ROLLUP: Trump's Massive Memecoin | Ethereum Ecosystem Drama | Ross Ulbricht Freed | Phantom Wallet Worth $3B?

In this week’s Bankless Weekly Rollup, David is joined by Eric Conner to unpack a whirlwind week in crypto. Highlights include Trump’s explosive entry back into the Oval Office, launching a $50B memecoin on Solana, a full pardon for Ross Ulbricht, and pro-crypto cabinet appointments. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation faces internal drama as Vitalik declares “wartime mode” amidst leadership restructuring. We also dive into Solana’s soaring ecosystem, BlackRock’s massive Bitcoin buys, and the SEC’s shakeup with new pro-crypto initiatives. It’s a week of big moves, bigger drama, and major market shifts! ------ 📣 0x | Start building with 0x v2 https://bankless.cc/0x ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | BUG BOUNTY PROGRAM https://bankless.cc/Uniswap-Bug-Bounty ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐CELO | BUILD TOGETHER AND PROSPER https://bankless.cc/Celo 🎮RONIN | THE FUTURE OF WEB3 GAMING https://bankless.cc/Ronin ----- ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/base:0x4be6cd4d402fed49eb2de95fbc8e737e8ffd3e7f/21?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:30 Markets https://farside.co.uk/?p=1518 https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-217-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-02c0bf3c093d https://youtu.be/nWPRFNVs6XY?si=YEOfBSUlqGmNJD7B 00:06:08 ETF Flows https://farside.co.uk/?p=1518 https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-217-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-02c0bf3c093d 00:11:19 Trump Memecoin https://x.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1880446012168249386 00:14:10 Melania Token https://x.com/MELANIATRUMP/status/1881087523847593995 00:20:53 World Liberty Financial Bids https://x.com/worldlibertyfi/status/1881457386671464804 00:26:06 Ross Ulbricht Freed https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1881932492170760674 00:31:08 Politics and Agencies https://x.com/DegenerateNews/status/1881760858508062898 https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/departure-gensler-012025 00:35:53 Brian Armstrong Expectations https://x.com/AltcoinDailyio/status/1880348843772113061 00:40:15 Trump Effect Kicking In https://x.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1880299698038493400 https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1881688751602286740 00:47:35 What’s Going On In The EF? https://x.com/vitalikbuterin/status/1880635379771904423 https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1880723497393201460 00:56:19 EF Leadership Drama https://x.com/dannyryan/status/1879705279761178690 https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1881680518934384676 01:06:37 SEC Charges Digital Currency Group https://x.com/tier10k/status/1880299710495486365 01:07:25 Circle Introduces USDC Paymaster https://x.com/circle/status/1882428077537386502 01:07:41 Phantom Raised $150M Series C https://x.com/phantom/status/1880018917068009527 ------ 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.

• 0:03David Hoffman?

  Bankless Nation, welcome to the weekly roll-up where we cover the weekly news, drama and developments in the crypto space. This week is the fourth week of January and today on the show, I have the pleasure of being joined by Eric Conner, former ETH maxi and now crypto AI bull to help me go through the weekly news. With me, Eric, really happy to have you, my man. How are you doing?

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Hey David, good. It's been a minute since we've recorded anything, but yeah, I've been well. Thanks for having me on. I know that people were a little bit of drama this past week, but just wanted to be clear, David and I had, David had reached out to me well before that to help kind of fill in on one of these roll-ups. And I said, yeah, of course, it's been a little bit. So I don't think I've recorded anything podcast-wise for a few months now. So excited to be back at it and chat with you.

• 0:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, podcasting is like riding a bicycle, you know, you never really get off the bicycle. You always know how to do it. So let's go ahead and get right into it. We'll talk about, we'll address some of that drama later in the show. But first, before we get to that drama, we're going to talk about Trump. Trump bursting through the doors of the Oval Office with a bang, drops a $50 billion meme coin that sends Solana soaring. He also kept his promise with pardoning Ross Ulbricht and really just kind of has the crypto industry edging for what he does next. Then the Trump second order effects are also underway. Gary Gensler is out. Hester Purce has launched an SEC crypto task force to right all the wrongs that the SEC has done over the last four years. A US court lifted OFAC tornado cash sanctions and Bank of America

• 1:26David Hoffman?

  has signaled their readiness to accept crypto into their bank. And lastly, drama in the Ethereum ecosystem. There's been some tension over the role and direction of the Ethereum Foundation's kind of reached a boiling point on Twitter in the last week. Vitalik is pretty fired up. He put on a malady PFP and is going toe-to-toe with some long Ethereum community members. And then a second Ethereum Foundation was launched. I'm confused about the details, so I'm going to ask Eric all about that. Before we get into all of that and more, a message from our friends and sponsors over at ZeroX, the OG builders, building critical DeFi infrastructure since 2017. They are now introducing ZeroX V2, a full-stack upgrade of crypto trading APIs, which brings multi-hop and multiplex routing for all of your Trades. What does that mean?

• 2:10David Hoffman?

  That means that it splits order routing through across various liquidity sources and various tokens. To make sure that you get the best execution on your trade. If you want to try out 0x V2, you can go to and see them at bankless.cc/0x. Whether you are a builder or you're a serious trader who wants to trade on chain, 0x is for you. Eric, let's get into the markets. Bitcoin started the week at $100,300, up 5% on the week to $104,800. I believe you don't own much, if any, Bitcoin, Eric, like me. But like, give me, give me your takes about like the Bitcoin price action over the last week and really over the last year or so, which is only three weeks now.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  That has maybe slightly changed in the last few weeks for me, but I'll keep that to myself for now. Yeah, it's the Trump effect, you know, which we'll obviously get into as well. But I mean, to me, the Bitcoin graph just looks pretty strong overall. And I think one of the keys is it's just kind of got the strongest narrative, the strongest media play right now. It's translating to people and I, I think a lot of this is, you know, it'd be interesting to see if Trump does announce a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Because I think a lot of, I don't know if that's really built into the price, but a little bit of that hype is built into the price, right? So 100K was kind of that level for a while that, you know, was, was resistance. It's kind of looking like that's slowly turning into support.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  So yeah, I mean, to me, overall, like, most of the crypto market looks pretty solid. And I mean, if Bitcoin can flip 100K into support, I mean, probably going to fly a little bit from here, especially with Trump in, in office now.

• 3:46David Hoffman?

  It was interesting, mid-week Bitcoin broke all-time high and no one really talked about that. It hit over $108,000 per coin. I think it probably touched 109,000 on some exchanges. And no one really was celebrating all-time highs. I know it's like only maybe $1,000 higher than the previous all-time high, but I think all-time highs are kind of normalized now. And also it dumped back down to 100,000, as you said. So we're getting some volatility above the $100,000 mark. Let's turn to Ether, a little bit of a different story. While Bitcoin was up 5% on the week, Ether Was down 3% on the week to where it is now at $3,200, started the week at $3,300.

• 4:27David Hoffman?

  Usually, even if Bitcoin is outperforming Ethereum, usually they're both in the same direction. They are both either green or red. It's kind of rare when one is green and one is red. And there's been a pretty big divergence. Bitcoin up 5%, Ether down 3% for a difference of 8% on the week. Any comments about Ether price performance, Eric?

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I mean, it's kind of just stuck in that same lull, right? It's kind of like Bitcoin goes up, Ether lags, Bitcoin dumps, Ether seems to dump more, right? It's just been a kind of a constant bleed on the ratio. I mean, this is historically what has happened in bull runs, let's be honest. Bitcoin runs up, blows past all time highs, it takes Ether a little bit to catch up. You know, there's a lot of hopeium around Q1 for Ether. We're almost a month into Q1, it hasn't moved. Doesn't mean it's not going to. Nobody really has a crystal ball, I definitely don't. This isn't like too weird for historical trends. Sentiment just feels a little bit different, but I mean, it's not out of the question whatsoever that Ether could go on a traditional Q1 catching up to Bitcoin run, right? But it's just kind of stuck in this, that 4,000 range, it's just been very, very brutal resistance, right?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  So when that happens, you just kind of start to range. It seems like we're kind of stuck in this 3,000 to 4,000 range when it comes to Ether, so. I don't know, I guess the big question is, is it going to play out like history? Or is it going to be a new, you know, a new cycle and Ether just can't get out of this slump right now?

• 5:50David Hoffman?

  I do feel very familiar to this feeling of, man, Ether is in this range and it just can't get momentum. But as the longer that that goes on, when it does break through that range, then you have just conviction and confidence in continuation. We're just kind of waiting for that moment. I will say that we, as crypto natives, tend to compare valuations a lot. But nonetheless, the straight US dollar bid into the industry over the last week has been absolutely gargantuan. $2.2 billion of inflows have flowed into digital assets over the last week. This is a report according to CoinShares, and you can see that show up in the.

• 6:30David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin ETF just yesterday on the 22nd, $250 million went into the Bitcoin ETFs. But the day before, $800 million. And then on the 17th, which I believe was last Friday, over a billion dollars in a single day went into the Bitcoin ETFs. And before that, it was 600 million. And before that, it was 700 million. So some gargantuan numbers going into the Bitcoin ETFs. The Ether ETFs also positive. I wouldn't call it gargantuanly positive, but we are at about, almost coming up on 10 days of positive inflows into the Ether ETFs. And like I said, here is that CoinShares report just talking about $2.2 billion of, you know, dollars bidding different crypto investment products

• 7:12David Hoffman?

  over the last week or so. So while, you know, we like to talk about the ratio, the Solana people love to dunk on the ETH people about the poor price action. But nonetheless, dollars are coming into the industry and providing a floor for all of our crypto bags.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the things, this has to me been the biggest mystery of the ETH price action, right? We've got, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into ETH and it just seemingly is stagnant, right? So that just brings the question of like, I guess who's selling or, you know, why, why are we bringing in so much retail flow and not going up? But, um, you know, this thing can, all this stuff can be a mystery until it just takes off, right? And you never really figure it out. Um, I do think ETH has had one of these interesting things where we're not as far along in the cycle as in our cycles as Bitcoin is. So there's a lot of like early, you know, still ICO participants that have large bags that are okay selling at 3,200, right?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  And maybe we just got to shake them out and they're the ones kind of dumping on retail flows. And then once they're out, ETH moves up. But to me, one of the greatest mysteries of this cycle so far has been that ETH got an ETF, hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into it. And I believe ETH price is the same as when the ETF was announced. Um, go figure that one out.

• 8:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that is a good point. Yeah, the ETH ETF seemingly has had no material price action in the ETH price, other than volatility. It's provided volatility without actual appreciation. Total crypto market cap, 3.7 trillion. That is near the all-time high, which I believe is 3.9 trillion, but we are still not yet there. And then two movers of the week that I want to highlight, Radium, which is kind of the Uniswap on Solana, not a perfect comparison. Honestly, nothing is a perfect comparison to the Uniswap of whatever chain, but Radium, it's an AMM on Solana, is up 50% on the week, and then Solana itself, up 20% on the week. I would call both of these things a tailwind of the Trump meme coin, which we're definitely going

• 9:15David Hoffman?

  to talk about, but the meme coin infra on Solana and Solana itself definitely has caught a bid over the last seven days or so. And we're going to go ahead and get to that subject next. Donald Trump enters the Oval Office with a bang, a meme coin, a presidential pardon, and a new host of pro crypto cabinet positions, and a task force, all tackling the crypto industry in the ways that we've always wanted to. We're going to get to all of this and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Uniswap. It's a browser wallet, it's a mobile wallet, but it's also the best place to swap tokens in DeFi. Check them out. There's a link in the show notes. Let's go here from Uniswap right now. Are you ready to swap smarter? Uniswap apps are simple, secure, and seamless tools that crypto users trust. The Uniswap protocol has processed more than $2.5 trillion

• 10:00David Hoffman?

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• 10:43David Hoffman?

  offering one of the highest APRs among the top 10 LSTs. And now, CMEith takes things even further. This restaked version captures multiple yields across Kerak, Eigenlayer, Symbiotic, and many more, making CMEith the most efficient and most composable LRT solution on the market. Metamorphosis Season 1 dropped $7.7 million in Cook Rewards to METH holders. Season 2 is currently ongoing, allowing users to earn staking, restaking, and ABS yields, plus rewards in Cook METH Protocol's governance token, and more. Don't miss out on the opportunity to stake, restake, and shape the future of METH Protocol with Cook. Participate today at meith.mantle.xyz. Eric, I think this is the tweet that was heard around the crypto industry. I think people probably thought that Donald Trump's Twitter account was hacked

• 11:27David Hoffman?

  when this tweet went out, but no, it's real. This tweet reads from the official Donald Trump Twitter account. "My new official Trump meme is here. It's time to celebrate everything we stand for, winning. Join my very special Trump community. Get your ticker signed Trump now. Go to gettrumpmemes.com. Have fun." And there is a big picture of Trump in a frame, saying "Fight, Fight, Fight", and it's gettrumpmemes.com. And if you go to gettrumpmemes.com, it's a big website that said "The Only Official Trump Meme. Buy now with debit card, buy now with crypto", and a Solana contract address, along with a very fit, skinny-looking Donald Trump. And it turned out to be real, that this is a real Donald Trump meme coin, called Official Trump, that debuted coming in at something like

• 12:12David Hoffman?

  a $10 billion market cap on launch, but only with a $10 billion fully diluted, like a $1 or $2 billion market cap. And then it immediately proceeded to go from about $2 up to $28 in like half of a day, adding $50 billion in market cap. 80% of the token itself is locked up, which is why there is such a big discrepancy between the market cap and the fully diluted valuation. Eric, where were you when you realized that Donald Trump launched a meme coin?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  I was not home. I was actually out. And I kind of missed the initial few-hour frenzy. I was trying to disconnect from my phone for a minute. Of course, that's when things always happen, right? Late at night when you're trying to disconnect a little bit. And then I had, I looked at my phone and of course I had a million texts and just messages and Telegram and Discord and everyone was blowing up about it. I think when I first saw it, it was at something like, I think it was like, like 20 bucks, 15 to 20 bucks. So it wasn't like too late in the game, but I felt like, you know, I had already come on and, you know, people had sniped it and it already went up. But yeah, this is just fascinating. I mean, to have the President of the United States launching a meme coin and tweeting it from his official account and everything, right?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I didn't, I honestly, I'll just be honest, I didn't think we would go this far in the meme coin game, right? This is like, I'm not saying it's like the peak of the meme coin market, but this is like the peak that you could possibly get as far as someone launching.

• 13:35David Hoffman?

  The President is launching a meme coin.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Like who's bigger? Who would be bigger? Elon maybe just hype wise, but I mean, Trump's kind of at the top right now, right? So, um, yeah, and I kind of miss it. I did not, I did not play this game. I felt like I was a little late, a little silly maybe. Cause I think it ran from like, once I saw it say 20 bucks up to the peak of I think 70, 75, 75 billion dollar market cap. Sitting around 36 now, but yeah, pretty fascinating. I mean, I, I had a lot of people, not really in the crypto of course, texting me like, hey, you buying this? I'm like, uh, I'm not, but you do you if you want. Um, and then of course, it's taken off, everyone's talking about it. And they decided to drop a Melania coin, right? And I'm just like, like why? Like this thing could have just, why? You dilute it like two days in.

• 14:23David Hoffman?

  They just shot themselves in the foot so hard.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  It was running. I mean, it was at 70 billion dollars. It could have run way higher, I think. The hype was there. Coinbase launched it. Robinhood launched it. And then you're just kind of like, wait, what? And then everyone kind of does a double take, right? And starts thinking like, well, are they going to keep diluting it? Is there going to be a Baron coin? Blah, blah, blah. So yeah.

• 14:46David Hoffman?

  You can see on the chart when they launched the Melania meme coin. I believe it was, if you're looking at this screen, it's right here. See this big ass red candle, excuse my language? The candle that drops the Trump meme coin by 55%. It goes from $75 down to $32. I mean, like, the thought process, I don't understand it. We're gonna play a Trump clip, which is the only known clip that I know of, of him actually addressing the meme coin. But man, Trump is the meme. Melania, she's, I'm sure she's a great lady. No one cares about Melania. Like, it's just Donald Trump, just one meme coin, and it would have gone to infinity. But they just killed their momentum, erased billions of dollars collectively.

• 15:28David Hoffman?

  Because like, the Melania meme coin is only at like $2 or $3 billion.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  And they wiped 40 billion off this cap by just launching it.

• 15:35David Hoffman?

  Exactly, yeah. Uh huh, and it hasn't really recovered since. And so, it's almost, it's basically currently at the price that it was when it dumped. It tried to recover, it did not. But it's currently clocking in at $37 billion, which is still not, it's still plenty of money. $7 billion, fully diluted. There is, on the website, you can see the distribution. There is a, one of the classic pie chart distributions. And all Trump collective-owned entities own 80% of the token. I think if anyone inside of the crypto industry launched a meme coin in this fashion, in this way, everyone in crypto would be like, well, that's a grift. You own 80%.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  100%.

• 16:14David Hoffman?

  But when Donald Trump does it, and you know, it pumps Solana, the Solana price by 50%, and everyone gets wealthy, then it's totally okay. And like, granted, it's incentive-compatible. It is, you know, legitimizing the industry in some way, shape, or form. Is putting more attention in, into the market. There are some pretty crazy stats out there about the sheer number of wallets that was made in order to just buy the token. Here's some, a tweet from Jason Yanowitz, who says, "50% of Trump and Melania holders have never bought a Solana altcoin before. 47 of buyers created their wallets the same day they purchased the token. 83% of holders own sub $1,000 of sole assets." This was a historic retail onboarding event.

• 16:59David Hoffman?

  And then Mike Appolito, who's, you know, Jason's co-founder, says the Trump meme coin is a seminal moment in crypto's history. Whether the discount rate that used to get applied to crypto for the fear of it being banned has lifted. The entire industry is about to re-rate up only. So zooming out, Eric, what would you say about just the impact on the crypto industry as a whole? Like, is this, is it, are we never going to be the same? Is it going to be forgotten? Like, what's your take?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think one of the most important points there, it's actually funny. I was talking with someone this morning about this is just the sheer number of wallets this created on Solana and for Solana, right? And I think of all the things, that's one of the better things they've cashed in on, on the meme coin game is just capturing users. And these are now just active wallets with money in them, right? Maybe they're not going to go trade or use Solana every day, but this created a crazy amount of wallets for them. I think overall, it's bullish, it's good for the crypto industry. I think no matter what, you have kind of regulation guards coming down. You have the president of the US launching a meme coin. Yeah, okay, we can call this a grift in a way. I mean, they own 80%. That's why I didn't personally buy it.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  And I'm sure there's just some kind of team behind this that convinced the Trumps to do this. And they kind of ran with it and they're probably the ones that were like, hey, let's do Melania now. Like, I don't think Donald himself is sitting there being like, hey, it's time to launch a Melania coin, right? There's like a team they're kind of working with doing this.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  I think, I think it's fine for the industry. We were already launching just nonsense meme coins every day anyways.

• 18:32David Hoffman?

  They have launched the worst things.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. So like, let's not act like this is like, you know, worse than anything the industry's done so far this cycle. But yeah, it's just, the 80% is personally why I didn't do it. I think if it was like 100% fair launch, I would have been more interested in hopping in. And I think that's probably holding a lot of people back now as time goes on as well. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, how that happens. Who knows, maybe like, oh, we're going to burn most of this and then people will be more interested. But yeah, I don't really think you can think of this as anything less than bullish in general for the industry.

• 19:08David Hoffman?

  I think the big question that Trump meme coin token holders want, or was getting insight for or wants insight for is like really how aligned is Trump with his own meme coin, right? Is he gonna be like on Twitter pumping his meme coin or does he even know about it? We have one clip of Trump talking about his meme coin, which was from a press conference when an interviewer asked him about it. It is a hilarious clip. Trump, you know, whatever you feel about him, he is either on purpose or accidentally hilarious. And I think this clip embodies that. So let's go ahead and listen to this clip right now.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  You launched your crypto coin the other day. Do you intend to continue selling products that benefit yourself personally while you're president? Well, I don't know if it benefited. I don't know where it is.

• 19:51David Hoffman?

  I don't know where it is.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  I launched it. I heard it was very successful.

• 19:54David Hoffman?

  I heard it was very successful. I haven't checked it.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Thanks. You made a lot of money, sir. How much?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Several billion dollars, it seems like, in the last several days. Several billion? That's peanuts for these guys.

• 20:10David Hoffman?

  And that's how it ends. He actually receives from the reporters how much money he made on this meme coin, because apparently he did not know. You can see inside of Google Trends, Solana, the Solana search keyword in Google is about to break highs not seen since 2021, like much higher, whatever this chart is. Measured at 30 was what it was on the high of 2021, and currently we're clocking it somewhere around 100. So three times higher than the highest point it was in in 2021 is what is the Solana search terms. Bitcoin is not at previous all time highs. Ethereum is not at previous all time highs. So Solana gets a win for just optimizing for meme coins. Turns out people really, really want to launch and trade meme coins.

• 20:54David Hoffman?

  But that is not the only thing that Trump is doing on chain. World Liberty Financial, which is Trump's DeFi project, which is kind of a fork of Aave, deployed on Scroll and Ethereum Layer 2, tweeted out to commemorate the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States, "World Liberty Financial is proud to announce the following strategic purchases today: $47 million of ETH, $47... Seven million dollars of wrapped Bitcoin, 4.7 million dollars of Ave, Link, Tron, and Athena. Excited for the future ahead with 20,000 likes on the tweet. And then I think Eric, this is your tweet. Donald Trump is starting to stake his ETH. Let me say that again. The President of the United States of America is staking ETH.

• 21:36David Hoffman?

  And this is a picture of EtherScan of 15 million dollars of ETH being staked to the World Liberty Financial MultiSig. He's doing all the things across all the chains. You got to give him credit to where Donald Trump is a businessman. He's got new lines. He's got NFT business. He's got a meme coin business. He's got a DeFi protocol business. How much he's involved with any of these things is probably minimal. But hey, he's doing it.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think this here is big for Ethereum because Trump's not taking the. First of all, they're not just sitting in stable coins, right? Obviously, he's the president. He's a USD maxi to an extent, right? But he's buying ETH. And yeah, he's buying some DeFi, which is good to see. But and a little bit of Bitcoin as well. But historically, in this account, they've been buying ETH. What does that mean? I don't know if it, you know, I've seen a lot of speculation. Well, he's buying a lot of ETH. Like, do you think they're going to announce something about ETH or DeFi? Maybe, or maybe they just think it's crypto is going to take off in general. And maybe they think ETH is low versus other things and they just want to do it. Now, some of the funniest responses I get to some of these tweets are like, well, it's not like Donald Trump himself.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Well, it actually kind of is. If you read the terms and services on World Liberty Financial website, like it states that this LLC, I think it's called like the Fight Fight Fight LLC or something like that, which is owned by the Trump family, has say in where the funds go and how they are invested over like a certain threshold.

• 23:06David Hoffman?

  Trump has governing power over World Liberty Financial. You've read the fine print.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  I've read the fine print. Trump family, and I'm sure, you know, he's on the top of the LLC. I think some family members on there or whatever. But they, I mean, they have the say over this. If they wanted to dump all this USDC, they could do it. They're clearly telling people to buy ETH. It's all there in the fine print on the website. So I think this is just great for crypto. I mean, like. The president's talking about meme coins, buying ETH, Bitcoin, DeFi. We're coming off, you know, four years of people hiding and tucking their tails in because they were afraid in the US to do anything related to crypto and DeFi, right? And clearly that, you know, you can't really be fearful in the US now about like being sued

• 23:51Speaker 01

  for launching a DeFi project or a meme coin or something legit if the president himself is doing this stuff, right? So I know that's not like an official legal stance by any means, but you feel a little bit safer now, right, than you did just a week ago or whatever. So where this all kind of goes next, I don't know. Like, is the whole four years of Trump's presidency going to be, you know, DeFi meme coin related? Is this just a flash in the pan and he's going to, you know, shift to, first of all, just being the president? And second of all, more like the Bitcoin or, you know, other coin national reserves? I don't know. Time will tell, but it's been fun. The engagements on those tweets are fun, too. People love Donald Trump buying ETH, so, yeah.

• 24:33David Hoffman?

  Dude, the Donald Trump algo is huge. Like, people just want to hear about Donald Trump and what he's doing about crypto.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:42David Hoffman?

  This tweet that we're looking at, from you, has a million views. It has almost 10,000 likes. I also just, the difference in behavior of what's going on on the two respective chains, Solana and Ethereum, is also just interesting. Like, what is Donald Trump and Trump-associated businesses doing on Ethereum? Building a DeFi protocol and buying Bitcoin, buying Ether and buying other crypto asset tokens. And then what are you doing on Solana? Launching a 80% locked-up meme coin. Like, those are the facts of the matter. There are two different types of behaviors going on two different chains. And I just kind of think that's, it's interesting to see the natural behavior that emerges on the respective blockchains.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I fully agree with that. I think that's, I had pointed out, not exactly that, but in a couple tweets, kind of like... You know, I'm okay with Solana winning, quote unquote, winning meme coins. I know they didn't win meme coins because there's great meme coins on Ethereum as well. But like, what if E's future should be a focus on like DeFi and ETH's money store of value and kind of like, you know, global sentiment layer that people trust throwing their assets on and not launching an 80% locked up meme coin like that. There is like this divergence now and kind of what the chains are being used for. And I think we're going to get into this topic a little more later, so I won't go too far. But this does come down to as well, though, you need to get users on your chain and users are buying the gas token and that's pushing price up.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  And so I know we're going to talk a bit, a little bit about Ethereum in general later, so I'll save some of those thoughts for now.

• 26:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, let's finish up with the rest of Donald Trump and his crypto actions. The big thing this week, I would say even bigger than launching a meme coin, even though launching a meme coin is pretty big, is the pardoning of Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Here's a photo of Ross at 40 years old, after being in jail for almost 12 years after he was imprisoned after operating the Silk Road, which is the, it's a dark web marketplace, a marketplace for everything. And then since it, you know, used Bitcoin and Tor, it ended up being a place where drugs and many other illicit activities would be done. Here is Ross Ulbricht walking, walking free with a little plant in his hands. I thought that was cute. He tweeted out, truthed out on Truth Social.

• 26:51David Hoffman?

  "I just called the mother of Ross, William Ulbricht, to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross." And I actually met Eric, I don't know if you've ever met Lynn, Lynn Ulbricht, but she has been around the libertarian crypto conference space. I met her in Bitcoin 2019, when she was collecting signatures to petition the government to release her son Ross. And she had been doing this before, before like the crypto industry really adopted her as a symbol of libertarian rights. And she never really gave up. And I can only imagine being the mother of a son who was in jail for 12 years and getting the phone call from the president saying,

• 27:35David Hoffman?

  Hey, I'm about to pardon your son. Kraken Exchange, Kraken tweeted out, "All of us at Kraken want to make sure that after what you've been through, you're able to land on your feet with the support of the community that loves you the most, the Bitcoin community." That's why we've donated $111,000 in Bitcoin to you, Ross Ulbricht from Kraken. So Ross, I don't know, he might have some Bitcoins tucked away. I don't think anyone really knows. He probably doesn't even know. But hey, at least he's getting $111,000 in Bitcoin from Kraken to Ross. Eric, what are your thoughts on all this?

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, great to see. This was kind of rumored, right? Trump had hinted at it or talked about it. It was kind of funny, like, this didn't happen on day one of Trump's presidency, and all the Bitcoiners were already kind of up in arms with pitchforks. Like, well, let's just wait like a couple of days, right? And then I think it was on-

• 28:22David Hoffman?

  It was signed on the first full day of Trump's presidency.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Second, I guess, US day, but within the first 24 hours. So, yeah, I mean, great to see. This, obviously, story goes way back, and there's a lot of nuance and stuff here. But I actually think, not even commenting necessarily on the case and what happened, I think it's a testament to how powerful Bitcoin and crypto have become, right? This is something, when Ross was prison for this, pretty much everyone in the US, especially in the government, thought Bitcoin was a scam. And Ross was kind of a champion in general for Bitcoin, right? Early on, and kind of, you know, even though Silk Road was like a drug exchange and illicit exchange, like, it helped put Bitcoin on the map in like a weird way. It was kind of the first big story.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  And now people that were being jailed for, you know, accepting Bitcoin on these marketplaces, what was once thought Bitcoin itself was dirty and only used for drugs and all this stuff, is now powerful enough to get the person out of prison that went into prison for this, right? So, kind of a full circle thing. Just really kind of shows the power crypto has now, and it's nice to see. I mean, one of the classic things during the election was, people anti-Trump were saying, "Oh, he's just saying this stuff. He's not going to stick to his word." So just in general, it's nice to see him sticking to his word on some of his crypto-related promises. And then, yeah, I've, of course, been thinking, I wonder how much Bitcoin has been stashed away, or like, he opens up some old laptops and some old, you know, hardware wallets or whatever,

• 29:50Speaker 01

  some cold storage, written down seed phrases, and, "Oh, look, we've got lots of Bitcoin on these." So who knows? We'll probably never know, but I'm sure there's some sitting around.

• 29:59David Hoffman?

  I was thinking about this. I'm gonna bet that he doesn't have access to any old Bitcoins, because for the many number of years, you know, 10-plus years, he has been operating under the assumption that he is in jail for life. And his mom has been working tirelessly to get him out of prison. And if he knew that he had access to Bitcoin somewhere, he would tell his mom, "Hey, Mom, I've got these Bitcoins. You can use that to fund help." So I think it would be likely that if there was the option for this, then he would have already tried to have exercised that option. But nonetheless, in addition to the Kraken, $111,000 in Bitcoin, I'm just pulling up the Bitcoin wallet. It seems like other people

• 30:42David Hoffman?

  have also donated even more than that. So he has up to $276,000 in Bitcoin coming out of jail. So he's landed on his feet, landed with some funds. Ross Ulbricht, I know every single podcast under the sun is probably clamoring at your doorstep trying to get you on as a guest, and I would like to include myself and the Bankless Podcast in that. If you are ever, after you are done being bored of being a free man, please consider coming on the Bankless Podcast. Let's get into some of the regulators. There's a statement on the departure of Chair Gary Gensler, and it starts off, "Today is Gary Gensler's final day at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Interestingly," I think this is written by Commissioner Hester Purce, Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, and Mark

• 31:25David Hoffman?

  Ueda, two very pro crypto SEC commissioners, and one very negative one, Caroline Crenshaw. I won't read the statement. I'll leave the link in the show notes for anyone who is interested in reading the statement, because I want to kind of skip to the punch here, where the White House has issued some executive orders naming Chairman and Chairwoman in the lieu of an actual official position. We all know that Paul Atkins is likely going to be the SEC Chair, but in his absence, before he is actually named and approved, Mark Ueda is the Acting Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has been very pro crypto, basically the other half to Hester Purce. And then also for the CFTC, we also have a pro crypto CFTC Acting Chairman.

• 32:09David Hoffman?

  For the CFTC, there's also SEC Crypto 2.0 announced. Acting Chairman Mark Ueda announced his formation of new crypto task force headed by our favorite Commissioner Hester Purce. My reading between the lines is that we need, the SEC needs to go case by case by case of every enforcement action, litigation, Wells notice that has ever issued the crypto industry and it needs to reevaluate every single one to see what the SEC, the new SEC wants to do about that. And so Hester Purce, I think, has always had the interest of the crypto industry at heart.

• 32:49David Hoffman?

  Fairly, not, she's not just like giving us a blank check, but she understands that her role is to have an SEC that fosters fair and efficient capital formation and that the SEC has not been doing its job as it relates to crypto. She has said this many, many times, including on Bankless, and I think Hester Purce, leading this agency-wide effort, could not be better for the SEC's relations to crypto. Eric, what are your thoughts on all this?

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, first of all, begone Gary, finally. Man, that guy was just one of the worst actors against the crypto industry in its, all of its history, right? So that's great to see. Yeah, and I agree with you. I think the key here, and they already announced it, like you mentioned, is just getting like clear guidance and framework, right? That was always the thing with Gary. It was just so murky and it was intentional, right? It was like their way of not really putting out guidance. It's almost worse when there's a middle ground because you're not really sure, like, can I do this? Can I not? So yeah, this SEC Crypto 2.0 thing, I mean, again, just so much positive news coming in and things that Trump had promised that are already happening on like day one and two, right? One of my, one of my favorite things before the election

• 33:57Speaker 01

  was people acting like, okay, the president can't like officially fire and appoint the SEC chair, but like, of course, they can pressure them out, right?

• 34:05David Hoffman?

  He has a lot of tools that he has.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  One of these things that I was always fighting with people. I'm like, there's no way Gary's sticking around. There just is not. Sure, like maybe by the law it can't happen, but it's clearly going to happen and it happened. So. I think the biggest takeaway here is just allowing US crypto companies to understand this framework and to finally flourish a little bit, right? Because we've fallen behind the rest of the world. I mean, I've had plenty of friends, developer friends, friends in general, that have left the US to go build stuff elsewhere, right? And so I think this is just going to kind of bring innovation in the crypto space back to crypto. And I think that age of fear for crypto builders in the US, not just the US, like the US's

• 34:51Speaker 01

  presence reaches far, right? That age of fear is kind of gone. And I think we're going to see like, you know, a Renaissance era when it comes to building and especially around DeFi and things like that.

• 35:04David Hoffman?

  I think one thing that I really want to highlight, the CFTC has named Caroline Pham as Acting Chairman of the CFTC, also pro crypto. So we are flipping from the SEC and the CFTC and the Treasury. The Acting Chairman, can't remember the name of the Treasury, everything is flipping pro crypto. So not only are the individual agencies working more collaboratively with the crypto industry, but they can now also work together. And so the CFTC and the SEC can work together to define what's a security and what's a commodity. So these agencies, which previously have had tension with each other, regulatory territory, land grabs that they have been trying, I'm hoping that now because they are all together

• 35:44David Hoffman?

  flipping pro crypto, that they can work together to foster correct and clear rules of the road for the entire crypto industry. I thought this video of Brian Armstrong being interviewed on Squawk Box on CNBC about what he's hopeful for, I thought was pretty interesting. So let's go ahead and give this a listen. Happening exactly.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  One of the most exciting things about this new Congress, which is the most pro crypto Congress ever, is that I think we finally have a chance to get some regulatory clarity in the US about some of these big open issues that, frankly, under Gary Gensler, we just haven't gotten any clarity for a long time. So which of these assets are commodities? Which of them are securities? That requires the SEC and the CFTC to come together and collaborate on rulemaking. Or to have Congress really step in and pass new legislation. So there's an opportunity to do that. The FIT 21 bill, which passed with strong bipartisan support in the House earlier this year. It's now making its way through the Senate. And with any luck, we'll get that passed through the Senate and make it to the president's desk here, either in the lame duck or early in the Trump administration.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  When you think though about the other currencies, and they're the ones I would imagine at this point that have the bigger room to move, or no?

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I think Bitcoin will be the most important crypto asset for a long time. It's got a lot of runway to move as well. It's not just about Bitcoin. There are dozens, hundreds of different assets in crypto that are now, they've met our listing standards, they've made it onto our exchange. And actually, there's thousands of these being created every day, believe it or not. And so some of these are, they're, you know, coins like Ton and WorldCoin, which are being used in emerging markets. There's things like in the DeFi space, like Uniswap that people want exposure to, or the things that are Layer 2 solutions are being built on top of like optimism. I think we're eventually going to get to a world where there's millions of these tokens. You know, every project, every individual, every meme on the internet is going to have one of these.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  And of course, every company, when they want to raise money, as we get regulatory clarity around securities and have a clear path for that, they should be issuing these coins as well.

• 37:49David Hoffman?

  Really Brian Armstrong, I think, kind of giving the maximally bullish case for crypto on Squawk Box, talking about companies issuing tokens, individuals issuing tokens. And I think really re-highlighting to investors, something that we see every single bull market is like, yo, remember that it's actually much more than just Bitcoin. This is an entirely new tech sector that wants to revolutionize finance, and we're just getting started. And when the appetite from outside investors moves beyond Bitcoin and goes down the market cap stack, I think that's what a crypto bull market is.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think one of the more important things he said there too was, he didn't say the exact phrase, but essentially tokenizing the world, right? I mean, everything is going to be tokenized.

• 38:30David Hoffman?

  I forgot that phrase.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything's going to be tokenized, right? And like Larry Fink kind of talks about this too. And I think the lack of regulatory clarity has held back a lot of institutions and banks from going down this rabbit hole. And I think that's really going to open the floodgates here. And you know, Brian's of course hinting at that a little bit, giving us some shout outs to Ethereum Layer 2s and stuff. He did say Coinbase's listing standards, which I would love to know what those are because they're...

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Clearly not very clear. I'm not sure what's going on there, but maybe for the sake of clarity, they could publish those. But anyways, yeah, just in general, tokenizing the world, I think this, you know, people, like he was saying, people first think Bitcoin, right? And now people are going to focus on like strategic reserves. But really what this opens up, this administration opens up, and hopefully not just this administration, hopefully these rules get established, clarity gets established, and it carries on forever. Really what this opens up is further down the pipeline, right, of, you know, everything being tokenized, institutions, banks not being scared to to tokenize things and to touch crypto and custody crypto. There's just so many things that can kind of fall down here. And, you know, all these institutions, banks, brokers,

• 39:43Speaker 01

  they want to take in fees, right? And they can, they're drooling, thinking about how much money they can take in for doing some of this stuff, right? And that's just kind of, this is going to open up the floodgates.

• 39:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, as you said, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says, "I want the SEC to rapidly approve the tokenization of bonds and stocks." Of course, the man who has already tokenized bonds would love the SEC to allow him to do even more of that.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Coinbase has got to be the first one thinking about doing this, right? They got to be the first one trying to tokenize coin stock.

• 40:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right. Yeah, that would be sick. Because coin is the only thing that I own that's an asset that's not on a blockchain, other than the dollars I need to pay for rent in my bank account. Other than that, it's just coin. And if I could just get that in my Ethereum wallet on base, that'd be great. I don't even need to ask Jesse or Brian to do that. I know that if they could do that, they would definitely do that. Some last little bits on this regulatory section. Senator Cynthia Lummis has been announced to chair the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets. This Senator Cynthia Lummis, previously a laser-eyed Bitcoiner, she has since taken off her laser eyes, but I know she's got them on in the back. And so she is now heading up the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital

• 40:58David Hoffman?

  Assets. She is from Wyoming, I believe, which also Wyoming just passed a bill, proposed a bill for a strategic Bitcoin reserve. So they State of Wyoming wants to put Bitcoin on the Wyoming balance sheet. And then the CEO of Bank America says that the financial industry is ready to adopt crypto payments if regulators give it the green light. That's the FIT 21 bill that we would all like to be passed by the Senate. It's currently moving through the Senate. Hopefully that gets passed and then all of a sudden banks can custody crypto because you know, the old institution has to come our way sooner or later. And then lastly, actually unrelated to Donald Trump, but the OFAC sanctions on tornado cash has been lifted. So I think this means, and do not quote

• 41:43David Hoffman?

  me on this, and I'm not a lawyer, and this is not advice, but I think this means that tornado cash is legal to use by United States citizens. This is the Joseph Van Loon, Preston Van Loon, Alex Fisher, Kevin Vitale, and a few others. This is their court sponsored by Coinbase. Coinbase sponsored this fight against OFAC. And the court has lifted the sanctions on tornado cash. I am going to wait for multiple lawyers, Jake Stravinsky at all on Twitter, all the crypto lawyers, to give me the thumbs up that this is now legal. And then I'm going to wait for a few other people to go first. And then I might use tornado cash, but I'm going to wait for all of those things first. Eric, give me your reaction to all this.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think I'll comment first on tornado cash. I think this is a big one just for privacy in general. I mean, privacy to me should be a human right. And when this kind of came out, and especially, you know, the founders, you know, he's Roman Storm, for example, is going on trial. I suggest everyone kind of go support his cause and donate to him. That's coming up. But just disappointing from the US, the country I live in, we live in in general, to go after people like this who are just building open source software. And I think, I really do think privacy is a human right. So huge win here. And there's some of, some of my

• 43:01Speaker 01

  friends in the space that were involved in going after them and won this case. So just bravo to them. It's on, it's on the screen here. So you can see those names, but bravo to them for. You know, this is just a true community uprising to try and defend the things that we're building and that we believe in. And again, yeah, I don't know, like, are we allowed to go use it? I have no idea. I'll wait for some legal advice there as well. But hopefully, this is a good sign for, you know, the founders themselves as well, who are facing, you know, legal action against them.

• 43:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this unfortunately does not mean that Roman Storm is in the clear. It likely does weaken the case against Roman Storm, but unfortunately, that is an independent case. So while we have gotten the pardon of Ross Ulbricht, we still have two open source crypto developers, Alexi Persaev and Roman Storm, who are under the thumb of the nation state that we still need to make sure do not get left behind. All right, Eric, coming up next, we're going to talk about the drama that you were in the middle of last week. The EF is changing and Vitalik went into full war mode last week, dawning on a lady PFP. But I don't think the community is totally inspired or appeased by the direction that the EF is going in. I think people are asking for a little bit more change. I think you have a lot to share on that. So let's go ahead and get into all that information. But first, before we get there, a moment to talk about some of these

• 44:19David Hoffman?

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• 46:32David Hoffman?

  Cello is transitioning from a mobile-first, EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain to a high-performance Ethereum Layer 2, built on OP stack with EigenDA and one-block finality, all happening soon with a hard fork. With over 600 million total transactions, 12 million weekly transactions, and 750,000 daily active users, Cello's meteoric rise would place it among one of the top Layer 2s, built for the real world and optimized for fast, low-cost global payments. As the home of the stablecoins, Cello hosts 13 native stablecoins across seven different currencies, including native USDT on Opera MiniPay, and with over 4 million users in Africa alone. In November, stablecoin volumes hit $6.8 billion, made for seamless on-chain FX trading. Plus, users can pay gas with ERC20 tokens like USDT and USDC and send crypto to phone numbers in seconds.

• 47:17David Hoffman?

  But why should you care about Cello's transition to a Layer 2? Layer 2s unify Ethereum; L1s fragmented. By becoming a Layer 2, Cello leads the way for other EVM-compatible Layer 1s to follow. Follow Cello on X and witness the great Cello-havening, where Cello cuts its inflation in half as it enters its Layer 2 era and continuing its environmental leadership. On January 18th, Vitalik Buterin tweeted out a very big tweet, and he said, "We are indeed currently in the process of large changes to Ethereum Foundation leadership structure, which has been ongoing for close to a year. Some of this has already been executed on and made public, and some is still in progress." Some of the goals of this change in leadership is improving the technical expertise within EF

• 47:57David Hoffman?

  leadership, improving two-way communications and ties between EF leadership and ecosystem actors like users, like app devs, wallets and layer twos. Also to bring in fresh talent, be more actively supportive of application builders and increase our use of decentralized and privacy tech on the Ethereum chain. And then he also explicitly stated some non-goals, which he just wants to really double down on saying this is not what is happening, which is execute some kind of ideological vibes pivot from feminized WEF soy boy mentality to Bronze Age mindset. We are not going to aggressively start lobbying regulators and powerful political figures. We are not going to risk compromising Ethereum's position as a global neutral platform. We are not going to be an arena for vested

• 48:41David Hoffman?

  interests and the EF is not going to become a highly centralized org. He follows up and says, these things aren't what the EF does and this isn't going to change. People seeking a different direction, a different vision are welcome to start their own orgs. And so this is, I think, come out of a bunch of tension of people asking for a leadership change at the EF and Vitalik is saying, yeah, we are doing a leadership change. I don't think this is exactly what the community or the broader people rabbling about a leadership change had in mind. There has been a very large push to get Danny Ryan to be the executive director of the Ethereum Foundation. But Eric, I think you're in the middle of all this. Maybe you could give a little bit more context and give me your takes.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I'll start with like, I just want to make clear that I didn't decide in the last two weeks to try to start pushing the EF to change, right? I have posts on Reddit and Twitter going back as much as six, seven years, asking the EF to change. And one of my biggest problems has always been the lack of transparency and the opaqueness. So anytime this, these debates come up, right? One of the hardest things for the community is we don't really know what's going on inside of the EF. So they, they report, they, they publish a report. Once a year. Well, it's funny is they report, they, they put one out for 2024. They, they didn't do one for 2023 on their website and there's one for 2022. So typical EF fashion, they, they skipped a year.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  So just this opaqueness and lack of transparency, like there's no, in the, in the report, it gives like a budget. It kind of talks about the teams, but we don't know the headcount really. We don't like an updated headcount. We don't really know like specifically how big these teams are, exactly what their task was doing, what they accomplished in the year, you know, all of that stuff. So I think it begins there. Um, I've been asking it for that and the community has been asking for that for six years now. So it's kind of like, how do we judge the success of the Ethereum Foundation? And one of the things I disagree with most people on it, I've been very open about this. I'm okay with the leadership, quote unquote, of Ethereum being fairly centralized for now.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  I think the network can be decentralized and I think the leadership, I think it's human nature to look to leaders. And to, to execute this roadmap, which is still pretty vast and ambitious. I don't think we can just be like, eh, everything's decentralized. Go start your own foundation. Good luck, everybody. Like I strongly disagree with that, um, especially because the EF took a pre mine of ETH early on to specifically do this stuff, right? And I think one of the things I've been most frustrated about in all of this is the EF doesn't report to anybody and I think they should have established something over the past few years where the community has some type of say in this. So, so for those unaware, and this is actually on the EF website and Vitalik two days ago now kind of made this clear.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  This, this change is up to him, basically. There, there's a board of three people. It's Aya, it's a, I believe a Swiss lawyer, I forget his name, um, and it's Vitalik. And the board decides, you know, who, the big changes at the EF, right? And one of those would be executive director. And I don't want to just make this about executive director. I, I truly don't. I think this is a larger kind of stagnation, cultural issue going on in Ethereum. But I, I think the EF is vitally important. I think hand waving it off as it's not and that the community could launch their own foundations if they want change. I just, the EF has a billion dollar treasury, like that's a huge war chest. And if you start a new foundation, you do not have a billion dollar treasury. So I think.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Where this all started for me, and this has been building for years, is just starts with lack of transparency and opaqueness into the Ethereum Foundation. And then people just kind of, the classic answer just being, well, just start your own foundation. No, that's not how it works. That's not how it works.

• 52:33David Hoffman?

  You need the foundation, not a foundation. Like, there's plenty of like side projects that spin up to help promote Ethereum, and they've all kind of like sputtered along. It's really, you need buy-in from top executional power support of the Ethereum ecosystem. This is the tweet that I think you were referencing that I think kind of just rocketed across the Ethereum community, and really the broader crypto community. Vitalik is responding to somebody on Twitter saying, "No, this is not how the game works. The person deciding the new EF leadership team is me. One of the goals of the ongoing reform is to give the EF a proper board, but until that happens, it's me." And I think this

• 53:13David Hoffman?

  kind of punctured through some people's like idea of what the EF was, which was some nebulous, kind of undefined role of like Ethereum stewardship. I have always, I don't have the clear sense of like the EF because I came in 2017 and I was still learning then. Other people like you, Eric, have had more context than I have. I think my newer understanding of the Ethereum Foundation is something closer to like Vitalik's nonprofit for the values and technology that he wants to foster and bring to this world, which can also all be Ethereum adjacent. And I think, I want to get your take on this, Eric. I think the community is asking for an Ethereum Foundation that can operate a little bit

• 53:55David Hoffman?

  more like a top-down organization to productify Ethereum and, you know, generate KPIs and outcomes and have like centralized organization and development because Ethereum is now under pressure from ecosystems that are growing much faster than Ethereum is. Even though they're at different scales, it's easier to grow when you're small, but like nonetheless, Ethereum seems to be lagging in development. And so we are trying to get some dank Bad level of urgency or some, you know, Danny Ryan level of leadership to guide Ethereum development and Ethereum progress and really make the organization of the EF more like market

• 54:35David Hoffman?

  competitive more than it is like a research and like charity nonprofit. That's kind of my loose understanding. Check me if I'm wrong. What's your take on that?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  No, I would agree. And I think you were just kind of alluding to this. I think it's important to understand like, so the EF went to this subtraction mentality, which basically is like slowly stepping away in importance. And the idea is if the EF disappears tomorrow, can Ethereum still survive? That was good for like, I see Ethereum in like three stages kind of right now is like the launch. It was, oh, look, this thing works and people like it. We're in a new stage that I don't think the EF is properly, and I don't think the community honestly has properly responded to, which is, oh, wow, this thing works, but we have competitors who think their stuff works better. And there's people out there who thinks their stuff works better. And I don't think we've

• 55:25Speaker 01

  properly responded to that, right? And I think we need a little bit more sense of urgency. I think we need a little bit more accountability. And the truth of the matter is, I've heard from a lot of people that Ethereum's competitors are out there. They're telling institutions, they're telling people, they're telling Wall Street that Ethereum sucks and they're ripping our throats out, right? And I just don't-

• 55:51David Hoffman?

  Because we aren't there to advocate for ourselves, because we don't have top-down leadership.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yep. And now there was the announcement, I know this isn't part of the rollout, but they're Ethereumize is saying they're gonna go now go into Wall Street, institutions and kind of advocate for Ethereum. But, and this was partially EF-funded as well. But I just think Ethereum needs to look at itself and reevaluate itself, given the competitors. And I don't think it's okay to just say, oh, our competitors aren't legit, they're all scams. Like, because that's just, they're, they're, they're real now, right?

• 56:25David Hoffman?

  Scams can be effective, and they're not scams. And even if they were, scams can still be effective. It's still a problem.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, look, is just an EF ED leadership change gonna change everything? No, not really. It would, it's gonna help, I think, personally. And this has nothing to do with like what I has accomplished. And one of the things that has really frustrated me, I'll just be honest and put me over the boiling point, is like- Sure, riling up Twitter a little bit, but I was pretty cordial in not attacking anybody, definitely not personally attacking everybody. And all of a sudden, the opposition to this, or I guess I'll label it an opposition, whatever you want to call them, just takes a couple trolls who said a couple mean things, and now all of a sudden, it's like, oh, everyone's just personally attacking, and we can't possibly do this now because, you know, and that's just not the point, right?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Like, we, like, I want, everybody wants Ethereum to win in the end. And sometimes you just need to, like, rile the troops a little bit. I think the community was very too much complacent over the last, you know, one to two years, and, you know, we gotta wake up. Ethereum needs to wake up, right? And it can't just, like, fade. You can't, like, be losing to institutions, losing to users that are using your apps. Like, you can't, at a point, you're gonna lose all the pillars that, you know, bring an interest to your community. And so, yeah, it just kind of, who knows? Maybe this is a butterfly effect and it all end up happening. I just personally haven't loved the responses from the EF so far, especially to, like, valued community members that have kind of been, like,

• 58:01Speaker 01

  diluted down to, oh, just influencers and tweeters and whatever you want to call them. Like, that's just not true. If you're gonna lose all your evangelists, who's out there marketing Ethereum and pitching it and talking about it and, you know, doing things for you? So anyways, that's just kind of where I am and kind of where my head's been at on the EF situation in general.

• 58:22David Hoffman?

  Is there a way where, you know, Vitalik wants to make sure that the Ethereum Foundation promotes and supports the values and research that it wants to bring into the world? And that's, that's the vision of, like, the EF being Vitalik's nonprofit? And then also, the community is asking for, like, people like Danny Ryan and Dankrad to have more execution, operational power? And I don't necessarily see these things as mutually exclusive. It just ma, it just really matters as to, like, who gets to call the shots in the future of the Ethereum roadmap? And I think people have always assumed that that is something that the, that's the role that the EF does. And, and I know- Vitalik as a person just doesn't want that for himself. He just doesn't want to be a top down leader. Like, what does Vitalik like to do?

• 59:07David Hoffman?

  He likes to write six blog posts about potential futures for the Ethereum roadmap, where the Ethereum community is like, I am looking for someone to pick a future and then steer the ship in that direction. And I think that has been the motivation behind re-elevating Danny Ryan's name as a potential executive director of the Ethereum Foundation. Now, maybe there's a different world where there's like a different organization that represents coordination around the Ethereum roadmap and the Ethereum protocol. And that's led by people like Justin Drake, Danny Ryan, Donkrad. And then also, the Ethereum Foundation invests in research, frontier research, you know, cryptography, you know, and is Vitalik's nonprofit. Is there a world where we can have both? Or is there a fundamental tension that like doesn't make that a possible?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  I think there's a tension right now. I think if the community makes it clear enough that, hey, we think this is the only way to go, I think it could be fixed. I think one of the, one of the biggest problems the community has right now is like, very, very quickly stepping back, Vitalik was a great, first of all, I respect him immensely. A great wartime leader early on. Like, he was kind of in core dev calls, making the decisions, like on Twitter, fighting for Ethereum, you know, going out and talking to people about Ethereum. And it kind of oddly shifted around. And maybe he just is a little burnt out, want to step back from some of that stuff. I get it. And like, let this flourish on its own, which I also get. Kind of happened with like Bitcoin Maxi saying, oh, it's centralized around Vitalik. And people kind of like buying into that. I never liked that.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Like, I wish Vitalik kept charge. I still wish he had it to this day. Now, there is this weird kind of thing now where he stepped back. He kind of has a different vision for Ethereum than the community has. And one of the biggest sticking points is, I don't think the EF, especially EF leadership, is very tied in to what the community sees Ethereum should be and what the users are using Ethereum for. And so you, you have this like, Grand vision coming from some people of this like utopia of what Ethereum should be like, right? And like Vitalik has spoken out against like meme coins and like a little bit about against DeFi and speculation. Well, at the end of the day, that's what people are using the chain for. Like you, you can't like have this utopian vision and just ignore what users wanted to use,

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  use it for, right? So I think there's just this disconnect happening and like from the community, the people in the trenches, the people evangelizing, using it every day and kind of those who seem to have control of the EF seem to have control of the roadmap. How do you marry those two? My, my personal opinion would have been Danny Ryan takes over because he's kind of always sat between those two users, those two bases, right? There's just a lot of interreflecting to do. Who knows? Maybe the market doesn't care. I, I think it does. And I think one of the biggest things is just making sure Ethereum does not negate the app layer because I think that's one of the biggest missteps that has happened over the last two years. That's where your users come from, that active wallets with money in them

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  and kind of, you know, getting back to that and focusing on that. But who knows? I'm sure Ethereum's gonna be fine. I think the, the culture has a problem. I think there's pretty big disconnect between the EF and the community. Can it get solved? Time will tell, I guess.

• 1:02:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah. It was funny when Vitalik invoked the idea of like what's something we're not going to do is execute some like, like woke WEF, soy boy, like vibe shift. And I kind of want to comment on that because I think it's worth, worth talking about. There's always been in the Ethereum philosophy to make sure that all stakeholders of Ethereum are included in representation and that is beyond just simple ETH stakers. Somebody brought up the idea of like, yo, let's make a little mechanism to allow people with Ether to vote and so they could express themselves. But that, what that doesn't do is that doesn't include any users of Ethereum who just aren't ETH holders. And Ethereum as its credibly neutral public good that wants

• 1:03:05David Hoffman?

  to represent, you know, the users of the internet, not just ETH stakers and ETH holders, needs to Account for as wide of a population of people as possible. You know, there's four billion people that use the internet. How do we account for all of them? And this has been the positioning of Ethereum as this incredibly neutral, public, good world computer for everyone to use. And it's not just for ETH holders. It's not just for, you know, stakeholders, it's for the world. And this is kind of aligned with like more liberal values of having a sphere of concern that extends very far away from you. As opposed to more conservative values, which mainly has a concern for like your nuclear family, you know, your wife, your kids. And then, you know, you're maybe like one more degree after that.

• 1:03:50David Hoffman?

  And Ethereum has always tried to expand this fear of concern to not just, not just ETH holders, not just ETH stakeholders, but Ethereum users, Ethereum layer two users, but then also future users too, like expanding this fear of concern so far. And I think in 2025, that what I think is a noble value has perhaps overreached and allowed opportunities for people like faster moving, smaller ecosystems to have a more local sphere of concern for their token holders today, which has been able to spiral into some wins by respective ecosystems. And now that the Ethereum user base is large enough

• 1:04:30David Hoffman?

  that they feel forgotten or abandoned by the Ethereum Foundation, which is looking, is still looking into the future about hypothetical future users rather than looking today about the needs of the users today. How do you feel about that kind of vibe?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Fully agree, 100% agree. And I think this fear of concern, as you put it, has oddly enough stagnated progress. Because if you're constantly, say, say you want to make a change, you're like, okay, well, it's fairly easy to kind of tell, I think, what the devs think, what even ETH holders, who I would pretty much put as like the users think. Maybe you can gauge like Twitter, but as you keep like pushing this out now and now, and you're trying to get perfect about it at a point. You end up making no change because you can't get like a perfect read on the situation, right? And this is one thing that I just hate when people are like, oh, the Twitter mob or the people on Twitter. Like, no, that it's a it's a public square.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  This is where most Ethereum discussions occur. It should give a decent vibe on where the community is. And if you're going to try all these different measuring tools and worry about all these different parts of the community, you're oddly going to go the way of Bitcoin and stagnate, in my opinion, and never make change, which maybe at a point is okay. I don't think it's okay right now. But I definitely 100% agree. And, you know, where does this settle? And this goes back to like, who should the EF report to? Like, who should they consider as their stakeholders, right? And this is just a tough problem as as time goes on. And again, this goes back to like, I personally would prefer centralized control of the roadmap

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  and some of these decisions by highly respected people like Vitalik, Danny Ryan, and people that have contributed great technical expertise to the protocol, who can kind of then like, you can kind of create committees, right? You can kind of have smaller representation for each of these areas. And it's not going to be perfect. And I think the perfectionist nature of Ethereum and trying to make sure everyone's perfectly represented and like, how are they represented? It just has created this kind of like stagnation and this like, just accepting the status quo.

• 1:06:37David Hoffman?

  Well, this conversation will, I'm sure, continue. This is not going to be fixed overnight, so we will just simply report on this as time goes on. Eric, I appreciate you for your perspective. There's three last bits of news on the week. Digital Currency Group has been charged by the SEC to pay $38 million, $38 million in a settlement. This was three days before the Trump administration came in. A $38 million penalty to Genesis for lending shenanigans. The actual specific words here is misleading investors about the financial health of Genesis after the Three Arrows Capital collapse. Like I said, Digital Currency Group charged $38 million. And Mauro, who was the CEO at the time, Scioscia Mauro, I just butchered his name, also is

• 1:07:22David Hoffman?

  Charged with half a million dollars for civil penalties. Circle, Circle has introduced the Circle Paymaster, enabling users to pay gas fees with USDC on Arbitrum and Base. So you no longer need a gas token. You can simply just pay with USDC to pay for gas. And that's on live on Ethereum layer twos. And lastly, a gargantuan raised by Phantom Wallet, raised $150 million Series C at a $3 billion valuation led by Sequoia and Paradigm. Phantom Wallet, we talk at Bankless Ventures about potentially investing in wallets here and there. And it's just investing in a graveyard. There's just dead project, dead wallets everywhere.

• 1:08:03David Hoffman?

  And Phantom is really the one wallet that has just absolutely broken through that rule to be a very gargantuan exception. Eric, I just went through a bunch of news items. Feel free to comment on all of them as you see fit.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I'll comment on Phantom first. I mean, they've done a great job of just making a user-friendly experience. And I think that's, you know, going back to Ethereum, how much the wallet, you know, landscape has been split. We've gone through many different, I personally use Rabbi now, of course, use MetaMask in the past. But some of these wallets, if they can capture like most of the user base of crypto, like I'm not surprised that they're getting, you know, $3 billion valuations because there's a lot of ways to tap into, you know, taking fees on swaps and all this stuff. But yeah, this is extremely competitive space when it comes to Phantom or wallets in general. Yeah. And I suppose just quickly comment on the Circle USDC thing and like being on Arbitrum and Base.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  I think stable coins are still one of the more underappreciated general bullish things, however you want to put it, for Ethereum and crypto in general. And like Ethereum still does hold most of the stablecoin value and activity. DeFi is still flourishing. You know, I think stable coins are just going to continue to grow and someday are just going to replace, you know, wire and ACH transfers, right? So they're kind of marrying these two as people are on boarded the more user-friendly wallets over time. It's going to be way easier for someone to just, hey, you got Phantom Wallet or Rabbi Wallet or MetaMask Wallet, whatever it is. I'm just going to send you 100 USDC or, you know.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  50,000 USDC for this wire, whatever it is. And it's cheaper and it's more efficient than. So, long-term, I know we've just become used to stablecoins, but it's funny how such a powerhouse product has grown so rapidly.

• 1:09:55David Hoffman?

  Eric, that concludes the weekly roll-up. I really enjoyed you helping me work through the weekly news, my man. You're just a wealth of wisdom and I really appreciate your perspective.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, David, thanks. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. I'm sure we'll chat on here sometime soon in the future. Who knows how long it'll be, but thanks for having me.

• 1:10:10David Hoffman?

  Appreciate it. Bankless Nation, you guys know the deal. We're gonna have Haseeb Karashi on the weekly roll-up next week and then who knows for the week after that. I want Ledger, but he needs to get back to my Telegram DM. But until then, crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.