Bankless - ROLLUP: Trump's Massive Memecoin | Ethereum Ecosystem Drama | Ross Ulbricht Freed | Phantom Wallet Worth $3B?

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

In this week’s Bankless Weekly Rollup, David is joined by Eric Conner to unpack a whirlwind week in crypto. Highlights include Trump’s explosive entry back into the Oval Office, launching a $50B memecoin on Solana, a full pardon for Ross Ulbricht, and pro-crypto cabinet appointments. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation faces internal drama as Vitalik declares “wartime mode” amidst leadership restructuring. We also dive into Solana’s soaring ecosystem, BlackRock’s massive Bitcoin buys, and the SEC’s shakeup with new pro-crypto initiatives. It’s a week of big moves, bigger drama, and major market shifts! ------ 📣 0x | Start building with 0x v2 https://bankless.cc/0x ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax  🦄UNISWAP | BUG BOUNTY PROGRAM https://bankless.cc/Uniswap-Bug-Bounty  ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  🌐CELO | BUILD TOGETHER AND PROSPER https://bankless.cc/Celo  🎮RONIN | THE FUTURE OF WEB3 GAMING https://bankless.cc/Ronin  ----- ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/base:0x4be6cd4d402fed49eb2de95fbc8e737e8ffd3e7f/21?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E  ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:30 Markets https://farside.co.uk/?p=1518  https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-217-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-02c0bf3c093d  https://youtu.be/nWPRFNVs6XY?si=YEOfBSUlqGmNJD7B  00:06:08 ETF Flows https://farside.co.uk/?p=1518  https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-217-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-02c0bf3c093d  00:11:19 Trump Memecoin https://x.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1880446012168249386  00:14:10 Melania Token https://x.com/MELANIATRUMP/status/1881087523847593995  00:20:53 World Liberty Financial Bids https://x.com/worldlibertyfi/status/1881457386671464804  00:26:06 Ross Ulbricht Freed https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1881932492170760674  00:31:08 Politics and Agencies https://x.com/DegenerateNews/status/1881760858508062898  https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/departure-gensler-012025  00:35:53 Brian Armstrong Expectations https://x.com/AltcoinDailyio/status/1880348843772113061  00:40:15 Trump Effect Kicking In https://x.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1880299698038493400  https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1881688751602286740  00:47:35 What’s Going On In The EF? https://x.com/vitalikbuterin/status/1880635379771904423  https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1880723497393201460  00:56:19 EF Leadership Drama https://x.com/dannyryan/status/1879705279761178690  https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1881680518934384676  01:06:37 SEC Charges Digital Currency Group https://x.com/tier10k/status/1880299710495486365  01:07:25 Circle Introduces USDC Paymaster https://x.com/circle/status/1882428077537386502  01:07:41 Phantom Raised $150M Series C https://x.com/phantom/status/1880018917068009527  ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ 

Bankless Nation, welcome to the weekly roll-up where we cover the weekly news, drama, and developments in the crypto space. This week is the fourth week of January. And today on the show, I have the pleasure of being joined by Eric Connor, former ETHMAXE and now Crypto AI Bull to help me go through the weekly news with me. Eric, really happy to have you, my man. How are you doing? Hey, David. Good. It's been a minute since we've recorded anything.

But yeah, I've been well. Thanks for having me on. I know that people were a little bit of drama this past week, but just wanted to be clear. David and I had reached out to me well before that. to help kind of fill in on one of these roll-ups. And I said, yeah, of course, it's been a little bit. So I don't think I've recorded anything podcast-wise for a few months now. So excited to be back at it and chat with you.

Yeah, well, podcasting is like riding a bicycle. You know, you never really get off the bicycle. You always know how to do it. So let's go ahead and get right into it. We'll talk about, we'll address some of that drama later in the show. But first, before we get to that drama, we're going to talk about Trump. Trump bursting through the doors of the Oval Office with a bang,

drops a $50 billion meme coin that sends Solana soaring. He also kept his promise with pardoning Ross Ulbricht and really just kind of has the crypto industry edging for what he does next. Then the Trump's second order effects are also underway. Gary Gensler is out. Hester Purse has launched an SEC crypto task force to write all the wrongs that the SEC has done over the last four years. A U.S. court lifted OFAC tornado cash sanctions and Bank of America has signaled their readiness

to accept crypto into their bank. And lastly, drama in the Ethereum ecosystem. There's been some tension over the role and direction of the Ethereum Foundation. It's kind of reached a boiling point on Twitter in the last week. Vitalik is pretty fired up. He put on a Malady PFP and is going toe to toe with some long Ethereum community members. And then a second Ethereum Foundation was launched. I'm confused about the details.

So I'm going to ask Eric all about that. Before we get into all of that and more, a message from our friends and sponsors over at ZeroX, the OG builders building critical defy infrastructure since 2017. they are now introducing 0x v2, a full-stack upgrade of crypto-trading APIs, which brings multi-hop and multiplex routing for all of your trades. What does that mean? That means that it splits order routing through across various liquidity sources and various tokens to make sure that you get the best execution on your trade.

If you want to try out 0-Z2, you can go to and see them at banklist. Atc.c. Whether you are a builder or you're a serious trader who wants to trade on chain, 0X is for you. Let's get into the markets. Bitcoin started the week at $100,300, up 5% on the week to $104,800. I believe you don't own much, if any, a Bitcoin, Eric, like me. But give me your takes about the Bitcoin price action over the last week and really over

the last year or so, which is only three weeks now. That has maybe slightly changed in the last few weeks for me. But I'll keep that to myself for now. Yeah, it's the Trump effect, you know, which will obviously get. into as well. But I mean, to me, the Bitcoin graph just looks pretty strong overall. And I think one of the keys is it's just kind of got the strongest narrative, the strongest media play right now is translating to people. And I think a lot of this is, you know, it would be interesting to see if Trump does announce a Bitcoin strategic reserve because I think a lot of, I don't know if that's really

built into the price, but a little bit of that hype is built into the price, right? So 100K was kind of that level for a while that, you know, was resistant. it's kind of looking like that's slowly turning into support. So yeah, I mean, to me overall, most of the crypto market looks pretty solid. And I mean, if Bitcoin can flip 100K into support, I mean, probably going to fly a little bit from here, especially with Trump in office now. It was interesting midweek Bitcoin broke all-time high. And no one really talked about that. It hit over $108,000 per coin.

I think it would probably touch 109,000 on some exchanges. And no one really was celebrating all-time highs. it's like only maybe $1,000 higher than the previous all-time high, but I think all-time highs are kind of normalized now. And also, it dumped back down to $100,000, as you said. So we're getting some volatility above the $100,000 mark. Let's turn to Ether a little bit of a different story. While Bitcoin was up 5% on the week, Ether was down 3% on the week to where it is now at $3,200, started the week at $3,300. Usually, even if Bitcoin is outperforming Ethereum, usually they're both in the same direction.

They are both either green or red. It's kind of rare when one is green and one is red. And there's been a pretty big divergence. Bitcoin up 5% ether, down 3% for a difference of 8% on the week. Any comments about ether price performance, Eric? I mean, it's kind of just stuck in that same lull, right? It's kind of like Bitcoin goes up, eth lags, Bitcoin dumps. ETH seems to dump more, right? It's just been a kind of a constant bleed on the ratio. I mean,

this is historically what has happened in bull runs. Let's be honest. Bitcoin runs up, blows past all-time highs. It takes ETH a little bit to catch up. You know, there's a lot of opium around Q1 for ETH. We're almost a month into Q1. It hasn't moved. Doesn't mean it's not going to. Nobody really has a crystal ball. I definitely don't. This isn't like too weird for historical trends. Sentiment just feels a little bit different, but I mean, it's not out of the question whatsoever that Heath could go on a traditional Q1 catching up to Bitcoin run, right? But it's just kind of stuck in this, that 4,000 range. It's just been very, very brutal resistance, right?

So when that happens, you just kind of start to range. It seems like we're kind of stuck in this 3,000 to 4,000 range when it comes to East. So I don't know. I guess the big question is, is it going to play out like history or is it going to be a new, you know, a new cycle? And Heath just can't get out of this slump right now. I do feel very familiar to this feeling of man, ETH is in this range and it just can't get momentum. But as the longer that that goes on,

when it does break through that range, then you have just conviction and confidence in continuation. We're just kind of waiting for that moment. I will say that we as crypto natives tend to compare valuations a lot, but nonetheless, the straight US dollar bid into the industry over the last week has been absolutely gargantuan. $2.2 billion of inflows have flowed into digital assets over the last week. This is a report according to it to coin shares. And you can see that show up in the Bitcoin ETF just yesterday on

the 22nd, $250 million went into the Bitcoin ETFs, but the day before, $800 million. And then on the 17th, which I believe was last Friday, over a billion dollars in a single day went into the Bitcoin ETFs. And before that, it was $600 million. And before that, it was $700 million. So some gargant numbers going into the Bitcoin ETFs. The Ether ETFs also positive. I wouldn't call it gargantuanly positive, but we are at about almost coming up on 10 days of positive inflows into the Ether ETFs. And like I said, here is that coin shares report just talking about $2.2 billion of dollars bidding different crypto investment products over the last week or so. So while, you know, we like to talk about the ratio, the Salon of people I love to dunk on the Heath people about the

poor price action, but nonetheless, dollars are coming into the industry and providing a floor for all of our crypto bags. Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the things, this is to me been the biggest mystery of the ETH price action, right? We've got, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into ETH and it just seemingly is stagnant, right? So that just brings the question of, like, I guess who's selling or, you know, why are we bringing in so much retail flow and not going up?

But, you know, this thing can, all this stuff can be a mystery until it just takes off, right? And you never really figure it out. I do think ETH has had one of these interesting things where we're not as far along in the cycle as in our cycles as Bitcoin is. So there's a lot of like early, you know, still ICO participants that have large bags that are okay selling at 3200, right? And maybe we just got to shake them out. And they're the ones kind of dumping on retail flows. and then once they're out, ETH moves up. But to me, one of the greatest mysteries of this cycle so far has been that ETH got an ETH,

hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into it. And I believe ETH price is the same as when the ETH was announced. Go figure that one out. Yeah, that is a good point. The ETH ETF seemingly has had no material price action in the ETH price other than volatility. It's provided volatility without actual appreciation. total crypto market cap 3.7 trillion. That is near the all-time high, which I believe is 3.9 trillion, but we are still not yet there. And then two movers of the week that I want to highlight radium, which is kind of the uniswap on Solana, not a perfect comparison. Honestly, nothing is a perfect comparison to the uniswap of whatever chain. But Radium, it's an AMM on Solana is up 50% on the week. And then Solana itself up 20% on the week. I would call both of these things a tailwind. of the Trump meme coin, which we're definitely going to talk about.

But the meme coin infra on Solana, and Salana itself definitely has caught a bid over the last seven days or so. And we're going to go ahead and get to that subject. Next, Donald Trump enters the Oval Office with a bang, a meme coin, a presidential pardon, and a new host of pro-crypto cabinet positions and a task force, all tackling the crypto industry in the ways that we've always wanted to. We're going to get to all of this and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible,

especially Uniswap. It's a browser wallet. It's a mobile wallet, but it's also the best place to swap tokens in Defi. Check them out. There's a link in the show notes. Let's go here from Uniswop right now. Are you ready to swap smarter? Uniswop apps are simple, secure, and seamless tools that crypto users trust. The Uniswap protocol has processed more than $2.5 trillion in all-time swap volume, proving it's the go-to liquidity hub for swaps. With support for growing numbers of chains, including Ethereum, Maynett, Base, Arbitron Polygon, ZK Sync, Unuswap apps are built for a multi-chain world. Uniswap syncs across its web interface, mobile apps, and Chrome browser extensions, so you're never tied to one device.

And with self-custody for your funds and MEV protection, Uniswap keeps your crypto secure while you swap anywhere, anytime. Connect your wallet and swap smarter today with the Uniswap web app or download the Uniswap Wallet, available now in iOS, Android, and Chrome. Uniswap, the simple, secure way to swap in a multi-chain world. $1.5 billion in TVL, the M-Eath protocol is home to M-Eath, the fourth largest ETH liquid staking token, offering one of the highest APRs among the top 10 LFTs. And now, C-M-Eth takes things even further. This restaked version captures multiple yields across Karek, Eich, and many more, making

C-M-Eth the most fission and most composable LRT solution on the market. Metamorphosis, season 1 dropped $7.7 million in Cook rewards to M-Eath holders. Season 2 is currently ongoing, allowing users to earn staking, restaking, and restaking, and and ABS yields plus rewards in Cook, M-Eath Protocol's governance token, and more. Don't miss out on the opportunity to stake, restake, and shape the future of M-Eath protocol with Cook. Participate today at M-Eath.mantle.xy-Z. Eric, I think this is the tweet that was heard around the crypto industry. I think people probably thought that Donald Trump's Twitter account was hacked when this tweet

went out, but no, it's real. This tweet reads from the official Donald Trump Twitter account. My new official Trump meme is here. It's time to celebrate everything we stand for. winning, join my very special Trump community. Get your ticker sign Trump now. Go to getTrumpmeams.com. Have fun. And there is a big picture of Trump in a frame

saying fight, fight, fight, fight. And it's getTrump memes.com. And if you go to gettrump memes.com, it's a big website that says the only official Trump meme. Buy now with DeBcard, buy now with crypto, and a Solana contract address along with a very fit, skinny looking Donald Trump. And it turned out to be real that this is a a real Donald Trump meme coin called the official Trump that debuted coming in at something like a $10 billion market cap on launch,

but only with a, excuse me, a $10 billion fully diluted, like a $1 or $2 billion market cap. And then it immediately proceeded to go from about $2 up to $28 in like half of a day, adding $50 billion in market cap. 80% of the token itself is locked up, which is why there is just such a big discrepancy between the market cap and the fully diluted valuation. Eric, where were you when you realized that Donald Trump launched a meme coin? I was not home. I was actually out.

And I kind of missed the initial few hour frenzy. I was trying to disconnect from my phone for a minute. Of course, that's when things always happen, right? Late at night when you're trying to disconnect a little bit. And then I looked at my phone. And of course, I had a million texts and just messages and telegram and Discord and everyone was blown up about it. I think when I first saw it was at something like, I think, I think it was like 20 bucks, 15 to 20 bucks.

So it wasn't like too late in the game. But I felt like, you know, I had already come on and, you know, people had sniped it and already went up. But yeah, this is just fascinating. I mean, to have the president of the United States launching a meme coin and tweeting it from his official account and everything, right? I didn't, I honestly, I'll just be honest, I didn't think we would go this far in the meme coin game, right? This is like, I'm not saying that's like the peak of the meme coin market, but this is like the peak that you could possibly get as far as someone launching. The president is launching a meme coin. Like who's bigger?

Who would be bigger? Elon maybe just hype wise, but I mean, Trump's kind of at the top right now, right? So, yeah, and I kind of miss it. I did not play this game. I felt like I was a little late, a little silly maybe because I think it ran from like once I saw it, say, 20 bucks up to the peak of I think 70, 75, 75 billion dollar market cap. It's sitting around 36 now.

But yeah, pretty fascinating. I mean, I had a lot of people not really in the cruise. crypto, of course, texting me like, hey, you buying this. I'm like, I'm not, but you do you if you want. And then, of course, it's taken off. Everyone's talking about it. And they decided to drop a Melania coin, right? And I'm just like, like, why?

Like, this thing could have just, why? You diluted like two days in. They just shot themselves in the foot. I know. It was running. I mean, it was at $70 billion. It could have run way higher, I think. The hype was there.

Coinbase launched it. Robin Hood launched. it and then you're just kind of like, wait, what? And then everyone kind of does a double take, right? And starts thinking like, wow, are they going to keep diluting it? Is there going to be a barren coin? Blah, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah.

You can see on the chart when they launched the Melania meme coin. I believe it was if you're looking at this screen. It's right here. See this big ass red candles? That's my language. The candle that drops the Trump meme coin by 55%. It goes from $75 down to $32. I mean, like the thought process.

I don't understand it. We're going to play a Trump clip, which is the only known clip that I know of, of him actually addressing the meme coin. But, man, Trump is the meme. Melania, I'm sure she's a great lady. No one cares about Melania. Like, it's just Donald Trump, just one meme coin, and it would have gone to infinity, but they just killed their momentum.

Erased billions of dollars collectively. Because, like, the Melania meme coin is only at like two or three billion dollars. And they have 40 billion off this cap by just. Exactly. Yeah. And it hasn't really recovered since. And so it's almost, it's basically currently at the price that it was when it had dumped it. Tried to recover. It did not. But it's currently clocking in at $37 billion, which is still not, it's still plenty of money. Seven billion dollars fully diluted. There is, on the website, you can see the distribution. There is a, one of the classic pie chart distributions. And all Trump collective owned entities own 80% of the

token. I think if anyone inside of the crypto industry launched a main coin in this fashion in this way, everyone in crypto would be like, well, that's a grift. You own 80%. But when Donald Trump does it and, you know, it pumps Solana, the salana price by 50% and everyone gets wealthy, then it's totally okay. And like granted, it's incentive compatible. It is, you know, legitimizing the industry in some way, shape, or form is putting more attention in into the market. there are some pretty crazy stats out there about the sheer number of wallets that was made in order to just buy the token. Here's a tweet from Jason Yanowitz who says 50% of Trump and Melania holders have never bought a Solana altcoin before. 47 of buyers created their wallets the same day they purchased the token.

83% of holders own sub $1,000 of sole assets. This was a historic retail onboarding event. And then Mike Epolito, who's, you know, Jason's co-founder, says, The Trump meme coin is a seminal moment in crypto's history. Whether the discount rate that used to get applied to crypto for the fear of it being banned has lifted, the entire industry is about to re-rate up only. So zooming out, Eric, what would you say about just the impact on the crypto industry as a whole? Like, is this, are we never going to be the same?

Is it going to be forgotten? Like, what's your take? Yeah, I think one of the most important points there, it's actually funny. I was talking with someone this morning about this is just the sheer number of wallets this created on Solana and For Solana, right? And I think of all the things, that's one of the better things they've cashed in on on the meme coin game is just capturing users. And these are now just active wallets with money in them, right? Maybe they're not going to go trade or use salon every day.

But this created a crazy amount of wallets for them. I think overall, it's bullish. It's good for the crypto industry. I think no matter what you have kind of regulation guards coming down, you have the president of the U.S. launching a meme coin. Yeah, okay, we can call this a grifts in a way. I mean, they own 80%. That's why I didn't personally buy it.

And I'm sure there's just some kind of team behind this that convinced the Trumps to do this. And they kind of ran with it. And they're probably the ones that were like, hey, let's do Melania now. Like, I don't think Donald himself is sitting there being like, hey, it's time to launch Melania coin, right? There's like a team they're kind of working with doing this. I think it's fine for the industry. We were already launching just nons.

since meme coins every day. They have launched the worst things. Exactly. So let's not act like this is like, you know, worse than anything. The industry's done so far this cycle. But yeah, it's just the 80% is personally why I didn't do it. I think if it was like 100% fair launch,

I would have been more interested in hopping in. And I think that's probably holding a lot of people back now as time goes on as well. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, how that happens. Who knows? Maybe like, oh, we're going to burn most of this. And then people will be more interesting. But yeah, I don't really think you can think of this as anything less than bullish in general for the industry. I think the big question that Trump meme coin token holders want or was it getting insight for or wants insight for is like really how how aligned is Trump with his own meme coin, right?

Is he going to be like on Twitter pumping his meme coin or does he even know about it? We have one clip of Trump talking about his meme coin, which was from a press conference when an interviewer asked him about it. It is a hilarious clip. Trump, you know, whatever you feel about him, he is either on purpose or accidentally hilarious. And I think this clip embodies that. So let's go ahead and listen to this clip right now. You launched your crypto coin the other day.

Do you intend to continue selling products that benefit yourself personally while you're president? Well, I don't know if it benefited. I don't know where it is. I don't know where it is. I don't know where it is. I heard it was very successful. I heard it was very successful. I haven't checked it.

Thanks. You made a lot of money, sir. How much? Several billion dollars, it seems like, the last several days. Several billion. That's peanuts for these guys. And that's how it ends. He actually receives from the reporters how much money he made on this meme coin, because apparently he did not know.

You can see inside of Google Trends, Solana, the Solana search keyword in Google is about to break highs, not seen since 2021, like much higher, whatever this chart is measured at 30 was what it was on the high of 2021 and currently we're clocking it somewhere around 100. So three times higher than the highest point it was in in 2021 is what is the Solana search terms. Bitcoin is not at previous all-time highs. Ethereum is not at previous all-time highs.

So Solana gets a win for just optimizing for meme coins. Turns out people really, really want to launch and trade meme coins. But that is not the only thing that Trump is doing on chain. World Liberty Financial, which is Trump's DFI project, which is kind of a fork of AVE deployed on scroll and Ethereum layer two, tweeted out to commemorate the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States. World Liberty Financial is proud to announce the following strategic purchases today. $47 million of Eath, $47 million of wrapped Bitcoin, $4.7 million of Avey, Link, Tron, and Athena. excited for the future ahead with 20,000 likes on the tweet. And then I think, Eric, this is your tweet.

Donald Trump is starting to stake his ETH. Let me say that again, the president of the United States of America is staking ETH. And this is a picture of ETHER scan of $15 million of ETH being staked to the World Liberty Financial Multisig. He's doing all the things across all the chains. You've got to give him credit to where Donald Trump is a businessman. He's got new line. He's got NFT of business. He's got a meme coin business.

He's got a defy protocol business. How much he's involved with any of these things is probably minimal. But hey, he's doing it. Yeah. I mean, I think this here is big for Ethereum because Trump's not taking the, first of all, they're not just sitting in stable coins, right? Obviously, he's the president. He's a USD maxi to an extent, right?

But he's buying ETH. And yeah, he's buying some BFI, which is good to see. And a little bit of Bitcoin as well. But historically in this account, they've been buying ETH. What does that mean? I don't know if it, you know, I've seen a lot of speculation. While he's buying a lot of Eith, like, do you think they're going to announce something about ETH or DFI? Maybe, or maybe they just think crypto is going to take off in general.

And maybe they think E's Lowe versus other things and they just want to do it. Now, some of the funniest responses I get to some of these tweets are like, well, it's not like Donald Trump himself. Well, it actually kind of is. If you read the terms and services on World Liberty Financial website, like it states. that this LLC, I think it's called like the Fight, Fight, Fight, Fight, LSC, or something like that, which is owned by the Trump family, has say and where the funds go and how they are invested over, like, at a certain threshold. So Trump has governing power over World Liberty Financial.

You've read the fine print. I've read the fine print. Trump family, and I'm sure, you know, he's on the top of the LLC. I think some family members are on there or whatever. But, I mean, they have the say over this. So if they wanted to dump all this to USC, they could do it. they're clearly telling people to buy ETH. It's all there in the fine print on the website.

So I think this is just great for crypto. I mean, like the president's talking about meme coins, buying Eith, Bitcoin, Defi. We're coming off, you know, four years of people hiding and tucking their tails in because they were afraid in the U.S. to do anything related to crypto and defy, right? And clearly that, you know, you can't really be fearful in the U.S. now about like being sued for launching a defy project or a meme coin or something legit if the president himself is doing this stuff, right? So I know that's not like an official legal stance by any means,

but you feel a little bit safer now, right, than you did just a week ago or whatever. So where this all kind of goes next, I don't know. Like is the whole four years of Trump's presidency going to be, you know, defy meme coin related? Is this just a flash in the pan? And he's going to, you know, shift to, first of all, just being the president.

And second of all, more like the Bitcoin or, you know, other coin national reserves. I don't know, time will tell. But it's been fun. The engagements on those tweets are fun too. People love Donald Trump buying East. So, yeah. Dude, the Donald Trump Algo is huge.

Like, people just want to hear about Donald Trump and what he's doing about crypto. This tweet that we're looking at from you has a million views. It has almost 10,000 likes. I also just, the difference in behavior of what's going on on the two respective chains, Salonna and Ethereum is also just interesting.

Like what is Donald Trump and Trump associated businesses doing on Ethereum? Building a DFI protocol and buying Bitcoin, buying ether, and buying other crypto asset tokens. And then what are you doing on Solana? Launching a 80% locked up meme coin. Like those are the facts of the matter. There are two different types of behaviors going on two different chains. And I just kind of think that's interesting to see the natural behavior that emerges

on the respective blockchains. Yeah, I fully agree with that. I think that's, I had pointed that out, not exactly that, but in a couple of tweets, kind of like, you know, I'm okay with Salana winning, quote unquote, winning meme coins. I know they didn't win meme coins because there's great meme coins on Ethereum as well. But like, what if East futures should be a focus on like defy and ethos money store value and kind of like global sediment layer that people trust storing their assets on and not launching an 80% locked up meme coin. Like that there is like this divergence now and kind of what the chains are being used for. And I think we're going to, get into this topic a little more later, so I won't go too far. But this does come down to, as well, though, you need to get users on your chain and users are buying the gas token, and that's pushing price up. And so I know we're going to talk a little bit about the urban general later, so I'll save some of those thoughts for now. Yeah, let's finish up with the rest of Donald Trump and his crypto actions. The big thing this week, I would say even bigger than

launching a meme coin, even though launching a meme coin is pretty big, is the pardoning of Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder of Ross Ulbricht. Here's a photo. of Ross at 40 years old after being in jail for almost 12 years after he was imprisoned after operating the Silk Road which is the it's a dark web marketplace a marketplace for everything and then since it you know used Bitcoin and Tor it ended up being a place where drugs and many other illicit activities would be done here's Ross Holbrook walking walking free with a little plant in his hands I thought that was cute he tweeted out truth out on truth social

I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. And I actually met, Eric, I don't know if you've ever met Lynn Ulbricht, but she has been around the libertarian crypto conference space. I met her in Bitcoin 2019 when she was collecting signatures to petition the government to release her son Ross. and she had been doing this before before like the crypto industry really adopted her as a symbol of libertarian rights and she never really gave up

and I can only imagine being the mother of a son who was in jail for 12 years and getting the phone call from the president saying hey, I'm about to pardon your son. Krakken exchange. Krakken tweeted out all of us at Krakken want to make sure that after what you've been through, you're able to land on your feet with the support of the community

that loves you the most, the Bitcoin community. That's why we've donated 111, thousand dollars in bitcoin to you ross oldbricked from crackin uh so ross i don't know he might have some bitcoins tucked away i don't think anyone really knows he probably doesn't even know but hey at least he's getting a hundred thousand and 11 000 in bitcoin from crackin to ross uh eric what your thoughts on all this yeah i mean great to see this was kind of rumored right trump had hinted at or talked about it it was kind of funny like this didn't happen on day one of trum's presidency and all the bitcoins were already kind of up in arms with pitchforks

Like, let's just wait like a couple days, right? And then it was signed on the first full day of Trump's presidency. Yeah, exactly. Second, I guess, U.S. day within the first 24 hours. So, yeah, I mean, great to see. This obviously story goes way back and there's a lot of nuance and stuff here. But I actually think not even commenting necessarily on the case and what happened, I think it's a testament to how powerful Bitcoin and crypto have become, right?

This is something when Ross was prison for this, pretty much everyone in the U.S. U.S., especially the government thought Bitcoin was a scam. And Ross was kind of a champion in general for Bitcoin, right, early on. And kind of, you know, even though Silk Road was like a drug exchange and illicit exchange, like it helped put Bitcoin on the map in like a weird way. It was kind of the first big story. And now people that were being jailed for, you know, accepting Bitcoin on these marketplaces. What was once thought Bitcoin itself was dirty and only used for drugs and all this stuff is now powerful enough to get the person out of prison that went into prison for this, right? So kind of a full circle thing. It just really kind of shows the power crypto has now. And it's

nice to see, I mean, one of the classic things during the election was people anti-Trump were saying, oh, he's just saying this stuff. He's not going to stick to his word. So just in general, it's nice to see him sticking to his word on some of his crypto-related promises. And then, yeah, I've, of course, been thinking, I wonder how much Bitcoin has been stashed away or like he opened up some old laptops and some old, you know, hardware wallets or whatever, some, some cold stores written down seed phrases and, oh, look, we've got lots of Bitcoin on these. So who knows, we'll probably never know, but I'm sure there's some sitting around. I was thinking about this. I'm going to bet that he doesn't have access to any old Bitcoins because for the many number

of years, you know, 10 plus years, he has been operating under the assumption that he is in jail for life. And his mom has been working tirelessly to get him out of prison. And if he knew that he had access to Bitcoin somewhere, he would tell his mom, hey mom, I've got these Bitcoins. You can use that to fund my, to fund help. So I think it would be likely that if there was the option for this, then he would have already tried to have exercised that option. But nonetheless, in addition to the Crackin, $11,000 in Bitcoin. I'm just pulling up the Bitcoin wallet. It seems like Other people have also donated even more than that. So he is up to $276,000 in Bitcoin coming out of jail.

So he's landed on his feet, landed with some funds. Ross Oldbrick, I know every single podcast under the sun is probably clamoring at your doorstep trying to get you on as a guest. And I would like to include myself and the bankless podcast in that if you are ever. After you are done being bored of being a free man, please consider coming on the bankless podcast. Let's get into some of the regulators. There is a statement on the departure of Chair Gary Gensler, and it starts off. Today is Gary Gensler's final day at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Interestingly, I think this is written by Commissioner Hester Purse, Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, and Mark Ueda,

two very pro-Crypto SEC commissioners and one, very negative one, Caroline Crenshaw. I won't read the statement. I'll leave the link in the showness for anyone who is interested in reading the statement because I want to kind of skip to the punch here where the White House has issued some executive of orders naming chairman and chairwomen. It's in the lieu of an actual official position. We all know that Paul Atkins is likely going to be the SEC chair, but in his absence, before he is actually named and approved, Mark Uweda is the acting chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has been very pro-crypto, basically the other half to Hester Purse. And then also for the

CFTC, we also have a pro-C-FTC acting chairman for for the CFTC. There's also SEC Crypto 2.0 announced. Acting chairman Mark Iweda announced his formation of new crypto task force headed by our favorite Commissioner Hester Purse. My reading between the lines is that we need the SEC needs to go case by case by case of every enforcement action litigation. Wells noticed that has ever issued the crypto industry and he needs to reevaluate every

single one to see what the SEC, the new SEC, wants to do about that. And so Hester Perse, I think, has always had the interest of the crypto industry at heart. Fairly, not, she's not just like giving us a blank check, but she understands that her role is to have an SEC that fosters fair and efficient capital formation and that the SEC has not been doing its job as relates to crypto. She has said this many, many times, including it on bankless. And I think Hesser-Pers leading this agency-wide effort could not be better for the SEC's relations to crypto. Eric, what are your thoughts on all this? Yeah, I mean, first of all, Gary, finally.

Man, that guy was just one of the worst actors against the crypto industry and it's all of its history, right? So that's great to see. Yeah, and I agree with you. I think the key here, and they already announced it, like you mentioned, is just getting clear guidance and framework, right? That was always the thing with Gary. It was just so murky and it was intentional, right?

It was like their way of not really putting out guidance. It's almost worse when there's a middle ground because you're not really sure like, can I do this? Can I not? So yeah, this SEC crypto 2.0 thing. I mean, again, just so much positive news coming in and things that Trump had promised that are already happening on like day one and two, right? One of my favorite things before the election was people acting like, okay, the president

can't like officially fire and appoint the SEC chair. But like, of course, they can pressure. them out. They can do, he has a lot of tools. This is one of these things that I was always fighting with people. I'm like, there's no way Gary's sticking around. There just is not. Sure, like maybe by the law can't happen, but it's clearly going to happen and it happened. So I think the biggest takeaway here is just allowing U.S. crypto companies to understand this framework and to finally flourish a little bit, right? Because we've fallen behind the rest of the world. I mean, I've had plenty of friends, developer friends, friends in general that have left

the U.S. to go build stuff elsewhere, right? And so I think this is just going to kind of bring innovation in the crypto space back to crypto. And I think that age, the age of fear for crypto builders in the U.S., not just the U.S., like the U.S.'s presence reaches far, right? That age of fear is kind of gone. And I think we're going to see like a, you know, a Renaissance era when it comes to So building and especially around defy and things like that. I think one thing that I really want to highlight, the CFTC has named Caroline Fam is acting chairman of the CFTC, also pro-crypto. So we are flipping from the SEC and the CFTC and the Treasury.

The acting chairman can't remember the name of the treasury. Everything is flipping pro-crypto. So not only are the individual agencies working more collaborative with the crypto industry, but they can now also work together. And so the CFTC and the SEC can work. together to define what's a security and what's a commodity. So these agencies, which previously have had tension with each other, regulatory territory land grabs that they have been trying, I'm hoping that now because they are all together flipping pro-crypto, that they can work

together to foster correct and clear rules of the road for the entire crypto industry. I thought this video of Brian Armstrong being interviewed on Squackbox on CNBC about what he's hopeful for, I thought was pretty interesting. So let's go ahead and give this a listen. Happening exactly. One of the most exciting things about this new Congress, which is the most pro-crypto Congress ever, is that I think we finally have a chance to get some regulatory clarity in the U.S. about some of these big open issues that, you know, frankly under Gary Gensler,

we just haven't gotten any clarity for a long time. So which of these assets are commodities, which of them are securities, that requires the SEC and the CFC to come together and collaborate on rulemaking or to have Congress really step in and pass new legislation. So there's an opportunity to do that. The Fit 21 bill, which passed with strong bipartisan support in the House earlier this year, it's now making its way through the Senate. And with any luck, we'll get that passed through the Senate and make it to the president's desk here, either in the lame duck or early in the Trump administration. When you think, though, about the other currencies, I mean, they're the ones, I would imagine

at this point that have the bigger room to move, or no? Well, you know, I think Bitcoin will be the most important crypto asset for a long time. It's got a lot. lot of run way to move as well. It's not just about Bitcoin. There's there are dozens, hundreds of different assets in crypto that are now, they've met our listing standards, they've made it onto our exchange. And actually there's thousands of these being created every day, believe it or not. And so some of these are there, you know, coins like ton and world coin, which are being used in emerging markets. There's things like in the defy space, like uniswap that people want exposure to or the things that are layer two solutions are being built on top of like

optimism. I think we're eventually going to get to a world where there's millions of these tokens. You know, every project, every individual, every meme on the internet is going to have one of these. And of course, every company, when they want to raise money, as we get regulatory clarity around securities and have a clear path for that, they should be issuing these coins as well. Really, Brian Armstrong, I think, kind of giving the maximally bullish case for crypto on Squawk Box, talking about companies issuing tokens, individuals issuing tokens. And I think really re-highlighting to investors, something that we see every single bull market is like, yo, remember that it's actually much more than just Bitcoin. This is an entirely new tech sector that wants

to revolutionize finance and we're just getting started. And when the appetite from outside investors moves beyond Bitcoin and goes down the market cap stack, I think that's just, that's what a crypto bull market is. Yeah. I think one of the more important things he said there too was he didn't say the exact phrase, but essentially tokenizing the world, right? I mean, everything is I forgot that phrase. Yeah, yeah. Everything's going to be tokenized, right? And like Larry Fink kind of talks about this, too.

And I think the lack of regulatory clarity has held back a lot of institutions and banks from going down this rabbit hole. And I think that's really going to open the floodgates here. And, you know, Brian's, of course, hinting that a little bit, giving us some shout out to the theorem layer twos and stuff. He did say Coinbase's listing standards, which I would love to know what those are because they're clearly not very clear. I'm not sure what's going on there, but maybe for the sake of clarity, they could publish those. But anyways, yeah, just in general,

tokenizing the world, I think this, you know, people, like he was saying, people first think Bitcoin, right? And now people are going to focus on like strategic reserves. But really what this opens up, this administration opens up.

And hopefully not just this administration. Hopefully these rules get established, clarity gets established, and it carries on forever. Really what this opens up is further down the pipeline, right? of, you know, everything being tokenized, institutions, banks not being scared to tokenize things and to touch crypto and custody crypto.

There's just so many things that can kind of fall down here. And, you know, all these institutions, banks, brokers, they want to take in fees, right? And they can, they're drooling, thinking about how much money they can take in for doing some of this stuff, right? And that's just kind of, this is going to open up the floodgates. Yeah, as you said, BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, says, I want the SEC to wrap it approved the tokenization of bonds and stocks. Of course, the man who has already tokenized bonds would love the SEC to allow him to do even more of that. Coinbase has got to be the first one thinking about doing this, right? They've got to be the first one trying to tokenize

coin stock. Yeah, right. Yeah, that would be sick. Because coin is the only thing that I own that's an asset that's not on a blockchain. Other than the dollars I need to pay for rent in my bank account. Other than that, it's just coin. And if I could just get that in my Ethereum wallet on base, that'd be great. Awesome. I don't even need to ask Jesse or Brian to do that. I know that if they could do that, they would definitely do that. Some last little bits on this regulatory section. Senator Cynthia Lummis has been announced to chair the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets. This, Senator Cynthia Lemmiss, previously a laser-eyed bitcoiner. She has since taken off her laser eyes, but I know she's got them on in the back. And so she is now heading

up the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets. She is from Wyoming, I believe, which also Wyoming just passed a bill, proposed a bill for a strategic Bitcoin Reserve. So the state of Wyoming wants to put Bitcoin on the Wyoming balance sheet. And then the CEO of Bank America says that the financial industry is ready to adopt crypto payments if regulators give it the green light. That's the Fit 21 bill that we would all like to be passed by the Senate. It's currently moving through the Senate. Hopefully that gets passed. And then all of a sudden, banks can custody, crypto, because the old institution has to come our way sooner or later. And then lastly, actually unrelated to Donald Trump, but the OFAC sanctions on tornado cash has been lifted.

So I think this means, and do not quote me on this, and I am not a lawyer, and this is not advice, but I think this means that tornado cash is legal to use by United States citizens. This is the Joseph Van Loon, Preston Van Loon, Alex Fisher, Kevin Vitale, and a few others. This is their court sponsored by Coinbase. Coinbase sponsored this fight against OFAC, and the court has lifted the sanctions on tornado cash. I am going to wait for multiple lawyers, Jake Schrovinsky et al on Twitter, all the crypto lawyers, to give me the thumbs up that this is now legal.

And then I'm going to wait for a few other people to go first. And then I might use tornado cash, but I'm going to wait for all of those things first. Eric, give me your reaction to all this. Yeah, I mean, I think I'll comment first on, you know, tornado cash. I think this is a big one just for privacy in general. I mean, privacy to me should be a human right. And when this kind of came out and especially, you know, the founders, you know, Roman Storm, for example, is going on trial.

I suggest everyone kind of go support his cause and donate to him. That's coming up. But just disappointing from the U.S., the country I live in and we live in in general to go after people like this who are just building open source software. And I really do think privacy is a human right. So a huge win here. And there's some of my friends in the space that were involved in going after them and won this case. So just bravo to them.

It's on the screen here. So you can see those names of a bravo to them for, you know, this is just a true community uprising to try and defend the things that we're building and that we believe in. And again, yeah, I don't know. Like, are we allowed to go use it? no idea. I'll wait for some legal advice there as well. But hopefully this is a good sign for, you know, the founders themselves as well who are facing, you know, legal action against them. Yeah. This unfortunately does not mean that Roman Storm is in the clear. It likely does weaken the case against Roman Storm, but unfortunately that is an independent case. So while we have gotten

the pardon of Ross Oldbrook, we still have two open source crypto developers, Alexei Persev and Roman storm who are under the thumb of the nation state that we still need to make sure do not get left behind. All right, Eric, coming up next, we're going to talk about the drama that you were in the middle of last week. The EF is changing and Vitalik went into full war mode last week, donning a milady, PFP, but I don't think the community is totally inspired or appeased by the direction that the EF is going. And I think people are asking for a little bit more change. I think you have a lot to share on that. So let's go ahead and get into all the information. But first, before we get there, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Like Frax,

the Decentralized Central Bank, the FRX U.S.E. Stablecoin, has got some of the best eels in DFI. It's kind of like if Circle, Athena, and Maker Dow all had a baby. But it also exists on the Fraxel layer two, an OP chain juiced up for massive throughput. You can go click the link in the show notes that goes to get started with Frax today. What if the future of Web3 gaming wasn't just a fantasy, but something you could explore today? Ronan, the blockchain already trusted by millions of players and creators, is opening its doors to a new era. of innovation starting February 12th. For players and investors,

Ronan is a home to a thriving ecosystem of games, NFTs, and live projects like AXE and pixels. With its permissionless expansion, the platform is about to unleash new opportunities in gaming, defy, AI agents, and more. Sign up for the Ronan wallet now to join 17 million others exploring the ecosystem. And for developers,

Ronan needs your platform to build, grow, and scale. With fast transactions, low fees, and proven infrastructure, it's optimized for creativity at scale. Start building on the TestNet today and prepare to launch your I. ideas, whether it's games, meme coins, or an entirely new Web3 experience. Ronin's millions of active users in wallets means tapping into a thriving ecosystem of

of 3 million monthly active addresses ready to explore your creations. Sign up for Ronin wallet at wallet.orgon.com and explore the possibilities. Whether your player, investor, or builder, the future of Web3 starts on Ronan. The Arbitrum portal is your one-stop hub to entering the Ethereum ecosystem. With over 800 apps, Arbitrum offers something for everyone. dive into the epicenter of Defy, where advanced trading, lending, and staking platforms are redefining how we interact with money. Explore Arbitrum's rapidly growing gaming hub from immersed role-playing games, fast-paced

-paced fantasy MMOs to casual luck-battle mobile games. Move assets effortlessly between chains and access the ecosystem with ease via Arbitram's expansive network of bridges and onrifts. Step into Arbitrum's flourishing NFT and creator space, where artists, collectors, and social converge and support your favorite streamers all on chain. Find new and trending apps and learn how to earn rewards across the Arbitrum ecosystem with limited time campaigns from your favorite projects. Empower your future with Arbitrum.

Visit portal.arbitrum.io to find out what's next on your Web3 journey. Thello is transitioning from a mobile-first, EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain to a high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 built on OP-Stack with eigenDA and one-block finality, all happening soon with a hard fork, with over 600 million total transaction, 12 million weekly transactions, and 750,000 daily active users, Sellow's meteoric rise would place it among one of the top layer 2s, built for the real world and optimized for fast, low-cost global payments. As the home of the stable coins,

Sello hosts 13 native stable coins across seven different currencies, including native USDT on Opera MiniPay, and with over 4 million users in Africa alone. In November, stablecoin volumes hit $6.8 billion, made for seamless on-chain FX trading. Plus, users can pay gas with ERC 20 tokens like USDT and USDC, and send crypto to phone numbers in seconds. But why should you care about Sello's transition to a layer two?

Layer two's Unify Ethereum. L1's fragmented. By becoming a layer two, cello leads the way for other EVM-compatible layer ones to follow. Follow Sellow on X and witness the great cello happening where Sellow cuts its inflation in half as it enters its layer two era and continuing its environmental leadership.

On January 18, Vitalik Buren tweeted out a very big tweet who said, and he said, we are indeed currently in the process of large changes to Ethereum Foundation leadership structure which has been ongoing for close to a year. Some of this has already been executed on and made public, and some is still in progress.

Some of the goals of this change in leadership is improving the technical expertise within EF leadership, improving two-way communications and ties between EF leadership and ecosystem actors, like users like app devs, wallace, and layer twos. Also to bring in fresh talent, be more actively supportive of application builders and increase our use of decentralized and privacy tech

on the Ethereum chain. And then he also explicitly stated some non-goals, which he just wants to really double down on saying this is not what is happening, which is execute some kind of ideological vibes pivot from a feminized W-EF soy boy mentality to Bronze Age mindset. We are not going to aggressively start lobbying regulators and powerful political figures. We are not going to risk compromising a theorem's position as a global neutral platform. We are not going to be an arena for vested interest, and the EF is not going to become a highly centralized. he follows up and says, these things aren't what the EF does and this isn't going to change. People seeking a different direction, different vision are welcome to start their own orgs. And so this is, I think, come out of a bunch of tension of people asking for a leadership change at the EF.

And Vatelic is saying, yeah, we are doing a leadership change. I don't think this is exactly what the community or the broader people rabbling about a leadership change had in mind. There has been a very large push to get Danny Ryan to be the executive director of the Ethereum Foundation But, Eric, I think you're in the middle of all this. Maybe you could give a little bit more context and give me your takes. Yeah, I think I'll start with, like, I just want to make clear that I didn't decide in the last two weeks to try to start pushing the EF to change, right? I have posts on Reddit and Twitter going back as much as six, seven years asking the EF to change. And one of my biggest problems has always been the lack of transparency and the opakness.

So anytime this these debates come up, right? One of the hardest things for the community is we don't really know what's going on inside of the EF. So they report, they publish a report once a year. Well, it's funny is they report they put one out for 20, 2025, 24. They didn't do one for 2023 on their website and there's one for 2022. So typical EF fashion, they skipped a year. So just this opakeness and lack of transparency, like there's no in the report, he gives like a budget. It kind of talks about the teams, but we don't know the head count, really.

We don't, like, an updated head count. We don't really know, like, specifically how big these teams are, exactly what they're tasked with doing, what they accomplished in the year, you know, all of that stuff. So I think it begins there. I've been asking it for that, and the community has been asking for that for six years now. So it's kind of like, how do we judge the success of the Ethereum Foundation? And one of the things I disagree with most people on it. I've been very open about this. with the leadership, quote unquote, of Ethereum being fairly centralized for now. I think the network

can be decentralized. And I think the leadership, I think it's human nature to look to leaders. And to execute this roadmap, which is still pretty vast and ambitious, I don't think we can just be like, everything's decentralized. Go start your own foundation. Good luck, everybody. Like, I strongly disagree with that, especially because the EF took a pre-mine of Eith early on to specifically do this stuff, right? And I think one of the things I've been most frustrated about in all of this is the EF doesn't report to anybody. And I think they should have established something over the past few years where the community has some type of say in this. So for those unaware, and this is actually on the EF website. And if I talk two days ago now, kind of made this clear.

This change is up to him, basically. There's a board of three people. It's Aya. It's a, I believe a Swiss lawyer. I forget his name. And it's Vitalik. And the board decides, you know, who the big changes at the EF, right? And one of those would be executive director.

And I don't want to just make this about executive director. I truly don't. I think this is a larger kind of stagnation cultural issue going on in Ethereum. But I think the EF is vitally important. I think hand-waving it off as it's not and that the community could launch their own foundations if they want change. I just, the EF has a billion dollar treasury. Like that's a huge war chest.

And if you start a new foundation, you do not have a billion dollar treasury. So I think where this all started for me is, and this has been building for years, it just starts with lack of transparency and opakness into the Ethereum Foundation. And then people just kind of, the classic answer just being, well, just start your own foundation. No, that's not how it works. That's not how it works. You need the foundation, not a foundation. Like there's plenty of like side projects that's been up to help promote Ethereum.

And they've all kind of like sputtered along. It's really you need buy-in from top executional power support of the Ethereum ecosystem. This is the tweet that I think you're referencing that I think kind of just rocketed across the Ethereum community and really the broader crypto community. Vitalik is responding to somebody on Twitter saying, no, this is not how the game works. The person deciding the new EF leadership team is me. one of the goals of the ongoing reform is to give the EFA proper board, but until that happens, it's me. And I think this kind of punctured through some people's, like, idea of what the EF was, which was some nebulous, kind of undefined role of, like, Ethereum stewardship. I have always, I don't have the clear sense of, like, the EF because I came in 2017 and I was still learning then.

Other people like you, Eric, have had more context than I have. I think my newer understanding of the Ethereum Foundation is something closer to Vitalik's nonprofit for the values and technology that he wants to foster and bring to this world, which can all be Ethereum adjacent. And I think, I want to get your take on this, Eric, I think the community is asking for an Ethereum foundation that can operate a little bit more like a top-down organization to productify Ethereum and generate KPI's and outcomes and have like centralized, organization and development because Ethereum is now under pressure from ecosystems that are growing much faster than Ethereum is. Even though they're at different scales, it's easier to grow when you're small, but nonetheless, Ethereum seems to be lagging in development. And so we are trying to get some Dankrad level of urgency or some Danny Ryan level of leadership to guide Ethereum development and Ethereum progress and really make the organization of the EF more like

market competitive more than it is like a research and like charity nonprofit. That's kind of my loose understanding. Check me if I'm wrong. What's your take on that? No, I would agree. And I think you were just kind of alluding to this. I think it's important to understand like so the EF went to this subtraction mentality, which basically is like slowly stepping away in importance. And the idea is if the EF disappears tomorrow, can Ethereum still survive? That was good for like, I see Ethereum in like three stages kind of right now is like the launch it was oh look this thing works and people like it we're in a new stage that i don't think the eF is properly and i don't think the community honestly has properly responded to which is oh wow this thing works but we have competitors who think

their stuff works better and there's people out there who thinks their stuff works better um and i don't think we've properly responded to that right and um i think we need a little bit more sense of urgency i think we need a little bit more accountability um And the truth of the matter is, I've heard from a lot of people that Ethereum's competitors are out there. They're telling institutions. They're telling people. They're telling Wall Street that Ethereum sucks. And they're ripping our throats out, right?

And I just don't. Because we aren't there to advocate for ourselves because we don't have top-down leadership. Exactly. Yep. And now there was the announcement. I know this isn't part of the rollout. but they're etherealized as saying they're going to go now, go into Wall Street and institutions and kind of advocate for Ethereum. But, and this was partially EF funded as well.

But I just think Ethereum needs to look at itself and reevaluate itself given the competitors. And I don't think it's okay to just say, oh, our competitors aren't legit. They're all scams. Like, because that's just, they're real now, right? Scams can be effective. And they're not scams. And even if they were, scams can still be effective. It's still a problem.

Yeah, exactly. So look, is just an EFED leadership change going to change everything? No, not really. It's going to help, I think, personally. And this has nothing to do with, like, what I has accomplished. And one of the things that has really frustrating to me, I'll just be honest, and put me over the point point, is like, sure, riling up Twitter a little bit. But I was pretty cordial and not attacking anybody, definitely not personally attacking everybody. And all of a sudden, the opposition to this, or I guess I'll label it in the opposition, whatever you want to call them, just takes a couple of trolls who said a couple mean things.

And now all of a sudden it's like, oh, everyone's just personally attacking it. We can't possibly do this now because, you know, and that's just not the point, right? Like, we, like, I want, everybody wants Ethereum to win in the end. And sometimes you just need to, like, rile the troops a little bit. I think the community was very too much complacent over the last, you know, know, one to two years. And, you know, we got to wake up. Ethereum needs to wake up, right?

And it can't just, like, fade. You can't, like, be losing to institutions, losing to users that are using your apps. Like, you can't, at a point, you're going to lose all the pillars that, you know, bring an interest to your community. And so, yeah, it just kind of, who knows, maybe this is a butterfly effect and it all end up happening. I just personally haven't loved the responses from the EF so far, especially to, like, valued community members have kind of been like diluted down to oh just influencers and

tweeters and whatever you want to call them like that's just not true if you're going to lose all your evangelist who's out there marketing ethereum and and pitching it and talking about it and you know doing things for you um so anyways that's just kind of where i am and kind of where my head's been at on the eF situation in general is there a way where you know vitalik wants to make sure that the ethereum foundation promotes and supports the values the value use in research that it wants to bring into the world. And that's that's the vision of like the EF being Fatalix nonprofit. And then also the community is asking for like people like Danny Ryan and Dankrad to have more execution operational power. And I don't necessarily see these things as

mutually exclusive. It just mad it just really matters as to like who gets to call the shots in the future of the Ethereum roadmap. And I think people have always assumed that that is something that that's the role that the EF does. And I know Vatalic as a person just doesn't want that for himself. He just doesn't want to be a top-down leader. Like what does Vitalic like to do? He likes to write six blog posts about potential futures for the Ethereum roadmap, where the Ethereum community is like,

I am looking for someone to pick a future and then steer the ship in that direction. And I think that has been the motivation behind re-elevating Danny Ryan's name as a potential executive director of the Ethereum Foundation. Now, maybe there's a different world where there's like a different organization that represents coordination around the Ethereum roadmap and the Ethereum Protocol. And that's led by people like Justin Drake, Danny, Ryan, Donkrad. And then also the Ethereum Foundation invests in research, frontier research, you know, cryptography, you know, and is Vitalik's nonprofit? Is there a world where we can have both or is there a fundamental tension that like doesn't make that possible? I think there's a tension right now.

I think if the community makes it clear enough that, hey, we think this is the only way to go. I think it could be fixed. I think one of the biggest problems the community has right now is like very, very quickly, stepping back. If Atalic was a great,

first of all, I respect him immensely, a great wartime leader early on. Like he was kind of in core dev calls, making the decisions, like on Twitter, fighting for Ethereum, you know, going out and talking to people about Ethereum.

And it kind of oddly shifted around. And maybe he just, is a little burnt out. I want to step back from some of that stuff. I get it and like let this flourish on its own, which I also get kind of happen with like Bitcoin Maxi saying, oh, it's centralized around Vitalik and people kind of like buying into that. I never like that. Like I wish Vitalik kept charge. I still wish he had it to this day. Now, there is this weird kind of thing now where he stepped back. He kind of has a different vision for Ethereum than the community has. And one of the biggest sticking points is I don't think the EF especially EF leadership is very tight in to

what the community sees Ethereum should be and what the users are using Ethereum for. And so you have this like grand vision coming from some people of this like utopia of what Ethereum should be like, right? And like Votalek has spoken out against like meme coins and like a little bit about against defy and speculation. Well, at the end of the day, that's what people are using the chain for. Like you can't like have this utopian vision and just ignore what users wanted to use use it for, right? So I think there's just this disconnect happening and like from the community, the people in the trenches, the people evangelizing, using it every day.

And kind of those who seem to have control of the EF seem to have control of the roadmap, how do you marry those two? My personal opinion would have been Danny Ryan takes over because he's kind of always sat between those two users, those two bases, right? There's just a lot of interreflecting to do. Who knows, maybe the market doesn't care. I think it does. And I think one of the biggest things is just making sure Ethereum does not negate the app layer. Because I think that's one of the biggest missteps that has happened over the last two years. That's where your users come from, that active wall is with money in them and kind of getting back to that and focusing on that.

But who knows? I'm sure Ethereum is going to be fine. I think the culture has a problem. I think there's pretty big disconnect between the EF and the community. Can it get solved? Time will tell, I guess. Yeah. It was funny when Vitalik invoked the idea of like what's something we're not going to do is execute some like, like, woke, W.EF, soy boy, like, vibe shift.

And I kind of want to comment on that because I think it's worth talking about. There's always been in the Ethereum philosophy to make sure that all stakeholders of Ethereum are included in representation. and that is beyond just simple eith stakers. Somebody brought up the idea of like, yo, let's make a little mechanism to allow people with ether to vote and so they could express themselves. But what that doesn't do is that doesn't include any users of Ethereum who just aren't eth holders.

And Ethereum as is credibly neutral public good that wants to represent, you know, the users of the internet, not just eith stakers and eth holders, needs to account for as wide of a population of people as possible. You know, there's four billion people that use the internet. How do we account for all of them? And this has been the positioning of Ethereum as this credibly neutral, public, good, world computer for everyone to use.

It's not just for eth holders. It's not just for, you know, stakers. It's for the world. And this is kind of aligned with, like, more liberal values of having a sphere of concern that extends very far away from you, as opposed to more conservative values, which mainly has a concern for like your nuclear family, you know, your wife, your kids, and then, you know, you're maybe like one more degree after that. And Ethereum has always tried to expand the sphere of concern to not just, not just eth holders, not just eat takers, but Ethereum users, Ethereum Layer 2 users,

but then also future users too, like expanding this sphere of concern so far. And I think in 2025, that what I think is a noble value has perhaps overreferial. overreached and allowed opportunities for people like faster moving smaller ecosystems to have a more local sphere of concern for their token holders today, which has been able to spiral into some winds by respective ecosystems. And now that the Ethereum user base is large enough that they feel forgotten or abandoned by the Ethereum Foundation, which is still looking into the future about hypothetical future users rather than looking today about the needs of the users today.

How do you feel about that kind of vibe? Fully agree. 100% agree. And I think this sphere of concern, as you put it, has oddly enough stagnated progress. Because if you're constantly, say you want to make a change, you're like, okay, well, it's fairly easy to kind of tell, I think, what the devs think, what even the Eath holders, who I would pretty much put as like the users think, maybe you can gauge like Twitter. But as you keep like pushing this out and out and out and you're trying to get perfect about it, at a point. you end up making no change because you can't get like a perfect read

on the situation right and this is one thing that I just hate when people are like oh the Twitter mob or the people on Twitter like no that it's a it's a public square this is where most the theorem discussions occur

it should give a decent vibe on where the community is and if you're gonna try all these different measuring tools and worry about all these different parts of the community you're oddly going to go the way of Bitcoin and stagnant in my

opinion never make change, which maybe at a point is okay. I don't think it's okay right now, but I definitely 100% agree. And, you know, where does this settle? And this goes back to, like, who should the EF report to, like, who should they consider as their stakeholders, right? And this is just a tough problem as time goes on. And again, this goes back to, like, I personally would prefer centralized control of the roadmap and some of these decisions by highly respected people like metallic Danny Ryan and people that have contributed great technical expertise of the protocol who can kind of then like you can kind of create committees right you can kind of have smaller representation for each of these areas and it's not going to be perfect

I think the perfectionist nature of Ethereum and trying to make sure everyone's perfectly represented and like how are they represented it just has created this kind of like stagnation and this like just accepting the status quo well this conversation will I'm sure continue you. This is not going to be fixed overnight. So we will just simply report on this as time goes on. Eric, I appreciate you for your perspective. There's three last bits of news on the week. Digital currency group has been charged by the SEC to pay $38 million dollars, $38 million in a settlement. This was three days before the Trump administration came in, a $38 million dollar penalty to Genesis for lending shenanigans. The actual specific words here is misleading investors about the financial

health of Genesis after the Three Arrow's capital collapse. Like I said, Digital Currency Group charged $38 million and Morrow, who was the CEO at the time, Scotio Morrow, I just butcher his name, also charged with half a million dollars for civil penalties. Circle. Circle has introduced the Circle Paymaster enabling users who pay gas fees with USC on arbitram and base. So you no longer need a gas token. You can simply just pay with U.S. to pay for gas. And that's live on Ethereum Layer 2s. And lastly, I'm gargantuan raised by Phantom Wallet raised a $150 million series C and a $3 billion valuation led by Sequoia and Paradigm. Phantom wallet, we talk at Bankless Ventures about potentially investing in wallets here and there.

And it's just investing in a graveyard. There's just dead project, dead wallets everywhere. And Phantom is really the one wallet that has just absolutely broken through that rule to be a very gargantuan exception. Eric, I just went through a bunch of news items. Feel free to comment on all of them as you see for it. Yeah, I think I'll comment on Phantom first. I mean, they've done a great job of just making a user-frily experience. And I think that's, you know, going back to Ethereum, how much the wallet, you know,

landscape has been split. We've gone through many different, I personally use Rabby now. Of course, you use Metamask in the past. But some of these wallets, if they can capture, like, most of the user base of crypto, like, I'm not surprised that they're getting, you know, $3 billion valuations because there's a lot of ways to tap into, you know, taking fees on swaps and all this stuff. But yeah, this is an extremely competitive space when it comes to Phantom or wallets in general. Yeah, and I also just quickly comment on the Circle USDC thing and like being on an arbitram and base.

I think stable coins are still one of the more underappreciated general bullish things, however you want to put it, for Ethereum and crypto in general. and like Ethereum still does hold most of the stable coin value and activity. Defi is still flourishing. You know, I think stable coins are just going to continue to grow and someday are just going to replace, you know, wire and ACH transistors, right? So they're kind of marrying these two as people are onboarded the more user-friendly wallets over time. It's going to be way easier for someone to just, hey, you got Phantom wallet or Rabby wallet

or Meta Mouse wall, whatever it is. I'm just going to send you 100 USDC or 50,000 USDC for this wire, whatever it is, and it's cheaper and it's more efficient than. So long term, I know we've just become used to stable coins, but it's funny how such a powerhouse product has grown so rapidly. Eric, that concludes the weekly roll-up I really enjoyed. You helping me work through the weekly news, my man. You're just a wealth of wisdom, and I really appreciate your perspective.

Yeah, David, thanks. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. I'm sure we'll chat on here sometime soon in the future. sure. Who knows how long it'll be, but thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Bankless Nation, you guys know the deal. We're going to have Haseeb Khrushy on the weekly roll-up next week, and then who knows for the week after that. I want Ledger, but he needs to get back to my telegram DM. But until then, crypto is risky.

You can lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.