Bankless - ROLLUP: World War Threat | North Korean Hackers | Vitalik Roadmap Updates | Visa Platform On Ethereum

Starting point is 00:00:00 Bob, bo. Actually crazy just like watching the missiles rain down on Israel. Yeah, so what you're hearing is the sirens in Israel as Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles, some getting through the Iron Dome into Israel. And globally, Marcus, just got really scared. Oh, yeah. This is peak global uncertainty, I think, at least on this year. And I think we should say, obviously, before we get into this roll up, just a sentiment check.

Starting point is 00:00:31 This is like not, this is bad news for everybody for the entire world, right? And I think Lex Friedman put it well when he said, probability if World War III feels higher than ever, a global war would destroy humanity. I pray for the wisdom of our leaders. I think, you know, we also echo that sentiment. This is kind of a concerning time that we're in, for sure. I think all eyes are kind of pointed at the Middle East right now,

Starting point is 00:00:56 not really knowing what happens next. But neither side, either the, is, anti-Israel, pro-Israel side really seems to be interested in taking the foot off the gas at the present moment. Yeah. I mean, hopefully this doesn't escalate into something wider. And of course, all of this global instability affects markets, including crypto markets. And that's been a theme of the week. This has been the worst start to October as these tensions have raged on. And it calls in a question, I think, what we've talked about. Remember that Black Rock report where they were talking about Bitcoin is actually sort of an asset when there's global uncertainty.

Starting point is 00:01:34 Like it should appreciate the way gold does in global uncertainty. It kind of wasn't in the aftermath of this, which is kind of interesting. Last night's, so this is the published the day after these attacks, last night's Bitcoin price action, Bitcoin was negative four while gold was up almost 1% in the aftermath of the Iranian attack. And this is kind of puzzling when you try to think about Bitcoin being sort of a global instability type of hedge. This is what BlackRock was talking about as their frame of understanding around Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Now, there could be a difference of timeframes here. Bitcoin could just like go risk off in the very short term while global instability over the long term might actually benefit Bitcoin. That is still possible. Also, since we're talking about this, there was this tweet that went out with this new polymarket front page. We're just talking about all these different markets that are related to this crisis in the Middle East. Will Israeli forces enter Lebanon in September? 86% chance. Will Irhan strike

Starting point is 00:02:34 on Israel before November? Will the U.S. evacuate their Beirut embassy before October? And the tweet on this screenshot of Polly Market says, it feels wrong that Polly Market has an entire Hezbollah betting section that makes war look like a football game to bet on, which actually caught Vidalek's attention, who went and responded, I'm actually in support of these. I support these existing. The point of polymarket is that the perspective of traders, it's a betting site, but from the perspective of viewers, it's a news site. There's all kinds of people, including elites on Twitter and the internet making harmful and inaccurate predictions about conflicts and being able to go and see if people with actual skin in the game think that there is something that has a 2% chance or a 50% chance is a valuable

Starting point is 00:03:16 feature that can help keep people sane. So it's just interesting to see crypto respond to global current events in an increasingly high fidelity fashion. Yeah, it's a it's like war betting does seem crazy. And like viscerally, when you look at this and you're like these charts, I guess viscerally, my first reaction is like, is this like a war betting market? And that seems like it does seem wrong. So I share the original like posters visceral reaction. And yet I also agree with Vitalik that when you look at the probability of all of these things,

Starting point is 00:03:49 is there a better source of accurate information around this? Like in a world where I have no idea what. going on and the risks of various escalations and attacks, this is a fantastic source of information for that. So I share that from Vitalik as well. I just kind of wonder what the rest of the world thinks about all of this in crypto. And I do think this brings up a broader question in crypto. It's just like I think sometimes the outside world looks at crypto and they're like, oh yeah, you guys are betting on like bunkers. Hyper financialization. Yeah, you guys are betting on doomsday scenario and like you're hopeful that you know fiat inflates to infinity so that you can go hide in your

Starting point is 00:04:32 bunker and have bitcoin and that's like a very anti-social type of like take right but but it's interesting with bitcoin and uh more so with ethereum i think it it's it's kind of juxtaposed from like it's it's not a pessimistic technology but it kind of is and also it's not purely an optimistic technology, but it also kind of is. It's almost like this cynically optimistic technology, because the entire Bitcoin and even Ethereum project is basically cynical from the perspective of, hey, we can't put all of our trust in centralized institutions. And if we don't have balance of power, decentralizations, they will increase in their level of corruption, right? So it's cynical from that perspective. But it's also optimistic from the perspective of

Starting point is 00:05:20 it's building an alternative. And it's building a new set of tools that people can use that fosters trust. So it's just this weird juxtaposition I find myself in being a Ethereum and Bitcoin bull. I think for whatever take there is out there of, oh, these crypto people are just betting on World War III. They're betting on the destruction of the earth. And that's just like what they're doing. What their culture is. It seems to be pretty adjacent to people that say, crypto has no use case. And it's because the crypto has no use case for them, but go talk to somebody in a developing nation that has escaped their hyperinflating currency using stable coins. And now, like, there is information here, like $2 million on will Israel invade Lebanon

Starting point is 00:06:02 before November, 86% 80% chance. That has been, that has now been able to inform people's actions and choices about their lives as it relates to them. And this, of course, is just the Hezbollah section of Polymarket. there's other sections of polymarket, then now people can have information, good quality, unbiased, market-based information about how to make choices about their lives aside from the fact that other people are betting on these outcomes.

Starting point is 00:06:31 Yeah, agreed. David, we got so much more to talk about. It's not just war stuff today. Roman Storm of Tornado Cash had his motion to dismiss, yet filed a motion to dismiss, his court case. It was rejected this week. And, David, there are massive implications for this. I want to talk to you about.

Starting point is 00:06:47 The judge made a ruling that might actually imply all defy operating in the United States is illegal, a money transmitter. We've got to discuss that. Ripple might be getting an ETF if Bitwise has its way, but the SEC says not so fast. And wants to go back to the drawing board about the XRP versus SEC case about Ripple being a security. Wow, going all the way back there. And then also Visa debuts a Fiat tokenization. platform on Ethereum with banks as its biggest customer. Powell's predicting a couple more rate cuts.

Starting point is 00:07:23 We'll discuss that. Also, North Korean hackers are invading crypto companies like en masse. This is a wild story we've got to get into. And bankless listeners, stay tuned to the end because I got some alpha on the Kane versus David fight. At least I hope I do. You do? And that's happening next week.

Starting point is 00:07:37 I hope you do. Anyway, David, you got to fill in. Did I give you this alpha or do you have this alpha? It's a mix between your alpha and my alpha combined. Wait, you have alpha that you haven't given me? I don't know. Wait till the end and you'll hear all that. It's happening October 11th, and there's going to be a special offer for everyone

Starting point is 00:07:56 trying to get last-minute tickets to that flight and to permissionless. So stay tuned. Before we get into the markets, we're going to talk to our friends and sponsors over at ZeroX. We're building ZeroX at V2, a full stack upgrade of the whole entire ZeroX project, an upgrade of their crypto trading APIs. Bring you multi-hop and multiplex routing. So if you want to make a big trade or even a small trade, there's a bajillion different permutations of making that trade. And XV2 goes through all of those permutations to make sure that you get the best final price on your trade, not just the quote, not just the best quote, but the best final on chain settled price, the one that actually matters to you.

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Starting point is 00:08:49 All right, let's get to the prices on the week, David. I want to look at these charts in some detail. Thanks to Cracken for providing these charts. All right, where are we on the week? And where was the missile dip that we saw earlier in the week? Turns out crypto prices are inversely correlated to the number of missiles launched in the world. Bitcoin currently clocking in at $60,300. Dipped below $60,000, but got back above $60,000 pretty quickly there.

Starting point is 00:09:13 So you said, do you say down 7%? on the week? Down 7%. That's a big one. That's a lot. It's a lot for Bitcoin. How about Ether? Ether, down 11% on the week,

Starting point is 00:09:21 started the week at 2,640, currently at 2,315. I think that actually means it's more like down 12% because that's dipped to lower than when I put these numbers in. Okay, so what does that tell us? Does that tell us that global instability is even worse for Ether relative to Bitcoin?

Starting point is 00:09:37 Yeah, Ether's always been like the more optimistic token of the two. And it always just moves more than Bitcoin. That's right. Let's go and check on the ETF flows starting with Bitcoin. Where are we on the Bitcoin ETF flows? It has been some big weeks up last week, but in the last two days, $242 million out of the Bitcoin ETF on the first $64 million out of the Bitcoin ETFs on the second. At some point, these are just going to be called equilibrium. Last week was a huge week. There was like almost a billion dollars of inflows into Bitcoin ETFs alone. So, I mean, it's not bleeding that

Starting point is 00:10:14 I mean, October 1st was kind of the Tuesday that the missile strikes took place, right? So it makes sense you'd see a drainage. Is that the first day that there's outflows from the BlackRock in a Bitcoin ETF? Wow, I think it might be. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, the first day in a while, right? No, I think that might be the first day ever.

Starting point is 00:10:31 Ever? I mean, this chart only goes back like 15 days here. Yeah, I don't think, I think that's the first day ever that Bitcoin has had outflows. You actually think that's the first day ever that BlackRock has had outflows? Yeah, it's always been inflows. Yeah. That's the first red number there. I'm pretty sure that's true.

Starting point is 00:10:46 Someone fact checked that. I don't know about that. You want to place a bet? You want to place a bet? No. All my money's going on that cane versus David bet, okay? On my betting money. On which side?

Starting point is 00:10:57 Well, we'll have to wait to the end to find out, David. Ether outflows, similar to Bitcoin $48 million on the first. Actually had 20 million dollars of inflows on the second. So the inflows weren't too rattled, I would say, by the Middle East conflict. Okay. there was a milestone that was passed, which is nice, though. This is a pretty big milestone. So the I shares, that's the Black Rock Ethereum ETF, just eclipsed $1 billion in total

Starting point is 00:11:22 assets. So assets under management of above $1 billion. So it's now in the top 20% of all of the ETFs of all time, and it did it in two months. So it feels like that feels like a big deal. But also it still feels like, I don't know, Ethereum's a little brother syndrome of like Bitcoin already smashed all of these records. So now I look at this and I'm like, oh, cool. Like, you know, the second place trophy doesn't seem that great in comparison.

Starting point is 00:11:48 Second place trophy going to the little brother that's five years younger. Yeah. Well, especially when you meld it with this, David, this is the East Bitcoin ratio. And we're under 0.4 again. What are we on the week? 0.0385. So that's been as low it has been. It got this low on the 19th of September.

Starting point is 00:12:08 It's back there again. It's bottoming. But bottoming? Bottoming. Bottoming can continue. We can continue to bottom. Yeah, you know, continue to bottom. And how about a total crypto market cap?

Starting point is 00:12:19 Are we still above a trillion? 2.2 trillion on the week. Yeah, still healthily above a 2 trillion. Well, speaking of health, one thing that is healthy in the Ethereum economy is the layer two economies. And thanks to Mantle for this layer two update. This is what caught my eye this week. So this is a new set of dashboards created by the Grow the Pie analytics team. It was just like, you know, crushing it.

Starting point is 00:12:41 They call these economics dashboards. And here's what I kind of picked out. This is if you sort this on the one year and you look at L2 profitability, you can see, David, a number of very highly profitable layer twos that have built on Ethereum. So nine chains in total. I think we actually have to define what profit is. Oh, yeah. Some people reject the term profit in the term of chain terms. What do you mean by profitability in the context of a blockchain?

Starting point is 00:13:08 Yeah. So the revenue. that a layer two in particular makes is the sum of fees that were paid by users of the chain. So if you use base, if you use arbitram, if you use optimism, scroll, et cetera, right, as a user, you're paying some fee. Okay, so that's the revenue that they make. And the cost in this context is kind of like a gross profit metric. So the cost in this context is the fees that they have to pay the layer one, that is

Starting point is 00:13:34 Ethereum in order to settle and provide a data availability for this service. So this is why our analog has been Ethereum, like Layer 2s are essentially reselling Ethereum Blockspace to the market. And they're reselling that on a profit margin. So the Delta is gross profit margin, essentially. Revenue, less cost is your gross profit margin. And the story here is there's now nine chains in total that are very much in the green. $150 million they've made in gross profit over the last 12 months.

Starting point is 00:14:05 It's really cool to see this economy of chains. Like here was kind of my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my bull take on it, David, in a tweet summary. Ethereum has already produced nine chains with gross profit. Each chain is an economy. Ethereum is a federated union of economies with ETH as its money. I think this is very bullish Eith, uh, even if the market's not reflecting it at this point in time. For some reason, people really just, uh, don't like this profit word. And maybe you can argue with the semantics.

Starting point is 00:14:32 Maybe you can argue with the idea of profit. Who doesn't like it? But what you cannot argue with is that 50, million dollars of ETH over the last year ended up in BASE's treasury, which is Coinbase. Or Arbitrum, $22.3 million of Eth went to the Arbitrum treasury. I don't know what you want to call that, but there's $22 million of Eth there. Revenue from base over the last year, $64 million. Costs of base? $14 million. That's not a lot of costs in comparison to the revenue. Arbitrum, $58 million of revenue, $35 million of costs. And these are the, the, the,

Starting point is 00:15:08 nine chains that are profitable, the nine layer twos that are profitable, are nine out of the 10 chains that are profitable, the 10th being tron. Tron is the only other than the Ethereum layer one. Are you talking about of all the chains? Not just late. Of all the chains. Yeah. All the chains that exist in crypto.

Starting point is 00:15:23 The ones that are profitable are the Ethereum layer one, these nine specific layer twos, and tron. And that's because you're adding another element here, which is you're considering issuance of these layer one chains as cost, right? So for... Which some people also debate. Which is ridiculous. Layer 2s do not have additional inflation or additional issues.

Starting point is 00:15:45 They do not have to have. They can't issue if they choose to, but it's not forced upon them for security because Ethereum pays for their security. Yeah. And I mean, the reason I say a federated union of economies with ether's money is because there's another dimension here that the economics charts and grow the pie don't show, which I think is really important is there's a massive amount of ether being used as economic bandwidth and money on, say, for instance, base.

Starting point is 00:16:06 You know, there's almost 600,000 ether. It's like $1.3 billion of ethas money on base, an equivalent amount even more on arbitram. And so that is the ethos money use case. But I will say, David, there's another way to interpret this data set. So I got some pushback from some of the make the L1 great again type folks, like Bread, who's got some great analysis on Twitter. And what he sees is a different lens on this. So what he sees is the profit margin percent.

Starting point is 00:16:35 And basically he's saying that, like, yeah, Yeah, L2 chains are in the green. They're making profit. But almost at the expense of the L1. So their profit margins are like 95%. I think that's a accurate take. It is at the expense of the layer one P&L sheet. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:52 That is true. It is in a way because so these layer twos are making 95% profit. And only for every $1 that they make, they're getting 95 cents of that. And they're only paying 5% back to the ETHL1. That is the DA and seven-the-costs. That's what that is. Yeah, but you could interpret that and you could say, well, ETH is not being burnt anymore.

Starting point is 00:17:15 It's not returning cash flows to ETH holders. And therefore, it's actually bearish ETH. I don't know if it's bearish ETH. It's bearish if you only value ETH on the P&L. Yeah. I am back to, and we should have a longer discussion and podcast about all of this, like kind of like our findings of takes. By the fact that we're talking about it for so long.

Starting point is 00:17:34 Yeah, for sure. But like back to you, this is fantastic for eth being money and that is the only thing that matters in the L1 game I'm coming back to like the L1 tokens are money

Starting point is 00:17:48 like that's all that they do everything else will be like app player take fees and you're not going to be able to preserve that anyway longer discussion should we talk about Powell for a minute yeah Powell says there could be two additional rate cuts this year but don't get too excited because he says

Starting point is 00:18:03 not that fast not that fast He said the recent 50 bips of interest rate cuts should not be interpreted as a sign that future moves will be so aggressive. He says, this is not a committee that feels like it is in a hurry to cut rates quickly. If the economy performs as expected, this would be two more rate cuts this year, a total of 50 basis points more. So we would get 1% in the year 2024 this year. We are not getting, we do not have like ammo loaded up with 50 bips each. we're just getting perhaps if good things go according to plan

Starting point is 00:18:37 just 50% more total this year which is fine kind of expected right yeah yeah I think the things to monitor as always as now post pivot are the jobs reports the Fed balance sheet Fed deficits all of these things

Starting point is 00:18:51 will contribute to the global liquidity and therefore the demand of commodity crypto money assets and also jobs reports coming in looking good so far yeah so far so good job openings are up and joblessness claims are up. Although have you seen David

Starting point is 00:19:07 this longshoreman stuff? So, um, oh, I have not. Our Costco shelves, I can't find toilet paper anymore. There's been like another run on the shelves. It's like, you know, that's happened locally where I live and it's happening. You ran out of toilet paper? Yeah, it's because of people. You got no toilet paper?

Starting point is 00:19:20 No, I have toilet paper, okay? Because like, we maintain a stock, all right? I'm not crazy. I'm a prepper. You know this. I'm a crypto guy. Of course I'd have toilet paper. Are you crazy?

Starting point is 00:19:30 But yeah, that's another, you know, kind of thing this week that, that, I don't know if you caught, but I mean, that could... Wait, do I need to go get Toyota Taper? David is not a prepper. No, dude. I got it for both of us. I'll send you some if you need it. What do we got coming up?

Starting point is 00:19:45 Coming up next, why was the free speech argument rejected in the tornado cash court case? And what does it apply for the rest of the industry? I think Ryan's got a little story to tell. And my story for you guys is Bitwise filing for the XRPETF, but the SEC is filing for an appeal at this ripple case, the case that actually decided that crypto... assets are not in of themselves securities, that a securities transaction could happen, but that securities transaction does not create a security of the asset. So we're going to talk about this and more.

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Starting point is 00:22:47 And if you're not a developer, those with staked CTSI can take part in the governance process and vote on whether or not a proposal should be funded. Make sure your vote ready by staking your CTSI before the votes open. Roman Storm, the tornado cash developer, had a motion to dismiss his own case that motion was rejected. The ruling by the judge calls into question whether defying United States is actually currently operating illegally. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. That's the crazy part, dude. That's crazy.

Starting point is 00:23:14 My understanding was that the Roman Storm case determines whether or not the United States can make a smart contract illegal. If Roman Storm goes to jail, it's because the ruling is yes, smart contracts can be illegal. if we prevent him from going to jail, it's because the ruling is no. United States smart contracts are just technology, they're just software. You can't make them illegal. You can't violate the free speech. That's what I thought was going on. Is that what's not what's going on?

Starting point is 00:23:39 That's all true. And it's also more. I want to get to why this ruling is potentially incredibly concerning to me and to some of the crypto lawyers that I've talked to sort of behind the scenes. One crypto lawyer told me off the record that they're struggling to figure out how literally anyone who's launched a D5 protocol is not also. committing a crime right now as a result of this ruling, David, not the future full case for Roman Storm that happens December 2nd, but this ruling. So let's talk about what actually happened

Starting point is 00:24:08 with this. So Judge Philea rejected Roman Storm's motion to dismiss in a New York court and ruled that the case could proceed to trial. So there was a motion to dismiss that was rejected, but then she also made a ruling. And she made this ruling verbally, which is somewhat interesting. basically the court ruled that using computer code to further alleged money laundering is not a First Amendment protected activity. Okay. So the ruling says code is not speech. And she ruled that there was no custody requirement in the legislation definition of a money transmitter. And this is really important. This is the second part I was talking about implicitly threatening the entire industry with additional requirements. Okay. So code is not speech. Like we kind of anticipated that. could be some judges ruling right that was a possibility but the second part that was the base case that

Starting point is 00:25:02 was the that was the known concern that we had yes so the second part no custody requirement in defining a money transmitter so a smart contract can be a money transmitter a smart contract it does not like take a third party custody right uh yeah smart contract it doesn't doesn't require you don't have to be a coin base or a block fire Celsius or you know crack in or that would be a custody requirement You could just be a defy application and subject to money. Honestly, like Ethereum is code that custody is money. Yes. Ethereum is illegal.

Starting point is 00:25:33 See, that's the part that I think people are missing with this ruling. The judge is actually saying all non-custodial defy is subject to U.S. money transmission laws. So that means uniswap, potentially. That means AVE. That means NFT trading. To your point, does that mean Ethereum? We don't know yet. You can expand this so far.

Starting point is 00:25:55 Oh, my God. If I have gold sitting on my coffee table, non-custodial, like the vibe around the gold, the universe is a money transmitter, non-custodial is everything else that's not a custodian. This would be hopefully an argument that an astute lawyer actually makes in court, you know, like talking about physical objects versus crypto objects and kind of like what's the difference. But that's why this is such a concerning ruling. And I was a little bit confused. Like, why is a ruling coming down? I thought it was just a motion to dismiss. I thought the judge would just be saying, yeah, the court, the case will proceed for Roman or like, no, it will be dismissed. But this is actual legal precedent. So a ruling like this does establish some legal precedent. It's almost like probabilistic finality, if that makes sense, right? It's like some proof of work. This is the way the common law system works. So, you know, one judge says something, makes a ruling. You know, the case isn't finalized. The defy as money transmitters is not fully finalized and propagated across all of the U.S.

Starting point is 00:27:00 It's not fully settled, but it does increase kind of the proof of work and the precedence. It does kind of harden the precedent here. So we have the opportunity for other rulings in the future, but it's kind of narrowed. Yes, this is one judge, but it calls into question if other courts will follow the exact same logic and define defy as being a money transmitter. And the actual violation is a violation of 18 USC section 1960. Okay, this is a section that deals with money transmitters in the logic, and it pertains to the illegal operation of money transmitting businesses in the U.S. And it's basically a federal crime to conduct, control, manage, or to own an unlicense money transmitting business. Okay?

Starting point is 00:27:45 And so what they're saying, what this judge is saying, is that tornado cash was, as an immutable contract, an unlicensed, unregistered money transmitting business, which again, calls into question, is the Uniswap code, an unlicensed money transmitting business? Is the Ave code unlicensed money transmitter business? Who do they expect to ask for a license? Exactly. And the fact that Roman Storm is now in jail and facing jail time as a result of a bad third party, terrorists, North Korea, whatever, using this code.

Starting point is 00:28:23 I mean, the same could happen to Uniswap, right? Right. The same... Well, you can... It's not just smart contracts. It's code. So Ethereum. Who Ethereum needs to go get a money transmitter license.

Starting point is 00:28:35 Right. And so what are the penalties, by the way, for this section 1960 a violation? Up to five years in federal prison. For whom? For the, potentially the developers. Roman Storm was the developer of Tournament. cash in this instance. He wasn't doing the money transmitting himself. He was, he developed the code and put it on a code on chain. Up to five years in federal prison, forfeiture of the business,

Starting point is 00:29:02 fines up to 250K. All right. So are you following why this is like potentially a big deal? And again, it's one judge ruling, but it's the proof of work precedent in our common law system that makes this incredibly concerning. Do you think the judge understands the implications that they are creating? So she actually didn't give this opinion in written form. Usually judges do. Usually judges give the opinion verbally, and they also publish it in written form. She didn't in this case. She, this is Jake Chervinsky.

Starting point is 00:29:33 She said she's not going to write an opinion. She read her decision from the bench, and that's all we get. All right? She didn't actually give a written opinion to defend this. She just read it from the bench. So the best we're going to get, and we do have now, is a transcript. of what she said from the bench. But Jake says,

Starting point is 00:29:52 I think it says a lot that she's not writing it up. So I expect she does know that this is contentious and has potentially disastrous implications here. And I think all of this causes a chilling effect, David.

Starting point is 00:30:05 It's like, how do you feel as a founder in the US or in any country launching an immutable defy contract when potentially it's a money transmitter and the penalty for this could be arrest

Starting point is 00:30:17 in going to jail. That's the worst that this can get. This is like a nuclear bomb for crypto. It's kind of bad. It's kind of bad. Now, people will hear this and they'll say, look, it's one judge. You're being chicken little about this. You know, the DOJ might say something like, don't be crazy.

Starting point is 00:30:36 Okay. This tornado cash, these guys were tied in with, you know, North Korea, DPRK stuff. It's like bad dudes. We're not going to bring criminal charges against Ave. or uniswap, of course. But that's kind of like a trust me bro legal system. It doesn't that depend entirely on who's in control of the DOD?

Starting point is 00:30:55 That's not how courts work. That's not how courts work. Yeah. So I'm worried because this court case feels like nothing's protecting us from this. The trial of Roman Storm where this will get determined to an either even greater degree. That's still scheduled for December 2nd in New York. So that's expected to last two weeks. we're going to be paying attention to that because it has massive implications, not just because of what you said earlier, whether a smart contract can be sanctioned or not or can be deemed illegal. That's part of it, but also the future for all D5 protocols in the United States.

Starting point is 00:31:32 Well, I mean, I'll hammer on this point again. It's code that is being marked as the money transmitter, which means Ethereum, Bitcoin, like layer ones are therefore also money transmitters in this context. right I don't know what we're going to do about this but we'll be taking a look I I am going to be talking I think you'll be out David you're flying somewhere but I'll be talking to Jake Chirvinsky this Friday about this issue and hopefully getting some more legal analysis I'm not sure it's going to make me feel any better but one thing that might make you feel better is actually donating to the Roman storm court case so he's still trying to raise funds he needs more in order to pay the legal fees for this highly expensive court case and if you want to go support that. We'll include a link in the show notes so you can donate to that cause.

Starting point is 00:32:21 All right. Getting into subjects around Ripple, everyone's favorite blockchain, Ripple wants an ETF, but Gary wants probably to say no. So Bitwise has filed for the first spot XRPETF. So now it's the ball is in the court for the SEC to approve or disapprove it. Oh, what do you think they're going to do, David? I don't know. Nature R.C. commented, Bitwise, position to file for the XRP ETF is highly noteworthy in the short term. This is a call option on the November election, he says. Bitwise is a highly credible crypto-native fund firm that does not just throw stuff out a wall.

Starting point is 00:32:53 Politics matter clearly here in the short term, but I think it is all inevitable over time. Are they basically saying if Trump wins, then you probably have a shot at getting ETFs like the XRP ETF through, but if he loses, like, there's no chance. Yeah, that's probably right. And I think there's probably actually some amount of demand. It will be really interesting to see the amount of demand for an XRP ETF. The XRP market cap has been. a complete mystery to me as why it's been so high for so long. There's some pool of demand

Starting point is 00:33:19 somewhere. I don't know where. Not in my friend circles, but somewhere out of the universe. So like seeing that show up in an ETF will be interesting. But that's not the only ripple related news of this roll-up. The SEC wants to overturn a ruling by Judge Annalisa Torres, who decided that XRP was not a security, and its secondary sales did not constitute security sales. So this would imply that any token that's traded on like uniswap, on any sort of decks, or even on Cracken or Coinbase, just because it's being traded does not make it a security. Yeah, it was great news, right? When XRP, when Ripple won this court case against the SEC, it was great news. Yeah, it took a lot of wind out of the sales of Gary Gensler's in theory

Starting point is 00:34:01 of investing, which is basically everything is a security. But the SEC is coming back for a do-over, asking for a do-over. appeal. Yeah, exactly. And so this can also delay the approval of the Bitwise XRP ETF. So, you know, the SEC not done yet. It's not even like, once upon a time, Jane Stravinsky gave me the take that, like, maybe the SEC's position is that they're just going to take everything to court and they'll

Starting point is 00:34:28 just let the courts decide by litigation, ruling by litigation, which maybe was a take. But the fact that they're, like, losing and then going back to appeal. Wasting our money, David, as tax-picker. layer of evil coming out of the SEC. I don't understand why the Democrats don't just like, like, get this guy out. Cut him loose.

Starting point is 00:34:49 He is just completely rogue. I don't understand. The Democrats are just like, I haven't heard from Biden in months. Kamala is busy trying to get elected. Where is his base of support? Who's like, yeah, Gary, you're doing a great, I guess we saw some of it in Congress when we saw that Brad Sherman's like cheering

Starting point is 00:35:02 him on. Yeah, yeah, all the, like Elizabeth Warren neo-bankers. I can't believe that's still a contingent. He's just doing such a terrible job for the U.S. right now. In crypto, but not just crypto. Some good news, though, this week, his chief attack dog, so SEC enforcement chief Graywall decided to step down. It's not the Greywall from Coinbase.

Starting point is 00:35:23 That's our guy. Not our Graywall, they're Greywall. Yeah, and he was known for aggressive policing of the crypto industry, just kind of leading the charge. Under Mr. Graywall's leadership, the commission authorized more than 100 enforcement actions against the crypto industry. So he is stepping down. And there is some chatter about this.

Starting point is 00:35:44 Jake, again, Jake's getting a lot of quotes in this episode. Jake Chivinsky saying, this is not normal. Not normal for an SEC enforcement director to get disappeared like this, gone on nine days notice with no replacement lined up. Perhaps the inevitable end to a campaign of unlawful harassment and misrepresentation resulting in many embarrassing defeats in court. So this could be a precursor to, Gary Gensler also, you know, being given his exit slip.

Starting point is 00:36:11 Maybe this, you know, the gray will go first. Yeah, don't let the door hit you on the way out. All right, coming up next, Vitalik has a solution for making Ethereum alignment great again and also has a take as to what the Ethereum roadmap should look like in the near term. We're going to go through all that and more. And also Visa launching a tokenization platform on Ethereum for Fiat, aka Sablecoins, with Banks as the customer. That's kind of interesting.

Starting point is 00:36:34 Bank the banks. Bank the banks, all of this and more. but first I want me to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Launching a token, don't let complex legal and tax issues slow you down. Toku provides specialized support to optimize your launch and ensure that you as a founder and your team and your investors get the most tax-efficient outcomes. The Toku team understands the crypto space inside and out and will ensure your token launch is fully compliant while maximizing tax efficiency. Toku can connect you with the best attorneys if you need them to make sure that you have the best advice, and Toku can help to optimize your taxes so you pay the least possible amount of taxes while,

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Starting point is 00:38:17 Why is this happening? Maybe it's because mantle has been on the frontier of layer two design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming onto the mantle layer two to capture some of the highest yields available in Defi and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion dollar mantle treasury in the Mantle reward station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is. one of the most helpful teams to build with, giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners

Starting point is 00:38:43 to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto, or your user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's Defi apps, click the link in the show notes. So getting started with Mantle. Pretty cool scoop by Blockworks. Visa launches Fiat-backed tokenization platform on Ethereum. They are developing a new product to help banks issue Fiat-back tokens on the Ethereum network. The Visa tokenized asset platform VTAP will enable the development of Fiat Fiat back tokens powered by smart contracts to help digitides and automate existing processes that will then power the exchange of real world assets. Yeah, a bank would use Visa's new platform to purchase

Starting point is 00:39:24 tokenized real world assets such as commodities or bonds with near real-time settlement using a token. The statement said, the first financial institution to use VTAP will be a Spanish bank BBVA who expect a rollout of a life pilot in 2025. Pretty cool. Visa on the Ethereum layer one. It's all based on Ethereum. So you know when you deposit funds into kind of your Wells Fargo account, how it's not like a dollar, it becomes like a Wells Fargo dollar, that sort of thing. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:53 Do you think there's a world where every single bank has their own version of like a tokenized dollar deposit on chain? Deposit on chain? There'll be like a Wells Fargo stable coin kind of thing. and there'll be a, you know, a Bank of America, stable coin thing. I mean, all of these will be fungible. Babin and Robbins 31 different flavors.

Starting point is 00:40:10 Yeah, maybe. Maybe something like that could happen. That would be so bullish for Curve. For Curve? Yeah, yeah, basically like the... I've heard of Curve in a while. That's interesting. Yeah, because it has completely just flipped into just like the background,

Starting point is 00:40:23 back end of like stable coin exchange volumes. Yeah, just hopefully it's not illegal, David. Thank you for that reminder. David, you read this blog post, Vitalik shared earlier this. week, his thoughts on how to make Ethereum alignment legible. So he's getting into kind of like, what are the values that really define Ethereum? And he mentioned a few things. Open source, so allowing for the inspection of code to ensure security and reduce risks of lock-in. So open source is a big Ethereum value, according to him. Open standards, you know, things like ERC 20s,

Starting point is 00:40:56 ERC 1271's, account abstraction, that kind of thing. Decentralization and security. And he defines this a little bit, like the walkaway test, which is, does the app remain usable if the team and all the servers disappear? Like, if everybody walked away, is it still usable? I mean, that's one definition of decentralization. And what's the potential damage if the team attempts to compromise the system? So, and then lastly, he talked about positive sum network effects for Ethereum being kind of a core value. So things like using ether as a token to enhance the Ethereum network effect. So this was kind of like, these are soft and I would say more squishy values-oriented dimensions of what constitutes Ethereum alignment. But then he also created like a call to

Starting point is 00:41:44 action to start measuring some of this. And he gives some great examples of ways we're already measuring it, which is kind of cool. Like MEV watch is a fantastic dashboard tool that measures basically the censorship resistance of Ethereum. You know, what blocks are OFAC sanctioned and what aren't. So that's good kind of transparency check in balance. We also have dashboards for client diversity, which shows kind of the portfolio of diversity of all of the ETH clients. We have dashboards like L2B, which are just phenomenal and kind of tracking the centralization or decentralization levels of layer twos. And these are the dashboard metrics. He's kind of calling the Ethereum community to kind of develop. So we can have our own internal regulatory system.

Starting point is 00:42:28 I've got to say, I think this is, it's an unspoken value proposition of Ethereum. It's actually like a core strength Ethereum has, is these dashboards as kind of regulators as a check on the system to maintain the decentralization. They're certainly doing a far better job than any of the nation state regulators. The actual regulators. Yeah. And I see this pretty uniquely in the Ethereum community. I mean, there's some in Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:42:50 There's some in other communities for sure. But Ethereum's really doing a stellar job at this. I think regulation via dashboard, it's kind of really. based actually. Yeah, it's kind of cool. It's awesome. Yeah, because like the dashboards actually don't enforce anything and actually just helps the social layer become more informed and take more action about things.

Starting point is 00:43:08 But the only Vitalik take of the week on a core dev call, Vitalik made a pretty strong appeal for increasing blob counts for the Pectra upgrade. Pectra has been split into a very big hard fork, has been split into two hard forks with Pyrdas, which is the

Starting point is 00:43:23 kind of the qualitative upgrade of Ethereum blob space, just allowing blobs to just Packmore Punch. That has actually been pushed out into the second half of the Petra upgrade. So TBD on that is being pushed out into the future. As a result of that, Vitalik makes an appearance on the Core Dev call saying, since we are doing that, we should increase the quantitative amount of blobs today. I thought that there's actually a pretty useful clip from the Core Dev call. So we'll go ahead and play that right now. I think, I mean, the reason why we need to think about this is because, like, if you just look

Starting point is 00:43:55 realistically. To me, it's just clear that just scaling actual usage is just incredibly important. And if Ethereum does not offer this, then people will find it elsewhere and people are going to have insecure blockchain experiences that are just not on Ethereum. And I would even argue that like even a 33% blob increase is probably more valuable than like even three of the vector EIPs at this point. So if you just like look at the ratio of effort to value, just like the amount of actual value here is quite high in terms of increasing the amount of activity that can happen. That was interesting. He almost never appears at these core death calls and weighs in, right? And so this is

Starting point is 00:44:54 not unprecedented, but I haven't seen this in a while. And he's sort of making the case, David, that, like, if we don't do this, then users will turn to other communities that are less secure and less decentralized. So is this war mode, Vitalik? This is the first time I've seen Vitalik

Starting point is 00:45:10 actually been like, hey, let me, like, draw out some of the actual points that he's making. He wants to increase the blob target from three to four and the max blobs from six to eight. And he cites the fact, that currently blob space, blobs are 75% full, and making the case that if we reach 100% full,

Starting point is 00:45:30 then as a result of just being at capacity, blobs are going to get expensive, and layer 2s are going to choose to use different DA providers that aren't Ethereum, citing unstable blockchain experiences. And therefore, implying that Ethereum has a higher quality block space, which I think is pretty hard to argue that it doesn't. But also, he's like, it's like a market competition, perspective of those like if we don't do this we're going to lose market share of

Starting point is 00:45:56 roll-ups who use our DA and we want to we want to ensure that we have the best pricing of the best quality of it's like it's kind of war mode vital it's still it's still penetration pricing right for it to get all collect all the L2s and lock them in so some summary of the takes around the ecosystem Dancrad as well are and other base devs are in huge favor of this Jesse said that base is actually interested in consuming even more blob space. So he would approve any sort of just increasing of the blob space availability on the Ethereum layer one.

Starting point is 00:46:29 There's some pushback as well. But generally, I think people are leaning into supportive of this. What I think trade out here? It's just going to increase slightly to some degree the node requirements for validators and stakers. Not node requirements because that implies hardware. It's just bandwidth costs. And the bandwidth is like the big bottleneck for all Ethereum scaling in this

Starting point is 00:46:50 present moment. Yeah. I don't, I've never seen those measurements actually, like how much, how much bandwidth does it take to actually run a validator pre this and post this, you know? It's like, obviously you have to have high speed internet, but do you need, like, you don't need gigabit internet at this point. Well, I think the argument being made by many solo stakers is that solo-sacers live in places where, like, internet's not amazing. Um, and we want to be able to run Ethereum in like, you know, middle America. Like your 5G network should be able to run There's a lot of places in the world that have like OK internet. And we want to make sure that Ethereum can run in places with OK internet.

Starting point is 00:47:25 Yeah, I get it. It's an interesting debate that's going on. But Vitalik kind of leaning into the let's get competitive and let's go win this. Speaking of Jesse Pollock, he has been elevated, he has been promoted to the Coinbase exec team. So congratulations. He is now actually working on the Coinbase Wallet project as well as base. in addition to joining the Coinbase Exec Team.

Starting point is 00:47:46 The Coinbase Exec Team, I don't know if these are the only eight people, but there are eight headshots here from this Coinbase website, saying our executive team, starting with Brian Armstrong, of course, Emily Choi. And all of these are very professional, like, warmly tinted, pretty uniform headshots. And then when it gets to Jesse, it's his goddamn crypto punch. I love that, like, trad investors in Wall Street are going to see this, you know, and all the annual filings. They let him keep his crypto punk as his headshot.

Starting point is 00:48:13 That's just great. This is kind of cool. You know, Polymarket has an app too. So they recently released, I believe an iOS app might also be available on Android that allows you to just like look at all of the different election forecast that Polymark is putting together. Because Tridefi Media is recognizing Polymarket as a fantastic source of this type of information, prediction information. Of course, it's read only because actually participating in these markets like is illegal in the U.S., right? but it's number two on the download charts right now. And that's above...

Starting point is 00:48:49 Download charts of news. Download charts of news. And that's above the New York Times and CNN right now. Yeah, suck it. That's kind of cool. Shane Copland, the founder of Polymaric, calls this The Flippening, the News Edition. CZ tweeted out GM this last week. That's the news.

Starting point is 00:49:05 Why did he tweet out GM? Because it got released from prison. So, congrats to CZ for getting out and tweeting out. and tweeting out a GM that got almost 200,000, like 16 million views. I mean, I was wondering if you'd come out as a hero, if that's what, like, you know, how crypto would sort of view him. And certainly that seems to be the case. Yeah, definitely. Talk to me about North Korea, Ryan. Talk to you about North Korea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, so the relevant news about North Korea

Starting point is 00:49:34 was this article from Sam Kessler from Coinbase. And the title of it is, how North Korea infiltrated the crypto industry. And the subcaption is this, more than a dozen blockchain firms inadvertently hired undercover IT workers from rogue states, mostly from North Korea. So, David, over the last to four years or so, this is starting to come out, it seems like the crypto industry, 12 companies that have just reported this, I'm sure it's far more that have gone unreported. You know, organizations like sushi, like you're in finance, like Cosmos, like Phantom, like Injective, okay? These are some sort of crypto, D5-related projects. They all inadvertently hired North Korean agents, like accidentally.

Starting point is 00:50:18 So they post it. It works like this. You post a job post, right? Software developer, something. And what's kind of the open source way? You hire based on merit, right? Like, show me your GitHub, show me your, like, code. I don't care where you live. I don't care who you are. Can you ship code? Don't care your race. Don't care your gender. Yeah, big question is, can you ship? And so these North Koreans are showing up with fake identities. Let me show you an example. fake identity from from Texas okay this is like a driver's license from Texas and they are that would pass my they're even doing this with professional background testing so this is a um a North Korean agent which has a passport okay and they're getting into these companies and starting to ship code

Starting point is 00:51:01 and guess what why they're there David it's not to actually productively work these are agents North Korean agents working for the government and they're looking for ways to siphon funds put some, you know, malicious code in a protocol, find an opportunity to steal money in order to ship it back to North Korea and support North Korea's weapons programs and other things, okay? So, do you know... Dude, Korea is doing almost anything that they can think of. Do you know Zaki Manian? Zaki Mani, yeah.

Starting point is 00:51:29 From Cosmos, okay? It's like, we've known him for a long time. So apparently, Zaki inadvertently hired... He got a message from the FBI saying, there's some weird crypto transactions coming in your accounts. What's going on? He looked into it. And it turned out he had hired two North Korean employees at his like Cosmo Staking Infrastructure Company inadvertently.

Starting point is 00:51:48 And his comment was this. I talked to them for every day, every day for almost a year. They did the work. And I was, frankly, pretty pleased. Like, they were good employees for an entire year before they just... Imagine if it's your job to go get a job and be a good employee as somebody else. That's your job. Talk about playing the long game, man.

Starting point is 00:52:10 Like the long con here. And this was kind of eye-opening for me because, you know, further in the articles, someone made the statement that it's looking like almost 50% of job applications for crypto jobs at this point in time. Crypto developers, yeah. Crypto dev jobs might actually be North Korean agents, right? So what does this do to the trust fabric of everybody is hiring in crypto? There are North Korean listeners of this podcast right now.

Starting point is 00:52:37 That is terrifying. People are listening to this. There are people listening to this who are North Korean infiltrators of crypto company's jobs. And they're like, fuck, they might be on to me. Well, like, yeah, maybe in their interviews, they're, you know, dropping bankless episodes that they've listened to or something like this, right? It could be relevant. This is absolutely wild. And I think, obviously, if you're hiring in crypto, be on the lookout for this.

Starting point is 00:53:03 Be extra careful. You've got to implement the background checks. They showed him a Texas license. Yeah. And I think this is, this might be just scratching the. surface. My nightmare scenario is one of like a North Korean agent gets into kind of some core dev client code. You imagine that? Inject something? Like if you're the Ethereum Foundation, you're reading this, I hope you guys are doing some robust screening. Right. Every single,

Starting point is 00:53:29 uh, yeah, group that's working on a client because we have been a bit trusting in this industry. Again, the open source rule, you can ship code. You have merit. Well, some of these North Korean agents can do that. They're good employees, maybe, at first it seems. And also, another thing is, do you know, it's highly illegal to actually hire any North Korean workers. Inside of the bankless discord, inside of bankless ventures, Ryan, Sean Adams here dropped a comment where he goes, hey, FYI, we need to make sure our portfolio companies aren't hiring anyone from North Korea. Hiring someone from North Korea is legal. And I'm like, huh, you don't say. Well, but like, it's illegal and it's one of those things where,

Starting point is 00:54:10 if they decided to enforce it, I mean, it's like possible like jail time and like all sorts of bad things, David. All sorts of fines and stuff like this. They haven't enforced on these crypto companies. 17,000 ways to go to jail in this industry. Oh, I love this industry. Anyway, we're leveling up. Like no one else is front running all of the chaos of the 21st century like crypto. We're doing that for everyone else.

Starting point is 00:54:33 Yeah, that's what I was here to do. David, you are getting ready for your fight. Okay? We're on the eve. We are what, like seven days out? Eight days out, the time of recording. So we promised some alpha. You give some alpha.

Starting point is 00:54:48 This is you. Is this a real life picture of you? Yeah. So Josh, our podcast editor, just came over to like this one-on-one time I had with my coach. Because, you know, everyone was very hyped about Nick Carter's video when he did his video. So I was like, you know what? I want one. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:04 So you got a hype video coming up? Yeah, I got a hype video coming out. So stay tuned for that. And I saw this hype video. I think this is Kane Warwick type video. I was not very hyped by this. I don't know about you. This didn't do too much too for me.

Starting point is 00:55:15 Oh, yeah. I don't know what it does to me, but I guess it's impressive. He's getting that sound that you're hearing podcast listener. Is Kane getting slapped in the stomach by his trainer? It's not that hard. It's not that hard. That doesn't intimidate you? He did 10 sit-ups.

Starting point is 00:55:29 My coach does that to me. I don't film it. Here's what was so weird to me is like you guys just recorded a podcast, like the week before your fight. So he came over your house? It'll come out next week. An in-person podcast. All right. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:40 We actually just settled the fight with a thumb war, actually. So, like, we're good. No, what do you think? I mean, he's sitting probably on the couch behind you. He's probably sitting across from you. You're staring into the face of, you know, somebody that's, you're either going to beat down or he's going to beat you down. And, like, what do you think? Were you intimidated or do you feel like, I got this?

Starting point is 00:56:00 I think it would be a pretty good fight. I think it would be a pretty good fight. All right. Well, I mean, that's the alpha. Honestly, I just wanted to hear what you said about this. The Polly Market right now could be an opportunity, bankless listeners, because Polly Market is getting you at 70. Hoffman is deep value on the Polly Market. Deep value, according to David Hoffman.

Starting point is 00:56:17 Deep value. 32% odds. So this could be the buy of a lifetime. Yeah, well, it's 32% odds is the middle of the market. If you buy me, you're buying it 39%. Wait, how's that work? Because the market is kind of a liquid. So there's a spread.

Starting point is 00:56:31 There's a spread. Yeah, there's 10K on this right now. I mean, you could boost those numbers up. I think there could be a fantastic. It wouldn't take too much to move this market pretty far. Well, this is, I guess, final notice because permissionless is next week. This is the last warning to come to permissionless. I'm excited about it.

Starting point is 00:56:48 I can't wait to see everyone in person. It's going to be like content is going to be incredible. Who are some of the speakers? Like I'm talking to critics in the first day. I'm super excited about that. I had the pre-call last week. We've got a lot of things to say. He's got a lot of things to say.

Starting point is 00:57:02 It's going to be interesting. Me and Jill Gunter from Espresso are going up against Kyle, Amani and Max Resnick. Oh, wow. About whether or not Ethereum, layer 2s are Ethereum. I think that's going to be pretty high. Wow. And the great thing is, is that is just like four hours before my fight with Kane.

Starting point is 00:57:20 So I'm just going to be fucking checked. I'm going to be ready to go. Just adrenaline pumping? Yeah. That's great. All right. Who wants to fight? No, it's going to be a great event.

Starting point is 00:57:30 And a reminder, there's still, if you're a last minute person, you're like, I don't know if I can, it's in Salt Lake City. It starts on, what, Wednesday? Wednesday, Wednesday the 9th. Wednesday the 9th. Friday the 11th. Bankless party on Wednesday at 5 p.m. at a brewery, free drinks. I will not be drinking. Ryan might be drinking.

Starting point is 00:57:46 So if you are a bankless citizen going to permissionless, let's make sure you come to our party. And bankless listeners, you get a 10% discount off these tickets. So bankless 10 for your last minute ticket. If you are a bankless citizen, there's a 30% link in the show notes for you where you can get a major discount.

Starting point is 00:58:02 Guys, you know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. But we are headed well. next week. We're headed to Salt Lake. This is not for everybody. We're literally going west. Yeah, we are going to the frontier. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

Bankless - ROLLUP: World War Threat | North Korean Hackers | Vitalik Roadmap Updates | Visa Platform On Ethereum

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