ROLLUP: ETFs Back? | Robinhood Acquires Bitstamp | Biden SAB-121 Veto

Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup 1st Week of June 2024 ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/12?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ 📣 TRANSPORTER - SECURED BY CHAINLINK CCIP | TRY IT OUT https://www.transporter.io/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle ⚡️ CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiGovernance 🏠 CASA | SECURE YOUR GENERATIONAL WEALTH https://bankless.cc/Casa 🌐 TRANSPORTER | CROSS CHAINS WITH CONFIDENCE https://transporter.io/ 🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 3:26 Prices 4:30 L2 Update https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1798731497173905439 https://x.com/0xKofi/status/1797645289307951127 https://x.com/Uniswap/status/1797624523711561828 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1798460468069085234 10:00 3 more milestone numbers on the wk https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1798497346512412898 https://x.com/0xDeFiDevin/status/1797462120713613511 https://twitter.com/sorellalabs https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bnb 17:52 FROTHY STONKS https://x.com/greg16676935420/status/1798404597897363936 https://companiesmarketcap.com/assets-by-market-cap/ https://www.reddit.com/user/DeepFuckingValue/ https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NYSE%3AGME https://x.com/JasonHitchcock/status/1797437168324899192 26:04 ETFs are back baby! Wen ETH ETF, wen banana zone for ETH? https://x.com/CarpeNoctom/status/1798170536146825630 https://x.com/ericbalchunas/status/1798156058487382232 https://x.com/bitcoinmagazine/status/1796120216780333409 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1797644643712262482 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackrock-says-10m-seed-money-174942096.html https://x.com/ericbalchunas/status/1796606348324634798 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1797589909768949827 https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1798351844248576311 https://x.com/AlexanderGrieve/status/1798352191713157308 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1796543517671424065 https://x.com/tradetheflow_/status/1797520578087465295/photo/2 https://x.com/vaneck_us/status/1798428976068657411 https://x.com/vaneck_us/status/1798432653726658619 43:55 President Biden missed the layup - vetoed SAB-121 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/05/31/a-message-to-the-house-of-representatives-on-the-presidents-veto-of-h-j-res-109/ https://www.aba.com/advocacy/policy-analysis/letter-to-president-biden-sab-121 https://x.com/faryarshirzad/status/1796837972978872764 https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1796687373314445766 https://x.com/standwithcrypto/status/1798433256339079417 https://x.com/fejau_inc/status/1796310685330051121 https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/05/30/trump-token-sinks-after-former-us-president-is-found-guilty-in-new-york/ 52:50 Robinhood Acquires Bitstamp https://x.com/RobinhoodApp/status/1798672303519342898 https://twitter.com/vladtenev/status/1798680590344126963 55:05 Celebcoin Culture Wars https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/mother-iggy https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1798290424622113230 https://x.com/IGGYAZALEA/status/1798471807647068297 https://x.com/haydenzadams/status/1798551176834638114 59:32 ETH Coinbase’s smart wallets is now officially launched! Is this how we get to billions? https://www.coinbase.com/blog/a-new-era-in-crypto-wallets-smart-wallet-is-here https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1797772737207062752 1:02:31 StarkWare plans to bring ZK scaling to Bitcoin alongside Ethereum https://x.com/StarkWareLtd/status/1797985467666940265 https://bankless.cc/PermissionlessDiscount 1:05:31 Punks below 30 ETH https://x.com/punksOTC/status/1798093880711155918 1:06:26 Blackrock and Citadel wants to launch new rival Stock Exchange in Texas https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/blackrock-citadel-backed-group-start-new-national-stock-exchange-texas-wsj-2024-06-05/ https://x.com/delzennejc/status/1798399433651974301 1:10:21 Raises and BVC Investments Mountain raised $8M in Series A https://x.com/MountainUSDM/status/1798740495679815731 1:11:35 MEME of the Week https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1798124339843449065 1:12:19 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures ⁠

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk ETFs once again. David, the Bitcoin ETF is back. We also want to talk about the Ethereum ETF. When are we going to actually get that? And what's that going to do for prices?

• 0:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's the first week of June, Bankless Nation, and it is time for the Bankless Weekly Roll-Up June. I'm feeling good, David. This has been a pretty exciting week. What are we talking about today?

• 0:24David Hoffman?

  The Bitcoin ETFs wake up from a nap. How much money did the Bitcoin ETFs take in this week? And also, of course, murmurings about the ETH ETF are definitely crescendoing. But when, Ryan, are we going to get the ETH ETF? I was promised an ETH ETF.

• 0:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  So was I. Also, on the back of that, Van Eck dropped a 2030 ETH price prediction, David, that's, I think, even among the ETH bulls. It's going to make them blush, because let me tell you, it is bullish.

• 0:52David Hoffman?

  It's a lower number.

• 0:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we also have Biden vetoing the SAB bill. He did that last Friday, like, kind of like after hours. It could have been an easy win, but he decided to veto. He had the layup, and he didn't take it.

• 1:05David Hoffman?

  Just fumbled millions of votes.

• 1:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the big question is, is the Democrat pivot dead? Or are they still going to give us some crypto wins?

• 1:14David Hoffman?

  And then a Starknet wants to become a Bitcoin Layer 2, but also not leave Ethereum. How do they do that? And also, Robinhood acquires a major crypto exchange, probably one of the biggest acquisitions in crypto that I've seen in a very long time.

• 1:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a big freaking deal.

• 1:28David Hoffman?

  So much news to cover. But first, before we get to all of that news, a message from our friends and sponsors over at GridPlus. If you don't know what GridPlus is, it is probably the hardest hardware wallet that is on the market.

• 1:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:40David Hoffman?

  GridPlus, the Lattice One. It's a little box that sits next to your computer, because I know all of you people are probably desktop power users. And it also comes with these little credit card-sized private keys. And so it is quite literally, like I said, it's a fortress for your digital wealth, which we are all trying to accrue here in the world of crypto. There is a link in the show notes, Bankless 2024, to get 15% off of a GridPlus Lattice One. And I've known the founder, Justin, for quite a while. A long time. He is obsessed with hardware wallet security, which is exactly the type of guy I think you want building, building your hardware wallet. I've got one of these. I know Ryan has one of these. He used to have it on his back shelf.

• 2:22David Hoffman?

  Josh, the podcast editor, has one of these. We're pretty big fans here of the lattice.

• 2:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's the gold standard. I think this is the gold standard for hardware wallet security. Right? So if you're serious about this, if you're a crypto vet, if you're a crypto native on the journey, also, the touchscreen is incredibly useful because it shows you your transactions, the details of your transactions before you hit the button, right? Which can be really good to protect against phishing. So a fantastic opportunity to upgrade your hardware wallet experience with the grid plus. It's called the lattice one, and that is bankless 2024 at checkout. I think there's only like today, tomorrow. It's just this week that this deal lasts for. So go check that out.

• 3:01David Hoffman?

  It's also, it's also good for the second week of June. So this runs the second week of June. Yeah.

• 3:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's friendly. All right.

• 3:06David Hoffman?

  If you guys want to know more about the grid plus, it's a pretty, it's a kind of a paradigm shift of how hardware wallet form factor is. So I'm going to be doing an unboxing of one in the coming week. So if you guys want more details about that, stay tuned for that.

• 3:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Your second lattice, David?

• 3:21David Hoffman?

  Second lattice. Yeah. Well, you have to, you have to unbox one fresh to make an unboxing video.

• 3:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, let's talk about the markets this week. Thanks to Kraken, as always, for the prices, and they're looking pretty good. Tell me about Bitcoin, David.

• 3:34David Hoffman?

  We're pretty happy. Yeah. Bitcoin started the week at 69,400, up 3.6% on the week. Almost got up to $72,000 for a high. We're currently at $71,100. So above 70,000. That's a good question. 72 something, 73 something? Yeah, 72, 72, 800, 72, 800.

• 3:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're, we're close again to Bitcoin all time highs. Every, every time we hit Bitcoin all time highs, like people get excited. We get media coverage, right? It's kind of like reflexive. At least that's my hope. ETH price, not quite close to all time highs yet. What are we like 25% down from all time highs, something like this?

• 4:10David Hoffman?

  We're still $1,000 off of all time highs, up 1.2% on the week, started the week at $3,800, just still just a little bit, a little bit above that.

• 4:20David Hoffman?

  Prices are up, not down. So that's what we're having you about. Total crypto market cap $2.77 trillion. I would call that flatty up, flatty up.

• 4:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Flatty up. Let's talk about layer twos in this section sponsored by our friends over at Mantle, which is a layer two you absolutely should be using right now. David, big news this week. Base entered number two, the number two, layer two by total value locked. I know there are some who think total value locked is a meme. I for one don't. I think it's

• 4:51David Hoffman?

  I don't think it's a meme.

• 4:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it is a marker of progress and traction. And so it's a big move. Base taking the spot from the OP mainnet, still trailing Arbitrum by about half. So Arbitrum sitting on top with 19.3 billion and then base at 7.8.

• 5:09David Hoffman?

  19 billion dollars. I mean, definitely congratulations for base for flipping optimism mainnet. This has always been the optimism strategy is like optimism mainnet. I kind of think is taking the Ethereum foundation strategy of operating by a design by subtraction mindset. So it's happy to see its own like child chains, its own

• 5:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let everyone else do the work is what I call that strategy.

• 5:32David Hoffman?

  Really good strategy. But yeah, you can't really ignore the absolute gargantuan of the nearly 20 billion dollars that Arbitrum has TVL. Overall 47.8 billion dollars on layer twos creeping up and up and up. Still waiting to crack that. Yeah, that is all time high. Not 50 billion dollars. I'll celebrate a 50 billion dollars. I'll also celebrate at 100. I'll celebrate along the way too. Also, what's been pretty cool to see over the last like month or so is just the on-chain profit for these layer two chains. This has been the thing that Ryan and I have been beating the drum about for years and will continue to be the drum about for years. It's extremely easy to be profitable

• 6:12David Hoffman?

  as a layer two. So revenue from layer two gas fees minus the cost of posting state roots on the layer one. Base took in almost $7 million in profits in May, just May. This is one month. $7 million in one month. Optimism, optimism mainnet took in 1.57 million dollars. Scroll took in 1.3 million dollars. Arbitrum took in 800,000 dollars and Linia took in 612,000 dollars in one month profitability.

• 6:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is pure profit, too. No issuance, no additional tokens. Of course, more getting unlocked, but no additional inflation that are being paid to validators. But like, maybe, of course, issuance is a meme. And not quite sure. There's been debates about this recently.

• 6:56David Hoffman?

  All of the things that you thought were real and fundamentals, Ryan, are actually just memes.

• 7:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this is, it's, it's really cool to see healthy businesses, very healthy businesses, being birthed on, on just like, value-added reselling of Ethereum block space. That's what they're doing. They're basically adding execution, adding value, and able to like, make money on this. It's pretty impressive. And I think this is the sort of thing that's going to attract more and more Layer 2s into crypto, right? I mean, everyone else is looking over there and seeing, like, what? 7 million a month for base? I want to do that.

• 7:31David Hoffman?

  And I can deploy a chain using the OP stack for free?

• 7:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, that sounds pretty good. Okay, let's talk about Uniswap volume on Arbitrum as well, as well, while we're looking at Layer 2. So, monthly Arbitrum volume on Uniswap has doubled compared to last year. So, May 2023 for Benchmark, we were at about 6.8 billion. And now, 2024 in May, we're close to 12 billion. So, pretty impressive. Although, I will say, David...

• 8:01David Hoffman?

  I would just, one, one more point. That is 12 billion dollars on Arbitrum. That is 12 billion dollars on Uniswap volume on Arbitrum. That's just one of the Layer 2s.

• 8:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and I know this is maybe an unpopular sentiment among some right now, but I feel like Ethereum's strategy just like, might be working, David. So, look at these two charts. ETH, still, fee king. This is, this yellow line right here is Ethereum fees, right? And so, and the pink bars at the bottom here, this is a token terminal chart, are the top Layer 2s combined, all of their fees, the fees that we just talked about for base and all of the other Layer 2s, plus the Solana Combined fees and Solana has been selling some block space here recently.

• 8:44David Hoffman?

  Solana has been fee positive.

• 8:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's still about like that. All of that combined is about one fourth of the total Ethereum fees here recently. And so Ethereum is still the king in terms of generating fees. And also on layer twos, transaction fees are under ascent, which has been a design goal as well. So you've got fee generation on the Ethereum layer one, and you've got transactions, at least on layer twos for under ascent. I think Ethereum doesn't get enough credit for that. I mean, that's what it was trying to do and it's kind of working. It's kind of doing it.

• 9:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you can actually see, this is all kind of speculative. We don't really know, but like gas fees on the layer one have also been like meaningfully low. We don't really have, you can pull up ultrasound money. Ether has actually been inflationary sadly for 30 days in a row. Half a percent of yearly inflation over the last 30 days. So there's actually less demand for Ethereum layer one block space. But we're seeing that turn into profitability numbers on the layer twos, which is kind of interesting dynamic. But I mean, that's, that's what we've been saying like, hey, go be on the layer twos. That's where you're meant to be. And that's resulted in like demand for layer two block space. And I guess as a result of that, pretty consequentially, less demand for layer one block space.

• 10:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, there's three other crypto milestone numbers to talk about on the week. This first one, you brought, drew my attention to this. So Eigenlayer just quietly passed 20 billion in this meaningless metric, total value locked, which I see 20 billion is a lot, right? There's a lot of ETH inside of this protocol.

• 10:18David Hoffman?

  That's a lot of ETH, yeah. I think people who are starting to just like look elsewhere beyond Eigenlayer after the Eigenlayer token drop. I think people were, I'm sure were expecting TVL to like leave Eigenlayer. Why would you leave it in Eigenlayer after the token? But the opposite happened. I think it was $14 billion when the Eigenlayer token airdrop happened. Now we're at $20 billion.

• 10:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why? Are we points farming? Like, what are we doing here?

• 10:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I still have my ETH in Eigenlayer. Why I still have it in Eigenlayer, I guess it's because I'm assuming I'll get rewarded for that for seasons two and three, even though the parameters aren't out there yet.

• 10:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that must be what the market's assuming because like the AVS's aren't live yet.

• 10:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and despite the negative feedback about like the Eigenlayer token drop, like the APY for depositors into Eigenlayer was like stellar. It was like 70, 80% APY for your time.

• 11:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I noticed that negative feedback has mostly evaporated. At least it was kind of like a two-week sentiment type thing, but that's not the only milestone to talk about. So this is big. EtherFi and Pendle both surpassed Uniswap in total value locked as well. This is kind of surprising to me. Of course, both of these are like restaking protocols in that category. So somewhat based off of that $20 billion in Eigenlayer that we just set up, but passing Uniswap, how do you make sense of this?

• 11:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so there are transactional applications and then there are like depositing applications. EtherFi and Pendle are both like depositing applications, as in like you put your money in there and then you like hold it there. EtherFi is an LRT liquid restaking token. Pendle is kind of an LRT derivatives platform. It's a yield derivative platform. A lot of people are using it to speculate on points now. So it's kind of like the center point, the center point of all like point speculation. And you put your TVL in and then you hold it there over a long period of time. Uniswap is less like that. Uniswap is more like you just go and trade. You go one token in, one token out.

• 12:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison then? They're kind of like different functions, yes?

• 12:23David Hoffman?

  It could be an apples-to-apples comparison. Like, the reason why you're putting your Ether in into Pendle and EtherFi and all your tokens is because of yield. Like, you're getting compensated for that. Some people are liquidity providing in Uniswap, and that is the $6.1 billion that's in Uniswap compared to the $6.2 billion in Pendle and EtherFi. But like, getting yield out of Uniswap is harder because of this thing called sex dex arbitrage. Whereas Uniswap LPs are getting squeezed by people arbitraging out the pools because it's actually just not a very efficient place to get your yield. I think that there is potentially a renaissance coming for the yield coming out of Uniswap

• 13:05David Hoffman?

  because Uniswap is generating pretty strong fees for its LPs. It's just hard to be a profitable LP because you keep getting arbbed out by MEV bots. There's this startup called Sorrela Labs that is building a Uniswap V4 hook that does a very similar mechanism to how, you know, you know how like all the MEV and the MEV Ethereum supply chain ultimately either gets burned or passed to Ethereum stakers?

• 13:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 13:31David Hoffman?

  It's a, there's a very similar primitive that Sorrela is building as a hook where you deposit your Uniswap liquidity through the Sorrela hook and MEV bundles and transaction bundles through this hook instead of going to MEV bots ends up just going recycled back into Uniswap LPs. So Uniswap LPs are passive receivers of the MEV of Uniswap. And so there's an obvious incentive to deposit your liquidity if you're going to be a market maker on Uniswap to deposit it through the Sorrela hook because then you actually earn the MEV that Uniswap otherwise would accrue.

• 14:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I think, I think what you're saying is Uniswap TVL is going to make a comeback because like right now it's not very profitable or yield generating for Uniswap LPs to keep their funds in there. But like there are some protocols that are emerging to make it much more profitable to kind of like fix that problem.

• 14:19David Hoffman?

  I think a possible future is that this hook design from Sorrela Labs produces a renaissance in Uniswap TVL and also therefore like Uniswap price execution. Like one of the big things, I remember talking to this about Mike Abolito when we had our podcast with him is like, we need to get price discovery back on chain. We needed to get price discovery away from Binance, away from Coinbase and put it into Uniswap. And this is how you do that. And that, that hopefully would come with like a resurgence of the ability of just to being able, a passive liquidity provider to Uniswap. Anyways, a little bit of a side quest here.

• 14:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  You swap TVL down then right now, but David's forecasting up. Something else that's up, though, is the price of BNB. You know, but you're like old Binance token. So it is apparently at all time highs.

• 15:10David Hoffman?

  All time highs.

• 15:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  All time highs.

• 15:12David Hoffman?

  Coming in at a fully diluted valuation of $108 billion.

• 15:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  And this is not, no longer on CZ's watch, of course. So CZ just started his prison sentence. Did he, that was like last week or the week before, something like this. One, one thing that we are going to do is we're having Richard Tang on the podcast, Bankless Podcast. Podcast. The podcast, that'd be a great name, dude. The Bankless Podcast tomorrow, and he is the new Binance CEO. So we want to pick his brain, see who he is, find out a little bit more about him, because I don't think the crypto industry has really gotten to know him. But yeah, all time highs for BNB. What does that, this put BNB in terms of the, like, top? Number five?

• 15:55David Hoffman?

  Number four, number four.

• 15:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Number four. Actually, just.

• 15:58David Hoffman?

  Oh, wow, it flips Solana. Oh, wow, it flips Solana by a lot.

• 16:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Huh. Interesting.

• 16:02David Hoffman?

  It's got, it's got $30 billion on Solana.

• 16:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Should we ask Richard about price?

• 16:06David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 16:09David Hoffman?

  Okay, so something, something that's going on across all prices is we're getting some rate cuts. Can you walk us through what's going on here, Mr. TradFi?

• 16:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, yeah, this is Mr. TradFi like chiming in here. So actually, two big things happened. First, Canada, Central Bank of Canada was the first G7 nation to cut interest rates. So Bank of Canada said, hey, we're capitulating. We've been raising interest rates and keeping it steady for the last, like, I don't know, four or five years, and now we're cutting. All right, so that was like one day last week. And then the European Central Bank also announced a rate cut. And this for the European Central Bank is the first time in five years, in the last five years, that it started to cut rates. So the expectation is a 0.25% cut, which brings the ECB deposit rate down to 3.75%

• 16:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  from the 4% top that it received last September. So David, these central banks are beginning to cut rates, and I think that is going to be, that, this is a bellwether for what the Fed's going to do next. So the Fed could keep it steady, but this marks like the beginning of rate cuts, like so it begins. Vance Spencer says, this is the largest rate cut cycle of our lifetimes. He says, I'm not sure. People are appreciating just how high rates are and how low they will move in the coming one to two years. You know that Fed pivot I was just talking about? This is the bellwether for the the big Fed pivot.

• 17:36David Hoffman?

  This is the opener. It's the opening act.

• 17:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  It seems like it.

• 17:39David Hoffman?

  The main headliner is our Fed, our Federal Reserve, but other Federal Reserves are cutting.

• 17:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know how they they they're all coordinating behind the scenes. So I mean, this is um, yeah, this is certainly a big deal. I feel like the stock market is maybe like front running some of these rate cuts. What's going on in stock world, David? Mr. TradFi?

• 18:00David Hoffman?

  I'm here for a zoomer, TradFi. So Nvidia, of course, sells GPUs, sells AI chips, sells the things that we need to have the AI revolution, has just been on an absolute tear for like, honestly, like a decade, but really in the last year or so, as it's just, you know, I think it breached Apple. So now Nvidia is worth more than Apple, just continues to just absolutely pump. The earnings numbers that Nvidia is putting in here is incredible. Okay, not not quite beating Apple, but pretty damn close, like $50 billion away from flipping it. Both of them are just right under $3 trillion.

• 18:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  The third largest company, right?

• 18:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, third largest company ever. The CEO Jensen, there was a meme going around because he was signing signing the the chest of a person. How do I explain this?

• 18:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just let him watch the look at the picture. Why is this happening?

• 18:52David Hoffman?

  Look at the picture. We have tech CEOs signing signing the boobies of people.

• 18:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is this? Is Jensen like a rock star? Like, is he is he big dealing? And people uh, this this looks like dot com stuff.

• 19:06David Hoffman?

  He's the CEO of like the greatest like price rising like sector of like recent memory.

• 19:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, since he since that signature, the price of Nvidia is up over $200 billion. So you'd be happy to know. So there you go.

• 19:20David Hoffman?

  Bullish, bullish.

• 19:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  How?

• 19:22David Hoffman?

  Okay, but that's not the only thing that's going on in the stock world. Roaring Kitty, I think we talked about Roaring Kitty last week or maybe two weeks ago. He just tweeted something and then that caused the GameStop price. To like double and then liquidate a bunch of people.

• 19:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 19:37David Hoffman?

  This is the same guy that like created the whole like GameStop, we were like revolution in 2021, uh, 2020. He used to post his positions on Reddit. This is where, um, deep fucking value was his Reddit username. He would post his positions on Reddit like relentlessly. He just stopped because like the GameStop movement kind of stopped. Interest rates went up. He stopped like years ago, three years ago. He posted again, his GameStop position for the first time in three years, just a couple of days ago. What was previously like a $22 million position in GameStop magically over the last three years

• 20:15David Hoffman?

  has turned into a $210 million position in GameStop, representing 5% of the entire company. So Roaring Kitty, AKA Deep Fucking Value on Reddit, owns 5% of GameStop. He posted this on Reddit, which caused once again the GameStop price to double up to something of like $40 or $50 or something. Where are we are now? $42, $42. Again, liquidating a bunch of people. I think it got up to a high of like $68. Absolutely insane. And then people are wondering like, where the hell did he get the extra $170 million to go leverage long on GameStop? Maybe people think he's like taking, he's managing other people's money. I don't know.

• 20:56David Hoffman?

  It's kind of crazy that he's just doing the same playbook that he's already done and he's just doing it again. Cause GameStop continues to be like heavily shorted.

• 21:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 21:04David Hoffman?

  It's kind of nuts.

• 21:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, so some people are calling like deep TradFi is calling this, uh, market manipulation.

• 21:12David Hoffman?

  The TradFi deep state.

• 21:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the TradFi deep state, E-Trade is, is, um, I'm calling him out on this. Do they try to close his account, something like this?

• 21:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. So he's managing his like 210 million dollar portfolio casually just through E-Trade. I actually don't know where else you would manage your portfolio, but that's because I don't have that $200 million portfolio. And some people are, they're saying like, we're considering kicking him off the platform for market manipulation. But then like everyone watching this is like, what market manipulation? He's posting his positions publicly. How is he manipulating the market?

• 21:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, he's posting publicly. He's just posting his buys. It's not like he's trading off of some sort of insider position.

• 21:49David Hoffman?

  And memes.

• 21:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Huh. I guess maybe buying assets is market manipulation if you buy in size?

• 21:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not sure, but I do know that like, large funds and large investors do this all of the freaking time.

• 22:01David Hoffman?

  All the time, all the time. Intentionally so, yeah. Like, X bank announces like, that they're bullish on the stock and then the stock goes up. Like, well...

• 22:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do think it's no coincidence that he decided to come back like, the same week that the central banks are starting to lower interest rates. Maybe this is a sign of things to come, but...

• 22:19David Hoffman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 22:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Speaking of things to come, what's coming up in the roll-up?

• 22:23David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, demand for the Ethereum ETFs is back. We had some pretty, almost record-breaking, not quite, but almost record-breaking, demand for the Bitcoin ETF. And then, of course, that heralds good things, of course, for the ETH ETF. So we're gonna give you the updates on the ETH ETF and what's going on with Bitcoin ETFs. VanEck gives an extremely bullish price prediction for Ethereum. Hold on to your hats. And Biden vetoed Sab 121. So, so long to the Democratic crypto vote. So we're gonna get to all of that and more, but first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken, our preferred crypto exchange. In 2024, if you do not have an account with Kraken, consider clicking the links in the show notes, getting started with Kraken today.

• 22:59David Hoffman?

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• 23:41David Hoffman?

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• 24:20David Hoffman?

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• 25:03David Hoffman?

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• 25:43David Hoffman?

  With a Cello Layer 2, Gas fees will stay low and users can even pay for Gas using ERC20 tokens, including native USDC and USDT, sending crypto to phone numbers, across wallets, using social connect. But Cello is a community-governed protocol. Make your VORs hurt in the Cello forum to shape the future of Ethereum. Follow @Cello on Twitter and explore the ecosystem built for the real world on cello.org/Quest.

• 26:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk ETFs once again. David, the Bitcoin ETF is back. We also want to talk about the Ethereum ETF. Wen are we going to actually get that? And what's that going to do for prices? Let's start with Bitcoin, though, first. So it seems like it was a big week for Bitcoin ETF inflows. What are we looking at in the charts?

• 26:20David Hoffman?

  The last time Bitcoin was just like breaking, it broke through all time highs and everyone was super bullish and Bitcoin went from 40,000 to 70,000 and then all of a sudden it stopped. Bitcoin fell down $10,000. All of that like was super correlated to flows, to flows. Why is Bitcoin up almost to $72,000, almost breaking all time highs? Because of the flows. We had almost a record breaking day of flows, a week of flows in this, in this last week. Just on June 4th, we had almost $800 million of inflows, excuse me, almost $900 million of inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs. The Fidelity FBTC, actually a standout winner

• 27:01David Hoffman?

  here, taking almost half of that. And so just the flows have resumed. The water spigot is back on. Buying pressure is coming back to Bitcoin and that's what's been going on. So really, really just healthy week. We're hoping of course for continuation. This was part of everyone's kind of sentiments about how the Bitcoin ETFs is just going to work. You're going to have your initial wave of demand, but then there's going to be some laggards, some holdouts. A lot of institutions who intentionally move slow just want these things to age. But now the Bitcoin ETFs is starting to approach six months old. And so we're getting, getting the next, another wave of flows. IBIT, the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF is the fastest ETF ever to hit $20 billion in AUM. AUM is just

• 27:46David Hoffman?

  TVL for TradFi. And so congrats to IBIT.

• 27:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at this chart, David. Look at this chart. This is the IBIT chart competing against the formerly, the now is the second fastest growing ETF in history, which is something called the GEPi. I'm actually not sure what that is, right? But some other large ETF. And it got to 20 billion in 985 days. It's only taking the Bitcoin ETF, particularly IBIT, which is just one of the ETFs, 137 days. That's absolutely insane. Like the difference between these, like these two ETFs on the charts.

• 28:26David Hoffman?

  The J E P I is the JP Morgan Equity Premium Income ETF. It's an actively managed ETF out of JP Morgan. The Bitcoin ETF, one of the Bitcoin ETFs, just absolutely blasting through some records here. It's kind of funny, the ETF, the IBIT, the Bitcoin ETF from BlackRock goes up to like $18 billion, almost immediately, like inside of 50 days. It tries to go down and that was like the last like two to three months of just like not positive price action. It tries to go down and then now we're at like record high inflows.

• 29:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's also crazy about this and why it's going to continue breaking records is because like it's not just about inflows. Imagine the price of Bitcoin doubles. I mean, we're just talking on an episode earlier this week of Chamath's like bear case bull prediction for Bitcoin this cycle, 250K, right? I mean, that is like a 2X, 3, like that's like a 3X from here. And so that's going to get us to 60 billion in IBIT, just like that, like price appreciation alone, like inflows aside.

• 29:27David Hoffman?

  I have a, I have an opposite take, actually.

• 29:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's your opposite?

• 29:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So you say like, yeah, in order to get TVL, in order to get like AUM.

• 29:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  TVL.

• 29:36David Hoffman?

  TVL.

• 29:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  TradFi calls TVL AUM.

• 29:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. But uh, so like, but yeah, we could all, the price of Bitcoin can just double and then all of a sudden you'll have double, double the AUM. Well, the only thing moving the prices these days, Ryan, is like flows into the ETF.

• 29:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  You think so?

• 29:54David Hoffman?

  So that, that's the thing that is moving the price. Yeah. And like, I think there's evidence for this. This is, I think, an answer as to why people are like slightly frustrated about the ETH price after the ETF announcement. Like we had that 25% like god candle, the biggest god candle in Ethereum's history.

• 30:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  No net new buyers.

• 30:12David Hoffman?

  That was the crypto industry itself, like taking all of its slack that it would allow and giving it into Ether. But like not any, like there's not any net new buyers and then people are still like unresistant to buy Ether beyond that. Like there are still people like showing what their portfolios are, like on Twitter. Some people just like snapshot, like their percentages of their portfolios and like it's still like 60% Solana, 70% Solana. Like the Solana community is like not willing to sell their Solana to buy Ether. I think anyone who is willing to buy Ether as a result of the Ethereum ETF news has already done it. And so that's the, that's, that's why ETH isn't going up anymore because it's like everyone did it in that one candle. And now, if we want ETH to go up anymore, you actually need the flows from the ETF.

• 30:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. We're gonna get those flows, though, right? Let's talk about that now. So the Ethereum ETF, two questions on people's minds. One is, when is it gonna happen? And two, what's it gonna do to price? So let's talk about both of these. On when's it going to happen? The estimates that we've heard range from like, one to three months, something in that range. That's sort of what the Bitcoin process was. People can't imagine it would take too much longer than that. We are seeing some positive signs because the issuers are doing things. BlackRock just seeded the ETH ETF with $10 million. They did this with Bitcoin. They're just like, that's nice. There's some inflows for you, 10 million.

• 31:31David Hoffman?

  BlackRock has bought $10 million of Ether in the last week. That's nice.

• 31:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so they're planting the seed right here. Also, the ETH ETF issuers, a fee war has been set off. So it looks like Franklin is like discounting its fees to 19 bips, David.

• 31:49David Hoffman?

  I think that's lower than any Bitcoin ETF, too.

• 31:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep. So they're leaving the pack. You know, they all compete for the lowest possible fees. And then we've seen some other ETH-related products. So this is a new Ether-related filing. This is a covered call ETF. Eric Balchunas says, "All of this activity that's going on with the ETH filers is the equivalent of the Oklahoma Land Rush scene in Far and Away." I've not seen this movie, but like, this is what he's talking about. Give you some visuals here, right? It's just like this kind of thing. You see what I'm talking about? Where you've got...

• 32:20David Hoffman?

  We just have everyone on horses just stampeding westward.

• 32:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  For a land grab.

• 32:25David Hoffman?

  Oh, we're going west. They're all going west.

• 32:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a land grab. That's what the issuers are doing right now. So any, all positive sentiments from that front. But, David, but guess who decided to show up this week? And, you know, put some rain on that parade. It was our friend, Gary Gensler. What's this?

• 32:44David Hoffman?

  He's just, he was apparently on CNBC's Squawk Box and says that the ETH ETF approvals will, quote, "Take some time." So it's not gonna happen this week, probably not gonna happen next week. I'm gonna give it a month. I mean, you have one month.

• 32:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  You estimate a month?

• 33:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, early July.

• 33:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you don't think Gary Gensler is saying, hey, like, it's gonna take some time putting the brakes on it? You don't think he's gonna try to draw this thing out? Twist the knife?

• 33:12David Hoffman?

  I think he is drawing it out. He is drawing it out, and that's gonna last a month.

• 33:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's your... So, okay. So, David Hoffman prediction, one month is July 6th. So, we're gonna hold you to that, David. July 6th is the date.

• 33:26David Hoffman?

  July 6th is a Saturday. So, you know, plus or minus a couple of days.

• 33:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, you want to be exact on this, huh? We'll give you a plus or minus.

• 33:35David Hoffman?

  I'm doing one month as a vibe. You're the one trying to make it exact.

• 33:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm trying to hold you to something here. All right, this quote that we just read from Gary Gensler is because he was on Squawk Box with Jim Cramer. You know TradFi Jim Cramer. So, it's hilarious. Here's a segment of Jim Cramer asking Gary why we can't have BONK ETFs next. This is what Gary says.

• 33:56David Hoffman?

  BONK the meme coin.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Okay, now, Polkadot, Cordana, Cosmos, Immutable, Ronin, BONK, Osmosis, Sushi Swap, my neighbor Alice have all traded millions. I'm talking about millions of dollars this very morning. No, should we have a sushi swap, maybe an ETF? Or the proprietary kind you say. I would think that BONK is a natural.

• 34:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  BONK is a natural.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  These are trading millions... Gary, these are millions of dollars these things are trading. Shouldn't we have some sort of product?

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Let me say something more broadly about the crypto markets. Right now, without prejudging anyone, these tokens, whether they're the ones Jim listed or other tokens, have not given you the disclosures that you not only need to make your investment decisions, but also that are required by the law. It's a basic concept in our securities market. We, the SEC, tomorrow are turning 90. Happy birthday, SEC.

• 34:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Happy birthday.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  And what President Roosevelt did is he created this commission to oversee that you, the investors, get disclosure. And in the crypto markets, they aren't giving you that disclosure. And secondly, that exchanges like here, this floor, the New York Stock Exchange, get properly regulated to protect against fraud and manipulation, and they don't trade against you. And these crypto exchanges, Jim, are doing things we would never allow this New York Stock Exchange to do. No, they're not. Our laws don't allow you to trade against your customers. And so you've seen the bankruptcies in this space, and there are some of the most leading lights in this

• 35:41Speaker 03

  field are either in jail, about to go to jail, or awaiting extradition. Okay, let's...

• 35:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go, David. That's a taste.

• 35:48David Hoffman?

  All right, let's unpack this a little bit.

• 35:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sure.

• 35:51David Hoffman?

  Exchanges are trading against their customers. Bankruptcies and leaders in the field are in jail, about to get a jail, or are awaiting extradition. He's right about that. He is right about that. FTX traded against their customers. That's what Alameda did. They were bad at it. Three Airs Capital, Genesis, and Celsius all been bankrupt. SBF and Alex Maschinsky are in jail. Do Kwon is the one awaiting extradition. And the SEC is suing Coinbase, Kraken, Uniswap, and ConsenSys.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  He's got the wrong guys.

• 36:21David Hoffman?

  You've got the wrong guys.

• 36:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Gary.

• 36:24David Hoffman?

  But the thing is, like, he's listing things that he knows happened?

• 36:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 36:29David Hoffman?

  From different entities.

• 36:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Drawing the connection.

• 36:31David Hoffman?

  So he knows.

• 36:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Yeah, he knows. You know, part of this, too, kind of that whole monologue here is just, it felt very much like, "Guys, stop trading. Look over here. We've got a great securities market here, and you guys keep going for the coins. Why are you doing that? Stop trading." I don't know why he feels like he needs to boost his value proposition. Anyway, happy 90th birthday to the SEC. It feels like they want to take us back to the 1930s with respect to the regulation, David. All right, so we've said it's the ETH prize, back to ETH price. It's all about inflows. That's what's going to move the markets on Ethereum. And there's some question as to what those inflows might look like. Let me give you an analysis from JP Morgan. They believe, this is an analyst report from JP

• 37:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Morgan, "We believe the demand for spot Ethereum ETFs would be just a fraction of that." Seen for spot Bitcoin ETFs. The reason they say is Bitcoin, number one, had the first mover advantage. Okay, so it stopped up all of the demand. Number two, Bitcoin's halving event. The halving event was a big deal. Uh, number three, the ETH ETFs won't have staking. Okay. Number four, Bitcoin competes with gold. ETH doesn't. Uh, and number five, there's lower liquidity overall in Ethereum. So, uh, those are the reasons.

• 37:52David Hoffman?

  Those are odd reasons. Those are odd reasons.

• 37:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, there's an actual, actual quote, "Demand for spot ETH will be negative because it doesn't do a halving like Bitcoin."

• 38:04David Hoffman?

  That's ridiculous. No one in TradFi knows what the hell a halving is. Like, the Bitcoin has a first mover advantage, I think, does check out. Bitcoin halving event is just not on the radar of TradFi. Like, whoever, whoever this analyst is, is a Bitcoiner, probably, because they're using a Bitcoiner, like, frame of mind. ETH ETF won't have staking, that's why there won't be demand for it. The Bitcoin ETF doesn't have staking either. Like, again, some elements that crypto natives know that TradFi just is unaware of. And lower liquidity in ETH? They are not aware that ETH is extremely price sensitive. In fact, this benefits ETH from the demand perspective because the price appreciation is going to drive FOMO because it's extremely price sensitive.

• 38:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, I'm guessing you're on the bullish inflow side of things then, David. You're not like this JP Morgan analyst.

• 38:53David Hoffman?

  Who would have guessed?

• 38:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, so, um, another estimate on inflows, um, from James Safer and Eric Balchunas. He, James actually DM'd me, David, and he said he listened to the roll-up, and I think we gave a lower, um, prediction on the inflows for, for James and Eric than they actually believe. I think they've revised some of their numbers. So James Safer, one of the Bloomberg analysts, says, "My number is 20 to 25% of Bitcoin ETF flows." And Eric Balchunas, uh, his counterpart, has moved his estimate up to around 20%, though he thinks it might come in less. So, larger than other estimates. I, I think last time we talked to James, he said like 10 to 20%. And now he's saying 20 to 25% with 20% as the base case.

• 39:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  So what price would that translate to is kind of a question just on a pure inflows basis. Let's say we get the higher end of James's estimate at 25%. That would imply 25% of Bitcoin inflows. That's what Ethereum would deliver. That would imply net inflows by the end of 2024 of 3.47 billion in additional buying pressure. And so the implied price performance of that, if you use like a Forex amplifier, which is like fairly reasonable back of the napkin calculation, given the the lower liquidity of Ether's smaller market cap size, is a price by the end of 2024 of, you ready for this?

• 40:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 40:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  5,294 ETH.

• 40:21David Hoffman?

  Can, I don't know if, is it even possible to predict this? I don't think you can make forward, like you don't know what the market's going to react.

• 40:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just in a vacuum. It's an analysis in a vacuum. That's all.

• 40:32David Hoffman?

  It's now, yes, right. You can, you can project implied net inflows of $3.5 billion. We can, we can, that, that checks out of like how much actual buying pressure there will be. You won't be able to actually anticipate what the market's reaction to that buying pressure is.

• 40:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you sound disappointed, David.

• 40:47David Hoffman?

  You could have a lot of sellers into that $3.5 billion. You could also have reflexive buyers of that $3.5 billion. I, I, I, I don't think that these are like, like solid. You can't predict this.

• 41:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  You could, but you, it's, it's an estimate. It's not a prediction. It's an estimate, right? Based on some, some amount of inflows. But you, you sound very disappointed about this. So let me give you a, a better bookcase of numbers.

• 41:13David Hoffman?

  I don't want to call myself disappointed. I just, I just disagree with the, with the concept of the prediction.

• 41:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  So here are some numbers you might like a little bit better. These, these numbers come from VanEck. So they put out an Ethereum report. They do price predictions. This is a price prediction for Ether for the end of 2030. So five and a half years from now, David. So they have upgraded their price for Ether. And the catalyst here, they think are the Ethereum ETF news, scaling progress, and their read of on-chain data. So they have upgraded their base case price prediction to 22,000 Ether by 2030. How do you feel about that number?

• 41:52David Hoffman?

  Let's see, 22,000.

• 41:57David Hoffman?

  That seems like a good base case.

• 41:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a base case.

• 42:00David Hoffman?

  I expect that to be the floor.

• 42:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 42:02David Hoffman?

  That's my floor.

• 42:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's your floor. Okay, so they not only give a base case, they also give a bear case and a bull case. Which one do you want first?

• 42:11David Hoffman?

  Give me the bear case first.

• 42:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bear case, $360.

• 42:17David Hoffman?

  What?

• 42:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  $360 is the bear case.

• 42:21David Hoffman?

  What?

• 42:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And here's the bull case. $154,000.

• 42:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's quite the range here. It's like, it's all possible things.

• 42:33David Hoffman?

  Okay, so it's 2017 prices or the dollars of shitcoin prices.

• 42:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you know, but they back into these estimates with like estimated revenue.

• 42:42David Hoffman?

  With math?

• 42:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  And yeah, like a validator cut and they're like some fundamentals, but of course you can kind of adjust the spreadsheet variables to whatever you want. But they do get the kind of the core fundamental drivers right, which is kind of cool. So.

• 42:55David Hoffman?

  I don't know how to reason that. I don't know how to reason. I am somewhere between.

• 42:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  22,000 and 154,000.

• 43:01David Hoffman?

  In 2030, I don't know if I'm bullish as $154,000, but I'm way more bullish than 360. So yeah, somewhere between those two.

• 43:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, I guess five years from now would be about like, just a little longer than another bankless pot. Like, we've been doing the podcast for like four years.

• 43:17David Hoffman?

  One more bankless.

• 43:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, we just got to double. Everything we've done in bankless, we just got to double that and we'll get to 2030 and we'll get to that 154k ether.

• 43:26David Hoffman?

  We started, we started bankless at like $150 ether.

• 43:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 43:30David Hoffman?

  And now, and now it's 20?

• 43:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 43:34David Hoffman?

  Times, 25 times that.

• 43:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  This would be a $20 trillion market cap. All right. So that's bull territory there for you.

• 43:42David Hoffman?

  A $20 trillion market cap is like end game Ethereum. That's kind of what I expect to like see Ethereum when I like retire.

• 43:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  When you're like an old man.

• 43:49David Hoffman?

  Climb mountains for the rest of my life. Yeah.

• 43:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Grandpa David?

• 43:52David Hoffman?

  That's when I'm handing my CryptoPunk to my kid kind of timeframe.

• 43:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Well, let's, uh, let's move from kind of like fantasy land here and price predictions and talk about this, uh, absolute layup that President Biden missed. So he vetoed SAB 121. This was the pro crypto legislation that Congress put on his desk and he said, no.

• 44:13David Hoffman?

  Comment out of the Biden administration. He says, "My administration will not support measures that jeopardize the well-being of consumers and investors. Appropriate guardrails that protect consumers and investors are necessary to harness the potential benefits and opportunities of crypto asset innovation." Is this Joe Biden himself saying these words or is this just his administration and Joe is just signing off on it? In my opinion, definitely the latter. Does it matter? Not really. It's just like he's just being a conduit for other people's opinions and desires about the world to be expressed and he's just like greenlighting it. Uh, who these people are that's telling him to veto SAB 121, uh, I don't know, but it's certainly not the banks. It's, well,

• 44:55David Hoffman?

  it's not the banks because the banks wrote him a letter. The American Bankers Association penned a letter in an attempt to sway the decision on SAB 121. So the bankers write a letter to Biden's administration saying SAB 121 represents a significant departure from longstanding accounting treatment for custodial assets and threatens the industry's ability to provide its customers with safe and sound custody of digital assets. Limiting banks' ability to offer these services leave the customers with few well-regulated trusted options for safeguarding their digital asset portfolios and ultimately exposes them to increased risk, which is something that we've been saying inside of the crypto industry for a long time now. So we know it's not the banks who are whispering in Biden's ear. So this kind of goes back to what Joe Lubin at Consensus is saying. It's, it's more of

• 45:39David Hoffman?

  like the political elite, political establishment who don't want another tech sector of Elon Musk's and Mark Zuckerberg's and all these other like tech bros to have more power because they didn't expect the internet to be such a big thing, is the conspiracy, which I'm a hundred percent on board with.

• 45:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's kind of also surprising too because it's halting the momentum. I felt like we were starting to get on the Democrat Party side of things, right? So we got the Ethereum ETF, which is probably like a phone call to Gary Gensler saying, hey, make this happen because November elections are important. And like that was not expected to go through. It went through. We got the FIT 121. Bunch of Democrats in Congress kind of signed on for that. And even the SAB bill, so the SAB repeal that Biden just vetoed is pro crypto legislation. And Chuck Schumer, right? The majority lead of the Senate, like Democrat of Democrats, said yes to it. He voted yes to it. And now is putting like a brakes on this with Biden vetoing. So Nick Carter says

• 46:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  here, rest in peace, Dems are just as good on crypto talking point. That crypto talking point is dead. It was born May 2024 and died May 2024 as well, the same month.

• 46:53David Hoffman?

  It just kind of is weird. Like, why would you start the process of becoming crypto friendly? And then like slam the door shut on that same process like a week later? Because like now we got the ETF, so sick, I guess. I mean, definitely sick, but then, but then like they still are losing the crypto vote. Like they, they, they were almost able to have people who just really don't want to vote Republican, able to still be pro crypto and vote Democrat. But now you cannot be pro crypto and still vote Democrat. You have to kind of choose. Like, do you want Democrats or do you want crypto?

• 47:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think they, they lost the single issue voters there. It was a layup and they, they missed it. And it's kind of perplexing. Why? More, more work to do. And talking about some of that work, do you know the Stand With Crypto advocacy group is attracting tons of members, attracting funding. It just hit 1 million members. Okay, this is the website, Stand With Crypto. I've joined this, David. You can join this for, for, you know, like text alerts and such. Get in on the key races as well. It's got a whole like ranking of who your legislator is, and it scores them from A, B, C, D, and F on a various scale. And we just hit 1 million members on this, which I think is bullish. If you have not joined this group, go to standwithcrypto.org so you can join that, get active, let your voice be heard.

• 48:13David Hoffman?

  So all of this has like crescendoed in a very vibrant conversation on crypto Twitter, just about like politics. Something that's like adjacent to this conversation, but somehow also extremely relevant is like there's big volume on polymarket in the political sphere, just because it's like politics and crypto are now like almost the same conversation. So you can go to like the polymarket and express what your opinions about the future of things. Meme coin trading about politics is also doing that same job. So when Trump got guilty, found guilty on 34 accounts of fraud, like all of that news last week,

• 48:50David Hoffman?

  the Trump token dropped 35% after that news. And then the Biden token jumped up 20%, so Trump fell down 35%, Biden went up 20%. And then they equalized afterwards. They just went right back to the prices that they were before that moment. But in that moment of time, you could have had made like very good money betting on Trump being found guilty or not guilty, either through the Trump token or the Geo Biden token. And this is not the first time we've seen this. Like meme coins are becoming like super accurate prediction markets. When Ansem, remember when Ansem, like his like kind of terrible performance in the boxing ring, all of the Ansem tokens just immediately started tanking in price

• 49:35David Hoffman?

  afterwards. And so we're seeing like this weird phenomenon of meme coins also becoming like prediction market bellwether for like in real life events. So something that's also happening in the political sphere that I thought is worth bringing up in the market section.

• 49:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we got more to talk about on the celebrity coin wars because Vitalik has weighed in on that whole world. Also Starkware, it looks like they're expanding to Bitcoin with a ZK rollup. Can Bitcoin support ZK rollups? And Coinbase got a new fancy wallet they think is going to onboard billion. So we're going to get to that and more. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including Mantle, one of our favorite Layer 2s. If you haven't checked him out, go check out what Mantle is.

• 50:17David Hoffman?

  New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming on to the Mantle Layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in DeFi and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion Mantle Treasury in the Mantle Reward Station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with, giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto, or you're a user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's DeFi apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle.

• 51:01David Hoffman?

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• 51:44David Hoffman?

  Head over to Cartesi's grant application page to apply today. And if you're not a developer, those with staked CTSI can take part in the governance process and vote on whether or not a proposal should be funded. Make sure you're vote-ready by staking your CTSI before the votes open. Taking self-custody of your crypto is one of the most important things you can do on your bankless journey. It's also one of the hardest things to get right, with huge consequences if you don't. If you want help going bankless, talk to Casa. Casa helps you take custody of your crypto assets so you don't have to wonder whether you're doing it right. Casa is a one-stop shop for doing self-custody the right way. With Casa Vaults, you can hold Ether, Bitcoins, stablecoins, all with one simple app and multiple keys for the ultimate peace of mind with a support team to help you every step of the process.

• 52:27David Hoffman?

  But it doesn't stop at self custody because even though crypto is forever, you are not. We all plan on making life-changing wealth in crypto, but with Casa's inheritance product, life-changing wealth can elevate to generational wealth for your kids and your loved ones who don't know anything about crypto. With Casa, you won't lose your private keys and you won't accidentally take them to the grave either. Click the link in the description to get started securing your generational wealth. Breaking news as of this morning, Thursday morning, Robinhood has announced that they are acquiring Bitstamp, which is a pretty actually huge cryptocurrency exchange, one of the earliest cryptocurrency exchanges that's out there, really just to expand on Robinhood's just crypto program. They just want to add more customers, expand out into the EU, the UK and Asia.

• 53:10David Hoffman?

  And if you don't know what Bitstamp is, it's actually one of the oldest exchanges, the first big exchange post-Mountain Gox. Mountain Gox was the first major competitor of Bitstamp, or Bitstamp was the first major competitor of Mountain Gox. 85 tradable assets, plenty of licenses all over the world, millions of customers. People don't really know about Bitstamp, it's just not in vogue, but they've been around for forever. They are currently headquartered in Luxembourg, but with offices in London, New York as well. And now they are part of the Robinhood crypto program. So Robinhood is just acquiring all of those users. Here's Vlad, the CEO of Robinhood, saying, "We believe crypto will fundamentally reorganize the financial system and we're acquiring Bitstamp to accelerate our vision.

• 53:53David Hoffman?

  Soon we'll combine forces with Bitstamp's global footprint, core spot exchange and industry-leading products like crypto as a service, institutional lending and staking." So this is, this is Robinhood just not like making some tokens available on Robinhood, but they are doing, they're just trying to compete shoulder to shoulder with the best in there.

• 54:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think here's why this is a big deal. So first of all, Robinhood has a ton of retail users in general, 25 million users. And now this is them doubling down on crypto. They also, if you recall, David, they're one of those five crypto companies that are now being sued by the SEC and they're based in the US, right? So what does this say, right? It's like the SEC has told them to stop trading crypto and they just bought a crypto exchange. Which is, I think it's hilarious.

• 54:38David Hoffman?

  Is this now the second crypto exchange that is now technically public since Robinhood is a public company?

• 54:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the third thing. So Coinbase, oh, and by the way, this is, this is kind of breaking. I haven't had a chance to get into the details, but there's rumors that Kraken is potentially going public as well. These are just rumors as of this day.

• 54:54David Hoffman?

  I did not see this.

• 54:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Imagine if you had Coinbase, you had Robinhood, and you had Kraken, all publicly traded companies with lawsuits from the SEC. It's absolutely crazy. I think this is a really big deal. David, get us up to speed on the celebrity culture wars and Vitalik weighing in here. What happened last week?

• 55:13David Hoffman?

  All right. So this is the continuation of Mother. This is Iggy Azalea's mother token, which is coming in at a whopping $205 million market cap. It almost hit a quarter of a billion dollars. $118 million in 24-hour trading volume, just absolutely insane. It's kind of crazy. Definitely like it hasn't gone down and just the price has not gone down on this thing. It's still like two weeks old, still pretty young, but kind of doing some crazy price action. Vitalik put out a tweet following Chris Bernisky, who put out a tweet earlier that we talked about in a different episode. Chris Bernisky says, "If Mother breaks into sustainable value creation, it will be the mother of this cycle's celebrity experimentation."

• 55:57David Hoffman?

  Vitalik responded to this Chris Bernisky tweet saying, "I'm feeling quite unhappy about this, quote, 'this cycle's celebrity experimentation so far.'" And then he adds in quotes, "Financialization as a means toward an end," end quote. And then he says, "I can respect if the end is worthy, healthcare, open source software, art, et cetera, et cetera. Financialization as the final product, though," like throwing up emoji. Ashton and Mila's stoner cast was vastly more honorable than anything we've seen in this 2024 celebrity meme coin era. At least there was an actual show being funded. How do we push things in a better direction? And of course, this just got a ton of traction because it's Vitalik commenting on meme coins.

• 56:38David Hoffman?

  So Vitalik saying, "Not really happy. This is a financialization as the point is not a noble destination." And so kind of kicked off a conversation about this, like there's been this conversation, Vitalik's now weighing in. And then here is the meme that Iggy Azalea posts, which is Iggy Azalea with her face on a mother breastfeeding a baby Vitalik, saying, "He was just hangry," which is...

• 57:04David Hoffman?

  Not a very nice response, I would say, to Vitalik's message.

• 57:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I guess so. I guess Iggy is just doing it for the culture, David. So this is Hayden Adams also weighing in, saying-

• 57:16David Hoffman?

  What culture? What culture is that?

• 57:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  The Iggy mother culture. If you own some mother tokens, you'd understand. "No issues with meme coins or celeb coins." This is Hayden Adams now weighing in. "I think there's value to memetic attention. It's cool to create markets for it. That said, "the underlying purpose and value of the tech goes way beyond financial games, "and the best builders in the space are motivated by positive social change." Iggy could have responded positively. Instead, she condescends the best builder in the entire space, proving his point. So Hayden standing up for Vitalik on this meme, saying it's like, not respectful. It's funny because-

• 57:52David Hoffman?

  She did just kind of prove his point.

• 57:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  How serious is it? I mean, people post all sorts of memes of Vitalik. Like, I personally don't have a problem with this meme, "but like, the firestorm that this whole conversation, like, Vitalik, I go back to like, Vitalik is just saying, "how do we push things in a better direction?" And people got absolutely angry about this, "saying there shouldn't be gatekeeping, there shouldn't be elites, like, dictating the terms of the meme coins. There's a whole discussion "on celebrity meme coins right now. And I feel like it's part of the culture wars. It's part of the crypto culture wars."

• 58:25David Hoffman?

  Huge culture wars going on right now. There's a dividing line in these culture wars. The war is being fought, like, over the line of, like, meme or utility. There's like a tweet that Iggy Azalea put out, saying, "I'm thinking about ways to like, "make my token useful for holders, and they can like, do things, like, compete in like, competitions and stuff." And like, a large number of responses to that tweet was like, "No, no, no, don't do that. No utility. Don't put utility in the tokens." There's people that want it to just be memes. And then, that's like, the nihilist camp, the meme coin camp, the culture coin camp, call it. And then there's the other sides of people who's like, "Hey, can we like, make these things more productive? "Can we make these things beneficial to society? Like, how can we make these things better?"

• 59:09David Hoffman?

  And that's the line that is being fought over. It's like, "Do you want to make these things into productive "things for like, GDP, or do you want these to just be memes?"

• 59:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I just continue to not really care about this, David, honestly. It's crazy that this is all we're talking about? Man, I'd rather talk about the ETFs than this, honestly.

• 59:29David Hoffman?

  Those are our memes. That's the memes that we circle out.

• 59:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  While the celeb coin culture wars rage on, the good news is, David, the builders are continuing to build. This is a Coinbase post, "A new era in crypto wallets. The smart wallet is here." So Coinbase has released something they call a "smart wallet." They say it's easy enough to onboard the next billion users, or maybe the first billion users, into crypto. So tell us about this. What is this wallet? What's cool about it?

• 59:54David Hoffman?

  Probably the first thing that if you go and get one of these wallets, the first thing you'll notice is how fast you get it. And actually, also the familiarity of the signup flow. And so I use a password manager, like most people. So when I got my wallet, it put the key in my password manager. And so your password manager manages your keys. And what is the difference between a password and a key? Really, the only thing is like the length of characters. And so my password manager now has my key. And I also have that same password manager like on other devices, which means I have this wallet on all the devices that I have my password manager. Everyone who uses a password manager now has this. That is your security model setup for your private key.

• 1:00:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not just password managers too, right? It's just like if you use Face ID, if you have a phone with a secure enclave, then it just like stores it in that, so you don't have to have a seed phrase.

• 1:00:44David Hoffman?

  All of those things are password managers, right? Like your secure enclave in Apple, like your keychain, that's a password manager. You just need some sort of password manager somewhere. Like it'll use Chrome as a password manager if you want to use that. And so this is like probably the best security that we can get a billion people to use, because many people also use password managers. I signed up for this on just like a web browser, just like www dot whatever the URL is dot com. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to access it. But then the idea is that this is your most secure and accessible wallet. It supports Base, Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB, Zora, so all of the EVM chains. And then this is probably just like the foot in the door for Coinbase to just do some

• 1:01:29David Hoffman?

  really cool things with people who have these wallets. And so it just starts with getting this wallet into more people's hands.

• 1:01:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think if you kill seed phrases and you use existing like password management infrastructure, like Face ID and this sort of thing that people know, and there's no network fees to like get started with a wallet, that removes like 90% of the barriers to entry for crypto. So this is really cool to see. There's also something that Coinbase rolled out, which is like, it's kind of cool. You can now text tokens on base. So David, if I have your, if you have your phone number, I can actually text you some other coins. Cause like, I want you to have these coins. I mean, maybe, maybe not mother.

• 1:02:10David Hoffman?

  You had to use mother.

• 1:02:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, no, I think actually I can, right? Because mother's on Ethereum too. So I could send you some mother tokens, David.

• 1:02:18David Hoffman?

  Mother's not on Ethereum. Jenner's on Ethereum.

• 1:02:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not? Oh, Jenner. Sorry.

• 1:02:21David Hoffman?

  We got the Jenner token, which is at zero.

• 1:02:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Man, I need to keep up.

• 1:02:23David Hoffman?

  That's at zero now.

• 1:02:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anyway, I could text you tokens. You could text your friends tokens. That could be a cool onboarding experience as well. So pretty neat to see this. Speaking of builders building, David, Starkware is trying to bring ZK rollups to Bitcoin. Is this possible? What did they announce this week?

• 1:02:39David Hoffman?

  Ellie from Starkware put out a video this week talking about how they are going to simultaneously put Starkware on top of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Turns out you can do that. And so this is actually, there's been a, there's a cohort of people out there who are just Bitcoin OGs who started building in the crypto space, but they were constrained about what Bitcoin could do and the available technology that they have. And they all just have kind of like a first love for Bitcoin. I think Brian Armstrong definitely fits in this category. Ellie and Uri of Starkware definitely fit in this category. They started building Starks and saw the powers that blockchain technology could give Starks because of Bitcoin. They ended up building on top of Ethereum because they needed something more expressive, a stronger foundation to build Starknet, Starkware. But they all kind of have like

• 1:03:22David Hoffman?

  this first love for Bitcoin. Since Starks and ZK technology has become sufficiently powerful, that they can now actually start to take that technology and bring it back to Bitcoin, especially with this conversation around OPCAT, which is a new op code that people want to get into the Bitcoin, software work into Bitcoin. If you don't know what that is, we did a podcast with Eric Wall about this. And so importantly, no new chain is being created. The same Starknet network that you are currently using with the same governance and same tokens can now also support Bitcoin scaling without supporting a fork. And so this is actually kind of like Starkware, probably from the perspective of Uri and Ellie, kind of coming home to their original purpose, which was to scale Bitcoin.

• 1:04:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it's really cool, just for all of the decentralization maxis out there, right? Because if Bitcoin can have ZK layer twos, that can further decentralize Bitcoin. You could do like more on top of Bitcoin, which is bullish. That one caveat, though, David, the OP Cat thing, I kind of wonder how long it's going to take Bitcoin to deploy that.

• 1:04:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, don't hold your breath.

• 1:04:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, this could take years. I like, I wouldn't be surprised if this took five years to get OP Cat into Bitcoin, which would make this announcement still five years out. I mean, maybe it happens sooner, but like, huh, two to five years is probably an estimate for this.

• 1:04:39David Hoffman?

  That is the pace of Bitcoin like changes, that's for sure. Other people are saying, Starkware, what the hell are you doing? This is a lack of focus. Like, you guys should focus on Starknet.

• 1:04:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, they don't have to do anything until OP Cat is deployed, so.

• 1:04:53David Hoffman?

  That's true.

• 1:04:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't want to change anything.

• 1:04:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Anyways, as Starkware develops their Bitcoin scaling strategy, we can ask them that at Permissionless, because Ellie will be at Permissionless. So maybe this is a topic of conversation that comes up in the ZK track or the Bitcoin scaling track, which we have both of. If you do not have a ticket with Permissionless, prices only go up, so you should definitely get it now, sooner rather than later. If you are listening to this, you get 10% off with Bankless 10. If you are a Bankless citizen, you get 30% off in your perks page. There is a link in the show notes. I'm super stoked for Permissionless. We have like, one of the sickest lineups I've ever seen out of a conference. So don't be a laggard, because then you just end up paying more. But if you want to be paying less, CryptoPunks are now selling for under 30 ETH for the first time in three years.

• 1:05:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this for my benefit? You want me to buy CryptoPunk this cycle?

• 1:05:41David Hoffman?

  This is in the weekly rollup, because Ryan has always just faded CryptoPunk because he says they're too expensive.

• 1:05:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I've always almost wanted one, they've always just been too expensive.

• 1:05:50David Hoffman?

  Well, Ryan, I got news for you because they're the cheapest they've been in a really long time. So I bought my CryptoPunk at a 22 Ether floor. And so I've been like, I've been able to be completely fine with my Punk even though of the depreciating price for a really long time. But now we're in the 20s, like a CryptoPunk got sold for 28 and a half Ether. So yeah, Punks below Ether.

• 1:06:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'll think about it. I'll think about it, David.

• 1:06:13David Hoffman?

  People are saying like, oh, like NFTs are so bearish, like CryptoPunks are bearish. 28 Ether is $108,000. It's still very pricey.

• 1:06:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's a lot of Ether for sure. Another bit of news this week that went a little below the radar, I think, is BlackRock and Citadel. They're trying to launch a rival stock exchange. And they're gonna do this in Texas. So this would be a stock exchange that would compete with traditional stock exchanges, like, I guess, the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange. And so they haven't done this yet, and they're gonna try to do it.

• 1:06:47David Hoffman?

  I didn't know you could just start exchanges in the old world. I know you can start exchanges in crypto all the time because you have a bajillion of them. I didn't know you could just make a new exchange.

• 1:06:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you're BlackRock and Citadel, you certainly can. You certainly have the liquidity and assets to do that. But can I give you some hopium, though?

• 1:07:00David Hoffman?

  This is, uh, I think, I'm pretty sure I know where this is going.

• 1:07:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, here's some hopium for you. Here's a tweet I uncovered, okay? Conspiracy theory here. BlackRock is launching TXSE, competitor to New York Stock Exchange. This guy says, this Twitter account says, they'll create an Ethereum L2 for this exchange. Okay, why? Here's the reason why. SEC Commissioner Hester Purce wants to create a sandbox for issuing trading and settlements of securities on a distributed ledger. Where will this sandbox run? Probably on the new TXSE. What if, David, BlackRock, Larry Fink, were so bullish on tokenization and crypto that they actually decide to launch this thing as an Ethereum Layer 2? What do you think about that? That give you some hopium? That send Ether price to 154K?

• 1:07:49David Hoffman?

  That is some pretty good hopium. That's some grade A hopium. I definitely can accept the conspiracy theory of Larry Fink is all about tokens, and he would like to produce an exchange that works with tokens. That conspiracy I can definitely get behind. Taking it all the way into an Ethereum layer two and it's going to be a tokenization based exchange? That's like straight delusion hopium.

• 1:08:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I kind of love it, though. Maybe in the fullness of time, we get there.

• 1:08:17David Hoffman?

  David. The last time you gave out a take that I thought was extremely delusional, it was the fact that we were going to get the ETH ETF on a political pivot.

• 1:08:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, this is not my take. I will say that. So don't get your hopes up on this one. In the fullness of time, though, all things are possible.

• 1:08:32David Hoffman?

  There is something that is missing from this weekly rollup, Ryan, that we promised the listeners last week, which is a competition between you and me.

• 1:08:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you going to call me out publicly because I didn't do my homework?

• 1:08:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Ryan didn't do his homework, so he is requesting to punt. To punt, because he's not ready to pitch. He can't pitch. He's not very good at it.

• 1:08:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Next show that I'm here, I got to punt this pitch because I want to get it right.

• 1:08:57David Hoffman?

  Next show that you're here, but you're here every single week, Ryan. Wouldn't that be next week?

• 1:09:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I need more time. I need more time to prepare. So Anthony Sisano on the show next week. You guys will enjoy him.

• 1:09:08David Hoffman?

  Anthony's on the rollup next week.

• 1:09:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm out. I'll be preparing my pitch. I'll come back and I will give you the best elevator pitch you've ever heard for Ether the asset. That's the focus, right? Not there in the network. We are trying to sell Ether the asset to TradFi, and I will come equipped to give you the best pitch you'll ever heard. You've ever heard, David. You're just going to knock your socks off.

• 1:09:28David Hoffman?

  So last week, we agreed to present our pitches this week. I'm ready to go. I've got my pitch like right in front of me.

• 1:09:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Save it.

• 1:09:36David Hoffman?

  So I think in order, if we're going to punt this by two weeks, because you didn't do your homework, I think we have to actually up the stakes of this debate, of this bet, because we actually didn't have any stakes. Yeah.

• 1:09:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, what are you proposing?

• 1:09:50David Hoffman?

  Now I have some.

• 1:09:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not going to fight you. I don't want to fight you.

• 1:09:55David Hoffman?

  That's not what I'm interested in. I don't know.

• 1:09:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Think about it.

• 1:09:59David Hoffman?

  If I win, you have to buy a CryptoPunk.

• 1:10:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dude, no, no.

• 1:10:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  A worthless JPEG? Definitely not. Think about it. I'll see if I accept your terms and you'll propose something to me and we'll bring it.

• 1:10:14David Hoffman?

  Bankless Nation, I need help upping the stakes for Ryan versus me.

• 1:10:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not buying CryptoPunks though.

• 1:10:20David Hoffman?

  But he's not buying CryptoPunks.

• 1:10:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, on raises this week, Bankless Ventures did a thing, a raise, we should disclose it. Mountain Protocol is a tokenized treasury. They've just raised $8 million. We're pretty excited about this one. Why are we excited about Mountain, David?

• 1:10:35David Hoffman?

  Well, this is part of the thesis that all stablecoins in crypto on CryptoRales will eventually just turn into tokenized treasuries. Why will that be the case? Well, because a tokenized treasury will spit out 5% plus yield. It spits out yield, whereas a stablecoin does not. Circle, Tether, one of those profitable businesses in all of crypto, and they do next to no work. Shouldn't you, as the owner and holder of stablecoins, get that yield? Get the T-bill yield? Well, Mountain Protocol is doing that. They've already issued over $50 million of USDM, which is a interest-bearing, T-bill-backed stablecoin, so individuals can get the yield that Tether is otherwise getting.

• 1:11:14David Hoffman?

  MultiCoin Capital is the lead. Castle Island Ventures participation, Coinbase Ventures, and Bankless Ventures as well all follow on participation. Bullish, Bullish Martin, bullish Argentine founders, because Argentine founders definitely enjoy stablecoins and definitely yield-bearing stablecoins. So there's a link in the show notes if you guys want to read more about Mountain Protocol.

• 1:11:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, let's close this out with a meme of the week, David. What are we looking at?

• 1:11:39David Hoffman?

  This is a meme from me, so I get the pat on the back for being the meme of the week. I also selected myself.

• 1:11:46David Hoffman?

  This is the guy poking the thing with a stick, asking it to do something. And then the thing that we're poking is the ETH ETFs. Will you please start trading?

• 1:11:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this gonna be the next month, according to David, of podcasts?

• 1:11:59David Hoffman?

  Yes. This is actually the meme of the week for the next four weeks.

• 1:12:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Four weeks only, because David's date was July 6th, if you guys recall.

• 1:12:06David Hoffman?

  July 6th is a weekend. Like, the vibe around there. Early July.

• 1:12:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Early July, first half of July is the prediction here. We'll be... Poking the stick at the ETH ETF until then on the weekly roll up. Got to end with this, of course, you know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier, not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.