Bankless - SotN#22: BONDING! w/ Collin Myers (ETH Internet Bond Market, Staking Returns, ETH Needed to Retire?)

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

For this particular State of the Nation, the video is very helpful. Especially when we discuss the calculator and staking returns: 📺 WATCH: https://youtu.be/FkxrTXCRUOo _________ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE ...TO NEWSLETTER: http://bankless.substack.com/ ✊ STARTING GUIDE BANKLESS: https://bit.ly/37Q17uI ❤️ JOIN PRIVATE DISCORD: https://bit.ly/2UVI10O 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ 👕 BUY BANKLESS TEE: https://merch.banklesshq.com/ ----- 📢 DEFI BUILDER? APPLY TO FILECOIN ACCELERATOR FOR $20K GRANT http://bankless.cc/filecoinapply ----- GO BANKLESS WITH THESE SPONSOR TOOLS:  ⭐️LEDGER - BEST HARDWARE WALLET TO SECURE YOUR CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/ledger-20 🚀ARGENT - GET THE MOST SIMPLE AND SECURE DEFI WALLET https://bankless.cc/argent 💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith 🤖YEARN - YIELD-SEEKING MONEY ROBOT THAT FARMS DEFI FOR YOU http://bankless.cc/yearn ------ SotN#22: BONDING! w/ @StakeETH (ETH Internet Bond Market, Staking Returns, ETH Needed to Retire?) The Internet Bond: https://bankless.substack.com/p/eth-the-internet-bond Whitepaper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-s15SvCIUBukhSZiNkpd0sTff3izQ5G/view Calculator: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LTv8c-9nfq225bV-esv-JXmb0K-nM_z6qbmVooTAUUo/edit?ts=5f730135#gid=13834492 Ryan's: 7 Lessons for Crypto Pioneers https://bankless.substack.com/p/7-lessons-for-crypto-pioneers-market Bankless Guide: How to Become a Validator https://bankless.substack.com/p/-guide-how-to-become-a-validator CodeFi, Collins project! https://activate.codefi.network/ ------ Don't stop at the video! Subscribe to the Bankless newsletter program http://bankless.substack.com/ Visit the official Bankless website for resources http://banklesshq.com/ Follow Bankless on Twitter https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ Follow Ryan on Twitter https://twitter.com/ryansadams Follow David on Twitter https://twitter.com/TrustlessState ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.   Disclosure. From time-to-time we may add links in this channel to products we use. We may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. We'll always disclose when this is the case.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:09 If you want to live a bankless life, you need to get a hardware wallet. There is no alternative for storing your crypto in a self-sovereign fashion. That's why I have four ledgers that I use to manage my different crypto assets using the Ledger Live account as well. Ledger Live is like your home base for managing your Ethereum, Defy, and crypto accounts. It does a really good job of aggregating all of your different Ethereum wallets if you are the type of person that uses more than one. but you can also add other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Cosmos or whatever your preferred blockchain is.
Starting point is 00:00:43 And then it will display an aggregate portfolio of all your accounts at the main page. One thing that Ledger is doing a really good job of is enabling all the money verbs that me and Ryan talk about with the Bankless SkillCube enabled in the Ledger Live app. So right now in the Ledger Live app, you can buy, sell, lend, swap, and stake your crypto assets, which is doing a really good job of fulfilling all of the money verbs in the Bankless SkillCube. Something that's new to Ledger Live is Ledger Swap, where you can swap assets one for another directly inside the Ledger Live application, ensuring trustlessness in your financial activity on Ethereum and on Bitcoin. If you want to learn more about what you can do with the ledger, go to the blog post The Power of Ledger Live on the Ledger website,
Starting point is 00:01:28 where they share some of the more advanced things that you can do with your ledger that you might not have known about. There's a link in the show notes that will take you to the Ledger Shop where you can get your preferred ledger. hardware wallets. I personally like the ledger NanoX, but I also have both. They're both great options. When you own a ledger, you own your own assets in the way that they have been designed to be held by the user and the user alone. So go get your ledger today to make sure that you are as self-sovereign as possible. The bankless state in the nations are brought to by WIREN. WIREN is DFI's first self-building community-run project, which I just get really, really excited about. Y-Earn is a system that seeks out yield in D-Fi, and it does that in a number of different ways.
Starting point is 00:02:12 A very aggressive way is with the vaults where you can deposit your preferred asset of choice, and different D-Fi experts will come in and generate a strategy for what to do with your deposited token, right? And so it'll go find ways to get yield in that deposited token in D-Fi. For those who want to just earn yield on their stable coins, the earn system is for you, where you can deposit your preferred stable coin, and Y-Earn will go and figure out which money market on D-Fy and D-Fy-I is producing the best interest rate, whether it's D-Y-D-X, it's compound or AVE.
Starting point is 00:02:46 It looks around D-Fi to see where the yield is coming from, and it direct stablecoins automatically so you don't have to. Check them out at y-earn.ffinance to get started, and also check out the stats page to see what other people are doing as well. Welcome, everyone, to the bankless nation. State of the nation, episode number 22, David and I are coming at you on YouTube live. We release these every Tuesday on YouTube. We also release them on the podcast on Wednesday. So you can check it out both ways. David, how are you doing today? I am just so excited about what's to come.
Starting point is 00:03:28 Now that the deposit contract is live, there are so many things to talk about that we've kept in our back pockets that we are now able to talk about, which we are going to start talking about them today in today's state of the nation. All right. Well, let's talk about what we're talking about then today. So we're talking about ETH as an internet bond and some folks from Consensus and Bison Trails put together a fantastic article and not just an article, some fantastic analytics around this that we're going to talk about today. We've got one of them coming on to talk about this with us. But this new paradigm of ETH as an internet bond, I think, is going to be super important for institutional investors to understand. So that's the first part of what we're talking about
Starting point is 00:04:10 today, right, David? Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, there's just so many layers to peel back. This is a first ever in crypto. This is a first ever in hard money. There's never been a bond market around hard money. And so, like, learning about what that is, I think it's going to be a really fun adventure. And I'm excited to learn about it with everyone in the nation. Awesome. So we've got an expert coming on to do that with us. We'll introduce him in just a moment. The other question we're going to answer probably in the second half of this is the question of how much you can really make staking. It's a question I'm sure is in your mind. And then maybe more immediately for David, how much Eath is it going to take for you to retire, my friend? Are we to answer that
Starting point is 00:04:54 question today? This is a question I've always been asking myself. Like every once in a while I pull out my calculator and go 32 times like two, 32 times four. Like if there's a, like 5% interest, you know, 8% interest. Like as somebody that, you know, got into the world of Ethereum, just like thinking about, like, okay, how many miners do I need to have versus how much? And then it moves into how much like stake validators do I need to have in order to sovereign, you know, dependable income. The cool thing.
Starting point is 00:05:21 You're all about that passive income. All about the passive income. Yeah. Like the whole cool thing about securing the Ethereum protocol is that like there's no bureaucracy, like trying to like figure out who need like do we get do we pay this guy like this month or maybe maybe we pay him next month like no there's no intermediary between you validating the ethereum blockchain and you being paid by the ethereum blockchain right so it's a dependable source of income and i don't know where else you can get that in the world which is why this is so valuable it's a non-sovereign hard
Starting point is 00:05:54 money productive asset that pays you in eth as dividends which is also a hard money in it of in and of itself. This is going to be exciting to you to dig into. And you're in luck, David, because we not only have the calculator that's going to help you figure that out. We've got the guy who designed the calculator that's going to help you figure that out. So, you know, let's figure out how much you need to retire, how much ETH you need to retire on with this whole new staking thing.
Starting point is 00:06:21 Yeah, let me know. All right. Lastly, if we have some time, we'll talk about some thoughts that I put out earlier this week, seven thoughts for crypto pioneers. So it's going to be a jam-packed episode. But before we get to the episode, talk about, introduce our guests. Let's talk about a few things that are new going on in the nation.
Starting point is 00:06:41 David, yesterday we put out this episode on the bankless podcast with Raul Paul. Our best episode ever? Yeah. I don't know. Some people are saying that. It's definitely our most downloaded episode ever in 24 hours. In 24 hours. Yeah, 24-hour download limit.
Starting point is 00:06:56 It broke the record on that. Well, what do you think? Was it our best episode? What do you think? Yeah, it was, I was one of our, one of our better ones. Maybe not our, maybe not our best, but like, people are really into the world of the, or the conversation of like, you know, Ryan, you and I are like, we are deep crypto native, right? Like, we live, breathe and die for, for Ethereum. Ro, Paul, he's not, like, he's not so, so like that. He's bullish on crypto for all the right reasons, but I wouldn't really consider him, like, a tribal member of, like, the crypto world, right? Like, he doesn't, he doesn't, he's not, doesn't bleed bank. It doesn't necessarily bleed bankless, right? He's not a crypto native.
Starting point is 00:07:34 He's just bullish on crypto. And so having two people, two parties that represent each side, I think is really important. And I think that's why that episode was so popular. It was super cool. It was bankless thesis meets macro thesis. And there's this interesting Venn diagram where the two things tied together. And we have some common investment narratives there. So check out that episode came out yesterday.
Starting point is 00:07:56 Should be on the podcast right now. We've also doing some cool things. We're bringing in Andrew Keyes tomorrow, who is at Dharma Capital. And he's going to help answer the question, are the institutions coming to Ethereum staking? He's also got a pretty cool announcement about getting some liquidity while you are staking, Heath and how that works. So that's going to be a Meet the Nation episode on YouTube only YouTube exclusive. And then next week, Michael Sondenshine is coming from Grayscale.
Starting point is 00:08:25 And this is funny because we recorded this episode, David, like two weeks ago with Michael. And at the time, I remember saying the intro, wow, Grayscale has seven billion assets under management. And like each week that went by since then, it's gone up by another billion. So now I think we get to, we get to title the episode like 10 billion in Grayscale, something like that and be pretty close to accurate on that. So it's been some amazing growth. That's going to be about the bridge to traditional finance, particularly with Grayscale. That's going to be a cool one, right? Yeah, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:08:59 And kind of in the same vein as like, you know, Grayscale represents like the macro world, right? It's kind of similar to Raul Paul. Like, Grayscale isn't like the Defi native, right? Like Grayscale can't go bankless. They are more or less like very, very bank friendly. But it's about the macro, like creating the world and creating the bridges to get into the world of crypto in the world of DeFi, the world of Ethereum. And, you know, something that I'm that I'm paying attention to is, you know, we saw, at least on
Starting point is 00:09:27 Defi Pulse, it took us like 18 months to get to a billion dollars locked in Defi. And then it took us like three months to get to three billion dollars in Defi. And then it took us like three more weeks to get to like 11 or 12 billion in D5. And I see that same acceleration happening in gray scale, but except that's with ether in gray scale. Right. And so I just want to know like how soon is that and how soon and how fast are those numbers going to really start ticking upwards. The growth is non-linear. It's something closer to logarithmic, which is really cool.
Starting point is 00:10:01 It's hard for humans to think that way. All right. Lastly, on the announcements list, before we get to the main event, we've got to mention the Filecoin accelerator. So, guys, Bankless is super important. Defi is super important. We also need decentralized storage in order to make these systems, these DeFi systems censorship resistant.
Starting point is 00:10:21 So there is a Filecoin accelerator. This is targeted at entrepreneurs and Defi. devs that is happening you've still got five days to register and apply for this but they're giving out a 20k grant they're also giving up to a million in follow-up funding there's a link in the show notes if you're a defy dev you've got an idea you want to use file coins distributed storage layer which we highly encourage you guys to check out and do there is a link where you can apply david is going to be a mentor as well so check that out david i want to get to the question i ask you at the start of every episode, my friend. What is the state of the nation this week? This one's so good.
Starting point is 00:11:01 The state of the nation is bonding. We are bonding, right? We are bonding our eth to the proof of stake phase zero chain. If you go to the Ethereum.org launch pad site, you can get your nodes up and run. Deposit your 32 ether and be part of the genesis of Ethereum by bonding your eth. But not only that, like many states of the nation, it doesn't mean just one thing. We are also bonding as a community, right? And so I'm working... Wow. Whoa, double meaning? Yeah, double meaning. Yeah, double meaning. So, and this is something that's baked into the core values of Ethereum. Consensus of the L1 is supposed to be done by many, many people, by everyone, by us, right? And it is a way to generate community. And we're in, we're in, Ryan, we have something going on in the background at
Starting point is 00:11:51 bank list that we're going to start pushing out. Like next week, I'm working on an article right now that kind of starts off with like how I started mining Ethereum and how that made me part of the Ethereum community and that is what and how I came to be in Ethereum, how I made my Ethereum friends and it started with mining at the consensus layer right and this is what we are doing with proof of stake we are enabling everyone to validate Ethereum and so we are bonding our ether and we are bonding as a community because that's what happens when you have decentralized consensus. So today's state of the nation is bonding. David, that was excellent. I did anticipate the double meaning. It's incredible. You brought that in there. Also, this would not be a digital nation without a propaganda department, of course. And so you are bringing some of that propaganda in that article next week. I'm just going to show two quick clips of this. This is some of the propaganda we have in store to encourage the Ethereum nation to start staking, secure the network, run a minority client. If you can't see this because you're listening to the podcast,
Starting point is 00:12:55 out YouTube. This is a wartime poster, folks. You got to check it out. Here's another one I'm going to show. We're going to release a whole bunch of these. They're fantastic. They're amazing. And I think should spread the meme of staking a little bit further. So that's going to be super exciting. All right. Bonding is our topic, friends. And so we want to bring on an expert in that topic. Want to introduce you guys to Colin Myers, who is the global strategy lead at Consensus codify, doing all sorts of things. in the staking department today, and also responsible for some of the fantastic ETH
Starting point is 00:13:32 as an internet bond white papers that you've seen and also the ETH calculator that we're gonna go into. Colin, how are you doing, sir? Welcome to the Bankless Nation. Hey, everyone. Happy, happy Tuesday, stoked, stoked to be on. And I like to think that the best is always yet to come. So maybe we can make this the most downloaded episode.
Starting point is 00:13:53 So, oh, wow. So stoked to be here with you guys today and thanks for having me on. Well, this is a super cool topic to do it. And Colin, we've been wanting to have you on for quite some time. Ever since you helped put out the first EF2 calculator, but we're always like waiting for staking. You know, it was like three months away, you know, like in three months, let's talk. But now it's here. So we're super excited to have you on.
Starting point is 00:14:20 You know, the first half of this, we really want to talk about the concept that. that you've been preaching here lately, the concept of ether when it's staked as an internet bond. We've said before that crypto is almost speed running through the history of development of money, right? So like we've gone from like hard monies like gold and now we're doing these early collateral-based lending markets and some of these things are new to defy. But like these things have happened through the course of financial history and through financial progress. And now we finally arrived at this super cool thing, which is an internet bond market. We have digital bonds now like ETH. But first, before we get into that, for people who aren't really familiar
Starting point is 00:15:09 with bonds, can we start with some foundations? So what is a bond market in the traditional finance world, Colin? What does that look like? Yeah. So, um, I think I agree with you guys, one, on kind of the speed at which things are moving. And I think now we're beginning to see new primitives with new functionalities and different things that actually will begin to create new financial products. And kind of what we've seen today is recreations. And now we're getting into that new financial product world. When most people think of bonds, it's mostly associated with debt. And a promissory note for someone to give funds to someone in return for some type of cash flow or some type of future promise.
Starting point is 00:16:01 When dealing with normal debt as well, there's probably one of the greatest risks that you have to deal with is credit risk. And also prepayment risk as well if you're on the bank side of the equation. It's also important to note that bond debt markets by debt. We're at a point today where, and that was kind of one of the purposes of the internet bond that Marr and I wanted to get across and at least advance the conversation around is beginning to develop macro indicators of network health once the world's largest blockchain finally switches to proof of stake, which will really, we believe, change the foundation of the risk return premium and an ecosystem of rewards that can be earned not only at the base layer by participating in consensus, but then all the other stream of rewards and risk technical and whatnot that you can take on top of that base layer for staking. And what we want to do is try to create common terminology, common understanding, draw conclusions from the world that we understand today, but then also at the same time let people know that these are hybrid instruments. These do not look like securities at all.
Starting point is 00:17:14 And they operate in a completely different world and the best way to, describe them are digital work agreements in the Web 3 era. So the goal of it is to bring it all together. We've seen a lot of different proof of stake networks launched in the past year and a half, all of which have different bonding terms or bonding flavors or bonding styles. But we've been preparing on our end for ETH2 now for a while, almost two years. And now it's time to get the idea out there. It's time to standardize valuation methodologies for internet bonds. It's time to standardize the way that we look at them. There's other things that need to be sorted as well. They're more advanced, which we highlight at the end of the paper, rating methodologies
Starting point is 00:18:01 and different things of the nature. But yeah, I'll stop there. Or I could just keep rambling for hours. Standardization and making sure everyone's on the same page about what these things are super important. But let's back up and talk about like bonds as an architecture in the first place. Like why do bonds exist? Like why who gets to issue bonds and why would they do that? Yeah. I mean bonds, bonds like let's say I'm a company or a government or or some some type of entity. I would utilize a bond to get resources to grow. So I would give up some of my, you know, future growth for short-term growth by, you know, borrowing money from someone.
Starting point is 00:18:52 We found that the contractor-licensed bond, which is a type of surety bond, is, you know, a bit different than what people think of, you know, bonds, which most people think of corporate or sovereign debt. So what we've learned through the surety bond and through examining what happens at the base layer of the Ethereum network is that, you know, the definition of a bond should be broadly expanded and it should be generalized as a financial agreement between two or more parties. You need two parties to set up the agreement and you can have more than one party involved in this agreement.
Starting point is 00:19:29 But it's a work agreement for compensation is probably the best way to think about a bond. With a surety bond, you are putting capital on the line. You're also putting reputation on the line. And that is also similar to what you're doing as a validator. You know, you're there and you're there to prove your reputation. You are rewarded based on your future reputation. And you're setting up an agreement between three parties, but the network acts as two of the three parties, which is quite, quite interesting. As it guarantees your cash flow streams are received because it comes from a pool of tokens, which can be minted as the network.
Starting point is 00:20:12 grows. Right, right, right. So why are bond markets so big? Like, it's one of the biggest, if not, maybe it's the biggest market in the world. And I was doing some research before this, before this dream. And I learned that like there's 20 trillion dollars in United States government treasuries. Like, that's a really big number. Why is this number so big? Why do people like bonds as an asset? Yeah. I mean, this is a deep question. But essentially, I mean, our, our entire global economic scale is based on our credits of them prior to working on Wall Street for six years. And I spent all my time in the corporate debt markets. And this is a frequency of the deals that go on and just the sheer number of what takes
Starting point is 00:21:02 place and how that system works. But it's a much larger, larger structural design consideration for global growth, which today is fueled on credit cycles, which is fueled on so many levers that monetary policy can pull and utilize. And one of the main ones is playing with interest rates as a result of being a. So, you know, debt's a good thing. I think that debt can be a bad thing. But if you use debt correctly, it's how we've experienced most of our human growth over time. I mean, debt's existed since the beginning of recorded history, if you will, from what we know today. So it all comes down to debt. And debt is what people use to grow things.
Starting point is 00:21:57 And it's the way that the global economy is structured today. Hey, Colin, do you know off the top of your head how large the bond market is in general, like sovereign bond market and then plus corporate bond? Just curious. Yeah, I would say sovereign bond market, there is public data for that. Corporate bond markets, there's not a whole lot of data, honestly, unless you're digging through a Bloomberg. But I mean, it's in the multiples of trillions, you know, it's huge. Yeah. So what I think is really interesting from sort of you're describing ether just at a high level for folks, just at a high level.
Starting point is 00:22:32 So ether, once it's staked, is like a bond. And you're describing it has elements of a sure. because you're actually, as a sticker, you're actually having to provide some labor. It's not just you just park the money. There is a labor component in terms of responsibilities of running a validator. So there's that surety bond component as well. David and I also love to talk about how Ethereum is almost like a nation in some ways. And how if you think of ETH as a money, as a value asset as well, it's to become a bit more like
Starting point is 00:23:09 a sovereign bond in some ways, except it's not governed by a central bank or a sovereign nation state. It's a decentralized bond. So it's almost like a non-sovereign bond. It's almost like a decentralized T bill. And I always find it funny that crypto often talks about benchmarks. It's like, what's going to be the total aggregate size of crypto, right? And people are like, Bitcoin, right? Okay. Gold is $8 trillion in outstanding like value. the world. So what if Bitcoin got to $8 trillion or surpassed gold or 50% of the market share? That's often the benchmark here. Well, what if ETH takes 50% of the sovereign bond market market share? Right? Like, then you're in the tens of trillions of dollars. I'm not saying that that happens
Starting point is 00:23:59 overnight, but like introduce that concept into your brain because we have just created something pretty unique, which is a non-sovereign bond that has elements of surety bond, but is also completely decentralized, backed by a decentralized economy, similar to a nation state. That's where I think things get really interesting. And by the way, ETH as a limited supply, hard money, that becomes very interesting as well. So like, I'm just like, okay, $9 trillion, that's cool. I mean, but like, sorry, Bitcoiners, you guys shooting a little low because we've got like 40 trillion in sovereign bonds. And maybe a portion of that market size is the market we should be going for here.
Starting point is 00:24:48 I just want folks to see that framing of the world. Again, this is not going to happen overnight, folks. Like, Ethereum has to grow a nation state-sized economy before that is possible. But I just want you to see that this is sort of the financial instrument that's just been unleashed. I just wanted to say that, Colin, mostly. No, we're aligned on the meta-ness of it, right? Yeah. Something that I've been waiting for ETH2 to launch now for two years,
Starting point is 00:25:16 and I've been spending pretty much all those two years on the economics, right? And then as the more of the meta thing, like what, there will be a reward rate that will come out of the network, right? So once this thing goes live and it gets bootstrapped and we surpass phase zero, we get to Genesis, and then we move through the life of ETH II, There will be some consistent reward rate that is public for all people to observe. And that reward rate will become something extremely meta. Exactly what, who knows?
Starting point is 00:25:47 It will be the risk-free rate of a new decentralized financial economy. And it will be the benchmark of, you know, what is the cost of creating trustless transactions? or what is the cost of just providing trustless infrastructure as a public good? There will be some type of benchmark, like a risk-free rate, which will come off of the Ethereum network. And I do believe that once that gets put in place, we will see a lot of different things change within our current stack of risk-reward and scales that we see on top of Ethereum today. There's all these staking mechanisms, right, that are built.
Starting point is 00:26:31 everywhere with their different reward structures and the different things. But the thing they're built on doesn't have a proper reward structure that has similar barriers to entry that the things built on top of it do. So now when you got the lower layer, you redo it, you create a reference rate. And then the reference rates that you are getting on top of that layer will have to fundamentally change somehow or be anchored to it in some way. So I think it's one of the final loops for us in defy to bring a holistically connected system together as we will have a reference rate of sorts. Totally agree. Taking risk in a certain ecosystem, what am I rewarded for for taking risk?
Starting point is 00:27:13 And then there will be a series of rewards put on top of it. So I don't think we know exactly what it'll look like, but we do know that that reward rate will be an anchor to a much larger financial ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, what we're talking about is if could, ETH staking yield could become the risk free rate for DFI, basically, in this entire decentralized economy, similar to the way the T-Bill, as you're saying earlier,
Starting point is 00:27:36 is kind of the risk-free rate for traditional finance. Super cool to think about that. So the current macro environment kind of changes up what, in my mind, what the risk-free rate is, right? And Andrea Santinopoulos, I think, made this claim in one of his Internet of Money speeches way back when where, you know, Bitcoin changed, the game on like what immutability is like whatever immutability was before bitcoin like bitcoin just added a new end of the spectrum for something that's much more immutable and i think that's coming
Starting point is 00:28:07 as well for whatever we call the risk-free rate in traditional finance because and especially during times of covid and money printer go burr like one of the reasons why there's a risk-free rate is because the entity behind the assets that are guaranteeing the returns can print money to pay you back on your bond, right? And so like, yeah, there's a risk-free rate, but you're also inflating the currency. And there's, and Ryan, you talked about like compare how Bitcoiners compare Bitcoin to gold and using gold as a benchmark. But if I were to put my Bitcoin or hat on, I would say like, you know, gold is like the minimum. We are going for a gold 2.0. That's an evolution on gold. It should be orders of magnitude more than gold. And I think we can say
Starting point is 00:28:53 that same thing with ether and the bond market. Like, yes, we are reconstructing the bond market. We can use the bond market as a benchmark, but we are able to provide much stronger assurances about the bond market of ether because we have some things baked into the Ethereum protocol that prevent an overly irresponsible, like issuance of ether, right? Minimum viable issuance. So what happens when we get a bond market that also has an entity that, is restricted in issuing the the currency itself. That's something that's really interesting to me. Yeah, I mean, the issuance of ETH II, right?
Starting point is 00:29:36 And that's some of the stuff that we baked into the model for the internet bond. Like in the earlier days of ETH two before we get to phase 1.5, which for everyone is where the ETH one chain is folded into a shard on ETH2. And that's when Ethereum will officially move from proof of work, the proof of stake. there's going to be ongoing issuance going on on the ETH1 chain. So we'll have kind of like rewards split between two things. Right now, I believe the annual, like the average annual issuance for Ethereum is around 5%. Whereas once we get into the mature ETH2 world, we're looking at 1% or under. And it's a very, its emission is based on its participation.
Starting point is 00:30:25 which is quite interesting, which then ties to its economics, which are designed in a way that they're capacity-based, essentially. So if there is more ether needed to be staked in the network, then it will over-incentivize for that. If we're, have too much security, or there's too many people involved, then the rate of reward will drop and it'll reach its equilibrium state. So it's, ETH2 is really meant to be this, this fluid moving dynamic system and it's, and it doesn't have a fixed supply. And I personally think that that's probably one of the greatest things about its design, especially being a smart contract platform, whereas how can you expect to have a fixed supply
Starting point is 00:31:10 when you don't actually understand how large it could actually get? And by having a dynamic cap on the supply, it's how it's a, be designed, I guess, is the way that I've looked at it. So when it comes to issuance and how that transitions over to ETH2 and how it compares to Bitcoin, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on there. And there are a lot of people who will argue that not having a supply cap is a bad thing. But to be honest with you, ETH2 is probably one of the most complex things that I've ever tried to dissect. And there's still loads that I need to learn after doing it for two years.
Starting point is 00:31:49 But one thing I can say is that not having a supply cap and tying the economics to its issuance and usage is a very interesting thing that I can't wait to see play out. Yeah, absolutely. Colin, can you, in order to really figure out what this thing is, can you maybe compare and contrast like a traditional bond market or bond issuance to like what we are seeing coming on Ethereum 2.0? Like, how are they alike? How are they different? Yeah. So I think I'll focus on one point, which is really, really interesting, and that has to do with maturity. So, and that's also one of the unique properties of an ETH2 internet bond and how it works, you know, beyond the earlier phases, which which has some restrictions, which are outlined in the paper,
Starting point is 00:32:35 and then we can also discuss them as well. But there's this perpetual nature of participating inside of this, you know, this global plumbing layer, if you will. When purchasing bonds or participating in traditional bond markets, their valuation, their yield, how they're sold, and many things are anchored to a maturity date. Yield to maturity, different types of calculations like this. There's a fixed parameter inside of that. One of them is being what is the maturity of this. And the other one is what is the par value? So then you have instruments that are kind of free-floating anchoring to these two items.
Starting point is 00:33:16 When it comes to a perpetual ETH2 internet bond, the big difference there is that there is no maturity date. You are free to come in and come out of it whenever it is that you would like. And par value has no barriers as to where it can go up and down. An ETHU internet bond par value is 32 times the market price of whatever Ethereum is currently at. and your maturity is there is no maturity. So when you look at who issues perpetual bonds, they are only usually sovereign nations, essentially. And when those sovereign nations historically have issued perpetual bonds,
Starting point is 00:34:00 they have a fixed rate of interest, whereas Ethereum is dynamic. And there is a call option that as the holder, you don't have any right around it, which means that that authority or that central body that issued that perpetual bond that guaranteed you this interest rate into perpetuity has the right to pay you back whenever they want. So that means that you could lose rewards inside of that structure, which is, again, how E2 is different, but it's fairly similar.
Starting point is 00:34:31 So just to highlight that. Two of the major differences here are that internet bonds are designed, or at least in the Ethereum sense are designed to be perpetual. You can come in, you can come out whenever you want, and you are not subject to those rewards ever ending because the protocol wants to, you know, take some money off the table, if you will. Now, Colin, one caveat to that is during this initial phase zero, you can't come out whenever you want, right? And I think you guys highlight that in your paper how at first it has a little bit of a different structure because during the, phase zero, basically you don't have the ability to exit from the bond. Can you talk about that for a
Starting point is 00:35:15 minute? Yeah, yeah, of course. So what we focused on in the paper, so I guess kind of long, long story short, is that we built this perpetual valuation model and spent time looking at ETH II's internet bond from a perpetual perspective, but we were looking too far into the future. So then we wrote the first draft of internet bond, we backed up into, okay, what's going on in the earlier phases of ETH II because there are some fungible properties and technical restrictions that result in this perpetual bond actually looking like a deferred rate coupon instrument based on its different properties. So in the paper, we decided to nail down deeper into phase zero to phase 1.5 instead of doing
Starting point is 00:36:01 phase 1.5 and beyond, right? Because that's the majority of how an ETH internet bond will be valued and the way that it'll trade is 1.5 and beyond. Whereas, you know, zero to 1.5 is this 18 to 24 month time period, again, maturity unknown, but its properties are very different. So in the earlier days, the way that the process works today is I want to be a validator on EF2. I head over to the E2 launch pad. I generate my keys. I deposit my 32Eth. I get my documentation and everything to spin up the client of my choice and also my ETH one node of choice. And once I enter that system, and I make that deposit, I make a one-way deposit to the ETH-1 chain, which again is in the ETH-1 chain until the ETH-1 chain is folded into the ETH-2 chain into a shard on ETH-2, which is phase 1.5.
Starting point is 00:36:52 So I send a one-way transaction, which is effectively a burn if the system doesn't work out. And inside of that, I accrue rewards, but I can't do anything with them. right? So I'm still earning rewards and I own these rewards. You know, the sovereignty of the rewards belongs to me as the validator who deposited, but I don't have any liquidity on them and I can't really do do much with it aside from watch at a crew. So during this, you know, this time period, the properties are very, very interesting. There's lots of different types of risks that exist at the beginning and exist through its lifetime, but lessen. And then there are some risks that completely fall away.
Starting point is 00:37:36 One of the major risks is not having liquidity on my base assets, which is my principle, which doesn't exist in the bond market. Pretty much all bonds have some degree of liquidity. They may be highly illiquid, but I still have the technical ability to trade it to someone or sell it if I'm uncomfortable with the situation. So what we have come up with for the earlier phases of phase zero to 1.5 is that an an ETH2 internet bond should be valued and probably will be valued like a discounted instrument, where from its initial conception to its change in its fungibility properties,
Starting point is 00:38:14 it will continually move towards its par value. That's this graph that we're looking at here, Colin. I think this is from my white paper, right? The bottom line here in red is the market value. That's what you're talking about, the discounted value that it would trade at, whereas this top line is the face value. And what you're seeing, I think, the sort of the axis at the bottom is basically months over time and the transition from phase zero all the way to this phase 1.5 and beyond
Starting point is 00:38:46 and how all of the market value and the face value and the present value all converge ultimately. Yes, I mean, in theory, which is what we expect. I think it's important to note that in a fully mature ETH too, like these internet bonds, which are, you know, chunks of 32-staked ETH, these could trade a discount. These could trade at a premium. I suspect a world where there's a long queue for people waiting to become a validator. In which point you may, there was a point on Madaja where people had to wait two and a half, nearly three weeks to actually enter the network and get a chance to earn rewards. So there's there's a situation. environment where over time it will definitely be a par value and how do you assign that par value? And then as its properties change and the network changes, it will trade at a premium or it'll trade at a discount. In the earlier days, we suspect it to trade at a discount for two reasons. One of them being just the natural time value of money and the fact that the rewards that you earn you can't have today. And there's some other economic benefit that you could be doing with
Starting point is 00:39:56 those money. So that's a fairly basic. present value, you know, evaluation. And then the other market rate is we applied manual discount rates for illiquidity and a few other things as they would change over time. So one thing I think that's worth noting is that in our analysis, we had to use a maturity of 24 months. It was difficult for us to derive a valuation of an E2 internet bond without creating some type of fixed variable. And in ours, it was basically laying it out over a 24-month time period from phase zero to phase 1.5. 12 months from phase zero to phase 1, 12 months from phase 1 to phase 1.5, which is definitely on the conservative
Starting point is 00:40:42 timeframe. Yeah, agreed. I mean, we talked to Danny Ryan, it's possible some of this could ship in, you know, 2021, at least phase zero, and who knows about 1.5. But yeah, so one last question. We're going to get to the second part of this to help David answer his question. Just a minute. But one last question, just to tie this off, right? So, Golan, you guys write this fantastic internet bond white paper that sort of models out how ETH is similar to traditional bonds. What does this do for the typical institutional investor who's familiar with the traditional bond world?
Starting point is 00:41:19 Does it help them understand it? Does it make them more warm to the asset class? What do you expect from this? Yeah, I suspect, well, first and foremost, those that are on the regulatory bodies and the institutional people, like, they definitely have gotten more up to speed on what Ethereum is in the past 12 months, which I think is like super, super great. So the only network that they have the chance to understand what proof of stake is, if you give them a tezo, if you give them a cosmos or if you give them any other chains and say, hey, take a look at this. It's most likely going to be more confusing for them to understand what proof of stake is. So now I think that a proof of stake is finally a reality inside of ETH2.
Starting point is 00:42:08 They understand Ethereum. They're comfortable with Ethereum. They see the value. They see the things being built on it. They're more knowledgeable about it. Now they take a look at, okay, so I have all this ether, what can I actually do with it? Or I'm interested in purchasing ether. what can I do with it? Because it is a utility token. So what type of utility does this token have?
Starting point is 00:42:29 And today for the first time, that that token has its own utility within its own ecosystem, which it was historically to pay for gas fees, but now it is the main asset used to achieve consensus, which is a self-reinforcing cycle of value. So I do believe that now people are ready to understand staking. And I believe that staking is easy for them to understand, but they need to look at staking through a lens of a network that they trust. And finally, now it's time for Ethereum to be that network that, you know, staking is here and people understand Ethereum. So I see this really cool mashup of getting these more people involved. I can tell you, just I just spent a lot of time on EFT research that the illiquidity part of the two is,
Starting point is 00:43:13 is an institution. There's absolutely no doubt about that. But I also know that there are custodial working on solutions help the institutions get involved. I don't think there's any, there's not much left selling on what is blockchain that they need to see.
Starting point is 00:43:34 They just need to have mandates in place, one of them being liquidity. If you're locked into an asset that's no good and you have LPs, like you're going to need to get out and in an E2 to 1.5 setting, that's not a property that
Starting point is 00:43:50 that they're used to experiencing it's so cool i mean some people will think about liquidity as well that blocks the institutions but at the same time i'm like well you know it's good for the decentralized of the network uh decentralization of the network that this is a bit more hobbyist and institutional blocked uh from from the get go and you're right it to come after i fill my bags exactly after david retires on his passive income which we'll talk about in a minute but so but like i think what you're saying here is this is what's so cool about this is if you guys zoom out are listening to what we're saying about this internet bond thing. Five years ago, institutional investors did not understand Bitcoin, right? They didn't understand it. And over the last
Starting point is 00:44:27 five years, we've seen the education of Raoul Paul, Paul, Tura Jones, Stanley Druckin-Miller, right? Like, these people are now like, oh, I see store of value. It's like digital gold. That happened over the past five years. Five years ago, when I entered this space, that wasn't the case. They didn't understand this. They thought it was criminal drug money. I think that happened over the last two years. I think it was even even shorter than that. So what I think will happen over the next, I'll be conservative and say five years, is that institutions will start to understand internet bonds as a financial instrument, the way they understand Bitcoin as digital gold.
Starting point is 00:45:03 And next thing you know, Paul Tudor Jones will talk about the staked Eth he's just invested in or started validating. And I think that is the next chapter here that you have helped unlock Colin. So thanks a lot. Do you have some time to stick with us so we can help David retire on his passive ETH income? Yeah, of course. I'd like to know what these numbers are like too, so I can set some more personal benchmarks. Right. We're going to do that in just a second.
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Starting point is 00:48:43 We are back with Colin Myers and David, of course, and he's going to help us answer a very important question. Of course, we talk about on bankless. What is bankless about? It's about freedom, financial freedom, freedom from banks. And David has the question, probably the same question that many of you have, which is how much ETH is actually required in staking to earn a decent passive income. off of this stuff, an income source that is denominated in self-sovereign, bankless money,
Starting point is 00:49:15 eth-nath source. David, I think that's the reason you started to get into this space. Is that correct? That's always been the dream. Absolutely. And this is something that really gets me excited about Ethereum 2.0 is because we're about to do this all over again. Like, I got into Ethereum because I started mining on my gaming computer, finding out like I can make $5 a day on my GPU. And then I scaled that up until like 20, 94 GPUs like spread in different corners of my dad's house. But then like in the bear market, the bear market came and then, you know, A6 kind of dominated the Ethereum landscape. And so I see this migration to proof of stake as a resurgence of
Starting point is 00:49:54 some of the original core values that brought people into Ethereum in the first place. The ability to mine ether and get ether dividends in your home is really powerful. And like we are going back to that world with proof of stake. that's always been the point of proof of stake is getting money paid to you at home in a self-sovereign way. And so I want to know, like, how much ether do I need a stake so I can like have a comfortable retirement? All right. Well, let's find it out. It's been my question for three years. You know what? Colin Myers designed, we've got him on right now. He designed the perfect calculator for you then. We're going to go through it. And I don't think David is the only one, by the way. I've talked to a lot of
Starting point is 00:50:31 Heath holders. Definitely not. Through the bear market. And part of the reason they kept the faith and kept holding is like, why. I'm waiting for proof of stake. I'm waiting for this to be a semi-passive income source for me in the future. I believe in Ethereum. I believe that this is possible. So David is not the only one. And if you are watching, you are listening, I bet you have some interest in this too. So I am pulling up the ETH2 calculator designed by Colin, Mara, some other folks and the team at consensus and partially Bison Trails. This will be linked in the show notes. There's also a guide that we will link. It's already linked. There's a guide we will link in the show notes too that we design that will help you through it. It has some variables we're going to go through
Starting point is 00:51:13 and help answer David's question today. So we've got first this whole category under the ETH two calculator. Let's start here. The current cost to become an ETH two validator is $14,293. That is the cost of essentially 32 ETH, owning 32 ETH. Is that correct, Colin? Yeah, that's your raw cost, if you will. That's your asset acquisition cost. So that's your capital outweigh. That's almost the equivalent, David, to your GPUs, basically. You've got to buy the GPUs. You got to buy the A6. That's what the A6 are in this new model. We have to get a certain amount of validators and stake on board to launch the chain. I'm assuming we get that. I still have full faith, especially after our ETH war effort next week, David.
Starting point is 00:52:01 We're going to hit those numbers. Not going to be a problem. Let's talk about some of the variables here. So one variable, Colin, is the ETH price, of course, right? So this calculator auto feeds into the ETH price. Another variable that you could adjust up or down is the total amount of ETH at stake. So this model right now, the default assumes about a million. But is it correct, Colin, if I adjust that amount up to say $2 million or $3 million or $5 million, that indicates more ETH of the $1 million.
Starting point is 00:52:33 total stake that the rewards will go down for David. Is that correct? Yes, yes, correct. So it's, we're going to start off earning rewards at 524,288. That is the Genesis threshold. And then as more validators get added, you will see between phase zero and phase 1.5 when there is no liquidity. You'll see a you know, you'll see a unidirectional decreasing reward structure where an earlier E-P. you'll receive the highest and then as more state gets added to the network, you will receive less. We'll keep it at a million for now. That will probably go up in other phases over time. It's hard to know. Eat's circulating supply. That feels fairly certain. I think the assumption of all of the
Starting point is 00:53:19 other validators on 95% of the time feels pretty safe. So let's get to the validator specific. So David, do you already have an internet router, my friend? Can I say yes to this question? I have an internet router, yes. That's how we are doing this dream. Okay, good to know. Good to know we're not using your cell connection. All right, so infrastructure, what kind of node are you going to run? So you have kind of two options here, right?
Starting point is 00:53:46 So you could either run your own hardware. Hardware. Or you could run in the cloud. No, hardware. Hardware. Staking at home. All right. So you want actual physical hardware inside of your residence, where you live.
Starting point is 00:53:59 And what are we doing for infrastructure choice? I'll give you two here. That's what the calculator says. You go the bare minimum requirements or you do recommended. All right. So here is, I think, let's see, the minimum requirements are something like this. 4 gigs RAM, 20 gig storage, SSD. I definitely got that. Yeah. Okay. So for people who are looking at this, like I'm going to be staking on a 2018 MacBook Pro. And that is. more than enough. I think I have an I-7 in it and an Intel I-7 chip. Maybe that's a little bit higher than average, but an I-5 is going to be just fine. Okay. So you've got the recommended requirements. You're above minimum requirements. And then Colin, what's interesting is David just answered the question, like he has a internet, he has a router, he has broadband. That's all you need. Broadband. You don't need some super like fast fiber connection, like your Comcast connection
Starting point is 00:54:56 if you're in the U.S. works. Is that right? All right. Cool. All right. So, David, how many validators are you going to run? Maybe we'll say like base case here first, and then we'll work towards your dream retirement passive income. Yeah, I'm going to only put in 32. I'm going to put one validator through in phase zero. And then I'll get the rest of my ether over, you know, all 332,000 of them over, you know, later, you know.
Starting point is 00:55:22 Okay. So this is you at first. You're being conservative. So like you're not ready to start retiring on this passive income. But we'll set this to one, one validator. So that means you're putting 32 Eth in. And again, 32 Eth is about 14K in capital. So not insignificant guys, right?
Starting point is 00:55:39 And again, we put out a meet the nation video about Rocket Pool. If you have less than 32E, there are other ways to stake. And there will be other ways to stake. But David's running his own validator. Uptime, 95% it's set at. I'm better than that. 98%. Give me 98%.
Starting point is 00:55:55 I'll just give you a flavor. Here's an SL like a calculator, uptime calculator. So 95% means you could be down up to 18 days a year. Right? That's 95%. So what did you say? 99%. 98.
Starting point is 00:56:09 98. I'm a good boy. All right. That still gives you, even as a good boy, like that gives you the ability to be down seven days a year. Right. So when I move apartments, I can close my laptop, carry it from one apartment to another set up Comcast. And that's my like five to seven day break.
Starting point is 00:56:27 Then that's okay. Exactly. Exactly. That's reasonable. As long as Comcast is now for like two weeks or like some sort of disaster hit. So I'm going to set you at 98%. Cost of computer hardware. I think that's already been put in. Useful life. Everything else is put in. So I think, Colin, am I looking at the right place? This is David's annual profit with these variables in place. So that's an annual profit if you can't see this of $1,777 at a net validator issuance. So he is making, annual returns of 12.43% on his 32Eth. So on his 14K, denomated U.S. dollars, he's making a 12.43% return. This is after the cost of hardware and internet. Am I reading that correctly, Colin? Yes, that's correct. And for specificity purposes, that means that that epoch that he participates in with the network state at 1 million eath stake. on an annualized basis, he would earn 12.43%.
Starting point is 00:57:34 Very cool. So that's an annualized number, and it's based on the snapshot of the state of the network at a million east state, which over the course of the year will change. You know, it'll only increase. So his actual annualized reward will be less than what the metric is that you see here today,
Starting point is 00:57:54 as it's annualized at a snapshot point in time. Got it. So as the stake increases, that could go down a little bit and that would be annualized up to that amount. So, David, I guess one question. So if you were to park your funds in, say, the equivalent sovereign bond market, like, what would you do on a T bill? Right. Like, do you know T bill rates off the top of your head? T bill rates, especially right now, I'm pretty sure, are like one to three percent, maybe more.
Starting point is 00:58:21 Maybe that sounds about right to me. Right. Yeah. And specifically one to three percent on the U.S. dollar, which is not a hard money. Which is not a hard money. It's between 1 to 3% and dropping. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw zero.
Starting point is 00:58:35 Some people talk about with the central bank digital currency, negative. And then in the background, the Fed is inflating your money, inflating the money supply. Right. So this is a totally different paradigm here. It's a different source. But there are risks here, of course. So let's talk about other places you could put your ETH. Is there anywhere in defy that you can get this kind of return at the moment that you're aware of?
Starting point is 00:59:02 In Wyn, you can submit your ether into a Y-Eath vault, and then it will draw die from Maker Dow and use that die to get a yield. And that is earning something like 4 to 6%, but that also has some risks involved because if your ether drops, you actually might end up having to sell your ether because you are taking out leverage to get that done. And so while that is 4 to 6%, that is not a risk-free 4-6%, that is a risk on 4-6%, which is a very important difference. And it also has other like defy risk. You're trusting die, you're trusting wire and you're trusting maker smart contracts.
Starting point is 00:59:43 Whereas this, and guys, when we say risk-free rate, somebody chewed me out on Twitter one time, somebody in D-5 because I said, like, ETH stake will be risk-free rate. And he's like, it's not risk-free. There's tons of risk. I'm like, yeah, I know there's risk. but it's protocol risk. It's the base layer risk. That's what you're incurring here, but you're not taking all of the other layers on top, right?
Starting point is 01:00:04 Importantly, in Ethereum staking, there is no counterparty risk, right? You are not loaning out your money. There's no one receiving it. The thing that is receiving your ether is Ethereum, which we can all trust. Otherwise, it wouldn't work. Okay. All right.
Starting point is 01:00:19 So you're putting that in. But like you're getting $1,777, which is a, which is a good start, right, for some passive income for you. But that's probably not going to be enough to retire on, right? On retirement, that's a pretty slim retirement. All right. So let's talk about some of your dreams, David. So we've got a few variables that we can adjust here. All right, just for fun. One variable, of course, is you could put more ETH into this thing. You could go buy more ETH and go risk it in this risk-free rate of ETH2 protocol risking. So you have that option, my friend.
Starting point is 01:00:56 Another option that we might see, and, you know, despite what people might think, Dave and I do not control the price of eth at ebbs and flows on its own. But if the price of ETH goes up, what's that going to do to your return? Well, in U.S. dollar value, it's going to pump that number up, absolutely. In U.S. dollar value, interesting, but not in ETH denominated. Your ether denominated returns will stay the same independent of the dollar price. But if the dollar value of ether goes up, then the dollar value of your ether dividends
Starting point is 01:01:28 also goes up. Okay. So let's say that what numbers do you want to adjust then, David? Let's let you play the scenario out. So we could adjust ETH price. We could adjust how much ETH you want to put in. What's kind of reasonable for your retirement passive income dreams? Yeah. So Chris Berniske, who is a person I trust tweeted out recently about his projected returns based off of Bitcoin, Ether, and D5 mid to small caps. And he estimated that Ether at the end of this cycle is going to do a 10x, where he thinks Bitcoin is going to do a 5x, Ether is going to do a 10x, and then D5 midcaps are going to do a 20 to 50x. So let's go with what Chris said. And so that would be put Ether at roughly $4,500 at a stable end of cycle price. Wow, $4,500. And when he was saying cycle, any idea what the
Starting point is 01:02:20 timeline was he was talking about? I don't think he gave a timeline. No. Okay. So he's saying probably in the next three to five years, two to five years. Yeah, two to five. Yeah. So we are jacking. We're 10xing the heath price right now, which is not crazy for a gold market cycle. Okay. And then are we keeping your, you just run in one validator with 32 eighth? Yeah, let's, let's keep one validator for now. And then we'll see what number that gives. And then we will go and change that number after I see with the number that it gives. All right, Collins magic calculator did all of the calculations for us. But I think we have to tweak one more number, because I think if we are assuming that ether price is going to be $4,500, I think there's probably going to be more ether of being staked. I feel like that's a likely outcome. So let's go from $1 million to, let's go to $4 million. $4 million, eat staked. $4 million, eat staked will keep the other variables the same.
Starting point is 01:03:11 Of course, eth circulating supply is going to be up a little bit too. But maybe we ignore that for now. Yeah, that's a unknown quantity. All right. adjust? No, I think that's right. All right. So your annual profit right now, you're doing 10K a year. So you went from, you just basically 10xed your annual profit. No, no. It was at $1,700 and now we're Oh, yes. 10,000. Exactly. So less than 10x because the issuance, your net issuance annualized went down from what, 12 to 7? Yep. Right. And so we previously, when there was only one million
Starting point is 01:03:45 ether stakes, we were receiving a 12% issuance rate, a 12% interest rate on our eth. And, And since we bumped that 1 million total eat steak up to 4 million, it went down to 7.4%. Okay. Is that going to be enough to retire on my friend 10K a year? We're getting closer, but still like 10K. Like I have a pretty bougie diet. I eat a lot of steak. So I think we're going to have to add some more validators, Ryan.
Starting point is 01:04:11 All right. So what do you want to do? Well, okay. So if I'm making $10,000 a year on one 32 eth node validator, my retirement goals are $50,000 a year. So I think we should 5xed 32. So five times 32, which that number is, hmm, quick math. 160.5 times 32 is 160th state and the calculator does it for you, my friend. Fantastic. And then that gets you to your annualized profit of 54K per year, a comfortable retirement. And that would mean that would that would mean that you are. And this is by the way,
Starting point is 01:04:46 like some people talk about like fire, financially independent retire. This is around the benchmark that they use for that sort of thing, personal finance world, right? Like 50K annualized. Some people feel comfortable enough to retire. What that means is basically you've still got a lot of capital here if you're doing that because that 160K is all your capital. That's like your net like capital, but it's throwing off 54K a year in profit for you. And that's paying for all your steak and your bougie lifestyle.
Starting point is 01:05:16 Yep. No, that's right. That's right. Yeah, 55. You know, it's not, is $55,000 a year as a salary is, is, you know, a modest salary. Like, some people would really appreciate it $55,000 a year. On retirement, like, that's not the, it's relatively slim, but I guess your consumption in retirement goes down.
Starting point is 01:05:37 But, like, you're, you're still going to have to, like, you know, do some things, right? You don't get to just, like, you know, buy a jet and start flying all over the world. You know what it does do, though, is it gives you the ability to go pursue hobbies, like even income making hobbies like you know like the stuff that we do often i'm just like it's fun it's like stuff i'd be doing if i didn't have to work right so you get to do that and you don't have to be a slave to the uh the wage right yep um so that's what that income can do for you yeah that is 55 000 in again issuance of dividends to you coming from a protocol not a counterparty there is no dependencies on me receiving my $55,000 a year retirement, right? And so it's actually as a security,
Starting point is 01:06:22 as a safety net, it's pretty strong. Yeah, absolutely. And this is hopefully will emerge as kind of the risk-free, like the teedles essentially of crypto. So this is less risky than, say, depositing your, your, your eth into the yam farms way back when we used to do that kind of thing over the summer. Very cool. All right, did that question? I need 160 ETH in order to retire, assuming that ETH are 10X is in price. So I got some work to do with my stack. Should we do some Anthony Sassana predictions and just jack this up to 10K? Let's see what happens at 10K. Let's see 10K 32 ETH deposit rather than 160. Let's go back to one validator. Okay. All right. So one validator at 10K Eith. This is the Anthony Sissana prediction.
Starting point is 01:07:13 you're doing 24K a year from 1,700 a year to 24K a year. If Anthony Cizano is correct, which I trust the guy, he's pretty, he's pretty correct quite frequently. And so that means one validator node with 32Eath gets you $24,000 a year. That is insane. Not too shabby, my friend. And then five, if we increase that to five, you're doing, so this is, again, 160 eath staked on a single validator, you can do this.
Starting point is 01:07:42 is 122K a year in relatively passive income. Okay, but if that's going to be the case, we have to bump up the total stake to 12,000 or 12 million, we got to do that because that's just too, too good return. All right. You don't want to live in fantasy world. I don't know if it'll ever get to 12K,
Starting point is 01:07:59 Heath. What do you think? Like, yeah, six years, excuse me, 12 million. What do you think, Colin? Do you think it's going that high?
Starting point is 01:08:04 Because at a certain point, like, it kind of trails off and you're just, it's diminishing returns as far as the returns go, right? depending on the price of ETH net like nominal yields to do turn negative if ETH doesn't like moon really
Starting point is 01:08:20 hard once you get about past that 10 million mark I personally think that through phase zero to phase one we see about a million and a half to two million I think phase 1.5 people, sorry phase one to 1.5
Starting point is 01:08:36 more people begin to step in and then by the time we fold ETH 1 and the ETH 2, I think we're around that 5 million mark, which is like phase 1.5, and then it's kind of, you know, it's ongoing state once it gets into phase 2. And then with what we know today, it's pretty mature on its fungibility properties. But things may change. I see 10 million as being the economic barrier that it may not make sense for people to want to participate, given the skills required to do so on your own.
Starting point is 01:09:10 and the rewards that you're offered. But 10 million each sticks, plenty for security of the network. But I personally see 10 million probably being that ceiling because there are negative yields that could be experienced based on where the price of each have. All right, 10 million. You're doing 77K a year, David. And then by the way, that's plenty.
Starting point is 01:09:32 That's a pretty decent retirement if some of our youth bull friends are right. And then by the way, is there a way to see, see how much Colin, like at 10K price, ETH, at some of these variables, 10 million staked, how much economic security does Ethereum have? Is there a chart on that in this calculator? Yeah, there's no security measures and benchmarks set inside of this, just kind of relative issuances.
Starting point is 01:10:02 If you scroll to the right, though, a little bit. One interesting thing is this chart with the three descending, which is validator issuance network at home and using a VPS. So this is the scale. It's the top right chart. So if you go up a little bit and then scroll a little over to the right, yeah, this one right here. So if you take a look at this, this is Genesis to 10 million ETH staked with the price of ETH set at around 400. So it is, you know, relevant.
Starting point is 01:10:33 So assuming you're seeing prices there, this is your gross from 19.8% to, to 4.5%. And then when you begin to layer in cost, there's two different cost factors as we've gone through. As you can see, once you begin to use your BPS and you get out here and you're only staking one validator into the $5 million range, your yields actually turn negative. Whereas if you're validating at home, you're pretty close to break even at $10 million. So I think it'll come down to the cost to the validator setup is to where that break-even point is. But I think this is probably relevant for users to take a look at as it explains the reward structure and how it's related to the amount of each staked. And that's interesting because it should kind of collapse to
Starting point is 01:11:25 sort of something close to the marginal cost, right? And like risk of staking similar to the way proof of work does, where it's like energy plus A6, like marginal cost. Yeah, it'll, I mean, doing a break-even analysis is probably what most larger people will do when deciding whether or not, you know, whether or not this is a good use for their ETH or whether or not they could, they could earn more of rewards someplace else. Very cool. All right. Well, we've got David on his retirement plan, Colin, this has been fantastic. Guys, Bankless Nation, we've got guides, we've got calculators. You can see if staking is right for you. And if it makes sense and how to be. to get on the passive income terrain if it comes to pass. Colin, just thanks a lot for your time and thanks for putting all of this stuff together, right? Devs are super hard at work. Also, people like you to help educate the community on staking and the potential internet bond. It's just like instrumental. So like thank you for all the work that you're doing here. Yeah, absolutely.
Starting point is 01:12:27 This is my, my ETH2 effort is, is my 15% of my time commitment and consensus that is, that is, you know, meant to give back in a non-profitable manner. So it's been very exciting two years. It's been a great experience for me to go through, go through the whole thing. It's me giving back to the community that's given a lot to me over the past three years. So I appreciate you guys having me on today to walk through the calculator and also to help get more, more people educated about, you know, EF2 staking, what internet bonds would look like and also to leverage the community that you guys have to kind of, drum up a good conversation. I'm really hoping this kind of gets gets people's gears grinding,
Starting point is 01:13:10 thinking about becoming a validator, thinking about the different abstractions that could be built on top of state Dether, as there's a lot of different things that could be built on top. So, hope that the paper serves as a fundamental viewpoint. And I can't wait to get back on with you guys once Genesis goes. And then we actually start seeing some data as to how these things are valued. and if it's relevant to some of the projections that we did. So just to close it out, for those of you who want to check out the Internet bond paper that Mara and myself put together, there's been a couple of good Twitter posts by the bankless team, and then we also collabed on an article as well. So feel free to check those out and head over to the PDF.
Starting point is 01:13:56 And last, last shameless plug for me would be for everyone to go check out, activate, activates a project that can consensus that I spend most of my time on. We collaborated with the Ethereum Foundation to build the EF2 launch pad. So it's kind of the big thing that we're trying to promote people to come in to activate, learn more about phase zero. We have an FAQ. We have an interface built on the calculator there. And we also have a secure link, most importantly, to the ETH2 launch pad. So you can ensure that you're not getting fished by coming through Activate as we built. We helped the EF build the platform. So we're excited about phase zero. I'm stoked that Genesis is around the corner and doing things like this will help it become more successful. So I appreciate what you guys are doing as it's extremely helpful.
Starting point is 01:14:44 Likewise. Colin, one thing I've been hammering on lately is I've been watching the macro world really learn how to place Bitcoin in the world around it. And there's nothing more bullish for Bitcoin than being understood. And when it comes to ether and staking Ethereum and proof of stake and and advertising like this internet bond market, that's what I see you doing with this calculator for Ethereum, right? Like really putting it into digestible and knowledgeable mental models for people to understand what is actually going on here. And so that's just one thing that really just makes me really excited about, you know, staking my own ethers. Like people are going to figure out what this thing actually is and it's going to be on the shoulders of your effort and Mara's effort
Starting point is 01:15:28 and everyone else who's trying to push this conversation forward. So thank you. you for everything you're doing. Awesome. Thank Colin. Take care. Cheers, guys. Talk to you. See you later. Everybody. Bye. Wow. That was super good, right? I mean, I know we always say it, and I've probably said that we always say it last time, but like, I'm bullish. You know what you said there. That was super cool is the most bullish thing for Bitcoin is being understood, right? Same thing. The most bullish thing for Ethereum is being understood. And I think we're going to see, like, both of these things happen in the next cycle. Well, cool. Man, this, this city of the nation is going along, David. Do we have, uh, we got some more time?
Starting point is 01:16:11 We got time. We got time. Yeah, I know you got some thoughts, Ryan, that, that you put down on paper. And so I want to, I want to hear them coming out from out of your mouth today. So let's get into it. Well, like, at the risk of getting a little ranty here, and I don't want to get ranty. I was just thinking over the weekend, David, about some lessons I've learned on the journey. Like, So I've been in the space about six years. So not like super long. That's pretty long. There was there at Bitcoin Genesis.
Starting point is 01:16:39 Yeah. You know, so and I picked up a few things just from watching mistakes that I've made and being like, oh, that's how that works. I shouldn't do that again. Right. But also like watching mistakes that other people have made on people. I've seen people flame out. I've seen people quit crypto. I've seen people totally lose it and exit the space prematurely.
Starting point is 01:17:00 And so I just offered seven lessons for crypto pioneers in the market Monday post. You want to go through these? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. People like lists. So yeah, lists are fun. Let's go to number one. All right. So crypto natives, crypto pioneers, we are definitely, as Chris Berninski said, the podcast
Starting point is 01:17:19 we did with him, exploring the infinite white space of this new digital country. But we're also bearing the brunt of danger here. And so here are the seven things I just want to convey to focus on this journey. The first is this. Crypto is in price discovery mode for the next decade at least. Price discovery mode for the next decade at least. You know what this means to me, David, is there's no rush. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:17:50 Like the ups and downs that we see on a daily basis and the crazy volatility and China slams the door or there's some hack on an exchange or there's some defy contract hack or there's some extremely bullish news it's all noise guys the market is figuring this space out the prices in discovery mode this is going to take decades your early expect the market to be irrational this is going to take years to figure out and it's going to take years for the market to figure out even the things that you already know now. So just be at peace with that. Just have a long-term orientation. That to me is the most healthy thing that you can do as you're thinking about getting started in crypto. Yeah, I totally agree. And crypto moves so fast. So it's hard to keep a macro perspective when there's, you know,
Starting point is 01:18:43 so many, every single week, there's something micro to pay attention to. Like, oh, PayPal, you know, integrated Bitcoin and then Bitcoin pumped 10%. Like, but then that, then you are paying attention in a very narrow way to what's going on. One of my favorite perspectives to take is, and I can't remember who said this, but like, it was probably in the middle of 2018, 2019 bear market. I think it was Eric Forge's who said this. Like, we're not in, Bitcoin isn't in a one to two year bear market. It's in a 10 year long bull market. Yes. That is the right perspective. And the one thing I try and tell people who are, you know, normies who are trying to get their head wrapped around, you know, cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin and Ethereum is, is they say like, oh, isn't it super volatile?
Starting point is 01:19:24 and like, you know, Bitcoin goes up like 20,000 percent and then it crashes. And I tell them, I give them the metaphor that, like, think of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies like as a plant, right? And it grows out of the ground. And you have this little sapling plant that's like six inches, six inches tall. And then next year, you come back and it's like four feet tall. Like it just grew like 20,000 percent. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:19:46 Insert the right math here. So, like, when people see that, they're not used to those numbers showing up on the stock market, right? stock markets assets on the stock market don't go 20,000 percent but VC funds they are used to those numbers because they were able to get in before everyone else right and so like the the whole like bitcoin moved or Ethereum moved like 5,500 percent in a year like that's just numbers that we're not used to but the world itself the universe is used to those numbers and we are in the middle of the universe figuring out how to price these things I totally agree totally agree and sometimes you get
Starting point is 01:20:22 trip out your psychology a little bit, right? Because humans aren't meant to deal with this level of volatility. But, you know, we do it to ourselves when we go and check our blockfolio 10 times a day, right? Like, I know people, yeah, really, right? I know people in crypto who's like to gain perspective, you're having trouble with this. Stop checking price. Yep. Yep. I mean, you could check price quarterly. This is a, that would be enough if it's true that we're in price discovery mode for the next decades. So anyway, perspective on that. The second, you ready for the second? Yep, let's do it.
Starting point is 01:20:54 All right. I have never seen a patient investor lose money in crypto. Never. If you're patient, you won't lose money. If you buy and you hold, you don't lose money over the long term. I tweeted something like this out on Saturday, and someone responded, yeah. But what about the guy that bought Eos or like the guy that put all money into? to, I don't know, some other coin.
Starting point is 01:21:22 I'm just like, the fact that you went and looked for another Ethereum or another Bitcoin or another short-term project shows that you weren't patient. That you saw somebody else getting rich, you had FOMO, and you did a bad thing. Patient investors don't lose money in the space. How easy is that? It's almost like foolproof. Just like, it's really hard. Buy?
Starting point is 01:21:44 It's hard. I know, it's hard. It's hard. It's hard, but like, it's hard. It's difficult, but it's simple. buy and if your time horizon is five to 10 years it'll work out you'll be fine if you're not buying short-term stupid assets right yep yesterday we saw the stock market pump on on vaccine news like did something insane like 10 to 15 percent and then we saw a crypto sell we had a sell off because
Starting point is 01:22:09 people went into stocks right yeah and so like there's two market participants there's people at the base foundational level who are patient who are never selling who are have their and have placed their bets. And then there's the people on top of those people that, you know, FOMO into something every 24 hours, right? And those are the people making the market movements, like the daily plus 5%, minus 5%, but it's the bottom substrate, the foundation that really is the reason why we are in a 10-year bull market, right? And so be part of that cohort that doesn't fombo, right? Just place your bets and sit on your hands. crypto is a device for transferring money from the inpatient to the patient.
Starting point is 01:22:50 Warren Buffett said the same about stocks. It's also true for crypto. Some of this is just good personal finance advice guys, but it applies in a different way in crypto. All right, you ready for number three? Let's do it. Okay. This might be like some tough love for you guys. 95% of you listening right now should stop trading and just hold.
Starting point is 01:23:11 You should stop trading because you're losing. money relative to holding. 95% of you are not good traders, not great traders. And you don't have to be to do 10xs in crypto. You can just hold. If you don't want to spend hours a day developing your trading skills and competing at that level with like the SBFs of the world and our friends at Three Arrow Capital, like the desks that are doing this 24 hours a day and spending 80 plus hours a week on it, like just don't.
Starting point is 01:23:53 You don't even have to be in that game. They are better than you. They are better than you. Full stop. It's like, it's right. It's like everybody thinks they're going to be in the NBA, right? Yep. And like to get in the NBA, first of all, you have to have a certain, like, natural-born talent
Starting point is 01:24:08 and like physique and athletic ability. and then you have to work really hard. 95% of you shouldn't be playing that game at all. You should just hold. I would add one corollator onto this. Like sometimes people go to the casino even though they basically more or less intend on losing money.
Starting point is 01:24:27 Like the casino is still fun. So like if you are finding yourself compelled to do that, separate your stack into two stacks, two separate stacks, heavily wait one stack to be your hold stack and then allocate like 2 to 5% some low number just to get your like gambling itched itched right just to do it just to say you did and then you can leave your whole stack if that's if you can't you know control yourself moderate yourself i totally agree with that and that is a sensible strategy david
Starting point is 01:24:56 all right number four i am responsible for everything that happens to me in crypto repeat that to yourself i am responsible for everything that happens to me in crypto not something somebody on Twitter, not the builder who built the smart contract, not the dude whose newsletter I read, not the person whose YouTube I subscribe to or the token that promised me the moon. I am responsible. That is an attitude that I have tried to uphold for myself in crypto because that is a growth attitude. You have to take accountability for the decisions that you make in crypto.
Starting point is 01:25:39 can't blame other people. It's not helpful to your progress as a crypto investor do that. But David, I see it a lot. And whenever I see it, I see a mark of immaturity. And like people, when I've said this before, people, people say things like, well, you're just letting, you know, scammers off the hook. Like, no, I'm not. Both of these things can be true. I mean, I totally reject scammers and people who are trying to take other people's money or hack and steal. But for you, as an investor, the best advice is to take accountability and responsibility for the decisions that you make in crypto. That is how you'll get better. Yeah. These systems treat users as admins. Like everyone who has an Ethereum wallet, that Ethereum wallet treats them as admin. As in no, that Ethereum wallet's not going
Starting point is 01:26:34 to do anything that you explicitly didn't say yourself. That's why we are. are a self-sovereign industry. That's why we have some of the core values of Bitcoin, Ethereum, bankless, like you have complete control over your assets, which means that if you lose your assets, you did something. Like, you probably violated rules one through three in some particular way, right? Yes. And, you know, I think that's really, you don't get like empowerment and self-sovereign finance without also being responsible for your actions, right? Yep. Or you see some crypto influencer tweet about something. Sometimes you absolutely have to buy. And you go buy that, right?
Starting point is 01:27:10 Quote unquote, that's on you. That's on you. I mean, should the crypto influence or do that? No, that's a separate thing. But the fact that you are jumping into a position that you don't know anything about, like, would you jump into an empty pool? Like, I mean, look down, look at what you're doing before you go and do it. Yep.
Starting point is 01:27:32 I think that's what we're saying here. All right. Absolutely. Number five, you ready? Yep. own more crypto than the financial experts recommend and doubly so if you're young. Some prescriptive advice, huh? All right. Why this? Let me let me let me let me say none of this is financial advice as always for this insclaimers. Also C number four right but I think that
Starting point is 01:27:55 the traditional financial experts people with CFAs people who are financial advisors they are selling typewriter in the age of the PC, right? They don't understand this asset class and therefore can't give you good advice on this asset class. So even the ones that are semi-pro crypto, you'll be like, yeah, you know, you should take 1% of your portfolio and gamble with it. That's not enough. Right. I mean, I get like 1%. Okay, it depends. Depends what your portfolio looks like. Depends what age you are. Depends on your risk tolerance on these things. I get that. But in general, I think the financial experts aren't going to weight you as high as you probably should be in crypto. And I think this is most important if you're young.
Starting point is 01:28:42 Like the 1 to 3% if you're young, is that all you want of your net worth exposure into crypto? It's not all I want. Where's the other 97%? What are you doing with that? You're buying boomer stuff. Boomers stuff. Yeah, you're getting dumped on by the boomers. So I'm not going to prescribe a certain amount for you.
Starting point is 01:29:02 It's like, but it's probably more than your financial experts. The guy at your brokerage is going to recommend to you. Absolutely. And so Anthony Pompliano is a big fan of the phrase like get off zero, right? Like he's going on the crusade of trying to encourage funds to just put 1% in, just put a half a percent in. And like part of the reason why that number is so low is because like you need a number to convince people, right? And so like, like, if you say like you need to put 15% of your portfolio into Bitcoin, well, to the, you know, funds that people are talking to when they say these numbers, 15% of their portfolio is like half a billion dollars, right? Or it could be. And so like in order to maintain legitimacy, you, as somebody who's going off and pounding, like put 1% into crypto, you need to be have a low number because any other number other than that seems crazy. But if you are the type of person who's like Anthony Pompeiano who's saying like go put 1% into crypto, you need to be have a low number. Because any other than that seems crazy. But if you are the type of person who's like Anthony Pompeiano who's saying like go put 1% into crypto,
Starting point is 01:29:56 Anthony Pompeiano has way more than 1% of it's over 50%. It's definitely over 50%. He said it. I heard of say it. Yeah. So do see what people's actions are, not what they're saying. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, he is talking mainly to funds and large pensions institutions on that one.
Starting point is 01:30:15 So, all right, number six is a little spicy, David. You ready? Yeah, love it. All right. Don't take crypto advice from someone who's never used uniswap. Yeah. That's a great one. That's a great one. I just think there are a lot of, like, crypto experts, VCs, pundits, thought leaders who talk the talk, but don't actually use crypto.
Starting point is 01:30:38 Like, if you haven't used Uniswap, if you haven't taken out a maker loan, you don't know what that is. If you haven't used defy, how can you possibly have a strong opinion on Ethereum or DFI? That does not compute to me. You have to use this stuff in order to be knowledgeable. and to provide advice about it. So this is a heuristic change over time, of course. But like right now, if somebody is talking smack about Ethereum or DFI or all the stuff saying it never works and they've never used Uniswap, I call bullshit dude. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:31:12 Yeah, it's one of those things that you can only be bearish on Defi if you haven't tried it. Right. And I think the reason why you use Uniswap is because it's kind of like the nexus of all the other apps. Like if you're going from Avey to compound, you might. have gone through uniswap in order to do that because for whatever reason, right? And so as a litmus test, you almost can't use Ethereum without using Uniswap at some point in time. So like it almost, it's almost to say like if you haven't used Uniswap, you almost haven't used
Starting point is 01:31:40 defy itself, right? Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like what does Uniswap require? Well, it requires like you to self-cust, your private keys, right? So that's something. You'd get familiar with the defy wallet like Metamask and you to make a trade. That's it. And if you haven't completed those checks, you don't have a very.
Starting point is 01:31:56 valid opinion to me on DFI. All right. Number seven, this is something Naval says a lot. Surround yourself with long-term people playing long-term games. I think this is so important. And I'm not just talking about people here as individuals, though that is also true. It's communities, it's projects, it's also individuals. But like those people who are playing long-term games, draw those close because there's a lot of folks in Crypto. who are playing short-term games that you don't want to be around. And they'll all say they're playing a long-term game. So you've got to watch their actions, not their words on this.
Starting point is 01:32:36 But if you are surrounding yourself with people who, I would say from an investor perspective, I think somebody like Chris Brinsky, that's a dude who's playing a long-term game. Like he's reputation-oriented. He knows he's going to be in this space for 10 years. He's even instructed his entire VC fund to be that. Not a hedge fund trader. There's like no exit, right? Unless his LPs are successful.
Starting point is 01:33:01 That's somebody who's playing a long-term game. I think of like Vitalik and some of the design decisions that Ethereum has made as a project, right? They could have scaled much faster by taking shortcuts. They're going through this like long arduous process of sharding and proof of stake because they think that they want to preserve decentralization and the neutrality of the network, right? That's another person who's playing a long. long-term game. If you surround yourself with those types of people and those types of projects and you yourself are a long-term player and keep your reputation intact as your strongest, as your most valuable asset, you will do very well in this space over the long run. That's why I've
Starting point is 01:33:44 seen everyone who's doing it. Yeah, man, I have so much to say about this. And I can't remember it was a book I was reading where the author was illustrating the father at a kid's soccer game and you have one father who is like yelling at his kids score score score you know do do whatever you need to do and then another father is like you know have fun right because there's two rules here like there's you can either play to win or you can get or you can play to get invited back the next time right wow yeah and that's totally you are so as an individual who is learning how to engage with others and be friends with others the goal is to not win the goal is to get invited to play a second time. And this is also true with trading, right? Like if you do decide to
Starting point is 01:34:28 trade, like you, the goal is to always be able to play the game. Like, don't ever position yourself that gets you cut out of the game. And this is something I tweeted out not too long ago where I said, like, you know, there are theses in crypto that are pretty decently defined. And I think we've defined like the bankless thesis and the protocol sync thesis and the ETH, the triple point asset thesis. and we haven't swayed from that, Ryan. And I'm pretty proud of what we've done here at Bankless. If any listener knows of a time that we've pivoted from one of our theses, let me know. But I think that we have been on the same, beating the same drum ever since this podcast started,
Starting point is 01:35:06 ever since this YouTube channel started, ever since you started the newsletter. We haven't pivoted, right? And, you know, there's a bunch of other people in the ecosystem that just have not pivoted from what they think this crypto industry is about. You know, Anthony Sizzano is one of them, DC investors. anti-prosynthesis, as many Bitcoiners hate that guy. He has been beating the same drum over and over and over again. So you should surround yourself with people that don't change up what they're saying based on the times of the day. And I didn't want to bring this up when we got into the state of the nation today,
Starting point is 01:35:38 but I recently tweeted out, if your cryptocurrency project has an army of green frogs behind it, you should probably rethink your strategy. Because we need people that are playing long-term games. And so you need real people behind your network, right? You need a real community of real humans, not just an army of green frog. So absolutely, I'm totally aligned with this one. Play long-term games. Yeah, I think what you're alluding to there, and like, I know you got like Twitter mobbed about it. But I think what you're looting to, though, is like reputation.
Starting point is 01:36:12 Yep. Is one of the most important long-term games that we as human plays that play, right? And I think there is insane amounts of value in creating sort of a pseudo-anonymous account, some sort of reputation behind it, and you can accrue that over the time. At the same time, right, like by putting your name out there and by, yeah, right, that is your, that is your reputation. That's your skin in the game. That's mistake. And that counts for something too. So regardless, guys, those are the seven thoughts for crypto pioneers.
Starting point is 01:36:48 if you're on the journey. Crypto is in price discovery mode for the next decade at least. Be patient because if you are, I've never seen a patient investor lose money in crypto. Probably if you're listening to this, you should stop trading and just hold. Remember that you as an individual are responsible for what happens to you in crypto. Don't blame others. That is the key to growth accountability. Own more crypto than the financial experts recommend. Don't take crypto device from somebody who's never used uniswap. And then lastly, surround yourself with long-term people playing long-term games.
Starting point is 01:37:27 That's it. Ryan, I'm seeing the YouTube comments. Give a big fat thumbs up to your list. So nice job. All right, cool. Well, good. We made YouTubers happy. Green frogs don't like us, but YouTubers are happy.
Starting point is 01:37:39 We'll take that as a win. All right, David, with that, we should probably sign off. We've covered a lot of territory today. We'll probably chop this into some smaller videos for your friends. viewing pleasure. It's been fantastic to be with you guys. Risk and disclaimers, of course, ETH is risky. So is the internet bond that we talked about today. So is Bitcoin. All DFI protocols are as well. But this is the frontier. We're glad that you're with us on the journey. Thanks for joining us. This has been state of the nation. What number, David?
Starting point is 01:38:10 32, 22, 22. 22. All right. Bonding. We're bonding. We're bonding as a community. Because we're playing long-term games and we're Doing it together. Happy bonding guys.

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