Unchained - Unconfirmed: How Ryan Zurrer Ended Up Spending the Most on a Single NFT Artwork - Ep.295

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

Ryan Zurrer, founder of Dialectic, a crypto wealth multi-family office, discusses his recent $29 million purchase of Beeple’s Human One and his experience at Art Basel in Miami, along with his thoughts on the NFT space in general. Show highlights: what Human One is and why Ryan purchased it how Ryan and Beeple’s personal relationship factored into the purchase of Human One why Human One is important to the metaverse how Ryan defied the odds in purchasing Human One how Miami’s Art Basel conference missed out by not capitalizing enough on NFTs what Ryan thinks about the NFT industry being described as a bubble how Ryan uses “proof-of-artwork” to determine which NFTs to buy Ryan’s experience visiting Beeple’s art studio/campus where Ryan thinks NFTs will go from here, and why he is so bullish on music NFTs in particular  Thank you to our sponsors! Avado: ava.do Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021  Nodle: https://bit.ly/3AXGydJ    Episode Links:   Ryan Zurrer Twitter: https://twitter.com/kukulabanze Previous Unchained appearances: https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-ryan-zurrer-would-like-to-see-a-new-dao/ https://unchainedpodcast.com/all-things-cryptoeconomics-pt-1-with-olaf-carlson-wee-and-ryan-zurrer-of-polychain-capital/    Human One Beeple x Christie’s interview: https://www.christies.com/features/Beeple-gets-real-with-human-one-11940-7.aspx Barron’s on Human One purchase: https://www.barrons.com/articles/beeples-human-one-video-sculpture-and-nft-sells-for-nearly-29-million-01636506472  Ryan Zurrer purchase: https://twitter.com/kukulabanze/status/1458236032818819075?s=20  Proof-of-Artwork: ​​https://www.decential.io/features/proof-of-artwork-ryan-zurer-on-his-29-million-purchase-of-beeples-human-one   Art Basel Miami https://artbasel.com/miami-beach    Beeple saying NFTs are a “bubble:” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-21/prices-in-a-bubble-beeple-says-after-his-69-million-nft-sale  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unconfirmed. The show that reveals how the marquey names in crypto are reacting to week's top headlines and gets the insights keep on what they see on the horizon. I'm your host, Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering crypto six years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the December 3rd episode of Unconfirmed. My book, The Cryptopians, Idealism, Greed, lies, and the making of the first big cryptocurrency craze is a available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes &oble, Bookshop.org, or any of your other favorite bookstores. And also, it comes out to 2222. Pre-order today at Bitley slash Cryptopians. That's B-I-T-L-Y-S-C-R-Y-P-T-O-P-I-A-N-S. With the Crypto.com app, you can buy, earn, and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code, Laura, link in the description. Tired of your exchange taking 25% of your staking profits? The Avato blockchain computer allows you to stake Ethereum and other crypto at home and keep 100% of the rewards. Go to aVA.do.

Wish you could earn crypto but don't want to spend thousands on hardware? Just download the Nodalcash app on your smartphone. Visit nodl.io-unconfirmed. That's Nod-L-E-O-O-S-unconfirmed. start earning no no cash today. Today's guest is Ryan Zerr, founder of Dialectic, a crypto wealth multifamily office. Welcome, Ryan. Hey, Laura. It's great to be back. Thank you very much for having me on.

And I am so excited to read your book. I think this is going to be the defining story of how Ethereum has unfolded. And I imagine it was probably really difficult to edit with just all the crazy stories that have unfolded. And so I can't wait to read it. I know it's been a long time coming. And we're grateful for the contributions that you continue to make for our space. Thanks, Ryan. Yeah.

People will see. The book starts with a list of characters because, yes, when you are describing decentralized worlds, there's a lot of people to keep track of. But people who know nothing about crypto and who've read it have told me, yes, they are able to follow. And through various quizzes I've given them, yes, I realized, okay, they really did learn stuff. So it's pretty cool to see. Anyway, okay, you recently spent $29 million, which is the highest amount of money ever paid for a single NFT on Human One by Mike Winkleman. By the way, you guys, I've barely slept, and so is Ryan, So I think this is going to be a very fun conversation.

Mike Winkleman is Beeple, most people know. Tell us why it is that you decided a bid on Human One and how you came to own it. So I've been developing a relationship with Mike ever since I bought the Dick Milking Factory back in the spring. And what deeply resonated with me with respect to Human One is the fact that it's this evolving piece. which will be, which will fundamentally change the relationship between collector and artist over many, many years. This piece will evolve and he'll continue to add to it over time. So when I looked at it, I thought this isn't one piece. This is actually many pieces.

I sort of looked at it, I guess, in a different way than that. And I don't think the world fundamentally understood how many pieces this will be, or just how big this project will be. And I thought that that was really interesting and I could embark on this multi-year journey with my good friend, who I just really like and we get along really well. And actually, before you keep going on,

can you just describe the artwork for listeners since not everybody has seen it? Sure. Well, I certainly would encourage everyone to take a look at a YouTube video of just Human One, all caps, one spelled O'Ne. But essentially it's a sculpture that is rotating sort of in this very methodical way. And today within the sculpture is a 3D moving image of an explorer, I would say.

It sort of looks kind of like an astronaut right now, but one would refer to them as an explorer that's slowly traversing different digital lands. And the important thing here is that this is a meditation on mankind's first steps into the metaverse. And we're all confronted with this conversation of our dual identities that we all now have between our digital identity and our real world identity. You know, human one is the first metaverse native. which then invokes this conversation and this set of questions that I think is very timely and poignant for society right now.

And I thought that the piece is important in that regard. And so how did you come to acquire it? And I interrupted you. So, yeah, I don't know if there was more that you wanted to say earlier, too, about how it was evolving and your relationship with Mike, et cetera. You know, talking back and forth with Mike, you know, I knew that this was something that was really special that had come together relatively quickly, but he felt like like was a seminal piece in his own career. And it's really important to note that, you know, Mike has deeply impacted the arc and trajectory of digital art along his entire career before when he was doing. sort of, you know, concert videos and music videos and, and really experimenting to the, the everydays, which has become this, this like global movement and, you know, that commitment, just that stoic commitment of creating art every single day honing and mastering your craft.

I think there's a really pure story that people, people really resonate with. You could tell in talking with him that this piece marked a really significant and step change in his own career. And that he, when you talk to them about it, you can see that he's deeply committed. This is like another commitment on the lines of the everydays where he's going to continue to update and evolve this piece and collaborate with others.

And I felt like I wanted to take a real swing at owning this piece as I've sort of matured in my own collection. Over the course of the last two years, I've migrated away from kind of like many different experimental purchases to a few purchases of higher quality, more sort of historical importance that I, you know, that I can have kind of a deeper relationship with. And this was this was an absolutely perfect one. So I didn't think I was going to get it. Chrissies, I don't think thought that I was going to be the winner. I think I was able to capture a fleeting moment in time before very well capitalized traditional art patrons enter in the space and have the confidence in themselves to make a bid like this. I think in a future moment a piece like this would not be available to a collector like myself at this kind of price point.

And why do you say that? Like what kind of is happening in the market now and where do you think it's going? And just out of curiosity, like, how is it that Christy's even gave me the impression they thought you wouldn't get it? Well, they admitted to me after the fact. So they just like straight out said that, yeah, we're not expecting you to win and for you to win at that price. Because, you know, Mike, it's been a bunch of time with sort of your very famous. who's who canon of traditional art patrons and one would have expected that they would come to the mat on that night and be bidding really hard. But it wasn't the case. The bid, to my understanding,

landed between myself and another crypto-native. And so we're seeing this moment where traditional art patrons are not really yet taking the deep dive. Like I would say, you know, everybody's top five or top seven most important pieces of digital art or NFTs are not owned by, you know, traditional art collections.

They are taking a standoffish approach at this point. But inevitably, you know, they will have to to enter, it will be a, it'll be a question of their own survival. They're not going to be able to to to poo this for, for that long. And so, you know, I expect this to evolve very quickly. And that's why I think that over the next year, certainly, definitely too, you'll see more accepted among traditional art patrons and traditional art institutions,

you know, where this piece has been the first piece that has created a conversation with sort of leading art institutions around the world that want to display an important piece of digital art that kind of represents their own first foray into the metaverse. And so as I've seen these conversations come up with Human One, I'm optimistic that we are moving in the right direction and quicker than traditional art would usually move in a new direction. Super interesting. So we're going to have to talk a little bit more about that because I have questions, but first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Did you know that exchanges take up to a 25% cut on your staking rewards? But you don't need

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with Ryan. So you were just at Art Basel, Miami, and you were talking about how you feel, you know, the traditional art world maybe is sort of coming around. And I was curious kind of like what you, what you saw there, what your take is now on how the traditional art world is looking at NFTs and how that's evolving. You know, I think Miami is a microcosm for how the art world is treating NFTs, where within the Miami Fair, there is almost nothing with respect to digital art and NFTs. There was one booth that was sort of dedicated to traditional art and NFTs, whereas all of the buzz, all of the energy that was happening in the city around the week were around the NFT drops,

like the, you know, the Rafi-Canadale piece on the beach yesterday evening or or Beeple's work or just, you know, other digital artists doing drops, like, for example, Christie's and OpenC doing the Mad Dog Jones drop later this week. And so everyone's talking about digital art and NFTs, whereas the sort of powers to be who curated, the core event are almost like missing the opportunity to to integrate it into the core of the

event. I think it was a bit of a missed opportunity in that regard. And again, they'll have to evolve very quickly because it will matter for Art Beisal to continue to enjoy the lead or the premier position that it has. Like, it will not be the premier art fair on the planet in five years if they don't get serious about digital art very quickly. And so it was an interesting thing to see that unfold in that way with, like, the outside being the thing that everybody was talking about and the inside being this kind of, you know, sort of stodgy, outdone, not that newer, innovative event. There's nothing new in the affair in Miami that you wouldn't have saw in 2019, right? Everything new and fresh and interesting was happening outside, which is related to NFTs and digital art.

Well, so people in the NFT world themselves have even, like Beeple slash Mike said this himself, that he agrees that NFTs are in a bubble and that pretty much all, not all, but the vast majority of the NFT. he's being sold will someday be worthless. He's said this. So how do you kind of reconcile that view that he has, along with, I'm sure you're well aware, a lot of traditional artists or art collectors have looked at NFTs and said, oh, I don't see anything of value, da-da-da. So in a way, they sort of agree. And yet it seems like you don't see those two viewpoints as being the same. So can you talk about that a little bit? Definitely. So anytime, that we've seen really compelling new technologies being applied to a market, you get this sort of Gardner hype cycle ebb and flow to it where, you know, and this happened with

ICOs and now it's happening with NFTs where you'll have this run. And yes, 90 plus percent of what's created in the run-up will prove to be worthless over time. But let's not miss the forest for the trees here. And remember that the 10% that does survive will be, will go on to be incredibly valuable assets, will be incredibly important pieces of infrastructure and technology in our society. And so this will happen with NFTs. It probably happens sometime in the next 12 to 18 months where a lot of your 10K PFP projects and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, lower quality pieces of art will prove to be relatively worthless, but there will be that upper crust that will survive, that will flourish and that will do really well.

This is true of the artists and this is true of the art across a range of different categories. And so I'm very optimistic that even though we're going to see this flush out of lower quality, that that's just the natural ebb and flow of, of technology applied to markets. And that's okay. We embrace that. And beyond that, you're also going to see other art categories picking up the slack such that the general market is expanding. So, you know, I think 2022 is going to be a great year for music NFTs and spatial AR, VR, VR

NFTs and thinking about art in this, in this more interactive way. And so the pie will grow even though we're sort of culling as we go. Yeah, yeah. And I think I'm just trying to remember somebody else in my show made a similar sentiment. And it might have been Devin Finser of OpenC, the CEO. I'll have to check back. But yes, I mean, I think that's true for, you know, crypto in general. And then how I navigate.

this moving forward is the same way that I've used since I've come into collecting, which is I use this concept that I call proof of artwork. And proof of artwork draws on a sort of baseline concept around proof of work. The baseline, the lowest possible value of a proof of work network is the total sum of the CapEx and OpX that has brought the code base and the network or the ledger to that moment, right? And so all of the investment that has gone into that to that moment is that your baseline minimum

cost. And when I look at a piece of digital art, I ask myself, you know, how much training and artistic merit and time and collaboration and just effort and human resources have gone into the creation of this work. What that does is give me a baseline of like, okay, this is at least worth this and then I can kind of reason for what, you know, how I should think about value with that piece. What that does is it causes me to miss out on some of your more cheeky pieces like, you know, like the pack pixel or like an X copy would like not be a thing that I resonate with, but it leaves me with a portfolio of really high quality digital art that's very technically

sophisticated and future forward things like Brandon Daw's work or Rafiq Anandals' work or or Mike Beeple's work where I can see and feel and understand very intuitively the amount of time and effort and resources that went into creating that piece of digital art. And so I just try to stay true to that north and know that things will kind of like work themselves out if I'm, if I've got like that kind of baseline covered in this concept of proof of artwork. One thing I wanted to ask you to talk about a little bit more was your personal relationship with Mike slash people.

You were talking about how this artwork will change over time and how, I mean, you guys are kind of like essentially friends. And I guess I was just thinking, what's fascinating to me is, you know, is so in a way you're going to be able to most likely influence the development of your own of this artwork that you own, I think. That would be my guess. And it's just kind of interesting because it just made me think that, you know, a long time ago, kind of when there were things like patrons of the arts and, you know, not like we don't have that today, but just kind of in that more old model, you know, you might be seen as something like that, but probably the

relationship was quite different. And so I'm just kind of curious, how you view that relationship now and in the context of NFTs. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a really fun part of it that we get to collaborate in this regard. And I want to make it clear that it's not going to be like me calling up. I can be like, hey, it's my birthday. Like put a birthday hat on the guy or like, you know, like, hey, can make it look more like me or something like that. It's not going to be like that. You know, part of our relationship is really good because I have.

have a deep, a deep sort of reverence and respect for the stoic path that he's walked to become the standard bearer of digital art. At the same time, it is really interesting to be able to like jam and ideas and, and talk about different things. And I flew down there to, to Charleston earlier this week and was completely, I'm still like, taken aback and like have goosebumps I was thinking about this. So Mike was like, yeah, come down to the studio. And I was thinking I'd go down there and be like, you know, a big garage and he's got like some screens and stuff that he does his art on. And that's kind of the end of it.

And he does these really interesting physical pieces where I think really he and Rafiq are the leaders in this kind of relationship between the physical and the digital piece. So he does physicals for all of his digital piece. which, again, just sort of deep in the relationship that he has with his collectors. And so I get down there, and it's not a studio. It's a full-on, like, sprawling campus. And he has, you know, he has a whole bunch of, like, aerospace engineers working for him and different artists on this massive, like, sort of warehouse that has all these offices and rooms and different things

and different people doing different things. It honestly seemed like this crazy mix of like Warhol Studio with Bell Labs, where they've got like 3D printers and laser cutters and they're just doing these wild things that I completely blew my mind. And so when you get this sense of like just how much they're willing to push the envelope and move things forward and, you know, and his brother, Scott, is a really brilliant engineer and a very fundamental to the whole, to the whole team. It's funny. It like, it takes a community. And when I think about this rationally at this point in retrospect, like very clearly, you know, couldn't be all one guy doing all this stuff. Like it's all one guy doing the like the pure digital, like the digital pieces.

But all of the support around him like 3D printing these collections. pieces and and experimenting with doing these like large scale real world manifestations of what was otherwise a surreal looking digital piece. It's pretty remarkable. I think Charleston is going to be this hotbed of innovation in the space as he continues to bring in artists around him. What's going on down there in Charleston is something very unique and very special. So I'm just glad to be a witness to it and be a part of it.

And I'm just glad that we get along so well. He grew up in Wisconsin. It's not that far from where I grew up in Canada. We're about six months difference in age. And so from the moment we started chatting with each other, especially because I bought something comical and interesting, like the Dick Milking factory, we just kind of hit it off as fast friends. and just like shit talk and swear and stuff like that with each other.

And so a huge part, I'm like, this sounds kind of flippant and cheeky, but it's not. A huge part of the reason why I bought the piece is because I was like, well, I get to buy this relationship with this amazing human being who, like, I want to be around for the next 20, 30 years. This thing will pay for itself in belly laughs with my friends, many times. of silver. So that feels like a better investment than

something from some faceless person. I just want to give listeners context. You spent more than $500,000 on that. I mean, the cost of belly laughs for you is different than for other people. I just need to point out.

But okay, before we don't need to dissect that more than we just did. But I did want to ask you before we go, where do you think NFTs will go over the next year or so? Well, as I mentioned, I think we're going to see a washout and a sort of migration to quality. And that's why I spend more time on kind of like single pieces that I'm more excited about than collecting like a piece a day or 10 pieces a week or something like that. But nonetheless, the pie will expand because new categories are emerging. like spatial VR NFTs, which we're really excited about.

You know, more things in Play-Dermed gaming will emerge. You know, photography, NFTs are starting to have a bit of a moment. Music NFTs are going to be massive. Music NFTs, you know, music, to my knowledge, is the largest category of art. So it will make sense that music NFTs are also the largest category of NFTs over time. I would think. Well, let's see. You know, Wu Tang, like, kind of tried it sort of pre-having the, like, the technology to do it as a one-of-one.

But I think other artists will follow suit in that regard over time. And so while there will be pain over the next year in certainly maybe in the visual art, NFT space, that's just the natural ebb and flows of markets. And, you know, we should be used to that in our community by now. All right, well, we will have to see how it all plays out. Thank you so much for coming on Unconfirmed. Thank you, Laura. Don't forget. Next up is the weekly news recap. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break.

There's a new cryptocurrency made for mobile that you can earn by downloading the Nodal Cash app. It's free, easy to use, and there's no hardware to buy. The Nodal Cash app allows you to earn crypto, whether you're on the go, stuck in traffic, or even while you're sleeping. Nodal Cash is the crypto you earn 24-7. Go to nodal.io-unconfirmed to get started today. That's NOD-L-E.comfired. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap. Before we dive in, I just wanted to urge you to check out four articles that I published this week.

On Medium, I read about the graph protocol, which is basically a decentralized Google, as well as why one of its potential competitors decided to instead help support the graph and become one of its core dev teams. On Facebook Bulletin, I explain the tokenomics of both Bitcoin and Ethereum. If you need a refresher on how to value BTC or ETH, or know a friend that is just falling down the crypto rabbit hole, go check out these primers on my bulletin page. All four links will be in the show notes for this episode.

First story. A Badger Dow hack left one user minus 906 BTC. Badger Dow, a DeFi protocol built to provide yield on Bitcoin. fell victim to an attack on Wednesday night. Badger Dow tweeted, Badger has received reports of unauthorized withdrawals of user funds. As Badger engineers investigate this, all smart contracts have been paused to prevent further withdrawals. According to Peck Shield, the total loss is over $120 million. Based on Peckshill data, it appears roughly 85% of the $120 million came from four large Bitcoin addresses, which lost 906, 491, 203, and 184 BTC, respectively, equating to losses approximating

$51 million, $27 million, $11.4 million, and $10.3 million. As a press time Thursday afternoon, the cause of the exploit has yet to be confirmed. However, Tritium, or Tritium, or some pronunciation like that, a batch core contributor, speculated in the Discord that it could be a front-end issue with the badger.com user interface. Tridium wrote, there is no problem with the smart contracts. It looks like a bunch of users had approvals set for the exploit addresses allowing them to operate on their vault funds. And that was exploited. Once we noticed, we froze all the vaults so nothing can move and are trying to figure out where the approvals came from, how many people have them, and what next steps are.

such an attack which targets the front end of badger Dow rather than the decentralized protocol itself raises many questions which a badger Dow Discord member named Cy Guy laid out in the main Discord chat this hack has really opened up a can of worms for questions for me one how can we make sure what we approve in Metamask is legit two how can funds be moved even with a rogue approval from a ledger secured wallet e.g if I swap a coin on unoswap I must manually hit the buttons on my ledger twice. One's for the approval and once for the actual swap. How is this hack possible? Three, how the heck does a front-end attack happen? Does this mean he hacked the server and uploaded a modified contract so when users click claim they get his? While Badger Devs have yet to release

any answers to the above questions, EGerel Capitals Cryptocat VC pointed out on Twitter that front-end exploits can be avoided through proper Metamask approval hygiene. Practicing proper wallet approval techniques can save users from giving defy, unlimited allowances, on certain tokens, a feature deployed by DAPS where users only have to approve the wallet DAP connection once, rather than for every token deposit. While convenient, this setup leaves users' funds at risk, as hackers have shown the ability to drain users' wallets giving unlimited allowance to defy protocols. To allow this, CrypticabVC explained, don't trust the site's UI. take the address manually from the Metamask data and look at that contract on EtherScan.

She added, never approve more than you plan to use. You can always approve more in the future. Yes, it costs a few more dollars. So is psychological help once you will get rugged. Square rebrands to block. Square, the Jack Dorsey-led payments firm, is rebranding its corporate identity to block, according to a press release on Wednesday. Since launching in 2009, Square has expanded its scope to include a variety of crypto-linked services,

including Square Crypto, a square offshoot focused on Bitcoin development, Cash App, a mobile payment service turned Bitcoin Exchange, title, a music streaming service with NFT aspirations, and TBD 54566975, a yet to be built decentralized crypto exchange. In addition to building out services for crypto assets, Square also purchased roughly $170 million of VTC back in February. The rebrand acknowledges that Square is no longer just a payments company specializing in commerce solutions, software, and banking services for seller businesses, says the company.

We built the Square brand for our seller business, which is where it belongs, said Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Block. Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. Much like how Facebook's rebranded to Meta did not alter the name of Facebook, the social media app, Disclosure, I write a newsletter for Facebook slash meta. Block explained that its name change only distinguishes the corporate identity from the other parts of the company, like Square, CashUp, Title, and TBD 54566975. And each of those entities will keep its name. Square Crypto, however, is rebranding to Spiral, a term the company thinks reflects on the nature

of Bitcoin as it continues to grow like a spiral from a single point, encompassing more and more space until it touches everything. The news comes just on the heels of Block CEO CEO Jack Dorsey stepping down from the CEO position at Twitter, the social media app he co-founded. In June, Dorsey famously explained, if I were not at Square or Twitter, I'd be working on Bitcoin. If it needed more help than Square in Twitter, I will leave them for Bitcoin. Dorsey told the crowd at Bitcoin 2021. With his time at Twitter over and Square is rebrand a block, It appears that Dorsey is making his summer statement reality. Metaverse land is going fast.

Metaverse real estate is getting hot. Data from DAP radar shows that out of the top 10 most expensive land purchases on the sandbox, a virtual Metaverse game, eight of them happened within the last two weeks, with each plot of land selling between $81,000 and $191,000. On to Central Land, a similar Metaverse game, five of the top 10 most extensive land purchases happened in the past 14 days, with eye-popping values stretching from $415,000 to $2.14 million. The latter purchase for 618,000 mana was claimed by the Metaverse Group, which announced the largest Metaverse land acquisition in history, a 116 parcel estate in the heart of DeCentral Lands Fashioned Street District.

Notably, the Metaverse Group purchase outed an anonymous Thanksgiving Eve acquisition of Genesis land in Axi Infinity for 550-Eth, or roughly $2.3 million, which marked the largest sale ever for a single plot of digital land at the time, according to Axi Infinity's Twitter account. In total, DAPR radar shows that over $100 million worth of digital real estate traded hands over the seven days ending November 30th. According to Digital Asset Manager, Grayscale, such buzzing numbers from the Metaverse are to be expected going forward. The Metaverse is estimated to be a trillion-dollar revenue opportunity across advertising, social commerce, digital events, hardware, and developer-creator monetization, wrote Grayscale in a recent report. Banks want to get into Bitcoin without getting into Bitcoin.

A report from Coin Desks, Ian Allison says that Goldman Sachs is among a group of U.S. banks attempting to figure out how to use Bitcoin as collateral for cash loans. Allison cites three sources familiar with the plans. Goldman was working on getting approved for lending against collateral and tri-party repo, said one source. And if they had a liquidation agent, then they were just doing secured lending without ever having Bitcoin touch their balance sheet. Coinbase and Fidelity Digital Assets were mentioned as potential candidates with whom the U.S. banks are in discussion. Goldman and a handful of other big banks are attempting to follow in the footsteps of digital asset-friendly banks like Silvergate and Signature. both of which already released a Bitcoin-backed cash loan program earlier this year. $31 million was lost in a defy hack spanning Ethereum and Polygon.

Approximately $31 million in cryptocurrencies were stolen from MonoX in a hack on November 30th. MonoX, a defy platform specializing in liquidity pools, saw about $18.2 million in rapt-eath stolen, along with $10.5 million in Maddick. other tokens were taken as well. According to security researcher Mooda Gupta, the exploit was caused by a smart contract bug that led to incorrect price updates when doing token swaps. He added, The attacker did a bunch of swaps from mono X token to mono X token to pump the price of MonoX token in the system. Once the price was obscenely high, they swapped their Mono X tokens for all the other assets in the system. In a postmortem, Mono X noted that it has a $1 million insurance pool,

which it is working on distributing. MonoX also hinted that more compensation could be coming for affected users. Please know that fixing the issue is at the forefront of our thoughts, and most importantly, how we can restore what was lost by our community. Be on the lookout for a compensation plan in the near future. Congress plans to host major crypto players next Wednesday. An upcoming congressional hearing titled Digital Assets in the Future of Finance, understanding the challenges and benefits of financial innovation in the United States is going to be chalk full of crypto industry heavyweights. According to Maxine Waters, the House Financial Services Committee Chair,

witnesses include circles Jeremy Allaire, FTC's Sam Bankman-Fried, Bitfury's Brian Brooks, Paxos's Chad Kaskarilla, Stellar's Dinell Dixon, and Coinbase's Alicia Haas. Notably, Coinbase's Alicia Haas is the only witness not to hold the title of CEO, and is appearing in place of Ryan Armstrong, who has been very outspoken in his displeasure with how regulators have handled the crypto industry. The hearing will take place next Wednesday, December 8th. Time for fun bits. Round up, big-time brands go crypto.

Cipherpunks and techies no longer dominate the crypto industry. Every day, Web 3, crypto, blockchain, technology, whatever you want to call it, seems to move another step towards the mainstream, as evidenced by three big-time companies making crypto-based moves this week. Adidas Times Coinbase, probably nothing. Last week, Adidas unveiled a partnership with Coinbase, humorously saying that it was probably nothing in its announcement on Twitter. Since then, the fashion company has been all over the metaverse. On November 22nd, Adidas showed off a plot of land labeled Adidas Originals inside the sandbox.

On Thursday, Adidas also announced official partnerships with Boreday, Club, NFT collector G Money, and NFT collection, Punks Comic. Beer.Eath was just the beginning. Budweiser launched an NFT collection this week, dropping 1,936 unique digital cans, referencing the year of the first Budweiser can. The pricing of the NFTs, which sold out in under an hour, depended on scarcity. As at press time, the so-called Budverse cans held a price floor of 0.24Eath. This is not the company's first crypto foray. Budweiser recently purchased the Ethereum domain, Beer.Eath, which it now proudly displays on Twitter.

Buy tickets, get an NFT. AMC and Sony are collaborating to drop a special collection of NFTs to customers who pre-purchase tickets for the upcoming Spider-Man movie. According to AMC's Twitter account, the first 86,000 members who buy tickets and attend the showtime will receive a link to download a Spider-Man NFT. Notably, the NFTs are based on wax, a blockchain that states it is carbon neutral, a point that AMC prominently displays throughout its marketing, touting the spidey NFT drop as eco-friendly. All right, thanks for tuning in.

To learn more about Ryan and Human One, be sure to check out the links in the show notes. Unconfirmed is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Anthony Yoon, Mark Murdoch, and Daniel Ness. Thanks for listening.