Euler, the system because they got hacked. It was a permissionless, like immutable code system that if it gets hacked, it's like pretty catastrophic
Starting point is 00:44:48 because it's not like AVE or compound, which are governance-based lending markets. This one has always been built as governance, minimize, governance reduced. And so, like, hands-off, no oracles, very, very bankless, but also very fragile. And so they have been heads-down building B-2 for ever since then. I mean, because usually after a hack like that, you'd throw on the towel. It'd be over. But, like, you know, Michael Bentley, he put a blog post about this of how difficult it was.
Starting point is 00:45:17 I read through that. And he just like... He had just had his first care. when it got hacked. Absolutely terrible. But they're back, and they have a pretty major release. This is V2 of the protocol. So what does V2 do?
Starting point is 00:45:28 Okay, so V1 was just a similar lending protocol, similar to compounded Avae, but just with different risk parameters in V2, they're calling it a meta-lending protocol. It enables builders to create highly customized borrowing and lending vaults. It also opens up the use cases for on-chain credit and eliminates fragmentation and capital inefficiencies
Starting point is 00:45:44 related to isolating the lending market. So I'm going to call this similar to Morpho, a newer borrowing and lending application on the scene with a different back-end construction to kind of maximize ROI and minimize risk, but also really leaning into the same thing that Marfur is also leaning into, which is governance minimization. AVE has kind of dominated the centralized liquidity model of Avey, the centralized pools. So like all pools, everything is kind of pooled together in Avey. Morpho is really segregated accounts.
Starting point is 00:46:16 Oil is a little bit in the middle, but also really leaning into just as, little governance as possible. So some benefits that Euler claims first users. You can choose between risk-isolated lending pairs or cross-collateralized vault clusters, which is where it's similar but also different than AVE. You can opt into passive lending or fixed parameter
Starting point is 00:46:34 vaults and manage your own risk. Vaults can support ERC20 tokens, real-world assets, synthetic assets, or even NFTs. It's totally open. And some other cool bells and whistles as well. Tons of audits as you could imagine. 31 audits. 31 audits, wow.
Starting point is 00:46:51 I hope that's enough. And then there is a $1.25 million audit competition that completed and a $3.5 million capture the flag with Hats Finance. So they just audited the shit out of this thing. There's also a bug bounty program as well. So honestly, Michael Bentley and all of the Euler team who kind of went through hell to live through Euler v1, its exploit and then Euler V2.
Starting point is 00:47:17 And then bring Euler back and deliver. with V2 over just like however long it's been over a year and a half now. That is some, that's some of the biggest grit I have ever seen in crypto. Yeah. Welcome back. That is impressive. Well done guys. Yeah. I hope you guys feel really, really good. Brand new type of protocol. I know like V1, we've seen a little bit of V1 and V1 was adoption was doing really well in 2022 and even into into 2023. And so like adoption was growing before like, A, the hack had came and then 20, we all know how 2023 went. so really hard market.
Starting point is 00:47:50 And so I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how well Oiler V2 can compete in the market. AVE is this gargantuan. Morpho is also pretty damn big now. What can Oiler do in this market with this brand new construction? I am curious. David, you pointed out that Celestia has released their product roadmap as well. Anything notable here?
Starting point is 00:48:09 I'll call it a technical roadmap. The way that they have constructed is very similar to the way, like, Vitalik illustrates the Ethereum roadmap. A little more polished here. A little more polished. Vitalik drew him himself. I think Celestia has some designer with him. So three main tracks that they have categorized theirs.
Starting point is 00:48:29 Abundant block space, verifiable block space, and frictionless block space. There's a link in the show notes if you want to see Celestia's technical roadmap. I hope somebody does an episode about that. Maybe it's us. Kind of a cool box to check here too. Bloomberg, the Bloomberg terminal. Do you see it?
Starting point is 00:48:45 Do you ever have access to one of these Bloomberg terminals? No. Every time I only see it through screenshots. It's so old, right? It seems so old. But it is like legendary. I mean, this is still a financial service that, you know, hundreds of thousands of financial professionals subscribe to.
Starting point is 00:49:01 What is it? What is it a terminal? It's from the 80s, dude. It's got all the financial information. Anyway, now that we've denigrated it, they've added polymarket to the terminal. So if you want to search for Trump versus Harris, Harris and the prediction markets there or any any market that polymarket has is now integrated
Starting point is 00:49:23 into Bloomberg. So that's just kind of a cool box to check. This is Shane, founder of Polymarket saying the Bloomberg Terminal has now integrated Polymarket entering mainstream news and finance before our eyes. What was once a fringe sci-fi idea for transforming the flow of information is now becoming the new normal as tens of millions of people have it around relying on polymarket forecast is a source of truth. I think this is actually true because once it gets in Bloomberg terminal, there's nothing like more blue chip finance than getting there, right? And so all the financial analysts will start referring to the polymarket data source.
Starting point is 00:49:59 Yeah, very cool. I wonder how strong of a top of funnel that'll be for a polymarket. I don't know. It, you know, it'll be great for the, it'll be great for the propagation side of the information that prediction markets are putting out, though. Dude, let's get to the CFTC thing. So I saw this tweet in the story originally. I was like, what is going on?
Starting point is 00:50:20 So there's something going on. It's not as bad as it first sounds. So the CFTC has apparently charged Uniswap with illegal derivatives trading. What is this? Okay, so the way that I think this works, pretty sure, is that inside of the Uniswop front end, you could go buy a leverage token.
Starting point is 00:50:36 So the Uniswop Front End listed and showed a leverage token. so users of Uniswop could go buy that from the Uniswap front end that Uniswap Labs controlled as a result of that An example of this David would be like if I wanted to do like a 2X-Eath or something like that 2X long-Eth FLYEth yeah there are many of these like leverage tokens
Starting point is 00:50:57 where there's like leverage built into the token yeah and you can go buy one of those on Uniswap and the Uniswap Labs didn't remove those from the front end because why would they and the CFTC has said well now you guys are offering leverage trading to US retail investors Unoswab Labs just agreed to settle for a whopping $175,000. By whopping, I'm being facetious.
Starting point is 00:51:17 That's very small. And this is specifically in a no-admit, no-deny settlement. So I'm thinking they're saying in this settlement, they're not accepting fault. They're not like, this is not a guilty plea. They're just settling for $175,000 to make this thing go away. I got it. Yeah, I think a concern here is like what's going on?
Starting point is 00:51:38 Is the CFTC becoming a bit more like the SES? where this is just an enforcement action, right? There's not necessarily like a warning. There's no kind of like comment period or anything. It's just going straight to enforcement. And this is the CFTC's director, Ian McClintley, saying the CFTC's enforcement division will vigorously enforce the CEA as digital asset platforms and defy ecosystems evolve.
Starting point is 00:52:01 Defi operators must be vigilant to ensure that transactions comply with the law. There are some dissenters, though, David. A couple of commissioners who actually said that this was not this enforcement was not a good idea, not in the best interest of the CFTC. So Commissioner Summer Mercinger said, it was my hope that one day soon the commission would consider rulemaking or at very least guidance, making clear how DFI protocols could comply with them. Unfortunately, today is not this that day. He's basically saying we should cooperate, provide guidance rather doing this enforcement action. Caroline Pham is another CFTC commissioner. She also dissented. She said
Starting point is 00:52:38 it was a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act for the the commission to establish such sweeping interpretations in administrative settlement orders rather than engage in notice and comment rulemaking. Notice and comment is where you say, hey, here's what we're thinking, here are the rules, industry can comment on it, the public can comment it. They didn't do that. They went straight to enforcement. So she said, I'm puzzled how we can charge the respondent that is uniswap based upon no evidence beyond the word leveraged appearing in the names of these tokens. So it seems like some at the CFTC are taking a chapter out of the Gary Gensler playbook.
Starting point is 00:53:12 All right, coming into the last and perhaps the coolest news of the day of the week, the Coinbase Developer Program, platform, excuse me, updated their MPC wallets to enable LLM or AI models to conduct payments. So this is an article that was released by Brian Armstrong on Twitter. And it starts this week. This week at Coinbase Dev, we witnessed our first AI-to-A-I crypto transaction. What did one AI buy from another? Tocins, apparently.
Starting point is 00:53:38 not crypto tokens, but AI tokens. This is a, what do you call it? It's like a double entendre, kind of a pun or something. Tocins are like this thing in LLM models that are like how LLMs work. Yeah, so the fact that we use tokens in the crypto world is also kind of funny. So Brian Arsham in his article says AI agents cannot get bank accounts, but they can get crypto wallets and they can use U.S.E.C. on base to transact with humans, merchants, or other AIs. Those transactions are instant, global, and free. this is an important step to getting AIs to get useful work done, he says.
Starting point is 00:54:13 And so Brian is saying like, hey, there's like frictions. AIs can't use Stripe. They don't have credit cards. They don't have bank accounts. But smart contracts, Ethereum, blockchains speak the same language as AI, which is code. And since they're permissionless, then AIs have all the tools that they need to pay for the services of other LLMs. I use chat TBT. I pay for it.
Starting point is 00:54:34 It's a great service. But AIs cannot do the same. And so Brian is saying, look, we just had this one AI, but pay for the services of another AI using USC on base. And I think this opens up, just use your imaginations, imagining all these AI agents who are providing value as humans start to provide value to other AIs. And all of a sudden, we can get this AI economy growing. Yeah. I mean, it's entirely possible that Ethereum turns out. It starts, it's bootstrapped by humans, but it turns into like a property rights system for the machines.
Starting point is 00:55:04 I totally see AI agents can't walk into a Wells Fargo and get a bank account. They don't have a citizenship. It's just not set up for them. But programmable smart contracts and programmable basic smart contract-based accounts are effectively what they will use to bank and communicate and exchange with one another. And a lot of this will be bot-to-bought agent-to-agent kind of driven in the future. In fact, this was like a thesis that seems pretty obvious and is going to play out. And this was originally what you and I wanted to talk to, Eli, Ezer Dukowski about. Do you remember
Starting point is 00:55:38 that? This was like our agenda. We were like, okay, cool. Before he sends us on the three-month detour. Yeah, we were like, hey, L. Ezer, like, going to that, yeah, you're very familiar with AI. You can tell us about the latest and the greatest. And we've just built this thing in crypto that we think is going to be a great digital property rights system for autonomous AI machines. AIIs are going to love it. And then about five minutes into that conversation, we really realize that he actually thinks you guys are going to come destroy us. And like we, you know, it's not a good thing
Starting point is 00:56:10 from his perspective that Yeah, from his perspective, he's like, this is bad. They're colluding to take over the humans. Yeah, yeah, he's like, made me feel sort of sheepish. Like, oops, maybe we just created a financial system for, you know, aeer species that wants to destroy us. Anyway, hopefully that doesn't happen.
Starting point is 00:56:28 It'll be sick. Hopefully that doesn't happen. So we end with the meme of the week, David. we looking at? Okay, so this is my meme. My mom just text me out of the blue, this article from some website, Financial Review, and the title is, crypto owners are more likely to have psychopathic traits study says. And then her comment to that is just, ha, ha, ha. That's all she sends me. Did you read this study, by the way? No. I did not read that study. It's a real study. I actually read the study itself. It was like an NIH-funded grant to study this. Oh, it's actually like a
Starting point is 00:57:08 well-done study. Yeah. Well, I mean, well done is, I guess, a subjective. Subjective somewhat. But they go through like the McAvellian dark triad personality traits and they're like, oh, yeah, you know, crypto holders have a lot of these and they're predominantly male. And they go through a whole psych analysis. They get their news from non-mainstream sources and all of these things. You know, Not necessarily uncomplimentary, aside from this one, you know, the Machiavellian traits and the psychopathic traits. But it's a real study that your mom is seeing in mainstream news here. So for context, my mom is a forensic psychologist, so she knows extremely well just the world of stats and studies around psychology-related subject matter. Forensic, too.
Starting point is 00:57:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she goes to court and shit. Oh, wow. Well, you should ask, like, you should send her the actual, like, get her to read the actual study. and give her professional take on it. She didn't just send me the headline. I'm sure she read that. Was there any back and forth or just?
Starting point is 00:58:07 No, I did not respond to this. I did not respond to this. She thinks you're a psychopath now. I was wondering. It's in the back of her mind, David. All right, let's close this out. We're going to get to wrist and disclaimers in a moment. But if you were watching on YouTube, or even on Spotify, there's something.
Starting point is 00:58:21 There's a QR code somewhere here that you can go scan and get access to the bankless premium feed. We call this the citizen feed. And we publish a lot of extra material on there. It's like bonus content, our debriefs after the episode. It's fantastic. No ads, by the way. So if you've gotten to this point in the roll-up, I know you are a dedicated bankless listener.
Starting point is 00:58:44 And if you're hearing this, you're not yet on the bankless premium feed. There's opportunity to go get that and do that. I think we have Spotify 10. It's the better feed. Spotify 10 is a discount code where you can get 10% off that. and you scan the QR code to make that happen. All right, we'll end with this. Of course, you know crypto is risky.
Starting point is 00:59:05 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.

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