Bankless - 📺 ROLLUP: Ukraine Crypto Donations | Russia SWIFT Sanctions | EBay Accepting ETH | Pixelmon NFTs

Starting point is 00:00:00 Crypto just got real. Yeah. Like it got real on the geopolitical stage. Hey, Bankless Nation. It is the first week of March. David, what time is it? Oh, it's the Friday Bankless Weekly Roll-up time, Ryan, where we cover what just happened in the last week of crypto, which I say it every single week was an insane week.

Starting point is 00:00:20 But this one is an insane week for the first reasons of the first time. Sanction Week, I think, is what we're going to be. It's going to be the theme of this week. But it's also documentary week, Ryan, because behind me, you actually can't see it, but there's two cameras coming out of the Infinite Garden Ethereum documentary. So this particular weekly roll-up is going to be components of it will be put into the Ethereum documentary, which everyone is super excited about when it finally comes out. That's crazy.

Starting point is 00:00:45 I can't believe they're interested in this little podcast we do every week, David. But, man, I feel like the theme is pretty fitting. You said Sanction Week, and I think the theme is as well as crypto just got real. Yeah. Like it got real on the geopolitical stage. people have asked us not to talk about geopolitics on bankless, but like, how can we not? Nonsensical. Nonsensical. We have to. We have to. At least we have to view all of this through the crypto lens. So that's what we're going to do because who is in the middle of all of this? It's

Starting point is 00:01:13 crypto. Crypto is straight in the middle of all of these sanctions, all of these bank freezes that are going on. And I think we'll continue to be for the rest of the 2020s. That has always been the promise of crypto is that it will one day enter the geopolitics stage. And so now that crypto has indeed done that, bankless is now a geopolitics podcast. That's a little scary. It's a little scary. When you say it like that, now I'm scared. Okay, forget everything I just said.

Starting point is 00:01:40 This is just about crypto, not politics. Anyway. We're going back to talk about some NFTs. We're going to talk about some NFTs, but first we've got to talk about weaponized banks, what that means. Some of the financial sanctions, the follow out from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all the economic sanctions. We're going to talk about governments trying to make crypto exchanges. comply to this. Shiver up my back. A little bit of a shiver. But all of this is also a decentralization stress test. There's reports of Metamask blocking users from Venezuela this morning. Not quite true.

Starting point is 00:02:11 But we'll talk about what is true as a result of this open sea as well. And then some good news, because we've got to throw in the good news. eBay talking about accepting crypto. That's a big deal. crypto raising more in donations to Ukraine than the UN, the United Nations. Wow. That's pretty impressive. Also, this Pixelmon phenomenon, David, you got to catch me up on this. There's like this NFT meme character named Kevin. Yeah, we have a new meme.

Starting point is 00:02:39 We have a new meme out of a complete, just flop of an NFT project. And now we have a meme called Kevin about it. We'll have to talk about that. It gets weird. All right, before we do, got to talk about our friends at Apolis, they're doing something really cool for the crypto space. So you know how we say on bankless, get a job in crypto? Well, sometimes that's hard.

Starting point is 00:02:59 If you're working for a Dow, do they have health? Do they have benefits? Can they process payroll? Opelis can do all of those things for you. They are set up to work with the Web3 employer, the self-sovereign contractor. And they provide health benefits. They provide payroll. David, what did I miss?

Starting point is 00:03:17 What else these guys do? That's largely it. It's basically a collective, a Dow collective, helping workers work a self-sovereign life. And so this is like sharing and getting better and better health care rates, the larger the collective grows. And if you sign up and get your payroll served to you by Opolis before May 1st, you get a thousand bank tokens and a thousand work tokens, which is the Opelis token. So, you know, a nice and a little carrot to get you to sign up for Opelis. Nice incentives to come work in crypto. Pretty cool.

Starting point is 00:03:47 All right, David. Let's get to the markets, man. Bitcoin. What are you doing Bitcoin this week? Yeah. So listeners will remember the last time we were talking about markets, it was right during the depth of... We were red. It was red just because Russia had just invaded Ukraine. And so there's fierce, spooks the market. So that is where we started last week at the low price of $36,000 Bitcoin's. We have since climbed up to $42,200. We hit a high of $45,000 and now we're back down to $42,200. So up 14-ish percent. on the week for Bitcoin. It's kind of recovered, all right? So look at this dip. This is kind of the, you know, Putin invades Ukraine news, massive dip, you know, the next day.

Starting point is 00:04:31 And now we're back up, back up to where we started. Is that the case? Yeah. So, like, no one could really know exactly why or what the markets do. But, like, you know, the dip happened right at the Russian invasion. So people got spooked about, you know, the potential of World War III. But I think the market turned around on the fact that, like, global geopolitical, currency tensions is probably a good thing for crypto. So that's kind of think what's been happening

Starting point is 00:04:55 in the last seven days. As sad as that is, there's definitely some truth to it. And we're going to get to that in the news section. But how about Eith? Did Eith have that kind of a recovery? Yeah, definitely. Started the week at $2,450 right at the dip, the Ukraine dip, hit a high of $3,050, but could not sustain, it could not keep its head above water currently at $2,815. It's funny this week. And I think as a result of the bounce from the Ukraine dip, Bitcoin gained more than ether. And I think this will show up when we take a look at the ETH to Bitcoin ratio. You could probably see it a little bit there. It's a little down on the week. Is that the case? Yeah, it's down about 4% on the week. I think we're at 0.68 last week, and now we're at 0.066. So down roughly 4%. So Bitcoin received a bit more,

Starting point is 00:05:40 I guess, tailwinds from the Ukraine bounce. Do you think there's a reason for that? It's just Bitcoin, people are fleeing their banking systems in Bitcoin a bit more than Ether at this point in time? Yeah, one of my favorite quotes that I've heard is Bitcoin in times of war and Ethereum in times of peace. Bitcoin has global liquidity and global recognition. And so when Ukrainians and also Russians who are trying to escape the rubble or Ukrainians are trying to escape an invasion, they don't really go down the rabbit hole of like which crypto do I buy. They just buy Bitcoin. Like that's what they do. It's got the brand recognition. That's what they do.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Although I do feel like Ether is underrated as a, I guess we put it this way, a wartime coin because of defy. Right. Right. I mean, you can trade with it. You can lend with it. You can't do all of that with Bitcoin. I feel like it's underrated.

Starting point is 00:06:31 But it doesn't have the brand recognition right now that Bitcoin does. So maybe that accounts for all of this. Oh, gosh. While looking at that chart, the HeathBTC chart, Ryan, man, it is, you have that out since like December for the last three months. That is just down and to the right for three months in a row. Yeah. Yeah, it's going down.

Starting point is 00:06:49 I don't like that. But, I mean, historically, it's still looking pretty good on the, on, let's see, the five-year. It's looking pretty good. Don't want it to go down anymore, though. There's a floor coming. We'll see. It's still early in 2022, and this year is totally surprised, I think all of us. How about the bed index?

Starting point is 00:07:08 That's a little bit more stable because you get Bitcoin, ETH, and DFI, a third, a third, a third, all together. What does that look like on the week? Yeah, it's roughly flat on the week. Started at $99, currently at $101, so up about 2%. Removes some of that volatility. It's nice. David, you know what? Coinbase had a record revenue week, a quarter, excuse me, that they reported last week. The numbers even surprised analysts. Take a look at this. 2.5 billion in revenue last quarter. Wow. Wow. Q4. Monthly active users swelled to 11.4 million. Analysts thought they were only going to hit 2 billion. They come in at 2.5 billion. Quite a surprise. Coinbase really, really chugging in the

Starting point is 00:07:52 fourth quarter of last year. And these stats do not include the sign-ups that they got from the Super Bowl. So those stats are coming next quarter. So it's going to be interesting to see how they can follow through on this. And also what also kind of happens from just crypto tailwinds from this whole like sanction conversation. Like crypto, for better or for worse, is in the news. And so that's generally good for signups. I would also say, like, they haven't even released their NFT platform, which they're planning to do at some point, too. And they've got, I have five, six, seven million early signups to that already, too. So a lot of good things ahead for them. Also, a lot of good things ahead for the Ethereum network, because we just hit a major milestone 10 million ETH locked in the beacon chain.

Starting point is 00:08:35 That's ETH staked. is crazy to me. It's a huge number. We're, we're just over a year later, a year from launch, aren't we? And we already have 10 million ETH locked up in this thing. It's just under 10%. What are your thoughts here? Yeah, it counted at 10% at the rate that it's currently climbing with more and more ether locked. Yeah, 10.1 million. I think 10% will be 11.8 million is, and that's just crazy. Like 10% of the network, in proof of stake, that is what you call a secure network. Like 10% of the total supply of ether is protecting the network. That's a lot. Especially when it's worth how many billions. Right. Yeah, exactly. Which is 10% worth.

Starting point is 00:09:16 Yeah. And that's only at the pre-M-EV level of ETH APR. So when the merge finally happens, all of the gas fees end up going to the stakers. And it's going to juice that APR up to something like, I think modestly 12 to 16%. Justin Drake, when we had his show with us modeling ether ultrasound money predicted something as high as 22% depending but that was when gas fees were like 300 way so things change but like the point is is when the merge happens the the incentive to stake is going to go from where it is at now at 5% 4.9% APR to something like 12 to 15%. So like we're not even getting started yet with the reservation demand of ether to stake to the proof of stake network. Do you know what that's so important I think it it it warrants repeating. All right what David just said

Starting point is 00:10:03 there is the current APR when you stake your ETH is 4.9%. It's already got 10 in ETH terms. And you can't, by the way, you can't withdraw it right now. So it's a one-way ticket, all right? And people are doing this. 10 million ETH worth of individuals and stakers are doing this at a 4.9% rate. Post-merge, maybe the summer, pretty soon, months away. This is going to shoot up to like 12 to 10%.

Starting point is 00:10:33 15% in eith terms in eith terms and i do think that's conservative so what's going to happen it's going to you're going to big slurping effect because it's going to slurp out all of the eath that was like oh i don't know if i want a one-way ticket to to stake my eath i don't know if 4.9% uh apr is worth it but like is 10% worth it is 12% worth it like post merge where there's a lot less risk oh yeah and so that's going to just suck in a whole bunch of eithr. eth supply. And when there is limited supply, but demand stays constant, what happens, David? Price goes up, Ryan. That's what happens. You said it not me. Demand number goes up. Like, there's not much, like, floating supply of ether on the secondary markets.

Starting point is 00:11:22 So, like, imagine all this, the yield farmers out there, the stable coin yield farmers that are scraping tooth and nail to dry and break through 20% API on their dollars, all of a sudden, going to be able to get like 15% on their ETH in a risk-free rugpole-free way. Where are all those dollar farmer yield farmers? Like the game changes when you can get ETH risk-free, ETH 15% APY. All those yield farmers are going to take their dollars and they're going to buy ETH and they're just going to yield farm the Ethereum network at a risk-free rate of 15% on your ether.

Starting point is 00:11:58 Like this title- Don't say your friends at Bankless didn't tell you because we've been telling you. Definitely And you know The other thing about that is I just think A lot of people aren't aware

Starting point is 00:12:11 They see that Well okay David Ryan People should know about this How come ETH prices down This year? You know so much I'm like that is macro related All right

Starting point is 00:12:22 That has nothing to do with the fundamentals Of Ethereum at this point in time The fundamentals are only getting stronger Okay we are getting closer and closer to that execution date where the proof of work is going to go away, and the proof of stake network is going to be dominant, and the merge is going to happen. So the risk is being boiled out of this asset class. The fundamentals are strong.

Starting point is 00:12:45 Just because price is going down has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the theorem, is more to do with the macro landscape than buying opportunity? I don't know. Plus, like, the whole entire crypto industry just prices ether alongside all the other things in the crypto industry, Bitcoin. Solana, Avalanche, Cardano, all these things are relatively priced to each other when none of these networks have this coming for them. And this is the main difference between a smart contract, proof-of-stake network with actual blocks-based demand and literally everything else in this industry.

Starting point is 00:13:17 Like, it is not priced in. What more can we say? Well, speaking of opportunities, talk about the job opportunity in crypto. Because our friend here, logicbeach.each, tweet this out, okay, David and Ryan, I did it. I got a job in crypto. Please stop yelling at me now. Okay, Logic Beach. We will stop yelling at you. This is not for you, Logic Beach, anymore. You can feel free to tune this part out.

Starting point is 00:13:39 But let's yell to everyone else. Everyone else. What do we want them to do, David? We want them to get a job in crypto is what we want them to do, which is why we have the bankless jobs board where we post all the best jobs in crypto. Should I start reading these off so Ryan can start dancing? No, no, no, no. I'm reading them on.

Starting point is 00:13:55 Stop, stop, you dance. Senior Product Manager at Super Rare. This is a feature job. That's a cool one. Super Rare, NFT platform. Senior product engineer at Moment Ranks, community manager, a contractor at DYDX Foundation, a governance, growthly,

Starting point is 00:14:09 DYDX Foundation, business operations and finance associate, DYDX, Marketing Associate, DYDX. We got a head of marketing at status. I am, operations manager at MakerDAO, lead financial analysts, strategic finance, I could go on. But we don't have time in the show to read all of these fantastic jobs.

Starting point is 00:14:26 Do yourself a favor. Get a job in crypto. So stay tuned into the bankless job boards at bankless.palat.com slash jobs. We can find all that. We're not going to stop yelling at you until you get a job, all right? This is not for Logic Beach because he did the work. Nice job. But for everyone else.

Starting point is 00:14:43 We'll be back next week. I wonder if they're going to put that in the documentary. I hope they do. All right, guys, we're going to be back with the news of the week. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Slingshot is a decentralized trading platform that combines the performance and ease. of a centralized exchange with the openness and transparency of Defi. SlingShaw aggregates liquidity from all of Defi in order to find the best price on thousands of crypto assets.

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Starting point is 00:17:06 sign up at Gemini with jemini.com slash go bankless and get $15 of Bitcoin after you trade $100 or more within the first 30 days. That's jemini.com slash go bankless. Hey guys, we are back with the news of the week. We've got to talk about weaponized banks. But before, just setting the context, this is crypto. I feel like this week, crypto just entered the world stage of geopolitics. Okay, it had the world stage from a brand recognition perspective.

Starting point is 00:17:35 I think the awareness of crypto really popped off in 2021. But now we're entering a different arena. We're entering the world stage. And I think this tweet from Eric Wall sums it up. Why don't you read it out, David? Yeah, Eric says, this is the moment crypto leaves the basement and clashes with the real world. This is it right here today. We'll put this link in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:17:56 but he just goes and puts all of the threads, the tweets from just major leaders of the world and just aggregates them. So Elizabeth Warren tweeting about how cryptocurrencies risk undermining the sanctions against Russia. Bloomberg talking about how the Biden administration is calling on some of the biggest digital currency exchanges to help ensure that Russian individuals and entities targeted by U.S. sanctions aren't using crypto markets to get around them. a tweet from somebody from Ukraine receiving how or somebody from Russia about how the accounts of users were frozen in the Russian Federation and Belarus. We have an individual, a Ukrainian individual, a tweet that we covered this Monday in the newsletter about how he says that he is physically safe in Kazakhstan, but his savings are gone and says that crypto is the only money that I still have.

Starting point is 00:18:45 Today, I can safely say that without crypto, Bitcoin, Ether, and NFTs, it's going to save my life when he gets back home. So crypto is an influence in the global current events. And we've seen it dabble in this before, but this is the moment where everyone is looking at how crypto would be involved if this happened closer to home, closer to crypto. Russia didn't have crypto assets, and it's not using crypto assets to escape sanctions. but people are treating crypto as if they are. And that is the conversation that's being had right now. Yeah, and so we're about to break that down. I think the conversation really starts with number one,

Starting point is 00:19:25 this weaponization of banks. And this is nothing new. Banks have been weaponized in the past, but I think this is the first time we've seen it weaponized on a geopolitical scale in the way that it has been recently with Russia. And of course, last week we talked about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so we won't talk much more about that right now. I think we should pick up the story with the sanctioning of Russia because the EU, the U.S., many, many countries around the world

Starting point is 00:19:56 are fairly unified in the sanctioning, the economic sanctioning of Russia for its actions in Ukraine right now. And the first thing that they did was they swifted Russia. Swifted. Okay. What does this term swifted mean? Yeah, the Swift's network is a payments network, a communications network between banks that allows the passaging of messages that ultimately relates, ultimately concludes in the settling of money across banks. I think it's more or less like the last line of defense of bank-connected networks. And so it's a global monetary payments network system. And if you're not connected to Swift, you're basically not connected to anything.

Starting point is 00:20:38 It's like Ethereum for Tradfai, the existing banking system. That's what they used to settle. It connects all of them. And so what did they do here? I love this quote. In an unprecedented act of global sanctions coordination, the United States, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and the European Commission, which is basically the executive branch of the EU,

Starting point is 00:20:59 have all agreed to expel Russian banks from the Swift Payment Networks, except for a few Russian banks that receive money to pay for energy supplies towards Europe. Because Europe still needs Russian energy because they're kind of cold without it. Great. So most Russian banks have gotten swifted, which means that the money inside of Russia is locked inside of Russia. Can't get out. And the value of your money goes down when you can do less with it. And so money that's stuck in Russia can't do stuff in the global stage so that money has become devalued, which is a conversation we're about to get to.

Starting point is 00:21:31 So they no longer have a transmission network to pay for things, to send funds, everything like that. The second action, I think, is almost maybe bigger than the first. A one-two punch where the second punch hits way harder. Yeah. So the second punch was this asset, the freezer. So the central bank of Russia apparently had assets in U.S. and European banks. Over $600 billion worth of assets. Their money.

Starting point is 00:21:59 These are foreign currency reserves. So a central bank has all sorts of different reserves. They keep gold on their balance sheet. Russia is no exception. But they also keep, you know, like the majority of their money is in foreign reserve. So they might have, you know, U.S. treasuries, they might have dollars, they might have euros, they might have yen. Well, all of a huge chunk of these funds are actually in the U.S. banking system. Or within reach of it. Within reach of it. And the U.S. and the EU just

Starting point is 00:22:32 shut it down. They didn't take it. They just froze it at this point of time. $640 billion of the Russia's central bank frozen. That's huge. Yeah, and they did this with a statement saying that any individual or business or entity is no longer allowed to engage with the central bank of Russia, once again, isolating the Russian financial system, the Russian money system, to basically only work inside of Russia and also Belarus. You got to think, like, they probably Putin expected to be swifted, but I'm not sure that he expected this.

Starting point is 00:23:08 You don't think, oh, swifted probably. But it's definitely not. I don't think. Russia has engaged in what Putin has been calling becoming sanction proof. And that means like having these foreign reserves. This was a part of Putin's plan to become sanction proof, except it wasn't. You forgot. They could just press some buttons on a keyboard and just be like, oh, sorry, you can no longer access this money.

Starting point is 00:23:33 Yeah. The details of how this works are kind of beyond me. But as it turns out, there was a huge Achilles heel in Putin's plan to become sanctioned proof, and now $640 billion, which in context is one-third of the total crypto market cap. So one-third of the entire crypto market cap is worth of value as being frozen away where Russia can't get it. And in addition to that, other Russian oligarchs are having their like mega yachts, which is basically a way to preserve wealth, being frozen sees.

Starting point is 00:24:04 It's their NFTs. It being seized in whatever port they reside in. So I heard a couple stories of Germany freezing Russian, or not freezing, seizing Russian oligachs mega yachts because it's basically like a sore value for them. Right. So those two things happen, the one two combo punch. And what were the results of this? First we got to talk about Russia's currency.

Starting point is 00:24:27 What happened there, David? Yeah, kind of like I was alluding to earlier, when the Russian ruble, the currency of Russia that's getting locked inside of the Russian border, it can now no longer be used to buy stuff in the rest of the world. world. Therefore, its utility value as money goes down. It's literally worth less. It can do less things. And so we saw at its peak a devaluation of 40% in the Russian rubble inside of one day. So in real terms of, all the Russian citizens that had savings in the Russian rubble lost 40% of their savings and wealth in one day just because of all the sanctions. And there's a lot of frustration

Starting point is 00:25:07 out there because the sanctions are targeting Russian individuals, Russian citizens, when we're trying to sanction Putin. And so people are saying, like, why are we harming Russian individuals? Well, unanswer for that, regardless of whether you think it's a good answer or a bad answer, is that causing social unrest in Russia is bad for Putin. Causing the people of Russia to be mad at their leadership is a sanction on Putin. So ultimately, it impacts Putin's choices at the end of the day because his leadership ultimately comes down to do the oligarch support him, do the people of Russia support him. And if everyone is not supporting Putin, then we can influence that choice by devaluing the Russian ruble, then this is what sanctions do. And yet at the same time,

Starting point is 00:25:51 there is a lot of pain on Russian citizens who aren't responsible for some of these actions as well. And, you know, we see actually that in the market as well with the Bitcoin ruple daily volume going up. You're going to have to scroll over to see that last bar. Okay, let's see the last bar. Oh, for effect. Wow. So what's happening, it seems like, is the Russian people are trying to escape the rubble. They're trying to escape the collapse of their currency.

Starting point is 00:26:21 And it's not, the currency is not just going down, I think, because of Swift sanctions. That's definitely part of it. Also, it no longer has much backing from the Russian Central Bank, you know, $640 billion in assets, just kind of frozen in time. And so that is resulting in the ruble going down. But people are buying Bitcoin. They're fleeing their currency and they're buying Bitcoin as a result. And you can see this in the charts.

Starting point is 00:26:45 Yeah, that was the volume chart of the volume between the Russian rubble and the Bitcoin. A huge spike in volume, right as people started to flee the ruble. Another reason why the rubles going down in volatile. values, because everyone's selling it. Everyone's selling the ruble and they're buying Bitcoin at an insane premium. We saw Bitcoin being priced up to $20,000 higher than it is in the rest of the world because that's how badly people who own the Russian ruble are selling their rubble to pay for super expensive bitcoins because they want to get out. They need the Bitcoin escape hatch. And so they're paying an insane premium because they are fleeing the ruble.

Starting point is 00:27:23 it's not only Russians either it's also Ukrainians that are fleeing their local currencies to buy crypto currency as well so this headline is ukrainians buy record sums of bitcoin on finance after the Russian invasion so what's happening on the Ukrainian side david it seems like the same thing yeah well so that's because this isn't sides right this is the Russian nation state this is Putin invading the other another nation state Ukraine. And then we have the individuals of both Russia and Ukraine exhibiting the same behaviors, kind of showing the differences between large institutions and small individuals. Small individuals are being scared about the value of their fiat currencies, and so they are buying Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:28:09 Regardless of whether it's a Ukrainian citizen or a Russian citizen, people are being scared out of their fiat currencies and they're using Bitcoin as a way to escape the choices that nation states are making. I do want to get back to this tweet that we were alluding to from a Ukrainian who says this, my Ukrainian credit cards don't work anymore. So picture yourself. You're a citizen of Ukraine. Things are falling apart, obviously. You've left your home. You've left your home. You're looking for somewhere safe potentially. That's the position this individual finds himself in. He says, my Ukrainian credit cards don't work anymore. I'm safe physically in Kazakhstan must have gotten over the border. But all my savings are gone. Anything you kept in your bank account, gone.

Starting point is 00:28:53 Crypto is the only money I still have. And today I can say without exaggeration that Bitcoin, Ether, and NFTs are going to save my life while I can't come back home. Individual fleeing his country with his crypto assets. Can't take anything else with him except his crypto assets. This is why crypto is a technology and is a money system for the people, regardless of what nation states do. whether you're a Russian citizen or Ukrainian citizen, you're trying to get out of this mess. You need this escape hatch, this pressure release valve.

Starting point is 00:29:30 And that's what the Ukrainian people and the Russian people are using crypto for right now. Especially during times of war, the form factor of how you hold crypto assets becomes incredibly important. Being able to hold a ledger inside of your fist and being able to move around the world like that and having all of your savings go with you is great.

Starting point is 00:29:49 You can also memorize the 12 words of your seed phrase in your brain so you don't even have to hold anything. And it doesn't matter where you are in the world. Your savings are in your head. This is technology that always enables the individual most, more than it does institutions. It's amazing. You have an internet connection. You have your assets. That's all there is to it.

Starting point is 00:30:07 And you can move them anywhere in the world. Let's talk about maybe the second story. The other half of the story. Yeah. All right. So the first part is nation states. sanctioning other nation states, in particular Russia, this point in time. Now, the U.S. Treasury, and I think Western nation states, are trying to bring these sanctions to crypto. They want

Starting point is 00:30:32 the same banking rules to apply to crypto. So if they can sanction American banks from interacting with Russian citizens or the economy of the Russia's Federation, then they also want it to apply to crypto exchanges as well. So here, the U.S. Treasury is formally asking crypto rules, formally adding crypto rules to Russian sanctions guidance. And they are asking crypto exchanges to block sanctioned individuals regardless of where they're headquartered. A lot of this practically looks like a block of anyone who has a Russian passport, a passport from Russia. So they're asking the Krakens of the world, the Geminize of the world, finance, Coinbase.

Starting point is 00:31:18 We have KYC to all their customers. Yes. If you have someone from Russia on your platform, de-activated. Get them out of here. Like, censor them, stop them. So that has been an ask. I don't think it's enforceable yet,

Starting point is 00:31:33 but you have to wonder at what point this will become executive order and enforceable. So what's happening now, David? You know, what are the exchanges, how are they reacting from this ask of the U.S. government? Yeah, generally the theme is that exchanges have declined to do this.

Starting point is 00:31:51 Both Binance and Coinbase have publicly stated that they will not block Russian users or Russian IP addresses, despite the requests of the Ukrainian government and also the United States sanctions. So this is one of the reasons why crypto is in the main stage is that crypto exchanges are not, they aren't required to comply. They have been asked to comply because they are not regulated under the same format as like the, the United States bank banking system because they're not banks. And so it's only a request to comply. And Binance and Coinbase have said that we are not doing that.

Starting point is 00:32:26 Coinbase hasn't said that they will not do that forever. There's a row that Coinbase has given out for itself that it could comply in the future, but as of right now, they are not. And, you know, and talk about, one of the, but Binance tweeted, we will not be freezing Russian users bank accounts because it goes against the ethos of cryptocurrency. Yeah, here's the Blockworks tweet saying this. And I take this point, but also the founding principles of crypto are for the crypto networks, of which Binance is not. Neither is Coinbase. Coinbase is a centralized entity. Binance is a centralized entity.

Starting point is 00:33:02 You have to expect these things to receive the regulatory pressures of the United States. And what has the foundational principles of crypto is crypto. And so, like the self-sovereign, censorship-resistant, seizing-resistant crypto assets can be expressed by individuals by removing their money from Coinbase and Binance and offering and taking self-custody. Because that is where you get all the beneficial properties of crypto. I don't necessarily think it's the job of these centralized exchanges to exhibit and express the values and properties of the crypto networks themselves, especially when people like Brian Armstrong and people at Coinbase can go to jail for not complying with regulations. And so we're not, maybe we're not there yet, but we have to remember that if you're a centralized

Starting point is 00:33:48 entity, you are going to become regulated. And so I don't think the banner of just like we get to hide behind the values of crypto works if you have an address with your office, your office addresses on it. Yeah, I think it's very laudable that the exchanges are resisting this. Number one, that's great. I mean, they are embracing crypto values, but you have to ask yourself, how long will they practically be able to resist this? And the answer to that is not long. I mean, the SEC sent a Coinbase's stern letter and said, don't release your lend product, and they didn't release their lend product, right? When like the full authority of the U.S. government starts to ask you to do something, sanction a particular set of individuals, for instance, you can bet all of these exchanges

Starting point is 00:34:34 will have to do it. They'll have to. And that puts us in a bad place. But I guess my tweet, Like, my take on this is similar to yours. I tweet this out, David. I'm grateful some crypto exchanges are trying to resist the shutdown of all Russian citizen accounts. That's noble. But that's not the point of crypto. If we're building a banking system that can be shut down, it will be shut down. We need defy, not crypto banks, bankless.

Starting point is 00:35:00 That's what we need. This is the reason for defy. This is the reason that Bitcoin and crypto banks aren't enough. This is the reason we need decentralized. banking services so that we're not put in this place. Jake Trevinsky... All of a sudden, the things that we've just been saying over and over and over again for the last like two years make a lot of sense right now.

Starting point is 00:35:21 That's what I'm saying. What does Jake Chavinsky say about this? I haven't read this tweet yet. This is a really important point. This is Jake Chavinsky, esteemed lawyer in the crypto space. Russia isn't using crypto to evade sanctions. It has shown no interest in trying to use crypto to evade sanctions. and crypto couldn't use crypto to evade sanctions even if it wanted.

Starting point is 00:35:43 We'll talk about that point later. Russia is using gold to evade sanctions, however. Russia has been stockpiling gold for like a decade now. And then Jake finished saying, but policymakers want to talk about new regulations for crypto. And so this is a really interesting point. This crypto is in the conversation, but not actually in the actions of the world at the present moment,

Starting point is 00:36:06 other than the individuals protecting themselves from, the devaluation of nation-state currencies. That's the only time we have seen crypto being used that's relevant to Ukraine. There's no actual actions that we see anyone taking to evade sanctions using cryptocurrency. There's zero evidence for this. Yet, it's forefront in the conversation. You're saying there's no evidence that Putin is using AVE to like, you know, take out a loan for himself and try to. I'm going to come back to this point a number of times, but there's a reason why I talked about how the $560 billion of crypto or $630 billion of crypto of assets that were frozen by the banking system by freezing the

Starting point is 00:36:46 central bank of Russia. I said that that is one-third of the crypto market cap. Putin cannot use tornado cash to evade sanctions with $630 billion. You cannot hide or route around sanctions using one-third of the crypto market cap. It won't work. I think chain analysis is going to figure that one out pretty quick, right? Well, you know, we're going to get back on this thread of, you know, how crypto and geopolitics and sanctions are affecting the world. But maybe a quick detour here and some good news, because it's nice to have good news. The good news is the crypto community really rallied around the people

Starting point is 00:37:26 of Ukraine who are obviously going through a devastating time right now. Can you talk about a few of the things that the crypto community is doing right now? We said in the intro that the crypto has now raised more funds than the UN, which is pretty cool. Let's talk about a few of these mechanisms. So what's this first one? Ukraine Dow. Yeah, Ukraine Dow spun up by Nadia from Pussy Riot, who has received her own oppression from Putin by making anti-authoritarian, anti-Pooten statements with her banned Pussy Riot

Starting point is 00:37:55 has started the Ukraine-Dow. And Ukraine-Dow, I think, has raised something like, oh, gosh, like the last I checked it was $5 million? It might be way more than that, actually. but literally just a single JPEG of the Ukrainian flag is a square JPEG, blue on top, yellow on the bottom. That JPEG has a party bid, a collective party bid for I think $5 million last I checked.

Starting point is 00:38:18 It might be way hard. Can you click that party bid link, Ryan, just to get my numbers right? Which one? Down a little bit, just below the joint discord. There you go. And so party bid is basically a way to collectively bid on a single NFT with all of your friends.

Starting point is 00:38:30 And, okay, that just sent you to the Discord. Anyway, the last I checked, it was like $5 million. And so this is on the air of like on the tailwinds of Constitution Dow, where we figured out that Dow's can just be collecting funneling money into a specific purpose. And so this Ukraine Dow spun up really, really fast and collected a bunch of money. By the way, if you want to hear more about this on overpriced JPEGs this week, Carly had Nadia from Ukraine Dow and from Pussy Riot on the show. So that's on the bankless YouTube.

Starting point is 00:39:00 You can click on that and check that out now. another thing that happened is the actual Ukrainian government put out some links, links to their Bitcoin and Ethereum wallet for fundraising. And they received nearly $10 million in crypto donations at this point in time. That number might be outdated a little bit too. But the crypto community has really rallied around this. This is Hayden from Uniswap tweeting out. There is a new interface, donate.uniswap.

Starting point is 00:39:32 where you can actually take any ERC token that you have and deposit it and convert it directly into the funds that the Ukrainian government wants to receive. So it's a one-click donation in an interface, which is pretty cool to see. And this is a- Ukraine Dow did raise $6 million from a party bid. That's confirmed. There you go. That's awesome.

Starting point is 00:39:55 And this is a tweet from Kyla about the UN thing, David. What's this? Yeah, this is where we got this headline. And again, this was March 1st, so three days ago. And Kyla says, pretty incredible that as of right now, the UN and crypto has pledged the same amount of money towards Ukraine. And that was three days ago where we were matched with $20 million from the UN and $20 million from crypto. And now crypto is up to $50 million. So two and a half times what the United Nations has donated to the Ukraine, crypto has raised in four days.

Starting point is 00:40:29 Insane. It's pretty awesome. insane. I'm proud of that. I'm very excited about that. Let's think about the name United Nations. What about just United People of Planet Earth? Because that's what's going on behind Ukraine Dow. That's what's putting money into Ukraine. Is the United people of planet Earth? Absolutely. Yeah, we don't necessarily need an institution to donate through. Let's talk about this, too. So this is the Ukraine tweet. These are the actual wallets, Bitcoin and Ether. It's super cool. So the Ukrainian government has an Ethereum address.

Starting point is 00:41:00 You can look up on ether scan and you can see what they're holding, the donations that have come in. This looks like $2.2 million in tether, a million dollars in dye, 180K worth of USDC. But most importantly, 1,500 ether clocking in at $4.2 million. So $4.2 million of ether and basically $3 million of stable coins sent directly to the Ukraine Dow. No, not Ukraine down. Just straight up the Ukrainian government. Yeah, this is their wallet.

Starting point is 00:41:33 Yeah. And it's just amazing you can look up a government's public wallet on ETHScan. Look at this. Shiba NFTs, the McDonald's NFTs. They have no idea what to do with those. God knows what else is in here. Yeah. Well, there was also, so there's also talk.

Starting point is 00:41:47 The story continues of an air drop. Before we go there, just also $10 million is in Bitcoin is in the Bitcoin address as well. That's fantastic. So lots of Bitcoin. That's fantastic. So what was with this air drop, though? So I think the Ukrainian government as well tweeted out. AirDrop confirmed snapshot will be taken tomorrow, basically implying if you've donated to the Ukrainian wallets so far, they were going to air drop something, something good, you'd presume.

Starting point is 00:42:16 That came out on March 1st, so just a day ago as of recording. And then take us from there. It sounds like people are expecting an air drop. You say the word air drop and the crypto community comes flocking. And so you can literally see when theirdrop gets announced, and the ETH donations per hour just rockets off the chart. And so, like, you know, there were some takes about how, like, before theirdrop announcement, like, all these people were just donating via altruism,

Starting point is 00:42:43 and then post theirdrop announcement, people were donating because of greed. Like, they wanted the air drop. But I think that's kind of a Nileless take. My take on that is people were donating for altruism before the promise of the irdrop, and then after the promise of the air drop, The airdrop was just like the nudge, the carrot, to get a lot of people who do care about Ukraine. That's why they're sending them money. They just need a little bit of a carrot.

Starting point is 00:43:05 You just need a little bit of carrot to get over the edge. And that's the power of Ethereum and incentives. Like we can create governance tools. We can create incentives. We can mechanism design our way into the outcomes that we want. And if all that you need is like the promise of anirdrop to donate millions of dollars to Ukraine, air drops are great. Except it turned out.

Starting point is 00:43:25 Except it had to be alter. after all, because then the Ukrainian government tweeted out, after careful consideration, we decided to cancel the airdrop. Every day, there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back against the aggression. Instead, they're going to do an NFT to support the Ukrainian armed forces soon. Maybe they didn't fully think through the airdrop before they tweeted in the excitement. During times of war, I don't think they have an airdrop roadmap. Right. So they thought about it, and there's going to be no air drop.

Starting point is 00:43:55 So everyone turned into altruists after all, David. So that's optimistic, right? The joke I heard is that the SEC came down on Ukraine and said, hey, you guys came into an airtrop. Gary Gensler, wow. Well, you had a take about this, too. Why don't you tell us what your take is here? Yeah, so this is me retreating Eric Connors $40 million donated to Ukraine on Ethereum thus far. And so, like, when we usually donate money to crises like this, it's usually done via things like

Starting point is 00:44:22 Red Cross or through, like, humanitarian routes. And humanitarian donated money is earmarked to only be for certain things, like food, medical supplies, shelter, clothing. This has no such contingencies. We are donating $50 million straight into the hands of the Ukrainian government. They can go buy bombs. That's probably what they're buying with it. So, like, the individuals of the world are now responsible for, like, weapons financing at the nation-state level. Like, the Ukrainian government can do whatever they want with this money.

Starting point is 00:44:55 That's scary. Don't you think that's scary? Super scary. Super scary. Yeah, right. We talk about how private keys and crypto puts power in the hands of individuals. One of these powers is having to consider the ethics of global weapons financing at the nation state level. We saw the error that the United States made when we finance and just weaponized, who was it? Saddam Hussein. Many world governments over the years, I would say. It's not a one time thing. And then it comes back to. to bite us in the ass later. And now we're putting money in the hands of Ukraine so they can go buy weapons so they can defend themselves. Like, this is now something that individuals have to consider when they send money. Careful with your new power. Careful with your new power, crypto people, for sure.

Starting point is 00:45:42 So what's happening with OpenC? Yeah, well, OpenC's never pretended to be D5, but they call it and call themselves Web 2.5, which I agree with. Somebody on Twitter says, I woke up to my OpenC trading account being deactivated slash deleted without notice or explanation. Hearing lots of similar reports from other Iranian artists and collectors. What the hell is going on?

Starting point is 00:46:02 Is OpenC straight up purging its users based on their country now? So this is still unfolding. This again happened this morning. Interesting timing that this is happening right next to Metamask and censoring Venezuela while we're having this global conversation

Starting point is 00:46:17 about crypto and sanctions. Like weird timing. I think this, we kind of need to wait for the dust to settle on this one because this is, I don't know how much more other Iranian artists and open-sea users have reported this, but here's another one. I do feel like there are some lawmakers and those in power and governments who are out for blood and sort of using sanctions in Russia and these sorts of things as an excuse to tighten things up

Starting point is 00:46:43 on the crypto side of things. Here's kind of a question I would pose to everyone. If you're looking at this stuff and you're saying, like, oh, wow, there's still, you know, centralization vectors in crypto. I just got to say, like, if crypto doesn't work, where else do we go? Like, what other option do we have? I think you're muted, David. I just didn't.

Starting point is 00:47:06 I don't have an answer for me, right? You were speechless. Speachless, yeah, I got nothing. He wasn't muted. He was speechless. Do I have, I just hold my crypto, my crypto, my dollars in my Wells Fargo, and I just wait for the government to just bully me around. Right?

Starting point is 00:47:19 I mean, you can, you can critique it and say it's not decentralized enough, or you can, like, jump in and help us make this entire space more decentralized. Here's another example. God, this was the worst. The largest crypto exchange in Korea is now stopping the withdrawals to non-custodio wallets and global exchanges after March 25th. All Korean exchanges only allow transacting between Korean exchanges, not metamask, not another exchange like finance.

Starting point is 00:47:49 It's just a closed system again. If you own ether or Bitcoin on a Korean exchange and you can't withdraw it to a self-custodial wallet, a wallet that you own, what's the point? You don't actually have it. It's just this paper thing, this fake thing that you're trading that allegedly, like, they could just like send all of the ether outbound and you could still trade on the centralized exchange without anything actually being there. It wouldn't actually matter.

Starting point is 00:48:16 Like if you can't withdraw it, it's not crypto. This is apparently from resulting from some government regulations. the tweet here is the Korean government says, I'm going to prohibit withdrawals from Korean exchanges to non-KYC'd wallets like Metamask by March 2022. And that's what they're doing. This is what's happening right now. I need to follow the story.

Starting point is 00:48:39 It's impossible to follow everything that's going on in every single country around the world. But it seems like things are getting stress tested to infinity. Go bankless while you still can. Get your money off of extension. If you know how to safely, and securely store your money in a self-sovereign way and with you know manage your private fees appropriately you have a hardware wallet you should probably do it it's time it's the right

Starting point is 00:49:03 decade to do it and if you don't know you should also be figuring that out like right now yeah it's the right decade to have that skill set yeah um all right let's move on all right this is the decentralization stress test some happy stuff uh eBay talking about taking crypto payments they already accept NFTs they want to get in with gen z's and millennials, and to do that, they want to take the leap to start accepting cryptocurrency. So I guess this is an announcement that they're going to be doing this in the future. They haven't started yet. That's pretty big.

Starting point is 00:49:36 This is one of the, like, the OG Web 1.0 marketplaces, and them accepting cryptocurrency would be a big deal, I think. Yeah, an announcement of an announcement, but, you know, we like it. I wonder what the stock price did. Ooh, down 2%. Unrelated. Couldn't have been else. Couldn't have been related at all.

Starting point is 00:49:54 What's this, David? Lido. What are they doing? Some staking. Yeah, so Matic Network is a proof of stake network. Lido is a proof of stake delegated staking network. And now you can stake your Matic as if you were a validator inside of Lido and start earning Madic rewards.

Starting point is 00:50:13 And so Maddox staking via Lido, now a thing. There you go. There's also been some consensus drama this week, David. I haven't had time to dig into the drama. Have you touched it a little bit? Yes. I know enough to talk about this. Okay, what's happening?

Starting point is 00:50:26 Interesting, juicy story. So there are many shareholders of consensus, people that own equity in the company. And, you know, Consensus owns a lot of things, right? It owns Metamask. Infura. It owns Infura, right? And there is a report going out that under Swiss law, where I think consensus is made, that key assets and IP that consensus

Starting point is 00:50:53 owns was sent to a new version of consensus, like a different LLC, a different LLC, a different company. And so Metamaskin and Furor were secretly given away to a J.P. Morgan-backed entity via what's claimed to be an illegal transaction. And so basically, consensus sold or gave some of what they own to a new company that is also owned by Joseph Lubin. So Joseph Lubin just spun up another company. So read the report to get all the details on this.

Starting point is 00:51:22 spun up another company and gave Metamaskin and Fear to that company, and he owns the larger share of that new company, along with a few other people from J.P. Morgan, which has left the rest of Consensus and all the shareholders of Consensus that have been with Consensus since, like, 2015, feeling very rug-pulled. And so they took them to court, and I think from what I've gathered is they're probably going to win that case. Multibillion-dollar audit. And Consensus does not want to be audited because in the early days of consensus, they played in employees with Bitcoin, which they didn't account for. And so, like, you actually can't really audit consensus because it's not, there's nothing there for like the first, like, two years of its life. Anyways, consensus is a little bit of a mess. I'm sure it'll get figured out. We'll hope. There's got to be some resolution in sight. I don't think there's any resolution for this on the NFT side, though. Pixelmon. So this one is dead here. So here's the Pixelmon website, which is a very good looking website with this very awesome pixelated animation 3D character. Pixelmon kind of gives you an illusion to some sort of Pokemon-type pixel game.

Starting point is 00:52:28 Pretty fun, right? It's amazing. I want to buy. How do I buy it? How do I buy it? Well, a while ago, it's too late, Ryan, they raised $70 million to build out what is, I'm guessing, some sort of virtual pixel NFT crypto game, kind of like Pokemon Go, perhaps, I guess. And they raised $70 million on like this pre-sale to buy these pixel mons, these characters. And so the game got released.

Starting point is 00:52:52 And once again, people are feeling just a little bit rug pulled about what was promised. It was a $70 million game. It does not look like a $70 million game. In fact, it looks like a bunch of carbon copies and forks from other games. Oh my God. So here's this pixel mon art. The first one that got revealed is so terrible that is turned into a meme. Kevin is now considered a historical NFT because of how bad it is.

Starting point is 00:53:17 This has got to be the worst. NFT I've ever seen in my life. Worse than your turtle? Come on, David. Turtles are cute. There's nothing redeemable about this. I don't know what it is. Is it some kind of a lizard with a pink, like,

Starting point is 00:53:33 I don't know, side ponytail? It's a pixelmon, Ryan. Okay. For the listeners, it's really ugly. Okay, so people were expecting something. Not only were they expecting, like, a world with, like, landscapes and, like, you know, area. they get these like very, very shoddy, fake weird pixel characters that don't look good at all

Starting point is 00:53:54 inside of this like generic grassland with no indication that these things do anything. You know, the shame of it. And if you want the full story here, William Pister does a fantastic job on Metaversal. We'll include a link in the show notes. The shame of it, it was they were aggressively hyping this project, the makers of this project, Cyber. In December 2021, the founder said, Pixelmon is the next blue chip. This is financial advice. Don't do your own research.

Starting point is 00:54:21 Whoa. I mean, that's kind of a red flag for me, but when people, when people shill their thing is like, oh, it's going to be the next thing. And they put a lot of energy and effort into marketing and promoting. And perhaps they're not putting that same energy into actually developing. That should be a red flag. That's when you know. That's when you know.

Starting point is 00:54:42 And the question, I think, for the community is, you know, was this intentional? Like, was this an intentional rugpole? Or was this just really incompetent execution? I think people have come to the conclusion that is closer to an intentional rugpole because the Pixelmon characters, there is a Minecraft mod called Pixelmon and they are thinking that they have just taken 3D stock models ripping off of this actual Pixelmon Minecraft mod. and then, you know, found, allegedly hired somebody from Upwork for a very small price to just do some very basic work.

Starting point is 00:55:22 So I think what's what happened, if this guy has any brains, is he did the minimum amount of work to not be considered a scam, but it's still a scam, right? Like, he did the work. There is a game. There are pixel mons out there. You can trade them. It is a complete flop. The game did not meet expectations. Everyone feels scammed, yet, technically.

Starting point is 00:55:44 Technically, he delivered. You know what, though? Like, this is the part in time where it's like that one guy ruins it for everybody else. That's right. Because this is going to cause lawsuits, I would imagine, or it could. Rightly so. It will be a case study for Elizabeth Warren to be able to say, this is exactly everything that's wrong with crypto.

Starting point is 00:56:08 Yeah. $70 million. Investors got ripped off. And this is why we need the SEC. to gatekeep everything that you guys do. Giving Elizabeth Warren so much ammo. So much ammo. Shadowy super NFTers.

Starting point is 00:56:24 The guy is Anon, right? His name's Cyber. That can't be his real name. Instead of returning the funds to Minters, the Pixomom Dev Wallet spent hundreds of ETH on other NFTs like Board Apes, Azukis, and others. Cyber has a history of failed Kickstarter. Kickstarter's like, you can do scams on Kickstarter.

Starting point is 00:56:42 Sad. This sounds like a serial scammer. You know, the one thing we get out of it, though, David, is Kevin. We do get Kevin. We do get Kevin for it. Some people actually think this meme is like Kevin and this pixelmon is so bad that it's actually going to be valuable. Yeah. Over time, because it's become a cultural artifact.

Starting point is 00:57:01 What do you think? You think that's, it's on the trajectory. Congrats crypto industry. We have a new meme. Would you buy Kevin? Um, I don't. Probably not. Yeah, I'm definitely, I would definitely not buy.

Starting point is 00:57:14 Kevin, as that thing is shameful. But we're talking about it. Sorry, all Kevin's out there. So it's getting more airtime. That's what they want. All right. Let's talk about an exploit that happened on Arbitrum. Again, NFT news here. Let's flip over to this. Yeah. These are all the ugly pixel mon. Sorry, I can't stop. I'm going to look at this guy again. Okay, so here's Kevin in the Pixelmon universe. And then here's the actual Pixelmon like a Minecraft mod, which was like what was used more or less to market the whole Pixelmon thing. Like, yeah, like that looks like a $70 million game. Yeah, that's okay.

Starting point is 00:57:48 I'd buy that. I wouldn't buy these things. All right, what happened with Treasure on Arbitrum? There was an exploit. Yeah, Treasure the NFT ecosystem marketplace on Arbitrum has been exploited. The details of this are currently unfolding. The exploiter has been able to force NFT listers on Arbitrum to sell them their NFTs for $0, basically. And they've taken a number of different NFTs, I think over 100 now at this point.

Starting point is 00:58:15 So if you have NFTs listed on treasure, you might want to go check that out. Make sure you're okay. Sorry if you're not. I don't know how pervasive this is. People are still trying to figure out what's going on and how this exploit happened. But as of now, the treasurer marketplace is not necessarily considered to be safe. Okay. Take that into account. Also, I release this week a Scalera NFT index on Kuiper Finance. Khyper Finance was that new index protocol that we talked about a couple of weeks ago in the releases section. Now there is an NFT index where you can get exposure to blue chip NFTs that has just been deployed on it. So that means basically you buy a token and you get exposure to a basket of NFTs, at least priced exposure to that. Kind of cool to

Starting point is 00:59:02 see that. That's coming out of D5 pulse. Any other thoughts on that? Yeah, we've seen NFT. indexes before from NFTX and a few others also Bitwise has their blue chip NFT products which doesn't have too much demand for it as you can imagine boomers aren't really ready to buy Fidenza's

Starting point is 00:59:20 but this I believe in Scott as a builder and I think Hyperfanius has the potential to be something very cool so I'm optimistic yeah it's very cool I think we need more DFI NFT index products as well what about this do we need more digital streetware, digital clothing?

Starting point is 00:59:39 This is, I know, this is, this is real, this is real clothing, isn't it? Oh, this is real? This is Dom, the guy behind the, the loot phenomenon, if you guys remember, lute, there are, there's a cool new website, blitware.com that allows you to mint an NFT and also receive an actual jacket of the same, like, pattern, the geometric pattern of your NFT. So, real world, physical world, virtual, virtual world, meta virtual world, pairings behind your

Starting point is 01:00:08 NFT and your jacket. How much are these things? I don't know. You're going to get one? No, I mean, what would I do? What would I do? What would I do? No, I don't think you get to put your own NFT there. I think that each jacket has its own pattern and that's what the NFT is.

Starting point is 01:00:25 Oh, okay. Listeners should probably, if they are interested, they should probably go research more. Each blitware will be auctioned off as a one-of-one NFT of the design. I see. The winner of the piece will be able to redeem the NFT for a bespoke one-of-one matching physical garment custom-made to their size requirement. Okay, so those are the details. We even had them in our note. I forgot to read them.

Starting point is 01:00:42 You know what? I kind of want my NFT, though. I'm going to wait on this. Yeah. I want to, I like want my own NFT on my clothes. That's what I want. Sure. You'd have to buy an NFT first, Ryan. Dude, I have some NFTs, okay? All right? I'm not a nobody in NFT circles. What about World of Women? Yeah. KPMG, this is an interesting pairing. What's this? KPMG decided to purchase a World of Women NFT. So they tweeted out, we completed the purchase of digital art from the highly acclaimed

Starting point is 01:01:11 World of Women non-fundible token community. That's awesome. Yeah, a lovely world of women NFT. Very nice. That's very cool. I like the earrings. Now inside of KPMG's balance sheet. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:23 Weird. Weird. Like, stodgy accountants, that's where it's coming from. They're buying NFTs. They're the ones excited about this. This is KPSC Canada, by the way. They say, our first foray into this rapidly growing asset class.

Starting point is 01:01:33 You love it. Yeah. We'll skip, skip Ether, skip Bitcoin. Let's go straight to the NFTs. Put those under balance sheet, guys. Sanction this. How do you say this? Recutin? Recutin. Japanese online retail giant recutin. They just launched an NFT marketplace as well. So I think that's going to be, I think that's a big deal.

Starting point is 01:01:57 The traditional, you know, e-commerce websites launching NFT marketplaces, there have been a few of those reasons. this is the latest out of Japan recruiting. It doesn't say if this NFT marketplace is like specific to one type of NFTs. It sounds like a generalized NFT marketplace. So we'll see how much adoption they get. I wonder if they just mainly stick to Japanese adoption. I just, I feel like it's going to be hard to compete against the crypto-native NFT marketplaces, right?

Starting point is 01:02:25 It's like when you're kind of stuck in the old world and you're trying to transfer the new world, I get why you want to do that, but I don't know. Maybe your best bet is just to acquire. It said further down in the article that it allows people to spin up their own websites for buying and selling NFTs. So maybe it's like a Shopify type thing where like, you know, you get to custom make your own NFT platform. We'll have to see. It's kind of cool, actually. Puma, another, the latest brand to adopt an NFT.

Starting point is 01:02:50 I used to wear Puma's. Puma shoes. Oh, Puma's are great. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, what are they doing? They bought a cool cat, which is pretty cool of them.

Starting point is 01:02:58 That's very cool. Because we like the cats. And I mean, it makes sense because Puma is a cat. And of course, they're pretty cool. So they have to buy a cool cat to put on this Puma balance sheet. This looks like a good one. Is this a good one, David? I think so.

Starting point is 01:03:11 Tell me if this is good. I like the tint of the glasses matching the shirt. Great. And like the beanie, very chill. Very chill cat. Very cool cat. All right. Good job, Puma.

Starting point is 01:03:20 Another brand, entry an NFTE ecosystem. All right. Last thing on NFTs, David. MFERS. They're making derivatives. There's many MFers. What are MF or derivatives? Well, first off, MFers are.

Starting point is 01:03:33 are the profile pictures that both me and Ryan have. They're these kind of facetiously cute, smiley, little stick figure NFTs. And, like, for some reason, they're a little bit ridiculous. I think they're the perfect amount of ridiculous. The thing is, they're also so simple that they make it really, really easy to generate derivatives of. And because Sartoshi, the guy behind MFERS,

Starting point is 01:03:53 has opened up the Creative Commons license to everyone, you are free to make MFER derivatives as many as possible. And so there have been so many MFERS. derivative. So I put out a tweet. But what is derivatives? Like that sounds like a financial product to me still, but it's not, right? We're just talking about like a. So it's just like versions of MFers styleized differently. So there's a different style. The base MFers, which are now like the cryptopunks of MFers, but now there's a bunch of derivatives. So there's Azuki MFers, which are MFers that look like Azukis. There are XMFers, which are the X copy versions of MFers. There are there are ahead MFers,

Starting point is 01:04:30 which are MFers that are looking straight at you. There are, invisible MFers. The number of derivatives is absolutely insane. There's little, little MFers for the cute little guys. GM MFers, but face MFers, uh, 3D MFers, uh, dead MFers, like punk MFers. The, the number of derivatives is absolutely insane. And so like the MFER ecosystem has absolutely exploded, uh, which is kind of cool. But each of these derivative MFers have their own like price and, you know, not like existing MFer holders hold these or get these. So what does it do for the main? Well, some of them do, because every single derivative has its own rules.

Starting point is 01:05:10 So some of them are, you can mince because you have your own MFer. Some of them, the fees that are baked into the royalty fees actually go to the OG MFers treasury. So the X copy MFers, XMFers, I think like 30% of the fees that they take from the royalty fees are sent to the actual MFERS treasury. As like tribute. Yeah, as tribute. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:05:32 And so, like, there's this growing ecosystem of MFers, the MFR community treasury, all of the MFER derivatives. And it's turned into starting to take into, like, so much, like, real estate and mine share out of the NFT community. That's really cool. And it's all because the creators of the MFR project did this Creative Commons license. So anybody can do whatever they want with it. And also made an NFT project that's very, very easy to, like, you know, iterate on. Like, they're just stick figures. That's really fascinating, actually.

Starting point is 01:05:59 Right. And I guess like it's all pie expanding value, right? So it's not like these derivatives take away from the main MFers. They add value to it. And these derivatives capture value on their own as well. This is definitely me like being excited about my own bags. But so like take that with a grain of salt. But also like MFers are really cool.

Starting point is 01:06:17 Like the ecosystem and culture and community around them, I just find really I don't have serious MFer bags. And this is exciting. So there's some validation for you. This is pretty cool. This is pretty cool. Maybe I'll buy some more MFERS. Those guys are so cute.

Starting point is 01:06:30 This ex-coppy MF forgets me, man. They're just copying the styles. I love it. That's very cool. Discord grinding. What is this? You were talking about this

Starting point is 01:06:39 a couple of roll-ups ago, but it's in D-Crypt. It's the newest crypto side hustle. People are hiring people to grind in Discord for them. That's what's happening. What is Discord grinding? Yeah, so this is people

Starting point is 01:06:51 trying to get on the white list for NFTs. So very hot NFT drops. They need to figure out how do they enable white listing to happen to individuals that are aligned with the community and probably aren't robots so these things aren't gamed. And so Discord grinding has become a thing where people are in Discord engaging. Like that's it. That's what they do. They engage. That's what the job is because in Discord

Starting point is 01:07:16 you can rank people based off their engagement, like how active they've been. And so people, there's a meme of people going into Discord and be like, hey guys, like how is everyone doing today? Like what's you guys up to? Like, oh, I just ate. like my French toast for breakfast. Like what do you guys have for breakfast? Just like fake and fake social engagement to be good community members. And they can get on the way list. Okay.

Starting point is 01:07:39 So they get on the white. Okay. So it's all about getting on the white list because what these NFT communities are doing is they're basically going through all of their discord participants and they're saying, okay, here's a threshold for how engaged you have to be in order to be on the white list. And everyone wants to make that cut, meet that threshold. So they're hiring fake community managers to talk. in Discord. That's what's happening.

Starting point is 01:08:01 Yeah, you see you guys, listeners might be familiar with Ryan's line, give the protocol what it wants. It's like Uniswop wants liquidity, you know, Ethereum wants security. Well, NFT communities want engagement right now. Like they have a completely refined this mechanism. And so right now what these NFT protocols, what they want are engagement. And so people are hiring people that make engagement happen. There's a Charlie Munger quote out there too,

Starting point is 01:08:27 which is show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome, right? That's what we're getting. Incentive gaming. This can't be long for this world. This is unsustainable. But I think this is indicative of things to come for what it takes to be a good community member. This is hopefully we can refine this behavior so it's not gamed in rather than injecting fake engagement. We inject real engagement.

Starting point is 01:08:47 My talk about East Denver was how we will train our protocols to respond to us with appreciation and love rather than like feeding us with rage and advertisements. And I see this as a very early step in. that. It's funny because, you know, every incentive structure that you put in place does tend to get gamed over time, right? So there was a time when Discord engagement was pretty pure. It was a good marker of community engagement. Now it's been distorted and kind of wrecked. All right, let's get to some regulatory stuff, David, while we finish the news here. So first, I don't know if this is really, well, let's talk about this. This is definitely regulatory. Bitmex co-founder Arthur Hayes just pleaded guilty on bank secrecy act violations.

Starting point is 01:09:32 So Bitmex co-founder Arthur Hayes, this is something that's been caught, I don't know, not in the court system yet, but in the justice system for a year? Close to that anyway, when these charges first came against Arthur Hayes. So what's going on? Yeah, well, it's not really any surprise. He was kind of like on the run, on the lamb a little bit, struck a deal with his, lawyer struck a deal with the courts if he turned himself in. you would have a softer plea deal.

Starting point is 01:09:59 And so now I think what's ultimately happening is Arthur's probably going to have to pay a fine. Bitmex is probably going to have to pay a fine. He's going to have to serve some amount of time in prison. But this actually might be the last news about Arthur Hayes that we hear about this story. Because this is the conclusion? I read this story and I wasn't sure about the prison. It says that there's a maximum penalty of five years. They're definitely paying the fines.

Starting point is 01:10:23 but it didn't say whether the prison sentence would be, like whether Arthur would actually go to prison or not, not sure on that. I mean, Arthur Hayes definitely has the money to buy his way out of prison if they give him that route. So that's definitely true. Is that the way prison works?

Starting point is 01:10:39 It's like monopoly? Yeah, a little bit. He's pay a little bit? Yeah, I mean, it's not explicitly in detail, but that's part of the other game. Okay. And Arthur's been writing articles. We have a take from him in the take section,

Starting point is 01:10:52 But if this story concludes, and this is the last, like, part of the U.S. versus Arthur Hayes story, and he's still paying attention to crypto. He's still writing articles about crypto. So what does Arthur Hayes do next? We should get him on the bank with podcast and talk about that. That's exactly what he should do next. That's exactly right. Well, let's ping him after this.

Starting point is 01:11:12 Anyway, let's talk about this. SEC is now probing fractional NFTs for securities infringements. So what are fractional NFTs and why does the SEC? care. Yeah, so fractional NFT, you put an ERC 721, an NFT into a contract that spits out an ERC 20 token. Fractional, the application fractional does this. And they've always been very careful about how to engage with this because an ERC 20 token that's based off of ERC 2721 collateral technically is a security, even though it doesn't like feel like it should be. It technically is. And so now the SEC has their eyes on fractional NFTs. You know, with all the bad actors and all the scams out there,

Starting point is 01:11:56 you know what they should go after? Fractional NFTs. It does seem like it's such a, I don't know, like a letter of the law thing, not spirit of the law thing. Exactly. Right. But even Hester Pierce is like kind of, this is what the letter of the law says. She says that plain vanilla NFT collectibles don't have revenue potential. They're unlikely to fall foul of regulations. But these fractional NFTs because there's a collective investment they might be considered NFTs. But it's just like when

Starting point is 01:12:27 we were these the SEC, the SEC like the securities laws that we have in the books right now, do you think they even contemplated something like this? Not a chance. Why should a shared JPEG have a 10K filing associated with it? Have to list it.

Starting point is 01:12:43 Right? Like it's just, it's stupid, isn't it? Yeah. The laws have to change. The dog. The dog community from the Doge NFT. Pleaser Dow bought the Doge NFT put it through fractional to make the dog token. So there's a dog token that's backed

Starting point is 01:12:57 by the Doge NFT. And now there's a vibrant community of dog token holders because they all own a share of the Doge NFT, the Mona Lisa of NFCs. And like, well, pleaserdao has very good lawyers and so they've definitely thought about this. So this is not like they just said this really nilly. But like this is kind of like

Starting point is 01:13:14 what this is in the conversation of. It's like, well, the dog community, by the way, is happy. Like, no one feels sad about how they own a share of the Doge NFT. No one feels like they have been just scammed by, like, that's not on the table. No one feels bad here. No one feels like they got harmed. No one's getting hurt. No one's getting hurt. People are just having fun owning a share of the dog NFT. Well, we'll see how that progresses. It's a weird, another bizarre argument. We have old laws on the books. Citadel is getting into crypto in the months to come is the report. This is Kenneth Griffin. Remember Kenneth Griffin, David? Who's he?

Starting point is 01:13:51 I do. He's the guy that bought the Constitution from the, from the cold, from the grips of Constitution now. He's the guy that bought the Constitution. The last minute. Didn't he say something like he bought it from a bunch of kids or something? A bunch of punk kids, yeah. Outbitting a bunch of punk kids. Well, there's not a lot of fans of Citadel or Ken Griffin in the GME community or the retail investing community either. He's a kind of an internet villain these days. Yeah, I guess he's coming to crypto, but that's our territory. So we'll see there, Ken. See how it goes for you. The news is that Citadel is now market making in crypto. That's the news. Sorry, we got caught up on Ken Griffin, didn't we? FDX has pledged up to $1 billion for a philanthropic

Starting point is 01:14:33 fund to improve humanity. What's this? Yeah, so SBF has always stated his interest in being a what did you call it, an activist, an activist philanthropist or something where he takes all of the profits from his business and basically because verbalized his commitment to donate basically all of it. He talked about this on the Sam Harris podcast for people that want more color there.

Starting point is 01:14:59 And so, yeah, FTX pledging a billion dollars for improving humanity. We also are having SBF on the podcast. We're recording with him sometime next week. So that's going to be pretty exciting. We'll have to ask him about this. What does he plan to do with this $1 billion in philanthropic philanthropic funds to improve humanity. David, we got the takes coming up and the meme of the week.

Starting point is 01:15:18 And of course, a really good takes. A pretty hot moment of Zen, I think, or at least a bizarre one. One that I'm very sorry about. You guys, we apologize in advance, but you're also going to want to watch this. Before we get to all of those things, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. The Brave Browser is the user-first browser for the Web 3 Internet, with over 50 million monthly active users. Control your digital footprint with built-in privacy and ad blocking. Inside the Brave browser, you'll find the Brave Wallet, the first secure crypto wallet, built natively inside of a Web3 crypto browser. Web3 is freedom from Big Tech and Wall Street. More control and better privacy.

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Starting point is 01:16:58 and they will go through automatically while you're away. So when you're making a trade, head over to macha.xy-slash-slash-bankless and connect your wallet to start getting the best prices and most liquidity when you trade your crypto assets. Bankless is proud to be sponsored by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system, where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum that lets you trade any token at the current market price. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum.

Starting point is 01:17:32 Inputs a token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. The Uniswap Grants Program is accepting applications for grants. Do you have something of value that you think you want to contribute to the Uniswap ecosystem? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a unique grant at Uniswapgrant.organt. And help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. Thank you, Uniswap for sponsoring bankless. Hey, guys, we are back with the takes of the week. David, let's start here. Web 3 won't Rugpull you.

Starting point is 01:18:00 Web 2 might, though. This is kind of a story and a take combined from a startup, founder who says he lost his company in $100 million by trusting by relying upon Facebook. This is just been a core tenant of Ethereum since day one. Facebook is not the only example of a company that's done this, but there are, and Twitter, for example, has its own APIs to have outbound data out of Twitter that allows other companies, other websites to consume that data, and you can create businesses around that, kind of in the same way that we have money Legos on Ethereum, you can use the data coming from other companies APIs that they give out

Starting point is 01:18:38 for free, for willingly, or sometimes they charge, and you can start to build services around that. So, like, Facebook is so incredibly big that people have built businesses on Facebook. Twitter has become so big that people use the data around Twitter to build businesses. The thing is, when these APIs are centralized, they can just get rug pulled. So this founder tells this story of this $100 million business that he had that got deleted because Facebook changes changed its algorithm. So this has always been one of the core tenets of Ethereum about how you can have unstoppable,

Starting point is 01:19:08 unstoppable censorship-resistant code that can never change on you. So you have long-term assurances about the viability of your business. This wasn't really relevant in the news except for how this one founder told the story, so I thought I'd just mention it here. Yeah, I think it's, it warrants repeating for sure. And the founder says it sends chills down his spine

Starting point is 01:19:29 to watch others build businesses on Instagram and TikTok as well, given what happened to him. Definitely a good lesson. Remember, you don't own your own Instagram account. That is property that you rent from Mark Zuckerberg. Absolutely. So why would you build on someone else's property? I don't understand. Would you build your house and someone else's land? Seems like a bad idea. Just build on Ethereum. Arthur Hayes. We're just talking about him. Apparently he wrote an article this week. I haven't had a chance to read it. It's called Annihilation. What's this about? This is basically connecting the cost of war. So this is coming off of the Ukraine-Russian conflict,

Starting point is 01:20:03 the cost of war, where like, say, like, it takes money to fund a war. So then it takes money to fund it to build a tank. And then it also takes money to build a building. And then when war happens, a tank comes into a country and it destroys the building. And then the opposing side destroys the tank. And so the value, all the energy,

Starting point is 01:20:21 the economic resources that got put into the building and the tank, and also all the lives, not to be, not to mention, all the effort and energy that it went to creating the lives, all gets destroyed. And so when we think about the values of the fiat currencies that are going into funding these things, ultimately the cost of warfare

Starting point is 01:20:39 comes out of the value of fiat currencies. And so Arthur Hayes has a very good job making the narrative of how you can see when countries go to war, inflation happens right afterwards because that's how they need to finance the war. And so eventually the efforts and resources expended in the war comes out of the value of the dollar.

Starting point is 01:20:58 And so this is a great, article by Hayes. Having just finished Ray Deli's book where he looks like empires in history and reserve currencies and history, all of the reserve currencies in history died and ceased to become reserve currencies as a result of some protracted war. Sometimes they won the war, but even if they won, it was very costly. War is incredibly costly on the fiat system. That is totally true. And this reminds me of the ether ultrasound article that I wrote. That one didn't get too much traction because it was actually really long, but this was coming after Justin Drake's ultrasound money meme when we were meaning that. And I talk about how, like, Ethereum, what it does

Starting point is 01:21:37 when it does the buyback from EIP-1559, and it's putting the money back into the currency, where war, for example, out of nation states, takes money out of the money to fund the military. Like these self-sovereign finance systems, like Ethereum, take money out of the economy and put it into the money, which is it's an important relationship to understand. So I encourage people to go and read that article. All right, you have another take here. I'll read it out. The full power that crypto brings can only be truly harnessed by the individual.

Starting point is 01:22:07 What do you mean by that? Yeah, so this is again kind of coming off of the Russia sanctions crypto conversation. The larger you are as an institution, the more muted the powers of crypto offer you. And so what I'm saying here is the powers of private keys, the powers of defy, works best at the individual. level and the larger the institution, the less and less those powers actually work for you. Because then we start to get into it's easier and easier to censor you, the larger and larger you are. Going back to the conversation of how Russia had one third of the total crypto market cap seized and people are talking about, oh, if it was in crypto, we wouldn't have been able

Starting point is 01:22:44 to seize it. If Russia had one third of the total crypto market cap in crypto, like we would have been able to nullify that. Like they would have been still able to send it from address to address, but they wouldn't have been able to pay for anything because we would have made it illegal to receive that money and tracing that money because it's a third of the crypto market cap would have been trivially easy. And so the larger and larger of the financial institution, the easier and easier it is to target with sanctions, target with regulations, target with rules, where the smaller and smaller you get closer down to the size of the individual, the full might empower and optionality that crypto brings to you, can you?

Starting point is 01:23:23 can be expressed. So like you think about just like metaphorically a whole the size of the individual. You cannot fit Russia through the whole of the size of the individual. You cannot fit six, six hundred billion dollars through the just an individually sized technology. And so the, this is why the private keys are so cool is it always benefits the margins of society the most, which are the people that need it the most. And while it does also, the powers of crypto also do benefit institutions, they don't benefit institutions as much as they do, they benefit the individual. This is why we're seeing Ukrainians and Russian citizens alike both buying Bitcoin to protect their wealth. Well, the country of Russia is getting sanctioned, meanwhile. And so crypto will always

Starting point is 01:24:10 benefit the individual more than it will the institution. I do think it's, you know, I do think that this provides asymmetrical advantage to the defender, right? That, that, that, is the principle of cryptography and certainly levels the playing field. So it's a nation state actor. The crazy thing, the cool thing about crypto and private keys is like a nation state actor cannot decrypt your assets and take them from you. Like that is incredible power. Where else in your life do you have this level of power to resist someone with that amount

Starting point is 01:24:48 of force? So I do think it's a massive equalizer for individual. for sure. This is another take. NFTs are the most authentic reflection of your identity from Cooper Turley. What's he saying here? Yeah, so there was a time where I think we would have put this into the bankless weekly roll up and been like, oh yeah, this is, this is great, great take, great tweet. But I've learned about different technologies. And so I actually quote retweeted this and said, people only think that NFTs are good for identity because they don't know of the other options. And so what I'm talking about are these new technologies that I've recently learned about called decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials.

Starting point is 01:25:29 And so, like, think about the NFTs in your wallet. You might like them, but how much of your identity are they actually? Do they actually reflect where you went for university or your credentials that you have because you did something? Or your birth certificate or your health care records? These are not going to be on-chain NFTs. At most right now, it's probably like going into my like, I don't know, like some, my stamp collection or my coin collection or my like collection of watches. That's more what it's like, which is not the most authentic reflection of my identity, right? Like a bunch of turtles is not who I am.

Starting point is 01:26:04 Right. So Evan, Evan, who's proven authority shown in here, talks about how NFTs are like your jewelry. Like they're your gold chain or your watch. And they kind of reflect your values. They kind of reflect your priorities. But they do not reflect your soul. And so what Evan is building, we recently had Evan on this social media panel. So if you want to get a taste for what she's building at disco, go check that out. But if we want decentralized identity, if we want crypto to reflect our personality and our soul, that does not need to be an on-chain NFT because sometimes you want to actually reserve your identity in a private manner and not give those things out for free by putting it on chain. And so this whole concept of a decentralized identity. identity via verifiable credentials and basically was considered off-chain assets, like off-chain

Starting point is 01:26:53 reputation, has started to just be in my brain at all times. I think that's something we have to dig into more for people to fully understand what you're talking about there. But yeah, I totally agree. NFTs aren't like everything right now for sure. This is Kevin Milwaukee's meme illustrating the same thing where NFTs and putting your identity on chain is basically giving the world all of your data. Imagine if your soul was on chain.

Starting point is 01:27:18 and everyone could transparently see you. You have no privacy. And so, like, decentralized identity via NFTs is a dead end where decentralized identity with identifiers and verifiable credentials is, like, the right path. What are you excited about this week, David? Is that what you're excited about? I'm excited about decentralized identity

Starting point is 01:27:37 and verifiable credentials. And, like, one of the illustrations, Ryan, about why this is so cool is because we actually get to have, like, think about how the conversation of Facebook sells your data, Twitter sells your data. With this off-chain data reputation system, you actually get to determine who you are in an off-chain in private manner,

Starting point is 01:27:56 and you get to choose what parts about you you get to reflect around the world. Who do you want to be in this present moment? One of the conversations around Ethereum and Identity is like, oh, you can have your Ethereum address that's your work address, or you can have your Ethereum address that's your play identity

Starting point is 01:28:11 or your gamer identity, and you get to pick and choose your personas. That was a conceptual, conversation for a really long time. People just used Ethereum addresses as like the way that we would use this. That's because people don't know the alternatives. And I think that the alternatives

Starting point is 01:28:28 are verifiable credentials, which are off-chain and decentralized identifiers, also off-chain. And so what this really allows us to do is it allows us to pick and choose our hobbies, our interests, who we are as people and allow those properties to find other people

Starting point is 01:28:45 that also have those alike things. like how people self-organized into their favorite subreddit communities of their own accord. Like who you are as an individual can be automatically like match-maked by people with a like interest and you don't have to do it by giving your data to Facebook or Twitter because you hold it in your self-sovereign wallet. So this whole concept has lived like rent-free in my brain ever since I've learned it. And so Ryan, that's what I'm saying about. I can tell it's eating your brain up right now. I can tell you're very excited about this. Look, I think that as well people who just see Ethereum

Starting point is 01:29:19 what we're doing in the space is like defy are totally limiting. It's like saying that early internet is just like email. You know, like there's so many cool applications that are going to be built out on this stack in the future and I do think decentralized identities

Starting point is 01:29:34 is one of them and I'm looking forward to seeing the apps and I do think your plug for the Web3 social media plan is a fantastic one. We just did that earlier in the week so you guys can check that out and we'll include a link in the show notes if you want more about that. All right, Ryan.

Starting point is 01:29:51 What are you excited about? Private keys, man. Hey, that's an important concept of decentralized identity. Well, okay, but like I'm just excited about the ability to store my life savings in 12 words in my brain. Like that I have that power. I'm not saying I do that now, but that I have the power to do that. And that each of us has the power to do that. I think we need individual superpowers if we're going to last in the 2020s.

Starting point is 01:30:20 Like these are core skills. I tweeted this out earlier this week. The must have skills for surviving 2020s. Private key management, you got to have that. It's key to not only storing all of your assets, but also identity as you were saying in the future. Defi, the ability to use it. Cold storage, encrypted private messaging.

Starting point is 01:30:42 exit planning, digital freelancing, crypto investing, VPN tunneling. This is no longer geek stuff. These are everyday survival skills. That story of that individual in Ukraine, I'm sure there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of stories like that that happen every day.

Starting point is 01:31:03 And this is the reason why now is an important time to stay in the cutting edge of this and make sure you understand how some of these technologies work. There was a time where this was just for geeks, like, no longer, when they're shutting down people's bank accounts arbitrarily, right, when, like, your currency can lose 40% because of some action that the people who run your government do. Like, you need protection from that. We all need protection from that. So I'm glad these technologies exist, and I plan to continue learning these skills. And I hope bankless listeners will invest in these skills too, because they are must-have

Starting point is 01:31:42 skills for the 2020s. The technologies that put individuals first are just getting started. The 2020s is going to be chaotic, but at the end of it, it's going to be an individual first decade. I hope so. And that's what we're fighting for here. That's the direction. Hopefully we're going in. David, you ready for it, meme of the week? Yeah, that's going to be a good one. Oh, it's back to Kevin. Kevin, time, person of the year. It's Kevin, the pixel mon, the super ugly pixel mon. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for the last Kevin. Sorry for everyone who bought one of these pixel mon, but you know, that's how it goes. Maybe it's a good time for the disclaimer.

Starting point is 01:32:19 None of this. Remember there's a very cringe moment of Zen coming afterwards. Yes, I should award people. I'm sorry about that. Don't watch it. Don't listen to it. It's bad. Don't watch it. You will not appreciate it. You will not like it. What's her name? Mark Zuckerberg's sister, Zandi. Randy.

Starting point is 01:32:35 Randy. Randy Zuckerberg. That's that's who was coming up. Randy Zee. coming up for you guys before that i got to tell you none of this has been financial advice except definitely do not buy a pixel mine eth is risky defy is risky so are nfts you could definitely lose what you put in but this is the frontier we are headed west we're glad you're with on the journey with us thank you so much i messed up the ending yeah you're doing it's a pixel line distracted me thanks guys bye If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills

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Bankless - 📺 ROLLUP: Ukraine Crypto Donations | Russia SWIFT Sanctions | EBay Accepting ETH | Pixelmon NFTs

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