ROLLUP: Bull Market Week 2 | Blackrock ETH ETF | WSJ vs Crypto

Bankless Weekly Rollup 3rd Week of July, 2023 ------ 🎙️ Tap into the Bankless Premium RSS Feed https://bankless.cc/premiumfeed ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🦊METAMASK PORTFOLIO | MANAGE YOUR WEB3 EVERYTHING ⁠https://bankless.cc/MetaMask ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ⁠ 🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo 👾GMX | V2 IS NOW LIVE https://app.gmx.io/ 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE ⁠https://bankless.cc/uniswap ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 3:00 Markets 4:30 MicroStrategy https://bitcointreasuries.net/ https://twitter.com/thepowerfulHRV/status/1724892561100443741 7:20 ETH https://imgur.com/P4U1F4r 9:50 Layer2 https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary 12:45 Solana https://twitter.com/0xjaypeg/status/1723085649928937960 16:00 Cathie Wood https://twitter.com/AltcoinDailyio/status/1724602432347689321 17:20 ETH Next https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1724813998770602176 18:20 Inflation and Liquidity https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/cpi-inflation-report-october-2023.html https://twitter.com/wclementeiii/status/1723340365749493822 23:00 Blackrock Spot ETH ETF https://www.theblock.co/post/263299/blackrock-ethereum-etf-sec 24:00 XRP ETF Hoax https://vxtwitter.com/WhaleWire/status/1724170699944722614 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1724528224892326128 26:00 ETF Speculation 28:25 WSJ vs Crypto https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-needed-a-new-way-to-get-money-from-iran-it-turned-to-crypto-739619aa https://x.com/BanklessHQ/status/1724897239611629636 https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1724841543872266381 31:20 OKX Layer2 https://x.com/okx/status/1724472549197619561 https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/okb https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/derivatives/ https://twitter.com/sandeepnailwal/status/1724517804852834411 36:00 Coinbase Verifications https://twitter.com/CoinbaseCloud/status/1722702330406060282 38:20 Nocturne https://twitter.com/nocturne_xyz/status/1724806199777042623 42:30 NEAR Protocol https://twitter.com/NEARProtocol/status/1722973131374010559 45:30 Lattice Redstone https://x.com/latticexyz/status/1724744074089943051 47:45 Poloniex Hack https://x.com/peckshield/status/1722991018272759816 https://x.com/justinsuntron/status/1723008641433784695 48:55 Ordinals Seed Round https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/11/16/bitcoin-focused-ordinals-project-taproot-wizards-raises-75m-in-seed-round/ 49:30 MEME of the Week https://twitter.com/cyounessi1/status/1722629171241955353 ----- 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?

  Grab your coffee. It's the weekly roll up. David, what are we talking about?

• 0:03David Hoffman?

  The bull market continues. Week two of the crypto bull market. What is pumping and why? This new and improved market section in the weekly roll up where we have the movers of the week will unpack which tokens are moving and why? And sometimes at some point in the market, you'll have to be reminded that sometimes they're just going to move and there's not going to be a why. But there's perhaps a why this week. And also another big win for layer twos on Ethereum. Another centralized exchange is launching another layer two. It's basically table stakes for exchanges to have a layer two these days. What else is going on, Ryan?

• 0:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  First of all, I'm glad you said centralized exchange because I can't stand like sex just doesn't work for me.

• 0:39David Hoffman?

  Another sex.

• 0:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  It just still doesn't work for me. Also, last week was speculation, but this week it's official. BlackRock has officially filed their ETH ETF. And not to be outdone, the XRP community tried to meme their own ETF application from BlackRock into existence. It didn't work out well. And finally, the base roll up is introducing on-chain perks for people who identify themselves. And also, we have some identity protection, a new privacy protocol coming to Ethereum that we're going to talk about. David, there's always so much we jam pack in this roll up. And you know what? We also jam pack another feature of Bankless that we don't talk about too much on the podcast, and that is

• 1:21David Hoffman?

  The other podcast, the other RSS feed.

• 1:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's another layer to Bankless that many of those listening don't even know about.

• 1:30David Hoffman?

  Most of you are still on the main chain.

• 1:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah. There's a, there's another echelon to your Banklessness that you can get to, and that is the Bankless Premium Feed. It comes with a subscription to the Bankless Citizenship. It's just a whole separate premium feed that we release that has bonus episodes. So after every Monday episode, David and I do a debrief, we call it. We are going to start doing monthly Q and As as well from the Bankless Nation. So all of this bonus content, it's also ad free as well. David, what else can you say about this, this fine, you know, second layer, layer two podcast?

• 2:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Some people say that after they've listening, been listening to Bankless for forever, they actually don't listen to. The Monday podcast, they just

• 2:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Don't tell them that.

• 2:12David Hoffman?

  They just listen to the debriefs. They're like, ah, the Monday podcast is really long. I'm just gonna listen to Ryan and David talk about the podcast.

• 2:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:19David Hoffman?

  So if that's your mind. Also, there's just a Discord where me and Ryan hang out when we are not doing podcasts. I've got my own channel where you can ask me anything. And this is where we will be having our town halls and overall where we just hang out during the bull market. So if you want some companionship along the bull market, if you want to just ask some questions or just overall hang out. Also, this is where we're getting the questions for the Q and A episodes. Just come hang out in the Discord. There's a link in the show notes to get your bankless citizenship. It is your bull market companion package that you need.

• 2:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  We should mention, it costs money. Okay, so this is $16 a month if you commit for a year, but we know you can afford it because it's the bull market. Week two of the bull market. All right, David, what are we covering today? Let's talk about the markets first. Bitcoin, what's the price in the week?

• 3:02David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin and ETH, actually relatively flat on the week. A lot of the action was further down in the market cap stack. So Bitcoin started the week at 36,300. It's actually falling as we are recording this. Yeah, sad, down 1%. So 36,000 flat is where we are with Bitcoin, down 1% on the week.

• 3:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but maintaining those relatively high levels, which feels pretty good. Tell me about this, the GBDC discount and premium to NAV. What are we looking at?

• 3:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so as markets are heating up, I'm going to just be looking at the grayscale discounts or premiums, mostly discounts. Because it's just a sense, it's a kind of a sentiment indicator. It's also an indicator of outside money coming into crypto. And they're using grayscale, an inferior product, nothing against grayscale, but simply an inferior product to a spot ETF, which we are going to be getting soon. And we are watching the GBDC and ETH discounts approach par, where they ought to be. They were negative prior during the bear market because everyone outside who's getting access to crypto via these mechanisms, like, I don't want crypto, sell. Now people are buying. So the grayscale GBDC discount has gone from like negative 40% back in July to where it is now, what we are looking at.

• 4:11David Hoffman?

  And the punchline I'm trying to finally get to, which is negative 13%. So we are negative 13% on the grayscale discount, coming up to zero. We want it to be zero. When this hits zero, all outside interesting capital that's interested in buying Bitcoin.

• 4:26David Hoffman?

  Would be motivated to not buy it through this venue, but actually would just buy spot.

• 4:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  It'll spill over.

• 4:32David Hoffman?

  So this is kind of absorbing actually like true spot market buy pressure because people are just buying the grayscale Bitcoin and Ether trust first.

• 4:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  But we're getting close. It was negative like 50%. Now it's negative 13%. David, do you know with this Bitcoin price ride, who is sitting on $1 billion worth of profits? Whose trade finally paid off? Can you give me a guess here?

• 4:55David Hoffman?

  Who just happens to have, who do you think happens to have so much Bitcoin that going up to $36,000 means that they have a billion dollars of paper gains? Who could that be? Who is that? It's micro strategy. It is. Currently, they have $5.7 billion of Bitcoin with a cost basis of $4.6 billion. So congratulations, Michael Saylor. You didn't really time your buys in the best possible places in the market.

• 5:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Doesn't matter. He was dollar cost averaging in, David. But like Ryan said, it was gonna work out, and it finally has. I want to say, we have consistently said that, that this is actually a fantastic buy. But David, I don't know if you saw this clip, okay? What kind of crazy person would actually be buying Bitcoin during all of these dips? Let me give you a flavor for Michael Saylor. This is him in a recent podcast, and I just love this clip. I want you to see it.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  But when you go all in on something, I would say that does take conviction. Now, your conviction might be coming from your first impressions.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  How many chairs are you sitting on right now?

• 5:55Speaker 02

  One.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Are you all in on the chair?

• 5:58Speaker 02

  I am all in on the chair.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Like, like the point really is you put on one pair of glasses, you've got one pair of, of AirPods right now. You're looking at me through one screen. You're using one microphone. That's a one microphone. Like, you trust it?

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Is that conviction? Seems kind of scary. Why don't you diversify? Why don't you use 10 microphones? The point really is, things in your life, did you drive in 10 cars at the same time or one car at one time? Do you drive down one street? Aren't you afraid that you're driving down one street? Do you take a different way? You know?

• 6:36David Hoffman?

  Look at his face.

• 6:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at his face.

• 6:39David Hoffman?

  He's like, I don't know how to respond to this.

• 6:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, my God. Michael Saylor never changed. That is the guy who has been purchasing this entire time.

• 6:46David Hoffman?

  That is some top tier analysis right there. I actually have two pairs of AirPods, Ryan. In fact, yeah. I'm not an AirPod maximalist.

• 6:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, does he feel the way about Bitcoin that you feel about Ether?

• 6:59David Hoffman?

  I don't think so. I think it's directionally the same, but he feels something. I'm not feeling what Michael Saylor's feeling.

• 7:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't think I've ever felt that way about maybe anything. The way Michael Saylor feels about Bitcoin. Those are some conviction purchases. And that's what gets you a billion in profits, my friend. Okay, that's Bitcoin's story. Tell me about the ETH price. We're looking at the Kraken Pro Charts. What is ETH doing on the week?

• 7:21David Hoffman?

  Well, it's going down from the last time I looked at it. So that's sad. We started the week at $2,016. I wrote down to where we ended up at $1973. But we're actually looking at your screen. It's $1960, so down 2%. So currently falling.

• 7:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  We started this episode and we called the bull. Now I'm feeling below 2K.

• 7:38David Hoffman?

  This is what markets in the bull market can do to you.

• 7:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  They go back down? That's not fair. You wanted to show us the ETH discount, though.

• 7:46David Hoffman?

  ETH discount, again, it used to be almost at negative 60 back in July. So negative 60%. So like if you bought one, if you put in $100 into the ETH discount back in July, when it was at negative 60, you actually got, what's the math here? Like 1.6-ish.

• 8:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  An extra 60%.

• 8:05David Hoffman?

  One amount on your dollars at par. We are not at par. We are up to negative 15. So there's been a lot of buying pressure on the ETH discount, bringing it up to negative 15. So that's also approaching par.

• 8:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and part of your thesis is that has to be evaporated before ETH really goes up?

• 8:20David Hoffman?

  It doesn't have to hit zero. It's just like, once you are approaching like below negative 10 to 0, then this differences between grayscale and spot is like less. So like, we're already starting to like, it's mostly gone.

• 8:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I want to believe, David. I want to believe. Okay, how about the ETH Bitcoin ratio?

• 8:37David Hoffman?

  It's flatty down, flatty down.

• 8:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Flatty down. And total crypto market caps hanging in at 1.44 trillion. So still pretty up.

• 8:46David Hoffman?

  Slightly up on the week because a lot of price appreciation happened down the market cap stack. People are placing their chips on their, the lower cap coins right now.

• 8:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Remember you asked me last week about like, what's the market cap of crypto this cycle? Well, I asked that question after last week's roll up crypto Twitter and here's what they said. The vast majority, 42% of my followers said 6 to 10 trillion.

• 9:08David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 9:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. And then second to that was 2 to 5 trillion.

• 9:11David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 9:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Which, I mean, we're almost to 2 to 5 trillion right now. Those guys aren't bullish enough.

• 9:16David Hoffman?

  Those are bears. Bears are saying 2 to 5 trillion.

• 9:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And my answer was in the range of 10 to 15 trillion. Apparently 20% think that. And 14% think over 15 trillion. So that's the distribution, at least according to my Twitter followers. I hope we don't stop at 5 trillion, David.

• 9:33David Hoffman?

  That would be lame.

• 9:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a bull market for ants.

• 9:36David Hoffman?

  That'd be lame.

• 9:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not interested in that.

• 9:37David Hoffman?

  I mean, I got my takes about this bull market, but I guess this is now a news show, so I can save my takes for a different show.

• 9:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, no, this is only the facts, okay? No takes here.

• 9:47David Hoffman?

  No opinions.

• 9:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  No opinions. Value locked in layer two. That's at 13.64 billion. That's healthy.

• 9:54David Hoffman?

  That is up bigly. Up 5% on the seven days.

• 9:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  More than that. We should just celebrate every time this hits all time highs. It's all time highs yet again on the week.

• 10:02David Hoffman?

  That's gonna be really, that's gonna be real annoying. Not for us, though.

• 10:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Up only. Just for our listeners. All right. Now, you wanted to show, we've got this new section for the bull market, movers of the week.

• 10:14David Hoffman?

  Movers of the week.

• 10:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm gonna sort CoinGecko by the seven day movers. Tell me about them.

• 10:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Celestia, Avalanche, and Thor Chain. Sorry, Casper, I still don't know where you are.

• 10:26David Hoffman?

  Celestia, data.

• 10:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Importantly, haven't cared enough to go research it.

• 10:30David Hoffman?

  Haven't cared since I last looked. Technically, Casper's at number three. Celestia data availability layer. Also, I recently had their airdrop, so congratulations on all of you non-American listeners who were able to get your airdrop. And also, congratulations to people who claimed the airdrop and then didn't sell it because it's been up like 3X since you claimed it.

• 10:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  This segment brought to you by the SEC and Gary Gensler.

• 10:54David Hoffman?

  So the Celestia, like, what's the market cap on Celestia right now? The fully diluted valuation is pretty big. No, that's, okay, yeah, excuse me. Market cap is 800 million.

• 11:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fully diluted, it's 5.7 billion.

• 11:06David Hoffman?

  5.7 Billy. Okay, so low, very low float, but this is typical for very young coins. Overall, just a huge, just like vote of confidence for the multi-rollup, the many, many, many rollup thesis. Like Celestia, the token TIA.

• 11:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really?

• 11:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, we're on the seven day. This is totally a narrative trade. Narrative trade, don't you think?

• 11:28David Hoffman?

  Well, the narrative is rollups. That is the, there's no other narrative for Celestia other than many, many, many rollups come and use Celestia data availability. It does one thing, which is sell data availability. And who are the one people that buys data availability? It's rollups.

• 11:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I get it. All I'm saying is it feels like it's a vote of narrative confidence and not necessarily a vote of.

• 11:49David Hoffman?

  Bro, it's narrative season, man. It's the bull market.

• 11:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Those are the same things now. I forgot. I don't know. What else we got?

• 11:56David Hoffman?

  Followed up by Avalanche coming back from the dead, plus 71% on the week. That is a big move. So let's say it's at 140% on the week, because I didn't say that.

• 12:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 12:05David Hoffman?

  And then Thor Chain, like really impressive return by Thor Chain, up 63% of the week.

• 12:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thor Chain, and you are doing a bull episode on Thor Chain because David, you tweeted out just, it's basically an opportunity for some of these communities and some of these other assets to come basically give their, their bull take. We're airing these on bankless.

• 12:24David Hoffman?

  Forward. Yeah. Eric Fordyce wanted to actually step in and join the bull case for Thor Chain.

• 12:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's been quite bullish on.

• 12:30David Hoffman?

  Right. He's been bullish. Yeah. It makes sense if you know his history with, what was his deck? Shapeshift.

• 12:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Shapeshift, yeah. And I'm going to scroll down a little bit, but I don't have to scroll too far before I see Solana yet again, David. It's been up only, and another 37% on the seven day here. Here's a take, that institutional demand is actually one of the drivers for Sol. And you can see that through the Sol grayscale trust. So we're talking about the other grayscale trusts. And here's a tweet saying, the grayscale Sol fund is trading at 125 a share. That's a 600% premium to NAV. Holy crap. You have a take about this, I think.

• 13:08David Hoffman?

  I do have a take on this. I first, before I get into my take, I'm going to give Jay, we had Jay on the podcast for the bull case for Coinbase. I'm going to give him a bonk. This is the Dogecoin bonk.

• 13:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, this is Jay?

• 13:21David Hoffman?

  This is Jay, yeah. Yeah, the Coinbase analyst.

• 13:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're bonking him on the head?

• 13:24David Hoffman?

  I'm bonking him. This is the Doge meme of bonking him. He gets a bonk. Why does he get a bonk? Okay, so not all grayscale trusts are the same. So what are the main differences between like Bitcoin and Ether trust and grayscale and like all the other ones, which we're about to pull up and talk about? For Ryan, pop quiz. What is the, what do you think the size is of the grayscale Ethereum trust versus the grayscale Solana trust?

• 13:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ooh.

• 13:51David Hoffman?

  In terms of like market cap, assets under management?

• 13:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I know that the Ether one is big. It's definitely in the billions. So I'm gonna go like 2 billion would be my guess for that. And I know that Solana is a lot smaller and it's, you know, 10% of the market cap of Ethereum. So we'll call that, you know, 200 million.

• 14:09David Hoffman?

  Okay. Bankless listeners, everyone, consider the numbers. Lock them in. The correct answer is the grayscale ETH E trust has 7 billion Ether of dollars under management.

• 14:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a lot.

• 14:22David Hoffman?

  And the Solana grayscale trust has 7 million.

• 14:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, my God. 1%?

• 14:27David Hoffman?

  7 million. Yes. It is absolutely tiny. And so going back to Jay's tweet, when he tweets that like the, let's see, the implied valuation is at $328 per token. That's like having a shitcoin market, shitcoin centralized exchange that's like third rate have almost zero volume on Solana.

• 14:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  An ant could move that.

• 14:49David Hoffman?

  Like I could, I could move that price. Yeah. Like the $600 premium to NAV is, that's just not, it's not real. So like.

• 14:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, what a terrible ripoff. Imagine paying 6X on your soul tokens.

• 15:01David Hoffman?

  Don't buy it. Just buy spot. And so Jay, I'm giving you a bonk for bull posting without. What is bull posting for people who are on Twitter? Just like posting bullish stuff and you get a ton of engagement. He got a ton of engagement on this tweet, but he gets a bonk.

• 15:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I feel engaged.

• 15:17David Hoffman?

  Can we look at all the grayscale sizes? Okay, so grayscale GPTC trust. How much total holdings? $23 billion, followed by Ether at $6 billion, followed by Ethereum Classic, because Barry Gilbert was weirdly in Ethereum Classic Bowl, at $230 million, Litecoin at 110, Bitcoin Cash at 72, Zcash at 9 million, Stellar Lumens at 8 million, followed by Mana, the Decentraland currency, at 8 million, followed by Solana at 7.5 million. It's behind the Decentral... What was that? That Metaverse project, the Mana? Anyways, 7.5 million. So like, there's no signal.

• 15:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's a long tail here.

• 15:59David Hoffman?

  It's a very long tail. Yeah. And sorry, Link Marines, this also goes for you, because Link is at 4.5 million.

• 16:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so maybe Jay feels sufficiently bonked. What's your take on Kathy Wood, though? Here is Kathy Wood talking about Sol. And David, spoiler alert, she's bullish.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  So Bitcoin and Ether, anything beyond that?

• 16:18Speaker 04

  Well, you know, there are infrastructure players. Solana is doing a really good job. I mean, if you look at Ether was faster and cheaper than Bitcoin in the day. That's how we got Ether. Solana is even faster and cost-effective than Ether. So, you know, there are infrastructure plays. We do believe Web3, digital assets, that's a big idea, actually. Digital assets with property rights. First time ever online that we're seeing property rights.

• 16:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so thoughts?

• 17:00David Hoffman?

  This is just like Chris Bernisky whispering in Kathy's ears. Like, here's Kathy, here's how you talk about crypto in the year 2023. Chris Bernisky, he used to work at ARC. He's a big Solana bull, like loaded up his Solana bags, been investing in the Solana ecosystem. And then Kathy Wood is going on Squawk Box, and she's like, oh, I'm going to talk about crypto.

• 17:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, what are you doing? This is not our takes episode. This is just the facts.

• 17:24David Hoffman?

  You asked me my take. You asked me my take.

• 17:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  A big mistake. All right, let's move on. We did an entire episode talking about why not ETH? And that was actually in the takes episode that we released earlier this week. But my take is, David, the TLDR is this reminds me a lot of fall 2020. And that was a time when everyone was rotating into the latest kind of like chips on the table, crap table thing, which was DeFi tokens at the time. And it was DeFi and Bitcoin. This time, it's basically like Bitcoin and all of the other like tokens that still have communities. It's not DeFi. So it reminds me a lot of fall of 2020. And if it plays out the same way, then ETH is going to have its run up soon. That is the hope. Maybe that's some of the cope.

• 18:06David Hoffman?

  I totally agree, but it was also not just fall. It was also summer and a little bit into spring of 2020. It lasted for a while.

• 18:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it did. It did. I know. So we might be in for a long one here, at least for those ETH holders that are feeling left behind. David, here's something boring for you, David. CPI, it hit a two-year low. Okay, so that's what we're talking about macros. But the reason I think that's relevant is because this was the smallest increase in September 2021. And the big question on everyone's mind is, is the Fed going to continue to raise rates? Or is it going to hold steady? Or is it going to cut? When inflation is down, it is more likely to hold steady or to cut. So that seems to be the trajectory in macro markets these days.

• 18:48David Hoffman?

  I think that's good. We want, we want that, right?

• 18:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we do.

• 18:52David Hoffman?

  I think we want that.

• 18:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, inflation down and Fed pivot up. I mean, that's good.

• 18:57David Hoffman?

  That's like going to be the biggest bullish catalyst that I can think of if we do have this bull market.

• 19:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 19:04David Hoffman?

  It's going to do things like this. When the Fed pivots, we're going to get more of this stuff, which is this is a tweet from Will Clemente, who's an on-chain, just like on-chain wizard, I'd say. And he tweets out, "For the first time in 1.5 years, the 90-day change in stablecoin supply just flipped positive. We have more stablecoins today than we did 90 days ago. What is stablecoin supply as an indicator for crypto? Liquidity, more stablecoins, more liquidity, more liquidity, number goes up. That's how you do math."

• 19:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, actually. In all of the things that we've talked about so far, this is the biggest fundamental bull. Like, we were talking about the narrative market. This is actually a fundamental. When stablecoin liquidity goes up, I get much more bullish, and this is a very good sign of good things to come for crypto, for sure. What do we got next?

• 19:48David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, a new exchange, because a new Layer 2. Every centralized exchange making Layer 2s these days. I declare Layer 2s are now table stakes, but who is it? And after that, we're going to talk about how blockchain data was used in Congress to fact-check Elizabeth Warren. I love these words. And then also, how XRP tried to meme an ETF into existence. We'll figure out if that worked out for them, but we'll get to all of that and more. But first, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken, our preferred exchange for 2023 and 2024, next year as well. So if you do not have an account with Kraken, consider clicking the link in the show notes to get started with Kraken today. Kraken knows crypto. Kraken's been in the crypto game for over a decade, and

• 20:31David Hoffman?

  as one of the largest and most trusted exchanges in the industry, Kraken is on the journey with all of us to see what crypto can be. Human history is a story of progress. It's part of us, hardwired. We're designed to seek change everywhere, to improve, to strive. And if anything can be improved, why not finance? Crypto is a financial system designed with the modern world in mind. Instant, permissionless, and 24/7. It's not perfect, and nothing ever will be perfect. But crypto is a world-changing technology at a time when the world needs it the most. That's the Kraken mission, to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrency, so that you and the rest of the world can achieve financial freedom and inclusion. Head on over to kraken.com/bankless to see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Cryptocurrency services are provided to US and US territory

• 21:16David Hoffman?

  customers by Payward Ventures Eek, PVI doing business as Kraken. Cello is the mobile-first, EVM-compatible, carbon-negative blockchain built for the real world. And now, something big is happening. Introducing the Cello Layer 2. It's a game-changing proposal that's going to bring Cello's rapidly-growing ecosystem home to Ethereum. Vitalik has shared its excitement for the Cello Layer 2 on the Cello forum, so has Ben Jones from Optimism. But why? The Cello Layer 2 will bring huge advantages, like a decentralized sequencer, off-chain Data availability and one block finality. What does all that mean? Rock solid security, a trustless bridge to Ethereum, and more real world use cases for Ethereum without compromise. And real world adoption is happening. Active addresses on Cello have grown over 500% in the last six months. With the Cello Layer 2, gas fees will stay low,

• 21:59David Hoffman?

  and you can even pay for gas using ERC 20 tokens. But Cello is a community governed protocol. This means that Cello needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard. Join the conversation in the Cello forum. Follow @celloorg on Twitter and visit cello.org to shape the future of Ethereum. Introducing GMX, the deepest on-chain futures market to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and leading altcoins. GMX is a permissionless decentralized exchange that offers perpetual futures and spot trading. Lightning fast trade execution and competitive pricing with the security and self custody of a decentralized exchange. GMX is live now with V2, bringing new optimizations to on-chain leveraged trading. And even more than an improved trading experience, GMX will reward you for just participating.

• 22:43David Hoffman?

  All GMX users can easily set up a referral link. And with $12 million of Arbitrum grants being distributed as incentives and over $150 billion in trading volume today all settled on-chain, GMX is leading the charge in terms of opportunities for DeFi liquidity providers. The future is on-chain with your wallets, with your trades, and with your money in your own hands. Try it out now at app.gmx.io.

• 23:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know that rumor last week of BlackRock filing the spot Ethereum ETF, David?

• 23:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the rumor came out right before we started recording last week. And it was buzzer beater.

• 23:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  We went out on a limb, and we said, you know what? This is probably going to happen, you know, coin telegraph style. We just, you know, but it took that risk. Well, today, as of Thursday, the 16th, BlackRock actually filed the official spot Ethereum ETF with the SEC. It's not a false alarm, it's not a bankless snafu. This is now a fact. So BlackRock has the Bitcoin ETF filing, and now it has the Ethereum ETF filing. And that, my friend, is very bullish.

• 23:46David Hoffman?

  Has anyone informed the ETH price of this?

• 23:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'd like to file a complaint with the crypto manager.

• 23:55David Hoffman?

  Right. Someone tell Ether that it's getting a spot ETF.

• 23:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Well, you know what? Not to be outdone, the XRP community was hoping for their own spot XRP ETF, at least on the back of this. This is from Whalewire, an account on Twitter. Just in, BlackRock has officially filed for a new iShares XRP Trust Entity. XRP, of course, the token behind Ripple, and here it is. This looks like a valid screenshot, David.

• 24:18David Hoffman?

  Looks super legit.

• 24:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  From the beautiful state of Delaware. Looks like a government filing, but there was only one problem. What was the problem with this particular filing?

• 24:27David Hoffman?

  It wasn't real. Whether or not this particular screenshot was just straight photoshopped, which is super easy to do, or something, we just had to wait for Eric Balakounas and a few others to come out and say, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, that is fake, that is fake. Somebody pumped the price of XRP up like 7% or 8%, and then it immediately fell back down.

• 24:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So it was actually, David, it wasn't just a screenshot. It was bogus paperwork.

• 24:51David Hoffman?

  Oh, so the screenshot's legit?

• 24:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the screenshot's legit. It was just like bogus paperwork.

• 24:57David Hoffman?

  Right, because it actually went through the Bloomberg terminal.

• 25:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it did. It looked so official. All right, so somebody was doing this clearly like just a prank, bro, probably to prop up XRP price. The only problem with that is...

• 25:10David Hoffman?

  Somebody had like a 100x order on it, yeah.

• 25:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  When you do that in TradFi, right, there's actual cops on the beat that don't like this type of thing. So the Delaware Department of Justice is now looking into this, and it looks like they're probably going to be making some arrests.

• 25:25David Hoffman?

  Oh, good. Good. I love that.

• 25:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's how they handle fake news over in TradFi world, it seems like. So we got that going for us.

• 25:35David Hoffman?

  Right, because it's not the Wild West over there. It's the normie place.

• 25:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I want to ask you a question. So last week, just after we recorded, we had this little back and forth. And my take was, I only think there's going to be, this market cycle anyway, a Bitcoin ETF and an Ether ETF. And everything else is like many months away, probably years away, like three years away or so. And we won't actually, we won't actually get that in this market cycle. But I think you disagreed with me. You said you think there could be the potential for other ETFs. Do you still stand by that claim, David Hoffman? And what's the next ETF?

• 26:09David Hoffman?

  I think you and I both know that I am not an authority about this whatsoever.

• 26:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  But the problem is neither it am I.

• 26:20David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 26:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I could, it was two people who don't know what they're talking about, like debating this.

• 26:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah, blind leading the blind. Okay, but if Bitcoin and Ether can get spot ETFs, so can Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. And we've noticed just like TradFi really just not being, being able to differentiate between just like Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin and like the rest of the crypto assets that people care about. Like it would be meaningful if we saw like a Link ETF. I think Link would be a viable candidate. Honestly, maybe even XRP too, because they won their, their case against the SEC. Like what question do you want to ask? Are we going to get Bitcoin Cash Litecoin ETFs? Or are we going to get like Link and Solana ETFs?

• 27:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  How about we do this? So how about we do this, right? So I was speculating and I think there's only two, you were speculating as well. You know what I did after because?

• 27:07David Hoffman?

  You asked an expert?

• 27:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I actually went and asked an expert. I'm going to reveal some DMs here because they're not private. James Safer, I asked him, is there any likelihood that we'll get another non-Eth Bitcoin ETF in the next one to three years? He said, no, sir. Absent new head of the SEC or literal act of Congress, I'd be surprised if we get assets other than Bitcoin and Ether and ETF. And then he said some more things there. So James Safer says this is still a ways away. And maybe, like, maybe we should count our blessings. Maybe we're just lucky to have two ETFs. And we only have like more certainty over the one. So Ethereum could still be a, you know, a hump to get over. Or Gensler's approval on this one.

• 27:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm sure he'll be choking that one down.

• 27:55David Hoffman?

  This is why this bull market is gonna be, if like everyone's like, oh, it's a bull market. It's a bull market, including us, including at least me. But man, if we have a bull market because we have this spot Bitcoin Ether ETFs and Bitcoin and Ether therefore have exposure to like all the capital flows from TradFi.

• 28:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 28:12David Hoffman?

  And right now, everyone else is like speculating on like Avalanche and Thor Chain and Solana. Like there's a disconnect here. Like these are different, these are different versions of reality.

• 28:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's definitely beyond the scope of this episode. You know, we'll have to give some takes on this, I think. The Wall Street Journal doubling down on crypto plus terrorism, but Congress is fact checking. This was a story that broke. Remember Wall Street Journal, we've been talking about so many rollups. Well, they just doubled down again, David. This is a brand new story coming out this week. Hamas needed a new way to get money from Iran. It turned to crypto. They're finding something else to point to crypto at. The pivot to digital currencies helped Hamas receive large sums of from Iran in the two years preceding the attacks on Israel. More, more baseless claims, it appears from the Wall Street Journal. But here's the good news. Here's the silver lining this week. I want you to watch this clip. It was a member of Congress talking about this particular thing. And notice what he says. Here's a tweet.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  In the aftermath of these attacks, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that reported that Hamas received a significant portion of its funding from digital assets. A subsequent letter sent by members of Congress stated that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad has raised over 130 million in crypto, to which the blockchain analytics firm cited by the Wall Street Journal issued a correction, and I quote, "There's no evidence to suggest that crypto fundraising has raised anything close to this amount, and the data provided by Elliptic and others have been misinterpreted." At the end of the day, bad actors will continue to use any means possible to conduct-

• 29:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I'm going to continue this in a minute, but did you notice Congress is now quoting blockchain analytics data?

• 29:56David Hoffman?

  That's cool. That's a cool thing.

• 29:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is Congress learning how this entire system actually works. And our industry is the one that revealed this. I mean, Nick Carter and all the citizen journalists responsible for sleuthing out the actual truth here. And this is making it all the way to the floors of Congress. This is Representative French Hill continuing.

• 30:17Speaker 05

  ... any means possible to conduct their illicit activity. But phones and the internet aren't to be blamed by terror financing and crypto shouldn't either. We must examine these issues head on and separate fact from fiction and that's why we're here today.

• 30:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, that's nice, right? So that's what's going on in in Congress. It's good to push back on this. And Tom Emmer created a bipartisan letter with Richie Torres as well, Representative Richie Torres. So this is Republicans and Democrats together calling for an inquiry on all of these shenanigans and false allegations. So David.

• 30:50David Hoffman?

  I love that. I love a junior Democrat questioning a senior Democrat, Liz Warren. Richie Torres saying, hey, Liz, that's some BS and I'm doing a letter of inquiry. That's, that's I'm looking forward to this.

• 31:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think in particular for Richie Torres because I think a lot of the established Democrats are kind of against this. And as you said, it takes a lot to push back against Elizabeth Warren in the party right now. So yeah, you clapping for all these members of Congress that are pushing back on this.

• 31:20David Hoffman?

  Big time, big time. OKX is launching their ZK Layer 2 with the Polygon ZK EVM. OKX is the sixth largest centralized exchange in crypto with 50 million users now all getting a Layer 2 to call home. Did you know also, Ryan, that they also already have a token? OKX already has a token, in the same way in that Binance has a token. It is a $13 billion fully diluted market cap, $350 million market cap. So no small token, now getting a Layer 2.

• 31:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, OKX is, that token is actually bigger than I thought. I mean, $13 billion is quite a lot. That's going to be used as the payment token on this Layer 2. So it's kind of a, it's got a utility use there too. And one interpretation of this, remember last week, David, there was rumors of Kraken looking to spin up their own Layer 2. It's not been confirmed by Kraken, but of course Coinbase already has one. David, are all of the exchanges going to have a Layer 2? Is this how this is going to go down?

• 32:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's looking like it. It's looking like table stakes for any centralized exchange to also have its own domicile blockchain, which I think is great because that is just more surface area for more things to become coming on chain. But I will say, Can we get an exchange to use a ZK Validium, basically a rollup, to not just like have externally to their ecosystem where they have their own chain, but actually be the chain? As in, can you take the backend of the ledger? Because what are banks? What are crypto banks? They're ledgers. Can you take the ledger, the state of the bank? Can you put that on chain? That's, that's the new cool thing that I would like. That would be very, very cool.

• 32:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we're just, we're just raising the bar even more. They can never satisfy us, right? We're not, we're not happy with a rollup.

• 33:03David Hoffman?

  You can always be more bankless.

• 33:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can always be more bankless and more decentralized. That, that might be the trajectory. We'll have to see. David, what do we have coming up next?

• 33:12David Hoffman?

  Coinbase is offering perks on the base chain. If you disclose your identity, if you verify your Ethereum wallet to them, you get some free perks. Maybe you're interested in that. If you give up your identity, maybe it's worth it for you. But on the flip side, there's a new privacy app to help you hide from Coinbase on the other side of things as well. And then also I've got some corrections that I have to say about near from our last week's weekly rollup. So there's some near things as well. We're going to get to all of these.

• 33:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we messed up.

• 33:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it was me. I'll take the blame for that one. We're going to get to all of this and more. But first of all, I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. MetaMask portfolio is your one stop shop to navigate the world of DeFi. And now bridging seamlessly across networks doesn't have to be so daunting anymore. With competitive rates and convenient routes, MetaMask portfolio's bridge feature lets you easily move your tokens from chain to chain using popular layer one and layer two networks. And all you have to do is select the network you want to bridge from and where you want your tokens to go. From there, MetaMask vets and curates the different bridging platforms to find the most decentralized, accessible and reliable bridges for you. To tap into the hottest opportunities in crypto, you need to be able to plug into a variety of networks. And nobody makes that easier than MetaMask portfolio.

• 34:23David Hoffman?

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• 35:08David Hoffman?

  or a user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum. Experience Web3 development the way it was always meant to be: secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. Visit arbitrum.io and get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities. You know Uniswap? It's the world's largest decentralized exchange with over $1.4 trillion in trading volume. You know this because we talk about it endlessly on Bakersfield. It's Uniswap, but Uniswap is becoming so much more. Uniswap Labs just released the Uniswap Mobile Wallet for iOS, the newest, easiest way to trade tokens on the go. With the Uniswap Wallet, you can easily create or import a new wallet, buy crypto on any available exchange with your debit card with extremely low fiat on-ramp fees, and you can seamlessly swap

• 35:53David Hoffman?

  on Mainnet, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. On the Uniswap Mobile Wallet, you can store and display your beautiful NFTs, and you can also explore Web3 with in-app search features, market leaderboards, and price charts, or use Wallet Connect to connect to any Web3 application. So you can now go directly to DeFi with the Uniswap Mobile Wallet: safe, simple custody from the most trusted team in DeFi. Download the Uniswap Wallet today on iOS. There is a link in the show notes.

• 36:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Coinbase is offering free transactions in exchange for on-chain verification. So I give up a little bit of information about myself, and then I get free on-chain transactions on Base? Is this what I'm reading?

• 36:28David Hoffman?

  That's what they're saying, yeah. Free Base chain transactions if you verify your Ethereum wallet to Coinbase. So if you already have a Coinbase account, you already have KYC done with Coinbase.

• 36:42David Hoffman?

  You can just link your base chain wallet and say like, okay, that's, that's my wallet. And then your wallet will have free transactions on base. There are some other perks as well. You can get access to the base Discord. I don't know what goes on in there, but I'm assuming they talk about base. You get some others. There's some other perks as well, right? So like a lot of whatever it takes to have like anti, anti sibblness as a property inside of apps. So like there's airdrops, airdrop like social gaming stuff.

• 37:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  What? I'm scrolling down. This is all built on the Ethereum attestation service, the open standard.

• 37:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, totally.

• 37:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  We did an entire episode about this. This is incredibly bullish.

• 37:20David Hoffman?

  Yep. Yeah. So using, using EAS to provide Coinbase's version of identity for base chain.

• 37:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, this could be an entire thing that we do, like exploring what a sci-fi crypto exchange looks like. But if you think about what an exchange actually is, well, it's, it's identity. It's one part identity. It's one part user experience. It's one part wallet. What does that look like in the future? It looks like this is the next step. Once all of the exchanges have their own layer twos, right? Well, what are they going to do? They're going to provide some sort of identity service on top of that layer two.

• 37:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, because they already, they already have the identity service and now they're just extending it into the layer two. I think we should proceed with caution with this. Because I don't think it's too far hard to just imagine that like there's an app that only is useful, only opens to you. If you have done your verification with Coinbase.

• 38:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, I could totally see that, that coming as well. So we're going to have identity KYC crypto and then we're going to have non KYC crypto. And one project that's helping us with the non KYC identityless crypto is a project called Nocturne. And we talked about them, I believe, a couple of weeks ago. They are a Bankless Ventures investment. The cool, exciting thing this week is they just rolled out live on mainnet. This is a privacy vault UI that's accessible. You go to app dot nocturne dot XYZ. That's where, that's where this is located. What is this, David?

• 38:47David Hoffman?

  Simply put, it is a wallet that is a sidecar to all of your other wallets. So every wallet that you have can have its own Nocturne wallet. It's basically like a shadow version of your public wallet. So kind of in the same way that I have David Hoffman dot ETH. I can go take my wallet and that David Hoffman dot ETH is registered to one of my wallets. I can go get a Nocturne wallet and then I have a private account. And through some cool cryptographic mechanisms called stealth addresses and some account abstraction primitives. You get to have your private account and then it lets you engage in DeFi. And anytime you make a transaction, Nocturne uses a stealth address. And then you do your transaction and then it throws away that stealth address and then you get another one.

• 39:31David Hoffman?

  And so there's always this hidden wallet behind this mask of stealth addresses. And so it's different than all the other applicant privacy attempts at privacy that have come prior. Because it brings privacy to your wallet. Rather than it doesn't actually, actually, it's not asking the consumer to do anything different in the grand, in the fullness of time. Like ideally, this is just becomes like embedded in your wallet.

• 39:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I think this kind of project really throws a question to the rest of the world, right? It's kind of the nation states. Do you want your citizens to have access to basically the HTTPS of crypto and value transfer? Or is that not allowed? And like right now, in the Nocturne interface, if you go to it, under the Terms of Service, I don't think they could get around this, David. There's a list of prohibited countries. So the user shall not access the software or use it if the citizen, if, if the user is a citizen of the United States of America.

• 40:27David Hoffman?

  Oh, great.

• 40:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep, that's.

• 40:30David Hoffman?

  I'm not surprised in the slightest.

• 40:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Many Bankless listeners, of course, the European Union, the UK, these are also listed as countries. Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Crimea, Cuba, Russia, on down. So a whole list of countries that according to the Terms of Service are prohibiting from actually using this. If you're a citizen of those countries. So it just shows we have a tremendous amount of work to do on the nation state side. Clarifying our privacy rights with respect to crypto. And those have not been enshrined or clarified in any degree. And they absolutely need to be if we are to preserve our digital property rights in the 21st century. There is no other way to do it.

• 41:13David Hoffman?

  The juxtaposition between what Base is doing right now with Coinbase, like on-chain verification and the constraints around what, who Nocturne can provide their services to is like sobering, to say the least. And Coinbase and Brian Armstrong have moved mountains for this industry in Capitol Hill, just in our political sphere. And so I applaud them for that. And also, I will call on them again, if they're going to incentivize, if they're going to incent doxing of wallets on BaseChain, I hope that they also help us make sure that we can have access to our privacy too.

• 41:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you see an update from Paul Graul this week? So there's Coinbase representing plaintiffs from Tornado Cash, at least users of Tornado Cash. Preston Van Loon is one of them. The problem is, David, that this is their second court case. They actually lost the first court case and this is an appeal case. So they're trying to fight this in the court system.

• 42:15David Hoffman?

  They are doing that.

• 42:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think we need something stronger. I think we need some politicians with some backbone. They're going to pass some laws and reel in the executive branch from enforcing this kind of thing. The question is, do we want to preserve a function like Cash, which is peer-to-peer and fully private? Do we want to preserve that in the digital realm or not? And some societies may choose not to, and that's a shame. David, we got a record to correct this week. We messed something up with respect to the Near protocol and they called us on it. What did we mess up last week?

• 42:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so last week we said Near is now becoming a Layer 2 on Ethereum. That is not true. What is Near doing? We did say this part, but it got muddled. Near is an independent Layer 1, and it always will be. It is now also, one of the new things, actually there's a handful of new things, is also a data availability layer. So the Near mainnet, the Near Layer 1 with all of its apps and assets and all that stuff, will continue to settle on Near and it will also become a data availability layer, just like Celestia, just like EigenDA, for Ethereum rollups or rollups from any other chain. But honestly, what other chain is producing rollups these days? And so that is the thing that they are working with Polygon, the Polygon Chain Development Kit, so you can build a Layer 2 Velidium using Near data availability.

• 43:26David Hoffman?

  So like Near data availability is a module. Inside of the Polygon Chain Development Kit, and they are also working on bringing this module to the OP stack. That's the updated announcement. But there's actually also some other Near things as well. Near is also introducing a fast finality layer built with Eigenlayer. What is a fast finality layer? I'm so glad you asked. This just processes transactions for Ethereum rollups and between Ethereum rollups in like three to four seconds compared to like whatever exit times, exit queues. You have to go down one rollup over to the other and back up to the other one. So it's just secure, low latency cross-rollup communication. One of many steps of what it will take to recompose many Ethereum Layer 2s into one seamless Uber chain on top of...

• 44:11David Hoffman?

  Did you read my article not too long ago about the five big questions for Ethereum?

• 44:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I read all your articles, David. I don't miss any.

• 44:17David Hoffman?

  Thank you. And there's like different versions of the future. It's like one superchain dominates all the other superchains. So this would be like the version of the future in which optimism superchain just like wins. Then there is the one single Layer 2, which is like the Eclipse model, which is just like not even a superchain, just one chain, and it's gargantuan. Basically the Solana on top of Ethereum thesis. That's the Eclipse thesis. And then there's the Uber chain thesis, which is like a pluralist version of many, many superchains. And so when Near is working with Eigenlayer to introduce fast finality between chains and therefore also superchains, this is a plus one to the multi-superchain thesis, which is as pluralist as it gets, which gets me going.

• 45:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  The Uber chain thesis, huh? I kind of like that. I think I'm probably team Uber chain thesis. I will say, even though we got the...

• 45:07David Hoffman?

  It's also the hardest one of the three, by the way.

• 45:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, even though we got the details wrong, I feel like we got the spirit right, which is Near is cozying up a lot more to the Ethereum community with some of these solutions and certainly to rollups.

• 45:19David Hoffman?

  I don't know if it can give us that much credit.

• 45:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I'm going to take it. I'm taking that as a W, David.

• 45:23David Hoffman?

  The thing that I said that was factually incorrect is that Ethereum assets cannot go to Near. They are separate settlement layers.

• 45:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. While we're talking about Layer 2s, David, you threw this my way at something called Lattice. Today, we're announcing... Redstone, a super cost effective layer two for on-chain games, worlds and other ambitious applications built on the OP stack. You said you were really excited about this. Why are you so excited?

• 45:48David Hoffman?

  This represents a frontier of crypto that is probably one of the most ambitious frontiers of crypto that I think is possible. This is, I think, when we all get into crypto and we all have our minds blown about the future that this could bring, like, oh, everything is going to be super sci-fi and we're going to be able to do everything, blah, blah, blah. Like, remember when you were way too overly optimistic about what crypto could do? This is that. Lattice Redstone, it is a, it's a roll-up construction that is designed, like, purpose-built to build on-chain worlds, fully on-chain games, universes, things with so much internal state that they need to create the theoretical maximum amount of scale using a roll-up construction, which is why we are

• 46:33David Hoffman?

  returning to the world of plasma. I don't know if you know this, Ryan, but plasma has been back in the conversation.

• 46:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Vitalik wrote a post. I saw this.

• 46:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. Okay, so Redstone is the first plasma implementation for the OP stack, so it's a module for the OP stack. The OP stack's becoming more useful. And it's just been to optimize to be super cost-effective for on-chain games and worlds and highly ambitious applications. Remember OP Craft?

• 46:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  No.

• 46:58David Hoffman?

  It was, it was an OP stack chain that ran Minecraft as its virtual machine.

• 47:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:06David Hoffman?

  So this is the same people.

• 47:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Spilling that kind of thing up?

• 47:08David Hoffman?

  This is the spiritual descendant of OP Craft. So more research and development, more growth with the team. So now we have Redstone, which is this, like, it's a, it's like a kind of an engine. It's an engine for on-chain games.

• 47:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think I would like to do an episode on this.

• 47:23David Hoffman?

  I've been trying to do an episode on on-chain worlds for a very long time. It's like this weird axis of crypto between the Zero X Park guys, the OP stack people, the lattice people. It's this weird axis and I don't know how to tap into them because they're all kind of like Vitalik and they kind of don't give a fuck and they just want to build.

• 47:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, those are the best episodes, then. If anyone's hearing, plugged into this ecosystem.

• 47:46David Hoffman?

  I mean, I'm connected with them. I'll just go DM them.

• 47:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, that's the truth. You just haven't asked.

• 47:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I just haven't asked yet.

• 47:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, there was a big hack this week. 125 million from Poloniex, which is His Majesty Justin's son, his exchange.

• 48:01David Hoffman?

  Don't, don't say any bad words, Ryan.

• 48:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't hope this doesn't cause another cease and desist, but this is purely factual. We're just talking about the news.

• 48:10David Hoffman?

  Further cease and desist.

• 48:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  125 million. I mean, we're laughing right now, but I guess this is a lot of money for people who still had their funds on Poloniex. I don't know why you would, but.

• 48:21David Hoffman?

  I don't know why you would.

• 48:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Three assets affected, $56 million worth of ETH, some Tron and some Bitcoin. So there you go. Do you know anything more about this?

• 48:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Justin Sun says, "The Poloniex team has successfully identified and frozen a portion of the assets associated with the hackers' addresses. At present, the losses are within manageable limits." I hope that means that he will just pay.

• 48:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  He should.

• 48:45David Hoffman?

  He should, he should. And he should donate some other stuff to public goods. Did you know Justin Sun has like 10 times as much ETH than Vitalik? I think it's like more than 10 times.

• 48:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I did know that. It's a sad fact.

• 48:56David Hoffman?

  It's a very sad fact.

• 48:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a sad fact of the day. David, last thing, we got a raise going on. Bitcoin-focused Ordinals Project Taproot, the Wizards, these things. Can you believe people are paying for these NFTs here? That's actually not the stupidest NFTs I've seen. Magic Internet JPEGs and this Ordinals Project just raised $7.5 million seed round. That's a pretty hefty seed round.

• 49:17David Hoffman?

  It's a pretty hefty seed round. Well, I mean, Bitcoiners don't have too much like seed investment opportunities, so when one comes along. And it's Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall. So, you know, previous podcast guests, immense respect for Eric. Udi is a great troll. We love him too.

• 49:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 49:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't like Udi.

• 49:34David Hoffman?

  I'm glad Udi has something to do.

• 49:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow. David wanted to include this in the agenda just to say that. Meme of the week. David, what on earth are we looking at? This looks like it's from a Simpsons episode. "Let's Go Banana" is the caption. Is there a clip to play that accompanies this, that explains this?

• 49:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, for sure. Okay, so this is Cyrus Unesi, one of many Ethereum people that are frustrated by the lack of performance in ETH. And so there's this bit out of The Simpsons and they're all on a bus and the bus is rolling and all the kids in The Simpsons are like racing their fruits. The video is very, very important, so let's go ahead and watch that.

• 50:17David Hoffman?

  You can guess.

• 50:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Banana, of course.

• 50:19David Hoffman?

  Between an apple and an orange and a banana, which one rolls the best and which one makes the race? They're racing fruit down the bus.

• 50:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm getting the imagery. Go banana! But you forgot the punchline. So the apple, the orange is Bitcoin and Sol, and the banana is Ether.

• 50:35David Hoffman?

  Yes. All the people watching the YouTube chuckled probably. The podcast is confused because we have to explain memes to them.

• 50:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what?

• 50:41David Hoffman?

  I wonder how many times we can get people to, or how often we actually do get people to laugh at explaining memes.

• 50:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  We probably never. Probably this is just like this entire episode in format is just for you and I. That's why we do these.

• 50:53David Hoffman?

  That's fine.

• 50:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  But David, we do have something for the podcast listeners, and that is a moment of zen, which is a fantastic song from our friend Coco the Corn Cob. And I think there's some sage advice here on how to not get wrecked during the upcoming bull market. So stay tuned for that. We will end with risks in just a minute, but first some disclosures. Bankless Ventures, as I mentioned, we are an investor in Nocturne. We are long-term investors. We're not journalists. We don't do paid content. There's always a link to all of our disclosures, bankless.com/disclosures. Crypto is risky. You never knew if you got an apple or if you got a banana on your hands, you could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 51:35Speaker 06

  Crypto has a million ways for you to get wrecked. I hope that you are careful and you give it respect. And no, I never wish that anyone be attacked. I'm always so amused at the ridiculous hacks.

• 51:50Speaker 06

  Never take for granted that someone is who they seem. Just do a search for Rosalcon and see what I mean. If you stole a billion dollars, then you might be discreet or you might be the crocodile of Wall Street. Then you get the demagogues who really love to stump and convince you that their token's not a speculative pump with fancy algorithms and 10,000 APRs. Forget the fucking moon. This time we're reaching for the stars. Because crypto has a million ways for you to get wrecked. I hope that you are careful and you give it respect. Because any kind of asinine way you can divine, exploiter ingenuity will beat you every time.

• 52:27Speaker 06

  Abraham Eisenberg deserves a special verse. In a contest for creativeness, he'll always come first. He pumped the price of mango, which had low liquidity, and then borrowed against it and wrecked the LPs. But that's not all he did, 'cause he's a clever SOB. He went on down to Ave and he borrowed CRV. He shorted the hell out of it and caused the price to fall. A sneak attack on Ave, and this is possible because code is a law. Yes, code is a law. This concept is the crux of it all. Will it prevent corruption, or is it a fatal flaw? Will it allow the robots to obliterate us all? Yes, code is a law. Yes, code is a law. 'Cause people are the reason that society's fall. Did Ave make us clump or by uncovering some flaws?

• 53:10Speaker 06

  Or should he end up pounding rocks behind a prison wall?

• 53:16Speaker 06

  The Euler hack in 22 was not a lot of fun. He washed the tokens and he sent a piece of Kim Jong-un. We figured it was Lazarus behind the attack, but then the hacker grew a conscience and sent it all back. The Cashio Exploiter was different, to be sure. He gave your money back if you convinced him you were poor. Social engineering, now a multi-six correct? Or maybe just a bug in a smart contract? But when the code is written, if it's immutable, it means there's no such thing as spirit of the law. If someone steals your shit, maybe it's morally wrong, but we all knew the risk. We've been warned all along. That code is a law. Yes, code is a law. This concept is the crux of it all. Will it prevent corruption, or is it a fatal flaw?

• 54:00Speaker 06

  Will it allow the robots to obliterate us all? Yes, code is a law. Yes, code is a law. 'Cause people are the reason that society's fall. Wanna make the kids be evil and exist anywhere at all? This is what we get when code is a law.

• 54:17Speaker 06

  Someone sends you a message and he says you're really smart. And will you join a panel and he'll pay you for your part? Ten thousand Twitter handles follow this guy, but knowing that you recognize, hmm, I wonder why? So you read the white paper, but you really don't get how we can go for 20 pages but without explaining shits? The Discord's full of people. Just saying, GM. Somebody Zach XPT this guy and blow up his scam. There are too many stories to recount them to you all. Crypto's like walking by some grizzly bear with honey on your balls. It's why all the returns are astronomically huge. We're working out the key so that it's safe for normies to use. It's why crypto has a million ways for you to get wrecked. I hope that you are careful and you give it respect. Cause if you spend a week here without getting wrecked,

• 55:00Speaker 06

  you deserve a gold star placed around your neck.